It’s a Thursday–just a regular, run-of-the-mill Thursday–and I spent it as I do most days during this recessed disaster of an economy. I sit. Well, first I wake up and forget to eat breakfast. And then I sit. I check my email. Then Facebook. Then if I remember between the hours of 11 and 12, but not after 11:30, I watch The View and determine whether it’s worth watching and a lot of times it’s not. And then the TV turns off and sometimes at 12:30 I’ll remember to watch The Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives at 1:00, but usually I forget and reload. Reload. Reload. The world wide web. And reload. Usually I forget Ellen at 3 and Oprah at 4 and since I’ve moved into this one-star palace, I’ve lost my cable and with that went Nancy Grace and CNN and Cold Case Files and now I don’t know all of the kids who have been murdered and if their dad had a bowel movement today and I don’t know about Amber Alerts and how many points the Dow has dropped or if Dick Cheney is still back from the dead.

But this is Thursday and it was a regular, run-of-the-mill Thursday. There was a smattering bit or two about Ed McMahon and how he will be remembered for his time with Johnny Carson, but I was asleep in bed during that time in his life because I was just a baby. Ed McMahon lived in my mind as the reigning champion of Publisher’s Clearing House. I always appreciated him sending those envelopes with sheets of likable stamps that I could sometimes sneak out of the trash when my mom ditched his offers month after month. If I’d checked the mailbox before her, I’d have a heads-up about those stamps and so I did. It was before I knew this was a world that gave you mail named junk and when I still believed Ed would show up at our house in a boxed limo and bring one of those great big checks that take three smiling people to carry. It was back in the day when I valued an extra-large check more than the zeros it represented.

Ed was old. He was permanently old in my mind and so when he died and was 86, I only thought that he was old and I remembered that he never came to our house and now he never would, but I don’t even live there anymore and he had a good run to have lived a whole 86 years.

And then Barbara Walters suddenly drew me back to the television because she got very quiet and very serious and she told me that Farrah Fawcett wasn’t dead but would be soon and that she only had minutes and she was right because it wasn’t long after that reload. Reload. Reload. She was gone. And the headlines had all of this time over her years long battle with cancer and could only come up with, Charlie Lost An Angel. I didn’t think she was old like I did with Ed, but I was prepared because of her NBC special that only aired a few weeks prior. I didn’t think she was old, but she’s my parents’ age and I was too small to watch Charlie’s Angels, so I only remember making fun of people who attempted having her hair. And one time I convinced my brother that our dad had been her boyfriend in 6th grade because they both lived in Oklahoma in their early years, but he believes almost anything, but it’s definitely harder to make up lies for him to believe after that one with Farrah.

Mostly though. Mostly I thought that she had a big life with big things and she was an icon and got to be famous and have a lot of money and it’s not that I thought she never had any problems–I mean, she got slapped with anal cancer–but I figured, aside from the cancer that killed her, she probably caught as many good breaks as anybody and yet, at the end of everything she was an angel of Charlie who had anal cancer. Her whole life was reduced to these very small things that were cursed with A+ clever headlines. It made me feel for a few moments how briefly any of us get to live. I mean, the world is supposedly billions of years old and then there are the other planets and demoted Pluto and millions of galaxies all with their own planets and stars and homemade bombs and nations who pledge allegiance and in the middle of all of this is a 62-year old woman and she died of cancer and what did it mean that she lived and got to be on television and the walls of 12-year old boys? She, maybe like all of us, shifted the plates and made the day called tomorrow happen a little differently and maybe she mattered and maybe she didn’t, but it made me think it even more than I already did–to mean everything and try everything and fail as miserably or live as strong and get things right and get things wrong and never be sure of much of anything.

We should all be playing.

I figured that was enough of a life lesson, so I went back to my regularly scheduled program of reload. Reload. Reload. And I updated my status about how stupid my roommate is and how bored I am and I contemplated taking a nap and I went over to CNN.com to see the latest on Iran and their Ayatollah and crazy dictator with too-close eyes and I saw Michael Jackson’s picture and expected another article about his upcoming tour or financial trouble or something jacked up like him holding his baby over a balcony, but instead it was Michael–newer, whiter Michael–and letters that spelled cardiac arrest.

I believe anyone can recover from anything–barring murder and old age and sudden death. It’s a part of me who believes anything can happen in real life and that Superman could have existed and that maybe he was just before his time.

Cardiac arrest is no big deal. They put some machines on you and beep beep beep your heart and watch you lay in your bed and in two days you go home. It’s Michael Jackson and he was 50 and he was burning hair in Pepsi and he was my third grade. He was my sixth grade. He was my college. And he was destruction never destroyed.

Michael was ghettoblasters on the playground in a new school in Oklahoma, half-way through the third grade, when I didn’t know anybody and the cool bully bitch called me over to her side and it was me and her and five other nine-year olds and I stood and stared at them as they snapped their fingers and bobbed their heads and it was Thriller. Thrill the night. I didn’t understand. Not even kind of. Just months earlier, at my old school, I had brought my Garfield to show-and-tell and nobody’s mom let them bring ghettoblasters to school. We didn’t even have ghettoblasters. They didn’t have ghettos. And neither did I. It was maybe my first inclination that I would never be cool.

We only listened to country music in our house and that was only while we were being transported in our sweet duotone Vanagon. It’s not that my parents disapproved of us listening to anything other than God’s music, it’s more that they kept us from knowing any such thing existed.

By day, Billie Jean was not my lover, but by night I was with Dolly and Kenny on Islands In The Stream. That is what we are. No one in between. How can we be wrong? I never stood a chance with the cool kids, but I did learn the whole Thriller album from our 30-minute-a-day recess. If I managed to escape it at school, there was always church where the kids would gather in the adjoining gym after services for more ghettoblasters and breakdancing and Michael Jackson. Not me though. I would just gather. And watch. And think how I could potentially learn to do the moonwalk, but never the helicopter.

Shortly after his Thriller fame came Eat It and USA for Africa and if I had We Are The World consecutively recorded on a 90-minute cassette, it still wouldn’t be enough–not even after a million, trillion years played straight.

Man in the Mirror. Dirty Diana. Smooth Criminal. Bad. And God love all of the little kids I babysat who owned Free Willy and didn’t mind me playing the bonus video, Will You Be There, again and again and all the while he was crumbling. I watched him and he crumbled. I watched him crumble.

His skin. His nose. His hair. Eyes. Lips. The umbrella. Blanket. Veils. The voice. And then there was a disconnect. I watched him say that the most loving thing you could do was share your bed with a child and the way that boy was holding his hand and the way they sat together. There was a disconnect. He had been dying and he died that day. Michael Jackson never lived past the killer whale.

As he fell apart, so did parts of me. Not for him. I just mean in my own life and my own world. I became conscious of myself and things inside of me and about me that weren’t likely to ever go away. The soundtrack of my childhood–we were simultaneous and uphill and I outlived Michael Jackson and he was 50 and I am 34 and I outlived Michael Jackson.

While they were dancing to Beat It outside the Apollo and Brooklyn held rooftop vigils and played his songs long into the night, I sang inside of my head because it’s dangerous for me to sing out loud and the words went bye bye miss american pie drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Buddy Holly and his 1959 plane crash that also took Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper was somebody else’s memory in somebody else’s place and time. But this day. This 25th day. Is the day my music died.

My dear Craigslist has taken a hit in the media these past few months, but I stand by Craig and his list because without him, I might not live. It’s the way we do business in the city. Sure there are the freaks and geeks and murderers who use it too, but 9 times out of 10 you won’t die if you let them in.

A pet peeve of mine is the fake ad responder craigslister. It goes like this:

1. I list a shelf for sale.
2. He emails something simple like, “Do you still have them?”
3. I say, “Yes. Let me know if you want to come get them”

Usually a day goes by and then you get an email from them saying something like the following:

Hello,
I am glad it is still available for sale.I am very much interested in buying your item and i am ok with the price. I am only able to make payment by money order at this time b/c i am away on assignment. Please provide me with your name , address and phone number for payment. It will take about 7days for payment to get to you. As per pick-up, I will make arrangement for the pick-up after payment has been received by you. I don’t mind adding thirty dollars so you can keep it in my favor.Please take the posting off craigslist today and consider it sold to me. Thanks

Expecting to hear from you soon.

Regards

First of all, who says, Regards? I could pick through this all day and still not be done with the red flags and grammatical errors. I could also choose three options of dealing with this man who calls himself Luke Hoffman:

1. Ignore him.
2. Write back and cuss him out because he’s ruined my Pollyanna view of the world.
3. Write him an email that will make him feel very uncomfortable, laugh, or think he has to hide for the rest of his life because some psychotic freak is obsessed with him.

I chose #3.

Here is my response:

Really, ‘Luke.’ Exactly how retarded do you think I am? You need to find a new game and some new skills because this one’s been played out for over a year now. You should check into the stuff the Nigerians are doing–I’ve even heard that Indonesia’s been bringing its A-game lately.

Have you ever watched ‘The Karate Kid,’ ‘Luke?’ May I call you ‘Luke’ or would you prefer ‘Mr. Hoffman?’ Because I’m feeling really close to you right now and, I don’t know, but ‘Luke’ just sounds more honest. If you don’t have a mom or a dad, don’t worry, because ‘Karate Kid’ will teach you everything you need to know about life. You know that book, ‘All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?’ It’s hogwash, ‘Luke.’ Hogwash in comparison to ‘The Karate Kid.’ ‘Karate Kid’ is way better than that. I know, I know, you’ll just have to take my word for it. The Kobra Kais think they’re so awesome and invincible and Daniel couldn’t beat them because they knew each others moves because in karate, it’s all the same, but then Mr. Miyagi taught him The Crane and The Crane is what finally beat the Kobra Kais and brought shame to their dojo. Without The Crane, Daniel would have been just another bastard child hanging out in Reseda with his mom and he would have dropped out of school and gotten a girl pregnant a few times and sure, he’d learn a few skills down at the Jiffy Lube, but his kids would be the dirty kids at school–the smelly ones that nobody wants to play with–and then they’d end up just like their dad. That’s how these things happen, ‘Luke.’ I know because I have a Netflix account and I get three dvds at a time and so I learn all kinds of life lessons. I highly recommend getting one. Mine costs $16.99 a month. Oh, ‘Luke,’ it’s the best.

Do you hear what I’m saying, ‘Luke?’ You need the equivalent of The Crane. If you’re going to scam money out of people, you’ve got to think bigger than Craigslist. You seem like you have so much more potential than that. Set your sights on something higher. You know how they say if you aim at nothing you’re sure to hit it and that if you shoot for the moon and miss, you’ll still be among the stars? It’s so true, ‘Luke.’ You’re not shooting for the moon, ‘Luke.’ You’re using Cold War weapons and those just aren’t going to go very far because they’re really kind of old and people actually refer to them as relics. And also the Soviet Union made them and we all know they’re a bunch of liars and cheaters–go no further than ‘Rocky IV’ and ‘Red Dawn’ to see that.

If you were really in New York, or even on my continent, I would really love to buy you a Sno-Cone and some Nesquik Chocolate Milk. You’ve had a tough day. You’ve worked hard. You deserve it. ‘Luke,’ I want you to go forth into this world and make yourself into something great. It’s going to be hard to make it better than Karate Kid, but aim for that. Aim for The Crane.

Good luck, my son, my darling, ‘Luke.’

Adrian Balboa

I pulled up in a borrowed minivan, parallel parked in a not-so-pretty-but-got-it-done fashion, and got out to begin hauling my first load into my new place. My helpers were on their way, so I decided to start light and begin with the frame to my dish chair. I put it on my head, stretched out my arms as far as they could go and carried it to the front door, all the while pretending it was the heaviest thing on earth and I was steroid strong.

There’s a restaurantish Italian-American place that takes up the storefront of my building. It’s run by two old people who aren’t married or related, but are just old, and they monitor all of my comings and goings and report on me to my roommates as often as they see each other because they’re nosey and have to know everybody’s business, which is the case with most residents in my new neighborhood–or so I’m told.

Anyway, I got to the door with my chair frame and outside the restaurantish place was a man who looked a little bit off, but could have just been drunk. He had on a bright orange shirt that said how much he loved Brooklyn and the word GAGA was written in permanent marker on a piece of strapping tape on his right sleeve.

As luck would have it, he decided to strike up a conversation:

GAGA: Is that a hammock?

me: No dude, it’s a chair frame.

GAGA: A hammock chair?

me: No dude, it’s not a hammock. It’s just a chair frame.

GAGA: Is it like a hammock?

me: Not really. It’s a chair. A dish chair

This continued for maybe 10 minutes or so, as I continued to try to edge myself further inside the door and out of his presence altogether. I failed. He was not a hint taker and wouldn’t take a breath long enough for me to say I needed to get going.

GAGA: Did you see my name? (pointing to the piece of tape)

me: Yeah.

GAGA: It’s one of my nicknames. Do you know what it means?

me: No.

GAGA: It means slightly crazy. Not completely crazy. Slightly crazy. It also means infatuated, which, if you think about it, also means slightly crazy.

me: That’s cool, dude.

He rambled on and on some more and then one of my friends finally showed up and saved me.

It turns out that GAGA just moved into the neighborhood a week before me. He paid $450,000 cash for a condo that he bought from a long-time resident who is now being sought for stoning. GAGA also gets 2500/month in disability checks, but nobody is really sure for what. He’s definitely drunk all the time, but people don’t know if he also pops pills or just needs to pop pills.

What has made GAGA reach awesomeness in my book is what happened the other morning. There’s a bus stop right outside our building and at 8 o’clock in the morning, there were a lot of finely dressed New Yorkers waiting to be commuted to work. Enter GAGA with a super soaker water gun, shooting up everyone in sight until the police showed up. When ordered to stop, he didn’t understand what he had done wrong.

“But the water is clean! It’s clean!”

A whole lot has gone down in the life of Minus these past few months. Some good. Some bad. Some very, very, very bad. Some so bad that I kind of went numb and sought refuge in a cave that was my apartment. I stopped short of hearing voices, but when my friend sent me a link to a New Yorker article titled, Hellhole, I decided it might be time for my inner child to make some changes.

Hellhole wasn’t intended as one of those, “I thought you might find this interesting” gestures. It was a genuine punch in the face. One that almost took me by surprise. In short, the piece talked about solitary confinement and how it’s one of the most inhumane forms of torture. It described the lives of monkeys and men who were accidental and intentional experiments and it talked about their brains and their minds and how they had become something of a cannibalizing vortex and, well, i didn’t want to become a 34-year old drooler with Marilyn Manson eyes, so I reduced my wordly possessions by almost 85% and moved. Into another apartment. Still in Brooklyn, but remote enough that I would be forced to walk actual distances. Now I’m living with two people who are strangers. They like to talk to each other and watch tv together and have actual conversations and I’ve required myself to participate. All of these things I did to myself on purpose, in an effort to halt my tracks and go a different way.

The only thing I feared with my move was the possibility that I could end up in a neighborhood that was just a little too sane, but those fears were quickly put to rest the day I went to get the keys. Parked alongside the curb sat an old army green Volkswagen van, with a did-it-myself camouflage patterned canoe strapped to the top, Abraham Lincoln stenciled on the side, and a plastered collection of the greatest hits in bumper sticker history covered both glass and metal. As I read aloud, “God was my copilot, but we crashed into the mountains and I ate him,” I knew that I was home.