The Beard.

The Beard is a calling.  A man’s calling, to what he can do when he puts his mind to it.  It is not something achieved easily, and takes a long time and much thought to utter the words ‘I’m thinking about growing a beard’.

Shaving’s easy.  It takes no thought.  For us men (actually everyone), you were born without facial hair, so where’s the thought in keeping it clean.  None, actually.  That is why meatheads and bankers are all clean shaven.  Because it doesn’t take any thought.  That’s why politicians without beards aren’t trusted -because they’re thinking men.  People think that the beard means a big off with no thought (is that how ‘off’ is spelled?), but the truth is the complete opposite.  A beard is good.  So my choice to grow a beard was a long time in the making.

Actually I never really thought I wouldn’t have a beard, since both my dad and uncle had them.  It was just a matter of time.  I knew I’d be at least 26 before I had what I could call a real beard.  Until then, I dealt with mostly scruff.  Which looked good.  I made it work, and came into my own with scruff.  Before then it was just baby faced, with bucked teeth, and no chin, in college, alone.  But I was smart enough to know that a puerto rican mustache wouldn’t help.  I had to bide my time.  Wait.

Its the Winter now so it’s the perfect time for a beard because you have the excuse of the cold.  And it makes you seem proactive beyond a coat in the face of the changing seasons.  If you’re considering it, nows the time to test it out.  I started to let it grow and figured as long as I kept the neck and face clean, it wouldn’t raise eyebrows.  In order to have a beard, the first thing you have to know and understand is that the beard changes rapidly in time.  Your father and his hippie friends had long, scruffy beards that don’t work in that way anymore.  Meanwhile, his father had pencil mustaches that worked for him and Clark Gable.  Their fathers had handlebar mustaches and other things like Chaplin had.  While that guys father had mutton chops, and boy, did they look good.  Nowadays, black guys have really slick chin straps (and every urban guy trims the front of his temples, which I’ll never understand).  Point is, you need to know what time you’re in.  By November, I had a killer beard and you couldn’t see my face.  I had two pillars under the left and right side of my lips that made me question my motives (no one else did).  And there was some red in it too.  Red in my beard, which made you me wonder about me.

But it gets outta hand.  There’s no telling when, and I couldn’t tell if it was getting out of control or if I was pushing the envelope.  Picture Michael J. Fox’s guitar solo in Back To The Future.  At first he’s rockin’ and everyone’s like ‘WOW, Man!’ ’cause he’s awesome and he is rockin’, and then at some point he goes overboard and falls to the floor and kicks that speaker and you’re like ‘Jeez, this is awkward’  But no matter how many times I watch it, I can’t figure out when the exact point is when the awesomeness ends and the awkwardness begins.  That’s what happened to me.

A few things gave away to me that the time was now time to trim it back.  First was last week, when I discovered a hair that had eluded being trimmed for at least 4 months.  At least.  A long, single hair that came out of the side of my face that recalled Guinness’s long nailed Indian man of the ninteen eighties and images of strange china  men with single, long neck hairs growing out of black moles.  Yuck.

Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror today.  I had on a light blue shirt buttoned up and a black corduroy jacket that, had I had a top hat, reminded me exactly of Bob Dylan on the cover of John Wesley Harding (I don’t think he has a hat there though).  But I actually thought that that was a good thing.  It wasn’t til now that I realized I wasn’t on the cover of an album and I was instead in a mens room 30 years in the future of when that album was released.

So that’s where I am now.  But the truth is, it happened two days ago, when my boss referenced a rat and me in the same sentence.  I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it doesn’t matter, because I couldn’t come up with a comeback and that’s the important thing, ’cause if your beard isn’t giving you the power to make good comebacks at your boss, then it’s not giving you the nitro-boost to your confidence that any real, self-respecting, end-unto-itself, beard does.

So tonight, I leveled it enough that it remembered it was my beard and I wasn’t it’s face (right?) But first I made sure to comb all the hair up until I could get a good look and laugh at how funny I looked with my beard, because, what-the-heck, hair on your face is funny.

iPooped! And other tech woes

Recently I washed all the dishes my sink.  Actually I do it quite often.  And to think that one day I may not need to wash them because I’ll have a dishwasher.  Or more likely a robot that’ll do it for me.

I have glasses that slide off my face.  I have to catch them alot when I’m peeing because they’ll slide and nearly hit the toilet.  I think they’ve fallen in once, but the water was still clean.  And to think that one day I may get that surgery to correct my vision.

I watch too much tv.  Between the commercials and waiting for my shows to come on, it’s a pain in the ass to actually watch what I want.  One day I hope to be able to pause live tv, tape only the shows that I want, and then have time for all that stuff that gets in the way.  Oh wait, I already have a DVR.

Three perfect examples of what’s come, what’s going to come, and what makes life better and worse.  Maybe not better and maybe not worse, but definitely more confusing.  More wonder in the sense of ‘Is life better like this?  Today, rather than fifty years ago?’ I used to think I was born in the wrong decade.  Still do, to some extent and was pretty sure I was an intellectual exception, but then this not-so-smart girl at work said the same thing today and I thought ‘oh man, does that take the novelty out of that idea’.  But really it plays into something I’ve often gotten the sense of.  That we’re not better off (Or maybe I’m not better off) despite the DVR and the dishwasher.  The eye surgery and the iPad.

I used to love my iPhone.  I still really like it, but its so damn overwhelming.  It’s like my closet, which is a mess.  I don’t even know what’s in my closet.   Shit, I bet my snowboarding boots are in there somewhere (they’re not).  But damn it, if I wanted to, if I really did, I could throw everything out of that closet til it was empty and then I would know exactly whats in there.  But I can’t do that with my iPhone, because these days it runs slower and I think it’s a RAM thing where it remembers that six months ago I searched for a Chuck E. Cheese and then Maps asks me if that’s what I want to know.  No that’s not what I want to know, 6 months. later!  Now I clear it and it’s gone, but there’s a million other Chuck E. Cheese-esque search items all over the phone and I can’t ever get the damn thing clean ’cause I don’t know where to look or how the damn thing really works anyway.  Same with this thing (my Mac Air).  It’s all cluttered cause I’ve imported With Or Without You ten times between the two albums I have it on, the back ups and those back ups and the copies on my phone and computer and I don’t know where else.  Imagine you moved into a place, put a bunch of crap into it, and then once you decide to move out, you take all your crap out and the place is actually smaller than when you moved in.  Actually I really think this is true in NY because the apartments have lots of paint layers.  But whatever.  My point is its a metaphor for everything.  Even your brain.  I can’t take everything out of my brain because the paint’ll be too thick.

And now the iPad.  I still get excited over something like it, but it carries with it, at least for me, the fear of paint drying.

I’m sorry if I’m a little rusty.  It’s been a while.

How To Make Chicken Soup With Leftover Chicken

The author and his soup

So you’ve bought a roasted chicken for dinner and stuffed your face ’til you can’t eat any more.  Now you’re wondering what to do with all that yummy leftover chicken.  While there’s a plethora of ideas, from a chicken sandwich to chicken salad, but one idea I really enjoy is turning my leftover roasted chicken into hearty chicken soup.  Especially at this time of year, when it’s getting to be cold season and everyone around you is getting sick, it’s the perfect time to make a batch of soup.  So here’s my recipe.  Hope you enjoy!

What you’ll need:

1 leftover chicken

1 1/2 onions

4 baby carrots

1 potato

1/2 a box of spaghetti

Dash of pepper, salt

Once you’ve finished as much of the chicken from your original meal as you want, store the chicken in your refrigerator for seven days.   A good tool to keep track of your aging chicken is to remember that this is the same amount of time it took God to create the universe.  Think of your chicken as being reborn again.  Storing the chicken is easy.  You can store it in the same container you bought it in.  After seven days, the chicken is ready to be another meal.

On the seventh day, you’re ready to cook (despite the wishes of others).  At this point, it’s very important that you don’t call your mom.  Though your mother may have a great chicken soup and know her way around a kitchen, have pride in your ability to not want help.  Also, you have the internet at your disposal, and that’s never been wrong when it comes to chicken soup.

Start by filling a large pot with water.  Fill it near to the top and put it over the fire.  While it’s heating up, put the chicken in.  There’s no need to cut it up.  Once it’s in there long enough, the meat will fall right off the bones.  Add 3 boulilon cubes for flavor.  Next, chop up some onions -alot of onions.  I like to use about one and a half.  A sweet onion work fine for me.  Next, chop up about 3 or 4 baby carrots.  A good trick is to snack on the bag the whole week until you remember your leftover chicken in the fridge and why you bought the carrots in the first place.  By then there should be just the right amount left.  Follow this up with the cut up potato.  After you’ve added your vegetables, you may want to add some spaghetti to the pot.  I like to take the box of spaghetti out of the cabinet upside down so that it all falls on the floor first before I put it in my soup.  This allows you to wonder why you’re doing this in the first place.  It’s a good idea to rinse it as well, but this is really optional.

By now your soup should be a cloudy white and your home should smell like a bad jewish butcher.  If you’re waiting for a film of chicken fat to appear at the top of your soup that you should remove, you may want to just dunk around the dirty white cloud instead.  Look for anything that looks too uninviting.  I like to pull out the smaller bones, any black stringy things, and the lungs.  Don’t be too worried if there’s alot you want to pull out.  If you’re like me, you’re anticipating the clean up and pulling things out will only help you with this once you’re done.

Next, turn the fire off and spoon out some soup.  You should only eat a bowl or so as a taste test.  At this point, the soup isn’t ready yet and you’ll know it.  Take the soup, now cooling, and heave it into three tupperware bins.  You’ll want to freeze the first two and refrigerate the third for when you’re hungrier.  If you’ve lost some of your appetite, your soup should almost be ready.

Wait two days and talk to your mom and ask her about the color.  If you’ve followed all the directions correctly, then your mother’s response should be something like ‘I’ve never, ever, ever made, or heard of, making chicken soup with leftover chicken’.  Again, something like this.  Depending on your mother this answer may vary.

If you’ve done everything right up to this point, then by the third day, your throat should be scratchy and your stomach will hurt. Remember, feeling sick is exactly why you made the soup in the first place.  Picturing the soup as what you’ll eat should also make you feel sick at this point so be sure to stop by the market and buy some fresh chicken soup.  Buy a potato as well for a simple baked potato.  Bring both these ingredients home.

Wrap the potato in aluminum foil and put it in the oven at 450 for about an hour.  Take the soup you just bought and put the soup in a bowl, add a dash of salt and pepper to your liking and enjoy!

For additional recipes, please check back here from time to time.

Addt’l notes:

You may also want to consider that the soup is what made you sick, but this is not a necessary step to the final dish.

Its helpful to keep the three soups in your refrigerator as long you don’t want to think about washing the tupperware.

If you’re worried about what to do with all the soup, try giving some to your girlfriend and her friends.  However be prepared to loose your tupperware.

If you have a story about this recipe, let us know!

Socks and Underwear, Pants and Clothes

My feet hurt every day.  My left foot that is.  It’s last three toes complain the most about a pain in the underside, coming from the middle.  Really ambiguous, but enough to get me to  take off my shoes at work and solicit comments from everyone else who has shoes on.  Actually the chairman of the division in his 20×20 foot office also takes his shoes off, so to my knowledge, if you’re looking for the guy who likes to let his dogs bark around the office, it’s either me or the chairman.

I went to see the podiatrist a few years ago after I got a flier with a smiley foot telling me I could get a free consultation and a foot massage.  So I went and they didn’t give me a free foot massage and all he did was tell me to wrap it, and he gave me some free gauze and I filled out about ten forms.  What a load of BS.  Those forms are the worst.  Even this weekend when I went to the gym and said I only had 5 minutes, they asked me to fill out forms that took 3 times as long.

My black shoes are decrepit at this point, being 6 years old and all.  I can get them shined by a portuguese guy who comes to the office and fixes shoes.  He’s in some sort of band, so he has long, curly hair.  He gets off the elevator wearing a shirt from one of the offices on another floor (an obvious gift).  He collects shoes from all the females and does whatever fixing is necessary to maintain them.  I have a 6 year old pair of shoes on my feet that I wear Monday thru Thursday.  They’re originally black, but the leather is deteriorating, so they are closer to grey.  I would ask this guy for a shoe shine ($5) but I really like going to the place and sitting and getting them done.  I get to climb up to the chair way up near the sealing, and then the man shining my shoes goes to work.  I feel very classy and it also feels very old fashioned, to maintain your possessions instead of throwing them away like everything else in this modern world.  Ah the shoe-shine man.  Johnny Cash sang a song about the shoe shine guys, well about a black shoe shine boy who had alot of rhythm.

Four Commercials

Most commercials suck.  DVR and Tivo have proven to be our answer to this and it’s simply so awesome that I am loosing hobbies because I watch too much tv without interruption.  But with the World Series (Congrats Yanks!) and live baseball in general, I had to watch alot of commercials.  Live sports doesn’t work with DVR and if you ever do watch baseball recorded, you end up fast forwarding through it and loosing all the tension that builds when you watch it live.  But I digress.  Lots of commercials and nearly all suck.  Joe Buck sucks too.  But a few were good, some were better.  Here’s a breakdown.

American Express – This commercial is annoying, because the cello playing (Bach) while you’re watching a baseball game makes you feel stupid.  But like in all sports, they repeat commercials a million times, and this became the anomaly.  The more you watch this commercial, the more you get familiar with the faces, so much so that their expressions begin to become so familiar, so comical, that you can almost name them like you would pets.  I just watched it again on youtube and have to say, it’s really nicely done.  I sure hope it wasn’t expensive to make because the simplicity would add to the enjoyment.  Anyway, here it is.  Keep a lookout for the red bag at the beginning (That’s how I feel when I’m at work).

Direct TV – Their annoying commercials of old movie scenes that suddenly go off script and tell you about the benefits of their service culminated with the Chris Farley Tommy Boy shtick that, I think, upset alot of people, or at least creeped them out.  But during the World Series, they showed the old Ed Begley Jr. and John Michael Higgins (Best In Show, Fired Up!) running a cable company ads.  These are all funny and easier to watch than those other ones (that also looked really expensive (I obviously like my commercials to look cheap)), and there’s some good lines.  I posted one below as an example, but they should all be checked out.  Also, check out Ed’s IMDB page because he somehow found time to be in every single movie ever made though I can only really remember She-Devil.  And I remember it all too well.  Here’s some more.  ’We’re gonna youthenize America!

Dodge Ram – I caught this about halfway through.  This commercial will not repeat well, nor will it work unless it’s between two very light, funny commercials (like Bud Light and that G1 Google phone with Cat Stevens playing).  But it got me thinking about poetry and imagery and how powerful it could potentially be, A) If it’s done right, and B) If it’s not shilling a car.  Though I must say I sorta thought I could use a car with what seemed like so much personality and purpose after watching this commercial.  Then I got to thinking how cool it would be to have a poetry renaissance in this day and age via the advertising world or something.  But it’s not likely.  As I said before, you do need two light commercials to bookend this one.  ’I will not downshift’ -that line makes me raise one eyebrow in confusion.  Click on the link (I couldn’t embed it because I suck).

Least Favoirte: Droid.  Nothing worse than new electronics falling out of the sky to blow our minds.  That’s just dating your product before it even hits the ground.  What the Droid is saying in that commercial is that on my planet, I became obsolete and was shot out into space as space debris only to land on your planet like when you humans throw your apple cores out the car window.  But seriously, it’s just too out there for a phone (it’s not a PSP we’re talking about), and like any gadget, it’s gonna eventually annoy you.  Even my iPhone (what, really? You couldn’t tell?) annoys me, though I think it’s the best phone I’ve ever had.  Ok, I think that’s about it for now.  If you want to watch it, use the link.  I don’t want that embedded on my site.  Hope you enjoyed.

The Mouse

The Mouses Bathroom

I think the mouse must be in here!

I consider myself to be a tough individual.  I don’t know why.  I have little proof to back it up, but there I sit, and when I think of myself, tough isn’t something I wouldn’t describe myself as (I’m not shouting it from the rooftops, but I’m also not dismissing it either).

I’m not tough.  I am scared of squeaky noises I think are mice.  I am scared of something shaking that I didn’t shake and I think it’s a mouse.  I’m scared of a mouse that’s not scared of me.  But it must be cause it squeaks (in fear?), it doesn’t come out when I’m around either.  And I’m bigger and I play loud music.  He’s so scared he literally shits himself all over my stove.

I have no idea why I have a mouse, though I’m pretty sure it comes in through the stove.  Once, Starr and I were hanging out like we do one Sunday afternoon when we heard a squeak or metal or both.  We both jumped a bit, her more than me, which gave me some courage to be more courageous.  Be the man and all.  I inched over and about 20 minutes later (when I’d gotten 4 feet across the floor) I found nothing.  But since then I noticed there were alot of rocks on my dish rack and stove.  Why were all these little, long rocks there, all over the place?

POOP! The damn mouse comes out at night, poops on my stove and leaves!  I clean up it’s poop and then it comes back and poops again!  The mouse is laughing at me.  It makes me so angry that I put out a trap.  Not at night though.  I don’t want to wake up to the mouse.  That scares me.  I’m too vulnerable when I’m in my underwear.  I need a bio suit or something or at least denim.  On my legs, and denim on my arms and face and hands would be good too.

In theory, I’m really not scared.  I think about the mouse, about how small it is and think and think and think about it and it’s not scary at all.  Really.  It’s a little mouse that I know is almost cute.  I’m 100 times its size and weigh 300 times as much.  It’s really small and he’s obviously scared of me because I leave food out and he’s too scared to even touch it.  Yummy cakes.  Instead the mouse just shits in front of it.  WHY?  Why, if he’s so scared of me would he do that?  Mocking me every night, only coming out just to poop on my stove.  Laughing that little mouse laugh because he knows his size doesn’t matter cause he’s got some bravado death wish or something that little fucking asshole mouse.

It’s like his friends dare him or something.  It makes so angry thinking of it.  And that led me to get the trap.  Forget the noises and squeaks and I’m tired of little long pebbles on my stove and like the Dog Whisperer says, you have to be a pack leader.  Pack leaders aren’t scared of mice.

I knew I’d catch the little sucker tonight.  I was all set to come home tonight and imagined having a Tom & Jerry-esque escapade around my apartment ending with my hand swiping around inside a mousehole (which the mouse then dresses up as a girl that I then somehow end up getting the hots for).  So I cleared the counter, put out a trap with salami on the inside on top of the stove, put two plastic bags next to the door so that I could come home and put him away and toss him as soon as I got home and even bought some industrial gloves from the hardware store just because my denim-bio-suit wasn’t ready yet.

I was cool the entire walk home.  Armed with my burrito, I climbed the stairs.  At the last step I heard a squeak and my heart sank, my stomach clenched, my throat closed up and my heart started racing and all that talk of being tough I’d given myself all day went out the toilet.  So sad.  I started stamping my feet.  I listened for the squeak and heard it again.  The little mother-son-of-a-bitch was in there, squeaking, writhing in the glue.  I imagined it, imprisoned all day, watching the sun set behind the shades unaware of how it’s routine had become his nightmare now that he was unable to move, and unaware of what was in store for him.  He’d had hours to think about it.  He’d probably gotten quite, like prisoners do, until their faceless captors come stomping down the hall and then they begin to plead for their life.  That’s what I was imagining while on the steps outside my door…and it was freaking me out.  I, instead of being the specter of death that the mouse was picturing was, instead, running up past my door and up the next flight of stairs.  I knocked on my landlords door (we’re friends, right?) but no answer.   I decided the squeaking was paralyzing me and so I had an idea.  I took out my headphones and put them in my ears.  I put on Motley Crue’s Red, White, and Crue and turned it up so that I couldn’t hear anything except Vince Neil screaming Shout At The Devil!  My whole body was shaking.  My heart was racing.  I put the key in and jumped back.  Jumped forward and turned it and pushed the door open.  Jumped back.  Nothing.  Jumped forward, and turned on the light.  One light.  I was going nowhere.  I took off an ear and listened but didn’t hear anything.  I checked my watch.  Shit. The game was starting (World Series Game 5).  I had to do something but I hadn’t gotten worked up like this for so long.  I was supposed to skydive a couple of months ago but didn’t but I imagine my body was clenched in a similar fashion to a freefall from 13,000 feet.  Okay, game.  Gotta do something. The way my apartment is arranged, you walk in, there’s a little wall and behind it is the stove, so I need to get inside to see what’s going on and I can’t just inch my way forward because then I”ll be on top of what, I can’t imagine.  I don’t hear anything and no box is dancing around on the floor , squeaking like I imagined it would be, so I summon my lack of  courage and run in, past the small wall to the far end of the apartment.  Motley Crue is blasting and I initially don’t see anything.  My music goes soft and maybe the thing is dead.   My mom is calling.  MOMTHERESAMOUSEANDIMFREAKINGOUTIDONTKNOWITSINMYAPARTMENTANDIMSICKANDITSTHEREANDIKNOWITANDICANTMOVEANDIMFREAKINGOUT…Something like that (I’m so sad).   But where’s the mouse?!  I take out my headphones and turn on the tv to get some sound in the place.  The phone goes dead.  I put the bags on my hand and look over at the stove.  The mouse isn’t there I think.  I need to be certain.  I need to get to the perfect angle to see through the trap and be positive (even though my logic says the trap would be moving and I know it’s not there).  A squeak! (I think).  It must be in the other trap.  The one I didn’t put out but instead left balanced on top of cup of water.   I’m so stupid and clouded by fear of what I don’t understand.  It’s that damn squeak that sound freaks me out.  Even on the subway, when a train screeches to a halt, or a dump truck outside my apartment hits the break with a squeak.  That makes my stomach clench.  I’m so far gone I take a picture, zoomed in all the way at the trap, I then view the picture and zoom into the trap (inconclusive).  But there’s no mouse.  There’s no dead mouse.  My mom calls back and I come to terms with myself.  I consider myself tough.  But I’m not.  Why do they squeak???

Everyone in New York has mice, a mouse, a rat, roaches, beetles, waterbugs, snakes, racoons, babies, or some sort of animal and a story from the plethora of apartments they all live, have lived, in.  It’s a rite of passage of all New Yorkers.  I need to kill this mouse.  I want to kill it for territory.  Like a pack leader does.  It’s okay.  Animals kill for territory all the time (I googled it today).

UPDATE: 2 days later and no mouse.  I discovered today that the distinct squeaking I heard the other day while coming up the stairs was, in fact, the stairs.  As Balzac said, ‘Our greatest fears lie in anticipation’.

To the Country!

I took advantage of the nice weekend and headed upstate with Rebecca.  The house in the Catskills is an area i’ve always referred to as The Country.  There’s multiple ways to get there, but we usually took the quickway.  A quickway is what older folks refer to a highway as.  Usually a quickway was built in their lifetime that now cuts the old travel time in half.  They remember how long it used to take and wow, that new quickway they built sure does get us there in no time.

Though with the nice weather and changing leaves, we took the old route 17 up, past all the dairy farms and old houses and it’s really nice to get out and see the things you’ve always known in a different way.  I think of the Red Apple Rest, which I stopped by when I was a kid with my dad and uncle and cousin when I was growing up.  They used to stop there on their old trips upstate and by the time the quickway was built  and I visited, it was a relic of a former time, now I returned with Rebecca and the place was all boarded up.

The fresh air and quiet are enough to make you think it’s really all you need in life.  The porch at my grandparents house is a perfect place for sitting and taking it all in.  But soon it got cold and so we watch tv on a small television and light the house with lamps from 50 years ago.  We cook dinner in a stove that only has an ‘ON’ area.  Not even an ‘ON’ area, but something like ‘FULL’, ‘LIGHT’, and I thought to myself, how the hell did someone work this thing.

There’s a bunch of old things in the house.  Old things my grandparents probably bought and thought they’d never have to buy it again.  Items like egg-beaters and telephones.  TV trays from the late seventies.  Coolers (lots of coolers!)  Sheets and bottles of soda.  Things!  So many things.  I can’t help but think how much use all those things could have been at one time or another, and yet my thoughts go to buying new items though I’m depressed that the new stuff is so disenchanting.

We stayed through til Sunday early afternoon.  We ate breakfast at the local diner where the placemats advertise local businesses.  Construction, accounting, jail bonds, etc.  We walked to the lake.  Enjoyed the peace and quiet.

There’s lots more, but the important stuff is here.  That I’m now thirty and a weekend of doing nothing and enjoying the weather in my grandparents house is enough to me seems strange, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Notes:

Red Apple Rest was featured in the Woody Allen movie, Deconstructing Harry.  An underrated and very enjoyable film of his.  He stops there with a black hooker and his son in the car because he’s Woody Allen.

Apple Season is upon us.  Jeff, get your cider.  The rest of you get to an orchard and enjoy some apple picking.

abzME is back!

I have officially reclaimed the website and registered it for 10 years. What did you do today?

Another event of me expending too much energy on something that should not have needed to be dealt with in the first place.

Now I am going to run to work because I am running late.

I will do work that should have been done yesterday.

My clothes will be wrinkled because I have not done the wash.

My food will be old because I don’t eat leftovers fast enough.

And yet, I will smile because my boss thinks I’m a Masochist.

No big fanfare needed.

Time is on my side, or else…

 

MY JOB IN A NUTSHELL

 

 

And to think that I missed out on so many things because I was so busy.  

Or was I?

I currently have over 900 emails in my Inbox -not from fans, but from work.  I’m awake, home on a Friday night and ready to go back to the office tomorrow, Saturday, to attempt to get that number down, while people in China struggle to get it up (the number of emails, I mean).

In the bathroom tonight, I thought twice about throwing away a Home Catalog because I suddenly found reading about the thread counts in towels and sheets fascinating.  And I wondered how the cotton yarn gets woven into sheets, but also gets knit into stretchy shirts like a white tee (I actually think I know this).  

I’m shocked that I’m even writing right now, at 20 to 2 in the morning, but A. Rebecca’s away in Vegas, and B. Work breeds work.  Hate admitting that, but it’s the only way I can explain why I’m still awake, doing the things I deem ”working”, like writing this blog, or reading about what a stock is, or  drawing a picture.

I don’t know how I feel about it yet and It’s a sick and twisted logic.  The more I work, the more tired I should be.  But instead, I’ve worked more this week than I have in the past 7 years at my company and yet I’m not yet tired cause all I’ve been doing is working.  

But oh how bad it is!  Days disappear and I haven’t written a book, or drawn a collage.  Weather changes and I hope for rain because it’s easier to be in during the rain.  And my girlfriend is the toughest part, because no one wants to hear that you can’t be home because you need to read a bunch of emails.  

It’s still too early to tell.  I’ll crash very hard after I publish this.  

Meanwhile, I watched Will Ferrel on Man vs. Wild yesterday -THAT WAS GREAT!  I now feel every celebrity should do this to plug a movie (especially those based on campy 70’s television).  

 

Will all this work do this to me?

The Great Wide Way

 

Who are all these people in my yard?

 

 

Psh, I read today on Gothamist, that the NY Post, is not a lover of the new move in the city to to block traffic on Broadway, between 47th and 42nd Street.  If you’re not familiar with the move, basically Bloomberg wants more pedestrians, less cars in this great city of ours, and I, for one, fully agree.  I’ll make my sacrifice (as this affects me too, as the occasional driver and relative of drivers (thanks dad)), I fully feel that cars, especially in Manhattan, kill certain characteristics of the city and the less cars, the better.  

I saw it for the first time today and thought it was great.  Everyone’s out in the street and the street feels more like it’s namesake “SQUARE”, than two streets colliding to form a Crossroads of The Taxi World.  It reminded me of all those European cities, with their central meeting squares.  I mentioned this to my friends who I travelled with to Europe and just this one line sold them.  Why?  Because when you’re traveling, those squares ground you.  You stand there and say to yourself, Here I am, and then you go from there.

Screw the Post.  They don’t know squat.  

This has, and always will be a walking city.  The car thing is relatively new.  And in the past two decades, the sidewalks have become unbearably crowded.  Opening up Broadway to pedestrians will only add more character to the city (as the picture above shows).  And the people and the tourists especially love it.  So if the tourists, with their money like this more than 6 blocks of taxi’s, I say give it to them because we like their money.