Today’s soundtrack: I had the fever with each passing year
Today at 10:32pm: in the left lane, behaving badly


So Sunday I took myself out on a little date. (Oh shut up.) At first I thought about taking myself to a bar to ply myself with drinks, so I could take myself back to my place and maybe have my way with myself. That sounded like it might get sticky, so instead I drove into Brooklyn to look at some photographs.

See a couple days earlier, I was in this Chinese vegetarian restaurant (don’t ask me why) and I saw this flyer. It had two photographs on it, one of a foggy cityscape, the other of a pretty girl in profile. The cityscape caught my eye and the pretty girl kept it there.

The back of the card had an address in Greenpoint (a residential area on the outskirts of tragically-hip Williamsburg) and a date when two photographers would be exhibiting their work. Sunday was the day.

By Sunday evening I was in a bad mood because something I’d failed at months earlier had recently come back to haunt me. I wasn’t angry, just morose. I drove into Brooklyn all slow, nearly beyond the help of ska.

Mesorole Avenue is in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Brooklyn. In the Polish section of Greenpoint. The venue was called Club Europa, though the area it was in seemed an unlikely place for a joint with a name like that. Rows of low-rise, immigrant-filled tenements (the kind where they use roofing for siding) kept watch over the block.

I got rockstar parking--at least something was going right--and slunk into the club.

The “club” was actually an old-school bar, with orange-ish lighting, a couple tough-looking Russian guys shooting pool and a Slavic loner-type nursing a vodka with one knee on the bar. Type of place where you’d have no problem getting your ass kicked if you played your cards right.

I was already in a bad mood, so thought about slamming some gin and playing nine-ball with the Russians for large sums of money. What could go wrong?

Instead I asked the bartender “You guys got some kinda photo exhibit here?” I was certain I was in the wrong place.

“Upstairs,” she said, pointing to a stairway I hadn’t noticed on the way in. (I’d make a terrible Jason Bourne.)

I left Mikhail and Vladimir to their billiards and tramped up the steps. At the top was a large open space, with a stage on one end, a sizeable dance floor, a couch/lounge area, and a three-sided bar. Standing in my way was a bookish blond with glasses, a cashier’s box and an expectant look.

“I’m here for the photo show,” I said.

“It’s ten dollars for the entire event,” she said, explaining that there was also a band and a raffle. I cared for neither of these things but dug a lonely Jackson out of my pocket and forked it over, unwilling to abort my date for the sake of frugality.

A door off to the right led into a well-lit white room, where a neat line of framed 16x20s ran across all four walls. Mostly urban interiors and exteriors. Some of the photos were interesting, others dull.

But one of the photographs was the sexiest I’d ever seen. It was a black-and-white of a man’s hand and a woman’s hand, each clenched around the other, amidst rumpled sheets. Something about the way it was lit and the obvious purpose of the clenching.

It amazed me how much more erotic it was than pornography. I guess once you’ve seen graphic internet footage of “vixens” putting zucchinis in their assholes, sex loses some of its mystery.

Still feeling bad, I was staring at one of the photographs when, in the glass covering the photo, I spotted the reflections of two pretty girls standing behind me. I really had to concentrate to refocus on the photo.

Presently the band began to play. Salsa music, which surprised me; I guess I was expecting polka or something Polish.

Even more surprising, the music sounded really good to me. I’m not a big salsa fan but the singer had this incredibly rich voice, like it was made out of chocolate or bourbon.

I didn’t give my feet the order to move, but before I knew it I’d wandered out into the main room to watch the band. There was a salsa band up on stage alright, with three Latin guys on the bass and drums, but the two singers, the flutist and the pianist were all Japanese chicks.

The singer’s voice was both mesmerizing and richer than Bill Gates, and a moment later I found myself at one of the tables with gin in my mouth. Intermittently I scribbled my troubles into a notebook, because once you put problems on paper they can go away. During the break a blond announcer got up and read information in both English and Polish. I lost the raffle in both languages.

I stayed for the second half of the set, and the music mixed well with the Tanqueray. The band was really, really good. At one point a Japanese girl with an amazing figure got up and started dancing salsa, incredibly elegantly, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Though I at least had the decency to glance sidelong when her boyfriend came into the picture. A leerer I’m not.

After the band wrapped up I paid my bill and left. On the sidewalk I found myself in a much better mood than when I’d walked in. Something about good music is transformative.

I was also in a drive-fast-and-play-loud-music mood, so I got in the whip, put some Stevie Wonder on and fucking tore ass across Brooklyn. On the BQE I slammed it into fifth, shot between tractors and made short work of traffic. Good music and testing the limits of physics in a vehicle is also transformative.

Back in my apartment, it wasn’t long before I was sleepy. Drifting off in bed, I became conscious of my one hand, lying to the side amidst rumpled sheets, clenching nothing, and thought of how that wouldn’t make such a good photograph.

Might be some decent flicks in here, though.

Today’s soundtrack: ...that they would want it for themselves
Today at 10:02am: making an unpleasant morning discovery: there’s no pineapple left in the ‘fridge


In New York City there’s more than one type of karma.

First you’ve got your Regular Karma. For those of you who live in a cave or the Upper West Side, the gist of it is, avoid slapping waiters or jumping the turnstile and you’ll make it through life okay.

The other kinds of karma:

Parking Karma. Certain people have a knack for coming across SUV-sized curbside vacancies. I am not one of these people, but the karma’s associative. When my friend Omar lived here, every time we drove someplace we got rockstar parking in front of the venue. If he wasn’t with me I’d have to spend ten minutes circling the block like a vehicular vulture.

Taxi Karma. I don’t take cabs much but my friend Betty told me about it. One of her assistants had good Taxi Karma, so you could step outside with her during rush hour in a rainstorm, and a hack with the light on would pull right up.

Mass Transit Karma. Give your seat up to enough old ladies and you eventually receive payback in the form of miraculously unoccupied seats during rush hour (assuming there’s none of those old bats within seat-giving-up radius). And sometimes these miraculously unoccupied seats don’t even have human feces on them.

Six-to-the-Five Karma. (Related to Mass Transit Karma.) This means you can step out of the local just as the express is pulling in across the platform.

Bar Karma (Barma). The ability to catch the beleaguered bartender’s eye on a crowded Saturday night. Also the ability to gain admission to bars more packed than Abu Ghraib, though the experience is not always as rewarding as it might seem to the suckers left waiting on the sidewalk.

Elevator Karma. If yours is rotten, you’re going to 36, and the elevator will make 35 stops on the way up there.

Starma. If yours is good, once in a while you’ll look up into Manhattan’s evening sky and spot a twinkling star that doesn’t turn into an incoming 747. This is a good feeling. ‘Cause nothing is worse than making a wish on something that eventually lands at LaGuardia.

Not a lot of karma behind this link, admittedly.

Today’s soundtrack: C3-H5-N3-09 like nitroglycerin
Today at 3:02pm: pounding the pavement


Today was a long day, but tonight was a good night. I went into a bar with the proper level of expectations, and they were exceeded.

I’d like tomorrow to be a short day, but you cannot specify with these things. It would be nice if you could order days like catalog items. If you could do so my tomorrow would be short, productive and filled with much sleep.

My head hurts. It’s either the gin or the lack of sleep. Either way I am going to remedy the situation by lying prone until my breathing becomes even, my eyes close and my consciousness goes away.

I have this theory that when sleeping my consciousness doesn’t actually go away, it’s simply transferred to a person who’s just waking up on the other side of the planet. Then when they go to sleep I get it back. But I can’t decide if it’s the same person or a different person every day. Or if it’s a dude or a chick, young or old, good or evil. I’d put up a poll but I can barely keep my eyes open. Talk to you later.

Today’s soundtrack: do the hustle
Today at 7:02pm: getting caught in a thunderstorm


I used to walk into a bar or a party and think “My future girlfriend might be in here.” I don’t think that anymore.

Sometimes it scares me thinking about all the weird shit I’m into and how I’ll never be able to share it with anyone. Not just some of it, all of it. That sinking realization that there is no Right Woman; my tastes have become too insane and specific. With each passing year and its attendant accrual of idiosyncrasies and experiences, the chances of finding a match become more and more remote.

Sometimes I care, sometimes I don’t. I think these days I mostly just want the physical stuff. It’s so easy to understand, easy to see where you are and the feedback is immediate. Best of all it involves a minimum of talking.

My patience for bullshit has gone way, way down. I look back at some of the bullshit ex-girlfriends have put me through and I wonder what the fuck I was ever thinking. I wonder how I could have let some of these people trick me and/or completely waste my time. I’m ashamed at my own complicity.

Whenever I start feeling bad for no reason, I tell myself it’s just chemical. An unlucky combination of ingredients stemming from having eaten the wrong foods or maintaining improper levels of sleep, endorphins, caffeine or nicotine. That tomorrow I will wake up and feel good and hear a fucking funny joke or read something interesting, or take a picture I like, or go into a bar with the proper level of expectations.

Today’s soundtrack: my mind spray
Today at 12:02pm: a joyless lunch of bland cafeteria fish


Spider-Man’s mask doesn’t have a mouth hole, which is crazy. Can you imagine trying to breathe through that thing? The mouth area would always be all wet and gross. I mean every time he’s got it on he’s doing hard work, all swinging around and stuff.

It doesn’t have a dedicated nose area either, so it must get pretty tight around the nose. Put your hand on your nose and press it tight--that’s what it feels like to be Spider-Man. Doesn’t seem like so much fun now, does it.

Because of how he gets around, the only city Spider-Man could live in is New York. He needs lots of tall buildings to swing from. Maybe some parts of Chicago but I don’t think the tall-building-area is as expansive. Definitely not in L.A.

Just think if he lived in L.A. but didn’t have a car, how corny would that be. Like he would hear about some bad shit going on across town, so he’d put the suit on and just start walking. Waiting for the bus, then more walking. After an hour he’s like drenched in sweat and saying “Man I am gonna beat The Vulture’s ass when I get there. That motherfucker better bring it.”

Or, more than likely, he’d have to call up one of his friends that had a car.

Movies I want to see:

- Spider-Man
- Fahrenheit 9/11
- Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
- Coffee and Cigarettes
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
- The Terminal (kind of)
- Harry Potter
- Good Bye, Lenin!


Goddammit, that’s eighty bucks.

My spider sense is tingling.

Philadelphia. Philander. Philanthropy. Philatelia.

Today’s soundtrack: love the life I'm living though I'm looking forward to the day I die

Today at 9:32am: plodding up the steps from the 6-train


The view in the photo above, that’s what I see every morning when I get out of the subway and climb out from underground.

Every morning I go to work, that is. Lately it’s been really bad. Not busy or slow, just random, and sometimes they call me the goddamn morning of and ask me to come in. I hate that shit. I’d like at least two days’ notice. Yeah I’d like a lot of things.

So I read this article about iPod users. Apparently there’s some guy in England who studies the behavior of people with iPods. (You gotta love The Economist.) One of the behavioral “tics” he’s observed is that people with iPods are much, much choosier about answering their cell phones. Isn’t that interesting? Why should this be?

I myself am this way, but I can’t understand the connection between the habit of vetting phone calls and “having 10,000 songs in your pocket.” Does this mean the iPod makes you this way, or that people who are already call-screeners are more inclined to buy iPods?

One thing I’ve noticed is that iPods definitely spoil you, psychologically. Since I can listen to any song I own any damn time I want, it makes me want other things right away. Like pesto pizza or coffee light-no-sugar or a denuclearized Korean peninsula. A guy gets used to not waiting.

I’m picky about taking calls because I find people waste your time on the phone. Lots of “ums” and “ahs” and pausing to breathe while you watch precious minutes tick away. If you’re actually important it must be even worse.

Voicemail is great. On voicemail no one is inclined to “tell you a funny story” or ask you which movie sounds better or read you parts of Beowulf they found interesting.

Sometimes when I call people I crave the voicemail. Because then you can leave the pertinent information or confirm plans without having to go through the rigmarole of actual conversation. (Don’t look at me like that, you know it’s a rigmarole.)

Text messaging is nice too, but the typing is like, come on, I mean who came up with this. We need to either come up with a better interface or start reducing the size of our alphabet.

I’m all for reducing the size of the alphabet. Already we have so many redundant letters. Get rid of “C,” let the “K” and the “S” take up the slack. “Ph” should be replaced by “F,” and “Th” should be replaced by “D” in all cases, since we’re already doing it in New York and it works just fine.

I started writing this post with the intention of saying something, and now I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps iPods destroy attention spans as well.

My iPod is trying to destroy me.

Also I have too many playlists.

I promise not to spend it on cocaine or therapy.

Today’s soundtrack: but still I’m much obliged
Today at 10:02am: getting a phone call from the boss


My new thing is I like walking diagonally across Manhattan intersections. I like doing it because pulling it off requires a special confluence of events. It can only be during a non-rush-hour time of day on specially selected intersections that see sporadic drop-offs of traffic due to the timing of stoplights at adjacent intersections.

Anyways I really like doing it. You should try it sometime, though you’ll probably get hit because you’ve no idea what you’re doing. Do it near a hospital.

Not that it’s great, but I talked to a photographer friend about what I could “do” with my photos beyond posting them online. He said I could either try to sell them to a stock photo agency or (as a distant second) try to have a gallery show, which don’t sound like it has any damn kind of future or profit in it.

But he did say in order to do either of these things, I’d need to get a better camera. Film, or something that shoots at a higher resolution so I can print large. Which means a big-ass camera like this

as opposed to the 4.0 megapixel joint I now carry, which looks like this

and is small enough that I can (and often do) store it rectally.

Problem is, the only reason I get the shots I do now is because I carry the little camera everywhere and just whip it out, which I’d never be able to do if I had the big one. Realistically I’m not gonna walk around town with that damn thing around my neck. If I’m on my way to the store or the subway and I see something interesting I just pull the little one out and shoot it, two seconds, blam.

Cameras are getting smaller while megapixel counts are rising, So I’ll have to wait for that confluence when 10-megapixel cameras shrink to the size of my current one. If you can’t tell my new word is “confluence.”

Use “confluence” in a sentence.

I attended a computer confluence in Las Vegas.

wrong

He had a lot of confluence on me as a musician.

wrong

Winning the award gave me the confluence to pursue my career.

F, zero, unsatisfactory.

You can vote with your dollars.
(Though there’s only one contestant.)

Today’s soundtrack: let me get back
Today at 12:02pm: comedy short film meeting with Wendy


Drove upstate to see Ma and Pa for Father’s Day.

J’ever see Father’s Day, the mid-90s Dennis Miller/Robin Williams movie? In the beginning Robin Williams goes “For years I’ve thought about killing myself...it’s the only thing that’s kept me going.”

I saw it when I was living in Japan, sometime after Month Six when I grew desperate to hear English and would rent any damn American movie from the local video store. I saw Great White Hope, Desperate Measures, Man in the Iron Mask, all kinds of awful shit.

A good movie I stumbled upon by accident was Fresh. Giancarlo Esposito put in his best performance since Do The Right Thing and the little kid was spot-on.

Today on FDR Drive I made a small physics discovery: Listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” at high volume while driving a car will make your right foot heavier. I think it doesn’t matter what kind of car.

I made short work of the traffic until I hit that straightaway after 42nd Street, and then in the mirror I caught a glimpse of this flat, yellow, angry thing buzzing up on me like a hornet:

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I think it’s a Lamborghini, no? Crazy-lookin’ thing, I could practically see exclamation points coming off the top of it.

I knew Love was from Jersey (peep the plates) ‘cause there’s no way he keeps this bitch in the city. FDR Drive is smoother now than it once was but it’s still no chocolate cream pie. The bottom of this car would be scraped up like the guardrail at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge.

After a half-hour of driving, concrete and glass turned to brown trees and grass, and then I saw this:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I think it’s a Dodge Charger, no? Check out the crazy C-pillar and total lack of a B-pillar. And look at the door, it’s a perfect rectangle. They don’t make ‘em like this no more, no sir. The driver kind of looked like Randy Couture.

I guess if this guy raced the Lambo he’d lose, but if the two drivers had a fistfight in the parking lot of a diner my money would be on Mr. Dodge.

Dodge, as in Get the fuck out of.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Who do you believe:
Me, or the Nigerian ex-diplomat who’s going to make you rich?

Today’s soundtrack: it sure fits in with my plan
Today at 2:12pm: taking the elevator to freedom


I love my country. Not the music, I mean America.

Of course, as with any modern-day relationship, there are plenty of things I hate about it too. But I’m not going to get into that today.

Here’s what I love: This morning on the subway I saw an ad for an English-language school. At the bottom of the ad was printed “REQUIRED BY FEDERAL LAW TO ENROLL NON-IMMIGRANT FOREIGNERS” (i.e. people who are here illegally). Which means there are people in Congress who actually realize that aliens walk among us, and if they’re going to be here anyway, they might as well be speaking English.

I like that ‘cause it’s realistic and honest. I remember the hoopla people made about giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants in California. They said stuff like “Don't give them driver’s licenses! They’re illegal! They’re not supposed to be here!” Yes, but they are here, and most of them are working. Doing jobs that need to be filled. I heard something like 75% of farm labor in California is done by illegal immigrants.

Then people said stuff like “They’re taking jobs away from Americans!” But on TV I saw them interviewing this Mexican dishwasher. He looked pretty tired. “I’ve been here for twelve years,” he said, indicating the kitchen behind him. “I’ve never once seen an American walk through that door and say ‘Hey, can I wash dishes? Are you guys hiring?’”

I like living in a country where even if you’re not supposed to be here, you still have a crack at some type of education. That’s a good thing. In New York, surrounded by immigrants, I feel good, like something positive is being done to counteract the various acts of fuckery committed in the name of our flag.



ME: I just want to love you.

U.S.: Love all you want; I’m still going to keep you at an arm’s distance.

ME: Why do you make it so hard?

U.S.: Because I’m complicated.

ME: But I am a huddled mass, yearning to breathe free.

U.S.: Then maybe you should quit smoking.

I might love my country, but I’m angling for a tryst with Canada.
Canada really listens to me.

Today’s soundtrack:
Lightning thirty miles away
Three thousand more in two days
Today at 5:02pm: walking home from midtown


Something I really hate is unsolicited advice, or people pushing their views. Self-entitled strangers always assume you give a fuck what they think.

My whole life is structured around minimizing the possibility of getting into situations where people can tell me what to do, and while it hasn’t exactly brought me stunning success, I feel like my own man, which is ultimately more important (to me).

Anyway there are a handful of people, maybe less than five, who can try to tell me what’s what and I’ll actually listen to them instead of closing the window or telling them “I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back” and then going outside and hailing a cab. Lam is one of these people. So the other night when we went to dinner and he began (tactfully) criticizing my ways, I listened carefully.

The gist of it was basically that I’m not doing anything. Professionally and socially. I have the potential to write a book or finish some body of work, and yet I let it lie like a sleeping dog. I don’t set goals for myself, I never did, and I have the attention span of a cockroach. (“I’m hungry...where’s food...OH MY GOD, RAID SPRAY! RUN! RUN! RUN! ...Okay I’m hungry...where’s food....”)

Few people know me better than Lam does, so I listened to the whole spiel and spotted all the truths. My hard drive is full of unfinished writing projects, half-assed and incomplete book chapters, ridiculous short stories about talking crocodiles that don’t go anywhere, and five years’ worth of six hundred disjointed journal entries gathering electronic dust.

I go to Hapkido once in a while, sure, but mostly I involve myself in random projects that lead nowhere, like the MovieTalkers thing, or I take copious pictures of things I think are interesting, or I sit at home and listen to Jackie Gleason while reading magazines and eating cheap take-out. And all I can think about is how I can get out of town for a few weeks. To take a break from being something that is not quite a loser, but perhaps in the same genetic family, like lizards and geckos.

A particular point of Lam’s concern was that I’m not even dating anymore. I used to go out like crazy, but these days I can’t bring myself to bother. Every woman I’ve spent time with has begun hassling me about emotional bullshit at some point, or invested heavy effort into trying to make me feel bad for not doing what they want. So now my system is blown out like I’ve been shooting horse for three years. (Do they still call it “horse?”)

I’m no longer just emotionally unavailable, I’m emotionally discontinued. You hear me? They stopped making that shit. You might be able to find a spare piece of my pity on eBay, but I guarantee it’s no good secondhand, since the original was a flawed product to begin with.

The point of Lam bringing up how I’m losing in the Rain vs. Inertia contest was not because he wants to make me feel bad, but because to him (and a few of my friends) it looks like I am clearly circling the inside perimeter of the toilet, waiting for gravity to take over. I’m going to be thirty-three in six weeks. I’ve squandered over a decade of my life at a dead-end job. I’m five figures in the hole and more often than not I eat meals that come in paper bags. Trying desperately to hang onto a car I can’t afford so I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Whoa! This is moving into fucking unjustified whining territory. Let me pull back for a minute here. Overall things are good. I’m not getting shot at by people who hate my country, I don’t have to work in a field and I eat whenever I want. I get to take trips to other places and I have all my limbs. The racism I encounter is merely annoying as opposed to life-threatening. Things are okay.

It’s just that I’m not living up to my potential, that’s the point he was trying to make.

I need to set goals and improve my attention span. I need to get my shit together and stop eating whenever I want.

In six weeks I’ll be 33. Fuck.

In eighteen weeks I’ll be 33 1/3, like an LP.

Let’s hope I’m not a “single” when I’m 45.

When I’m 78 I’ll be worth more but no one will listen to me anymore.

Alright these jokes are getting stupid.

Why read for free when you can pay?
(Note to self: Work on sales pitch.)
Trip progress update coming soon.

Today’s soundtrack: strange bird
Today at 11:02pm: for a brief second, suspended in mid-air


Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra was fucking fantastic. Holy shit! Words cannot describe it (not that that will stop me from trying). In the past year I’ve had two experiences that made the other 363 days kind of worth it. The first took place in Tokyo, the last was this show. This was right up there with the best sex and the best meals.

So, fucking, good. It validated my belief in human beings. I learned to love again. Enemies joined hands. I solved pi.

As with most good things, this show came at the end of several bad things. The first was my day at work. I had one of those movie-bad days where I wanted nothing more than to go home and drink a bottle of Windex. Coworker and I not “on the same wavelength.” God is testing me and I’m failing miserably. F, Zero, Unsatisfactory.

By 6pm I threw my report card in the garbage and met Mike and Thomas at S.O.B.s. down on Varick. (For those of you from out-of-town that stands for Sounds of Brazil, not the other thing.) A line was already forming, mostly Japanese girls. Some of them were hot but the weather, unfortunately, was hotter. New York summer in full effect.

They kept us waiting for a while, like ninety minutes so we started talking to people. In front of us, Japanese girls from Yamaguchi, behind us, some white cats who’d driven down from Boston for the show. They were joined by a small crew from D.C., and for the umpteenth time I thought to myself Damn I’m glad I live in New York. These poor bastards had to put in five hours of wheel time to peep the gig whereas I put in five minutes of Nike and lost no petrol.

The bouncer was so big he looked like a fucking Transformer. Like if you stood a truck up on its ass. Huge. He also looked like Cedric the Entertainer’s older brother, making me wonder if he told you jokes while escorting you out of the club in a headlock. You left with laughs and a bruised neck.

They finally let us in but we had to wait another goddamn hour! The three of us sat on the edge of the stage while a shockingly untalented DJ spun an awful, awful variant of house music.

Then came the warm-up acts. First was a super-weird Japanese girl who played music out of a laptop and sang incomprehensible, bizarre lyrics with little connection to the music. She kept playing with one of those expanding plastic spheres on stage. All we kept saying was “Dude she’s all weird!” Then some people started laughing at her so I felt kinda bad. Who knows what kinda demons this girl has. I should probably date her.

Next was some band called Gaijin-A-Go-Go. It was weird, the drummer looked exactly like Mikhail Gorbachev and it was, yep, Go-Go music. It wasn’t terrible and the one Japanese girl in the band was supercute, her personality too. All dancing around like the schoolkids in that one Snoopy cartoon. I couldn’t stop watching her. But after the third song (their set list, taped to the stage, listed ten) I squished my way to the bar at the back, to drink gin until my senses were addled.

After an eternity--we’d been waiting nearly four hours--Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra a/k/a SkaPara finally came on. Nine guys lining up on stage, dressed like old-school big-band cats, white tux jackets, black pants.

It was everything I’d hoped for and more. These guys got up on stage and just fucking smashed it. They started right up, BLAM, and it was like you got shot with a ska gun. It was like the saxes, the trombone, the cornet were big-ass machine guns, lighting the crowd up, I said goddamn. The roar was instant. Everybody just jumping around like crazy.

It was fucking hot, hot, hot. The music was so immersive, half the time my eyes weren’t even open anymore. When I did open ‘em I’d look around and see nothing but cute Japanese girls smiling, the whole room swinging around like the deck of a ship, the stage lights glinting off the brass, and those nine guys on stage tearing shit up. It was just ridiculous.

We were standing just to the side of the stage, so close I almost got hit in the head twice with the wide-swinging trombone slide. (That would have been something.) Next to me, a girl with swaying long hair that encompassed my arm every other beat. It felt like I was in a magic car wash made out of Ska.

When I was in Hong Kong a few years ago me and a buddy drank a shitload of absinthe (it’s legal there) and went into a club in Lan Kwai Fong a couple days before Christmas. Swirling lights, pumping music and you felt like you were in floating in a neon cloud made out of anesthesia and Radiohead. That’s the only thing I can remember that came close to this.

From my vantage point I could clearly see all the girls in front of the stage. There was a whole grip of hotties but I just remember this one standing in the middle. She was plain-looking and not jumping around like everyone else, but just staring up at the band wide-eyed with this huge, pure smile on her face. I’ll regret writing this later because it sounds so corny, but in that one moment she looked so beautiful to me.

In retrospect I wish I’d taken pictures, but while the show was going on the last thing I was thinking about was the camera. Plus I knew something like this simply couldn’t be captured on pixel, and I don’t need flicks anyway; the experience is burned in my brain in IMAX 3D Surround Sound. I need to be able to vividly access this memory to get through the slower, duller parts of life.

It’s so hard for me to have fun, pure fun. This was pure fucking fun.

After the show we spilled out of the club, all psyched, and walked east. At the end of the show the guitar player was slapping all our hands and he gave Mike his guitar pick and Mike showed it to us, all happy.

Mike was also on deadline that night, so he and Thomas hopped a cab back to the East Village while I opted to walk back to my place. It was almost 1am.

On the way back I stopped at a deli to pick up dinner, a cold chicken wrap and some Sun Chips. Carried it back to my apartment in a plastic bag. Sat at my desk and ate it, munching slowly, my eyes still glazed. Thinking I have to go back to work tomorrow. But right then I didn’t care. I just remembered that plain girl with the big-ass smile.

Today’s soundtrack: hi o tsukete, mori no naka
Today at 8:02pm: blowing my eardrums out with a pair of headphones


I got nailed in the head with a wrench the other day. You’re not supposed to leave tools on top of ladders, a rule I normally adhere to scrupulously, but the other day my head was in the clouds while I was trying to mount an eye-hook in plaster.

So later I go to move the ladder and I hear something sliding then BAM, this crescent wrench lands precisely on top of my skull like a fucking smart bomb. Dumb wrench. This is coming mere days after I wrote something about people falling prone to gravity-based deaths being idiots. Nothing worse than people you don’t like turning out to be you.

Afterwards I had a knot on my head and I forgot about it until today, when I went to shave my head and found an unfamiliar contour on the top of it. I tried to shave around it, like when you’re mowing a lawn and come across a large rock.

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. Do you like them? And don’t you lie to me. Well I like “Utsukushiku moeru mori” (“Beautiful burning forest,” I think). It goes like this: da da da da da, da da da da da. Anyway these guys are really good. Ska is my prozac. If you hate it I don’t want to hear about it.

Can’t write right now, I’m a little too mixed-up. I have a process but can’t seem to execute it. Little bit too much going on. I’ll try again later.

Slightly better than buying a commemorative plate.
(Though I wouldn’t hold it against you if you passed.)

Today’s soundtrack: the gypsy flies from coast to coast
Today at 8:02pm: installing grommets on a jury-rigged curtain


I never think about the end of things, which is why my apartment’s a mess. Every time I come up those stairs I’ve got something in my hands--a cup of coffee, the day’s mail, a box of wood screws, something interesting I found on the sidewalk--and I never consider where it will end up. So it all gravitates into a pile, creating clutter.

I suppose I should learn to open mail (particularly those bills), throw old coffee cups away and stop bringing other people’s garbage into my home. My problem is I only see beginnings, never endings.

Did you ever think about how much your apartment weighs? Mine is so heavy I’m surprised the downstairs neighbors don’t complain. The other day I finished painting the floors in here, to ready it for studio use. I almost herniated myself lugging two five-gallon containers of paint up the steps. I’ve since emptied one of the buckets so now it’s light as a feather, but all the weight from inside it went into my apartment.

Once I read this book on how to get organized. The author’s basic rule for living in a clutter-free space is: “Everything has its place.” Like bills go in folders and stuff. Every single thing you own, said the author, should have a little box/shelf/drawer/area it goes into.

So I tried that, but the problem is there are so many things that defy classification and/or lack an abundance of like items to group them with. Where do I put a half-finished crossword puzzle? A friend’s forgotten umbrella? Dead flowers from an ex-girlfriend that I’m not quite ready to throw out? The microfilm a dying spy pressed into your hands at a sidewalk café before someone shot him in the neck with a crossbow?

Now I’m trying to be conscious of every single thing I bring inside. The other day I bought a hooded sweatshirt and refused the store’s packaging (a paper bag and that crinkly tissue stuff) and just ripped the tag off and threw it in my bag so I’d have less to throw out later.

Too many beginnings and not enough endings. I never liked endings and usually try to avoid them at all costs. It’s not a realistic way to live, but for better or worse I’ve been getting away with it.

When I moved to the suburbs as a child we lived in the first house on a street that, unlike the blocks we’d lived on in Queens and Staten Island, came to an abrupt end at the top. The road just stopped and then there were trees. To inform passing motorists that it wasn’t a through-street, suburban towns are required to post signage. So there was a yellow sign in our front yard that said DEAD END. I never liked that.

For roadtrippers, some pretty killer pieces of advice from St. Jude (not that one): Here.

Useful advice borne of personal experience is my favorite. (Note: That’s not a request for advice. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s unsolicited advice.)

Today’s soundtrack: the most gorgeous sleep that I’ve ever had
Today at 7:22am: crawling out of bed and saying “I love life”


Not far from where the above picture was taken is the Canal Street 6-train station. I take the six to work every day the boss deems fit to call me in.

The other morning I approached the station and spotted the African immigrants I’d seen there for the past few.

African immigrants who announced their presence with bubbles. For the past few these cats have been down at the station bright and early, selling these plastic contraptions that blow a prodigious amount of soapy bubbles in the air. Perfect, shiny little spheres, floating dreamily through the air, in sharp contrast to the grit, dirt and imperfection of the city around it.

Traffic on Canal is appreciable in the mornings, and so it happened that when the intersection jammed, a schoolbus full of Asian, South Asian and Latino children came to a dead halt in front of the bubble guys. Young kids, maybe five or so, from households that spoke Spanish or Urdu or Chinese or Bengali.

The schoolkids went wild at the sight of the bubbles, which rotated slowly through the air in dense, shiny clouds. One of the Africans started laughing and walked over to the bus, spraying it with soapy spheres and it was as if you took a volume knob marked “Children’s Shouts of Glee” and cranked it up to 10.

A window in the middle of the bus was slightly cracked open and the bubble man put the nozzle of his device up to it. The kids’ faces lit up like they were receiving gifts of magic and the bus actually started rocking.

An adult matron on the bus, a portly Latina woman, squeezed over to the window and desperately started trying to get it open. All parties involved (and some not involved, like me) clearly wanted that bus filled with bubbles and I started reaching for my camera. You should have seen the kids’ faces. They were so happy. The African was frantically trying to work his nozzle into the window.

But the window was stuck, and try as she might the lady couldn’t get it open. The African guy realized this and started just spraying the bubbles everywhere. The kids went wild again. The jam cleared and the bus began moving.

The last thing you saw was a dozen kids’ faces pressed against the glass, smiles bigger than a traffic jam at Canal and Lafayette, followed by a trail of bubbles that gradually dispersed.

After the bus was gone the African guy returned to his post by the station steps. I almost bought one of the bubble guns right then and there but I knew later, sitting in my apartment with it, I would feel pathetic and more alone than before.

Being an immigrant isn’t easy in this city, and I know ‘cause I watched two of them scrape out an existence for me and my brother. Before meeting my mother, my father was initially a salesman and completely alone in New York, with no living relatives anywhere in the world and no one to rely on. He told me about the feeling of going out to sell things and getting doors shut in his face and knowing that if he fucked up, he was going to starve.

It wasn’t until afterwards that the thought of this guy out at the station, approaching the school bus, ignoring throngs of potential paying customers going up and down the steps, hit me kind of heavy. I know I should have bought one.

This sidewalk is made of pavement, asphalt,
granite, slate, and wood.
New York's special blend of urb's and spices
gives the sidewalk its unique flavor.

Today’s soundtrack:
seven long year
lord knows I tried
everything I could
get along with,
my wife

Today at 8:02pm: fuming (in more ways than one)


My rent got raised so I’m fucking pissed off.

I just smoked my last goddamn Japanese cigarette. Mixed feelings.

Oh who am I kidding, it fucking bothers me.

My mind is still in Tokyo. It’s going to have to book its own flight and come back by itself. But at least it’s in Tokyo, lucky piece.

Still, the joke’s on my mind, ‘cause I’ve got my passport right here. I’d like to see it try and clear customs with no fucking paperwork.

The new waitress at the diner is really starting to fucking bother me. She just shouldn’t be a waitress. I’m the only bald Korean guy ever walks into that place, how hard is it to remember how I like my fucking coffee. She puts sugar in that bitch one more time I’m liable to decorate the wall with it. Every fucking morning we go over this.

I miss Josephine. She’d catch me coming in the front door out the corner of her eye and be slapping the lid on a proper coffee by the time I got to the counter. Nice smile, too. Sometimes she looked so tired in the mornings and it made me want to take her on a date and spoil her.

She went back to Malaysia, I don’t know what the circumstances were. I guess anyone smart enough to be a good waitress doesn’t stay a waitress for long.

You know what’s sad? I was a really good waiter. I’ve already found and rejected my life’s calling and it was slinging steaks. I started working in restaurants at fourteen and I don’t mind telling you I was the Amadeus fucking Mozart of waiting tables.

The next-to-last restaurant I waited tables at was called Spring Street. Not the joint on Lafayette, it was on West Broadway. I remember coming in early on Sunday mornings in a white shirt and black pants and unfurling tablecloths and glancing out the window at a fashion shoot taking place in the middle of the street. All day I watched other people’s lives.

One day the owner’s wife got up my ass and I quit, I think I walked out in the middle of a shift. She was a cranky piece. Anyways the place is an eyeglass store now. Looks very different and it’s always strange when I pass it, ‘cause I remember walking out of there exhausted after a shift with a fat wad of singles in my pocket and smelling like Mahi Mahi or whatever. I used to hate taking the A back to Brooklyn with all that cash and dressed like a penguin but I didn’t have much choice.

Where the hell was I, oh yeah. Now that the city’s gotten all soft, New York’s longtime vetting process has gone by the wayside. The service industry, forget about it. Waitresses, taxi drivers, bartenders, they’ve all lost their edge. It’s no longer survival of the fittest. Any punk can show up and make it. Something very, very sad about this.

The taxi drivers...jesus fuck. You gotta see some of these douchebags.

If I ever make any real money, maybe I’ll go over to that eyeglass store and buy the most expensive frames in the whole fucking place. Or maybe for old times’ sake I’ll go in there and open a bottle of wine and show the label to the cashier or whomever. But instead of pouring it for him I’ll just break it against the side of his head.

I’m so glad I didn’t die while I was still a waiter there. Or anywhere.

Anyways yeah, if you ever come to my house for dinner you’re pouring your own drinks.

Or if you get up my ass and I pop the top button and stroll out, you’ll know what I was thinking.