I love being tracked. I know people nowadays have concerns about the NSA snooping into their business and whatnot; civil liberties: blah blah blah; but I just look at all that as a sign that somebody somewhere cares. It’s comforting to me. I realize this attitude may come about as a result of negligent parenting, but I try not to dwell on the whos or whys too much.
Friday July 20, 1979 my mom took a day off from her job at On the Spot, a cleaning supply company located out in the Valley. It was the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing and she thought it would be a good opportunity for us to learn something. Read more
I haven’t lived in New York since 1999. But I’m still a New Yorker, there’s no doubt about that! It’s like being a Marine, once one; always one. But I’ll admit something here, I’ve lost track. And for that I’m very concerned. I haven’t been there for years now and it’s changed so much, and well….. what will I do?!
Jeannine Wooten was a dreamer. Like many dreamers, she was given to the get-rich-quick scheme. This may imply to you a generalized lack of energy or effort on her part, but to that I must reply, oh, contraire!
It’s not unusual that singular observations come at you enough times to where they harden into opinions. But it’s quite rare (and not to mention gratifying) when those observations and opinions (even the ones where nobody else seems to agree) are proven beyond a reasonable doubt. “Reasonable doubt?!” you might scoff. “Why yes,” I’ll attest, “it was even proven to me in a court of law!”
Growing up without a male role model, I was forced to turn to the world of television. It was 1980, and I was either looking in the wrong place, or there were not that many viable broadcast options for a 12 going on 13 year old wanna-be-rebellious mama’s boy.
I guess I was also a sister’s boy too, if there even was such a thing.
There were other boys at school, but, being my peers, they were equally uninformed – but hopefully not as pathetic as I considered myself to be. Except for Mr. Bishop (who told a couple of harrowing stories of the Watts Riots), the teachers were all dicks and were therefore unapproachable. Where would I turn to find an older guy to show me how to avoid the pitfalls of my teen years? To show me how to, you know, just be a guy?
I ran upstairs because I’d heard the fight was already over. As part of my ongoing effort to get my friend James into sports I had jotted this down on a post-it before I hit the project-concrete stairs of our dorm room at Willoughby:
“Tyson knocked him out in 93 seconds! 93!”
OK it was really 91. But I’d been listening to WFAN and they were apparently pretty excited about it too. I made it the 6 floors up (not trusting the “hellavator”) and stuck the note to James’ door, under the 804 number. None of us had TVs except for Lewis Greene and Myra Rivera, and he only let us watch Redskins games (including the Super Bowl); and unfortunately this didn’t happen often because we all lived in Brooklyn.
I just saw the new movie “Star Trek Into Darkness” and now I’ve got celluloid agita. Please indulge me whilst I try to articulate my discomfort (oh yeah, requisite spoiler alert: blah blah blah).
I’ve gotta admit, I went into the theater a little defensive; after all I remembered what happened to Vulcan in the first movie back in ’09. I felt that they’d just better not……..
Well, there’s nothing after that. There was just a vague feeling that they’d better not do something I didn’t approve of. Just don’t change it too much, ok? I entered the theater with just that mix of excitement and trepidation.
I’ve been watching a great series on Netflix recently, “The Story of Film,” a multipart look at everything having to do with movies from the 1890’s to the present. Some of the history I knew (remembering local lore as an old Hollywood resident) but some things I didn’t (like that the great director Jean Renoir was the son of the great painter Pierre- Auguste Renoir). Produced in 2011, the “Story of Film” unfolds on several continents and is (thank goodness) not the same old Hollywood-centric story.
Mary had been with me everywhere. The ups, the downs, the countless moves to different cities and states. I couldn’t shake her. My sibling barnacle knew all my moves and how to push all my buttons. She was my rival, always nearby, a sentient shadow. And one day when we were coming back from Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors I just, well, snapped. A moment later when I realized where I was, all I saw was my little sister (not even one whole year younger than me – clinging stubbornly close even in age) lying there on Gower Street with a scoop of vanilla rolling slowly to the gutter. It lost its glint as it picked up debris and quickly started to melt.