Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

There are a few things about me that ponder and amuse my friends.  My being a Yankees fan, an adulterated one at that, is one such point.  Ions ago my Grandmother and her sister would watch Cubs games, as they lived in Hammond, IN.  Cubbies fans pretty much describes that side of the family.  None-the-less, back in the '80s the Yankees sucked and you didn't have the glory of the internet to make them easily accessible.  Then in college there was the 1996 World Series.  Any baseball fan knows the story of how the Yanks won the first title since 1978.  Those same fans know the story of Jorge, Pettitte, Mo, and Jeter.  I won't bore you with the history of the core four.  What I will tell you is that in many ways watching the four of them fade from the game in various stages of retirement makes me wrestle with my own memories. In 1996 I was a junior at Kentucky Wesleyan College.  Imagine being a Yankees fan in Kentucky? I was.  I ...

I apologize in advance for typos. Mondays.  Diatribes about Mondays are easy to come by, and even on this blog I have posted one , two ,or some more .  Every now and then a Monday proves exceptional, causing a need for a brain dump, recharge, and maybe a bourbon or two.  Let's see . . . Monday for the making. 9:00am, first class.  I come into the classroom a few minutes early to see a student who hasn't been there in WEEKS waiting.  Walking in I remarked the he had returned, and he said "yea, I wanted to talk to you about that."  What did he want? He hasn't done any work all term, and I'm talking not a lick.  He wanted to sit-in on class and be able to pass . . . Did I tell you that he said he couldn't all semester because I have a policy that if you are more than ten minutes late you can't come in?  So it's my fault he couldn't get there on time? Yup, you know it . . . pass the bourbon, and it's not even 9:00am. Class wasn't ba...

Friends with iPhones tell me that the auto-correct function changes fucker to duchess.  I have to take their word for it, as I am a Crackberry user (for the moment) and I do not use auto-correct.  I use spell check, but no auto . . . None-the-less, when fucker becomes duchess it turns to a point of humor.  Snickers abound about "That duchess stood me up!" "That duchess lied to me!" or "I saw that duchess in traffic." Yesterday I schlepped out to Stony Brook to see an old friend, and in the course of my life a short little venture "out East" couldn't be crazy free.  Out on the depths of Long Island, not within the comfort and restless (yet peaceful) noises of my 'hood and devoid of the Manhattan backdrop along the East River, I always feel like I am putting my memories and sanity into the hands of reckless agents of wary laden moments of self-destruction.   We already know I have seen a certain ex in traffic twice now, and yesterday mad...

So today I went on the hunt for a dresser.  I braved IKEA again, on the quest for something cheap and functional.  Perhaps this is where I should say I do not enjoy the vortex of IKEA.  the first time I went into an IKEA I was hobbling along on crutches as I had broken my foot.  Perhaps it was the pain pills, perhaps it was the July heat, perhaps it was the massive crowds that day . . . But, ever since I have detested the place. I'm just not a fan of winding through the vortex of IKEA, with only one way out--through more crap.  To make it even better all the furniture blurs into itself after about five minutes, and winding through the maze of assemble-yourself furniture of pressed wood and veneer it feels like a vortex has sucked you in.   Mixed in are rooms assembled with signs attesting that "This is rooms costs 1000."  Components share and match, and mix, and . . . scores of folks run about designing their room to look like something from the stor...

Last week was a shitter. Here are the accounts . . . 1. A friend who had made plans with me months ago, and canceled them just days before I got to NY, sent a text message asking if I wanted to go camping last weekend. I was a little rebuffed, but I initially said okay. Then her boyfriend started with comments, and I got uncomfortable. Mostly, I was uncomfortable because I could already see that their weekend was based on two people, and I would only be a third wheel. Perhaps things wouldn't have gone so badly if he hadn't posted two messages on FB that I have "no sense of adventure" and "no sense of humor." Also, note that he misspelled my name. Anyone who knows me knows I hate that shit. I know better than to ask a friend to choose, I don't do that, and I no longer allow people to treat me like that. I have no beefs with her, and I'm a bit upset that I can't talk to her anymore. The problem is I never know if her boyfriend is reading ...

I've been up on Long Island for about a week now, visiting and job hunting (yea, go figure on the latter), and several things have hit me. The first: I knew that I missed the north, but I didn't realize just how much of my identity can now be called "northern." Little things from delis, coffee shops, the style of clothes I wear, the large amounts of dark colors in my wardrobe, shoes, to just being very comfortable in the skin and soles of an urbanite and northerner. I do realize LI is the burbs, but going into the city reminded me of more than the island did/does. As for this recession . . . well, my first two days here I drove to some of my old favorite and "unfavorite" spots. I wheeled my car to Montauk, rolled down the windows, smelled the LI shore, put my feet in the sand, and rubbed my toes along the rocks. I closed my eyes as I walked along the boat docks in Montauk and remembered many a summer's day spent taking in the view and character of thi...