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

Two seconds after we got the invitation to Wanda and Derek's Retro Night, Tom starts talking about making Rainbow Jello. I'm not sure what brought this on. Rainbow Jello became his very own white whale: " Sometimes I think there's naught beyond  Rainbow Jello . But 'tis enough. I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it." -- Tom, talking about Rainbow "Moby Dick" Jello First there was the quest for a bunt pan. Then a recipe. Early in the morning, Tom arises and takes a rolley cart down to the Westside Market. He returns: A lot of Jello There was Jello and empty packets and multiple timers beeping and some colors simmering and other colors in the refrigeration stage by the time I got up. It's exacting labor, this Rainbow Jello creation. Jello cooling its heels in the fridge The effort pays off! Look at this work of art! The Artist with his Rainbow Jello Thank you to Wanda and Derek for the...

This is NaBloPoMo Year 4 in the bag. In this last post, I usually feel like I have to sum up the goings on with a neat ending that ties up all the loose ends. Unfortunately that is unlikely -- if you've read more than 1.5 posts in this blog, you already knew that. This place is not where you go for any kind of story arc. Most days of my life are very similar to the one I had today: In October, I bought a 10 pound bag of fava beans on Amazon. Before I clicked Buy, I did one of the Ask Amazon questions. I asked the shoppers of Amazon if the fava beans in question were already shelled. A fellow shopper replied they were shelled. The shoppers of Amazon cannot be trusted. I believed the shopper, ordered the beans and a week ago, I made a batch. They came out kinda crunchy. Because the fava beans? Not shelled. I made another batch today. I'll just eat the fuckers. The shells probably have lots of fiber and most Americans are woefully short of fiber. People are all worr...

I'm feeling unproductive today. This might be considered a total counterpoint to my childhood, which was a very high output endeavor. I know this because my mother keeps bringing over more boxes of crap I made. My god this pottery castle turret sculpture must have taken forever. It weighs 30 pounds. I so funny. Adorable lion cub killing a zebra in cold blood. Cycle of life and all that. D&D baby So please let my past zeal and verve excuse my lack of motivation today, the penultimate exemplar of yet another NaBloPoMo in the bag.

Earlier this morning before Thanksgiving dinner with the fambo, we'd been pitching cards like they did in the Bronx back in the day. Pitching cards with Grandpa No Tips, No Tops - Dad's rules. Pitching cards turned into all of us throwing cards at each other. How could it not, honestly? The battle royale ended when Ella hid behind a balance ball and pretty much scooped up all the ammo. Also someone flung a 7 of hearts dangerously close to an eyeball. And that is how there happened to be about 19 decks of cards scattered all over the carpet. After dinner, I collected enough cards from the carpet for a good-sized deck and dealt for a game of spoons. It was me, Tom, Grandma, Jack, Ella and my brother. At some point, Tom looks over and sees my brother blatantly cheating. Totally nonchalantly, he is picking through heaps of unused cards strewn around nearby.  My brother (also known as "dad" to two of the players in the group) was pulling out 4s of a k...

When I was out power walking down the east-side esplanade with Alex like an OG, he told me he was learning Irish. He called it Irish, not Gaelic. I forget why the term "Gaelic" is currently a no go. I asked Alex why he was learning Irish. He currently speaks German, English and Norwegian. Irish seemed like an unlikely candidate for a fourth language in all cases. But especially in this case since his girlfriend is Columbian from Columbia. Alex had his reasons. Which basically all amounted to he just wanted to learn Irish. Alex asked me if I was going to learn another language, which one would I choose. I had to think on that. Even without a Columbian girlfriend, Spanish seems to bubble up as the sensible option. But then again ... I have been reading these poems by a Sulfi poet named Hafez who lived in Iran in the 1300s. Many people I have encountered on the Interwebs complain early and often about the translation of these poems. They say that the translator of the...

How long has it been since I wore the coat in question? Long enough that I printed out directions from the webbernets that day. Here are the things I found in the pocket of said coat, which was actually super expensive. This is the reason I've kept it, but not worn it, since Ye Ole Days of MapQuest. It's hard to toss things that you saved up for. Items from my coat pocket Other finds include a pharma pen (another artifact), lip gloss and a pack of gum. In a testament to preservatives, the remaining sticks of gum and the lip gloss look genuinely perky overall. Nonetheless, I threw them all out.

Actually there's no coffee in the Acela Lounge A business associate was coming into the city from out of town. We'll call him Pete. Pete suggests we meet in midtown. "Sure," I say and pause to consider a good place. Pete jumps in, "We should just meet in the Acela Lounge at Penn Station." Photocredit:  https://mysocialmate.co/tag/nypennstation "Ok," I reply. Pete probably had a train in or out right before or after and I have nothing against using time wisely. Fast forward to the day of our meeting: The Acela Lounge is basically wall to wall chairs. It's like a playhouse in SoHo that's in the basement where they show one-acts by emerging artists. There's no coffee. There's also no tables. It's odd to have a meeting with someone sitting directly across from you with no table in between. "When did your train get in?" I ask Pete. "Yesterday," he says. "Oh. When do you leave then?" ...

Last Saturday, I decided to walk up to MoMA to renew my membership. Learned a valuable lesson. It's possible I've learned this same lesson before but now I'm going to document it for posterity and for my own future reference: Do not walk up 6th Avenue into the 40s. Seriously. I had the misperception that 6th Avenue would be ok. Not 7th and therefore not Times Square. Not 5th and therefore no fancy shops. What the hell is on 6th Avenue above 34th Street I ask you? Well now I know -- lots of tourists. They come at you from all directions, it's like a video game. A very slow moving video game. Mostly the game involves not tripping over three ladies from Duluth, grabbing onto the strap of someone's cross body bag to avoid breaking an ankle and then getting arrested for pickpocketing or something. I think about these things after Matt's incident in Magnolia Bakery . Anyway, finally, and in a hella bad mood, I made it up to MoMA. I was hopeful after the big...

The ad for https://loopstore.com/  says, "Shop your favorite brands now reimagined to be waste-free." I'm on board with this so I placed an order. Before I go further, I'd like to mention that Loop is only available, at least at this time, in I think NYC. So basically anyone who orders lives in a shoebox sized apartment. Here's Tom inspecting my purchase: Yes. The Loop box is gigantic. It apparently folds down flat, but the result? Also giant. It's not like matter disappears just because it is engineered with creases. Another issue is that I ordered 4 bottles of Febreeze to meet the free-shipping minimum. That was a poor choice. I rarely use Febreeze.

I just got back from: Happy Hour at a bar near Penn Station Really good tacos right across the street from the Harry Potter broadway show A bar with a bartender that Andy knew from when this bartender worked at a different bar which unfortunately burned down But I'm not going to discuss this agenda or mingling with tourists in midtown at all. I'm going to talk about Super Spirographs. Remember when we made cool drawings that looked like this: Super Spirograph like I used to make when I was a kid. Photocredit:  https://blog.solidsignal.com/news/fun-and-games/fun-friday-inspirograph/ Except my mom found a box of my early works of art in the basement. Including this: Obviously one of my finer super spirographs worthy of keeping for decades. Yeah. Ok. Maybe my memory is not a dead ringer. As another proof point on the memory situation, I was chatting with a woman at the first bar we went to tonight, and then later, another woman started talking to me who...

Two amazing seats in my shopping cart. Just one small problem... Seriously, what would you have done? All I can say is that I'm gonna be in the front seat. Tom is the tall guy you don't want to sit behind.

...you get spam in two languages.  My email is a veritable fiesta platter of irresistible offers pouring in from all across the globe. How heartwarming to be loved by parties near and far -- who are clearly exceptional at tracking my whereabouts online and/or offline. So kind of them to offer, but obviously I have no need for a home alarm with so many concerned citizens all over the world privy to my goings on.

Tom and I just finished watching Downton Abbey. All six seasons. We watched one show every single night. Except weekends and holidays. We needed to conclude our slow-mo binge before the movie went out of the theaters. Well, we missed the movie. The day we finished watching the final episode of the final season, the very last theater that was still showing the Downton Abbey movie stopped showing it. Their timing, or our timing, was almost poetic. Now we have to wait until god knows when to see the film. But that's not what I wanted to write this post about. I was going to tell you that sometimes, after we'd watched our one episode, we weren't ready to quit the couch and go through to the other room. This will make semi-sense if you watched Downton Abbey. The Crawleys did a lot of quitting of rooms and going through to other rooms. Anyway, I'd say to Tom, "what else is on?" And he'd flip through Amazon Prime. This is how we discovered Cat TV. It'...

This is a #latergram, but I'm sure you'll agree it totally holds up. Tom was alone in his office one evening in September. He steps out into the hallway and stops dead in his tracks. Before him, he sees a snake on the carpet. Looking very snakey: The snake's coloring is perfect for slithering undetected amongst industrial carpet fibers Tom does not know what to do. The last time he encountered a snake indoors, he was at home and we had welding gloves and a gigantic rubbermaid tub. I'm talking like two weeks before this. September was obviously the Month of the Snake. Tom nabs a chafing pan thing from the office kitchen and tosses it on top of the snake.  Good thinking, honey. The snake and an aluminum tray. At this point, Tom pauses because, now what. After pondering for at least two and half minutes, he goes over to the doorway and gets the doormat. He lays the doormat right next to the aluminum tray. He slides the tray slowly onto the doo...

Tom and I decided to pop into the Whitney today. I hadn't been there since they took out the three floors of biennial stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like the biennial. It's one of the Whitney's main schticks. Except it takes over the whole museum. For months. At some point, I'm over it. On the 8th floor, the Jason Moran show would have lived up to any expectations I may have had. Except I really didn't have any since I didn't check what was showing before we went.  Jason Moran put a piece of paper over his piano keyboard. Then he covered his fingers with graphite. He played some music AND laid down an abstract chalk drawing simultaneously. The whole endeavor was a raging celebration of multi-tasking. I was all over it. I was all over it even more when I noticed that Jason Moran likes a hole puncher as much as I do. Some of the piano graphite drawings (are they drawings?) had holes punched in them with an old school hand held hole puncher. I'm filthy ...

Tom enjoys new undies every now and then. So he bought a pair of unmentionables and had them shipped to his office. His colleagues are very helpful, especially when it comes to mail distribution. One of them hand delivered Tom's package right to his desk. Luckily, the exterior envelope was very subtle.

Today marks the half-way point in my NaBloPoMo sojourn. It's been going pretty well so far, no frantic scribbling at 11:59pm or random "holy shit I totally forgot" moments. I do not want to get over-cocky however because Thanksgiving is always cause for concern. Things get busy if you know what I mean. Today, after we got back from a heartwrenching funeral in Pennsylvania, I headed over to another funeral of sorts - Barney's in Chelsea is closing. It just opened up like a couple years ago. I still think of the place as new. I never managed to make it to the restaurant upstairs. Even though I have purchased exactly one item from Barney's during my entire lifetime, I kind of enjoyed having it just around the corner. I liked to walk by and peer in the windows and watch the rappers and the trust fund heiresses snapping up three Yves St Laurent handbags in one go. "Wrap my three new handbags in tissue paper and then put them all in a large shopping bag, please...

A guy walks out of the Rainbow Junction Sex Shoppe. We just happened to be passing by on the sidewalk. The guy is clutching a 40 and singing, out loud, "Let's talk about sex, baby" by George Michael. He knows more verses than I know. He's dancing as he walks, but just a little bit. More like a shimmy than an actual dance.

Matt was standing in line in Magnolia Bakery. In a suit. He had just come from work. He rustled around in his messenger bag to find his glasses because the cupcake label font size is on the small side. Suddenly the woman in front of him in line whips around and says, "I'll take my phone back now." "Do you want me to take your picture?" replies Matt. He's genuinely confused. "No," says the woman. "My backpack is open and my phone is missing." She has a foreign tourist accent and a very strident tone. "Wait," Matt says. "You think I stole your phone?" Matt does not have a foreign accent, he lives up the street and he has not taken her phone. The woman is there with her husband who attempts to defuse the rapidly igniting situation. He is semi-successful. Matt says, "Is your ringer turned on? What's your phone number, I'll call you." Meanwhile the woman rustles around in her backpack an...

Maybe six months ago I was shopping at the online candle store and ran up against the shipping conundrum. Like if I ordered just a little more, the shipping price would be lower or free or something. Anyway, I impulse purchased a so-called Full Moon Candle. Because who doesn't need a candle that shall only be burned when the moon is full? I need to "release whatever no longer serves me so I can go forth unbound," as they say in the fine print. Previously, I have forgotten to break out the candle on several full moons including the momentous Wolf Moon over the summer which definitely constituted a major #fail. But I remembered today! I lit the candle this morning, which may have been ill advised given that the morning is part of the DAY and the moon generally is associated with the NIGHT. Anyway, the candle exploded. KaPow the whole side of the thing shot off and made a big noise. This is a solid shard of glass in flight we're talking about here. Luckil...

On 11|11, Corduroy Club members were encouraged to go to Macy's or some other similar outlet of corduroy. We were allotted Corduroy Club membership applications to put in the pockets of any corduroy items for sale. 11|11 is the day that looks the most like corduroy. Today is the Corduroy Club High Holiday. Sadly, Corduroy Club is defunct. Those holiday parties were some of the best nights I've had. Impassioned speeches about The Year In Corduroy, including highs like the sofas in Obama's Oval Office being reupholstered in corduroy. Plastic whales (wales) raining from the ceiling in a massive grand finale Etc. Should the festivities ever revive, I would need to go shopping. I gave away my corduroy shirt. How could I achieve a maximum corduroy ensemble without a corduroy shirt? Not easily is the only answer. And maximum corduroy ensembles were the only way to roll on the high holiday.

Today after a really nice morning in Annville, Tom and I arrived at our place in New Jersey and unloaded a carload of bootie. Mom and dad are moving and we are the beneficiaries of a lot of treasures unearthed during the basement excavation. It was serious work carrying all the stuff upstairs, so we recovered by ordering Chinese and watching Groundhog Day on Amazon Prime. Groundhog Day came out in 1993 when Bill Murray was 26 years younger than he is today. I think the last time I saw Ground Hog Day, I was possibly 23-26 years younger than I am today. This most recent Groundhog Day viewing revealed a few nuances of the film which I do not recall from earlier. First of all, I completely missed the entire point of the movie. Your glass is half full Legit doing things for other people is the only path to redemption Being self-aware is a plus I'd say spoiler alert except this movie is on the darker side of drinking age. I was just now in the kitchen and I noticed m...

First of all, how many German professors can you fit in a Friends of Old Annville (FOOA) Annual Dinner? Turns out more than you'd expect. I ran into two during the mingle portion of the evening and then the featured speaker said he was a German professor. I know, it's really remarkable. The Annual Dinner was held in the American Legion up the street from where I grew up. Tom said something about how the ventilation system was so powerful the floor shook. I said I was 100% sure I knew why there was a stadium sized ventilation system in a party room. May I draw your attention to the mail slot in the front door: Same mail slot was there 40 years ago. Nothing much has changed since then except they've removed the red shag carpet.  I'm familiar with these historical facts because you see I spied on the veterans. With some regularity. We'd creep up the front steps of the Legion and open up the mail slot. Slowly. It's metal and clangs. Also because a bil...

It's National Blog Post Month. 30 posts in 30 days. Beware friends. No one's stories are safe around me: Andy invited us to hang out with him and Stacie and his childhood friend Ryan. I was all in. As a rule, stories from Andy’s childhood do not disappoint. We were belly up to the bar table, drinks in hand, ready for go time. Pretty quickly, one particular day bubbled to top of mind. It was a trifecta if you’re 14 on Long Island in 1985: The Madonna Penthouse issue came out It was the day of the Live Aid Concerts in London and Philadelphia Andy’s relatives from Australia were flying in for a visit The day began at 4:05 am when Andy and Ryan zipped across the street to the deli. They nabbed a couple of bagels from the bagel delivery bag hanging on the door knob of the store. This, apparently, was not in any way special and had nothing to do with the trifecta.  Back at Andy’s house eating bagels, the two of them immediately began plotting how th...

Tom sitting behind Ella, our 12yo niece who is ignoring him. She's busy staring at cute pictures of animals on her phone. Tom: "What do you think of baby seals?" Silence. Continued Silence. "Good Eatin'?" I laugh and laugh. Ella does not look up.

Of course I've been fully aware for many moons that my passport was to expire in November. I endeavored to address the passport renewal process I'm going to say starting last March when I went to Sweden. You can't travel internationally if your passport is going to expire in the next six months or something and I was in under the wire. Mostly I did a whole lot of nothing. Then we went to Canada in August. Passport control raised an eyebrow when he saw the impending date. "I know, I know," I said. Places I have been lately. I continued to do nothing. Occasionally I would think about putting a note in my calendar to start figuring out what I needed to do, but really, how daunting. First, I'd have to locate the form to use. I vaguely recalled last time I got a passport, I think I went to an office building somewhere. Or maybe Bruce went to an office or Shanna went to an office and I'm projecting their actual experiences into my memory. But ...

My fingers are bruised from hitting refresh. The Twitters are going crazy. First, the incumbent Republican Governor of Kentucky, Beven, is up by a lot. Then *zoom* out of nowhere comes Beshear, the Democrat. Beshear holds steady for half an hour but then the red counties start coming in. Drip. Drip. Drip. Beven starts catching up. Closer and closer. Give or take a gnat’s whisker. I almost passed out from forgetting to breathe. Luckily my watch beeped and reminded me. It's taken me an hour to write this blog post because I keep having to stop and manically study seven live election coverage reports while monitoring the tweets. Also yelling at Tom from the other room, "KENTUCKY!" Beshear has been declared the apparent winner, up by 6,000 votes or some other ridiculously small number. It's really not all that amazing of a squeaker victory considering that Beven had a 30% approval rating, which is pretty squarely in the "we think he's a dirt bag" zon...

Very Tricky Not Rocks You see these rocks? They aren't rocks. Vija Celmins, an artist, had a bronze cast made of actual rocks. Then she took the bronze cast and meticulously painted it to look exactly like the original rock. This became her thing: More Not-Rocks Is this a comment on deception and artifice?  It could be a metaphor for a glittering metallic heart inside an exterior that looks just like a... rock. Or a beautiful natural exterior with a hollow interior. I'm reminded of those statues of people that look creepily lifelike. Just instead of "Woman in House Dress with Cigarettes" Vija Celmins decided to go with "Rocks." Or maybe she's like that Chilean poet whatshisface Pablo Neruda who wrote odes to common things. Basically, I'm not sure what to make of this. 

Most critically, I went down to the Fountain Pen Hospital and bought three different kinds of fountain pen ink. Here's one of them. What a nifty bottle, right? Fountain Pen Ink I bought at the Fountain Pen Hospital Given how much the fountain pen store guy helped me work through my ink indecision angst, I'm not even going to worry that I saw this ink for $5 less on Amazon OR that the same exact day I was in the store, the Fountain Pen Hospital was running an online 20% off special I found out about later. These guys at the Fountain Pen Hospital are fountain pen Nerds with a capital N. When you can capture their attention with wild hand gestures and your outside voice, they are also happy to wait on you. The guy I ensnared told me not to buy the Mont Blanc ink. He gave me this advice for some reason I half couldn't hear and half couldn't understand. The Mont Blanc ink was $10 more, so some shekel saved there. The guy also told me to avoid the very alluri...

We had dinner with Bruce and Bernardo last night at Candle79 on the Upper East. I wish the Candle79 interior looked a little less like your uncle's favorite Italian Japanese fusion place circa 1993. The food is as consistent as the decor, however, which is why we continue to go back. (Note: Tom disagrees. He says he "likes the decor." Especially the upstairs.) After we bonded over fountain pens, Bernardo started telling this story about how one time he tried to learn to play the violin. It was not an altogether successful attempt. He wondered if the problem was his violin, so he went into one of the fancy violin stores up by Lincoln Center and had his violin restrung. credit: Brobst Violin Store The proprietor of this violin store happened to have been some kind of violin virtuoso in his younger days. The Virtuoso was there when Bernardo went to pick up the violin. Bernardo decided to ask him for advice. He explained his problems to the Virtuoso and then paused ...

On Halloween last year, we were at Wanda and Derek's for a coveted view of the Village Halloween Parade. Wanda & Derek live right on the parade route. It's so very civilized to sit in their massive bay window and watch the marching without having to mingle in the brouhaha on the sidewalk. photo credit: Time Out NY Photo credit: Karen Ruben I say all this to say that last year we were not at our place in New Jersey on trick or treat night. But our porch light goes on automatically. So our house beckoned children near and far to our doorstep and then after they trekked the whole way up our front walk. PSYCH. No one home. Cue evil laughter. In the corner of our front porch I had left a can full of garden tools. Little shovels and a hand-held rake apparatus and a weeder or two. One of the children took the tools out of the can and arranged them very passive aggressively on our doormat. Sure I felt shitty about all the innocent tricker treaters who approached ou...

Milk Oolong tea is like a magic trick. It comes in the form of little pellets. Milk Oolong Magic But when you put the pellets in hot water, they bloom into full-on leaves. Like big leaves. Like I always put too many pellets in my tea cup and wind up with a swamp of half-furled leaves. The tea earned its nom de plume because it supposedly tastes milky or buttery. I'm not sure about that, but it does have a unique flavor. I like tea with a unique flavor. Life gets boring otherwise. I first encountered the Milk Oolong at Bosie Tea Parlor , back when it was on Morton Street. I had popped in one day and miraculously, the place was not mobbed. One of the people who worked there had 30 seconds to help me pick something new out of the tea catalog. I'm conflicted about Bosie Tea Parlor's to-go service if you must know. On the one hand, it's kind of nice to enter a parlor of tea. I love tea and I love a parlor, so the whole idea appeals. But here's the thing: it...