Still WULAD After All These Years
Yes, yes. Long time no blog. I’m still working on Law & Order: Special Douche Unit Part III, which can be expected this week. But hopefully the glamorous new graphic above will dazzle and distract you enough that you’ll forgive the relative lack of new or interesting content. Today’s content will have at least one of those attributes, however.

Wrapped Up Like 162 Games
I feel I should conjure up some sort of post-mortem on the long, dark winter of a long, hot summer that the New York Mets inflicted on themselves and anyone unfortunate enough to consider themselves a fan this year—but I don’t feel like it. Instead, read this good Times piece on some of the historic match-ups that could be headed our way in the Centennial Fall Classic. Here are the battles I’m rooting for, in order of preference:

• Cubs/Red Sox: The “Impossible Dream” Series—with Red Sox in 7, extra innings, heart attacks from Logan to O’Hare.



• Giants/A’s: The “WULAD Most Likely to Get A Ticket” Series—Gotta say I’d pull for the Elephants in this one. Barry’s got lots of gas left in the tank anyway, so we might as well make him wait a few more years so as not to tempt him to retire early.



• Braves/A’s: The “God I Hate the Freaking Braves” Series—How about the near-canonized John Smoltz walking Miguel Tejada with the bases loaded to lose Game 7? Or, as a last resort,



• Giants/Yankees: The “Destroy All Monsters” Series—I never, ever, root for the Yankees, so Clare-bear & I could let bygones be bygones and support the Real Baseball League together in peace and harmony. (He’s still wrong about expanding the playoffs, though. You want more baseball? Extend the division series to 7 games. I shall say no more on this subject.)

Belle and I will be live and in person at Game 1 of the A’s/Red Sox division series Wednesday, so those few of you who give a rat’s ass can tune in Thursday for a full report on Pedro, Hudson, the excitement, the cockroaches, the whole Network Associates Coliseum playoff experience. Until then…

The Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital
I leave you with a letter I sent to Mimi Smartypants after reading the schedule for a James Joyce conference to which she linked:

Dear Madam:
I happened to notice that one of the lectures at the Joyce Conference is "The Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital" by Rhoda Zabargian. Rhoda Zabargian?! I was talking about the freaking Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital when Rhoda Zabargian was running around in her freaking kneepants wiping her nose and flunking kindergarten. I was giving lectures on the Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital in my freaking sleep when Rhoda Zabargian was boinking her professors to try and keep a 'C' average! I was wiping my ass with papers on the goddamn freaking Bildungsroman as Cultural freaking Capital when Rhoda "don't know much about the Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital" Zabargian was copying her thesis verbatim from Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital for Dummies, which incidentally I wrote!

That said, you may rest assured that in no way is my opinion of Rhoda Zabargian and her "knowledge" of the Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital affected by the fact that she left me at the altar and ran off to Burning Man with a pole-sitting Gypsy, but not before shouting loudly about some of my very private medical problems in front of the assembled guests, including several highly regarded Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital scholars; or that, ever since, I have abandoned my position as the Rhoda Zabargian Distinguished Chair of Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital Studies at Yale to devote as much time as possible to maintaining the magnificent gothic shrine to the memory of our lost love that I have painstakingly constructed out of 400+ lbs. of cured cold-cuts in my apartment. Rhoda, please come back! I didn't mean it. You're the genius of Bildungsroman as Cultural Capital—I'm just a worthless hack. I wouldn't know a Bildungsroman from a hole in the ground. Rhoda? Please, I'm sorry...

Set, Spike, Snivel
You know those little travel-agency pop-up ads that have little games on them, like hitting a baseball, or striking out a batter, or carrying luggage across the street, or the fat guy who jumps off a diving board? Well that goddamn volleyball one, man, I can’t hit that damn ball for the life of me. I have spent literally minutes trying to spike that freaking ball, and I come up with nothing. But you see, I’ve had a tough road with volleyball through the years, so this is no exception:

• When I was in 4th grade our gym class was playing volleyball, and although I’d managed to stay out of the way for most of the game (as part of my ongoing strategy to avoid scrutiny from the snarling, stuffed red jogging suit of a teacher and überjock kids), my peripheral vision suddenly detected a speeding white mass hurtling toward my head. I did what any red-blooded, 98-lb., last-to-be-picked nerd would have done, which was to shield my face with my hands while frantically ducking as the ball bounced off my head and out of play. I immediately heard a guttural explosion from the sidelines. “Carey!” shouted the jogging suit, “what the heck was that?! I want effort in my class, how are you going to grow up to be a man,” etc. “I’m sorry,” I whimpered, “but I tried.” (Well, tried to get out of the way, anyway.) This feeble attempt at self-defense brought on a torrent of invective the likes of which Thomas Jefferson Elementary had never seen, and may never see again. In some hallways of the school, on a quiet day, you can probably still hear his roar echoing faintly from the distant Reagan years.
  


• In the summer of ‘90, I went to a pool party with my second girlfriend, about whom the less said, the better. (She wasn’t a fundamentalist Christian, though, which put her way ahead of the first one.) Some guy she used to date was in the pool, playing water-volleyball… I got in and half-heartedly played a few minutes, but the smell of hot dogs on the grill far outweighed the stench of my miserable play, so I got out in search of forced meat on a bun, and to avoid further embarrassment. My girlfriend sulked for the rest of the party and her gabbing friend later told me she thought I’d acted “like a wimp.”
  


• Three years later, I once again found myself confronted with my old nemesis, this time on the glass-strewn blacktop of my final year of Phys Ed. One fine day I looked up to see the familiar sight of an off-white round missile flying at my head—I finally had the chance to right the wrongs of the past and start anew! With lightning quickness, I threw my hand up, and felt a shooting pain as the ball jammed the knuckle of my middle finger, then fell to the ground, its mission accomplished. As my finger started to swell, I saw my P.E. teammate, the giant, burly she-male star of the league champion Varsity volleyball squad, walking toward me with clenched fists and a curled upper lip. “Dumb… shit!” she growled, her rage barely contained within her thick, quaking frame. After a second of staring fiercely as I looked back in horror, she turned slowly and lumbered back to her position. (Later, in the non-combat atmosphere of Economics class, she said sheepishly, “Sorry I gave you a hard time in P.E. ... I get serious about volleyball.”

These are the kind of stories that make C-baby say, “your childhood makes me sad.”

You Can’t Steal Home Again
This post is sort of about baseball, but also about life, laundry and the pursuit of sappiness and all sorts of other pertinent stuff, so I suggest that those of you who usually skip the baseball-related items withhold your groans and eyeball-rolls until the end.

So last night I’m crumpled on my cat-battered chair, laundry finally done (after at least a week of being ill and improvising solutions to my lack of underwear—you don’t want to know), remote in hand, switching furiously between watching the Oakland Athletics scrappling with Rodriguez’s Rangers, and the Mariners fighting for their post-season lives with the Anaheim “Last Year is A Lifetime Away” Angels… both games are in the ninth, with Oakland able to clinch the division with a win and a Mariners loss, lots of drama and all that, and although I’m pulling for the A’s—not only because they’re the Bay Area equivalent of the Mets, having a more blue-collar (for millionaires, that is), younger and scrappier feel than the yuppified Giants juggernaut, but also because I want to see the Red Sox in the playoffs instead of their wild-card-rival Mariners, even if they’re likely to lose spectacularly—I really don’t want it to end.

The thing is, I already miss the baseball season. Well, those of you who are still reading are thinking, that doesn’t make any sense, since a) it’s not over yet, there’s still a week of regular season left, as well as the excitement of the playoffs, World Series®, etc.; and b) in another sense it was over long ago, as “my” team has been out of contention since June and is currently fielding a group of striking janitors in place of its professionals, all of whom are more urgently needed in the Dominican winter league training camps or at their jobs as jugglers and sketch-artists at Disneyworld. I admit those are valid points, but—I just like knowing that there are baseball games happening. I guess it’s some of that summer-worship I’ve had since grade school (excluding a seven-year respite during my stay in New York, when the summer months were so miserable and malodorous that I couldn’t wait for the snow to come), or maybe it’s the inevitable brightness that a game on TV brings into my apartment whether or not I’m actively paying attention to it. You could say that might not be a good sign for my life in general—that I’m relying on the flickering images of frolicking overpaid man-children to make my living space comfortable—but there it is. And I miss it when it’s gone.

Anyway, back in the real world of last night, the baseball gods honored my wish and sent both games to extra innings, and I was able to relish that bit of grassy eternity for a little while longer. That is, until the two heroes of the night—Adam Melhuse of the A’s and Tim Salmon of the Angels—won the games for their teams and left the A’s with the division title. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to enjoy the rest of the season, but I’m secretly pulling for every single game from now until Commisioner Bud hands the trophy to somebody (hopefully not wearing white and blue pinstripes) to go 10, 11, 16 innings, and put off as long as possible that long, dark wait for April.

Nuts 'n' Bolts note: You may have noticed that the WULAD faithful (that includes you) now have the ability to leave comments, praise, criticism, insults, write-ups, come-ons, put-downs, triple-dog dares, etc. beneath each post. I encourage you to do this early and often. However, the comments boxes/links/whatever have been disappearing occasionally due to server issues at the thingamajig provider, so if at first you don’t succeed…

Hail to the WULAD
President Bush was on TV last night being interviewed by my former lover and nude racquetball partner Brit Hume (of the relentlessly muckraking FoxNews), whose Fair and Balanced queries nevertheless made the Main Man revert to his “Are you going to make me pretend I give an armadillo’s caboose about what those unbelieving cityfolk have to say about my Divinely Inspired rule?” smirk, which shows less teeth than Cheney’s but has that downward-turned-corners-of-the-mouth thing that communicates his disdain pretty well. All in all, it seemed like a good interview, but I was kind of surprised by a few of his announcements:

• that he was un-retiring Gen. Wesley Clark and appointing him Chief Smiles Officer for the Army’s new door-to-door Baptist Erotica Book Club fundraiser in either Afghanistan or Iraqistan, he forgets which;



• that he was setting up a new high-security detention facility in Cuba specifically for librarians; and



• that he and Atty. General Ashcroft were working on a revised, “Opt-In” version of the constitution, although he assured the citizenry that the proper Applications for Civil Liberties (CL-40 if single, CL-40z if married, CL-X if gay and married, CL-Ø if Muslim, CL-$ if campaign donor, CL-69 if Bill Clinton) would be available at your local Wal-Mart on every third Wednesday in months not containing the letters A, E, I, O, or U (also Y if Homeland Defense Alert Level is “Yellow” or higher).

Also I found it strange that he inadvertently referred to Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Benevolent Feudal Lord of the Yee-haw Surfin' Cowboy Fiefdom of Californ-eye-ay,” and then corrected himself by calling Schwarzenegger “He Who Shall be Seated at the Right Hand of the Mighty Sovereign King. Begone!”

Brushes With Brushes With Greatness
Over the course of my many travels, journeys, wanderings, escapades, undertakings, voyages, exploits, sexploits, jaunts, treks, excursions, sexcursions, adventures, expeditions, sexpeditions, madcap romps, and the like, I have been fortunate to have many encounters with people who have had encounters with some of the shining stars of this world—the glitterati, if you like—and I would like to share some with you, the reader, in the hope that some of the magic that rubbed off on those that met these remarkable people, which in turn rubbed off on me in a slightly reduced amount, might somehow pass a small residual part of that vicariously vicarious sparkle to you and your workaday existence, or sexistence, as the case may be.

• My dad once went to a party that the late John Ritter was also attending.


• He also saw Roy Scheider at an airport, but didn't say anything to him because he (Scheider, not my dad) wasn't wearing a shirt.


• A friend of mine shared an orange with Allen Ginsberg.


• The same friend also watched The X-Files with former governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown.


• Another friend went to Jon Cryer's wedding.


• The same friend once rode in an elevator with Dabney Coleman.


• My sister met Magic Johnson at a party and said he was a jerk.


• Another friend flashed her boobs at Chris Isaak (I don't blame her—he's a handsome guy. Not that I'd have sex with him. Unless maybe there was a lot of money involved or if I thought it would advance my career. Forget I mentioned it.) (Chris—call me.)


• A woman I used to work with met Fidel Castro, or so she claimed. She may have been hallucinating.


• Another friend's mother is old friends with Orlando Cepeda. (This is technically a brush with a brush with a brush with greatness.)


• Timothy Busfield once cut my dad off on the freeway.


• At a party, S.F. mayor Willie Brown once said suggestively to a friend of mine, "Gimme some o' that sugar."


• While doing a headstand in yoga class, a friend fell over and landed on Willem Dafoe.


• A different friend witnessed a confrontation between the same Willem Dafoe and a juice-bar employee. (Celebrities!)


• I once got hit on by the daughter of a famous funk drummer from the 70s whose name I will withold for fear of legal action. (My mind is goin' through them changes, though.)


• A guy I used to work with played a voice on an answering machine in Sleepless in Seattle.


• Another friend saw the woman from Law & Order at The Vagina Monologues and said her head looks much bigger than on TV.

Now doesn't everybody feel just a little bit less insignificant? I thought so. Got further B.w.B.w.Gs? Send them in and I'll publish the best of them, and you, too, will be able to share some small part of that twice-reflected glory.

Why, Spock, Why?
This video (via Dave Barry) brings to mind an issue that my dad talks about a lot when discussing his collection of ugly (or otherwise remarkable) ties—that there is a four-part process that has to take place in order for something so outlandish to exist: first, someone must conceive the idea ("I've got a great idea for a ____!"); then someone must agree to sponsor it ("That is a great idea for a ____. Let's make it happen!"); somebody has to actually produce the thing ("Are you sure that's how you want it?"); and finally, a consumer must actually buy it (or for our purposes, watch it). In the case of this video, I find it truly staggering that this project made it from conception, through approval and production, and all the way to being shown on TV—yet there it is. Fascinating. And really, really bad.

Take My Freedom—Please!
Attorney General and Dark Lord John Ashcroft has been on a kind of a book tour lately, and by “book” I mean to say "horrifying Draconian evisceration of the cherished priciples of our free society." He's very disappointed with all of us and our failure to get on board the Civil-Liberty-Smashing Train that is the "USA Patriot Act," which was originally to be called the "Terrorism is Bad Act." He wants us all to stop worrying about little things like constitutional protections, the rule of law, and such, and focus on the big picture of the need for the government to be able to abuse the rights of its citizens unchecked in pursuit of dangerous terrorists such as telemarketers. The idea is for the public to put its faith not in mamby-pamby laws like the Bill of Rights or the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution, but in the good intentions of a benevolent protector government, which he assures us is really acting in the best interest of us all—and by "us all" I mean to say "the Republican Party and other non-troublemakers." I trust him, don’t you? He has such an honest face.

In Happier News
I don’t know about you, but I just love seeing the phrase “appreciation for a woman's round, tight butt” in a news story.

Take Me Out to the WULAD
The S.F. Giants clinched the National League West title last night, making them the first team in the majors to seal up their division. They have spent the entire season in first place, which has only happened nine times in baseball history, and have been at least 8½ games ahead of their closest competitor since July. How boring.

The Mets, meanwhile, are proving to be gracious losers, resisting the temptation to play “spoiler” by beating any playoff-contending teams. Apparently their historic sweep of the Braves last month was a kind of last hurrah before rolling over and inviting the rest of the National League to slap them around, ridicule them, sleep with their wives, call their children names, and dance on the grave of this pitiable season. But wait ‘til (the year after) next year!

New Bottle, Old Whine
In the continuing interest of reminding you how entertaining this website can be, I've been gradually moving most of my favorite posts from the old, inconvenient site to the archives of this one. If you just cannot live by the semi-daily bread I give you alone, feel free to browse the weekly digests under "Archives" at right. I'll be glad you did.

Neighborhood Spotlight
As a new feature, WULAD will be turning its attention to notable attractions in the area; our global readers can get a taste of San Fran without leaving the comfort of their dilapidated, tiny-Styrofoam-ball-oozing beanbag chair, while local readers can visit these Scintillating Spots themselves. Today’s column focuses on All-Stars Donuts—truly the crossroads of San Francisco. How can I begin to list its charms? As the ironically praise-laden Guardian cartoon hung non-ironically on the wall notes, they’ve got coffee, cops, speed freaks, and free parking. And at 5th and Harrison, it’s conveniently located only a block from the city Mental Health Services office! The folks I see there are mostly tired-looking middle-aged men eating omelets with blank stares, technology-industry hipsters picking up their coffee on the way to their pink slips, and construction workers buying a hundred bucks’ worth of crullers and Snapple—but then I’ve never been there at 3 a.m., when it must get really interesting. This morning a not-too-disheveled guy in a colorful scarf walked in while I was paying for my item superficially resembling a bagel, approached the counter, and said to all or none of us, with a fierce look in his eye, “Pure and simple... beauty,” followed by something unintelligible. Nobody paid any attention to him. “The words,” he continued as he walked back out the door, “the words. Words!” (This is right around the corner from where I passed a man one day shouting into a hedge, “God, I’m the devil! I’m the devil, God!”) But the staff is indefatigable and gets the job done in spite of it all, although once they gave my bagel to somebody else and I had to wait for them to make another one. Four stars!

In other news, occasionally lovable demagogue Michael Moore sums up a few of the arguments which could potentially influence those who still think Bush is a pretty O.K. guy. I don’t know anybody like that, but if any of you do, share this with them. I might add something about how no administration has ever had the power to hold American citizens indefinitely without charge or judicial review, until now. Just kidding! I’m sure they’d only use that power against somebody who deserved it.

Coming soon—the thrilling conclusion to my tale of Law & Order & Public Urination.

Skeletons in the Closet
Gubernatorial hopeful Ah-nold told Oprah yesterday that an interview from the 70s in which he described drug use and group sex was part of an attempt to promote interest in weightlifting by telling outrageous stories that glamorized the sport. WULAD’s crack research team has discovered that this was in fact an ongoing strategy for Schwarzenegger, and presents the following interview excerpts as examples...

Playboy Magazine, 6/24/84, promoting The Terminator: “Well, you know James Cameron and I spent a lot of time driving around L.A. on a motorcycle killing police, you know, to try to get used to the role… also we jumped on Linda Hamilton, but you know, Cameron can’t do it in front of other guys.”

Variety, 5/15/88, promoting Twins: “Well, I spent a lot of time having sex with twins to prepare for the role, and one time me and the twins jumped on Danny DeVito and took him upstairs, but he was still mad about what Judd Hirsch did to him on the set of Taxi.”

Ladies' Home Journal, 7/18/90, promoting Kindergarten Cop: “Well, you know I spent a lot of time asking people 'who is your daddy, and what does he do?', to get used to the role... also I took a bunch of kids and threw them in jail and interrogated them for hours without food and water, but this was before I really knew much about the script other than the title. And I’ll tell you a secret—this is not a tumor, either.” [pointing and winking.]

Sacramento Bee, 8/24/03, campaigning for Governor: “Well, in the old days I spent a lot of time at hash parties, and one time me and Danny DeVito jumped on Arianna Huffington, but you know Cruz Bustamante can’t do it in front of other guys. Also I have hired a hit man to kill Gray Davis, who I could crush like a twig between my rippling thighs, but I am too busy with the group sex, you know. Join Arnold!”

Captain Marble
He's... looking... at me!

Raising the Clark Bar
Sources say that Wesley Clark has decided to throw his hat into the presidential ring. The great thing is that the Republicans will still try to find a way to paint him as weak on defense (even though he was a decorated general), Ann Coulter will still call him a traitor, it’ll be fun. In case you missed it the first time, here’s my list of potential campaign slogans for my new favorite army guy:

• "I took it to Slobodan Milosevic—Now I'm going to take it to the economy!"
• "If I can command a bunch of Bulgarian fighter pilots, just think what I can do with Congress!"
• "Let's pretend the Kosovo Muslims are the Democrats, and the Yugoslav army is the Republicans, and the Croats are the swing voters, and the Montenegro militia is, um..."
• "The Serbs don't hate me for nothin'!"
• "Blowing shit up for America since 1966!"

The Harsh Face of Potty
Via C-Baby, this is the most gritty, noir-esque paragraph ever found in a Yahoo! news item...

His head is shaved. His red-and-yellow T-shirt proclaims "Cute Girl!" His loose, white-cotton shorts are grimy with dirt. Suddenly, he stops in mid-stride and squats, the seam of his pants parting smoothly to allow a stream of urine to pool onto the concrete.

James Ellroy, look out.

Loosely Organized Blatherings (LOB), vol. xcvii
News flash: Howard Dean is 5'8". I don't know about you, but I doubt the short-man-thing helps with a guy who is going to be painted by his opponents as a soft-on-defense Volvo-driving liberal. If you're thinking that I have lost all idealism and become a pragmatically-minded cynic, you're absolutely correct. In this climate, it's all about electability, and to be honest I'd vote for this guy if he was willing to call himself a Democrat and I thought he could beat President Action Figure. So for the time being I am officially all about Wesley Clark. As I was telling my obstreperous co-worker, I don't know where he stands on the issues and I don't really care. He can win, so get on board and we'll sort out the details once Mr. Giving-Grant-a-Run-for-His-Money-as-Worst-President-Ever is back to Texas and what he does best: running companies into the ground while using taxpayer funds to get rich. On to other business.

I know Clare-Bear hates Lance Armstrong, but I happened to see him yesterday, speeding up the steep grade of Taylor Street with 50 or so of his closest friends. I later learned that he started the race with a fever of 102°, and decided to drop out after a measly 50 miles of steep climbs and hairpin turns. What a wuss.

----------
Me: Does this outfit make me look like a dork?
Her: You mean more than usual?

Take Me Out to the WULAD
Rob Neyer tackles the anti-Met propaganda myth that Robbie Alomar has turned his season around since being traded and is a big reason the White Sox are contending. Let's face it, kids—he was mediocre at best in New York, and he's proving to be nothing if not consistent in Chi-town (.262 avg., .336 slugging, .357 on-base percentage with Mets; .256, .336, .350 with ChiSox). Maybe a little spitting would help motivate him.

Interesting piece in today's N.J. Star-Ledger regarding former Met (and Cardinal, Cub, Oriole, Dodger, Ranger, Yankee, etc.) Todd Zeile's new gig as unofficial player advocate for the movable feast that is the Montreal Expos. Selig and the owners are so obviously not motivated by anything resembling the interests of the team (the article details several of MLB's broken promises so far), and Zeile, who has been with the team for less time than it takes to fry up a plate of Canadian bacon, has taken up the banner in a big way. (Interesting side note: Zeile is also the most furiously blinking man ever to step into a batter's box.) The League's half-ass plans to continue to use the team as a traveling-sideshow until they can find an appropriate eccentric millionaire and/or gullible municipality with tax money to burn to take over the franchise are an insult to the team's players, alumni, and remaining fans. Not to mention Youppi, apparently fighting for the rights of gay mascots everywhere.

Wrapped Up Like a Criminal Justice System, part II: The Long Douche of the Law
(Part I to be found here.) In our last episode, our hero had moved to California and begun a new life, full of magic and wonder and worlds away from Sheridan Square, the memory of that July day in 1996 buried deep in his random-access (or is it read-only?) memory...

However, one day last year my remote control happened to land on a rerun of NYPD Blue—the fat cop was questioning some doofus, and mentioned that “somebody wit your name and date a’ birt is wantet fer questionin’ en Da Moyne…” I had a sudden anxiety attack: it’s the bithdate and the name, that’s how they find you! See, as I’d gotten older I would occasionally think of my unanswered summons and wonder if I might have guessed incorrectly that I was off the hook—but when I left New York, I figured that even if there was a warrant, they’d never think it’d be me all the way in San Francisco. The logic wasn’t real strong, but it was easier to not think about it than to go to the courthouse and possibly be shot 19 times, as was occasionally happening in those days. But the date of birth! How many people with my name could've been born on my birthday? I quickly changed the channel but the seed had been planted in my mind that perhaps I had not emerged unblemished from the incident as I had assumed for years.

In an uncharacteristically assertive move, I decided to call the NYC Summons Information line and see what they’d have to say. I was prepared to hang up the phone suddenly and leave the country if necessary. The person I talked to was surprisingly cooperative for a New York public servant and listened to my whole stupid tale of woe. “Yeeeah... you prawbly got a wuarrant. Lemme look it up.” After taking my name and D.O.B., she informed me that yes, I was officially a Wanted Man.

—Well, is there anything I can do about it from here?
—You don’t live heah?
—No.
—Have you got a lawyeh heah?

I asked if I could just take care of it the next time I was in town, or if I had to worry about being hauled across the country if I got a speeding ticket. She told me it was just a New York thing, although I wasn’t sure I believed her, especially in the Big Brutha Law Enforcement climate of the post 9/11 age. I had visions of being carted down to Gitmo Bay with a sack over my head, forced to shave my beard and tell my story about the smelly French guy to a secret military tribunal. It did not feel like a good time to be on the wrong side of the law.

Nevertheless, time passed and I was not arrested. Which brings us to this spring, when I get a glittery invitation in the mail to the wedding of Howé—one of my best New York buddies and the reason I can say I’ve attended a Passover seder in a law office—and I decided that, in keeping with my new philosophy of dealing with problems rather than ignoring them until they became absolute emergencies, I would set aside some time on my trip to do a little sightseeing at 346 Broadway, home of the NYC Municipal Criminal Court.

Coming Soon: The thrilling conclusion to our story! Will our hero be forced to spend weeks rotting in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, living on dirty soap and food scraps discarded by rats? Or will he engineer a daring escape and begin a life on the run, with no one to trust but his own wits and his mastery of disguises and regional accents? Tune in Next Time...

Keeping it Simple
No pontification today. Read about my friend Lydia's mother here. Support real patriotic ideals here and here.

My only little tribute is this slideshow, featuring photos of New York chugging along in its indomitable New York way, as seen on my trip last month. I hadn't been there since October of 2001, and it was inspiring to see the rejuvenation.

Wrapped Up Like a Criminal Justice System, Part I
If I may, I'd like to take you, the reader, on a journey—a journey to a simpler time, a time when men were men, and Schwarzneggers were actors, and "Yahoo!" was just something you said when you got laid, which I never did—the golden olden swollen days of July 1996. Picture a young whippersnapper, fresh (well, a year-and-a-half fresh) off the boat from Reno and wide-eyed at the phantasmagorical wonder that was Manhattan. That was me, and since I had nothing better to do (being in the midst of a four-year bout of involuntary celibacy and related social ineptitude), I found myself one day agreeing to play with a trio on a street corner for tips. In those days any opportunity to play was considered a good thing, and the more horrible the experience, the more an aspiring music ascetic could feel he was really "paying dues" and transforming himself from shiny suburban band-geek to grizzly world-weary urban jazzbo. The organizer was a French drummer—nice guy, but not a fan of deodorant, unfortunately. He assured me that people did this sort of thing all the time, so we made our way across the village to Sheridan Square, at 7th Ave. and Christopher Street, less than a block from the famous Stonewall, and within shouting distance of real jazz venues like the Village Vanguard, Smalls, and Sweet Basil. (Only the Vanguard is still around.)

My previous experiences with New York outdoor playing had been harmless enough—the only trouble we'd run into happened one afternoon when two cops approached me and my co-buskers in Washington Square Park and said, "Don't get us wrong, we like the music, but when we come back, you guys might wanna be gone." (No mention of crackin' skulls, but we chose not to make an issue of it at the time. This was before certain members of the NYPD started making a habit of turning unarmed people into Swiss cheese.) This particular concerto al fresco started in a similarly innocuous way, with a small crowd of passersby gathering to listen to our particular brand of college-kid jazz, clapping and even dropping the occasional dollar in the pungent French guy's bass drum case.

Within ten or fifteen minutes, however, a burly guy in a polo shirt was mumbling quietly and strangely to us, and it was only after I saw his little badge-necklace that I realized he was one of New York's finest, and we were being given three of the millions of quality-of-life summons mandated by Hizzonner Rudy Giuliani (not yet the secular saint he was later to be canonized, he was mainly known then for his Tough-On-Crime-and-Dung-Art stance), who insisted there were no quotas—and yet the cop could have told us to leave, but chose to issue us all summonses instead. "There's lots of jazz clubs around here," he pointed out, "why don't you people play there?" Indeed—I couldn't wait to go to the Vanguard and tell them that Officer Krupke had insisted my band play at their club. ("I know you guys have Herbie Hancock booked for next week, but the cops said we have to play here. Sorry. You can put your stuff over there, Pierre.")

Of course, some of the more civics-minded members of the crowd started giving the cops a hard time for ticketing us: "This is New York," said a greasy old guy holding an open beer in a paper bag, "people come here to play, you gotta let 'em play!" Our polo-shirt friend promptly gave him a ticket, too, which seemed to break up la resistance. After the fuzz left, I took my summons and my $3 share of the earnings and bought a lousy burrito made by a Korean guy.

Through a boring series of events, I missed my original court date, but Le Drummer a L'Odore, who had gone when he was supposed to, told me he sat in a courtroom for a few hours before the judge said "Unreasonable noise? What does that mean?" and dismissed the charge. Great, I thought, I'm in the clear! If he threw that one out, I'm sure mine was tossed, too! Well, duh, says everyone, including my older self—of course not, you idiot. But it was easier to forget about it... right? All that changed when, six years later and two time zones away, I happened to stumble upon a repeat episode of NYPD Blue...

Will the Law catch up with our young hero? Will he be sentenced to 10-20 years of pre-reviewing submissions to McSweeney's or the Reader's Digest joke page? Will he flee the country and fall in love with the buxom teenage daughter of a Lithuanian sword swallower? Tune in tomorrow!

To Be Continued...

Current Events, Shmurrent Shmevents
Neal Pollack is overflowing with praise for Our Fearless Leader's recent answer to those who suggest things aren't going completely swimmingly in Iraq. There's also some fairly loose (meaning I agree with her but she muddies the water with a lot of unrelated details) vitriol from a 9/11 widow directed toward Showtime's dramatization of President Action Figure's "action" on the day in question. But enough gloom and doom.

Interchange this morning...
Me (face in pillow): "You want some Mini-wheats?"
Her: "What?"
Me: "Mini-wheats?"
Her: "Mennonites?"

At Long Last
After much delay, WULAD is proud to present—ripped from the headlines and ribbed for her pleasure—"Chocobaby in the Heartland." Start the show by clicking here, then just hit the little right-arrow button to the upper right of the photo to go to the next one. Someday I'll figure out a more professional (read: less janky) way to display photos. (Any suggestions that don't involve spending money or learning anything? E-mail me using the link at right.) Hungry for more? Check out the action figure, which doesn't really look much like her but it's the thought that counts.

Mass-debating
The Demo hopefuls went at it last night, and although I didn’t watch the entire debate, I did learn a few things:

• Carol Moseley-Braun is related to neither Johnny Moseley nor Eva Braun.
• Bob Graham exists.
• Dennis Kucinich no habla Español. Really no habla.
• John Edwards reminds me of the annoying guy from my high school Student Council, and has the same haircut.
• Howard Dean could easily host “Sabado Gigante.”
• Before becoming a senator, John Kerry was a successful actor.
• Apparently not everybody in America speaks English. How did I miss that?

Speaking of which…

Fun with Foreigners, or "Wo ist Die Cable Car?"
C-baby and I were talking the other night about the people she meets at her job. She mentioned that whenever a European comes in she finds herself automatically referring to them, mentally or verbally, as German, even though many of them may actually be Austrian or Belgian or Swedish or whatever.

Me: Yeah, I don’t know what it is, you can just tell Germans walking down the street, the little glasses, the sandals, the spiky hair and paleness. I always wonder, what would it be like, I mean, can you imagine being like that your whole life—you know, being…

Her: German?

Me: Yeah…

Her: You’re wondering what it would be like to be German your whole life?

Me: Yeah, I mean… don’t they realize how weird they are?

I don’t know whether I was having a moment of xenophobia or xenophilia or just plain stupidity. You be the judge.

That New Blog Smell
Just when you thought the Pentagon couldn’t get any more horrible. If I see one of those things at my funeral, I implore anyone present to promptly discover a method for reanimating dead tissue so that I may be resurrected and then can beg to be killed again, naturally after playing taps myself on a real instrument and smothering the offending electro-bugler with my burial jacket.

LEGAL NOTICE:
The paragraph following this one will deal with baseball. You are welcome to skip it, although this does not negate your obligation to read anything following it studiously. In the future, I may explore strategies such as posting baseball-related items in a different text color, but I view this as a last resort since it is my goal that my interests—all of them—become your interests, and that one day the one-sided but many-faceted virtual community that is WULAD will be one seamless and unassailable monolith of common cause encompassing the entire spectrum of Yours Truly. Or as I am fond of telling Chocobaby, my world is your oyster. On to business.

The rookie-laden Mets, who in the opinion of my boss should be headed for the Triple-A World Series, swept the mighty, smug, best-record-in-the-game Atlanta Braves, who stopped by Shea for the three-game drubbing on their way to the NL East title and the playoffs. While the Civil War-style rivalry has lost some bite since 1999 (when über-goat Kenny Rogers walked in the winning run in game 6 of the NLCS), it still gives me more pleasure to watch the Mets beat the Braves than watching them beat any other team with a name not starting with “Y.” The Times has an incomprehensibly negative take, while Mark Hermann of Newsday believes this augurs well for the future of a franchise that, as little as three months ago, seemed headed for years of misery.

Non-baseball fans start reading again now! Hopefully everyone approves of WULAD’s new look—I think you’ll agree that a non-tech-savvy soul such as myself is better off with the “blogging for dummies” approach here at Blogspot, although I never had a problem with Diaryland and wish them well. Onward and Upward!

The Medium is the Mess
I’ve been MIA since coming back from the Other Side, but here’s some nourishment for the starving minds of the WULAD faithful. Coming soon: I take on the NYC criminal court system—and win!

The results are in, and jazz musicians are crazy. Or perhaps we are sane, and the rest of the world mad!? No? Never mind. I once asked saxophonist Ernie Watts why he thought so many great jazz musicians had gotten mixed up with drugs, etc. over the years—his answer: “Maybe because you spend your whole life learning how to play, and nobody gives a shit.” I can only testify to 15 years’ worth of truth to that so far.

Chocobaby and Chelle-belle have recently expressed dissatisfaction with the way they’ve been portrayed on this site; C-baby says, “You make me sound like a bitch,” while Belle thinks “I come across as a vacuous party-girl.” In the interest of fairness, WULAD will take a closer look at these issues and see if we can’t find some mutually agreeable resolution. Let’s take the impressions one at a time.

• Belle is a vacuous party girl. This impression might come from quotes like “We rock!” or “I’d have sex with me,” or “Baby’s open for business!” Belle, I must point out that you did say those things, but I do admit I’ve left out more weighty quotes of yours such as “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” “U.S. construction spending advanced for a second month in July as home building increased on the heels of a drop in mortgage rates the previous month,” or “Despite increased corporate control of the media, there is very little outright censorship of the news in this country. There is, however, a kind of selective historical memory that makes it difficult to even recall events which go beyond what the noted M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky has referred to as the ‘boundaries of thinkable thought.’” I’ll try to paint a more complete picture in the future.

• Chocobaby is a bitch. On any given day, one might find a blog entry detailing an interchange such as this one:

[C-baby laughs.]
Me: What?
Her: I’m just thinking of all the stupid things you’ve said in the past 20 minutes.

Or,

Me: Sorry, I got sidetracked, I’ll stop rambling on about uninteresting crap.
Her: Are you suggesting that what you were saying before was interesting?

Her main beef was that “you never put in there that I think it’s cute when you say stupid things.” Which is true, since I guess I thought it was funnier without the Awwww factor. I’ll concede the point and try and be more, uh, Fair and Balanced from now on, hopefully without alienating my cynical hater-of-all-things-cute fan base. (For those who still like their Chocobabies served cold, I’ll add her fine quote from the below-mentioned party: “Shut up, you stupid Canadian!” But she meant it in a cute way, I think.)

Speaking of C-baby, she was kind enough to call my attention to the fact that G-Monsta’s logo has been appearing all over lately.

You Don’t Know the Meaning Of ‘Tough’
So the tribes gathered last Sunday for the illustrious Ker-Bear’s birthday extravaganza, held this year at Kilowatt, the Mission district’s home of unnecessarily nasty bar staff and cash-gobbling, frequently overridden jukebox. Yours truly apparently got hisself pretty well Wrapped Up Like a Drunk, and, among other ill-advised escapades, challenged the mighty Shan-Bear to an arm-wrestling match. Well, maybe “match” isn’t the right word—“rout,” “sacrifice,” or “public humiliation” might be more apt. After humoring me for a few short seconds, she lowered my arm to the table like a sleeping baby, while yawning and doing math problems with her other hand. As I limped off to nurse my wounded pride, C-baby commented, “You are so tougher than he is.” Shan-Bear paused for a minute and said, “Yeah, but he’s tough in other things, like the saxophone.”

Return of the Native
Back on the left coast. Tantalizing tales of neurotic nostalgia in the New York netherworld will be filtering in over the next few weeks as breaks in the torrent of fan-hitting-shit allow. Also wacky wonders such as C-Baby’s Tour de Heartland slideshow featuring the Hamburger Helper hand. For now, tids and bits…

MTV has been stealing ideas from my dreams again.

So Ah-nold smoked hash and participated in a gang-bang. Which gubernatorial hopeful among us hasn’t? Cast the first stone.

Chocobaby, font of wisdom:

• “You’re like halfway through your life, I think you can start to take some risks now.”
• “I love it when you talk about nerds as if you aren’t one.”