My new years resolution; Be a better person? But I’m amazing already. Do more for other people and the planet? Are you kidding me, I am so generous it’s unbelievable. Be a more attentive husband and father? Don’t insult me, I am the greatest husband/father a woman/child could ever have, just ask Renata or Erica…okay so maybe you should just take me at my word on that one. So what then? What’s left? In 2010 I vow to be…..this is pointless….Okay this year I plan to drink, smoke, eat like a pig, gamble excessively, and generally abuse people, then next year on new years I’ll be ready. Happy new Year everyone. Love to all.

Well it’s here at last, that long awaited last night before sales. But what does it mean. For over twenty years I have been writing with this goal in mind. My first published book. Did I think it would take twenty years, no. Did I think it would be a biography, no. Am I happy with the finished product, immeasureably. And yet, I am here alone tonight babysitting my one year old. The dog is asleep on the bed in the other room. Renata is off to meet a friend in the East Village and I am writing. I am writing. Had this happened any other time in the past ten years I would be in a bar right now or on my couch with a bottle in my fist pontificating to the nearest stranger, or anyone else who would listen… I would have been riding the wave of my ego to an unbearable darkness… nothing would have pleased me…. nothing would have worked because this does not feel like what you think it’s going to feel like. I have spent most of my life manufacturing (mostly with the aid of chemicals) how I feel… now, I just feel… right now I’m warm, I’m pretty healthy, the bills are paid, I’m having a good marriage day, Erica just made me smile, I’m a little hungry… I’m going to make myself a sandwich… when Erica sleeps I am going to watch a movie, take the dog out one last time, and when someone is holding a copy of Orangutan in a bookstore in the morning considering if its worth the fourteen bucks, I will be here, doing what I do, what I have now been given some freedom to continue doing…. I will lay down a word, worry that it’s not good enough… I’ll look for the next…I will hammer my way down the page pushing and pushing it until the engine kicks and I will be off again as fast as my fingers can carry me, when that engine kicks in I am gone my amigos…. I am gone gone gone …………….

I just wrote an entire blog entry , tried to upload a picture and lost the entire blog. Okay, so I’m going to do this again and now I am appropriately pissed the fuck off for the subject matter. Just this morning I was reading in The New York Times that New Yorkers are the least happy people in the country, REALLY, you think so. You’re right, we are pissed off, we’re also more honest, and it is our honesty that is mistaken for unhappiness. Newsflash: We are all going to grow old, wither, and die people, and that’s if we’re real lucky. New Yorkers are just more in touch with this basic truth, we don’t hide from it, we embrace it, we don’t walking around pretending it’s not going to happen, it’s still going to hapen no matter what latest fashion you’re wearing or how white your teeth are. Let me tell you I’ve been to plenty of happy places in my life and it usually just made me feel depressed and confused, most happy people I’ve met belong in the nut house. I am not happy and I’m proud of it. The only thing we really have or leave behind are our actions, the little things we do while we are here to help another person or to leave the world a little tidier before we close the door behind us on the way out, so there you have it my moment of cheer, merry $#*#ing holidays everyone and don’t let the door hit you on your ass on the way out.

I was out for perogies in a Polish place in the East Village last night when the real heavy stuff started down. By the time we were back out on second ave the cars were crawlling along through about three inches of it and we had to lean into it with our shoulders as a fierce wind spat sharp shards of the shit in our faces as we treked across town. By midnight our golden retriever was able to bury himself in a snowdrift outside our door but the artic wind coming off the river cut the romance out of it. But it was a special night for me all the same. I had a piece published in Poets & Writers, the Inspiration issue that hit stands yesterday. It’s under, Fires of Inspiration: How the Winters Biggest Books Got Started. It’s a small piece but still, it’s something to see your name in an article like that, a magazine like that, after all the nights of darkness, the bad pains in the chest at four in the morning when the the only thing to hold for comfort was a bottle of whiskey, the nights in jail staring up at the bottom of a bunk as a fresh drunk shakes and moans and shits in his pants on the bunk above you. It can snow all it likes this christmass, I’ve paid enough dues to the blank page over the years to relish a small mercy. I deserve at least a little piece of the dream, I’ve seen an army of others trample all over it for years, with shoes so finely polished you could see their bright pink assholes relected in them as they sqeaked along. I’m not saying I’m any better than those pricks, but I’m as good, I do know that.

I braved the cold last night to check out Crazy Heart at the Angelika and I’m glad I did. I watch movies in part to escape. I can’t drink myself away anymore so I live with constant head noise, it’s rare I find a movie, or anything else for that matter, that can take me away from that. Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake. There isn’t a moment in the movie you don’t believe him, Maggie Gyllenhaal is equally convincing in her role as young reporter, and Colin Farrell almost pulls off a believable southern accent, almost, (is it just me or does Farrell look like he belongs in the Taliban). Bad Blake is a drunk country singer and I believed every minute of Bridges performance. I was cringing and twitching in my seat and blown away by how many of the scenes I felt sick right along with him. I don’t think I’ve watched a drunk in a movie I identified with so completely. It is one hundred percent authentic. Writer Scott Cooper, you nailed it pal. You have to see this movie. It’s a rare and beautiful gift. I’m going back. My guess is Jeff Bridges nabs himself an academy with this one.

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in a while. It was a horror show. They called in the interns and they stood around glaring into my mouth like it was a coffin. One young lady passed out and they had to carry her out while they sent for the salts. Another young man burst into tears and had to be consoled. They told me to go home and come back in five days to give them a little while to regroup, to recover from the initial trauma my teeth had caused them. I got up and headed for the door. I spent the entire night running from knives in my sleep, there was blood everywhere. When I woke I understood why people need a God to believe in, it’s for the dark times, when what you know just isn’t enough to stop the fear. Friday I’m back again. This time I’ll be ready for the bastards.

Orangutan Book Trailer

.I’m still trying to figure this thing. I spent about two hours this morning trying to find somewhere to log in to the blog page only to discover that it is impossible to do that without a doctorate in computer science. My friend Rick saved the day by sending me a log-in link. Why Wordpress WHY? WHY must these things be so damn difficult to figure out. There must be an easier way. I know I’ve probably lost a lot of the gray matter over the years to the sauce but I’m not what you might deem mentally challenged. If I can’t figure it out in two hours of intense research how to log into my own damned blog page then it’s a fucking problem. Stop playing x-box geekazoids and install a log-in logo on the main page for godsake. Okay I’m done ranting, you’re not worth the energy. You people make me want to drink, it is precisely this kind of nonsense that drives perfectly normal people running into the nearest liquor store to spend their last dollar on a screw top bottle of white wine. And one other thing while I’m ranting here, can we think of another name for the climate problem, other than Global Warming. I get that we’ve destroyed the ozone layer and we’re suffucating the planet but I was just outside twenty minutes ago and trust me it’s not warm, it’s not even cold, its fucking freezing out there, when it’s this cold I get angry at the very thought of Global Warming. I find myself thinking, Fuck the Ozone layer, give me some godamned heat up in this piece, I’m cold and I don’t care if a giant tidal wave wipes Manhattan off the face of the planet, I want heat now. There I’m done for now. Is this what people do on blog pages? Is this what they’re for. Fuck it, this is my blog page and I’ll write what I like. Have a nice day

It is freezing in New York tonight. Manhattan is an ice box. A bitter wind whistles up the Hudson acorss the park and up Broadway looking for stragglers hurrying home with glassy eyes and ears stinging. We are at home with the radiators clanking and hissing waiting for the Pizza delivery guy to brave this painful night so we may not. This is a trial blog entry. My first. I’m going to try attaching a pic also so if it works it works if not I’ll try again tomorrow.