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

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.