Citizen of the Month

the writing and photography of Neil Kramer

Category: Life in General (Page 10 of 46)

The Hole in the Ground

February 22, 2011 / / 24 Comments

When you are stuck underground for a long time, in the darkness, under the grass and dirt and flowers, not dead but fully alive, all vital signs working except for your sense of reality, your first sighting of a pinhole-sized ray of light coming from a point above will not be a celebratory event.  It will be a message of fear.  Some ONE or some THING is telling you that there is a way out.  But you don’t want a way out.  You wouldn’t be sitting flat on your back in the cold dark dirt if you wanted a way out, right?

But a hole has opened.  And every day, this uneven circle will grow larger, the light will burn stronger and more focused, and the heat of the sun will create thirst and emotion in your still-alive body, forcing you to climb out of the black hole onto firm land and fresh air.  You will have no choice.  Better to do it now.

Once outside, in the slight breeze, you may recognize your surroundings, and you may not.  You have been under the earth for a long time, and your head will be dizzy.  You will not know for how long you were lying in the dirt, watching the ants as they paraded in front of you, like little soldiers.

Don’t move.  Just stand there, next to your hole — and wait.   Someone will pass by, seeing you naked and dirty, your knees bloody and scraped, and offer you some help.  It will be a nice older man, or better yet, a young woman carrying a bucket of well water, and she will offer you a drink.

“Why were you in that hole in the ground?” she will ask you.

“I dunno.” you will answer.

Good.  Be honest.  There is no reason for you to lie or weave dramatic stories.  You are a man who just clawed his way out from inside a hole in the the ground.  Why bother with tall tales?

“It must have been very uncomfortable and painful to be stuck in there,” she will whisper sympathetically, pouring the water into your cupped hands.

At that moment, you will feel the pain.  Her mere mention of the anguish will unleash the burning knife in your spine, your head, and your heart. Language has that terrible effect.  The agony will be acute because this is the first time you have felt that long-forgotten pain, the shivering that caused you to bury yourself in that hole in the ground on that fateful day.

What happened on that day?  Why did you hide yourself away from the goodness of Life?  You will not remember, but now you have returned.  You are standing on your own feet, upright.   That is a start.  It is time to live with the pain.

Drink the healing well water and then, using the bucket, wash yourself clean.

Not Self-Esteem, But Arrogance

February 13, 2011 / / 21 Comments

I’m the last person in the world to be giving anyone any self-help advice, and I don’t trust those who usually do in blog posts, but I’ve been feeling braver and confident in certain aspects of my life lately, which is surprising even me, and I think a large part of this is because I had one of those “a-ha!” moments recently that spur you on to change. I have no idea whether this paradigm shift in my head is real or delusional, but I thought I would share it with you and see if anyone can relate or add anything to it.

For the longest time, I have been operating under the assumption that I have low self-esteem. I’m not sure where it came from, probably my father, but it made sense to me. When I looked at those around me, I considered them “more important” than myself. If I was walking into my apartment building in Queens and saw someone carrying a few bundles, and he turned to me and asked, “Could you help me a second?” I would answer, “Sure.” That is being considerate.

But if I was struggling with packages, I would not ask some stranger, or even a neighbor, for help. While this seems like a minor reaction, the same attitude would exist if I was asking for a promotion from a boss or a dance from an attractive woman at a friend’s wedding. I don’t like “asking” others for anything because I am under the assumption that I am too weak to handle the rejection. Low self-esteem. I would be crushed. Others are more important than little ol’ me. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy. By constantly seeing myself as “smaller” than the next guy, my self-esteem weakened to the point where I didn’t want to bother a waiter to refill my coffee cup in a diner.

“I’m sure he is busy with other customers,” I might think. “He’ll get around to it eventually. I can be patient.”

I’ve thought about this self-esteem issue for a while, and I can never seem to get a handle on it. It slides through my fingers like sand. I understand my self-diagnosis intellectually, but I don’t feel it in my gut. After all, I don’t walk around seeing myself as a lesser person. Not at all. It’s not how I perceive myself, even when I don’t ask the neighbor for help or the boss for a promotion. If anything, at the moment of indecision, I probably see myself as BETTER than they are — more noble and considerate, as if niceness was a badge of honor.

And this was the a-ha moment. What is holding me back is not lack of self-esteem, seeing myself as smaller than others, but ARROGANCE, viewing myself as morally superior and kinder than the rest of humanity.

Why don’t I ask the guy to open the apartment door for me? Because I am acting under the assumption that this guy is, at heart, a self-absorbed twit who will say no. The boss is not going to give me the promotion because he is an incompetent businessman waiting to give the promotion to his nephew. The woman at the wedding won’t want to dance with me because she just wants a one-night stand with the drunken married guy at the next table.

What a horrible way to view other people!

Now, before you dispute my theory, let me say that I understand that this is about issues of self-esteem. I’m just saying that constantly thinking of myself as having low self esteem is counter-productive. What if I viewed it the other way, where I AM THE ASSHOLE?

In this new scenario, the neighbor, the waiter, the boss, and the woman at the wedding are all lovely, wonderful people. They want to help me, give me a promotion, and dance with me. Why wouldn’t they? They are nice people. Why assume that these individuals are lesser than I am, wanting to reject me for their evil pleasure? Why do I see myself as super nice and others as complete idiots? I’m the IDIOT.

Why wouldn’t the guy hold the door for me? Why wouldn’t the woman dance with me? And they wouldn’t be doing it FOR ME. They would be doing it for themselves. I know I get a kick when I hold the door open for someone. Why not give someone else the opportunity to feel good?

Because I’ve been a arrogant jerk more interesting in feeling morally superior than dealing with real people. I WANT you to say no, so then I can say to myself, “I wouldn’t say no. Look how much better I am than those people!”

That’s been the problem all along.

Please hold the door for me as you leave. Thank you.

The Recipe for a Happy and Successful Man

January 24, 2011 / / 18 Comments

Editor’s Note: I know this post is rather odd.   Look at it as an experiment.

Every man instinctively knows the recipe for a successful and happy life. The recipe is as simple as the easiest homemade mac-n-cheese or a basic chicken soup.

The recipe for a man’s happiness contains three ingredients.  I call them Head, Heart, and Groin (or you can that last ingredient Dick, Cock, Johnson, or “the Big Fella,” whatever term you prefer).

If a man can satisfy the needs of each of these essential ingredients of his Life – Head, Heart, Groin – blending them artfully so they all work together reasonably well, he will be a happy man.

Let’s imagine your life as a soup. We are talking metaphor here, not a real soup, although I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was an actual “Head, Heart, and Groin” oxtail soup  served at some food cart in the Chinese province of Guangdong.

The happy man is our final completed soup, ready to serve.

Sadly, few men are anywhere near Master Chefs when it comes to their own soups. 99% of men are completely amateur cooks.  They brazenly overpower their soups with one ingredient, act cocky and don’t follow the recipe at all, and get so distracted that they burn the pot, or in extreme cases, even burn down the entire kitchen.

Head, Heart, and Groin.  What does that mean?

We all want to —

1) satisfy our intellectual curiosity (Head)

2) love and be loved (Heart)

3) connect physically with another (a polite way of saying “get laid”) (Groin)

These ingredients are easy to find.   If these items were sold in a typical suburban supermarket, we would find them right on aisle 1, next to the other common kitchen staples, such as Heinz Ketchup, Diet Snapple, and Ring Dings.

If the ingredients are so easy to find, and the soup so easy to make, why do we fail to be happy?  If the answer is as simple as a recipe scribbled on the back of an index card, why are there a million self-help books giving us advice?

Most men have one basic problem.   They were never taught to use a measuring cup, so the soup never turns out right.

In my own case, my soup of Life always turns out over-salted, too spicy, or bland.

It’s not that I’m lazy or stupid. I’m working on perfecting my soup all the time, trying new methods and techniques, even adjusting the amounts depending on the life situation.  I just can’t seem to get my soup to taste right.

When I am alone in the house, I over-think every move and action.  My soup is mostly Brain.   It is like I have created a matzoh ball soup with a giant matzoh ball plopped right in the middle of the bowl, allowing no room for the broth.  The matzoh ball absorbs the liquid, and the dish can hardly be called a soup anymore.

This does not create happiness.  Too much Brain makes a bad soup.

One of the reasons I am writing this post right now is because I’m procrastinating from “real” work.  I cannot think today. My mind won’t rest.  I feel like one big brain, with my body irrelevant, and my body doesn’t like it at all.  I just want to take a nap.

When I leave my house, I tend to experiment with my recipe, hoping to adjust the balance of the three ingredients, striving for that perfect soup, and a happy Life.  I do this as a necessity, knowing that Brain soup will never make you friends.   But as an only child, I have always felt somewhat uncomfortable with others.  I think I also have some co-dependency issues, as you can from five years worth of posts about my relationship with Sophia.  When I connect with others, both in real life and online, my soup becomes heavy on the emotion and schmaltz — Heart.

At first, a Heart-heavy soup seems like a perfect recipe for relationships, but too much heart is like too much salt or chicken fat, or in the case of the matzoh ball soup, a matzoh ball that wasn’t molded correctly, so sits in the soup all soggy, crumbling like the New York Jets in this year’s championship game at the mere touch of the spoon.

A Heart-heavy soup is more edible than the Brain-heavy soup, but most people would pass on it the second time.  It gives you heart-burn.   Men who approach life with too much Heart frequently grow irrational, even crazy.  They are rarely happy.  When you see me on Twitter getting petty with you, you know what type of soup I am preparing in my kitchen.

The third ingredient for a man’s happiness is very important, although we sometimes keep this hidden from view, like MSG in a Chinese restaurant.   Without getting into too many of the details, there are specific personal reasons why I’ve been overcompensating my soup with Groin.    Have you noticed how many of my blog posts are all Groin, with little Head or Hearth?  I don’t intend this to be the case.  I just sometimes let the soup kettle boil and boil with too much Groin inside the pot until it is practically jumping off the stove

Some men enjoy being all-Groin.  In matzoh ball soup terms, their soup contains two round matzoh balls, and the matzoh balls can be quite tasty, but the soup is absolutely bland, as if the chef forgot to add anything else to the broth.

I frequently make this type of Groin-oriented soup online, especially in my blog posts, but rarely in real life.  I would be happier if I added more Groin to my real-life soup, and more Brain to my virtual version.

So, there you have it.  The three simple ingredients, the recipe to a man’s happiness.

Of course, I struggle, just like the rest of you, in creating the perfect soup.  My soup is always too much of this, or too little of that.

Being a Master Chef in Life is a difficult task.

Real or Imitator?

December 10, 2010 / / 24 Comments

As all writers online know from experience, it is always our most ridiculous posts that get the most attention. In between pouring my heart out in these reverb posts and breaking my back promoting next week’s big Holiday concert, I took a little break two days ago to re-tell a funny conversation I had with my mother. She had just seen a show in Florida where four guys sang the songs of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Being a snoot, I made fun of the show, calling it a copy of a copy (an imitation of Jersey Boys which is itself an imitation of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons).

So naturally, this post got linked to some sort of “Jersey Boys” forum, where I learned about the controversy over the Jersey Boys imitators.

My NYC musical theater friend, Noel Katz, explained it to me in the comments:

This may add to confusion, Kramer-family-wide, but the original Broadway cast of Jersey Boys (you know, the show about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, featuring their hit songs) does a concert tour in which they sing the songs made famous by (you guessed it) Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. The producers of Jersey Boys aren’t happy about this, and had their lawyers delay the tour for some time. I know one of the performers, who points out that he and the others are making a lot more money than they were on Broadway. It sounds likely your mother saw them.

After learning about this controversy, I owe my mother an apology. It is quite possible that my mother saw the performers of the original Jersey Boys, who are now touring as Frankie Valli and the Four Season imitators. They would still be imitators of the original Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, but the ORIGINAL Jersey Boys from the original production, so my mother probably saw a more authentic “Jersey Boys” than the audiences seeing the show on Broadway!

Confused?

Perhaps this will be one of my blogging themes for 2011. What is real? What is imitation? And how do we know the difference?

In my Jersey Boys post, the final punchline was set-up by a response to my mother saying that an imitation Tom Jones is as good as the real Tom Jones:

“So, why don’t you hire someone who looks and sounds JUST like me to be your imitation son. That would be the same thing, right?”

“Maybe my imitation son would actually send me a Hanukkah card, hmm?”

By coincidence, I received an email from a complete stranger this morning. I was wary of opening it, thinking it might be spam, but something drew me into clicking on the link:

It was from a woman named Angela.

Hi Neil:

I stumbled upon your blog a few months back (don’t remember how), and have been immensely enjoying it. I generally don’t reach out to bloggers out of the blue, but I saw your blog posting and I had to email you to let you know that my hubby is your doppelganger. See a picture of him, next to your photo. Crazy, no? He dressed up as you for Halloween.

And, the similarity does not stop here. He used to live in NYC (the last place of residence was in Queens), and he was a copywriter.

Anyway, hope you’re not freaked out by my email; it’s not every day that you find someone that looks like you. Keep up your writing, and happy holidays.

Angela

At first, I wasn’t even sure if this was from a real person. Or whether I should be freaked out. But it was a real person. And she seemed normal enough. So, I responded back to my new friend.

Dear Angela,

Thank you for you lovely note. No one has ever dressed up as me for Halloween, so please thank your husband. This is a great honor. And I must admit, that your husband is a very attractive fellow.

Oh, and I have left a message with my mother that your husband will be sending her a Hanukkah card.

Thanks!

Neil

One Word

December 6, 2010 / / 29 Comments


David’s “The Anger of Achilles”

I’ve been upset the last few nights, sleepless over something rather innocuous — a writing prompt that I saw on someone’s blog:

“Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word.   Explain why you’re choosing that word.”

I saw a few of the responses from other writers, many which were about commercial success, accomplishment, or internal transformation towards a healthtier lifestyle or mindset.

When I tried to truthfully come up with my one word, all I could come up were words like illness, death, frustration, and loss.

This made me angry.  So much so, that I haven’t blogged in five days, not knowing what to do with this odd feeling sitting in my gut.  I’m not comfortable with the emotion of anger.  I’m also hosting The 2010 Blogger Christmalhijrahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert on December 15, and I was fearful of creating a negative vibe on this blog.   After all, what type of Holiday concert impresario feels, of all things, like a Scrooge?

Don’t get me wrong.  I love working with you on the concert.  Hearing your voices gives me immense joy.  But my negativity was scaring me.

Many of my friends are believers in positive thinking.   I tried to re-frame my relation to my past year by changing my one word to something more uplifting.   Rather than seeing 2010 as a year of death (both of my in-laws), I decided to use the word “strength.”  Sophia and I endured the year, despite the long hospital visits, the changing of the bed sheets, the decisions made, and the funerals attended.  I was “strong” enough to make it through the year in one piece, despite marital woes and graying hair.  It just seemed an insult to the memory of those that passed, to interpret the year in a positive light.

All year, I have been obsessed with the popularization of the word “branding.”  Perhaps branding should be the entire internet’s choice of one word to represents 2010.  While there are different interpretations of what this word “branding” means, I see it as more appropriate for consumer products like print cartridges than the world of living, breathing, human beings.   Once we sell ourselves like soap,  we are forced to be unrealistically upbeat, “inspirational,” and photoshopped.  I just cannot “market” 2010 as “strength,” even to myself.

So what should be my one word?  I’m afraid of telling you that 2010 — to me — was mostly about “death” and “anger.”  I know that sounds harsh, and it is embarrassing to admit.   We tout authenticity and honesty, but I have a feeling that we mostly day that to sell our seminars.

There is no post more symbolic to me on this theme than my very first post of 2010, written on January 3, 2010, titled “The Incident in the Car.”  I was still in New York at the time, not aware of what my year was going to present to me.  I decided to start my new blogging year with more focus on writing, more like a memoir, hoping to give my readers a fuller view of my life experiences.  Without my fanfare, I spun a small memory piece about high school-angst.  This short post caused a storm of outrage against me, with total strangers coming to my blog accusing me of crimes akin to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.  I was also unfollowed on Twitter by several bloggers, including some who later touted “authenticity.”  Others were quick to comment on that day because of the “buzz,” but never once showed up on my blog for the rest of my difficult year, more concerned with a completely minor event from decades ago than anything to do with my current life.

Was I wrong to bring up this somewhat dramatized tale of overheated teenage frustration and insensitivity, especially to an audience of women?  In terms of blogging and branding, probably YES, that is if I see my blog’s goal as primarily a PR tool.

When I look back over my archives, I get angry over the experiences of my last year.  It wasn’t a good year, and maybe it is too soon to learn any “positive lessons.”

I tossed and turned the last few nights, not sure whether to talk about my negative emotions.  I was worried that you will brand me as “Neilochka, the angry guy,” or “Neilochka, the one associated with dead people.”  The biggest danger to this increasingly online world is that we easily mix up words and images with action and intent.  If I write a fantasy post about sleeping with ten women, you can not really judge my real-life actions, just my rather bizarre mind.  Even in my most lurid fantasies, I am always polite, even serving breakfast the next morning to all ten of these women.   If you want to judge me solely on my writing, that is your prerogative, just as it is your right to publicly praise another writer, when you know that he is — in reality — sending pornographic photos to all of your friends.  We live in a bizarre world where image is more important reality.

We should remember — as writers — that the first great book, if not the very first book of Western Civilization is Homer’s Illiad.  And the very first word of that book is “menis” — anger.

Menis means “anger, wrath, rage,” and the menis referred to here is specifically that of Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War. Achilles is enraged at Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army, for taking one of Achilles’ hard-won prizes, a slave girl, Briseis; moreover, menis is what the entire Greek army is feeling, as the Iliad is set in the tenth year of the Trojan War. The Greeks have been away from home for all those years and are restless and uneasy about the outcome of the war, and about whether they will ever return hom; their rage simmers just below. Achilles’ anger over his slighted honor is so great that he almost kills Agamemnon and is stopped only when Athena, the goddess of wisdom, pulls him by the hair and stops him.

What I like about ancient literature, including the Greeks and the Hebrew Bible, is that the  writers don’t sugar coat human experience.  There is death and joy standing side by side, like Achilles and Agamemnon.   Anger and celebration.  War and love.  Writing is not only an imitation of a glossy Martha Stewart magazine.

I’m not the best person to be pontificating about writing the full range of human emotion.  I’m mostly a light, funny writer.  That is a large part of my personality.  But I would hate to shy away from dealing with my three-dimensional life, because I would be judged, or it didn’t fit my “brand.”

Which brings me back to the Holiday Concert.  I’ve been hosting this concert for five years, and this is the first year where I feel a bit disconnected.  I am trying hard to reconnect with my Holiday Spirit.  But it doesn’t really matter.  I enjoy participating, and I love to see YOUR  joy.

If I can attempt to be inspirational for a moment, I would like this year’s concert to be able to embrace our inner Scrooges.   Not everyone has large extended families, or colorful Christmas trees in their homes.  Christmas can also be a lonely time for many.  Why should we hide these feelings? I prefer — at least this year — to take my inspiration from Homer’s Illiad rather than some internet guru.  In Homer’s world, anger and frustration were allowed.  Anger is even the honor of being the first word.  As I reflect on 2010, it will be impossible for me to solely focus on joy, even during the concert.  I will be a bit of a Scrooge.  Shit happens.  There will be those that we have lost.  Opportunities missed.  Friendships broken.  We should be able to celebrate the good — and mourn at the same time, not hiding the “negativity” in the a locked closet like a batty uncle, but embracing it as the stuff that makes us human, like the Greeks would, soldiers away from home at war, restless and uneasy with the future.

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word — Anger.

iPhone Notes from Veronica and Di’s Visit

December 2, 2010 / / 18 Comments

Wednesday, November 24

Veronica (V-Grrrl), one of my oldest and dearest blog friends, is coming to Queens this afternoon for Thanksgiving, along with her husband, her two teenage children, and Di Mackey (visiting from Belgium).

My mother and I are waiting for their arrival. Although they said the trip should take five hours coming up from the South, it is now seven hours since they left.   Not unexpected knowing pre-Holiday traffic.

++++

I received a phone call from Veronica’s husband saying that they reached New Jersey.  They assume, based on what their GPS says, that they will reach Queens in forty-five minutes.   I just turned to my mother, who is watching “Judge Judy” on the television, and told her that they arrived in New Jersey.

“OK, it’s going to take them another three hours,” she said.

I agreed, and we laughed.

++++

And we were right!  It took them ten hours to come to Queens.  Veronica’s husband parked the car down the block.   The others stumbled out, their bodies creaky and bent-over from hours in traffic.  Veronica was the last to exit.  I felt a sense of warmth seeing her again, despite her looking like she could use a serious nap.

++++

I have met Veronica and her family in person before (I had visited them last Christmas), but this was my first time meeting Di Mackey. I forgot, that despite her living in Belgium as a photographer, that she was born a Kiwi.  I was surprised to hear her New Zealand accent, with its dusty, rough-and-ready timbre.

After we hugged, she asked me, “And where’s your mum?”

“What?!” I asked, not understanding her question.

“Your mum!”

Funny Kiwis.

++++

Everyone was hungry after their arrival, so I called my mother down from the apartment building, and we walked over to Valentino’s Pizzeria, famous for its shrine to Fran Drescher (“The Nanny”), one of our block’s most famous former residents.

++++

Still at Valentino’s.  Di is fascinated by the large portion of pasta at Valentino’s.   While Veronica and I mock American culture, Di seems to love our country.

“The people are so friendly,” she said.

“Maybe you’re the friendly one.” I said, already noticing how she had immediately started conversations with the waiter and a Chinese woman standing in the street, carrying an umbrella.

She was also “blown away” by her visit with Veronica and her daughter to… Marshall’s at the mall!   Apparently, in Belgium, there are two types of women’s clothing shops — ones that are very expensive and ones completely schlocky. There aren’t stores like TJ Maxx and Marshall’s, where the average woman can buy designer clothes at a discount.

Di mentioned that her new-found enthusiasm for American life got her in trouble with some blog readers back home, who thought she was dissing Belgium with her glowing reviews of Marshall’s and Applebee’s.   After all, asked her friends, wasn’t it the Belgians who really invented the waffle?

++++

We’re back home and I am falling asleep.  A few weeks ago, when I first told my mother that I invited guests over, she wasn’t THAT happy. She was traveling to Florida for the winter a few days after Thanksgiving, and didn’t want to deal with the cooking, etc.    But now she is enjoying herself with the guests.  She is chatting with Veronica and Di as they watch the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

++++

Knowing that my mother was leaving town in a few days, Veronica and Di presented me with a cool — and amusing — gift.    They wrote — by hand — a small cookbook for me, with easy to make recipes.  They also gave me twenty essential McCormick spices to have in the cabinet.  If you follow me on Facebook, you might remember that I once asked a question about the essential spices every cook should have, which caused a minor fight amongst other Facebookers debating the merits of such things as tarragon and cinnamon.

++++

Thursday, November 25

We are in the subway. We woke up at 5AM so we can find a good place to stand at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Despite growing up in New York, I have never gone to the parade.  Maybe it is the idea of waking up at 5AM that had something to do with it.

When we entered the subway station, it was fun seeing everyone’s confusion over using the Metrocards.  For some reason, Di has compared the NYC subway to the train system in Istanbul!   She is now chatting with this grandmother who is sitting next to her.

Di talks to everyone.

++++

We are on 50th Street.   We got a decent spot.  The parade is in progress.  But the waiting for the parade, and now the standing and watching the parade is tiring.  The event is fun, but it feels like my feet are falling off.

By chance, we picked a spot that couldn’t be more “American” in culture.  We are across the street from

1) an Applebee’s restaurant

2) a huge, building-length billboard for some ultra-violent video game where each game character is holding a shiny phallic gun.

3) some tropical island tourist billboard, where a woman’s bikini is half-falling off.

Surprisingly, this inappropriate billboard is quickly becoming the highlight of the parade for Veronica and her kids.  They are each amusing themselves by trying to photograph each balloon character at the exact moment it floats by the billboard, making the character look like he is trying to grab the woman’s bikini, or just plain sleazy.

I like Veronica’s family!

Photos by V-grrrl —



++++

It is now night. My mother cooked up quite a Thanksgiving dinner. To top it off, Veronica and her family brought three delicious pies from a bakery down South.

++++

It is after dinner and we are now watching the parade on TV that we saw in person earlier in the day.  What a vastly different experience.

First of all, most people on the parade route never see any of the Broadway show routines that they perform for the cameras in front of Macy’s.  Also, the celebrities on the floats, such as Kanye West and Gladys Knight, mostly wave and yawn as they travel down the parade route, reserving their energy for when the camera lights go on.  Sometimes, the floats passed by so fast, you’re not sure who it was that was waving at you.   We just learned from the NBC broadcast that the five clean-cut guys on the Build-a-Bear float were some popular boy band on Nickelodeon!

Even though you see more of the parade on TV, the NBC broadcast has become very cloying and commercial.  Was it better years ago?   Now it seems that they break away from the parade every five minutes so Al Roker could interview — wait, is that a star from one of NBC’s new shows who just “happens” to be standing there on the parade route?!

++++

Friday, November 26

We’re back in the subway this morning, this time to Battery Park to take the boat to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.


My photo of Ellis Island (via iPhone)

+++

Today, it is Di’s day to shine. I am watching how she takes her photos. She has such an eye for detail.

Here’s an example in one of her photos from Ellis Island.

++++

We have returned to Queens.  Veronica’s husband just found out that he got a $70 parking ticket because he misread one of New York’s many confusing parking enforcement tickets. He is a little mad at himself for making the mistake.  I am telling him that rather than feeling upset, he should consider getting this overpriced parking ticket the most authentically New York experience that he will have this entire weekend.

++++

We just ate dinner.  Why do leftovers always taste better?

++++

After dinner, we were using my mother’s laptop to show each other various funny videos from YouTube.  I remembered that there was a parody version of the song, “Empire State of Mind,” titled “Forest Hills State of Mind,” which prominently showcases the Queens subway stop at 71st Street and Continental Avenue, which is where we caught the E train each day en route to Manhattan.  I thought I would amuse everyone by showing it.

OK, now remember, I don’t have kids.  So it didn’t even occur to me that this video, filled with references to motherf*ckers and other NSFW items, might not have been been the best Holiday video for the entire family.  From now on, I’ll remember to check the ratings before I show Veronica’s family any videos!  (Yeah, like photographing Thanksgiving Day balloon as sleazy characters is “normal” family behavior.)

++++

Di wants to take some photos of me.   She tells me to stop mugging and “look natural.”


by Di Mackey

++++

Saturday, November 27

My guests are going home later today in order to avoid the big traffic on Sunday.  We are at the Dominican Diner having breakfast.

A few moments ago, Di ordered a bagel, saying that she hadn’t yet tasted a “real New York bagel.” My mother and I exchanged glances.  Both of us know that the bagels at the diner are terrible, probably from the supermarket.  My mother gestured to me, as if to say, “Eh, don’t tell her, and she won’t know the difference. Why ruin the moment for her.”

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She loved the crappy bagel.

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I just said good-bye to everyone, hugging Veronica, Di, and Veronica’s daughter.   I have been feeling a little lonely since leaving LA.  Their visit was just what I needed.

Forever 13

November 13, 2010 / / 15 Comments

Today, I’m attending the bar mitzvah of the son of one of my closest friends.  This got me curious to go look at the photos from my own bar mitzvah.  As I looked at this photo of this thirteen year old boy, a somewhat disdainful look on his face, I thought about my last post, and how I was going to change myself into being a less moralistic person, looking at only the good in life and society-at-large.  But now I wonder if my character is just etched in the DNA, and I should accept my need to kvetch.

Moralistic Me

November 12, 2010 / / 7 Comments

I’m more moralistic than you would expect. I’m easy-going and non-judgmental on a personal level, but when it comes to groups, I’m like an 19th Century hermetic crackpot who spends years writing a tract about the perfect society, and then gets pissed when no one follows the plan.

During my years blogging, I’ve been a crank at times about “the blogosphere,” as if it was a blueprint for an ideal virtual world where everyone is someone interesting and deserves to have a voice, bitching about cliques and BlogHer and blog networks and gender roles and branding and blog lists and blog widgets and self-promotion and monetization and advertising and integrity and authenticity and photographic manipulation and promotions and conferences and giveaways and even “blogging” itself — pretty much everything else that we all now do and believe on a regular basis without anyone giving any thought to it.

It’s not going to be easy for me, because my basic personality is as ingrained as King Arthur’s Sword in the Stone, but I’m going to try to focus more on my own writing and my own actions, and less on what YOU do. I will be a happier person because of this. When I think about you, I want to visualize you as goodhearted individuals, each trying to do his best for himself and his family, and not as a mob molding a Golden Calf out of melted Etsy jewelry and fornicating with camels, while I’m stuck on the cold mountain, my beard gray and dusty, waiting patiently for the Ten Commandments to be faxed from the main office, missing out on all the fun.

Community is a good thing, but it can also be the source of our unhappiness. I want to remember, that both online, and in real life, the individual relationship always come first, before any grand ideology about the community-at-large, no matter how idealistic the genesis. I need to do a lot of work on myself before I attempt to mold any of you into my image. Because even God did a pretty bad job with that one.

Branding

November 11, 2010 / / 11 Comments

I miss biting a woman’s arm. I love that. I love to taste the salty skin until she pushes me away and says, “Stop it. That hurts.” But she likes it, despite what she says. There is a time for strength and a time to be dominated. I am the most alive when I am biting her like an animal. She knows it, and takes pride in the mark on her arm, like I had branded her with the heat of my unstoppable passion.

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