Beasties

Every once in awhile, a rumor would make its way around town—town being McMurdo Station, on Antarctica’s Ross Island—that a penguin or two had wandered into our rough-hewn hamlet. Not being accustomed to seeing much besides humans locomote in these environs, our ears would prick at these reports and we’d rush out on break from the galley to see the little Adelies in their self-important huff and waddle.

The short, fat little black and white birds looked like nattily attired, curious tourists as they poked their beaks around town and we humans watched, rapt, but kept our distance. The best way, though, to see an Adelie was when out on the white, flat, endless expanse of sea ice when you’d see one rushing, Alice and Wonderland White Rabbit-style, headlong toward some very important date for which the bird was, invariably, late.

Other than the Adelie (our immediate corner of the continent lacked the Emperor and Chinook penguins found elsewhere on the Ice), our only other oft-seen cohabitants were the seals and the skua birds.

The seals—fat, grey, impassive yet, in a way, graceful creatures—you’d see sunning and lazing in groups of three or four out on the sea ice. Sometimes pups—from their happy, near dog-like faces you’d understand why they were called that—would be with the adults, who would raise up from their flop and look at you purposefully if you got too close. But we rarely got too close, out of respect for the wild environment and the Antarctic Treaty.

Lastly, the skua birds, or just skuas, were scavengers that looked a bit like dirty gulls and had no natural predators, and so were utterly unafraid of humans. They would walk right up to you, entirely unruffled—or, more likely, if you were carrying food, divebomb you, Ride of the Valkyries-style, when walking between buildings. They were ornery neighbors, but we took it all in stride and enjoyed the chance to see these charming, sometimes cantankerous beasties in their natural habitat—after all, we were the visitors; they, unlike we humans, could survive and indeed thrive on that harsh continent.

DO NOT READ FURTHER

... if you haven't yet seen the final episode of The Sopranos.

OK, I warned you.

I posted this just a minute ago under this thread on Gothamist.com:

Amazing episode, and entirely true to life: most of the time in life, not all that much happens—not even to trigger-happy mobsters. My roommate, brother and I were on the edge of our seats for the final seven minutes in the restaurant, as every little look from someone looked like a hit coming: but it never came. That's the hell that Tony has devised for himself—not a hell handed down by the universe, but one of his own making, wherein neither he nor his family will ever be truly safe.

But, he lived; and things were going pretty well for him and his immediate family there at the end. And that's life, that's what David Chase & Co. have been trying to tell us (among other things) all along: the universe does not punish bad deeds or reward good ones; it is what it is, and there's no old man up in the sky throwing lightning bolts or sending bread from heaven, however much we may want to believe that.

I think that what Tony "got" during his peyote trip out in the desert was that, yes, there is another plane of existence, another something out there, but—like the sun that flashed at him, it is indifferent to what we do on this earth. We may come from somewhere, but whatever that somewhere is doesn't have any feelings one way or the other about what we do here. This was the only true way The Sopranos, given its entire preceding run, could have ended—no matter how many red herrings David Chase threw us along the way.

Congratulations to everyone who has been involved in this incredible show—which, if I may be so bold, deserves to be mentioned alongside such great and timeless works of art as Ulysses, Guernica, Citizen Kane, et al. Job well—and, most importantly, honestly—done to the very end.

My dad's thoughts

on high school reunions, the attending of:

At some point everyone should attend at least one just to experience the experience. Kinda like eating Jello—perhaps fun while being slurped but not too satisfying afterwards—but, hell, it ain’t natural to live in America and not experience Jello.

Well said, Dad.

Strangling Karl

Things being today
what they are, all my old things begin
to become mythy and massive—
my economist friend from Oxford,
I’ll tell the kids—or maybe
he’ll come visit and we’ll tell, in tandem,
the story of how he strangled Marx.

To have a fondness for what’s past—
like Woody Allen for Annie Hall, or me
for the Bodleian and the Firkin, mornings
on the river vomiting up beans on toast,

is a good thing if taken rarely,
like a dozen donuts bought and downed
on a Sunday-morning whim—then
it’s like when the wind brings
a sudden scent of sea
with no sea in sight.
But dwell overmuch

and it edges toward what
the old sea captains called Nostalgia
and Debility—an overripe August stink
that threatens to overwhelm
with its too muchness, a realm
of malignant growth, a pestilential
purple cabbage plant,
a garbage-fed mulberry tree
that leaves a fermenting carpet
of fly-wracked berries.

So these are my thoughts
with respect to returning
for my high school reunion.

But kept in check, forward momentum maintained,
with second sight I see a morning
years from now—though I may never
take a drink again, a cigarette
can always be snuck: we’ll recreate how,
in Berlin, we came upon a looming stone statue
of Engels, standing, and Marx, seated—and Kevin,
lover of capitalism, acolyte of Adam Smith,
managed just barely
to get his arms around the stone neck of Karl,
with a gleeful grimace on.

I’ve still got the picture.
He got that Marx sumbitch something good.

What is lazy writing?

Main Entry: lazy writing
Function: noun
1 : the first sentence of this story from Sunday's New York Times, about the opening of the as-yet unnamed state park in Williamsburg (my neighborhood), Brooklyn.

This is why people call The Times elitist and out of touch with reality—and are sometimes correct.

Dishwashing for fun and profit

This guy ain't got nothin' on me ...

... though I still might read his book, since he is, after all, a fellow dishwasher-in-arms.

This is terrifying.

OK, so, Mayor McCheese. No big deal, right? Look more closely.

Isn't this picture sort of vaguely terrifying, like in a decadent Weimar Republic-type way? Note the mayor's accusatory glare and malevolent expression. Doesn't he seem to be staring into the depths of your soul? What about the weird shadows on his head, and the raised eyebrows? Can't you just see him yelling "Schnell! Schnell!" to some poor gypsy, or perhaps calmly torturing a suspected spy? There's something just so bad-trippy about this picture.

I take the subway. I also eat the Subway.

On Saturday I was on the G train heading south. A man sitting with a bike across the aisle from me said, "Got a bike here for sale, real cheap."

"I don't need a bike," I said. "I ride the subway."

"You do what?"

"I ride the subway. I don't need a bike."

"You ride the subway?"

"That's right."

"You know the restaurant Subway?"

"I do."

"You ever eat at Subway?"

"Sometimes."

"So you ride the subway ..."

"Yes."

"And you eat at Subway."

"That's right."

"OK then," he said. "Just checking."

Is it just me

or does this CNN.com article about Prince Harry not being able to go to Iraq make the British Army sound like the Boy Scouts? Not just because of the word "troop," but also because, at the very end of the article, there's this sentence: "Jobson said he did not believe Harry would quit the army, despite being kept out of Iraq."

"Jobson said he did not believe Harry would quit the Boy Scouts, despite being kept out of the Annual Troop 23 Jamboree."

I have been remiss

lately, w/r/t blogging. ("W/r/t" means "with respect to"—it's a David Foster Wallace tic that I picked up about ten years ago, when I first read Infinite Jest.)

But so: a few weeks ago I wrote a review/recommendation (here's the link) of a book by Tom McCarthy called Remainder. A fine book, and it fairly crept into my system.

The reason I bring it up today is because, on Sunday, I got the keys to my new apartment and went over there. I had, of course, been there before—but what struck me on Sunday was how much the building reminded me of the building that plays a central role in Remainder: the cooking smells (though not liver, as in the book), the noise from behind doors, the little window in the bathroom looking out onto a courtyard of sorts, the wide, airy stone stairways ... it was an interesting bit of déjà vu.

It's worth posting here, from Merriam-Webster, the def. of déjà vu; I was not aware of the second def., though I love the implications:

Main Entry: dé·jà vu
Pronunciation: "dA-"zhä-'vü, -'v[ue]
Function: noun
Etymology: French, adjective, literally, already seen
1 a : the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time b : a feeling that one has seen or heard something before
2 : something overly or unpleasantly familiar

Kind of cool and creepy, hmm?

It is this sort of writing

that visits me in my nightmares:

Recruitment and selection

Members of the Human Resources Department work to source, identify, and attract top creative and business talent to [company name redacted]. Our mission is twofold: to partner with business units to achieve the goals and objectives of the Company and, through this process, to sustain the Company’s premier status within the fashion industry. Our Company aims to provide every employee with a comfortable and professional experience with [company name redacted], from the first point of contact and beyond. [Company name redacted] believes that it takes people with different backgrounds and views to strengthen a well-rounded company. It takes diversity of culture, style, education, experience, and geography to add value to the Company. This ultimately results in a positive impact on the Company’s global business.

It is anti-writing; it is virulent and damaging. It drains words of their primary use—as carriers of meaning. Orwell was right:

"The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought...We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else...A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well...Or, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning; or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else...

In the end thoughtcrime will be literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word...Every year there will be fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness will become a little smaller...By the year 2050 - earlier probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of Big Brother will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now...There'll be no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime ...The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."

Miscellany

Here are some words which may no longer be used:

1. Sunworshippers. Noun. An awful word used by hacky travel writers when trying to sound bougeouis and at a loss to come up with some new way to describe people that go to beaches.
2. Landed. Verb. "I landed my dream job at Glamour magazine yesterday." A word used chiefly by new female initiates to the New York publishing world. Often travels in packs with Cosmopolitans and very bad music on iPods.
3. Ginormous. Adj. See previous post.
4. Gawker Stalker. Noun (proper). An "app" made by the blog Gawker.com, which plots, on a real map of Manhattan, where various celebrities have been sighted. Now you can know exactly where the person who is no different from yourself except in that they had the bad taste and hubris to pursue a dubious career in self-promotion, aka acting, buys a hammer!

And here is an amazing story from The NY Times about Kool-Aid pickles, or "Koolickles." Further proof that kids in the South are the smartest kids ever.

Go Go Arkansawyers

It's a big week for Arkansans in New York.

Today, on DailyCandy, the inimitable Little Rock native Mary Kathryn Wells' clothing line, called Smart Fitzjerrell, is featured. Check out the fun write-up here, and the clothes here.

Last night, I saw Jeff Nichols' movie Shotgun Stories as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. I can't give enough props to Jeff—the movie was moving, funny, pretty, sad, and hopeful; aka everything a great movie should be. If you live in New York and want to see it, there's one more screening, this Saturday at 2:30pm, at the AMC 72nd Street East. Go here (scroll down to the movie's title) to read a synopsis and buy tickets.

As for me, another Little Rocker in NYC—I ain't done shit. But I'm having fun.

3/28/06; or, After changes, we are more or less the same

At Lodge again. Joe and Jeff are in the middle of a staff meeting talking about drinks to their servers off to the left; I miss the waitstaff camaraderie. It's definitely a group business, something the publishing industry lacks -- the room of one's own, the inky wretch, smells of the lamp; it's all solitude.

Whereas in the table-waiting game, and on the Ice, there was a real bonding, Us vs. Them mentality. Standing out on the back loading dock after Thanksgiving, passing the bottle of wine 'round the circle of blue shirts, with that white, sharp Antarctic sunlight making us all squint -- that was a killer moment, one of my all-time up-theres.

It's that camaraderie I miss, that maybe we used to have at the start of Rough Guides, at least in the beginning; and especially after 9/11 at the Afghan place on St. Mark's and the Grassroots Tavern next door.

That's part of the reason I like coming here -- to be, if only in a peripheral way, and only for a bit -- part of that club.

What does it remind me of? It reminds me of all the things I've been a member of: high school, ROTC, Collins' parties, the JYAs at Oxford, the SPIers at NYU, the DAs on the Ice, going over to John's roof after work all those days, drinking beer and looking at the Empire State Building. Knowing people and liking most of them, being part of a community.

Perhaps this is part of what draws me to being a cop.

Editor's note: I no longer want to be a cop.

The No. 1 Killer

This morning at about 11am, Derek and I were sitting on the chairs outside of the Champignon cafe, having a coffee and cigarette, as we do most mornings.

A old black man with a scruffy gray beard shuffled up to us. "Either of you have a cigarette I could have?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, and proffered my pack of Camel Wides. He took one while saying something like, "I been quit for a few weeks now, but it's stressful here in America."

"Sure is," I said, as Derek offered his lighter to the man. The man lit the cigarette and, as he puffed his first puff and gray smoke wreathed his face and he began to shuffle off, said, "Thanks. Stress, you know—that's the number one killer."

On a quiet Cobble Hill afternoon

On a quiet Cobble Hill afternoon,
the season's first nice Saturday, I sit inside
at a window smoking
and drinking Diet Coke, outlooking onto
the brown brick building set below bright
blue sky, framed by the window
two rectangles, one above the other, seamless,
like a real-life Rothko.

A bumblebee, dronelike, is surveying me.
Against the blue he -- the bee --
is black, shadowed, shorn
of his yellow.

Earlier I was napping.
Earlier I was listening to Sky Blue Sky.
Earlier than that I was in the city.

The brown building's now lightening,
in response to what the sun does daily,
sinking off west.
The bee has buzzed off.
My cigarette's done and now a noise
of cars somewhere, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
gently, like a white apartment curtain fluttered
by summer wind,
breaks my reverie.

Remainder

I recently finished a great book—one of those “can’t put it down but wish you could because it’s so good and you wish it would last longer” kind of books. It’s called Remainder, and it’s by Tom McCarthy, a Britisher and member of the International Necronautical Society, which I think he had a hand in making up, and which I don’t really know much about or really care to investigate further.

Sorry.

But the book is great. Riveting, odd, suspenseful and—in what I’m beginning to realize is kind of a hallmark of books that I think are great—it made me feel a little bit crazy, myself; I found myself sort of acting out some of the main character’s neuroses and patterns, putting on the face of that particular character.

Some books from before that have made me do this and feel this way include:

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
Ulysses, by Joyce
and The Recognitions, by William Gaddis—this one the most so

Now, if you’re still reading, you might be thinking, “What a pretentious fucking list, and of course all those books made him feel that way—they’re great books, classics, and near-unanimously recognized as such!” Well, fuck off. Also you miss the point of what I’m saying, which is that—surprisingly—Remainder is now on that selfsame list. See?

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
Ulysses, by Joyce
Remainder, by Tom McCarthy
and The Recognitions, by William Gaddis—this one still the most so

At any rate, it’s a great book. It is about a man who has an accident—he’s hit by something falling from the sky—and who later, after coma and physical rehabilitation and memory loss and so on—receives a large monetary settlement from the company or companies responsible for what hit him. But that’s not the important part. The important part is what, in a flash of inspiration in a bathroom at a party one night, he decides to do with the money.

Will I tell you what he does with the money? No I will not. It’s too bizarre for me to spoil here. But suffice it to say that the book, as all good books, isn’t even really “about” any of that—the guy, his accident, what he does with the money. Rather it’s about why we do anything; the ways in which we move through and relate to the physical world and other people; and what this “means”—and here I’m talking deep, existential meaning; what it means for consciousness, perception, and life on the macro level. How we relate.

I am so famous

Check my just-younger brother's blog for a link to a small piece I did recently for Men's Journal. I do not necessarily believe such flattery as Jacob gives of my writing, but I certainly appreciate it.

Here is the link to what I'm talking about.

Green Tortoise

I did not take this picture. It comes from Green Tortoise.

For two weeks we traveled, on a unique version of the Great American Road Trip. We didn’t go like Sal and Dean did, balling that jack hard along Route 66; rather we rambled in style—de gustibus non est disputandum, mind—on the Green Tortoise, a green-painted, ramshackle and raucous “sleeper bus” that makes the trip several times a year (along with its turtle brethren) from East to West Coast.

We loaded up our colorful packs in NYC; and as we rolled out of Manhattan across the George Washington Bridge, a sense of swelling rose within our breasts. As Simon and Garfunkel sang, “We’ve all come to look for America.”

And what’d’ya know—we found it. From the Big Apple it was down the Eastern Seaboard, to Cape Hatteras and Okefenokee, where the gators lurked in the swamps. Thence we turned right and started that long crossing. We partied all night in New Orleans, where one of us, we thought, had got pinched by the cops. We had a big party down by a Louisiana river, spanned by one of the last elevator bridges in the country. The morning after, our campsite looked like the scene of some mad war. We blew through the rest of the South and right by Houston, which loomed up on the left, an alien planet silver and shining.

Out west, though, where we began to meander and linger, was where things got really interesting. We smoked a joint among the prickly pears and wandered stoned through the cool Carlsbad Caverns. We gambled in Vegas, the Great Unwashed at Caesar’s blackjack tables. One early morning after a hard rain we coasted calmly into the soaked, red Valley of the Gods—and, after a hike as we drank “cowboy coffee” on a hill, the strains of Van Morrison’s “And It Stoned Me” reached our ears for the first time ever and, well, stoned us.

After that was denouement. We pulled, ragged and ravished, into San Francisco and the Green Tortoise Hostel in North Beach, just up from where Ginsberg published Howl. Fog-wracked and fresh, San Fran felt like a city with no memory—but memories, of a whole continent behind us, were all we had left.

Ob Hill

The peak in the back is Observation Hill. The buildings about a third of the way up are a disused nuclear power plant called ... well, read on below.

On Antarctica’s edge, ice-locked into the France-sized Ross Ice Shelf, lies Ross Island, the primary base for the British expeditions of a century ago. Many reminders of their efforts remain, including a stirring monument at the crown of the 750ft Observation Hill (or “Ob Hill,” as it’s known at McMurdo Station, America’s chief Antarctic research facility, which lies in its shadow). Ob Hill was so named because it was used as a lookout for ships returning to the Ice; today it is climbed by station residents to get a view of their utterly alien, white environs.

The first third up the extinct volcano consists of loose volcanic scree, which must be scrambled up until one reaches a road that winds partially around the hill to “Nukey Poo,” a decommissioned nuclear power plant. Here, most climbers turn to look for the first time—much like a new Manhattanite walks to the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge before turning to look at his city’s towers—at their temporary home. McMurdo looks like a small mining town from this vantage point, with homey curls of steam topping each parti-colored yet faded building.

Ob Hill’s next two thirds must be bounded up, billy goat-style, over large, haphazardly strewn rocks. About 250ft from the top a small, boulder-topped peninsula flattens out in front of the climber, offering another opportunity to take a breather and look out. Now the frozen McMurdo Sound and, further off to the left, the imposing Royal Society mountain range can be seen. To the right looms the smoking cone of Mt Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano.

Climbers corkscrew up the hill’s left side, which obscures the top so that one is nearly at the summit by the time one sees the solid wooden cross which stands as a memorial to Captain Scott and his men, who perished on their return from the South Pole. The cross is inscribed with a line from Tennyson’s Ulysses which—as the town, sound, mountains and volcano spread out in front, with the seemingly interminable expanse of the ice shelf behind—serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made so that the climber can stand here today and survey: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

A short history of fire in Joanna Newsom's Ys

Fire—a thing that, of late, has been kind of a preoccupation of mine, for obvious reasons—is a big lyrical concern in Joanna Newsom’s latest album, Ys. The word, or some variation thereof, appears multiple times in four out of five songs on Ys.

From “Emily”:

that the meteorite is a source of the light
and the meteor’s just what we see
and the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

From “Sawdust and Diamonds”:

then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision

From “Only Skin”:

it was a dark dream, darlin’, it’s over
the firebreather is beneath the clover
beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever
a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather

~

and when the fire moves away
fire moves away, son
why would you say
I was the last one?

~

through fire below, and fire above, and fire within
sleeped through the things that couldn’t have been if you hadn’t have been

~

clear the room! there’s a fire, a fire, a fire
get going, and I’m going to be right behind you
and if the love of a woman or two, dear,
couldn’t move you to such heights, then all I can do
is do, my darling, right by you

From “Cosmia”:

water were your limbs, and the fire was her hair
and then the moonlight caught your eye, and you rose through the air

When the hits keep on comin' ...

... read some Larkin.

A co-worker reminded me of him today. He—Philip Larkin, by the way, is who we're talking about, the late English poet—was an odd bird. A galumphing, bald, bespectacled, sexually frustrated bird—and also, it just so happens, maybe the funniest, most sad, and most poignant poet of—the century? The whatever? Who knows. I have no authority to say anything beyond the fact that I never ever get tired of him. (Another I don't never get tired of? Miller Williams, Lucinda's dad.)

Most of the time, reading Larkin, it's a light, or feels like a light, affair; he rhymes a lot; he makes jokes; he curses ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad /// They don't mean to, but they do"); he seems to have a wry smile, very English, on his face all the while. But as my co-worker and friend this afternoon reminded me, Larkin also often swerves sharply, becoming strangely sad and deep.

My co-worker reminded me of this facet of Larkin by sending me the following, in response to my bitching about not having enough money to afford, well, life.

Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
'Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex,
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.'

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don't keep it upstairs.
By now they've a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire:
You can't put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won't in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It's like looking down
From long French windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Always with the windows, with Larkin. What a strange obsession. I wrote something about windows, once, in response or inspiration. Here it is (and keep in mind this dates from '98, so read on forgivingly):

Distances

I like distances
And far off places.
I like high windows
That frame miles
Of steaming interstates
And strip malled green valleys.
I like how sometimes
From rooftops
After rain
The suburbs
Look like Aztec jungle.

This was written in the Honors Lounge of Old Main, on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where I went to school (and which some of you reading no doubt know).

Hopefully I've gotten better, writing-wise.

Fire pics

So the TK I promised is still TK. (For those of you non-publishing types, "TK" is editor shorthand for "to come.")

For now, though, here are a couple pictures of the fire. Some guy on the street took them. Many of you may have already seen these, but if not, here they are.

Picture 1 is of the building and the fire trucks and etc.

Picture 2 is a still from a short movie some guy shot at the scene, and features me. (The link to the YouTube video is below this picture.)

OK so here's what went down—part the first

Early Sunday morning at 3am I was awakened by a number of things. I didn’t really know what was happening, but in my dream there were alarms and voices and buzzers. I woke up to smoke in my room; not much, but a bit. The fire alarm in the living room was going off. Someone rang my bell.

I opened my bedroom door and there was a lot of smoke in my apartment. I ran back into my room and grabbed some socks, shoes, keys, wallet, and a zip-up sweatshirt. I was in my pajama bottoms (not a onesie, unfortunately) and a white T-shirt.

I opened the door to my apartment and the hallway was filled with smoke; many alarms were going off and someone shouted up the stairs, “Get out! Fire!” I couldn’t even see down to the second-floor landing there was so much smoke, but I just ran down anyway without really thinking much. (So much for all that grade-school fire safety training.)

On the way down I banged on the apartment door below me, yelling to get out. I busted out the front door and there were already fire trucks pulling up, or there, I forget. I sat down on the sidewalk in front of the building and pulled on my socks and shoes. One of the guys who lives below me (and whose apartment door I’d banged on) gathered up my stuff while I put on my shoes and yelled into the building, ringing the buzzers for all the apartments.

We ran across the street. The smoke—which was coming from the tire store down on the ground floor of our building—was acrid and hurt your eyes. Two or three fire trucks were there already; more—at least eight—would eventually arrive, along with the Red Cross, ambulances, cops, and passers-by.

It was cold outside; I was shivering. I had forgotten my cell phone. Ladders started to go up all around the building. I saw a kid being carried out by a fireman on a ladder from his window; on the way down it looked like he was throwing up. He got to the street and was just kind of milling around in front of the building, not looking like he knew what was going on. I went over to him.

“Are you OK, man? C’mere, come with me.”

I led him away from the building and got him some water. “Thanks.”

A crowd had already begun to gather. I forget whether or not flames were licking out of the tire store, but I think they were, as well as the apartment directly above the tire store. Firemen went to work with buzzsaws, sending up showers of sparks, on the steel grates of the tire store, from behind which thick smoke was pouring. I found the other kids from my building and we stood and watched the thing burn up.

More TK.

Theme + new subtitle

I have noticed, lately, a bit of theme emerging within these pages. As such, note the new subtitle for this blog.

So without further ado, here's today's helping of the former:

A Little Tooth
by Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

***NEWSFLASH***

***NEWSFLASH***

The following statement was issued via iTunes HQ at 6:06 EST (-5hrs GMT):

Individually, both Beyoncé and Shakira are two of the most powerful female voices in modern pop. Together, they might just be invincible. The duet "Beautiful Liar" will appear on the deluxe version of Miss Knowles' second solo album, B'Day, when the deluxe version is released later this year.

The world now waits and watches, to see whether Ms. Knowles and Shakira (surname unknown) will use their newfound invincibility for good or ill. As a precautionary measure, all U.S. troops have been recalled from Iraq, to fortify the homeland against an all-out attack—Beyonce’s dirty bomb posterior plus Shakira’s thermonuclear hips—the likes of which the country has never seen. A curfew of 10pm has been issued for the lower 48 states, and the president will address the nation tonight in an emergency broadcast on all the major networks.

Jay-Z could not be reached for comment regarding his self-dubbed "hottest chick in the game's" newfound invulnerability—and, as some reports are having it, heat vision.

We will update you as the situation develops.

The smokes pop out

Going through old pictures, the smokes
start to jump out at me; there's one
behind my ear, head-on
to the camera and inscribing a circle,
perfect in its symmetry,
a white-rimmed lunar eclipse.

I look tough.
Most of the time
photos lie by showing only one aspect
of a thing at a time.

In the photos we all have cigarettes.
We don't,
but we look like we could or should,
because we are young.
Cigarettes are for the young, and quitting
is an acknowledgement of
one's own mortality.

My life will not be
a field by the river, crawdads
and free smokes, festival beer
and in-jokes.
Or it won't be that entirely or all the time.
So, realizing that,
down go the Marlboros.

Sometimes I think a third hand would be good

Like when you're in the shower and you're trying to squeeze some conditioner into your hand, except the conditioner bottle is made of thick plastic and you really need two hands to squeeze it out -- so where, I ask, does the conditioner go? Hence my idea that a third hand might be good.

With apologies to Pound

IN A STATION OF THE SUBWAY

The angry train crashes in
to the station, a rusted-out car
crunching down a dusty hill.

Is it just me

or is this beginning to remind anyone else of this, from Raising Arizona?:

GLEN: Yeah, it's a good one . . .
Course I don't really need another kid, but Dottie says
these-here are gettin' too big to cuddle.

Humor quiz

Here is a quick humor quiz.

Which is the funniest planet?
A) Pluto
B) Earth
C) Uranus
D) Neptune

Choose carefully.

To an Antarctic Traveller

What follows was given to me recently by a friend. It choked me up on the subway, and it chokes me up now. Dig it.

To an Antarctic Traveller
By Katha Pollitt
1.
When you return from the country of Refusal,
what will you think of us? Down there, No was
final, it had a glamour: so Pavlova turns,
narcissus-pale and utterly self-consumed,
from the claque, the hothouse roses; so the ice
perfects its own reflection, cold Versailles,
and does not want you, does not want even Scott,
grinding him out of his grave—Splash! Off he
goes, into the ocean, comical, Edwardian,
a valentine thrown out. Afternoons
in the pastry shop, coffee and macaroons,
gossip's two-part intricate inventions
meshed in the sugary air like the Down and
Across of an endless Sunday puzzle —
what will such small temporizations mean
to you now you've traveled half the world and
seen the ego glinting at the heart of things?
Oh, I'm not worried, I know you'll come back
full of adventures, anecdotes of penguins
and the pilot who let you fly the cargo — but
you'll never be wholly ours. As a green glass
bottle is mouthed and rolled and dragged by the
sea until it forgets its life entirely — wine,
flowers, candles, the castaway's save me
meticulously printed in eleven languages — and
now it rests on the beach-house mantel
opalescent, dumb:
you'll stand at the cocktail party
among the beige plush furniture and abstracts,
and listen politely, puzzled, a foreigner
anxious to respect our customs but not quite sure
of the local dialect, while guests
hold forth on their love of travel —
and all the time you hear
the waves beat on that shore for a million years
go away go away go away
and the hostess fills your glass and offers crackers.

2.
They named a mountain after you down there.
Blank and shining, unclimbable, no different
from a hundred nameless others, it did not
change as you called to it from the helicopter
it was your name that changed
spinning away from you round and around and
around as children repeat a word
endlessly until at last it comes up pure
nonsense, hilarious. It smashed
and lay, a shattered mirror smiling meaninglessly
up at you from the unmarked snow.
More lasting than bronze is the monument I have
raised boasted Horace, not accurately, and yet
what else would we have him think? Or you,
that day you wrote yourself on the world itself
and as the pilot veered away forever
saw mist drift over your mountain almost
immediately and your name stayed behind
a testament of sorts, a proof of something
though only in the end white chalk
invisibly scribbled on a white tabula rasa.

Bada Bing!

The above picture is what I was just eating. I saw it at the store in the freezer and I had to have it. It was actually really good, but what bizarre marketing. "The Snacks that America's Favorite Mobsters Love" -- wait, why? I've never seen Tony and Christafuh eat Chipwiches.

Nevertheless, I highly recommend these ice cream novelties. They are even tastier than eating Mickey Mouse's head:

My friend Emily

I have a friend named Emily who is currently teaching school in Thailand. Last night I chatted with her via Google Talk and we discussed, among other important issues, Cookie Monster's recent repudiation of cookies. I had been told that he even changed his name to Vegetable Monster.

Emily, shocked and dismayed, did some research and emailed me the results later. What she sent me, which I'll reproduce below, is maybe one of the greatest emails I have ever received.

Emily wrote:

I think the only change made to Cookie Monster is that now he has learned (and tells children) that cookies are just a "sometimes food." A monster does not live on cookies alone. So now he eats other stuff, too, like fruits and veggies. I think the Vegetable Monster thing was just hype following this little change. The end.

A List

Ten Things that Should Be Wiped from the Face of the Earth

1. Wine bars.
2. Celebrity weeklies.
3. Sleep coaches for babies.
4. Of-the-moment phrases used to describe an ostensibly important bloc of voters, such as “Soccer Mom” (the O.G.) or “NASCAR Dad.”
5. Strollers that in their bulkiness and unwieldiness recall WWII troop carriers.
6. Untucked dress shirts and the men that wear them “out.”
7. The Crate and Barrelization of Manhattan (and, increasingly, Brooklyn).
8. The word “luxury,” and everything to which that word is attached.
9. The trapper hats everyone seems to be wearing.
10. Cigar bars.

Go forth and wipe.

That Friday

That Friday
* a Hunter Slaton original

That Friday I was fizzing angrily above it all,
in a the hell with it, hail-mary mood. The clouds
were grey so the Empire was too, gunmetal,
like a battleship, or a battleship in the game Battleship.

That building had moods. Feelings
rushed through me like high clouds, quickly,
over a scooped, fresh-scrubbed valley. The reason was because

of the meeting. During the meeting (and after, and later)
I had seen red, like a Pamplona bull on the boulevard. A righteous fury'd risen
within me, a red mist a bulletspray.

Leaving my work building
the street was a curl I shot; I made appointments
left and right: a stalking,
deep-breathing, Serenity Prayer-saying
sneaker-clad tiger, burning bright.

Put a Geiger counter on me and
I would have fairly crackled.

After I got nearly to where I was going
in Bryant Park I paused. The grass
was all ripped-up and gone, sand-flooded. A small sign said

"The lawn is closed for reseeding." I should say it was.

Pacing through puddles I counted it down, checked the watch
did some breathing, before the interview. The meeting:
would it turn out to have been a good or bad thing?

I couldn't tell and couldn't smoke; I'd quit. That morning
I'd woke sober, for the 10th month. Ten times ten times ten times I hadn't, hating
the swim up from sleep. But not this one.

On the air was the smell of spring: fresh, newness, thaw;
the opposite of November woodsmoke. I remembered
my intro to the city'd been here, into 11 W. 42nd and the green chairs

of Bryant Park. The park was not being reseeded then
and soon it would not be again.

I pushed through the tall revolving doors and went in.

I've got nothing

Today I've got nothing -- not because I have nothing to have, but rather because my brother's got a post that kicks any post I could come up with today's ass.

Read it here: it involves a penguin, a marathon, a chicken, beer, water, and a blind man. And it actually happened.

Since when is this a word

This paragraph is from The New York Times Magazine's long (and quite good, mostly) story on the band The Arcade Fire, published (I think) this Sunday (note the word I've bolded):

Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Will Butler, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, Sarah Neufeld — all of them crowding together, massaging one another’s shoulders like actors in the school play and grabbing for empty plates so that Liza can dole out steaming ladles of pasta from her ginormous pot — this is the Arcade Fire, born in Montreal, soon to play London, New York and 5,000-seat venues in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm and Berlin, perhaps the biggest sensation right now on the world indie-music scene.

Since when is "ginormous" an official, acceptable word? I can see using it if you're a 15-year-old girl and you're writing about, I dunno, the birthday cake you saw MTV's My Super Sweet Sixteen ... but The NY Times? And I know that the writer is writing about a band and not, say, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan ... but I just can't see using it in respectable writing, no matter the topic.

And so: ginormous = officially banned. I shan't have it used again. NY Times: you've been warned.

Chuck Berry

Wikipedia, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Way #1***:

In 1990 [Chuck] Berry was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the ladies' bathrooms at two of his St. Louis restaurants. A class action settlement was eventually reached with 59 women on the complaint. Berry's biographer, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. A Miami purveyor of celebrity sex videos is currently marketing video footage purporting to show Berry urinating on a young woman in a bathtub. Although the voice sounds similar to Berry's his face is never visible on the tape, making positive identification impossible.

What I want to know is, to whom is this video being marketed? The weird Venn diagram overlap of sexual deviants and 50's rock 'n' roll enthusiasts? I dunno man.

***Courtesy of J.B. Gordon

Open Letter

Dear The Weather,

Hi, how've you been? Good to see you back in New York, but could you maybe lay off the monsoon season until oh, I dunno, April or so? You're kind of messing stuff up for everybody.

Take care,

Hunter

Spring's tipping point

Every year spring comes and I feel like I’m winning a prize for a contest I didn’t enter.

That’s a gift, man; April’s not the cruelest month—or at least it all depends on one’s perspective. At any rate, I’m psyched for the upcoming seasons. My analysts are predicting good things.

But so: anybody in NYC looking for stuff to do this summer? We get older and busier and scheduling becomes necessity. Here are some ideas:

Catch a game on Coney Island, with the amusement park as whimsical backdrop

See Shakespeare performed in the park, with blinking planes flying over

See a show in one of New York's great pools, built by the WPA in the '30s

More TK.

Burn the Arcade

This post is about the Arcade Fire. Did anyone catch them on Saturday Night Live? They (along with The Office's Rainn Wilson, who is maybe the weirdest-looking guy ever), were amazing. The band played two songs, "Intervention" and "Keep the Car Running," and after the show apparently played three more songs for cast and crew.

Here are some links if anyone is interested. I highly recommend their first album, Funeral; their new album, called Neon Bible, is out March 6th ... I'm really excited for it.

The Arcade Fire in Concert (courtesy of NPR).

MP3s of the two songs broadcast on SNL; "Intervention" is particularly breathtaking (courtesy of the blog Six Eyes).

In other news, last night on PBS I caught the documentary about the Brooklyn Bridge ... I'd seen it before, but last night watching it was just as good. The documentary documents the building of the bridge, which was completed, if you can believe it, in 1883; and then has commentary from a number of historians and critics and what-not. One guy, David McCullough, who is the author of many books, most notably and recently 1776 and John Adams, had this to say:

"The Brooklyn Bridge makes one feel better about being alive."

I wholeheartedly agree.

Meet the Gyroball

In today's NY Times, there's an entertaining article about a new type of (baseball) pitch being thrown (mostly) by Japanese pitchers, including two that have signed to the Red Sox and the Yankees: the gyroball. Apparently, though, the Japanese have another name for it:

Tezuka sought out a Japanese computer scientist, Ryutaro Himeno, to test his theory. They published a book in 2001 called “Makyuu no Shoutai.” Translated, the title of the book means, “Secrets of the Demon Miracle Pitch.”

That reminds me of the time on NewsRadio (the TV show) when the boss wrote a "How I Succeeded in Business and How You Can, Too" sort of book and had it translated into Japanese. Translated, the title became Feel My Skills Donkey Donkey Donkey Donkey Donkey.

Today

I am beginning to feel like this:

"I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"

That's from this, one of the best ever.

There Are Two Types & A Tip

There are two types of men in this world: those who will, every once in awhile, buy a comic book -- just to see what Superman or the X-Men are up to these days -- and those who not only would never think to do such a thing, but would probably disdain the practice to boot.

Suffice it to say, you'd do well to keep a healthy distance from the latter.

Also, a tip: don't ever get the fucking flu. I swear, if a killer flu ever develops, we're all screwed. I've been at death's door since Thursday night.

That said, if you do get the flu, get Tamiflu (prescription only), an antiviral drug. That shit works wonders. Or it seems to. Maybe it did nothing. But if felt like it did something, like smoothed my getting-better, kept it trending upward.

Oh, and I think I accidentally quit smoking. We'll see. As Mark Twain said, "Quitting smoking is easy ... I've done it hundreds of times."

Risky Kiss with Money Honey

That subject line's cribbed from The New York Post, which today has a story about Maria Bartiromo, a hottie financial anchor for CNBC who has lately been embroiled in a sort of pay-for-play thing with Citigroup RE: free jet travel, and her teenage years in Brooklyn. It sounds like it's made-up, but I guess it isn't. I kept waiting for the Van Buren Boys to make an appearance.

Run, Franken, Run!

Good news today from Minnesota: Al Franken is running for the Senate.

Run, Franken, Run!

Yacht Rock

OK:

1. Open iTunes. Go to the Music Store.
2. Search for "Yacht Rock."
3. When the search screen comes up, scroll down and find "Yacht Rock" under iTunes Essentials, on the left side of the screen. Click on it.
   
4. When Yacht Rock opens up, first thrill to the mocking sensuality of the paragraph under "The Basics" -- "time to open a bottle of rose and prepare for the smooth" -- and then click on the "Complete Set" tab.
5. When the Complete Set opens, scroll down and play track 24, "Breezin'," by George Benson.
6. I swear to god this is what they play on the Weather Channel when they're showing the forecast for multiple cities at once.
   

Bad News

Bad news today from Utah -- a "lone gunman," as The New York Times had it, killed five in a shooting spree at an historic mall in Salt Lake City.

The scenes, story, and phrases are all the same -- lone gunman, shooting spree, hail of gunfire, no expression; the typical banality of a mall in the evening transformed into something hyper-real by one (obviously) disturbed person. But certain details sometimes get one: like the photo on the front page of CNN.com this morning of a face-up dead girl (it'll probably be gone by the time you read this), or the detail reported in The Times, in which a man who was visiting his wife at the children's clothing store she managed heard the shots, barricaded themselves in the store, and then heard a single police officer shout, "Police! Drop your weapon!" before a volley of gunfire rang out, killing the attacker.

My condolences to all of the victims and their families.

As Adam Zagajewski wrote, in a poem published in The New Yorker the week after 9/11, "Try to praise the mutilated world."

That poem comforted me then; I'll post it here now.

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Your Seinfeldian Observation for the Day

So what is the deal with all these people walking around town wearing hats that look like the dog van driven by Jeff Daniels' character in Dumb & Dumber?

***UPDATE***: I have been informed that the above observation has already appeared on sites such as Gawker.com and Fashionista.something-or-other (I won't link to these because they are stupid). Nevertheless, I maintain that I came up with this on my own, even if it appeared elsewhere on the Internets first.

Intermission

Work has been very busy, and so not so many blogs recently.

This, though, is one of my new favorite things: clocky.

It runs away and hides when it's time for you to wake up!

Up with Hope, Down with Cars!

I just came across a fantastic op-ed from The NY Times called "The City That Never Walks," by Robert Sullivan. (Here's the link.) It concerns the car and New York City, which seem to be locked in a bitter, to-the-death embrace. Sullivan recommends dumping the car.

He writes:

For the past two decades, New York has been an inspiration to other American cities looking to revive themselves. Yes, New York had a lot of crime, but somehow it also still had neighborhoods, and a core that had never been completely abandoned to the car. Lately, though, as far as pedestrian issues go, New York is acting more like the rest of America, and the rest of America is acting more like the once-inspiring New York.

I could not agree more with the rest of his piece. Sullivan has the issue dead to rights, proposing a simple solution to the car problem in the city: closing off streets to cars. Because, as has been proven (see Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead), more roads does not equal better-flowing and lighter traffic; rather, and paradoxically, it means More Cars.

Sullivan's right, too, about other cities behaving more like NYC, and vice versa: being in Denver and Austin, it was easy to see how more and more of the city was being given over to pedestrians, as the downtowns of those cities were rehabilitated and spruced up as people began to return from the suburbs to the city. I think, and Sullivan touches on this in his piece, that the reason NYC has this attitude is in fact because it was never abandoned at all; the people never went away from the city, and so neither did the cars; the cars go where the people are. And because there was never a significant reduction in the population density of Manhattan, there was never a concurrent reduction in traffic, leading to a state of affairs in which, when people began to return to the city, it was easy (or easier) to say, well, why don't we just give over the 16th Street Mall in Denver, or 6th Street in Austin, to pedestrians? There aren't any cars choking those streets anyway.

New York hasn't evolved that way. The city was never depopulated by people decamping to the suburbs, and so was never depopulated by cars, either. The number (and here I'm assuming, but I'm sure it must be true) of cars just kept growing, leading to a situation in which it is more often than not much quicker to walk along, say, 14th Street, than take the bus. The same is true for many major NY thoroughfares: 34th Street, 42nd Street, Broadway; even many smaller streets down in the Village.

What I, personally, would like to see done is this: ban all automobiles (at least from Manhattan) that aren't buses, taxis, or delivery trucks. Does this sound fascist to some of you readers? Maybe it does. But consider the fact that Mayor Bloomberg, a few years ago, banned all smoking in public places in New York. Just banned it. No vote, no nothing. Does that sound fascist to you? I wager, considering most people's current opinion of smoking, that it does not. And it doesn't me, either, because it's for the common good of the people. Banning automobiles from Manhattan would also be for the common good of the people -- it's just that so many people are addicted to automobiles that it's hard to get them to give it up. (Perhaps the tobacco analogy's more apt than I originally thought.)

But so: take a look at Sullivan's article, linked above and also again here right now, and let me know what you think. Do other readers out there in TV Land share my passionate hatred of (at least within the confines of the city) the automobiles, which, if we're not careful, will kill us all?

Let Me Tell You About the Way to Harefield

From the power or telephone line that formerly had a number of pairs of shoes slung over it, there are two easy ways to get to Harefield Road, on Metropolitan Avenue between Graham Avenue and Humboldt Street. The first is to walk east between the scary delis along Jackson, taking a left on Woodpoint and then a right on Metropolitan. Passing this way you'll pass a number of points of interest, including, on your right, a church (Catholic, I assume), at which, after the February 3rd services, there will be a blessing of the throat; a large apartment building called The Point, which is a monstrosity; a small, cave-like shrine to the Virgin Mary that is always filled with burning candles, even in the morning; and, more prosaically, a White Castle.

For those of you out there in TV Land who are unaware, the White Castle is a terrible fast-food establishment that serves delicious "sliders," or very small hamburgers, about 2 inches square. I have read them described as "wet, tasty little morsels," and that's as accurate a description as any. Forgive the vulgarity, but they wreak havoc on your insides. For those of you in the South, think Krystal, but more suspect.

Used to be, the White Castle's "dining room" was open 24 hours a day, though this changed a few months ago so that now only the drive-thru (which cannot, and I speak from personal experience, be utilized on foot) is open 24 hours a day; the interior closes at midnight I believe.

Which is probably a good thing. Once a friend and I, both overserved and, hence, desirous of White Castle, hatched a plan while wolfing down sliders, to steal one of the old-timey (from the 1950s, maybe) White Castle ads that were framed and hanging on the wall. We had the whole thing down pat: I would create a distraction while my friend lifted the poster and walked out the door toward my apartment. It was foolproof -- or so we thought.

But others, apparently, had had the same impulse -- the poster turned out to be hot-glued to the wall, and we were forced to walk away empty-handed, with a belly full of sliders and a head full of booze.

White Castle, 781 Metropolitan Avenue, open 24 hrs, dining room closes @ midnight. Avoid the Church's chicken, which is also sold there.

Let Me Tell You About the Shoes on the Line

One block south of the laundromat, on the corner of Jackson Street and Kingsland Avenue, are two bodegas (aka convenience stores, delis, Quik-E Marts, etc.), both of which are kind of bad and scary, and which I usually don't patronize if I can help it. But between and above the two delis is a power or telephone line that runs between two telephone poles, and over which (at least until very recently) hung many—I'm talking like 40, minimum—pairs of sneakers and shoes. The line was heavy with them, and it was kind of a sight to see, especially in the right light. I kept meaning to take a picture of all the shoes for my friend Paulo, who's a fan of shoes-over-power-or-telephone-lines, but I kept putting it off and now they're gone—but coming back: today there were two pair.

But what do shoes-over-power-or-telephone-lines mean? There are many schools of thought. Here are a few. If these offend anyone, I apologize; but I didn't write it—I only link to it.

Let Me Tell You About What's Disheartening

Waking up and checking the temperature and finding that someone's misplaced the other digit.

Let Me Tell You About My Laundromat

Continuing south along Kingsland Avenue from George's Deli, passing the 102/104/106 block of houses, you'll soon pass, a few blocks away and on the west side of the street, a supermarket. Just south of here is my laundromat.

The laundromat, which has large banks of shiny silver washers and dryers, is also a drycleaning and wash 'n' fold place -- which latter service I most often use. The couple that runs (and, I assume, owns) the laundromat are Korean, and are obviously first-generation, as they speak very little English. They are a grey-haired, spectacles-wearing man and a delicate, fine-boned woman, both of whom always seem to have the hint or beginnings of a smile on their faces, even though they work what appears to be 12+ hours a day, seven days a week. They have begun teaching me, intermittently, how to say a few things in Korean, including hello and goodbye. Apparently to say hello and goodbye in Korean you start by saying the same word, "Annyong" (this may be familiar to some TV viewers out there) and then pairing that with another word, which in the case of hello is "Gah-say-oh" (I think) and in the case of goodbye is "Kah-say-oh." I could, however, be entirely off on this latter word of the construction, and I think I am, as, like I said, their English isn't so great and my Korean's worse.

But their son's English is fine. I don't quite know how he came from these two small people, as he's a Yao Ming-looking fellow, tall and solid, but he did. He helps out in the laundromat from time to time, though obviously he has school to attend. He's confident and clearly smart, always very approachable in the laundromat. Or, rather, he approaches you.

And the thing is, is that in this laundromat is the American dream in microcosm: two Korean immigrants, relatively fresh off the boat, running a laundromat with little English and their son going to school. He will go to college and get a degree, perhaps somewhere in the city, and his children will not work in a laundromat, and will all go to college. They will probably talk like Americans, and will sound strange to their mannered, immigrant grandparents -- but their grandparents will be proud nevertheless, if a bit mystified by these children, so close yet so far away from them.

Wash 'n' fold service (same day) is 80 cents a pound; there is a $5 extra charge for large comforters and blankets. Open 7 days/week, 6am to 8pm, closed Sundays at 6pm.

This Is George's Deli

On the corner of Kingsland Avenue and Division Place, one block south of the Lettuce Factory, is George’s Deli—or, as the sign above the shop would have it, Geo g ’s D li. George’s is run by a guy called Carmine, and is of the oldest school, an Italian joint that sells the staples: Entenmann’s pastries, the New York Post, Manhattan Special espresso soda, Perrier, and sandwiches—breakfast in the morning and Italian until the place closes, at the throwback hour of 6pm.

The best breakfast sandwich would have to be the bacon, egg and cheese, with extra hot sauce (that last part’s me)—though the potato, egg and peppers hero also sounds tasty. As for lunch and later, the Godfather is the way to go: for just five dollars, you get a sub built for two, piled with all manner of salami, prosciutto, and other Italian meats I can’t name, along with marinated hot peppers, mozzarella, oil, vinegar, lettuce, and tomato.

Beyond being a deli, George’s is also a butcher, and many’s been the summer day when my friends and I of the Kingsland Territories have purchased hot dogs and hamburgers for grilling (not barbecuing, as many Northerners would incorrectly have it) on the grill in the backyard of 104 Kingsland Ave, which was the first state admitted into the union. The burgers are good, but they are of the pre-made variety, and therefore cannot beat the ground beef, fresh and perfect for burger-making, of Graham Ave’s Model T Butcher.

This latter—sawdust-scattered and ripe—will be featured shortly in these pages. For now, though, head down to George’s with a hungry friend and ask for the Godfather.

Let Me Tell You About the Weather in My Neighborhood

Special Weather Advisory for the Kingsland Territories:

Expect light snow flurries this morning, slowing but continuing into the afternoon. Purple-blue light, like a bruise, will be evident over Manhattan. Snow will likely accumulate on the tops of the trucks of the Lettuce Factory, and will seem, when seen from high windows, to form down quilts on those tops, due to the snow arranging itself in patterns according to the ridges on the trucks' crowns. Expect a wet but enjoyable walk to work, due to the unique way in which a snowfall makes one notice details of one's neighborhood one hadn't before. High temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit, low of 27. Current temp 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Let Me Tell You About My Neighborhood

My neighborhood, which is a part of the larger fiefdom of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is enclosed by Kingsland Avenue and Woodpoint Road, to the east; Grand Street, to the south; and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, or the BQE, which crosses Grand at the southwest corner and Kingsland at the northeast corner, forming a lumpy scalene triangle.

The primary thoroughfares in this neighborhood, which for the sake of argument let’s call the Kingsland Territories, are Graham and Metropolitan avenues, which form a cross that is inscribed within this triangle.

Now that you’re oriented, I’ll begin.

The Lettuce Factory

The Lettuce Factory, on the corner of Kingsland Avenue and Beadel Street, is not really a factory; however, a great quantity of lettuce and other fruits and vegetables are ferried daily into and out of it. The lettuce arrives via big trucks in the early morning, and is stored at the factory until other smaller trucks or vans take it away, which happens throughout the day, but most frenetically in, again, the early morning.

Workforce-wise, the Lettuce Factory is staffed by, according to my rough count, equal numbers of Mexicans and Asians. Each group seems to have their own boss, and neither mixes with the other. The Asians keep much more to themselves at the Factory, but I’ve become friends with a few of the Mexicans—most notably their leader, a jolly, somewhat rotund fellow with black hair and a black mustache who, every morning when I pass the Factory on my way to work, says to me, “Hello, my friend!” And I answer back similarly, usually accompanied by a salute. He’s begun to salute back. On weekends, when we both have a bit more time to kill (the Lettuce Factory is open seven days a week, and my friend, the Leader of the Mexicans, seems to be there for each one of them), I stop and we chat for awhile about this and that. I’ve told him of my love for tacos, and once he told me he wanted to take me up into Queens, where he lives, for really good tacos. This has yet to happen, but I remain optimistic that it may yet.

I said above that the Mexicans and Asians seem to not associate much, and to work more next to each other than with each other (which, I dunno, could be true; it could be two Lettuce Factories in one, for all I know). That’s true, but once it wasn’t. This summer, during the World Cup, I would walk by the Lettuce Factory in the hot afternoon, and the Mexicans and Asians would all be gathered—arms folded, gaze intent—in the dark and cool of the Factory interior, which is open to the street via a big bay door, and through which one can often see boxes of veggies and fruits stacked to the ceiling, watching soccer on a small, rabbit-eared television.

That’s the story of the Lettuce Factory. Tune in soon for my neighborhood’s next room.

Most jokes are not funny ...

... but most punch lines are.

To wit:

Recently I was referred to a website, topic irrelevant, which at the bottom of its page had a link to a "Joke of the Day." I clicked on this link and was very disappointed by the quality of these jokes, which were all collected from their "Joke of the Day" status in a big list.

Scrolling through these so-called "jokes," though, I noticed the punch lines of each, when read by themselves, were pretty funny. Herewith, I present a collection of these.

• The old man looked at his wife and said, "This is all your fault. If it weren't for your bran muffins, I could have been here ten years ago!"
• I think it must have been those bastards at the Post Office.
• "Nothing important, sir," the airman replied, "I'm just here to hook up your telephone."
• "I don't know why YOU do it," says the old woman, "but I never had a pan that was large enough!"
• Probably wasn't the same elephant.
• "Well," Boudreaux says, "neither did I, until you shined that light in her face".
• Billy Bob says, "This year I'm taking Earlene with me."
• "Yes, I know you did," said the blonde," but we had money left over---so now we're going to Sea World.
• Get off the children's carousel and, next time, don't drink so much!
• The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I'll send you to the electric chair."
• Frustrated, the man answered, "Put that @#$ cat on the phone, I'm lost and need directions!"

And finally, and perhaps most sublimely:

• To this day, he has no idea how she figured out he was in the furniture business.

I knew they got dolled up, but this is ridiculous

Yesterday morning I read this article on CNN.com: Nipple covers, hair and other red carpet secrets. I really had no idea. I mean, I knew that many went to great lengths to get dressed up for the Oscars and other such awards shows -- but I had no idea at all that it was like this: a "body-enhancing airbrush tan," which adds muscle definition (as well as, of course, tan-ness) where there is none; botox, "which paralyzes overactive glands to temporaily stop sweating"; and hairnet-enclosed piles of hair clippings, which are stuffed into chignons and other updos, in order to give the illusion of extra volume.

Are these not the most insane activities you've ever heard of? Makes me feel not so bad for trying on, oh, I dunno, three jackets before I go out. At any rate: anyone who has ever felt inferior compared to the beauty of those who walk the red carpet should read the linked article above -- it really puts the lie to how physically perfect so many of these celebrities seem.

Bouncing color balls

Here's a link to an ad for the Sony BRAVIA, which I think is some sort of new LCD TV ... I actually don't really care what it's for, but it's a really cool ad, of thousands of bouncy color balls being bounced down a San Francisco street. Well worth a watch.

For Pete's sake, let the Rabbit eat some goddamn cereal already

Don't ask me how I navigated to this:

From Wikipedia, typo sic:

During the U.S. presidential election of 1976, General Mills launched a campaign to find out if the Rabbit should finally get some Trix. Children wrote letters to General Mills and voted 99% in favor of allowing the Rabbit to eat a bowl of ceral. In an advertisment released after the voting had ended, the Rabbit was awarded an entire bowl of Trix. However, when he asked for more, the children told him to "wait till the next election."

The bolded part is just sublime.

Minimum wage

Yesterday the newly Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill that would, in three increments over the next 26 months, raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. Cheers to the Dems; it's been far too long (10 years, in fact—and can you guess who was president when the last increase was put into effect?) since the minimum wage was raised.

Did you know ...

• ... That the first country to enact a minimum wage law was New Zealand, in 1896?
• ... That the U.S. federal minimum wage was established in 1938, at $0.25 an hour?
• ... That the "highest" the U.S. min wage has ever been was in 1968, at $1.60 an hour (= $9.12 an hour in 2005 dollars)?

The people at McDonald's, the people at Dunkin' Donuts, the people who serve you lunch, pump your gas, and so on deserve better. They work just as hard, if not harder, than the people on yearly salary, and with worse (or no) benefits, to boot. Congrats to the 110th Congress for getting started off on the right foot; now let's hope the Senate—and of course the president—will see this much-deserved and overdue increase through.

Update

The Onion had a good little "local news" thing today:

BROOKLYN, NY—In day 126 of an ongoing situation, the market on the corner of Dekalb and St. Felix continues not to carry soy milk.

Really a horrible situation for all concerned. My heart goes out to the hipster families affected.

Flickr

Here is a link to my Flickr page, which has a few pictures from my time on the Ice and a number of pictures of people from my office, my friends, and also my family when we were in Tahoe. Also there are rainbows, which we saw in a valley outside of Tahoe one morning.

I bought some magnets

That's right, magnets. And, as is kind of typical for me, I totally went overboard and bought these magnets, which I received in the mail yesterday and are so strong they're a little scary.

But they sure do hold pictures on the fridge. Maybe even, I dunno, small animals on the fridge. Scrap metal, that sort of thing.

Back (again) from hiatus

I was again on hiatus, in Tahoe, skiing (5%) and gambling (95%). Now I'm not any more.

Check out this crazy story (from various sources, though this version comes from Gothamist) about a guy who yesterday in Manhattan jumped onto the subway tracks to save another guy from getting run over by the train. He held him down in the well between the rails as the train roared over them—can you believe that? Neither suffered serious injuries. Incredible.

Also, in unrelated inappropriate trivia, which part of a cell (y'know, the biology kind) sounds like a Russian sex toy?

That's right: the Golgi apparatus.