Dream of Being a Giant

You get a letter in the mail. Come to the Giants Minicamp and get ready to play some football. This is somewhat confusing. You haven’t played football in almost 17 years. You read the letter again, this makes no sense, you study the name, and it jumbles and the letters move all around so you can’t be sure it says you, but it has to, why would you be holding it? You reread the letter and without actually doing any reading you learn it expects you to be at the camp no later than the date listed.

Which is today.

Which is today!

And somehow you are there.

Standing with men taller then you.

Somehow older then you, though you are now older than most NFL players currently playing football professionally.

These men dwarf you and you think about how bad it is going to hurt to block them, hit them, tackle them.

You think about the pain of a hyperextended knee. A knee going the wrong way. Swelling with blood and the bone grating needle used to drain it. You think if this is going to happen you might as well try to get a knee brace. Two would be preferable, like you use to have in High school.

You leave the class being taught around a white board. None of the play designs make any sense on it anyway. You still have no clue what position you are playing. You have no clue what arrow is you.

In fact you have no clue what the arrows are doing. Some face out. Some face in. You don’t think there are 11 arrows on either side of what you guess is the line of scrimmage. It’s the Pros maybe they do things different.

As you leave to try and find a knee braces you notice one of the other groups has a woman in it. A small short haired woman in her 50’s. She looks motivated and asks questions about what is being drawn on the white board in front of her group.

Somehow she is competition.

This doesn’t make any sense.

It also makes no sense that you walk out into the parking lot to find someone to give you knee braces.

You get lost because honestly you have no idea what or who you are looking for.

On the way back you see someone that looks like a coach.

He asks, “what are you doing.”

You answer, nervous immediately, you don’t like authority, “I am looking for knee braces.”

“I might be able to get you one, what position do you play.”

“I think I may need two,” and “you know I am not sure what position I am going to play.”

He looks at you a moment, and says “hold on let’s find out” and disappears.

Somehow you are back at the white board again. The symbols make even less sense. The coach looks at you and its obvious you are expected to play and know whats being discussed. You feel stress building in your chest. How are you going to play if you don’t know where you are going to play or what will be expected of you when you get on the field.

You rationalize it to yourself, I will fake it, I will get out on the field and pretend I know what to do.

A tap on your shoulder.

You turn and a list is shoved under your face.

What was your name again?

You tell the voice, big and booming, what your name is.

The list disappears and then reappears again a moment later.

You think you read your name and tell the voice this, but next to it is not your picture, it is the imagine of a man with a tiny head and a huge neck, a real pro ball player, this is not you, and it is too late to tell the voice.

You see his positions, they are just letters to you, except O.L, outside linebacker you think, you have never played outside linebacker. You try to tell the voice. He shifts the paper as if looking at it also and you see the name, it is now for sure not yours. The letters jump and move around but they don’t belong in your name. A mistake has happened. All you know is you don’t want the voice to know you are there by mistake. You want to be there. It doesn’t matter how painful it is going to be.

And the practice facility disappears.

You are outside of the stadium.

Your teammates are ready for a game dressed in Giants blue and padded up. You are wearing… knee braces, but not the knee braces you needed and no pads.

You can’t tell anyone, maybe this is proof they know you don’t belong, so you begin a search for pads, so if called on to play you will be ready.

You find a bag and sort through it, the game is about to start and you need something. You slip a pair of black baggy pants over your legs and then a regular pair of football pants, but no pads. You don’t even have a jersey or shoulder pads or a helmet, but you are ready to play. You know you will stick your nose in and block someone, tackle someone. It is going to hurt and it may be only one play and you will be out, hospitilized, but you are going to try.

As you start to walk back to your team you see the old short haired lady walk up and start digging through the same bag.

“Pads?” You ask though it is obvious she isn’t wearing any.

She nods, digging.

Then you wake up.

My Future with Melon

Up on Seventh and Carroll there is a Key Foods. It looks grungy, like it should be cheap. So yesterday Olivia and I walked up there to buy a few essentials and I saw the future.

It is not the closest grocery store. There is an associated two street blocks away and we are members of the Union Street Food Cooperative, but I thought it would be cheap and I wanted to take the walk, I have been lazy with getting up in the morning and actually doing my road work so I could use this bit of exercise to make myself feel better.

I like the Coop, for the same reason I despised it at first.

The people.

They are fun to watch in their hippy, grungy, angry little ways. I don’t fully understand yet why shopping here showcases the worst behavior I have ever seen in a grocery store.

It may be the future I saw at Key foods.

Or it could be the ownership aspect.

When you become a member of the Coop, you buy into the store. You pay a refundable membership fee and get to work 2.5 hours at the store every four weeks all for the honor of shopping shoulder to shoulder with the meanest shoppers in the history of marketing.

My wife says it’s because the aisle are narrow. I disagree, though she is the smartest person I have ever met, I really don’t think the aisles are any narrower there than in any other grocery store. It’s kind of like Roller Derbying for food, but instead of skates you have a buggies and we aren’t talking about athletes either, we are dealing with 60ish women that a stiff wind would blow over, running people down to be the next to examine the kale.

My first few excursions I tried to be polite as if I were in some kind of violation of the rules. As if there was something I could do to not feel in the way no matter where I stood, but this was the wrong way to handle the situation.

In fact shopping at the coop was a lot like living in Flushing Queens.

Once the 7 stopped at Main and Roosevelt it was on, people ran for the stairs bumping into each other pushing one another out of the way just to get out of the subway. Out on the street it would get worse, sidewalks crammed full of pedestrians, families walking arm in arm stretched across the entire walk way, people stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to answer phones or to send a text. It was midtown but worse. After a few weeks I decided that there was no use avoiding it and turned on a sort of Godzilla approach to getting home. Nothing could stand in my way that I would slow for. My own rules were straight and sure and take no hostages.

So this is how I shop at the coop now. I do what I need to do and allow the other shoppers the option, run into me with your manic energy, or wait behind me as I chose my kale.

But we didn’t go to the coop and we did not go to the associated, we went to Key Foods and I saw the future.

It started as we stood in front of the watermelon. They were not marked with pricing and the ones cut up looked old and rubbery so we decided to buy a full one, it was heavy and darkly colored, with the telltale yellow patch on the bottom indicating it had ripened and would be sweet and juicy.

I couldn’t wait actually to cut into it and savor the sweet sticky goodness. There is nothing better than watermelon. No fruit can compare.

We walked around the store with it in our buggy putting other items on top of it. It was an essentials only shopping trip. The buggy was not that full. And the experience was a lazy one. The other shoppers were polite. It was like small town shopping, where a four way intersection everyone tries to give the person to their right the go ahead. It was a sweet world, one in which I sort of missed with the many months we had shopped at the coop.

This was until we checked out.

Everything got pushed through the scanner at the self-serve register. We scanned everything without even looking at the price and our “essentials” came out to $30.00 bucks.

Eh, not bad.

Then $6 for a 12 pack of coke, and I thought that sucked, a luxury, the one treat I allow myself and my wife’s soul addiction.

I shrugged and we bagged it up turning to the last item in our buggy.

I picked up the melon and scanned the bar code. The extremely loud voice coming from the self-serve register that yelled our price for each item scanned for the store to hear, asked me, “place the item on the scanner to be weighed.”

I did so and had to blink to make sure I wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t there. $15 for a 10 pound watermelon.

We asked the attendant if this was right. She said, “Yes,” and walked away to help someone else.

We debated taking it off and going without, but after answering our one question the attendant had moved on to the next question, which sent her into the store and she was gone long enough for our patience to be lost causing us to decide to just go ahead and pay for the fucking thing.

I don’t remember melon ever costing this much.

It concerns me.

I not sure why it was so expensive.

I thought about nothing else the entire walk home.

I imagine the watermelon was born on a farm somewhere, so I began with that.

I wondered if just to be a farmer nowadays required a second mortgage, and maybe those loans being taken out on the farms were being defaulted on with not enough produce being sold to pay it back and those farmers are getting squeezed out by the banks and leaving the farms to go wild as no other American can afford to buy the rights to the land.

Less melon farmers means less melons and the price rises.

Then remembered a story I read where there was generational shift away from rural America, where kids were moving into large cities away from farms and small town life. I imagined the funerals of parents with those in line to be the next melon farmers driving in from big cities to attend. Afterward, I imagine, they looked forward to breaking the farm apart and selling it to land developers.

Less melon farmers means less melons and the price continues to rise.

Maybe this melon was an import. So I picture a comfy plane ride for my newly purchased watermelon from some South American country where stuff is actually still grown.

Maybe I am paying for transportation costs with this price, being New York City is not known for its Melon farms this meant my melon did not need to come from out of the country for fuel costs to be included in the price, but maybe as close as Georgia.

I don’t even like owning a car because of fuel costs. So this became a likely possibility why this melon was so expensive.

If I can’t pick it from the ground myself, I have to pay the person who brought it to me and all the costs associated with that trip.

And then I remembered hearing about the almond farmers in California. They tore down generations old almond trees because they could not afford to pay the water bill to keep them alive.

Water!

It’s free. It’s everywhere, but for some reason, this year was less falling from the sky.

Less water, higher water, bills, fewer melons growing, the higher the cost.

With this I saw the future in Key Foods.

Haunting in Brooklyn

I am trying to get back into running. I did just shy of three miles in two block intervals in just over 30 minutes. Walk a block, run two, the street blocks not the Avenues. It was easy and I got a good sweat going and I feel like I am building back up to the five mile plodder I once was.

As I do my thing today, I think about my Grandfather. Actually he has been on my mind a lot since I moved back to New York.

He grew up in the Bronx.

I am not sure where exactly.

I would like to know.

It would give me an excuse to go up there and walk around his old neighborhood and try to imagine what it would have been like, prewar, and all. I am sure not much prewar architecture remains though. I hate to imagine what I’d find. I think I remember hearing it was near Yankee Stadium, but my memory is like Swiss cheese.

After the war he moved to Brooklyn and started having babies in the Fort Hamilton Parkway area. I realized shortly after moving to Park Slope that Fort Hamilton Parkway runs not too far from where I am currently living.

I discovered this while accidently running 6 miles.

I started out thinking I would do one course, much shorter and ended up running around Greenwood cemetery and bam right there is a road sign telling me I was on the Fort Hamilton Parkway. Along it somewhere my Grandparents started their family before giving up on city life and moving to the potato farms of Long Island.

He was a hard worker, my grandfather. He fixed planes during the Second World War and retired from the post office in the late seventies and passed comfortably in Florida surrounded by loved ones.

I was not there. I wish I had been. I was engaged to a bad year at that point in my life. A bad year that would last another 8 months. Bad decisions, with horrible outcomes, not as bad as It could have been, but bad enough to forever alter the landscape of my life and bad enough to put me in another state as my Grandfather lay dying.

He painted beautifully, my Grandfather. He always had a canvas on his easel. He painted in oils. Must have done hundreds of pieces during his life. I have hung pieces of his work up in some of the places I have lived. I don’t own any today. I was proud to be related to those works by blood. I wondered often why he had been a postal worker and not a professional artist.

Malcolm Gladwell helped me realize that I was watching a master at work, one who had devoted his ten thousand hours of practice, but it took him 70 plus years to accumulate in-between doing the right things for his family.

My Grandfather had the artistic temperament. Meaning he had a temper with a low boiling point, like me and my brother, loud and some of the things he could say, Jesus, but he was smart and never violent. One thing he told me many times as a child, especially after a subpar report card, or an in school fight, or call home from the principal’s office, would be that the world needs street sweepers and ditch diggers as much as it needs doctors and lawyers.

This statement haunts me today, it hurt me then also, because I didn’t want to dig ditches, or sweep streets.

I still don’t.

I have dug ditches though. Of course I did it in the Army, but then after also, once. I helped dig three gigantic holes into which concrete was poured. On top of those gigantic holes filled with concrete some other team placed a cell phone tower.

The holes were dug on a farm in Georgia. A huge piece of land. I tried to talk to the engineer about the details of the assignment and as little as he shared he did tell me the property owners could live comfortably off the rental agreement from this tower alone for the rest of their lives.

How lucky. They had land someone must have used a shovel on at some point and now they get to live comfortably for the rest their lives while that tower hums its signal out into the world connecting cellphones.

Some people are lucky, or work hard or have to use a broom professionally, whether they want to or not.

I have used tools that have blistered by hands and left wounds that took weeks to heal.

I have done this, that and the other thing so often I am tired of the repeats.

My brain is blistered from the mundane and repetitious life I seem to be living. I am trying hard to think up something different. Find some path hidden from view. Most of all I hope with all my soul I have not relegated myself to ditch digger or street sweeper.

I sure as hell am not going to be a Doctor or lawyer either.

I am not quite sure whats left.

The Heart of Neil

“Neil Armstrong died from the complications of a cardiovascular procedure,” a family member gave the press those words.

A cardiovascular procedure?

Wasn’t his whole life, from July 16th 1969 on, a cardiovascular procedure? I keep thinking about the scream of a roller coaster ride, how exciting the journey. The ups and downs the twists.

The screaming fun.

Sadly it all ends when the cars come to a halt and bars pop up and everyone is asked to get off, a heart will still race for a short while anyway.

I am always disappointed in that, when it happens and I am asked to leave the ride, knowing the excitement will soon fade.

I tried when I was kid to just sit there and hope I wasn’t noticed and maybe be able to go around one more time, but I would be discovered and I would be removed, well asked to anyway, I still had an amusement park to explore and more lines to stand in.

Maybe it shouldn’t be such a letdown, after standing in line for what would feel like an eternity. Waiting behind bored people who smell like mildew from the log flume ride, or stink from being deodorantless, or stink because they are shitty people, rounding what feels like endless number of times around bars set into a serpentine.

All to sit in a very worn seat and sent on a short spin through a fraction of what it must have felt to sit aboard Apollo 11.

It took that old bucket of bolts 7 seconds to go a mile when leaving the atmosphere. It takes me longer to put one of my shoes on, or use to before I discovered All Stars now come prefabbed for slip on.

The rocket weighed 500,000 pounds empty and 6.1 million when fully load with fuel. Once in the Army, I transported a bunch of old C4 to a dump site crapping my pants the whole time thinking about an imminent explosion, which wasn’t made any better by the guy sitting next to me, some older then dirt E5, missing fingers and all telling me “careful, private,” anytime my truck hit a bump.

We survived, and Neil survived. Though I think Neil survived the most dangerous thing a human being has ever done and I just survived a routine task made nerve-wracking by a onetime careless soldier sitting next to me freaking out at every pebble in the road.

Maybe I wasn’t told everything I should have been told on that drive, but Mr. Armstrong knew what he was getting himself in for.

It just feels wrong to have his life end with such a whisper. He created such a bang with his efforts, or his volunteering to sit in the capsule of a machine designed by thousands and allowed to be sent to a foreign body that for millions of years has circled our planet unmolested by the feet of man or animal.

I told my wife maybe it would have been better to have the man die in the arms of a prostitute named bubbles, living a life no normal 82 year old man could ever hope to have lived.

Complication of a cardiovascular procedure?

It just doesn’t seem right.

Maybe it was the moon after all that killed him. How hard must his heart have had to be going on the 16th of July 1969? 7 second miles to start a 300,000 mile journey.

Once the descent was survived , unknown, unproven theories were his only hope, a huge grey boulder potentially to be his home, forever , a president with two speeches prepared, one for a win and one for a loss and it truly was a tossup as to which it would be.

A nation watching, no, a world watching, in history it is an American flag that was placed on the surface, but it is a human flag made with human fingers, placed by human hands, and all due to a purely human effort.

Man invaded the moon and thousands and thousands and thousands of things had to go right with this journey, every second was a victory that had to lead to yet another victory a second later.

In the middle of it all, after a lunar modular touched down on the surface of the vacant wasteland of its destination, a man stepped out and said, “That’s one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.”

Oh jeez.

After a near perfect situation, a perfect journey, a perfect everything, the only flub came from the vocal cords of the man to first touch a foot on the Moon. A man named Neil, a simple machine called man.

Having been on stage in front of hundreds I can understand his error, he flubbed his line in front of billions.

I can see him practicing it every day of his journey, looking into a little space mirror, saying, “a man, a man, a man,” and then he forgets one simple extremely important word and his sentence has a completely new meaning.

But it worked. That flub, the launch, the reconnection and the return, it all worked so perfectly.

Years went into starting and finishing that roller coaster ride.

I wonder if the thrill ever went away, I wonder if his heart ever did stop beating a thousand times a second. I wonder if the adrenaline of that journey ever left his body.

I like to think he did not die a normal man and that at the hands of a doctor, who tried to fix his racing heart, Neil was finally able to relax from his journey. He was finally able to rest.

Generation Woes Me

I have been stressing over my professional life for some time now.

An article I read yesterday stated 85% of generation Y, a generation that takes up almost a third of the work force alone, has been relegated to jobs earning them under 19k a year.

This didn’t help.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Freedictionary.com defined Generation Y as, “members of the generation of people born since the early 1980s who are seen as being discerning consumers with a high disposable income.”

Where the fuck is all the money?

15% is all it takes for this generation to be considered “discerning consumers with a high disposable income?”

Maybe the free in freedictionary.com means it sucks.

I can never get cyber resources to agree anyway, sometimes it’s like the internet is counterintuitive on purpose.

I like to define a generation as anyone who could have fought and died together in war. I am 35 so the range of 17 to 53 years old works for me, because anyone born within those years could have shared a foxhole with me and if they have had to I am honored to include them.

But thinking about it a bit I realize I could have gone to war with my father from 1995 through 1997, before he retired as a Major. He was born in 1953, he is too old to be in Generation Josh, but the world needs officers and we were both serving in the Army during those two years.

So again I turned to the internet.

Doing a quick Google search, Dictionary.com was kind enough to relieve me of my misconception telling me “a generation is anyone living at the same time in history, i.e. the post war generation, or the Great Recession Generation.” To go deeper it states, “Any 30 year period between parent and offspring,” can also be considered a generation.

Wikipedia generously added to the definition of Generation Y, or the Millennials, or Generation We, or the Global Generation, or Generation Next, or my favorite, the Net Generation, as any one born in the late seventies all the way through the millennium. I am born in the tiny window that could place me in generation X also which, thanks again to Wikipedia, includes all births from the early 60’s through early 80’s. In terms of how I feel about my life and thanks to my military service I didn’t graduate college until 2005, so I will claim my membership in the slacker generation, the Generation of Misfits, the Generation of Lost Boys and Girls.

According to official tallies we have a 17% unemployment rate, which under a microscope would probably grow to 30% or more including all of those angry no pep gamers out there inhabiting basements refusing to even try anymore.

The failure to launch generation is an echo generation. Not really a generation at all really, but a repeat of Gen Xers, the second child, late to the dinner table and missing all the good stuff forced to eat soggy salad and stale bread.

Every country has a different term for us. In Tunisia we are the Hittistes, or those who lean against the wall, in Egypt we are the Shabab Atileen, meaning Unemployed youths. In Britain, we are NEET’s meaning Not in Education Employment or Training. Japanese Gen Y’ers call themselves Freeters, which is a combination of words, the first is the English word free and the last three letters come from the German word for worker, Der Arbeiter. China just refers to us as the Ant Tribe, because of our tendency to crowd into cheap apartments on the fringes of big cities.

An article hosted on a website, I happened upon, suggested that twenty something year olds are taking a longer time to grow up.

What the fuck!

What does that even mean?

I can only guess, because honestly I just read the title.

I imagine they don’t go into what growing up means.

Turning to Wikipedia yet again I am given two possibilities, one is either biologically an adult that is sexually mature and/or is a legal adult and can buy porn and beer.

The title of the article suggesting the Y’ers are taking a longer time to grow up is probably not suggesting that these people are maturing sexually less quickly. We aren’t looking at a bunch of prepubescent children walking around in their 20’s and early thirties. It also isn’t suggesting that legally they aren’t adults because no recession, or economic downturn, or whatever the smart people in control of the money call it, can replace the laws of the land, and if I remember correctly 18 year olds can still catch bullets and vote and 21 year olds can still buy liquor.

If being an adult can simply be defined as accumulated wealth, living on one’s own, under the care of oneself, than with 85% of us earning less than 20k a year we might us well live as free as we can.

Think of it as an excuse to stop trying to fit in with a society that wants us to sit on the sidelines and just watch, maybe we should start our own league, grow a beard, climb Everest, see the Taj Mahal, live in Brooklyn and write blogs, become a hipster, or stop being a hipster, please stop being a hipster, live dreams and think big. I assure you the walls won’t fall down if we stop leaning on them nor will the couch cushions run away if we got up and did something else.

My One Sided Conversation With Barack

I am now getting minute by minute text messages from our president. I signed up to get his twitter feed sent directly to my phone. It was a mistake. I get a lot of messages from him. It’s like thinking someone’s cool and then getting to know them and finding out they are not. Yesterday He kept droning on and on and on about smaller class size.

Barack says, “I want smaller classrooms for kids.”

I am all for our children’s education. I think the less they learn the harder my life is going to be when I get old and I would like to get old someday, and I would like my old age to be easy, but are smaller class rooms the way to go?

I think the issue is the apathy of the American students, the malaise of boredom, in addition to a prison like environment, and the jailor like attitude of the instructors, the rigors of standardized testing. I remember one of my nephews a few years ago, he had to pass a single test or he would be left behind if he graded lower than a certain point.

He was in tears.

Couldn’t sleep.

Stressed to the point of hives.

He was in middle school. I don’t ever remember being that stressed out in school at any point in my life and I have a college degree. Two in fact, and some of a third. I had a boss from Mumbai, India. We were standing in our office’s kitchen and I was listening to him talk about his children learning English and how he was worried that they would have a tough time when they went to school fitting in with the other kids. It made me curious about his education.

The guy was brilliant. He could code programing like no one I have ever seen. He could run numbers faster than a calculator, and his logic abilities were amazing. One of the smartest people I have ever met. Seriously one of the smartest people I have ever met.

“How are schools in India,” I asked.

“Full,” he retorted as if it was going to be the final word on the subject. I pushed and got, “Big classrooms 60 to 70 kids, one teacher who lectured.

“How did the teacher cater to all of those students?”

“She didn’t, gave no individual attention, I don’t remember ever being addressed in school by a teacher. Either you learned or you didn’t.”

“How did a system like that produce you?” I asked. It might seem like ass kissing, but I was genuinely curious. I went through an education system with half the number of kids my boss did and have the math skills of a goat and I am not being fair to the goat.

“We took what we were going to be tested on home and had a tutor go over the information with us until we knew it.“

“So tutoring was available for everyone?” I was thinking about my community college days preparing to pass the state mandated standardized math test. I had to take this test to get my first degree, because my math grades were below a 3.0. I went to a study lab and tried to work my head around the quadratic formula and other rules and laws of the subject and had available to me people who would come and answer my ridiculous questions. Without that lab, oh how much less debt I would have right now.

“No. tutoring was something the mothers and fathers provided.”

“Cheap?” I was getting rude, I was so curious I had to know, how such an overcrowded education system produced a commodity such as my boss who was worth enough in American currency for my company to bring him over here support his visa and pay him gobs of money.

“No.” and he got embarrassed.

I told Barack about the larger class sizes in India. “…think deeper not smaller. “ I was ignored.

He has lots of followers.

I was not truly expecting a conversation with the president, but the tweets being sent to my phone started to make me irritated.

Barack says, “More teachers will be able to teach more kids at the speed they need,” and “smaller class size means more help to kids”, and “large class sizes mean kids who fall in the middle are easier prey to the cracks of obscurity.”

My first retort was, “More teachers equals more bureaucracy, kids don’t care, number of teachers will not change that.”

My second, “More teachers to pay to baby sit bored kids cramming for standardized tests.”

And then finally giving up on the matter and realizing that education reform was not a subject I should even be involved in I sent, “You got my vote, but it’s too bad we can’t hear some talk about innovation and change regarding education. Class size is not the true issue, how our kids enter their adult lives, now that is a point of importance that need to be discussed.”

Then I shut up. There wasn’t much point in responding to the tweets. My voice is too soft and meek to be heard, and the teachers’ lobby and millions to spend every four years. I am still getting tweets from the president, today though; I think I will ignore them.

Assange

I am having a difficult time accepting that the charges levied against Julian Assange are an attempt at political assassination.

I see the situation as two women accuse him of rape, which boils down to him having sex with them without condoms. He was asked to wear one, but chose to force the woman into having sex without putting one on.

That’s a dirt bag thing to do, right?

If it was political assassination why make it rape, wouldn’t child porn do a better job of discouraging a following.

The guy was just a programmer anyway, an editor, a word changer, he spilled secrets that could have led to the deaths of American kids joining up for military service on the hope of college and a better life. He also helped the Tunisian people revolt from their corrupt government. That was impressive. The Tunisians knew they were getting a raw deal from the people in power, and no one knows how the cards will land at the end of the day there, but no real global political powerhouses crumbled due to anything released.

In my opinion, overall, he wasn’t much of a whistle blower though. No real global change occurred because of his coding abilities or editorial clout. Why would the world’s governments want to shut him up with charges of rape?

He sought corruption and found little.

Maybe he almost found something…

Honestly do we need Wikileaks to tell us where the corruption is?

In the United States 70% of the population live close to or completely in poverty.

A whole generation is deeply in debt and there are only enough jobs out there for 3 out 4 people to work and even then, in most cases, marginally.

We pay taxes to a government which pads their budget by inflating crime and need and destroying the lives of people forever all for millions and sometimes billions of our dollars.

Eisenhower said beware the military industrial complex.

We ignored him.

Need examples?

Weapons of Mass destruction, ring a bell?

Or how about a police department in Brooklyn, they show they are doing a good job by deflating crime, while a police department in Florida justifies their budget by inflating crimes. Subway workers do unnecessary work just to justify their budget and ferry mechanics on the Puget Sound say they do work that never gets done.

I am sure there are more examples. What could be a simple society is made more complicated by a bureaucratic system looking out for itself, feeding on a people that have drained dry.

So maybe Assange was onto something, but the world doesn’t deal in maybes.

The man did many pretty reprehensible things, lots of people died because of his leaks in Tunisia, and as to the question of whether he is a rapist or not, he ran away from his accusers. Not only did he run, but he also pointed fingers and cried political assassination to distract from his crimes.

Assange committed lots crimes but missed the boat on where the true corruption lay.

I dipped my toe recently into the financial arena of the U.S. and discovered that most people who work for the big banks and trading houses wake every morning for the hope of earning seven figures along with a huge bonus every year. Sounds like a great desire. But this is accomplished on the backs of people barely scrapping by on a pittance. The huge sums some individuals pocket are not based on individual merit, most of them could not even program a Black Berry alone and we give them trillions of dollars to play with.

I worked for a movie. I discovered that there is no soul in this industry. That every movie we see is built on the backs of people who make $100 a day, or work for free and have twelve hour work days, never knowing until late at night when they are due to come in the next morning.

No director or actor, with their million and millions of take home money, could ever do it without the little people. Look at the credits next time you spend money on a movie, most of those people are nonunionized, freelance, underpaid, overeducated , extremely indebt and have no hope to advance. Or if they have slinked a rung up on the ladder it seems they make sure they hold it by knocking the people underneath them off.

Assange did something wrong. He ran from his accusers. This is pretty strong evidence he is guilty as hell, belongs in prison and is out solely for his own hide, we should probably now look at wikileaks in a different light. This man is a victim of a conspiracy to discredit his character the truly funny part is he did all the discrediting himself.

The nightmare of Nyad

A woman named Diana Nyad slipped into the warm waters of the Florida strait and started an ordeal that made no sense, I am curious about this urge to swim to Florida an urge so strong that she tried to do it over and over and over again. Why brave the nightmare of trying to swim from Cuba to Key West?

I went out on a shrimp boat once about 11 years ago. It was through friends of my sister I got the opportunity. We meet at the docks at sunset and readied the boat. Or more like they readied the boat and I stood there with my hands in pockets watching. The night before I had worked an overnight shift at my job. I had not had an opportunity to sleep during the day and was exhausted.

But whatever, as it was pointed out to me recently, I have an excuse for everything.

When they did whatever it is they did to get the boat ready, we cast off. Shrimp boats aren't that big but they aren't small either. Bigger than anything I had been on piloted by a guy who dropped out of high school, not to belittle the guy. I mean they didn't teach shrimping at Ridgewood or anything beneficial that I took away anyhow, and this dude knew his stuff. He did the things that shrimpers do or did.

I am not too sure if this is even a profession anymore down in Florida. I read somewhere it was closed off now, too expensive to compete with farms and South East Asia.

Anyway as we moved away from land and the sun sank down into the horizon exploding into the colors of a typical Florida sunset I was ill prepared for what lay ahead of me.

Darkness.

A darkness so pure that at times I wondered how the pilot knew what was out there. Occasionally a horn would sound off in the distance and occasionally the pilot would sound his horn. There would be a flash of red, a tiny little blink off in the distance that told of either land or another boat.

They would do a run and drop anchor and shut the engine off and sift through what their nets picked up from the Gulf floor and there would be silence, the water lapping against the boat disappeared it seemed and on this little wooden deck we were suspended in nothingness so pure it was terrifying.

I think I was supposed to help, but couldn't keep my feet under me with all the swaying so with the rocking boat and my exhaustion I dozed in the cabin on the captains chair feeling a little guilty.

I think of this while reading about Diana Nyad. She had to quit again. I hate she was pulled from the water 55 miles after starting her journey. I hate that she made it closer to her target then she has ever managed to do in her other attempts thus far. I picture her during the storm, lightning flashing all around fighting to get back in the water.

A water filled with sharks and jellyfish.

The sharks freak me out the most.

When I was kid I would fish in the Gulf with one of buddies from middle school, Jimmy, we used shrimp as bait, and I caught a huge Remora, hauling it up into the boat snappen my pole. In my head we were inches from a hammerhead shark or tiger shark when Jimmy told me what it was and what it did. It had a big angry looking suction cup head and wiggling body. Jimmy killed it unconcerned and cut it up to use as bait.

I dont remember catching anything else that day.

Knowing what I know now it probably came from a docile Nurse Shark sleeping on the gulf seabed, but the idea of the size of that creature down there has affected me my whole life.

Nyad probably fought to go back in the water with the sharks swimming close enough to be spotted by her crew. She knew they were there. She stopped occasionally to drink and eat and I am sure her team would say, “hey, I am seeing lots of shark fins and stuff.”

“No worries I will continue to count and sing to Florida,” She probably retorted lisping through her jellyfish stung lips.

She claims to have braved the dark and the sharks and the jellyfish to show people over sixty dreams can come true. That the attempt is better than not doing anything at all.

I was disappointed when I found out she had to stop 48 miles from her goal, but at the end of the day I guess I am inspired by the idea she will try again, or someone else will, or it will remain a body of water that is uncrossable by swimming. I am okay with that also. At least we didn't need to rename it the The Strait of Nyad.

Production (Part 2) Superfluous Education

It is 3:30 when my alarm goes off out in the living room. I leap from bed trying to get to it before my wife wakes. I know she is aware of the noise. She sleeps lighter than a feather floating on a soft breeze. She doesn't complain though, she stopped doing that while dating and I would wake at 5:30 and go for a run before work.

I don't mind being awake this early.

I am filled with energy and high exuberance at the crack of dawn.

I am a morning person, some would call it, the rest, my wife included, call it annoying as hell.

This morning I am off balance while making my vitamin infused chocolate milk.

“What's that?” you ask.

Well here's the recipe. Vitamin Infused Chocolate Milk:

I tbs of L’carnitine

5000cc’s of vitamin D

5000cc’s of vitamin E

A cup of skim milk

One unmeasured heaping spoonful of nestle's chocolate milk powder.

Its a good recovery beverage.

I assume.

One I wish I had discovered while still running.

I haven't run since I fucked up my ankle, or a tendon in my foot, or some minor thing that an MRI at the V.A. discovered, but one no health care official cared to explain the impact of, if, continued to be abused while jogging. Maybe soon I will brave the Brooklyn Streets once again, regardless of explanation or not, but this morning even if I wanted to give it a shot, time and the festering blister would not allow it.

The reason I am up so early is I received a 5 am call time Sunday night about 9 pm.

Of course I couldn't sleep right at nine, so I lingered reading book three of A Song of Fire and Ice until sleep caught up with my intentions.

I did not notice the time when I did drifted off. It was late though, maybe after midnight.

It was a deep sleep the iphone’s little song pulled me from. One in which I was grabbed violently from the darkness.

Regardless of feelings I am up, I am awake, I am ready to do what needs to be done. I attempt to chase the milk with a cup of french pressed coffee.

The milk got drunk but the coffee remained mostly filled on the window sill all day. Time was my enemy this morning.

From 3:30 till 4:18 I floundered trying to get ready. I don't know why I thought I could do it in thirty minutes. I knew it would take about an hour to get from Carrol to Greenwich street. I knew I hadn't prepared jack shit the night before.

After showering and throwing on jeans, a douchey t-shirt and Chucks I grabbed my laptop, which I was told on Friday, “Is a necessary part of your job,” by Josh, my educator, and that he was “deeply disappointed I hadn't brought it.”

I had a moment after this statement was made, through the fake smile thrown across my face, where I wanted to grab the guy by the shoulders and shake him a little bit, and say, “you mother fucking want something? You mother fucking ask for it!” but I didn’t. I still had the idea I was going to learn something working for free on the production of a movie.

I guess I did learn some things when I had arrived Friday morning.

Right after walking through the door I was rushed into a car with Josh. Something had not been brought to the set that needed to go to the set right then and now.

Thursday, somebody had fucked up.

Who fucked up?

Someone else.

I learned two things in the first five minutes of my movie making career.

1: Everybody is always blaming someone else for a fuck up.

2: Nothing is ever done correctly, or on time, or within budget.

In retrospect I am sure this has something to do with the attempt to get as much free labor as possible out of an initially excited workforce. A balloon filled to bursting will always deflate no matter how much helium is placed inside it. The balloon will droop and stop doing its job. Thats why I got this opportunity in the first place. Someone drooped too much and either walked out or deflated to the point a trash can was it’s next home.

Craig's-List is good for these types of jobs here in the city. Filled with opportunities either nobody wants or jobs nobody can do.

The times we live.

So anyway, Monday morning, I grabbed my laptop and my book and my wallet and my keys and my power cord and my phone and it’s power cord all on individual attempts to get out the door. A process that should have been a grab and go, if i planned it through, turned into an 18 minute effort.

I love the cliche on-time is fifteen minutes late. I use it in every interview and honestly would love to live my life by it.

I try.

I really do.

This morning as I waited alone at the Union St sub-way stop I knew it wasn't going to happen.

The train came at 4:35.

It stopped at Whitehall at 4:48.

I walked as fast as my now swollen foot would allow and reached the 1 train two minutes later. The good news it was sitting there waiting for me. The bad news it sat there for ten minutes.

I was late when it took off uptown. There was nothing I could do about it. I relaxed into my book knowing what came from this would come no matter what I did from this point on. I had made my bed so to speak.

When the train stopped at Houston I had a three block walk. I started walking/limping in the direction of the production office and I got a phone call. It stopped the gaming podcast I was listening to. My ringtone is the theme song to Doctor Who. I love it. I want people to call me so I can ignore their call and listen to my ringtone. I couldn't ignore this call.

“This is Josh,” I said, as I always say when I know the person calling will be asking for me anyway.

The high nasally voice on the other end belonging to the production rat, who would not allow me to be called Josh, asks, “Hey whats up?”

I fucking hate him for calling, for doubting that I was on my way, for seemingly testing me with every task as if he second guessed hiring me to work for free on this fucking indy movie, “I am on Houston,” like the city in Texas, “House-ton” I correct myself, “heading to the office” I quickly add, feeling embarrassed and hating him more for making me nervous.

“Okay.” he responded and the podcast continues when he hangs up.

Just simply, Okay, but the intonation... I don't know.

On the drive to the set Friday we talked, it started out as a good talk, we talked about movies, we agreed on a bunch of opinions and eventually he learned I sucked at names and remembering details on the fly. After the drop, on the way back to the production office, he turned more inquistorish, as if a wrong answer would be deadly and he would be my doom.

It was beginning to annoy me, his attitude, it wasn't steady. It bounced from one extreme to another so quickly. He was cool.

He was a dick.

He was my boss.

He was one of the guys.

I was already feeling off balance when dealing with him.

His okay continued that thread.

My attitude was going from bad to worse and I knew this experience wasn't going to end well for anyone involved.

The Tebows V. The Giants

I saw Tebow play the Giants last night. Or was it the Jets playing the Giants? I can't remember for sure. The Tebows had green jerseys and the Giants kicked the crap out of them.

I am a Giants fan. Have been since 91 when a missed field goal won them a second Super Bowl. I am also a manning fan. Doesn't matter which one I like them both, the ones at least playing still in the NFL.

Eli seems so innocent to me. I imagine him being very much like Tebow. A good ole Christian boy from the south. A guy I meet recently suggested that wasn't the case. In high school, he told me, Manning was a hard core alcoholic and class clown, barely made into college and him being a two time Super Bowl champion is not the path anyone from his past would have ever thought he would have been walking.

Tebow on the other hand is doing what everyone from his past probably imagined he would be doing, playing in the NFL and making something from what everyone keeps saying is nothing. Dude he is an exciting athlete. He threw for ten more yards then the starting Quarterback with a much smaller fraction of completions. When he walked on the field at the start of the second half he caused a reaction in the stadium that, to me sitting just off the end zone, sounded like a hero had entered the fray, and this from Giants and Jets fans alike. The whole stadium cheered for the guy when he entered the game after the first half, derisive New York, the I love to hate you capitol of the world, all screaming for a little virgin boy from Florida.

There was a guy behind me who had an opportunity to yell a few words to Ahmad Bradshaw as he walked past. Based on most of what the guy said I thought he was a Jets fan. By the end of the game I wasn't sure what he was, annoying at first and funny as hell by the time he left, but when the big running back walked by he choose to tell him, “Bradshaw! Hey Bradshaw!” the big man looked up to the row right behind me and my wife, straight at the gruff voiced man and kind of smiled like he was giving the guy a treat, until the dude continued, “Steve Walker loves you and he is gay.” Bradshaw quickly averted his eyes and picked up his pace to the locker room, or wherever he was heading. He shook his head a little bit, a subtle movement as if to remind himself of where he was. Later on as he returned to the game the guy behind me who I began to think of as either a construction worker or fireman did the exact same thing, “Hey Bradshaw! Bradshaw! Steve Walker Loves you and he is gay!” this time he was ignored, but I knew Ahmad heard him. Everyone sitting within a hundred yards heard him, including Steve Walker who I imagined was the balding grey haired guy sitting next to the construction worker who could afford season tickets.

When I returned to The City I did a similar thing. After finding my uptown 6 train I sat down with my bags and tried very hard to ignore a man screaming, New York,” over and over again. As an excuse, I was tired, I hadn't slept in over 24 hours and as if by remote control I found myself staring at him by the 72nd street subway stop. I didn't even realize I was doing it until he made eye contact and I could sense a hate, which could easily result in murder, staring back at me, a mess of shit that made me remember you don't respond to crazy here.

Ahmad needed to be reminded also. It was probably a long off season back home to whatever normal place he was from, where the world still had two a day practices and homecomings. This construction worker talked shit about everyone. Jets, Giants, Bradshaw, Steve Walker, the cheerleaders, but when Tebow took the field he shut up. He didn't say one thing until the end of the game as if waiting for the Tebow miracle to happen. I felt the stir in the crowd as if younger version of Mike Tyson was walking towards the ring and the crowd started to feel bad for whoever was about to get his ass kicked.

The Tebows got their asses kicked though and I don't know how to feel about it. On one hand here a guy that without a helmet could be the spitting image of the comic book character Archie, whose legs, my wife claims are too short for his body, and got cut from the team he brought to the playoffs and was replaced with the quarterback he faced tonight's older brother.

He was sacked a few times and I saw him talk shit to the first guy who sacked him. I did not hear the words, but I saw the fat round number 72 grab his crotch and dance off the field laughing in response. On one of the next times he went down he got into the face of one his linemen.

I thought he was more poised than this. The better man. A both cheeks slapped type guy. It’s preseason though and maybe Tebow, like Bradshaw, just needs to get use to New York. It ain't missionary work, it ain't the swamps of Florida, its the concrete jungle where even fans turn by the end of the third quarter, but with two minutes to go in the game all the boos will stop with one right play. Maybe the Tebows will find that play, maybe come February they will have an opportunity to challenge the champs, but it's only preseason so I think I am kind of still hoping for another Giants championship.

Production (part 1): Rat

The little man had rat like qualities. He was small in a vulnerable way that suggested he might be able to run forever. He scrunched his nose when thinking and could not help but picture him in the sewer sniffing out food.

I am big, bigger than the V.A. wants me to be, bigger than the U.S. Government wants me to. I feel strong and capable and can run mile after mile, or could have before a bout of tendonitis and this fucking blister. I look at this little person I wonder what it would be like to be so slight and run in the morning. I watch little people running. Their legs effortlessly gliding along the ground, bounding into the air with each step makes me so jealous.

When I run it is akin to attempting to punch holes through the earth. Each Tendon shattering step, mile after mile, leaving a trail of destruction behind me. As I see the little people glide through their runs. I imagine the image I leave emblazoned on their brains.

A hulking figure fighting gravity and losing.

I ran in Rome one time. I wore a beat up pair of Chuck’s. I ran down Via Varese and my footsteps echoed off the surrounding buildings, Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Just before I quit of embarrassment I fell behind two old people. They stopped their leisurely stroll and pressed themselves up against the buildings to our left staring at me as if the allies were advancing yet again into Roma. I felt bad for the fear in their eyes. I wouldn’t have run them down. But then again the sidewalks were narrow and the streets were filled with suicidal scooter owners. Maybe it would have come down to me of them.

The blister was only a blister for a short time. I popped it and as an Afghani Vet told me, “remove the skin and keep it dry,” I did and life started to suck immediately. The thing is like a sloping valley of discomfort. Starting near my middle toe it slopes down to the ball of my foot into a deep rivet of pain. I think I rubbed the bottom of my foot to the muscle.

My wife looked at. She almost threw up but still managed to laugh and say, “no it didn’t.”

The little rat like man spits out in instructions that I am meant to remember. The copier works this way.

File the paper work this way. When something needs to go to set, do it this way.

When I don’t tell you to do something don’t bother me.

I am bored. I can’t stop yawning. Tears are leaking from my eyes. I follow pretending the fire in my foot at each step is a sacrifice for getting a credit on an indy film with super hero actors and a Saturday night live performer. He stops his prattle as if editing a line just written into a computer. Looks at me a second and I am sure he is about to insult me.

But he doesn’t and the duldrum of the rest of my 11 hour and forty-five minute day continues.

Telephone Game

Lesson number one of working on a movie set.

This lesson happens even before the first day of work.

Maybe it’s an obvious one. Maybe in the world of professionality this is a common courtesy.

So its starts: me knowing at some point I will be getting my time to show up for my 12 hour shift at the production office.

I waited all day for my call time.

I refreshed my email every three minutes.

I debate whether I am missing something. Was I supposed to call? Was I not doing something that would facilitate me not losing this job? This job that could allow me to meet more people in the industry. Get Vetted. Get work that potentially doesn’t make me want to rip my heart out and flush it.

Lots of expectations.

Maybe I should call.

What would happen then. A rethinking of the decision to hire me in the first place?

What would it take?

By three I decided to call. I had received a few calls on my phone.

First call the person answering sounded like my valley girl. She said something it came out fast and unintelligible.

The Second was for the V.A.

The Third was him.

“Movietitleredacted this is Josh.”

I almost don’t remember I am not allowed to be called Josh and have to refer to myself as Joshua.

“Hey josh, this is Josh…ua just wondering if I…” He cuts me off.

“I will be emailing you later tonight when I learn the times.” He says with as much dick in his voice as one can have and still be able to talk.

The phone clicks.

I look at the screen to my Iphone and think I hate this little fucker.

Missing Machine

I am a cog without a machine. I don't know where I belong or what task I am to help perform. I know I am a hard worker. It comes from six summers of football. It comes from three years of Army service. It comes from going coast to coast in a country so large that the entire world could live here and own an acre of land each.

I have met people who work harder. I have met people more lost. I have met people so stable they never have to worry about anything upsetting their world.

“I want to build something,” I tell my wife. “I want to see nothing and create something from it.”

I am starting to love the blank page again. The blinking cursor and the endless possibilities. I am realizing that I have always loved the blank page. Given or found I will put marks on it. I will doodle something. I will mark on it and create.

But as a part of a machine I am misplaced.

Another metaphor is; I am a sack. A bag. A tool used to hold things. Over the years, in me has been placed shit. I have been emptied and reused 85 times. Never satisfied, but forever stained with the material filling or that has filled me.

I have read that middle school is when a student will need to begin to use the study skills they gained throughout elementary school. That middle school is preparation for high school and high school preparation for college.

My cog didn't fit in the machine of the American education system either. I rebelled against math teachers. Rebelled against the static learning. I hated not being able to create.

“This is what is and nothing you can say or do will change that,” this bored me.

Grammar bored me to the point I never even spelled the word correctly until my Junior year in college.

Grammer.

It made more sense. I didn't care.

I care now, which saddens me.

My tool was reading. I read and read and read. I wrote well because I knew what sounded good. I never learned to wright by learning where things go. Commas are a pause in thought or point of emphasis to me. Periods are the end. What more was needed. I still don't feel comfortable diagramming a sentence. But a teacher came to me in highschool and said I needed to be in AP english.

She gave me a choice.

Yes, or no.

I said no.

My buddies weren't in AP English. The guys I played ball with lifted weights with wrestled with they fucked around in regular english while I read. Distracting from me. I could turn a blank page into a page filled with beautiful words or connected lines and no one would ever notice with them sitting next to me.

In retrospect what was in AP English was Alison Lastnameredacted. She scared me. Too pretty, the epitome! I walked away from her once afraid my mouth would fill with nothing and that nothing would insult her perfect brain and she would know I couldn't Solve for X.

The cross country team was in AP English. I said hi to a cross country team member once by giving her a friendly push. She flew across the room. When she recovered she yelled at me. I was embarrassed. I never talked to another member of her team again even to congratulate them on the three state championships they earned for the 4a conference.

I worked with a guy in eighth grade in an art class. My cog and his cog connected. I artistically directed us on a piece of plywood that had been stepped on by many sneakers. I saw colors and swirls and I wanted to fill it up.

We worked hard together.

He asked, “what?” and I told him.

At the end of the art period we were proud and would hide our piece in the corner of the room always excited to return to it.

One day we walked into class and it had been destroyed.

“Oh" the teacher said "I did not know you guys wanted to keep working on it by yourselves.” A group of girls saw patches of pink. ignoring the sneaker treads. I don't know who they were. I pictured the pretty ones. The Ap crowd. I never wanted to be a part of them, they had made what we created into a nothing. They had ruined our masterpiece. Taken our vision and destroyed it.

In another class my partner tried to hit one of them with a paper clip slung across the room with a rubber band.

He hit the wrong person and got expelled.

My cog collected dust almost never as part of a machine.

It worked alone.

It formed clay into figures and shapes in High school.

It ruined white canvas with splashes of color.

It covered blank paper with poems to my girl friend or stories of protagonists forever traveling, or pictures of heros and swords and dragons.

In the Army my cog earned bruises scratches broken bones and learned to fear and hate leadership. To love diversity. To see the world, bliss, exploration, the goal.

Between college and the Army I learned the hard way some mistakes are forever, and others lead to vistas so beautiful they whisper and that others go away and never come back.

In college I used my cog and discovered theatre was difficult in making the machine work without egos getting bruised or bored. I also discovered the blinking cursor and that it could help me develop whole worlds.

After college that same blinking cursor has done nothing but add to my job count. Resumes and interviews so perfect, attitude so dominate, so strong willed, a hate for direction and prodding and manipulation, loss after loss learned and relearned.

I realize my cog is under used.

I realize I need to discover its machine.

It may have been left out of some watch, unneeded when that machine was repaired, or its creator not needing it for time to tick by.

Sometimes spare parts can be used to create something else. Sometimes they collect dust in jars screwed to the underside of a shelf. What's my future?

I will let you know some tomorrow from now.

Roma from the R

The R pulled into Union.

I followed a tall woman dressed in black onto the car. I stood at the front and scanned the passengers.

To my left, two empty seats and a woman on whose head a colorful scarf sat. It had many shades but seemed red as a whole. She didn’t seem that old. She didn’t seem abnormal, but I didn’t look that long.

At first she wasn’t the one that interested me anyway.

I was curious about the tall woman dressed in black. She had found a spot right in front of the train door. As the train moved through the tunnel she constantly adjusted her dress. Never moving it in any direction just seeming to pull and settle the fabric against her skin as if she would rather be naked.

She wore sandals scuffed and old and showed slanting wear on the heels. She had long skinny feet blistered and dry. She never looked anywhere but at herself in the doors window. Pulling and pushing at her clothes.

I knew she would be getting off the train at Atlantic. Somehow knew she was short for this train and Manhattan would not be where her day was heading. I wanted to know why Atlantic. Why the concern. I pictured adultery, misguided sexual adventure, an answered craigslist ad, prostitution, or maybe she just wanted to go to Target.

The train stopped and as I thought she would the tall woman in black got off. I took one of the seats next to the woman in the scarf. The one against the wall giving us the middle seat as a buffer certain no one would sit next to her or me.

As I sat down I got a better look at her face. In her nose, that hooked over her upper lip, was a gold ring. Her eyes were black and weepy. Weepy in a way that didn’t suggest tears. Weepy like thick. Weepy like something medically was needed to be done. Under that red looking scarf, puffed black hair, immediately reminding me of dolls hair. Dolls hair cut by the hateful actions of an older sister to her younger sibling’s property.

At first I thought she might be going to the airport. She had two bags that together looked to weigh the same as she. They were checkered, tiny white, blue and grey boxes covered them. They were made of a nylon material like a tarp.

My leg brushed one and she moved it away from me. Like my skin had contaminated it. I didn’t take it personally. The bag had felt lighter then it looked.

I ignored her. Like everyone in New York ignores each other, by paying peripheral attention to the ones that make us nervous.

I did so. I could feel her presence. I could sense she didn’t Like me sitting here. Me here, invaded her space.

As if planned she started twitching just as the train reached the Whitehall stop.

By Cortlandt she began to moan and call out.

I have heard tongues spoke before. At a church in Clarksville Tennessee off Fort Campbell. I was with my buddy Bonebrake. I liked going to church with him. It wasn’t for the God. It was more for the experience. Having a buddy, doing something, going somewhere. I’d get drunk with the bench dwellers outside the barracks for the same reason.

I don’t know if she is speaking in tongues or even having a religious experience on the uptown bound R train.

I am now afraid to look at her.

I wonder how bad it would be if I did get her attention.

At city hall she started twitching, Moaning, and speaking again in nonsensical sentences.

A thought hit me that maybe this was the way she kept people away from her stuff. Or maybe I, now sitting only one seat away from her, was driving her into this frenzy.

There was a Grey Hound bus deep in the remote woods of Canada. A man was eaten by his seat mate. Chopped into little pieces with a hunting knife and snacked on while the rest of the bus’ passengers watched from outside.

I didn’t think that was going to happen here at the cusp of Canal Street. But I imagined her arm jutting out suddenly armed with a large hunting knife.

I would catch it, I thought, catch her wrist in my hand and bend it back making her drop the blade. She would be harmless then. My strong grip and the torque of joints that don’t bend that way keeping her motionless.

I wondered if I would really be able to stop it if it came to it. Or would I just simply look down and see the blade imbedded deep within my chest. A growing red flower spreading. A sense of suffocating. Dark edges gripping the corners of my eyes. Before nothing.

I saw it both ways. And preferred to ninja my way through the situation if it happened.

Prince came. And she yelled at a man standing to close to her. It wasn’t a yell filled with a language people speak but sounds glued together in a structure much like a sentence.

The man shoved deeper into the train and I realized I was able to meet the eyes of the people sitting in the three seats across from me.

They pitied me.

Two Latin woman and a skinny old Asian man. It was more the older Latin woman whose face I saw pity in. The other two pretended to ignore me when they saw I saw they were looking at me like I pretended to ignore them even after the eye contact. That was the difference, the woman next to me wasn’t ignoring anyone. She engaged with everyone. She was a social butterfly interacting with everyone that came near her.

I could not picture this woman with doll hair and two gigantic bags having a real home to call her own. The thought struck me as I wondered if the Asian man was Japanese or Japanese American. Where did she come from? Where did she go? Does she live permanently on the NYC subway system? Bathing in the time square restroom. Switching trains occasional for a change of scenery?

I was not being assaulted by a smell. Or a sense of dirty skin, or the nausea of disease.

At W8 the another thought assaulted me, this was her home and she was welcoming us all in her own special little way.

By 14th street she was calm head on her chest breathing softly and I got off the train.

Blisterfuge

I walked home from the V.A. yesterday.

Call it a challenge, call it conservation, call it me saving the planet single handedly, or maybe call it subterfuge.

Honestly I am calling it ignorance.

I have access to multiple device that will connect me to a GPS system, which would have told me that from the corner of 23rd st and 1st AVE to home is 6.5miles.

The good news is that I made it back to The Slope under Air Assault pace 1 hour and thirty four minutes.

The bad news is that now I have a huge blister on my left foot, Right in the middle. The blister is not the point really of this story only a flavoring. A touch of saffron and Maybe a pinch of fresh ginger… together.

A subtle reminder, I am constantly at odds with myself.

Here is what is the drive here (and I only ask that the blister be remembered for later. The night before, late like 1am, I hit the Internet and sent my resume and a nicely plagiarized cover letter to fifty or so Production Assistant listings on Craig’s list.

I said:

Dear production,

I am sending you my resume to be considered for your open film crew position. I believe I can be an asset to the production. I pride myself on working well within a team and communicating well with diverse groups. As you can see from my resume I prize the written word and have been trained in theatre production, but am limited in film experience and would like to change this. I also welcome the opportunity to broaden my experience with film production in anyway possible. I have limited work both in film and television. With (Redacted film company here) I assisted in post production duties and was a production assistant on the (Redacted TV show here) managing audience participation. I welcome the chance to provide you with additional information to supplement what appears on my enclosed resume. Thank you!

Ok I did not necessarily steal the words used in the letter. I did though seek inspiration from the internet.

Sometimes A recipe is needed to begin dinner right?

I got two responses the next day.

The first was an e-mail which gave me a link to a You Tube video.

It asked:

Please go to www.redeactedwebsite.com & view parts of our show from Season 1. Please let us know in what way you envision contributing to the enhancements planned for Season 2. *What did you think about the film work & editing from Season 1? How much do you believe we should have paid for Season 1's work on a show by show basis? Also, if you have not - please give us an idea of your pricing & please let us know an approximate turnaround time from filming to finished product (editing) for our half hour show. Regards!

What the fuck do I know. And God what a great idea to get views up for a stupid YouTube video.

Promise a job in film and everyone and their freaking mother will take a look at it.

So I bit. I sunk my teeth into this bait and responded to each question asked:

1)What did you think about the film work & editing from Season 1? I initially wrote: it fucking sucked and hated wasting the three seconds I spent watching it.

But the wife made me delete it.

So I tried again and wrote:

I watched a bit from the link provided and thought the editing was choppy, jarring, perhaps, maybe good for a music video, I wasn't in to watching much, it did not capture my attention, nor did I want to follow the action further. I did like the yellow tie though someone on the production has great taste. The dude acting was kinda able also. Did you guys have a script? Cinematography looked oldish, def non digital, (I could feel the look I was getting from my wife at this point so I finished with), which is not bad all on its own, I guess.

2) How much do you believe we should have paid for Season 1's work on a show by show basis? My production experience is very limited, but have always fantasied about the pirate style where the cost is so nominal, I would gather you managed this here, congrats.

3) Also, if you have not - please give us an idea of your pricing $0.00! I want to work for the experience, maybe on the backend a fee could be arranged.

4) please let us know an approximate turnaround time from filming to finished product (editing) for our half hour show. I would think you could film a half hour program with lots of preproduction (Writing, scouting, rehearsing) in a week. Preproduction on the other hand is your time sink but doesn't cost anything really. Plan well in advance of actually shooting and editing would be a breeze.

It all made sense to me.

I got no response from them.

It is no wonder why, not because of my honesty actually either, because while working on this e-mail, which I never sent, I was applying for another job and plugged in another cover letter and attached a bunch of documents and accidentally sent it to them with none of the above answered questions included.

But whatever, respect to whoever came up with the idea for the YouTube hits.

My second response from my late night cover letter and resume bombing run was more promising.

I got a call, like a real call, my Doctor Who ring tone starts, was like whoa, i spent a $1.29 on that hadnt actually heard it used for realz yet.

The call was for a real movie being filmed in Manhattan starring real actors I have actually enjoyed seeing on screen, or DVD or TV.

I thought I was having a stroke or had had a stroke and for the rest of my life I would be living in a fantasy world in which I would get everything I always wanted.

The guy said his name.

I forgot it immediately.

He said the name of the movie.

I repeated it in a mocking tone.

He said he needed someone to come on the production ready to work. To work hard. To work fast. And to be ready for anything.

I said, “You found him."

He asked if I would be interested in coming in for an interview.

I said, “Yes,” willing to leave right then.

Thankfully he quickly added, “How about tomorrow at 2.”

“Sounds good,” but thought fuck yeah!

I quickly wrote down the address as he gave it to me on a piece of paper.

I grabbed anything white and started to jot down information. Usually I when I do this type of note taking the paper used is gone forever, never to be seen again.

For the next 12 hours for some reason I thought the interview was in the AM after 9 sometime. I am good this way.

I am good at messing the little stuff up, ok actually I’m really good at messing the big stuff up also.

I found the paper somehow ended up on top of my laptop. I can’t take credit. I remember putting it in the kitchen near the sink. My sabotage is usual complete and utter. This small scrap was meant to get soaked with dish water and be unreadable.

Thankful I married the woman I married.

Then I went to the V.A. and came home at Air Assault pace 12 miles in 3 hours and suffered that wonderful blister on my left foot.

Pungy sticks and landmines have nothing on me.

I arrived in the Village on time.

I limped into the right building.

I limped onto the elevator.

I limped up to the receptionist who looked at me as if she was wondering how trash from the street could have blown itself up 7 floors to stand in front of her desk. She asked, “Yes?” and sneered the I’m pretty and you can go fuck yourself smile. I thought fuck ya some good old fashion C.S. and said, “I have an interview for a production assistant position.”

“With who?” Her voice dug into me it was shrill and self-important and I hated her guts to the point of wondering if my hate could give her cancer.

I smiled and looked down at her desk and watched my finger draw an imaginary line, “I don’t know.”

I thought, fuck, now im fucked, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I looked around the office, and wondered if the person I would be interviewing with could heard this interaction.

The office was huge and open and non-bustling and had red brick walls. Glass topped cubicles.

No one even seemed to care I was standing at this desk.

The desk had a bowl of candy on it.

My breath tasted like smoke.

I felt like I had already lost.

“Which production?” she said and the edge was gone but a mocking was there to replace it.

I told her, but I aint going to tell you.

She said, “Have a seat.” And I swear if she could have she would have added bitch.

I sat and listened and played with my phone.

I heard things like.

Josh and sign off, and start, and need, and work.

Then a Chinese man walked in with a big bag of food and I was reminded I was hungry. Two women walked over to collect the food. They offered candy to the deliver guy who turned it down. They stood there for a few minutes. I watched them not watch me. I watched their eyes not even drift in my direction. As if everyday someone wearing a blue collared polo shirt with brown slightly graying hair, goatee and glasses sat in this very seat.

They thanked the delivery guy.

He left.

I kept watching.

A sandy blonde man walked toward me.

He smiled.

I stood.

He extended his hand, “Josh,” I took it and looked him in the eyes. Or at least think I did. I wanted to. It would have been nice if I had. Lets assume this happened.

I said yes as if he had asked.

I forgot every freaking parent that gave birth to a child in the seventies has named their baby boys Josh.

“Let’s go in here. “

I followed without argument but wondered if it would have deemed funny if I had.

I followed trying not to limp, but limped anyway.

Two hours later I got a call.

“Hey Friday we are putting you on the call sheet you are going to be our everyday guy. We will send it to you tomorrow.”

Limp and all.

Guess I will need to figure out another way to self sabotage.

Production Assistant 101

The day is humid. I wear old jeans that felt tight around my waist, but within five minutes of walking start to droop. I have a t-shirt on, one of the t-shirts I have been buying to seem cool, with a symbol or wording or a logo that didn’t need to be there, but I like it for the camouflage it provides, look at my chest not at my face. On the streets of Brooklyn in park slope I am a speck among specks and I like that.

I like being invisible.

Three blocks down 4th Avenue I make a left on Degraw and see the address 621.

I am not excited. I think I know what to expect. I am poor. I have made mistakes. I will be surrounded by others of my ilk. We are all trying to scramble up from the abyss.

I enter the building recently renovated. The air conditioner groans and there is a funky smell. Like cat pee. Or old person. Or maybe it’s the physical embodiment of disappointment and regret , low expectations.

The first woman I see ignores me as I walk up to the counter. Another woman with pretty, moist, big brown eyes walks out of an office and smiles in a small way to suggest she may remember me.

I was here before I said the same thing.

I say this time, “I am here for the production assistant orientation.”

This time She says, “Have a seat.”

There are two choices. One against the window. Between a man with wooly salt and pepper hair, I don’t see his eyes. His face looks resigned. On the other side of the seat is a woman wearing tight bright spandex talking on her cell phone. I wonder if I’d agree with her loud opinion of, “fuck that bitch she aint right.”

The second seat is under the counter. Not directly, but near enough. I sit in this far awayseat secluded and plug in my ear buds to drown out a bit of the noise of talking and laughing and being human. I don’t listen to anything through them. I just leave them in my ears.

I pull my book out. Open it to my dog eared mark. I flip a page. I don’t remember any of the words I just read so I flip back and find myself turning it yet again having done no reading.

Marking my place I set the book on my lap.

I can’t help anticipate the resolution to my actions today.

My wife would not be happy if she knew.

She wouldn’t be happy if I sent her a text explaining , “this is a complete waste of time.” I do it anyway.

I am good at complaining and moaning and assuming.

She responds, and I see her sweet eyes roll through the words displayed on the screen to my phone, “then come home.”

She knows I wont.

The meeting is at one.

My phone says thats forty five minutes away.

Twenty minutes later the woman who ignored me calls,” those who are here for the production assistant orientation, please sign in.”

I jump up.

The dark eyed one says, “See.” And I wonder if she is talking about me.

I sign my name and sit back down.

Ten minutes later a different woman with a purple dress hugging rolls of fat directs us to a conference room, “Production people come sit in the conference room.”

I assume the conference room will be an obvious location.

It is.

I look at the ‘U’ shaped table and debate which would be the best seat. In college I would sit in the back corner desk farthest from the door.

I read later that’s the seat trouble makers take in a class setting. I choose the second seat from the front nearest the outside wall.

The guy next to me is fat and I wonder if I look like him. He doesn’t look comfortable. He pulls at his shirt. His pants are huge and baggy but somehow still cut into his waist . He glances at me and I can’t tell if its hate or fear I see briefly on his face.

On the other side of me a person sits whom I think is a woman dressed like a man. I can’t be sure.

I feel confused.

I don’t say anything to either of them.

The room fills up. I start texting my wife the results.

1 of this person , 2 of that, 4 of them and 18 of the other.

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

She responds “shut up” and I know she is getting angry.

I feel alone.

I look at the guy with the red hair and wonder if he always feels alone.

Ginger guys.

Unfortunate.

Scruffy.

Gangly.

My wife says they get laid a lot. I wonder if this guy does. I wonder if it’s just the red hair. Like it attracts women like a red cape attracts a bull.

Toro! I am a bit jealous at this thought.

The room fills up.

The proctor walks in, “good morning.” She lays down a box filled with paper.

I tried to print a collection of stories once that was 200 pages and the cost would have been too much for me to afford. I wonder how much that box cost.

How many reams.

How much ink.

Was it professionally done.

If it is her words on that paper is she proud to be able to hand them out.

The room really fills up now. The outside and the inside of the table have no empty seats, then 26, 27, 28 walk in together.

“No more chairs in here you guys want to grab some chairs from outside.” The Pretty proctor smiles. I like her smile. She seems smart.

Educated.

Capable.

If I ran a nonprofit employment agency I would want her to be the face my clients see.

Me and the fat man aren’t sitting very close together so I move my chair closer to him.

He moves his farther away.

I scoot a bit closer and he moves to the edge half on the table half off.

I feel bad so I move back away from him and I hear, “Ouch.”

I am certain it is a woman now behind me, but for some reason I say, “Sorry man.” Knowing I just caught her arm between our chairs.

I can’t tell if she feels hurt or proud. Weird that I would not be able to tell the difference.

Pretty closes the door and begins to walk back to the front of the conference room and says, “Ok lets get started, my name is..”

She is interrupted by someone trying to get through the door.

“Is it locked?” She asks the room.

Someone answers, “no.” without checking.

Pretty walks back over and opens the door. She pulls hard on one handle and both doors open.

3 walks in. He has a hairlip, cleft palate, that thing that is obvious to everyone but no one is allowed to mention.

He says, “ sorry,” in a lisp that has to make phone work impossible.

Three people work on reclosing the door.

“No flip that there.”

“Gotta turn that”

“Look just push it hard like this”

Each attempt lead to the door slowly ebbing open.

“It’s Okay guys have a seat,” pretty says jumping into her presentation with giving her name.

And I zone out.

3 hours later on the paper in front of me are three sentences, or fragments, or thoughts.

Feast or famine.

Go to Craigslist.

Gotta network.

After filling out the application with every truth I could summon I leave feeling dejected and buy a pack of cigarettes hoping my wife will control their distribution.

Touchdown confirmed

The word from NASA at 22:32 “Touchdown confirmed! We are safe on Mars.”

This landing, the whatever number that have occurred before it, knowing that someone knows what moondust feels like, knows what the vacuum of space smells like, knowing at some point in my genetic past life or death was one failed hunt away. With all this and what comes in between, the human spirit is on my mind.

I am thinking of success versus failure. I am thinking when at the end of the day do you go home with head hung low and when should you marvel at getting in line for the roller coaster in the first place.

The olympics being the only thing I have watched over the last week adds to this.

The Bulgarian's father screams, “ Look! Look at that beautiful boy, my son, my beautiful boy,” and I fight tears.

I don’t know what the Bulgarians man's son was doing or did or was going to do. I was drawn only by the sound of that man’s voice. The voice of love and pride. I don't even know what either of them look like. I fought the tears. I should have let them fall.

Later that day NBC settles its cameras on a close up of one of the female gymnast feet covered in healing blisters and with a quick glimpse of the taped up big toe, broke, supposedly needing to be iced just to put weight on it and then that foot propels this athlete towards a vault that will take her dozens of feet into the air to land with the force of her body weight and gravity on those very feet that made me cringe moments before.

The article in the Huffington post starts out “Oscar Pistorius fails...” to qualify. He did come in last in his heat.

I watched this heat. He ran faster then I have ever run in my life.

I watched this man wearing prosthetic devices for legs run his heart out that day he advanced to this round.

In this round he finished last.

I never once saw failure.

I saw the heat’s winner come to him at the end of the race. That “Winner” asked that “loser” if he could wear his name when he raced again. Oscar took his name off and exchanged it with that other olympian and fought tears.

I did not fight tears.

And Oscar didn't fail! That headline did. The wonderful professional opinionated author of that piece, who also probably could never run as fast as Oscar did, probably could have picked a better verb when he chose “failed.”

At some point in his life Oscar said, “Just because you have a disability doesn't mean you have a disadvantage.” He asked for no favors, only a chance to grab what he could from the apple tree of life before it was too late.

NASA shot a 3 ton bullet 33 million miles and hit a seven foot bulls eye.

Yay us humans!

That was one hell of a spear throw.

Mars rover landing

Today something amazing is going to happen... for the sixth time a probe will land on the surface of Mars.

Yay!

As amazing as that is, to send a hunk of metal, the size of a Honda, millions of miles into space (33 to be kind of exact) and hit something half the size of Earth, I mean fuck here, why do we care about skeet shooting or archery at the Olympics when this truly is marksmanship.

I can't even throw a sock at a hamper and make it 90% of the time.

Some might say, "But This whole Mars thing been done before 6 times, why should I care."

Parents around the world would answer, "Just because," the interesting part to me is the blackout that occurs when the probe actually gets there.

Percentage wise its not in our favor to be successful. Out of the six attempts to litter the surface of Mars maybe 3 worked out.

They found some of the wreckage of the others through the lenses of telescopes.

So golly gee shit this is amazing.

All sarcasm aside why I write about this event is that for seven minutes these... what? scientists? I guess thats what they are but it seems to diminish it slightly. These arm-chair astronauts, no... thats even worse... cosmic quarterbacks (ding!) fling a 3 ton hunk of metal through a tire with a diameter of 7 miles 33 million miles away and for the last seven minutes have to give up all control.

As that 2.5 billion dollar ball hurtles towards Mars NASA can watch it and make little adjustments five minutes into the future. They cottle it and stroke it and nudge it towards its dusty destination.

Its kind of cheating.

What would Tebow give to be able to adjust his throw mid air, tighten the spiral, adjust the trajectory, speed it up or slow it down, I bet he would give up... never mind I bet that guy would call this cheating, but even if he didn't consider it cheating and had the ability, what if after the ball actually went airborne and he had all this control over its motion to guarantee success, he then had in the last few moments to wait to see what would happen.

Would the receiver even open his arms to catch the ball?

Would the ball bounce off the receivers chest?

Would a defensive player come and snatch it away at the last minute?

Nasa today is going through just this.

After all the control for 7 minutes NASA has only what they put into the effort to achieve this landing.

To bankroll the investment.

They input all the numbers, and now it is up to the machine to do its job on the other side. Either the recycling of many little tiny pieces of metal will need to be accomplished or a new rover will be putting around on the planet mars.

My tiny brain can't even fathom the details.

Fingers crossed!

And maybe in four years Mars rover landing can be team event at the Rio olympics.