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 '