Innocent Bystander

Friday Foto #195...

New York state of mind...Top of the Rock at sunset.

Friday Foto #194...

New York state of mind...Top of the Rock at dusk.

Walk with me...

I'm still walking, although I've fallen a bit out of step (ouch...too early in the post for a pun like that) during the month of September. I'm trying to get into a new three-times-a-week schedule (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday), with Sunday being the long walk and Tues. and Thurs. being shorter ones. My goal is still not so mileage as time spent walking: I like to stay out at least two hours each time I go (three on Sundays). I've taken to walking later in the day, preferably 3:00-4:00 to start and back home by 6:00 or so. The daylight is really starting to dwindle out here by 7:00 and in another month daylight savings will kick in and it'll be dark around 6:00. Not that winter is an issue. If anything, the walking weather will be more comfortable.

I still have my set walks, but I've added a new one. I call it the "Goldfinch Variation." It involves about a six and 3/4 mile walk up through Hillcrest and down through Mission Hills to Little Italy, with a dog-leg over by the airport and then down the Embarcadero. That was my long walk this past Sunday. On Tuesday, I reversed that walk and ended up going around the Padres stadium, north on the Embarcadero to the airport entrance and back home through Little Italy (skipping the long hike up the hill to Hillcrest...I guess that's why they call it that, huh?). That was 4.25 miles.

Walking really clears my head and cheers me up. I still have my days of self-loathing (Tuesday was one of them) and a walk really helped. I know I'll never escape those days, but I'm thankful the walking thing has worked out for me and helped me not only to lose weight and get healthier, but also helps my mental well-being. I'm going to San Francisco next week for work and a little R&R, so I hope to get a bit more walking in up there. It's such a beautiful city to walk in.

But then again, I already live in a beautiful city to walk in...

Facebook's New Friends Categories Fall Way Short of Being Complete...

Facebook, the ubiquitous online friends site, recently introduced some new features, chief among them some added categories for friends. Now you can mark a Facebook friend as a "close friend" or an "acquaintance," and better control how their info appears on your page.

But really, Facebook, why stop with just those two? It's like skipping from a small to a large with no interim step. I have acquaintances, friends, and close friends, and usually ne'er the twain shall meet. Why not add a few more categories, thus making us anal-retentive organizers much more satisfied?

Let's start with the "medium" step of adding a just Friends category, people who are something more than just an acquaintance, but not the person you're going to tell all about the horrible and demoralizing date you had last Monday night. And while you're there, let's add the following:

People I've Never Met in Person, But Who Friended Me on Facebook. C'mon, we all have them. They're friends of friends who you added because it seemed like a good idea at the time, until they ask you for Comic-Con tickets two days before the show.

People I'm Friends With Only Because I Work With Them and It's Politically Expedient. You've done this. You know you have.

People Who Are Friends With Me Because They Think It's Politically Expedient. When this category grossly outnumbers the above category, it's time to come up with a new Facebook Friends strategy.

People I Used to Date and I'm Spying On So I Can Curse Their Newfound Happiness with Someone Else Who Is Obviously Inferior* to Me in Every Way. *That asterisk really means "superior." This category is only for masochists. Join the club.

Musicians, Stars, Authors, and Media Types Who Have No Real Presence on Facebook Unless A Lowly Assistant is Manning the Keyboard for Them, But It Looks Cool When They Appear in My Friends List in the Sidebar. I heart Avril Lavigne, but why doesn't JLo return my messages?

People Who Knew Me in High School But Never Spoke to Me Back Then. NOW you decide you want to be friends?

People Who I Just Couldn't Say No To, But Will Someday Just Go in and Quitely Eliminate. And derive great satisfaction from doing so.

Who Are You Again? Seriously. Why did I friend you or accept your friend request?

Friends With Benefits. This has nothing to do with Anthem/Blue Cross or ObamaCare.

Facebook, if you can add these categories to please the completist in me, I will heart you forever and never unfriend you.

Shelf life...

I spent most of this past weekend doing a "home improvement" project that involved bookshelves. My main set of bookshelves have been slowly dying over the past couple of years, victims of an over-zealous book collector who kept loading them down with heavy books and other paraphernalia. (That would be ME.) One day last week I woke up to a top shelf at an extreme downward angle, with the books perilously close to sliding off, which, I imagined, would have a domino effect with the shelves below. It was time.

I've had these shelves for almost 28 years. I bought them when I moved upstairs in my Academy Ave. apartment in Mt. Lebanon, PA, back near Pittsburgh. That was 1984. They made the trip west with me in '98 (yes, via covered wagon, smart-ass), but at some point--when I downsized into a smaller apartment in my current building--I got rid of two of them, so I was down to four from six. Those four bore the brunt of my book collection for the past 10 years or so.

Say what you will about city living, but all you have to do--most times--is stick something outside your door and put a FREE! sign on it and it'll disappear pretty quick. I became the gift that kept on giving for a few nights as, one-by-one, I placed my old shelves outside in the hall, and--abra cadabra!--they disappeared. I trust they found a good home.

So on Friday I ventured out to the magical land of IKEA (thank god I didn't run into that Salander bitch) and bought six new big bookshelves and here is where life got at least a little interesting (you were praying for that to happen while reading this, weren't you, dear reader?). IKEA delivers for a fee and it was totally worth it this time out, since the shelves were way too big to fit into my car. Best of all, I bought them at 1:00pm and they were at my door at 5:00pm delivering them. And that's when I started building.

All five shelves built. Now comes the hard part...putting all the damn books back on 'em!

But disaster struck with shelf #5...when I opened the box, one of the side-pieces had a huge crack in it. My friend Kimberly--who I was having lunch with that day--gallantly stepped up to the plate and helped me load the heavy MF of a box in her SUV (that's my favorite Law & Order show, by the way) and we took it back, and lo and behold, here's where fate lent a hand and the story gets its semi-happy ending: I underestimated the size--and monolithic effect--of the shelves while at IKEA (plus the amount of shelf-space I actually needed for books). So having one out of the six bookshelves turn out to be damaged was actually a small kindness bestowed on me by the book gods.

So, four days later--and three more trips to IKEA (I gotta buy stock in that store)--I'm pretty much done. The total effect actually makes the apartment seem bigger to me (I thought the opposite would be true), I think because of the long stretch of uninterrupted shelf space now. I have some room to grow. I also invested in a new bedside shelf unit and a new table lamp. All in all, I came in under budget, too, so I think it's high time I get one of them TV shows on HG or some such cable netlet.

The bottom line? Besides keeping me off the streets and away from drugs and hookers (my normal weekend pasttimes), you mean? It's just another small (well, not so small, I guess) home improvement that makes me like the place more and more. Here's what it looks like in its finished form:

I still have a little tweaking to do (no, that's not a drug reference), but I'm pretty happy with it. And you know me...happy is my middle f*cking name.

Friday Foto #193...

New York state of mind...in Central Park.

Random thoughts in a less than random world...

I hate writing about not writing, but I have not been writing lately mainly because of work-related...well, work. I was away for most of last week at a retreat, and working the rest of the time on another publication for an upcoming show. Things are slowly coming back to normal, but I head out the door again in 2 weeks for said show and will be gone for another week.

I'm not complaining, just elucidating for my regular readers' (both of you) benefit. Except for glancing at a bookshelf yesterday morning and noticing that the top shelf was at a dangerously steep angle, pointing to the floor, I have been pretty much consumed with work. (No books were lost, but I'm definitely considering new bookshelves...the ones I have are old enough to be done with college and living in my basement, sponging off me.)

Still, the outside world does intrude every once in a while and make me want to write--or at least comment--on some things. Like the CEO of Starbucks, who on The CBS Evening News tonight, sounded like he should be running the damn country:

"Howard Schultz is CEO of Starbucks, a Fortune 500 company with 200,000 employees worldwide. More than half of them are in this country. Thirty-six thousand were hired this year alone. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley reports Schultz has challenged other CEOs to step up their hiring, and to join him in withholding campaign contributions to Washington incumbents. Schultz says that instead of giving campaign contributions to politicians, his fellow CEOs should use the money to create more jobs." (You can see the whole story here). This guy sells coffee for a living. Go figure.

I'm all for cutting off the gravy train to every politician, from crybaby John Boehner to Mary Tyler Pelosi, from Harry "Mr. Wilson" Reid to smarmy Eric Cantor. It's refreshing to hear someone "big" say this, and in a big forum (although if you watch any network news program, it seems like the commercials are targeted to people only over the age of 50. WELL over the age of 50. Like 103 or so.) Mr. Schulz lays all the problems in this country--unemployment, lack of consumer confidence and spending, the debt ceiling--squarely on the dysfunctional government that is in office right now. And if anyone out there thinks we need another Republican governor from Texas to run the nation...been there, done that, look how that worked out for us. And don't get me started on the candidate from Minnesota with the 1,000-yard stare. She's as creepy as the guy who killed John Lennon.

Beyond that, the only thing that caught my eye--or ear, as it was--this week, was a local DJ (do they still call them that, or does "DJ" now automatically mean someone who plays music at a club and not on that dying thing known as "radio?") on Sophie 103.7 in the afternoon slot commenting on a special 9/11 version of a song by Adele that was "killer." Seriously? A reference to 9/11 and "killer" in the same sentence.

I think it's time to kill the DJ.

Friday Foto #192...

New York state of mind...in Central Park.

On Comics: DC's The New 52...

DC Comics has taken the extraordinary step of restarting their entire line of comic books, 52 issues all beginning with #1. Even the venerable Detective Comics, which started in 1935 with #1, has a new #1.

When DC first announced this publishing initiative a few months ago, I--as a comics fan, NOT as someone who works in the comics industry--was skeptical to say the least. All publishers have restarted their "universes" from time to time. Marvel seems to do it every other week with their Ultimate Universe, a sidebar line of comics which was created to lure in new readers when the heavy weight of the regular Marvel Universe got too much for non-followers to even attempt to fathom.

DC has gotten that way in recent years, too, with one Crisis after another. The very first Crisis storyline occured in Justice League of America #s 21 and 22, way back in the sixties, when editor Julius Schwartz--along with writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky--introduced the Earth 1 (then present day) superheroes to their Golden Age counterparts over on Earth 2 (Flash meet Flash! Green Lantern meet Green Lantern!). That was mind-blowing enough for a 7-year-old like me. But over the years, all this continuity--augmented by retro-continuity (that never happened, THIS did)--got so weighty, so burdensome, that it seemed like the entire line of comics would collapse under its own weight. And shouldn't the joy of comics reading simply be good stories with good characters by great writers and artists?

DC announced this new start to a more than skeptical group of fans, a group that has been steadily dwindling in the past few years. As the economy worsened, comics sales sank. And as co-publisher Dan Didio mentioned recently, DC did not want to be selling a 10,000 $20 books to a that small amount of readers. Drastic times called for drastic measures. And boy, is this drastic.

The first issue of "The New 52" debuted last Wednesday, Justice League by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee. As a first chapter of a 6-part series, it was enjoyable. Not great (although the art by Lee, inker Scott Williams and colorist Alex Sinclair is nothing short of spectacular), but serviceable. It's the kind of story one is used to in this day of trade paperbacks; it's just the first chapter of a bigger storyline. I'm more looking forward to the debuts of the other books starting today (ironically, I will be away from a comic book shop all week...oh, the horror of it all!), books like Action Comics (written by Grant Morrison), Detective Comics (written and drawn by Tony Daniel), Batgirl (written by Gail Simone), and Swamp Thing (written by new wunderkind Scott Snyder), to be followed--for the remaining weeks of September and ongoing after that--with numerous other new #1 issues, finally totalling 52 in one month.

So far, The New 52 has brought--or will bring--people back into comics shops. Justice League sold more than 200,000 copies, something very few comics have done in the past 5 years. A handful of the other new titles have sold more than 100,000 copies. Books that haven't even hit the stands yet have gone back to press for second printings, sold out from the distributor (Diamond). The real test, of course, is if people keep coming back week after week, month after month, or if this is just some kind of "I'll give the first issue a try" thing that will be dropped immediately. I know I'm buying 27 out of the gate. Two of my friends are more daring than me and buying all 52 first issues, being democratic and deciding to vote with their wallets for the first round of this Iowa Caucus/Last Comic Standing type of contest. In the meantime, the skeptic in me has disappeared. I--evidently like a lot of people--am excited about The New 52, and especially excited to read these first issues and go to a comics shop each Wednesday. It's nice to feel that way again.

Get ready for the deluge...

Next Sunday, Sept, 11, marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11, another date which shall live in infamy.

Can we pause for a second to just let me say I've never gotten used to the usage of the word "anniversary" to acknowledge such a heinous event? The "anniversary" of Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima or 9/11 just doesn't sit well with me. Anniversaries should be happy events, but I suppose there are enough unhappily-married couples in the world who go through the motions each year to render that point moot.

Any of us who lived through 9/11 will never forget it. Every time I see a digital clock with that number on it, my heart sinks a little. Every time I think of the woman I was dating at that time, I flash back to turning the TV on with her in my bed that morning. Every time I see a movie with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in it, I sigh. It's part of who we are these days, as an American people, to remember-- vividly and tragically--the events of that day.

And now we'll all be plunged back into it, for better or worse, for the next week or so. There will be TV specials, magazine articles, and books all vying for our attention. There will be more of the already worrisome warnings from the government about possible terrorist attacks on or near the anniversary (there's that word again). There will be ceremonies and remembrances, all appropriately solemn and reverential, and maybe, finally, the 9/11 Memorial will open at Ground Zero, after years of bickering and in-fighting and trying to decide what constitutes an appropriate memorial.

I'll pretty much ignore them all. Just like I ignored the (blessedly) small spate of 9/11 related movies that came out over the past ten years. It's just too soon, too raw, too painful. Entertainment Weekly has a list of TV shows coming up. I'll pass on all of them, thanks.

But what I will read--but not enjoy, not really--is New York Magazine's special issue, which also appeared in my mailbox yesterday. Titled simply "9/11: One Day, Ten Years," its lead article is "The Encyclopedia of 9/11, an 88-page A to Z compendium about that day and it's aftermath. Covering everything from Abbottabad to Najibullah Zazi, it's filled with articles, startling photos and informational graphics. This is something meaty and worthwhile, in my humble opinion, even though the advertising pages that permeate the article are more than a bit off-putting ("New sparkle in Soho?" Really?) This is the kind of historical reporting that I find fascinating.

So this will be my own little acknowledgement that it has been ten years since an event which changed the world. Not just my world, but everyone's world. I'll relive that day to a certain extent and when the words and images all get to be too much, I'll put the magazine down and walk away for a while. But I won't need anything else to help me remember. I'll never forget.