The Billiken's Bluff

I was writing short stories for some fiction classes at NYU. This was before blogger and comment sections. For a bunch of stories I footnoted everything, like a comment section to myself, for everyone to read. The footnotes, the caveats, the rejoinders were written against an imaginary critic. I was worried that people wouldn't get the writing, which was mostly a bunch of attempts at clever references and humor about things that weren't necessarily that clever or humorous like barber shops or bath tubs.

Anyway maybe I should start using this technique again. Admittedly, my pictures and references have become such inside, circular references-



that no one, weinger or otherwise, could be expected to get it. So I will try this, going forward... a running commentary. Going backward.... I was told there was a two hour wait at Clinton St. Bakery for brunch on Sunday. There was a line outside, there was a line inside. They serve tasty obnoxious things like steel cut oatmeal with blackberries, or french toast with with some nectar reduction sauce. Stuff that makes you blush a little when it comes time to order them (ummm I’ll just have a cheeseburger, w/ American cheese, no that’s all). Anyway, two hours was too much I walked uptown and passed these two gentlemen eating some soup and something dried out of a packet that did not look fancy, but there was no wait, but yet and still, they looked less than amused, surly as all hell on this Sunday morning.



So there were a lot of opposites headed my way and in response I took that picture and ended up eating brunch somewhere else. French Toast with some berries.