holly martins's friend

Cutting ears

2011-11-11T12:13:00.002-05:00

I stopped minding Holly

2011-11-10T20:29:00.002-05:00

I stopped minding Holly because of a few passing comments about how I stopped minding Holly. So I let months pass and then finally decided to return.

And run a marathon.

And make some beer.

And reinforce normalcy.

big wheels keep on turning, plastic lifeless resin chairs______something

2011-08-30T23:11:00.004-04:00

It's an August night in Brooklyn where the summer the clashes with forces of passing meterological anomalies and unmolested thoughts stewed upon remind one of how decent people behave in the most inopportune moments. We help out our brothers and sisters.

Then we go back to our stupidity. Of eating our tails, inflating our prides and hoisting our flags.

Good thing I did my part already for god and country. Now I can go back to cleaning the gutters and shaving my head.

Returning to Holly after a long winter

2011-06-02T22:21:00.005-04:00

I spent the memorial day weekend at the shore, biding my time until I could tell everyone that I spent the memorial day weekend at the shore. I don't actually ever go to the shore. I am not someone who ever makes plans to visit the shore, to go to the beach, or to swim in salt water. I like cold, and overcast, and dark. In fact, right now I am typing this from the darkness of my dark patio, with a cold spring wind blowing through my hair. My long luscious hair. You should just see it.

I visited the shore by getting dropped off in Perth Amboy and squandering the better part of a Saturday afternoon meandering along the shore line in search of Avon by the Sea on bicycle. These town are in New Jersey, home of the New York Giants, and the New York Jets and the Frank Sinatra and that mother fucker Rudy Van Gelder.

I love him actually. He made a recording studio in his parents house. He recorded some of the best musicians this country has every known. He recorded those recordings. They define our culture. He is from New Jersey.

And that is not right there.

Okay...so I rode for something like 50 miles in and out of shore towns, passing young ladies and men in their summer best. And some orthodox jews on the Sabbath. I found a bar mitzvah yarmulke by the road side and tucked it away. I knew John would get some use from it. I was right. It perfectly matched his summer best.

I finally made it to Avon by the Sea, and was told I was mispronouncing the name of the town. It's not pronounced like the cosmetic company. It is pronounced like the way Moses spoke to his disciples. With gravity, candor

and a little jazz.

Fucking Rudy.

My man.

park, singing, dancing

2011-02-22T21:06:00.015-05:00

I remember standing under the arch at Grand Army Plaza from several years ago. Then climbing inside the Soldiers and Sailors Arch with my parents, looking down Flatbush to the island of Manhattan. I turned around and saw the Park, a stand of green amid high rises, its entryway patrolled by four spires, with eagles perched on top. The thing about Grand Army Plaza is this: from anywhere on the plaza, you feel majestic, immersed in an anachronism, poised, ready to wait for the horse drawn buggy, model T ford, Ford Edsel, or any matter of chariot, ambulatory gadget, bringing you up to the gateway of Brooklyn.

Prospect Park's characters change daily, weekly, yearly. I have been a minor cast member for years, appearing here in there in productions of such things as:

1. Man at outdoor party surrounded by scowling, judgmental lesbians. What had he said? And was he dressed in white or was that the tablecloth?

2. Man observing Raccoon, named Rocky. He would become a close acquaintance over the years, protecting the man from would-be attacks from historically acute rats, still bearing a grudge, holding the man accountable for that accidental killing of a rat, brain smashed in one night, brought down by the accidental fear.

3. Man running the traverse road at dusk, no one there, bracing for attack by alien, knife wielding child, rats still bearing grudge.

4. Man alone. In the dark. With loneliness spreading, covering the ground, filling in dank corners, the leafless trees, the still sheep meadow where the sheep no longer graze, he stands on the outside of eternity. Waiting for the bus. The cat bus perhaps. A way to get home. A way to return.

These things. They are as much my memories of the park, of places gone, dispersed like pollen on a windy spring day, coating table tops, pool covers, the unused props of a long winter.

Welcome back.

The rats. They grudge you still.

The day after the morning after

2011-01-02T10:20:00.008-05:00

It begins with a a light drizzle and ends with solitary confinement.

I am not sure where that came from. That doesn't bode well for my year. I can see it unraveling now. I watched the film "A Serious Man" last night, seeking a retreat from a New Year's day of sleeping in and drinking late and Bloody Mary recapitulation. Instead I watched a story of a man losing what little grip he had on his world. He was never king of his domain to begin with, something more like a middle manager. Like me.
Middle manager. And like any good middle manager, I have some good excuses on why that project didn't get finished, why that deadline was missed by 12 weeks and why god has taken it upon himself to persecute the witless.

My top five excuses for 2011:

1. I do not need butane for my hair curler iron. It's for my lighter. I certainly would not being using that butane for other activities, like volatile substance abuse.
2. I am too working here at my desk. I am having a work conversation. About work. I am certainly not spending this past hour talking about flammability aspects of butane or how to set the neighbor's kidney shaped mailbox on fire, the kind of fire that may burn up not only their hideous mailbox, but also their wooden replica of Boxcar Willie, complete with a full-sized boxcar.
3. I didn't touch that woman's ass. I was taking dust samples. From near her midsection. With my hand. For a project. That involves dust samples.
4. I am sorry that I missed our lunch engagement. I stopped eating lunch. It hurts the environment. And Jesus didn't eat lunch. He ate big breakfast burritos in the desert with quail eggs and buffalo meat. So I am kind of like Christ by missing our lunch date.
5. My asthma caused me to forget that zombies lack common decency. They do not pardon themselves or ask permission to leave the table . In fact they lack all social mores, and fashion sense as well. Their clothes are always stained with blood. They kill indiscriminately with neither malice nor passion. So when I assumed that the zombie was holding the door for that woman in the Brookstone's store, I misread that moment entirely. The zombie was holding the door for me. To eat my brains. So I let him.

2011. The year I operate with no frontal lobe. The best excuse of them all.

Bonnie Prince Billy for the holidays

2010-12-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

Wind it up and let it go

2010-12-10T15:49:00.003-05:00

Friday evening creeping in.

You're invited to a bar.

Somewhere in Brooklyn.

I will be there.

Black and gray sweater.

Black jeans.

Black boots.

Shaved head.

I'll be sitting on a bar stool. Polished. Wanting. Hands open.

This is the moment i'll be waiting for. Shake hands. Kiss cheeks.

Let's begin.

Philadelphia Story

2010-11-23T23:49:00.002-05:00

Mark stops. Takes gloves off. Hands them to wife. Continues running 26.2 miles. Finishes. Finds a little bit of neurologically fueled heaven.

Long commute home

2010-10-13T22:56:00.002-04:00

I rode home from work. I took a detour through Queens and Manhattan. I rode over the 59th Street bridge. I met my pal Jonathan at the entrance to Central Park at Columbus Circle. We rode two laps in the park. I left the park. I rode over to the West Side bike lane and took it all the way down to edge of Manhattan. I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. I rode up Washington Avenue. I walked into the apartment. The end.

I remember those legal size papers that our teachers would hand out in elementary school. The sheets had a landscape orientation. They were lined on two sides to help with our penmanship. On one side half of the paper was blank for our corresponding illustrations. We filled them up with descriptions of our days and nights, itemizing all the great and good exposition.

I did this. I did that. I went here. I ate the whole thing.

I rode 35 miles from work to home. I ate some guacamole. I went to bed.

I can't think of anything else. Simple. Basic. It's just missing the drawing.

pizza and ice cream

2010-10-01T13:44:00.003-04:00

Amorino Pizza with figs.

Blue Marble Coffee Ice cream with hot fudge.

Trees blown about in anticipation of more aggressive behaviors.

2 Peronis served and drank out of a wine glass.

Brooklyn night.

I know I'm getting older. Getting ready for the ice cream.

It's why New England is littered with ice cream shops. They are the Northeast's strongly puritanical answer to Europe's pubs and beer halls.

The day will come when all that is left to savor is a cold and sweet diversion from waiting. The rest of the day and evening will diffuse to blankness.

It doesn't sound so bad.

Reason number 12 on why I run outside

2010-08-30T15:41:00.003-04:00

Water fountains.

I am running five miles in Crocheron Park, Queens and stop off for the second time at the water fountain. It is blockish cement thing with a spigot on top and a tiny recessed pool with a drain. I drink a couple of fast gulps and start running again. I feel the it immediately. My face is covered in spider web and I am dragging an angry spider along seemingly attached to my hip. This web was not there a mile ago. He must of worked quickly? Or did I miss him the first time? I scoop off the web from my face and lower the spider to the ground, all the while never loosing my pace.

Spiders. Okay-that's reason number 13.

red hook esoterica

2010-08-21T23:00:00.001-04:00

I am certain that the young white teenager at the Red Hook, Brooklyn Ikea dormitory showroom yelled at her mother this afternoon that "God was in the marketplace."

I came for a printer caddy.

Boxes of Enlightenment part 2

2010-08-10T20:48:00.004-04:00

When you box up your things you tend to begin a process of devaluing or over inflating the worth of your individual possessions. You keep the Kirk mug again. You leave behind the book on Tarot card reading. You shave off a few things, and covet a few others. The last time I gave up a beloved plant, but this time around our apartment has killed off almost all organic matter with its merciless blasts of heat and blinding sunlight. Even the cactus died. So there are no plants to mourn our give up this time. Instead, I will surrender up an air conditioner or two, a television and its stand and a few other non-sentimental items. The television was adopted by a caring family in Connecticut where I am sure it will receive the care it needs, and live out its live in a carefree existence.

The air conditioners are another story. If we leave them around, then we will invite the horror to our front door. It will be them: those post-apocalyptic-like, Mad Maxian scavengers who maraud and terrorize the streets of Brooklyn, tearing apart any discarded possession in the hopes of finding that most rarified of items: the copper substance. It drives men to drink. It makes women sell themselves on street corners. And our air conditioners are valuable sources of this most desired metal. It will be salvaged by these beastly men and women. They will mercilessly extract any bit of valuable copper from the belly of the unit and in turn release gob-loads of freon into the Brooklyn air.

So I guess I will give the air conditioners to my parents. Or anyone else. Anyone who does not carry wire shears in their back pockets that is.

So now to the point of this entry: Does anyone need a 9000 BTU window unit air conditioner? Anyone?

Elevated mood, smelly jersey

2010-08-04T10:14:00.003-04:00

Colleague: "It smells like stinky socks in here."

Me: "Oh."

She is standing in the doorway of my tiny non-windowed office. I know that she is probably smelling my cycling jersey and shorts hanging on the other side of the door. She can't see them and thinks I have a revolting odor. It's worth it. Especially for miles 10 through 12. And the intensely pleasant mood elevation that follows. Those out there who do have never ridden fast with wreckless abandon on two wheels powered by your own internal combustion machine that functions on approximately a gallon of blood and heaping of 0xygen will not know what I am talking about.
I usually keep my bike in the office unless my office mate shows up. I dry my cycling clothes as discreetly as possible, but after someone stole my favorite Sugoi jersey from underneath the stairwell (it was draped over a recessed pipe under there), I am careful where I leave my clothes to dry. These particular warm new-summer style months have left me sweating profusely after the 14 mile ride to the workplace and I began to think that my jerseys were getting old and were not honoring their wicking responsibilities. Then it occured to me that it was me. I smell. I don't remember smelling so much before. It must be the heat-right? Or maybe its something else. Something like decay. I am decaying I guess. Getter older. Rotting from the inside? Right? Is that a tad melodramatic? Anyway, it's worth it. Being smelly that is.

Yield and go

2010-08-02T15:26:00.002-04:00

The Natural break. According to my own bicycle commuting lexicon, this is an intersection that can't be broken. The traversing of such space without regard for traffic lights will invariably lead to disaster, breakage and irrevocable loss. So you must stop. This is Queens Boulevard and Yellowstone. This is Northern Boulevard and Bell Boulevard. This is Houston and Broadway.

For most intersections, it's a different story. It's the pause, the momentary observation of vehicular movement, then the sprinting ahead. Some do it with a throw-caution-to-the-wind approach. Some of us with more age and pain under our belts worry about our decaying cartilage and bone, and make a more intentional effort at yielding. I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm not saying it's legal. I'm just saying it happens over time, the tendency, the involuntary response to push forward, to sneak over and under, up and above, and through and past the rumbling, poised cars, the endless waiting.

Summer time riding

2010-07-30T09:42:00.003-04:00

The summer means its time for repaving, re-grading, re-fucking up the streets of New York City as prescribed by the Department of transportation or the Romulan Empire or one of those elusive and tyrannical shadow organizations. If you are a bicyclist who gets stuck on one of these recently excavated roads, stripped of its top layers, manhole covers checkering the roadway raised a inch or two from the surface like carbuncles on the peeling skin of sunburned body, then you will know the of the tribulations of the broken blacktop. Another facelift on a decomposing body. Except the body is a road. Like Jewel Avenue. And the Romulans have forsaken the cyclist. As is their way.

I finish my ride and use my cycling gloves to extract all the bits of new pavement stuck to my tires.

I look up pavement graders on the old you tube and find this nugget:

7 train biscuit

2010-07-29T09:10:00.003-04:00

The sound of a rubik's cube. It's coming from the young man sitting across from me . He is a striking young Asian man, strongly developed triceps, biceps. His tee shirt hugs his torso. He listens to his Ipod, never looking up, focusing on the business at hand. He holds a rubik's cube between his hands. The sounds of the cube being manipulated strike me like a laser burning through my outer cortical material , leaving behind a slight burning smell that seeps out of my cranial cavity. I know that sound. It's freshly baked bread, aisles of unopened cereal boxes, cold sheets on an autumn night, the rumble of engine reborn.

He solves the cube in about a minute. Then he mixes up the sides again. Starts over. The few riders in the subway car look over occasionally. This is the 7 train, man. We do this every day.

Are you there?

2010-07-28T23:04:00.003-04:00

Holly Martin's Friend. His friend is not such a good person. They went to boarding school together. It ends badly. You may or may not know this.

The important thing is this: Uncle Larry sometimes checks in to see if I have written anything. He likes to keep track of the poorly constructed musings of his forty-something nephew. So Uncle Larry, I apologize for the neglect in my maintenance of Harry Lime, Holly's old friend. Harry is not to be trusted. He hides in dark alleys, connive against those in power, and bring hardship to children. He is not to be trusted.

Harry that is. I am trustworthy.

On unimportant things, at least.

Rusty, the elevated train to the future

2010-06-24T22:52:00.005-04:00

Rusty Staub is sitting across from me on the 7 train going towards Manhattan. He looks like Rusty Staub. Dressed in business pants, tasseled shoes, dress shirt, flushed face. He is on no one's radar. It is a subway car of young teenage and twenty something Asian and Hispanic strap hangers. I look over and think to myself: Rusty. Le Grand Orange. And then I look backwards.

Me in the summer of 1985. At Shea stadium. A moment punctuated by hot pavement, a failing grasp of adulthood, Andrew's VW bug pushing forward over the Whitestone Bridge. A minute ago, I think. I still have a picture. The Mets are losing. Rusty is probably down there in the dugout. I look at the picture and try to draw out what may have been going on in that sputtering head of mine. How do you pitch a change-up? Why do curve balls and change-ups look the same from up here? Why am I even here? Do I actually like this game? Will it always be this hard? Why this?

Now I am here with Rusty again, stewing on this existential meat of adolescence, adulthood, baseball, and it occurs to me that I still have no answers. I grasp the pitching with a little more ease, but very little else. So the question becomes not why, but how?

The why has no answer. The How is simply a matter of luck, perseverance, and something else. Something that occasionally leaves you on edge of recognition: legs shaking back and forth under the table, stirring you out of bed at night. Like fearing the unknown; the proverbial sneaky copperhead lingering in the tall grass.

End of the line

2010-05-31T23:29:00.004-04:00

It's 83 degrees in our bedroom right now. The sounds of the party from the shared backyards has died down. I feel a deepening sense that Brooklyn has used up it Memorial day weekend, squeezed out all the processed, sickly sweet high fructose corn syrup, and left behind a bit of damp, crumpled ephemera, lying on the corner of of the back seat floor mat of a 1985 Buick LeSabre. It left behind several thousands of empty bottles of lighter fluid , several sleeping G train shuttle buses, 2,786 overflowing trash containers, and one single broken headache. My headache. Time to find another city. What's next? Lexington? Bangor? Bucolia? And where is my jacket? The one with the patch for good humorlessness?

Top two food items in my desk for 2010

2010-05-11T13:57:00.002-04:00

1. Classic Tofu Master Handmade Black Dried Bean Curd
2. 32 reeces peanut butter cups.

Really. 32. I can't get enough.

The Dried Bean Curd-not so much.

Mary Martin and Julie Andrews

2010-05-08T22:51:00.001-04:00

Julie Andrews.

My favorite graffiti of 2010

2010-04-30T14:59:00.002-04:00

I stopped at the bathroom at Shelley Lake in Raleigh, North Carolina last week and while washing my hands I noticed on each opposing wall there was a bit of scrawl.

On one side:

"I love Obama."

On the other:

"Jesus is #1."

Nothing clever or vitriolic or bawdy.

If I had a marker, I would have added something like:

"I love eating lunch."

The Shuttle train

2010-04-26T21:47:00.002-04:00

Has anyone given some thorough consideration of splendor of the Franklin Avenue shuttle?

Oh yes. Right here.

The Drill Doctor 350X

2010-04-25T00:30:00.002-04:00

My father-in-law is sharpening his collection of drill bits with this device. It uses a diamond sharpening wheel, and will even take care of masonry bits. I don't know about you but I think we all need the Drill Doctor in our homes and workshops. He holds such wonder to me. I want you to see it too.

I think if Willams Carlos Williams re-wrote "The Red Wheelbarrow" it would be something like this:

"so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

and the Drill Doctor 350X."

Drinking again

2010-04-15T13:37:00.002-04:00

I had one last bottle of my steam beer left in the refrigerator (batch number 5). It was in a 12 ounce bottle with no label , and it was wileing away the days and months next to the rooster sauce and the homemade blueberry jam. Towards the end of my class last night, I started thinking about sitting on the couch with a cold beer and watching the most recently recorded episode of the new Elmore Leonard produced show "Justified." I did just that when I got home.

I know this may seem like an accentuation of the obvious, but gosh-golly-good-god-damn I felt absolutely perfectly squared away there for a few minutes, drinking my crisp, balanced, mildly bitter, home-brewed beverage, watching that handsome Tim Olyphant and squishing my toes into the carpet.

If for this moment only, I think I'll make some more beer.

Cooper Ave. Reduxe

2010-04-05T13:52:00.002-04:00

Damn Cooper Avenue. Stop that business with the whole exposed trolley car tracks and large post winter potholes.

According to Ride the City's safe and safer routes, Cooper Avenue is a trustworthy pathway through Queens. They obviously have not spent any quality time with Cooper Avenue. He never wants to leave the bar until his judgement is so impaired that he needs protective eye wear and headgear to walk three and half blocks. He never files his taxes until early June. He changes his linens once a season. He uses bolt cutters to cut his toe nails. He drains his ears canals with rusty skewers. He cleans his firearms with the safety off and the chamber loaded. So needless to say, I don't trust that Cooper Avenue.

He brings me home. It's just sometimes I wish he didn't.

Bottling

2010-03-30T20:44:00.004-04:00

There is a great satisfaction derived from filling a freshly cleaned, dry heat-sanitized 22 ounce bomber bottle with homemade beer. This afternoon I bottled my eighth batch of beer. I use a bottle filler to simplify this task. When the liquid fills to the very top of bottle, I release pressure on the filler and the flow is interrupted. Then I pull a sanitized cap from a nearby bowl and crimp a cap around the opening of the bottle, using my red baron bottle capper. I wipe down the sides of the bottle and slide it into its owns special partitioned place in the bottle box.

Each time I do this brings me a little closer to jesus.

I mean the guy in the hat. With the corn cob pipe. And the bag of peanuts. That Jesus.

My friendly neighborhood divorce

2010-03-24T09:08:00.005-04:00

The man who is the hypochondriac
who wears the magnetic arm band
who maintains the air conditioner at 66 degrees in his office during the mid-winter months
who carries a briefcase filled with nothing but orange prescription pill bottles and a single Popular Mechanics magazine
who wears denium shorts in winter, spring
who finds happiness in something, I know something, a place with his daughters, his friends,
the entire A side of "Let It Bleed," the roundness of finishing a task, parking the car perfectly, tucking the sheets and blanket under the mattress and making something whole again. It is enough to get him to faithfully return every Monday.

He is divorcing his wife. The two kids. The house.

His change is a gaping hole where something has been extracted.
I want it back for him.
For him the happiness of a thousand of those complete moments.

As I want them for myself.

Habanero Pepper Mamalade recipe ingredients

2010-03-22T09:07:00.007-04:00

2 1/4 pounds of navel oranges-unpeeled, thinly sliced

juice of 1 lemon

zest of 1 lemon

6 cups of water

3 dried habanero peppers

9 cups of granulated sugar

This would be my first excursion into preserving food. I chose something with a little zing, a little fire, a little sweet, a little spice and a lot of sour.

Unfortunately, the habanero pepper is out of my league. It's a pepper for those off-world creatures who have war-torn palates, flattened by years of drinking horseradish flavored mineral water and starting their mornings with a crunchy jalapeenios cereal. I am not that man. Some of the pepper ended up in the canning pot and was commuted from solid form into a gaseous state. My eyes felt a bit of burn. The back of my throat errupted into a smoldering patch of blistering skin. The neighbors called 911. The block was shut down. The Hazmat trucks showed up minutes later, and I spent the evening in a Department of Homeland Security holding cell. Those god damn peppers.

In any event, the canning part went well. I have ten 8 ounce jars of marmalade. Ready for consumption. Or black ops interrogation methods.

Whatever suits your fancy.

earning spring

2010-03-18T09:30:00.003-04:00

Do we picnic in March?

I am not ready for this bit of nonsense.

My kingdom for another cold front.

Last night the park was unseasonably crowded. It was a personal affront to those of us who savor these cold months for their hardening character; most stay inside on their treadmills, under their covers, behind their televisions. I covet these months for their solitude, their dark quarters where I cover my head in cotton and lycra, spending so much attention to insulate that big fat bald head of mine.

I want that first day of budding warmth to feel like I have paid in full for it.

And right now I still have a balance.

146mm rear axle with mangled dust cover

2010-03-06T21:49:00.003-05:00

I need a new dust cover. Damn it. This is what happens when you don't follow directions.

"Leave dust cap in place. Dust caps may be fragile and removal may result in damage."

-Park Tool's Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair

I have the patience of a hungry, rabid, bleeding mongoose.

Hearing Aid

2010-03-03T09:17:00.003-05:00

Me: "Morrissey was using an Ipod in 1984?"
Wife: "It's a hearing aid."
Me: "Nooo. It's an Ipod."

Like James Cole in "Twelve Monkeys." Morrissey is shifting through time looking for empirical proof of the apocalypse. I am sure of it.

2010-02-27T00:27:00.000-05:00

Brooklyn when it snows.

progressivism

2010-02-23T22:48:00.002-05:00

Like Charles Davenport. He was progressive. Or Magma. They were progressive. Or the red and yellow tape in the music library. Progressive.

Valentine's Day riding

2010-02-16T10:25:00.007-05:00

My old early 90's entry level mountain bike (a Wheeler 4400) has served for many years as my around-the-town bicycle. Recently, I decided to take it apart to figure out the origins of a particular annoying sound that may or may not have been a spent bottom bracket. Over the years, my cast of bicycles have taken on their own unique personalities. The Wheeler was no exception. He felt sadness when his heralded place as the primary ride was diminished by the brand new 18" GT Karakoram in 1996. Then, years later, while riding through the streets of Queens, I hit a pothole and the drop-out broke away from the chain stay of the Karakoram. It was irreparable damage that would mean an entire frame replacement, as I had absolutely zero knowledge of arc welding. I know the Wheeler had something to do with this. I am not sure how but I am certain of his malevolence regarding this particular incident.

Years later, the Wheeler lives on as my utility bike. Lately, a particularly bothersome noise emerged from the chaotic area where the down tube ends and the business begins. So I decided to take a look. I know this angered Wheeler. He sees this as a fool errand. There's nothing wrong with a little noise.

I removed the pedals, cranks, the chain rings, the bottom bracket. As it turned out, the noise was coming from the sealed ball bearings in the one of the pedals. They were shot. So I bought some new pedals, but I have not got around to putting everything back together. The Wheeler sits in the quiet basement, unused, unsung, unnoticed. I want him back, but I just need to make some time for re-assembly. I hope he understands.

And that leads us to Valentine's Day. When the New York City road conditions involve slush, ice, road salt, random piles of snow, the Wheeler has been the go-to bicycle. I needed to get some olives for my fancy valentine's dinner of mushroom risotto, and it was one of those slushy, snowy days. As The Wheeler was out of commission, I was out of luck. The local fu-fu market is a long walk at the edge of our neighborhood. If I were to walk, it would take 20 minutes, but a bike would get me there quickly-smickly. I asked my dear wife if I could borrow her wonderful folding bike and she appeased me; so off I went. In the back of mind, I wondered what Señor Wheeler would think of this snub job. I muddled through slushy streets and skidding cars and arrived safely at the fu-fu market. I thought to myself: I love this bike. I wish I could hug it. With its wonderful 20 inch wheels and folding body and sweet kick stand. I dismounted in front of the store and began the quick and easy process of breaking down the bike and folding it up. I parked in front of a cast iron fence which would make a swell spot for locking up. The one challenge of the folding bike is that you can't be lazy about doing all of the steps in breaking it down. If you do not open the quick release on the handlebars and shift them downwards, the bike will not collapse neatly. As my mind was already on fu-fu olives, I neglected one of these steps and the bike would not close properly. I re-opened it, finagled this and that, and tried to close it again. At this point, I looked down to notice that I had gotten red paint on my thumb. My wife's bike is blue, and there was no red items within view. I pulled my thumb up to my face and realized that I had in fact punctured it with some part of bike frame. I was not going home though. I came this far for my olives and I would not to be stopped. I entered the fu-fu market and walked to the coffee display where I grabbed a handful of napkins. I wrapped my thumb and casually walked over to the olive display. I spooned the olives into a plastic container using my other hand. As I sealed the lid of the container with this non-punctured hand, I realized that this hand was coated in bicycle grease and wet blood. I looked down at the spoon handle, but it was too dark to see if I had stained it. I wiped this hand with the remaining napkins and then stuffed these soaked bits into my coat pocket. At the cashier, I kept both of my hands below the counter and pulled out my money as quickly as I could. I could feel sweat dripping down my forehead from beneath my bicycle helmet. A line had formed behind me, and I wanted my exit to be as carefree as possible. Midway through my transaction, the cashier called the manager on the phone about a price point. I only had two items. Her eyes wandered about as she listlessly responded to the person on the other end. I hoped that she would not notice the dried blood on my face. Finally, she finished her call, rang up my items and gave me change. I stuffed it in my pocket and rushed out the door. When I got outside, I walked to the snow bank near my locked bicycle and washed my thumb in the cleanest snow I could find. I looked up. A woman was standing in the doorway smoking. She did not acknowledge me or my blood letting. No, nothing here but me and my blood stained snow, thank you. I unlocked the bike, reassembled it, and put on my gloves.

On the way home, I envisioned Señor Wheeler resting in a dark corner of my parents' crawl space, Laughing. He loved this kind of thing. Busted frames, punctured thumbs-this is what you get when you don't honor your bicycle heritage.

Brooklyn, 3:15pm, G train Fulton Station Staircase.

2010-02-10T22:51:00.000-05:00

So so sick So so sick

2010-02-08T10:07:00.000-05:00

Enchiladas at home for a change

2010-02-08T09:21:00.005-05:00

Most Superbowl sundays, I am eating enchiladas at Chris and Kevin's soiree. This year, I felt the weight of a cold, pressing school olbligations, inertia. Instead, I volunteered for enchiladas duties. At home. My wife and me and our old, chilly aparment.

green pepper, red pepper, yellow pepper, sharp cheddar, cottage cheese, cream cheese, jalapeno, onion, garlic, tomato, jalapeno, onion, coriander seed, cumin seed, salt, pepper, corn tortillas, baking dish, frying pan, 3 1/2 quart pot, 375 degree oven.

Plated, eated, hot sauce hot. Cheese cheesy.

With a side of black beans and rice with chipotle peppers adobo sauce.

At 9pm, the game was turned off. I drifted off into the other room. I savored the moment. No football. No commercials mimicking art. No binge drinking. No uncomfortable pauses.

"Big Love." Rattling radiator. A sharp sting of pepper. Our Superbowl Sunday picnic indoor picnic retreat.

2010-02-07T23:06:00.003-05:00

Knowing how to spend a Saturday afternoon takes work.

Evol spelled backwards in love, but eval spelled backwards is lave.

And medieval spelled backwards is laveidem.

Don't worry if you failed to understand this last point.

Only a 9th level chaotic good ranger could really grasp the significance of it.

Someone who knows a thing or two about cloaks and twenty-sided dice. Someone like myself.

Really.

Poached Eggs

2010-02-01T09:33:00.004-05:00

Some mornings I try to make poached eggs. It's such delicate business for such a lumbering beast as myself. It requires a bit of finesse not only to extract the egg from the water with success and without breaking the yolk, but also to leave behind all of the water so as to not make more toast soggy. My failures with poaching pull at my will. Every failure yields the following result- why did I bother with this? I could have just fried them or scrabbled them or hard-boiled them. It causes a lingering self-doubt. The poached egg- the routine of my life. Again and again again with failure, bitterness but always worth it. The soggy toast. The broken yolk. The lasting resistance.

150 Stitches

2010-01-09T10:03:00.004-05:00

My father never let me use his chainsaw until I was in my thirties. Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, he was the wielder of chainsaws. I did get my fair shake at using the Maul though. This was really a combination of an axe and a maul; instead of a dull surface for driving in steel pins, it had nice weighted blade to split wood. Looking back it seems a little odd that it was perfectly acceptable for the 15 year old boy to wield the weighted axe and risk driving the blade through his foot or calf, but the chainsaw was off-limits? So there I was: hauling fallen trees the half of a mile back to shed where my father would slice them down to evenly cut pieces. Then I would step in and chop them into to smaller pieces with the maul. Chop, saw, haul, chow, saw, haul. Burn. The greener wood would remain in the shed until next winter. All the other pieces would be brought up to the garage for burning in the stove. Years later, I remember those mornings more than anything about my childhood.

Okay-back to the crux of this entry:

Last year, my sister-in-law wanted to borrow the chainsaw to remove a fallen tree from her backyard. My father volunteered to drive over to their house and do it himself. Once again, my father was the self-appointed keeper of the chainsaw.

This morning I was reading the New Yorker's Talk of the Town and found this wonderful bit from Ben McGrath:

Timber

This was my favorite sentence:

"One rule of thumb has it that a hundred and fifty stitches are required for every second of contact between a chain blade and human skin."

I hope my dad doesn't read this article. For all of our sakes.

Stay home

2010-01-08T20:54:00.003-05:00

I made red lentil soup this evening. I fixed myself a daiquiri while I waited for the soup to do its simmering. The daiquiri has become a thing of interest for me lately.

2 ounces of light rum

1 ounce of simple syrup

1/2 ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice

handful of ice

Shaken. Poured into a chilled martini glass.

I finished it up and moved on to some Dale's Pale Ale. I love my kitchen. Its certainly better than most New York City bars. The music is always at the right volume. If I want to hear Savage Republic, I will listen to Savage Republic. There are no large plasma screen televisions. No NFL posters. No bouncers to invade your privacy.

Something's missing though. I know that. Some days I arrive at that perfect moment, seated at the bar, the pint glass filled with mysterious malted treasure, a Patrick O'Brian book in hand (the Java v. Constitution), and then I hear it. "Academy Fight Song*." "Let's Have a War." "Sailin' On."

Something like that. Something that makes me pinch myself. Lovely. Yummy. Okay. It's still worth it.

*courtesy of Andy Lee.

I am definitely goin' to Jackson. Definitely. And that's a fact.

2010-01-07T13:50:00.002-05:00

Darkness persistent, and also obscuring potholes.

2010-01-06T22:25:00.004-05:00

The temperature was 26 degrees. It was perfect weather for the Gore Windstopper Bib tights. And two layers of gloves. And Windstopper over socks. And booties. And Balaclava. And still the wind bites and chews at your forehead. You ride alone. It's just you and the irate drivers. They mock your insistence. Your billowing yellow jacket. Your dissipating temperament. Stay home. Stay off the road.

I get to work and my frame is covered in a dried spray of salt, mud, road silt.

At home, I wheel out my bike to the sidewalk and brush it off with my soft bristle car wax brush. The passers-by stare and laugh. If you could only know.

It's love. A round trip of hardship, aching joints and surging, raging pulse, heartbeat, lungs flaring. I can barely stand. I use the handrail to make it up the stoop. I stand at the door, top tube over my shoulder, unwilling to stop.

Octoberfest in February-batch 6 ready for bottling

2010-01-03T17:20:00.005-05:00

My 5 gallon carboy has been sitting in the corner of the garage for the last four weeks in its secondary fermentation stage. I will bottle it this evening. I took this picture with my father's digital camera. He mistook this image as a picture of his grandchildren and almost printed it out. I am not sure if this says more about the aesthetic value of home brewing or my father's tendency to find humanity in grains of wood or bubbling, fermenting liquid. In either event, it makes me smile.

(Or it may just be he needs a stronger prescription, but where's the poetry in that?)

Watching the skies for their arrival

2010-01-02T11:28:00.003-05:00

The writing was on the wall. They were coming. We waited in the dark of Prospect Park, simmering with excitement. When they arrived we stopped breathing for seconds, minutes. They gave 45 guilders and some beads. We offered them hardened apple cider and squash.

The island is yours, we said.

They corrected us: "It's a terminal moraine."

We toasted. The cider was cold and biting. They said: "May the year bring you health and happiness. Here are some nice blankets."

The cats next door part 2

2009-12-31T09:07:00.003-05:00

As mentioned earlier this week, the feral cats next door may or may not be:

A. zombies

B. Ruthless creatures who stop at nothing to maintain control of the block's refuse ebb and flow

C. Mutilators of dogs

D. All of the above

Last night, John enticed one of these feline monsters from under a nearby parked car, and stroked its coarse, mangled fur. It followed us up the stoop and stood on the top step as we closed the door. From behind the closed door, I thought I heard what sounded like the movement of the forearm handle of a pump action shotgun.
This morning, he was waiting for me as I left the building. He followed me, creeping along, moving from one car's wheel well to the next. I noticed that he had brought reinforcements. I am not sure if I will make it home tonight. I have said too much.

More favorites for 2009

2009-12-30T10:48:00.003-05:00

The top 4 VHS cassettes in my bottom office drawer for 2009 are:

1. Blade Runner, tenth anniversary edition

2. Flashdance

3. 16 Candles

4. Matrix Reloaded

5. Serrated kitchen knife from the Banzai 99 store

It should be noted that this last entry is not in fact a VHS tape. It should also be noted that the previous four entries are in fact the only VHS cassettes in my bottom drawer.

The cats next door

2009-12-29T09:05:00.004-05:00

They live in the abandoned Brownstone building several doors down. At night, they hide behind car tires and make covert dashes to curbside garbage bags. They fight, procreate, and make the streets unsafe for rodents, very small children, bowls of uneaten spaghetti.

This morning the temperature dropped below twenty degrees. The cats must be cold. What are they doing right now?How do the fend off the cold? Do they trap feral neighborhood dogs, cut them open from ear to tail, and seek warmth amid their streaming entrails like Han Solo did for Luke Skywalker in "The Empire Strikes Back?" How many dogs will they kill before someone takes heed? Who will call out these feral cats of Greene avenue and their malevolent ways? No one will.

If they were zombie cats, it would be a different story.

That's for sure.

top five substances of 2009

2009-12-25T13:17:00.004-05:00

5. Brown sugar- this is not a euphemism.

4. Carbon fiber- I really lost 5 pounds. 5 pounds, damn it.

3. Copper- always a dependable one with its whole conductive-ness and all. Making "A Love Supreme" even more Supreme. Like killer Supreme. Or ice cream Supreme. Or even Diana Ross Supreme.

2. Dopamine- because of all great neural processing work you have done to keep me from chewing off my fingers and turning towards cannibalism.

1. Na Cl- once again the hands down winner for another year. You lovely beast of the seasoning world. Drawing out water, punching up flavor, killing off snow. Nicely done. Again.

Prospect Park, 7:10pm, 22 mph

2009-12-07T22:28:00.002-05:00

Edward R. Murrow High School Track, Saturday afternoon

2009-10-31T17:53:00.003-04:00

I tried to run today for the first time in nearly three months. I made it around the track for 1.5 miles or so. Stephanie and I travelled out to the Edward R. Murrow High School to check out their track. The school's mascot is hornet or a wasp or some kind of frolicking bee. I think they should change their team mascot to reflect the honoree of the school's name. Something like the Uncontested News-hounds.

The track surrounds a football field and is abutted by several tennis courts. The field and courts were aflutter with activity. Several orthodox jewish boys joined a racially mixed group of teens and pre-teens for some touch football on this Sabbath. In another corner, two Indian teenagers practiced with their cricket bat on a tennis court. Another group of hispanic and African

American teenagers passed a soccer ball back and forth in front of goal in the corner of the field. And the Russians and Poles slowly completed their laps on the track.

My knee held out. Stephanie pushed on for another two laps, and I slowed to a walk. The football game sputtered to end. A soccer game emerged. And the cricket practiced dragged on.

Beat that, Columbus.

Borough Park, Point of Departure. Citifield, Site of Arrival

2009-10-07T21:19:00.005-04:00

I am walking through the neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn. It’s in the waning moments of the day. The cold evening of autumn makes everyone’s step and cadence a little brisker. Boys wearing the clothing of Jewish Orthodoxy run by me. A Woman speaking Russian loudly into her cell phone drifts in and out of my sensory range. I climb the stairs to the F train on my way home to dinner, to paper writing, to the domestic routines shared by millions throughout this culture. Yet here, standing on elevated subway platform among the ordinary pageantry of Brooklyn life, I am seized by the notion of why I still love my city. It does not remind me of home. It is random, exotic and extraordinary. At home, I am safe, comfortable. In many suburban communities throughout this country, the neighborhoods attempt to replicate this concept of false security in their outside worlds. The children are never left alone. Main Street is replaced by the climate-controlled shopping mall. The gated community becomes the model of prosperity. In New York City, there is no expectation of certainty. The subways may abide by some fleeting schedule. The stores may open and close. The dry cleaner will probably have your linen trousers on Thursday. But don’t count on it. Like some constant burst of misfiring neurons, New York City lays waste to your sense of comfort. Your favorite pizza restaurant is now a spa. Your local subway station suddenly closes for five months. Your taxi driver unexpectedly drops you off in Queens. Your dry cleaner closes and those linen trousers vanish into some couture morass. The man standing next you on the bus does not speak your language, worships another faith, disagrees with all of your social views, and will never will raise a glass of spirits with you. Yet somehow you are able to share a moment of solidarity. You are tempted by the same exhaustion, the same irritability to say to anyone who will listen:

This is it. Why am I still here? Enough.

Then it happens.

I know you. I saw you yesterday. You with the Mets Hat. That Minaya. What is he thinking?All this money for a new stadium. For fourth place?

Commiseration. Is is substitute for real generosity, for tenderness, for love? Yes. Tonight it is. For now we are all children of baseball, awash in nostalgia, griping like an old couple. We will be there again though, as we bundle up for another off season.

Thank you, New York. Who needs linen trousers anyway?

The US Open ends. The possums move in.

2009-09-17T23:21:00.002-04:00

Today I witnessed a large possum under the platform at the Flushing Long Island Railroad station. The possum was digging in the earth. I have nothing more to say about this.

My endless, petty, tumultuous love affair with public transportation, part 31

2009-08-12T18:59:00.005-04:00

When driving a car in New York City, you feel a pang of relief when you arrive at your destination. It comes from the sense that you have merely passed through a place, unanchored, stuck, moving and stuck again. You sit in traffic, watching the pedestrian, the food delivery person, the pizza maker, staring out from behind your windshield, feeling nothing but the impulse to get through to the next intersection. You want to get there, to that place where you can leave your car behind, once again unencumbered.

This morning I sat on an uptown A train reading Ian Frazier's account of travelling through Siberia. He recounts in splendid detail how he recruits two Russian men and purchases a diesel powered Renault step van to venture out into the expanses of planet Siberia. Frazier builds his vision from the vantage of a finicky steed, but his attention extends behind the front seat to the sparse setting beyond, as he drifts nearer the edges of humanity. I stop reading for a minute to daydream about infinity. As I too begin to drift, I am drawn back to my fanciful subway ride and a bit of odd intrigue from a nearby seat. The woman sitting perpendicular to me in the subway car is engaged in a lively discussion with her companion. I hear this:

Enthusiastic woman: "They never found anything when they searched my cell. They looked and looked. It reminds me of this."

Siberia. Lenin. Exile. Incarceration. My A train. My luxurious seat of humanity. I am in your gratitude.

Frank update

2009-08-03T14:40:00.003-04:00

Frank stopped by the office today and requested that I peform a google image search on a Cadilac Deville. This is what he had me print out for him:

I love my job for these moments.

Thursday evening at the Market

2009-07-30T22:58:00.002-04:00

Me: (holding the box of organic granola and wanting to go home): "six forty five is a lot for granola but I spent two seventy on my bagel this morning."

Wife: (exasperated): "we are not paying six forty-five for granola."

I put the box back.

Wednesday night in the park with KMart

2009-07-15T08:17:00.004-04:00

Tonight the New York Philharmonic is performing in Prospect Park under the direction of Alan Gilbert. They will be performing Beethoven's Symphony no. 7 (and Mozart's Jupiter symphony).

More importantly, I figure a 2 liter camping thermos fresh from the shelves of KMart should nicely fit two bottles of wine. Nicely.

Because 750 milliliters x 2 is less than 2 liters. I love this whole metric system.

That is all.

Compare Foods, 3:45pm

2009-07-13T11:22:00.004-04:00

The cashier is nineteen or twenty years old at most. His bagger is younger. I place a cloth bag on the check-out conveyor belt in front of my several items. I stare into space as the bagger fills my cloth bag with groceries after the cashier scans them. They were:

1.Unsweetened cocoa

2. six pack of expensive beer

3. two bottles of club soda

4. Cereal box of Shredded wheat of the Honey nut variety

5. Two rolls of paper towels.

The young bagger fits everything into my bag, but the two paper towel rolls. I hear their conversation. It's as if I am not there. The bagger begins to put the paper towel rolls in a plastic bag.

Cashier: "Noo. Don't put them in a bag."

Bagger: "Why not?"

Cashier: "He's not gonna want it."

Bagger: "What's he gonna do?"

Cashier: "I tell you what's he gonna do. He will put them under his arm like this." (He tucks the two rolls of paper towels under his arm.)

I look at both of them at this point. It's as if I suddenly showed up.

Me: "Yes. That's just want I am going to do."

I take my cloth bag filled with groceries off the register conveyor belt, tuck the two paper towel rolls under the other arm and walk towards the exit.

Fucking white people.

Public

2009-07-04T15:29:00.005-04:00

Two incidental moments of perfect drunkenness from the Independence Day weekend:

1. Two young Norse looking men were sitting on the wooden bench on the A train platform at Columbus Circle last night. The station was crowded with barely clothed denizens enjoying the beginnings of their Friday evening revelry. It was close to midnight.

Back to the young blonde, sinewy but athletic men: They were sharing a meal of a twelve pack of full-sized glazed donuts and a two liter bottle of Nestea Iced tea. They passed the bottle back and forth. One of them held onto the hard plastic container of donuts. In the time that they were seated they each ate several donuts and drank most of the iced tea. The train pulled into the station. The more haggard of the two gentlemen popped up and headed for the subway holding the opened container of donuts. Three donuts remained. His companion drank a long swallow of iced tea and followed.

2. The vaguely Russian looked twenty-something woman sat forward on the downtown C train. Her top was unbuttoned to her sternum and most of her breasts were on display. In fact, much of her upper body seemed to be exposed skin. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was asleep? She began an incremental forward motion toward the floor. Her torso and legs were slowly transformed from a 90 degree angle to a 75 degree angle to a 60 degree angle to a...

I considered stepping in, but I was weary to intervene. I was uncertain where to put my hands in order to slow down her descent. My actions might be misconstrued as licentiousness. As I considered this dilemma, the train lurched forward. She began to topple forward. Before I could act the man standing in front of her raised his hand to her forehead and gently pushed her backwards to an upright position. She stirred and said something to him in Russian. He replied to her in Russian. Then she passed out again. He looked down at her, then turned to the stranger standing next to him. This woman was listening to music through her headphones at an intensely loud volume. He tried to get her attention.

"I like that band. Of Montreal. I like them."

This woman standing next to him pulled off her headphones.

"What?"

2009-06-28T22:59:00.006-04:00

My right knee gave out on me last week. I have been sitting on the couch for most of weekend, watching cooking shows, reading about orthopedic surgeons, but mostly looking out the window. As one of my dearly loved favorite cinematic characters, James Stewart plays a photojournalist named Jeff in the film "Rear Window" who becomes entangled with the goings-on of his neighbors through his daily voyeuristic behavior brought on by being incapacitated by a broken leg. Me, I am just watching painters deftly drop to a hanging platform three stories above the sidewalk and the big old trees below, blowing in the wind. No Raymond Burr burying his wife in the backyard, no piano players, no dancing woman. My wife does do a wonderful Grace Kelly though. She makes me quesadillas, buys me Pad Se Yu and chocolate chip cookies, kisses my forehead and reminds me that this too will end.

My pal FB

2009-06-23T11:59:00.005-04:00

On a weekly basis, my pal Frank stops by my office. He attends one of the programs in my building for individuals with developmental disabilities. We have an arrangement that he can stop by on a once-a-week basis and have unfettered use of my web browser for a very short period of time (usually around five minutes). I should mention that I would establish some parameters if needed; however, Frank usually wants to watch music videos on YouTube or conduct a google image search on some 1980's cartoon.
Today's video:

Strawberry Pickin'

2009-06-21T19:40:00.004-04:00

Strawberries make me happy LAMF. They are summer wrapped up in a sublime balance of sweet, tart, juicy. They are perfection, and they are the most sexy fruit in the land. Unfortunately most of the time they come packaged in some clear hard plastic container with a hint of their former glory.

Yesterday I spent the day picking strawberries at Jones Tree Farm. Their strawberries are plentiful, bursting out from their neat rows with globs of red sweetness. Once more, the stars have aligned. In perfect strawberry multigloriousness.

Returning to the neighborhood

2009-06-20T08:32:00.005-04:00

I left Brooklyn for a few days to travel to Torino, Italy. It was a vacation of disassociation, detachment, drifting away from the every day muck and swallowed up in a revelry of sitting outside, holding hands, drinking coffee and wine, aligned with the planets, the seasons, and those Fiat Pandas. I love those Fiat Pandas.

I slipped back into Brooklyn to find one of those "sky watch" police towers situated a block away from my apartment. The term "sky watch" hints at some astronomical viewing station to gaze out at the night sky, not some menacing tree house for law enforcement straight out of "Escape From New York."

Then I read this.

Ok, I get it. Brooklyn has some issues. It's filled to the teeth with people who need more Italy and less indignity. I wish it was that easy.

From Brooklyn to Danbury

2009-06-08T22:39:00.015-04:00

The guy in the bike shop told me he thought the North County trailway and South Country trailways were boring because they are soooo flat. He is right. Flat. I still love them. They're also fast. And they snake through the woodland and forest of the Westchester County. And they're quiet; even on a warm spring Sunday you find solitude, among the chipmunks, woodpeckers and guileful Canadian geese.

The trail starts in Yonkers and follows the former rail bed of the Old Putnam Line. The South County Trailway ends in Elmsford, but after a short ride on some side streets you pick up the North County Trailway that brings you all the way to Baldwin Place. From there it becomes the Putnam County Trailway which drops you right into Carmel, New York.

I rode from my doorstep in Brooklyn to Danbury. It was 82 miles. I spent my Sunday morning and part of my afternoon pedalling home. I was moving from place to place; traveling through the streets and towns of my life, adrift among streets names, reservoirs, city parks. I may have been here before; I read the signs and mouthed the names. Could they be markers from another time? If I can't remember them now then did those moments really happen?

I end my ride at my childhood home. It is like the reverse of John Cheever's "The Swimmer." Instead of the backyard swimming pools of my life, I moved through concrete, desolate spaces into inviting and lush woodland, and finally I am deposited to a consecrated ground, the hearth of feasts, kinship and remembrance of things past.

I started off with Manhattan, riding up the West Side Bike path, passing the George Washington Bridge along the way. The bridge seems unsightly compared to the humble lighthouse that hides below.

Little Red Lighthouse overwhelmed by the Washington Bridge to Jersey.

From there, I entered the Bronx, riding up Broadway under the Number 1 train tracks. The train rattles overhead. I feel it in my rib cage. I want it to stop but I stay on Broadway until I am free of the train and free of New York City. Into Yonkers.

Under the Number 1 train elevated tracks on Broadway in the Bronx

Along Broadway in Yonkers, preparations were under way for a Puerto Rican parade. I rode by parked floats covered in crepe paper and banners. I am unnoticed, unwanted, not Puerto Rican. I smell fried food and gasoline. I need to get away from cars and traffic. And then it happens. I arrive at the trailhead to the South County Trailway on Toussaint Road off of Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers. Unfortunately, the trail is under construction. I ride to another point of trail access at Barney Road. At last. I push forward into the canopy of trees and follow it for miles. The South County Trailway makes up about 11 miles before leaving you in the midst of Elmsford. At this point, I ride through some side streets, past slumbering industrial equipment and reach the beginning of the North County Trailway. From here on in the ride settles into mile after mile of woodland, shade, the smell of something in bloom-Lilac? I pass through Westchester County into Putnam County and then the trail ends.

The Remnants of the Old Putnam Line.

Former Railroad trestle over the Croton Lake converted to a multi-use bridge for cyclists and pedestrians.

Me.

Welcome to the Nutmeg State.

I ride Route 6 into Connecticut and finish my trip in the hills of the Aunt Hack neighborhood of Danbury. It ends unceremoniously. I pull my bike into the garage and enter the house. My father appears.

"Your brother thought it would take you this long."

I take a shower and wait for pizza.

North County Trailway map

South County Trailway map

2009-05-28T23:06:00.000-04:00

A bucketful of beer

2009-05-17T21:59:00.005-04:00

My empty pail loaded with the accessories for homebrewing

I spent the afternoon bottling a batch of beer. I made five gallons of german style altbier ale. I bottled it into 22 ounce bottles until I ran out of 22 ounce bottles. Luckily, I had some spare 12 ounce bottles on hand. I had requested my empties from the waitress at the restaurant last night. She obliged. She even gave me a paper bag to carry them in so as to maintain some propriety on leaving.

I soaked them this morning in a basin filled Oxiclean and hot water to get the labels off. Then I siphoned the beer from my secondary fermentation vessel into my bottling bucket. I finished up with filling each bottle and capping them with a personal sense of completion. Like running 26.2 miles, except without the running and sweating and salty part.

I did this amid the controlled recklessness of my two nieces running, jumping and singing show tunes from the musical "Billy Elliot." It was wonderful. Lovely. Beer making, mask making, song singing, smelling like brewer's yeast and texas sheet cake.

Alcohol by volume:4.8%.

Two more weeks. And I will do it again. Beer anyone?

Tuesday night on the G train

2009-05-06T00:53:00.002-04:00

I sense he is staring. Eventually I look in his direction. He motions to his jacket. He pulls at his zipper and looks up at me. I realize he is cuing me to my own improper buttoning. I smile at him and redo the button arrangement on my London Fog overcoat that I bought for ten dollars from the Salvation Army. I am embarrassed for a moment. Then it comes back. This stranger committed to propriety. My fashion guardian. Thank you. I love this. This town. This perfection. My four buttons of absolution. I am not alone. Again.

Thursday on Cooper

2009-05-01T15:11:00.006-04:00

Cooper Avenue sounds nice enough. It traverses through the neighborhoods of Glendale and Bushwick. I pick it up at the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Cooper. I have nothing nice to write about Cooper Avenue. It's simply a means to my end. I would go so far as to say: Fuck You, Cooper Avenue. For your petty and mean-spirited drivers who squeeze around me with less than an inch of clearance so that they can wait at that light at the next intersection. I wish you cared more for me, Cooper. If I could only replace that C with a H, I think things would be different. You would be my Hooper. My Mr. Hooper. And I would stop at your store. Instead, you are Cooper. My entrance to Queens. My passage across borders. My departure from civility.

Spring riding

2009-04-20T14:49:00.007-04:00

I spent most of my Sunday riding to Nyack from Brooklyn with my friend Lisa. The round trip mileage was something along the lines of 70 miles. Our trip included:

1. Two bridges squared.

2. One tug boat.

3. One peanut butter and jelly sandwich ÷ two from the Runcible Spoon.

4. One mental health counselor.

5. Four shots of espresso ÷ two.

6. Euphoric moments blended nicely with back pain, knee pain, neck pain, and overbearing German tourists.

Lisa-from now on, it's the Manhattan bridge.

Brooklyn Bridge.

The Runcible Spoon.

Lisa chasing down cycling club in Piedmont, NY.

Hudson Greenway in bloom.

America is waiting

2009-04-19T23:06:00.002-04:00

Ronald standing waiting over the passersby on 42nd Street.

"Oh yea-you shall know me by my yellow jumpsuit, my uncompromising vision of world domination and my broomstick that I will drive through the hearts of my enemies who shall bow at my size 22 red shoes. Ye shall know my wrath and taste my scorn."

Feral New York

2009-04-13T22:45:00.006-04:00

The first home game at a new stadium has come and gone. The stadium emptied, the first night of many. Nine innings. Eleven runs. One balk. Ok...one more day of the New York Metropolitans. But lets go back in time to a moment earlier in the day-one which I was sure was the harbinger of baseball perfection.

I am sitting at window of an eastbound Long Island Railroad train. Right before the train arrives at Flushing station, it passes a tiny body of water at the edge of the Flushing-Meadow Park and almost in the shadow of the new ball field. This is Flushing Creek. And as I stare out the window, my gaze falls upon an enormous great egret standing at the edge of the creek. The bird stands still as the speeding train passes. I am dumbfounded at this quite large bird who decided to cross paths with me today. Then something occurs to me. I think that the egrets and baseball have some elements in common.

They both look like they mean business. When you bear witness to them you are confounded with admiration at their grace. You lose yourself in a moment, spilt between their profundity and simplicity. Then with a fury of movement and push... they're gone.

Tomorrow night: Oliver Perez v. Kevin Correia. Lefty v. Righty. Okay. 155 more to go.

My 1994 Mitsubishi Expo LRV (and optional turret)

2009-04-10T14:48:00.005-04:00

Two Expos are Greater Than One

I once told someone that our 1994 Mitsubishi Expo handles like a Sherman Tank. This made no sense to her. I meant that when designing a vehicle built strictly for the utility of battle they would approach the issue of the comfort of the driver as a frivolous consideration.

Unlike the Sherman Tank, my 1994 Mitsubishi Expo does not have a 75 mm gun. This is unfortunate.

A Perfect Holiday Craft Project. I mean PERFECT.

2009-04-05T17:51:00.001-04:00

The best god damn reviews on the inter-tubes

2009-04-02T22:13:00.003-04:00

I usually don't read Frank Bruni or Chowhound or Time Out's restaurant's reviews because:

1. I have a poorly developed palette,

2. I like to eat at home,

3. I am a vegetarian,

4. People can be mean, petty and uncharitable.

And that brings me to the real point of this post:the place I go to find the best and most positively brilliant reviews anywhere in the world wide inter-tubes:

Andy L.'s reviews

They are unbridled diatribes of meanness and adulation, bristling with piss, vinegar and love of Kyle and Errol. I stake my reputation on them. Luckily, I have no reputation.

Donald Judd, Marfa, Texas and cool heavy shit

2009-04-02T21:58:00.000-04:00

Good question

2009-03-22T14:07:00.003-04:00

A little girl and her mother were standing next to the door on a rush hour A train.

Little girl: "What happens if the train driver dies?"

Mother: "Please stop talking about this."

Little girl: "But what happens if he dies?"

Mother (exasperated): "Enough!"

They get off a few stops later. Mom, she had a good question. What if the train driver dies? I do not mean dying in bed or at the hospital. I mean when he or she is driving the train. I can't stop thinking about her question. That was four days ago.

On the border of New York State and Connecticut

2009-03-16T21:19:00.006-04:00

I crossed state lines with a case of homemade beer. I like to cross over into New York state at the same place that Sybil's father entered the colony of Connecticut back in 1777 on his way to intercept the British. I have a case of twelve 22 ounce bottles of Nut Brown Ale. I bring up Colonel Luddington because my whole beer making pursuit in some small way aligned me with those who came before and made their beer by hand. We are kindred spirits of thrift and utility. I cooked my batch up on the stove and fermented it in storeroom (where my parents keep their muskets and barrels of gunpowder). Ohh Jeesh...I shouldn't have written that. Now I am certain to end up on a god damn watch list for DHS. In any event, the beer is ready. Next week you can find me at the Cumberland Farms parking lot down on Route 22 selling it out of my trunk.

Making Beer and talking beer

2009-02-24T22:42:00.008-05:00

My parents bought me a beer making kit for the holidays. It was a basic kit that came with:

1. A 6.5 gallon fermentation bucket

2. A 6.5 gallon bottling bucket

3. Hydrometer

4. Siphoning tube

5. Airlock

6. Twin Lever Red Baron Bottle capper

7. Bottle caps

8. Bottle Filler

9. Racking cane

Yeah-I could go on. I won't. It was a lot of stuff. And the most important thing: a recipe kit for Nut Brown Ale with Malt Extract, Dried Yeast and Bittering and Finishing Hops.

I had to go out and find a nice stainless steel brew kettle. I found such a thing at...Walmart.

The Tramotina 22 quart stainless steel stockpot. It served perfectly as a brew kettle allowing enough room for a rolling boil, with more than three gallons of water for the Wort. So, yes, I bought something at Walmart, but that's not the point of this entry. The point happens to be this:

I did everything wrong.

My sanitary approach was dulled a bit by my two wonderful nieces running in and out of the room as I busily cleaned, sanitized and dried my equipment. Then during my brewing, I felt certain that I contaminated the Wort in the cooling-down process because the air was filled with poison that night. Creepy, sneaking microbes were waiting to undermine my intent. And to top it off, I lost my cool, collected self at the moment when it mattered most. I had cooled down the Wort to 80 degrees and pitched my yeast. I covered the fermentation bucket with its snug lid. I slipped on the airlock and then...well, it did not look right. I pushed it down a little further and then, POP. The rubber grommet* that held the airlock in place fell through the hole and dropped into the Wort.

Noooo! I was almost done.

I found a long ladle and sanitized it. I began the dredging. The bucket was white plastic and the Wort was dark brown. I could be here a while. After about ten minutes, I started hearing the voice. It was timid at first but as the minutes wore on it become more aggressive.

Just reach in. Take that arm of yours and fish around the bottom of that bucket. It won't hurt a thing. Listen to me. Just do it. You bathed earlier this week. Your arm is nice and clean. Oh yes it is.

Finally, I relented. I pushed my arm into the murkiness and dragged my fingers along the bottom of the bucket. Then I found it. I pulled it out. I sanitized it. I refit it on the cover and reset the airlock. It was over. Nothing left but the wait. I planned on doing single stage fermentation so my beer would be doing its business in that single big bucket for the next two weeks. Two long weeks while my beer became a swirling mass of mold, stench and ruin.

2009-02-18T14:32:00.002-05:00

Last night I noticed from the train window what appeared to be a singular wall standing in front of the new CitiField. I imagined that it was a sort of baseball Masada. A few die-hard Shea stadium stalwarts were making a last ditch effort to accost the forces of capital and empire.

It turned out it was stairway. It came down today. Its been a slow, discomforting experience watching that big blue eyesore dissolve into the landscape. I am glad it's over. Now I can get back to the business of waxing nostalgic about important things, namely Beefsteak Charlie's.

Here is the slideshow from the Times capturing the end.

Barley, Hops, Yeast and water

2009-02-18T08:39:00.005-05:00

I somehow managed to slip in a point in class last night using the above ingredients to illustrate a point supporting the scientific method. They were discussing "re-conceptualizing the special education empirical model." I was discussing beer.

Disability in Education Class: 0

Mark: 1

Wednesday night match

2009-02-15T10:46:00.003-05:00

It was gosh darn windy out Wednesday night; however that did not stop us from riding a few laps in the park. And all I can say is between
the large fallen branches littering the roadway,
the dive bombing rabbits,
the mighty tree that was blown asunder at the 15th Street entrance,
the perilous trip up the hill on East Drive where I was certain we were traveling under five miles per hour,

someone was out to get us.

Nature: 1

Mark and Lisa: 0.

Bucketful of Crabs

2009-02-09T21:51:00.008-05:00

The point where I want to begin this is here (please bear with the ad).

She boxes. She is a new mother. Her parents are incarcerated. She spent some time in juvenile detention. The story promises no redemptive endings or perfect reconciliations. I know that and I want no more from it than that.

We walked home from the bus stop and I began my tedious dissection about how a story about a post adolescent mother with an intention for pugilism somehow makes the most perfect sense to me. It’s not about her future fights or the challenges of being a single mother or the impossibility of finding faith in the immaterial. I am somewhere out there with her. I want to believe in perseverance. Instead I will trouble with staying here. I want the kingdom of heaven. But I will suffice with living out the week, and ignoring your sentiments (Dr. House), the ones about selfishness, the abyss and subjugation. Today I fight for Brooklyn. Tomorrow doesn’t matter.

My vessel

2009-01-30T12:43:00.000-05:00

I have Bisphenol A circulating in my body. It’s fine. Really. The BPA accumulates though, and soon I look at all plastics with a bit of weariness. At my workplace, I regularly fill my igloo water jug at the water cooler and bring it back to my desk. In this way I reduce the number of times that I travel back to the dreary kitchen where the water cooler resides. I have been filling my Igloo water jug over the last three years I do not think I have washed it once. In fact, it’s growing some mold in the crevices of its cover. I pair my Igloo job with a Rite Aid plastic cup that I occasionally wash out with lukewarm water. It has a circle of mold at the bottom of the cup that I can’t reach with a paper towel or sponge because the cup narrows at the bottom. Sometimes, I push a paper towel to the bottom of the cup with a chopstick in order to mop up this growth. In a mark of the changing times, I pondered over this Petri dish of a drinking vessel yesterday, and finally reached a point of some personal disgust. I threw it out.

I won’t throw out my Igloo jug though. I’ll wait for some new research finding about hard plastic and its correlation to dementia. Until that time, the seepage will continue.

I take if for granted that you clean the roadside of the snow, the corpses and the detritus of the ages.

2009-01-28T23:19:00.009-05:00

2009-01-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

Delicious breakfast #125

2009-01-17T09:45:00.004-05:00

1. Toasted bagel with chunky peanut butter spread thickly.

2. Gorilla Coffee's Ethiopian Harar ground and served up nicely in my JC Penny's mug from 1996.

3. Lee Morgan's "The Rumproller" vinyl reissue on Blue Note.

4. 365 Orange Juice from George's favorite shop around the corner.

5. Duck Tape.

6. New issue of Bicycling magazine with story about Alysa Milano and lawn darts.

7. Tincture of Laudalum

Another State of Mind (1984)

2009-01-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

2009-01-15T22:29:00.000-05:00

Flushing Update

2009-01-14T14:32:00.004-05:00

1. The upper deck of Shea Stadium is slowly disintegrating before my eyes. Every day another piece disappears. It’s a slow grotesque orchestration. It’s the third movement that will sputter out into oblivion, like a Steven Reich composition, entangled in monotony, embroiled in discretion. Harummpphh.

2. And then: Noodles again. One more perfect lunch. On Union St near Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, Queens resides Yipin Chinese Cuisine. Cucumbers, cilantro, fresh noodles and spicey sesame sauce. It resurrects my spirits that have been stifled by bitter winds.

Here is a nice interactive map with photos (look to the right side of the map for Yipin on Union) from a NY Times article this summer about the food of Flushing.

It's January, I'm 40, and it's time to ride.*

2009-01-12T15:00:00.004-05:00

* Thanks Dad.

The aisle of regret

2009-01-10T20:22:00.004-05:00

We moved to a neighborhood that has a remarkable absence of well stocked and pleasing grocery stores. In fact, our local Bravo grocery market offers nothing but degradation and regret. Here are some of things that my Bravo does not have:

1. Produced harvested in 2009 or 2008.

2. Garbanzo bean flour

3. Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn

The following items are things can that can be found at my neighborhood Bravo supermarket:

1. A overpowering odor of spoilt meats, rancid dairy products and lingering melancholy.

2. 23 varieties of low carb tortillas

3. A selection of cottage cheeses that have a faint taste of metal.

4. Paul Bowles' Manuscripts*

* No, really. I am not making this up.

Prospect Park 11:15pm, December 31, 2008

2009-01-01T22:45:00.009-05:00

Lisa and her unfortunate encounter

New Year's Eve Prospect Park 5k runners, 2008

Last night I spent an a hour or so in the park engaged in the healthy practice of discharging firearms and drinking grain alcohol out of 3 liter soda bottle. No, no-that was Andy. Sorry Andy.

I did not have any alcoholic beverages this evening. In fact, I spent the waning minutes of 2008 running inside Prospect Park in 19 degree weather. Afterwards, I stood with Lisa in the park's interior near dog beach, amid strangers and wished in 2009 with fireworks, and poignant observations about hay bailing and socialism. Lisa had already consumed two martinis earlier before the run, so she was in much better shape to relinquish the old and bristle about the new.

After the fireworks, we walked back towards the car. The Brooklyn sky was soaked with starlight. After running, then standing, then standing some more in frigid temperatures, I found that I was at a loss for any revelry. As Each year passes I find I am less invested in promises and resolutions, and more perplexed by purpose and atrophy. As we walked to the car, we passed buildings abuzz with parties, christmas lights, short skirts, and half drunk bottles of rum. We run into a bubbly young French twenty something gentleman. He is drunk. He has no coat. He holds a bottle of rum and wants to tell us about France and Brooklyn and how lovely everything is at this very moment. He describes his past absolutely spectacular New Year's Evening nights spent with dancing friends, polished eiffel towers and excellently dressed monsters. He asks why we are here. We were running, we say, and standing around and some other thing. It's this, I think. I am glad I am here. It's a moment of fortuity. Refined, chilled and barely distinguishable. I'll take it.

It never seems like much, but once again you are in new territory. You begin a year in uncertainty. You end it with cold feet and twenty something French boys. It gets better each time.

Making the Nature Scene in December

2008-12-24T09:15:00.003-05:00

Jose the Beaver has returned.

Thank you, Jose. I have been waiting.

2008-12-09T23:26:00.001-05:00

"I'm gonna take everything I own and make a chicken lover out of you."

Raptors at Large

2008-12-07T20:27:00.005-05:00

I ran into another hawk again at Crocheron Park. I was running in the park earlier in the week on one cold and overcast day and this enormous bird flew past me only ten feet or so above my head. From its wingspan and color, I knew it was a hawk. Was it the same one I had seen earlier in the year? I searched on google with the key words hawk and Crocheron Park. The only relevant material that came back was the my own entry about the matter. I spoke to someone at work about it and they referred me to the parks department. Then I came across this story:

Hawk with Prey Shot on Fifth Avenu e

New York at Night

2008-12-01T22:43:00.004-05:00

The flat bead truck brings new fortifications to the union army fort. The Con Edison worker dressed in black coveralls, with black camouflage face paint drags a bucket full of copper wire. The woman pauses on the top step of the stoop, on her way into the burned out building. She responds loudly to a passerby who asks her directions to a halfway house in the neighborhood. Then she turns on her flashlight and disappears into the building, like any New Yorker returning home from a hard day.

Big day on the river

2008-11-30T23:11:00.003-05:00