leftenglishinnewyork.com

Playing Pool Near Omaha, Nebraska

A complete cross-section of the American population can be found in pool rooms. My local hall, Eastside Billiards, had a plaque which stated “Pool and Sex: two things you don’t have to be good at to enjoy.” True. Any of our regulars would agree. They included a divorce judge, an opera singer, a plumber, teachers, immigrants, lawyers, CEOs, artists, construction workers, and my favorite, J.V., a computer analyst from Nebraska. He once invented a data encryption method that he sent to the FBI, and his uncle was a “cleaner” for the Hells Angels. “Let’s just say he carries a wood-chipper around in his truck,” J.V. told me, “and he don’t know much about tree surgery.”

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The Stereotypical Boss

I just got fired. It’s not the economy—after all, this was the third time I was fired from the same job. But it was probably deserved.

To begin with, the job was beyond me. Starting off behind the bar at Eastside Billiards I had the honor of being able to call myself “the worst bartender in Manhattan.” Until the day I left I still never learned what goes into a cosmo or a martini. My customers couldn’t complain, as any time they asked for a cocktail I couldn’t handle I’d glance at a cheat sheet and give them a heavy pour.

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No Candidate Left Behind

Barack Obama was not the only African American running for president in the 2008 elections. But few knew of Cynthia McKinney, Georgia’s first African-American Congresswoman and this year’s Green Party Candidate.

In a plurality-takes-all political climate, little knowledge of the third-party candidates is understandable. Many believe that voting for a third party is a waste of your vote, for they will never get elected. In 2000 Ralph Nader allegedly spoiled the Democrats’ chances by taking many of his 2.9 million votes from people who would otherwise have supported Al Gore. In Florida, with a mere 537 votes separating the Republicans and Democrats, this could have been decisive. George Bush got in because of Nader! In 2004, Michael Moore got down on his knees on national television and begged Nader not to run. The sentiment was clear; running against the Democrats in swing states is immoral.

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Monsters in our Midst

- This was the title of an essay I had been set for class, which reminded me of the first time I went out for a drink with my soon-to-be girlfriend (and now ex-girlfriend), AK. The boss, JWS, was also along, trying to get lucky.

Monsters in our Midst

We’ll get underway at a locals’ bar on the Upper-East Side, a dark room with an open front, an ill-used jukebox, and three of us—AK (the new bartender), JWS (my boss, who you already know) and myself—nestled around a small, circular table. On it lie our beers in various states of repose; mine worriedly contemplating its end; AK’s enjoying enthusiastic attention; and JWS’s replete with an obnoxious calm after several dull, untouched minutes, its owner too busy to sip as he talks, and talks, and talks…about himself.

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To the Staff of the Basin Harbor Club

Dear Staff of the Basin Harbor Club,
I am writing this from the edge of the long concrete pier next to the harbor office, last night’s shirt rippling in the breeze, the morning sun just about to break a little warmth through the fog over the lake.

Over the last day or so I’ve been wondering how I could sum up the service in this hotel for my friends. Possessing neither the clarity nor brevity in my current state to narrow this experience to just a few words, I will instead write a letter of humble thanks to you, the staff, for the amazing services you have provided. Names are omitted here, not only because your bosses need not know what credit is due where, but also because I’ll surely forget some of the many names of those to whom I owe this great thanks.

The fine array of amenities this hotel offers still pales in comparison with the approachability of the Basin Harbor staff. To the maid that I woke up next to on my first morning, I must say your enthusiastic customer service certainly distracts one from your lack of professionalism. However, I do worry that regardless of how attentive you may be to your customers, you should strive to make sure that the sheets will be cleaner once you have finished your tasks, rather than unusable. It was quite uncomfortable to only realize the importance of staff cleanliness once I had already sat down for breakfast with four generations of my family. Of course, it was also quite a surprise to have had you at hand in the first place.

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Dear boss, please don’t:

Dear future bosses,
from my experience, this information should help you along. Please, don’t

1. a) Take coke with one of your staff. b) Also, don’t buy coke off her boyfriend in the toilets. More importantly, if you are going to take steps a and b, do not fire her because she is taking coke or because her boyfriend is selling coke in the toilets. Check first: are you the only person who has bought coke off her boyfriend in the toilets?

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James of Madison Avenue

-About the homeless guy who lives on my block

Sitting on the steps between a pastry shop and a nail salon, James seems to have little to do with the Upper East Side. It’s his 49th birthday, and although his appearance—grey mixed with the black on his head, weathering of the face, sunken eyes—shows his age, his quick movements and endless energy suggest he’s younger. His eyes dart back and forth, picking out people as they pass, never missing anything. They, too, call to him by his first name, smiling, and often slip him a dollar. He speaks in short, sharp sentences, every now and again pushing longer ones indecipherably through the gaps of his six-toothed gums.

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Is There any Excuse for TV News?

- Written after watching a segment about soldier risk in Iraq

“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” ––Henry David Thoreau

History of our demise:
The telegraph gave us context-free information; information about which we knew nothing of before, and which came in the form of headlines we could understand little of, for they offered no depth. The value of information no longer needed to be tied to social function, but instead became attached to curiosity, novelty, and interest.

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Hallalelujia

Halallelujah

One busy corner, a shiny metal cart, and the best Halal food in the city.
With an estimated 10,000 of them spewing out the smell of burning chicken and day-old hotdogs, you might be forgiven for thinking New York’s street vendors are all the same. Also, with a plethora of warm and cozy restaurants to choose from, streets swarming with “can’t you see I’m walking here?” civilians, and an official 172 violent crimes a day, why risk a meal outdoors in this city? The answer, from 11:30 a.m. until 4 a.m., is on the corner of 53rd and 6th.

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Feudian Froo Froo

- I wrote this on the 24th December, 2007, while coming down with a fever. Completely inspired by Frederick Crews’ book The Follies of the Wise, this book seemed to prove to me that all this bullshit I’d been learning in my literature classes, although it may, in the end, be correct, has no evidence to back it up, and was the fancy or a crazed, coked-up…you’ll have to read it yourself. For me, here are the best bits:

Dear all,
The idea that Freud’s theories are proven by the extent to which we find them in literature is wrong; he stole many of his theories (repression, the super-ego, guilt feelings, the paternal image, the maternal image, and so on and so forth) from literary giants of his time and before. Nietzsche, for example, pre-empted Freud in that all actions and intellectual choices are egoistic, that we remain unconscious of the motives of our actions, that forgetting is an active step taken to preserve psychic order, that dreams use symbols to express our primeval selves, that comedy results from a sudden release of anxiety and that laughter entails being malicious with a good conscience.

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French Toilets

These were not designed with user interface in mind. Had they been invented after the turn of the nineteenth century, their creator would have been institutionalized for not realizing the gravity of his failure. To begin with, J, upon seeing her first French toilet, shrugged and said “like India.”

Whoever says that the French nation is chic has never gone to take a dump there. Imagine all those beautiful, graceful, immaculately dressed, heartless French women, cigarette in hand, red lipstick on the butt, smoke spinning up into the ceiling fan above, squatting over a hole in the ground to do a shit.

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A Note on US cults

“75 million years ago there was an evil galactic leader called Xenu, who controlled seven planets in our sector. Each one was overpopulated by about 178 billion people, which worried Xenu, so he decided to solve the problem by calling everyone in for income tax inspections, injecting them all with glycol and alcohol to knock them out, put them in DC8 planes with rocket motors, and shipped them to Earth, which back then was called Teegeeack, where they were stacked around the bases of volcanoes. These volcanoes were then detonated by H-bombs, releasing everybody’s souls (called a “thetan” in this story), which were then sucked up by giant electronic traps. They were packaged and sent to a large cinema, where they were shown 3D motion pictures that implanted a false idea about life, including things like the devil, god, heaven and hell…that sort of thing. These souls were then released back into the world, where they roamed aimlessly for years, until the first humans provided them with bodies to inhabit, which they clung to. Xenu, thankfully, was eventually captured by the good forces in the universe, and put in a mountain on one of the planets, where he is trapped by a force-field powered by an eternal battery.”

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Travelogue From Portugal

- found this, writing about what I had written on my last night in Portugal.

To place you where I am now, writing this, it is facing a white, papered hotel wall covered in faint zigzags. It is stained, with evidence of smoke, dust, shoe scrapes, and next to the table upon which my computer rests, slight chipping. Next to the computer lies Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, my wallet, my hotel room key. This is on top of a horrible red, blue, yellow, purple and orange striped and flowered tablecloth barely large enough to cover the table itself.

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Going to a Crack Den With Bongo

I’ve tried to write this story many times, and it never seems to work. It sounds so stupid on paper. We were about fourteen. My friend and I went to go and get some fish and chips at my local chippy, and while waiting for the food to fry we met a guy outside, a dealer. He was an old guy, Eastern European, huge, thick glasses over his eyes, a walking stick, gold rings, a large brown coat. He wanted to sell us something and we agreed. First he said he had it on him, then that we should go just around the corner, and then that we should follow him. He called himself “Maagu.”

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Girls Carrying Condoms, Smart or Slutty?

- For Consider Magazine, Michigan, Spring 2009

When I used to go out on the prowl, I’d put one elbow on the bar, heave my chest up, and then try to enact the pose of Michelangelo’s David. But as I’ve aged, I’ve been forced to be more precise. Now, instead of going for everything in heels, I try to figure out, “Does it look like she’s carrying a condom?”

Okay, that’s a joke. But there are male-centric words for that kind of behavior: “womanizer,” “letch,” or “Italian,” for example. Still, “Girls carrying condoms, smart or slutty?” is a regrettable choice of words. It is loaded with connotations from a time when patriarchal, misogynistic language and chauvinistic rationale went unquestioned. However, given this conceptual landscape, I would have to argue that carrying condoms meets the definition of “slutty.”

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Letter to Ralph Nader

- written on Monday, November 10, 2008

Dear Mr Nader,

I am an undergraduate at The New School in New York. I’m old enough to remember the reasons why my mother voted for you in 2000 and voted for you myself in 2004, but realized that by the time the 2008 elections came about, although I have been keeping up on the elections, I didn’t know much about your race.

On Election Day I interviewed 100 people at six different voting booths, all over Manhattan, to see what NYC’s educated elite knew about the election alternatives. I asked them questions just as they left from voting. Ten thought you might have been on the list. Three of those knew what party you were standing for. One had voted for you, but his vote was a protest vote against McCain and Obama. I did not meet a single person who could tell me something positive about you, even though (almost) everyone I know shares your beliefs.

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Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog

- My first article for Our Town

“Darwin!” shouted his owner, Alicia Bralove, as for the fifth time in five minutes her 15” beagle tried to hump my leg. For a champion show dog, Darwin seemed to pay little attention to his name, continuing until physically removed. “He’s disciplined by his trainer,” Bralove apologized, “but when I see him I just melt.”

Almost one year ago Beagle-Mania swept the nation after another hound, Uno, became the first beagle to be crowned winner of the renowned Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in front of a capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden.

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Richard E. Newman, Perfecting the art of Restoration

- Republished without the permission of Our Town

EAST SIDER RICHARD NEWMAN CREATES A NEW LIFE FOR DAMAGED RUGS, ONE KNOT AT A TIME

Hidden away in a small Upper East Side apartment, every inch of which is covered by some aspect of his work, is one of the world’s leading rug restorers, Richard E. Newman. Collectors from all over the world have been bringing rugs to him for hand washing and restoration since 1979.

To attain a 16th-century look using modern wool is no small feat.

“Although some people might argue with this,” he said, “there are probably less than five people in the world who can do what I do.”

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New York on a Bike

I’ve ridden my bike along the Grand Union canal, through England and Wales, on the London to Brighton bike ride and from Calais to Genoa, but a 9 ½ hour bike ride with a friend in New York was more incisive than all of those put together.

I live on the Upper East Side, an area with more near-dead old ladies and cobwebs than any other area of Manhattan. There are a lot of clothes shops (for example, the shop on the corner sells extremely fashionable maternity dresses), high-priced delis, art and antiques shops, picture framers, restaurants, cafés and bars, but no place to buy an affordable drink. Old people, rich people, beggars, rich kids, pampered puppies, Mexican delivery boys… you get the idea.

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Playing John Smith

After thanksgiving theater, a.k.a. a family event, I went to play pool. At about 1:30am an “open” player, one who likes to drink and gamble at the same time, asked me for a game. For those who don’t know, his rank puts him about four or five levels above me. I told him I only wanted to play for $20 and he said he wouldn’t play for less than $100 a set. We settled at $75. I found a “backer” who put up $50 on my $25, so we had enough for one set. He gave me a poor handicap (2 games in a race to seven), well below what I would usually expect — perhaps 4 in a race to 9. I was not expected to win.

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