The Billiken's Bluff

November Rain, Acid Rain, September 11 there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Here's the dilemma, Craig's List [seeking: a poignant photograph to invoke how it all felt, how things happened], I was evacuated from my building in flip flops, a sleeveless shirt and basketball shorts, keys in hand, nothing else. 10 yards from my entrance I was charitably handed a sock and quickly understood this was to be used to cover my mouth or eyes or nose or whatever I could shelter if I got creative enough - from the ash and smoke flowing north and east up the street. This was dramatic and I was dressed comically.



I wanted my wallet and some real shoes and my digital camera and to be better prepared for what was quickly becoming not a fire drill evacuation. I want to draw it and picture it and make myself look like the least effectively constructed hazmat suit complete with a nose/sock that extended like an elephant nose.








But it was folded, balled like a cloth and just covered my mouth, boring, and I moved fast, uptown even in my sandals. So no photos of the events, the exodus away, and no google image proof that there were serious rumors swirling that day.




I heard there are 6 more planes in the air circling in New Jersey, yea it's them TOO.



We thought this movie was still on an upward trajectory and we might not have even seen the piece d'resistance yet, in other words there was still time to get everyone's digital camera, time to call Spielberg for directorial advice, and time to make aluminum foil antennas hats to facilitate them taking me to their leader.



There was no clear indication which direction was safer. Upwards, northwards seemed like the general trend.

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

There was a lot that was less than clear, but I can tell you this - I wasn't nervous I was excited. Three hours into this someone had already posted a 11" x 17" hand-drawn poster for an "END OF THE WORLD PARTY ... STARTING NOW!!! <--> ENDING???"




I bought some Olde English 40s but never made it upstairs to the party.




I walked and walked I wanted to be out there seeing this.

Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life...
than write a hundred stories.
Giacometti was once run down by a car,
and he recalled falling into a lucid faint,
a sudden exhilaration,
as he realized at last something was happening to him.

Later, the subways reopened and I slept at my mom's apartment. A lot of head shaking and watery eyes, chills, goosebumps, and Tom Brokaw in the background narrating the scene in my living room between my mom and I. Things felt important. There were offers of hot tea and something to eat, I'll make you eggs, some scrambled eggs and an english muffin, sit, sit. Everything was backwards and meals were served with no concern for time of day or night. In my room with radio on, flipping between dreams and talk radio; I woke at 5:30AM hearing Don Imus for maybe the first time, talking seriously. This was before we knew how many had died and before the bravado and threats began from those who would waive any flag.

The tune you'll be humming forever, all the words are replaced and wrong.

her heart was in the right place




an extraordinary <---> rendition

6 years later listening to the morning spot vacated by Imus after his impeachment, making my drive to work, fighting the near daily battle not to spill any ice coffee on my khakis.




A moment of radio silence to remember, broken by blowing bagpipes and trumpets that seemed ready to morph into an Arabic call to afternoon mosque wail but abruptly turned into a more Knights of Columbus donny boy O donny boy styling.









It all ended up being dust not asbestos, hangovers rather than anxiety-induced migraines, sweat replaced watery eyes, sophmore, junior, senior years passed, invisible ink and erasers that remove pen - video footage that disappeared from network TVs despite begging, pleading to be aired with all of it's shock and awe content. Indivisible.



my Mea Culpa. I sketched this while driving to my office on Tuesday and meant to post it immediately upon landing. But instead - like America when David Letterman told us it was ok to laugh again and Bud Selig when he told his MLB to play ball, same as when Londoners displayed their trademark stiff upper lip and went to work the day of the Tube bombings - I went about my normal routine, business as usual. Creating worlds within worlds - in work email distributions, in fantasy football leagues, in a booth full of friends with pitchers of beer - waiting impatiently, foot tapping, nails bitten, pacing around the room cellphone on ear, waiting for something to wake me the fuck up.

The film is about a lot of different things, about how Los Angeles lights up at night, how cars become prostheses of ourselves and how driving with the radio on can be bliss. But as with all of Mr. Mann's movies, "Collateral" is finally about men and work, and about how being a man is itself a kind of job.