BIG. EASY.

Day 1 of 5 and already this trip is paying emotional dividends.

These two (and I hate to judge, but) jockfrat jarhead high school linebacker wannabe idiots were crawling in a canary-yellow Hummer down Bourbon Street at about two in the afternoon, spilling drunkenly out the windows of their (I'll say it again) canary-yellow Hummer.

Nothing says lookit-how-big-is-my-bird like Big Bird Yellow, I guess. I'm clearly jealous. (You're clearly drunk. Oh, hush. Not much. Not yet.)

I'm walking about 10 yards behind these (again, not to judge, and this time I'm foreshadowing) preened up popcornhaired cheergirlies with spray-on jeans and tans to match, and that particular kind of lip-do where it's both superhigh-gloss shiny and exactly the same color as the rest of the skin on their face. They look like lizards about to shed, but hey, it's all the rage.

So the two guys slow down, completely on cue, to give the famous holla that has been passed down through the male lineage of the species since we first learned how to climb the mighty mastodons: "Hey beautiful, wanna go for a ride?"

The alpha cheergirl looks our rumlogged-musclemassed homonculus friends up & down, apparently totally expecting this, and says with a loud Tsk, "No way am I getting in that Bummer Hummer. "

Her friend chimes in. "Yeah, what a waste of gas. You guys are stupid, you know. "

And up, up! Went their noses.

I would have totally chased those fine, responsible, elegant young ladies down, even if only to shake their hands or whatever, but the restraining order explicitly forbids me from talking to unaccompanied minors.

But really. "Bummer Hummer. " What a excellently supreme lame-ass 3rd grade putdown!

AND IN '05 IT'LL BE LIVE AT BUDOKAN OR SOMETHING

So I've got this idea.

I've been having a slightly rough couple of months, between the hardware mismanagement problems and the degeneration of the job, and what I really need is to actually accomplish something and show it to the world. And none of my projects, be they the book, the life-sized Shaquille O'Neal in aspic I wanted to have finished for Christmas dinner, the unified field theory that the Academy is I'm sure sick to death of waiting for, the crop circle creation party I had planned for Central Park, laundry, none of the plans I made seemed to have worked out these last few months.

It's enough to drive a fella to Under The Volcano-style slow death.

But I have an idea, and I've been working on it for the last few months, while things have gotten quiet in here.

I'm thinking of putting out one song a week, through all of '04. That's 52 songs, written, recorded and released in downloadable form. I have a million songs, at least a dozen or so of which are worth listening to, and since I haven't put out anything since the end of '99, we're talking a level of consistent quality comparable to, say, the second Boston album. (I know, I'm aiming high. But it will be a pleasure to change the musical landscape, not just of this town or this culture, but of humanity itself, by releasing pretty songs about, oh, let's see, jello fetishes, bikers with Tourettes, and the sweet anticipation of my fiirst trip to a Waffle House. Just to name three.)

See? Now you're warming to this, ain't you. A proper album release would then be forthcoming, and after (insert middle step here) I will be swimming in bling, and you my most loyal and sweet friends can join me on my yachts or in my villa or star in the movie or whatever.

Any ideas? (I've already thought about the parallels to both Stephen Merritt and my pal eyeballkid, who have been working on projects that are similar, at least on the face of them, to this one. At the risk of sounding haterish, 69 Love Songs was an excellent CD crammed into a 3 CD set. On the other hand, Mr. Kid's stuff is stylistically different than what I've got planned, is also cooler than shit and is more than worth keeping track of over the next year.)

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So I'm co-hosting (with the excellent and underappreciated Janet Rosen) tonight's Drinking and Thinking trivia night at Dempsey's Pub (2nd Ave. between 3rd and 4th).

I've been up all night writing questions, because I only care enough to ask the very best. Also, it's tough coming up with enough material on Wacky NY Post Headlines or TV Doctors Named Poopsie or The World's Great Donut Producing Nations to produce a full round of questions. (After the first four or five... well, the temptation to start randomly booty-calling strangers becomes unbearable. Still, I persist. For you.)

Come on down. It's free, there are prizes with real cash value being given away, and the already cheap beer is discounted even further. Also, I'll be spinning some of the worst music ever committed to disc.


PS: Keep next Tuesday free if you can. I've gone and booked myself a show at Micky's Blue Room in the East Village. Thus ends my musical sabbatical, sort of.

COMING, LIKE CHRISTMAS

Every day this last couple of weeks has included many of the same issues. Insomnia is one of the worst. If you can’t sleep, I’m not going to be able to help you. (I know quite a few people who, through stress or whatever, have thought it largely impossible to get shuteye these days. Perhaps the Mayor’s office started putting No-Doz in the water supply so we hardworking New Yorkers can make up the budget shortfall quicker.) As it happens now, I go to the day gig, come home, pass out for a couple of hours, wake up around 11:00 pm or so, write until 4 or 5, then go back to sleep until the alarm drags my ass up for another lap.

It’s no way to live, but I don’t have an immediate solution, past just toughing it out (the worst part of chemicals, holistic or not, is that they work; I take half a sleeping pill and I’m out for days).

Still, life isn’t bad. I wrote this pretty song called "Every Late Night Hotel Desk In Paris Must Know Her Name By Now," which has a little falsetto part in it and everything.

Lots and lots of new songs. I might have to start playing gigs again, just to share them.

And I promise to be my usual perkily caustic assholy self very soon.

THEY MAY BE MARRIED GAY POT SMOKING INTERBRED ATHEIST PINKOS UP THERE, BUT AIN'T WE REALLY ALL THE SAME, Y'KNOW, INSIDE?

I'm not usually one to point you to an easily-perused publication already read by millions, but this New York Times article on the growing cultural rift between Canadians and Americans is, while a bit obvious in the writing, at least worth noting, if only for the fact that it quotes both Douglas Coupland and Rick Mercer in the same piece (as well as the most widely known Canadian-American of all, Peter Jennings, and a few random McGill PoliSci students, who make the quite-valid point that ignorance of the other country doesn't go just the one way:)

Rachel Brickner, 29, a political science graduate student at McGill originally from Detroit, said that despite her own liberal views, she sometimes tired of the anti-Americanism she encountered among Canadian students.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she said, an old roommate told her that "the U.S. deserved 9/11 because we're bullies."

"Canadians are quick to blame the United States for not knowing about Canada," she said, "but Canadians make a lot of ignorant statements about the U.S." No Canadian city reveals differences as much as Vancouver. It looks like any American city, except for a drug culture that is so abundantly open. The police rarely interfere with bars, storefronts and even offices where people can buy or smoke marijuana. A "compassion club" distributes marijuana legally to cancer patients and others who have doctors' notes.

When I was younger, our teachers used to ask us what we thought "Being Canadian" actually meant. None of us had an answer, because there wasn't much of one at the time. Our answers involved little more than donuts, The Guess Who, Saturday Night Hockey and William Fucking Shatner on the $50 bill. But now, a Canadian identity is much more evident. Shit, the whole world understands Canadianism now, to some degree. It's emphatically not American, and despite what the article says, it's not all that European neither. (Master's thesis excised for space considerations.)

Since I moved here, my level of patriotic fervor (I'm talking about specifically Canuck style as opposed to the more obvious version here in my adopted homeland where I happened to be born) has risen to the point where I barely recognize myself under the layers of maple-themed clothing I wear. I figured it was an identity I could hang my hat on until I asserted myself in the social scene down here, but it's become a surprisingly integral part of what separates me from everyone else.

And to my shock, I'm kind of okay with that.

IT'S THE BEST GAME YOU CAN NAME

If you've seen me in the last few weeks, you might notice that my usual shapeless exterior has somehow miraculously been replaced with waving ripples of sinewy muscle. The slender vee of my torso tapers down to taut stallion haunches, and my eyes are clear and full of whip-smart charisma I always knew I had, hidden deep within the bushel that was the Old Me.

Well, okay, how about - my feet are actually getting some non-reflected sun, and I can often climb stairs without throwing up now.

Why, you ask? Damned if I know, I answer.

Oh, alright. It's because I've started playing street hockey in Chinatown. If you've been to Chinatown, you might think this is impossible. I still marvel at the absurdity of it. And yet, there we are, down by the water between the bridges, running around on weekends like hopped-up sugarbuzz kids at recess. It's most excellent.

It's comprised mostly of a loose group of literary and journalistic weasels, many of them Canadian expats, who meet every Saturday morning, to drive Friday night's booze out of their systems by running around and hacking each other with sticks until they run out of breath. It's quite friendly, actually. The mid-life-angster ratio is refreshingly small.

You should come out. I've gone two weeks in a row, and you can totally tell, cos I'm all buff and shit now. Ne fuck with me pas, mon ami. Seriously.

COOLER THAN I'LL EVER BE, PART VII

So let me tell you a true story.

Last week, I was walking down the street, dressed reasonably fly, you know, I had the leather jacket and the chucks with the flames on 'em, my Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap and my swinging newish shirt that I'd bought from H&M for less-than-you'd-think about a month ago instead of doing laundry. I was, as they say, styling. Bee Gees in my head, strutting along in the autumn afternoon, being kicked by old ladies and autistic cellphone businessdudes and knocked over by generically ethnic delivery guys with hand trucks, but aside from that, you could tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, something something something.

Standing on the corner (I wanna say the corner of Walk and Don't Walk, but it was actually 14th and Broadway) was this woman who looked like she'd stepped out of some Missy Elliott Doritos commercial. She was dressed. Lavender jumpsuit she could have worn to a board meeting, bag matched the shoes, she had the look. And topping the look was a fedora that just fit perfectly.

Now, being a man of no hair (by choice, thank you kindly), I have learned to appreciate proper headwear. Every once in a while, the art of wearing a good hat fades from popular culture, and it takes some creative movement somewhere to bring it back for some secondary reason, be it some retro fetish or a religious or utilitarian thing. Fine millinery never completely goes out of fashion, but it does fade sometimes.

I'm walking toward this fully tricked-out fashion queen, and if I'm gonna say someting I have about three seconds. So I told her, "Damn, girl, but you sell that lid, I mean, you are tricked out in that thing. I'm not playing you, I'm just saying: that hat just makes you."

Of course it came out more like, "Gosh, that thing on your head sure is purty!" Styling, brotha. Straight up.

She looks at me, up and down, and slow like a glacier, she sucks her teeth, and of all things she could dis me for, she chooses, saying it real low so only everyone in Union Square can hear:

"Leafs fan."

Aw, gurl, hit me where I live.