Brooklyn Baby Daddy

My Heart Attack Pt. 2

2012-02-01T12:06:00.001-08:00

So, it wasn't a heart attack, but that didn't stop Randi from almost having one herself. You see she had been told that I was having a heart attack, of course, so she was terrified. In turn she then told my family that I was having a heart attack, and told her own family.

For my immediate family this was devastating news, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. Obvious, because they were afraid for me. No so obvious because my beloved Uncle Herbie had, unfortunately, died far too young as a result of heart disease. It was and is one of the great tragedies to ever befall our family.

My sister immediately flashed to that when she got the news, which was horrific for her. And you can imagine how it went for everyone else. My Mom was not told about any of this until later, when I told her, which was the right move.

I was wheeled into my own room in the Cardiac Care Unit at Baptist East. Dr. Dillon, whom I immediately liked, told me that I would probably be the healthiest person in the unit, but since I'd had something wrong with my heart, we didn't know what yet, that was where I would go.

The room was comfortable. My daytime nurse was named Russ and we immediately hit it off, as we are both bit science fiction fans. My evening nurse was named Virginia, and she was also excellent. They were both attentive, knowledgeable and good at their jobs.

Soon we heard the clicking of high heels and another doctor entered the room, Dr. Wojda (pronounced voy-ta). She was, and is, an elegant European woman, who always seemed, to me, to have their air of someone either on their way to or from the opera.

But what she really is, I learned, is a leading infectious disease expert. (I was to discover that Dillon is also one of the leading, if not the leading, cardiac doctors in Louisville.)

We talked about my various physical problems, and focused on the staph. She took a look at the boil on my hip and quickly intuited that I almost certainly did not have strep, but staph that had penetrated into my blood stream. She said the boil would be drained the following morning, Friday, and that I would get an MRI in order for them to see what was really going on with my heart.

The rest of the day passed with much blood drawn, my blood pressure and temperature taken what seemed like dozens of times, and my first official hospital meal, some kind of spaghetti thing. "Wow, this looks like a bad version of something good," I joked, But I ate it anyway. It was okay.

My brother-in-law Jason, who is a bigger fella, made a particularly funny joke that I later heard. After hearing that I, of all people, had a heart attack he said, "you know I've been meaning to talk to him about his lifestyle."

I spoke on the phone with my brother, dad, sister, and eventually Mom too. Of course they were all concerned, but happy to hear there was no heart attack, as was I. In fact, my go to line--when someone would ask me how I was--was this: "A lot better now that I know I'm not having a heart attack!"

There were some fringe benefits to this near-death experience too. Ever have an argument with a friend that you can't quite get past? Scare them with a heart attack and soon your disagreement will seem pretty small.

The following morning I was scheduled for my MRI. I was strapped into yet another rolling bed, and taken to Jewish Hospital. (My little joke, I was being taken to Jewish hospital, where all the patients are probably baptist. But I was a patient at Baptist East, even though I am one of Louisville's 10 Jews.)

The MRI is a Kubrikian sort of thing. A narrow, white tube, into which you are inserted. You aren't allowed to move at all while it is in operation. Ala "2001" it is sleek and white. At any moment I felt kind of like screaming "open the pod bay doors HAL!" But you also can't move, ala "Clockwork Orange" when he is forced to watch the movie and can't wipe his eyes.

The took dozens of magnetic photos of my ticker and then I was released. Randi and her mom were in the waiting room.

My wife was amazing during this whole ordeal. At my side as much as she could be, but she also took care to keep everyone else updated. She brought me things to read, food, and gave me 100% total sympathy and love when I most needed it. I realized then, and still realize, how lucky I truly am to have her as my wife.

Her family was almost as great. Her mother, Judy, watched Stella for four days in a row, which Stella loved. And Randi's sister Nora, along with Judy, cleaned our apartment top to bottom. It is currently cleaner than when we moved in.

My brother in law Kerry and his daughter Claire sent me chocolates and some flowers to cheer me up, and Jason, and his wife, Nicole visited me in the hospital, spreading cheer. And Nora's husband, Brian, was kind enough to take Stella, and his own kids, out to lunch so they could have a little fun.

I was also visited in the hospital by my friends-since-moving-here-but-good-friends-just-the-same, Marcus and Yancy, whose very presence cheered me up.

We also received a surprise visit from Cantor David Lipp from our temple, Adath Jeshurun. This was a pleasant surprise, and it was a lot of fun to see him. He also arranged for a temple volunteer to share some challah and grape juice with us that night, Friday evening, for shabbat. It made my hospital room seem a whole lot more like home. I was grateful.

And Randi posted about me on her Facebook page, garnering dozens of responses. It made this sick guy feel a whole lot better.

Stella freaked out when she first saw me. She entered the room, and started to cry. "I want to be with Mamaw!" (That's her name for Judy.) But then we started to clown around, and she had some fun. But the gown was kind of a hurdle.

"Daddy's in a funny dress!" She said this at least a dozen times. Another time she felt the fabric, and said solemnly: "Daddy's dress is soft."

That night, last Friday, when Judy tucked Stella in she said this little nugget before bed. "Daddy is in the hospital, so he can feel better. Daddy has on a funny dress." And then she passed out.

Eventually a doctor came in to drain my boil. A nurse, female, also came in. The boil had gone down in size, and the nurse was a bit letdown that there wouldn't be much of a show, so to speak.

"Oh, you should have seen my last surgery," the doctor, a thin woman, said. "It was like a softball!"

No, my little boil just kind of bled a lot, and then they packed it up with antiseptic gauze. A culture was removed from it, and then sent to a lab, to see what kind of staph I had.

There were a few things to get used to. I perpetually had a line running out of my arm into a tube, and little monitors on my chest connected to something about the size and weight of a Walkman.

Initially they wanted to monitor my urine count, for some reason. I am amazed to say I pee almost exactly 200 mg every time. The things you learn.

The majority of the stay was uneventful, almost relaxing. Randi and I spent a lot of time together. And while it might stretch the definition of "quality time" we really hadn't gotten to spend this much uninterrupted time together, with no real responsibilities, since before Stella's birth. But I wouldn't want to repeat it, you know?

I got oddly used to having people do stuff for me. The nurses would get me a drink if I wanted it, move stuff, turn on or off lights. It felt weird initially, but I learned to let them help me.

Overall it was kind of like a nice hotel room, only with constant interruptions, poor cuisine, and a whole lot of sick and dying people all around me. I guess that's kind of like living in gated community in Florida.

By Monday they had determined that I had staph for sure, it had poisoned my system, but I didn't have the worst kind of staph, known as MRSA. (That's the kind that is resistant to most antibiotics.)

As for my heart, I had been short of breath because it was inflamed, in a staph-related condition called endocarditis, which is basically an infection of the heart. I was told that with proper care, and a thorough course of antibiotics, I should be back to normal, 100%, although not right away.

I was given a PICC line, which is kind of like an IV that is placed inside your arm, and told that I would need to return to the hospital every day for 24 days to get the medicine I need. I was also told to not exert myself too much, and that I wouldn't be 100% back to normal until around Easter, whenever that may be.

Overall, I have to say I was stunned by how good the staff was at Baptist East. I saw both Dr. Dillon, and Wojda a lot. I even got to know them a bit. Dr. Dillon reminded me a bit of a hard-core version of Ed Helms, with a great dry wit. And Dr. Wojda, I learned, is from Eastern Europe, where my family is originally from.

I have heard horror stories of how people have had serious problems in big city hospitals, and they feel ignored by their caretakers. I can't say that was the case for me at all at Baptist East. I saw not only the doctors, but the nurses all the time. It truly felt like first world healthcare.

So, I am not 100% better, but I am much better than I had been even a week ago. My temperature is normal, my blood pressure is down, I can breath, and I am getting more healthy not more sick. I have love, family, friends, and meaningful things to live for. I am grateful for my life, my wife, my daughter, my immediate family, and the friends that I love. I am grateful for the beautiful notes and messages I have received online. It all could have been so much worse.

So if you see me this month ask to see my PICC line, it is on my right arm, and is a tube that snakes out of the crook of my elbow. It makes me feel cool, like a cyborg.

My Heart Attack Pt. 1

2012-01-31T07:44:00.001-08:00

I hadn't been feeling quite up to snuff for several days. Starting 10 days ago, roughly, I felt a bit off. My energy was lower. I wasn't sick, but I wasn't quite myself. I always felt like something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was like a constant, mild, indigestion, or heartburn, that never quite went away.

We went to a party for one of Stella's classmates Saturday, January 21st, and it was fun. But I was grumpy on the way there, a real crab, more than usual. Once there I hung back, and couldn't really play with Stella or the kids, didn't try to.

Sunday, the 22nd, was more of the same. We went to a playground, and I just didn't feel like doing anything. I didn't feel sick, again, just not good. Not even tired, just annoyed, like I was having my period, or what I imagine my period would feel like if I were to have it. Randi agreed. I was being kind of a pill.

Then Sunday night came, and I had a harder time than usual, I'm an insomniac, getting to sleep. By later Sunday evening I had a mild fever, and couldn't sleep in our bed at all. I had sweat through my pillow, and sheets.

I slept on the couch, and sweat through it as well. I had fitful bouts of brief sleep, maybe 40 minutes at a stretch all night, amidst some chills, and aches in my limbs and joints.

The next day Randi went to work, and I dropped off Stella at school. I came home, and my fever exploded past 102, then past 103. It finally peaked at 103.1. I had barely enough energy to make it down the hallway of our apartment.

I had a pretty disgusting, but thorough, bowel movement, which I thought would make me feel much better. It did not. Uh oh.

Randi came home, and we discussed that I should go to the ER. I didn't want to, but knew of nothing else to do. At 7:30 p.m. last Monday night, a week ago, I went to the ER at Baptist East hospital down the street from our apartment.

I signed in, and they took my vital signs. But then hours passed, as I shivered in all my clothes in the waiting room. Finally past midnight I saw a doctor, and he took cultures from my throat. Randi had said strep was going around her school, so I was convinced this was what I had. My throat hurt a lot, so this only made sense.

After a couple of hours more the diagnosis came back: strep, and a urinary tract infection. The latter of which men almost never get. Just my luck.

I was pumped full of IV fluids, and given prescriptions to fill for antibiotics, and made it home by 3:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, wiped out. I had a strange craving for hot chocolate, which I satisfied. I had just completed a three week "cleanse" with Randi, and having never felt worse, kind of was like, screw it!

I made it to bed by 3:30 a.m., and slept fitfully, only to awake early the next day to drive Stella to school again. I was wiped out, all the way. I dressed her with one eye open, and barely made it to her school.

Then I became worried that I might have something more than strep. I had a breakout on my legs and butt the prior week. It wasn't too big, but over the years I have learned to become concerned about staph infections. I've had them in the past, and even though they never really hurt me I was concerned that it could.

My mild breakout consisted of a few small boils, almost like a rash. I looked up "staph infection" on the Mayo clinic's website, and looked up what can go wrong. When staph goes bad it becomes something called "sepsis" which is blood poisoning. When it gets worse you go into septic shock. And from there, if untreated, you die.

Even by the time it gets to the septic shock stage, even if you do treat it, your odds are not great. Septic shock is no joke.

I looked up the symptoms. They were just like the symptoms for strep: fever, aches, fatigue. But also shivering, which was not a symptom for strep.

Worried, but on the trail, I thought, I called my dermatologist. I would see her Wednesday, the following day. I told the receptionist I was specifically worried about sepsis.

Randi came home with Stella last Tuesday, noting that I had not dressed her appropriately for the weather. It was cold outside and I had put her in some kind of nylon yoga pants that were wide open at the ankle like bell-bottoms. Stella had been cold, as it was in the 30s. Initially I was defensive about it but had to concede Randi had a point. What was I doing, sending Stella out into bad weather dressed for spring. I told Randi I had been worn out from the prior night's ER visit but this wasn't a satisfying reason, for her, or, really, for me. I must've been really out of it, I concluded.

I saw my nurse practitioner dermatologist, the following day, last Wednesday, and told her I was concerned about sepsis. She looked at my legs and determined I probably did have staph. I also told her about my ER visit, and my strep diagnosis.

She prescribed a topical antibiotic ointment, and told me to see her in a week. I asked again about sepsis, and she said that if I did have it there would be no question. I wouldn't really be able, even, to walk into her office. I would know I had it, and it would be very, very bad.

After my new prescription was filled out I applied the antibiotic cream to my legs, hoping it would do the trick. But I knew it would take a few days for any improvement.

Overall, though, I felt better than I had since before going into the ER. The antibiotics must be doing their thing, I thought. I spoke to my mom that night, and told her I was on the mend, though I had been worried about staph. I told her about the ER visit, and she sounded appalled. Why didn't I go to my doctor? If your doctor can't see you in an emergency you have to get another doctor, she concluded.

I didn't love getting second guessed like this, as I am almost 40, but it must've made an impression, as I soon headed her advice.

The following morning, last Thursday, I awoke, feeling alright, not too bad. As I got myself into the car to drive Stella into school my side, where I had a boil, hit the side of the car, and it exploded into pain. I dropped Stella off, and went home, feeling a bit short of breath.

Once inside the apartment the shortness of breath continued. Now it was joined by a feeling of slight pressure on my chest, like someone had placed their palm on my sternum, and pressed down lightly.

I called my doctor, as per Mom's advice. They couldn't see me at all, no space, and told me to go to the ER. I was resentful of them, and didn't go.

Then the pain continued, and, feeling a bit foolish, a bit like Chicken Little, I made my way back to Baptist East. I expected the same four hour wait as last time.

I signed in, and wrote my symptoms were shortness of breath. That's it, I didn't even mention the chest pressure.

This time I was immediately put into a wheelchair, before, it seemed, I could even turn around, it was that fast. They didn't take my vitals, my insurance, nothing, I was quickly wheeled inside, urgently.

From here things moved very fast.

I was put into a room, and my blood pressure and temperature was taken, and they asked me how much pain I was having from 1 to 10. I said 2, but told them about my chest pressure.

Immediately an EKG machine was wheeled in. I thought this was absurd, but they took the reading anyway.

Within five minutes a doctor came back. "Your EKG reading was unusual," he said.

Soon a team of nurses swarmed me, alongside the doctor, whose name I can't remember.

Needles were urgently put into either arm, I was given three baby aspirin to chew, I was given two more big pills, not to chew, that I chewed anyway by mistake, and the room had about 12 people in it, all focused on me.

The needle wouldn't enter my left arm, because it had just been needled so much from my prior ER visit. With no time to waste they put the needle into the back of my left hand.

"Wow, this is how Layne Staley must have felt," I joked. No one laughed.

Within another few moments a second doctor, with a surgical mask entered.

He got on my level and looked me in the eye.

"You are having a heart attack," he said. "We have to operate on you now."

The nurses were still trying to put various things into my arm or take things from my arm, but this new doctor, Dr. Dillon I was to learn later, closed the door on all that.

"No, we have to do this NOW. Let's go."

In other words, he kicked ass.

Srep, a UTI, and now a heart attack? "This really hasn't been my week," I joked to the closest nurse. Again, no laughter. I guess it really isn't the best medicine after all.

As I was wheeled down the hall I was able to call Randi. She had already been called by me when I entered the ER, and was on her way, so I got her voice mail.

I sounded amazingly like myself, I thought.

"Hi babe, it's me. On my way to have them check out my heart. They tell me I am having a heart attack ..."

Here three nurses corrected, in a way that is not so different from when Stella corrects me.

"No, you ARE having a heart attack," they said in unison.

"Okay, I am having a heart attack. I am being well taken care of, and I am sure they will do everything they can. See you soon."

I hung up the phone and realized that, just maybe, my life could very soon be over.

What about all the things I never got to do, I immediately thought. The book I have been working on forever, it will never be finished. Too much time wasted.

But then I thought of all the people in my life. And how I had loved them, and let them know I loved them, and how if I loved you, or cared about you, you knew. I let you know. My life was one of love, and openness, and treating the people that I loved as well as I could as much as I could. And I felt better. In fact, it made me feel not bad at all. It made me feel good, if you can believe it. I love my family, I love my friends, and it's been a good life. I could live with that.

I was asked what the pain was again as I was wheeled into what I suppose is the surgery room. I repeated, about 2. "I thought a heart attack would feel a little different, I guess."

I was told a catheter camera would be inserted to examine my heart.

Oh great, I thought, right up the penis.

I hope they use numbing solution.

In truth the catheter was placed in my wrist, and the observation was over before I knew it had begun. It's a miracle, isn't it.

Quickly they determined that I was NOT, in fact, having a heart attack. The second this was said the tension exited the room, as did most of the people. I was rolled down the hallway. And put into a waiting area.

Here things get a little strange. I can't really remember the next hour or so.

Randi soon saw me, and was terrified. I looked grey, she said. I am sure we hugged, and I told her I loved her. Because I do, and did.

They still didn't know quite what was wrong with me, but we knew, if nothing else, that it wasn't a heart attack. And that was something, you know?

Sh*t Jews Say To Other Jews

2012-01-16T21:39:00.001-08:00

(My low-tech, all text version of the current meme. All things I've either heard, or said.)

1. Ugh, so hungry! (Only said once a year.)
2. Me? I always tip 20%.
3. But his brother’s a doctor.
4. Hitler? Part Jew. I know!
5. Wait, what's a Methodist?
6. Jesus? Jew.
7. If he existed.
8. Goys.
9. It’s like they think we’re all Woody Allen.
10. His new movie? Pretty good!
11. We marched with them, but now they hate us?
12. I’m disappointed with Obama over Israel. (Substitute any president here.)
13. Israel? Best army in the world!
14. I mean, yeah, I’ll date them, but ...
15. Wait, when’s Chanukah again?
16. Do you spell it with Ch or H?
17. The year? 5770 something?
18. Me not so much, but I have Orthodox family.
19. I’m thinking about being kosher.
20. A glass of milk with meat? Gross.
21. I’ll have the cheeseburger.
22. We used the paper plates.
23. I thought about the Israeli army. In high school.
24. We weren’t rich. Upper-middle class.
25. How about the matinee?
26. Don’t make a scene.
27. Where I grew up was pretty diverse, Jewish and Italian.
28. It’s like if you’re not a doctor, lawyer or Wall Street guy they don’t even look at you. (For the Jewish guys out there.)
29. (While eating a bagel.) You just can't find a good bagel anymore.
30. She was hotter before the nose job.

Why Rick Santorum Can't Win: He's Catholic

2012-01-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

Look, I'm sure Rick Santorum, within the sanctuary of his friends and family, is a perfectly lovely guy. In fact, I have nothing against him as a person. It's just that, you know, he's unelectable. I mean, after all, he's Catholic!

I know he probably thinks he was born that way, and there's nothing he can do to change it. Heck, maybe he doesn't even want to change that. But the truth is, being Catholic is a choice, it's a lifestyle. And one rejected by the majority of other God-fearing Americans. Maybe he can be re-educated. After all, has he ever really tried being not Catholic?

After all, I wouldn't want Santorum to face the kind of prejudice that is so rife in this world if you are an aggrieved, long-abused minority, still fighting for equal rights and treatment. It just wouldn't be fair to him.

To prove this point I have culled a long list of horrible, bigoted, anti-Catholic remarks from the Internet. These are actual things people have said in public denouncing Catholicism. I guess we could call these folks Papal-phobes.

I fear the day Santorum should be confronted in public by people spewing hateful statements like these:

1. “Is anyone saying Catholic couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?”

2. On Catholic adoption: “A Catholic woman came up to me and said, ‘why are you denying me my right?’ I said, ‘well, because it’s not a right.’ It’s a privilege that society recognizes because society sees intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.”

3. “I certainly would not approve of [a bill moving through the California legislature compels the state to add Catholic history to the state education curriculum], but there’s a logical consequence to the courts injecting themselves in creating rights and people attaching their legislative ideas to those rights that in some respects could logically flow from that. So I’m not surprised.”

4. “I have no problem with Catholicism. I have a problem with Catholic acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional Christian relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just Catholic. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s Catholic. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.”

6. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [Catholic] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything… In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included Catholics. That’s not to pick on Catholicism. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.”

7. Discussing Catholic marriage: “This is an issue just like 9-11… We didn’t decide we wanted to fight the war on terrorism because we wanted to. It was brought to us. And if not now, when?"

8. “[Catholic marriage] threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country.”

9. “I would argue that the Catholic community has not made the argument. They may have made the argument as to why they want it, but they have not made any arguments as to why this is beneficial for society. They have not made any argument – convincing or otherwise, that I’m aware of – as to what the impact would be on normal, Christian marriages and what the impact would be on children …We’re into, in many respects, an unknown territory.”

10. “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture, ... When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural Catholicism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

11. "Would the potential attraction to Catholicism by simply having a Catholic in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?"

12. "I don't want to make Catholic people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."

Of course the truth is Santorum made all these statements above, only I switched the word "gay" for "Catholic."

It's amazing a guy who is from a minority that was discriminated against so heavily for so long could be so dismissive of equal rights for other minorities. After all, it just a little over 50 years ago that people thought John F. Kennedy wasn't fit to be president because he would be a vassal of the Pope in Rome.

And even today in some of the more isolated, evangelical, parts of this nation they still think that Catholics aren't actually Christians.

Note: Not all the statements above were originally about gays. Number 10 was a slam on secular Boston, where I replaced the word "liberalism" with "Catholicism." Which fit pretty well.

Number 11, was a slam on Mormons, and specifically his opponent Mitt Romney. Sounds a lot like the things people used to say about JFK, right?

And number 12, of course, was originally a blast against black people, and "welfare." Or whatever Santorum imagines welfare to be.

In other news, happy Martin Luther King day Rick!

Steve Jobs, great entrepreneur, failed person

2012-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
I do realize that Steve Jobs, as a subject, has been beaten into the ground, but I just can't let go of one thing.

I just finished reading the amazing Walter Isaacson biography. It was as good a job as I could have hoped for from any book about such a recently departed icon. And throughout Jobs is a completely captivating figure.

One thing that really stuck out was his complete ability to focus. If he wanted to do something nothing was going to get in his way. He could literally bend heaven and earth. And time and again in the book there are examples of how he was able to move mountains to get his way. To do the impossible, to bend the will of people, institutions, whatever it took. It was one of his defining characteristics.

His feuds were legendary, his successes epic. And it seems that each one of them was accounted for, in some detail, in the book.

Yet there was one area that was deemed so trivial by either Isaacson or Jobs that it wasn't even discussed in the book at all, which shocked me. And that is Apples' long black history as a perpetrator of inhumane working conditions in its Chinese factories.

Not even one mention of this, not even one paragraph.

And yet it is one of the things that defines Apple as a company, and Jobs as a human.

This is amazing, this lack of concern for other people. Jobs was so obsessed with every aspect of production that he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and wasted hundreds of man hours, making sure the factories where his NeXT machines were built were painted the exact right color.

This he had time for. But there was no time, or concern shown, for the thousands of Apple laborers in China who make those amazing machines that we all love.

Either this was an epic failing of Jobs as a person, Isaacson as a writer, or both.

Look, I know I am not treading on any original ground here. The monologuist Mike Daisy has done more to publicize this issue than I ever could. Yet I still can't go over it.

Jobs was such an obsessed, involved perfectionist that he argued about the placement of a period on a business card for days. He chose the exact shade of blue, from the exactly right stones, for the floors in his Apple stores, and would accept nothing else. He sought to control every aspect of design, and the user's' experience, for his projects. Every single one.

Yet when it came to the working conditions of his factories he just didn't give any sort of good god damn at all. How vexing this is. How inexplicable. How impossible to understand in any way.

Did he not know? Why was he content to cede control of his production in this one area? Why did he not even seem to care even when these things were pointed out to him? Why was Apple so behind the curve time and again, when it was revealed that the working conditions in their factories were so hellish? How could Jobs allow the reputation of his beloved company to be so besmirched, when he, if anyone, could have changed things?

And he if took a stand for things to change for the better he would have gotten his way, because he almost always got his way. Nothing could stop him, except his total lack of a heart for the abused workers, some children, that made his iPods, and iPads.

How could a man who seemed so enlightened fail so hard in this one area that is so important?

Apple workers committed suicide, the conditions were so bad. Why didn't Jobs care? Why didn't Isaacson? Why was Jobs not confronted about these obvious atrocities?

Jobs cared about the user experience with his devices in an intimate way. Why didn't he care about the people who made these devices in any kind of way at all?

And why didn't Isaacson call him on it?

The UCBT and Me

2011-09-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

New York magazine, which gets my vote for best magazine in the world, has a great oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade online. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I knew the UCB Theater (UCBT) would someday get this royal treatment, because it really has changed comedy, and the larger world of entertainment. And by extension the world. All in just 15 short years.

I have written here about improv before, but I don't know if I ever have blogged about how truly cool it was to be a part of that world for the three years, or so, that I lived it. If I have, forgive me.

From 2000 through 2003 I spent probably at least two nights a week, virtually every week, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, back when it was at its location on 22nd street, in a black box theater that I loved from the word go.

I took classes, many, performed, a lot, formed teams, two, and saw so many, many funny people and performances. I don't think I have ever laughed that much, that consistently for so many years in a row. For that alone, those are three of the best years of my life.

But it got even better. Because it was not just a theatrical experience, but a totally social one. Being (relatively) young, I was 28 when I started with classes, I had a lot of time to hang out, drinking, eating french fries, going to shows too, with a whole new cast of characters and friends. It was a big, open, friendly scene. There were no real stars in it, yet, and the entire thing had the vibe of a party waiting to happen. All you had to do was put yourself out there, just a bit. Be a little braver maybe than you were used to. Commit to practices, be there, on time, be ready to support the other improvisers, make them look good.

It made total sense to me.

And of course I got to see so many people perform so much, before they became stars. The list could be endless, but I will name a few: Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Rob Riggle, Paul Scheer (who was in like every show I saw for two years it seemed), Ed Helms, Jack McBrayer (who was, possibly, my favorite improviser), Rob Corddry, many writers for Conan, SNL and the other great NYC TV shows, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, Horatio Sanz, Jerry Minor.

Of course, it was hard at the time to see who would emerge to become a star, in some cases. But in some cases it was very easy. From the moment I first saw Amy Poehler on stage, pretty much dominating an entire roomfull of very tall Catholic and Jewish comedy nerds, I was waiting for her to get picked up by SNL. Which happened about one year later. Jack McBrayer was another no brainer, as he was that funny, that charismatic on stage. I never saw him have a bad performance, or even a bad scene or line. At least to me, he could do no wrong.

But those are just the names we know now. The entire scene had a vibrant sense to it.

Growing up I had read so many stories about the glory days of NYC rock, CBGB's in the late 70s, the Village in the '60s. This, the UCBT in the early '00s was my scene, my time to be there for history as it was being made.

And the thing was, we all knew history was being made, even if the world at large did not yet. I would come out of shows that were so great, so energizing, so fun, it was impossible for me to not feel that this would simply continue to grow and grow. NYC needed it, and what NYC needs the world soon needs.

So it was special, and it was happening, and we knew it was happening, as it happened. Isn't that the definition of time well spent?

Better still, unlike with rock, improv was so easy to get into. You had classes that would open the door for you to become involved. As far as I remember CBGB didn't have any classes. In these classes you would learn how to do improv, which was its entire own language. Impossible to describe, you could only learn to breathe at that altitude by repeated exposure. It had to become your life a little in order for you to even begin to hang on stage and feel at all confident. At the same time it was just as much fun for a newbie as for someone with more experience, although for different reasons.

So, in a place as wild and huge as NYC, I had my people, all of a sudden. I had a reason to go to the Lower East Side on a Thursday night and party. I had shows to do, and friends to support, and an entire world that was being created right before me.

I met my future wife through improv, as if it didn't give me enough.

Like so many scenes and passions improv was fun, energizing and ultimately something I could not make into a life. By about 2003 or 2004 it started to get a lot more competitive. And, by then, I was starting to realize that I may have not been a great fit for show business, as much as I enjoyed so many aspects of improv itself.

It began to get more of a networking thing, I felt, as it became quite apparent that careers could result from getting on a team at the UCBT. If you got on a team you had, in a sense, been officially recognized as someone with potential. People who mattered in show business could very likely see you. If you didn't get on a team it was a lot like being the baseball player who never gets out of the minors. After a while you either move on, or you keep playing out of the love of the game, not caring about the world. I admire people who can soldier on like that.

And, I'll be honest, I witnessed some real sucking up. It became a bit more like high school, and I wasn't all that great at high school the first time.

I was not a great fit for the competitive aspect of it. I blew every single audition I had to be on an official UCBT team, all three of them. Six scenes in total, maybe half of two were good. This probably told me, more than many other things, that I may not have had the makeup for a high pressure career in show business. I never even got a call back. And didn't deserve one, really.

And although I loved being at the theater, and performing I think twice a week was my absolute limit. I don't know why, but after that it began to seem more like work, and the returns on my time investment would start to yield inversely less fun. And the entire point was to have fun. Once the fun part of it is gone, it's over, no matter who you are.

I remember dragging myself once to my third practice in a week,and realizing that I didn't want to really go. But those who are in show business now through the UCBT did that and more.

So I drifted off, which was the natural way of things. But I love my memories of the improv I saw, the people I met, and the improv, better still, I got to do. I hope I get to do it again some day. I was pretty good, way back when, when my improv fastball was working. Maybe not a rock star, but then again I didn't have to be. I was there to say "yes and" in order to make my partner look better.

It was a great time, for which I will always be happy and thankful.

Keeping Up With Stella

2011-09-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

Watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and boy do I find these biznitches hard to handle. Spoiled, yet incredibly stupid, they are probably going to herald the downfall of our society.

I have been trying to think of some funny things that Stella's done the past few days that I have enjoyed. Sometimes it's not just outright jokes, it's more her attitude.

What has been so cool is that she's starting to become so outgoing and friendly with her classmates in school. A year ago I was scared that maybe she had some kind of developmental delay that couldn't be overcome. Parents, man, we are just crazy. Instead, she's not only come out her shell, she's become quite the gabber among her friends.

She's an interesting combination of things: sweet, independent, a bit sassy, sometimes a little whiny, very quick, and funny. She's not a needy kid, and she's not an aloof kid. She seems pretty content with who she is, and where she is most of the time, and most days.

She can be a bit willful, but I guess that comes with the turf most of the time. And when she gets way too smart alecky, or starts to act up I have the ability to draw the line, and, get this, she actually listens to me. Which is slightly amazing to me.

I won't admit this to her until she's about 40, but this ability to lead her and have her listen to me, simply because I'm the dad and I say things like I really, really mean them, it's kind of a new experience for me. In my life virtually no one does anything just because I say so. The cats? Good luck with that! Anyone who's ever worked under me? At times. My wife? Well, that's not how things work in Casa-de-Serchuk. We try to come to mutually agreeable solutions, so that neither one of us feels bossed around. And when that doesn't work we do rock paper scissors until we reach a satisfying conclusion. (Hint: she always falls for rock!)

So, when Stella and I are getting ready in the morning I will say something to her like "Go into the living room, and wait for me. I am turning off the light in your room." And she will walk herself into the living room, and wait for me.

Again, maybe to other people this is not all that amazing, but I am still not totally used to it. I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts.

On an unrelated note we have been in potty training city for about three months now. It's mostly over, the hard part, but not entirely. We still have to bribe her with an M&M after she uses the potty correctly, and if we don't remember, believe me, she will remind us.

We're also starting to get to the age where the stroller is becoming more and more a thing of the past. We can go for short walks now, even up to a quarter or half a mile if we really want to, and she totally keeps up.

I also love this, she will hold my, or our, hand while we walk, although eventually this will start to piss her off and she will wring her hand out of mine. At that point I will usually use a strong voice and tell her that we do not get go of mommy or daddy's hand when we're out.

Because like most parents I live in mortal fear of her getting either hit by a car, or abducted.

Sometimes she listens to this and sometimes she doesn't. We try.

Mostly, though, I think we're doing a pretty good job. Stella is happy, she's healthy, she plays, she spent the entire summer having fun, she grew, she learned words like "butthole" as elucidated in a prior post. She's right where she should be, and I am extremely proud of her, every day.

You know, it's amazing to think that we were all like this, and not too long ago. Fresh, un-jaded, friendly, un-inhibited. Willing to give people a chance. Sensitive. Without a malicious bone in our collective bodies. All that bad stuff, you have to learn it I suppose. I hope I can help keep her this happy for as long as possible. I guess that's every parents' wish.

Most of my best laughs these days come from Stella

2011-09-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

I kind of stopped writing about the Brooklyn Baby Baby because, I don't know, I thought I started to feel like one of those bloggers writing about their kids, well past when anyone else still wants to know.

But, screw it, I don't care. At least not tonight. This kid is hilarious, and responsible, for most of the good laughs I get in a day. So I am going to try and drum up some memories from today and the day before that made me laugh, or at least brought a hearty smile to my face.

Well, here's one. Yesterday we went to "Disney On Ice", which alone should make you laugh. It was at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville. It started with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Pluto all in safari outfits (despite the fact that, you know, they were on ICE). Apparently there were on the savannah at the start of a world tour of various Disney-owned entertainment properties. Truth be told Mickey and the gang were little more than Ed Sullivan-esque hosts for the show. Most of the heavy lifting was done, show-wise, by the ice dancers for the various entertainment set pieces we watched.

It started with an all-ice Cliffs Notes rundown of the "Lion King," which ended before Simba fights his uncle Scar to the death. In fact it just kind of ended. And then it went into "The Little Mermaid," which presumed that Mickey and the Gang could vacation underwater? The Little Mermaid segment included our first human-looking skaters, which lead Randi to say "Now here's something for Dad!" as six bikini topped skating mermaids whipped around the ice. Ariel was the seventh, and eventually there was a big fight with an inflatable Sea Witch, and all was right with the world.

After that they went to Hawaii to tie in with "Lilo & Stitch," which I have never seen, and I was kind of surprised it was included. Let's face it, it's B-list Disney. Nonetheless, and I am a bit ashamed to admit this, I cried a bit when they explained the Hawaiian word for family, which means "no one gets left behind." Yes, this is sad, I almost got misty again typing this.

Stella was enthralled pretty much the entire time, although she got very pissed off when Mickey left the ice, at least the first time.

Then it was intermission, during which I bought a hot dog. A totally unnecessary detail, but there you go. Also, Randi had a conversation with a drunk mom who had one of her boobs hanging out.

The second half, and this was kind of strange, saw Mickey & Co., fly clear from Hawaii to Foggy London Town, where ice skate clad bobbies and yeoman and yeo-women welcomed us to their city, where "every day is paradise" or something like that. I doubt the looters would agree with that, but then again, they aren't on ice skates.

The second half was pretty much dedicated, almost in its entirety, to a skating recreation of "Peter Pan." This really threw me for a loop. Hello, this movie came out in 1953! And it's a great story, and I love it, but I was stunned they gave this much show time to a movie that was so totally not something the Princess loving little girls in the audience could possibly give a crap about.

I enjoyed it, as much as I could, given that it was on skates and for four year olds.

At one point some of the effeminate "pirates" in Hook's dastardly crew were singing something about how great it is to be a pirate, and Stella had gotten out of her seat and was totally getting down in the aisles, dancing a totally kick-ass jig. Honestly, this was my first big laugh of the day.

Then, after Hook finally fell into Tick-Tock the Crock, the show ended with some small time fireworks. Quickly after that we learned that The Disney Princesses were slated to make an appearance a little down the road in their own ice skating revue. At that moment I realized were had just watched what amounted to, more or less, the leftovers of the Disney repertoire. If we wanted to see the real big deal stars we would have to pony up once more.

Show now officially over, we all walked out into a bright, lovely day. "Wasn't that fun?" was asked Stella. "We saw Mickey, and Minnie, and Goofy, and Daisy, and Donald, and Peter Pan, and Tinkerbell, and ..."

Stella cut us off: "But no Pluto."

Dammit, this kid doesn't miss anything. And she was right! No Pluto! They had everyone else, but not the faithful dog.

Randi and I both laughed and laughed. Stella rules, she catches everything.

If You Are Against The Affordable Care Act You Are Either Brainwashed or ... A Republican Presidential Candidate

2011-09-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

The more I hear about the Affordable Care Act and the good it will do for countless millions of Americans, the more convinced I am that it was a great thing that it passed. The more proud I become to live in a nation where we actually, get this, try to do the right thing for one another. The added bonus? It will also save money! In fact the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the current drive to repeal it would add $210 billion to our deficits from 2012 to 2021, were it to succeed. (Link)

So, expanded care, and it saves money? What a boondoggle! (Note: for the irony impaired, I am being sarcastic.) http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Republicans hate the Affordable Care Act not because they think it will fail, and raise expenses, it won't, and they know it, but because they fear it will work. And their blind allegiance to the religion of non-intervention in the workings of the market will be shown to be not only intellectually dishonest, but bankrupt.

It will never cease to amaze me that we tolerate a patch-ass system of half measures for our health care that cost more than anywhere else in the first world, and deliver less. That we die younger here than in, say, Canada, have higher infant mortality rates and pay twice as much for it. I would think that those who are so vocal when it comes to the "right to life" that they advocate bombing clinics would take a moment to think about the young lives being wasted in the name of more and more corporate profits. But why start now?

Here's one for instance. Although the provision that keeps insurance companies from treating "pre-existing" conditions has yet to be enacted there are measures in place to help pregnant women get care. Did you know that insurance companies will turn pregnant women down because pregnancy can be considered a pre-existing condition? Well, it is.

Our local muckrakers at the LEO magazine wrote a nice article about this. There is something called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. PCIP is part of the Affordable Care Act, and it keeps, as the name implies, people covered if they have the dreaded pre-existing conditions. There is a pool of $5 billion set aside to cover people through PCIP, but no one knows about it yet.

In my state, Kentucky, which virtually always ranks near the bottom in everything coming to good health, and hear the top in poverty, only 140 Bluegrass Staters have enrolled in this program, despite thousands and thousands not having insurance. They just don't know about it. And if the Republicans have their way they will never get the chance to learn about it before the plan is defunded once and for all. Kill it before it can save more lives. Now there's some right to life right there.

Even better PCIP is cheap. In my state I would only pay $177 to get it, a fraction of what COBRA costs. And far, far cheaper than the cost of a funeral.

In November 2010 I covered Sen. Rand Paul's victory celebration in Bowling Green, Ky. for New York magazine. There I spoke with a field operative for Paul who railed against the health care bill being rammed down everyone's throats in the dead of night. (These Tea Partiers never say a discouraging word about the black bag job that was the vote for Medicare Part D however.) Then I asked her a simple question: what about the provision in the act that covered you if you have a pre-existing condition. "You know," I said, "we pay into these insurance plans for years, and then when you need it they say you aren't covered!"

She thought about it for a moment. "Well, I've never heard about that."

Yet she hated the Affordable Care Act, even if she didn't understand it, hadn't read it, and didn't know that it would benefit her. Why? Because she was brainwashed, and told to. And that's all she needed. Say the word's "small government" and alot of these self-styled "Libertarians" reflexively salivate and then come in their pants.

But I have met few of these people who are true libertarians. They're just conservatives who realize their brand has been besmirched beyond repair by Bush Jr., Cheney, Wolfowitz and all the other chicken-hawks who send other people's sons and daughters to hot, rocky places to kill and be killed. For weapons of mass destruction that never arrive, or oil that we never get.

Most of these "libertarians" would be all too happy to get urgent care in a hospital if they needed it, but had no insurance. Or would crap their pants if their water ran out, or the power grid went down, or the roads fell apart, or a loved one became injured and needed immediate critical care. And even if they didn't believe in "the system" we would still give them coverage, save their lives, give them water, and the rest. Because we believe a strong nation is a just nation is a fair nation. Or at least I do.

I roll like that. A lot of us do. It's time for those of us who want healthcare to be both more universal and more affordable to start talking back.

Sept. 11, 2001

2011-09-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

I first went to the Twin Towers, first had any real idea about them at all, when I was probably no more than five years old. The entire family went: Dad, Mom, Sharon & Stuart, and me.

The occasion was the closing of a very important business deal for my dad.

What I remember best about that power lunch in Window On The World was simply that I could look down on the cars below and they looked even smaller than my toy cars that I loved to play with so much. It seemed hard to believe they were real. Eventually when we got back to the street level it again did not seem possible that the cars could have grown that much larger in that time.

It was a very good, and memorable day. A happy family memory of us all together. Sadly, there just aren't that many of those memories in existence, so I prize the ones I do have.

Then the Towers were there in the critically-reviled remake of "King Kong" from 1976, which very much broke my young heart. Every version of that film breaks my heart, dammit, critically-reviled or not. He was a giant gorilla, and deserved better.

After that the Towers became a landmark that I thought of with some fondness. I saw them in "Trading Places" in the famous orange juice trading climax of the film, and they felt kind of like an old, warm, acquaintance.

I ventured downtown in the mid-90s to visit a friend who worked in the Financial District, and walked around the World Trade Center. The Towers were in a giant plaza, back a bit from the street. That time, for some reason, I looked up and it scared me a bit, they were just so big, so awesome in size.

After that they became more or less a compass point for me. No matter how lost I would get in The City I could look downtown, and there they were! Impossible to miss and right at the southernmost tip of the island.

I didn't have much reason to venture that far downtown usually. But I liked that they were there. I remember moving to The City in 2000, and learning that Robert Fripp was to play a free show at The Towers. I didn't go, but thought, hey, that's pretty cool. I wonder if they're trying to make the Towers, you know, hip?

I had a source that worked in the Towers too. Dennis, he was an attorney for a white shoe law firm, and was a good guy. I met him for lunch in 2000, only the second time I had actually been in The Towers since that long-ago lunch as a child. I went up to around the 50th floor, which took two elevators, and we ate in one of the many great restaurants that were in the street level atrium. It was a pleasant autumn day, and a good expensed meal. I remember now how awesomely huge the lobby of The Towers were, and how it was a bit confusing to know if I was at the right building. (Dennis, by the way, lived. Another source of mine, whom I spoke to only a few times, was the head of compliance at Cantor Fitzgerald. He did not live. I thought about him every time I opened my source list, and still think about him today.)

And that was my experience with The Towers. I had some affection for them. I loved that for at least a little while they were the tallest buildings in the world. As a Tri-state area native I have always felt that it is a in a sense a joke that other cities work so hard to build their big buildings, bigger than the ones in NYC. Okay, Dubai, you win. Like, get over yourselves. Having billions in oil money and, I don't know, indoor ski slopes in the middle of the desert does not a great city make. You know it, I know it, quit fooling yourselves.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 I hopped on the bus at Port Authority at 8:40 a.m. or so, and made it to the other side of the Lincoln tunnel after at least one of The Towers had already been hit. If I had looked downtown from my bus window, I didn't, I would have seen it smoking for about a second or two. I probably would have thought that whatever it was they would get it under control. Because they always did.

I had not taken the 1993 truck bombing plot all that seriously. I mean, I knew it was bad, but I thought it was ludicrous that these guys thought they could take down something as massive at a Twin Tower with some fertilizer. Put 'em in the clink, forever if need be, I thought. But give me a break!

As I got of the bus in Carlstadt, N.J. I heard the bus driver's radio say "all the tunnels are closed," right as he closed the bus door in my face. The driver looked a little confused. It sounded strange, but I didn't make too much of it.

It was only once I got to my job at Beta Industries, my dad's company, that I heard the whole story. A tower had been hit, possibly both, by airplanes? Everyone was, rightly, hyper-alert to the news. Claus, a longtime hand there, told me he had seen the Towers smoking from the roof of the building. I couldn't see it from the street level and thought about going up there. I may have even asked, but there wasn't much time.

The radio was on inside, as was the TV. 1010 WINS' main correspondent on the scene was a woman who wasn't even a full time reporter, she just happened to live down there and was just reporting it almost like a normal, shocked, horrified person would. I wish I could remember what it was she said, but when one of the Towers collapsed her horror came through so loud and painfully clear on the airwaves. A normal woman called upon to describe, for an audience of hundreds of thousands, a true vision of hell.

I remember the normal radio anchors kept their professional faces on better. I also remember a comment that went something like this: "And the stock market is closed, which may not be such a bad thing." Hard to believe.

After the first tower fell I didn't think the second would, but of course it did. More horror, more terror. Later that afternoon fighter jets scrambled above our heads at the warehouse. "Looks like they're going to kick someone's ass," somebody in a parking lot said. But of course there were no asses to kick. The anger, though, was already quite real. Soon the need for vengeance would find voice, but not that day.

During lunch I drove out to a high viewpoint, and simply saw a low hanging gray cloud downtown, quite big at first, only to level off and grow a bit less dramatic as the day wore on. The real drama, though, was in realizing the Towers were knocked out, like a face missing its two front teeth.

It was an odd work day, of course. My dad and brother were in Chicago, and wanted very much to get home. (Eventually they drove.)

Perhaps the strangest part of my day was when business as usual tried to assert itself. My dad had a longtime business associate named Bill, who was the very definition of the hale-well-met fellow. He was a kind, friendly, gregarious man, who seemed like a transplant from Jimmy Stewart's America at all times. Army vet, I think WW2, always ready to recount his wisdom and advice. And, a salesman.

Bill ("Call me Bill!"), would frequently either call or drop by, and if my dad was there they would kibitz for some time.

Well, things had been winding down for Bill for a while. His health, I had the sense, was starting to go south. His snow white hair, it looked like, had started to fall out. I believe his wife had died not long before. I got the feeling he was probably not doing all that well, his skin seemed a bit flakier than in the past. But to go to lunch with him, or simply talk with him for a minute or two, you could just tell he woke up every day determined to be the same old Bill, to look as good as ever, to care as much as ever about his job, to be as good a guy as ever.

Well, sometime after lunch on September 11 who should stroll into Beta's offices but good old Bill? Friendly as ever, with that warm smile on his face, ready with a good handshake. "Hi! Nice to see ya. Is your father around?"

I looked at him as if he was some kind of hallucination. Funereal might be one way to describe the office that day, and, probably, any other place you could go in the Greater New York area.

I looked at Bill some more. I didn't want to be rude to him, but this was just too strange. Breugal, I don't know, maybe he could have imagined something even more bizarre than this. Or David Lynch.

"No Bill," I answered, "he is in Chicago today."

"What about your brother? Is he with the old man?"

"Yes, Bill, they are both in Chicago. They are trying to come back, but it might be hard because, well, all the airports are closed."

"Would it be okay if I left a note?"

"Sure Bill." Beat. "Let me grab a pad."

Mind you, everything I said was almost in slow motion, I was so in shock, and stunned from the unthinkable events, still transpiring, about a mile away as the crow flies. Buildings were still burning, and the Pentagon had also been hit, and that other plane (Flight 93, I later learned) had gone down somewhere. Was it shot down? Did we get any of this right today, as a nation? I didn't know.

I tried to be as courteous as reality would allow as Bill wrote out his note (on our pink "While You Were Out" stationary). I dutifully put it on my dad's desk, where he could find it, and then I stood there, in a sense waiting Bill out. I didn't want to bring up the obvious calamity taking place if he wasn't going to. Maybe there was a good reason he didn't want to talk about all this death and destruction, as he was a vet? I didn't know. But he never brought it up with me, and we never discussed it.

Bill then made, as best as he could, his usual rounds in the office staff, and I don't believe his upbeat Dale Carnegie-esque demeanor changed even one iota during his entire short stay. Then he firm-handshaked his way out of our lobby, back to his car, and drove on to his next appointment.

Later that day I talked to my dad on the phone. He wanted to know how things there were, and if we were okay. I told him I was fine, but I probably would have to stay with Mom for the next few days as all the bridges and tunnels were closed for the foreseeable future. And I made sure to tell him Bill had come by for a visit.

Been Feeling Lethargic As A Writer

2011-08-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

I do realize it happens, but I have been in the midst of a very big not-writing-much spell. This has traditionally not been a good thing for me, because all this time later writing remains the thing I feel I do best, and when I am able to communicate my thoughts through it the experience is always a bit cleansing.

What has been the holdup? Well, I have been burning a fair amount of my creative calories on the band, Bottle Cap Manifesto. Which has not been in vain by any means, as I am having a total blast, and we are rocking. I've also gotten to be more or less a fiend on the electric guitar. Which has been gratifying, and a dream come true.

Nonetheless, I remain a bit un-moored by not writing. It feels like, I don't know how to explain it, a bit like I don't fully exist when I'm not writing on a regular basis. I have these impulses and thoughts and signals that I want to communicate to the rest of the world, even if it just to know that I make noise, breathe and you hear all this.

So, here I am.

I have also been a bit blocked on a larger project I've been at work at for some time. And that is, somehow, trying to wrestle a book from my experiences being a dad. Of course this would also include the pre-dad period too. If you have been a longtime reader of this blog, in other words if I am somehow directly related to you, you will have read or heard some, if not many, of these stories before. But I have felt that there is a story there.

I am just not sure what yet.

It seems, almost, like there are too many stories there. Some of them are quite long and detailed, and kind of their own thing.

A lot happened in the past three years, almost too much: birth of a new child (obviously), moving, losing a longtime job, trying to find an apartment for three months, the emergence of the child into our lives coupled with what can only be described as post-partum depression that first hit one partner in the marriage and then hit the other, counseling, bedbugs (don't worry we don't have them now), getting bedbugs again, getting them a third time, having a neighbor upstairs in our "Russian" apartment who would drop hammers on his floors all night long, a child who can't sleep, a child who can't stay swaddled, a child who we love.

I don't know what the through line is, other than we survived.

Some time ago my former managing editor at Forbes, Dennis Kneale, had a luncheon with the reporters, wherein he ripped a story apart. It was very instructive. I believe in that luncheon he said that if you can't describe your story with the headline and the dek (aka the subhead) you don't really have a story. (If Dennis did not say this it was Stewart Pinkerton. In either case it was wise and 100% true.) In other words if you don't immediately know what your story is about you really don't have it yet. The point of a story should be clear, and not leave people wondering what it is you are actually talking about.

So that is where I am at now. I have a lot of material, I think, some of it quite mortifying, and I have about 120 pages of material, but I don't have a theme yet. And without a theme I do not feel I have a compas by which to guide myself. I have, instead, a lot of material. But not a book.

And the thing is I do very much want to write at least one book in this lifetime. A book is real, a book is tangible, a book is substantive, a book is an accomplishment. An article is fine, and a blog is fun, but only a book is a book.

But I don't know if my story is a book. You know?

Maybe there is a book in there, but I am not sure what it is yet.

I guess the first thing I should work on is gettin a title and a subhead, huh? Then, maybe then, it will become clear.

I don't know what compels me, or at least tortures me, about wanting to do a book. It has to be for me, I don't think the world will care too much either way. Not to be too self-deprecating about it. But it's probably not a career move for me. It is a life move. I hope.

Stella is asleep right now and Cromwell the cat just hopped on up past me to land on the writing table. Randi is out getting sushi with a friend. I am reasonably content here, writing this to you, to myself. That's a big reason I keep doing it.

I guess that's it for now. I hope to write you again soon, to feel that much less lethargic!

How's Stella?

2011-08-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

I think she's doing pretty well these days. Stella had a great summer, she played all day in summer camp at the local JCC for most of July, and now is back in school and really loving it.

She's grown so much in just the past few months. This past weekend we put her in a dress that used to go way past her knees. Now it goes above the knees and even looks a bit short on her. All this changed in just the past 2-3 months.

Plus she was out in the sun and playing for pretty much the entire summer. It was the best thing for her. She made good friends, and has become incredibly social and talkative, both in groups and with us. Now, she was always a chatterbox with mom and dad, but her being so outgoing in groups, that's something new.

And, man, she's starting to really crack me up on a personal level. She's gotten very sharp verbally, and has an amazing memory.

Two nights ago we were getting her ready for bed, doing our usual routine of getting her in her nightclothes after her bath. At one point she was standing up, and began to sing "Mama I'm a Big Girl Now" from Hairspray, and she knew about 80% of the words, and was doing this soulfoul little shimmy dance the entire time. It is hard to convey in words just how adorable this is. She also knows just about all the words of "Good Morning Baltimore" and even tries to do the little harmonies that build up in the climax of the song. But here's some cuteness. She calls it "Altimore" instead of Baltimore. And there is a line in the song about "somebody invite me before I drop dead!" Well, Stella sings it, "Somebody invite me before I drop in!" Which is much nicer anyway, right?

What else, well she is for the most party potty trained now. In fact two nights ago we were getting ready for bathtime, and we noticed it was quieter than normal. Typically when she's with us Stella is a dynamo of demands, questions and things she wants to do. ("I really want to watch TV!" has become a constant refrain around here, for example.)

So, quiet is not normal, we looked for her. Well, she had placed her little toddler Dora The Explorer toilet seat on the normal toilet, taken down her "big girl" panties, put her little step stool before the toilet, climbed up and was going to the bathroom. All by herself, without us even being consulted! It was an amazing moment for us, as parents. Better still, no diaper doo-doo to clean up.

It's been a real summer of growing up for the little girl. (I can hear her in my head right now, "I'm a big girl!") She is a total riot, sweet, and so, so funny. She knows she's funny too, and keeps trying to catch us up and make us laugh. One time she made a poopy in her training potty that was rainbow shaped. Then there was another poopy next to it that looked, well, just like poopy. We joked that it was a poopy rainbow with a poopy cloud. Forget it, that did it! She heard that, and now says it all the time, dying laughing!

She also learned the word "butthole" somewhere, I swear, not from me. I of course tell her not to say it. So, she will be on the potty, like yesterday, talking to herself. And yesterday she said something like this: "Poopy is coming from my tushie. Not my butthole." I keep trying to keep her from saying it, but the more I talk about the more she simply repeats that she shouldn't say it. I try not to laugh, but it's hard not to sometimes.

So, that's a lot of information about her pooping, but I swear, it's been a huge part of our lives since she was born. You parents out there will know exactly what I'm talking about.

In other news my cat Talisker has taken to vomiting all over the carpet. He will in fact move from the tiled floor to some carpet to vomit. We change his food, which seems to help at times. And of course he stops vomiting completely before I take him to the vet. I've now taken him twice for this, with no real answers.

Stella, of course, picked right up on it. She might see something on the carpet. "Cat vomit over there." (She still has a slight Brooklyn accent, god knows how. So it sounds like this. "Cat vomit over der.") In other words, she's good with languages?

Enough for tonight.

The Golden Age

2011-08-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

I have taken to venting my feelings about the world in verse. Below is my take on a William Butler Yeats "Second Coming"-esque work, combined with Bob Dylan. I would like to believe!

THE GOLDEN AGE
by David Serchuk

We've been downgraded
Under-rated
Bow before your master, been prostrated
Its complicated
Traps been baited
The hideouts raided and the
Tie-dies faded
The haters hated
The waiters waited
Bank to the bankers who rate the unrated

So I Testify to the power of gold
Your credit's gone, been oversold
Cling to the rock, salvation found
Arbitrarily valued, ripped from the ground

The 30's are back
Although not exact
Bonnie & Clyde been ransacked
By a Florida stripper
Such a big tipper
Shot down with her brothers, like a bunch of day trippers
The market's cracked
London ransacked
Amy Winehouse faded back to black

So I testify to the power of gold
Arbitrarily valued, arbitrarily sold
So I testify to the power of gold
In Sierra Leone, 10,000 bodies lie cold
Cling to my rock, my salvation found
In a piece of Au, torn from the ground

Ripped from the dirt, in the worst places on Earth
Human life does not hold such worth
Our heritage pulped to mine the land
From the African bush, to Canadian sands
Thousands died to dig it, shines so pretty
Hawked on late night by G. Gordon Liddy

Imperial power
Need to take a shower
You ask for a minute but take an hour
Endless war
Been off-shored
We reserve the right to be bored and ignored
The price we pay
For looking away
Let us pray to the golden god with feet of clay
Its always darkest before the light
But the clock ain't even struck midnight

In a born again nation more lost than found
Clamoring for yellow bits torn from the ground
Stockpiling the ammo, I'll buy the next round
Its a race to the bottom, but we're already down

Jesus saves, as our trades are unwound
The Federal Reserves talks, but there's no sound
Bailed out GM, cars filled with clowns
Juggling their balls, and plenty around
France is going under, raping chamber maids
Two silhouettes on the shades
Egypt is rising, but the U.S. is broke
It's a bull market for downgrade jokes
Taking medicine that don't taste like Coke
What is still working, and what is just broke?
Real Housewives staged, a fantasy soap
Marie Antoinette smiles, so let them eat hope

Don't look behind the curtain, let me repeat
It's only white lobbyists down on K Street
Our democracy is in retreat
Our freedoms gone packing, as we're packing heat
A manifesto of greed, that's what we need
Says the state employee drinking the tea
Let the destruction begin, with all deliberate speed
The river has risen, and we're grasping for weeds
Drowning in debt we were told to acquire
For the life to which we were told to aspire
To be fat and happy, its our divine right
Now the clock has struck 12 midnight

The complaints have been heard, give us a solution
We need a Third American Revolution
Fresh blood to stem this dissolution
We need a Third American Revolution

Let's pay as we go, but remember our brothers
In this together, each one and the other
Knowledge costs, but ignorance ain't cheaper
The bank account's free, but the late fees grow steeper
Midas' kiss, ancient crypt keeper
Something's amiss, I hear the grim reaper

But it's not too late
Dry out this Watergate
It's not too late
Cash this golden gate
But it's not too late

Bush Contributed Far More To the Deficit

2011-07-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

I try to not demonize anyone, but this graph from the Washington Post shows it clear as day: most of our deficit, by a longshot, is the result of Bush's policies, not Obama's. Read it and (we all) weep.

George Bush's tax cuts contributed more to the deficit than ALL of Obama's spending combined. This is sobering. Bush's Medicare druge benefit/giveaway cost more than Obama's Health Care Reform.

Why do we live in a nation where partisanship trumps the simple ability to look at objective data and make an informed decision for the betterment of our nation? I am willing to take my lumps and give till it hurts, as long as I feel we are all in this together.

Until we can all grow up a bit, and realize that we are truly in this together, that what keeps us apart is not as important as what we have in common, we are going to get in worse and worse trouble. And we will leave this nation poorer than we found it.

I believe Tea Partiers are concerned about the deficit. I met many of them at Rand Paul's victory celebration. But I will never understand why their outrage about deficit spending came so late.

They want to leave a better nation for their children and grandchildren. So do I. Why can't we recognize the humanity each of us posses and work together on reasonable solutions to solvable problems? Why indeed.

We should be wary of those who would keep us scared, and keep us at each others' throats. They have a reason for wanting this to happen. As they said way back when, follow the money. It always leads back to the source.

I am standing by President Obama because he stood by me

2011-07-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

I have come to realize that one key difference between the more extreme elements of the Republican party and mainstream Democrats is how we view luck, fate and work. Democrats, I believe, endorse hard work, as do people everywhere. In fact we endorse it so much that when Bill Clinton was president the unemployment rate dropped to a historic low of around 4%!

But in addition to endorsing hard work I feel Democrats have more of a sense of "but for the grace of god go I." Homeless people, we understand, are not bad people, are not failures. They may be people with substance abuse problems who need treatment, but we understand that we all could be just a few really bad breaks away from being just like them. There but for the grace of god.

People who are upside down on the mortgages and need help are not stupid, greedy idiots who should be tossed on the street. They are people who bought into the hype of an actively sold myth, perpetuated by the housing industry, and greased by the total deregulation of the mortgage brokerage industry, courtesy of Republicans. They made bad bets, yes, but if we can keep them in their homes and in the process help save a neighborhood too--thereby keeping up everyone's home values and keeping things from sliding into urban decay--well, maybe this isn't so bad.

Republicans, I feel, do not have this sense of grace. If you're homeless, even in today's horrid economy, you probably are lazy, probably deserve it. Does you kid deserve it too? No, but that's your problem buddy, not mine.

If you are about to get foreclosed upon--even if the bank in fact could renegotiate your mortgage to something that would make more sense--well, tough luck man. You should have worked harder. What, job gone? Move to Texas. Or India.

I get it, I will never convince anyone on the extreme right about anything. I know. But I have to say that their feelings about the lazy sucking up government dollars when they could be working, that is just pure bullshit.

I know because I benefited from, and am immensely grateful for, President Obama's much-maligned stimulus.

You see I was laid off in late 2010 through no fault of my own. That's why it's called getting "laid off" and not called getting fired. I earned some severance pay from my job, and then was on the government dole, collecting unemployment as I looked for work. And I looked, and I looked some more. I went on interviews, I called all my friends and contacts, I beat the bushes. And every week I collected my $405 in unemployment. It kept us from the streets. Along the way I took what jobs I could, but it wasn't enough to keep me from going back on unemployment when I had to. I didn't feel bad about this, or like a failure. I worked for years for this money to be there for me when I needed it.

Thanks to President Obama my family could afford healthcare in the form of a greatly reduced fee for COBRA insurance. Thanks to stimulus money it cost $400 per month, instead of its usual cost for a family of three, around $1300. If we had to pay the full price we would again would have been on the streets, or living with one of my parents. Again, thank you President Obama.

My reduced-rate COBRA lasted through July 2010. With a stroke of great luck Randi secured a job with health insurance that started that following August. We never had to be afraid to get sick, thanks to President Obama.

(I used to joke about health insurance: "Hey man, now I'm insured! I'm going to get sick now ALL THE TIME!")

I had a hard time finding a job thanks to, you know, the Republicans destroying our economy. But thanks to President Obama's extension of unemployment insurance we were able to stay in our new apartment too. True he had to cut a deal with the devil, i.e. extending the ridiculously irresponsible Bush Tax Cuts to do it, but he helped save one family at least, us. Thanks President Obama.

These are small things in the grand scheme of it all, but there are millions of families like mine. We worked hard, we saved for rainy days, and then we still got blasted. And we all should take a moment to not only thank President Obama, but defend him as he's being attacked for protecting us.

And then, guess what? Eventually I got lucky enough to find a job a couple of months ago, knock wood! I no longer am collecting unemployment insurance, of course, and am in fact paying my fair share of taxes, happily!

And for all those years while I worked in New York I paid more than my fair share, because I lived in a humanistic Blue State, and the money made in New York pays for all the various and sundry disasters that seem to strike Red States like clockwork. Thank god they are so anti-government, those Red States, or else they would have to actually pay for the services they suck up like vacuums. As they say there is no free lunch. It's just that the rich Blue States--which have a lot of what in them? That's right LIBERALS--pay for the buffet so we can all eat in this nation during times of famine.

Because that's how we roll. We believe that but for the grace of god there goes all of us. And they have the nerve to talk about religion.

One Year In Kentucky

2011-07-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

As the moving truck pulled away last July I wondered just what was going to become of me, and how I was going to deal with Kentucky. I had some sort of dark, grim thoughts on my mind, that's for sure. I guess you could say it was black humor, or at least I would like to think it was.

"Next time you see me back East," I told my friend Mike, who had helped me move, "it might just be in a body-bag."

Okay, maybe not the funniest joke. But my world had turned upside down. I moved from a dynamic, vibrant city and neighborhood, filled with friends and family nearby to a big fat question mark. An apartment complex whose pavement was as smooth and undisturbed as glass, on a lazy, hot July day. No one was out, life seemed a good deal emptier than I knew before. How, I wondered, will I ever be able to survive this? Survive moving, in effect, to the suburbs. Survive rebuilding my life, despite myself?

One year later I have some of those answers. The truth is that while I did not physically die as I joked with Mike I did sort of die in other ways. The me that I had clung to is gone. In its place is someone different in many ways. I hope better, but I know different in many important aspects.

After we first moved here Randi and I had a few weeks to get settled in before her academic year began. I was bitter, and frustrated by just about everything. Envious of the perceived success of everyone else. Here I was, 38, unemployed, a failed journalist (I thought), a failed everything (I thought). And not even a particularly great dad for Stella, because I was consumed with anger over ending up in Kentucky.

I tried for us to have good days, Stella and I, and I even succeeded, but I was in a bad period, a dark time. There were many afternoons I simply did not feel up to "parenting" her so actively and let "Sesame Street" do the job for me, with its accursed Elmo. Or some other cartoon, I became pretty familiar with most of them, and can still sing the songs.

I looked for work, without much success, unsure of what I even wanted to do. I wrote a pair of cover stories for highly regarded local publications, but these did not lead to job offers. I had been at Forbes, an editor at the website no less, and I could not get a job anywhere in my new town. It was a letdown, and a big blow to my ego.

I started to see a psychiatrist that I found through Angie's List, because I didn't know anyone to ask. He turned out to be wonderful, and, surprise, not only also a Jew, and one native to Louisville, but an active member of the synagogue we started to gravitate to, Adath Jeshuron. Louisville, I started to understand, was a very small world.

At AJ the cantor, David Lipp, a wonderful man, introduced us to another journalist, named Andrew Adler. Andrew was like me in many ways. From the East Coast, living in Louisville, and now moving to be with his wife and family in New Orleans. But he had one last story he had to write for The Courier-Journal, the local paper. For the section called "Love Story" about, well, love. Randi and I were his subjects. So within two months of moving here we were featured prominently in the local newspaper. The world got smaller.

I wrote about how Louisville and New York were different, tongue in cheek, for The Huffington Post. It went viral in my new city, and all of a sudden a lot of people knew more about me. Again, the world got smaller.

I wrote a story for Louisville magazine, and went on assignment with a wonderful guy named John Nation, a photographer. He took some great pictures for the article, and we became fast friends. John has lived here for decades and seemingly knows EVERYONE. He also has a daughter, Grace, who babysits for us on occasion, and is a lovely person to boot. Again, the world got smaller.

Stella, was now in the Adath Jeshuron preschool. A man named John Gage plays music for the kids. I introduced myself to him at a performance. He has been playing music locally for decades, and, again, knows EVERYONE. Again, the world got smaller.

The article I wrote for Louisville magazine, about local banking, did not turn into a job. But a few months after it ran I emailed the CEO of a bank I had written about for the article to let him know I am available for any work he may need. He gave me a writing test, which I guess I passed. Then I was interviewed by the person who is my current boss. In other words, I got the job. Again, the world got smaller.

Two months after landing here I formed a band, because I needed something to do, and love music. My bandmates are Scott Stinebruner, Tim Caruso and Steve McDonnel. They are not only great musicians, and writers of music, but now three of my best friends in Louisville. Sometimes Tim's amazing wife Savannah babysits for Stella, and graciously agreed to cat sit for us recently. We came back and the cats were in better shape than when we left them. Again the world got smaller.

My new job pays more than I made at Forbes.com. The world didn't necessarily get smaller but it definitely got better financially.

I have found that Louisville is a city of open hearts and smiling faces. If you are kind to people, and agreeable you will soon be shocked to find how friendly and interconnected everyone is.

One of my favorite new co-workers is a woman named Carolle. She knows my (still relatively new) friend Marcus who writes for the Courier-Journal. Her husband is an accomplished author and fixture on Louisville's arts scene, and has been for decades. Carolle knows EVERYONE, including Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. Talk about the world getting smaller.

The CEO of my company went to the same pre-school Stella currently goes to. I think you get the picture.

I could go on, but I hope you see where I am headed with this. My life was finished, but them, somehow, it began to mysteriously fill the cup again. But this time I was different. I am no longer a journalist but in PR and marketing. And I am glad for the change, initially to my surprise. I read "How To Win Friends And Influence People" and I find I am fact am winning friends, although I think it's a stretch to say I am influencing people. But it's made me 100%more open to the good in people and in life.

Today I am happier than I have been in a long time, and though I still see my doctor, and my therapist too, I, knock wood, feel a corner has turned. I was burned out in Brooklyn, in some ways already dead. Writing about brokers, and investing, and business and money, money, money. It was all fine, but I hated the competitive pace. I hated not feeling like the people that owned my old firm didn't know me, because they didn't. I hated feeling like I was always trying and failing to climb the totem pole to earn respect.

Today the people I work with are just nice to me, and everyone wants me to succeed. It's a great feeling.

Forgive me if I ramble.

I died, in a way, and was reborn. I didn't expect it, but now am open to what's to come. And what is that thing to come? Only my life.

My Graduation Speech to America’s Youth

2011-06-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

(Setting: A podium at a decently respectable school, though its reputation is perhaps not what it once was. Your humble author, me, stands at the lectern, staring out at a sea of shiny, fresh-scrubbed faces. They asked for my worldly wisdom on this, their graduation day. They got it. I clear my throat and commence the commencement.)

“Don’t wear sunscreen. Or at least take it easy until the EPA sorts out which ones give you cancer.

As you graduates finish school and head toward whatever is next, it seems to raise the inevitable temptation from your elders to pass along their questionable wisdom. Like me. Right now.

I don’t have much wisdom to share, my career path is more crooked than a gerrymandered Congressional district.

But I do feel that the recent controversy over sunscreen provides some food for thought.

It seems like every few years much of our received wisdom is proven useless, obsolete or ridiculous. I talk about sunscreen because about 15 years ago it was alleged Kurt Vonnegut (he was a great writer, if you haven’t read him yet, please do so) wrote a commemoration speech where his first instruction, famously, was “wear sunscreen.” He then spun other words of wisdom to his young listeners, though he would periodically tell them, again, to wear sunscreen.

Well, the entire thing was a hoax. Vonnegut never wrote those words. And now it turns out the central refrain of the entire thing is also phony.

What are some other pieces of hand-me-down wisdom we’ve seen brutally dispelled in the past decade? I can list a few.

1. God ain’t making any more land: Used as an inducement to buy into the real estate bubble, this may actually, literally be true. But even if god ain’t making more land he sure seems to have a near endless appetite for McMansions that nobody needs or wants. The lesson here? Don’t buy something because somebody else told you something about god, I guess.

2. People will pay for quality content online: Due to the rise of the Internet the value of the written word, and writers, has been slashed more than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween 1, 2 and that new one that just came out a few years ago. This tells me that while we have a market of ideas it is a market. And markets behave in ways that are hard to predict long term. The other lesson, I guess, is that, by and large, being a writer actually kind of sucks a little.

3. The Internet is unbelievably cool; ergo tech stocks are always cool too: Tell that to anyone who bought shares in pets.com, etoys.com, webvan.com or any of the million other now-forgotten tech stocks that went blammo. The lesson? By the time we learn about something cool it's almost certainly not really cool anymore.

4. We would never enter a war based entirely on lies: It’s long been whispered FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen to draw us into war. If this is true, and I doubt it is, it still pales in comparison to the Iraq War, which was marketed, and sold completely on unreliable and un-provable assertions, aka lies, about the imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction. Then the lies were sold to us on TV by the highest members of The Bush Administration. The lesson? We are easily led, and make terrible decisions, when we are afraid. Like then voting Bush in a second time.

I could go on, and, believe me, I do. Ask my wife.

(Pause for polite, if predictable, laughs)

But that’s not the point of this speech. What I am trying to get at is the idea that the future, despite all received and conventional wisdom, remains stubbornly unknowable. Today’s truisms can become falsehoods before I’m even done with this sentence. And probably just did.

Knowing this you no longer have any good, logical reason to play it so safe, to do what is expected rather than what you want without even testing your wings on the unknown. Because in 10 years what is as yet unknown could be so commonplace as to become unremarkable, and what is known, and understood to be safe, could become completely discredited. Like banking! Seriously, remember when bankers were merely boring? And then they destroyed our economy. God, how I long for boring!

So take a risk on the unknown, which is really a risk on you. You don’t have to know how the story ends before you start writing the book. Which is something made out of paper that people read before Kindle.

So, thank you for allowing me to speak before you, but I’ve got to go. My broker is calling my iDroid, something about ePets.com shares on the cheap. He says it’s a bottom.

Oh, and, despite what I said before, yes, wear sunscreen. Just do your own research first instead of trusting me, Kurt Vonnegut, or someone imitating Kurt Vonnegut. I think the EPA’s website is a good place to start. Thank you, I hope you enjoy middle school and let's party!"

(Cheers, mortar boards thrown into the air, somewhere a baby cries from the heat.)

Everyday I Climb The Hill

2011-06-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

The headline of this post is the chorus of a song I wrote called "Everyday."

I wrote the music about a year, or so, ago, when we were in Cape May, NJ. It was a bouncy upbeat sort of thing, acoustic-based, fun. Stella liked it, and usually that means it's pretty good! I remember her dancing around on the porch of our rented beach house. It's a fond memory.

The lyrics came about six months ago when I was, there's no other way to say this, locked into a deep, deep depression. They are as uplifting as I could make them at the time, which was not very. (And some were cribbed from Dylan Thomas: Hey, steal from the best!) Here they are:

"Everyday"
Taking the blue pill everyday
Thank god for pharmacology
Keeps the noon-day demons at bay
I didn't use to feel this way

Pre-Chorus
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light

Verse 2:
Up the hill the stone I push
Feel a lot like Sisyphus
Falls to the bottom whenever I reach the top
Keep on pushing I can't let myself stop

Pre-Chorus:
Well I won't go gentle into that good night
I will rage against the dying of the light (sing 2X)

Chorus:
Everyday I climb the hill
Don't know if I'll get there I don't think I ever will
Didn't use to feel this way
But I'm gonna keep on pushing, keep on climbing everyday

Verse 3:
Brought a child into this world
The bluest eyes you'll ever see
She's my darling sweet little girl
It's no longer just about me

Chorus and out

So that's the song, kind of an upbeat downer when you hear it. When I have a decent recording of it, I'll post it. I like it, although I don't feel like we, the band, Bottle Cap Manifesto, have it 100% down yet. (It's the bridge that's kind of hanging us up.) When we play it live, which we've done a few times now, it doesn't feel as confessional as it reads on the page, but I guess that's the beauty of music, the blues even. Sharing the dark stuff can become positive, or more positive, when its in communion with others, the band, the audience, the universe, the Hindu floaty thing. (The last reference is an inside joke to Randi, and comes from the truly, truly strange documentary "Grizzly Man." If you haven't seen it yet, get it right now. It cannot be described adequately, in its full awesomeness, by me tonight.)

And the sheer repetitive fact of practice makes me less self conscious about the song too. By the 50th time we've played it in practice it no longer feels like reading a diary entry and more like constructing and deconstructing a mechanical object, cutting it down, refining, memorizing the words so I no longer think about them.

But ... the part about Stella gets me every time I sing it. As it should.

And I don't take a blue pill everyday, just so you know. That's what they call poetic license. It's white. :-)

Father's Day Ruminations

2011-06-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Coming on the third Father's Day, which is very cool. I don't have any real plans firmed up yet. We've considered visiting the Muhammad Ali center. And for whatever I have for dinner's main course, I am having a dozen oysters on the half-shell in advance. That's about it for my big plans. I'd like to think it's because I'm low maintenance, and not because I'm lazy.

But I've been thinking about parenting, and being a dad, as I am wont to do, you know.

It's a weird thing. In recent years I've really become judgmental about people, not generally, but in very specific ways. You can be a prick, a blowhard, a jerk, a phony. Generally speaking, unless it impacts me quite directly I don't care. I don't have to have you in my life, or have an opinion on you. In fact, the less I think about you the better off we both are.

But there is one area where I've become kind of a stickler. You can be the world's biggest a-hole to me, but if you have a great relationship with, and are good to, your kids, and they love and admire you I will basically think you're not all bad. In fact, maybe you're okay, just not to me.

Conversely, you can be nice, nice, nice but if your kids think your a shit, I, deep down, don't care for you.

Or maybe you've been a shit to your kids, but they still love you and try with you. That's okay, they can still care for you, but I won't like you.

You almost certainly will never know this. I won't tell you, because it's really not my business, but this is pretty much how I judge people these days.

You can fail in a lot of ways, but if you are good to your kids and love them and they love you back, and mean it, I will say you're a good man.

Conversely, you can be a great success in this world, but if I see you being a bastard to your kids and family I will never trust a word you tell me, no matter how nice you are to me.

I had a boss in Boulder who was a bastard. There's no other word for it. He treated his staff like crap, threatened, harassed and tried to intimidate people. He was belligerent, and a blowhard, and sometimes not all that smart. He told me my predecessor was fired for not doing what he said, on my first day on the job.

Nice guy, right?

But his daughter would walk in, and she loved her daddy. You could tell. And it probably wasn't always easy on them, because this was a broken home.

Okay, to me he was still a bastard, and at times I could have easily imagined strangling him. But then I would think of him, and his daughter and think, well, you know, he sucks but at least he's not all bad. Maybe 95%, but not all.

Conversely there is a guy who is buddy-buddy with my own dad, and he is always friendly, garrulous even.

Then one day, about 16 years ago he was over at our house, selling my parents a car. It was in great condition, and he kept it up well, the motor sparkled. Meticulous.

But, and I don't know what caused it, his wife said something, and I saw him snap. I don't remember what he said/shouted, but his nice-nice face darkened real fast, he lit into her, and I could tell he only wore the mask of a friendly man. No, he was not friendly.

This is how I think of him today, and I've seen him many times since.

The problem is, you don't get to say whether you are a good parent, or a good father. That's not your call in the end. No, only your children can determine that. And it takes a long time to see if what you claimed was your "best" really was.

I hope my best is really my best.

And yes, sometimes kids hate their parents, even though the parent does everything right. And sometimes kids from great, loving homes end up ruins, addicts and disasters.

But mostly it's not that way. Mostly people who travel those dark roads go there because there is an emptiness inside that should have been filled very young by a parent's love. They are looking for something that can't be so easily found in drugs, or food, or booze, or self-hate, but that doesn't mean they're not going to try it anyway. Mostly if kids turn out to be problematic adults you can safely lay the blame at the feet of the child's parent in some way.

So those are my thoughts on Father's Day!

That and I hope I get a tie.

Joe Battipaglia: In Memorium

2011-05-26T20:14:00.001-07:00

I just learned of the unfortunate passing of Joe http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBattipaglia. He passed away in mid-April, from a heart attack. Joe was beloved in the financial community and the odds are good that if you were at all a regular watcher of financial shows over the past decade you probably saw him on TV.

He always made his case vigorously, but I can't remember even one time I saw him yell at or belittle anyone on one of those shows. His facts spoke for themselves.

Doing a little research online I have since learned a good deal more about Joe. He was a remarkable person in many ways. According to his CNBC guest bio he "was the son of a sanitation worker, grew up in Queens, only child, first in family to attend college. Graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, economics, Boston College, 1976. Played rugby, lacrosse. MBA from Wharton, 1978. Market strategist (private client group) at Stifel Nicolaus, began career as analyst at Exxon and Elkins & Co. Joined Gruntal & Co., where he spent 18 years. Chaired investment policy at Ryan, Beck & Co. Former trustee of the Securities Industry Institute ... Married 1980, wife Mary Ann. Sons Matthew (Dartmouth) and Jeff (U.S. Naval Academy) played college football; also has daughter, Christen. Helped get employees out of One Liberty Plaza, across from WTC, on 9/11. Frequent guest of Larry Kudlow, Fox Business. Suffered heart attack in Georgia, where he had gone to speak at investors luncheon. Recalled in memoriam as "gentle giant," "very generous guy."'

That's a lot for any person, especially one who went so young, 55. He was also 6'7" and 300 pounds. He cut an imposing figure, I suppose.

I knew him personally, not well, I need to add. But I did know him. When we were starting Intelligent Investing at Forbes.com three years ago there was this idea that we would have an "Investor Team" of financial wizards and superstars that we would use in regular rotation for our stories. Build a repertoire of experts, in a way.

The only problem was we had no real experts or stars. I didn't know where to exactly begin recruiting such a team, either. But the fact was, we needed some names, it was what the entire thing kind of was premised upon.

Somehow Joe Battipaglia's name came up. He was extremely well known among those who follow the markets. Maybe not known to everyone on the street, but definitely known to everyone on The Street.

We had little time to lose. We had to begin cranking out stories, and still did not really have our experts. I had a fairly lengthy list of people who hadn't called me back when I asked for their help. The list of those who would help, though, was much, much smaller.

So I, out of the blue, called Joe. I didn't know him. He sure did not know me. Having seen him on TV I was, to be truthful, a bit intimidated. I expected to leave a message and never hear from him again, as had already happened so many times.

Instead, to my surprise, I got him on the phone. I told him about what we were doing, or trying to do, and who I was. I said the word "Forbes" as much as I could to give myself some credibility by association.

After about 25 seconds of my spiel Joe said he would do it. Suddenly, I had a source for one of our inaugural stories, and a big one at that. I believe it was about the future price of oil a hot topic, then as now. I nervously took notes, and he slowly went over every point a few times, patiently. His voice was a rumbling basso profundo, but easy to understand. All in all I interviewed him for maybe 10 minutes that day, but he gave me a lot to work with. I was profoundly grateful.

Because he has so impressed me with his generosity of time and spirit I made sure to call him back before the final draft went online. I went over each of his points, making sure I had the facts just right. Believe me, this can be a dicey time. Sources can often get shockingly prickly when you read back to them what they actually said to you. Joe merely listened patiently, made a few additional supporting points, to make sure I really understood it, and then when it was over said something like "yeah, I think you got it."

The story ran, and we were on our way with a great new channel on the Forbes.com website.

The truth is I think I maybe interviewed Joe one additional time after that. He was busy, always going to conferences. I could often get him on the phone, though, even if he was just telling me no. "You know Dave, I would really love to, but things have just been so crazy here. But please keep me in mind for next time."

I did, and even if he kept not being able to do it I always left those little phone chats feeling pretty good. Here he was, a big man, in his field, in so many ways, but he always had the time to at least take the call.

I never met Joe in person. I think I told him that if I ever came down to Philly I would like to say hi. He agreed, if I am remembering correctly, that that would be nice.

I can't claim some great friendship with him, that would not be honest. But he was a friend to me, a stranger, when I really needed it. He was a good person, a very smart Wall Street analyst, and I am very sorry to learn that he is no longer with us.

The REAL difference between New York and Kentucky

2011-05-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

A year ago, while we still lived in New York, I took a job as an editor for a start-up financial newsletter. It was run by a very successful investor and former hedge fund manager I had originally met through Forbes. He was a dynamic person, and lots of fun to be around and I was happy for the job. It was hard work, and I wasn't necessarily a perfect fit for what he wanted, it turned out, but I gave it my best.

In the end he needed someone who was far more of an investment guru than I was, with more ability to break down balance sheets in order to unlock the true potential of stocks. I had little knowledge about this process. My picks tended to be pretty predictable, and not all that exciting.

Not that I was wrong all the time, I wasn't. I read through the reports they already had on file and said that Apple, for example, was a "buy" at $260, it's now at $335. The iPad was brand new and all the analysis I read pointed to it potentially being a smash product on the order of the iPhone, although many poo-pooed that notion a year ago. Worth remembering: the iPhone was also poo-pooed when it came out. I saw parallels. Honestly, Apple still might be a buy, as it's price-to-earnings ratio is only 15, but I digress. (Another digression: it's extremely hard to consistently beat the market over time.)

Whatever, I didn't buy Apple that day, because I'm really not comfortable investing any real money into individual stocks. I guess that's why I'm not already retired in the Caribbean sipping daiquiris, like Dan Ackroyd at the end of Trading Places.

And none of these points are why I'm writing this anyway.

One day my new boss took me out to lunch at a local Pannera. He generously offered to pay for my soup and salad, as well as his own. This being New York these came out to something like $25, by the way. But pay it he did, which I really appreciated.

When he paid, I noticed, he did it with an American Express card. Then I looked still more closely. It wasn't just any American Express card, it was The American Express Black Card.

Something clicked in my memory. The Black Card, I thought, isn't that what, like, Jay-Z uses?

In other words, it is for the truly big money.

That night, out of curiosity, I looked up all I could find about The Black Card. It turns out to have an interesting story. The Black Card (the real name of which is actually The Centurion Card, but no one calls it that) was actually a myth before it was a product. Once upon a time the highest, most-prestigious Amex card you could get was the Platinum card. Which is plenty prestigious, believe me.

Still, the world being what it is, the Universe's various Masters started to say they had heard tell of still another card, that was even more rare, and exclusive. The Black Card. You couldn't ask for it, they could only give it to you. If they felt like it. Maybe.

But at this point there was no Black Card, it was just a neurotic fantasy playing out in the minds of pampered heiresses and Wall Street hard-ons in order for them, somehow, to still feel inferior.

Of course American Express eventually got wind of this. I imagine when they first heard the story their top execs probably laughed their asses off and then, in mid-laugh, became dead serious. Holy crap!, they almost certainly shouted, we've got to introduce this Black Card! The marketing has already been done for us, by the most powerful people in the world! Then they went back to laughing their asses off and eating money sandwiches.

And so the Black Card was released. In a canny move Amex kept it invitation only. Today you can only be invited to get a Black Card if you already own a Platinum Card, are crazy rich, have great credit and, presumably, spend just wheelbarrows full of money all the time.

So, THAT was the card my new boss used to pay for our lunch at Pannera, that day, a year ago.

Man, I thought, this dude is seriously loaded. Which I already kind of knew anyway, but this proved it.

Not long after that I overheard a conversation in the office whereby my boss talked about how he had to pick up his laundry, either within the building or perhaps through delivery. He didn't have the ability to do laundry in his, presumably, posh, possibly penthouse-level, apartment.

Fast forward one year later. We live in Louisville, Kentucky. We do not have a Black, Platinum, Gold or even Green Amex Card. Yet we do have a clothes washer and dryer in our apartment, unlike my old boss. That we have this is considered so unremarkable no one ever remarks upon it. We spend a grand total of $905 a month in rent, which is high for here.

And THAT is the real difference between New York and Kentucky.

I Was A Teenaged Randian

2011-04-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Today, upon the celebration of my 39th birthday I though it appropriate to wade through some old writings and reveal perhaps one of the most shame-inducing things I have ever written. But, first, a little background setup is in order.

As 2011 moves past its first third it has become more and more apparent that the nation as a whole is in the grips of a new wave of influence from The Scientific Objectivist herself, Ayn Rand. Rep. Paul Ryan--who resembles no one so much, in manner and look, as Gabe from The Office--proudly proclaims himself a follower of the writer and philosopher. Copies of her books continue to sell briskly and an Atlas Shrugged movie has recently been unleashed in theaters. In short Ayn Rand, almost 30 years after her death, is having a bit of a moment. Her philosophy has struck a chord with Americans who fear the incoming wave of still more moderateness from our already hopelessly modest president. This, they have thundered, cannot stand. They cry for the rights of the individual, the right to assert their greatness, their right to pay fewer and fewer taxes in the name of fiscal balance and responsibility.

Forgive me for perhaps sounding a bit smug but of course Ayn Rand is old news to me. Way, way back when, in 1988, I myself had a bit of a personal Ayn Rand moment. In fact I spent much of the first half of junior year walking around with my head blown by this idea of self-reliance and unfettered genius. After all, who would know more about self reliance than a pampered, coddled suburban Jew, who had everything he could virtually ever want literally given to him? But that mattered not. I looked around at my fatted calflike neighbors, with their lazy intellects and perfect yard-induced complacency and saw right through them. None of you, I thought, have ever stood up for what you truly believed. None of you, I again said to myself, again silently, have any of the guts you truly need to change this world. I would shrug my shoulders, perhaps in an Atlas-like fashion?, and look down my nose at them still more. Failures, I ruminated, the entire lot of you.

Of course I am not the first to wrap my cloak of suburban anomie around the first handy philosophy I could muster. And not long after that I found myself attached, tic-like, to yet another, and greater siren call, The Grateful Dead. Mind equally blown, but in a big party full of stoned hippies, businessmen and hippie businessmen. Of the two mind blowers, I add, perhaps unnecessarily, the latter was a hell of a lot more fun, and a hell of a lot less lonely. But, as they say, I digress.

I had been given a copy of The Fountainhead during a teen tour I had taken during the summer of 1988 in Israel. (On a side-note one of my favorite fellow teen tourists that summer was Roger Madoff, nephew of the justly hated Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff. Talk about the rights of an individual to do exactly what they want!)

The corrupter of my young mind was my counselor Alan, another suburban Jew, of course, except he was in college and knew a couple of Crosby, Stills & Nash songs on the guitar. You know, he was awesome. I don't know what prompted the conversation, but at some point Alan presented me with his idea of the individual and his supremacy.

"Think about it Dave," he said. "Has ANYTHING great ever come from a committee? Can you perform surgery by committee? What about all the greatest inventions? Were any of these done by committee? The light-bulb? The telegraph? No, these are all things best done by one person leading the way, alone."

I thought for a moment about Alan's surgery example, then answered. "Well, Alan, what about the research that went into the medical knowledge that lead to the surgery. Often that is done by groups and even teams. And during surgery itself there is an entire team of people working with the surgeon, like nurses and anesthesiologists, who are just as important, in their way, as the surgeon."

Alan pondered this for a few seconds and, if memory serves, even granted I may have had a point. Despite this he still saw fit to hand me his copy of The Fountainhead, telling me to just check it out.

It was a big book, 740 pages, or so. This alone meant a lot to me at the time. Up until that point the biggest book I had ever read was The Sword Of Shannarah, a Tolkien-esque ripoff that held me spell bound in sixth grade. And let's be frank here, bigness is important when you really don't have any real experience or knowledge in the world of literature. I hefted the soft-covered text. Hmm, I thought. It's about the size of a brick. I should read this.

My second thought was, man, this is going to take up a lot of room in my bag. But screw it, knowledge is power, and therefore worth the work.

Later that night I cracked the spine and immediately was captivated. Howard Roark, my god, who WAS this guy? Where did he get off taking down The Parthenon like he did, and right in front of his mendacious architecture instructor? Then Roark marched off into a sunset of self-assuredness, just a few minutes before he was to graduate from architecture school. But Roark just didn't care about the phony pantomime of graduation. He only cared about the little amount of knowledge to be gleaned from the inferior hacks and losers that were there to instruct him.

After this big entrance Roark then went to work in a rock quarry, all on his own terms. And this was all in, like, the first 25 pages!

Now this, I thought, is a man. He lives by his own rules, he sticks to his guns no matter what, he doesn't let anyone get in his way, he believes in himself without even the shadow of a doubt. He is content to suffer and get passed by without compromising himself or his art. People can either see him for what he is or leave him, he just didn't care. He didn't hate anyone, he didn't talk down to anyone, he wasn't bitter about the chances lesser talents got, he simply focused on what brought him joy and wouldn't let anyone sully the purity of his work.

Now that I read this again it still seems attractive. And I still see how elements of it remain with me today.

But along with all that good stuff, came a sort of almost super-human callousness. To show compassion for those who aren't as talented, who aren't as supremely self-assured, this concept doesn't exist to Howard Roark. The idea of sharing in the bounty of a wealthy society, understanding that some simply do not get the opportunities others get, this idea is also seen as completely without merit to Roark, and by extension Rand. To understand that reason is not always objective, but fallible, that successful people are not necessarily better people, again there is no place for these ideas in Rand's universe.

Nor, for that matter, is there any other concept of virtue at play here other than the self-realization of the individual. In The Fountainhead Roark goes on a diatribe at one point about how nature is simply there as a tool for man's use. Trees only have value in as much as they can be split and made into beams. And to attribute any sort of feeling of greater respect or care for the natural world, apart from what it can do for us, is simply a romantic, pointless and trifling waste of time. This idea literally could not even occur to Roark.

Of course I realized all this only later. Because I loved The Fountainhead. I was with Roark ever step of the way. I jeered his seeming nemesi, Ellsworth Toohey and that brown-noser Peter Keating. I especially loathed Keating, that sellout. Toohey, even at 16, simply seemed like a cartoonish weirdo and hard to actually hate.

But Keating. If you haven't read the book Keating is cast as a kind of anti-Roark. They are classmates at the architecture school Roark leaves. While Roark struggles Keating is the perennial golden boy, graceful, ingratiating and easy to be around. He will conform to what you want him to be if it helps him climb the ladder. A modest talent he gets by simply by being good looking, malleable and popular. And while I personally may have been pretty malleable I sure didn't feel like I was popular or all that good looking. So, you know, fuck that guy!

As the book progresses Roark struggles, but eventually begins to build a client base. He even turns down jobs, no matter how much money he needs, if it's wrong. In one example he refuses to build a home for an old man, because the man wanted it to be based on a sort of plantation that he looked at as a boy and felt excluded from. Roark, in a moment of nice insight, asks that, really, is all you want to stay locked in the battles and mindset you had as a boy? Is your true mission simply to remain stalemated in that time, only from a different perspective? Where is the you in what should be your home?

Like I said, Roark/Rand was not all bad.

And over time Roark's star, by dint of unshakable self-confidence and nonstop work, starts to rise. And in that same time Keating begins to age like the picture of Dorian Gray. He is miserable in his work, his seemingly perfect like starts to unravel, what he really loves to do is paint canvasses. So he takes it up again, as a bit of a hobby, but it's too late. He sold out, and in Rand's world, once you do that you really can't get unsold again. (Again, these ideas, right or wrong have certainly influenced me, for better or worse.)

Needless to say the book meant a lot to me, even as I started to drift from it over time, perhaps inevitably. Rand seemed to me a bit of a fad, something people went through. And then two signal events happened that estranged me from much of what she stands for and her philosophy.

First I reread the book when I was about 25 and I fought it a dreadful, tedious work. The characters are at best cardboard approximations of people. The prose disastrous, the philosophizing tedious. As a fan of great writing the mere fact of her prose hackery did a lot to diminish Rand in my eyes.

Then, a few years later, I started to see Rand's mantle appropriated by people with whom I had very little, if anything, in common. People who used her name as an excuse to gut desperately needed programs for those people among us unlucky enough to have been born very poor. Rand would simply say it's their fault if they are born poor and remain that way as adults. They didn't try hard enough, she'd argue. They are lazy, and in a sense, bad people.

But when my wife told me about kids in the Bronx who want to go to school and learn but their parents are either absent or on drugs ... Or there weren't enough books, yes, not enough books. Or the building they attend school in is crumbling around them, or actually making them sick. At that point I realized that Rand's intellectual purity was no match for the problems of the real world.

When I heard Rand's name used to justify what amounted to me as an undeclared war on our nation's poor I realized I could never identify in any real way with her or Scientific Objectivism. To buy into this philosophy and really live it you have to be blinded to anything subtle or complex about the root causes and solutions to poverty. You have to love a one size fits all answer to everything, which is that gifted people are serving the ultimate moral good by just doing as they damn well please at all times and somehow this benefits society. And the more they do as they damn well please the better off society will be.

Really? Well, I don't know how gifted the financial industry is but it's pretty much done as it damn well pleased over the past 30 years and where has it gotten us? We are a stagnating nation, where the rich already live in Gault's Gulch, and didn't even have to leave the country to get there. America, as it is today, is a land where the rules literally and figuratively do not apply to the rich and super-rich. And we are all, the rest of the nation, poorer for it in every way.

Wow, all that and I didn't even get to the main point of this essay. And this is, to reprint, for your amusement my college admission essay where I talk about what a great Scientific Objectivist I am. And to think, I imagined this would get me into Wesleyan.

Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 6--Food

2011-03-16T07:31:00.001-07:00

(Remember all these people below, and in all the other entries before, wrote in expecting that a TV show would take up their cause. To me that is the best part of this whole thing. And here we bring our "book" to a close with all the things people wrote in about food.)

FOOD:

Why does everyone want to sue? Besides, didn’t you see “Supersize Me”

From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

I recently went to McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwich I discovered a headless roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cooked along with my food and I bit its head off. Help me. What can be done? Can this be a possible law suit?

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Another one who missed “Supersize Me.”

From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

I recently went ot McDonald’s and purchased a #7 from the breakfast menu. After receiving my food I went home to enjoy my purchase. While I was eating my sandwhich I discovered a head-less roach in it. The roach seemed as if it was cook along with my good and I bit its Head off.

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Hey guys? Maybe we could all just skip the Mickey D’s for a while?

From: xxxxxxxx@aol.com
I have a problem with a McDonald’s in the Bronx. On Saturday March 5, 2005 at around 8.25 in the morning I ordered a Big breakfast deluxe meal. I started eating the meal and almost half through the meal I notice something black in my mean which turned out to be Rats Feces. I have the food from tha tday in my freezer and I have pictures of the meal. I had to go to the emergency room because I had diarhea and was vomitting up.

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Ants are a delicacy is certain parts of the world; I’m not sure where but that place exists.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxx@officeteam.com

I went to Haagen Daz to enjoy a delicious treat… I bought a cone with sprinkles that comes already prepared. To find that as I was pealing off the wrapper of my delicious treat and finish it off, millions of little ants came crawling out. I still feel sick. No one was able to help me. They did not even give me my money back! Please help!

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Wait, this guys is upset that he didn’t eat more of this hot pocket?

From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

I had brought a hot pocket from pathmark and I found a rodent tooth in it. It really made me sick to my stomach I didn’t eat no more after I found the tooth in it. I only had like two bites before I came across the tooth.

Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 5--Celebrities

2011-03-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

(Here the various viewers of my friend's TV news show wrote in about their celebrity obsessions.)

CELEBRITIES:

Kid, you lost us at “Hanson.”

From: XXXXXXXXX@aol.com

I am a really big fan of Hanson and they were recently in a law suit. they lost and the judge said they have to give up 6 of their songs to the record label. I want to make a patition to get them back their six songs because I believe it is unconstitutional to have to give them up. If you call me I could explain this a lot better.

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Ridiculous and pathetic…knowing is half the battle.

From: xxxxxxxx@hotmail.com

Okay, I realize that this is a LONG shot, but I figure I have nothing to loose. The internet, and email in general, are VERY powerful tools. My objective is to HOPEFULLY meet Mr. Mike Piazza by the end of the year. I am seeking to obtain my objective by emailing this link to everyone I know, and then some; perhaps EVENTUALLY it will get the attention of someone who could make it happen. I acknowledge how ridiculous and pathetic this seems – and yet it is that notion that I hope to capitalize on. For example if this were presented to say, Rosie O’Donnell (hint, hint), she may think I am SO pathetically desperate that she’d feel compelled to put me out of my misery. Stranger things have happened.

At this point you’re vacillating between “Is this chick out of her mind?!”, and “Umm, don’t you have anything better to do with you time?” The answer to both is ‘Yes.’ I am slightly cuckoo at times, have plenty to do (single Mom of a 12-year-old, work full time, ect.), and many more goals to achieve . But I also believe that if you TRULY want to achieve a goal (silly or not), YOU have to make it happen. So here is my attempt, and it will only ‘work’ if people (friends, family strangers, weather men….) participate. All you have to do is “pass it on”. Come on! Haven’t you ever had a dream? Been a fan? Wanted desperately to meet the object of your fanaticism? What did YOU do about it? I am making a conscious effort here and I need your help.)

I traveled approximately 3,400 miles last year to attend two Met games in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the man himself. Wouldn’t you know he wasn’t on the roster for either game? And being from Boston, the chances are pretty slim that I’ll be attending a Met game this year. Perhaps now you can see why I am using the internet as an avenue!

I acknowledge how ‘off the wall’ this is. And while I encourage positive feedback, helpful and creative suggestions and ideas, I ask that you refrain from forwarding and negative criticism, as I am not really hurting anyone by launching my “campaign”. Hee hee.
Thank you for your help and wish me luck.

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May The Force be with you…to find something meaningful to do with your life.

From: xxxxxxx@hotmail.com

On behalf of all the Star Wars fans especially now that May 19 the new Episode 3 film is coming up would want to know why Sony Online Entertainment ignored us, lied to us and took the very game that we all love and destroyed it…

We told Sony we did not like it, they just ignored us and said everything will be alright, they even erased our post against it in the forums and banned us taking away our freedom of speech. That’s why right now, for the first time, all members are coming to gather rebels and imps to go against the dreaded Sony Online Entertainment. We come to you for help so Sony can finally hear our voice.

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Just so we’re clear you only have ONE Liver and you need it to live.

From: xxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com

Help me. I just found out that Barry White is in need of a liver. I want to find out if I can help Mr. Barry White. I will give up one of my livers for him. Please help me find out if I can. Mr. Barry White has to live on and so does his music. I love him, I will give up a liver for him.

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Put your kid to bed earlier and don’t blame us when your kid finds out you’ve been lying to them for years.

From: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com

On Saturday, Dec. 21st at 11pm myself, my wife and my 7 year old daughter are watching “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Well you should have put up a warning notice that this show contains information that there really is not a Santa Claus! My daughter was very upset watching this show. By the time we shut it off it was too late. Maybe you should help out your network and show them to be a little considerate of who is watching your network.

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Umm, maybe we could host a telethon? And are these people French?

From: xxxxxxxxx@prodigy.net

Hi H,

Hope all is well. We are not asking for your help for us. We are asking your help for Jerry Lewis, of whom we have been fans virtually our entire lives (please remember this throughout.)

His appearance is alarming. In his piece he said he was 50 pounds overweight, blaming the steroids/prednizone that he’s taking (for pulmonary fibrosis?). And that, with all sincere respect, is pure bovine scatology, used as a justification for the weight gain, NOT in his best interests.

For Jerry’s sake, and others like him, you can’t let this celebrity get away with that “cause” excuse unchallanged. That is tacit affirmation of inacurate information. There is only one excuse for anyone gaining, and maintaining, that amount of excess weight especially ... and it is not from lack of exercise either. We hope you can help him.

Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 4--One Liners/Bellevue

2011-03-16T07:19:00.001-07:00

Below are contained the emails and letters from viewers that were either really short or just plain nuts.

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ONE LINERS:

This isn’t the Dr. Ruth show and we don’t do stories on common occurrences anyway.

From: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com

My girlfriend is pregnant and won’t give me sex.

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100mg of Prozac, as may times a day as necessary.

From: xxxxxxxxx@myboostmobile.com

Can you please tell me how to remove electronic mind control technology?

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A question that has stumped scientists for years…

From: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com
I’m asking you why does cafeteria food stink so badly??

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Well it’s better than being a pig…

From: xxxxxxx@mobil.att.net

Help I am a lamb.

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No.

From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com.

Help!

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Pal, we’re journalists! Why? Because we’re terrible at math!

From: xxxxxx@yahoo.com

help me with math work.

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Thanks for SHARing
From: xxxxxxxx@e-mail.com

Why can’t more people learn and adapt SHARE attitudes?

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What channels are you watching, anyway? And why can’t we get those?

From: xxxxxxxx@nycollege.edu

Direct TV is jerking me around.

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PT. 2 BELLEVUE:

Doctors give out medication for a reason, don’t stop taking it all on your own.

From: XXXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
I really hope you can help me with my problem. Its going to sound quite bizarre if you’re not familiar with it but here goes. My name is Elina XXXXX XXXXXX and I live in Bloomfield, NJ. I don’t know if you recognize the name but I’m the person you and every other news anchor on every station looks at while presenting the news on air. This is something I’ve had to figure out on my own but I really need for someone to explain why I’m being looked at. I’ve kept these thoughts to myself and it feels like I’m living a double life. Keeping them secret is ruining my life even though I’ve had to do that so that I won’t be perceived as crazy. I hope you won’t consider me crazy. I’m not sure if you’re at liberty to talk to me but I would really appreciate if you could. I don’t know who else to turn to. I’m not hoping that you air this problem but after watching your last segment on how you helped a girl receive her Dad’s kidney even though he was in jail I feel hopeful that you won’t disappoint me. Thanks in advance.

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Lay off the psychedelics, the 60s were over a long time ago.

From: XXXXXXXXX@aol.com

There is proof of an after life, and proof of higher energetic existence. I live in such a way everyday. Proof of such an existence of Spirits is found within oneself. Many people look for physical proof with physical means. This will only get you physical proof. I will be glad to pass to you an experience of energy in a way you have probably not felt before.

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You should have made that left at Albuquerque!

From: XXXXXXXXXX

Looking for metaphysical Margot who passed through New Mexico last year. Margot, if you see this please click the link to contact me. If someone reads this who knows her please contact me.

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What the F….? It makes me wonder how much time is spent by the NSA wiretap program reading e-mails like this?

From: XXXXXXXXX@cs.com

The people that I see when I’m sleeping are very nice. I sent an e-mail to them that what they do is amazing…they are really cool. They are the cast of the TV program Friends…Love them!

I also sent an e-mail asking….why is it that we don’t have privacy? Also if they can help us because this is a family and we need our privacy. Also I need to take a class at the Long Island University. That was the reason I saw a counselor. They said that I caqn take the class to complete. Also I need to take some courses for the program that I’m and those courses are available online. We have the right of privacy.

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Oh, so now we know who to blame for “Cats.”

From: Christopher

What I am about to say in this letter is so incredible, it sounds unbelievable. But, it is the absolutely true. I have been the victim of a conspiracy for some twenty years. It began around 1980 when I met a woman who worked in a midtown Manhattan Bar. I began to talk about movies, plays, songs, and television programs. I told her my ideas and somehow she was able to make movies, plays, songs and television programs from my ideas. It did not happen all at once, but over some period of years.

I said to her “There should be a play about Cats.” And a play called “Miss Saigon ... a love story.” And “Phantom of the Opera” based on the horror story.

Then there were the movies: I thought of the names for: American Gigalo, Big, Back to the Future, Crocodile Dundee, Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Footloose, Good Morning Vietnam, Earth Girls are Easy, Forrest Gump, Lost Boys. Risky Business, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Stayin’ Alive, Union City (starring Deborah Harry of Blondie, shot in my hometown, and an epic love story remake of Titanic.

Some of the television programs: Ally McBeal, BayWatch, a sitcom with Jerry Seinfeld. Xena, I made up the name, about a woman warrior in ancient times.

Then there were the songs: the group Blondie were friends with this woman, and she gave the the ideas I had for most of their hits. Atomic, Call Me, Heart of Glass and Union City Blue, a song Deborah Harry wrote about me. I know Deborah Harry was a friend of this woman who I only knew by her nick name “Dondi.”

I want to get the recognition and royalties for these ideas for movies, plays, songs and television programs. But as I have no written proof, I am unable to prove my claims to sue Dondi and Deborah Harry for “conspiracy to defraud me.” So I hope you can help me contact Deborah Harry and see if she will admit finally that she did defraud me of my rights to royalties for most of her hit songs. I thank you.

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Our elected leaders will be pleased to learn this is the biggest problem in Washington.

From: XXXXXXXXX@aol.com
CC: FIRSTLADY@WHITEHOUSE.GOV

A CAPITAL CITY HAS MUCH TO DO WITH SOCIO-ECONO LIIFE OF A NATION. .. SHOULD NOT BE THE LARGEST CITY OF A NATION/STATE
SHOULD NOT BE NAMED AFTER A MALE PERSON..

Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 3--Animals

2011-03-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

ANIMALS:

I don’t know the average life span of a guinea pig but I’m sure five years is enough. I think it’s time for a lesson in natural selection.

From: xxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

I am writing on behalf of Mrs. Gilman’s second grade class at P.S. 193Q. We have a 5 year old guinea pig named Fudge who is sick and in need of medical assistance. We searched locally for a vet who was willing to donate his time but was unsuccessful. Fudge had a tumor surgically removed 3 years ago. Sadly, the tumor has returned. If Fudge doesn’t receive proper medical attention soon, her future doesn’t look bright. Our hope is that if our situation receives some publicity, a vet who is willing to donate his time and talents may come forward. Fudge has lived in Mrs. Gilman’s class her entire life. She has munched her way into the hearts of not only the children, but most of the staff. We are hoping you can help.

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Ewe, gross. I think I’ll pass on this one.
From: xxxxxxxx@aol.com

Hi, I don’t want to appear on TV or have my name broadcast but could you investigate internet websites that show sex between animals and humans? This is sick and I don’t like to see those things. I told the ASPCA about this but they told me to tell you guys. I want to see those sick bastards in jail!

***********************************************************************

We hate clichés but you have to let a dead dog lie. Six years is my cutoff for looking for carcasses.

From: xxxxxxxxx@earthlink.net

(Date of e-mail: April 14th, 2005)
On May 10, 1998 in the early 2-3am hours my dog was killed on 8th Ave. and 29th St. It was a hit and run. My dogs’ body was never found. The car continued to drive away with my dog trapped…I was in extreme shock. I contacted the police… They drove me around and I could not find his body. My roommate’s boyfriend who is deaf went out looking. I posted signs, I called shelters and vets. I tried to get a story but Frank Sinatra died soon after and nobody would print it. I know this is years later and that you probably can’t do anything, but I always harbor hope to find someone out there to find his body.
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Hey, c’mon lady, the dog’s working!

From: xxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

I would like to now if a Police Officer can let their Work Dog go to the bathroom in front of your apartment door & leave it there for you to clean it up even though you asked him to clean it up, he walks off & gets in the car, laughs then leave, is there a way to get him in trouble for that?

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Ever see a cat skeleton in a tree? Didn’t think so.

From: xxxxxxxx@mac.com.

we need help getting a cat out of a tree in brooklyn that’s been there for 5 days. Nobody will help.

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Hey, people! Maybe these cats are just avoiding you!

From: xxxxxxxxxx@aol.com

My cat is stuck on the roof. My family tried to get her down but the roof is just too high. My cat has been up there for three days.

Notes From A Newsroom Pt. 2--Medical Mysteries

2011-03-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

(Reminder: These are all from real letters (remember those?) and emails received by my friend when he worked at a TV station.)

************************************************************************************
MEDICAL MYSTERIES:

You can only loose your virginity once, by definition, and time travel hasn’t been invented yet.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
About a year back my ex-boyfriend saw a program on TV I can’t really remember what channel he saw it on but I think it was 2020 but anyway there was this doctors office on Forrest Ave. that the doctor says he could give a woman back her virginity so he gave me the number and I call them to make an appointment to talk to the doctor a month before I did the surgery he told me that the surgery was common and that he had a lot of celebrity clients and that there would be no side effects I asked him if I could speak to any of his clients about it and he told me it was confidential but he did let me speak to his assistant because she herself had it so she told me that it was ok that her husband was happy and that I should do it so I said ok and put a payment of $1000 then I pay the balance on the day of the surgery which cost me $2000 plus $160 for blood test so after surgery I had to wait 30 days before I could do anything he told me the pain was only going to last 5 days I was in bed 14 days taking pain killers so I called him back and he told me to take twice the amount that I’m supposed to then I know something was not right about this man but anyway I had an appointment with him in 30 days I went back so he told me that I was free to have sex now so 4 days after I had sex with my boyfriend my vergina was the same as before so I call him and he told me to come in then he told me to wait another 30 days for it to fully heal he say every female is different some take longer to heal than others so again I listen to this fool so after 30 days was up I went back he told me everything is ok now I had sex again and I had the same result as before so I call and call and call he never return my call so I went there he told me if I want that he would do it over and that I only have to pay $500 so I said no! no more money I am giving you beside that I don’t want to do anything over so he told me to leave and good luck so I call a lawyer now I’m asking you for help I’m 21 years old and I don’t know what this guy did to me please help me I have no where else to turn.

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Just because you see it on TV doesn’t mean you should try it at home.
From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.com (and his friend Cecil)
Seeking justice due to HBO over stepping the lines of sexual content in a television program. (graphic male intercourse) during primetime television. Please help, seeking medical attention.

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Sad story but I think there are too many problems here which go beyond my ability to fix.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxx@verizon.net

I started a case with Social Security Disability. To sum it up, my paper work was sent to the appeals council in Virginia in June 2004… I started this case with two legs and ten toes. I now have one leg cut off below the knee, the other leg is missing all the toes and half the foot. I presently have diabetes, chronic heart failure, acid reflux disease, am anemic, two stints placed in my heart and had a stroke on my left side.

************************************************************************

But do they help your TV reception?

From: xxxxxx@camba.org

Hxxxxxx, please help.
In June 2002 I had surgery to reduce and lift my breasts and also a tummy tuck. Unfortunately, one breast is bigger than the other and on my tummy tuck one of the sides it looks like two bunny ears sticking out. It sounds kind of funny but it is the truth.

************************************************************************

Maybe God is trying to tell you something?

From: xxxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com
Hello Mr. XXXXX, My husband and I have been trying to have children, but my husband has a sperm problem so we baught a product which claimed to resolve the problem. We tried the product for almost a year. My husband did the semen analysis and we found out this his sperm quality has been reduced to 0% but before taking this product it was 20%.

Notes From A Newsroom: Pt. 1

2011-03-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
Tough day, the tsunami in Japan is horrifying. So I thought I would send out this post that should brighten your day a bit.

A few years ago I proposed writing a book with a good friend who was a producer for a local news station. (Local to New York City that is.) He worked on an advocacy show, one where viewers with problems would contact the station and if found worthy the station would try to find some answers or satisfaction on their behalf.

It was a good show and my friend had some success with it. But of course there had to be a flip side, which is that they received scores of emails from people who were, no other way to say it, bat shit crazy. Or deluded. Or simply angry with no way to help. Or too stupid for words. Or ... you get the idea.

Our idea, in turn, was to take some of the emails, format them, provide some snarky captions and put it out in book form. We sent it to a few agents, but no one bit. And my friend, in turn, had questions about whether the emails were even his to use.

But now a few years have passed and probably no one would care if I reprinted the old emails here, would they? If they do I am sure I will hear from them.

So, we didn't publish a book, but I will share with you what the book would have been. And if there are any agents who find themselves salivating to do this, well, shoot me an email. I am sure we can find a way to accommodate you.

Again, these are all true letters and emails from the public.

So I present ... NOTES FROM A NEWSROOM

Pt. 1: WE CAN’T HELP YOU…

(Note: Our snarky captions are in italics below. I think you'll figure it out.)

I can see it now…”At 10:00 an important consumer warning for all you lonely women out there, your 9 volt lover might get you hotter than you want.”

From: XXXXXXXXX@aol.com

I have a situation that I am at a loss for. I spoke to several attorneys and did not receive any luck…I was told it is far too extensive to proceed without costing me a lot of money…I feel now I have been through enough, being asked to go through this again is very difficult for me, and is now costing me to defend myself. This was very traumatizing for me, very emotional, and a very embarrassing situation.

A few years ago, I had a fire in my apartment, I did not have renters insurance, and took what was a severe loss for me. The fire had started from a battery operated device of mine. A vibrator. Smoke alarms in my building were not working at the time, and caused the fire to brew for several hours. The Ft. Lauderdale Fire Dept. did not want to get involved in a legal issue and refused to make a statement on that behalf. My neighbors stated they smelled smoke at 6pm, the fire dept. did not arrive till after 10pm.

The maker of the vibrator is Doc Johnson, and at the time of the fire, I had inquired to sue the manufacturer for a product liability case, but being told the cost of the case was beyond what I could afford, I put my head down, and proceeded to leave this matter behind me. The fire report humiliated me with my own words and took a great deal to recover from.

In my efforts to get over this, and move on with my life, I have recently been served papers for the damages to the building…I have searched for legal advice, my only luck was to hire an attorney in my defense of this case. Who then advised me I could write letters to the manufacturer, in hopes that they would not want to cause any hassels. Also being informed I might get a response or they might throw it in the trash. I don’t know what to do, and don’t understand why I have to go through this. On that note I came here to see if you have any further advice for me.

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Watch out for that 4th step it’s a doosie!

From: XXXXXX@hotmail.com

Please help….A letter to the Long Island Rail Road

Tonight was the ultimate. I arrived home at the Lindenhurst LIRR station at 8:45pm to find two women placing police tape closing down a railroad stairway. They explained that the stairway was being closed because someone complained about the safety of the 4th step. What they neglected to expand upon (and I’m sure they didn’t realize they were speaking with a 4th step veteran) was that on the 4th step, and on the 4th step for the entire week before, was a huge pile of human feces. (I don’t think dogs would travel that high to alleviate their problems)… There are CONSTANT problems with the LIRR Lindenhurst facility…Any service provider who leaves an escalator out of service for an extended period while providing a stairway to customers paved with human feces for an extended period of time is asking for trouble. And you’ve found it.

Sincerely,

Bill

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Welcome to NYC, we have the Empire State building, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty and tax free crack!

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com

I have a few things bothering me about my travel occasionally to the city; the subways have no bathrooms, many stations have no or inadequate seating. When you get to the city the bus stops have frequently no or inadequate shelter or seating. The parks are frequently dirty, filthy and foul smelling. The bathrooms rarely have tissue paper, never have paper dispensers, no soap to wash your hands. Your story about fining a store owner for selling lousy made me sick. The city fines a hard working store owner for making a profit on cigarettes and not paying taxes, but lets the pot and crack dealers work the city with impunity, how come I have to pay taxes and the crack dealers don’t have to?

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You got the wrong guy for this one.

From: XXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com

Help me I need a girl will you help me? Call me at 215-XXX-XXXX. Please help fast I need a girl to have sex with and pride my life around. You must help, or if you are gay just tell me I’m kinda gay too.

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No kids, no laughing, no traffic, no cold weather, Gods’ not listening? Got it, we’ll get right on it.

From: XXXXXXXXX@aol.com

I just wanted to congratulate you on your hard hitting exposé. Your report has truly opened my eyes to the injustices that are surrounding me in my daily life. The children in the park next to my apartment building must be stopped! They are so loud. Have you ever heard a group of children laughing? It’s enough to drive you mad. I also live a few blocks from the George Washington Bridge. The noise from the bridge makes it quite difficult to sleep. The city of NY has ignored my numerous requests to close the bridge during my normal sleeping hours. Please help! It has also come to my attention that New York City is sometimes far too cold. I have talked with God multiple times about this “situation” but have yet to receive a response. I truly believe that if you speak to God the way you did those scoundrels we can get this cold weather taken care of right away.

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This story will probably not have a “happy ending.”

From: Stacey

my problem is that today I had an interview with this person about a body rub position ... that I found on craigslist.org. . I met the guy at 52st and 8ave and then he met up with me and he brang me to his business apartment. . he told me about the position and that you give massage topless. . to the client. .I gave him a full body massage while he was nake. . but then the part was that I have to jerk him off at the end. . and that doesn’t seem like this is part of a massage policy? What do you think? And he say that I have to be nuke too but I told him I feel unconforable. . and then at the end. . he say that I don’t have to use my hands but to use my mouth to give a blow job... my question to you howard is do you think this not a real business? He say that his other girls that work here are nuke and give bow jobs. . this is a private massage business. . I think this wrong? What do you think? Don’t you need a license for doing massage?

************************************************************************

Wait, why do you know this?

From: Yehuda

There is something going on at Delta airlines. When I call the 1-800 number for reservations and am put on hold, one of their hold music/advertisments “for switching to AT&T residential service and get Delta sky miles” has a guitarist playing the music of the NAZI National anthem, “Deutschland uber alles” in the background! This is a great injustice to all jews, and a violation of my civil rights every time I call that I have to hear this. Can you help?

What Sensory Processing Disorder Means To Us

2011-03-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
I realize that a few posts back I left a bit of a cliff hanger, in regards to what it means for Stella to have Sensory Processing Disorder. So, I will do my utmost to explain it. Please, I am not a doctor, so this is not the gospel truth, just my best interpretation of what it means. At least as far as Stella is concerned.

Basically it means that you have a hard time, as the name of the disorder implies, processing sensation, information and stimuli. We all have the ability to regulate how we deal with stimuli. This can be new ideas, the signals that coordinate our muscles and brain, or things as basic as the five senses. The latter two are the major areas that people with SPD have to work at, and develop strategies for.

You see you can be overly sensitive to stimuli, meaning you jump when you hear loud noises and light makes you squint, even if it's not all that bright. (And so on.) You can also be under-stimulated, meaning that normal sensations don't really register with you. These are the kids who put their tongues on everything, twirl around getting dizzy until they throw up, and don't feel pain like the rest of us do.

If you are overly-sensitive the world can be quite an overwhelming place. In Stella's case the world, quite literally, was an overwhelming place, in fact. THIS is why she didn't sleep for the first 18 months of her life, or so. The very worldness of the world, I suppose, bombarded her in such a way that she literally couldn't handle it.

It all makes so much sense now. The first night we brought her back from the hospital she screamed and cried, and couldn't sleep. Aha!, I thought. I have just the thing!

Our bassinet had a vibration mode on it, kind of like a junior, junior version of the old "magic fingers" found on some of your seedier motel mattresses. (And that's saying something.) And failing that it had a curved plastic tower that emitted soft music, had lights that oscillated up and down and even a mobile with little spinning bears.

No crying child, I thought, could withstand this onslaught of soothingness.

She was so adorable, so small, so new, I just couldn't bear to see her upset. (In her little onesie, the memory, I tell you, of her back then, it makes me tear up a bit, even now.) So with great confidence I flipped the switch on the magic fingers and awaited her soft, soothed cooing sounds.

Instead she only screamed louder and longer, as if in mortal pain. Ah! No way! This could not be!

Stubbornly I kept the bassinet on "vibrate" mode for about five minutes, confident this was all just a mere misunderstanding. It was not, she wailed and wept, and would not be comforted.

I begrudgingly turned the vibration mode off, sad that it would never get to do its intended job.

But I had options! I turned on the soft music and oscillating lights, and found myself almost hypnotized by the magical effect. Stella, once more, only screamed more and louder. The spinning bears, too, did dick.

And so it went. Nothing we did soothed her for days, weeks, months. (Nothing, that is, except nursing on Randi's breast for hours at a time, until Randi began to bleed.) We had gotten a baby swing for a present, she, again, only screamed more.

I could go on, but I am sure you get it. The point is, and we didn't learn that she had a disorder that upset her thus until three months ago; she was overstimulated by it all, and those various toys only amped up the stimulation. The magic fingers probably felt to her like electric shocks or needles, or made her want to crawl out of her skin. The lights probably shone like magic cubes, the music probably pounded in her head like a hi-fi set on "annoy."

Over time other symptoms manifested. Stella was late to roll over, late to crawl, late to walk, even late to talk. (Hard to believe the talking part if you see her today, she talks a blue streak, and has a great vocabulary for a little child. Seriously, it's better than some possessed by my old customers at the dive bar I used to tend bar at.) She had and has a hard time going up stairs, or down. Her utensil skills are still fairly crude. She doesn't know how to jump.

All this is a function of her body not being able to process the signals coursing through it. There is a slight lag, the regulator inside is not quite regulating right. So external stimuli floods her and her electrical nervous impulses can't keep up with what needs to be done.

It's not all that uncommon a disorder we have learned. Something like 10-15% of all children suffer some degree of this, one way or the other. Virtually every child with autism has SPD in some way, but the reverse is not true.

With Stella the way it shows up in public is that she becomes overwhelmed in scenes with a lot of commotion. So preschool with its bright colors and busy, busy children causes her to mainly shut down. The situation is very different at home, where she is completely at ease, and comfortable, obviously, with us. I wish her teachers could see that Stella a little bit. I know they care about her a great deal, and I wish they could get to have some of that kind of fun with her.

So we are doing our best to help her learn how to cope with it, and we have to learn how to help her cope as well. Twice a week she sees a great occupational therapist paid for by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, through an early intervention program called First Steps. She is eligible for this program up to age 3. So it will end on April 14, her birthday. We are also examining other schools that have staff that are trained in developmental and socialization issues.

But for us, we want Stella to get all the help we can get for her, but we also don't want to over-react, and make this some kind of defining thing for her. It's not. She is a lovely child, so friendly, so funny, so personable, so smart too. She is truly the sun and the moon to us, the reason the world turns, why it all was created, what it's all about. She is a gift and sometimes when I go to bed it's with a smile, knowing I will get to be with her the next morning. (Sometimes I don't go to bed at all, insomnia!)

We just want her to be able to share that face, that we are so privileged to see, with the rest of the world. And so that the rest of the world gets to know the real Stella back. So she has something called Sensory Processing Disorder, but it's not who she is, it's just a thing. We'll deal with it, get used to it, and eventually, I believe, perhaps well down the road, stop thinking about it.

Enough With The F*cking Teacher Bashing

2011-03-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

Punish the poor for not being able to afford private schools. Punish the teachers for wanting the wages and pensions THEY NEGOTIATED FOR. Punish those who believe a public education should be a right and that teachers deserve to be well paid as professionals. Punish the teachers again for daring to work with America's children, only THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB in this nation. Yes, you heard me. More important than being a cop. More important than being a firefighter. More important than serving in the now sainted military. More important than opening your own small business, or running a large mega-corporation. More important than what I do. More important, likely, than what you do too. More important than being a principal or superintendent at those same schools. (Seriously for all the vitriol directed at teachers there is VIRTUALLY NONE directed at those two jobs mentioned above. Yet public educational systems can only work as well as the principals and superintendents allow them to. Still, it's all the teachers fault.)

Yes, being a teacher is the most important job in America. Because it is the one job that truly keeps the American dream alive. What is that dream? It's not just getting rich. It's the dream of being able to achieve, to have the opportunity to do what you can conceive of. Of not being stepped on all your life because you happened to have the wrong parents. It's the dream that a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, with one white parent and one black parent can somehow, yes, become President of the United States. Despite all our problems NO OTHER NATION in the world has put a leader in place like Obama. Like his policies or hate them, we should all be proud that he had the chance, that's all the chance, to become the leader of the free world. None of this would have been possible without a decently funded public education system.

Only some people don't really like that dream, no! They like to keep all the power and all the money for themselves. And they have legions of useful idiot allies among the ranks our nation's ignorant, who have been brainwashed for generations to believe that all government services are somehow wrong and suspect. That charter schools are a miracle cure. They're not. There will always, and should always, be a need for excellent, traditional classroom teaching. The answer is not to find a way to pay teachers even less, and take away their benefits, all in the name of new-religion frugality. The answer is to pay teachers well, give them the benefits they've earned and deserve and find ways to help them educate better. One issue: how about making sure our nation's most poor actually have access to stuff like ... books? (My wife is a public school teacher and taught in the South Bronx. Yes, there weren't enough books. And her principal spent school funds on new, expensive mahogany furniture for her office. Again, somehow the under-performance of this school is the techers's fault. Shame on us all.)

Look, just pay the fucking teachers what they negotiated for and earned.

And stop the ignorant teacher bashing. How about blaming the huge, gaping wholes in our national budgets on the real villains? Those on Wall Street who actively destroyed our economy with financial weapons of mass destruction? How about blaming those who abetted them from 2000-2008 by deregulating every market in sight and making the Securities and Exchange Commission even more toothless? There were no cops on the beat to watch our nation's financial markets. We were told they would never destroy themselves in the name of enlightened self interest, those banks. And they didn't. They got bailed out. We got destroyed.

How about blaming our broke, indebted economy on the people in the mirror? We couldn't save, we spent every dime we had and then borrowed more to spend more. Now we're broke, as a nation and, once more, it's the teachers' fault?

I have heard this quote in many ways, many times, but it is especially apt now. If you think education is expensive try ignorance.

We've tried it. And look where it got us. And, again, somehow this is all the fault of our teachers? Maybe we should start blaming the students too? Only not the ones in school now, they are children, but the ones who graduated and then lead lives of deliberate ignorance. You know, us.

Back On The Wagon

2011-03-01T20:05:00.000-08:00

Since I am printing, in serial form, the first blog entries I ever did here on The Huffington Post I've decided I also need to create some new material. If I'm going to, in other words, revive the past I also need to put something out that's fresh. I feel like I'm trying, in other words, to get back on the writing wagon. My goal is 10 minutes a day, not a whole lot more. If I can keep up with it, I will feel better about pretty much everything. I always feel better when I write.

Given this loose mission I am going to keep the first few entries pretty helter skelter. Whatever rises to the surface will be what I write about. In this case what's been on my mind is writing itself.

For the longest time I've had this idea that I want to, somehow, write a book. A memoir, to boot. I think I have an interesting story to tell, but I think I've developed a block about it.

The idea is simply to collect much of what is already on this blog, namely the first two and a half years of our life with Stella. Okay, a little bit before that as well.

My goal is to try to make something fun, interesting and worth reading. The center thread I see running through it is that for so much of the first year and a half of her life she didn't sleep really at all. And when you coupled that with all the problems we had with various apartments and living situations (our first apartment was on a block with five construction projects, our second apartment was under a Russian a-hole who would deliberately drop heavy weights on the floor to wake Stella up--and we had lead paint issues--our third apartment was riddled with bed bugs, twice) it drove first my wife and then me to the brink. And then a couple of steps beyond the brink. Couple this with the incredible stress of a nearly year long debate about whether to move to Kentucky or not, and me losing my job, I would have to say that the past three years or so have easily been the most stressful of my life.

Not that there weren't good things too, and not that some of it wasn't fun and funny, but it's hard to reconcile it all. Also there are things I've written that I love, but I am not sure where they should go. I wrote that huge piece about how hellish it was to simply drive out of Brooklyn to New Jersey. It was a 12 part series--it was like the I Cladius of blog entries. But Stella is only in it a bit. And when I printed it out it came to ... 60 pages. Gulp! Where does that fit in a book where the through line is about how our daughter didn't sleep and we learned she had Sensory Processing Disorder? Can it?

Seriously, we went into counseling, and much, much worse over the past two years. Some of it was actually quite horrifying. How to reconcile that? How to make it instructive and yet still a memoir? Do you have little asides where you talk about SPD? How to make it funny one moment and then deal with the horror of a stressed out couple, terrified their kid has lead poisoning, fighting, it seems, with everyone, even with one another? (And we did more than a little of that too during this time.)

I don't know right now, I just don't. I feel if I can get it together it would pin all your ears back and blow a lot of shit, frankly, clear the fuck out of the water. But I am just a bit stuck. How to make it a book, not just a disconnected series of interesting stories that all took place in a sort of rough sequence?

I know, just do it. I am thinking, or writing, out loud here. I can only thank you for reading, if you're reading. But this is the sound of a guy trying to figure something out, not really the sound of a man here to writing something clever. But this helps, somehow, it just does. I don't know why.

Well, that's 10 minutes. I feel like somehow this accomplished something. I am also oddly looking forward to the next entry. I guess that's what it's all about!

A new video of Stella

2011-02-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

I am such a slacker when it comes to posting current photos or videos of Stella. But this one is from just a week ago. It's adorable! It's her singing "Shabbot Shalom!" She must have learned it at her pre-school, because I sure don't remember teaching it to her. She's really coming along, speaking, walking, talking, she's an absolute riot, and I am so lucky to be her dad. Enjoy!

When We Knew Something Was Amiss

2011-02-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

We had received the postcard for the birthday party in Stella's bag. It was for a classmate of her's at Adath Jeshurun preschool. Stella is in a class with 12-13 other toddlers, and from what I had seen so far she loved and was very comfortable in her school. In fact on the first day I walked her down the hallway to class, she was so calm, holding my hand in hers. All around us children wailed and cried, terrified to be away from their parents. But not Stella, I was so proud of her. (We have a short video of this, it is amazing, kids are just SCREAMING. And you look at Stella, la di da, like nothing's going on out the ordinary.)

Why was the postcard in the bag? Well, every day when I bring Stella to school I bring a little bag with her. The bag has an embroidered mermaid on it, and her name. It was a gift from my first cousin Eric and his wife Heidi, which was really sweet and very much appreciated. Now we use it to hold her extra clothes, diapers, what have you. On Fridays it holds a fresh loaf of challah, brought from the school home. It also holds various status reports from her teachers.

Anyway, the postcard. It had a photo of a young boy dressed in a Batman suit from Halloween, one of those suits with the foam muscles. It was adorable. Stella looked at it for one second and smiled. "Alex!" She knew right off who it was, and then started to talk about him with some enthusiasm. Next she talked about some of her other classmates and even some of her teachers. This kid, we thought, loves that school. And she is going to love this party, we have to go.

The party was to be held at a place called All About Kids in Louisville. We've been there before and, again, Stella loves it. It is an indoor playground, with mini trampolines, one of those inflated bouncy-bouncy rooms (for lack of a better description), slides of all kinds, just tons of stuff for kids to jump on, ride on and have a great time on. I go there about once a week with Stella and she just has the best time, she can't wait until I get her shoes off before she's up and running. "Bouncy bouncy!" she says, so happy.

This is going to be doubly great for her then we thought. She loves All About Kids and seems to love her classmate Alex too. This confluence of things even got me excited, because I love it when she has a good time.

Well, the say of the party arrived, and we met all the other parents upstairs. Stella kept to herself, which I didn't think too much of. Then we all went downstairs to the play area. There was a long runway that lead into a big pit of soft foam squares. The kids were to wait in line, run down the runway, and jump in. They all waited in line, more or less, but not Stella. She had this kind of blank look on her face, as if she was in another dimension.

One by one the kids waited for their turn to come and then ran down into the pit, where they would jump into it. When it was Stella's turn I had to get on the runway with her and guide/push her down to the pit. Once she was there she didn't want to jump in. Once she was finally in she didn't want to get out. She was oblivious, it seemed, to the order of how this was going. Meanwhile all the other kids knew more or less by instinct how to follow most of the orders and take turns. Stella just didn't seem all there.

Next we were lead to a little zip wire sort of contraption, where kids would hold onto a handle and then glide over a pit of foam. Once over the pit they would let go and fall in, all in all a lot of fun. I saw one classmate after another of Stella's try it and have a great time. But when it was her turn she screamed and wouldn't even get near it. Randi said this is okay, she's just scared. Randi also said this sort of thing used to happen her too when she was young, there was just so much going on.

I was a bit miffed that Stella was, well, kind of a fraidy cat with this stuff. But more to the point I was worried a bit, this didn't seem like the kid I knew. Back in Brooklyn in the playgrounds she would climb up, slide down, do the whole deal, for hours sometimes. Sometimes she was more bold, sometimes less, but she never just withdrew. I didn't know what to make of it.

Finally we all went upstairs for cake and ice cream. I couldn't wait to see her say hi to Alex, whom she had recalled with such warmth, but once again she completely shied away from all of the other kids, and either sat on my lap or Randi's. When cake came she dutifully ate it, but totally ignored the kid right next to her. Again, it was like she was there, but not really there.

After the party ended we packed up and when it was just the three of us Stella seemed like herself once more, chatty and lively. What the hell, we thought, is going on here?

More to come.

Sensory Processing Disorder

2011-02-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

Today I picked up Stella from her pre-school, Adath Jeshurun, and took her directly to Hear Here for Little Ears, a place in Louisville where they test, as the name indicates, hearing for children. It is paid for by the state of Kentucky, and is something we needed to do to ensure that Stella's developmental delays/issues are not related to her hearing.

(Wait, did he say developmental delays? I did. I will get into that more as the entry progresses.)

We were tested by a friendly woman named Shelley Moats. We were supposed to meet up with her about two weeks ago but had to cancel because there was a pretty severe snow storm, which in Kentucky means it came up to about my ankles. It's not so much the roads I worry about here, it's the other drivers. There's a little ice and they totally lose it.

The process was fairly painless (other than the truly awful cup of pod-coffee I had in the office: caramel mocha? Ugh, something like that); Stella sat in my lap while they put a foam covered tube into her ear to test the makeup of the canal. Both sides were perfect. Then we went into a small room with a doctoral student and Shelley piped in sounds from a control booth. When the sound would come from the left and Stella turned appropriately a picture of Minnie Mouse would flash. When it came from the right Winnie the Pooh would flash. Occasionally, for no reason I could discern, a middle picture of Tigger would light up too. Stella was a great little trooper through it all, even during the part where they put the tube in her ear. She hates having things put in her ear, she's very sensitive about it.

Before going in I had a nice conversation with the receptionist, a pleasant woman who also has a three year old. She called me Mr. Serchuk, which took me a moment to deal with. ("Dude, Mr. Serchuk's my dad!") Then she asked probably one of the stranger questions I've heard in some time.

"In New York are the Starbucks faster than they are here?"

I had to think about it. I am not a great drinker of coffee, despite risking it with the caramel pod above, and when I do I avoid Starbucks. Not for anti-corporate reasons. But for taste reasons. I think their brew is unremittingly bitter, with the added bonus of being expensive too.

Still, it was an interesting question. I would have to imagine that virtually everything in New York is faster than here in Louisville, but it's also much more crowded, right? So that's how I answered. If there isn't real traffic, I said, the New York Starbucks would have to be faster. My memories of Starbucks, in fact, are of them kind of joylessly shoving a hot cup of liquid tar my way, more or less with some alacrity. And that's what I told her.

"Because here, it just takes them so long to make the actual coffee," she said. They just keep talking her ear off, when all she wants is some joe. That's the South for you, I suppose. I really don't know. As a guy who spends 85% of his time in his apartment I don't really meet to many people during the day. But when I do they seem thoroughly decent. And friendly.

Anyway, back to the hearing test. Stella, it turns out, has great hearing. A bit better than average. This was great to know, but it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. As I've documented in this blog at some length back when she was a toddler the problem was that she heard all too well. When we would try to get her down for a nap or, heaven forbid, some actual sleep it would take just the slightest sound, the merest crack of the floor or creak of the lead-paint covered door to jolt her awake, wherein she would then proceed to stay awake for hours on end. So hearing, yeah, not such an issue with this one.

The issue, though, is why she was so sensitive to sound in the first place. Because we expected to stay away for the first several months without sleep. We didn't expect to have a child who seemed completely shocked and pained by the sheer volume and rawness of the world. Who cried from exasperation all day and all night for weeks, neigh, months. It was expected that she would cry, all babies do, thank god. But this, this, was something else. It was, we have only recently come to know, because Stella was afflicted by something called Sensory Processing Disorder. Which I had never heard of until we finally had her examined by a series of therapists within the past two months.

Once we learned what this disorder is it all started to make sense, all of it. The extreme crankiness that had no cure, and went on for over a year. The sleep that virtually never came for 18 months. The fact that she hated being swaddled, hates loud sounds, hates even being touched or held. We felt so alone, for so long, we thought this was just stuff that we had to deal with, that this was simply what having a kid is all about, only worse. Other parents simply couldn't relate. We'd hear advice that worked wonders for their kid, and it would never do anything for us. We'd hear about letting her cry it out, how there are choices you make about how to train your kid. None of this ever worked for us. And why? SPD.

Now, the question. What is Sensory Processing Disorder, and how did we know Stella had it? That is a question for the next blog entry.

Hospitals

2010-10-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Stella felt especially bold on the playground. It was about two months ago, and she was playing on the jungle gym usually reserved for the big kids. I was proud of her, as she is typically very cautious about heights. But here she was, climbing up, up, up and sliding down. "I want to do it again!" she's scream in joy at the bottom. And she would do it again, and again.

She was happy, so I was happy. It's an easy formula to remember.

I had my backpack, with all my supplies in it, the diapers, et al. I turned my back for a second to put it on a bench and this is when disaster struck.

This time, you see, she didn't try to go down the normal slide, but the corkscrew slide. And she didn't really try to slide down it at all, but for some reason, WALK down it. I saw her, it was, as the cliche goes, in slow motion. She put her foot over the edge and moved forward. She gained no footing and then fell forward, falling down the slide. Her head hit the side of the slide, toward the bottom, with a horrifying thud.

Oh no!

I ran over to her, and picked her up. She cried, and cried and cried, hysterical.

I held her, terrified, ashamed, frantic. What to do, what to do? I had to see how she was. I tried to talk to her, no real response, just more tears. I kept trying to break through, but I could not.

Since I didn't know quite what to do I decided to see what there was to see. I gave her some milk, which she eventually drank. I offered her a snack which she did not want. Then, after a while, I put her back on the ground of the playground.

She wondered around and then moved to the little kids playground. She started to climb up the stairs and then slid down the little slide. She seemed okay actually, or so I hoped. I decided to wait and see.

After about five minutes I could see that things were not quite usual. She seemed dazed. I walked to her and asked her what color my blue shirt was. She took a moment. "White." She knows her colors real well, so this worried me. Then she said it was green.

That was it. I decided we had to go to the ER.

I picked her up and gently strapped her into her seat in the back of our car and drove to the ER room at the local Baptist hospital in Louisville, which is about two blocks from our apartment.

The wait was about a half hour, and in that time Stella seemed to come to, but I still couldn't be sure. You hear stories, you know? But, by the time we saw a doctor she seemed like normal. She could count to 10, as usual, and knew her colors. The doctor reassured me that these things happen, and it is a good thing that these playgrounds are made of plastic, because it greatly reduced the possibility of any real trauma happening to the head.

Relieved I drove home, but I feared the bill to come.

You see, last Spring we went to the ER in Brooklyn. We thought she had swallowed a hair beret, and when we told her doctor she said we had to take her to the hospital, now.

At the ER in Park Slope they took some X-Rays, and the like. It was involved, yes, but we weren't there all that long, and while we saw a couple of doctors we didn't take more than an hour and a half of anyone's time.

The x-rays found nothing, and we found the missing hair beret about two weeks later, under her crib. Ah well, but better safe than sorry.

The bill made me sorry, though. It was over $700, and this was after our insurance covered whatever it is that it is supposed to cover. It was $350 or so just for the doctors and $430 for the hospital itself. I do realize we got x-rays, but sheesh.

But what can you do? We paid it.

So imagine my fear when I saw the bill in the mail from Baptist in Louisville. How much are we going to get screwed this time? I opened the letter and my eyes popped, but not in the way I expected.

$18.

It was $18 freakin' dollars! This must be a mistake, a misprint, there must be a zero missing, or two! No, this was it, this is what we owed, with the same insurance plan, same everything.

Two weeks ago I mailed in my check for $18. And that's it, it's paid for.

Stella still won't go near the big corkscrew slide, but I don't mind. Later, when she's ready.

7 Things About Me

2010-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

As noted by my friend, and fellow writer, Sarah, everyone loves a list. So I am stealing her idea and writing down 7 things about me.

1. I can twirl my eyeballs around really, really fast. It's been described as sickening and nauseating and just plain weird by most who have seen it. I have never actually seen it, although I guess Randi could record me doing it, and play it back to me.

2. I had NO idea at all what I wanted to do with my life, or even liked to do until Mrs. Summers's class in seventh grade, where I learned that I liked writing stories. Then I really got turned around by the writers Harlan Ellison (for his first person essays) and Hunter S. Thompson (for his wild, wicked sense of humor and craziness). Then I was like, yeah, I could kind of be like a mixture of THOSE guys.

3. I am the co-guardian of my older sister, Barbara, who has Down's Syndrome.

4. I say I never owned a dog, but this is not true. During middle school we got an older female Golden Retriever mix from the shelter. I named her Tory and she smelled awful, but was very friendly and sweet. Unfortunately she was sick and we had to take her back to the shelter, and she died not much later.

5. My earliest memory is of waking up on the floor in my bedroom, in our old house in O'Shaughnessy Lane in Closter, NJ. Then I wandered into my sister's room and, this is the memory though it may not be reliable, we argued and she hit me in the stomach. Sharon is not a violent person!

6. This is pretty well known, but it's still cool. In 1996 I was a driver in Bill Clinton's motorcade when he came to Denver. My car was a copper Ford Taurus, and my Secret Service name was Straggler Two. (Straggler One was, of course, right in front of me.) I was the very last car in the motorcade. Little known fact, there are two motorcades. The first five cars or so, actually have dignitaries in them. Then there is a gap and there are all the other cars, who have press or whomever. I had no one, both days! I shook hands briefly with the POTUS and got my picture taken with him. They never sent me the picture though.

7. As a freshman in high school I was an indifferent athlete, but somehow during winter track I managed to be in part of a four man relay team that actually won the blue ribbon for first place at a track meet. I think my time was a touch over 64 seconds for my quarter mile. Not bad! To this day I have no idea how I did it, as I hadn't trained all that well, and my prior time was something like 80 seconds.

Thoughts On A Wednesday Morning In September

2010-09-29T03:39:00.001-07:00

Stella is still asleep, and will be for probably the next half hour or so. Randi is awake and getting ready for work. I am here, of course. It is 6:40 a.m. If you had told me back in high school that I would ever be able to get up this early I would have laughed in your face, if I wasn't already asleep that is. I was always up late, reading, I guess. And I found it extremely difficult to get up before 10:00 a.m. I always attribute that to laziness, but I think that there is a biological reason for it as well. I had read somewhere that teenagers' brains are wired to sleep in late. I am not sure what the genetic advantage could be of this. Maybe it was so the rest of the tribe could have some peace and quiet back in the stone age and this kept them from literally murdering the teens in their midst. I am certain that if I did some research into this I could find out more, but I don't feel like it right now.

************************************************************************

Trying to slowly gather some momentum in the Louisville area, mainly with writing. I am working on a freelance piece right now, although I won't discuss it for superstitious reasons. I am also working to meet with other editors and the like. Beyond that I have a meeting within the next two week at a local university to get oriented for their grad programs for education. I have had a hard time figuring out exactly what I want to do, should I move in this direction.

Classroom teaching seems like it would be very satisfying in many ways, but also a total frenzied, burnout-producing grind. I love kids, and love to instruct, but I think I would have a hard time trying to keep a room of uninterested high school or middle-schoolers engaged and interested. The thought of having to be a disciplinarian for so many kids seems wholly uninviting to me. Look at this, I am already assuming they would not like my class.

I have thought about guidance counseloring, which I do realize is not a verb. It would offer the opportunity to help a kid one on one, which could be very rewarding. And I would get an office, and wouldn't have to be "on" the entire time in front of a class. I would get to help kids find what they want to do with their lives, which I think I would enjoy. But it might not be as directly rewarding as teaching.

I guess I can't know, as I really haven't done either job.

One of my favorite parts of my past few editing jobs was my ability to work with other folks and help them get better at what they did. Mentoring, I guess, although I hate that word, as it's become such a trite, lame cliche. I thought of it as simply helping them, not being their mentor, so to speak. But it seems the young adults I worked with closely have thrived and continue to do well. Some of them even learned a few things from me, I believe. Of course their success is the result of their own hard work and brains, but I like to think I helped them learn a few things for the limited time they spent with me.

That I liked. I liked working with smart people, and helping to make them smarter, on a one to one basis.

I have been told that I would make a good college instructor, but I don't know where I would begin to get such a job, or what the job would even be. Writing instructor, I guess? Journalism professor? I am not sure what the qualifications needed for such a job would be, or even, for sure, what the job is. I guess there are always ways to find out, such as reaching out to people who already do this job and talking to them. Usually people are pretty good about spending 10 minutes, or so, with folks who have a genuine interest in learning more about what they do for a career. So, maybe I should do that!

In other news, I am still getting used to Louisville. I don't feel like I really know the heart of the city just yet. In NYC you could tell, from the moment you came in, that this town has a strong identity, one impossible to ignore, in fact. It is THE CITY. We even called it The City growing up in NJ. There are a million different scenes in this world, some easier to learn about, some took more time, but they were all there.

But I don't have that feeling about Louisville. There doesn't seem to be a real city vibe here, or at least one I've seen yet. It's a cityburb, or at least that's what I've started to think of it as. It's not quite what I consider a city, yet it is not really a suburb either, it's kind of both at the same time. There doesn't seem to be a real logic to the layout, either. Everywhere I go there are just these cool little spots, and out of the way stores, and the like. It is definitely funky.

One cool thing: barbecue smokers. This is something I never saw in NYC. As I drive around town I see, again and again, that many businesses have barbecue smokers parked in their parking lots, actively smoking up meat every day. I have seen this in at least a half a dozen places. It just seems so southern to me. And I'm not really even a big BBQ guy, but this is just cool. Of course you vegetarians out there will not agree.

One thing I miss is the feeling of a large, humming downtown. In NYC I could take or leave Midtown (though I liked Times Square, most hate it). But I always loved downtown, and could spend hours walking around there, looking at the shops. Brooklyn too had whole neighborhoods chockablock with dense, urban things going on. Concerts, stores, boutiques, guitar shops, next to delis. You know, urban living.

Downtown here is very, very mellow. You can get a parking spot right in the middle of town during the work day for god's sake! On Sundays the place is practically deserted.

Not that this is bad, but it's an adjustment. I do realize NYC was not, and is not all that perfect. But I miss walking through dense, urban areas. It's the only place Spider-Man could ever have been a superhero, know what I mean?

*********************************************************************

I am reading "The Snowball" a biography of Warren Buffett. He tries so hard to come across as a folksy, lovable guy who just happened to get lucky. But he is a complete and total genius, with an ungodly ability to analyze stocks and invest. Right now in the book he is 25 years old, and will sit all day, every day, analyzing stocks and companies, and really breaking down what they do. At this point he had been doing this for at least 10 years, all day, every day. It's astonishing. If you met him when he was 15 you would have remembered him; he would have been the smartest, most socially awkward 15 year old who ever shook your hand. He was always, always obsessed with numbers, probabilities and took an active interest in calculating longevity. He had a near photographic memory, and later on knew his finance textbooks better than the people who wrote them. In short, he was born a numerical genius, with an almost unheard of amount of brain power, but had to learn how to interact socially to charm people and succeed. But his brain was akin to a cannon, where most people have a pea shooter, and the smart among us have a handgun. The dude was and is gifted, but not in the usual ways. To his advantage. Replicating such genius, of course, is all but impossible.

But I am also inspired. I know I will never, and can never, be a math genius like him, but his ideas can be applied to other folks. The book is called The Snowball because that's the central metaphor for how he sees life: you start small with a good idea, or money, or an area of expertise and just keep adding to it until it compounds. That I can relate to.

And I do know something about investing, as I wrote about it for years. I am not going to be a genius stock investor like him, no one is, but I can apply myself to examine what would be better for me, and us, than keeping the money in the bank, doing nothing. I have some ideas and look forward to putting them into play.

Mainly I am inspired by Buffett's ability to plan and think long term. I am often reactive, not proactive. Things either happen to me, or they don't. But it doesn't have to be that way. One way we, as humans, can shape our world, is to make plans. Map things out. Set reachable deadlines, use the skills we have to achieve things that will improve our quality of life.

Money is important. I never wanted to really admit that before, it made me uncomfortable, but it's a self-defeating attitude to believe otherwise. It should not be why you do what you do, or else you will be not fully engaged in your own life. But it is important, and there are ways where you can plan and likely find ways to get more of it. And why not have more if you can have more?

So far that's my take away. Planning is okay. In fact it's a good idea. Set deadlines, goals and learn to think beyond today, or even this week. It's not illegal, you know?

Anyway, that's it for now. My hands are starting to cramp, which sucks. Maybe I need a new keyboard.

Toy Chest Child Bed

2010-09-23T03:49:00.001-07:00

Randi woke up late today, my fault. I had reset her alarm to remind me to do an interview yesterday. Now she is rushing. Yay me. :-(

*************************************************************************************

So a little progress report on the Brooklyn Baby Baby. (Which no longer applies. Now I have to find her another nickname.)

We went to the doctor's office two days ago. She is 30 and a half pounds, and I am not exactly sure about her height. But she is just about average as far as that stuff goes. The doctor was impressed by how affectionate and vocal she is.

She sings all the time, and makes up songs too. Her newest one is called "Ballerina Cat," which is just as lovely as the image it conjures. She also made up one called "Baby In The Water," which goes something like this. "Baby in the water, baby in the water, baby in the water, octopus." Sometimes she substitutes "baby octopus" for octopus. I should video tape this stuff, because it's so precious. There I go again, it's not video taping old man, it's recording.

A relatively recent passion is her stuffed animals and toys. As in having virtually all of them on her bed at all times. (She moved from a crib to a toddler bed when we moved to Kentucky about two months ago, she loves it.) Right now she is asleep, it's morning, and she has at the head of her bed probably 15-20 stuffed animals, a stuffed pie toy and, a book and yes, a tea set. She refuses to go to bed if all these things are not right where they should be, i.e. taking up 40% of the available space on her already not too big bed.

Last night before bath time she and Randi had a tea party. She took all her toys off the bed and put them down on the carpet in her room so that they too could get some tea. Then she completely ignored Randi and spoke almost entirely just to the animals. Of course the moment Randi left the room she cried and cried until she came back. Even if mom is only watching she still needs to be there for the party, I guess.

I should take a picture of this phenomenon and put it on this blog. I have been bad about posting pics recently. I know that for some of you this is a vital and important part of the blog "experience."

Stella has a very good vocabulary and can say words like "stupendous," and talks nonstop virtually all day.

She loves her preschool, Adath Jeshurun. (You know, the Jewish preschool that is 25% Jewish.) When I drop her off in the morning she walks with me, hand in hand, through the halls of the school until we get to her class room. Then she abandons me, immediately starts to play, and has to be reminded to say goodbye and give me a hug goodbye. She even did this the first day, except on that day the hallways were simply filled with screaming children. Not Stella, she looked totally at ease, and ready to go.

When I pick her up, though, she typically runs over to me. By the time we get in the car, though, she typically wants something that I had forgotten to bring. Either a book left at home or something like that.

We have discovered some nice local playgrounds. Louisville has a really, really great parks system. The majority of the marquee parks were designed by the Olmstead and Law firm, who also designed Central Park in Manhattan and my beloved Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The neat thing about these parks is that the major ones are all linked, they even have a bicycle race that traverses all of them.

We are still getting to know some local parents. I miss the playgroup support we had back in NYC, but I am hopeful that we will have some nice playgroups in the fall.

As for me, I am gradually getting into the swing, I hope. I have founded a rock band, again, I hope! We have two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer. I found the members via Craigslist, and wrote a fairly long and heartfelt ad about the kind of bad I wanted to start. I listed bands I liked (Beatles, of course, 'Stones, Velvet Underground, Ween, REM, The Dead), and said what I do and would like to do. I wanted to play mostly originals with some tasteful covers thrown in. But I wanted it to be an originals band.

I do realize this is an uphill climb. People want to hear what they already like. But I wanted the chance to see if some of the songs I wrote hold up.

Well, here's what happened. I had one drummer fire us before he ever even played with us. He wanted to play covers. A second guy showed up in a Skynryd T-shirt, played some songs with us, and then quit without another word. (Both of these guys were recovering alcohol or drug abusers. I think I met the only sober drummers in North America. Just kidding drummers!) Another bassist played with us a couple of times, and was good, but quit because he wanted to develop more time to his Stevie Ray Vaughan-ish power trio, and a keyboardist couldn't keep up with it because he wanted to devote more time to his other projects.

All this I understood and expected. I recruited based on a few criterion. Did they like the songs? (Most important one.) Would they be easy to deal with and work with? Do I like them as people? Do they understand that I am a married guy and dad? (Meaning I can commit for what I can commit to, but not hang out all night and party.)

I am happy to say, touch wood, that so far the four guys we have match the criterion above. The other guitarist, Scott, writes and sings, which I love. I also write and sing but I definitely have a soft spot for just being the guitarist in the band. Stepping out of the spotlight and just playing. I loved this role in my former band, Connecticut, but grew frustrated over time because I couldn't bring any of my songs to the band, it was not allowed. Eventually, not surprisingly, this helped contribute to the breakup of the band.

This is a shame, because had I been able to contribute we could have made a lethal combination. Now the remainders of that band are still playing some of the same dives we played, more or less, eight years ago.

The bands I always wanted to be in as a kid typically functioned as collectives of some sort. The Beatles, everyone sang, three of the four guys wrote. The Dead were a collective in many literal ways, with multiple singers and writers. Squeeze was based on a partnership of two guys, REM and U2 are total partnerships in all ways. This always appealed to me, I have never been too comfortable with it being The Dave Show. (Maybe this is why I gravitated to improv comedy in NYC, not standup.)

Of course I also love solo performers like Bruce, but the guys in his band seem to accept that his band is a benevolent dictatorship, and they don't seem to mind. But Bruce is also a genius and perhaps the world's greatest performer so I guess it's cool. Nirvana was also the intellectual work of one guy, as a songwriter, although the band's sounds was indelible and as important as his writing.

Anyway, I don't want to jinx us too much here, so I will drop it for now.

Fall has fallen, summer is over. Shed a tear for its memory and move into the new.

My High School Reunion

2010-09-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is lifted from my journal from September 12, meaning that my reunion was, yes, on September 11. It was held at the Old '76 House, in Tappan, N.Y., which is fairly close to where I grew up in Bergen County, N.J. In fact we went to the '76 House a few times when I was a child. It dates back to the Colonial Era, and once was used as a jail to hold a co-conspirator of Benedict Arnold's!

***********************************************************************************

I had an absolutely awesome time as my 20th High School Reunion. Everyone was friendly, there were good vibes all around, all day.

When I first came into the parking lot of the '76 House I saw my old friends and colleagues from the student newspaper in school, Amie Ravitz and Elana Haviv, who were parking. I wasn't sure whether I should go up to Amie, as we hadn't spoken in more than a little while. (Elana and I had kept touch over the ensuing years.) But Amie was thoroughly warm and welcoming. It felt good to have people who were happy to see me.

That was the pattern. Everyone was open, surprisingly happy to see one another. I think even we were surprised by how nice it was to simply be in one another's presence once more. I was in high spirits all night. I had been worried that people would look down on me because I am still unemployed and not all the way there yet, but no one cared. Nor did I look down on them if they were not where they thought they wanted to be.

I was happy to see old, old friends, who were almost uniformly sweet and easy to speak to. We laughed at each others jokes, reminisced about things long forgotten or suppressed in some cases. There were people there who were thriving that I had been quite worried about twenty years ago. There were people who had turned their lives and attitudes around. There were people there I had long conversations with that I had almost never actually spoken to at school. There were no cliques, there was no posturing, none of that stuff. It was like the open, happy, carefree party that we rarely actually had at my school.

(What can I say, the 1990 class at Northern Valley Regional High Demarest lacked a certain school spirit. I mentioned this to Jessica Patton, who organized the entire reunion. She said, something back that I loved: "I was a cheerleader and I didn't have any school spirit.")

I spoke with almost everyone, laughed a lot, make people laugh, enjoyed everyone's company. High school is so strange. You have nothing in common, on the face of it, with many of these folks, and yet you DO have something in common. Something very key, four of the most crucial years of your life.

Everyone should go to their high school reunion if they can. It makes you realize that people love you and miss you, even if they didn't know it. Even if you didn't know it. Milestones are real and important. As are roots. We should honor them and use them to stay both grounded and reminded of the good people we were and the good people we may yet want to become. And even if we don't, people will still like us and be happy to see us for who we are today.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

2010-09-19T03:36:00.001-07:00

Everyone is sleeping, except me, and the cats. Cromwell is being very affectionate right now, which means he's hungry.

Have a lot to catch up on. Fasted yesterday, which is always interesting and strange. Honestly, it is not that hard, for the most part. I remember the first time I fasted. It was August, I was 11 years old and in Camp Ceder Lake, a New Jersey Young Men's Hebrew Association camp. They told us there was some fairly obscure Jewish holiday on the horizon and if we wished to fast we could. I had never done it before, so I thought it would be a novel challenge. Also, and to my shame, more importantly, it would get me out of activities that day, and I could just kind of laze around. This really attracted me. Camp was so busy, I felt that at 11 years old I needed a break!

So I fasted, and don't really remember anything about it, other than, yes, I did make the entire 24 hours and breaking the fast was really cool. Me and the other campers and staffers who fasted went down to the dining hall at Camp Nah-Je-Wah (which I am sure I just misspelled) and after some prayers were set we dug into a kosher dairy style meal. Tuna salad, bagels and the like. It was celebratory and festive and I felt proud that I accomplished my goal.

Yesterday, though, was a little different. I didn't fast to get out of anything, I did it because I felt like it would be, by now, very strange not to. I have been fasting on Yom Kippur since I was 12 or 13. (Although one year I caved and bought a Whopper Junior. That was the last time I did that, though. I think I was 14.)

First, in the morning we fed Stella -- she doesn't fast, of course -- and then went to temple. We went to a temple near us called Adath Jeshurun, which is also where Stella goes to pre-school. (It's a Jewish pre-school, but even so it's student population is only 25% Jewish. I believe I already talked about this in a prior entry. Still, a lovely place.) Or shall I say Stella goes to the pre-school affiliated with the temple. I did the same as a child, and went to Temple Beth-El nursery school in Closter, NJ, where I grew up. My family were members of the temple as well.

During Rosh Hashonah you are supposed to be somewhat uncomfortable. So in addition to fasting, as if that wasn't uncomfortable enough, you also don't shower, don't shave, don't drink water, don't brush your teeth (a yuck in my book, but this year I stuck to it), and you don't wear leather. So you have the sight of a fairly well dressed guy, me, in a nice enough suit (from Target) walking around in my imitation leather sandals, with no belt, and my watch in my pocket rather than my wrist. Very strange, I guess. Felt kind of odd, although the sandals were comfortable.

At temple I had the same debate I always have, to talis or not to talis. The talis is that long fringed scarf, for lack of a better word, you see Jewish men (or mostly men anyway) wearing around. I generally feel like a poseur when I wear one, since I am not all that observant (despite my past few blog entries here), barely can read Hebrew and generally do not live a life that I would consider all that "Jewish" as far as actual, formal religious activity. In fact I believe I have worn my talis all of three times since my Bar Mitzvah in 1985.

Nonetheless, I still own one, and it has a nice blue velvet bag.

This year, after we had put Stella in the temple's day care, we went upstairs and sat down in our assigned seats. (We are not members of AJ, but they were nice enough to give us newcomers in town a pair of seats all the same.) After about ten minutes of services I felt the urge to put on a talis, so, not feeling all that strange about it after all, I took it out of my bag and put it on. I was far from alone, in fact most of the guys in the temple already had one on. I would have been conspicuous by not wearing one, I suppose, but that's not why I did it.

Why did I do it? My old Rabbi and friend, the late Josh Simon, used to say regarding religious stuff, "fake it till you make it." Meaning you may not feel authentic doing these various rituals and practices, but do them anyway, and eventually they will start to feel like they have become a part of you. In this way he encouraged me to wear a talis, for example, and Randi to try her hand at reading Hebrew.

So there was certainly an element of that in there. (Josh was a fascinating and amazing guy. He was probably about 45 and had been a journalist at Life Magazine. He played reggae-tinged rock music in the services, with him rocking out on a black Gibson SG electric guitar. He was a bit of a rabble rouser, a bit of an iconoclast. He once concluded a midrash--or exegesis--with this unforgettable thought. "What doe this all mean? I don't know, but I just think it's great!" Unfortunately Rabbi Josh passed away in early August 2005, right before he was to officiate our wedding. I could get more into it, but it would take a long, long time to write down how I felt about Josh. I loved the guy, you know?)

Another part of all this was that I wanted to put the talis on. I just did, it felt, for the first time, right. I can't explain it.

Maybe I am looking for things. I don't know, but I want to start living life less about me, me, me all the time and start reaching out to the world, in order to help it and help others more. I am a creative person and love to do creative stuff. I have spent large portions of my life around other creative types, and by nature we tend to be lovely, fun, fascinating people, but we also tend to be kind of self-centered. All those years I spent doing improv, which were wonderful, definitely gave me an insight into the minds of actors and comedians. They are great, they make wonderful friends, but there can be a certain focus on the self. I am sure this is not a surprise to most of you reading this, and many other folks have a similar issue.

But the self-centered life has not really made me happy. I never felt like I did enough for the world, never gave back enough. I would like to change that this year, and I am starting to think of various ways to do that. Becoming more involved with the local synagogue can potentially be one way. They have many programs to meet others and do various volunteer work. I am keenly interested now in learning more about these options.

We stayed in services until about 12:20 p.m. or so and then picked up Stella. She was in the playground with all the other little kids. The people watching the kids were sad to see her go. This little girl is quite loved by all who know her, I am convinced.

She ran over to us, with a little plastic cup in her hand that belonged to the temple. We tried to pry it from her hand, but then she started to scream and cry. She's almost 2 1/2 now and many, many things make her scream and cry. So we decided we would bring back the cup next time, if it was okay with the temple. Then Stella took our hands, and together we walked back to the car.

Oh, that's right, we have a new car, or at least one that is new to us. It's a Kia Rondo, a name that sounds like one of those late night commercials that sell you the pocket fisherman, or stuff like that. It's a crossover, which means it looks like an SUV, but really is a car at heart. This is for the good, as it drives and corners like a car, and gets pretty fair gas mileage--which was of critical importance to us--but is more roomy inside than a typical car with a similar wheelbase. I like it, and enjoy driving it around, but definitely was sad that we needed a second pair of wheels. More goods, more payments, more responsibility, more resources burned. All those things are true, but the fact is, you just can't have any sort of real life in Louisville without a car. It's fairly suburban in that light, and the public transportation system here has been rated as among the worst in the U.S.

So we pulled into the car. Stella's new thing is to say "It's hot!" whenever we get into the car, whether it's hot or not. But now we have an even newer thing, where I sagely shake my head and say "it's not hot." Then she nods too and repeats it. "It's not hot." Then I might put my hand on her face, and this will sound weird I know, and scream "brain eater!" She actually has grown to like this, believe it or not. In fact the other day she kept on repeating "bwain eata!" over and over, until I put my hand back on her face and did it again. In this way I am preparing Stella ... for what exactly? The upcoming zombie invasion? For life as the kid with a weird dad? I cannot know, but I am sure it will one day help Stella be a light unto all nations.

She ate lunch when we got home, we did not, and then she took a nap. But only after ensuring that about 25 stuffed animals--literally of all stripes--were on her bed. Right before naptime she panicked and screamed "mermaid!" She has a stuffed mermaid, you see. Then she jumped out of her bed like it was on fire and ran into the living room looking for it. In fact the mermaid was actually in her bed already, buried under other stuffed toys. Randi found it, and showed it to her. Stella, relieved, then climbed into her bed, and was ready for her nap. We turned on her white noise machine--a holdover from the days when she was the lightest sleeper in the world--turned out the light and closed the door.

She slept for about two hours, a good nap. During this time Randi napped and I read "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is a definite page turner, and one about a financial journalist to boot! (I knew we were a sexy profession full of intrigue!)

Once Stella awoke we got her some snacks and got out of the apartment. Among other things we went to the Crescent Hill library and bought some supplies for breaking the fast. Fasting really does take over the day, you know? Next year maybe we will go back to temple and put Stella back in the child care, I don't know.

Stella had dinner at 6:00 p.m. and we broke the fast at 6:30 p.m. It wasn't officially sunset at our apartment, but it had been 24 hours since we last ate, and, we reasoned, it was dark somewhere, you know? The food tasted delicious, as expected. We had bagels (bought at Panera because all the bagel stores here closed by 3:00 p.m.! In my hunger-induced state this pissed me off to no end, and made me angry that there wasn't one real New York bagel place in this town. I think I was being a bit overly critical, in retrospect), lox, some various salad type dishes bought at the super market, and challah. The challah was how I actually broke the fast, with some honey. It was great. Oh, and I also drank about a liter of ginger ale. Good times!

It's good to be a little hungry. One of the reasons we fast, I believe, is to be reminded that for some people the fast never ends. That hunger pain I feel once a year never ends for millions of people, including children, around the globe. In this way it makes me, I hope, more sensitive to the plight of those around the world who do not have the luxuries I truly do take for granted. In fact I think we should all fast at least once a year regardless of our religion, for 24 hours in a row. It might make the world a tinier bit more of a sympathetic place.

After the fast we gave Stella her bath and got her ready for bed. Her new thing is to scream "help!" whenever she is the slightest bit uncomfortable, like when we are putting on her pajamas. I promise, we are not torturing our daughter! So if you see us all out together and Stella is screaming for help, please realize that she might just be miffed at us for not buying her a third ice cream, not that we have punished her or anything like that. Just a reminder.

After Stella was put to bed we cleaned up a bit and watched Oliver Stone's movie "W." Stone has been accused of making up stuff in his films, and I wish he made this entire movie up, but, no George W. Bush really was our president and really did not understand what was going on in Iraq and really did rush us into a war when a little bit more time would probably have proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. But now it's too late and history is what it is.

One prayer we say during services is for our leaders, to grant them wisdom. I always say it.

I know I promised to write about the high school reunion. Next time, I guess.

Erev Yom Kippur

2010-09-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

The headline here means that tonight is Yom Kippur Eve. It's strange, being a Jew. Nobody goes to synagogue for the fun holidays but they pack 'em in for the most downbeat day off the entire year. This is the one you cannot miss if you want to consider yourself a real Jew, and it includes a fast no less. I know a lot of people who don't do anything religious all year and they still fast.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of blog posts recently. I really don't have a great excuse. I've been Mr. Momming it a lot recently, which is exhausting and time consuming. During the time I have off I am trying to get jobs, which seems to take a long time, and yield no real concrete results, at least not yet.

I have to be honest, during this time of year I miss the East Coast. The weather is as nice as it gets there and this time of the year is always special to me. Not just the leaves, but those too. It's everything, it feels like a time of renewal in the tri-state area.

I am still getting used to Louisville, but feel homesick to be honest. I still feel like I have to meet more people and do more things, become more social. It's been a real period of feeling like whatever I do or however busy I feel I feel I'm not doing enough, and am letting myself down. A negative train of though, I know, but I always feel I can do better and more.

Some good stuff too. I have tried to start a band, and it seems like the winds might be finally blowing in my direction. We had a great practice last Tuesday with a new drummer, an excellent guy named Steve. Great drummer too. We also have another singer guitarist, Scott, who is great, and a wonderful bassist, Tim. It's a jinx to talk about this stuff in public too much before we've even done one gig, but it has been a really, really fun project. I am so excited to play songs with these guys. Before this I had only played the songs for myself or maybe for Randi. The good news is they sound good with an actual band. Of course they need polishing, but that's to be expected. Still, what a thrill.

My big project I've been putting off is a book proposal. The problem is, I have to narrow whatever proposal I do to something easy to grasp and quick. This should not bee too hard, as I am an editor, but I haven't let myself have the time yet. Why? I'm being lame, I don't know. I have been told by many folks that I should do it. I would like to, too!

I am going to University of Louisville next week for orientation. I am interested in changing my path, and look forward to seeing the school. From there it is not at all inconceivable that I could begin an education major in the Spring semester. I need and want to try something new.

Stella is watching "The Wonder Pets" right now as I type. I feel guilty about making a cartoon her babysitter, but I have to have some time to do some of my projects.

Got a big dinner tonight, as we don't eat tomorrow. I was going to try my hand at a brisket, but it takes longer than I thought and we don't have all the ingredients anyway. So the brisket will have to wait.

Went home for Rosh Hashonah last weekend, and had a great, great time. I will write more about my high school reunion in the next entry. I almost didn't go, because I was embarrassed about being without a job, but my sister convinced me I should go anyway. Because a lot of these folks may not be around for the next reunion, know what I mean?

It was great to be home, see loved family and old friends. A good time was had by all and I left feeling very good about myself, despite my trepidation. But, like I said, more on that next time.

Ciao! (And easy fast for those who are fasting!)

A New Jew In Lou

2010-09-07T12:26:00.001-07:00

Okay, so one of the biggest concerns I had before The Move was how it would feel to be such a total, and complete minority here. And, no, this is not about voting Democrat.

It was, as has been described elsewhere, the Jewish problem. The problem being, mainly, that I am Jewish and the vast, vast majority of people in the greater Louisville area are not.

I've been in this situation before mind you. I lived in Boulder, Colo. for five years, where you'd go out on an average night and half the guys you'd see looked kind of like Thor, only bigger, and in more polar fleece. As for the girls, they all had names like Butterfly, had ankle tattoos and most could complete a full Triathlon before breakfast. It was kind of like living amongst really, really stoned Marines.

So it was with some relief that I moved back to the New York area in 2000. I wanted to be amongst my peoples again. This despite the fact that I couldn't score a date with the female members of my peoples to save my life back in high school and college.

Still, it was nice to have good bagels, and live amongst people who understood that "Seinfeld" was not a sitcom, it was more like a documentary.

Needless to say when Randi recommended we move a couple of years ago I feared the loss of this extended mishbucha. (Means family in Yiddish.) Would people understand me? Would everyone try to get us to join the 700 Club? Would there be a community for us to even join?

So far the answers to the above have been no, no and yes.

First, some back story. When I got here I didn't even know how many Jews there even were in Louisville. I knew the mayor was Jewish, but I didn't know if he would be immediately available for a nice Friday night dinner.

Randi and I were determined to stake out our place in the Jewish life of Louisville, no matter what. The community might be smaller here, we reasoned, but that probably means it's tight knit, and proud. We, as a people, have certainly endured worse!

After the initial hubbub of the move settled down we decided to check out synagogues, to see which one we felt comfortable in. We've gone to services at Reform and Conservative temples and have yet to find one that truly resonates with us, though we've enjoyed the people we've met so far.

I first went to a local conservative synagogue and what was really cool about it was that they had daycare for Stella. Because services really aren't her thing just yet, you know? So I got to experience the service without having to watch a toddling toddler.

I was told Louisville had an older community as many of the younger Jews are leaving for places like, yup, Brooklyn. But the community was quite old, to be frank about it. As the service progressed more and more younger people started to show up, but the service was still somewhat sparsely attended, and mostly old.

Then we went to a reform synagogue, which was a lot of fun, but this one had no daycare, so we had to watch Stella. She was completely unable to sit still, so we had to find ways to distract her. Luckily we discovered that she loves yarmulkes.

So while Randi was in the service I took Stella and walked around the temple and found a large box of yarmulkes. She basically dove into it, and put first one, then the other, on her head. She settled, more or less, on a purple satiny one that she really liked, and insisted on wearing for the next several hours.

After the service there was a little gathering over coffee and cake, where we met the rabbi and spoke to him. He had come to Louisville from Israel. (And I thought I had a trip to get here!) He was very friendly and warm.

We talked about the Jewish community in Louisville, or rather what there is of one. He told me the community was about 10,000 people strong. This didn't seem like much to me, as the metropolitan area has 1.5 million people. But 10,000 people could still fill most of Madison Square Garden, I guess.

After services we went to a bluegrass show at the Iroquois Amphitheater. During the show there was a lot of talk about Jesus, not to mention various songs about Jesus, not to mention that most of the people at the show almost certainly worshiped Jesus.

Now imagine the scene, Stella still has her yarmulke on. She loves the music! And she is totally grooving and bouncing around at this show, with a little yarmulke on. We wondered if anyone would even know what it meant? Would they think it's some kind of beret? I figured, though, that if anyone could get away with it, it would be our adorable two year old daughter. I personally wouldn't try it.

After the show an older woman walked right up to us. "Now isn't she just adorable with her little yarmulke on?" she cooed. So, at least someone knew!

From there we journeyed on. We explored different Jewish preschools, and learned that they are, on average, on 25% Jewish. The one with the most Jewish kids is all of 30% Jewish. I imagine they used to have more, but the younger Jews who reproduce are elsewhere.

As we toured one preschool we learned that contrary to that Rabbi told us Louisville actually only has 8,000 Jews, not 10,000. So there are more people who are, I believe, albino in Louisville than Jewish.

Having said that it's not that big a deal to me. We still get good challah on Friday, and I made sure to put a mezuzah on our door. (In a funny note this is our second mezuzah. The first one was made of stone and fell off our door and shattered, back in Brooklyn. I think we made God mad?)

So there I am, a new Jew in Lou. As the holidays are coming up I feel just as optimistic and upbeat about this time of year as I ever did. I do realize that I'm a bit of a minority here, but that's not what really bothers me. Mainly I just miss my Jewish family and friends back home. If they all showed up it could easily kick up the amount of Jews in this town to, say, 8,010.

New HuffPo Piece: Obama Vs. Hitler!

2010-09-06T05:10:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
So this is why I was researching "Mein Kampf." I needed to do some research on Hitler for my new HuffPo piece comparing him to Barack Obama. Give it a read, you might even think it's funny!

Sincerely,

Dave

This Is Very Strange

2010-09-03T03:19:00.000-07:00

I was on Amazon's page for "Mein Kampf"--doing research for another article--and below, no lie, are the Tags Customers Associate with This Product:

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below.
glenn beck(1)
michelle malkin(1)
rand paul(1)
recommended by glenn beck(1)
ron paul(1)

ron paul reading list(1)
rush limbaugh(1)
sarah palin(1)
sarah palin reading list(1)
tea party movement(1)

tea party revival(1)
tea party(0)

As I said in the headline, very strange. Not one book in German!

Well, THAT Was Fun!

2010-09-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

So,
There was a kind of tempest in the (sweet?) teapot yesterday. As noted in my prior blog post I was officially welcomed to the city, along with Randi and Stella, via the blog "Consuming Louisville." I thanked them back, and thought it was all surprising and neat. (Backnote: "CL" had first read my HuffPo piece, so that's how they knew.)

But it got better.

Then another person saw the HuffPo piece and totally ripped me for being a hipster New York financial writer who deigned to grace The River City with my presence.

This kind of shocked me. For one ... me a hipster? Having lived in Brooklyn, the Mecca of all things Hipster I was astonished to learn that I was that fashionable. As I joked to someone else in the wake of this post, I had come to think of myself as about as trendy as unskinny jeans. I lack ironic facial hair, never wear Mideastern scarves and basically don't look or act like I'm on my way to a rave.

I mean, just look at that picture on the right side of this blog. Is it the blue Target-brand polo shirt? The sea green LL Bean backpack that I've had since the reign of George Bush Sr.? The khaki shorts that could have been stolen from my mom? If that is hip you'd better watch out Williamsburg!

Another thing that surprised me. I, with tongue in cheek, didn't say NYC was better than L-Ville, but that they came out to a draw. New York gets plenty of ribbing too.

Third, it was in the humor section of the HuffPo.

So that was that.

But it got even better. Next L-Ville's NPR station talked about my arrival, and the reaction to it, on their blog.

In short, I had gone viral. Which is a word that a married man pretty much would never want to hear in any other context.

Then about 30 more people started to follow me on Twitter, despite the fact that I have a token, at best, presence there. I appreciate this attention, for sure, and now I will make it my business to ensure that I make it worth their while.

Oh, and the local hip alternative weekly also picked up on my story. And even though they had mixed feelings about it, what can I say, I was flattered. (Although the blogger did call most of my list "lazy." Not fair, I woke up bright and early to write my listicle!)

So, this just goes to show, you really can't tell. I slaved over my "CEO Cover Stories For Dummies" article for the HuffPo, made sure every word landed with maximum impact, edited it probably at least a half dozen times. I had dreams about ways to make it better, tighter, funnier, more incisive. The general public's reaction, of course, was almost no reaction. Although I am grateful to say my sister really liked it.

This one, though it still took work and effort, was just way less intense. And, I thought, way more harmless. Imagine, I had thought editors and other journalists would rip me for the way I ripped CEO cover stories, but, really, no one cared all that much.

And the Louisville piece, by contrast, stirred up something akin to a hornet's nest. Although, to be fair, many, many of the comments were of the good-natured, sense of humor bearing, variety. My peoples! (BTW, I even had a PR company contact me via Twitter to tell me how to get ahead of this story. For real.)

So, you never know what people will react to.

It should also be noted that the thing that really ticked people off was my insinuation that Louisville doesn't have world class food. I listed hot browns (a delicious turkey and ham based dish with gravy, mmm), barbecue (double mmm) and Chik-Fil-A (triple mmm) as the things to eat here. And the irony is, I wasn't being ironic. I love all that stuff, really, really love it. In fact even though I am now well educated about how many great restaurants are here I am most excited to eat at a place called the Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot (or FABD), which has two giant meat smokers in the parking lot (I almost just wrote smokers without the meat part, but realized that would have conjured images of just two giant dudes smoking cigarettes), and looks like a place where Hell's Angels go when they want some brisket.

I wrote that about Louisville, fwiw, because good barbecue, hot browns and Chik-Fil-A are all things that we have here that New York doesn't have. Yes, and as I've learned, Louisville also has a burgeoning and great restaurant scene, but so does New York. I guess I could have made this point with a little more finesse?

I guess the food thing touched a nerve here. My guess would be that Louisville is a city that has made a lot of steps in the past decade or so to become more and more outward looking, cool and sophisticated. (I base this observation on what Randi, who grew up around here, has witnessed. The city today is nothing like the Louisville of her youth when it was, no pun intended, basically a one horse town. Now it is hip, alternative and striving to keep itself unique. I appreciate this.)

So, for me, some Eastern hipster financial writer, to come in and ignore all that hard work may have felt like a slap in the face to some folks around here. The New Yorkers, in classic fashion, just didn't care.

I guess I'm just not a foodie. But it's not like I was in NYC either. In fact my favorite restaurant in the entire city was a Thai place in Park Slope called Song. It was good, cheap and fast. I loved it, even though, if memory serves, it had seen at least a few health code violations in its day.

Anyway, so that's what happened yesterday. Lots of fun. Now, of course, I wonder what I will do next. Ah well, no matter what it's guaranteed to get a different reaction from the public than I expected. That's how it seems to work.

I Have Been Officially Welcomed To Louisville!

2010-08-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

I will keep this one short.

Today I posted on The Huffington Post about how Louisville stacks up versus New York. (Longtime blog readers will have read this piece here first. Okay, I am re-purposing my own writing, but if I can't who can?)

I had one small quip in there about how the food in NYC is better than in Louisville. And I don't think that is a hard argument to make. Still, one fairly prominent Louisville blog made a point of officially welcoming me to Louisville, and then explaining to me that there are many, many fine dining establishments in this fair city that I should know about and consider. It's not all Chik-Fil-A! (Which I almost certainly just misspelled.)

Now I know. But, my gosh, for reals? Who gets welcomed to a city this way?

And it's funny, because in the original HuffPo piece I wrote about how here people are almost too friendly. I guess I was onto something. But I will take it any day!

Oh, and here is the welcoming blog entry.

The Trip: Post-Script, or Chapter 12.

2010-08-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'll keep this one short. (Although for Chapter 1 you should click on here. For all you latecomers!)

Mike and I hit the road the next day at 8:30 a.m. and, believe it or not, it went pretty much as planned. Yes, there were some hairy moments, so to speak, when I feared my cats would bake to death in the back seat of the Honda. (The solution was to put up the window shade and blast the AC. Honestly, once that was done it was nicer in there than in the truck. And it used very little gas, fwiw.)

At the end of the first day of driving we even each felt confident behind the wheel of the beast. The highway is so much easier than the tri-state area, especially once you venture into the heartland. There isn't much traffic and it's easy to get to where you need to go. The rest areas also got progressively less and less crowded as the trip progressed.

Yes, there were some interesting moments all the same. Mike and I had many fantastic and fun coversations, including one where we vowed to remember all the teams that played in the World Series going back to 1990. I think we got them all too.

Another wonderful moment happened as we drove down the freeway shortly after dusk, in Ohio. All of a sudden I looked onto the shoulder of the road and saw what must have been hundreds of lightening bugs flickering on all at once, as if to say welcome to the real America. It was as fantastically beautiful as the world's tiniest meteor shower.

That night we stayed in an Ohio hotel relatively near the Kentucky border. We snuck the cats in, too, and let them run around. Talisker was a wet, matted mess, Cromwell looked none the worse for wear. It brought some real joy to my heart to see them stretch their legs and roam around our room. They seemed intent on exploring every nook and crevice of that room too.

Later that night I heard a rhythmic banging against the wall of the room. I immediately assumed it was Cromwell, as he does that sort of thing. But as I listened more I realized, no, that's no cat. Nope, it was, in fact, a couple next door having happy fun times. And lots of them too, to judge by the frequency with which their fun times persisted. It had actually woken me up, a first. Later that morning they woke me up once more. Mike, for his part, slept through most of it.

The next morning we walked across the street to a Waffle House. The coffee was superb, the actual waffles could make you vomit. I was shocked, up to this point I had thought waffles were one thing that were impossible to get wrong. How naive I was.

As we left a middle-American waitress gave me the once over and asked, "what would you say if I told you you weren't allowed to leave?"

It took a moment for this attempt at seduction to process in my brain. Wait, I had just been hit at, at a Waffle House? I had just found the one thing that made the actual food there seem appetizing by comparison.

"Thank you," I answered. "I am very flattered." Lame, I know. Then we hightailed it out there, before they closed the doors on us, locked us in, and had their waffle-serving way with us both.

The rest of the morning was pleasant and easy. We arrived at my new home in Kentucky by 11:00 a.m. The movers weren't there yet, which I understood. I had been in contact with their dispatcher since the first day of the drive, because I had been so late. The actual move in, in other words, was scheduled to happen a day after we had originally planned. In true Southern fashion the dispatcher, a young woman, was kind and nice about the whole thing.

Soon Randi and her family showed up, the whole coxie army as they say. They brought fried chicken with them too, which was really nice. We opened up the apartment and had some lunch on paper plates on the floor. Then the movers called on the phone, they were here.

I went down our new stairs to see three guys in a fire red Mustang pull up, and all of them were smoking. Yup, we're in Kentucky, I thought. Nonetheless they were professional, friendly and did the entire move in job in two hours, as originally discussed. The job came in at $180.00 as per our original estimate, and when I tipped them $60 they seemed to genuinely appreciate it.

As the move in took place Randi took Stella and our niece Bethany and nephew Daniel to the pool. Oh yeah, we have a pool too. They splashed and played all day until everything was in place, or at least in place for now.

Soon Mike retired to a private room we had rented for a short nap and I headed down to the pool too. I saw my brother in law Kerry and started to describe the entire crazy tip to him, or at least as much as I could in five minutes.

He laughed and laughed. "Dave," he said, "you've got to write about this."

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 11

2010-08-26T06:51:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I was going in the wrong direction, it kept getting later, you can guess how this made my nerves feel. I was already exhausted and not sure how much longer I could keep going. On the other hand I wasn't all that far from Mike's if I could just get this ridiculous rig turned around.

I was on the lookout for U-turns, as noted, but there weren't any that I could see. I let one exit pass and then another pass. Soon I was miles and miles in the wrong direction from the Edison Memorial Rest Area and I just wanted to get this thing on the right track.

I picked an exit roughly ten miles away from the Edison Rest Area and got off. At this point I had to pay my toll for being on the Turnpike, which seemed ridiculous because I wasn't even where I needed to be. Nonetheless I paid it, and looked for a convenient place to turnaround.

Somehow I made a wrong turn, and then another wrong turn. I had to get off, I had no choice. The exit that looked most promising was New Brunswick because, if for no other reason, Rutgers University is there. College town, how bad can it be?

The streets of New Brunswick were deserted, and if there was a college there I sure didn't see it. Instead I drove down and down the road, past endless strip malls. Nothing was opened, not one restaurant, not even a gas stations. It was lights out in Mallville, USA.

This was supposed to be a relatively brief little jaunt off the Turnpike but after ten minutes I realized I had seen absolutely nothing that alerted me as to how to get back on the highway. Was I going the wrong way, again? I didn't know, but it was a safe guess by this point that I was.

I drove past yet another empty fast food restaurant, yet another empty carpet place, yet another empty big box retailer. It was like a ghost town, if all the ghosts were K-Mart shoppers. I decided to turn around, and take my chances going the other way.

I made a right, off the four lane road I was on, onto a two lane road, into what was the last opened gas station in the entire area. I needed something to eat, my terrible Nathan's hotdog had been hours ago by this point, and I was thirsty as well. I also thought I would ask directions, since, you know, I was totally crap at actually getting to where I needed to be.

As I got closer to the gas station I saw it was not exactly a friendly place. Indeed it was one of those ones that have the clerks behind bullet-proof plexi glass. Okay, okay. I decided to play it safe and slowly walked back to the truck. Once in I put it in drive, inched a turnaround, and got back on the road, going, I hoped, the right way.

They say the course of true love never did run smooth, and as you can guess by now, neither did the course of one overwhelmed schmo in a rented truck with two cats. I somehow took the wrong direction at a fork in the road, and then got off at the wrong place in a traffic circle, it was, in short, kind of like "European Vacation" except it was neither a vacation nor in Europe. Soon I was driving through the inner city of New Brunswick, or at least a town near New Brunswick. This area, of course, was not empty at this time of night. I nodded grimly as I tried to keep from getting ever more lost.

After about five minutes of this I saw a sign for the Turnpike. Relieved I got back on the right path, I hoped, and was hopefully on my way once more. Of course I still missed more turns, and the like, but I think you can get the picture by now. Altogether this little extra side trip tacked on another half hour to my voyage.

I got back on the Turnpike, and took yet another ticket. It was now 11:30 p.m.

I spoke to Mike and went over the directions for what to do when I got off at his exit. I would make a right, get onto a fairly busy local road, drive past various intersections and then make a right when I saw a Staples mega-store. Got it.

Soon I passed the Edison Rest Area once more, happy to see it get small in my rear view. Then I finally saw Mike's exit. I pulled off, and followed his instructions to the letter.

Except for one part, of course. I missed the turn at the Staples, because it was dark and came up suddenly. Quick turns in this rig were not going to happen. Instead I made the next right past the Staples and decided that I would then turn around and take another shot at it. Yet there was no outlet that lead directly back to the road I had just gotten off.

Somehow I now ended up in an empty stretch of residential suburbia, where the roads curled around with no reason at all, and the road I needed could not be seen. I ended up in a cul-de-sac, naturally, and was now trapped. Uh-oh, I would have to back up, and risk snapping the trailer hitch. You better believe the words of the bitter U-Haul service mechanic (see the last chapter) echoed through my exhausted brain as I incrementally backed up the entire rig. The trailer hitch groaned a little, and the entire procedure was hugely awkward and time-consuming, but eventually I was able to turn around and nose my way out of the one way suburban street. I dearly hoped I would never have to risk it like that again.

After that I drove around the 'burbs in desperate search for the main road that I needed. Somehow I made a wrong turn and ended up going the right way back onto it. Whew!

Can I tell you there was not a soul to be seen anywhere? It was ominously quiet, there was barely any traffic. Just some strip malls, roads without sidewalks, traffic lights, that was it.

I made a left back onto the main road, and tried to then pull a left into the Staples parking lot, as told by Mike. No go, there was no outlet into the parking lot. Of course. I would have to go all the way around, one more time, in order to make it happen.

So I did. I drove another half mile down the deserted road, and turned right at an intersection, and turned around in an empty, and quite large, parking lot. Then I got back on my main road, and once more drove up the the lot at Staples. This time I approached it with an almost crab-like slowness, and made the turn!

Yay!

From there I called Mike to let him know I was actually close by this time, and I meant it. It was now 12;30 a.m. My god, what a day. This had been, easily, the worst day of travel in my entire life.

I drove out through the back of the parking lot onto a small residential road, then I made a few relatively quick turns, and within five minutes was in front of Mike's house. And there was Mike, waiting for me.

I parked the truck on the street, and got out. The vastness of Freehold, N.J. seemed to swallow all sound. It was quiet, dark and virtually dead, or so it seemed. But it was good to see Mike. He smiled at my exhausted face and welcomed me inside.

Mike helped me unload the cats, offered me something to drink and set me up for the night on an extremely comfortable couch on his living room. Together we chatted for a while while we watched the last 20 minutes of "Johnny Dangerously" on HBO. (That Mary Lou Henner, va-va-voom!)The room was intensely air conditioned, so much so that it was almost cold. What a contrast to my apartment in Brooklyn, with its window mounted AC units that were either pointed directly at the floor or at the nearest wall.

The cats were placed in a small bathroom, which wasn't wonderful, but was sure better than being in a kennel all night. They meowed, as you can expect.

I finally turned in at 1:00 a.m. It had been way too long a day. It was virtually impossible to believe that it had only been that morning that I dropped off my beloved wife and child at the airport.

I couldn't think of it all now. I couldn't think at all, period. As the movie came to its predictable end I charged up my phone, and got under the covers on the couch. Then Mike went upstairs and I slept the sleep of the dead.

Now, at last, the trip could really begin.

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 10

2010-08-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

So we made it through the tunnel without incident and finally were on our way, rolling down the Turnpike, driving, not having to navigate terrible traffic. There was traffic of course because this is New Jersey, but compared to Canal Street it seemed like Kansas by comparison. I exhaled a little, even as I tried to not inhale as the cabin reeked ever more of used cat litter.

Still, it was almost scenic. Northern Jersey, especially near the Turnpike, still shows some signs of its long-past former wildness. In other words I was in The Meadowlands. Really the Meadowlands is one large swamp and watershed, with innumerable streams that criss-cross through the tall grass and cat tails. When you look at it the right way, in the right light, it is easy to imagine what the first travelers here could have seen.

As I drove down the road, over the Meadowlands, I looked up to the sky and saw something that made me catch my breath. It was a fish, flying in mid-air. Then I looked closer: no, that fish was not flying. It was caught in the talons of a great raptor bird, either a hawk or an eagle. I couldn't tell which because I could only see its silhouette as it flew toward me. I watched it for as long as felt safe, maybe five seconds, but tiny sensations of awe rippled through me as I continued to ride through perhaps the most suburban of all states.

I fiddled with the radio and adjusted the AC. Ah, movement at last. As long as this kept up I would be at Mike's before not too much longer, maybe another hour or so.

After about forty minutes on the road I realized that relatively soon I would have to get some gas. Despite the fact that I had barely gone anywhere, as the crow flies, I was still down past half a tankful. I wanted to be super cautious about this, as I really didn't know how far this fully loaded truck could go.

I passed one rest area, then another. I realized, though, that I would have to go into the next one that comes up because otherwise I might not be able to get gas for far too long. The Thomas Edison Memorial Rest Area would be my ticket.

It had started to get dark. On either side of the road I rode past streams and less and less urban density. It was beautiful in its own New Jersey way. In fact, despite its terrible reputation, only part of New Jersey is choked with refineries and wall to wall homes or ghettos. Most of it is far more bucolic.

As darkness began to ascend I pulled into the rest area. I had two competing impulses. I needed gas and I needed to go to the men's room. I decided to do the men's room first, as the thought of pouring copious amounts of liquid into a vehicle while I needed to expunge copious amounts of liquid didn't seem all that appealing.

I wasn't sure where to park the truck. It seemed too big for the car parking lot, but too small for the tractor trailer lot. I decided to go with the latter anyway, just to be safe. It was entirely full. Man, the tri-state area, always so many damn people.

Though I couldn't get a spot I could park alongside the curb at the rest area. I felt a little ridiculous with my little U-Haul amongst all these giants, but oh well.

I wasn't close enough to the curb, really, but I could readjust it after I got back from the bathroom. I put the truck into park and turned it off. Then I rolled down the windows a bit, and told the cats I would be back soon. Cromwell meowed in annoyance.

The bathroom was crowded and not too messy. Then I got a bite to eat at Nathan's. The hot dog was sub par and they didn't even have french fries, only potato chips, which was ridiculous. I then took my drink and walked back to the truck.

Once inside I buckled up and turned the key in the ignition.

Once again ... nothing! It was deader than disco.

Oh damn.

The farkin' battery had died once again! Dammit, dammit, dammit! What to do? What to do?

I remembered the U-Haul emergency number, yes! This would have to work. I called it, was put on hold once again -- due to "unusually high caller volume," as before -- and was finally put through to a young woman spoke with a heavy urban accent who sounded completely uninterested in my dilemma. Nonetheless I still got her name and wrote it down. She in turn gave me still another number to call. I called it, and was put through to a very friendly woman named Patty. Patty asked me where I was. I told her I was at the Thomas Edison Memorial Rest Area on the Jersey Turnpike.

"No, where are you? What town is it in?"

How would I know? No one ever knows this stuff.

"Call me back when you find out," she said. And I got her number as well.

How to find out? Did they have a mail box? A post office? I would have to figure it out. I walked into a convenience store attached to the larger rest area and asked them which town we were in. The Mid-Eastern woman behind the counter was very helpful, and told me that we were in Old Bridge (it was either that or Woodbridge, please forgive me for not being exact with my "bridge" memory right now). She then gave me a receipt which had the address on it, and I thanked her.

Once back at the truck I called Patty once more and told her my exact location. She then explained they would send out a local mechanic to replace my battery. At this point I also gave her the claim number for my prior dead battery, which she took and noted. She also gave me the mechanic's name and number.

How long would it take? Anywhere from an hour to two hours she said. It was a busy night.

Oh man. Two hours? At this point I called Mike and told him that I guess I would be late, or at least later, and that I would let him know when I would be back on the road. He said okay, and that I should keep him updated. I also called my mom, who was sympathetic, and Randi who was doubly sympathetic.

Since I was stuck here I decided to try and take in the scenery. Believe it or not The Thomas Edison Memorial Rest Area was kind of pretty. I looked over a stream that ran along the rest area, saw birds fly by as the sunset became increasingly more and more impressive.

There still might be a chance we could hit the road tonight, I realized. So I might as well use this time to move the cats back into the car.

I walked back to the trailer and tried to open the back door to the Honda. Nope, it only opened a few inches because the movable fender had been put in the "up" position and was now stuck. I had no idea how to get it down. Crap! Not this too!

How to fix this? I had no idea. Antoine hadn't told me back in Brooklyn. Now I was stuck in a rest area, waiting for some mechanic, in the boiling summer heat, and couldn't even move the cats back into the car. How would Mike even be able to take the trip with me now if I couldn't find a place to put the cats? This was just not my day.

I called Patty back at U-Haul and told her my problem. She told me to look on the trailer and see the instructions written there. I saw a lot of things that told me to not mess with the trailer in any way, but nothing that told me how to lower the bumper. Maybe it could and should only be done by a certified U-Haul employee? Maybe if I did it wrong I would screw up the trailer and the whole thing would fall apart as we cruised on down the road? I didn't know!

Patty said she would have to look it up and call me back. Much to my amazement she did. Then she walked me through how to do it. I needed to go the movable fender and find two rubber plugs. I saw them. Now, she said, unplug them from their mounts. I did so and soon the fender revolved downward, so I could open and close the car doors. Oh phew! At least one minor disaster had been averted.

I decided to move the cats later, for now I needed their company. It was dark, and together we sat in the cab of the truck. All around me 18-wheelers were in their slots, all of them with the motors running despite there being no one that I could see inside. I guess that's how truckers do it. I talked to the cats and told them, again, I was sorry it had worked out like this. Cromwell didn't understand, of course, but he rubbed himself up to the kennel's bars so I could pet him. I did, and we both felt a little better.

In this manner an hour past, then an hour and a half, then almost two hours. Where was the mechanic? I called him, and got a voice mail. Then I called U-Haul and told them this guy was late. They told me he was in the area and would be there within half an hour.

Finally at 10:30 p.m. a huge, beautiful red truck pulled up. This was my guy. I got out to say hi, and he didn't even acknowledge me. I popped the hood and asked if there was anything else I could do, and the mechanic, a middle aged white guy with a mustache, said "I should be home by now!"

Okay, sorry about your job.

Without any additional chit-chat he changed the battery and turned the truck on. It started and I said thanks. Then I started to pull out. It was awkward, though, because I was so close to the truck ahead of me, I would need to back up a little for some clearance. The mechanic stopped me.

"You can't back up in these things. You'll snap the metal of the trailer and then you're done!"

Okay, I said, chastened. After he pulled out and left me I slowly inched forward, free at last. I would still need gas though.

I pulled up to the truck gas area, and the attendant waved at me and said many things in a language that I simply could not understand.

I got out. "What?"

"No, other one. This is for diesel!"

He pointed to where all the cars were getting gassed up about twenty yards away. Great, I would have to find a way to drive all the way around in order to get gas, since I couldn't back up. Everything with this trailer was more than twice as hard as with a typical car.

It took some time, but I eventually got there, and filled the tank, $60. Ouch! I had barely even gone anywhere. This could end up a very pricey trip.

Now I would have to get back onto the Turnpike. Somehow I missed the first ramp onto the 'Pike, and had to drive around yet again. Soon I ended up in a desolate part of the rest area, and made a right turn here, a left turn there, in order to get back to the road. Soon I saw a ramp back to the road, my ticket out of there. I slowly got on and started to ride up.

It was too late by the time I realized I was on the wrong ramp, the one that lead to the northbound side of the Turnpike, not the south. I was headed in the goddamn wrong direction.

How to explain such an obvious and bush league mistake? There are a few culprits, it was late, I was in a vehicle that was virtually impossible to drive, I couldn't go in reverse to correct mistakes. But I think the most likely one is simply fatigue. I had been going nonstop, in highly stressful situations, since 6:30 a.m. It was now some 16 hours later, and I hadn't yet had a real break. Worse still, I still had more to do, though I couldn't know how much more. I was a wreck. There was traffic all around, the cats were constantly on my case, and if I made one false move as I drove down the street it would be a big, big disaster. These were not optimum conditions. Well, at least it hadn't rained.

I would have to find a U-turn for my U-Haul. Yet there were no U-turn signs. I could risk simply getting off at an exit and hoping I could turn around but this could be quite the gamble. New Jersey is an almost infinitely complicated set of roads, jug-handles, arteries, side streets, one way roads. In short it has more pathways than the average brain. If I made a wrong step I could end up very much where I did not want to be. And for a long, long time.

I had no choice, I would have to play it safe and drive back to an exit that I knew would let me turn around without too much fuss. That would be at least ten miles north. This trip just kept getting longer.

Next Time: I finally get to Mike's

CEO Cover Stories Made Simple!

2010-08-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Do you have what it takes to write a cover story about a CEO? Take my quiz on The Huffington Post and find out!

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 9

2010-08-18T10:19:00.001-07:00

(Chipping away at the stone ...)

My blood pressure began to rise, as a cat defecated again, and the sun beat down on the cabin. I had no choice I would have to go back to the office and get Antoine.

I rolled down the windows enough but not too much, and climbed out. It was boiling hot, and Cromwell panted. I know this because I had faced the opening of the kennel toward me. The kennel was enormous, by the way, and took up most of our shared bench. This gave me excellent access to their non-stop complaints, and frequent bathroom breaks.

Still, I felt terrible. Our other cat, Talisker, just laid in the back, in a small puddle of water that used to be in his dish. They didn't look sick, but they didn't look too happy either. In fact Tali mostly looked resigned and depressed. Given that he is such a chipper cat normally this in turn depressed me.

Resolved: I had to get this truck to start as soon as possible.

Back on the hot sidewalk I walked, once more, up the block to U-Haul's office. At the gate I was greeted, yet again, by the loitering day laborers who now knew to not ask me if I needed help. I sure did, but not of the variety they could provide.

I didn't see Antoine, of course. I asked for help at the desk, and was told that I would need to talk to Antoine. I told them that I didn't see him. I was then told that he was "around."

With a few moments to kill I bought two bottles of cold water. One for me, one for the cats.

After a few minutes I saw Antoine outside and flagged him down. He looked stunned. "Really, are you sure the lights aren't on?" I said I didn't think so. He then asked me if I turned the key hard enough. I said probably. We went through a few other obvious options until I convinced him that yes, indeed, the truck was probably as dead as I claimed.

Antoine looked dubious, but started to walk down the block to see what was what. I followed again, and said what I hoped was my final goodbye both to the U-Haul office and the loitering day laborers.

Once at the truck Antoine climbed back into the cabin, moved the seat back, and tried to turn it on. It made a wracking sound and died. He waited a few moments and tried again. This time it made a smaller wracking sound before it died. Come to think of it the truck kind of sounded like Harvey.

Hmm, Antoine said. Hmm. "Your battery's dead." I figured. As far as problems go, this was not too bad of one. They have about a million trucks here, and probably at least one extra battery, right?

He got out of the truck and asked me if I had called the U-Haul emergency number written on my receipt. I had not, because I was actually at a U-Haul station. He told me I should anyway. I then climbed back into the truck, adjusted the seat and dialed the number. Of course I was put on hold for some time -- because they were experiencing "unusually high call volumes" -- before I finally got to speak to a friendly Southern guy named Harold. Harold told me he would register my complaint and send someone out. They might be there in 45 minutes to an hour. Yes, an hour.

I asked Antoine if there was anything he could do, after all the truck had worked not long before. He said he could try to jump it. I said that would be fine and he took off.

Once he was gone I rolled up the windows, and opened the kennel. (The windows were rolled up so the cats couldn't make a break for it.) I poured some cold water into the cats' dish, and told them I was sorry. I know this sounds sappy, but if you've ever owned a pet maybe you understand. I really was sorry, none of this was their fault, and yet they had to suffer.

Cromwell immediately drank up the new water, and Talisker continued to lie in the back, his fur wet, listless.

I closed the kennel door, and rolled the windows back down, consumed with guilt.

Five minutes later Antoine rolled up with another truck, popped the hood, had me pop my hood and hooked up some jumper cables. After two minutes we tried to turn the engine. It gagged and did nothing. Five minutes later it gagged with a little more vigor and then died once more. Finally over 10 minutes later it turned. I knew it was not a good sign that it took this long to start, but put that thought to the back of my mind. I had to go!

Antoine told me to let it run for another 10 minutes before starting the trip, so that the battery fully charged. Tick-tock. I thanked him, and he drove off.

It was now almost 4:00 p.m. According to my original plans I was supposed to nearly be at Mike's by now. I was supposed to get there by 4:30 and start the drive, then we would keep at it well into the night. Well, that wouldn't happen.

As the truck idled I first called U-Haul to cancel the help that was on the way. They gave me a confirmation number for the help I never received, which I wrote down anyway. Then I called Randi to see how she was and how their trip was. She told me everything went great and the trip had no delays, which is almost, in its way, as unusual a story as mine. I told her about what had transpired so far. She expressed sympathy for me and concern for the cats. She then told me I should take it as easy as I could, and to not push myself too hard. I was grateful to have such a loving and supportive woman in my life. She also told me Stella was fine, and having lots of fun as she played with her cousins. I was glad to hear it.

After our call ended I went over my travel direction. I had planned to take the Brooklyn Bridge to the Lincoln Tunnel and then from there take the Jersey Turnpike to Mike's. Under typical circumstances this drive should take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. I decided to call my Dad to see if he had any suggestions for cutting down time, as he drives in the area frequently and, well, he is my Dad. He knows this stuff.

He strongly suggested I take the Holland Tunnel, downtown, instead of the Lincoln as it bleeds right into the Turnpike. Okay, done.

Finally ten minutes passed. I nervously put the truck in drive, and inched my way into the narrow street. Whoa! This wouldn't be easy. Though the truck drove well enough before now, with the trailer, it was astonishingly cumbersome and took wiiiiiiiiiiiide turns. I wasn't used to this, not at all. And I would have to learn how to drive it through some of the toughest conditions that could ever be: New York City rush hour!

I cut the wheel as much as possible as I turned right. I missed hitting a car parked right at the mouth of the parking lot entry by inches. Then I slowly, slowly continued on down the street, ready to make yet another right turn.

My god, this thing was a nightmare to drive. It was astonishingly slow, needed a turning radius as wide as two tennis courts, and also needed extra, extra room between it and any other cars for braking. Frickety frak!

I was nothing but nerves, Cromwell cried nonstop a foot from my right ear, every pothole jostled our valuables, and I had to watch for hyper-aggressive New York drivers at all times.

I drove down Third Avenue. Typically what I did was turn left from Third onto Flatbush Avenue, and take that to Tillary Street to the Brooklyn Bridge. This might mean nothing to you, but that's what I usually did. Now I slowly ambled down Third to Flatbush. When I got to the intersection I had a rude awakening. There was no left turn on Flatbush from Third! I am ashamed to admit it, but with the car it usually didn't matter, because I could make the turn anyway. But with this beast? No way. I had to play it safe. I drove across Flatbush, as cars honked and tried to get around me. Then I ended up near the Atlantic Center shopping plaza. I had to go right and then right again to get back on Flatbush, but there were only one way streets ... all going the wrong way! Crap. I still didn't really know how to drive this rig, and the traffic was starting to get to me.

Finally I found a two way street and started to turn. Then I realized I probably wouldn't have enough room to clear it. I got out, and checked how far into the intersection I would have to go to not hit the pole on the corner. Pretty damn far. I got back in, made a wide circular turn, slowly, as a car facing me backed up. I now realized the one advantage of driving a big rig: no one screws with you.

At the next intersection I turned right again, and was on Flatbush, at long last. I moved along at a snail-like pace, and signaled any turns for at least a few minutes before taking them. Then when I did turn into another lane I did it slowly, by degrees, so EVERYONE would know not to cut in.

I made the left at Tillary (which runs parallel to the East River) and then a right to get onto the bridge. Right before I got on the bridge a cop waved me down. No, no trucks on this bridge. What, how would I get to Manhattan? The Manhattan Bridge, he said. Oh, good grief.

I managed to pull into a side rode without hitting anything or anyone (seriously people are everywhere, and they jaywalk!), then I made a right in order get back to Flatbush Avenue, which fed directly into the Manhattan Bridge.

Okay, now you are probably asking, didn't this schmo take into account that he would need to factor in the truck before making his driving plans? The answer is, I did and I didn't. I knew the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels both allowed trucks, but I hadn't done the extra work to find out about the Brooklyn Bridge. Blame me, or blame my frantic, harried, stressed-out life. I had done so much right, but not this.

I soon learned I wasn't on a road that fed directly into Flatbush so I would have to take the long way around. Before not too long I was in the projects, hoo-ray. I must admit, I locked my doors. Fortunately I was at least somewhat familiar with these projects as they were fairly close to the Brooklyn Navy Yards, where they had brought my car, when they towed it, twice.

I knew that the roads around the projects lead, in fact, to other roads. As do most roads, I guess. I wasn't sure which ones would lead back to Flatbush, but I needed to go right, so at the first road that looked at least somewhat pothole free I made a right turn and hoped for the best. Soon the projects got small in my rear view mirror and Flatbush came into view. Yes, victory!

It was somewhat nerve-wracking to drive over the bridge. For some reason I realized that, whoa, that sure is a lot of water down there, better be careful. It's likely I thought this because I still had relatively little control over my truck and trailer. But I couldn't let myself think about this too much.

Though I drove extra slow I still made it across, and then made my way onto probably the single most traffic-clogged street in New York, and by extension the nation, Canal Street. I had no choice, as this street lead directly to the Holland Tunnel. I typically avoided Canal under the best of circumstances, which these were not, but I had to grit my teeth and deal with it.

There were cars everywhere, and drivers cut in and out at an alarming rate, though none of us went more than eight miles an hour. My strategy was to inch along and trust that no one wanted to mess with a big truck. This mostly worked.

Inside the cab the blasting AC had finally cooled it down, and Cromwell had at least stopped panting, though the meows kept up at a steady clip. I could deal with this, I said, I can deal with it.

As I got closer to the tunnel I saw a sign that said TRUCKS and had an arrow that pointed left, away from the tunnel. What? Did I qualify, or did they mean 18 wheelers? I didn't know, but I didn't feel I could risk it. I bailed out as I was about to enter the tunnel, and looked for the alternate route. Of course as soon as it was too late I saw another truck as big as mine ready to enter the tunnel right where I had bailed. As for the alternate route, there was none.

Sweet, now I would have to go around the long way, during rush hour, to get back to the most crowded street in America, in the most illogical, poorly designed, part of New York, Tribeca. Here the quaint cobble stoned streets veer off at weird angles, sometimes abruptly, and often don't lead anywhere you think they should. But they are quite picturesque.

I had no choice, I would have to bite the bullet. I started to do the drive around, Gulliver in the land of Lilliputians, making enormous, awkward turns, as the late afternoon sun beat down right into my eyes. I got on streets that lead away from where I needed to go, I got lost, but finally I saw a long street that lead into the mouth of the tunnel. It was choked with traffic, but at least it went where I needed to go. Screw it, I would wait in line.

I nosed in, and realized it would be a long, long wait. Possibly at least a half hour to go 100 yards. I turned on the radio--thanks for the instructions U-Haul!--and settled in. We crept along, which was fine by me. After the harrowing experiences of before this would do.

After we had closed half the gap I saw a bus on my right side, the kind that ferries tourists around not kids. The drive waved at me, one big vehicle to another, and he smiled. Then he proceeded to cut me off, and not only that he clipped my right side view mirror as he did so. It didn't snap, but it did get whacked totally out of alignment, making me blind on that side. I had no passengers so they couldn't readjust it, unless I put the cats to work.

I cursed him out three ways from Tuesday but mostly stewed, impotent, in my rage.

The traffic crept on, tick-tock. It was now 5:30 p.m. Where had the day gone? If I was lucky maybe I could get to Mike's by 6:45, and then we could go; a late start, yes, but not too late. God, did I really drop Randi and Stella off this morning?

Finally it was my turn to enter the tunnel. Suddenly a lady cop materialized out of thin air, and waved me to the side. Good god, what now?

She told me that while trucks were allowed they did not allow trucks with trailers. I would have to go uptown forty blocks to the Lincoln Tunnel. Of course I would!

Okay, okay, I can deal with this, I thought. I pulled over onto a little side road near the tunnel and got out. At least I could adjust my mirror back into place. I tried and tried, but no matter what I did it wasn't quite right. This was another time where having a passenger would have been an immense help. Instead of having them do it now I had to run, change it, and then go back to the seat to see if it was right. If it wasn't, and it never was, then I would try again. Eventually I got it kind of right, but only kind of.

Then I slowly crept back onto another small street, and then onto another small street, that finally lead onto the West Side Highway, which would take me past the Meatpacking District and Chelsea and to the Lincoln Tunnel.

This part was relatively event free. I was completely exhausted from nervous tension, but the drive into the Lincoln Tunnel was thankfully without event. Before not too long I was in blessed New Jersey, and finally on my way!

Of course several hours had been burned, on a day that was already tortuously long. I tried to follow Randi's advice and take it as easy as I could, while still remaining vigilant and ready for disaster. Fortunately no disaster came, for a little while.

Next Up: The Thomas Edison Memorial Service Area!

New York vs. Louisville

2010-08-17T05:49:00.000-07:00

(I interrupt my moving story for something short and fun, I hope!)

New York vs. Louisville

As a newcomer to Louisville I can’t help but compare it to my old stomping ground, New York City. Why did I move here? Should you care? Those, my friends, are questions that have no answer. Today I am just going to shoot from the hip and see how the River City stacks up against the Big Apple. Get out your scorecards!

Water:
1. New York has the finest drinking water in the U.S.
2. Apparently in Louisville you shouldn’t drink the water without a prescription as it’s loaded with drugs. Hmm, maybe that’s why I’ve been in such a good mood lately?
Advantage: Louisville.

Access To Stuff:
1. New York is a city of neighborhoods, and every block has tons of stuff within walking distance. Barring that, take the subway. Barring that? Buddy, you’re screwed.
2. Here nothing is walking distance even though nothing is far. But from what I’ve seen the public transportation system doesn’t really work, coordinating busses that don’t really show up. Perhaps we should take shorter trips via horse?
Advantage: New York.

Shelter:
1. New York features cramped, bedbug-ridden hovels with noisy neighbors, lead paint and no laundry or dishwasher. On the bright side at least they’re really, really expensive.
2. Here we live in a lovely apartment complex where I’ve never even met my neighbors.
Advantage: Louisville

Food:
1. New York has the best deli, bagels, pizza, Chinese food, Thai food, Indian food, Pakistani food passed off as Indian food, Italian food apart from pizza, and whatever it is they actually sell out of those pushcarts. Lamb? Rat?
2. Louisville has hot browns, good barbecue, Derby Pie and Chick-fil-A. I love Chick-fil-A, and New York has like one. Crazy, right? Crazy.
Advantage: New York.

Manners:
1. In New York politeness is understood to be a privilege not a right.
2. Here folks are almost too friendly. For instance, three different people thanked me for one small purchase at Office Depot. It was almost like I had given them money or something.
Advantage: Louisville.

Driving:
1. You may not believe it but New York drivers are the safest in the world. You would be safe too, by the way, if you could never go more than five miles an hour.
2. Here I get tailgated all the time. Maybe they’re just too friendly?
Advantage: New York.

Sports:
1. New York has the Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks, the Nets, the Giants, the Jets, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Devils, and the Liberty. Now let’s look closer at that list. Half the teams blow, A-Rod is featured in the other half and our best basketball players wear sports bras. (And I’m not talking about you, Eddie Curry.) But, once again, at least the tickets are really, really expensive.
2. Folks here are really into college sports, right? Aren’t those the guys who aren’t actually pros?

Advantage: Tie.

Okay, so let’s call it a draw … for now. I look forward to getting to know my new hometown more so I can stack the deck one way or the other in the future. So be nice to me Louisville! Now onto less contentious matters: Wildcats or Cardinals?

Updates From The Heartland: The Move Pt. 8

2010-08-17T03:52:00.000-07:00

(Now it's more like "War & Peace" and "Crime And Punishment", lengthwise I mean.)

It was now 3:00 p.m. Packing up the truck had taken longer than planned, and now I had to drive back to U-Haul, and get them to hitch the trailer, load the car onto the then-hitched trailer and start the actual drive. Now that the truck was full it drove a bit less agilely than it had on the way to the apartment, and needed more distance between me and the drivers ahead of me when I had to hit the brakes.

I pulled into U-Haul fifteen minutes later with no further incident, drove up to the main office and stepped out of the cabin. It had been blisteringly hot all day, and this had not changed though it was getting into the late afternoon. The weather had been nice and balmy all summer and spring, but we were currently in the middle of the summer's first real heat wave. This made everything more complicated, especially as I was to travel with live animals, which was constantly on my mind. (No matter what I did, or how careful I was I couldn't get the stories of poodles basically baking to death in locked cars out of my mind. I wouldn't be that guy!)

I locked the truck (even though, realistically what could actually happen in U-Haul's parking lot?), but cracked the windows as much as I could so the cats could get some fresh air. Then I hit the ground, and walked to the office.

Once again the loitering day laborers all flocked to me to ask if I needed any additional help? I had to tell them no thanks once again. They looked at me with disappointment and, I believe, some anger.

Once inside I waited in line once more. It moved along with Soviet-style alacrity, better befitting a bread line or the Motor Vehicles Department. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Eventually it was my turn, though, and I thrust my reservation, once more, at the woman behind the counter. As before she showed no surprise, or interest, as she took my papers.

After a few moments she told me that I would need to grab someone named Antoine (not his real name) and he would take over from there. "He's out front," she said as she handed me back my various receipts.

I went out front and in a rare turn of events Antoine was actually where she said he would be. He was a clean cut Latino guy in his mid-20s, and was both professional and friendly. I told him about how I would need help loading the car onto the dolly once it was hooked up. Apparently it was against company policy to help customers actually load the dolly ("for insurance reasons," he said) but he saw the desperate look in my eyes and said he would try.

"Where's your car?" he asked. Right near the U-Haul offices I said. Okay, he told me, get it, drive it into the lot out back and then back the truck into the lot. I thought the latter might be hard to do, but said okay.

After I pulled the car into the lot it was time to get the truck in. I walked back to the main lot in front of U-Haul's offices, suffering the stares, once more, of the loitering day laborers and started up the truck. The cats meowed non-stop, of course, and this did not exactly help my already frayed nerves as I pulled the truck out of the front parking lot's side entrance, and drove down the narrow side street to the lot out back. When I say narrow I mean it, it was perhaps 20 feet wide. Backing in the truck would be quite the challenge.

A challenge, it turns out, I was not up to. I tried, but it was impossible to get the clearance necessary to drive out past the narrow parking lot entryway, cut the wheel and back in. For starters cars lined both sides of the street and made it even narrower still. In fact right in front of the entryway on the other side of the street was a parked limousine. How he managed to get that spot is an eternal mystery. If he hadn't been there I might have been able to do it, but it was a no go as is.

I had no choice, I would have to drive around the block again. This took longer than you might think it would because it was Brooklyn, and traffic was everywhere. Once around the block I once again stopped the truck -- risking the ire of the drivers behind me -- in front of the entryway and told Antoine that I just couldn't do it.

"That's okay," he said, "I just thought it would make it easier." To my relief he got into the cabin and drove the truck in nose wise, and then did an 80-point turn so that it was finally turned around and the front of the truck faced the street.

Then Antoine got out, and I climbed back in. Once in I had to move the seat up, of course. This guy looked my height, I don't get it. Anyway, then he grabbed a large car trailer and wheeled it around and around until its front was at the back of the truck. From there he commenced to hook it up. It's a more complicated operation than you might think, one that I am grateful U-Haul does for its customers. It took about 15 minutes, tick-tock.

From there we moved onto the part of the job that he shouldn't have helped me with but did, the loading of the car. I started up the Honda (the insides of which were already like 120 degrees) and slowly nosed it up to the extended trailer rails. The track was not wide, and there was no room for error. It was also rather steeply inclined so I would have to step on the gas a bit to get it up.

Antoine guided me up, similarly to how the oil change guys do it, telling me to go a little left, a little right, I'm sure you can imagine it. Soon the car was mounted up top, much to my relief. Then I put on the parking break and tried to get down. But I couldn't because I couldn't open the door. You see the trailer had a movable fender that could be raised or lowered, and for now it was raised, meaning that when I tried to open the door it would only open about three inches. Antoine waved at me, and released something that allowed him to lower it so I could open the door and get out. From there he put various straps and chains over the car's front tires (seriously I was supposed to do all this myself?) and soon enough the car was secure.

I was so grateful I didn't know what else to do so I tipped him $7. It wasn't much, I realize, and he had done me quite the solid. Then he said goodbye and walked back up the block to the main office.

Now the trip could FINALLY begin. I climbed back in the cab, adjusted my mirrors, readjusted the seat, and turned the keys in the ignition.

Nothing.

The engine made a gagging sound as it barely started to turn. Then it died again. What? This had to be some kind of weird hallucination, this couldn't be real. I had just driven around the block. I took a moment, gathered my wits and tried again. Again, nothing, the truck just would not start. Oh double shit.

I admit, at this point I started to freak out a bit. What to do, what to do? Thankfully I was actually at the U-Haul headquarters, so I guess this was the best play for this to happen? I guess?

Next Time: Was this the best place for this to happen?

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 7

2010-08-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

(Wow, this is turning in the War & Peace of moving stories.)

I met the movers outside. I had hired four and, as noted, two had arrived. Where were the other two? The two guys with me didn't know, and neither did the guy who runs the service, Sal. Sal, by the way, sounded pissed.

One of the movers was Ray, a fairly wiry Latino guy in his mid-20s, and the other one was a good deal older, a very good deal heavier, white and sounded like a tres-butch Harvey Fierstein. It didn't exactly fill me with confidence that the first thing Harvey (not his real name) did was light up a cigarette.

Harvey was peeved that the other two weren't here yet, but felt confident that this move would be a piece of cake. After all, they were simply to move the boxes into the truck, not unpack them on the other end. How tough could it be?

We examined the the interior of the truck. The first thing I noticed, after how large and empty it looked (maybe I should have gotten the 14 footer after all?), was that the blankets I had rented from U-Haul weren't there. God dammit! Now everything would get scratched.

I didn't know what to do! My car was parked at U-Haul, so I would have to drive the mother f-in TRUCK the entire way there, and back, just to get the blankets. In the meantime the other two guys could show up and then they would be getting paid to wait. I talked to Harvey about it.

"How much you got?" he wheezed, in between puffs. I explained that though we had many boxes and bags we only had three or four real pieces of actual, meaningful furniture. Two old walnut dressers and a night table that I had inherited from my grandmother, by way of my sister, our dining room table and that was it.

"Okay, okay," he rasped, "no problem. That's nothing! You don't even NEED the blankets for that little. We'll make sure of it."

I was confident if he was, almost, and decided to let the move commence sans blankets.

Harvey and Ray moved a few boxes, a few bags, but nothing heavy for the next 20 minutes. Harvey explained that they really couldn't do too much because they lacked the heavy straps that are required for fastening heavy boxes to your back. He almost said it accusingly, as if I was supposed to have the straps. "Don't you have anything like that?" he growled, shaking his head as I answered that I did not.

Finally my phone rang again and it was the other two guys. They were somewhere in the vicinity, I was told, and would be there soonish.

Finally about 10 minutes later the other two guys showed up, with a backpack that contained the much-desired straps. These two guys also had all the paperwork for me to sign, and the rest. On every move there is one guy who is basically foreman, and runs the show. This guy was Phil, a very professional black man in his mid-40s, who went over everything with me thoroughly. Very professional, that is, for a guy who was almost an hour late, but I digress.

Soon all four were sweating and moving large boxes down our stairs. Almost immediately Harvey began to caterwaul and explained to Phil that his back was still recovering (from something), so he'd have to sit this one out. Phil didn't seem bothered by this in the least. So Harvey, rather agilely, climbed up into the truck and started to sort out where all the boxes should go for maximum efficiency. In this way moving is sort of like Tetris, or Jenga.

After about another 20 minutes I asked the guys if I could go to the local deli to get anything for them. Ray, without missing a beat, told me that it would be really cool if I bought him a sandwich. Okay, I answered, I meant something more along the lines of Gatorade. He was disappointed, but somehow dealt with it.

So I went a couple of blocks over and got a multi-hued variety of sports beverages for the guys. (Each and every color somehow looked like you could use it for radiator fluid.) When I returned they gratefully grabbed for them, and downed them. Even Ray.

Phil walked up to me not long after the real moving had commenced, with a quizzical look.

"Had I moved you before?" he asked. I couldn't remember. We had now used these guys three times over the span of two years. I did remember a few of the movers--including the superman who somehow moved one of my heavy, heavy dressers all by himself--but I was not sure about him.

Then he started to carry a box of our books.

"Okay, now I remember you," he said. "Dave has the books." What he meant by this is not that we have so many books, we don't. But that I always make the mistake of packing way too many books per box, and they always rip the box as these guys try to carry them. I felt really bad about this, and vowed next time I would buy the special boxes that are used to transport books. They're small, basically. I think I also made that same pledge the last time we moved.

What can be said about the next few hours? As anyone who has ever been moved can attest it's a stressful situation, even if you're not carrying the actual boxes. For starters the place always looks like total shit. Once everything gets moved dust bunnies the size of hedgehogs become rapidly apparent. And you find everything you had forgotten you had dropped on the floor. Sometimes, by the way, it's better that some of this stuff stay lost. Change, change and more change is also to be found, making your floor resemble the bottom of a fountain. In addition huge swaths of dust will surely be wherever there had been a rug, even if you had just cleaned under there last week. If you own pets, as we do, tumbleweeds of pet hair will roll down your hallway, now freed from their place under the chair or couch. In short it's gross.

I went around sweeping where I could, while also doing my best to stay out of their way, as their time was my money.

In truth I felt bad, having these guys do my work for me. The screwed up part is that I feel it is, all this time later, still my work. Why should I feel bad, I paid these guys to carry this stuff? But I did, I just did. Moving sucks, that's for sure, but it sucks much worse for them.

About three hours after the move was supposed to begin the apartment was mostly empty and the truck was mostly full. (Glad I got the big one after all!) There was just one thing left, the cats! They had sat in their extra large kennel for the entire move, complaining for every minute of it. Now it was time to load them into the cabin of the truck. I asked Ray if he could help me with it, as the crate was simply too large for me to do by myself. He was kind of surprised but said sure, and together we carried the meowing plastic box down two flights of stairs, down part of the street and into the front seat of the moving truck. The food spilled, their litter spilled and their water spilled too, but we did the best we could. They too would have to deal.

Now there was just one last detail, Harvey said.

"Do you have any rope, or anything like it?" Rope, huh? No one told me we'd need it. No, you need it, he croaked, because that's how he's going to secure all our belongings in the truck so they don't slide around during the long drive to Kentucky. Without it all our things will shift around and get crushed.

Oh shit, rope? Where in the frak do you get rope on last minute's notice? I had an idea, a hope really, but not much more than that. Maybe the local five and dime store? You know, the one that has off-brands of everything, sends faxes, has copies for five cents and is somehow also a pharmacy and notary? That one?

I had no other options so I ran the four blocks to see if our local everything store indeed had everything. It killed me to pay these guys to literally sit around as I did this, but there was no other choice.

The trip there took about eight minutes. I ran in, breathless: "Do you have rope?"

Amazingly, they did! It was in the back of the store near cookware, a rack of discount sponges and the copy machine. I picked up two bags of it, yes the rope came in bags, and ran back.

As I returned I listened to Harvey conclude a lecture to Ray about how screwed up it is to be a mover. "There's no future in it," he said, "and all you end up with is a messed up back. No future."

I didn't want to interrupt but since I did have the rope I thought I should. Harvey shrugged and walked me back to the truck. Once there he asked if I had a knife. (Somehow I thought one of these guys would.)

Aha, I did! In fact in the tool chest--thankfully packed near the tailgate of the truck--was my old trusty lock blade, purchased in Thailand in 1999.

Sounded good to him. He took the knife opened the blade, locked it of course, and then tried to cut a length of rope. Tried is the operative word here, because my knife couldn't actually cut jack shit. I mean it couldn't even have cut butter. It was so dull and crappy, why did I hang onto it for 11 years? These are the sort of questions moving makes you ask yourself, over and over.

Suddenly Harvey had an inspiration, a smoker's inspiration. He grabbed his lighter, lit it, and placed the flame under the synthetic rope. In a few moments the braids became twisty, melty and then ultimately were snapped. Voila! In turned out he only needed about ten feet of rope. Now, though, I was the proud owner of about forty feet. I guess I would save the rest, for god knows what.

As Harvey tied everything down Phil went over the cost of the move with me. At $115 an hour I would have to pay them $350, factoring in their time to get here (only movers get paid before they start a job) and all the rest. I thought this was pretty high, considering that two of these guys, including him, were an hour late. I said I needed to call Sal. This was greeted with dismay by all of them, especially Harvey, who had just returned from the truck.

"You can cal Sal, but it won't do anything," he said. "Hey, look, we don't even do jobs that are under three hours, it's not worth our time!"

Really? This was news to me, considering that I had originally hired them for two hours, terms agreed upon by Sal.

Despite Harvey's derision I called Sal anyway. Once on the phone I explained how I felt I was being overcharged, because the guys were late. Now when you factor in the hourly rate, versus how much time they were not there, I figure it comes to ...

Sal cut me off. "I don't do the numbers! What you say, $50 bucks?"

Okay, $50 bucks. Did I still get ripped off? Probably, but the clock was ticking once again and I needed to get to what's next.

The move now was officially done, and I signed all the papers Phil wanted me to sign. Then I tipped them $80, which I thought was fair. Harvey took the money, but looked at me like I had just put his cigarette out in his beer. The other guys also took it without much emotion one way or the other. Ah well. Soon enough they all departed, back onto the subway and another job moving other people's stuff.

It was time for one last look through the apartment. After this was done I would have to go. I wouldn't see this apartment again for a long time, if ever, maybe. We had found subletters, so maybe we could return down the line, but it truly did feel like goodbye. We'd had some hard times here, for sure, but some very good ones too; wonderful parties with friends new and old, festive holiday meals, bright winter mornings where we looked out our window to see snow. It was a life.

Now the apartment was truly empty. The closets were bereft, Stella's room was depressingly barren, our bedroom looked like no one had lived there, ever.

I went downstairs, into the living room, empty, our big closet, empty. The kitchen. I checked every cabinet and they were all empty ... except for two. And these had all our pots and pans in them, crap!

Luckily I had a few garbage bags left. I loaded the forgotten cookware into them, and carried them downstairs and into the back of the truck, as they clanked and rattled. Then I spun through the combination on my 27 year old MasterLock (still works!) and opened the cargo hold. It was just about jam-packed, but there was still a small amount of room for one or two more filled garbage bags.

Then I locked up the back, refastened my lock and climbed into the cabin. Cromwell and Talisker took this occasion to give voice to their thorough disapproval regarding this entire arrangement. And one of them had already pooped in the litter-box. So, with a heart half-full of regret, out roughly $400 and smelling not exactly like a rose I started up the truck.

To be continued ...

My New Huffington Post Post!

2010-08-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

Please click on it! My new post at HP!

I will get back to the moving story I swear.

--Dave

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 6

2010-08-10T03:07:00.000-07:00

Fortunately there wasn't much traffic back to our place from La Guardia, and I made it to the apartment in good time. The movers were scheduled to show up at 11:30 a.m. When I originally booked them I had thought this was perhaps too late, but now I was glad. I still needed to do a bunch of things in the apartment before they got there. For now, though, I had to get the truck.

U-Haul is on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, an extremely busy road, six lanes wide. The plan was to get the truck, leave the car, load the truck, come back, get the dolly hooked up, somehow, and then load the car into it. Then drive to New Jersey to Mike's place, pick him up, and then, at last, finally, start driving to Kentucky with all our stuff. Easy right?

U-Haul was as unfriendly as ever. It was one of those businesses that no matter what you did, no matter when you came in, no matter what you needed, the people behind the counter always acted like you were putting them out. And there was always a line.

I got in the line without thinking about it, almost by reflex. There were two dudes in front of me who were just talking a lot, and they looked in no hurry. Great, I had about two hours, and needed to get things going.

"Oh you can go," one of them said. Huh? They didn't work there, that was for sure, so why were they just hanging around chatting? No idea. Whatever.

At the desk I took out my reservation, and when the woman finally got back from her break, which naturally took a few minutes, I handed it to her. She looked it over semi-skeptically and then had me go through a long, long sign in process via a keypad in front of me. I put it all on my credit card, signed the various waivers that needed to be signed, paid for the insurance, the whole deal. This took about ten minutes. From there I was given a blue receipt in a paper sleeve, and told to go to dispatch. I thanked her, and walked outside.

I wasn't exactly sure where dispatch was, and didn't see anyone around. Still, I was in a hurry and needed to get my truck right away. So I walked to the first employee I saw, and asked if I was in the right place for dispatch.

The employee was a youngish guy in his mid-20s. He gave me one of those looks like "don't piss me off" and told me that he was dispatch and he would get to me when he could get to me. Go wait by the sign. This was the stuff that I could never just explain away to Randi. Why was is that in New York people were often rude for no real reason? I never had an answer other than it's just part of the deal. Politeness is great, but not mandatory in the city, and it's just another one of the costs of doing business. I guess you could say in New York we see friendliness as a privilege, not a right?

Randi, despite living in the New York area for over a decade, never could understand this, and never wanted to. I couldn't blame her, and I could never explain it to her satisfaction. Because, honestly, it's not that we're always in a rush.

I waited by the sign (the one that said "dispatch" on it, of course) for about five minutes while a truly enormous truck drove out of the parking lot. The driver behind the wheel was a really goofy, yet confident, looking white guy with a backwards baseball cap. The dispatcher looked highly dubious as he went over the various instructions this guy would need in order to not cause a major disaster. The size of the truck scared me. Would I have to command such a beast?

Finally it was my turn. I contritely explained that I had my receipt and needed my vehicle. I was told, once again, to wait as a large truck -- thankfully not quite as large as the one I just saw -- was wheeled in front of me. After a brief visual inspection by the dispatcher I climbed into the elevated cabin feeling either like BJ or The Bear, I remain unsure which.

The first thing I did behind the wheel is pull the seat up. This is a constant in my life. Whenever someone else drives my car they push the seat back, it doesn't matter the situation. It can be a team of dwarf Mexican wrestlers (and, yes, this happens all the time) they always lean the seat way back. I have brought my car to garages where the guys were no taller than me, I just knew it. But apparently I am the short one, because whenever I get back in the driver's seat it looks like somebody just got laid in there. I have to pull it way forward, and tilt the back of the chair way up. I must have really short legs and enjoy sitting at an acute angle as I drive.

With the dispatcher now on the running board he proceeded to give me the once through about how to operate the truck.

"These are your lights," he said, as he pulled out a knob. "This is your AC," he said as he blasted the air conditioner, at least that worked, " and "this is your radio." Honest to Jesus, I have rented trucks multiple times in my life, they always make sure to tell me how to work the radio.

"Now this is a big boy so you're going to want to leave a lot of room when you break and when you turn," he said. Got it. I was suitably nervous about the whole enterprise, I didn't think speeding and tailgating were going to be my problems. Then he handed me the keys and I slowly crept out of the U-Haul parking lot onto the street. As I did so I drove by the small army of Latino day laborers who loitered right next to the "no loitering" sign, as they all wondered whether I needed some help moving? I waved, meaning I don't know what, and drove carefully on.

I drove slowly, very slowly as I got used to the size of the truck. Actually, it didn't handle too badly, and the breaks worked well, thank god. Still, it was bare bones. It had the radio, the AC, a couple of drink holders, some kind of massive plastic pit in the center console and that was it. I put the blue receipt in the pit as I watched for traffic.

I made it back to our apartment without too much other ado, and even found a spot on our side of the street close to our door, a lucky break.

Then I locked up the truck and went back inside to the apartment. The movers were to come relatively soon now, and I wanted to double check and make sure everything was set up. There never is enough time, it seems, to lock everything down before they get there. Unless you're really, really organized.

The first order of business? The cats, of course. I filled a Tupperware container with litter and duct taped it down in the back of the travel kennel. Then I did the same with their food bowl saving their water for later. (Here's a nifty trick I learned from David: freeze the water the night before so it doesn't slosh around so much.)

Then I walked through the apartment, trying to put everything I had heretofore forgotten into yet another in an endless series of black plastic bags. Our apartment was practically lined with them. I also took apart our long, black kitchen table and carefully placed all the bolts and various other small metal parts in ziploc bags and put those in our tool chest. I may not be the most organized person in the world but I know how to compensate for this. I wrapped the legs of the table in bubble wrap. I then put some of our paintings in black plastic garbage bags too, which may not be ideal, but it's how we've moved with them now two other times, and they always seem to do okay.

Being so busy kept me from ruminating over the larger issues that would otherwise occupy my mind: that I would miss it here, that I would miss my old life, my friends, my family, the city in summer, the city in autumn, the free summer concerts (Public Enemy's playing a free show on August 15 in Central Park!), the things I never got to do, the beach. I knew that if I lingered too long over these feelings I would feel saddened for all the ways that New York remained the only place I could ever have a chance of doing some of the things, professionally, that I had long aspired to. I still dreamed that somehow, someday, I might find a way to get a package to someone at a comedy show, have them actually read it, and like it. Then I could write for them, this had been the long-time, hardcore, serious dream. It had never happened, and I had sent out various packages, and bothered what few contacts I had in that world on many different occasions. But the hope never dies, and that is sometimes the problem.

Still, thankfully, I didn't have time for such reminiscences just then. It was time for action, not self-defeating, and depressing, reflection. Thank the lord.

Soon it was 11:00 a.m., time to herd up the cats, literally. They always know when something's up, so I looked upon this with some annoyance. I grabbed our black cat Cromwell first. He was fairly passive until we got within two feet of the carrier and then he started to fight me. Still, it was nice having such a large door to shove him through, and that is exactly what I did.

Now our other cat, a black and white guy named Talisker, would know what's up. They always alert one another somehow. He was, as suspected, under our bed, a relatively easy find, given the hundreds of places he could have hid, especially with the apartment in such disarray. He fought a little more, which is slightly ironic, as he's usually such a purr machine. All the same, I shoved him too into the carrier. Then I somehow managed to put in their water dish and tape it down without their escaping. Right away they started to meow like a jukebox that does nothing except play meowing songs, and they stayed that way for the next two days.

Soon it was tie for the actual movers to show up. And, at noon two of them did, already a half hour late. The other two? Not so much.

Tomorrow: Moving, and driving. I swear!

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 5

2010-08-09T02:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, so let's talk about the actual move.

The logistics were daunting. We had to move a man, a woman, a child, two cats, a car, and all our belongings from Brooklyn to Kentucky, about 800 miles. How to make it all happen? As mentioned in the first post in this series I became fixated on the cats. How to move them?

David, The Pet Chauffeur, said that if we were going to put them on an airplane we would have to go to the vet's office and get them to give us various release forms, and all this had to be done within the next few days. I didn't know if this would work. Since Randi and Stella were going to fly into Kentucky a few days earlier than I would be there we discussed whether she could schlep Stella through the airport, carry their luggage and handle two cats. Then when they got to Kentucky what to do with the cats? I asked if she could let them run around her mom's house for a few days until I got there, but Randi was very dubious about this. Her mom now has four dogs. One is her actual dog, two were her son's, and one is a stray that she kind of adopted. Maybe she could just put the cats in the basement for a few days? Again, Randi was highly skeptical.

I could press the point, but I thought that maybe it would all be the same if I found a way to travel with them. I, as previously mentioned, was going to drive a U-Haul filled with all our stuff and tow a car. The trip would probably take two days in total. I asked David what might be the best way to travel with the cats given this situation.

He recommended a size 300 dog carrier, which apparently was much larger than your standard cat carrier. I could put both cats inside it at the same time, in addition to the cat food, the water and a shoe box filled with litter, so they could poop and pee. He also mentioned that he happened to have about a million of these carriers at his business, so I could come on down and he would give me a deal.

But how to do the actual drive with the cats? David asked what I'm doing with the car. I said I'm towing it. Okay, he said, if you're towing it get one of the flat bed car dollies, not the ones where the car rolls along on two wheels, so it's flat for the cats. Then put the carrier, containing the cats, inside.

Another problem: it's probably going to be about 95 degrees as we drive to Kentucky, how to keep the cats from dying in the heat? David said that maybe I could crack the windows on the car. He also said that I could turn on the AC on the car, but he did not recommend this as it is illegal to keep a running car on a transport unit. I said thanks, I will have to think about it.

A couple of days later I drove to David's business. Even though it was only about 15 miles away it took about an hour and a half with traffic. As is my usual custom I made a Google Map to get there, and forget to make one for the return trip.

His business was in a mid-sized home in an industrial part of Long Island City. Inside I saw the article I had written, framed, on the wall. Wow, I hadn't even framed it.

David, unfortunately, wasn't there that day as his mother had not been feeling well. So some of the other folks there helped me. Everyone was very nice, and gentle as those who tend to work with animal usually are. I saw a 300 sized kennel -- basically a large plastic box with a door in the front -- and wondered if it would be large enough. I asked to see the 400 sized kennel, which was then way too large. Well, this would have to do. All through the back of the home there were various dogs barking, though inside the home there were some smaller dogs who were able to walk around,including a very friendly dachshund.

The cost of the kennel was $40, which is good because that was all I had. Once it was cleaned and made ready I tried to fit in the back seat of my Honda and it just barely made it. Phew.

I drove home, and for one reason or another it took about another hour and a half. All together the trip, to go perhaps 30 miles round trip, took four hours. That's one thing about NYC, what isn't walking distance is often way too far.

So the cats were taken care of for now. I would worry more about them later. Now I had to actually get on with plotting out this move.

I went onto U-Haul's website to try and figure out the best setup for the trip. Should I get a 14 foot truck or 17 foot? I went larger. I opted, as mentioned, for the more expensive flat bed car dolly, not the two-wheeled job. I rented 10 blankets to protect our gear. Then came the eternal question: should I get insurance on the truck and dolly? I am never sure in situations like these (which include renting a car) whether I would be truly covered in an accident via whatever protections are offered from my credit card. I paid the extra money for the insurance, though I kind of didn't want to.

I made the reservations about two weeks in advance of the planned move day. The truck and dolly was to be mine for four days in total.

I was a bit nervous about it all. This was going to be a big rig. The truck would be easily the largest I have ever driven, for the longest period of time. Add in that it would also have a car towed behind it, and the 17 foot truck -- I opted for the big boy -- would soon swell to, what, 30 feet? Longer? I shivered at the idea of trying to get that thing through the city, but realized I just would have to deal with it.

Fortunately around this time my friend Mike volunteered to take the trip with me, and share the drive. He lives in Denver, but had spent most of his summer break -- he is also a teacher -- in his hometown in New Jersey and was damn tired of it. A little trip, he said, would be just the thing he needed.

I was grateful for the help and took him up on the offer. To make the trip worth his while I paid for his airline ticket back home, as he was doing me a big favor. Even with this added cost, I figured, it is still so much cheaper than the figure Flat Rate had quoted.

Now I had to plan out how to load and unload all our stuff. U-Haul has a feature on their website where you can find movers, price them, and read their various customer reviews. If you like what you see you can also reserve their services for when you need them. Since I was driving myself I realized that we would only need movers to load and unload the truck. I reserved Pack Mule movers on the Kentucky end, at $85 an hour for two hours, with three guys. And on the New York end I emailed a company called Personalized Movers, who had helped us move twice before. Their cost was $115 an hour for four guys, and two hours. Of course being nervous about this whole deal I checked both confirmations about a dozen times before the actual moving day.

The big day finally arrived, July 8. That morning I helped load Randi and Stella, and their things, into our Honda and drove them to La Guardia. Their flight was at 8:30 a.m., so we left the apartment by 6:30. Fortunately there was little traffic and we made it to the airport in about 25 minutes. (Again the city, being the city, meant that this trip could have taken either 25 minutes or two hours.)

When we got to the US Air curbside dropoff at the airport Randi got out and checked the bags. My job was to load Stella onto her new carrier. You see we had purchased a transport device for Stella so that Randi's side of the trip would be made relatively easy. It was a set of wheels with a handle on the top that you could fasten a child safety car seat onto. This way instead of dealing with a stroller you could just roll your kid through the airport in their own seat. It cost about $80, yet another of the innumerable expenses that factored into the move.

There was only one problem, in our haste we had forgotten to actually assemble the damn thing. It was still in the box, still in the plastic and now I had to figure out how to put it together, from scratch, on the curb in front of the airport, while the police, taxis, livery drivers, various other passengers, and random airport employees kept trying to get us to hustle on out.

I tore open the box. I would need a Phillips head screwdriver. Wonderful. I looked into the trunk to see what goodies my mom had left in a large brown cardboard box she always kept back there. (We had gotten the car from my mom, as you now know.) This box had mainly been the bane of my existence, as it took up a lot of room and I never did anything with it. But it held jumper cables, some maps, and god knows what else. Fortunately it also held ... a Phillips head screwdriver! Yahtzee!

Now, feeling a bit more like McGuyver, it was time for me to assemble this thing on the curb, while my child was inside the car, looking nervously around, and my wife checked the bags. I saw instructions, I saw various plastic parts, I saw wheels, but I saw no screws. Oh man. Not good.

In a frenzy I looked harder and eventually found the four screws I needed, but it took a few precious minutes. God dammit, I thought, why didn't we think of any of this before today? No matter how well you try to plan something there is always something forgotten. This was it. I was frantic.

I put the wheels on the axle and snapped them into place, then threaded them into the groove where they were supposed to fit and didn't. I would have to deal with that later. I put the handle into the frame, backwards I eventually realized. I reversed it a few minutes later, as the sky cap guys looked on, confused. Time was ticking. I screwed in screws, as fast as I could. Then Randi helped me snap in the axle right. We were tense, I felt kind of like I was doing surgery on the side of the road. After about ten minutes (an eternity when you are curbside at the airport) it looked sturdy enough. Now would come the test. I unfastened Stella from her seat, and put her on the curb, holding Randi's hand. Then I fastened the car seat into the holder, wrong of course. I tried it again, and this time it seemed to work.

Then I took Stella and put her on her seat in the bracket. It was a little shaky, but seemed to roll and do what it was supposed to do.

Randi and I kissed, it was now around 7:10 a.m.

"I will call when I land," Randi said. (She is superstitious about flying, and always calls when the trip has ended.)

"Okay," I said. "Have a great trip and I love you."

She said she loved me too.

"And I love you Stella," I said, as I bent down to kiss her cheek. At this point Stella probably flinched and moved her head, as is custom, but I can't quite remember.

Then Randi started to walk inside, towing Stella behind on her new roller. They both looked like they were actually having some fun with their new toy, especially Stella as she rolled along. She smiled. That was the image I burned into my brain as I waved goodbye to the both of them, and Stella even waved back.

After they went inside I immediately snapped to. No time for long goodbyes, my day had just began. I knew it was to be a long day, although just then I had no idea quite how long.

Next time: getting the van, packing and driving.

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 4

2010-08-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

So, out of the blue, about two and a half months ago I get this call from one of the few remaining financial big magazines. I had met with the editor there before he was editor there, and we had hit it off way back when. Now, much to my surprise, I got a call about whether I wanted to come in and interview for a staff writer position.

Knock me over with a feather, dig?

I said yes, of course, even though I knew it would cause a certain amount of sturm und drang over here, not to mention agita, and a few other words in foreign languages. We had agreed to move, but the "good job" caveat was coming into play, and I was just as surprised as anyone.

I got out a nice suit, and dressed up for the interview, but didn't really have too much invested emotionally. By now I have been on so many interviews that I knew relatively few ever go anywhere. Still, I figured I would put my best foot forward, and do what I could.

The magazine, let's call it "Personal Riches", was ensconced in a large, perhaps massive is a better word, midtown office tower. This, I thought, is a real place to work. It had security, expensive art in the lobby, a reflecting pool out front. I cleared security and went upstairs to meet my interviewer, Richard. (Not his real name, etc.)

In Richard's office was his number two, a pleasant woman named Gloria. We started to chat, and since I had nothing to lose I felt unusually free and confident. Suddenly I noticed everything they said they wanted in a writer seemed to track with my experience, it was kind of spooky. The topper came when they asked me if I could handle being a mere staff writer after being an editor? I answered that this was more than good for me, and, don't worry, I could always mentor the various younger reporters who know nothing.

We all had a good laugh, and, what do you know, soon an hour had passed! Always a good sign. Then I met some other editors, and we all hit it off famously too. Soon I started to feel kind of warm, and not from my blue suit. We were clicking. Really clicking. I was shocked, but ready to see where this went.

Soon after this it was time to talk turkey, and here's where it got real interesting. I didn't bring up salary, they did. This is always good. You know when the money talk starts that things are going well.

Richard asked me what I would want. I had to think quick. You're always supposed to say what you made at your old job plus, I don't know, 15-20%, or so. But I didn't want to do that, because I had been underpaid at my old gig, and didn't want to lose money courtesy of the penury of my former employer. So I pulled out the oldest trick in the book, I asked THEM for a salary range.

Here's where it gets fun. Richard kind of apologized at this point and told me that while I wouldn't be making "Forbes money" (this is how he phrased it) they could still pay a decent wage. I nodded serenely. Then he quoted me a figure that was just about twice what I made at my old job. I nodded again, perhaps a touch less serenely. That they were willing to indulge my almost transparent gamesmanship made me feel confident, much to my shock.

"I realize things are tough these days," Richard added, almost sheepishly. "But as things improve we'll see more from corporate." Oh my. So this is the kind of money real people make! It was strange to finally feel like I might get to join the adult world.

I took a moment, let the dollar figures sink in and then answered: "Well, I guess I will have to put the yacht in dry-dock."

We all smiled, ha-ha.

Soon the interview drew to a close. As a formality, more or less, I was asked to cobble together a few story ideas and send them their way in the next week or so. If it takes a little longer don't stress it, Richard said.

Fine, I had a few ideas.

Once downstairs, downing a late afternoon pushcart lunch by the reflecting pool, I took a moment to parse what had just happened. A job basically finds me from out of the blue, I kill during the interview, it's what I would like to do, AND it would pay actual money. What had I done wrong for things to all of a sudden go so right? This just wasn't my typical style of career luck, i.e. bad.

But I didn't look forward to the call to Randi. I knew this change of plans would upset her, as she was ready to leave New York post-haste. What would we do? If we stayed she couldn't get her old job back, we had missed the deadline. Could we swing a deal where I worked in NYC part time and lived in Kentucky part time? I didn't know, couldn't know. I decided I wouldn't try to put it all together now.

On the phone Randi was upset, as I expected. But it was what it was. I didn't like to see her upset, but this opportunity was just too good to pass up. For all of us, not just me. With more money we could send Stella to summer camp when she got older, maybe get a place in Kentucky and here, finally get to enjoy New York like a civilized couple, not always two steps from a tenement existence, only with Thai takeout. Which we can't even order all that often.

The next few days were tense, and Randi and I discussed this new development, sometimes heatedly. I stuck to my guns, I had to go for it. Initially she was not pleased. I didn't want to make her unhappy or hurt our marriage, but I thought this was something I needed to do.

About a four days after the initial interview Randi came around, which made me really grateful and appreciative. "Look, there's no way we can turn down that money," she finally conceded. I agreed. I am not a big one for making your whole career about the money, but ... this time I thought I could make an exception.

I told my mom, who almost cried with joy over the phone. She, of course, didn't want us to move. She didn't want us to go, didn't want Stella to go, and thought that my career options were better in NYC. But mainly she was so proud that someone, somewhere finally offered me what I was worth. She said she always knew I deserved something like this, and always believed in me. I was swelled with gratitude. The kicker was that she said she was thrilled for me, even if I didn't get the job.

I told her to please keep it between us, as there was no offer yet. The next day, of course, I get calls from my brother and sister congratulating me on my new job.

Still, I was confident an offer was likely.

I decided to run with their suggestion of a "few" story suggestions. I would blow their socks off. I sent them five story ideas that I thought were dynamite. They were immediately returned and unanimously rejected.

Whoa, must've been a misunderstanding!

Then I decided to go another route. Over the next week I wrote two five page mini cover stories, basically, that took research, writing, phone calls to sources in the financial world, the whole deal. I killed myself to make these great and knew they were the best I could do. I sent them in on a Friday, full of piss and vinegar. Just try to not hire me now suckas!

Early Monday I received a call from Richard. Excited but confident I picked up the phone, awaiting my offer.

Instead I received a quick and conclusive rejection. When I picked up my jaw from the table I sputtered out something like, "how?"

My packages were too much, basically, he said. It was like I was trying to show off all I know, rather than write something that readers would really need.

How can you answer that? (Too much knowledge? Huh?) You can't. I didn't. I said thanks for reading, and with a ghost of our former collegiality, he wished me luck as we ended our call.

A day later I emailed Gloria to see if she would be kind enough to send me a brief email to explain where I went wrong. I still couldn't see where. Her note back was very kind and gracious and she said she would get back to me in the next few days.

The next few days never happened.

I walked around in a fog for about two days, shocked and dismayed as my new life melted back into my old one. I am ashamed to admit today that I had even gone so far as planning a new car purchase. After a year on the job of course, I didn't want to be rash. But still, I had allowed myself to dream that much, even as I realized I was being premature. (It was a Lexus, by the way, not the expensive one, the middle of the line one. Black.)

At 38 I now had to face the reality: I would have to start over, even if I didn't feel ready. My last hope for really making it in the city had fallen through; the latest and greatest in a string of lost opportunities and mistakes. The straw could not be grasped, the hail Mary pass would not be received. I would now become a New York Jew in Kentucky. Not quite Mark Twain, is it?

I realize I promised to tell you about the move itself in the first entry. I will get to it in the next one. No lie.

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 3

2010-08-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

The reason why was because Randi had to alert her school, PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn as to whether or not she would return. Even though the school year was to start in September they would need to know by March. A few weeks in advance of this we went back and forth still more, and started to see a marriage counselor to help us deal with the stress this had put on us as individuals and as a married couple.

I personally felt the strain. No matter how I tried to slice it I couldn't come up with one answer that would satisfy everyone. If we stayed Randi wouldn't be happy, and would feel that we had ignored something very important to her, which was that she desperately wanted to try and help poor rural children get better educations. This was, and is, a noble goal that I supported. Or at least I supported it in theory before it meant that I would have to move to Kentucky.

If we moved I might be able to find a decent life in Kentucky, but I wasn't confident. As mentioned my entire world had become centered around New York, and I had a wonderful group of friends, and a great family, whom I loved. It would be especially hard trying to replicate the network of friends, family and close contacts that had made up a fairly complex web for me. On any given night, if I decided to go out, I could go downtown and see people I know perform, meet a good, good friend for a drink, or even catch a movie with a chum. I knew I would desperately miss these people.

The problem, of course, is that we, as a couple, could rarely indulge in these sorts of fun activities because it cost so much. We lucked out, and found a babysitter that would watch Stella for $15 an hour, but since I was jobless and Randi only worked part time at the school (she had decided to go back to work last school year, but too late to get full time work) even at this discounted rate our little nights out, which we used to take for granted, became back-breakingly expensive. If we merely went to see a movie we would have to add up the cost of the movie, $23 or so, and the cost of the babysitter, at least $45. Heaven forbid we should want to get dinner or buy popcorn at the theater, then our night could easily top $100. Just to get dinner and see a movie.

Sometimes we could get babysitting help through a collective Randi was in, but this could not be counted on on a regular basis.

So basically our lives had become very small, with us in most nights, praying for the return of shows like "Mad Men" to make yet another night inside seem worth it.

As mentioned, the clocked ticked away while we tried to find, somewhere, the wisdom of Solomon. How to balance the happiness of one versus the other? Not to mention that if Randi was unhappy it would have a big impact on my happiness.

Also there was the Stella factor. What would be best for her? In Brooklyn we lived right next door to a library with excellent programs for kids and down the block from a great playground with a tots section. Better still we had become part of a large, lively and close-knit group of parents in our area, as Brooklyn has become such a Mecca for young couples. We all knew one another's kids, and Stella had started to develop friendships with some of the local kids her age.

Yet, again, though, the question loomed: could she be happy if her parents were constantly stressed? If we stayed would we be able to settle into a routine that would mitigate the isolation we frequently felt? Would having more family nearby help us, and by extension help her? I tried to figure all this out, as did Randi.

What about me? My career had seemingly hit a wall. I enjoyed writing investigative pieces into Wall Street, which I already had done at prior jobs, but even when I was hired at Forbes I was told that they didn't need me for that. I could do it in my spare time, of course, and see if a job opened up. But for now they wanted me to continue to crank out the financial advice, and do whatever else it was they wanted me to do at.

Not to say that I didn't work hard, I did. And I was grateful for the chance. But my job was a full-time job, and I took it seriously. Unfortunately at the end of the day there was little time for me to get cranking on the next great Wall Street expose. That is also a full time job. The problem is that being a dad and a husband is also yet another full time job, and one I also took seriously. So something had to give and what gave was my ability to do extracurricular reporting. This is how journalism is a young person's game. If you are single, and childless, you can spend the extra hours on the phone, going to conferences, calling people earlier in the day or late at night. You can write things up over the weekends. You can have, in essence, two jobs. The one they pay you for, which you may not love, and the one you want to grow into.

I know, boo-hoo. I realize that it was my decision to not burn the extra midnight oil. I made a choice, and have accepted it. But I was sad to see this horrific financial meltdown take place right before my eyes, and only be able to delve into it peripherally.

Then there was the apartment situation. If we left, but decided we would want to come back how could we? We would lose our apartment, and as anyone who has ever moved to New York can attest, finding a nice, affordable apartment can be a process akin to finding hen's teeth. Especially when you don't already have a place. How would it work? Would I ask my parents if we could stay with them while Randi took the bus into work, I looked for apartments, and Stella ... just what would Stella do anyway?

Some of these questions have no answers, of course. After months of banging our heads against various walls we decided, with the deadline landing on our backs, to simply roll the dice and go for it. I realized something important: I would never be able to divine the future, so I would have to stop trying. No matter how much I figured, reasoned and played out various scenarios I could not account for them all, especially with things that are as unpredictable as happiness and satisfaction.

It was decided that we would move, try Louisville, and see if anyone would want to sublet our apartment while we were away.

Could the sublet work? Would our landlord agree to it? We didn't know, but we would ask.

Anyway, if you can imagine it, these were only some of the questions we tried to answer before the move. (Others: What about my sister Barbara? She has Down's Syndrome and I am her legal guardian. She's in New Jersey, could I see her? What about moving from a place with tons of Jews, New York, to a place where there aren't very many at all? How would I handle that? Would Stella assimilate into a culture I wouldn't want her to assimilate into?)

So, as mentioned, all this put an enormous strain on us personally and together. The back-and-forthing of it all, the idea that we would have to change lives ... it was all too much. Sometimes I was on board, and sometimes I would draw way back, terrified and angry that I would have to go. Randi wanted to go, yes, but then she would pull back too. We would have a great day, a day that could only be had in New York, and she would start to question whether we should move as well. We might be at a public pool, amidst dozens of kids from every race and background, all playing together. Only in New York, I would think, and the thought made me happy.

Then something would happen that would make me very unhappy, and it would also only be in New York. I would have to move my car twice a week, every week. Heaven forbid I should forget, then I would be slapped with crazy expensive tickets, and the threat of having my car towed. Laundry was blocks away, which can be a big burden when your laundry bags weigh 50 pounds. To get food we have to carry groceries up three flights of narrow stairs. And everything costs way more than it should. These are the compromises of city life.

So there were so many unanswerable issues at play. Yet at the same time I also knew that no matter where we went we would still, ultimately, bring ourselves along. Could a move even make us happier if we weren't happy now? Maybe, but maybe not. Again, these are questions that have no answers, almost like Zen Koans, but far less philosophical and fun.

To complicate matters still more we also understood that if some crazy great job opening came my way we would have to reconsider moving. I for one was not worried that this would happen. It hadn't happened yet, and I'd been on the lookout for months.

Yet this unlikely scenario is exactly what happened.

Updates From The Heartland: The Move, Pt. 2

2010-07-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I was stressed out and nervous about the entire concept of moving away from The City, and my much-loved Brooklyn to go to a new area, a new life, a new everything. And, I hoped, a new me. Which is a horrifically cliche thing to say, I realize, but definitely has been on my mind. I realize that journalism is a tough career choice, and one that has lead to a certain amount of burnout. Year after year of writing about markets and investing advice left me no wealthier personally, or, for that matter, more marketable.

Despite that I wasn't necessarily ready to move 800 miles away to make this change manifest. But these were the discussions/arguments that Randi and I had, many many time, over the course of a year. If we didn't move how would we know what else is out there? Aren't we concerned about where Stella will go to school? (The New York public schools are a notoriously mixed bunch, and saying they are "mixed" is being generous.) Another issue is that we hadn't had much of a life since Stella was born, as babysitting rates in the city can be upwards of $20 an hour, and we had few options for family members to come and watch out daughter. As a result we were more or less shut-ins for the first year of Stella's life, and while that got gradually better over time, it never got all that much better. The demands of raising a high-spirited child in the city proved exhausting, even overwhelming at times. It was all us, all the time.

If we moved we felt confident that some of this burden could be lifted from our shoulders because Randi has a large extended family in the greater Louisville area, and her mother had already volunteered to babysit.

Plus, and this is huge, the cost of living in New York had gotten outrageous. I recently saw a graph that said that over the past decade the average price to purchase a home had risen by roughly 70% in the city, which was already expensive, while salaries have stagnated. Our apartment was and is a steal at $1700 a month. Meanwhile, in Louisville, we would find a fairly deluxe two bedroom for $900, almost. And this is the expensive place!

But there's a reason it's less, and that reason is because it's in Louisville. A place that is far away from the bright lights, although for me personally the much larger issue is that it is also far from the publishing capital of the world, and the entertainment scene. This was a tough pill for me to swallow because I am a writer, for starters, and I have long loved to see and perform music and comedy. (Although it's been several years since I've performed on a regular basis.)

Plus, and this is most key, I was really scared by the prospect of having no close friends nearby, or family. The reasons for this may be obvious, but they still loomed extremely large as I fretted, back and forth, over how a move could play out. It was impossible to come to a conclusive answer, because there were just too many variables. Meanwhile, while we dawdled over our decision the clock ticked away. I will explain why in the next entry.

Updates from The Heartland: The Move

2010-07-28T03:09:00.000-07:00

So yes, we have moved to Kentucky. I still can't quite believe this, even as I write it. We have been here about two weeks, and have been busy with the usual moving in stuff. I have been writing, but not every day, and mostly in a journal, not in a blog. I just haven't felt ready to share my thoughts with the world. Not that the world necessarily cared! But this is what's going on now, so I will give a little rundown, probably in shorter doses, over the next few days of how it's gone so far. But let me start by describing the drive out, because it was a nightmarish experience.

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The decision was made that the most cost-efficient way to do the move was for me to rent a U-Haul truck, pay movers on either end to pack it, rent a trailer, put the car on it, and drive to Kentucky, rather than pay movers to ship our things.

The main inducement, as always, was price. About two weeks before our move-out date I had brought in a company called Flat Rate Movers to come into our apartment to give me an estimate as to how much it would cost if we simply paid them to move everything. (The way they do it is that they would reserve room for us on an 18-wheeler, along with the gear from other people who are also moving.) The guy who came to our place was a pleasant Israeli guy named Oran. (By the way, ever notice that a ton of movers are Israeli? I have.)

He did a complete and thorough job, and spent about 15 or 20 minutes reviewing every conceivable thing. We were doing a clean move out, that was the plan. The other half of the plan was that we wanted to sublet our apartment, in case we decide to return down the road. (Randi's teaching job in Brooklyn grants up to five years of leave after you have a child. Meaning that you can leave the job for up to five years after the birth of a child and come back and be guaranteed your old job back. It's a union thing. Pretty neat, right?)

So anyway, Oran looked everything over and entered a bunch of numbers into some sort of portable computer. The entire process was fairly complex as he even had to call in to headquarters, and get some sort of code. About ten minutes later he had his figure for how much it would cost to move us. And remember this was the Flat Rate, so this was it: $3900.

Whoa boy, that's a lot of dough! I asked how much it might cost if we left two large pieces of furniture behind, and he brought it down to $3600. I realized that we would only have to buy furniture out here anyway, for such nominal savings it didn't make sense to leave the pieces behind.

I tried to rationalize how we could pull this off, because I really didn't want to drive this stuff almost 800 miles, towing a car the entire way. But the more we discussed it, the more we realized that there just was no way. Renting a truck from U-Haul would not be cheap, in fact it would cost roughly $1300, including furniture pads and the dolly for the car. Factor in gas, which would for now be an unknown, and we're looking at hundreds more. Factor in a hotel for one overnight and we're looking at more, add in food and it's more. But still, I could find no scenario where we didn't save serious money, at least $1000, by doing the move ourselves. And at this stage of the game, with my wife without a job, and myself without a job as well, $1000 meant a lot to us. Maybe some day it won't seem worth it, but I kind of doubt it. At least not some day soon.

Of course realizing that we were going to have to do it ourselves lead to a whole series of logistical challenges that we wouldn't have to contend with had we just paid Flat Rate to do it. Chief on my mind was what we were going to do with our beloved cats, Cromwell and Talisker.

Here I thought to reach out to the one person I've ever met whom I can truly say is an expert in the area of moving pets: David, the head of a company called The Pet Chauffeur. How did I know David? It's a story, but maybe not a very long one. Years and years ago I wrote a story about him for The New York Post, my one and only piece for that newspaper by the way. (You can read the story here if you scroll down the page.)

I remember the impetus for the piece. I was in my old Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and I saw a sign on this car as it drove down the block: The Pet Chauffeur. Right away this seemed kind of crazy, and very New York; a taxi service for your pet. Meanwhile I could rarely afford cabs, but here was an entire service meant to ferry around four-legged friends. As mentioned I couldn't think of anything more urban that that, in a city where so many people have pets instead of children, and then treat these pets better than so many families treat their actual kids.

I called the one and only contact I had at The 'Post, business editor Dan Colaruso. (Now long departed.) He said he was interested in the story, and I wrote it up. It was actually one of the easier pieces I ever did, and I was happy to see it in the paper about a week later.

Anyway, this is a digression I realize, but who cares, right? So I called David, to get his advice about the best way to move the cats. Randi had great trepidation about whether she could handle it all if we boarded them on the airplane with her and Stella, which I understood. It's hard enough to fly with a toddler as a couple, you always need more hands that even two adults seem to have, and it's a struggle to stay on top of all the stuff you have to do in order to simply get on an airplane these days. Plus we had concerns about whether it would be best for the cats to do it that way, as cargo holds may not be the best places for living creatures.

Do you think I over-thought this much? Hmm, sure seems like it. In truth the moving of the cats became perhaps my single biggest source of stress during this entire process. Maybe I did this deliberately in order to focus on something, anything, other than the reality of the move at hand and what it might mean to me personally. I just could not imagine what life would be like in Kentucky, a place where I had no friends, no real contacts, far less in the way of career options, I feared, and only my in-laws for family outside of Randi and Stella. Not that my in-laws aren't wonderful, of course they are, but it was hard for me to see myself in this reality, let alone get psyched for it. The truth was the entire process was enormously, extremely, all-consumingly stressful for me, and the stress gradually built up over several months. Eventually I became extremely depressed and anxious about the entire idea, and things started to spiral out of control with me personally.

But more about that tomorrow.

Thoughts On Toys, Curious George

2010-06-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

Slept in a little this morning, it's about 6:30 a.m. Stella is surely going to be awake soon, so I probably won't have long to do this. So here we go.

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Man, it's been hot, am I right? As they say in "Biloxi Blues" it's been like "Africa Hot." The metal stairs leading up to our apartment are black, and every morning the sun shines down on them, making them even more hot. Ick and icky poo.

Slept with the fan on, right near the bed. It worked, even better than our AC unit upstairs, it was more immediate, you know?

In Stella's room we have installed a portable AC unit that rolls around on wheels, and is about the size of a small refrigerator. It is probably the best AC unit in the apartment. It has this snaking tube that reaches from the back of the unit to the window, where the hot air is piped out. When you first turn it on in a hot room the tube becomes actually hot to the touch, which is kind of crazy and in a way fascinating.

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Anyway, enough about the weather. I mean, how boring can I be, right?

What else is happening? What else is happening with Stella?

We saw "Toy Story 3" yesterday afternoon, partly to help escape the heat. We went to a movie theater on Court Street in Brooklyn. First we waited on a line that was not moving at all. Despite it being about 2:15 p.m. on a Thursday the place was just about packed. What's wrong with these people, don't they have jobs? :-)

Then we moved to a ticket dispensing kiosk. There were five but only one of them worked. We were starting to get frantic, because it was getting closer to movie time, and we weren't sure whether it would sell out. I was holding Stella the whole time, because this is her new thing, she wants to be held all the time. A kindly Latina woman let me buy tickets ahead of her because she was going to a later show. So, once we had our tickets we started to go to our theater, theater 12. This was on, no joke, on either the sixth or seventh floor of the movie house. We went up, up, up escalators, some of which didn't work, of course, me holding Stella the whole time.

I later joked to Randi that we went up so much that it actually took water longer to boil.

Soon enough, though, we made it the theater playing the movie, although we missed the coming attractions and some of a short animated feature that played before the movie. But the actual movie itself was wonderful, and I recommend it very highly. I think Stella liked it a lot too. In fact it is the first movie that she has ever made it all the way through. True she did have to get up and walk around, or at least between us, and she made some noise toward the end, and was kind of anxious, but by and large I think she really loved the movie.

Which was good, because it would be nice to go to the movies, pay for a tickets to a kid friendly movie, and then actually see the movie in question.

I've caught about half of "Marley & Me," "Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeequel," and "The Princess And The Frog." They were all entertaining, or at least parts of them were. Then inevitably Stella would get way too antsy and I would have to grab her and walk around the theater, and then it would be Randi's turn.

Maybe she just didn't like these movies? I don't find that impossible to believe.

I don't think it's revealing too much to say that at the end of the new "Toy Story" the boy, Andy, has to decide whether or not he is going to keep his toys. In fact that's kind of what the entire movie is about. And, gosh darn it, who hasn't had to deal with that dilemma? When I was a kid I slept with about 10 stuffed animals every night, but over time outgrew them (thank god) and eventually had to realize that maybe someone else would benefit from them more than I would. The decision to give them away was easy, but I still miss my Curious George doll.

It was a gift from my brother Stu, and I think he bought it at a stationary store downtown. I had forgotten that he bought it for me, but he reminded me years and years later, and I think it was so cool of him to get this present for me. It immediately became my favorite. It had a red shirt that said "Curious George" on it, and a red baseball hat, the brim of which was turned up.

It was my absolute favorite, and I loved it. When I was in my early 20s I decided that since I was no longer playing with it that I should give it to my younger cousins. I didn't realize though how hard it would actually be to part with it. As I was handing it to them a voice inside my head said "no!" don't do this, keep George, but give away anything else. But I didn't listen to it, and parted with my toy, but with a heavy heart.

This was the right thing to do, I thought at the time, though it made me sad. I felt really adult, you know? And I thought that part of being an adult is being sad when you give up your childhood toys.

Maybe, however, that meant that I wasn't quite ready to actually part with it.

About six months ago I asked my cousins for it back because I have Stella now and she is just crazy about George too. But the doll was long gone by then, removed in a cleaning binge some years ago. I am not mad about it, because I gave it away, it was theirs to do what they will. I have to admit, though, that I was dismayed to hear the news, I never imagined I could actually lose George forever.

My cousins are wonderful and sweet people, and bought a new, modern version of the George I lost, again with a red sweater but this time with much more realistic monkey hands and feet. Stella is crazy about it, and sleeps with it sometimes. In fact she loves it, probably the way I loved mine way back when. Maybe she even loves it more because it is hers. It's entirely possible that she wouldn't have taken to mine this way, and I would have been kind of surprised, maybe even, this is silly, a little hurt? Who knows?

All I know is that somehow, in the back of my mind, I know that if I ever am walking by a yard sale and I see my old school Curious George doll I will almost certainly snap it up and bring it home. Although I'll probably wash it first and throw it in the dryer for a good long time before bringing it into the house to stay. Because let's not be too sentimental here.

Thoughts On A Thursday: Sarah Palin, Lady Gaga Edition

2010-06-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

What do these two women have in common? They're both nuts!

Hi,
Going to just be a bit random here, as it's a Thursday morning and I'm barely awake. So let's see. As usual, these are my opinions and thoughts, probably with little justification or facts backing them up!

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Boy, that Sarah Palin! It sure seems that everything she does instantly becomes news, right? In the past two weeks I've seen headlines about people she's endorsed, questions about whether she had a boob job (for an increase not decrease), a story on her daughter Bristol Palin being in a soap opera, and so on.

You'd almost think she didn't scare half the country to death.

But she does. And this is what I find so strange about the talk about her being the nominal leader of the Republican Party right now, half the country is downright terrified of her. Terrified of her smirk, of her proud ignorance, of her obvious backpeddling on positions that she once endorsed ("Drill, baby, drill!"). I mean, she is a big, big reason why Old Man McCain lost the last election. Anyone who was Democrat refused to jump lines (there were no McCain Democrats, ala Reagan), and most independents were also scared away by her obvious joy in being on the wrong side of just about every issue.

If she is the best the Republicans can do expect them to definitely lose the 2012 Presidential election. Closer to home I predict that the candidates she endorses will continue to lose, and that she herself will continue to be an overall drag on the Republican Party.

What has happened to The Elephants anyway? Whereas they once portrayed themselves as the party of the grownups, the party of responsibility in all its various guises, now the best figurehead they can rustle up is a former, not even one term, governor from one of our smallest states? A person who polorizes everywhere she goes? And this is considered good? What am I missing?

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And Democrats have had to learn, alas, that Obama is not an idealized figment of their most fervent imagination, but an actual living, breathing, flawed man. He is, hold steady, not perfect. He has and will continue to make mistakes. In this he will be like every other person that ever walked the planet. I can accept this, but can other Democrats? Do they have another choice?

It seems like Obama is getting it from all sides these days, and I can understand why. The economy, despite somehow being "better" still is terrible, unemployment is high and not getting better, and other key indicators, like housing, are not promising.

Mostly, though, Obama has been shown to be somewhat of an unengaged technocrat when it comes to the oil spill. He tries to project that he cares, but people don't really believe him. His response to the entire crisis has been as agonizing, in some ways, as the spill itself. What else could he have done? I don't know. He's gotten BP to agree to a $20 billion cleanup, which is a hell of a lot more than George Bush 1 wrested from Exxon in the wake of the Valdez tragedy. In fact Exxon fought the notion that they were responsible for the Valdez incident tooth and nail for about 20 years. In the end they went back and back and back to court to reduce whatever monies they had to pay, even though the disaster was clearly their fault.

But we want to believe Obama can make this spill stop, go away, magically get capped. But it can't.

It might be interesting to know that during Reagan's first term he was not all that popular, not with Democrats mind you, but Republicans. Two years into his first term he was stuck in a recession, and there was a lot of talk in the Republican party of dumping Reagan, of having him step gracefully out of the spotlight so they could find someone else for the 1984 election.

Of course none of this happened, and in 1984 he won in the biggest landslide in modern American politics. What changed? The recession ended, and the economy turned around, that's all. If Obama can also cruise into 2012 with an economy that is getting noticeably stronger he will be in great shape, especially if the Republicans continue to heed the siren song of their ignorant muse, Sarah Palin. As a Democrat this would make me happy, but as an American this makes me very sad indeed.

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This truly has nothing to do with anything, but I am concerned about Lady Gaga's recent antics at the Mets and Yankees games she attended. Apparently she stripped down at both of them, acted totally weird, but not in a good way, and just generally projected an air of crazy. What I'm thinking is, here we go again. She is starting to crack.

Look, I have no idea what it's like to actually live in the spotlight, but all the evidence around me seems to prove that it's extremely unhealthy for young adults to find themselves there for long periods of time. Look at Michael Jackson, look at Corey Haim, look at anyone who ever went near the set of Diff'rent Strokes. Lindsey Lohan, the list goes on. If you are a young person and become world famous the odds are good you will go totally nuts. Again, look at Britney Spears.

Britney, what a odd trajectory she had. She went from computerized jail bait/sex kitten, to crazy woman, back to emotionless dancing fembot. And we are supposed to be happy that she's back "entertaining" and being anorexic. But instead, to me, she just looks joyless and dead inside. Indeed when she went nuts, shaved her head, attacked a car with an umbrella, all that, she was showing actual, real emotion. It just wasn't emotion that seemed all that healthy or good for her.

The crackups always start with something small. With Michael Jackson it was the story that he had bought the Elephant Man's bones. Worldwide we all just kind of went, huh? But otherwise he seemed more or less normal, so we ignored this weird sign. Soon he was bleaching his skin and having sleep overs with little kids. Did he molest them? Who knows? Was it creepy? Hell yes!

With Britney Spears the first sign of weirdness was that she was, brace yourselves, smoking! (Oh for the day this seemed strange.) Yes, you remember now, right? She was caught smoking on a balcony, which totally contradicted her wholesome (as wholesome as jail bait can be, I guess) image. Remember, she endorsed George W. Bush, and had been a Mousekateer. She was supposed to be the perfect American Girl. But there she was smoking, an actual real live American Girl now, and people were upset. Soon she was having affairs, getting married for two days, and driving barefoot with her babies in tow. The downfall came fast, and it all started with some smokes.

With Lindsey Lohan the first sign of trouble came from reports that she was being rude and cranky on the sets of her various films. Showing up late, not knowing her lines, all that. Again, not a huge deal, but a portent of things to come.

With Lady Gaga this odd, self-defeating behavior at the baseball games may be what we, years down the road, mark as the start of her crackup. After all, what did she accomplish with these displays? Nothing other than to alienate scores of fans in her own hometown. For what? Some cheap publicity? She's already one of the biggest stars on the planet, and about to headline a bunch of shows at MSG. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld not all exposure is good exposure, in fact you could die from exposure.

This is a shame, because at 23 years old, she looks to be full of potential and actual musical talent. But the media is so all devouring, so constant that I fear she will never get to live up to this potential if she doesn't learn to take a step back.

All these stories form a pattern. So many of these child/young adult stars are so contained, so precocious, so controlled in everything they do, until one day ... they aren't. At all, and then they fall to pieces in a violent, agonizing way. We forget now, but just five years ago Lindsey Lohan was a fresh faced, sweet as pie, wholesome All American girl, who had just starred in a series of Disney films. "Mean Girls" was not to be her swan song, but her coming out party. And in that movie there are entire scenes where you can see the young, sweet person she seemed to be. Now she's an absolute train wreck, and when she puts a blond wig on she looks not like Marilyn Monroe, but her own middle aged mother. My god, she's what, 25?

Anyway, I don't need to recap the whole sad list, but I think of all the talents a young star can have the talent that is most important is the talent for preserving themselves, learning how to say no to the spotlight and risking the public's short memory so they don't burn out and get consumed by their own notoriety. First they are famous then they are infamous. This is a shame when actual talent is at stake, yes, but it's also a shame when actual lives are consumed.

Me? I'm glad I'm peeking late. :-)

Good Morning!

2010-06-15T02:49:00.000-07:00

Ugh, yesterday was one of THOSE days. I woke up, made a list of things to do, and maybe got to do about half of them. But many of the more important things didn't happen. And these have to do with helping keep this place a little bit more neat than it is right now.

I swear, entropy has become a constant factor in my life. If we don't clean up the toy area it becomes a crazy mess within a day. If we don't do the dishes for one day the sink mysteriously becomes filled. If we don't change the litter box every four days it smells like an ammonia bomb has gone off in our bathroom. On top of that the recycling needs to be taken, and the normal garbage too. These are the perhaps quotidian chores any household needs done, but when I don't do them I definitely feel a certain weight pressing down on me as I walk around the apartment. So this is my plan this morning after I write here for a little bit: tackle the mess, in all its various stages.

I went to bed early last night, around 10:00 p.m., which maybe isn't that early for some, but still early for me. I have been trying to live a more disciplined life over the past couple of months, and trying to get to bed more early, so I can rise more early, so I can get more done before Stella wakes up. Once she wakes up we dedicate all our various energies to her and her needs, which is as it should be, but that means the only time of the day that is really virgin turf is the very early part, which is why I have made it a point of waking up no later than 5:45 a.m., which is a complete life change for me.

I have never been an early riser. All my life I have struggled to make it out of bed. In high school I would barely make it on time, often not having time to shower in the morning, still groggy in first period. In college I sometimes had a hard time making it to my, gulp, 10:00 a.m. classes, which is kind of shameful, now that I think about it.

That has started to change over the past few years. About a decade ago I got a job as a reporter at a place called "Institutional Investor." At II they required me to be at my desk at 7:30 a.m., preferably having already read that morning's edition of the "Wall Street Journal." I also had to wear a tie, and dress pants, which was kind of a crazy throwback, especially considering that many of my peers were moving in the other direction as the dot come explosion reached full flower.

It was anachronistic but in a way I found it very cool. In a way I felt very square too, but that was what it was. After a while I found myself really getting a lot done by noon, which was a new experience for me, even if I didn't always love waking up when it was dark, and then heading home at night when it was dark too.

In short I learned a little bit about what it meant to be an adult. Or at least to act like one long enough to know what it should feel like.

After that I never had much trouble getting to work on time, in fact most places I worked I was typically one of the people who would arrive on the earlier side. At my last job I would show up at 8:00 a.m., typically the first one there. One morning an old timer there looked at me at my desk, and kind of gestured to me with his coffee mug.

"Yeah, I see you're like me, a morning person," he said.

"Not really, I answered, but I am for this job," I answered.

He looked kind of shocked, but I guess that's part of being an adult: you do what it takes to make it.

Good morning!