Raindrops keep falling on our heads

Why is it that what ever I’m reading soon becomes news? Must be my narcissism.

I began my second read of a terribly wonderful, but difficult and long book, “The Broom of the System”, three weeks ago. I hadn’t picked it up since the time I finished it first, around 1990.

Then the author, David Foster Wallace, hangs himself. (Google it)

Thanks for the inspiration, dude.

The bulk of the novel takes place in Shaker Heights, OH, near Cleveland. How many stories are placed in that setting?

None.

So who goes ahead and dies today?

The most famous man Shaker Heights ever produced. Paul Newman.

Yes, that Paul Newman, the maker of Butch Cassidy’s Spaghetti Sauce and renowned movie star.

My mom is gonna be sad.

Seismic

There used to be three kinds of narratives: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, man meets whale.

Add one more to the continental drift of ideas: Plane hits building.

This is my job

OK, I’m working on the contact lense thing. The theme is comfort. What would happen if you saw an ad that read “The IRIS in your EYE is SMILING”? Get it?

I’ll go back to the drawing board.

Eye contact

I got nuthin. Maybe an iris a shade less gray...

I have nothing to offer this week as far as keeping up with me is concerned. Not that there’s anyone keeping up with me. Not that there’s anyone concerned.

Camouflaged myself this week in a cloak of visibility. Where eyes can’t find me.

I was loud, boisterous and conspicuous. So that those who listen could hear.

I also apparently happened to utter one of the funniest lines in the history of pharma advertising.

The mere recall of the line still sends Heather into uncontrollable fits of hysterics. At the time of its utterance, I thought she and Alyssa were going to loose all sense of conference call decorum and bark out guttural feminine hyena noises at a telephone thankfully switched on mute.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard while sustaining eye contact with two friends simultaneously ever in my life.

Let’s put it this way: Two very smart people, Heather and Alyssa, almost wet their pants at a smart ass comment I made during a conference call. It made the first half of the week worthwhile. Which is code for saying it was barely bearable.

I don’t know how or why I laughed. I was thinking of Ann. She’s going through the toughest of times. And guess who’s supposed to be in Orlando next weekend?

The second half of the week wasn’t quite as funny, but just as noisy. I’m beginning to realize that volume equals respect.

So I just yell all day (not at people, just in general, as in: “Where’s my pen?!”, “Who has the ad?!”, or the always popular, “Who’s going to get us coffee?—I’ll buy!”)

And when I don’t yell I daydream of silence and plan out periods of quiet time that never happen.

I was actually tapped this week to work on world famous Saatchi CONSUMER CREATIVE—probably because of my newly realized strategy of being conspicuous. Stupidly, they think I’m smart.

I was granted the privilege of taking the elevator all the way to the top floor, just to find that they are just as clueless as we are, but with a sadistic edge.

How sadistic? They asked me to work on their stuff over the weekend. Thanks, bitches!

Does anyone know anything about contact lenses? I don’t. And now I have to be an expert on them. By tomorrow.

Virgin and scale equinox

I like the fact that my birthday bridges summer and fall.

I am curious about its astrological significance.

If you look close, you’d be surprised at how often the number 22 shows up with seeming randomness. (Not including this accompanying piece of swipe art.) I mean it in one's daily doings. Last year I went on a trip to Boston, Ft. Lauderdale and Denver. It started on the 22 of the month. I had a seat in the 22nd row twice (curses to coach). I had a hotel room beginning or ending in 22 three times. My dinner tab came to $220 one night. I received 22 voice mails while traveling. Two of my flights (at different airports) began at gate 22. An other flight was numbered 222. And this was just one trip, one series of events I recall to illustrate my point. It happens alot. At least to me.

So often so, it might as well be etched in concrete.

Deck hand

Heard a phrase today that I've never heard before. Suits me well. Not to mention a ton of people I know. It might be one of those common phrases that everyone but me has heard and that I might be embarrassed to divulge.

It goes like this:

You don't need a full deck (of cards) to play a good hand.

Kinda sums me up not so bad.

You?

Carnival in Lower Manhattan

Went to San Generro this week, for what was supposed to be a one-hour lunch. For those of you who don’t know, the San Generro Festival is a pretty big deal here in NYC.

It’s like a giant Italian carnival in lower Manhattan. Sausage and peppers for all. Canolli for all. Pizza and pasta for all. Six bucks a plate.

Not to mention the possibility of a flesh and blood mob hit.

Lauren, Caroline and I walked Spring St., crossed Broadway and hit Mulberry on Thursday afternoon. We met some ex-coworkers for socializing.

Three hours later, we were full of food, had ingested a good amount of beer and wine and found ourselves staggering back across town to Houston St. I’ll tell a tiny bit of the story…

After meeting our friends, we had a serious dining decision to make. We deviated from the norm.

Instead of the usual mode of ordering up some sausage and pepper sandwiches and scarfing them down while circled around a garbage can, we went high class. We got a table at a sidewalk place.

“Table for seven, please.”

The staff took us to heart as non-tourists and gave us a pimp seat front and center. We ordered Poroni’s and baked clams in return. While getting fixated on the scene the maitre’d came to me. With the warning of an impending fake nun.

“She comes by all the time,” he said, “scamming people of money.”

Being technically Catholic, I put on my nun goggles. Sure enough, a minute later this lady dressed in black, wearing Reeboks and hoisting a faux Coach purse comes to our table urging us to “Give to the poor children”. Everyone reaches for their wallets but me. I shouted, abruptly—and to the point of garnering the attention of half a block—“Don’t give her a penny. She’s not a nun.”

For a split second, you would have thought I was the devil himself. But she just smiled, gave me a wicked stare and moved on. We ordered another round or beers instead of giving to a fake nun’s fund.

TGIFNY (Thank God I’m From New York) trumps WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) always, everywhere.


One of the things that happens a lot more than one would think in a city of 7 million people is the fun of running into friends, happenstance. Six of us met at San Generro. Seven of us went to lunch. Why? We bumped into a wandering Justin. Which was weird because…

The woman who inherited his cube announced her resignation just before lunch. Something about that cube that ejects people from Saatchi. Justin, Tommy and now Lauren.

She’s going slightly uptown. I was devastated by the news.

She is good, and I don’t know if I have the patience and energy to break in yet a third copywriter this year.

Ugh.

Plus, Lauren loves to laugh even more than I. That’s unusual. Especially considering that we share a similar bawdy sense of humor.

She makes work fun. That’s a rare commodity.

Nothing like a 20-minute walk with a body brimming with booze to wind up a Thursday.

And then to try to tell of it Friday but barely capturing a glint of the spectrum of the day.

I’m going with Salinger on this one. There is no “The End”.

She attacks me with a knowing grin. She sees the rockstar in my presence. Points for the rich video girl. She knows how to get a smile with her eyes. BFD.

River seemingly between us?

Scott Weiland Complex – Punch drunk and without bail.

Finally home. The ordeal reached beyond the city bounds.

How does one communicate with a woman who does not communicate?

We go crazy in congregation, we only get better one by one. Think about that.

What did I know?

I asked someone not to look back. As if I were a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

(Take into account, this is pretty much all in reference to a Jean-Baptiste video...) And that my birthday is not this coming Monday, but the next. 22.






The following reference for the above mentioned pulse of memory will delight my friend, Lauren...though I am not or never was a "Deadhead"...and am a part of a generation distantly disconnected with the as about to be mentioned influence...


Wiki:
(After a mid-way instrumental break is perhaps the song's most famous lyric: "Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac." This image of once-countercultural Deadheads driving establishment status symbol Cadillacs immediately connected with Henley's age group, and neatly encapsulated the song's feelings of loss and aging.[original research?] It is rumored that this line was inspired by Henley seeing Joe Walsh driving a Cadillac with a Deadhead sticker on it while on Sunset Boulevard.[citation needed])

In a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone, Henley explained that the song is more about nostalgia, and questioning the past[1]—a recurring theme in Henley's lyrics (cf. The End of the Innocence, and Taking You Home)

The music video to "The Boys of Summer" is a French New Wave-influenced piece directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot completely in black-and-white, it shows the 'main character' of the song at three different stages of life (as a young boy, a young adult and middle-aged), in each case reminiscing about the past relationship. This is shown during the line "A little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back" at which point, each of the three people look back in turn.

Nine Twelve

How many hotel rooms have I slept in over the past decade?

And I couldn’t spend a night, or a part thereof, in a borough other than Manhattan tonight?

I practically live here. It’s not that I’m tired—we all are this week. Why?

Because 9-11 sucks for everyone. Let alone those who work but a mile from ground zero. And all we do is imagine the hell it must be for those closer than us. How many friends did you lose that gorgeous, sunny morning?

I have a whole fucking series of stories to tell pivoted around those frozen moments that still hold keys to the future.

Maybe that’s the answer to the question. Too many vacant hotel nights leave one jaded to the possibilities of a sudden quiet dark. Or the loud dark, as the Lower East Side would be tonight, even in the rain.

All I had to do was go out for a drink. But I was needed on set, couldn’t go wander. Why didn’t I invite her here?

I felt the sensation of dust settling. Finally. After breathing it in for 7 years.

Forget that I’ve been up at 5 AM for the past 3 days, forget that I’ve barely made it back to RB by 11PM any night this week. Forget that I tried to go to bed before 1 AM last night, but made the mistake of keeping the tele on. The channels replayed 9-11 as it happened.

Reliving mourning is no way to go through the night.

I wanted to again meet RR, but not be a stranger to my bed.

But I can’t have it all my way.

I’m in Manhattan. She’s a 10 minute walk and a 15 minute subway ride away. 25 minutes at most.

I want to put it all together for her—she’s pretty, cool, and pretty cool. But I feel a million miles away. Even with WiFi.

Devouring tempo and heat

There was a time not too long ago when the Fine Young Cannibals song “She Drives Me Crazy” took a foothold in my consciousness. It was for none of the below mentioned girlfriends. It was kind of in general.

It had a wickedly effective drum and bass and rhythm guitar groove.

The song made me horny.

Their rendition of, “Suspicious Minds”, the 7 minute dance mix, had sort of the same effect. Plus, it was a particularly inventive Elvis cover.

When I say “not too long ago”, I’m being ambiguous with purpose.

1 year, 5 years, 10, 15? Who is to judge?

When I say the songs made me breathe the accelerated shallow depth of deep passion, I am not not being purposely ambiguous.

The yearning desire for passion inherent in both do not pass me by. And still do not, to this day. I think “Suspicious Minds” can be adopted into a dramatic, expressive 4/8 passionate profile tango with ease and pressing passion on the empty floor of an atelier. With a woman willing to tango in a dark room heated and lit with a fireplace three centuries old. Our silhouettes cast in dark shadow against an orange glow-- ambiguity in contrast with illumination.

Yet another reason why the United Nations should meet at a bar

PK said:
Stay away from the Mexican fighting tequila. Actually, that might be a cool name for a brand of tequila. We could mix the distilled juice of the agave with absinthe and Nyquil. Then sell it at carnivals.

I said that a few months ago. Imagine if we invented a united tequila, wine and martini thing? There'd either be peace or puke. Either way, we'd have a few noisy nights and then some desperately needed quiet days.

In spite of myself...

Vous ne voulez pas être un idiot américain

Why? Have you watched les conventions de notre politique?

Both, pathetic.

Où est notre mieux la nature?

Forgive my French, it is terrible.

Who else though, are our brothers of independence? Who else arms with the red, white and blue like we do? Where did Ben Franklin write the preamble? Paris! What country grew with momentum as we americain entered the world stage?

Why I can never be the Vice President

My history is hazy. My July experiences testify to that. As do a few March days worthy of note. Not to mention one February moment and an October incident, both well within this decade of indiscriminate incrimination. and each documented somewhere on this world wide public diary thing.

Otherwise, I am eminently qualified.

The following 6 human beings/or groups thereof would probably testify in my defense...

I will defer to the testimony of my baseball coach circa 1991. He still remembers that two strike line shot up the middle I hit while batting lefty when he was thinking I was just another righty power schlump 3rd baseman with a hole in his glove. (How do I know he remembers it? Met him by chance in a go-go bar and he began to ignore the boobs. Probably took him 3 or 4 rounds before I started noticing he was time-suspended in the early 90’s.)

Cut to a few years later.

I will defer to the testimony of my voice teacher circa 1995 (she thought I was a one note wonder before she finally learned to play “Disarm” on piano.) Her hands danced on that keyboard while patiently waiting months for me to deliver. She’s the one who gave birth to a new low tenor. She birthed my voice from some kind of musical uterus, covered in Spaghetti-Os and baritone octave triplete'. Kudos to her for refining what I have since let rot.

Cut to a few years earlier (time is not linear, no matter what the voice inside your head says.)

I will defer to my writing teacher, Dr. Cole, who caught me doing something bad with a girlfriend in a hallway and helped me to realize that there was more to life than a buzz. He asked me to take his classes. This man, the most pre-eminent doctor on campus, wanted me in his classes. At least he made it seem that way. That was all I needed. From there on, I was cool, GPA-wise. Somewhat…

I will defer to a woman in Florida who squeezed me like toothpaste a few years ago to see if I had a face to go with the brain. I don’t have either. But that was never the point…

I will defer to the lead singer in the main band I was a member of in the 90’s. This gentleman was a huge Stones fan, a bass guitar player who made sure we had an anchoring groove. Bass and drums. Key to most everything we all dance to. We played a weird mix of covers and originals. Gorilla-Zilla was our signature tune. He actually had the audacity to say that I was the best drummer he ever jammed with. Jeez, he was kind.

I will defer to my surfing friends who were there the night I epically crashed. They had seen me ride in the 12-footers of seasons past. Then they saw me concussed, cut from my wetsuit by EMTs and poured into an ambulance, body blue and limp from a lack of oxygen. They saw a ghost get up and bust out of the hospital to go to work that very Monday.
(No longer blue, more like a sweet bleeding peach now that 6 months have passed.)
With Hurricane Hanna coming, I’m eager to get back out there. They vow to make me wear a hockey helmet. Fuck them.

I have had the kind of life experiences that will prohibit me, in this current climate, of ever holding a high community office.

Sometimes we’re meant for others. Sometimes others are meant for us. We absorb what time and space grant.

I have enjoyed success and failure in athletics, music, love and art, thus…

…I can never be the Vice President, so…

…so instead I will file a patent for the planet earth and draw royalties from those who use it.