Lie #6 - there's no place like home

So happy to be back in America that I ran naked through the rain today. In Times Square. I was hoping to get arrested, but I was a little disappointed about that not happening. In fact, cops were just saying "Move along folks. There's nothing to see here." And, unfortunately, there wasn't much of a crowd either. Even though it was lunchtime, most people were paying attention to the Naked Cowboy.

All I can say is if M&Ms steals my idea--running around actually naked instead of in underwear and with a guitar and boots--I'll sue!

Lie #5 - first ladies

I spent much of the day on the streets of Paris selling Norwegian pickeled herring. Although I cornered the market recently, it is not selling as rapidly or for as high a price as I expected.

While I was out on Rue Montainge who should come up to me all smiles, but The First Lady of France, herself. I met Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Most people don't know that she is a math genius. She told me she was very impressed that I had won the Abel Prize.

I have to admit that I was a bit intimidated to meet this impressive woman in a grand fur coat surroudned by her security detail. When I explained to her what I was doing, she bought a can of pickeled herring from me. She didn't have euros on her--and I don't take credit cards. But fishing thrugh the pockets of her coat she found two Norwegian crowns; so, I sold her a tin of the herring.

Carla told me she had just got back from London, and the subject of the photograph of her that Christies is auctioning off came up.

I told her not to worry about that and to feel free to come to America anytime. We got over being prudes decades ago. In fact, we got over all of that stuff back when Eleanor Roosevelt posed for a photograph.

Although she was a great humanitarian and progressive thinker on human rights, a lot of people don't know that Eleanor Roosevelt was practically crippled with embarrassment about how pigeontoed-toed she was. She didn't want people to see her walk; so, she usually got pushed around in a wheelchair by her husband, which was quite difficult for him to do as he himself was in a wheelchair.

Lie #4 - math prize

I was awarded 6 million crowns by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for my pioneering work with Tits. Now, now, stop it. It's not what your thinking. Why anyone gets turned on by little birds I have no idea. Such people are aberrant at best.

I am talking, of course, about my work regarding the new and influential notion of groups as geometric objects and their symmetry that I did with Jacques Tits, of France.

By the way, the Norwegian crown is a lot stronger than the dollar; so, it didn't make sense to convert all the money to--gulp--American dollars. That's why I spent my half of the $1.2 million on Norwegian pickeled herring. They don't call me an algebra whiz for nothing!

Lie #3 - There's gonna be a rumble

I blew up buildings in France. No, no, it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not a terrorist. I was working with a demolition crew that had to clear some run-down apartment blocks from the 1950s to make room for something new and nifty.

By the way, the French don’t implode structures with dynamite the way we do in America. They have a kind of hydraulic jacking device that lifts one side of a building and can actually turn it upside down. It’s a lot quieter than the way we do it, and a lot less noisy.

The last structure that had to be destroyed was the house that the crew was staying in during the project flipped just fine, but it was too light to self-crush like the apartment buildings we did. So, the demolition company sold it to a guy who shipped it to the Kaszuby area, by the Baltic sea, in northern Poland.

Interestingly, everyone I have met on this project speaks fluent English, with an American accent, which makes my attempts with my phrasebook sound quite pitiful.

Lie #2 - raison d'être

Every day for a year I will come up with a new premise for a blog about doing something every day for a year.

[Message to Puerto Rican Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila: Don't make false statements. Lie! Plenty of people have gotten the book thrown at them for making false statements, but nobody has ever gotten into legal trouble for lying. I envy you having 12 associates, by the way, I have to write this whole blog myself.]

LIES! - Lie #1 - if I did it

This is a blog; so, I might as well write something--which I have not done often enough (or have done too often in some people's opinion).

Now that yet another hot blog seems to have wound down, I feel like I should try to do something. So, every day for a year I will tell a lie.* I know that doesn't sound very positive or particularly impressive, but I'm trying to get in touch with my inner Cretan (that's a lie, by the way). Anyway, I can't help thinking that if more people lied, we would get better at separating truth from fiction. And Lord knows there isn't enough fiction in this world.

So, here goes: Today I ate a lemon, skin and all. Swallowed it whole.

*This itself might be a lie.

In search of lost comedy

For some reason I found myself thinking of Perfect Strangers today. A little bored with my work, I headed for the Web and stumbled upon the random fact that today is the 22nd anniversary of the show's debut. The show ran until 1993 and thus accumulated more than the traditional 5 years of episodes needed for syndication.

When Perfect Strangers debuted, I was a newlywed. I think my wife found it first, probably by accident while changing channels, and Balki Bartokomous's jumbled English is what caught her attention--possibly because it took her a minute or so to determine whether it was grammatically and idiomatically proper. She was a foreigner and she jumbled her English now and then, too--but she was fluent enough to get the jokes.

During the run of the show, 1986 to 1993, my wife and I lived in four apartments, changed jobs, changed careers, bought a cat. Perfect Strangers was one of those great shows that nevertheless by the time it ended you had almost forgotten it was still on the air. That wasn't really the show's fault, it's just that by 1993 we were working too hard and not watching much television. Now we're divorced, but I still have the cat.

It's easy to forget how great the physical comedy was; something that is way more difficult to pull off than most people realize. I remembered how good Mark-Linn Baker was when I saw an episode of "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" that he directed that climaxed in a side-plitting scene involving Mark Curry smashing up a lot of glass with a golf club--there are about a million ways to do that and not be funny.

Speaking of the end of an era, tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26th, is the 366th--and thus last--new thing.

My fellow New Yorkers . . .

. . . Here is a picture of me:
I've had kind of a bad day, and I don't want to talk about it much.

Here is a picture of my wife:
She's pretty good looking actually, except this is a picture of her when she's thrilled to see me.

Somehow when I prepared myself for a career in public service, I expected it to be more like this:
It hasn't worked out like that as much as I'd hoped. C'mon people, cut me some slack. If I want to have a good time, it costs me $5,500 an hour. Do you know how long it takes me to get $5,500? On a government salary? A lot longer than an hour, let me tell you. Do you think you could lighten up once in a while and be a little more forgiving? Now let's pull ourselves together and focus on what's really important: the bond insurance industry.

The coward bastard bomber

When I heard early this morning about the bomb attack on the military recruitment station in Times Square, I immediately thought of two previous similar attacks. (The police aren’t explicitly making that connection, however.)

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but I believe these attacks are all the work of the same man: The Coward Bastard Bomber. Why did I even remember these attacks in October and May of 2005? Because they were weirdly petty. Early one morning in May of 2005 a “novelty bomb,” as the police are calling them, exploded near the British consulate. In October of 2005 there was another, near the Mexican consulate, shattering windows. We remember, Coward Bastard, wherever you are, we remember.

Mayor Bloomberg went to Times Square today and spoke about the situation, calling the bomber a coward: "Whoever the coward was that committed this disgraceful act on our city will be found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Bloomberg said. Mayor Bloomberg forgot to add “bastard”--well, he didn’t forget, it’s just that the Mayor tends not to say “bastard” in front of TV cameras and on the radio. For one thing, it’s undignified, even if it’s true. I, however, have no reservations about saying "Whoever the coward bastard was that committed this disgraceful act, he is a coward and a bastard.”

What is the Coward Bastard Bomber against? Mexicans? The British? Windows? Small buildings? He did break a couple of windows at 3:45 this morning, although apparently the “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster behind the window was unscathed. Clearly this attack is more bastardly than dastardly. The U.S. military just spent $60,000,000 to practice shooting down a satellite (they succeeded); so, you know an ammunition container filled with gunpowder (or pineapple or apple, as in the earlier incidents) could no doubt bring the Pentagon to its knees. I have news for you, Coward Bastard Bomber.

Yes, somebody could have got hurt, most likely the Coward Bastard Bomber himself, which is a typical fate for cowards and bastards who make bombs and carry them around on bicycles.

I don’t know whether these attacks qualify as felonies, but I suspect they do. And I can’t remember whether all that fuss about the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law finally resulted in New York having that law, the one where if you're convicted of committing three felonies you can never get out of prison. I hope we have that law, and I envision this conversation:

“What’re youse in for?” [This is New York, of course.]
“Bombings!”
“Say . . . Aren’t you the Coward Bastard Bomber?”
“I . . . uh . . . don’ think of myself that way.”
“You put gunpowder into a plastic pineapple and broke windows at 3 a.m.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re in the pen for the duration? Wow, I have actually met the Coward Bastard Bomber.”

When are . . .

. . . people going to learn to stop stealing?

Bai Ling on her way to the airport:


Bai Ling one hour later being booked on suspicion of stealing $16.22 worth of batteries and magazines from a store at the airport:

Need I say more? Pay for your batteries and magazines. Don't disturb the peace.*

*Note to Bai Ling: If you'd just asked me, I would have bought the batteries and magazines for you and none of this would have happened. Stop being so shy and call me. Disturbing the peace does not pay.