When I'm home alone and just want to relax, I like to instant watch old episodes of Law and Order. Netflix streams right to the TV, so even though they only offer the 'Criminal Intent' and 'Special Victims Unit' versions of the program, it's nice to just press play and instantly have something to ignore. It is precisely because these series are retarded, truly retarded iterations of the original series, yet the same, insofar as they ape the form of the original Law and Order, that they are so goddamn easy to ignore. I play a couple of episodes and pretty soon I've answered emails, done the dishes, watered the plants...It's brilliant!

The head of the Philosophy department at Stanislaus was a Deadhead like few others. While this may seem laughable to some, he is a truly original thinker of the Grateful Dead phenomenon, and one hell of an administrator, having brought together a serious group of Continental thinkers in a fucking cowtown in Central California. Well, anyways, we were talking about the Dead, and I said something about the richness of the lyrics, and the rewards of focusing on the lyrical element in the music. Jim agreed with the point, but pointed out, with a smile, that he often found himself ignoring the music altogether. It was what he put on when he needed to work, which is to say that he had reached a level of familiarity with the music to the point where he no longer needed to pay attention to it. He could just be with it, without that being a thing. Is that what love is, the blissful ignorance of the beloved's existence, objectless and indifferent? Am I in love with Law and Order, SVU?

Every year on my birthday I get a card from my Grandmother, each holding a check written for however old I'm turning, and the inscription, the same every year, "Eat light, drink light, and have a happy, healthy birthday." Good advice from a woman who displays the vigorous stamina in old age that only accompanies the temperate, a trait clearly lacking in my nature, in my generation, but intimate with the children of the Depression.

The first day of Summer is the longest day of the year. Tomorrow will be shorter. There will be less time for cold drinks on hot days, less chance for hours wasted prone under the sun on Saturdays at the beach, less of the early Summer moonlight perfect for finding a Summer love.

I once began trekking to a remote wilderness in the Mojave desert to celebrate the summer solstice with some friends. We made it as far as Leucadia, about 50 miles north of San Diego on the PCH, where my sister had a place within smelling distance of the beach. Having driven through the night we rolled in to town about 4:30 in the morning. and headed straight down the cliffs to the beach, where we stumbled upon a record low tide, the water breaking 50 yards from where it would normally reach. The shore was littered with shells, beautiful shells, large and intact. Shells everywhere, exotic in their wholeness. Gleaming white Conch shells. Large, elaborately colored scallops. I found a sharks tooth. We ran and ran, laughing, jubilant with our discovery. It was an hour before sunrise on the first day of Summer, the longest day of the year, and the fucking earth had given us a gift.

Hey Stoli, you were the meanest sonofabitch in town, but I loved you for it. I'm gonna miss you, buddy.

The J train was awfully crowded this morning. No matter. Got to hear this:

“…well, you know, I lost three, had three miscarriages before my son was born.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“But God is good, and I got pregnant with my son, and it stuck.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm.”

“And I was real careful during the pregnancy, got all kinds of tests, and sonograms and such, and when the doctor wanted to give me a shot of ___ I said no, I will take what the good Lord gives me, retarded, or missing something, it doesn’t matter. Because, you know, that shot leads to miscarriages in some women, and I wasn’t going to risk that, to risk what the Lord had given me. If that boy’d come out retarded or handicapped, well, we’d just have to work through that, as well.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm.”

“And then, a couple of weeks before I was due, I started feeling real bad. And the baby, he wasn’t kicking around, or moving much at all.”

“Did you drink some cold water? They say that helps.”

“I drank some orange juice, all that, trying to wake him up, but he wasn’t moving, and I was feeling real bad, so my husband and I got to the hospital, and praise the Lord, it’s a good thing we did, because the doctor said we was about to lose that child.”

“Oh, no.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm. So they cut me wide open – oooh, that pain! – and pulled my baby boy out two weeks early, and he was sickly, and this was up in Hartford, where we was staying at the time, and the doctors say that they’re goin’ to have to keep him for a while.”

“Oh.”

“So my husband and I, we stayed in a Ronald McDonald house for the time that boy was in the hospital, for about 2 months, and this was about 14 months ago, and we just got back and settled in the city, got a place right across from Highland Park, sure did, and this weekend we’re goin’ to do it up large, to celebrate a year outta the hospital and a year back in New York, and Father’s Day is comin’ up soon,”

“The 20^th, I believe.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm. So we’ll celebrate Father’s Day as well. Imma goin’ to get out there early, and get a bench, and get the barbeque out there, and we going to do it up large, have a real celebration, praise the Lord.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm. But my husband, well, you know he’s got diabetes, and the other night he comes home all swollen. His legs is swollen. His arms is swollen. His face is all swollen. So before he even has a chance to say otherwise I say we goin’ to hospital, and we get there, and the doctor runs tests, and he says that there ain’t nothing wrong, that everything is negative. And I say No, nah-uh, I know my man, I can tell when something ain’t right, you know what I’m sayin.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm. I sure do. We can tell.”

“That’s right. So the doctor, he run some more tests, and it turn out that my husband got something wrong with his kidneys. They ain’t working right.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“God is good, and we’ll work our way through it, but for now we just gonna have a celebration, and celebrate what the Lord has given us, my baby boy.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“But the Lord, well, you know, He giveth and he taketh away. Just last month, my man’s sister was hit by a car as she was crossing the street.”

“Oh. Mercy.”

“Well, I’m at home with my girlfriends, and we get the call, so we rush to the hospital, Jamaica Hospital.”

“That’s a good hospital.”

“Mmmm-Hmmm, well, it wasn’t good enough to save this girl.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Every bone in that girl’s body was broken, she was crushed, all swollen, couldn’t even recognize her. But she held on, she fought, but in the end, she was just too damaged.”

“She’s gone to her Lord.”

“Yes. Yes. She was a good woman, a good child. She will be missed, but we will celebrate her memory. We gonna celebrate her, and we gonna celebrate my baby boy, and we gonna celebrate a year back with our people.”

“And Father’s Day, too.”

“Yes, that’s right. Praise the Lord, Father’s Day, too.”

Hepcat (I Can't Wait) Conan O' Brien Show sometime in the late 1990's

"Go on and treat me like a jerk, well when he comes to play, girl if I'm so bad why don't you go his way? Aw, but there's nothin' like your lovin', I can't wait to hear you say..," baby, you skank like none other.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Thank you for coming to every practice I ever had, even those times that I had to drive you home. And thank you for being such a sharp dresser.

And you know how you like to tell the story of when you and some friends got hammered one night, and you all decided to get tattoos of the Playboy bunny, so you drove to Venice Beach but you were third in line and by the time the first two got their tattoos you had sobered up to the point of knowing better? Thanks for not getting that tattoo, Dad. That would have changed everything.

I remember it being my father who did most of the cooking. I know that this isn't true, I know that it was my mother that was day to day preparing breakfasts, lunches for school (she made my little sister and I lunch every day), dinner to have waiting when my father would return with one of us from practice. But Dad had the signature dishes: Chinese Roasted Pork and Chile con Queso on Sundays with the football game; Steak Oscar on New Year's Eve; and for some reason his French Toast always had a bit of fried egg on the edge, which my sister and I found delightful. Mom was American Gourmet 101. Mom would make Pot Roast, and Chicken with Cheese and a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. Mom would make Meat Loaf. But I don't associate any of these dishes with my Mom. This is terrible to admit, but I can't imagine sitting at another's table and thinking that Mom could make it better; not unless, that is, the menu features Fried Hamburger Tacos and "Any Pudding" Desert.

But Mom was better. She did not miss a day, did not take a day off, even when it seemed as though the pressures of holding my family together would tear her apart. She was the fucking dark matter, the only one who possessed the strength and fortitude to keep in harmonious orbit a family predisposed to wandering. And her lack of originality in the kitchen notwithstanding, Mom always seemed just a little sharper, a bit more sophisticated, more independent, more of an able woman than the other Moms. I know that she thought we took her for granted. Maybe we did...I'm certain we did. But I was always proud of her.

But Mom has changed in recent years. She is not longer the confident, assertive, force she once was. There now are times when I doubt my mother, doubt her ability, doubt that she is able. I know that she has doubts about herself. So there is just the one thing I would like her to know on this Mother's Day: her children know that she has poured her everything into them, and they know that whatever successes they achieve are reflections of her effort, her patience, her determination. And her children will be there for her, will support her with the power of their self-confidence, their strength of character. Because even if the nourishment we received in the kitchen was largely utilitarian, the lasting example of my Mom is a figure of superabundance.

There's no question that some of the today's very best writing is to be found in the pages of The New Yorker.

Just this last weekend, I paid to see a film on the power of The New Yorker review alone. The film, as the review had argued, was terrible, a supreme exercise in cynicism, "violence's answer to kiddie porn." But the review was so well written, the critic so clearly animated in his reaction to the film, his argument so cogent, that I was drawn to experience the film for myself.

Even among the uncredited capsules in "Going on About Town" there are jewels to be unearthed. Consider this endorsement of a exhibition of Old Masters at the Frick:

"Savor eight of the nine visiting Old Masters, then pour yourself into Rembrandt's 'Girl at a Window', which will use you up. The unremarkably pretty subject, in an open blouse, leans forward on a stone sill and gazes slightly past us. Rosy-cheeked, against a black ground, she steams with vitality. Is she chld or woman, serene or anxious, innocent or cunning? She is all those things, but not at once. Her aspects flicker in the mind. One hand oddly raised to her throat becomes as tormentingly enigmatic as Mona Lisa's smile. Your response to her induces a responsibility. She has become a person in your life. Your life is different."

Whoa!

I am lucky enough to find myself surrounded by people whose intelligence and facility with words I admire. This is a situation that I do not take for granted; a situation, in fact, which I actively sought to put myself. I have friends who have written for The Times, and friends who have been invited to read at philosophical symposium. I have friends who nosh with famous authors, and others whose work has been lauded and published by prestigious journals. I find their success tremendously satisfying, and share in their glory as a wanderer takes share in the bounty of a desert oasis. Graduate school was my reason for moving to New York, but my motivation was to meet a girl and maybe someday get a piece into The New Yorker. Maybe someday I'll accomplish one or both of those goals, but until then I'll continue to take joy in the intelligence and wit of my friends.