Dan Mooney

The other half is of Lithuanian descent, and while it wouldn’t necessarily go around willy-nilly wishing people Happy St. Patrick’s Days, neither would it mind throwing a few back on a Tuesday night during the thawing of an endless winter.

As I look back at this date through the years, memories come not fully formed but in shards…

…in seventh grade, my mother surprised me and walked into my room, opened my closet, and took out a bright green, corduroy kind of shirt, one that I didn’t wear particularly often.  She placed it on my bed, without fuss and without words but with the clear message that I’d be wearing that shirt that day…

…in eighth grade, our one-off English teacher kept saying “Top of the Morning!” A hilarious, genuine guy. That day he welcomed everyone into our classroom with a “Top of the Morning!” and let fly another “Top of the Morning” in the cafeteria after he had led us down there and bought everyone his/her choice of a bagel, or a hot chocolate…

…in twelfth grade, when Joe dyed his goatee green… incidentally, I grew my first goatee the following summer but it was the only color any of my more recent goatees have been: “rich auburn”…

…in my junior year of college, when I had a nasty cold but soldiered over to my old roommate Ed’s off-campus place, where he was hosting a party, to say hello… many pitchers of beer later, I was not feeling sick anymore. It’s still the origin of my stance on drinking while under the weather (for strength!)…

…in my senior year of college, going on a fantastic Green Line pub crawl through Boston, Allston and Brighton, MA – extant unscanned photos include one of me lying across the T tracks – and also having one of the most seldom and complete moments I’ve had in life, at Big City, pausing during a game of pool and soaking in the cigarette and the pool cue in the one hand, a Carlsberg (made green with food coloring) in the other, and a girl (that one long since departed) tucked under my arm…

…in 2005, what I’ve already immortalized here …

…in what must have been 2006, nearly busting some plaid-shirted, lacrosse-hat wearing frat guy’s head open after he shoved me after I told his boozy friend not to keep running into me in a bar too crowded with boozy frat guys for him to be taking up so much space poorly dancing with his girlfriend/hooker, knocking into me and spilling the expensive drink I’m too busy not enjoying because I want so much to throw the beer in the one guy’s face and smash the glass across the other’s… luckily for them, it didn’t come to that… the 6’10”, 280 pound, impeccably dressed African-American bouncer held me back (came to my rescue) in time for me to leave the bar with my posse and all the dignity of Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen sobbing his way out of the Hill Valley Festival… I had a smoke and went right across the street to the Slaughtered Lamb, which despite its kitschy décor was unjustifiably empty, especially in the downstairs, where our group of 12 drank away the rest of the night by ourselves.

…in 2007, walking up 3^rd avenue in the early afternoon, it being the weekend, and seeing 21-year-olds throwing up their brunches in phone booths – clearly the reason why there are so few phone booths anymore… then thinking every bar in the area WOULDN’T be crowded… getting mauled by the crowd at the Black Sheep… finally just going for it and grabbing fistfuls of Best Wingers and gorging ourselves on many kinds of chicken and World Famous Potato Wedges while watching BC rather unfortunately losing to Georgetown in the NCAA tournament…

…in 2008, driving home from work on a day where the weather is as beautiful as Ireland itself…

For each of these grains of memory lie five more colorful ones undisturbed… Cheers to those as well…

Enjoy the day today… enjoy the night tonight… and after you’re done remembering what you’ll remember, please don’t forget to forget…

I rode the 3 train back uptown the other night. With nothing to read or listen to, I rested my eyes after what had been a long, tiring, trying, productive Presidents’ Day.

From my left, eyes closed, I heard singing, but not any of the usual singing – a cappella groups, wandering minstrels, talented lone panhandlers, Mexican bands, even literate youths passionately reciting along with their favorite spoken-word albums – none of those.

This was awful, awful singing. And it was loud.

The most striking part was that this was happening at all. Everyone around me did as I did, hearing the horror, locating its source, then looking away in embarrassment and confusion, trying to piece together any of the poor guy’s motivation.

Disturbing, too, was his level of confidence. He wasn’t just some guy singing more loudly than he thought he was, with us being too polite to call him on it. He didn’t look like much of a physical threat, so it also wasn’t the case that we evaded outright the suggestion of a lower volume.

He was just a headphone-wearing, average-looking guy, who was hardly normal. I’m sure he was challenging us to confront him. Maybe he was lonely. Surely he was a jerk of some kind. At the very least he wanted to impose himself upon on us, and thankfully his approach was mostly harmless, involved no actual touching and was not at all violent (though horrible dying barnyard animal sounds did come to mind throughout the experience).

Someone said something. It was a homeless lady, with a very small face and a very high voice. The train clattered on the tracks behind me but in the spaces between I could just make out what she said to the guy:

“You can sing loud, if you have a good voice. If not, you have to sing lower.”

She said lower with a great “lowering” gesture of her arms, hands spread, palms down. The circle of people nearest the confrontation all laughed in relief 1) that the man heard the message, even if he didn’t get it, and 2) that each person was in the end not the one who had to deliver it. Everyone was happy.

The lady of the moment walked in my direction and said to the girl to my left, “I needed a laugh today.” She kept moving, until she stopped at the middle of the car and gave her plea for alms. She didn’t ask merely for money – she also suggested that we part with any leftover food we had on us. It was a good strategy, and her recent heroics weren’t ignored – others gave cash as the same girl to my left reached into a bag and held out a small plastic container of Chinese soup.

The lady inched back over, held the cup with grateful hands and thanked the girl for her generosity. Almost as an afterthought, just before the lady put the soup into one of her many bags, she asked the girl with a certain assurance of the answer: “There’s no pork in here, right?” The girl shook her head. The lady nodded hers in thanks, then went on her way.

I thought the lady must be religious, asking about pork. I pondered what would have happened if there had been pork in the soup – would the lady have just declined it? How hungry was she? If not then, would she ever compromise her beliefs to sustain her body?

I stopped myself and just fixated upon the scene’s uplifting moral: Beggars CAN be choosers.

New York’s new subway trains are cleaner, sleeker, brighter, and quieter versions of their veteran counterparts. The yellow and orange colors of decay and dying (think of Autumn) have given way to the hygienic gray and silver of the future, a Winter of Content!

The new trains are also one step closer to being self-aware machines ready to kill us all. They speak.

The older trains, of course, have human conductors that announce the current and next stops, the train and its destination, even if they pull a Fenster and mumble through the whole thing.

The city’s new AI trains seem downright educated, being polite and informative and enunciating clearly.

What throws me is that each speaks in two voices – a woman’s, and a man’s. The woman’s voice gives station information, this is…, the next stop is…, and so forth. Then, when she’s done filling us in, the male’s voice, authoritative and melodic, orders us all to “Stand Clear Of The Closing Doors, Please!!”

The good cop/bad cop mentality has spread to mass transit. The calming, motherly figure builds up our confidence by telling us little stories, a bit about how the world works, keeping us calm by telling us where we are and where we’re going. The father figure then throws in his two cents, tossing his weight around, telling us what to do and what not to do. He says “please,” but his commands has already been given and for us the soothing female voice is already a far memory.

In the eyes of the MTA, we are all children.

It was my first football-free weekend in quite some time, this past one.  I was away, got some fresh air in the country, thankfully not sitting in my apartment otherwise wasting my time twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do when there’s no football to be watched.

But it’s Monday now, and so begins a week of excessive speculation, analysis, and dissection of the game of all games, the Super Bowl.

The whole endeavor makes me appreciate all the more the weekends leading up to the Super Bowl, when there are two, and before that four, games to be enjoyed - so much football, most of it good, some of it fantastic.  That division rivalries showed up all through this year’s playoffs confirmed for me my preference for those weekends, pound for pound, over the bloated exercise coming up this Sunday that nonetheless is one of the few collective experiences we have anymore, seriously worthy enough to merit giving the whole country that Monday off.

My team, on the other hand, is not one of the two playing this coming Sunday.  Hasn’t been to the show in a while, though I can look over at the NFC Champs and see how long Super Bowl droughts can be.

Me, I cheer for the Bills.  I pulled for them against the Giants all those years ago.  Was as happy as I could be when Frank Reich led them back against the Oilers.  Was as sad as anyone when Tennessee took an illegal pass and turned it into a “Miracle.” When I was 9 and I went with my family to Niagara Falls, my dad bought me a Bills jacket.  This Christmas, my girlfriend (a Buffalo gal)’s parents got me a Bills hoodie.

Know why I like rooting for them so much?  They play in New York, dammit.  Sometimes Toronto, yeah, but that’s because the owner hates everyone in Buffalo just slightly more than he loves himself.  But never New Jersey.  Never all their home games in Jersey.

One day they’ll be back to the Super Bowl, however many years from now.  And I know they had their chances those four consecutive seasons.  If a dynasty is continued excellence, that one from the early 90s is hard to argue against, even without the big win.

The Bills’ biggest obstacle to getting back to the Super Bowl actually isn’t how bad they are.  It’s how good they are.  They’re solidly mediocre. And it’s killing them.

They’re a hair under satisfactory.  7 wins, 9 losses in each of the last three seasons.  That’s not good, but it’s far from awful.  When you’re not awful, people don’t pity you. They just write you off and forget about you. More importantly, you don’t get the top draft picks.  You just pick 10th-20th every year, not getting the franchise quarterback you desperately need to be courageous enough to take the reins once and for all. You get stopgaps at a position here or there, nothing more, and it’s never enough. I’d much rather sit through one awful season just to win a Super Bowl in any of the next four years.  .500 is a tiresome thing.  To strive for that percentage is to know just how low the bar is set.

Now, this isn’t just a Bills issue – this could absolutely be written about most franchises in sports, certainly most football franchises.  In a league where dominance is shunned, where as many people root against the pursuit of perfection as for it, all so that 32 teams can play evenly matched games, a case like the Bills’ isn’t unique. We just must understand that close games are not necessarily good games, or entertaining games to watch. Sometimes yes, but many times no.

While I’m watching, waiting for the Bills to put it together, I’ll amuse myself thinking how far this parity thing will go.  What’s the end of that road, every team finishing at .500?  32 8-8 teams?  How about 30 8-8 teams, one 7-9 team, and one 9-7 team who’ll get home field advantage in their conference’s playoffs.  In the other conference, meanwhile, 12 tiebreakers will be needed to solve which 8-8 team is marginally better than the others.

It’ll come down to whose grass is greener, I’m sure.

Hey there, girl reading a book–

You probably think I’m checking you out. Yes, I am looking at you with some interest. If this boosts your mood, I am fine with that, since I generally don’t mind creating small pockets of joy, even when I don’t mean to.

I see you peripherally, looking back at me just after I’ve looked away. You surely do the same. The dance continues.

But let’s be clear on this: I’m really just trying to see what book you’re reading. Your left hand is covering the title.

I know it’s not one of the hardcover Harry Potter books because yours lacks the distinctive color pattern on the cover and spine. I know some readers take off dust jackets all the time, as I know some adults were embarrassed by the thought of reading the last Harry Potter book in public, especially in that first week after it came out. Wouldn’t want to be part of the flock – rather, wouldn’t want to broadcast it, would we?

Anyway, pardon my prying eyes. I’ve learned a little something about the people who live in my world. Thanks for that. Thank God you’re reading.