Hell's Kitchen Short Cuts (apology to Mr. Altman)

They finally repaved 8th avenue after leaving it scraped and raw for weeks, and the day after, stuck in the fresh asphalt in the middle of the street was a Master padlock. It had sunk in until it was perfectly flush with the surface, so I'm thinking ain't nobody gettin' that out. It's part of the street now. For some reason the thought of some poor bike messenger cursing and buying a new one made me grin. If he only knew that his old padlock had achieved immortality.

Walking down 9th avenue, an elderly lady with a) immaculately-coiffed old-lady helmet hair, b) Jackie O sunglasses, c) full-length mink, open to reveal d) purple velour tube top?!?, e) incredibly tight jeans, and f) in between d and e, the muffin-top from hell. At what point in her psychotherapy did that train run off the rails?

As I passed the pet store, I got a brief snippet from two teenage girls headed in the other direction: one pointed to the cat sleeping in the window and said to the other "Ohmigod, is that real?" Gee, a real live cat asleep in the window of a pet shop. As opposed to a cleverly-designed fake cat, which are all the rage nowadays. What are the odds?

I'm walking here! I'm walking here!

Well, I got hit by a livery cab yesterday. How's that for an opening line? Still can't believe it. Yes, I'm fine, I'm uninjured, not to worry. He just tapped me with his front bumper, causing an incipient bruise on one shin and a serious attitude adjustment. And by attitude adjustment I mean my attitude miraculously adjusted itself from nonexistent to native New Yorker in point 5 seconds flat. And back down again just as quickly, which fact I find considerably more bemusing. Entertaining to bystanders though, I imagine, or at least I hope.

To elaborate: I was crossing 49th street on the west side of 8th Avenue, headed north. I had the light. I feel the need to emphasize this point: I had the light. The little white "Walk Like An Egyptian" man was on the sign, not the big red "Stop! In The Name Of Love" hand. The livery cab started to make the turn onto 49th from 8th, I could see him in my peripheral vision, and by the time I realized he was not even slowing down I was squarely in front of him with no room to maneuver and all I could do was turn toward him in astonishment. And he slammed on the brakes at the last moment, which is why I'm not injured, but it was too late and he hit me. He actually hit me! I couldn't believe it; he actually made contact. Not hard enough to knock me over, thank god, but hard enough to hurt. If he'd been going faster than 5 miles an hour in the first place I would have had two broken legs. I was completely dumbfounded.

Without hesitation I leaned over his hood and screamed "What the FUCK?!" at the top of my lungs. I guess I just didn't know what else to say. So I said it again, even louder. He just half-shrugged and took his hands off the wheel, holding them up in front of him as if to say, jeez lady, calm down. No apology, of course. And I stood there in front of his car while he continued shrugging and waving me off until I finally realized there was nothing else to do but... move out of his way. So anticlimactic, really. I'm not quite sure where the spittle-flecked obscenity-yellin' version of me came from all of a sudden; I would have preferred the quick-thinking license-plate-gettin' version of me, but alas, you take what you can get in moments of crisis. I was three blocks away and down the stairs into the subway station before I thought of getting his licence number and reporting him to the Taxi & Limosine Commission. Oh well. At least that "what the fuck" got taken care of. I can cross that one off my New York checklist, no kidding. That guy was "what the fuck"ed thoroughly and with the appropriate spirit, if I do say so myself.

Clozapine for everyone!

One of the little-known benefits to procrastination is that you can watch your favorite tv shows in large chunks instead of one at a time. Today I finally felt like catching up on the four "Lost" episodes clogging up the Ti-faux after weeks of just not being in the mood for yet more layers upon layers of Dharma-brand bullshit, served with a light coating of Omigod, Like Who Does Kate Like This Week?

++++Totally Unnecessary Spoiler Space Out Of Sheer Habit++++




Allright, so obviously if this is all Happening in Hurley's Head (HHH), then the writers have been flagrantly cheating from the get-go, since we have seen umpteen scenes, both on the island and in backstory, about things that Hurley obviously could have neither any knowledge of nor interest in. This obviousness is, however, not enough to convince me that the HHH explanation will not turn out to be at least partially true, since this type of cheating with regard to point of view is distressingly common nowadays. Having a consistent point of view is one of the hardest things to do if you only write for television or the movies without having a background in fiction writing. Because, of course, you're writing more directly for the audience in those mediums (as opposed to in service to your story), and the omnipotent point-of-view of the audience itself tends to bleed over onto the characters. Not that I'm being all holier-than-thou about it, since I love a little p.o.v. cheating as much as the next gal, and I love it for the same reason writers love it -- because it works. Hell, there isn't an episode of "24" that doesn't feature at least one character in possession of knowledge that they actually could have no way of knowing but in fact only know because we, the audience, know it and it would be tedious for us to remember that they didn't until they caught up. And I canNOT stop watching that show to save my life. Hey, it's not tedious! So, a little p.o.v cheating, a leeetle slide over into imaginary omnipotent narrator world, I can get behind that. But if the writers of "Lost" wind up lending any credence to the HHH explanation for these island shenanigans, that's more than just a little cheating, that's cheating on a "What, this ace? The one that totally did not just fall out of my sleeve?" scale and that would not be cool. As L. put it, the HHH scenario only works if Hurley turns out to have been a writer for "Lost" before he got committed to the nuthatch. In which case, have at it, I guess -- as long as at least one of the actual "Lost" writers is eventually institutionalized to provide the appropriate gravitas. Hey, I don't ask for much. And at the rate JJ Abrams is going Tom Cruise will drive him to the looney bin before "MI:3" is released, so there you go.

For Tara

Every day? Still? We'll see....

So I've been thinking about procrastination (goes without saying I haven't been doing anything about it). It's sort of counterintuitive that I'm concentrating on this the last few days, since my lifelong procrastination problem has actually gotten much, much better over the last year or so. No more folders on my desk at work whose contents I'm afraid to excavate, and sometimes the homework actually gets done before the day it's due (sometimes, that is, not often). I used to think that it was a combined fear of success/fear of failure thing; you know, you don't want to do too well on a project cause then people will expect that level of performance from you as a matter of course and screw up your 'it's always more fun being the underdog' strategy, plus which if you procrastinate and do a half-assed job then you have a built-in excuse for why it's not any good and don't have to secretly worry that you actually weren't capable of doing any better. (Obviously I belong to the run-on sentence school of self-psychiatry. And obviously I've read and thought way too much about this.)

And maybe some, or even all of that was true when I was younger, not that understanding it ever did a damn bit of good when it came to doing anything about it. But at my age I can no longer really even pretend to be the underdog, come-outta-nowhere kid, and nowadays I can usually convince even my nagging inner voice that I'm capable of handling, if not brain surgery, at least the things I need to do in my life as I've created it. Which is sort of the problem, "my life as I've created it", or at least touches tangentially on sort of the problem: the last few days I've been formulating a theory that procrastination now has evolved for me into a way of keeping the possibilities open. To not have to commit to the life I'm living as my actual life. (Nice that I seem to have the same bad habit as ever but for different reasons. Boy, my subconscious is clever.)

My procrastination (though, once again, a lot better than it used to be) keeps me from investing fully in the things I do; last minute half-assing my way through crucial parts of my life makes it seem not quite real. Just a temporary distraction. Still so many possibilities on the horizon for what my real life will be. I'm not getting old! I still have plenty of time to decide what I want to do when I grow up, and obviously this isn't it, since I have yet to change the entire world in any meaningful way or at the very least write a best-selling book. And if I also procrastinate when it comes to making Big Decisions about my future, then all possible futures are still open to me. Bonus! (Except probably the future of becoming the first woman to play major league baseball -- I've sort of made my peace with the fact that that was never a possible future of mine.)

On the other hand I am actually taking real classes (after meaning to do it for years), learning stuff about things I'm interested in, and if I do the assignments at the last minute maybe it's just because I also work full time, and if I'm not sure where all of this is going in the long run and keep agonizing over my ultimate career goals, well, maybe I should just relax and not overplan and see what happens for once. So there's the 'cut yourself some slack and things will work out" theory, as well. Of course, I like both of my possible theories, so I think I'll procrastinate on deciding which one is valid so that I can keep my options open...