Handbill Handout

It was a chill grey morning, the kind of morning the guys on the morning news console you about by saying “Sure it’s below the seasonal average but we’ll warm up for the weekend!” as though that makes you any less prone to miserable shivering when you walk out the door today. The bus rolled onto the bridge and I noticed for possibly the first time a sign that said “You Are Not Alone! 24 hour phone booth 50 feet ahead!” That’s cool, I thought, they put in a phone line so you could talk to aliens. Space aliens that is, not the Earth-dwelling kind they hate in Arizona. Weird place for it but hey, if they opened that sort of thing up to the general public who knows what kind of panic might ensue. Then I realized we were getting on a bridge so what the sign was really saying was “Don’t Jump and Screw Up Everyone Else’s Commute, As Soon As You Pull Over To The Phone Booth A Cop Car Will Race Onto The Bridge and Scoop You Up As A Suspected Terrorist”. Honestly friends, do you think ther...

I'm stealing a transcription from another website just in case that site ever goes away because I think it's worth keeping around. Below is Vin Scully eulogizing Ernie Harwell while doing play by play. Vin probably knows he's the last of the old breed now, the last of the baseball broadcasters who aren't self-promoting hairdos trying to show off their big voices or the overly analytical analysts who turn baseball into an exercise in algebra. He is the last of a generation that tried to tell stories because one of the great joys of the slow pace of baseball is (or rather should be) the time to breathe and enjoy the weather and tell stories in between play. Those old school guys are (were) the sort of people you (or I, anyway) would want next to you in some minor league park somewhere shooting the breeze on a lazy afternoon. Anyway, thanks to whoever runs this site for transcribing this. "I have a problem and I hope you will understand and bear with me. One of ...

Happy early spring in the Northeastern US with lots of shiny sun and warmth aplenty. Flowers bubbling up out of the mud and all that. Soon it’ll be time for the bunny to come out of the tomb and bring the eggs to heaven and then we’ll have ramps and asparagus and spring onions and there will be much rejoicing. Of course, the whole death thing keeps getting in the way. Welcome to 2010, the year of death. Of course every year is a year of death in fact every day is a day of death for somebody or something from the person you admired to your dear relative to the head of lettuce you murderously shredded into what you called salad even though it was just a bowl of lettuce and some creepy chemical compound called “bottled salad dressing”, a vegetable’s embalming fluid yum yum yummy. 2010 started with a friend of mine dying and he was younger than me and it was out of left field so we call that one a tragedy. It’s about to continue with a beloved old aunt-in-law who will finally get to f...

Today is my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Or rather today is the 60th anniversary of the day they got married, because legally I think they are no longer married since they are both dead. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure once you’re dead you’re single though I don’t know who came up with that rule. I mean sure, it makes sense when one partner is gone and the other is still here, but when you’re both dead are you both still single? And if you aren’t, is your “new anniversary” the death of the second partner assuming you both didn’t die on the same day? Bah, it’s all too complicated. For the purposes of this essay, let’s just assume that my parents, though dead, are still married, and that their anniversary is today, though that’s only based on hearsay since I wasn’t present at the occasion. Really all I have is their word for it. Which I hope was correct, seeing as how we have what they said was their wedding date on their headstone and boy howdy would I be embarrassed if we w...

Mother’s Day is a little different when you have a dead parent. (“It’s not dead, it’s sleeping.” I said “dead parent”, not “dead parrot” Monty Python-quoting voice in my head!) The upside is you don’t ever have to worry about a gift. No crowded stores or obscene shipping charges from a website to get the gift there on time or packed restaurants with crappy fixed price menus and servers who are pissed off because other than Valentine’s Day Mother’s Day is the ultimate amateur hour for restaurant eating and the amateurs don’t tip. Nope, you don’t have to worry about any of that, not even a phone call. If you’re like me and you have a small garden plot on your parents’ grave however, well, you have a whole ‘nother set of worries. You know all those people who made restaurants amateur hour on Mother’s Day? You know what happens when their mother kicks off? That’s right; all those people flock to the cemetery where ol’ mom’s mortal husk is interred. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. I visit ...

I dream of dead people. So do lots of other people, I’m sure. I dream of dead people more in the spring, which I’m not so sure is as universal, though it would make sense given all the rebirth and renewal hoo-hah that we the humans have imparted to this time of year over the millennia. The equinox stuff and the bunny and egg symbolism and the dead-God-that-we-ate- but-then-he-came-back-even-though-he-wasn’t-a-zombie stuff. It is interesting Christianity is the only belief system featuring a figure that rises from the dead that isn’t destructive and evil isn’t it? Well, the only belief system I know anyway; I have to think there’s some other one out there with something similar to counteract everything we’ve built around mummies, vampires, zombies and the undead in general. That’s beside the point. The dead people I dream of are still dead, and yet they show up in my subconscious more often this time of year. Dead pets sometimes too. Know where I see them? I see them at the house I grew...

There have been a rash of celebrity deaths over the last few days, and all of them were sudden and unexpected: Harry Kalas, Nick Adenhart, Mark Fidrych, and of course Marilyn Chambers. Makes you realize that you could go any time, without any warning whatsoever. Since I have an unhealthy obsession with death to begin with, this run of famous folks suddenly plucked from the planet got me thinking about the rituals surrounding death and in particular the things we say to each other when someone has kicked it. One of the things you inevitably hear is “If (deceased) were here, he’d say (whatever)”. Now of course this means other people are putting words in the deceased’s mouth, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand its people putting words in my mouth. So, today’s homily will be a little clip and save pocket guide for things that I would ACTUALLY say if I were still alive. I mean, I am still alive, but when I am gone I want all of my dear friends and loved ones to keep this list a...

I made an appointment with my eye doc today. It will be the 16 month follow-up to the cataract surgery on my left eye and the beginning of me lobbying to get the right eye done as well. A person my age doesn ’t normally have to deal with these things but in my family the parts start wearing out early. I don’t want my vision to deteriorate to the point it got to last time where I was hardly reading anything I didn ’t have to read for work, had trouble driving, couldn ’t read menus in restaurants and viewed everything through a haze not unlike what your world would look like if you took a pair of eyeglasses and smeared butter all over them. The surgery itself is no big deal. You’re awake but high as a kite on valium as they destroy your lens with sound waves, suck it out with a needle and pop a new plastic one in its place that happens to be farsighted. Well, the one I got happens to be farsighted because the newer ones that adjust to your eye are still experimental and aren ’t cove...

Last night I had the strange experience of being able to walk in a relatively straight line from my place of work up 6 th avenue to the bus stop instead of having to bob and weave through the writhing mass of bag-clutching holiday celebrants as I have to each December. They’ ve all gone home, or back underground, or to wherever they go to wait for the warm weather. January doesn ’t have much going for it, but one thing it does have in its favor is the lack of crowds in the neighborhood around my office. Settling into my seat as my homeward-bound bus eased across 50 th street last night I looked to my right and saw the Rock Center Christmas tree still big as life and all lit up. The crowds, however, were gone. The tree belonged to the locals now for what little time it had left before being mulched and used in the city’s parks. The bus stopped at the mid-block traffic light and I began to think. It seemed like only a few days ago that I had first seen this year’s tree as I typically ...

I heard from my sister that my late aunt tried to leave her body to science. Science wanted no part of it. Apparently she had used up her physical resources to the point where science had no use for the shell that she departed. My sister said my cousin told her it was the only laugh she got that day. I’m very proud of my aunt and hope they can say the same about me when my time comes. The marathon was last weekend in New York. I’ll never understand the appeal. The brother of a dear friend of mine was a runner. I say “was” because he too has left the planet due to a heart attack at 28 ten years ago. Apparently the marathons weren’t good for an undiscovered (while he was alive anyway) heart defect that he had. One autumn before he passed he ran the NY Marathon. I asked his brother how that went and he said “He told me “I’m spent.”” He got no runner’s high, no revelation, no endorphin-fueled communion with God, no nothing. He was just tired at the end. My friend’s brother was ...

Thai politics, actually. Seems that the prime minster of Thailand has finally stepped down after weeks of protests and a takeover of his compound. Supposedly none of those things forced him out. What did him in? Paid guest appearances on a cooking show that he used to host prior to becoming prime minister. It seems that in Thailand it's a constitutional violation to do such a thing when you're the PM. Now I wonder how long it'll be before some TV or radio host comes up with "Boy, don't you wish we had a rule like that in the US and (insert name of hated political office-holder) had been a guest judge on Iron Chef?" Man I could make some dough punching up material for those guys. Back to ex-PM Sundaravej : What recipes did he demo? Or was he just a taster? What food did in a political career? Maybe someone will post clips on somewhere out there on the vast interwebs . Maybe I'll be motivated to go searching for them. Or maybe not. Screw it, onc...

I’ve been thinking about planning my funeral. No, I’m not facing imminent death or anything. Not that I know of anyway. It’s just that after you go to enough wakes and funerals and shivas and whatever other ritual-for-the-dead is observed by the bereaved you begin to have thoughts about how you want your own going away party to be. I don’t think I’m alone here. In fact, I think as the boomer generation slips toward its dotage in the 21st century we might begin to see the emergence of a whole new occupation: the funeral planner. I’m not talking about a funeral director or undertaker here. I’m talking about the expansion of the party planning industry beyond Super Sweet 16s and weddings and the newly-in-vogue (or maybe not so new, I’m out of the loop) divorce parties to include funerals. And I for one would applaud such a thing. I think a well-planned funeral that literally IS a celebration of the departed’s life instead of a bunch of people making small talk with a body at the f...