JUST ANOTHER WORDY TANTRUM ABOUT IDIOTS
I've been trying to write songs about this whole attack thing, because that's what I do, I write songs. But everything's come out sounding like Eve Of Destruction, all breathless, listy, hamhanded and out of touch, picked clean of context. Instead, I've been ranting a lot, semicoherent flushings, trying to make sense of what-all is happening, both in the world and (way more importantly) in my own life.

Since the eleventh, I have, a bit more than usual, let my verborrhea go absolutely haywire, just pull the Romilar-tested gonzo-approved Lester Bangs trick of closing your eyes and letting the words spill out onto the page like some Niagara torrent, like the sentence ain't never gonna end now that it's begun, like there's no end that's even possible, Inna-gadda-de-ramble, Freeverse. (Counterproductive? Sure. But at least I feel better afterwards.) (Draw sexual metaphors from this paragraph at your own risk.)

You can bitch about what someone's saying, but how they say it is a little tricky. If you can get past function and get yourself a clear shot at someone's form, then either something is really shot to hell with their MO or you're Kael or Ebert or, um, Kakutani? Whatever.

Take Rush Limbaugh, for example. (Rush, to me, is like KFC: there's times when you might actually want to try it just to find out if it still tastes terrible, that salty lardy smell they blow out into the street draws you in, like you know it's gonna make you queasy but just a dose of it would get the inexplicable desire for it out of your system, but then you get some and to your absolute surprise, Hey! It's even worse than your tastebuds imagine, it's scary and a little dangerous and it fucks you up inside just a little bit and it takes days of clean living to get your inner workings back in order. But then, a few years later, you forget, and it all happens again.)

Anyway, Limbaugh. That ugly fascist prick has less sense than a bag of hammers, and talk about someone who won't shut up. I imagine Howard Stern without his eight hundred stripper friends and dirty double-entendre cronies, just by himself, getting all morose and ranty for three hours a day. No one deserves that much airtime in front of that many million people. No one. Not on any side of the political game board, not anywhere. The fact that that sanctimonious self-worshiping small-minded fuck is the most listened-to man in America can be directly tied to why the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of blowhard closed-minded shits. Because, well, we are, and he's our doughy addle-pated spokesman with that most dangerous of things, a bully pulpit and a carefully cultivated army of lobotomized worker ants who ditto his every vindictive, bilious utterance as if it was broadcast directly from the Mount.

I refuse to believe that these people are our future. The fact that this militaristic, scared minority (and god, please let them be a minority) of self-important assholes among us are isolating us (all of us in North America and maybe Europe too) from the rest of the world, taunting and goading all these people who not only have a legitimate gripe about how the USA throws its weight around, but they have literally nothing to lose and a one-way ticket to paradise for wiping us out, even if it means wiping themselves out, scares me as a human being more than anything.

And these self-appointed ignorant hawks don't even have a clue. They just keep giving each other patronage gigs, boinking each other's interns, drinking up their expense accounts and driving their Ford Explorers over curbs and into each other like the highways are some video game, with the AC jacked up to arctic and some angry white fratboy thrashy fagbasher band on with the boomp bass turned way crunch up boomp, seething inwardly and outwardly about how they're being put upon, messed with, screwed over and otherwise inconvenienced by all the other peoples of the world. You wish, jackass.

The Maaaan isn't keeping you down, holmes, and neither are the foreigners, the liberals, the ACLU, Bill Gates, the taxmen, anarchists, the homeless, the hippies, the porn industry, the Taliban, Montel Williams, the intellectuals, the queers, the po-lice, the Clintons, welfare mothers, Hollywood, baby boomers or P. Diddy and the Bad Boy Posse.

Wrong machine, kids. Point your rage somewhere else. You're not the victim of the problem. Actually, by not thinking about this crap you are the problem. It ain't hopeless, but you gotta stop being ignorant.

This is no time to stay under a rock and wait for the whole war thing to pan out. It's going to pan out on our heads, I don't know if y'all noticed, and dammit we'd better get used to the fact that it's a round planet, and if something can blow up over there, then something can and will blow up over here. It's a goddamned miracle that no one's flown a plane into a building before this, and the fact that everyone's comparing WTC to Pearl Harbor, well the fact that we've been the undisputed heavyweight champeen of Island Earth for going on 60 years now and we've not been hit like this more often is kind of a miracle.

People blow each other up all over the world, all the time. And nothing we do now is going to change that. Especially if what we do now is blow up more cities and make more enemies.

Look. I don't have answers, and I'm not an elected official, and this column is syndicated only between the end of my fingers and your eyeballs, so I'm aware of my influence. But there has got to be another way to go about this. Even our lawd-protectors Congress themselves keep saying that this "war" is going to be different than any other war ever fought. Ah, yep. I agree. The Mighty American Empire is in real danger of getting their asses kicked by a pocket group of medievalists with slingshots, a different version of the same bible that the Christians use, and nothing to lose. This little set-to, if it goes they way they're all saying, is gonna be so messy it's going to make Vietnam look like, well, like the Gulf War.

And some corporations are going to get filthy rich off it.

And me, I feel a little helpless right now. All I can do is lash out and throw tantrums like this one, read other people's thoughts on the matter (be they more popular or less mainstream) and hope a conclusion presents itself.

STUDIO STORIES
I went straight from work on Tuesday night straight to the recording studio to lay down tracks for the first musical I was ever in, Peter Dizozza's Prepare To Meet Your Maker. We share an apartment now, but at the time I had been in New York all of six weeks, living in a huge expensive apartment in Brooklyn, I knew no one, and I was working a day job and a night job, shoehorning open mic appearances in between the odd couple-hours of sleep.

I had never acted before, but Peter asked me, and in my new-emigrant hubris I took the gig, before I realized it was the lead role and I had a nude scene. (I wore boxers, but the buggery part stayed in the script, about which I'm still a little traumatized).

The play ran one successful month at Baby Jupiter, and then the momentum of the project kind of fizzled out. But I made a lot of friends in the cast, and seeing them on Tuesday again after (in some cases) months of disappearance was really sweet.

It's basically a romantic comedy. I played Quasimodo, a hunchbacked necrophiliac gravedigger. Quasi digs up graves and makes a little whoopie with the corpses, but one night he picks a magical cadaver named Cementeria, who through coitus comes to life! And Quasimodo turns from this scummy necrophile into a quite distinguished man! Of course, the effect doesn't last long. We have to keep getting our proverbial freak on, or else Cemmy dies and Quasi gets all beastly again. So of course we get separated, and we chase each other across the world and through various mythological comic setups.

It's probably more complicated than that, (here's someone else's stab at the plot, with illustrations from before I joined the cast) but that's all my little brain can handle. I know my motivations, so really, what the hell else do I care? And the songs are lovely, even if I'm singing most of them.

The last time we ran the show was at the Sidewalk Cafe, which is a dreary and totally inappropriate place to stage a play. The stage was so small, we changed the thing into a reading. It really took the wind out of everyone's sails, and after that we all kind of went on our way. But I really missed the feeling of hanging out with that cast.

The other nice been-a-long-timey thing about Tuesday was that I was back in a professional-type recording studio. It was in (actually, it was) this fellow's sixth-floor one bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. The living room had become a control room, the vocal booth was formed by closing a closet door and the bathroom door, and the only soundproofing I could see was thick shag carpeting nailed to every surface.

I pity the guy's neighbors. The equipment was professional, and the end result sounded fine. But I couldn't help thinking, dude, you spent all this money and time on equipment, splurge and get yourself a real space.

MY CORNER STORE
I find I've been going out of my way to shop at Arab and Asian-owned businesses this last week. I figure there's been so much talk, even among people who should really know better (which I guess is everyone) that we shouldn't be giving money to Those People, that I figure some of them are losing business, and so I'll put a little extra effort in to giving them what little business I can provide. Trust me, it's meager, but it's something else I can do.

Around the corner from my house is the Little Pakistan Deli, which amidst its various signs in Arabic is flying as big an American flag as there is covering every square inch of the rest of the city these days (and I'm guessing the country too, though I haven't left Manhattan for more than a couple of hours since the attacks). It's yer standard East Village deli, open 24 hours, near both the NYU campus and a hospital, and even though it's fairly small it's always had people milling around in it, day and night, weekday and weekend, until this week.

I go past that place every day on my way to and from work, and it's been a ghost town in there.

What does one say or do when you see this happening? I find I've made a point of getting whatever I need, like TP, ramen, candy bars, "Kill The Taxman" voodoo candles, Froot Loops, cigars, saucy teen magazines, you know, the staples of modern life (I'm kidding - I hate Froot Loops and I can't remember the last candy bar I had, but -- look, I'm trying to make a point here) from there. Partly because I bet they're tenser than many others with their national allegiance dangling out there like some big bullseye for the abuse I'm sure they're getting, and partly because, like Jonathan Richman, I just like the character of a decent corner store, and the thought of this one closing makes me sad, and I've had enough sad for this month already, thanks.

I'm not making extra trips there for no reason, and I'm not leaving twenties on the counter or anything. Just picking up the slack where some ignorant redneck student who doesn't know any better has decided to take out his rage by boycotting one of his neighbors.

LETTERMAN AND THE CHILDREN
Here's the text of David Letterman's amazing opening monologue on Monday night. Not that David Letterman is (or should be) the barometer of modern American thought or anything, but I was genuinely impressed with his candor, and, well, I long suspected he did many of the things he does on the show for purely personal and therapeutic reasons, and here we have stark, lovely, utterly human proof of it. (You can hear it in Realaudio if you missed it.)

Remember the often-played footage of those Palestinian kids 'celebrating' the attacks? Well, these pictures of Palestinians in mourning show what I hope and guess is a slightly more prevalent viewpoint. (You know, if we held vigils every time a Palestinian town got bombed, let alone literally any other individual people in the Middle East or South Asia or anywhere else in the Third World, we'd never get to have a Union Square without candles again.)

NEWS FLASH: WAR IS STILL STUPID
I write too much about this stuff (I write too much in general - more than anything else in this life I need a good editor - you know one?), but does anyone really believe that Afghanistan or Osama bin Laden or whoever poses a real threat to the U.S.? Sure, we should get him and his posse or whoever else was involved, find them, try them, yeah, rock on, but please, don't give me this We're At War crap.

This is not war. It's a worldwide manhunt for a criminal, a murderer with the blood of thousands on his hands. But that's it. This ain't even Iraq bombing Kuwait, let alone Pearl Harbor.

Here's my meme. Say it with me now. The United States has not been attacked by a People. It's been attacked by a Person. And despite all the (manufactured?) evidence to the contrary, it's still possible that this person, whoever they are, had financial or logistical help from people who (*treason alert here*) might not have even had brown skin, who believed in a different god (like the Christian one, or the money one, or the power one), may have had other interests, other motives that the news outlets have jumped right over in their quest for a clean, simple story.

This is the worst possible time to get ignorant.

LIFE DURING WARTIME
How did I get soup on the crotch of my pants when I ate it standing up over a counter, and I haven't grabbed myself in over ten minutes?

AFTERMATH
So like airbody else I've been watching CNN and CBC and BBC, and reading mainstream papers and some 'alternate' news sources, and the more I read, the more something's fishy.

No, I'm not talking about W.'s disconnected blatherings about eradicating all evil and ending terrorism as we know it. (If terrorism was really eradicated, U.S. foreign policy as it currently is would become largely irrelevant. They'd have to start doing something more constructive, like feeding the poor or negotiating lasting peace treaties or something. And if George really believes what he's saying, and it sure looks like he does, I'm more scared than ever.)

And I'm not talking about Dick Cheney's disappearance for those crucial first four days (I'd buy that he either was made to disappear so that George would have no competition for the spotlight of absolute control, at least until Giuliani stepped up and started acting all mayorlike, or maybe he was cowered under a desk scared shitless.) Nor am I talking about the jingoistic one-voice treason-baiting whipemup that's passing for news on the networks.

But a rental car with an Arabic-language flight manual at the airport, as if flying a 767 is the kind of thing you can cram for, like a biology test? A passport of one of the suspects 'found' in the rubble? I thought the plane was the bomb, and if that fire was hot enough on those floors to actually melt the entire building, then how did a passport survive without a body? A stewardess' hands tied together, minus the rest of her? How'd they know it was a stewardess? And with all the gruesome photography we've already seen, why not show us this stuff?

I have no proof of these things. But I have been lied to before.

My guess is that the U.S. Government took a bad situation and is trying, clumsily in places, to turn it to their advantage. I believe they have plenty of ready-made 'pieces of evidence' to plant in whatever locations are necessary, either to help sway public opinion or to get convictions out of shaky courts or whatever. I also believe that if there's a couple of things that look fishy, there may be other happenings and items that have escaped scrutiny. (Ten bucks says Bush's 86% approval rating is cooked, and oh yeah, despite the magnitude of the crime committed last week, and despite what Congress and the Post might be yelling, repeat it after me: this is not war. War will begin when we bomb the crap out of Afghanistan and occupy it for a few months starting around Thanksgiving, and then they fight back in their feeble way. Last week was just the biggest crime ever committed, and yes, there is a difference.) I've seen enough, I think, that now I'm questioning everything I see or hear, including the cel phone calls from the planes, the directions airport security is now taking, the fact that the Osama bin Laden has been given a full week's head start (and counting) as if this was some big ole game of hide and seek, there are tons of lines to be read between.

Look, I'm not saying things didn't go down exactly as we've been told. (Okay, maybe I am.) But I am aware of how history is being rewritten right before our eyes, by everyone with an agenda, and I'm trying (along with lots of others, I'm pleased to report) to keep track of everyone's story. And in the coming weeks, the people and companies who get filthy stinking rich off all this war talk are going to have to bear up under ever more scrutiny for their role in this catastrophe.

Here's what I'm reading this week:

The Usual Suspects: CNN / NYT / Reuters / BBC

and then there's (in no order whatsoever, and far from complete, but still)
Red Rock Eater Digest
Ethel
Follow Me Here
Tom Paine
Progressive Review
Unnkown News
and not least Metafilter, which has broken more stories than all the major networks combined this last week.

I'M AWARE I'M JUST SEEING IT EVERYWHERE NOW
Odd things in the July 9, 2001 issue of the New Yorker (Living with someone who doesn't throw things out has its advantages):

- a cartoon showing a rooftop party with the host coming out with a tray, the caption being:
"Okay, everybody, let's eat before the food gets dirty!";

- a longer piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Martyr Strategy: What does the new phase of terrorism signify?" focusing on Palestinian extremism and, of course, on Public Enemy Number One;

- a short piece by Lillian Ross on the sudden arrival (and departure) of Bill Clinton to a semi-official function;

- another longer piece by Seymour M. Hersh about the shady backroom workings of Mobil in The Persian Gulf and South Asia, entitled "The Price of Oil";

- two other cartoons:
"So, Jim, where do you see yourself in ten minutes?"
"Relax, don't be afraid, it's just your office."

I am, in fact, aware that this is merely coincidence. Maybe it's just that the economy, oil prices, fear of the unknown and the hijinks of our past and current leaders are our main obsessions, which might be why this whole thing is hurting everyone like it has been. Maybe it's just that New York is in a lot of ways the most jaded, blase, detached city-state I've ever heard of, and this spectacular bursting of the bubble could not have been calculated to screw this city up any more than it could have. I guess this means I'm officially still paranoid.

FOUR.
I've been numb all day. My apartment stinks of smoke, in a way that reminds me of the fire at my last apartment, except it's everywhere, as opposed to being able to walk away from the neighborhood and wash the destruction out of all my clothes.

I went down to help out, but there were a ton of volunteers. I fetched coffee for the workers, but there were a ton of other cooks, and I felt kind of sick.

This is freaking me out in a brand new way. All my clothes stink. Part of me needs a big ole hug, and part of me needs to get away from all humanity. I feel helpless, useless, uncomfortable in my own skin. I don't fear for my life. I fear the same things I always fear. Death before my time, irrelevance, apathy.

Nothing good is going to be written tonight, certainly not by me. I have other work to do. Tonight the rain comes, the all-too-symbolic rain. Everything is black and white today. Not like every other time.

THREE.
I can't sleep. There's too much to think about.

It's so quiet here. I can't believe it. The streets are deserted to a degree that I've never experienced before. It's like everyone's exhausted from dealing with yesterday. I know I am.

I wish I could record what it sounds like right now. Not quite silence, but as close as I bet Manhattan will ever get. I can actually hear the waves of the East River, half a mile away.

Apparently I'm two blocks inside the designated lockdown zone for tomorrow too, and the reports say they're going to be arresting anyone on the streets, but screw it, I'm going to work. See, if I don't work, I don't get paid. Of course, if work sends me home, that's another story. (I work near the Red Cross, so this'll be my day for blooding. Or whenever. They'll need it tomrrow, and tomorrow.)

You know, I'm fighting the urge to turn on the TV right now and watch what I know will be more empty jingoist hawk talk from old guys with buzz cuts. It sickens me that our government (in the name of 'freedom') is going to use this as an excuse to blow the shit out of a country of little swarthy people, instead of finding the actual source of the problem.

America is the bully of the world. We're an empire in decline, and a little comeuppance was long overdue. Terrorism is cowardly, no question, but the same people that I watched bemoan and decry the blowings-up here cheered and condoned the very same activities when shown via videophone from Kabul, just like they huzzahed and aintamericagreated when watching the infrared transmissions from Baghdad, and woohooed 'em in Bosnia, and screamed for Arab blood in Oklahoma City.

I'm having a problem distinguishing the difference right now. Killing foreigners is killing foreigners, whether you're holding a box cutter to some 767 pilot's head or wearing a Peacekeeping Force Patch on your jacket and pushing peasants around at the end of your AK-47. Someone tell me different. Please.

TWO.
Someone is playing the U.S. Government like a Stradivarius here.

This little piece of theater we've seen today was absolutely masterful. I'm kind of in awe of the logistics required to make this nation-wide action happen, and I applaud them unreservedly.

(I'm not endorsing what happened. But hear me out here.)

They crashed the first plane into the WTC just before 9:00, when workers (but not many tourists - don't want too many internationals among the casualties if you can help it) were in the building, and then about 20 minutes later, when the world's cameras are trained on the building from all sides, the next plane ponies up and takes out the other building. This much action alone is legend-worthy. To add the Pentagon to the list of successful targets is a lovely exclamation point.

And why do I get the feeling that Osama Bin Laden had nothing to do with it? I bet it was someone else with an OAG flight guide and a few friends (they apparently were armed only with box cutters and knives - how is the Star Wars Initiative gonna defend against that, I ask you?) who hit upon this master plan, and through some combination of dumb luck and excellent planning, managed to lace together a string of wide-bodied gas bombs that found their targets better than any guided missiles ever could.

The targets were clearly the totems of American might. This was a straight attack against the US as a ruling empire. To what end? Well, right now who needs an end. We'll all watch this unfold.

And the American government has responded like the logic-challenged bullies they are, by bombing the shit out of Afghanistan, and trotting General after Senator after Congressman after ex-CIA operative, proclaiming the same shite, our prayers are with the dead, we will hunt down the perpetrators, we will make America Safe Again. Out of these people's mouths, under these circumstances: what rot.

It was a brilliantly managed piece of theater. Yes, people died. I have never seen anything so massive, so heinous, so evil, so amazingly conceived. But I have to say that part of me is deeply impressed.

I'm not done with this subject. I'm actually pretty pissed. But there's more to think about. Don't turn your brain off.

ONE.
I'll tell my story, and then I'll get into the aftermath stuff, which is already beginning to piss me off.

I heard about the first crash as I was waking up this morning - I had the radio on, I was late, as usual, and they cut in with the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

So I flipped on CNN, and when the second plane hit, we heard it out the open window. At that point, it became clear that this was an organized attack and not some freak accident. We made coffee and settled in for the day.

Dust started to gather in the air, a little on the street. The sounds of sirens started to fill the air, and haven't stopped yet. People began walking along our street covered in soot and dust, their faces and clothes ripped, clearly in shock, bearing ice packs and casts, clearly having been discharged from triages nearer the scene.

I've been sequestered in the apartment ever since. The streets have been unpassable, and really, why leave? Here is where the action is.

Now that the sun is setting, the flow of emails is starting to ebb, and people are starting to arrive at the house. I don't know how long I can stand the flow of rhetoric that's spewing out of the TV, but the fires continue, casting a lovely pale orange glow against the cloudless late afternoon sky.

WORLD TRADE CENTER
Some shots from this morning:

     

I took these shots on my way to work, after the first tower collapsed, from over on 5th Avenue, just north of Washington Square Park. I live over on the East Side, where there was more smoke and dust but less of a good view of the action. I spent some time up on my roof, talking about the ramifications of all this, whether we're at war, whether this was a reaction or whether it's something we (as Americans) we should react to.

There's still a fire raging in the area that the radio and TV haven't mentioned. Smoke continues to billow around the area, six hours after the double impact. Whoever did this was masterful in their planning and stage management of the operation. It couldn't have happened better. Quite frankly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened before, I'm thrilled that there were no biochemical or nuclear weapons involved, and we might never find or catch whoever did this, despite assurances from Mister Bush.

I have a longer rant, but I'm just letting you know that I'm okay.

I'M NOT LOOKING FOR A NEW ENGLAND
Today's big question a-buzzing about the office like a fly who can't figure out that it's just busting into a window:

What are people from Connecticut called?

Connecticutites? Connecticutians? Connecticutters?
Connectors? Cons? Yankees?

Is there a website for these things that I just haven't found? Because I have looked so very, very hard. [Note: I have barely looked at all.] Some of them I know, just because they get used. There's Pennsylvanians and Rhode Islanders, Quebecois and Nunavutters, Dallasites and and Louisvillains, Truth or Consequencers and Toad Suckers, Idahoes, Texasians and Wyominglers, Cape Townies and Addis Ababans, Hong Kongas, Dahomies, Ecuadorations, innocent Uzbekistanders, Burma Shavers, Grenada Televisions and all the other Antillionaires, both Lesser and Greater. But then there's Connecticut.

I remember an episode of Taxi where Reverend Jim Ignatowski works a series of 36-hour shifts in the cab so he can afford a satellite so he can see hundreds of TV channels (which at the time was still a crazy concept to people, unlike today where any ole schmoe can wander home from work, plop down in their ratty old dumpster-bargoon half-couch, flip on the telescreen and watch, in succession, a South Amerrican minor league cricket match, a rather riveting documentary on the history of traffic signs, the final round of the 1959 British Open Golf Tournament (don't tell me - Nicklaus, right? Damn), then switch over and catch some morning show live from somewhere in (I'm guessing) Sicily before switching to the all-Tejano music channel to wind down a little, all of which really happened last night, with no stops on any of the 28,400 showings of Dolores Claiborne or Battlefield Earth starting every eight minutes across the other 791 channels of the digital spectrum, cos hey, I'm eclectic and shit, but there's a limit), but no one else knows why Rev. Jim's working so hard, and theyget all worried about him and finally they follow him home to this horrible apartment beside the airport and there's nothing in the place but this big screen TV, and Jim sits there, transfixed, watching, of all things... a sitting of the Delaware State Legislature as they debate whether to call themselves "Delawarians" or "Delawarites." Alex Rieger gets to deliver one of his little homilies about the dangers of subsuming one's life to the dangers of television, and then at the end of the episode, after he convinces Jim to bring all the equipment back, they're all leaving and you can hear the legislature deicde to go with "Delawarians" and Rieger freaks out - "Dammit, that sounds so dumb! I can't believe they didn't pick 'Delawarites!'"

The torrent of technological advancement has now brought us to the point where such an episode is a quaint little joke. The intricacies of a human genome, the transparency of government, the inner machinations of media and modern psychology, all have advanced so far up the evolutionary scale that there is an office full of already-overburdened people in the busiest city on the planet who still have enough mindspace free, even on a deadline-strewn day like today, to have had an active and heated discussion about the proper designation for the people from Connecticut.

And the web, the world god damned wide freaking web, the Babel-glorious next evolutionary step bringing humanity closer together, has no repository for this valuable and necessary corner of the world's knowledge?

Pah. I refuse to believe this. And if they're called "Connecticutians," I'm gonna have to write me a fiery letter to someone else's Congressperson.

REPORT
Notes on tonight's MTV Video Music Awards at the Metropolitan Opera House, in something like real time:

Puff Daddy is a clown. This loser is the most classless poser I have ever seen. He reminds me of Flavor Flav minus, y'know, a sense of class or humor or anything other than his ability to show us his big red nose. He's like some character out of an old In Living Color episode. Shiz, even Rick James grew up, G. The only representin he be doin is for his 58 friends all packt into his old man's VW Beetle. Say it with me now. Puff Puff Daddy, clown clown clown.

Bono looked dazed in his pre-show interview. Before making a crack about the Irish minimalist school of video filmmaking that got them their lifetime achievement award, he looked like he had been woken up just before they turned the cameras on them. Edge did all the talking. Animated and articulate, he'd have made a pretty good front man if, well, if his band ever needed one.

In a 45 second interview, Jay-Z said the phrase you know what I'm sayin 37 times. No, Mr. Z, we don't know what you're saying. Say it.

Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson talking about the sex they were constantly having (and from which they were interrupted to come to the show) turned my stomach.

And I'm glad for AJ McLean getting his life back together, but I'm glad the BSB had to leave. 3 mentions of "64 days sober" in ten minutes was enough, especially since we were kicking off a party.

Outkast had the right idea. They dressed up in neon lederhosen and furry pants and were all happy-goofy, like some hot chick had smiled at them. Which is probably the level of compliment being a part of this show is equal to.

The "Videos work here" ads for MTV are a bit funny, and possibly a bit too true.

Jennifer Lopez entered the show looking like 1973-era Linda Ronstadt. Unfortunately, she changed into some Ricardo Montalban-meets-Julie the Cruise Director for her song. And poor Jah Rule had to sing, and really, he can't.

The miking of the audience wasn't all that good. It made it hard to gauge who was actually popular and who wasn't. Clearly the point of that.

The "nature" theme for the award bumpers was excellent. Jumping gazelles, quick-tongued chameleons, turtles fucking, clams sticking their little tonguelike feet out to taste the sand, it was an imaginative take, and especially with the all too real trend toward artificiality this year, it was kind of jarring.

Before the show, Fatboy Slim's Christopher Walken dance video won all the technical awards, and when it won Best Direction, Walken got the biggest cheer of the night to that point.

Janet Jackson's speech for Aaliyah sounded off the cuff, but really heartfelt. It was probably scripted, but still.

I think it was a masterful stroke to put the podium and the microphone so low. Despite the fact that the microphones are plenty strong enough to talk into standing up, it was sweet to watch all these self-important gottabestar-types bending over, afraid that one of their desperate heavenly incantations might not get heard, like it might just mean they would not arise into the sky upon their demise. Trust me, Beyonce: When you go, they're gonna be sticking wings to your back right away. With a staple gun. So relax, gurl.

You know it's a bad year for musicians when Linkin Park comes on and they sound like a breath of fresh air. Alicia Keys, going on not much later, brought the house down, as much because she was actually proficient at playing her instrument as that she was hot and had great pipes.

Moby accepted his award wearing a Minor Threat t-shirt, and his humility would have won me over if I didn't like him already. Go, big boy! Stubbleheads rule ok!

Did I mention that Jay Z is a fucking tool? He used the Nike B-Ball ad instead of putting together his own floor show. I get the feeling that's the most original thing he had in mind. Tool.

I thought that it was classy that Moby and Eve dragged Gwen Stefani back onstage to thank her for them winning both the Best Male and Best Female award. It's nice to win those two awards when you don't even have a video of your own out. Gwen was appropriately gracious. I'd like to get to know these people someday. Maybe I shall start stalking them. (Eve. rrrarrr.)

Michael Jackson came on for N Sync and looked eight kinds of tired, dude. To use the sports metaphor, he's lost a few miles off his fastball, and even with the loving lightweights of 'N Sync around him, it was not the pure love-fest you'd expect. 20 seconds of moonwalk-on-the-spot and a couple of spins, and the old man was dizzy and out of breath. But oy, the set design was fantastic! Kids falling in and out of comic book tableaus and little putt-putt cars and teddy bears... Technically, it was a marvel. Shame about Michael.

Easily, the funniest thing of the night was Ben Stiller throwing down at Puffy. He was fearless, and it worked out. Puffy is a clown. Oh, I said that. Well, Ben called him on it, and everyone got the joke. Especially Jennifer Lopez, who they kept cutting to in the audience, laughing her (not very big, or was it just me) ass off.

U2 introducing the Ramones and giving the tribute to Joey Ramone that everyone else was giving Aaliyah was right and fair and good, and the fact that they dissed their own back video catalog on the night they were getting a lifetime achievement award for it was a lovely, and I'm guessing intentional, funky coincidence.

On the other hand. Macy Gray wearing the date of her album release on her dress was the most chickenshit thing I think I saw all night. Who told her that whoring her suddenly-styleless ass out like that was a good idea?

Anyway, U2 playing Beautiful Day after a power glitch postponed their set (Jamie Foxx handled the unforeseen stuff poorly - please, can someone find and pay Chris Rock or Jon Stewart or whoever to do it next year, please? Please?) was the last thing I remember as being good, even though they set the whole thing up so that Britney Spears could close the show out with some major production. Her snakes and seven veils act was underwhelming, and left the pundits as puzzled as I was about what to make of all this. Still. Social event of the season. I laughed, I cried, I winced. Three and a half stars. I might get that Alicia Keys album after all.

THE LIGHT, THE TUNNEL AND THE DAMAGE DONE
I realize that lately I've not been in touch with my feelings.

I always used to watch insensitive people shove and elbow their way through life, often achieving the things I wanted but was too aware of my surroundings to just go and get for myself. I have known, and learned, that nice guys finish last.

It's not like I missed my adolescence the first time around. It was fine. Not the best time of my life, but I liked it okay. It's just that, in some ways, I'm entering it again.

All my life, I've been told how special I was, and like most kids who have gotten that treatment, I heard it. I believe it, even to this day, even in the screaming face of everything and everyone saying otherwise. To be a writer, or a singer, let alone both, you have to believe in your own specialness. But I've dropped the ball pretty much all this year, and I've been baffled as to why I've been so ineffective in everything in my life of late. I think I know now.

Against my better judgement, I'm dumbing down. Not in terms of intelligence, but in more fundamental, deep-rooted ways.

Still. I don't need therapy. I need success. Everything follows from there.

I need a good editor. I need a month off followed by about two years of solid work. I need an advance. I don't need true love or the new Aaliyah album or penis enlargement or even a better job or an apartment of my own, though those last two would be nice. I need even a short break from the endless cascade of distractions, I need a nap, I need to get to work, and I need a piece of dumb luck somewhere. That's not much. I can get that all for myself, and doing so will make it so I can take a couple of deep breaths. Once I can breathe again, I can feel again.

LESLEY'S WEDDING
I feel like I have slowly committed a horrible crime.

Lesley Wood was, for a long time, my closest friend in the whole world. We lived together in a little house on Bathurst Street in Toronto for a few years, passed judgement on each other's job prospects, pet projects and romantic partners, and did all the lovely invasive things that really close friends, totally comfortable with each other, do.

She offered to play drums in my old band when we needed someone. I helped her organize an anarchist gathering a couple of years ago. She turned me on to drum & bass, and kept me thinking about political and social causes and globalism long after I would have been happy to regress into being a normal apathetic grownup whose prime intellectual activity would be the latest Grisham novel or Everybody Loves Raymond.

She saw me at my best and my worst, and still came back for more, often against her better judgement. I credit her for large parts of my personality, outlook and ethics, and I love her without reserve.

A lifetime academic, she moved to New York the year before me, to attend Columbia University. When I came down, we were all excited that we were going to spend more time together. It hasn't worked out that way. Between her schoolwork and her activism, she's been all but unreachable, and I've immersed myself in the downtown songwriter scene to the point where I poke my head up out of the hole at all-too-rare intervals.

She's getting married next weekend. Mack's a truly sweet, caring and sensitive guy, I think the world of him, and of the two of them together. I've known about the wedding for months, and though it's not required, expected or necessary to the proceedings, I literally could not be happier for either one of them. The problem is my self-immersion. I have been so involved in my own crap these last few months that I haven't responded to her. I would love to sit down and talk with her, catch back up, and I will at some point. But I feel I have dissed her by not responding to her invite to the wedding.

But I have no time to go to Toronto, no money to pay for the trip, no gifts to bring to show how much Lesley has meant to me. I don't even have an answer for why I haven't replied to her calls and e-mails. She went through a phase where she didn't get back to me, and now it's my turn, and that would be fine, except my turn is coming at a spectacularly bad time.

This isn't the only manifestation of my blocking. I've been lax in booking better shows for the band, the book I was writing sits half-finished and untouched for months on my hard drive, I'm working a job I don't like because I can't be bothered to try harder to find a good one, I'm seeing someone and that involvement is suffering, and I'm just waiting until I get angry enough at myself that I'll pull myself out of this. Understanding, of course, that that's not how it's done.

Look. I am a poor man, I have nothing. I can only give my heart, and right now, that heart is all soup and no steak, and this is all a day late and a dollar short, and while I hope she has a wonderful wedding and a continuation of her already-glorious life, I feel like a total schmuck for blowing my opportunity to share in her day.

Especially with what she has meant to me throughout my adult life.

I hope she understands what's going on, but also how happy I am for her, how my love goes with her down that aisle, how even coming out of what sure feels like a nervous breakdown, I would give anything to bridge this gap and add my good vibes to the wedding party.

But I have lost the right to ask for more than her forgiveness, and I cannot expect her to be that gracious.

I'm going to light a candle for her this weekend. And pray to god she doesn't read this, at least until next week.