All Across The USA: Coast To Coast In 4.5 Days

The plan was to blog my way across America, but unreliable internet access, unexpectedly long drive times, and a lack of sleep put paid to that.

The only entry I even got started on was titled The Streets Of Laramie, and recounted how I discovered that I'd never actually set foot in Laramie, Wyoming, despite having crisscrossed that state numerous times over the years.

In fact, there were a couple times that I fully planned on stopping there, and once where I even put on my blinker for the exit before changing my mind at the last minute and pushing on to the next town, but ultimately I passed the place by so many times that I forgot it was even on Interstate 80 (the semi-boring coast-to-coast freeway that passes through what has got to be one of the least picturesque sectors of what is otherwise an extremely picturesque state).

I'd somehow got it into my head that Laramie was off somewhere to the north, probably up in the vicinity of where Casper actually is. I'm fairly sure I've never visited Casper, either, but I could be wrong about that. Many of my Wyoming crossings were done in the rather bleary and drug-imbued 1970s.

But this was definitely my first time in Laramie, and it's my new favorite town in Wyoming, not that there was a profusion of contenders for that crown. I used to think it was Cheyenne, but on reflection, realized that I didn't care very much for Cheyenne after all, being infatuated mainly with the name and the fact that it was the closest thing to a genuine urban agglomeration between Salt Lake City and Omaha (okay, maybe Lincoln).

Maybe it's just that I once bought a pair of cowboy boots in Cheyenne that hurt my feet for several years afterward, and if you ask why I didn't simply stop wearing them, it's just that I figured that people from Cheyenne were sure to know more about cowboy boots than I did, that it was most likely my feet that were the problem rather than the boots, and that eventually they (my feet, that is) would adjust themselves.

Didn't happen, however, nor did my appreciation for Cheyenne ever increase, so even though I was running behind schedule on my cross-country hejira, I opted to stop in Laramie this time, mindful, too, of the time when I resisted all portents, including dire warnings from the I Ching, and pushed on past Laramie into the teeth of a winter gale and ended up nose down in a snowdrift at the bottom of a 30-foot cliff.

No snowdrifts this time (though there had been a light dusting a day or two earlier on the higher peaks), but there had been, I found the following morning, some horrendous wind gusts over the 8,640 foot pass that separates Cheyenne from Laramie, and considering how susceptible my rented 12 foot Penske truck was to wind - especially since I'd managed to ignore instructions and pack most of the heavy stuff on one side - chances are I would have ended up over another cliff only this time without the soft snow landing.

So downtown Laramie had a lot of bars, none of which I ventured near, but it also had Grounds, an excellent little cafe catering to hipsters, students, and the occasional punk rocker, offering wireless internet access and staying open till midnight, something you don't that often find in such allegedly cosmopolitan centers as London or SF/Berkeley. Not having arrived in town until after 11 pm, however, I didn't have time to finish a blog post, but I did manage to get a pretty decent meal, again something hard to find at that hour in those aforementioned faux-cities.

I'd hoped to have six days to cross America, allowing me plenty of time for sightseeing and visiting folks along the way, but the packing and - especially - the throwing out of many years' worth of accumulated junk took much longer than expected, so by the time I pulled out of Berkeley, I was a day and a half late, and a visit to my mother's house and the recycling center in El Cerrito (two separate locations, let it be noted) lopped another couple hours off my first day's travel.

So I only made it as far as Elko, Nevada when I'd been hoping for the Utah state line, and from then on it was a game of catch-up all the way. I considered skipping my visit to Hanny, my internet buddy in Lincoln, Nebraska, but fortunately I decided not to, and we had a pleasant walk through downtown and the state capitol, topped off by a pretty darn good Mexican dinner. Yeah, it put me another couple hours behind, but was well worth it.

And just what was the hurry? Well, I'd recruited a posse of van unloaders - Oliver, P Smith and JoeIII - who were expecting to meet me at 10 am Saturday morning, and if I missed that time slot, they'd all be off to the afternoon Steinways show at the mall - yes, at the mall, in Urban Outfitters, if you must know - and I'd be faced with trying to carry things that weighed considerably more than me up three flights of narrow, sagging stairs, and, face it, it wasn't going to happen. Half my furniture would have ended up on the street.

I fully expected that posse or no posse, my ridiculously big desk was never going to make the stairway cut, but with the aid of three strong men and an inch to spare (after I took the drawers out and removed the apartment door), it practically glided into place. In fact, I'm typing on it now. Whether it will ever leave this apartment again is rather another question. The wood matches the floors quite nicely in terms of color, though not in terms of sagginess: in the entire apartment there's hardly more than a few feet of level flooring, and given the number of creaks and other strange noises I keep hearing, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this whole house collapses at some point. It shakes just like a California earthquake whenever a large truck passes by or someone slams the door downstairs. At least I'm on the top floor, so there's not quite so much of it to fall on me.

I had another pleasant rendezvous en route, with Pete Repellent and his lovely partner Simple (formerly Simple81), outside a mini-mall Starbucks in Portage, Indiana, where Pete also insisted on buying me not only a coffee, but my dinner as well. The two of them, the punk rock counterparts to George Burns and Gracie Allen or Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, then provided me with a full-on cavalcade of comic bickering as I dined. Only two people who are truly devoted to each other can be that hilariously vicious.

Then it was back in the Penske saddle for one last marathon day that took me from the Indiana-Ohio state line back home to Brooklyn in about 13 or 14 hours. Northern Ohio looked far prettier than I ever remembered it being (it's still no Michigan, however), and Pennsylvania looked to be even more spectacular, especially at the higher altitudes, where the autumn leaves were approaching their peak. Unfortunately, a rather fearsome storm - the first hint of rain or even clouds all the way across - blew in on me, followed closely by a dramatically sudden nightfall, and I spent the rest of the way - and a rather long way it is, too - across Pennsylvania trying to navigate curves and dodge speeding semis. At one point we reached "the highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi," some 2800 feet, I believe it was, and were warned of a steep descent ahead. What they didn't tell me was that we'd be going downhill for the next 280 miles, something which I suspect is a physical impossibility, but which nonetheless seemed very much like reality.

The road didn't flatten out until halfway across New Jersey, but now I could see the lights of New York City ahead, and though I'd originally planned to stay outside of town and drive in early in the morning, I thought why waste the money on a motel when I was no more than an hour or two from home?

In principle, anyway; as it turned out I took the wrong exit in Newark and spent a nervous half hour or two blundering through ghetto streets at midnight with pretty much everything I owned metaphorically strapped across my back. After bouncing over some of the worst back roads and collapsing bridges this side of the Third World, I finally made it to the Holland Tunnel - thankfully there was no three-mile-long line like the last time I used the tunnel - only to be told by less than welcoming tolltaker: "No trucks!"

I tried protesting that I'd checked on the internet and that trucks were supposed to be allowed now, though they had indeed been banned for several years after 9/11. I was told to go to the Lincoln Tunnel, without being offered an explanation about why - assuming I was a terrorist with an enormous bomb rather than a bemused middle aged man with a truckload of household goods - it would be preferable for me to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel instead of the Holland.

Oh well; at least the Lincoln Tunnel wasn't far off, and there were signs clearly delineating the route to it. Signs which promptly disappeared, leaving me driving aimlessly but ever more frustratedly through the streets of downtown Hoboken, at one point getting caught up in the proliferation of drunken 20-something car and foot traffic in what is apparently a rather happening nightlife scene, and at another point getting stuck on some long drive along the river that offered no exits and took me nearly as far north as the George Washington Bridge, which I would have crossed except that the radio was warning of one to two hour delays going into the city.

So, finally found the Lincoln Tunnel, got charged double toll even though my (relatively) small truck had been paying the equivalent of auto tolls all across the country, and quickly found myself tied up in the jampacked streets of Chelsea and then the Village. At one point, owing to some spectacularly bad luck and/or judgment, I found myself trying to navigate through what was barely one lane of traffic on Bleecker at MacDougal, which, trust me, is not the most ideal route at 1:30 in the morning when the frat boys, rappers, drunken NYUers, and every other yahoo within 50 miles of the five boroughs is staggering and/or attempting to drive, albeit to no particular destination.

Enough complaining; I eventually made it to Brooklyn, found a parking place right outside my building, and the rest is history. I haven't even unpacked half my stuff, and I still haven't found a way to stop some of my furniture from sliding into the middle of the room, but the cable TV and the internet are working, my desk is in operation and looking every bit as messy as it did in its last home, and one of these days I might even plug in the refrigerator and go grocery shopping. I'm already thinking of moving again, maybe - if necessary - out of the immediate neighborhood this time, but for now I'm home, and quite happy and content to be so.

Punk Rock? Are You Guys STILL Talking About That?

I meant to mention this a while back - maybe even before the event actually happened so that some of my friends might attend if they wanted - but last Monday, September 10, I was part of a panel discussion on the past, present and future of punk rock.

I know, I know, it's all been said 20 or 30 years ago, and if you really wanted to rehash the question, you'd just head over to the PPMB, but hey, it's hard to turn down an invitation where you can talk at length about your opinions and people not only won't interrupt you, they'll actually applaud when you've finished. Try getting that kind of reaction out of your average barroom conversation.

My fellow panelists were Liz Nord, who's done a documentary film on the Israeli punk scene featuring, among others, the band Useless ID, who I'd actually met a few years back when they first visited the US, Jon Vafiadis, better known as Jonny Whoa Oh of up and coming indie conglomerate Whoa Oh Records, and the legendary Danny Fields, renowned for his associations with the Ramones, MC5 and Stooges among other things.

Danny was the "moderator," though there was little moderate about his approach. He expressed befuddlement about the current state of punk rock ("How do you find out about these shows and bands?" he asked at one point), but happily told stories of adventures stretching back to the 1950s, only some of which were directly related to punk rock, but most of which - including those about his years hanging with the Warhol crowd - were fascinating.

He was a bit reluctant to relinquish the microphone to the other panelists. At one point, an audience member prefaced a query about why '77 punk got so much more attention than its later incarnations by saying, "This is for Larry," only to have Danny go on rambling discursively about talking dirty with Andy Warhol and follow it up with, "Next question." But I was happy to let him take the lead; I'm not sure I would have been a good moderator, not being a particularly moderate person by nature.

Anyway, apparently there are videos of this (thanks to the assiduous efforts of JoeIII) and some bits may or may not have made their way onto YouTube. And, I've just discovered, someone over at The Film Panel Note Taker has gone to the trouble of taking notes on the discussion and posting them on his/her blog. It's a very truncated version, and not that true to how we actually sounded, but you get the general flavor of things. So if you're curious about the past, present and future of punk rock, you're welcome to have a look.

Goodbye, California

I haven't really lived here in ten years, but I've always kept this small room, more of a storeroom than a living space, really, but it's still provided me with a base in Berkeley, something I'm now on the verge of finally giving up.

Considering all the awful things I've said about Berkeley in recent years, people could hardly be blamed for wondering why I'd want to maintain any ties to the place, but my reasons were twofold: most of my family is located nearby, and I had way too many things - the accumulated possessions of a California existence that dates back to 1968 - to consider shipping them over to England during the years I was living there. Most of the stuff has mainly sentimental value, but it's value nonetheless, even if it wasn't quite enough to convince me to lay out the thousands it would have cost to bring everything to London.

But now that I've got a new home base in Brooklyn, the time has come to pack up all these memories and move them out to the Right Coast. I flew out here on Monday night, not expecting any great drama to arise around this; if anything, I was annoyed at having to leave New York for a couple weeks at one of my favorite times of year. But as the plane crossed into California airspace, I was seized with sudden spasms of regret and fear: was I doing the right thing after all? Was California really as bad as I'd made it out to be? It certainly didn't look that way from 30,000 feet, with the lights of the cities splayed across the darkened land like so many jewels on velvet (sorry, I know it's a cliché, but it really does look like that).

It became painfully apparent that I couldn't casually cut my ties to the place where I'd had some kind of home or connection for nearly 40 years and not expect to deal with some rather intense feelings. I remembered how I first came here, young, scared, dead broke and wanted by the law, and immediately felt safe and at home. I recognized that despite my best efforts to screw things up, California had been very good to me, providing me with the opportunity to make my fortune and pursue my dreams. Basically, my life had been pretty crap before I got to California, and while there were plenty of crap intervals afterward as well, most of them were of my own making.

For the first day I even toyed with the idea of abandoning this whole Brooklyn thing, settling back into my little room in downtown Berkeley, and living here in quiet obscurity for the rest of my life. I could certainly afford it; the rent here is ridiculously low, with all utilities, even high-speed internet, thrown in. It might not be much of a life, granted; we're talking about a 9'x12' room that's so cramped I have to sleep in a loft up near the ceiling and can reach almost everything without getting out of my single chair. And not much light gets in through the windows, the stairways and common areas haven't been decorated (or, it sometimes seems, cleaned) since the 1970s, and the house in general is a classic example of Berkeley's rent control turning what might be a perfectly normal house into a time capsule hippie hovel.

Still, it's been a comfortable place to hang out, or perhaps more accurately, hide out from the world. I first took this room when my original Berkeley room, a bit larger and in the house next door, was devoured by the monster that became Lookout Records. I and two employees/partners ran the label out of that slightly larger room until the Green Day explosion of 1994-95, when the number of employees expanded to the point where there was no longer room for me to sleep there. When I got this new room in January of 1994, I grabbed a handful of blankets, took them next door and threw them on the floor, followed by myself, and slept for something like 29 hours.

Now, in two or three days if everything goes to plan, I'll be loading the last of this room's contents into a truck and setting off across the country. Normally I'd be looking forward to a transcontinental drive, but I'm kind of already dreading what it will feel like to wave goodbye to California for the last time.

Well, not necessarily the last time; I can always come back, I keep telling myself, if things don't work out in New York. And of course I'll still visit family and friends here as often as possible. But not having a specific place to come back to is going to make that a very different experience. Once upon a time, I would have thought nothing about moving thousands of miles away - in 1970 alone I did it three or four times - but perhaps I'm finally getting too old for this sort of shenanigans.

I try reminding myself that even if I were to stay in California, I wouldn't want to keep living in this room or this neighborhood. Downtown Berkeley was no prize when I first moved here (next door, into what would become the Lookout office) in 1990, and it's been going downhill ever since. Even if there were anywhere to go at night, I no longer feel all that safe on the streets, and the crime stats - almost double the rate of street crime compared with New York City - would seem to indicate I'm not just being paranoid. Today's Berkeley Daily Planet had a story about how a gunman strolled into a cafe directly across the street from the UC campus and robbed six students of their laptops; in New York I've grown used to seeing people sitting out on the sidewalks at two in the morning typing away on their computers without a care in the world.

So I guess I'm going to go, and if my recent experience in leaving other places - specifically Laytonville and London - is any indication, it'll be fine, and you won't catch me looking back or turning into a pillar of salt. But right at this moment, surrounded by the wreckage and detritus of my past waiting to be put into boxes and be carted off to a new home, I'm feeling just a teensy bit anxious. Give me a couple days, though, and I should be cruising up over the Sierra Nevada singing, in the words of Joe King, goodbye, California, it's really been nice, and getting ready for the rest of my life to begin.

Somehow I Don't Think This Is What Dr. King Had In Mind

I haven't been keeping too close a watch on the news in recent weeks, but the past couple days I've been cooped up in this room in Berkeley, California sorting through papers and packing things for my upcoming moving van trip back to Brooklyn, with my only company being the none too tender ministrations of AM talk radio.

Normally that would mean being subjected to an unrelenting barrage of rabid right-wing ranting, but this being the Bay Area, we're also offered a similarly demented and hate-ridden outpouring of left-wing lunacy. Tonight I've endured three hours of the grotesquely obese race baiter Bernie Ward (a defrocked Catholic priest, who woulda thunk!) and half an hour of Ray Taliaferro, who's been spewing venom, often but not always race-tinged, at all things American for at least four decades now. It was in June of 1968 when, newly arrived in San Francisco, I first heard Taliaferro raving about how Richard Nixon was a madman, a criminal, and, if I'm not mistaken, a "son of a bitch."

Being a rather hateful little hippie myself at the time, I thought this Taliaferro character was just one more part of what made San Francisco great, but over the years I became considerably less fond of him, even on occasions when I agreed with him, because of his tendency to browbeat listeners and dishonestly distort what callers said in response to his inflammatory rhetoric. Example: Caller says, "Ray, I basically agree with you that racism is a problem in our community, but I'm not sure rounding up all white people and interning them in re-education camps is the way to go about solving it." Taliaferro responds: "Well, of course you'd say that, you rotten, good-for-nothing, Ku Klux Klan-supporting, inbred little cracker. Why, I bet you're just sitting there in your log cabin or your trailer park macraméing a rope to take to your next lynching, you low-life, worthless piece of scum. And what have you got to say for yourself? Nothing? I thought so (because Ray has turned off the guy's phone line)! See, folks, you confront these racists with the truth and they just turn tail and run like the cowards they are!"

Actually, Bernie Ward uses almost exactly the same technique, and tonight he, even more than Taliaferro, was obsessed with this Jena, Louisiana case. I'd just heard of it earlier today, and as far as I could see, the main thing it illustrated was the depths of depravity to which the so-called "civil rights" movement has sunk. We've got Mack Daddy Al Sharpton flying in to scoop up some publicity and no doubt some cash, we've got Jive-Ass Jesse Jackson accusing Barack Obama of being "white" for not having a sufficiently knee-jerk reaction to the case, and Bernie Ward doing a solid three hours of fulminating over how this proves America is a completely racist nation.

So what's the great injustice these crusaders are rushing to denounce? Well, apparently six young African-Americans are being denied their God-given right to rat-pack and savagely beat one white teenager as a means of addressing their hurt feelings over some racial tension and turf warfare that's been going on at a small-town high school in the Deep South.

Ward, Sharpton, Jackson et al. are comparing this to the freedom rides and heroic marches of civil rights activists in the 1960s, but as I recall, those protests were demanding the right to attend schools and ride at the front of the bus. I don't remember Martin Luther King declaiming about a dream in which one day gangs of young men would be allowed to attack and beat other young men based on the color of their skin.

Okay, am I being one-sided here by ignoring the initial provocation by white students, who apparently told black students they couldn't hang out under a certain tree and later decorated that tree with nooses to reinforce that point? Well, I'm not ignoring it, and of course I think it's vile to evoke, whether intentionally or not, painful memories of a time when black people were routinely lynched in the Deep South.

But what seems to be overlooked here is that however vile and hateful the white students were being, they were still engaging only in speech and symbolic actions. You know, sticks and stones and all that...? Calling people names, especially racially charged ones, or making it clear that you don't think very much of their skin color or their culture, is the mark of small-minded and ignorant people. But a gang beating someone black and blue and bloody is a whole other order of injustice.

Martin Luther King knew that, and struggled mightily and mostly successfully to persuade his followers to restrain their understandable anger and instead employ nonviolent tactics. The charlatans who claim to be carrying on his legacy are doing just the opposite: charging that the arrest and prosecution of the black teenagers for their gang assault is a violation of their civil rights.

If there was even a shred of logic to this position, you'd have to also accept that women were merely exercising their own civil rights if they attacked and beat every moronic misogynistic rapper who's making a living slagging off bitches and hos. White kids who get robbed for their lunch money or suffer gratuitous beatdowns by black kids in liberal bastions like Berkeley or Oakland should be immune from prosecution if they brought in their own posses to administer some street justice. I say if there was any logic to this position, which of course there isn't, but nonetheless the media are falling all over themselves to present the hatemongering of Sharpton, Jackson et al. as if it were a perfectly reasonable response to an obvious injustice.

Combine this with the usual suspects hopping on the "OJ's only being persecuted because he's black" bandwagon and I very nearly want to despair about the possibility of Dr. King's true dream ever being realized. He dared to speak of a day when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; 44 years later we seem to have arrived at a point where the color of a man's skin is all we're allowed to see.

At The Dark End Of My Street

This is what I see tonight when I look down my street in the direction of Manhattan. Not the buildings - there are too many houses and trees in the way, and anyway, I think this photo was taken from Jersey - just the lights.

And they're playing on the clouds in almost exactly the same way. It's very eerie. I didn't even know what it was when I first stepped outside. I thought maybe an airplane was coming in toward Kennedy and for some reason had put on its landing lights early, and then fell back on the equally plausible explanation of it being a UFO.

Then I remembered hearing about the Tower of Light that's been displayed every September 11 as a memorial, and realized simultaneously that this is the first September 11 I've actually spent in New York. Having such a close emotional involvement with this town for such a long time had somehow made it possible for me to forget how little time I'd actually spent here.

Surprisingly few people actually said anything about what day it was today, but they didn't have to; though they talked of everything but, their eyes told a different tale. And tonight along my block, many of the neighbors are out on the stoops or the sidewalks basking in the autumnal but still relatively mild breeze. Their eyes are fixed on each other, or on the beers that they're drinking, or on Joe-across-the-street dragging the garbage can out for tomorrow's pickup, but their glance and their attention keeps drifting back to the tower of light at the dark end of my street.

Semi-Obligatory 9/11 Post

Originally posted on the PPMB, reposted here by request:

I was living in London at the time, and my first awareness of it was my aunt calling downstairs saying, "You might want to turn on the telly, there seems to be some business about a plane and a skyscraper over in America." Then I spent about the next three days parked in front of the TV with a bottle of Jameson's feeling sorry for myself (why? nothing at all had happened to me personally) and angry that this had been allowed to happen, and confused and bewildered about what I was doing or should be doing with my life.

The thing was that at this time and for the year or two previous I'd been doing more and more drinking and more and more feeling sorry for myself, and the thought that kept coming into my head as I watched the New Yorkers risking their lives and pitching in to take care of one another was, "What if this happened here in London? Would I be able to help my neighbors the way those New Yorkers are doing? What possible use would my drunken ass be?"

It was actually those feelings that prompted me into finally giving up drinking and trying to become a more responsible human being. Remember, at that time there was a real sense that there were likely to be more attacks, and that they could come anywhere (London eventually was attacked, and very close to where I lived, in 2005), and I felt that if or when that happened, I wanted to be strong and clearheaded enough to be able to do whatever was needed of me.

A couple weeks later, I was in New York City. The planes had just started flying again, though they were almost empty, as were the airports, except for the machine-gun toting soldiers. It was the way flying looks in those airline commercials, where you never have to stand in line and everybody gets a good seat and has three stewardesses to wait on him. I got on the subway near JFK and that's when it first hit me in a way that it never could have on TV. The first thing I noticed was all the flags. Pretty much every house in Howard Beach had one flying. But the really amazing thing was the feel of camaraderie on the subway. It was like every time someone got on, everyone in the car would turn to him or her, check them out to make sure they didn't look like trouble, and then sort of silently say, "Ok, you're all right now, you're one of us, we're all looking out for each other here." I imagine it might have felt very different to a person who looked Middle Eastern - but to me it felt very safe and comforting.

I spent the next 10 days in Manhattan, and the smoke - and that horrible smell, which others have mentioned, and which I don't think anyone will ever be able to forget - was still hanging over the city. Some days the wind would blow it out to sea and the air would feel fresh and clean again, but then the wind would shift back and just like that the mood would change. People would be in the middle of a conversation and suddenly get a whiff of charred concrete and incinerated bodies and the looks on their faces would turn grim and desperate and the conversation trail off into non sequiturs.

I was running around with this girl at the time, and she was one of those people who saw the whole thing as America's fault. We were up in Central Park on an incredibly beautiful day in early October - even then you could still see a thin column of smoke rising downtown - and she got really mad at me for suggesting otherwise, capping it off with, "And I don't give a damn about those people who died in the World Trade Center," implying that it was their own fault for being there in the first place. That started a raging two-day argument in which we called each other every name under the sun, and guaranteed that our relationship, which had always been tempestuous at best, was never going to go much further.

By the time I went back to London, though, there was no longer any doubt in my mind that sooner or later I was going to live in this great city. Thinking of other places where I'd lived, especially London and San Francisco, where a large percentage of the people thought exactly like this girl did, made me especially keen to live in a place where people were grown up enough to take responsibility for themselves and others. Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I pictured Londoners or San Franciscans, if they'd faced a similar disaster, running around like headless chickens and looking for someone - probably the government or "capitalism" or "the corporations" - to blame.

And six years later, here I am, a proud New Yorker myself and feeling very honored and privileged to live in what I don't doubt is the greatest city on earth. The events of September 11, 2001 had a very large impact on me personally, in that they led pretty directly to two major changes in my life, stopping drinking and moving to New York City, but I suspect I'm just one of millions who had their lives permanently altered that day, and unfortunately - for those who lost loved ones or livelihoods, not always for the better. But I think the net effect for New Yorkers in particular and Americans in general has been a wake-up call, one that said essentially, "It's time to stop living in la-la land and to start thinking about what life and liberty and your place in the community of humankind are all about." A lot of stupid and excessive and overreactive crap has come down as a result of 9/11, but I'd say that overall we're a better and stronger people as a result of the lessons learned that day. Let's hope so, anyway, because I have a feeling that there are times yet to come when we'll need to be.

Bottomfest 2007 - God, I Love These Guys

What is a Bottomfest? And whatever it is, doesn't it sound vaguely unappealing? If not slightly salacious?

That's what I thought when I first heard of it, but as it turns out the "Bottom" in the fest came only from Dr. Drew Peabottom, Ph.D., who despite his passing resemblance to Harry Potter and his childlike obsession with obscure Queers vinyl, is not only a genuine scientist (who studies, you know, science), but also is turning 30 years old this month.

Which prompted his devoted consort Ms. Sarah Peabottom to organize a two-day fest in his honor in a remote corner of northeastern Pennsylvania where about a dozen pop-punk bands could wail away to their hearts' content and the usual fest-related tomfoolery could ensue, all without any risk of alienating the neighbors or incurring the wrath of the authorities.

The first night's event actually took place in not-so-nearby Wilkes-Barre, and I managed to miss most of it, but things kicked off again before noon on Saturday with solo performances by Rapid Randy (of the Backseat Virgins) and Pat Termite (Beatnik Termites) before the full-fledged bands took over. It's always seemed a bit weird to me to see bands whose natural environment seems to be dimly lit night clubs and bars playing on green grass in broad daylight, but by the time New Hampshire's Guts, Maine's Leftovers, and New York's Steinways finished tearing things up, things like stage lights and walls and ceilings seemed thoroughly superfluous.

Some of the sets were sloppy and good-natured fun - especially the Guts' runthrough of a dozen or so punk classics in addition to their own songs. These guys are just so, so good, even missing vocals from Geoff, who had mysteriously mislaid his voice somewhere that weekend and could only croak along in the background. Others were more straight-ahead, like the Steinways, who debuted some of their best new songs yet. Who else? Project 27, Be My Doppelganger, Nancy, Dead Mechanical among others: a veritable treasure trove of pop punk circa 2007. Oh, and a "surprise" (Dr. Peabottom was one of the only people there who appeared to be genuinely surprised) appearance by the mysterious Jerkingtons, who first rocketed to prominence in 2005 with their merciless lyrical scourings of some of the PPMB's leading personalities (I hope I'm not being too vain in using that description, since I myself have been the subject of one of the Jerkingtons' verbal brickbats: "Larry Livermore Is 80 Years Old").

Unsurprisingly, given the participants, the locale and the nature of the occasion, there was a fair bit of drunkenness, though none so flamboyant and flagrant as that exhibited by Matt Lame, who seems to specialize in this sort of thing at fests of all sorts. Sporting a fishing hat of the style featured by Wilson on Home Improvement and wielding, among other implements of destruction, a purple air mattress, Matt wreaked several strands of havoc on festgoers for pretty much the entire 24 hours he was on the premises. Apparently he passed out at one point inside the tent that had been set up for him by less inebriated companions, but for reasons as yet unexplained, the tent proceeded to collapse and envelop him, as Chadd Derkins put it, "like a cocoon."

"It was awesome watching him struggle to find his way out of the collapsed tent this morning," observed Doctoracula, another attendee, "It was like he was being born." If, of course, being born entails being greeted with a cream pie to the face, which was Pete Repellent's payback for Matt's antics of the previous day.

Pete, who journeyed all the way from Chicago with his devoted partner Simple 81 (he actually refers to and addresses her as "Simple," and she occasionally even answers, though not infrequently with vulgarities or obscenities) also helped orchestrate one of the fest's other highlight when he dressed up in a yellow Peep costume (you didn't know there was such a thing? Neither did I) to confront Chadd Derkins over the latter's thoughtless boast that he could "probably" match the world record for Peep-eating (103 in half an hour). Chadd got through 30 before staggering out behind the garage to vomit; his orange (these were special Halloween pumpkin Peeps) puke pile proved to be a popular tourist spectacle for the rest of the weekend.

Someone, apparently relations to Ms. Peabottom, thought it would be a good idea to order 15 pizzas, which arrived sometime around 9pm, a few hours after dinner and just before a massive birthday cake was served. Then came the campfire singalong and marshmallow roast, though I suspect more marshmallows were thrown than roasted, especially once the aforementioned Mr. Lame arrived on the scene.

The singalong turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the day, not so much for its quality - it was a rare song where anyone could remember all of the words - but for its enthusiasm and the realization that the last couple decades of pop-punk songs had turned into - at least among this group - genuine classics. The group went through pretty much the entire Queers catalog, and large segments of Screeching Weasel, the Riverdales, Weston, MTX, and, of course, the Ramones. At one point there were competing singalongs, with the larger group carrying on with "Punk Rock Girls" while Oliver Poopsounds and I unaccountably tried to drown them out with our own version of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out." Oliver was rather drunk; I had no such excuse.

Chadd and Oliver also serenaded me with their own ribald renderings of several Potatomen classics, apparently in an attempt to persuade me to pick up the guitar and do a few tunes myself, but I wouldn't fall for it. I'd seen Matt Lame dodging enough marshmallows to not want to take his place as the principal object of the crowd's ire. Afterwards, of course, I regretted my reticence; it's not often in 2007 that I'm likely to encounter people - drunk or not - bellowing for Potatomen songs. Maybe next fest.

It wasn't all goofing around - well, yes, actually that's pretty much exactly what it was - but the whole weekend just left me positively glowing. It wasn't a massive fest on the scale of Baltimore; probably no more than 50 or 75 people were there at any given time. And although some of the best bands of our time were in attendance, it wasn't primarily a musical event. The crucial element was just a lot of good friends getting together and having the time of their lives, and while I'm sure your friends and their friends and everybody's friends are just as nice and just as fun, these are my friends, and they're the best, and right now I feel so lucky and privileged and blessed to know them all.

My Mustard Colored Mustang

One of the joys - for me at least - of living in New York City is being able not just to exist, but to live very well without owning or driving a car. In fact, unless you live in the outer boroughs or are rich enough to pay for private garage space (which in Manhattan costs as much as or more than an apartment or house in most cities), owning a car has got to be far more trouble than not owning one.

But sooner or later, one feels the need or desire to get out of town for a couple days, and unless you're going to one of the cities or towns served by rail (i.e., much of Eastern New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, etc., driving becomes a necessity, as does a visit to those extortionate vampires known as rental car companies.

I know, everything's more expensive in New York, but rent a car hereabouts and your per day price can easily equal what you'd pay for a week in other parts of the country. Nevertheless, they can and do get away with it because, especially at weekends, there's what seems to be an almost limitless demand for their services.

In my case I wanted to go to Eastern Pennyslvania for Bottomfest (about which more later). In principle I could have hitched a ride with someone else who was going or even taken a bus to nearby Scranton, but that would have meant having to camp out at the fest, something I'm sure I would have enjoyed immensely when I was in the Boy Scouts or drunk (or, as was often the case, both), but something I now seem to be thoroughly over.

So I bit the bullet and booked a rental from the Avis location - basically, a parking garage - in downtown Brooklyn. I'd requested the cheapest compact available and assumed I'd be driving one of Detroit's dorkiest little clunkers, something along the lines of the Neon I rented in Seattle a few years ago, only to have to pull off the road at one point because it wasn't capable of maintaining freeway speeds in the face of a stiff wind.

But quite the contrary. "Would you like to upgrade your rental today?" asked the clerk, "A nice convertible, maybe? Only an extra $100 a day." Unsure whether she was just playing with me or seriously thought I looked like enough of a doofus to lay out that kind of money for the privilege of getting defecated on by passing pigeons, I laughed and said, "No, I'm all right with the el cheapo model."

With that, she pointed behind me and said, "Your car's right there waiting for you, then." I turned to discover possibly the most garish automobile I've ever seen at close range: a brand new Ford Mustang in a color which can only be described as a particularly efflorescent and flamboyant variety of New York City taxicab. Not quite yellow, not quite orange, and not exactly, though it was my favorite comparison, the hue of mustard that has sat out in the sun too long. But close.

Somewhere, I supposed, there was an individual prepared to pay $25,000 for a car whose paint job was virtually guaranteed to offend every neighbor on the block, so I could comprehend why the Ford Motor Company might produce such a vehicle. But why on earth would Avis Rent-a-Car, presumably in the business of catering to public preferences, buy one? Before I could ruminate further along these lines, I had eased out into the traffic of Atlantic Avenue, nearly running over a man who had stopped in mid-street to gawk, his obvious desire to deliver a stinging insult stymied only by his jaw having dropped so precipitously as to render speech awkward if not impossible.

"Hey," I said, "at least if I get in an accident the other guy's not going to be able to claim he didn't see me coming."

And perhaps there was something in that, because despite it being the Friday afternoon before Labor Day with the highways being clogged by escaping urbanites, not only were there no accidents, but other drivers seemed to give me a wide berth. I cruised through the suburban wastelands and Mafia burial grounds of Eastern Jersey and then suddenly found myself at what looked like the entrance to the Oregon Trail: who knew that once you get away from the greater New York area, New Jersey suddenly becomes a verdant wilderness? Well, New Jerseyans, maybe, but I'm not even sure many of them travel this far west. I mean, we're talking at least 75 miles from Manhattan.

Things continued in this vein until Pennsylvania, which consisted of even more wilderness, except for the long lines of cars apparently headed for "the lake" or wherever people go on these holiday weekends, and I had to wonder why the pioneers felt it necessary to push westward all the way to California when it seemed like there was still plenty of frontier to explore within a day's wagon train ride of Wall Street. I also had a scare when it seemed as though I might run out of gas, towns and villages having suddenly become exceedingly scarce and those that could be found seemingly having shut down for the night by 6 pm.

But I made it - only just - to my destination in not especially lovely Wilkes-Barre (I asked if it were named for the same Barre in Guillain-Barre Syndrome, but nobody seemed to know), which apparently was a thriving industrial city at some point, but now looks to be suffering the long-term aftereffects of a zombie invasion. Between traffic, getting lost, and general lollygagging, I arrived at 11:30 pm, about three and a half hours later than planned, and got to see about ten minutes of the show I'd come for, before hopping back into the chariot for a half hour ride over the mountains to the slighly more lively town of Clarks Summit.

It was there that I found some people actually appreciated my mustard-colored Mustang. It caused a bit of a stir when I arrived at Bottomfest (of which, again I say, more later), with Stephanie and Michelle Shirelle jumping into the front seat and demanding to be taken for a ride. Who knew pop-punk girls' heads were so easily turned?

Leaving town on Sunday, I stopped to fill the tank once more. "Nice car," pronounced the attendant, with nary a trace of irony, which they didn't appear to speak in these parts. "It's full serve only," he said, stopping me from getting out to pump my own gas.

"Oh, sorry," I told him, "I'll just go to that station across the street then, I don't want to pay extra for full serve."

"Nope, it's not extra, same price here as there," he said, going about his business without waiting for my assent, casting an appraising eye back and forth as he did. "We only ask for a couple bucks tip," he informed me as he screwed the gas cap back on."

In an unguarded moment, I might even have fallen for this one, but hey, I was driving a brand new mustard colored Mustang, so I just laughed out loud at this notion. "Hey, that's the way they did it back in the 1950s," he protested.

"No they didn't, pal. I was there in the 50s, and if this was the 50s, you'd be checking my oil, washing my windows and offering to vacuum out my car, all for a buck an hour and not even a chance of a tip."

"Oh well, doesn't hurt to try, does it?" It was 11 am on a Sunday morning, but it suddenly occurred to me that he'd probably been up all night on crystal meth. Maybe not, though; he was still smiling and friendly as I drove away, something you don't often see in cranked-up small town boys. I drove back to New York City, made the unwise choice of trying to drive across Manhattan instead of going the long way around via Staten Island, and was home in Brooklyn before the afternoon was too far gone. I was completely happy to be out of the driver's seat, out of traffic, and back on the subway, even if it was only the lowly G train, but there have been a couple moments since then that I actually almost kind of miss my mustard colored Mustang. If you see it (and believe me, you'd notice it if you did), wave hi for me.

"His Friends Thought He Was Doing An Art Piece"

I've never had a lot of time for the Burning Man yuppiefest in the Nevada desert. Very possibly that's because of a lack of open-mindedness on my part (you'll note that I dub it a yuppiefest without ever having been there, and that in fact I'm simply repeating an insult initially lodged against the event a decade or more ago). On the other hand, I decided long ago that I could spare neither the time, money nor inclination to investigate further.

All I know is that virtually everything I've ever read or heard about Burning Man has led me to believe that too many of its participants are drug-addled dingbats for me to have any chance of enjoying myself in their presence. And I thought along these lines even in the long-ago days before I had given up drugs myself. Nearly every quote I've read has focused on the Burners' (Burnouts, more like) predilection for elevating the banal and tedious into the profound and insightful, a surefire sign that copious amounts of marijuana and other psychedelics have been running amok in what otherwise might function as serviceable brains.

Apparently not everyone in attendance is completely loopy, though, at least if this article is to be believed. Some of the parties involved manage to sound pretty ditzy nonetheless, abstinent from drugs or not, which reminds me of an old saying about alcoholics: "You can take the booze out of a fruitcake, but you've still got a fruitcake on your hands."

Anyway, I've stopped paying much attention to the event in recent years, but I couldn't help noticingthis particular story: apparently some hapless camper hung himself and nobody bothered cutting his dangling corpse down from its makeshift gallows because they assumed it was some sort of art installation.

Another awkward issue: apparently the brain trust/corporate interests behind Burning Man are undergoing an agonizing examination of their collective conscience over whether the festival was in danger of being taken over by big business interests. With its patrons forking over an average of $200 a pop for the privilege of spreading a sleeping bag out on an otherwise godforsaken desert, the concepts of barn doors and bolting horses inevitably come to mind, but according to this story in the organization's in-house PR sheet (which, remarkably, doubles as the daily "newspaper' for the greater San Francisco Bay Area, such is indeed the case.

Laurentius Livermore

Everyone knows about Wikipedia, of course, but slightly fewer people are aware of Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia. And fewer still have their own entry in that august journal, but apparently I do.

Actually, my presence there has little to do with any merit on my part, and much more to do with a professor by the name of Jacob Love, apparently was a Lookout Records fan (at least judging from his online screen name, which was taken from an Operation Ivy song), who did the translation work and put me among the immortals.

I only had a vague memory of this until I had a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter who's doing a story on the (alleged) resurgence of Latin and somehow had me pegged as "a Latin buff." While it's true that I hold Latin in the highest regard, think it's a tragedy that it's been removed from most school and university curricula, and hope (possibly in vain) that it will one day be restored to its rightful position as one of the crown jewels of Western civilization, I'm not sure I qualify as a genuine "buff."

While I can usually decipher inscriptions and school mottoes, not to mention most of the magical spells in Harry Potter, I'd be hard pressed to get through even a few pages of the Aeneid without wanting to strangle someone, most likely myself. It's not that I find Latin difficult - in fact back in high school I used to study it for fun, to the point where I neglected my other subjects - but I just didn't study it long enough. Two years in high school, plus lots of altar boy prayers, have left a substantial vocabulary inculcated in my skull. Hell, more than four decades on, I still remember most of the declensions and conjugations. But in order to successfully decipher the classics, I would have needed another year or two of college level Latin, and though I took one intensive course at Berkeley (six hours a day, five days a week, the equivalent of one year in 10 weeks), I stopped just short of gaining a real mastery of the material. Story of my life, really.

Anyway, the reporter and I ended up mostly chatting about our mutual Anglophilia (now there's a country that at least for a while knew the true value of Latin) before referring him onwards to Dallas Denery and Dr. Frank, two genuine classicists who, in one of those myriad injustices with which the world is rife, have yet to make their own appearances in Vicipaedia.

More Movies b/w Goodbye California

There's been a bunch, so I probably won't remember them all, but here are some:

El Cantante

Complete trash with a good sound track. I've always liked salsa, even though I don't know much about it, and since I've been living in New York, I've become more interested in Puerto Rico as well, so I was already planning on seeing this film even before Luis invited me to come see it with him and his friend Vicente.

As it turned out, I may have been one of the only gringos in the house (Luis is Mexican-American and Vicente is Spanish; pretty much everyone else in the theater seemed to be Puerto Rican), but no matter: even I could tell that apart from the music there was very little authentic about this Jennifer Lopez vehicle, and anyway, it's hard to make a romantic film about a guy (the singer Hector Lavoe) who insists on systematically drugging himself to death. Your basic "Yeah, I know he was a hopeless junkie, but he was a beautiful man" kind of fluff which is never going to ring true with anyone who's known a real junkie or three. But it was fluff with a good salsa beat, and I still enjoyed it. It could have been so much more, though.

King Of Kong

I really only went along to see this because a fair sized delegation from the Pop Punk Message Bored crew was going (if it had been up to me, we would have gone to see Superbad instead), but I enjoyed it anyway, despite nearly falling asleep at the beginning during what seemed like an unnecessarily detailed exposition of the intricacies and inner workings of the video game Donkey Kong. A game which, I might add, I have never played in my life, not even in its 80s heyday, and which I'd heretofore had pretty close to zero interest in.

King Of Kong is a Spinal Tap-type documentary about some truly bizarre characters whose entire existence seems centered around a biter competition to be recognized as the world's greatest Donkey Kong player. The difference being that, unlike Spinal Tap, these characters are apparently real, as is their bitter competition. Admittedly, I wasn't fully convinced by the movie itself, even when Chadd Derkins, who knows a bit about video games himself, assured me that this was not a mockumentary. It wasn't until I got home and did a little internet fact-checking that I had to accept that yes, there really is a parallel universe out there where 1980s arcade games are pretty much the only thing that matters.

Then I started thinking about how my own social set - especially the pop-punk segment of it - would look under the microscope of a competent documentarian. Our weird private language and in-jokes, as well as our internecine battles over the most esoteric minutiae of punk rock dogma would no doubt appear ever bit as bizarre and opaque to the "normal" filmgoer (assuming many or any of those would be interested in watching us in the first place).

And the same thing could be true about a local bowling league, the pigeon fanciers society, or a trainspotters convention (trust me, those of you who haven't lived in England; the latter two actually do exist). For that matter, not to be too flippant about it, many religious groups could quickly become the butt of other people's jokes if their thoroughly honest theological discussions were filmed from a certain angle.

Okay, point taken: we're all weirdos. Entertaining movie, anyway.

This Is England

I saw this on a rainy and chilly, i.e., very English-feeling night, and it brought loads of memories and emotions flooding back. Set in 1983, very near to the time when England started drawing me into its orbit (I'd first visited there in the mid-70s, but it wasn't until the 80s that I began to sense I was destined to live there), I was reminded of the pervading ugliness as well as the discreet charm of workaday English life.

The pebble dash houses, the insta-slum council estates, the droll humor coupled with an undercurrent of menace and violence all rang true: England in the 70s and early 80s felt very much like a failed state, if not a doomed civilization. This tale of young boy befriended by "good" skinheads before being sucked into the orbit of some psycho and racist yobs was chilling but not at all far removed from the realm of possibility. England today may/does have its problems, but they're a far cry from the general despair and disillusion that stalked the land during Maggie's early days. In fact, I found myself having a newfound appreciation for the woman. Not that I think she was a nice person, or that many of her policies weren't pursued in terribly inhumane ways, but that perhaps no other leader could have picked a crumbling and derelict country up by the scruff of the neck and told it to get on with things the way she did.

I also found myself reflecting on my own time in England, what it was all about, why I went there and why I'm not there anymore. I often get very nostalgic when I familiar sights or hear familiar accents on the television or the movies, but this time I wondered if my ten years there had been little more than some lengthy and ultimately pointless detour. No, that couldn't be true, I argued with myself: I learned so much and had so many amazing experiences. But what, my other half shot back, did it all add up to, apart from learning a slightly different dialect and being surrounded by people who appreciated and encouraged the sardonic and sarcastic attitude that was always getting me threatened or beat up in America?

Some day, looking at the whole of my life, those ten years in England might qualify as my years in the wilderness, but then hadn't I previously offered up a whole other decade in the actual wilderness of the Northern California mountains? Could it be that my life is fated to be nothing but a series of wilderness detours? Will New York someday seem like just another of them? It feels very much like home to me now, though, which for all my time there, England never fully did.

Oh, right, movie review, not soul-searching and self-obsession: yeah, good movie, well worth seeing, especially if you care about England or harbor romantic illusions about it. A bit visceral at times, but hey, that's life, innit? Oh, and the experience was heightened by a posse of real skinheads (okay, as "real" as you're likely to see these days outside of a gay fetish bar) who came stalking in and occupied the back row just as the film started.

Based on many experiences at punk gigs back in the 80s, I instantly tensed up, assuming that they were there to wreck the show. They were probably going to throw beer cans at the screen, or demand that all the other patrons shout "Oi oi oi" along with them, but apart from a few giggles, they were good as gold. One of them got so drunk that he staggered out mid-film, taking several minutes to find the exit after literally almost walking into the screen, but that was at a point when the goings-on in the film were so grim that a little comic relief was in order.

Okay, there are more films yet to write about, but it's 3 am. Why am I suddenly seeing so many movies? You might infer that I have no life, and you might indeed be right, but hey, watching movies is sort of like life, isn't it? Anyway, in a couple weeks time I've got another real life-type event: I have to fly to California, pack up all my remaining belongings and furniture stored there, and drive them out to my new apartment in New York.

Despite all my traveling around this country and Canada, it'll be my first time driving all the way from one coast to the other in single trip (I've done California to Michigan and variations on that theme by car many times, and Vancouver to Halifax by train, but never California straight through to New York). I guess I should think of it as a big adventure, but it's also kind of scary, because it means finally and totally saying goodbye to California after almost 40 years of having some connection or home base there.

And why am I doing this? Pursuing my destiny, or continuing to wander like Moses and the Israelites in search of the Promised Land? I guess we'll just have to wait and see about that, but any of you residing in what are usually the flyover states but are about to become the drive-through states for me, feel free to come on down to the highway and wave hello and best wishes as I come rolling by.

Sunshine

A somewhat chilly and rainy autumn-like night seemed like a good time to see a movie about flying a rocket ship to the sun.

Sunshine is based on some dubious - or at least highly speculative - science: the notion that when our sun begins to die, plunging earth into an eternal ice age, it can be kick-started back to life by dropping something called a "stellar bomb" the size of Manhattan into its core.

Never mind that I'd always been under the impression that a) when the sun actually dies, it will erupt into a supernova that will incinerate the planets as far out as Mars or Jupiter; b) that the biggest nuclear explosion human beings can generate would have about as much impact on the sun as dropping a lit match into a forest fire the size of Texas, this tale of eight astronauts attempting to pilot a bomb-bearing spaceship straight into the sun is a riveting tale indeed.

Of course there's also the fact that if you really want to deliver something to the sun, it's pretty simple: just blast a rocket in its general direction and by the time your rocket is inside the orbit of Venus, the sun's gravity should take care of the rest (any astrophysicists reading this, fell free to correct me). Okay, so the whole premise of the film is utter nonsense; it's still great entertainment, and as one review said, "You'll never look at the sun in the same way again."

For instance, I've always had a pretty good opinion of our nearest star. Apart from the occasional sunburn and the paint peeling off my old car from from overexposure (but that's more the stupid Toyota Motor Company's fault than Old Sol's), the sun has been nothing but good to me. I mean, think about it: it sits there for billions of years dishing out warmth and light and making all life possible without asking a thing in return. I mean, you don't get much more benign than that. No wonder the ancients worshiped it as a god.

But in this film - and here I have no reason to doubt the science - as soon as you get in closer proximity, the sun becomes the ultimate killing machine, capable of incinerating anyone or anything in the blink of an eye (and, speaking of eyes, capable of instantly and permanently blinding anyone who looks at an almost totally filtered version of it).

Of course it doesn't help that people seem to get a little loopy - make that a lot loopy - as they enter into the sun's gravitational field, but I'll say no more about that for fear of spoiling the plot for those of you who might wish to see it. Because this isn't exactly a high-budget film, the sets and the effects are somewhat limited, but are effective nonetheless, even though they often consist of little more than flashing lights and some great crashes and bangs that sound not unlike what you'll hear in a multi-level subway station.

Which was why, waiting for the L train at 6th Avenue while the F and V rumbled overhead, and seeing the lights of the train as it came barreling down the tunnel toward me, I pretty much relived the terror of the film while at the same time marveling at the way many things we think of as completely mundane and normal are very nearly as amazing as rocket ships that go to the sun.

When I got out at my stop just as a rocket ship-sized semi roared past on Metropolitan Avenue and then left me standing there in sudden silence as the rain started to fall in earnest, it felt more autumn-like than ever, and for once I didn't feel at all melancholy about the prospect. In fact, after what I'd just seen, taking a bit of a break from the sun seemed downright inviting.

Oh To Be In England...

...now that football season's here.

Yes, it's been a seemingly interminable - what, almost three months? - wait since the curtain came down on the last Premiership season, and here we go again: just when I was beginning to get used to having my Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays free, the marathon begins again. And now that I'm watching my matches on television rather than in person, there's actually a lot more of them. Especially since I'm considering getting Setanta in addition to the Fox Soccer Channel: it could mean that I'm barely able to leave the house until the FA Cup comes around again next May.

Not that I've been completely starved of football these past few months; there's always something, if not on FSC, then on one of the Mexican channels. Which reminds me of something that came as a revelation to me the other night while I was watching some lower division clash from the ass end of Southern Mexico: every time there was a lull in the action, a band would strike up a few bars of the Mexican Hat Dance.

What's remarkable about that? Well, I guess I'd just assumed that the Mexican Hat Dance, like California burritos, was essentially a gringo takeoff on Mexican culture, and that real Mexicans would never dream of having anything to do with it. Guess I was wrong; either that, or some American TV producer had got in on the act and convinced someone to play the MHD as a way of adding an air of verisimilitude for the Norteamericano audience.

Anyway, this morning I watched Man City systematically take West Ham apart, and while in an ideal world I would have liked to have seen both teams loses, West Ham for their dodgy dealings in the transfer market last year and Man City because they're now coached by Sven Boring Eriksson, the inflicter of untold misery on English football fans and ruination of two World Cups and a European championship.

Unfortunately, Sven's team done good today, and thoroughly deserved their win. Liverpool, who squeaked past the perennially tedious Aston Villa thanks to an own goal, not so much. In fact today's second match was totally forgettable affair, but that was all right, as the plumbers were busily making a racket in my apartment trying to fix the pumps so there won't be any more floods.

But tomorrow - in a mere 6 1/2 hours, actually - I've got to be up for the real start of the 2007-08 season, as my beloved Fulham go charging (or more likely skulking) into the macerating maw of Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. Fulham have never won at Arsenal, never once in their entire history, and I'm not counting on much different a result this morning. In fact, there's every likelihood that this could be a bleak and truly dismal affair, and that crawling out of bed to watch it will be the equivalent of witnessing a 90-minute train wreck that I just can't turn my eyes away from.

Ah well, hope springs eternal in the youthful heart, they say. Or was that the foolish heart? At my age, it's definitely got to be the latter, but hey, at least until 2 pm UK time, we won't have dropped a single point and have every bit as much a chance of winning the championship as anyone else. Yeah, right, but what I guess it comes down to is that opening day is like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny for grownups. Until they've actually delivered that lump of coal, the world is full of infinite possibilities.

On The Town

A couple nights out this week, both low key, both strangely, quietly satisfying. Well, actually, I've been out most nights, but I'm not counting movies (Die Hard and the previously mentioned Chuck and Larry), just events where live music was involved.

Tuesday night saw me rolling up on my bike to the Lost and Found tavern in Greenpoint. I didn't get there till quite late, but it seems to be the kind of place where everything happens quite late, almost ostentatiously oblivious to the fact that some New Yorkers do indeed have jobs or school or similarly boring obligations to contend with on a Wednesday morning.

I hung outside - it was a very nice night - shooting the breeze with Mikey Erg and my old friend Justin "Sully" Sullivan, who to be honest, I barely recognized now that he's acquired a few years/layers of Greenpoint/Williamsburg patina. Which was true the last time I ran into him, a year ago on the G train when we were both coming home from the Rancid show.

Being as out of the loop as I am, I didn't even know that he was the drummer for the Radio Faces, the band I'd come to see; the last time I'd seen Sully playing music was with his old Long Island hardcore outfit, The Insurgent. Anyway, the Radio Faces were good, very good, even, more power-pop than pop-punk, not that there's anything wrong with that. My only objection: their first song, something about a Party at the Bushwick Hotel, went on forever, with the chorus being repeated at least 150 times, well, maybe 50 times. Point being, the song's very good and catchy, but repeating the same verse and chorus over and over doesn't make it any more so. Rather the opposite, in fact.

Every song after that was shorter, hell, the set itself was short, and ended rather strangely, with guitarist Nato still plunking away as though he meant to start another song, while other members of the band began taking down their equipment. I walked part of the way home with Hallie Unlovable, who's leaving on tour this weekend and won't be back until Labor Day.

"Oh my god," I said, that means your New York summer is already over, and it's only the first week of August!"

"Yeah, well, I'm about ready to get out of town," she said, but I still felt wistful, not because I wanted her to stay here if she wanted to be elsewhere, but because if her New York summer was ending, it brought home the point that it wouldn't be much longer before mine was too.

And by Thursday night, it really felt that way, because it was almost - not quite but almost - too chilly to hang outside of Hank's Saloon wearing only a t-shirt. As at the Radio Faces, the crowd was small but devoted. Actually, there were quite a few people there, but I'm only counting the ones I know, insular and parochial bastard than I can be at times.

The occasion was the final show by the Impulse, another power-pop outfit with some of the same strengths (and a similar weakness for the occasional too-long repeating chorus song) as the Radio Faces. Singer/guitarist Adam, formerly of Dirt Bike Annie, the quirky, seminal band that almost single-handedly kept New York City pop-punk alive in the dark ages of the late 90s, is ostensibly retiring from rock and roll in order to move to Florida, take care of his kid, attend university and do similarly adult things.

As exuberant as the music was, there was an autumnal chill to the affair, and I'm not just talking about the weather. The Impulse hadn't been around that long or achieved a whole lot of recognition beyond a moderately-sized group of friends, and maybe because of that, it felt sad to see it ending, especially since Adam is almost the living, breathing epitome of a rock star, so much so that it's almost hard to imagine him ever being anything else.

And yet so the dream ends, at least for now. It wouldn't surprise me to see him suddenly re-emerge from Floridian exile at the head of a far more massive band, but neither would it surprise me if it really is the end for his rock and roll fantasy and the beginning of what will hopefully be an equally satisfying adventure in normal life. I know what it felt like: when you're getting into your late teens and you're still hanging out on the street corner not knowing what you're going to do with yourself when summer ends, and meanwhile seeing your buddies gradually drift away to the service or college or marriage or careers. Like they're all growing up while you don't know if you can or even want to.

I got to this show hell of late, too, and missed Short Attention, but most of the clever, maddening and annoying crew were still there. Grath McGrath was walking around with a lifelike and life-sized stuffed dog under his arm, which I found strangely disconcerting, and Bill Florio, that prince among men, gave me, Crafty Dan and Jackie O. a ride home in his little hybrid car, the first I've ever been in, along the BQE with its mega-spectacular views of lower Manhattan on a night when the lights burned with mad translucent fire.

Here Comes The Rain Again

It was very nearly a precise replay of a few weeks ago: a storm arriving in the predawn hours, rain lashing furiously on the windows, lightning flashing like a strobe light and thunder drowning out all other sound, followed by the gurgling sound of water springing up through the floorboards and turning my entire apartment into a wading pool.

The only differences: this time I knew the storm was coming, so sleep, even before it arrived, was out of the question, and because of that, I had most things up off the floor and - theoretically - out of reach of any possible floods. The other difference: this time the water was almost twice as deep as last time, and reached places I'd never thought of as being in danger.

It was discouraging, let me tell you. It had only been in the last couple days that everything was completely dried out from the first flood, and I was still in the middle of putting stuff away again. If I'd been more diligent in doing so, lots more things would have been soaked this time. The futon sofa, untouched by the previous inundation, soaked up water like a giant sponge, so much so that it took two of us to carry it outside to dry in the sun. Shoes were floating everywhere, along with the rugs, trash cans, storage bins; oh, it was a real laugh riot.

I took it all in surprisingly good spirits, though, laughing and joking with the neighbors, many of whom had experienced similar or worse disasters. But not the old guy two doors down, who usually whiles away his days on the porch dispensing friendly greetings to everyone who passes by; today he couldn't stop pointing out that his was one of the only completely dry basements on the block.

"Come and look, there's-a no water, come and look," he demanded, which a few of the neighbors found exasperating, dealing as they were with anywhere from six inches to six feet in their own homes. By the end of day I felt more a part of the neighborhood than ever before, being unable to walk more than a handful of feet down the block without someone stopping me to ask if the water had gone down yet or to say, "So, you're moving down the corner house, huh? Bet you'll be glad to get out of the basement!" How the hell does everyone on the block know when and where I'm moving when a few weeks ago I would have told you they probably didn't even know I existed?

I don't know, but I kind of like it. I've never been that big of a neighborhood person before, but I guess I'm becoming one. When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood kind of like this, where everybody knew everybody's business, and it used to drive me crazy. Maybe it will again some day, but right now it's cool to feel a part of things.

P.S. Today it's been raining again, not hard enough to flood, but enough so that all the stuff that was drying out isn't drying out anymore. And the temperature has dropped into the 50s, and I've had to wear a jacket for the first time in months. Not cool. Well, not unless you like winter and/or San Francisco, because that's what it feels like.

Private Splendor, Public Squalor

I don't have many complaints about New York, and in general, I think it's headed in the right direction. I know, I know, people assure me that if I stick around long enough I'll have plenty to complain about, but so far so good.

For the most part. However, when I went for a swim at Brighton Beach last week, followed by a walk up the boardwalk to Coney Island, I couldn't help feeling this was an area where the city could do better. Lots better.

Many people don't know it, but New York City has some pretty spectacular beaches. Maybe not the equal of Ipanema or Bondi, but there are miles of beautiful sand, water that's just about the perfect temperature for swimming (well, for a couple months of the year, anyway), and when the heat of mid-summer descends upon us, you'd need only a few palm trees to complete the illusion of a subtropical paradise.

Well, except for a few minor details. The Parks Department (assuming they're the ones in charge) does a creditable job of cleaning the sands, but cigarette butts and broken glass still get dumped there faster than it can get picked up. But what are you going to do? Millions of people use the beaches, and it's probably too much to expect them all to be civilized.

But what's really missing are the most basic facilities. I haven't been to Rio, but at any fair-sized beach in Sydney, there'll be at the very least a changing room and a concession stand; about the best New York has to offer is some truly rank public toilets.

I discovered this when I decided to change back into my street clothes for the trip back to town (I'd worn my swim suit under my clothes when I came to the beach). I walked over a mile and a half without finding a single place to do so. If worse came to worst, I thought, at least I could change inside one of the toilets, but many of them had "No Undressing" signs, and the others were so tiny and so squalid that you wouldn't want to remain inside of them any longer than absolutely necessary.

I finally found one large public toilet near Coney Island that people were using as a changing room, but it clearly wasn't designed to be one, even though there was plenty of space if it had only been laid out sensibly. What was even more ridiculous was that New Yorkers (who knew?) are apparently an extraordinarily modest lot: whereas in Sydney, people would have simply dropped their drawers and got on with dressing or undressing (hell, in many cases they'd do it right out in the beaches, about half of which are clothing optional anyway); here they stood around grimly and shamefacedly waiting for the handful of toilet cubicles to open up.

And what a grim experience it proved to be when you finally got inside one: nowhere to set your things down except on a filthy toilet or on a floor awash in liquids of indeterminate origin, and barely enough room to move, let alone wriggle one leg at a time out of your trunks and into your jeans. Next time I think I'll just ride back to the city in a wet swim suit rather than face that prospect again.

And on an only slightly related note: what's up with the museums? $20 "suggested donation" to get into the Metropolitan, and the MOMA doesn't even bother with suggestions: it's just plain $20 or get lost.

Now we all know that New York is an expensive city, but those kind of fees necessarily preclude all but tourists and the middle and upper classes from experiencing one of the greatest cultural resources in the world. When I was a kid, our family had very little money, but several times a year my dad would pile the whole family into whatever old jalopy he could keep running at the time and haul us down to the Detroit Art Institute or Historical Museum. The cost? Zilch, nothing, nada. It was totally free, and I don't think it's overstating the case to say that that fact helped change my life.

Those visits helped establish a lifelong habit, but more importantly, gave me the first inkling that there was another world possible beyond the grim belching smokestacks that might otherwise have circumscribed my Detroit existence. After I left home, no matter if I was dead broke or even homeless, I'd still stop in at the museums, sometimes to immerse myself in culture, sometimes because it was the only place that was warm. Sometimes I'd spend the day; other times I'd walk in for a quick 10 or 15 minute breather, a refresher course in what it meant to be human.

All that changed when the authorities in their wisdom decided that society could no longer afford free museums. There were discount plans, sure, and one or two days a month when the great unwashed were still allowed in free, but they were missing the point: that the people who often needed museums most were those who couldn't or wouldn't rustle up fifty or a hundred bucks to take the family on an outing, and who might never set foot in one unless it was there and available for free on a regular basis.

I can safely say that if museums had been charging the 1950s and 60s equivalent of $20 a head when I was a kid, I might have visited them once or twice if I was lucky, rather than the literally hundreds of times I did. And my life would have been infinitely poorer for it.

It's worth mentioning that one of the few unmitigated triumphs of New Labour in Britain has been to do away with all admission fees to state museums. All it took was a relatively minor redirection of tax money, and suddenly kids from families like mine were again able to wander at will among the treasures of the ages. And if Britain can afford to do this, how is it possible that New York and other American cities can not? At a time when New York City is growing richer by the minute, possibly richer than any city in the entire history of humankind has ever been, it's not just ridiculous, it's practically obscene that we can't afford such simple amenities.

Chuck And Larry

Hey, I'm only human, I have character defects like anyone else, and one of mine is that I enjoy Adam Sandler movies.

Actually, I'm not sure this is a true character defect, although it is certainly treated as one by my more cultured friends. Say something favorable about an Adam Sandler pic in their presence, and I'm likely to hear, "Oh, just because you've moved to Williamsburg doesn't mean you have to go all ironic on us."

But there is nothing whatsoever ironic about my delight in the broad, slapdash, hamhanded - yet ultimately loving - swipes at popular culture and society that Sandler specializes in. I know I waxed rhapsodic on here about his last movie, Click, perhaps a little too rhapsodic, because a week later I couldn't even remember what the movie was about (something about a TV remote). But I remember it was good. Or at least pretty good. Didn't make me want to slit my wrists, anyway.

But this new one, I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, is a whole new order of wonderful. I thought the previews looked pretty funny, but I still wasn't sure I wanted to see it until some prissy queen wrote into the Village Voice complaining that it was "completely homophobic," apparently because the word "faggot" is used a few times (only by very bad or ignorant people who get their comeuppance, of course; Hollywood in 2007 would never dream of releasing a mainstream film that made gays look like anything but cuddly Will and Grace-style pets).

When Miss Thing went on to fulminate, "I've never been more offended by a movie than this one," compared it to gay bashing, and finished up with, "I've never been more let down by the Voice" for giving it a semi-favorable review, there was no longer any doubt in my mind that I had to see it.

Apparently quite a few people felt similarly, because even on a Monday night, with the film on three screens in the Times Square multiplex, every showing was sold out. I was lucky to get a seat at all, and when I did, it was sandwiched in between half a dozen clearly heterosexual couples happily munching on what theaters somehow get away with selling as "nachos" (basically corn chips that you dip in orange-colored Elmer's Glue, it seems).

It was a very mainstream and very straight audience, definitely drawn from (way) uptown and the boroughs, and I realized immediately where much of the antipathy toward Adam Sandler comes from: he appeals to what my downtown and inner Brooklyn friends would consider the "wrong" sort of people, though of course they'd never admit it out loud.

Anyway, the movie is hilariously crass, full of fun, and still manages to make a few good points about tolerance and open-mindedness. The audience may not have been entirely won over to this point of view, as there was still a good deal of ew-ing every time things got a little too gay onscreen, but this stuff takes time. It's not that long ago that the idea of a largely working class and ethnic audience paying money to be entertained by an unabashedly pro-gay comedy would have been nearly unimaginable.

But did I say "pro-gay?" It's not really; more like pro-human, pro-doing or being or feeling whatever the hell you want to do or be or feel. Despite being essentially a straight person's take on things, it'll do more for the cause of tolerance and understanding than every overtly "gay" movie I've ever seen, not least because it treats gay people as just plain people rather than as the special, almost magical creatures Hollywood usually serves up, capable only of being noble yet doomed victims or incredibly witty and stylish professionals whose primary purpose in life is to show clueless straights how to dress, shop, eat and dance.

One more point in favor of Chuck And Larry: it's totally Brooklyn-centric. The accents, the backdrops, the attitudes: I don't think any of the characters ever bothers to set foot in Manhattan. It's loud, trashy and irreverent - the film that is, but yeah, Brooklyn, too - yet shot through with home truths. Take your favorite uptight gay activist to see it ASAP.

Postcard Punx

I've long been bemused by the time capsule kids who dress up in picture-perfect representations of punk fashion circa 1982, and I've grown steadily more bemused in recent years as the costumes grow ever more precise and formulaic even as the kids wearing them grow farther and farther removed from the time period that spawned them.

I guess the equivalent would be if my late-60s gang of late teenage/early 20-somethings had spurned the hippie look in favor of dressing up in zoot suits and rocking out to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. I mean, what prompts kids to slavishly perpetuate an era that ended before most of them were born? And by the way, why 1982 punk style and not 1977? I think I know the answer to the latter question: by 82 there were more spikes and studs and bondage trousers, i.e., the overall look was more preeningly peacock-like than the Sex Pistols/Clash era style, which tended more toward the generally disheveled and in some cases could even be mistaken for the early hippie look.

Anyway, there's quite a little aggregation of postcard punks who hang around - some might say infest - St. Mark's Place and Tompkins Square Park, and while some of them have been there so long they've gone feral, the majority, I suspect, commute in from the suburbs to destroy society on the weekends. I've actually overheard a couple of them calling their mothers in Connecticut to let them know they'd arrived safely in the city.

They do - even the weekenders - tend to affect a rather grubby look and a fractious demeanor, and one such lad swaggered - as much as a scrawny 17 year old wearing a heavy spiked leather vest on the hottest day of the year can swagger - into the pizza joint on the corner of St. Marks and Avenue A, where I was quietly enjoying my dinner.

"Yo," he barked at the counterman, "Let me use your restroom."

"We don't got no restroom," he was told.

"Yo, don't tell me that, I know you got a restroom, c'mon, man, what do I gotta do, buy something? A Coke or something? Hey, I'll just give you a dollar if you let me use it. A dollar and a half. Cash, man."

The counter guy stared silently at him with that blank look that New Yorkers seem to reserve for the most obtuse out-of-towners. The kid fumbled for something to say, and I, thinking I could maybe break the impasse, said, "Hey, you know there's a public restroom right over there across the street," pointing in the direction of Tompkins Square Park.

The kid, who clearly hailed from what they used to call "a good home" even if he hadn't washed his baby face in a couple days, seemed taken aback, as if he were debating what the appropriately punk response should be. He briefly toyed - at least it looked like it - with the idea of telling me to go fuck myself or threatening to stab me, but then his face softened, and he spoke softly, the way he might if he were addressing his favorite teacher back at Darien High School: "Oh, I know about that restroom. But those toilets are so dirty."

Larry And The Cable Guy

It's probably at least a bit remarkable that I've managed to live as long as I have without ever having - until today, that is - the apparently near-universal experience of waiting for The Cable Guy. I felt a little like Morrissey singing about his hairdresser: "I sense the power within the fingers, within an hour the power could totally destroy me - or it could save my life."

I mean, who cares what kind of haircut you have anymore? With a good internet connection you never need to go out in public again, and if anyone insists on knowing what you "look" like, there's always Photoshop and artsy emo (aka blurred) portraits from ten years ago.

But get disconnected from the worldwide web and you might as well not even exist, or at least it's a lot harder to find out what time movies are playing or what the weather is like in Ulan Bator this time of year. So it was some trepidation that I parked myself in the front window to watch for the Time Warner van. Friends with experience in this field laughed at my childlike trust that the cable guy would turn up at all, let alone during the 4 hour window that I'd been promised.

However, the laugh was on them, as barely an hour and a half had passed before a very polite "technician" phoned to say he was in the neighborhood and would arrive at my door in about 15 minutes. He was there even sooner, and I could even forgive him for double-parking and then sitting there in his van for another 10 minutes while he ate a bag of greasy ribs. I could see him licking great dollops of sauce off his fingers, and hoped that he both had a large supply of napkins and would use them liberally before he came into my house and started, um, touching things.

He turned out to be a fine, jovial fellow, which made it hard for me to be cross about the fact that he didn't seem to know much about cables or computers. But he was smart enough to test all the cables and tell me that they were fine, and to tighten up the cable on my modem, which made all the right lights come on, even though the internet still didn't work.

And that was about it. Maybe I needed a new modem, he said. Or maybe not. He didn't know why my computer still couldn't connect to the internet, so I should probably call customer service and ask them. I didn't bother pointing out that I had already called customer service a week ago, which was why he was here in the first place. I thanked him for his efforts, waved goodbye, and then went back and tinkered around with my computer some more and voilà, the internet appeared! Unfortunately I have no idea just what it was that I did to solve the problem; otherwise I would be down at Time Warner tomorrow applying to become a "technician" myself. But never mind; the cable guy was nice, he showed up on time, and somehow between the two of us we made the internet work again. If only every story in the naked city could come to such a happy end.

Beardo Nation

I don't have any right to complain, I suppose, having chosen to live in this neighborhood, but there are times, most frequently in a packed car on the L train, when I question my own judgment in having voluntarily subjected myself to being surrounded by people with some of the worst dress and grooming sense in history (well, at least since the 1970s, which is far as I care to go back, lest I have to start ruminating on the horrors of paisley bellbottoms and other atrocities of the 60s).

I mean, Williamsburg, capital of post-collegiate America that it is, should be awash in beautiful young men and women, or at least one would think, but instead it provides a daily assault on the senses by hordes of what would appear to be derelicts, at least in embryo if not of the fully sprung variety.

But before I go any further, I should clarify: when I say "people," I actually mean the men, because most local women manage to look at least interesting, and sometimes downright fabulous. And for the most part, they tend to wash both their clothes and hair on a regular basis. The men, not so much. Not hardly at all, in fact.

I know I'm in danger of sounding like one of those fuddy-duddies who used to fulminate about "dirty hippies" or like Ronald Reagan, who once said of the 60s counterculture: "They dress like Tarzan, look like Jane, and smell like Cheetah." But at least I'm not going on about how, "You can't even tell the boys from the girls."

Quite the contrary. If only there were a bit more androgyny, if only a few of these potentially good-looking young men's idea of "masculinity" didn't entail making themselves look as grotty and unkempt as possible, with the ideal image apparently being a 70 year old Bukowski at the tail end of a three week Night Train and crystal meth binge.

Mostly, of course, it's the beards. Why? We didn't endure the travails of all these centuries of civilization building and razor inventing to come to this feral pass. Or did we? Is there where it ends, with a whole tribe of what are presumably among America's best and brightest (certainly if the amounts forked out on college tuition by their doting parents are any indicator) deliberately uglifying themselves as a statement against... what? The commodification of contemporary culture? The fact that they're only 25 years old and already getting too paunchy and disheveled to look good in their super-skinny American Apparel shirts?

Of course the women are not without blame in this matter: as long as they're willing to tolerate or even embrace guys who sport the beardo/bum look, there will be ever-growing legions of new young men who say to themselves, "Shave? Why bother?" I'll admit I'm a bit squeamish, but every time I see an even moderately good-looking girl sucking face with some human Brillo pad, I'm simultaneously astounded and appalled.

"How can you do that?" I always want to ask. "I mean, even with your eyes closed, it still feels (and probably tastes and smells) like you're kissing the ass end of a wombat, doesn't it?" Admittedly, I have met one girl who forthrightly claims that she's sexually attracted to beardos, up to and including Abe Lincoln, but she's clearly in a small minority. What of the others? Are they that hard up? So lacking in self-esteem that they can't even say to a potential suitor, "Yeah, like I really want to make out with Charles Manson. Go home and shave before you even THINK about trying to talk to me, loser." In my experience, women have never had a problem with speaking that forthrightly in the past; what could have changed?

But I guess I'd be overlooking the regrettable fact that people still met and spawned all through the 1970s, the last time dirty, smelly beards were in fashion, and that in fact many of today's most visually offensive hipsters may even have been the offspring of some of those squalid couplings. So perhaps it's an ancestral memory thing, though thinking further, I realize that most of Williamsburg's most bearded denizens these days are more likely to have been born in the 80s, when people were clean-shaven, watched John Hughes movies, and committed few fashion crimes more egregious than big hair and Kajagoogoo.

So I think we really could expect better, but unfortunately probably won't get it. In the meantime, I will have to console myself by meditating on the misery endured by those who insist on sporting face muffs and dressing in head to toe dirty black during these 95-degree days with humidity to match. Hopefully this will have a seriously deleterious effect on your sperm count and you at least won't reproduce.

Disconnected

For once I actually have an excuse for not posting anything new on what has lately been this sadly neglected blog. Shortly after I got back to Brooklyn after a 10-day sojourn in California (and you didn't even know anything about it, did you? not a word of griping from me about how much San Francisco or Berkeley suck, either!), my internet connection (my very expensive internet connection, I note, unlike my free Berkeley internet connection - see, some things are actually better in Berkeley) decided to go walkabout and/or wonkers (my new coinage, combining, duh, wonky and bonkers, hope you like it).

I knew I'd been spending way too much time on the internet, albeit little or none of it blogging, but wasn't aware just how dependent on it I'd gotten. Not just for killing time, though there's certainly that, but for so many of the day-to-day functions that heaven knows how people managed to deal with before the internet was invented. Like looking up phone numbers, for example; who has a phone book anymore? I realize some profligate people call information at whatever number(s) they're using nowadays, but I quit that when 411 stopped being free.

Or, for example, when I decided to take to my laptop to the public libary and take advantage of the free wireless connection there. I wanted to look up which branches had wireless and what hours they were open, but where do you find that sort of info except, of course, on the internet. Anyway, trusting to memory or instinct, I'm not sure which, I found my way to Bryant Park, located behind the main library at 5th adn 42nd, where I'm currently sitting at a nice little table, conveniently shielded against the blazing sun (currently 95F/35C) by a lovely garden umbrella and watching a couple new skyscrapers being built virtually in front of me).

My trip to California was not something I really wanted to do, especially in the middle of my favorite time of year in New York, but I'd promised to help my mom with some things and also had a bunch of old business to clear up there myself in preparation for what now looks like my permanent move to New York. Can't remember if I mentioned it in my dispatch about the flood, but part of the fallout was that I have to move out of the place I've been subletting. I wasn't looking forward to spending the last month of summer in what has sometimes been described as New York's premier blood sport, the apartment hunt (especially sans internet!) but then the super called yesterday and offered me a place all of three doors away. It's more expensive and has its drawbacks (but on the plus side, it's on the third floor and presumably safe from floods), but it looks like I have my own apartment now, or will come next month.

Enough personal minutiae: I really only stopped by here to let any faithful (or otherwise) readers know that I was temporarily out of the electronic loop and not to expect much from me (not that you probably were anyway) until next week at least. Oh, and while I was in California, my personal computer genius friend Patrick Hynes helped set me up with some new computer wizardry which may help me finally get my long-promised website off the ground. If I ever get an internet connection, that is.