The Subway Is My Ice Castle

wallofskatesI clamp on my purple headphones, crank up the iPod, and in my mind’s eye, and I envision a woman, a girl really, skating in perfect accompaniment to whatever song pops up. Classical. The Stones. Springsteen. Gaga. She can skate to anything. She can do beautiful layback spins, and spirals, and double and triple spins, all perfectly.

As I’ve told you before, I’m not known for my grace. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had, between my two ankles, broken them 10 times. So when I told my mother I would like to join my high school’s figure skating team, she was appalled. Continue reading →

Why I’m Running Away With the Cat Circus

ShadyCatsI’m thirty years old. I get blind drunk once a week because I’m too poor to do it more often. I frequently don’t wear real pants for weeks at a time. Some days the only conversation I have is with my dog.

I’m not just single but divorced and still fuming and sniveling inside about my last relationship. I keep reactivating my OkCupid account, trolling for some kind of unicorn-man to fix me, despite having no car, living with my father, and working fifteen hours a week tending bar at a pizza restaurant.

I like the Cobra Starship song “Hot Mess,” because I relate to it at a visceral level.

I am whatever the opposite is of having one’s shit together. Continue reading →

New York City: The Crack Years

996747416_a95e0d9ac3_bI got to thinking about the heavy crack days. New York’s, not mine. Crack was like a tidal wave crashing across the city. I lived uptown, in the 120s. You know how, when you walk in the country at a certain time of year, you hear the leaves crunching beneath every step? It was like that in my neighborhood. Not leaves, though, crack vials.

I would get the train at the valley of 125th Street most mornings, at the only elevated stop on the original Manhattan IRT lines, thanks to the island’s sudden dip in altitude between Morningside Heights and Hamilton Heights. I was usually the only person not jumping the turnstile. Continue reading →

Could Horse Meat Disguised as Beef Be On Its Way to the U.S.?

With the news that the world’s best place to get trapped in a maze full of Swedish furniture constructed with wooden dowels and spirit gum, IKEA has suffered the indignity of having their famous meatballs tainted by horse hide. Oh, the shame of having one’s reheated frozen meatballs accursed by a non-beef product! America immediately wanted to know if their American IKEA Swedish meatballs were safe — well, as safe as a place that puts pink slime in their meat can be. Continue reading →

Every Brown Boy

This post originally appeared on March 21, 2012. We are re-running it today on the anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin.

Last night, I put a fleece hoodie on my five year old nephew so we could go for our routine walk through the neighborhood. He likes going for our walks as much as I do. We race down the street – him burning off sugar energy before bed, me (hopefully) burning off belly-fat creating calories. As we walk/run our several blocks, sometimes, often times, he gets ahead of me then looks back, pleading for me to catch him. It’s when he is away from me that I feel the most fear.

He is a sweet boy. Very smart and observant. He can replicate dance moves that he sees on Glee, always wants to watch SpongeBob, and never misses the opportunity to flirt with a pretty girl. Last night, he made a derogatory racial gesture at the dinner table and I explained to him why it is not okay to do that. I explained that it hurts people’s feelings and that it’s not acceptable to hurt or be mean to other people. I demonstrated the point by asking him what color his skin is, to which he replied: brown. I asked him how he would feel if a classmate put dirt on his body and then pretended to be like my nephew. He said he wouldn’t like it. Continue reading →

Song Lyrics Adjusted for Inflation

Some of your favorite songs of yesteryear famously boast of spending lavishly but much like Dr. Evil the dollar amounts don’t impress with our inflated currency in the present time. But what would these songs prices be if we adjusted for inflation? Continue reading →

Why Consoles Are Killing Gaming

I’m a gamer. Unlike the vast majority of gamers, however, I game on a PC. I’ve been gaming on a PC for nearly 20 years. I’ve invested hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars into gaming hardware over that span to run the latest releases at resolutions, framerates, and detail levels that would make your eyes bleed, and I’ve done it without a second’s hesitation; in fact, I usually do it with a smile.

So you’re going to have to trust me when I say that the consoles are killing gaming. Continue reading →