VISIBLE
These are the kinds of things I love about New York: They're putting a statue in Harlem commemorating Ralph Ellison, a local guy who happened to write The Invisible Man, which was one hell of a good book. (I identified with it way more than I did a lot of the French novels about feeling alienated from society, even though the racial undertones were, looking back, more than a bit beyond me when I was 17.)

But what I love most about the commemoration is simply that the neighborhood thought enough to do it. I can't imagine the city council in, say, Toronto, just to pick a place at random, ever deciding on a writer, and a commemoration place, and an artist who would do justice to a decent memorial. If they even get a plaque together for Robertson Davies, I'll be shocked. Maybe when Margaret Atwood dies we'll see a little something in Yorkville someplace. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

MY MAD CRAZY MAD SOMETHING
Hola amigos, I know it's been a long time since I rapped at you, but the Chiconator spent the weekend getting out and doing some stuff. Promise it won't happen again.

Shot a video this weekend for my old drummer Aashish, who finished his India-by-way-of-Indiana (think Mellencamp with tablas, no really) record and is moving to L.A. with it (so you know there's a gurl involved, because, well, why else would anyone in their right mind, etc etc).

The place we shot in is a fairly big room that had this photo exhibit running of really good-looking people getting trashed while having their picture taken. (Now that's the kind of coffee table book I'd buy.) So we did all the standard computer video tricks of making the ten of us that were there look like 500, and it was fine even though the coffee ran out early on and there was no beer and it was almost 11:00 in the blessed a.m. and the next location turned out to be not even close to big enough to shoot the next scene (there was some vague plot involving auditions, a poorly attended open mike and a house party) so we went to this kind of swanky loft with walls painted in garish Trading Spacesesque plummy colors and we shot the rest of the thing there, which worked out okay except that, well, there was only about ten of us and it's hard to shoot a scene about a swinging screaming rave-up house party when the space is so large and no one's drunk yet.

So after that was done Dani (another maybesoon bigshot LA rockstar, ho hum, not to drop names) and I hightailed it back to Arlene's where my two Toronto friends were patiently waiting having done their nails, and the rest of the afternoon began with a hush. See, Arlene's had some sort of indie short film fest thing going on which seemed kind of not so hot, but maybe that was because Natch and Catch (their real names, j'ne vous shit pas) are both film people with whom I worked in the movie bidness back in Toronto once upon a whole nother time, but we might have been looking at the flicks with a less than critical eye, especially since we were doing shots of Wild Turkey and it was almost four in the afternoon. Anyway, the three of us (Dani went home to have a nap or a change her clothes or -- I don't know) went to the Pink Pony (which I haven't been in since they turned the place into some kind of beatnik museum, which I hear happened what, a year ago already) and from there we went to the wrap party for the video (there was a wheelchair at the space in which Natch cracked her kneecaps from racing around the place, and oh yeah, we drank some more) and then we came back into the Village and popped from hotel bar to swanky mood lighting central joint (at Pop, don't order the nachos; they're like eleven bucks and they give you six, evenly spaced across the plate. What are we, supermodels? Jesus.) before finally winding up at McHale's where the two touristas crashed and burned, but that was okay because we were a block from the apartment at that point and I was starting to get a little cranky myself.

The next morning they piled back in the car and left for Toronto again, full of stories about how I'm living hard and large, and bringing the proverbial it to some kind of mighty degree, and I did nothing whatsoever to burst that bubble. And all day Sunday I wavered between recording the bass parts (my voice keeps dropping, must be puberty, and about fucking time too) and passing out in my easy chair, listening to either my demo songs in playback or the police horses hanging around outside my window.

HOPE I DIE BEFORE I GET OLD
Oh, and happy birthday, William Shakespeare.

TV TURNOFF WEEK MADE EASY
My hard disk recorder is fixed now, which means I'll be making music for the rest of this week. That, combined with the Leafs doing their annual swoon, means I have no reason to turn my little box on again until, oh, Sunday night around 9 anyways. (Don't tell me I don't know how hard it is to break the cycle of addiction, bub.)

Besides, I have a ton of books to read, and tons of crap to write, and I've heard that there's a whole big world out there. (Oh, so much to do. The litany of the unfocused mind.)

I've written a half-assed kinda topical song that (if I can work out the other half of the ass) I'll post up here. I've been meaning to do that for a couple of months now, and I'm running out of excuses not to. So if you need me, that's what I'm doing.

I ALWAYS KNEW THAT ANDY GARCIA FELLOW WAS ALRIGHT
The most magnificent book I ever read, Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers, an American Graffiti-style romp through the decadence of pre-revolutionary Havana, told with more different voices and episodes of wordplay that kindasorta tie into the plot (such as there is a plot, it's more like a Pollocky mural than a linear thisthenthisthenthis type of novel) than anything this side of, oh I don't know, Ulysses, is out of print again.

Bummer, eh? Well, yes. But all is not lost.

There is a used bookstore I happened into this evening in the Village, just off Bleecker, that had a stack of them for sale. Some Barnes & Noble or someplace just unloaded their entire stock and now you can pick up a copy for yourself for four bucks. (Still waffling? Keep this in mind: I have forced this book on a substantial number of my friends over the course of my adult life. By way of this post, I'm kind of forcing it on you. Thank you for allowing the indulgence. You have been warned.)

The catch, and there's always a catch (isn't there.) is that I don't remember the name of the store. It was one of those oppressed peoples'/third world joints, but there are a few in that neighborhood. Not to be dismissive or anything. It's just there are like a dozen third world bookstores within a hundred yards of that corner.

So if you feel like hunting for a soon-to-be-gone-forever great work of literature, and you don't mind trekking from wherever on this big round world you happen to be down to the Village in this lovely Spring weather we're having to shop idly for a cheap book or two, well, don't say I don't point y'all toward nothing to read, my friend.

(And if my endorsement isn't enough, and why wouldn't it be, Andy Garcia agrees. Now you're convinced, admit it.)

"GOD WILL ROAST OUR STOMACHS IN HELL"
Yes, I admit it. I went out and had a good time last night. Vidiot and jonmc and I went out and stuffed our faces full of, let's see, in order, rice pudding, kangaroo meat (with Rheingold), flavored egg creams (Vidiot had a lime rickey - accuracy is vital in accounts such as this), PBR in cans, a fried Mars bar each and a couple of indecipherable snacks from a Japanese supermarket on St. Mark's Place that has to have opened in the last year (I'm sure, I would have remembered this, right?).

I don't share Jon's prodigious sweet tooth, and so when we parted ways, I had to get something salty in me or I was going to have to pull out my tongue and whap it hard a few times against the side of a building just to reset my taste buds. So I went to White Castle (yes, White Castle), what little buzz I had from the beer pretty much gone, and I read and wrote for a while until this cop started looking at me funny for loitering.

Oh, Vidiot took pictures. If you've never had a deep-fried Mars Bar, you might want to have some Gravol or something before you look at the photos of them. (They look kinda like rat corpses. Sweet, crunchy, caramelly, gooey rat corpses. Mmmmmm.)

IS THE WAR OVER? DO WE KNOW? YOU THINK THEY'D TELL US?
After discovering I had made two sports-related posts in a row, I fell into a funk. I wandered the streets, looking for a better metaphor for what's happening in the world, a more variable template upon which I could drape the pearly fabric of my wisdom.

But here's a metaphor for the week so far: After the big round of layoffs last week, someone got back into the office and poured something sticky into all the phones, leaving not only all the phones themselves covered in some kind of goo which of course pooled underneath, but I'm now living the Steven Wright joke about how I was so poor I had to get a phone without any 6's and my friends are getting pissed. That's been the week in one gloopy swoop so far.

But (but!) I'm on the verge of being able to announce a couple of music-related things. Until then, I'm home frantically doing some extra recording and catching up on my sleep (always a good idea). You wanna talk to me? You know where I am.

WHAT THE PUCK
Dear Adam,

What the hell is happening with the Red Wings? You had everything going for you this year -- well, aside from losing one of the two or three best goalies of his generation and the greatest coach to ever step behind a bench. But Dave Lewis is a decent cat who's won everywhere he's been, and Curtis Joseph was my favorite Leaf (although whoever's starting in goal for the Leafs gets serious consideration for that anyway), and you took him away from us, you bastards.

And then you made him start sucking. How? He might not have a Stanley Cup ring, but he was always good for two or three playoff rounds before his teams buckled in front of him. What did you guys do, make him drink the water in Detroit? Jeezus.

I've alternately not cared for and hated the Wings since I was in Pampers (we're talking early last week, maybe before that even), and with the way things were panning out going into the playoffs, I had real hopes that My Leafs would have the sublime pleasure of backing up the Cup truck, turning on the hoses and drenching Your Wings in hundreds of gallons of farm-fresh whoop-ass in the Stanley Cup Finals.

It's still early in the whole thing, and worms will turn turn turn, but so far, we're holding up our end of the bargain (After Kaberle's overtime goal last night, I came into work today looking like that guy in the Viagra commercial - "Hey Tony, did you get a new haircut? Are those new slacks? You start working out? " I just walk, smug as a CEO with offshore accounts intact, to my office and close the door and then start whooping all over again like I'd just won A New Car! on The Price Is Right).

So what are you guys doing? Lollygagging about, losing and losing and losing. You can't lose to the Ducks. The frickin' Ducks! They're nothing more than a promotional vehicle for a movie franchise that stopped churning out product years ago, fergawdsake!

Only two teams in the history of the game have won 4 in a row after going 0-3 to start a series, but your boy Dave Lewis played on one of them, so he'd better be plumbing the depths of his memory trying to figure out what he's gotta do to get the Wings up off the mat so they can be blown away like dogs in the street three weeks from now by the Leafs, in the Cup finals, like the good lord intended.

Sincerely, Tony.

WEIR DOZE
Here's the speech I've worked up for the disproportionate number of people who have approached me this morning:

Yes, I'm happy to accept the credit. Isn't the job I did great? Without me, and the 30 million-odd other Canadians, but especially me, little Mike Weir would have sucked like a Shop-Vac in a wind tunnel last weekend, instead of climbing, one six-foot putt at a time, to the zenith of the golf world. (Or at least the ever-shrinking corner of the golf world still cowering behind that sign over there that says NO GIRLS ALLOWED. That's a detail, though.)

Still. I accept your congratulations with the grace befitting the patriarch of a great clan, or Harvey Weinstein at the Oscars, whichever.

Yes, I had nothing to do with it. But I shall happily take credit for my part in winning the Masters through my Sarnia-born southpaw Mormon doppelganger. How lovely and gracious of you to notice the real significance of the part I played in the tournament at Augusta.

Now unless you're buying, please move to the side so the line can keep moving.

THE ACQUIRED TASTE OF GASOLINE
They have stronger coffee than what I'm drinking. But it comes out of one of those single-serving-at-a-time Flavia machines, and so everything's clumsily brewed through a dirty dispenser with unfiltered East River water and tastes like leaded gasoline. (Think auto body shop coffee without the floaties.)

Now, I like the smell of gasoline. It reminds me of childhood car trips and gigging on the road. But that doesn't mean I can drink the stuff. So I go a little weaker, drink a little faster, and deal with the pain.

Oh, the compromises I make just to try to be conscious. Just remember this: everything I do? I do it for you.

I'm clearly not there yet.

NOT THE KIND OF RIPPED I WANT TO BE
I left my terminal for a few minutes, and when I got back someone had left this page open. (That's my excuse. Good one, eh?)

I'm actually kind of astonished at how much I do not want to look like Mr. Universe. Is that attractive to anyone? Really, I'm asking. And you know, even all puffed up like that, I bet I could take him in a fight.

(And by "I," I of course mean whichever human shield I happen to be drinking with when we spot Mr. Balloonymuscles at the next table, nursing his creatine shake and bowl of power greens.)

SOUL OF WIT, SOMETHING SOMETHING
Feels like once upon a time, I was mostly articulate, even if I was a fiery and longwinded guy, the only thing between my current bling-happy lot in life and spending my days having to keep my beard from getting tangled in the handle of a shopping cart full of broken radios being my ability to type fast and sometimes not punch the schmuck in the office beside mine.

Since those heady days (oh, six months ago?), I've noticed substantially more pointless words in these posts, which is fine if one is trying to emulate David Foster Wallace or Marcel Fucking Proust or whoever, but not so hot if you're into, y'know, trying to occasionally make sense.

So this month's project involves keeping it shorter in here. My guess is that the only thing short will be how long I can stick to it, but I'm thinking of it as the Evil Twin Diet, where if I can shave a few needless sentences off my midsection (and post more - diet plus exercise, right?), I might rid myself of some bad habits and maybe (just maybe) become more attractive to those spitfire-hot blogs always hanging out by the taco stand, taunting me with their curvy colors and florid entries and sweet chocolate links full of promise.

I got a ways to go. (Reading this back: How do I ever write coherent lyrics? Jesus.)

MY MUSE IS TALKING CRAZY SHIT, SHE KEEPS PUTTING ME ON HOLD
The last few days, I've only been able to sleep between 10:00 and midnight. Seems that having pretty much everyone I work with get fired (Not to get into details, but I've never, in my long temp-gig-spattered life, seen more managerial cowardice than I saw on Friday) has really helped me to refocus. The insomnia is just a bonus.

So I woke up this morning at a little after midnight, stared at the ceiling for an hour, realized how stupid that was, fired up the beast & wrote a whole new opening chapter for the book. Which is fine, except I liked the old one. Maybe I'll just toss everything and start again. (As I type that last sentence, I'm thinking -- I could. I really could.)

It's just one of those months where everything I write is varying degrees of crap. These months happen, but it means this post is about as coherent as I'll get this week. At least my story-sewage pipe isn't clogged, so there's hope.

On the upside, the other side of this steaming river I'm crossing is very close. I can see it from here. Our shit, who art in shit, hallowed be thy shit. Doodly doo doo, feeling shitty. Shitting groovy. May it be so.

It's four-something now. I'm going to go lay down again and, oh I don't know, try going back to sleep or something.

(You know, I'd have become a painter if I didn't bite my fingernails so much. They'd open my belly at my autopsy and find a big clump of oil-based paint which I'd have ingested one sliver at a time for decades. Also, I can't draw, but since when etc etc.)

HANG ON A MINUTE
They just laid off a ton of people here at work. I'm the only one left in my department. I'm fine, I'm just here alone, which bodes well for the future, but my routine is going to be messed up for a few days, and I can't guarantee how often I'll be here this week.

So of course, expect 1500 words on the Military Industrial Complex and how good Six Feet Under was last night by noon today.

AND STAY OUT
Actually, contrary to what the Dongmeister's otherwise perfectly apt haiku said, it's best for everyone that Geraldo Rivera has been flushed the hell out of Iraq.

Having the smarmy little weasel die there, no matter how it happened, would make him some kind of martyr for journalism. Which is the only way he could do more damage to a once-comparatively-noble institution than he already has. (He had no business being there in the first place. How does the little overweening camera hog get hired, over and over again? He hasn't done any accurate reporting anywhere in literally decades, and he's got no regard for the truth or the safety of the troops he's with or the story he's trying to tell.)

Thinking about it, Dong's 20-minutes-alone-with-Geraldo-and-a-nail-gun idea isn't so bad, actually. Maybe we could rent him for some kind of torture party or something.

OKAY. WE HIPPER NOW
In other news (Thank you Jaysus! There's other news!), New York Magazine came out with their 35th Anniversary issue this week. I never read the thing; every time I pick it up it's either painfully bland or filled with the kind of self congratulation that tells me I can let myself out whenever I've had enough because only we are so important. (Not that that's a putdown: I just don't find them interesting enough to make the effort. Is that wrong? Probably. Still.) Also, the crossword's too easy. I'm a snob that way.

Anyway, to celebrate, they put out a list of 100 People Who Changed New York. And even before reading it, my first thought was, "Hmmm. How interesting. NY Press came out with their list of The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers, and I wonder who's made both of them?"

Not that I know all the names on these lists. I'm still new in these parts, and I haven't completely caught up on New York City history (You said there wasn't gonna be a test!). At least now there's two pages of cheat notes. Thanks, you two similarly named publications! I now have more names to drop!

Now, sure the two lists don't scan directly across, and of the people I know, I'm a little surprised (Candace Bushnell is hated more than, oh, P. Diddy? Is that just because someone at NYP is pissed that they didn't get to shag her before she got hitched, or are they kissing ass to get an invite to next year's black & white ball or something? And Michael Moore (pre-Oscars, even!) is #3? He's less of a New Yorker than even me, fergawdsake).

But what the hell do I know, aside from comparing the two lists and finding that (let's see) Woody Allen, Tina Brown, Annie Liebovitz, Patti Smith, George Steinbrenner, Martha Stewart and Harvey Weinstein are both most hated and most influential. Great. Now all I have to do is decipher New York's cryptic blurbs ("Pauline Kael - Wrong about DePalma - still, her acolytes proliferate;" - "Howard Stern, shock jock. Leering envelope pusher of the haw-haw a.m.") that make me wonder if they need to sell more ad revenue so that they can afford proper subject-verb agreement.