NOT DEAD YET

No, I am not dead.

A regular reader of this space sent an e-mail to me. "Did you die?" was the basic question. No updates, no entries, no signs of life from this site or my dormant other site [1] for quite some time...what could have happened to put a sudden halt to the usual output?

Someone did nearly kill me, but more about that later, or maybe another time.

What happened was Summer.

I am a divorced Dad, and as such I get my kids for just a short period each Summer. The kids live with their mother [2], a twelve hour drive from here. They are both teenagers now, and this creates a different set of Annual Summer Visit circumstances.

First off, it changes the duration. My daughter held two jobs for a while this Summer; one as a camp counselor, the other working at a local movie theatre in her home town. Of course she likes being able to earn some money, and she enjoys the work, so being with Dad cut into her Summer Earning Potential. My son, about to enter High School, was enjoying his official Summer Of Doing Nothing At All.

Coming up to hang with me didn't change this too much. And, frankly, the local hard rock station in his hometown doesn't hold a candle to the offerings here in the NY metropolitan area.

Teenagers have a definite agenda. Often it is unaspirated, even possibly a state secret.

Their mother [3] makes sure to have them do their Summer reading (assigned by the school -- man, we never had this when I was a kid!) while they are up here, making me the parent who sees to it that they do schoolwork over the Summer!

But it really was a good visit, kid-wise.

We went to Yankee games, including our annual Old Timers Day visit to The Stadium with Susan, of course (and we have one more baseball game - a Met game this time, sad to say no more Yankee games this visit), a Broadway play, saw movies, went to a few museums, saw the relatives, went shopping (oh, did we do some shopping [4]!), went nuts bidding and winning (ouch!) on eBay stuff, and hung out in the air conditioned indoors a great deal.

My daughter got an ì only available at the Times Square New York Planet Hollywood T-Shirtî courtesy of her grandparents, who managed not to run out of the place for their lives despite the volume level of the, uh, music (?) blaring away in the store.

There were some battles over the car radio, and then further over which station should be on ("K-ROCK!" "Z-100!"). Headphones and portable CD players helped quell these mini altercations.

We hit the various eateries the hometown and the nearby big city has to offer: Katz's Deli with Susan, the local nearby excellent Chinese restaurant, Mama LaRusso's (a dining establishment without comparison, again with Susan), Mr. Kold Kuts (where they make special hero sandwiches to order, better than anywhere, fresh, tasty, wonderful!), The Broadway Diner, The Metropolitan Cafe, Hamburger Harry's, one of those Sushi and Samurai Hibachi cooking places with our friend Mountain Woman, two or three local bagel places, and even a local greasy spoon diner.

I was so upset and appalled by the placemats at this diner! Advertising all over it, and on BOTH SIDES! Usually when this sort of blind-ambush sensory consumer attack occurs, I just flip over the place mat and ignore the whole deal. But now the attack is double sided! Further, this was a particularly ugly job of design, typesetting, and visual presentation. We went there to purchase a meal from the diner, not to become part of an advertising target audience from whom a certain number of impressions could be touted and used as a demographic audience estimate. Oh, was I pissed.

Is the diner paying us? No, we pay the diner for food, and to a certain degree, for service. And what do we get? Attacked by the place mats! I hate this. Such a shitty advertising concept, and during what should be a meal. This seems like a close cousin to the telemarketers who call homes during the dinner hour.

I complained to the manager as we were paying our tab and leaving. He smiled and nodded profusely, told me he'd speak to the owners, kissed my ass and forgot about me the moment we'd gone out the door.

The result: another establishment we will never enter. The advertising (and the obsequious, ass-kissing, disingenuous, bullshitting manager) drove me away.

The kids were rather entertained by my reaction to the placemats, which had little or no impact on them. They are clearly more inured to such things. Must have something to do with watching MTV.

The food at this diner would best be described at edible, so no great loss to never go back.

Another interesting dining experience was with our cousins Paul & Susan. They live in Manhattan, on the Upper West Side. No too very far from their building, in New York City, is Tomís Diner [5]. Seinfeld fans will know that this is the restaurant/diner used as the basis for Monkís the eatery the Seinfeld characters were always patronizing.

It is also the basis for the Suzanne Vega song Tomís Diner [6].

There are a bunch of TV Guide covers with Seinfeld cast members, some newspaper articles put laminated into frame displays, and other memorabilia. The joint is right around the corner from Columbia University, and right up the street is a used CD and Video place. Susan and Paul gave the kids some birthday/visit gelt [7], so off to the store we went. A good time was had by all.

My daughter seemed a bit put off by the fact that Tomís has been somewhat remodeled from the actual ìSeinfeld show design,î if ever it really looked exactly like that. My son thought it didnít at all look like the Seinfeld placeÖand the waiters and waitresses on the show all spoke perfectly clear English, as opposed to the extremely thick Slavic-sort of accent our waitress sported.

We visited Liberty Science Center [8], always a fun place. This year there is a wonderful and offbeat exhibit: Grossology [9]. If this comes to a museum near you, get your butt over there (words carefully selected)! Yes, the science of burping, farting, mucus, excrementÖand hands-on and nose-on displays! Wonderful, yucky, entertaining, and of course, GROSS!

Another sign the kids are growing up: in the Liberty Science Center Gift Shop all the little kid things were too babyish for them, and the more mature stuff was clearly either overpriced or just not worth getting there. The kids and I all liked the lava lamps and some psychedelic stuff, but the cost was out of whack and we knew these items were better purchased in other venues! Ah, a little retro hippie stuff, and sharing it with the kids. Fatherhood at its best.

We went to our annual barbeque at our friend Alanís house, always a pleasure. Alanís mom makes a Cucumber Salad which is a highlight of my sonís visit each year.

I drove my daughter back to NC so she could go to Marching Band practice at the High School. My son came back up North with me for another ten or so days. We went back to eBay to get some Incubus [10] goodies for him, and have been doing the father-and-son thing male bonding thing.

We had a great conversation during part of the endless drive from NC to NY, talking about philosophy, friendships, goals, our shared attitudes on religion and the religious, the opposite sex, and so forth. He and I have a similar sense of humor; we both love wordplay and puns, and understand the sometimes ridiculous things that either of us find humorous...often (usually?) completely lost as funny for others.

At the end of this week we drive back down to NC, and thatís it for visits until the holiday season rolls around. We all get back to our usual lives, a little better for the visit, a little sadder that it is ended.

Another time Iíll explain about the 17 year old girl who nearly killed us on our first night back in my suburban New York metro hometown.