Beauty is only skin deep, but none of us have X-ray vision, now do we?

This gem courtesy of myself and my fine co-workers.

Yes I am blogging at work. And if you're reading this before 5:00 you ain't exactly fufilling your job requirements either. :)

It was Company Photo Day at the office. I had seen company shots in some of the cubicles, but there hadn't been one taken since I was hired. Word came down two weeks ago that there would be one, shortly after Matt's not-so-rosy State of the Union address. Naturally, everyone's taking this to be a "goodbye" photograph.

This morning, while driving to work, I somehow drew a correlation between this phorograph and the big "senior class photo" that was taken in high school, which lead to a digression regarding signing yearbooks and how I wrote "ave atque vale" in the yearbooks of all the people I never planned on talking to after graduation, and the fact is half the people I'm still in contact with from high school are people I wrote "ave atque vale" to, whereas out of the five people I planned on staying in touch with, three of them I no longer talk to. Alas, how I arrived at this train of thought eludes now eludes me. I'll be a happy camper when they invent the means to post to your Blog via audio.

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McAllen, Texas was boring as fuck. Jim, the co-worker who accompanied me, is enjoying telling the anecdote of how, wheneverhe told me that we should be takeing pictures, my response was "But there's nothing to take pictures of!"

McAllen isn't a hick-town. That's more like Pharr (pronounced "far"; yeah, funny innit?), the town next to McAllen. McAllen reminds me of Manalapan--strip malls and neighborhoods and just about every chain store you can think of. And nothing else. I couldn't wait to get out of Manalapan so oyu bet your ass McAllen held no appeal for me. Well, except for copious attractive Mexican women. (How does one develop a preference for certain ethnicities? An attractive woman is an attractive woman regardless of ancestry, but, as a whole, Asians don't particularly turn me on. I don't think of black women in terms of "exotic" so I can take or leave the Nubian persuasion as I see fit. Yet hispanics definitely get my attention. Why is that?)

Needless to say, I won't be working in Mexico--oh, yeah, the job itself, my promotion, would be in Mexico, in the Reynosa plant. It's a nice office. But I'd be commuting from Texas to Mexico. And while there is a neat thrill in getting to commute from one country to another, it's not exactly a deal-breaker. It's like comutting to Canada.

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I told Matt I was turning down the job offer. He was perfectly fine about it, making the obligatory "OK. You're fired." joke. But it wasn't a tense meeting by any stretch, which I, admittedly, was slightly worried about. But Matt's a good guy, and Ia ppreciate his honesty and his lack of interest in bullshitting anyone. Mike would do that sort of thing, but it's not Matt's style at all, and that's quite refreshing.

But here's an interesting kicker: the Totowa office may not be closing. It seems there's some complications, or possible complications arrising that might require my company to keep the Totowa plant in operation, though much more limited than what it is now. So reports of my impending unemployment might be exaggerated.

I still . . . I was going to write "I still have to move to Philly" rather than
"I still plan to move" and that's a Freduian slip well worth pondering. Because, let's face it, I hate the unknown, so the fact that I have a bit more luxury in things is a tempting excuse to slack off. But the truth is whether I can keep my job in Totowa (of which there is no guarantee) or not, there's no reason not to continue with my plans to move.

The good news is the possible change in the company's plan results in a more stable economic situation for me: if the office stays open longer than I can keep getting paid longer, and the chances of me being able to financially afford my rent until the end of the year is much more likely. This means I don't have to worry as much about having to bail on my lease before the end of the year and screw Sean out of his share of the deposit, which was definitely a worry for me.

Not only that, but Matt hinted strongly that any incentive to stay until the very end of the Totowa Office's operation would result in a bonus plus severance pay, so I don't think it too unreasonable to presume up to two months full salary, if it came to that. It's not much, but, again, it would get me through the end of the year (if the office closes in October as originally projected).

I tried to hint strongly that I'm going to still look for another job. I told Matt outright, that until I hear otherwise, I have to operate on the assumption that I'm losing my job sometime this year and that I will be looking for another one. Matt's response was to tell me he'll let me know ASAP and he outlined the probable severance package I mentioned above, which was his way oif saying "stick around, you have time." But I'm not going to do that.

It's time to go. I've had my fun and now it's time to serve my conscience overseas, coming in fast, etc. etc. I need a change in venue, I need a new place. I've been in this area since 1993 and I've only gotten so far. I realize that's my own responsibility, but part of that entails knowing when what you want can't be gotten where you are.

And I thought I was nervous going to Morocco for a week....

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I've gotten a couple of comments on my last entry. Which I re-read the other day and was embarassed to see how poorly written some sections were. I think I'm going to edit things slightly and make it more presentable.

Incidentally, you may have noticed that for all my talk about posting the blog entry on May 23, it was, in fact, posted on the 22nd, despite it being roughly 1:30 in the morning of May 23 when I hit the "post" button. You see, Blogger recently completeed a massive overhaul of its system. Previously its timestamp was triggered when you hit the post button. Now it is triggered when you hit the create option. I know you were all dying to solve this inscrutible mystery. I hope your lives are now filled with the same meaning and fufillment mine was upon this epiphany.

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Rush is releasing an EP of cover songs. Rush has never recorded someone else's material. they performed an instrumental version of the Rolling Stones "Paint it Black" during the SARS benefit they played in Toronto last year, but beyond that they haven't performed someone's work since touring for the first album.

Tori Amos released a DVD last week. Included was an audio CD with six songs, mostly B-sides previously only available via her website.

Stay tuned for future ruminations.

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That's it. I'm about to fall alseep on this keyboard and I've got no pithy way of ending this entry. Wish I could've remembered the "senior class picture" tangent, though. It was a good one.

Though this will be posted on May 23, right now there's still 20 minutes left to May 22, so as far as I'm concerned, this entry's for that day.

May 22 is a day of considerable importance to me. It was on that day in 1990 that I committed myself to the Fair Oaks Psychiatric Hospital.

My brother and I were trying to organize a surprise 20th anniversary part for our parents. This required us to call our parents friend's and get them in on it. Brian wanted me to make the calls. I was petrified of doing it, paranoid that I would look silly in the process, or make some mistake. My self-esteem was non-existent. So, as was par for the course with my brother and I at the time, things became an argument of epic proportions, and it ended with my brother taking one of the larger kitchen knives and thrusting it into my hand, saying "If you want to die just kill yourself and get it over with," or something to that effect. I broke down in tears, not because I was afraid that my brother had done this, but because I couldn't follow through with his demand.

My mother came home about an hour later to find her younger son sobbing and pleading with her to be locked away so he could just waste away and die. That evening the phone calls were placed and my parents drove me to Summit, New Jersey, where Fair oaks was located. By 10:00 that evening (or perhaps later) I was formally signed into the hospital, and my parents left me in the evaluation unit.

I spent ten weeks in Fair Oaks. 71 days, from May 22 to August 1, 1990. It was a fairly lengthy stay, even for that time. Nowadays, of course, you're lucky if your insurance will let you stay a week in such places. Overall, it was a fantastic time. I went in, wishing I could find the strength to kill myself, and left realizing that my true strength was my ability to stay alive.

It wasn't perfect, of course. I realized, a few years later, that Fair Oaks never "solved" or "cured" me of anything. It certainly helped me put to rest the demons that were consuming me at the time, but there were far many more, and in many respects greater, monsters I would have to face. Though I left Fair Oaks with a stronger self esteem, it was not fully restored. And my obsessive tendencies, which were only partially manifest at the time (there were bigger issues at hand), would explode a year later, and reach their crescendo during that terrible semester Sophomore year at Montclair State. (But even that isn't so cut and dried as I'm making it.)

But Fair Oaks helped me learn to fight my demons, to be willing to fight, to want to fight, rather than surrender to them. I was 14, which placed me in the adolescent unit where they threw everyone age 12 to 18. Most of us were in the 14-16 year range, but we did have a ten-year-old at one point, and a couple of older ones. Like any place where you were thrown together under heightened, and mutual, circumstances, you formed bonds quickly and intensely.

There's a litany of named I only half remember. I had to dig out my journals of 1991 to get them all: Jeff, Kiah, Shawn, Pat, Howie, Mark, Mike, Jim, Renee, Heather, Andy, Dave, Erika, Michele. It's been fourteen years, these names are barely recognizable. If I didn't have them written down I wouldn't be able to remember half of them.

Kiah was a skinny blonde best remembered for her love of Skid Row and her pierced nose which she had done by one of the girls in the evaluation unit, just a day or two after I arrived. One day in the summer we had a long talk because she was worried about the results of the pregnancy test she had taken the other day. She and her then boyfriend, who was 17 or 18 years old, had been having sex on a regular basis just prior to her entering Fair Oaks. Mind you, Kiah was my age, 14. She left Fair Oaks a few weeks before me. Last I heard her mother was planning on moving her to Nova Scotia or something.

Shawn was the mother figure. She was 15, heavyset, soft spoken, but a heart of gold. We corresponded a little after we both left Fair Oaks. In January of 1991 she wound up back in a hospital. I wrote her once but never heard back from her.

Pat was one of my roommates on the evaluation unit. He dated Renee for a while after they both left.

Mark and Howie were the oldest kids on the unit, 17 or 18. Howie was an artist, I think Mark went into the army. They were roommates, and had a huge stash of candy in their room (which, I believe, was against rules.) We would play chess during Quiet Hour.

Andy was another roommate of mine. A quiet guy; I think he was a fan of the Punisher, but I honestly remember very little about him. His face is clear in my mind--tall, thin, dark hair that was cut short but naturally curly. Bushy eyebrows. I liked him the best of all my roommates.

Heather and Erika were people I knew on the unit. I recall writing with Erika--maybe Heather as well--after we all left. One of them wrote a letter which seemed to indicate she liked me. The feeling wasn't mutual and in one of my brilliant displays of honest communication, I never wrote back.

Michele was about 16 or so. She liked the cartoon character I created, SpaceCase. She claimed to have been a family friend of John Gotti, which I believed completely at the time though hindsight has me highly dubious. She took French at her High School. This is why, when it came time for me to choose a second langue to take in High School, I took French.

Jeff was one of my better friends on the unit. He was a year or so younger than me, and for some reason when I try to recall his face now I think of a young Anthony Michael Hall, but nowhere as geeky as the nerds Hall portrayed. He was one of the first kids I met in the Evaluation Unit. It was the night I arrived, and while I waited for a doctor to see me, Jeff was in the snack room, grabbing Fig Newtons to take into his room (which, of course, was not allowed.) He saw me and smiled, putting his finger to his lips. Another time, he and I got into a pseudo-debate over the Shroud of Turin. He tried to escape from the Adolescent Unit, if I remember correctly. I'm not sure what happened after that.

I have no idea who Jim is. My mind is drawing a blank.

Renee's last name was Klein, and it was a running joke that we were siblings. We kept in touch for a good year after our respective discharges. She and pat even made it to my 16th Birthday Party. We lost touch for a few years and then, amazingly, met again at the Freehold Raceway Mall, where she was working. We stayed in touch for another few years, losing contact for good during my last semester at Montclair.

There's one name this list that's missing: Dave. Dave was one of the supervisors of the unit. There were five or six of them. Leigh, who was a very pretty blonde with curly hair and, I think, a southern accent. Roger, a big black guy whom I played chess with a few times. There was an older woman whose name I can't remember but was acquaintances with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But Dave was my favorite, the one I got along the best with, who I would talk to the most. He gave me the best piece of advice anyone ever gave me: "fake it until you make it." It's advice that has worked, every time.

There's so many memories flooding back now. Two weeks in the evaluation unit--longer than I should have--because there was no space on the Adolescent for me; watching MTV even though it wasn't allowed. The switch from school to summer programs; the meals, the progress levels (four in all; each with their own rewards and privileges. I made it to level three--though it took two attempts to do it.) The group meetings and the unit meetings. Seeing Gremlins 2 and being one of the only kids who thought it was funny. "Weed Beet"--don't ask. The sessions with Vi--short for Violet--the psychiatrist assigned to me. A very long streak as one of the people who got to enjoy Friday dinner off-unit. "Advice and Feedback.", Quiet Hours, movie nights, Pat loaning me Rush's Presto album--the first Rush album I listened to in its entirety. Almost losing my Level 3 status during . . . either during some confrontation in a Unit Meeting or during a field trip where many of us weren't following instructions . . . or maybe I almost lost the privilege each time. Creating a Space Case homage to the Godfather for Michele (I know this is at my parent's house, I should dig it up and scan it in.)

When you were on the Adolescent Unit, you were given "point cards", it was used both as a tracking program and incentive--every half hour you had to get your card signed by one of the unit managers. You received 15 points for simply getting it signed. If you sat down with one of the managers and talked to them about your problems, you got twenty points for the half hour--or perhaps just five additional points; time passed makes the details blur. At the end of the week all your points would be tallied. The seven kids (or maybe ten) who had the highest cumulative points for that week were taken off-unit Friday night for dinner. The tradition was that on your last day of the unit, you would pass around your point card and have it signed by everyone there, sort of a mini-year book. I used to keep my Goodbye Point Card in my wallet, but that was years ago. It occurs to me now that it's been several years since I've seen it, which means it's either buried somewhere at my parents house or long since lost. I hope its the former.

Ah, but that was many years ago. I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. (thank you, Bob Dylan). And it was a good time. Fourteen May 22nds have come and gone since, and for most of them I've made it a point to take some time and remember, if not on the specific memories I've bored you with above, then at least on the simple fact that I had once been there and that it helped bring me to here.

I actually went back to Fair Oaks in 2000. I thought the ten year anniversary was appropriate enough to call for a visit. It's no longer Fair Oaks now--it's under another name, though still a psychiatric center. I went to the main reception area but they wouldn't let me tour inside. Still. Just to be there on the grounds and remember, knowing how far I had come, was well worth the trip.

I could be dead. I could have slit my wrists or taken pills or suffocated myself, because I was so convinced that I wanted to die. Now, being at Fair Oaks didn't solve all my problems, and with either more time or more honesty it might have been able to better prepare me for the things that were still to come, or allow me to avoid them completely. But it was a start.

I didn't want to die. I thought I did, and I'm not sure how I can make the distinction between what my depression made me think I wanted and how I came to realize that, even with all the pain, living is the far better option. At least, I can't think of how to describe this without sounding like a third-rate after school special, but that doesn't make it any less true. Going to Fair Oaks was very much a rebirth of my life, and without that place I wouldn't be here now. So once a year I throw cynicism to the side and drown in nostalgia and hindsight and remember the day my life changed for the better.

Of course, it's well past midnight now, so the 22nd has come and gone. It's May 23 now a date which has no small significance as well, but that can wait for another time.) Anyway, it's time to put these memories back on the shelf. Thanks for accompanying me this time. See you here again next year....

Oh, go on, you've all seen Pee Wee's Big Adventure, you know how it goes.

OK, firstly, for the few of you I haven't told yet:

My office is closing. I got the word last Monday, the day I came back to work after being in Morocco. there was a state-of-the-union kinda of meeting that Friday and matt told everyone business was not good, but in truth, the decision was already made to close the place down.

The reason is simple economics: overhead costs to produce materials domestically is too high for companies. It's w rough market, and competition is fierce. the only way for most large companies to make money is if they build their product outside the U.S. where the labor is cheap. It's why we have a plant in Casablanca, and one in Mexico, in Reynosa, just over the Texas border.

Which brings us back to my discussion with Matt. He tells me the office is closing, most likely by October. Now, as most of you do know, Matt's been waving a promotion in my face since Mike was fired at the end of March. the idea was I'd be head of purchasing, take over Mike's purchasing related duties. this, of course, was complicated by Pete's senority, but that was Matt's problem.

However, with the Totowa office now cloing, the company game plan is to centralize. All the customer service, all the purchasing for my company will be handled in one place. That place will be McAllen, Texas. It's right by the Mexican border, closest to Reynosa. Matt had told me that the longer game plan for me would be an opportunity to be promoted and work in McAllen. With Totowa closing, those plans are accelerated. If I took the position, I'd move out there by the end of the Summer.

So I'm flying down to Texas early Wednesday morning with another co-worker to check it out. I'm essentially being paid to sight-see for two and a half days. If I like it, if I think I can live there, then I'll be promoted to some sort of purchasing manager. I'd be in charge of a team of buyers, I'd report to the soon-to-be-hired Global Purchasing manager, and off I go on my career.

My company would pay for everything--all the relocation costs, buying out my lease here in Bloomfield, the hotel I'd be staying in until I can find my own place to live. And this is a town where you can by a three bedroom, two garage house for under a hundred grand. I'd be a manager, I'd be on my way. I'd be living in the ass-end, right-on-the-Rio-Grande, when-the-Mexicans-sneak-over-the-boader-they're-using-your-backyard, border-town, McAllen, Texas.

And if I say no to all of that, then I stay with the company as long as they keep the office open, after which I'm back on the unemployment line.

But, you see, that's not the end of it. Because as many of you also know, I've been more and more frustrated with my life here in Bloomfield. Plenty of good friends, sure, but I've been feeling like my life's in neutral and I've been looking at ways to change that. And the way that seemed the most likely choice would be to move out of the area. Mike Zav's been trying to get me to move to the Philadelphia-area for a few years now, and with Bright-Matrix trying to get off the ground and the fact that I really like Philadelphia itself, I've been leaning towards moving there sometime next year.

Now that my office is closing, plans got accelerated (they were slightly derailed by Matt's pormotion offer in March; originally I was thinking of moving down near Philly by the end of this year but post-poned it to take the promotion, earn more money, and get more experience. But now I'm looking at my original time-table). If I don't take the McAllen job, then I'll be looking for a job near Philly. No matter what happens, this is my last year living in Bloomfield.

I could probably spend another twenty paragraphs talking about this. I've been running the pluses and minuses in my head for a week now. Going to McAllen is going to settle this, one way or another. Yeah, I'm not too optimistic, but I'm going with an open mind. I was nervous as hell about going to Casablanca and that was a magnificent trip. my apprehension about McAllen could be equally unfounded. It could be very nice--it could be modern, clean, and friendly, and there could be some extremely hot Mexican senoritas looking for a nice American with a Northeast accent to shack up with. I'd never think I'd move to Texas, let alone a border-town, but I never thought I'd enjoy working as a buyer, and doing that had given me this incredible opportunity, so whose to say what will work for me in the long run.

Either way, this is my last entry for a while. There's no direct flights to McAllen, for obvious reasons. I have to fly in to Houston and take a smaller plane down to McAllen. And for reasons even I don't quite understand, this flight has to be done out of BWI Airport, so tomorrow evening my co-worker and I are leaving work an hour early to catch a train from Newark down to Baltimore, staying overnight there and then taking the 6:30 flight out of Baltimore to Texas. If all goes well I'll be in McAllen by 9:30 Central Time. Then I repeat the process on Friday, sans the stay-over in Baltimore. My ETA is to get off the train in Newark is midnight, 12:00 AM Saturday.

So all this is what's been bubbling under the surface of all my blog posts since late March. This should explain most of my cryptic and not-so-cryptic comments. I wanted to write about this sooner, but gven the sensitive nature of these circumstanmces, I was worried/paranoid that people in my office would get wind of this when it's Matt's responsibility to tell them. But at this stage everyone in the office has figured out what's going on, and I need to get this off my chest, so fuck it.

That's all for now, folks. Needless to say, I'm going to be a bit pre-occupied over the weekend. Wish me luck.

It was an interesting weekend. Last Friday I joined Terry for the monthly Contempt. It was highly disappointing--having discovered a great way to get ghostly images during the last time I was there, I was really looking forward to going back and taking some more pictures. Unfortunately, though I was in a much better position to take pictures, the lights were not. Contempt's normal lighting technician was on vacation or something, and whoever filled in decided to set the lights off to the side of where Contempt's go-go dancers would stand, so at best only half their body's were lit by the spotlights. It made for some interesting effects with my camera, but nothing anyone would recognize as human. Ironically, with the spotlights off to the sides of the dancers, I was able to snap a few decent pictures of Contempt's regular club-goers. You can view a few of the better ones here, here, here, here and here. Still, not exactly what I was hoping for.

Worse, around 1:00 the DJ who took that shift was horrible. the dance floor was practically empty within the hour, and between that and the lights, it made for a noticeably lackluster evening. On the bright side, I spent more time talking with terry's Contempt-buddies than I have at all the other Contempt's combined; they're a good bunch of people so for that alone I'm willing to give the club one more shot and hopefully next time will be better.

Saturday was Moving Mia Day. I was part of a small army--about ten of us in total--who schlepped an ungoldy amount of boxes from Mia's apartment in Montclair to her mother's home in North Arlington. It was quite an operation: we'd move boxes and furniture out of the apartment, down the stairs and onto the lawn outside the apartment, then we loaded up as much as we could in as many cars as possible and drove to North Arlington, about a fifteen/twenty minute ride via backroads. then we unloaded the cars onto the front lawn of the house, then brought everything inside.

Mia had waaaaaay too much crap for one apartment. I thought I have a lot of crap--Mia's got me beat by a mile., I was utterly amazaed at all the knick-knacks, books, dust-collectors, etc that she had packed away. I've been in her apartment countless times over the years, but I never realized just how much it all was until we had to move them damn things. Fortunately, while there was a fair degree of improvsation in terms of moving and loading and unloading, Mia had labeled practically every single box so we knew where they belonged without having to ask Mia "where does this go?" every five seconds.

At the end Mia sprang for pizza and beer and the half of us that stayed for the whole move had an impromptu lawn party around 5:30 that afternoon. About half a dozen of us in plastic chairs drinking beer and eating pizza while 80's metal bands played from Tony's CD player. It was our own slice of white trash heaven.

The one down side to it all was I got terribly sunburned. The back of my neck is a bright cherry red, and my nose and the right side of my forehead is beet red as well. And my scalp is a lovely shade of lobster, too. You think I would've realized that outdoors + (mid-80s temperatures*humidity) + bright sunny day = massive sunburn, but nooooooo.

I was supposed to go to the Loop Lounge that night, but after I got home and took a (very long, very cold) shower, I collapsed into the chair in front of the TV. Christine called and I could've sworn I was speaking to her in English, but Christine swears otherwise. Since she spent the day indoors and not having her brain baked by the sun, I bow to her version of events.

Then, proving once again that anyone can graduate college with honors, I went to the Hoboken Street Fair for a few hours Sunday afternoon and got cooked a little more.

Needless to say, I'm pissed. My scalp burns when I try to wash and comb my hair. My forehead is starting to blister . . . oddly enough my neck feels fine, despite still being a lovely shade of crimson. But this is not exactly the shape I wanted to be when I'm about to spend three days in South Texas.

I have no interesting way of ending this post, so live with dissapointment.

I got a very strange e-mail the other day. An e-mail from KJ. Only it wasn't a personal e-mail, it was a newsletter from his band, Murder in the Dark.

Boy, was that a blast from the past.

We'll forget, for the moment, that I never signed up for this e-mail, nor the fact that the band played right next door at the Loop Lounge in Clifton, (an occassional go-to place of mine) just a few weeks ago but I didn't get an e-mail then. What amazes me most is that there still is a band called Murder in the Dark.

They weren't always called that, you know. When I first met Jaki, the band was called Pierre Lunaire, or something like that. It was October of 1993, and the band was playing the infamous (well, infamous to us) Obsessions Gig--it was a club somewhere in the Morristown area. It took us about two hours to drive somewhere about thirty minutes from the college because the directions were all wrong.

KJ wasn't in the band then--we didn't even know KJ existed (he wouldn't arrive until January of '95). I think Wesley was handling the keyboards and Alex--yes, that Alex--was the bass player. The band went last because it got the fewest people to show up. Pete and I were the drivers, and thus became official roadies of the band.

But at it's core, the band was Jaki and Ken. Ken, who played the Star Bangled Banner on his guitar even though they were a Goth band. And Jaki with her powerful vocals. During my time at MSU the band went through multiple name changes and band members. KJ came into the band a year or two after we all met him. He had taken up the bass and when the slot became available he joined the band. The name Murder in the Dark didn't come about until roughly the same time I left college, so that's December '97 or early '98.

The last time I saw them play was at The Pyramid on Avenue A in NYC. It was the spring of 1998 . . . almost six years ago exactly, as it had to have happened after Alex, Patti, and Alison came to visit on Memorial Day. I showed up, surprising Jaki and Ken by bringing Patti and Alex in tow, which, in hindsight, was obviously not the smartest thing to do (even six years ago there was plenty of history), but I had thought it was time for us all to forget past slights and move on. (This is what them high-falutin' college-types refer to as "irony".)

So imagine my surprise when I got that e-mail from KJ. At first I thought perhaps KJ started his own band using that name, but the descriptions in the picture section of their website says the singer is named "Jakineko"--evenb with the pictures all blurred it's obviously Jaki. Someone named Charles is the guitarist, so I guess Ken has moved on--when I last saw him in '98 he was enaged, so perhaps he has other priorities now.

It was a different lifetime, you know. It happens when you move on . . . or drift apart. But I remember sitting in Jaki's room, with the lights out and the candles and incense lit, with her and Ken sitting and composing songs or just jamming playfully. I remember the "show" they performed in the basement of the apartment Ken lived in at the time (just off Bloomfield avenue and probably a five minute drive from where I live now). I remember Ken sneaking in alcohol inside his guitar case. I remember going to being 18, 19 years old and thinking these were friendships that would last forever.

Last I saw KJ was a solid year ago; I bumped into him during one of my solo ventures to XTC's in Newark. He's got his own crowd. A lot of them wear fake fangs and they call themselves vampires. None of us that new KJ can say this with a straight face but when I saw him he had his friends and a girlfriend and he wasn't wearing the fangs himself so I'll enjoy my little glass house sans stones, thank you.

It's been a long, long time since I had anything to do with them.

Still. If I knew they were performing in Clifton, I would've gone. I wonder if they still do that Black Sabbath cover of "N.I.B".

Here's the situation: I've pretty much told Brenda everything about what's going on in the company. (Which is another looooong post soon to be written, but I digress.) I told Brenda because she and I get along very well and because I've got a crush on her. Given the weight of circumstances, we've been talking quite a bit this week. Often work related, sometimes not. We have a good rapport.

So on Thursday she comes over to my desk for a social visit, and talks about how she's going to Conneticut this weekend to spend time with friends that she met through horse-riding. Two friends, both married. "So it'll be the three of us and our significant others." she says.

At which point my brain does a bit of a double-take because, last I remember, the pictures of her and her on-again-off-again-rinse-repeat-ad-infiitum-boyfriend were face down on her shelf and she had made more than a few comments about being sans boyfriend.

So today we're talking and I bring up her weekend plans. "Just the six of you, right?" She says yes. So, OK, she's seeing someone. And my brain is wandering a bit, trying to figure out how long its been since she broke up with her ex, and whilst doing actual work for the office, I have to ask her a question. I go over to her desk and as she's rummaging through her papers for an answer and I glance up at her shelf. Sure enough, there's the picture of her and her boyfriend on display. The same shmuck she's been doing the on-again-off-again-two-step with since forever and a day.

And the funny thing is, yesterday, I was trying to not feel any dissapointment over this--though, inevitably, I felt dissapointed. Not that I had any shot, but if she was single, and seeing how there's not much time left in Totowa anyway, I might go for it and now I certainly have no chance blah blah blah . . . but seeing that she's with her ex . . . I mean, that's just funny. Sad, too, but it's funny because at least it reinforces that this ain't someone I should be around anyway, so there's no need to get all Gothic and mopey about it.

This rather explains the dream I had last night in which I was hanging out with Patti and we were playing chess.

Seriously.

I don't remember much about the dream at this point. I had dinner with Jay and Sarah at near the end of it. And for some reason Mariah Carey was there. Or it may have been someone who wanted to be Mariah Carey, I'm a bit hazy on that; such is life in my nocturnal wonderland. But I do remember playing chess with Patti. I remember meeting her, and we were pulling out the chess board and the peices were larger large, like baseball-sized pieces. And I openly admitted we were getting together (and playing chess) because I wanted her to feel bad about . . . our relationship I think.

But the image of playing chess with an ex-girlfriend is just too ripe not to reflect on. I'm quite certain I wasn't really thinking of Patti. Granted, earlier this week, Sean confirmed for me Patti's wedding is on, and sometime before the end of the month. But seeing how my conscious mind had been dwelling on Brenda, I'm more than certain Patti was merely a dream-state proxy. My guess is she represented yet another unattainable person, someone who can't give me what I'm looking for.

But it's the chess part that really gets me. And maybe that had more to do with the lighting-game Christine and I played right before I went to sleep, but it's too rife with symbolism. The idea of playing games, of strategy. It takes planning, foresight; the ability to anticipate what you opponent is thinking, what they will do, and plan accordingly . . . if that isn't like the start of a relationship, I don't know what is.

(Provided, of course, you view romantic relationships as an advesarial processes. But that's for another blog entry.)

But here's the real issue, the one I should delve into but will not (and I realze that by ending with a semi-clever metaphor I'm simply avoiding--for now--the real issue). But right now I'm dwelling on women I can't be with, insecurities I won't deal with, and patterns I'm not altering. It's not so much a matter of concern how you play the game while you play it, but a matter of learning to approach the board from a different angle before making the first move.

So, about this civilian behading thing. Yes, yes, shocking and all that, what with the Iriaqi Prisoner scandal still in everyone's mind. I realize I'm a bit late to the party. I was in Casablanca when Rummy did the Polticial Two-Step in front of Congress--and no I don't think Rumsfield should resign over the prisoner scandal; for one thing, there are people far lower in the chain far more culapble than he is, and there's a lot more things he's done, or not done, that he should resign for, let's stop making him the single scapegoat here when so many others should be held accountable.

Anyway, now that I've digressed nicely:

People often ask me if there have been any iconic images from this war," Howe says. "And until now I would say no, there really haven't been any iconic images. But now I think that the images out of Abu Ghraib might become the ones we remember from this war, and if that happens it will be the first time in history that iconic images will have been taken by amateurs."

The Salon article the above quote links to is far too short for such a fascinating topic--two topics, really (which I'll get to in a moment). Once you step back from the sobering realities of prisoner mistreatment and civilan behadings, you can appreciate the dyanmics at work, which are easily as equally compelling as the specific issue it provokes.

Even as the US government tries depserately to control the images of Iraq that we see, personal technology circumvents all official channels. You don't need to know how to work a top-of-the-line Nikon when your mid-level Nokia can take pictures with just one button. The underground's gone digital. Guerilla warfare not with guns and bombs (not that that's gone out of style) but with high speed internet and satelitte uplinks.

But here's the other side to the other side of the equation: the fact that it takes an image to capture our attention. 100 years ago, it was The Jungle that brought about social change. Upton Sinclar had no camera, no digital photography. All he had was the creation of investigative journalism. But the press had already reported about abuses against soldiers since as early as January. And, as the Salon article mentions, Nick Berg's situation had been known about for weeks. It took the visuals to bring it to life. It's hardly the death of print, but what happens when the written word no longer captures the attention of the public at large?

I know, I know, I owe you people some posts on Morocco. Trust me, I'll get to it. But it's been a crazy week. I'm invoking Setec Astronomy at the moment, but I'll explain all real soon. Probably right after I get back from visitng McAllen, Texas.

(Now, would you consider that last comment foreshadowing, or just being cryptic? Moo hoo ha ha ha....)

My neighbor is a nice old lady, preobably in her late 50s, maybe early 60s. She lives alone. About two weeks ago, I came home from work and saw a garbage bag outside my neighbors door. My spider-sense starts to tingle, and sure enough, just as I turn the key to open my apartment door, my neighbor opens her door. It seems her feet have swollen up and she's confined to her apartment until the swelling goes down. She asks if I can take out her garbage for her. Being the nice sort of guy, I agree.

A few nights later, as I leave the apartment, I see another garbage bag outside. Now, my neighbor mentioned she MIGHT need me to throw out her trash one other time. But seeing it there, so unceremoniously, irked me. I paused slightly, then, as a small protest, decided not to take the trashbag with me. Halfway down the steps I heard my neighbor's door start to open; she obviously heard me leaving. (mind you, the next morning I did take the bag to the dumpster.)

At midnight tuesday, the NYC area had a calamatous thunderstorm. I hadn't seen or heard a storm like it in a few years, it was a magnificent thing. Of course, as massive thunderstorms are wont to do, they played havoc with the local wirings. Aparently, my downstairs neighbor's didigtal cable service went ka-plooey as a result of the storm. I know this because just as I was leaving this morning, my hand on the front door of the apartment building, my neighbor's door opens. And this little old lady, probably in her late 60s at least, is there, asking me if I can help with her cable. Mind you, she lives there with (I presume) her son; it's not like she lives alone and has no one to turn to.

But both these events give me pause. What is it about these old women that make them lie in wait. This morning, this woman obviously heard me coming down the steps. Did she decide, on the spur of the moment, to ask me for help? Why not ask her son? Perhaps she didn't trust his abilities, and felt more secure asking random strangers.

And what of my other neighbor? Her feet were swollen--that was plain to see when she talked to me that first time with the garbage bag. She knows roughly what time I get home fromt work--during the summer she's always outside sitting in a chair and enjoying the warm weather--so she had to have been waiting for me. And that second time: how could she know to open the door of her apartment unless she was waiting for me--or my roommate--to leave ours?

What is it about these old women that compell them to be so sneaky? My neighboor could easily ask for my phone number (which I'd be hesitant to give as she'd probably usue it to call me every five minutes for some little thing); but it would surely be more polite than simply waiting by the door. At the very least, for that second trash bag, simple courtesy would dictate that she let me know when she'd need her trash dumped, rather than presumtuously dumping it outside, as if I were the regular sanitation workers.

I wonder if my Grandmother does this? Waiting for some unsuspecting strapping youngster to pass by her house, at which point she opens the door and invites him in for some milk and cookies (or, more apprpriate for my Grandmother, some mahjong and margaritas) and under this guise of pleantry, reveal her true purpose. Hmmm, then again, tyat really isn't my grandmother's style. But ten to one some of her friends do it, so I could still ask her for some insider information on the topic.

So, is it just me? Am I some senior-citizen-chick-magnet? Or have you, too, been a victim of the Old Lady Ambush? Inquiring minds want to know.

It occurs to me, as I am about to go to sleep (for getting a mere seven hours sleep in the last 48 hours tends to bring a certain shift in perspective; sleep deprivation is the best precusor to lucidity) that, though I have been in Morocco on a business trip, I have not been to my office since last Monday. It feels like, rightly or wrongly, like I've been on vacation.

I'm baaaaaaaaack.

It's 11:30 now . . . about 3:30 in the morning in Morocco. I feel largely unprepaired. Sean bought me a travel guide to Morocco. I was in Barnes & Nobel's on Saturday and it didn't even occur to me to check such a book out.

I'll tell you the one thing I am worried about: whether my skin condition will cause problems at customs. Most doctors aren't familiar with my condition, never mind customs agents. Would you let someone into your country with half a dozen blisters visible and they can't offer any documentation as to what it is? On the bright side, there aren't really any large blisters visible--I have one or two on each hand at the moment, but they're small and being treated so I doubt anyone will think much of them. But it's one of those last-minute things that I'm realzing may cause complications.

Packing went easily enough, I mostly tranfered the laundry I did this morning from the basket to the suitcase. Tomorrow I show up to work in beat-up slacks and a t-shirt. (I'd like to push my luck and make it one of my concert T's, but I'm thinking one of my "nice" t-shirts will be the better choice.) I still have to pack toiletries, and I'm debating whether I want to bring ne of my duffle bags on top of the suitcase. All my clothes fit in the suitcase with enough room to spare, but I really don't have a medium-sized travel bag--the closest I have is my workbag, and that's probably going to be loaded with books for the plane ride.

Nothing like waiting to the last minute to realize all the little things. And it's not like if I forget something I can just go to the local K-Mart and pick something up.

Would now be a good time to admit how frickin' nervous I am? I know it'll be great, don't get me wrong. But I'm traveling, solo, out of the country. At least it's all business and not a vacation.

. . .

And how bizarre a world has it become when I can write a sentence like that and be glad?

Well, it's now midnight. I may stay up half an hour more so I can be nice and tired by the time I get on the plane. Next time I write it'll be next Sunday, or perhaps Monday.

Wish me luck....

I bought Big Fish on DVD today. It was one of those half-impulse buys. I say half impulse because I had wanted to see the movie when it came out back in January--it looked like the kind of movie I would really enjoy and connect with. I heard generally good reviews, and when I was in Best Buy this afternoon, I saw it on the rack. A voice in my head said "you know, before you buy this, maybe we should rent it or something first to make sure it's worth buying."

Understand, I try to be frugal with my DVD purchases. Not for lack of wanting DVD's, but I've never been crazy about buying a DVD that I'll only end up watching once; I'd prefer to buy the movies I realy enjoy, the ones I'd want to keep watching over and over.

So I bought the movie and I watched it when I came home. It wasn't the utter catharic experience I hoped it would be--I knew it wouldn't--but it started out very promising. Certainly one of Tim burton's stronger directorial efforts, and the color palate is wonderful; exquistie cinematography.

The problem is the story all falls apart at the end. Get ready for spoilers:

The plot of the movie is that father and son do not get along. Edward Bloom, the father, is an enganing racentour. The problem is, his stories are so amazingly exaggerated, they can't possibly be true. People enjoy them nonetheless, because they see the truth within the fictions, and all is well and good except for the son, William, who can't get past the fiction. He's desperate to find out the "truth" abouthis father so he can find--or perhaps regain--a connection to his father he regards as a stranger.

Why William wants to find this connection is never clear--and. unfortunately, this isn't the point of the movie. The movie is really about Edward Bloom and his version of his life. It's standard Tim Burton territory. And Burton's become more adept at showing us these things--there are fantastic sequences aplenty, like the best tall tales, seamlessly integrated with "real" life; you never get the surreal feeling you do with Edward Scissocrhands or Beetlejuice. The problem is this means that Edward Bloom is the only character with any real depth and humanity (Helena Bonham Carter's Jennifer comes close, though I think that has more to do with her acting skills than the script). and this is what causes trouble at the end.

And what you have at the end is this: , Edward is dying in the hospital, but he refuses to die that way. So, reaching some epiphany, William realizes his father must die as he lived--as a tall tale. So in a sequence that is admittedly full of pathos, William describes to his father his fantastical death. And, just to hammer the point of the movie home in case you missed the hammer in the previous 110 minutes, Edwards funeral is attended by all the amazing and supposedly imaginary characters he knew in his life.

You'd think this would be a wonderful poignant ending, and I suppose on one level it is. The problem is it's utterly hollow. Because you have no payoff between father and son. Yes, William finally realizes that Edward isn't someone who uses fictions to reveal rather than decieve. But what they reveal isn't very clear--and they should be; at the very least it should be clear for his son, who has heard the same stories countless times and doesn't find them endearing at all. William spends the entire movie almost beligerently attacking his fathers fictions. Even at his father's deathbed, when William finally learns the "true" (and utterly mundane) story of his birth, he comments that he prefers the true story to the fanicful one Edward has always told. Why then the sudden change of heart? What does he realize?Thoughout the entire movie, Edward stubbornly refuses to give his son what he wants, give him any reason for his son to trust him. Yet at the end the son has a change a heart just because his father acts as stubbornly as he has throughout his life?

It seems as if the idea is that William comes to this epiphany as he begins telling the story of his father's death. If that's the case, then it's a sequence Burton failed at spectacularly. What starts out as a tender moment between father and son devolves into yet another tall tale. Which then makes me wonder what was the point of having the father/son estrangement at all? Obviously it was the maguffin used to tell the story, but with William's acceptance of his fathers story, those stories lose context--there is no "reality" to contrast it to.

The irony is that Burton became as enraptured with Edward's stories as so many others, and by doing so, does exactly what Edward does--he ignores the son, the person who should be the most important character in the movie. By ignoring William, the movie loses its true realism--not the "reality" of Edwards tall tales, but the very humanity the movie was supposed to be celebrating.

Movies are fictions themselves, and the best movies are the ones, like Edwards tales, that give you the truth even if told in a fiction. By surrendering completely to the fictions of Edwards Bloom, by bringing all the fantastical characters to the funeral, the implication is the fictions aren't fictions at all, and that defeats the essence of Edward Bloom. It defeats the very realization that William is supposed to come to--that the audience is supposed to have. The movie is reduced from tangible poignancy to simple whimsy. It's an ending unworthy of the rest of the movie. Worse, it's an ending unworthy of Edward Bloom.