The View from the Top...

From the top: Dusk over the Hudson - 52nd floor Westin Times Square, NYC;
Pacific Sunset - 10th floor Sheraton Delfina, Santa Monica, CA;
LA Palms vs. Skyline - 6th floor terrace, L'Ermitage, Beverly Hills;
LA Weather - 12th floor, Westin LAX;
Salt Lake Surrounded - seat 2A

Can I take your order?

Why is it that the best meals often occur way past midnight, hours before the morning omelet? Is it the calming effect of the post-dusk air that serenades the food like strawberry vinaigrette running over acres of mixed greens? Or is it because a chicken gordita just tastes THAT damn good?

Why is it that every thought of calories, carbohydrates, or caffeine seem to exit stage right when the Drama about late night food begins? Eaters-remorse is fast asleep while you're chewing on that fat-packed Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Potbellies hide under the blankets and Love Handles are busy making out in the driveway... Why is it that a 4am Biggie Size of fries seems like a much more delicious alternative than taking Lucy or Rhonda home from the club?

Something about that late night, drove-too-far-to-get-it and then waited-in-line-behind-nine-cars-kinda-Snack appeases all bouts of confusion or eruptions of hormone...

Something in those twilight tastings energizes us more than any Sunday morning sermon ever could. Reverend Ronald McDonald sho' do know how to preach...

And the hymns he's selling go damn good with some ketchup and a six-piece.

And we're singin' along...cuz we're saying 'screw it' with each verse...with each bite... forgetting about the morning paper or the 7am meeting... just eating something greasy and fried, and lovin' every minute of it... freedom baby... that's what ol' Rev is preachin'...


And ima believer.

Inspiration

When inspiration hits...unleash it.

Even if it's 3:43am on a workday.

Lyrics of the Week

Champ:
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine.
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind.
Held you in my arms one time,
Lost you just the same...

Still don't know what love means.
- Ray LaMontagne, Jolene

Runner-up:
I dont want your innocence,
I dont want you to stutter.
I dont want a commitment,
And I dont want you to suffer.
I dont want your number,
Baby I want you to wonder...
- Diddy w/ Christina, Tell Me

Old School:
Did I ask too much, more than a lot.
You gave me nothing, now it's all I got.
We're one, but we're not the same.
Well, we hurt each other, then we do it again...

Love is a temple,
Love the higher law.
You ask me to enter,
But then you make me crawl,
And I can't be holding on, to what you got,
When all you got is hurt...
- U2, One

14

It's an intoxicating balance between schizophrenia and genius...between insanity and prodigy...

A fine line that's a dance floor for only the finest of performers...tip-toeing across the stage with precision, grace, and a few well-timed pelvic thrusts.

Weaving in and out of conscious and subconscious. Fantasy and reality... The Fourteen are fearless.

Armed and dangerous, ready to lay siege on any comer...any dinner guest at the Feast that is friendship, or famine that is the lack thereof... The Fourteen are incognito.

Undercover brothers, with varying attitudes and appetites but with the same infectious laugh. Different outfits with the same bad haircut... The Fourteen are coveted.

Desired by some, unknown by many, misunderstood by most...only the richest of Landlords own the key... The Fourteen are privileged.

Tucked away beneath blankets of security...invisible to the naked-eye... The Fourteen are lonely.


I have Fourteen personalities.

You know 3.

Now accepting reservations for Eleven.

Piano...

Why is it that when you're eleven years old, the thought of 'piano lessons' makes every budding hair follicle in a young male's body stand up in unison and scream out in unkempt anguish to acres of antsy testosterone... petrified about the impending persecution of all that is manly inside his 4 foot, 100lb frame....?

Rough, stubbled, future five-o'clock-shadows in gripping fear of infinite, effeminate curtsies in pink shirts and plaid bowties... Something about an hour on the bench with Mrs.Wyman in her dingy first-floor family room never ceases to whip said 11 year old boy into a whirling frenzy, scurrying with all his might to find some excuse.... ANY excuse, to refrain from refrains, and abstain from "C minors" and tippy-tippy tippy-tippy tee tee tahs... "I am man. Me eat meat. Me play football. Me fight lion.".... So goes the male adolescent mind... the puberic (is that a word?) thought process....

The hot girl in 5th grade doesn’t want the dude who can play a mean Moonlight Sonata... she wants the dude who can boot the big, red, rubber ball over Bobby's head in left field during kickball at recess... or the brotha with the fastest shuttle run time....

So, while myself and flocks of like-minded young men continue our endless search for Professional Kickball Leagues in which we can showcase our accrued ball-kicking talent... the nerd from the back row...in Mrs. Johnson’s class... yeah, that dude...

He's hummin' his baby grand right now... spittin' out Mozart and B'tove...Bach.... and sh*t is sounding nice... NICE.... And he's doing something with his hands that we'll never be able to do with our feet.... and THAT is poetic justice... or, pianic justice.


Anyone know a good piano teacher?



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