Dear Ma’ams and Sirs and Whom It May Concern at MTA:

This morning’s commute was kind of the worst commute ever. I mean, you guys really outdid yourselves. But until somebody rich buys a second public transit system or until we get jetpacks and can fly from place to place, you and I are kind of stuck together. Mostly I ride the F and that was what I attempted to do this morning at the Carroll Street station. A crowded mass stood and waited for 40 minutes before I became a leader and pushed the button that called your secret MTA headquarters. My question was simply, “Where’s the F?” The man on the other end said that there was a holdup at Church Avenue. I asked why an announcement hadn’t been made. He said that there were no speakers in our station. I asked why somebody couldn’t just yell an announcement if there were no speakers. He hung up on me.

I don’t like being hung up on. I don’t think it’s very nice. I’m certain that if I were to hang up on someone at my job, I wouldn’t have a job anymore. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t even get away with that at McDonald’s.

I yelled to the entire platform about Church Avenue and they all seemed very relieved and happy that they were given a reason for the holdup. Most of them mass-exited, but others stayed. About 8 minutes later, an F rolled up, but it was stuffed like a cattle car and I, for one, didn’t want to be a cow this morning, so I was stuck on the platform even longer. It took at least 8 more minutes for the next cattle car to show up, but this time a few of us were able to cram ourselves onboard.

The thing is, the situation wasn’t much better last week either. We stand and we wait indefinitely for 4 G trains to pass or no trains at all and nobody gives us the courtesy of telling us why there has been a hold up. Not even after we get on the train. And the train has speakers, so you wouldn’t even have to yell. Late trains happen. There are accidents and delays and we all know this, but there’s probably a little bit that the MTA could be doing better.

For starters, there should be announcements. Yelled announcements or speaker announcements. Preferably by somebody who speaks English and knows how to enunciate. Because that’s also a problem sometimes. You might also consider having Wal-Martish-type greeters at the turnstiles. Not to greet us necessarily, but to give warnings about possible hour-long waits and maybe even to apologize for the inconvenience. Saying you’re sorry goes a long way. People will like you more. I’m fairly certain that F passengers don’t want to be your friend after today, so maybe you could do something extra-special tomorrow to make up for it. It doesn’t have to cost money, although donuts and Coke products are always nice. It could be something simple like, a few extra trains that come within 5 minutes of each other or an announcer or yeller who will say they are sorry about what happened on Monday and all of last week.

I like the F and all of it’s 1973 glory. The fake wood-paneling and seats of orange and yellow are kind of nice. And I generally like you for not making us have to walk everywhere or take cabs or drive cars we don’t own. But I don’t like being hung up on. And I don’t like not being notified of delays and not given reasons. Lord, hear our prayer. I hope you have an excellent Monday and keep up the good work.

Since moving to New York over five years ago from Austin, Texas, I have experienced a wide array of living situations and roommates who have been sometimes cool and sometimes certifiably insane. While I enjoy the free entertainment, I feel it’s high time I bring a sense of normalcy back into my life–if only in my living situation. Behold the list of things I would never like to experience again:

Smelling so bad that I gag when you’re in the room or have been in the room.

Placing your dentures in a clear glass of room-temperature water and leaving them on the bathroom sink counter.

Having cats.

Having cats who are gross.

Having sex with a stray girl with your door wide open.

Bringing complete strangers back to the apartment.

Giving complete strangers keys to the apartment.

Sharpening a hunting knife in front of me in an effort to intimidate.

Hawking up snot on a daily or regular basis.

Dating a girl who sounds like Jurassic Park when you’re having relations.

Offering assorted creme-filled treats to God.

Keeping dead pet ashes in tins with Polaroid pictures of the pets while they were alive taped to the sides.

Having a voodoo doll.

Having imaginary boyfriends or girlfriends.

Not taking showers on a semi-regular basis, to where the bathtub is filled and then left coated in dirt after you emerge.

Smoking in the apartment.

Screaming like a girl if you see a fly.

Expecting your roommates to cook your meals.

Wanting to crawl into bed with your roommates if you get scared.

Digging through your roommates things when they aren’t home.

Running around in your tighty-whities while screaming like a girl.

Using the bathroom with the door open.

Going into the bathroom when somebody else is in there.

Talking to people who don’t exist in real life.

Laying on cat pee.

Long Island accent.

Making up a brother who is dying of cancer.

I’m a 34 year-old girl who is a freelance graphic designer. My other roommate is a 26 year-old male teacher. He only asks that you be clean, respectful of privacy, and have a job.

We’re looking for a third roommate to move in by November 1st. The room itself is approximately 7.5′ x 9′. Our last roommate had a double bed, dresser, and small table in there. It’s definitely on the small side and there are no windows, but the common areas of the apartment have pretty big windows that let in a lot of light. The bathroom has a shower and bathtub and we have a separate kitchen. Most of the living space is wide open. There is roof access, which is obviously not much of a perk during the colder months, but it does exist.

The apartment is on Columbia and Union in a neighborhood that is sometimes referred to as “Columbia St/Waterfront” and sometimes “Carroll Gardens” and sometimes also “Right by Redhook.” It’s very quiet down here and there’s not a lot of street/people noise. It’s safe and well-lit and a nice place to live. The B61 is right outside the door and we are nearest to the Carroll Street F, G, which is about 5 blocks up. Grocery stores, laundromats, dry cleaners, great restaurants, and movie theaters are all nearby and if you have a car, there’s always plenty of parking.

We’re both pretty quiet and very laid back. It’s important to us that the apartment feels relaxing and comfortable.

Please write to us with any questions and let us know when you would like to come by to meet us and see the room. Thanks and good luck with your search!

Stefan Sagmeister talks about the benefits of closing his studio every seven years to take a one year sabbatical. Along with being brilliant, he’s also one of the nicest men you could ever meet.

We walk around and in this city we mostly walk around and nobody looks up and if they do they don’t make eye contact and if they make eye contact they look away. It can come suddenly or not for weeks or months and maybe forever, but sometimes we crawl out of time and slow-motion our way onto otherwise sidewalks. I watched his eyes close and then open and maybe i just thought it up but his chest was breathing up and down and up and down, but it might have just been the fur in the wind with its side to side and back again. His little arms crossed over each other and his ear twitched slightly and his tail was perfect and I felt bad for thinking him into a pillow or a warm coat or worse yet, how he hadn’t suffered much physical damage, so what if a taxidermist came and got him and that way i could carry him around or mail him to someone or sit him on a doorstep and hide. Poor dead squirrel. Shut up, Myself.

Caw, Caw, Caw but not like a crow. Little noise. Little noise. Little noise. Caw. Caw. Caw. She was running as fast as she could. Up and down the fence, going right and then left and then right and then left. Little noise. Little noise. Little noise. Caw. Caw. Caw. My pillow was her baby. People began stopping with their strollers and walkers and I found myself providing more and more pretend details about this squirrel and his mom. “That’s his mom,” I said. My head bowed. My voice soft in reverence. “She’s trying to get help for him. I don’t think he got run over because he’s not smashed. Maybe he just collapsed.”

“He no collapse, he dead. I think so. He run in the trees. That his mother.”

The School-Crossing Guard very matter-of-factly.
She would know.

Little noise. Little noise. Little noise. Caw. Caw. Caw.
Little noise. Little noise. Little noise. Caw. Caw. Caw.

I couldn’t just leave him. What if he was alive? What if his eyes did close and then open and what if it wasn’t the wind on his fur, but his little heart beating inside?

“There a vet.”

Where?

“Right there. There a vet.”

She was pointing a few doors down to a blue awning and so I went in.

“Umm, this is kind of random, but there’s a little baby squirrel out there on the sidewalk and his mom is trying to get help for him and I don’t think he’s dead, but he might be, but he didn’t get squashed or anything, so maybe he’s still alive. Anyway, I don’t know if you can fix squirrels or not, but I felt bad to just leave him because the mom can’t seem to get any other squirrels to come help her.”

The floral-scrubbed, straight-outta-jersey-haired, yellowish-brownish tinted glasses lady finally managed an, “Oh” and then something about her being alone, but sending the doctor down to see the squirrel when he arrived, but she had gotten out of her chair at the same time and wandered to the door and I pointed to the small mound of fur and showed her his mom and she heard Little noise. Little noise. Little noise. Caw. Caw. Caw. “I’ll be right there” she said.

I figured she had to lock up, but no, she just needed a cigarette. Vet lady had already finished a quarter of her smoke by the time she got to me and the squirrel. It hung out the side of her mouth and she puffed in and out without the aid of her hand. “He’s dead. Oh yeah. He’s dead.”

“Really? You can’t save him?”

“No. He’s dead. I’ll go get something to pick him up with.”

And off she went. I told the mom I was sorry.
That I tried.

School Crossing Guard Lady Number Two was staring as I walked towards her and on my way home. “He’s dead,” I told her. “He might have just collapsed.”

“He didn’t collapse. His mom dropped him from the tree.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. He fell from the tree. She dropped him. I was watching her running back and forth with him and she almost dropped him two other times and I was like, ‘Whoa’, but she was trying to carry him. She loved him. You could tell she loved him. Carrying him real nurturing-like. Damn. That’s sad.”

I know, I know. But really, I’ve been busy. You’ll see just how busy in the very near future when Minus Five gets another facelift. It’s already in the works–the little man is working on making it go.

But here’s something that fell onto my head and into my lap. A collaboration between me and the very wise Sally Hogshead. She’s got a new book coming out and has been tweeting and facebooking like mad, so she asked if I would take her words and design a whole poster, and I’m no dummy, so I said, heck yes. It’s maybe one of my favorite things ever–to design only using letters and numbers. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle. I can sit for hours and put the pieces together and not even realize how much time has gone by.

This is the first of what we hope will be a weekly ordeal. To get a downloadable/big version, click here.

Here’s to smart ladies who hand out sweet assignments to Minus. And here’s to the Minuses who take them. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll start following her on Twitter. Right after that, you can follow me on Twitter as well.

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life’s busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin’ up
If the wine don’t come to the top of yer cup
If the wind’s got you sideways with with one hand holdin’ on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood’s easy findin’ but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin’ and the street gets too long
And you start walkin’ backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow’s mornin’ seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin’
And yer rope is a-slidin’ ‘cause yer hands are a-drippin’
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe’s a-pourin’
And the lightnin’s a-flashing and the thunder’s a-crashin’
And the windows are rattlin’ and breakin’ and the roof tops a-shakin’
And yer whole world’s a-slammin’ and bangin’
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
“I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn’t they tell me the day I was born”
And you start gettin’ chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you’re lookin’ for somethin’ you ain’t quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world’s a-watchin’ with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she’s long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they’re fryin’
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell’s bangin’ loudly but you can’t hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes’ve turned filthy from the sight-blindin’ dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an’ fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin’ three queens
And it’s makin you mad, it’s makin’ you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin’ around a pinball machine
And there’s something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin’
But it’s trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin’ in bed
And no matter how you try you just can’t say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion’s mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you’d never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin’
On this road I’m walkin’, on this trail I’m turnin’
On this curve I’m hanging
On this pathway I’m strolling, in the space I’m taking
In this air I’m inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I’m playing, on this banjo I’m frailin’
On this mandolin I’m strummin’, in the song I’m singin’
In the tune I’m hummin’, in the words I’m writin’
In the words that I’m thinkin’
In this ocean of hours I’m all the time drinkin’
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they’re around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
‘Cause sometimes you hear’em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin’
And you can’t remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming
And you know that it’s something special you’re needin’
And you know that there’s no drug that’ll do for the healin’
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding
And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin’ train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That’s been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over
You need a Greyhound bus that don’t bar no race
That won’t laugh at yer looks
Your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin’ long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it’s you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you’re sitting
That the world ain’t got you beat
That it ain’t got you licked
It can’t get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope’s just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner ‘round a wide-angled curve
But that’s what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
‘Cause you look an’ you start getting the chills
‘Cause you can’t find it on a dollar bill
And it ain’t on Macy’s window sill
And it ain’t on no rich kid’s road map
And it ain’t in no fat kid’s fraternity house
And it ain’t made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain’t on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it’s funny
No you can’t find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain’t in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you’re bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain’t a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain’t in the rumors people’re tellin’ you
And it ain’t in the pimple-lotion people are sellin’ you
And it ain’t in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star’s blouse
And you can’t find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can’t tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain’t in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain’t in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain’t in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin’ and tappin’ in Christmas wrappin’
Sayin’ ain’t I pretty and ain’t I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can’t even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you’ll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper maché
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain’t in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who’d turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can’t find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain’t in the ones that ain’t got any talent but think they do
And think they’re foolin’ you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while ‘cause they know it’s in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin’, “Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain’t there no one here that knows where I’m at
Ain’t there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN’T REAL”
No but that ain’t yer game, it ain’t even yer race
You can’t hear yer name, you can’t see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’
Where do you look for this lamp that’s a-burnin’
Where do you look for this oil well gushin’
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowin’
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You’ll find God in the church of your choice
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it’s only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You’ll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
—Bob Dylan

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.