The Department of Useless and Ill-Informed Opinions

What's Wrong With Where I Live?

Every now and then I meet new people. And sometimes, I'll meet someone I consider this person to be like-minded. Perhaps it's politically or socially, but more often than not it comes down to the other person's tastes in music, books, or movies. It's a connection based almost purely on how cool we think each other might just be.

When you're in on some artistic secret, a band nobody else really knows yet but you wish a few more people did (but not too many people), and then you meet someone who's also in on it you're happy. It gives the two of you common ground, a jumping off point into hopeful continued commonalities, maybe even into discovering something new. This is how it works.

So I'll be at a party or somesuch and I'll be talking to a person who I deem of equal coolness, and who deems me of the same, and the conversation will eventually turn, as it always does with New Yorkers, to where we each live. It generally goes something like this:

Me: "So where do you live?"

Them: "Williamsburg. How about you?" (Incidentally, insert any number of supposed hipster neighborhoods in here, and it works the same.)

Me: "Upper East Side."

Bam. Conversation's over, just like that.

Suddenly I go from a kindred spirit, someone who likes and hates most of the same things, to some guy who clearly is just trying to co-opt their indie mentality in order to seem cool. A poser, if you will.

And so I ask you, what the hell is wrong with where I live?

I'm the first guy to admit that the Upper East Side isn't exactly a hotbed for the indie scene. My neighbors don't posess all that much street cred. But just because I live amongst the over-privileged older and very-recently-ex-fraternitied/sororitied younger, does that suddenly make me one of them? One of the JT-listening, Us-reading automatons who I'll freely admit infest this place?

Look, I know what this area is. And in truth, I don't even know what my overarching point here is meant to be. Maybe I'm just pleading with the hipster masses to not write me off straight-away. Maybe I'm trying to help myself and those huddled few like me who live up here, assumed as a member of the uptownocracy (I just made that word up, and I kind of like it) based purely by our heinous zip codes. Or perhaps I just feel like bitching. I think I'll go with a little from all three.

Am I accusing the downtown hipsters of being judgmental? Well, yeah, I guess I am. I think it's a prime quality of being a hipster. You're always on the hunt to identify the few who are like you, and to scoff at those masses who aren't. And so when my supposed made-up exterior of guy-in-the-know is revealed to be just another damned UES'er in their eyes, the handshake turns into a scowl. But, I'm just as judgmental. My friends can tell you that apart from muttering "fucking tourists," my next most common group to curse about are "those fucking downtown hipsters." I like to think I do it because I'm vengeful towards their contempuousness, but I wonder sometimes if I don't do it because I'm simply jealous that they live in a 'cooler' neighborhood than me. It kills me to think that, but they've managed to make me completely subconscious about my own home.

I write this, I realize, because I have a massive inferiority complex about my apartment. I'm so concerned that I'm going to be crumpled up and thrown away like a fast food wrapper (not like a McDonald's wrapper though, because hipsters don't do McDonald's) that I find myself constantly on the defensive, and becoming immediately deprecating when talking about my home. "What? Oh, yeah, Upper East, I-know-it's-fucking-lame, but, you know." How sick is that?

I need to get over my bullshit about where I live. Or, I guess I could always move, which would be the more expensive and greater physical effort of a choice, but incredibly simpler from a psychological point of view. I suspect I'll go with neither option. I'll likely stay up here, being convenient to work and enjoying my relatively reasonable rent, and continue to belittle this neighborhood that in truth has been quite good to me. It feels unfair, and it feels like I'm betraying my pizza place, my local pub, my dry cleaner, and so on. But this is just one more example of what this city can do to you. It's not judt about who you are and what you do, but it's also about where you live. I may have a double walking the streets of this city somewhere, a guy who has completely identical tastes to me in everything, but because he lives in the Lower East Side he's levels and levels above me on the social scales that I (hate to admit) that I sort of want to belong to, the ones where I know I'd fit in.

Today

I don't have much to say today. Lots of bloggers (in fact most every site I've been to today) has somehow referenced what today is. And I'm glad they have, it's important that people talk things like this through.

For myself, I don't have anything to say on the subject that I necessarily feel like sharing with the world. It's not so private or personal or heart-wrenching as the stories or insight you might get elsewhere, it's just that I plain don't want to talk about it. On the other side, I didn't want to let today go by without any sort of comment at all. It's an odd day to say much of anything as far as I'm concerned.

So this is it. I'm not saying nothing, nor an I saying anything.

What I will say is this: If you had a good day today, I hope they keep on. If today was a bad day, I hope things start working out in the right direction.

United Flight Diverted, AP Claims Boston Gets Extra Freaked Out

I was reading an Associated Press article on CNN.com today about the United flight from London to DC that was diverted to Boston, after a female passenger more or less freaked out. The second-to-last paragraph in the story contains two sentences:

      "Terror scares garner particular attention in Boston because of Logan's history. Members of al Qaeda hijacked two planes from Logan on September 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York."

Did you read that? Good.

Taken at face value, there is some logic to it. Bostonians, just like all Americans (and in truth like most humans), were deeply affected and frightened by 9/11.

But do me a favor, and go back and read that again. Particularly the first sentence. Then come back to me over here.

Are you reading what I'm reading? Of course it doesn't say that Bostonians were more affected than New Yorkers or anyone else, but why does an article about a flight that's potentially in trouble require a statement that says that Boston freaks out due to terror warnings. From a purely logistical/physical perspective (i.e. not loss of life) Logan, and therefore Boston, lost a plane. New York lost landmarks. Yes, they lost people too, just like 48 other countries who had citizens perish that day, and I'm most certainly not trying to stir the pot or create controversy. Nor am I saying a word about the city or people of Boston, who had nothing to do with this story.

I'm calling out the AP actually. I don't think insensitive is the right word here. Nor do I think tasteless is right, though God knows I take issue with the way every single news outlet covers 9/11 (something I won't go into right at this moment). I think the word I'm looking for is stupid.

If you want to tell me that New Yorkers have a greater fear of terrorism, because 9/11 happened here, I'm with you. Same for the other 9/11 sites, London, Madrid, Mumbai, and any number of other locales where terrorism has occurred in recent years. I also buy the statement that Bostonians, as with all Americans, are more frightened by terrorism in the past 5 years than ever before. These make sense; they show logic.

But, to me, to imply that Boston has a greater fear of terrorism because their airport was a launching-off point for the attacks belittles the attacks themselves. It suggests that regardless of where those planes and their passengers eventually met their end, whether it was NYC skyscrapers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania or the Dark Side of the Moon, that the theft of the plane is what strikes fear into the hearts of Bostonians.

Yes, the hijacking of an airplane is scary, and anytime I see a story that involves such an act I get a little quiver (and that was true even before 9/11). But no, I don't know that the hijacking doesn't scare the people of the departure city anymore than it does a person somewhere else.

I understand that it was an attempt to neatly wrap up a story that, at the time of this writing, hasn't seen its end yet. I suppose its author spent a while, as long as their editors would let them ponder a seemingly meaningless throwaway paragraph on a breaking news story, trying to figure out exactly how to close this piece out. And while I certainly don't think that this person was trying to offend, they did manage to. I'm not offended in a traditional "I just saw something that offends my ethical sensibilities" sort of way; it's my intelligence that's offended. It was a thoughtless way to finish off an article about a relatively minor incident by needlessly tying the residents of a city to, and reminding them about, a horrible attack. I highly doubt that the diversion of United 923 made Bostonians remember that American 11 and United 175 left from their airport. I'd suspect that if that day occurred to them at all, they thought about the entire thing and the atrocities committed.

NYC Scavenger Hunt

I'm working on putting together an scavenger hunt for NYC. Details are still being worked out, but it'll be on some Saturday this fall.

As opposed to the types I ran once-upon-a-time-in-my-youth, everything on the list will be legally obtainable, and ideally free. We're thinking lots of loose items as well as lots of pics. Should be lots of fun. I'm such an organizer-type that I'm looking forward to the planning and running of it.

More info will come as soon as I have it, and a website will launch for it at the same time.

Tales From The Hottest Place On Earth

(And I don't mean "hot" in a Paris Hilton sort of way.)

Some tidbits from the past two days...

I was heading towards the library tonight after work finally, and the subway line I needed was all fucked up, running something like one train every 10-15 minutes. It took me something like 45 minutes, including waiting time, to go 10 blocks.

When I got to 42nd St., I walked west towards 5th Ave. only to have find the street closed. There's one cop standing there at the corner of 42nd & 5th telling everyone trying to cross, at rush hour mind you, that they can't. 5th Ave. is closed from 42nd down to what looks like 40th, and there's a bus sitting in front of the main entrance of the library (you know, the lions). I ask the cop if the library is closed, and he says he doesn't know, all he knows is that this corner can't be crossed. Yet, from the other side of the same corner, people are crossing. When asked why people can cross west-to-east but not east-to-west a the same exact corner, the cop pauses and replies "All I know is, you can't cross this way." So I cross to the north corner, cut across, and head back south. Two more cops are at that corner, and won't let me take the corner steps to the main library entrance. I finally get in through the side door, on 42nd.

Leaving the library a couple of hours later, my research all done (and when I say done I don't mean done for the night; I mean totally done), I decide to take a cab home. It's too fucking hot, and I suspect the 4/5/6 line is still hosed. I know 42nd is a tough spot to find a cab in the evenings, so I walk towards Grand Central, and wait on the south side of 42nd, opposite Vanderbilt and the elevated Park Ave. There's no rhyme or reason, and people are standing all over this stretch, grabbing whatever cabs are letting people out for GCT. I'm fine, relatively, with a cab pulling up 10 feet ahead of me and someone else who's been waiting getting it. But, when the guy crosses from the other side of the street with his girlfriend and snags a cab I was hailing, then curses me out claiming I was trying to steal it from him, I sort of lost it. I'm a pretty quiet and reserved guy, but the heat does funny shit to people. All I know, is I was livid due to this guy's audacity.

I don't get people walking around in sweaters during a week like this. I haven't seen many, but I've seen a handful.

That's all for now. I'm going to Florida tomorrow, where it's actually fucking cooler than NYC.

The Good Driver, The Bad Driver and The Ugly Driver

For whatever unexplained reason, I seem to have a lot of what one might be inclined to term surreal experiences. Nothing all Close Encounters or anything along those lines; just some very odd stuff.

The latest happened four weeks ago, on the Saturday night when the blizzard started. I was out with some friends at the newly-opened downtown branch of P.J. Clarke's celebrating a birthday. We all knew the snow was coming (or most of us did anyway, as the birthday boy and one other claimed it was going to be another meteorological bullshit job), but decided to go out anyway. As we sat having a nice leisurely, booze-filled dinner we watched out over the harbor outside the World Financial Center as the snow went from a light misting/dusting into big, wet, thick flakes, and we knew it had arrived. It didn't stop us though, we kept on going, and in fact adjourned to the rear bar for a few more once we settled up the dinner bill.

I'd have to put it somewhere around 1am when we all finally decided to call it a night. Not very late, but the snow was heavy, and there were already a couple of inches on the ground. Now, in case you're not aware of the geography, the WFC isn't exactly a hopping night spot. It's an office tower complex (and one that I worked in for a little while back in 1998-99), though with the recent residential boom of Battery Park City it's not quite the weekend ghost town that it once was. I figured between the neighborhood and the weather, cabs would be a bitch to come by (as did my friend Rob, who walked out the north exit of the WFC and hoofed it through the snow to City Hall), but there were a few waiting outside the south exit of the complex. Lucky me.

So I hopped in one, and the guy has his radio on. I knew that I knew the song, but I couldn't quite place it. It was an instrumental, and sounded vaguely Musak-esque, so I figured it was just another version of some song and the Guinness was blocking my brain. A few blocks go by, and the cab driver turns around (while driving through snowy streets, no less). He says:

"You know this song, my friend?"

"No, sorry, I don't." (I lied. I was drunk and tired, and it was just easier.)

"I see. You will know in a moment."

He turned back and reached for the car radio, hitting the Next Track button a few times. The next sound I heard, I knew quite well. And so would you. Even if you never knew where specifically it came from, it's one of the most recognizable movie themes of all time, and it happens to be from one of my favorite films.

So I'm enjoying it, but still a little bit on the drunk side, and my Tuco-loving cab driver turns again.

"You know it now, my friend?"

"Yes, of course."

"Is a classic, no?"

Now, as wonderful as this conversation was, I really wanted to get home, um, what's that word? Right: Alive. It's a fucking blizzard, we're speeding up the FDR, and this guy wants to chat about the Spaghetti Western genre. I'm not a big cab talker at any given point, but right about now I'm starting to fear that this dude might fancy himself a bandit, and we may go careening off into the East River, Thelma & Louise style.

This is where you might expect a climactic end, the final gun battle between Blondie and Sentenza if you will, but no such luck. He drove me home, the whole while listening to 15 seconds of a track and skipping to another, spinning around to ask what I think, his ADD in full effect.

There's all different types of crazy in this world, and we all own at least a tiny sliver of it. This guy was somewhere about halfway up the chart, I'd figure. Not crazy enough to do something drastic (at least not to me, God help the first passenger who says they hate Sergio Leone movies), but just crazy enough to want to chat about obscure movie soundtracks from 1966 while driving through a snowstorm.

A Vast Bisquick Conspiracy

...or perhaps it's the Aunt Jemina people. Maybe more sinister is if they're in it together.

Either way we had a little maple syrup issue here last week. I know that I was out that night and smelled it, but because I was a touch on the drunk side I only vaguely realized it, but got home seriously craving pancakes.

Which is exactly what I had for breakfast the next morning. So all was well.

Lots changes in a year, and it's been 367 days since I last wrote here. I've got a new job (and as a result have only been on 3 trips all year, only 1 of which was for business), new apartment (down the hall from the old one, but no more leaky ceilings), and... well not much else that's new. But apartment and job are pretty much everything, right?

I also have another book under my belt, and am winding down the second draft of that second book. And because November hits tomorrow at midnight, and also because I'm sick of editing for the moment and am craving something new, I'll give NaNoWriMo another crack this year, hoping to make it 3 out of 3 successful completions. The hope is that over the past 2 years I've grown as a writer, and this will potentially prove that.

I have an idea I've been sitting on, not for very long really, but sitting on it I've been doing. It requires what I consider to be some pretty significant research to do properly, and I've really only told 2 or 3 people about the idea. I have all of my research materials ready to go, and I've started doing some. But it don't be this year's NaNo Novel. For one thing, I'm just not ready from a preparedness standpoint to start on it tomorrow night. And for another, I don't think I'm good enough to do it justice. I once read how Kevin Smith thought up the idea for Dogma years before it was done, even before Clerks, but that he knew if he tried it earlier on it would've failed miserably (a view some people have of the actual 1999 version too for that matter). I'm sort of taking that view with my Big Idea. It'll come, just not for a while.

Usually I prep up a project fairly heavily. No research, because to be honest, I've been too lazy in the past. But I get the plot mapped out and get the characters named and all that good stuff. Well right now, it's 30 hours until NaNo 2005, and I've got dick. I thought I had the thing idea set for this year, but this morning I woke up and decided it was overindulgent and just plain shitty. Not to mention boring. So today I've gone through various notes and crap for concepts I've dreamt up over the past few years, and I have 4 of them (out of 5 that existed) written on an index card each.

Four unique ideas. And I've been staring at these fucking things, spread out on my coffee table, for a good part of the day. I'm lost like Hurley on an island over here.

I hoped that if I worked on perfecting my Bloody Mary recipe today, it might have spurred me into some creativity. All I am now is low on vodka, and with a cabinet full of shit I didn't own before, like Tabasco and Worcestershire.

For the time being, I'm sitting here getting pissed off because my fucking remote won't stop lighting up, and it's been driving me batshit for 2 days now. There's some excuse, no?

Anyway, inspirato will hit sometime tonight or tomorrow. Or that's the plan anyway. And if it doesn't, I can always run down the block to Cork & Bottle for more Maker's Mark.

So, sometime way back, because way back is all that exists around here with a lack of updates for a year, I promised I'd devise a theme for here and maybe stop talking about myself. No such luck for now. I tried politics, but that's become amazingly infuriating, since at least for the moment the seemingly real bad guys continue to get away with everything and anything, while guys like Scooter Libby, who I've nicknamed The Fall Guy (and in no way am claiming him to be the good guy here) go down for it. But I'll say that GWB is having a real shitty run of things the past couple of months. He could really use a vacation. But politics morphed into baseball, specifically pro-Red Sox/anti-Yankees stuff somehow.

And that was where I threw in the towel. I'd still like to talk about politics. And baseball for that matter, especially since my Mets have a great opportunity to build on success over the next few years (even if I have to listen to Willie say things like "Yeah, it's got a lot of meat!").

Regardless, here's hoping I'm back to this thing. And more importantly that I find something valuable to write about, both here and in the new book.

The Hills Are Alive...

With the sound of my apartment windows rattling from Chinook helicopters flying overhead.

Yes, it's a beautiful 90 degree and humid day here in New York City, and as around 250,000 people are busy marching up 7th Avenue and then back down 5th Avenue, I've seen and heard helicopters flying by. Come to think of it, I've felt them too. Those babies cause everything to shake a little bit.

But it's all part of the charm of putting a divisive political event in the middle of what's arguably the biggest terrorist target in the world. Fun for all involved.

For me, I'm flying out of here tomorrow for a business trip, to Canada again, and I won't be back until Thursday. In truth, I think I'm flying on the two worst days, but whatever. Tomorrow is also the first day of the US Open, and of course Thursday is the day that the President will be in town. Yeah, security should be a breeze...

I have very mixed feelings about not being here this week. On one hand, I was looking forward to giving the RNC the same attention as I did the DNC. Being in Canada, I'm hoping to get CNN on my hotel room TV so I can at least see parts of it, but I'm not counting on it. The other side has me saying that this place is going to be a zoo this week. I wasn't overly concerned with any terrorist activities, I was concerned with a decreased ability to get around the city. So, not being here will obviously mean that I won't have to put up with subway-related hassles all week. At least not until Friday when I try to go to the office.

So there are two things that I'd like to talk about today. The first is related to the convention, but it's quick. The second is these Olympic ads that George Bush is running.

I saw a story this week about one of the Off-Broadway plays that had arranged for discount tickets for delegates. The name of the show is Naked Boys Singing (link goes to their official website). Carl White, the producer of this show (which is largely considered to be gay-themed although they do get quite a large bachelorette party business as well) extended this offer to RNC delegates, just as the producers of many Broadway and Off-Broadway shows had done, and NYC & Company, the official tourism bureau, added it onto a general list. Earlier this month the arrangements committee for the convention started looking over the offerings and asked that Naked Boys Singing be dropped because the content didn't suit their membership. White made a statement that said that this was a flip-flopfrom why the Republicans chose NYC in the first place: diversity and culture. Incidentally, before this whole thing came up there were ticket orders using the special delegate code from about a dozen people. So maybe the Committee on Arrangements is selling their delegates short. Or maybe they just want to keep their minority members down. I'll go with the second choice.

The second thing is of course these TV ads that George Bush has been running alongside the Olympics. Look, Clinton campaigned with the Olympics in 1996, so I don't have a huge issue. Bush wants to argue that there are two new democracies competing this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's all thanks to him. He has a point. The war in Iraq may have been largely unjustified, but they do have a new government because of his actions. There are two pieces of this that get me though. One is that he's using pictures of specific Olympians against their wishes. Bigger than that is that he's breaking the law! Yes, that's right, the law. As in doing something illegal. And nothing is being made of this. It was mentioned briefly in the last paragraph of the article I linked to here. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the USOC (US Olympic Committee) can regulate any use of the Olympics in advertising and such. The USOC even has exclusive rights to the term "Olympic" or any variation on it (such as Olympian), and also to the Olympic logo of five interlocking rings within the US. The USOC has asked the Bush campaign to halt these ads, not because they're against the law but because they feel that they're counterproductive to what the Olympics stand for, but the campaign basically told them to go screw. You may ask why the distinction is being made in 2004 for Bush but wasn't in 1996 for Clinton. The answer to that is that the US Congress changed the law in 1999, granting these exclusive rights to the USOC.

How the hell is the Federal Election Commission letting the Bush campaign get away with this? I haven't read the law itself, but "exclusive rights" is pretty cut and dry to me. The USOC respectfully asked the campaign to halt these ads, and they refused to. Now that the Games have ended the isn't as much use for these commercials. I think it's up to the USOC and/or the IOC to file a formal complaint, whether it's a lawsuit for unauthorized use of their trademarks or it's with the FEC doesn't matter to me. But it sets a dangerous precedent with the Olympic Committees allow campaigns to walk all over them like this.

Is this the real respect that the Bush's have for the Olympic Games?

3,691 a.k.a. 7%. Not awful,

3,691 a.k.a. 7%.

Not awful, but of course it's not 4pm and this is where I ended off last night when I went to bed. I've not touched a single word yet today. The Marathon proved to be the distraction that I suspected it would be. I even got a view of Puff Daddy himself running past me with his posse. Pretty amusing to watch a posse run up First Avenue.

I took a bunch of notes onto a digital voice recorder thingy last night, and today's first step will be to translate those notes back into what I've already written.

So, with last night's SNL on in the background (and I'm hoping it won't suck), I'll plow onward.

-J

I'm crapping out here, and

I'm crapping out here, and we're only on Day #2, so I turn to my old Friends in Creativity, cigarettes & booze (Johnnie Walker Black tonight specifically). I have no intention of being outright drunk, just happy enough to type without abandon. Sort of like I'm doing now... This is difficult to coordinate logistically, since all I have is a laptop, and I'm sitting on my couch and needing to reach out for either the glass or the Camel Wide, but that's fine.

So far I'm at 2,701 words (which isn't too shabby really) and I believe I've told three friends about my participation in NaNoWriMo. All have confirmed that I'm a blithering moron for trying this. My friend Jason agreed with me that had I had a week or so to ponder this I would've bailed out on it, but since I was only informed about it about 13 hours before it started I just jumped in like an idiot.

Truth be told I've been looking for motivation for this for some time. I've had the plotlines more or less laid out, and the characters all sketched and such, but haven't been willing and/or able to set the time aside to do this. And now, true to my nature, I jump in full force since I have a quota and a deadline.

They do such incredible things to us as people, don't they? My time schedule hasn't changed much recently (with the exception of the first 6 months of this year being out of work), but yet now I suddenly have the time. I think that part of my willingness to do this comes from my ReplayTV (it's DVR, like TiVo damnit). Now I'm no longer beholden to the TV shows that I like to watch, which are basically limited to The West Wing, and reruns of The Simpsons and Family Guy. This helps considerably. It's one of my wisest electronics purchases I think, with my MP3 player right behind.

I think I'll get back to it, since I feel the need to press on (deadlines and all), and tomorrow will be largely shot with the NYC Marathon running virtually past my apartment. I'll be out watching it for much of the day, so I'd like to get a jump on tomorrow's word count.

God I hope someone reads this one of these days...

-J