"Brent had a deeply self-destructive streak. He didn't have much supporting him in terms of an intellectual life. I mean, I owe a lot of who I am and what I've been and what I've done to the beatniks from the Fifties and to the poetry and art and music I've come in contact with. I feel like I'm part of a continuous line in American culture, of a root. But Brent was from the East Bay, which is one of those places that is like nonculture. There's nothing there. There's no substance, no background. And Brent wasn't a reader, and he hadn't really been introduced to the world of ideas on any level. So a certain part of him was like a guy in a rat cage, running as fast as he could and not getting anywhere. He didn't have any deeper resources.

My life would be miserable if I didn't have those little chunks of Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. I can't even imagine life without that stuff."

--Jerry Garcia on Grateful Dead keyboardist, Brent Mydland, in Rolling Stone

This is something

F.Scott Fitzgerald on Ring Lardner in the The New Republic. This is memory. This is life.

I'm very pleased

about my increased Asian readership! Keep the comments coming!

Did this happen?

Overheard on a New York subway platform at 2AM, said by an upset man to woman in tears.

"Jesuitry? Jesuitry!? Do you even know
what that means? Equivocator, maybe, but outright Jesuitry? Uh uh."

Newsflash!

I'm no hero, I'm just a man with a remote.

I'm beginning to think there's a bounty on my head with all this ticketing a-goin'-on...

12 January 2010

Justice Court Town of Bedford
321 Bedford Road
Bedford Hills, NY 10507

Re: ticket number [redacted]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please find enclosed a ticket left for me on January 6th. Here is the problem – that morning, around 7:07 AM (give or take a few precious minutes) I trudged through the freezing cold to pay my five dollars to park for the day, yet when I entered spot ‘113’ an invalid reading came up. I typed it again. Once again I was rebuffed. There was nothing to do aside from go back to my car and switch spots, or leave a five dollar bill under my windshield wiper (would that do, I wonder?), or to dash to the train hoping to make the 7:17 and equally hoping that I wouldn’t get ticketed for this, of all things. I chose the latter, and my hopes were dashed at about 7:35 that night.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what might have caused this mix up. I think someone might have paid for 24 hours sometime between, oh, 6AM and 12 PM on January 5th, and then returned at any point before then, leaving their spot empty but with money still on the meter. Thus when I went to pay that fateful morning, the machine wouldn’t accept it because there was already money on the meter and unfortunately it seems that you can’t add time to an existing meter. Regardless, the meter expired by the time your diligent attendant checked at 12:30 PM leaving me with a ticket that, I would like to argue, I should not be held accountable for.

What do you think? Should I be on Law and Order, or what?

Sincerely,


Sheridan Dupre

P.S.

Is there a bigger idiot than David Denby?

I don't know about you...

...but 2010 is both off to a good start, and simultaneously distressingly similar to 2009. It's a colder year, though - isn't it? A colder decade, probably. But it's already had its share of pleasant surprises. My 13th victory in Minesweeper; the conductor on the train not collecting my ticket; the book of stamps I got for free through a glitch in the stamp machine. I think these are good tidings. Yes, I think it's safe to say this is going to be my year, my decade. In the 'tens, all of my mail will go out. There are no excuses any more, not with free stamps, free transport. No, not with this kind of luck. No excuses.