I walked to the place thinking, it's only ten minutes from my house, so I could conceivably sleep till 3:30 in the morning, maybe even 3:45 if I don't shower; it's a warehouse, I doubt they'll care...

Short cement stairs led to the cement loading dock. In the in door, out the out door, men moved quickly, pushing or pulling handcarts; others stood or shuffled in the small front room, waiting their turn. Past them, through hanging fat plastic strips, I saw boxes stacked to the ceiling.

A guy standing at a high wooden desk handed me a form and pointed to a picnic table on the dock, protected from rain by a crooked arrangement of tarpaulin. A young man wearing overalls and his hair pulled back into a fat, frizzy knot sat hunched protectively over his own form. The application asked for only the most basic personal information (SS#? Ever accused of a crime? Willing to take a drug test?) but included several math questions, some of them headlined "USE YOUR CALCULATOR." I didn't have a calculator, so I figured them out on scrap paper. They mostly involved adding and multiplying decimals and fractions. This was kind of pleasant, like doing a crossword.

I brought it to the guy at the desk. "Where's your calculator?" he asked. "You didn't give me one," I said. He pointed to one; as I checked my figures, the young man came in with his form. "Where's your calculator?" the guy at the desk asked.

As I stood waiting for my interview, I watched a soundless video on a TV in the corner of men putting up beams in a graffiti-scarred warehouse. "HERE WE GROW AGAIN," read a banner under the TV; under that was a pile of damaged inventory--giant, dented cans, and a big hunk of roast beef, its plastic wrapper swollen and moist with spoilage.

A large man in a dirty white coat motioned me over and asked a few simple questions. Had I ever worked in a warehouse? Yes, I said, and I think I sounded convincing, because I had, briefly, about 30 years earlier, though I didn't mention that.

I fear I may not have sounded so convincing when he asked if I was ready to stick with the job for a long time. I wanted to be, but the worm of conscience kept messing with my delivery.

They'll let me know.

Roy
October 10, 2002
12:10 a.m.
Report on the Job Market

The ad didn't say much: mainly that the company was gearing up for its "busy season," and promised, "call today, start tomorrow." I needed to start yesterday, so I called. On the phone they said they were an advertising company. I got an address and rode the R out to Long Island City.

I got out on Northern Boulevard, which is devoted mainly to gas stations, auto showrooms, and other automotive colossi, such as Standard Motor Products, a two-square-block building with masked windows that seemed to emit a low rumbling sound.

The office I sought was located above a small garage. The staircase was sagging and its carpeting was worn practically down to the wood. The waiting room was large, with chairs lining the perimeter, like an old union hiring hall. For some reason a large TV in the corner blasted Gladiator. Near that was a Coke machine.

I submitted my resume, got a Coke, and read a book, pausing at times to catch the scenes with Oliver Reed. The other applicants were much younger than I; one looked like Jon Spencer and carried a metal briefcase. The others just looked like they wanted a job. I used the men's room. The toilet seat had a huge crack in it.

I was finally summoned to another large room furnished only by a few chairs and a glass table. A young man in a purple suit told me they were looking for people persons. I asked a lot of questions about the kind of advertising they did. Promotions, he said. I asked for elaboration. He expressed again the need for people persons.

I mentioned that I had done a search on their phone number and address, and found it had previously belonged to a wholesaling business. The interviewer nodded and said that the previous occupant had indeed used the same phone number.

I was formulating another question along these lines when he got up and shook my hand. "This is just a preliminary interview," he said. "Good luck to you."

And with that I was gone, walking down Northern Boulevard in a nice jacket, wondering on which of this city's great avenues I would at last find my deliverance.

Tomorrow: Roy calls a warehouse that is offering graveyard shift employment.

Martin
October 6, 2002
7:30 p.m.
Fireworks

Can somebody please tell me what's up with the mysterious fireworks in South Brooklyn? At least once a week, it seems, a great crackling and booming starts up and lasts several minutes. It's going on right now. Yet what occasion would there be for fireworks on the 6th of October? I am not the only one who hears this. The neighborhood dogs certainly do, for it sets them in an uproar. My wife hears it, too. I wonder, could it be a supernatural phenomenon? Echoes of British cannon fired in the Battle of Brooklyn? If anyone has a rational explanation, I would love to hear it. Please email me: mfd@alicubi.com. Thanks.

Roy
October 5, 2002
12:50 a.m.
Fall Classicism, or, What Was I Talking About Again?

So far the AL Division Series (after all these years, I still wince at the ugliness of that title) has been a humdinger. Three hard-fought games, 42 runs. And tonight the Angels came back from a five-run deficit (against the Yankees!) to win 9-6. It does my Yankee-hating heart good.

As a lifelong Mets fan I am honor-bound to dislike the Yankees, but as a baseball fan I must respect them, and I can't get over the mess Anaheim has made of their pitching. They've chased Clemens, Pettitte, Hernandez, Mussina, and everyone in the bullpen except Rivera (and if anyone can get to that fragile demigod, the scrappy Angels can). Now, Lord knows the Yanks have sluggers, but if their pitchers are going to allow seven runs average per game, Giambi et alia better be eating their Wheaties with extra helpings of steroid sugar.

All the talk about legacy -- Yankee pride, Angel chokers -- is bullshit. If the Yanks hang in (and I still see them doing it, goddamn them, in 5), it'll come from a testosterone storm at the heart of the order, not the millionth YES-network replay of the Lou Fucking Gehrig speech. If the Angels go down, it'll be bats, not ghosts, who beat them.

I love the game and its history, but Jesus Christ, I hate the weepy, sepia-tone horseshit that has accreted to it. In baseball as in politics, sentimentalism provides cover for decadence; as America has slid toward total insanity while fools flail the flag, baseball has been devolving into an overpriced, underperforming mockery of its own legacy, with PR teams pasting photos of Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth over the great, yawning holes in its credibility.

Meantime our depraved mayor, Richie Rich, has unleashed a police "Noise Squad" to extort money from deep-pocketed club owners and deep-in-shit cab drivers, all with the backing of the latter-day-yuppie sub(way)urbanites who don't see why the City has to be so noisy. Come to think of it, if the Yanks get chased early, maybe it will have something to do with destiny. Perhaps God will use it to punish New York for allowing itself to become a cowtown with skyscrapers, a bunch of hyperactive Herkimer-Jerkimers -- in other words, just like everywhere else, only more expensive.

Roy
October 4, 2002
12:40 a.m.
Look at Me, I'm Bobby V

Bobby Valentine, Mets manager since 1996, has been fired. Classically, this makes sense. When a manager is given stars like Mo Vaughn, Roger Cedeno, and Roberto Alomar, and still manages to come in dead last--and alienate half his players and all of management in the process--he ought to expect the hook. Newsday mentioned five reasons why Valentine got fired, but to me the turning point was Rey Ordonez calling Mets fans "stupid" last week. Contented clubhouses don't yield comments like that.

On the other hand, these are the Mets we're talking about. Big-time trades don't usually work for them, as is clear to those who remember Bobby Bonilla and Bret Saberhagen, who were supposed to lift the franchise to glory but mainly generated fights with reporters. Unlike the robotically professional Yankees, the Mets don't just air dirty laundry, they wear it. I remember Sid Fernandez telling reporters after a bad start, "Maybe I should just call it a fucking year." (This was in June.) From Strawberry to squirt-guns filled with bleach to the embarrassing 2002 season, a certain amount of insanity and ineptitude has been part of the Mets mix for decades.

Still, Bobby V was a special case. This is the man who once snuck into his dugout wearing a fake mustache after an umpire chased him. He never seems to know when to leave well enough alone, and this year he was in the news a lot more than most losing managers, even by New York standards. In August, Bobby V was obliged to tell reporters that he was not trying to get fired. He called managing the Mets "the job that I hold the highest place in any job in the country, in the world, the thing that I live and breathe and die for every second of my life." (Valentine has a taste for overstatement. During the Mets' horrific late-summer slump, Valentine said, "it's killing me, it's killing my family, it's killing my pets.")

I believe him. Valentine is tightly-wound, and this was always what I liked about him--I always enjoyed the sight of him speed-chewing gum in the dugout, strutting angrily like a Napoleon stuck at the front with a troop of Boy Scouts. Maybe his tightly-wound style wasn't the best for the Mets, but after the who-cares attitude we witnessed in this year's All-Star game, some sympathy is due a guy who suffered foolishness ungladly, even if a lot of it was his own contribution.

Martin
October 2, 2002
3:20 p.m.
New York by the Numbers

A spam from CareerBuilder.com tells me they have "Over 23,000 Jobs in New York City!" A search for the terms "editor" and "writer" netted a total of 44 jobs in the greater New York/New Jersey area in the last 30 days. Sounds fairly decent, until you go to the page for employers, and search for resumes in Media and Journalism: A search of those categories limited to New York, NY found 1,978 resumes. Another search in the job seeker section limited to jobs that pay less than $15,000 a year netted over 2,000 results.

In other numbers, it took me 90 minutes (10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.) to drive from Carroll and Court Sts. to the Amoco (now BP, for "Beyond Petroleum," formerly known as "British Petroleum") at Atlantic and Vanderbilt Aves., to the Brooklyn Marriott, where I returned the rental car. That includes a three-minute, pay-the-pump topping-off of the gas tank. According to MapQuest.com, the trip totalled 3.6 miles, at an estimated driving time of 14 minutes. Atlantic Avenue, always under construction, is more fucked now than I've seen it in my three years here.

The temperature in Brooklyn is 83 degrees.

Roy
October 2, 2002
12:50 a.m.
Sameold Sameold

The damn Yankees won their first playoff game versus the Angels Tuesday night. As I scour the city streets trying to find someone who'll employ me at a living wage, and the nation prepares to invade Iraq for no better reason than its ability to do so and its Administration's desire to ride war fever to electoral victory, this is just one more damned thing in a life that is, as conventional wisdom so aptly puts it, one damned thing after another.

But! at least there are a few laughs in John Derbyshire's latest column at National Review Online. Get this:

"Yet hate does not have much of a constituency on the Right, either. I hang out with these folk, and read their stuff. I have not yet heard any one of them say, even in private conversation, that we should make war on Iraq because Iraqis are loathsome people. Those who do want to make war on Iraq mainly want to do so for the benefit of the Iraqis, to relieve them of a horrid dictatorship and bring them the joys of democracy and prosperity... The range of attitudes on display towards the people we might shortly be dropping bombs on, goes from indifference to tender concern."

What a lovely picture this suggests: the Masters of War brimming with Christian sympathy as they count the hours till VI-day. "I cannot wait till we saturation-bomb these poor devils into submission! I am overwhelmed with tender concern!" "I feel only indifference toward the victims, which should not be confused with hate!"

Tee hee. Life's a pleasure. Excuse me now while scour the fridge for unspoiled condiments.

Roy
September 26, 2002
1:50 p.m.
On Tour in the UK

We closed out the tour last night with a show for our UK label in Brighton at the Concorde 2, a large old dance hall which seems purposefully distressed to give an old-fashioned "rock" vibe--tatty chandelier, black walls, filthy dressing rooms, overpoweringly loud sound, etc.

We performed well for a decent-sized crowd, with Lach clowning more than usual for the cameras that were capturing the action for the label's promotional uses. The event was billed as a "New Underground Experience," with a video feed from some agitated poets with guitars in Los Angeles, and former Strangler Hugh Cornwell headlining with a trancey outfit called Sons of Shiva, who performed in front of a rear projection of shifting, allegedly psychedelic patterns. (As I commented to someone at the time, it's not psychedelic if they aren't using 60s-style oil projections, and you aren't on 60s- style drugs.)

The Sons' bass player chatted collegially with me offstage. It feels good to greet fellow musicians on the road, and share the secret-shake familiarity of professionals crossing paths. Once upon a time I only wanted to impress other musicians, not associate or spend any time with them (they smell, you know), but while I still appreciate a good review from peers, I am now content to just trade tales and shop talk with them. Great or small, we are all road warriors, crossing whatever stony landscape in search of fame and fortune, and a tip of the cap to a rival clan as you pass them on the High Road (or the Low) is one of those rituals that makes the whole difficult business easier to bear.

I notice also that some rock signifiers have less charm for me than once they did. Resting in the dressing room before the show, staring at the murals of comically grandiose graffiti and adjusting to the poor lighting and bad smells, I became suddenly very tired of the quasi-satanic accoutrements of musical life--the little middle-fingered touches that once epatered the bourgeoisie but now mostly qualify, I think, as a life- and performance-style that just isn't rich enough for my blood anymore. I never outgrew rock, but I have outgrown [YOUR NAME HERE] RULEZ! in fat marker on a bathroom wall, for good or for ill.

So now it is the morning after and my road withdrawal slowly sets in. Brighton is a lovely town, with that long stretch of seafront, cute shops, immense apartment blocks that curve and spread their fronts like vertical waves to maximize the number of ocean views, and surprisingly young and good-looking population. (Steve says this has been a coming town since the 90s, and is awash in tourist money.) I can hardly enjoy it, though. Momentarily I will be back in my life, that cursed thing, and beating off calls from creditors and other such harpies. How will I know what to do without a tour manager to tell me? Who will buy me beers now that there's no catering? How can I even bestir myself when there's no itinerary, and no stage waiting?

Roy
September 24, 2002
3:00 a.m.
On Tour in the UK

I must apologize to my readers for the lag between reports. Most of you have no idea how time-consuming and tedious the tour regimen can be. All of our days have gone like this:

1. Awaken (anywhere between 10 am and 2 pm)
2. Sort musical gear & laundry (I have shortened this routine by not washing, to the mild displeasure of my tourmates).
3. Load the van.
4. Travel anywhere between two and seven hours.
5. Arrive at club, rouse club staff, load in.
6. Small talk with locals (England is a very sociable country, so this persists well beyond the "I don't have all day, pack in and fuck off" customary in the States).
7. Sound check (usually 30-60 minutes in our case--ten mikes on the drum kit alone, and weird wiring and sound board problems at every club we've played).
8. Food (in England, bands are fed as a matter of course; in America, it's usually "there's a Blimpie's downtown, everyone eats there").
9. Wait through the opening acts (there is not much one can do in this period except drink, sleep, read a book, or walk around the generally closed part of town adjacent to the venue--the least wise course of action, I have learned, is to actually watch the bands).
10. Play.
11. Chat up the fans, bookers, etc.
12. Load out, and retrace your steps.
13. Back home, sit up for 1-3 hours wired out of your wits, get (more) drunk, watch shitty TV, argue over whether Thin Lizzy was better than the Replacements, eat what's in the tour manager's fridge, and lie abed wondering whether the pain in your waist is muscle strain or liver damage.

Repeat until mad.

Thumbnails of our last three shows:

GLASGOW. A motherfucking long drive through some motherfucking beautiful country. The famous Scottish heather is visible as variegated patches on the many rolling hills, ranging in color from dark green to deep purple. Sheep and cattle in plenitude. We stop in a country pub; makes me think of Kingsley Amis' "The Green Man"--locals pleasantly announcing to one another the tedious details of the day's events; steak and ale pie, good bitter. Glasgow has steeply graded streets to rival San Francisco's, a gear-grinding challenge to the van. "Not so bad here," says Mick, who's been up North before. "In Scotland, they call this the lowlands." We tour the big street, Sauchiehall, a glittering Rialto of clubs strolled by mostly young Glaswegans speaking in the classic burr ("Therrrre's a nice lookin' currrry"). The gig is well-attended, but we go on late so the crowd thins (though the local booker is enthusiastic; in the UK one actually gets credit for doing a good job). We stay in a B&B up the road and sit up drinking beers pinched from the dressing room. After the guests leave, Billy and I watch "Top of the Pops," stunned to see that the former TV launchpad of our favorite bands now plays host to squadrons of lip-syncing chicks in skimpy costumes gyrating salaciously to disco bullshit. In the morning I eat the greasy complementary breakfast and climb a hill to survey a large part of Glasgow: lots of sooty but beautiful old (or ugly new) buildings, a surprising number of which are festooned with graffiti, with gothic Presbyterian spires poking up out of the brick morass. On Sunday morning there is fuck-all to do, besides lament the sleep one has missed eating the greasy breakfast.

MACCLESFIELD. This is Sunday and the town is dead. I expect it is not much livelier during the week. The club is smartly done-up but the sound system is poor, which agitates our manager. The dressing room is spacious and I, beaten down by too little rest, shut myself into the refreshment room to sleep on the floor; there I dream unpleasantly as the vibrations from the opening band's set rattle my weary bones. This lot play well past their appointed time, and our manager finally stalks onto the stage and screams "Fuck off" at the lead singer. "Nobody tells me to fuck off," says the singer. "Fuck. Off," repeats our manager, and they surrender the stage. The crowd, big fans of the opening act, stares at us stonily. We batter them with high-tempo rock. They grudgingly bob their heads. We retreat, exhausted and vindicated, and drive a million miles back to Lincoln, drink more, fart, belch, and wake up late the following day.

LEICESTER. A lovely club, with a corrugated silver curtain at the back of the stage. It's part of a local performing arts complex, and usually plays host to recitals by local actors and dancers (among whose charming leavings are some trophies for "lyrical excellence," and polaroids tucked into the corners of the dressing-room mirrors). The crowd is distantly polite, applauding our songs as if they were scenes in a play. Afterwards we talk with the promoter who, like many such we have met here, has an inpenetrable dialect, in this case made more difficult by a pronounced stammer. He is a sweetheart, and hugs us goodbye as we climb into the van, our bags stuffed with the cans of John Smith Lager he had thoughtfully... [ends]

Martin
September 23, 2002
5:30 p.m.
Baghdad to Berlin

Once we accomplish a "regime change" in Iraq, will our tanks swing northwest and push into Deutschland? Certainly, it's the next logical front in the war on terror, according to the Bush doctrine. In maintaining his stance against a US invasion of Iraq, newly re-elected German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder bears a striking resemblance to Mullah Omar in the eyes of the White House.

Attempting to mollify Bush and company, Schroeder explains that Germany remains a staunch ally to the dear Yankees who liberated the Fatherland from Nazi rule, bearing forth the light of democracy, and who later triumphed in the Cold War, unifying the nation under democracy. Schroeder claims he's exercising his democratic right to object, saying, "We will have it out in a fair and open way without in any way endangering the basis of German-American relations," the Associated Press reported today. AP also quoted European Commission President Romano Prodi as saying, "If there is a 'poisoning' of relations then there is a misunderstanding of democracy in Germany. We must be prepared to work together to discuss issues publicly."

The fools! Their simplehearted belief in United States' commitment to democratic principles will be their ruin, mark my words. Reported in the same AP dispatch, Bush declares to a crowd in Trenton, N.J., "I made it clear to the world, that either you're with us or you're with the enemy and that doctrine still stands."

Schroeder, rethink your stance, lest a Tomahawk cruise through your office window; likewise, American dissenters, beware the hour of the wolf.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-Election.html.

Roy
September 21, 2002
4:15 p.m.
On Tour in the UK

Decent show in Lincolnshire tonight. (I can't get straight whether Lincoln is part of Lincolnshire, or the same thing.) Small house, but attentive and loyal. We had equipment problems, which resulted in the bass being disconnected from its amp and run through the PA exclusively. This caused a long delay, but the punters stuck with us, cheered, even danced a bit. Afterwards, the usual small-house-on-tour bit: chat up the stragglers, discuss the next show, drink.

A stout fellow named Dave who'd turned up at the last performance was at this one as well. He'd driven in from Wales, a good distance, and expected to be at our next three shows at least. I like and appreciate fans, but can't begin to understand them. If I followed any man through three towns, I'd expect to be issued a uniform and a cartridge belt at least. Dave seems content to tape the proceedings and talk to us.

Dave moved to Wales from Manchester years ago (for reasons I have yet to ascertain) and loves it. "You can keep the back door wide open," he said to me. "And beautiful rolling countryside all round." As a longtime New Yorker, I canāt even picture this life, though I understand people live it in various locations around the world. Dave also described a lot of very big shows he's attended throughout Europe. This I can't fathom either. Why go to shows if you're not playing them?

We are in the flat now and finishing off a case of Carling in the can that had been left for us in the dressing room, the large remainder of which we thoughtfully stuffed into our gig bags before departing. We just saw Woody Allen's Sleeper on TV. What a charming comic actor he was then. The scene in which, disguised as a domestic robot, he passes a hallucinogenic orb around to party guests, getting high and increasingly belligerent as he does so, is worthy of Keaton (Buster, not Diane, who is pretty decent here as well). How come no one is this funny and trenchant anymore?

No time for that sort of morbid cultural discussion now. The fellows are downstairs watching an Italian vampire film and commenting uproariously upon it. I'll join them. This old road life.

Roy
September 20, 2002
1:45 p.m.
On Tour in the UK

The first tour gig went well. We played a club in Peterborough run by an affable, turbaned Sikh with a perfect Midlands dialect--not uncommon, I know, but novel and piquant to me. The club accommodates a dance club on the first floor, and holds concerts upstairs. The crowds for both were similar: young locals out for a spree, wearing raver pants and pullovers upstairs, and midriff-baring blouses and button-downs downstairs.

Our show was energetic and at times a little manic, to be expected on the first gig of a tour, even from old dogs such as we. We drew respectably, especially considering how quiet and unpopulated the surrounding streets were. Peterborough, I'm told, is the terminus of a high-speed rail line that runs to London, and has of late attracted a lot of upscale settlers. The place is clean and quaint in the English manner, with some new, posh shops and restaurants stuck in among the kebab joints and off-licenses, and seems destined for a bourgeois future, despite its presence in the midst of farm country, where one's van is more likely to hit a sheep or a pig on the highway than a deer or, for that matter, a pedestrian.

Our road crew is terrific. Aidan, the guitar tech (he does a lot more, as does everyone in the crew, but this is his most high-profile assignment), works quietly and carefully, calling little attention to himself. Steve, our tour manager, is bustling and cheerful, like a first-time, long-shot candidate for Parliament working the hustings. Mick, our driver, is one of that increasingly rare and wonderful type, the working-class gentleman. He is very big and could easily crush all our heads like soggy ping-pong balls, and probably should, but he is also exceedingly friendly and, on those rare occasions when he speaks, tells very fine stories. Mick and I had a little trouble understanding each other at one point, and we got to talking about our hearing problems. Mick mentioned that he had a perforated eardrum, and, upon prompting, explained how he got it: chasing turkeys.

He'd had a job in which he and a crew would go out to a farm shed housing dozens of turkeys and grab them, one by one, and haul them into a truck for slaughter. The turkeys were onto them, and fought like hell, flapping their great wings violently. One especially spirited bird managed to reach its head down and jam its beak deep into Mick's ear.

"Stung for hours after," said Mick. "Later, down the pub, I noticed it was bleeding."

Later in that job, Mick was made foreman. He got no extra pay, but he did have life a little easier. "I'd just tell the men, I drove you lot all the way out here, now get in that shed and chase turkeys, I'm on me break." I asked him how he makes ends meet now. "Sign on the dotted line," he said, miming this action in the air. I believe this means the dole.

Lincoln, our home base, continues to delight me. I walked to the central market and along the High Street today, and noted several architectural antiquities, including a 20-odd-foot length of wall that I might have ignored were it not for the uneasy feeling it gave me that it might topple on me. I then saw that it was made of immense hunks of stone, sections of which had been fashioned into windows and a doorway, and trimmed by some ancient feats of masonry long smeared into the background by time. It did indeed lean a little toward the sidewalk, which gave the illusion of impending collapse, but it has probably been settling that way for some time, for it is the former Great Hall of the Guild of St. Ann, and was built in the 12th Century.

Nearly as memorable was a more modern establishment on High Street with the front window painted over, bearing the sign PRIVATE SHOP. Over the door was a stark "WARNING" that "persons passing this threshold may be exposed to indecent material."

I am not sure what is going on back at home, but I do know that Ken Livingstone is being challenged for the London Mayoralty by his former arts and leisure chairman, and that a columnist in the Guardian doesn't think much of him. The Page Three girl in yesterday's Sun was very attractive...

Roy
September 18, 2002
2:45 p.m.
On Tour in the UK

The trip did not start out with promise. I rode the A train from Carroll Gardens to 42nd Street before realizing that JFK was in the other direction. (Years of taking the F and R to Queens made me assume that borough was invariably an uptown destination and the geographical opposite of Brooklyn.) I wound up taking an airport bus, which was comfy and roomy but air-conditioned beyond all reason, and cost $13 that I now cannot spend on meat pies and pints.

Fearless Bandleader misread the British Airways schedule, so we were obliged to make a mad dash for the gate while stuffing overpriced, flavorless turkey sandwiches from Peet's Coffee into our mouths. Fearless Bandleader then, naturally, extolled the virtues of late arrivals. ("There's no line!") Some people make lemonade of lemons, but FB makes Chardonnay of stale urine.

The flight was not crowded, though British Airways' plebian seating ("World Traveler Economy") made it seem so. Getting out of the aisle for a piss looked and felt like a poorly executed tai-chi routine. The film selection was weak, too. I caught the last fifteen minutes of that Reese Witherspoon Importance of Being Earnest. Jesus! To see the most graceful stage comedy of all time so hobbled and beaten about the timing! Bad portent: several lines worth of credit for modern paintings used in the production. Idiotic closing sequence, too. Why not instead have outtakes from Earnest, including one scene of Witherspoon screaming, "What fag wrote this shit? Oh, sorry, Jeremy." (I recommend the old Michael Redgrave version, which at least moves.) On the bright side, the airline food was fine. I like airline food. Most of the digesting seems to have been done ahead of time, saving me the trouble, and I notice British Airways seats have little wings on the sides of the headrests so you don't nod off onto your neighbor's shoulder, which is awfully clever of them.

We were greeted on the far side of customs by our tour manager. Now, in my prior experience, a tour manager, should such a creature be found at all, is generally someone who knows the territory and expects to be paid off for telling you which way to go on a one-way street. But our man Steve's energy and helpfulness were evident from the get-go; he grabbed our luggage and ran it into the exceedingly roomy and clean (!) tour van, where our driver (!!) waited.

The trip from Heathrow to Lincoln I spent mostly on my back, trying to sleep. The land was flat and level and at times, in my fatigue and delirium, I thought I was crossing New Jersey. Every now and then, though, some manse out of The Wind in the Willows would flash past the window and draw me out of it.

Have not seen much of Lincoln yet, but it is all over rowhouses and chimney-pots of the sort movie art directors use to announce, "This story takes place in a lovely, old-fashioned English town where the men wear caps and the ladies fix you a nice cup of tea!" Steve's apartment is about 150 years old, and British damp has weathered its hide nicely. He told us, to our surprise, that Lincoln was the Roman capital of England (you can tell the old Roman roads, Steve told us, because they're "dead straight"), and a good site for it too as it is nestled by a great hill, atop which sits a very nice Gothic cathedral that I shall have to visit soon. Also, we are surrounded by small agribusiness, including vast pig farms which seem roomy, charming, and pleasant accommodations for their porcine inhabitants (at least till their throats are slit, but hey, everybody dies).

My first attempt at a nap here resulted in fever dreams, during one of which I found myself in quite a classy S&M bookstore. I asked to use the bathroom and was directed up a stone staircase to an open commode covered in chains and human feces.

This should not be taken as a Freudian comment on Steve's housekeeping, which by rock standards is very fine, but on the mental disgorgement that often follows a musician's first day on the road. Not much happens excepts changes of landscape and very small bursts of effort, but as the consciousness acclimates to the tearing-away of familiar sensory data, a touring player may suddenly acquire a sense of exile, fragility, and, despite the company of his mates, loneliness. This is part of the price of admission, and why so many of us write maudlin songs about this interesting procedure.

Now I must go to the Tesco (how British I sound!) and buy a phone-card. More later.

Martin
September 14, 2002
6:00 p.m.
We Become What We Hate

Three Arab men in a Georgia slop-stop allegedly joked about a terrorist attack on Miami that would occur Sept. 13, within earshot of a Ms. Eunice Stone. Despite thinking the men were merely trying to get her goat, Stone phoned the authorities. Twenty-four hours later, a section of I-75 was closed in both directions; the men submitted to 17 hours of questioning, search, and detonation of personal property, before being sent on their disgruntled way. Pols and cops are patting themselves on the back. "This was a job very well done," the St. Petersburg Times quoted Jeb Bush as saying. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Tim Moore assured Stone she had done the right thing: "Just think if we could get every American to do that, then every town would be safe."

That is, safe from the verbal attacks of wiseacres and rabblerousers. Meanwhile, any real terrorist operatives, who are, law-enforcement officials admit, as professional as our own cloak-and-dagger people, will go about their business in silence while cops cordon off highways and blow up people's knapsacks.

I can no more imagine an al Qaeda sleeper mouthing off in a Shoney's restaurant than I can imagine a CIA agent saying to a barmaid in some banana republic, "On September 13, I will direct rebel forces in storming El Presidente's palace, and help oversee the installment of a new government. Hey, have me arrested if you don't believe me..."

It's a federal offense, punishable by significant prison time, to stage a terror hoax, as well it should be. But there is a difference between teasing a Shoney's patron and phoning in a bomb threat, is there not? Yet these men stand to face charges if it can be established that they made the remarks the Georgia woman says they did, which they deny having made.

There is a man of Middle-Eastern background who owns a pet shop around the corner from me. He was the subject of a Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker for leading a boycott against the New York Post, owing to its perceived bias against Palestinians. What if I were to call the Homeland Security hotline to say that while browsing for doggie treats, I overheard him remark to an unidentified visitor (presumably of Arab descent) that "the plan" was "going smoothly" and that on Sept. 13, "it will come down." The feds would likely swarm on his home and shop, for he would already have been noted as being outspoken against US interests. And then it might come out that "the plan" was to tear down a dilapidated garage on his property, that it was "going smoothly" because a contractor had been hired, and that the garage, long a neighborhood eyesore, would "come down" on September 13. Or maybe he never made any such remarks.

"A job well done," Hizzoner and the police commissioner would say. "Mr. Downs did the right thing."

With every incident like the one in Florida, we become what we hate.

Roy
September 13, 2002
12:52 a.m.
What We Do With It

I've been cleaning my apartment. This is a rare event. I used to think I was just lazy about it, till I started pulling out hidden things I hadn't confronted in a while, and realized that my aversion was more rooted in fear than sloth.

Among the momentos mori a clean sweep revealed:

Photographs of old girlfriends.
Letters from old girlfriends.
Tiny gifts from old girlfriends.
Business cards that never worked out.
Stuff I bought and never used (like a business-card holder).
Foreign coins from trips with old girlfriends.
Business documents from jobs I grew to hate.
Old phone bills.
Tapes of old bands.
Reviews of old bands.

And, worst of all, very old personal journals which should be burned (but for the instinctual terror that such a conflagration would spread to the walls and curtains, making it marginally more trouble than it would be worth). Saving one's journals is almost as loathsome a vice as creating them. What might my life have been had I turned all this silent suffering to action? Come to think of it, maybe even more of a mess than it is.

In any case, my private scribblings (which I couldn't help but sample, sitting on the floor with the dust bunnies) would, if revealed to the public, do nothing to improve my literary reputation. Whose would? Even the most exalted of posthumously published private notebooks (Fitzgerald's, for example) are only morbidly interesting (the little roads to Zelda's asylum and all that). Forget about Pepys. He was faking. Men of his generation never put pen to paper without an eye to immortality. It takes a great deal more discipline than I have to be honest successfully. When we portray ourselves, however coyly, we are sometimes saved, but when we strive to be true we are damned.

The disgorging of my detritus was depressing, even more so for the bits I couldn't throw away: mainly the portfolio pieces, and stuff that might be worth a little money. Throwing things away felt much better. Recently I had to sell some old gear to make the rent. I mourned these items a little, but mostly I was relieved. Every piece of my past that I lose, it seems, makes me lighter and a little happier. I can see why Richard Hell threw that TV from the roof.

I don't know whether it's good or bad to feel that way. I admire the collections some of my friends have--stuffed bookshelves, walls of LPs, little museums of prints and videotapes. I think such surroundings of self-evidence would drive me nuts. No matter how exotic these artifacts are, they still represent the owner; you can learn a lot about a person by scanning his bookshelves and his CD rack. (Photos in wallets are even creepier.)

Let my work reveal me insofar as I am to be revealed. Build me no monuments, as I have built none for myself. We are on this world a little while only, and probably for good reason.

Roy
September 12, 2002
12:40 a.m.
Re: Hitting the Cut-Off Man

Keith Hernandez, whose comments on the current Mets squad were considered here on Monday, dropped by his old clubhouse yesterday Tuesday to apologize for them. The New York Post reports only second-hand on this, as no scribes were allowed at the meeting, and no Met, past or present, had much to say of it afterwards. Hernandez made a terse statement, intimidated the Post's writer ("'You all right with that, Mike? Is that all right? You done with that? You happy?' 'That's fine,' came the reply..."), and split.

Now, this was obviously a scheduled press event, and I suspect the apology was something Hernandez expected to make even as he was posting the comments that earned the players' ire. I still think Mex, as he was once called, choreographed the whole business. But to what end?

I present two theories. First, the take-one-for-the-team theory: Hernandez was aware that some key Mets had learned to block out the imprecations of manager Bobby Valentine, and as a result the team was rudderless and factionalized. In the absence of a positive focus, he offered them a negative one: Kick-Me Keith, or more properly Prove-Me-Wrong Keith. This at least offered a more exciting topic of clubhouse conversation than how the boys would spend their winter vacation or which Port St. Lucie cocktail waitresses they would attempt to nail during Spring Training, and may have in part spurred the Mets' recent streak.

I would prefer this to my second theory, Comeback Keith, but it must be considered. In terms of baseball, Keith had been drifting for some years. As he is extraordinarily intelligent for a ballplayer, this is hard to figure, since lesser '86 Mets such as Howard Johnson and Wally Backman are managing minor-league clubs, and Keith clearly loves the game. His recent emergence as a Mets on-air commentator shows that he was not unwilling to pull a few strings to get back into the organization. And his commentary has been excellent -- on those rare occasions when he's in the booth; Keith's journalistic status, it would seem, is day-to-day. And neither Tom Seaver nor Gary Thorne look to be making room for Mex anytime soon.

So maybe the old Captain is playing a little politics. As gadfly to the underperforming 2002 Mets, he makes his presence, and his passion, publicly known in a way he could not during brief stints in the booth. Perhaps by aligning himself with a reform faction, as it were, he positions himself as a future hitting coach, or even as managerial material.

Or maybe he's just back on blow and does crazy things sometimes. We'll see. Keith was named this year by the fans as the all-time great Mets first baseman. Memories of Mex stir deeper feelings in our hearts than memories of Mo Vaughn. He clearly wasn't making nice with his journalistic brethren Tuesday, so this is no boon to his career in that wise. Wouldn't the fans like to see him back in uniform? Wouldn't Mets management like to give the fans something they'd like to see?

This is much more fun to think about than how bad Atlanta is going to sweep them this week.

Roy
September 11, 2002
12:45 a.m.
December 7, 1942: An Alternate History

From coast to coast, our nation bowed its head in solemn remembrance on the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, known now and for all time as 12/7.

In every town and city, formal gatherings were held to remember the fallen and to try and make sense of what happened on that fateful day. Many citizens are still shaken by the attacks, and there was a general feeling that America had lost its innocence.

"I haven't felt safe since 12/7," said Mrs. Merle Attucks of Topeka, Kansas as she gathered with her neighbors to hold candles and pray. "If it happened at Pearl Harbor, it could happen anywhere."

Every radio station was devoted to reenactments of the attack, including one by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. The Lessing family of Pittsburgh sat solemnly before their Philco as Alexander Knox recited Roosevelt's "day of infamy" address to Congress.

"It makes you think," said Mr. Lessing.

Some musical programs were offered, but they were very different from what listeners have learned to expect. Betty Hutton sang "Ave Maria." Bob Hope audibly choked up, and told the nation that "jokes have no place in the post-12/7 world." He then recited the Gettysburg Address.

The general feeling of unease is attributed to many factors. Some go back to last year when, having declared America in a "state of war" against the Axis Powers, President Roosevelt unaccountably failed to ask Congress to confirm this with a formal declaration. Then, several months into the conflict, Roosevelt declared that it was not really so important to capture Hitler and Tojo as he had once believed, and that Azerbaijan, a small, oil-rich Soviet Republic in the Caucaucus, should be the Allies' primary target. Stalin has naturally protested, as have most of our other Allies, but the President has said the United States will "go it alone" against Azerbaijan if necessary.

Roosevelt's surprise reversal of the New Deal early this year, which forced hundreds of thousands of workers out of work, has also caused some concern. In a 12/7 Anniversary address to the nation, FDR again explained himself: "America's military supply companies cannot be forced to create armaments; but desperate, unemployed men can be, and with the New Deal out of the way, there are more such men entering patriotic service every day."

FDR then told his listeners, "The only thing we have to fear is a surprise attack by any one of a number of enemies, anywhere and at any time. Stay nervous, America. Remember, your shattered nerves are the price of victory."