I'm Super! (Thanks for Asking.)

I loved Superman Returns. It was exactly what we needed after Superman III and IV and the untimely passing of Christopher Reeve. Bryan Singer paints the character with a gentle, loving brush. And we fall in love again. The movie is gorgeous, as is the impossibly pretty Brandon Routh. And he does a killer interpretation of Reeve's geeky Clark Kent.

It did for Superman what Batman Begins did for Batman. Thank god for Chris Nolan. I still adore Tim Burton's two Batman films — dark, macabre and gorgeous. The scripts were weak, but those movies were always primarily about mood and design and stand-out villains. Then Joel Schumaker ruined the series with his be-nippled caped crusaders in Batman & Robin and Batman Forever.

With Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series and a strong X-Men series (despite negativity about III), superhero movies are back in our good graces. These directors have breathed new life into the newsprint golems of our childhood.

I learned recently that the attempt at a Smallville-like stab at an Aquaman TV series was aborted. This makes me sad, primarily because Justin Hartley is such a wonder to behold. And, let's face it, people watch these WB shows for the boys, right?

At least you can get the pilot on iTunes!

I'm still waiting for a Green Lantern movie. He and Batman have always been my favorites. So when I took the "Which Superhero Are You?" quiz the other day, I was surprised — and a little disappointed to find that ...

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others. [Which Superhero Are You?]

I am Superman

I can live with this, I guess. I am kind of a boy scout, aren't I?

But before I could get over that, along comes Who Wants to be a Superhero?, premiering tonight.

[Pause for reaction...]

Who are these people?

Levity is clearly gay and very cute. At first I thought his superpower would be stand-up comedy or something. Like he defeats his enemies by causing uncontrollable fits of hysterical laughter. His weakness would be humorless Republicans, etc... But I was taking the concept of levity too metaphorically.

Personally, I'm betting on Fat Momma.

Kenny Rogers: Promethean Giver of Truth

There was a time in my life when the songs that influenced me most were the hymns we sang at Catholic Mass.

I am the bread of life,
Those who come to me shall not hunger,
Those who believe in me shall not thirst
No one can come to me
Unless the Father beckons.

Refrain:
And I will raise him up
And I will raise him up
And I will raise him up
On the last day

Those days are all but over, but I miss it sometimes. I loved the music at church, especially when they'd haul out the choir every once in a while. The music was always the best part of Mass for me. I used to copy the notes out of the hymn book to pass the time, measure by measure, into a little notebook my mom kept in her purse. I didn't know what they meant exactly, but it felt like a productive task at the age of 5. But the lyrics... These songs were so abstract. Bread? It was good for Communion, good for Easter, but a man cannot live on the Bread of Life alone, right?

There was also, of course, Schoolhouse Rock.

Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen,

A bit weird, maybe. How about:

I'm just a bill.
Yes, I'm only a bill.
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee,
But I know I'll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.

But there was a golden great I've been reminded of recently that taught me so much more.

On a warm summer's evenin' on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler. We were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin' out the window at the darkness
'Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.

He said, "Son, I've made a life out of readin' people's faces,
And knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
And if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you're out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I'll give you some advice."

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
'Cause ev'ry hand's a winner and ev'ry hand's a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

And when he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. This is one of my all-time favorites. This was the stuff of real life. Metaphors that gave me some insight into the grown-up world — even if I didn't know exactly what he was singing about at the time. I used to imagine a satanic, horned man dealing cards to a table of cowboys whenever I heard Kenny sing: "There'll be time enough for counting when the demon's done."

(I must have had a little too much of the Bread of Life.)

Still, I was astute enough to gather valuable lessons about:

• Cross-country railroad etiquette
• The joys of traveling without a destination
• How to share a smoke
• The value of a sip of whiskey
• Winning gracefully (you never count your money...)
• Knowing what to throw away (and what to keep)
• The unpredictability of life
• The inevitablilty of death, and the ability to look at it without sentimentality
• And most importantly, how to tell a story

There's another famous attempt at a similar theme:

I'm a gambler, and I will take you by surprise
Gambler, I'll aim this straight between your eyes
Gambler, yeah I know all the words to say
'Cause I'm a gambler, I only play the game my way, yeah

Not nearly as informative, I think. But it's a lot of fun, and you can dance to it.

Cherry Picked

From the Thank God files:

ABC also is bringing back "Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry full time and resuscitating the funnier formula from its freshman season. That means farewell to Tom Spezialy ("Dead Like Me"), the writer who subbed for Cherry and turned "Desperate" into a melodrama.

"I think everyone, including Marc, admitted that the beginning of last season we stumbled a little bit," McPherson says. "He really spent too much time setting up the mystery, setting up the new arcs, and this year we're going to jump right in."

More from the AP here.

[See also: Desperate Housewives Call for Desperate Writers]

Black Eye

No one at work has asked me about my black eye today. I wonder if they think I'm being beaten at home and they're afraid to ask me about it because it might reduce me to tears or fits of hysterics. Or maybe they don't want to force me into a corner where I begin to tell lie upon lie to maintain the status quo and avoid embarrassing myself or the person who hit me.

But I work at a social service agency. Surely if anyone is going to care enough to ask, that person will be right here.

Of course, I'm not being beaten. I injured myself at rugby practice last night when the guy running in front of me slammed into a goal post and I slammed into him.

It's just a wee thing. Just a little bruising on my cheek.

I think it's funny that I should get my first rugby shiner at my last rugby practice. Well, my last practice for a few months, anyway. Most of my teammates don't know I'm taking this next season off.

Ethereal Apple Logo at 59th and 5th

	Let us worship it ... [Apple Insider]

I'm new to New York City, but I'm pretty sure this is not what they mean by "The Big Apple."

I don't know why I'm remembering this now, but when I was approaching the southeast corner of Central Park on the morning of the New York AIDS Walk this year, I saw something near the corner of 59th and 5th Avenue that gave me the creeps yet filled me with a sense of materialistic wonder.

There is a house-sized glass cube parked in front of a building there, inside of which seems to float an enormous, white, glowing Apple logo.

Like the glass-pyramid entrance to the Louvre, I have learned, this is (or will be) the entrance to a flagship Apple Store in Manhattan. A glass box in 21st century Manhattan is not quite as incongruous as a glass pyramid in the garden of a 12th century French palace. It follows more closely Apple's current design aesthetic. (They haven't tried a pyramidal shape for any of their hardward yet, have they? Not yet, anyway.)

It's very minimalistic. (Can minimalism be expressed in terms of quantity if it is meant to be an expression of the littlest possible? This reminds me of the impossible "very unique.") But the implied worshipfulness seems spooky to me. I don't deny the existence of the Cult of Mac. I am a proud member. Treating this logo as an object to showcase in itself turns it from a simple storefront sign into something exalted. It's like a golden calf, raised high so we may gaze up at it, like the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem.

Madonna Paradox

I won't call it hypocrisy. I'll be generous and call it a paradox.

It almost qualifies as irony. But we English majors know better.

What I'm talking about is Madonna's insistence that she not only monitors the TV intake of her kids (good idea in my opinion), but she also neither watches TV nor reads newspapers nor magazines herself. Ever.

She, our like great nation's source of illumination, George W. Bush, is intentionally media deprived. She says sometimes she listens to the BBC with husband Guy. She hears about the news of the world from conversations with friends.

Madonna, the queen of mass media, star of magazine cover and MTV, chooses to disregard the news. Sure, she ignores press about herself. This is just and good and fair. Besides, how tedious, boring and infuriating, right? But she also ignores news about the world? She does TRL. She does The View. She does Good Housekeeping. She does Ladies' friggin Home Journal. She depends on the media. She is the media.

Yet, she holds herself above the very media her career depends on.

Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Madge. But does this seem weird to anyone else?

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood: Q19 Crazy Lady

When I have the good fortune of making the Q19 bus in time to get to work at a decent hour, there is often a woman there who in equal parts amuses me and embarrasses me.

She always sits in a window seat reading a dog-eared bible. I won't notice she's there until she folds back a page of the Good Book and declares to the bus-folk around her, "Mmmmm... o-o-o-h boy!"

A few people turn to look where the noise comes from, including myself. I usually end up standing on this bus, so I can see her clearly. She just looks down at her bible and once or twice more loudly repeats an emphatic "O-o-o-o-oh mmmmmbo-eee!" and follows it by clicking her tongue just as loudly:

"Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!"

It's the sound an old person might make while digging in her teeth with a toothpick, rocking in a chair on the front porch.

On public transportation, such outbursts are disquieting but widely ignored to the best of our ability. If she knows she is startling half of the passengers around her, she doesn't let on. If she has any notion that she is making the lady sitting next to her nervous, darting her widened eyes toward her, expecting perhaps a small forest creature to leap out of her chest cavity, she does not let on. She does not seem to realize that anyone has noticed anything at all, let alone that she has made any sort of loud, incongruous, inappropriate and inexplicable noise at all.

She turns another page of her bible and resumes reading silently. We all downshift from orange alert to yellow. And then a few minutes later: "Mmmmmmmm! Mmmmmbo-o-o-o-o-ay! Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!"

She really puts some effort into it, distorting her voice, getting a little raspy, a little throaty. Like she's out back picking tomatoes off the vine in the blazing sun, and she's tugging at her collar and pulling her wide-brimmed straw hat back off her neck to mop her forehead with a worn bandana. One almost expects a "Would you just look at that! Hoo... lawd!"

Is it something she's read? Is she regarding the sins of mankind? Has she remembered that she left the coffee maker on back home? Is this what Tourette Syndrom looks like?

Then again: "Mmmmmmmmm... bo-o-o-o-o-eeee! Tck tck tck tck tck tck tck!"

She never looks up from the book. She doesn't shake her head. She doesn't take notice of anyone or anything around her. She just continues reading her book and making loud exclamations to no one.

She looks so normal. Cute, tightly curled hair arching out in all directions. Flawless, mocha skin. Manicured but unpolished fingernails. Just enough makeup to bring out some contrast in her features. Nice, cool, conservative floral printed skirt and sleeveless sweater: you know... beige, black, salmon.

And, remember: She's reading a Bible. Totally harmless. I'm not so sure.

New York Lesson No. 331: Thin and Gorgeous

There's a notion in places like Minnesota and Michigan that people in New York are all thin and stylish. "They all walk everywhere, and they're all gorgeous, and they all dress in black and look fabulous."

This is a ridiculous myth. And thank god. Otherwise I'd stand out around here like a pimple on Madonna's ass.

Daily I see plenty of fat people on the subway who don't know how to dress. My roommate, an apparent slave to the rumors of the Midwest, says, "Yeah, but those are all the tourists." I might believe that if these people weren't on their way to and from work.

Yes, New Yorkers walk more on average than people in most cities in the country. Yes, we are not as fat as Mississippians. But the Naomi Campbells and Beyoncés among us are few and far between, at best — even in Midtown or SoHo or the Village.

I saw Sandra Bernhard in an interview going on and on about how New Yorkers have a great sense of style that no other place in the country can match, and I couldn't help thinking: "What bullshit. Where do you hang out, lady?" And that's it. Yeah, there is a small class of people in certain neighborhoods in Manhattan — and by "New York," unfortunately, she of course narrowly means Manhattan — who push the edges of fashion trends. Of course, Bernhard hangs out with these people. In these places. This is the New York she knows.

The New York I know — the New York most New Yorkers know — is a New York of tank tops, Old Navy t-shirts, frayed jean cuffs, house paint-spattered work boots, dirty fingernails, monochromatic business suits with unimaginative neckties and shoes that don't match the belt, guts hanging out of ill-fitting halter tops.

Nice shoes, though.

OK. No matter what borough they live in, New Yorkers pay far more attention to their shoes than someone in, say, Minneapolis. I'll give you that. People in this town may have shitty jeans, but they'll have fierce shoes.

Apart from that, this panacea of fashion is something I just don't think exists outside of the imagination.

Anyone who tells you otherwise probably did not grow up here and desperately wants to cling to and be associated with an illogical, unattainable ideal. Indeed, most of the people who will tell you this are themselves fat and fashionless.

Robot Cats!

	Won't scratch your couch [Necoro.com]

I came across some information about robotic cats which led me to this commercial. I don't know which is creepier: the robotic cat, or the lady delightedly playing with it.

At first I couldn't fathom why someone would want one of these things. Then the following occurred to me:

• They eat electrons, which are cheaper than cat food.


• They do not require a stinky litter box.


• They will not scratch the fuck out of your couch while you are out of the house.

Inferior Decorating

Three unforgiveable interior decoration decisions, in my opinion:

1.) White wall-to-wall carpet

2.) Floor to ceiling mirrors, especially an entire wall of mirrors

3.) Fake plants, especially trees

These are certainly my most hated interior design elements. They may be allowable in certain commercial contexts, but certainly not in the home. (Do you have a fleet of ottomans to cover up every red wine stain?) I think they represent the height of all that is vile and wrong about suburban notions of beauty or — worse — "nice."

A friend once owned a condo with mirror-covered bathroom walls. Every vertical surface reflected every other vertical surface. You could watch yourself pee from all directions or get lost in infinity looking behind yourself in the mirror.

This place also had white carpet. When he redecorated, it was the first thing to go.

Years later, I found myself on a weekend trip in a house that incorporated all three elements. It was not the host's fault, but rather his parents.

I will venture to add another:

4.) Wicker furniture

Anyony care to dispute me or add others?

Buy? A pen?

Knowing I'd want to jot down some ideas as I walked through the neighborhood to my bank today, I stopped in at Rite Aid to buy a cheap pen. I can't remember the last time I bought a pen. Usually they're just in a drawer or on my dresser. They just sort of accumulate, and you always have one somewhere.

Well, I was overwhelmed at Rite Aid. First, there are far too many choices! (Glad I wasn't at Staples or Office Max.) And it's next to impossible to buy a cheap pen — they're all Space Age and far more complicated than the simple instrument I'm looking for. Or they come several to a pack. (Shoulda gone to Staples or Office Max.)

I grabbed one for $2.59 or something similarly stupid and ran to the check out counter.

Random Observations

Just some random observations today from the Lower East Side on my lunch break.

One.
"Yo, do me a favor," I heard a woman say into her cell phone as I walked down the sidewalk in her general direction. She was leaning over a guard rail around a subway entrance, causing her shirt to ride up slightly, exposing a hanging gut that she probably didn't want to expose. "Don't nobody slap me in the face. Not my mother. Not you. Not nobody. You touch me and I will stab you in the neck."

She was using her outdoor voice, despite having a private conversation. As I passed her and walked further away from her, her voice got fainter and fainter. I noted that, despite the threat of mortal violence, her part of the conversation took place entirely without profanity.

Two.
Waiting at a cross walk for the light to change, I noticed a small figure to my left out of the edge of my field of vision. He was an old man, and he was standing next to a garbage can, fussing with a green umbrella. He opened and closed it, running the folding mechanism up and down the shaft a couple of times, shaking it, twisting at it.

I checked the light and turned back to the old man. He was stabbing the umbrella down into the garbage can. Judging by its missing handle and broken spines, I guessed he had taken it from the garbage can originally. He had in his hand a spring, evidently taken from the shaft of the umbrella. He fingered it and wiggled it slightly and then turned and walked away down the sidewalk.

The light turned, and I crossed the street.

Three.
On the other side of the street I encountered a sidewalk sweeper. He wore a heavy-looking green Lower East Side Business Improvement District jacket #8212; better suited for November than early July — and rode on a machine that resembled a zamboni with two large wheels in front, one small wheel in back, and two rotating circular brushes meant to sweep debris under the vehicle and toward an intake fan.

The single wheel in back left a winding ribbon of motor oil wherever he went, betraying the erratic course he took swerving through and among the pedestrians. No one seemed to feel they were in any particular danger as he deftly avoided sweeping them up or knocking them over.

I was puzzled by such eforts at lunch time on a weekday. I'm no city manager, but surely there's a better time to sweep the sidewalks, I thought. And what was he cleaning up anyway? A cigarette butt or gum wrapper here and there, leaving a larger mess behind him than what he encountered in front of him.

Maybe he just wanted to get somewhere without walking. I have a friend who, when she was 15 and had no driver's license, rode through her home town on a riding lawnmower to buy a pack of smokes from the only place that would sell them to her. That makes sense, in its desperate, adolescent way. But this guy... where was he going?

I wonder if there really is such a thing as a random observation. The events around us are random in that they are unpredictable and outside of our control, but the very second we begin to pay attention to them, the act of observing becomes deliberate. With all the activity around us in New York City, we could be distracted in any direction at any time of the day. It's something in us that draws an occurrence into our sphere of attention. Something led me to notice the woman on her phone, the man with the spring, and the guy on the sidewalk-sweeping machine. I wonder what about those three incidents is the common link to my attention.

Feel it on My Fingertips. Hear it on my Window Pane.

For some rainstorms, umbrellas just don't matter.

I am shivering in my air conditioned office now, while my pants hang immodestly over my office door and my socks hang over the doorknob. They're nearly dry, but not completely. My shoes are another matter. Since removing them with a satisfying shlurrp! and far more effort than I am used to, I've set them on the floor to air out a bit. They may never be dry again.

This morning when I exited the F train, people were huddled at the foot of the steps that lead from the station out to the surface. Between the time I had entered the train in Queens and exited on the Lower East Side, the skies had opened up and let loose a torrent. I decided that I would walk the five blocks to my office rather than wait out the worst of the downpour. Who knew how long that wait might be? And I was already 10 minutes late for work.

My umbrella was strong, and it withheld the rain pretty well for about half a block. Then I realized my error. It wasn't just the water coming down, but also the water that had already fallen. Some of the curbs were banking very high, very dramatically moving rivers, as the sudden flood rushed to the nearest sewage drains. I couldn't even leap over some of them, so my shoes were drenched in short order.

The back of my pants from the knees down were soon soaked through. My socks were like cold rags. And my umbrella was beginning to sag under the pressure of so many gallons per second.

But my hair was still cute.

I was thrilled with the suddenly cooler temperature. This cloudburst represented a major victory against my arch nemesis, the high humidity we've seen in recent days. Usually it reduces me to a sweaty mess because nothing evaporates on some of the worst mornings. Today I was even wetter for a different reason, but at least I wasn't boiling over from the heat.

What choice do we pedestrians have but to get wet when it rains? Should I stop and wait under and awning? Why delay the inevitable? I'm already soaked. Should I walk faster? or run the rest of the way? If so, I'd only splash myself from underneath and probably slip in these tractionless shoes anyway. Wet as I was, it made little sense to do anything but push onward. I was laughing for much of the way, it was so ridiculous and futile.

As the intensity surged up and down at intervals, I toyed with the idea of folding up my umbrella and, Lear-like, face the tempest as a simple man against nature. Sometimes the wind would pick up and send the rain sideways. What was the point of fighting this storm? My head and some portion of my shoulders were relatively dry. But little else.

Thank god my bag stayed dry. I love my sporty WNYC tote! When I got to work, I locked my office door behind me and changed into the post-gym clothes I brought with me. I feel like a fool wearing shorts and sneakers at work, but today I'd rather be dry than appropriately dressed.