Long Drives

So we made it to the Heart of Texas, Austin, last night. Corrie drove from about forty miles before Texarkana through to about forty miles to Dallas, which was the reprieve I needed to finish what I started.

We left Brooklyn Sunday morning after finishing the packing of the little things and digging the truck out of the snow. The City got about 18 inches of snow the previous night, and it had blanketed everything. It wasn't cold enough yet for it to have hardened into white concrete.

I drove Sunday from Brooklyn to Roanoke, Virginia. There was snow piled up on the side of the highway the entire way, as well as covering every tree and mountain within eyesight of the road. It was a pretty straight shot, down to Atlantic from Malcolm X, over to Flatbush, which becomes the Manhattan Bridge, across Manhattan on Canal Street--the Manhattan Bridge dumpoff--through the Holland Tunnel and onto I-78. We took that to I-81, which we stayed on all the way to Knoxville.

That was the second day; 81 from Roanoke passed Knoxville, when the 81 turns into I-40, then through Nashville, and eventually staying in Dickson, Tennessee. Two southern metropolises in one day...damn, Tennessee is a long state. Somewhere before Knoxville the snow along the highway stopped abruptly...poof--and there wasn't any snow anywhere. Bizarre.

The third day we zoomed passed Memphis, Little Rock, switched drivers before Texarkana, switched back before skirting Dallas, through Waco, and eventually here, Austin, around 12:30 last night. We'd planned to stop in Texarkana for the night, but felt like we could make the drive, and wanted to save the money.

I have some pretty cool pictures, but I'll post them later.

Happy Belated Winter Solstice!

Happy Birthday Mary!

Today brings us the 21st birthday of my sister-in-law Mary. I hope she rocks it. I debated weather or not to put this post up, since I forgot to put a similar one up for her sister, Steph, back in November. I settled on doing it, obviously, since 21st's come around once in a lifetime.

Also, Steph had a pretty cool birthday last year, actually turning 18 on November 4th, so she was just old enough to vote, coming in under the legislated hour. Sometimes I think that as technology moves forward at lightning speed generations move further apart more quickly. But, when looking at elections, I think that anyone aged within the bands of having the ability to vote in their first presidential election for either the 2000, 2004, or 2008 elections must be inexplicably joined.

In any case, Happy Birthday Mary!

One More Thing for Norm

I couldn't resist.

Macon Street, just east of Ralph Ave. You can check it out on Google maps if you want.

Survivor Bag

Last November, as in thirteen months ago, during a wind storm a black bodega bag was swept up into the bare branches of the tree outside our apartment building. All throughout the fall and winter that followed, the sound of it whipping in the wind was a constant annoyance.

The snow storms couldn't bring it down, and neither could the rains. I almost climbed into the tree and yanked it down myself. Corrie has some good memories of my complaints, my bitching and moaning.

Spring came, and like all trees during spring, green life returned to the tree. Summer came, and leaves covered the tree instead of pollen dropping fronds. The rains were here once a week, and yet, visible as ever, that bag remained. It stopped being so annoying, at least.

Now, as it feels cold enough to be winter, it's still technically fall for a few days more, and the bag is still in the bare-again tree. It's been ripped into shreds, but it remains, more than a year later.

Sad Day in Sacramento

On November 20 this year, the Maloof family, owner of the Sacramento Kings and Monarchs franchises, of the NBA and WNBA respectively, announced that they were no longer going to be operating the Monarchs, essentially folding the team.

A frenzied two weeks passed while the commissioner of the WNBA tried to find a suitable owner and arena in Oakland and the East Bay area, where interest seemed the highest. This ultimately failed, and the team was picked apart by the other remaining WNBA teams in a dispersal draft.

Ugh.

These are obviously tough times for the WNBA. The Houston franchise also folded this year, and the Detroit franchise has moved to Tulsa, but has yet to be given a name, so currently they're just WNBA Tulsa. They have some time before the season starts before they need a name, I suppose...

But between Sac, Houston, and Detroit you had three of the original eight franchises, all of which had been playoff perennials, and all three had won championships. For as fanatic as Kings fans are in Sac, and they are pretty damn fanatic, it was he Monarchs that brought Sacramento their only professional sports championship. The Solons were okay during the PCL heyday, but were never really good enough to beat the Seals of SF, or the Hollywood Stars, or the Los Angeles Angels. The River Cats might have taken the AAA Minor League crown a few years back. But the Monarchs, in 2005, won it all.

It was my understanding that when the WNBA finally formed, and pushed the more exciting women's professional league that had just started, the ABL, out of the picture, that they awarded teams to cities with loyal and idiotically fanatic fan bases. Sacramento definitely fits the profile. The ABL, though, had started two years prior, played more games in a season, and had more teams on occasion. It also had the refreshing business of having an acronym that didn't automatically signify that it was chick-oriented. The ABL. The best the NBA could come up with is the WNBA, or NBA for women. Am I the only person annoyed by that? In golf we have the PGA, and the LPGA, when on a television screen it shows up as a delicately cursive "L", as in Lady...At least in tennis and volleyball, which have been established as a dual gender professional sports for decades, you get the ATP and AVP respectively, without any "W"s or "L"s.

I've read that the NBA has been operating the WNBA every year at a loss, which begs the tragic question that hangs around the pro ladies basketball constantly: when will the boys decide that the girls are no longer financially viable, and scratch the entire thing?

Nasty Saturday

This past Saturday at the market the weather was easily the worst I've ever had to work through.

Some days during the summer can be gross, with the heat and humidity bearing down on you with force, making your arms and forehead dripping and salty. There is some relief, though, when you take a handful of ice and drop it onto your head, or splash your face and the back of your neck with icy water. Of course, when you run across the street to the big-ass (for Manhattan) Barnes&Noble bookstore to use their restroom you catch a chill once your sweaty hide comes flush with the powerfully air-conditioned climate.

But, this past Saturday was worse.

It was cold. Not really cold, but cold enough to still shock your system because it hasn't been that cold yet; it was in the mid-thirties. Boo-hoo, you might say. The wind was going as well, with a general 20 to 30 mph baseline with regular gusts into the 40s, and an occasional shove that felt much higher. That combination, while lame, is able to be dealt with. The wind cuts at your skin, but it's not so cold (like February) that it feels like cold glass shards on exposed skin.

But, this past Saturday it was raining. Or maybe the verb is slushing. Mostly it was rain coming down, but for a while it was like clear slurpee was falling from the sky. From a distance it kinda looked like snow. But walking through it, trudging through it, getting people's dairy for them in the exposed outness, showed you the truth.

After three-and-a-half years the weather still mystifies and amazes me.

Nuts and Bolts...

This post (and its predecessor) were compiled on Corrie's lappy, but I have a new toy myself, and I'm trying to work the kinks out, so if, fair readers, you happen to find a post with small font (like the haircut piece) please understand that I'm working on it.

The new lappy/toy has a tendency to erase everything I write once I highlight it, and it then becomes unrecoverable. This new feature has been a royal pain in my ass, and I'm trying to fix it, so bear with me if you don't mind. Growing pains were expected with the new toy, and thanks a bunch, it was perfect...just a little agita every once in a while.

The posts about Thanksgiving and the haircut I had to rewrite three times each. In full. But, all will be good in the end.

Again, thank you.

Congratulations to Corrie and Me

If this isn't self indulgent, I don't know what is.

The weekend after Thanksgiving used to be the days that Corrie and I celebrated our "anniversary", our dating anniversary as it were, which makes this year's post-thanksgiving weekend nine years we've been together.

Nine.

Wow...that's almost as long as I went to college...

Thanks for the great times, baby, it's been a blast, through the good and the bad...always an adventure. Love you!

Haircut in the Stuy

I got my first haircut since I sheared it down in March a few weeks ago. I went to the same place where I had it done the first time, and the same guy did it again. He seemed like he knew what he was doing--hell, he's the expert--and he trimmed it and made it seem like I paid a small fortune for a hair-do. Really, I just wanted it shorter, much shorter than he left it. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I didn't want it ploofy and curly like it was.

A few days afterward, Idecided I wanted something closer to what I originally wanted, and for the first time since moving to Brooklyn, I wandered bravely into one of the barbershops on Malcolm X Blvd.

Barbershops in the black community occupy an important place: they're meeting grounds for young men (as long as they're not the "salons") where the posturing, drinking, and undermining confidences is low. I'd wanted to go to one ever since we moved here just to gauge their reaction, but I always deferred to my sense of decency, as a move like that might be seen as patronizing, even if they'd laugh about it later.

I was there before the afternoon rush, and the barbershop was empty save for two barbers, one in his late forties or early fifties, and the other much older. The moment I walked in, they just laughed sardonically while shaking their heads. Then the older gentleman beckoned me to a chair, and I told them I'd have to run home for my money. I expect they didn't expect to see me ever again.

But they surely did, three minutes later. The older gentleman sat me down and took a few minutes short of an entire hour to shear my hair down, alternating between electric shears and scissors. He did a good job; it was much closer to what I wanted the first time a few days before in Manhattan. As he worked, the shop started to fill up. The young men might have noticed me, a young-ish white boy, but paid me no mind...their daughters and/or little sisters, who had also started to file in and figit while they waited, had a hard time not staring.

The older gentleman who cut my hair told me that it had definitley been a long time since he'd cut any white-man's hair, and that back then, he'd had little choice as to whose or how hair was to be cut. Times have changed, alright.

I got my hair cut on Malcolm X Blvd in the Stuy. Whatta world.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has been close to my heart since I was living in that great big flop-house on Oceanaire. We had Corrie anbd Marc who weren't from California and weren't going to go home for the last week in November. Tony and I would stick around and Ryan would usually join us after a family feast in Morro Bay or Van Nuys. Thanksgiving became our holidy, the one we celebrated with and for ourselves. Usually our Thanksgivings would devolve into an attempt to be the gluttony kings of the Central Coast.

One year Tony made two trays of lasagna to accompany my turkey, both trays having both ground beef and pork sausage. The next year we went to the store looking for the largest turkey available and came away with a thirty-seven pounder. The next year Ryan purchased and Corrie and I made while Ryan was at work a fabled Turducken. The next year we deep-fryed a turkey and, since it had to be done outside, we odored the air with Chinese-food restaurant smells due to the peanut oil we used. Not to be outdone with a small turkey, since to deep-fry a turkey it needs to be small (at most 14-15 pounds), I roasted a similarly sized "small" turkey. One year Marc made baked-ziti using meatballs supplied by our friend Katrina, who shot and killed the moose that supplied the meat for the meatballs.

That a holiday is based on feelings of thanks and contented-ness is probably the main reason why Thanksgiving ranks so high on my list of favorite holidays...it's probably a close second to St. Paddy's...that specific day is easy for me to get behind, being Irish, named Patrick, and a fan of whiskey.

In November, though, I just love cooking and eating turkey.

Congratulations Homo floresiensis

The discovery in 2004 of remains of a human-like creature on the Indonesian Island of Flores sparked a debate. The remains looked like humans, only much smaller. Once set of scientists decided to call them Homo floresiensis, a new human specie, that persisted in that area until very recently, possibly as late as 13,000 years ago. Another set of scientists claimed that it was too early to tell if the bones represented a new specie of human (the three most recent, and most likely all living together on Earth at one time being H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapien), and that the difference in size is not more extreme than that found between a great dane and a chihuahua.

It seems that after five years of research, H. floresiensis has been granted inclusion to the family tree, and is not a specimen of human with microcephaly, a condition which can result, among other things, with a much smaller than normal skull.

This may explain the hundreds of years of reported sightings of Orang Pendek, a yeti-like creature of extremely small size "found" in the Indonesian jungles. Sightings have come from the farmers, the Dutch, Americans, and other tourist and military personnel for years. Maybe a descendant of floresiensis has survived...

A little more about Orang Pendek here. More about floresiensis here. (Good luck with that last one.)

Happy Cooper Day (In Washington State)

On November 24, 1971, 38 years ago today, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving back then, a man with "Dan Cooper" printed as his name on his ticket boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle. While in the air, he gave the stewardess a note that explained that he was hijacking the plane, wanted a ransom of $200k in unmarked cash, and four parachutes. The plane landed in Seattle, he let the passengers go in exchange for the money and parachutes, kept the crew captive, and took off again.

His directions to the crew were for them to fly at no higher than 10,000 feet and at much less their normal cruising speed to Mexico City. They informed this Dan Cooper that flying in such a manner meant they wouldn't be able to make it that far, so he instructed them to fly to Reno instead, and refuel there. Soon after taking off from Seattle, after the flight plan had been agreed upon by Cooper and his captives, he sent everyone into the cockpit so he could be alone in the back of the plane. He proceeded to open the plane's rear stairwell, and, as it appears to history, he jumped from the plane with the money, two of the parachutes, and his "bomb".

A mixup in the press labeled him as "D.B. Cooper", and his legend grew. He was never arrested, caught, or even fully identified. The prevailing notion around the FBI was that he didn't survive the jump, but no remains have ever been recovered. The money wasn't marked, but the serial numbers had been recorded prior to the money being delivered, and only one stack of twenties has ever been recovered. That happened in 1980, nine years after the heist, in south-western Washington State. A young boy found a stack of weathered bills, still housed in the rubber band that held them on that November day, in a section of the Columbia River. Forensics proved it was from the DB Cooper ransom, but they also (reluctantly) proved that it couldn't have deposited where it was eventually found until sometime after 1974. No earlier than 1974? Three years after the caper? It only really added to the mystery.

So, in some places in Washington State, November 24th is celebrated as "Cooper Day" in remembrance of the daring hijacking, ransoming, and escape of the mis-labeled D.B. Cooper.

I would imagine since September 11th that celebrating the hijacking of an airplane might have since fallen out of vogue.

Funnier Than I Expected

I recently picked up a copy of Moby Dick--Marc had salvaged the copy from the bottom floors of his building--and started reading it, basically just as a attention holder until I found something else. I had some ideas for what I wanted to read next, and thought Melville's dense opus could serve to hold my attention on and off for years.

But Moby Dick is a lot funnier than I ever was led to believe. This cat Ishmael, the narrator, is quite the chatterbox, and after reading seventy pages one can imagine how the story can balloon to 600+ pages. Melville's got fart jokes in the first few pages of Ishmael's narration. Then there's Ishmael's first night at the Spouter Inn, having to share a bed with Queequeg, and waking the next morning and finding themselves spooning, with Queequeg hugging Ishmael so tightly he can't break free or wake up the big Q. "You had almost thought I had been his wife," is a quote. Does this anger Ishmael? Not as much as you might guess; he's easy going.

Sometimes the "classics" will surprise...I suppose they don't reach that status without being pretty much great all around.

The Bronx Zoo

Marc and Linda took Corrie and I to the Bronx Zoo. It was my and Corrie's first trip, and Linda's first since grade school. Marc remembered having been there before, but I don't remember when he said that had been.

Let me say, starting out, that I have mixed feelings about zoos in general. The first thing that gets me is the paradox of having to educate the populace about the beauty and diversity of animal life on the planet, about the importance of keeping that rich diversity intact by imprisoning examples of it and showcasing them. In many instances, those animals have no habitat left, so being caged up is the right, difficult as it may be, decision to keep them from going extinct. Sometimes those animals have some habitat, but are susceptible to infanticide, baby predation, etc, and are held in captivity for mating procedures, to be released at some future point back to that habitat.

Okay. My liberal misgivings have been stated. I'm not sure what I expected with the Bronx Zoo. But, not that it was disappointing, it wasn't exactly what I had in mind; it was, basically, another large zoo, kept up rather well, well stocked with all the cool animals we were hoping to see...maybe I was expecting more glitz, or flash...just remember, this isn't some oil-scion from Dubai's personal backyard zoo. It was a nice zoo, a great zoo, and I had a good time. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't effect me seeing all those animals behind glass, bars, or moats staring out with a longing look (if they were awake).

In any case, we saw the bison first, then wound up a walkway to the bird complex. Inside there were lots of non-aquatic, non-birds-of-prey birds stationed in small cubicle like places where the back wall had a large slightly blurry photographic image of the bird's natural habitat. I saw it and thought, I'm sure they get fooled by that every day, and then I tried to tamp down my inner criticisms. It was pretty cool, walking all over the complex, seeing toucans, other birds that I don't the names of (there were plenty), going up ramps and into rooms that were hot and humid, hearing the raucous calls from each of the species upon entering a new section.

We left there and walked for a while. We dodged kids (everywhere we went), and I guess that makes sense, since kids probably haven't spent as much time watching late night (old-school) Discovery Channel nature shows as I did, and so this wide collection of animals is still very awesome. We saw the baboons, the giraffes, the zebras, some stripy-deer like animal that was in the same pen as the lions...almost too much like the Serengeti, right? Now, watching a pack of lady lions bringing down one of those guys? I'd definitely stick around for that. We saw the tigers and the polar bear and the grizzly. Seeing the bears made me sad again, and I'll include a picture of them.

Eventually we went to the monkey hall. I'll include a picture of the detail work on the facade, since it is cool and indicative of how the zoo was probably organized and toured in the last century. Inside was pretty cool, but there were only New World monkeys; only from South America. (I only knew this because of my insomniac research that led to my own blog post about them a few months ago.)

We were planning to see the gorillas, but that exhibit cost extra money, and we didn't feel like fighting the even-more-densely-populated throngs of children.

I had a good time, and I thank Marc and Linda for indulging Corrie and my desire to visit the zoo, a desire we've had since arriving here back in 2006. Perhaps I'll add some more pictures later, but here are a few.

Here's one of the educational boards up at the bison hutch. Do you see that, or is just me?

Here the two bears...see how sad they look? Again, is it me? Maybe being surrounded by concrete...check out the grizzly's toy on the right hand side.

Here's some hyenas giving me the hungry look.

Here's the neat work on the monkey hose facade. Each building has something like this, this facade work showing what was inside.

Dobbs Ferry Wanted Poster

Corrie and I spent a nice day in the Bronx this past Sunday, visiting first the Bronx Zoo and then Linda's old stomping ground in Morris Park, finishing the day purchasing "the best bread in America" from the Bronx's own (true) Little Italy, centered along Arthur Avenue, from the eponymous Arthur Avenue Bread.

The bread was fresh from the oven (we got the semolina variety), and it was absolutely fantastic. But this post isn't about the Zoo or the Morris Park neighborhood in the Bronx--those will come later with pictures (of exotic animals behind bars anyway), this post is about something nailed to a wooden lightpost outside of Marc and Linda's place. We saw it on a walk of their dog Simba.

The paper was of the salmon-pink variety color, and the main mug, the main visual element of this Wanted Poster was a drawing (albeit very accurate) of a black and white cat.

"Rabies Alert" in all caps rings out above the picture, making the unassuming feline seem like some kind of public menace, which, unfortunately, is probably what he is. "We used to see that kitty all the time," Linda told me as I was reading the poster, "right up until that date on there."

The date to which she referred was the date that the cat had a fight with a raccoon and disappeared. The paper goes on to say that anyone who believes that they, or their children, or their pets have had any contact with the cat should call the Westchester County Department of Health immediately to, and this got me, "assess his or her need for life saving rabies treatment."

The last two lines are ominous at best and underscore how little I really knew about rabies, the extent of my knowledge being dogs foaming at the mouth and shooting Ol' Yeller:

"When administered early enough, before symptoms develop, the treatment is 100% effective. However, once symptoms occur, in humans or animals, the disease is fatal."

Happy Friday the 13th!

Brought to you by Pogo and Churchy LaFemme!

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

-Walt Kelly

I couldn't resist...

Crunk Parody

Does the word "crunk" have any meaning to most of my readers? I'm guessing no. Living in Brooklyn for three and a half years has exposed me to surprisingly little of the world of "crunk."

I do remember Norm using it occasionally a half dozen years ago as an adjective denoting something as negative.

Crunk is the title of the hip-hop music originating in the southern United States, the epicenter of which is now Atlanta. Hip-hop music used to be solely (in marketable acts) a bi-coastal entity, with the East-coast originators holding eminence with Run DMC, et al, then the West-coast style took over the mainstream with the gangsta-rap. Eventually mainstream hip-hop returned to the East-coast...Biggie Smalls and Wu-Tang...

Crunk developed in the dance clubs in Memphis, but the "capitol", as it is, is now Atlanta. In any case, crunk music is different from the west- and east-coast varieties of hip-hop in that the music used as the background is almost always a sample of fast, dance-club style beats, and the lyrics are usually nonsense or very simplistic, and tend to be shouted or yelled (with a heavy dose of repetition), rather than "rapped" with rhythm.

Many in the hip-hop community (outside the crunk universe) decry crunk and its lack of political messages, its glorification of ignorance and shiny baubles and things made of gold.

So...there's some background. Crunk is hip-hop with the lamest messages and the least original way to convey them. Little Jon is the biggest crunk star. He was parodied on "The Dave Chappelle Show," and if you're familiar with those sketches, you already have a base for what crunk is.

Now, here's a link for a crunk parody made by Bomani Armah, a poet and musician from Baltimore, called "Read a Book". Knowing what you know, if you've read this far, this might just be pretty funny. Many people don't get the video/single, calling Mr. Armah a prejudice butthole (in a more spicy fashion), while others find it scary because you can't necessarily tell that it's satire.

There is cursing in the song, so be warned (possibly too late), but the messages that our singer try to impart over a sampling of Beethoven's Fifth are things like, obviously, "read a book", as well as "raise your kids", "buy some land", and "wear deodorant" among the others. It is, to me living in a black community, a dangerous combination of poignant and humorous.

News From Bucolic SLO-Town

It seems like one of the romantic images of New York City is the grimy and crime filled metropolis with its ornery citizens ready at the helm with some kind of rude remark. There may be some truth to the stereotype, but while the people can be rude, they can also be friendly and gregarious, and, the truth about crime might be surprising. At the start of the World Series this year, the newspaper I read had a graphic comparing the City to Philadelphia; it was broken up into three columns, the center of which had the titles of the things in comparison (historical landmarks, mayors, celebrities born and raised, murder rate, etc.), and on either side they had the "answers."

The murder rate was the thing that got my attention. New York has lots and lots of people, but not too many murders, in either sheer number or percentage rate. The rate in NYC was around 1 murder for every 18,000+, while Philly had 1 for every 4,500+. While in our neighborhood catcalls and trash talking are facts of life, robbery or other more violent crimes don't seem to be too big a part of life. Murders are high out here in the Stuy (only relatively speaking), but they are almost exclusively between young black men--perpetrated by and against.

I noticed that my friend Ryan, still out in San Luis Obispo, had mentioned various places about a rash uptick in the amounts of larceny, home invasion and ransacking, being jumped in the street, and car-jacking occurring in that beautiful college town.

I'd imagine that petty theft, drunk-in-publics, minor drug offenses, and sexual assault would be unusually high in any college town, but it seemed like the new wave of crimes emanating from SLO county had a new flavor.

Here's a case in point: a young lady leaving campus in her car was approached by a pedestrian who asked her for directions. He proceeded to jump in her car, force her at knifepoint to drive him to her bank, demanded of her a withdrawal of money from her account (she ran for help while he stayed in the car), then he led police on a high-speed chase down to Grover Beach, eventually fleeing on foot and fading away into the woodwork, getting away. A write-up of the story from the local press can be found here.

Ryan has said that the feeling and the attitude of the town have changed in the few years since Corrie and I have left. Tony (he ultimately left before we did) has heard stories about punks (the homeless street kids I remember almost fondly) asking walkers for cigarettes and then pounding them as they go for their pack. Hearing this, I almost wanted to have a run-in with these little creeps...I'll show them what Brooklyn does to white kids.

Canyon of Heroes: Coda

Like going to Duvet for New Year's and Bourbon Street (and the Village) for Halloween, going to the Championship parade was like a "Okay, I did that" moment, not necessary to replicate. If I'm here for another one, with no obligations to work or what have you, I might check it out again. I wouldn't call in sick for it.

It was a pretty cool culmination of being a Yankee fan all these years, to be in that large sea of pinstripes and Tiffany designed inter-locking NYs.

I'm still pulling confetti and shredded paper out of my hat and sweatshirt.

Here's a self-portrait of my nostrils.

Canyon of Heroes: Cleanup

The cleanup began right after everyone began clearing out. With about 5 or 6 tons of shredded paper being dropped directly onto the street, you gotta expect some mess.

When I finally began to leave my spot, to go find Marc, I was wading halfway up my shins in paper. Literally, half-way up my shins.

I got a few kinda cool shots from the cleanup effort. After walking around and making some calls--no cell phone worked during the parade since too many people were trying to use theirs--I found these cleaners already starting to use leaf blowers.

Then, with the wind having been pretty whippy all morning, I came across this subway grate that had used it's power of suction to hold onto it's garbage.

Canyon of Heroes: Ballplayers

These parades are really just so adoring fans can scream at their sports heroes one last time, shower them with praise and hoarse yells of "We love you Matsui!" and "Jeter! Jeter! Aaahhh! Jeter" (those have been ringing in my ears for a few days now).

I was hoping that the parade would be a few floats with the Yankees on them, slowly driving by, soaking in the adulation, and then we could all go on to lunch. Pretty strange to call it a parade even. But then, of course, I'd be wrong, and it was a "parade"...they had one car roll by--it had Yogi. Then they had one of the convertible tourist buses full of people I didn't recognize (the crowd would chant "Not Im-Portant!"), then a high-school marching band, then a float! With Yankees? Well, one or two...then a car, then a bus, then a marching band, then a media truck, then a float!

It seemed like there were thousands of feet between each group of paraders. It took quite a lot longer than I'd ever imagined. I knew the marching bands were high schoolers because a drunken student next to me would scream at every group, "We beat you in football! You guys suck in football!" Every single one. Then apparently his team's band came by, and he went crazy, yelling and screaming (and even cursing one of his own teachers who was leading the band), and I yelled as loud as I could, "You suck at football! Your football's garbage! You suck!" One of his friends thought that was funny, but the kid was too drunk to even notice that anybody had said anything.

But anyway, we all cheered and screamed for our players, and that's all that really mattered. I'm posting some pictures here, and I apologize about the quality...it was tough and crowded and my camera, while awesome, was having trouble with the light sources and the constant jostling, which renders some pictures blurry...I have lots of footage, but again, the files are too large to fit up here.

First, we have World Series MVP, Hideki Matsui.

Next we have (hard to see anyway) A-Rod, Francisco Cervelli, and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

Then we have two expensive imports, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeria.

And of course, bringing up the rear, we have the Greatest Closer Ever, Big Mo, Marniano Rivera.

I had better film footage of Andy and Jeter and Jorge than I do of pictures.

Canyon of Heroes: Not Early Enough; Crowds

I'm referring, in the titles of theses blog posts, to the Canyon of Heroes. This is a stretch along Broadway in Lower Manhattan from Bowling Green up to City Hall. It's called "Canyon of Heroes" because the tall buildings make it look like a canyon, and the astronauts from the Mercury Project rode through in the late fifties, and the nickname stuck. Barricades are put up the night before, and traffic is finally closed off as the timing of the start of the parade nears, and the parade goes north of Broadway, which is opposite to normal.

The parade was scheduled for Friday at 11 am. I left with Corrie at her usual work time, and left the train station where she transfers (and where I used to back in the day). That stop is the first stop in Manhattan for our train.

I came up above ground at about 8:30 in the windy blue chill of Friday morning to an already drunk sea of nearly 25,000 people. I got a cup of coffee (staves off the headaches)(booze at that hour? Maybe six years ago, or while camping...) and picked my spot. The crowds were throwing rolls of toilet paper back and forth across the street, traffic seemed nonplussed.

Around me the crowd would chant "MVP! MVP!" at passing by buses full of school children, at sanitation workers, at photographers...pretty much anyone could have been an MVP that morning. At one point, a few minutes after nine, the crowd having grown behind me, a man wearing a Mets jersey and Mets hat walked by, sheepishly grinning, being hoarsely "Awwwedd" at, which quickly turned to "BOOOO!" which, just as quickly turned to chants of "Ass-Hole! Ass-Hole!" This became the new chant for the morning.

Before, most anybody could have serenaded as "MVP! MVP!", but now, the most common refrain was "Asshole!" over and over...for cops having a good time with the fans, for cars that wouldn't pull the roll of TP from their hood and toss it back to the drunken crowd, even for a short teenage latina girl who couldn't throw a roll of TP across the street from a position of sitting on somebody's shoulders. That seemed too much for me.

As the hours passed, and my feet moved maybe six inches, my legs began to cramp up something fierce. Only now, a few days later, do they feel normal.

By the time the parade arrived, my legs were hurting, I was kinda thirsty for a drink since all around me were high-school kids cutting class and drinking liquor (I'd been smelling vodka and cheap whiskey for hours), and I was hungry. At about the third hour mark, the first floats began to come by.

Here are some crowd shots. The second is after the parade ended, and everyone is trying to exit. Please remember, that this scene was happening for a nearly two mile stretch up and down Broadway and not just limited to my little neck of the woods.

Canyon of Heroes: Introduction

Dad, if you haven't seen, I responded to your comment (it'll be hidden by the time these post).

I've decided to break these next few posts up into easily fashioned anecdotes and congruent photographs, otherwise it could devolve into a series of pictures like the one at the bottom of this page, hundreds of them strewn out every few pictures from the scene and morning, slowing down the coherence.

One of the goals I had lined up for myself for "something to do before I die" was to be able to be living in a city that had a sports team win their championship. I was thinking that maybe that could have been a Mexican soccer team (if we ever lived in a large enough city) or possibly some great big American college town and a national championship in something.

That goal was accomplished back in Feb 2008, when the Giants played one of the best Super Bowls in history, beating the Patriots and spoiling their bid for a season of utter perfection.

In New York, as well as in most other cities, when a major team accomplishes a championship feat, that city throws the winners a "ticker-tape parade", even though they stopped using ticker tape almost fifty years ago (more than fifty?). Today, what they do is dump a few tons of shredded paper and confetti to give the same effect. Who needs recycling?

Now, in 2008 I missed the Giants parade because I had to work, and didn't feel right calling in sick. This year I didn't really have that problem, since my work week is pretty short, but, I would've called in sick this year because, well, this is the Yankees, my Yankees, and I'm here, and this is the parade I always wanted to attend.

This is what every fifth or so picture looks like, what I mentioned earlier, and while I think they're pretty cool pictures, there's only so much narrative you can accomplish with that...

Congratulations Jim and Debbie

Our old friend Jim, who's house we'd go to upstate every six-weeks or so to get away from the City for a weekend, got married last week at Lake Tahoe to his wonderful girl, Debbie.

They seemed a good match early on, at least from what Corrie and I could tell, and we couldn't be happier for them.

Wishing you two all the best for years and years. Definitely let us know when the party part of the ceremony will be taking place, and we'll do everything we can to be there.

My Two-Hundredth Post

Wow...made it to 200. I have some plans, but I'm keeping a lid on some of them. I'm beefing up my novella into a novel and working on a second.

Like my fiftieth post, here is a picture of Tuxedo (for no reason).

Thank You Tony

My good friend and older brother, Tony, showed me great hospitality, helped me out as much as he could, and drove me all over the state of Louisiana. I greatly appreciate it and could never really generate words enough to thank him properly.

Love you bro!

When Corrie saw this picture, she said "Beefcake!" (ala Cartmen from South Park's first season). This is Tony with his massive dive helmet, a crazy feat of engineering, heavier than it looks, but once you're hundreds of feet down, the mass matters less.

Louisiana in a Few Days

While Tony and I didn't see any damage sustained from Katrina (that we knew of) in New Orleans, we did see plenty of crappy little towns all throughout Louisiana that could have been damaged from that famous hurricane, or a more recent one, or the general ebbs and flows of the Mighty Mississippi or any one of its tributaries that flow through just about every single speck of habitation down there.

So many boarded up places, places that look like they should be boarded up but aren't, old worn down homes that look condemned but have little kids playing in the yard, and almost all are stilted up on piles of bricks a foot high. Under each corner, and also under each of the load-bearing beams, most houses have been built on piers of bricks. This is one way that the folks living there can stave off the ravages of flood.

It didn't look like enough to me, but I'm not part of a generational string of denizens with plenty knowledge of how the river(s) behave, about how the basically endless swamp flows to-and-fro, from Florida's panhandle to Houston, blocked by the Ozarks to the north and the Gulf to the south.

Beaches? With lots of coast line one might expect beaches, but not really in Louisiana. There, pavement gives way to swamp, and swamp eventually gives way to the Gulf. Where the Gulf begins and the "land" ends is generally up for debate. It seems to peter out, and I guess once you get to a low frequency of loamy swamp "islands", you could probably say that the Gulf has "begun."

Here's a picture of one of those "islands."

This picture was taken on the way to Port Fourchon (pronounced "foo-shaw(n)" with the 'n' almost silent), which, if you'd like to spend a few minutes playing with Google Maps, look it up and see how desolate and isolated it is. That'll give you a good idea how the "coastline" works.

Try the catfish and crawfish. Boudin I hear is great. The food is pretty good. Tony's meat store has crazy great deals.

One thing I never really heard was that gambling is perfectly legal all over Louisiana...if not, then nobody seems to do anything about it. Every single truck-stop also had a casino attached, and in most of the cities we drove through were loaded with casinos.

Have you ever heard of anyplace in Louisiana known as a gambler's paradise? I mean, New Orleans is a tourists destination, but isn't known for the same things that Las Vegas or Atlantic City is known. I was surprised to say the least. Gambling and casinos were everywhere. Maybe it's a sign of the run-down socio-economic spectrum...lots of casinos, dollar stores, fast-food, and check-advance loan proprietors.

Bourbon Street for Halloween

So...we did it. Tony and I. We slogged through the crowd along Bourbon Street during Halloween, dodged drunken co-eds, skirted the pools of vomit, enjoyed one of the famous "3 for 1" beer deals, watched a little of the Yankees-Phillies game, and then stopped in at a jazz bar where we were probably the youngest pair in the place. That jazz bar was so cool it pretty much made the evening. (I was going to post a video from it, but the file was too large.)

The French Quarter, known locally as simply The Quarter, is basically a rectangle bordered by Canal Street, North Ramparts, the Esplanade, and the Mississippi River (I named them in a clockwise fashion). The most famous street is Bourbon, mainly because of the parade on Mardi Gras and the drunken booby-flashing that accompanies it. Holy hot-dog on a stick, Batman, you couldn't drag me there on Mardi Gras. Not even sedated and passed out...

Inside The Quarter, off Bourbon and on one of the other streets, it looked like the only establishments were antique stores, high-end galleries, and a handful of eateries. Seriously, antique stores made up the main percentage of places of business. It that little rectangle they had more antique stores than in all of San Luis, which I remember as having a very high percentage of antique stores.

If a watering hole is what you're looking for (read: bar), then pretty much what you need to do is just find Bourbon Street, since there's almost no bars in The Quarter anywhere else, and on Bourbon, everything is either a bar, a crappy Times-Square-like souvenir shop, or a strip-club. During the first trip, before Halloween when Tony and I walked out of The Quarter along Bourbon, we first passed "Larry Flynt's Barely Legal Club." (Larry Flynt, if you don't know, founded Hustler magazine, pushing the boundaries of pornography vs obscenity in the US.) About two blocks down, there was "Larry Flynt's Hustler Club", and two blocks further there was "Larry Flynt's Hollywood Club." Across the street from one of these clubs--directly across the street--was a club who's name escapes my memory, but who had a neon sign in the window that read "1000s of Beautiful Girls & 3 Ugly Ones". Sheesh. Guess you gotta cover everybody.

Here's a few pictures. The first is of Jackson Square, a large green park that borders the River; notice the statue of Jackson on his horse in the foreground, and the Saint Louis Cathedral in the background. The next photo is of one of the rare bars not on Bourbon Street, a cool hole-in-the-wall place named after a pirate. I like the picture because it shows off the density and the romantic stereotype of New Orleans' streets. Then there's a few of the crowd during the festivities.

Like last year's New Year's Adventure--going to the posh club Duvet--this was something that we can say later in life that we did. It wasn't lame or anything, but once you've braved Greenwich Village during Halloween, it having more people and worse weather, and you, generally just trying to get home after a long day of work, the sheer size of the Bourbon Street party isn't quite as mind boggling.

I did, though, enjoy walking the streets with a cup of beer. Just like Europe...

A Brief Note about New Orleans

I spent a few hours total in New Orleans a week ago, spread over two separate visits. The first was a lunch and a beer in The Quarter after arriving, and the second was a dinner in the 'burbs and then Bourbon Street in The Quarter again for the Halloween festivities.

This post is really about an article I read in the Times-Picayune newspaper I picked up on my way out of town. It was about Ed Blakely, the former NO recovery-czar who "couldn't get out there fast enough."

Ed Blakely cut his teeth in the large-scale recovery industry after the Bay Area earthquake in '89. He was brought in in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.

He gave a fiery interview to CalTV, the Berkeley university's television channel, in which he claims that New Orleanians always wanted someone else to do the rebuilding, that the city is a hotbed of racial tension that will erupt into full-scale race riots within five years, that city workers were unsophisticated and thirty-percent were taking remedial literacy courses, and that, in his possibly his bleakest condemnation, the city "isn't likely to have a future."

He described the white politicians in the city as seeing the hurricane as an opportunity to reclaim the power in the city. New Orleans, which had been one of the more bustling metropolises with a black majority, had enjoyed almost three-decades of black supervision in the most powerful spots in city government. That has changed since 2005.

Is Ed Blakely right or wrong? I wasn't there long enough to tell. I can say that I didn't really see any damage from Hurricane Katrina, but we didn't really go to the 9th Ward, or some of the more devastated areas.

I thought the article was an interesting viewpoint, one I never could have fashioned on my own after my five hours of research time learning of French Quarter cajun restaurants and bars.

New Orleans did seem like an interesting place to visit. It had its share of history and mystery, and the older parts--The Quarter--had its charm...narrow European-like streets, relatively clean, and lax public consumption laws.

YANKEES!

My Yankees won their first World Series title since 2000 this evening. Hideki Matsui, the Japanese slugger imported before the 2003 season won the WS MVP award, which is interesting because he's been a full-time DH (designated sitting-on-the-bench-and-waiting-for-your-turn-to-smack-the-ball-guy) during both the regular season and World Series. He didn't even get to play in Philadelphia because his knees are achy(bad)(shot)(surgeries on each one over the last two years).

Tonight he killed the ball. He hit over .600 for the Series. Good for him. My dad's favorite current Yankee.

I got back yesterday from New Orleans and Louisiana and will post on that stuff pretty soon.

I told Tony that one reason I felt the Yanks were going to win was because I paid money for a Brooklyn Dodger hat instead of a Yankee hat in some kind of protest to their fan-gouging tactics at their new stadium; it was a mild way to forsake them. In 2007 I paid more attention to the Jets than the Giants, mildly forsaking the Giants, the team I always considered my team, and they won it all. I felt that it could happen with the Spankees as well, and I would take that as a consequence of sporting my borough's colors over my team's.

Go Yankees.

Good Old Fashioned Manual Labor

One of the reasons we went to visit Josh and Elizabeth in Beacon, an hour or so north of the City, was so I could set some tile for them, and show them the ropes, so they could do it for themselves later.

They had sheet-rocked a small area with some water hookups, with the intent to create a laundry room. They had bought and borrowed all of the necessary tools and materials; 12x12 tiles, 2x2 tiles, thin-set mortar, trowels, a sealant type os material I'd never used, a wet saw, and Mastic, an adhesive agent that I never used before but knew about.

I set about putting the sealant down (start with a layer of thin-set on the ground, then the sealant paper-like fabric, then thin-set on top of it and go from there with the tile), then showed Josh how to make the cuts with the wet saw. Then I got to work. I tiled the floor, which, for being so small, sure kicked my ass. No knee-pads left my kneecaps feeling like they were bruised, while the up and down played havoc on my knee muscles and lower back. You know, just a day of manual labor/construction aches and pains.

Then we used the Mastic coming up the walls, putting the ceramic up with the glue. After getting the wall set up with the protruding corner, with the grout lines lining up, I was assed out and cashed in simultaneously. I was done and useless for the rest of the day, and Josh and Elizabeth finished up the wall, which was still plenty of work. Here are some pictures; I'm putting the sealant down, some more working, and the newly finished work, without grout, which they'll do today or tomorrow.

It was nice to feel useful again.