Today’s soundtrack: so much depends on the weather
Today at 11:02pm: installing Venetian blinds


Dammit--I thought the gig was on Friday, but it’s on Thursday. This week I’m doing a reading at NYU and today I realized it’s a day earlier than I’d expected because I have the type of memory you have if you accidentally bang your head into things a lot.

My last two gigs haven’t been stellar, so I want this one to be good. I had a reading for some arts society about a month ago and tried out a new story, and it just didn’t go over. I figure this time around I’d better stick with the tried-and-true.

The event I’m reading at will have multiple speakers and performers. The Keynote Speaker, like my friend Michelle, is a political activist. Unlike Michelle she’s also a venerated eighty-year-old woman who’s been doing important things since before I was born. I don’t know much about political activism.

Well today I got an e-mail from the conference organizer:


We have contracted you for our Opening Event this Thursday 4/1/2004 as a performer. Unfortunately, due to [Keynote Speaker]'s health concerns, she has backed out from the event just recently.

Because of this recent turn of events, would it be possible for you to be our keynote speaker for the night???


Whoa. My head started shaking an emphatic “No,” then I put my hands up to steady it before I banged it into something.

First thought that came into my mind was “I’m not qualified.”

Then I realized I’m almost 33 and fuck it, I am sorta qualified. Though I’ll endeavor not to use words like “fuck it” or “sorta” during the speech. I’ll use words like “endeavor.”

The conference organizer called me with the details. The original keynote speech was supposed to be forty-five minutes, but since I’m not exactly The Man (or The Woman), they planned on reducing mine to ten minutes.

Ten minutes isn’t really a keynote, it’s more of a key-post-it. Ten minutes is like, a warm-up act at a comedy club.

Not that I’m complaining; ten minutes of saying something potentially helpful to college students seeking answers is better than any other ten minutes of my life. Other ten-minute episodes of my life include:

- Where is the other sock? I must find the other sock.
- This stain on the counter will come out if I keep scrubbing it.
- Why isn’t the train coming?
- Pizza, definitely pizza--wait, I had pizza last night--maybe a hamburger? A burrito? Mediterranean. Or maybe Japanese.
- There has to be a bathroom somewhere in here.
- If I sleep for just another ten minutes and skip breakfast, I can still be only fifteen minutes late to work, which isn’t bad.
- I know I came into this room for something, and I am not leaving until I remember what it was.
- Maybe if I just stand here like an idiot that beautiful girl will approach me and invite me to Tuscany.

So I’ve basically got a day-and-a-half to bang out a speech. I have to integrate it with the theme of the event, which I’m not really clear on. I wish the theme of the event was Major Cartoon Characters And What We Can We Learn From Them or something light and easy. I could do ten minutes on why I love dogs. I could do ten minutes on the best way to get to JFK during rush hour. I could do ten minutes on how repeated cranial impacting can affect your memory, but I’d probably forget the last half of the speech.

Well, I know what I’ll be doing for at least ten minutes tomorrow, and that’s staring at a blank screen in Microsoft Word while that lousy cursor blinks at me impatiently. I hate the blinking cursor, it won’t go away until you chase it with letters, and once you start chasing it you can’t stop, or it comes back again.

Okay here we go...I’m getting something...signal’s coming in:

“Chasing the Cursor,” by Rain Noe.

Christ. If I had just written that on a typewriter I’d pull the paper out, crumple it into a ball and throw it at the wastebasket.

I’d miss the wastebasket. Then I’d get out of my chair, bend over to retrieve the paper and my head would connect with the printer loud enough to make my roommate say “What was that?”

Today’s soundtrack: Random blonde bio high density rhythm
Today at 8:02pm: dozing in a chair

I always welcome the chance to center a big American highway in my windshield and blare escapist music, but in order to really enjoy this you’ve got to be alone. If you’re traveling in a convoy it’s no fun because you have to maintain pace, and if you’re carrying passengers it’s considered impolite to crank the volume up to 10 because you don’t feel like talking about Richard Clarke or movies or carbs or whatever.

So for the MovieTalkers gig up at Yale, I opted to drive up by myself, at a separate time from my teammates in their other car.

On Friday afternoon I threw the MovieTalkers script and a change of clothes into a backpack. I started packing up my laptop and grabbed a road atlas, but ditched both of these at the last minute because I figured I wouldn’t need either. This mistake would cost me twelve dollars within the hour.

The weather was gorgeous outside. Spring came to Manhattan late and beautiful, like a date who keeps you waiting because she knows you’ll put up with it.

I hopped in the car and tooled over to the east side, windows rolled down, with some crumpled directions to New Haven shoved into a slot on the dashboard. It wasn’t until I’d started rocketing up FDR Drive that I switched the radio on and heard the bad news: A tanker truck had blown up on 95. The heat from the ensuing fire had buckled the roadway, leading to a shutdown in both directions.

While I was sure the driver had died and felt bad about that, my more practical concern was that 95, around Bridgeport, would be closed “for at least two weeks.” The directions I had to Yale were 95 all the way.

At a rest stop in Connecticut I bought a $12 road atlas. There was a McDonald’s there too. I figured I oughta get something to eat, since I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner later (I always get too nervous before a show to eat).

After scanning my twelve “Value Meal” options I opted for the Big ‘N Tasty, which recent experience had proven to be misnamed, but which still seemed like the lesser of twelve evils. Plus there’s something nice about knowing exactly how much something is going to suck. Do you know what I mean? If you don’t, you probably have lots of true friends and have never been greeted in a strange town with racial slurs or had someone try to hit you with a rock.

I ate the burger and pored over the atlas. Afterwards I took a few minutes to stare out the window and wonder where my life was going, then I got back in the car.

What should have taken ninety minutes took three hours, but because I’d left early I was still ahead of schedule. I pulled into New Haven around 4pm.

I’d heard New Haven was a cesspool, but had only been here once before, late at night to drop an old friend off. This time around I wouldn’t get to confirm it for several hours yet.

The Omni Hotel was jammed with college kids (I’d later find out the attendance was around 600) from all over the country, here to attend the conference, of which MovieTalkers would be a small part. Since the conference was put on by a Korean-American college organization, about 90% of the students were Korean-American. It was kind of cool, I heard Koreans speaking in the familiar New York accent, the laid-back west coast drawl, and that unmistakably clean midwestern English.

I didn’t know anybody, so after parking the car I sat outside the jammed lobby and called my “handler.” He sent someone to check me into my room. I love staying in hotels--free cable, and the bathrooms are always way nicer than anything I’ve encountered while crashing on a friend’s couch.

After resisting the temptation to stuff one of the fluffy white bathrobes in my backpack, I headed back downstairs and walked a few blocks to see if I could get any good pictures of New Haven. Turns out I couldn’t.

Back in the lobby I perused the Schedule of Events. Looking over the list of speakers, I saw my friend Michelle was on the roster, and was giving a workshop at that very moment across campus.

(Background: I met Michelle, a political-activist or whatever you call it, during a speaking gig at Smith College two years ago. Since then I’d booked her for a group speaking gig I did last year at the University of Wisconsin. Whenever we see each other it’s at colleges.)

I couldn’t make heads or tails of the campus map, so I asked a sinfully hot girl of maybe 18 for directions. A couple blocks later I found Michelle’s building, said hello and we exchanged numbers.

Several hours later our gig was about to start and I stood in front of a room of fifty people, frantically trying to connect a DVD and projector to two monitors. Some Yale students, tech guys, had hooked it up erroneously, and I was stunned to see they’d plugged the red cable into the white port and vice versa. Now George Bush attending Yale started to make a little more sense.

Due to technical difficulties, scheduling fuck-ups and general disorganization, our show started an hour and twenty minutes later than it should have. My co-performers (Tina and Derek) and I, mostly exhausted by that time, put on what I have to say was a mediocre-to-lackluster performance. Or maybe it was just Derek and I, Tina was pretty on. Anyways I doubt we’ll be booking any paid gigs on the strength of this one show.

Afterwards Tina broke out, while me, Derek, the director and several friends of hers headed to a nearby restaurant for a late dinner. We were the only Asians in the whole place and I was unsurprised to see we drew stares and obvious murmured comments after walking in the door.

Derek and I were feeling a little down, but over dinner he ordered a pitcher of Sangria and it seemed to cheer him up.

On line for the bathroom, I overheard a Yale student talking on his cell phone. “You got into another fight?” he crowed into his phone, excited. “Dude did you fuck him up? Did you fuck him up?”

Yep, George Bush definitely went to school here.

Michelle joined us for a spell, and after a couple hours of dinner and booze (for everyone else, not me) Derek and I headed back to the hotel with the director, a female, and a female friend of hers.

On the way back to the hotel we came across two white frat boys hanging out on the sidewalk, one of them urinating. We had to walk over his stream of urine to cross. As we passed he stared us down and spat a nasty racial slur at us. “Try me,” said Derek--and then one of them picked up a rock and threw it at us. (He missed.)

I couldn’t believe it. This was a fucking Ivy League school.

While we kept walking, Derek said something back to them and was fully prepared to fight them. I wasn’t, which bothered me for the rest of the night. My first instinct, especially when with girls is to avoid beef altogether, but maybe that’s a pussy instinct. I was kind of disappointed in myself.

Something that blew me away was these two kids were on top of the food chain--white males on their way to earning degrees from one the most prestigious universities in the world--and they still had to flex. It made me sick just thinking about it.

Back at the hotel, Derek and I were hanging around the student-jammed lobby when I overheard various tales of racial taunting encountered by the conference visitors. I again found myself surprised, because while open-faced white hostility isn’t exactly an anomaly in this country, the last place I expected to find it was fucking Yale.

On top of that, I know Koreans are kind of hot-tempered as a people, so I figured it was only a matter of time before one of these white cats went too far, or had better aim with rocks, and some shit was going to jump off.

Sure enough, we heard a commotion in front of the hotel and went out to see what it was.

Two cop cars with flashing lights were blocking off the end of the block. A bunch of the Korean students were standing and watching.

“What happened?” I asked some students coming from that direction.

“They got arrested,” said one.

“Who?” I asked.

“Three Korean students from Toronto.”

“The white kids didn’t get arrested though,” said another.

I never got the whole story from the same person, but what I was able to piece together was this: Five Korean-Canadian students went into a bar, which was of course 99% white. Inside the bar some racial slurs were thrown, and the Koreans didn’t take to it too kindly, and there was some kind of brawl, and the Korean students were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to go back inside to get their coats, and then another brawl broke out outside. Then the police showed up and arrested three Korean kids.

I don’t have all the facts, but I’m guessing the Koreans didn’t start it, and here’s why: As any person of color knows, you have to be some kind of maniac to head into a bar that’s 99% white and go popping some shit. They probably went in there for a drink and ran into some knuckleheads like the rock-thrower we ran into or the people who hawked us at the restaurant. Cue drama.

I felt bad for the kids who got locked up, because they’re from Canada so I don’t know what kinda legal shit they’re gonna get into.

I hate dealing with racial bullshit every other time I leave the city. I try not to write about heavy shit in here because I myself don’t enjoy reading people’s blogs when all they’re doing is complaining, but this one I had to mention.

Anyways later Derek and I were chilling back in the room while I flipped through free cable. “I wonder if we would’ve gotten arrested if we did something,” said Derek.

“Man, that would’ve sucked,” I said. “Can you imagine, we come up here to do a gig and we end up getting locked up.”

It might’ve sucked, but it still bothered me that I didn’t do anything. Maybe it was worth getting arrested over.

Even worse was the feeling that this wasn’t some isolated incident--experience has proven antagonistic acts like this will continue to happen for the rest of my life, and I know there’s no way I can do something every time and win every time. It’s maddening.

Let’s say I’m lucky enough to find the right girl to marry, and we have successful careers and save up enough to have kids, and work hard at giving those kids a good life; well, someday, someone will still call my kid a chink, or worse.

I went to bed and tried to forget about it. The gig didn’t go well, but there will be more gigs. The day didn’t go well, but there will be more days.

The thing that won’t go away is that there is a burden that comes with being non-white, and I don’t have any choice but to bear it, and the solution eludes me.

Unable to sleep, I tried enjoying my free fucking cable.

Today’s soundtrack: With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats
Today at 8:02pm: Getting choked by Betty.


Everything’s changing. My roommate bought a condo and is moving out, so right now there are boxes everywhere. His old work area in the corner of our apartment has been transformed into an empty, hollow space. Next week he’s gone, I tear our rooms down and my name will be the only one on the mailbox. I’ll be living in a big, empty space.

When I moved into this place it was a big, empty space too, but I was moving into it with a girlfriend. We worked six blocks away from each other in midtown and we were crazy about each other.

She hates me now, lives somewhere in Hong Kong. I think the last time we spoke was in the ‘90s. Did you ever hear that Dinah Washington song “What Can I Say After I Say I’m Sorry”? Apparently the answer is “Nothing.”

The walls should be easy enough to tear down, ‘cause we put ‘em up. We left most of the sheetrock exposed and left the screws unspackled, so I should be able to dismantle rather than demolish. The problem will be disposing of the shitload of sheetrock I’m gonna have lying around. Then I gotta repaint the floors so I don’t see the empty outlines of two bedrooms.

Thanks to everyone who submitted their “blind date” questions.

Just now I went out for a late-night walk, like I used to. I like Manhattan after 1am. It’s even better around 4 or 5am, but I have to get up at a decent hour tomorrow; I’m headed up to Yale. Me and the “MovieTalkers” group are doing an unpaid gig for some student organization called KasCon. I don’t know what will come of it, maybe some future paid gigs. All I know is tomorrow night I’m sleeping in a hotel room with two dudes I don’t know that well.

Anyways, back to my walk. I headed up to the East Village to buy a pineapple at my usual bodega spot. After cutting through NoLita, I was walking up Mott Street when I saw the most beautiful thing--A 1963 Cadillac convertible, in what looked to be mint condition. It was disgustingly gorgeous, this gargantuan, rectangular slab of shiny blue metal.

It had somehow been parallel parked, taking up at least a space and a half. It looked obscene, sandwiched between regular cars of more reasonable length.

I reached into my pocket to snap a flick for you, but realized I’d forgotten to bring my camera. It’s too bad I don’t have one of those cell phone cameras. Anyways I wanted to take a closer look at the car, but figured I’d check it out on the way back.

I went up the Bowery, banged a right on 4th Street and passed my favorite building in the world. On the middle of the block there’s this dilapidated four-storey, with a bizarre, enclosed spiral staircase going up the face of the building, from the second to the fourth storey.

It looks like something built by Italian artisans from 150 years ago. It also looks abandoned, but there’s some sign on the front proclaiming it’s a theater. Doesn’t look like a theater. Well whatever the hell it is, if I was filthy rich I’d buy the damn thing and it would be my house. And you can be damn sure there’d be an expertly-parked 1963 Cadillac convertible sitting in front of it.

My rich fantasies were interrupted by the anticlimactic reality of my life--the bodega only had three pineapples and they were all shite. Greener than the crumpled five-dollar bill I had in my pocket to pay for it. I turned around and headed back home, empty-handed.

Five blocks later I cut across Prince and rounded the corner to Mott Street--just in time to see the Cadillac pulling away from the curb. I had apparently just missed the 20-point back-and-forth the driver must have pulled to get the car out of the parking space. I couldn’t see who the driver was, or even if it was male or female; I just saw the dark outline of long hair.

The Cadillac motored serenely down the block, moving away from me. A part of me wanted to run after it. I picked up the pace a little, hoping a red light at the end of the block would get me a better look, but the light was greener than the pineapples.

I watched the ass-end of the Caddy shrink until it got lost in the jumbled perspective of the city. There’s a metaphor in here somewhere, but I’m afraid to suss it out. Thinking too much can get you in trouble.

I wonder if there are any 1963 Cadillac convertibles in Hong Kong.

Probably not.

Today’s soundtrack: I ain't moving 'till the bailiff comes
Today at 8:02pm: at Hapkido, being forced to do wayyyyyyy more sit-ups than I’d do if it were up to me


Thank you for the clichés, they were delicious.

Next solicitation: If politeness was not an issue, what is a brief question you might ask someone when trying to get to know them, i.e. in a blind date situation?

Just anything you’d want to know about that person if you were considering them as a dating partner or even long-term prospect.

Sample questions:

- “Are you into politics?”
- “Have you ever cheated on anybody?”
- “Are you close with your parents?”
- “Do you believe in gender roles?”
- “How much money do you make after taxes?”
etc.

Brutally personal questions are fine, polite is fine too, as long as it’s something you’d genuinely be interested in knowing about your potential partner. Any help greatly appreciated.

Today’s soundtrack: block rockin’ beats
Today at 5:42pm: trekking home


I need your help. I’m working on a personal project I will eventually tell you all about and I need some clichés. Popular, cheesy ones along the lines of “What does not kill you makes you stronger” or “Dance like no one’s watching...” etc.

Can you guys think of any? Especially any having to do with love or relationships?

Thanks in advance for any help proffered.

Today’s soundtrack: I need to stop and take a rest
Today at 2:02pm: descending


The best is when you and a stranger are waiting for an elevator, but then two elevators come and you each get your own. This happened to me today and it was the highlight in an otherwise torturous day of corporate drudgery.

When waiting for an elevator with a group of strangers, I always go in last. I linger to see if an empty one is coming. I know it’s not very often but sometimes elevators get stuck between floors, for hours, and I’d much rather be trapped by myself than with a group of strangers.

I bet when elevators first came out, it was considered rude to purposely avoid taking an elevator with a stranger. Or maybe it’s rude now, I don’t know. I wonder if it’s rude in England, assuming England is one of those places where manners still count for something.

I want to go to London. In London I would happily ride an elevator with complete strangers.

But who am I fooling, I don’t have the scratch to go anyplace. For years I’ve been dying to get to Cuba but I haven’t been out of the country in years, not counting Canada. I just can’t afford it.

In May I’ll be going to Tokyo though, because a freelance client is paying for it. Last year I designed some bags for a Japanese company through an NYC design firm, and in May they’re finally having the product launch. The other designers and I are supposed to attend. I’m looking forward to the trip.

I’m a little apprehensive, though. An ex of mine lives in Tokyo and she recently got married. Every time I’ve been back to Japan, she and I just happened to be single, and things kind of picked up where they left off. But now she’s Mrs. Somebody. Might even have a kid by now. I wonder if she’ll even be willing to meet up with me. Japanese social situations are different and I could totally see her not returning my calls even if she did want to talk to me.

When I was living in Japan I discovered a lot of complicated and confounding social rules I had trouble deciphering. It took me a while to figure out when I was officially her boyfriend and stuff. It’s already difficult to understand women so when you add a different language and system it turns into a regular Rubik’s cube. Not to mention she was an artist.

In Japan I lived by myself and it was the first time I’d had the luxury to do so, because New York City is all about roommates. I think having my own place for a year spoiled me in a way, and it definitely shut something off in my head. Before I moved out there, I believe, I could share elevators with anyone and not give a good goddamn.

Well, what are you gonna do. I can’t put the genie back in the bottle but I can always take the stairs.

Today’s soundtrack: bad medicine is what I need
Today at 9:32pm: waiting on line at United Artists Union Square

Just saw Dawn of the Dead with Lam, Sing and Julie. It was pretty decent, if not as good as I’d hoped. Without spoiling any major plot details, it’s about a group of everyday people besieged by zombies.

I noticed that everyone in the movie, from housewife to hillbilly, was comfortable with firearms and had great aim. Got me thinking I should go to a firing range and become fluent with firearms, in case I ever need to hole up in a shopping mall and blow mutants away.

As anyone familiar with zombie lore knows, to disable a zombie you must destroy the brain or isolate it from the rest of the body, meaning you either gotta cap it in the skull or swing a sword through its neck.

I have some experience with a sword, so it’s conceivable I could cleanly remove the head from an attacking zombie, but in this movie they’re fighting like ten, twenty zombies at a time so I would probably get overwhelmed. I bet my arms would get really tired. I might even get a sports injury, like tennis elbow, but it would be zombie shoulder or something. So I’d rather use a gun.

Then again, holding a firearm steady for prolonged periods must be tiring too. So for zombie problems I think a tripod-mounted heavy machine gun would be ideal. You could obliterate incoming zombies from the comfort of a crouched or maybe even seated position. Also, from what I understand with those sorts of rifles aim is not so much an issue.

If I was an eccentric millionaire, I would go out and buy a tripod-mounted heavy machine gun after seeing this movie. Also I would look into some type of kevlar jumpsuit with headgear that protects you from bites. I think they have similar diving suits that are supposedly sharkproof. To understand why you need to be protected from bites, please read the following fact sheet.


Zombies: Who are they, and what do they want?

Fact: Zombies want to bite you.
Fact: A zombie bite will always become infected.
Fact: Once infected, you eventually die and become a zombie.
Fact: Unlike old-school zombies, modern-day zombies can run fucking fast.


I was impressed withhow fast some of the zombies in this movie were. They had a couple that were like the Carl Lewis of zombies. When viewing older zombie movies I was always like “Ah, I could outrun those guys” but watching this one I was like Man, if you wanna outrun these motherfuckers you’d better have those Nikes laced up tight. And you better eat a powerbar or something. ‘Cause these bitches can run.

Although the upgraded zombies are fast, luckily they’re not smart. They can’t do things like drive a car or make phone calls or fill out complicated tax documents or pick locks. In fact I don’t even think they can talk. Good thing, too. If zombies could make phone calls you’d just be fucked.

Anyways the tagline of the movie is “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” So never mind rebuilding Iraq, I think if the U.S. Government wants to avoid some serious problems they’d better start rebuilding Hell. I’m talking multi-story high-density housing with room for growth.

The should have a new branch of Urban Planning called Hell Planning. A bunch of architects holding focus groups with sinners.

Today’s soundtrack: whatever you do now, don’t turn around
Today at 8:02pm: grappling with Betty

The Corporation used to trust me. In the ten years I’ve been there I’ve never had to sign a contract or an NDA, I just did my work and kept my mouth shut.

That was bound to change, of course. The Big Boss told me McBride in Legal sent down a contract for me to sign. I looked it over to see where the tricks and traps were hidden. I found several--The Corporation, of course, is trying to take advantage of me--and The Big Boss said he’d see if he could get it amended. But, he says, McBride is adamant I sign some type of contract. Fucking Legal.

So, in the corporate spirit of you-give-me-something-and-I’ll-give-you-something, I asked The Big Boss for a raise. I know the economy’s been acting like a little bitch, but my rent’s gone up, and my health insurance decided the rent shouldn’t stay in such a high place by itself, so now the two are living together in the Let’s Take Advantage Of Rain Suites.

“Well, if I had it my way I’d pay you three hundred dollars an hour,” said The Big Boss. (I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or greasing me--a fellow employee told me The Big Boss “likes to play his cards close to his chest.”) “But it’s a question of what the market will bear. Let me check with [so-and-so] in [such-and-such] and we’ll see what we can do.”

That was before I made my big, stupid mistake.

The Big Boss gave me some tasks to delegate. One of them involved a file that we need a certain process applied to. I found a Firm that performs this process and got a price quote--57 dollars. Ridiculously cheap.

After getting money approval from The Big Boss, I sent the file to the Firm, and endured a litany of technical questions from them--“Do you want it [this way], do you want it [that way],” etc. I didn’t understand some of the technical stuff and basically said yes to the things I thought were right.

The file came back, and the boss saw it and was happy. The next day a rep from The Firm called me up to send me the bill:

$426.00.

“What--I thought it was 57 dollars!” I said, panicked.

“No, no, no, no. Who told you that?” asked the rep.

I looked over my notes to see if I’d written the person’s name next to the price quote. I hadn’t. I just had “$57” underlined on a yellow legal pad, next to some doodles of shaded boxes. No one’s ever going to mistake me for an FBI agent.

“Uh...some woman,” I said, and felt myself slouching.

“No, no, no, no,” said the rep. “That’s a very complicated process we performed, and the accurate price is $426. And that’s a very competitive price, I might add.”

“I see.”

As luck would have it The Big Boss was out that day, so I left a message on his voice mail with a lot of stammering. It’s not good when someone gives you a task to do, and you tell him a price that he agrees to, and you underestimate it by a factor of 8. If I was on The Apprentice I’d be beyond fired--I think Trump and that blond woman would actually push me out of a window on one of the upper floors. And these days I’m not even sure I’d scream on the way down.

So, doesn’t look like I’ll be able to push for my raise now.

The other day I talked about making mistakes and paying for them. But this is a new one: I made a mistake that will result in me losing money in future wages.

Isn’t life interesting?

Yes, it is. It’s very interesting.

So interesting I could slap myself.

Maybe I could just go around slapping people. I’d be like, a serial slapper. I’d slap indiscriminately and with conviction. The cops would be looking for me, the papers would warn of my menace. Bus drivers, security guards, technocrats, politicians, no one would be safe from my slaps. Except for those politicians that have bodyguards.

Does anyone have any free tickets to Hawaii?

These guys take orders from the dude on your five-dollar bill.

Today’s soundtrack:
I would surely
surely lose a lot
Today at 5:12pm: trying to stay away from sneezy people on the subway

In midtown I come across an ATM vestibule stuffed with suburban kids in high school band uniforms, trying to get out of the cold. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade brought a grip of unfamiliar types into my daily path, from Team Band to the Irish (Eye-rrrrish) tourist with the thick brogue standing on line* at Citibank.

* (Here’s a question for you: Everyone I know says “standing on line,” “waiting on line.” But a friend of mine claims that everyone outside of New York says “standing in line,” which in all my time in other places I have never confirmed to be true. Is it? Anyone?)

But the strangest group I saw hanging out in front of the bank was a large posse of white men dressed in full Civil War regalia, right down to their wool shoulder shawls, leather pouches and handmade boots. All of them had musket rifles tipped with bayonets. Apparently the rifles get heavy, because when these fellas are on break (from whatever the hell it was they were doing), as I saw them, they form their rifles into teepees to avoid carrying them.

Is that an actual Civil War practice, to stand your rifle up and lean it against two other rifles? Seems like a bad idea to me. I mean you don’t see S.W.A.T. doing that. I can picture all of the muskets falling over, then there’s a loud retort, then three people get shot in the foot with a steel ball the size of Ron Jeremy’s testicle.

So anyways I’m standing in front of the bank, wondering how best to ask these guys to restage Antietam, when suddenly a thought occurs to me:

“White privilege” is typically associated with big things like living in desirable neighborhoods, or the ability to become the President of something, anything. It’s typically not associated with marching around midtown Manhattan dressed up like Larry Storch from F-Troop, but strangely enough, this is a form of white privilege too. I mean they are never going to let, say, a thirty-deep grip of black men stand in front of a bank, in disguise, with bayonet-tipped rifles, holiday or not. Something stinks in midtown.

Anyways, I’m sure that’s the last thing on the minds of these guys standing in front of the Chase in their 1800s army wear. But strange as it sounds, they’re lucky in probably more ways than they know.



*Update: Thanks to everyone who responded on the “in line” vs. “on line” thing. I say “on line,” and provincial as I am I’d never heard anyone say “in line” except to refer to skates.

After the first three people wrote that they say “in line” I was going to call them barbarians, but now I see that most of the country, and apparently Australia and England, says it that way. And since they invented the language in England I’m guessing that’s the right way to say it. Which is interesting. Or should I say onteresting.

So, I am the barbarian.

I also do not say “go to bed,” I say “go on bed.”

Okay that last part was a lie.

Today’s soundtrack: once upon a time you dressed so fine
Today at 10:02am: asking why my paycheck’s late. Again


Years ago the weather was controlled by a boring, rational old man. It got cold in the winter and hot in the summer. If he was feeling generous it would snow on Christmas.

At some point he handed the weather reins over to his daughter--an emotional, hysterical young woman prone to violent mood swings. She gets pissed off and suddenly it’s freezing in September and snowing in March. A forgotten callback turns into the longest cold snap you can remember, and you can be damn sure the summer’s got all kinds of nasty surprises lined up.

Whoever it was that forgot to call her back, call her back, for fuck’s sake. All of us are tired of paying for your crimes.

The buildings mock me.
But I will not be mocked.

Today’s soundtrack: like a rolling stone
Today at 3:42pm: On FDR Drive, changing lanes like Ben Affleck


battery will get you nowhere
Still getting used to being an adult.

Adult Rule #33: Whenever you make a mistake, you have to pay for it. The currency is either time, cash or more often than not, both. These days I can barely spare either.

The mistake I made this time was to leave my hazards on. Was backing up to get into a parking spot, so I hit the blinkers. After I’d claimed my rectangle of asphalt, I was so intent on getting to my destination that I turned the car off without noticing the blinking red triangle on my dashboard.

When I returned to the car hours later, the battery was deader than Qusay Hussein.

A loyal friend drove out from Queens to give me a jump, and after that I returned the car to the garage. That was about a month ago. I haven’t used the car much since, but the few times I’ve gone to retrieve it, it needed a jump-start every time. One night I drove around for about an hour to recharge it, but unlike Jesus Christ in The Passion, it stayed dead and failed to spawn any new religions.

Well, today was the first free day I had to handle the battery problem.

Manhattan’s got a little of everything and a lot of some things, but those “some things” are not auto parts stores. The few I could find in the yellow pages told me a replacement battery for my car would run me a hundred dollars. The last time I bought a car battery Mariah Carey was on the charts, but I could swear car batteries only ran thirty, forty bucks at most, and inflation doesn’t climb that fast. I remember “Dreamlover” and AC Delco.

I called some shops in Brooklyn, to see if expensive Manhattan storefront rents were boosting the prices I was given. But the Brooklynites wanted eighty dollars, which I still felt was too high. Eighty dollars should get you a battery and a full-body massage. (Though if the auto parts guys were the ones delivering the massage, I’d take a gift certificate instead.)

Just for fun I called the dealership to see what they’d charge. They wanted $120 for the battery, and if I wanted them to install it (which I didn’t), that’d run me another fifty bucks for labor. I said “Thanks anyway” but what I really meant was “Kiss my ass.”

Next I figured I’d see if I could recharge the battery by simply driving around again. The first time I’d tried it had been nighttime and I was driving around the city, which meant a) the headlights were on, sucking up juice and b) the frequent brake-slamming required in navigating Manhattan traffic meant my brake lights were constantly coming on, sucking up yet more juice. Plus I stupidly had the radio blaring.

So this time I opted for smooth, high-revving, uninterrupted highway driving, with no headlights. The guys at the garage gave me a jump, then I hit FDR Drive and broke north, out of the city. Manhattan gave way to the Bronx, the Bronx gave way to Westchester.

I maintained strict radio silence the whole way, which just left me with my thoughts. The thing I discovered is I enjoy spending time with fifth gear more than I enjoy spending time with my thoughts.

After forty-five minutes I started to get hungry, but knew I couldn’t stop at a restaurant; I couldn’t afford to turn the car off, in case the battery wasn’t yet charged, and suburbs or no I wasn’t gonna leave the damn thing running.

In Thornwood, New York I spied a McDonald’s, and finally realized what a drive-thru is good for. I ordered my meal at one window, paid at a second and received my food at the third. I pulled into the back of the parking lot and left the engine running while I scarfed my Big ‘N Tasty (which was, incidentally, neither big nor tasty).

While I was eating and trying not to spill ketchup on the stickshift, I observed my fellow McDonald’s patrons, suburbanites all of them. It amazes me how you can go just forty-five minutes outside the city and the people instantly get larger around the waist. The people that came through resembled what I’ve come to know as average Americans: a rather large housewife, and a grip of angry white kids who looked and dressed like heavier versions of Eminem.

After my “meal” I continued driving, determined to get at least an hour outside the city. Fifteen minutes later I’d succeeded, and found myself approaching the town where I’d spent my adolescence. (My brother and I were born in the city but pulled out at the age when children normally begin getting in trouble. Two Asian kids with strong Staten Island accents moving to an all-white suburb is trouble, but that’s a different story.)

I knew for a fact there was a large auto parts store in this town, or at least there had been fifteen years ago; in high school, when my Datsun was ailing I took pride in acquiring the parts and fixing it myself. I even had this big toolbox full of a shiny Craftsman tool set I’d saved up for. So I pulled off the exit, to see if the auto store was still there.

In 1979 my pops started up a small video store in a tiny little shopping mall. It was the first video store for miles around. The success of this store was responsible for both my family and I getting three squares a day, and for ensuring that I saw every movie made between 1979 and 1989. Which is why I can now only process my life through movie cliches, and, when stuck in a jam, will occasionally ask myself “What would Michael J. Fox in High School U.S.A. do? How can I defeat the Beau Middletons in this world?”

I drove past the spot where the mall had been, and it was gone. Recently demolished, by the looks of the site; a huge, flat expanse of dirt, with bulldozers still tidying the mess. I know it’s dumb but that was kind of a shock for me.

I thought for sure the auto parts store would be gone too, but it was still there. Then, shock #2: The guy manning the counter was Asian. Back when I lived here, the only Asian guy I’d seen on a regular basis, besides my brother, was my dad.

This guy wasn’t my dad, but he did send an employee out to the parking lot to hook some type of device up to my battery.

“Yep, it’s shot,” said the guy, reading his device. “It won’t hold a charge.”

The only thing doing any charging was me, meaning I put a new battery on my credit card. “How much do they run?” I asked, before they rang it up.

“Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche batteries are expensive,” he said. Such irony. I bought the VW because it was the cheapest real car on the market, but due to corporate parentage I’d be paying the same for my battery as the I-bankers with the GT’s and the TT’s.

I dropped 75 bucks on the battery, and another 12 for a cheap socket wrench set, because my shiny Craftsman tools that I’d saved up for with busboy money had eventually gotten lost in one of my moves (there were five).

Out in the parking lot I popped the hood, rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Changing a battery is normally a simple gig, but I discovered mine was locked into place by a flange at the bottom. Getting to the flange required removing a piece of the headlight casing, which in turn was connected to another plastic cowling with a wire snaked through it, all of it held in place with screws, not bolts. After cursing some, I went back in the store and dug a blackened hand into my pocket to pay for a Philips-head.

Minutes later I had the new battery in place. Then I spent more time than I should have figuring out how the headlight casing could be reassembled with the wire snaked through it. After sorting that puzzle out I finally slammed the hood shut and turned the ignition key to ON, half-expecting to hear that dreaded, empty click which meant I’d have to find someone in this parking lot to beat up out of sheer frustration. But the engine started like Shaquille O’Neal.

Afterwards I lugged the old battery back inside, to be recycled. You ever lift a car battery? It’s the size of a box of Breyer’s but feels like forty pounds of anti-matter. I can’t understand how something that small could be that heavy.

I also can’t understand how something as trivial as changing a car battery took me eighty miles, a hundred-and-four dollars and three hours door-to-door. And now I’ve got, bouncing around in my trunk, a cheap-ass socket wrench set and a screwdriver I didn’t want. But I made a mistake, and now it’s paid in full.

Today’s soundtrack: it betrays a bad mind
Today at 8:02pm: lamenting the fact that it’s snowing in March


It’s been exactly ten years since I first interviewed for an internship that turned into my current permalance gig. (I do design work for a large, household-name-brand Faceless Corporation.)

A lot happens in ten years. I went from being a boy to a man and back again, or something like that. I saw lots of people in the office age and change. Some people get thinner but most get fatter. It seems hardly anyone retains their original shape.

When I went to Texas a few years ago, that was the first time I ever saw “morbidly obese” people. I was amazed at how big humans are capable of becoming. Not to mention the structural improbabilities associated with a person that size. I saw some people so big I couldn’t understand how the skeleton could support the mass surrounding it. If you tried to erect a building with the relative girth and footprint of some of these people, the architect would take one look at the plans and be like “Oh come on, that’s not gonna work.”

It also amazes me that we’re living in an age where this problem is even possible. For much of human history our ancestors were just running around trying to get enough to eat, spending all day cultivating fields or chasing their dinner with a stick. I don’t think they ever could have imagined such a thing as having too much food. I bet they didn’t even invent the word “fat” until after the Industrial Revolution.

In honor of a decade (give or take; I was overseas for a year and took time off here and there) of “service,” The Boss wants to take me out for a beer with The Guys. I appreciate the gesture but have no idea what the hell we’ll talk about, so I’m approaching it with a sense of mild dread.

They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I’m not the same person at work; every time I go into the office it’s like I put on a disguise. The big nose, bushy eyebrows and glasses.

I avoid most of my coworkers. Any observations, comments or wiseass remarks that occur to me never make it off the Teleprompter. I’m the quiet freelance guy, the hired gun in the back room. I don’t think they want to hear me marveling at the structure of fat Texans, and I don’t really want to tell them.

Funny how I can’t talk to my coworkers, but I have no problem getting up in front of a roomful of strangers to read stuff I’ve written. I’m doing a reading this Saturday for some organization called Open Circle. It’s free but if you want to go I think you’re supposed to RSVP. Info at this link:

I don’t know the organization well, and it’s apparently mutual; I’m listed on their website as a “Writer/Actor.” Once they turn the mike on I’ll have to clear that up after I clear my throat.

Today’s soundtrack: let me rock you Chaka Khan
Today at 8:02pm: getting punched in the stomach by Betty


It’s busy, man. Back on soon as I get the time.