On a few occasions, I have tried to get into meditation. You know, sitting in a comfortable position, surrounded by soft lights and quiet, trying to empty the mind and find the still place at the center of my being. But usually what I get is an experience of how much my mind jumps all over the place and refuses to be still.
I know meditation is supposed to be good for me. I also know brussel sprouts are good for me, but at least I can grill those in olive oil and garlic (maybe even add some bacon if I am feeling particularly naughty) and come up with something mouth-wateringly tasty. The noise coming from my mind when I am sitting still is less like garlic and olive oil, and more like sand in the underpants. It just seems to get in the way of me enjoying the quiet like I would want to.
I was encouraged a while back when I read about Tibetan Buddhist meditation, where you get to treat the images that come into your mind not as obstacles, but friends. Follow the labyrinthine path your mind wants to take, and when it has finally run out of gas, then you can really experience the peace, before, like a 5 year old, your mind catches its breath and starts darting all over the place again. Not bad, but still not the wonderous experience of meditation, the revivifying blast of me-as-mountain that I'd like to know.
Of course, the solution was right in front of me, which is why I didn't see it - it's tattooed on my forehead, and I wasn't looking in the mirror. I didn't waste all those years (from 1986 to 1999, basically) singing Gregorian chant weekly. We learned that listening while singing, as daunting as it can be to try to do those things simultaneously, can really settle the mind, transform experience, all that kind of good stuff. Yes, there's still that idea of the workings of the mind as distraction that I have a hard time with. I just can't help feeling that there is a good reason that I think what I think, even if there is a hierarchy and there are times when I would like to set aside the nagging suspicion that I forgot to buy bread at the store to focus on more important and/or more pressing concerns. Cleaning house doesn't necessarily mean throwing out all the furniture to get to the dust and the cobwebs.
So here I am now thankfully in a new chant choir, singing mass once a week. Now granted I am the only singer who is aware of what I am trying to do. I have no idea what the motivation is of any of the other guys with which I am singing. But for me the most important point of the whole thing is listening. Not that I do that very often. In fact, part of my motivation for writing this is to remind myself to remember to listen more frequently during the mass. So far I have been tied up in making sure I sing the right notes, and keep in mind where the next piece of music is in the book.
But things are getting better. Every so often I get the feeling that, hey, I do know how to do this, don't I? I start to relax just for a moment. I look at Charlie, the director, and try to hear the other voices in relation to my own. All the things I learned to do more than 20 years ago when I first learned to sing chant. And then the moment is lost and I go back to struggling. I trust that the more I listen, the faster I will start to get back my chant "chops." And then I will be not a chant follower, someone trying desperately to keep up - I willl be a leader, capable of leading others and capable of being sensitive to others and myself.
In the meantime, if I can make some progress in my physical therapy, I may, before the summer is over, get to take up again one of my other favorite methods for getting to that quiet place: in-line skating. Perhaps because it works the core so well (you know, the lower back and stomach muscles, in some circles the center of our being), skating, especially when I do it alone, is a tremendously "centering" experience. There is so much rhythm to the strides as I move, left, right, that it sometimes feels like I am not moving at all - an analogy to the mind moving and remaining still. It is at the most energetic moments of skating fast with sweat rolling down my face, the sound of the wind whistling through my ears, my limbs darting back and forth, that I remember the lesson of this exercise.
While some may search for stillness by eliminating everything that moves except for maybe the breath, for me, the stillness makes itself most indelibly felt in concert with movement. In other words, stillness is part of all that is moving, and conversely, movement if it is harmonious and free is a part of the meditation.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
At the center of everything is nothing...
OK, for the next few days it looks like I am getting back to the original focus of this blog: stuff that makes my brain buzz. Today we are going to talk about meaning and meaninglessness, or how everything is built on nothing (or something agonizingly close to nothing).
Years ago, I showed up for a psychotherapy session. At the time, my therapist Ellen was subletting an office space from another therapist Heather. At the beginning of our session, Ellen excused herself to put a note on Heather's desk. As she put the note on the desk, her hand brushed against a pencil can on the desk, and the can fell to the floor and broke.
Ellen became upset and wrote another note to explain what had happened and offer to pay for the pencil can. We then sat down for our session. The first thing Ellen said was, "gee, I wonder why I did that? Was I subconsciously harboring some resentment towards Heather?"
Now, you should know that I have a pet peave about the tendency of therapists to see meaning in every little thing that happens. Nothing is just what it is, no person is innocent, everything done is a window into the tortured tendencies we all have lurking beneath the surface of our personalities.
I countered by telling Ellen that I thought what she did had no meaning whatsoever. She was aghast: how could it not have meaning? Surely everything has some meaning, however slight and simple. No, I responded. It is actually the existence of meaninglessness at the heart of everything that makes meaning possible.
Whoa. She didn't have the foggiest idea what I meant. Could I explain that further? So I turned to math as an allegory - to the importance of undefined terms as the basis for defined terms. I couldn't quite remember how it all worked, but I did my best to recall it. Here is a better explanation than what I was able to describe to Ellen that day.
In geometry, we have terms that are defined, and terms that are undefined. The three terms that are undefined, point, line and plane, are the building blocks for the entire discipline. Without the undefined terms, we would have no point of reference for that which is defined. However, they remain undefined, because it is impossible to define them.
I know that in microphysics, there is a similar sort of thing going on, where as we examine particles in their most basic forms, we discover that they are built on energy which is in movement. But there is nothing that can be measured or precisely located. I know less about physics so I can definitely be corrected if I am wrong, but that is what I remember. Once again, all that exists, all that we have, is built on, perhaps we could even say depends on, imprecise, non-existent things.
My therapist listened and tried to grasp what I was saying. In the end I think it all confused her and we moved on: so, Karl, how are YOU today? But I did not let the idea die. Certainly therapists are not the only ones who spend a good deal of time searching for meanings in all their actions. I continue to believe that the situation for us is analogous to what I have described in geometry and physics.
In the example of Ellen brushing the pencil can, I believe we are distinguishing between whether what she did was deliberate or accidental. If it was deliberate, then she would have been completely aware of where the pencil can was and decided to knock it over. If it was accidental, then she was probably unaware of the location of the can. This is why I find seeing meaning in everything aggravating. It presupposes some kind of all-knowing, all-seeing ability. It also presupposes that while her conscious intention was not to disturb anything on the desk, her unconscious intention was to carry out some sort of agenda against Heather, and that her consciousness was powerless to detect this agenda and intercede to prevent Heather's can from being broken.
It is all just too much to accept. It reminds me of the eleborate formulae Ptolemy came up with to explain the movement of the sun and all the planets while desperately keeping the earth at the center of the universe. This meaning-in-everything position strikes me as somewhat desperate as well - it is a way of keeping ourselves at the center of our own universes, a way of avoiding growing up, I believe.
More healthy to accept, not that we are all powerless to prevent our unconscious from acting out secret vendettas at all times, but rather that, while it is useful occasionally to investigate our motivation for doing what we do, it is also very healthy to let things go that are not central to keeping us from living happy carefree existences.
I know I am being hard on Ellen and others who share her profession. Certainly, the reason I would have sessions with a psychotherapist is because I want to examine more acutely the mysterious movements of my psyche. And certainly, when Ellen wondered about why she had knocked over the pencil can, she was at least half kidding, and probably more than willing to just accept that it was an accident. I took it more seriously than she did, perhaps because I was the one who was sensitive to this mania of looking for meaning. I may not have wanted to examine my own motivations, my own secret, subconscious intentions.
But certainly it is healthy to have a balance in this as in all things. Scientists have shown us that so much in the natural world behaves in predictable ways. We have spent a good deal of time examining how the mind deviates from that principle. Perhaps though, even in our unpredictability, we exhibit patterns that may be considered to be predictable. We do things unconsciously that are in synch with the intentions of our consciousness. And nobody gets hurt, either accidentally or deliberately.
Years ago, I showed up for a psychotherapy session. At the time, my therapist Ellen was subletting an office space from another therapist Heather. At the beginning of our session, Ellen excused herself to put a note on Heather's desk. As she put the note on the desk, her hand brushed against a pencil can on the desk, and the can fell to the floor and broke.
Ellen became upset and wrote another note to explain what had happened and offer to pay for the pencil can. We then sat down for our session. The first thing Ellen said was, "gee, I wonder why I did that? Was I subconsciously harboring some resentment towards Heather?"
Now, you should know that I have a pet peave about the tendency of therapists to see meaning in every little thing that happens. Nothing is just what it is, no person is innocent, everything done is a window into the tortured tendencies we all have lurking beneath the surface of our personalities.
I countered by telling Ellen that I thought what she did had no meaning whatsoever. She was aghast: how could it not have meaning? Surely everything has some meaning, however slight and simple. No, I responded. It is actually the existence of meaninglessness at the heart of everything that makes meaning possible.
Whoa. She didn't have the foggiest idea what I meant. Could I explain that further? So I turned to math as an allegory - to the importance of undefined terms as the basis for defined terms. I couldn't quite remember how it all worked, but I did my best to recall it. Here is a better explanation than what I was able to describe to Ellen that day.
In geometry, we have terms that are defined, and terms that are undefined. The three terms that are undefined, point, line and plane, are the building blocks for the entire discipline. Without the undefined terms, we would have no point of reference for that which is defined. However, they remain undefined, because it is impossible to define them.
I know that in microphysics, there is a similar sort of thing going on, where as we examine particles in their most basic forms, we discover that they are built on energy which is in movement. But there is nothing that can be measured or precisely located. I know less about physics so I can definitely be corrected if I am wrong, but that is what I remember. Once again, all that exists, all that we have, is built on, perhaps we could even say depends on, imprecise, non-existent things.
My therapist listened and tried to grasp what I was saying. In the end I think it all confused her and we moved on: so, Karl, how are YOU today? But I did not let the idea die. Certainly therapists are not the only ones who spend a good deal of time searching for meanings in all their actions. I continue to believe that the situation for us is analogous to what I have described in geometry and physics.
In the example of Ellen brushing the pencil can, I believe we are distinguishing between whether what she did was deliberate or accidental. If it was deliberate, then she would have been completely aware of where the pencil can was and decided to knock it over. If it was accidental, then she was probably unaware of the location of the can. This is why I find seeing meaning in everything aggravating. It presupposes some kind of all-knowing, all-seeing ability. It also presupposes that while her conscious intention was not to disturb anything on the desk, her unconscious intention was to carry out some sort of agenda against Heather, and that her consciousness was powerless to detect this agenda and intercede to prevent Heather's can from being broken.
It is all just too much to accept. It reminds me of the eleborate formulae Ptolemy came up with to explain the movement of the sun and all the planets while desperately keeping the earth at the center of the universe. This meaning-in-everything position strikes me as somewhat desperate as well - it is a way of keeping ourselves at the center of our own universes, a way of avoiding growing up, I believe.
More healthy to accept, not that we are all powerless to prevent our unconscious from acting out secret vendettas at all times, but rather that, while it is useful occasionally to investigate our motivation for doing what we do, it is also very healthy to let things go that are not central to keeping us from living happy carefree existences.
I know I am being hard on Ellen and others who share her profession. Certainly, the reason I would have sessions with a psychotherapist is because I want to examine more acutely the mysterious movements of my psyche. And certainly, when Ellen wondered about why she had knocked over the pencil can, she was at least half kidding, and probably more than willing to just accept that it was an accident. I took it more seriously than she did, perhaps because I was the one who was sensitive to this mania of looking for meaning. I may not have wanted to examine my own motivations, my own secret, subconscious intentions.
But certainly it is healthy to have a balance in this as in all things. Scientists have shown us that so much in the natural world behaves in predictable ways. We have spent a good deal of time examining how the mind deviates from that principle. Perhaps though, even in our unpredictability, we exhibit patterns that may be considered to be predictable. We do things unconsciously that are in synch with the intentions of our consciousness. And nobody gets hurt, either accidentally or deliberately.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Another day with nothing to say...
Warm, humid, overcast today in New York City. It matches my mood pretty well: pensive, brooding, melancholy. I remember in college how a friend of mine saw me sitting in the cafeteria at lunch one day and told me I always looked so thoughtful. The difficulty is getting the thoughts to coalesce into something that might be meaninful to share with others.
Of course instead of staying with my thoughts and trying to unravel them a bit, I could just read emails or post on Facebook or occupy myself in any number of other ways on the internet. But that would not serve me in the long run. There are enough distractions in life without me going out of my way to create some. Not that I don't indulge myself in distractions often enough.
I hesitate to begin because frankly I am puzzling over the issue of privacy. It's one thing for me to use this blog to just talk about whatever is on the surface of my mind. But it would be another thing to divulge the real inner workings of my mind - to make myself vulnerable before the vastness of the internet. In one sense, it wouldn't be much of a big deal, since I don't think many people read this blog anyway. Also, God knows I have revealed myself in postings on Facebook and other message boards, sharing details of my life that few people know.
But in another sense, I think it would be the wrong thing to do. I know I am a guarded person in some ways with those closest to me. But ironically it seems easier to share some deep secrets in cyberspace, where those who will read it are at a distance. I think there is some valor in going the harder route and letting the truly important people into my secret world. And I also think it could be hurtful if those people were to read important things that should be shared with them broadcast impersonally over the internet.
So I think I will stick with the safe route. Not that I am not sharing stuff that is meaningful to me here. Over time, I hope to really get in a groove here and write some good stuff that people will really want to read.
Man, I need a shave. There was a time it seemed when I could get away with only shaving once a week. But now within a couple of days there is enough scruff to make it a dangerous proposition for my girlfriend to kiss me. Nobody wants carpet burns on their cheeks and chin! I suppose I just feel lazy about shaving - preparing the skin, making sure the blade has the right sharpness, cleaning up afterward. The reward is worth the trouble I guess; but within a relatively short amount of time, the smoothness of my newly shaven face is spoiled by new whisker growth already making itself felt. In short, before the day is out, I am scruffy once again.
It's like some cruel joke. Shave, shave, shave, and then I have to do it again. A Buddhist monk I know had an interesting take on this sort of thing. He was talking about eating, another thing we have to do over and over again. He said we have so much desire that can never be quenched. We eat and feel sated for a short time, but then our appetite returns and we want to eat more. From his perspective, the best thing to do is to train ourselves not to have desires.
I disagree with him. First of all, the training he is talking about takes more than a lifetime, and it is not easy. Secondly, I think that for the vast majority of people, it doesn't work. And third, I think the idea that we should want to rid ourselves of our desires presupposes that desires are not useful or do not serve a very strong positive purpose in our lives. Again, for most people that presupposition is not true.
Let's return to shaving for a moment. Here I am resisting the need to shave. It is as if, in a very small way, I am going against the current of the flow of life. For a time, being dirty and unshaven may be perfectly fine, as I slave away at this blog entry. But I will feel a sense of accomplishment by overcoming my resistance and shaving. The fact that I will have to shave again at some point in the future is immaterial. Buddhists talk all the time about being in the present - well, in the present, after finishing that shave, I feel fantastic. I don't need to worry about the next time I am going to have to shave. The only thing that is important at that moment is the pleasurable feeling of having a clean smooth face.
There are many other reasons I object to Buddhism. For example, I think it's too intellectual, too heady. I won't go into the other reasons at the moment. But they certainly have it right when it comes to placing emphasis on enjoying the perfection of where any of us is at this exact moment. I personally get in trouble because I am always worrying about all the things I would like to do that I haven't done yet. Sure, I will feel good once I have crossed all those tasks off my list. Then tomorrow there will be another list and so forth. For me the whole process can be full of inner excitement or pleasure: making up my list of tasks for the day, going through the list one by one with some discipline, getting to the end of the day when I can sleep next to my girlfriend, full of excitement that I get to do it all over again tomorrow.
Sure, I would like to make a mark, make a difference, to live a meaningful life. How I might do that is a topic for another post. But this daily drudge, the daily searching for fulfillment of our petty desires, can be the beginning, the first solid steps toward building the person who does important, groundbreaking things. At subsquent stages of the process, there may be more layers of distraction to peel away. But for now, this is where I am.
Of course instead of staying with my thoughts and trying to unravel them a bit, I could just read emails or post on Facebook or occupy myself in any number of other ways on the internet. But that would not serve me in the long run. There are enough distractions in life without me going out of my way to create some. Not that I don't indulge myself in distractions often enough.
I hesitate to begin because frankly I am puzzling over the issue of privacy. It's one thing for me to use this blog to just talk about whatever is on the surface of my mind. But it would be another thing to divulge the real inner workings of my mind - to make myself vulnerable before the vastness of the internet. In one sense, it wouldn't be much of a big deal, since I don't think many people read this blog anyway. Also, God knows I have revealed myself in postings on Facebook and other message boards, sharing details of my life that few people know.
But in another sense, I think it would be the wrong thing to do. I know I am a guarded person in some ways with those closest to me. But ironically it seems easier to share some deep secrets in cyberspace, where those who will read it are at a distance. I think there is some valor in going the harder route and letting the truly important people into my secret world. And I also think it could be hurtful if those people were to read important things that should be shared with them broadcast impersonally over the internet.
So I think I will stick with the safe route. Not that I am not sharing stuff that is meaningful to me here. Over time, I hope to really get in a groove here and write some good stuff that people will really want to read.
Man, I need a shave. There was a time it seemed when I could get away with only shaving once a week. But now within a couple of days there is enough scruff to make it a dangerous proposition for my girlfriend to kiss me. Nobody wants carpet burns on their cheeks and chin! I suppose I just feel lazy about shaving - preparing the skin, making sure the blade has the right sharpness, cleaning up afterward. The reward is worth the trouble I guess; but within a relatively short amount of time, the smoothness of my newly shaven face is spoiled by new whisker growth already making itself felt. In short, before the day is out, I am scruffy once again.
It's like some cruel joke. Shave, shave, shave, and then I have to do it again. A Buddhist monk I know had an interesting take on this sort of thing. He was talking about eating, another thing we have to do over and over again. He said we have so much desire that can never be quenched. We eat and feel sated for a short time, but then our appetite returns and we want to eat more. From his perspective, the best thing to do is to train ourselves not to have desires.
I disagree with him. First of all, the training he is talking about takes more than a lifetime, and it is not easy. Secondly, I think that for the vast majority of people, it doesn't work. And third, I think the idea that we should want to rid ourselves of our desires presupposes that desires are not useful or do not serve a very strong positive purpose in our lives. Again, for most people that presupposition is not true.
Let's return to shaving for a moment. Here I am resisting the need to shave. It is as if, in a very small way, I am going against the current of the flow of life. For a time, being dirty and unshaven may be perfectly fine, as I slave away at this blog entry. But I will feel a sense of accomplishment by overcoming my resistance and shaving. The fact that I will have to shave again at some point in the future is immaterial. Buddhists talk all the time about being in the present - well, in the present, after finishing that shave, I feel fantastic. I don't need to worry about the next time I am going to have to shave. The only thing that is important at that moment is the pleasurable feeling of having a clean smooth face.
There are many other reasons I object to Buddhism. For example, I think it's too intellectual, too heady. I won't go into the other reasons at the moment. But they certainly have it right when it comes to placing emphasis on enjoying the perfection of where any of us is at this exact moment. I personally get in trouble because I am always worrying about all the things I would like to do that I haven't done yet. Sure, I will feel good once I have crossed all those tasks off my list. Then tomorrow there will be another list and so forth. For me the whole process can be full of inner excitement or pleasure: making up my list of tasks for the day, going through the list one by one with some discipline, getting to the end of the day when I can sleep next to my girlfriend, full of excitement that I get to do it all over again tomorrow.
Sure, I would like to make a mark, make a difference, to live a meaningful life. How I might do that is a topic for another post. But this daily drudge, the daily searching for fulfillment of our petty desires, can be the beginning, the first solid steps toward building the person who does important, groundbreaking things. At subsquent stages of the process, there may be more layers of distraction to peel away. But for now, this is where I am.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Another pet peave: sports media coverage
OK, let me take this discussion of sports one step further. Therese and I were talking about this last night, so I will get this off my chest here and now.
I don't know whether you want to say that sports journalists are lazy or conservative or what, but I feel like they constantly cover the story that is easy to cover rather than covering the story they should be covering. Let me explain.
This weekend 22 year old Rory McIlroy took the golfing world by storm, winning the US Open and in the process shattering numerous records. He led from start to finish, and after the second round of the tournament on Friday, he was already 6 shots ahead, and it was pretty definite already at that point that he was going to win.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the US Today in my hotel in Boston and found, accompanying the front cover's lead story on the US Open, a photo of Phil Mickelson, and a story of how Mickelson and other stars were not playing very well in the Open. But I should not have been surprised, because this is routine for sports media of all kinds. They would much rather put their energy and their money into covering the obvious thing, even when that is not really the story.
My hope, staying with golf for another moment, is that McIlroy's success will draw attention and we will finally not have to hear every week stories about what is wrong with Tiger Woods. Don't get me wrong: I am a fan of Woods and hope that he returns to his level of excellence and breaks the record for Major Tournament victories. But I really don't want to hear about every little detail of what he is doing with his swing coach or whatever. Especially not when there are other players like McIlroy who are showing off their talent while the endless drivel about Woods' problems continues to flow.
And this is common among all sports. Look at basketball and the media's focus on LeBron James. Or how about football and all the stuff about Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco? I know that Owens is still a legitimate player at wide receiver, but he is no longer the no. 1 receiver in football. But if he speaks up and says anything at a press conference, in no time flat it's all over all the sports news.
I understand that controversy is appealing, and controversial athletes are always going to get more attention than ones who "just" play their sport at its highest level. I also understand - or maybe this is just my take on things - that journalists have a hard time dealing with athletes who don't give them what they want, and so anyone who is the least bit complicated or elusive is going to be labeled a problem or, worse, a flake, and treated like a joke.
What would I like to see? How would I like to see sports journalism change? Well, to say that it should adhere to the same standards as other journalism is a joke at this point, since most broadcast and print news is distraction and drivel. But I think it would be a lot better off stretching itself, working a little harder to tell not just the stories that immediately sell newspapers. I would like to see some journalistic ethics and editorial vision applied to deciding what stories will be told and what stories should be told. When a person implodes, for example, anyone with any sense of decency would either look away, or help to calm the person down and see if they can do anything for them. They would not look for ways to make the person lose control even more, which is the equivalent of what we see in sports journalism all the time.
Of course, there are many reasons why a lot of the best and most compelling stories from sports never get told, or at least not until a great deal of time has passed after the events have taken place. For example, the parties involved would lose their competitive edge over other teams. But I'm sure that many athletes would be more willing to forge relationships with journalists in the hope of getting the story told well if they were not convinced that journalists are not going to make them look like fools. In that respect I can understand why journalists focus on the few superstars that everyone is talking about - at least they are going to get some story from Tiger Woods or LeBron James. But I would be more impressed to see that one journalistic outlet or newspaper who, the next time everyone is writing the same story about how LeBron didn't play his best, decides to spend their energy on who is playing their best and why. In other words, I would like to see sports jouirnalists do the job that we expect all journalists/reporters to do: hunting down interesting things that noone has heard about and telling us why we should be interested.
I don't know whether you want to say that sports journalists are lazy or conservative or what, but I feel like they constantly cover the story that is easy to cover rather than covering the story they should be covering. Let me explain.
This weekend 22 year old Rory McIlroy took the golfing world by storm, winning the US Open and in the process shattering numerous records. He led from start to finish, and after the second round of the tournament on Friday, he was already 6 shots ahead, and it was pretty definite already at that point that he was going to win.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the US Today in my hotel in Boston and found, accompanying the front cover's lead story on the US Open, a photo of Phil Mickelson, and a story of how Mickelson and other stars were not playing very well in the Open. But I should not have been surprised, because this is routine for sports media of all kinds. They would much rather put their energy and their money into covering the obvious thing, even when that is not really the story.
My hope, staying with golf for another moment, is that McIlroy's success will draw attention and we will finally not have to hear every week stories about what is wrong with Tiger Woods. Don't get me wrong: I am a fan of Woods and hope that he returns to his level of excellence and breaks the record for Major Tournament victories. But I really don't want to hear about every little detail of what he is doing with his swing coach or whatever. Especially not when there are other players like McIlroy who are showing off their talent while the endless drivel about Woods' problems continues to flow.
And this is common among all sports. Look at basketball and the media's focus on LeBron James. Or how about football and all the stuff about Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco? I know that Owens is still a legitimate player at wide receiver, but he is no longer the no. 1 receiver in football. But if he speaks up and says anything at a press conference, in no time flat it's all over all the sports news.
I understand that controversy is appealing, and controversial athletes are always going to get more attention than ones who "just" play their sport at its highest level. I also understand - or maybe this is just my take on things - that journalists have a hard time dealing with athletes who don't give them what they want, and so anyone who is the least bit complicated or elusive is going to be labeled a problem or, worse, a flake, and treated like a joke.
What would I like to see? How would I like to see sports journalism change? Well, to say that it should adhere to the same standards as other journalism is a joke at this point, since most broadcast and print news is distraction and drivel. But I think it would be a lot better off stretching itself, working a little harder to tell not just the stories that immediately sell newspapers. I would like to see some journalistic ethics and editorial vision applied to deciding what stories will be told and what stories should be told. When a person implodes, for example, anyone with any sense of decency would either look away, or help to calm the person down and see if they can do anything for them. They would not look for ways to make the person lose control even more, which is the equivalent of what we see in sports journalism all the time.
Of course, there are many reasons why a lot of the best and most compelling stories from sports never get told, or at least not until a great deal of time has passed after the events have taken place. For example, the parties involved would lose their competitive edge over other teams. But I'm sure that many athletes would be more willing to forge relationships with journalists in the hope of getting the story told well if they were not convinced that journalists are not going to make them look like fools. In that respect I can understand why journalists focus on the few superstars that everyone is talking about - at least they are going to get some story from Tiger Woods or LeBron James. But I would be more impressed to see that one journalistic outlet or newspaper who, the next time everyone is writing the same story about how LeBron didn't play his best, decides to spend their energy on who is playing their best and why. In other words, I would like to see sports jouirnalists do the job that we expect all journalists/reporters to do: hunting down interesting things that noone has heard about and telling us why we should be interested.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Some thoughts on sports
I love sports. I started playing basketball when I was around 8, baseball and football when I was maybe 9. And I started watching sports on television when I was 10 or 11 - the first World Series of baseball I remember seeing was in 1973, when the Mets played the Oakland A's. I vaguely remember seeing the Knicks beat the L.A. Lakers earlier in 1973, but I wasn't glued to the TV set. It took me a little longer to get into watching football - my first favorite team was the Minnesota Vikings, which I chose for two reasons (because their uniforms were in my favorite color, purple, and because I liked their quarterback, Fran Tarkenton).
I remain a big fan to this day. In baseball, I am a big fan of the Yankees, but with other sports, my allegiance changes, and I tend to follow favorite players more than particular teams. I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of people dislike the Yankees, and I understand why, but I consider myself to be different than a lot of Yankee fans. I'm almost as much a fan of baseball as I am of the one particular team, and I don't expect them to win every year like so many people who call themselves fans do. I think it's at least unrealistic, and at most stupid, to think that your favorite team is going to win every year. I mean, you might believe that when you're ten years old, but as an adult, you know better. Plus, it is disrespectful of other fans to think that your team should win all the time and noone else's favorite should have a chance.
So I consider myself a real fan in the sense that I enjoy to watch the sport more than I root for one particular team. I distinguish that from the casual fan who wants to see the team they root for win, and is not interested if their team does not win, and will find something else to occupy their time if that is the case. As I've grown up, I have seen that sports is really about making money more than keeping fans happy, and the sports have tried hard to attract the casual fans in my opinion. But while the MLB and NFL have done this by trying to insure that parity exists, i.e., that many if not most of the teams have a chance to win the championship, I feel that the NBA has worked hard to do this in another way, by insuring that for the most part, a small group of teams focussed around mega superstars will win most if not all of the championships.
This started with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. The league became more popular than ever before, and made more money than ever before, and once the owners got the feel of that wealth in them, they did not want to go back to making pennies after Jordan retired. So they have continued to heavily market whoever they could find who might take up Jordan's legacy and win multiple championships as well. And sure enough, just a few teams have won championships since then, while in baseball and football during the same time period, the championships are won by a different team pretty much every year.
The first player to be marketed as the "heir apparent" to the title of best player in the league was Kobe Bryant, and sure enough, his team, the Lakers, has won 5 championships in the last 10 or so years. The next player to receive that title is LeBron James, and the league has been working very hard in the last several years to get James' teams to face Bryant's in the finals, without success. First, LeBron made it with the Cleveland Caveliers, but the San Antonio Spurs beat the Lakers to face them. Then the Lakers made it three years in a row, but James' Cavs couldn't beat the Celtics and so once again the league was thwarted from getting their dream match-up. And now this past season once again, it didn't happen - the Dallas Mavericks swept the Lakers from the playoffs, so James' new team, the Heat, had to settle for playing someone else.
And even though the Heat lost to the Mavericks, most of the media coverage continues to focus on James, who apparently is more compelling as a loser than any of the Mavericks are as winners. This is the kind of nonsense that completely discourages me as a fan. But again, the league wants to maximize its profits, and most casual fans just know LeBron or Kobe or whoever. They can't tolerate having to actually pay attention to what teams might win or have the most talent or whatever. They want to see their hero come out on top, and if he doesn't, they want to know why he failed, and when he will come out on top. It is ridiculous, and one of the reasons that my interest in professional basketball comes and goes.
But again, it is about making money, and not just money, but big money. If the guy the league is depending on to bring in the casual fans fails, and the casual fans go elsewhere to spend their entertainment dollars, then they will find someone else to focus on as the next savior of the league. It's a model that to me is misguided and stupid, but it worked with Jordan, and they are not going to abandon it anytime soon. I am not even going to get started on the myriad ways in which I can perceive favoritism on the part of the league in trying to get the result they want to bring in and keep bringing in that big big money the owners crave so much. But let's just say that their strategy for league success makes me question the credibility of the sport on a more than occasional basis.
I remain a big fan to this day. In baseball, I am a big fan of the Yankees, but with other sports, my allegiance changes, and I tend to follow favorite players more than particular teams. I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of people dislike the Yankees, and I understand why, but I consider myself to be different than a lot of Yankee fans. I'm almost as much a fan of baseball as I am of the one particular team, and I don't expect them to win every year like so many people who call themselves fans do. I think it's at least unrealistic, and at most stupid, to think that your favorite team is going to win every year. I mean, you might believe that when you're ten years old, but as an adult, you know better. Plus, it is disrespectful of other fans to think that your team should win all the time and noone else's favorite should have a chance.
So I consider myself a real fan in the sense that I enjoy to watch the sport more than I root for one particular team. I distinguish that from the casual fan who wants to see the team they root for win, and is not interested if their team does not win, and will find something else to occupy their time if that is the case. As I've grown up, I have seen that sports is really about making money more than keeping fans happy, and the sports have tried hard to attract the casual fans in my opinion. But while the MLB and NFL have done this by trying to insure that parity exists, i.e., that many if not most of the teams have a chance to win the championship, I feel that the NBA has worked hard to do this in another way, by insuring that for the most part, a small group of teams focussed around mega superstars will win most if not all of the championships.
This started with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. The league became more popular than ever before, and made more money than ever before, and once the owners got the feel of that wealth in them, they did not want to go back to making pennies after Jordan retired. So they have continued to heavily market whoever they could find who might take up Jordan's legacy and win multiple championships as well. And sure enough, just a few teams have won championships since then, while in baseball and football during the same time period, the championships are won by a different team pretty much every year.
The first player to be marketed as the "heir apparent" to the title of best player in the league was Kobe Bryant, and sure enough, his team, the Lakers, has won 5 championships in the last 10 or so years. The next player to receive that title is LeBron James, and the league has been working very hard in the last several years to get James' teams to face Bryant's in the finals, without success. First, LeBron made it with the Cleveland Caveliers, but the San Antonio Spurs beat the Lakers to face them. Then the Lakers made it three years in a row, but James' Cavs couldn't beat the Celtics and so once again the league was thwarted from getting their dream match-up. And now this past season once again, it didn't happen - the Dallas Mavericks swept the Lakers from the playoffs, so James' new team, the Heat, had to settle for playing someone else.
And even though the Heat lost to the Mavericks, most of the media coverage continues to focus on James, who apparently is more compelling as a loser than any of the Mavericks are as winners. This is the kind of nonsense that completely discourages me as a fan. But again, the league wants to maximize its profits, and most casual fans just know LeBron or Kobe or whoever. They can't tolerate having to actually pay attention to what teams might win or have the most talent or whatever. They want to see their hero come out on top, and if he doesn't, they want to know why he failed, and when he will come out on top. It is ridiculous, and one of the reasons that my interest in professional basketball comes and goes.
But again, it is about making money, and not just money, but big money. If the guy the league is depending on to bring in the casual fans fails, and the casual fans go elsewhere to spend their entertainment dollars, then they will find someone else to focus on as the next savior of the league. It's a model that to me is misguided and stupid, but it worked with Jordan, and they are not going to abandon it anytime soon. I am not even going to get started on the myriad ways in which I can perceive favoritism on the part of the league in trying to get the result they want to bring in and keep bringing in that big big money the owners crave so much. But let's just say that their strategy for league success makes me question the credibility of the sport on a more than occasional basis.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Why do I have to have a topic?
Well, this writing every day project is going well. I am indeed writing every day, and sometimes, most of the time in fact, I have something to write about. I think of friends who have blogs who write every day, and wonder how long it took before they felt in a groove with it. I remember talking to my friend Philip Newell who has written and published many books who told me that even after writing for many years, it is usually still, as he put it, "a slow slog." So the goal is to just keep doing it.
It's not as if I don't have a bunch of subjects that could be turned into more sustained projects, perhaps even books - I absolutely do. I won't share them with you right now because I know that blogs are probably most read by others who blog/write, and I don't want to find out somewhere down the road that one of you got the idea from me to write the same thing I wanted to write! I know: I should put my ego aside and realize that most if not all of my ideas are nothing new (nihil sub sole novum, right? (it sounds so much cooler in Latin!)).
So here I sit without a topic. I have so many interests: sports, music, literature, film. Surely, I should be able to get a topic out of all those! Plus there are many possible things to talk about from my everyday life - I've already talked about cooking, but I could share with you things about my job hunt, or any number of other things I care about, like politics and religion and the weather, blah, blah, blah.
But I also feel like the measure of a writer may be when he doesn't have anything particular to write about. A good musician can enthrall you with one note, and a good actor only needs one look, one word, to move you, right? So a good writer, like a good stand-up comedian or orator or anyone else who thrives on thinking on their feet, should be able to make something out of nothing, just by taking a deep breath, looking within, and letting the fingers go flying over the keyboard.
Of course, even as I contemplate this, my mind searches for topics. Hey, I could tell you how I started writing... or, what about talking about my dreams for this blog for the future... or, I don't know what. But I will, for the moment, still resist letting my anxiety about not having anything to talk about steer me towards relying on a topic. I love telling stories, but in order for this blog to not just be a self-centered exercise in having a chance to be the hero and control the point of view, there has to be some alternate view.
s
Nihil sub sole novum. Or as Dylan Thomas put it, in regard to the task of writing, "the lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft." "On no work of words" is one of my favorite Thomas poems. It's a bit bleak, and I think we all need to make friends with bleak, to get comfortable sitting in the dark, so that we can encounter on a deep level our own strength. If you can't sit still without your blackberry and laptop and iPod to keep you company, well, then you're in a bit of trouble. As we know, at the end we will lose all those things, and more. But when we can become brothers in bleak with Mr. Thomas, I think we can begin to experience that after everything is gone, what is left is much more.
I'm not giving you some kind of Christian message (although I am a Christian of sorts, admittedly). I'm just saying that we draw on resources deep within us all the time, strength and humor and empathy and creative thinking, that will be with us to the very end. Even if our last days are spent comatose and mostly braindead, I still believe there is something going on in there. I know, this has turned kind of morbid. I needn't have chosen as my topic not having one. I could've talked about any number of different subjects. But anyone who knows me well has to know that I do not resist thinking about death when appropriate.
Sure I'm afraid about leaving this earth and hope to have as much time as possible left here. Not that however much time I have will ever be enough. My life is very rich. Yes, I have creature comforts, but that's not what I mean. I mean that I live in a time full of possibilities, in a country where I am relatively free from harm, in reasonably good health, both of mind and body, with a healthy modicum of good spirit, optimism and determination. As I go forward, writing this blog, I hope to express what I have and what I am, while also letting in all the warmth, beauty, and complexity of what I experience around me.
It's not as if I don't have a bunch of subjects that could be turned into more sustained projects, perhaps even books - I absolutely do. I won't share them with you right now because I know that blogs are probably most read by others who blog/write, and I don't want to find out somewhere down the road that one of you got the idea from me to write the same thing I wanted to write! I know: I should put my ego aside and realize that most if not all of my ideas are nothing new (nihil sub sole novum, right? (it sounds so much cooler in Latin!)).
So here I sit without a topic. I have so many interests: sports, music, literature, film. Surely, I should be able to get a topic out of all those! Plus there are many possible things to talk about from my everyday life - I've already talked about cooking, but I could share with you things about my job hunt, or any number of other things I care about, like politics and religion and the weather, blah, blah, blah.
But I also feel like the measure of a writer may be when he doesn't have anything particular to write about. A good musician can enthrall you with one note, and a good actor only needs one look, one word, to move you, right? So a good writer, like a good stand-up comedian or orator or anyone else who thrives on thinking on their feet, should be able to make something out of nothing, just by taking a deep breath, looking within, and letting the fingers go flying over the keyboard.
Of course, even as I contemplate this, my mind searches for topics. Hey, I could tell you how I started writing... or, what about talking about my dreams for this blog for the future... or, I don't know what. But I will, for the moment, still resist letting my anxiety about not having anything to talk about steer me towards relying on a topic. I love telling stories, but in order for this blog to not just be a self-centered exercise in having a chance to be the hero and control the point of view, there has to be some alternate view.
s
Nihil sub sole novum. Or as Dylan Thomas put it, in regard to the task of writing, "the lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft." "On no work of words" is one of my favorite Thomas poems. It's a bit bleak, and I think we all need to make friends with bleak, to get comfortable sitting in the dark, so that we can encounter on a deep level our own strength. If you can't sit still without your blackberry and laptop and iPod to keep you company, well, then you're in a bit of trouble. As we know, at the end we will lose all those things, and more. But when we can become brothers in bleak with Mr. Thomas, I think we can begin to experience that after everything is gone, what is left is much more.
I'm not giving you some kind of Christian message (although I am a Christian of sorts, admittedly). I'm just saying that we draw on resources deep within us all the time, strength and humor and empathy and creative thinking, that will be with us to the very end. Even if our last days are spent comatose and mostly braindead, I still believe there is something going on in there. I know, this has turned kind of morbid. I needn't have chosen as my topic not having one. I could've talked about any number of different subjects. But anyone who knows me well has to know that I do not resist thinking about death when appropriate.
Sure I'm afraid about leaving this earth and hope to have as much time as possible left here. Not that however much time I have will ever be enough. My life is very rich. Yes, I have creature comforts, but that's not what I mean. I mean that I live in a time full of possibilities, in a country where I am relatively free from harm, in reasonably good health, both of mind and body, with a healthy modicum of good spirit, optimism and determination. As I go forward, writing this blog, I hope to express what I have and what I am, while also letting in all the warmth, beauty, and complexity of what I experience around me.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Don't answer that question!
Let's just get this over with. I have never been one of the cool kids. I avoided following trends, wearing the cool clothes, etc. from the earliest days. And the kids who were really cool, who didn't have to work at it - you know, the ones with that certain swagger, who didn't care what anyone thought - well, I could tell I was not one of them, either. I did care what people thought, but I was doomed to be looking in from the outside when it came to fitting in and being one of that "in" crowd.
The reason I mention all this, is that I once again find myself seemingly out of step with the bend of things, behind or ahead of the mainstream or whatever. So I find myself thinking, "gee, am I getting old?" but the truth is that the position I find myself in is not a new one, and has nothing to do with my age.
Let me explain. Saturday night Therese and I finally got around to going to see the movie "Bridesmaids," which is one of the most popular movies out there nowadays, and from all the positive reviews, one gets the impression that it is a very high quality film. It continues to be popular, since the theater we were in was quite full. Therese doesn't usually go to comedies, but since we had heard positive things, she agreed to give it a try.
Well, let me be blunt. Bridesmaids is easily the worst movie I have seen in a theater in at least 10 years. Granted, I have not seen any Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey or other Judd Apatow films in theaters. But if this movie is an example of what good comedy is today, then all I can say is that the bar has fallen so low that the distance between the bar and the ground is measurable only through a microscope.
It is difficult for me to explain how or why this movie is so bad except to say that it is just not funny. The main character is bland and unlikeable. The situations she is put through are so overworked and nothing new is presented to make them interesting. The things that made many of our surrounding audience members howl with laughter only made me cringe. The pacing is slow, the acting is wooden. The only person who seems to be having fun with their character is the woman who plays the sister of the groom, who gets to be brazen and outrageous.
How can a movie that is making so many people laugh so loud be completely unfunny to me? I find this a little troubling. But at the same time, I know that I have a sense of humor, and many things that happen everyday make me laugh. And I watch mainstream sitcoms - granted, mostly in syndication, which may mean that these are yesterday's sitcoms - but I watch them and I do indeed laugh!
So I hold fast to my assessment of the situation, and say that if Bridesmaids is an example of the best comedy films being made today, then comedy is a lost art in Hollywood. Of course, this is nothing new. My friend Ed has been lamenting for years that the people branded comic geniuses nowadays can't hold a candle to the brainy funnymen and women of days gone by. The likes of Andy Kaufman, for example, are not to be found in the current comic landscape. And Ed watches a lot more comedy than I do, so I trust his assessment of the situation. Our tastes are not always the same, and I do feel like Chris Rock and Margaret Cho, for example, are incredibly funny people. I also don't mind Kathy Griffin.
So I guess the big picture is that there is still plenty going on within the mainstream that entertains me. God knows, I don't spend a lot of time looking for it. But I also don't spend as much time as I could searching out quality entertainment, the rare entertainment experience where I might feel transported and changed and uplifted. For example, I just realized that I haven't read a book from start to finish in more than a month. (gotta put "reading" on the schedule!)
I suppose I could blame it on Facebook and cooking shows and whatever else is taking up my time these days. But another part of me feels like there's no reason to blame anyone. Whatever I am doing, it is filling my needs, and if I need something I am not getting, I will break out of my earthenware routine and go scrounging in the gutters and wherever else looking for it. The internet will probably be involved. So if I get disillusioned by feeling once again out of step with the bland and the nonsensical that is forever being put in front of us as the thing everyone is doing, and I ask you if there's something wrong with me, please ignore the question.
The reason I mention all this, is that I once again find myself seemingly out of step with the bend of things, behind or ahead of the mainstream or whatever. So I find myself thinking, "gee, am I getting old?" but the truth is that the position I find myself in is not a new one, and has nothing to do with my age.
Let me explain. Saturday night Therese and I finally got around to going to see the movie "Bridesmaids," which is one of the most popular movies out there nowadays, and from all the positive reviews, one gets the impression that it is a very high quality film. It continues to be popular, since the theater we were in was quite full. Therese doesn't usually go to comedies, but since we had heard positive things, she agreed to give it a try.
Well, let me be blunt. Bridesmaids is easily the worst movie I have seen in a theater in at least 10 years. Granted, I have not seen any Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey or other Judd Apatow films in theaters. But if this movie is an example of what good comedy is today, then all I can say is that the bar has fallen so low that the distance between the bar and the ground is measurable only through a microscope.
It is difficult for me to explain how or why this movie is so bad except to say that it is just not funny. The main character is bland and unlikeable. The situations she is put through are so overworked and nothing new is presented to make them interesting. The things that made many of our surrounding audience members howl with laughter only made me cringe. The pacing is slow, the acting is wooden. The only person who seems to be having fun with their character is the woman who plays the sister of the groom, who gets to be brazen and outrageous.
How can a movie that is making so many people laugh so loud be completely unfunny to me? I find this a little troubling. But at the same time, I know that I have a sense of humor, and many things that happen everyday make me laugh. And I watch mainstream sitcoms - granted, mostly in syndication, which may mean that these are yesterday's sitcoms - but I watch them and I do indeed laugh!
So I hold fast to my assessment of the situation, and say that if Bridesmaids is an example of the best comedy films being made today, then comedy is a lost art in Hollywood. Of course, this is nothing new. My friend Ed has been lamenting for years that the people branded comic geniuses nowadays can't hold a candle to the brainy funnymen and women of days gone by. The likes of Andy Kaufman, for example, are not to be found in the current comic landscape. And Ed watches a lot more comedy than I do, so I trust his assessment of the situation. Our tastes are not always the same, and I do feel like Chris Rock and Margaret Cho, for example, are incredibly funny people. I also don't mind Kathy Griffin.
So I guess the big picture is that there is still plenty going on within the mainstream that entertains me. God knows, I don't spend a lot of time looking for it. But I also don't spend as much time as I could searching out quality entertainment, the rare entertainment experience where I might feel transported and changed and uplifted. For example, I just realized that I haven't read a book from start to finish in more than a month. (gotta put "reading" on the schedule!)
I suppose I could blame it on Facebook and cooking shows and whatever else is taking up my time these days. But another part of me feels like there's no reason to blame anyone. Whatever I am doing, it is filling my needs, and if I need something I am not getting, I will break out of my earthenware routine and go scrounging in the gutters and wherever else looking for it. The internet will probably be involved. So if I get disillusioned by feeling once again out of step with the bland and the nonsensical that is forever being put in front of us as the thing everyone is doing, and I ask you if there's something wrong with me, please ignore the question.
Friday, June 10, 2011
A story of summer heat
Since the heat is so much on my mind, after two straight days of 90-plus temperature and thunderstorms last night, let me tell you about one of my adventures in the heat.
When I was first married, we had no air-conditioning in our spacious Queens apartment. But we had pretty good cross-ventilation, and our first summer together was pretty mild, so we congratulated ourselves on roughing it and saving the cost of buying more appliances.
The next summer, however, there was a blistering heat spell. Sleeping at night bathed in our own sweat became old fast, our moods were dark and tempers frayed during the day. The only relief we had was when we went to our evening jobs at a law firm in an icebox of an office building.
For the weekend during this heat, my friend Ed invited me out to go rollerblading. His friend John was in town, and we would go down to Battery Park City, right next to the water, where there was bound to be a nice ocean breeze. I weighed my options: I could stay home in my apartment with the shades drawn and no breeze, sweltering, suffering with no energy or will to do anything, or I could go out and risk heatstroke from engaging in strenuous exercise with the hot sun bearing down on me. Oh, and did I mention that Saturday was forecast to be the hottest day of the heatspell, with temperatures possible reaching 100 degrees?
Well, I don't know how I spun it to Kristin, my then-wife, but I convinced her that I would be perfectly safe rollerblading with my friends. So off I went. To go with the festive mood of the outing, I wore my new Grateful Dead concert t-shirt that our friend Allyson had gotten for me, at what would prove to the be the Dead's last concert in Madison Square Garden before Jerry Garcia died. I met Ed and John and Ed's wife Ginny, and off we skated, down the westside of Manhattan to Battery Park City. The sun was brilliant, just scorching, but there was also a breeze, a hot breeze but the air was moving at least, and while we were skating, the heat didn't really make an impression on us. And we stopped frequently to just inhale large quantities of water and juice and such.
We skated all over, drenched in sweat and grime before long, climbing over hills and gliding down inclines. We stopped in the middle of the day at a restaurant in Chinatown, one with minimal air conditioning, and just gulped down glass after glass of water. The food's saltiness was just what we needed. After that rest, though we were all a little stiff, we put our skates back on and skated back to the westside pedestrian ramp, and skated back up to the upper Westside, before I left them to get on the subway home.
I must have been a sight when I got home. The Grateful Dead t-shirt had dirt and grime stains on it that would never come out. Kristin was furious that, in retrospect, I had put my life in danger. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. I felt fine, and experienced no ill effects from our skating expedition. And then two days later we gave in and bought a couple of air conditioners. A very civilized thing to do. And everywhere I lived since then, I have been very careful to make sure I spend the hottest days of summer chilling indoors. No use risking heatstroke.
When I was first married, we had no air-conditioning in our spacious Queens apartment. But we had pretty good cross-ventilation, and our first summer together was pretty mild, so we congratulated ourselves on roughing it and saving the cost of buying more appliances.
The next summer, however, there was a blistering heat spell. Sleeping at night bathed in our own sweat became old fast, our moods were dark and tempers frayed during the day. The only relief we had was when we went to our evening jobs at a law firm in an icebox of an office building.
For the weekend during this heat, my friend Ed invited me out to go rollerblading. His friend John was in town, and we would go down to Battery Park City, right next to the water, where there was bound to be a nice ocean breeze. I weighed my options: I could stay home in my apartment with the shades drawn and no breeze, sweltering, suffering with no energy or will to do anything, or I could go out and risk heatstroke from engaging in strenuous exercise with the hot sun bearing down on me. Oh, and did I mention that Saturday was forecast to be the hottest day of the heatspell, with temperatures possible reaching 100 degrees?
Well, I don't know how I spun it to Kristin, my then-wife, but I convinced her that I would be perfectly safe rollerblading with my friends. So off I went. To go with the festive mood of the outing, I wore my new Grateful Dead concert t-shirt that our friend Allyson had gotten for me, at what would prove to the be the Dead's last concert in Madison Square Garden before Jerry Garcia died. I met Ed and John and Ed's wife Ginny, and off we skated, down the westside of Manhattan to Battery Park City. The sun was brilliant, just scorching, but there was also a breeze, a hot breeze but the air was moving at least, and while we were skating, the heat didn't really make an impression on us. And we stopped frequently to just inhale large quantities of water and juice and such.
We skated all over, drenched in sweat and grime before long, climbing over hills and gliding down inclines. We stopped in the middle of the day at a restaurant in Chinatown, one with minimal air conditioning, and just gulped down glass after glass of water. The food's saltiness was just what we needed. After that rest, though we were all a little stiff, we put our skates back on and skated back to the westside pedestrian ramp, and skated back up to the upper Westside, before I left them to get on the subway home.
I must have been a sight when I got home. The Grateful Dead t-shirt had dirt and grime stains on it that would never come out. Kristin was furious that, in retrospect, I had put my life in danger. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. I felt fine, and experienced no ill effects from our skating expedition. And then two days later we gave in and bought a couple of air conditioners. A very civilized thing to do. And everywhere I lived since then, I have been very careful to make sure I spend the hottest days of summer chilling indoors. No use risking heatstroke.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Film in New York
I have for such a long time equated New York City with serious filmgoing that I can't remember a time when I didn't! And while I started going to the movies at such a young age that many of my earliest memories are connected with movie experiences, even before I moved to New York City there was always a certain gravitas (to use Therese's word) around seeing a film here in New York. So it seems only fitting that I tell you about the first movie I remember seeing in New York.
It was the summer of 1973. We had purchased tickets to go see the Mets at Shea Stadium for a Saturday 1:00 game. My dad, my two older brothers and I made the train trip from New Jersey into Manhattan and then took the number 7 train out to Shea. The weather was crummy and it looked like the game might be rained out, but we went there hoping to see a game. As it turned out, the game was rained out, and we waited in line to exchange our rain checks for another game. But the question turned to what we would do with the rest of that day.
The idea of seeing a movie came up, which sounded great. Which movie? I would bet it was my oldest brother Bob who came up with the idea of seeing Jaws. It had just come out, there had been lots of commercials about it, and it was rumored to be gory, which my brothers loved. My dad agreed that we could see it - I would imagine he had a newspaper and was able to find out where in midtown Manhattan it was playing. We took the subway back to midtown and traded our rain check line for a ticketholders line, waiting to get in to one of those huge theaters that used to be all over midtown in those days.
I was poised at the ready from the moment the movie started to cover my eyes with my hands. It wasn't the first time I was going to a movie that my brothers would love but that would most certainly prove to be too scary for me. Just a year earlier my brothers had snuck me into a showing of Willard with them, duping my mom into thinking we were going to see some kid's film that was playing at the same theater. I spent most of those 90 minutes with my hands over my eyes, and walked away with a stomach ache from all the gut-clenching I had done.
But this was supposed to be a high-quality film, not a lowbrow shock feature. And sure enough, from the first scene of teens partying on the beach at night, I was pulled in. And though there were a couple scenes that were too scary for me - the one where Brody and Hooper go out to investigate the boat floating aimlessly at night, and the guy's head pops out of a hole in the bottom of the boat stands out - overall I was awed by the experience, and of course relieved when Brody finally killed the shark at the end.
The movie let out just in time for us to go catch an early dinner at the Horn & Hardart Restaurant in Penn Station, our usual routine after watching ballgames, before hopping on the train back home to New Jersey. My mom was irritated when she found out what my dad had taken us to see - she was particularly worried that it would cause me to have nightmares. Sure enough, when I laid down for my usual 9pm bedtime (hey, I was only 11 at the time!), I found it hard to settle down to sleep. Vague scary images were floating around in my head, and each time I dozed off, they would start to solidify into disturbing storylines of monsters chasing me and such. So after maybe an hour of trying to sleep, I got up and wandered into the living room, where the rest of my family was watching tv.
My confession that I was having trouble sleeping renewed my mom's complaint to my dad about taking us to such a scary film. But she went easy on me, offering me cookies and milk and letting me watch tv until I had settled down enough to go back to sleep. I'll never forget what was on tv: my family was watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, I think on public television. Well, I couldn't understand their accents very well, or get their jokes which were over my head, but still I felt very special, getting to see what was obviously adult fare. The fact that my two older brothers, who are only 2 and 3-1/2 years older than me, were also watching, did not diminish my feeling of being included in adult entertainment watching.
I suppose I did settle down after a couple of chocolate chip cookies and glasses of milk, and then was able to sleep just fine. It would be a number of years until the next time I saw a movie in New York City - off the top of my head, I can't think what the next one was, but it must've been during college, nearly ten years later. That first time made quite an impression. And "Jaws" remains a favorite, the kind of film that, if I am idly watching tv on the weekend, and I notice it's on, I will watch it all the way through without changing the channel.
It was the summer of 1973. We had purchased tickets to go see the Mets at Shea Stadium for a Saturday 1:00 game. My dad, my two older brothers and I made the train trip from New Jersey into Manhattan and then took the number 7 train out to Shea. The weather was crummy and it looked like the game might be rained out, but we went there hoping to see a game. As it turned out, the game was rained out, and we waited in line to exchange our rain checks for another game. But the question turned to what we would do with the rest of that day.
The idea of seeing a movie came up, which sounded great. Which movie? I would bet it was my oldest brother Bob who came up with the idea of seeing Jaws. It had just come out, there had been lots of commercials about it, and it was rumored to be gory, which my brothers loved. My dad agreed that we could see it - I would imagine he had a newspaper and was able to find out where in midtown Manhattan it was playing. We took the subway back to midtown and traded our rain check line for a ticketholders line, waiting to get in to one of those huge theaters that used to be all over midtown in those days.
I was poised at the ready from the moment the movie started to cover my eyes with my hands. It wasn't the first time I was going to a movie that my brothers would love but that would most certainly prove to be too scary for me. Just a year earlier my brothers had snuck me into a showing of Willard with them, duping my mom into thinking we were going to see some kid's film that was playing at the same theater. I spent most of those 90 minutes with my hands over my eyes, and walked away with a stomach ache from all the gut-clenching I had done.
But this was supposed to be a high-quality film, not a lowbrow shock feature. And sure enough, from the first scene of teens partying on the beach at night, I was pulled in. And though there were a couple scenes that were too scary for me - the one where Brody and Hooper go out to investigate the boat floating aimlessly at night, and the guy's head pops out of a hole in the bottom of the boat stands out - overall I was awed by the experience, and of course relieved when Brody finally killed the shark at the end.
The movie let out just in time for us to go catch an early dinner at the Horn & Hardart Restaurant in Penn Station, our usual routine after watching ballgames, before hopping on the train back home to New Jersey. My mom was irritated when she found out what my dad had taken us to see - she was particularly worried that it would cause me to have nightmares. Sure enough, when I laid down for my usual 9pm bedtime (hey, I was only 11 at the time!), I found it hard to settle down to sleep. Vague scary images were floating around in my head, and each time I dozed off, they would start to solidify into disturbing storylines of monsters chasing me and such. So after maybe an hour of trying to sleep, I got up and wandered into the living room, where the rest of my family was watching tv.
My confession that I was having trouble sleeping renewed my mom's complaint to my dad about taking us to such a scary film. But she went easy on me, offering me cookies and milk and letting me watch tv until I had settled down enough to go back to sleep. I'll never forget what was on tv: my family was watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, I think on public television. Well, I couldn't understand their accents very well, or get their jokes which were over my head, but still I felt very special, getting to see what was obviously adult fare. The fact that my two older brothers, who are only 2 and 3-1/2 years older than me, were also watching, did not diminish my feeling of being included in adult entertainment watching.
I suppose I did settle down after a couple of chocolate chip cookies and glasses of milk, and then was able to sleep just fine. It would be a number of years until the next time I saw a movie in New York City - off the top of my head, I can't think what the next one was, but it must've been during college, nearly ten years later. That first time made quite an impression. And "Jaws" remains a favorite, the kind of film that, if I am idly watching tv on the weekend, and I notice it's on, I will watch it all the way through without changing the channel.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Cooking, part three (conclusion)
So after a year-and-a-half, I broke up with that latest girlfriend, and I was on my own for a couple of years, licking my wounds and expanding my cooking repertoire to suit my new palate for meat. A friend gave me a George Foreman grill she wasn't using, and I started grilling chicken breasts and turkey burgers and other things on there once a week or so.
In addition, one of my favorite quick meals became making a dressed up frozen Amy's soy pizza. I would sautee mushrooms, bell pepper and sometimes onions, slice up a chicken sausage, put all that on top of the frozen pizza, sometimes put extra soy mozzarella cheese on if it need it, and bake that in the oven. That would make a very filling meal, especially if I paired it with a nice Belgian ale. I was really getting into drinking beer - after a trip to Belgium in 2007 and subsequent trips to Monks Alehouse in Philadelphia, I was getting spoiled and very particular about what beer I would drink. Mostly, if I was going to drink beer, I only wanted to drink the best.
A year and a half ago, I met Therese, whose love of food equals my own. So of course being together with her means I have gotten to expand my cooking repertoire further than it ever has been before. I have made all the things I've done before for her: chicken pot pies, Thanksgiving side dishes, pasta w/mushrooms and cheesy tomato sauce, baked my famous amazing cookies. And I've done lots of new things. Some have been inspired by things we have seen on the Food Network, like baking Tart Tatin after seeing Jamie Oliver make it over an open fire in France. Some have been inspired by things I love that I've always wanted to make, like paella, which I've now made three times, most recently for Therese's daughter's birthday. Some have come from recipes that Therese has clipped from magazines, like a Moroccan style chicken with cinnamon. And often, now when I want to get an idea of how to cook something, I look it up on the Food Network's website to see how Emeril and Rachel and Pat Burrel, etc. would do it, and then I adapt it to my own tastes!
Therese and I have different philosophies for cooking. Therese is more into feel and adding things as she goes along, and not following a recipe or using the timer to determine when something is done. She lets her nose tell her when a dish is ready. I like to have a recipe and exact measurements and timings as the basis for what I am going to do. Which doesn't mean I am inflexible and will not let myself be inspired to do something that suits me. I just want to make sure that the result is going to be not just tasty, but memorable. Because if a dish comes out tasting really extraordinary, then that is something I will add to my rotating repertoire, and we are going to have it again soon!
In addition, one of my favorite quick meals became making a dressed up frozen Amy's soy pizza. I would sautee mushrooms, bell pepper and sometimes onions, slice up a chicken sausage, put all that on top of the frozen pizza, sometimes put extra soy mozzarella cheese on if it need it, and bake that in the oven. That would make a very filling meal, especially if I paired it with a nice Belgian ale. I was really getting into drinking beer - after a trip to Belgium in 2007 and subsequent trips to Monks Alehouse in Philadelphia, I was getting spoiled and very particular about what beer I would drink. Mostly, if I was going to drink beer, I only wanted to drink the best.
A year and a half ago, I met Therese, whose love of food equals my own. So of course being together with her means I have gotten to expand my cooking repertoire further than it ever has been before. I have made all the things I've done before for her: chicken pot pies, Thanksgiving side dishes, pasta w/mushrooms and cheesy tomato sauce, baked my famous amazing cookies. And I've done lots of new things. Some have been inspired by things we have seen on the Food Network, like baking Tart Tatin after seeing Jamie Oliver make it over an open fire in France. Some have been inspired by things I love that I've always wanted to make, like paella, which I've now made three times, most recently for Therese's daughter's birthday. Some have come from recipes that Therese has clipped from magazines, like a Moroccan style chicken with cinnamon. And often, now when I want to get an idea of how to cook something, I look it up on the Food Network's website to see how Emeril and Rachel and Pat Burrel, etc. would do it, and then I adapt it to my own tastes!
Therese and I have different philosophies for cooking. Therese is more into feel and adding things as she goes along, and not following a recipe or using the timer to determine when something is done. She lets her nose tell her when a dish is ready. I like to have a recipe and exact measurements and timings as the basis for what I am going to do. Which doesn't mean I am inflexible and will not let myself be inspired to do something that suits me. I just want to make sure that the result is going to be not just tasty, but memorable. Because if a dish comes out tasting really extraordinary, then that is something I will add to my rotating repertoire, and we are going to have it again soon!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Cooking, part two
Living on Staten Island in a large apartment in a Victorian house suited me. It was there that I did baking for the first time. I tried making oatmeal raisin cookies from a macrobiotic recipe. They came out horrible. Then I found a recipe in Vegetarian Times for making a chocolate cake with creamy chocolate icing. That one came out pretty good, although I overcooked the cake so it had a crispy crust around. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone to eat the cake, so I had to eat it myself, and it turned stale before I could get through half of it.
As much as I liked living on Staten Island, I was floundering, working a string of low-paying retail jobs. So I turned to education, and left Staten Island to go to graduate school for musicology at Columbia University.
Columbia gave me an off-campus apartment, where I shared with 4 other graduate students, including sharing one refrigerator and one tiny kitchen. I had to be strategic about when I cooked my meals, especially dinner. Two of the guys never really cooked, so that helped.
I spent my 2-1/2 years at Columbia subsisting on very little, since the salary I got for being a student-teacher left little after I paid my rent for doing anything. Typically, my first meal would be in the middle of the day, and consist of a toasted bagel (or two) with margarine. Then for dinner I would have ramen noodles with mixed vegetables, or pasta with spaghetti sauce, or brown rice with beans and vegetables. When I had a little extra, I indulged myself and bought Entenmann's cakes or cookies, using the sugar to stave off the oppressive feeling of being a graduate student.
Near the end of graduate school, the pall of being a student began to lift, and I became a little more adventurous in the kitchen. Under the influence of a friend, I started eating seafood now and then, ordering Chinese shrimp fried rice and such. Also, I experimented with making cheesy-style sauces for my pasta. I knew I shouldn't eat dairy, but if I ate a tiny bit of cheese mixed with margarine and flour and water over my pasta, other than getting a bit of a gravelly voice, I was ok.
After graduate school, I moved to the East Village where I once again cohabitated with some bohemian types. But these people were decidedly more upscale than the ones I had living among in New Brunswick. And food was one of the few things that we spent money on when we had it. One of my roommates, a German guy staying in New York for 6 months for an internship, loved to socialize and entertain. He was always having barbecues on the roof of our building, and he would always make sure to make a skewer for me with no meat on it.
And I was cooking up a storm myself. I baked bread numerous times, baked cookies and muffins, and all in a rickety little convectioner's oven. With Chinatown nearby, I shopped frequently in Asian supermarkets and bought soy-based mock meats and spice packets and hearty noodle dishes.
Then one Thanksgiving, I ate turkey for the first time in probably 8 years. My roommate invited her friends over, and I invited my new girlfriend, and we had a blast. I don't remember what I made, but there was turkey and lots of vegetable dishes, and then one person made a sweetpotato dish with marshmallows that nobody liked but me, so I got to eat all the leftovers of that!
My girlfriend and I got engaged, and then a short time later got married, and we moved in together to an apartment in Flushing, Queens. This was a huge place by New York standards, and included a large eat-in kitchen. Now that I had another person to cook for, I really went to town. I baked cookies. I baked pies. I perfected a number of dairy-free and vegetarian adaptations of dishes I had loved as a kid, like macaroni and cheese and tacos.
But while Kristin and I were together, my dedication to being a vegetarian began to soften. First, at Thanksgiving and Christmastime, we would get a turkey. We told ourselves it was mostly for our pet cats and dogs, so that they could have the treat of having fresh warm meat. But as the years went by, we started eating the turkey more than the animals did!
Next, Kristin was a big fan of getting pre-made hero sandwiches at a local deli. Whenever I didn't have anything planned for lunch, she would grab one of those sandwiches. Then over time, she stopped eating what I made, opting for her deli hero sandwiches. So eventually I gave in and ate the sandwiches sometimes myself. But when I cooked, I would still make vegetarian food, except for those twice yearly turkeys.
After 8 years of marriage, Kristin and I split up and I moved to Brooklyn. As far as appearances were concerned, I told everyone I was still a vegetarian, but now I started occasionally eating meat, especially from fastfood sources. After a year of being on my own, I dated a woman who was supportive of my being a vegetarian, and she even made really delicious vegetarian dishes for me. But she also liked to eat meat on a regular basis. For example, her job working for a university occasionally called for her to attend events that would sometimes include dinner. When one of the options for dinner was filet mignon, she would order that. She really enjoyed her meat, that I could tell. And I wasn't offended by that. On the contrary, I found her relish for chowing into a big steak very sexy.
Unfortunately, my relationship with that woman did not last long. But a year later, I found a new girlfriend. She had a tiny kitchen in her West Village apartment, but we made the most of it. In addition to making lots of the usual things, omelets for breakfast and pasta for dinner and such, we tried making some exotic things, like fresh pesto sauce and chicken pot pies from scratch. And then when Thanksgiving came around, we really went to town: several of her friends came over, and we spent several days making side dishes - cranberry sauce, homemade stuffing logs, sweet and sour red cabbage - leading up to the day, when in addition to making a huge turkey, we made garlic mashed potatoes, haricot verts with slivered almonds, and a beet-centered appetizer that my girlfriend had found in a magazine. And for the crowing touch, the night before Thanksgiving, we peeled, chopped and cored numerous pears and made a huge yummy pear pie with raisins.
By this time, I was no longer identifying myself as a vegetarian. My girlfriend encouraged me to try heavier meats to see what my digestion would tolerate after being a vegetarian for so many years. Eventually, I found lamb was ok, but beef was sitll off-limits. At home on my own, I would still cook mostly vegetarian, although I did begin to buy chicken sausages to put in my pasta rather than vegetarian sausages.
OK this is getting long, so I will finish up the story tomorrow.
As much as I liked living on Staten Island, I was floundering, working a string of low-paying retail jobs. So I turned to education, and left Staten Island to go to graduate school for musicology at Columbia University.
Columbia gave me an off-campus apartment, where I shared with 4 other graduate students, including sharing one refrigerator and one tiny kitchen. I had to be strategic about when I cooked my meals, especially dinner. Two of the guys never really cooked, so that helped.
I spent my 2-1/2 years at Columbia subsisting on very little, since the salary I got for being a student-teacher left little after I paid my rent for doing anything. Typically, my first meal would be in the middle of the day, and consist of a toasted bagel (or two) with margarine. Then for dinner I would have ramen noodles with mixed vegetables, or pasta with spaghetti sauce, or brown rice with beans and vegetables. When I had a little extra, I indulged myself and bought Entenmann's cakes or cookies, using the sugar to stave off the oppressive feeling of being a graduate student.
Near the end of graduate school, the pall of being a student began to lift, and I became a little more adventurous in the kitchen. Under the influence of a friend, I started eating seafood now and then, ordering Chinese shrimp fried rice and such. Also, I experimented with making cheesy-style sauces for my pasta. I knew I shouldn't eat dairy, but if I ate a tiny bit of cheese mixed with margarine and flour and water over my pasta, other than getting a bit of a gravelly voice, I was ok.
After graduate school, I moved to the East Village where I once again cohabitated with some bohemian types. But these people were decidedly more upscale than the ones I had living among in New Brunswick. And food was one of the few things that we spent money on when we had it. One of my roommates, a German guy staying in New York for 6 months for an internship, loved to socialize and entertain. He was always having barbecues on the roof of our building, and he would always make sure to make a skewer for me with no meat on it.
And I was cooking up a storm myself. I baked bread numerous times, baked cookies and muffins, and all in a rickety little convectioner's oven. With Chinatown nearby, I shopped frequently in Asian supermarkets and bought soy-based mock meats and spice packets and hearty noodle dishes.
Then one Thanksgiving, I ate turkey for the first time in probably 8 years. My roommate invited her friends over, and I invited my new girlfriend, and we had a blast. I don't remember what I made, but there was turkey and lots of vegetable dishes, and then one person made a sweetpotato dish with marshmallows that nobody liked but me, so I got to eat all the leftovers of that!
My girlfriend and I got engaged, and then a short time later got married, and we moved in together to an apartment in Flushing, Queens. This was a huge place by New York standards, and included a large eat-in kitchen. Now that I had another person to cook for, I really went to town. I baked cookies. I baked pies. I perfected a number of dairy-free and vegetarian adaptations of dishes I had loved as a kid, like macaroni and cheese and tacos.
But while Kristin and I were together, my dedication to being a vegetarian began to soften. First, at Thanksgiving and Christmastime, we would get a turkey. We told ourselves it was mostly for our pet cats and dogs, so that they could have the treat of having fresh warm meat. But as the years went by, we started eating the turkey more than the animals did!
Next, Kristin was a big fan of getting pre-made hero sandwiches at a local deli. Whenever I didn't have anything planned for lunch, she would grab one of those sandwiches. Then over time, she stopped eating what I made, opting for her deli hero sandwiches. So eventually I gave in and ate the sandwiches sometimes myself. But when I cooked, I would still make vegetarian food, except for those twice yearly turkeys.
After 8 years of marriage, Kristin and I split up and I moved to Brooklyn. As far as appearances were concerned, I told everyone I was still a vegetarian, but now I started occasionally eating meat, especially from fastfood sources. After a year of being on my own, I dated a woman who was supportive of my being a vegetarian, and she even made really delicious vegetarian dishes for me. But she also liked to eat meat on a regular basis. For example, her job working for a university occasionally called for her to attend events that would sometimes include dinner. When one of the options for dinner was filet mignon, she would order that. She really enjoyed her meat, that I could tell. And I wasn't offended by that. On the contrary, I found her relish for chowing into a big steak very sexy.
Unfortunately, my relationship with that woman did not last long. But a year later, I found a new girlfriend. She had a tiny kitchen in her West Village apartment, but we made the most of it. In addition to making lots of the usual things, omelets for breakfast and pasta for dinner and such, we tried making some exotic things, like fresh pesto sauce and chicken pot pies from scratch. And then when Thanksgiving came around, we really went to town: several of her friends came over, and we spent several days making side dishes - cranberry sauce, homemade stuffing logs, sweet and sour red cabbage - leading up to the day, when in addition to making a huge turkey, we made garlic mashed potatoes, haricot verts with slivered almonds, and a beet-centered appetizer that my girlfriend had found in a magazine. And for the crowing touch, the night before Thanksgiving, we peeled, chopped and cored numerous pears and made a huge yummy pear pie with raisins.
By this time, I was no longer identifying myself as a vegetarian. My girlfriend encouraged me to try heavier meats to see what my digestion would tolerate after being a vegetarian for so many years. Eventually, I found lamb was ok, but beef was sitll off-limits. At home on my own, I would still cook mostly vegetarian, although I did begin to buy chicken sausages to put in my pasta rather than vegetarian sausages.
OK this is getting long, so I will finish up the story tomorrow.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Cooking
Well, since I talked about one of my loves, music, on Friday, I though I might go on a bit about one of my others, cooking.
So one of the major events of my young life was when my dad got laid off from his job when I wass around 12, and my mother was forced to go back to work fulltime. Why does this have anything to do with cooking? Previous to my mom going back to work, she made all our meals. The only food I ever made was sandwiches, which during the week meant cold cuts with mustard or Miracle Whip and on the weekend maybe something a little more elaborate like grilled cheese with ham, or maybe a fried egg sandwich with a Kraft American cheese melted on top of it.
But once Mom went back to work, she relied on my brothers and I to get dinner started before she got home. So I started to get a little bit of exposure to what cooking actually was. It might mean taking a pot out of the fridge with all the ingredients already in it, putting it on a burner, bringing it to a simmer and then leaving it on low to cook for a certain amount of time, until Mom came home to finish it. But getting dinner ready might also mean cooking pasta, heating up sauce and a vegetable, for a total of three pots - keeping a watch on all three and determining when each pot was done.
When I went off to college, all my food was prepared for me in the dining hall, so that was really a step backward. The only thing that might involve some creativity was putting together a salad and choosing the dressing. But we were allowed to rent small refrigerators for our dorm rooms, and fill them with rudimentary ingredients to get us through the time when the dining hall was not open. Yes, that was usually just sandwich meat and maybe a slice of leftover pizza, but we felt adventurous to have options in our fridges.
So it wasn't really until I set out on my own after college that I started cooking. The summer after I graduated, I spent a few weeks living with a professor, trying unsuccessfully to get a job in NYC. At the beginning I had some money to contribute to groceries, and so I would buy simple things like tv dinners but also the fixings to make omelets. I still remember what those early omelets were like. First I would get a little margarine melted in a frying pan. Then I would sautee some sliced mushrooms. Then take the mushrooms out, put in some margarine, and start the eggs cooking, throwing in the mushrooms, putting some thin pieces on cheese on, and voila! my omelet. I felt so urbane, so cultured, to be making my omelets.
Of course I could also cook pasta and heat up spaghetti sauce. And make tv dinners. So there was my repertoire! With that I got through half the summer. Then my professor kicked me out - he felt that I wasn't trying hard enough to find a job - so I went to spend another few weeks with an older friend named Jesse. Jesse taught me how to make a variety of simple dishes, like sliced up hotdogs mixed with frozen vegetables warmed up in a pan, and then tossed over rice. He also got me to make something from scratch for the first time, using a recipe: cream of mushroom soup. what a sense of accomplishment I gained from that! And he instilled in me the rule that cleaning up is an important part of any cooking! Considering I am your usual guy who frequently avoids cleaning anything like the plague, this was a revelation; but I took it to heart, and I would say to this day the area where I am most likely to do a good amount of regular cleaning is in the kitchen.
Finally at the end of the summer, still without a job, I had to admit defeat and move back in with my parents. But I got a job in a short amount of time working in a warehouse in New Jersey, and with earning my own money came buying my own food. This occasionally caused some friction, since my mom still dicated the diet for those of us who lived at home. For example, I'll never forget the first time my mom saw me put wheat germ on top of spaghetti sauce. She freaked - "you're ruining my sauce!" she said, even though "her" sauce was probably mostly from a jar. Eventually, she calmed down, and got used to the fact that I could now fend for myself pretty well now, and if I wanted to eat something different from what she was providing, I could buy it and make it.
Luckily, I saved enough money to move out of my parent's house in less than a year. I ran into a high school friend named Pedro who told me about an opening in his apartment. I jumped at the chance. There I was, living in New Brunswick, NJ with two Rutgers students and my friend, who did canvassing for a political organization. As you can imagine, it was a rather primitive setting. And frequently, I was the only one with a regular source of income. So I would take it on myself to collect whatever I could from my roommates and make a grocery run to the supermarket. My repertoire expanded to include some beatnik standards like brown rice and soy sauce and dried beans that my artsy roommates wore as banners of their membership in the counterculture.
Other than the occasional omelet, which might include bacon, I rarely ever cooked anything with meat in the apartment. This worked well, since two of my roommates were vegetarians, the first such animals I had ever studied at close range. My third roommate, ever a protagonist, took the opposite position of eating meat at every opportunity to make my veggie roomies uncomfortable. I took a position somewhere in the middle: I felt sympathetic to my vegetarian roommates sentiments, but I also loved ham sandwiches and chicken legs and bacon, and couldn't imagine going without those things. What would I eat if not meat, I thought.
So there I was, sitting on the fence. But being a vegetarian seemed to fit in with the alternative bohemian lifestyle I was affecting, so before too long I gave in and decided to give it a try. There I was, soaking blackbeans overnight so I could boil them up the next day to eat along with a pot of brown rice and some steamed broccoli. I couldn't help cheating on the diet though, especially when free food was involved. When my parents invited me to come home for dinner, I would eat chicken cacciatore and fresh ham and Swedish meatballs, and love it, without any qualms. Then when I returned to bohemian New Brunswick, I would sheepishly avoid the subject of what had been for dinner.
I became more solidified in my vegetarianism when I got my first job in New York City, and moved there as well, in early 1986. That first job was at Weiser Books, one of the most famous occult bookstores in the US, and I was their new shipping clerk. With all the spirituality and alternative living being promoted there, I encountered a number of vegetarians. And I became good friends with Ed, who as it turned out lived just down the block from me in suburban Staten Island. Ed's girlfriend Ginny actually worked in a healthfood store on Staten Island, and Ed was always bringing wonderful dishes from home for lunch, all vegetarian, and sometimes he would share with me. He was leary of me when it came to the subject of diet, though, because he could tell that it didn't take even the slightest breeze to make me bend back towards meat-eating.
My new roommates on Staten Island were very supportive of my vegetarianism. They had had a previous roommate who had been very allergic to molds, so they were used to having to segregate their food and such from others'. It did confuse them, though, when I would bring home a ham and cheese croissant from Zaro's bakery for my dinner, or accept an offer to share a meatdish that they made.
Another turning point occurred when my next job was with the same healthfood store where Ginny had been working. By then I had determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was allergic to dairy, so in addition to mostly abstaining from meat, I also wanted to abstain from dairy, which meant reading ingredients of anything that I bought in a store. Working in the health food store, Family Health Foods, made finding non-dairy alternatives easier, since most of the people who worked there were vegetarians and also abstained from dairy. In the back of the store, they had a kitchen where they would make lots of popular staples of the American diet, but altered to exclude meat and dairy. Over time, I learned how to make many of these things myself, using soy milk and tahini and nutritional yeast and ground cashews and such to make mock cheeses, and using seitan and textured vegetable protein and such to make mock meats. I got by, and instead of just rice and beans and vegetables, I could make some things that were more interesting, like mock beef stroganoff, so the experience was very empowering for me.
Tomorrow I will pick up the story in the late 1980s and bring it to today.
So one of the major events of my young life was when my dad got laid off from his job when I wass around 12, and my mother was forced to go back to work fulltime. Why does this have anything to do with cooking? Previous to my mom going back to work, she made all our meals. The only food I ever made was sandwiches, which during the week meant cold cuts with mustard or Miracle Whip and on the weekend maybe something a little more elaborate like grilled cheese with ham, or maybe a fried egg sandwich with a Kraft American cheese melted on top of it.
But once Mom went back to work, she relied on my brothers and I to get dinner started before she got home. So I started to get a little bit of exposure to what cooking actually was. It might mean taking a pot out of the fridge with all the ingredients already in it, putting it on a burner, bringing it to a simmer and then leaving it on low to cook for a certain amount of time, until Mom came home to finish it. But getting dinner ready might also mean cooking pasta, heating up sauce and a vegetable, for a total of three pots - keeping a watch on all three and determining when each pot was done.
When I went off to college, all my food was prepared for me in the dining hall, so that was really a step backward. The only thing that might involve some creativity was putting together a salad and choosing the dressing. But we were allowed to rent small refrigerators for our dorm rooms, and fill them with rudimentary ingredients to get us through the time when the dining hall was not open. Yes, that was usually just sandwich meat and maybe a slice of leftover pizza, but we felt adventurous to have options in our fridges.
So it wasn't really until I set out on my own after college that I started cooking. The summer after I graduated, I spent a few weeks living with a professor, trying unsuccessfully to get a job in NYC. At the beginning I had some money to contribute to groceries, and so I would buy simple things like tv dinners but also the fixings to make omelets. I still remember what those early omelets were like. First I would get a little margarine melted in a frying pan. Then I would sautee some sliced mushrooms. Then take the mushrooms out, put in some margarine, and start the eggs cooking, throwing in the mushrooms, putting some thin pieces on cheese on, and voila! my omelet. I felt so urbane, so cultured, to be making my omelets.
Of course I could also cook pasta and heat up spaghetti sauce. And make tv dinners. So there was my repertoire! With that I got through half the summer. Then my professor kicked me out - he felt that I wasn't trying hard enough to find a job - so I went to spend another few weeks with an older friend named Jesse. Jesse taught me how to make a variety of simple dishes, like sliced up hotdogs mixed with frozen vegetables warmed up in a pan, and then tossed over rice. He also got me to make something from scratch for the first time, using a recipe: cream of mushroom soup. what a sense of accomplishment I gained from that! And he instilled in me the rule that cleaning up is an important part of any cooking! Considering I am your usual guy who frequently avoids cleaning anything like the plague, this was a revelation; but I took it to heart, and I would say to this day the area where I am most likely to do a good amount of regular cleaning is in the kitchen.
Finally at the end of the summer, still without a job, I had to admit defeat and move back in with my parents. But I got a job in a short amount of time working in a warehouse in New Jersey, and with earning my own money came buying my own food. This occasionally caused some friction, since my mom still dicated the diet for those of us who lived at home. For example, I'll never forget the first time my mom saw me put wheat germ on top of spaghetti sauce. She freaked - "you're ruining my sauce!" she said, even though "her" sauce was probably mostly from a jar. Eventually, she calmed down, and got used to the fact that I could now fend for myself pretty well now, and if I wanted to eat something different from what she was providing, I could buy it and make it.
Luckily, I saved enough money to move out of my parent's house in less than a year. I ran into a high school friend named Pedro who told me about an opening in his apartment. I jumped at the chance. There I was, living in New Brunswick, NJ with two Rutgers students and my friend, who did canvassing for a political organization. As you can imagine, it was a rather primitive setting. And frequently, I was the only one with a regular source of income. So I would take it on myself to collect whatever I could from my roommates and make a grocery run to the supermarket. My repertoire expanded to include some beatnik standards like brown rice and soy sauce and dried beans that my artsy roommates wore as banners of their membership in the counterculture.
Other than the occasional omelet, which might include bacon, I rarely ever cooked anything with meat in the apartment. This worked well, since two of my roommates were vegetarians, the first such animals I had ever studied at close range. My third roommate, ever a protagonist, took the opposite position of eating meat at every opportunity to make my veggie roomies uncomfortable. I took a position somewhere in the middle: I felt sympathetic to my vegetarian roommates sentiments, but I also loved ham sandwiches and chicken legs and bacon, and couldn't imagine going without those things. What would I eat if not meat, I thought.
So there I was, sitting on the fence. But being a vegetarian seemed to fit in with the alternative bohemian lifestyle I was affecting, so before too long I gave in and decided to give it a try. There I was, soaking blackbeans overnight so I could boil them up the next day to eat along with a pot of brown rice and some steamed broccoli. I couldn't help cheating on the diet though, especially when free food was involved. When my parents invited me to come home for dinner, I would eat chicken cacciatore and fresh ham and Swedish meatballs, and love it, without any qualms. Then when I returned to bohemian New Brunswick, I would sheepishly avoid the subject of what had been for dinner.
I became more solidified in my vegetarianism when I got my first job in New York City, and moved there as well, in early 1986. That first job was at Weiser Books, one of the most famous occult bookstores in the US, and I was their new shipping clerk. With all the spirituality and alternative living being promoted there, I encountered a number of vegetarians. And I became good friends with Ed, who as it turned out lived just down the block from me in suburban Staten Island. Ed's girlfriend Ginny actually worked in a healthfood store on Staten Island, and Ed was always bringing wonderful dishes from home for lunch, all vegetarian, and sometimes he would share with me. He was leary of me when it came to the subject of diet, though, because he could tell that it didn't take even the slightest breeze to make me bend back towards meat-eating.
My new roommates on Staten Island were very supportive of my vegetarianism. They had had a previous roommate who had been very allergic to molds, so they were used to having to segregate their food and such from others'. It did confuse them, though, when I would bring home a ham and cheese croissant from Zaro's bakery for my dinner, or accept an offer to share a meatdish that they made.
Another turning point occurred when my next job was with the same healthfood store where Ginny had been working. By then I had determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was allergic to dairy, so in addition to mostly abstaining from meat, I also wanted to abstain from dairy, which meant reading ingredients of anything that I bought in a store. Working in the health food store, Family Health Foods, made finding non-dairy alternatives easier, since most of the people who worked there were vegetarians and also abstained from dairy. In the back of the store, they had a kitchen where they would make lots of popular staples of the American diet, but altered to exclude meat and dairy. Over time, I learned how to make many of these things myself, using soy milk and tahini and nutritional yeast and ground cashews and such to make mock cheeses, and using seitan and textured vegetable protein and such to make mock meats. I got by, and instead of just rice and beans and vegetables, I could make some things that were more interesting, like mock beef stroganoff, so the experience was very empowering for me.
Tomorrow I will pick up the story in the late 1980s and bring it to today.
Friday, June 3, 2011
My tattoo
Thear years ago I got my first (and only) tattoo. Whenever people see it they ask what or who it is and then I explain to them: it's adapted from a 16th century woodcut of the Renaissance period composer Josquin des Prez. I got it because I'm into his music, but even more so because I am into the music of that time.
I have been passionate about "early"music, i.e., the music of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, since the early '80s. In the fall of my freshman year at Wagner College on Staten Island, NY, I had a terrible cold. I had been in bed for a few days but I was starting to get a little better, well enough to drag myself out of bed and over to the dining hall for dinner to sate my returning appetite.
As I settled into a chair to eat a Reuben sandwich, I noticed a group of about 15 people wearing tuxedos and evening dresses standing off to one side of the room. After a few minutes, they opened music folders and their director led them in singing a couple of pieces from their upcoming concert. I had never heard anything like that before in my life. It was amazing. I had no idea who these people were, and I left the dining hall before I could find out. Later, I saw a flyer for the group's concert, and I wanted to go, but I was painfully shy in those days, and didn't know where the performing space was, so I let it go.
Later in my freshman year, I moved in with a roommate named Adam Stein who was into all kinds of stuff I knew nothing about. He had his own desktop Apple computer, he wore t-shirts with mathematical formulae on them, and he listened to English folk-rock and early music. Well, I never really got into doing anything with his computer, and while I enjoyed math in high school, I didn't have any plans to go any further with it. But I did catch the bug for English folk-rock, and for early music especially.
Once Adam discovered that I was open to listening to his music, he would play it on his stereo when I was around. Then in May, he told me he was going to the Collegium Musicum's concert. Well, as it so happened, in choir I had started dating a girl named Karen who had joined the Collegium Musicum, so I was going too. This concert of the music of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso was an eye-opening experience. This was the same music that had enthralled me on that day in the previous fall. While listening to the few albums my roommate had of Medieval and Renaissance music was cool, this was music that I wanted to know everything about. I wanted to sing this music.
The problem was that the Collegium Musicum was for only those music students who were advanced, who could hold a part all by themselves. I.e., mostly juniors and seniors. And here I was just finishing my freshman year. Plus, I had only started learning to read music since I came to Wagner. The director of the Collegium could see my enthusiasm to join the group, so he agreed to let me in, on a probationary basis. And I agreed to take some music courses the following year to build my musical skills.
Well, the rest, to paraphrase the worn-out cliche, is my history. I went to my first concert of professional singers, the group Pomerium Musices, singing the music of Johannes Ockeghem a few months later, and once again I was blown away. Early music became the focus of my life at school, and eventually I became a music major and graduated with honors in music with the goal to make early music my lifelong focus.
Well, it hasn't worked out that way exactly, but neither have I at any time not had early music in my life. I did get a masters degree from Columbia University in musicology, but while there I soured on the idea of becoming an academic and teaching music. I had doubts about whether I was skilled enough as a performer to make a living at it, so I took the easy way out and went to work in corporate America, as a paralegal and later secretary for big New York law firms. Over time I amassed a huge library of recordings of early music, and I have sung with various amateur early music groups here in New York City, and still do so.
Starting in the mid-80s, I also developed a specialty in the field: Gregorian chant, or as I prefer to call it, plainchant. While working at my first New York City job, as a shipping and receiving clerk at an occult bookstore in 1986, I heard of a chant choir starting up. Well, I had always been told that most Renaissance music is based on chant, so I thought that if I really wanted to understand Renaissance music, I should develop a knowledge of chant as well. Once again, I had an epiphany experience. Singing chant was deep and meditative and just the right thing for me. I stayed with that group, under the direction of my friend and mentor Rembert Herbert, for about 13 years, and by the time the group disbanded in 1999, I was the group's assistant director and cantor along with Rembert.
When Rembert's group ceased to exist, I saw my opportunity to make my own way in the music world, by having my own chant choir and teaching people about chant. It hasn't worked out exactly as I envisioned it; however, I did put together a concert of chant a few years ago which we recorded and the whole project showed a lot of promise. Out of that experience came the idea of creating the Chant Project. I still have domain names reserved to start a website for the Chant Project and hopes to get it going as an ongoing performing group, but have yet to begin building it as I would like.
But recent developments are making it more likely that I will finally use my musical abilities and possibly make a living from them at long last. After 18 years working for law firms it became clear that my heart just wasn't in being a legal secretary any more. So the question arose - what then? After thinking about it, I thought, why not bring my administrative skillls that I have built up over the years to a musical or performing arts organization? Unfortunately, that is easier said than done; but I am now in the process of volunteering with some performing arts organizations with the goal to impress the right person at the right time with my abilities and then find a paying longterm position as a result.
Oh, we were talking about my tattoo, right? Well, you can see why of all the things I could've put on my body, I chose a Renaissance composer. To say that it has meaning for me doesn't come close to describing how I feel. How do I feel when I sing those ancient melodies, in concord with others making incredible pure intervals, reviving music that was created so early in the development of our Western culture? I feel alive, more than emotional, at peace, useful. I feel like I am where I am supposed to be. I am home.
I have been passionate about "early"music, i.e., the music of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, since the early '80s. In the fall of my freshman year at Wagner College on Staten Island, NY, I had a terrible cold. I had been in bed for a few days but I was starting to get a little better, well enough to drag myself out of bed and over to the dining hall for dinner to sate my returning appetite.
As I settled into a chair to eat a Reuben sandwich, I noticed a group of about 15 people wearing tuxedos and evening dresses standing off to one side of the room. After a few minutes, they opened music folders and their director led them in singing a couple of pieces from their upcoming concert. I had never heard anything like that before in my life. It was amazing. I had no idea who these people were, and I left the dining hall before I could find out. Later, I saw a flyer for the group's concert, and I wanted to go, but I was painfully shy in those days, and didn't know where the performing space was, so I let it go.
Later in my freshman year, I moved in with a roommate named Adam Stein who was into all kinds of stuff I knew nothing about. He had his own desktop Apple computer, he wore t-shirts with mathematical formulae on them, and he listened to English folk-rock and early music. Well, I never really got into doing anything with his computer, and while I enjoyed math in high school, I didn't have any plans to go any further with it. But I did catch the bug for English folk-rock, and for early music especially.
Once Adam discovered that I was open to listening to his music, he would play it on his stereo when I was around. Then in May, he told me he was going to the Collegium Musicum's concert. Well, as it so happened, in choir I had started dating a girl named Karen who had joined the Collegium Musicum, so I was going too. This concert of the music of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso was an eye-opening experience. This was the same music that had enthralled me on that day in the previous fall. While listening to the few albums my roommate had of Medieval and Renaissance music was cool, this was music that I wanted to know everything about. I wanted to sing this music.
The problem was that the Collegium Musicum was for only those music students who were advanced, who could hold a part all by themselves. I.e., mostly juniors and seniors. And here I was just finishing my freshman year. Plus, I had only started learning to read music since I came to Wagner. The director of the Collegium could see my enthusiasm to join the group, so he agreed to let me in, on a probationary basis. And I agreed to take some music courses the following year to build my musical skills.
Well, the rest, to paraphrase the worn-out cliche, is my history. I went to my first concert of professional singers, the group Pomerium Musices, singing the music of Johannes Ockeghem a few months later, and once again I was blown away. Early music became the focus of my life at school, and eventually I became a music major and graduated with honors in music with the goal to make early music my lifelong focus.
Well, it hasn't worked out that way exactly, but neither have I at any time not had early music in my life. I did get a masters degree from Columbia University in musicology, but while there I soured on the idea of becoming an academic and teaching music. I had doubts about whether I was skilled enough as a performer to make a living at it, so I took the easy way out and went to work in corporate America, as a paralegal and later secretary for big New York law firms. Over time I amassed a huge library of recordings of early music, and I have sung with various amateur early music groups here in New York City, and still do so.
Starting in the mid-80s, I also developed a specialty in the field: Gregorian chant, or as I prefer to call it, plainchant. While working at my first New York City job, as a shipping and receiving clerk at an occult bookstore in 1986, I heard of a chant choir starting up. Well, I had always been told that most Renaissance music is based on chant, so I thought that if I really wanted to understand Renaissance music, I should develop a knowledge of chant as well. Once again, I had an epiphany experience. Singing chant was deep and meditative and just the right thing for me. I stayed with that group, under the direction of my friend and mentor Rembert Herbert, for about 13 years, and by the time the group disbanded in 1999, I was the group's assistant director and cantor along with Rembert.
When Rembert's group ceased to exist, I saw my opportunity to make my own way in the music world, by having my own chant choir and teaching people about chant. It hasn't worked out exactly as I envisioned it; however, I did put together a concert of chant a few years ago which we recorded and the whole project showed a lot of promise. Out of that experience came the idea of creating the Chant Project. I still have domain names reserved to start a website for the Chant Project and hopes to get it going as an ongoing performing group, but have yet to begin building it as I would like.
But recent developments are making it more likely that I will finally use my musical abilities and possibly make a living from them at long last. After 18 years working for law firms it became clear that my heart just wasn't in being a legal secretary any more. So the question arose - what then? After thinking about it, I thought, why not bring my administrative skillls that I have built up over the years to a musical or performing arts organization? Unfortunately, that is easier said than done; but I am now in the process of volunteering with some performing arts organizations with the goal to impress the right person at the right time with my abilities and then find a paying longterm position as a result.
Oh, we were talking about my tattoo, right? Well, you can see why of all the things I could've put on my body, I chose a Renaissance composer. To say that it has meaning for me doesn't come close to describing how I feel. How do I feel when I sing those ancient melodies, in concord with others making incredible pure intervals, reviving music that was created so early in the development of our Western culture? I feel alive, more than emotional, at peace, useful. I feel like I am where I am supposed to be. I am home.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Taxi Hell
When my girlfriend Therese had trouble getting home last night by taxi, it reminded me of one of the craziest experiences I ever had with a taxi. Every New Yorker has at least one of these stories, and here's mine.
It was the night of my firm's Christmas party. The party had been a great one, probably the most fun party I've ever attended put on by a place that I worked. Part of what made it fun was that I genuinely enjoyed spending time with the people I worked with. I had many friends at that firm - in fact, I'm still friends with some of these people.
As the party started winding down, a handful of us started talking about going somewhere else for a drink or two to finish off the night. One guy, P (I'll just use initials to protect people's identity), knew of a great club in the meatpacking district - it was hard to get in, but he knew someone who worked there, so if we went with him, we would get in. In total, there were 5 of us who wanted to go, so we had to split up and go in 2 cabs: P and a lady in the first cab, me and A and E, two other young ladies, in the second cab.
Our party was at a restaurant in Battery Park City, not that far from the club in the meatpacking district, so it seemed like no big deal. So away we went. Our cabby decided to take the westside highway - he thought it would be quicker than taking side streets or whatever. Cool.
Well, we are on the Westside Highway, when a tractor trailer sideswipes our cab on the left side. We hardly felt it, but the cabby was enraged. As the tractor trailer pulled ahead of us, the cabby was cursing and trying to catch up with him so he could get the trailer to stop and give him satisfaction. The exit that would take us to our club went flying by. We yelled at the cabby but he was oblivious to us. He was focussed on catching the trailer.
We kept yelling at him to drop us off, but he was convinced that his chance at catching the trailer was dependant on not stopping for any reason. By now the 3 of us were yelling at him constantly to let us off and he was yelling back in broken English (I believe he was Indian or Pakistani). Meanwhile, there was another drama developing in the cab. A's boyfriend had been annoyed that she was going to the Christmas party rather than spending the evening with him, so he had gone out with his friends. A had told him she would call him after the party to meet up with him somewhere and then go home together. She had been calling him over and over again, but he had not answered. She was convinced that he was angry with her and ignoring her calls. E and I were trying to convince her that he was probably having a great time with his friends and had turned his phone off or left it somewhere where he could not hear it ringing. Our efforts to calm her were unsuccessful. A was on the verge of bursting into tears.
And our taxi kept speeding north, now miles away from where P and his passenger were probably already enjoying a drink and wondering where we were. Finally, when we reached midtown, the cabdriver got in touch with his dispatcher, who told him to stop chasing the tractor trailer. OK, we thought, now we can get the driver to turn around and drive us back to the club. But no. The second thing the dispatcher said was to park the cab and wait for a towtruck to come get the taxi. We couldn't believe it. On top of driving us miles and miles out of our way, this taxi was now going to just leave us on the side of the highway? Couldn't he at least take us to a main street where we could more likely get another taxi. No, he could not.
This was more than we could bear. We told the taxi driver we wouldn't pay him. He yelled and cursed at us. We yelled and cursed at him. Finally, we gave him half of what we owed him. He yelled and cursed at us some more. We yelled and cursed at him. My throat was now sore from all the yelling I was doing. He threatened to attack one of the ladies, and the three of us assured him that if he laid a hand on any of us, all three of us would beat him senseless. In fact, we told him, as mad as we were, he better just get back in his taxi before we lost control and started beating on him!
Finally, we walked away and started looking for another cab. Luckily, it didn't take long for us to find one. By now, it was more than an hour since we had left the Christmas party. We were sure P had given up on us. Our taxi roared down the side streets, pulled up in front of the club, and of course P was nowhere to be seen, the person he had told us to ask for wasn't working at the club that night, so we couldn't get in. It didn't matter anyway, really, since by now A was bawling - she had called her boyfriend another 20 times and he hadn't answered her calls, and she was convinced that he was breaking up with her. E said they would drop me off and then she would take A home. A short time later they dropped me off in front of one of my favorite bars, where I had a couple of beers to wash out of my mind the images of the worst taxi experience of my life.
It was the night of my firm's Christmas party. The party had been a great one, probably the most fun party I've ever attended put on by a place that I worked. Part of what made it fun was that I genuinely enjoyed spending time with the people I worked with. I had many friends at that firm - in fact, I'm still friends with some of these people.
As the party started winding down, a handful of us started talking about going somewhere else for a drink or two to finish off the night. One guy, P (I'll just use initials to protect people's identity), knew of a great club in the meatpacking district - it was hard to get in, but he knew someone who worked there, so if we went with him, we would get in. In total, there were 5 of us who wanted to go, so we had to split up and go in 2 cabs: P and a lady in the first cab, me and A and E, two other young ladies, in the second cab.
Our party was at a restaurant in Battery Park City, not that far from the club in the meatpacking district, so it seemed like no big deal. So away we went. Our cabby decided to take the westside highway - he thought it would be quicker than taking side streets or whatever. Cool.
Well, we are on the Westside Highway, when a tractor trailer sideswipes our cab on the left side. We hardly felt it, but the cabby was enraged. As the tractor trailer pulled ahead of us, the cabby was cursing and trying to catch up with him so he could get the trailer to stop and give him satisfaction. The exit that would take us to our club went flying by. We yelled at the cabby but he was oblivious to us. He was focussed on catching the trailer.
We kept yelling at him to drop us off, but he was convinced that his chance at catching the trailer was dependant on not stopping for any reason. By now the 3 of us were yelling at him constantly to let us off and he was yelling back in broken English (I believe he was Indian or Pakistani). Meanwhile, there was another drama developing in the cab. A's boyfriend had been annoyed that she was going to the Christmas party rather than spending the evening with him, so he had gone out with his friends. A had told him she would call him after the party to meet up with him somewhere and then go home together. She had been calling him over and over again, but he had not answered. She was convinced that he was angry with her and ignoring her calls. E and I were trying to convince her that he was probably having a great time with his friends and had turned his phone off or left it somewhere where he could not hear it ringing. Our efforts to calm her were unsuccessful. A was on the verge of bursting into tears.
And our taxi kept speeding north, now miles away from where P and his passenger were probably already enjoying a drink and wondering where we were. Finally, when we reached midtown, the cabdriver got in touch with his dispatcher, who told him to stop chasing the tractor trailer. OK, we thought, now we can get the driver to turn around and drive us back to the club. But no. The second thing the dispatcher said was to park the cab and wait for a towtruck to come get the taxi. We couldn't believe it. On top of driving us miles and miles out of our way, this taxi was now going to just leave us on the side of the highway? Couldn't he at least take us to a main street where we could more likely get another taxi. No, he could not.
This was more than we could bear. We told the taxi driver we wouldn't pay him. He yelled and cursed at us. We yelled and cursed at him. Finally, we gave him half of what we owed him. He yelled and cursed at us some more. We yelled and cursed at him. My throat was now sore from all the yelling I was doing. He threatened to attack one of the ladies, and the three of us assured him that if he laid a hand on any of us, all three of us would beat him senseless. In fact, we told him, as mad as we were, he better just get back in his taxi before we lost control and started beating on him!
Finally, we walked away and started looking for another cab. Luckily, it didn't take long for us to find one. By now, it was more than an hour since we had left the Christmas party. We were sure P had given up on us. Our taxi roared down the side streets, pulled up in front of the club, and of course P was nowhere to be seen, the person he had told us to ask for wasn't working at the club that night, so we couldn't get in. It didn't matter anyway, really, since by now A was bawling - she had called her boyfriend another 20 times and he hadn't answered her calls, and she was convinced that he was breaking up with her. E said they would drop me off and then she would take A home. A short time later they dropped me off in front of one of my favorite bars, where I had a couple of beers to wash out of my mind the images of the worst taxi experience of my life.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Can Wednesday be friends day?
OK, I have no idea what friends day might be, except maybe a day to get back in touch with friends.
And true enough, there are any number of people I would call my friends who I haven't corresponded with in quite a long time. Back in the day, I used to write letters to my best friends wherever they were, long rambling accounts of everything going on in my life at the time. And some people would write me back.
Nowadays, Facebook and Email and so forth make it possible for me to expend a minimal amount of energy and make a connection, however superficial, with friends far and wide.
Of course, the definition of what constitutes a friend has changed, however slightly. Instead of having to wait until I encounter someone in the flesh to do the usual things one does to establish a friendship - meet, talk, establish common ground, share a common experience - now with Facebook I call someone a friend right after I have established from looking at their profile that we may have some common ground.
And as Therese reminded me the other day, you really don't know people just from trading quips with them on Facebook. I agree with that statement, but with a qualification. My qualification being that the relationship you establish with someone in cyberspace is a real relationship; but it is not the same thing as having a face-to-face relationship.
I can remember when I was using Match.com to date, having numerous experiences of there being a disconnect between the cyber relationship and the face-to-face. In exchanging a handful of emails, I would get the sense that I had a great rapport with a lady, but after spending no more than two minutes in the actual presence of this same person, I was bored or uncomfortable and had no expectation that spending more time in their presence was going to change that first impression.
I guess part of it is the time factor. Maybe it's easier to be suave or witty or sound interesting when you have the time to compose an email that makes you seem that way. Even in a chatroom, you have the chance to proofread your contribution to a conversation before you hit "send." But in the actual presence of a real-life person, you have to think on your feet. All the details of what the person likes to eat and where they've travelled and who their favorite movie actor is escape you, and you have to make things up as you go along, and lots of people in this day and age of texting and Tweeting do not have that ability.
I guess there's no real way of bridging that very real distant between me and someone at another computer somewhere else in the world, and remaining in cyberspace. As much as we love our tools, in order to establish a real lasting friendship, the laptop and the Blackberry/iPhone have to be put aside. That is of course assuming that we want a real lasting friendship. Personally, when I have the chance, I will jump at it to put a face and personality to the person I've met in cyberspace.
For example, I have travelled to Washington DC, Chicago, Florida and Nebraska to meet people I had befriended on cigar boards. And I haven't been disappointed in any of those cases. Which is not to say that I am going to hop back on a plane or train and visit all of those people again. It is true that some people, some friends, are more interesting and friendly from a distance. And that's cool too.
And true enough, there are any number of people I would call my friends who I haven't corresponded with in quite a long time. Back in the day, I used to write letters to my best friends wherever they were, long rambling accounts of everything going on in my life at the time. And some people would write me back.
Nowadays, Facebook and Email and so forth make it possible for me to expend a minimal amount of energy and make a connection, however superficial, with friends far and wide.
Of course, the definition of what constitutes a friend has changed, however slightly. Instead of having to wait until I encounter someone in the flesh to do the usual things one does to establish a friendship - meet, talk, establish common ground, share a common experience - now with Facebook I call someone a friend right after I have established from looking at their profile that we may have some common ground.
And as Therese reminded me the other day, you really don't know people just from trading quips with them on Facebook. I agree with that statement, but with a qualification. My qualification being that the relationship you establish with someone in cyberspace is a real relationship; but it is not the same thing as having a face-to-face relationship.
I can remember when I was using Match.com to date, having numerous experiences of there being a disconnect between the cyber relationship and the face-to-face. In exchanging a handful of emails, I would get the sense that I had a great rapport with a lady, but after spending no more than two minutes in the actual presence of this same person, I was bored or uncomfortable and had no expectation that spending more time in their presence was going to change that first impression.
I guess part of it is the time factor. Maybe it's easier to be suave or witty or sound interesting when you have the time to compose an email that makes you seem that way. Even in a chatroom, you have the chance to proofread your contribution to a conversation before you hit "send." But in the actual presence of a real-life person, you have to think on your feet. All the details of what the person likes to eat and where they've travelled and who their favorite movie actor is escape you, and you have to make things up as you go along, and lots of people in this day and age of texting and Tweeting do not have that ability.
I guess there's no real way of bridging that very real distant between me and someone at another computer somewhere else in the world, and remaining in cyberspace. As much as we love our tools, in order to establish a real lasting friendship, the laptop and the Blackberry/iPhone have to be put aside. That is of course assuming that we want a real lasting friendship. Personally, when I have the chance, I will jump at it to put a face and personality to the person I've met in cyberspace.
For example, I have travelled to Washington DC, Chicago, Florida and Nebraska to meet people I had befriended on cigar boards. And I haven't been disappointed in any of those cases. Which is not to say that I am going to hop back on a plane or train and visit all of those people again. It is true that some people, some friends, are more interesting and friendly from a distance. And that's cool too.
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