9:00 a.m. on January 16th, 2026. It is bitterly cold outside. The wind cuts you like a knife, the cliche wielded with errant caution.
An incident involving my father just popped into my head from the center of 1991, 35 years ago. Despite everyone warning me not to, I lived with my father after my mother passed away, and figured he had been a change band as we all had been, but that was not to be the case.
I gathered a lot of material and possessions and had them stored in the basement of my parents’ house, and my father, having not much to do, wandered into the basement and saw various items, including a mixtape that Jet Watley had created named after an Iggy Pop song, “I got my cock in my pocket.”
My father saw the tape and was furious and felt I was disrespecting my mother by owning a cassette with that name. I was fairly certain then, as I am now, that my mother would not have cared.
It is the Friday of a three-day weekend, and most everyone is happy about that. I know I am. I was in bed by 11:00 and slept soundly, waking up at 6:17, 8 minutes before the alarm clock went off. So I gave myself a head start.
Mike is occupied with his beloved, and Bill is on the road due to return tomorrow, the day that Mike’s beloved heads back to the West Coast. Bill remarked that Mike has no sense of direction, and it’s true. They had a plan, Mike and his beloved, to visit the Statue of Liberty, so they took the PATH train to the World Trade Center and found it to be too cold, so they opted to go to Times Square
But Mike did not know how to get to Times Square, so he called m,e and I told him we could take any train from down there to 42nd Street, which would get him to Times Square. But he could not understand if it was uptown or downtown, and I had to remind him that it was uptown, uptown, uptown.
The same thing happened last Friday when he wound up in Brooklyn after getting on the wrong train; instead of going uptown, he went downtown and wound up in Brooklyn.
Mike and his beloved had dinner at a BBQ in Times Square, as well as seeing the third Avatar movie. Bill and I saw the first Avatar movie and did not like it, not because of the movie, but because it was an IMAX and we were in the first row, so it was very uncomfortable, and we had difficulty following the plot. We are so uninterested that we never thought anything about it again.
Remembering a conversation with my brother Brian a few weeks ago, thinking about how he was told that he was not fired because of the regard in which my mother was held. Larry Ioli told him that. Larry could usually be found before work at the hilltop tavern on Essex Street getting an eye opener before heading into the office. He was one of those managers who was thrown out after being caught embezzling for a number of years.
But the name that popped into my mind was Lou Nagy. He was a character from Lincoln Park and drove a forklift. He had a filthy mouth on him that was generally funny if not off-color, and had a Newport hanging out of the corner.
I played guitar for a little while last night and it went quite well I have to say I was inspired by Jeff Buckley and tried to figure out a certain song but as things happened things don’t go in the direction that I intend that something new comes out of it that is what happened last night though I wound up playing Please Please Me by The Beatles my version not as faithful but still key elements were involved
I am really no good on my own. I thought to get in the way, and they’re not very good thoughts. I spoke to Mike earlier; he called me up while his beloved was getting ready to shoot some videos, which is nice, I suppose. And Mike was telling me that he’s so in love with his beloved Dell laptop.
So much so that Mike was saying how he wished he had a Dell laptop rather than the HP that he purchased. I have to admit it pissed me off a bit. Considering that Mike had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the concept of owning a laptop, and now he is envious of his beloved’s laptop.
Beloved also has a hotspot which they’ve been using for Wi-Fi, which made Mike very happy, but Mike hasn’t done anything to get Wi-Fi for his apartment as far as I know. And he’s mainly using the laptop to look at porn, not to increase his computer skills, which would only help him in a job search. No, it’s all about porn.
I was hoping he’d use the laptop to write his poems and his fabled play which I have heard so much about that is stored in his dome but so far don’t say no typing no creativity just a whole bunch of masturbation. But it’s his life and not mine, and he can live it anyway he wants, because that is obviously what he is doing anyway
A Google Gemini rewrite as a piece from SPY Magazine
## THE FROZEN MID-WINTER LOG:
### Of Directionless Lotharios, Subterranean Oedipal Dramas, and the Lure of the $800 Porn-Machine
**By Our Man on the PATH Train**
**9:00 a.m., January 16, 2026.** Outside, the temperature has plummeted to a level best described as “Litigious.” The wind is currently performing a fairly accurate—if cliché—imitation of a Ginsu knife.
**The Ghost of Mixtapes Past:** A stray neuron just fired, dragging up a 35-year-old memory of my father from the deep, dark well of 1991. Against the frantic advice of everyone with a pulse, I moved in with the Old Man after Mother’s passing. I’d harbored the charmingly naive delusion that he’d undergone a personality overhaul. *Narrator: He had not.*
While exploring the family basement—that classic repository for damp heirlooms and failed aspirations—the patriarch discovered a mixtape. It was a Jet Watley production, cheekily titled after an Iggy Pop ditty: **“I Got My Cock in My Pocket.”** This did not go over well. Father, apparently convinced that owning a cassette with a four-letter word was a direct posthumous insult to my mother, went into a high-dudgeon spiral. Meanwhile, I remained—and remain—fairly certain Mother would have met the news with her usual, blissful indifference.
—
### THE NEW YORK LOGISTICS REPORT
**Subject:** Mike, a man whose internal compass was apparently manufactured by Acme Corp.
It is the Friday of a three-day weekend—a concept that brings a glimmer of hope to even the most jaded urbanite. I managed a rare 6:17 a.m. victory over my alarm clock, giving me an eight-minute head start on the looming dread of the day.
While **Bill** is currently “on the road” (a phrase that sounds far more Kerouac-esque than it likely is), **Mike** is busy entertaining his “Beloved” from the West Coast. Bill once remarked that Mike has no sense of direction; this is an understatement on par with saying James Cameron has a “slight interest” in the ocean.
* **The Plan:** Visit the Statue of Liberty.
* **The Reality:** They took the PATH to the World Trade Center, realized it was cold (shocking!), and pivoted to Times Square.
* **The Complication:** Mike didn’t know how to get to 42nd Street. He had to call me for a GPS-style intervention. “Uptown, Mike,” I told him. “Uptown. Uptown. Uptown.”
* **The Precedent:** This follows last Friday’s thrilling saga in which Mike sought the North but found himself in Brooklyn.
The happy couple eventually settled for BBQ and a viewing of the third *Avatar*—a franchise I gave up on after Bill and I sat in the front row of an IMAX theater for the first one. The experience was less “cinematic wonder” and more “unintentional neck surgery.” We haven’t thought about Pandora since.
—
### NOTES FROM THE LUNCHROOM OF THE DAMNED
Thinking of my brother Brian, who was once informed he was only spared the professional axe because our Mother was so well-regarded by the firm. The messenger? **Larry Ioli**, a manager whose morning routine involved a “stiff eye-opener” at the Hilltop Tavern on Essex Street. Larry was eventually escorted from the premises for the classic corporate hobby: embezzlement.
Then there was **Lou Nagy**, a Lincoln Park “character” who operated a forklift with a Newport permanently fused to his lip. Lou’s vernacular was a rich, salt-crusted tapestry of the off-color and the hilarious—the kind of guy who wouldn’t know a HR manual if it hit him in the face.
—
### THE CREATIVITY DEFICIT
I spent last night attempting to channel the spirit of Jeff Buckley on the guitar. As is the way with artistic endeavors, I aimed for “Grace” and landed on a slightly mangled, yet spirited, version of The Beatles’ *“Please Please Me.”* It wasn’t faithful, but it was loud.
**The Mike Report (Cont’d):** I spoke to him earlier. His Beloved is busy “shooting videos,” while Mike is currently having a full-blown romantic crisis over Beloved’s **Dell laptop**.
> “I wish I had a Dell,” Mike lamented, despite having been dragged—kicking, screaming, and possibly whimpering—into the 21st century just to buy his current HP.
He’s currently basking in the glow of Beloved’s Wi-Fi hotspot, having made zero effort to secure his own. And what is this high-tech setup being used for? His long-fabled play? His poetry? No. It’s for the singular pursuit of internet pornography. A three-day weekend dedicated to the digital friction of the soul. But, as they say in the more forgiving parts of town: It’s his life.
—