I submitted a form letter, previously, content that someone else’s words could well enough evince how important I believe robust public library services to be.

This time, I elect to write my own words. Yes, I live in Brooklyn. Yes, I have my own branches there — both the Crown Heights branch and the closed Flatbush branch — near my home, but I work in Manhattan. As a result, it is quite convenient for me to visit branches in the city.

I frequent the 58th Street branch and it is a boon to me. I am a voracious reader without sufficient space to have a library in my own home. Lacking the square footage and shelving space to make my own library, I depend upon the NYPL and BPL to provide those titles I wish to read, and would even wish to own, but that wish is purely infeasible.

To lose the Public Library service, or to diminish it in any capacity, is to deprive New York citizens the means to enrich themselves and augment their intelligence. You will usher in, through austerity, a yet dumber, less erudite population and — considering how stupid is the bulk of the citizenry already — this war against self-education and imagination would be a mammoth blow to us all.

One word with so many implications. It can be a trivial misdirection, easily corrected or a profound listlessness, intractable and oppressive. Then there’s every degree in between, and the misapplications beyond either extreme frontier.

Yesterday, I could invoke “lost” in the sense that I “lost it” on the train. I was on my way back from hockey, a scrimmage, wherein I was driven into the boards by some lumbering oaf and, since I had put out my right hand to avoid bodily hitting the boards, I injured my wrist.

I wanted so badly to deck the guy. In his clumsy, awkward incompetence he was splayed out on the ice, trying to get back to his feet. One swift crack from my left hand would have been sweet to deliver. Instead, I spewed invective and skated away. The guy running the skate thanked me for my level-headeness and maturity. Yet, it feels like cowardice; allowing myself to be done-to without issuing any recrimination.

Today, I have no backward range of motion in my right hand. The pain in my wrist is excruciating and I fear oaf-boy may have caused to pop or rend one of the tendons assigned either to my middle or index finger, or both. It angers me.

It angered me yesteray, too. I felt, as I said, done-to. Victimized. And, sitting on the train ride home, sullen and disconsolate, this ugly couple kept looking at me. All I could wonder was why the hell I was so interesting … and why the hell couldn’t they look elsewhere. I wasn’t looking at them; I caught their gazes in my periphery … and they kept coming back to me … until I exploded.

Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook is down. I’ve come to regard this as a miracle, but I was originally — ridiculously — distressed by the site’s unavailability. After all, I’d found two interesting stories I wanted to share and how else was I going to do that? I couldn’t email them to everyone I know … and then I thought about why not. Well, because no one I know gives a shit, certainly … and it’s kind of gauche to foist information on people.

Using facebook to disseminate information is like talking to oneself. Except not simply for the sake of talking to oneself; rather hoping someone will overhear you and engage you in response your obviously brilliant, witty, pithy mutterings. But in that posting to facebook resembles a soliloquy, it is permissible to post every Tourettic outburst, random thought and passably interesting news article, movie clip, photograph and music video. Whereas it would be most unwelcome to email everyone you know at the moment of every half-baked thought or whimsical discovery.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” a number of times. I enjoyed it a number of those times. However, during my latest viewing, I could not ignore a particular continuity goof, nor the plot contrivances and the abject lack of chemistry between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Today, if this movie were remade – verbatim – it would bomb. Even with production values improved to what is capable now, with location shots instead of set pieces – but the original script, plot and pacing intact – the film would be an utter failure, a snoozefest that stretches disbelief beyond any credulous boundary.

Read the rest of this entry »

I bought a new guitar in November. It never came. It was on backorder into January, so I canceled it. Then I got a hard-on for a sweet Fender Stratocaster with a mahogany body, gorgeous red finish and black headstock, a humbucking bridge pick-up and a fast, maple neck. But it was a right-handed model. They didn’t make a left-handed one. I am not Hendrix. I passed on it.

In my dejection over the red and black Strat not turning out, I re-purchased the guitar I’d ordered in November. It came at the end of February and I’ve had it about a week.

At first glance, she’s a beauty. Nice, glossy black finish, black fret-board, pearloid inlays there and in the headstock, which is uniquely shaped to give the axe some nice character. The knobs are a combination clear- and goldish-acrylic, the pick-guard and pickup cradles are somewhat cream colored…

Read the rest of this entry »

The first thoughts may well be: “Wait, you mean you HAVE a filter? You DON’T have Tourette’s?” To which my response would be: believe it or not, I do filter myself. Just imagine what I’d say if I didn’t. Sometimes I wish I had Tourette’s just to have an excuse to blurt out what I’m feeling / thinking.

Yesterday:

I had a duffel in which I’d brought both my pairs of hockey skates to be sharpened. After dropping them off, I had a more-or-less empty duffel. While walking down Nostrand Avenue, two middle-aged dudes in conversation stopped talking as I passed. I noticed one of them sizing me up, his jaundiced eyes standing starkly out against his Special Dark complexion … and I laughed.

Neither one of them said a word to me. Maybe they were put off by my laughter; it was of the mildly insane variety. Mirth did not inspire it, rather the recognition of absurdity and a general sense of just not caring.

I imagined what they might have said, and my responses, and the conversation as it played out in my head is what caused the outburst.

Dude: “Yo, whitey, what’s in the bag?”

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, I looked at Pisces:

If something no longer works for you the way it once did then get rid of it. Yes, you may have a sentimental attachment to it, but sentiment cannot be allowed to come between you and the kind of life you are striving to create for yourself.

Today, I looked at Aries:

If you want a better tomorrow you are going to have to sacrifice something today. You can be remarkably ruthless when the need arises, so cut out of your life anything that no longer serves a useful purpose. That includes friendships too.

I was born on the cusp. It means that both of the above horoscopes may pertain to me. Now, I really try to be objective (let’s all have a hearty laugh about that) and logical when I can, but I am usually taken aback by the accuracy of horoscopes on the rare occasions I look at them. It really isn’t in my nature, I think, to be either objective or logical; which speaks volumes over how those two methods have controverted my actual nature.

The world would be very easily navigated if everything were black or white, but very, very few things are either and nearly everything is gray. It’s not easy to excise something that may be so overwhelmingly positive in some very crucial ways yet disappointing in other, perhaps equally, important ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

The MTA, once again, is hitting the little people (no, not dwarves, per se; regular, everyday folks) where it hurts the most: our wallets.

They aren’t hiking the fares again, not just yet, but jacking up the price of a Metrocard is but one way to deplete the ridership’s funds. By curbing essential bus and train service, the MTA is denying New Yorkers the opportunity to easily travel to where is the best (perhaps this should be in quotes … read: highest paying) — or only — available job.

I know people who commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx because the latter borough is where they found work, despite that they already lived in Kings County and therefore could not easily relocate closer to work; nothing locally or in Manhattan availed itself to them, so they took what did.

Read the rest of this entry »

First, the weather went bad … literally raining on mine and my bandmate’s plans to get shot for promotional purposes. So I stayed in all day, whiling away the time until my 11:30 hockey game. I spent the bulk of the time working on our band’s webpage. It’s more or less ready, now. We could probably move forward if we had the photos. But we don’t.

I walked to the train at 10 p.m. last night, huge bag of hockey equipment over my shoulder, it’s cold and raining out … but not until I get to the station, three blocks away, and DOWN the STAIRS, do I realize I don’t have my fucking wallet. Yeah.

So, I walked home with all my equipment, got my damned wallet and walked back to the station. When I got to 23rd Street, there were no buses in sight, so I then had to walk the four avenue blocks to Chelsea Piers and then the rest of the way into the complex to the end of the pier, which comprises about another city avenue block.

I’m fit. I’m in good shape. It wasn’t a problem, but it did start to nag at me as the game wore on. My knee isn’t quite back to 100%, though it’s pretty damned close. My team played like shit. I couldn’t score despite a bevvy of great chances … I even got stoned on a sliding two-pad stack save. That was some old school goaltending … but, fuck, did I feel snake bitten; I got great wood on the shot, lifted it too, but all it hit were the pillows. Fuck my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m tapped out. After composing more than 20 songs in the last four months, my brain is exhausted.

It’s disappointing.