Blog

  • Busy Morning

    I wouldn’t say that I was dreading today, but I knew I had a lot to do. That was the reason that I didn’t sleep the best. Sure, there was a good/bad late movie on last night, which didn’t help.

    But, today was the last day of school for the kid, and there was a finely dusted glaze of excitement in our apartment this morning. The cusp of Summer vacation was upon us, and the kid was bubbling over with glee to get it all started. For us the parents, we needed to take the appropriate pictures of “The Last Day of School,” so we could compare them to the shots we took on the first day of school. There was a noticeable bit of nervousness in me as we all walked to school. Something about last days that fill me with melancholy and the feeling of saying goodbye to people you’d grown accustom to seeing daily. The kid bounded off with her friends into school. No one really works on the last day – it’s just a fart around day.

    My next task was to take the car in to be serviced. As Summer is almost here, we are about to start our serious driving season – traipsing around the Mid-Atlantic states, and New England as well. I never thought I would be the type of New Yorker who owned a car in the City, yet here I am. And as such, the responsibilities of car ownership are thrown on me – the maintaining of our car which requires that I drive it to the service center on the westside of Midtown. I like to take West End Avenue to get down there, as it’s an avenue, and an area of the City that I am never in. Full of big old apartment buildings that I’m guessing were built in the 1920’s or so. It is a land of doormen, and people who have to go to work, but well to do jobs, because these people have expensive bills. Like I said, it’s a part of New York I never go to, so I always feel like an explorer when I am there.

    Then to round out my morning, I hit up the Trader Joe’s on 93rd. In the mornings, the place is a mix of older people, and people who look like they just got done working out, and aren’t in a hurry to get to work. Usually, I’m in and out rather quickly. I don’t dottle as this isn’t my favorite chore. Today though, 93rd TJ’s music player was ripping it up with some forgotten 90’s rock. Yes! I am now their target demographic, and they are catering to me! About damn time! Awesome choice with the 311 – and maybe I was too harsh to them when they came out! “I Alone”!!! I haven’t heard that song in years. Alive was a great band! Remember Alive? Me either! Because their name is actually Live. Good memory, I have…

    Now home, it’s blog and making a Summer playlist for all the driving that I’ll be doing. Yes, Live and 311 might make the cut. Going to eat lunch and pick the kid up from school. Hopefully the rain will hold off so she can have some park time with her friends. I still have to make dinner, and start planning the rest of her vacation.

  • That Feeling of the Last Day of School (Unedited)

    Outside of Christmas, my birthday, Halloween, Easter and Thanksgiving – The Last Day of School was the best day of the year! That feeling of elation of being done with school, learning, teachers, the other students, and the start of Summer vacation, is an experience that, try as I might, I can never recreate. I worked for a conservatory and a college, and the last day of classes at those institutions never had that same feeling either. When I was a kid, the last day of school was and final end point – a clearly defined conclusion. Working at a school on the last day of classes, all we could think about was getting ready for classes to resume. I tried piggybacking off of my kid’s last day of school, but the feeling I get is that I need to come up with things for her to do over vacation. No real elation in that.

    But maybe, we adults aren’t supposed to regain that feeling? Like, no matter how much fun I have with my kid around Christmas time, I never feel like that eight-year-old kid that got a Star Wars AT-AT Walker from Santa. For one thing, kids are the center of attention at Christmas, and my role changed to parent – and as such with a different role, then I should expect to have a different experience. No real revelation there, right?

    As I get older, I am wary of trying to “recapture” an old feeling. Everything in life changes, and so do feelings. When I revisit places of past glories and happiness, the feelings that come over me are twinges of sadness, lightly salted with the acknowledgement of the joy I had once encountered there. Melancholy isn’t to far away either. I keep thinking that full-blown happiness will come back to me in those situations, but it doesn’t. What I left with is the feeling that I want to move on. And even then, it is still had to say goodbye to the places of your past.

    But as I was reminded today by an old friend, moving forward, getting out there and trying for new experiences is the only way to keep alive and connected.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Bad Movie Bible, Stuck in the Rain, and Father’s Day Gifts

    (If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the shower…)

    For those who know me, and for the other four people who read this, you know that I love the show Mystery Science Theater 3000, and bad movies in general. As soon as I got a Blockbuster card as a teenager, I was renting only the best of the really awful movies, usually to watch with friends on Friday or Saturday nights in junior and high school. (I was a popular cool kid, if you couldn’t tell.) That was a happy time in my life, and when I have a rough day, an episode of MST3k, or an awful movie hidden deep in Amazon Prime Video (they really do have the schlocky-ist of movies) will quickly get me back on track to a better mood. About a month ago, The Great God Algorithm of YouTube decreed that I needed to start watching the videos of The Bad Movie Bible, which is created and hosted by Rob Hill. (I thank Thee, Great God of the Algorithm, for this gift!) Hill is a hilarious encyclopedia of awful movies, and with his dead pan delivery and spot on editing of clips, he has created some of the best and funniest videos detailing specific genres of bad movies. My favorite series he has are the “Borrowing Blockbuster” videos that go into detail on all the knock off movies that came out to cash in on the success of huge hit movies – like Star Wars, Jaws, Die Hard, etc.… I respect Hill’s commitment to movies that most people write off, and at the same time I am amazed at his stamina to handle what must feel like an unending onslaught of awfulness.

    Today, I did the Alt Side Parking dance of moving the car. No big deal, went as normal as all the other days that I do it. But as I walked home, it started to rain. I didn’t know it was supposed to rain early today; I was told this afternoon. And as such, I had no raincoat or umbrella. I was a guy caught out in the rain, a few blocks from home. So, I walked in the rain and got soaked. It occurred to me that I haven’t been caught in the rain in a long time, like ten years maybe. Once I accepted that I was going to get soaked, it was a rather enjoyable experience.

    My wife and kid got me a Tottenham Hotspur t-shirt, and supporter’s pin for Father’s Day. That made me very happy.

  • Retired Flash Fiction Story

    (This is an experiment of a flash fiction story that I decided to retire from submitting. Enjoy.)

    Airbag

    There was light, and then there was darkness. Maybe there was sound, but I think all I can remember hearing was the fear in my brain; As I was scared. Or was I screaming? Broken glass? I think so, and if that was true, then I don’t know how I didn’t get cut up. I hit my head, and banged up my back. There wasn’t any blood that you’d expect.

    What existed after, most likely before if only I had paid attention, was the feeling of floating, up and away – of relief that I was here and not in some other place, even though no rational person would want to be where I was, and that’s because they weren’t fully/completely aware of being alive in this reality, but now, or at least then – in the aftermath – I was present.

    When I was a child, growing up in the Cold War, knowing that at any second one of two nations could blow up the whole world; so many people lived in the pool of existential threat every day. Life could end at the push of a button, as that was modernity. But what I fixated on wasn’t necessarily that all life could end, but having to wait for it to end. Being told the missile was on the way, that in a matter of minutes I would be evaporated, but I had to wait for my impending death. That count down is what scared me. Sure, if you knew you had one day left, then you could get some stuff done. But with five minutes – I would just be left with my thoughts. My awful thoughts. Even if I tried to be constructive with my five minutes, I’d most likely use four of the minutes deciding what to do, and that last minute wouldn’t be enough time to accomplish it. But I know me, and I would spend five minutes kicking myself for all the things I didn’t do. Hating myself as the doom, the bomb, the endless end drew nearer. Not enjoying what I had, but regretting what was.

    The darkness did give way to the light once again. I opened my eyes. I looked around and made sure I was alive. On the side of a highway, having spun around, I was alive. Excitable, juiced, sweating yet cold. The Universe had expanded, only to contract back to the same place, and I was still there. The blue gray interstate, an airbag deflating – I had the acknowledgement of time.

  • Short Story Review: “Status in Flux” by Weike Wang

    (The short story “Status in Flux” by Weike Wang appeared in the June 26th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (As in life, there will be SPOILERS!)

    Illustration by Jiayue Li

    First, we had stories about Covid arriving. Then there were the stories about living with Covid. Now we have arrived in age of stories after Covid, and what it all meant. “Status in Flux” by Weike Wang is at the vanguard of the “after Covid” era with all the questions: What did it all mean? How has it affected us? Some people have moved on, while others haven’t; why?

    As the story begins, the narrator informs us that the world recently opened up for travel after Covid, while at the same time she is having intense insomnia which she is addressing by driving at night to twenty-four hour grocery stores to peruse the froze isle. Just from the opening, this piece is witty, clever, and humorous. The narrator is in process of applying for a green card so her and her husband can travel, because everyone else in her life has gone off to travel. Her Canadian parents, her younger sister-in-law, her in-laws, and her friends. But, because of the green card process, she cannot leave the country. The story daftly intertwines all of these storylines, while also giving the narrator ample ability to dwell on her life as an immigrant, first from China as a child moving to Canada, then moving to America for grad school.

    Weike Wang is a very good writer. The story moved at a good pace, the characters felt individual and authentic to their own situations. Like I said, there is a healthy bit of humor in the story, and a few running and call back jokes are thrown in as well. The piece is well structured, showing Wang’s skill of not over staying any one storyline too long.

    Yet, at the end of the story I couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing happened. All of the other characters go out in the world, but the narrator and her husband are stuck at home in New Jersey, waiting to see if she gets her green card. I get that narratively, logically and thematically that this is the point of the story, but it didn’t feel satisfying. The narrator keeps doing the same thing at the end of the story that she did at the beginning – driving to all-night places while dealing with insomnia. Also, the narrator doesn’t seem to learn anything, or gain any new knowledge, and emotionally, she never grew from where she started. It was frustrating because in the final moment of the story, the narrator is talking of driving to the boarder, all phrased as questions – so it’s just a hypothetical, and not a choice or an action.

    This story really did charm me, and I enjoyed reading it. As I got closer to the end, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it did feel like it was building to something. For that reason, I can’t say that I loved this story, but I most certainly didn’t hate it. I would have to say that I had the mildest, lightest of disappointments with it. But in the end, you should read it.