Zom-om-bie, zom-om-bie...

I’m on a big cleaning tear these days sorting through the piles of detritus here in the Fortress of Solitude. I’ve got plenty of things to keep me occupied a lot of them having to do with making money and part of that is sorting through things and setting up a portfolio site to entice all those nice people out there in the world to beat a path to my door and shower me with money and work.

So, I’ve got a lot of scanning to do too and I came across something the other day I thought to share.

I don’t talk about drawing much. I love drawing, I don’t do it anywhere near as much as I should but it is such a freeing experience.

Thing is, I’m very critical of my abilities. A lot more critical than other people are of their own work or of my work. There have been times when certain people who shall remain nameless have tried to take a shot at me by throwing stones at my work and it’s a fairly futile experience for them because whatever they pull out, whatever they want to rip at, well... I’ve already spent hours torturing myself over it and I’m all too ready to acknowledge what’s weak or ill conceived. You can’t get better at something unless you recognize where you fall short and take the steps you have to to correct it.

But with drawing, I realized I would never really achieve my childhood dream of becoming a comics penciller. It just wasn’t going to happen and it was me that made the decision because I compared myself to the people I loved and admired working in the field already.

But there have been times along the way where I’ve gotten the odd cartooning job or someone has asked me for something. So, today’s little item is just one of those things. Sometime round about the late 80s or early 90s a friend’s then wife (now ex-wife) was working in animation and it happened that her company would be working on animated bumpers that would sandwich around epsiodes of HBOs Tales of the Crypt.

The truth was that the people in question didn’t have any idea of what style the illustration and animation should take so my friend’s wife asked if I wouldn’t try and work up something for them as examples with the prospect of getting more work down the road.

So to that end I worked up three 4 x 5 panels with really heavy blacks just to give them an idea and while they really liked it and used the visual style nothing else came of it. This drawing was one of the things I showed them, I tried to simplify the styling as much as I could (this was for animation after all) and still get that EC effect.

The friendly man.

It’s been some time when since Grand Central went from being a train station to being something else. They renovated the station going on over a decade ago now and when they did they dramatically transformed how people experience Grand Central.

Some of it, I miss.

On the lower level where Two Boots Pizza currently resides, there used to be stairs and a ramp up from the lower level to both entrances of the subway – the one the sits on 42nd Street and the other that is close to the Lexington Avenue exit of the South Passageway. I miss those because they made it infinitely easier to get from the lower level to the subway than it is today.

But then again there are some things that are better...

There are days when I actually like that the Grand Central Market is there in what was previously unused space. And I do like the fact that they opened up seating areas on the lower level. That can be a bit nice at times.

I like that they removed the caps over the ramps by the Oyster Bar so you can see that big interior space that is the main room of the terminal proper. And the mirrored staircase on the east side of the main room is nice too although I do miss that big Kodak billboard that was up there for so very long.

But what I wanted to talk about today was what was going on while they were renovating the station to bring it up to the standards that we know today.

Over the course of that arduous construction period there was a considerable amount of time where a good portion of the terminal had these wooden walls blocking off areas where construction and renovation was going on.

And because just putting up walls without any kind of adornment struck someone as a bit bland, the MTA or whomever was responsible for it at the time decided to put up a series of drawings on the blank wooden surfaces. Basically they were supposed to be snapshots of a kind, caricatures of different people the artist had run into as they made their way around Grand Central.

I didn’t like most of them but there was one... one that for some reason or another just really caught my fancy. And I can’t really explain to you why it was, but in my mind I had built up a story and a past for this caricature, this person if you will. And in every way that person came alive to me, it endeared itself.

And that’s the Friendly Man, the drawing above. Every time I saw that image, it just seemed to me as if the Friendly Man was someone who I knew. Someone who I had run across at some point over the course of my lifetime.

The Friendly Man was from the Caribbean and he spoke with a deep, resonant voice. The cadence of his speech had a bit of a musical quality to it and it was heavily accented but at the same time it was warm and of course, friendly.

The Friendly Man was someone who had no airs, a man who accepted his lot in life but that didn’t mean his life didn’t have room for fun. No, there was an enjoyment and a zeal somehow that belied what outwardly would appear to be a meager existence.

In short, the Friendly Man was one of those people who made your day a little better.

And throughout that whole time that Grand Central was undergoing this transformation and these images were up, I would make my way in each and every day and rush through the terminal on my way to and from work. But, every day, seeing that image of the Friendly Man somehow made me happy. It made me happy in a way and for a reason that I am at a loss to explain but I know it did even looking at the image now something stills pulls at a thread and I am trying to figure out what it is I am seeing, where that connection is, what memory it is triggering, the person I can’t remember who the image reminds me off tugs at the corners of my memory.

Just another one of those mysteries.

And Madame Ex knew very much how much I liked the Friendly Man and as she was so very good at doing, she tracked down the artist who had made a book that all the images plastered around Grand Central appeared in.

This is the book:

And the artist’s name is Maira Kalman check her out.

Why I’m Republican.

I make no secret of my political leanings but you simply cannot imagine the amount of surprise in some quarters over my stance. Over the past few years, I’ve heard from avowed Republicans and Democrats both the statement, “You’re not a Republican.”

Really,

A large part of that has to do with my very liberal attitudes on social issues. I simply don’t feel politicians should get their noses up in people’s personal business. The choices people make about how they want to live thier lives as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else should be their own.

Admittedly I am very hawkish on foreign policy issues. In large part my belief is firmly rooted in historical lessons where over and over again entities who have tried to negotiate from positions of weakness have done so at their peril. I’m not about using force unnecessarily but force should never be taking off the table entirely as far as foreign policy goes. It would be nice to live in a world where that wasn’t the case but the human animal just hasn’t advanced on the evolutionary scale to that point yet. And I count the minutes until we do.

Also, there needs to be a social safety net, socialized medicine is necessary in our country and while the insurance lobby and many members of the Republican party rail against “ObamaCare,” the truth of the matter is that the Medical Reform Act is a good piece of legislation if only a flawed first step along the path. Repeal is not the answer in this case. Modifying and fine tuning reform and providing a framework for affordable care for everyone is something that makes a lot of sense on both a humanitarian level and also on an economic level. Really the thing that needs fixing is tort reform and limits on awards in malpractice cases. As much as we would attribute godlike powers to medical practitioners they are simply as human and as fallible as the rest of us. My commonly used analogy is you can barely get someone to fix your automobile properly and the human body is a much more complex machine. While we have learned much in the last century we still have a long, long way to go to fill the gaps in our knowledge.

Finally, I think the biggest part of the problem we have in our country is an entrenched bureaucracy that does everything in its power to be wasteful because there isn’t a reason not to be. Look no further than Congress, those stalwarts of dysfunction in American government. I came across this story today and if it doesn’t perfectly illustrate how Congress fiddles, Nero like, while the country burns, nothing else does:

In the 18 months the 112th Congress has been sworn in, the House has introduced 60 bills to rename post offices. Thirty-eight have passed the House and 26 have become law. During those 18 months, the House has produced 151 laws, 17 percent of which have been to rename post offices, according to Congressional Democrats.

Just priceless, instead of actually doing the hard work of addressing the problems of the postal system, our leaders choose to give us the fluff of renaming post offices. Really sums up what’s wrong with our government, don’t you think?

Reports of my demise,

are thoroughly premature. I can’t say what I’ve been doing, lord knows I wonder at times myself but, life moves forward whether we want it to or not. In the meantime, I am always trying to retain my youthful optimism because I think it”s a bad thing to lose. So, let’s have something uplifting then, no?

We are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean
See our friends, see the sights, feel alright
We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out
See our friends, see the sights, feel alright

Are we like you, I can't be sure?
Of the scene as she turns
We are strange in our worlds

But we are young, we get by, can't go mad, ain't got time
Sleep around, if we like but we're alright
Got some cash, bought some wheels, took it out, 'cross the fields
Lost control, hit a wall but we're alright

Are we like you, I can't be sure?
Of the scene, as she turns
We are strange in our worlds

But we are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean
See our friends, see the sights, feel alright

Are we like you, I can't be sure?
Of the scene, as she turns
We are strange in our world

But we are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean
See our friends, see the sights, feel alright

Because things have gotten too sedate around here...

I was looking around for something on the band Filter today when I came across this image:

And I thought to myself – I said, “Self! Nature sure makes a lot of odd things in this here world! No matter what I can come up with it sure does seem like nature can outdo me!”

And so I thought I would share.

Some thoughts on fathers and Father’s Day.

You know, Father’s Day is just about upon us again and it leads my thoughts in a specific direction...

I don’t have a father anymore. I’m at that point in life where I’m old enough that I’ve got the whole dead parent thing going on and my old man has been dead now for over five years. It’s a curious thing too in a way because even though he’s gone he still looms large in my life.

He looms large perhaps in the destruction that was left in his wake.

My ‘father’ was not a nice man. As a matter of fact he was a despicable, selfish, petty tyrant who spent much of his time doing his level best to berate me and put me down in every way possible. When I was younger, this never really made a lot of sense to me but as I got older I grew to understand that the compulsion that led him to behave in such a manner was deeply rooted in his own insecurity and self loathing.

Outwardly, to people who knew him in only a very superficial or limited way, he was gregarious and genial but. most of this mien was stemmed in his long term abuse of alcohol. I can actually remember going to AA meetings at around the age of 9 or 10, being dragged along as part of my ‘quality time’ with my father when he had visitation after my parents divorce (roll that over in your head if you will for a moment... as an adult it really astonishes me that a parent would expose a child to that world).

But really when you get right down to it, who your parents are, the people they are, is really a bit of a crap shoot. There are no guarantees on whether you’ll have good parents or bad.

Truthfully, I’m not looking for pity here, this is more along the lines of statement of fact. It’s just this holiday brings me back to thinking about a man who has passed and what if anything his legacy is. There are a lot of broken bodies in my father’s wake. Women he had relationships with, children he neglected, it’s really quite fascinating.

I spent a lot of time trying to prove to my father I wasn’t the person he made me out to be. The problem was, I never was, not even close because, the horrid animal he tried to paint me as whenever we had contact was nothing more than a reflection of him as a person. And I have to admit I find it quite unsettling when I do see parallels in my life in comparison to his. The irony here is, all those malicious things he imagined I might be capable of, they were only the things he could do, the evil he could visit on people.

I can’t bring myself to blame him anymore - to blame him for being the man he was. I have never understood how he could turn out so incredibly damaged and my uncle (his older brother) could set an example for me that I carry in my heart to this day. I can’t blame him especially now that it has been a half decade since he passed and in that time I’ve just had to pick up the pieces of a life where I spent a good portion of time doing things, caring for someone, who showed no appreciation other than to demean and berate me.

So today, on this day celebrating fathers, I’ll think back on the past a bit. I’ll ask the same questions about why things were the way they were but I won’t linger or dwell on it any more than I already have here.

I’m sure my experience was not unique, I know it wasn’t for a fact as a recent conversation relayed another person’s pain and hurt, damage that was still carried around and evident in the person by a distant and emotionally lacking parent even though the age of child and parent would make one think any conflict would have been resolved long ago.

But that’s not the way things work. The damage of harsh words, coldness, or absence of approval can last a lifetime. There are a lot of the walking wounded in this world and each of them carries that burden in silence often, shackled to those chains, hauling it around until they free themselves. Until they realize there wasn’t a single thing they could do to repair the damage in their parent they simply won’t be free.

And as far as honoring goes... yes, if someone merits it, by all means but Father’s Day is not a right and celebrating tyrants, dictators or monsters is just foolish. Instead it’s better to bury them and like the past just leave them behind for a better tomorrow.

I’m so happy...

Watch baseball long enough and you’ll see just about everything. While some closers will point to the sky after a save, Indian’s reliever Chris Perez had another means of noting it against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. Considering the number of times Anheuser-Busch products have been the source behind people’s impulse to regurgitate, I’m sure it won’t be made into a big deal although it is funny to watch:

Honestly? He’d have better had won.

Considering he spent more than 7 times his opponent spent on advertising and the campaign.

Walker's efforts in Wisconsin drew support from the tea party, fiscal conservatives and many prominent Republicans across the country who personally and financially supported the governor in his recall race. Walker raised more than $30 million for the recall, according to estimates, compared to $4 million raised by Barrett, and Walker had several heavy-hitting outside groups in his corner, including the billionaire Koch brothers, who head up a nonprofit called Americans for Prosperity.

Then again with that kind of disparity you would think the margin in the election’s outcome would be bigger...

Walker led Barrett, who was the governor's 2010 opponent and is the current mayor of Milwaukee, 54 to 45 percent with 83 percent of precincts reporting. Walker beat Barrett in 2010, 52 to 46.5 percent.

What conservatives will never admit.

You know if you listen to certain shows or outlets, you’ll hear a lot about the current administration running up debt and adding all kinds of spending to the Federal deficit. You’ll hear a lot of lip service about the current administration making government bigger too and when people counter by pointing to the faults of the previous (GW Bush) administration in terms of the financial condition of the country when the last election rolled around the same people will try to gloss over it as quickly as possible.

One thing you won’t hear about is how the former administration spent wildly and made government larger too which was a big part of the problem. It’s a bit of selective amnesia that is extremely telling because it’s not a question for these critics about spending as much as it is about what you spend money on.

Here are some interesting facts you won’t hear mentioned and even more interesting is the legacy that rarely gets mentioned – is it time to rethink the whole Homeland Security thing?

With more than 200,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the Homeland Security Council. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy.


According to Peter Andreas, a border theorist, the creation of DHS constituted the most significant government reorganization since the Cold War, and the most substantial reorganization of federal agencies since the National Security Act of 1947, which placed the different military departments under a secretary of defense and created the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency. DHS also constitutes the most diverse merger of federal functions and responsibilities, incorporating 22 government agencies into a single organization.

The DHS independent auditor is KPMG, one of the Big Four audit firms. Due to the level of material weaknesses identified, KPMG were unable to audit the DHS financial statements for FY 2010. KPMG were unable to express an audit opinion on the FY 2009, FY 2008, FY 2007, FY 2005, and FY 2003 financial statements. Attempts to access the reports for FY 2006 and FY 2004 within the 'information for citizens' portal met with a 404 error. The Message from the DHS Chief Financial Officer in the FY 2010 report states 'This Annual Financial Report (AFR) is our principal financial statement of accountability to the President, Congress and the American public. The AFR gives a comprehensive view of the Department’s financial activities and demonstrates the Department’s stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

Okay, so let’s stop for a second and role that over in our heads for a moment...

A Republican administration created a new Cabinet department that is the third largest (doesn’t sound much like smaller government to me). Of course though, in the new millennium if you create something like this especially if you’re fiscally responsible, you’ll be sure to put in some kind of oversight, no?

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

But wait, there’s more!

You think perhaps I’m being a shill here? Perhaps I’m overstating my case?

The Department of Homeland Security has spent up to $71 million developing a vast, computerized information sharing system that many emergency responders across the country don't understand and don't use, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by CBS News. The Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) is an internet-based, password-protected system that allows local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to share information in real time as an emergency or disaster unfolds. But many officials tell CBS News they'd rather pick up the phone or be on the scene than manage emergencies from a keyboard. 
Government auditors say regardless of the scenario, HSIN is redundant. The GAO report to be released next Thursday finds the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have no less than 17 terrorist information sharing systems like HSIN that in total cost more than $800 million. Last year, the Senate Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to DHS complaining that only 6% of 18,000 first responders use the network.

 And the question here is this: with all this money spent are you really that much safer? Or is it just another one of those things magic tricks, a smoke and mirrors game putting money in some people’s pockets under the guise of the government taking a more active role in making the world ‘SAFE!’

Five Transportation Security Administration workers at a southwest Florida airport have been fired and another 38 suspended after an investigation found they failed to perform random screenings last year.

The 43 disciplined workers, a combination of front-line screeners and supervisors, represent about 15 percent of the roughly 280 TSA employees at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers.

I’m skeptical of all of this crap. Honestly getting people to take their shoes off at airports or to surrender up shampoo bottles or to submit to cavity searches just makes it more inconvenient to travel and I have to think there are better ways to do things. Also the business about profiling in a politically correct society is just patently ridiculous – I’m not expecting the senior widow from the midwest to seize a plane. Treating everyone on the same level when it comes to security risks is just plain stupid and a tremendous waste of money and effort.

Plus, I’m of the George Carlin School of cynicism when it comes to these things. I don’t like seeing liberties taken away under the guise of making the world a ‘safer place.’

Then again, we’re not hearing the administration’s critics talking about dismantling things as a fiscally responsible mover, are we?

Welcome to the new millenium.

More from the drafts queue:

America, the waning power?


Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults—and that’s before the Great Recession hit.


“Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you'll have that same status as an adult,” said Erin Currier, project manager at Pew's Economic Mobility Project. “With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there’s good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe.”


You know what fascinates me is watching people run around and buy into the pablum that is consta...

I know where I was starting when I began this entry which I started awhile ago now.

Here’s what happens in our nation as people decide they can become armchair economists. You’ll hear a lot of talk about the increasing deficit and how the current administration increased the deficit at astronomical proportions over the last four years but here’s the rub... part of the reason the deficit increased is because of a declining tax base.

Wait, you say? What’s this?

Well, it’s important to recognize and realize what is currently going on in this country and namely it’s that the middle class or what we had come to think of as the middle class is under attack. And it’s under attack in oh so many ways, there is a propaganda campaign being run right now against things like organized labor, collective bargaining and things like pensions.

In each case you’ll hear people say, “Why should they get that? I don’t get it!”

The question should not be why THEY get a pension or medical coverage or whatever benefit you want to slap into the blank space but why WE ALL don’t have those benefits.

Today, the buzzword is not job security, rather it’s job insecurity and people are on a white knuckle ride, holding on for dear life trying to protect their little corner of the world.

Take a gander at this though, that things are in fact getting tougher really is not your imagination...

Middle Class Squeeze.

Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.

From August in ’09...

The latest insult to my intelligence came today in the form of the husband of the woman who killed eight people last week on a local highway holding a news conference to once again reinforce his dead spouse’s image as the paragon of wholesomeness and motherhood. Yes, the autopsy results are just wrong and there is once again some great conspiracy afoot here folks.


The upshot of all this, the husband is a public safety officer in Nassau County and his wife was smoking marijuana, think Nassau County will be looking into whether or not he should be fired? Yes, a courtesy card will get you out of a lot of things lady but not killing eight people while you are under the influence and smoking pot.


Public Security Unit is responsible for maintaining security at county facilities. Building security, and the protection of persons and property therein, is accomplished through observation of activities at the facilities, investigation of incidents and compliance with OSHA fire and safety regulations. Other responsibilities include transportation of county employees and documents, enforcement of parking regulations and collection of money from parking meters.


I can only imagine there was a hold back of autopsy results on the part of Westchester County because the guy is a member of the Nassau County PD and they wanted...

So, I wrote this two years ago and in the interim lawyers have been busy. Not only that but there’s been an HBO documentary on the event which was one of the worst vehicular crashes in New York State history in terms of fatalities.

This is all written in relation to this event.

This all took place very close by to me, literally a stretch of road I am regularly on and know quite well.

At the time, to think that someone could do this... could drive so long and so fast in the wrong direction down a major parkway just beggared the imagination. It’s not something you could do easily, it’s not something where you could find yourself turned around and just happen to be going along unaware of what was wrong.

Certainly you couldn’t drive as far as the woman in question did without registering on some level what was happening.

Unless...

Unless... you were really fucked up. Not sick. Just fucked up (and I’m not going to gild the lily here by avoiding harsh language).

It’s a sad thing and not for the party responsible, not the woman in question who was both drunk and high but for the children in her charge and even more so the innocent other people she killed who just happened to have the misfortune of being in the wrong place in the wrong time.

That’s the people that concern me, not the apologists trying to come up with an excuse besides the obvious but the people who were the innocent victims of what was a total lack of responsibility.

See, there seems to be a disconnect here, a disconnect that somehow a woman, a mother, wouldn’t be capable of making a bad decisions, of being selfish, of indulging to excess and not being a responsible adult.

My question is, when did this happen?

When were women suddenly elevated in status and stature to the point that they could not make errors in judgment or not fall victim to the same flaws of character that men fall victim to? Maybe this was around the same time women began referring to themselves as goddesses or princesses? I hear or read this quite regularly and it never ceases to fascinate me.

In this case though, watching a widower trying to come up with every excuse in the book about why 1 plus 2 doesn’t equal 3 is just insulting to everyone’s intelligence and disrespectful to the families of the people who were following the traffic laws.

The dichotomy of American politics.

I got to thinking about this today...

I had (have) gone out with a woman and she was shocked that I am a Republican.

There are certain preconceived notions about what party alignment means when it comes to your makeup as a person and living in and around New York, being a Republican often carries a social stigma because avowed “liberals” who are self-described as open and progressive are all too ready to jump the gun and make determinations about you as a person.

In any event over the course of time there were many instances where a certain amount of amazement was expressed on the part of this particular lady regarding my views.

And truthfully, nothing is quite as simple in this world as people would have you believe, nothing is quite as black and white as people would like to make it.

But I did come to a realization today about the differences between the two political parties...

The Democrats for better or worse are about inclusion and the Republicans are about divisiveness. There is no better example of that than the behavior of Congress over the last two years and also the formation of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Does the Tea Party really talk about doing anything good? They talk about big government and being against it but one of the biggest problems the Republican Party has had over the last decade is that they have fully embraced big government in many ways.

I never was a fan of President Bush (Junior). I didn’t vote for him and repeatedly the discussions I had with fellow Republicans were about the President’s free-spending ways. The funny thing is that in those discussions almost to a person, people were ready to acknowledge that Bush Jr. did not follow the true tenets of the Republican Party in terms of being fiscally responsible.

Furthermore, the idea that regulation is a bad thing is really a bit of a non-starter.

There is a lot of lip service given to the fact that ‘Government’ needs to get out of ‘Business’s’ way but the interesting thing that no one seems to remember in the course of these discussions is that whenever that happens the end result is a huge bailout foisted upon the taxpayers of the nation because regulators were asleep at the switch and allowed people to go off and rob others blind.

No... we really don’t talk about that much now, do we?

Our nation is becoming a place where it’s really hard to stand unless you are all the way to the left or all the way to the right.

But I am increasingly tired of listening to what I call Bullshit Rhetoric, rhetoric that fails to acknowledge how our country arrived at this point in its history, the responsibility the previous administration played in bringing us to this point and basically people running around with their fingers in their ears yelling ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, I can’t hear you’ at the top of their lungs.

So, as I sit here and write this on Memorial Day, a national holiday where we sit on the precipice of another Presidential Election campaign cycle, I have to wonder what will be paraded before us over the next five months.

I’d like to think that we’ll actually be able to engage in intelligent discourse but the truth of the matter is we’ve never been able to do it before and I highly doubt we’ll be able to do it now.

So... in that context, when asked if you are better off today than you were four years ago, ask yourself this about the eight years that preceded it...

• Who was asleep when the real estate bubble burst and bad mortgages were packaged together to hide the fact that they were horrible investments?
• At the end of the day, why did we really go into Iraq?
• If we were all about making the world safer for us by attacking the stronghold of terrorism, can we today look at Afghanistan and say anything we have done has made a huge difference? Have we fared any better than the Soviets did in the eighties? Are our relations with Pakistan any better and do we have a clearer understanding of the dynamic and the culture of the tribal areas that straddle the borders between those two countries (places that historically have given rise to the extremism we have vowed to fight)?
• Where did that surplus go that was there at the end of the Clinton years and what happened to the idea of the balanced budget amendment?
• If the system is broken, who broke it?

Keep those questions in mind because I have the feeling that we’re going to be hearing a lot about them and related subjects over the next few months.

To be clear...

When I’m talking about sacrifice I mean something along the lines of a human or a goat.

How come?

Another one of those pulled from the closet that is the drafts queue...

I realized one of the reasons I don’t like any of the social network crap. I’m not on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. The only place I allow for any kind of networking is professionally via LinkedIn and like other social networks they have a feed where you can see updates from the people in your network.

Yesterday, someone in my network posted something particularly inane -

Update: Happy Birthday America!

Translation – Give me your attention because I am one of the attention deprived. I’m needy!

And this was on what is supposed to be a business networking site! It beggars the imagination! This is the equivalent of a non observation, Better put in these terms... IF you haven'’t looked at your calendar, IF you haven’t recognized the fact you have the day off, IF you don’t know what day it is, IF the fireworks going off weren’t a clue! Please let me remind you that it’s the Fourth of July.

And for that matter is the person wishing the entire population of the country happy birthday? Is there some kind of disembodied great spirit of the country he is offering up thanks to?

Hey buddy, how about a sacrifice while you’re at it?

Sheeeeeessssshhhhh!

There are reasons to like Bill Murray.

I was never a big Bill Murray when he was at his peak on Saturday Night Live. I can’t tell you exactly what did it but, through the years Bill Murray has grown on me and I’ve developed a fondness and affection for him and his sense of humor.

Putting some thought to it, I would have to say the turning point was his portrayal of a disaffected industrialist beset by a mid-life crisis in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (which is a terrific movie and if you haven’t seen it you really should!). No, that wasn’t it, I’m thinking we might go even further back to GhostBusters when I started to take a shine to that dry delivery that is one of Murray’s hallmarks.

So, if you know anything about Bill Murray (and I don’t know all that much aside from him living over in Rockland), you know he’s a pretty big baseball fan and also the owner of a minor league franchise. He’s also a die hard Cubs fan.

Seeing as how the Cubs are in the middle of an 11 game losing streak, it seems to me they could use some cheering up.

Winding down.

Five weeks ago I got laid off.


Well, I don’t know if laid off is the right word as it was put to me, I was put on “as needed” or “will call” status.


Now, if I was independently wealthy this would be fine with me, I would have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever but since my bill collectors are persistent cusses, I simply find I can’t sit by the phone and wait for a client to call.


And truthfully, I was very disappointed on a number of levels. I liked quite a few people at my job, I really enjoyed interacting with them on a regular basis and in some instances I found myself learning from them. I knew the landscape in the company as well and there is something consistency in the structure of a person’s day.


And I believed I added to the organization, I felt... nay! I strived to do good work and to be an asset to the dynamic so it hurt on a certain level (yes, even though I am loathe to admit it, I do take a certain level of pride in my work) being cast aside.


Now, the place I was at had seen an exodus of talent over the last year, so much so that it was addressed by the top man in the local office. Literally every week or other week an email would make the rounds about someone who was leaving and the obligatory sendoff party. It became something of a joke in that gallows humor k...

Well, well, well another work related snippet. This one written even earlier back in October.

You know, shortly after this I wound up at a new client with new challenges and in four short weeks (or was it five) I can say I had probably the worst experience of my professional life. Yes, it was really that bad.

And shortly afterward I wound up at another client where I had an another bad (though not quite as bad) experience and then was back at the client I started with once more.

Let’s say it was akin to a freelance merry-go-round with a very, very bumpy ride.

In the interim, that period of time during my absence, the exodus continued and still continues from my understanding. Which is a shame because as I said I really like this company quite a bit. But I already feel as if I am talking out of school and I won’t succumb to the temptation to do so. Office gossip is probably better left as office gossip and people who are enduring it are quite aware of what is going on without me belaboring the point.

I wonder for myself what it means moving forward as far as the nature of work and what the future holds for me in terms of work. I don’t honestly believe there is such a thing as the perfect workplace and really you’ve got to make the best of whatever situation you’re in. The thing that I’m finding more important than anything as far as work goes are the people you work with and it seems over the last couple of gigs that I’ve wound up meeting some very nice, talented people and I like that a lot.

Enough of this though time to move on to more unimportant things...

The week that was.

I started this back in February or March...

So, I’m back at it again. Scraping around trying to drum up work as the gig I was working wound down.


And I’m sad about that but I’ve also arrived at the unfortunate conclusion that no amount of effort, no amount of quality work at this client will produce any kind of permanent job offer which can be discouraging but also can be incredibly freeing too. In essence the relationship becomes one of need and convenience for both parties – if your needed and available then it works.


But while I try not to allow myself to fall into a state of rancor, it certainly isn’t a situation I want to rely on either.


This week after the taking a day off because I couldn’t push myself any harder, I went in. I didn’t feel well still, if anything I really do push myself more than I should in these matters but my circumstances don’t allow me such a luxury so I sallied forth and made the best of things. I did however commit myself to moving at a pace that I felt I could manage, and in this I mean I got in when I got in.


Now, in some corners that might sound awfully cavalier but I have heard of two circumstances where guys in my profession have been in places where people have dropped dead because of heart attacks and it came from not listening to their own internal mechanism. Much as I do need to work and am committed to doing a good job, I’m not committed to making some kind of ultimate statement by dropping at my desk – my work simply isn’t that earth-shattering in the scope of the world no matter how much people these days like to believe work is all.


Anyway, I did go in and really could say I was not someone I would want to be around since I had this dry hacking cough I couldn’t for the life of me stop. I wouldn’t want to sit around that and I was embarrassed to say the least. I got an email asking me if I was in (most of the people in my department are actually on another floor now) and when I replied I was but I didn’t know for how long (given how I felt) the response I got was “for the rest of the week, unless I hear different.”


Now, this was kind of funny...


Anyway, round about 5:30 I got a call something needed to go out and I was slated to pick it up. Long story short, I walked back in my door at midnight. This is not really altogether unusual with my job and even this I can’t say I’m horrified or put off by it, but I really wasn’t feeling good at all and the next day when I awoke it was clear I either find a doctor or go to the emergency room because I desperately needed something stronger than what an OTC drug could manage.


Now, I was in a bit of a quandary...


I have medical insurance if you can call it that. What I have is what could best be termed as ‘insurance lite’ as this program that covers very, very little (maximum yearly benefit of $1k..

Now, there was an upshot to this – the upshot was quite simple. What happened was on the day in question, I went in and stayed really late and put my health in jeopardy. I put my health in jeopardy and the end result was the benefit to me was only I got paid the few extra hours I stayed late and nothing more.

Well, I got paid! Isn’t that enough?

See, I really should’ve gone home. I wanted to go home. I didn’t feel well and the best place for me was back in bed but because I want to be a go along guy, but because I want to please my client and I want to garner their favor I hung in there and made sure everything went out. It went out on deadline and it looked damn good when it did.

I made my client look good in the process and took care of what was a problem (or what would’ve been a problem for some other people if they had to stick around and deal with the situation).

Now, what did it get me?

Nothing.

And that’s the contract today between employee and employer. You are a resource and a disposable one at that. If the time comes your employer is slow they will no longer carry you during those slow periods – it simply doesn’t happen anymore.

The question I have is when you take that off the table, what’s left?

Anyway, in this instance I really do like my client, I like the company, I like working with people there and I even enjoy the work at times. I make a point of saying that because I don’t want to present myself as some bitter malcontent but at the same time I find it would be foolish not to recognize the dynamics of the workaday world.

I wound up going to a clinic locally to get the care I needed and I really, really needed the care. I had to take antibiotics because it was pretty bad. Through it all I kept working, didn’t miss a day but I will say I kept to a schedule that was easy on me.

How do I find myself in this situation? I wonder about it myself but I think it is a more common occurrence for a growing number of people in our country and this is where our system is failing. Our system is failing in the sense that there are people, people who work and who are trying to make a go of it but the deck seems so entirely stacked against them currently it is near to impossible for them to make ends meet.

I know in my case, it got to the point where I was paying for my own medical coverage and this was what I consider to be standard coverage and it was costing almost $1,000 a month!

So, I had to drop my coverage and what I have now isn’t even slightly adequate. It’s faux insurance. It doesn’t cover visits and like I said earlier the maximum yearly benefit is $1,000 a year.

So, when people rail about Obamacare as the Health Care Reform Act is derisively referred to I find myself stepping back for a second, asking them what in particular is their issue with the legislation itself. Then I ask them it they’ve read the bill (in most cases they haven’t) and take a few moments to lay out the arguments about why the bill is actually a good thing for everyone in this nation.

Anyway, this was just one of those snippets laying around in my draft queue and I wanted to get it up and this is where it led me.

More can be said on this topic but let’s leave it for another day. In the meantime, I am like a shark once more swimming to find my next meal.

Finally, the perfect response!

I really dislike getting spam, especially if it is sent to me by people I consider friends.

 I love getting email!

I love getting mail!

Anytime someone takes time out of their day to write me a note and spend some time communicating their thoughts I feel honored and it makes me very happy. But, send me some political screed,some stupid cliché missive laden with threatening sentiment, chain email, etc. You know what I’m talking about here and I just find myself very put off.

It’s not as if I have a lot of time, if anything I feel time is more precious with each passing day especially because I find my energy to do things is diminishing, I jsut find myself overwhelmed often by the necessities of daily life.

So, the above short is just one of those things that encapsulates the perfect response to this aimless and pointless electronic dribble.

Friends don’t let friends send spam.

Thought for the day.

Riding the train in that stops at 153rd St. because there is a Yankee day game...

There are a lot of fat Yankee fans, and not fat in just slightly overweight but as in morbidly obese.

And while we're on the subject, ever notice how people who are in good shape and who have really terrific bodies wear loose clothing and the people who are fat wear the stretchy tight stuff that only brings to mind sausages - why is that?

With Mother’s Day coming up...

I simply had to share this. It’s just such a great tune and it stands up so well to the test of time:

F*&% me Blogger.

Blogger has forced the changeover to their "new" interface. The unfortunate thing here is that there new "cleaner" interface is more akin to AOL 2.0. I always love it when companies take something that works and gum it up (that is sarcasm). Maybe it’s time to just shut down the blog or better still get off my ass and really set up my personal website and move things over there. Wordpress is looking more and more appealing by the second.

Darwin theory.

I ride the train a lot (oh, by the way, hi there! How ya been?).

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, so I have to ride the train every day because I commute (and the second my winning lottery ticket comes in, you can kiss that sh!t goodbye). Each day I spend a good portion of my morning and my evening in a rocking tin can on my way to and from the city.

If I'm really lucky I snail a privacy seat.

A privacy seat for the uninitiated is a seat placed opposite the conducter's booth at either end of a pair of cars. I love the privacy seat because it puts some distance between me and what I can't stand.

What can't I stand?

People.

It's the misanthrope in me but save me from some cow's mewling bored brats or a moron who believes they're talking into a tin can with a string instead of a cell phone.

Some peace and quiet you f&$@s. I sit on an office where there is a constant barrage of noise. Open offices! Collaboration!? Look at us!! Save me please!

Let me go in and put me time in with some relative peace and quiet so I can think if you will. The grandest time in my entire professional life was when for a brief period I had an office of my own. Oh for that nirvana once again...

So I relish that ride where the privacy seat is mine.

Yet the interesting thing is that I am close to the door, hence the title of my post. A door is a relatively simple mechanism to operate - it's not as if you have to take a class to master the thing. You approach it, you turn the knob and you've made it!

Sounds pretty easy?

But you would be amazed at the trouble it presents to a vast majorityvof people. Granted the door between the cars on the commuter train has four handles - three are for locking the door completely so you can't pass through but only one actually unlatches the thing and sitting there watching this, this comedy where some schmuck tries to go to the next car and starts thinking it's a Houdini trick of some kind makes you realize Survival of the Fittest is a straightforward concept and the herd is on trouble because we're not letting it truly operate.

Tonight I watched four Bims fresh from the Yankee game try to achieve the higher brain function of using a door and going to another car - f$&@ing amazing and the scary thing is, they're going to breed!?!?

Lord, save us all!

Best baseball fight ever.

Watching some baseball (which is absolutely great along with the 3-0 start) and also doing some reading too while I am at it — just baseball related blogs and news when I came across this which I remember when it happened and all these years later even though I grew to love Robin Ventura during his days as a Met I cannot help for the life of me think how much Nolan Ryan made a statement for old guys everywhere with this one:

Happy Blogiversary!

Yes, I find it hard to believe but I’ve actually been writing down my rantings in this small, seldom trafficked corner of the World Wide Web now for some time. Life has changed quite a bit during the course of that period...

When I started the weblog, I was inspired by my friend Margaret. Margaret stopped blogging for the most part a long time ago which is really a shame because while she was always quiet she has a lot of things to say.

I had a fiancé and while my fiancé is married, it’s not to me. I had thought by now I would be married and have a few kids but things didn’t work out that way.

The day I started this blog, i had just moved my friend Roberta - now Roberta is in North Carolina having endured a similar experience to my own in the caring of an elderly parent. A task that has to be one of the most draining and demanding experiences any adult can endure. I know I finally saw my own responsibilities end several years ago.

All in all life is full of change and many things have changed over the last nine years–some good, some bad. Life is never perfect and although I find myself discouraged by how much struggle is involved just getting through the day I realize in many ways I am blessed because even the bad things are never as bad as they could be. I would’ve liked to be further along in so many ways, to feel as if I had accomplished more but I think there are a lot of us who walk around with those feelings, wondering about paths we’ve taking, turns we’ve made that have bought us to the place we are at.

Again, while there are a whole genre of fiction on the subject, the upshot is we wouldn’t be the people we are if we had gone down a different path and who is to say it would have been a better route to take.

So on the dawning of another year, a day that feels more like a rebirth than New Year’s ever does (because it is unique and mine alone) I wish anyone reading a wonderful new day because the days ahead of us are filled with two things: promise and hope and only by embracing those twin concepts will we arrive at the pace we want to be.

The definition of Linsanity.

Getting overly excited based on a rookie’s ethnic origins when the winning streak coinciding with his insertion into the front five of your team brings your team’s record to .500.

Let’s face facts here people, Jeremy Lin is a great story but the Knicks even with him on the team still suck. The frenzy surrounding his arrival just underscores how bad the Knicks have been for so long and how little there has been for Knicks fans to root for over the last decade.

I hate being sick.

Nothing really punctuates the day besides feeling as if you’re an animated corpse.

The past few weeks have been rather tough...

If it hasn’t been one thing its been another, really. I managed to swing some work (which unfortunately looks as if it’ll be winding down this week) and through it all I’ve been fighting every step of the way to manage to not miss a day and today I was simply left without much of a choice.

That’s one of the things they don’t talk about in offices, and in the workplace in general these days, the way people feel obligated to be at work no matter what and how there is very little margin for error and people don’t have the ability to take sick time like they used to without it reflecting poorly upon them.

Unfortunately about the only thing this succeeds in doing is spreading various maladies among the whole office.

Recently, in several of the places I’ve worked at, there is this growing tendency towards what is referred to as the ‘open office,’ an office without walls or cubicles where everyone is put atop one and other all in the name of fostering a more collaborative environment.

Personally, I think of it as a load of malarky. It’s just another way to dehumanize the workplace, to put people more in line with factory farmed livestock penned together in as small a space as is possible if only to keep better tabs on people. It doesn’t work well for me because generally the projects and work I do are more of a solitary effort and if I do need input from someone I’m working with, I have no problem in shooting them an email or picking up a phone or simply walking over to where they sit and speaking to them.

But a side effect of this whole open office thing is that it’s much easier to spread germs among coworkers, simply put if someone sneezes and there isn’t a physical barrier between them and the other person well... I leave it to you to draw the appropriate conclusion.

So, I’ve been working and first a few weeks ago they ripped up all the carpet in the office. And the new carpet looks nice but the thing I don’t think people realized at the time was that previously (within the last nine months) there had been a bedbug problem. And it sure seemed as if right after they did that the next few days afterward I started discovering all kinds of marks all over my body.

The upshot was I had to bomb the house just to be sure the little buggers hadn’t hitched a ride home with me (and this is a problem I’ve never had before so I’m drawing a cause and effect line here).

A week or so after that I started having really bad pain in my stomach.

Now, the thing about getting to a certain age and feeling pain is this, most days you are going to feel something. I’m not 20 anymore and truthfully a lot of the time I feel pretty damn good (except for some of my damaged parts like my legs which still feel the effects of the scooter accident from two years past and the ruptured muscle from last year). Pain is funny though because you come to realize most pain will eventually go away if it’s not serious and you do something to address it.

In this case I had my suspicions about the cause and even though the pain at one point got severe enough I though I’d be seeing the interior of a hospital really soon, I managed to be spot on with what I though it was and corrected the problem on my own.

Concurrently, I’d been having a scratchy throat, severe sinus headache. This was after another coworker said they had to take a day off because they had a sinus infection and then it turned out both myself and the guy across from me were experiencing the same thing (again wondrous how these things can spread, isn’t it). So I walked around all of last week dealing with both the stomach thing (which gradually got better towards the end of the week) and feeling that low level shitty feeling of having a scratchy throat and being not quite sick but definitely off which blossomed into a full blown something as whatever it was took up residence in my chest.

Got a nice sore throat and a dry rasping cough out of the whole deal along with a good underlying achiness accompanied by a low grade fever. I just had to take the day off and loathe though I was to lose the day it was the best thing I could do because even though I don’t feel great I feel better than I did this morning.

But how many people can’t afford to take a day off? (I know on a level I can’t) And does that contradict with this whole diatribe I keep hearing during the run up to the election. Think I’m full of it? Read this article, and do some research on your own and you may come away surprised.

Best movie in a long time!

There are a few movies from the eighties that I really like. These are not necessarily the movies you would think, these are smaller movies, cult movies, movies that you watch and there is something about them that strikes a chord in you.

One of those movies is Real Genius, Val Kilmer, Jon Gries, William Atherton and of course Michelle Meyrink (there was something about her).

And then too there’s Just One of the Guys, another blip but enjoyable for an entirely different reason (crushing on Joyce Hyser was easy. Finally, there was Fright Night with Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall and a pre Married With Children Amanda Bearse.

The last movie was remade recently and while it was on my radar, I rarely find myself rushing out to see anything in theaters anymore. But I did recently get it from NetFlix and I have to say I was just blown away – thankfully it’s not a straight remake and where they’ve made changes, they’ve worked well within the story and the cast is a damn good one too (with fave Doctor Who, David Tennant in the Roddy McDowall role).

Anyway, I really enjoyed it and that seems to be rarer and rarer as time goes on, check it out:

Goodbye Movie Mondays!

Last week was the last of the canned Movie Mondays.

It’s hard to believe but my NetFlix account and the activity I had on their community pages provided me with over two years of content to post. And really it was a good thing because as miniscule as the traffic is to my isolated corner of the internet, Movie Mondays at least provided regular content so the blog didn’t go dark as it were.

Strangely enough, most of my writing of late has been at work.

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself branching out more in an effort to reposition myself in the marketplace. Since I can write, I do write when the occasion offers itself up and although a friend took me to task over drinks on Friday for offering up a skill and not getting properly compensated for it, you’ve got to walk before you run.

Blog stuff is free and easy for the most part... stream of consciousness bs that just flows through the fingertips but at work, I actually have to sit down and think about what i’m saying, who I’m saying it too and whether or not it’s effective even with my limited vocabulary.

It’s challenging.

And the only other reason i haven’t been writing more is because I just find myself exhausted by days end.

Wiped, spent, what have you... even as I write now I am in the midst of a rather gargantuan yawn. Which means I probably should draw it to a close and get ready for bed.

BUT! I do have an idea and I’ve been fooling around with it, turning it over in my head and it’s something that would mean at least four months of unbroken posts, a new one each and every day. Just have to get motivated.

Our future space program?

I saw this clip and found it interesting. Lego Man in space, a project by two kids with a weather balloon that was wildly successful:

Movie Mondays!

Interspersed in a career of big action blockbusters, Will Smith proves time and again he has solid range as an actor lending his presence to quieter character driven fare. Here, in the story of man haunted by guilt and driven to make right by improving the lives of a select few, giving each of them a great gift. It makes for a compelling if bittersweet film well worth seeing. Rosario Dawson holds her own cast opposite Smith as they both light up the screen. Woody Harrelson and Barry Pepper are familiar faces cast in smaller roles.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.

Movie Mondays!

An interesting film bearing little resemblance to the F. Scott Fitzgerald story it is based upon. I found it very similar in tone and scope to Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an odd love story that plays out across history. David Fincher moves away from his usual offering of thrillers to give us a lavishly photographed film with liberal touches of sentimentality. A daughter (Julia Ormond) reads to her dying mother and in the process makes a host of astounding discoveries about both herself and her parent. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett make an infinitely watchable pair and the end result is a charming diversion well worth the price of admission.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.

Movie Mondays!

Hello... I'm a Mac. And I’m a zombie. Whatever you expect going in cannot prepare you for this turkey. It’s just a question of how many cliches can be thrown in over the course of 103 minutes and even then a decent cast can’t save this stinker. If you want to see a dead man (or in this case a naked Christina Ricci) walking, watch any episode of Six Feet Under which is infinitely more entertaining. About the only thing remotely making this flick interesting is the nubile Ricci’s lack of wardrobe but that appeal will only take a film so far and in this case it’s not far enough because like Ricci’s character this movie should be buried.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.

Out of content, out of luck.

Sooooo... in just a few short weeks the one continual feature, the one regular content that has gone up without fail will soon be coming to an end.

There was a bit of time there when I was repurposing the reviews that I wrote up on the NetFlix website but then NetFlix went and stopped the community features aspect of their website so it really didn’t make much sense to do reviews anymore. But I still managed to get almost two years of content out of what I had written which is substantial in my book.

Now that we’re heading into 2012, I have to take the time to think about what I want to do with the blog and whether or not I want to continue with it. In March, we will arrive at the 9 year anniversary for the blog. That’s a substantial chunk of time.

Nine years later, I’ve developed a style and a voice in my writing and I am long overdue on finishing up the may unfinished projects that lie about in varying stages of completion. It just feels as if its time, time to get some work done, time to finish things and see them through. And with resources (my own energy levels as it were) in scarce supply, I have to devote my focus into very specific areas.

Unfortunately the blog may be something whose time has come having served its purpose but that could change.

Movie Mondays!

It plays as very dated but it is still entertaining. Daria: Is it College Yet takes place after the series ended and revisits the same characters. I watched it more out of a sense of nostalgia than anything else and I can see where Daria influenced a generation but much of the humor is trite to say the least. Lacking in appeal for anyone over the age of 40, Daria: Is it College Yet will most probably find an audience among disgruntled and disaffected teens or those looking back fondly on their youth.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.

IMG_3895

IMG_3895, a photo by Jo Weldon on Flickr.

I saw this image up on Flickr...

Hah.

It’s funny (maybe not so much) but a week or so ago I was walking up to midtown from Chelsea after a long workday and I found myself walking up Sixth Avenue. And I was on the east side of Sixth as I crossed 23rd Street and walking north I got to 24th and looked across and there on the corner was another nondescript deli or some such in the very same corner that was for a long time the home of Billy’s.

And I thought to myself what a crying shame that was.

Back in the eighties when I wrangled the yellow beast I could always enjoy a beer or two in Billy’s on a day off. And then we had a friend’s bachelor party at Billy’s and I remember coming in and being stricken by the fearsome man with the shaved head dressed in a suit (the soon to be groom - who had shaved his head for the wedding) and countless other nights when an evening of adventure took a turn and we wound up there.

It was different from all the other topless bars at the time, it was small and it had something of a neighborhood bar feel and while it was a topless joint it wasn’t overly sleazy.

And now it’s just another friggin’ deli.

And further up Sixth most of the flower shops are gone now and the furriers have closed up shop and in their place are a bunch of bland, newish rental buildings occupied by who knows who with the rents they charge.

And I really miss that New York.

You’re still coming ’round here?

This small corner of the Internet doesn’t get that much traffic.

Outside of the ’bots that seem to be altogether way too busy indexing everything which leaves me a bit dumbfounded.

Since it’s the last week of 2011, I imagine some kind of recap of the year is in order. I find myself hard pressed though to garner up the energy to go into intricate detail though.

As years go, 2011 wasn’t a bad year. I worked a lot this year and that’s something I’m thankful for. I’ve seen too many people not working and not working for long periods of time not to acknowledge the blessing of having a job in tough times.

Most of the year I spent with one client and I liked that. I liked being at the client even though there were ups and downs and I found myself connecting with a few people. That’s something I like, connecting with people in a way that gets beyond the surface and building true relationships or at least going beyond that 2 dimensional kind of interaction that I find very artificial.

I worked at some other places too this year... those were adventures and not at all in a good way.

There is something going on in my field and I’m trying to understand it and figure out a way to ride the wave as it were or if not that figuring out an escape strategy.

It’s very hard for me to explain to people who aren’t familiar with the mechanisms and processes of the industry I work in what it is I do exactly. There are times I myself have trouble understanding it.

Sometimes I write, sometimes I design, but usually I’m cleaning up another person’s sloppy work.

I’m a finisher but it appears there is less and less emphasis or regard given to that aspect of work. There is also a ‘hot potato’ characteristic to a lot of the work I’m growing tired off. Being the last person to handle a project often means you are the person held most responsible if there are errors but since the whole concept of ‘finishing’ is being devalued less time is being given to that part of the process so the question is how to set clear parameters and define clear areas of responsibility in any given situation.

It requires the deftness of a diplomat and I’m not diplomat.

There were a couple of times this year I’ve really thought about going back and doing something I did before I got into my field, something which while I didn’t hate I certainly didn’t like but in those moments something that seemed to be a better alternative to how I earn a living today – maybe that speaks to just how bad some days were.

Overall though the year wasn’t sooo bad.

I’m a bit at a crossroads because I find more and more that I am thinking about the next ten or twenty years and wondering what it is I want out of life. I have arrived at this point mainly as a passenger on a train where I don’t remember buying a ticket to this destination and certainly feeling as if I missed my stop and should have gotten off the train a long time ago.

Being on the train though, still being a passenger, means I now have to adjust my travel plans and come up with a new destination. I wonder where it is I can go?

I get every sense 2012 will be about setting a new destination if I can.

I imagine I should be wishing anyone who makes their way here happy holidays but instead of doing that I will just pass along this simple wish - may the days in the year ahead be better than the ones before.

Movie Mondays!

I can best describe as follows: Think Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations but with magic instead of food. A fun combination of travelogue and a look at magic - how it is performed, the tricks and its place in society - in Egypt, India and China. I enjoyed watching Penn and Teller (two very uncomfortable travelers) making their way among the busy streets of Cairo, the back alleys of Calcutta and the lesser traveled parts of China. Through it all, there are some interesting factoids thrown in among some entertaining performances. I watched it in this order: India, Egypt and China and I was glad I did because it mirrored the weakest to strongest journeys. A word of caution though, Indian magic involves many tricks with faux mutilation and consequently there is quite a bit of blood which though fake is realistic looking so if you're squeamish, you’ve been warned and it also is not suitable for (the India portion) for kids under the age of 11.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.

Movie Mondays!

Sobering. This American adaptation of the foreign Brodre is a strong film that touches on issues like estrangement, alienation and trust. Could well be on a double feature with The Hurt Locker, this film deals with the fallout of a soldier thought killed on tour of duty. It has a solid cast with Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard and Mare Winningham who are all on their game. The film actually raises larger issues in the sense we are at a point of dealing with a generation of service personnel who have served in combat and will be returning home, this film and Hurt Locker may be the beginning of a wave of American films focusing on the issues surrounding those returning veterans just as American cinema has done with each conflict the US has been involved with since WWII. Brothers is a stellar entry in the genre.

I’m repurposing content by taking my NetFlix reviews and posting them here on the blog. If I could figure out a way to do it, I’d post some kind of link for people to connect and make me their friend on the service. Unfortunately, it isn’t altogether clear how one would do that - so if you know a way, pass it along. In the meantime, I’ve got steady content for at least a year.