from the top...

let's see: yesterday, the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium with Matt, followed by a visit to the 11th St Pub with Billy & Michael and (again) El Acogedor Cibao.

...and whatever else I missed

so, today's itinerary: LGA, Grand Central Station, Mami's, Colin Quinn's "Long Story Short," Tom & Jerry's, Katz's Deli, 12th St Ale House, El Acogedor Cibao...

¡no más!

this is the last time I fly Delta. their website (basically sales- and not customer-oriented) was down for hours—and "one-time notification" means "23 e-mails."

$ave me $ome.

regarding my prior post on lucky pennies: I bet I'll find fewer of 'em in NYC. my theory? the natives are so aware of the terrain, they'll find 'em before I do.

nature show

plans to fly into post-storm JFK on Tuesday means having to check flight status every hour. it's nice to be able to watch Nature, to keep things in perspective.

a Christmas prayer

please forgive my wayward blogging./
I failed to post, but went eggnogging./
X-mas Eve can overwhelm./
I’m glad to be back at the helm.

happy Christmas to you all.

time will crawl.

as with every other important event, time crawls toward X-mas. the thing is thrust upon you suddenly and—before you know it—is off again, as quickly as it came.

blog-stalker II

I finally decided to follow that erstwhile girl-only blog. why? I found it finally has not just more followers, but a few guys among them. I'm no longer creepy!

sorry, piggy.

once upon a time, my "I could eat this every day" meal was pizza. after last night, however, I'd have to say it's Suzy's chuletas a la abuela with rice & beans.

holiday to-froms

on January 5, 2011, I'll celebrate the 20th anniversary of the flight that brought me to Seattle from New York. (also, I'll be flying from New York to Seattle!)

nada

tonight, I have nothing to say—nothing at all to say. have you got something to say? (please say it, because I have nothing tonight.) what's that you say? ¿cómo?

espresso love's alright.

my coffee girl raised prices $0.25, so I've been going less often—which means she'll make $6.50–$9.75 a week, instead of $15, including tips. has she noticed?

well-done

if you have to go, you might as well be burned at the stake, like Copernicus. (or was it Galileo?) it's the smoke that does you in before you are crispily done.

now with less copper!

how lucky are the lucky pennies of which I find at least one nearly every day? I learned last night that those minted in 1982 and earlier contain actual copper!

i pugni in tasca

in JHS, Elliott said, "are your hands cold? make 'em fists" (I'd heard "fit") "in your pockets." he forgot to add tucking your thumbs, but they were wise words.

urban wolfboy

when I was a young man growing up in the South Bronx of the early '70s and playing in the rubble of burned-down tenements, I wanted to grow up to be a werewolf.

punny/stupid

here are a few punny/stupid names for a capella groups (you're welcome, The Sing-Off):

Vokel Yokels, The Bass-holes, Composed, The Uppenclassmen (from U. Penn)

a dedication

Milt Gross offers a book to his wife, "to whom baseball is a monstrous plot [making] her a summer widow."
change "baseball" to "softball"; that could be Suzy.

"Tempest" in a teapot

other than the relentless rain & coffee worship & phony friendliness, the lousy thing about Seattle is that limited-release, select-city flicks don't come here.

born, born in the '60s

buying flight tickets, entering required personal info, I had to scroll way down to find my birth year (1967). doubts that I am getting old have been dispelled.

talking down

if Seinfeld were still on TV, he'd rail against "downtalkers" (gals whose speech trails off into a low growl) and those who end sentences with "so" and/or "or."

blog-stalker

what's creepier: to be the only boy to follow a gal's blog of which all the followers are gals, or to follow the blog anonymously? an interesting ethical query.

about the author

man, I used to know how to write. or, rather, I used to write, and I was pretty good—respectable, anyway. that was back when I drank & was depressed. good times.

"Screed"

"no one has known ... the things you know, and you have, as the artist of the whole matter, an authority that no one has approached."
–Jack Saunders (or Conrad)

new rule

Suzy says, "write something of substance and import!" that'd be a new rule, then, as in:

Auntie Karen said last night, "autograph what you do with excellence."

how it works

the rules: no abbrevs (heh-heh); no numbers-as-words; no fragmented sentences; no posts of more—or fewer—than 160 characters; and whatever I can think of later.

posthaste

the challenge: to create a daily blog post of only (and exactly) 160 characters—the number of characters allowed by the message window of my not-so-smart phone.

"in the beginning..."

hello?