How old do I feel tonight? If I ran into Methuselah, the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, of course, I would refer to him as “kid.”  That old. That ancient. That irrelevant.

We just got back from travelling 500 miles in the last day and change, a huge loop that took us from Westminnie and then through a huge circle in the blue ridge mountains of Virginiee and then up near our nation’s capital, and then back home. If you’re keeping score that would be Westminnie to Charlottesville, VA to Hot Springs, VA to Leesburg, VA and then back to Westminnie. And all points in between.   When we got home tonight I plotted out this trip on Googlemaps, a fabulous Internet resource, and the picture the trip drew ended up looking like a duodenum, which, of course, is the first section of the small intestine, as we all know. I don’t think there’s any metaphor here, it just worked out that way. A happy little kismet.

Following the duodenum road back home

So our duodenum trip this weekend was another stage of the Possible Marriage Venue Tour 2012, a great soul-seeking journey to determine the right place for Daughter Shannon and her now fiancée The Duke to tie the ol’ knot in autumn 2013. For anyone who has gotten married in the last several years or maybe anytime ever,  you know that this is no easy task. In fact I might be tempted to say that it is as tricky and thought-provoking and difficult to solve as the riddle of the Sphinx which was the following: “Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it is?” The answer to that (man, of course, resolved eventually by Oedipus) was child’s play compared to this timeless conundrum: “Where the heck should Shannon and Duke get married?” The answer? Um, who knows?

This weekend we started out at a mansion-golf kind of place that was okay except that the ballroom where the wedding would be held was not exactly up to snuff.  After a tour of that place in an electric golf cart we all four –  La Sooze, the mother-of-the-bride (MOB), me, the Father-of-the-Bride (FOB), Shannon, hence known simply as the Bride (B) and Duke, who we will call The Eventual Groom (TEG) piled into our white Accord chariot and drove another hundred or so miles to a gigantic resort hotel deeper in the Virginee mountains than I have ever been. That place was great – Southern charm, plenty of stuff to do, the rooms were terrific (MOB and FOB got a nice suite and a complimentary cheese plate upon arrival) and it even had an indoor pool that was warm enough for me to swim in. Great, right? Book ‘er. Well, not so fast there. The drawback here is that the place is like 4 ½ hours from Westminnie as the duodenum flies and the fear, of course, is that asking people to go that far for a wedding is a bit of a stretch even if the wedding place is cool and relaxing and chuck full of Southern charm. So put that one down as a maybe. On the drive back we also swung by another resort place closer ( a mere hour and a half)  to home which is like a golf and swimming club  and overlooks the Potomac River and it was okay but did not produce any wows or gee whizzes and so it’s on the list but not up there. We need a wow at this point. Anything less is unacceptable.

Of course all these places we are visiting are all about weddings and so we are being treated to ballrooms and restaurants and possible photos opportunities for the B&G and hotel rooms and on and on. We’re also seeing weddings. It was the weekend, of course, and so actual people were actually getting married as we did these various and sundry tours the past two days, so we were not only imagining what some rooms would look like with a 3-tiered cake and drunk Uncle Bob dancing The Dougie  in his best suit, we actually saw Bob and the cake. Yesterday, in fact, we watched a pensive bride and her father, suffering from Male Pattern Baldness, as they waited for the signal from the wedding planner to step through a set of doors and down a long set of steps to stand before friends and family gathered on the lawn outside. It was that moment I think that ultimately made me feel old and extraneous. That and the 500 miles and the getting up early this morning in Hot Springs, VA to go to the Shrine of the Sacred Heart church with MOB La Sooze for a service performed by a legitimate Irish priest complete with a Frank McCourt-like accent.  That’s the tired part, probably, the part that caused me to come home tonight and immediately stretch out on the  Country Squire for an hour. Exhauuusted, at least. The irrelevant part is looking at the bald dad and his young and pretty daughter, and recognizing that my own beautiful daughter and I will soon enough be standing at the top of some stairs waiting to enter the next phase of her life and mine and I will probably be saying something rude and inappropriate, which is what I do, what I have always done, and then she will be gone.  It just made me think of how things move ahead. How big circles ripple into little circles, and those concentric rings are our lives and they move so rapidly inward. Wasn’t it just recently that La Sooze stood at the back of a church holding her own father’s arm before she walked down that aisle? Her dad is gone now, G*d rest his soul. I don’t know what he said to her that day, that moment, but I’m sure she remembers it. I only know my own mother, long disappeared into the ether of permanently broken relationships, said to my  soon-to-be-wife as she approached the altar that day “it’s not too late to change your mind.” In retrospect La Sooze perhaps should have more carefully considered that last-minute advice. Now she is stuck with an irrelevant man, the FB who wanders from ballroom to possible rehearsal dinner location wondering if his hairline is receding and  wondering what he will say on that day in September 2013 when his daughter becomes The Duke’s wife.

Tonight I was listening to some old tunes as I was writing this and I ran across the Cat Steven’s song Father and Son which is a musical conversation between a dad and son where the son is telling his dad he needs to go away to grow and become his own man and the dad is trying to pass along his own experience and tell him to stay and chill. I will not, of course, tell Shannon to stay. She will go, as will the boys someday. This is the way the concentric circles work. But I might steal a line from that song that the father says.  “Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy.” And I am. And tired. Today. I have a year and a half to recover. With hope by then we’ll know where the wedding’s being held.

I just had to tear myself away from the TV because I came home from the gym with a fabulous chicken and steak quesadilla and turned on the tube and there was this show on called “Obese and Expecting.” It is about super fat women who are pregnant. In Hi-Def no less. Couldn’t take my eyes off it. This show was on a network called TLC which stands for The Learning Channel. Not quite sure what it is that I was supposed to be learning. Maybe that some guys just dig fat girls? They make the rockin’ world go around, don’t they? You know I don’t know what’s sadder about these medical-type TV shows, the fact that these people are in the condition they are in, or the fact that they allow television cameras shoot them in the condition they’re in and then show it on national television.  Fat rolls as far as the eye can see. Ew. The show just before Obese and Expecting was called “Half-Ton Mom” and was about a 900 lb. woman who, as you can imagine, couldn’t get out of bed. They had to cut a hole in her house to take her to the hospital. Hint there, btw. When they have to cut a hole in your house to get you out you may want to think about addressing your weight issue.  Just saying.  Anyway, I can’t make too much fun of people who are “morbidly obese” as they called it on the show. I assume this is some kind of sickness or weakness and I totally understand that. I also assume no one would choose to become 900 lbs and have no life beyond watching television and housing anything within reach. I myself have overcome demons and continue to struggle with addictions and weakness. Cigs, for instance, which I positively know I should quit but you have no idea how hard it is. Well maybe you do. Anyway I don’t have to watch this stuff on TV, though, do I?  Probably not.  I have other things to do. Like take a couple of soft chocolate chip cookies to the house, which I just did. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. Maybe they’ll make a show about middle aged white guys struggling with the curse of the Junior Jelly Belly – they can call it: JJB and Me.

So I will cut this short tonight because I have something else on my mind. No, not that, although it always there buried somewhere between the Id and the Super Ego (obscure Freudian reference there – did you see it?).  Specifically now that Number One Son Sean is home I have been once again thinking about music, which I only do on occasion. Back in December when Sean was home for a little Christmas stay he and I worked on a song that I had previously recorded but did not like the result. The song  is my magnum opus. Well, this week’s anyway. It is called My Innocence and I have been obsessed with it for a long time because it’s about wanting to go back and find that place where I grew up, find my lost innocence, if you will.  Who does not want this?  Maybe if I could, which I can’t, I could find out where it all went wrong, or at least experience again for a few minutes a little sheer innocence and purity and approval, at least from the streets and the children there. I was so obsessed with this song that when I was in Miami back in February I kept sitting out on Shannon and Sean’s patio overlooking the water and the lights of the 307 and playing it 10 different ways waiting for something to click. I also sent it to my dear musically-gifted friend Bill like a note begging for someone to save me from my miserable mediocre musical self. Because of all that and with input from Bill and Sean I am finally satisfied that the song is where I wanted it and Sean and I re-recorded it the other day and now I love the music and hate my croaky vocals so we will record it again when we have the time. Meanwhile I have a new obsession, another song I have been fiddle-farting around with for months. I actually write the first line of this song last fall and have been carrying it around with me like a crumpled bank receipt since. None of this matters, of course. I will do nothing with this music except record it and maybe post it here in the nation and maybe send it to some close friends. But the result is not what matters. It is the process that matters. It is the creativity and the thoughts and constantly saying to myself “but what do you mean? What are you trying to say?” that really is what keeps me coming back. Isn’t this a terrific life lesson in 4/4 time?  I mean I cannot tell

The Nation in the basement recording studio last weekend. Good thing there's no sound on this blog. You'd be horrified.

you how many people I work with, especially now, who have probably never before questioned their own clarity –asked themselves what they mean or what they’re trying to say. Not that this makes me special, it does not. I just think it’s good for you, like exercising or eating garlic that makes your breath smell like shit but keeps your heart pumping.   So I will cop n you early tonight because I think I finished the lyrics today to the second song and I have a microphone and an M-box mini digital interface right beside me and GarageBand open on my computer and so I will exercise my creativity again just because I can. I love it, you know. Better than watching medical shows on TV, although writing bad song might be considered an illness, but it sure does makes me feel good.

One of the things I did not mention to you the other day with regard to Mother’s Day was the other present I bought for La Sooze. You know, of course, about the sunglasses. They look terrific btw and coolly hip on the mother of my children. La Sooze wore them last night walking down the street in Downtown B’more. She dominated. But I did not tell you about the other present which was kind of a Mom’s Day no-no but really was a big hit, with me probably as much or more than with La Sooze. The present? A vacuum cleaner. Not anyvacuum cleaner, mind you, but a  Dyson DC 35 Multi-Floor Cordless vacuum. You’re jealous.   I get wood just writing it. Dyson, of course, is the Rolls Royce of the vacuum world. More suction than a high school whore. Thing’ll suck your arm off. The nice thing about this particular model is that it’s cordless, of course, so you don’t have to

This douche does not deserve the Dyson DC 35, not in those pants. But he has one doesn't he? So do I.

schlep with the plugging in or any of that nonsense. Just rip ‘er off the wall charger (which I myself, btw mounted – a carpenter at least) and start whacking at the hard wood floors.   Of course I am hardwired for vacuums anyway since my long-lost mother was like one of those OCD cleaning persons who vacuumed the entire apartment or house or wherever we lived every single day and twice on Sundays without fail. Looved to clean, this woman. In fact the soundtrack to my childhood is the whirr of a Hoover at 7 am on a Saturday. I swear. We had a terrifically clean house but I didn’t get a lot of sleep. And btw I personally could never actually run the vacuum because my mother, Mrs. Clean would not trust a functional illiterate such as me to be able to get the cleaning result she was looking for. So you’d think I would have a vacuum resentment, wouldn’t you? Like I would run from every Hoover and Oreck I saw. Not so. I think I got used to it. And now with the cordless, I get excited when someone drops something on the floor. Kev II was making himself a little something to eat tonight and dropped a single grain of rice to the floor by the stove. I damn near broke an ankle racing for the DC 35. Got  that little long grain. Ahhhh,  happy Mother’s Day to me.

So my beloved New York Rangers are playing again tonight and I am completely distracted. I keep typing a few words and then going into the master’s bedroom and watching a few minutes and then coming back here. Rangers are losing btw. Insert sad face here. I did want to mention that the reason I did not write last night was that La Sooze and I, as I said, were in downtown B’more where we had dinner with some terrific friends – my man CB, my Chicago Brother who shares my birthday and a passion for fairness and honesty, and his terrific wife Beth who is absolutely filled with the joys of life and oozes that enthusiasm from every pore.   More on CB on another day, but I just wanted to let you know that I had a legit excuse for not sitting down and pecking away for myself. I was eating steak with a friend.  Delish too.

So before I go watch the end of the Rangers game I just wanted to mention first of all that I have not gone away from Miserable Maryland all week, and I have no current plans to. Can you stand it?  I can’t. I’m bored already. This weekend, however it is travelling time again – pack the ol’ suitcase. This weekend is actually the continuation of the Great Wedding Venue Search of 2012 where we are travelling around to grand locations trying to determine if these hotels and restaurants meet my stringent standards which consist  of whether or not I can afford the place and what kind of seltzer water they serve. Beyond that I will leave these things up to Daughter Shannon and The Duke and La Sooze and whoever else wants to have a say in planning the wedding of the decade. I’m not sure my opinion will carry much weight in these matters, although I do know hotel rooms. That I could consult on. So this weekend we are actually visiting not one but two venues, both of

I think this is where Daughter Shannon and The Duke are getting married.

which are several  hours away from here and both of which look suspiciously like the Palace of Versailles  in France though both of these palaces are somewhere in Virginia where they certainly talk funny but not as funny as the Frogs. I guess if either of these Versailles-venues make the cut that will mean that Daughter Shannon and The Duke will have a “destination” wedding which means you go somewhere besides Westminnie. Westminnie btw is not exactly a wedding wonderland. I think there’s one place you could hold such an event but it has a gross oversized chandelier and is more suited to a Board of Education meeting or a bar mitzvah. I don’t think that’s the vibe Shannon and The Duke are looking for. What that vibe is I can’t possibly imagine. Obviously it has something to do with French palaces. J’ai envie de chier. That means “I want to shit” in French. I looked it up. If we end up in a Virginia Versailles I will use this phrase a lot. Either that or “avez-vous un aspirateur je peux emprunter?” this mean in English “do you have a vacuum cleaner I can borrow?” Might as well make sure our destination is clean.

I’m wearing out the channel changer tonight. On one channel my beloved Yankees of New York  are playing the Orioles of Baltimore in the rain right here in Miserable Maryland. On another channel my equally beloved Rangers are playing the New Jersey D*vils in the Eastern Conference finals for Lord Stanley’s Cup in the hockey. Btw I cannot spell out their team name because who in their right mind names a team the D*vils? Terrible name. How about the New Jersey Swamps? The Jersey Turnpikes? Even the Jersey Springsteens would work. Anything but that. It is not a name to trifle with.  In future refernces we will simply refer to them as New Jersey – agreed? Anyway, I keep switching back and forth and back and forth here like a man with a dual personality. Dr. Baseball and Mr. Hockey. Both games are, at this precise moment tied, btw. It happens to be in between periods of the hockey game right now which is the only reason I am typing and doing it very quickly, I might add. Otherwise I would be pacing a little line in front of the Country Squire in my master of bedrooms.

This is why I love sports, of course – because it is a huge and terrific and occasional distraction. In the space of a lifetime sports means precisely nothing. Not if you’re just watching it. Maybe if you’re playing you could earn money or get some muskels from it. For people like me it is just a diversion, something to pour my heart into between the monotonous moments that mostly make-up life.

Well, not everything is mundane. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. Moving. Not mundane at all. I mean literally clearing out of the ol’ God View . Can you stand it? I have not mentioned this, not here in the Nation anyway, but La Sooze and I and the Fab Five in general and Jeter the bloated beagle, may have to pack it up and relocate.  Not that we want to. We don’t. We may have to. This, of course, has everything to do with  the Big Fish company eating the Little Fish company I work for. Now I am a part of the Big Fish’s aquarium which happens to be

God View - the Nation's capital

located in another place, about 100 miles north of here in Pennsylvania in a place with a Super Wal-Mart and lots of McMansions with big yards. Oh boy. Not that Westminnie is such a prize. In the few years that the Fab Five has been here this place has changed, and not for the better. There is a Jiffy Mart up the street where I feel like I need pepper spray just to go in and buy a pack of cigs. This is not your grandfather’s Westminnie anymore.  But truth be told I’ve kind of gotten used to it here. I love God View, of course, but who wouldn’t? It has some great open space but then when I need a place to hide I can come here into The Office where the guitars and my gigantic iMac are or go down in the basement where the recording equipment is or of course escape to the confines of the Country Squire and close the shutters. Doesn’t matter what’s outside. It’s nice in here.

You know growing up I moved a bunch of times. Connect the dots from the Bronx to Coventry, Rhode Island to Danbury, Connecticut to Dayton Ohio. None of these moves were welcomed or good or easy. I felt like a piece of furniture. You plop me in a new room in a new town and I sat there and behaved the way I was built – dysfunctional and lost.  This is one of the reasons I do not want to leave God View behind. I have moved enough. Yes, I know that home is where the heart is and wherever the Fab Five is I will be content and useful. I also need the work and will go wherever they are paying me to go. But can’t it just be here? Please? I’ll move later, I swear, when it’s time to go into the home. Actually it will be a good long while before we have to start wrapping dishes and packing boxes. Probably at least Fall and maybe longer.  But as Billy Joel said the day will come when the fun falls through and the rent comes due. Somewhere along the line. I just hope that line doesn’t come for quite awhile. Not, at least, until the Rangers series with New Jersey is done. Otherwise I’ll be listening to the game in the back of  moving van. I need the distraction. He shoots, he scoooooores!

We must, of course, discuss Mother’s Day today. There is no other topic. Mom’s Day is easy to dismiss if you want to, as a Hallmark holiday, just something retailers made-up to wrestle additional money from your pocket, which is essentially the American definition of success – how much money can you get other people to give you? Some of these made-up holidays are senseless or annoying, of course – Boss’s Day (Oct. 16), the ever-popular Valentine’s Day (really?), and how about Grandparents Day (the first Sunday after Labor Day, btw, don’t you forget it or Mam Mam will kick your ass). All this said, even though it is a made-up holiday that was created by a woman named Anna Jarvis from West Virginia of all places, I find it to be a useful holiday that seriously causes you to stop and reflect on important matters whether you want to or not. Not things like hearts and flowers, but things like mothers. Muy importante.

As a father I think I know now the importance of mothers in a much deeper way than I ever did as a child when the word “mother” actually meant something.  Mother’s ruled then. Mothers rule now.  I mean think about it, you actually came from your mother, you’re a piece of her, like Adam’s rib.  You are borne of her and so you are her, for better or worse. As a child I remember mainly people’s mothers. Their dads were always on the periphery, coming home at night looking bushed and sweaty and then disappearing into their apartments.  I still see Diane Cuminale’s quiet and kind mom answering the door of their apartment and inviting me in, Angie Corio with her great bouffant and black dress looking down from the fourth floor apartment window checking on us kids,  Karen Leonardi’s mom calling out the kitchen window for her to come in for supper, Roy Dina’s mom, also Angie, coming out on the street one day to slap Roy and grab him by the ear in front of everyone because he’d done something she deemed wrong. You didn’t mess with mothers then, they loved but they drew a straight line and ruled with an iron fist. They taught you things no one else could or would.

I know from my experience that my own children are clear products of their mother. La Sooze mainly raised them and instilled in them the values and rights and wrongs that I never could. That is too hard a job. Dads get off easy really. I was not there all the time and even when I was I was not the go-to person in the family; mom always was. Who cooks the meals? Who picks out the outfits and says the prayers at night and reads the books and kisses the knees and show you how to use a razor on your legs and holds you when the first love has broken your heart? Mom, for sure. I appreciate this. I appreciate that my children would never be the amazing adults they are becoming had it not been for the love and care and patience and concern and utter connection of their mom. I love La Sooze for this.  So do the children.

I, of course, have a mother too, as far as I know. I have not seen nor spoken with her in a number of years so I did not call her on the phone today or send her cards or flowers. I am sure she wasn’t waiting. In fact if I had she would have thrown them away. Such are the twists and turns that lives sometimes take. I always wanted one of those wise and loving and fun mothers who would be my mentor and friend and cover me in unconditional love and tell me how proud she was of me.  I’m not sure I’m alone in that. Doesn’t everyone want that approval, that feeling of home that only a mother carries with her in her perfume and the way she walks and the way cuts a sandwich? I do not hate my mother. I guess I “honor” her and my father both, as the Bible tells me to, though I’ve never been quite clear what “honor” means in this case. I leave them to live their lives and do not think often of them. There is no reason to. Today I did, though. Regardless of how things turned out, she is still out there somewhere, my mother, and she still pours Coke into glasses like she did when I was a child.  I remember it. That will have to be enough.

So two things. I wanted to let you know that in our ever-present love for La Sooze the mother of my children, we bought her terrific Mother’s day presents today.  The biggie was a pair of very cool sunglasses. I had bought these same glasses for myself a few months ago and La Sooze admired them and tried them on one day and she looked terrific as she looks terrific in everything. She would look good in rags as my beloved mother-like Cali aunt AK would say.  So I took a pair of her glasses into the store and had a prescription pair made for her as well. Ray Bans. Coolest mom in the ‘hood.  The beautiful mom is pictured here in her coolest of shades.  Beautiful lady.  I also wanted to pass along the following poem. It is from the poet Nikki Giovanni and is one of my all-time faves because it recognizes mothers for their great love and souls as well as for their frailties. Sometime I wish I had Nikki Giovanni’s mother. But I have other mothers, and I have La Sooze.  What more would I need?

So happy Mother’s Day to all you moms. I appreciate where you’ve been, what you’ve given of yourself to continue this life of ours. Today, maybe everyday, you deserve specials.

Mothers

~ Nikki Giovanni

So I’m back  again from Boston which is meaningless information to you since you did not even know that I was in Boston did you?  Last night I was sitting in some yuppie-ass restaurant  called Sam’s at Louis which overlooks the Bahston Harbor and I was eating pan seared scallops with sugar snap peas. Of course I was. Deish, btw.  This was a work thing and I was sitting at a table with five other people, none of whom I particularly care for, and four of the five kept swapping work stories like pulling their dicks out to be admired “you know one time I….” I, I, I, of course. Someone told me once never to start a poem with the word “I” because no one cares that much about you. I would apply that to stories told at a table with strangers. This was like a competitive storytelling hour too – one guy would tell a big schlong story and then another guy would tell one showing how big his dog was and then on and on. I did not participate. Moments like those make me feel like a child. Why is this? I was as old or maybe even older than most of the people at the table and yet I felt as if I should ask for a kiddie menu and crayons and I should order mac and cheese and some chicken nuggets. I think it has something to do with my perception and my past. I’m embarrassed by queer stuff, uncomfortable when people are doing or saying things that proves without a doubt that they are shallow. I don’t know how to handle it, what to say. What do you say when people are talking about nothing but themselves and you are hunched over a plate of scallops? I said nothing and hoped my silence did not create the din of judgment.   I wasn’t judging, per se. I wasn’t thinking “G*d you’re assholes.” It’s more that it made me feel awkward and alone and all I wanted to do was go somewhere alone and eat a hamburger by myself where no one was talking to me. This is all a part of my gift/curse, the poet in me, I guess.  Sometimes transparency is, transparent to me. These guys I could see straight through. There was nothing there. Their weenies were actually small. I saw it like an x-ray machine at the airport. Please remove everything from your pockets – the Nation is watching. It is all about work, this is what defines them. All that defines them. At that moment at the table at a work dinner they were in their element. They told stories that all ended with how damned smart they are and how in their story they knew more than everybody else and so they made everything right because the rest of the world is a bunch of nincompoops. You know people like this, I’m sure. But I wonder about people like this. I see them in my mind going to bed at night, their grand bellies hung over the top of their boxer shorts, and I wonder who they are at that moment. Are they still the protagonist of every story or do they become fallible and frail at some point? I will never know, of course. You will only see behind the curtain of people if you try, if you go to their house and cross your leg on their couch in their living room and size-up their wife and look out of the corner of your eye at their wedding picture on the piano. None of this will ever happen with any of the people I was with last night. How many people you work with do you actual befriend, actually like go to their homes and see them in shorts? Rare. For me, anyway. I don’t want to see their hairy legs. I don’t want to tear down the work wall. What was a perfect metaphor last night was when the meal started and these guys were ordering wine and they asked me ”Nation will you drink red?” I have met some of these guys before, they know me but they don’t me. Not that every person I meet I will tell them “Hi, I’m Nation, I’m an alcoholic,” but at some point you would think they would notice that I do not drink and not ask me such a question. I wanted, of course to say ”No red, no white, no fucking strawberry wine. I do not drink, douchebags.” But I didn’t. I politely declined.  No, thanks, I’ve got some seltzer here.  If they once asked me a question about myself or tried to chip at the wall a little they might realize this, might notice something about someone else. They don’t. They didn’t. Yesterday during the day I was at this office that was next to an old, old power plant, one that Thomas Edison, THE Thomas Edison actually owned. It doesn’t run anymore. Hasn’t for years. It’s a cool old building, all red brick and weeds now growing in the cracks of the concrete. It has had its day. I went out in the afternoon at one point to escape the conference table I had been sitting at for hours with the same people I would have dinner with later. I needed a breath. I walked over to
the old building and stared up at peak where there is sculpture of a head that may be  Mercury the Roman messenger of the gods to humans.  There was also Tom’s name carved in stone and the year 1903 in Roman numbers. I stood and stared for awhile, the blue smoke of my cig curling around my head on a grey and rainy afternoon in Beantown. It felt good for just a moment to look at something solid, something that I could not see through, something well-built that had served its purpose and then stopped in time. Later, my awkwardness would revert me to a child. But then, that moment in the drizzle beside the dirty water of the Boston Harbor, I felt old and alone and strong yet in my abilities and convictions. And it felt good.

Can you see me here? Look closely, I’m the face in the crowd – I’m the short one with the modified Jew ‘Fro, third from the left. See last night I drove out late in the evening to the idyllic Thurgood Marshall Airport and there with hundreds of my closest friends all with their trunks open I picked up La Sooze and Daughter Shannon from my Hammy. I forgot to tell you that La Sooze went down to the ol’ 305 last weekend to hang out with Daughter Shannon leaving me to my own devices which, left alone, amounted to napping, doing Kev II’s college laundry, and going to the gym. I am a party animale, obviously. Anyway what is now weird is that my house, God View in the vernacular, has gone overnight from a quiet little hamlet to hangout central. As the kids trickle home others follow and so, for instance, right now as I type Kev and Sean have a friend over and they are all in the living room watching some Japanese anime movie and meanwhile Daughter Shannon and her former BF now fiancée The Duke are in her room watching a little tube themselves and so gone is the solitude that reigned here only a week or so ago when the only sound to be heard here was the air conditioning turning on and off and the Jeter the  bulbous beagle snoring on his oversized pillow due to the terminal state of his corpulence.  This is not a bad thing, of course,. It is a good thing, a very good thing. I like when the little chickadees are all in the house, the Fab Five in formation. I’m just not accustomed to it right now. Kind of like when Kev II was born a couple of years after Number One son Sean and I realized I’d forgotten what it was like to have an infant in the house. Watch the little fontanel. Last night Daughter Shannon knocked on our bedroom door at about midnight and after I said come in and she did I said “you have to knock?” to which she replied “your door was closed, I didn’t know what you were doing in here.” Obviously she’s forgotten what it’s like to live with middle-aged people. I was soaking my false teeth what the heck you think I was doing at midnight on a Sunday?

Nothing says "you're a cow" quite like a nice set of Spanx for Mom's Day.

Hey don’t forget that this Sunday is Mother’s Day. Don’t say I didn’t remind you now. I just saw an article on the sagacious Internet under the headline  “What not to give for Mother’s Day” and it held some very wise advice. According to the article, which was reprinted by that bastion of all things news caboodle.com, do not give your mom or wife or gay boyfriend the following items for Mom’s Day or risk being shutdown for the next several weeks: Do not give anything that says “As seen on TV” on the label. Also don’t give her a diet book, wrinkle cream or a household appliance which implies that you expect her to do household work, which really, you don’t do you? My personal favorite gift recommended not to give mommy is Spanx, which I had to look up. Spanx according their website, specializes in producing “body shaping undergarments” like girdles and “tummy taming” body suits. In other words you wear this shit to smash in your fat rolls so buying this for La Sooze would be like saying she looks like Jeter. Fortunately she does not and I have precisely no reason to search for Spanx for Mom’s Day since my own significant other is quite svelte, thank you. Maybe I’ll buy men’s Spanx for myself to pull in my disgusting junior jelly belly. That might make a fine gift for the Momma.

So I told you the other day that I was “selected” at work to keep my job. Using the word “selected” kind of sucks, btw, doesn’t it? I do have Jewish blood after all. Anyway as part of the whole career survival process today they actually announced the latest survivors today in some corporate e-mail. I believe it may have been the first time my little name has ever appeared in one of these things. Creepy, really. I mean my own personal name was among a bunch of names, mainly of people I do not know and I assume will never know (fine with me)  so it’s not like the thing was about me. Hardly. But as you know I myself have been writing these kinds of corporate announcements for years and never realized how weird it is for someone else to be writing your name, someone who presumably could not give two flying shits about the Nation. Not that I never cared about the people I have written for or about ‘lo these many years, I just suspect that whoever wrote this fine piece of prose probably couldn’t identify me with a GPS and a mug shot. As I say, weird.  I am much happier being anonymous. Do not use my name in a sentence unless you know me. You don’t know me. You would probably buy me a Spanx.

So my beloved Cali aunt AK called me tonight saying she could wait no longer – she had to know – did I get my walking papers from work or not? She said I had left her and my tens of readers hanging off a cliff at my last writing.  She said it was like a soap opera story on a Friday when they drop some bomb and then leave you without the actual answer so you’ll tune back in on Monday to find out. Btw did Matthew really murder Eddie on One Life to Live? I have to know. Btw, back in the day when I was young and impressionable and quite lazy I used to watch soap operas regularly. No homo. Two of them specifically – the aforementioned One Life to Live and General Hospital. This was back specifically when Luke and Laura were dominating General Hospital. I believe Luke raped Laura in the disco in 1979. They were happily wed in 1981. True love. Anyway I only watched soap operas because I was living in Wichita, Kansas and I was going to college full-time in the mornings and then working full-time second shift at a job in a computer center. I had a couple of hours to blow every day between school and work and what the hell else was I going to do in Wichita, Kansas at 1 in the afternoon on a weekday than to watch soap operas? I got into them, btw. I was like a house frau then. At work I was more like a vagrant. All I remember about that job was that I worked for a Muslim guy named Keith. Super nice guy only he got real sick every year during Ramadan, which is the Muslim month of fasting and you can’t eat anything during daylight hours as a way to show submissiveness to G*d. So Keith would starve himself to death for a month and as a result would get sick as a dog afterwards. I think I’d change religions just based on that. Btw Keith was the guy who taught me the phrase “asalaam alikum,” which means “peace be upon you” and when someone (a Muslim someone, I guess) says that to you you’re supposed to reply “Wa laikum As Salaam” meaning “and unto you peace.” Of course. I used this response once in a bar with a very large and drunk black man and when I responded correctly he was quite impressed and backed right off my little Christian shit. Good bar trick.  Oh and the other thing I remember about working in Wichita, Kansas is that I drank a lot. In fact many evenings at lunch I would either go to the local Sonic drive-in for a pork fritter and a cherry coke (absolutely delish, though my terrific nephew Brian who worked at Sonic during high school tells me they no longer make pork fritters at that fine establishment. Mistake on their part.)  More likely than not, however, I’d skip the food portion of lunch and head over to a bar down the street called the “Why Knot” which featured a picture of a hangman’s noose on the establishment’s sign. Many more nights than not I myself would say Why Not? And I’d return from lunch an hour later quite beery. Model employee.

I would work here if they still made pork fritters.

There was a guy from work who was always at the Why Knot at lunch too – his name was Fred and everyone called him Fred, Fred the Walking Dead because Fred was not only pale as a corpse he was a full-time drunk, stoned every night on the clock. Looking at Fred the Walking Dead was like looking at a picture of my own personal Dorian Gray. Only a matter of time. Oh and there was also a girl at work who used to come in braless all the time wearing a t-shirt that said “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” Thankfully I never tested her claim.  Obviously this was a great place to be – Wichita, Kansas 1979, Luke and Laura, drunken co-workers, pork fritters. Clearly the high point of my life. Glory Days.

Back to my own cliffhanger. My real glory days.  So Friday morning I drove a couple of hours to meet my fate, which was delivered at a little table in the upstairs of a little restaurant in a little town in Pennsylvania. This was like being called out to the middle of  a forest to receive a secret message. I figured if THE company was going to bump me off they could do it easily there and it would take me days to find my way home. Either that or they could just dump the body out there. Who would care? So the woman I met at the restaurant tells me well Nation, you’re in and then slides a piece of paper across the table moistened by my bottle of San Pellegrino and on said paper is my new title and salary and bonus opportunity and the like. Btw I like my new title which is “Regional Communications Manager” which kind of has a ring to it, no? I think I’ll make an acronym of it – RCM. Regal.  Now the salary I wasn’t that thrilled about.   I mean a Regional Manager should be make lottery-winner money don’t you think?  I should be driving a Bentley. Instead I’m making the exact same coin I was making before. Harrumph. And here I thought I was going to get rich and buy whitewall tires. Not so much. But seriously, how happy am I to have a job right now – a good job? Very. I know the fed government wants me to believe that unemployment rates are going down and everything is just swell and it’s all somebody else’s fault anyway, but they want me to believe a whole lot of stuff and I’m no rube. Truth is I have been out of work before and it is nowhere to be and this is no time to go back to doing it. Having once had to do the walk of shame home to tell La Sooze in the middle of the afternoon that I had been relieved of my job duties is not a time I ever wish to relive. So I’ll take the job offer and I’ll continue to work hard, well as hard as I’m capable of anyway, and I’ll be quite happy about it. But you take the good with the bad. I have much to be grateful for – I still have a good job that I like and a new terrific title with the word “regional” in it and I never tested Satisfaction Guaranteed in Wichita, Kansas so I have no guilt or STDs. All good. On the sad side Sonic will never make a pork fritter again. Shame. As Lou Reed says, there’s a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out. And as my Muslim friends would say “You’ll live, you schmuck.” And I will. With peace upon me now that i know I have a job. Thank a you Allah.

So I’m back from Bahston and as a nice welcome back to Miserable Maryland on the way home from the erport tonight I ran into a horrendous thunderstorm that made me peek precariously through the darkened windshield and turned the streets spontaneously into little ponds as I made my way to Westminnie. He’s back. Release the hounds.

So guess what I have to do to tomorrow? That’s right, I have to go away again. Turns out with all my recent travels I wasn’t particularly focused on the fact that it is indeed May and that means that Kev II my little college student has completed his sophomore year of higher education. Which means he has to come back home and I have to get him. Forgot.  Whoopsie.  So as it turns out tomorrow I had to drive north anyway for a work thing. Not just any work thing mind you but a moderately significant meeting. Tomorrow, in fact is when the jury’s decision comes in regarding my immediate future – thumbs up or thumbs down. Can you throw a Jew to lions? Why not, eh? Not to get into too much detail here but I have told you with some minor amount of specificity that my former company, well not MY company but

Will the nation be the hunter or the hunted? Only the Big Fish knows for sure.

THE company I worked for, was recently taken over by another giant company, a BigFish, eaten like lions used to take out the wildebeest on Marlin Perkins Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on Sunday nights (obscure cultural reference there for the over-50 crowd only). Anyhow, as past of this feeding frenzy we, the people who work at THE company, have had to go through some process after the big takeover to find out whether we will still have a job or not. As Ken Kesey said, you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus. Tomorrow I find out if I have a seat. The nice thing about this is that it just so happens that I have to drive to the ‘Cuse anyway which is due north of here and as it turns out the Big Fish company says they want to deliver their decision to people face-to-face, mano y mano, eye-to-eye if you will, so I have to drive a couple of hours  to get the news.  It’s on the way anyway. I’m not sure if I like this face-to-face thing btw. If things go badly, which I have no reason at all to think they will, I’m not sure I would want anyone to watch me as I fall.  Not that I have any choice. So tomorrow I will either arrive at the ‘Cuse  snug as a bug in a career rug or completely distraught and searching the internet on my cellphone for jobs.  I’ll let you know when I can. But don’t worry, you know that even if I go down I’ll go down like a champ.

So tonight I was thinking about the idea of ladies, and for that matter gentlemen. I thought of this because I was getting off the elevator at the airport and this young kid actually stepped back when the doors opened and said “you go ahead.” Unheard of. Remember when announcers and comedians used to start shows by saying “Laaaadies and gentlemen”? Does this mean anything anymore to people under the age of 40 or 50? What would resonate now would be someone announcing “Wiiiiigers and bitches…” since the majority of young people seem to want to all make believe now that they’re tough and hard and grew up in the ghetto even though they grew up taking ballet classes and cutting their suburban lawns on Saturday.  Yo. I personally was taught to respect people and defer to others. Actually that sensibility was pretty much beaten into or threatened into me. If I didn’t step aside and let the old guy get off the elevator first I would have gotten such a smack. Not such a bad thing I guess, in retrospect, because it did teach me to respect other people and to think about others before myself. This is not a key component of our culture now. Except in the occasional elevator at the airport. A real gentleman tis kid. Old school.

Ok so you know the NY Rangers won that hockey game last night in triple overtime and I paced the floor in my Boston hotel room until nearly 12:30 at night which means I’m tired. Plus I have to get up and drive many hours tomorrow. Plus I might get kicked to the curb or eaten by a lion in the jungle. Better get my rest.

So I’m sitting in a hotel room high above Boston and it is shaping up to be a miserable sports night for me and I figure this is quite appropriate since I AM in Bahston which is the terrible rival of all things New York. See you grow up in New York and deeply imbedded in your genetic make-up is a disdain specifically for the Boston Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins. Just the way it is. When I first started coming up here to Beantown on a fairly regular basis when Sean came here to college I was kind of dumbfounded for a little while. I kind of felt like I was behind enemy lines and eventually I’d be sniffed out and some guy in a Bobby Orr jersey was going to randomly bloody my nose on Mass Avenue just for the hell of it. But the more and more I’ve come here to Lawbstahtown the more I kind of like it. I mean I still disdain the Red Sox and Bruins and Celtics, but I’ve gotten to know quite a few people here and they’re pretty nice. Working class. I like that. Not all the stuck-up rich Asian kids who walk around here downtown wearing overpriced fashions. Nah. I’m talking about the Bahston guy with the accent sitting two seats from me on the plane tonight who told the guy in the middle seat “you might wanna take off ya jacket – it might get wahm in here.” Cracked me up.

You know what I think about sometimes? I think about roots. I mean you have absolutely no choice in who your parents are or what the point or place of your conception is. I guess that’s up to G*d and maybe sheer chance. So I just happened to be conceived by an Irish guy and the daughter of a Hungarian Jew who didn’t even know she was Jewish. And they just happened to live in the Bronx. I’m kind of glad of that. Not that I was raised by the Irishman and the hidden Jew, more so that I was raised, at least at the start, in the Bronx. You know this gives you instant street cred for life. Think about this – someone says, so, where were you born, or where are you from and you say, Toledo, Ohio and they go, “oh, cool. Isn’t that where the Mudhens are from?” But instead you say “I grew up in New York, in the Bronx,” and right away you get a little respect. The cool thing is that wherever you’re born or raised you are never aware of the cred factor when you’re actually in it. So if you happen to be born in the South of France if you leave the South of France you will be the envy of every person you ever meet who knows your background. But when you are young and noshing a nice baguette for breakfast with a bottle of wine you aren’t thinking “isn’t this cool – I can speak French and I live in a place that people would kill to live in and I didn’t have to do anything to earn this.” Perhaps this is why the past becomes so important. In the moment, when I was standing in the little deli on Westchester Avenue in the shadow of St. Helenas church ordering a meatball hero and an RC Cola and I was in the fifth grade and I was hanging around with third generation Irish and italian kids named Emil and Mary and Johnny I certainly wasn’t aware that those moments would define me for a lifetime. But they have. This is how I define myself – I’m from the Bronx. It explains everything. The past.

Do you ever get tired of hearing me talk about this? I don’t get tired of talking about it. I love it. I live here in the moment most of the time. I am, in fact, sitting in a Marriott hotel in Massachusetts with an NBA game on the television behind me. I know that. But I stop in the deli every chance I get for a hero. It feeds me.

Anyway tonight I’ve been alternating between watching the Yankees play the Orioles in the rubber game of a three-game series at Yankees Stadium and Game three of the Ranger-Capitals Stanley Cup series. The Yankees got bombed. The Rangers are in overtime. Oy. Again, the past. I’ve been in Miserable Maryland for 100 years and yet I still pull for all the NY teams. La Sooze on the other hand who grew-up mostly near Dayton, Ohio, has found her allegiances with some of the local teams. I can understand that. I mean we have been there for 20-plus years, I guess it’s ok for her to pull for the Baltimore Ravens even though I don’t like them. NY Giants for me, of course. She also likes the Capitals. I respect this. Dayton doesn’t have a pro football team. Or a baseball or basketball team. Plus B’more is her home. I’m sure she had her own deli somewhere in her past. We all did. And if not, she’s always welcome to join me at mine. The meatball heroes are exquisite.

Oh, and go Rangers.