My freshman year of college I was taking the standard writing class part two. I had to pick a poem and analyze the meaning of it. I don't like much poetry, except haiku and bawdy limericks. I picked Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay. If only because I remember it from the Outsiders. I compared it to Bruce Springsteen's song Glory Days. My teacher, who went on to be the poet lauriet of Rhode Island read the essay, the only thing he wrote on my paper was "A Are you from New Jersey". This morning as I heard Glory Days I wish I still had that paper. Anyway here is the poem:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Since the last episode of the Soprano's I have been thinking about Journey a lot.

So Saturday after the wedding the Field, #13 who was staying with us, and I get back to our apartment. The field is hungry so we decide to run upstairs to our apartment change and go to a diner. Its about 145 in the morning. So we go to the diner (which was completely unnecessary), but delicious. I even looked for Don't Stop Believing on the jukebox, but sadly ended up playing Wouldn't it Be Nice. So we leave and its a two block walk back to our apartment. Sitting on the sidewalk is a girl, who had to be 21 or 22 crying her eyes out. We asked if she was okay. She was crying so hard that she could barely talk. She also was wearing what appeared to be a cocktail napkin. Now, Hoboken is a safe place, but a drunk, underdressed crying girl at 2 o'clock in the morning, just can't be a good story. So she finally told us that she had left a bar in a huff because her boyfriend was dancing with other girls and being mean to her. She was from the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvannia and her boyfriend was not picking up her phone. She told us where she thinks where she was staying. Its about 20 blocks from our apartment in the wrong direction. The field and I did what any slightly drunk 30ish people would do, we volunteered to walk her there. About half way through the trek, my friend John comes up to us. So now like Dorothy and her friends, myself, the field, John and Rhoda the crying almost naked girl headed off to find Oz. The whole time we spoke about how her boyfriend seemed like a jerk and whether she was an Eagles or Steelers fan, and all the sort of small talk you make when you are walking a complete stranger home at 2:45 in the morning. When things like this happen it makes me never want to venture into the suburbs.

One of my favorite sayings that my father uses over and over again is "Besides everything else that happened Mrs. Lincoln what did you think of the play?"

I just am so excited to hear from Paris it is killing me................

http://cronkitegreeting.blogspot.com/

You should definitely be watching Flight of the Concords on HBO. It's sketch comedy with a lower case.

Summer Project Annoucement tomorrow. Too busy today to get in depth. Wednesday at the latest.

I am not a huge Supreme Court watcher, but I keep my pinky toe on the pulse of it, mainly from reading George Will, who comments on the court occasionally and a snippit here or there in the paper. Anyhow, It is amazing to me that George H.W. Bush nominated Souter to the Supreme court. In today's Red/Blue world that never would have happened.

#13 and I were sitting around listening to the cable channels that only play music, waiting for the field to get ready, before going to a wedding on Saturday night. The song Islands in the Stream with Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers came on. This sparked the memory of the 80's Lip synching show Puttin On the Hits. Is there anything funnier in an antifunny way than when someone dresses up half of themselves in one garb and the other half in another garb and sings karaoke or lip synchs a male and female song. That memory had us laughing for about 10 minutes.

Coming Sunday or Monday my summer Project.

Yesterday in the middle of June I wore Corduroy pants to work. (Yes, this is a Dry cleaning story so you have been warned). So I go to the dry cleaners yesterday morning with my ticket and also one of the Field's dresses. As an aside we have know for about four months that we are going to a wedding Saturday night, but the Field waits until Thursday morning to get the dress she needs dry cleaned. As a second aside the Field and I have two separate dry cleaners. Her's is close to our apartment and they always have cute little dogs in the store, I have used it on occasion, including with some stuff at the end of last week. I have one that is on my way to work that I use and has a nice guy who always has gum and gave me a planner for Christmas. So I go to hers. I ask them if it is possible to get this dress cleaned by Saturday morning.
She follows by asking me as if I am stupid, "Have you heard about the flood at the Dry Cleaning Factory? We are backed up on all Dry Cleaning, and can take nothing until at least next week and all deliveries are backed up until at least Saturday." Her tone implied I was stupid for not having heard of the flood. Now, I am sure in the Dry Cleaning community of northern New Jersey this is their Katrina, but with global warming, the space shuttle being unable to land, and me at 7:25 in the morning realizing I may have no clothes to wear to work (small big deal), and the Lake may not have a dress to wear for a wedding on Saturday (Huge, End of the World, Big Deal), a flood at a Dry Cleaning factory has not exactly set off the CODE RED. So I say thanks. Then I go to my dry cleaner with fear that he uses the same factory. I get there. He says hello and then the last four digits of my phone number. (It's a great relationship when the proprietor knows you by your code in his computer system). So I ask him, I say "I heard about the factory flood." He then looks at me, like I looked at the proprietor of the other cleaners a mere eight minutes earlier. He then says do you need this by Saturday or Monday. I say Saturday morning. He says see you soon. End of Transaction. I go home and put together a stellar outfit of a shirt that has a small hole in one of the armpits and corduroy pants. Later I Googled Dry Cleaning Factory Floods and am came up blank. So I hope my clothes are there today or I may start to get really worried. Last night I put a pair of pants that doesn't need to be in the dry cleaner into the laundry with a shirt and Ironed them both. So Thank God it's Friday.

Summer of 1995: I had just come home from my first year at college. It was the closest my life ever got to a Bruce Springsteen song. My old man got me a job at a factory changing computer chips and working in the shipping department (I just like the way that sounds). I spent the summer building shelving, shipping packages and accepting returns. The woman I worked with was a big fan of country music. That was the toughest part of the job. I am a suburban kid from the Northeast. At that time I was much more Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin than Randy Travis and Garth Brooks. During that time I had 2 weeks that I loved. The first is when my boss went on vacation and I had autonomy of the radio. I listened to Howard Stern in the morning and then classic rock all day. The second was more interesting. In the third week of July the country station had a week of classic country. It was pretty much all Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton. That week changed my perception of Country Music. The music was so raw and real and true. It was like Zeppelin, albeit stylistically different. Then Cash came out with the America albums that Rick Rubin (who produced the Beastie Boys) produced, and a certain type of country music, that I would almost, although I would probably be alone in this, categorize as folk music, became forever in my music mix. So besides being able to afford to buy a TV for my dorm room after that summer the job gave me appreciation of something else as well. Everybody has heard the Cash version of Hurt, you should listen to the rest of those albums because he distills music down to just being voice, guitar and sadness. And sadness is the key ingredient to good music. Compare Shiny Happy People to Everybody Hurts...

Expect to hear puns galore from Jay Leno on this story for the next 3 weeks.

You know what never gets less exciting... riding in a Limo.

You really meet very few people who say their favorite food is pepperoni.

The nice thing about life is that it always offers surprises.

Slinger asked me to name my 12 favorite movies. I will add a little commentary

1. The Apartment - My favorite movie of all time. The Lake won't watch it because it is black and white. This movie captures New York to a T.
2. The Karate Kid - Years ago when I took a screenwriting class I referenced every point covered to how it applied to the Karate Kid.
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark - In so many ways the perfect adventure movie.
4. Caddyshack - Ted Knight is superb in this movie.
5. Almost Famous - There is more heart in this movie than in an entire greeting card store.
6. Wall Street - Such a moral fable.
7. Cocktail - When Tom Cruise was cool. But Bryan Burns steals the show
8. Get Shorty - I loved it when it first came out, I love it even more now. Dennis Farina steals the show
9. Scent of a Woman - Al Pacino is perfectly over the top in this movie.
10. Adaptation - Such a creative movie. It out metas - meta. (and is more accessible than the still great Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
11. Punch Drunk Love - There are so many perfect little moments in this movie. Everybody thought it was stupid.
12. Dirty Dancing. When this came out in 87 my Mom would watch it day after day after day. Now whenever it is on, I can't help but watch it. Unreal soundtrack, nice story. In 1998 my senior year of college I spent an entire weekend trying to teach my friend's 18 year old sister the lift. We got it once, and we also shared an unprivate kiss making her sister banish her from my apartment the rest of the weekend.

13 Honorable Mentions: Animal House, Lost in Translation, Memento, Vanilla Sky, Magnolia, Joe Vs. The Volcano, The Shining, Top Gun, Jackie Brown, The Swimmer, Match Point, Glengarry Glen Ross, Point Break

Here is the difference between Men and Women at age 25. A couple who have been dating for 6 months walk by another couple who is married about the same age and pushing the stroller with their 8 month old.

The woman thinks, "Someday that will be me" and smiles
The man thinks, "Thank God that isn't me" and then continues to think about either beer, football, chicken wings or supermodels, or some combination thereof.

I write this not to unleash my inner Tim Allen, I write this because as I grow older and mellow and move away from my inner 25 year old, I realize that just like there is the 8 year old part of me that will alway think that Swords and flamethrowers are cool, there is a part of me that will always be 25.

At least it's Flag day.

Somebody found this site today by Googleing "Leather Queesiness". Welcome to the club.

Fascinating

5 Types of It's Besides Cheeze-Its.

1. Bee'z-Its
2. Pleaze-Its
3. Suri's-Its
4. Sneese-Its
5. Flea'z-Its

Update.

I went to college in the Rhode Island between 1994 and 1998. Musically there are a few songs that will always be associated with college. The Fugee's, Chumbawumba, Blues Traveler. During that time period though if there was one constant it was the two Dave Matthews albums Under the Table and Dreaming and Crash. Under the Table and Dreaming in college was the chameleon album that was played for both a huge party, a small card game, a basketball warm-up or an impromptu late night getting to know one another session with a young lady from your Western Civ class after the bars closed. What brought this thought up is the morning as I was walking pre-work (A quick 3.5 miles to get the blood flowing), the I-pod came to the Dave Matthews' song Say Goodbye.
If you are unfamiliar with the song, it talks about two friends being somewhere together (in some versions of the song it is suggested that it is a cabin). In it, Matthews suggests that tonight said friend and he be lovers and tomorrow go back to being friends. It's a pretty simple concept and one that any guy who has a really close friend who was an attractive girl, but clearly has no interest in him, has thought about. As I was walking back into Hoboken and listening, what I began to wonder is, what percent of guys felt empowered by this song. They heard the lyrics, they thought to themselves if it can work for Dave, it can work for me with Betsy. Then I wondered what was the success rate? How many times in 1998 was there some, mediocre with girls, History major who finally got his education major, cheerleader, lab partner while studying for a quiz to listen to Say Goodbye and have her be swept up in the moment.
If such things were measurable, my hypothesis would be that maybe it worked 20% of the time. This with a baseline of, in college just asking worked 5% of the time (in today's world it's probably closer to 40%). My fear though is that what if the success rate was like 80%? What if all that needed to happen was to have the gumption to make the move and play the song? When I was a boy scout my first summer at summer camp I took Pioneering Merit Badge. One of the knots we had to learn was the bowline, which can be used to rescue people if they have fallen of a cliff, a very useful knot if you live in suburban New Jersey and the greatest incline is 30 feet at a 23% angle. Anyhow I spent the whole week trying to get it right on how to tie it. Then finally the last day the instructor showed me a way to tie it that was so easy the second time I tied it that way I did it with my eyes closed. I think I am happy not knowing if Say Goodbye worked or not. Now that I am happily married to the Field, it would be useful to me as knowing the bowline in the flat suburbs.

I guess the only thing to be said about this story is that it is timeless.

One of the greatest jokes of recent times is "What's the toughest part of rollerblading... Telling your parents you are gay."

Here are some more jokes in that mold:

What's the toughest part about being a Radio Shack Sales Clerk?
Having to buy stamps in bulk for your pen pals.

What's the toughest part about being a John Grisham Fan?
Vacuuming the Sun Chip crumbs from your hardwood floors.

What's the toughest part about baking a pumpkin pie?
Facing your disappointed relatives while hungover.

What's the toughest part about watching a sunset?
Admitting to your second wife that you have shaved your chest.

What's the toughest part about becoming a tightrope walker?
Visiting Alabama in the summer.

What's the toughest part about buying a new I-pod?
The tape on the cardboard carton it comes in.

What's the toughest part about being elected mayor of Gary, Indiana?
Changing your name to Gary.
What's the toughest part about being a seamstress?
The wolves.

What's the toughest part about flying to Tokyo?
Paying your dues with flight time on the smaller routes like Seattle to Portland and Sacramento to San Jose.

What's the toughest part about being a Russian Studies Major?
Getting the visa for your internship in Moscow.

Today is the One Year Anniversary of the Lake. Or as my alternative name for the blog: The People's Exhibit A.

This will probably break the Glaciers heart, but when it comes down to it, I really can think of few things I would like to do less in this world than fish.

What does a Skeleton say before Dinner?

Bone-Apetit

How do you make a tissue dance?

Put a little Boogie in it.

Yes I was at a 6 year old's birthday on Saturday.

There are going to be four reactions to the Soprano's in the office today so just be ready:

1. How dissapointing
2. What a genius is David Chase for ending the show on such a murky moment?
3. I am poseur so I am going to call David Chase a genius even though I was dissapointed.
4. This leaves open a chance for a movie.

I didn't think it was great, but I liked it. Chase stayed true to himself and in that sense when viewed along with the rest of the series it all fits in. Sure if you were looking for an end of MASH or end of Newhart type of ending you were going to be dissapointed. Chase should be considered a genius if for no other reason than 90% of Americans last night thought for a brief second that their Tivo/DVR was broken, and when has someone manipulated the public like that before.

Freshman year of high school in English class I read a story called "The Lady or the Tiger" by Frank Stockton. I couldn't help but think of it last night. I remember the class discussion from that time and I think it really defines how people enjoy stories. A third of the class enjoyed that the ending was left to the reader to imagine. The other two-thirds thought of it as an unfinished story. At the time I was in the two-thirds, as I have grown and revisited the story and stories like it I am now clearly in the one-third. I would much rather an ending like last night than the Usual Suspects.

Number 13 tipped me off to this which as someone who loves game shows makes me more excited than the day Nicole Ritchie found out about Bulimia.

God how I love when someone pronounced an Acronym when it normally it is just referred to by the letters. It makes my day.

Imagine if someone referred to Tom Selleck as Magnum Pie, except funnier.

Satan just said it got a little cold down there, because I kind of agree with Al Sharpton... From Drudge:

SHARPTON BLASTS JUSTICE SYSTEMThu Jun 07 2007 11:45:47 ETReverend Al Sharpton, President of National Action Network, and one of the country's foremost leaders for civil rights, is blasting the justice system for what appears to be favoritism in the early release of Paris Hilton. "Though I have nothing but empathy for Ms. Hilton whom I have met and appeared with on Saturday Night Live the night I hosted in 2003, this early release gives all of the appearances of economic and racial favoritism that is constantly cited by poor people and people of color. There are any number of cases of people who handle being incarcerated badly and even have health conditions that are not released.I have served several sentences for civil rights and civil disobedience actions and I even fasted which caused health concerns to prison authorities who paid for a doctor to come see me daily rather than release me. This act smacks of the double standards that many of us raise

Remember the good ole days when you could come up with really good punchlines to this story. Now we can only feel sad for him and his condition.

Characters we all Know #1:

A chubby girl in her twenties, who when she went to camp as a child was probably voted most artistic and creative, talking loudly on her cellphone before 8AM

#2
A guy who just never is quite with the times as evidenced by his reading the Da Vinci code this morning on the train, and listening to a walkman.

#3
The person who makes two trips to Free Coffee Day at Starbucks before Lunch, but otherwise doesn't drink coffee.

So Larry David (comedic Genuis Larry David) is getting a divorce from his wife. I can only hope that it will mean more Curb Your Enthusiasm. A long time ago an in another life I wrote a Spec Script for Curb Your Enthusiam. In it Larry and Cheryl take in Cheryl's friend whose civil union breaks up and accidently at the same time Larry hits on and becomes friends with the ex Civil unionee and then invites him over to dinner. I thought it was funny.

Last night's Celebrity Sighting of no consequence Vanessa Redgrave.

I have been holding steady in the 70-75% range the last few days. This morning I woke up feeling stronger but I want to make sure it is real and not false optimism. I hate to sound like a wuss, but this has been an awful experience.

3 Things that seem right and if you encountered the opposite situation, would seem wrong.

1. If you have a male friend from college and he has a younger sister, she should be an optimist.
2. If you meet a gay english professor, he should have a great sense of humor
3. The only guy in a suit or the only guy in shorts at any occassion never make you feel warm and fuzzy

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277718,00.html

Stuff like this fascinates me, and I am ashamed of that.

I am at about 67% but feeling stronger every day and back to actually eating. As of this morning I lost 12 pounds in 6 days. I don't recommend that. I am in the office which actually feels better. There was a lonely moment on Saturday night where I was watching the food network to try and tempt my body into having an appetite. Absolutely horrible debilitating illness.

I have spent the last 3 days fighting food poisoning. One of the worst experiences of my adult life.