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.