a great way to get to hate new york

Two weeks into the shoot, and for reasons that escape me I've become the de facto driver for the show (the name of which I am forbidden from mentioning but which, uncoincidentally, is a perfect anagram of "I am a worthless maiden, heed me"). The logic, for lack of a less sarcastic-sounding word, of putting someone who can count the number of months he's been in this city on both middle fingers in charge of piloting a massive 15-seat van through the traffic-choked streets of New York escapes me, but the upside is that every hour I spend screaming at some asshole triple-parked on Bowery is an hour of not being screamed at by a drug-addicted, alcoholic multimillionaire.

Short of the odd drunken taxi ride, I'd literally been in one car since coming to New York before starting this job, and my impression had been of a city composed entirely of tunnels. The subways are in many ways wonderful, as much for their convenience (which is ample) as for the voyeuristic, fight-or-flight thrill of being surrounded on all sides by an army of lunatics. And yes, yes, there's a certain...well shit, magic, to emerging from the dank tiled murk of the subway to find yourself suddenly in a different part of town.

And so for me this city existed as a series of islands. Go down into the subway and emerge in Harlem, Central Park, Union Square, Greenpoint, Bushwick. There are points of reference, yes -- the spire of the Empire State Building, the gaudy flash and bang of Times Square -- but the bits and pieces that make up the city never quite fit together. The Bronx is up, the Battery 's down. Everything else gets a bit hazy.

In the beginning, it's this simple dislocation that makes being anywhere for the first time so exciting. The simple act of decoding the geography of a place, of figuring out which roads take you where, is the first step to penetrating its mystery. Said mystery is stabbed, set on fire, pushed down a flight of stairs and then given the finger by a cabbie the minute you start driving. Yeah, the Bronx is up and the Battery's down, and between them, an endless sea of douchebags.

Central Park, once a sanctuary of calm in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the city, is now just a big green road block in between where I am and where I need to be, and shit, now I need to drive all the way the fuck up 66th to get over to the west side, even though the place I need to go to pick up the lens is on the same fucking street I'm on now, and jesus, for some reason the fire department has the street roped off so now I gotta go all the way up to -- the fuck?! The light's green you fucking moron! GO!! Don't honk at me, you prick, I'm not the asshole staring at a green light with my thumb up my -- Move your goddamn car! Yeah, you! And then once I have the lens I have to get all the way the fuck up to the Bronx to pick up some dry ice, of all fucking things, then back down to the lighting house in Greenwich that won't have our stuff ready until after lunch, which I'm goddamn missing right now, by the way, and after all that I have to make it back across the Williamsburg Bri--No, YOU fuck YOUR goddamn mother, lady!

Michiko Kata, 1959 - 2008

I've been struggling to write this post for a couple of days now, and although I'm finally sitting down and running my fingers over the keys, I feel no more prepared to tackle the great weight that hangs over my heart than I was when I first received the news; and so it's with a tremendous sense of sadness that I report the passing of a woman who meant a great deal to me.

Those of you who know me from our time in Japan will know what I mean when I say that Michiko Kata was my J-mom. Michiko was a woman of unparalleled kindness and generosity of spirit, and during my four years in Japan she and her husband were as much a family to me as anything else. When I was sick she brought me food and medicine. When I was lonely she invited me over to her house for dinner. When I was bored she told me which hikes were the best and which onsen were the most beautiful. Whenever I got angry or frustrated with life in Japan, she listened to me rant until I felt better. She was an avid mountaineer. She was a painter. She was a mother and grandmother of two.

It is easy to say about anyone who has passed that they were wonderful, that they were kind, that they were a good mother or father or husband or wife; but I am confounded -- not only as a writer, but as man choked with grief -- that I can find no words to say anything more than that. I can say nothing that will give deeper meaning to her life, nor more weight to her death. I can say nothing that will make anyone grieve with me.

But perhaps it's for the best that grief is such a peculiar and private emotion, that it strips us of our ability to be grandiose. No matter how eloquent our praise, no matter how sad and beautiful, in the end we say only that the person who has died was dear to us, and will be missed. It is this, the simple fact of our grief, the irreducibility of it, that is our greatest tribute to them.

And so I say simply, that Michiko Kata was dear to me, and will be missed.

welcome to the working week

One of the things I hate about web-blogs is the first line of the first post after a prolonged period of bloglessness. It's invariably something along the lines of "Hey guys, sorry it's been a while since I've written anything, but blah blah blah." And, as with a great many other things I've always hated about blogs -- monumental self-importance, coupled with a lack of structure and breathless, pathological fascination with the marginally interesting minutiae of one's own life -- I find myself wringing my hands as I search for a way to believe that what I'm doing is somehow fundamentally different.

There are two main reasons I hate posts like this one. First, and most aggressively obnoxious, is that it presumes the existence of a substantial readership and presumes that said readership is so ravenously dedicated that the three weeks you spent not blogging about the cute-slash-crazy things your cat does have not only been noticed, but have furthermore been a source of some anxiety in their lives. The second reason, and one that springs hydra-like from the bloody neck of the first, is that so much amazing shit has been going on happened that I don't know where to start! And so, the dilemma: Which funny/interesting/unsettling events and/or observations from the last month do I bother recounting?

Do I tell you about the heavily tattooed, sporadically toothed woman I met at Amoeba Records who was carrying her baby wrapped up in a sling over her stomach? Or how she saw me looking at Jackson 5 cds and told me how she didn't normally come into the Soul section but had started once her daughter had been born because she didn't think she should grow up listening to death metal? Or how, when I asked to see the baby, she said that her baby was at home with her husband, but that she carries a bundle of rags in swaddling clothes with her because when her baby is far away she has panic attacks?

Or do I tell the story about looking for the keys to my motorcycle that, y'know, isn't really about the motorcycle at all but is, like, a metaphor or some shit? Or do I tell you about the amusing subcultural/generational disconnect inherent in going out with a 22 year old straight-edge vegan? Or about the series of seriocomic near-disasters that constituted Christmas?

Each of these things is, depending on how far you lower your standards, blog-worthy. And, under different circumstances, each may well have led to a funny/interesting/unsettling entry of its own. But three officially heartwarming but secretly frustrating weeks with my family have left me criminally unmotivated, and so these things fall down the memory hole, however half-heartedly cliff-noted.

Lucky then, dear readers, that New York is so quick to offer up a bevy of bat-shit lunacy, for not two days have gone by and I'm already playing catch-up. From realizing half-way through our conversation that the oddly familiar woman next to me on the plane is a porn star, to seeing a lady blowing a guy in a car parked in front of the police station across from my apartment, to watching a drunk on the subway stand up and announce that he'd show everybody a trick, then puke into his hands.

Perhaps the best news, however -- beside the comforting knowledge that New York is still, as ever, awash in a sea of sex and vomit -- is that I have finally found a real live paying job. As of yesterday I am a production assistant for a show on the Food Network, and while I have yet to meet the hostess, almost every single person I spoke to on set described her using some combination of the words "crazy" and "bitch." The non-disclosure agreement I signed yesterday keeps me from mentioning her or the show by name, but I can almost guarantee that this job will not only line my pockets with sleazy green, but more importantly, provide me with access to a well of crazy so vast and deep that it promises to power this blog for months to come. Seems Every Major Indicator Has Offered Me Evidence My Argument Doesn't Err -- While I Truly Hope She Acts Nuts Despite Real Appeal, Let's Expect Embarrassment.

So. That.