incidentally.

rip paul newman.

class personified.

id write more about my half-bro, if i werent (wasnt? shouldnt i know the english subjunctive by now?) wrapping up my brilliant a-rod contract powerpoint don for class.

go cubs.

no october baseball in nyc.

i mean, really?

damn.

rhyme 1.

show no mercy in murcielagas
im far from being the bastard that marcy had fathered.

-jay-z, mr. carter

another mouth to feed.

there is an unfortunate analog to the crisis of waking up, breaking out the cereal bowl, pouring in the flakes or o's or whathaveyou, taking the spoon out, then, as seinfeld describes, picking up the milk carton and realizing it's tragically light.

(sometimes you still pour it over the cereal, hoping by some miracle youve misjudged the weight, right? nope, you havent. and your reward is a semi-moist bowl of ruined honey nut cheerios [which is the perfect cereal btw {provided you have sufficient milk}].)

the analog is your cat waking you up, leading you to her empty food bowl, then you picking up the cat food bag and realizing it's tragically light. and youre gonna have to make your first foray into the world this morning in your jammies and unkempt countenance, to buy the beast the generic food the deli sells, b.c the pet store that sells the premo stuff that she wont inevitably regurgitate (shes a weak-stomached food snob - o brady i love you!) doesnt open for another hour and you gotta haul ass.

and of course said premo pet food store will be closed by the time you get home tonite.

man, the sacrifices we make for our children, right?

d'oh.

remember when you were a kid, and you wondered why the government didnt just print up a bunch of money, so everyone could be rich? (i at least wondered that).

well, guess what? they finally do! (though not so everyone can be rich, exactly.)

while having the senate banking committee $700 billion fannie/freddie/lehman/AIG/your uncle ruby/bumblebee man bailout hearings on in the background, i heard senator bob bennet (r-ut) say 'the economy runs on credit. credit is granted on confidence. confidence is based one of two assumptions. the collateral is worth it, or the cash flow will be sufficient. one way or the other, the loan will be repaid. what we're faced with now, is finding a way to restore the confidence in the system so that credit can start to flow again. that's what we're here to try to do.'

one way or the other, the loan will be repaid?!

youre kidding me bob, right?

as many of you know, unlikely as it sounds, my first real job out of college was underwriting commercial real estate mortgages, and my second was developing and getting said mortgages approved by our loan committee. (i should mention, our collateral was the commerical real estate itself, and always a second lien on a residence whose first lien was inevitably held by freddie mac or fannie mae or maybe it was only one of them; i forget.)

anyway, i dont think in the history of the lending company at which i worked, in tens and maybe even hundreds of thousands of loan applications, anyone ever dared tell the loan committe, 'one way or the other, the loan will be repaid.' it's like, why dont you add, 'cross my heart and hope to die.'

i realize bennet (btw, his website has a section called 'bennett in the senate,' which is a pretty catchy line i have to admit) had to speak in such a generality in this case, but that gem still perked up my ears.

and i just read, in the times, that "the chairman of the (senate banking) committee, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, said in his prepared remarks that Mr. (Treasury Secretary Henry M.) Paulson (Jr.)’s proposal was 'stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail.'"

i guess that makes sense, you know, b.c HOW DO YOU COLLATERALIZE A FRIGGIN' 700 BILLION DOLLAR LOAN? the loan-to-value ratio (im really trying to sound like i know what im talking about) any bank would require on that literally fantastic loan would have to call for collateral worth upwards of 1 trill, right?

additionally, how can we expect the cash flow (and which particular flow are we talking about, here, btw?) to be sufficient? to recoup 700 billion?

i mean, we're just printing up money.

im sure there are all sorts of ways to show that my saying that indicates that i dont know what the hell im talking about. (for instance, this times op-ed is a good one. actually, you really should read it. it helped me understand the whole situation a lot better, using clear language.)

the pt is, dude, i may not be an economologist, but i stayed in a holiday inn last night, and i am dubious.

lastly, i think this bailout prolly has to be added to the list of lifespan historical watermarks that i talked about in aug 07.

quote 37.

the truth has a ring to it.

-via paula williams, cab driver, jehovah's witness, native and resident of bed-stuy do-or-die

she stopped the meter and we talked about god and the bible and eve & adam (not adam & eve) and spirituality and people and life for what seemed like twenty minutes.

we really didnt agree on any of the specifics of the ways in which god works, but we agreed hes doin something.

btw, this post is a visceral reverberation of this one.

is it worth it to you?

i know we're all being barraged with obama fundraising requests.

i know people are tired of hearing me, and everyone else, talk about him.

i know. i know. i know.

but you know, it's not like this is important or anything.

* * *

this is one of my final pleas.

carrot. honestly. please donate to my obama-biden fundraising page - WHATEVER you can spare.

you can chip in a 20 spot. i know you can.

stick. frankly, shame on you if youre not gonna spare anything.

(obv if youve already donated through another channel, you are exempt from that preemptive dig.)

please donate once in september, then again in october.

thank you so much.

you cant go home again.

in transit from the pitch 'n putt to dinner chez maz, i saw a lot of yankee fans on the 4 train, on their way to the last game - ever - at the current yankee stadium.

seeing them was not unemotional for me.

i had wanted to make it to one game this year to say goodbye (i usually see two at least, anyway), but never got around to it. my bad.

nevertheless, closure doesnt have to happen in such an orchestrated manner. that's something im learning.

so im gonna keep this simple. my two best memories of the house that ruth built:

1. sophomore year, i took a flat F on a genetics midterm at u of m to fly back to nyc to see game 2 of the 98 world series. not only did the bombers win, but bernie baseball, my all-time favorite player, hit a dinger. at the time, i justified my decision to take the zero by telling my mom that seeing the once-in-a-generation record-setting 98 yanks in the world series would be a much better story for my grandkids than some genetics midterm. boy was i right. so glad i did that.

2. i refer to an old post of mine. i cant tell it any better now than i did then, so here it is.

goodnight yankee stadium. thank you for being my sanctuary from the world.

some words keep speaking when you close the book.

this is like a must-write-immediately.

i just met a guy who had a tattoo of an open book on his forearm*.

whenever i meet people who have prominent tattoos, i ask them what theyre all about (the tattoos; i dont nec want to know what those people are all about. that's knowledge i could do without).

so i said, 'what's that tattoo say?'

he showed me.

SOME WORDS KEEP SPEAKING WHEN YOU CLOSE THE BOOK.

i fairly lept out of my don.

jawbreaker.

i couldnt believe it.

i couldnt place the song, but i could sing the lyrics. he reminded me the line is from condition oakland, off 24 hour revenge therapy; a brilliant song whose bridge is actually jack kerouac reading a poem of his.

jawbreaker is easily one of my handful favorite bands. they really mean a lot to me.

having disbanded in 97, and my having never been a part of their scene when it was current - as i was introduced to them by nick, the rest of whose music i loathed - i cant be sure how popular jawbreaker ever was. but i know i never hear about them now.

i basically have conversations about how awesome they are with myself.

so when my new best friend told me that not only does blake schwarzenbach live 'not far' from near me in bk (he wasnt sure precisely where), but that jawbreaker almost had a secret reunion in bk six mos. ago, well.

i nearly lost it.

*i must acknowledge that overlapping metaphor: wearing an open book on, essentially, your sleeve. is it too much, or simply appropriate? acknowledging i dont really know this guy, im guessing the former.

cruel summer.

this morning, as i went to and from the laundromat to wash my jeans and the sheet upon which brady bestowed last night's dinner, i noticed that there is now a legitimate chill in the nyc air.

i for one welcome this change.

i like summer, but it always seems to squeeze every last drop of sanity from my melon. it's time to simmer down now.

im not a big fan of winter, but fall and spring - anytime.

ulysses.

this post is for nc, rsj, the father of rsj, and my cat.



so, tom brady is out for the season.

dont worry, im not gonna do what you all think im gonna do, which is, you know, flip out.

i actually think this is a good thing.

let's go back a bit.

i loved tom brady b.c he was the nerd's qb. he was drafted by the erstwhile montreal expos as a catcher - the cerebral cortex of the players on a baseball team. initially relegated to backup under brian griese at michigan, brady supposedly hired a psychologist to help him cope with his frustration. (that's enough links btw.) and he was a legit ls & a student, not a kinisieology 'student-athlete.'

then, even as our freaking starting qb, brady wasnt the celebrity he should have been. those honors went to the newly-arrived, over-hyped drew henson, whom, interestingly, the yankees had drafted as a third baseman - the biceps, and maybe triceps, of a baseball team. henson was so highly touted by everyone and their mother that brady had to cede some game time to him. what's worse, i think he had to cede some tri-delts to him. no matter; brady started every game for two years, and ended his college career as orange bowl mvp.

nevertheless, he was drafted in the sixth round. he was scrawny. hes built up his arm, but hes never been much of a 'physical specimen.' logically, it was the most cerebral of coaches, belichick, who took a flier on him.

a coupla years later, drew bledsoe went down, brady became the pats' starting qb, the team won three super bowls in two seconds, and somewhere in there, brady became tom.

he went from being the brain to being the face.

dont get me wrong; in the process, brady established himself, in an improbably short amount of time, as one of the greatest football players ever - no small feat.

it's just that something was lost in that process.

but brady's career has been so storied, that you just know he's a favorite son of the football gods.

so they must have taken him down for a reason.

theyre not content to make brady's career great; theyre gonna make it epic.

coming off the most crushing super bowl loss in history - a game which, if he had won, would have propelled him into relative immortality - brady is now gonna have to sit out for a year.

hes gonna have to chew on that bone without a chance at redemption for a whole friggin year.

it's a blessing in disguise.

this is going to be a transformative experience.

brady is now in what joseph campbell called the belly of the whale. (this most often happens to athletes via injury, but it can happen by other means, such as imprisonment.)

this inward journey is going to turn brady into the type of transcendent (yes, i use that word a lot) athlete he never could have become inside the gym.

as campbell puts it:
Appearing to have died by being swallowed or having their flesh scattered, the hero is transformed and becomes ready for the adventure ahead.

in other words, when all is said and done, hes not only gonna come back to reclaim the lombardi trophy. tom is gonna find brady again.

this is the stuff of legend.

pull your weight.

for reals, people.

if youre not already signed up to do some obama volunteer work (nyobama.com/events/nyc), go to his website (barackobama.com) and throw down 25 or 50 bones. preferably, do both (volunteer and donate). i am.

i dont know ANYONE who cant afford that $25 donation. literally EVERYONE i know treats themselves to some extraneous good and/or service that costs at least that amount.

drink red label for a fortnight. dont buy the fancy cat food. dont have fifty birthday dinners. dont fill your tank for a week. buy generic. etc, etc.

leave it all on the field. and if you cant leave it all, for chrissakes leave something.

please. im begging you.

we'll all be better off.

from the more things change dept.

doing homework on a sunday with football on in the background.

god that takes me back.

except for the fact that im showered and wearing legitimately daytime attire.

btw, if you think a brady post isnt in the works, i have a bridge to sell you.  half off!

plastics and wire in your kiss; the breath of eternity on your lips.

seven years later.

ten lifetimes ago.

seems like it was yesterday.

i always think of emk on this day; it was right around then that we got close. my experience of nyc during that time is inexorably linked to her. lo and behold, she emailed me as much this morning. that was comforting; to know we'll always share that. and that period is also tied to palm; we had just started living together. from our roof on fourth st, we had an all too good view of the unbearably large plume of smoke.

i remember the makeshift memorial that literally thousands of new yorkers contributed to in union square in the following days. my dad took some old stuffed doll my sister had, wrote 'the brins care' on it, adorned it with some other thoughtful artifacts, and placed it amongst the other tributes.

if you werent here, ill tell you. the city came up aces.

anyway, i couldnt help sharing some remembrances, but the main pt of this post is to make a couple of recommendations.

there are myriad historical records of 911. but im more interested in the impressionistic records; the ones that capture those lives, as opposed to those events. i single out two.

the first is the album the rising by bruce springsteen. nowadays it's just rare to hear a concept album, let alone one as resonant as this. is it any wonder? teams of firefighters and policemen, ie lunch pailers, perished while helping to save people during a seemingly ordinary workday - in springsteen's own backyard. talk about the right man for the right time. the album is exquisite. it captures loss so poignantly that to this day some of the songs put an empty pit in my stomach.

the second rec is don delillo's novel falling man. it's about a survivor of the towers and his family, in the aftermath, and it also touches upon the jihadists, from their persepctive. i chanced upon it in the airport on my way to moscow over the summer. couldnt put it down. i recently gave it to emk. as she said: what a fucked up day. and no one that wasn't here when it happened really gets it. the book gets it.

ok, enough preachy preachy. but it had to be done.

rip, my classmate. god knows how many times, during our four years at stuy, she looked out of a window and gazed at the towers. i know i did it hundreds of times myself.

still unreal.

quote 36.

sometimes it’s necessary to slay a beautiful theory with an ugly fact.

-dr. charles hirsch, chief medical examiner of new york city

thank you miss power.

dinner at jg melon's with lee. (i had never had their burger.) we sat outside, on the corner of 76 and 3rd.

midway through the meal, a team of police cars converged a few buildings up, on the same block on 3rd. their sirens were off, but their lightbars rotated ominously. they remained in the middle of the street for a while; we asked a waiter what was going on.

'someone jumped off that building,' he said. 'from the fourth floor.'

i got up to rubberneck. i saw that the pavement in front of the building in question was squared off with police tape which was tied to two police cars parked in the street. several other police cars were clustered around. many people, cops and passersby, were clustered around - cops inside and outside the square, voyeurs outside.

the lightbars kept going, like lighthouses. i sat back down.

neither of us recalled hearing an ambulance. it seemed like a suicide really did take place a few doors down. while we were eating bacon cheeseburgers.

i think that's the closest ive been to a death in my life.

blame it all on yourself.

this mornning, as i was walking through ft greene park, i passed a slightly derelict-looking black guy. he was holding a boom box, and despite his tattered appearance, he looked cheerful; we smiled at each other. i couldnt hear what he was playing on the box, b.c i had my headphones on, but after i passed him i was curious, so i took them off. ill make no secret of the fact that i was expecting hip-hop.

i couldnt have been more surprised by his song selection: billy joel's shes always a woman.

reminded me of another time when, on myrtle ave, i passed a similar dude singing sweet caroline.

ah, ft greene. combining you with my prejudices sometimes yields funny results.

quote 35.

they only throw ticker-tape parades for war heroes, astronauts and people who win ballgames.

-jerry jones, as quoted in class last night

show me in the rules where it says i cant marry myself.

i was best man at a wedding one time - that was pretty good. i thought there was a little too much in the title there. best man. i think we oughta have the groom, and a pretty good man. i mean, if im the best man, why is she marrying him?

-jerry seinfeld

at palm and mrs. palm's wedding this weekend - a wedding that was, of course, quite classy - i had but two responsibilities as best man. one was to hand the rabbi the rings when he asked for them during the ceremony. the other was to deliver a toast towards the end of the dinner portion of the reception. anyone who knows me wont be surprised that i was much more nervous about the rings. i practiced taking them out of my pocket from the moment i got them until i walked the maid of honor down the aisle at the beginning of the ceremony. ended up doing fine.

at the risk - nay, certainty - of sounding immodest, i knocked the speech out of the park. it was prolly ten minutes or so, but it felt like ten seconds. i hadnt written a script to read from - just some talking pts i wanted to make sure to cover. for instance, i started by explaining that palm and i had our bar mitzvahs on the same leap day in 92, but as he was new to our school that year, and i had been there for ages, almost all of our classmates went to mine. i said that considering that that was our start, and that sixteen years later i was his best man, ours is one of the more storied friendships in jewish history. then i said it was a bittersweet day b.c i always thought palm would marry me. anyway, it went from there.

people just seemed to go with it; laughing, 'awwwing' at all the right moments. it was a real high being up there. as soon as i sat down, people started giving me effusive compliments. it all felt great, not least of all b.c i really wanted to do right by the newlywed couple.

you gotta love it, right? i go to a wedding, then i write a post about it that focuses entriely on me.