OK so it's game 6 of the World Series and my beloved Yankees are a game away and I am so uptight I cannot stand myself. In fact i am so nervous i have flu-like symptoms, which is what happens when i get jitttery. I am schvitzing like a dog in summer. It is just now the bottom of the sixth and even though my beloved Yankees are leading I am planning out my night to work off my uber hyperness - couple of loads of laundry, maybe run the vacuum. Maybe I'll build some bookshelves and apply for a PhD program if the game goes into extra innings. Oy.
So obviously I'm a little distracted tonight so this will be short. I just don't have much of an attention span for some reason. Right this minute I just happen to be avoiding the television.
So tonight we are packing the ol' bags. Tomorrow me and La Sooze and little kev will be on the road on the way to Bahston. This, as you know from our story, is our trip for Kev's first-ever college visits. How exciting. For me at least. Kev, at least on the outside, doesn't seem to give two shits. I suspect he does, but it would probably be uncool to admit it. Anyway tomorrow we will leave God View at fiveish and then drive for about 5 hours and stay in a place called Middletown, NY, which is real close to the Hudson River. We will be staying at the Ramada Inn that I told you about recently, the one i reserved off PriceLine and then looked up on my Bible TripAdvisor only to find reviews that said basically that the place is a shithole. La Sooze, ever the optimist, said that it doesn't really matter since we're only going to get there at midnight and pass out and then leave right away in the morning. I assume that after a full day of work, another late night with the ol' World Series and then a nice five hour drive through the Pennsylvania darkness will be enough to tucker me out, wouldn't you say? Maybe I will even be able to sleep through the bed bugs and broken furniture. Then Friday we will drive the rest of the way into Bahston and Kev and the rest of us, is due at Emerson College by 3 for his first ever cherry-poppin' college visit. I myself am a veteran of these things having visited my fair share of colleges with Shannon and Sean. Well Sean only visited one college - Berklee College of Music and that's where he ended up. Focused young man. Shannon visited a couple of places, most notably she and i drove to upstate new York one where she visited Ithaca college, which is a terrific school and one she was accepted to. On the road into the college we passed a yellow traffic sign that announced "caution, snowmobiles." Shannon, no snow bunnie by nature, looked at me like this was probably not such a great idea. Then we drove onto the campus and weren't 10-feet onto the property when she turned to me and said "I'm not going here." And that was that. It is my sincere hope that we can get at least 15 or 20 feet onto the Emerson and then Boston University campus on Saturday before kev starts picking the place apart. I can say this much, anyway - as far as I know they At least they don't drive snowmobiles in Boston.
Anyway, this game is killing me so I'd better move on with my pathetic life. I keep going in and watching a batter or two and then coming back and trying to write something. Don't you just love sports? I have chapped lips already from licking them like Jeter the beagle when there is food around. Anyway before I go i do want to mention that I am taking a business trip next week to shoot a video in Trona, California which is just left of the middle of nowhere. I made my reservations today and am flying in Las Vegas and spending the night there and then driving across Death Valley to get to where I'm going. How terrific is that? I have never been to Vegas before so nothing is happened to me there that would have to stay there. I'm staying in a hotel that is shaped like a pyramid. This does not surprise me. I assume everything in Vegas is shaped like a pyramid or the Sphinx or Stonehenge. Anyway that's next week. First we conquer Bahston, then the great Pyramids of Las Vegas.
Chasing the evil virus with a possessed pizza cutter
Like Aerosmith.."I'm baaaaaackkk." Only I don't have those fabulously fat lips of Steven Tyler. No matter. I am in The Chair again doing what I am meant to do. Whining.
So where have I been? I've been to war with a virus on my computer, that's where. For the past several days I have indeed been in The Chair in The Office at GodView but I have not been stroking my ego via the keyboard, but instead have been endlessly searching for an elusive solution to a vicious and brilliant computer virus that had taken over my fabulous Dell Desktop and was melting it down byte by byte. See on Saturday Little Kev the future collegian came to me and said the following: "you (notice the use of the pronoun" you" and not "we") don't have any anti-virus software on the computer do you?" he asked with no sense of urgency or remorse whatsoever." "No," said I, "I cancelled Norton because I hated it and I've been looking around for some free stuff because I read from one of those smug computer writers on the Internet that the free stuff is just as good as the stuff you pay for. Why do you ask?"Well, I should have known why, and it was not because Little Kev had taken a sudden keen interest in computer programming. It was because he had been downloading an entire CD from some sketchy-ass Internet website and along with swell guitars and drums and screaming lyrics about disenfranchisement he also loaded a wicked virus that I have been unsuccessfully chasing like a mythical Snipe ever since. Thank God for the MacBook Pro which does not get viruses, because I have been sitting here like an air traffic controller lo' these many hours with two computers going - the MacBook which i have used to load every known antivirus software onto a memory stick, and the sickly Dell desktop which every time you got on the internet it would direct you to some phony page that said you had a virus and needed to load some software. Didn't matter if you typed in the website for the friggin' Vatican, a phony screen would pop up telling you that you had a virus and desperately needed to load this stuff which if you actually loaded it would probably have spontaneously turned the Dell Desktop into a steaming pile of shit with flies buzzing around. Maddening. Worse yet, the evil genius who developed this little computer worm set it so that you cannot open or run any anti-virus software to get rid of it. So you're screwed. And if you write a blog, as some people I know do, you are totally and completely douched.
Really, though I have a confession to make. I actually like this kind of thing. I actually like the challenge of it. It's like a really hard puzzle. I like problem solving, but only if I know eventually I can solve the problem. I knew I would figure this thing out, but it takes time. Whoever the tool was that developed this thing is an evil genius who needs a hobby or a girlfriend. Anyway, as you know i get strangely obsessed about stuff - body hair, a particular kind of sneakers i simply have to own, neti pots, my own self-worth. I have been obsessed with fixing this virus problem for days. In fact both yesterday and today at work it was all I could think of, walking around tossing this thing around in my head. I do this sometimes with song lyrics if I get a song started and i get stuck and am not happy with a line, I run it around in my head, like let the words circle around in there non-stop so whether I'm having a conversation with someone or standing at the urinal shaking my tail feather inside I am thinking about that damn lyric. Anyway I came home from work tonight, rushed home really because I worked late, and immediately hopped on my two computers and stared searching and loading again and somehow i caught that little shit which came up in the log of one of the 30 programs I've downloaded in the past 72 hours. It was like finally seeing a dead mouse in the trap after finding mouse poopies in your kitchen for a week. Ahhhhhh. I walked around the house tonight proclaiming my computer genius, jumping around like that annoying Rocky at the top of those annoying stairs in Philadelphia.
Oh speaking of Philly, have you been watching the World Series? I certainly have (speaking of obsessed). So far it's been a terrific Series with a little bit of everything, and I have alternately worn a path in the carpet pacing in front of the TV in the GodView master bedroom and worked hard to ignore the proceedings depending on how I was interpreting my luck that particular night. Of course my beloved Yankees are up 3 games to 2 over the Phightin' Phils and the series is going back to New York but the beloved Yankees lost last night and now everyone in the ol' big apple is pushing the panic button and freaking out. Me? I'm staring at the panic button but not pushing yet. If the beloveds lose Game 6 tomorrow and the Series goes to a game 7 with chubby CC Sabiathia pitching on three days rest then i might start producing prodigious sweat rings under the armpits. For now I am nervously under control.
Oh did I tell you that La Sooze was out of town all weekend? My beloved LA Sooze, what would I do without her? She actually flew to Dayton, Ohio which i call Gooberville, and spent the weekend with a friend of hers, a guy she's known since high school. This was no cause for concern on my part because A. La Sooze is simply not that kind of person and considers me her soul mate, and B. the dude she visited is gay as Liberace. Anyway she went out there because this guy, we'll call him Double R because those are his initials, is a former professor at Northwestern University and apparently ridiculously smart and creative. La Sooze, as I say, has known him for years and they still talk and they have been talking about getting together because Double R is not only super experienced in the theatre but he is a gifted grant writer. La Sooze is trying to raise funding to shoot a documentary film about a young boy she has worked with for years who has severe brain damage as a result of a near drowning when he was a baby. Anyway while La Sooze was away what I was doing? Well I did not sleep under the blankets in the Country Squire because I never do when my beloved La Sooze is away. I just can't. Under the blankets is like a holy place. I get a blanket and sleep on top of the comforter as if I am only napping temporarily. I also spent a sleepless night on Saturday. Dig this. Several month ago daughter Shannon bought me a pizza cutter with a NY Yankee logo on it. The beauty of this device is that when you press on it to cut a slice of the ol' peets it plays Yankee announcer John Sterling calling a home run by Derek Jeter. Great fun. Anyway in the middle of the night Saturday, after the Yankees had scored a thrilling late-inning World Series win over the Phightin' Phils, the pizza cutter decided to do Yankee calls all on its own. So it's like three o'clock in the morning and I'm in bed and John Sterling is in the kitchen howling like a madman doing his patented home run call ..."there it goes, it is high, it is far, it is gahn!" and in my semi-conscious state I'm thinking I left the radio on and I keep banging on the damn thing to no avail, and after about the fourth homer that Jeter hit in the kitchen i finally was lucid enough to figure out what the heck was going on and got up and turned it off and hid the possessed pizza cutter. Maybe this is a sign huh? Maybe Jeter - El Capitan, the namesake of my annoying beagle - is getting ready to do something special in the World Series. Or maybe my pizza cutter is malfunctioning, just like Yankees, and just like my Dell Desktop.
Tonight as I stepped off the subway at my stop, I looked out at the road that runs on either side of the train station and was quite suddenly blue. The subway station is in a strange spot anyway, the tracks slightly elevated and running directly in the center of the highway. You get to it through a tunnel that runs beneath the eternal traffic. Sometimes in the morning I stare out the train window and see snapshots: men in pick-up trucks smoking cigarettes with the window cracked, plain women in SUVs talking on cell phones. Sometimes, when the traffic is moving, it seems the cars are racing the trains, aggressively creeping south to the city in a brutal rush to sit and feel their own worth. But not tonight. Tonight i stepped off the train and it was grey and nearly dark as it always is these days. Out of sheer habit I looked to my right, to the side of the road that goes north past billboards and liquor stores, schools now barren of children, gas stations. That's the way I go, to the suburbs, back home. Tonight out there in the coming darkness there was nothing but cars, a cacophony of matching red lights packed in three grey lanes like sardines in a tin can, neat rows, all going the same way, stopped dead. I had my headphones on. I was listening to The Doors' Hyacinth House. "Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away? It was the only card in the deck that I had left to play." I stuck one hand in my jacket pocket then fell in line with the swollen crowd that emptied out of the train cars. A swarm, like bees, funneling toward the tan marble stairs that lead down, out. The next to the last step at the bottom has a huge chunk missing and is jagged and uneven . Last week I stepped there unknowingly and like a drunk, lurched forward and caught myself just before i fell down in a thick crowd. I made believe it had never happened, straightening myself and walked on.Cool, as if anyone cared. Tonight as I descended I was thinking about a scene from the movie Revolutionary Road where Leonardo DiCaprio is getting off a train in New York in the morning and he's surrounded by thousands of men and they all look just like him: dark suits and thin ties with fedora hats and newspapers neatly folded under their arms. It's that sameness that makes me weary sometimes, the uniformity, the hurried rush to something none of us can really identify with any candor. On days like these I can feel the monotony between my fingers. It's like I'm watching myself watching the eyes of a crowd at a tennis match, back and forth, back and forth, polite applause, then back and forth again. Today I was aware of the broken step near the bottom of the stairs and stepped around it. Now that I am aware of it, I will not risk the fall. I stayed tight with the crowd. In front of me was a heavy-set middle-aged woman wearing a long jean skirt. She walked slowly, rocking from leg to leg, her hips dipping with each agonizingly slow step. At the bottom of the skirt she wore red socks.
I walked the three flights up to my car, closed the door and lit a cigarette. I pulled out of the parking garage and onto the highway, finding an opening in the long, long line of red lights stopped in the autumn dusk.
First of all the World Series starts tonight and my beloved Yankees are taking on the Phightin' Phillies of Philadelphia which means it's an all-east coast Series which means there is the potential for fights in the stands, and it will certainly rain a lot and be cold, which will have zero impact on me pacing the floors of the God View bedroom with the tv on until all hours of the night. While guys like Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins clearly concern me in this upcoming series, what concerns me even more is that this morning I was listening to a New York sports talk radio station and they were telling fans to get to Yankee Stadium early because Obama's wife and the VP's wife (who is the VP, anyway?) are going to be at the game today and there will be tons of security. Um. quick question - why? It's clearly going to be too cold to show off her universally celebrated arms, so it can't be just another fashion stop for ol' 'Chelle O, which begs the question of why this woman is clogging up traffic for the Series in NY? Isn't she a White Sox fan? If I was the Prez, and I am clearly not, I certainly would not ditch the World Series at Yankee Stadium and send La Sooze instead with one of her political gal pals. No, I would be in a front row seat in a Yankees jacket and hat sitting between Rudy Giuliani and La Sooze and no doubt Billy Crystal would be nearby in case things got grim and we needed a good laugh. Anyway, as I type this my beloved Yankees are losing 4-0 in the eighth inning of this first game and Cliff Lee of the Phightin' Phils looks very much like Cy Young. It's the curse of 'Chelle O, I'm telling you. Anyway, looks like an early night for both me and my beloveds. There's always tomorrow.
Oh I mentioned PriceLine and that shameless shill William "The Negotiator" Shatner yesterday. I'm pissed at Bill. Here's why. See the first weekend in November La Sooze and I are making a trip to Bahston with Little Kev to visit two colleges - Boston University and Emerson. So the deal is we're leaving on Thursday night and driving like 5 hours and then spending the night on the road in upstate NY then finsihing the trip the next day when we have our first college visit scheduled. So since this is one of those hotel stays where you just get in late, sleep, shower and leave, we decided we did not need the Four Seasons, but a reasonably-priced room would do. So I got on the ol' Internet and dialed up PriceLine and that shill Shatner. See if you've never used this PriceLine thing it goes like this - you pick a city and a number of stars, like a three-star hotel, and then you put a price in that you feel like paying and you either get a hotel with those stars at that price or you don't. The problem is that ol chop-chop Bill will not tell you what the actual hotel is until after you agree to pay the money, and if you say ok but don't happen to like the hotel you get there are no refunds and you are what my fat irish father used to call SOL, or Shit Out of Luck. Anyway, I am SOL. See I went through this ridiculous process and i got this Ramada Inn in Middletown, NY for a terrific price. Now i know why. After I got the confirmation from Bill I immediately jumped on my all-time favorite website, my travel bible TripAdvisor, which provides reviews of hotels all across this great country of ours. So i punch in this wonderful hotel and the first review I see says the following three letter word" UGH!" Not good. I read on. Other headlines say "Bring disinfectant," "Keep driving," and my personal favorite "This place should be inspected by the Health Dept." Great. The individual reviews tell you about dirty rooms with broken furniture, missing ceiling tiles and broken door locks. Vacation paradise. Can't wait to get there. Anyway after reading these rave reviews I contacted ol' PriceLine and threw myself at the mercy of The Negotiator but to no avail - no refunds, pal. So now I hate Bill Shatner and PriceLine and I am absolutely dreading going to this awful hotel like I am dreading the prospect of fielding calls and e-mails from Phillie fans tomorrow. UGH indeed.
Oh also i did try out the ol' Neti Pot last night and it was terrific, though I don't think I will have myself vdeotaped while performing the act and post it on YouTube. It's a little awk having a little tea pot spout jammed up one nostril and warm water pouring out the other one like a mini Victoria Falls. Felt pretty good, though. In fact today i did a little additional research on my friend the Neti Pot and one of the sites I read said the pot can result in "dramatic improvements in chronic mucus and catarrh (basically a cold) problems, eye complaints, reduced anxiety and an improvement in sleep problems." The magical elixir - all of life's problems flushed out of your nasal caviites. Just ask Oprah. Maybe if you rub it hard a little genie will come out and grant you three nose-related wishes as well. Oh, also in my research I found out that the pot is sometimes called a, and I'm quoting here: "nose bidet." Cracked me up. A couple of years ago my whole fam, including La Sooze's mom aka Mema, went on vacation in the Dominican Republic at one of those all-inclusive resorts. Apparently every country in the free world has bidets except the US where we believe our private parts to be superior and already cleaner than those in the remainder of the universe. Anyway there were bidets in all the bathrooms of the hotel where we stayed and the boys, Little Kevin, really, used the one in his room to consistently clean the sand off his feet from the beach. I have an actualy photograph of one of these cleanings. Smart boy, really, but he needs to be a little more careful about where he puts his feet.
Oh, one more quick thing before I turn the telvision off and make believe there is no World Series going on. Today i got an e-mail from the person above me in the corporate organization chart - PAM. Pam was forwarding an e-mail that she had received informing her that some company was doing a background check on me. Uh oh. Connecticut Bob Wintershoe is apparently still thinking he likes me but wants to be sure I am not a total creep before he pops the question. Oh, and for some reason he tells PAM about it. Thanks Bob. Of course when PAM asked me I totally denied all knowledge of what was going on, telling PAM I had no idea what that was about - probably e-mail spam. Anyway, as I predicted, I thought this particular Bob W went well and maybe there will be something more this time than an e-mail telling me that they've decided to "pursue an internal candidate" as Philadelphia Bob Wintershoe told me earlier this year after I'd schleped three times to the City of Brotherly Love (another reason to dislike Philly btw). Anyway, nothing is decided yet but I have this intuition about this and I am clearly feeling Bob's love. Wow. I wonder what Connecticut looks like in November.
So today I was walking into work after I had gone to the Barnes & Noble bookstore at lunch in the rain. Did I mention it is raining again? Did I mention I feel as if I live in a car wash? Anyway, as I approached the ol' brick building, my glasses misted, I was slightly sad about the prospect of going back into work when all I really wanted was to find a comfy spot all alone where I could start reading the new book I'd just bought. But no, I had to push through the revolving door and go upstairs and make believe I fit in for several hours, and as I thought this through the following phrase popped into my head, the one with the still overgrown and Lyle Lovett-like hair:Numbingly unfulfilled. That's how work makes me feel these days, numbingly unfulfilled, like a toy robot who can only perform one or two tricks, I go through my routine in a quiet but listless malcontent funk. Really, it either needs to stop raining for awhile or I need to find another job. In the meantime I will hang onto this phrase because it is the most descriptive and creative thing I've thought about all week. Numbingly unfulfilled. I like it. Maybe I'll have my name legally changed to that.
Oh speaking of books, I finally finished the endless book "Loving Frank" this morning on the train, all 350–plus pages of this plodding tome. Thank God. I placed it on my bookshelf at work this morning, never to be read again. It looks very impressive there beside my copies of Revolutionary Road and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Anyway I got a new book that I started this afternoon and I am already feeling the first pangs of a new-found love. The book is another memoir (natch) and is called "This Boy's Life" written by a guy named Tobias Wolff.I actually purchased it because years ago La Sooze and I saw the movie made out of this book and I loved it, mainly because it starred Robert DeNiro who, let's be honest, is probably my all-time fave actor along with perhaps Ronald Colman, Montgomery Clift and the incomprable Ida Lupino. Anyway DeNiro plays this kid's step dad in the movieand he's a super duper prick and he keeps yelling at the kid by saying the following: "shut your pie hole." How could you not like a movie that uses the line "shut your pie hole?" You could not. Anyway I read the first few pages of the book tonight on the way home on the crowded subway with a bald-headed guy in a tan trench coat pressing against my left arm and I am feeling it - the book, not the bald guy. In fact as much as I did not love Frank I may love Tobias Wolff. This is what is terrific about books, you toss one aside and grab another until you find one you like and you never have to make excuses because reading is completely self-governing. No one is quizzing me on chapters.I am thrilled that I have a book to love.
Also, tonight I bought a Neti Pot. I shit you not. I got it at Bed, Bath and Beyond which isa very strange store, high class kitsch for your bathroom and kitchen, which is precisely what this country of ours has needed for years.A Neti Pot for the uninitiated is a cute little tea pot, short and stout, that you fill with warm salt water and then you jam the spout up your nostril and you pour the warm water through one nose hole and it pours out the other as if you have a hole in your head. It looks very dignified, I assure you, though I suspect it's not the kind of thing you want to do in front of a potential beau on your first date.Anyway this fabulous little tea pot flushes out the ol' nose cleaning it out of, um, shall we say, debris. It is a yoga thing, this Neti Pot and according to the trusty Internet has been used in India for many a day.Indians are apparently always shoving tea pots up their snouts. It's supposed to help stop sinus problems and colds, and now La Sooze (who btw looked very cute today in a little wool skirt and boots) tells me she has read that it helps prevent the H1N1, or swine, or "Heiney" flu. So too does Listerne mouthwash a few times per day, apparently. I bought some of that today as well. I have not tried the Neti yet, btw but plan to flush the ol' schnoz before I hit the Country Squire tonight. So why did I purchase this little whiffer washer? Because I have been feeling crappy the past two days and of course these days when you sneeze you know you will be dead from swiney heiney flu in a matter of days.Anyway La Sooze and I had talked about the Neti awhile ago and when it came up in convo tonight I immediately ran to the Bed, Bath and Beyond and pushed my way past 100-thread count sheets and pedicure sets to the pots. Somehow I feel better already.
I had other stuff to tell you tonight but my Neti Pot is calling. Remind me to tell you about PriceLine and TripAdvisor tomorrow because I have criticism for that shill William Shatner. In fact I would like to punch his fat face in.
But that is for tomorrow. Tonight I close with a joke that was forwarded to me today by my Cousin Nancy in Connecticut. The joke actually had a picture embedded in it on the e-mail she sent but the picture did not bring anything additional to the joke table so I will leave it out.
Oh the joke has a name, it is called Itlian Women Are Tough, and it goes like this:
An elderly Italian man lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite ravioli wafting up the stairs.
He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed.Gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen, where if not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven for there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were hundreds of his favorite ravioli.
Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of love from his wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
He threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a crumpled posture. His parched lips parted, the wondrous taste of the ravioli was already in his mouth.
With a trembling hand he reached up to the edge of the table, when suddenly he was smacked with a wooden spoon by his wife.
"Va fanculo!" she said. "Questi sono per il funerale."
