Andrew J. Lederer

and now i think i can more clearly express what i was talking about --

"i'm dark and i'm outraged about things any thinking person would already be outraged about and we all feel better and special for sharing this outrage though this shared feeling isn't going to change anything and i'm not half as funny as a laurel and hardy movie or an episode of 'fawlty towers'."

now, i have nothing against darkness or outrage in comedy but there is a perhaps unintentional disingenuousness here. as in "i'm, shocked, shocked that government lies to us and corporations aren't our friends." (yes, i know i also used the inspector renault template in my last screed on disingenuousness. it fits.)

i remember last year in edinburgh, critics mentioned excitedly how doug stanhope seemed positively on the verge of destroying himself.

this is comedy? watching a guy destroy himself?

i guess it is if you're the type of person who finds people being thrown to lions funny or finds risible a guy collapsing with a heart attack in the street. (yes, it would be funny if he fell into mud.)

oh, yeah -- i forgot -- stanhope was throwing himself to the lions because he couldn't stand the pain of all the truth he had to bear because of his inability to shield himself like we mere mortals in the audience.

"ah, but my sacrifice is worth it as you may be able to benefit from what i'm forcing you to face, even if i go under."

come on, do any of you really believe doug stanhope was/is "destroying himself" (if, indeed, he was or is) because of the world? self-destruction is more personal than that. it comes from within. the societal commentary, true or otherwise, is just something you hang on your pain.

(this is as far as i got with these thoughts.)

i was just reading steve bennett's chortle review of joe rogan, in which he categorizes rogan as -- like kinison, hicks and stanhope -- an outlaw comic.

BULLSHIT

. . . to the very notion.


i remember one night at the westwood comedy store, sam kinison said to me something along the lines of, "i know we're different but i respect you (that was a paraphrase but this is a direct quote -- ) we're both outlaws." (well, it coulda been "we're all outlaws," he mighta been talking about him and me and his outlaw entourage.)

my reaction at the time was twofold -- i was flattered that he included me -- i wanted to be an outlaw

and i thought the whole notion of those guys or me being outlaws was ridiculous.

this may be harder for those of you in britain to understand than for those over here: there was/is no amazing risk in doing what these guys do -- telling the truth that they tell. regardless of what it looks like on the outside, the most transgressive ideas are all over the place here and have been since before any of the people under discussion were born.

i'll give ya an example that may place it in relief -- the so-called "unbookables" show in edinburgh last year. those guys weren't unbookable. they were ultra-bookable/exactly what people wanted to see and hear.

heartfelt and brilliant though the people in question may be, they never, in my experience have said anything unprecedented, except, perhaps occasionally, in the context of a mainstream stand-up milieu.

i don't doubt that the hickses of the world thought they were blazing trails and maybe, coming from the southwest, as the hicks/kinison guys did, there are more strictures, religious and otherwise, than those i encountered as a jew in new york. but the fact remains, none of these guys were originators of big ideas; they were marketing them to like-thinking people at a time when, to a reasonable extent at least, their notions -- in a comedic context -- were welcome.

and that's why they were/are not "outlaws," except if the term is considered generic rather than literally descriptive.

oh, yeah -- you know what else i thought when sam said that to me? "why would we want to be outlaws?"

comedians always have a certain license. the degree to which sam was actually an outlaw was mostly outside the realm of the comedic and it probably damaged his life. the reason he was great was because he was funny. as time wen by and he became more outlaw and less comic, he became less great and less successful.

now, hicks might actually agree with some of what i'm saying. he was funny before he was anything else -- before he was a smoker, a drug-taker, anything.

i remember him waxing rhapsodic about gaylord sartain, with whom he had made a sitcom pilot. gaylord sartain is most famous for having been on frigging "hee-haw," for christ's sake. but hicks was crazy about him because he was funny.

this little rant is neither detailed nor complete but it points the way to certain truths (as i see them) and you guys can fill in the blanks, rebut, agree, whatever.

my notions may make more complete sense to you if and when i return to the subject here. (i think i may have written about this before, during the last fringe. couldn't find it in a search, though.)

and i have to admit, i thought then (when sam "included" me) and i think now that if anybody is an outlaw, i'm an outlaw.

subtlety in truth; to tell the truth as closely as possible to the way it actually happened, with a minimum of exaggeration, and still have it be funny. that's what i'm going for.

i don't always succeed. and i'm not the only one trying. and it's not the only kind of comedy i like as a performer nor is it my only enthusiasm as a member of the audience. and i'm not the best at it.

but in many comedy environments, one takes a lot of heat for goin' at it that way; for breaking the rules; for being an outlaw.

(but who wants to be an outlaw?)

fringe office took the 1100 bucks i offered and will tell me how much more i owe and when i owe it on monday. it strains credulity to think that, after taking all that money, they'll drop my listings because of what i still owe (especially since i won't owe it if they drop my listings). but who knows with these guys?

i'm pretty much recovered from my self-induced stomach ailment. yesterday, i managed to get outside a little.

i had waves of discomfort but could handle them and, more tellingly, i could handle the sikh day celebration i stumbled onto in and around madison square park.

a right festival of turbans, it was. i went looking for native foodstuffs to buy, but it turned out they were giving them away. (it's times like these that i love religion.)

it was good, indian vegetarian food -- some of it familiar-looking, some of it looking like slop. but i ate everything that was handed to me and even the slop was tolerable. (some of the other stuff was nice.)

pure, white, delicious indian rice. perfect tortilla-like breads.

mmm mm.

it made me feel like hell.

a hell i transcended by getting in touch with the pink, white, and translucent green beauty of madison square park. (also its metallic beauty, as mixed in with nature's aesthetic bounty were metal trees, which were part of some art installation.)

the springtime wonders swept me to that pleasurable place inside me where the fact of my existence in a wondrous world generated intense pleasure and a sense of connection to nature.

in addition to which, i still felt like hell.

which made me notice i was right near the train to my gym.

so, i went and worked out hard (as opposed to my typical, perfunctory "tip of the hat" to movement). i took to the sauna to sweat out the toxins that had been plaguing me, then returned to the cat-watching pad to mostly ignore various versions of "law and order" and drift off to slumber.

in the middle of the night i woke up and made myself a steak.

Ulcer-like pain. Marathon tours of duty in the "rest" room. Couldn't close a window in the other room and it got cold, so I closed the door which may be why the cat I'm looking after was yowling at me, at great length, in the middle of the night when I was trying to sleep away the pain.

Allergies kicking in. Took almost a full day's maximum dose of stomach medicine in just a few hours.

Got a friend to let me use his credit card to pay most of the money I owe the Fringe office before the deadline they gave me (which was today). E-mailed them the details hours ago; now, it's heading toward the end of the day/week in Edinburgh and I've heard nothing.

Writing this is making my stomach act up again.

Why did I take that aspirin without water? I never answered that question because I don't know!

The delicious Ziggi's french fries I ate last night covered in highly acidic, tomato-based ketchup didn't help me for some reason. Nor did the whole wheat penne bolognese I made and ate in large quantities.

Nor the Pepsi One,

Nor cold Schweppes ginger ale.

Moan.

I just ate some more of it out of the pan it's been sitting in on the stove. Not a good idea, right?

But it tasted good.

And I was hungry.

it happened AGAIN, with my post about last night's "Subway Stories" set.

i've now changed the categories, so it CAN'T happen again.

the whole point of this blog is HONESTY.

honestly,
andrew

My appearance at "It Came from New York" at the Bowery Poetry Club last night went great. The theme was "Subway Stories" and I told a lot of them in my Edinburgh show last year, so I was more than well-prepared.

I love to test the audience's willingness to go along with me (they often fail the test -- or maybe I'm the one who fails), so it was gratifying to find acceptance and a fond embrace even as I told them of an adolescent masturbation escapade on an empty middle-of-the night train. (Subway masturbation seems to have fallen into disrepute as renegade practitioners have taken to doing it when other people are present.)

There were many smiling people complimenting me on their way out (though, as of my last search, no one seems to have been moved to enthusiastically blog about me). After the show, I went out with some of the gang but left quickly because an aspirin taken without water during the afternoon had turned into an ulcer-style stomach ache. (I had decided that rather than stop eating badly, I needed to take an aspirin to stave off a heart attack during my afternoon nap -- I know you're only supposed to take part of an aspirin for that purpose, but I figured since my face still hurt, I could use the pain-relieving, too)

I was so distracted was I by my pain that I accidentally left without paying for my fries. Since I was too far away to go back when I realized this, I used the "extra" money I now had to buy a cheese steak.

I woke up depressed.

just noticed that the last five posts had been somehow placed by this blog setup into the category of "fiction", (which i created for "part 1" the other day). these are so not fiction.

i wonder what the psychological effect was on readers -- seeing the word "fiction" above what i had written.

i've now fixed the problem but have i been dismissed? has compassion not reigned? has concern not been forthcoming? has wise advice and sage counsel been withheld? have my life, my stress, my fears been seen as a gag?

a joke that is, in effect, on me?

between $1500 and $2000, depending on how it's figured and who does the figuring, by friday evening gmt or -- i have been threatened by an accountant -- i will be removed from the 2007 edinburgh fringe programme.

$326, by next thursday morning, or my stored belongings will be sold.

total -- min. $1826.

expected income -- $700, minus withholding, maybe by friday, but in check form and after close of business gmt.

and maybe not by friday.


remember, i'm doing a show tonight -- "it came from new york" at the bowery poetry club in new york city at 8 (midnight friday gmt).


ps. they're not really following gmt right now in the uk, 'cause they also have daylight savings in force, but i don't know what initials are used to express that.

come if you can.

_____________________________________

IT CAME FROM NEW YORK: SUBWAY STORIES

Tales of the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, M, N, R, V and W. With the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 and a little QB, GG, RR, CC and LL thrown in for those who remember.

BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery btw. Bleecker & Houston
8:00pm
Tix: $8

Featuring:
It Came From FLATBUSH: writer/artstar ERIK SEIMS
It Came From THE UPPER WEST SIDE I actor/writer VID HARDT
It Came From OLD MILL BASIN monologuist ANDREW J LEDERER
It Came From THE UPPER WEST SIDE II writer/comedian KATIE HALPER
plus token non-New Yorker It Came From NEW JERSEY poet/chanteuse
BONI JOI

With music from ICFNY house band LONE VEIN. Curated and hosted by Michele Carlo, who has lived in four of the five boroughs of NYC and can remember when a slice of pizza cost fifty cents.

people never think i'm doing anything.

i mean as an actor or comedian or writer or whatever.

i don't mean that they think i'm out of work. (although they'd be correct in that.)

i mean they think i'm just being rather than doing. that i'm not acting or intentionally creating a persona or tone but instead am just a character, powerless to be anything other than what is paraded before them.

which, in a way is a goal of mine.

in a way, it's a compliment to me.

(and in a way, it's maybe even partially true.)

but this perception of me as god or circumstance's creation rather than my own has haunted me again and again.

at a desk by the window (the sun will prevent others from recoiling at the sight), covered with grease from the approx. 2/3 of a pound of pasta i made for myself and the accompanying home-made, oil-laden sauce. (the pork chop i fried up earlier apparently wasn't enough to satisfy my appetite despite the cookies i followed it up with.)

lots of garlic in the pasta-fixin's. if someone were near me, they'd probably notice that. (great shower here. i should use it.)

i didn't finish possibly (though probably not) remunerative work i had to do this morning. i won't get paid by the fake news people until i straighten out some paperwork but i have to call them and i'm too unmotivated to put new minutes on my phone.

an associate wants to brainstorm and i just want to lie down.

or sit up.

alone and quiet.

miserable and optimistic.


a guy paid me 40 dollars less than he said he had for something. i didn't count the money 'til days later.

my storage is gonna be up for sale again on may 3rd. i owe $335, more than $100 of which is late fees.

you may remember i said this wouldn't happen again, as they were lowering my monthly rate from $25 to $75 and it is true that the going rate for my unit is now $25. however, when i last paid my bill -- over the phone with a friend's credit card -- they ran the charge including the next month, before i had a chance to tell them not to.

rather than create havoc by attempting to have the girl reverse the charge and then reprocess it for the correct amount, i figured i'd be nice and let them reapportion the money based on the new rate after i got the change taken care of. (i had to move to the unit next to mine to get the lower rate -- it had to be as if i was starting over.)

so, i went to the storage place the next day and was told i had to pay a $25 processing fee to start over again.

fair enough, i thought. still a bargain. "take it out of the money left over from the coming month's rent your girl charged me yesterday."

but the manager wouldn't/couldn't do it.

she said something like "rent is rent, fees is fees" (although i'm sure it wasn't as "no tickee, no washee" as that), meaning she could only use the rent i'd paid toward other rent, not toward an account reopening fee. so, even though i had paid three times what would be my new monthly rent, i couldn't use any of the overage to cover the processing for the change.

if i had $25 in cash, the change could instantly be made and the extra $50 i'd paid in rent would cover me 'til the end of march.

but i didn't have an additional 25 bucks.

so i couldn't make the change at all.

and the rent accrued at the higher rate until, when i had some money, it still wasn't enough for me to cover the ballooning balance.

i looked at their website the other day. they don't even have spaces listed that cost more than $25. i've been paying an inflated rate from years ago.

yet somehow i now owe $335 when i should owe $25 or $50 or -- with fees -- $65.

because i was nice and didn't make the girl reverse the charge right after she put it through.

does that seem fair?

(by the way, i'm talking about storage usa, john st. in brooklyn -- an extra space company. maybe someone in corporate will scan the web, see this, feel guilty and straighten this out so that i don't lose my stuff and they get paid what's fair but no more.

. . . nah.)

What a fucking beautiful day yesterday. Wandering through Greenwich Village in the sunshine is one of the good things.

Saw Mel Brooks sitting at one of the outside tables at French Roast. Looked great and was with a younger guy, maybe his son.

I acknowledged him as "Kaminsky," -- which is his real name -- and gave a "thumbs up" gesture.

He smiled back warmly.

The white trees were everywhere and almost pure white. (Soon they will begin to have more green -- it's not the same.)

Hey! And now it's today.

Gavin Crain knew he had been exposed to a more-than-reasonable amount of radiation in his youth because of his family's unfortunate taste in collectibles -- radium-filled timepieces and uranium-glazed Fiestaware, which they ate off of every Sunday night because it was special. He often felt sick, which he imagined was related to this exposure and was jealous of comic book characters, whose nuclear experiences turned them into heroes, not somewhat justified hypochondriacs.

"Still," he thought to himself, "getting bitten by a radioactive spider gave Peter Parker spider-like powers. What would my powers be? The ability to tell time? The strength of a Mexican dinner?"

Hmm. The more he thought about it, the more he figured he did have one power -- he was sort of invisible. It wasn't the right kind of invisibility, though. Not the kind that thwarts evil villains.

In truth, Gavin was invisible even to himself. He didn't really notice that he could do things.

Like, you know the stories about adrenaline-fueled mothers who somehow find the strength to lift cars off of their young ones and things like that? Well, Gavin couldn't quite do that but he came close -- he seemed always willing to get one of his students or even a passerby out of a scrape and if it meant climbing something or lifting something that seemed daunting to others, he would do it and think nothing of it.

And he didn't need a personal connection to whoever was in need to drum up the necessary enthusiasm and strength.

Have we always lived in such a disingenuous society, where the prevailing paradigm is Casablanca's game-happy Captain Renault proclaiming expediently that he is "Shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on" in Rick's Cafe?

Merely the latest example of this mania for flogging others as if their actions (which may be wrong, but that's beside the point) are somehow out of the ordinary is the frenzy over Alec Baldwin's rage-filled and perhaps vile message to his 11-year-old daughter.

I don't know. The level of froth didn't seem outside my childhood experience or the experiences of others I know. I heard on CNN that Baldwin's visitation rights were rescinded because of this tape. Come on, now. For calling her a pig?

88% of America's children would be wards of the state if that were the standard of parental inadequacy.

This is what we fiddle with while America burns.

The head of the (Brooklyn school) District 21/22 chorus I joined when I was a kid was a teacher named Paul Anish, with a hard a.

If I had been a little older, maybe I'd have been clever enough to think of him as Mr. Anus, even though he wasn't particularly an asshole, but because I was still in single digits, I instead thought of him as Mr. Amish, also with -- incorrectly, because my cousins had visited the Pennsylvania Dutch (really Deutsche) country and come back saying it that way -- a hard a.

So, because I was too dumb to know how to pronounce Amish, I thought he had a funny name, but if I had known how to pronounce Amish, I would have thought he didn't have a funny name because I was too young to know the word anus, the existence of which means, for reasons other than those I suspected, that he did have a funny name.

Did I intuit that his name was funny and find a way to make it so without the knowledge necessary to find the right answer? Or was it one of life's coincidences that led me to internally laugh at the name of someone who's name deserved to be laughed at for a slightly different reason which was unknown to me?

Maybe that's why he taught elementary school. (He may have taught older kids, but let's proceed for the moment as if he didn't.) Could be he knew that pre-teens and older would have recognized the scatological potential of his name and make his life a living, unholy hell..

On the other hand, if I'd for some reason said "Mr. Amish" aloud one day, even if he was capable of figuring out what I meant, he'd have smiled benignly, recognizing the harsh fate he'd escaped.

Thank goodness none of this was cluttering my mind during those halcyon Saturday mornings as I willingly missed Saturday morning cartoons -- permanently putting me out of step with my generation -- to learn "The Ash Grove" and fa-la-las and all that rot (which I loved).

No, my mind was cluttered by the name of my more immediate choral instructor -- Mr. Gustafeste (guss-ta-fess-tee). Man, I love that name to this day.

He was the first guy, as far as as I know, that I ever saw wearing a cumberbund, which I, for a long time (of course), thought was pronounced cumberbun, as if it were a baked good. (And by a long time, I mean until pretty recently.)

Shouldn't a guy named Gustafeste wear a cumberbund?

I think he should.

the last hour or so of "The Nutty Professor". (Not the Eddie Murphy movie.)

I've probably seen it at least a dozen times in my life and haven't always been in the mood to enjoy it but today I just couldn't get over how awesome it is.

Such control. Brilliant attention to detail. Good acting, even. (Not things you always associate with Jerry Lewis.)

Very clearly inspired by Jerry's primary directorial influence, Frank Tashlin, but also pure Jerry. His final trip and fall into the camera brought tears to my eyes and made me laugh -- genuinely -- at the same time.

Real comedy.

begat a late-starting spring in New York City, which seems to have kicked in today. It's 60-something degrees right now and should be that or higher for the next few days and, presumably, beyond.

The last time it was this warm was (freakishly) around mid-January. There were intimations of change over the last few days; hints that the season was finally ready to spring. White-bloomed trees have erupted in all their transitory beauty, augmented by cherry blossoms in various shades of red and bright yellow flowers in tiny, triangular parks.

I haven't gone out yet today but even the way the sun comes into the window has a new and welcoming quality.

It's a good day.

After months without a place to call my own, at the moment I have two apartments -- the temporarily permanent one and another where I'm expected to feed a cat and take care of other bidness while the master is out of town.

The "cat house", features a Persian feline, formerly a scaredy-cat in my presence, who has taken to following me everywhere. Luckily my allergies aren't acting up too badly. (I think I developed an immunity during my tenure hiding out more or less daily at my chef and video curator's THC-infused den of protection.)

My fear is that the lessee of record at the temporarily permanent place, remembering how sweet life was, will decide that, since I have this other domicile, he'd just as soon have his place to himself. But the cat house is permanently temporary, not temporarily permanent, so if one pad becoming two results in two becoming one, this current residential abundance will have been just another of life's ironic jokes.

Hallelujah.

Ever wonder why criminal masterminds are often "assisted" by brain-damaged idiots?

As it happens, the underpinning of this theoretically fictional relationship type is reality itself.

When you're on the bottom or off to the side in life -- marginalized by criminality, finance, or whatever -- there isn't a large pool of competent, compatible associates from which to draw, professionally or socially. You gotta go to war with the henchmen you have, not the henchmen you want.

And that, dear readers, is -- as much as anything else -- the reason Superman and his ilk tend to prevail. It isn't only goodness and niceness or truth and the American way.

We in life's margin's simply don't have the help.

st

that word above was gonna be stymied.

but then my for the time being roommate came in and threw me a sandwich and i couldn't go on because i'd be lying.

my mood has improved.

making sloppy joes from scratch.

in the middle of living. no time to write.

but it's simmering, so i thought i'd letcha know i'll be back, at length, tomorrow.

in the meantime, don't miss me too much.

love,
andrew

to that party.

but i didn't take a shower. the mechanism at the new place i'm staying confuses me. it may be a flaw in the system but i waited a long time and it didn't get warm.

settled for wearing freshly laundered clothes (and buying tic-tacs).

and, boy, it felt good to be out.

i mean, i was out all day -- even walked along with the new york tartan week parade.

the coolest thing was that, past the end of the parade route, bagpipers began playing "amazing grace" for their own enjoyment.

then, farther west on the same street -- after the pipers had stopped -- a laborer began to sing the song with a redneck/country twang. i walked out of its range but who knows how far the chain of musical reverence went and how many different musical styles were applied? (none, probably. i'm pretty sure i experienced the full extent of it. but i can dream, can't i?)

in any event, being out at night, after a seemingly completed day, felt different. in fact, i felt satisfied simply walking on 23rd st and almost didn't care if i found the funky private space in which the party was being held.

the night was soft, cool, and deeply black and the lights of the city stood out in crisp relief, imbuing me with a positive sensation that continued inside "the blue door".

there really were people from divergent of groups which don't usually overlap in my life plus entertainment from a band i like featuring a guy with a plastic arm.

i should fix him up with heather mills mccartney -- maybe if she has a dominant arm gene and he has a dominant leg gene -- and they breed -- they'll have a baby with all limbs intact. (oh, yeah. that would happen anyway.)

be that as it may, i was sociable, i got bought a couple drinks, i got invited to a cd release party tonight and i felt for more than a lttle while like i was a person.

these are good things, right?

maybe they'll continue tonight at the cd party.

my friend rena -- who i hadn't seen for months before running into her last night -- may want to go with me. and carla -- who threw last night's party -- said if she wasn't too hung over, maybe she would go.

but this is all in an almost unimaginably distant future. for now, it's all i can do to get over to the gym where, yes, i can exercise but, more importantly, i know how to work the shower.

for someone i barely know.

she's interesting and almost every other group i've ever been in -- separate in many other ways -- seem to converge in/upon/through her, though i really didn't meet her through any of them.

i made dinner tonight for my roommate of sorts and me -- london broil and spinach with garlic -- and it was pretty good. i feel garlicky and greasy and in no mood to remedy the situation and prepare to go out.

i'm a fool if i don't go to this party but nothing good is going to happen if i do.

i think i'm gonna go.

i'm gonna try, anyway.

but if i'm gonna take a shower, i guess first i gotta take off my shoes.

now that i am somewhat settled in my new temporarily semi-permanent place, i'm suddenly having london flashes.

the longer i've been back here, the more i've felt, from the accumulating burden of slights and failures, that i've got to beat this town. but now that i have a stable residential base from which to mount an assault over the next 3 1/2 months, the things that made me not even want to stay this long have been reappearing in my mind.

of course, i love new york. but the things i want and that make me thrive were (seemingly, at least) more readily available to me in london a few months back than they've recently been here at home.

i won't be vague. i'm talking about two things -- career and women. both seemed to smile at me at least in small, genuine ways during my summer and early fall (resist double meaning) in the uk.

now, i recognize that being an exotic/a visitor plays into this to some extent and perhaps if i were in the uk all the time, i would be taken for granted or neglected just as i am here. conversely, there are positive twinklings of promise here that can hopefully be fanned into conflagrations of personal and professional triumph (or mild satisfaction). but i feel like, in london -- for the time being at least -- i wouldn't have to fight downy-fresh, recent emotional bruises to get to a pinpoint of light. and that greater ease has a lot of appeal for me.

but it's not gonna happen so quick.

first, income -- none.

second, i owe the money for my edfringe program listings, so when i get my check from my short-lived writing job, it will go to that -- and it may not even be enough.. (plus they're threatening to deny me the early filing discount. and i wonder if they know i owe them money from last year.)

then theres a third and fourth and who knows how many other reasons i'm stuck here in the "greatest city in the world"

so, i gotta call women who've expressed an interest in me here and follow professional leads but manifesting the spring in my step necessary for doing it correctly is gonna take some effort.

i guess i'll start small.. i'm gonna head over to the brooklyn botanic garden to sneeze amidst the beautiful springtime blooms in a little while. (it's free on saturday mornings.) later, i'm gonna cook dinner for me and my friend. (london broil, spinach and rice.)

maybe i'll go to someone's birthday party tonight.

and i'll still be in new york tomorrow.

girl, about 20, in a manhattan wendy's --

"one day you're a teenager. then you look up, where your life has gone?"

friendus interruptus

the friend i'm staying with woke me up twice this week while i was in the middle of something important.

two or three days ago, he woke me while i was talking to desi arnaz.

and yesterday, he interrupted my slumber after i'd just found out both he and i had been dropped from the cast of a long-running british television show.


outside mcdonald's, broadway and 5th st.

french fries scattered over the sidewalk, surrounding, radiating from and encircling him, a man sat -- presumably hungry -- and held out a cup.


my justice

i'm not usually petty but sometimes my internal sense of fairness causes me to mete out justice, swiftly and mercilessly.

for instance, in edinburgh last summer, i was coming out of that short tunnel on the way from chambers st. to the pleasance dome when i impulsively pulled down and crumpled a poster for a comedy show because the booker had not only not responded to a message i sent him, he hadn't even bothered to open it. similarly, yesterday i walked into the sauna at the gym and was disgusted to see that someone had again hung an article of clothing to dry on the heating unit, seeing the space as his special clothes dryer.

why, i thought, did i have to breathe the evaporating exercise sweat and miscellaneous detritus from this guy's undershorts just because he can't bring himself to put them in a plastic bag and dry them at home?

after due deliberation (lasting a few seconds), i unscrewed the cap on my poland spring bottle and poured fresh water on them in hopes they would still be damp when he came to pick them up.

they were near where you pour water on the rocks, so it could have happened inadvertently, anyway. better he should learn this now than later.

i did him a favor.

Somehow manged not to get sick all winter. Now, I think I may be getting sick.

Cleching. Itch.

Maybe it's allergies.

After all, this is the time of year my face usually puffs up and crusts over.

Still, I go to see the cherry trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I won't pass up the seasonal beauty and pleasure for comfort's sake. Either I'll leave sneezing as if the devil himself is the botanical realm or I'll dose myself with benadryl and move, slow and zombie-like, through the springtime wonders, in a dimension of my own, wondering if I can be seen by the faster-moving others who surround me.

(I think I'll go Saturday.)

Time again to open up "The Old Mailbag".

In response to Overtly Emphatic:
Berry 9 wrote
Hiya Andrew

I have to say, I like the italics. Not only do I feel that they're used appropriately (even in the maligned coca-cola piece) but I find them positively helpful: they make it easier for me to hear your voice in my head when I read your words -- an enormous bonus for those of us trying to fully enjoy your comedy from overseas. Here in Scotland we have only your careful use of textual style to comfort and amuse us. (Well, that and real-sugar coke, of course.)

Actually, that's not all that I have to add to my enjoyment lately. I have also quit my job. (Did I mention the crappy civil service-type job that I'd been languishing in for the past 4 1/2 yrs? Well, it's goodbye to all that.) I have a new job in audit and accountancy, which I'm delighted about. I know that might seem crazy, but I am genuinely excited to be working in public finance.

So, I will still be working long hours and dividing my time among various Scottish cities, but when I am Edinburgh-based and keeping a reasonable schedule during August it'd be great to meet up. Let me know more about your schedule in Edinburgh as & when...

Best,
B

and That Guy wrote
I like the italics too!

In response to In the Soup:
Siskokidd wrote
What a grand adventure! It makes my day of cleaning out my storage space (still too many 90's ghosts to get rid of) seem uneventful. No moral dilemmas. No saving humanity from an epidemic, not even the whiff of food. I did find an item that I swore I returned to it's rightful owner, insisting as much to the owner years ago. Now it turns out I'm just a liar.

In response to Cryptic Musings:
skippywithnuts wrote
I like the new approach to your blog. Kind of like a Larry King column if he were really high. Like a Haiku... only a HIGH KOO-KOO.

I always get something out of every blog you write.

You have remained one my artistic inspirations since the moment i met you.

Thank you.

Marc

And that's all until the next time we open "The Old Mailbag".

1. how sad that it doesn't surprise me that much to see the enemies of cliche fall all over themselves when the bullshit they wanna hear is aimed at them.

2. re trust issues considered in both ends burning -- is it possible both parties can be trusted; considered friends? neither?

3. everybody wants to be saved.

what a load of impenetrable gunk.

the first part, mainly, but i fear it casts a shadow over the entire affair. looking it over later, i realized i could've made a couple of tiny fixes that would have made all the difference. (this is what happens when i don't look the thing over before i publish it.)

interesting information, though. (i think.) i hope you were able to see the content through the contorted form.

ah, well . . .

today has been nice. only one work week has passed since the employment i thought would save me evaporated into nothingness. remember how i was impatient to feel solid, thinking i'd already made a transition that wasn't yet noticeably present in my life?

well, i was wrong about that, wasn't i? nothing had changed, really, and before it could, the forces required for the change to come had dissipated.

good for story arc, though -- struggle, good news, apparent success which is then snatched from between my fingers. should have been followed by a good chronicle of loss and depression.

and i did feel lost and failed and frustrated and deluded as last week dawned. one thing i can tell you is that the ridiculousness of my life-planning was suddenly clear to me. how i ever thought i could accomplish anything before i had that pittance-producing gig is now a mystery to me.

it's strange -- when i had that gig, i kinda felt like a "gent", even though i was likely still a ragamuffin to others' eyes. after it was gone, i felt greasy and unkempt; unable to maintain myself, though -- again -- there was probably not much difference from previous days.

still, i never got that low.

and now it looks like i have a new semi-permanent living situation in place, filling the internal respectability slot previously inhabited by the writing gig.

bought sheets and pillow cases today.

and a pillow.

white.

laid on 'em happily for a while in my clothes before going out again. (the cheap pillow had a nice, new buoyance.)

then i walked through the largest chasidic neighborhood in the world on my way to manhattan. it's the next to last day of passover and the streets were filled with proud, black-clad families.

it's the closest, i think, i may ever get to being in a jewish shtetl in pre-ww2 europe. the streets there even twist and turn, european-style.

it was a trip. if you come to ny, be sure to go to williamsburg to experience this. i know some of you may associate williamsburg with hipsters but there's a massive part of the neighborhood that is a throwback to an eastern european, jewish yesteryear.

catch if if you can -- you ain't seen nothin' like it.

now i'm in noho, havin' a coffee. don't know what's to come later.

i do know that i feel kinda clean.

saw a grand and beautiful church in the bushwick area today. its bells tolled as i was passing by, not for me, but for the neighborhood types who were heading (i'm guessing) toward their solemn, yet joyous, resurrection celebration.

my friend asked me the other day about the traditional jewish christmas celebration, which -- most of you probably know -- consists of a trip to the movies and a chinese dinner. i told him and his friends that the traditional jewish easter celebration consisted of coloring easter eggs just because it's fun (and getting the house all stunk up with vinegar) followed by the execution of a jewish dissident.

(for the record -- "the jews" [whatever that phrase means, anyhow in a context like this] did not kill jesus.

they also do not control hollywood. [no, really.]

oh, yeah -- and i said the easter thing before i was asked about the christmas thing. got big, gentile laughs too. the kind of comfortable guffaws you can only get from a serene member of the dominant culture.)

saw a beautifully dressed, older black gentleman, with (presumably) his daughter and grandson, taking the bus to their easter destination. i took the same bus and enjoyed the old man and his daughter's running duologue about the neighborhood -- new things, old things, changed things, burned things, things slated for demolition . . .

we passed a rundown storefront church, called, if i'm remembering correctly, "the church of righteous prayer". as grubby and dirty and uninviting as it was, people were entering to mark the day in holy contemplation. (or something. a little earlier, i passed this latin church -- also in a storefront -- and it felt like a party. latin music was playing and people were groovin', salsa-style. didn't seem like a religious service to me. but what do i know? when i was one-month-old, my parent's bought me back from the rabbi for like, a dollar. that probably sounds irregular to a goyishe eardrum.)

anyway, this dirty worship shop had a marketing catchphrase. painted on the outside were the words, "there's no prayer like a righteous prayer." (if they'd used the money that went to painting that toward a new coat of white for rest of the exterior, i'd have found the at assertion somewhat more persuasive.)

right after that, we saw chasidim struttin' in their beaver hats and the daughter asked the old man, "do those jews celebrate easter?"

he answered with a very firm, "no," and went on to point out their new house of whatever, which he told her was just built and -- he'd heard -- very nice. he then started to talk about a chasidic custom -- i couldn't hear what it was -- but i did hear him say that it originated in paganism.

i don't know if he was right -- it sounded wrong to me -- but there was no judgement in his tone and, immediately, he started talking knowledgeably christian customs that had originally been pagan. i loved this smart guy and his clearly intelligent family and was surprised when we passed a high-rise housing project (like britain's council estates) and the daughter reacted to apartment terraces as if they were a new and unfamiliar technological wonder.

she worried about the safety of little kids in an apartment that had one and wanted to know if the terraces were entered via a door or if you climbed out a window, as with a fire escape.

her father assured her that what looked like a window was actually a door and, finally, they decided an apartment with an amenity like that was worth wishing for.

i'm guessing (duh) that these were not prosperous people. and they demonstrated that class and intellect are not the exclusive province of more monied types. (hell, who's stupider than some of the really rich?) when i left the bus i would see clueless people of a more curious sort.

in a dunkin' donuts-adjacent taco bell express, a young black guy acted as if he had never been in a fast food restaurant before -- something far more unlikely than having never been in an apartment with a terrace. the counter guy asked him what he wanted to drink and he said, with what seemed like genuine surprise, "what -- you don't have juice?"

the counter guy then ran through the most utterly conventional line-up of available beverages imaginable, with the guy consistently disappointed and at least once more asking for something that would not normally be there. fun-nee.

i took the train to the gym and had one more good easter moment -- a guy in the steam room crossing himself. (twice.)

sounds like a great holiday, huh?

i ended my afternoon with a walk through the eccentric and beautiful 19th-century architecture of ft. green, but not before buying a small package of more-or-less freshly-sliced ham, the better to taste the holiday.

and soon, i'm goin' to get fed home-cooked italian and watch the first episode of this year's sopranos in a friend of a friend's downtown manhattan hideaway.

so, i'm in a good mood. how about you? hope your day was springtimey (it's cold in new york) and smile-evoking.

oh, you know what? i didn't tell you how there were a number of places i saw today that still had christmas decorations up. is there a resurrection angle there? something that'll make that work?

no woman has ever accused me of stalking her, probably because i'm too damn lazy. but that does nothing to change the fact that we of the modern world see the that world, i suspect, in ways that are sadly different from our forbears.

for instance, a guy who once would have been called an "ardent suitor" is now a stalker.

some of the great long-lived relationships of all time began with a guy who wouldn't stop badgering an intensely uninterested woman, but that's not allowed to happen anymore. i shudder to think how crazy truman would have been with that bomb if he hadn't earlier in his life been allowed to hound bess until she was too weak to resist his enthusiasm for her. (i believe this took years.)

oh, yeah -- here's another one: "no" means no.

i mean, i understand why we have to assert, as a society, that this is so.

but no doesn't mean no.

not always.

'cause people are not linear, one-dimensional machines; we are beasts of nuance.

you know -- come to think of it -- i don't understand why, as a society, we have to pretend that subtext doesn't exist. why can't we acknowledge that there is subtlety, inconsistency and downright dissonance, cognitively speaking, in the ways we think and act, and that it is the responsibility of an aggressive actor -- interpersonally, that is -- to be damn sure he or she is reading the other person correctly and to be be willing to accept the consequences if he/she is not?

and, okay, let's be honest -- there's no "she" in that position, really. i'm just being politically correct.

speaking of which -- why is it so wrong to "objectify" women? women are objects, first, aren't they. (and so are men.)

we don't know each other when we first meet -- we see a physical presence - in other words, an object. we judge it, which is only natural (if perhaps "unfair"), and then we get to know this object and slowly turn it into a subject.

honestly, i'm only writing about this 'cause i didn't have anything personal on my mind today but i do mean what i'm saying and i've thought about if before, despite the fact that i'm not only not a stalker, i also have no rape plans and am generally more enthused by a woman's substance than her shadow.

i am an ogler, though. it's partly because i have bad, uncorrected vision, so i linger on a woman (or an interesting building or a newly designed box of oreos) longer than i might 'cause i'm afraid i'm not seeing her (or it) perfectly.

but also it's because (and there've gotta be pheromones involved, too) women are individually and generically wondrous and when you see the varied examples, ya wanna record them not just for the pragmatic recall required for self-contained self-gratification but because you feel you're seeing something special and perfect and don't wanna miss it, just like you don't wanna miss, i don't know, the grand canyon -- you're gonna look at it 'til you're well and truly done.

and anyway, we don't really objectify women. women are people. (did you know that?)

and we know they're feeling and thinking things, like, "why is this guy looking at me?" or, "i wish this guy would stop looking at me."

but you never know what the grand canyon is thinking. (now, that's an object.) and we don't subjectify the canyon or a chair or a piece of dental equipment. that would be plain looney.

see? we're clearer on things than many on the distaff side of the equation think.

of course, i'm just referring to distaff public thinking. even i, in all my wisdom, don't know much about distaff private thinking.

like (back to the staring thing), what do women think men are thinking when we stare -- impressed in some way -- at them? do they think it's something rapacious or gynecological?

'cause i'm usually thinking, "hey she's cute," with "wow, great tits," being the worst, probably, that my thoughts'll get.

than again, i could just be a simpleton. i remember when they used to have smoking sections in the backs of planes and i would look back at the cool people who were smoking and see a smoking guy talking to a smoking girl and i would imagine their conversation as something like, "hi. what kind of cigarettes do you smoke." "i smoke winstons. how about you"

(sigh.) i don't think i should be revealing myself so much.

there's a guy at the gym -- it think he's a cop or a fireman or something and i know he has a new baby -- who blasts a presumably antifungal spray onto his crotch at great length.

i mean, it goes on forever -- he must have the rottenest crotch in the northeast.

problem is, as he blasts medication endlessly onto his gonads, it also shoots through his legs and it billows toward me, threatening to coat me with protection against fungi, whether i need it or not.

god, he's either an overcautious "belt and suspenders" guy or he's got on oversized order of mushrooms accompanying his "meat and two veg". if he's that infested, i fear his new child might have been born with a thick coat of fungus.

maybe daddy's dna fused with his parasites' to form the worlds first "portobello baby".

or maybe an enoki baby. or a button, making him cute as a button.

and i haven't even brought up the issue of the global warming this guy's causing with his regular aerosol assault.

should i turn him in to al gore?

i noticed my cousin's daughter (also my cousin) checked the blog late monday or early tuesday. she's away at college and she doesn't always read my blog, so i figure she checked in to see if i'd written anything about the passover seder monday night at her uncle (my cousin) ken's.

in case she checks in again, this was the menu:

matzoh ball soup (perfection. needed no alteration.)
brisket
chicken cutlets in a wonderful sauce
tilapia with "special sauce" (dill-flavored, different from the chicken's "wonderful sauce" but still, of course, wonderful)
harvest pie (kenny denies it is his "signature dish". also says we don't want to know what vegetables are in it.)
roasted potatoes (made by neighbor. i remember she said onion soup mix was involved. terrific.)
israeli salad
peas and carrots (didn't eat any.)
chocolate/caramel-covered matzoh (tasted like a heath bar.)
a fruit compote pie thing. (so good.)
macaroons (i brung 'em from the new bowery whole foods but didn't get around to eating any of 'em.)
other deserts (i was full and didn't even really look.)

in attendance:
kenny
barbara (his wife)
michael (their younger son)
josh (their older son)
ben (josh's friend; aspiring actor and filmmaker; sometime pa on the sopranos and stuff like that)
neighbor family (ma, pa, daughter)
eugene (my uncle, sarah's grandfather, kenny's dad)
charlotte (eugene's female equivalent, relationship-wise)
joyce (barbara's sister; tall)
ed (joyce's husband; tall, mustache)
al? ( barbara and joyce's father)
sydelle (al?'s wife, not barbara and joyce's mother; told me about a dish, i think it was like chicken cutlets with a cherry sauce or something, that she was making the next night that sounded spectacular)
me

wasn't a classic holiday, from the lederer perspective -- nobody fought. (then again, it wasn't a lederer affair.)

we used (newer copies of) the same haggadahs (the book that contains the seder service) that we've used since i was a kid. the names of missing family members (like you, sarah) were in the books from previous seders, showing parts they/you read in whatever year the markings were from.

i was very funny. josh's friend ben and the dad from ken's neighbor family particularly appreciated me.

josh beamed proudly whenever his friend enthused over my witticisms. (when kenny, after we were all full, said he would now be serving venison, i said, "i'm game." get it?)

that's all i can remember now. except that it was fun.

a ziesen pesach!

love,
andrew

got linked by gawker again the other day (was it the 4th or 5th time this year?) for the coca-cola post. it was the 1st time they aimed their celebrated "snark" at me, claiming i'd used too many italics.

it was a rant, really and when i read it over, i decided i hadn't italicized enough. still, i knew there was an italics imbalance in the post before i published it, but i didn't have time to work it over any further, 'cause gawker's deadline for "blogorrhea" had arrived and i suspected they'd like this one.

who knows? it could be the italics thing tipped them in my favor; maybe their ability to mock was the element which ensured my inclusion. if so, thank god for inadequate proofing -- i'll take the thousand or so extra hits, snark or no snark.

plus they helped me overcome an andrew-rule problem that had been plaguing me for a while.

sometime within the last few months, i was reading over a pre-written post before publishing. i was at my friends house -- you know, the one who supplies me with my daily requirement of ambient pot -- and i'd made sure to finish my writing before i arrived there, so's i wouldn't be unduly influenced by his environmental maryjane.

however, i couldn't help looking the post over one more time and when i did, i felt i had probably used too many italics.

as a result, ever after, i've been unable to err on the side of less italics, fearing it was the unfair advantage of thc that had given me my italics-busting insight.

but now i can cut back on the italicizing and attribute it to the dressing-down i got from gawker.

and not my unnamed friend's pot.

sometimes, life is good.

went to the supermarket to get some more real coke. (a friend couldn't find it, though there was plenty.) took the lids off various "home" made soups they had there, 'cause sometimes the chicken really does smell homemade and it's like being transported to a holiday dinner with my family (but without the arguments). then i saw they had little sampling cups, so i thought i'd taste the chicken and maybe make my trip to homemade soup land more dimensional.

i ladled a serving into my cup, ruing the loss of a carrot chunk that fell back into the pot, and was about to taste the stuff when i realized that, in my excitement, i'd forgotten to enjoy the scent.

and since once i tasted the soup, i wouldn't be able to smell it as purely and perfectly, i leaned over the tureen to get a pre-taste whiff.

just then, i saw a single, small drop of saliva fall from my mouth into the soup.

i closed the lid, drank my cup, and thought i'd move on; people must do that stuff all the time -- or worse.

you gotta assume stuff like this might have happened.

i'm not sick, right? nothing will happen to people if they eat it.

yeah. that's right.

i went to get the soda but -- damn -- i'd forgotten my dagostinos card, so i couldn't get the discount they were offering. i thought maybe i should go back to my friend's place, get the card and save the cash.

. . . but i couldn't do it.

i had to tell the store what i'd done.

i couldn't waste time going upstairs while my saliva kicked off an epidemic that would make the victims of the tainted pet food scandal look tame.

and if i was gonna tell the cashier i'd spit in the soup, i had to buy something first, so i'd seem like a customer and not just some guy who came in to drool in the food.

so, i spent an extra buck and a quarter.

and then i didn't tell the cashier what i'd done because, frankly, i looked at her and wasn't sure she could process the information and turn it into action.

fortunately, i'd now clearly purchased something and wasn't just a soup-drooler, so i went looking for a manager, but with no manager in sight, i had to settle for telling the guy at the deli counter.

he took it well (after all, i was clearly a customer) and thought (as i did) that it probably happened all the time. meanwhile, i was proud of myself for putting others' safety ahead of my own desire to escape embarrassment.

i sure hope they changed the soup.

but just in case, don't buy soup at the 3rd avenue and 25th street dagostinos until tomorrow, at least.