it is nice to come home and be instantly reminded that you live in the best place in the world.

I never imagined that hearing my dad fart would bring me such joy. Thinking back to my early childhood memories, my definition of the word “stinky” was informed by the odor that my dad left in the bathroom after spending a deal of time in there. “Smells like roses” he’d always say, but I knew that ‘stinky’ equaled that lingering scent in our bathroom that only my dad was capable of creating. Foul, bad, gross, yucky… but more than anything; stinky.
But now, sitting in a hospital in Kalispell, Montana, the event of my dad farting is a cause for celebration. Only a couple days ago he had some major surgery on his intestine because it somehow got blocked and clogged up. His belly was cut wide open and his entire intestine was literally pulled out of him and placed on a tray next to the operating table. The doctors examined the intestine, found the segment that was clogged, cut it out, sewed the remaining good parts back together, stuffed the intestine back inside him, and then stapled up the 12 inch incision.
Once the surgery was complete, the doctor said that the first sign that the intestine was working properly would be that my dad would start farting. For two days we sat around waiting and hoping for my dad to fart. I reminded him of all the times when I was a kid when he would fart and try to convince me that it was a bull-frog or some wild animal. After that I told him to visualize a stomach full of black beans and roasted garlic (a deadly combination for us McCormick men), but nothing seemed to help. He could only eat Jell-O, and farts just didn’t seem to want to come out.
This morning, however, was a different story. Like the sounding trumpet of a victorious battle march, a nearly silent but oh so wonderful fart escaped my dad’s body. Nobody actually heard it, but my dad announced “I think I just farted.” And then a couple moments later, as we all sat quietly listening and looking at each other, a slightly louder fart came out that was undeniable. “Ladies and Gentleman, my dad has farted!” The nurses poked their heads in the door, the doctor came running from down the hall, and everyone started singing and dancing. Well, not really, but I was ready to start doing cartwheels down the hallway.

What a mess. Crazy wandering through uptown after being wined and dined by some curators from a big art museum while my dad is in a hospital somewhere in Montana being cut open. All I want to do right now is call my ex-girlfriend, but then history reminds me all too quickly why that wouldn’t help any. There are so many beautiful women walking the streets of Manhattan, it seems like one of them should be able to read my mind and see how badly I need a pair of warm arms to fall into. Why does it always seem to go like this? Days that could be both the best and worst days of my life? I am sitting in a meeting with some people who might help me with my movie and things seem to be going pretty well. Then I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and glance at the caller ID and see that it is my Dad calling on his cell phone. I figure it’s just him calling to say he is back home from his fishing trip in Montana, so I let it ring through and go to voice mail. After the meeting and on my way to my second important meeting of the day, a dinner date with the art museum curators, I check the message. It’s my Dad, he is still in Montana, at a hospital getting ready to have emergency surgery for a blockage in his intestine. He sounds awful and is clearly in a lot of pain. I quickly call back and my step mom answers and says he is in surgery. She explains that my dad woke up this morning feeling terrible. It got worse and worse and they went to the hospital, and now he is in surgery getting parts of his intestine removed. My step mom assures me everything will be okay, but she is obviously freaked out too. I get off the phone just as I approach the museum, and soon find myself at a fancy restaurant drinking fancy wine, and then drinking too much fancy wine. I am amazed at how easily I am able to switch back into business mode. I tell them about my screenplay, I tell them about my installation, they seem very interested and excited about both and we laugh and enjoy the wine together. Eventually the bill comes and I get a glance and see that the wine was $19 a glass. “Don’t worry, it’s on the museum,” says one disgruntled curator. We say our goodbyes and I am lost in uptown, and the thought hits me that it is possible that I let my dad’s last phone call go to voice mail.
What am I doing here? The crazy people who talk to themselves on the street suddenly make more sense. I look up and see a stone statue of jesus looking down at me from the overarching entrance of some nearly ancient cathedral, illuminated by the soft glow of the fluorescent lights of a Mister Softee ice cream truck that is parked just off the sidewalk. The full moon is rising over Rockefeller Center; tourists are taking pictures of it with flashes, pictures that surely will never come out. But they have hope, and they are smiling, so I take one to just to fit in. If I had a car I would just start driving to Montana. My dad lives in Maine, I live in Oregon. It’s a cruel joke that this happens while we are both flip-flopped on each other’s coasts. I wonder what a cab fair would be to Bozeman.
The F Train is my new love. For only $2 she’ll take me home. She never says no, but sometimes I have to wait for a while. I just couldn’t take the streets of Manhattan anymore. A homeless guy was begging for money and I gave him everything in my wallet, with the exception of a ten-dollar bill that I knew I needed for at least one more drink. A man on the subway wears a military uniform and sports a button reading “Hitler didn’t need search warrants either.”
Almost ten years ago, my Grr-Dad fell ill and was dying. He was in the hospital and going fast, and everyone in the family was on their way to Southern California to say goodbye. That week I had my first kind-of-important film screening at the Portland Art Museum and my dad assured me that my Grr-Dad would want me to stay for the show. I booked my ticket for that night and Vanessa Renwick drove me to the airport at top speed just after the screening. I barely caught my flight, but two hours later I was in LA. I took a cab to the hospital and found my dad waiting for me out front. “Matthew, your Grr-Dad is dead.” He hadn’t started crying at that point, but after saying that particular arrangement of words he couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. Saying it made it real. My Grr-Dad, my Dad’s Dad, had died half an hour earlier, while I was on the airplane.
Now I am in New York, doing things that feel important but probably aren’t all that important. I don’t think my dad is dying. This isn’t that bad of a thing, but it is really scary and we still don’t know how bad it could be. The subway just stops in the middle of the tunnel and I hope it isn’t broken. Standing still always makes the anxiety much heavier. I wonder if there is a power outage or a terrorist attack, but soon we start moving again. I just need to get back to my fake apartment and make some calls.
The person at the airline that I need to talk to about changing my ticket is only available during normal business hours. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to arrange my transportation to Montana. Thank god for the ten-dollar bill in my wallet, that will get me three or four Schaffer’s down at the ol’ Bait and Tackle (depending on how generous a tipper I am). The bar crowd tonight is much livelier than it was on Monday, and I realize that I will be leaving much sooner than anticipated and this might be goodbye to my new favorite fake neighborhood. Tonight is one of those nights you just assume get mugged or hit by a car or seduced or abducted by aliens. Some sort of intense reality shift that is more intense then the current, real reality. I just want to get lost in some other thoughts for a few minutes. This entire summer has been a summer of trying to create distractions. This trip to New York is really just a distraction, my life has become one giant charade… if I really really really look like I’m having fun than I must be having fun. The search for a distraction so profound that it causes you to forget your dreams and ambitions, overcome your fears and ditch your morals. It has worked for some people I know, but I can’t seem to get it to work for me. Alien abduction sounds nice, especially if they could drop me off in Montana when they are finished with me.
It is times like this that I really hate being an only child from a broken marriage. I’ve been to all of my grandparent’s funerals and watched my parents rely on the mutual support of their siblings. My dad and his brother, my mom and her brother and sister. I’ve always secretly wished I had an older sister, and I have never had the urge to call her more than I do right now. I’ve got a mom and a step dad and a dad and a step mom, all of whom are growing older. And me. That’s my family. It was great as a kid during Christmas when I’d get two sets of presents, but now I am scared to death about the fact that I have no family members remotely close to my age. I am too selfish, and not responsible enough for this.
When my mom’s mom died, her brother and sister were both there and they supported each other in roles that had clearly existed since they were young children. When my dad’s dad died, my dad played the part of the older brother, dealing with much of the funeral arrangements while my uncle spent extra energy comforting my grandmother. When my grandmother died, my dad tried to play the role of the responsible older brother, but at a point lost it and completely broke down. But my uncle, my dad’s little brother, was there to help him back up, and together they were able to get through the hardship. In each case, I remember how my dad and his brother or my mom and her brother and sister came together and supported each other in ways that I am afraid I will never know for myself.
The girl who I was exchanging glances with the other night is here, but she is talking to some other dude and doesn’t seem to notice me. I never did talk to her that night, and I figure now it is ridiculously too late. Besides, I doubt I could convince her to be my surrogate older sister anyhow, and if I started speaking to her it would probably be a total disaster. “Hi, I’m Matt, I’ve had too much to drink, those art curators ordered lots of wine for us, and oh yeah, I just found out my dad is having emergency surgery somewhere in Montana. He called me but I let it go to voice mail. I’m totally freaking out. What did you say your name was?”

Red Hook has three great bars- Bait and Tackle, The Pioneer, and the historic Sonny’s. It’s Labor Day, and the Bait and Tackle is the only one open tonight, but it is getting the job done just fine. Red Hook has a vibe that reminds me a lot of Portland, at least that of the hipster contingent. It has more of a neighborhoody feel and seems less cosmopolitan. People ride bikes, dress casually, and actually say hi to each other when walking down the street. Red Hook is a little bit isolated from the rest of the city, so I suppose that creates a closer nit community, and there seems to be more artists here and less yuppies, though it is getting harder and harder to tell them apart these days.
The Bait and Tackle is pretty nice. As the name suggests, it sports a fishing and hunting motif, with the walls decked out with taxidermied animals, mounted fish, photographs, trophies, and layers of fishing related paraphernalia. Two guys sit next to me talking about the weather in Seattle and how bad the winters are. Sounds like one of them has lived there, as he knows the early sunsets and short days, as opposed to the rain, are what really make the winters difficult. But now he is trying to wax something about how it is a dry climate. He is obviously drunk. I have no real beef with people fearing the weather of the PNW. In fact yes, it is awful, don’t move there.
I can’t tell how old the Bait and Tackle is or how long it’s been around for. It feels like an old man bar that has been open for decades, but I have a feeling it might be a hipster re-creation. It kind of reminds me of Dots in Portland, but with more character. I’ve always thought Dots felt a bit like a retro-furniture store with really good food. The Bait and Tackle feels like a personal collection of artifacts that must have taken many years to accumulate. And they have two dollar pints of Schaffer’s, which start off a little rough but taste better as the night goes on.
Earlier today I went to the West Indian Day Parade in Prospect Park. Crazy floats, Mardi-Gras Indians, hundreds of food vendors and millions of people. It was pretty intense and felt more like a street party than a parade. By far, the most exciting moment was when a float drifted by that Jamaican rapper Sean Paul was standing on top of performing. The float had a monstrous sound system, and at least 2000 people who had jumped the barricades were walking along side it, jumping and dancing and waving Jamaican flags. As it drifted down the parade route, the thunderous float and subsequent army of followers waving flags was one of the most powerful and exciting spectacles I have ever seen. The energy was overwhelming, more powerful than any march or protest I have ever seen.
I always feel kind of silly sitting at a bar writing in my journal, but it’s too late to go back now so i better just keep my head down. Something about the soothing buzz from the beer and the stimulating atmosphere makes writing in bars really easy. Plus, it takes commitment- if you are going to be ‘that guy’ sitting there with your head in your journal, you better look like you are busy writing. You don’t want to sit there starring off into space, looking like you are trying to be poetic. When I first sat here I had an entire half of the bar to myself, but now there is a group of three young women sitting next to me that I should probably be trying to flirt with or something. But that sounds so impossible, and when you are in a bar by yourself you don’t have anywhere to escape to- no friend waiting back at a table, no group to re-engage in a conversation with. Just you, awkwardly sitting there all by yourself, with everyone knowing you just got shot down by some girl. But, even worse than that, I think I have really bad b.o. right now. I was in the sun all day and walked for hours, and a day of sweaty new york air has left me smelling pretty foul, making this a no win situation. It’s one thing to be that weird stinky, mysterious loner hunched over his journal sitting at the end of the bar writing, but an entirely different thing to be that stinky weird loner creep who hits on girls who don’t want to be hit on. Oh shit, they are all getting up to go have a smoke, and two of them definitely gave me the eye. Now would be the perfect time to go have a smoke and talk to them, but, I don’t smoke. Smoking has always been a good social crutch for meeting people, and I suppose New York’s new smoking ban only makes that more so. But then again, I don’t like cigarette smoke, and kissing a smoker can sometimes be kinda gross. Plus, the tobacco industry is probably second only to the oil industry for the prize of “evil corporate power most responsible for destroying the world”, and I tend to be disappointed with people who choose to patronize them, so maybe going out to flirt with these girls isn’t such a good idea after all. Or maybe I am just trying to come up with excuses for why I shouldn’t try talking with them.
Okay, so I just got a refill of Schaffer’s and had a little conversation with the bar tender and found out that this bar has only been here for three years. But it was in fact a bait and tackle shop and the sign out front is original. That all makes perfect sense. I couldn’t imagine this bar existing in this neighborhood for too long of a time, seems way too hipsterish and not old-manish enough, but the fact that it was a bait and tackle shop before explains the weathered ambiance a bit. It is not fabricated history, just augmented. Out with the night-crawlers, in with the Schaffers.
At the parade today I took a lot of pictures “from the hip.” I must have been inspired from hanging out with Jem (king of shooting from the hip) Cohen, and I snapped dozens of pictures by simply aiming my camera at a subject and taking the picture without actually looking through the view finder. It’s a great way to take pictures of people when you don’t want them to know your taking their picture, and having a digital camera makes it a lot easier because you can take tons of pictures and just delete the bad ones (which there are usually a lot of). I messed up plenty, mis-judging the focal range or simply cutting off the person’s head, but a couple of them turned out real nice. As soon as I leave this bar I will go play with the good ones in photoshop.
The guy who was sitting behind me talking about Seattle is named Jack Daniels. Really. He just introduced himself to the group of girls and the bartender vouched for him. Even said it got him a free drink one night, of Jim Beam. I guess if you are going to have a name that is ridiculously famous, it’s good to have one that helps to get you drunk every now and then. The girls don’t seem all that interested with Jack, and he retreats to his buddy but they seem to be on their way out anyhow. That is always a good time to try to start a conversation- if you are on your way out you can just keep going if it doesn’t look good, but pull up a chair if it is going well. At least that’s what I have heard. I am so stinky I am starting to gross myself out, this humidity really gets me greasy. There is a new dude sitting on the other side of me at the bar. He too is alone and has that pseudo intellectual look that makes me worried that he is going to want to talk to me. He might start with the girls first, but he might think I am a safer bet. When you have your head down writing in a journal, girls won’t interrupt you, bar tenders won’t interrupt you, but pseudo intellectual dudes will always interrupt you. I think it is because they feel some sort of kinship, and assume that what ever it is you are writing is probably something they know a lot about and therefore you’d rather be talking with them about it instead of writing about it. “What are you busy writing about?” “Well, funny you should ask, I am writing about how I don’t want to get stuck in a conversation with you.”
He is probably a really nice guy, I think I have just had too much stimulation today, and too many beers at this bar. I probably couldn’t really form a good sentence if I had to. For some reason I’ve always liked to sit in bars and write and be totally anti-social but still completely engaged in the social situations around me. It is sort of like participating, but as a spectator. Sometimes talking just seems too difficult, and the beer is the only thing that makes sense. In fact, I’ll have another if you don’t mind.
Pseudo Intellectual dude seems more interested in playing video games than talking to me or the girls. Which is sort of a relief, because if he had wound up talking to the girls I would have felt a bit jealous. It is better to just think of them as some impossibly unapproachable thing. I don’t need him to dismantle my theory. The girls are going out for another round of smokes. I have caught eyes with one of them so many times that I either need to go talk to her or absolutely never look up at her again. We are way past the look and smile stage. How did we get here so quickly?
My beer is almost empty, and my penmanship is getting worse and worse. Soon I’ll need to make a big decision.

It’s raining in New York. Hard. Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ernesto moved up the eastern shore late last night, and I feel sorry for all the real Ernesto’s in New York who are undoubtedly taking lots of shit as the storm with their shared name drenches the city. “Ernesto, you asshole, why are you ruining the holiday weekend?” I knew it was raining hard while sitting in that funky old-man bar down in Sunset Park, but when I stumbled out at 4am it was as if I was walking into a television commercial for the Weather Channel. The winds were gusting and the rain was coming down in sheets, and I recalled all the times my New York friends have asked me “how do you deal with the rain?” when discussing life in Portland. I looked over at my friend Marianna, who was battling the wind to get her umbrella up, and told her I didn’t think I could ever live in New York because it rains too much.

(window display in Brighton Beach)
Last night, before the storm really hit, before we found ourselves addicted to the perfect jukebox filled with Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, and before Helki’s dance party where a seven year old neighbor kid walked in and challenged us all to a dance competition and then proceeded to shred us with his wicked dance moves, we found ourselves sitting in a ocean front Russian restaurant out in Brighton Beach. Brighton Beach is a wonderfully intact Russian/Eastern European neighborhood in the eastern reaches of Brooklyn that’s not too far from Coney Island. Marianna said she had been out there a few times as a kid, but hadn’t been for several years, so we hoped on the subway and went out in search of the perfect Russian dinning experience. We walked around for at least 30 minutes, considering several restaurants and eventually settling for one that impressed us with their particularly bright, neon yellow and green napkins. Looking at the menu, I remembered that I am not a big fan of Russian food, but that didn’t stop me from ordering a stroganoff and enjoying the view of the ocean as the hurricane slowly inched it’s way towards us.
The restaurant, whose name I can’t pronounce or type because my keyboard doesn’t speak Russian, was also a nightclub and banquet hall. We were obviously there in the in-between time, as the dinner rush had probably just ended but the big party hadn’t yet started, and I am quite sure that there have been some amazing wedding receptions there. The place sported an incredible 80s style that only seems to exist in cheap import furniture stores, with lot’s of tinted mirrors, faux leather couches, and tables with shinny dark surfaces and gold trim. But they made it look good, real good, and it reminded me that you don’t have to have money to be elegant, you just need to try hard and be proud of what you’ve got.

New York has changed a lot in the past few years, but in far-out neighborhoods like Brighton Beach you remember all the romantic and mysterious elements that make this city unique. A stroll along Brighton Avenue feels like walking down the main street in a mid-sized European town, with markets full of mysterious foods and exotically packaged candy, restaurants with aggressively charming door men, and local teenagers cruising to the sound of American Hip-Hop. The roar of the passing subway on the elevated tracks overhead is the only indication that the town doesn’t end after a couple miles of suburbs, and reminders that you are a tourist persist around every corner, in signs and menus that you can’t read, in passing conversations you can’t understand, and the scoured look in the faces of the old people who you know have seen so much more in their lives than you could ever imagine.