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New York: last look from moving vehicle

The cab was waiting when I checked out of the hotel at 4:30 am this morning, groggy after a sleepless night- when you're used to sharing a bed with your wife and the cat, lying all the way at one side while wife and cat occupy 70% of the available bed space, you think having a king bed to yourself will be a treat, but it isn't, and you end up sleeping at the edge of the bed, just like always. Except that the room is devoid of that reassuring sound of the wife's snoring, the little silhouette of the cat's head you see staring back at you from just above your wife's leg isn't there, and the view and sounds at the window are definitely not home.

So, anyway, I'm groggy and I'm in the cab mumbling about needing to go to JFK for Sky Blue... er, Jet Sky... Jet Blue, and soon we're speeding past Ground Zero, looping onto the FDR, and we're off, onto that side road, up and over the Brooklyn Bridge, winding through warehouse neighborhoods in Williamsburg. And I'm looking out the window at a city I know very, very well, a city near which I grew up, looking at familiar places in the pre-dawn darkness and I thought the following:

Geez, this city looks old.

Geez, this city looks rundown.

Geez, this city looks poor.

Why didn't I notice this before?

Of course, I did see it before, but being away from it for 8 years, being in a city that considers 1975 "history," makes a row of brownstones, a series of tall brick apartment blocks in a housing project with the boyz hanging in the courtyard, the furniture stores in warehouses- We Sell Direct! Department Store Quality at Wholesale Prices!- and the hospital missing letters off its sign and the delis and bodegas and cars and people... they all seem, I dunno, older than I remembered, a little dirtier, dustier, worn. Brooklyn and Queens looked like something you'd see in a sepia-toned, scratchy photograph from the early part of the last century.

Truth is, they're no different from when I was last there, or the times before that, or when I lived on the Island and we'd take the "scenic routes" to avoid the L.I.E. and Grand Central and Van Wyck and, especially, the Belt Parking Lot. It looked pretty much the same then, and it'll look pretty much the same 20 years from now.

The other day, I bought some food at Gristede's, and I threw a copy of the Daily News on the checkout belt, too. The lady ringing my purchases up looked at the back page with a color picture of sulking Lakers and said "Oh, man! Didn't you just love it when L.A. lost?" I said yes, I loved it, and I walked out into the cold Battery Park evening and thought, yeah, I loved it because I don't like the Lakers but not because I hate L.A. New York just seemed cold and dirty and kinda sad, and that's when I remembered what's changed over the last 8 years: me. I'm from California now.

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I've been irritable lately. Not sure why, either, but little things have been getting on my nerves. The bad driving around here seems worse, the slowness at the Post Office slower, the out-of-stock favored brand of deodorant at Wal-Mart- yes, I checked the top shelf where they put the extras- more annoying.

I've felt that way since returning from New York, and I wonder if that had anything to do with it. New York is a little more... aggressive than L.A. Maybe exposure to that for a couple of days triggered that switch in my personality that's been in the Off position since I moved away from there years ago. Maybe I'm just tense anyway. I don't know, but in the meantime, you might want to give me a wide berth.

I do bite.


("In every sense of the word." Ha, ha. Don't make me angry.)

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Interesting end to the Detroit-New Jersey game tonight. Just an observation: if you have less than two seconds remaining and you're down two points, you don't try and draw a foul instead of getting a good, and close, look at the hoop, especially at home. You go right to it, you try to make the shot instead of getting free throws, which the Pistons were missing in the clutch. That's how the Detroit players and fans ended up pleading for a call and the Nets ran off the court jubilant- you don't leave the outcome to the refs. And it wasn't a foul.

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The terror alert is up to orange. I went and had a burger at Hennessey's. They do 2-for-1 burgers on Tuesdays.

The terror alert is up to orange. We watched "24" and "American Idol" and an old "CSI" on the PVR, then a "Simpsons" before closing it out for the night.

The terror alert is up to orange. I ran, worked, paid some bills, picked up some stuff at Ralphs, washed the dishes- in other words, I continued to live my life. And that, essentially, is what America is all about. We're handed information- terror alert raised, be on the lookout- and it's information with which we don't know what to do. Are we to turn in the neighbor for something? Are we supposed to patrol the harbor for suspicious cargo? Are we supposed to run every time we see a truck, a package, a guy with olive skin? What, exactly, does "be aware" mean? Isn't that the FBI and CIA and Department of Homeland Security's job?

The terror alert is up to orange. If they're counting on me and you and the rest of rank-and-file America to act as rent-a-cops, we're in trouble. But there's nothing we can do about it. Short of having advance warning, there was no way the people who died on 9/11 could have avoided it, and nothing any regular American Joe could have done. Over a year and a half later, there's still nothing we can do, not unless we see someone in the act.

The terror alert is up to orange. I'm going to sleep now. I can't think of a better idea.

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Back at the other website for which I write, there are message boards where people in the radio industry can post stuff and kinda chat. I never post, preferring to lurk and stay out of it when the going gets rough. Lately, the going's been more than rough- it's been downright crude and hostile. That's not surprising, because all message boards experience that. No, what surprises me is that people are sometimes putting their real names, or stuff that clearly identifies by inference who they are, on their posts.

I am generally an advocate of being above the fray, avoiding trash-talking, remaining more neutral than the Swiss, which evidently ain't all that difficult. Not that I'm always successful. In fact, catch me at the right moment and you can hear some interesting stuff. But, officially, I wouldn't do that. I suppose I'm old-fashioned, too timid, out of step, but when I see people attack each other and former employers and co-workers and PUT THEIR NAMES TO IT, I'm astonished.

Let me tell you this: I have left certain jobs furious at certain people responsible for my predicament. I could have spread negative stuff about them, could have posted nasty accusations, could have gone on the attack for revenge. Something held me back, and many years later, those same people all played significant roles in very good things happening to me. Some went out of their way to make sure I was included in projects that turned out to be rewarding on every level.

Meanwhile, people who really should know better are out there feeling better about life because they got a dig in at someone who they feel did them wrong. That's nice. But the price for that momentary thrill is way steeper than they'll know. The people they're trashing know people. Someday, they'll lose out on a job or a project, and they won't know why. All they'll need is a mirror to figure that puzzle out.

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Ruben won.

I realize that a lot of people don't care about "American Idol," and I can understand that- after the first rounds when it's fun to watch bad singers get skewered by Simon Cowell, the show's kinda boring and very Vegas in the lounge-at-Sunset-Station sense. But I work with radio talk show hosts, and I know that many, on Thursday morning, will be thinking "I'm not gonna talk about THAT crap. Nobody cares when there are so many more IMPORTANT things to discuss." And there are, but, look, how much can you say about the Orange Alert, or the tax cut? We NEED the "American Idol" kind of crap, just like we NEED "The Matrix Reloaded" and the hazing story and LeBron James and just about anything but the important stuff. Listen, people hear the talk about terrorism and taxes and the lousy economy and they CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM. It's useless. And the bad news is so pervasive, so depressing, it's no wonder people need relief.

In the movie "Sullivan's Travels," Joel McCrea thinks he has to make a "serious" picture about the poor, only to discover that those poor people want nothing more than to be entertained by a cartoon, to laugh a little in the face of misery. And that's why "American Idol" is important. It's our cartoon. It makes us laugh, with it or at it. And that makes it important enough to talk about on the radio.

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Once again, I find myself out of sync with the world. Part of me is fully aware that Memorial Day is this coming Monday. Part of me refuses to accept that. As a result, I've been walking around without acknowledging that the holiday is THIS weekend, that I need to have plans arranged NOW, that the question "what are you going to do for the holiday?" is not properly answered with a shrug and a muttered "I dunno."

So, what ARE we gonna do?

(shrug) I dunno.

Maybe we'll take a ride to the desert, or go to see the Angels- Tampa Bay's in, which sucks, Saturday's Bat Day, which also sucks, and they're off on Monday, which should be a criminal offense. No baseball on Memorial Day? There should be mandatory doubleheaders. Maybe I'll broil up a couple of non-Canadian steaks. Whatever. I just should have figured this out sooner. The holiday snuck up on me.

Shoulda bought a calendar. Another strategic error.

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I don't care about Annika Sorenstam right now. I don't care about LeBron James and his sneaker contract, either. Tax cuts? Road maps to peace? The Peterson trial? Nope, nope, and nope.

It finally sank in about lunchtime, when I realized we're going to wrap things up for the week a little early, close the office, hit the road. Three-day weekend. Time to relax, turn off the work mode, go do something mindless.

I'll try.

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Movie Review: "Bruce Almighty"

It sucked.

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One of the bad things about having no plans for Memorial Day is that when the weather sucks, there's nothing on TV. OK, there's basketball, but nobody's going out of their way to see the Nets and Pistons these days. Otherwise, it's all reruns and crappy movies. Blockbuster- yes, we live right near Hollywood and the best we have for video rentals are Blockbuster and Hollywood Video- was out of anything we might want to see. We've watched everything on the PVR, and there's only so much Food Network and HGTV you can take.

Somewhere on earth, billions of people are wallowing in poverty and disease and war and violence. I'm upset because there's nothing on my satellite dish right now. I'd think about how shallow my life is, except that if all of those people had comfortable homes and satellite dishes, they'd be complaining, too. Think there's anything good on MogadishuVision right now? I'll check the guide.

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