Jumpin' At The Woodside

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since the events of 9/11 . While I'm filled with thoughts and emotions, it was only today that I really took stock of how much New York City has played a part in my life. Yes, I was at the Yankees game on 9/10/2001 that was eventually rained out some 12 hours before the world changed, but so much more than that. It seems like NYC has always been a special place for me. I remember my dad taking me to see "The Magic Show" with Doug Henning on Broadway when I was a kid, and when he went with me and my class to see The Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. And yes, I suppose he also took me to my first concert, Captain & Tennille. It wasn't my choice, but that's another story. Although I'm a staunch Philadelphia sports fan, like many kids of the era, I admired and followed the prolific Yankee ballplayers at the time like Catfish Hunter, Thurman Munson and Reggie Jackson, and th...

The word "soul" has many meanings, but the one that resonates the most with me is genuine, or worded another way - the active or essential part. I find I look for the "real" or genuine qualities in many things... music, movies, writing and the design of things from houses to furniture, and most importantly in people. While I'm sure I will live the rest of my days doing and saying dopey things from time to time, but I hope to continue knowing the difference between the genuine article and horseshit. One can only hope. I like this quote below from a piece I wrote a while back. It reminds me to stay true to my beliefs, and to put another way as related to a timeless fable... If the emperor is nude, by all means tell everyone. "Once those cinema-plexes popped up all over creation, shazam! There's this one little theater on the other side of town. It's got the big marquee, the lights, the infinity mirrors and varnished wood. Wood man, wood...

Not every day you stumble across physical evidence of a past crossroads in your life. Today while cleaning out some old boxes I found a job offer letter from a company in Wayne, Pa, sent to me in 1999. My choice at the time was either to take this job at a new company, or stay at my current company if they matched the offer. They did. It was a tough choice, and I remember at the time I felt like I was making the right choice. I ultimately wanted to stay where I was as our division was about to be spun off into a new company, and it seemed like big things were on the horizon. Dot Coms were booming and everyone was cashing in, so it seemed like everything was going my way. About a year later, the Dot Coms went bust. January 2001, I found myself in a conference room where most of our company, myself included, received the news we were being let go via speakerphone. I eventually got back on my feet, but I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I taken that job offe...

Rogue OREgasmic Ale Greetings and Hoppy Friday! Tonight's brew is  Rogue's OREgasmic Ale ... "Brewed using 100% OREGON Ingredients. Micro Barley Farm Dare™ & Risk™ Malts; First Growth Micro Hopyard Revolution & Independent Hops, Pacman Yeast and Free Range Coastal Water." Believe me it lives up to its name, it's good stuff. That is of course if you're a hop fan, if not then probably not so much. This week was our somewhat quarterly "All Hands" meeting, and as usual it was held at the EpiCentre Theaters , maybe the finest movie theater complex I've ever seen. Immediately following our meeting was the theater's regularly scheduled showing of the latest Batman film. When the meeting started, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was thinking of the victims and their families in Colorado . Actually a few times this past week I found myself thinking "what if..." in various public places. Granted I doubt there a...

I'll always remember 2011 as the year I woke up. My divorce was final in 2009 and I dated other women on and off since. Although I was looking to meet someone with whom I could share real feelings and a serious relationship, I never had more than casual relationships. For awhile I wasn't sure if it was the fact that I didn't have chemistry with the women I dated, or that I wasn't ready yet... or maybe a little of both. The closest I came to a serious relationship was with a woman who I felt very comfortable with and we became good friends. We had a lot in common and had great times together, but no matter how intimate our relationship became I didn't feel love for her. This grew difficult over time as I saw her growing closer and closer to me. Finally, I had to tell her how I felt. We tried to remain friends and still spend time together, but that didn't work. While daily life went on and snowstorms became a regular occurrence in the early part of this year, I s...

I wrote much of this post a couple months ago, but seems appropriate to revisit on this weekend's 10th anniversary of 9/11. Until I encountered some media programming memorializing the events of 9/11, I wasn't aware how close my feelings were to the surface even after all these years. I recently heard the replay of the Howard Stern Show from 9/11, and then a few days later watched the Saturday Night Live special about the 2000-2010 era that included clips of the first few shows after they returned to the air following the tragedy. It was like experiencing it all over again... the sadness, the anger. I remember feeling a sadness or maybe a heaviness that I feel like the whole country felt for at least a year or more following that day. Reminded me of a time when I was very young. I found a book about JFK and the assassination at my grandparents' house. As I paged through it with my grandmother, we saw photos of the funeral procession and she started to cry. I asked her...

I now have a new home for my written pieces, Timmay Pieces . My blog entries about this, that, the other, what I ate, drank, concerts I attended, where, when, why, what have you and what for... will still reside here. My prose consisting of fictional short stories, poems, thoughts, fragments, etc. will now reside on the blog Timmay Pieces . - Salud!

Inspiration comes in all forms, shapes and sizes... and can even come in the gaze and friendship of a beautiful young woman. I had a surprise lunch today with the aforementioned young woman. I was a little nervous at first as we've only had brief in-person chats in the office, but have texted and instant messaged a good deal. She's so full of life and energy. She has a real hunger and passion for taking in as much of the world as she can. She's funny and smart, and I'm thinking why would she want to talk to me? Kidding of course, because I'm an amazing individual... now that's funny! Self-deprecation humor aside, you still wonder... at least I do. Anyway... she inspired me to get back into my writing. She claims to not be a writer, but has taken up her own blog. She has good writer instincts. She starts off with the lead that grabs the reader and then fills in the details from there. I keep thinking how can we have anything in common with our age difference, but...

I wanted to share one of my favorite scenes from a film script I wrote awhile back. I tried to present it here in proper script format. The blog has some display limitations so it's not perfect, but it'll do. A portion of the film is set in 1987, and the following scene takes place after a group of friends have been up all night after driving from Orange County, Calif., to watch the sunrise in Joshua Tree National Park. Two characters sit outside a small house in a community not far from the park. I really liked the dialogue here between Paul and Webber, and very proud of how it turned out. Paul is a NJ transplant struggling to find his way in the world, while Webber, a transplant in his own right from Oklahoma, speaks with a slight twang and isn't afraid to preach his own brand of cowboy religion and common sense. EXT. BACK PORCH - DAY Paul slumps in a chair at a table with an umbrella. Webber sits down and pours a margarita for each of them. PAUL Where are the other two? ...

I was inspired tonight by the post of ol' Lazy Acres' photo on FB and the simple tagline "Headed home." What follows is fictional. Headed Home Headed home into the sunset, headed into the unknown. All the while the feeling of comfort surrounds me, soothing like a warm blanket on a chilly evening, a cool drink on a summer’s day or the smell of warm apple pie on a fall afternoon. Can I get to where I hope to be? Can the I-we in me find the dream I share with mothers and fathers who came before? Can we find the “home” wherever we find ourselves flaps up and wheels down? We’re on the approach, sinking in, the ground’s coming up fast, but there’s time. There’s always time. Time enough to find our piece of the pie. Time to find the corner of the earth we call me, mine, ours. Time to take in that sun set; time to grab the sparkle in the eyes of young ones growing up too fast. Can we make it last? Pulling up at the gate, grab my belongings and start for the door. Walking, not...

I used to carry CDs to work in a big black binder, maybe 25 or so. Before that, I guess I had a plastic rack full of cassettes I'd leave in the car, ever careful not to let them melt in the sun. I'd use my finger or a pencil to wind the the tape back into the cassette after the player yanked it out. I had vinyl records and 8-track tapes, each with their own dilemma - scratches and dust, or tapes eaten by hungry stereos - things we don't have to deal with today. Today's electronic world, a world so wired almost silly to even say the word "electronic." It's not needed, it's a given. Today I carry my entire music collection in a wallet-sized gizmo, about 4,000 songs worth. Friends, are they real or just the Facebook-Twitter kind? I used to drive about 15 miles to work and some days it took almost two hours. Before that I took the train, listened to a CD or a cassette and kept my eyes on the floor. Good to drive a car now, no longer a sardine in a tr...

I remember waiting for the bus, waiting for the train, waiting to listen to my Walkman or Discman CD player – that’s right, not an iPod. I thought about this on my drive to work this morning. I remember when I moved from Boston back to the Philadelphia area. I couldn’t wait to drive my car to work and park in a parking lot. Not a generic pay lot up a few blocks from work, but an honest to goodness free lot – free for all the working people of the building to park in any space they chose, ah freedom. Here, there are bus stops on my way to work. Many times I’m either behind the bus and need to pass, or ahead of the bus and want to stay there. I have one vivid memory of taking the bus to work. The bus ride was rather uneventful, but what was memorable was the surrounding circumstances I found myself in at the time. This was in Jersey City, NJ. It was winter 1990 and I was attending classes full-time at NYU during the day, and working as a security guard overnight from midnight to 8 a.m. I...