The Huggett Files

Dumped to Zero

2012-01-26T08:52:00.000-05:00

I’ve driven to my dad’s many times now, with varying results. This year I had Natalie with me. We planned to first visit her family in Chicago before continuing to the Upper Peninsula. That meant day one would require nearly 800 miles in the car. We made it out of the city easily enough, and soon we were zipping through Pennsylvania with Joss stretched out in the back of our rented red Ford Focus.

Past noon we paused to pick up a terrible lunch at Arby’s. We chose that establishment over others, I guess, because of the jamocha shakes, though I also ate one of those 99 cent chicken sandwiches, thinking their smaller offering might do less damage to my arteries. The product leaked a gelatinous mayonnaise-like concoction onto my fingers, wrists and even forearms, and soon I was driving with my steering wheel greased to a high shine.

The miles fell away, and darkness arrived. I was estimating in my head our remaining mileage for the day when a pickup truck in front of us drove over an 18-wheeler tire “retread” – 5 or 6 feet of steel-belted, hard rubber. It was tossed into the air in front of us and cracked into our grill, before falling under our own tires. It made quite a sound: Natalie let slip a small shriek, and Joss stood up in the back. “We’re fine,” I said, because it’s in my nature to say such things, though I was not sure if we were or not.

We weren’t. Ten seconds later the ‘check oil’ light came on, and I began looking for an exit. But a furious buzzing sound filled the interior, and the battery light lit up on the dash. The engine strained and our speed dropped – 60, then 50. I pulled onto the soft shoulder just as the on-board computer warned of a dangerous temperature under the hood. All dashboard gauges dumped to zero and the engine died; we rolled to a stop. I put on the hazard lights and got out to take a look, traffic whooshing past.

Using the light on my phone, I could see the passenger side front panel was torn away, and fluid hissed out of the gaping hole in the body by the tire. I got back in.

“This car is totaled,” I said. Natalie squinted at me in silence, not wanting to believe it.

I called Dollar, and a representative told me a state trooper would soon arrive. Meanwhile, she’d work on getting us another car, she said, suggesting we might need to backtrack in the wrecker some 50 miles to Cleveland for it. “OK,” I warned, “but this car is loaded with luggage and has a dog in the back seat.”

Shortly a state trooper pulled up behind me. I’m a reasonable adult now and hardly trouble, but still a surge of panic went through me as the lights blazed in my rearview. He walked around the vehicle, inspecting, then asked me to sit in his squad car. It’s been probably 20 years since I’ve sat in one, but apparently the nervous feeling it generates never goes away. What does this man know about me, I wondered. Is he going to call my parents?

We filled out an accident report, and he gave me everything I’d need to pass along to my insurance company. Turns out that when you haven’t done anything wrong, cops can be really helpful and professional.

Next, the dead car. What can I say about Rick’s Towing, and Dean, the driver called out to the I-80 turnpike on a cold Wednesday night? He spoke little, other than to ask me if Joss bites and to then inform me she’d need to ride in the car on the flatbed as he towed us. He pulled the Ford onto his rig and we climbed into his cab.

He looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s and wore a thick mustache and a scruffy beard. A ballcap sat atop his head. We chugged down the interstate toward the next exit.

As we turned off toward Norwalk, Ohio, he spoke: “Well, you both have colds.”

We pondered this for a bit -- we felt fine. “Do we?” Natalie asked.

“Well, I do,” he said. “So I guess you’ll be getting it, too.” He reached over to shift gears, and Natalie noticed the tattoo across his knuckles. I assumed it read Kill or Deth, but when she asked, he said it was the name of his brother, died years ago. “I got another tattoo on my shoulder,” he said. “A girlfriend’s name. And I got a spiderweb on top of my head, just because I’m bald, I guess.”

It took us 20 minutes to drive to Rick’s lot, during which time we learned that Dean has four kids – two from a first marriage, one from another woman and a final from his last wife, recently divorced after 24 years. Both wives had been named Robin – a calculated decision, I think, related to that shoulder tattoo. He was still in love with his second wife, he said, and aimed to remarry her in June, which would have been their 25th anniversary. I asked why they got divorced in the first place, and he said they used to fight “all the time, over small things,” but since they’d been apart their affection had sprouted fresh. The conversation moved to his grandkids, and how he’d spent $700 on his favorite for Christmas. His phone rang.

“Hello,” he said. There was an unheard question, to which he responded “missing you.” He followed that with, “I’m working right now. I’ll call you later.”

He hung up. “That was my ex-wife,” he said. “She still calls me.”

I was beginning to think he had a solid chance at remarriage. Once at Rick’s, Dean lowered the car while I started making phone calls. Dollar said a new rental was being towed to us from Cleveland, and we sat down to wait. The guys in the shop offered us leftover food from a holiday party, and they brought Joss a bowl of water. A half-hour later, a wrecker pulled in and dropped off a Chevy Cobalt (also red). We packed up that car in the dark, Joss jumped onto the backseat, and were set to start again. But we paused and pooled our cash, pulling together $10. I went back into the shop, where Dean and a coworker stood around the deli tray. “We don’t have a lot of extra money,” I said, and it’s still not clear to me who I was comparing us to, or if it was true or not. “But we wanted to give you this.” I extended the wadded bills.

“That is not necessary,” Dean said, holding up his hands.

“I know,” I said. “But this could have been a lot worse, and you were really good to us.” He nodded and took the money. “You have a nice Christmas,” he said.

Outside Rick’s lot, we pulled over to feed Joss her dinner and think. It was past 9 pm and we had a long way to go. The prospect of getting back on the highway, where busted tires leap up off the road and destroy your engine block, did not excite me, and we still had more than 250 miles to go. But we decided to keep at it, and the miles clicked off, one by one, as they always do. We rolled into the Windy City past 1 am, about 16 hours after we left New York.

We spent a day and a half in Chicago, before heading north to Milwaukee and Green Bay and beyond. While we hiked in the snow up there, and opened gifts and made afternoon Manhattans, Dollar and American Express went about settling the score behind the scenes. Here’s a photo of the car taken by the insurance company.

And here’s a list of the damage that tire did.

Note the nearly $4000 for engine block replacement. The total bill, with towing, comes to more than $6200. This wasn’t my fault, of course, and many accidents are not due to driver error, but it reinforced a lesson for me: have insurance for your rental car. In the past, I’ve gotten behind the wheel of rentals thinking maybe my credit card was covering me, or maybe my own car insurance extended to rentals. But since I’ve been in NYC and have no car, I’ve been using a premium insurance through American Express, $20 per rental. What that means, I now know, is that when you kill a car on the side of an interstate highway, they simply bring you a new one while everyone else figures out how to pay for the damages.

8-12 inches

2011-12-10T12:56:00.001-05:00

I like fall: the heat of New York City summer departs, thesleeping weather improves, out come the sweatshirts, craft brewers start makingautumn beers. It’s Natalie’s favoritetime of year, though she likes it for pumpkin and apple picking, the fallfoliage and haunted houses.

So we planned an overnight trip to Warwick, NY, to hit alocal winery, a pumpkin patch, the Forest of Fear haunted house, maybe someapple picking. We got reservations at a bed and breakfast that allowed dogs and I borrowed a car from a friend tomake the trip. I was pretty excitedabout it.

My excitement might have clouded my judgment. A freak fall snowstorm was aimed at New York,with a forecast of 8-12 inches for Warwick. “That’s OK,” I said, rather stupidly. “We’ll just get there before the snow starts.” I figured we’d at least be able to walkthe sidewalks of this quaint town, have a nice meal. We aimed to leave at 9 am, before the stormhit.

But time slips away, and we ended up leaving at noon,walking to get the car through fat, ominous flakes. On the other side of the GW Bridge, the snowpiled up. Soon we were climbing into themountains at less than 30 mph, and what should have taken about an hour and ahalf took us three. The roads lookedlike this.

We had wanted to visit the winery for lunch, but the roadswere bad enough that we settled for some pedestrian pub fare on the main street. We toldthe B&B we’d “check in” by 4 pm, so we paid the tab and then grabbed some localwine from a liquor store across the street, as a replacement for not visitingthe winery.

The B&B was located on Old Country Road – a name thatdidn’t conjure up easy driving. Limbs,heavy with snow, bent over us as we picked our way five miles through an approachingdusk. At the B&B, a small tree alreadybroken over in the front yard, I dropped the Jeep into 4-wheel drive and burst througha snowdrift onto what I assumed was the driveway. We went up onto the porch and banged on thedoor.

Dogs barked inside, and after a good bit the front door was openedby an older woman wearing a questioning look. We explained who we were, and her expression on her face suggested shewas either relieved we’d made it, or annoyed we’d kept our reservation – I couldn’ttell which.

The farm itself was smaller than I’d imagined, given thephotos I’d seen on the web, and its insides were cluttered. Three dogs greeted us – two of her own andone puppy she was dog-sitting. Sheforced this incredibly rambunctious creature into a crate, where it barkedincessantly as we brought in our bags and Joss.

Our room upstairs was small – it fit just the bed and awhicker entertainment unit. The thoughtof possibly being snowed in there moved the walls closer. Dorothy looked at us. “Oh, why don’t I just give you the biggestroom?” she said. “No one else is cominghere tonight.” A significant upgrade: abed, a coffee table, a futon and TV, our own bathroom.

The view from the front window was this. See the sideways tree?

We relaxed for an hour or so, but when I heard a plow go byit seemed like a good time to try going back into town for supplies or dinner. We took Joss and told our host we were goingout.

There were now big branches down in several places along ourroute. I drove carefully, watching for fallenpower lines and drifts. On main street,we stopped at a big CVS to pick up snacks. I had just gotten money out of the ATM, Natalie had chosen some pretzelsand water, when the building lost power with a dull, crackling thud.

We all paused, as the emergency lighting came up. “Everyone out,” said the woman behind theregister. “It’s a fire hazard. I can’t have you in the store.”

Unable to pay or even properly return our goods, we put our productson the floor or the check-out counter and filed out.

We tried a gas station and managed to grab snacks and even foundan awful turkey wrap. We got back intothe car. Natalie wondered if maybe therewas something to do in town? Pass alittle time? A fire engine whizzed by,lights blazing. We gave up. There was no place to go and the going wasbad anyway, so we dejectedly turned for the B&B.

The return trip seemed to take twice as long, and when wereached the farmhouse, tree branches leaned over the entrance to the parkingspaces. I plopped it into 4-wheel driveand plowed through them and slid into our slot. I shut the engine down. “I’m sohappy to be off the road,” I said with a sigh.

We leashed Joss and walked the desolate road in the black. Heavy, wet snow hit us in the face. Across the street, a graveyard sprawled,tombstones topped by white. The wind moaned,all around us trees limbs portentously creaked under the weight of the snow,and for one brief moment, it was spooky enough to feel like Halloween. “Let’s not walk too far,” Natalie said, tightlylinking her arm though mine, as a stolid darkness wrapped us up. It was just us, the snow and the moon.

And that seemed odd, as I thought about it. No streetlamps at all? No lights in other houses? With a sinking feeling, I turned to look atthe B&B – a shadowy structure, without power. Things were going from bad to worse.

We trudged through the snow to the farmhouse. Dorothy stood waiting in the kitchen, candlesburning, and took the opportunity to tell me I’d not locked her gate correctly whenwe’d left for town, and the puppy had gotten loose. It had been located, but it was becomingclear she was not pleased with her only paying guests. We took two candles andretired to our room with our gas-station dinner. It was 8 pm.

Since the heat was out, we pulled the comforter over us onthe futon, me sipping a beer and Natalie having some wine, chewing pretzels andour awful turkey wrap, swapping stories. Joss curled up under a blanket and dozed. Honestly, once we got used to the idea, therewas something cozy about listening to the storm blow outside.

In the morning, the storm had spent itself, and the sky was brightblue. No hot water for a shower, nobreakfast – no reason to stick around. We took Joss across the street and let her cut paths through the freshsnow.

Since she couldn’t cook, Dorothy recommended a local spotfor breakfast, and we headed there. As wefinished up our flapjacks and eggs, Natalie looked up at the door. “Oh, there’s Dorothy,” she said, waving. But Dorothy didn’t return the gesture, hereyes passing right over us as she grabbed some pick-up food and left again. I think that was our official sign to leaveWarwick.

The drive back lasted three hours, as we skirted fallen wiresand were rerouted twice due to closed roads. Back in New York City, none of the snow had stuck. Things looked like they always did – a typicalfall afternoon, with Halloween just a day away.

One With Nature

2011-08-08T15:19:00.003-04:00

Trav,

My dad’s house gets a lot of wildlife. Deer come through the front yard year round, turkeys congregate at the river’s edge, rabbits duck into the brush. I myself came face to face with a skunk while jogging there just three weeks ago.

That wildlife often does damage to the trees and plants around the house, and my dad has raged war in particular against the squirrels, which tend to pillage his bird feeders like Vikings. He’s had to deter wildlife from my stepmom’s garden, too. The tomatoes, asparagus, lettuce and flowers are under constant assault, especially from deer, so my dad searched the internet and came up with a plan to encircle the plot with strung-up fishing wire to keep them away. That didn’t work very well, and he wanted to know why.

What do we know about my dad? He’s long suffering, for one. But also that he’s an engineer, and he isn’t satisfied until he knows why something has occurred (I tend to suffer from this malady, too). He has accumulated gadgets to give him all sorts of data. He has a digital readout in his house that provides the temperature in the main room, the garage and even down by the river’s edge. He has a device he wears to the gym to record his heart rate as he exercises. He consistently takes his blood pressure and plots it on a graph.

So when those deer somehow subverted his fishing wire, he bought a night-vision camera with video capability and a motion sensor, and set it up aimed at the garden.

“I just want to see what’s happening out there at night,” he said.

In short order he’d emailed me still-shots of deer politely stepping over the fishing wire, then filling their cheeks with tomato and cabbage, sometimes looking right into the camera as they did so.

All of this got me thinking, when I went to visit him last year, that I should enliven his nightly show. I’ll give him Bigfoot to consider, I thought. I’ll give him Yeti.

On my first night at their house last summer, I brushed my teeth, washed up, undressed to my underwear, and sat patiently on the edge of my bed waiting for utter silence.
When I was sure the house was asleep, I crept down from my bedroom in the loft, then quietly slid back the door to the patio and let myself out into a very dark night. Living in NY, I forget how black it can be when there are no lights, anywhere. Just ink, all the way around me. The dew had already set on the grass, and I paused in the wetness to let my eyes adjust.

I made a wide circle outside the deer wire, until I thought I was behind the camera. I primly stepped out of my underwear and left them in the grass. I climbed over the wire and moved into the frame -- in my mind, the Yeti had suddenly appeared on screen, back to the camera, about to make himself a salad. I took a step, turned and gave a long, feral stare over my shoulder, then ambled away.

There, I thought, circling back. That should do it. I picked up my underwear, put them on, and slipped back in the patio door, hoping with all my heart no one had decided to get up for some water just as I came over the threshold, nearly naked at well past midnight.

I dried my feet and climbed into bed, almost too excited to sleep. I woke in the morning to my father and stepmom puttering around in the kitchen below, making breakfast. “You know, I never turned that camera on last night,” my dad said, and up in my bed, disappointment seeped from my pores. “Well, what does it matter?” he said “I know what’s going on out there now.”

But did he?

Given our relationship, my dad eyes me suspiciously if I ask for anything at all, and I suppose I don’t blame him. So that afternoon I pulled my stepmom aside and told her my plan – I need him to turn that camera on and check it the next day, I said. Her face split into a huge grin. I was worried that she’d inadvertently tip him off herself, but that was naive – she’s spent 25 years getting him to do what she wants and he’s never suspected a thing.

That night I waited until the house was quiet, and I slipped outside, shedding my underwear outside the patio door. On the grass, I again paused to let my eyes adjust, listening to the night insects creak and chirp, a soft wind shushing through the pines. Across the river I heard a coyote bay, and – I shit you not – a shooting star streaked the sky. I seemed to be one with nature, and my plan just felt right.

I used the same route to the camera: I appeared suddenly in the frame, paused, looked back over the shoulder, ambled left off screen.

Once I was sure I was out of the lens, I turned and walked back. This time I saw a red light blinking on the camera body. He’ll definitely have something to look at tomorrow, I thought. I went to my underwear and quietly went back inside.

I woke up to the smell of coffee brewing, but I stayed in bed, reading. I heard my stepmom ask my dad to go check the camera, saying she had seen “some raccoons” the other day.

“OK,” he said, going out to the lawn for the memory card and then climbing the stairs to the loft – my bedroom when I visit, but also where his main computer is kept. He warmed up his machine and sat at the screen just feet away from where I read in bed. He pulled up video clips from the memory card.

“Bug,” he said to himself, watching scenes of the empty yard and noting trigger points for the motion sensor. “Nothing. Another bug. Nothing.”

I just lay there.

“Whoa!” my dad shouted, freezing at the keyboard.

From downstairs, my stepmom, “My god, what is it? Is it Bigfoot?”

I bit my lip and didn’t say a word. My dad hit ‘play’ again, eyes wide. Then they narrowed. “Brady,” he said quietly. He turned to look at me. “It’s you.” I had hoped for a big grin, a belly laugh, but I didn’t get one. My dad just looked troubled. I got out of bed to join him at the monitor.

We stared at the screen. There I was, ghostly white and floating across the frame. I didn’t look like Bigfoot. I didn’t look look menacing, or even wild.

I looked ill. I was hunched over in the dark, moving gingerly in my bare feet, walking crablike, almost feeling my way, like something was wrong with my legs. The night vision lens made me look even whiter than I normally am, which in turn made me look thinner. My eyes were ablaze. I looked like a demonic old man shuffling toward the grave.

He replayed it again and we both watched. “Yeah,” my dad said, his voice low. “I don’t think I’m going to tell anyone about this.”

I had expected euphoria at a prank well played, but watching the clip I instead felt shame. Who does this, I thought? Who gets naked and walks around the yard at night?

My sister was repulsed; even my accomplice stepmother sort of shocked at how unsettling the video was. It’s interesting to note that I myself sat on this story for a year, cowed by how unhealthy I seemed in the video.

Looking at it closer later, I could see that I’d never really known in which direction the camera was facing. What the video actually caught was me when I thought I was off camera – walking away, out of Yeti character, turning around, leaning in to what I thought was the side of the camera. In it, I’m no Bigfoot. I’m a sickly apparition, bumbling through a prank in the night and exposing myself to the world.

I thought long and hard about putting the video on this blog, and I just can’t do it. I think the idea behind the joke was funny, I think it was worth the effort, and the only way to play it was nude. But still, the internet is forever. I’m willing to give up only a still shot, appropriately blurred.

Brady

Friends of the Library

2011-07-06T20:55:00.018-04:00

Trav,

In March we went down to North Carolina to look after our mountain properties, like a couple of real estate magnates, and one morning we drove to a local coffee shop. I ordered a hot cocoa, like a child, and then noticed a flyer stuck to one of the support beams.

A simple printout, it invited submissions for a fiction contest sponsored by Friends of the Black Mountain library. I made note of the email address, picked up my cocoa and we went out into the gray, drizzly morning, driving back to your mother’s house on the hill.

Once home in NY, I emailed to ask about contest guidelines and deadlines, and to make sure I could submit without actually being a resident of Black Mountain. The deadline was just a couple of days away, but there was no limit on story length so I sent in The Night Full On.

A day after the contest deadline I had not heard anything, so I began the by-now-familiar process of rationalizing being passed over by judges. On a Monday morning my phone rang – a number I didn’t recognize, so I let it go to voicemail and continued getting ready for work. Then an email popped up from the contest organizer, asking me to call her. That seemed a good omen; doubtful she was cruel enough to call and personally tell me I lost. I dialed her.

“Well, you won,” She said. In my apartment, I grinned. She went on. “We had a lot of entries this year: 18!” I winced. I mean, winning is better than not winning, but first out of 18 doesn’t suggest I’m a world beater.

She took me through the scoring process. The judges ranked each piece in four areas: voice, style, making the reader care about the characters, and grammar. I winced again – grammar? That was actually a category?

“You were the only one who got a perfect score,” she said, and I was back to grinning.

“Well, that’s incredibly nice to hear,” I said. “You made my day.”

She got my address to send me a certificate and the winner’s check – $50! – and we hung up.

I knew the library was free to use the winning entry for promotional purposes, though I was never really sure what that meant. As far as I know, they don’t publish a magazine or literary journal, so I didn’t expect the story to get any real visibility. (For interested readers, I’ve uploaded the short story to the fiction tab on this blog.)

Then I got an email from a woman who lives in the house next to my mom’s. She’d run into another friend of my mom’s, who’d been in the library and saw I was the contest winner, and had wondered if I’d moved to town. So I know they had at least a display or something.

Let’s be clear: the contest is no big deal. But when I realized they’d put something up in the library, my first thought was, Ah, shit. You know who would have been awful proud about this? My mom.

She went to her library a lot – for books, music and movie DVDs. I used to kid her about it, because in this era of instant downloads right to your iPhone and streaming Netflix, there seems something quaint about her going to the library to pick up a copy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The truth is, my mom always supported my writing, and me winning this little contest in her own town would have pleased her immensely. She would have told everyone, and I really wish she could have seen whatever it is they put up in that library.

Brady

Buoyant Period

2011-06-20T12:50:00.002-04:00

Drop Off Service

Trav,

You and Ridge gave me a book last Christmas – The History and Stories of the Best Bars in New York.

A useful gift, I thought, as I thumbed the pages. It got me thinking about the bars of my life,trying to decide which ones I’ve spent the most time in. And then I compiled this awesome list,complete with interesting tidbits.

Winston-Salem, NC: Most of the social life at college centeredon campus parties, but we hit the bars around the stadium at football season –before, after and sometimes duringgames, since we weren’t very good back then. Most often, we were at On The Fringe, and it was here that I first had ahorrid shot called Prairie Fire, introduced to me by a volatile South Africanstudent nicknamed Tarzan, so called because he spoke with an accent, was absurdlystrong, super tan and went shirtless whenever possible. For the heat, we used the local hot sauce,Texas Pete, headquartered right there in Winston-Salem;its product litters restaurant tables all across the South.

In most of my memories from that bar, I’m young and hopeful,aware I was moving toward graduation and sort of proud of the way things werecoming together – I was earning a college degree! In some ways it felt like my life was justabout to begin, but it also felt like a unique, buoyant period was drawing to aclose. I haven’t been back to Winston-Salem in manyyears, and I’ve been told the bar has changed both names and clientele. But for me it will always be On The Fringe, so in my mind, it is always me and my friends occupying the booths.

Charlotte, NC: I lived here right after college, when Charlottewas much smaller than it is now and when the social scene was south of thecity, not “Uptown.” Hour for hour, Ispent more time at Providence Road Sundries,mainly because a small group of friends rented a house directly across thestreet. We used that bar as a finaldestination, a place we could retire to and not worry about driving. When the bar closed, we’d all amble acrossthe street and continue the night or crash on the sofas.

On the weekends it was crowded with the hard-drinking young.I wasn’t there for this (I was working a third shift at the time), but onenight a friend happened to bump someone in the crowd, spilling beer. Bristling followed, and even though it wasinitially put to rest, later in the night three of those guys re-approached ourfriend in the crowd, then coaxed him outside and got him up against a car andbroke his nose. The growing mob outsidewas finally noticed by one of my roommates, who shoved his way past the bouncer,rushed the fracas and knocked down the first guy he could reach. The police showed up, ending things, but thenext morning my roommate’s hand swelled into a grotesque shape and he went tothe hospital for a cast.

Here’s a sunnier memory: one night a big group of usmatriculated to Providence Road Sundries after spending the day at an outdoorKentucky Derby party, watching the races on a huge screen. One of us had astarter job as a pharmaceutical rep, peddling oral products. He also had, for reasons unclear, an old University of Florida Gator mascot suit. He left the bar, slipped over to the houseacross the street, put on the suit and then came skipping back into the packedbar, handing out toothbrushes to patrons – this huge green reptile lecturing uson dental hygiene.

Ah, the idiocy of youth.

Prague, Czech Republic: Whileteaching English there, I spentmost of my time at Chapeau Rouge, which had a big ex-pat following in the coldwinter months. I could almost alwaysfind other teachers there, or English speakers. But for my money, the bar I miss more than any other is King George’s (Král Jiřiho, or something). Below ground, good prices, awesome Czech pilsner and big tables withbenches. It wasn’t well known totourists, but one afternoon a huge group of young Europeans filled that place,raucously belting out football songs. That moment in particular stands out, and I think that’s why I miss itthe most.

Chapel Hill, NC: Ispent a lot of time on busy Franklin Street, and its many bars and restaurantspopulated by UNC students. My go-toplace for the casual drink was The Cave,a low-ceilinged dive at the bottom of some narrow stairs in analleyway. Apparently the oldest tavernin Chapel Hill, it had a decent beer selection,a poolroom in the back and sometimes live music in the corner. I liked sitting at the bar, and also the factthat the back door dumped you into a parking lot – from there to my apartmentit was about a five minute walk. I can’t think of anything of note happeningin this bar, except I remember one time me and a friend playing pool against acouple of Mexican immigrants. They didn’t speak any English, and we all know mySpanish is halting, but we took turns buying each other beers as we played.That was nice.

These next two are the heavy hitters, and close to myheart.

Atlanta, GA: The Flatiron. Located in a wedge-shaped building at thecorner of diverging streets, it was named after the Flatiron building inNY. I first went to this bar when in Atlanta on an unpaidinternship between years of grad school. The East Atlanta neighborhood was fastgentrifying back then, with a mix of white/hip/gay people opening businessesand frequenting the new bars mixed in with its older black establishments. On that hot summer night, I sat in theFlatiron having a beer with a friend. Across the street at the now-defunct The Village, a tremendously largeAfrican-American woman danced and repeatedly thrust her ass up against a bigbay window, hard enough to make the glass bow.

When I moved to Atlanta the next year, I couldn’t wait to goback to Flatiron, since the diverse mix of punters in the various businessesmeant I was never quite sure how the night would end in that part of town. Over the next seven years or so, I spent moretime in that bar than any other in my life. My friend and I had our regular seats along the right-hand side. I had my menu favorites, and I always knewwhat my first beer would be. I knewexactly what I wanted to play on the jukebox. I used to affectionately describe it as a place where “if you needed toput your head down on the bar for a while, that was OK,” and I admit that late at night it could be an odd crowd,mostly sad men putting away pints, with thick cigarette smoke hanging over usall. A friend once had her wallet stolen out of her purse while we sat at thebar, though we managed to catch the guy and get the money back.

It’s still open, though Blendz, the hair salon that used tobe on top of it, has been replaced with a tattoo shop. Every time I’m in Atlanta, I make a point of stopping in. Maybe it was a bar for pickpockets anddrunken losers, but I never quite saw it that way.

New York City: Flatiron is still probably my favorite barever – it just aligned perfectly with my temperament and place in lifethen. But I now think I’ve spent moretime in Drop Off Service. When I first moved to NY, it seemed like wemet there once or twice a week. Youlived around the corner, and I lived down the street for two months. I was new to town and didn’t even have Joss with me yet, so I had time toburn after work. Even when I moved to Brooklyn, Drop Off was on my way home easily enough. It had been your local for years and you knewalmost every regular in there, so by association the bartenders eventually knewme, too (thanks for that). That made buybacks plentiful and sometimes painful –you don’t always want a free shot of whiskey placed in front of you.

When I moved into Manhattan from Brooklyn, I started takingJoss with me to the bar as a way to get her out of the apartment and morestimulation, since she loves people so much. But guess what? They don’t allowdogs anymore. Plus the place has gottenreally popular and it’s harder to find a seat in there. The reasons to go dwindle, and I needsomeplace new.

So thank goodness I have this book you guys gave me.

Brady

Vegas

2011-05-14T22:26:00.003-04:00

In early March I attended a conference in Las Vegas, the first time I’d been in Sin City since a couple of bachelor parties some 15 years ago. My memories from those trips are long nights, the incessant bonging of slot machines, the labyrinthine layouts of casino floors, sports betting and the glory of free booze for gamblers.

I expected a different experience for my work trip. I also expected an insider’s view: I had Natalie with me, and she’d actually lived in Vegas for a year and a half.

We arrived early afternoon on Sunday and picked up a rental car from a small company off the Strip – my first reminder that away from high rollers and the glamour of the strip, Vegas is depressing. The shuttle driver’s salt-and-pepper hair was greased back and he wore dark glasses like he had something to hide. As he drove he told us about his so-far unsuccessful attempts to get a bus license or a cab license or some other official document that might change his luck. Filling out our paperwork, he regaled me with Vegas hard-luck stories and the stupidity of local thieves. The point is, the place oozed loser.

Once off the lot, Natalie drove us through “Old Vegas,” what used to be the main part of the city before things got built up further down the Strip. It’s sad (but interesting) now: dirt bag hotels, empty casinos, boarded-up houses and homeless people pushing shopping carts through the streets. This was made worse by it being a Sunday, when the air has gone out of Vegas and everyone is a dead man walking. You can’t drive around that area and not think that beneath all the flown-in excitement, the town is a cesspool.

After some In-N-Out Burger, we headed to Red Rock Canyon. If I lived in LV, I’d need something like this to keep me alive. A beautiful wall of red rising out of the sand, with a paved, 13-mile loop that runs through the park. It’s a common location for bike riders and joggers, these drained, lonely figures carrying water and making their way through the desert.

We had a huge room at Caesar’s Palace, with windows overlooking the fountain show at the Bellagio and a good stretch of the Strip. As we showered and got ready for dinner, we watched the sun go down and Vegas come alive. I’d shaken off the dreary vibe of daylight Vegas, and I found myself getting swept up in the glitz and building excitement as we walked through the lobby and out into the crowded night.

The next day I attended the conference and Natalie went to visit old friends. In the evening we joined a couple she knew for dinner at an upscale bar – Todd English pub, the rare place with a solid beer list, located in the brand new, high-end Crystals resort. Locals, they filled us in on today’s Vegas. Since the peak of the housing market sometime around 2004, Las Vegas home prices have declined nearly 60% (as of Jan. 2011). I don’t think I knew this detail, but it makes sense. Vegas is nice for a weekend of gambling or shows, and maybe those with tons of disposable income might want a second home there. But disposable income pretty much disappeared during the recession, and that had direct effects on places such as Crystals: it was conceived before the recession and is housed in the City Center complex, an $8.6 billion, mixed-use venture supported by MGM and Dubai World. Now on the other side of the recession, the complex is still half empty and hovering at bankruptcy. It is not the only building like that in Vegas.

Natalie hit a spa the next day while I worked, but that night after dinner we ducked into the crappy Flamingo Lounge. Even though she’d lived in Vegas, Natalie had never gambled. But I usually set aside a small amount to lose, and I bought $100 in chips and we sat at a $10 minimum table.

It was empty except for one other couple – we found out they’d just moved to Las Vegas. I won a hand now and then to stay afloat but mostly the cards were not kind and my pile of chips shrank. The dealer suggested I cut Natalie in to change the mood, and it worked: she turned $10 into about $60 or so, while I consistently lost money. When I had just $10 left, I convinced her to combine chips and bet it all. We shoved our miniscule $70 or so onto the table.

“Are you coloring up?” the dealer asked me.

“No, we’re all in,” I said. The couple down the table literally gasped.

The dealer had been good to Natalie, so it was her hand to lose, and he dealt her two face cards. We walked away some $40 up, after a tip.

Natalie flew out the next morning, but I had one more day. All week long, the city had grown on me – the lights, the dim casino floor, the hopeful tourists in the lobby. I’d managed to embrace Vegas for what it is, and I realized I’d miss it.

After the conference ended, I needed a decent, non-casino beer, so I changed clothes and walked back to Todd English pub. I ended up talking to a couple of traveling salesmen at the bar – salesmen have a way of pulling strangers into their circle. The guy next to me was the youngest son of the man behind the company that distributes that famous US vs. Russia hockey game.

I was excited by this bit of trivia, for some reason, and besides, he had fascinating stories to tell, so I stayed way longer than I had planned to. As I walked the Strip home, I warmly stared at the lights and the action. The elevator took me up to my room, and I pulled a chair up to the window to watch the Bellagio fountain do its thing one last time. Vegas, you’re all right, I thought. You’re all right.

I wanted to take a jog before leaving, so I got up in the morning, stretched and went outside. I figured I’d head away from the Strip, hoping to find it quieter. My route looked like this.

Cars, overpasses, billboards and desert. Awful. I jogged past deflated tourists on their way out of town, dragging their roll carts behind them, bickering and already sweating. I jogged through intersections, cars running the light and zooming down expressway ramps. I passed an elderly man scouring the gutters, stooping to pick up anything of value. Immigrants emerged from under overpasses, wiping their faces, squinting into the sun, then wandering off to whatever their future held. I tried to ignore all this and slip into the run and my music, but it wasn’t working. I wanted to quit, go shower up and get out of town.

Vegas, I thought, at the turn-around point, you’re a cesspool.

Three Stories

2011-01-29T15:14:00.002-05:00

Trav,

I drove to Iron Mountain for Christmas again, and had a great visit with my dad and stepmom. While I was there, I started reading Rabbit at Rest, the last in John Updike’s great series with protagonist Harry Angstrom.

Because Rabbit at Rest shows us early on the ugly, bitter relationship between father and son, and because of the recent trip to Iron Mountain, it made me thankful for the connection I have with my dad.

When people ask about my father, there are three stories I tend to tell. The first happens as I was middling my way through high school. One of my chores was emptying the cat box, and at the time of this particular story, I’d probably put off the job several times before my dad reminded me of my responsibility. Only then did I reluctantly go to the cat box and pick up my tools. But in doing so, inspiration hit me.

My stroke of genius was to go back into the kitchen and grab a plastic baggie, then sift out a few brown turds from the cat box and seal them inside. My dad often packed himself a lunch before going to bed at night, and left it in the fridge. So even though he was furiously trying to balance fatherhood and running a new company – things I didn’t understand then and are still shadowy to me today – I placed that baggie into his lunch sack when the house went quiet that night.

I honestly can’t remember if I was there when he got home from work – I could have had sports practice or a game, or I could have been working – but I do remember his description of discovering my gift, which occurred as he sat in his office at lunchtime, chatting with a long-time colleague who leaned in the doorframe.

“As we were talking,” he told me, “I opened my bag and pulled out the contents to spread across my desk. Sandwich first,” and here my dad mimicked pulling out a sandwich and plopping it down onto the desktop, “then a yogurt.” Plop. “Then this clear plastic bag.” Plop.

When that hit the desk, my dad and his friend both stopped and stared at it for a few long seconds.

“Jesus, Charlie, what the hell is that?” the colleague asked.

“I don’t know,” my dad answered, after a pause.

“It looks like cat shit,” this guy said, incredulous.

“I think it is,” said my dad with a sigh.

*****

The second story: My dad has always been active, and I have memories of him playing tennis, being in basketball leagues and on softball teams. This meant he often was in athletic gear around the house. One night – again, me in high school, not sure of exact age – my dad stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink. He had shorts on, and it occurred to me that it might be funny to sneak up and whip them down, leaving him in his underwear at the sink. I crept up and jerked them, hard, all the way to his ankles.

To my uncomfortable surprise, he was wearing bathing trunks, and my yank left him naked from the waist down, his hands wet in the sink. “Whoa!” he yelped, flinching and twisting and trying to rectify the situation without turning around.

I laughed but backed away – I’d seen more than I wanted. My sister also was in the kitchen, and she burst into giggles. Together we watched his back as he struggled, and our laughter brought my stepmom into the room, who joined in almost by contagion.

He finally got his shorts up and turned around. “That’s great,” he said. “That’s really funny.” Joke over, I began to quiet down, but my sister’s amusement was as thick as ever, and it became clear that she was laughing at some new angle.

“What?” My dad asked.

“You…you…when Brady did that,” she gasped. “You flexed.”

“Yes, ha, ha,” said my dad, having to now reach deep down to keep his sense of humor, and only thinly succeeding. “I’m sure I did.”

My stepmom found this especially funny, and fell against him. “But what were you doing?” she asked, laughing the question right up into his face. “Why were you flexing?”

And here was the bottom of that reservoir of patience – he was getting ganged up on, and all this was undeserved. He dropped his voice. “Well what the fuck do you expect me to do?” he said to her. “Bend over and arch my back?”

*****

Story three: My dad at night often placed in the bathroom the clothes he needed for the following day, including the bag he’d take to the gym. This meant he didn’t need to turn on the bedroom light in the morning and wake my stepmom. (Are we identifying a trend? This is a man who prepares.) I was gone at college for this story, but the way I heard it, my sister snuck into his gym bag one night and inserted a maxipad into his clean, white cotton briefs. The idea was that he’d uncover it while dressing at the gym, and perhaps it might fall out on the floor and he’d be roundly embarrassed.

My dad took the bag in the morning, and my sister sat waiting in the kitchen the next evening for his return. When he walked in, she blurted, “How was the gym this morning?”

“Fine,” he said. “How was school?”

She tried again. “How was getting dressed after the gym this morning?”

“OK,” he said. “Why?”

She furrowed her brow. Was it possible he just wasn’t taking the bait? Unlikely. With a slow blooming, it came to her.

“Oh my god, you didn’t notice!” She laughed. “I put a pad in your underwear!”

My dad would tell me, years later, that as soon as she said it, the very moment that sentence completed, he could feel a clogging, cottony fullness between his legs. What shocked him most was that he’d been living with that sensation all day long, and never once questioned it.

*****

To this day my dad will nod and say my sister holds the crown, won with the maxipad gag. Still, the interesting thing to me about telling these stories is the response from people. They almost all say, “I can’t believe you had the nerve to do that to your dad,” and I guess that’s a valid point. That probably says something about me, and my sister. But it also begs the question: in what kind of family is that behavior quasi-acceptable?

I think the general answer is, one in which the kids respect their father enough to accept his guidance, discipline and parenting, but they do not fear him. That’s how I always felt – respect, even mutual respect, but not fear. I can say I had a father-son relationship that never once included pettiness, jealousy, or meanness. I can say it was a relationship in which we were almost always able to communicate and understand each other. In other words, the very opposite from what is seen in the beginning of Rabbit at Rest.

No complaints from me, dad. Not one.

Brady

A Good Way to Get Shot

2010-12-23T17:42:00.003-05:00

Trav,

I spent Thanksgiving in Maine, a place I had not been in three years. In fact, after my dad moved to Michigan some 15 years ago, I feel like I’ve been back only a handful of times.

When I do get up there, I like to run down memory lane, and I like to see how much things have changed. I had one day not reserved for family stuff on this trip, so I thought I’d take Natalie and head to the Rockland-Camden area, and drive through Union and past our old house on the hill.

Union is a small town, if you remember. There is no trash pick up, for example, so when we lived there we’d have to drive our trash to the dump and toss it into the landfill. I remember that the road leading to it was marred with debris, and plastic bags hung from tree branches, having been delivered there by Maine’s swirling winter winds. The landfill was unsettling for me as a kid – I looked at this mountain of rotting garbage and rusting refrigerators and thought, We’re ruining the world.

But I can report that the dump now is officially retired, and the mound of refuse has been transformed into a green field. It's still cordoned off by a fence, and big signs warn against trespassing (probably because of methane), but to see it looking like part of the ecosystem caught me by surprise.

We used to swim in the deep waterhole in front of Morgan's Mills, long defunct. It's now operational as a mill, and as a country store, too. The yellow elementary school I attended is a museum now, I think, and they built a bigger, brick school about a quarter mile away.

Our old house, white clapboard when we bought it, now is a light green, and our cedar-shingled garage has been torn down – the owners built an attached garage instead. The back, screened-in porch my dad built is fully enclosed today. They paved the driveway, which means some kid has a smooth surface for the basketball hoop – I had to dribble away the grass and pound flat the earth with the ball. It looks like this now (this is an older picture, in summer).

We drove to the top of Clarry Hill, where a dirt road winds into the bare blueberry fields of my youth. I spent four summers raking blueberries on those fields for Roland Miller. The terrain up there is rocky and flat, and the blueberry plants are kept low with an annual burning. It’s not public land, but there is a trail for hikers leading into the fields, and it’s so remote that the view is treeless swells in every direction, in the distance the surrounding hills.

A feral wind whipped across the top, strong enough it could have blown Natalie down. It stirred up something primal in Joss, and she pinned her ears back to run circles across the rocks.

From there we went into Rockland – once a tough little dock town, now made kitschy and cute with ice cream stores, boutiques and cafes. In Camden we watched the boats bob in the harbor and walked around the shops. We ducked into Cappy’s Chowder House for a beer and a bowl of New England’s finest.

When we got back into the car, I thought maybe we’d pass through Union on our way back and I’d let Joss stretch her legs again on top of Clarry Hill. But when we got to the trailhead, a car sat blocking the entrance – a couple of kids getting stoned, probably. I parked down the road a bit and let Joss out. My dog and I walked across the fields, the wind having slackened some and the sun sinking lower.

The kids pulled away soon enough. A few minutes after that, a truck came down the trail, and it slowly went past my rental car. Then it stopped. Two people inside. Hunters, I figured, as this was the season. The car didn’t move, so I called Joss to my side and walked back to the road to see what they wanted.

As I got closer, a man dressed in orange got out. Not sure on his age, but I’d suggest not too far off from me.

“You know, we got a trail over there,” he said, pointing.

“Yeah, there were some kids blocking the entrance,” I said.

“This is crop land,” he said.

“I know,” I said. And I did. After all, I collected the crop from this specific land for several years, the money I made was the first I ever earned in my life.

“Well, we don’t allow people on it,” he said. “I own it. Or I lease it, anyway.” I thought, Ol’ Roland must have died; do you lease it from his family?

“Sorry about that,” I said, though the fruit was long gone at that time of the year, and there is no harm at all in my walking across this wide expanse of low-lying brush before it gets buried under snow for the winter. I turned toward my car.

“You know, that’s a good way to get shot,” he said at my back. I turned around, because that sounded like a poorly veiled threat if I’ve ever heard one.

“Not by me,” he said quickly. “But it’s hunting season.”

“I know,” I said, slowly and evenly, because I grew up hearing the “pop, pop” of guns in the woods behind my house, and that house is literally just over that hill. I know when hunting season is in Maine, and where the hunters go.

“You not wearing any orange like that,” he said.

“I know,” I said, for the third time, a sliver of irritation creeping into my voice. His land or not, this guy wasn’t telling me anything new, and I was tired of it. I opened the door and Joss jumped in. He climbed into his truck.

I started the car and watched him drive off, bouncing over the rocks in the road. I was annoyed. I spent formative years on this hill, and I am not a greenhorn, so it ticked me off to be taken as such. But then I tried to take a step back and examine just what this stranger saw when he looked at me: a Chevy Impala with New York plates driven onto a dirt road better suited for trucks, me standing in an open field with a clean black jacket and dark jeans, my boots the kind someone might wear on the subway in NY, rather than in the mud or snow.

I’m not the city tourist this man thought I was, but you’d never know it by looking at me.

Things have changed indeed.

Brady

Stop With Nostalgia

2010-12-03T22:25:00.009-05:00

Trav,

A long time ago, I quit my job, packed up a bag, found someone to care for my dog, basically broke up with the girl I was dating and left the country. I was 24 at the time, not far out of college and working a mostly dead-end job as a blood tester for the American Red Cross. So, why not?

The initial idea was not mine – instead tossed out as a general invitation by my friend Jim. He wanted to go abroad, teach some English and see parts of the world we knew nothing about. No one would go with him, but I took up the cause. We settled on Prague, Czech Republic, because the dollar translated well (our meager savings would carry more weight), we heard there was a need for English teachers, and because it was centrally located in Europe, which meant we could easily travel to other countries.

We had nothing in place when we landed, and thus bumped from hostel to shitty hotel to Czech flophouse, until we were able to sublease a flat from some American girls. I got a job first, at a Berlitz language school, and Jim landed a gig at the Sun School not long after. Berlitz paid to push my paperwork through, making me legally able to work in the country; the Sun School was happy to pay my friend under the table.

It was incredibly fun, and I learned more about the world and my place in it while living there than during any other period of my life. We visited museums and castles; we made friends with other English-speaking ex-pats; we took day trips to historic sites and weekend jaunts to neighboring countries; and we soaked up the local culture. But, being young, we also drank too much. We stayed out too late. We occasionally missed teaching assignments and sometimes got into street fights with strangers. Let’s chalk that up to youthful exuberance.

Overall, I found Czech people to be incredibly warm, and I grew especially fond of one group of six students I taught twice a week. One eventually had me over for dinner with her family. Another used to take me to his neighborhood bars – local, smoky places filled with surly old men playing cards: hangouts I’d not feel welcome to patronize on my own.

Berlitz classes tend to be expensive, which meant my students mostly were adults serious about learning – I had textbooks for them and assigned them homework. Jim’s school had a slightly dodgier reputation. His students usually were less eager, and at times it seemed the only thing he needed to do was talk to them, correcting their responses now and then.

Which means he sometimes got bored and told his students glorious lies to pass the time. He once fed them a convoluted story about our stove catching on fire and almost burning down our flat. They loved it.

One day Jim came home from class and said, “Brady, listen, you have to get your students to say squirrel. Just try it.”

(Some quick linguistic background: There are a few sounds in the English language that do not exist in Czech. The “skw” sound in squirrel is one of them. The “th” sound is another. They never hear it in their own language, and thus cannot say it without conscious, strained effort. I sent one girl home with the instruction to say, 30 times a day, “I thought those teeth fell out on Thursday.” She said it worked.)

The next day, I drew a squirrel on the whiteboard. My small class recognized it and grinned. I then spelled s-q-u-i-r-r-e-l on the board and told them to try and say it. My six students began to massacre this word aloud, trying out ridiculous variations. Skyrel. Squirreal. Skwirole. I leaned against the wall and bit back laughter while they beat the word around. It was impossibly cute.

Jim had two students in particular he talked about: Tomaš and Pavel. They both worked for Hewlett Packard (which was paying for the lessons) and already had decent English. They were mandated to attend class, and often their hearts just weren’t into learning. The “class” eventually devolved into my buddy standing outside the school with them, smoking and talking about booze, or bars, or girls, or whatever else they brought up.

When our time abroad came to an end – Jim went home first and I followed two months later – we both stayed in touch with some of our students, and he told me that for a while Tomaš and Pavel were diligent about writing. Which is the point of this entire entry. Pavel’s email, posted below, remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever read in my life. Granted, it is racist, sexist, and crass, but partially it’s that old Eastern European attitude that makes you laugh: How could he say that? Plus, the writer’s unintended syntax and grammar mistakes are hilarious, and halfway through this missive, he accidentally swaps two American curse words, then repeats the error going forth.

I know you’ve read it before, but it belongs on the internet. I have wiped clean the students’ last names. Enjoy.

Brady

Hello Jim,
it's a perfect feeling to hear that you are living. We miss you with Tomas
and sometimes we remember on you, your jokes and stories.
But live is going and good friends leaving....
But stop with nostalgia.
Jim, admit that in Amsterdam you had something with prostitute?
You must give me detailed info!!! Did you meet in Amsterdams some gipsies?
I have good news for you. A lot of Czech gipsies (a few thousands) need to
emigrate to Canada at this time. They told that in Czech rep. here is 
discrimination of gipsies!!! I wish dead for all of them.
Jim, you know that from Canada is to USA very short distance. That mean 
maybe you will meet some gipsies which you met before in Prague.
You will meet old friends. Good luck.At this time we have another teacher from Ireland. He isn't from CSS 
because you know that we don't like feministic women in that school.
He is good but you were better. We miss jokes about nun f.e
Back to my stage in Africa in bloodness Safari.It was really perfect time
with another type of people, different culture etc.
My first idea after leaving the airplane in Mombasa was ,I will died,
because air was really very wet.(humidity about 85-90%). After smoking one 
cigarette situation was little bit better.During the trip to our hotels
complex (15km) I saw a lot of poor people. You cannot imagine that. Thay lived
in houses which is very similar like our bus waiting-room without 
electrification without water.Really terrible picture.Our hotel komplex was 
really comfortable. It was like in eden. Our komplex had about 80 guards.
Normal negro had no access into that place. On terrace there were going
monkeies which have very big shining blue nuts. But really very bright. When you
will come I will show you the photos.There were a lot of bars, servers and 
swimming-pools.

After week there we went to 3days trip on safari by the little plain which is
for max. 10 people. Only one cabin for all , no other room. The time of flying
was about 2 hours and distance about 600 km.But.... Every person which visited 
the Kenya has usually problems with stomak and has very big scouring which is 
like water. No help for you. After 30 minutes in plain came to my stomak very
big cramps. We were in 3000 thousand metres. It wasn't possibel to solve it.
I went to co-pilot and ask him about toilet. Answer was terrible. NO TOILET
ON THE BOARD..Imagine , no WC, no separate room and together with us were there 
other 7 foreigners. The fuck needed to go out. I asked again co-pilot what
can I do because it's really urgent. The answer was crazy. He gave me a special
pack for vomit and he told that I can fuck inside the pack. I asked him where
is separate room? He told that there is no separate room and he recommend me
to fuck in the normal board!!! Imagine the very little area with foreigners and
fuck there. I can imagine the fresh air after finishing... Brrrr.
Co-pilot told it to all foreigners, They were very smiling.... I had very red
face. It was one of the most bad situation in my life.I refused. 20 minutes
it was really crazy. The fuck was on the start my ass still. After it was
better and I keeped my fuck inside the ass. Ufffff.
We flow around the Kilimanjaro. Lovely seeing. I took some photos.
On safari I met all type of animals which is possible. But on safari
I met big poisonous snake - Black Mamba from distance 2 metres. I was very
afraid.

Outside of our hotel komplex near the Mombasa there was a special bar with
prostitutes.Some of them were lovely and they were cheap. My friend use one
of them and she smoked his dick. He told that black prostitute is the best
in the world. I can't compare because there was my girl friend too. Maybe
in future.

Jim, I must go to do something. If you have time send me message. If you want
to speak with me let me know your phone number and we can speak by phone.
No problem for HP.
I believe that I will hear you soon
Have a nice weekend
Pavel

South Korea

2010-11-04T20:51:00.001-04:00

Trav,

I’m back from South Korea, and I can happily report it was one of the best trips I’ve taken. Why? First off because I found the people there to be incredibly pleasant. I had school children shout out, “Hiiiiieee! How…R…U?” at the mere sight of my pale, pale face. I had a gentleman take one look at me and stutter “

USA

?”, then give me a firm handshake as we waited for the urinals in a very crowded restroom off the highway. Once a man shouted “Good Morning!” at my back just because I passed him while we were jogging. I don’t know if it’s because of the Korean War, or what, but this American was well received.

Speaking of friendly people, I was again propositioned by a prostitute, which seems to happen whenever I travel. On a night when Ami was struggling through a head cold she’d caught on the plane, I went out alone for a light meal at an ex-pat café right next to the hotel. I ate and paid in about 40 minutes, but I had not gotten more than 20 steps down the sidewalk when I heard the rushed “clop, clop” of heels coming up behind me and a woman saying “excuse me.” I turned around to face the rather attractive female I had seen sitting at a table by herself, staring into a laptop.

“You are leaving?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, thinking maybe I had left something behind and she’d found it.

“Alone?” she said. And I got it.

“Noooo,” I said slowly. “I’m going right there,” and I pointed to my hotel. She took the hint and we parted ways; I was not the lonely businessman she had hoped for.

Here’s another reason I liked the trip: as you know, I’m hardly the World’s Tallest Man. But I felt big and strong in Korea, which is generally populated with slender builds. While Ami and I were walking through a shopping mall, a salesman tried to get me to try on a shirt. He looked me over.

“I think, large for you,” he said, holding one up.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “And thank you for saying that.” But it was a Western-style shirt (all the rage there, too) and I have my fair share, so I declined.

Seoul is a great city, but rather than write 2,000 words on it, here’s a rundown of our activities in visual form.

Hiked to the top of the Seoul Tower.

Visited the Namdaemun market.

Saw the Deoksugung Palace and the changing of the guard.

Took a day trip to the edge of the Demilitarized Zone.

Walked along the River Han.

Toured the Leeum art museum.

We did have one specific mission in Seoul – to find the adoption center that had transferred Ami into our family. We were able to locate the new children’s services building, close to where the old one used to be, the one Ami had passed through, some 30-plus years ago.

It felt reverent to be there, like walking on hallowed ground, and we went inside with her paperwork to sort of just say hello. We ran into a caseworker, who did some quick research and told us Ami had been born in the Chungcheongnam-do region and given over to the adoption center in Daejeon, before being sent to Seoul for her adoption to the US. We knew most of this already, but it was nice to see who worked there, see kids playing, see the pictures taped to the walls. Here we are in front of it.

We also took a trip to Sokcho, a smaller fishing town on the east coast about a 2.5-hour bus ride away. We stayed in a hostel for ~$27 per room, though Ami’s had a broken toilet, and she was attacked by mosquitoes and kept awake at night by the skittering sounds of rodents in the walls. (Me? Up one floor, I slept like a champ.)

From there we went into the Seoraksan National Park on a gray and rainy day, every peak shrouded in mist. With a giant Buddha near the park’s entrance and pagodas dotting the valleys, it felt distinctly Korean. We hiked to the top of Ulsanbawi Rock, a strenuous 2-hour climb that finishes with about 900 metal stairs taking you straight up.

Standing on the top and looking down, the mist was so heavy that you could not see where you came from, or just how you’d managed to get there.

The next day we went to a bathhouse – Ami with the ladies and me upstairs to mingle with the fellows. For an hour and half, it was me and about 20 naked Korean men, not talking, quietly slipping in and out of various pools, lying in the sauna and getting pummeled by bruising jets of water. This was my first trip to a bathhouse, but it seemed routine for the locals, as I saw men in their 50s helping their fathers hobble into the water, or sitting on small stools with handheld showerheads vigorously but methodically scrubbing themselves down. Some reclined on wooden chairs with towels over their midsections, napping under the windows, as if it was something they did once a week.

I think I felt farthest from home in that spa. Partly because of the silence and the heat, which made me introspective, and partly because of the constant, rather surreal sound of the water jets softly echoing in such a hard place. And I guess partly because of the view – foreign mountains rising up through the windows. But it was mostly because I was stripped bare, white as a fish’s belly, and my paleness told you all you needed to know: I was not Korean. My face alone told that story often enough, but I felt it strongest then, naked and mingling with the locals.

On the day we had to fly home, we had a long train ride back to the airport. It was depressing to leave, and we were both quiet, me watching the countryside roll by through the windows. I dissected the trip in my mind and decided that the most notable thing about traveling around Korea with Ami was the reversal it brought. Growing up in Michigan or Maine, Ami stood out simply for being of Asian descent, and I’ve always been able to pick her out of a crowd because she is a particular height, has straight black hair, cheekbones just so, and skin a certain color. In

Korea

, the opposite happens. It is me that stands out, as people with Ami’s coloring and facial structure surrounded us constantly. She blended in so easily that I incorrectly identified her in crowds many times.

And this made it easy to imagine how it all could have been different. She could have grown up in

Korea

. She could have gone to school there, made friends, fallen in love, had kids, had a career– who knows? Watching Koreans go about their everyday lives, it was easy to picture Ami as a Korean by birth and by culture, and I turned this over and over on that hushed train ride.

Thinking about this put a hole through my gut, and for a while I could not figure out why. Then I realized that what makes it sad to me is not that she would have lived some other life, which may or may not have been better or worse than the one she has now, but because if anything at all had been different, then my family would be decreased by one, that the thousands of memories I have of Ami and me growing up would not exist, that I would not have this sister in my life.

And that is not the kind of thing I care to spend my time considering.

Brady

Undead But Predatory

2010-10-06T23:43:00.004-04:00

Trav,

I was back in Iron Mountain in August. I try to go there twice a year, mostly because dads are worth visiting, but also because it’s a great place to relax. Winter has its own charm, and both Joss and I love it there. Summer is something completely different, though. It’s the big green lawn, the deck at the water’s edge, warm days and cool nights, the boat and swimming in the Menominee River. In that regard, it is the anti-New York.

My dad has a bunch of space above his garage, and I’ve stored stuff up there for years – some boxes were left behind when I went away to college, while others I put there while downsizing for the move to NYC from Atlanta.

This past trip I went poking through my pile to see what might be discarded, and I came across a bunch of writing from elementary school, junior high and high school: haikus, essays and even some fiction. A few were solid – on one, my teacher wrote, “I could hardly wait to find out what happened!” – yet others showed almost no imagination at all, and the teacher’s comments reflected it.

I also found the first thing I ever wrote – a book, if you can believe that. There’s no date on it, but I actually remember putting it together with my mom, sitting on the rug in the Detroit house, which made me probably 4 or 5 years old. I remember dictating the story to her while she clicked away at the keys on her electric typewriter. Then I added some shockingly rudimentary drawings, my mom found a cover, and we stapled it all together.

An aside about writers: Plenty use their lives to inform their work, of course. Pat Conroy had a terrifically mean father, and he served as the basis for The Great Santini. Cormac McCarthy had a son late in life, which helped him form the plot that eventually became The Road. Richard Yates battled mental instability and alcoholism most of his adult life, and characters with these problems show up in Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade and his short stories.

In that regard, it seems I was no different. At the time of writing that book in Detroit, I recall I was struggling through a fear of the supernatural. That started early for me, I think, and persisted until I was probably 11 or 12, when (my dad says) I stopped reading young adult books and started reading novels by the horror master Stephen King. It was almost as if I decided to grab my fear with both hands and face it on my own terms, chapter by chapter, he says.

I can’t say for sure that was what I had in mind, but I can say that Stephen King’s writing and my fears definitely shared some overlap: I remember reading Cujo and being quietly horrified by the passage where a half-man, half-dog creature comes out of a little boy’s dark closet and speaks to him. For nights after reading that section I’d go to bed but not lie down, instead sitting paralyzed with fear on my mattress, staring across the room at my closet door, waiting for it to swing open.

I’ve always found it interesting to realize what things scared which people, and why. For me it was always ghosts, or creatures under my bed, or maybe something undead but predatory floating outside my second-story window, begging me to let it in. And when I was young, I assumed we were all scared of those same things. But one night I woke to hear my brother shouting in his room, crying out for my dad. I listened in on their conversation and heard my brother babble something about gorillas. I scoffed. Gorillas! In Maine! Everyone knows gorillas don’t live in Maine – they live in the tropics and eat bananas, and that particular fruit does not grow in New England.

No, for me, the real danger was the ghost. It was the monster. And it was those sorts of creatures that flooded my brain when awoken by some benign but unidentified thud in the heart of Maine's black winter nights. It was those fears that caused me to shriek for my parents.

When we assembled that book, my parents were thinking it would be a good idea for me to explore the topic on my own, maybe try to flip it around and make ghosts a good thing. They suggested we tell a happy tale; I turned to Casper the Friendly Ghost as my model and wrote me into the narrative.

My story encompassed me, Casper and kindergarten. In it, the ghost sees something special in a young Brady and takes me under his wing (or under his sheet). We eventually form our own pack and gloriously fly through Michigan’s nighttime sky. He makes me his partner in immortality, if you will.

I realize now that this was, in essence, the first Twilight book, and had I found the appropriate publisher, I’d be a rich man today.

Read it below.

* Baby Snoops was a stuffed dog of mine that looked a lot like Snoopy. He was not a rapper.

The End.

Brady

Brady,

Great story, it helped me get over my own fear of ghosts, and also made me hungry for pizza. The illustrations are fantastic. I'm glad it was ghosts and not gorillas you were afraid of, because gorillas are much more difficult to draw. I'd have written an excellent blurb for the back cover if you'd asked.

I hope Orson wants to make a book with me someday, I even have an old typewriter under the couch.

Trav

We Could Have Been Anyone

2010-09-08T21:42:00.008-04:00

Trav,

We’ve had some nice weather lately – sunny, temps in high 70s and low 80s, down to 60s at night. It’s enough to make you think that autumn is close, and maybe we can say goodbye to the hottest NY summer on record.

Fall is a great time for getting out of the city. So when Mike was given access to a ragtop 1989 Chrysler LeBaron and thought it would be fun to hit the wineries on Long Island, we all climbed aboard: in the back, Joss sitting behind the passenger seat, with my feet on the middle console, legs raised and bent, squished next to Natalie; in the front, Koozie standing on Mel’s lap, Mike driving.

It had been some time since I’d been in a convertible. I know they can be pretty nice when going slow – the wind flicks at your hair, the sun kisses your skin. But I’d forgotten that at speeds above 50, passengers in the back get pummeled in the face. And I’d forgotten that when stuck in traffic, the sun uncomfortably beats down. And I’d also conveniently forgotten the expected high temps for the day: mid-90s. For a while, we were all miserable, especially Joss, with her dark fur. At the wheel, Mike groaned. “Worst idea ever,” he said.

We finally got loose of traffic and eventually pulled into our first winery. When I climbed, sweaty and a little car sick, out of the LeBaron, the outlook brightened. The place was busy, and though a terrible band banged out wedding reception music, we happily sat ourselves at a picnic table to sip wine for an hour or so.

Next stop: Martha Clara Vineyards. A bigger place, with an accessible vineyard, and even some indoor seating, where we settled at a long wooden bar and sampled some whites.

Then, Greenport, near the end of the North Fork. It's a smallish town with a marina, and a quaint main street offering ice cream and taverns and clothing stores. Also, long swaths of cool, green grass in its public park

at the water’s edge, where Joss promptly threw herself down for some writhing.

Kites flew in the breeze, and we all stretched out in the grass. Children came in droves to pet cute, fluffy Koozie (no matter that she routinely attacks man, child and beast), while generally ignoring my sweet gutter dingo. But I’m not bitter about that. Not bitter at all.

For dinner, we sat at a restaurant on the docks – the dogs next to us – and powered through some seafood. The sun sank in the west, the temperatures had dropped and the day was turning into exactly what we’d hoped for.

We finished past 9 pm and needed to get back. We piled into the car and drove the dark country roads with the top down. The dogs were tired and relaxed. Insects creaked in the fields and trees, and the stars above were so ethereal they seemed unrelated to the dim glimmers we see in the NYC sky. Our collective mood was high – Natalie and Melissa laughed over some shared joke until they lost the ability to speak. The women still had their hair wrapped in kerchiefs for protection from the wind, and we could have been well-to-do couples from the 50s, making our way back to the city after a drive in the country. We could have been kids in the 80s, driving a parent’s LeBaron. We could have been anyone.

Then we stopped at a red light, and Mike looked into his rear view mirror. “Why is there smoke coming out of the back of this car?” he said, and you could almost hear the needle dragging across the record.

We pulled into a 7-Eleven. It was with a sinking feeling that I saw the engine had plenty of coolant, because this meant the problem was not something we could fix in a parking lot. For fun, we filled it with coolant anyway, dumped in a quart of oil and tried again. But the engine’s temperature redlined in no time and smoke belched out of both ends. We parked at a gas station to make some calls.

Next stop, Holiday Inn Express! We gently coaxed the car to the hotel and sent Melissa and Natalie in to the front desk. Melissa gets results – I realized this a long time ago – and for some reason people are inclined to help her. (As opposed to me, where people seem to want to give me some sort of comeuppance.)

She got us a suite for $179, and they waived the pet fee, which is ridiculous because we had not one but two pets. Mike and I settled in while Mel and Natalie took a cab to Wal-Mart to grab things like toothbrushes and sleeping tee shirts and, perhaps most importantly, beer. Mel worked especially hard at this.

I was ready for bed – I was tired. But I found I slept poorly. The dogs, in an unfamiliar place, barked at every sound, our four smartphones pinged and chimed all night, and a service truck outside our window woke me well before dawn. Around 8 am I called a nearby Chrysler dealer, and I was disappointed to hear that they couldn’t be sure they could fix it that day. To make matters worse, as soon as we all got up, Joss puked between the beds and Koozie promptly pissed on the carpet.

Mike and I dropped the car at the dealers just as the engine temp again redlined, and we walked back to the hotel along route 58. We’d heard nothing from the shop by our late checkout of 1 pm (negotiated by Mel), so we grabbed bags and dogs and walked through the heat to a strip-mall of sorts, taking up residence on the patio of Panera Bread. After about an hour, Melissa and Mike got sick of waiting and walked to the dealership to demand our final answer: broken water pump, and it could not be fixed by end of day.

Mel got on the phone and did some sort of customer service voodoo I have yet to grasp and got us a rental deal at Enterprise. We piled into a PT Cruiser and Joss immediately fall asleep in the back. We drove home, with AC blasting, in less than two hours.

Not quite the trip we envisioned when we climbed into the convertible. I lost a full day of work and together we’d spent about $450 on the hotel, rental car and emergency Walmart supplies. Still, for those few moments when we were driving in the dark after Greenport, when the night air was cool, the top was down and our spirits were way up, something seemed to have opened above us. For a handful of seconds, the trivial worries of life and jobs and everything else floated up and away; we seemed like different, more glamorous people, and I could have ridden in the back of that car forever.

Brady

The Hip Hop Defense

2010-08-11T22:41:00.004-04:00

Trav,

Stumbling through the internet the other day, I came across an article written back in February about a German teenager named Helene Hegemann. She’d published a best-selling book about the young, and club life, and Berlin. She received much attention as a new, major talent.

Then it was discovered that she’d plagiarized sections from a lesser-known novel, as well as from other “unattributed sources,” the article stated, at times doing it so recklessly she’d not bothered to change more than a word or two. This got her much attention, too, but of the unpleasant kind (though, incredibly, she was still suggested for a literary prize; she didn’t win).

Before we delve too much into Ms. Hegemann, let’s first talk about the types of writers. If I’m painting with very broad stokes, there are two kinds. First, there are writers who can smoothly slide words against each other and make sentences and paragraphs the rest of us understand. These are often journalists, and they report and inform, though essayists also fall into this category. When you come across the upper echelon of these talents, you know it: you’ll find their work in Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Newsweek and more. Also found in your newspapers – one of the best reported pieces I’ve ever read was by Charlie LeDuff, back when he worked for The New York Times. His piece on the labor hierarchy in a rural North Carolina hog plant was part of that paper’s series of articles on race, which won the Pulitzer. (He now works for The Detroit News, chronicling the Motor City’s ongoing struggle.)

The second kind of writer is able to craft a story from thin air – in other words, make shit up. The best of this lot draw on their own experiences or knowledge, and they put together stories that entertain, sometimes teach and often reflect life back through their characters. I could give you a long list of people I admire here, but I’ll stick to a few of the giants – John Updike, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx and Richard Ford.

Being one kind of writer doesn’t preclude you from being the other, and plenty are both – Jonathan Franzen comes to mind, as does the recently deceased David Foster Wallace.

Where does this leave our German friend? Well, she’d written a novel, but she also stole seemingly significant plot turns. Stealing is bad enough when doing the first kind of writing – in reporting or essays, it suggests the author merely missed (perhaps intentionally) adding a footnote. But it’s twice as bad in fiction, I think, because you’re supposed to tell an original tale. You’re not supposed to hijack someone else’s story and change just a few things. You’re not, in other words, supposed to write The Catcher in the Wheat.

But since Frau Hegemann didn’t lift her entire novel, I’m going to call her a partially formed writer of the second kind. She is, of course, only partially formed herself – she’s just 17. That’s quite young. I wrote at that age, and what I turned out was shitty. I had not found my own voice, I wasn’t very good at the craft of writing itself, and I did not really understand what the world was about anyway. So I wrote awful things about teenage romances gone awry, monsters in the closet and fights on the playground. To write good fiction, I think life needs to have beaten you up a little. It’s very rare for someone that young to understand the importance of life’s struggle, for example, or be able to perceive the way the world can grind on humans. And I think those types of observations are needed in order to write effective, moving fiction.

So all right, she stole – let’s forgive the kid. And I do. But what I heartily disagree with is her public response (whether from her of her PR agency, I don’t know) to the criticism. She said she was of a “different generation,” one that “mixes” all of today’s easily accessible content to create something new.

We briefly chatted about this on the sidewalk the other day. You called her response “The Hip Hop Defense” and I couldn’t agree more. She’s saying that a young, computer-savvy generation is out there grabbing this and layering it over that and creating something new. This is an incredibly lazy argument on her part.

Her rebuttal got me thinking of The Grey Album. Remember it? DJ Danger Mouse mashed up The Beatles white album and Jay-Z’s The Black Album illegally, distributed it for free and it became a huge underground hit, swapped from person to person but never officially sold. It was a unique idea, and I’ll even argue it can be passed off as art: it combined two elements into something new. It garnered Danger Mouse enough attention that he was able to launch a career making original music, most notably as part of the duo Gnarls Barkley. In short, he moved from being a DJ to musician.

The Grey Album was an unlicensed mixing that worked, mainly because the final product was easily recognizable as a sum of its parts. You cannot say the same for Helene Hegemann’s attempt. She hid what she stole, took credit for work not hers, and on top of that, she sold the finished product. That is straight plagiarism – not some trendy new “mixing” of content. Danger Mouse was able to move on to become a full-fledged musician. We’ll see if Ms. Hegemann is able to grow in a similar way. In the meantime, she’s less a writer than a DJ.

Brady

Overwhelming Evidence

2010-07-17T17:54:00.005-04:00

Trav,

I recently finished my civic duty. You had your shot last year, and I hoped to have a similar experience, but they read my name for the first case, and then chose me to be questioned in the first pool, and then actually placed me on the jury by the end of the day. Literally, when they called my name, I let out a long, slow “Fffuuuuccckkk” under my breath.

One of the interesting things about jury duty, I’d come to realize, is the other jurors. During the questioning that first day, I’d noticed an older woman with ridiculous eye makeup. She’d described herself to the lawyers as an actor, and in general mouthed off about a lot of unimportant things in all her responses. Here was someone not at all like me, I thought.

Guess what? She got picked, too. Leaving the courthouse the first day, she appeared next to me on the sidewalk and said, “Well, we’re on a jury. It’s hard not to feel validated by this.” I wrinkled my brow in confusion. I don’t see anything particularly validating about lawyers deciding you won’t queer their trial, but she went on, in all seriousness: “I’m thinking about going on auditions again, getting my head shots up to date, because of getting picked for this.” I smiled and sped up just enough so she was forced to turn to someone else, thinking, Boy, that Faded Actress is gonna be trouble.

The case started two days later. It can be boiled down like this: An aging, single woman in Harlem got sick late in her life and deeded her 4-story brownstone to her cousin, videotaping the entire legal proceeding. Then a 50-ish man named Enrique Compazo (though his lawyer called him “Ricky”) allegedly tried to steal it by forging several documents, including a revocation of power of attorney, a mortgage, and a deed of ownership.

The defense’s main argument was that Ricky didn’t speak English and was a simple working man not nearly savvy enough to pull off a legal-document-forging-fiesta like this. Unfortunately for Mr. Compazo, though, there was a mountain of evidence that pretty much walled him in. We heard some interesting testimony from a handwriting analysis expert (this sealed the case for me) and some heartbreaking stuff from a down-on-his-luck guy, who sure seemed drunk or otherwise incapacitated while on the witness stand. But some vital information came from a NYPD detective who told us he arrested Mr. Compazo in English, spoke to him in English, and overheard him make a phone call at the jail about “buying” a house in Harlem. A ripple went through the jury box at this testimony – he speaks English after all! – and the defense’s case broke apart on the spot.

The real fun happened in deliberation. Twelve jurors: 4 men, 8 women. Three blacks, 9 whites. Most of the group in their 20s, but everyone under 40 except Faded Actress and an older guy named Fred, who was exasperated, businesslike and maybe my favorite person on the jury – he had no tolerance for anyone who didn’t see it his way.

We got right down to a vote: 10 guiltys. Two people were unsure: Faded Actress and a very nice young woman in a PhD program for computer science, who told us she was unsure about “everything,” and wanted the entire collection of evidence brought into the jury room for poring over. You should have heard the outburst from the 10 of us who just wanted to slam this case shut and go home – Fred in particular was displeased. People slapped the table, groaned loudly, or yelled that she could not possibly be serious.

Her problem, we collectively realized, was that she had a rather loose grip on how the real world works. She said she didn’t think handwriting analysis was real, couldn’t connect up all that paperwork, and besides, why would someone want to steal a house? Meanwhile, Faded Actress was caught up on every tiny dramatic detail. She couldn’t get over how sad it was for this old, single woman to be dying and worrying about where her property went. People shouldn’t have to worry about that, she complained. And that’s all she wanted to talk about, while the rest of us moaned and begged her to focus.

Lunch arrived. We ate, talked some more, and then a girl across the table from me said, “I need a sugar rush,” and told our foreman, Harris, to please request candy from the bailiff. And I’m wincing, thinking, My god, we’re about to send this dude to prison where he’ll probably have to join a Hispanic gang to survive the race wars, and then he’ll still get shanked in the showers because that’s what happens in the joint. And we’re in the deliberation room clamoring for lollipops and Skittles?

Harris passed along the request, and then Computer Science asks if maybe we can build the case for her as we all see it? That would help, she says. The girl next to me silently shakes her head, then clamps a hand around her throat, mouthing the words “hung jury” to me. But I was still hopeful and so Harris and I offered to break it down to both Computer Science and Faded Actress.

At first it wasn’t going well, and the longer it took to convince them, the more disgruntled the rest of the jurors became. People were sighing loudly (Fred, I’m looking at you), or muttering expletives in response to their particularly inane questions, or just angrily staring at the clock on the wall. It got so bad that Computer Science began to quietly cry from the stress, and had to “take a break” in the women’s room to collect herself. That stunned the group into silence and they vowed to back off.

When she came out, she was stronger and the atmosphere more respectful. The candy arrived, and people happily munched and sucked. We continued to rationally explain how the post office worked and why property in Harlem would be worth stealing, and finally, after four hours of deliberation, we had a consensus guilty verdict.

We filled out the jury paperwork and someone told Harris to get the bailiff. Faded Actress paused. “Your name is Harris?” she said.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“I’ve been calling you Paris all this time,” she said slowly, like waking from a dream.

We sat there until the bailiff came and led us into our jury booth. The judge turned to us. “I have your verdict,” he said, “and also got your request for candy and lollipops. Glad we could take care of that.”

Everyone giggled except me; I stared at the floor and thought about poor Ricky trailing a huge man through the yard, holding onto his pocket lining. The judge asked Harris to read our verdict; he stood and said, “Guilty.” The defense asked that we be polled, so a bailiff called out our juror numbers and we all said guilty one by one. The case was over, and we were released.

As we collected at the elevators, both lawyers came around the corner, carrying their evidence boxes. Now free to interact with us, several jurors peppered them with questions. I heard the defense lawyer say he assumed that “the overwhelming evidence” had led us to our decision, and I could see palpable relief on Computer Science’s face: we’d done the right thing – the man was guilty and even the defense lawyer knew it. The elevator came, and most of the jury crammed in. The doors closed on us and we stood silent as we descended, enveloped by the satisfying feeling of justice and the light scent of candy on our breath.

Brady

Entering a Black Hole

2010-06-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Trav,

This is going to be a little convoluted, but just be patient and climb aboard.

The New York marathon is hard to get into. Basically you can gain entrance via lottery, or by joining the New York Road Runners club and participating in a bunch of their races (and paying for the privilege). That’s what I did last year – spent a lot of Saturdays getting up early and heading to a park someplace in New York and running with a number pinned to my chest. And thus I earned my way into the 2010 NY marathon.

Which means this summer/fall I’ve got to train. In this vein, I went for a morning run on April 6, planning on a short 3 miles with my dog before work. At the halfway point we paused, and I let Joss sniff some grass before turning around. On pushing off in the other direction, I felt a gentle popping in my inner right knee. When my foot hit the ground a pain shot through the joint, and did so again on the second step, and the third. And then I stopped running. I limped home.

By the time we reached our door, I was pretty sure I’d done something serious. The next day I was literally dragging my leg through the street behind me, and kids sometimes stopped to stare as I passed or climbed up out of the subway.

In short order I got an appointment with a sports physician, who sent me off to get an MRI. A couple of days later, we had our diagnosis – torn meniscus. I was told the swelling would decrease, and the pain would go away, but the tear does not heal on its own. Without having surgery to cut out the tear, it flaps around in the joint and messes up the knee function.

I scheduled surgery for a week later. I had not gone under the knife since hand surgery in 1989. I’d forgotten what it’s like. For the knee, they got me into the gown and shaved the leg; the doc came in and looked at it, wrote his initials on my thigh; and then I went into the surgery room. The anesthesiologist put a line into the back of my hand, then gave me a drug bolus. I felt nothing at first, then a rush like I’d just had a really good IPA on an empty stomach, then my brain began to thickly buzz like I’d just slammed five cocktails. Next: a woman repeatedly saying my name and shaking my arm; I was in the recovery room. Going under for surgery is like entering a black hole: it’s not as if you sleep through the procedure; it’s as if it never happened at all.

It looked like this when I took the wrap off. You can still the doc's initials.

Switching topics. About two weeks ago, I tagged along with you and Ridge on your trip to Massachusetts to visit your sister and mom. That was a pretty good time, wasn’t it? Completely relaxing. The lawn, the swingset, the kiddie pool, the sprinkler – full on summer in New England.

Jess and Jesse have a great old house, and the town is quaint. I realized that I had not been there in six years – not since 2004, when I flew up from Atlanta and they graciously let me stay with them while the Red Sox were in the World Series. I brought my laptop, so I worked out of their house during the day and watched games at night. When the series ended, you and Ridge came up for the parade.

I remember the day after the Sox finished their sweep, I took a break from editing and walked into the town square to look for newspapers. Almost every place was sold out, but as I walked, I thought, The Red Sox have just won the World Series. This had never really seemed possible to me, and because it had actually happened, the entire world felt different. I know this sounds incredibly stupid to say about a sports team, but after their win, it seemed like anything was possible, like anything might happen in this new future.

That was six years ago. And guess what? A lot has happened since then. Some of it quite bad – my remaining three grandparents have all passed, and I lost my own mother after a prolonged illness. But some of it has been great – I got a new dog, ran a marathon, shed that job I had in Atlanta and relocated to New York. In general, I now find myself more satisfied with the world and my place in it than ever before. You? You’ve gotten married and have a son. Jess and Jesse now have two kids – they had none in 2004. It’s incredible what six years can bring.

Back to my knee. At your sister’s two weeks ago, I went for a jog – my first one after knee surgery. I felt slow and creaky and it seemed like I could get another meniscus tear, or worse, at any second. But the joints held, I loosened up and started a good summer sweat. Looking at the houses as I jogged, it did not seem like six years since I had run down that same road. The way time moves, it can seem like surgery, like you blink once and it’s all behind you. But it isn’t surgery, and you’d never want it to be. Yes, you’re wide awake and have to feel each cut of the blade, but you get to experience the pleasurable moments, too.

Brady

A Tale of Two Michaels

2010-04-24T17:59:00.005-04:00

Trav,

I still have no TV. I find I don’t miss it much, especially with the amount of stuff available online (thank you, hulu.com) and through Netflix (I’m currently absorbed with Breaking Bad). The one thing I really, really miss, though, is live sports.

I don’t miss ESPN, which is more self-promotion than any real journalism, but I miss football games playing in the background on fall weekends, and I miss the NBA games. I miss college basketball, too.

In recent years, the NCAA and CBS have gotten smart and put the entire March Madness tournament online, streaming it live in HD. The picture on my new laptop is crisp, and I watched a lot of games this past tournament, including my own school’s eventual ousting in the second round.

NBA.com has its own “network” now and is broadcasting games on NBA TV, and I just bought a season pass from MLB.com for $120, giving me access to some 2,000+ games in HD on my laptop. I’ll probably watch just 25 Red Sox games, but that’s well worth the price. The truth is that the internet has opened up a lot of options for sports fans.

Where am I going with this? Back in time. When we were growing up, of course, none of this existed. I watched sports on a tiny black and white TV that got reception through some metal skeleton on the roof. Even by the time I graduated high school, in some parts of rural Maine there still was no cable television at all. I was at the mercy of whatever the few networks put out over the air.

Which is how I fell in love with Georgetown basketball. Big East basketball ruled back then and Georgetown was often at the top of the Big East. They were on the TV every weekend, it seemed. I loved their attitude and their players. I can still name many: Patrick Ewing, Reggie Williams, Perry McDonald, Michael Smith, Ralph Dalton, David Wingate. The lineage would continue in later years with guys like Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and Allen Iverson.

I liked them because that’s all I saw and that’s all I knew. I’d say Georgetown was my favorite college team until I went to college myself and formed my own allegiances. Check out one of my senior year photos. Classy. (What’s up with the mitt, you ask? I’d had hand surgery a week prior – a story of its own.)

When Georgetown upset Houston the win the NCAA tournament in 1984, I vividly remember the game. It was my introduction to the team and I followed them from there on out. Georgetown was the underdog, as Houston had both Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon, but Georgetown just physically took the game from them. I waited eagerly for the Sports Illustrated to reach my house the next week, because I knew the Hoyas would be on the cover. And they were, with this shot right here.

That’s Michael Graham, a freshman at the time. The shaved head, the big dunks, the hard defense, the rebounding – I loved this guy. He couldn’t shoot a jumper that well, but I overlooked that for his aggressive style. Suddenly, in the way that can happen only to 12-year-old boys, he was my favorite player.

The truth is he never studied, and the next year he was left off the team, and then he basically disappeared. He got drafted in the NBA in the fourth round (by Seattle) but never made the team, and then played in Europe and South America.

Irrelevant. What was relevant was that after their title win in 1984, I started looking around for a big sports poster of him to put on my bedroom wall. I already had one of Larry Bird, and a big hand-drawn poster of The Incredible Hulk my dad had made for me, and I wanted Michael Graham to go alongside those. But this was a one-year college player and no one was making him into a poster. I looked everywhere, in stores and magazines, before finally giving up.

Months later on my birthday, I sat at the table having eaten some cake and about to open my presents. My parents handed me what could only be a poster – a long tube. I peeled off the wrapping paper and started unrolling. The first word I read on the bottom was “Michael,” and I thought, Holy Shit, they did it! They found a poster of Michael Graham! How did they even remember I wanted it this badly? How were they this perceptive?

I finished unrolling. It wasn’t Michael Graham. It was this guy. My disappointment was palpable. I just sat there at the table, mouth agape, thinking, How is it my parents are so un-perceptive? How is it they know me this poorly? How is it that they think this is the poster I want?

I didn’t say anything and later leaned it in the corner of my closet. At some point, as Michael Jackson became the most popular human on the planet, I pulled the poster out of my closet and put Mike Jackson up on the wall. But I couldn’t help but think that Larry Bird and The Incredible Hulk were staring down disapprovingly at me, and it didn’t last. He came down and went into the trash.

Brady

Just the Bulls

2010-04-14T22:41:00.011-04:00

Trav,

I’ve finished building bookshelves into the apartment – my fourth set of shelves into apartments in less than three years. So I can say with certainty that I’m tired of building shelves. And I’m also tired of moving and I hope I don’t need to for a while. While the new apartment has what my friend calls a ‘prison sink,’ the place is bigger than the old apartment on the second floor, and I'm finding I enjoy being higher up and overlooking the street.

Remember when I moved in from Brooklyn? Although I had a burning, angry desire to leave that dump behind, my one concern with the new place was the cost, and I wavered for a day or two. But I remember thinking, This is a chance to live right next to family – something unheard of in New York unless you grew up in Long Island. And also, This is a chance to live right next to family who is about to have a baby. I remember telling you that our dads always flip stories back and forth about their early lives together, when they were in college or young parents themselves, when the families we know today were still being formed. I pointed to all those memories they drag up when they get together, and I said this was a great chance to build something similar in own lives. “Let’s make some memories!” I told you.

So I took the place. It's been only a year and a half, but I’ve stored up some great memories, almost without noticing it. And because my first year in this building coincided with Orson's birth, some of the best ones involve Orson.

The first couple of weeks following Orson's arrival must have been a haze of crying, feeding, and fitful sleep for everyone in your apartment. I caught only a portion of this, as I ducked in and out. But I remember us ordering dinner one night not long after you guys brought him home. In those days, the little guy was doing what new little guys do – crying and pooping and eating nonstop. Ridge fed him constantly, and both of you looked a little haggard – happy, mind you, but tired. On this night Ridge handed O to you so she could finally sit down and eat a meal. She could not have been at her plate for five minutes before he started to bawl for the breast – and the only person who could stop that kind of crying was Ridge. She looked up, exhausted, and said something like, “I just fed him.” I remember thinking, She can't even get five minutes to eat the very meal she needs to produce the milk he wants. And I thought, This is what it’s like to have a newborn in the house.

But you guys all settled in pretty quickly, I thought. One night, right after Ridge had gone into the bedroom for some sleep, you the proud father were showing me how to change Orson. We were whispering to keep it quiet, you fastening this and re-buttoning that and explaining it all, when Ridge came out and caught us hunched over the kid like two guys leaning into a car engine, where one knows what he’s doing and the other is clueless.

I also remember the first time Orson fell asleep on my chest, his head next to my chin. It was incredibly peaceful, and his gentle breathing as he slept made me wish he never had to be woken up for his own bed. I think I got a tiny inkling of what it must feel like to have a child: it was pretty intense. (The Huggett Files readers: I'm not saying it's like having a kid of my own! Don't shut down the comments section slamming me for daring to act like a parent when I'm not! I'm just saying I felt protective.)

Once maternity leave was over and it warmed up outside, you took to sitting on the stoop with Orson in the late afternoon, the two of you waiting for Ridge. Sometimes I'd come home from the 1st Ave. subway stop and see you guys on the stoop as I came down our block. This became a regular enough occurrence that I found myself wondering as I commuted home if you guys might be there or not. Man, I hope so, I’d think. Nothing like coming home to find a toddler grinning at you on your own doorstep.

But I think my favorite memory so far is Just The Bulls. You and Ridge had a pattern last summer: she went to bed early and tried for some solid sleep without Orson, and you’d stay up with the boy for a while, feed him a bottle, change him when needed. If the Red Sox were on TV (or sometimes just for the company), I'd come down from my apartment and the three of us would sit on the couch – you and me sipping beer in the warm summer night, Orson falling asleep in the crook of your arm. Three men staying up as the city quieted down, watching baseball, talking about life while Ridge got some much needed sleep. Great, great memories. I’ll never forget it.

Hands down, moving into the building was the best thing I've done since coming to NY.

Brady

********************************************

Brady,
It's the strangest thing, it seems to have gotten a little dusty in my apartment when I got to the end of this here post.

I can't tell you how great it is to have you next door, for a million reasons, but having you around for this first year with O is up at the top of the list, and not just for the Bradysitting.

Thanks, Trav and Orson (the bulls).

Short Bus

2010-03-21T20:47:00.011-04:00

Hi Trav,

We’ve had a lot of snow this year – more snow in February than the city has ever recorded. Twice our management at my job closed our office. This had me thinking about my youth in wintry Maine, when we were guaranteed three or four snow days per year. Always a welcome surprise, but one in particular stands out. Our house in Union sat on Clary Hill – a road that took sharp turns through the trees before creeping up an incline to a flat expanse of blueberry fields. It was not conducive to normal-sized buses, and since there weren’t many of us on the road, we were serviced by a small van painted orange – a short bus, if you will. (Yes, yes. I rode the short bus. Start your jokes now.)

The drivers varied, but the one I remember most was on the job the briefest. He told us to call him Snakebite, he cracked jokes as he drove, gently made fun of us kids, offered us gum and we loved him. But he lasted just a week, I think, and looking back through an adult’s eyes, I get the feeling Snakebite was either a pedophile or a drug addict. He wore a beaten leather jacket and dark sunglasses as he drove, and something about him giving us gum seems off today. But I was disappointed when he was gone without so much as a goodbye, and when I asked my parents what happened to him, I got a lot of hemming and hawing and no real answer.

Anyway, one morning I awoke to find a medium-sized storm had blanketed the town. The radio cancellations did not include our school system, but because of the steepness of Clary Hill, the short bus could not make the trip and our little group was excused.

I was in sixth grade, but I was one of only two kids in my class selected to be on the junior high squad at our tiny school. I never played, and the eighth graders ran the show, but I loved being on that team. So I asked my mom if basketball practice was cancelled for the school. She said no, and because of either some perverse sense of responsibility or an unhealthy love of basketball, I asked my mom if I could walk to school to join practice. Yeah, she said, laughing. If that’s what you want to do, then yes, you can walk to school.

I packed my basketball stuff, wrapped myself up in wool socks and my winter coat and hats and mittens and boots and set out, my mom grinning as she helped me out the door.

I started down the hill. Everything was white – the trees, the rock walls lining the road, the road itself even. The sounds I made were swallowed by the snow and the trees sat quiet in the woods. Once my house was gone from view, I quickly became both nervous and lonely – it was just me and my breathing, my feet kicking through the snow drifts. I finished the hill and walked the flat, small valley. I cut across some dead corn fields and then went over a frozen creek and into the fairgrounds.

For two weeks every summer, this was the location for the Union Fair, with its ferris wheel and The Zipper midway ride. With its horse pulls and fried dough and an arcade. Also a tent for freaks, and a peep show (seriously – sounds like 1920, right?).

On the other side of the fairgrounds I picked up the road that ran through our little town common, with a gazebo in the middle and the small library and our local grocery store. Then up a small hill to finally reach the school grounds.

(I went back to Union a few years ago. Here I am with Joss on the gazebo, and also my old elementary school. They have now built a new brick school about three times the size.)

Union's population was increasing even then, and the town had outgrown the school, so as part of the overflow, the sixth grade class was stuffed into a trailer alongside the building. I went up the three steps to the trailer door and threw it open. I must have looked like a conquering explorer: a blast of cold flies into the trailer and there I am, bundled up and silhouetted in the doorway by the white landscape behind me.

My teacher stared. “Where did you come from?” she asked.

“I walked,” I said, and began the long process of undressing.

She could not believe it. No one could, actually. Who the hell walks to school, to learn, when you have permission to stay home?

Me, that’s who. For basketball practice. When class was over, I went to the gym, changed into my little shorts, stepped into my Converse and pulled my socks up to my knees. We ran through the layup line.

“Huggett,” said our coach, “what are you doing here today? I thought that bus route wasn’t running.”

“I walked,” I said.

“You walked,” he repeated. In tiny Union, teachers knew where everyone lived – so he knew the distance. He chortled, then turned to everyone else. “Did you hear that? Now that’s dedication!”

“No way,” said an eighth grader in front of me, because he knew something that maybe the teacher did not – my parents had split, and my dad had an apartment within short walking distance from the school. Walking from there didn’t take much dedication at all. He turned to me.

“You walked from your dad’s, right?”

“No,” I said. “My mom’s.”

The coach laughed. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

I don’t remember how practice went that day. And I’m not sure how I got home – I think I just walked to my dad’s. But I remember that feeling of nervousness when I first left the house, I remember how long the walk took, how quiet the woods seemed, and how lonely it was to trudge through snowy fields and over creeks.

I realize this sounds like one of those exaggerated “when I was a boy” stories – uphill, both ways, in driving snow. The other day I sat wondering how far it actually is, but since this is 2010 and tall tales can be verified, I mapped the exact footpath on gmap-pedometer: 3.2 miles, one way. Not exactly the Iditarod, I understand, but pretty far for a sixth grader. I think the story stands up.

Brady

********************************

Hey Brady.

If it's at all possible could we get a short story based on the disappearance of Snakebite?

Thanks, Trav

Pasties and Meat Pies

2010-02-06T22:42:00.025-05:00

Trav,

Time for my annual Holiday Drive Post. I’ll remind The Huggett Files readers that I do this trip every year so that I can cart The Black One to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And by now it’s sort of a tradition. Besides, she loves it there, for lots of reasons.

This year I made a quick pit stop to drop off some cargo and crash for a few hours, but then it was back on the pavement for another 11 hours, right through America’s holy triumvirate of depleted manufacturing cities – Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit. There’s an overpass on 75N in Toledo that has “Toledo Pride” spelled out on the chain link fencing in big red letters. I won’t get into the long-term problems of protectionism, or the free market, or unions, or anything else, but I will say that I can’t help but pull for these places. My dad grew up in Pittsburgh, we lived in Detroit, my mom’s from St. Joe, Michigan (sister town to Benton Harbor), and it’s fair to say I’m a sucker for our burned-out post-industrial towns. They’ve got rich histories and are full of sensible people who work hard – or who want to work hard, anyway.

Above Detroit the route gets quieter and more remote. God’s country, Michiganders call it, and I admit it’s a starkly beautiful area, especially during winter. From The D, it’s about four hours to the Mackinac Bridge – the third-longest suspension bridge in the world. When the clouds are high, I can see Lake Michigan stretching out in both directions: choppy, cold and gray as slate. But it’s a horrible spot for lake effect snow and whiteouts, so the bridge often closes in inclement weather, and there’s a myth that a high wind once blew a small car right over the guardrails – they found it beneath the bridge at the bottom of the lake.

Across the bridge and into the U.P., it’s another 4 hours to my dad’s house. Those last 30 minutes really stretch out, and by the time I arrive, I’m usually exhausted and irritable from 18 hours on the road, but my dad always has a beer waiting for me, so I sit on the couch and it’s not long before something soft and calm settles into my bones. It’s Christmas, after all, my family is around me, my dog is there, there’s no alarm clock in the morning and work seems far away. The pressures of life recede and I feel cared for, like a kid again.

This year when I arrived, I walked down to the river’s edge to take this picture. A home in the snow drifts, flood lights pushing back the dark. The trip is worth it.

Once the cities are behind me, the best part of the drive is the two or three hours that curve around the top of frozen Lake Michigan. My first few years of making the trip, the views were so shocking I pulled over, coaxed Joss out of the car and took her down to the edge, where ocean spray falls on itself over and over, until giant ice sculptures line the shore. The wind whips across the frozen beach and the expanse of water in front of me seemed so vast that I struggled to remember that it was just a lake.

She's young in that picture. Not yet two years old, with room to grow.

I’ve never done this drive in the summer, and in some ways I don’t want to. In the summer, people from the lower peninsula come up to vacation, to visit the Garlyn Zoo or explore The Mystery Spot. But in the winter, the tourist crap is boarded up, the small motels are either closed or empty, the scenic overlooks are shut and the towns dead. It’s just the locals living their lives, and it suits me.

But what about the food? A lot of smoked fish, for one, ‘cause of the lake. And also pasties. No, not the things a woman puts over her nipples when she dances for the fellas. I’m talking about meat pies (though they do make them vegetarian, Trav). Remember the mining history of the UP? Miners ate pasties for lunch: the wives baked ‘em up, and the men warmed them on their shovels over an open fire. They’re sold both as a tourist attraction and also because they’re ingrained into the local diet. Kind of bland, I admit, but I like them anyway. I had one this year at a new coffee shop over the Wisconsin line in Florence. Looked like this.

(The Jones bubble gum soda is great, by the way, if you haven’t had it).

What’s my point? I’m not sure. I guess it’s the drive, and why I do it. As long as that trip is, and as much effort as it takes to book-end my holiday break with 18 hours in the car, it now feels like tradition, and I’d miss it at the end of my year. Even if Blackness were no longer in the picture (Don’t even think it!), I might do the drive anyway, as crazy as that sounds. Just to keep building tradition. If you do something enough, even something as tedious as driving 18 hours in bad conditions, you start to like it. It’s funny how routine brings fondness.

Maybe I do it because I want a new tradition. The routines of my childhood are gone. I never get back to Maine. When I do, even though I’m happily flooded with memories of my youth, it all feels like a long time ago. As much as I loved that farmhouse and the apple orchards in Maine, I’ve got a lot of time logged in Michigan, both as an adult and a child. And now I’ve come to love not just that cabin by the river in the UP, but also the long drive through the state and around the lake to get there.

Brady

My Mom and Me

2009-11-29T21:42:00.006-05:00

Montreal

2009-10-19T15:11:00.008-04:00

Trav,

I went to Montreal a while back – long while back now. July, I think. Great town and I attended a decent work event. The front wall of the conference center was unique. Being inside seemed like some sort of Skittles commercial.

I didn’t have much time to sightsee, but I got the crux of Montreal, I think. I walked through Old Town, down by the water. Heavily trafficked by tourists, but still worth the time. Here it is as night fell.

My last night there I looked up what was reputed to be the best pizza in Montreal, which is, by the way, a real foodie town. I took a C$15 cab ride to the place and got out. The cab sped away. I walked up to the front door, only to read a sign telling me the place was closed for two weeks. Why not put that on your website?

But I was in Little Italy, so I walked around until I found some other pizza place to eat. Inside it was quiet, and I guess that should have been a hint. The pizza was pretty bad.

I decided to walk the entire way back to the hotel, because I knew the street was a main thoroughfare and went through a lot of neighborhoods. Once I left Little Italy, I went past lots of hip bars filled with Montreal’s cool people. I passed an outdoor viewing of some movie in a small park, and I leaned against the light post on the opposite side of the street to watch it for a bit.

Not two blocks after that, two kids stopped me and asked if I knew the location of an outdoor movie showing. You should have seen my grin. I love to help people with directions, and here I am, my first time in Montreal and I knew the answer! I was so happy about this that I admitted to them that I was a tourist before telling them it was just blocks away. It was as if I wanted them to know how fortunate they were to have run into me.

Further down the street, I went through a tiny red light district, or so it seemed to me, because I saw a strip club or two and a working girl propositioned me on the street. Then through Chinatown, which looked like this.

The next day I considered jogging in Mount Royal, the hill and huge park that the city is built around. But my right Achilles was bothering me, so I figured I should skip the run and walk it instead. I got about halfway up, to a decent vantage point before I had to turn around and go check out of the hotel for my flight home.

Through those trails in the woods, when I was alone, I came upon this scene.

Thoughts on just what this could be? Because all I can picture is a huge bear standing in the middle of this mess, a rabbit held by the ears in each hand, having just bashed them to pulps against the rocks.

Brady

No Other Likely Survivors

2009-09-02T21:14:00.008-04:00

Travy,

There’s not a whole lot to do in Iron Mountain, which is one of the reasons I like it. Another is the name: Iron Mountain. Sounds like a place to fight the battle for middle Earth.

But it’s called Iron Mountain because it used to be an iron mining town. On a gray and overcast Saturday, my dad and I parked in a lot with this guy and bought a ticket to ride into the side of the hill.

Tours run about every 45 minutes, and anyone waiting can peruse a dazzling array of tourist kitsch – everything from koozies that cleverly ridicule your spouse to football figurines, including a very current Drew Bledsoe in a Patriots jersey. I could not believe the amount of crap fanned out on the tables.

Here we are listening to our guide’s robotic spiel on mining equipment – seriously, she spoke the whole time as if she were reading a dictionary for the millionth time. Eventually, we boarded a little wooden train and chugged into that hole in the mountainside just beyond my dad.

Here I am in the tunnel.

Tours last about 35 minutes. We stopped at the Little Stope and the Big Stope (What’s a stope? A room opened up in the rock while mining, I learned), and heard about life underground. For instance, the mine stays at 42 degrees year round, and the highest paid position in the organization was the blaster: 14 cents an hour.

The Big Stope was pretty amazing, really. On the other side of the guardrail yawned a huge black hole in the earth – so deep, our guide monotoned, that if you stood the Empire State Building in it, we’d see only the top 50 feet of the flagpole sticking out. Across this expanse we could see a tiny statue illuminated by a light. Big John again, our guide told us, this one 10 feet tall, but it was so far away across this black cavern it looked more like a tiny Drew Bledsoe action figure than a statue.

This constant homage to Big John had me wondering who the fuck he was: I assumed he was some miner that got his legs blown off, or a guy who wandered down a shaft and never returned. Or some local guy killed in a cave-in. So I asked her. She told us he was a sort of patron saint of all miners, a guy immortalized in the song Big Bad John, sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

That sounded fine to me, but it bothered my dad, who swore the song was sung by Jimmy Dean. When we got home, he looked it up to find he was right. Which brings into question every other single thing our guide told us. I now suspect that huge hole in the Big Stope really peters out a few feet into the darkness and blasters made $200,000 a year.

We piled into the train to depart, my dad and I in the second car from the front, arms and legs pulled inside for safety. But we bumped over something, then the train groaned to a halt and the engine died. “We jumped off the tracks,” the family ahead of us said, but I’m not sure our guide heard us. She backed it up a few feet and tried forward again, only to grind the front end into the tunnel wall, bringing us to a shuddering halt.

The lightbulbs meant we could see enough to step around the thickest mud and deepest puddles as we made our way out. As we walked, I thought, This is just like being in the NY subway during the 2003 blackout.

Our little group was ahead of the rest of the tour, and as we squished along they fell far enough behind that I no longer heard them. I suppose there is something significantly symbolic about following your father out of a long dark tunnel into the daylight, but I was too focused on how I might screw with the next assembled tour to think about it. I hoped I might burst from the mouth, breathing hard with wide eyes, talking about cave-ins, no other likely survivors and please, god, call for help. But the waiting area was empty, so instead I ambled into the gift shop to put away my hardhat and jacket, and we casually mentioned to the people behind the counter that the train had jumped the tracks inside that mountain, and the rest of the people were struggling out on foot.

Brady

Announcement!

2009-08-22T23:56:00.005-04:00

This probably should have gone up months ago, but I've been busy ... with things.

Joss Rides the Rails

2009-08-09T11:32:00.013-04:00

Trav,

Thanks for the help getting Joss over the East River. I've been planning on taking her on the subway for about two years now, prepping by putting her in shoulder bags and uncomfortably carrying her around for a few minutes at a time. The idea back then was to get her into Manhattan easily – instead of walking her over a bridge or putting her in a taxi. This picture was taken about two years ago.

Look at that smile. She thinks she's doing a job, and doing it well. But I realized that a shoulder bag was not the answer. She's willing, but she was too unstable in there, and 40 pounds hanging off your arm gets heavier with each passing minute.

I figured what I needed was a big backpack – an Army-sized duffel. I found an Army/Navy military store on Houston and went in to check out the wares. The place was run by a middle-aged Chinese guy, and he eagerly followed me about, dropping details on which bags were largest, which ones had closing tops, and which ones were "the best." All I knew was that it required sturdy stitching and be deep enough to restrain my dingo. He pointed to one bag that had a rain-proof top. I stood taking this all in, and then mused off-handedly: "I won't need that. I'm using this for my dog."

He stared at me and considered his next words carefully. "You torture you dog," he said, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

I grinned. No, of course not, I told him. I won't close the top, I said. I want to take her on the subway, and she loves to go see new places.

That calmed him and we settled on a big black one for about $20. The idea now, though, is to be able to take her back into Brooklyn. You and I almost ran this experiment last summer, but we canceled it – can’t remember why. I felt that someone talking to her on my back for the first trip would calm her – I was pretty sure the train and the noise and all the people would scare her. We needed a short trip: one stop on the L train into Williamsburg. And yesterday was the day.

This was us practicing getting her into the bag.

And here we are on the train.

Note my left arm curled behind my back, supporting her legs. It seemed like a nice way to make her feel secure back there. It helped, I think, though I felt her trembling against my spine for the entire short ride. When she's super nervous she really sheds, and when you reached over to pet her, I noticed a chunk of hair trailing your hand when you took it away.

The whole thing took maybe seven minutes? Ten total underground, perhaps. My left shoulder ached terribly when we were done, but I say she took the whole thing pretty well, wouldn't you? As always with this dog, she's trainable and eager to please. I think she'll eventually settle in, if I do it enough with her.

The end result? Playing with a new toy on a towel at Suzy and Joe's.

Brady

********************************************

She was so good, clearly nervous, but she never let it get the better of her. I see it getting easier next time. Soon she'll associate good things with a trip in the bag. A day with friends in Brooklyn rather than a day home alone. I wouldn't be surprised if when you grab your house keys she hops up, finds her way over to the bag and tries to climb in "Let's go to Brooklyn!". Now if I could just find a bag big enough for Cass ...
Trav

The Strawmen

2009-07-28T22:08:00.018-04:00

Trav,

I had an email from a friend the other day who basically said, Look, would you please post something to that dead blog of yours? She’s right – we’re close to losing our sponsors at this rate. You’ve got a new baby as an excuse. I have nothing.

So I’ve boiled down my trip to Ireland for Teresa and Rick’s wedding to a few things. First, my rental car at the Shannon airport was a manual transmission, so I not only had to drive on the opposing side of the road, but shift left-handed, too. Looked like this.

Thank goodness I spent all those years brushing my teeth left-handed because I hoped to be the next Larry Bird. It was a two-hour drive that was exactly what you’d think it would be – narrow roads, troubled Irish skies, a light rain and lush, green countryside. My destination was the tiny town Cong, notable for being the setting for the movie The Quiet Man, filmed in 1952. It won two Oscars but all anyone at the wedding seemed to recall about the film was John Wayne dragging some woman by her hair through the fields of Western Ireland.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful part of the world. It remains quiet and quaint, and the people are unreasonably friendly. For the wedding, we were all staying at Lisloughery Lodge. You can check the link for more, but it sits atop a small hill and overlooks a bay and was a perfect combination of modern luxury while still seeming rustic.

On Friday I managed to get a jog in, so I could see some of the countryside. I ran down from the lodge into Cong proper, where I took a left onto a thin road, passing a church and a field. As the town center fell away behind me and I saw things like this tree.

From there, I turned a corner and found a huge castle sitting across from an inlet. I mean, I sure everyone else in Ireland knows it is there, but it was a huge surprise to me.

It’s now a golf resort and restaurant. And it has a helipad, for fuck’s sake. It was weird to run through this quaint little town, through some green fields and then come upon a helipad. I kept on, through a heavily forested path, then past an equestrian school and finally it opened back up to country homes and rolling hills and sheep. The middle of the road turned to grass, and I knew I was seriously out in the country. My legs felt great, and I wanted to run forever.

But I turned around, ran to the lodge, cleaned up and went back into Cong to take pictures of the river there, and an old abbey. Here are a few shots.

Saturday broke rainy. The wedding was at 1, and I rode to the Ballintubber Abbey with a Norwegian couple I once met in Oslo. The rain spattered down most of the way, and we followed another couple of cars and got briefly lost. That meant we showed up late – the wedding already under way – and when I pushed open the church door, I smacked Katy and the other bridesmaids waiting to make their procession. Nice job, American.

Here’s the abbey, apparently the oldest one in Ireland.

The ceremony was long enough, and the weather Irish enough, that the sun came out during the event, light streaming in the high windows. Long enough for a Rick-and-Teresa receiving line outside.

This is the best picture I think I got from the grounds.

The reception was back at the lodge, but as we prepared to leave, a woman slowed her car and rolled her window down alongside us – “Your tire is flat,” she said. Geoff came up from his car, and us three men stood around in a semi-circle in our suits, a light rain coming down and staring at the flat wheel. Say what you want about American culture, and our cars, and our driving and our obesity and McDonalds (believe me, Teresa has said it all to me over the years), but I’ll say this: I’ve been driving since I was 15, and I’ve changed tires in rain, snow and sleet, in driveways and on soft shoulders, day and night. I took my jacket off, tucked in the tie and changed that tire in little time. Score one for America!

The reception started around 5:30 pm. The rain came and went, but the skies stayed light until nearly 10 pm, and we sat around tables inside and ate five courses, spread out for hours. The band started playing around 10:30 and stayed past midnight, with the dance floor busy.

Here’s a bit of Irish history for you. In the old days, poor neighbors crashed weddings in order to get leftover food. But they were embarrassed about it, so they constructed straw masks to put over their faces and hide their scavenging shame. Teresa found and hired a group that dress up like The Strawmen and crash weddings, then do traditional Irish dancing. It was quite a sight. This is a terrible picture, but here it is anyway. You can barely see the masks.

Anyway, the problem for me was that I was due to get up and drive back to Shannon Airport at 7 am the next morning, so I cut my drinking off way early, and once the band stopped around 12:30 am, I started making my rounds, saying goodbye to everyone and getting ready to slip off to my room. As I slept, someone turned the place into a disco and people danced until around 3 am, Teresa told me later. After that, they all retired to the hotel bar to sing Irish songs until around 5:30 am.

I made the drive with no trouble and flew straight to Atlanta for a conference. It was a long day, and I was glad I’d gone to bed when I did. But when I checked out in the morning, the clerk saw I’d been there three nights and asked me how I liked the room. Great, I said, because it was. He said that normally when he asks wedding people how they like the room, they can’t answer because they spent no time in it at all – they check in and party until dawn, then check out. Sometimes their heads never hit the pillow.

Brady

Weekend Visitor

2009-06-25T10:02:00.006-04:00

Trav,

I’ve got this guy living with me until Monday evening. Rufus. I call him Roofie.

He’s a smaller dog, which means Joss feels safe around him and, therefore, loves him. This morning she gleefully chased him all around the dog park and even ran solo circles herself, something she doesn’t do that often anymore.

Roofie is a cast off, much like Josser, and bounced around a bit before being shipped up to New York to be with his new owner, who promptly showered him with love. He now spends a fair amount of time on her lap, from what I’m told.

When I left them this morning, Joss was happily tossing about some of Roofie’s toys, and wriggling around on her back on my bed. Rufus, however, followed me from room to room and generally appeared unsettled.

Being the owner of a rather frantic dog with separation issues myself, I can see the signs in Rufus. But I figure he’ll settle into a pattern in a day or two. To be honest, his whining and following me around made Joss look almost normal in that regard. For once, I’m glad she’s there to keep him company, instead of the other way around. Honestly, I think she’ll keep him in line. I can see her now:

“Listen, little guy, stop pacing. He goes away right after his shower, when he puts all that stuff in that bag and grabs his iPhone. See? He just did it. You hear that? He just locked the door. Now we go lie on the bed and listen to the iPod on shuffle until he comes home. It’s pretty relaxing.

What are you doing? Stop staring at the door! Hey! I wouldn’t tear that up if I were you! Believe me, it solves nothing and you’ll just feel foolish when he comes home. Oh, and if you still feel on edge, he keeps the Prozac in the cabinet over the kitchen counter. He gives me mine right after breakfast.”

Brady

The Step Grinder and the Secretary

2009-05-12T21:16:00.016-04:00

Travy,

I just came back from Michigan to visit my mom in Berrien Springs. I had not been out there since Thanksgiving, so I was due for a trip. It’s quiet and peaceful there, and I can run past apple orchards and sleep with the windows open in a farmhouse built in 1840. Here’s where I sleep.

Looks like we stepped back in time, doesn’t it? You can feel the years in this old place.

Anyway, we had a bunch of errands to run while I was there: a trip into town for some banking, a stop at Lowe’s, an appointment for my mother. But we also had tasks in the house, including going through her filing cabinet to weed out junk. I came across some pretty good stuff in those drawers: her birth certificate, complete with tiny footprints on back; her old driver’s license; her passport. And, most interestingly, my parents' marriage license.

My parents have been divorced for a long time, as you know. Long enough for them to both move on with their lives, and even arrive at a place of mutual respect. Which allowed me to view this piece of paper for what it is – an awesome piece of history.

Here’s what it tells us. They got married in St. Joseph, Michigan. My dad was 19. My mom just 21, though her birthday was the very next day, which really made her about 22. It tells us my mom was born in St. Joe, and my dad in Pittsburgh. I already knew they met at college, my father still enrolled, but my mom finished with a two-year degree and working on the campus. The document lists my father’s official occupation as “Step Grinder” – his job when he worked at Buck Tool while also a student – and my mom’s as “secretary.” (I have no idea what a step grinder is and had never heard the term before the marriage license. But my dad found and sent me a picture of him actually working the job.)

This piece of paper also tells us my grandfather was born in St. Joseph, which means he spent his entire life in that town – from birth to death. My grandmother's birthplace, however, is listed as "Russia." The truth is she was born in Kiev (though it was occupied by Russia at the time), and her family was descended from Germans. But none of that was needed for official paperwork in 1969 – "Russia" said it all.

That document put me in a nostalgic mood, sitting there imagining my parents much younger than I am now, a step grinder and a secretary, working their way through college and getting hitched in small-town, southwestern Michigan. My dad, just a year removed from his mother’s cooking, all at once a student, a husband and a full-time employee. My mom with a two-year degree and a household to run. At 22, she’s Mrs. Huggett, of all things.

So maybe that’s why, when the sun came out on Sunday, I wanted to poke around St. Joe. I wanted to go past the house my grandparents lived in when I was a kid, because that’s where my strongest memories of them are. Driving past that ranch house brought a lump up into my throat; I suddenly felt old, swimming through memories of me standing on that porch, of splitting one of the guest bedrooms with my big brother. And, most importantly, memories of my sister arriving into our lives in that very house, after my mom and dad brought her home from their overnight trip to the adoption agency in Chicago.

We left there and drove past my mom’s high school, past the homes of her childhood friends, even the house my grandparents lived in right after their marriage.

Then my mom and I headed for the water, but we passed a soft-serve ice cream shop and I had to stop, because the warm weather and clear sky made the day feel an awful lot like the beginning of summer. We parked in a lot at the water’s edge and sat on a swing in the sand, my cone already gone, the sun on our faces and a breeze coming off the huge lake.

I pulled a few stories out of my mom. St. Joe, nestled on the coast of Lake Michigan, is a nice beach town now, and rich folk from Chicago buy vacation homes on the water. But when my grandmother and her family, after coming into the US through Ellis Island, arrived to St. Joe, the homes by the water were for immigrants, and they settled into a little enclave of Germans. My grandmother and her sister spent a lot of time on that beach. In fact, that’s where my grandparents met. Part of my grandfather’s job was to keep hooligans and riff-raff off the carousel at the beach, and he noticed her while he was working. Eventually they went on a date, and that was it. They were together some 70 years.

The way my mom remembers it, when my grandparents decided to get married, my grandpa’s parents didn’t like it. They called my grandma a “beach bunny,” because she lived by the water with the rest of her lot, but my grandpa didn’t care – he loved his beach bunny and that was that.

Now fast forward some 25+ years. My dating parents come home from college to introduce my dad to my mom’s parents. And they had news, as well: my mom was pregnant and they were getting married. Boom!! Can you imagine?

My grandmother began to cry. “What will the neighbors think?” she sobbed. My grandfather, to his everlasting credit, slapped his thighs and said, No crying, this is a time for celebration. And he went down to his basement for a bottle of champagne.

This is where my parents got married.

Big church. But small wedding – punishment, my grandmother said, for my mom being pregnant. There was no party, no real reception, but your parents were there – not yet married but engaged. I guess my dad had to beat his big brother at something, and he won that race to the altar, leapfrogging your dad at the last second.

Some of this stuff I already knew, but it was a good trip. With my mom headed back to North Carolina, I’m not sure when I’ll be out that way again, unless I make it a habit of driving around Lake Michigan. And maybe that’s another reason why I felt so strange while there, because I don't know when I'll be back. Or maybe it’s the small-town feel of St. Joe that put an aching into my chest. But it can’t be that, because once my family moved out of Detroit, I spent years in a tiny town in Maine, and I had a great time, so what’s the problem?

Or maybe because being there screams the past to me, screams 1980, screams a time when we were young, my grandparents were alive, everyone was thin and we all had our health. But the truth is those times are gone forever. And maybe that’s what bothers me.

Brady

The Lance Message

2009-04-14T11:41:00.011-04:00

Trav,

As part of our continuing series on vandalism, city ‘art’ and the lives of the homeless, I give you this:

Fuckin white Boy will not give up Lance I go to Bronx

I took this down by the East River, under FDR Drive. The homeless congregate there, because it provides shelter from the elements and they can rest their wearied bones on the benches. Plus, it’s a step away from the street hustle and traffic. When Joss and I go jogging in the mornings, we occasionally pass these men, burrowed under blankets on the benches, their overflowing shopping carts parked alongside. Sometimes their stockinged feet protrude from the bottom of the bedroll, which always makes me want to stop my run and gently reach out my finger.

"It's time to get up, little buddy," I’d whisper, tickling away. "Breakfast is ready."

Anyway, they are two great sentences – almost poetry. They say a lot, but not enough, and they get one thinking.

I emailed my friend Randy to see what he thought. We exchanged messages for about 45 minutes, in debate. To me, it was one homeless man leaving a message for another: "Look, that white boy won’t stop harassing me, and I’m moving on. Find me in the Bronx if you need me." In my eyes, the "Fuckin" lends it a tired anger – bitter and defeated, he’s gone.

Randy saw it differently. He saw the note as a message from a man to his gay lover – I’m leaving, and you can find me here, if you’re still into "us." Neither of us could quite see it the other’s way, so Randy suggested I get some paint and write "Please Clarify" beneath it.

It got us talking about this book – a collection of people, some famous, some not, who were asked to boil down their lives into six words. A sampling.

After Harvard, had baby with crackhead – Robin Templeton

Watching quietly from every door frame – Nicole Resseguie

Nobody cared, then they did. Why? – Chuck Klosterman

So, my questions to you (and our readers), are these: What do you think the "Lance" message means? And, can you sum up your life in six words?

I think mine might be one of these:

Please punch me; I deserve it.

Moved around but still not settled.

Joss, I think, would write this:

Prozac helps calm the anxious dog.

Brady

Hey.
When I first saw it, I thought the same thing as you. This guy was getting hassled by some "white boy". Probably another homeless man, whom he competes with for the prime sleeping locations or something, or maybe the white boy just keeps roughing him up and stealing his cans.
I suppose Lance knows where in the Bronx he can find his friend, an equivalent to the spot under the FDR. I wish the homeless of New York used Hobo symbols, that would be cool.
I found his use of the term "boy" interesting. I think the statement would read in a completely new way if it read "Fuckin White Man" right? That would be a broader statement about society I think.

A new mystery: I was down there the other day, and somebody has covered the word "fuckin" with spray paint. The question is, who? The city? Then why not cover the whole statement? A shortage of white paint? Laziness? Maybe it was a local parent, who occasionally walks by there with a young child just learning to read? I don't know. I'll try to get a picture of it as soon as it stops "fuckin" raining.

OK, here is mine: Used to read, now ... diaper changes.

Trav

Update: Brady: While jogging this week, I noted the entire wall has now been covered over with a light gray paint. The message is buried. Glad I got that picture when I did.

Shit Bird?

2009-04-02T13:36:00.002-04:00

East Houston NYC

So I know the nation awaits my Orson post (and it will come). I just need to wrap my brain around this last month and try to put it into words.
Anyway, it'll happen, so until then .... Shit Bird?

Fiction Post

2009-02-18T23:04:00.004-05:00

Trav,

I’m overhauling the fiction section of The Huggett Files. It was incredibly stale. I’m going to try and be more vigilant about getting new stuff up there. I'm going to feature one piece at a time, and also link a nice photo from your work to go alongside – after all, that was our original idea for this blog.

We’ll start small. I just put up a piece called Brooklyn. It’s very short, and light fare. The impetus was some email exchange between us back in maybe 2005. You told me, as a joke, that you wanted my next piece of fiction to include a shovel, a cat named Oscar and a mattress? Something like that. I whipped up a piece while at work (my old job in Atlanta) and sent it over. It was kind of stupid.

But one day a writer friend tipped me off to an online contest for fiction pieces – nothing over 300 words, I think. It’s pretty hard to set up a scene and give any sense of place or meaning, then get some closure, in that amount of space. One of the best pieces I’ve ever seen of very short fiction is by Annie Proulx, called “55 Miles to the Gas Pump,” in her collection, Close Range. The piece is dark and haunting, and it’s only three sentences. If you see that book at your local store, take it off the shelf and read that story. Won’t take but a minute.

Anyway, I cleaned up the piece and sent it in to the contest. Those contests are sort of rigged. Not officially, but the winner is someone who immediately gets in touch with everyone they know and have all their friends stuff the digital ballot box. The award went to someone with about 75 online votes, and the piece wasn't great. Second place was in double digits, too. The rest of us with no friends settled around the bottom. But I was very pleased to see that a complete stranger voted for me – you can see it in the comments section. Made my day.

Anyway, jump over and read Brooklyn. That’s your photo at the top.

Brady

Posters

2009-01-26T20:51:00.018-05:00

Photo by Kel, from the Lorimer stop

Trav,

For a long time, I thought posters were the most ancient, ineffective way to advertise. "Why would you put up a poster," I wondered, "when there is TV and radio and internet and everything else?"

They might be ineffective elsewhere, but I've realized posters work in NY. Everyone walks here, and posters catch attention. They consistently alert me to new movies and live shows. It was a poster that turned me on to Dexter, for instance.

But they also provide a vast playground for vandals. Most of it is harmless: tags or kids giving shout outs to themselves, like "Fancyboys" or "Kid Flava." Sometimes they get political, if not particularly coherent. Like this.

It's hard to read that, but it says, "So what if I voted for McCain. Israel can do no wrong."

Look at this one.

You know who that is next to Cedric the Entertainer? That's Haley Joel Osment, disfigured. I was startled by his face under the ink – he didn't grow up to be that cute, did he?

And, of course, we have the crude ones. The cocks-n-balls. Like this.

I have several problems with this piece of art. First off, The Statue of Liberty is a woman – Lady Liberty, they call her. So the penis makes no sense, unless someone is telling me that one of America's most treasured symbols is a tranny. And even if that's the case, I just can't believe his/her genitals would be able to reach his/her face as he/she kneeled in the cold, no matter how stiff his/her erection.

Gets you wondering, though. I mean, when Debra Messing agreed to do marketing for The Starter Wife, did she know what she was getting into? Did she know kids were going to draw a mustache on her upper lip, black out two of her teeth and scribble a cock next to her ear? Did she know she'd eventually be depicted as a hairy, toothless sex freak on a subway wall for all of New York to see?

Anyway, my favorite in the past weeks is this one for the movie Marley and Me. Three quiet little words, but effective (spoiler alert!).

You The Huggett Files readers – and there are so many of you now, millions even – what have you seen? If you see something particularly noteworthy, snap a photo and email it to me or Travis – we'll get 'em up. Or describe it in the comments.

But don't send them all at once, or you'll crash our server.

Brady

Hey.

I can remember when I first moved to New York City I was fascinated with the poster specific graffiti in the train stations. I could not believe the artistic level of the scribblings, whether with paint, sharpie, or ball point pen. It took some time to for me notice that when I left my usual train stop, the Clinton/Washington G train, the quality dropped off considerably. I was spending all my time at a train station one block from an art school (Pratt) waiting for a train that is notoriously slow to arrive. The G is the only train that never enters Manhattan, and there was a time I was convinced that there was only one actual G Train, running back and forth between Queens and Brooklyn. Art school kids always have pens and markers and X-acto blades on them, and they have plenty of time before the G arrives.

I'd like to take a second to mention the art of Poster Boy. This is a young man who has taken it all to another level. No penis drawings for him. I'm always on the lookout for his smart and creative work, take a look: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26296445@N05/sets/72157605066109339/
and word has it, the cops MAY have finally caught him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/arts/design/04post.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=poster%20boy&st=cse
I for one hope they never catch him. He may be the only interesting artist working in what seems to be the recently stale world of street art, other than Banksy and his many copycats that is.

Anyway, I love this stuff. I enjoy both the primitive penis given to Julia Roberts on her newest movie poster, and the cut-up commentary of the Neo Cons by Poster Boy.

I have to believe that the companies that produce these posters know full well that they will be defaced, it must have been proven worth while either way.

I'll keep an eye out for both the best and worst, and put 'em up here soon. Below are a few of my favorites.
Trav

From Kelly:

Brady: Just saw this one yesterday, and since it made me laugh for some reason, I went back and got a picture.

First off, I didn't know NWA were still recording -- I thought they branched out to solo projects more than 15 years ago. Guess I was wrong, because here they are offering up their most memorable advice again. Clearly, the street doesn't think working as a corrections officer is the way to go. Also worth noting here: This ad campaign was styled by our very own Cate Sheehy.

Latest from Kel:

My favorite part about this one is the prison style tear tattoos.

The Jury is Out

2009-01-08T10:09:00.003-05:00

Hey Brady,
I hope you can still read this through the tears of laughter I've created with my hilarious title. You see, I thought I'd write a little bit about my experience with jury duty this week. Unfortunately, I have nothing to say about it. I sat in a big room with about 300 people, my name was never called, and I never spoke to anyone. All of the city employees were friendly and often funny, and none of the people waiting with me did anything crazy. So, I managed to get caught up on my New Yorker articles, which I feel pretty good about, and that's it. How is it possible that I spent all that time with hundreds of people and nobody did anything funny enough to write about? So anyway, that's all I've got, instead, I'm going to post a picture I shot over the holidays, that I hope you enjoy, because I've got nothing to say.

Bright Blue Slush

2008-12-24T23:45:00.010-05:00

Trav,

I’ve been visiting my dad and my stepmom in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at Christmas for years. Because I’ve got Joss and a heart the size of a prize-winning pumpkin, I’ve made the trip by car the past four years so she can come with me, riding in the back seat all that way. When I lived in Atlanta, the trip was about 1,200 miles. When I moved to NY, I hoped that the drive would be a lot shorter, but it isn’t – about 1,085 miles. There is just no quick way to get to the UP.

When I’ve got company in the car, it’s not too bad. But from Detroit on, it’s a lot of quiet miles and dicey weather. It’s not uncommon to have white-out conditions and heavy snowstorms around the top of Lake Michigan. Last year a coming storm forced me to do the entire 18-hour trip from NY basically in one fell swoop so I could be off the road by the time it hit.

This year weather plagued the trip here, too. A storm came across the Midwest and hit New York on Friday, and that had us worrying that we’d find trouble in the Pennsylvania hills when we started out very early on Saturday. But the snow was past by the time we hit the road and the rental car buzzed along. The problem, though, was a second storm aimed for Michigan, with snow expected to start Saturday night. That left me with two options: one, try to push through the second stage of the drive and land at my dad’s before the storm hit, or two, wait it out in Detroit.

Once in Detroit, I checked with my dad and we agreed it wasn’t smart for me to do another 8 hours of driving, this time into a snowstorm, all so I could arrive around midnight. So I waited. In the morning, though, the storm was still sitting on that upper area of “the mitten” of Michigan, and driving up over the Mackinac Bridge was a questionable idea. But the other side of Lake Michigan looked clear, so my dad suggested going the long way around – take I-94 west to Chicago, then heading north to Milwaukee and Green Bay, then up to the UP. That route is about 100 miles more than going straight up Michigan and then west, but I decided to hammer out the 600 miles so I’d arrive on Sunday night before Ami flew in.

I left Detroit around 11 am and things were fine – a little wet but roads were mostly clear. It went well at first, and I whizzed through Kalamazoo (my birthplace!), but as I got closer to the bottom of Lake Michigan, the winds picked up and a heavy cloud cover settled over the sun. The wind swirled the powdered snow and visibility plummeted. Soon we were down to one lane, most cars driving with their hazards on. At one point we were all going 25 mph, me gripping the steering wheel of the glorious eggshell-colored PT Cruiser, in a line of cars crawling through gusts of snow. The temperature gauge in the car kept dropping, going from 5 degrees (that was in Detroit) until it bottomed out at -4. My view through the windshield looked like this.

Soon traffic ground to a halt. As we crept forward, we met the beginning of a huge accident in the opposing lane. Jack-knifed tractor trailers, and cars galore. I counted about 15 smashed into each other and laid out in the median. Firetrucks lined the mess and cops stood helping the crowd. A few cars looked totaled. I know this makes me the ultimate rubbernecker, but I snapped a couple of photos with my iPhone as I passed. But it wasn’t for me; I did it for the millions of The Huggett Files readers – I’m always thinking of them.

The white-out driving lasted about two hours, and the sun poked out again in Indiana. But it stayed very windy and cold, and I was having another little problem – I’d lost the ability to squirt windshield washer fluid about an hour into the trip. The filthy glass was hard to see through, and it’s not like I needed anything else to worsen visibility. In Indiana, I stopped to fill up and cleaned the windshield with a squeegee, but the cleaning fluid at the gas pump was slush, and the streaks I left froze to the glass. I popped the hood and checked my reservoir, and it was all bright blue slush in there, too. I had a warm bottle of washer fluid in the back (thank you, Mary O’Brien – genius!), and I topped off the reservoir, but unfortunately it didn’t help so I had to squint a lot as I drove.

Above Milwaukee it got bad again, with strong winds gusting snow across the roads. When I stopped for gas and a windshield cleaning, my fingers went numb in about two minutes. The sun had long set by then, and when I let Joss out to pee in the dark at a quiet gas station in Southern Wisconsin, she ran back and forth in this howling wind, not quite sure what to make of it, never settling down enough to empty herself. I called off the attempt after five minutes and she leaped back into the car.

As I got farther north and more inland, the temps began to climb and the wind faded. By the time I rolled into Iron Mountain, it was about 10 degrees. Got to my dad’s at about 9:15 pm. A second day of driving 10 hours. It was worth the effort to arrive on Sunday, but I didn’t really have any idea how bad that stretch had been in Western Michigan until I saw this on CNN the next morning, covering that huge wreck on I-94.

In western Michigan's Berrien County, drivers blinded by blizzard conditions drove into a 30-vehicle pile-up on Interstate 94 on Sunday afternoon. Dozens of other vehicles also were involved in a series of other nearby wrecks, including one that killed a 31-year-old Illinois man, police said.

Michigan resident Eric Teschke said he had just told his friend who was driving that they should probably slow down when trouble began.

"I look up and I just see a sea of cars and I go, 'Oh, crap, oh, crap.' And I just go 'We can't stop,' " Teschke said. "So we're sliding for about 15 seconds, knowing what's going to happen. Bam, slam into the back of several cars and a semi."

Michigan State Police's Matthew Churchill said it was the worst pile-up he's ever seen.

"Vehicles were actually crashing right in front of us, and there was really nothing we could do except to try to stay out of the way and try to get to the people and keep them in their vehicles where they could be safe," Churchill said.

White-out conditions and the pile-ups forced police to shut down a six-mile stretch of I-94 near Lake Michigan for hours Sunday afternoon.

Yikes.

I’m hoping the weather holds up for the return trip. I’m planning on driving to Detroit the shorter, prettier way: east over the UP and down Michigan. Which means that by Saturday night, I’ll have driven some 1,100 miles around Lake Michigan. It feels like a cruise in the country gone horribly awry. I leave on a Sunday aiming for the local lake but don’t return for nearly a week, and when I do, I’ve circled the monstrous thing, the odometer is massively increased and the car is filthy.

Merry Christmas,
Brady

An Old File

2008-12-19T00:20:00.005-05:00

Peru, 2001
Jesus and The Goodyear Calender.

Slow Dance

2008-12-10T20:51:00.013-05:00

First off, Trav, Live Strong. Joss does. She always has, really.

I had a nice little Thanksgiving, how about you? Because of my desire to bring that dog along, I drove to see my mom in rural Michigan. A long drive -- about 10.5 hours to get there, and it was that short only because I left NY well before sunlight and made great time through the hills of Pennsylvania.

I won't bore you with the ins and outs of my five or six days there, but I will tell you that I'd never made a turkey on my own before and certainly never prepared an entire meal. This year I did the turkey (though my sister basted it) with my mom reading me directions. I made a pumpkin pie (from a can). I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Steamed up some green beans, even. We had garlic bread and mashed potatoes (Ami made both of those). Even cranberry sauce (again, from a can).

Here I am Thanksgiving morning, telling the turkey all the horrible things I'm about to do to it.

Not the best Thanksgiving meal in the world, I understand, but I was sort of proud. We had a little wine, and I had some good beer. Certainly, the event was not a failure (as I secretly feared), and everything I ate tasted good. The table looked like this.

I had a great time with sister and mom, and being at that farm was pretty peaceful. But back to Joss. She had a nice week. She got to play with my aunt and uncle's Golden Retriever, and she also made huge strides in her ability to co-exist with cats.

My aunt has one, you see. A very laid-back animal named Taffy Sue. She's been around my aunt's dog for years, so she understands canines. Initially she was nervous at the new dog; she raised her hair and widened those eyes. But after a day of hiding upstairs, she decided it was back to her normal routine and downstairs she stayed. From that point on, Joss and Taffy Sue slow danced around each other on little tables...

on dressers...

and sometimes just side by side.

I spent a good deal of my time refereeing them the first day or so, but after a while, they settled in. The key, I think, is that Taffy Sue never ran from Joss. She never triggered Joss's chase instinct. By Friday, Joss was acclimated enough to approach Taffy Sue in the middle of the living room and casually circle her once before moving on. I wasn't sure I'd ever see a day when that happened. I came away thoroughly impressed with her and told her how great she was the entire way back to NY.

Brady

To Finish Mannheim

2008-11-28T14:47:00.009-05:00

Trav,

To finish Mannheim: These conference usually go for three days or so, and they are long ones. Awake and at the conference for breakfast by 7:30, then meetings and discussions all day, then a dinner reception that usually puts people back at hotels around 10 pm.

I almost always try to attend the receptions. Partly because I think I should – you never know who you will meet, and I’m at these conferences to meet people who can help me in my job. And partly because they are often held in great places that I’d ordinarily have no chance of getting into. I’ve been to receptions in AT&T Park in San Francisco, standing on the pitcher’s mound with a drink in my hand. I’ve been to one in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, wandering around with a plate of food, staring up at the hanging airplanes.

For Mannheim, our first reception was held at the Kongresshaus Stadthalle Heidelberg, in the sister town of Heidelberg. We were dropped off at an official-looking building made of stone. These events are sponsored – in this case by the city of Heidelberg – and the sponsor pays for the venue and all the food and booze. That gives the sponsor the right to then give us its sales pitch. In our cavernous structure in Heidelberg, after I had retreated to the upstairs balcony, my fist curled around a rather nice German hefeweizen, the Lord Mayor of Heidelberg took the stage.

It was embarrassing. It’s almost always embarrassing. No one listens. No one stops talking. I’ve been at receptions where some people never even turned around to look at the speaker. In a way, that’s understandable: we’ve heard these awful speeches over and over – the local tax breaks, the universities located just down the road, the proximity to the international airport, the quality of life here in beautiful City X. In Heidelberg, as the crowd murmur continued, the Lord Mayor finally had to plead. “Just two minutes, if you please. Just be quiet for two minutes, and then you can go back to the conversations and the drinking,” he said. The chatting fell to a dull roar, and he plodded through his pitch. On the stage, he seemed a comic losing the crowd.

The next night, Bayer sponsored the reception in one of their warehouses, though they made it quite elegant. See?

Candles and soft lighting all the way around, and the food was good (and German: meat, potatoes and sauces). When it came time for the pitch from Bayer, one of their execs (I couldn’t tell you who) got up and said his piece (I couldn’t tell you what he said). But he chose perhaps the most grandiose yet ridiculous place from which to speak. A catwalk, high above us, under a rotating Bayer logo. Why? A tiny figure in a spotlight. He looked like a man contemplating suicide.

Brady

You Should Have Killed Him

2008-11-16T12:10:00.014-05:00

Travy,

I’m trying something new. Instead of coming home and putting together a rambling post on Mannheim...fuck it! We’ll do it live!

The conference really begins tomorrow and I’ll have less time, but right now I’m alone in this quiet, gray German town, the hotel sucks and the TV offers nothing in English, so why not?

I was way behind the curve on booking a place to stay, so the other conference goers grabbed all the good hotels. I could have found a better place farther out, but I wanted to stay within walking distance of the conference center, so I snagged the Balladins Superior Hotel Mannheim, not too far from the Paradaplatz (city center). How bad can it be with the word “superior” right in the name?

But it's not superior at all, really. The rugs in the hallways are stained and worn. The shower is a tiny cube with a broken head that spews water in all directions. A note in my room says the place is now under new management (the old name: The Cruise Café Hotel, and the in-house restaurant has a definite nautical theme). All this tends to suggest things went wrong with the old regime.

I do have a small patio, but the view is uninspiring. I get other Communist-looking buildings. Look.

This will work fine, though – I can sleep and shower and get ready for the conference each day. Anyway, my cabbie from the train station to the hotel had interesting things to say. When he asked me where I was from and I responded with the US, he said, “Oh, Obamaland.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you happy that you elected a black man president?” he asked me.

I paused, then said, “I’m happy we elected a good man president,” I said. Black or not. To me, his skin is not his most memorable quality, as we’ve covered in this blog before.

The cabbie did not respond, so I offered: “He’s better than Bush.”

The cabbie laughed. “Anyone is better than Bush. Donkey is better than Bush. You should have killed him.”

I wondered if he means me specifically.

He continued: “He is a war criminal. He should die.”

And nearly in the next breath, he points out the Mannheim castle. Biggest in the world, he says, except for Versailles in Paris. But it’s not all it used to be, because the Americans bombed it in World War II, he said, and it was restored to a shell of its former glory. Ah yes, I think. WW II. German persecution of an entire ethnic people. Mass extermination. About 6 million Jews butchered. My driver fails to see the irony in his statement as he labels our current, wildly unpopular president a war criminal.

(As an aside, it never ceases to amaze me how brazen the rest of the world is about criticizing America and her policies, especially to her inhabitants. Whether it's warranted criticism or not is another conversation, but I’d never pull aside a Brit, or Spaniard, and lay into their Queen or prime minister. I’d consider it not only rude but also inappropriate. And not being a native, I’d find it hard to think of myself informed enough to criticize those who are actually from that country. I can only assume that because America is the sole superpower right now and dominates the news cycle, the rest of the globe feels vested enough to take ownership of her decisions and policies. And thus the criticism. It’s hard to stay friendly sometimes when this happens. Sure, we’ve got our faults, but I love my country and I’m not up for bashing it with strangers.)

I went exploring after a short nap. Down around the water tower the city is getting ready for Christmas. They do this in other parts of Northern Europe – I’ve run into it in a few German towns and in Austria and Czech Republic: putting up carousels and kiddie rides, erecting temporary gift shops and stands selling cocoa and hot cider or wine. I like the way the shacks glow at night – seems to help fight off the cold.

Mannheim seems a lot like Hamburg and Dusseldorf and even Munich. I’m sure there is fun stuff to do here, but I’m not sure I’ll have time.

I poked around online for a place to eat dinner: Zwicker Stube.

It had a nice, local feel, and plenty of meat and potatoes – very German. It was small and all the tables taken, but I got a space at the bar, which suited me just fine: eating alone is best done at the bar. This was my view.

The old guy kept a glass of beer under the bar, and sipped from it during my drawn-out meal, refilling when needed. He was friendly and moved around back there as if it were his own kitchen – I like to think that he actually lived upstairs, and that he locks up at the end of the night, slipping off to his quarters through some back set of stairs.

Here’s the crowd.

It was still early, so when I left I ducked next door to Millie’s Pub and Bistro. A quiet place, with the short bar filled by people well over my age, and both bartenders in their 50s. One wore a plunging neckline to put her heavy breasts on full display. They had a 5-CD changer on shuffle, and it played a steady stream of American music. “Lean On Me” was on as I sat down.

I got a weird vibe in there, but that’s probably to be expected since there were so few of us and it was clear I was not local. An older man filled the stool next to me, ears pierced with gold rings, smoking along with the rest of the bar; I’d forgotten how awful a smoke-filled bar can be.

Soon, a small, neat man with soft features came in, probably 50 years old. I was beginning to think the bar was a hangout for 50-something gay men. Which is cool, but I was going to have some ‘splaining to do if I stayed much longer.

A largish man sporting a thick brown mustache leaned back in his chair so he could see me and said, “Don’t fall asleep.”

For the briefest of seconds I thought he was trying to warn me – don’t fall asleep in this place or you’ll wake up in the basement, arms and legs bound. But I realized he’d caught me yawning in my jet-lagged state. We started talking. He lives in Toronto but is a native of Mannheim. He was in town with his wife and on vacation for a bit. We do the small talk – When did I get in? Am I jet lagged? Where are you from? Why are you here? – and then they got up to leave.

“Good time!” blurted his wife, as they rose.

He told me to get some rest and to “soak up the feel” of the city while I’m here. Actually a very nice guy, as most Canadians usually are.

“Good time!” said his wife again, struggling into her coat. She was pretty drunk, and I realized she didn’t speak much English. I nodded and said I hope to have a nice time, yes.

They leave, but not before she turns back over her shoulder to shout “Good time!” once again. By then I was pretty tired and actually wanted that sad hotel bed of mine, so I muddled through the linguistics of paying and dropped €5 on the bar.

Today I managed to go for a 5-mile jog, across town to and around the park. Past the media tower.

Not a very exciting day, really. Truth is, I’m kind of ready for the conference to start so I’ll have stuff to do. Luckily, the opening reception is in an hour.

Auf Wiedersehen
Brady

A Futuristic Whooshing Sound

2008-11-12T17:32:00.008-05:00

Trav,

So, to update the millions of The Huggett Files readers – I’ve moved again. You already know this, of course, because I once again used you for all my heavy lifting. Remember that I did this to you as recently as the end of March?

Thanks again for your help. I’d like to think it’s the last time I’ll ask for it. One, because I hope I don’t move again for some time, and two, because I hope to be an adult the next time and pay movers. I hate testing the strength of all my friendships just to switch apartments.

(Brady picks up cell phone. He dials. Audience hears ringing. The call is answered.)
“Hi buddy, it’s me. Listen, I just wanted to say that you’ve always been a great friend to me. So why don’t you come over and help me carry a couch and some dressers and this mattress up a bunch of stairs?”
(Scene ends)

I love the East Village and love the new place, though. I’ve discovered it is exactly the opposite of where I was living. Let me count the ways.

Old place: holes in the drywall (especially under the sink).
New place: no holes and the walls are freshly painted.

Old place: a cardboard box on the stairs by the front door for each tenant’s mail.
New place: real mailboxes with keys for each tenant.

Old place: both taps in the bathtub leaked streams of water, and the shower temperature vacillated wildly from cold to burning hot.
New place: brand new bathroom, and the shower temperature stays pleasantly consistent.

Old place: a sink, a stove and an ancient refrigerator. No counter at all.
New place: new fridge, new stove, new dishwasher(!) and new sink. Plenty of counter tops and cabinets. I cannot fill them.

Old place: JMZ trains rattled by 24 hours a day. Tenant below me was a DJ, and often began his post-bar partying at around 5 am, pumping techno music. (He was a nice guy, actually, and always turned it down when I asked.) Other nights, landlord had gatherings in his jazz club two floors down.
New place: I hear next to nothing and sleep peacefully at night.

Old place: flushing the toilet required holding the handle down for 20 seconds, watching the water build, then swirl and finally disappear, only to gurgle up seconds later still stubbornly holding its contents.
New place: one stout push on the lever empties toilet with a futuristic whooshing sound that reminds me of being on an airplane.

Old place: landlord was fined $300 for not adequately managing the building’s trash facilities. He was also threatened with termination of power three times by ConEdison for non-payment of bills, all in seven months.
New place: there is trash pick up, and building manager sorts recycling. Landlord pays bills on time.

Old place: no lease, and my landlord tried to raise my rent after six months (which is why I finally left).
New place: real lease, and landlord fixes anything that breaks.

I’ve lived in worse places, where the rats were large and aggressive and the cockroaches persistent (I remember my mom’s hands creeping to her mouth when she walked into that fraternity house my senior year in college). But since I’ve moved, I’ve realized just how much I hated that place. I mean, I loved Williamsburg. I loved many of its bars and I loved Bonita. I loved jogging over the bridge. I loved McCarren Park. For nearly two years, it was my NY existence. I’m sad to leave it for a lot of reasons.

But I hated that apartment.

I’ll probably have more on this topic, as I’ve taken my landlord to court and have a date set for December, but for now? Adios, dump.

Brady

The Right Choice

2008-11-10T16:47:00.013-05:00

Trav,

Nice photo, and thanks for taking it. I saw this mural while riding the bus this morning (trying out new routes to work – and that one sucked: took me 50 minutes). I thought, Wow, they sure got that mural up quick. You can’t see it that well in the photograph, but it thanks America for voting Obama as president elect. And off on the left, there is a big red X over what is a poor rendering of McCain, as the Republican candidate looms over the globe with his arms outstretched in that odd, injured way of his (damn you, Vietcong). On either side of his head are the words “GOOD” and “BYE.”

NYC is happy Obama was elected, and so am I. But you’ll remember that on the night of the election, I was taken aback by the media coverage. I felt it focused too much on Obama’s skin color, and not enough on his potential as a president. I honestly thought it belittled Obama’s accomplishments to continually bring up his skin. I didn’t vote for him because he’s black – to vote based on skin isn’t a good enough reason. I voted for him because I thought he was the best candidate for president. And because I think he has a unique, almost unnerving ability to perceive humanity, and a powerful combination of calmness and inner strength. The fact that he might be able to heal the racial divide is an added, awesome bonus, but the media discussing only his skin color all night bothered me.

You disagreed. You said the time to address what Obama means to the black community and America’s history of racism was on the night of the election.

Guess what? After thinking about the days surrounding the election, I think you’re right. The entire city was abuzz leading up to Tuesday, and it’s been abuzz ever since. You can feel it in every corner of the city. At the dog park. In the bodegas. Among co-workers. In the bars. Everywhere, Obama was and is a topic of conversation.

I took Joss for a walk around the East Village before the action on Tuesday night, and almost every conversation I overheard was about the election. Three young black kids walked by, commenting on how they were going to address white people if Obama won. I won’t say that I felt their anticipated tone or attitude was particularly healing, but I do honor their excitement – this was a life-changing, huge event for them. It was the turning of a page, it was an apex.

Post election, I spent some quality time in the Laundromat. An elderly Latina lady chattered on and on to her friend, and I kept hearing Obama’s name. My Spanish remains shoddy, so I can’t say for sure what she said, but she sure sounded happy.

And finally, I was walking home the other night and came to an intersection. As I waited for the crosswalk signal to change, I listened to a rather heated conversation between a black guy and a couple of whites. The black guy might have been homeless – not sure and I didn’t turn around to stare. Anyway, whatever he wanted, the white guys weren’t giving him, and he was angry. He blurted out, “You’ll vote for a black man, but you don’t fucking like blacks!”

The white guy calmly said, “I didn’t vote for anybody.”

And the black guy said, “That’s because you ain’t registered, motherfucker!” And he stomped off.

An odd exchange, yes, and I’m not sure what’s at the bottom of it. But it’s interesting that the black guy blurted what he did. It’s as if, in this new era in which a black man has been elected president, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He thought, Wait, maybe these people don’t hate blacks, because Obama just got elected a few days ago, and it took a lot of white votes for that to happen. So, where do I stand? What is happening here?

And so he charted a new path in the dialogue of one race blaming the other. You’ll vote for a black man, he said, but deep down, you still hate us.

Now, is that true? I’d venture no. I think those white guys just wanted the panhandling to stop and for him to go away. But I think it’s telling that our angry friend had to pause for a second and rethink his complaint about whites. It was time to add a wrinkle to his accusation, so he did. All because Obama is the president elect. And I guess, in some fucked up way, that’s progress.

Brady

**********************************************************

I love the "That's because you ain't registered" comeback. That is hilarious. I suppose the election of Obama does confuse the racists on both sides a bit. White racists will have to watch this man destroy all of their long held stereotypes, and the black racists will have to admit that a lot of Americans didn't care what color Obama was, just as long as he was the best person for the job. I'm confident that they will however find a way to continue being racist, so as not to be called quitters. Nobody likes a quitter.

I have really enjoyed the energy in the city in the days following the election. I love New York City almost every day. Sometimes, when I'm on the bus, after being stuck in the rain, I hate it, but usually, it is my favorite place. There have been three occasions when I REALLY loved it. It is those moments when the city seems to feel and move like one unit. After September 11th was one of those times, obviously an awful time, but also, in the days after, when I was most proud to be a New Yorker. As bad as it was, it solidified my love for the Apple. During the blackout a few years ago, when it felt like everyone in the city had the same thought: "We will not riot like in the 70s, instead we will all drink warm beer in the streets!" And now this week, when, like you said, Obama was all anyone was talking about. We held our breath together, crossed our fingers, and watched him win. It felt like America was letting us back in to the Union.

Trav

Democracy!

2008-11-04T11:27:00.002-05:00

Sussudio

2008-10-17T10:58:00.010-04:00

Brady,
This past Sunday, at family dinner, we got in to a conversation I wanted to bring you in on. This one is not as odd as they sometimes can be, but I do think it's interesting.

What is the worst band and/or singer that was, at one time, your very favorite band and/or singer?

I decided mine was Mr. Phil Collins. I can't sit through a Phil Collins song without wanting to kick whatever speaker it's coming from. I do not like Phil Collins or his music, but, I do remember there was this one summer, when I was in elementary school, and I saw this:

I believe I bought the cassette the very next day at Strawberries Records and Tapes in North Kingstown, and I was telling Billy not to lose my number for weeks after.

So, I've loved some truly terrible bands in my day. Especially during the Poison and Ratt era, but I can still sit through "Talk Dirty to Me" so I think Phil will take the crown.

Your turn.

*I'd also like to encourage our millions of readers to participate, and after a week or so, I will look over the submissions, choose my favorite, and the winner will get the old double cassette player stereo I used to carry around with me just in case I felt the need to breakdance in the street ... and I felt the need to breakdance in the street often, because my moves were too dope to keep to myself. True story.
Please leave your favorites in the Comments section.
Thanks. Love, Dr. Pop n' Rock.

*************************************************************************************

Trav,

This is a tough one for me, because we’re looking for “your very favorite band and/or singer” that was crap. I know I listened to a lot of crap when I was a kid, much of it because Nick and I joined BMG record club together and we each picked stuff. (He picked Falco, and lots of Madonna. I remember picking ZZ Top.) I remember we listened to a lot of Doug E. Fresh. But I don’t think I ever considered any of that my favorite anything.

By the time I was old enough to have a favorite, I’d established my own taste. I’m sure my parents thought it was trash, but looking back, I listened to influential stuff that stands up today. I swear, I have good taste in music.

My first real love was Black Sabbath. My buddy and I used to listen to his sister’s albums, and we both fell in love with Sabbath. They scared the hell out of me. The actual song Black Sabbath opens with the sounds of a rainstorm and then gives us in first-person Satan visiting lead singer Ozzy Osbourne, and it pretty much terrified my 12-year-old ass. Sabbath was my favorite for probably two years from then, and we listened to album after album, though the group had already booted out Ozzy. So from there we jumped to Ozzy, and he was my favorite after that. Then I think it was Motley Crue (and I insist that their early stuff was quite good – hard, tinged with punk and LA glam, a bit of Kiss thrown in – gritty). Then Metallica, and the first time I heard them, they kind of scared me, too. The speed, the heavy riffs, the shrieked lyrics about death and destruction – it made everyone else look like...well, like a hair metal glam band.

From there, I think Guns ‘n’ Roses became my favorite. After that, I think the next time I really identified a band as my favorite, or acknowledged that an album was amazing, was Radiohead’s OK Computer. I was out of college then and expanding my music tastes greatly, but it’s still one of the best albums I own.

But I did listen to lots of shit as a kid. Poison. Warrant. Dokken. Ugh, you name it. When crappy metal was exploding all over MTV and radio, it seemed like I was swapping tapes of new bands with kids every other day at school. Which is how I got turned on to Loudness, the Japanese metal band.

Their album was called Thunder in the East, and they sang in English. It was awful. But at least I knew it was awful, even then. I listened to it for the music and tried to ignore the lyrics – something normally very difficult for me to do. They had one great song (musically) – Heavy Chains. A dark, driving guitar beat that tumbled over itself and climbed at just the right spots. Here, check out the lyrics. You’ll see why I cringed, even as a teenager. Read them slowly, lest they explode your brain – the poetry is very deep.

She Wants To Run, Going On,
Point Of No Return
No Looking Back, Hope Is
Gone Just A Slow burning

Lost Without Love, So She
Tries To Get All She Can
Into The Night, Desperate
Eyes, Look For Helping
Hands

Like A Scream, The Siren's Call
Now It Seems She's Lost To All
Moving Slow, And Trapped In Pain
Don't Run With Heavy Chains
What's Left Is Torn Apart
Heavy Chains On Heavy Heart

Her Broken Life
Her Broken Heart
Broken Promises Lost And Found
Just Like A Knife
Into Her Heart
Keeping Her Down

(Solo)

What's Left Is Ripped Apart
Heavy Chains On Heavy Heart

Broken Pieces Of Life
Broken Pieces Of Heart
Broken Pieces Of Promises Lost And Found
Heavy Chains Like A Knife
Cutting Into Her Heart
Keeping Her Down

Heavy Chains

Great, no?

Brady

Does This Make Me An Elitist?

2008-10-06T14:46:00.013-04:00

Brady,

So I've been going on and on about McCain and how he sold his soul to be the Republican nominee, and about Sarah Palin, and how she makes me want to light myself on fire ... wait, what? Well now I'd like to mention what really scares me about America. It's this :

Box Office Estimates Oct. 3-5
1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua (PG)
$29.0 Million
2. Eagle Eye (PG-13)
$17.7 Million
3. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (PG-13)
$12.0 Million
4. Nights in Rodanthe (PG-13)
$7.4 Million
5. Appaloosa (R)
$5.0 Million

What?! Really? The talking chihuahua movie? I almost walked out of a theater a few weeks ago because the TRAILER for this movie came on. You can tell me it's a kids movie, or just a really long Taco Bell commercial, I don't care, I'll never understand how people could pay to watch this movie. I know I'm being one of those people that gets outraged about a movie or book that they never saw or read, but I'm feeling pretty confident in my opinion. 29 million dollars in the first weekend. You know what that means ... a god damn sequel.
Trav

**************************************************************************************

Trav,

After reading your blog, I noticed something. Tim Robbins steals shit to seem smart. And he doesn’t give credit after doing so.

Here’s how I know. I happened to watch The Daily Show for Monday, Oct. 6. The guest was Tim Robbins. Early in his chatting, he noted that “the world was collapsing.” Stewart assumed that he meant the financial crisis, the credit crunch, the government bailout, etc. But Robbins instead cited a movie about a “talking dog” being the No. 1 draw at the box office, which must be a “sign of the apocalypse, I think.”

Wait – where did he get that line? Since the show is filmed after your blog post, I can only assume that he reads The Huggett Files, and stole your material for his intro. Making it worse, he didn’t even acknowledge it.

I can hear you now: It’s probably just a coincidence.

But it wasn’t, and here’s how I know. Later on in his ramblings, he sighed and complained that he wanted a “smart person” to run this country, and he backed it up with this gem: “You know, we have the Navy Seals, and they are an elite squad. Don’t you want elite people running the government?”

Zing! Great one, Robbins! But wait. Haven’t I already heard that somewhere? Oh yes – Maureen Dowd’s snarky column on Palin (not that I don’t like snarkiness – I’m just saying), published Oct. 6.

In her column, she says:

“We could, following [Palin’s] strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?”

Clearly, Robbins got up Monday, read The NY Times and The Huggett Files to properly arm himself for the show and went to meet Jon Stewart. All of which I don’t have a problem with. But I have a major problem with him not adequately sourcing his information. As a journalist (I’m really more of an editor, but I do have that degree, and I do interview people and use sources), I’m really irritated. It’s sleezy and it’s unjust. He’s standing on the shoulders of others, and he’s doing it on national TV. Personally, I won’t even retell a friend’s funny situation without properly informing anyone listening to whom it originally happened – so they get the credit. And that’s just me in a bar – not on TV, passing lines off as my own.

You know how the far right hates Robbins and his activist wife, Susan Sarandon, for their outspoken, leftist views? I always wondered why they singled him out. I think I’m beginning to have an idea.

If he had not done one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, I’d be really ticked off.

Brady

I'm OK with Tim Robbins stealing from THF, though I do wish he would credit us, after all, I spent at least 8 minutes working on that piece.
Anyway, it's better than what usually happens, and that is the New York Times stealing from us ... that's right, we are now the blog of record.

Trav

The Backlash : Episode Two

2008-10-01T09:51:00.001-04:00

I feel like this sums it up pretty well.
My only issue with this clip is that CNN does not have enough crap on the bottom of the screen, I can still see their mouths.

Pried It Up

2008-09-28T23:28:00.009-04:00

Trav,

Now that we are dealing with current events, like Sarah Palin as a horrific VP pick, let’s consider the financial markets. (I know this is your favorite topic.)

Roughly, in very distilled form, this is what has happened thus far. Massive de-regulation in the mortgage sector has allowed a whole bunch of people to get mortgages they should not have gotten. These people bought more house than they could afford, they took out big loans against the rising value of their homes, they bought places with no money down, they took out interest-only loans and they got mortgages with ballooning payments years down the road.

But here’s the thing about mortgages – they earn lots of interest. So they’re valuable and lenders package them all up to sell to someone else. And they are sold again and again, these mortgage-backed securities, from bank to investment house, all around the globe. I think my original loan in Atlanta was with Sun America, or something. They sold it months after I closed. My refinance loan was with Quicken Loans, but they sold that off, too.

For a while, as house prices were rising and we all were giddy about how much money we’d make in our home, everyone was happy. I know I was. My place in Atlanta was appraising about 12 percent higher each year, I think – twice the normal annual average. (This was all before the bubble burst.)

Nothing lasts forever, though and as those ARM-fueled higher payments kicked in, as people began to default, and as the buying spree stopped and house prices finally began to fall, things got nasty. Homes sat on the market and owners were unable to refinance their loan, because lenders had no incentive to do so. Foreclosures exploded. Homes went to auction, and owners sometimes just walked away because they owed more than the house was worth.

Suddenly all these mortgage-backed securities floating around the banking world were, quite frankly, not worth squat. And as we all sat around wondering how many foreclosures were still out there, banks began looking at each other’s holdings and weren’t able to correctly value them. Lehman Brothers. Washington Mutual. Bear Stearns. Others. All with a tremendous amount of assets that were suddenly valued at next to nothing. And banks need to borrow in order to fuel business (I read somewhere, probably in NY Times, that Lehman Brothers was turning over $100 billion a month to finance its bonds, stocks, real estate and financial assets). Deeply leveraged into these mortgage-backed securities, these companies were not able to borrow (or had to borrow at very expensive rates) and their businesses approached the toppling point.

But it doesn’t stop there, as the huge mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got into trouble, and insurer A.I.G. needed to be bailed out. Still, why does the government need to deal with this? Because if so many banks and large corporations went under, the banking world would collapse, and the lending power of that world drives the entire economy. I’m quite sure that without some intervention, we really would be looking at a major recession, Great Depression II, etc., in this country. (Man, I hope I got all this right – I’ve been reading for weeks! Either way, though, if any of you 7 million The Huggett Files readers see an error in all this, let’s just let it go, huh? The bigger point is below.)

Which brings me to…me. When I bought my loft in Atlanta, I was about 31 years old. I was struggling on a journalist’s salary, making maybe $40,000 – or whatever those jerks at Thomson were underpaying and overworking me for. I had, literally, no savings. I don’t think I would have been able to afford the closing costs on a normal mortgage. But rates were at an all-time low, and borrowing money was cheap, and there were a lot of crazy mortgage programs out there, so I went for it.

I bought in an area that had no place to go but up, as I’ve chronicled on this blog before. The gunshots, the drugs, the break-ins – it was kind of what I expected. But I lived in the place and that meant my money was not being tossed away on rent, so I was happy. And I loved that place – still do. I got to live in a 100-year old warehouse, under some billboards, right in Atlanta’s guts. I felt incredibly lucky. It was beautiful in many ways. The big windows, the stairs, the view from the roof. See?

But I’m a perfect example of what was wrong at the time. Yes, I had good credit, but if the same boy from 2003 applied today, I don’t think I’d be cleared. My mortgage was a 3-year ARM, meaning that my loan would adjust unpleasantly after three years, but I doubted I’d be in Atlanta that long, so I didn’t care. I also had a split mortgage, meaning one of them was interest only, and so those payments were never applied to the principal. I put no money down, which meant that I owed basically what the loan was worth. Basically, I let the rising prices and cleaning-up neighborhood drive my investment.

When my three-year ARM was up, my loan payment jumped by $400 a month. Horrified, I refinanced. Prices were still rising, so I was able to do that – in fact, the appraisal showed my home’s value had risen by $45,000 in three years. Awesome! I refinanced with a odd, gimmicky mortgage that allowed me to pay as low as $650 a month for five years, but with a payment in five years that exploded to something I’d rather not consider (though I did overpay each month so my interest was covered). Then I found a job I loved and moved to NY.

And that’s where things got sticky. What do to with this property? Sell it? Didn’t seem smart, given the way my old neighborhood was cleaning up, coupled with the long time many lofts were sitting on the market after the bubble burst. Find a renter? I did for a year, but it doesn’t make sense either, and here’s why: I owe at least $1100 each month to cover my interest and my escrow payments for the taxes in this gimmicky mortgage, and I can’t rent the place for much more than that in Atlanta. Plus, I also still pay my $200 HOA fee, not the tenant. Which means even with a renter, I lose about $2,400 a year in HOA fees.

But to sell it, I need to have it empty (should sell quicker that way). And if it’s empty, then I’m pouring at least $1,100 in rent and $200 in HOA fees a month into that place while it sits on the market. Meanwhile, I’m still paying my rent in New York for this dumpy apartment run by a washed up, drunken jazz-playing slumlord. My finances are stretched thin.

This leaves me in between a rock and a hard place. Let’s pretend it sells in six months. Not bad, but it still means I’ve lost $7,800 in mortgage payments and HOA. I’m hemorrhaging money while this sits empty on the market.

How is this housing crisis resolved? A government bail-out! Although in this case, the “government” is my mom. She’s recently sold property and is loaning me the money to pay off my mortgage. Can you believe it? It’s a huge, tremendously giving thing to do, and it relieves so much. Now I can put it on the market and lose just $200 a month in HOA fees (plus my taxes), instead of $1,300 until it sells. And because I’m not panicked, I can afford to be a little patient and not sell it at a loss (though I’m still pricing it aggressively).

My mother has inserted a bar under the rock on one side of me, and pried it up. I feel close to slithering free. Without this, I could have been pinched there for months, perhaps years.

Not everyone has access to this kind of help, and I’m incredibly lucky. This 36-year-old man is getting bailed out by his mother. And it is tremendous. Thank you, mom.

Brady

Out Went the Lights

2008-09-24T10:51:00.004-04:00

Trav,

Remember when the waterfalls opened in New York Harbor? I thought it was a nice way to make the waterfront a little more welcoming, rather than a place where two filthy rivers join up. Anyway, I was out in the harbor last weekend, listening to a band play on a riverboat. We departed from 23rd and FDR, chugged down to the Statue of Liberty and then turned around before returning to port. Took about three hours.

From the deck, you could see those waterfalls, lit up for night viewing. We got up close and personal with the one under the Brooklyn Bridge. See?

I like the American flag at the top of the bridge. It looks so tiny up there!

At 9 pm, they shut them down – boom, out went the lights. You can see professional pictures of the display here, but really, you shouldn’t click on the link because the photos there make my little iPhone shot look like craaaapppp.

Brady

Kickstart The Backlash

2008-09-09T18:43:00.031-04:00

Brady,

I know what you (and everyone else) are thinking. What does Travis think of Sarah Palin? Will he ever take the time out of his spotty freelancer's schedule to write about her, and if he does, will he use a clever pun like "Does she Palin comparison to Obama"? Well the answers are: I'm not a fan, Yes I will, and I just did.

So, I've decided to write about Sarah Palin on the very day that I found myself saying "If I hear one more thing about this lady, I'm going to kill a fuckin moose!" and of course, where we come from, Commietrashcanistan, the land of no values, killing a moose is a bad thing. So, as you can see, I'm fed up, and I'm ready to kickstart the backlash.

If you are like me, and you are, you've probably read just about everything written about her in the last few days. So far it's all been about the same: Babies and snowmachines and shit. That's all fine. I've been to Alaska. It's totally beautiful, but I will pass more people on 14th street today than live in the entire state, but I'm not really going to make the argument about whether she's experienced enough or not, because I really think a lot of that is BS, and I think some of that argument can be made against Obama, and yet I'm almost certain that he would make a kick ass president, and that she would not, so there you go.

She's a hockey mom, which I guess means her son played hockey growing up, and maybe she drove him to practice or whatever. That's nice. I don't really get the connection to Pit Bulls. Does that mean whenever hockey moms go to the dog run at Tompkins Square Park all the other people call over their dogs and leave? That's not very nice.

So I guess that would mean that our moms were Basketball Moms? What does that say about how they'd vote? I think for a while there, my mom might also have qualified as an After School Detention Mom (I was tardy a lot). Who would she vote for then? Nader maybe.

Her daughter Bristol is pregnant. OK, I like babies. Some people want to say that it reflects on SP's parenting skills or about how she's never around. I don't buy it. Teenagers have sex. Some get pregnant (Though, has there ever been a pregnant teenager with LESS of a choice?).

So my point is, it feels like the Republicans want all of our issues with her to be these personal family issues that we really don't give a shit about so that they can act all offended or call us sexist and elitist. Sure, it is fun to talk about the hypocrisy of the GOP suddenly defending this women's decision to go back to work, etc. But really, it's all about policy.

These are the big ones that get me excited, and by excited I mean pissed off.

Creationism in school. Are you kidding? OK, I can almost understand why they don't want evolution taught in schools. They don't believe in it, even though it's totally true, and they spend their Sundays teaching their kids not to believe it. Fine, but they want to teach creationism in public schools? No matter what religion the kids are? That's CRAZY. The last thing I want them doing is ruining all the cool witchcraft I've spent my entire Sunday teaching my kids. Don't you think I'd rather be watching the Patriots? Of course, but the devil ain't going to worship himself.

Pro-Life v Pro-Choice. I'm going to stay away from this one. Let's just say we disagree.

The Environment. This is probably an unfair blanket statement, but when I was in Alaska, everyone I met that was really into preserving the wild parts of the state, were from somewhere else. I think they're spoiled up there, maybe they don't quite appreciate what they have, because they see it everyday. It's like when people visit NYC and can't understand why we don't go to fancy restaurants or concerts every night, or museums every weekend. We take it for granted (That and we are so busy sinning). So, she wants to drill in ANWR. I guess I get that from a Governor's perspective, jobs and oil profits for the state. But it's short term thinking. It's time to build some damn windmills! Can you imagine having a vice-president that believes global warming is not man made? Oh, right.

Guns. I understand the culture of hunting, and I actually respect people who hunt to feed their families, but assualt weapons, and concealed handguns? Isn't there a middle ground? Why, if you are a hunter, do you also need to support military grade weapons? How does it make sense that cities can't make and enforce their own gun laws? How can felons buy guns at gun shows. Why would a hunter in Michigan care if there is a law against concealed weapons in DC. For some reason I've never understood the all or nothing stance of the NRA, also, people who hunt with machine guns are dicks.

Those are the big ones for me, I'm probably forgetting about 10, but you get where my head is.

So McCain is supposed to have regained his "Maverick" cred. That doesn't make much sense when it is so obvious that he wanted to pick Lieberman. Is it a maverick who doesn't choose the person he most wants because Rove and Limbaugh said they'd make him pay for it? Has anyone ever given up more of himself for a shot at the Whitehouse? (probably, but I don't know who). Of course they all make compromises, but he's like a different man, a small man, and picking a VP in order to please the base, the base you supposedly "buck" all the time, that's sad. Also, if he really believes that he'll get Clinton voters just because she's a woman, that's actual sexism.

I'll be interested to see what happens when they let SP out of Cheney's bunker, and she starts campaigning without him. What will it say when her crowds are bigger and louder than his?

Then again, maybe it will work. God I hope not, but if McCain wins we can only hope that he immediately goes back to the man he was before he sold out.

Trav

Turns out she's just making stuff up too.

SP for VP? Thanks, but no thanks.

****************************************************************************

Travy,

Ah, politics. I really don’t like politics. Honestly, as good as Obama’s speeches are, I find it difficult to hear even him doing the back-n-forth on issues through the press. I dislike all the vague things politicians need to say, and the half-truths they utter in order to get elected. It’s depressing that someone who doesn’t pander won’t get elected. I’d make a terrible politician, I know it.

Sarah Palin? Nuts. You will not be able to get me to say anything but that. I’m sorry, but someone who wants to ban books from the local library (we’re not talking a Penthouse Forum collection, either) will never find my support – for anything. Neither will people who want to teach creationism as a scientific discipline, rather than in the “faith” curriculum. Those are two of my major passions in life: reflecting the world through fiction and trying to explain the planet through science. (My thoughts on spirituality are not tethered to my belief in evolution.)

What has really bothered me about the meteoric media rise of Sarah Palin is that so many Republicans are selling the storyline of her being a good choice for VP because regular folks can identify with her. Her supporters think, See? She balances a checkbook, too! See? She juggles work and family, too! She picks up her kids from hockey practice, too! She’s just like me!

And therein lies the problem – I don’t want someone “just like me” even close to the White House. I’m not nearly qualified. And I don’t want your average hockey mom in the White House, either. I want a highly educated, well-rounded, strong, compassionate, worldly person for the job. Not someone driving across the tundra in her minivan, hockey sticks clattering around in the back like she just lost at Jenga.

Is Sarah Palin a simple hockey mom and not qualified? Truthfully, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s qualified enough, but I also know I’m being told by Republicans that her qualifications aren’t important. Instead, what’s important is that she’s just like the average American – and thus a great VP choice because people will relate.

Come on, Palin supporters. We can do better. Your average person should not be vice president. And they should not be president. McCain knows this (and McCain is no average man, I admit). Obama knows this. Deep down, you know it, too. Stop acting like a small-town, former sports reporter, mish-mash educated person would be awesome to have so close to the top.

The presidency is an incredibly hard job. It requires exceptional talent and intelligence. It is ridiculously hard work. Palin is a terrible pick when considered from any intelligent angle – though clearly a smart one if all that matters is exciting the terrifying base of the Republican party. The Republicans should be ashamed for pretending their VP selection is solid because she’s your average, hard-working mother. It’s a difficult job. We need the elite. If Sarah Paline is elite – prove it to me. If she’s average, let her sink back to the middle of the bell curve and disappear.

Brady

A Picture For No Reason

2008-08-30T16:00:00.003-04:00

Eddie from the bar.

The End

2008-08-26T17:02:00.003-04:00

Well, we had a great run.
Thanks John, for making it happen.
I'll see you all soon. I love you guys.
Trav

Coming News: A Brand New Huggett

2008-08-18T10:23:00.011-04:00

Brady, well you already know all this, but here we go ...
The rumors are true. Ridge is pregnant. Now I'll answer a few questions.

She feels good, no sickness yet, but she is having a hard time sleeping, and has to pee every 8 minutes or so.

February 21st.

We are leaning towards not finding out, sorry.

We just signed a new lease, so we're not going anywhere for at least a year.

Yes, totally, she has a nice little belly going.

Well, we weren't NOT trying.

No.

Yes, but we're not telling people what they are.

Maybe.

Cass will be fine, thanks for asking.

And in closing ... Yay!!!

Hi buddy,

Yeah, I knew about it. Doesn’t mean I’m over the excitement, though. Like I said, I’ve had a lot of friends have kids, and that’s great, but I’m totally pumped about knowing this one for the rest of my life. It’s awesome news.

So while I don’t have any real questions about the pregnancy (I think I’ve asked Ridge my allotment), it’s funny you had a list of answers, because I had a list of unrelated questions and your answers fit those perfectly. Here they are in order. Match them up with your answers. (I hope these are as funny as they seemed when I wrote them.)

Q: I heard Ridge had six cups of coffee yesterday.

Q: When is the last day I can pay back that beer money before you send Matt and Kel after me?

Q: Did you ever figure out what caused that rash?

Q: New York is too expensive. Want to join me in living out of a storage unit?

Q: Do you think I’ve been overfeeding Joss?

Q: Did you take it easy on me when I beat you and Ridge at online Scrabble?

Q: Can I come over for dinner?

Q: Do you and Ridge have any swingers clubs you go to?

Q: Am I your favorite cousin named Brady?

Q: Ridge told me Cass has been ‘totally sick in the butt.’ What’s up?

Brady

Extra, Extra!

2008-08-08T17:48:00.010-04:00

Trav,

Remember my trip to Pittsburgh last year for my dad’s 40th high school reunion? Not only did I write a scintillating blog entry on the topic, but I wrote an essay, too.

It seemed publishable, and I thought of Newsweek’s My Turn. I thought my essay, touching on the Steel City’s decline and rebirth, might have a shot.

It didn’t. Newsweek passed. (Though my friend Randy Osborne did get an essay published in Newsweek, and you can read it here.)

I briefly thought about other outlets, but mostly I forgot about the piece and it sat on my hard drive. But it recently dawned on me that newspapers have Arts and Entertainment sections, and I figured the Pittsburgh newspaper might be interested. I queried their A&E editor and sent it in.

The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette liked it and published it last weekend. (I am also pasting the text below, as I know that link will one day go dead, but this blog will live forever.)

It got a fair amount of response. Some people in Pittsburgh recognized the Huggett name and emailed my dad. A former high school math teacher emailed me to say he remembered my father as "a pleasant, witty excellent student" and asked me to say hello to him. Crazy. The guy must remember every student he ever had.

Then there were the detractors. Two people emailed to challenge my comment of "mid-day" headlights. That was more likely the '40s, they said, and one offered up proof why, saying that by the '50s, "Allegheny County had started enforcing smoke control ordinances, which reduced use of bituminous coal in homes and in the mills, in favor of anthracite coal, oil, gas and electricity."

It seems he did more research than me. The truth is, I think those people are right (my dad agreed that the choking haze was probably in the '40s), so I emailed them and told them so. But what I’d really been trying to do in that section was compare 'old' Pittsburgh with the new, which I think that passage did.

I did, however, get one very nice email from a stranger. He pointed out the powerful "poetry" of a certain line, said he got choked up reading the piece. He also said that my dad must be proud to have such a perceptive son.

I’ll be honest: that reader made my day – he is, in fact, why writers write. The idea is to transmit a feeling, a sense, from the writer’s brain into someone else’s. To get the reader thinking. To leave a mark, as they say. For me, I try to do that crisply and cleanly, and sometimes if I’m lucky it comes out pretty.

I do have one complaint with the editing. The editor in truth changed very little, but he flipped one verb tense. In the piece, when we are riding down the Incline, I originally wrote that "for a few hushed, creaking minutes, I am in limbo." He changed it to "I was in limbo" to better fit the tense of the article. But that misses the point and the broader message. I wasn’t "in limbo" for a few seconds in the Incline – I am in limbo, and that was the entire point of the essay. I laid that out twice: once when we’re suspended on the Incline, between the old Pittsburgh of my father's youth and the clean downtown in front, and the second time when I’m alone on the lawn, halfway between the band of teenagers and the people at the reunion. The "in limbo" didn’t go away when I got off the Incline. It exists (for now) to this day.

Brady

First Person: My father's reunion
Visiting the Pittsburgh that is and the one that used to be
Saturday, August 02, 2008
By Brady Huggett

My father left Pittsburgh when he was graduated from Edgewood High some 40 years ago. He now lives in Michigan, but when the class of '67 put together a reunion, he booked a flight. Curious to see what I'd learn, I did too.

We both arrived in Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon, and I got a driving tour up and down Edgewood's leafy, hilled streets, my dad pointing out the landmarks of his childhood: my grandparents' old house, the site of the only car accident of his life, the corner apartment my aunt moved into when she left the house pregnant at 16, the stop light where he and his friends would line up for drag racing.

Saturday afternoon we wove to the top of Mount Washington, my father twisting the rental car's wheel left and right as we climbed the switchbacks. From a viewing platform we stared out at the skyscrapers, at the yellow bridges stretching across the river like fingers reaching for Downtown but falling short.

"When I was a kid," my father said, pointing to a structure that now sits humbly below others, "that was the tallest building in the city." But that was decades ago, when mid-day drivers were forced to use headlights to combat the black, choking pollution that streamed from the smokestacks lining the river; when new snow soon acquired a thin coating of soot; when steel was king. Now Downtown is something new, cleaner, gleaming, the sky blue above it and a blanket of green trees rolling down from me to the river below.

We made a stop down the ridge line at Chatham Village, a 197-unit social housing experiment built in the early 1900s where my dad's family lived until he was nearly 4. We stood just beyond the patio of what once had been their front doorway, acorns littering the stones, tall trees above us shushing in the breeze.

"When I went to nursery school," my dad said, "the teachers would walk by here, all the kids grabbing onto a piece of a long rope. I'd come out the door and grab my piece at the end, and they'd lead us to school, so no one fell behind."

He shook his head at the memory of it, clicked another photo. I stood staring at the screen door; I could almost see my grandmother behind it, her face still smooth, her eyes clear and deep brown, the way they were decades ago.
________________________________________

My dad's parents are gone now: him to cancer some 20 years ago, her dying peacefully in her sleep in 2005. Watching my father turn away from the patio and amble down the walkway, I became aware of my heart thudding. I could not pinpoint the cause, so I ignored it and padded after him.

We paid $1.75 apiece to ride the ancient, wooden incline down the side of the mountain, the same route my grandfather took to catch his bus into the city more than 50 years ago. As we descended, the other passengers quietly taking in the view, for a few hushed, creaking minutes I was in limbo, the Pittsburgh of my father's earliest years at my back, the shining, modern city of the present rising to eye level through the front window.
________________________________________

My dad had been nervous about the reunion, worried he would not recall names of old classmates, but he had little trouble Friday night. And although Saturday evening brought an even larger crowd, soon he and his friends were clapping each other on the back and smiling as if they had graduated yesterday.

"You look just like your father did when he was 18," one attendee told me, throwing his arm around my shoulders as we stood near the keg on the back porch of the place. I nodded and laughed, filling my cup. But I knew this was not true. When I smile, lines radiate from my eyes and my back is stiff in the mornings. Eighteen was half my lifetime ago.

Under a canopy on the lawn, the band – all high school kids – unpacked guitars and a drum set. Their guitars produced a modern, buzzed-out sound and the drummer was soon pounding away shirtless. Mostly the reuniters didn't care, though, busy with their conversations, and I found myself watching them alone, standing halfway between the porch and the band's makeshift stage.

When the band stopped playing, I stood listening to the soft sounds of insects in the trees and the chatter of my dad's old friends behind me. I heard disbelief in their voices. Disbelief that the stories they retold happened 40 years ago. Disbelief at having grandkids. Disbelief at how thin the future grows when weighed against an ever-expanding past.

In a rush I identified why my heart had started hammering in my ears at Chatham Village: the surprise in my father's eyes as he realized 55 years had passed since he had lived there as a boy, that 40-year high school reunions arrive impossibly fast. The reminder that time slips through our fingers like quicksilver. That it slows for no one. Not for him; not for me.

Brady Huggett is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. (b_huggett@hotmail.com).
First published on August 2, 2008 at 12:00 am