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Unkindness, Pt 2

Running into people

Like I said, a buncha people from my past have been making a reappearance in my life, in a manner of speaking – either they actually have or I thought about them, which I’d probably not done in a while.

First is someone I’ll call the Cellini Coach whom I last saw out in California.

I call him Cellini because, like him and Jason Everman, he’s insanely successful in some seriously disparate fields:

  • He sold a buncha companies to Google and Facebook – you’ve absolutely used his stuff if you’ve been on either of them – and might be a billionaire. I’m not sure.
  • He’s also a ridonk fighter – fourth degree black belt in BJJ from Gracie Barra, great boxer, and trained shooter and wrestler – and is kinda my private coach on certain things (see below).
  • He’s also getting his master’s degree in philosophy a Oxford.

Despite alla this, though, he’s a pretty quiet and down-to-earth kinda guy.

Him: Don’t put up a picture of me.
Me: It’s ironic that a fella that helped invent the internet doesn’t wanna be on it.

Plus, even though he’s a super busy and successful guy, he’ll still take the time out to answer questions that I’ve got regarding certain aspects of fighting which I always appreciate.

Like most kindnesses I get, it’s a kindness that is neither expected nor warranted.

Below is him acting as my coach, which he totally doesn’t need to do, and yet he does.

We met up just this past week a mutual friend’s physical therapy joint – Recalibrate PT, which is probably one of the best PT spaces in the city IMHO.

There, Cellini he took two hours outta his super busy schedule to give me a private lesson to help me fix a buncha issues I’ve been having with my game.

I also ran into a whole raft of friends while there that I’d not seen in ages, including my buddy Sawyer – who was training with my friend Cotton (whom I also recommend if you’re looking for a personal trainer).

Me: Dude, we loved Masters of the Air, whatever happened to your character (Lt. Roy Frank Claytor)?
Sawyer: In the show, he just disappeared but in real life, he survived WWII and fought in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which he also survived.

On a somewhat related note, I recently had a phone call with someone whom I was unkind to ages ago.

He said I never apologized to him for being unkind to him, but he seems to have forgotten that he wouldn’t let me apologize to him.

Still, I suppose that’s really neither here nor there; I could have apologized again but chose not to again.

In any case, I figured that, since I was the one originally in the wrong, I’d just go ahead and apologize again to him, again and did that.

I’m hoping he took it to heart just because I would hate for anyone to suffer because of something I did, but that’s really his decision to make and not mine.

I suppose we all do unkind things as much as we do kind ones and, when we do unkind things, we should try to fix things when given an opportunity to do so.

This actually reminds me of something else entirely, but I’ll tell you about that later.

Location: my freezing pad
Mood: possibly sick with a broken toe
Music: I thought it was just another fight (Spotify)

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Unkindness, Pt 1

Reliably unreliable

Was supposed to see A-SIL our in NJ today, but the weather was just gross so we just all stayed in, although my brother did come by because he’s in town from Cali.

It’s just as well, we’re all feeling run down around here.

Me: Are you sick?
Her: I dunno. I just feel like I’m fighting off something.
Me: Same. I don’t feel sick per se, I just feel…rough.

Think I said a dozen times just in this blog that the trait that I find the most attractive is kindness.

So, it logically follows that unkindness is the most unattractive quality, at least to me.

Before Alison, I once briefly dated a wealthy lawyer. She was attractive and very nice to me.

Just…not to everyone else.

She was rude and curt to waitstaff, always late to everything, and never – ever – did what she promised she’d do. Not for me or anyone else.

She was reliably unreliable.

One day, a rude event on an escalator followed by another one to a waiter in a restaurant was enough.

When we broke up, I remember Cappy asked me why and I remember saying, “Attractive is temporary, douchebag is forever. She was a douchebag.”

When we broke up, her sister – a successful lawyer in her own right and whose personality I liked more than hers, actually – told me that she and her husband would buy me a new Porsche if I reconsidered.

Remember telling them, “I’d rather have a Metrocard and be alone, than have a Porsche and be with her.”

Because, at some point, you just tired of making excuses – to yourself and others – for someone’s poor behaviour. It’s exhausting.

It was with her that I came up with the term, “Something a lot like love.” Cause, at one point, I really thought I loved her as she was attractive, smart, successful, and nice – but only to me, which wasn’t enough.

But I obviously didn’t love her, because I left her.

And I never once regretted it.

Bring this up for two reasons:

The first is that I’m so regularly pleasantly surprised with just how kind Sara is, along with all of her other good points.

I honestly don’t think that character trait can be overstated enough when it comes to just having a life partner.

Because looks and so many things can go away and, in the end, you’re stuck with who they are deep down inside.

Who Sara is is just as nice on the inside as she is on the outside.

There’s a second reason, though, which is that a whole raft of people from my past have been making reappearances in some fashion in my life and I’m reminded about how much I value this trait because some of the reappearances were very kind while others were less so.

But this is already a longer entry than I had expected it to be, so I’ll wrap it up in the next one.

Location: wet and gross NYC
Mood: cough cough
Music: all over everybody seems unkind (Spotify)

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Fat Logan and the Bouba–Kiki Effect

The shape of our lives

Her: I can’t imagine you as a fat kid.
Me: Oh, trust me, I was.
Her: I just can’t picture it.
My mom: Do you want to see pictures of him when he was chubby?
Her: Yes!
Me: Oh god…

If I said the words: Spike, Crack, Snip, or Kick and asked you to imagine that the sounds the words made had a shape, what shape would they be?

What if I said the words: Gooey, Balloon, Smooth, or Marshmallow?

If you’re like most people, the former comes across feeling kinda hard and pointy while the latter comes across as soft and rounded.

This is called the bouba–kiki effect.

Basically, words give us a certain feeling and have a “shape” to them in our heads.

Thought about this the other day because I’ve been telling everyone for years that I was fat at 14 but I only recently realized that was inaccurate.

I was fat in 5th grade so I would have been 10 then.

That was the most traumatic time of my childhood.

Childhood traumas stay with us for so long because of how time works relative to our age.

Case-in-point: I was fat for four years, from 10 to 14.

For a 52-year-old, that’s not that big a deal – after all, it only comprises approximately 8% of my life (4/52=0.08).

Unfortunately, when you’re 14 years old, those four years comprise almost a 1/3 of my entire life up to that point (4/14=0.29).

But it’s more than that, isn’t it?

Like, you don’t really remember much before you’re eight years old.

So, when I was 14 years old, I only remembered six years of my life, really.

This is actually the THINNER version of me.

That means that, those four years of my life – ages 10 to 14 – felt like most of my life, about 67% of it, to be exact (4/6=0.67).

My point is, if words have a shape and feeling, so too do periods of our lives.

I submit that periods of our lives have a weight and shape to them as well, and only we can see and feel them.

When people say, “Just get over it,” or, “That was ages ago,” they’re not being honest with how everyone processes their youth differently from everyone else.

For me, my fat years feel soft, heavy, slow, and oversized – everything was a drag and depressing.

Even now, if I had to describe my overweight years, despite their only occupying 8% of my total life, it FEELS closer to 33% of my life.

And this is why I try to remember that the kid is processing the world very differently than I am.

Yes, he’s 10, but he really only remembers stuff and people from when he was about seven or eight, so he’s really only lived maybe three years or so?

He doesn’t truly remember much beyond that, although he has a sense of things, like the bouba–kiki effect.

Like he has a sense of loving being in NJ with his grandparents and Queens with his cousins.

He just knows they make him feel good in one way or another.

That’s why, even some 40 years later, I still know exactly what it feels like to be a fat, friendless, kid.

It’s always why I’m always obsessed with food and being fit.

Because even though it was (several) lifetimes ago, deep down – well, probably not even that deep down – I’m terrified that I’ll wake up trapped in that fat kid’s body once more.

Which, let’s be honest, is only a few poor carbohydrate decisions away.

Me: Hit a new milestone today.
Her: What’s that?
Me: Welp…somehow, I’ve eaten four pounds of peanut butter in five weeks.
Her: You’re kidding.
Me: If only. (thinking) Now I gotta go out and pick up more peanut butter.

Location: my dry-as-a-bone room
Mood: stressed
Music: I paint a picture of the days gone by (Spotify)

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I despise Disney

They never shoulda taken off Kimmel

I’ve owned stock in Disney since I was 23.

“Owned” being the operative word as I sold alla it back in September when they took Kimmel off the air.

Still, that doesn’t stop me from despising them.

From a legal standpoint, they are probably one of the most evil companies on the planet from an intellectual property attorney standpoint but that’s a wholly different conversation.

I have a tattered and torn copy of The Brothers Grimm, read every story there at least twice.

And The Little Mermaid was one of a million books I read as a kid.

Girls I dated in high school and college always wanted to watch Disney films for some reason and I remember watching The Little Mermaid and its saccharine plot and being so pissed off.

But the film I find most offensive is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

See, I read that book when I was like…13? Way too young.

I think my dad had a copy, so I read it exactly once. But, holy shit, that book fucked me up.

It was the first time that I understood the cruelty of people to other people.

Never really got that before reading that book.

Seeing how Disney sanitized it and made it into a completely different thing upset me, so much that I never did see the end of it – probably never will.

Later that same year when I read the book, I learned about the holocaust, like really learned about it.

I get why people deny it even happened; the cruelty of it all seems unbelievable.

And yet, that’s exactly why people need to know about it. So that we can steel ourselves against ever allowing such a thing to happen again.

Even though it does, indeed, keep happening.

In today’s news cycle, the cruelty of people to other people is just sickening.

Can’t help but think that maybe it’s because companies like Disney spend all their time feeding all these syrupy stories of nonsense when life is poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

There are ways, I think, to entertain but also let the truth of things settle and change people.

 

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Location: my apartment, which smelled like freshly baked bread
Mood: dry
Music: At least I know what I make-believe (Spotify)
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Worth keeping around

Just show them a great first date

Me: Wait, you have how many unread messages from guys?
Her: (checking phone) Hmmm, 1,021?
Sara: (laughs) That sounds about right.
Me: Man, it pays to be an attractive blonde female.

When Sara and I met up with Amanda the other day, we – like always – asked about her dating life.

Because now that Sara and I were married, it’s nice to live vicariously through her, the ABFF, A-SIL, and others.

Us: So…what’s the latest?

On a related note, the other day, I posted the above image on Facebook that someone sent me from rando reddit post (which I’ve since lost).

Didn’t think much of it – four friends of mine commented and I went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I had several hundred comments and, a few days later, over 400 comments.

Some were fine, with many of my female friends commenting how bad it is out there for them.

But the number of questionable – and I do mean questionable – responses from men really floored me.

They ranged from whiney and excuse-filled – somehow, a short, old, arthritic, minority widower is anything but average…

…to angry and…jealous?

I’m not sure how to understand this fella below, who seemed to be upset that I even went on 180 dates in 18 months, which is about 10 dates a month, or 2-3 dates a week – something I told you is totally doable if you just…do it.

It’s all so profoundly sad because men want to meet women and women want to meet men, but they are clearly speaking very different languages.

And what I found most shocking is that so many men were offended by the demonstrably true things I said: Which is that whenever a man goes on a date with a woman, he runs the risk of wasting his time and/or money.

But whenever a woman goes on a date with a man, she runs the risk of wasting her time and/or getting assaulted, raped, or worse.

And yet, men will say this kinda stuff without a hint of irony:

Did you know that ladies? That “men are assaulted at a much higher rate than women?”

It’s news to me – and, I’m sure, news to you as well.

In any case, he obviously doesn’t know that I met Alison after I got robbed of all my money, or that I met Sara after I gave up most of my clients and got robbed (again).

It *MUST* be because of money or something else that women like about me but not actually me – not because I’m actually a decent human being who can talk to a woman because that would mean, well, maybe it’s you, dude.

The funniest thing about that guy’s statement is that my oldest readers know that my fave thing to do while out and about was to see how many women I could get to buy me a drink in a night.

One night, I even got a girl to get guys to buy her a drink to give to me. That, my friends, is how you afford to go on a ton of dates without going broke.

No one ever dated me for my money.

Honestly, I’m not that good-looking, I’m old as dirt, I talk a lot with my hands, my back is just crap and the rest of my body isn’t far behind, I’m overly pedantic, etc.

And yet, I have zero problem meeting and dating women, probably because of two major reasons:

    1. When I was single, I put in the time. I got shot down, repeatedly. I most likely got turned down 2-3X more than I succeeded.
      • But when I failed (beyond her having a boyfriend), it was always my fault: I was too nervous, I was too forward, I was too hesitant, something.
        • That’s how you get better at anything – by not blaming someone or something else but by fixing the only thing you can control and change, yourself.
        • Do you remember when Alison rejected me? I accepted it and told her I hoped she’d reconsider…and then I immediately picked up three other women, two within the hour. It’s never the other person’s fault.
    2. The other reason? I respected the fact that women take a chance every time they went out on a date with me or anyone else.
      • That meant that when a woman did go on a date with me, I was always grateful they took a chance, and I rewarded them for taking that chance by being a decent human being and showing them a great time.

That’s it.

That’s the big secret, fellas:

Stop complaining, put in the time, and be a decent human being.

Being interesting and non-needy helps.

This singer named Craig David had a line in a song that I always told myself whenever I felt like whining: Instead of me feelin’ sorry for myself, gonna get me somethin’ tonight.

Because you can’t whine or anger your way into someone’s contact list.

Show someone a great first date, and they’ll come back for great second date.

You’d think this would be pretty easy.

You would, clearly, be mistaken.

Women have to go through thousands – thousands – of men to find one worth keeping around.

You gotta be worth keeping around to be worth keeping around, man.

Location: the gym, trying to survive against 20-somethings
Mood: annoyed and embarrassed
Music: it’s so late, yet, I’m so up for it (Spotify)
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Happy (?) New Year, 2026

A start is enough for now

Her: What are you thinking about?
Me: (sighing) 2015 into 2016 – ten years ago.

Another year’s passed.

When I was a kid, the new year was always filled with so much excitement and hope.

These days, it’s a lot less of that.

This was my room decades ago.

It’s pretty wild that it’s 2026.

I remember in 1999 how crazy it was that we were turning to a new century and millennium.

Over a quarter-of-a-century later, that seems like a distant memory.

In 2015, I had a pregnant wife I adored without end, both parents, a smoking hot career, and was in peak health.

And then, in a snap, it all turned to shit.

This was the view from Alison’s hospital room at midnight on 2015.12.31, exactly 10 years ago today. That was our wedding reception picture on the windowsill.

But I couldn’t even mourn all that I lost because I was suddenly legally, morally, and ethically responsible for another – tiny, helpless – human being for the first time in my life.

What happened the next few years was a lotta madness and haze that I’m still working through now.

On that New Year’s Eve between 2015 and 2016, I sat alone with my dying wife on the top floor of a hospital on the East River and had this exact view in the lounge area.

I remember how beautiful it all looked and, while terrified, still felt hopeful.

2016 into 2017, I felt a lot less hopeful.

In 2017, when I thought my life couldn’t get worse, it got so much worse.

And here I am in the start of 2026 with my son, who’s now old enough to be really interact with me, and Sara, who has been nothing but a gift since the moment I met her.

I struggle still with all of the darkness both in and surrounding me.

But I feel a bit more hopeful, now that I have the two of them as companions.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. And a start is enough for now.

Me: Happy new year!
Him: Happy new year, papa!

Location: an Indian restaurant, trying to warm up
Mood: hopeful(ish) and freezing
Music: Gotta find my way (Spotify)
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Travelogue: Taiwan 2025, pt 3 – Visiting my childhood summer home

A trip to my childhood

The next day, we had Taipei street food and coffee for brekkie.

25 years ago, the coffee in Taiwan was pretty meh, but it’s about on par with the rest of the world at this point.

Everyone absolutely loved the food I got and devoured it – forgot to take pics but it was essentially this type of dan bing.

Although I did take manage to take pics of a fruit that I ate like there was no tomorrow as a kid here, the wax apple.

If you ever find any, get it.

Crap, now I want more.

Afterward, we left the AirBnB we called home alla those days and took the bullet train – first time for all of us – from Taipei to my mom’s hometown, Hsinchu.

Trip was ridonk fast, less than 40 mins; used to take like 90 mins by car.

She booked a five-star hotel that was less than seven minutes walking distance from my aunt’s pad and my mom’s childhood home.

This caliber of hotel was not around when I was here last in 2000. Case-in-point, there was not only a bidet in our room, but literally, every bathroom in the hotel.

Son: (trying a bidet for the first time) Oh my god, this is the best!!

The blue garage was where I spent all my childhood summers; it was a garage my grandmother converted into a convenience store, and it’s back to a garage now.

Me: (looking out from the balcony) Holy cow, we’re so close. We can see my mom’s home from our room.
Her: I spent a lotta time planning this.
Me: Oh man, I love you!

See all the tall buildings? Zero of those were around when I was a kid.

Zero.

Below’s a pic I took of that exact area 25 years ago. No joke.

This picture was taken April 8th, 2000. If you look to the right, you’ll see zero tall buildings. That’s where my mom’s old home was. Nothing was there then. Oh, and that’s my aunt’s helmet in front; she picked me up on her scooter.

We immediately took a walk so I could see the old hometown.

Her: How do we cross the street without getting killed?
Me: Honestly, I have no idea. There were never this many cars around before. This is crazy.

The church that I played at as a kid was still there, which blew my mind.

It wasn’t this color when I was a kid. There weren’t as many cars here so we used to play in the lot. I used to climb up the side of that wall on the right.

Everyone was hungry so we took a walk and found a bao joint.

The buns were hot, fresh, and delicious.

The Uber Eats sign made me chuckle.

Of course, we stopped by a convenience store for some drinks and snacks.

Son: I’ve never seen this before.
Me: What?
Him: M&Ms…but as a chocolate bar.
Me: Crazy what you find in other countries, yeah? You gotta travel when you get older, kid. Who knows what you’ll see elsewhere?

We headed home afterward for the kids to crash.

There was a spa in the hotel that the Firecracker and I both took advantage of except I managed to slip in the whirlpool area and cut a one-inch gash on my left knee.

Her: How did you do that!?
Me: Well, first of all, I’ve had very little sleep…

But the staff there patched me up pretty quickly.

Later that night, my cousin picked us up to take us out to eat.

Him: We were so sorry to hear about your late wife and dad. We told your mom but didn’t want to bother you directly.
Me: I know. I get it. It was…it was my year of horror (可怕的一年). What can anyone say?

Met up with my aunt – my mom’s younger sister and his mom – at the restaurant. My cousin insisted on taking us all out to eat.

To a buffet of all places.

Firecracker: Oh man, does he know you or what?
Me: I think it was just an amazingly lucky guess.

This was my kid cousin. He’s now taller and bigger than me.

He’s got two kids of his own to boot – alla the kids got along like a house on fire, which was sweet.

We caught up for a while and then he drove us all back to our hotel, where we all crashed pretty hard.

But before that, we drove past our grandmother’s store/house.

Me: I shoulda come when she…she went away.
Him: Your mom came.
Me: Right. Still.
Him: It’s ok.
Me: I loved that old lady.
Him: Of course. We all did.
Me: Yeah. (nodding, looking away)

The next morning, we inhaled the brekkie buffet, where I ate my weight in dragonfruit.

Son: Papa, your tongue is bright red.
Me: Take a pic and lemme see.

We caught an Uber to a neighboring town where we saw a replica of a Hakka Tulou, something unique to my particular ethnic group.

That’s a full entry for another time as there’s too much to get into now.
Yet another thing that the Firecracker researched and set up for us.

Afterward, we caught an Uber back to Hsinchu, where we went to a mall and had some western food because the kids wanted a break from Asian food and so we could get some new clothes for the kids.

Spaghetti in Taiwan turned out to be a very bad idea.

We also brought them to a park to run around before heading back to the hotel.

For dinner, the Firecracker and I wanted some authentic local Taiwanese food from Hsinchu, which is the type of food I think of when I think of Taiwanese food, so my cousin brought me a great local joint.

The beer was really good – kinda sweet and not bitter at all.

Him: When our cousin K came by last time, we blew like $500 USD here.
Me: You’re kidding.
Him: Nope. Closed the place down.
Me: (nodding) We are related.

Something about the lunch we had didn’t sit right with the kid, so he sat alone and didn’t eat – so I knew he was def feeling off.

Like I said, spaghetti in Taiwan turned out to be a bad idea.

The Firecracker, her kid, and I absolutely demolished alla that food.

Afterward, we went to my cousin’s pad and hung out with his kids and my aunt for a while before heading back to the hotel.

It was a sobering thought but I thought that this might be the last time I ever see my aunt again.

Firecracker: Not necessarily. We can come back soon.
Me: Maybe. I’d like that, though. Maybe.

Location: my old gym, getting a plaque that says I have a million subs on SF
Mood: ecstatic
Music: Home is where my habits have a habitat (Spotify)
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Travelogue: Korea 2025 and Taiwan 2025 (kinda)

Welcome back, Mr. Lo.

It was still dark when we left our little pad in the UWS, our bellies fulla heart attack sammies.

With my awful back, I was dreading the 16-hour trip but my buddy Ricky suggested that I get this blow-up seat cushion and god did it help; it, plus using my jacket as a lumbar pillow helped tremendously.

I’ve not slept on a plane in 44 years.

Every time I get on one, I think: This time will be it.

I took one-and-a-half pills of Ambien, one pot gummy, two OTC sleep meds and…nuthin. Was awake for the entire 16 hours it took to get Korea.

In fact, I was awake since the morning the Firecracker and I got hitched: 45.5 hours in total.

So, I was feeling dull and vicious when we arrived but that too is a story for another day.

Her: You’re not making any sense!
Me: OK, that happens after 35 hours. (turning to my son) From now on, ignore what I say and listen to her. I’m not thinking straight.

The plane ride was, thankfully, uneventful.

Whenever I travel internationally, I try to have an extended layover; this time, it was in Korea.

I’d never been.

So, after the Firecracker navigated us out – because I was completely nonfunctional – we crashed overnight in a huge hotel room in the boonies where I finally got some sleep after 45.5 hours.

Some, being the operative word here.

Just a rando set of statues we saw in the Uber coming back to the airport.

Right before I left town, I dropped my old German tutor and buddy KG Betty a line and she said she would love to meet up.

So, bright and early on Saturday morning, she picked us up outside the Seoul station and brought us to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which the Firecracker was dying to see.

We just happened to make the changing of the guard.

The kids were only so interested.

Afterward, we went to try to get noodles at the knife-cut noodle lady’s stall at Gwangjang Market, Seoul from the Netflix series but it was – of course – closed that day.

It was still super cool, and packed for an early Saturday morning.

She brought us to a local joint where we had some authentic Korean food before she gave the Uber driver some clear directions to get us back to the airport in time to head to Taiwan to continue our journey.

But not before giving me a hug and a little gift because she knows me so well.

After the 16-hour flight from NYC to Seoul, the trip from Seoul to Taipei seemed like nuthin.

When we arrived in Taiwan, I walked out of the airport customs area in the Arrivals Hall – something I’d done a dozen times in my youth – I was just overwhelmed with emotions.

It was the smell and sight of the place that took me back to the very first time I’d arrived there as a little kid.

I had a memory – real or imagined, I’m not sure – of my grandmother and youngest uncle, rushing to give my mother a hug.

It felt real.

And there was a little part of me that kept thinking that maybe my grandmother might possibly show up, the fevered dream of sleep-deprived old man.

My son started asking me all of these inane questions and I barked at him.

Not my finest moment (I later apologized).

The Firecracker took him away and left me alone with my thoughts.

I literally stood there for the first time in 25 years and wept.

Thought of all those people I loved and lost and would never see again except in pictures and in my cloudy head.

And I have so many, from the memorable to the mundane, they all mattered to me in one way or another.

Like when my uncle brought me out a night market to have a sizzling plate of steak and the wonderment of all the game and clothes hawkers.

 

So many random memories came at me, one after another.

Everyone was quiet while we waited for our car to arrive and my son was the first to break the silence.

Papa. I’ve never seen you cry before.

It’s funny.

I cry all the time because that grief button’s always being hit.

Suppose I hid it well up until then.

It was just too much to take at that moment, I guess.

I was just slamming that goddamn button.

I couldn’t handle the cacophony in my head.

Too many old ghosts came rushing up to greet me all at once, but after a bit, I realized the car’d arrived, so we all piled in and were on our way.

The driver spoke to me in broken in English and I turned to him and all this Chinese started coming out, as if I were a fat 10-year-old kid again.

Chatted with him the whole ride to the AirBnb.

Me: (in Chinese) I’ve not been here in 25 years.
Cab driver: 25 years! Why so long?
Me: (thinking) Lots of things. Life. I don’t recognize this place anymore.
Him: (nodding) A lot’s changed in 25 years. This place was all empty 25 years ago. The city’s grown, the population’s shrunk.
Me: Shrunk? I would have thought the opposite.
Him: (shaking head) No. (laughs) People are getting married later. They don’t want to have kids.
Me: Yeah, it’s like that in a lotta places.
Him: (tells me more about Taipei and Taiwan in general, I translate for the Firecracker and the kids as best I can) Here we are, Mr. Lo. (exits the car and starts taking the luggage out) It’s NT$1650 but just give me NT$1,600.
Me: What? Why?
Him: It’s 25 years! Welcome back. (smiles, holds out his hand to shake mine) Welcome back, Mr. Lo.

Location: back in rainy NYC
Mood: crazy jetlagged
Music: Memories come rushing up to meet me now (Spotify)
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Categories
personal

The power to make anyone cluck like a chicken

A gun…made of cheese

I think that one of the reasons why it made sense for the Firecracker and me to get married was that we saw the world in the same way. When you find members of your tribe, it’s always nice to keep them close.

Mostly.

Her: If you had a minor superpower, what would that be?
Me: (thinking) If I could detect cancer, would that be major or minor?
Her: Obviously that’s a major superpower.
Me: Gotcha, ok then, that’s easy: I’d want to be able to make anyone cluck like a chicken at will to the volume and extent that I want.
Her: WHAT?! That’s ridiculous.
Me: Is it? Think about it. There are so many situations where it would be amazeballs.
Her: Name one.
Me: Where to begin?

Me: Imagine someone cuts you off, instead of road rage, he’s now clucking like a chicken in his car at the top of his lungs. Maybe he’s on a date, maybe he’s with his parents, maybe he’s with his boss. Guess what? He’s clucking like a chicken for the next hour or so.
Her: (laughs hysterically)
Me: Or imagine I get mugged. Instead of defending myself, dude is now SCREAMING like a chicken. He cannot stop and he doesn’t know why. Is he still really gonna be mugging me?
Her: (still laughing) Stop, stop, I can’t…

Me: Or if someone insults you. Guess what he’s gonna do for a month at the top of his lungs when he gets home? The list goes on.
Her: Ok, that’s a pretty good minor superpower, when you put it like that.

Me: OK, what about you?
Her: (takes a deep breath) Ok, ok…ok. Lemme think. Well, I suppose I’d want to be able to make anything cheese.
Me: Wait, what? Why cheese?
Her: (shrugs) I like cheese. Like, if I’m at the bank and I get hungry and I’m holding a pen. Instant cheese.

Me: What if you get mugged?
Her: With what? A knife? That’s cheese now. A gun? A gun…made of cheese. You know the best part?
Me: What?
Her: Never need to buy cheese again for the rest of our lives.
Me: (nodding, impressed) OK! I like it. Between my clucking power and your cheese power, we could take over the world. We’d be invincible!
Her: And moderately fat.

Location: Not NYC…
Mood: 45.5 hours sleep-deprived
Music: heroes, forever and ever (Spotify)
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Categories
personal

More than usual

I have problems

The rain from Hurricane Melissa was pretty bad here in the city but I was stuck in a doctor’s office being told that the only option for my back was another shot before surgery.

As soon as I was done, rushed back – “rushed” being a loose term because the city was really moving at a snail’s pace – but oddly, the pad was bone dry.

It was really weird.

With the amount of water that came down here, the entire unit shoulda seen some serious water damage and yet…not.

Welp, not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth and take my wins where I find them.

Me: I’m still hungry.
Her: You just ate like 40 pieces of sushi. How is that possible?
Me: (shrugging) I have a big brain.
Her: (laughing) The brain doesn’t use that much energy.
Me: The average brain weighs 2% of the body’s mass but uses 20% of the body’s calories. (thinking) I gotta think I’m at least 21%.

Been on a diet again, but not for Scenic Fights, actually. Got a new little project I’ll tell you about once it’s closer to done.

But it’s been a struggle just because I can’t seem to get full for some reason worse than usual for some reason.

A buddy of mine suggested that I’m hungrier than my usual ridic level of hunger because I’ve been working out a bit more with my physical therapy.

But it seems such a tiny additional burden to me that it can’t possibly justify the amount of food I’m taking in.

In any case, my goals are super modest – like five pounds or so just to look better in a suit for something.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Me: OMG, look at those sammies!
Her: Logan…we just ate.
Me: I know, I know, I know…I have problems…

Location: all over NJ, Manhattan, and Queens today
Mood: pooped
Music: we all have a hunger (Spotify)
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