'Tis (noch) der Saison

“Weihnachtsmischung (Winter-Mix)”, ©Jeff Glovsky

 * * *

(Dank wie immer to MingoPhoto for paying attention ...:)

Constant Wishes

No matter which Hol(y)days you celebrate

(or Sainted traditions you may have Nicked)

to share, maybe laugh and make it through

 the frenzies of this Season

(and regardless of the color,

shape, size, meaning of your symbols),

may this Day (and Night) and Year(s) Ahead

be MERRY, bright and prosperous

... and Peaceful. Always that.

Sony, North Korea and Me!

As an American, I’m confused:  do I thump my chest and stress about complete and utter capitulation … the weaselly collapse of an entire segment of population … the industry that feeds it and the “weakness” of our nation?

Or am I glad that things aired on the right side of caution, and that fate wasn’t tempted?

* * *

(Thanks, Rene, for the reblog!)

Remember(ing) Laughter

When my dad turned 50 years old, he did a little 'river dance' on his birthday cake.  Sadly frustrated with life and years behind him to that point, and whatever present hassles he felt his family, (empty) wallet and failing business had been giving him, in a single swooping motion, he swatted his 50th birthday cake off the kitchen counter, and leapt upon it like Nureyev.

Stamping like a person one-tenth his age in the frosting, and crushing "5" and "0" candles beneath his still shoe-clad feet, he ceased misbehaving only when my mom burst, literally, Lucille Ball-like into tears.

I was not privvy to the "Event of the Half Century", as my brother and I came to call that day; I did not witness it myself ... My brother, in these sort of excited, hushed tones, related what was going on, as I entertained guests in the upstairs bedroom we shared:  a sanctuary (whenever I'd lock Jared out of it) that I used to kick back and call, "The Swamp".

Finest Kind

My friend Mike and I had been arguing that day over which of us was going to be Hawkeye Pierce ... and more importantly, which one of us was going to go downstairs and eat birthday cake wearing the dirty bathrobe my brother and I had laying around the floor of our bedroom?

I was adamant:  I was going to be wearing that bathrobe, because Hawkeye would have ... and anyway, it was on my bedroom floor, in my house, not Mike's!

"You're Trapper John!  You're TRAPPER!" I screamed into Mike's sweaty armpit ... as he tightened his headlock and gave me a noogie.

Just then, my brother (Major Winchester) burst in.  "Dad smashed his birthday cake on the floor!"

I didn't hear what he said at first -- flailing, in a headlock, as I was -- but eventually, as the words sank in -- and as my best friend Mike released his grip -- I realized that neither of us would be needing the bathrobe ...

There wasn't any birthday cake to be eaten!

"Jared, are you joking?" I asked my brother.

He responded by throwing me into a headlock ... I told him I believed him!  I just wanted to make sure!

He gave me a noogie.  Then we ran downstairs.

Sure enough, my mom was wailing like Lucy ... a birthday cake was on the floor ... and there was my dad, with some paper towels, wiping frosting and candle wax off his shoes.

Fast forward several decades.  As I near the 'Big Five-Oh' myself -- incidentally, no longer so smug in my lineal place as the older brother -- I compare my (mid)life now, to my dad's back then:  daily stresses?  Check.  Money messes?  Check.  Failed business(es)?  Check(check).  Wailing wife and stunned children?  At times, check and check.

But an overriding impulse to laugh through it all?

That most vital touchstone ... Happily, check ✓.

New Winter Blues

"2% or 1% of 0.2% can always be used to destroy a human being, when there are no barriers, when there is no perspective and no context." - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas

* * *

The other day, someone contacted me to rent an apartment I own.  After going through all of the usual motions -- proving the property is mine to offer, sharing references, sending this person a link with photos ... then agreeing on a monthly price and informing the renter what I'd require to move forward, and move into my property ...

The renter informs me that he "decided to do a quick google search" ... hopes it's some kind of "misunderstanding" ... but "can still not justify moving forward with this transaction".

... There are three (3) posts bearing my name on Ripoff Report.  Since 2010 -- although really, not until I became able to emerge from shell shock in 2013 -- I have fought, and won, to remove damaging items about me online.

About "Jeff Glovsky", personally; not negative "yelps" or scathing "reviews" about my underperforming, badly managed and ultimately failed business nearly five years ago ... but disgusting name-calling, insulting and bullying against my personal reputation ... hobbies, interests, friends and family, loved ones ...

The fallout from these emotional attacks launched in 2010, both publicly (online) and through private, chiding emails to which I would find myself waking each day, and then literally fearing, continued for years ... until enough became far more than enough, and I finally crawled out of my shell-shocked torpor.

This is something that the aborted renter I mentioned, probably doesn't know (not that it would've made any difference to him):  that I've fought, and WON.  To remove -- Delete.  Permanently. -- other nasty, unwarranted, damaging, emotional, false and defamatory misinformation about me from the internet.

Why?  Because it wasn't a full picture and/or wasn't accurate - and nobody has unfettered "freedom of speech":  to attack or defame, and destroy my name, or anyone's name online because they can ... or especially, believe they "should".

But what's still out there about me online -- and still alarming to potential renters, colleagues, friends and partners ... disarming potential -- is also inaccurate; the statements which still publicly fester, contributing still to permanent damage and loss of income and opportunity (not to mention respect) ... are lopsided, if not wholly false.

Doesn't matter ... The three (3) complaints about me on Ripoff Report remain, and they remain visible.

So the abortion I mentioned ... the failed renter ... informed me the other day he wasn't renting my apartment.  "Not a problem," I chirped cheerily.  "Hope you find what you're looking for!"

He then proceeded -- seriously.  Because I asked him, "Are you joking?"

"Not in the slightest," he chirped to me, cheerily --

then proceeded to suggest that I let him stay in my apartment free for a couple of months -- "plus some cash", he offered grandly -- in exchange for his help with "online reputation management".

"We offer a guarantee on this service as we use lawyers and legal documentation to have the result removed from google," he babbled.  "If you are interested in the proposition I can send you some case studies."

If not for the risible opportunism (and rank inappropriateness) ... the guy's earnest cluelessness ... the assumption and presumptions he'd made, with his mind up:  case closed, black and white, righteous and wrong ...

I'd have laughed in his face.  My rancid, hot breath bringing sting to his eyes, as I leaned in to offend him.

The same way he nonchalantly offended me.

“Lunar (New Year)”, ©Jeff Glovsky

Made Brown Again

Congratulations on getting 5 total likes on Jeff Glovsky INK

Five Likes only??

Yikes!

... more Random Poetix

by Jeff Glovsky 

Riddle Me This

Recent input (from me) on a social network:

What fascinates me about social media is the psychological aspect.
 
What is/are the reason(s) behind the loneliness ... the histrionics ... the sad, almost desperate need for attention? The delusional hope -- or worse, the belief -- that every thought or "tweet" we make is somehow necessary/interesting?
 
That we have, and are supposed to have, "fans" - literal strangers, for whom we preen and pout and smile in "selfies" ... so that we might be "liked".
 
When did we become so sick?  What void does social media fill?
 
Were lives of people always so empty ... lacking as well in the not so distant past, the milennial capacity we now have to "share"?
 
Or do we exist today in a permanent, new "normal" state of mental illness?

Try Logging Off This Holiday Season ... It'll Be OKAY!

 Really.

Why Is It So Big??

Story of my life!  I get asked all the time ...

Why is your blog so ridiculous??

I smile, wink a little ... proudly, yet truthfully, say "I don't know."  Ask if I should change my dongle.

"Your dongle's fine ... ".

I smile again.

"Dude!  What the fuck?  Stop simpering at me!"

"You tell me why it's so big!  That's why I called you here, to look ... Here, let me open things up for you ... "

"Holy shit," she says, as it smacks her eyeballs ... "That is big!  Is that as small as things get?"

"Yes," I say, sheepishly.

"It's like my parents' telephone ... "

"I know!" I say proudly.  "I was looking at it the other night, and thinking the same thing!"

"My mom's small fingers get lost all over it.  My dad can flail away though, and never misses!"

"I hear ya'!"

"Can I ... ?"

"Absolutely.  See, I've got no control over how big it looks ... "

"You should resize this manually."

"I have, believe me.  I do!  All the time.  But then it just springs back to this size again."

"Even if you snip it?"

"Snip it, crop it ... It's like a worm.  It just keeps growing back!  Nothing I do ever makes it smaller."

"I'll make it fit the way you want it."

"Thank you, Gina."

"That's why I'm here ... "

And how was your weekend?
 * * *

more annoyances / episodes

Turkey Times

"(I)t's not pigmentation: it's a mentality and it's either going to work for you or it's going to work against you" 
[italics added] - Pharrell Williams

On Monday night, the week of Thanksgiving 2014, America was praying to be thankful for justice in Ferguson, Missouri.  With the fair and legally rendered decision not to indict Michael Brown's killer, a police officer reacting to public nuisance, if not threat, but then tragically incited to kill in that line of duty ... justice was rendered.

Fairly.  Legally.

The Grand Jury assembled in Clayton, Missouri -- to its immense credit and credit to all law-abiding communities of St. Loius County (and everywhere, for that matter) -- was able to separate fact from folklore ... actual circumstances from a breathless and toxic (social) media-whipped frenzy ... real life from hysterics and virulent fear(mongering).

Truth from hatred ... legal from racial ... common sense, in the end, from flawed logic and threats.

Here we go again in America!  Black against ... oh.

The truth is, this issue was never "racial".  It was intrinsically a matter of law and order, as endeavored to be enforced throughout the world:  Someone was causing trouble, someone called the police, the police showed up.

That the alleged troublemaker in this case happened to be black and his killer, the police officer, white, became relevant only when Michael Brown became killed by Darren Wilson.  Officer Wilson did not put on his badge that morning looking to kill someone (of any color).  He did not fire nervously, blindly without provocation.  This was no tragic "accident".  But it was also not an intended outcome.

As supported by evidence duly considered, Officer Wilson was doing his job:  first responding to a community's call ... then sidetracked by a threat, purportedly escalating beyond "perceived".

In America, the ability to see things as they are is no more.  It has been annilihated by an overreliance on lazy voyeurism and a nasty, judgmental susceptibility to (social) media manipulation.

Too often in America -- the Ferguson Grand Jury being a recent, and fortunately high profile, exception -- guilt, liability, blame and every worst-case scenario or behavioral motive is what's presumed ... not innocence first.

No, never that.

Bill Cosby, for example ... is a rapist now.  He IS a rapist, according to the prevailing winds of America's consciousness.  And whether or not the individuals, all pointedly with "nothing to gain" (except headlines and bylines, of course, and their names online, and/or a little more fame squeezed out of quarter hours) are corroborating in "exposing" a new flavor of Cosby ... A new "truth" wills out:  "Bill Cosby" no longer associated with Fat Albert, Temple University, Philadelphia, Jell-O, Dad sweaters, the '70s, the '80s, Saturday morning cartoons or Cliff Huxtable.

No, the New Cos is a "serial rapist" in the minds of millions ... likely now to be remembered that way, and associated these days with Spanish Fly.

... And bizarrely, curry.

'Man, I don't even like curry … ‘

Today, something like this gets taken seriously, at face value, with not even one person pointing out the context ... and that maybe, just maybe, a story about female David Letterman interns being "forced" to watch Bill Cosby eat curry backstage (lol?), no one saying a word ...

just might be a put-on.

Just saying.

Of course, rape is not funny.  The allegations against Bill Cosby are serious ... and may in fact not be just another day in the bullying internet's mob mentality.

Racism is also not a joke.  Nor killing.  Nor racial (incitement to) violence ... nor the perpetuation of inequality through misinformation, opinion overriding fact and loud and "viral" calls to arms.

"A riot is the language of the unheard.  Riots are self-defeating and socially destructive." 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cos and Effect

Bill Cosby knew ...

Back in the day, on early stages, he would regale groovy audiences with tales of making girls like "Crazy Mary" go, "lhaaaahhhh", by slipping them some Spanish Fly.

Psychologically speaking, in that 3-minute comedy bit, are an analyst's wet dream ... a cornucopia of clues to the planting of seeds, and behaviors formed.

(He) has done this before.  In the past, he has probably even got some; like a dog that's been trained, poor cat just keeps on sniffing ...

No one else back then, back in the "innocent" yet heady days of drug overuse and casual sex, and the anecdotal public airings of pecadilloes by certain "underground", counter-culture and/or simply "Youth", as opposed to "Establishment" (established), voices ... was doing bits about Spanish Fly:  an alleged aphrodisiac, ancient Molly, if you will, which used to be advertised in the back of the "men's magazines" I would furtively jerk to ... but sadly, can actually lead to meloid poisoning, among other unpleasantness, in both women and men.

Still, some twenty years after the routine debuted, there was Bill Cosby again, baring soul and airing laundry, in the guise of publicity for his 1991 book, "Childhood".  Transcript from an interview with Larry King:

BILL COSBY: Spanish Fly was the thing that all boys from age 11 on up to death — We will still be searching for Spanish Fly.

LARRY KING: [laughs] That’s right.

COSBY: And what was the old- The old story was, if you took a little drop — It was on the head of a-

KING: Pin.

COSBY: -pin! And you put it in a drink-

KING: That’s right. Drop it in her Coca-cola — It don’t matter.

COSBY: It doesn’t make any difference. And the girl would drink it and-

KING: And she’s yours (emphasis mine).

If liquor's indeed quicker, as I've sometimes known it is ...

Writers write about what they know.  The basis of comedy is reality; there's truth in humor.

Bill Cosby knew.  And maybe he's been trying to let us know ... about patterns established.

Behaviors formed.

Is it ... ?

"Word"(s) By ...

“Word”, ©Jeff Glovsky

“No More Words”, ©Jeff Glovsky

Read, Liked District

November Nods (October Acknowledgements) out to ...

@Spiegro, for recommending "In Carmen Aragon Again".

... I'll find her.

@tkwyoung, for amping up the visibility of "From Medium to Middling" and helping me get my point across (and thanks to the 10 (so far) who seem to agree, by recommending the piece):  simply put, that Medium (not the TV show), a once vibrant and valuable visibility platform -- a writer's wet dream, if you will, affording easy exposure to readers of quality -- is not what it once was.

Still, I enjoy the simplicity of posting to Medium.  Although work of mine may very well, literally, languish unread there ... it only takes one astute Collection editor to snatch up the orphan ...

So thanks to @JustThinkingNow for taking in "Still Relevance" - a (relevant) Monica Lewinsky piece, originally posted here on blogspot.

Finally, thanks to Guilhem Ribart, Daniel P.K. Ng and AlmostFreeNYC for noticing, a lot, last month.

*Plus a special shout this time around, out to long-time Photos by Jglo appreciator, Sawa Minori! ty :)

- September Shouts

- December's Children

Ghosts and Skeletons

My friend Mike, whom I've known for more than forty years ( ...! ), is a history buff, and a dedicated nostalgic when it comes to shared memories and our personal histories.  I can always count on Mike, whenever we have any occasion to catch up (which is not nearly as often or enough as it should be), to remind me of some tidbit from not only our childhoods growing up together, but also my own experiential Akasha ... which should never have become wiped away in the first place.

I thought of Mike the other day when I 'stumbledupon' something I forgot even existed:  "(Mostly) Unpublished writings by New York City author, poseur, poet and flâneur" ... JgNYC.

If you click there, you will enter a world of gamely attempted, lame stits and farts, before Twitter or Facebook ... before even LinkedIn!  My first post, an early slice of Slice / Life, dated April 28th, 2003 ... Apparently, LinkedIn launched that May.

first "Contact"

And then I found, resurfacing from the bowels of the deep web, one of the first online formats which granted me publication - an until now MIA zine called Strawberry Press ... which, with Underground Voices and Thieves Jargon, cut my teeth;

then, circling back to my giant, small steps into the early, first "blogosphere" -- that abandoned single page of posts on jglovsky.blogspot.com -- I became further reminded that I was, and still am (if I can find the password!!), a proud member of Zoetrope ("one of the first uses of social networking on the internet") ... a virtual writers' workshop sponsored by All-Story.

Who knew??  Who could remember any of this, when work and life demanded attention and the past four years, especially, have been starting over?

While starting to weep now, I'm actually happy:  to have come across these footprints from a more recent past ... clinging as I tend to, to my longer ago, Gen X sense of self, and the spirit that still haunts those streets and footsteps ...

Expressively (Irresponsibly) Yours

I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike. - "Kaci Hickox"

When I was back there in seminary school ... there was a guy who used to get bogged down in expressing himself.  Huge sports fan, he was also (like me) a theater geek - and (also like me) used to write and direct things, and strut around like Fellini.

But when it came to expressing himself in public, when not dismissively, almost disdainfully, breaking off sentences to snort in bemusement ... M.D. would flounder for words, often babbling, repeating himself.

To be clear (and fair to the guy), I also have trouble getting sentences spoken in public to make sense ... Sometimes, getting them out of my mouth is a challenge!  Being a writer, I tend to overthink speech:  when speaking, I sometimes wrestle with adjectives ... synonyms, adverbs, metaphors, "flow" ... the same way I do as I when I'm writing.

The difference is that writing, no one's listening to me.  The exercise is done in private, the sweat and the grunting remain offstage.  The only thing a reader "hears" of my written words and stories is the result, not the process.

When speaking, I can sound retarded.  Confused, marble-mouthed (... and I mean no offense whatsoever to people with marbles in their mouths!) ...

Anyway, M.D. from F.U., I suspect, used to struggle similarly.  A fellow wordsmith ... but he also used to get into these paroxysms of frustration over events that he felt he couldn't control.  There was Chernobyl ... Black Monday ... Tiananmen Square and the Hillsborough soccer disaster in England (probably the most frustrating of all to him ... big nutty sports fan that I knew him to be back then).

Then locally, on at least one occasion ... I remember him during a meeting of our relatively small theater department -- convened specifically to address something or other which mattered then -- and M.D. literally sputtering, repeating, "All of the ... BULLSHIT ... has to stop!  We can't continue with this ... BULLSHIT.

"I would just like all of the ... BULLSHIT ... to end!"

"What are you referring to?" he was patiently asked.

"Just ... BULSHIT!  I can't explain the ... BULLSHIT."

Our poet laureate emerged from that, somehow, with a new patina of respect ... as rather than being mocked, he received backslaps, handshakes and commiserations after the meeting ... not to mention going home with my girlfriend that night!

It dawned on me then that by speaking up, be(com)ing a voice, no matter how eloquent (or not) your message ... you will be heard.

Ode to a Self-Absorbed Medical Worker

I've also come to understand all too well the immediate power and limitless reach of the World Wide Web ... a potentially devastating power and overreach, which is only now beginning to be recognized and kept in check:  lids are being placed back on steaming kettles, masks ripped off and new gates erected ...  not at all "ending" Freedom of Speech, but rather, returning to civil discourse.

This is overdue.

So instead of weighing in more than I already have about the stricken "Hero" Without Sense, Dr. Craig Spencer, and pulling punches entirely on the obnoxious and causelessly rebellious Nurse Kaci Hickox, I'll instead put forth the proposition that Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass ...

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

... I CANNOT say Shoshana Roberts has a FINE ASS!!!!!!

(Some) Musical Influences

"A-B Road"

"Liam"

"Integration Blue(s)"

"Disraeli Geared"

"Sunday Morning"

* * *

"Walk on the Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

B.M. and P.M.

"My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain." - Charlie Chaplin

I have nothing but respect for Monica Lewinsky.

As the World Wide Web's "Patient Zero", she has suffered... felt pain... Cried, and died inside daily.  She has waited for exactly the right time and place...

She has taken up arms against haters and hatred, and perfectly played now the cards she got dealt.

The standing ovation Monica Lewinsky received at the Forbes' 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia... some empathy, finally... The (finally) respectful hearing of things from her perspective -- the listening, versus insulting of her -- was fifteen years or so overdue.

I remember a disturbingly blunt and offensively direct hit on the Lewinsky debacle's whistleblower, that pot-calling-the-kettle-black backstabber, Linda Tripp...

Perhaps not a beauty queen, Miss Tripp wound up on the cover of one of New York's beloved rags, either the News or the Post, under the coffee-spitting headline, "It's Getting Ugly!"

To me, it's always been those three words, coupled with the unflattering head shot of Linda Tripp chosen to be plastered there on that front page beneath them, which was responsible for birthing, nay, shitting out, the "internet era", and foreshadowing our Rudest Generation to come.

The gum-smacking wisecrack of that tabloid headline -- the bestial boyish New Yorkese, at the public expense of a then unmarried, middle aged, childless woman, though somebody's daughter -- I will never forget;

the cheap, easy laugh I admittedly shared (hot coffee snorting out of both nostrils) with millions on that New York City, '90s morning never did sit well... and now, fifteen years later, looking back over the world's "timeline" since then -- of cruelty and inane and desperate cries for attention, feeding (or fed by?) a nation's cracked psyche -- the Before and After demarcation has not been more clear to me.

Never mind September 11th.  Simply (perhaps simplistically) put, the breakpoint in recent history, in my recent memory, is Before Monica (B.M.), when there were discretion, decorum and manners still; and Post Monica (P.M.), when name-calling, trash-talking, hating (and/or Yelping) anonymously, buffoon inappropriateness and lazy discrediting became society's norms - and somehow, OKAY.

The world turns, though.  What goes around...

Today, more than fifteen years P.M., I'm no longer the only one publicly decrying an epidemic of Asshole.  Nor am I alone anymore in my appreciation of Monica Lewinsky, and tacit acknowledgment of our P.M. world's penchant for piling on and bullying, wolf pack overkill.

* * *

* *

the Tyler Clementi Foundation to stop online bullying.

the Amanda Todd Legacy Society Ryan's Story

*

think

New York is Homeless

(not the photo poem)

"Discarded (Disposable City)", ©Jeff Glovsky

In the "city that never sleeps", there are dozens of new and relatively (competitively) inexpensive hotels which have sprung up - off side streets, on beaten paths, occasionally right next door to each other (?) ... housing tourists and businesspeople who affordably, comfortably, happily sleep each night.

Off side streets, on beaten paths surrounding these hotel grounds, are less happy, less comfortable human beings.  Some are squirming ... some sleep; some are fake, but some desperate: loudly/quietly affording (afforded) nothing.

It's easy to take pictures and "share" their stories:  from the comfort of your kitchen ... bed, desk, home office ... Steaming coffee at hand, you stream what you wish folks to think of their lives.  But what you wish, or what's actually happened to them, matters nicht - the mistakes, missteps, hopes once, dashed dreams ... these aren't "inspiring";

and you propping up, prompting smiles for your smart phone ... encouraging the marginalized to relive their hopes once, their dashed dreams ... only steals from them dignities which might remain.

May things remain to be seen as they are, daily basis:  the struggling discomforts, the forgotten, discarded ... so that underlying problems become addressed.

Redressed.

"Out Reach", ©Jeff Glovsky

October Song

"To most men the past is never yesterday, or five minutes ago, but distant, misty epochs some of which are glorious and others abominable." - Henry Miller

"Excuse me!" he whirled, on the airplane in flight, to the fat woman sitting behind him and armed to the teeth with a duty-free magazine.

The woman had rolled up that weapon and clocked him over the head with it ... because he'd had the temerity, in flight, to recline his seat into her overweight lap.

"Excuse me!" he whirled ... and the woman played dumb, trying proudly to play like she hadn't just done that.

I wonder where those two are right now?

I think of the 'ones who got away' sometimes ... those fleeting passengers through my life, who wouldn't have reason to think of me, but nonetheless made their impressions felt and registered on my akasha.

I think of the 'ones who got away' ... From the roadside café in Pennsylvania, that angry, long-legged bird with ripe plumage ... I spied her storming, arms crossed, smoking, stomping down the roadside, carless ...

Left my café booth to ride her.

Many years later, this hotel AV gig ... The "V" guy (I was doing "A") raced sloppily through his post-show chores, because, as he put it, "the wife" promised him "a little fun" if he managed to get home early that day.

I cried at the innocent beauty of life ... then went home to my own wife and "fun" of our own, as we fought about money and tore down our scene.

Growing up, on a ship, northern Michigan waters ... My little baseball cap blew off.  A fair-haired, red-nosed Minnesotan joined me hanging over the railing, waving my baseball cap bye-bye.  Her name was Dawn, that's all I know ...

I wonder where Dawn rises now?

Little League, early effort at teamwork ... I whacked that baseball almost out of the park.  Watched it sail, like Icarus, into the sun.  Then I chased it ... past first base and into the outfield.

No one told me where to run!  No one told me what to do when I hit it ... I had a coach (and had a dad ... but Dad cared as little about sports back then as I do now, if that's possible (and if not less) ... My dad can't be faulted.

... I guess.).

I asked the coach which way to run ... What to do, if I ever hit a baseball.  Not believing, dismissing my foolish question -- because in Coach's athletically fit, trim mind, it couldn't be anything but foolishness -- he answered my dumb, yet sincere, ask with sarcasm.

"See that scoreboard?" he chewed and spit, and smiled sort of shittily.  "Ya run out there, climb up that fence and touch it!  Then run back to the dugout when you hit the ball."

He said that.  I did it.

... My dad watched, his heart sinking faster with each step my cleated feet took, charging and high-stepping out toward that scoreboard ... racing the ball I just whacked toward the sky.

I wonder whatever became of that coach guy?

With every year that passes by, the incidents, visages, in my mind's eye grow clearer, taking on lives of their own as my own life counts down toward an inevitable 9th inning ... beginning now, slowly, to stretch toward the 7th ...

I look back, slow motion sometimes, sometimes smiling, and think of the ones who got away.

"The Memory", ©Jeff Glovsky

Renard Might Say ...

Happy Birthday, John.

When I'm ... 74

* * *

One Of My Favourite Songs From John Lennon | The Chronicles Of Renard

(a sort of reblog)

Out of Whack

The guy who's following me online, reached out via email last week and asked me (no doubt derisively) how in the world I can have 1600+ tweets but only 31 followers on Twitter?

He actually inserted three (3) question marks at the end, and capitalized the word 'how' ... Apparently needing to know, indeed, HOW I could possibly have more than 1600 tweets??? - but only a proportionately tiny handful of people giving a shit.

I told him -- my online "fan" -- that I wasn't doing this to be "liked"; that I had an agenda, and at the end of the day, I am and have been achieving my goals.  True, it seems I have more social networks online than actual "followers" ... and some of these networks are entirely useless.

Don't care.

Google my name now, the name, Jeff Glovsky.  What you "stumbleupon" today is 1000% times cleaner, more accurate a reflection, more truthful and balanced, than even six months ago.  Yes, I still suck in some quarters ... and in the fevered imaginings of the guy who bumped into me in New York a few weeks ago and hissed in my face, "you fucking scumbag" (This actually happened) ... in front of not only my family, but the Starbucks barrista I was trying to make eyes with!

Or a guy in Miami ... who never previously met me, but felt compelled when he did, after sussing me out from a photo somewhere, to make challenging, instigatory remarks to my face ... alternately and insultingly laughing in it with his girlfriend, as I picked up my dry cleaning one day with my wife.

Fortunately, such disgusting, and vaguely unhinged, public incidents are few and far between.  In the former example, I hope and pray this guy remains unarmed ... Is it any wonder my "tweets" are geschützt?!

But 1600+ tweets ... Indeed, HOW and why?

Because I have photography and writing streaming on Twitter:  I have "allowed" the "app" to post on my behalf ... so whenever I do something on WordPress or Tumblr, it's automatically "shared" with that guy who's following me.

But why so few followers?

Because, why so MANY?  What is the point of having '500+', or random "likes", or like, @GayBatman trying to like me??  Or Hot Lonely Girls, beating down my door?  Man, I've got my own stories.

And is this even real???:

purveyor of (smash)words

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The 'real' Jeff Glovsky