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.

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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?”

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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.

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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.

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Since I’ve been so busy with CrippleBush lately, I’ve neglected the hell out of Divided Front. Today, I tried to remedy that. I planned on re-recording a handful of tunes but, now that the day is done, I managed three. It amazes me sometimes how I manage to piss my time away without accomplishing anything substantial.

As it is, I’m glad I managed the three tunes. I took a decent chunk of time to tab out “Down and Out in New York City” … it’s been bugging me for so long that no one else in the world has tabbed the song.

It isn’t laziness that kept me from doing myself, though. I can pick out a song, find the notes, figure out the riffs and fills, the chords and the melody … but it’s such an arduous, harrowing process. It doesn’t come easily for me. I don’t pick the correct notes right off and blaze through a tune in minutes. I have to painstakingly dissect it, find a sequence of notes and then use that to determine the key and, from there, I start to learn the song.

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I had a conversation with one of my more favorite cohorts the other day about a particular business with which we are both familiar. We are both incredulous at how many bad decisions are made on a daily basis and how no consequence ever seems to come of it. At one point, he dubbed it insanity per the definition of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Maybe it’s masochism, but I am sometimes compelled to pore over the shit that is purveyed to women about men. Insipid, shallow, stereotypical drivel like: 5 Types of Guys to Avoid at all Costs and 10 Things he’s Thinking when he Sees you Naked.

Now, do I agree that Bluetooth- and popped-collar multi-polo shirt-wearing douchenozzle cuntbags aren’t worth a woman’s time? Yes. Absolutely. But this article doesn’t share anything insightful at all … and it doesn’t call women out for their habitually stupid behavior of going for exactly the guys they complain about. All the while these insane — per definition above — women decry the lack of good men out there, while intentionally overlooking the ones that fit the criteria they condemn the dipshits for lacking.

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Five men were recently absolved of accusations of rape. The charges were brought against them by a girl who recanted her claim. Though there’s a lot of noise about “innocent until proven guilty” in this country, these boys were thrown in lock-up, held on exorbitant bail their low-income families could never hope to pay and some of them were suspended from their schools. All the result of mere allegations … which have turned out to be false.

Rape is obviously very serious, but so too should be protecting the innocent from false accusations and unlawful repudiation. Like it or not — under the tenets of our justice system — even if someone did perpetrate an act that violates the law, there should be no recourse for punishment BEFORE a guilty verdict is delivered in our courts. However, preemptive punishment, regardless of guilt, is not new in this country … this purported land of freedom and democracy … more like of hyperbole and outright lies.

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The light in my kitchen died. Typically, it wouldn’t be a big deal of any order … I can replace light bulbs. But this is hardly typical; the fixture in the kitchen uses doughnut-shaped fluorescent tubes that attach by arcane plugs to what looks like a battery. Worse yet, the rings are held in place by three metal clamps.

So, I realized this was outside my purview. It wasn’t unscrew old and screw in new. I went to my superintendent, since he is — theoretically — the person responsible for handling repairs and maintenance in the building. I asked him about replacing the light and he told me he couldn’t.

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So, bread is up to $7 a loaf at Whole Foods. I’ve been wringing my hands about this tidbit for a while, so if I’ve already circulated my discontent, I apologize to my reader.

I heard a rumor it is possible to bake one’s own bread. Hogwash, you say? Perhaps. Still, it seems plausible … I mean, how else do the companies that sell such a fine product obtain said product? Yes, I suppose magic is a possibility, but as much as baking and magic may seem like the same thing, I say the former is more akin to alchemy. And everyone knows how easy that is!

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I’m a big supporter of Mom and Pop shops. I was raised by a small-business-owning family and I recognize how difficult it is to own such a business and how important is the support of one’s customers. But I also have a fair amount of indignation for small businesses that cut corners and purvey to their loyal patrons wares of poor quality.

I recognize that to compete against much larger stores, a small business may feel compelled to make sacrifices, but it is abhorrent to me that the sacrifices made would be at the expense of the customers’ well-being. That’s the case with my local butcher, where teemed a mass of flies one would expect to find on a moldering, shit-caked corpse on a hot day.

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