Leaky Faucets

According to the classic, sappy romance “Love Story,” (full disclosure: it’s one of my guilty pleasures) “love means never having to say you’re sorry.  I guess its official then: Hizbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah does not love Israel.  While he didn’t actually get down on his knees and beg Ehud Olmert to take him back, he did, in a shocking announcement, admit that based on the devastating consequences, he regretted the decision to kidnap the Israeli soldiers.  While not exactly an apology, it was an act of contrition rarely made by people in his social network.

Sometime tomorrow, Paul will be loading up the U-Haul truck with his two cats and piles of records, and heading west on I-80 back to Cleveland.  After six years in
New York where he lived in three boroughs, he has decided once again to return home.  He went from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn, the latter seeming to suit him best, but in the end decided where he belonged most is where he began.  (You certainly can’t beat the price of real estate there.)  Part of him never left as he managed to retain an extensive network of friends after all this time.  Paul, who has been known to wander from city to city and from apartment to apartment within each city, may just stay this time.  I hope things work out for him there.

I loved the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.  Every time we ate in Chinatown, we would go there afterward for their exotic flavors like Lychee, Red Bean and Almond Cookie.  My favorite was Taro, the vegetable commonly known as the source of Poi.  That might sound disgusting to some (like potato ice cream) but I swear it was amazing. 

Before tonight, I hadn’t been to the Factory for a long time since we don’t eat in Chinatown much anymore.  For authentic Chinese, we usually go to Flushing which is better and cheaper than Manhattan.  Last month, we ate at New Lok Kee in Flushing which used to be on Mott Street.  After dinner, I was looking around for the Flushing branch of the Ice Cream Factory but my search was in vein.  I thought I had heard there was one there but maybe it was my imagination.  When I got home I looked it up.  I found that there was indeed one in Flushing but not anywhere near the restaurant.   I also discovered that the Flushing outpost as well as the one in Nolita were imposters.  They were not owned by the same people who run the Chinatown store, but were apparently started by a brother of its founder.  In my internet search I also found some sites where people were dissing the original Ice Cream Factory, calling it nothing but a t-shirt shop for tourists with mediocre ice cream similar to how CBGBs isn’t much of a rock club anymore but sure cells a lot of shirts.  The critics said the Haagen Dasz down the street was much better.

 I thought it was bullshit.  I loved that place.  Until tonight, that is.  We ate at Canton Garden on Elizabeth Street which was very good.  Then we decided to stroll over to get some ice cream although we were pretty full.  I tasted the Green Tea which was not very good-far inferior to the one at Ariyoshi, my favorite Japanese restaurant.  I went with the old standby: Taro.  But, I immediately noticed something different. The color had changed from white to a light purple.  I asked about it and the server didn’t know but another girl behind the counter-possibly a family member-concurred with my supposition.  The color, in fact, did change.  As for the taste?  Totally different.  It wasn’t at all like I remembered.  In fact, it barely had any taste.  This was a colossal disappointment.  I question whether I would go back there or not. 

Maybe the critics are right.  Maybe it has gone downhill.  Maybe it has succumbed to the Manhattan concept of catering to tourists: high volume, low quality.  Perhaps, this is another sign that it’s time to get out of New York.  When your favorite things start to suck, it seems like things are changing.

Apparently, all you have to do is kill a child beauty queen, or at least claim that you did like John Mark Karr.  Maybe he just wanted a free flight back to the States so he confessed to the crime.  Below is an excerpt from The Australian describing the royal treatment he got on the way to Los Angeles. 

Before take-off, Mr Karr took a glass of champagne from a flight attendant and clinked glasses with Mr Spray, who sipped orange juice.

Dinner on board, served on a white tablecloth with silverware, was one many passengers would envy. Mr Karr started with a pate, then had a green salad with walnut dressing. The main course was fried king prawn with steamed rice and broccoli, followed by a slice of Valrhona chocolate cake for dessert.

Mr Karr drank a beer, crushing the can with his hands when it was empty, then moved on to a glass of French chardonnay with his main course.

He later dined on roast duck with soy sauce and yellow noodles, and for his third meal quickly ate a piece of pizza served with chocolates and a bottle of Evian.

I’m wondering if he turns out to be innocent, will he have to repay the cost of the flight.

I think I may have seen one of my former colleagues in the Forest Hills subway station yesterday.  I was entering and he was exiting.  As I walked past I thought: “wow, that looks like Scott Flynn.”  I glanced back after we passed each other as did he.  But neither of us stopped.  I’m not sure if it was him.  I didn’t get a good enough look and my eyes are pretty bad.  I know he used to live in the Bronx so it would be weird if he lived in Queens now.  On the other hand, I remember his girlfriend at the time lived in Queens.  But that was eight years ago, and they used to fight all the time so I doubt they are still together.  We shared a cubicle for a few months at Bozell and he spent most of the day having long-distance arguments with his girlfriend.  He left the agency and went somewhere else and I haven’t seen him since.   It would have been interesting to say hello but not really that important.

I always thought of Buddhism as the most peaceful of all religions.  Well, apparently not in Sri Lanka.  Some of the Buddhist monks there are quite militant urging an escalation of the government’s war against the Tamil Tigers separatist group.  The other day, some of these monks interrupted a peace protest rally in the capital, which led to fisticuffs, some of which was monk-on-monk.  What’s this world coming to, I ask you?  

If the library’s employee newsletter had a police blotter, that headline would appear in the next issue. I feel sorry for Harry, the subject of this story. He’s an older guy who works in the mailroom, close to retirement. He got caught doing something stupid, possibly accidental, and he lost his job.

I found out about this yesterday. Everyone received a copy of the library’s employee theft policy with their bi-weekly paycheck. Peter was wondering if it had anything to do with the unceremonious dismissal of the IT director. I didn’t think so, but I happened to be having lunch with a friend from the IT department yesterday so I figured she might know. To my delight, she seemed to have her finger on the pulse of all the latest gossip. The IT director was dismissed (or as the official story went resigned) because of his horrible treatment of his staff which earned him unanimous hatred from the entire department. Apparently, the situation also led to the firing and resignation of the top two people in HR a few months back.

She also gave me the scoop on the theft memo. Apparently Harry “borrowed” a magazine that had not been processed. As he was leaving one day the alarm went off and he was busted. Because of the zero tolerance policy regarding theft he was fired on the spot despite his clean record and the fact that the item he took was probably worth a few bucks. This is appalling to me. I also suspect that he didn’t really steal it but intended to return it. Well, the memo made clear that the administration will not make judgments on the value of confiscated items. In other words, theft is theft whether it’s a laptop or a ballpoint pen. (Oh, shit, I better return the pens I have before anyone notices they are missing.)

There were some other more substantial thefts recently. Most notably, the guy who runs the shipping department was selling scrap items that were supposed to be discarded and keeping the money. He was fired as was his supervisor–also close to retirement like Harry-for having knowledge of the scheme and not doing anything about it.

Frankly, one might not expect theft like this at such a staid institution like a library, an institution that exists to do good for the community. Well, just like there are politics in any office, there are also people who misbehave in any type of work environment. The library just happens to have extemely rigid policies that do not offer much flexibility and often harm those who do not deserve it.

Why do so many ex-football players enter politics?  And more importantly, why do they all seem to be Republicans?  The latest in this trend is Pittsburgh Steelers’ hall-of-fame wide receiver Lynn Swann, who is now running against Ed Rendell in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race.  Swann, was an excellent player, but a horrible sideline announcer.  Yet, he could still win due to his popularity as a player.  Ex-footballers who have graced the halls of Congress include Steve Largent and J.C. Watts both of whom represented Oklahoma, Jack Kemp and legendary Nebraska Cornhuskers’ coach Tom Osborne.  All Republicans.  Frank Deford offered this explanation on NPR a few months back.

Another possible reason is that football players (i.e. dumb jocks) tend to have conservative and old fashioned outlooks on the world.  Macho.  Sexist.  Homophobic.  These are all Republican traits and they can all be found all over NFL and college locker rooms.

Michael Chertoff should be fired.  Not for the reasons you think though.  The Department of Homeland Security personally let me down last night.  They failed to protect my homeland security.  My home was invaded by an unwanted “terrorist” of sorts. 

We were sitting on the couch at 11:30 pm.  Aya was reading “The Lovely Bones” and I was typing in this blog.  All of a sudden she shrieked.  A mouse had run across our living room hardwood under the entertainment unit.  I shined the flashlight under it; the mouse scurried out and underneath some bed sheets that were on the floor.  I grabbed a plastic container to try to catch it as I quickly jerked the sheets.  At this point Aya had gone into the bedroom to hide after standing on the couch.

Of course, I couldn’t catch it.  That thing was fast.  It ran along the baseboard then under the couch.  I moved the couch again ready to pounce with my Tupperware.  The little shit was no where to be seen.  I planned to release it outside, do the humanitarian thing.  But it wouldn’t give me the chance.  It wouldn’t be caught. 

Aya wanted immediate action and I certainly didn’t want this thing in our apartment so I grabbed the local Yellow Pages and started frantically dialing every pest control service in the area.  It was midnight already but I wanted this resolved before going to bed.  Who was I kidding?  There was one listed as 24 hours but when I called the emergency number I got an “all circuits are busy” recording.  Finally, I got a hold of this guy Charles at Bug Busters in Corona.  He was still working, but needed at least two hours before he could get here.  He’d call me back.  So I went to bed.  Charles finally called around 1:30 and we agreed it would be better to wait until morning.

For some stupid reason, I expected an exterminator to come over and catch the mouse within an hour’s time.  Fortunately, I have never had to deal with a mouse in my house before this, so my naiveté in these matters was for a good reason.  He laid several traps-snaps and glue boards-and also found the likely point of entry.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I had good intentions of doing the right thing but the mouse wasn’t cooperative so I had to play rough, just like with any other terrorist who hates my love of freedom.   Charles was pretty confident we’d have a dead mouse on our hands in a matter of days.  Hopefully, this will be the last one we see around here.

One humorous note on this.  I went with Charles to his car to get a receipt and his card.  The man drives a yellow VW Beetle painted with the words “Bug Busters” along with decals of insects and rodents all over the sides.  The vanity plates read “BUGS DIE.”  Exterminators need to have a sense of humor I suppose, much like funeral directors.  Meet one of them at a party and you’ll get some good stories.

 

The Pre-Show
Two nights ago, the weathermen were calling for thunderstorms and of course more humidity.  Being a Monday, I was exhausted as usual, not recovered from a busy weekend.  Nevertheless, without a ticket a decided to make the nearly one hour trek on the F train to Prospect Park desperately hoping that I’d be able to score a ticket to the sold out Manu Chao show without compromising my tight-assed budget.

You may recall previous posts on this subject which ranged from jubilation (July 16) to heatbreak (July 26).  Heading down, I was pretty confident I would get a ticket and I didn’t expect to pay much more than the $25 face value.  It’s usually easier to find one ticket because most people need more than one.  As soon as I got to the western entrance of the park, I realized I had underestimated Manu Chao’s popularity.  There were probably a good 30 (maybe 50) other people standing in the same spot as me trying to buy tickets, and unfortunately there seemed to be very few sellers.  I saw people holding their fingers up showing the number of tickets they needed so I too held up a solitary finger above my head hoping I’d be the first person a scalper would see. 

After 20 minutes, no one approached me except for a reporter.  He introduced himself as Ken someone from the New York Observer-the pinkish paper he said.  Yeah, I know it.  He interviewed me about my quest for tickets and at the same time informed me that it might cost me if I want to get in.  Tickets had sold for up to $175 on craig’s list.  Shit.  I only had about $40 and was hoping to use some of it for dinner before the show.  I didn’t feel too hopeful at that point.  With all the other buyers, I’d surely be outbid for any available tickets.  A woman near me was on her cell phone.  It sounded like the person she was talking to would not be coming so she’d have a ticket to sell.  The moment she hung up, I pounced.  “How much?” One hundred freaking dollars.  No thanks.  I saw a couple of attractive Latina girls purchase tickets.  One of them told me she paid $80.  That’s ridiculous.  Ken the reporter was telling me that there was a bit of a brouhaha over scalping tickets to this concert because of Manu’s anti-capitalist sensibilities.  People on craig’s list were saying no one should make a profit.  I never thought about that angle, but it sounded good to me, especially if the seller felt that way.  I talked to Ken for a few minutes, told him my sob story about not wanting to pay the Ticketmaster $8 markup then waiting to long to try the surcharge free box office route.  He wished me luck and told me to check Wednesday for the article that I may or may not be in.  (Sure enough, the article ran today but I didn’t make the cut.)

After about 30 minutes of my seemingly futile pursuit of a coveted ticket, I was already starting to think about giving up.  I had another half hour in me maybe.  People were approaching me asking if I had tickets to sell.  There was a serious glut of buyers and few sellers, thus the jacked up prices.  Then I saw this burly white guy who appeared to score a ticket.  Earlier I talked to him and he said he was looking for two.  He bought them for $40 on the other side of the monument.  Brilliant!  All of us are congregating on this side of the monument, but no one is over there.  So I decided to give it a shot.  After about two minutes, I saw a group of people walking in with a bunch of tickets in their hands.  Perhaps, they had extras.  I approached a blond woman in a black shirt.  “Do you have any extra tickets?”  “Actually, I do.  My friend just bailed on me.”  “How much do you want for it?”  “Face value.”  Holy shit!  “You’re so cool!”  “No problem.  Thanks for making it so easy on me,” she said.

That’s it.  I was in.  And for only $24, while some poor suckers paid $80 because they couldn’t wait for a better deal.  Now I had some time to kill before the show.  My only concern was that I’d get mugged for my ticket.  I had to guard it close until I was in.

The Show
 I went to get some pizza and came in just as the first song was playing.  The crowd was already going nuts.  They seemed to be largely Latino (the segment of the population that wears Che shirts and regularly attends protests) and also probably European with a sprinkling of Caucasian hipsters.  One of them had a Ho Chi Min shirt and I don’t think it was meant ironically.  Don’t think I’ve seen that one before. 

The smell of marijuana wafted gently over the crowd seemingly making everyone happy, sheltering us from the real world like a hazy tent.  Perhaps, I was the only one who was only getting it second-hand.  The stoned seemed to be having such a good time I was tempted to ask someone for a hit, but I didn’t.  Maybe next time I should.  The marijuana culture is certainly a theme of Manu’s music including the classic song “Clandestino,” with the refrain “Marijuana-Illegal” and “Welcome to Tijuana-Tequila, Sexo, Marijuana.”

The six-piece band, dressed mostly in athletic gear such as striped jogging pants (except for Manu), featuring two guitarists, a bassist, two percussionists and a keyboard player, had a great and seemingly endless supply of energy, as did the crowd.  I couldn’t help but dance along with everyone else almost immediately.  It was like the band had us under a trance.  They played a lot of my favorites, some that I didn’t know and left out a few that I would have liked to hear.  Manu’s voice sounded exactly like he does in his recordings.  Unfortunately, many of the songs were played much differently live.  Many were speeded up and some were shortened.  There was an overabundance of ambient police sirens during the songs.

Even though I was by myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It would have certainly been better if I could have shared this with Aya or others, but no one wanted to go.  Their loss.  I can’t let that stop me from going to see someone I wouldn’t want to miss any time I have a chance to see him. 

Being a sold out show, the place was packed.  I started at the very back, but being a veteran concertgoer, I managed to inch my way up front so that I was within the first ten rows from the stage by the end.  Which was important for me, since I couldn’t see too well from the back.

Most of Manu’s lyrics were in Spanish, but because I’ve heard some of them many, many times I was still able to sing along at least to the choruses.  I did not get much of his between song commentary since it was mostly in Spanish.  Another reason to relearn Spanish.  How can you cheer if you don’t know what someone is saying?  Well, the general gist of it was leftist rhetoric about Cuba, the Zapatistas, Bush, etc.  Much of it I agree with but certainly not all. 

The music lasted about two hours included several encores.  I thought the encores were a bit rock-starish for someone like Manu, but I was happy to get more music.  They finally left the stage for good to cheers of “Allay, Allay, Allay Manu.”  I was completely sweaty, needed another shower but I didn’t care.

The subway ride home was the final highlight of the evening.  Until we reached lower Manhattan, the car I was in was filled with concertgoers who were either stoned or drunk or most likely, both.  A group of young Latino men were swigging capfuls of Johnnie Walker Black on the platform waiting for the train.  These guys were loudly singing lyrics on the train.  When I got off the train in Jackson Heights, one of that group, who was obviously trashed when I saw him back in Brooklyn, was passed out on the floor of the train.  Out cold.  His friends-some friends-left him by himself completely blitzed on the subway.  God knows where he woke up.  No doubt his wallet was stolen.  No one seemed to try to wake him up; instead, they just stepped around him to sit down.

Bottom line: It was well worth the trouble and stress of getting a ticket, the hour subway ride each way and the risk of going there and not getting a ticket.  If Manu Chao comes again, I’m there.  No hesitation.