Fleeting Truth(s)

(Mis) Adventures In Suburbia...

2010-06-16T08:28:00.002-05:00

Been over a year since we fled NYC for the quietude and peace of a beach side town in CT. Really, it’s not all that different than city living.

Fine it’s completely different.

But in little ways. For instance, kids love when I call them ‘lil homey’ as they get off the bus. Their parents love it when I call them ‘Rebecca, Michael, Robert and Lillian’. Parents love being invited over for frozen margaritas. Just not at 11:30am on a Tuesday.

Its all good, I’m getting the hang of it. I even joined the Y. Settled into a sweet 6pm yoga class. Me and the mommies getting our downward dog on. Woof. Felt good, so I joined the Sunday morning yoga-Pilates. Figured if I could learn yoga in one class, adding a hyphen shouldn’t stop me from becoming a Pilates master too.

Quickly discovered Pilates is to Yoga what a Marathon is to say, jogging around the block. Just because you’re good at one, means you probably suck at the other. 10 minutes into class I was half-pretzeled raising one leg behind me in tiny, soul-crushing increments. I was in pain. But the pain resided in muscles I didn’t know existed.

Like the asslegknee. Its a muscle group just below the chestgutrib. And mine felt like someone was crushing it in a vise. So between asslegknee raises I plotted my revenge. Hard to remember all the details but in a nutshell it was basically a Unabomber campaign targeting nationwide Pilates studios. Between coughing fits I remember thinking I’d skip the manifesto writing part and just go for burning shit to the ground.

After class my teacher thanked me for coming. She’s French and has a great accent. We fell into an easy discussion about hip-flexors. Which could’ve been mildly sexy if she’d been in like, fishnet stockings blowing lazy smoke rings from her Gauloise cigarette.

Instead she took my leg and bent it out of sight, showing me ‘all zee relief is here, no?’. I couldn’t have agreed more – no. Before passing out, I made a mental note to make sure my firebombs contained a chemical accelerant so the studios would burn down before the fire trucks could get there.

Then, blackness. I woke up later, at the front desk of the Y. Asking if they had another yoga class. Not instead of, but in addition to. My inner-Deepak Chopra had been activated. I would not give up. No, I would excel at Tuesday night Yoga with Karen. I would rule Sunday morning Yoga-Pilates with Giselle.

And now, just to show they’d pushed me too far – I added another Yoga class. Wednesday nights with Nancy. ‘Revitalize and relieve the day’s stress with stretching / yoga’. Perfect. I showed up five minutes early on Wednesday, popped into the studio with my yoga-mat.

‘Hi, I’m Nancy – are you joining us tonight!’ the single process fifty something blond was perkier then a.m. coffee. ‘Would love to – bring in my mat, right?’.

‘You betcha! And grab a step…’.

Which should’ve been my first warning sign. The north of forty crowd all had long plastic step thingies. They were doing calf raises, so I grabbed one and did a calf raise showing off my new flexibility.

And then Nancy turned on music. They always vibe something kinda new-age-y in the yoga class. Stuff that sounds like a pair of turquoise dolphins with angle wings soaring over a blue ocean knitting Christmas scarves. But this wasn’t new age. It was trance. Trance not like, lulled into a peaceful coma. Trance like drop X and rave all night Trance.

Seemed weird. I mean, you can’t really stretch or do yoga to music that you’d play at a Prague disco while some girl with an eastern bloc accent gives you a blue pill with a tiny dove on it asking if you can get her and her cousin back across the border with you. Sorry, that’s another post.

Anyway, the music was too loud for yoga. Which now made sense because Nancy wasn’t yoga-ing. She was yelling. And dancing. ‘New faces tonight, say hello to – Dana and Gail!’. Nancy was marching in place rapidly like the Energizer Bunny.

I smiled and gave a little wave, not sure what was happening. Then she barked something like ‘…and, cross-step up, back step down, sidestep two three four, repeat…’. While doing some kind of hybrid River Dance, disco-cardio foot weave all up and over the step thingie.

I saw my reflection in the mirror and got confused between my left and right feet. I finally got my left foot onto the step when Nancy got to ‘…and repeat’. I did not hear Nancy say ‘And now, gentle warrior pose. Laying on your back, close your eyes and drift cloud-like into a place of loving peace’.

Which is why I joined yoga. I like being a cloud. Clouds don’t feel like they’re getting their sphincter muscles spanked with a snow shovel. Clouds don’t do Prague dance moves with fifty-year-old women with the energy of teenagers. Clouds float.

Nancy was not floating. Nancy had gone onto ‘…and grapevine walk, count of 10 and 9..and…8…and 7…c’mon, work! And 6…’. I frantically followed Nancy / my mirror reflection across the room laterally. Turns out I rock at grapevine. Its got a kinda Latin vibe – you just walk to the side, moving one foot behind the other while staring at your confused reflection which is trying to figure out if mirror left and real left are the same.

But I did it. And it was only my first three minutes in class. I briefly considered not firebombing Step Class Studios. Pilates joints were toast, but I might spare Step. Feeling revitalized and sexy and all grapevine walk, I threw a little hip into it. You know, work it a little.

‘…and squat to floor, hands up high and football shuffle count of 10, 9, 8, 7…’ Nancy and mommies were shuffling laterally across the room. Shit. I remembered this from H.S. I hated it. And that’s was 30 yrs ago. When I had the body fat of a #2 pencil. And on it went. Grapevine walk lost all its new and shiny fun after doing it like 9 times without stopping combined with football shuffle.

I was sweating like a baseball player on steroids before a Congressional hearing. My eyes were burning. I ran across the gym and grabbed a paper-towel from the dispenser, wiping the sweat from my face. I may have tried to kick someone’s step out from under them. Hard to remember. But yeah, probably.

‘Way to work, Dana!’ I heard Nancy cow-bellow across the room. If by ‘way to work’ she meant ‘Yay for you, that was your spleen falling out of your back!’, then yeah – yay. I could feel my pride hitting the floor in big, wet, salty sweat drops. Then, the big finale.

‘Great! Now grab your body bar, raise it out in front, squats on 8 and 7, and 6…’. Body bars have one purpose in life. They don’t rescues orphans. Or clean wildlife after an oil spill. Body bars want to hurt you. I was squatting. And bar-ing. And wanting to cry. I felt sweat run down my back, but didn’t rule out spinal bleeding.

Then I saw Helen from my Tuesday night Yoga. Helen’s about 104 years old and as thin as a swifter. And there she was, lifting her little body bar away ‘…and six and five and four, three…’. The difference was, Helen was using one of the lightweight bars made for women – it had little pink caps on the end and was way lighter then mine. Which had – pink caps on the end.

Hmmm. I looked again through my sweat-stung eyes – maybe the pink on mine was darker, signaling how much heavier my bar was. No. Same bubblegum pink. I watched as Helen pumped her bar up and down like it was a Q-Tip. Then coming up out of her squat she threw in a little Broadway style, chorus line kick. Essentially I’d been lapped while running by a senior pushing a walker. Awesome. ‘Good for you Helen…’, I thought. You’re gonna need that cardio because I just added senior centers to my firebombing list.

‘Great job, cool down – lay your mat on your step…’. Yoga, finally. Helen may have been old enough to help build the pyramids, but no way she could cloud like me. I was born to cloud. I lay on the mat, closed my eyes and pictured Nancy comforting a weeping Helen ‘Now, now – Dana’s probably been floating like a bunny cloud for years honey, its fine…’.

But Nancy’s yoga, like Nancy’s stretching, was vastly different. In fact, it wasn’t really yoga. It was vertical leg crunches to a 16 count. 4 Sets. I tried to reach my body bar, thinking I could club Nancy a little bit and make her stop. But I couldn’t lift the bar while lying on my back.

And then we were standing, clapping, wooting like we’d all won free pedicures. Class was over. I sat in my car, sucking down buckets of air. I’d done yoga. Pilates. Step. And sure, it was all a little more then I’d planned for, but I’d hung in there. Learned about hip flexors. And body bars. Even silently applauded an old woman’s success. I’d been a good week. There was only one thing left.

I turned up the A.C. in my car, looked at the clouds form lazy, beautiful shapes in the blue sky and pulled up Google on my blackberry. Then I punched in ‘firebombing+accelerants+homemade’. My fingers were nimble, each one a little ballerina dancing on the tiny keys. My mind was clear and extra focused as I navigated link after link ‘Unabomber…firebomb composition…ignitable liquids’.

Say what you want, but apparently nothing helps your concentration like a good Step class.

What To Watch...

2009-10-10T08:33:00.002-05:00

I try and not watch anything on TV that in any way contributes to the culture of misogyny, violence or sexual objectification already so prevalent in our culture.

Not really, but it made me feel morally superior to write that.
Okay, so I love Damages with Glenn Close. Frighteningly, she’s the backstabbing Xerox of a former boss of mine: mean-spirited, her-at-all-costs Narcissist. Glenn Close’s the reason they have acting awards.

So maybe Entourage does appeal to my hidden puerile instinct towards a Peter Pan, stay-young / irresponsible / hide your immaturity behind material objects and chase down twentysomething hotties like you’re a Cheetah on the African plains, live-now-apologize-never lifestyle, wait – I don’t have a counter argument here.

The Shield – try and jump over the bar that series set. Dare you.
Hung. Jury’s still out on this. The tone / characterization feels a bit unbalanced to me. And, its just difficult for dudes to root too fervently for a concept built around the premise of a guy with a huge um, a large uh, well let’s just say when he orders a deli sandwich he doesn’t need the giant pickle.

I have to admit, even by my standards (wtf, I have no standards…)Burn Notice is style over substance, pretty faces trumping characterization and essentially a montage of beautifully lit panning shots of a sun-soaked Miami meant to lull you in to not noticing how implausible most if not every episode really is. My total, absolute fave show on TV. If Fiona showed up at my door with matching Makarovs and some C-4 plastique, my marriage would be in serious trouble.

True Blood. Some weeks I bite, others I don’t. Haven’t watched any of season 2 yet. So no, technically I’m not one of the rabid fang-gang.

And of course, the most morally korrupt, lo-tech reality show in the ignominious history of television – Cheaters. Basically, is what it says – hand-held cameras and a crew of 15 bust cheating spouses / lovers in the act. Best episode so far was when wife+cam crew walk in on hubby – naked, wearing a black leather mask, handcuffed to a cheap hotel bed and getting whip-spanked by a 6 foot, black Transvestite. He freaks, manages to get loose as wifey’s screaming at him, chasing him around the bed in this 10’x10’ Motel Six (maybe they should just go ‘head and change the name to Motel Sex) room trying to hit him, and he actually pleads his case, saying “'I'm doing this for us! She's helping me with intimacy issues!!!”.

To which I say, those are some intimacy issues I never, every want to hear about. Or the episode where a black husband gets cold busted by his wife. He’s total deer in the headlights – silent like a mime, just kind of blinking at the camera lights realizing he has no out. Until he invokes Presidential privilege.

He goes to wife “We can work this out, yes we can”. She’s like, “Are you out of yo black mind? Work this out how?!”. To which he earnestly responds, “Yeah, President worked it out with Hillary, right? We can fix this too”.

But not all episodes are a comic reveal on our collectivly flawed humanity. Last night they had midgets cheating on midgets. Yep, little people acting like big freaks. I was like “Man, even I can't watch this'. Turns out I could. And you know what, I learned a lot about myself, from my tiny friends.

Like you can’t measure what’s in a person’s heart. Passion really can blind a person to the obvious. And if a midget tries to punch you just reach out and put your hand on top of their head. They have big hearts, but short arms.

Careful What You Wish For...

2009-08-20T21:08:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time I dreamed of this life--traveling around the world with a Buddhist master, making a positive meaningful impact on people’s lives. And for the most part, I do. Help others, that is. The problem has become my lack of ability to help myself. I have become the very person I humbly warm others from becoming.

By day I wear a suit and tie, spending countless hours helping an incarnate lama as we travel the world giving talks on compassion, understanding and meaningful living. By night I slink around in any bar I can find drinking until blackout. My life has somehow, unbeknownst to me become so painful that I must anesthetize myself from it.

Before we arrived in Colorado we were in Baltimore, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Before that, Vienna, Amsterdam Germany, Paris and Italy. Then South America. I can order drinks in ten different European cities in five languages. I know what time Happy Hour starts in at least fifteen of the nation’s major airports. I’m now so tired I hallucinate. While I’m awake. I visit a family friend, a doctor. He takes my pulse, my blood pressure, does a Chinese medicine work up of my phlegm, then pronounces me “Exhausted”. “Thanks, Bill--real news flash” I laugh, buttoning up my shirt.

A tall man with intense, caring eyes, Bill takes me by the elbow. Not forcefully, but it gets my attention. “I’m not kidding. You are clinically exhausted”. Doctors can add a stress to syllables in a way that commands respect. He could say “No Dana...you must take out the gar-bage” and it would take on a new, important significance.

“You can rest for a few days, or I check you in right now and hook you up to an I.V.”. I stop buttoning my shirt. Bill’s words weigh me down with their solemnity. I meet Bill’s penetrating gaze and nod. “I hear you. I do”. Bill purses his lips, blinks his forgiveness. “No stimulants, stay away from spicy food. In three or four days, you should start sleeping through the night again. Dana, you need to rest”. Bill leaves the office and I sit there, his admonition a slap on the face, still stinging.

I leave his office, shaken as much by Bill’s intensity as his diagnosis. I drive along in a daze, not sure what to do. I notice “El Chico’s”, a bar popular with the University set. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon as the cute sandy-haired waitress smiles and sets a cocktail napkin down in front of me on the laminated table. The tables are chest high and I feel like Lily Tomlin in her oversize chair. But already I feel better.

El Chico’s is famous for its margarita’s that come in a laughably industrial size glass big enough to raise trout in. There’s actually a neon sigh above the bar--an oversize glass with a line through it, forbidding anyone from having more than two of their large or three small margaritas. This always makes me laugh, but before i finish my first large, I am happy like a five year old on Christmas and realize that Bill the doctor is simply jealous of me, of my lifestyle.

“Getcha’ another?” the waitress smiles and I grab for my glass, a little too desperate for the last gulp. I fish the plastic straw from the cavernous glass bottom as she lifts it from the table. I can chew on the straw and suck the last of the margarita from its marrow to nurse my buzz until she returns. Somehow, I’ve now been at El Chico’s for four hours. The after work crowd is in full swing as is the first of the college crowd. Van Morrison wails “Brown Eyed Girl” and twice I almost tip over and fall off my stool.

I switched to beer long ago and am on my fifth Dos Equis, acting like I can handle this. The truth is, I am an instant drunk. My mother is diabetic and Navajo. Any kind of alcohol instantly converts to sugar in my system. I can get drunk on literally half a beer. That I’ve had the equivalent of twelve drinks means I’m dangerously inebriated. Being this drunk now means, I must have sex. And if I must have sex, I must drive my car to wherever the sex is. People tend to forget how easy alcohol makes problem solving.

Suddenly I remember I haven’t checked in with the secretary of the day. Essentially, I’m a traveling Joint Chiefs Of Staff. So whenever we arrive at our next city, I have to constantly ensure that the daily schedule is adhered to. The daily schedule is a Wooly Mammoth of meetings, interviews, conferences with local directors and public talks. The daily schedule is a massive, ambling Dinosaur that crushes me with every step. No matter how fast I run, I cannot escape the lumbering daily schedule.

I look at my watch, squinting to stop the hour hand from spinning. I left for my doctor’s appointment six hours ago. By now the staff is dealing with the fact I’m not there – I justify my absence as a much-needed break. What’s six hours away from the grind for a guy that travels over 250,000 miles a year, right?. Again, alcohol enables me to really cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of things.

Besides, I am invincible. I travel with a Buddhist lama, so even deeply intoxicated I tell myself I’m blessed and can do no wrong. I exhale deeply and for the first time all day cannot feel the Wooly Mammoth’s huge foot crushing my chest. I smile to myself and stretch my arms. I am not exhausted. I am fine. Bill is wrong. I am still stretching my arms, which must be incredibly long because they are going up and up and up. I feel free, airborne. And then my head hits the floor solidly with a hollow “thunk”.

People are pulling me up. A twentysomething kid with a Van Halen t-shirt high fives me and hands me his beer. I drink it as a bouncer leads me outside. He hails a cab. We drive for one block before I am curbside, emptying out my body of liquids and solids. Cabbies hate pukers. My ride is free. I wake up later, behind the wheel of a friend’s car.

I’m on the Interstate leading into Denver. Within an hour I’ll be downtown. The windows are open and the radio is playing Cool And The Gang. I am Cool And The Gang. I haven’t slept a full night since we left Amsterdam. That was eight cities, three weeks and many time zones ago. The gas pedal feels like a marshmallow under my foot – it gives way easily, all the way to the floor. I’m flying again, soaring past the cars next to me.

I close my eyes, cold air rushes through the windows. I remember the cold air off the coast of Portugal. An exotic, old-world mix of orange, red and yellow buildings spired and tiled. Cobble stone streets disappearing up alleys so narrow, cars have to flip back their side-view mirrors to navigate through.

When I open my eyes, I see the ruby red of taillights ahead, and wonder who put a parking lot on the Interstate. And then I realize the cars ahead aren’t parked, they’re stopped. I’m going 85 MPH, waking up too late in the left lane. And now I wonder if its true – am I really invincible? Because unless I click my heels together and manage to Oz myself out of this dream, chances are very good I’m going to miss our Thursday flight to London.

The Cool Warmth Of Family

2009-08-19T17:38:00.004-05:00

We are gathered together, family both immediate and extended, a clutch of close friends. My mother is in a casket, of sorts. It’s actually an industrial strength cardboard box. She’s been transferred to the box and lay inside, surrounded by dry ice. She’s frozen. Solid. She’s a momsickle. And we’re here to cremate her body, finally. Its been a draining, exhausting seven weeks, no one more exhausted than my mother, who finally gave up the struggle to lung cancer four nights ago.

Since then, its been a bizarre, disorienting emotional roller-coaster as those who loved her have laughed, cried, anguished and some of us, visited awake in the predawn hours by my mother’s spirit. Her latest visitation “from over there” my uncle likes to say with a wry smile and nod-up of the head, was to inform a woman who never met her to gather family and friends for a wake of sorts.

The woman tells my father this at six-thirty a.m. on a cool, bright Colorado morning. Estranged for thirty years, my mother apparently felt compelled to have her former husband see to a few last minute details for her. That’s mom--always including everyone. The woman is both apologetic and dumbfounded. She never met my mother, but worked in the same building. While the soap slid off her body in wet slimy sheets during her morning shower, she said her head was suddenly “filled with a movie--narrated by Louisa”.

The “message” says to bring Bushmill’s whisky (my dad’s favorite for some time, who says time doesn’t heal all?) and red roses. Lots of red roses. Her brother, a frail, dark-haired Spanish wizard of a man laughs when he hears this. “I told her the Navajo put flowers in the grave--so their relations would walk on petals in the afterlife--she always loved that story”. He laughs again, a high, thin laugh that shakes his whole body. His face lights up and we all laugh.

Now, two days after our “wake” we are here to say a final goodbye to the husk, which housed her for sixty-six years. We’ve prayed, done Buddhist ceremonies and cried. Cried so much that if anyone else wants to shed a tear we’ll have to get some Fed Ex’d to us – we’re all cried out. There are no more prayers. Louisa’s spirit has stopped making house calls. We can say goodbye.

But the morticians aren’t moving. They’re whispering in too-loud voices. Something’s wrong. “Problem?”. I ask. They exchange worried glances--a tacit, morticians “rock-paper-scissors”. The loser, a mid-forties death-clerk takes a breath, coughs nervously. “Her jewelry--state law prohibits us from cremating her with her jewelry on”.

Nobody says a word. We kind of decked mom out in her favorite rings and bangles thinking they’d make the trip with her. “We’ll have to remove them--unless you’d like to...”. I glance around the room--no one in my family would like to apparently. I can’t blame them. We’ve spent four days with my mother’s decomposing body, the sweet heavy smell of death now coating our every cell. Everyone’s gone just about as far as they can on this voyage--time to head for home. But since we’ve come this far...

I nod to the mortician who actually seems relieved. I’m about to find out why. I reach down alongside my mother’s frozen body and find her arm. It feels like a branch in the winter, stiff and lifeless, hands balled up and still. I feel her fingers, they are tiny, thin, preserved. I cup her wrist in my hand and pull it towards me--her whole body moves to the side a bit. She is of course, hard and cold as a rain-soaked sidewalk. And now I see the dilemma. In order to remover the rings and bangles, I’ll have to force her cold, frozen fingers free.

As I move her arm back and her body is once again horizontal a wisp of knowing moves through the room. Now they get it, too. And now, with complete certainly, no one would like to be involved. My personal macabre meter reached “tilt” long ago and though this is a new high, or low on my all-time weird list, grief has long given way to a kind of giddy, humorous disbelief. I mean, really--how much more fucked up can it get? I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Then I wrench my mother’s cold arm-stick up in one quick motion. It gives way somewhere at the shoulder and rises from dry-ice mist in to view.

In a way, this is awesomely bizarre beyond words--I would so dare anyone in the Addams family to top this. I firmly take my mother’s preserved fingers and force them straight, sliding off each ring. By now, I’m in to the rhythm of it and am satisfied at my own handiwork. The last ring is pulled over her hard, small finger-knuckle and I raise the gold like some deep-sea diver hoisting up the final nugget of booty surrendered by the deep.

My family looks on in awe, shock and final, silent confirmation. Despite the mood, the circumstance and the sheer madness of it all, the moment is just too perfect and I cannot resist. I look around the room slowly and with confidence as I remove the latex gloves, snapping them off professionally “I’m afraid that’s all I can do for her”. My brother shakes his head and suppress a giggle. My girlfriend who will someday be my wife and mother to our precious daughter, nods and smiles--she’s loves that I am both freak and saint, sinner and devil cursed with all, but blessed with innate, perfect unpracticed comic timing.

As we leave the mortuary, we look up to the chimney which coughs thick, curling dark clouds up and in to the inverted-ocean blue sky. Louisa. “Oh no” I say, “Now she’s everywhere”. We go to breakfast and cannot figure out what to say as the perky waitress asks “what’s everyone up to this morning?”. Between bouts of quasi-hysterical laughter, we manage to order a table full of pancakes, omelets, bacon and endless rivers of coffee.

We laugh and eat like lumberjacks. I eat and eat and eat knowing the empty feeling will never be gone, not now. I eat anyway. After twenty minutes I sit up, take a deep breath and look out the window. Endless Colorado sky blue to the edge of nowhere. Except for a few dozen cloud-puffs. I look again. They float buoyantly and I cannot help but notice about a dozen of them resemble small rose petals. Laid out across the sky so perfectly you could walk on them.

What To Watch For...

2009-08-13T17:09:00.002-05:00

I try and not watch anything on TV that in any way contributes to the culture of misogyny, violence or sexual objectification already so prevalent in our culture.

Not really, but it made me feel morally superior to write that.
Okay, so I love Damages with Glenn Close. Frighteningly, she’s the backstabbing Xerox of a former boss of mine: mean-spirited, her-at-all-costs Narcissist. Glenn Close’s the reason they have acting awards.

So maybe Entourage does appeal to my hidden puerile instinct towards a Peter Pan, stay-young / irresponsible / hide your immaturity behind material objects and chase down twentysomething hotties like you’re a Cheetah on the African plains live now apologize never lifestyle, wait – I don’t have a counter argument here.

The Shield – try and jump over the bar that series set. Dare you.
Hung. Jury’s still out on this. The tone / characterization feels a bit unbalanced to me. And, its just difficult for dudes to root too fervently for a concept built around the premise of a guy with a huge um, a large uh, well let’s just say when he orders a deli sandwich he doesn’t need the giant pickle.

I have to admit, even by my standards (wtf, I have no standards…) Burn Notice is style over substance, pretty faces trumping characterization and essentially a montage of beautifully lit panning shots of a sun-soaked Miami meant to lull you in to not noticing how implausible most if not every episode really is. My total, absolute fave show on TV. If Fiona showed up at my door with matching Makarovs and some C-4 plastique, my marriage would be in serious trouble.

True Blood. Some weeks I bite, others I don’t. Haven’t watched any of season 2 yet. So no, technically I’m not one of the rabid fang-gang.

And of course, the most morally korrupt, lo-tech reality show in the ignominious history of television – Cheaters. Basically, is what it says – hand-held cameras and a crew of 15 bust cheating spouses / lovers in the act. Best episode so far was when wife+cam crew walk in on hubby – naked, wearing a black leather mask, handcuffed to a cheap hotel bed and getting whip-spanked by a 6 foot, black Transvestite. He freaks, manages to get loose as wifey’s screaming at him, chasing him around the bed in this 10’x10’ Motel Six (maybe they should just go ‘head and change the name to Motel Sex) room trying to hit him, and he actually pleads his case, saying “'I'm doing this for us! She's helping me with intimacy issues!!!”.

To which I say, those are some intimacy issues I never, every want to hear about. Or the episode where a black husband gets cold busted by his wife. He’s total deer in the headlights – silent like a mime, just kind of blinking at the camera lights realizing he has no out. Until he invokes Presidential privilege.

He goes to wife “We can work this out, yes we can”. She’s like, “Are you out of yo black mind? Work this out how?!”. To which he earnestly responds, “Yeah, President worked it out with Hillary, right? We can fix this too”.

But not all episodes are a comic reveal on our collectivly flawed humanity. Last night they had midgets cheating on midgets. Yep, little people acting like big freaks. I was like “Man, even I can't watch this'. Turns out I could. And you know what, I learned a lot about myself, from my tiny friends.

Like you can’t measure what’s in a person’s heart. Passion really can blind a person to the obvious. And if a midget tries to punch you just reach out and put your hand on top of their head. They have big hearts, but short arms.

When (lack of) Art Imitates Life

2009-07-15T17:56:00.003-05:00

So this is supposed to be a real note someone found (click on it to enlarge), and posted on a site where people can post lost notes. And if you don't think too closely about it, its funny. But I do think about it--the content that is. And in a post modern world where nothing is what it seems, and every facet of so called reality is massaged and scripted until it actually doesn't echo reality, I have to wonder.

Is there really a site for lost notes?

Did Scott (socks or not) truly write this?

Because I've been duped too many times. Life has been over-edited and in the process, upstaged by facsimile.

Maybe I'm jaded. But I just can't extend the innocence of wonder to any suggestion of 'original material' any more. Personally, I don't think there ever was a Maria.

And Scott's either a seventh grader with a scanner, or a disgruntled copywriter whose launched a new web site that offers 'humorous, honest glimpses in to the intimacy of people's lives' via the found notes he 'posts'.

Which, btw looks Photoshopped. There's no bleed to the ink, and the wrinkles don't distort the letters at all. And the tear isn't a tear. Just an area where the pixels were erased.

So when I read it, I don't empathize I criticize. The syntax feels glaringly awkward in an obvious, forced manner. Even people who speak poorly, speak consistently poorly. Repeating the imperfect tense 'was' isn't a clever way to mock language, its just lazy. Not to mention, the emotional tone feels uneven. Endearments (dear, sincerely) are poorly constructed devices to imitate the closeness of their bond, but stand in glaring opposition to the condemnation supposedly motivating the writer. I mean, Scott.

Finally, tube socks? Just a cheap short cut--using a word that you thinks funny to try and illicit a laugh. Like after five beers when you crack up everytime you shout 'spider monkey!'. Until the manager tells you Happy Hour is over and Spider Monkey wasn't funny after the third episode of Friends.

In the old days, I would've laughed. But then in the old days the note would've been real. And it would've resonated with humanity in all its fractured, tender, dysfunction. But since Survivor, Big Brother, Ace Of Cakes, The People's Court and The Bachelor I just can't take the chance. So I choose to not believe reality. I'm taking a break for awhile. At least until they come up with a show where I really can't tell what's real, or not.

But I figure by the time that level of writing / programming makes it on TV, it'll also be available in Hi Def Hologram. In which case, I'm gonna grab my handheld and just film me showing up at Dunkin Donuts every morning pretending I may choose the blueberry muffin, when the whole time everyone knows I only eat chocolate chip muffins.

Hey, it's not that funny--but at least it really happens. At least, I think that's me...

Life, One Page At A Time

2009-07-02T14:14:00.005-05:00

The lung cancer ravaged my mother like an uncontrolled fire, finally consuming her entirely one morning, seven weeks after her initial diagnosis.

She was sixty-six years old, and just about the most vibrant, gutsy, fun and badass person I’d ever had the joy of being around. She lived up to every inch of her Spanish / Navajo heritage, a sassy, wise, provocative and potent brew of woman who left the imprint of her force-of-nature style wherever she went.

The Montoya’s came to the New World in 1546. Given a land grant in New Mexico, they settled on 700 acres of land living as Gauchos and ranchers and still do, today. And by thier standards, sixty-six was adult infancy. The elders tended to live regularly well into their upper nineties, with one hundred plus ages not the least uncommon.

We all presumed Louisa was one of those old growth Oaks under whose branches of family would rest grand and great grandchildren. Certainly no expected that Oak to be so quickly, unceremoniously burnt to the ground. The cancer moved faster than we could plan. Days slipped away faster from us the tighter we tried to hold onto them. Louisa was tired. Morphine masked the pain, but made her groggy.

We moved her home to the couch and watched her labored breath move her chest slowly, up and down, each breath possibly her last. Exhausted from the sheer terror of losing my mother, I fell into a deep sleep early one night. Suddenly, Louisa was there—a dream, an apparition, a vision.

I kneeled next to her, asking “What should I do?”. I meant, with her belongings, her clothes, a few possessions. But what I felt was, “What will I do without you?”. I kept asking, answered by the air all around us which echoed “Everything’s fine”. Until finally I realized, everything would be fine. Somehow. When I wokr up, my face was wet from tears. I said to Ann, “I never knew a dream could be so sad…”. And in the space before she could answer, my brother called to say he’d just gone in to the living room and found mom—peaceful, relaxed and yes, no longer breathing.

Seven weeks later, Ann and I were far removed from Colorado’s foothills, but every second of the previous months was as close as our breath. We couldn’t sleep, and suffered a sort of dulling malaise that clung to our hearts like those lead capes you wear when you’re x-rayed.

We were staying on NYC’s upper west side in a small one bedroom. It was just forty-eight days after Louisa’s death, a time Buddhist’s consider a key transition point when the consciousness finally separates from presumed reference points.

All night long the phone kept ringing—half asleep, I’d stumble over and pick it up. On the other end was a kind of low-frequency static “Hello….hello, who is it?’. I’d keep asking over and over, able to hear the line was open—but no one responded.

It happened on and off through the evening, my voice falling away in to a space at the other end of the receiver that buzzed lightly with an energy like a small bee-hive.

Around 3:00 or 4:00am, I sat straight up in bed, looking over to the living room. There was Louisa, her long black hair flowing behind her as she glided through the space, then just as mirage like, disappearing.

Ann sat up “What is it?”.

“Louisa”.

We put our heads back down and slept what little we could, too tired to make sense out of any of it anymore. The next evening Ann and I walked to the Hudson. I had a small portion left from Louisa’s cremation ashes, which I let fall into the dark water far below us.

“I’m just trying to let go mom, that’s all”.

My voice echoed inside my ears, as sharp winter air stabbed at us. Silently Ann and I marched back to Broadway, to the subway. Then Ann reached over, her hand to my arm “Can you breathe?’. I put my hand on my chest—the lead vest was gone. Maybe it was a start.

We sat on the subway quietly, side by side. Too worn out to say anything. It had been a marathon of grief, and we were just beginning to realize we might never finish the race. Better to stop running. Across from me, I saw a little girl next to her mother. Five or six years old, beautiful little ringlets of hair spilled over her forehead, which I could see just above the cover of the book she was reading, held out in front of her.

The cover was illustrated in bright colors, and I had to tilt my head down just so to make out the title, “Louise, The One And Only”. The girl’s mother leaned back in to her seat, eyes closed. Behind them both through the subways window I could see the buildings blur past in an endless line, a page, a book, a story at a time.

Does This Lawn...

2009-05-19T16:57:00.002-05:00

...make my grass look fat?

Okay, so I’m still pretty surprised at what some fresh air and a lack of NY'er's in your face can do for your overall state of health. Don’t get me wrong, NYC’s a wonderful place, but I must’ve been ready for a change.

We moved to CT in September, and I’ve been back to NYC exactly once since. Ann called me about two hours after my first meeting “So, what’s it like to be back?”.

“Someone’s already been mean to me and it smells like urine—I’m getting the 4:40 instead of the 5:00 train, see you for drinks on the porch”. Pretty much sums up my last trip to the city.

I can’t say there’s been any serious downside to my new life here. I’ve grown accustomed to the staff at Home Depot just about peeing themselves with laughter when they see me coming in, knowing I’ll be loaded with just about every newbie question a NKO (the suburban) B can rock.

My last visit started out with a real knee-slapper “Hi, welcome to home depot, how can I help you?”

“How do you grow grass?”.

This was followed by a blank stare and a fairly long silence.

Hmmm, Home Depot. The name said it all. A depot of things you need for the home. My home needed grass.

“Uh, well we have a gardening and lawn section just past aisle eight…”.

I walked past aisle eight outside onto a tidy little 1.5 acre of land filled four stories high with every conceivable lawn / garden / home gazebo / product ever devised. Seriously, there were tools I’d never even seen before stacked Christmas tree high.

But I didn’t see any grass. I saw plants, dirt, trees, flowers, tools, I even saw entire sheds pre-assembled. But no grass.

“Hey, welcome to home depot what can I help you with today?”.

The woman in the hunter orange vest had the kind of face that could grow flowers just with a smile. Kindly. Nurturing. God had sent me an angel. Visions of a lush green carpet of grass by the weekend danced in my head.

“I need grass”.

“Great, follow me…”. I followed the bright orange vest as she tossed out question to me like flower petals falling off a branch…

…is the crab grass all gone, because you’ll want to take care of that if you haven’t but it’s really too late since you should’ve killed that during the winter it’ll just strangle whatever tries to grow so for now you can just leave it, it’s the brown patches on your lawn just rake up the old crab grass bag it, do you have lawn and leaf bags? we’ll get you some and then I’d recommend a good sun and shade mix of seeds go ahead an distribute them evenly we’ll get you a seed sprayer so you can maximize distribution and after you lay your seeds you’ll need a fertilizer unless your soils too acidic in which case you should consider…”

I’d lost her after crab grass. Managed to regain consciousness somewhere around “seeds”, then kind of blacked out again and came to as we arrived at a pallet of ten pound bags.

“Here you go, fertilizers on over by the geraniums…”. She handed me a heavy plastic bag. It said “Grass Seed: Sun/Shade”. On the bag was a beautiful picture of a vast, green lawn. Children were playing on it. It looked like a magazine cover. I wondered if maybe I could just cut out the picture and tape it to the dirt in my backyard.

The bag was $25. For a bag of seeds. It seemed expensive and unnecessary especially since I didn’t want a bag of seeds. I wanted a bag of lawn. The bag was not only heavy, but it was happy hour. I needed a drink and a new plan.

Back home I sucked on my third Corona, staring at the bare patches on my newly adopted “lawn to be”. It was clear to me now there was no way that little picture from the bag would cover my lawn. I mean, my earth. Turns out growing grass is a lot of work.

So I plan to tackle it tomorrow. Or possibly this weekend. Or, never. There’s always spray paint. Be kind of homage to NYC. I could just graffiti on my lawn and call it a day.

Whatever I do, one thing’s for certain.

I’m definitely writing a letter to Home Depot and recommend they change their name to Home Suggestion. Or Home Possibility. But depot it isn’t. Place is the size of a Kennedy Airport, and they don’t have one lawn there.

Am I Gay, Or Is It The Coffee?

2009-05-15T14:31:00.003-05:00

Here’s my theory; we’re all insane until proven otherwise. We just don’t know we’re nuts until you have one of those moments when the soundtrack of your own thoughts falls away and you hear yourself talk.

Like in line at Dunkin Donuts, it was like suddenly someone turned off the stereo and I could hear the words come out of my mouth and echo around the store:

“…thanks, I’ll have a medium light, one Sweet and Low and a chocolate chip muffin”.

It was a car-key moment. The moment when everything drops away but the sound of the car door slamming shut as you lock your keys inside.

I sounded so Man-Gay. Not straight up “Gay Gay”, and nothing on the down low, no inner cowboy secretly looking to take that long weekend escape on Brokeback Mountain.

Just Man-Gay.

“Medium light with one Sweet and Low” isn’t gonna make anyone look up from their morning paper and go “Alpha male on the floor, stand back boys…”. So I stood there fumbling around for some money thinking how MG my order sounded.

And I worried that I’d been too pampered, too lucky in life. And I haven’t even been that lucky. But then I heard something that made me pause, reflect, then almost laugh out loud.

Guy behind me goes “…I’ll take a large coffee, extra light skim…with a splash of cream and four Splendas”.

Okay, I may not be the toughest guy on the planet, but I was ready to hand this guy the ass-less cowboy chaps and say “You go Village People…”.

C’mon.

Okay, the splash of cream is equal to the skim milk content altogether so what’s up with that? Just freaking order it with the cream.

Which brings me to my second point. I know I live in Suburbia now, but who the &^%()*%$ orders a ‘splash of cream” in a $2 cup of Joe at Dunkin Donuts?

I’m all for us dudes getting in touch with our inner Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, but puh-lese, you do not need to be taking the inner Queer Eye out for a picnic lunch.

Or letting him order a ‘splash of cream’, for that matter. And while I’m at it, Splenda? Honest to god are you really gonna tell me you can take the Pepsi challenge, line up packets up Splenda, Sweet / Low, Equal, do a blind taste and pick one out?

And, god help you it you do possess the freakish ability to separate artificial sweeteners by taste, if you are a straight male, can you please not order ‘splenda’?

Why?

Say it again: Splenda.

You order Sweet and Low, you’re calling a spade a spade. It’s sweet, d’uh. That’s it job. And it’s fake as Pam Anderson’s floatation devices so obviously it’s low in calories.

But dude, you order Splenda you better not be wearing a penis because the word Splenda is about one man-gina away from borrowing your wife’s lip-gloss and trolling the park after work.

Hey, order your drink. Live large. But you get two perks per cup. You order coffee, you can add milk or sugar. It can be skim, soy, cream, half and half, hey you can hook up your own cow and squirt away.

But you don’t get to ask for your milk and a splash. No. Not now, not ever.

Unless you are Carston from Queer Eye or Liza Minnelli.

Or maybe Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, yeah I know; he was just an actor playing a gay cowboy.

But he was on the bottom.

I’m just saying.

If you're gonna be a muffin, be the top.

What's It Gonna Take?

2009-03-11T20:19:00.002-05:00

I’ve watched with equal parts panic and helplessness as the flames of the recession first licked, then engulfed and have now consumed, my business.

Friends and family say all the right things “Hang in there”, “You did it once, you’ll do it again”, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”. And they all mean well, I honestly believe that.

And I honestly believe, what they all really mean is “Thank fcuking god it’s not me”. Because that’s just human nature and hey, I get it. I really do.

When they were filming Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg flew Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Edward Burns et al, to Ireland. They spent two weeks in a kind of stripped down boot camp, led by an old barnacle-hard Irish drill instructor. Tough old SOB. Kind of guy that opens beer bottles with his ass.

Tom Hanks said that after 48 hrs of no-sleep, marching in the rain, living on c-rations hell they were, well, pretty much fcuked. They were hurt, bruised, frightened and to a man realized they were pampered movie stars who just wanted to be back in their own beds.

Around a pitiful campfire on a wet night, the instructor asked them to imagine being in war with one good friend. One man they counted on and loved like a brother while bullets flew too close, and killed men next to them.

Then he said, “Imagine he dies. Now tell me, how would you feel?”. And they thought and thought. Until one at a time, each of them mustered the courage and honesty to talk about the loss they felt, the grief they’d experience. The utter frustration and anger they’d feel about losing their own. Their brother-in-arms.

And the instructor looked around the circle, and said “That’s fucking bullshit. What you goddamn feel is happy it wasn’t you”. And to a man, they realized he was right. Then, they really felt bad.

So I get it when people say “Dude, you will get through this man, I know you!”. That’s cool, it’s what you say. It’s what I’ve said. But I wonder what it takes to tell the truth?

While back my wife bought two lamps. Cool, modern Ralph Lauren, leather with top stitching. Real expensive, but she found them at a sample sale for like $200 instead of $1200.

Recently we decided to sell them. Not because they didn’t go with our present décor, but because we needed the money for food. But we’d taken them to a consignment shop in this charming, rich little town thinking we might get a better price for them.

We didn’t. So I put my five year old in her car seat and schlepped us the 20 miles across town to pick them up, figuring we’d go Craigslist with them. Ella was tired, and whining in the backseat as I tried to read directions off my Blackberry in the fading light.

Trying to steer, read font the size of half-ants on a screen the size of a Ritz cracker while not missing the *&^%$@!+ that was it turn onto route 7, a little amber light caught my eye.

The reserve tank. I was running on fumes. Which in and of itself is not so bad. What’s bad is running on your reserve tank and not having enough money to get gas. And having another 20+ miles to go with a sleeping five year old in the car who’s crying because it’s dinnertime and the money you don’t have for gas, is also the money you don’t have to stop and feed her.

I finally found route 7, and eventually the rich, manicured town that refused to buy our lamps. I carried Ella into the store, met immediately by the cool, disapproving glare of the owner. Apparently she had an unwritten policy forbidding her to extend kindness to father’s who brought their crying children into her store instead of say, leaving them in the car which was parked a block away.

She pointed to the lamps. Plural. I’d forgotten one was taller than me. Great, I had to carry Ella which meant it’d take me two trips. One for each lamp, Ella slumped tearfully against my chest.

I could feel something like pride make a small cracking sound inside my chest. “Okay, sweetie…here we go”, I tried to comfort Ella as I picked up the lamp which now seemed to weigh every bit as much as it’s true retail cost.

I balanced Ella, lamp and shame while nudging open the store’s front door. “Dana, what are we doing?”. “Oh, we have to get these crazy lamps home sweet-pea, we’ll be there soon, okay?”. I wondered quietly without breaking into tears how much gas is in a reserve tank.

And I carried my little girl who meant everything, and a lamp which shouldn’t, but did at the moment, mean a hell of a lot to me, down the block, into the wind and finally to my car. “Can we go now?”, Ella said into my neck.

And I swallowed back something like a childhood memory of walking down the street with my dad and somehow knowing not to ask for toys in windows so he wouldn’t have to make up a story about the money he didn’t have.

“Almost there sweet girl, we just have one more to get…”. It was dark, and Ella was warm against me and the walk back already felt long. I lifted Ella up to get her on my other hip, turned around and there stood the owner of the store. She reached out, “Here’s that other crazy lamp”.

She smiled, turned, walked away. I stood there, quietly. And blinked. And very gratefully said, “Thank you”. I thought about the look on her face the entire way home. The amber light of the reserve tank stayed steady, like a little homing beacon all the way into my driveway.

We sold the lamps a few days later on Craigslist. We have some food in the refrigarator. But I have a much bigger problem. I experienced real kindness. Unconditional kindness. But it took a running-on-empty, hungry child, broken business drained bank account before I was humble enough to recognize it.

And if that’s what it takes, I mean really, really takes to be human? To live the kind of truly spiritual life I tell people I do, but don’t? Then I don’t know if I can do it. If my heart has to be that broken to let out what little good there is in me, I don’t think I can take it.

But what if I can? Take it, that is. Maybe I can live broken hearted enough to experience life and put groceries in the fridge and gas in the car. And I wonder. Every time the reserve tank light suddenly flicks on, I wonder. Will I ever run out of gas. And if I do, does that make me a bad person?

Or, does it mean I’m lucky enough to not actually be running on empty, but to be running on humility? And if I can just hang in there, eventually, I’ll make it home.

Ho, Ho, Ho It's Magic....

2009-03-11T09:54:00.001-05:00

...you know, never believe it's not so.

Out Of Africa...

2009-02-21T11:10:00.004-05:00

NEW YORK - A Nigerian man has been charged with trying to swindle nearly $27 million from a Citibank account in New York held by Ethiopia's central bank.

You're kidding me, right? I mean you have to have the I.Q. of a fcuking juicebox to not know this. C'mon, my daughter's five and even she rolls her eyes when we get spam from some financial officer at an unheard of African bank promising us our soon-to-be released millions just as soon as we send him our bank account information.

And you're telling me that Citibank fell for this?

Man, how desperate is the US banking industry? What's next, the CEO of Skank Of America hoping his Lotto 649 ticket hits so he can increase credit lines?

Dude, read the fcuking memo--the words "Ethiopian" and "Bank" in even remotely the same sentence are about as legit as "Paris Hilton" and "Singing Career", "Pamela Anderson" and "Natural","Olsen Twins" and "Solid Food", "Amy Winehouse" and "Sober" or "Ryan Seacrest" and "Girlfriend".

Worse, who had to admit they were getting scammed by a con even third graders know is like, completely bogus? I would've hated to be the exec at that meeting:

"Um, we've suffered another setback...".

"What is it Wilson, are the Markets down another two hundred points?".

"Um, well, uh, no....".

"The Feds won't lower the prime rate?".

"Yeah uh, no. I uh, transferred some money. To my uncle. In Ethiopia".

Followed by the deafening roar of silence.

Ohhhhh, man. That is just ugly.

Great. Our banking system is attempting to rebuild our financial infrastructure by falling for internet scams.

I am so psyched as our leading corporate entities try and steer us out of the disaster they've created by relying next on the advice from The Magic Eight Ball, Rock, Paper, Scissors and that most sagacious of all founts of wisdom...

..."Dear Abby, recently the CEO of our bank decided to cut the prime lending rate...".

Monkey Takes A Bullet

2009-02-17T18:29:00.003-05:00

HARTFORD, Conn. - A 200-pound domesticated chimpanzee who once starred in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola was shot dead by police after a violent rampage that left a friend of its owner badly mauled…

Okay, that’s weird. And sad. Unfortunately we’re in a depression, so though I love monkey’s as much as the next guy, I’m laughing my ass off.

Funny thing is, I live like, 20 mins from Stamford. My wife and I were sweating out the economy last night when this story comes on the news. We were like WTF?

And you gotta admit, WTF?

And yes, before any of you closet Darwinists go ape on me, I know chimps and monkey’s aren’t the same thing, genetically. I salute your dedication to species differentiation with my opposable thumb.

Now, first things first—since when do chimps top the scale at 200 freaking pounds?

Hello, we’ve all seen those cute little chimps scampering around and they’re adorable and not a banana over 40 lbs, right? C’mon, they’re like the size of a four year old.

Clearly, this is a chimp with a chronically lowered sense of self esteem who’d turned to junk foods in an attempt to heal a wounded self image.

Which may explain the anxiety. And I quote “Conklin told reporters the chimp was acting so agitated that Herold gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea”.

Great. Overweight, image conscious chimp with a drug addiction. Which more than explains the drinking. And again, I quote “The chimpanzee…drank wine…logged onto the computer to look at pictures, and watched television using the remote control, police said”.

Just so I have the big pieces of the puzzle in hand here—obese, drug-addicted, alcoholic, TV watching slacker. Okay, so basically the chimp is me. They didn’t mention the online porn addiction, but then again, they didn’t have to.

I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

Poor bastard never had a chance. He’s just doing what any of us would in tough times like these. He’s acting out. Can you blame him?

Dudes like 15 yrs old. Now I have no idea if chimp years are like dog years, but c’mon—nothing that weighs 200 lbs should be in a diaper. Especially if it can drink. And log online and read about the economy. Cuz we’ve all been there.

Starts with an after work cocktail, just to take things down a notch. You loosen up, have dinner, have more drinks. Tub with the kid, bedtime story, it’s 9:00pm when you leave the room and what’s left of your night is whatever you can jam in between now and 11:30pm.

Fill the glass, now you’re on drink number four. And feeling kinda groovy. But, what if after drink number four you looked around to notice you lived with a tribe of chimps? All of them yammering and poking at you to download another Tarzan clip from Youtube.

That’s our boy. Bottle of Merlot, some online poker, then suddenly it hits him—“I’m wearing a fcuking diaper? And what the hell is Youtube? And what’s with the humans?”.

So in the long run, I guess there’s more that separates me from chimps other than my awesome opposable thumb.

I can handle my Xanax. And my booze. And I have at least another fifteen years before I’m wearing diapers.

So until I’m sitting here typing away in a Depends, using a voice synthesizer to activate my keyboard…

…its Happy Hour.

Yes, You Eat It...

2009-02-10T10:59:00.002-05:00

I’m still settling into suburbia here. Not that I don’t love it, I do. And I’m learning all the little things that mark you as one of the lawn mowing, Dunkin Donuts loving, neighborhood tribe.

Like, ‘mommy-banter’. A form of casual conversation that gains you entrance into the mom‘s circle (especially crucial if you’re a dad-dude). It’s the perfectly harmless little morning snippets of convo that go down between parents when you’re dropping you child off at school.

Its winter, so the weather’s always a simple way to wedge into the mom’s circle and spark up some well-meaning gab.

I’m a people person, so while hanging with the mom’s this morning I decided to kick off the first round of neighborly chat.

Dana: “Wow, it is so Frosty the snowman out there, brrrr”.

Niiice. Turn a holiday reference into a clever play on the weather and off we go.

Connie: “Oh, I know—just makes me want to curl up with my comfort foods…”.

Oh man, how easy is this? I may start a service for people who need a casual convo starter. I’d be like those little logs you use to get your fire roaring, but you know, I’d hang out at parties. Find a clique of party-mutes and kick things off.

Dana: “Hot cocoa, cinnamon toast…”.

Connie: “Mmm, soon as I get home I’m making my favorite…beer cheese soup”.

Dana: stunned silence.

None of the other mom’s say anything, so I’m not sure what to do. Though instinct is shouting in my ear that sticking my fingers down my throat and pantomiming spraying chunks all over my daughter’s classroom is probably not the preferred response.

I can feel the seconds ticking by, and now I’m getting nervous that she thinks I’m purposely not responding.

But wtf do I say, coz all I can think is “Did she just fcuking say ‘beer cheese soup’?. I do the math real fast—beer+cheese=soup. Sh*t. I got nothing. I take a deep breath, and manage…

Dana: “Hmmm, that sounds like something you’d make if you were from Wisconsin”.

It’s not much but it’s all I have, and at least for the moment I’ve keep the banter alive. I mean, these are the kids my daughter will be growing up with. If I fail the banter-test, I’m off the Island, the tribe has spoken.

Connie: “Oh yeah, mid-west style for sure”.

Phew, nice save. I figure I have to go for it now, really lean into it.

Dana: “Sounds yummy—what do you use, like Vermont cheddar?”.

Connie: “Velveeta”.

Dana: roaring, epic stunned silence.

Now I’m panicking, because essentially this woman just told me when the temp hits low digits she microwaves a bowl of cheese for lunch. With basically, a beer chaser.

I want to scream. I picture a hunk of Velveeta, slowly melting like the wicked witch into a puddle of orange chemical goo. It seems really hot, so I unzip my coat a little, I need air. And my chest feels suddenly heavy. I try and regulate my breathing like I learned in my wife’s pre-natal class. Now I’m sucking in tiny sips of air through my lips.

I take off my hat because now I’m in a full sweat. I smile weakly and slip a finger onto my wrist pulse—it’s racing. I’m going to stroke. Fortunately, one of the other mom’s chimes in…

“Oooh, good one. We always do meatloaf, with a ketchup glaze”.

I quietly wonder to myself how I came to this. I live in a place where ketchup and glaze can be used in the same sentence, and a bowl of melted cheese thinned with beer constitutes soup.

It’s all just so, new to me I guess. The giant SUV’s, the families of four and five kids, all the father’s working in finance, all the women having the exact same blonde hair with honey-toned highlights.

And after school snacks you can make by simply melting cheese in a bowl and topping it off with a little Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I’m not sure how to work my way back into the conversation. And time is working against me. If I don’t close the circle, she’ll know it. She may not acknowledge it, but she’ll never forget I abandoned her during the cheese-soup bonding.

Do I ask for the recipe? I can’t feel my legs any longer, how can I summon the motor skills to type a recipe into my blackberry? I don’t even know where the
‘v’ key is.

I jab my thigh with a pen, try to get the blood flowing and think of my daughter—I gotta man-up and make this happen, her futures at stake here.

Dana: “Sounds super-fast to prepare…”.

Dude, you are the freakin’ man. Phew, I feel my chest release just a little.

Connie: “Super-fast. You garnish it with popcorn”.

She may as well have said “Oh, and I have a penis”.

I’m frozen in a kind of half-smile, and I’m blinking too rapidly. It’s like my eyes can’t believe what I’m seeing so they’re trying to shut out reality by changing the shutter speed.

Like a fatal car accident caught on high-speed film all I can see is a little snowfall of popcorn, settling onto an orange lake of cheesy-frothy foam. Connie’s saying something else, but I can’t hear her.

A kind of suburban concussion grenade has exploded too closely and ruptured my inner ear. Connie’s laughing now, tossing her head back, honeyed-highlights flashing. The other mom’s giggling, trying to cover her mouth with a mittened-hand.

I blink. And watch the slow motion movie of my life unfold one frame at a time.

I say something like, “Gr…aha…blugher…baw”. It’s not really a word, it’s a language I’ve never heard. On my home planet, it must be some kind of goodbye, because I’m walking away on my frozen-legs, kind of jabbing one in front of the other hoping they’ll hold up.

Connie’s waving, slowly. The other mom’s smile, mouthing something I can’t hear. I hope it’s not “See you at lunch…”.

Back in the car, I rip off my jacket and gulp down fresh, clean air. I turn on sports radio, listen to football scores. Really, really loud. But I’ve done it. I’ve entered the inner-circle, the hallowed ground, the Stonehenge of school culture—the mom’s circle.

My daughter will have play dates, be invited to birthday parties and have sleep over’s at her friends homes. And I’ll just remind her to be polite, say ‘please’ when she asks for something and whatever she does, do not eat the orange soup.

The Power Of Ass

2009-02-04T11:36:00.004-05:00

My daughter just got hammered by the flu. 102 temp, projectile vomit—poor kid was a hot boiled mess. A few things cross your mind when you see your little kitten wrestling the toilet-bowl like a truck-driver:

1. Poor little angel.
2. Jesus, I don’t want the flu.

The flu is bad. If you haven’t been bitch-slapped by it lately, pick up a six-pack, check it out. Reminds you why old people die from it. A cold is a bunch of unruly little germs having Spring Break in your system.

The Flu is Hitler.

Colds are impersonal, they’re frisky teenagers copping a feel with some of your white blood cells. The flu knows you by name, and wants you dead. And it will slowly raise your temperature until you lay in bed curled into fetal submission weeping like a special needs student who lost his juice-box.

My wife and I woke up the next morning and tore through the medicine cabinet. Funny how with a cold, I’m Mr. Natural. Sore throat? Sniffles? Here, try the latest organic, naturopathic remedy I just picked up—an herbal-psychic potpourri of Echinacea, Golden Seal, the imprint of Baby Jesus’ tiny handprint and the rainbow-aura of magic dolphins. Um, yummy. Taste the love.

But man, you say ‘flu’ and I break out the big guns. I’ll buy shit off the pharmacy shelves that guarantees pancreatic cancer in 4 out of 5 users, has no FDA approval, has clinically killed half of its trial-patients and carries a Govt warning label with a picture of a man’s head exploding after taking.

But if it says it’ll ward off the onset of flu, I’ll push you into traffic to get my box of it faster than you can say placebo. So as my wife and I sort through half-bottles of fairy-potions I’ve amassed over the years, we find a box of Zicam tablets.

“Oh…”, Ann says—like she just found my porn stash and doesn’t know how to broach the topic. “I forgot we had these…well, they’re pretty strong…”. That’s about the last thing I remember her saying before I awoke in a Latvian clinic with my spleen missing. More on that later.

Before she can stop me, and she tried, I popped a Zicam tablet in my mouth and started chewing. Chewing hard, to show my level of commitment. Chewing like my life depended on it, visions of little Nazi-uniformed flu cells raping my immune system.

And then, I stopped chewing. Because I was both crying, and gagging. ‘Cause what Zicam’s label doesn’t say is “Warning: Product Tastes Like Ass”. Point of clarification, I don’t mean ass in the college-kid, drunk, naughty way, like “check out that chick’s ass”. I mean ass, as in the working end of the noun.

Have I ever eaten ass? No, and I’ve never been poked in the eye with a sharp stick either, but I get the idea. I’m sufficiently knowledgeable with the general theory—sharp stick; hard, spear-like, capable of inflicting damage. Eye: soft-tissue, vulnerable, protect at all costs.

And to my latest vocab entry—Zicam. As in, it tastes like a full-blown, uncooked and pungent hunk of ass-meat. In your mouth. And though it’s a gum, its not really gum. It’s a weird alien hybrid. It starts like gum, kinda chewy and soft.

That’s just a ploy so you keep chewing. Cause you’re tasting butt, except the gum consistency makes you think “Gum can’t taste like rear-end, I’ll keep chewing…”. And then the tablet kind of breaks apart into fragmented mini-chunks of butt, each small chunk as fully potent as the whole.

Like those monsters, you cut their hand off, but the hand stays alive, separate from the body, right? Zicam’s the same. The tablet’s just a delivery system of sorts. The total assification of the tablet occurs upon breakage. Each fragment blooms into an orchestra-rich flavor symphony of sweaty ass-crack. And even if you gag, it doesn’t matter.

Zicam’s flavor-chunks kind of leech butt-flavor as you chew, coating your tongue and throat, and teeth and so-god-help-me, your life really, with ass. And then, like a drunken college grope-fest, it’s over as soon as it began. The tablets gone, broken up, dissolved and swallowed.

I’m standing there, kind of teary. I feel violated, like, I just woke up in someone else’s dorm room and can’t find my panties. I’m blinking, trying to find true North on my life-compass. My wife says “Chew one every four hours…”.

The last part echoes in my head like I’m on a ‘shroom trip “every…..four….hours….”. Now I’m feeling kind of nauseous. I have a stomach full of the flu Anti-Christ. My body feels really light and airy, like I’m lint just kind of floating around in space. I’m having an out-of-body experience. I’m Zicaming. My wife is really, really tiny now, because I’m floating at Space Shuttle altitudes.

Entire cities are like Lego-block projects below me, cars and people the size of a comma ending the sentence in which they live. And there, yes there—I can see little laboratories, and teeny-weeny little scientists in pristine white lab coats making Zicam.

They’re making billions of little Zicam tablets, and…and they’re laughing. The tiny scientists so far below me are, laughing. Because they’ve managed, after decades of frustration to finally get the upper hand on the flu virus?

No, they’re laughing because after years of frustration, they’ve finally managed to market a product that tastes like ass.

Does Zicam work?

Yes, it does.

Does it taste like ass?

You be the judge. Next time you feel the telltale signs of some plague-like virus slowly goose-stepping over your immune system, pick up some Zicam. Now, in all fairness you should know Zicam also makes a nasal swab.

And you wonder, ‘hmmm, nasal swab? Well, if the tablet tastes like colon, does the swab smell like butt-gutter, too?”.

I’ve tried the nasal swab too.

But I’m not telling.

I’m floating high above it all, and like my little scientist pals—I’m laughing.

The Things Children Say...

2009-01-05T09:45:00.002-05:00

Friend of mine and I were talking 'bout the relentless joy of parenting. Speaking of Happy Hour, she recalled one of her many trips to Children’s Hospital. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the family now lives in Paraguay.

"Oh, one time my husband and I had a few beers. I'm playing with our little guy, trying to tickle him while he's on my back. Well, I wrangle him off my back to around the front of me. He's hanging upside down, when he slips and falls.

Head first. Splits his lip. Immediate buzz kill. He's screaming, my other two kids are laughing hysterically and I'm half-wasted trying to get a band-aid on him. Well, five minutes into it my husband's like "Um, I'm pretty sure he needs stitches".

This is confirmed by the blood now pretty much gushing down his face. Okay, three kids and two parents into the car, off to the emergency room. We walk up to the desk, the nurse takes one look at my screaming, bloody five year old and sympathizes, "Ooh, what happened?".

Which is when my 8 yr old Lisa pipes up--"Mom dropped Alex. On his head. Drinking beer". I try to laugh it off, "Kids...." which earns me a sidewards look from the nurse. "Alright..." she begins, logging us into the computer, "...has your son been here before?".

I switch into Mom-mode, determined to show nurse Ratchet I can parent with the best of them. "No. Lisa was here when she fell of her bike. Oh, and for measles. When she was four. Robert was here for mumps...".

"...and when he broke his toe in soccer...", my husband chimes in, flush with pride that we're forging ahead through a beer-haze showing the world our kids indeed come before Miller Lite.

“But this is Alex’s first visit”. I give the nurse my best this-is-not-a-sarcastic-smile when she squints at the screen, then looks up.

"It says here Alex was hit by a car. You brought him in May 15th, 2:33pm. Do you remember your child being struck by a car?".

The question hangs in the air like a threat to call Social Services.

"Yes, okay--that's right. Actually, we were here and um, yep had Alex checked out. Technically, he rode his bike into a car...". Nurse Ratchet quietly folds her hands in front of her, like a judge.

"...the car didn't actually hit him". I try to reverse my this-is-not-a-sarcastic-smile into something that might work in child custody court. Kind of a half-pleading, I'm-not-a-bad-person smile.

Quick to my defense, my husband offers "Yeah, we'd remember if a car hit him".

Nurse R. exhales once. "But you don't remember him riding his bike into a car?".

"Oh, we remember that...May 14th...".

"The 15th, actually" Nurse R. corrects me coolly.

And in that brief awkward and accusation-filled silence is when my eldest decides to ask “Can I have a Happy Meal? Do we have to stop for beer again on the way home?”.

Alex got three stitches.

Everyone got Happy Meals.

We now go to St. Vincent’s Hospital. Yeah, it’s a bit out of the way but they have a great cafeteria.

Name That Tune

2008-12-12T11:05:00.002-05:00

ADELAIDE, Australia - Hymns are being replaced at funerals by rock classics like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," a cemetery manager said Wednesday.

"Some of the more unusual songs we hear actually work very well within the service because they represent the person's character," Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said. Among other choices are: "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead," "Hit the Road Jack," "Another One Bites the Dust".

Which got me to thinking, what're they gonna play at your funeral?

Oh and remember, it won't be what you write down in your last will and testament, no.

It'll be whatever your kids or ex decide best sums up your contribution to humanity in four bars (plus chorus) or less.

That's right, while you're at the Pearly Gates finding out you can't swipe your ATM card to get in, back in the land of mortals, your funeral party's gonna be devouring the buffet, rocking out to
Linda Ronstadt...

"You're No Good...".

So sleep tight.

And think about doing some good deeds between now and whenever.

Might get you an upgrade to a better song.

Or at least, a credit card that really is "everywhere you want to be".

Reinventing The (Cheese) Wheel

2008-09-12T08:31:00.002-05:00

Newfound facts about suburbia: all kids ride scooters down the street.

All the time.

So I went online and found a great scooter for Ella at Toys R Us.

Molded safety plastic, child-tested, no-slip cushioned grips.

My wife and Ella come back with a pink one. Not the one I’d called ahead and saved.

I look at Anne and she whispers, “It came with plastic sunglasses and a fake cell phone…”.

It’s true. I unpack everything on the back porch for assembly and amid tiny wheels and seat stickers there’s a small pair of pink sunglasses, matching plastic cell phone and a cute backpack.

Essentially, they bought pink sunglasses for $40 and they came with a scooter.

Newfound facts about unpacking: whatever you need most at any given time has not yet been unpacked. Like a screwdriver. For assembling oh, kids scooters?

I rummage around in the drawer and all I can find is this 3” walnut handled cheese knife. Fine, whatever.

So I’m on the back porch up to my eyeballs in an instruction pamphlet that someone in China wrote while on a noodle break, when Ella comes running over.

She sees all the gear spread out and squeals happily,

“Oh my goodness, it came with the sunglasses. And a backpack…and a cheese knife!”.

Can You See Me Now?

2008-09-07T13:00:00.002-05:00

My cover’s been blown.

I’ve been an undercover NYC vice agent for a decade, but a month ago it all caught up with me.

A crack addict in central park saw right through me. Came up to me while I was out with my four-year-old daughter and asked point blank “Are you a Federal Agent?”.

I’d been made, game over.

I did my best to rebound, even stammered out, “I’m sorry, what?” but we both knew he had me dead to rights.

I could see the dejection on Ella’s face. No more all night stake outs in her MacClaren stroller. Her days masquerading as a happy little Upper West Side pre-schooler were over.

But this was the life we chose, we knew the risks when I decided to carry a 9mm Glock with a pistol grip and gain 15 lbs binging on Starbucks iced lemon pound cake.

I’ll miss that cake.

Ella will be fine. She’s adaptable. And she knew one day it could all end. And we both knew it could’ve gone real bad, real fast. But it didn’t. We were lucky.

But at some point, lady luck loses your address.

And you wake up one night sweating in the dead of winter. You know you’re living on borrowed time—and you can hear the tick-tock in your head getting louder.

If you’re smart, you get out. Now. Middle of the night. No long goodbyes. So we’ve taken reassignment. But first, they have us on ice for a while. We’re too hot.

They moved us out of the city. To a charming little seaside town where people don’t look too close to see if we’re packing heat when we’re packing groceries.

Ella starts her second year of pre-school next week. Her teacher’s say she’s very verbal, amused by how she refers to a large quantity of anything as a “boat”.

It’s agent slang for a 1000 count quantity of illiegal Ecstasy pills. I just smile and reply, “Yeah, she’s real verbal”.

At dusk I sit on the porch swing, drink light beer from a can and nod pleasantly to the neighbors.

I don’t know if I’ll miss the action. Too soon to tell.

We fell asleep the first night to the sound of crickets. Second night too. Woke up and had our coffee on the beach.

I haven’t startled awake yet to the sound of sirens and reached for my piece.

Ella has a scooter. It’s pink. She pedals up and down our quiet street and hasn’t yet pulled over another kid on his scooter to ask “You in a hurry for some reason I should know about?”.

I gotta go.

Have to rake leaves. That’s what you do here, you rake leaves. I like it. You don’t run them down, slap Flexi-cuffs on them and read them Miranda rights.

They just sit in the grass. You stuff them in a big plastic garbage bag. Put them in the garage, hang up your rake.

Then you go to bed, feel your daughter snuggle up close to you. And you listen to crickets.

My Olympic Dream's Over...

2008-08-14T16:50:00.002-05:00

Who hasn’t had an Olympic dream dashed?

Mine’s been the US Women’s Gymnastics team. I know I can’t compete in all the disciplines, but felt pretty confident I could run around twirling that ribbon-on-a-stick.

I’ve been working out again, so my cardio’s pretty good. I’m 5’9”, 185. Oh, and I’m a guy.

So I thought all the bench pressing would give me an edge lifting the ribbon-stick up and down repeatedly.

Then I saw China’s Women’s team. Their premier athlete is 4’6” and 70 lbs. Wedding cake ornaments think she’s petite.

And yes, even though the Chinese Federation claims she’s 16 years old, she probably finished her floor routine, then cuddled up with her blankie and bottle and took a nap ‘cuz she’s 12 yrs old, tops.

Put it this way--she’s like a foot taller than my daughter, who’s 4.

The rest of the Chinese team isn’t much bigger—4’ 8”, 90 lbs, 4’ 10”, 115 lbs. The entire group looks like they could finish practice than sit down and share a Cheerio.

I watched them twirling around on the bars like weightless pixies. One armed spins, somersaulting dismounts, laser-accurate landings….carrying their teddy bears the whole time.

And I realized damn, it’s a young persons sport now. Not like when I tried out for the East German Women’s swim team in the 80’s. And made first alternate.

I’m 40. Yeah, maybe I’m ten pounds overweight but can you put your heart on a scale? Wait, actually you can. I mean, can you measure Patriotism? Can you bottle courage?

I see the Olympic torch held high and man I feel that fire in my gut. And I know somewhere there’s a team for me.

Maybe Lithuania. I hear they need bobsledders.

Fetch, Roll Over...Die.

2008-08-14T08:52:00.002-05:00

Saw a woman walking her dog. One of those teacup Pomeranians. They’re small. Look like balls of lint on a leash. That sh*t.

She had a treat for it. But first, she made it jump through more hoops than a circus clown.

Sit up
Speak
Turn in circles
Roll over

The tiny performing lint ball responded to each hand gesture carefully, performing its designated little acrobatic feats with silent efficiency.

And then, it took out a small handgun and shot itself in the face.

No, but it should have. I mean, where’s the dignity?

Forget the fact the things about the size of a hood ornament, but now it’s being trained to give the neighbors a laugh while they sip Pimms cups.

Heaven forbid this poor bastard was ever released back into the wild. Well, or maybe just Bed, Bath And Beyond—still, what’s he got to fall back on?

His most basic animal instincts have been replaced with the ability to stand on its hind legs and wiggle its paws.

Nice.

Try that in the Serengeti when you’re surrounded by snarling hyenas. Seriously, let the dog have what’s left of its life.

Free it to roam grassy, African plains. Well in this case, maybe department store aisles, in search of adventure.

For cocktail hour, just buy a frickken stuffed animal. Throw it in the air. Turn to your guests and say “I taught him everything he knows”. Then pour more drinks.

Because believe it or not, even small dogs have big dreams.

And so does lint.

The Ballad Of Luella Parkins

2008-08-09T15:20:00.005-05:00

The day that child was born the Devil put his feet up to rest, breathed fire and said to himself “finally, help”. There’s mean, there’s cruel and there's just plain ugly, and as the child grew up it became apparent he excelled at all three. He became a ward of the town itself, no one least of all the mother wanting anything to do with what was so clearly an evil plan etched harshly in a babe’s clothes.

He came to be called Cooner, after what was at first wrongly thought to be a fear of raccoons that began to turn up twisted and broken all over town. The child would scream when he saw another mutilated ‘coon’s body, and only later did people realize the youngster yelled in excitement, not fear. In fact, Cooner had fear for nothing and hate for everything.

But most of all Cooner hated life itself and its cousin the living. So any chance he had, Cooner set out to show the Lord just how little he cared for the man's handiwork and soon enough death began to follow the boy like a bleak shadow.

At first, Cooner’s destruction was the usual fare of childish intolerance; birds delicate bodies smashed like paper playthings and countless bugs smudged into the dirt to mix back into the earth. But Cooner’s uncaring deviance soon gave way to a real and mature taste for death.

Like a baby able to reach blindly with the knowledge a mother's teat will be there, Cooner reached blindly and found death at the end of his grasp, growing stronger with each life he stung out. It came to him like a fire in his brain that he could only extinguish with old-fashioned hate.

Sometimes he felt like salt burned in his veins and blistered up to fight on the battlefield of his skin. Whatever breathed the lord’s air and came to life made the fire burn hotter and all wondered when the first real catastrophe would strike. It wasn’t long.

Luella Parkins went to her porch that cool wet morning and, banging her tin coffee mug on the railing waited for her dog Blue to come and breakfast. Theirs was an easy knowing of each other worn smooth like a stone over 20 years of friendship. Luella and her Jacob had saved the puny runt from being drowned by its owners.

Premature and too tiny to live, its mother simply stopped nursing the whimpering pup so the rest of her healthy litter could eat. Jacob had come across Miller Hatchings, who owned the bitch, on his way to the creek with the pup wrapped in newspaper, eyes still shut and barely breathing. When he got it home, it was blue with malnutrition weighing less then the paper coffin it came in.

Luella kept the pup in her dress top, fed it warm buttermilk and damned if that wisp of life didn’t continue to wake each morning to the surprise of them both. Named as much for its blue tick pedigree as for its signature color, Blue grew up robust and grateful, only too happy to follow after Jacob each morning into the fields for pheasant.

Around mid morning, which in an early-rising farming community like Lancaster County meant around eight-thirty a.m., Luella would bang her coffee tin on the porch railing and still a half mile out, only then would Blue leave Jacob’s side to race back home.

When Jacob’s rattling cough ended one chilling winter night with his last breath, Blue stayed next to him until the morning, until no warmth from the dog would bring his friend back. Every morning since then, going on five years now Blue dutifully went out on the same trails he and Jacob knew by heart, retracing alone the journey’s he and his friend had made their life.

At Dover’s point he’d stop short of the poplar strand and flush a handful of spring ptarmigan. He’d move slowly through the pines until he scared up some doves then onto the sugar mill where the grouse fed on fallen seed. This was Blue’s memorial, played out every morning, each season with not a one missed. Until today.

Luella knew he was gone when the last echo of her banging cup faded into far away and no Blue arrived. They found him froze solid by the far bend in McAlister River. Old and cold, his stiff legs broken in a bad jigsaw puzzle of twisted limbs. She buried him next to Jacob, a clutch of field daisies on the soft earth that covered him for the last time.

Folks brought canned peaches and cider to the house, sorry for Luella’s loss and she offered floury butter biscuits to each and every person. It was a shame they all agreed that ole’ blue fell and froze in the same map of a river which he and Jacob walked so often, but they all knew what really happened.

What really happened was the reason Cooner stared blankly when they asked how the hand was, how he’d lost the thumb. Bandaged crudely, the burlap straps bloomed red across his large hand, then finished into a crusty brown shell, dried and hard. And Luella knew.

Knew that Cooner had frozen that hand keeping Blue’s anxious head under the freezing water. Knew that Cooner had cried like a banshee, just as he did as a child, excited as her dog’s desperate legs kicked for life. Knew that his reward for killing the animal was a skinning knife, drawn along his froze hand, popping off the hard thumb like a walnut from its shell. People had now settled into an uneasy and wary silence around the hulking figure. He was a cold morning of mischief and bad timing whose sun rose when others set for the night.

Two-headed birds, children crib-dead and the wrong of the world were the minstrels that cried Cooner’s arrival. His was the darkest of foreshadows looming long and grim across the small town each day. The rumors from birth till now grew like moss on a wet stone, including those who said the baby had not cried but once in its entire life.

The day he was born, the nursemaid said the baby refused to breathe, most likely holding its breath in anger for its delivery into the living. The Doctor had to pin-stick the feet to tear breath from the baby and when it could no longer prevail, the child screamed with such fury they say the mother died right then and there. But Luella knew the old country fable was a patchwork of half-truths which only she could read the truth in.

Late autumn passed silently and with great quiet. The flowers were mostly gone now and the sun threw half-hearted slants of dull light over the fields at low, soft angles. Luella spent much of her time walking alone missing Jacob’s soft laughter like dandelions on wind as Blue padded along loyally behind them. She followed the steady curve of Macalister river down past the old school house with it’s spider veined windows all cracked and dry curved floorboards bending towards the ceiling.

A large raven, oil spot black circled lazily in the afternoon haze, the feathered tips of its wings waving in the thermals which kept it effortlessly airborne. Luella gathered up the last handful of some fiddlehead fern giving a good tug to bring it out of the earth, a clump of dirt firmly stuck to the root end. Holding the ferns in her apron she wiped the cool damp dirt from her hands and stood to leave when she saw him.

His silent vigil held her to the spot for longer then she would have wished and she could just see him where the field turned to Blue spruce. Just beyond the first spray of trees, his silhouette cut a black outline so dark all she could make out were his teeth.

Black as they were, she could see Cooner’s cut of smile sliced open to reveal those hard, dead teeth. Luella lost her footing without moving, and when she righted herself he was gone. But she knew it was him, felt it in her bones and wondered where he’d show up next.

Fall quickly retreated, took the last summer light with it and November hit hard and cold. The first storm blanketed every tree, flower and shrub in a frozen sheet starched solid and heavy. Luella spent the early winter nights in fitful sleep, waking at the wrong time and reaching to the empty place beside her. She’d sit suddenly upright sometimes, wake to the black room and look hard for shapes that were not there. She’d strain to hear, until the quiet itself was too loud then she’d put her head down, lay awake till sun up, then start what was left of her day.

By late January, the last light faded well into the forest, swallowed whole amongst the pines and even the moon fought to cast a pale glow. And when it did one quiet evening, it cast down on Cooner who stood at the far end of Luella’s property and walked on heavy feet towards her cabin. Soon he stood looking at the small house, its outline cut out against the black sky behind it and he felt his skin rise hot and dry.

Frozen stems crushed underfoot as Cooner’s boot settled on the porch. Luella’s kindling hatchet, its weathered oak handle shimmed into the heavy head, was stuck into the stump, took all the old woman’s might to sink it that far for a night’s keeping. Cooner easily plucked the hatchet out, felt the hard oak handle slide through his hand and the head come to rest by his side. The moon’s sorry light greased the nicked blade, blackened from time and cold from the night.

He opened the door, walked in and knew every step of the old place again, managing silently to miss each loose board meant to betray him. He knew these smells, the same after so many years. Flour and bacon grease worn well into the wood counter where every night for forty-five years Luella mixed her dinner biscuits. Heather and cockscomb hung in clusters above the cabinet, sweet and dry. And Cooner could feel the old scents cry into every pore, begin to strangle him and burn his memory.

At the bedroom doorway, Cooner played his finger over the jagged hatchet blade, pressing hard until he could feel his blood, warm and moist against the metal. He watched the old woman’s feet move under the covers, saw her face crease like old paper and took a step forward. Luella tossed mercilessly, her old hands fighting at her sides.

In her dreams, old Blue nipped at her skirt baying warnings long and low. Inside her head his cry echoed and that dog would just not let her sleep. Cooner knew the axe would cleave her head like winter kale, firm at first then giving over as the steel drew through her skull like a ship’s keel parted waves. Somewhere in dreamland’s narrow eternity, Blue yelped hard, dug his teeth into Luella’s skirt almost pulling her over, and finally she opened her eyes.

Dingy moonlight clung to her old linen curtain and did what it could to make its way across the black room. A torn ribbon of it fell at Cooner’s feet and this time the darkness had a shape Luella didn’t have to imagine. He saw her sit up slowly, silver hair against the old headboard, pale eyes wrestling with the night. He also saw the other eyes, cold black circles hollow by her side. They were eternity and then some, with no looking back to forever and already forgotten now. Only then did he understand the hard clack of a shotgun’s hammer drawn back, there is no forgetting that sound.

The cold eyes rose up to see him better, the rifle’s barrels dull and gray in the blackness. He needed only a nick of time, so he took it now wrapping his hand tightly around the axe handle. “Mama, I’m home”. Cruel teeth spitting the words, each one hanging on a sharp barb of hate. He brought the axe up fast from his side and almost out of his hand in one motion. And the cold eyes blazed fierce, spitting back at him as whole suns of light burned towards him in a rush of heat and the top of his head peeled back, and off.

Luella scrubbed the wall for three days with vinegar and salt. On the last day, her old brush worn to the nub she got up the last of it, the wood now scarred clean. On the fourth day, Miller Hatchings dragged the body out of the house and gone forever. When he came back, he lifted his satchel and from it eased out a small puppy, eyes pressed tight against the light, nose wet and cool to the touch.

A tiny perfect hound dog. Blue, come back like Lazarus but small. “I understand if...” Miller began but Luella reached over and took the pup, raised him up to the light to get a better look. Then put him in her dress, next to her bosom. Safflower honey eased the edge off the sassafras tea, and neither said much. Miller told her the old weed patch next to the Church had bloomed wild roses. No one even knew they were there. Just appeared a few mornings back, in mid-winter no less.

Some said it was a miracle. No one asked why Cooner hadn’t been seen around the last few days. Some said that was another miracle. Father Kestings just said it was a sign of good things to come. Luella nodded, the tea warm to her lips and looked out the window through brackish clouds, where columns of light poured down to soak new life into the frozen ground.

You Call That Art?

2008-07-29T09:20:00.006-05:00

My wife took our four year old daughter Ella to the world famous, Museum Of Modern Art (MoMa).

Mid-way through, the tour guide turned to the kids and said "And what do you think this sculpture looks like?".

Ella raised her hand and said, "Garbage".

Erik With A “K’. As In “Kill”.

2008-07-27T12:13:00.002-05:00

I hang with my daughter at the playground a lot. Meet a lot of mom’s, trade a lot of horror stories about how much cake we all ate at the last birthday party. Don’t meet a lot of dad’s, but am happy when I do.

Always cool to trade “guy’s” perspective on child-raising, lack of sleep and the last time we actually set foot in a gym to do more than see if our card-key still worked.

But every once in a while you look across the bench and see a 6’5” rack-of-muscle with a buzz-cut, the dead-eyed stare of a paid assassin and the cool demeanor of a guy who’d twist your head off it’s spinal column as easily as spinning the top off a Bud.

I tried not to stare, but first of all the dude was massive. Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV massive. His muscles had muscles. He was like Dolph Lundgren on ‘roids.

And he was watching my daughter. Fcuk. It can never be the IT guy from like, Staples. Him I could just slap the pen-protector off of his shirt, push him off the bench and be the hero-dad that saved the playground from the creepy kidless guy on the bench.

“Kid’s are having fun…”, I ventured, wondering how I’d explain to my wife why I was carrying home my own head.

Dolph didn’t even turn his head, just said “They’re innocent. Don’t have to worry about all the shit out there…”.

Great, way to go Dana. I was actually helping the Playground Serial Killer get into character. Good one.

“Yeah, like uh having to pay rent…”., I meekly tossed out there.

“Or worrying about war…war is shit”.

He turned to me. I braced for impact. He reached over and shook hands. Well, he reached over and my hand disappeared into his. He was shaking my wrist-stump. I may have peed a little bit, but involuntarily. And it was really hot out and I’d been drinking tons of water.

“Erik, with a “k”. Like the Vikings. You know the worst thing?”.

Instinctively and motivated by fear, I somehow knew the correct answer was not “When they give you a light cappuccino at Starbucks and you have to ask for more steamed milk?”.

Fortunately Erik The Viking answered for me.

“It’s so loud”.

I thought back to this morning in Starbucks, he was right. The “whurrshing” sound of milk steaming could be startling if you weren’t expecting it.

“The sound of gunfire”.

Oh, that sound.

“You never get used to it. I was in Somalia. We’re the guys who went in to rescue them. Clusterfuck. Shit was wrong everywhere you turned. You read Blackhawk Down”.

I felt actual pee go down my leg and wondered if Depends came in camouflage.

“Yes”, I lied.

“Yeah, shit right?”.

“Definitely…”, I tried to listen for a siren somewhere, wondered if I could jump the playground fence and flag down a cop before Erik pulled me back.

“You know that one guy, Spec Ops dude, wrote the other one…”.

Fantastically, miraculously, I actually knew whom he meant. I’d seen the paperback out years earlier, remembered the author’s cold eyes.

“The guy with the long hair, mustache—kinda wild looking?”.

Erk with a K nodded. “That’s the guy we read. He knows. I did nine tours in Iraq. No one does nine tours”.

I was not about to argue with him, call him a slacker for not going back for number ten.

“Know the difference between us and them?”

“The Iraqis?”

Erik smiled like a parent watching his child try to spell banana with a z.

“Between SEAL’s and Rangers. When it comes down on you? Fucking Rangers are a joke”.

Erik pantomimed a wild-eyed soldier, firing his rifle everywhere—hi, low, to the left, to the right.

“Not us man, we keep our shit together”. Erik aimed his rifle to the near tree line, about fifty yards from us. “Tzing”, he mimicked the sound of rounds traveling half a mile a second. I could feel myself sweating.

He slid his rifle over ‘bout five inches, “tzing…”, moved it over anther half foot, “Tzing…”. He picked his targets out carefully, never rushed the shot and put a round center mass every time.

“Know why most guys flunk the training?”

They were questions to a quiz which I was not expected to get the answers correct, but to just not answer “cappuccino foam?”.

“The physics. Lot’s of guys can survive ocean training. Most of ‘em flunk the UDT though. You know what UDT is?”.

Now I was getting a little pissed. I wanted to say, “Hey, you know how many calories are in an iced mocha with skim, not whole milk? Now drop and give me twenty, asswipe…”.

But he beat me to it. “Underwater Demolitions Training”. Guys never pass the written physics. Nitrogen mix at 60 meters, exothermic reaction in saline, yeah. That’s what fucks ‘em up”.

Just then a three-year-old blond-haired boy ran over, jumped into Erik’s arms. A perfect little Mini-Erik. Small “k”.

He kissed his dad, ran off.

“I watched every one of my friends die. Was just waiting for mine. But my kid softened me up. Figured I’d get out while I could. My background, lots of jobs I can get out here”.

Strangely, I didn’t feel compelled to ask exactly what those “jobs” might entail.

About two months later I was walking down the street, saw Erik going into an apartment building on my street. “Erik..with a “K”, I called out.

He turned around really slow, like a gunfighter secretly gathering himself before turning to face the enemy.

I hadn’t noticed how pale his blue eyes were. Or how clear. They gave away nothing. But took everything in. I could feel him running a threat assessment on me, like the alien in Predator “Male. Multi-ethnic. Loves donuts. Threat assessment n/a”.

I realized guys like Erik may not always have their finger on the trigger, but they sleep with the safety off. We talked for a minute, then went our separate ways. He never really registered any emotion, it was like we’d never met but he was giving me the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t think Erik puts a lot of stock in relationships, doesn’t have real long-term expectations. I do think Erik remembers people, but the faces he conjures don’t belong to the living. They belong to memories, wisps of reality that fade in and out of his mind, and exist in a world that is filled with sounds most of us can’t hear, and that he can’t forget.

Thank God, For Me…

2008-07-14T09:39:00.003-05:00

No really, hold the applause. I do it for the children. And margaritas. But mainly, the children. Who by the way, if they’d quit jumping around like a *&^%($#! sack full of tree monkies could carry my margarita. How sweet would that be? I’d be doing it for the children, who just happened to be carrying some frosty drinks.

But I digress. Here’s my point:

“Dana is very polite, honest and great buyer. Even I delayed the work but he cooperated with me in such a way that was impressive. I am really very thankful to dana for his cooperation, and also thankful to God that I got connected to such a Great man. Thanks a lot, dana”.

I said I wouldn’t cry. Tissue please….

Do you not love the guy who wrote this? I fcuking do, I may marry him. Dare me. I mean, can’t you just hear the truth in this guy’s voice?

I mean, I think he’s a guy. Hmmm, actually he may be a she. We’ve actually never met. But that’s beside the point says The Great Man.

Our connection spans time and distance. Which could explain why he/she/it was 10 days late completing a coding project for my website. But hey, when you’re a Great Man you can overlook the foibles of lesser humans.

What you can’t overlook is the fact this tech had my website files and could’ve burned my site to the ground. Which he/she/it clearly would never do, because why? See Great Man reference above.

No, my connection to my little Malaysian brother/sister/goat runs deeper than any simple cash transaction. It runs all the way to my credit card. Again, not the point.

We’re all family, connected by the unseen bonds of humanity. I could care less that my newest brother/sister lives in Malaysia. Or Hong Kong. Or for that matter, King Kong. Like the sisters said, “We Are Family…”.

Oh and did I mention the part about GREAT MAN. Just wanted to make sure you got that.

So next time you’re in Singapore or Calcutta. Hmmm, or um, Viet Nam just sit back, order a cold beer and tell ‘em to put it on the GM’s tab. They know who I am. And man, they love me there. Wherever it is. And uh, whoever they are.

Oh, and can you also ask them if they charged like $200 worth of internet porn, 7 quad-ban cell phones, a Pamela Anderson calendar and a George Foreman grill to my credit card?

*clink*

Cheers.

When Ball Pits Go Bad

2008-06-30T09:24:00.003-05:00

As Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, would say “The horror”. Turns out that despite their lofty records of human ethics, deep values and eco-stances, McD’s, Chucky Cheese and every Kids Gym from here to Laos doesn’t clean their ball-pit on a regular basis.

You’re kidding?

Note the deadpan sarcasm in my voice.

As if at the end of every shift, that 20 yr old McDonald’s manager is going down his trusty check list, pausing to show great concern when he sees “Ball Pit: Desanitize” at the end of that list, unchecked.

But true vanguard of humanity he is, he releases the rest of his hardworking (non-English speaking) staff as it’s well past midnight and, rolling up his sleeves gets out his squeeze bottle of Physoderm, his hypo-allergenic cloth and meticulously hand-rubs to shiny perfection and ultimate cleanliness each and every ball in that pit.

God bless. I’m sure Hamburgler’s in Golden Arches Heaven right now, looking down on that manager and making him a little French fry cross to wear.

Right.

Of course they don’t clean the *&^*^%$# pit people, wipe the shake outta your eyes. First off, even the places that have these things refer to them as “pits”.

Or as I like to call them, “ball-spits”. Do the math. Babies, toddlers, kids. Snot. Plastic balls. Get it? Now, quit whining and grow a pair.

If they call them pits, how high up on their to do list can they be? It’s all in the language. Tar Pit. Money Pit. Ball Pit.

The pit-trifecta of human misery. Repeat after me: No One Cleans The Pit. Got that? Otherwise, they wouldn’t call it a pit. They’d call it “A Suite”.

Glad we cleared that up. Now, about what’s been located in these pits like, allegedly, knives, guns, snakes, human remains. Well, just in case you're lighting up your torches, ready to burn McD's to the ground, rest assured the stories about the heroin needle (or the poisonous snakes) in the ball pit are every bit as urban myth as they sound:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blneedle.htm

And feel free to google Kevin Archer+Midland Chronicle which is supposedly the name (and town paper) of the boy who died from a ball-pit heroin needle accident.

Hmmm, no kid named Kevin Archer? No Midland Chronicle? Wanna know why you can’t find the story? Riiiight.

But, should you feel so compelled to hand-search the pit for deadly vipers before your lil one jumps in next time, would you please see if you can find my life while you're in there? I distinctly remember having one, shortly before Ella was born.

I've searched every chocolate chip scone, glazed donut, frozen margarita and iced mochachino I can get my hands on, but I just cannot seem to find it.

From what I vaguely remember, it looks something like this--golf all day Saturday, drinks with Ann that evening, sleep in late Sunday, brunch with Ann, read a book, see an 8pm movie, drinks at home.

Oh, and money everywhere. In every account--checking, savings, I think I may of even had money in an offshore account. May have been the Jersey shore but hey, that's a shore.

Don't get me wrong, I probably won't toss Ella into the plastic-ball-pit-of-communicable-diseases anymore either. But hey, she's just a kid. And if she was gonna get Ebola from plastic balls coated in kid-gunk, pretty sure she woulda had it by now.

So next time I chuck her in there, as a concerned and loving parent you can bet your diaper bag if I hear any child in the ball pit wail in pain, I'll be the first dad over there, digging through balls. Because somewhere in there's my *&^(*^%$! life and it's going to take more than heroin needles, vipers a human skull or kid-crap to keep me from finding it.

Drinking And Blogging....(drunk letter to my Aunt)

2008-06-25T13:06:00.002-05:00

It's so nice to "speak" and I feel so badly for not being in touch. In general, because I love you so dearly and I realize there's little way of you knowing that if I never write or call. I love you. Lest this email get too long and the point is lost. And specifically, I know the loss of your dear friend has been so tough for you. I wish I could say or do something to lift your heart. Death is just so final and moreso for those of us left behind, so lonely.

There's an old Buddhist story (okay, all Buddhist stories are "old" I guess ;-) about a mother who refused to acknowledge death. In her case, the loss of a family member. She went to the Buddha and demanded he do something. She refused to admit that death was so complete and without reversal. The Buddha finally relented and said "Bring me back a black sesame seed, and then I can reverse death". Delighted, this woman went from village to village searching in vain for a black sesame seed.

Finally, certain she'd misunderstood him she returned to the Buddha and said, "You must be mistaken there's no such thing as a black sesame seed". And the Buddha said, "Just as there's no such thing as reversing impermanence. It just is". I remember when Dorothy died. Dad called me from the hospital room, literally moments after she passed. Funny, but I was meditating when he called. Afterwards, I went outside and just walked around. I felt fairly at peace until I suddenly realized I'd never hear her voice again. It was odd, the theory of death made sense, but the real life emotion was truly it's own experience and demanded it's own respect.

I hope that in the pain of your heartbreak, you can truly let yourself feel how much you love. How much you loved your friend, and how much you miss her. Any other story or conversation isn’t worth the paper it's written on. Her death, your friendship together and now, your grief all demand the respect of acknowledgement. I'll shed a tear, too. For our Dorothy's, our Trungpa Rinpoche's, our Louisa's. Here's a toast--actually, I'm drinking right now. I woke up and do believe I'm having my first aneurysm, lol. My left eye is twitching and I feel like the scarecrow from Oz, nothing about my body quite works right. It's 2pm on a Wednesday so in true Fabbro spirit I figured "Hey, if I'm passing on so be it, but I'll be damned if I'm going out sober".

So I raise my mid-week, icy cold margarita to us all, living and gone. Hahaha, as Dorothy would say "To those who love us may they love us. To those how don’t, may god kick them in the ankle so we know them by their limp...". And in addition, I'd say, those who love us, know us by our limp. And our limp is that of broken hearted warriors who miss their own. And who raise a glass, knowing someday, sometime soon those who love us will raise their glass to us. Then they'll limp home with the heartbreak of missing us. And so it goes. But for god's sake, let's not go out sober...shall we?

Love and miss you dearest Fay,

Dana

(A Pot Hole) In The Long Road Back

2008-06-22T06:39:00.009-05:00

Parenthood is less about "which values will I pass along to my child" and more about "How much birthday cake can I eat in a 24 hr. period?". Answer: a lot, if you wash it down with enough beer.

Saturday, Ella and I had a date with sugar. Two birthday parties in one day. Our little pal Seaborne was kicking off the big 3 at a morning bash, while our friend Destine would be ringing in Cinco De Birthday at 4pm.

It was a day that would require Zen-like patience, the hand-eye coordination of a neurosurgeon and the carb-loading intake capacity of Lance Armstrong.

First up, Seaborne's bash. Or as Ella calls him, 'lil Sea. Let's get right to it. I love Sea's parents--they're grounded, sane, kind, funny, interesting, compassionate, but maybe most importantly, they serve champagne and cake before noon.

So by 12:15pm I had a cake and bubbly buzz. I felt euphoric, heady. Decided to design a new hybrid bio-fuel and end dependence on foreign oil. Maybe volunteer at a clinic for kids. Cure cancer. Life was good.

Being the connoisseur of fine things that I am, it somehow seemed like a good idea to then start drinking beer. Ice cold beer. Hey, I was the guy who ended America's addiction to oil, didn't I deserve a brew?

Besides, 'lil Sea's dad said "Hey, want a beer?".

I'm Irish and Navajo, which means I have a full-fledged alcoholics lust for booze combined with the tolerance of a four year old. So by now I was flying.

Before I could finish the first one, I was already finishing my speech to the U.N., urging it's members to see beyond the politics of greed and do all they could to pass my charter for a worldwide "Beer 'N Cake Blowout!". I could picture my esteemed colleagues nod in respectful admiration as they stood to applaud.

It occurred to me that anyone standing on the threshold of winning the Nobel Prize should enjoy himself. Which is just about the same time Sea's dad said, "Get you another one?".

Serve on my good man, serve on.

As I chatted amiably with the other parents about the virtues of cutting chicken nuggets into smaller, more easily digestible pieces someone said "What are you guys up to after this?".

And then, it hit me. Hit me hard. Hit me 'bout as hard as the second helping of Mac 'n cheese I'd just wolfed down. Today was Saturday. I was supposed to run four miles. On my feet. Carrying the entire weight of my own body.

I just stood there, staring at the empty beer bottle in my hands. And the also very empty bowl from which I'd eaten Mac and cheese.

Not to mention the slab (or three) of chocolate cake I'd inhaled. There may have been some ice cream on that cake. There may have actually been a separate bowl of ice cream, in addition to the two giant spoonfuls I'd slapped on top of my choco slabs o' love.

Sorry, was there icing on the cake? No it was dry. Didn't you hear? All the 3 year olds in America banded together in coalition to put a stop to cakes being iced.

Right.

There was more icing on that cake than mascara on Tammy Faye. You could actually eat for two or three minutes before you even hit cake there was so much icing.

So basically I'd had champagne, beer, mac and cheese, ice cream a foot of cake and six inches of sugar. In about an hour. If I'd been swimming off the Atlantic Coast a whaler would've harpooned me and sold my fat to Japan for cosmetics.

But a fate far more cruel awaited me than that.

I squirmed in place.

"Um, actually I was going to go for a run....".

The other parents kept eating cake. Then slowly, one by one, they each turned and walked away.

The herd had deserted me. I was alone. Four miles. Seriously, I could die. Macaroni could float into my bloodstream and clog a heart valve. I think I read about that happening in People.

Ella and I made our way home later, though I was very quiet as we walked.

When we got home, I gently patted her head as I laced on my sneakers.

"Goodbye little one..." I thought, "Tell your mother I loved her".

Running's a funny thing. It's always hardest when you first start.

But after a while, the endorphins hit, you find your stride and you feel really alive.

I'd run about forty feet and could feel my spleen inflating. There would be no endorphins. No runner's high. No big finish. There would be me, in a too small tee shirt bent over counting mac chunks.

"Breathe..." I thought.

"No, don't...". A little voice sounded. "Fill your lungs with air and trap it there so the macaroni won't clog your airway".

I tried it for ten feet. Not sound medical advice. I farted, then gasped for air.

Two petite blondes jogging in my direction crossed the street.

I decided the smart thing to do was slow my pace, run smart. I slowed down a few paces. An old lady with a portable oxygen tank walked past me. Okay, too slow.

I tried to hum "Rocky", but I was having problems breathing. I picked up the pace. "Okay, start passing people. Have a goal".

Good. Competition always fires me up. That's how I managed three pieces of chocolate cake when I saw the other parents gagging after their second.

I kicked it into gear. Could feel my legs pumping.

Up ahead I saw a woman with her dog in tow. One of those pesky Chihuahuas. He was in one of those little ass-wheelbarrows, getting towed. Guess he didn't have full use of his hindquarters.

Hey, he should've thought about that before he threw down the gauntlet. Because now, it was on my friend. I headed towards them. Couldn't wait to see the look on their faces when I blew by them like a jungle feline.

Whew. It was 88 degrees out. Grueling NYC humidity made my skin feel like wet leather. I could feel cake hunks bobbing up and down in an ocean of gut-beer.

The little Chihuahua pulled away. I coughed. Someday soon, he'd be dead. That made me feel a little better. Now I had a bigger problem. I could feel the humidity had worn out the cartilage in my knees. I was running bone on knee bone.

I was furious, but who to blame? Nike!!!! My shoes had let me down. I'd sue them. Phil Knight would be my pool-boy. With the lawsuit money I'd get titanium knees. Then I'd buy a stealth bomber. And destroy all the rubber trees in Central America, grinding North American running shoe production to a halt.

No one would have appropriate running shoes. People would have to run in their work shoes--loafers, sling backs, casual summer sandals.

But I'd have Titanium knees. I would be unstoppable. Ha. Maybe this run wasn't such a bad idea, I was thinking pretty clearly now. I wondered which other challenges I could overcome with my titanium knees.

Marathon polka dancing. Outswimming sharks. Kicking soccer balls over the top of the Chrysler building. I would be a god. I almost couldn’t wait for my knees to give out so I could start my lawsuit.

Then I head a tiny "beep". My watch. I looked down, my time was up. I'd made the four miles. I sat on a bench, took my shoes off. Looked at my regular knees. They were okay, I guess. I could always sue later. After tomorrow's run.

I felt the sun on my face. Felt relieved. And a little proud. I'd done it. Hung in there. Four miles.

Then I remembered, when I left the party they wrapped up the last of the cake. Put it in the fridge to keep it from the heat.

Their apartment was only four blocks from here. I put my shoes back on and laced 'em up.

This time would be different.

This time, I'd have the cake in a bowl, so when the ice cream melted I could eat it with a spoon.

The Long Road Back

2008-06-19T17:31:00.006-05:00

I was in good shape this winter, for awhile. Went to the gym frequently. Ate well.

My body changed shape. People looked at me differently.

"Hey there...uh, great haircut".

I worked out more. Longer. Harder.

My body felt lighter and stronger. I did set after set after set of push-ups. My arms felt like hydraulic pistons effortlessly tasked with pushing up my body which felt air-light, like balsa.

Eating was like throwing whole, dry logs into a roaring fire. My digestive system broke down, assimilated and processed food like a machine. Chicken breast. A pound of spinach. Four apples. Egg whites. Oatmeal. For breakfast.

I put on eight pounds. Lost two inches around my waist.

I felt like Dr. Bruce Banner, secretly waiting to go green and get my Hulk on.

My workouts were undertaken with Swiss-watch efficiency.

I ran faster, pushed harder, sweated more than anyone around me. I named my workouts: "Unforgiven", "Tapout", "Crybaby".

Worked out so hard my lifting partner stopped coming. Just, didn't show up one day. Never came back.

Worked out so hard I met The Clown. As in, "Pukey The Clown".

Winter came. The sun departed at 4:15pm. People got grumpy, got depressed, got colds.

I didn't get tired. I didn't catch colds.

Instead, I put 600+ pounds on the leg press. During my fifth set, I looked around for more 45LB plates to add.

When I finished, I turned around and people were staring at me. Then, quietly they just went back to their workouts. A trainer walked by, looked at the fourteen 45 lb plates on the machine and just shook his head.

600+ lbs was actually the last thing I kinda remember. A few nights later I felt tired. And feverish.

The next day I was 103. I sweated like I'd been dipped in a big, wet bucket of misery.

My body felt like angry dwarfs were pounding me with sledgehammers.

I felt white hot metal spikes pierce my head, puncture my eyes and pour searing white light into my brain.

I cried. I prayed. I prayed harder. I lost weight like some maniac butcher had sliced off whole slabs of me from each side. A pound a day, then two. By the end of the week, 10 pounds.

A month later, I had enough strength to walk around the block without coughing.

I felt like I'd been through a kind of spiritual awakening. And during this awakening, I realized two things.

1. God probably doesn't exist.
2. Donuts had taken his place.

I could not eat enough of them. Iced, glazed, old fashioned, sprinkles, sugared. Even that most old school of all fried creations, the crueller, had become family to me.

I felt like the Manchurian Candidate. As if somehow, someone, perhaps even yes, a foreign government had sneaked a chip into my brain. The chip was encoded with a simple binary message that repeated itself in my brain over, and over and over again.

"Donut"

After about a month, again, people looked at me differently. But now they didn't find ways to compliment me.

I didn't care. Unless they worked as a night manager at Dunkin Donuts, they were irreverent to me.

Soon, my old clothes fit again. Snugly, at first. Then uncomfortably.

I no longer craved lean proteins, green vegetables. Leafy greens and robust fruits.

I was a Donu-vore. I existed solely for The Donut. Like a grizzled old drunk I was cranky most mornings. Until that first, heavenly bite of Chocolate Glazed with sprinkles.

Then, an angelic smile would cross my face. I'd see holy light fill the room and I'd go out of my way to help strangers.

And then, it ended. I went to a wedding. Packed my "fat suit" to wear. A simple, classic linen suit two sizes too big for me. Figured I'd just tighten the old belt up, suck it up for a night and get through the evening.

Except I was too fat for the fat suit. I had to leave the pants unbuttoned in order to walk around without feeling like a trussed sausage.

Mid-way through the ceremony, I felt flush. The pants were still too tight. I breathed in, and unzipped them a bit. I wanted to cry. My wife looked over, saw my emotions rise to the surface and squeezed my hand, so proud her husband was moved to tears at this joyous occasion.

I silently wondered if anyone had ever been sliced in half by too-tight pants.

So I put the donuts down and picked up my sneakers. Went for a run. After ten minutes I was exhausted. Light-headed. Then, just off the trail I saw a chocolate donut. Hallucination? No, the sweet redeemer of life. I slowed my pace. Could see it just ahead a few paces.

My own morality flashed before me like a cheap diner menu--"Do I eat food off the ground?". My mind argued, "It's nature for chrissakes. If you can't eat food from nature what's the $%^&$# world coming to, eat it man!".

I stopped. And wondered what to do. I looked at the donut, snuggled there in the leaves. Perfectly shaped...like a pinecone.

It was more serious than I thought. I was having flashbacks. Where would it end? When I actually bit someone, a live person? Having mistaken their arm for a fcuking cinnamon twist?

It's been two weeks now and I'm happy to say I no longer mistake the forest's natural bounty for iced carbs on my runs. Hey, one day at a time, right?

Been back at the gym. Have lost two pounds. I'm getting there.

Coming home from my run the other day, I cut across the park into the city. Running by a Starbucks, time suddenly slowed. Like it had been stretched out like taffy.

Through the window, I could see the pastry case.

I took a deep calming breath, "Just keep moving...".

And then, I saw it.

A raspberry, apricot cookie. It looked so benign, so homemade. So trust worthy. Like mom had just baked it. For me. I stopped, looked at the cookie. It smiled at me. No really, it did. Not some weird, computer generated fake smile. It just made this cute little face at me, turned up the sides of its mouth like the cookie-version of Meg Ryan. Awww.

I wanted to hold it. Provide for it. Give it a home and care for it.

And maybe, someday I will. But until then, I can remember like it was yesterday--the time my own pants almost sliced me in half.

I Am Warrior (Hear My Song)

2008-06-13T16:38:00.006-05:00

I am a simple warrior-monk. I roam the earth in search of…the perfect frozen margarita.

My warrior-code binds me to the vow of non-violence, contemplation of illusory truths and celibacy. Unless you are really hot, in which case IM me.

My weapons are the highest expression of compassion. I wear them to transcend petty anger. And because they come in five colors to match just about every outfit I own.

I rise each day at dawn before battle to write my “death poem”, well knowing life is fleeting and each moment is already gone:

Crimson Sun
Sparrow In Flight
I Bought These Sunglasses
On Sale

And no, I am not wearing a “skirt”. It is a formal Samurai dress~and I gotta tell you it keeps you looking slender after a long night of Sake-bombs and smoked eel.

Believe me, you do not command respect on the battlefield (or the dancefloor) if you show up looking like fat Elvis.

When Monkeys Go Ape

2008-06-13T14:36:00.007-05:00

“MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. - A spider monkey used a garden hose to scale the wall of a moat at a Michigan City zoo before being captured at a nearby boat dealership”.

Do you think the hippos and rhinos were back at the zoo, watching the pursuit on COPS? Whispering under their breath "Go Stan...go".

Man, must have been a moment when he made it to the boat dealership. Whaddya think he was going for, maybe a sweet twin engine outboard? 650 HP of man-thrust. Dual beer-holders in the captain's seat.

Probably had his little hand on the wheel before they got him.

I'm sure the zoo went quiet. Giraffe probably snubbed out his cigarette, hoofed back to his pen, "Knew he wouldn't make it".

Little furry guy will be back at the zoo by the PM feeding. There'll be a few quiet "Hey Stan's". No one will mention the "incident".

Life will return to normal.

Show's over, back to your cage.

But not for Stan. It will be different, now. The bananas won't taste as sweet. Picking fleas off his pals won't be fun. Not the simple distraction it used to be. Tourists will come by, snap pictures. Sure he'll throw in a "Woohoo aaahhh", but his heart won't be in it. Not anymore.

They'll run tests. Wonder if he has a low-grade virus.

He doesn't. He has something else. An itch he can't scratch. A dull headache where his heart used to be.

Some nights, Stan can feel the wind in his fur. He's on the water. Throws the throttle forward, the boat skims over an ocean so blue you'd think Monet painted it.

For long seconds at a time, the boat goes airborne between swells. And Stan's flying. His little Captain's hat snug over his ears. The sun's low on the horizon. He steers towards it.

Then, he wakes up. He’s in the zoo.

He sees his friends, monkeys. They jump from one branch to the next, happy. So they think. Zookeeper throws a handful of peanuts over the gate. They scramble over, grab at them like children. Not Stan.

He looks out, sees the sun setting.

Sees the last of the tourists snap a bored picture of him. He doesn't even raise his arms up over his head.

Watches the people as they leave. Sees the attendant let them out of the park.

And next to the park's exit, by the door, Stan sees something. A simple garden hose. Forgotten. It snakes up the wall, to the roof. To the ocean. To the wind.

And for the first time in weeks, Stan smiles.

Go Stan…go.

Home, (bitter) Sweet Home

2008-05-21T12:10:00.004-05:00

Had a family reunion recently. A traveling party of Tibetan monks who were accompanying the 17th reincarnation of their teacher.

Nice bunch. All of ‘em. First thing I noticed was they didn’t push in line. Or mutter snide little remarks at you under their breath. Or give you that fake “fcuk you” smile while they cut you off for the next taxi.

One of them, Zimpon-la, was this tiny little smiling artifact of a monk. Old. Real old. Like, “Knew the Buddha…personally”, old.

Had never been on a plane. Took a 14 hour flight from India to NYC, woke up the next day and ambled around as we toured The Met, The Reuben Museum, Rockefeller Center and Ground Zero.

Never stopped smiling. He was like being around a small little nova of goodness. You’d smile back at him, and he’d reach out and hold your hand. Just hold your hand. You could feel centuries of life in the crease of his palm. Suddenly you were in Tibet, sipping hot tea while snow peaks shone golden in morning sun-rays.

Then, just like that you were back. In NYC. And there was Zimpon-la, ambling down the hallway to his hotel room. Small little shuffling steps, taking him down the hallway like it was just another journey in his life.

Last I saw him, he was walking towards me to the dining room. I was so happy to see him. Had been a long time. Maybe, lifetimes. “Ahhh, Zimpon-la” kind of escaped from my lips, half-tearful, half-laughing to see my old friend.

He just beamed. Reached out, took my hand in his. He sort of held my hand to steady himself as he walked by. I wondered how many high mountain plateaus we’d traveled together, over the years.

How many long walks we’d taken across grassy meadows so vast it took an hour for the wind to blow over them from one end to the other. Cold, very cold, biting cold winters tent bound, sipping thick Tibetan tea laced with butter which coated our wind cracked lips.

Then, just like that I was back in NYC.

Sirens wailed, people yelled at one another. Time was no longer measured by how long the sun was in the sky, but by how late we were to the next meeting. Everyone looked so unhappy, rushing around.

A man cursed a woman who mistakenly took his drink from the counter at Starbucks. A women “tsked” in hot frustration at me because I wasn’t walking fast enough.

My lips were no longer cracked.

But my heart was.

Then I saw Zimpon-la. Tiny, little, robe-wearing, smiling Zimpon-la. Now, he was even smaller. In fact, he was inside every person I saw. There he was smiling, kindly. Helping others. And I realized, we’re all Zimpon-la’s. We just forget sometimes.

I’m trying to not push anymore. Or curse people under my breath. Or be angry with people because they’re too slow, too in-the-way, too old, too young, too loud, too rich, too homeless, too whomever-they are.

I’m trying to be patient. And kind.

There’s no need to hurry anymore, old is the new young.

How To Have A Tea Party

2008-04-18T08:14:00.003-05:00

My four year old daughter Ella knows how to have a tea party. I apparently, do not. She reminded me of that this morning over a small plastic cup of watered down English breakfast tea and make-believe banana cake.

"Here's your yummy cake, Abu...".

I'm currently playing Abu, btw. The mischievous but well-intentioned, pointy-shoe wearing monkey from Aladdin? Thank you, I'll be here all week, two shows on Sunday.

Well, in between sips I had wandered far-afield of reality.

I wasn't in Arabia, under the shade of a palm sipping tea with Princess Jasmine.

I was paying bills. Meeting deadlines. Hustling up work. Stressing how to make ends meet. My body was there. My mind was not. And as we all know from reading Carlos Castaneda, Walt Whitman or Cormac McCarthy--your mind is where all the good stuff is, your imagination.

And without imagination, you can't actually be two places at once.

Which Ella instantly knew when I reached out, accepted the slice of banana cake and kindly, but absent-mindedly said "Thanks for the banana cookie...".

A short pause followed.

She's a fun Princess, but she's firm around certain issues of protocol.

"Abu, I told you. It's banana cake. Why you said 'cookie'?".

So busted. Suddenly, I was feeling very present. And very naked. Even in pointy shoes and a make-believe tasselled Fez.

Because in the mind of a four year old, there is no make believe. You're either drinking tea and enjoying yummy banana cake, or you're not.

You don't pretend, don't fake it, don't play at it. And you certainly don't pay bills, stress over a future that's not here and mistake banana cake, for a cookie.

Tomorrow, I get a lesson in dress-up.

Better get my head right, I'd hate to lose this gig.

Lost&Found Moments

2007-11-21T20:19:00.002-05:00

I spend many of my waking hours avoiding moments of truth.

Which is pretty understandable. I mean, I’m a father, husband and my business supports my family. Which means like my wife I’m overworked, underpaid and perpetually tired.

So I live in a constant state of flux. Work deadlines blend in to family deadlines that merge with stress and ricochet off of all the caffeine in my system.

So who can blame me for missing a few seconds here and there of moment-to-moment life?

Funny thing is, my daughter and I were at a local java-hut the other day and I witnessed someone not avoid the truth.

Next to our table there was a father who in one arm carried his screaming two year old to the cashier while his five-year-old girl sat next to us with her hot chocolate.

That she immediately lost control of and splashed all over the floor. It was pretty spectacular, actually. Paper cup kind of flew out of her hands, arched over the corner of our table and formed this instantly endless milk-chocolate reservoir that just kept spreading.

Her dad came back and picked up the cup, as his son continued screaming. A moment later the manager, a middle-aged Indian man came over and started mopping up the choco-lake.

Dad looked over and offered his apologies but this manager was totally cool~he just said “No, no please these things happen”.

Which was just such a refreshing and often unseen reaction to this kind of thing. Then the manager goes “Sir, what did she have?”.

Dad was kind of surprised and goes “Oh uh, hot chocolate…”.

And a minute later, this manager returns with a new drink for the little girl.

Then he cleans off their table. Then, he actually grabs a new paper napkin and dries off the table so they don’t have to rest their elbows in that thin film of water.

Okay, so now I’m impressed.

Or maybe I’m restored to what people are capable of when they don’t avoid the obvious.

So dad gathers up his newly chocolated daughter, his screaming boy, smiles to us and jets.

And I tell my girl, “Ella did you see what that man did?”.

Then I explain how the man brought the little girl a new hot chocolate and Ella asks “Why did he bring it?”.

And honestly, part of my is asking the same thing. Which happens if you live in New York and you forget to exhale every once in a while.

Instead of seeing moments as possibilities you see them as annoyances.

But that part of me that is still capable of exhaling explains to Ella that sometimes people are capable of caring for others. And sometimes you can just give someone a new hot chocolate if they spill theirs.

At the mention of free hot chocolate, Ella seemed to really get interested. So as we’re leaving I pick her up and detour by the cashier. The manager has his back to us and I ask “Excuse me...are you the manager?”.

He turns, sees us and walks over, a little flash of concern painting his face.

“Yes, sir may help you”.

“Well, I just thought that was a really gracious gesture on your part. I’m a father and I know what its like to always feel like you’re overwhelmed and making a mess everywhere you go…”.

And suddenly and pretty effortlessly, this kindly Indian man just starts beaming light.

I mean like, Della Reese “Touched By An Angel” light.

And I’m holding Ella and he’s beaming us and we’re all lit up like big shiny human-stars and he gestures with his hand and says

“This store is my baby. I am the owner and my customers are family to me. I am blessed to have this place. God-blessed so thank you for such nice words”.

And it felt like Ella and I were looking down the barrel of this long, golden tunnel of light and she felt feather-light and my voice sounded like barely an echo of itself and I managed to say something like “Well god-bless you for your kindness…”.

And then like instantly, the tunnel-beam closed and we were just in this tiny coffee shop on the upper west side and I was walking away with Ella and she goes “What happened?”.

And I didn’t really have an answer. I wasn't sure what happend. As I was putting her in the stroller random thoughts just crisscrossed my mind, like what if that guy beamed us so brightly we had half-face tans like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind?

And would Ella sometimes not answer her cell when her dad was calling just hoping to hear his little girl's voice?

And why does six ounces of hot chocolate in a cup somehow triple in volume to 18 ounces when it spills on to a horizontal surface?

I snugged Ella's coat around her, realizing you can’t keep little girls from growing up. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's how we can rescue the truth from obscurity. By just exhaling and realizing that we can't package moments so they aren't messy, or painful.

We can just try and be present for as many truthful-moments as we can stand, even when its right in front of us, on the floor covered in hot-chocolate.

Control Your Fluids

2007-11-16T14:51:00.001-05:00

Sometimes my friends (and by friends I mean people who still have lean bodies, date like field-bunnies and spend their Saturday’s buying clothes not decorated with licensed cartoon characters) ask me, “So what’s it take to be a good dad? Love, money, patience?”. Actually, there’s a much simpler answer~control your fluids.

Yep, it’s that simple. You control the fluids, you control the chaos.

Do the math.

You’re at dinner. Your fluid is wine. It must go in to your mouth. Repeatedly. Easy.

Trickier is your three year old who has within arm’s length a glass of milk, a glass of water and of course, your wine.

Lose control of any one of those three glasses and its game over. Liquid finds its own level. Which means it flows under and around your paper napkin, the plates, the stem or base of any glass and eventually, off the sides or end of the table.

What’s left is a table coated in a base of fluid and any number of saturated napkins. In other words, you’re now trying to eat dinner in a swamp.

Time to get the check, dinner’s over.

But if you can manage to deftly wield fork-bites of 1500° flesh-searing pizza in to your mouth, while chugging glass after glass of house wine and using one arm to keep your child from leaping off their chair and on to the table next to you in a full-out body-slam while you use your other free limbs to keep every fluid-filled glass vertical and your table dry…

…then winner winner chicken dinner, enjoy your night out with the family.

And if you do manage that minor miracle of fluid control, then you get to move on to the master class.

Controlling your tears.

Because even more difficult than keeping water glasses from tipping over is managing your own emotions as a parent.

And I use the term “manage” here loosely.

Controlling your emotions is more like trying to catch hummingbirds with your bare hands.

Because after you get home with a water/wine/milk soaked shirt, peel off your clothes and jump in the tub with your screaming toddler who refuses to brush her teeth after ‘tubbie, then towel her off, spray her hair with organic detangler then wrangle her in to bed before your wife fills out divorce papers, something funny happens.

You miss your child.

You snuggle the blanket around their little body, sneak off the bed as stealthily as a cat burglar, close the door quietly behind you then burst in to tears.

You’re exhausted, fried like a donut, smell like pizza and can’t wait to hold your baby again.

So you open the bedroom door, and tip toe back to the bed. Just to make sure they’re safe.

And they are. Sleeping as quietly and safely as a lamb. Their faces are perfect. Angels don’t look this flawless.

Their tiny chests move gently with each breath like little ocean waves, in and out. They lay quiet and secure. Theirs is the most righteous peace of body and soul.

They don’t know war, or catastrophe, or loss. Or any myriad number of the world’s sharp-edged realities upon which they’ll cut themselves in years to come.

They only know they are loved. And they are safe. And for now that’s all they need to know.

And yet, somehow for some unknown reason you think to yourself wordlessly, “what if?”.

What if I lost her?

And you feel a heavy weight slowly crush you from the inside out. The weight pushes out the last of the air in you, pushes tears to the corner of your eyes that paint your face.

And you feel light, like you could float away. And you watch her little body, so still.

You reach across the space of your own fears and with your weightless body touch her face.

You can feel her breath move through the diagram of your fingerprint and in to your heart.

And you stand there. Unable to move.

And somewhere beyond your control the world’s most frightening question continues to echo right through you.

What if?

And you know the honsest answer is, you don't know.

So you do what you can. You go to pizza dinners. And you drink bad house wine.

And when she reaches for your pizza and knocks over your glass you smile while you mop up the mess.

And you order another glass of wine. And you hear the world in her joyful laugh and the world says “You can’t control the fluids”. And you know its true.

And liquid will find its own level anyway.

Whether its bad house wine, or good house tears.

They Don’t Make Skeletons…

2007-10-29T10:53:00.001-05:00

…like they used to. Was in Central Park Friday night around 8pm, looking for bats with my three year old. Long story.

But anyway, we’re cruising along when we hear the unmistakable thump of a bass line. We head towards the music, when suddenly we see the pathways in the park are on fire.

Lining every pathway as far as you can see are glowing jack o’ lanterns.

Volunteers had carved over 10,000 ‘jacks for the Central Park Halloween fair. So we’re walking along this fire-orange pathway of smiling, grinning, cackling pumpkins.

We make our way to the outdoor stage where a DJ is pumping out tunes that would make a skeleton’s bones rattle.

Its so loud, Ella and I can’t even hear each other. So we grab hands and start dancing. The music is absolutely jamming, we’re dancing and laughing our goblin-butts off hysterically.

Then Ella stops, lets go of me and runs over to these two like, nine year olds dressed head-to-toe as~skeltons. They have mask-hoods and black body suits, the whole deal.

And Ella walks up to one, stops and puts her finger on its chest. Then just starts tracing along its bones. Rib bone to the hip bone, hip bone connects to the leg bone.

Then she takes ‘skel’s hand, turns to me and just beams like the sun, like “look dad, a real live skeleton”. Skel was cool, kind of stood there not exactly knowing what to do with this fascinated little three year old, but digging the attention anyway.

Then Ella laughed and ran off, running around in circles while the music played and I chased her and we giggled and I thought how cool is NYC?

Out of breath, we sat on a bench. Blanket of black night overhead. ‘Skel’s and goblins and zombies dressed up as exhausted parents danced and watched and did the spooky family-thing.

Then I noticed we were sitting just opposite a fifty foot high scaffolding rig that held hundreds of glowing ‘jacks. It was this five-story wall of fireballs.

And a big sign thanking the Sunshine Camp.

It’s an annual camp that hosts terminally ill kids and their families. So the Sunshine Volunteers has turned their altruism on Central Park donating their time and carving skills to trip-out the park for H’ween.

My stepmother (no, not an evil stepmother that’s fairy tales, this is a Halloween story) volunteers every year. Spends a few weeks in Maine with kids just like the two nine year old skeletons Ella was just tickling femur bones with.

But the Sunshine Camp kids are all in various states of terminal illness. So they’re living their own version of Halloween on kind of a daily basis.

But my step mom says the kids are amazing. They’re not despondent. They still have that kind of innocent wisdom that most of us have lost. Or never even knew we had.

And they spend these few precious weeks just hanging with their families instead of medical specialists. And they play silly games like Pin The Tail On The Donkey, instead of Pin The Five Year Old With Another I.V. Tube.

And they stare directly in to the face of their own reflection that’s slowly but surely starting to fade from life’s mirror, but their images are more present than ever.

And looking at this wall of jack-o-lanterns I could see every Sunshine kids face my stepmother’s ever talked about, looking back at me.

The Sunshine kids were smiling funny, wicked, playful fire-glow faces at me as I held Ella, who’d fallen asleep in my arms her own little skeleton curled up in to my coat blanketed against October’s bite.

And the more the pumpkin-sunshine kids smiled and glowed at us, the tighter I held on to my little skeleton.

And the jack-o-lantern kids whispered “Hold on Dana, hold on. And never let her go”.

Ella’s little heart thumped with life. And the music played so loud I couldn’t hear a thing.

Except the Sunshine Camp kids.

Yeah, they don’t make skeletons like they used to.

They make ‘em better.

Affair, Part Deux Or…

2007-10-16T19:19:00.001-05:00

…first life, second chance. So look, its not like my wife was actually seeing some guy in person. And its not like they were spending time offline, talking on the cell phone, getting closer to one another emotionally, creating a depth of relationship they didn’t have online.

Well okay, it might’ve been a little bit like the second thing.

Was I worried?

Not even when I’d roll over in bed at 3am and she wasn’t there. Or the morning she went to ask me a question and mistakenly tried to “type” it on an “air-keyboard” like she was online.

Okay, that was weird.

But my point is, marriage is like um, well its like a…

…hmmm, marriage is f*cking weird. It just is. I mean, relationships are weird.

We’re basically aliens to ourselves, unable to even penetrate the most simple meaning behind most of our own actions.

I mean, think about it. How many times do you just suddenly catch yourself living a double life, a Second Life? Answer? ‘Bout every five seconds if you wanted.

All you have to do is periodically and objectively peek your head through the window of your own mind and check out your behavior, your thoughts, your intentions, and +bingo+, turns out you’re the biggest freak you know.

Or is that just me?

Fine, take the Pepsi challenge I dare ‘ya.

Try and really be honest about what motivates you. Moralism? The Truth? Honor? Hey, nothing personal but I bet ‘cha its really something much closer to home like sex, money or anger.

Find yourself out of sheer love for your fellow human opening the door for that stranger at Starbucks? Hmmm, well did you happen to notice the fellow human you offered help to just happened to be a 5’11” blond with the body of a beach volleyball player and a smile that would pulse a cadaver?

Yeah, funny that. Cuz just in front of Ms. SoCal 07 was an old lady in a ratty sweater and you didn’t think twice about getting the door for her.

Hey, I’m just sayin’.

Okay, so scenario numero uno doesn’t apply to you. Even if Brad Pitt is walking out of Starbucks and you elbowed past a wheelchair-bound old man to get to him.

Again, all I’m saying? Next time you think you’re doing something out of kindness or altruism~take a deeper look. You might be surprised at what you find. You might be surprised to find you’re actually living your own version of Second Life.

My Wife's Um, Affair

2007-10-02T09:13:00.000-05:00

It was bound to happen, looking back on it all.

Sure, there were the obvious indicators. We’d been married a while, the demands of a family created more pressures on our relationship, the obvious things.

And its not like we’re not, in many ways crazy about one another still. We’ll always be really, really close. But at some point in a marriage, you both realize that something’s changed.

Not only is the honeymoon over, you can’t even find the photos. So I guess I wasn’t totally shocked when I found out. And I wasn’t that surprised when she told me what sparked the attraction~his nimble mind, clever sense of humor and charming intellectualism.

Same things she saw in me once. Well, in my mind anyway. But you know, for all this guy’s attributes tend to think of him more as being pretty one-dimensional.

You know, flat? And from the few glances I’ve caught of his picture, he’s small. Not that I’m Hulk Hogan, but this guy can’t be more than three, three and a half inches tall, tops.

Did I mention he’s an avatar? An onscreen generated identity? Oh, well~he’s one of those.

My wife’s been spending time in Second Life~an online simulation game. You create an identity, dress yourself up and party.
You go to any thousands of virtually existing sites and meet like-minded people. Um, avatars.

Last week I hung out in a Buddhist monastery. Listened to monks chant soothing thousand-year-old hymns. Same night some friends took me to a gay club. Decorated with real life pictures of um, “men doing things”. I’ve seen NASCAR racers die from less violent rear end collisions.

Yep, Second Life is like one giant adult-prom where you’re the prettiest girl there, everyone wants to dance with you and you can buy virtual sex-toys at an exchange rate that make the peso look like gold bullion.

Or, if you don’t wanna prom you can start your own group of like-minded home shut-in's who are interested in say, addressing the human rights violations in the Congo.

Or if socio-politics aren’t your thing why not join “Crazy Clown” where members dress up in vintage clown outfits and give each other enemas while blasting “She Blinded Me With Science” from their laptops at home. Or from the community PC in the prison library, I suppose.

But I digress. As in real life, Second Life offers you access to just about any club, group, relationship or experience you can dream up. Which is how my wife met Emile31.

Now, in my wife’s defense~I don’t know that she’s really compromised any kind of marital trust. I think. I mean, so far it seems to all be in good fun.

Which is why I went in, created a 6’ 5”, ripped, shaved head, pony-tail adorned, matrix glasses, Ninja-robe wearing Warrior Monk and dropped in on Second Life.

And lemme just say~when you look like I do in SL, do not expect chicks at any club to ask you to dance.

Might be the dark glasses.

Though I did have a percolating little conversation with a German philosophy student named Tikka on the progress Kant has made to Aristotle’s theory of “being”.

Which I tried to refute on the basis of Aristotle’s De Anima, namely you can’t argue against potentiality v. actuality from a modernist pov that’s been influenced by the rationalist position of mind/body identity.

Which is just about the time Tikka told me she wasn’t just a philosophy student, but also a member of the African Lesbian Sisterhood.

Guess she was trying to throw me a clue when she said her favorite drink was straight scotch. So like I said, you can get in to just about anything you want in Second Life. And believe me, there’s a lot to get in to.

I’ve met SLer’s who real lives pale in comparison to the emotional complexity of involvement in which they engage in SL. I’ve met people, single in RL who’ve gotten married, bought property, build a house and raised a family in SL.

In two weeks.

You may wonder, how?

Or more pointedly, why?

Or less generously, wtf?

I felt the same way, until I got in there~now all I can say is you gotta see it to believe it. And you gotta remember, don’t believe anything you see. Or as a popluar t-shirt in Second Life reads, “Your Girlfriend Is A Guy”.

Confused?

You have no idea.

The entire SL experience is the ultimate “Fantasies R Us”.

Any just like any other place humans gather, there’s more hooking up going on than a Bass fishing tournament.

Oh, my wife? Still my wife.

What happened?

Part two soon.

How Many Grains Do We Need?

2007-08-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

Remember the good old days, when bread was bread?

Came in two flavors, white and whole wheat.

Then, we were greeted with a few new options on the old sliced bread menu. Seemed innocent enough at the time. "Oat Bran" was big for awhile.

Then they got daring and offered some kind of ubiquitous "multi-grain".

Now, no one really cared what the multi-grains were. It was like, "Cool. Grain is healthy. I guess many grains are really healthy".

But then, the grains kept on multiplying.

Two grain. Three grain. Then it just like exploded to five grain.

I didn't know there were five grains. I know there's wheat. That's a grain, right? Are oats a grain?

Okay, so I'm good up to two grain. If oats are a grain.

Now there's nine grain bread. Seriously.

I mean, are they just sitting in a lab somewhere creating new strands of grain, just to bulk up bread?

Is wheat no longer nutritious enough? I don't get it.

I bought a loaf of the nine grain. Its chewy.

Very chewy.

My three year old had toast made from nine grain and fell asleep before she could finish gnawing through her first bite.

I bit down on one of the nine grains (I'm not sure which one) and the grain-thingamajig didn't like, break.

My teeth just went sort of like "clunk" on the grain. It didn't budge.

I was scared. So I just swallowed it. Whole.

Are these new grains edible, or have they been manufactured just so we can get the grain count up in to hundreds.

Stopped by the store yesterday.

There's now fifteen grain bread. 15.

I couldn't help myself and had to buy it.

But I couldn't lift it off of the shelf. It was too dense. Too full of life-sustaining grains, I guess.

I could see the grains through the plastic wrapper. They looked big. Like the grains were on grains. I thought I heard them whispering and I saw the bag shake a little.

So I left.

On the way out I got a Snickers bar. Snickers is made from chocolate. Which starts from a bean, right?

So for now, I'm sticking to things only made from beans. Which basically means I live on Snickers bars and coffee.

That's fine, I'm pretty wired from all the caffeine and sugar.

Which may come in handy in case I have to wrestle a loaf of fifteen grain bread sometime.

They're coming, trust me.

Princess Saves Tooth, Keeps T-Fairy At Bay

2007-08-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

Fairyland Press~August 07

In the biggest upset this tiny kingdom's seen since Cinderella won over Prince C, another upstart young heiress to the throne has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Three year old Princess Ella apparently fell from her carriage in what witnesses called a "spectacular free fall".

"Yeah, I seen it. Total face plant", reported one of the three blind mice. Rushed back to her home kingdom of Tasty Apple, the diminutive maiden-to-be was taken to Dr. Mo Lar, for treatment.

"Nice kid. Great smile. Teeth're fine. Little out of position, but she's a trooper. Now, the Evil Queen? In here last week? Talk about a pain in the bicuspid...".

Reached at her palatial apartment, Ella offered her thoughts on the events through a mouthful of ice cream "Mmurrh!".

Unavailable for comment was the Tooth Fairy. With rising union costs a concern, the Fairy Union's revenue of late has been curtailed by online-payment entities like "$4Teeth".

Asked if the discoloration around her lips might prove a deterrent to the upcoming Autumn dance, "Fall In Love", Ella replied "Its like a base color...I'll probably go with a complimentary lip liner...".

Reported by The Write Knight
787 Forever Drive
Tasty Apple, 34544
Kingdom

How I Got Picked Up…And Put Right Back Down

2007-05-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it takes a certain combination of charm, aggression, fatigue and love of family.

Every once in a while I release my death-grip on the remote control, the iMac and all other forms of male-dominated technology in our home so my wife can have the night off from me.

I’d had a long day of last minute writing deadlines. My wife had had a long three years of child-wrangling. We were both crispy enough to get served up in a basket with ketchup and chicken fingers.

So I left my beloved so she could enjoy a little peace ‘n quiet and headed to a bar to veg.

Margarita in hand, swallowed whole in a sea of pretty happily buzzed twenty and thirtysomething or others I was staring vacantly at the TV like I actually understood the colorful pictures when I felt a nudge.

I look over and there’s a table of cuties~buzzed, naughty and as I was about to discover out for a bachelorette party.

None of which has applied to me in even the remotest of possibilities for about fifteen years.

So this blonde arm-nudger says to me “What’s going on?”.

I’m like, clueless. I’m also like, married. So I quickly do the math, look back up at the television and reply “Oh, um I think Damon just homered for the Yankees~its 5-2”.

Cutie doesn’t blink. Which makes me think “Uh oh, Red Sox fan”. In fact, not only doesn’t she blink, but she doesn’t even look at the TV. Instead, she goes “So, what else is going on”.

Now I’m thinking, “Shit~I just summed up my entire grasp of sportstalk in one sentence”.

Then I notice she’s not wearing a Yankees cap. Or a sports jersey. Or a boyfriend. And despite all the noise in this place for some reason I can hear my heart starting to accelerate, like someone just asked me the answer to a math-quiz question.

So basically there’s this nubile athletic Cheetah staring down a past-its-prime wildebeast. I mean, let’s keep this well in perspective.

I was at best, the helpless defenseless mouse this feline was batting around just to keep its game sharp until something worth it time ambled in to view.

So I did the only thing a red-blooded, not-entirely-past-its-prime, can enjoy the painting without smudging the canvas, hot-blooded male would do.

I had an outburst of “Marriage-Tourettes”.

In the entire space of one sentence I managed to blurt out something like MARRIED I HAVE A THREE YEAR OLD DAUGHTER I NEVER EVEN GO OUT THAT OFTEN HOW ‘BOUT THOSE YANKEES HAVE I SHOWED YOU PICTURES OF MY GIRL?!!!!

And, true to spastic form the next thing I know I’m flashing them cell-phone pics of my family.

Which Cheetah could care less about and proved the point by responding “You know what? Everyone always thinks their kid is like, the cutest. You can’t be objective”.

Which is when I realized, Cheetah’s may be fast, but Wildebeasts are made for the long haul. And I said something like “Oh, you mean like when girls say they’re a size six but they’re really like, a size eight?”.

Yeah, I guess you could say that kind of put a damper on our little Tom And Jerry flirt-fest. The last I saw of Cheetah, she bolted off to the bar with a well executed eye-roll/hair toss to her friends, “Well, enjoy talking to the guy who’s married with a three year old…”.

By the time I got home both mama and daughter were curled around each other, fast asleep. I took Advil, wondered to myself since when on a school night do I have three drinks, then crawled in to bed just in time for Ella to do a full-out toddler stretch by planting a kick to my chest.

Which made me gasp for air and wonder how many pounds-per-square inch force can a rib absorb before it hairline fractures?

But it also made me smile, like I said~us Wildebeasts are built for the long haul.

Starbucks: Where Wildlife Mingles

2007-05-11T16:42:00.000-05:00

Its true. Starbucks really is one of the last remaining wildlife refuges on the planet.

Just stop by any morning, mid-morning, late-morning, afternoon, mid-afternoon...(you get the idea) and watch the timeless display of species interaction.

Typically, as most wild animals tend to do~they congregate around a central, important and life-sustaining feature of their landscape.

At Starbucks it’s the condiments counter. The modern day "watering hole" for every species that visits.

At the watering hole, you'll see the intricate and complex give and take as nature displays its awesome tendency towards natural selection.

Or as I like to call it, "Only The Caffeinated Survive".

Lesser-caffeinated males can be seen staying near the back of the pack, waiting for the moment they can meekly reach over for the thermos of Low-Fat milk.

Quickly, ever on the alert for larger game, they top off their tall, skim extra shot vanilla latte.

Sadly, this smaller-than-average specimen will not last the next round of budget cuts or will sustain a career-ending paper cut while filing. Nature is cruel, but fair in its meting out of wildlife-justice.

Next, the real lords of the plain.

The Alpha Males.

They triumph proudly and without fear right in front of the milk counter, almost daring another male to confrontation.

They drink triple-shot vente espressos.

They don’t need milk.

Or sugar.

They metabolize the espresso directly in to primal aggression.

They ravage icing-rich cinnamon rolls, but show no discernable weight-gain.

Often, in a sign of species dominance they can be seen eyeing the lesser-males behind them in to forced submission. The non-caffeinated males will slink back, gaze averted and not approach the counter until the Alpha male departs back to the office.

The females stay in protective groups, clustered around the yellow and blue artificial sweetener packets for camouflage.

In courtship display they will casually wave a stir stick in mid-air to draw attention often while reaching across the alpha male for the non-fat milk thermos which of course, is sadly out of reach for the lesser male, as are any of the females.

Occasionally, a lesser male will try to force its way to the front of the counter. It’s the natural-selection equivalent of salmon stream-jumping.

Though many fish will be pushed back by the force of the water, over time their generations will develop the fast twitch musculature to make the jump upstream to the calm breeding pools.

At Starbucks, you’ll see a lesser male push his way past an Alpha male, to the surprise of himself and the females. Sadly, once at the front of the counter the lesser males suddenly realize they lack the requisite lean body mass to sustain a fully caffeinated drink.

Lacking the energy they need, they typically stand mute and helpless for an awkward moment before grabbing something unneeded and inappropriate, like one of those two foot, extra long straws before they retreat.

And as night falls and cooling, mid-morning Frappucino orders evolve in to later afternoon double lattes, the cycle of nature continues and fulfills its evolutionary mandate~in tall, grande and vente.

Housepets: The New Celebrities

2007-05-08T12:12:00.001-05:00

Okay, so Barbaro finally died. Yeah, that race horse. Exactly. I have no idea why this horse and his story so fascinated the media. Last I checked, he was a racehorse, right? That won? Isn’t that what racehorses are supposed to do?

I mean, its not like this horse turned his back on racing to pursue a career in medicine and find a cure to childhood diabetes or something. Yet for what seems like years, every time I turn on the television like, every station was talking about this horse.

Barbaro hurt his leg again!. Now he has an infection, he’s better! Oh no, he’s sick again! He’s recovering! No, Barbaro succumbed to his injuries!.

Seriously, Darfour hasn’t received this much coverage since it even barely became a topic in our country. So what’s up with this horse? It’s not like he was Mr. Ed. Now there’s a horse. You show me a talking horse, hey~you can have all the coverage you want. I’ll write the press release myself.

I mean, for weeks you couldn’t even get a good heated conversation going. You mention Iraq, someone's like "Oh, did you hear Barbaro's up and walking". Or try and stir the pot about the whole Gonzoles DA mess and people brush you off with “Hey, Barbaro’s injuries healed. They’re saying he’ll have a light work out next week and he munched a handful of oats! WILD CHEERS FROM OFFICE STAFF.

I mean, you mention Barbaro in a sentence and you get employees dry humping each other at the fax machine in pure, unadulterated joy. Again, what did Barbaro do? Oh right, he was a horse.

Are we so starved for celebrity that the faux royalty-status we already shower on pop icons is no longer enough? Have we transcended human adoration and shrunk to celebrating the achievements of animals?

Maybe I'm just bitter because a farm animal I've never heard of will probably get his own book deal posthumously. I'm sure that psychic guy John Edwards will be chatting up Barbaro from beyond the grave next show.

Seriously, if I as so much see one "Barbaro: Amercia's Horse" bumper sticker I'm throwing myself under the car.

Whatever. But I tell you it’s a slippery slope we’re on. Black ice slippery. Check out youtube. Enter “cats”. How many videos are there of cats doing stupid things? Answer~way too many. What’s next, “NBC is proud to present, The Iifetime Achievement Awards For Housepets”.

Where does it end?

More importanty, where did it begin? Rin Tin Tin? Lassie? Flipper? C'mon, you never saw Flipper trying to get a development deal. Flipper was more than happy to pull little Sandy from some awful riptide then celebrate with a backflip and some sushi.

Benji. That's where it all went bad. One *&^%*&(@! feature film and the next thing you know Benji's in an air-conditioned trailer asking for gourmet kibble.

I never liked Benji. His eyes were too close together. And now, because of Benji we're grieving the passing of a horse that couldn't even talk.

Great.

Thanks for setting our culture back oh, about a century's worth of common sense Benji.

Doggystyle.

Livn' La Vida Three Year Old

2007-05-04T14:09:00.001-05:00

I am caffeine powered. My three year old daughter is nuclear powered. She derives fuel directly from the sun as it creates stellar energy.

She no longer needs to nap. Or really, eat. She lives on Polly Pockets and day-long playdates at the park.

Oh, and this kind of weird, artificial laugh she's developed. You ask her if she wants more fruit and she throws her mouth wide open and laughs like a forty-year old, "HAHAHAHA".

Then of course, she seems to gain great strength from her philosophical outlook on life.

Her early phase of inquiry was purely empirical~fingers jammed in to a bowl of frozen blueberries yielded-cold.

But that's when she was two. She's three now and her powers for reasoning have increased in direct proportion to her love for mini Peppermint Patty's.

Yesterday she was in rare form. Made the Energizer Bunny look like a narcoleptic.

Ella played all day, then skipped her nap, proudly walking out of the bedroom at 3:00pm declaring, "I'm just not tired Dana...".

My wife, though clearly a saint among mere mortals hasn't slept well the last few nights. In that condition, you miss one afternoon toddler nap and you're ready to eat a bullet for dinner. As Ann walked out of the bedroom after Ella it was clear from the look on her face she needed either:

a. Drugs
b. A hot affair
c. Some help

Needless to say, we can't very well be telling our little Angel "Just say no" while popping Vicodan like M&M's, and thankfully Ann is way too tired to have an affair. Even a lukewarm one.

So we picked "C". I scooped up Mighty Might and off to the park we went. We ran. We swung. We see-sawed. We chased each other. We played Cinderella. We went to our friend Rosie's, where Ella and Rosie tore her place apart, laughed out loud, tried to remove tufts of hair from one another and gobbled down mini-cheeseburgers.

By 8:00pm Ella was yawing. My plan was working. By 8:15pm we were in the tub, en route to an early bed-time. So there we are, tub full of dollies, us wet and soapy.

Ella was giving her tiny doll a good scrub down when she asked: "What are we doing tonight?".

Just like that. Like, "Nice little break. What's on the books for the evening~build our own particle accelerator?".

I just burst out laughing it was so funny. I said "You crack me up!".

Prompting her to ask "Why am I cracking you up?".

Dana: Oh, because you have such fun.
Ella: Why I have fun?
Dana: Well, I don't know~you just enjoy living so much.
Ella: When are we dying?
Dana: *pause*
Dana: *pause*
D: Well...not right now. And when we do, we'll relate to it then.
E: Okay.

So yeah. Basically what passes for casual tub-time conversation for my daughter is a brief inquiry of one's mortality.

I wonder sometimes what its like for her, raising a fortysomething dad.

Probably though, I won't ask her...

NYC Man Crushed By Job...Survives.

2007-04-06T18:39:00.000-05:00

Phew, that was close.

Ever have a job that's oh, not really working out?

And by "not working out", I mean "Swallowing-your-very-soul-in-its-entirety-like-happy-hour-shots-in-hell?".

Yeah, that kind of "Not working out".

Hey, it happens.

Like, say you started a small business. Like if, you were a writer.

For instance.

And maybe you didn't make the best business decisions.

Like not having a dedicated client list.

Or maybe you partner with some guy in PA who writes children's books and says you're exactly what his company needs but doesn't pay you for six months and you're thinking "Uh oh, this is bad" but can't believe he'd never pay you and then not only doesn't he pay you but he says he's changed his mind and won't use you.

Except, funny thing~he just spent six months using you like a rolled up fifty in the VIP section in a Miami club at 3am.

Then say you kinda went, oh what's the word for it again...oh, yeah~bankrupt. And your credit cards are so maxed out they actually ignite in to flames when you try and buy a hot dog and coke for $2.50.

So you get a job.

And within months you realize "Uh oh. Something's fishy here...".

Like maybe it turns out to be the job from Hell.

And every time you have to deal with "Management" it leaves you feeling like you just licked radioactive waste from your fingertips.

But hey, you've managed to put the flames out on your credit cards.

At least to the point where they're not showing your picture next to your Discovery card on America's Most Wanted, asking "if you see this man, call...".

But remember, this is still only act 1 in "Its my life", which means you're in for a big, unexpected plot twist.

Like having a baby.

So you lose a year to not sleeping.

Add another oh, 6-8 months of just being plain, fcuking miserable and bitter about the soul-sucking job.

And the next thing you know, the closest you're coming to solid food at lunch is the lime wedge on your margarita glass.

Tip: lunch-hour drink specials totally rock.

And one day you look across the bar and see this old guy.

He's about 75. And he's drinking highball glasses full of gin.

And he stumbles out, half carried by one of the busboys who winks at you 'cause you're now a regular and you go back to your drink, and wonder "WTF am I doing with my life"?

And you order another one.

Then one day you get it. I am the old guy stumbling out. Not yet, but I'm getting there.

And at some point, he had dreams. Or a dream. Or a passion for something.

So you skip "lunch" for a few days. And instead, you sit at a diner with a pad of paper and you write.

And after a few days of drinks that only have lime in them because diet coke without lime sucks, you have an idea.

And its new and old and familiar and terrifying and exciting and it knows who you are and you can't ignore the fact the idea lives in your marrow.

What if...I was a writer?.

And the next day even while people at work try to beat you down because they're so angry about their own life the only way they can feel good about themselves is to make others around them as angry and bitter as they are, well, even while they're trying to make you feel miserable you can't stop smiling because in half an hour you're going to lunch to sit by yourself, in a booth, in a quiet diner.

And write.

And one day you see a different image of yourself.

You're not 75 and gin-pickled in your own skin and stumbling out of a cheap Mexican restaurant at 2pm. On a Tuesday.

You're sober. And for a living...you write.

And every day you go to the diner and write.

And every night after your daughter goes to bed you write.

And you get a client for a writing job. And then one more.

And one day a director calls you at work on your cell phone and he needs a music video written in one hour for his label and when will you send it to him?

And you think "I can't do it". And you hear people in your office slowing tearing at each other's dignity.

And you download the MP3, play it as low as you can, record it to your cell phone, throw in your ear piece and sit in the bathroom for 20 minutes listening to the track over the sound of people flushing toilets next to you then you run back to your computer and write a music video.

And it goes to #11 on TRL.

Then you come up with an even better idea.

You decide if you can write in a toilet-stall, writing at home should be 100x easier.

But "I Wrote A Top 11 Video In A Toilet Stall" is too long for a business card.

But this fits pretty well: www.conceptdna.net

And one day...you give notice. You realize its never the right time.

Like Thelma And Louise, you just go for it. Okay, bad example they drove off a cliff.

But hey, for the two hours prior to punching the gas pedal they totally redeemed themselves.

And that final shot was freeze frame, so maybe they were just driving off an overpass.

Turns out the 75 year old guy used to hang out with some baseball player named Joe.

DiMaggio.

My last day at Hell-Job? I stopped by the bar, one for the road.

Sat down next to "Old guy's" chair, which was empty.

I nodded to the chair, asked the bartender "Where's our friend?".

He just shook his head, "No". I guess Old Guy finished his drink.

So, a little free advice. If the place where you usually have "Lunch" can get your drink on the counter before you get your coat off and before you actually order a drink, change bars.

Better yet, change careers.

Et Tu, Hamburgler?

2007-03-30T14:53:00.000-05:00

So once again I bring you "True Adventures From (Suburban) McDonalds".

Yes I've seen "Supersize Me". And yes, it’s frightening how quickly an over-processed foodstuff like McD's can compromise the human immune system.

But have you had the fries lately?

Thank you.

And there I was, watching my three year old daughter munch down aforementioned grease-sticks of joy when something caught her eye: The McDonald's contribution to plastic-mold architecture.

No, the other contribution besides the faux-buttocks curved plasti-slab banquette seat that leaves you feeling like you've been violated by 40 pounds of heaving, sweaty polymers after sitting crammed in to one like too many fries in a basket.

That's right~The Human Habitrail.

Call it what you will.

Playland, Adventure Land, Ronald's Funhouse~but let's call it what it truly is: a giant rat trap for the unsuspecting.

You've seen it. Giant plastic tubes suspended above ground, linked by tiny plastic stairs, interconnected by tiny plastic connector passageways.

It sits before you, multicolored and promising of unbridled fun for you and your little one.

There's even a sign, caring and cautionary in its message "Small Children Not Allowed Without Parent".

Clever ploy. Any dad worth his middle age sees a sign like that and can feel his chest puff out like some past his prime superhero determined to jam his pork chop legs in to those too small tights and fight injustic one last time.

Which is exactly what they want.

I vaguely remember turning to my wife, catching her eye as Ella and I climbed in to the first tube-of-hell.

I recall seeing her shake her head, small smile crease her face.

At the time I thought she was thinking, "You go Superdad".

I now realize she was thinking "How many times are you going to crawl in to one of those things and panic before you remember you're claustrophobic you idiot?".

Like any surrealist life-moment frozen in time, I had forewarning.

A five-year-old boy had already crawled in to the trap ahead of us. Hearing us enter he turned to see Ella and since he was all of two years older than her, called it exactly at he saw it. “Come here baby, crawl to me!”.

Then, seeing me half-crawling up behind her he paused a moment, then called me exactly as he saw it “Um..come on big boy!”.

Jamming my body up and past the fake plastic stairs while holding on to E for her dear life wasn’t too hard. In fact, it was kind of fun.

Until we got to the tube. The “Tube” is (if you’re a 40 yr old man who eats at McDonald’s) a not very large plastic tube that’s suspended about nine feet in the air. If you’re a 35 pound three year old, then you’re basically a mini-cooper in the Lincoln Tunnel.

I was the Titanic turned sideways in the Suez Canal.

The Tube moves when you crawl in it. Especially if though you used to be a pretty trim 165 lbs in your fighting days, the last fight you had was a quick and brutal one round KO to a pint of Ben And Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

Ella was a good five feet ahead of me, wheeling along when the first panic wave hit me.

Panic’s great. It’s the ultimate attention getter because it travels at light speed via every firing synapse in your brain and it screams I’M FCUKING JAMMED IN A TUBE AND I CANNOT BREATHE.

Which wasn’t exactly true. I wasn’t jammed, I just couldn’t bring myself to move. And I could breathe, but my breath was funny sounding. Like I was taking too big gulps of air through a straw. Little, forced wheezy breaths.

Through the small cascading sheet of sweat blocking my vision, I could visualize headlines in local papers “Big Boy Meets Tragic End In Tube”.

The Tube felt suddenly smaller. And it seemed darker inside then I remember. Ella was just ahead of me, doing fun little pony-kicks, her back legs flying up then whacking down on the tube behind her which made the whole suspiciously-engineered contraption shake like the death rattle.

Think about it. You’re a young, talented architect just out of school. The I.M. Pei. Head full of stress and counter-stress equations, ready to design the next great monument of technological wonder.

Think the firm’s senior partner comes to you and says “Hey, Umberto~we want you to cut your teeth on one of those new McDonald’s playland tubes. Get out there and make us proud”.

Exactly.

Which, especially at that moment when the whole tube began actually swaying in mid-air thanks to Pony-girl’s bucking, begged the question~who’s in charge of engineering and constructing these things?

And then it hit me.

Hamburgler.

Sure, he had his moment in the 80’s. But basically, he’s what~some kind of fast food convict, right?

Guy’s in prison stripes. On lifelong parole. They always say guys in the joint punch license plates in shop as part of their workday.

I’m pretty sure Hamburgler is sitting somewhere, cigarette hanging from his mouth putting together plastic tubes.

And as his little “middle finger” to the man, occasionally leaving out one or two of the hanging rings. So you know, it wobbles a bit more.

And every night Hamburgler goes to bed, he makes sure the lojack alarm-light on his ankle is green pulls the covers up to his chin and rests soundly knowing somewhere, in some McDonald’s Big Boy is suspended in mid-air, sweating like large fries in the salting rack.

Who Gets’s Coffee. And Who Fcuking Doesn’t.

2007-03-25T14:59:00.000-05:00

Let’s get one thing straight. Just because coffee is available to everyone, doesn’t mean everyone should be drinking it.

Couple of ground rules.

Parents
They get a free pass. In fact, parents should get a lifetime-unlimited Starbucks card when they pick up their newborn.

Teachers
Since they make less than a Starbucks employee, they should never have to buy coffee again.

Okay, here we go.

The Haves
Lawyers. I want them doing my 40 minutes of work in 20 and billing me for 10. Not thrice versa.

Citibank Employees
If I have to stand in line once more for an hour while two cashiers spend twenty minutes talking about their cell phone bills then next time I go in I’m taking a hostage.

Cab Drivers
Tough call. I had to give it to ‘em though. You taken a taxi in NYC lately? The fare is like, $25 bucks a second or something. So yeah, the light turns green? You want these guys Nascar’ing over semi-trucks if possible to keep your five-block trip under a grand.

Ambulance Drivers
If I end up in the meat wagon I don’t want my driver “Braking For Small Animals”. I want him mowing down entire blocks of pedestrians to get me TO THE FCUKING EMERGENCY ROOM NOW.

The Have Not’s
My kids’ school bus driver. Think about it. Do you want the vehicular guardian of your little ones slugging back a triple shot vente, yelling “Buckle up kids~WE’RE GOING OFFROAD!”.

Cops
This is such a no-brainer. I for one, do not want a juiced, itchy trigger-finger, former Special Forces no-neck, screaming “INCOMING” and drawing down on me with a .38 when I reach past him at Dunkin Donuts for a packet of Splenda.

Subway Operators
C’mon~do you really want these guys hitting the corner at 60mph+ and whispering under their breath “I believe I can fly. I believe I can fly….”.

Korean Manicurists
These women already work by volume. If you’re not careful they can file a grown man down to his knuckles in under ten minutes. I say, chill out and if there’s sparks flying off their emery board it’s a sign they’re “juiced” in which case pick a god and pray cuz you’re gonna need a hook where your fire-engine red nails used to be.

Just a start. This list will be updated as soon as I finish my triple-shot vente extra hot cappuccino.

Codeine+Nymphomaniac(s)

2007-03-21T20:10:00.001-05:00

Oh and the flu. Which explains the codeine-laced cough syrup.

And all of it, not in that exact order.

So in a flu-induced stupor I may have accidentially watched "Dancing With The Stars".

And I have a favorite.

Paul McCartney's one-legged ex-wife.

Yeah, I know. Bear with me.

So here's the thing. Metro-sexual, Iron John's, balanced w/our feminine~call it what you will but when beer comes to pizza, guys are just well, guys.

I have it from the most trusted sources in Gossipdom that Healther Mills is a certified cougar in the sack. Now, why am I unable to remember my wedding anniversary date, but have this useless factotum coded in to every firing synapse? See above.

So when she hits the floor, there is of course that guy-part of my brain that's secretly hoping the leg goes airborne during a spin and takes out rows 1-4 of the studio audience. Or second choice, that faux Italian/French gay judge.

And of course, evolved man that I am praying nightly for world peace, there is again, guy-brain that, I'm sorry who you are or what you've done but put a chick in front of me with snaggle-teeth, a bad 30's do and a peg-leg? Instinct kicks in and we must ridicule until said chick snaps and goes Carrie on National TV.

Unless of course, its rumored that Peg's a nympho. Which for some reason in Guy-lexicon rhymes with Mother Theresa. Say it slowly--"Nympho". "Mother Theresa". Trill your "R". No? Whatever.

Which explains that despite the fact HM won't last another round, or two tops--she's my new underdog.

Or as my wife said "Oh, cute. She's your underdog pick because she said "I just want some child at home to see me do this with my leg and say to themselves~I can do it too".

"You are such a dad".

To which I responded, "Yes".

But remember, somewhere deep in the heart of every dad past the pampers and the empty beer bottles~is a guy.

Another recent discovery of note:

No matter how high I turn up the blender Codeine will not froth enough to top my Cappucino.

So I'm just drizzling a nice little syrup-lattice of it over the foam.

Codeine's cool that way.

Surviving McDonald’s. Or Not…

2007-03-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

…one of the last true guilty pleasures is the McDonald’s road-trip meal. It just doesn’t have that “Oh my god I’m eating dinner at McDonald’s” aftertaste to it.

So the family and I are cruising along in our rental car, taking a long weekend when just ahead on Interstate “Where The Hell Are We?”, the golden arches beckon.

In fact they glow. And they send out wave-lengths of French Fry goodness that bypass your normal synapse function with one overriding command, eerily Jedi-Knight in its directness: Go. There. Now.

So we pull in to the parking lot, jump out and my three-year-old daughter Ella leads the charge inside.

And hits paydirt.

Right there, in all its shiny, multicolored glory is a My Little Pony display. Comes in a happy meal. I’ve never ordered a happy meal. I am about to. Daughter and wife head off to find our own personal slab-of-molded-plastic family seating unit.

I stand in line innocently unaware of just how much suburban street-savvy it takes to successfully place an order at McD’s.

It goes something like this. A young-man in official uniform greets me with a worn, forced smile. He is slightly taller then an oversized fry. ‘Bout the weight of a nugget. He speaks in rapid-fire McDonaldese, and as this is suburbia, I am slightly unfamiliar with the dialect.

"WelcometoMcDonald’sSirmayItakeyourorder?"

"Um…let me have an ice coffee, and uh small French fries and oh, a happy meal".

I reach for my money, not knowing my close encounter has just begun.

"Burger or Nuggets sir?"

I look around, thinking he’s talking to someone else. Then, with all the seasoned calm of a hostage negotiator he again:

"With your happy meal sir, would you like a hamburger or Chicken McNuggets?"

He’s almost mouthing the words, like he’s dealing with Rain Man.

"Oh, um…Nuggets?"

I suddenly feel very self-aware and lapse in to giving answers inflected as questions like this three foot kid is my shrink and my task is to repeat back what I hear so I can give the impression of somehow being in control of my own life.

"Four or six piece sir?"

More questions. I feel my forehead moisten with a single, dead-giveaway bead of uncertainty.

I have no idea what he’s asking. I feel like I’m in a quiz-show on a different planet and the alien host is asking me “ARHII:” AAERR((!!”””GGZZZ!!??”.

I come up with the only thing I can muster resembling an answer.

"For the ponies?"

Nugget-boy shakes his head sadly, like the hostage just made a grab for his captor and detonated the bomb.

I am so fcuked.

"No, not the ponies sir. Ponies come in a single package. The Nuggets sir. Would you like a four-piece or a six-piece?"

This I can answer, and I feel a rush of confidence surge through me. But I play it cool, make sure and not rush the answer. I feel like I’ve been in line for five years.

"The four piece".

Behind me, a single line of very large, pale anxious people for whom McDonald’s means neither guilty nor pleasure, has formed. For them, there is only intense, ravenous hunger with a side of contempt for City slicker who doesn’t know his Nuggets from a Quarter Pounder.

One of them snorts. A few fidget. They are a herd about to panic and stampede. I must get my now “Less Than Happy” Meal and get out. How long can it take to jam some basically, uncooked fully processed food and a plastic toy in to a bag?

"Ranch, Zesty or Sweet&Sour?"

I know the answer isn’t “Ponies”, but fear has created some kind of survival by free association response in me. I heard once that ponies live on ranches. It’s not much to go on, but it’s all I have.

"I’ll have the Ranch".

I phrase it in first person to take some ownership of the situation. And I throw in the definate article because honestly, I have no idea what the three choices represent so just in case I am getting an actual working ranch I won’t look like a total idiot when they hand me an actual working ranch.

I have now lost complete track of time and like Rip Van Winkle may return to find my three year old is now at Vassar and no longer requires a My Little Pony.

Speaking of which…

"…and which color pony sir?:

Oh god.

"Oh, uh, they have colors?"

"Yes sir."

And sure enough, he tosses three small heat-sealed clear baggies on the counter.

Small heat-sealed baggies. I have a quick flashback. That’s another blog entry.

The baggies are small, and there’s so much print on them I can’t actually see inside to determine what the colors are. I’m staring at the baggies, mouthing air like a fish out of water.

…and before the herd can trample me, he comes to the rescue.

"…purple, blue or pink?".

"Pink!"

I accidentally shout this out. Its like I now have some kind of corporate-pressure induced Tourettes.

"That’s an iced coffee, small French fries, happy meal with four-piece nuggets, ranch dipping sauce and a pink pony.

"Anything else sir"?

Ranch~its a dipping sauce. I am relieved to find that out. It means I will not have to explain to my wife how I went to order a happy meal and ended up with 400 acres in Texas. My tongue feels very large in my mouth and I wonder if it might spill out if I try and answer.

"You’re going to call me “sir” even though I just ordered a pink pony?"

"Yes sir".

And as I walked back to my table, happy to see my daughter had not yet gone away to an all-girl’s college to have a tumultuous affair with her Women’s Study professor, but was in fact still a darling, pig-tailed three year old jumping up and down at the sight of her daddy returning with a happy meal, it hit me.

That’s why McDonald’s can systematically eradicate the bovine population, super-size us to the point of extinction, coat us in enough ranch sauce to drown a grown man and we still go back.

Because no matter who you are~crack mom, Jeffery Dahmer, Citicorp VP, or dad on a happy-meal-mission, once you have your pink pony in hand~they still call you sir.

Niiiice.

Juan Valdez+Donkey: Update On The American Dream

2007-01-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

Remember Juan Valdez? We were first introduced to him in that Folgers commercial. As the v/o talked about flavor crystals (are those "coffee" flavored crystals, btw? I thought the coffee taste came from, the coffee?), cut to hard-working Juan Valdez.

Simple burlap clothes matched the sacks of coffee carried atop his loyal burro, as Juan's smile to the camera warmed our hearts like a fresh cup of shade grown Columbian.

Ever wonder what happened to Juan and the donkey? Ever just stop and think to yourself "Hey, Juan Valdez. I wonder what he's up to these days?".

I'll tell you. Juan and Donkey have taken on Corporate coffee. No way? Way. I just had coffee with him at 42nd st. Well, not exactly with our humble day-laborer but with 12 of his closest friends and employees who were pumping out hot java faster than the Olsen twins can split a raisin for lunch.

Where you say? Oh, how about at Juan Valdez's Cafe Times Square. A humble little 4500 square foot shop with leather banquettes, track lighting and nine varieties of shade grown coffee. Place makes Starbucks look like a slum.

Yup. Juan Valdez is living the dream my friends and has his own chain to prove it. Guess Juan got tired of lugging those bean sacks up the hill. Or, those bean sacks contained something Columbian other than coffee. I mean, you gotta wonder how a guy Juan's age can lug beans+sacks+donkey up and down Columbian mountains all day. Hey, I've had Folgers--it ain't that strong.

Juan was what, 40 yrs old 20 years ago? Unless he was like, one of those kids who have a full facial hair before they hit 12. Went to school with a kid like that. 10 years old, four feet tall, mustache. Name was Fuad Furag. Arabic, I think. Every kid he met, asked "Where eees your sister!". Didn't matter if you had a sister or not, kid would hump a fruit basket.

So old/young Juan, backed by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia loaded up the truck and he moved to Bev-er-ly. Hills, that is--swimming pools, movie stars. Okay, there was no jingle that worked with "Midtown Manhattan".

So there I am. Watching a couple ladies sip their mango nevados, one of six frozen specialty drinks on the menu, thinking "Juan Valdez?! The American Dream? Where's my dream? I'm a good guy. Sure I don't have a donkey but I've carried bags of stuff up sharp inclines, too!".

Now I'm thinking where's my chain? And more importantly, is there even really a Juan Valdez? His silhouette decorates the interior, but I didn't see any old guy in a serape feeding his donkey $2.95 a pop brownie scraps reminiscing about the old days when he "...hand carry the bean up hill, but I do it for love, not money senior".

I mean, would the real Juan Valdez please stand up? Or is the American Dream, mainly...dream? Is it only so much froth, easily stuck to the side of one's lip while the over-heated content's of life's reality cup scalds us back to the truth that there is no "American Dream?".

Actually, what I was really thinking was "Goddamn, that's a good brownie. Not too moist, good balance of chocolate flavor underscored by the walnuts pieces...". But I meant to think, "Yeah what about the real backbone of this country?

Is there truly opportunity for those who are willing to work hard, do the right thing and live with just enough wealth to donate to charity and buy a Lexus while staying in a friendly tax bracket?".

I don't know, I just don't know. I hung around a while longer. Good coffee, btw. Didn't see any traces of Juan V or his trusted pack animal. On the way out I thought I heard a woman say "Did you hear? Donkey's getting his own reality show--he's in development with NBC".

That was all I needed to hear. Six months from now Donkey'll be on the Today show, sucking up to Matt Lauer. "Eee or, eeeor, eeeeoooor". Haha, Donkey you are one funny beast of burden and proof that hey, the American Dream can be hand-picked by anyone". Al, how's our weather today?".

Me, I'm headed back to Starbucks. Giant, soul-sucking dream crushing corporate black hole that it is. At least I know where they stand--world domination by 2010. Give or take a few cups.

Attacked By Vicious Rottweilers…

2007-01-21T13:57:00.000-05:00

…okay, they weren’t exactly Rottweilers. And they didn’t attack me personally, but other than those minor details the rest of the story is true. Mostly.

So my wife and daughter and I are chilling out Sunday morning. Buzzer rings and its our best friend, Liz (by request her name has been changed to protect her true identity and preserver her anonymity. Her real name is, Liz) from across the street. She comes up, loyal Pug Carlos in tow.

Carlos doesn’t care if I use his real name or not. Carlos is a dog. Dogs aren’t subject to self-reflection like humans. Maybe it’s the humility-inducing act of sponging off other animals butts with their tongues, but dogs rarely have thoughts like “Does this leash look my ass look big?”.

Anyway, turns out Liz’s neighbor, was taken out on a stretcher by EMT’s. Problem is, neighbor’s a little old lady with four Jack Russel Terriers. Or, for those of you who’ve ever been yapped and nipped at by a “Jack”, you know they’re more appropriately termed “Jack Russel Terrorists”.

Next to a Hezbollah hit squad, they’re pretty devoted to creating their own rein of confusion and intimidation through the “Bark and Bite” tactic.

And it turns out, Liz has been on the receiving end of their strong-jaw antics, having taken a nip to the thigh years earlier. And now there’s one or more of these crazed, bloodthirsty, menacing demon-hounds prowling her hallway.

Oh, like if I’d written “…there was a small non-descript dog the size of a toaster cowering in the hallway waiting for its owner to return…”, you’d still be reading? Thank you.

Now, the urban legends surrounding these vicious hounds are legendary. Renowned cage-fighting dog expert Johnny “Mutt” Vasquez says “Jacks” were originally bred by wealthy Upper East Siders intent on stemming an influx of knock-off designer footwear above 71st street.

But after a few generations of in-breeding, it appears the dogs lost their taste for cheap mules and sling backs from Nine West. Soon, faux designer eye-ware, handbags and even those cute little jewel cases for cell phones were targeted.

By the mid-90’s, the dogs were prevalent well up to E. 87th and as far west as 79th and Broadway. Soon we were a city of denizens living in fear, toting gnarled fake handbags. I hear to this day the Chinese won’t let a Jack Russel below Houston St.

So when Liz (her real name) told us through broken, rasps of breath she’d been cornered by the beasts my wife and I knew she needed help. Now, bear in mind my wife and I don’t get out much. Okay, maybe since the baby we don’t get out—ever.

And when Sunday morning finally kicks one lazy foot out of bed and you realize your otherwise fabulous weekend plans were reduced to a. dusting b. re-organizing 2000 Thomas The Engine books, well a mild case of “Gang Attack By Hell-Hounds” dawns like a new day, a rebirth of the adventure-filled life you once lived but is now so very far in life’s rear view mirror you can’t ever recognize it.

I also wanted my little girl to grow up in a city of true diversity and cultural acceptance where she could freely choose to wear a nice little French sole Cha Cha from Prada even if it did cost dad the electric bill. As a down payment.

Barring that I figured I’d at least score some kind of civic award for bravery. Bloomberg would hold a press conference, I’d say something like “We all have a hero inside us, just waiting for the moment to do some good…”, then there’d be a tasteful little brunch, some snap shots and I’d have my rent stabilized forever. So yeah, it was worth a shot to the sack by some angry dog.

Anyway, Liz is no slouch when it comes to adventure having successfully raised the Upper West Side’s most glamorous, energetic and personality-filled 2 year old since Shirley Temple. Aka, Rosie, aka Roesita aka whirlwind Rosie. Liz and my wife decided it would take a well-planned sneak in to Liz’s building aided by a treat to detour the rampaging canines.

Armed with a baggie full of 8-grain bread, Liz and I carefully opened the door to her building. I could hear the dogs snarling somewhere near, but so far they didn’t appear to hear us re-enter the building. Liz and Carlos stayed at the front door, keeping it propped open for me if I had to retreat for my life.

I crept up the stairs, nutritious bread in hand when it dawned on me instead of whole wheat goodness, I should’ve been carrying a little dress flat casual from Payless. I could hear the dogs in their apartment, gnawing their latest victim probably, but probably otherwise uninterested that the last time Liz or I saw any real designer foot up close it was on QVC.

By the time we’d scampered to safety inside Liz’s, little Rosie was there to greet me with a freshly excavated “Boogie”, her way of saying “Thanks for making retail shopping safe again, man”.

And as I walked home, flush from my near-death encounter (hello, remember there were four dogs in that apartment. Any they could’ve sprung at any moment…) I realized, maybe its not the animal’s fault. I mean, they were just doing what they were trained for. Just like us Manhattanites were trained to look for the big red SALE sign at Banana Republic and Kenneth Coles.

And who knows. With the proper care and re-training, those pesky but loyal little dogs could serve their fellow man, or woman again with distinction and honor. They could rise above their past and serve side by side with humans to contribute in a positive way to society.

LIke, we could train them to bark really, really loud when the Starbucks guys doesn’t put enough foam in your Cappuccino.

Oh, and/or save orphans. Somehow.

Tito The Fish: Aug 25th, 2006~Jan 13th, 2007

2007-01-15T17:16:00.000-05:00

Well, at least this Chinese fighting fish went out battling. He was my two and a half year old daughter's first official pet. Named by her after her favorite member of the Jackson 5, Tito. Well, her favorite band member changes as frequently as her pampers, but when we asked "What do you want to name your fish?", she didn't miss a beat and said "Tito...".

So Tito made it about 25% through his normal life expectancy before being struck down by that unchecked killer of Betta's, "Dropsy". Ironic name. Poor guy. By the end he was looking like fat Elvis. Bloated and gasping for breath. When he took ill, we immediately went on line, hoping to find a cure.

You know, "Go to Petco, buy meds, drop in water, etc". But it turns out "Dropsy" is bad. Chances of a Betta surviving are about the same odds as Tara Reid making a comeback.

By day five or six of his advanced trauma, he was kind of listing to one side like a proud battle ship taking on water. My wife and I discussed how to speak to Ella about it. She seems a bit young for the whole "Grim reaper" thing, not to mention neither one of us wanted to freak her out and in to early toddler-therapy.

My wife took it in stages and one day as Tito was performing his last spinning/kick to the sounds of "I Want You Back", my wife picked Ella up and said "Tito's sick, maybe we should say 'hello". So, they peered in to the tank, and my wife said "Tell Tito, 'feel better Tito". Dutifully, Ella replied "Feel better Tito...". Then, "Bye Tito, hope you get better...". "Bye Tito, hope you get better".

Ella scampered off to play, and my wife got a fresh cup of tea. Five minutes later, Tito had gone to that great Siamese Fighting Fish Temple in the sky.

Nothing looks quite as convincing as a dead fish as well, a dead fish. A few hours later, convinced Tito wasn't going to pull a John Edwards and start channeling messages through the toaster or something, my wife pulled me aside, "I think we better tell her...".

I looked over at Ella, playing so innocently and figured my wife was right. Now, I've been pretty up close and personal with death. I've counseled those in the final stages of life, and shared more than a few last moments with family members and friends.

As I gently picked up my daughter I knew that given her age and sensitivity, there was really only one thing I could say in this special situation. "Ella, your mother has something to tell you...".

Ann held Ella so she could see in the tank. Tito was at the bottom. "Honey, remember how we said Tito was sick?". Ella nodded, "Yes". "And remember how we talked about how flowers live and then they die?". Again, "Yes".

"Well, Tito's dead. So daddy's going to take him to the river and put him in so he can go back to the sea". About this time I was biting the inside of my own lip to keep from crying and all I could see was like the title on one of those Movies Of The Week "Tito~He Swam Away".

"Why's he sick?". Oh uh, I hadn't figured on Ella asking questions, but my wife was there to volley. "Well, everyone gets sick. And sometimes fish die. Just like the flowers. You have them for a little while, then they're gone. That's just life".

Through the mist of my tearing, my wife was beginning to look like that old wise man from Kung Fu. But hotter. And her little grasshopper was slowing absorbing the truth of life, of living and dying. Ella nodded. She looked wise herself, wise beyond her years and I knew she'd realized, in her own way--something special was happening.

Ella looked at Tito. At my wife, then me. Then barely suppressing what looked like a smile but I'm sure was really an instinct to fight back tears she asked "Can I have a Peppermint Patty...tonight?".

And in the time honored traditon of our family, Ella proved that really, the only true way to deal with adversity is to eat candy.

Smart kid.

Is It Hot In Here...

2007-01-10T12:21:00.001-05:00

…or is it just the planet? I live in New York City. It was 68 degrees here four days ago. I walked around in a t-shirt passing guys carrying their golf clubs to the car, giggling like five year olds at a birthday party.

68 degrees. In NYC. In January. But I’m sure it has nothing to do with Global Warming (BROUGHT TO YOU BY EXXON MOBIL). I mean, we’re just dealing with normal, climatological change. Happens all the time. Oh, it hasn’t happened on this particular planet to this degree for roughly 650,000 years (an ice age period), but other than that it happens all the time.

So let’s just relax here people. Turn on your lights and appliances, hell—leave ‘em on all night! Pump some unleaded in to the SUV and take a nice long, meandering drive up to say, oh Maine. Which at this rate of warming will have enough eroded natural forest to qualify as beachfront property.

And while we’re at it, I think its high time we just took a minute and looked at the whack jobs trying to frighten us out of our God-Given Right (PAID FOR BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION) to live our American dream.

Our resources our renewable people!. That’s right, the 50% of naturally occurring, virgin forests that are left in the U.S. after decades of unregulated logging, mining and industrialization? That’s right, these will grow back. Someday. Maybe. Okay, the rate of deforestization is too rapid to ensure the replenishment of naturally occurring forests. But you get my point.

C’mon, what about all the paper products manufactured from trees that make our lives so comfy? I say, Squeeze The Charmin! (BROUGHT TO YOU BY KIMBERLY CLARK THE CORPORATE GIANT THAT REFUSES TO IMPLEMENT A POST-CONTENT PAPER RECYCLING PROGRAM).

I know, I know—some of you are saying “but don’t the world’s ancient forests maintain environmental systems essential for life on Earth by controlling rainfall and evaporation of water from soil? And help stabilize the world's climate by storing large amounts of carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change?. And don’t these forests house around two-thirds of the world's land-based species of plants and animals?.

Well, I think we have to keep our eye on the big picture. I mean, have you ever used post-consumer content toilet paper? Its not even white like “normal” toilet paper. Its…brown. And its scratchy. That’s right people, its paper that’s uncomfortable on my ass.

And besides, why should good people like the CEO of Exxon Mobile have to suffer for his livelihood? I mean the poor guy’s barely scraping along on his 2006 bonus of 2.8 million dollars to supplement his annual salary of $18.5 million (including a 17% salary hike). Poor guy. And this, just as Exxon Mobil reported the second-highest ever corporate profit of $10.5 billion — behind its own 2005 fourth-quarter record. Think of the pressure they were under to match quarterly profits!

C’mon. You wanna mess with Exxon Mobile? Wanna shout “Hey, what about researching other means of dependable and renewable energy sources?”. Well, any consideration of a fuel source other than fossil would mean a profit loss. And remember all the pressure they're under? So lighten up.

Besides, if the government told Exxon it was turning to the already researched and validated means of renewable, non-fossil fuel burning energy sources, why that’d be like telling Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss that Charley Sheen was going in to rehab for sex-addition. Bad for business.

I mean, you don’t think that Exxon CEO guy wakes up every morning to see gas prices over $3.00 a gallon and thinks to himself—“Wow, our country’s reliance on fossil fuels has continued to generate emissions that have eroded million year old glacial melts like the Hindu Kush and Himalayan, reliable water sources for China, India and much of Asia and increased melting over several decades would mean some areas of the most populated region on Earth are likely to 'run out of water'".

You’ve gotta feel for the guy! Can’t you just see him now, sitting in his fuel-sucking Jet humming Michael Jackson's “Man In The Mirror”, “…I’m looking at the, man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways”. I can. If I squint. In the dark.

Now before you get all self-righteous and yell “Hey, it’s a world problem—not a U.S. problem!”. We should chat. Apparently, one day in class there was a whole big lecture on how our over-industrialization was destroying the planet, but somehow, the U.S. missed that class.

Where were we? Oh, who knows where the U.S. ever is when it comes to silly buzzwords like “Accountability” and “Ethics”. Probably just bad timing, Maybe the class on Global Warming was the same day Dominos Pizza introduced those damn brownie squares with chocolate dipping sauce.

Or those Cheesy Breadsticks. OMG. I’d like to construct like a suit made from those cheesy breadsticks then have my friends snap off sections of my carbohydrate-body and feed it to me. So yeah, we missed that class.

As it turns out, most of the world is on board with this whole “Act now, save the planet from unnatural catastrophe thing”. Wacky humans! There’s currently a few dozen countries on board and supportive of the Kyoto accord.

There’s countries already setting new standards to limit harmful emissions. The U.S. is not one of them. For example, call me high on cheesy breadsticks, but last I checked the U.S. couldn’t sell their cars in China. And not because U.S. design is forever linked to that creative-abomination known as the “Gremlin”. No, U.S. cars do not meets China’s Safety Emission Standards Act.

China. Same country that used tanks to pave Tianamen Square with the bodies of student protestors. Same country that has more international human rights violations than Dolly Parton has silicone injections. Same country that has systematically destroyed Tibet’s spiritual infrastructure. That China.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot about Chinese culture I respect. Love the food. And their uncanny ability to actually have a delivery man at your door with steaming boxes of Lo Mein before you’ve actually finished placing the order on the phone. “…yeah, and an order of Moo Shoo pork, and one hot and sour, oh excuse me someone’s at the door…”.

And c’mon General Tzao’s chicken!? Apparently, the man was not only a feared war-faring General, but somehow found the time to whip up a mean spicy chicken dish. Can you imagine that guy leading you in to battle? "Our horses will trample them like grass. Our angry swords will separate them from their loved ones. But first, can I just get a show of hands who's having the crispy prawn appetizer with the ginger-wasabi dipping sauce? I want to get started on those before we ride off...".

Anyway, the point is the U.S. is way behind the rest of the world in taking immediate, effective steps to curtail the destructive effects of greenhouse and other industrialized emissions.

And by the “rest of the world” I mean those real, cultural outposts like oh, California. Which has already passed new safety emissions acts and which is now being attacked by Congress to avoid the thoughtless, irrevocable harm its caused by trying to save the planet in favor of U.S. auto-makers cranking out another few dozen million atmosphere-destroying vehicles.

And while we’re at it, may be we should stop blaming the institutions we hold so dear that manage the concerns of our great country to ensure that all people live in a land of opportunity, with “liberty and justice for all”. The corporations. Uh I mean, the government. Yeah, the government which thankfully has the full support of really great, like-minded businesses behind them to make sure we the people, for the people have a form of checks and balances to support us.

I mean, in 2003 along with General Electric, Comcast, Citigroup and many other Fortune 500 companies hired Bush administration officials and former GOP congressional advisers for top lobbying posts. So relax people, we’re in good hands.

So all I’m saying is its hot. Come to your own conclusions. Its your life (well, actually its “our lives” but unfortunately we’re all using the same resources) so live it how you want. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to do a damn thing. That's what we call "Freedom".

I mean, if you don’t care about the adverse weather conditions, increase in infectious diseases, thaw of the million year old ice deposits and average annual temperature increase you can always move to New York City and just play golf this winter.

The weather’s great.

This message sponsored by www.CorpGov.com, Bringing You The Future Today, Since It Won’t Be Here Tomorrow.

When Ninjas Attack

2007-01-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

Obviously, if I’d known he was Ninja I would’ve stayed home. Or at least dressed in something all-black and while rapidly moving my lips and speaking in broken English, insulted the power of his Cobra Strike Fist.

But he’d somehow intimidated a friend in to misrepresenting him. “Or, go see Dr. Hsu, he’s great!”. So off I trek to Chinatown after work because every few years I manage to get some mystery physical ailment. Few years ago it was “Fire-ribs”. Every time I breathed deeply it felt like I’d swallowed a bag of plastic cocktail swords. Before that, “Tingly-knee”. Weird, tingling sensations in my knee.

Both times I’d get MRI’s, x-rays, acupuncture, massage, nuclear bone scan, physical therapy. Even did psychic healing for the rib thing. Nothing. Everyone confounded. Then a year or two later, presto—mystery ailment gone.

This time its “Lava-wrist”. Wrist feels like there’s an intermittent flow of hot magma scorching through the veins. Have already been to two docs, x-rays, some kind of prescription only anti-inflammatories that were so strong they singed my eyebrows. The works. No tendonitis, no carpel tunnel, no clue.

And the added bonus side effect is the only thing that really causes it to throb and glow red is working out. And the double bonus side effect is since I’m not lifting at the gym, the pain is somehow lessened when I pick up Oreo Cookie Bars. You know, cookie-batter spread in to a pan then cut in to plank-size squares so instead of saying “Jesus, I just ate like four dozen cookies…”, you can say “Hmm, think I’ll just grab an Oreo Bar…” which is topped with like, entire Oreo cookies. Not even sprinkles, no they just like jam the whole cookie in to the batter like “What—you gonna send it back?”.

So yeah, my wrist feels better when I don’t get up at 6:30am to lift groan-producing weights over my head but instead hoist a delicate 9oz, 3400 calorie cookie bar in to my pie-hole. And the wrist somehow also accommodates doing curls with a refreshing little 14oz frozen mochachino. For breakfast. Must be the ice in the drink.

So yeah, now not only am I off the gym, but of course I’m getting oh, how do you say in your language, chunky? And when did the word chunky become even close to being some kind of cute way of saying “Two more Oreo bars away from dating Kirsty Alley?”. Be honest. At best, chunky is the out of shape, ugly cousin of hunky. Ever hear someone say “Oooh, he’s a chunk…I mean, hunk”. I didn’t think so.

Which is why I found myself walking a labyrinth of Chinatown backstreets until after an endless elevator ride I was in doctor Hzu’s (pronounced “Zhu” but they cleverly hide the z behind the capital H to throw you off the trail) office. He spoke basically no English and now that I think back, the only words I barely recognized sounded something like “Confucius say soon you cry like little boy on Ritalin”.

So I’m naked. On this guy’s table. In Chinatown. And he starts in on me. Immediately, I can tell he’s doing deep tissue work, like myfascial release. Which is kinda like a jackhammer inside each nerve fiber trying to eject itself through your skin. Its not uncommon to leave a myfascial session and have bruises and welts appear the next morning.

Twenty minutes in and I’m wiling to pay him to stop. At one point I give an honest to goodness little “squeak” of actual pain. Its like this total admission of surrender—I’m tapping out. And he laughs. Which I take as a sign that he likes me. Applauds my ability to acknoledge the battle I wage over my pain. But probably means, “Oh, you think that hurt…?”.

Two hours later and I’m bathed in sweat and soaked in fear. I feel like I missed a payment to loan sharks and they just baseball batted me senseless. My hands even hurt. He did this thing with his knuckles over the back of my hand that made my fingers twitch involuntarily.

At his desk, I bend down and get a pen in my mouth since my hands no longer function and scribble out a check. The elevator door opens downstairs, I hobble to the front doors of the office building/slaughterhouse and clank. The doors are locked. Really, honest to god this-is-an-office-building-and-its-closed-after-hours locked.

Mild panic. But seated just outside, next to the glass door on a folding metal chair is some old Chinese guy. He’s wearing one of those blue cotton Communist hats that look good on no one, even if they’re made “By every man, for every man”. But seeing it does get me to thinking, if us Americans get all our cheap mass-produced goods manufactured in China, who makes their stuff?

I whack the door and Communist guy turns and looks at me, unsmiling. Thank god. I motion to the door with my ear, the only non-bruised piece of cartilage I have left and shout “The door—its locked!”. He looks at me, shakes his head and returns to his culturally time honored practice of looking across the street. Inside my head I hear something like an elevator announcement ‘Panic level now rising”.

Forget back to Dr. Hsu’s office. I realize now his resting pulse never topped 68 despite the fact he was prepping me like a Sunday buffet dish and its clear he’s some kind of Asian Hannibal Lecter and I refuse to end up in his lo-mein.

I hear something downstairs, and find some guy in his office, the desks of which I kid you not have stacks of paper like, four feet high. Ernest Hemingway didn't generate as much paper as this guy. And he’s wiping down his desk. With an old pair of underwear (TRUE FACT NOT INCLUDED FOR GRATUITOUS FICTIONALIZED EFFECTS). I swear. I can even see that like, bands of red and blue thread in the waistband.

The guy refuses to unlock the door. Starts yelling at me, “Where your from, where you from!?”. Remember, doctor lockjaw upstairs has already squeezed all the blood out of my body so I had to pump my mouth a few times before actual words came out and when they did it sounded like “Doctorwhoimeanzoodoctorwhozoo”.

Underwear-wiper angrily picks up his phone, dials a number that rolls over to a recorded message and starts yelling in Chinese. My passing knowledge of provincial Mandarin serves me well and I make out the sentence, “He is bruised but alive. Come quickly for make eating on him doctor…”.

And I manage to scamper up the stairs, just as some old man (Do Chinese males come in any other version btw? Are they like already 68 years old when they’re born or what?) and I whimper and he pulls out some kind of oversize key ring that has just about every metal key ever produced and the next thing I know I’m limping down the street sucking cool air, looking like one of those trailer park felons from COPS.

By the way what is it with those wacky Floridians you put ‘em in a trailer park and its like BAM they have to run out, knock over the nearest 7-11 then try to outrun the police in a wife-beater and torn shorts. “Bad boys, bad boys, what ‘cha gone do…”.

Its day four after my escape from Ninja-ville. I’m sure doctor Lecter Hzu is happily plying his trade on other unsuspecting clients. The bruises are almost gone. My wife took photos, laughing the whole time, to add to my weird ailments topped by weirder treatments file.

Oh, my wrist hurts like hell still. But in a way, not the same kind of pain. This pain is somehow tolerable. Not different, just hmmm, familiar. Like when you’re in a bad relationship but you know it could be worse and sure, every once in a while you think about leaving them but who knows how much worse it could be and why risk it? And besides, I have almost full range of movement again with my fingers, so why mess with a good thing.

But oddly, every once in awhile the phone rings, and the caller i.d., just reads “unknown caller”. And I have this weird urge to grab the phone shout in to the receiver fru twristed wrips “Wru have insulted Eagle Claw Scrhool and nrow you pay….eiahh!!”.

New Years Resolution

2007-01-06T01:17:00.000-05:00

To post at least once a week on the blog.

Why?

Because I respect the craft of writing, the art and beauty of written expression for the imagination and because I believe in a world of diversity and respect...

...oh alright. My wife's friend Randi said if I didn't get serious and feed the blog on a weekly basis then she'd cancel my subscription to Tractor Pull magazine and replace it with like, Teen Us.

If I see one more article about Lindsay Lohan in/not in/in/not in rehab I will slam my head in the freezer door.

Look, Randi is not to be taken lightly. She’s a career woman. She has fabulous fashion sense.

And she just got her hair done and its sassy and there’s no stopping her.

Thus, I post out of fear.

But I will post Randi, I will post.

I leave it to my friends to add comments. Fling the URL around to your friends like beads at Mardi Gras and keep me on the straight and narrow.

Look, if I'm here writing it means I'm not at Starbucks over caffeinated and arguing.

With you.

See how we all win here people?

Merry Muther$%^$#@ Christmas

2007-01-05T20:21:00.000-05:00

Or, "Why Baby Jesus Would Be Proud Of Me For Not Shearing One Of His Flock The Day After His Birthday".

Okay, so for the sake of consistency all my Real Urban Encounters tend to go down in one of two places. A. Starbucks. B. Leaving Starbucks. Does my rash of ongoing conflict-encounters always occur outside a caffeine filling-station because on top of being a self-obsessed, angry, paranoid country we're totally wired to the gills on Evil Bean or is it just a coincidence? Probably a coincidence.

So I'm with my 2.5 yr old daughter at 'Bucks in Greenwich Ct., where the streets are paved with gold and the fine citizens are taken by Rolls Royce to get their daily Frappucinos. Day after baby-Jesus' birthday, so you'd think amidst all the post-birthday of the Savior merriment there'd be a little extra love and light to go around. Think again.

I wait for fifteen minutes in a line that snakes almost out the door. Place is jammed. Fortunately, Ella and I find a table. But we're short one chair. Next to us a group of three people gets up to leave, so I snag one of theirs. Ella and I are chilling nicely, talking about the socio-economic benefits of fair-trade coffee versus commercially exploitive practices of corporate-backed businesses like oh, Starbucks when suddenly this woman walks over, gets in my face and goes "Uh, excuse me sir that's my chair!".

Now first of all, when did I become a sir? So I'm dashingly salt 'n pepper haired. Okay, maybe mostly salt. Okay, maybe at a young age Mother Nature just unscrewed the top to the fcuking shaker and coated my head in salt, are you happy now? But still, I'm cool, I think. Its not like I walk around in a cardigan with leather elbow patches smoking a pipe. I listen to Black Eyed Peas for god's sake! None of my clothes have any elbow patches, I swear.

So already I'm insulted. But I figure, be the bigger person. Feel her pain. Now she's like, right in my face. I can feel the hot foam from her $12.95 triple tax-bracket, husband's seven figure income, annual bonus that equals the Gross Domestic Product of a developing nation beginning to scald the side of my face. Plus she called me sir, so in addition to feeling socially claustrophobic by her financially liberated lifestyle, I just plain hate her.

"That's my chair. You took it from that table, my things are there". She articulates this through clenched teeth and a thin bitter smile that makes me think somewhere in her basement illegal Dominicans are chained to an ironing board, forced to perform menial domestic tasks. I make a mental note to free them after I kill her and start a revolution to bring only fair trade coffee to America.

Sure enough, somewhere between the time the original occupants left the table and I sucked down enough coffee to realize I already couldn't afford my daughter’s college tuition someday, this woman had apparently walked out of line, and put her purse on one of the chairs. Which would explain her purse sitting on one of the chairs. The purse had more top grain leather and silver on it than a rodeo saddle. The cost of it would've covered a semester of room and board at Brown.

"I saved it. That's how it works". Now I get it. In my pre-first-sip-of-caffeine lull, maybe I remember seeing this woman, who by the way was like, eight people back in line walk over and put her purse down on the chair. I may have seen that. If you don't have it on video however, talk to my lawyer.

Very quickly, I throw together a tall, double-tolerance, half self-righteous, half-apologetic, no back-down latte. With a shot of faux understanding. Extra hot. "We were in front of you. In line. Sorry...". She cranks the knobs on her hate-machine, and spews up a triple-grande pissed-off, I-will-crush-your-revolution-and-you-will-join-your-friends-in-my-basement-and-iron-my-shirts cappuccino.

It’s on. I notice her eight-year old. He's flatlining on a mobile PS2 and could care less. Still, I know we can take them if it goes down. Not only does Ella possess the strength of an angry Chimpanzee, but she's already managed to scratch her face with her grissini, so I know once she nibbles away the rest of the yogurt coating it'll basically be a non-registered lethal breadstick.

The Mexican standoff ensues, with me playing the part of an actual Hispanic. Standing. Maybe she had to get back to her McMansion and hose down the workers before lunch, but for whatever reason she storms off and takes a table by the window. I don't know. But I give myself credit for not saying another word to her. Even though she shot me a couple of angry stares between sips of her battery-acid.

And for dessert? She actually goes over to the cashier, has a fit then stomps back over to announce to me victoriously, "Uh yeah--I checked with them. That is how it works. You can save your place. Its not who's ahead of who". She walks off and I so want to yell after her, "Its whom...", but I think of the workers, my incarcerated Latin brothers and sisters and bite my lip for fear she'll make them use heated rocks instead of Rowenta irons if I push her any further.

Ella by now had indeed eaten off the outer yogurt coating to reveal the world's hardest bread-stick like substance underneath. Maybe grissini is Italian for "Titanium". And I knew she was ready, pigtails and all to get her daddy's back. Fortunately, the full effects of the sugar-laden yogurt had set in and her eyes lids were beginning to flutter an SOS for naptime.

So I leave you with this. How exactly does that work, the whole "save a chair from in line, even though technically I was an actual paying customer having already purchased my products while she was only a potential customer having not made a purchase and for all I know she could've gotten bored or been paged the workers were out of spray starch and left without having ever made a purchase, in which case she was basically only intending to be a customer which is really, no different from anyone in the entire town of Greenwich (hmmm, Greenwich--Grinch?) walking around at any given point thinking hmmm, Starbucks in which case the next time someone goes to sit down and enjoy their brew you could say to them, excuse me, that seat's taken. At some point. Maybe. By someone who may or may not actually be having a coffee here. Sometime.", Yeah how does that work?

And you may want to consider carrying around an extra grissini, you know tucked away in your purse or something. Hey, you never know.

NYC: Home Of Wildlife...

2006-11-20T13:30:00.000-05:00

And not just in the Village at 3:00am. No, for the price of donation you can visit the Museum Of Natural History on the upper west side and get your safari on. My daughter Ella, is two and a half and she's been stalking big game there (and their butter cookies from the cafeteria) since she was a crawler.

Now, as the winter months approach E and I will be spending more and more time there, since on any cold frozen weekend, the museum's a pretty cool place to graze. But the deal is, we're not the only Animal Kingdom buffs looking to avoid frigid Jan temps looking at water buffalo.

Nope, come any Sunday from now until April and any trip you take to MNH you are taking your life in your hands. In addition to the already naturally occurring masses of animals which populate the place, there's a number of holiday-season migratory clusters of beasts you won't find gaily depicted in your Audubon guide.

For starters, there's Touristo Maximus. You'll see them congregate in large groups, moving in mind-numbing slowness from exhibit...to exhibit...to exhibit. Note the large size of the males, fortified against the cold from a steady diet of high calorie sticky-carbs---buns, bars 'n cakes.

And be on the lookout for Pre-Teenus Destructus. These fast moving candi-vores drive en masse from one brightly colored exhibition to the next, sweeping away debris, people, stuffed alligators and whatever else stands in their way. Typically innocuous, they march steadily like a army ants pausing only when in proximity to the next sugar-laden snack they encounter. Do not, I repeat do not try and hide any solid or liquid containing sugar on your person if you find yourself in the oncoming path of PTD's. I have seen grown men stripped of all clothing and pride, leaving nothing but a crumpled Snickers wrapper on the floor where they once stood proudly.

Also to be wary of is Mom-us Overstressus. This species wears a clever kind of camouflage, draping their entire body in children's coats, mini-strollers and Dora The Explorer action figures. If you look closely however, you can just make out a single arm protruding from the mass attached to one of their 1.4 to 2.5 offspring. The female (they travel alone, males are rarely seen) can be marked by her call--a desperate, high-pitched call of alarm, which sounds something like "INEEDADRINK--INEEDADRINK".

So, in to that teeming sprawl of urb-animals, E and I are making the rounds. In fact, we're just coming out of the Ocean Hall Of Life, when she wriggles away from me and jets off. Now, I don't know if its the proportion of her two and half year old's body, maybe the low center of gravity combined with the piston like action she generates with her legs or perhaps its being around those feline jungle cats--but that girl is fast. Not to mention, her closing speed i.e., her speed of acceleration+the cookie/cool thing she sees=is incredible.

And that's exactly what happens. I put her down, she decides she's going to check out the Mountain Gorillas and hello closing speed aka Warp Factor Ella. So off she goes like Road Runner, my eyes doing the quick L-R scan for trouble, when my radar picks up a variable--a lone animal has strayed from its pack. Grampus Oldtimerus.

And he's moving s...l...o...w. And Ella's headed right for him. Now parenting, if nothing else is a constant crash course in engineering, physics, and a buncha other sh*t I missed in high school. But you do learn this--a well aimed toddler, moving at x amount of speed can take down an object as least five times their height (not weight) if they are applied properly to a structurally weak area. In this case, the structure was an 80 yr old. Unaided by any kind of walking support device.

And even though Ella's only five feet from me, they are on a perfect course to intersect one another. I mean, she's headed straight for the knees, classic position to drop him like a bad prom date. And to add a little more suspense--he's a bull Grampus. Even hunched over, he's easily six feet tall. Now, I'm watching the whole thing in 'ProtecoDad-Vision', which is a highly developed kind of sight that captures events at 1000th its normal speed so you can begin to experience the soul-crippling trauma a hundredth of a second before it actually occurs.

Which is right, about...now.

Ella hits his knees, just as I get there to grab him by the elbow to keep him from 9/11'ing to the floor, as he just-that-moment feels Ella beneath him and hits r-e-v-e-r-s-e. Now, things slow down even more and I watch Ella carom off his knee, but never lose her balance, giggle and keep running. Disaster number one, avoided: child is alive. Repeat, child is still alive. But I still have him by the elbow, in case he falls. And E's still running...away. So I get another hand on his opposite arm so I can keep him both a.upright and b. move past him.

So now I'm holding him and he's holding me and we're locked in some kind of dance neighter one of us expected to be in my own momentum pulling me past him as I mutter 'I'm sorry, my fault, my fault...'.

And now he's fully aware of what almost happened so he's holding on to my arms, and he repeats 'my fault, my fault'. And then, he starts laughing. Old Timer is laughing. That kind of old, deep, seen-it-all laugh that's like, older than most of the exhibits there.

There we are. Face to face. Holding each other. And he looks right at me and says 'Its no one's fault. And he looks over at Ella, beautiful little unsuspecting Ella with her pigtails and he goes "Lucky you...", and then my momentum carries me away and a moment later I'm holding Ella and I can hear his voice echo in my ears, down the hallway, in to every exhibit there "Its no one's fault".

And I get it. Its no one's fault. All of it, none of it, some of it. Its no one's fault. So yeah, its a jungle out there. But if you're lucky, every once in awhile you get face to face with one of those truly real encounters with nature.

Those painfully too real moments we try to avoid like 'chasing-down-my-dauther-I-found-myself-waltzing-with-a-six-foot-two-eighty-year-old-man'. But in those moments full of tigers and lions and bears oh my, sometimes you can find out just what kind of creatures we really are.

My Two Year Old Daughter Is Michael Jackson...

2006-07-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

...okay think circa ten year old Michael, not the shiver-up-your-spine mental picture of the Thing which calls itself MJ and looks decidedly less life-like than its wax counter part at Madame Tussaus. And no, I will not be purchasing Ella her own personal chimpanze to do her every bidding. That's my job.

So, how exactly did my bubbly little Elmo-loving toddler become an "Automatic systematic, full of color self contained, tune that shadow to your vibes..." Dancin' Machine? Well, "Blame It On The Boogie"(Warning: MJ song reference). Okay, I had to do that, sorry.

So El's in her high chair giving a bowl of peas and carrots the once over when suddenly she stops cold--I thought she'd traffic-jammed a pea/carrot in her throat. Well, I'd left itunes playing on the IMac--pretty diverse collection of stuff--U2, Aretha Franklin, Bach and lo and behold, The Jackson Five singing their 1970 hit, I Want You Back (When I had you to myself, I didn't want you around. Those pretty faces always made you stand out in a crowd....I want you back!). You'll see in a minute why I can now recall lyrics with the same dazzling speed I could once down an entire frozen margarita, read on.

Ella just freezes and listens to the song, looks at me and goes "Ella dance with dada...". Being a lifelong RB/Motown fan and not especially a tireless advocate of mixed vegetable medleys I lift El out of her seat and she kind of dances/runs around in circles in front of the computer. Song ends, Ella points to the IMac "Morrre".

So I hook her up. More circles. I tell her its Michael Jackson, then the questions "Dada, talk more about Michael Jackson". I decide any conversations detailing MJ's tragic lapse from childhood prodigy to anorexic, wax-faced pedophile, home zookeeper are better left to her mother. I foocus on happier times telling Ella about little Michael and his brothers, Randy, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon.

Well, we listen to I Want You Back about five times in a row. She's showing no signs of let up so I figure maybe I can find a video of her new friend. Well, easy as "ABC, 123" (yeah, buckle up I'll be cleverly inserting song titles in to the rest of this entry now that I've found a thematic narrative device to drag you along...) I find the Jackson Five singing their hit I Want You Back on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1970. The clip comes on and you'd think Tickle Me Elmo had suddenly appeared in the room. El goes ab-so-lutely quiet.

There's little Michael all of ten years old in flare bottom pants, boots a vest and purple hat pulled down over his 'fro. His brothers are there, the five of them hitting each choreographed dance step like they were born to be doing this Michael even at ten, more effortless than his siblings. And El is transfixed. It ends. She just goes "Morrre".

I hit play. We watch it eight times in a row (I'm not kidding) before she comes up for air. I download another video, The Jackson Five ten years later doing Dancing Machine on Soul Train. Armed with both videos for reference, El immediately constructs her own Michael timeline divided in to "Little Michael" (e.g. I Want You Back) and "Big Michael" (Dancing Machine).

Two days later it starts. We're laying in bed and hear Ella rustling in her crib. I look up, as she pulls herself to standing position and her first words of the morning are "Ella Michael Jackson wants juice...". My wife's eyes pop open. Yeah, you heard her right. Your two year old daughter now refers to herself as Ella Michael Jackson as in: Ella Michael Jackson hungry/wants to go out/is tired.

That lasted weeks. Months? Times a blur when you live with a celebrity. Daily viewings of the videos become so frequent my wife and I began to speak in clipped lyrics, she: "When I had you to myself...", me: "Now its much to late for me...".

Ella discovers if she whacks hard enough on the IMac's keyboard the vid starts up from the beginning. So essentially, after week two she really only needs her parents to prepare meals and download more videos. One morning my wife decides to draw a line in the sand with her gloved hand.

As the last chorus of I Want You Back fades, Ann says "Okay Ella no more Michael Jackson this morning...", at which point Ella bursts in to tears and melts in to a toddler-pool of swirling hysterics not unlike the Wicked Witch when Dorothy hosed her down.

Ann turns to me, face awash with motherly concern and asks "What should we do?". At this point we're in to like a month straight of Ella Michael Jackson. The metamorphasis has become complete. I figure soon she'll be moon walking to her play dates, next step find her some back up singers.

I look at Ella on the floor inconsolable, crying. See the real worry etching itself on to my wife's lovely face. And I realize its time to step up and be both a strong father and a supportive husband. I take Ann's hand, "You need to turn down the treble on I Want You Back, Michael sounds pitchy...".

You know, parenting is all about patience and understanding. We've managed to ration E down to about one viewing a day of MJ. And its only vintage, adorable "Do You Remember The Time?" lovable MJ. When the time comes to explain to E that she and her videotic best friend both share a similar penchant for furry chimps and five year old's on play dates, well as I said before her mother will explain.

And we've expanded E's dance repertoire. To her concentric circle-running and one legged jumps for I Want You Back I added the robot. At the first bridge to Dancing Machine Ella hits it perfectly, old school style. Moves her little arms up and down and her head back and forth while keeping her eyes still.

I don't think there's any hyperbolic sleep chambers in her future and since we can't install a full-size ferris wheel in our one room apartment any aspirations for an Upper West Side version of Neverland Ranch will go unrealized.

There is however a really cute three year old friend of E's, Shayna. Natural sense of rhythm and totally adorable. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'd ever exploit my own daughter's innocent love of dance and song in to something crass and commercial. I'm not even suggesting that there's a market out there for a song/dance group of two to three year olds who, with the right supporting father behind them could leverage a development deal with say Disney for a demo cd with either a product tie-in like "Grrl Group Barbie" or a promo give away like free Magic Pony's who sing the group's first ballad "Pamper Me..." when you pull their tail.

No, I'm not suggesting that. But if you're the parent of a two or three year old who can clap to the beat and sing back up, email me....

News Flash: Three Iced Mochas, Bad Customer Service And A Stranded Space Ship.

2006-06-28T15:37:00.000-05:00

Couldn't leave with out posting this. Must vent. Okay, from the beginning. So look, yesterday it was warm and sunny, I was wearing cotton pants, there was a nice breeze and somehow I got it in to my head I'd deviate from my daily, trusted and loved elixir of an iced mocha and try an iced white chocolate mocha. Okay, let's just let this topic die and I promise not to bring it up again. I mention it only now as it plays a role in the events which follow. I know, I know--white chocolate mocha. Sweet baby Jesus, what was I thinking.

Okay, so it was actually my second drink of the day. Then of course, to get the taste out of my mouth, I had to get another iced mocha. So yeah--read on knowing I was pretty fueled and accept partial responsibility for what ensued.

Get home after work and decide Ella needs to see Big Lizard. So we head to Toys R' Us, my precious little 30 pounder in my arms, carrying our flying saucer. Flying saucer rocks. Its foam, 'bout ten inches in diameter, radio controlled. Flies thirty feet in the air. Or in our case, eleven feet in the air in to the ceiling of our apartment. But its not charging properly so I throw it in a bag and we head to Times Square. Slow train, so by the time we hit the Square, El's already yawning. Its like quarter to seven which means its her dinner time, bath time in bed by 8:30pm.

I go directly to customer service, hand over the saucer. Indifferent sales girl looks it and me over, asks what the problem is. I tell her it won't hold a charge. She must work extremely long hours and be incredibly fatigued because it takes her tremendous physical effort and copious amounts of mental exertion to lift the nine ounce foam toy, carry it approximately three feet away and plug it in to the wall.

I can tell she's fatigued because she's constantly rolling her eyes and exhaling. Three minutes go by as she stands there, not saying a word and fixing her hair. Then she looks at me like I just farted. "You need to go get a replacement...". Oh, thanks for telling me when I first arrived instead of waiting three minutes. By the way, love the hair. So now I have to lug baby-girl back up to the second floor, fight through the crowd and grab a replacement. I should've known things were already going downhill and not going to get better.

Ten minutes later I get back, wrestling with Ella who's now officially not having fun, put the new box on the counter and the girl turns to me like I'm Rain Man and couldn't possibly tie my own shoes much less guess how many matches are in a box and snarls "This one ain't even broken. It works fine". Did I tell you about the part where I'd had three iced mochas? Yeah, this is where that whole caffeine thing comes in to play.

Ella's squirming, bitch-salesgirl and her posse of one other evil-retail wench are eyeing me and I feel my lip begin to quiver. Quiver like I'm morphing in to the Hulk. In fact, I can feel my pants and shirt begin to shred as my body mass increases and I start turning green. Really angry, pissed-off how-dare-you-fcuk-with-me green. Now Hulk must hurt puny humans.

Instead, I ask for a manager. Andrew shows up, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Blah, blah blah. Immediately, these girls start going in to how the product isn't defective, but "Works fine...". More hair fixing and exhaling as Andrew fidgets, caught between an irate customer and uncaring staff. Long story medium, I leave there with a new flying saucer, ensuring Andrew I won't be back.

Of course, when I get home tonight Ella will jump in to my arms and shout "Big Lizard" and of course I'm not about to tell her Toy's R Us is a giant corporate entity with huge profit margins who could less about whether a small family on limited income gets a refund on their $19.99 flying saucer. So I'll probably see Andrew tonight, but the good news? I've only had one iced mocha so I should be fine.

And the moral of my story is this. I'm no better than anyone else. I walk by people every day, see them clawing and scratching their way through existence and as I pass throught the toxic vapor trail of their anger think to myself "Relax dude, its just a flying saucer. Take a deep breath and just chill, you're overreacting". But truth be told, when push comes to shove I'm getting a new, working godd*mn, flying saucer. Even if it takes me three iced mochas.

The Blog Goes On Vacation...

2006-06-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

...I know, I know--Bloggie just returned. But that was from a bad virus, now Blog gets a vacation. So, this is the last post until "Return Of The Blog 2" (I'll have to cast the sequel with a bunch of B actors like, Corey Feldman) around July 10th. But the whole vacation thing got me wondering, vacation from what?

I mean, if say, Blog is doing what it enjoys most--blogging, then why would it need a break? Guess that's as close to rhetorical as I can get without s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g it out. And yes, in this instance Blog is a metaphor for you-know-who. But let's pretend the Blog is a real, animated entity then if this little spiel goes sideways I can flame away on Blog and not feel too bad about myself.

Okay, look I'm a hardworking guy. Uh, I mean Blog is a hardworking blog. It has a wife, daughter, has aspirations, hopes and dreams. Is currently not exactly in its dream job (hmmm, the blog metaphor is crumbling, I mean if a blog's dream job isn't to blog, what is it? Waiter at a hip Tapas bar?).

Here's the point I'm not getting to--if a vacation for me is a chance to spend more time with my wife and daughter, great. If there's hidden undertones of needing to escape from certain elements of my life--than really, how long can anyone live like that?

I mean, just do the math. Two or three weeks a year to decompress can't be a healthy formula for living. What's going on the other fifty weeks of the year? And I guess to leapfrog over any BS I might try and fill space with, how long will I wait before doing the kind of work, really meaningful to me work that I want to do?

And does it, this transition require some kind of superhuman effort of will? Or just more caffeine? Dare I order a Vente anything? Have you seen a Vente, I mean up close? Really stopped and just filled your eyes with just how much caffeniated anything can fit in a cup that size?

Urban Tale digression: At Starbucks the other day, guy's standing there, undecided. The barista's this interesting black guy--like, 6'3", glasses--very articulate, very sharp. So, our unable-to-decide patron's trapped in the oncoming headlights of the drink menu when my guy (amiably, but with much gusto) jumps in to save him. "Hey, you need some help?". Well, patron's not quite up to speed yet right? I mean, that's why he's at Starbucks.

And believe me, he does not know what's about to hit him. He half nods like, "Uh, you're my barista, you know what I need--right?". Wrong. Don't misunderstand. This particular barista is one of the better I've seen, but that a.m., he was clearly on a mission. He just picked the wrong soldier to send to war.

Barista says, "You want something cold?! And chocolate?! Something that'll wake you up!!". Now, I've seen this barista whip up custom stuff on the spot, seen him sell a new concoction like it was the latest Manolo Blanik--but in this case, he was grossly underestimating his customer's tolerance for the Evil Bean--nothing good was going to come from this little dance with the Devil and all I could do was stand there and wait for the caffeine to hit the fan. Actually, I could've stepped up and said "He knows not what you offer, Mighty One. Give him a latte, grande extra hot--and let him be on his way". But what fun would that be?

By now, patron has no idea what he's in for. Far as he's concerned nicest Starbucks guy on the planet's 'bout to whip up something special, just for him. Just like Dr. Jekyll whipped up a little "something special" for Mr. Hyde. And guess what our barista makes him? I know, because he couldn't contain his excitement and shouted out the order, to himself--ready? "Quad Vente, Iced White Mocha". You get that? Quad. Four shots. That's enough to drop a charging rhino mid-stride, leave it on its back legs kicking air ready to be turned in to a nice handbag.

That was last week. I have no doubt poor ba*tard is sitting on a curb somewhere in the city, empty Starbucks cup at his feet, mumbling to himself "Mocha...vente...quad...". .

So here's my point--yes the "Man" is keeping me down but guess what? Turns out, I am the Man. I'm keeping me down. That sucks. No one to blame. If I never, ever actualize what I want? It's cuz I didn't man up and get 'er done. Dammit. Its on me. That's why I hate/love/watch/avoid those stupid Movies Of The Week, the ones with titles like "The Man-Boy Who Wanted To Be A Writer--But Held Himself Back Until He Just Couldn't Stand The Voices In His Head Anymore--And Then Realized It Was Up To Him. And Him Alone". You know, those MOW's?

So there you have it, my new years resolution. For my summer vacation. Like that segue? And what's the resolution again? To not blame the Man, including myself but to work at what I want. To aid me in this endeavor I can utilize as much a. Caffeine b. Family/friends support c. Caffeine, as necessary. But I cannot make any more excuses. And I cannot have any Starbucks drink that contains more than two shots of Espresso in it or that comes in a size larger than an industrial toxic waste drum.

See you after vacation.

Blog and friend of Blog.

Now That's A Big Lizard...

2006-06-23T16:19:00.000-05:00

...took my two year old daughter to Toys R Us in Times Square. First event was the Square itself--Ella loved it. We went at night, lit up like a Christmas tree. We step out from under the subway entrance, Ella looks around wide-eyed. I go "This is Times Square, E". She takes it in, replies "Times Square make Ella awake". So far, so good.

Next stop, the five story, multi-level Mecca of toys known as T's R Us. First encounter? Guy dressed up as a Giraffe. El goes nuts. Giraffe goes nuts, big hug fest. So, on we march checking out Lego sets and train sets and dolls (no real interest in Barbie yet) and stuff in general and a few hundred yards away I can just make out what appears to be a giant, life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, fully articulated with audio. Loud audio. Like, cover your ears-from-the-concussive-force-of-his-RRROOAR loud.

El sees me look over, hears the sound and says "I see that...!". I pick her up, we head over and I'm thinking "Hope this isn't that seminal moment in her childhood which sparks a lifetime of therapy...". So, we're walking over and El sees this giant, jaw-snapping monster ahead and gets quiet. I stop about, oh forty yards away and we just stand there. T lets our a mighty, really loud RRROOOARRR. El's watching, just watching then turns her hands, palms up (which is her gesture for like, "get it?") and says "Big lizard not real".

No we go regularly. She's never flinched. Just runs like a little pony right by Big Lizard to the toys while unsuspecting Japanese tourists spit up their bottled water every time T-Rex lets a roar fly directly overhead.

Which got me to thinking--no, not why aren't Japanese tourists immune to the whole T-Rex thing having grown up with Godzilla stomping their villages in to matchsticks, rather--how do we lose that innocent yet acute sense of perception? That simple, wholesome and fresh perspective which sees things for what they are? Or aren't?

Example, I get on the subway in the a.m., and there's a bunch of T-Rex's roaming, roaring and jaw-snapping inside my head. They roar "You're gonna die poor, alone and unhappy!". They bellow, "You'll never have a job you like". Sometimes they snap their jaws, clicking "You know squat about the dharma, quit trying to act like you can change who you are!".

And you know, a lot of times I just stand there, not even hearing the music from my ipod (Lots of Kanye West these days and some old school--The O'Jays, Chaka Khan) just deafened by the roars, nodding my head "Yes, you're right--I cannot change, I'm stuck with who I am and all my sh*tty, self-doubting, dysfunctional ways...".

But sometimes I remember, "Big lizard not real". And I just stay in my body--feel rooted and don't get freaked by the loud roaring in my head. I can feel the subway jostling back and forth. Hear the O'Jays in my ears old school Philadelphia style, telling me to "...get on board the love train, love train c'mon...", and I choose to not get rocked by any old monster in my head.

So, the weekends here. Will probably make a trip to Times Square, E and I are due to check out her boy, T. His days are numbered. Too expensive to keep the hydraulics maintained. Staff says back in the day, in fact the very first day they turned him on two years ago, hydraulics all new, limbs all fresh and mobile--well, he was so life-like people ran out screaming and they had to turn him off.

I guess everything wears out after awhile, even Big Lizards.

When Only The Hora Can Save You...

2006-06-15T20:38:00.000-05:00

...or how I officiated a wedding for 170 stunned Jewish friends and family members. Dear friends of mine asked if I would, as an officially sanctioned "Buddhist Minister" (in the state of NY, registration number 71747!) officiate their wedding. I'm touched to tears.

Wedding was end of May, 'bout three hrs out of the city. Bought a new suit (three button, linen, flax-colored. Went with a French blue spread collar shirt and an Aboud tie--copper red/orange with angled blue stripes). Rented a car so I could drive home same night and wake up next to my daughter. So far, so good.

Kind of wasn't exactly clear on the whole backstory of how the family and their 170 closest friends who'd flown in were ready to burn me at the stake upon arrival since I was a. Not Jewish. b. Not a Rabbi. c. A Buddhist. Found that out when I met the parents an hour before the 5:30pm ceremony. Nothing like upping the ante.

Given I couldn't exactly jump back in my car and bail, I figured my only real options were a. Pray to Yahweh or b. Hit the bar. I head over to the caterers, but they were sweatin' set up and weren't about to slip me a Corona from the cooler. So I did what any self respecting Buddhist would do--walked over to a far off corner of the huge field where the ceremony would be and prayed for help. Still could've used that Corona.

Showtime. We're outside, bride and groom look great. Behind them, 170 pin-drop quiet friends/family waiting for me to pull a goat from a burlap sack and start the proceedings with a traditional sacrifice. See? If they'd done their homework they would've known Buddhist are vehemently opposed to taking life. And that Buddhists love an icy cold cerveza con limon before important rites of passage god dammit! Oops.

Did I mention the ring bearer was an active Marine just back from his second tour of Iraq? He was there in dress blues, sizing me up I'm sure and figuring out whether to go for the straight choke-hold or go WWF and take me out with a folding chair to the back.

So away we go. Readings, vows, rings exchanged, kissing, pronouncing them 'Husband and Wife', off they go happily married and next thing I know there's mom and dad crying and hugging me heartily with thanks for such a beautiful ceremony. Could've been the suit. The suit was hot. Now may I have a Corona? Apparently not. Nice woman walks up, says "I have to say, I came here ready to be very disappointed with you/Buddhism/the ceremony but I was surprised/inspired/grateful/touched. I hyphenate because I care. And because, for the next hour every single person who came up to me said just about the same thing.

People really met what they said but after like the thirtieth person, I had to catch some air. I grab a beer and walk down the dirt road, jump in my rental hit the a.c. and decompress. Should've grabbed two beers. Will next time. By now its dark dinners served and I figure I'll just be another shadow under the big tent reception. Kill my beer (St. Paulie Girl--not my fave but its what stuck to my hand when I blindly grabbed whatever the cater-guy pulled from ice) and walk over to eat.

Okay, despite the storied and difficult legacy of suffering I will say this about the Jewish tradition--it is unbeatable when it comes to stocking a reception dinner. I'm about to fill my plate when my Spidey-sense starts tingling. I turn and looking right at me is this elegant, snowy haired eighty+ yr old gentlemen. He reaches over, takes my hands in his. "I vanna sank you for your words of love. Your vords of beauty. Nevah stop what you are doing. You bring the most important message of all, the message of love. And I should know, our world? It needs love more than evah".

He leans in, puts his mouth right up to my ear, I can feel his breath--and it moves right through me "I should know, I'm a survivor--Auschwitz. Don't forget us, we die one thousand every week". He gives me a the most gentle lovely, kind kiss then walks away. I'm standing there with an empty plate, just basically blinking like a stuck brake light. I head right to the bar, double up on a Grey Goose. My mind racing nowhere all at once. I sit on the grass watching people dance. Think about Auschwitz, think about "Schindler's List" which amounts to just about everything I know about the holocaust. I drink two more doubles, but can't get drunk.

I feel, grateful? Inadequate? Phony? D. All of the above. I think about another drink and remember I still have a four hour drive home to Manhattan. I put my empty glass on a table and mom walks up to me. Gives me a hug and says "Come...". On the dance floor everyone's in a circle, just starting the hora. We walk over the circle opens and we dance. And every few turns of the circle, I'm looking for that little man. And I can't find him. He's nowhere. And everywhere. But I can't see him. And can't forget him.

The Blog Is Back...

2006-06-15T19:42:00.000-05:00

...phew, long six weeks. Or whatever. Okay, that's my excuse but never fear I'm back with a whole new series of real life encounters with reality, including but not limited to:

1. The wedding I performed for a couple whose 170 person guest list was extremely unamused I was a. Not Jewish. b. See "a". c. Muliply axbx one hundred.
2. My two year old's encounter with a Tyranosauras Rex and how I learned to not fear "The Big Lizard".
3. How our friend Randy a girl half my size with twice the heart kicked me in the pants and got me "back on blog...".
4. More, lots more. Read on.

Starbucks Patrons Assaulted By Toddlers...

2006-04-26T15:14:00.000-05:00

...well, more or less. I take my two year old daughter to a gym class every Saturday a.m. After class, a bunch of us load up our strollers with our writhing toddlers and head over to Starbucks to re-fuel. Typically, there's about four parents. Three of 'em are packing doubles--two kids each. That means seven little ones, twelve to twenty-three months of crying, happy, laughing, jumping, playing todds.

Yeah, you should see the looks we get when we roll in, pushing our convoy of strollers. People shake heads, roll eyes, guffaw, tsk and generally wet themselves at the site of our arrival. Now I know what the Romans felt like when the Vandals showed up ready to sack the place.

Of course, not so long ago I was on the other side of that $4.00 grande two-shot, extra-hot skim cappuccino. Now, its like "any port in a storm". I mean, once you become a parent its like you're viewed as an escapee from a leper colony. You know, you keep showing up at all the places you used to go, but people kind of turn their heads, avoid eye contact and ignore you? Same deal at Starbucks. People stare across the top of their java at you like you personally just brought in a batch of fresh Ebola virus spores and dumped 'em to the ventilator shaft.

But like any self-respecting leper, you learn to ignore the nasty looks, pick your diseased limb off the ground and shuffle along back to your cave. Only problem is, before you do that--you have to secure a table for you and your co-lepers so you can suck down over-priced scalding drinks while simultaneously toddler-wresting a wriggly two year old, save them from asphyxiating on handfuls of lemon pound cake, keep from kicking over the table and carry on meaningful, interesting conversations with other adults who are also living on rationed sleep.

So we roll in to the 'bucks and can you believe it? I spot a free table. Starbucks, 10:30am Saturday morning--primo caffenation hour and I find a free table. Only problem is, the table's in the middle of the room which means we won't be able to fit our strollers next to us. But the table next to it only has a dad and his five year old son--and next to them there's no tables. Just wide open free space. A welcoming plateau of stroller-accommodating grazing land. Our Mecca.

I make a bee-line to dad and his boy, and roll up just as he gulps down the welcoming sip of his java-juice. "Hey, any chance I could switch tables with you guys?". I mean, I'm asking him to relocate all of two feet. Well, angry-dad gives me this look like I just shoveled glass shards in to his drink. He doesn't even reply, just looks me up and down...then up and down. Finally, he makes this big show of like, swallowing his sip, glares at me and goes "Because you have...a stroller?!".

Okay, so I'm like a Buddhist forever, right? So this stuff is supposed to just roll of me like water/duck. But honestly, I can be kind of confrontational (Hmmm, wouldn't have anything to do with DRINKING TOO MUCH COFFEE WOULD IT?) when pushed. And this is exactly the kind of situation where I can justify my self-righteousness (protective father, a helping friend, blah/justify/blah/justify) and go right back at someone.

But the wildest thing happens. Nothing. I mean, this guy fires a hate-rocket at me and it just...passes right through my body. Zoom. Right through. I feel nothing. Nada. Zip. No anger. No impulse to attack/defend/repeat. My mind doesn't even do a double take, you know where I hear myself go after someone then have to talk myself down before I come up with some faux-polite response? Just big, vivid alive space. There isn't even a jet trail from the hate-rocket, just space.

So Space-Dana replies, "No, there's a group of us". Its almost like I'm having this really civil conversation with myself, he's not even an obstacle--he's just kind of this non-threatening outline/cut-out of a person and I've chosen to not color in the cut-out with my projection of anger/threat/obstacle/fill in the emotion. Turns out he's a one-rocket guy and the next thing I know he switches tables and bingo--everyone's has what they need, sans hostility. For the most part.

What hit me right between the eyes most keenly is how much healthier it is to not project. It hit me because I felt different. What I felt was normal. Not like I just had some kind of flame-out which had left me charred, the burnt stench of which I'd be feeling and smelling for hours/days to come. So there 'ya go. My advice? Don't grab on to your own solid state of mind so tightly it gives you agita. And even if you're sure the other person's your problem, bear in mind just for fun, it could be a whole self-imposed smoke and mirrors thing.

Oh, the big bonus of the whole thing? Two tables away there was a family of three? Their kids were screaming so loud it was blowing the plastic lids off people's lattes and no one even noticed our happy little table of Gremlins.

How Silly Am I?

2006-04-21T16:12:00.001-05:00

I mean, really. I just caught myself in the reflection of my own appearance and I'm like, walking, talking, moving, reacting, speaking, thinking, moving, distracting, avoiding, perverting, grasping, presuming and commenting on every thought in my brain. And that was just in one split second of a moment.

If we can just step back for a moment, detach from our own appearance just ever-so-slightly and look at ourselves--its pretty funny. Last night my foot hurt. I've developed a callous from running. I looked at the callous, fingered it, felt some pain--then put my shoe back on and ignored it.

Because even though I know from direct experience its just skin and the moment I wear it down with a pumice stone it'll stop irritating me--there was this moment after I perceived it, just this little itsy-bitsy moment where I formed the thought "that callous is part of me--I could be in pain if I remove it".

Despite the fact I've ground away these suckers before, and I know it won't cause me pain, know in fact that the way to stop the pain (as I've personally and directly experienced myself) is to simply remove the callous--I cooked up the thought that some solid part of me was being threatened and in response to the threat, the callous is still there.

And that's exactly what I do with my thoughts. I don't even not see them as part of me--that's too discriminating, too courageous. I simply create my identity with the thought as it simultaneously forms/arises/appears. Which really, is more economic. You cut out the middle man so to speak, which is objectivity/space--you just go directly from appearance to identification. My foot hurts/I am my foot.

This student once went looking for his teacher--when he arrived at their typical meeting place he found a note "Gone to the freak show". Well, I guess in 10th c. India there wasn't a freak show around every corner, so this student was like totally WTF? He searches all over, finally makes his way to town.

In to the main market area--bustling with activity--people selling, living, dying, stealing, arguing, loving--and he sees his teacher, sitting down just watching all of this frenzy and action going down.

The teacher's just sitting there, frog on a log. Not doing a damn thing. And the student gets it *lightbulb*. This is the freaskshow. This is the circus, the carnival. We all paint ourselves up with this mask of presumed identity and then go running around reacting to everyone else's mask.

Voltaire said "Life is a drama for those who feel, a comedy for those who think". Most of the hardcore, real deal teachers I've ever encountered have at some point absolutely just stunned me at their instantaneous ability to convulse with laughter in the midst of what I perceive to be well, drama.

Once spent a week with this very revered, elderly Tibetan lama. Very serious stuff. First night, at dinner--he goes around the table asks everyone where they're from. You know, getting to know us. With every response he beams, nods in gentle understanding, repeats the person's cherished home "Oh, Mic-hi-gan?". Very grandfatherly, clipped Tib-English pronunciation.

I'm sucking it up. Loving this Lama. To me he's the Burl Ives of Lamas. I just want to curl up with him and watch that "Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer" special and just be cuddled by this kindly little old soul. He gets to me, I reverently whisper "Californi..." don't even finish the sentence he laughs out loud, like hysterically "Mickey Mouse!".

Everyone stops, he stands up, points at me and still, laughing his ass off shouts "Mickey Mouse!". Well, ain't I suddenly the most popular guy to humiliate at the table. Of course, everyone cracks up and now the whole table like, ten people are pointing and laughing, "Mickey Mouse!". And everyone is having this total moment with Burl Ives lama, but me.

I'm of course, smiling playing the whole thing off like "Oh, I get it...California, Disneyland--Mickey Mouse". But inside I'm like "Are you fcuking kidding me? Dude, we were gonna rent the Rudolph special together?! Hang out, cry when Rudolph's nose won't light...". I'm dying. But you know, to him my drama was his comedy.

Oh and it goes on. I'll give you the cliff's notes, but the next acts of the comedy were Act 2: Dana awakens in the middle of the night to discover everyone's shoes have been laced together then tied to his arm while he was asleep in the hopes that he'd move his arm and drop twenty pairs of shoes on his head. Act 3: The day we depart, the entire staff receives the most loving blessing from Burl Ives Lama who promptly turns to me and head butts me. Not head butt like, oh here's the traditional Tibetan greeting with a little extra oomph, head butts me like he's an English soccer player for Manchester United after like, twenty pints of Guinness.

So anyway, for what its worth--if you happen to catch your own reflection in the mirror--any mirror and for just a split second you have that odd feeling like your watching some television show and you spaced out and when you came back you felt like even though you just missed part of the show it didn't really matter because what-the-hell-is-this-about-anyway-and-why-am-I-watching-it?

Well, either turn the volume way up so you don't notice you're spacing out anymore or get ready for some sleepless nights. 'Cuz once you start questioning what's really going on around you...well, things take a turn for the interesting.

The Week of 4/17: Suffering Goes Big!

2006-04-20T13:52:00.000-05:00

In the last four days--sister in law diagnosed w/cancer. Surgery today. Co-worker's baby rushed to ICU with life-threatening low-level hemoglobin count. Thirtysomething friend, newly wed--killed in a car accident. Her husband's teen son, also in the car now in an induced coma.

So here I am praying away for people, doing tonglen. Even went to St. Bart's church on 50th and spent my lunch hour with the "Angel". Saw it/her there years ago when there for a Sakyong Mipam talk. She's in a small room, a larger than life-size Angel in alabaster.

And no I don't watch re-runs of "Touched By An Angel" and I do not, I repeat do not have a pewter angel on my key chain. But I'm telling you, you step in to a small room with a thousand pound, white Angel? Hey, sh*t happens.

Then it hits me--I'm one of six billion people on the planet. Doing my scrawny, undernourished, distracted tonglen practice--who's covering the other 5.97872 billion peeps? Okay, so not all of us are suffering. But if you just stop for a minute and think about the war fare, poverty, disease, famine--at any given moment there are a lot of people in real distress.

And that's just counting the humans. How many beings are in the animal kingdom? So what to do? It seems insurmountable, the amount of suffering being experienced at any given time. Given all that, here I am at work sleepy from waking at six a.m. PTT (pre-toddler time) to practice, but mentally whining because I want an iced mochacino.

I remember when I lived at a Dharma center. There was a Tibetan teacher visiting, waiting just outside the shrine room, ready to go in and give a talk. There was this really sweet family from Montreal there, well they come down the stairs, late for the talk--and see the lama there, ready to go in.

But the little boy (he was about thirteen) was just crying a river. This teacher looks over and the boy's sister says, with that kind of perfect, child's lack of pretense--"He just found out his grandmother dies. He misses her". And man, this teacher's whole face, like the molecular structure of it changed. It softened and re-formed and melted and tears just started streaming down his cheeks.

And he walks over to the boy and puts a hand on his shoulder and the little boy didn't think twice he just grabbed this Lama and hugged him and folded his whole little body in to him and they cried and the boys snot flowed down these monk's crimson robes and they stood there together. And that teacher wasn't going anywhere. A hurricane couldn't have moved him from that boy's side.

I haven't thought about that for a long time. Could I ever care for a stranger like that? I'm going to get an iced mochaninco. I'm going to keep getting up at PTT--something about that feels right. I'll probably forget about other people's miseries until something jars me back to that reality. I'm glad my family's safe.

That teacher? One of the strongest, kindest, wisest most straightforward humans I ever had the good fortune to be around. His ability to be truly present was the result of hard work. A lifetime of literally reshaping his intention. He died a few years later in a car accident in India.

Transparency Of Concept(s)

2006-04-19T12:38:00.000-05:00

From Chogyam Trungpa

In the absence of thoughts and emotions, the Lords (the forces of materialism) bring up a still more powerful weapon, concepts. Labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid, definite world of "things." Such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well.

The world exists, therefore I, the perceiver of the world, exist. Meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self. Labeling becomes simply the act of discrimination.

Bonus Points...

2006-04-18T13:59:00.000-05:00

...for anyone who clicks on the death/impermanence link under dharma teachings. I dare 'ya...

Am I Enlightened Or Just Really Pissed Off?

2006-04-18T12:18:00.000-05:00

From Chogyam Trungpa:
EMOTIONS AS THEY ARE
"In the practice of meditation, we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. By seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. Thus, they become the inexhaustible energy that fulfills egoless action".

Which got me to thinking, how do I know when I'm "...fueling egoless action" or just being an @sshole? You know, there's people (okay, mainly NY'ers...) who fear getting in to Buddhism 'cuz they don't want to "Lose their edge and go soft", despite appreciating the newly-won sanity of their friends who've gotten in to meditation.

So which is it? R we getting truly righteous or just ridiculous? Are we serenely finishing our lite beers and leaving the bar before the good brawls start as our friends laugh at us behind our backs? Do we need the edge? Can we have our cake...and smash it too?

Tonglen Posse: Saddle Up...

2006-04-11T12:04:00.000-05:00

...hi all. A good friend's baby just went in to ICU last night. Still doing tests, but looks like a pretty virulent form of Anemia where the red blood cells are attacked by the bodies own immune system.

The little girl's name is Daya, she's about sixteen months old. It would be very appreciated and helpful if you could include her in your practice. The mother's name is Limor--I'm sure a few healing thoughts in her direction wouldn't hurt either.

New link below--a talk on Tonglen by Pema Chodron.

Thanks all.

You Talkin' To Me?

2006-04-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

"Fear is one of the weapons of our ego. It protects the ego. If one reaches the stage where one begins to see the folly of ego, then there is the fear of losing the ego, and fear is one of its last weapons.

Beyond that point fear no longer exists, because the object of fear is to frighten somebody, and when that somebody is not there, then fear loses its function. You see, fear is continually given life by your response, and when there is no one to respond to fear - which is ego loss - then fear ceases to exist."

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Another Day, Another Dharma

2006-04-06T09:59:00.000-05:00

So, there's a section here called 'dharma teachings/talks'. For now, I'm adding links to articles about topics raised on the blog--the skandas, the 12 nidhanas, karma.

If there's a topic you'd like to know more about, just let me know (my email addy's available under 'view my profile').

Also, pls feel free to send this blog to friends, family, extraterrestrials. Any and all are welcome.

Schmidt Happens...

2006-04-05T12:32:00.000-05:00

...back in the day, during his teachings Trungpa Rinpoche would sometimes reference "Joe Schmidt". In his marrow-piercing high-pitched thunderbolt of a voice, Trungpa would say something like "So, just suppose Joe Schmidt comes along...".

Of course, Trungpa's mantra power being what it was, he somehow actually conjured up Joe Schmidt. Despite the fact no one's ever actually seen Joe Schmidt, he now has his own blog. There's a link to it, bottom left...

Feeling Pretty Sassy...

2006-04-05T12:16:00.000-05:00

...humbled by no HTML experience, but driven by a large Cafe Mocha and the words of a good friend who said "Any monkey can figure out how to put links on his blog...", I've managed to create links on the blog.

1. The Chronicles Project: first hand stories about Trungpa Rinpoche.
2. The Konchok Foundation: the rebuilding of the Trungpa Rinpoche's home monastery (Surmang) in Tibet.
3. The Dharma Ocean Center: dedicated to the study/preservation of the teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche. Started by Dr. Reggie Ray, Author "Indestructable Truth". *this site has downloadable MP3's of some guided meditation practices.

The Water Just Got Deeper...

2006-04-03T15:55:00.000-05:00

"...reviewing the buddhist view of consciousness and feeling, including how consciousness forms, how it relates to feelings, and how thoughts and attitudes spring out of that process. The abhidharma or buddha’s teachings on this go into incredible detail.

The twelve nidanas, it turns out, describes how moment to moment our consciousness forms from nothing, reacts to the perceptions of phenomenon, forms a positive, negative, or neutral opinion of that phenomenon, then jumps to a conclusion about how things should be and habitualizes the result.

We also studied the five skandas, each a mental process which all combined make up what we typically consider self or ego. the formation of the skandas is part of the nidana cycle, the fourth nidana in fact, before sense perceptions start to make contact with the phenomenal world. the consciousness skanda is paramount, but is supported by the skandas of form, feeling, formation, and perception.

Form constructs distinct views of the world, feeling just provides a very basic positive, negative, or neutral opinion of things, perception processes what we perceive, and formation pigeon-holes things into categories for us.

The importance of these teachings is deep. When Pema teaches about ‘learning to stay’, this comes from the wisdom that the cycle of karma can only be interrupted between the seventh and eighth nidanas - between feeling and craving. Once we’ve gone from feeling to actually thirsting for something then we’ve continued a cycle that ends with a further strengthening of ego and solitification of our world view.

But if we can learn to rest in feeling (the seventh nidana) then we can interrupt the habituation of ego. In fact, that’s the only way we can work with it and stop the karmic momentum. By karmic momentum I mean the quality that our feelings lead us to action which then sows the seeds of future suffering - in this case the habituation and solidification of our ego-centric view of the world.

Trungpa rinpoche also gave an interesting teaching on the skandas and enlightenment. He taught that the skandas in an enlightened being are still there. what’s different is that they aren’t connected. Meditation cuts the tight connection between the skandas. Then he went further to say that it’s not really a connection that you’re severing. Really the skandas are just crammed together by our speed.

We hate to experience space, our world feels unsolid in space. so we keep our mind running quickly so we don’t notice that there is a small gap between each skanda. so meditation lets us slow down, and then increase the gap between the skandas or in other words so we can see the large expanse of space which is already between them".

Real Life. Real Strange. Really.

2006-04-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, true story. The other day my wife is at the subway station and overhears someone firmly, emphatically say "No, here's how it goes. The inside story? 'We, you?'...do not exist". She turns around to see a nine year old boy saying this to his little brother.

To Drink Like Men...In A Gay bar.

2006-03-31T16:56:00.000-05:00

My friend Joe Mauricio (not his real name) and I went out last night to an Irish pub--in Chelsea. Which meant--you got it--place was filled with tall lads in soccer jerseys sporting a lisp. And boyfriends. Then again, Joe and I were there--which says, what? Say what?

Anyway, jealous as I am to admit it--Joe (again, not his real name) is a class A funnyman. He's an actor, working comedian and one of my dearest friends. So, over the course of a Guinness (whiskey for Joe, he said he's "on a diet") we talked about what it means to be living, scrapping and keeping our heads above water in NYC.

As we compared notes, one thing became clear. Its kind of tough doing the "right action, compassionate thing" in a city where people are elbowing each other on the subway. Turns out Joe (okay, okay his real name) and I are right there, pushing and shoving with the best of 'em. But aren't we supposed to be versed enough in knowing our minds to not believe the hype and get sucked in?

Maybe. Maybe not. So what's my point? I don't have one, I'm hoping like the next subway if I hang around one will show up. My non-point is maybe this city is just too hectic and no matter how much mediation you do, its not enough to keep from barely not elbowing that guy who just dug his in to your rib cage.

Or, and this is the embarrassing admission section--maybe I'm just not working hard enough at my own practice and using the energy of the city as an excuse to foster my own pent up frustration. Bit of an urban-spiritual chicken or the egg deal, in a way.

As I see it, my choices are: a. Don't hang out with Joe. He's clearly the Devil. b. Don't ride the subway. Its clearly the preferred mode of transportation for...the Devil. c. Put my money where my Guinness is and don't elbow back. Cuz elbows are...damn, the Devil thing doesn't work with elbows.

So, since Joe's the only friend I have and I can't afford taxi's, looks like I'm going to have to put on my big-boy pants and actually walk the walk I keep yapping about at those fancy classes I teach on Buddhism. So there it is. I have to stop looking for reasons to throw elbows and start making room for people, in my mind and heart. Either way, looks like its going to be a long trip.

Would've been so much easier if Joe were the Devil. There's nothing like a warm excuse to curl up with and ignore everything around you.

Suffering: Apply. Wait. Reapply.

2006-03-31T14:32:00.000-05:00

Mi amiga Roberta once said "Pain is mandatory, suffering is optional", which I'll use as a clever segue to how I got in to an email fight with someone. Why is it that email is completely inadequate at capturing mood, tone and emotion--until someone writes and tells you to go *&%^$#! yourself?

So what did I learn other than getting flamed in an email is pretty much like getting flamed in person? I learned that NY State law restricts the possession of semiautomatic assault weapons that hold up to 100 rounds. In retrospect, probably a good thing. I'd been the victim of a an email drive-by and there was little I could do but suck toxic tail-pipe fumes as they drove away.

Problem is, while you're choking down someone else's anger-laced carbon monoxide, you tend to keep replaying the events in your head. It becomes one giant loop reliving itself, the ultimate inner, "He said, she said". And the next thing you know, circumventing the state mandated six month waiting period for a handgun seems, well reasonable. And that's when you better wake up and smell the karma.

Because the more I replayed the events, the bigger more life-like and real the whole thing seemed. I was feeding my emotions big double-handfuls of self-justified anger-kibble and they were quickly growing up and out of control. They had become Rage-Zilla, foot-stomping to matchsticks whole villages of reason and patience.

And then an ancient Buddhist saying came to me, "Dude--shut up". And I realized that it was up to me. To shut up, to stop replaying events, to seal up the bag of anger-kibble, to tear up my registration form for an assault weapon and to just, stop. So I did. And lo and behold Rage-Zilla tucked his tail and vanished.

I realized it'd be wiser to spend the next six months being grateful for a lovely wife, family and life rather then put on one of those semi-knit trucker's hats made from beer cans, waiting for my Fed Ex delivery of a semi-auto handgun. I mean, someone has to stop the madness, why not me?

There's a great quote from one of those old Buddhist Yoda's, about what not to do with one's thoughts. It starts out "Do not imagine, think, deliberate, meditate, act but be at rest...". This doesn't mean "Go zombie" whenever trouble arises, but rather, "...at rest" means to let mind rest in its own ability to be present, intelligent. Don't crank anything up. For that matter, don't crank anything down.

Oh, the other thing I learned is that email is probably the media-crack of the millennium marketed by self serving corporate interests to undermine the necessity of human interaction and create an unhealthy dependency on technology.

Then again, maybe I just need to learn to not type whatever comes out of my brain.

Karma: Not A City In Thailand....

2006-03-31T12:55:00.000-05:00

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म, from the root kri "to do") is an active verb. So you could approach karma from the p.o.v. of "What are/were my actions" as opposed to, "Why am I experiencing this or that effect?". According to Buddhism karma's a law, the enactment of a principle as opposed to any kind of moral governing.

The thinking goes, if we realize that the pain we sometimes experience is the effect of our own misguided actions, hopefully, eventually we'll stop creating those actions. In other words, if we can generate a little awareness in our lives, it might help us see that we're the ones whacking ourselves in the head with a hammer--its not the result of some unknown, mysterious force.

Speaking of blunt force trauma, time for another coffee...

Am I A Bad Person?

2006-03-30T14:12:00.000-05:00

I lobbied for a new espresso machine at work. Nothing outrageous--its a Bodum. Simple design, ruthlessly efficient. Makes a great cup--first time every time.

So for the first week we all stood around, whipping up espresso drinks, discussing the perfect crema color and the joys of perfectly steamed milk. It was a beautiful thing. One happy family.

But that changed. People started drinking more. A lot more. Our salesperson Tim, who shall remain anonymous went from having (seriously) a single cup of deli-brew a day to three double-espresso drinks. That's six shots of espresso. A day.

I'm going to put one of those electronic dog-collars on him so when he tries to fire up the machine he gets a jolt of electricity to the face and neck area.

And people are snippy. Everyone's short-tempered, intolerant. They stand and foot tap while the machine cranks out the java-juice, shaking thier heads dismissively 'cuz its taking too long. And no one even cares about how much crema a single shot should produce--because no one makes a single serving anymore. If you're not cooking a double, don't even approach the machine. Needless to say we now order espresso grind in bulk.

People look over their shoulder a lot. Like someone's going to unexpectedly surprise them. I don't even know if people use the cool ultra-contemporary double-walled clear glass espresso glasses I bought--I think they're just sucking it straight from the spigot.

Now, when you go to make an espresso, if someone else is there its like those monkeys in 2001: A Space Odyssey--you get this stare like you're moving in on their kill. I've seen employees keep one another at bay with the cute little sugar spoons, jabbing at each other, going for the eyes.

What have I done? Me, I don't even go near the machine any more. I go to Guy&Gallard, plunk down $4.00 and pray when I get back to work people haven't gone Lord Of The Flies on each other. But you have to admit, Guy&Gallard does make a good brew. And they don't poke you with the sugar spoon while they steam your milk.

Warning: Objects In Mirror May Not Exist....

2006-03-30T11:37:00.000-05:00

The Five Aggregates (Skandhas)
by Charles Patton
The five aggregates (skandhas) are the scheme the Buddha chose to describe the nature of the individual human existence. It is a common doctrine among virtually all schools of Buddhist thought, being basic to the Buddha's philosophical teachings.

The remarkable aspect of it is that it describes the human existance as a combination of physical and mental elements without recourse to the idea of a soul that is distinct from the mind, and -- most especially -- does not assert any governing agent that can be identified as a self within the individual.

That is to say, each of the five aggregates is an equal component of the individual, which amounts to a conventional self only when all are present and functioning.

Briefly, the five aggregates are: the material organism (ruupa); sensation (vedanaa); conception (sa~nj~naa); volition (sam.skaara); and consciousness (vij~nana). The diagram below sketches the basic relationship between the aggregates in a human being.

The first and last (material organism and consciousness) of the aggregates are perhaps best thought of as the "stuff", or basis, of the individual, while the other three (sensation, ideation, and volition) are the internal transactions that occur between them. Matter is organized into a physical organism and animated by consciousness.

These two combine to form the body-mind substrate of the personality. The other three aggregates are forms of activity that arises in the interactions between the body and mind.
Sensation involves the process of data collection by the senses.

The six sense organs in Buddhist thought include eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and brain. The brain is included as a 'sixth' sense organ because it senses sensations (such as memories) that arise internally and not directly from an external source (though they may have come originally from an external source).

Certain emotions, such as sorrow and happiness, may also be considered mental sensations in some situations. Also, the sensations that occur in the dream state are sensed by the brain. The sensory objects of these sense organs are rendered into data, which is transmitted to the brain. There it is rendered into a mental representation. This rendering is the first step of conception.

To give an example, the retina of the eye is struck by light and it sends a data transmission through the optic nerve to the brain. The brain takes this data and converts it into colors, shapes, and images. This process produces a constant visual field (visual consciousness), so long as the eyes, nerve, and brain are all functionally properly.

Conception is the process of deriving general concepts from the sensory fields and using them as templates in abstract thought and also as a means of recognition. To give an example, the concept of redness is drawn from the visual sensations of certain hues of color, representing a certain band of wavelengths of light, which we call 'red'.

One difference between the sensation of red and the concept of red is that the sensations of red are all slightly different and are merely the red hues that appear in the visual field. A ball may be red, or there may be red on a billboard. The concept of redness, however, is an idea lifted out of the images of our vision and generalized.

It does not represent a specific hue of color, but is a very general notion that encompasses a multitude of hues that fall within a certain range of color. In essense, the sensation of red is seen, while the notion of red is thought about. By drawing a concept of redness out of the plethora of hues that we see, we are able to single out hues and recognize them as 'red'.

On a basic level, conception is an essential function of the mind if we are to make sense of the world. Without it, we would not be able to recognize particular things or to generalize about our environment. We find certain red fruits on certain trees and generalize them, calling them apples on apple trees.

Later when we find another tree with the same fruits, we know that it is an apple tree. It is because of the concept of apples and apple trees that we able to recognize it again. This is why this aggregate is sometimes translated as preception rather than conception.

Volition is that function of the mind that might also be called the 'will'. It involves an agent of action, what we typically refer to as the psychological 'I'. Volition does not merely involve intent, but simply consists of actions that originate in the mind and have an agent that performs them. This aggregate includes a broad group of activities in the commentaries from earliest times. There is a traditional litany of fifty-two activities that were considered volitional. They include things like habits, reactions, and intentional acts.

Volition is very important in Buddhist thought because it is this that is the genesis of karma. In fact, karma is itself defined as a volitional act. Volitional acts all have results, which is sometimes called the fruits of karma. Of course, these results are not always ethical in nature. If I am thirsty and choose to pick up a glass of water and drink from it, the volitional act has the result of alleviating thirst and putting water in my body. But there is probably nothing ethical about it.

If instead I come accross someone in a desert who is suffering from extreme thirst and I give him water (or chose intentionally to withold my water from him), that would consitute a karma with an ethical quality. Karmic acts are generally divided into three categories in Buddhist writings, these being mental, verbal, and physical acts.

To illustrate, if I form hateful thoughts about someone I meet, that is a mental act. If I tell the person hateful things to express those hateful thoughts, that is a verbal act. If I strike that person with a stick or fist, that is a physical act. Each of these types of acts have different consequences and gravities. Mental acts tend to function to condition our attitudes and opinions.

Verbal acts tend to condition our relationships with others, and usually will also reinforce mental conditioning. Physical acts are often the most powerful, because they can go so far as taking or perserving life. They have results that condition our physical environment. Generally speaking, though, karmic acts tend to have their seeds in mental acts that, if nutured, blossom into verbal and physical acts.

To speak and behave compassionately, on a consistent basis at least, one needs to begin with compassionate mental acts.
This is the basic scheme of the five aggregates that make up the individual personality. While it broken up into five distinct components, when we take them all as a whole, we can see it as a complete system.

Up And Running...

2006-03-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

Hey all--so my original plan was to meet with my friends+meditation students every month, hand out readings, have in depth discussions, probe the mysteries of dharmic deep space and have all of us integrate the complete meaning of the Truth in to our system this very lifetime.

Then I remembered I have a job. And a daughter to raise. So, here's the next best thing--a blog. Instructions are simple:

Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

Post responses like, "Dude, I have no idea what this article is talking about". Then I'll post back "Phew, neither do I".

See you here, or there.

Dana