Best Saturday Ever

This Saturday was both Laura's bridal shower and the "Bridge Battle II" race. Friday night Laura and I had seen an assortment of films at the Bicycle Film Forum. There were a lot of short films including a film called "MASH San Francisco" that showed lots of guys bombing down city streets and crashing their track bikes into the pavement. It put the fear into me.

Saturday morning I was really starting to dread the race. I had that awful feeling in my gut and I was kinda sluggish and weak as I rode to the start on 23rd and the FDR. I had hoped that I could have done the race with Josh, but his bike was recently put to final rest after he was doored on Christopher street.

After a lot of poking around the FDR Park and the surrounding area, me and this guy who wanted me to call him Chino found the race organizers and we got our spoke cards. As a rule, Alleycats start about 45 minutes after they're supposed to, in this case it took about an hour and a half. As more people gathered, I got bored and passed the time looking at the course map, reading the New York Times and calling my brother to shoot the shit. This didn't do anything to calm my nerves and I resolved to myself that my only goal was to not get hurt and that I would drop out of the race at the first sign of trouble: a flat, a small tumble over a curb, the second I got lost etc.

The organizers had us move our bikes to three different spots before deciding on a place to lay our bikes down for a short Le Mans start. I was scared as hell that I would get a shot of adrenaline and do something stupid once the race started so I stood at the starting line and concentrated on my breath and heart rate. When it was time to go, everyone ran like crazy and roughly 70 people ran for their bikes and started pouring out onto the FDR and up to the 59th street bridge. There were at least 4 minor crashes that I saw out of the corner of my eye, including one guy from Boston clipping into a GMC Jimmy in the 30's. I was squarely in the middle of the pack and noticed that I was going at roughly commuter speed up 1st avenue. I resolved for the rest of the race to keep my straghtaway speed at at least 20 mph.

The pack thinned out considerably on the Queens side of the 59th street bridge as people went different ways and in different orders. People were further thinned into packs ass groups of people got stuck at lights. I dropped about four people at a light when I muscled my way across four lanes of traffic and hooked up with a group of 5 fast guys and one really fast girl on a road bike.

Here she is at the finish line with 2nd place finisher Ken:
I was able to hook up with different groups of people and drop others in traffic on my home turf in Greenpoint, but that girl on the road bike I just couldn't shake. For a while she had me on Grand Avenue, but then I caught her when a bus cut us off on Lorimer, then I thought I had her licked on Flushing near the Navy Yards until I started to run out of juice and she passed me, shot me a shit eating grin and said something that sounded like "ha haaa" (a la Nelson from The Simpsons).

Near the end I was starting to feel like a whipped dog. I hadn't drank any water since starting the race and I was worried about how in the hell I would get up the Manhattan Bridge and over to the finish line without dropping 10 places behind. I started up the bridge at 15 mph, dropping the pack of people that I had been riding with, including the girl and I drafted up the rest off the way behind this one Japanese messenger who I'd once spoken to a year ago. He was a lot smaller than me, so to successfully draft him I had to crouch really low. I had my manifest out before the checkpoint in the middle of the bridge, and I managed to shoot past him afterwards. As I was going down the brigde, I saw all of these other people from the race going the opposite way. I thought that they were all ahead of me and that when I got to the finish line at the Anthology Film Archive, that the organizers would send me back to the Manhattan bridge to get a second signature. That didn't seem like a lot of fun, but I bombed through Chinatown anyway, screaming unintelligable shit at crowds of people who were walking through my green lights and then finally going the wrong way up 2nd avenue to the finish line.

I gave my manifest to the guy at the table and found out that, no, I didn't have to go back and that I had come in in 16th place. Sixteen baby! For the next 5 minutes I was shell shocked, my body was floppy, I shouted when I meant to talk and I drank water like a camel. The girl came in a few minutes later and I she was the first place girl finisher. I beat the first girl, made me feel like a big man.

I stayed for another couple of hours, drank a lot of free red bull, ate a chocolate bar, read the rest of my NY Times and watched the various track events. At six, I went over to Brooklyn to the end of Laura's bridal shower and had an excellent time.

Slammed By The 3-Wheeler of The Law

This morning started pretty bad and got worse and worse. I woke up tired, which hardly ever happens to me, even at 5:00 in the morning. I was pretty pokey on the bridge and in a complete fluke, I ended up getting thwacked from behind by this guy that I always seen on the bridge and talk to at 5:20 every Monday morning. I thought that I had missed him until I paused before going through a red 1 block from the bridge and got thwacked from behind by a very solid left arm. He went down, I helped him get back up and it was no big deal. It was 99% his fault, but I felt pretty bad about it and ended up going up first avenue because I was embarrassed.

At 7:30, I started my delivery run and was still tired even though I had had another coffee. As I was going towards 8th avenue on 39th street (the wrong way), one of those three-wheeled traffic vehicles swirved towards me and the guy inside waved at me. Like a freaking idiot, I chose to ignore it and pedaled away. He caught me a block away after I decided not to go the wrong way on 41st because I thoght he had given up right as I got away.

"You're in a heap of trouble now! Gimme your ID...Now stand over there!

I stood where he told me and watched as he spent the next ten minutes writing, double checking and writing some more. I had roughly 45 pounds of envelopes in my bag going to everyone from Bob Herbert to Howard Stern and I was wondering just how fucked I was. If the bike got confiscated, I would be able to continue doing my deliveries, I would just have to lie to my boss and say that my frame had broken or something like that. I pictured myself trying to do the next weeks deliveries on Laura's 50cm bike with the seat all the way up. I thought about getting arrested. Each time I thought he was done, he would check his code book and start writing another ticket. My thoughts started wander after a bit as I took a closer look at this guys three-wheeled traffic car. The whole thing was just stamped sheet metal and shatter proof glass. This guy's bulletproof vest was the only thing keeping the steering column from going through his chest in an impact. A car of any size could kill this guy in a side impact and he had just chased me across four lanes of uptown traffic in the space of two blocks. I felt like a piece of shit.

In the end, I got four separate tickets, for going the wrong way, for disobeying a direct order, for not merging right (this I didn't actually do) and for not having a bell on my bike. I got a further verbal reprimand from him telling me that he was originally going to just give me a warning and that I had done a very stupid thing and had endangered both my life and his.

Then he left and I walked my bike to 40th street and then spent the rest of the morning following every...single...traffic...rule. If you subtract the 13 minutes I lost getting the ticket and another 10 doing a one time extra delivery for my boss, it tacked on roughly 35 minutes to my otherwise 3 hour route.

I've been pretty wary of the NYPD after some bad run-ins and after their behavior during the RNC. The NYPD had fire engines go through civic minded crowds of yielding Critical Mass riders only to swing them across the avenue and have the police arrest the people that had let them through. The people who got arrested were detained for more than the alotted time in holding pens that had chemical waste in them. Most people had to wait months to get their bikes back. I stillI depend very much on the cops though. If I get doored, I need them to process an accident report, if Laura had gotten the license number of that awful man in a minivan that hit her with his mirror I would have demanded that they arrest the guy for doing a hit and run.

The cop that got me this morning did everything by the book, he was pissed but not irrational and I have to say gave me exactly what I deserved. I got caught this time but I've eluded the cops on four other occasions that I will not go into for obvious reasons. It looks like I will be paying a total of $150 for these four tickets, which is pretty paltry considering the thousands and thousands of times I broke the law while working or commuting.

This has become a long an rambling post. To make up for it, I've searched Google Images to find you this picture of Captain Kangaroo as a reward for struggling with me. Thank you.

Cross-Trainer Season

Every year around this time, when the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, more and more people get on their bikes and ride around New York. Of them, there is a special subset who try to race me, they are the cross-trainters. The cross-trainers are the guys who have spent the winter in gyms lifting weights, running in place and sweating their asses off racing one another in spinning classes. When the weather gets warm enough, they get on their bikes and try to prove their mettle racing me through traffic, up bridges and through congested park drives.

They usually have enourmous arms, great tans and expensive bikes. One of these guys will see me in traffic, they'll chase me with a huge burst of energy sprint and will whizz past me. Then I'll follow them for about a block just to see if they have any technique whatsoever then I'll pass them. They'll get a little bit peeved, try to catch up, but then find out that maneuvering through New York City traffic and blowing red lights requires something greater than a 40 bpm resting heart rate and great deltoids.

Yes, I realize that this is silly, peurile, elitist behavior. Yes, I know that it cheapens me and denigrates my charachter to mention it in a forum as public as this, but god damn it's just so...much...fun!

Yesterday on the bridge I had a particularly good time. I was going from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge, passing people on the way up. This is not so much machismo as smart practice, since I have only one gear and if I lose momentum I'm screwed. I passed this big huge brute of a guy who could clearly bench my and his bodyweight combined. He had these ridiculously large calves that looked like ham hocks. After I passed him I heard him start breathing harder and out of the corner of my eye I saw his shadow lurking behind me. I sprinted the rest of the way up the bridge and started on the gradual descent near the middle of the bridge. As I got into the final ramp of the bridge, going 23mph, I again saw his shadow getting bigger, he had a lot more gravity on his side and he wanted to pass me bad before the bridge was over. I cranked it up to 32mph and made it off the bridge, he turned a different way and I never saw him again. Good times.

A Wonderful Day for Playing Hookey

It was looking like I'd be working an extra day at work this week due to an exceptionally large order that came in on the pipeline, but three days and 2875 coasters later, I was in a good enough place to either come in or not. Laura had the day off so I decided to forgo the money play hookey with her.

We slept in as long as the dogs would let us (we're dogsitting Milo) and then biked off to DUMBO, Red Hook and Prospect Park. Red Hook wasn't as interesting or up and coming as I thought it would be. It whole thing was just a fairy tale made up by Barbara Corcoran.

The ride ended at Pacifico, lots of guacamole, and a big ass burrito. After we got home we had some drinks at Pete's Candy Store with friends and got good and snackered. The next morning was an early one geting Laura off to Boston and it was grim.

Out Of The Saddle

the Monday Morning Job was pretty hellacious. Got about an hour into into it before the heavens opened up and I was caught with nothing more than shorts, an undershirt and a t-shirt. I thought that it would be a summer rain and that I wouldn't lose too much body heat, but I was wrong. Each time I stopped and went into a building I got a little bit colder. I finally broke down and bought a set of rain gear from Modells in Harold Square. It cost me $40. I've been holding off on getting freaking rain gear for a year and a half and all it was going to cost me this whole freaking time was forty measly bucks. I've done maybe 6 other rainy mornings and 4 snowy Monday mornings because I was too cheap to get some freaking rain gear.

In my experience, rainy days are best dealt with by going slow, keeping warm and not giving a fuck about anything but staying safe and healthy. When all was said and done, I lost a total of 10 minutes off of my average from the whole run. Oh yeah.

Shakespeare

Saw "The Taming of The Shrew" at the old alma mater last night. Josh told me about it and I talked Jessica into going with us. Outside the building we ran into Steve, my old acting teacher, former director and (n a separate story) former real estate client. We hugged, it was damned good to see him and he doesn't look a lick different. It was strange to walk into the Tisch building again, it's coming on five years in May and I basically spent my whole freaking life in that building for four years.

There were lots young actors hanging out in movement pants and tights. I felt old, really old. I ran into some familiar faces and there was the uncomfortable exchange of the ol' "what have you been doing" thing. It's unique among BFAs, you kind of sniff one anothers' butt to see who is and isn't working in theatre. I've been letting theatre go lately, but it hasn't been that easy. Something has felt missing. Every once an a while I'll look to the left of my TV and glance at my complete works of Shakespeare. Haven't cracked it yet, but now I think I shall. This past Thursday marked the bard's 442nd bithday (he also shares a birthday with Hitler, the 8th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre and the international day of smoking pot).

I have pretty strong opinions about how I see my Shakespeare. I can be a little bitch about it in fact. I dug on some of the performances, the woman who played Petrucio, two of the smaller ensemble actors were great. Steve did a grand job of setting the scene, breaking the fourth wall and some of the theatrical shit he did (difficult to write) were great. Hats off!

Some of the casting I wish was better, which made me do a kind of Fantasy Baseball Shakespeare. If he was 30 years younger and classically train Kris Kristofferson would have made one ass kicking Petruchio.


Afterwards, Josh and I rode like assholes back to Brooklyn. We passed some guy on the first major ramp of the bridge who slammed past us on the next incline. I made a feeble attempt to catch him again on the uphill, but I didn't have a damned thing.

There was a party at Andrew and TK's pad and Josh and I witnessed the last 10 minutes of a rousing game of asshole. TK, the asshole, had to let us in and Julia made everyone who pissed her off say something especially nice about her before drinking. Laura was in a fine mood and the night ended with an empty flask of whisky, a cold bike ride home and Laura showering with the Pig to clean him off.

DUMBO Scramble

A˜s part of my reolution to enjoy all the uniquely New York things before I leave, I went to DUMBO this Saturday to race. This was my fourth messenger race and each one has had its unique challenges. Unlike other races that I've done, I had no freaking clue where any of the stops were because I DON'T KNOW DUMBO! Neither did anyone else though, so that made it kind of interesting. It was a lot of follow the leader...on cobblestones. I'll break it down thusly:

Leading up:
The start was in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right on the water smack between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Lots and lots of people with all kinds of abilities some first timers, some people on cruisers, a couple of tall-bike Black Label types. I also got briefly interviewed by some lady doing a segment for HDNet. I registered, got my manifest, spoke-card and t-shirt and then spent the next 40 minutes puzzling over the manifest. I knew one of the addresses, only becuase it was in Manhattan. After futzing with a map that didn't show any of the streets I was looking for, I knew one other stop. I resolved then, like most people did, to find someone who actually did know what the hell they were doing.

The Start:
It was a 50 yard dash LeMans start. Most people had clipless pedal shes and messenger bags, which made a kind of clippity cloppity rustling sound as we all ran in a pack to our bikes. I got my bike and started pedaling like a motherfucker in the general direction of the first stop. Everyone in the lead pack had track bikes and were jumping up onto the sidewalks in order to avoid the cobblestones. I made the mistake a few times of trying to pass people by jumping off the sidewalk and powering through the cobbles. The cobbles in DUMBO are far worse than those in Soho. My balls are still jiggling.

I eventually found two guys to follow who seemed to know where they were going. We got lost a bunch of times, but I sure as hell wouldn't have been able to figure it out on my own. Both of the guys, Alex and Pablo had track bikes with no brakes they were, well...bold in intersections. The both had some pretty exceptional BO (I was no lilly myself) and when I drafted behind them I was in a slipstream of pure armpit. I was too tired not to.

The checkpoints were all different. One of them made us do 10 pushups (go man-tits go!) before they would sign our manifest another had us answer trivial pursuit questions, and yet another, situated at the top of an enourmously steep hill just had us give em' a high five.

Snafu:
On an uphill, some guy passed in between me and a row of parked cars. He got too close, thwacked me on my back with his shoulder and I went down going all of about 7 miles per hour. Scraped my palm, elbow and knee on the pavement, my jeans, only one day old, got ripped. The guy who thwacked me acknowleged he was at fault and apologized. Shit happens.

That was the second to last stop. I made up for lost time by screaming down the cobbles and passing all of the people who had passed me because of my fall and got back to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Once there, I turned in my manifest and was given a new one. I had just raced 12 ball-busting miles, both guys I was following were long gone and I my knee was starting to smart. I threw in the towel and biked back to Williamsburg to have beers with Laura and Kristine. It was a damned good time. Had I not been a little better this week about not drinking so much and exercising more, I would have actually finished the freaking race and enjoyed it a little better. Perhaps next week.

Sedar

Sedar fun at the place last night. Among other things, I learned that Charles Schwab is the new Manischewitz, you can never have too much booze in the house and that Pharoh was one prize dick. Laura cooked up an incredible assortment of food and even made a plague cake. I drank a ridculous amount of water before I went to sleep, a bunch more at 6:00 am when I needed like crazy to pee and and sweated out the better part of a magnum on my ride into work. Good times.

Hey Cutie, Be Careful

Just a slice outta my life:
I was doing a track stand at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Third halfway through blowing the red when I heard a woman say "hey cutie, be careful."

A bunch of things went off at once. Since marrying, I've gotten random vibe a couple of times and one woman actually tried to give me a paper with her name and number on it at a concert. This time however, it was a black woman in a Jeep Cherokee that was filled with her children, the oldest looking to be about 12.

I gave her a big smile, nodded and ambled my way through a gap in oncoming traffic.

After a long wait, the system works

After my Monday morning deliveries I like to do something productive so today the project was to get a social security card. After a 16 minute wait for an operator, the guy couldn't hear me, after a 20 minute security check, I was told to go to Brooklyn and after an additional 3 miles of biking and another 40 minute wait, I was able to plunk down my form and my drivers license and get an interim card. Easy as pie! In 7-10 days, I'll have another form of ID and be on my way to getting my Missouri drivers licence swapped over to NYC. Just in time to buy a van, load up my shit, and get outta town.

I'm back!

For a good long tiime I was leeching wifi signal from my neighbors. They either moved or put up a firewall and that, more than anything, was the reason I haven't been doing a damned thing on this here blog. NO MORE! I now have internet access in the apartment and way too much free time on my hands.

Last night Laura and I met up with Julia, Andrew, TK and Kiersten at a local gallery and checked out the sculpture du jour: Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug.


Laura and I both favored the fact that you can see the crowning head of her son. My personal complaint was that it just didn't look that much like her. I wouldn't have ever guessed it was her had I not been told. Whatever, I got a free PBR and I'm now some strange part of a small footnote in modern art history. Oh yeah, and you can buy it for $135,000.

From there we biked over the bridge to the east village to celebrate Wes' 27th b-day. All kinds of people were there and the bar had a great Reingold-and-a-shot-of-questionable-whisky for $5 special. The ride home was a lot of fun and Laura and I burned it up for the last half mile.

Dunno if you've ever done it, but if you have even on beer, bike hard and get off your bike, you will feel like a prize drunk. The all just metabolizes in your body and hits you when you stop. It's raining out and I plan on taking it easy today.

A Damed Good Time Was Had By All

The engagement/we actually got married party went off like a charm. Redd's was essentially ours, lots of people showed up. For those of you who missed it, there was skee-ball, drink specials and party favors (money for skee-ball, candy, pre-teen style Valentine's bracelets). Laura and my friends John and Noreen came down for the party and took us out to dinner beforehand. Here's some pics.

Andrew and TK


Here's me doing an impression of what I looked like later that night (I ate PFC, dropped a buiscut into water, don't recall if I ate it or not).


Luke and Julia


Laura and Josh


Laura playing Skee-Ball. No, that's not redeye, her eyes actually burned red with concentration each time she bowled.

Ahhh Marraige

If you haven't been living under a rock, Laura and I went down to the courthouse and got married. It was a lot easier than getting a drivers license renewed, but far more emotional. Our friend Kristine served as our witness. It was over so fast that there wasn't enough time to cry. I remember thinking as I walked out of 1 Centre Street "they want to keep gay people from doing THAT?" Laura surprised me with a room a the Millenium Hilton and we consumated our marriage to a bird's eye view of ground zero. It was beautiful.

Our engagement/we got technically married party is this Saturday at Red's in Williamsburg. It starts at 9:00 come on through.

Don't Mess With Messengers (Female or Otherwise)

This here is a little something from the mean streets of Toronto. Apparently, this guy picked the wrong girl to vent his road rage against. Check out the whole series here

Man Do I Love Democracy

Today was an interesting day of radio listening. My Tuesday through Friday job allows me to listen to WNYC all day. It allows me to chew the cud over the news of the day. Todays news had some good little bits to it, I'll break it down thusly.

-Hamas won democratic elections in Palestine. How the hell d'ya like that?

-Bush: Loves democracy, doesn't like Hamas.

-Bloomberg: no more guns dammit, he's sick of that shit!

-James Frey: Dodged a freaking bullet. He only had 20 minutes of grilling from Oprah and her audience before the show was inturrupted by the President's address. Hamas has a friend in James Frey, or Bush. Only time will tell. All I know is that I won't buy any of Frey's book till they're in the 50% off bin.

Roastin'

Laura and I checked out Gimme Coffee this morning with Laura and The Pig. The coffee itself was good, damned potent. I asked the lady if I could have a little milk and sugar in mine, but she referred me to the coffee and milk station. I hate that, I hate it so much. You have this wierd bottleneck when you're adding sugar and milk and it never leads to interesting interactions between people. You just have this wierd sensation as someone hovers next to you waiting for you to hurry up and garnish your coffee. I won't repeat that in my own (future) establishment.

My newest obsession is roasting. There is a shit-ton about coffee that I don't know and need to if I'm going to open a place of my own. It's a hell of a lot cheaper in the long term if I roast my own beans, and I can sell my own brand of coffee in the store and on the internet. The problem is that I haven't the foggiest about what goes into a good blend and roasting batch and a good roaster costs about as much as a used Kia Spectra. After the wedding Laura and I talked about going to Florida or Idaho (depending on the brand of roaster we'll buy) and take a three day coffee course.

In other news, Laura and I are training for a half-marathon. We ran 5.3 miles tonight, (our front door to Manhattan over the Billyburg and back). We did about 4.5 miles last Sunday and this week we kicked a hell of a lot more ass. Tomorrow's delivery should be pretty grim, looks like frozen rain/snow. I just got some new rain gear, lets see how she works.

Violent, But Satisfying Fantasy

A couple of nights ago, I was watching "American Idol" with Laura. Some aspects of the show bothered me and my subconsious was good enough to right some of the wrongs as I slept.

That night, I had a dream that I was somehow cast on a reality show (not Idol). I figured that since I was basically going to be prodded and poked till I fit into whatever archetype the casting people had given me, that I would fuck with em'. Every time I opened my mouth I would be very articulate or just smile like a dope. Soon enough I was asked to leave and as I left the host of the show (Seacrest) said something to me that just didn't sit well as I left. I looked back at him and something about my stare spooked him, probably since I had been doing all that smiling, and he started to walk fast and then run in the opposite direction. I watched him run for a second, thought about chasing him, then though better of it, THEN though way better of it and started booking it like a motherfucker after him. I was running behind him and he was looking back and pumping his legs like a crazy person. I chased the smiley sonofabitch for about a quarter mile before he keeled over wheezing, looked as me then started blubbering for me not to hurt him. I think I either hit him once or made as if to hit him and he collapsed on the ground and pissed himself.

"Try not to get a hard-on." (from pissing himself. Dude, it totally made sense) I said, and walked off.

Now tell me, folks, what the hell was that all about?

Poppa's Got a Brand New Bag

Over the weekend, Laura and I built some shelves/bike cubby for my former co-worker, Petra. We went to sleep a little too late and a little too drunk on Friday night, so we drank way too much coffee and headed on over to her place. Laura watched Petra's son, Magnus, who I first met as a lump in Petra's belly a little over a year ago as we got all the lumber at Home Depot. The whole experience was pretty rewarding, I got to say that I've made a set of shelves (nope, never done that before) Laura got to feed a bit of her baby jones (the clock it ticks, softly, but steadily) and Petra gave us her smaller shelf that the bigger one displaced. I was also paid a bit and Petra gave me this old but very new looking Kozmo.com bag that she had had lying around for a while.

I love this thing, it's one of the few surviving artifacts of the dot-com boom.

For those of you who weren't in New York circa 2000, Kozmo was a fantastic failure of a messenger service that allowed you to have everything from ice cream to porn delivered to your apartment at no extra cost. Everyone who worked for them got paid an hourly rate plus tips. They tried to do this very complicated delivery system that never quite worked and because 1. they had no minimums, people would just use Kozmo to order little things that they were too lazy to go out of their dormrooms to get and 2. the people that started it were internet people, not delivery people. At one point, I was going to get hooked up with a job with them, but they went tits-up before I had the chance to apply.

Each of the messengers got these high-quality Chrome bags that were bright Orange and had this Green little guy running across them with "Kozmo" written all over them. The business plan was bad, but bags they bought were quality and you can still see them on messengers backs all over the city.

I actually worked for a summer with this woman, Hannah who designed their little logo and told me great stories of being taken out on company dinners at Nobu and making $80,000 her first year out of art school. She also told me about round after round of layoffs as the cookie crumbled and long, long periods of unemployment afterwards.

I did my Monday Morning deliveries with it this morning and it works pretty good. It doesn't have the patented Timbuk-2 strap release, which can make it a little difficult to take things out of, but it fits around your shoulder and back like a baby sloth clinging to its mama. It also holds a hell of a lot of stuff. It's bright, florescent Orange and when I wear it with my bright yellow helmet, I look like an important piece of text that's been highlighted. This thing is the shit!

A Million Little Pieces

So about a week and a half ago I finished "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, the brutally honest, beautifully written non-fiction book that turns out now to be not all that honest or non-fictional. As far as I can tell from the internet, TV and radio a lot of the legal problems that he had were hyped up and I'm sure more aspects of it will turn out to be demonstrably false.

It seems he made a faustian deal with himself and his publisher which caught up with him this week and may eventually fuck him. Apparently, Frey had the door slammed in his face 17 times by publishers before his book was accepted (perhaps after a rewrite or two) and was released as a work of non-fiction, against his initial wishes. The book contains no forward, no preface, no disclaimer about artistic license. It just begins with him waking up on a plane with no wallet, four missing teeth and no recollection of what happened or where the plane is heading. That is some gripping shit I have to say and actually true to boot. I took everything he said in the book as the truth, he went on Oprah several times and to many, many book signings and events and said that it was an honest, accurate portrayal of what happened. Even the part about having a double root-canal with no anesthesia, local or otherwise.

It looks like Big Jim kinda fibbed about his legal problems, former arrests and god know what else. The fact of the matter is that I really liked his book, liked the message and I think he's a great freaking writer. The problem is, his whole book is predicated on honesty, total blaring honesty and I took him at his word. If we were friends, I'd clock him one and we'd be cool. As it is, I'm just a reader and the furthest I'll go is to not plunk down $23.99 for his other book.

Laura took it with a grain of salt, much like you would watch an episode of Law and Order based on an actual event. We sparred for a bit over the book and in the end, she was a hell of a lot righter than I was.

Put Down for the Rock

Laura and I went for our second visit to "Push" a custom jewelry place on Mulberry street. This time, we came back and I bought the ring, it'll be ready in 6 weeks. It's a handsome sucker, platinum with pave black diamonds, I'll post a pic once it's ready. I think this is the biggest purchase I've ever made. Feels good though, it's going to look great.

What a nice day

Aside from normal anxiety about getting up at 5:00 this morning (I've been up since ten after four) deliveries went very smoothly. Today's high was in the 50's and aside from being sent on something of a fool's errand as a favor to my boss, all was well. Instead of going home, eating a huge meal and passing out for a couple of hours, I got a lot of stuff done. Laura and I are still looking for a venue for our wedding and nothing can go forward until after we find a place. The current ticket is to have it done at Galapagos Arts Space on North 6th in Williamsburg. A few months ago, before we were engaged, Laura told me about a friend of her's that didn't have very much money and had the wedding at Galapagos. At the time it seemed to us the epitomy of young bohemism but with the budget we have and now faced with the reality of the costs, it's looking mighty good. This is not to say that it's cheap by a long shot, no sir. I can see why there's such a huge industry around this.

In other news I'm in the process of trying to get some kind of credit card. In the first few weeks of my freshman year of college, I got more offers to get a credit card than to buy weed in Washington Square park. I figured that to get a credit card was to play with fire and over the years I've had lots of friends who have gotten burned. Now, at the ripe old age of 27, credit card companies just aren't interested in extending a line of credit to someone who has kept up with his own finances makes a living wage and has never saddled himself with credit card debt. I understand the business logic behind it, but it's still a little screwy to me. I don't even want a credit card really, I just want one to raise my credit rating, get a business loan and then eventually have come kind of line of credit for my business expenses. As it stands now, it looks like I'll have to get a "secured credit card" which means I give them money, they hold onto it and my monthly limit is the amount of money that I have given them. If I default, the keep they money that I've given them and I'm back to the drawing board.

Does anyone know of a better way of getting a credit card, business loan or have $200,000 that I could hold onto for the next half decade?

The Week

Had a good meeting this week with the hard workin' folks at NYBMA. I'll be helping them with a campaign to contact buildings that are hard to get in and out of.

My regular Monday job was moved to Tuesday because of a building union holiday. If you'll remember, this Tuesday featured freezing rain. It was bad, real bad but it was not the worst day of biking in the elements, not even in the top five. When it was over, I took a real hot shower and slept like the dead

Still looking for a place to get hitched and a place to start a business. Laura and I checked out Supercore at 305 Bedford Ave, it's beautiful and well designed if we had the chance to take over their lease tomorrow, we would.

In completely unrelated news, I've been thinking a lot about Isreal's Prime Minister Ariele Sharon. He's in some bad shape, he might survive, but he will not prosper. I only hope that whoever comes next will be crafty enough to fill whatever gap he leaves. I've never been a big fan of his, but I deplore a power vacume, particularly in that part of the world and at this time.

Happy New Year's All!

A damned good time was had by all. Many thanks to Kristi for having everyone over to her beautiful downtown pad. Everyone was there, booze flowed like water, and the new year was rung in quite loudly. At about 1:00am, everyone went to Mehanata (Bulgairan Bar) and Archie was able to get everyone in for free by using his Homeland Security badge. I had forgotten that Bulgaria was part of the coaltion of the willing. Laura and I danced like crazy people for about 20 minutes before we both realized just how drunk we were. We made it back to Brooklyn and I had to drag Laura to bed like she was a sack of potatos.

Jeremy brought this polish vodka that comes in the shape of a sniper rifle and I took a bunch of photo's of people with it.

Happy 2006 Y'all!

Melissa with Sniper Vodka:


Sam with Sniper Vodka:


Laura with Sniper Vodka:


Kristi with Sniper Vodka:


Josh with Sniper Vodka:


Jeremy with Sniper Vodka:


Nadine with Sniper Vodka:


Wes with Sniper Vodka: