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Wow of Silence

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Oh, come on now. It can’t be that easy…can it? For most of my life, I’ve been searching for ways to keep my noodle in shape, and while I’ve made some marginal progress in this area, I still have a lot of work to do. One of my favorite techniques is a deceptively simple concept that my old buddy Fred the Shrink told me called “Detach and Observe.” The idea is that you step outside of yourself and take a nice long look at your mind. You don’t judge, you don’t scold, you don’t do anything except observe what’s going on in your head. It’s good way of catching destructive thought patterns and, we hope, undoing them. So, I’ve been observing lately, and I see that I fly off the handle far too often. The computer is too slow, I can’t find my wallet, one of my articles isn’t coming together fast enough--whatever the excuse may be--and I start cursing and fuming like a bag lady in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I live alone and it seems that my subconscious mind has essentially...
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Help Wanted

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I worked the night shift at two different jobs last week and I never got out of bed. The activity was all in my mind in the form of two back-to-back work-related dreams that were so realistic I’m wondering if I should keep my resume on the nightstand. I know I blog about my dreams a lot, but some of these midnight mind mirages are just so twisted I can’t keep them to myself. Now to be honest, these two occurrences weren’t nightmares, certainly not like some of the high octane screaming mimis I’ve had in the past that packed enough psychic energy to power the Empire State Building. These, on the other hand, weren’t particularly bad dreams. They were just kind of… unpleasant . The first one had yours truly working at a temp agency doing some kind of brain-numbing grunt work that a NASA chimp would've found insulting. The events are vague—I think I was stuffing papers into envelopes at one point--but I remember quite distinctly the feeling of despair and depression I used ...
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A Ticket to Anywhere

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Aretha Franklin knew what she was talking about. “Music does a lot of things for a lot of people,” the Queen of Soul once said. “It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life.” I did some emotional time traveling last week while listening to Eighties songs on YouTube. I was barely attention to the hits as they went rolling by until Tracy Chapman’s “ Fast Car ” came on. And then I was flying, bouncing through the years until I reached 1988, when I had just moved to Stroudsburg, PA to work as a reporter at the Pocono Record. This was more than a typical memory or recollection. It really seemed like I was back at my old apartment on Scott Street, feeling so lost and unsure of myself, convinced I had made a terrible mistake by moving here from Brooklyn, but too terrified to do anything but keep going forward. At the time there was an agent looking my novel, while a buddy of mine and his partner were tr...
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Reflection and Repentance

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"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams"—John Barrymore I missed the bus last on Friday night. I thought I had plenty of time before the bus bound for Pennsylvania was going to show up, so I took a quick run to the loo. I was planning to go to a local theater production, and I thought this would be a nice change of pace. As I walked out of the bathroom, I heard a large vehicle rolling by my house. That had to be a sanitation truck, I reasoned, and not my ride, but when I got to the window and watched this big-ass vehicle pulling away, I saw “Allentown” painted on the back. I wasn’t going to the theater. None of this happened, of course, at least not in the real world. I had dreamed the entire episode, which had taken place in the porch of my family’s back on Senator Street. But the emotion I felt as I watched that bus fade down the street was all too real and quite familiar. I was consumed with regret. Experts believe that dreamed about miss...
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Waite and See

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I blame Harlen Corben for this. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently watched the Netflix miniseries Missing You , which is based on one of the many books written by the demonically productive author. The title comes from the 1984 megahit by John Waite, which is one of my very favorite songs from my favorite musical decade. I absolutely love Eighties music, and this song is emblematic of the time. I remember seeing the video on NBC’s Friday Night Videos and then hearing it again on a new crime drama that debuted in ‘84 called Miami Vice . It was the second episode of the slickly produced program entitled “Heart of Darkness”, which featured a pre-Al Bundy Ed O’Neill as undercover FBI agent who got too deep into his role as a gangster. The episode opens with “Missing You” playing over a sweeping shot of the Miami waterfront and if memory serves—and it very well may not--I was watching it the home of one my sister’s friends. “This looks like a rock video,” our hostess...
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The Girl from Nowhere

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It seemed like she was here for just a moment and then she was gone. Kim Sae-Ron was a popular South Korean actress who starred in over 20 TV shows and movies. I had never heard of her until a few weeks ago when I stepped into what I call “The Netflix Trap.” That’s where I sit down for what I plan to be a relaxing evening of television as I scroll through the movies and programs available on the streaming service. And I scroll, and I scroll, and I scroll, struggling to make a decision. This process can go on for quite a while and, more often than not, I’ll jump over to Amazon Prime and go through the whole charade all over again. What makes me particularly batty with both these platforms is that they warn you that certain films and TV shows will be leaving soon. I suppose I should appreciate the heads-up, but I often feel pressured to watch a movie that doesn’t particularly interest me. And I’ve sat through more than a few dogs in the misplaced fear that I might be mi...
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Washing the Cat

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It’s hard to believe that Harlan Coben has written only 36 novels. It’s just feels so many more. I confess I have never read one of the #1 New York Times author’s books, and I can’t say I have any urge to do so. They seem rather lightweight, and I recall one online commentator who described his prose style as “execrable.” But Coben’s stories, which often involve events from the past suddenly rearing their ugly heads, can make for some darn good escapist TV. Twelve of his books have been adapted for film or television, with Netflix cranking eight series to date. Coben’s work has been provided material for shows in England, Spain, France and Poland to name a few, and his net worth has been put at $25 million, which sounds kind of low if you ask me, given his output. I just got finished watching Missing You and in addition to being a funky mystery and a fine cast, the program was only five blessed episodes. There was just enough time to introduce the characters, set up the s...
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