Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

Date : 12/27/08 Found : $8.75 in second car of 1:23pm off-peak Mid-Town Direct to Penn Station Current Status : Colin McGrath's tip jar after performance at Rockwood Music Hall, Allen Street, LES, Manhattan.

James E. Campbell, the principal of my all-American white trash rodeo of a high school, had devised a fool-proof system to guarantee posters hung on campus were official: he would sign them all in the lower right-hand corner. Unfortunately for James, I had fifteen periods of Graphic Art Shop a week and a hellbent obsession to plaster Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd lyrics up and down the corridors of higher learning. I mean, how deep is it when Robert Plant sings? I had a responsibility to spread the genius.  (I saw a lion he was standing alone with a tadpole in a jar.) Graphic art shop nestled across the hall from Wood Shop, Metal Shop and Ag Shop. I did a little stint in Wood Shop but sniffing glue in the backroom with the rest of the class really wasn't my thing. Metal shop doubled as a free labor internment auto mechanic camp for the bus depot. And the Aggies kept to themselves, identifiable in their gang 4H jackets. But graphic art shop, well, it featured some interesting advantag...

Foregoing the bliss of ignorance, I stepped up to the newspaper machine.  Clink. I deposited quarters in the slot, pulled open the hinged door. The newspapers were piled up inside. I leaned over and grabbed one. My glasses fell off and landed inside the machine. The door slammed shut.

Bubby R always said Great-Bubby Frimmer hoisted thrifty to a radically new level. Fabric shopping with her... oy vey. It always turned into a farshlepte krenk already. She'd haggle with the clerk at Woolworths, for the love of Got. Suddenly, I recalled this ancient family kvetching in the middle of the whole affair on Canal Street. Actually I was on Broadway, just south of that enormous kinky reggae impenetrable sidewalk swarm that goes on down there 24-7. But I was not there to buy a Rastafarian bobblehead. I was there because I couldn't go back to the Lower East Side, where I had overwhelmed myself in the claustrophobic labyrinth textile warehouse firetraps. They made me all shvitsy. I suffered a panic attack in the woolens aisle and had to call Lynn to talk me down. That's why I went on the Yelp! and pinpointed a fabric storefront of managable proportion. Despite the risks to my psychological well-being, I was hellbent for Velvet. I had this grand vision to create a deca...

One Wooden Sword (Painted) Two Handbags (Black Coach and Decadent Fuchsia Number) One Seasoned Fish Head on a Stake with Tinsel One Small Treasure Chest Containing Spices (Cinnamon, Nutmeg) and eight Chuckie Cheese Golden Tokens One Black Lace Shawl Turret-less Brownie Castle that keeps getting smaller every time I go in the kitchen.

No one would ever accuse me of being slightly OCD because slightly is an adjective I rarely manage to achieve. Right now I'm all over CraigsList again. But this time, I'm the buyer. I got the crazy flipper fingers scrolling through lists of used furniture and household oddities at least twice a day. Ha ha, you know I meant every twelve minutes. When I hit refresh, bloop bloop bloop, day or night, new posts dance before my eyes like sugar plum fairies. Good clean fun only available within densely populated areas. All these things I never dreamed I could drag home for such small scheckle. So far, I've bought Christmas lights ($10), an electric disco ball ($10), a fuzzy rug ($90), an iron ($5), a fancy teapot ($20) and aromotherapy essentials ($5). This is where the hangers come in. The ad said the hangers were new, wooden, 80 for $30. I asked if I could get 40ish for $15. Seller agreed to the terms. Except she had a trick up her mild-mannered sleeve. I had to throw away my la...

Date: 11/25/08 Found: One Dime in Second Floor Ladies Room, 1719 Route 10 East, Parsippany NJ. Current Status: In back right pants pocket of brown chinos, hanging in closet at residence.

What I find most remarkable about the tourists walking on the sidewalk in Manhattan, god bless their economic contribution, is their solid refusal to accept that they are not riding in a car. They are nakedly vehicle-less on the crowded streets, meandering along sandwiched between millions of us actually trying to get someplace on time. Current Working Hypothesis: Tourists in denial: although on foot, retain delusion they are somehow in automobile. Two Preliminary Observations Supporting Hypothesis: Families cluster on the sidewalk as if they were enclosed by a four-door sedan. Dad on left, mom on right, two kids in the back. Out-of-towner discussions ensue as if occurring inside a car with the windows rolled up. Case Study: Fanny-pack woman on a street corner waiting for light to change waves around a map and exclaims, "Where are we? I think the Empire State Building must not be on this street. I said we should have turned back there." Her husband replies, "No, I think ...

Power Tools with less than 10,000 rpm motors Big Black Houseflies in autumn Decisions made by a committee Tourists on the sidewalk in midtown Skis in deep wet powder Nightfall in mid-summer Robitussin pouring into the little dosing cup The Acceptance of Change Karma going around and coming around Tractors on the highway

I had a little problem with truancy growing up. There were key reasons for this: School started hella early. I had largely figured out how to successfully stay under the radar and not go to school, or not go to school until after lunch period, at least three days a week. So showing up at 0-dark-hundred hours for the other two days really cut into my busy schedule, as well as disrupted my biorhythms. I had fifteen periods of graphic art shop a week my senior year and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep myself entertained. In case you haven't figured this out by now, we lived in bumfuck. The same percentage of my graduating class went to college as went to jail. There were no AP classes, no fun electives, no clubs (except 4H) and the principal would at one point be hospitalized for mental instability. Avoiding school attendance is actually easier than you might imagine. Mostly, the trick is in the planning. You have to put on your Dr. Evil cap early... as in the year befor...

Date: 11/15/08 Found: One Dime in back pocket of pants purchased at HousingWorks Sample Sale on 17th Street Current Status: Still in same pants pocket. Date: 11/14/08 Found: One Nickel near Cashier 26 at Whole Foods on 7th Ave by 25th Street. Current Status: Gave to bartender in lobby of Rubin Museum as part of tip for good Mohito.

Today is National Corduroy Day. Hail the Wale! I did not indulge in any festivities. Frankly there were none. Celebrating is such a waste of time anyway, I used the hours and got busy with some more productive endeavors. Like I took a moment to ascertain the contents of my desk at work in a proactive fashion. Seems I've collected one entire drawer full of extra footwear. Mostly sneakers, but a few clogs wormed their way into the mix. Sometimes an office worker just needs an emergency change of shoes and it is important to be fully prepared. Either that or my shoes at home are escaping the lousy closet conditions by migrating to my office. I also have a drawer full of cereal (hot & cold), a drawer mostly full of pants and another drawer where I store papers people have given me which don't really look that interesting. The papers are organized chronologically, oldest on the bottom. I'm thinking when the drawer fills up I'll probably recycle them.

On January 5, 1970, my great-grandfather, Louis, dropped dead from a heart attack at the corner of 7th Avenue and 28th Street. He had just come from the subway. Personally, I would never take the subway to 28th Street, as this would require the #1 train and everybody knows yo' mamma can waddle faster than the #1 train. My great-tseidy must have hopped the #2 into Manhattan from his apartment in the Bronx, and then switched at Penn Station on 31st. Why he just didn't schlepp the last three blocks on the sidewalk confounds me. Maybe it was really cold out. Over the summer, I was taking my own advice and clipping down 7th streetside, when I spied a lost penny on or about the historic 28th street block. I picked it up. It turned out to be a 1942 Wheat Penny. The scene was very dramatic in my own mind. I toted the penny home and lined it up in a row of other important streetfinds: two large washers, and two bolts, one of them hollow. I had a few words with my Uncle George, a numisma...

When I came home from work yesterday, I would have parked in the driveway except for this ginormous blown-down tree. Here's a tally of how much Tom owes me: On Saturday, I told Tom he should move his car from its normal parking spot or I would probably burn a hole in it. He begrudgingly complied. He was very "busy" upstairs playing with his computer. I noticed his sour look despite my welding helmet, which really does a number on your capacity for astute observations. I crank it up to the max-14 total-darkness setting. Which is why I have a tendency to weld thumbs and fiberglass autobodies. Tom re-parked completely over on the bleeding edge of the driveway. He knows this. Later that afternoon, we went to the City for a long weekend. Which meant Tom's car was still parked way over there when the tree fell down. And crushed the exact spot where Tom's car has normally been parked every single day since forever. After I paused in stunned surprise and quietly google-ey...

While vacuuming: "Wow, look at this little Hoover go. It really sucks! ...I mean, in a good way." .

We were ten minutes late for the 7pm appearance of John Hodgman at the Barnes and Noble on Union Square. Luckily, John Hodgman was also late. At first, I was happy we didn't miss anything, but then I started to wonder how many Karma points I had redeemed in the transaction. This bothered me until I found two shiny pennies on the street on the way home and I knew I was square with the gods. To keep the mostly pasty-white and bespeckled geekmo crowd occupied until his tardy arrival, Hodgman had commissioned an opening act, a folk singer named Jonathan Coulton . Later, we learned that Jonathan had been born feral and raised by woodland creatures in Connecticut, but outwardly he exhibited few traces of his seedy past. Except his buckskin shirt and Davy Crockett hat. Initially, I enjoyed Coulton's songster antics with an air of flighty inattention, but when he recited all the U.S. presidents in precise historical order, I realized the act was a potential Learning Experience. John H...

What if you were riding on the train with your husband, or anybody really, sitting in one of the butt-to-butt two-seater benches. The window on the left and a metal arm rest on the right sandwich you both in place pretty squishy-like. And what if somebody rolls up and asks if they could sit down between you. "Excuse me, could you shove over a bit? I can get in there. I know I can get in there." They try to Vulcan mindtrick you into believing they can mash their whole self into the two-inch sliver of unoccupied space on the bench seat. Maybe they'd like clench their hiney cheeks together in an effort to appear less horizontal. You'd be like, say what? and get all scowly-eyed and intractable. Or maybe you'd pull a New York and pretend you didn't hear anybody talking in hopes they just silently give up and go away. I ruminated for an hour over this possible circumstance. I have to plan out my reaction just in case.

A photo of Michael and Tom at the Festival of 504 Lights last Saturday came out great, some even describing it as "amazing." The picture, part of a larger work-in-progress by the visionary self-portraitist Michael, was taken at approximately 11pm and represents the zeitgeist of that twilight hour... the time betwixt the first cocktail and the one right before a hard-nippled gentleman of the hands-on variety started whipping out his junk in the backyard. "Michael spent an inordinate amount of time in the planning and conceptual phases of the photograph," said bystanders close to the shoot location. "He said he strove to achieve an allegoric representation of the unbearable lightness of being." Experts are divided as to the artistic inspirations underpinning the photograph. The largest opinion pool posits that both the choice of subjects, the pose and the moodiful lighting closely emulates the famous Charles and Georges Durand-Ruel painted in 1882 by Pierr...

Subsequent to The Giant Green Chair Catastrophe of 2002, I am fully onboard with the notion that bringing home measurements and fabric swatches is a worthwhile pursuit. Things look different in real life than they do in the store. Which is why I asked Rick, the excitable carpet salesman, if I could take a slice of #63 Honeydew Flotaki carpet to test it out in situ. To my dimay, Rick claimed he didn't have any Honeydew for take-out. What a pill. Yet I was not to be deterred, launching immediately into a persuasive and rational dissertation on why Rick should spare me a square. Certainly he could count on me to return it. I have a well-deserved reputation for bringing back carpet swatches, even when nobody wants them back and is frankly surprised when I show up with a pile of matted pile. I made it clear to Rick that I'm a relentless, guilt-ridden greenie and carpet is made from a petroleum derivative. Rick remained steely-eyed, limp wristed and completely unmoved by my unimpeach...

Sirloin Porterhouse T-Bone Rump Roast '

My brother Sethie calls me up: "Did Mom call you?" "About Dad?" "Yeah. And the Dots." "I don't know if it's possible to be addicted to Dots." "So did you figure out why she thinks he's addicted to Dots?" "He buys them in bulk from the Mennonites. And he eats a whole box while he's driving." "Oh." "Yeah."

About half my Facebook Friends have the last name "Thomas." They happen to be my cousins. My prodigious uncles discharged a goodly number of little Thomases into the world wide web. Or maybe I just don't have a whole lot of other friends, thus increasing the proportion of Same Last Namers in my overall Facebook Friend pool. The Facebook is smart. As well as forward thinking. And interested in geneology for the purpose of bringing kinfolk together. It gave my Friend list the once over and must have noticed I have a thing for 15 - 25 year-old pisanos sporting the "Thomas" surname. A little notice popped up identifying "People I Might Want To Add to My Friends." Thus notifying me as to the whereabouts of my potentially long lost cousin, Michael Thomas:

I wear the same things pretty much every week. I'm not really what you'd call a clothes hound." -

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves. ~ Claude-Adrien After the Nazis torched all those books in 1933, most Americans realized with horror that burning or banning books just because one group didn't like the storyline was censorship. And censorship is what separates democracies from fascist regimes. If you can't read what you want to read, you are a subject and not a citizen. Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~ Joseph Henry Jackson How much must you fear an idea before you attempt to banish the thought from the planet? Do you think that just because you stick your fingers in your ears and go nah nah nah nah nah nah that the idea will curl up and turn to ashes? Do you think that you are protecting your children by shackling their brains and pretending that no one is gay or agreed w...

I have spoken to my great uncle Elliot a grand total of three times in my entire life and one of them was when I rocked the duties of Flower Girl at Ronnie's first wedding. Since Uncle Elliot had missed my Grampy's funeral last week, he drove up from Florida to pay his respects and visit my grammy , his sister. They would bond and reminisce . Speak Yiddish Pig Latin like they did when they were ten and think they're hilarious. Just to see how she was doing, I called up Grammy, who broke out her mad skills in slathering AWKWARD across an otherwise straightforward phone call. She asked me point blank if I wanted to say hello to my great uncle Elliot. Ummm . Sure. Uncle Elliot required little if any prodding to launch into a tale about his years at Radio City Music Hall playing in the pit orchestra. He'd watch the girls audition for the Rockettes . The first cut was a test. The Silver Dollar Test. They'd make the girls hold three silver dollars. One between their thig...

My grandfather's yarns string together all I know about his life. He always told the same stories. Just the facts. Using the same words, the same inflections. Any number of current events could trigger a hasty rocket launch into one of his memories. And once commenced, you would. always. be treated to the whole gantzeh megillah. A dozen years ago, Grampy maybe had twenty tales he'd rotate through. More recently, he winnowed the lot down to about five. He must have known we'd heard every one of them countless times before. But the past held so much more promise then any present-tense conversation ever could. My grampy liked to be the center of attention. Grampy escaped with his family from Romania after the Bolsheviks invaded and it became dangerous to be a Jew. He lived in the Lower East Side, eventually moving up to the Bronx. I got the feeling he was in a lot of street fights, but the fisticuffs always broke out in the space between his stories, so we never really got a f...

Back in the Paleozoic era about fifteen years ago, I was popular with the Ladies who Lunch. The ones who live in Peapack, eat tiny sandwiches and complain about the help. They would hire me to design their party invitations, personal stationary, and campaign materials for an occasional kid's student council run. Newsflash, and you might want to jot this down: if you want to kick some major high school ass, get your mommy to hire a professional advertising agency to lock down your run for class president. I am proud to say our candidates never lost an election. My assistant Dmitri drove down to Mary's place. Possibly, he needed to drop off press proofs for our crushingly successful "Vote chRis" campaign. The first time I had gone down there myself, I met Mary's houseboy who twittered on endlessly about the terrible ordeal of finding ribbon to match Mary's satin pumps. It was a fine spring day. Dmitri drove through the service gates and somehow took a wr...

Before yesterday's epoch-shattering visit to MoMA, I used to think there was nothing more to picking up assorted rusted roadbooty in the parking lot then rampant OCD. But now I know better. I'm doing it for Art. Because I am obviously on track to become an Artist. And possibly not an Artist starving for a reason. We saw a Mark Dion exhibit in the CurioKammer area on the second floor of the museum. Dion (b. 1961) "bases his installations on the methods of categorization found in natural history museums. He filled this cabinet with curiousities found in the museum's sculpture garden." Eureka! I will become renowned within art circles for my provocative juxtaposition of lost pennies and clevis pins. I am going to empty my pockets and start taking this seriously.

From: Stacey Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 10:54 AM To: Erin Subject: Complex plan of action Hey there, Thanks so much for offering to feed our cat while we are at the beach. Ok, so we have a very complex multi-layered approach to the Raccoon Situation. Here’s the Plan: We have fortified the Raccoon Fence with additional sheet metal, duct tape, bolts, WD-40 and ammonia. We are little concerned about the ammonia as it may repel the cat as well as the raccoons. I was a little heavy handed. If you come in and the food is not eaten at all, please put food in the Auxiliary Locations as specified below. Inside the basement, there are two food bowls. One at the bottom of the steps and one at the top. We are keeping this approach because if the raccoons find one food bowl they tend to not go looking for another one. The food bag is right on the top of the basement steps inside the door. Please keep the door closed as if the cat gets up stairs he will spitefully ri...

Mary's mom heads over to the neighbor's house for the yard sale. All the goods are spread out over the yard. She browses. Until somebody comes out and tells her they're just cleaning out the shed.

"Look at this hair in the cat bowl. It's black and white with a sprinkling of tan. Do you think it is Alex's hair? I hope it's not a raccoon hair." "I'm going to pluck a hair from Alex for comparison purposes. Probably the most exemplary hairs are in his hindquarter." "I didn't actually hold the two hairs next to each other. But I think the hair in the cat bowl came from Alex. I really hope it came from Alex." "The other option is we could put piles and piles of food outside so the raccoon doesn't have to come inside. But that would only be only if we were really desperate."

It all started when Andrew got the ball rolling last night and afterwards I couldn't get it off my mind. I spent most of this morning fantasizing about calling up my Intellectual Property attorney and telling him that I want to get a business process patent for "Math." Not old arithmetic, mind you, but New Math. First thing my IP lawyer will ask if we created "Math" less then a year ago because you have to file within a year. Absolutely, yes. It's fresh. It's shiny as a polished multiplication table. As far as you're concerned anyway. Then the lawyer will ask if every time we've used our "Math" we've noted that it is our proprietary methodology. Oh certainly. Math.™ ©2008. For sure, every time any kind of numeral sniffs around any other numeral for any purpose whatsoever. Ok, the lawyer will say, can you describe the functionality that your Math offers. Snort. Of course. Anyone can see it's so obviously revolutionary. Then I wi...

The real problem is the general public’s inability to deal with the hazards of flea market culture. That’s why most go retail. But for me, there’s nothing like the thrill of wondering if must-have rubberized binoculars are covered in some kind of dramatic and dangerous fungus. My fleamanship circumference extends from West 17th north to 25th. Sometimes I take the free shuttle to the Hell’s Kitchen market but Deborah the ex-glass blower has a booth on the corner up there and man can she talk a blue streak. Plus she tries to sell me repurposed safari gear that’s like the household goods equivalent of a comb-over. Personally, I think the famous Antique Garage on West 25th is overpriced. But it’s a good shortcut to the Goodwill flagship store if you go in on the south side. Then you can stroll over to the open-air market down the street. You can wheel your Smarte Carte right over everybody’s feet on 6th Avenue. It doesn’t bother the tourists because they all wear adequately padded leather ...

I had this enormous tattoo. A full back plate depicting some swarthy military hero in a pith helmet and a colonial jacket. A banner fluttered out under him that read "Viva la Columbia." Shit. I never saw the "Viva la Columbia" in the tattoo book when I picked it out because there was a smear on the page. I don't have any family from Columbia. I never lived in Columbia. It would be weird to get a tattoo in commemoration of a country because they export a decent coffee bean. I could not wrap my head around how to justify this tattoo. Thank God it was only a dream.

We concluded The Sofa Tour yesterday. The journey had stretched on endlessly, but we persevered. We knew the meaning of privations and of hardships. We looked at every sleeper sofa in this entire city. The very last one we saw. Was the One. Participating in the victory celebration was Kirstie Alley. No, she really didn’t participate in the victory celebration. She just happened to be in the store at the exact same time that the Farewell-to-the-Sofa-Tour credit card transaction went down. Truthfully, she couldn’t have seemed less interested in our triumph. Nonetheless, we did view the appearance of Rebecca Howe mid-Sofa purchase as an auspicious sighting. The next leg of our journey, The Sofa In Situ, bodes well. View Larger Map

21 days. 10 guys on a team. summer. Wow. That's a lot of laundry. They probably have a washing machine on the team bus.

When someone has wrapped their entire body around a pole in a crowded subway train and someone else coughs to indicate their annoyance. How loathsome. If a person is sufficiently clueless to body block all the other strap hangers, then hacking up a lung nearby will only communicate you have a tenuous grasp on the purpose of language. When you share a moment with someone who exists five seconds in the future, she will always finish your sentences for you. When she realizes she’s skittered too far ahead and can’t see you behind her, she frantically gropes backwards through the darkness of time to find you. She jitters wildly between her moment and yours. It is exhausting to be around her. When you share a moment with someone who lives inside her own mind, for her, the moment is like a dream. When you dream, no matter what anyone does, it is done for you or against you. When you dream, your perception becomes a reality in which you are the only driving force. When you dream, your reaction...

In a surprise move, local housecat, Alexander T. Nash, forewent the opportunity to spend the long weekend in the city. He cited a need to curb the recent surge of lawless chipmunk activity on and about the left perimeter sidewalk area. Nash, 5, said, "Someone's got to do it [sweep the property of rodents.] These striped lawn monkeys are no petty foe to toy with." He further noted, "Besides, why would I want to be seen with a person who actually forgot to pack ANY clothing and walked around Chelsea for three days in a sweaty green Gygax-era dungeons and dragons T-shirt? So 'Lost' reject. I don't understand how it is possible not to realize you are hauling a TravelPro with nothing in it but a couple magazines and a pair of brown socks." Asked if his three days guerilla solo had produced results, Nash commented that he had tirelessly prowled around for a minimum of 2-2.5 hours daily. He did take a short break to watch the Macy's Independence Day fir...

1) Our waiter had on a rainbow colored T-Shirt with "I had a bowl of bitchy this morning" printed really big on the front. 2) He was also wearing a matching skirt. 3) He greeted Tom and me as follows: "Hello, ladies." Pad Thai in Chelsea, 8th Ave at 16th St.

We bought a property on Friday. During the closing, the seller's real estate agent kept offering to give us ("the enemy") stuff. The seller's real estate attorney looked ready to squeeze his head and crack it like a nut. Tom and I huddled under the conference room table to escape from stray fisticuffs and evil death stares. Meanwhile, our very own real estate agent's assistant fiddled with her extremely low neckline and wondered aloud why her Blackberry kept sending email messages all by itself. I was about ready to poke needles in my eyeballs. Here's just a taste of the backstory. There's more where this came from, but I will spare you. The Cast in Order of Appearance Robert H: The Seller's Real Estate Agent Jane: The Seller Alan Esq: The Seller's Real Estate Attorney Stacey and Tom: The Buyers - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In a message dated 6/25/2008 4:38:48 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Robert H (t...

I have devised an ingenious scheme for increasing my personal elevation above sea level. This skill is essential for general admission shows wherein Only the Tall Can See the Stage. The secret lies in footwear. Besides the towering platform base needed to jack you up an extra 2 - 4", a light shoe tare weight is also required. Afterall, you can't actually WALK in these shoes so you have to carry them in your backpack to the venue. Along these lines, I have noticed an interesting statistical anomolie. No matter what doorstep you select to sit on to change out of your commuting shoes and into your stilts, and despite the fact that it takes sub-two minutes to execute the transaction, a resident of the dwelling whose entrance you are blocking will inevitably return home at the exact moment when you have each foot in a different shoe and a sock hanging off his railing.

Richard Cheese held my hand. He looked deeply into my eyes and sang about some chick in a green shirt named Vanessa's hoo-ha. It was such a highlight. At Webster Hall, there is always this big Big big Black dude security guard named Lowes. Lowes sits stone-cold and bulging biceps cross-armed in front of the stage. For entire shows, he steely eyes the crowd and keeps us in line via the silent promise of Unilaterally Assured Destruction. Not even once, have I seen Lowes succumb to the merest facial twitch. But when Richard Cheese broke into a little swanky Vegas-style Shake Ya Ass by Mystikal, I spied full-on, teeth-baring, LOLing. There is something inherently fabulous about a very white man in a tiger-skin tuxedo sahaying around crooning X-rated gangsta rap. In light of his musical genre, Richard "Dick" Cheese's stage show was not unexpected. Nonetheless, I wouldn't have predicted the hijinx. The man is hotly smarmy, brazenly greasy, semi-sober, yet broadly capti...

What do you call it when you get stuck in the airport for hours? In-Terminal-able. Well, Melissa thought it was funny at the Sushi Lounge yesterday.

My pop is an artist. His medium is cereal. Cold cereal. He layers together high terrariums of flakes and nuggets and mini-biscuits. Masterpieces in glass bowls. My father's most productive time is in morning. He starts by flinging open the doors of two cabinets entirely packed with cereal boxes. He squintily eyeballs his vast palette of shapes, colors, textures and sizes of pressed grain and dried fruit. He carefully selects the most inspiring for his chunky canvas. Sometimes he pre-blends a concoction of granola and raw oatmeal and flaxseed into a large plastic container. He uses this like primer. For foundation purposes. Flattening it out in the bottom of the bowl. Clean kitchen counters are not a priority for pop. He loses himself in the process of creation. He takes into account density, mass and buoyancy. He works for varied texture, coordinated color and structural integrity. When the milk and/or applesauce is layered in, the design must stand up to the rapid liquidation. Pop...

Jen's mad delight on and about Sex in the City: the Movie + Her shepherd-meister herding skills = Almost all the OC Girls in the Morristown Clearview Theatre Friday night for the 7:30 showing. Despite the veritable fiesta platter of Labels and Love, Melissa could not be deterred from going down the shore. "Labels and Love." That's the Carrie-proclaimed theme of the movie. A sensitive exploration into the inner lives of brutal shopaholics. As the movie trundled on, I myself decided to slip into something more comfortable. Like a coma. For the sake of accurate reporting, which I have never purported any aspiration to achieve, my review of the movie would contain the following three points: All the loose ends from the TV show have been tied up nicely enough for Saks 5th Avenue. A tiny meaty nut of plot is embedded inside an enormous foo foo fruit of cashmere, silk and blue peacock feathers You would think that such smart and independently successful women would be a li...

Man rushes into new loose tea store on 9th avenue between 41st and 42nd street. He stops short just inside the tranquil Zen doorway. Wide-eyed and frantic, he twirls around in panic circles, finally bursting out: “Cupcakes? Cupcakes! Where are the cupcakes?” Tiny hippie shopkeeper peers over her red-rimmed glasses: “Cupcake bakery moved around the corner, Mister.”

Posting ads on Craigslist: Wood 4 Sale!

At lunch with the bike club, Dad got some spinach lodged between his front teeth. He chiseled away at it with his fingernail. Finally, success! The spinach rocketed through the air and landed in Scott's coffee. Plunk. Scott didn't notice. Dad didn't mention it.

One mumble from Jennifer about maybe slightly possibly kind of thinking about taking up running after Gavin was born and Tom immediately bellied up as Coach. He snapped into action about a half hour after Jennifer's obstetrician gave the all clear on exercise. Coach Tom fired off a series of running route maps, conveniently located around Jennifer's neighborhood and complete with mileage and topography notations. Tom followed up with advice on proper sneaker fitting and how not to look like a roadnoob. A liberal sprinkling of phone consultations ensued, topped off with the proclamation that his protege would race in the spring. Jennifer was to pick a 5k out of the race forum and Tom would run with her. Wax off, Jennifer-san! Race day finally arrived last Saturday. The turnout was big. Eric showed up with Nabeela, Adison, Gavin and a Camera as big as Gavin. Donna and Bob were also in attendance. Although Jennifer's First Five Kilometers was, of course, the main event, the se...

If you are interested in the real Cher's indian heritage, click here . What follows concerns a really fucking awesome party: There was electric in the air at the recent Lip Synco DeMayo competition. Against the backdrop of a construction worker, a grease monkey, a cowboy and a nurse, the Indian was as tall as a five foot five inch tree. Her headdress was mighty. So was the ensuing rendition of YMCA. It was a hightest fantasmo right through the last verse where the young man does it all by himself and puts his pride on a shelf. I thought the Indian looked sort of familiar, but I didn't connect the dots until she took the stage again four acts later, this time decked out in a reckless black body suit and platform space boots. Yes. It was Cher. She is really an Indian. This heritage has never come out, even during the Insider Star Club luncheon at the annual Cher Expo where such intimate topics as Cher's six tattoos have been reviewed in excruciating detail. Congratu...

Most partygoers are familiar with the moderately lewd 1969 Rolling Stones song in which singer Mick Jagger boasts of getting forcibly laid by a divorcee in New York City who covers him in roses prior to blowing his nose and then his mind. Whenever asked, I recommend "Honky Tonk Women" for wedding reception set lists. On one hand, you are cheering about being heaved across a barroom queen's shoulder and taken upstairs for a ride. On the other hand you have just celebrated the sacred vows of marriage and: All the flower girls in their sweet taffeta dresses are shakin' booty The bride's boss, rigged out in pearls and sensible low heeled pumps, sashays through what could only be described as high energy square dance. The bestman is out there boogying with his sister. It is discovered that strappy sandals and ruffled gowns are not the best outfits for grinding. My other mofo favorite nuptial tunes include: "The Stroke'" by Billy Squire and "You Shoo...

At first, I fancied really going back to basics for my birthday. Maybe spend the day fasting on nothing but dark green leafy vegetables and little scraps torn from the bible. It would be all like zen and I would rediscover my inner child. But then we decided to go to the Village and look at real estate and I glimpsed this in a window: I think it's some sort of B-movie martian in a decorative saddle. It changed my perspective on the day and I decided to live life to the fullest because you never know when a lead pipe will fall from a scaffold and clock you right in the bean. We enjoyed five hours noodling around in other people's closets and wrestling with the "why" in the question of The Legion Action Figures Posed in Mock Battle Inside Somebody's Kitchen Cabinets. Subsequently, it being my birthday and all, I decided I was keen on a delicious snack of my choosing. I had 2.5 cups of coffee, spoonfuls of brownie and a lovely lump of seaweed. Then we spent about hal...

I don't regularly fling myself around the kitchen to the frantic and thunderous beat of my new favorite earcandy for no particular reason. I am building stamina for the brutal Lip Syncho De Mayo annual contest at Tracie and Andrew's. Unfortunately, such high-level competition requires more than stamina. People come to play. Yet the voting pool is a fickle fickle mistress. In a shocking turn of events, the Dirty Love number was passed over for a place on the podium. The routine, which defied all reason and social order, lasted approximately four and a half minutes. Marc presided over the Frank Zappa ruckus with Bacchanalian charm, a fuzzy black headsuit and a dragon air guitar. Claire, obviously corrupted by dangerous peer pressure, sported black tights, frisky gold sandals and a brazen poodle fetish. She worried that her children would find out she was out after midnight drinking beer, socializing and shakin' her money maker unsupervised. She commented, "My kids kee...

"Thank you, I've had a pleasant time."

So feast your eyeballs on my eight-passenger spinch leaf. Spawn of the Flower House in the middle of the front yard. (For full appreciation of the scale, please remember Tom has a giant head.) So let's caucus people. Do we all finally agree that the Flower House is, and always was, a veritable hurricane of inspiration and foresight?

I'm back at kung fu at the YMCA dojo. I know it's exciting to dream of a brilliant Lord Voldemort-y nemesis because it challenges you and all that, but I have a few hypermobile vertebrae. So I'm training for a nemesis likely to hoist himself on his own petard. My sensai told me if I don't want to take the throws, I can be excused. Nonetheless, she invited me to the class Bar-B-Que this afternoon at her house. This kind of lifestyle - hard drinking, hand-to-hand combat, Benadril - takes its toll on your body. The antihistamine only came into play because about 10:30am, a yellow jacket infiltrated my sweatshirt and stung me seven times about the neck and shoulder region. It was harrowing. But I'm white belt tough. I grabbed the yellow jacket in between my bare fingers and squashed it like a bug. My sensai lives next to an illegal daycare. They put a trampoline out in the mini-yard and let the kids jump on it from the roof. Keeps 'em occupied for hours. Although at...

Beantown goes recklessly patriotic for Patriots Day. The citizenry celebrates the vision and fortitude of our founding fathers with all the usual fanfare, like beer in plastic cups at 10am. There is also a lot of flinging one's self around and shrieking encouraging words into an endless expanse of multi-colored, spandex-clad marathon runners. They don't call it The Poeple's Olympics for nothing. Just like you have to qualify to run the race, I think you have to qualify to spectate the affair. You can't just stand there like a googly-eyed lump, as is so prevalent amongst lesser crowds. You need spirit fingers, bullhorns, sharpie markers, balloons, drum sticks, pompoms, and maybe a good high kick. Bib #6739 trotted in to the finish with no orthotics and one massive blister. Yet despite defeating Heartbreak Hill and 26.2 miles without an iPod, Tom was frisky enough to immediately deck himself in a new Boston Marathon 2008 windbreaker.

My Grammy R has been known to tell other people's relatives that their liver patê could be better. She has been known to do this at soaring volume in the middle of Tom's and my engagement party. But my Grammy has wrapped her head around more than just liver patê. Yesterday she clued me into some ancient family wisdom. She said that a husband and a wife need to work as a team to make a house a home. She passed on to me her home improvement strategy, which she has perfected over her sixy-five year marriage: Decide what you want to do. Discuss with your husband. Go out and buy whatever you want.