Author: Logan Lo

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Thanksgiving 2011 – it’s always darkest before the…?

Man walking in front of a church off Times Square, NYC

You could skip this entry altogether and just click this entry here instead.

———

Danger – slightly religious post below:

Had a really strange day. A owner in my building refused to fix an $11 toilet handle resulting in hundreds of dollars in damage to the rest of the building. She’s a self-professed “good but misunderstood person.”

I submit that if you ever have to say the words, “I’m a good but misunderstood person,” you’re most likely neither.

Speakinga stuff y’say, there’s this saying that it’s always darkest before the dawn. But I think it’s always darkest before the storm. Meaning that no matter how dark it gets, it can always get darker. Still, figure that if you know this, you can outlast it.

Saw my friend Johnny in the middle of the night – this Thanksgiving he didn’t physically punch me the gut. But he still hit me there.

Cause he’s onea the people in the hospital I told you about. In the middle of an empty room save the two chairs we occupy, he says he’s gonna be ok. We’ve known each other 20 years, I say.

Me: You gotta be ok. It’s hard having friends for this long in this life.
Him: I’m ok, man. (pause) Been reading the bible. Trying to understand stuff.
Me: No kidding. (thinking) In all these years, we’ve never talked about God, yeah? Cause I figure that we all meet God on our own terms. But can I tell you what I think?
Him: Sure.
Me: The point of the bible, I think. Is that unlike any other religion I know, the people that live good lives – the best lives – get ____ed. Jesus get nailed to some planks to die in agony, John the Baptist gets decapitated as a party favour, Job loses everything just so God can tell a good story. It goes on. I think it says we’re promised nuthin but misery and if you get any little bit of joy, you should be grateful, because it’s still more than we’re promised.
Him: If that’s the point of the bible, what’s the point of it all? Life?
Me: (thinking) Maybe – and what do I know – we’re no different than the rocks and trees and there isn’t a purpose. Or maybe it’s that we can choose to repay the aether somehow and that both makes us different and gives it and us purpose. Maybe the point is that we do good things to make the world a little less unfair and we do it to give our own lives meaning. Maybe nonea us own anything, we’re just supposed to take carea everything for the next guy. We’re supposed to leave this joint here better than when we arrived. Maybe that’s the point, Johnny.

Say it every Thanksgiving – that it’s about making our lives better by making life better. I think that’s the meaning of it all.

Have a Happy Turkey Day, all.

And if you’re reading this from a place without a Turkey Day, you should still have some turkey.

 

httpv://youtu.be/WbN0nX61rIs

Location: home
Mood: good
Music: am done with my graceless heart so tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart
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personal

Having your person and your people

Girl in Subway on West 50th Street, NYC

Him: (laughing) That’s pretty funny – you have a good sense of humor. (holding out hand) My name’s Jack, this is my wife, Claire.
Me: (taking hand) Logan. And thanks. I bought it on ebay for a buck fifty.

The thing about misery is that it always comes. That parasitic fear’s parta the deal, I suppose.

For mosta my youth, did a lotta stress eating; meaning when bad things happen, end up downing anything and everything. As a young adult, did a lotta stress fighting – meaning I got into scrapes for no real good reason. But being old means I go to the gym whenever things get tough.

Been going to the gym a lot lately.

Cause people I know and love’ve been in the hospital a lot lately. Four to be exact.

They’re all gonna be fine, I think hope. But it’s stressful – after all, life’s a tragedy fulla joy.

I like wrestling and fencing cause, for 15 minutes at a time, y’think of nuthin. You just try not to get hit or choked. It’s nice to not think sometimes. Oftentimes, wish my brain would just shut off for a bit and leave me be. But it only does when I wrestle or fence. So off I go.

Last week, though, couldn’t go cause I had to be near a phone in case of emergencies. Isn’t the waiting the worst part? And so, with nuthing to slash or choke, stuffed my face like I was 12 again.

Did manage to find time to slip into a friend’s wedding where I met a buncha nice folks. It’s nice having your person and your people.

Her: You’re home. How was it?
Me: There was rum and meat, so it was great. But it’s always nice to be home.

And it is.

Even though lately I’ve been hanging out a lot in that wretched miserable space between awake and dreams, it’s slightly more bearable cause she’s here.

Like I said, it’s nice having your person and your people.

Candles on a table off Times Square, NYC

Location: at a breakfast with a dean of law
Mood: worried
Music: would I walk for a hundred miles for an instant northern smile
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5 Unique things to do in NYC – 2011

What does a native New Yorker do for fun?

Lincoln Center

People are always asking me for unique things to do in NYC. Dunno about unique but here’s what I do as a native NYCer when I get a moment or two:

1. Walk down Riverside Drive
On a clear day, take a walk down Riverside Park. It’s perfect in spring or fall – here’s when I did it in November 2009. There’s an entrance on 72nd and Riverside Drive. Start off by walking to the tip of the West Side Pier and pretend you’re on a ship. Afterwards, you can stroll all the way down to Union Square via the bike path (or bike, natch) and see some ruins of old NYC, the parks, and even the High Line if you want to step off for a bit. It’ll be the most relaxing part of your Manhattan trip.

2. Eat at John’s Pizzeria
Always tell everyone to try out John’s Pizzeria on W 44th Street. Everybody goes to Lombardi’s downtown cause that’s where American pizza was invented in 1897. That’s all fine but it’s kinda not worth it. The thing is, Lombardi had a buncha helpers who were named Grimaldi, Patsy, and John, amongst others. John set up shop, like the others, and John’s Pizza’s his flagship. The pizza’s the same in that’s it thin and great – not coal fired, though. But the thing about John’s Pizza’s that it’s in a converted cathedral. So try to get a seat in the main room and look up at the stained-glass ceilings. You can also have fun trying to figure out where the choir was. It’s cheap too; figure $50 for a pizza, two drinks and a salad. It’ll be the nicest pizza place you’ve ever been to. Two notes:

  • the mens rooms are tiny,
  • avoid any time 90 minutes before a Broadway show, place’s packed.

3. Step out at Solas
Back when I was single, was at Solas on East 9th practically every Thursday and Friday night. The best thing about the joint – beside the no cover charge – is that it’s essentially three different spots in one. The eastern part’s a regular bar; belly up, order yourself a Dark and Stormy and chat up the girlie next to you. The western part’s almost always has a DJ and a private party that you’re always able to crash and get down with your bad self (don’t be a douchebag if you do). That has a bar too. Finally, upstairs is a lounge area although they usually jack up the sound up there too. Oh, and there’s a bar there too. Love that joint. It’s the only thing I miss about being single.

4. Get a drink (with or without bubbles) in the Winter Garden
Despite the name, the summer’s the best time to head downtown to the World Financial Center / Winter Garden. There’s usually a lotta shows that’re free to see and you can get a Dark and Stormy here too or something else with bubbles in your drinks. Like mosta NYC, it’s not really cheap but it’s not crazy expensive. Good place for a fourth date or a nice night out.

5. Have lunch with real silverware and food you don’t have to unwrap for $7
Go eat at Curry Row – already wrote about it once here.

I’ll post more stuff to do in the city that’s not in guidebooks next year. If you have anything you like about the city, lemme know?

As for me, back to the grind…

———-

Regarding the usual nuthin, spent most of Thursday night in the hospital again. Just a lotta waiting around for doctors. Come so often to this emergency room that I should get some sorta rewards point.

———-

 

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The Men Made of Stone - Logan Lo
Location: Last week, a waiting room at Columbus Circle, again.
Mood: still worried
Music: maybe I’m on my knees
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Categories
personal

Thinking about all the Hows and Whys

Watch time

This woman named Alice Neel once said that All experience is great provided you live through it. If it kills you, you’ve gone too far.

Had enough distance now from my old troubles to think about it objectively. Alla these things I thought I’d never make it past I did somehow.

Suppose that’s just human nature, to survive the blows. And the one benefit of the gut-wrenching is that peculiar feeling that, If I could survive XX, I could survive anything.

Alison and I were in the hospital on Thursday.

The hows and whys are for some other time and from some other narrator.

My parta the story’s that I was two hours north of the city when I rushed down to hear the news.

Just lemme tell you that there are times in a man’s life when he just wants to cover up his ears like a child and not hear to those impatient things that need to be heard.

But you listen cause you’re not a child. Not for a while now.

And you nod. There’s always a lotta goddamn nodding.

And after all that listening and nodding, you manage to compress all of that agony and fear into a tight little ball and stuff it into some crack in your soul where y’hide that stuff.

Then y’take a deep breath, and say out loud, It’s gonna be ok. Partly for them, mostly for yourself.

And it is, almost always, somehow ok.

But cause you’re an insomniac, you get up in the middle of the night to sit by your lonesome on an uncomfortable couch and, without fail, retrieve that ball you hid earlier. You unpack it, smooth it out, and examine it from a million different angles, hoping for some understanding that never comes.

Finally – despite your best efforts – y’think about all of those hows and whys. Mostly the whys.

Location: Last week, a waiting room at Columbus Circle
Mood: worried
Music: sun is going down but it will rise again
YASYCTAI: Remember that you made it through all the other times. (time/2 pts)
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personal

What you’re lucky enough to get is never enough

No matter how much time you get, you always wish you had more

Pumkins in the Village, NYC

Him: Wait, how old are you?
Me: 38. Why, how old are you?
Him: 23.
Me: I think I hate you.

I own some Apple stock. And when I say “some” I mean a pittance. Like enough to buy a really good dinner at a five-star restaurant in the City.

Whenever my stocks go up, feel that greedy urge in me go: Man, I should have bought more. There’s always that feeling that what you’re lucky enough to get, is never enough.

Was wrestling the other day with some Asian guys. The thing with Asians is that it’s always hard to tell how old they are – even for ourselves. While we look young, though, it’s just the appearance. Time just keeps on going.

Which goes with my formula that Time¬=Money; Time>Money. And here the greed’s even greater cause no matter how much time y’get, you always wish you had more.

Read the eulogy that Steve Job’s sister wrote for him. It’s very moving – if y’get a chance today, you should read it. His last words I find especially profound in their honesty and simplicity.

I wonder, then, if there’s a time that we become ok with the amount of time we’re allotted.

Hope so. Not afraid to admit that it scares me. The not knowing.

November 2011, already. Where does the time go?

———-
And now for some levity – think the same is roughly true for Asian men:

How Asians age

Location: surrounded by blueprints and surveys
Mood: slightly anxious
Music: My scarecrow dreams When they smashed my heart into smithereens
YASYCTAI: Read that eulogy. (10 mins/0.5 pts)
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dating personal

Digital to do / Insult me, beat me, make me write bad checks

Canal Street Subway

Mom: (leaning in, whispering) Act normal. I put two suitcases with your dad’s stuff into your trunk. Get rid of them.
Me: What? How?
Her: Shhh! I don’t know, don’t care. Just get rid of them. (turning to everyone, smiling) Who wants dessert?

I’ve somehow become a digital packrat in my life. My father, god love him, saves everything. Drives my mom mad. On more than one occasion, I’ll go home and find that she’s filled my trunk with random junk that my dad’s accumulated.

Suspect that if she were in the mafia, we’d have similar conversations.

Like me, she accumulates mosta her stuff in digitally. But I take after my dad in that I save everything.

Think it all started when I decided to get rid of all of my CDs years ago. Then I digitized all of my class notes from my school days. Just snowballed from there. The whole thing’d be fine it not for the fact that I didn’t organize it properly from the get-go. So now, as it gets bigger so does that sinking feeling that I gotta go back and re-edit a buncha stuff. So, to avoid procrastination, every time I get a few minutes, go back and start curating.

Amazed at how much stuff I’ve actually got.

On the topic of editing digital stuff, been reading a buncha my friends’ dating profiles for them. They’re terrible. The majority’re just bland and boring with lotsa guys putting up smiley faces every two sentences as if to say, I‘m just kidding, see how fun I am?

The worst are the ones that say, I’m just looking for someone nice. As if everyone else is saying, Insult me, beat me, make me write bad checks.

Figure there’s gotta be a cottage industry to help people not come off as weird or desperate online. Think I’ll have to write a post about writing a good profile onea these days soon.

And there’s another thing to add to my digital to do list.

Location: getting dressed in the front room
Mood: thoughtful
Music: Complacency, a vacancy, checks into your heart
YASYCTAI: Edit another folder of stuff. It’s never ending (a long time/1 pts)
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business personal

Being busy with actual life

Bar on the Lower East Side

A project I’ve been working on for a while now just came through. More details as it gets closer to actually happening.

In other news, been busy with actual life. Nothing terribly interesting for anyone that’s not me but I gotta stop saying I’m gonna finish something and just finish it.

Location: in front of a hot cuppa coffee
Mood: great, really
Music: Once upon a time, somebody ran.
YASYCTAI: Man, are y’ever gonna finish writing that manuscript? (years it seems/3 pts)
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business personal

Socialism for banks, capitalism (and arrests) for the rest of us?

httpv://youtu.be/S6svA6Qvq1U?t=1m32s

We both know that it’s rarely political here. But every once in a while, gotta say something.

Got mixed feelings about the Occupy Wall Street protests. On the one hand, agree with the core tenet of it, which is capitalists cannot assert socialism for banks and capitalism for the resta us. On the other hand, just let people get to work and make a dollar already. There’s definitely an element of whiny in it to me.

Having said that, the above video enraged me. Fast forward to 1:33 where a woman outside a bank protest and not actually protesting – she’s wearing a business suit – appears to want to leave the bank. She’s then grabbed by someone in regular clothes, physically tossed into the bank and then either locked in and/or arrested.

Clearly, something is wrong with this picture.

While I don’t agree with the protesters, their right to peacefully protest is something the cops should be defending not making worse. Far worse, IMHO.

———-

Mentioned it in passing in my last post but there’s a seasonality to my work; summer’s usually pretty quiet and right around October, work picks up dramatically.

Last year, this was kinda true – this year, it’s definitely true. Keep wondering when the economy’ll finally turn around but this year is shaping to be onea my best outta the past three.

Which is not really saying a lot looking back at the last three years.

———-

 Gonna be tweaking this blog over the next month or so; don’t mind me.

Former LJ’ers, changed the comment system so (I hope) you will be notified if you leave a comment and someone responds to me – like me.

Leave a comment so I can test our a few things?

Location: this past weekend, out in Queens
Mood: busy
Music: had no idea of the state we were in
YASYCTAI: Leave a comment and I’ll response – let me know if you get an email? (10 sec/1.0 pt)
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personal

The world limits us enough, why do it to ourselves?

Train arriving at Columbus Circle

Her: It looks worse, you should go see a doctor.
Me: Nah, I’ll be fine.

Wonder how many people died saying those as their last words.

Been going to the gym like crazy cause summer’s usually my slow time and I wanna get in as much gym time as possible before things start getting mad busy. So I was rolling with my buddy Car when we got onto the topic of MRSA (pronounced “mer-suh”). If you don’t know what that is, do NOT google it, instead, just believe me when I tell you that it’s gross and deadly. I’m a germaphobe by nature – to the point that no less than a dozen people remarked why I’d wrestle since that’s so unlike me. Which goes to show, that as much as I hate touching stuff, hate not knowing stuff even more.

Feara ignorance > OCD hand-washing.

In any case, had just shaved earlier that week and rolled and had gotten some razor burn. After a week, it started looking bad. Like real bad. After HG put her foot down, went to the local medi-merge where the lady doc walked into the room, took one look at me, and said, “You’ve got staph, man.” It wasn’t MRSA – thankfully – but it was something dangerous and gross. She gave me some meds and told me to go home and shave, which I did for the first time.

Lemme tell you: (a) it was insanely painful and (b) it far worse than I thought.

Killed all of my weekend plans. A weeka antibiotics later, about 90% back to normal.

The psychological scars’re gonna take a bit to get over though.

Do you know I’m scareda flying? Was the international sales manager for a Fortune 500 company and terrified of flying. But I board that plane every damn time.

Cause the world limits me enough; don’t need to do it to myself.

So Thursday, back in the gym.

Course, gonna be covered in plastic wrap from head-to-toe but that’s really neither here nor there.

 

Location: in fronta piles of papers
Mood: better
Music: rolling in the deep the scars
YASYCTAI: Do the uncomfortable things. (always/3 pts)
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business personal

Real Artists Ship / Goodbye LJ / Goodbye Steve

Grand Central Station

 

My favourite thing about Steve Jobs was this thing he said a while back. The story goes that some guy was constantly tweaking and editing something, saying it wasn’t ready yet. He was an artist, y’see. At which point Steve blew up and said, “Real artists ship!”

He meant that the only difference between a nutcase with a notebook and a writer was that a writer tossed his baby out into the world and let come what may. Anyone can call themselves an artist but a real artist produces.

Thought about the man and that quote a lot. He had a million ideas but the difference between him and everyone else was that he rolled his dice, he took his chances. He never was onea those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Who knows what he could have shipped if given just a little more time?

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? He made more in month than I could ever make in a lifetime. Yet it’s why I despise that saying, time is money. Any idiot can make more money.

But time, that we’re not afforded enough of, regardless of the person. Time is a trillion factors greater than money.

Bye, Steve. Wish you had less money but more time.

 

Logan Lo in Paris

For those of you coming from LiveJournal, thanks for coming along.

It’s been a while and hopefully a little while more.

 

Location: Not livejournal any more. Just here. It’s weird.
Mood: weird
Music: For every beginning There must come an end I want to thank you
YASYCTAI: Maybe hit that “subscribe” link just below? (30 secs/0.25 pts)
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