Homeowner wins & woes

Goodness, I'm a bad little blogger.  Here we go again. I haven't posted since January--nine months ago.  Can a person even call himself a blogger if he only posts a few times a year?  Eh, who cares, right?!  It's not like I'm getting paid to do this--and, for what it's worth, I don't consider myself a real blogger anyway.  Fortunately, despite my abysmally casual commitment to this blogging hobby which borders on abandonment (with parental visits just frequent enough to avoid the tragedy of forgetting altogether), my last post really caused a stir, bringing decent-hearted human specimens from varying walks of life together under the banner of common experience--and all because of a miserable ass who enjoys attacking other people through craigslist.  Who'd have thought?!

Turtles in Central Park, New York City, August 2012.  (Photo by Michael Jehn.)

Over the past nine months, I've received numerous responses from fellow craigslist patrons who have, through no act of malice, misspoken word or knowing crime, incurred the wrath of crenovationsllc@gmail.com (whose real name, mailing address, phone number, and other juicy personal tidbits were provided by individuals who kindly responded to my January post).  I won't provoke or indulge Mr. Dan Hobbins of Gibsonia, Pennsylvania further--since I've already stooped pretty low by now--except to say:

Mr. Hobbins, I'd love to share your fruitful wisdom, your razor-sharp insight, right here on my humble blog. Please, grace us with your staggering intellectual presence, under your own name, in your own earnest and completely uncensored words.  You are welcome any time--but only if you stand behind your true identity. 

(Somehow I don't think he'll show...)

Anyway, enough with the facetiousness and on to some real news. I've called this post 'homeowner wins & woes' because I'd like to share a few of each with the world.  I'll start with a win.  The foyer flooring--a handsome dark manufactured bamboo product with a pitted, antiqued surface texture that complements the existing wood paneling and stair railings beautifully--has been installed, thanks to a lot of hard work by Mr. Matt Crowe. Sure, there were some woes associated with the win.  The bamboo wasn't my first choice for material, but the stuff I really wanted wasn't in stock at Lumber Liquidators and would have taken two months to arrive on order.  The foyer sub-floor was so uneven, the walls so untrue (i.e., not straight and precisely aligned, as opposed to "not really walls" or "walls that are lying") that we didn't get the first piece down until late afternoon on the second day.  Of course, the bamboo is so dense and solid that many of the hand-hammered nails wouldn't go in even after pilot holes had been drilled--and the nail gun simply kept splitting the tongues on the boards.  Frustration...but not defeat.

Fortunately, one new nail gun and two weeks later, the floor was complete: shiny and new (DUM, DUM, DUM--like a virgin...), glassy in its perfection, complemented by new quarter-round shoe moldings, doorway thresholds, and a brand-new $115 cast iron register grate from Signature Hardware to replace the existing one that had been so grievously molested by time and moisture that it might as well have been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.  A final minor woe regarding the floor: every speck of dust, every tiny scratch, stands out instantly against such a dark patina.  Luckily I'm a cleaning freak.

In addition to the flooring, the foyer walls leading all the way up the stairs to the second floor have been completely repainted in a warm, inviting yellow tone called Caribbean Sunrise (win), although the amount of pre-painting plaster repair necessary was unbelievable (woe) and painting itself, especially above the stairs and the stained glass window--where I teetered precariously on an old chair resting atop a haphazard pile of furring strips and plywood scraps stretched between the second stair landing and the top rung of a ladder (disaster waiting to happen but thankfully avoided)--was a total bitch (woe).  The heinous old mini-fridge-sized air conditioner in the foyer window that I couldn't even use because its plug doesn't fit standard outlets is gone (win) and my metal scrap-collecting neighbor Dave helped me get it out of the window and took it for me so I didn't even have to worry about how to dispose of it (win) and the tacky-as-sin paneling that had been hammered in above the air conditioner is gone (win) and, miraculously, the original double-hung sash window was hiding inside (win) and is in terrific shape!

Furthermore, my mom--who is awesome--found very cheap, very hip curtains for both the entryway window and the living room window that perfectly fit the mid-century modern look that I'm going for (win).  By the end of the year, I should have the rest of the stair treads painted and the two landings professionally carpeted; the second-floor hallway floorboards will finally be painted within the next month; the master bedroom on the second floor will be remodeled by mid-December including drywall and carpeting; and, with any luck, I'll be getting a new front porch in the spring.  (Matthew Johnston, if you're reading this, please let me know whether or not you still want the job; it's been a while since I've heard from you!)

I will end with one last, but lingering, woe: I've been having a lot of trouble getting rid of one of my tenants.  Call him whatever you'd like--Stefan, Sylvester, Simon or Salvatore--since I'm not going to reveal his actual name on the Internet.  The guy's got a lot of serious issues that I had not anticipated and am not professionally equipped to deal with: chronic hoarding, poor hygiene, and a manner of aloof passivity that I didn't even think was possible.  He's so unassertive, so lacking in proactive initiative or self-defense--of ideas, personal needs, or opinions, I mean--, that I've wanted to scream out loud on countless occasions.  I was a fool for having allowed him to move in at all, my judgement blinded by the prospect of quick, easy rent money; for this I accept full responsibility.  Per our original verbal agreement, pursuant to the lease, he was supposed to have been vacated by the end of September; but, as I should have expected, he managed to completely avoid moving out, and naturally he failed to communicate any concerns or unexpected snags to me ahead of time (lack of communication being another one of his issues).  I granted him another full month.  He didn't move out--and then the trashy wet week-long misery delivered by superstorm Sandy created a scenario in which I wouldn't have wanted people trudging into and out of my house repeatedly anyway, tracking leaves and mud everywhere.

So, my tenant has until November 15th, and that's final.  No more excuses, no more bullshit, no more house projects delayed by his frustrating ineptitude.  If he attempts to linger for one more day, he will encounter a front door whose lock has been changed upon return.  On the bright side, at least he's a harmless soul who wouldn't intentionally harm another breathing creature--or, for that matter, likely utter a profane word--if a gun were pressed to his temple.  I wish him joy, prosperity, and fulfillment in all his future endeavors, and openly acknowledge that he is probably a better person than I shall ever hope to become; but I also want him the hell out of my place.  Is that so much to ask for?!

One57 luxury apartment and condominium tower under construction in midtown Manhattan, August 2012. (Photo by Michael Jehn.)  The construction crane visible in the photo was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Stupidity: when it comes to people, you can count on it!

People are really damned stupid. Not you, of course. Not everyone. Just...a lot of people. Give stupid people a forum for unbridled self-expression like the Internet and their stupidity--manifest in the form of irredeemably idiotic blog rants, self-incriminating photographs, belligerent discussion board personas, relentless strings of unrestrained typo-laden Tweets, less-than-pointless YouTube clips, you name it--will flourish like bacteria on the floor of an Interstate rest stop bathroom (especially during those frantically busy holiday travel periods when the janitors can't get in there often enough to push stinky pink bleachy bacteria-murdering stuff around with the mop). For the record, I will attempt to demonstrate here and now that this is not an irredeemably idiotic blog rant; but that's ultimately for you to decide, not me.

Anyway, I would like to share a recent instance of incredible--yet sadly typical--human stupidity with you. No, I'm not referring to the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Italian coast. That was certainly stupid, avoidable, tragic--which is nothing to say of the captain's criminal egotism or staggering cowardice--, but that story is not my own. No, my story is about linoleum flooring. Specifically, it's about my attempts to recycle some old linoleum flooring from my house for artistic purposes by offering it for free on Craig's List. That act in particular is not the stupid part, but let me explain.

Last week, after months of procrastination, I finally got around to downloading about 400 images from my digital camera to my computer. Among these were photographs of the linoleum flooring that decades ago had graced one of the bedrooms in my house--a bedroom that had clearly once been a nursery or baby's room before it was carpeted and turned into Mrs. Brown's dressing room, complete with an enormous vanity and the most gratuitously large collection of [mostly unused] makeup products that I have ever seen outside of a department store. Here are a few photos of what I like to refer to as the creepy nursery flooring:

Here's another photo that illustrates some of the other cute figures that appear in the flooring, like kittens and chickens (on wheels?!), rabbits and piggy banks, even a camel:

I knew that the flooring wasn't in fantastic shape; but it's certainly unique, rare, slightly endearing, definitely amusing--and a potential goldmine for artists who use such materials. Thus, I posted on Craig's List, as I have done on many occasions before, this time offering any and all of this linoleum flooring for free to anyone of creative persuasion willing to stop by and check it out.

One of the first individuals to respond said this (and only this): "some of that old flooring was made with aspestas."  Okay... Appreciate the warning, but, um, that's not even how you spell "asbestos." Granted, I could have been a snarky shit by responding to that effect but I simply thanked this person for the concern and forgot about it.

Now, here's where the stupid comes in. The very next day I received this response to my earnest attempt at freecycling from the faceless dunce hiding behind the e-mail address crenovationsllc@gmail.com: 

LOL !  You must be drunk ! IT"S GARBAGE ! Where do you drunken nuts come from ?  Did it ever occur to you that the" VINTAGE" linoleum has "VINTAGE" asbestos in it?

Okay, stupid! I thought to myself. You wanna show the world how unequivocally stupid YOU are by attempting to make a fairly smart person feel stupid?! Think you can get away with jabbing an honest gent who happens to enjoy a good stiff drink now and again? HUH?!  And this is how I responded:

Drunk?!  Occasionally, absolutely, but not when I posted (to the best of my knowledge...) and certainly not right now.

Honestly, what was the point of your responding to my post if your only accomplishment was to sound like an ignoramus fuck?  Why do you think that I'm giving this stuff away as opposed to trying to sell it?  Clearly you're not familiar with the fact that some people actually use this material for art.

www.billmillerart.com

If even one person can or will use this linoleum to create something funky, unique, beautiful or inspiring, why NOT give it away as opposed to tossing it in the trash?  One last thing: asbestos is only dangerous when large quantities of it are inhaled in airborne particulate form.  Working with materials that contain asbestos can be done safely as long as one protects oneself from airborne particles--especially when those materials aren't known to crumble into clouds of fine dust.

Do a little research before trying to sour perfect strangers' evenings with your abusive ignorance, chap.  In plain English, get a fucking life.

So there you have it. I never heard back from the prick, in case you were wondering. Maybe the universe afforded him a moment of clarity just potent enough to recognize that he, in fact, was incorrect about something. But probably not. In all likelihood my response was deleted without ever having been read. You know, my mom was right years ago when, during any one of a number of arguments, she would rhetorically remark You always have to have the last word, don't you? DON'T you?! Yes, mom, and I still do.

Before I finish, I would like to share one final example of stupidity--or whatever you want to call it--that I have encountered perhaps half a dozen times in the past few weeks. Perhaps you've seen it yourself:

The day that I first encountered--and subsequently screen-captured--this particular web artifact, I was enjoying an uneventful music-supplemented morning at work doing something or other on the computer. (At that very moment, as you can tell, I was listening to songs by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour--one of the best guitarists of all time--on YouTube.) So, you ask, what qualifies this as an example of stupidity? The claim, boldly splashed across the top of the image like a front page newspaper headline, that Jesus Christ is Lord? No, certainly not. Lots of people believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. The fact that an online Christian dating service is trying to seduce me and thousands of other unsuspecting viewers with an image of a generic bleach-blond Barbie slut who, for all I know, could boast a laundry list of mastered (and commercially available) filthy acts that would put poor Mary Magdalene to shame? BINGO! I can think of some other things to call it, too: shamelessly desperate. Tacky. Sad. 

* * *

Oh, and to the blond girl in the image: I'm sorry for the things I said. You're probably a very nice girl. I just hope that that particular shot of you doesn't appear in your high school yearbook anywhere. Or as your Facebook profile photo.

A funny little zombie poem to whet your appetite

I'm a little ashamed that I haven't posted anything new in months. Nothing informative, nothing clever, nothing insightful. Nothing. Then suddenly this zombie poem idea comes along and I figure that I should post it just to see what happens. (Certainly, the dead will not rise as a result of my desire for attention on the Internet--at least not this time.) In the past few months I've become enamored with AMC's The Walking Dead for numerous reasons, like so many millions of other zombie-lovers and TV-lovers in general. It's a harrowing, approachable, highly addictive post-apocalyptic narrative of surprising depth and restrained programmatic saturation (which is to say, each season is limited to a relatively small number of episodes); horror fans are guaranteed to crave the impressive realism of the gore and makeup effects as well as the suspense and the timeless appeal of a familiar modern American landscape--in this case, downtown Atlanta and surrounding rural environs--transformed by total zombie plague, while those who appreciate dramatic television writing will find themselves easily attracted to the substance of the program's characters: easy to identify with, relatively non-cliched, and refreshingly genuine.


Recently I thought that it would be amusing (at least to me) to write the synopsis--essentially in the form of a theatrical trailer's creepo Vincent Price-style narration or the description on the back of a video sleeve--for a highly ridiculous fictional zombie film called Lighthouse of the Living Dead. Why a lighthouse?! I don't know. I like lighthouses. I love the ocean. I'm intrigued by the idea of a seaside town besieged by hungry walking corpses. There's a lot of atmosphere in just about any seaside environment, you know. Especially when the weather's gone foul. Anyway, the synopsis became a bit unwieldy; I wanted to pack too much detail into it, and my tendency toward rhythm and sound-play--brimming with alliteration and internal rhyme as so many of my poems are--began to foster a beast that was something more than a long-form movie tag line. So, folks, here you have it: the lovingly polished (and utterly melodramatic) description, in prose poem form--divided into quatrains because I don't know why (other than they looked good at the time)--of a movie that almost certainly will never exist. And if it ever does, I want to work Justin Bieber in there somewhere in a breakout role that will blow the world's feeble celebrity-drunk mind. No, Justin Bieber will not appear naked in the film. The only thing that will appear naked--many times over--is the juicy abomination of human victims' eviscerated digestive tracts strewn in steaming piles across brine-coated tide pool rocks beneath the early morning sun. Cheers! 

Lighthouse of the Living Dead

Beneath the cruel indifferent darkness of night,

guided only by the moon's deceptive glow

and the distant pulsing beam atop their trusty

seaside landmark, they risked deadly cliffs

and biting winds in a desperate flight to survive—

to witness the sun’s triumphant rise into a new

tomorrow, a better world.  A chance to start again.

They prayed the relentless fetid zombie masses,

horrific shambling shells of former family

and companions Hell-bent on their quest for flesh,

would never find them there.  The lucky few

who reached that ancient brick bastion of might

against the gales and tides believed they’d be safe.

But the light betrays them.  The goddamned

lighthouse beacon.  Round and round and round

it turns, cutting miles through the night.

Round and round and round.  And round.

(And round.)   Panic rises when the townsmen find

there's no way to turn the bastard off—

stairs to the lamp room chained and locked,

keeper hanged from the rafters in despair

by rigging rope and a suicide note lying crumpled

on the floor by his corncob pipe.  Outside,

amidst the swiftly shifting sea oats just beyond

the wave-wet rocks, there’s alarming movement

all around them barely visible in the blackness,

evil groans and shrieks carried on the wind

growing closer by the moment.

Now they are pretty fucked.

House progress -- photos and notes

Warning: this post probably won't be very interesting to folks who don't know me and/or are not even remotely interested in following progress on my house. However, if you are interested, this post is just for you!  Yes, you!  That makes you a very special person indeed.

First, a few shots of one of the two third-floor bedrooms, AKA Wayne's Room, AKA the Pisces Room.  These photos were taken at the beginning of July and lovingly illustrate not only the criminally nasty green color of the room but also the scope of the necessary plaster repair work which took us more than a week to complete and was extremely messy during the sanding process (but turned out not to be nearly as torturous as one might think, especially after having had a fair amount of practice on a previous room).  Back in the day, when young Wayne Brown occupied the room, he was obviously offered a pretty generous helping of creative freedom and ran with it.  Zodiac Pisces was painted on the ceiling in purple splendor, visible in the photo showing my friend Dan working.  The walls were also pockmarked with approximately four million pushpin holes.  Thankfully, both third-floor bedrooms are now complete with fresh white walls and ceilings, newly painted window sills, and clean hardwood floors that don't even really need to be refinished.  (When I first bought the house, those hardwood floors were hiding beneath mid-century linoleum sheet flooring and quasi-zebra print carpeting that would blow your mind.)  All I need to do now is update the electrical outlets on the third floor, mostly so that window air conditioners can be safely installed (thereby rendering sweltering barely-inhabitable-in-the-summertime rooms comfortable for tenants!).

 

Next, the glorious back yard, also taken at the beginning of July.  Throughout much of June, and much to my embarrassment, a large portion of the back yard was a bombastic fast-expanding tangle of chest-high weeds--in other words, an honest-to-God Pennsylvania jungle.  Many hours of sweaty labor later (not to mention an extremely unpleasant case of poison oak that left pus-oozing sores all over my forearms and itchy rashes everywhere else, including above one eye and all over my male parts), the yard was tamed.  Since these photos were taken, the patch of grass in the middle of the yard has been trimmed; a compost bin has been purchased and placed in the back corner of the yard; several new plants have been added to the collection, including Northern sea oats (a type of tall decorative grass), chives, and a tiny little gingko sappling; and the rusty green steel pipe in the middle of the brick pathway has been removed and given to my neighbor to sell for scrap.  Next Monday, a gentleman from the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association will install a large rain barrel at the corner of the house, meaning that the innanely-installed PVC pipe running across the patio (and causing all kinds of erosion damage every time it rains hard) will be gone!

Finally, some recent photos of the front yard, a true obsession of mine in the landscaping project department and a seemingly never-ending work in progress.  (Wait, isn't that the whole house?!)  Little by little I've been acquiring large rocks and extremely heavy chunks of slag metal (mostly from a debris pile in Duquesne, PA, on a riverfront wasteland property once occupied by the Duquesne Works steel mill) to use both as retaining wall along the sidewalk and as decoration throughout the yard.  These unique objects, which look almost like rocks except for their oxidized surfaces and graphite-gray metallic textures, have turned out to be the ideal landscape feature for my yard--heavy enough to create a durable, permanent barrier and a fitting found-art tribute to Pittsburgh's legacy.  The red-brown pine bark mulch that I chose is also a perfect fit for the house, although as long as the retaining wall remains unfinished, and until I can reroute the downspout rainwater through underground pipes and out to the sidewalk, the mulch and much of the bare soil is at risk of washing into the sidewalk every time we experience a heavy downpour.  (This has happened twice now.  The first time it happened I spent almost half an hour shoveling mud out of the sidewalk and back onto my hill.  That kind of made me want to scream and break things.  Instead I got dressed and went to work and was bitter all day.)  Next spring or summer, provided that I have some money saved up, I plan to rebuild the entire front porch deck.  I'll feel a lot better about the house in general once that project's done!

About the means, not the end: a not-so-reverent travel account

-->This travel essay was composed while flying to New York City on June 22, 2011 to visit my amazing friend Amanda Amodio. We visited the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums, took a fantastic brunch cruise, met up with two other Carnegie Mellon alumni friends, soaked up some sun (and overheard lots of Russian conversation) at Brighton Beach, and attended a wedding held at the magnificent Alder Manor, an Italian villa-style estate built by a turn-of-the-century mining baron. Sure, none of this is particularly funny. However, the experience of traveling to New York was funny--HA HA! funny as well as You have GOT to be fucking kidding me funny--, and I hope that you'll be entertained by my description of the trip. Enjoy!

"Is it against FAA regulations to annotate the safety instruction card with snarky captions making fun of the illustrations?"
 

The plane hasn't even left the ground and already there's been enough amusement, annoyance, hilarity and disdain to fill the average person's average day. I haven't flown for nine months, mind you, and I've unintentionally prepped for this particular journey by immersing myself in the delightful world of aviation disasters thanks to about three dozen episodes of Air Crash Investigation on YouTube. (I've been obsessed with airplane crashes for most of my life, so this shouldn't come as any surprise.) I trust this bird implicitly and the flight crew only slightly less. The way I see it, if it's my time to go, fuck it. I certainly won't be able to say that I didn't have any fun in this baffling and highly nonsensical mind-bender called life.

I'm sitting alone in the last row of this modest little Brazilian-built Embraer jet--18 rows of three seats each and only about half of them occupied--enjoying the warm euphoria of a dull whiskey high. (I'd asked the bartender for gin and I got a nine dollar double-shot of Jameson instead, God help me--and did I mention that I sat at the bar for a full seven minutes before any of the THREE bartenders paid me any mind? I could feel other patrons' stares penetrating into the cotton candy core of my insecurity like poison darts and was only moments away from walking out unserved. Can you imagine me walking away from a bar without a single drink? I swear, this plane could go down right now and I think I'd be laughing all the way to the ground!) Mere feet away from my head, positioned like a big round piece of minimalist contemporary sculpture just outside the window, is one of the two gas-snorting, air-sucking contraptions driving this hunk of metal through the sky. These big round dumb gray objects that most of us take for granted don't look like they're doing anything at all, especially when their turbine blades spin their mad dervish whirl so fast that they're not even visible; yet I know that this machine is inexplicably complex and enormously dangerous, capable of converting an errant bird (or a person) into red vapor and dime-size meat chunks in about three-tenths of a second. Speaking of bluntly morbid hilarity, ahead of me and across the aisle a kind of intense looking guy about my age is reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Fantastic! Another Vonnegut fan! I haven't read this particular book, but I brought both Hocus Pocus and Breakfast of Champions with me on my trip to Hawaii last year. (My incessant satanic giggle raised more than a few eyebrows on airplane and beach alike as I devoured those sardonic, sharp-witted literary gems.) I considered striking up a conversation with the guy--"Hey, don't mean to interrupt your reading but I love Kurt Vonnegut!..."--and then decided against it.

For the first time ever, I ventured to add my own commentary to the safety instruction card tucked into the seat pocket before me. (Don't worry, though. If you should find yourself sitting in this very seat sometime in the near future, my scrawled nuggets of sarcastic contempt won't necessarily distract you from saving your ass as the plane settles deeper into the ocean and you're doing what any other sane, life-loving person would be doing at that moment: calmly consulting the safety instruction card.) Never before have I seen such tranquil acceptance, such satisfaction, on the face of a person clinging desperately to a seat cushion to avoid drowning. Never have I seen--thankfully--such an ugly little man-baby, here also seemingly content as a king while floating in a veritable shark cafeteria. Never have I seen a woman so evidently pleased to have to strap an emergency oxygen mask over her face. And, for Christ's sakes, how often does a commercial aircraft come to a tidy stop in a grassy field with its landing gear down, passengers dashing forth excitedly as if exiting a thrilling amusement park ride? This happy little document begged defacing!

Just after I got seated in my secluded back row seat, all spinny in the head and privately entertained by all manner of deviant thoughts fabricated to pass the time, I witnessed a most amusing choreographed dance by two of those runway traffic control guys--you know, the ones with the neon vests who wave the little orange mini-lightsaber flashlight things around. What made this brief moment of pure human joy all the more satisfying to me as the intrigued and tipsy spectator is that these guys usually appear, at least from all my years of experience flying, to be fairly damned miserable individuals (or just abysmally bored) who'd quite possibly rather get run over by a taxiing aircraft--thereby spending the next four months propped in front of a TV collecting disability from bed while pleasantly stoned on painkillers and afternoon soaps--than work this particular job for ten more minutes. No misery this time. It was a moment that seemed almost commercial-perfect, this unlikely duo circling their arms and kick-stepping in perfect sync, laughing like kids without a hint of self-consciousness. Ten minutes later, as my plane finally started to pull back from the terminal, I decided that I'd try to get the attention of one of the dancing lightsaber-waving Drive your airplane where I fucking tell you to! guys--the younger one, wearing shades that might or might not have been expensive and looking a bit too smart, a bit too model-pretty to be in this line of work. I waved the peace sign. When he saw me, he grinned widely and waved a peace sign back. It wasn't Okay, I'll humor the lame-o passenger just this once; it was genuine, and that made my day. Genuine anything in these cynical times is rare. It reminded me of how delighted we used to be as children when we'd make downward arm-pumping gestures to the engineer of an approaching locomotive and he'd blast the horn several times in return. (It was even better when they'd toss candy at us.)

I don't know if you've ever had airplane coffee, but it usually sucks. However, it's coffee, and it's air travel, and air travel usually sucks these days anyway--and I need my coffee. I need my coffee like a Roman crowd in the Colosseum needs blood. (That and elaborate recreations of naval battles with lions and spiky-wheeled chariots circling around giant statues of dicks while their drivers try to spear other gladiators' heads off.) When the flight attendant finally got to me, I had my head down, concentrating on composing this very specimen of literary perversion, and she said "A beverage, ma'am?" I looked up and said "SIR?!" She was black as Diana Ross but her cheeks went sunset red. In order to defray any tension I said "I sure hope you've never seen a woman with sideburns like these!", tugging my outrageously overgrown mutton chops. "Sorry, it was your hair--the ponytail!" she laughed. Sipping bad coffee as we descended over the White House and the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial almost underneath us and the Capitol building in the distance, kind of made me feel superior to just about everything. (It also made me wonder, How do people really live in the White House anyway? I think I'd get more privacy, more quiet, in a tent in the back yard. Of course, if I can make it that far inside the perimeter gates, you sure as hell aren't holding me back from hot showers in marble bathrooms and fancy catered meals! I'll bet the coffee's better there, too.)

So here I am, sitting at my second airport bar of the evening--this one in Reagan International, named after the president that conservative loudmouth and all-around humanity hater Anne Coulter considers one of America's best ever. (You do understand he had Alzheimer's from about '82 onward, right?) Considering how chaotic the place is, how many passengers are clustered outside the restaurant scoping out empty seats, I'm damned lucky to have even scored a stool at the counter. The gray-haired guy next to me has his laptop out, showing off dozens and dozens of closeup photos he's taken of famous personalities to the younger guy on his right--Obama and Joe Biden, both Clintons, Tim Russert and Sean Hannity, even Marie Osmond. I could tell from their conversation that the guy's got an ego the size of planet Jupiter. (Possibly larger.) Even so, his stories are interesting and there's a certain quick, low-key, almost English-like bite to his humor. He strikes me as kind of a cool guy and kind of a douche at the same time, well aware that the same could probably be said about me. I order gin and get gin, but this time the bartender, a quirkily attractive middle-aged woman with a tasteful diamond nose stud who I've warmed up to nicely, initially got off to a rocky start (and I don't mean the rocks in my gin) when she checked my driver's license, turned away with a smile as I put it back in the wallet, changed her mind, asked me to produce my ID again, scrutinized the birth date a second time through squinted eyes, and said with a frown and a certain condescending upward hook in her tone, "You're too young!"  Clutching my gin glass like a hand grenade I responded, a bit more sharply than necessary, “May thirteenth. Nineteen. Eighty. ONE. That would make me thirty." A moment of awkward silence as she read the date again. "Oops!" she chirped, glancing at me with one of those whimsical Well whaddya know?! expressions. "I thought it said ninety-one!" I was flattered. Seriously. It's good to know you're aging so well that bartenders still think you're underage.  (And just when I was considering follicle implants and Botox...) I took a glance at some more up-close public rally shots of President Obama on the laptop; Mr. Showoff then had the audacity to turn the computer away from me as if I were trying to catch a precious glimpse of some critical top-secret government document. Yep, more douche than cool. No doubt about it.

Other than the close friend I'm going to visit, New York City is no place special--I mean, whatever happened there but some movies and mob hits and terrorist attacks?! (It's a joke, folks.) But this trip, this process of physical transferal to another realm of existence, will certainly linger in the strangely decorated hallways of my memory. Remind me of King Kong, Woody Allen and Lady Liberty, Marilyn's skirt flaring over a subway grate and ice skating in Central Park, Donald Trump and the Rockettes, Sinatra and the Macy's Day Parade, Wall Street debauchery and a miracle plane landing on the Hudson; I'll think mostly of how funny it is just getting to New York. You show up and a whole new symphony begins--a cacophony of horrors with a touch of serendipity, endless sidewalk clamor, and enough mad laughter to go around.