Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

As I rock along the subway line, and pass with throngs of others up and down the stairs, escalators, and ramps, and pour onto the city streets, I can feel the hum of the urban hive.   Its rhythms, its rhymes, its pulse.   It's heartbeat.   These are the things I see.                On an average Monday, with mid-fall overcast skies and leaves beginning to change, billows of steam erupt from the sewers and rooftops.   Those from the lower domains carry the odors of the city, those that out of towners notice and I've long learned to ignore.   The ones from above, I look at them and wonder if they are the cast off dreams of New Yorkers awakening to find themselves in the cog again.   Or, I wonder if they are the cast off dreams of New Yorkers who find themselves awash in regret the morning after, in the middle of, or years into the game.   Are they the bellows of exasperated parents bemoan...

I realize that the slow rising realization that my marriage flopped--rather profoundly if I must say--is starting to shock the lot of you.  Though, you should remember that I was single for more than 30 years (near 36) before taking that ill fated trip down the isle.  Seriously, I've moved on, I'm good, I'm happy.  Things went down a year ago.  I'm not going into that now . . .  dramatics and damage of love undone is not something I really care to broadcast for internet harvesting of sorts. None-the-less, we have another serious conversation to have. I know that many of my so-called friends enjoy signing me up for every Republican list serve there is during political season.  Well, this year, it seams these chumps have found a new level of hell.  Republican people meet dot com is apparently a real f-ing dating site.  Dude.  No.  Oh no.  Just hell f-ing no. Last spring I let a couple folks talk me into a brief stint at online d...

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 ...

So I'm like a whole freaking week late on posting the final Me Made May roundup.  Well . . . I was in Kentucky on work, and I won't apologize for having a beer after work and usually being too tired to stay up past 10:30.  Yes, lame.  Yes, true.  Yes, there were an hour of student and work emails too . . . nearly every night. But, for your viewing pleasure: Wednesday, a day of browns. An Amy Butler Barcelona, my new boat shows, a now toooo large cardi, and my insomnia bag (AKA Multi Tasker Tote from Anna Maria Horner). Of course,  I was still in NYC here . . . It was chilly, hence the cardi.  Guess where the cardi is now? In the growing Goodwill bin. Thursday . . . the day to finish packing what wasn't done the day before, remember the tablet and Advil (the sunscreen for kids who go to summer camp for nerds), and try to sleep. {There's no photo as my phone shit the bed a day or so later, and . . . this one isn't on my Google+ backup (meanin...

Twenty bucks says there's typos.  Oh well.   While I most likely had every intention of brain dumping about my recent trek down Insanity 95, reading a piece on rituals made me think about things.  Particularly, my mind has been swirling around what rituals actually are and what they mean.  Rituals, in and of themselves, are strange beasts of memory, burden, and daily life I presume.  Yet, do all rituals look alike and do they all provide a sense of spiritual release, connection, and solace?  Doubtful, as I would say the face of the ritual changes with time and place.  My drives from NY to DC, always along I-95, change for meaning and purpose.  Yet, the trip never alters.  My parents live three plus hours south of DC, along the dreaded I-95, college friends live in Richmond and DC.  The bulk of my trips have landed me in DC, and they have not always been filled with the laughter and cheap beer that old college buddies bring.  Ho...

Not long ago I made mention that I wasn't sure if I would want to have a beer with "the girl in Birks" who moved here in 2000.  Wild eyed with untamed hair in shades of auburn with blondish highlights, her peasant blouses with tattered jeans, and tanks with long hippie skirts, leather knapsack on her shoulder and gypsy scarf around her neck spoke of her age more than anything else.  In college she had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road no less than twenty-five times; always scenting the air with clove cigarettes and littering the desk floor, and any flat surface with beer bottles.  Sadly, or maybe aptly, they were not uber cool micro-brews.  Back then Miller and Bud Light called to her on Kentucky nights.  One of the roommates--Mere--"borrowed" the cherished book, but that should really read she "lost" the novel in the forlorn flat surface with papers, clothes, and trinkets.  Most just call it a desk.  Shortly before graduation the mysterious flat...

Amongst the raindrops and puddles wider than my height, I plunged for an afternoon engagement . . . oh, it was the sexiest kind . . . a hot, steamy, rekindle with the New York Public Library.  So sexy indeed.  So, up I traipse getting there to realize I've lost my access card.  But that's okay.  I'm a bonafide city resident so I got a library card, after a gem of a librarian let me pull up an online bank statement for a current address.  Seriously, do you see where this is going? After climbing the stairs of ascension, to room 308, I requested my requested off-site material now on-site via an email request that I verified via a digital image on my phone.  I then schlepped a shit load of American Legion magazines to a table for the latest book I'm muddling on.  For the next two hours--since final grade insanity got me there late, and the rain played its too long game of showering me and the city--I plunged through 12 issues from 1960.  Among ot...