A 9-11 T-Shirt.

I was buying a bagel on the way to work this morning & there was a woman on line wearing a brand-new ‘9-11 Memorial’ t-shirt (with an ad for Tishman Construction prominently displayed on the sleeve). Not a ‘Never Forget’ t-shirt or an ‘In Loving Memory’ t-shirt. That mighta been OK.

No. It was a tourist trap souvenir t-shirt. How exactly is that different from an Auschwitz t-shirt or a Srebrenica t-shirt or a Darfur t-shirt or a Columbine t-shirt?


At least it was black, but I think that was more Manhattan cool than anything else.

There is a serious disconnect these days between the sacrifices, the hardships, the tragedies, the insanity that makes up the lives & deaths around us, & the willingness or even the ability of the rest of us to see it. We have no shared American experience anymore. No shared grief or anger or despair or joy. Or love. We have become a nation of people who hate our neighbors, both next door & around the world, because we think they have something that should be ours & why should we share, anyway?

I had hoped that Ground Zero would remain...I dunno, hallowed ground. Sacred. That's strange coming from me, I guess. Maybe 'sacred' is the wrong word, because, in a sense, it is a monument, to how quickly people will kill (& avenge those killings) in God's name. An invisible monument, to be sure, but still there. To most people, it has become one more background for one more vacation picture of the kids. Something to do before the Broadway show or the Yankees game. A reminder to nobody. An homage lost & forgotten. An inconvenience.

9-11 no longer has any meaning. After just 10 short years, it is just an excuse to deny each other's patriotism. Or sell t-shirts.

Way to go, counselor.

Lemme see if I understand this. The Solicitor General of the United States, with months, maybe years to prepare, stood before the Supreme Court today and could not answer the one question that anybody who has been paying attention knew was coming.

At least Carlos Beltran got froze by a curveball, didn't he?

Un-f*cking-believeable.

The Photograph I Didn't Take.

 

It was the last day of our vacation. We had just finished a week of camping our way around Lake Ontario & had spent most of September 10^th driving back to our house in Sullivan County under a cold front. If we had left 90 minutes earlier or later, we could have made the entire trip in sunshine. That storm also pushed another storm traveling up the coast out to sea, leaving behind the beautiful weather that we all remember so well.

Our backyard had three ancient willow trees that always shed branches when it rained, so that’s where I was, cleaning up, when my brother called the next morning.

Jane answered & Dave said, Are you watching television?

No.

Turn it on. Now.

What channel?

It doesn’t matter.

I was on the phone with him when the North Tower fell.

On September 12^th, back in the city, Dave & I rode our bicycles downtown to see what we could see. On my way to meet him, I saw a car parked on West 77^th Street, covered in dust.

The cops had all traffic blocked at Houston Street, but from years of running along the East River, I knew the little downtown streets pretty well. Getting inside was easy.

Dave wanted to go back to his old apartment in the West Village. Walking out of his front door every day, the first thing he would see would be the towers. At Christopher & Washington, he got off his bicycle in the middle of the intersection & let it drop. He stood in the middle of the street, arms at his sides, staring up at the empty sky.

I took so many pictures that day, but I didn’t take that one. I don’t know why.

We got within two or three blocks of The Pile. Everything was covered in dust, sometimes ankledeep. Papers & shoes. Demolished cars & trucks, towed just far enough away.

At some point I realized that we were serving no useful purpose & had no acceptable reason for being there, taking pictures of rescue workers with nobody to rescue. I thought about what was in the dust I was walking on & I felt like a creep.

The fires burned for weeks. You could smell them from 30 miles away, or more.

In 2002, I worked the first Tribeca Film Festival. Every time we stepped outside, day or night, we would see truckloads of debris being loaded onto barges for transport to labs, hoping to find something, for somebody.

Jane & I sold our house upstate a couple years later. Dave died a few months after that. The 9/11 photograph I didn't take is the one that's stuck in my head.

All those people.

Welcome Back.

OK, that was a lot of fun. We all had a good laugh or two at the expense of fools, & that’s the best kind of laugh. ‘If you can’t think of a good Rapture joke, it’s not the end of the world.’ That was my favorite.

Y’know, I can’t help but think that the people who were that sure they were going, at the end of the day, weren’t going anywhere. If the Rapture had happened for real, we would all have been very surprised at who stayed & who left.

But we’re all still here & what sucked about life on Earth last week still sucks. Legitimate problems that gave this joker in Oakland just a little more ammunition to convince people that the world deserves to end, they’re still around. Some of the other stuff, like homophobia & good old-fashioned Christian intolerance, isn’t what I’m talking about. Those are problems, to be sure, just not in the way most apocalyptic Christians imagine.

So how about we dispense with the myths & fantasies & fairytales. Let’s stop waiting for dreams to come true. We could actually try to fix the world that we live in, here & now.

I know. Fat chance.

But we do get to play this End of Days game all over next year, when the Mayan calendar runs out.

Children of the Rapture.

So, should the Rapture NOT come Saturday, what happens to the children?

We’re all giggling up our sleeves at these poor delusionals that have exhausted their life savings to warn the heathen scum among us that it’s not too late to repent & be saved.

(Let’s just think about that for a second & then quickly move on: the End of Days is upon us & people are spending everything they have on advertising. Madison Avenue has won. Maybe it really is over, after all.)

When the End doesn’t come, they’re gonna be broke, because of this snakeoil salesman in California. (Don’t misunderstand me. I have no sympathy for them. None.) Is he gonna reimburse them? Not bloody likely. He’ll just pick another day, like the last time. Maybe he really believes this stuff. More’s the pity.

I could go on at length about how here we are, an allegedly modern society, & this nonsense still has astonishing traction. But, like I said before, what I really want to know is, what about the children? This wasn’t their idea. I doubt that they were seriously consulted. What did they do to deserve whatever comes Sunday, after their parents throw it all away on Saturday? Why are the sins (yeah, I said sins) of the father always visited upon the son? Are the infidels, atheists & other sundry unbelievers who these pious souls were willing to pray for, but happy to leave behind, supposed to step up? On Friday, we weren’t good enough. Will God provide? He’s lied to them already, at least once.

All I’m saying is, if you gotta roll the dice, then roll ‘em, but don’t bet your kids. There’s no such thing as a sure thing.

What about the children?

Metablog.

Blogspot has been down for over 18 hours. Something about maintenance gone bad, with spectacular conspiracy theories floating around. Since I’m trying to avoid thinking about how long it’s been since I last checked my hit count, I thought this might be a good time to muse about how this whole blog thing is going for me. Oh, & for you too. Of course.

Yes, it has come to this: I’m gonna write a blog about my blog, & I can’t promise that this will be the only time. You will see this as either an exercise in ironic self-reference (if you like it) or self-important narcissism (if you don’t). I’m OK with it, either way.

I’ve been writing this blog for a couple weeks now. In that time, I’ve tried to explain what I intend to do, told a joke or two, even ranted a little. So far, so good.

The main reason for doing this at all is a desire to find my voice, to see if I really can be the writer that I have imagined myself to be, without ever really doing it, for so many years. The answer so far is, Maybe. Maybe I can. I dunno yet. But I’m averaging about 40 hits a day, so somebody is actually reading this stuff, maybe even people that don’t know me. That blows my mind.

Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

A few months ago, I performed my own songs, for the first time ever, at an open mic thing. Yeah, I know, it was planned by friends, produced by friends, & largely peopled by friends. It was quite possibly the friendliest audience I’ll ever see, & it went very, very well. I was scared shitless anyway & didn’t really enjoy it, or rather, I enjoyed it just enough to want to do it again & scare the shit out of myself all over. The most amazing part of the experience was the realization that there may actually be an audience for my bizarre little songs. Who knew.

I kinda feel the same way about this blog business. I would hope that I could provide wry commentary on life as we know it, the eternal search for irony. I plan to be funny soon, preferably when it’s on purpose. Make a contribution. But at the end of the day, I’m afraid that it really is mostly navel-contemplation. Me, expressing my opinion. Me, writing a slow-motion autobiography. Me, me, me. Hopefully, something of substance will come out of this. That's not for me to judge. I’m just as amazed at people reading this stuff, with the distinct possibility that some are coming back to see what nonsense I’ll drum up next, as I am at people liking my songs. It’s fervently desired & thoroughly unexpected. The difference is, with writing a blog, I don’t hafta stand up in front of people. This is a little easier. Just a little.

Oh hey, Blogspot’s back. For me, anyway. Me, me, me. See ya.

Enos Slaughter.

I wish I could take credit for this story, but I can’t. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but, frankly, I don’t care. I can’t even give proper attribution, because Google has let me down, this once. So I will repeat it as best as I can remember, heavily paraphrased.

Many years ago, I was watching a baseball game on television, & the announcer was talking about an interview he had heard, many years before that, with Enos Slaughter, Hall of Fame outfielder who played his best years for the St. Louis Cardinals. The conversation turned to Ty Cobb. The interviewer asked Enos Slaughter what he thought Ty Cobb’s batting average would be if he were playing today (the late 1960’s).

Enos Slaughter said, Probably .310 or .320.

The interviewer said, Is that all? He hit .367 lifetime, over .400 three times.

Enos Slaughter said, You have to remember, he’d be over 80 if he were alive today.