Today’s soundtrack: You've never been this far,
you've always been too smart
Today at 8:02pm: Cleaning the kitchen.


Some new store opened in Chinatown, I don’t know what it was but I saw it on the way to the subway this morning. There were people standing in front and two big arches of balloons.

The arches were comprised of red, white and blue balloons tightly tied into helical formations, like patriotic DNA. The image stayed in my head for a minute, then I forgot all about it because the train came and I had to run to catch it.

Work was work. Just when you think my boss can’t get any more annoying, he invents something. In terms of being annoying he really knows how to think outside the box. He should do consulting for people who need to learn annoyingness.

Eight hours later I took the subway back downtown and came out at Canal. Trudged upstairs through the crowds to street level. Stepping onto the sidewalk I saw people, and traffic, and sky. Something caught my eye up in the air, a little multicolored bundle of dots.

It was a bunch of balloons, pretty high up. Red and blue and white. Suddenly I remembered the new store from this morning.

In eight hours my muscles had grown tense, my mind further unraveled, and these balloons had gone from festive decoration to airborne garbage. I think if I hadn’t seen the balloons I would have forgotten that this day even had a morning.

It gets dark early now, around 7pm. I did stuff around the house then went out for a pineapple around 10pm.

I live near Little Italy/Chinatown but I get my pineapples in the East Village. There’s a spot that’s always got the best golden pineapples! I’m not gonna tell you where because you don’t live in the Village anyway so it would be a waste.

I normally walk up Elizabeth Street because it’s nice and quiet but tonight I took the Bowery, which is always filthy. I wanted to see stuff, I guess.

I was rewarded for my choice by seeing piles of things of increasingly alarming content. First was a pile of garbage, nothing new about that. Next I encountered a decent-sized patty of human shit. (Glad I’m not the sucker that accidentally transformed it from a log into a patty. Remember, watch where you walk.)

Finally I came across a human being lying in the middle of the sidewalk, apparently unconscious and wrapped in a pink blanket, just above Bowery and Rivington. I think there’s a rehab center around there, maybe one of them got away.

I got up to CBGB’s, which for you out-of-towners is a little famous hole-in-the-wall live music spot on Bowery and Bleecker. Lots of famous bands got their start there back in the day: The Police, Blondie, The Ramones, et al. If you use the little shithole bathroom in the back you have the distinct honor of pissing in the same spot where Sid Vicious drained his wanker.

Well they still have shows almost every night. As I approached tonight I saw a car pull up, then all these punks got out. I mean “punks” literally, white people with fully-committed haircuts and lots of metal in their face and raggedy clothes and black eye makeup.

The weird thing is their car was like, a brand-new maroon Chevy Cavalier. “The Heartbeat of America.” I just can’t picture one of these punks working in an ice-cream store or wherever and saving his pennies to buy a Chevy Cavalier. I wonder if he bought it because it has a good warranty and gets reasonable mileage.

Two cars up I see tonight’s band unloading their equipment, and they’re punks too.

Punk rock! Punk rock! Punk rooccccccckk!

...Sorry. Anyways this is even funnier: these guys are all in tattered black leather and unloading their equipment--from a forest-green minivan. A fucking Honda Odyssey.

When I was in high school punks were these scary guys who stabbed your cousin’s friend with a screwdriver and beat the shit out of that guy Paul at the bus stop and roamed Avenue A waiting to kick your ass. Granted it was 1988 (Avenue A was actually dangerous, for christ’s sake) but still.

You almost never saw punks in a car and if you did it was, like, a beat-up ’67 Rambler or a fully fucked-up Plymouth Valiant with stickers of upside-down American flags on the trunk. Now it’s the year 2002 and I live in the future and punks drive minivans.