What was I thinking of?

I don’t really know what I was thinking of when I went last week to the Apple Store at the Cherry Hill Mall. I had wanted to see what the iPad looked like and how it worked. Even though I know that it is just a glorified, oversized iPod, I wanted to know if I could seduce myself into getting it. I wanted to see if I could be one of the first people I know who would have it. I wanted others to say ooh or ah and I would be the focus of attention and people would look at me with awe and fascination. Which is really strange because I don’t think I like being the center of attention, it allows people to see my flaws which I take serious efforts in hiding.

That’s probably why I don’t like taking pictures of myself. It’s true that I can look at myself 2 or 3 years after a shot has been taken and say, “that wasn’t so bad,” but to look at photo of me taken today or last week or a few months ago will make me shudder as I see how this sags here or how those poke out there and I will run for shelter, denial or destruction of the evidence. I need my privacy, my anonymity while I pretend to look like something that I’m not. However, for some reason I don’t seem to respect the fact the others may feel about themselves the same way as I do.

Take the picture above for example. When I found out that Apple wouldn’t have the iPad until this weekend, I sat outside the store wondering what I should do. So I took a picture of the store and made sure that I had the mother and her baby in the frame so that I could put a human aspect to the picture. I didn’t ask her if I could take the picture and in fact I did my best to conceal that I was photographing her. Now suppose she was on the run from her wife-beating husband and didn’t want her location known, I’ve just jeopardized her security. Or take the picture below that I took last year. Supposing Papa from the old country sees his beloved daughter out in public with a man and no hijab or mask bringing shame to him and his family. Next you’ll be reading about her and her ritual punishment in the papers and I will be responsible. Will I care? Yes I will, but then life goes on.

I will care unlike the bastard who took a picture of me and an Ex all those years ago while we wearing matching thongs at the July 4th event at the beach in Malibu and published it in the gay magazine, Frontier.  Did he care that he had exposed me to ridicule in front of friends and family and possible job loss? Probably not. It's a good thing that no one I knew read this magazine.

I wonder if they still have that event on July 4th?

Matching thongs? What the hell was I thinking of?

Inflight Entertainment

I was on a plane and I was bored with the movies and sleep doesn’t come easily any more, as my mother would say,” too much guilt.” Anyway as part of writing better resolution thing I took at the beginning of the year, I wrote this because there was nothing else to do…

There is something about travelling that I will never understand. Well actually I do understand but I just can’t accept it. Why is it that whenever I pack a bag, it never comes out right?

If you have ever seen the movie the Accidental Tourist there is part in the beginning where the protagonist tells the audience the art to travelling is to carry just one carry-on bag with the minimum of clothing. The best combination will be one jacket and two pants socks, shirts, socks, underwear and a good book or at least a large one that will tell people that you are busy and help keep them away from you.

I used to try that. In fact I was quite good at it. The last time that I went to London I had a small bag with just the right amount of clothing for long week-end. I laughed at my friend when we met at Heathrow We had departed the US from separate cities. He had with him a large almost steamer trunk like wheeled bag and a smaller one that hung from his shoulder. I asked him if he was the one who had actually decided to carry the kitchen sink with him. I hadn’t known at the time that he had decided to buy out half of London and then turn to my credit cards when he had run out on his.

The other thing that I didn’t know was that once I was back at Philadelphia I would be subjected to questioning by customs and immigration and then further questioning by customs and immigration once they took a look at my at my carry-on and told me that it was much too small an amount of luggage for someone to be travelling from Europe with and just what exactly had I been doing there, who with what and when. Of course he irritated me, but I tried not to show it which failed and we both started circling each other as men often do when they want to show whose dick is bigger. When I told another friend what happened, he said that if it had been up to him he wouldn’t have let me back into the country.

So this time I’m heading to Rome for the weekend and I’m writing this on the flight and I’m wondering why is it that this time I have a bag that I thought that I would never be able to fill and yet it is? Why is it that I have so many more things with me than I need but I’m also starting to make a mental list of the things that I forgot to pack or didn’t even think about? I mean really, do I really need to travel with two cameras, lenses, this computer and an iPod. Well in all honesty I don’t go anywhere without the iPod, I’d rather lose a limb than that. And why is it that in a row of four seats in between the two aisles of the plane the woman next to me feels the need to spread herself out and takeover not just hers but both the of other unoccupied seats? Doesn’t she feel or think that I would like a little room too.

Maybe I should just get some sleep before I start to notice the difference between those passengers that are used to flying and those that aren’t. Like that man over in there diagonally across from me as he tries to curl forward on to some sort of flat pillow pressed against the TV screen in the back of the head rest in front of him. Poor fellow probably doesn’t realize that his seat can lean backwards and thus have less chance of a crick in the neck which he will have when he leaves this plane.

This has been more of a ramble than I thought it would have been. Oh well I’ll post this tomorrow when I arrive at the hotel I guess, unless I collapse from exhaustion.

A Conversation

I shot this picture of 2 men in Franklin Square in Philadelphia last September after the square was renovated and refurbished. The homeless people and drug addicts had been evicted and children and their families were encouraged now to visit. I wasn’t sure what the story of the men was, but I was certain that they were friends. They had an ease of conversation about them that bridged whatever kind of gap that may have existed there and bonded them to each other.

It seems like it was a lifetime ago when I didn’t have an iPod glued to my ear. Whenever I’m out, travelling, walking, away from home or the office, I’m listening to something. Sometimes it’s music that I’m listening to or podcasts, or if I’m on the train I’m going even more blind trying to watch a movie or play games on a 3½ inch screen.

I’ve noticed recently that this keeps me sort of isolated from what’s going on around me. People will walk up to me while I’m on the street and try to ask me something, directions, money or whatever and I will often not see or acknowledge them. Alright, sometimes I’ll ignore them on purpose, but other times it’s because I’m so wrapped up in my own little world that it’s hard for them to engage me in whatever they want me to engage in.

It used to be that when I would take the train home before I got my first iPod, I would sometimes over hear the conversations of those who were around me. I remember one time coming home from work when the two men in front of me were talking to each other and one of them gave his theory as to why the train tracks in Haddonfield, our next stop, were under street level whereas the tracks were above ground for every other stop. One man said it was because Haddonfield NJ was like Jerusalem and the Jews wouldn’t take that type of inconvenience or desecration in their town. They both laughed.

I didn’t think that they were being racist or bigoted because I don’t really think there is a significant Jewish presence in Haddonfield. I thought they were just talking and joking because that’s what friends do between themselves no matter how it may seem to those on the outside. I may have been wrong. But friends will often have a sort of shorthand, a method where they can keep in synch with one another in order not to communicate but to comfort each other; even if it's just to comfort each other over a boring 20 minute train ride.

I noticed that about myself when I looked at a video that was shot of a fellow blogger and friend, Curtis on Fat Tuesday. The whole thing was a spur of the moment thing and took about 40 minutes. Much of it was really a bunch of nonsense rather than mind boggling scintillating conversation. If you’re interested, I’ve cut it down to about 20 minutes of sparring and parrying and can be found in the My Stuff widget at the side here. Or you can see it cut down even further to a cleaner version that is on YouTube as well as on Vimeo which is less than 8 minutes long and is shown below.

Look at them or don’t.

Either way, there is something special that people have with their friends. At least I think it’s something special that I have with my friends as opposed to the relationships that I have with the hundreds of other people that I just know, and I think that's worth talking about.

How much is too much Information?

I don’t get it, I really don’t. Maybe it’s a generation thing. Maybe it’s something like certain dance movements that you only do when you are in early 20’s because to do them when you are older would throw your spine so far out of alignment you’d have to walk with a cane for the rest of your life. I don’t understand why the need to share what we are doing every minute of the day with friends or even complete strangers. Now I’m not talking about people with small children who really do need to know where the kids are and that they are safe, or people who do that for security reasons. I’m referring to those of us who sign on to certain websites and log every minute detail of our lives no matter how dreary and obsequious those details may be.

About 2 or 3 months ago I signed up with Facebook because a friend asked me to. But apart from him and an organization that asked to become a friend, I have no one else listed as a friend. It is not because I want to remain reclusive or set apart from everyone else, but because I don’t really know anyone else who belongs to Facebook, so I mainly keep some junk on it that will be easy for me to find in the future and prevent me from cluttering up my computer. It’s another resource for me.

I should also mention that I belong to 4 or 5 groups that have pages on Facebook, one of which is my gym. Out of the 5000 members that belong to my gym there are about 144 of us who also signed up for this group and except for the trainers; I haven’t seen a single person that I know. But it is a source that I can use to learn things about different events going on, or schedules that I might not be aware of. Also, Facebook is an icon featured on my iPod so it’s all linked.

Recently I noticed that I had not filled out the profile part of the webpage for Facebook and that there was also a section where you could tell people what you were doing exactly at that moment. There was a field for about 30 or 60 characters or words where you could say what you were doing at that moment. You could tell people that you were heading over to the movies, or having a cup of coffee with Jill or soaking in the tub with Bob. These blurbs about your life would then be instantly sent out to your friends’ email bins, websites or sent out as a text message to their cell phones and I thought this must be how Twitter works.

But then I asked myself, why would I want to let people know about every minute of my hum drum life, it’s tedious enough just living it. And worse than that, why on earth would I want to know about someone else’s life minute by minute? So you felt a little ill after lunch, do I really need to know right away? That shit can wait, no pun intended.

Take for example I gave a homeless guy a dollar after he held the door for me at a convenience store this evening. Should I have let the world know right away? I don't think so. If it’s really that important to you we can talk and reflect about it at the end of the day over the telephone if I haven’t turned it off and if I know that’s what the conversation will be about it probably will be off.

I know that there are many people who have signed up for Twitter and I guess similar programs and I don’t mean to point fingers at anyone because it’s not about them, or even you, it’s about me. I like to be up on gadgets and trends and stuff, but this one… I don’t get. It's funny that I’ll show you a picture of my behind and maybe more in a heartbeat as long as the picture looks good, but Twitter somehow seems like it’s too much of an invasion of my privacy and that just doesn’t sit well with me.

Am I wrong?

I Want New Stuff

Growing up I always figured that if you had the latest technology, you would always be ahead of the economy. I don't know where that came from, or how that makes any sense, maybe my father, maybe the kids that I went to school with, but that's how I thought.

So I'm not sure how long ago it was that I decided to get a new iPod, but I'm sure that it wasn't that long ago. I got the 16GB version instead of 32GB even though that was the one that I really wanted, but I never really ever had more than 18GB on the old iPod and I didn't want to spend the extra $100 on something that I didn't need. You see I have somewhere around 800 songs on the player and listen to about 10 or 11. The rest of the device's memory is taken up by videos and podcasts. I love podcasts. They can be so interesting and informative. I actually learned how the sub-prime home lending fiasco went south and how it affected the world economy from reports from the BBC and NPR. Also I'm starting to learn to speak Italian now listening to 2 podcasts that I get weekly for free.


It was because I had bought an iPod this year that I didn't I didn't switch to AT&T for cell phone service this year. I had wanted an iPhone and since my contract with Verizon was up this year, it would have been my chance to bail and leave a company that I have no love for. But I thought the purchase of an iPhone would have just invalidated the earlier purchase of the iPod.

Well this week Apple sends me, I'm sure they sent everyone and not just me, an email about the new version of the iPod that you can shake rattle and roll for effect. It has a larger screen and speakers which the earlier versions don't have. And what makes it even worse is that now you can get more for less and I'm pissed. My device is not even a year old and already it's out of date. Old news. Yesterday's technology.

When will I ever learn? I know that I will never be able to stay up on the latest gadgets with the most bells and the loudest whistles, but you know of course that I'm thinking about replacing the iPod. I think there is some sort of psycho name that professionals use for this kind of behavior but since I try not do drugs, legitimate or otherwise, I don't know what else to do.

Maybe with the economy as it is, I should just forget about silly entertainment gadgets and just put as much money as I can into gold, get a rifle and wait for the revolution. I'm sure that by that time, iPods will be the least of my worries.

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

I don’t have that many songs on my iPod as compared to what other people have on theirs. I have about 800 or so, a few videos to make me even more blind, podcasts and some pictures. Out of the 800 songs, I listen to maybe 200 of those now and again and maybe 50 on a regular basis. Today as I was flipping through the device and I came across an album by The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Who? And I remembered.

Last year around September or October I went to see my man, Paul Smith in NYC. For some people, their man is Armani or Dolce and his friend Gabbana, but my man has been Paul for at least the last 12 years. He’s always sexy and different and sometimes I can find something that I can actually afford. That day, I was going to replace the Gap wallet that I had lost previously with one with a purple lining and my friends’ name stamped on the front.

So like George Bush, once the mission was accomplished, I tried to figure out what else I could do with my friend Larry. That was Larry, not Curtis. Curtis said he would read my blog if I mentioned his name; so once again, Curtis.

Larry and I headed over to Union Square which is only a block away from the Paul Smith store and sat on one of the benches. Outside of the square on the sidewalk was this group. There was about 7 or 8 young men playing brass instruments. Trombones, trumpets and Sousaphone and I noticed they were drawing a big crowd around them. We walked over and listened to them for a while. Now brass bands are not my kind of thing, it is the type of music you listen to just as you are marching off to war, but these young brothers were starting to interest me and the people around.

A few minutes later they took a break and explained that they were from Chicago and they were on there way to London I think, but they needed to hawk their CD before they left. It was $20 and Larry and decided to split the cost and I would make a copy for myself. I’m all for supporting your own kind, but giving $20 to people I don’t know for a disc that I wasn’t even sure had anything on it wasn’t something that I was going to fall for by myself. So we purchased the disc and listened to their next set.

Afterwards we walked away as they were doing the sales pitch and one of the band said to the crowd, “Come on and buy a CD. Don’t look at us as if we were gold fish in bowl.”
And Larry turned and with that effeminate way of his said, “Hmm, and then what fish would you be?”
Oh God. Oh God I thought. It’s amazing how an agnostic or even an atheist can find religion in the strangest of places. The brother turned and said pointing accusingly at Larry,”You don’t want to find out what kind of fish I could be.”

At this point, I’m thinking that since I’m the bigger of the two, I would have to defend Larry when the young man lunged for him. I knew with my size that once I hit him, he would hit the ground hard and maybe it would over quickly. But since he also seemed like he was 20 years younger than I was, he would probably be 20 years quicker, and by the time I would be able to think about hitting him he would have already struck me 5 or 6 times. I decided to do the honorable thing. I turned and walked away.

Larry followed.

Since then I have only listened to their album once. They’re not bad, but they are still not my thing. They are just another reason to take up more of my memory space.

I Touch You Touch

Rest assured your jobs are now secure. You can sleep easy now with the thought that the value for your homes will no longer decrease as the economy is revived. And dare I say there will be peace in Iraq. Yes, I have done my bit for Bush and country. The economy stimulus check has been spent. It’s true I don’t actually know if the money has been deposited in my account yet, but they said it would be on the news and you know the networks are never wrong.

Anyway, I’ve been having troubles with my iPod recently; I was only getting sound out of one side of the headphones. I had thought that it was a headphone problem but after replacing them at least 3 times in the last 6 months, I figured it must be the iPod itself. This evening I went to the new Apple Store at the Cherry Hill Mall to see if I could get it repaired. Obviously it would be some sort of short that needed fixing or headphone contacts that needed realigning. Real simple.


Well they didn’t fix it there, but if I went on line and googled iPod repair, I could find someone who might fix it for about $50 to $75. Or the store could replace it with a similar model, which they don’t even make any more for $120. My third choice was to trade in the iPod Classic I had and upgrade to something else with 10% off. I turned and looked at what they had in the store and I actually felt my nipples start to harden. I was surrounded by that sweet smell of new technology and I couldn’t resist.

So the iTouch is being charged and I’m sitting back figuring I will have about $180 which I will buy a money order with and send it to my cousin courtesy of Chet from a previous post. I would send a check but the bitch used to steal from me when we were younger. I doubt that he’s changed since. But I’m happy, at least for today knowing that I’ve done my part for the economy by purchasing parts that were made in China and assembled in Mexico. I’ve helped with global warming by purchasing a leather case for iTouch and thereby preventing another cow by belching and farting methane gas into the atmosphere. And I know that George is still in the White House.

It brings a tear to the eye.

Checks & Balances

A friend of mine at work sent me the following email. It’s about the government stimulus rebate check that will be sent out to tax payers in order to jump start the economy.

WHEN YOU'LL GET YOUR REBATE
The order in which the IRS sends out payments will be based on Social Security numbers. If your return is processed by April 15, here's what you can expect.
Direct deposit payment
If last 2 digits of your SS# are: Your rebate should be sent by:
00-20 May 2
21-75 May 9
76-99 May 16
Paper check
If last 2 digits of your SS# are: Your rebate should be sent by:
00-09 May 16
10-18 May 23
19-25 May 30
26-38 June 6
39-51 June 13
52-63 June 20
64-75 June 27
76-87 July 4
88-99 July 11

Source:IRS

Up until now I had not really thought about what I would do with the check once I received it. One idea I had was to continue what my father used to do with his extra cash and send it on to my cousin in New York, He’s a guest of the state there and won’t have access to creating a decent life for himself for a hell of a long time; life in fact.

Another idea, the practical one was to pay off a bill or set it aside to pay upcoming bills like my gym membership or cell phone bills. I should do something an adult would do, something dull, something dreary. But I know I won’t.

The third idea is to get an iTouch media player to replace my iPod. I can get one for $599 and if I went to Delaware I would pay no sales tax and walk away with a dollar that I can use to buy a soda or play the lottery. Can you imagine if I won the lottery on a dollar tax rebate, it would be like the gift that didn’t stop giving. I would be so excited that I would probably nutt, ejaculate automatically right there on the spot. I would be so grateful I would have to join the Republican Party and start supporting the war. I would get so crazy, I would have to run down the street and holler that Bush should be made a saint. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What I’m actually thinking about now is that I can really help the economy by buying shares of Bear Stearns. As everyone knows, the share price for that venerable company went from over $90/share less than 2 months ago to $2/share yesterday and there is an offer for JP Morgan Chase to buy them out, although I believe it went up to $5 today. Of course it’s always risky to get into something that is a reflection of the failed policies of both the Federal Reserve and the government, but how much lower can the price get? And anyway, it’s only $600. Even if I lost every cent, no one is going to have to worry about me jumping off of some building in downtown Manhattan. There are other things that would keep me much closer to home.

Oh I know, if I’m going to throw the money away, I can go back to Morimoto. It’s a restaurant in Philly that is owned by Stephen Starr and the Iron Chef of cable fame. I had dinner there once last year. I was with a friend, Curtis. I’m always dragging him out some place, one day he’ll turn on me. Anyway, so I ordered a bowl of soup and sushi and he got a basket of cold noodles that you had to pour a sauce over it to add flavor. We also ordered a bamboo shoot of Saki to wash the stuff down. Yes I said bamboo shoot; I guess having it come out in a bottle would have been just too Western.

I think with the tip, the whole thing came up to $180. That was $90 for a bowl of soup, 4 pieces of sushi and something to drink that reminded me of my own stomach juices. Crazy.

I still wake up in the middle of the night with night sweats thinking about that dinner. It’s a memory that still lives with me. Hmm, now there’s a thought, I can stimulate the economy and have a lifetime of nightmares. Money well spent I think.

"Brother can you spare a dime?"

After I left the gym tonight, I was feeling hungry. What to do? Get something from a fast food restaurant or pizza place? Quick and easy? No, the best thing would have been to go to a supermarket and get what I needed so I could actually have something nutritious, possibly fresher and in the long run cheaper. So I went to the Whole Foods Market on South St. in Philadelphia and got some vegetables and something to drink. The purchase was small and was done quickly. I was in and out of the store within minutes.

As I left the store, I passed a man, taller and younger than myself, as seems to be the case more and more these days, standing outside. He was only a few yards away from the exit door and while he looked clean and well mannered, if there is such a thing, I knew that the first thing out of his would be the plead for money as I passed him.

Sure enough, even though I had my iPod on trying to shut out the world and keep what I didn't want to be seen away from me, I heard him ask, "please, can you help me out so I can get something to eat?" as I got closer.

Hah, the nerve. Asking me for money so he could buy food outside of a supermarket. Everyone knows that people in his situation want money for only two things, drugs and alchohol. I wasn't going to fall for that line, so I just shook my head and walked on my way. "Happy Thanksgiving," he said as I left him behind.

"Mother fucking bitch," I thought. He was trying to make me feel guilty for having what I had and he didn't. That was another line that I wasn't going down for. You have to wake up pretty damn early in the morning to think of something that would make me feel bad, or guilty over something that I had no control over. I walked away fuming, but solid in my commitment not to fall into his trap.

However, as I reached the corner and I began to hope that the few dollars that I had in my wallet would be enough for me to get a pack of cigarettes at the Korean store on 10th St. I know, cigarettes, a dirty habit, I've heard it all before, but if you're not sleeping with me, lay off. Anyway, I also began to wonder what made me so holier than thou. I thought, "how can I get my drug fix and look down on him? How do I even know what he really wants to do?" I didn't and even if I did what difference would it have made?

So I turned back. I walked over to young man and handed him two dollars. He said something to me, I didn't really hear, either the iPod had become louder or the blood was rushing in my head. I'm not quite sure. But I did know leaving the area that no matter how "happy" my Thanksgiving would be, I woud not feel guilty about my new found friend this season.