Blaiser's Live-Blogging Event Of The Season!!

5:15 AND WE'RE LIVE!!!! 

Phew - things were getting desperate there for a sec -- thought I might have to mug someone for their wireless access (you can do that, right? body check a Hipster for his iProduct, and while he's groping on the sidewalk for the flip-flops you just knocked off of him--like a blind guy searching for a dropped blind-guy poking-stick-antenna-thingy--and "hack" some serious "bandwidth?" I mean what's the guy gonna do, chase you? Not in those flip-flops, assuming he even retrieves them…. I don't know what, in fact, he can do while wearing flip-flops on a surface other than sand, except perhaps look ineffectual....

Fortunately, no violence was resorted to,* and here I sit, reclined in my driver's seat, coffee secured in coffee-cup-holder thingy, bravely scamming Internet access from some router nearby that calls itself by the Unusually Intriguing Name of "Delores Netgear." Well, Ms. Netgear, you really ought to be more careful about your hardware - you never know when some douchebag✝ is going to randomly drive by in a station wagon and muscle in all up in your digital business. Don't mess with me, I've laid claim to an illegal parking spot in New York. I'm a baaaaaad man (please read with Muhammad-Ali-like inflection)

And now, please pull up a "chair," and prepare to be enthralled as I live-blog the incredibly daring act of sitting in my station wagon on West 56th street for 45 minutes while I wait for my parking to become legal at 6 o'clock!!! It's GUARANTEED to be the meh-ta live-blog Event Of The Season: the ACTUAL experience of sitting in a station wagon in Midtown, ever vigilant for the appearance of the evilest arm of oppression known to man (outside of the Syrian government): The NYC Meter Maid….

5:20 -- Double Phew!™  

It took so long to write that opening post that I burned through 5 minutes. If I were a smart Meter Maid, I'd time a stealth assault on 56th street at, like, now. There are a whole bunch of cars sitting here, illegally, in broad daylight. The city'd clean up, and then the police wouldn't have had to confiscate the generators from Occupy Wall Street in order to power their flat-screens during long stake-outs.

5:25 -- 

Still recovering from the first update...

5:26 --  

I need to pee.

5:30 -- 

Finally taking a good look around. When I look in my side-view mirrors, I'll be able to see Meter Maids sneaking up from either side of the car. Hopefully, I'd catch her writing a ticket on the guy behind me:

a new, black Toyota, and I'd have time to A) engage the Stealth settings on my gunmetal grey Taurus, or execute the 9-point turn necessary to extract myself from this parking spot 

5:34  -- 

Wow, I think maybe 1/32 of an inch, although not touching, isn't exactly neighborly posturing to that Mazda 3. 

Although I will tell you I made it into this spot on the first try. I rule. Still, an adjustment may be necessary. One needs those options in life. A meh-ta-phorical Fordian rolling back of an inch, or so, speaks Volumes about who I am, what my Personal Code is, and why I don't wear flip-flops. Skye Masterson wouldn't be caught dead in them, and that's good enough for me.

5:34:30  -- 

Yeah, that's much better:

5:38 --

 I really need to pee...

5:38:43 -- 

I know what you're thinking: You're thinking, "Hey Blaiser… what if the Meter Maid catches up to you as you're making your 9-point escape? With rush-hour traffic, you'll be a dead duck, and while you're waiting for the light to turn on 8th Avenue, WHAMMO! You get nailed. She's not wearing flip-flops!" Well, calm down, Everyone -- I have a backup. If the light's red, I simply peel out and sprint through the adjacent underground parking lot--the entrance through which I can see the clear daylight of 57th Street. Here, let me "uplink' a digital facsimile of what I'm seeing so that you, the faithful Blaiserblogudilian can "see" what I mean. 

Only one possible downside -- when a grouse flushes near the house where I grew up, something similar happens, but occasionally with deadly results: the grouse peels out very much like an '03 Taurus, flies toward the house, looks through the front door window--through the kitchen--sees daylight (and subsequent woods through the kitchen window {just like I'm seeing the warm glow of 57th Street} and thinks he's home-free, just before smashing into the reinforced front-door window at about 40 knots, thereby breaking every bone in his body, and landing in a heap on the porch, like an appetizer dropped from the heavens.** Seriously, we ate a grouse who met that exact end on my dad's birthday once. Think there's no God? Think again.

5:43 --

OK, a dwarf (forgive the nomenclature -- is this acceptable? Small Person with Different Proportions?) just stumped up, on forearm crutches, and got into the Mazda 3. That was upsetting. The space was immediately taken up by a Porsche Boxster. Dude better not hit my '03 Taurus Wagon.

5:45 

They just switched the lights on the perimeter of a striking high-rise built over the Deco building of a particular publishing company where I used to work. 

5:46 --

Porsche Guy can't parallel park to save his life. He's having trouble in a two-seater with a space roughly the size of Weehawken. I suspect flip-flops.

5:50 

AND he's got a vanity plate. Awesome.

Vanity Plate intentionally blurred for Boxster Guy's Protection...
5:50:25 

Maybe I should pee on the Boxster.

5:52 

OK, if a dwarf gets out of the Boxster, I'm totally peeing on something, dammit.

5:53 

Two white, puffy lapdogs have snuck up, on leashes, on my passenger side. I can hear them, but can't determine what they're doing because they're too close for the side-view now. There's a gaggle of kids with them, and they're laughing (the kids, not the dogs.) I have a sinking feeling the dogs are peeing on my Taurus. Or hitching me to a tiny tow-truck.

5:55 

No Meter Maid sightings at all. How much money is the City losing by allowing all this lawless parking on West 56th Street? I may have to A) write a letter 2) stop driving in protest. That'll show 'em.

5:56 

Am I the only douchebag sitting in his car in case of unlikely Meter Maid Materialization? I'd get out to look, but then I'd get NAILED for sure. Less than five minutes now….. I need to be strong. My bladder needs to be especially strong.

5:57 

Well, there's the douchebag in the vanity-plated Boxster…

5:58 

A hansom cab passes slowly, the horse patiently clip-clopping down the Left Lane. He could pee any time he wants--not even stopping if he didn't want to. Strangely, he doesn't.

5:59 

Almost there……. almost theeeeeeerrrrre…… !

6:00 

Huzzah! My hands are sweating, but I have not 1) been ticketed by a Meter Maid or B) peed in or near my Taurus. At the stroke of 6, an elderly gent in business clothes got out of the Boxster and wandered down the South Side of the Street. Rich Guy. Total douchebag. I gotta find a bathroom. I'm betting, also, the Meter Maids were on a pee break. 

* Please feel free to nominate this for the 2011 Pro-Am Bloggers' Association Worst-Opening-Phrase Award.

✝ It's important to note that liberal use of the word "douchebag" does not, in fact, violate my blogistic raison-d'etre of so-called Zany Optimism™. It merely means I live in Jersey.

** In this meh-ta-phor, I'm not sure what the parking-garage equivalent of the front-door window is. Hopefully not a nun pushing a baby carriage on her way to volunteer at the soup kitchen.

6:01

Thanks for reading, and please remember: one should always make unexplained allusions to "stealth" settings on their beat-up Fords. It not only helps to expose the patent absurdity of the whole flip-flop miasma, but also reinforces the coolness of Spock Ears, which I'm totally wearing right now. 'Cause chicks dig that.

I'm so sorry, Uncle Barbara.....

Or, why Barbara Ehrenreich and Dick Cheney ought to go out to lunch together. In France.

After dropping off the progeny at school this bright, cold, Brave New Morn, I walked to the village center to do some marketing. My cleaning supplies needed replenishing, I had money to deposit in the bank, and there was bakery danish with my name engraved on its top, in sweet, lacy white icing.

It occured to me, on the bracing walk back home, that Mondays in January ought to represent the ne plus ultra of fresh starts and renewals. I don't want to take a Polyannish position that ALL things are, in fact, possible (cue monkies to fly out of my nether orafice), but that MANY things, or at base, SOME things are surely possible, and that's a lot for many people. I'm not talking about most Americans, if you will. Rather those of us on the planet who are truly challenged--folks who may worry what kind of roof will be over their heads tonight, where their next meal is coming from, why their soccer team was blown away on the way to the stadium. And especially not anyone still driving a Hummer. Unless they're driving it in North Florida, which I encourage as much as possible to globally raise the temperatures there in time for my visit there in two weeks...

So. I was upbeat--to be sure. That's what I do: Zany OptimismCTM, and welcome to it. After cheerfully scrubbing dishes and tidying up, I turned on the radio and heard the surprising news that one of the most war-torn areas on Earth was down with that, too: Seems a lot more people in Afghanistan think that things can and will get better. Afghanistan.  You'll remember it as the land of you-can't-win-here and If-it's-a-new-decade-you-must-be-the-next-major-power-to-invade-us....

But the next story on the radio was that Barbara Ehreneich wants me to feel bad. Or rather, that the power of positive thinking is, essentially, a dumb thing for Americans to do. Well. Full Disclosure: I have not read her book yet, but for now, I'm calling Bull Puckey, based on her interview on the BBC this morning and her irresponsible position on Optimism:

On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster..

Now, look. I realize this quote is somewhat out of context. Moreover,  I think I have a handle on what she's really railing against: delusion; megachurches; a breakdown in reason and logic. That's all well and good, but in the damaging sound-bite interview I heard this morning, the message was overwhelmingly "Don't be so damn positive." Cow Pies, I say.

Greed and stupidity certainly contributed to the various late 20th-Century economic bubbles--i.e. many folks took no responsibility for their own mortgages and allowed less-than-savory--ok scummy--real estate brokers and bankers to mesmerize them with the promise of short-term financial alchemy. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's moving more product than I this fall? Don't blame it on my smiley-face, however. Or my neighbors'. Blame it on the disintegration of American education, perhaps, but not on a sunny disposition, a precious commodity in the general moral morass of Planet Earth these days.

Barbara, I'm sorry you got breast cancer,* and I'm sorry you didn't like the pink-ribbon festooned support network you found on the Internet. (And who wants you to embrace your cancer as a gift? That's just dumb.) You've lost the whole point of life-changing events. It's a changed perspective that one embraces, not the burden of disease. It's an ability to maintain perspective that allows us to find the clichéed silver lining, and re-discover the beauty, say, of a freshy cut perrywinkle-blue iris.**

Barring suicide, we don't choose the manner of our deaths. This is thin ice for me, and my cancer friends can surely chip in, but perhaps part of what's going on for long-time chronic and fatal disease-sufferers is that they simply have much longer to contemplate their own demise, or see it only through the filter of sickness. I don't know, but what I do know is that this media campaign rubs me the wrong way.  Again again again, I have homework to do, but you know what? My instinct tells me there are equal parts self-promotion and bitterness in this book. That's why Barbara and Dick ought to have lunch together. In France.

I'll wager that for every bummer story you throw at me, I'll come back with a positive one. There's parity in this human life. Which side do you choose to be on? Is it a value to society to teach our children that the class is half-full? For we all die. This is perhaps the root tragedy. There are wonderful things in life and we don't get to carry on indefinitely. Sucks to be us, yeah, I know. I'm with you on the inanity of bringing motivational speakers in to pep up the academic community,  but don't you make me feel bad on this beautiful Monday morning.

Thank you, the management here at Blaiserblog.com

* Contrary to pessimistic readings, this is sincere. I do not minimize anyone's health issues. That would be mean.

** $4.99 at Trader Joe's. You should check it out. But stay away from their ecologically-correct cedarwod & sage multi-spray... it smells like a half-pack of cigarettes left overnight in a can of Old Milwaukee...