Listening Post

Zero 7's Simple Things is one of my favorite albums of all time. Not only does its almost indescribably lovely chill seem to transport the listener to someplace very far away, it always transports me back to one very specific and brief era of my life: New York City, in the comedown after months of psychic tumult covering 9/11. This kind of listening-for-nostalgia generally violates a credo I have about music, but in this case I'll let it slide. Zero 7's stuff is sonically atmospheric, so it makes sense that it evokes such very clear imagery in my mind. It's almost sense memory.

While 2003's When It Falls came very close to matching Simple Things's wondrous soundscapes, nothing released since by the band has done that much for me. It's not bad -- it's just not, with the exception of one or two songs with José González on vocals, what I fell in love with.

After a long wait, Zero 7 now has a new single they've just released and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It's a good song -- I mean that. I still wonder, though, whether it's a good Zero 7 song, at least when compared to their songs of ten years ago.

Here's Don't Call It Love.

Third Rail

Today's column for the Daily Banter focuses on the New York Post's instantly notorious "dead man" cover from yesterday and the question of journalistic ethics.

Here's the opening shot:

"Denis Leary used to do an amusing bit years ago where he said that one of the best things about living in New York City is that there are so many interesting ways to die. It isn't simply a matter of the usual daily trials of living in a big city -- the potential to be shot, mugged, hassled by roving gangs of brown youths of indeterminate Latin American lineage, etc. -- it's the almost unimaginable and constantly evolving urban landmines that are indigenous to New York and that present an everyday threat, whether you choose to deny their existence for the sake of your own sanity or not. You can be killed by a block of ice falling off the top of a skyscraper. You can step on an inadvertently electrified manhole cover. You can fall through a storm grate on a sidewalk.

You can get pushed in front of a subway train."

Read the Rest Here

Waterworld

If you're interested in seeing some of the best and most surreal pictures from last night across New York City and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard, the Atlantic has assembled them all in one place.

They're pretty incredible.

The Atlantic: Sandy After Landfall/10.30.12

The Engulfed Cathedral

The Empire State Building Shines in the Darkness

Obviously there are a lot of other places besides New York City taking a serious hit from what used to be Hurricane Sandy tonight. But however unfair it may be, there's truth to the argument that the press tends to fixate on any disaster striking New York not only because it's a media hub but because there's something primally unnerving about watching helplessly as some of our nation's grandest manmade achievements are laid waste. We like to think of New York City as a citadel which, through sheer fortitude and attitude, remains impregnable. The reality, though, is that it's anything but.

I spent several years of my life in New York City and I still hold it very dear to my heart. It'll always be like home to me. And tonight I'm keeping my friends, family and all New Yorkers in my thoughts -- along with everyone else, the millions of others, affected by this monster storm.



The FDR at 34th St. Underwater



Flood Waters Come Through the Elevators of the PATH Train



Flooded 148th St. Subway Station



The FDNY and Other First-Responders Search for Flood Victims at 14th St. & Avenue C



A Submerged Parking Garage in Lower Manhattan



The Heavily Toxic Gowanus Canal Overflows Its Banks in Brooklyn



Flood Waters Rush Into Ground Zero



Jane's Carousel Along the East River Underwater



Flood Waters Cover Cars on the Lower East Side



The Front of a Building Falls Off in Chelsea



The Con-Ed Power Plant at 14th St. & the FDR Explodes

Quote of the Day

"I applaud Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative as I believe he’s one of the few people in power who is taking practical measures to fight obesity. We hear a lot about how we shouldn’t be 'nannying' people with laws about how they live their lives, but with such a massive problem as the obesity epidemic to deal with, we are way past the point where can trust people to make better choices. We have to help them make better choices."

-- Jamie Oliver on New York City's proposed ban of sodas over 16 ounces, which just passed

You know, I really used to like Jamie Oliver -- until he decided he should be my mother. While I understand a crackdown on certain products which can be deemed not simply bad for you but directly harmful to others: cigarettes, drugs, guns, etc. Bloomberg is taking his crusade to make the world a better place a bit too far. Banning a certain quantity of soda, allowing the state to determine how much is too much for your health to take, is ridiculous and draconian. It's one thing to take on crappy food in schools, where at the very least you have a captive audience with terrible impulse control, but even a 32 ounce soda won't balloon the average person, provided he or she isn't drinking one every day. And that's what it's really all about: moderation.

The notion that the government needs to step in and regulate how much of something an adult can have simply because there are those who indulge in too much -- the thought essentially being, "Well, we gave you freedom and some of you fucked it up so now everybody has to pay," -- is mildly offensive. I'm not an elementary school student who deserves to be punished simply because a couple of my classmates goofed off and now I need to be taught a sweeping object lesson for my own good. I don't drink a lot of soda and I honestly can't remember the last time I downed even 16-ounces of anything like it, but it hardly matters: I don't like the idea of the government restricting freedoms based on the lousy choices of the lowest-common-denominator because, as much as I hate the cliché, that's a very slippery slope. You can't legislate away all forms of bad behavior nor should you try.

And please don't make the argument that I don't need more than 16-ounces of soda. Of course I don't. There are a lot of things I don't need. But nine times out of ten it should be my decision and only my decision as to what I want.

Anyway, I've already mentioned this subject a couple of times...

"Food Fighter" (Originally Published, 4.13.11)

I'm always willing to cop to my somewhat retrogressive knee-jerk reactions, so here goes.

Last night I happened to catch a few minutes of the season premiere of chef Jamie Oliver's ABC reality series, Food Revolution. The basic premise of the show is that Jamie travels across America doing essentially the same thing he's become both famous and notorious for in his native Britain: trying to educate people about the dangers of the processed foods they're eating and drag them, kicking and screaming if necessary, toward a more healthy diet, all in the name of combating the dreaded "obesity epidemic." It should surprise no one that Jamie concentrates a substantial portion of his effort on what kids eat -- specifically what schools feed to kids. Obviously at face value this is an inarguably noble cause.

It should be said that I'm actually a big fan of Jamie Oliver's. I used to watch his BBC show The Naked Chef semi-religiously; I bought several of his cookbooks and I always admired not only his technique as a chef but his philosophy of teaching people to cook rather than simply training them to adhere to recipes and mimic styles. In other words, I'm always more than willing to give Jamie the benefit of the doubt. But something about the tone of last night's show, and maybe the show in general, really irked the hell out of me.

You'd be a fool to deny that we have a very serious problem with obesity -- particularly childhood obesity -- in this country. While I've argued plenty of times before about the media's irrepressibly giddy lust for slapping the term "epidemic" on any and every problem that affects a large enough group, there are far too many obscenely overweight people across this great land of ours and if you think it's simply a personal decision that affects no one but them and the Wal-Mart scooters whose suspension systems they push to the point of collapse, think again; the fact is that you and I ultimately pay for the health issues all that weight brings with it, even if we're not the ones packing on the pounds (which statistics say we likely are at this point). We pay via higher health insurance premiums, higher prices from businesses forced to either accommodate the obese or work around the days off from work they're inevitably forced to take, and more strain on Medicare. According to one statistic, if the obesity rate in this country continues to climb, by 2018 it will cost America $344 billion annually. So, yeah, it's our collective best interest as a nation to slim the hell down.

So why did it bug me to watch Jamie Oliver condescendingly castigate the owner of an independent restaurant in Los Angeles for having the temerity to serve milkshakes that contain actual ice cream as opposed to, say, yogurt and fruit? That's exactly what happened at one point, with Jamie seeming exasperated at the notion that someone would want to serve a customer a milkshake if that's what he or she orders. "That's not a milkshake; that's a smoothie," the restaurant owner says. "But why does it have to be? It's a milkshake," Jamie responds. I get that Jamie Oliver is undertaking the herculean task of trying to get us to change the way we think about the food we eat on a level that's DNA-deep, but I couldn't help but think that the hapless guy trying to run the restaurant aimed at, oh I don't know, giving people what they ask for, was right and his inquisitor from across the pond was wrong. People should be encouraged to buy smoothies rather than milkshakes; each of us should know what one can do to our health versus the other. But if somebody wants a milkshake, that person should be able to get a freaking milkshake. Once again, while there's an argument to be made that I'll eventually pay for the ingestion of too many shakes one way or the other, I'm not sure I or anyone else should be denied something that's harmless in moderation just because somebody else can't control him or herself and treats fatty foods like cocaine.

Jamie Oliver's biggest push, though, is something he and his army of acolytes have been following up for the last 14 hours or so via the circulation of a petition on Twitter. Jamie's white whale of the night -- one which keeps jumping out of the water as the series progresses -- was of course school cafeterias, mostly because they've got a captive audience and have a monumental impact on how someone's diet develops throughout his or her life. So what do Jamie & Co. want? No "sugary milk" in school cafeterias. In other words, they want to see chocolate milk, strawberry milk, any milk besides just plain old milk banned. Again, I get the argument that little good comes from giving kids milk that pumps them full of sugar and empty calories, but is an outright ban on it really the way to go? What about the child who just likes chocolate milk and can actually handle drinking a carton of it without ballooning into a mocha-colored Violet Beauregarde? At what point do we draw the line? At what point do we decide to stop protecting some at the expense of the legitimate desires of others?

I'm all for healthier options at America's schools; that and food education are musts at this point in our evolution as a nation. But there's a difference between an option and a mandate. And while it makes sense for Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolutionaries to fire all guns at once with the understanding that it may be what's required to effect even a small amount of necessary change, there's still something decidedly draconian about pushing to reflexively relieve us of our freedom of choice when it comes to what we eat.

Now, who's up for an In-N-Out Double-Double?

Related: DXM: Feast of Burden/11.25.09

Quote of the Day

"I was openly mocked by the patrons, and my wife was begging to leave as she heard the wait staff and management gasp in horror that they actually had to serve me."

-- Glenn Beck, complaining about the treatment he received from average New Yorkers during a trip to New York City over the holiday weekend

Beck goes on to say that New York has become a "vile and hateful" place, which is supposedly what led him to move out of the city.

I'm beaming like a proud papa right now. As usual, New York City proves itself to be not only a bastion of intellectualism and enlightenment but one with exceptional taste and zero tolerance for stupidity.

By the way, when Beck left New York last year he moved to Dallas.

I'm just gonna leave that right there.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Complete)

The Full Piece that Ran Yesterday at the Daily Banter

Let’s start with the obvious: HBO’s new series Girls isn’t for me. What I mean by that is that I’m not its target audience. I’m not a millennial; I’m not female; I’m not a Brooklyn hipster who’s perpetually drowning in his or her own insufferable ennui; I don’t recognize even a hint of myself or my life in any of the dingbat characters or torturous scenarios the show traffics in. I’m sure Lena Dunham is a nice enough person, but there’s nothing about her that makes me think she’s someone I really need to take seriously as a creative talent, let alone the supposed voice of her generation (God help them all).

Granted, I lived in New York City for quite a while and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t familiar with the kind of “girls” Dunham and her cast try to represent for the TV audience; the city is crawling with them. I just don’t think they’re interesting enough to merit the representation. On the contrary, my reaction to any encounter with them typically lies somewhere between cringing painfully and going full-on Inspector Dreyfus whenever somebody mentioned Clouseau’s name.

With that in mind, though, I think that the criticism Lena Dunham’s been on the receiving end of from some in the black and Hispanic community is unfair. In case you haven’t been following -- and for your own sake, I hope you actually have better things to do than concern yourself with this kind of “controversy” -- a host of socially conscious journalists of color, many of them female, have complained that Dunham’s show is too “white,” that none of the titular girls on Girls are black or brown. The argument is a little dumb at face value, simply because Dunham herself is white and it’s not like that’s something she can change -- and while New York City, both real and the depressing hellhole depicted on the show, is indeed a melting pot, let’s be honest and admit that it’s not exactly unlikely that people like Dunham’s character on the show and her small cadre of friends would all be the same shade of white.

Hell, the show wouldn’t be what it is -- cloying and insipid -- without the pervading stench of white privilege and the ability for characters to mumble complaints about the kind of shit only privileged white kids have the luxury of complaining about. It’s been a common refrain among critics of Girls, but it’s a show about white people problems -- and like everyone else, I say that as derogatorily as possible -- and trying to shoehorn a demographic into the equation which undoubtedly brings a different set of concerns to the table would be a ham-fisted nod to political correctness and little more. There wouldn’t be anything the least bit honest about Dunham taking that tack -- and anyone willing to admit to the world that she’s this tiresome, irritating and unsympathetic is honest if nothing else.

Please understand that I’m certainly not saying that women of color don’t occasionally obsess over some of the same trivialities that a show like Girls attempts to address; everybody has his or her own version of navel-gazing. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a larger forum for shows that either catered specifically to black and Hispanic female audiences or were able to draw the parallels between all women without trying to force the issue in an effort to ward off exactly the kind of criticism that’s been leveled at Dunham. Those upset about the show’s lack of color, so to speak, have a point when they argue that a series like Girls with an all-black or all-Hispanic cast would very likely never be given the cachet of a time slot on HBO -- but again, it’s not like that’s Lena Dunham’s fault, and again, it’s not as if she should be required to adjust her vision for the show simply to satisfy the PC police.

It’s a show about a Lena Dunham-type character and the people she interacts with. And if you’re not included among those people, trust me, you shouldn’t be complaining. You’re a hell of a lot better off.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

It's being called Sex and the City for the aptly named Generation Y -- which means you probably already know what I'll think of it.

Still, does Lena Dunham's Girls really deserve all the criticism being heaped on it? No, not all. It doesn't deserve to be called racist -- insipid and irritating, that's a different story.

My latest piece for the Daily Banter takes the show apart.

Here's the opening shot:

"Let’s start with the obvious: HBO’s new series 'Girls' isn’t for me. What I mean by that is that I’m not its target audience. I’m not a millennial; I’m not female; I’m not a Brooklyn hipster who’s perpetually drowning in his or her own insufferable ennui; I don’t recognize even a hint of myself or my life in any of the dingbat characters or torturous scenarios the show traffics in. I’m sure Lena Dunham is a nice enough person, but there’s nothing about her that makes me think she’s someone I really need to take seriously as a creative talent, let alone the supposed voice of her generation (God help them all)."

Read the Rest Here

Remember, kids: To "Like" and RT is to care.

Quote of the Day

"As for the hype, if the Knicks had Ricky Rubio, the brilliant 20-year-old Spanish point guard for Minnesota, Spike Lee would be sitting at courtside in a bullfighter costume, and people would be writing dopey articles about the link between flamenco rhythms and basketball. It’s just New York being New York."

-- Gene Lyons, dissecting the true meaning of "Linsanity" in Salon

This pretty much nails it. While everyone else is losing their freaking minds trying to figure out why Jeremy Lin is the biggest phenomenon since Justin Bieber, the reality is that New York City's just happy to have a winning basketball team again and, in true NYC fashion, it's making sure the whole world knows it and gets on board.

If Lin had moved from the Warriors to the Rockets to the OKC Thunder, a lot less people would give a crap.

Quote of the Day

"Maybe I live in a different New York than this movie is set in, but are there really that many beautiful, nicely dressed, apparently sane women willing to risk their lives by going home with a random dude from the subway, even if he does look like Michael Fassbender?"

-- Dana Stevens, in a review for Shame at Slate

In a word: yes.

I've told this story many times, usually to single people thinking about moving to New York, but never here: CNN had sent a young male producer prospect up from Atlanta and Ali Velshi was showing him around the offices at the Time Warner Center one morning when apparently the subject of the single life in the big city came up between the two of them. I didn't catch the whole conversation, only a little bit of it as I happened to be walking by on my way to something else.

I saw Velshi lean in conspiratorially, saw the young guy give a little knowing laugh, then Velshi turned to me and shot off a quick, "Chez -- dating in New York City."

"Fish in a barrel," I responded with a smile as I breezed swiftly past them, not even breaking stride.

There are both wonderful and horrifying reasons that I know this.

In the City

Why I still love New York: In the mere 60 hours that I was there over the weekend I made a half-dozen new work-related contacts; ate at Recette, Pastis and the Stanton Social; drank twice at pretty much the best bar on earth, Death & Co.; had a few beers with Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams (as cool a chick as I'd expected); went to a show at Upright Citizens Brigade; had an interesting conversation with a really gorgeous girl who freely admitted that she was screwing a 64-year-old overweight guy to live in his apartment; became fast friends with a 21-year-old kid who works on Wall Street and who hopes to one day open his own restaurant on the Lower East Side; hit the Mercury Lounge for the official release of Pillow Theory's fantastic new EP; got into an amusing but noteworthy debate with someone over the merits of Sucker Punch (I thought it was brilliantly over-the-top and unfairly maligned -- he either didn't like it or was simply arguing for the sake of arguing); and all in all managed to at least somewhat distract myself from the fact that I went up there primarily to drop off Inara.

I miss my daughter already -- but I'm grateful for the busy and entertaining transition period the city provided.

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

Because it's a slow news day, and because I now spend quite a bit of time playing with Inara in the backyard, under two big trees that remind me a lot of the one I describe here...

"Shade of Gray" (Originally Published, 12.9.08)

When Jayne and I were scouting for a new place to live back in July, we looked at quite a few apartments. Some were very nice -- some, not so much. But what made us settle on the Astoria townhouse we currently call home was its abundance of unusual charms: the high ceilings; the living room which had already been painted a warm and inviting red; the large kitchen; the second bedroom, perfectly suited for a nursery and facing the backyard; the large outdoor deck extending out over the same yard.

The big, beautiful tree in that backyard.

The one that our landlord is having cut down today.

We moved in during the summer, when the tree was lush and full; Inara was captivated by it when we would sit on the deck or in the rocking chair in her small bedroom. I fell in love with that tree; there was honestly nothing more relaxing -- more enchanting -- than sitting underneath it and listening to the wind blow through its leaves, watching its heavy branches sway languidly against the giant sky beyond. It was hypnotic. It was peaceful, in a city that offers very little peace. The tree was like some kind of ancient sentinel, standing watch over Inara's bedroom. Over our home.

And now it's coming down -- piece by piece.

To call it sad wouldn't even scratch the surface.

Apparently, the reason it needs to be destroyed is that our next door neighbors -- a retired NYPD cop and his very sweet, very Irish wife -- are tired of having to rake the stray leaves from it each fall. Why that requires that it be cut down completely is beyond me. Regardless of the reason, killing something that's been a part of this neighborhood longer than any of the parties involved have been alive -- removing something so beautiful from this Earth -- feels wrong. It is wrong.

I'm in no way a nature buff, nor would I call my views on the environment particularly left wing -- sensible, yes, but not left wing. And yet one thing keeps going through my mind as I watch this once majestic thing -- this seemingly invincible being that's seen and withstood so much in its lifetime -- be so casually shredded:

"It's not yours to kill. This tree doesn't belong to you."

As it's almost winter, there are no leaves left on the tree -- they've long since fallen off. Yet even in its skeletal state, the giant is so impressive that as it comes down and barren gray sky replaces the area where it once stood, the kitchen in our apartment -- and of course, the nursery -- becomes brighter and brighter. The shade that Jayne and I cherished so much when we moved here is vanishing before my eyes.

Sad doesn't even scratch the surface.

It's just heartbreaking.

The People That You Knew at Elaine's

There was a time when writers ruled the Earth -- they roamed the cultural landscape not as the unwashed steerage class but as honest-to-God rock stars. People wanted to be seen with writers, wanted to be able to say that they had been seen with writers, wanted to drink with writers, wanted to pick the brilliant and often twisted brains of writers in the hope that whatever made them tick would somehow rub off. And for those people -- and those hallowed writers of the day -- there was only one place to go for that sort of experience: Elaine's.

Nestled high on 2nd Avenue on New York City's Upper East Side, Elaine's was a place where guys like Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Mario Puzo and Woody Allen rubbed elbows with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Mick Jagger. And vice versa. It existed at all times as a monument to the art of being there -- of that indescribable feeling of taking part in something grand and special and secret just by knowing the right place to go or the right people to talk to -- and as the years went by it became a tribute to a bygone era in New York City nightlife. Once again, when people with something to say, the brilliance to say it well, and the complete lack of a tether to the restrictions of polite society to hold them back spoke with booming voices.

I was lucky enough to spend an evening at Elaine's only once, but once was enough. The food was average (but no one went for the food); if you weren't a regular, the service was below-average (but aside from the chance to see the irascible Elaine Kaufman herself, no one cared about the service); but the atmosphere -- that was the ticket. That was why you went and why so many kept coming back for more.

Last night, in what reportedly felt more like a joyous wake than a somber memorial, hundreds lined up for Elaine's for the last time. At the end of it all, the place closed its doors for good.

They don't make institutions like that anymore. And if you know anything at all about the personalities that frequented Elaine's throughout the years -- you know that they belong in an institution.

The New York Times: Too Much Fun to Feel Sad at the Farewell to Elaine's/5.26.11

View from the Top

A minor diversion here: When I first arrived in New York City in September of 2001 and began exploring -- during the very little free time that I had following 9/11 -- I made it a point to spend a good amount of time in Brooklyn. I had a few friends there, I liked the vibe, etc. Considering that I had my car with me at the time, I'd generally drive across the Manhattan Bridge to get to wherever I was going, and whenever I drove at night I would invariably look off to my right and see what became known to me as the place I wanted to live in New York more than any other. The apartment, in my mind, to end all apartments. At night, for whatever reason, the windows of it would be lit in a deep red, and that just added to the mystery and glory of what I knew was beyond for whoever was lucky enough to call that place home.

It had a spectacular location, almost right on the water, with a view that I knew rivaled any in the world. I could see it had architectural features that made it stand out, even in a city like New York. And it had that clock. I just fell in love with the place.

Until this morning, I had never seen inside it.

It's everything I imagined it would be.

The Brooklyn Tower Clock Penthouse

Testament

It all comes back in an instant.

When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, it's not that there was closure -- it's simply that it felt like a kind of bookend to a period of collective consciousness for our nation and a personal journey for myself. Almost ten years ago exactly, a gaping hole was ripped open in the fabric of our psyches, one that changed many of us forever. I remember very well what that day was like, the visceral experience shared with my country and the world, as well as the very personal trauma I felt and which I knew each and every one of my fellow Americans were coping with their own detailed version of. I didn't know what the people living up the street from me were going through specifically, but I understood our common grief.

For me, the events of 9/11 quickly wound up offering an inadvertent and tragically ironic way out of a life which had come to a dead stop, thanks almost entirely to my own stupidity and weakness. I spent the month immediately preceding that day in a public rehab facility, trying to kick an incapacitating drug habit. Maybe I didn't deserve a second chance, and I know I didn't deserve one that came at so high a cost, but a second chance is what I got that day. With nothing at all to lose -- no job, no wife, no real hope, nothing -- I packed a bag and drove from Miami to New York City with the intention of doing something to help, anything. I would work if given the chance; I would hand out water and administer aid to those suffering infinitely worse than I ever could if not. I accepted as emotional and spiritual liniment an axiom that I had heard long ago: When in the throes of your own personal hell, the only way out is to do something for someone else. To prove to yourself that you can still make a difference. That's how you know you're alive.

So much has happened since then in my life and in the life of the country I proudly call home. But with the death of Osama bin Laden and the scenes of people rallying in the streets of New York City -- the city I ran toward when all seemed lost; the city whose unyielding spirit and resilience helped heal and save me, and for which I'll always be grateful -- I can't shake the images and emotions that come flooding back from that one moment in time. The woman I held in my arms who had lost her husband in the attack. The massive candlelight vigil that brought me to my knees in tears. The long hours spent covering events of near-catastrophic mental burden, and the bond built with the men and women who labored alongside me. The humble daily praise for the police officers and fire fighters whose ranks had sacrificed so much. The dizzying fury of wanting to see justice done in the names of those so cruelly taken from the people who cared for them and whose lives would never be the same. The surge of entirely righteous patriotism. The helplessness and heartbreak, combined with hope and exhilaration, that I felt watching a wounded city mourn, then rise up, defiant. The pride of being at the epicenter of what I knew would be the single most important and life-changing event I would ever experience. The love, yes love, for a city and its people that was as overwhelming a feeling as any I'd ever had.

I remember now -- again.

Like all of us, I grieve again for what was lost.

But, like all of us, I'm grateful for what remains.

Picture of the Week (And It's Only Monday)

The fun continues in New York City.

Last week it was hipster traps -- now it's bridge & tunnel traps.

Picture of the Week

Seen around New York City.

Someone is setting hipster traps.

Genius.

(via Gawker)

Mosquing Tape

Okay, anybody got the over-under on how long before this is revealed to be a big joke by Trey and Matt?

My favorite thing about the bumper-sticker sloganeering hyper-patriots out in NASCAR Land is that they're always quick to appropriate and defend the sacred memory of 9/11 and its legacy in New York City when A) they weren't actually there and therefore weren't directly affected by it (losing loved ones, smelling death 24/7, living with overwhelming paranoia, etc.) and B) they generally think the city is full of godless liberal elitists and probably deserves to be sunk into the sea anyway.

We've got to stop the mosque?

You don't have anything to do with it since the only decisive action you took in the wake of 9/11 was to stop eating fucking French Fries.

Don't Panic

More proof that, unfortunately, it's only a matter of time.

The Huffington Post: Car Bomb Shuts Down Times Square/5.2.10

On a lighter note, anything that takes out The Lion King...

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

Proof that things rarely turn out the way we plan.

"A Life More Ordinary" (Originally Published, 8.22.06)

This will not be the finest thing I've ever written; on the contrary, it will probably wind up being hackneyed and silly. Consider yourself warned.

I'm somewhere around 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean and I'm exhausted as hell. As usual, my iPod is connected directly to my eardrums and a couple of seconds ago Simon & Garfunkel's haunting masterpiece Scarborough Fair gave way to Radiohead's Everything in its Right Place. As usual, it would seem that gods equal parts loving and vengeful are also possessed of a sick sense of irony.

Exactly five years and one lifetime ago, I was entering the final week of a month-long stint at a South Florida rehab center -- the culmination of a nine month and nearly $200-a-day heroin addiction. I see no reason to go into the lurid details of what I experienced in rehab -- what I gained and lost, the depths of human suffering and heights of human resilience I witnessed; suffice to say that by the time of my unremarkable departure from the public facility which had been kind enough to house my racked body and mind for nearly a month, I was lucid enough to realize that one of the reasons I didn't want to do heroin anymore was the simple fact that if I lived an eternity never having to go through the fucking nightmare of rehab again, it still wouldn't put enough figurative and literal distance between myself and the experience.

Right after leaving rehab, my father and I hopped a plane back to Los Angeles with the intention of cleaning out what little was left of my life there in the wake of my soon-to-be ex-wife's unceremonious departure, which occurred about halfway through my little vacation from the daily grind of being a pathetic addict. The plan was simple: Dad and I would fly out to L.A., salvage what we could, write the rest off, then drive back to South Florida where I would begin my new life as an unemployed shell whose days would consist mainly of staring at the TV and contemplating suicide -- not necessarily in that order. All in all, it was a good plan -- a roadtrip even Dennis Hopper would find surreal. An ex-Navy SEAL and his junkie son -- all gone to look for America.

The reason this happens to be on my mind right now -- the obligation to celebrate such a momentous anniversary notwithstanding -- is because I distinctly remember the drive to the airport; it very well could have been the lowest point in the sad history of low points throughout my life. For some reason, the painfully generic AOR station in South Florida at the time chose to play A Perfect Circle's 3 Libras as we approached Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywoood International Airport, inadvertently providing the perfect soundtrack to the tiny tragedy unfolding in the lives of two people who just happened to be listening that morning. That drive to the airport -- that entire trip back to the place I called home at the time -- was nothing less to me than an outright admission of failure: I had failed in my career, in my marriage, in my life. I was simply going back to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess.

This morning's drive to the airport had no such soundtrack, unless you count the sound of the pounding rain on the windshield; no life-altering body-blow precipitated it; there was no punishing sense of impending doom; it was simply my father driving my wife and me to the ostensible end of our mini-vacation. Yet this morning's drive was an infinitely more painful experience than that nearly identical trip five years ago.

The reason for this is the stuff of worthless Dr. Phil shows, bad screenplays and "A Very Special Facts of Life". See, when you finally learn to care for someone or something other than yourself -- when you find something greater and more important than bullshit self-reliance -- you open yourself up to a world of hurt like nothing you'd previously imagined. Excuse the triteness, but it would seem that Uncle Ben's advice to young Peter Parker cuts both ways: It's true that with great power comes great responsibility, but it's equally true that with great responsibility comes great power. For most of my 36 years on this planet, I never bothered to willingly take on any responsibility, for exactly that reason: I didn't want that kind of power over anyone's life other than my own. I made commitments, but only in a perfunctory sort of way. I made promises, but always surreptitiously left myself an open back door. I made a hell of a lot of excuses for my rotten behavior; typically those excuses were so damned clever that rather than balk at them, I admired my own ingenuity at their creation. My life was always mine to make or break, and it was good that way. It was an entertaining, ongoing dramedy of which I was the lead and just about anyone else merely played the necessary role which I had assigned them. Characters came and went -- some were killed-off or written out, some just gave-up and walked away -- but the star of the show always remained.

This was why, no matter how many disastrous turns I took in life, I always seemed to come through like the proverbial cat landing on its feet.*

Despite coming off of a fall that would've made Icarus flinch, this outlook on life was still very much intact in September of 2001, when I made the decision to come to New York in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In fact, New York, I quickly learned, was the perfect place in which to lovingly nurture the hell out of an attitude like this. True, it was a city in excruciating pain, but it was also a city in which a person could easily vanish and reappear at will, occasionally as an entirely different entity altogether. It was a perpetual playground which provided a mammoth new backdrop for my little one-man show. As a single guy with a great job and a new lease on life, New York City was my fucking town.**

Then I met Jayne.

I wish I could humbly claim that I retired the Me-and-Me Against the World mindset the moment she spoke my name, but unfortunately that's just not the case. In spite of the fact that I loved her passionately, I initially loved her somewhat selfishly. She never deserved to be part of the rotating cast of characters in my show, and yet for the first year or so that's what I might have considered her, even if she never knew it. I can't tell you exactly when things changed. I'm not quite sure when my love for her began eclipsing my concern for myself -- as well as for anyone or anything else. I do know however that these days her life and her needs -- as well as our life together -- are of a singular import to me; I will fight to the death for her and to keep us intact. She and I are a family.

And therein lies the issue.

New York is a whirlwind, and when you stand alone in that whirlwind it's highly unlikely that you'll be pulled into pieces. Try hanging on to another person, though, and see what happens. There are those here who don't see a young married couple as a family -- they look upon it with a jaded eye and a natural assumption that it's nothing more than a divorce waiting to happen. At the risk of over-generalizing, New York City is a single person's town. The place is certainly greased for bringing people together, but keeping them together is a different story entirely. Once upon a time, Jayne and I fantasized about being that old couple you see holding hands, walking through Central Park. The problem is this: you only see that couple in movies and commercials. Most elderly couples you stumble across in New York City fit another stereotype altogether -- it's the one in which the two people involved can't live with each other, but they apparently can't live without each other either. This was never the kind of relationship I imagined being involved in as I slipped into my twilight years.

What my wife and I want instead are things which might have seemed painfully dull to us years ago -- things like stability and the love of good friends and the support of a caring extended family. We want a child of our own, and we want to raise him or her in a nurturing environment. We want to be able to come home from work and see each other, rather than face the near-constant onslaught of a work schedule which never seems to end and employers who expect unconditional submission to that fact. Quite simply, we want a life.

This undeniable truth is the reason why our ride to the airport this morning was so difficult; we just didn't want to come back.

I love New York -- but I love her more. She loves New York -- but she loves me more.

Everything is most certainly not in its right place -- but it soon will be.

*It's worth mentioning that while I've come through quite a bit in my lifetime, I've never had the colossal nerve to be self-congratulatory about this fact. I've always believed that you forfeit the privilege of calling yourself a survivor when in fact the only things you've survived are your own personal catastrophes.

**Every unattached idiot thinks this. Finding an arrogant moron in New York City who flaunts his supposed ownership of the place is about as common as finding a deli which advertises the World's Best Coffee -- and it's just ridiculous a claim to make.

Just as an admittedly sad, to say nothing of ironic, aside -- here was Jayne's own comment on the this piece, from August of '06:

"We both still love New York for the part that it's played in our lives, and for all the wonderful things that it is. But now we look at everything from a parental perspective- and the frustrating truth is that if we really want a FAMILY, which we'd like to start within the next year, we just can't afford to do it in the way that we'd like while living in new york city. As it is we don't have the time or energy to really enjoy each other- how are we going to have the energy for our kid(s)?

This is the underlying reason for all of this- the reality is that with our lives the way that they are here, we can't be the good parents that we want to be. I hope that you can understand this. I grew up in the suburbs in Pennyslvania- with a yard and a dog, etc etc... I do not want to raise a child in a one-bedroom apartment. and neither does chez.

we'll always be grateful to new york for restoring chez's vitality, (and mine as well, for different reasons. but this isn't my forum...), and we'll always want to visit.

I'm grateful for how chez has changed over the years- his priorities have changed drastically, and so have mine. we are family now, and we'd like to be around people who see us as such. we spent the last weekend around true friends and family- people who love US, not just one of us individually. it was a healthy environment and that's what we miss. For those of you who we were with who may be reading this- I can't thank you enough. Hopefully we'll see you all again soon."

Incidentally, yes, that's Jayne in the above photo. It was taken by me in London. Also, I've disabled comments for this repost. Given all that's transpired since it was originally published, this little piece of history is now just for reading, not for publicly commenting on.