touche, spirits. touche.

thursday night on james's twilight roof with some classy headz. some of us were eating some good neopolitan-style square pizza, standing up, as there were no seats. i had picked up a sqaure slice with a nice husk of crust on one side. since i had a beer in my other hand, i attempted to rotate my square with one hand, to nibble some crust before it naturally became the only part left. shocklingly, i dropped the square flat on the floor - cheese-side down, no less. chris, james and jordan, who had been immersed in a conversation about music, promptly looked up at me with faces of sympathetic disappointment, like i was the proverbial dog that peed on the rug. impressively, they managed to hold this expression while having a hearty laugh.

jordan then said something which i consider the best description of my unparalleled klutziness. he said: 'colby, it's like you have these spirits around you at all times, just f*cking with you.' to demonstrate, he came up to my side, and pretended to hump me. we all agreed this was an astute hypothesis, no one moreso than myself. we then delved into the nature of these spirits, which we agreed was to play practical jokes on me my whole life, rather than mess me up in any serious way.

the next night, i was walking with ilana while licking an ice cream cone (mint chip, mutherf*cker), when the scoop of ice cream in the cone popped out and fell flat on the sidewalk. it was quite the comprehensive plop - not a drop of ice cream remained in the cone. while lans cracked the eff up, i related jordan's theory, and she surmised that a spirit had simply placed his finger inside my cone, and given the ball of ice cream a little flick.

on sunday, i was again going over all this with james and jordan, and jordan said that there must be a reason for these spirits to have it in for me in this practical-jokey way. he thought maybe my klutziness might somehow come in handy, to the benefit of everyone. then james said, 'maybe you'll one day clumsily save us all!' which i thought was fantastic.

i am the biggest klutz i know, hands down. and truth be told, it might be hereditary. while my dad is not klutzy, my grandfather, who i call "poppy" and who is still going strong at 94(!) is constantly bumping into things and generally making a racket. for this reason, when i klutz in front of my dad, he likes to call me "poppy junior." anyway, while my extreme lack of grace does put me in mortal fear that one day i'm going to spontaneously fall into the subway tracks and get torn to shreds by a 4 train, i do take no small bit of amusement from it. my physical gaffes really do come off like god is playing practical jokes on me, and so far i'd have to say he has a wicked, creative sense of humor. in reality, as someone who loves to laugh, i am honored to be his jokester sides's medium. my intuitive sense is that he, or the spirits, will look out for me when need be, since i bring them such mindless joy on the regs.

that's how i fill in the blanks.

times

lemme level with ya.

no new post until next week. enjoy your three-day weekend,

you greedy @#$%!

new posts soon; hang in there.

(C-NOTE: MY APOLOGIES. APPARENTLY THIS POST ORIGINALLY CAME ACROSS AS ONLY SO MUCH GOBBLEDEEGOOK ON EVERYONE'S COMPUTER BUT MINE. IM TESTING NEW FONTS, AND 'WEBDINGS' ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE PLAIN ENGLISH ON MY SCREEN HERE, SO I WASN'T AWARE OF THE CONFUSION. NEEDLESS TO SAY, THERE ARE SOME KINKS IN BLOGGER. NEVERTHELESS, AS HAL WOULD SAY, THIS COULD HAVE ONLY BEEN ATTRIBUTABLE TO HUMAN ERROR. WHEN IT'S OFF-KILTER, MY BLOG IS MY OWN FAULT. MY CARD IS AMERICAN EXPRESS.)


i so appreciate your patronage!

i currently have to spend my blogging time coming up with positive jokes about denise o'donnell, a candidate for AG in new york. a good friend of mine's mother is somewhat of a force in the new york democratic party on long island, she's giving a speech introducing denise, and she asked me to provide her with some funny lines. i did the same thing last year, for elliot spitzer i'm proud to say. (thankfully, i dont remember the jokes i came up with.)

so the 'political joke writer' self-designation on friendster is not complete horse sh*t.

verdana

italy has the best advertisements.

remember those nyc bus stop ads for alitalia that showed the woman with the cannoli half in her mouth, gazing upwards? sadly, i can't find that image online right now, but this morning i did come across a similarly incredible campaign on the rocchetta mineral water website, which is what reminded me of alitalia. (c-note: make sure to also click on the 'miss italia' photo gallery, for even more fun.)

trebuchet

how sweet it is: the spontaneous group jump-hug.

ticket to pride

yesterday, i was quite pleased to accept lina p and maddy b's invitation to last night's yankee game (hosting the texas rangers). it was my first game in a long time; frankly, i can't remember the last time i had been to The Stadium.

anyhoo, the game got off to a poor, poor start. specifically, thanks to a banged-up shawn chacon (i didn't know this during the game, but apparently he had a significant shin injury, from being tattooed by a mark loretta hit last week), the bombers went down 9-0 and then 10-1 in the early innings.

i feel very strongly that throughout my life i've had a strange talent for attending yankee games wherein the pinstripers - even, nay, particularly- during great seasons, have suffered especially ignominious losses. (my dad has always seemed to take a small bit of pleasure in corroborating this theory, i think on the grounds that he 1) dislikes team sports and 2) still associates the yankees with the crass kids he grew up with in elmhurst. ['the catholic kids liked the yankees, the other jews liked the dodgers. i liked the giants.'])

so i was disappointed but not shocked that this was gonna be another live blowout on my record.

anyhoo again, since the slaughter materialized so quickly, rather than talking of leaving, the three of us decided to settle into better seats, as the stadium was half-empty. we easily moved from our perch in the front row of the upper deck behind right field to a row near the front, by the first base line (high up, but very good vantage pt).

then, the yanks started chipping away. here a run, there a run, etc, until, after a sixth-inning barrage, they took the lead 11-10.

im now gonna curtail my apparent urge to boringly sum up the game. suffice it to say, we were all thrilled and falling all over ourselves when they took the lead, and not a little glad we hadn't left, which we all had thought about doing many times over.

then the lead changed sides a few more times, before jorge posada won the game on a classic, you-dreamed-it-up-in-your-backyard-a-billion-times-as-a-boy, two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth, walk-off two-run shot to the bleachers in right.

needless to say, the place fairly brimmed over with excitement. (we didn't specifically know it then, but we stalwarts had all just witnessed a single-game comeback tied with the greatest ones the yankees had ever pulled off. i doubt anyone there will witness a commensurate game in his/her lifetime.)

here's the pt of the post. when that ball went outta the park, lina, maddy and i started jumping up and down with glee, and we organically melded ourselved into a real spontaneous group jump-hug.

you know what im talking about. something so great happens to a group of people, that they have to hug each other and jump up and down together, as a single ecstatic unit.

thing is, we all agreed that usually these group-jump hugs are somewhat labored, forced or contrived. this was a truly spontaneous and pure group jump-hug. it was very joyous and life-affirming. we were very proud of ourselves for pulling it off, and well we should have been. the transcendent experience was quickly deemed blog-worthy. whoomp here it is.

for a final note, i should mention that the spontaneous group jump-hug is a close cousin of the spontaneous slow-clap - a concept illuminated by my idol, bill simmons (sports guy). you know the slow-clap. it's at the end of a lot of teenager movies, when some high school dork makes a speech to everyone in the school auditorium, extolling all the life lessons and virtues he's learned while being dumped on by popular kids and chasing the prom queen. the room is quiet when he's done speaking, but then someone starts slow-clapping, then someone else, it all builds, and eventually it becomes raucous applause. that is the slow-clap, my friends.

not to be confused with the group jump-hug, but certainly related.

jorge's about to join a major league home plate team jump-hug,
perhaps the most skilled, highest-order jump-hug known to man

for posterity: anatomy of a comeback (click on to enlarge)

blowin' up like you thought i would.

albert pujols's 1,000th hit, a two-run homer - april 21

blue basilica has officially gone over a thousand unique hits. i would like to thank the following people, enumerated in rhyme:
1. ron g
2. brucey b
3. kid capri
4. funkmaster flex
5. lovebug starski

that is all.

daniel rutimann: 26, going on classy.

click on image to enlarge...the image.

daniel "danny cakes" rutimann, my roommate, friend, confidante, musicology professor, part-time barber, perpetual masseur, short-order cook, erstwhile trainer, current muse, lighting consultant, and brady guardian emeritus, turned 26 yesterday.

is this dude classy? could john bonham keep the beat? do the knicks suck? was the pope a youth nazi?

seriously, danny is very classy, and also fairly ripped. i could not possibly sum up my love for him within a reasonable amount of space here, so i asked some friends to help me out. i get by with a little help from my friends:

hubie brown: ok, so you're danny rutimann. you have a ton of upside, even if you couldn't pick out the good toilet paper if your life depended on that modest task. you got the guns, you're decently long, but more than anything, you have a strong work ethic. when you walk into rooms, door gyms jump onto doorframes of their own volition; children in prospect park gather behind you to run in a pack, like you're 'rocky' or some other stacked wop. you know the difference between work and play, and which one calls for drinking gatorade afterwards. the pt is, you can be relied upon to keep it real, even when you realize you've been sharing a toothbrush with some finook for god knows how long. that kind of perspective will be invaluable in crunch time, like when you need to have the dula super remove the bars on your sweatbox living room windows.

neil young: let's not kid around about danny rutimann. i wrote the song 'cinnamon girl' with him in mind. it was originally called 'peanut butter chotch' but that title was ahead of its time, so the squares at the label wanted me to change it to 'nutmeg caballero', and then we all compromised on 'cinammon girl.' anyway, the kid's a musical revelation. when he picks up an instrument, it instantly looks like one of his natural appendages, and im not just saying that because his grundle is so eerily shaped like a mandolin. though it certainly is.

bruce arena (coach of us world cup team): danny not having devoted his life to soccer is a tragedy commensurate to the hypothetical of daniel radcliffe not having devoted his life to the pursuit of a real life harry potter identity. it's no less upsetting.

chef flaco: today, in your honor, we will actually have the chicken mole. you still will not order it.

jim rome: here's what im burning on. danny rutimann. look, i know, if i lived in fort greene, i'd get a honey turkey sandwich every day too. but do you really need both kinds of peppers? are you the self-proclaimed dr. pepper? is that some sort of custom back in zurich, to keep the girls away? here's some advice, shammy. throw some mustard on there like you actually realize you're half a jew, fill a large opaque cup with cloudy tap water, drop 'fever pitch' in the dvd like i know you want to, and cuddle up with your drum pad. because that's how you roll.

arthur agee: you took my story into your heart, it wasn't just rubbernecking for you. thanks dawg!

jessicas alba and simpson: you melt us like raclette in a raclette oven. meh. i guess we're not that creative. but we're so hot, we're like friggin' pablo picasso and chuck close over here.

happy 26th, danny. you're gonna be an ace big bro to young pepsi, i mean, miguel, and a revelatory shrink for crazies like me. it has been an honor to wear your socks. you classy bastard.

-mrs. rutibrinn

a fulcrum, not a pivot.

(c-note: im posting this without proofreading it, cuz i have to run and i dont want this to be an unfinished post.)















i have something important to say!

this post is based on my having just watched episode four ('the power and the people') of new york: a documentary film.**

episode four covers the triangle factory fire. (as always, wikipedia has a good concise description of this tragic event.)

for those unfamiliar with the triangle fire, here's the opening paragraph from wikipedia:
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was a major industrial disaster, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died in the fire or jumped to their deaths. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.

the garment workers were mostly - if not all - teenage women - girls, who worked ridiculous hours under disgusting conditions and basically defined the term 'sweat shop.' the tragic, disgraceful catalyst for the horror was the fact that the doors to the floor where the fire was were locked by the factory owners, preventing the girls' escape. (ostensibly, the exits were locked to encourage labor and to prevent stealing.)

anyway, i had long known about this event, but i had never been fully aware of the grisly, bloody scope of that day until i saw this episode of new york.

the film's narrators read from first-person accounts of the fire. word of the fire spread around the city quickly, and many bystanders came down to watch the event unfold. sadly, no one could really do anything to help any of the girls. firefighters' ladders and hoses simply could not reach the upper floors of the building. so those who were there eventually realized that they were not going to see a rescue; they were only going to see a slow, agonizing tragedy. needless to say, it was brutal.

there were multiple first-person accounts that spoke of watching girls crowd in the open windows of the doomed high floor, with flames jumping behind them, nipping at them. accounts of watching girls jump individually, and also holding hands. accounts of realizing that since there was no way out, all the girls in all the windows would eventually have to jump, with no hope of survival. accounts of girls in mid-air, fluttering their arms to right their bodies. in vain.

the new york film was released in 1999.

this i swear to you - if i played certain excerpts of these first-person accounts for you - the accounts of girls crowding windows and jumping - you would never be able to tell if the account was of the triangle factory fire of 1911, or 9.11. realizing this was one of the most eery feelings i've ever experienced. (i havent seen the last episode of the film, which was made after 9.11 to accomodate the event. i dont know if the film draws this parallel at that point.)

this transcendent parallel of the two single greatest tragedies in nyc's history got me to thinking.

it took a while, but the triangle fire served as the catalyst for great labor reform, and even the women's movement. progress was slow--laws were not changed immediately, but one could fairly say that eventually, crucial measures including key safety and workers’ compensation laws were borne out of the triangle fire.

thinking about this kind of depressed me.

b/c the thing is, while new york city seemed to have 'learned something' from the triangle fire, we don't seem to have 'gotten the message' from its recent analog, 9.11.

sure, in the days, even weeks, even months following 9.11, the city took on a different vibe. people really were more copacetic with each other, and i genuinely felt a unity here i had never experienced previously in my 20 odd years living on the rock. but now, in nyc, it feels practically like 9.11 never happened. it's business as usual.

sure, the US went after osama and the taliban pretty quickly. sure, we waged a war on terror.

but, to say nothing of how silly the 'war on terror' really is, we, nyc, didn't really learn the right lesson: a lesson pretty similar to the fire of 1911.

in short, both events should have spurred new york to protect its needy, downtrodden citizens, but only one event did.

make no mistake, 9.11 was more about poverty and desolation than 'terrorism' (yes, i know this idea is not original, but still). the plain truth is that if there weren't hopeless people in the middle east who don't have a proverbial pot to piss in, there wouldn't be terrorists attacking us, with our proverbial streets paved with gold.

im not saying new york should have responded to 9.11 by extending aid to the middle east. that doesn't seem to fit. but why not take the underlying lesson from 9.11--poverty and hopelessness hurt us all--and apply an antidote to those forces here, in nyc?

why didn't we, as galvanized new yorkers, stand up and say 'we will alchemize this tragedy. we will learn from it, just as we did from the triangle fire. we cant necessarily help people all over the world, but we sure as hell can help people in the five boroughs. more of us can volunteer at shelters, more of us can volunteer at needy schools....'

sure, some people did take it upon themselves to do these things, but where was the gestalt movement? where was bloomberg truly championing these ideas, with the full weight of his office, and even wealth? where was bloomberg putting radical new laws into effect which would aid the needy?

he/we had so much inherent political capital from 9.11. im not saying we didn't do anything, but we didn't do enough. of that i am sure.

the triangle fire produced sweeeping, once-in-a-generation labor reform. where is our reform? what will we tell our kids 9.11 was good for? a war? a conspiracy theory? a few movies?

all there was/is was an eye-for-an-eye military response by the US as a whole, and a year-long (give or take some mos.) campaign of faux born-againism by new yorkers, mostly taking shape as tacky american flags taped to apartment doors.

i see as many homeless people as ever. i see as many beggars on the subway. i feel just as much racial tension. it's the new york i grew up in and i love it, but--aye, there's the rub.

i dont want to tell my kids that the new york i grew up in didn't change on account of 9.11. i want to be able to tell them that before 9.11, there was a lot of poverty and hopelessness here, but 9.11 taught us something, and we fought like hell to change all that after the tragedy. just like they did after 1911.

what reforms will i be able to point to? i want to be able to say 'that's how mike bloomberg got his universal new york health coverage bill passed' or 'that's when it was mandated that every neighborhood had to have a homeless shelter of certain quality.' but i fear i wont be able to say SHIT.

i know i sketch some broad strokes here, but i think/hope you get my point.

i wouldn't say we're letting the terrorists win. but by responding in kind to them, rather than fixing the wounds we already had--the wounds the poor, hopeless terrorists illuminated for us--we're making this battle a push (tie) at best.

let's learn our lesson, new york. let's honor the people who, hopeless, jumped from the trade towers. let's honor them by giving strength and help to the hopeless new yorkers who are not jumping, but dying the slow death, every day, month upon month, year after year.

we see them every day. they should be our proxies for the people we couldn't save in battery park. and we have much more time to help them. right now, we aren't doing NEARLY enough.

let's change this city in a goddamn tangible way. radical reform, not the wish that every new yorker now has that fuzzy feeling in his heart that we all should be on level ground. let's fucking level the ground.

fulcrum and pivot have mostly overlapping definitions. but i use them here to mean different things. a fulcrum is a pt on which a great swing is made. a lever is pulled. something changes. in basketball, a player with the ball can pivot on one foot as much as he likes, but he does it to throw the defense off. he never actually moves anywhere.

let's make 9.11 a fulcrum, not a pivot. we did in 1911.















100 years apart, new yorkers watch a nightmare come true for fellow new yorkers.










** - (i dont know if ive endorsed this seven disc series here before or not, but in any case im gonna do so now. if you live in nyc, you must netflix or buy the film immediately, because it will open your eyes and heart to the city in a whole new way, and you will be grateful for this. if you just like nyc, you must do the same. if you're remotely interested in nyc, you must watch it. even if you hate nyc you should watch it to gain the respect for the city you're so sorely lacking. basically, everyone should see this film -- it's spectacular and epic. it's eptacular.)

new post soon. and it's gonna be classy.

i would just like to say that visiting one's own blog is masturbatory.

needless to say, i do it a lot.

congrats and another food post. (or, why eat hamburger when you can have steak? - for reals)

1. congratulations to my classy friends daria & diego, who got engaged monday night. (diego popped the question in the middle of the brooklyn bridge; it sounded pretty classy.) as i told them last night, it's nice to know that in this facacta world, two nice people can still find each other.
2. before heading to daria's for the impromptu engagement party, i had dinner at blt steak with the fam last night. i have to say, im not a big steak person (in fact, i usually dislike it), but the steak at this place is effing awesome. and it makes me want to comment on--nay, diss--peter luger yet again. see, it seems everyone and their mother praises peter luger (usually people, including myself, say 'peter luger's', malapropping it a la 'barnes & noble's', or worse, 'blockbuster's', but that's a pet peeve post for another don.) as if jesus christ himself is back in the kitchen there, cooking up the steaks. and i've never understood this. the steak at luger is great, to be sure, but in my estimation it doesn't come close to justifying the exorbitant prices there, especially when you consider the drab decor (i think many people would call it 'faux drab' but that sounds like 'drab' to me) and less than supplicant service (at those prices, waiters should be supplicant no matter how good the food is). (btw, it's not that the service isn't good: just that they don't kiss your ass and junk.)

here's my point. blt's waiters arent totally obsequious either, but they're closer than luger's. and the decor is a lot classier. and the prices are about on par. and the steak is every bit as good if not better. and the location of blt is in-the-thick-of-it midtown, as opposed to williamsburg. so my question is, all things being equal--more accurately, all things being slightly better at blt--why would anyone ever choose luger over blt?

i think luger is just one of these venerable nyc institutions that's coasting on rep, despite having lost its pep. if blt and luger came to the city at the same time, no way in hell luger survives. i see through you, luger. you bastard.

quick hit.

rudy g's in iowa. he's mulling running for president. i'll just say this - if rudy ever becomes president, i'll never stop throwing up. the terrorists will have truly won. it would be like 9.11 was a touchdown, the twin towers were the uprights, rudy was the football, the white house was the big net, and the terrorists just kicked him through, to go from six pts to seven.

trust me, that's a great metaphor.