Category: Essays

Twenty years ago, my friend Joe and I went to see Roger Waters at Madison Square Garden for the [Radio KAOS][1] tour. We had horrible seats high up and at a ninety degree angle to the stage, but, being teenagers, we moved down as far as our bravery would take us. And that wasn’t too far–we positioned ourselves in front of the stage, but not at stage level. We were just up from that, first tier. It was the best view I’ve ever had of a concert, but I was nervous through the whole thing, shifting from seat to seat and row to row as ticket holders made their way into the concert.
The whole section, minus two seats, filled up, and we managed to stay there for the entire show. “Radio KAOS” was set up as a live radio show, with [Jim Ladd][2] as a DJ, and a caller, Billy, whose synthesized voice would set up various pieces, including “Arnold Layne.” At the time, I wasn’t really immersed in Pink Floyd’s early work, but “Arnold Layne” transcended any ignorance on my part. It’s a brilliant piece of pop psychedelia, and when it played, entirely recorded–the band just watched the video along with the rest of the audience–I thought it was the most amazing thing I would ever see in a concert.
This being in the days before the [internets][3] and YouTube.

Now, I can see “Arnold Layne” on demand. It’s amazing really, and something I haven’t really explored. But, what is more relevant is how it changes the expectations of a Waters’s live show. The audience won’t be content with piped-in music while an old video plays. Pink Floyd, and by extension Roger Waters, are known for their amazing shows, with the lights and lasers and floating pigs. What would Waters do to make his show worthy for the Internet Generation? Last night, twenty years after the last concert I caught at the Garden, Katherine and I found out.
To drop some suspense: There were no lasers. Lasers are so 1990s.
Instead, the cohesive binder was an olde-tyme radio, a cigarette, and a bottle of scotch projected out from an LCD screen behind the stage, spanning its entire width. The visual was on the screen long before the lights went down, and occasionally, a hand would reach up and grab a glass of booze, the cigarette, or even change the station on the radio. I was particularly pleased when “Dancing Queen” was quickly changed for some smoky jazz. And, just before the band came on, [Vera Lynn][4] sang “We’ll Meet Again.” The images were super-sharp and vibrant.
This concert was billed as “Roger Waters performs The Dark Side of the Moon,” which certainly would have been noteworthy enough, but with the death of [Syd Barrett][5], whose madness informed much of the popular work of Pink Floyd, surely Waters would throw in a tribute to the founder of Floyd. And there’s a war on. Waters obsessed thematically on war on “The Final Cut,” “The Wall,” and “Amused to Death.” He couldn’t let this latest excursion in imperialism go without comment.
When the lights came down, the energy was immediately pumped up with a pyrotechnic version of “In the Flesh” I’ve been to several Waters and Floyd shows, and this was the first that used a lot of pyrotechnics. Of course, I never saw “The Wall” in concert, where a wall is literally blown up in front of an audience, so it certainly wasn’t unheard of to see pyrotechnics in a Floyd show. Still, it was noteworthy, to me.
“In the Flesh” was followed by “Mother,” also from “The Wall.” PP Arnold, a long time touring background-singer with Waters, sang the David Gilmore parts. Very nice. “Mother” ended, and where, on the album, a little boy normally said “Look, mummy, there’s an airplane up in the sky,” in the concert, it was replaced by a low-pitched throbbing noise. The screen behind the band turned black, and, on its lowest edge, the eclipsed corona of a darkened sun began to arise. There were so many disparate cues as to the next song that it took me a moment to recognize, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.”
Katherine can probably confirm how ebulliently excited I was. There are certain songs that I just assume I will never see live. “Set the Controls…” is almost 40 years old and not that popular, even amongst fans of Floyd or Waters. When I heard it, I was breathless. It took me back to 1999, when I saw Waters at Jones Beach perform “Dogs,” from “Animals.” It took me back 20 years when Waters played “Arnold Layne,” and “If” from “Atom Heart Mother.” Waters has no problem pulling something from the back of his immense catalog.
“Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” is an interesting song for Floyd fanatics. It was made on the cusp of Syd Barrett leaving the band. It is one of the few early songs sung and composed by Waters. The studio version actually has guitar work by David Gilmore, who came in to relieve some of the pressure from the ever-breaking Barrett. But, thank you YouTube, I came across this old gem, where Barrett is on lead guitar. This video is odd, because Waters stops playing bass to sing. Clearly, he’s singing live, and Nick Mason and Rick Wright are playing live, but the bass and guitar are coming from some ethereal plane, because Waters and Barrett aren’t strumming anything close to what is heard.

Back to the concert. Was there anything after “Set the Controls…”? Maybe. I could have left happy after that.
Oh, yes. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” parts 2 through 4. Here was the start of the tribute to Barrett, with an excellent sax solo by Ian Ritchie.
Then came “Have a Cigar” with some really nice visuals on screen. “…Cigar” was sung by Waters. He did a good job of it. On the album, “Wish You Were Here,” “Have a Cigar” was sung by [Roy Harper][6], the same Roy Harper immortalized by Led Zepplin in “Hats Off to Roy Harper.” Some trivia. At any rate, according to Nick Mason in Inside Out Waters wasn’t too confident in his voice at the time of recording “Have a Cigar,” so they got someone else to do it. I doubt anyone in the audience last night, who didn’t know Waters didn’t sing it in the first place, thought anything less of the song. There’s a magical bit of sound effect at the end of “Have a Cigar” on the album, where, instead of a fadeout, the song transitions to the next by way of changing radio stations. Static and brief bits of music and dialog are heard, including a man and woman arguing: “Yes it is. No it isn’t! Well, I’m sure of it.” At the end of “…Cigar” in the concert, the visuals gave way to the olde-tyme radio again, and the hand turned the dial as one would imagine on the album. “…Cigar” transitions this way into “Wish You Were Here,” and so it did at the concert too.
“Wish You Were Here” had some nice video of Barrett, often filtered in orange and yellow capturing his playfulness and madness all at once. But then, the video, and the concert, transitioned into something else. The video showed poppies floating down across a field, a Floydian visual clue if there ever was one. Poppies are all over the album, “The Final Cut,” the most reviled Floyd work ever. It’s a difficult Floyd album to get into, unless, like me, you’re a depressive sort, in which case the multiple layers of disillusionment and helplessness really speak to you. But for purposes of a Waters concert, the important aspects of “The Final Cut” are in its anti-war and anti-fascism songs. The poppies came down over “Southampton Dock,” and “The Fletcher Memorial Home” featured a black and white video of a desolate cell block where vaguely Castro-looking men shuffled about. Along the walls were portraits of Stalin, Reagan, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Dubya Bush. “The Final Cut” was built around a distaste for dying empires grasping at glory, specifically [The Falkland Islands Crisis][7] in 1982. Sadly, Waters paranoia and fear of fascism is more relevant today, and he used his older music to capture his hope and frustration at our state of fear and war.
The Mideast clearly fascinates him, inasmuch as Western Imperialism keeps bombing the shit out of the same few places where people–let’s not forget these are fellow human beings we’re bombing the shit out of–don’t really have much to begin with. “Amused to Death,” Waters last rock album, dealt with the disconnect between the luxury of Western civilization and the poverty of the rest of the world. After “The Fletcher Memorial Home,” Waters played “Perfect Sense, Part I” and “Perfect Sense, Part II,” with some outstanding singing by Katie Kissoon, who appeared on the original album, and an inflatable astronaut flew around the Garden. A repeated refrain in the second song is “Can’t you see?/It all makes perfect sense/expressed in dollars and cents/pounds, shillings, and pence.” It’s even part of our “global anthem.” Written after the first Gulf War, but before our latest excursion into quagmire, “Amused to Death” decries war-boosters who will never, themselves, feel the bloody waste and horror that war really is.
But, then, after all these songs and themes, Waters tells the audience that we’re now in “the controversial part.” He explained that the next song, “[Leaving Beirut][8]” was about a personal experience he had while hitchhiking through Lebanon as a teenager. The recorded version has a narration by Waters, but in the concert, the narration was on screen as if from a comic book, with sound effects, word balloons, and all. When Waters and the background singers sang their parts, they too were accompanied by word balloons. Very clever. I admit I was surprised by the small, but boisterous, negative reaction by some in the audience. We’re not at war with Lebanon. The message of the song was that there was a kind family in Beirut, and Waters hopes they’re okay despite the 20 years of civil war (and more recently, Israeli bombing). Why boo at this song? Could it be this line, “Oh, George, oh, George, That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small”? Whatever. In a brilliant, absolutely brilliant move, Waters immediately followed up “Leaving Beirut” with “Sheep,” from “Animals.”
That was another dissociative moment for me–another song I never thought I’d hear live.
During “Sheep,” the obligatory Floyd pig flew around, with remote control box and two directional fans strategically placed to give the pig his testicles. But this pig had graffiti. “New Yorkers/Don’t be led to the slaughter/Vote November 7.” And “Fear Builds Walls.” And “Impeach Bush Now” on the pig’s ass. Huh. A bobble-head behind me, who booed during “Leaving Beirut,” tapped me on the shoulder and said, “That’s fucked up,” when he saw the pig’s good-bye message. I shrugged and continued to enjoy an old psychedelic hippy getting out his message to some people who refuse to understand. After the show, there were people on the train home who were talking about the best concert they’d ever seen, but what the fuck was with the stupid Beirut song? I’m getting ahead of myself here, but… good. If you didn’t expect a message like that, then you don’t know anything about Waters, and you don’t know anything about compassion.
Wait, wait. We’re at intermission, but there was so much more to this concert. The lights went up, and the screen behind the stage had a teeny-tiny moon on it, which grew over 15 minutes, until it was the classic circled-screen size for many Waters and Floyd concerts. For the entirety of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” all the visuals were placed in that circle.
But before we began, Waters introduced “a dear personal friend,” Nick Mason. Well, color me surprised. The rest of his band were familiar to those who’ve seen his shows in the past. Snowy White, on guitar, and Graham Broad, on drums, toured with Waters since at least 1984. Dave Kilminster, on guitar, and Jon Carin, on keyboard, were with him last time ’round. Jon Carin played with Floyd the last time they were around, too. Some kid named Harry Waters played the Hammond organ. Never heard of him.
“The Dark Side of the Moon” was played, in its entirety. “On the Run,” had a new video to it and some new sound effects, but other than that, the songs were played fairly close to the released version. There was no 20 minute guitar solo during “Money,” thank God (Dave, I’m looking at you). Carol Kenyon knocked “The Great Gig in the Sky” out of the arena. And I got to hear my favorite track (because I never hear it), “Any Colour You Like,” which has my single favorite transition of any song, segueing into “Brain Damage/Eclipse.” And 40 minutes after it began, the heartbeat softly pulses out to “There is no dark side of the moon really…,” and it’s over. A very tight set.
Water thanked all of us. The stage went dark, and the audience went wild. I am always impressed at how the audience before the encore is so enthused and eager and loud, but they’ll still manage to ratchet up the energy when the band comes back out. So it was. I looked at Katherine and said, “Here comes ‘Comfortably Numb,'” but Waters said, “We’re going to do something a little different.” He introduced a boy-choir from New York, about twenty kids in all ranging from age 7 to mid-teens. They wore jackets that obscured their t-shirts, which they would later reveal to say “Fear Builds Walls.” And, sure enough, the band broke out into “Happiest Days of Their Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” with the helicopter sound effects and all.
Waters celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall with a concert at the site in 1990. The Berlin Wall obviously informed “The Wall,” but after the fall, “The Wall” resonated more with the memory of it. The wall in “The Wall” is destroyed by madness, but the Berlin Wall fell by the will of Berliners. That the wall was not rebuilt, I think, gave hope to Waters. Until, of course, it was rebuilt, this time by Israel, between it and the West Bank of Palestine. The video, during “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” contrasted images of the Berlin Wall, and it’s fall, with the building of, and separation caused by, the Israeli wall. Fear builds walls, indeed, and I was reminded of our own considerations to build a wall between us and Mexico.
To me, it’s ironic that Waters got inspired to write about incidences that were happening on a global or personal scale, but were moments, nonetheless. And yet, years or decades after the fact, the music and the messages find more resonance, are more apt, then ever. I went to the show assuming I’d be watching a sixty year old burnt out and disillusioned beyond belief. Instead, Waters himself seems revitalized by the strange confluence of circumstance that makes his songs about the Falkland War prescient to the Iraq mess. What he has in abundance is hope. And it makes for a good show.
Bringing this point home, Waters closed the show with “Vera,” a song of longing for Vera Lynn and the nostalgia of a “good war.” This followed into “Bring the Boys Back Home,” both from “The Wall.” A clearer message of hope and hopelessness that is bound into war couldn’t be found in a one-and-a-half minute song. The pyrotechnics ablaze, the band and audience singing at the top of their lungs, in a full-fledged plea to stop the fighting. What a way to close the show.
Oh, right. Then they played “Comfortably Numb.” Maybe you can’t fight the man, after all.
[1]: http://www.connollyco.com/discography/roger_waters/radio.html
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Ladd “I don’t like fish…”
[3]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=internets&r=related “Is our children learning?”
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Lynn
[5]: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,804928,00.html
[6]: http://www.royharper.co.uk/
[7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War
[8]: http://www.macphoenix.com/creative/blog/archives/2004/09/roger_waterss_n.html

Phew! [Russell’s Law of 50% Returns on Comic Adaptations][1] holds true. Bad news for *X-Men III* perhaps, but *V for Vendetta* was fantastic. I enjoyed it while watching it, and I left the movie theater excited, eager to talk about the differences between the comic and the movie, which, except for two minor cases*, actually didn’t affect my enjoyment of the movie in the least. The movie stands alone as a good movie. After a couple of days, I actually want to see the movie again, something that I can’t remember feeling about a movie in years.
But, of course, I was *eagerly* awaiting *V for Vendetta*.
And, there, that’s my review of it. 3.5 stars. Best adaptation of a comic I’ve ever seen. Go see it. Seriously.
That isn’t all I have to say about reviews of the movie, however. I’ve been puzzled by much of the Big Media handling of *V*. A quick look at the [Rotten Tomatoes][2] listing of reviews for *V* indicate that it is getting a solid majority of positive reviews (76% as of this writing), but what strikes me odd is the group of reviewers that pan the movie. *Variety*, the *New York Times*, the *New Yorker*, and *Newsweek* seem to be forgetting that *V* is a work of fiction, and not a call to destroy public property. These same reviewers don’t seem to have a problem with the thousands of forms of violence and depravity that any movie brightly highlights, but because V, the character, is a terrorist, a protagonist (one of three, it must be noted), and manages to blow up a couple of buildings (both implicitly empty), these reviewers cannot distinguish from their repulsion of real world events and film fiction. Odd.
And V isn’t a hero. He isn’t a rallying force. He is the face of chaotic, violent opposition that must be discarded once the power structure has shifted. The movie shows this in no uncertain terms. If you’ve seen the movie and don’t know what I mean, you should have stayed until the credits. V completes his vendetta, and the sea of Londoners *remove their masks*. One complex question the movie asks is “When is violence justified?” But many reviewers were so angry at pokes to the Bush administration they felt, incorrectly, that the movie asked, “Is violence against the Bush administration justified?”
I came across a uniquely skewed review, not from a Big Media name, but from a [regular joe][3] who submitted his review to Rotten Tomatoes. He claims *V for Vendetta* is trying to divide people and is anti-Christian. As he writes:
>Vendetta takes modern day problems, issues and even events and twists them into a comic book political satire meant to reaffirm to those on the ‘Left’ side of thinking that the ‘Right’ is out to rule the world and crush anyone who doesn’t agree with them. ‘Christian’ believing people are made out to be closed minded intolerant Nazi style jerks that want to dispose of all Homosexuals and Religious leaders are only shown as hypocritical perverted sex offenders who hide behind their faith. I will simply say that if you believe this message… you have no idea what true Christianity is all about.
I am not sure he saw the same movie as I did. Or actually lives on the same Earth as I do. Well, let me be more generous. This man obviously looks at the world through a lens of persecution. Instead of thinking that the movie portrays Fascists as using the trapping of religion to disguise their true morality, he believes that the movie portrays Christians using Fascism to hide their perversions. He really obviously believes that the movie is anti-Christian, when it couldn’t be plainer that it is anti-Fascist. I mean, honestly, who’d support Fascism?
>’V for Vendetta’ is an offensive, intolerant, irresponsible ugly film that fuels the fire of ignorance in today’s politically hostile world.
*V* may be offensive, but that’s up the viewer. It is, without a doubt, intolerant of Fascism and the persecution of minorities. I don’t think it’s “irresponsible ugly” though.
For a brilliant review (with spoilers), check out [the Trickster][4]:
>V espouses no political program; he merely destroys. In truth he’s an anarchist, the v-in-a-circle logo conspicuously echoing the anarchist’s “A” tag that was showing up in spray paint across Europe in the days when the comic first appeared.
>
>Is V a good guy or a bad guy? It’s never clear in the comic–even though it is always clear that the totalitarian government is bad. If the moral balance is more obvious in the movie one suspects that is only because of the zeitgeist — in the current political climate you’re either for civil liberties and the rule of law or for unchecked government power and the legislating of morality. Neocon manichianism has pushed everybody to the wall.
We differ in opinion about the source material. The original comic is unmatched for me, and I believe the comic pulled together the disparate threads of a dozen sub-plots in a conclusion that gives me goose-bumps whenever I think of it; although, Evey is a much stronger, more believable character in the movie than in the comic. I’m saddened that Warner Bros. got cold feet last November and pushed the opening back to March, and I’m annoyed at the anemic marketing for the movie, as well as Alan Moore’s inexplicable request to remove his name from the project, but a good movie was made, one that I eagerly await to watch again.
\* V does not *fall in love with Evey!* And governments can be evil without unleashing plagues. I thought that was kind of a cheap short-cut into forcing the audience to really, really hate Norsefire/Sutler. (And Sutler will always be Susan to me!)
[1]: http://www.macphoenix.com/creative/blog/archives/2005/07/lately_movies_a.html
[2]: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/v_for_vendetta/
[3]: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=274191&entryid=304773&view=public
[4]: http://chervokas.typepad.com/trickster/2006/03/v_for_vendetta_.html

So last night I’m driving down Lakeland Avenue, delivering fine foodstuffs for customers of [Lynda’s Eat Well and Be Well][1], and it’s about an hour into a snow storm that will eventually dump 4 inches of snow in the area. Lakeland Ave, for those not familiar, is a four lane road and the speed limit is 50 MPH. It’s a fairly trafficked road, and at that point in the evening, even though it was late, the road was just wet; no snow was sticking to it, and the temperature was above freezing.
I mention all this, because as one of Long Island’s premier *Offensive Drivers*, I get impatient with hesitant drivers very quickly. And when ever there is snow in the air, people begin to drive very hesitantly, which reminds me of an aside:
When Katherine and I went to Las Vegas, we took a side trip to the Grand Canyon. We drove 6 hours to get there, and we didn’t see much of it, since it was cold and the sun was setting. I raced back in 4 and a half hours, determined not to stop or slow down for anything. In the middle of the ride back, it started to rain. It wasn’t a bad rain for driving, because it wasn’t so hard that it ruined visibility, and it wasn’t a drizzle that causes the oil embedded in the surface of the road to rise up and make everything dangerously slippery. It was just a steady rhythm of rain. But you wouldn’t have known it from the way everyone else was driving. And you wouldn’t have known it from the radio. The radio deejays were warning all of us to get indoors and stay off the roads.
The rains lasted about 40 minutes. I heard nothing about flooding or flood warnings anywhere in the area. They were all just crazy with fear about something that they only dealt with a few times a year.
And so it goes with Long Island drivers and snow. The very smell of it makes brake lights squeeze on.
I just want to get where I’m going. I don’t trust other drivers, and their supposed *caution* actually makes me far more nervous than anything else. Last night there were more cars driving in between lanes and mysteriously slowing down or stopping than any other time on the run I make every week. Visibility was fine

October gets me in the mood for Halloween, my favorite holiday mostly because it parades its own meaninglessness. Despite the fears of certain moral traditionalists, Halloween doesn’t really stand for anything. It’s just a autumn harvest celebration that got overshadowed by Thanksgiving. Sure, it has an *official* Catholic designation as *the day before* All Saints’ Day, but any of the pagan imagery associated with Halloween is just the influx of thousands of cultures and their various death holidays. It’s all a mishmash now, and very few people take it seriously.
And that makes it all the more fun. Especially for kids, getting to do on that one day which they dream of all year long: Taking candy from strangers.
Every other day of the year, kids are specifically verboten from taking candy from strangers, which makes perfectly good sense, even if that’s all that kids want from anyone. But Halloween, the trick becomes the treat, and the only perverts in the neighborhood are those that give out pennies or fruit.
And it was ever thus, until the early eighties when news reports came in telling every parent that apples were found all over the place with razor blades stuck in them, and kids were not safe to eat the candy (or the fruit) that they got for Halloween. The holiday took quite a beating then, which it has never really recovered from, except that those children of the eighties, like me, like to [throw parties][1] now, and we keep the Halloween industry alive.
But every October, when thoughts run to Halloween, I think of the sadness and fear that brewed over twenty years ago. We gave into a hysteria that had no rational basis. There were verified razor blades stuck in apples, for sure, but each one led back to the person (usually a pre-teen) who found it there in the first place. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of supposed injuries, but always in some other town or state or nation, and without the Internets, it was difficult to research the truth.
What triggers these fears? In the case of the razor bladed apples, which was a rumor bubbling beneath the surface of mass hysteria for years, it was probably the [cyanide-laced Tylenol][4] that blew it all out of proportion. But there are other less-explainable bubbles of fear and irrationality that burst into the national psyche, like [spitting on Vietnam Vets][2], or spider eggs in chewing gum, or [needles in soda cans][3], or fingers in fast food. Once these things are seized by a certain percentage of the media, the whole nation reacts as if society is going to collapse.
We hear these things that sound plausible, but disturbing, and assume that they must be true, and that some nefarious agent (usually a lawyer or *the Government*) is trying to keep the truth from us, and once some brave, smiling hairpiece on the six o’clock news confirms our fears, all rational thought is out the window. A razor blade in an apple? *Look a the goddamn fruit before you bite into it.* See that 2 inch long slice and the brown oxidation on the skin? That’s bad. Cut that part out.
Or one could just assume that every single person is a child molester and apple-spiker and go from there.
It is frighteningly obvious to me that we don’t like to actually think about anything. We get most of our information from authorities that are authorities only by dint of looking good in front of a camera (or by writing angrily enough on the Internets). We do not trust ourselves or our fellow non-sparkling humans. Everyone by now has heard of the massive mugging, raping, and murdering that went on in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but this was hysteria in it’s finest form. It took a group of three time losers (they were poor, black, and then displaced) and turned them into something we could deal with, with baser emotions (they became evil criminals). Instead of feeling compassion for people experiencing an upheaval completely unexpected, and unnecessary, in postwar America, we could hate them for not acting like Jesus or Ghandi or whomever else we would expect to just rise over it all. Even better when we could turn the reality of overflowing plumbing and unsanitary conditions into a fantasy picture of animals shitting all over each other.
See, then we could feel superior again: *We* wouldn’t spit on vets. *We* wouldn’t spike the candy bar. *We* wouldn’t shit on the floor of the Superdome. *We are not the animals.* Those other people are.
But maybe hysteria does prove that we’re different from animals. It must be a completely human affliction. No other species would go apeshit crazy when it found a finger in its collective chili.
[1]: http://www.macphoenix.com/lounge/photoalbums/2004/
[2]: http://slate.msn.com/id/1005224/
[3]: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/syringe.asp
[4]: http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/tylenol/

Knowledge is a cruel path, summed up fairly early in our culture with the story of Adam and Eve and the fruit. It wasn’t an apple. You can look it up. Anyway, the fruit was the “fruit of knowledge of good and evil,” and once the Edenites took a bite, they understood more about their environment and could judge right from wrong. Thus the fall from grace. The more we know, the less we’re comfortable in our surroundings.
Think of every person who grew up with commercials selling housewives cleaning products, because their homes were too damned dirty. To highlight this, advertisers gayly showed us close-ups of microscopic germs breeding and breeding on our kitchen countertops. They anthropomorphized these germs into dirty little men with pointy teeth and evil intentions. Only strong Mr Clean or Scrubbing Bubbles would make these horrible creatures go away. A century before, surgeons were just learning to wash their hands before cutting someone open. That was a positive change, of course, but since the idea of germs was imbedded into the mass-market mind, we’ve been inundated with anti-bacterial soaps and lotions and foot-powders and toothpastes and wipes and sundries. The effectiveness of these things can be debated, but we demand them, because a little bit of knowledge has turned us all into OCD patients, thinking, “must wash… never be clean… must wash….”
When I was in high school, I was learning a bit about the food chain and our industrialization of it. I do not recommend this course of study if you want to eat your food guilt-free. Still, I never felt too uncomfortable about it, because I can rationalize justifications for eating chicken, even though most of these involve soup being so damned tasty. But in art class, a fellow student told me that she was trying to become vegan and found that the only thing she ended up eating was Twinkies.
Two things to explain about this. First, this was almost twenty years ago, and it was far more difficult to be a suburbanite vegetarian than it is today. There were no Whole Foods or Wild by Natures on Long Island, and McDonald’s idea of a salad, at the time, was the shredded lettuce and re-hydrated onions found on a Big Mac. When you were a teenager and wanted to eat something without bits of meat in it, you invariably turned to junk food.
But, secondly and sadly, many junk foods were still made with lard. Yes, today the fillings in Twinkies, Oreos, and Hostess Cupcakes are made with vegetable shortening, but then each of these were filled with lard and sugar, a crunchy and rich combination, that some purist still lament the passing of. And I had to tell this to poor, sweet, burgeoning vegan Liz in art class. She looked sadly at me and said, “Oh,” like Pooh when he discovered that he ate the fifth and last jar of honey.
A lesson I should have taken from that is to keep knowledge within, and only release that knowledge when entirely necessary, but I don’t do that. I like to tell people constantly that they’re using quotemarks and periods incorrectly, or that George W. Bush actually is dangerously stupid. I think intelligence is just a matter of getting your facts straight, because if you know a little about anything, you can’t believe in Creationism or acupuncture. But intelligent people do believe crazy things, and I am always amazed at their credulity.
And it was with this in mind that I searched around a bit on the web for things about Scientology, as I often do from time to time. You have to be a bit off, I think, to believe that you have a 75 million year old alien living inside of you that is upset about botched abortions that happened to it several millennia ago. Scientology has been in the media again, lately, because of nutty Tom Cruise and his one man mission to make Scientology look even scarier by preaching it’s virtues. I always start off my web journey into the madness of Scientology by reading xenu.net, called Operation Clambake, which compiles tonnes of materials about the Church of Scientology (or Co$ by its detractors), at much personal and financial risk to the operator of the site. Co$ uses lawsuits to scare critics (in Scientology speak SP, or Suppressive Persons) into shutting up. I imagine in the age of the Internet, this is getting harder for Co$ to do, but they try.
In following some links, I came across a simply formatted page listing various players in Hollywood who are involved in Scientology. And there, knowledge burned me. Learning that Giovanni Ribisi was heavily into the Co$ didn’t bother me. Or that much of the cast of That 70’s Show believes that bad science-fiction author, L Ron Hubbard, was akin to a messiah. I kind of laughed when I found out that Jerry Seinfeld took a couple of Scientology courses in the 70s and 80s and felt it helped his career. No, that didn’t matter much.
But Beck and Neil Gaiman, those were two names that surely did not belong on that list.
Beck first. Beck is a second-generation Scientologist, which means he may not have much choice in the matter, but his catalog of music is built upon the cast-about foundations of other genres. He mixes and melds and is obviously a creative and intuitive person. His continued involvement with a dangerous and destructive, pyramid-scheme of a money-making operation is beyond my comprehension. He looked like he wasn’t really a practicing member for much of the 90s, but a break up with a non-Scientologist girl friend sent him spiraling inwards (inspiring the excellent, but somber Sea Change). He is now married to Marissa Ribisi, Giovanni’s twin-sister, ironically enough. The whole Ribisi clan seems to be fully saturated by the Co$.
Gaiman second. He doesn’t talk about it, but his father is BIG in the Co$, so big he runs the church in Russia. Gaiman himself seems to have left, and may be an SP, but his wife may still be involved. This is disheartening and disappointing for several reasons, but my ability to rationalize comes into play again, and I think all is forgiven if he really is a heretic to Scientologists. Should it come out that he is still involved in it, a good chunk of my library is suddenly eBay material (or eBayt, a term I just coined now). I’ll still listen to Beck albums, possibly not enjoying them as much because I question the extent of his genius, but I won’t get rid of those. Why would I treat Gaiman worse?
Because much of his output concerns myths and gods and religions, and Neil Gaiman is a very well-read man. Although he is also second-generation Co$, like Beck, Gaiman has to know better. He could easily look up the dozen of sources that L Ron Hubbard ripped off to create Dianetics and Scientology. As a maker of myths, better myths too, I might add, Gaiman could surely see that Hubbard was no more than a charlatan who got lucky, gettting rich off of people’s ignorance.
But who am I to question beliefs? People wish for strange things, and I don’t pretend to understand them. Is a person who believes that living a decent life and believing in the divinity of the right man will send that person’s invisible and undetectable energy/life force into a plane of pure bliss and light, which is also invisible and undetectable, any less crazy than someone who believes an overlord alien solved overpopulation on 26 planets by freezing much of that population and sending them to planet Earth and bombarding them with atomic bombs under mountains? Well, yes, I think a Christian is less crazy than a Scientologist, honestly.
And is it fair to hold that against someone? This is murky ground on top of a slippery slope. I know it isn’t fair, but the knowledge of it disturbs me, and the road ahead is far more twisty than it was when I didn’t know.

On the second night of our week in Vegas, Kathy and I were already exhausted from the amount of walking we were doing. We were at the end of The Strip, staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel, so there was a lot of distance between us and anywhere else, but that wasn’t that big of a deal, really. We had a car, there is plenty of transportation between the hotels, and The Strip itself is only a couple of miles long. But just to get out of the hotel meant walking great distances. Obviously, they want us to spend as much time in the casino areas, and everything connects to the casino in some way or another, and to catch a tram or go to the valet, we had to walk through the huge casino. Then, if we drove, The Strip is quite like driving in rush hour traffic on the LIE, as in we didn’t get anywhere fast, or slow. On average, it would take us about an hour to get from one end of The Strip to the other.

So we tended to walk most places.

Anyway, as I said, we were tired out the second night, and retired fairly early to our room, fairly early being about 11pm. Relaxing for a bit, I was anxious to go down back into the casino, since I had caught the video poker bug. Kathy had purchased the Fodor’s 2005 guide to Vegas, and it gave the impression that video poker machines gave basically the best odds of any game in Vegas. They were specific, in that we had to play the 9-6 machines, meaning that a full house paid back 9 to 1 and a flush paid back 6 to 1. These machines were relatively hard to find in Mandalay Bay, especially in quarter or nickle bets. Most machines were 8-5, and a few were 7-5. Do not play these machines. Finding a 9-6 machine, according to Fodor’s, pretty much guaranteed that we’d break even over the long run. In all, I think we did pretty much break even on video poker, not so much on table games, but that’s not the point here.

So, Kathy was ready to go to bed, but she didn’t mind me going down to the casino floor. I promised myself that I would only feed $40 into the machines, and I would avoid the dollar video poker. And, I had a mission. I was going to get a free drink while playing. The first day we were there, we made a costly mistake: We paid for 2 drinks at a bar. After we did, a nice older gentleman leaned over to Kathy and said, “If you put $10 into the video poker machine,” which were set into the bar face, “you’d get your drinks for free. My wife and I spend an hour or two here, and we don’t spend much that way.” Kathy and I looked at each other with disappointment and embarrasment, since we both knew that’s what we were supposed to do, we just weren’t thinking of it at the time. But from that moment, I swore that I would get as many comped drinks as I could get.

When I went down to the casino on the second night, therefore, I was determined to get my comped drink. This never happened. Mandalay Bay’s servers were few and far between in the slots and video poker areas. I kept moving from machine to machine, another mistake, and I would inevitably see the one server working the slot area ask people if they needed anything in the area that I just left.

It was also very, very slow that night. This was Monday night/Tuesday morning, and the casino was dead. No other night was as slow. So I sat in rows of empty machines no matter where I went. Occasionally, another player would sit within the same area, but they usually played for a couple of minutes and left thereafter.

I did only play quarter machines, but I went through my original $40 pretty quickly. I was still determined to get a “free” drink, but it was becoming more expensive by the moment. I moved to a progressive payout machine, called “Bonus Jacks or Better,” which paid the correct 9-6, but also only paid 1 to 1 on two pair. Normally, the machines paid 2 to 1 on the two pair, but the “bonus” aspect of this machine payed higher on specific 4 of a kinds. Four 2s or 3s or 4s, for instance, paid back a minimum of $100, where as normally they’d pay back 250 to 1, or $62.50 on the quarter machines. Getting 4 aces was even better, paying back over $250. The progressive nature of these machines meant that the more people played them, the more these bonus payouts would actually payout. But these are hands I’d never hit. I sat there because it looked like a good place to be seen playing, and therefore I’d get my damned drink.

Alas, that wasn’t to be. Instead, I blew through $10 pretty quickly, and only had $5 left in my pocket. Reluctantly, I put in the last bill. A few hands in, I had gotten 2 aces and 2 fives, when it occured to me that keeping the fives was useless. Like draw poker in real life, I could throw back cards after the first deal. Video poker let me throw back every card, too if I wanted to. But at the time, I realized that it’d be better to keep the 2 aces, which paid the same as the two pair, and throw back the fives in order to better my chances for 3 of a kind, more likely to hit than a full house. I didn’t get anything but 2 aces on that hand, so the strategy didn’t work, but I felt like I actually learned some strategy.

Then I hit 4 aces on my next hand.

I stared slackjawed as the machine made dinging noises as it counted my winnings. For the first time, I actually paid attention to the payout for the 4 of a kinds, and realized that I hit a hand that paid better than a straight flush on this particular machine. Then I thought, breifly, damn I wish I was playing the dollar machines. That washed away quickly, though, and I suddenly got the adrenaline surge of a winner. I made some sort of yahoo yelp, and looked to my left to share in my elation, but no one was there. I looked to my right, and no one was there either. I looked at the machine, and punched the button to get my payout and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Most of the casinos now print up a ticket with the amount left on the machine, rather than spill thousands of quarters or what have you. Some still payout in hard cash, but that’s the minority now. I grabbed my ticket, and debated breifly to cash it in or show Kathy, and showing Kathy won out. I ran to the elevators, ran to the room, tried to be quiet as I entered, but I was too excited, and woke Kathy up to show her. She was groggy at first but eventually shared my elation. It was the most money I had ever won.

Still, and all, as I said, we just about broke even on video poker over the week we were there. A couple of times, I was satified when we drank for free, or close to it, because we would only lose $2 or $3 while playing at a bar. At the MGM we broke even, at the Las Vegas Hilton, we won $40, and downtown at the 4 Queens, we lost $40. The best video poker machines were at the Excalibur, because they had the right 9-6 odds at nickle bets. We could play for hours there, if we didn’t get bored quicker than that. Excalibur servers weren’t impossible to find either.

So that’s the story on video poker in Las Vegas. I’ll be teaching a seminar about it at a vocational school annex. Look for it in the future.

The van that I drive for my dad’s business is a decent ride. It’s got a lot of pickup and the braking is good and it isn’t difficult to control, so I can’t complain about it much. But I keep flattening the rear driver’s side tire. 4 times in 6 months!

The first time was totally my fault. I rubbed the tire on a curb while making a tight turn. I’ve done this many times in many cars, and when I did it last spring, my time was due—I ripped the side-wall of the tire. Fine. But then I discovered a funny little thing about the rear driver’s side tire. When I put the jack in the recommended place, I lifted the entire van, but the tire stayed put. The strut wouldn’t lift. So I jacked it up higher, and higher until the strut reached its maximum stretch and began to lift up, too. I swear the front tire on the same side was lifted off the ground. The 3 ton van was being held up by a tiny jack and the passenger side tires. The spare tire barely fit in place, but I dared not raise the van up more. It was ridiculous.

I hoped never to have to change that tire again, but the night that I got the new tire put on (okay, new used tire), all the air leaked out of it. The next day, I cursed to the heavens, got in the van, and, yes, drove the van on the flat tire to the nearest tire place. It wasn’t far, but it was a real risk. The tire wasn’t that mangled, though, and it was repaired in minutes.

But not repaired well. There was a slow leak in it. I wasn’t really surprised at this, since I didn’t treat it at all well. So I kept filling it up with air every week, telling myself that I should just get a new one, until I ran over a pothole in early September, and Blammo! there went the tire. O accursed tire! Why dost thou trouble me so?

Well, I had to stick the spare on, this time. There was just no way to get it to a tire place. I thought back to the first attempt at changing the tire, and attempted to put my dinky jack (no jokes!) on the strut, but it just wouldn’t fit. I had to get my father’s bottle jack to do the job right. So again, the spare and another trip to a tire place.

Each time I had to change a tire, and other tires went flat, just not with the same frequency as the rear driver’s side, I told myself, I’ve got to get one of those X-shaped tire-irons, because each time I had to change a tire that the tire guys replaced, the nuts were put on too tightly with their pneumatic drills. I would watch these guys tighten them, and then hammer them in for another 3 or 4 bursts and think, “Great, but where will you be when I have to put the damned spare on?” And I would also think that I wanted one of those cool hydraulic floor jacks that quickly lifted the van up. Ah, to dream.

So tonight, with a couple of flat tire free months behind me, the first thing that I thought when I hit another pothole is, “What’s that hissing sound?” And then, “It better not be that same stupid, fucking tire!” which, of course, it was. A gas station just up the block would be my base of operations for the next two and-a-half hours. First off, I could not get the lug nuts off with the standard issue tire iron. I wrenched and torqued and struggled for naught. I tried pipe wrenches and ratchet wrenches, and nothing worked. I had to call Katherine to rescue me with an X-shaped tire iron. Blessed be to the inventor, Saint X-shaped Tire Iron Guy. I still had to struggle to get those damned lug nuts off, but I did, with the right tool.

But then, my job was only partial finished. I still had to get the tire off the ground. And I tried to sneak the dinky jack under the strut, which was totally out of reach, and nearly lost my hand when the jack shot out from beneath the van. Luckily, the tire was still on. But enough was enough. I stopped everything, went to Sears, and gots myself a hydraulic jack. Yeah.

In minutes, the job was over. As Katherine said, “With that jack you can do this in just a half-an-hour, instead of just over two!” True, indeed. So, now seriously, if anyone needs a good jack, let me know. That thing was expensive as hell, and if I don’t put it to use, it’ll just be a waste, because, dammit, I ain’t gonna be poppin’ no more goldurn tires! Sheesh.

Is your “These Colors Don’t Run” bumper sticker fading to powder blue? Need a more jingoistic message than “God Bless America”? Well, fear no more. Gas stations and 7-Elevens around the nation are on the forefront of mindless patriotic propaganda selling yellow and flag-themed ribbons that you can stick on your car with “Support Our Troops” bravely printed upon them. And since they’re so cheap, many folks have taken to purchase two or more to put them on the same automobile. Because, you know, you wouldn’t want the car behind you to the right OR left to not be able to tell that you’re a red-blooded, kickin’ ass, taking no prisoners unless we can torture them by making them wear underwear on their heads, God-fearing American.

“Support Our Troops.” Brilliant. It is as inspiring and as important a message as “Breath Oxygen,” or “Live Until You Die.” As good consumers and, some of us, income tax payers, we all, indeed, are supporting our troops. Possibly, though, the message is conveying a deeper meaning. Something along the line, perhaps, of “Shut the fuck up, you stupid hippies, and stop making the rest of us think.”

Surely, I could talk about how blindingly obvious it is that Bush administration does not support our troops, past or present. I could talk about the cutting of veteran’s benefits and the reduction of their medical services. I could point out how sending the wrong amount of troops into Iraq, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons is precisely how a president shows he has little regard for our troops and their wellbeing. I might even talk about how we’re on the verge of having a crippled military that will be unable to respond to real threats in the coming years, which cannot possibly be a way to support our troops. But no, I will not talk about these things, which are well-documented elsewhere. I, instead, am going to talk about how most people buying the ribbon bumper stickers have never actually seen a ribbon and so are incorrectly applying these ribbons to their automobiles.

One of the first things I noticed about the critical mass achieved within days of these ribbons being brought to market was that no one was actually applying these things to their bumpers. They were always on the trunks or even the side panels. Why? I wondered. Ah, of course, they’re magnetic, and most bumpers are plastic or plastic-coated. But that wasn’t the only odd thing, there was something else about them, and this one took me longer to figure out.

For this demonstration, I am borrowing a ribbon I found at Kingsport City Schools in Tennessee. Here is the ribbon:

Notice that the ribbon hangs like a real ribbon would? That’s what is wrong with the ribbons on most people’s cars and SUVs. They instead affix them like so:

I can only assume the logic here is that the text is horizontal, because the ribbon isn’t set at 90°, which looks more like this:

But if you’ve ever worked with ribbon, or even, I don’t know, ever seen a ribbon, you’d know that the fabric would sag if you hung it on its side. So these magnets represent a great new technology that allows us to boldly denounce the Theory of Gravity. Or something. I think many folks are just too intimidated to hang the ribbon as it should, because then someone might have a problem reading the text, and then sheer anarchy would be the next step.

A few people do get it right, and the really ambitious hang it at a jaunty angle:

Now, I’ve been in the design field for some time, so you can take my word—a jaunty angle is 7° to 13° clockwise from the vertical axis. Anything less is just crooked, and anything more is too much angle. Trust me.

But I digress.

They call it “The Kingdom.” It sits behind the building where you’d go and get your food. You’d never even know it was there, but it’s larger and vaster than the main building. It is where they store their dry goods, like flour and corn meal. They also have a huge, two-story freezer in the Kingdom, which they turn on during the holidays.

I think it’s ironic, perhaps, that you’re in the front, buying your chicken that’s been disemboweled, split-through with a spear, and slow roasted, or you’re buying your chicken that’s been torn apart, tendon from bone, and batter-dipped for frying. I think it’s ironic that the front is dedicated to humanity’s position on the food chain, but the Kingdom, in back, is run by the birds.

Starling and chickadee and sparrow and crow and sea gull, at any time, you’ll see more of them than there are people in the Kingdom. And when I walked into the vastness of it, I could hear the smaller ones, the stowaways from Great Britain, chirping and flittering around in the rafters in the near darkness. They quieted down when I reached the shelves that held cans and bags and sacks. One such sack was in the wrong place, sitting upon a square pack of 16 cans. The sack, once protected by plastic, was eviscerated, spilling its guts of bleached flour onto the cans beneath it, and the floor below. There were little peace-signs imprinted in the fine powder at random intervals. These were bird tracks. The birds found a way to get into the flour.

Oh, I thought, the processed, bleached flour must be like crack cocaine to these little birds. They probably get no real nutrition from this, just energy.

And so, I didn’t think it was the best thing to have the flour exposed. I covered up the ripped part of the sack with a large piece of the torn plastic, and held it down with a large can. Then I walked away.

In the empty vastness of the Kingdom, I could hear the echo of beating wings. Far enough away to not spook the birds, I turned around to see seven small brown and black birds looking at the plastic cover and the can holding it down. A few of the birds flew at the can, to frighten it I suppose. They were all twittering and chattering, and the frustration in the noises they made was evident and growing, until I heard, “TWEEET!”

It was loud and echoed through the Kingdom. It was a high, shrill noise that could not have come from a bird any larger than my hand, but it demanded attention be paid. The other birds and I froze for a moment, and they flew back into the rafters.

“TWEEEET!” knocked around the walls and vaulted ceiling again. I couldn’t make out the source of the sound. It shook all around me. There was more flapping in the rafters, and little tricks of shadow and light made it look like there were several dozen birds up there. Then there was silence.

Slowly, deliberately, I walked towards the exit, towards daylight and open air, until I was stopped in my tracks by,

“TWEEEEET!”

The sound surrounded me and was nowhere in particular. It was an angry chirp, a desperate whistle. Just steps away from the doorway, it stopped me. Thinking for just a moment, I turned around again, and quickened my pace back towards the shelves. I threw down the can and ripped away the plastic. Flour dust danced all around me. I swiveled and made for the exit again, pausing only briefly, once out the door, to peek back into the darkness of the Kingdom, where the birds ruled. Two or three little birds pecked and scratched in the white flour, flittering in excitement, content, for now.

Katherine, Chris, and I went into the City on Sunday morning to see Neil Gaiman. Every year there is a big baker’s-dozen-blocks-down-5th-Avenue event called New York Is Book Country. Neil was signing books for an hour, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. Those of you who know me personally would be proud to know I woke up in time to make an 8:40 train into the City, with tremendous help from Katherine.

Once we were in the City, we walked about twenty blocks uptown. The weather was beautiful, and being Sunday, there was very little traffic, pedestrian or otherwise. If I wasn’t so grumpy from waking up early and having no sugar or caffeine, I really would have been enjoying myself. As it was, I was begrudgingly grateful that nothing had gone wrong. It was quite a treat to see 5th Avenue closed off from 42st (where the New York Public Library building sits, clever, no?) all the way up to 55th Street. Neil was going to be signing at 49th, where DC Comics had set up a booth in the Graphic Novel section of the fair. We got there by 10:30, and found just a few people ahead of us, milling about by the platform where Neil would sign.

Now I had to get a book.

Or, in other words, I’m an ass. I’ve been a semi-rabid Gaiman fan for years. I have quite the collection of Sandman-branded merchandise, and I have a half-a-dozen special collectors’ edition books, not Sandman-related, written by Neil. I have the Warning: Contains Language CD. I have a 1000-run edition of Murder Mysteries, hand-bound, published by Biting Dog Press. Sure, I have the Hugo-winning Sandman comic, “Midsummer’s Night Dream,” the only comic ever, and forever, to win. At least 50 things I could have signed by Neil? Yes, a conservative estimate.

So here, I’ve gone into the city without anything, and will have to buy a book. But this was no big deal, really, because I wanted to get a copy of Sandman Endless Nights, the first Sandman-related thing Neil has written in years. I (correctly) assumed that I’d be able to get a copy there, even though I wasn’t sure it had officially come out, yet.
At the DC booth, they had four copies on display, two hardcover, two soft. Of course, I was going to get the hardcover, but, no, DC wasn’t actually selling them. I’d have to go to the Borders down the road, I was told. I set off, leaving Katherine and Chris to wait on line. I walk down to the end of the fair, 55th Street, without seeing a Borders book store. Sweaty and concerned, I saw an information booth and asked the nice woman there where the nearest B. Dalton was.

I don’t know why I do this. B. Dalton hasn’t existed in New York in ten years, I think, and yet ask me to name a book store, and I’ll say B. Dalton without pause.
At any rate, the nice woman at the kiosk was old enough to know that B. Dalton was a book store and directed me to the Borders on 49th Street, where I had just come from. I blinked, thanked her, and then headed back down the road. When I got to 49th Street, doubting-Thomas that I am, I scoffed at the idea that I’d miss the book store. There was no Borders building here, I said to myself. See? It’s not here at all… oh, look, it’s a booth right next to the DC Comics booth. Oh. Right.

I got on line to buy the book, and called over about five feet away from me where Katherine and Chris were still waiting. “Hey, look,” I said, “the book is being sold right here.” I gave a sheepish smile.

Then with book firmly in hand, and paper bracelet, used to guarantee those waiting on line a signature from Neil, firmly on wrist, I waited for another twenty minutes or so for Neil, who arrived and started signing early. What a guy. We were given yellow Post-Its™ to write our name on, so Neil wouldn’t have to guess spellings and such, so when I got up to him, he asked, “Jonathan, is it?”

“Mmm hmm,” I said.

And I wanted to say a thousand things to him! Do you want to go get sushi after this, Neil? Murder Mysteries is my favorite short story, but did you know I never got that one detail about the newspaper story until I read the illustrated version? “Ramadan” was my favorite Sandman story, and I think it perfectly highlighted your amazing ability to join real myths with those you’ve made up yourself and pull them together in one hell of an entertaining story. That’s called pastiche, right? I’m envious that you can write so well, so often, and still have the will and energy to update your online journal. You really connect with your audience. Oh, and Daniel, and Delirium, and Mervyn Pumpkinhead, and Door, and Low-Key, and Wednesday, and Shadow, and Snow, Glass, and Apples….

But what I said, after he drew a really cool, really funky Sandman in silver ink on the inside of Sandman Endless Nights, was, “Thank you, very, very much.”

“Oh, you’re quite welcome,” he said, and I moved aside.

Twenty seconds. Twenty seconds with a man of genius, a man who has entertained and educated me, and countless others, for over ten years. And then I moved aside.

Chris gave him a copy of Good Omens to sign, and he wrote, “Burn this book!” We’re not sure why.

We trekked down to Little Italy afterwards, for the last day of the Feast of San Gennero, and I had a stuffed artichoke, Katherine had a cannoli, and Chris had chicken shish-kabob. Yeah, Chris is a real lover of the Italian food. The crowd was thick, and the sun on our backs got us too hot and too tired too quickly, so we left the City shortly afterwards. But I got my book and my twenty seconds.
Hope to see you next year, Neil.