First things first: happy birthday to Addison, Finnian, and Millsy.

I admit that this may sound a bit sappy, but I’ve spent the past few days ruminating yet again on what a wonderful collection of friends I have. Really. Y’all are interesting, warm, and fundamentally good people. Okay, okay, a couple of y’all are jackasses. But you make me laugh, and thinking about some crazy moment that we shared will put a smile on my face when I need it most. But what a gift, when worlds bump up against one another. I’m reminded of a Rudolf Steiner quotation that I happened upon while reading the Utne Reader en route to a wedding last December:

You will experience moments, fleeting moments, with the other person. The human being will appear to you then as if filled, irradiated, with the archetype of his/her spirit. And then there may be, indeed will be, other moments, long periods of time when human beings are darkened. At such times, you will learn to say to yourself, “The spirit makes me strong. I remember the archetype. I saw it once. No illusion, no deception shall rob me of it.” Always struggle for the image you saw.

Yowza. But seriously, what a fantastic couple of weeks I’ve had. Celebrating the Bar with Alice , Amer, Jordan et. al. Partying it up until 7 a.m. with my girl Angie from the Academy. Downing the tasty drinks at The East Side Company Bar with Jamie and Siggi. Chilling at A60, or Soho House (where, need it be said, Macky is a member). Drivin’ to Billyburg at 3 in the fuckin’ a.m. and seeing the crazy-ass Otto & Green on a median on Delancey.

And suddenly this town o’ eight mill feels like my god damned living room.

How on earth have I been afforded these horizon-broadening experiences? And what the heck did y’all do with that girl from a small town in Indiana? (Seriously. Click. I’m not kidding. Small.)

I’ll tell ya how I got here. You. Not ‘people like you’ or ‘this one dude who looks kinda like you when he turns his head a certain way’. But you. Specifically. Maybe we’ve had one conversation, maybe I told you a joke back in the day that still makes you laugh when you reminisce, maybe you’re my best fucking friend in the whole wide world. It don’t matter. Our shared sigma of experience has made me the person that I am today, so I can slide in a reference about William Safire or tina or helping old men get hard ons.

Well, shit.

Do you think I knew about cold lampin’ until a certain someone popped some Curious Like George into her stereo? Did I have any clue about the antics of Uncle Earl until I met spike@minerva? And without the original social elite, how else could I regale coworkers with tales of the ghetto-blaster-totin’, sellin’-crack-in-Hoboken motherfucker with 18.5 Ivy League degrees?

No. I didn’t. You gave me a slice of your world and made mine that much bigger. Slap the hand, indeed.

I’m feeling grateful that we crossed paths, be it while I’m getting baptized as a Mormon or sitting in Mrs. Camblin’s first grade class. It doesn’t matter how long or why our worlds bumped up against one another, I’m a richer person because of it.

So there’s your non-commodity to ‘consume’: your friends, your family, your lovers. Our time on this earth is finite, and all we have are these moments with one another. Make the most of ‘em, you crazy bitches.

Much love from the BK -

ANP!

On an unrelated note, I just saw Deliverance tonight and I really want to go camping or rafting (seriously). Any takers? No shotguns, though. Seriously. Get in touch.

1. Note to self: if future husband starts to shave balls, be suspicious.

2. Dude. I’m in New York fuckin’ City. Why am I all mopey dopey?

3. Time to go party with my friend, the former meth addict, and current New York City Public Schools’ teacher.

So, this Erin Lavik chick, now teaching at Yale, created a polymer-based scaffold to implant into rats whose spinal cords had been injured. This was for her MIT master’s thesis. 30% of the control group learned to walk again. 70% of those in the test cell (har har … this means they had the scaffolds + neural progenitor cells) learned to walk.

Uhm. Wow.

Click here to check out a video.

It’s crazy to think about how this work, embryonic as it may be, could end up helping humans suffering from spinal cord injuries. Can you imagine? Christ almighty.

It makes me wish I used my big juicy brain for something more important than hawking credit cards. * sigh *

My middle-name-sake Neal kept sending me these CDs with her son Josh on the bass. Grudgingly, after a few months I popped one into my MD-CD stereo unit (paid for with gift certificates earned from the extraordinary credit card spending required by purchasing Amazon.com GCs for all those BlinkRewards members), and thought to self, “Hmm, this doesn’t suck.”

A year or so later, Josh was tying the knot with his ladyfriend, and Neal & hubby were in town from PDX and invited me to trek down to the City to see this Matty Charles & The Valentines bidness for myself. I closed up the baby store in Fairfield early, hopped on a train, and fell in love.

Truth be told, Matty is a hottie. Nice locks, plenty of visible tattoo action for that splendid “I’m a bad boy” look, and a sense of humor and crowd-management style that brings a smile to my face every time. But it’s the music, people. His voice is like warm honey, his lyrics bring a special delightful pang to my heart. I’m typing from memory here, but a sampling includes:

“I’ve been lookin’ for an answer in every drop of wine, and the whiskey shines the gold but there’s no way, they could ever keep my heart from feelin’ lonely all the time, o mama I don’t wanna go insane.”
- Mama, I Don’t Wanna Go Insane

“… I won’t have to face the darkness all alone, if I have you there to hold… All the things that I used to think were mine, I would give ‘em all away, to keep the love that took so long for me to find, let it live another day… a single breeze is gonna bring you home to me, when your sailin’ days are through …”
- Valentine Song

“And the edge of all the darkness, there was always somethin’ new…”
- Always Something New

“When I was younger, I was such a sight to see, when I believed that I could win, and all life’s pleasures seemed to flow right into me, but I had no idea that it would end…”
- Where They’ll Bury Me

Be still my foolish romantic heart!

Yes, I know all the lyrics at this point. Over the past year I’ve seen ‘em at Pete’s Candy Store and The Living Room on numerous occasions, downin’ a Shirley T. and singin’ along. Their residency at Pete’s ended recently, so I was delighted to receive the following email from Matty:

I’m happy to announce that we’re going to be playing again after a mysterious hiatus. We’ve been in the process of gaining new powers here and abroad so that we can offer you an exceptional night of entertainment! Behold…

******************************
MATTY CHARLES & THE VALENTINES
******************************
WEDNESDAY JULY 13TH * 10PM * FREE!
******************************
THE LIVING ROOM * 154 LUDLOW ST.
bet Stanton & Rivington in NYC’s Lower East Side
******************************
Check out the website for more info @
www.mattycharlesmusic.com
******************************
Take the F or J train to Delancey.

I can’t wait to get a hit of MC & The V on Wednesday. If I haven’t dragged you to one of their shows yet, I can’t urge you strongly enough to check ‘em out. They’re really good. Re-he-he-heally. And I’m not just sayin’ that cuz Josh’s brother Nick is one of my Friendsters. :)

If you wanna join, you know how to get in touch.

xoxoANP!

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, July 5th), turn your telly to your local PBS station to catch Street Fight (10 p.m. on Channel 13 if you’re in NYC), a documentary covering Newark’s mayoral race that pitted Sharpe James v. Cory Booker.

If you aren’t familiar with this battle royale, I’ll never forget a story that IMPACT board member Doug Jaffe told me about the race. Doug was involved in the Booker campaign, and while educating poll workers about possible election fraud, was asked by one of the locals familiar with the antics of the Sharpe James’ crew:

“What do we do if they pull the fire alarm at the gym and then run around and try and put some fake votes on the machine when everyone runs outta the room?”

Not your average election, indeed.

This promises to be a splendid hour of public television, and be sure to watch for a certain Jheri-curled crooner named Raoul B. during the reality show. Raoul left his posh gig at our now-defunct but then-thriving (!) .com to run the operations for Booker’s campaign, and I can’t wait to hear his multisyllabic yet pithy remarks delivered in the ‘I-am-very-serious-I-am-Raoul-&-check-out-how-I-use-my-hands-to-amplify-what-I-communicate-with-my-fiddy-cent-words’ style that I have come to know and love. (Just kidding, RB, who loves ya?!?!)

Those living in the B who want to watch it yuppie-style on my projector are welcome to join me. You know how to get in touch.

xoxoANP!