The Liquor Store Guy

Have you ever walked into a liquor store when they're doing a free tasting? I rushed into one the other day to get a bottle of wine. There's a guy offering free samples of a new vodka, I already forget the name, Extreme Polish Mist or whatever it was called. A frosted glass bottle with little bare trees and deers on the sides.

"It's quadruple filtered," Vodka Dude says.

"Tastes good," I say, even though it tasted pretty much like vodka.

"Have you noticed the hints of cinnamon and licorice?" he says.

"Yeah," I lied, just to make it look like I knew my vodka. "Definitely a hint of cinnamon in there. Interesting."

I threw the tiny plastic tasting cup in the small trashbasket and told him I'd definitely keep it in mind for the future. He gave me this look that said, do you think I give a flying fuck if you keep it in mind for the future? I'm paid to stand here.

So I moved on, found a real cheap and tasty bottle of red wine (the sign actually said Real Cheap and Tasty) and paid for it, listening to Vodka Dude talk it up with another customer. I listened to him tell her about the quadruple filtering process, the hints of cinammon and licorice, and then she asked him what he thought of it.

"Oh," Vodka Dude says. "I don't drink alcohol. Never touch the stuff."

I'm leaving the store, and I'm thinking, that's just not right. I mean, what if an exterminator showed up at your apartment and said, mind I come in, I have no idea how to use this? Or a pilot got on the intercom and said, down below we have a great view of Shea Stadium, and I have no fucking idea how to land this? Or maybe it's just the liquor store guys. Maybe they're a teetotaling alien race hoping to turn us all into alcoholics so they can take over the world.

So don't buy Extreme Polish Mist, or whatever it was called, with the bare trees and the deers and the frosted bottle.

12:17 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The Tandem Asshole Theory

I'm working on something called The Tandem Asshole Theory. I'm convinced that when I run into one asshole, on an otherwise normal, lovely day, there's a one hundred percent chance that I'm going to run into another one within fifteen minutes. For instance, yesterday, I said 'hello' to a mother at my daughter's daycare and she looked at me as if I'd just taken a crap on the floor. Not a word out of her mouth in response. She just stares. I could go on about people who don't say hello when I say hello, but that's not the point of this little tale. Within fifteen minutes, another asshole tries to merge right into my car, nearly scraping the paint off my beloved beige Nissan. What I'm saying is that if I have the misfortune of running into one asshole, I might as well just start dusting off the welcome mat for the other one, because he's going to show up within fifteen minutes. The only way out of this situation is to suddenly become an asshole myself, precluding the need for the second asshole to find me. So if I suddenly cut you off in traffic, or look blankly at you after you introduce yourself, you'll know that it comes from a good place.

10:37 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Grace Paley

I heard the sad news that Grace Paley died today. I was fortunate enough to study with her at Sarah Lawrence. She was a short woman with unruly white hair and a wonderful, craggy smile. I can vividly picture her at the end of a round conference table in writing workshop, listening to a female student read her story. I remember the story had a line about smelling the piss-stained aroma of a New York subway entrance. One by one everyone piled on and criticized the story. We were all extremely satisfied with our superiority. Then Grace spoke and in about two minutes, showed us why we were all idiots (without saying 'idiot' of course) and why it was a great story. I remember the writer was a skinny girl with wiry black hair and that she beamed as Paley spoke. I think great writers are also instinctual defenders of good writing. They don't go with the crowd, they couldn't care less about trends or genre, they just know when a story works. Once, as I sat in her office, she kindly explained why a story of mine didn't work.

"Your story is like this," she said, gliding one hand over the other, barely touching her palms. "It needs conflict. It needs to be like this."

Then she clapped her hands once, loudly, and smiled.

I did too, even though my feelings were temporarily hurt. I knew I was learning. I can still hear the echo of her handclap in that small office.

If you've never read her, two wonderful books are "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute," and "Later the Same Day."

5:35 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Please Don't Kill Me, I Just Want to Ride the Wonder Wheel

What is it about me that I always feel like I'm the guy who's one step ahead of the other guy and end up paying dearly for it? For instance, Coney Island yesterday. Blazing hot boardwalk, everyone around us starting to get slowly unhinged by the heat. Suddenly, every sweaty parent around me is yelling at their kid.

"Hold my hand now," one angry looking guy said. "Your mother's not watching you because she doesn't give a shit."

"Get out of the doorway," a gentle-looking man yelled at his son. "That's a store. People need to walk in there."

There was something about the heat that was turning every adult into a sinister enforcer of small infractions. Meanwhile, I'm leading my own family on a forced march to….The hot dog stand NEXT to Nathan's.

You figure the fact that absolutely no one was eating there would have tipped me off. Or that there were silver scales growing on the French fries. But no, I was the guy who was avoiding Nathan's endless lines, crunching into a hot dog that had probably been tossed on the grill sometime around 1979. My wife does this thing when she knows something's wrong with her food. She clamps a napkin against her mouth, like she's gone into mourning.

"What's going on?" I said.

"Nothing," she said, her voice muffled by the napkin.

"I can't eat this, daddy," my daughter said, showing me the hot dog, which had snapped off, like beef jerky.

"What's wrong with it?" I said. "It's delicious."

But this is what occurred to me as I forced myself to eat the stiff little hot dog on the stale bun. How could a human being screw up a hot dog, a food that fully EXISTS before it's even touched by our hands. It doesn't have to be poked or prodded, checked for rareness, herbed up, or even flipped. It simply has to be moved to THE SIDE of the grill, after A FEW HOURS. Needless to say, we left the Hot Dog Stand Next To Nathan's to stand in line at Nathan's.

But before I sound like I'm always walking around with a gripe in my pants, I'd like to say I like the seediness of Coney Island, the tender way the weeds poke through the abandoned amusement park's asphalt, the poignant leers that the two shirtless men passing us give my wife, or children. The dollar I had to give another shirtless man just for parking my own car! Is it real seediness or is someone paying these people? Some kind of urban decay nostalgia project funded secretly by Mayor Bloomberg. Because I simply do not believe that some scrawny guy wearing a T-shirt that said Movie Star would walk right up to me as I'm pushing my daughter in a baby carriage on the boardwalk and say…

"I'm going to kill you."

For a moment, I thought he was talking to me. He was talking to me. And then he was gone, all talk apparently. I watched him casually shock another innocent pedestrian.

But the Wonder Wheel, in the end, was wonderful, the carriage slowly scraping over the green rails and momentarily flinging my daughter and I into hazy, blue space. We descended into the loading station, the lines of people sweatily glaring, and happily felt ourselves climb into the breezes again.

7:00 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The Night Poems

Well, first came The Office Poems. Now, prepare yourself for the offhand, seat-of-the-pants sequel, The Night Poems...

12:03

waiting for the Xanax

to kick in

and one loose quarter

in the drier

to stop

fucking around

and find

the right pocket.

12:23

My wife is gorgeous

when she sleeps—

these poses

she keeps from me

all day

as if she were

sunbathing

in her underwear

in a moonlit cove.

I watch her

turn on her side,

still fascinated,

as if I were a beach peddler

holding a basket

of polished, pink-lipped

sea shells. I lay them

at the foot of the bed

and watch them

crawl away.

Even my imaginary

creatures refuse

to bother her.

12:58

The little one,

she could accidentally

hang herself

from these Venetian blind cords,

she could swallow

this miniature baby

carriage.

I kneel down

and push it away

with my index finger,

wondering what's become

of the treacherous

plastic infant

who used to bawl inside.

10:57 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The Office Poems

I don't know which came first, the boredom or the creativity. But I'm sitting here at my freelance job this morning, and the choice was daytrading or poetry. To stave off financial destruction I wrote some office poems. And...here they are....


IN THE OFFICE KITCHEN

a basket of wilted flowers
have been placed
next to the microwave.
How did you know?


CARMEN ELECTRA

was speaking
into a microphone
in Bryant Park.
We pressed against each other
until we could see
the slightly parted lips
under the dark sunglasses.
We kept pressing until
we could barely hear her voice.
"I use cocoa butter,"
she said, almost timidly,
to her amazed
Asian interviewer.
"And sometimes…"
We were leaning even closer
when the bomb went off.


TRANSLUCENT JELLIBELL

If I have suddenly
become a Palestinian worker
waiting at a maze
of concrete dividers
growing thirsty,
my dark cotton pants
chalked with white dust,
he must be staring
at my computer screen
watching the latest bloodshed
refresh itself, gently tugging
the ribbon of a body-
bagged cookie
left over
from last year's launch party.


CUSTOM STREAMERS

All day,
I have been waiting
for the pink bicycles
to come ringing
round the corner,
the gap-toothed girls
on the verge of losing
their balance
chased by their crouched
fathers and yards
of custom streamers.

12:59 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment