Friday Funnies

I hate the word "Funnies." That's why I used it. If I could have written "Friday Funnies" in that googledy Comic Sans font, I would have.

But so. Here are a few things, one about bombs and two about Obama.

1. Beware, those who use urban slang! No longer can you shout, "This pretzel mix is the fucking bomb."
2. I just found out Barack Hussein Obama is a smoker. I can't tell you how much this pleases me. And, yes, yes, I know: Smoking's bad blah blah blah. But I like that Obama smokes. Why? Because it shows that he hasn't had all of the humanity wrung from him by politics. Humans do stupid, pleasurable things—they have bad habits—like smoking; and I, for one, would rather elect a fallible human than a perfect robot. It's funny, but in in this way Obama reminds me more of Bill than Bill's own wife does. (Not that spouses are necessarily similar, but you get my point.)
3. Time for reader participation, via the comments function: What do you think Obama's brand is? I've got my money on Camel Lights, but damn do I wish he smoked Lucky Strikes.

11/27/07

The dates dotted in this journal, with gaps
amidships, are clicking on up inevitably,
as they are wont to do. Three years now,
and my want for you, my want of you,
keeps coming back like an old football injury.

I never played, but the metaphor seems apt:
prior glories, hard hits, a longing looking-back
that, too rigorously examined, having kept reading,
proves not to hold up so well. Well oh well.

Used to I could induce rapture
at will, by picture, poem, or rereading
old emails. Often, substances got in on the act.
A doomed, dready dreaming, mouthing a memory
like an ice cube in August: delicious, but gone quick.

Now not so much. Sobriety's conspired
to make life realer. Clarity can be a bit dull.
That old pull's perhaps been dispelled
by my newfound stability. The pilot light's lit
but I've turned off the gas.

Back in Black Tie

From this past Friday night at the M&C Gold Awards, held at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts on Manhattan's Lower East Side:

Birthday 2K7

I had a good birthday. Thanks to all of you who wished me one—and nuts to all of you who didn't. (Not really; I just like saying "nuts to you." Makes me feel like a 1930s "newsie.")

My mom and my dad both called yesterday to wish me a happy birthday. Both of them sang the happy birthday song to me; it's kind become a family tradition to do so.

After that, though, on the phone with my dad, he said, "Man ... you're 28. Two years away from 30, 32 years away from 60 ... unbelievable."

"You're right," I said. "I know. It's just a bad calculus that don't ever get any better, does it?"

"No, it sure doesn't," said my dad, laughing hard.

Post No. 200!

Happy Post No. 200 to me! To celebrate, here's a something I wrote:

On Sun and the Interest of What’s Happening

In the Viennese café, after the movie,
we chose a sunstruck seat
in the covered outdoor garden’s corner.
“How have you been doing?” we asked one another.
“How was Japan?” “How are you and your man?”
“Japan was good,” I said. “Japan was really great.”

Maya was enjoying Brooklyn: the quiet, the space,
the more-laid-back life. But she wasn’t sure she’d stay

in the city forever. In fact, Maya was sure
she wouldn’t stay. I sipped my latte and picked at
the strudel with schlag. The light made it all
seem somehow unreal, like when in shadow
you view a street thoroughly smashed by sunshine
across the way. “And I don’t know where I’ll go.”

Earlier, in the movie, a bad-for—but mad-for—one-another couple
looked out, arms around waists, onto a Paris dusk.
I thought of my girl like that, then, and London.
It wasn’t good but it was something.

“So who do you see?” Maya asked. I stirred
from my sunny reverie and rearranged the cutlery, anxiously.
A minute earlier I’d have had an answer, but the sun seemed
to shut all that down;

the light a viscousness in which I’d been trapped,
sap slowly surprising an insect, henceforth caught,
preserved for eons, dust motes dancing in slo-mo.

Everything telescoped. “Joe,”
I said. “I talk a lot to Joe.”