It's all in how you carry yourself

An usual night of dreams that felt like reality and reality that felt like a dream led to waking to what so far has appeared to be a perfect morning, the sort that fills you with a calm, peaceful feeling, which is exactly what I needed to start me off the right way and get into what I wanted to talk about today.

One of the things that has always calmed me down, and if you know me well then you know how very important that is, is taking pictures. Normally I stay away from taking pictures of people and stick to shots of sunsets and nature, shots like this one here that I took with my point and shoot

But the shots that I always wanted to get kept eluding me because I just wasn't equipped with the proper tools, which meant that I was going to have to actually get a professional grade camera to shoot things like this

I took this shot this past Saturday while wondering around testing the new camera, and MAN did I need to do so with the way things were going. I needed to be calmed more than ever. But in my travels the random events of life seemed to open up to show me some things that maybe I needed to see.

I have no idea who these people are, but he had just proposed to her as I happened to walk by, and they asked me to take a picture for them so that they could remember it. It was nice to be a part of their special moment, even in a very small way, so I took one of my own.

For whatever reason, I've always been a guy that people have done that with. I get asked to take pictures for people all the time. There constantly seems to be someone coming to me for directions, even when I'm in a city that I've never been to before. We don't approach just anyone for this sort of thing, you know that as well as I do. Every one of us has been in a similar situation before, and you have to have a certain comfort level with the stranger you're asking just from how they appear to be.

Well, 93% of all communication is in our body language. We literally say way more to the people surrounding us by the way we're standing around and the look on our faces than with any of the garbage that flies from our mouths. That aura, that energy that emanates, speaks to everyone in proximity.

When I saw this woman in the picture above me she was working with small children, helping to make their day at the park a fun and memorable one. I happened to pass three times while snapping my photos, and with each pass I couldn't help but notice the calm and easy demeanor she displayed and the softness about her. This picture does nothing to do her justice, but even here you can see that in her face. There was a grace, an elegance about her that just melted my heart, and though I doubt very much I'll ever see her again, instantly I thought I saw someone special and it stirred a change in me.

Our chance encounters with the people that walk in and out of our lives are often not a thing to latch on to and hold, but an opportunity to change the way we look at things, what Marianne Williamson calls miracles in her great book A Return to Love.

I'm always talking about the lack of a certain something in our starlets these days, which of course filters down to all the women in our society, that ladies like Olivia De Havilland (up top) had so much of that it poured from them on the screen and moved you.

Where are the Princess Grace Kelly's of the world, the kind of woman that even 30 years after her death the very mention of her name still echoes the embodiment of the word her parents chose to call her by.... Grace.

Or Ingrid Bergman, who you really could believe great men, the Victor Lazlo's of our lifetime, would endure almost anything to get back to, to live for, to inspire them to fight for a better world, or give it all up for.

And of course my all time favorite, Audrey Hepburn. They just don't make women like this anymore.....

Except they do. A chance encounter with a random girl just being herself opened my eyes to something that I either didn't believe that could ever exist again, or perhaps that I had been looking in the wrong places, at the wrong people, for all along. And I began to think about myself, casting the same light on who I am and the way that I act that I had been burning the ladies of the world with.

I've stated in the past how John Wayne was once the embodiment of what is was to be the American man and how as a kid growing up this is what I too was supposed to be, why I often act the way that I do, rough and tumble, out there for everyone to see, A MAN BABY, YEAH! But the truth of the matter is that I'm really probably more like Ash from Army of Darkness in all the wrong ways

"Are all men from the future loud mouth braggards like yourself?"
"No, just me baby.... just me"

Dr. Wayne Dyer always says that you do not attract what you want into your life, you attract what you are, something I firmly believe. When you carry that into the people in your life, if you act like an animal, you'll attract other animals. Act like ghetto trash, you'll attract ghetto trash. Act like Ash... you get deadites

So it's really no wonder that this is the type of woman that I've been finding when I look.

But the woman at the park had me inspired to be more than what I've become, to find all the best parts of myself and have that be the face that I show to the world. In NLP we have a technique that we call modeling, and by that we mean to find someone that displays the characteristics that you want to have yourself and model the way that you behave after the way that they do it. And if you want classy, elegant women in your life, then you have to be more like a man that would be in the same circles of that sort of person. You have to be Cary Grant.

Well, I'm not nearly that good looking, nor am I suave or sophisticated. I may be too much of a Shanty Queens slob sitting on the curb, rough around the edges to hope to pull that off naturally without coming off as try hard. But that doesn't mean I have to be loud and obnoxious either, and I find that when I'm at my best, it's when I'm being the strong, quiet type that takes care of his responsibilities and doesn't worry about the rest. So I may be better off as the Ed Burns type

Well... maybe I don't have his looks either, but if you want to attract a better quality of person in your life, then you have to be a better person. And it's all in the way that you carry yourself. So rather than worrying about who's out there and how good they are, instead concentrate on who you are and how good you can be.

Then the truly beautiful ones will find you.
So who do you want to be?

Later people

With a little help from my friends.....

If you can, click play on the video, it's another soundtrack for the day.

It appears that we've started a revolution! My buddy Mike has started a spot of his own which you should definitely check out; Ramblings of a Fat Necked Zilch.

I met Mike twenty years ago now way back in our high school Creative writing class. That class was the most fun that I've ever had doing anything in my life and Mike was an integral part of our sketch comedy team, so I have absolutely no doubt that he'll be terrific and that you'll enjoy hearing what he has to say.

Back then all I wanted to do with myself was write for Saturday Night Live, and if you look at the cast picture from above you can pick out the heavyweights that were on the show at the time and why it may have been so inspirational to a creative mind. I don't see Mike Myers in there, but he was a huge part also, who can forget Wayne's World? Party on! Of course, that was just before the show completely sucked like it has for the past 15 years now.

I knew that I had something as a writer when I wasn't allowed to work with certain members of the class because we were too good to work together, and as I'm told, the teacher (head of the English department) used my work for years afterwards to show other students how its done.

What I'm amazed at is how many friends that I still have and kept in touch with from my days at Francis Lewis High School and what incredible people that each and every one of them turned out to be. While that may not be such a big thing for many of you reading here, New York City is so sprawling that very few people spend their entire lives surrounded by the same kids they grew up with. When you throw in the twists and turns where life takes you it all adds up to very different, divergent paths for everyone involved. Yet, when I think about the people I talk to and spend my time with the most.... the majority of them went to Lewis.

Speaking of friends, I was having a rough one last Thursday, feeling really down on myself for some unknown reason. So my buddy Kris asked me to come out to Kodiak's on RT 110 in Farmingdale. I had no idea what I was walking into. Apparently it was Karaoke night, but they do it like no other place that I've ever heard of. If you want to sing you have to get up on the stage, with a live band playing behind you, and throw yourself at the mercy of the crowd. They have a gong that gets slammed when you suck, and you get yanked off the stage to the sound of cheering patrons if you're not up to snuff. But they aren't only cheering for silencing those voices that sound like someone's skinning cats in back alleys... NO... when someone gets gonged the bartenders (our bartender was incredible, hot, smart, blew me away) get up on the bar and pour free shots down your throat. That's right, free shots for everyone! It was INSANE!

The place is so good even Rod Stewart showed. He didn't sing; didn't want us to hear the cancer in his throat.

Of course, you're only as good as the company you keep, and usually that amounts to bad things and you becoming the lowest common denominator, but the crew I was with that night made it a total blast and pulled me out of my funk completely. I had such a good time that by 2 AM I found myself drinking with a girl that was the spitting image of Lady Jaye from GI Joe.

I'm not sure what I'm more disturbed about, that when I google Lady Jaye for a pic that I can't get one because all that comes up are images of Spiderman's Mary Jane Watson, or the images that do come up when I see them

I think I'm dating myself here. Scarlet is the only GI Joe female that anyone seems to know anything about, some information age we live in. It's funny, all the different tangents I go off in while I write these things, I can't control them, I just go with it, but now I think I have to go and find this statue

No wonder why everyone loves Spiderman!

So back to my point about friends. In life many of us get down on ourselves, especially when things aren't going they way we want them to or we aren't living the life we meant to live. But you never really know the impact that you have on other people.

After drinking all night Thursday I was completely hung over Friday, in what I should have known was the beginning of a disastrous weekend. For most the of the day I was throwing up at work and couldn't keep anything down, which is why we had no Friday edition of this spot, but I'm a trooper and dealt with it. I left work early to get to a playoff softball game, only to have my tire blow out with no way to loosen a stripped nut to change the tire. I was stuck on the side of the highway in a dangerous spot for 5 hours in the middle of yet another thunderstorm with 1 bar left on my phone. Not exactly the greatest Friday night, right?

Except that the entire night countless numbers of friends continued to check up on me from wherever they were just to make sure that I was alright and to see what they could do to get me out of that mess.

We often lose sight of the things we really do have in our lives, especially when the chips are down and our backs are against the wall. We sometimes lash out, or whine and cry, hoping that someone will see the pain we're in and do something to pull us out of it, only to feel crushed when no one seems to notice. But how often do we ever really ask for help? Most of the time our pride keeps us from doing it.

It never ceases to amaze me though, when we come right out and say it, "I'm in a real bad spot right now, and this is what's wrong" how many people are willing to do so much to get you going again. And in those moments you really get to see what it is, and who it is, that you really have.

Winning in life doesn't mean having the most stuff, the biggest house, the best vacations. The people that stuff attracts disappear when it counts. Winning in life means having people behind you that care enough to always put that smile back on your face.

Party on People!

I'm angry this morning... And a parade of clowns...

And I couldn't say why.

All I know is that I dreamt last night that I finally spent the night with the woman of my dreams, and when I woke up this morning it was 45 minutes late and she wasn't there, but in her place was this indescribable rage

I don't know if its better or worse to know exactly who that person is for you, especially since if you ever actually got with them they wouldn't be the person of your dreams, but your reality. It's almost a never ending kick in the ass. But then, Anthony Robbins used that energy to become what we know of him today. He lived next door to his dream girl, had to watch as she ran off banging one guy after another, guys with money that he didn't have; he was broke.

But that's not it.

Have you ever felt as if you we on a small boat with no sail or oars in the middle of a dead lake, nothing's moving anywhere and nothing you're doing can change that? That's a metaphor for life, of course. That's usually when Jason pops out and drags you under

But this screaming from this anger, whatever it is, wherever it comes from, letting it out, at the end of the day amounts to little more than howling at the moon

Since acting out in that sort of way really gets nothing done except alienate every one you know though, and makes you feel like a total jackass, you might as well be howling at the moon in a clown suit

Do you see what that kind of behavior gets you? And I've long since decided that if I was going to get caught out there having anything to do with clowns, it was going to be this one

Maybe if I'd been dreaming of her instead I'd have woken up with a smile on my face, grabbing my honker! Officially, this in now my favorite clown of all time. If life is just a circus anyway, how do I get into hers?

Times like this require a change in energy, you have to do your best to look at the things you appreciate in your life. For instance, the other night it only cost me $1 to be reminded how much Nicholas Cage sucks

Yeah, Season of the Witch was total horsesh.... hey, I'm trying to stop cursing here..... but then, how the hell did I not see that coming, right?

Thank God for real life Superheroes like Master Legend! You really need to see this. Seriously. You do.

I was first introduced to Master Legend in the documentary Superheroes. There are real life superheroes out there, they walk amongst us. And if you haven't yet had the pleasure, I highly recommend this flik. There are no words to accurately describe it. And I'm almost positive that a certain lady I know parties with the Brooklyn chapter of heroes from time to time. This feeling in my bones almost guarantees it.

And how do I forget my love for The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia? IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Honestly, I tried to sit through this, tried, almost had someone tie me down so I could, but I couldn't get through even 3 minutes of it. It was because they were too ugly. Seriously, that's what did it. But I promise you one day.... one day....

Though I should feel a kinship with these folks. You see, I'm just New York City White Trash, what we call SHANTY! That's a shanty up above. That could be me on that porch. In Broad Channel. That's precisely how I know how nasty it is to surf in the Rockaways. You see, you can't be happy until you accept who you are, embrace it. And now that I have, in the few short moments that it took me to write this, my anger is gone.

And now, my spirits lifted, my soul is free to pursue that woman of my dreams.

In the immortal words of my hero, my Captain... Master Legend....

"When a man's been injured as many times as I have.... he deserves a beer!"

Oh Captain, my Captain. I think I'll go get one.

Later People.

Cleavage, Haircuts and Social Value

I had finally gotten my hair cut last night after a long time in need and it fell in line with the exact conversation that I had been having just before I left the office, which fell in line with exactly what I'd been saying for months now, and not because the barber butchered my head.

Don't worry pal, I'd be crying too if someone made me look like Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th. An aside about Corey Feldman, he claims Hollywood is full of kid touchers. His claim.... he liked it.

This reminds me of the real reason I play Sir Not Appearing in this High School Yearbook. My sister gave me a haircut that made me look like Brian Bosworth, "The Boz"....

Enough said.

The barber shop that I go too isn't giving me cuts that make the ladies swoon and drop trou at the site of me, just a simple solid job that never makes me look like the clown with the rag wrapped on his face, yet I've been going there for years now.

And why? Because they give me something that The Boz couldn't give the Seattle Seahawks and Feldman couldn't give any of his roles after The Goonies.... and that's VALUE!

ANDY! You... GOONIE!

Actually, if you're a fan of The Goonies you should probably check out that site I linked too.

I talk about it all the time, but it can't be separated, every single human interaction everywhere, everytime comes down to a matter of VALUE. In other words, "How does this make my life better?". If it does, then the people will come, if not, ghost town ladies and gents.

There are three barber shops around the corner from my house, yet I drive a ways away to keep going to my place, just for an average cut. Again, why? Because for $12 I'm always greeted with a handshake and a smile. We talk about women and how to make money, two things that consume most of my mind. I've started to learn the game of soccer sitting there, and at the end, a hot towel cleans the garbage little hairs from my head and clears my sinus', something they don't do anywhere else. 

No, there's no Cedric the Entertainer in this place (too bad though, he was funny as hell in that flik), they're a bunch of Russian Jews, but what they do extremely well is, as Henry Ford always said, they show you have much they can give for a dollar as opposed to what they can get out of you for it.

When I lived in Vegas it took me a while to find a barber I got the same good feeling out of, that made me feel I was getting VALUE, making my life better. Then I came upon a small place where an unbelievable Mexican beauty would do the cut, all the while fondling my head and shoving right where I got the full glimpse of her....

No one spoke a word of English in the place, but it didn't matter. All I had to do was utter 4 and 1 and get ready for the show, all for a measely $10. Oh, and she cut my hair too.

Beautiful women have it easy it that sense, without having to think or worry about it when they walk into a room or post something on the net their VALUE speaks for itself. The mistake many of them make is in thinking that the wares that they're showing, outside of a little bathroom material (maybe a little more for those few, those lucky few), provide the rest of us with enough VALUE to make us dip into our pockets to make THEIR lives better without any more effort than showing up. (In many cases they're right)

Life's a party if you're a Hotty

Hold up, the cleavage made me forget where I was going with this.....

OH YEAH! Literally, every single human interaction comes down to the question "How does this person make my life better?" or what value does this person add to my life, even your friends. Just think about that, when people you know get too serious, or they're kind of a drag, you really only put yourself around them when you absolutely have to. But when they're fun to be around you put yourself there every chance you get, and that's the VALUE they bring you, afterall....

You can't put a price on a good time!

Or was that...

Dyn-o-MITE!

Unfortunately, 99% of the world is running around looking at everyone and everything in terms of "How does this make my life better?", how it adds VALUE to THEM. But like my barber, or Henry Ford, success comes when we start to think in terms of "How can I make YOUR life better?"... "How can I add VALUE to YOU?"

But then, if we all thought that way, there would be no greed, no violence, no hatred... the world would be a beautiful place. Speaking of.....

For no other reason than I think this is HOT!!!

Later People!



Where Everybody Knows Your Name....

There's an odd energy in the air this morning, and I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, all I know is that something is in the works. If you can, hit play on the video and listen to the theme music while you read today.....

After an entire weekend, sick, stuck in the house, I was getting stir crazy, I had to get out of there, but alas, at 9PM on a Monday night and real football still a ways off there isn't much to do out there. That's life as you get older and most of the people you know are married with kids. Which got me to thinking about all those days when they weren't, or still hung around if they were.

"Is the rain ever going to stop?" I heard from a friend. No, it isn't, Climate Change, baby!
"The economy sucks! When are things going to get better?" Not any time soon, so buckle in. Like I was saying yesterday Inside Why We're... the system is rigged like a Vegas Casino and the house always wins.
"Why can't I find anybody? dating sucks" Yes it does Brett, yes is does. And they're looking for someone to fill their holes, not to fill yours, so accept you might be stuck in that cycle for a while.....

And then it hit me like a Pimp on his bottom whoe
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name....

I'm never so good as I am when I have that place that I can always go and be surrounded by friends, knock down a few, and laugh about whatever daily nonsense is going on. In high school it was the basement of a couple of friends, you never had to call, just show up. If they weren't home their mom would throw down the keys.

At Oklahoma State it was the house. My buddies moved in during my 2nd semester and we would have parties where a thousand kids would walk through the door by 10:30 and picked up by cops stumbling around, drunk, 3 miles away by the end of the night. It was right across the street from the dorms and though I didn't live there I might as well have; I had my own key.

McCann's in Astoria was good to me for a long time. I think I was in there literally every night for about a year until the party moved somewhere else. You never do so well (and I mean with the ladies) as you do on your home turf, and it's comforting to know you can just show up and someone you can chill with will be there.

And in Vegas, there was Larry's Villa, the strip club with pregnant dancers and meth addicts that I called my bar, and the Garage. All hail the Garage! (Pronounced Gah - Ridge).

Larry's Villa

No matter how old you get you're still always that kid in the tree house, your home made fort, where all the members of the club gather and find sanctuary from the outside world. Once there, even for just a few hours, everything is ok, the world is right again.

We all need our sanctuary's. But where does one go when you no longer have that place? The real beauty the show "Cheers" is that it captured all of that perfectly. It's why we fall in love with things like Seinfeld, Night Court and Married with Children. Its why we fall in love with the bar down the block, even though its a dump and half the customers are passed out with three green teeth. For some of us, the lucky ones of us, that place is our job, and the rest of the world is a cake walk from there. I've been lucky enough to have a few of those. You always look back on them as something that just can't be replaced.

And looking back, at these places, at the people who filled them, and filled us, it isn't something out of a Bruce Springsteen song trying to re-live our glory days... no, it's more akin to your old favorite room, to where the heart is; Home.

I never had that room in my parents house, I always moved around too much to set roots to a place that way, at one point we up and left about every 8 months. It's difficult to find that place in the world where you know exactly who you are and where you fit in like that, which I guess is why my passion has always been for those people in my life. Why once I call you friend, in my heart, you'll always be just as if we were transported back to that place again, that basement, that house, that bar, that gah-ridge.

So where do you go where everybody knows your name? Where is it that they're always glad you came?

Huh huh, he said came!

It's times like this that we need that the most. So grab me a beer and save me a seat. I'll be right there.

Inside Why We're FU....ED!

With monsoon season still gripping the city and the myterious illness that dropped me like 3rd period French, the weekend was a total washout. For most of it I couldn't help but feel like the people caught in the preview of Hereafter, that Matt Damon flik that no one bothered to watch.

Speaking of Matt Damon, laid up like Sonny Bono after a ski trip I happened to catch the last hour of the documentary "Inside Job". It was really disturbing to see how the world economy got destroyed and how the people responsible are not only right back in power, but stronger than ever. Buckle in folks, cause it's only going to get worse.

I got you, babe!

Between that and the 2005 documentary "Why We Fight", which is another must watch about the Military Industrial Complex, if you really think that the American people have anything at all to do with who or what is running the country, or that the powers that be have your interests in mind or all, that you're even a blip on their radar.... you're kidding yourself.

The amazing thing about all of it is that now that we live in a world where all the information we could possibly want is at our finger tips with a few key words and the wave of a mouse, we've used that power to effectively cut ourselves off from one another and collectively pull the wool over our own eyes. Watch these two videos then tell me if you still think the American government couldn't be responsible for 9/11.

I'm a sucker for pretty much any show where they're saving some failing business, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is one of my favorite, so when I saw Bar Rescue last night on Spike TV I was IN! I couldn't care less whether or not the so called experts they bring in are experts at all. For years my job was to see how small businesses were losing money and show it them, and there's something about doing things right that just makes me hard. This was great in the sense that they give you specific stats most people don't think about that are necessary to achieve if you want success. For instance, successful bars shoot for 70% of their customers to be women, so they cater to bringing women in. It makes perfect sense to anyone that goes bar hopping, if there are chicks in there, the dudes will follow. Once it turns into a sausage party, it's time to bounce. It's a good model for most businesses, get the women, the men will follow. It's no coincidence that movies that really make HUGE money at the box office are the girlie films that chicks go to see with their girlfriends, yet still have enough action to entice their boyfriend to see it too.

But the thing that really gets me with these shows is how disgusting the places they walk into are. If you knew the what nastiness lurks in the not so dark corners of pretty much every place you eat and drink at you'd either be sick to your stomach or feel as invincible as Monty Burns. YES, Invincible!

I've worked in several restaurants in my life and can't tell you how many cooks and chef's didn't wipe their ass or wash their hands after dropping a hot one, then went right out to cook without gloves. I remember a rat the size of my dog once got speared to the wall in the kitchen at the first job I ever had, a Japanese/Korean fusion restaurant in Manhattan that's no longer there. The Chef poked it with his chopsticks and said, "Heh, Mickey" before going back to touching your food with those same chop sticks.

In Vegas I was the office manager of restaurant that's also no longer there. Tony Fuckface, the clever little nickname we had for the chef (possibly the foulest human I've ever met, and I've known some winners) because he looked like Sam Kinison's uglier brother and liked to watch while strangers nailed his much younger wife would host regular after hours orgies in the kitchen... on all the cooking surfaces.

I had spent some time when I first came back clearing out the basement of a rather famous building in Forest Hills, Queens.... it was so disgusting that rats the size of my foot would die at my feet. The only time a rodent will do that is when the place is so infested that it would rather take its chances with you than get eaten alive by its brethren. Well... the food and drink for a particular restaurant that used to be a Beefsteak Charlie's is all stored in that same basement... I absolutely refuse to go in there. Though, I have to say, I get a hearty chuckle when I see the trendy ladies that don't have time for me sitting there ordering off of the sushi menu...

I was going to go so much further with all of this, take it in another direction, but it's all gotten away from me and the ramble has gone on long enough. And now I forgot what I was talking about, so... until next time....

BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!!

Shit... now I'm on the list. If my car mysteriously crashes.....
At least I'm on someone's list.

Later People!