They got Special Ops Cody, all is lost!



Quick! Hide your GI Joes!

The photograph purports to show a soldier called John Adams in desert uniform with a gun pointed at his head.

In a statement accompanying the picture, an Islamic group calling itself the Mujahideen Brigades claimed on Tuesday to have taken a US soldier hostage in Iraq.

It threatens to kill him unless Iraqis held in US-run prisons are freed within 72 hours.

My adventures with Doctor Mark...

So, this week turned into a pseudo medical week with lots of trips to various and sundry practitioners. One such trip was the semi regular foray down to the world of the Dental School.

I’ve been going to NYU Dental School for about a year now. This after having come to the conclusion it might be a good idea to get my teeth looked at. Part of the motivation in that decision was not having gone to my regular dentist in awhile. Part of the motivation was in thinking I would be out on the market dating soon, it might not be the worst idea to be out there with a mouth full of decent looking teeth (nice smile going a long way with the ladies).

So, I went down and got myself assigned to a student who wound up graduating and handing me off to two other students. Now here it is a year later and we’ve finished all the repair work due to decay and were set to embark on the next phase of the dental odyssey which will be reconstruction and restoration. Think of my mouth as some kind of large public works project - akin to a bridge or a highway and you begin to get the idea of the scope of things.

At one point I actually considered putting out public notices for bids for the work but reconsidered and thought the better of it.

So, I’ve been under the care of Jan and Mike my two dental students (a senior and a junior respectively) and I’II have to say I’ve been pretty pleased with the results. Going to a dental school instead of a regular dentist sounds like it would be an unwise decision, an observation which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reason I stopped going to my last dentist is that I didn’t think he was doing a good job and finding a dentist isn’t an easy thing. So I procrastinated with the obvious repercussions. The thing I like about the dental school is that the students there are really concerned about doing a good job. Each and every time they delve into your mouth, they have to get a professors’ okay before doing whatever it is they’re going to do and when they’re finished it gets looked over by a professor and graded - imagine, my teeth being someone’s class project!

So, I’ve been enjoying the whole dental school experience and can’t recommend it highly enough. Getting back to Dr. Mark, so this week having finished all the ‘decay’ stuff, the next step was to see if I could get my case accepted by the cosmetic dentistry clinic. So, when I went in for my appointment with Jan this week, I was surprised to find instead of having another go round with the drill, we would be going to the other clinic and finding out what they thought.

The cosmetic dentistry clinic is in another adjoining building, so Jan and I made our way over there her carrying the model of my teeth in this little black suitcase (I didn’t know it was a model of my teeth on the way over but so what).

Well, walking into the cosmetic dentistry clinic was something like going from a Motel 6 to the Waldorf! Not that the facilities are bad at the clinic but where the clinic is a large common room broken down into cubicles and painted with this garish yellow color, the cosmetic dentistry clinic couldn’t be further from that. The color scheme was in these very elegant pale tones and with lots of wood accents. Instead of a series of cubicles in a large communal room, each patient has there own treatment room. Definitely, the luxury wing of the school complete with a little plaque outside each room stating who the magnanimous donor responsible for the beautiful facilities was.

So, there we were in the Shangri-La of the dental school, my student dentist Jan and I. We were supposed to meet with one doctor (professor) and as it turned out she was busy. Jan set me up in one of the rooms, prepping it for the exam , placing all kinds of tacky, sterile plastic on all the surfaces. She left to find a the person we’d be meeting with and while she was gone I took the opportunity to play with the chair.

See, Jan hadn’t been able to figure out how to get the chair to operate and once she was gone, of course I set about making myself comfortable by figuring out how to adjust the chair. Admit it, we all at one time or another have wanted to fool around with all those little do-dads in the dentists’ office (the water, the drain, the chair, the air thingee), the good thing about the dental school is that the students are still so new to all of it they don’t get pissed off by your playing with their toys. They’re still so new to the concept of poking around inside of someone’s mouth they’re just happy if you wind up doing something that makes you more comfortable and thereby makes it easier for them to work.

So, here I am fooling around with the chair. I get it to drop from its’ ridiculously high position, jump up and in (in my most graceful NASA astronaut way), and then proceed to get the back and height adjusted oh-so-well that I can nap a little if it takes a bit of time to find whoever it is were meeting with.

A few minutes later, Jan walks in trailed by another dental student and Dr. Mark who she introduces to me. Dr. Mark’s name even seems in keeping with the subdued and calming demeanor of the cosmetic dentistry clinic. I mean, of course what other kind of surname would he have? Dr. Mark. It makes perfect sense and then I begin to wonder if there aren’t a whole series of professors in the cosmetic dentistry clinic who have been blessed with surnames which sound like informal first names.

Doctor Mark is an Asian man who appears to be somewhere between his mid thirties to mid forties. He is not tall but seems impeccably groomed but, that’s not the most striking thing about Dr. Mark, oh no.

For when Dr. Mark opens his mouth, out comes the deepest, most basso FM radio voice. Dr. Mark has missed his true calling as an announcer somewhere - this much is certain within the first minute and a half of meeting him. Somewhere from deep inside this deceptive package issues forth this commanding, resonant voice which immediately reminds me of the guy who does all those voiceovers for every crappy movie preview I’m forced to sit through.

In this moment, I almost begin to hear Dr. Mark intoning, ”In a mouth... of despair. There lie teeth, in desperate need...” well, you get the idea.

Dr, Mark is very perfunctory though and quite businesslike, after introducing himself he gets right down to the business of picking and poking to see if my dental student Jan has a case worthy of the cosmetic dentistry clinic.

He picks away at my teeth, making the occasional comment about some discrepancy between his observation and what my chart shows. It is very quick, very brief. At one point, Dr. Mark picks up the model of my teeth and is inspecting it while showing Jan a proposed plan of treatment. While handling the model, something comes loose and one of the model’s teeth falls of at which I grab my mouth and bleat in mock pain.

Dr. Mark gets the joke, as does Jan and they continue pouring over the model. In too brief a time the consultation is over, Dr. Mark exits leaving the memory of his rather large voice behind and Jan and I make our way back to the normal clinic. Away from the world of muted colors, carpeted floors and hushed noises to the measured cacophony of the normal clinic.

Anyway, the upshot is I think I am winding up in the cosmetic dentistry clinic. Even if I don’t though I will not soon forget the voice of the infamous Dr. Mark.

Today’s celeb sighting:



Finishing up brunch with Roberta and Emma at the Miracle Bar and Grill I turned to see another New Yorker sitting across the room finishing up the bottle of water she was nursing. Looking like another person trying to get through a sleepy, overcast Sunday - I probably wouldn’t have noticed her if not for the telltale bobs (I don’t even know if that’s the right terminology) and the rather unusual, very ‘icelandic’ garb she was clad in.

Blog Sensei as Snow White naming the seven dwarves plaguing today’s office worker:

1. cranky

2. tired

3. cold

4. hungry

5. achey

6. overworked

7. stressed

Although, there is all likelihood she will not find humor in that statement given her current condition.

In an attempt to drive up the readership of my blog, I have focused on those two things that media outlets have come to realize will generate ratings, namely sex and sports. Having referenced women’s private parts, I can only now link to a humorous sports article:

And now the Yankee pledge of allegiance -

“I do solemnly swear allegiance to all things New York Yankee. That I promise to ridicule and belittle the accomplishment of any other professional baseball team and state unequivocally my pledge to believe in the inferiority of all other championship ball clubs, their franchise and their meager history. That winning one out of every four World Series establishes entitlement and if another team wins in our stead, it will be viewed as a fluke. That I recognize that year in and year out, it is for the good of baseball the New York Yankee organization spend like hell and whereas the Yankees shall continue their winning ways and dominate Fall Classics for decades to come, I will insist it isn’t because of Steinbrenner's money, it’s because other teams don't try hard enough and money has nothing to do with it. That I take this oath freely and without reservation, for the betterment of America and all things baseball.”

You never know where you’re going to wind up...

I was looking around SuicideGirls (trying to figure out if I want to sign up on the site or not) and you know how sometimes you find yourself just wandering around the web? You wouldn’t have sought out something but, through a series of clicks you find yourself taken to a place. I used to do that with the car a lot, just get in and drive somewhere and explore, now I do it on the “info highway” (ouch, what a hackneyed use of a really overused cliché).

So, click - I’m here, click - I’m there. First it’s some members’ link and then on to some obscure blog and then some fetish photography and then some studio’s website and before you know it, I wind up here:



And I find myself just fascinated.

Sure, I imagine there’s an underlying lurid aspect of the fascination but, overall it’s just the amount of dialogue that is impressive. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such an interesting compendium on this subject. Between the first time stories of both men and women, to ob-gyn experiences and just plain talk in general - I found myself just “wandering” around for a bit of time.

The Flashmob



Everyone in this picture is now (I believe after January 8th) breaking the law and subject to arrest - even the little girl in the center of the picture. Damn criminals, you just can’t escape them anywhere!

Find out what they are doing and why here.

Wouldn’t it be nice?


If you click on the image, you’re directed to the petition to Mayor Bloomberg.

The very best solution to the currently overcrowded sidewalks is a vastly improved pedestrian environment, coupled with a free-flowing transitway. The vitality and intensity of New York derives in large part from its very human scale of circulation and activity. People from all over the country, not to mention the world, come here to experience this and are often amazed at how much they like it. We believe this intensity should be encouraged and enhanced. The act of taking the cars out of 42nd Street would, in effect, be converting the scale of the street from the automotive, back down to human scale, and would open up tremendous new possibilities for the complete redesign of the street.

One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time - if you haven’t seen it yet do go because it’s certainly worth it.

A recent purchase

Interesting to note if for a few reasons:

First off, I never cease to be amazed by my own capacity to delight in looking at naked women - a quality which doesn’t seem to diminish over time as I thought it would. One of the things I always liked about drawing class was just simple appreciation for the naked form.

Second, I like the book because so much of the focus in society today is an image of perfection and this book runs counter to that. Not to say the women contained within aren’t absolutely beautiful but, they don’t fit easily into the wafer thin, model perfect physique that is held up to women in this country as an ideal.

Women are just beautiful.



Quite a few of the women would be unspectacular if you met them on the street (although many of the subjects were quite attractive). But it's the level of emotionality that they all convey without their clothes that makes this treatise remarkable. Each woman is beautiful in her own way. And on that level, the book is very successful.

A career-spanning art exhibit, The Will Eisner Retrospective will open at MOCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) in New York City in May 2005, followed by galleries at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, The University of Massachusetts in Amherst and possibly additional venues.

Will Eisner died January 3, 2005, following complications from open heart surgery.

Yo! Yo! Yo! Check Ke out... doing the guitarist thing!



upcoming shows:
01.21.05 friday [@11pm] The Trash Bar 256 Grand St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
02.18.05 friday [@10:30pm] Ace Of Clubs 9 Great Jones Street, LES, NYC

You can listen to the bands’ music via this link, fun stuff and of course the Ke man is über-cool!

Odd things...

I heard something the other day so disturbing, it actually induced a physical reaction. I honestly would have never thought such a thing possible. After I heard the news, my stomach actually cramped up for a couple of hours through the night. I also succumbed to a rather pleasant bought of something named after a Mexican idol. Two days and counting and my stomach is still unsettled by it - I never cease to be amazed by these things.

WOW! THEY FINALLY DID IT!

At work? Bored? Dreary day?

Click here for your amusement.

He will be missed:

He is fortunate indeed to have been a steadily working actor since the age of 20, He made his first film appearance in the Manhattan-filmed low budgeter Cop Killer (1958). In 1960, he created the role of flamboyant interlocutor El Gallo in the off-Broadway smash The Fantasticks.

Another New Years Eve is upon us, I find myself sitting watching Law and Order and eating Mexican food...

...and not being particularly bothered by it either.

Last year I found myself having a wonderful dinner in the garden of a great Italian restaurant down in Key West. The company was fine and the weather absolutely terrific - it was the first time I had been on any kind of vacation lasting more than two days in over six years, needless to say it was rejuvenating.

This year when it came right down to it, I didn’t really feel the urge to go out and celebrate much. It hasn’t been the greatest of years but, I find myself hard pressed to really sum up the year as horrid - surprisingly enough as each year passes I find it really takes a lot for me to classify a year as horrific after remembering some of the things that have been thrown my way.

I am thankful I have some kind of perspective.

However, closing the book on 2004 won’t be a hard thing to do, ever the optimist I always look at a New Year as something burgeoning with nothing but potential for wonderment and I have no reason to believe 2005 won’t be the best of years.

And of course, that is my wish for any of you. So dear reader, please accept my most heartfelt wishes for the greatest successes, the most tremendous joys and the most complete happiness in the coming year - we can do little to change our pasts but the future is one thing we can surely influence and I wish you and yours the best in the coming voyage of our planet around the sun.

Happy New Year.

The numbers game:

Lots of things in the news about Tsunami deaths - Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 117,000

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others. The death toll topped 117,000, and officials warned that 5 million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.

Okay, as bad as nature did to the human race last weekend, here are some sobering numbers for you to put things into perspective:

800,000

In "Ghosts of Rwanda," airing April 1, 2004, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE® and the BBC mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — a state-sponsored, 100-day massacre in which some 800,000 Rwandans were methodically hunted down and murdered by Hutu extremists as the United States and international community refused to intervene. Through interviews with key government officials, diplomats, survivors of the slaughter and even some of the genocide's perpetrators, the two-hour documentary offers groundbreaking, eyewitness accounts of the genocide.

2.400,000

Out of a 1970 population of probably near 7,100,000 Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. The vast majority, almost 3,300,000 men, women, and children (including 35,000 foreigners), were murdered within the years 1970 to 1980 by successive governments and guerrilla groups. Most of these, a likely near 2,400,000, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge.

Seems no matter how much of a hit nature can put on our asses, it’s no match for the horrors we can visit upon ourselves — the remarkable thing is that when moments like these happen, instead of their being an outcry and loads of support being offered up to the savaged populations, we generally keep mum.

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

My phone talks to me.

No, really. I’m not insinuating I hear voices or have gone around the bend (although I’m sure they are people I know who would argue the point) - I just changed over cell providers and also got a new phone in the process. The new phone which is half the size of the old one and fits very nicely into my pocket, also has this very disarming feature.

I can be in another part of the house and all of a sudden hear this mechanical if slightly female voice say, “Call from... (insert caller’s name here)... ” and then they’ll be this beep after which the whole thing starts all over again. The first time it gives you the option of whether you want to take the call or not - you can actually just say “yes” or “no” and it either answers the call or puts it directly through to voicemail.

The thing takes pictures. I can send email from it. Get email on it. Record little memos to myself. Set up a calendar with reminders when I’m supposed to be somewhere. It’s really quite the amazing little device.

I’m still trying to figure out why the default voice is female. It probably is a commentary on sexism in our society that the default voice on my phone sounds like a woman instead of some burly, macho man or even some english sounding butler for that matter.

Anyway, the more things I program into the damn thing (people’s names and email addresses), it seems the more it can do. So, I guess I’ve finally taken the leap into the world of science fiction. It may sound like I’m overstating things a bit but, when I was a kid I can remember reading Dick Tracy in the Sunday color funnies (Dick Tracy getting prime position on the first page with Dondi) and being awed by the two way wrist radio Dick Tracy had.

Overnight it appeared all the payphones vanished and everyone began walking around with a cell phone plastered to their head. And they keep getting smaller and smaller. I figure we’ve got a little more than a decade when they’ll be planting a chip set with a speaker just under the skin behind your ear and a small microphone implanted into the skin of your cheek. No more messy phone to carry around with you - no more worry about losing the stupid thing.

Which makes me think about this thing that happened recently...

There’s this woman (I was going to say girl but I caught myself), who I just think is the most beautiful thing imaginable. This happens a bit with me, the whole being awestruck by the beauty of some women and just feeling totally intimidated by it.

So, not too long ago she dropped her cell phone.

Sure, everyone drops their cell phone you’d say but, do you drop it in the toilet? The thing was in her back pocket and well for a sense of decorum I think you can imagine the rest. At least she didn’t compound matters by flushing the thing. Needless to say, the phone really wasn’t working after that.

I think the day comes people are getting those implant thingies - she may wind up being in the front of the line. In the meantime, I find myself somewhat less intimidated by the beauty these days, knowing that we’re all susceptible to a D’oh moment.

There are a lot of things involved in my day to day life that people don’t have the slightest idea of. Then again, I rarely have a clear picture into other peoples’ lives outside of what they choose to share with me.

I roll into work around the same time every day. It’s the same time I’ve been getting into work for the last seven or eight years actually. Every day I try to get in early but, I don’t have a great reservoir of energy and that morning time is precious.

It’s usually in that first hour or two after I get up that I have the most energy and can accomplish much, much more than I ever can in the evening. Part of it is just being refreshed after sleeping and another part is not yet having the weight of the day or my life bearing down upon me just adding to the burden of what needs to get done.

Plus, of course there’s the unbearably long commute. No matter how many times I describe it, it just never seems to ‘stick.’ There’s the drive, then the train ride, possibly the subway and the walk a series of dominoes where if any one part doesn’t fit just so, it can set all the others out of kilter, increasing the amount of time and the tension level to the start of the day.

In recent years, a few friends have taken the plunge and moved from their commuter friendly addresses (read Williamsburg) to the hinterlands. They’re not by me but, now have a comparable commute. So, there’s a certain wry satisfaction I get when I hear them bemoan the lack of sympathy they get from co-workers when they try and describe their two times a day trek to their peers.

Yes, if the stars are aligned and everything works out perfectly it’s a beautiful thing but, most often it’s not. After awhile, while I do still care about it, I‘ve become numb to getting excited about it anymore when things don’t go the way they should - it has more to do with keeping my sanity in a less than perfect world.

Outwardly, I think people confuse my numbness to the issue as indifference or a lack of regard but, again I don’t think they have a fair understanding of the situation (walking a mile in my shoes and all that).

Plus, this business being what it is, it seems I rarely get out at the time I’m supposed to. I can’t begin to reckon the number of times I’ve been corralled in that last half hour of the day to deal with some urgent matter because somebody has come to realize I’m about to leave - never ceases to amaze me.

Anyway, part of that whole daily routine is the household chores. Being in the situation I’m in, it’s more a matter of making sure things are done or finding them becoming much, much larger things to have to deal with. People with children have some say in the matter but, when dealing with an aging parent you get very little in the regard of say plus, you’re fighting the eccentricities that accompany the progression of the years.

So, tonight when I was looking around for a heating pad for my neck and was told I could find it in the EYOC’s room in a drawer I guess I should have been far from surprised to find that a frying pan along with it’s lid had taken up residence in the bottom drawer of one of the night tables.

I mean, I can’t imagine there isn’t anyone among us who hasn’t awoken from a sound sleep in the middle of the dead of night with a sudden urge to fry something?

We all have those strange cravings, don’t we? Two o’clock in the morning rolls around and I sit bolt upright in my bed stricken by the compulsion to make french fries and of course at that moment I certainly don’t want to be fumbling through a kitchen cabinet looking for pans. Maybe even fry up a nice fillet of flounder, wouldn’t that be yummy?

Does this even begin to compare with the hemming of the pants with the common office stapler? Or the home repairs done with the Swingline office model?

No, but it ranks right up there with them.