Well, I Guess if Arnold Can Be Governor ...

Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota officially admitted defeat in the hotly contested U.S. Senate race today. This was a news item that gave me pause. I'm not quite sure when Al Franken went from sardonic wit to strident leftist politician, but I'll always remember him as the guy on weekend update with the satellite dish on his head.

Picture from keloland.com

Union Square on Saturday

I love going to the greenmarket in Union Square on Saturdays. It is teeming with activity, and even though I rarely buy anything beyond a bag of apples (the really good ones from upstate NY with the snap), I love the atmosphere.

After managing to blow $75 in Petco (it's where the pets go and where my money goes apparently), I came outside where the animal rescue groups had some dogs up for adoption. I saw this little guy and knew he was really an American Eskimo because the cage was marked "do not touch this cage." Like my ex-wife, the eskimo dog is beautiful but difficult.

You're a Long Way from Missouri, Kid

Apparently some gang members attacked a couple of guys in the lobby of their E. 26th Street apartment building yesterday, stabbing an 18-year-old to death and severely wounding another man. They were casualties of some sort of feud it seems. Having just spent my first week living in Manhattan, the words of another NYC newcomer really hit home:

"I moved here from Missouri yesterday," said Hannah Robbins, 21, who lives a block away [from the stabbings site]. "I didn't expect to step outside on my first morning here and see someone almost dead."

(photo from lynzva on photobucket)

The Problem with Blogs: One More Goodbye

It's not always clear why people blog. Most of the blogs I read are Yankees news related and they publish every day during the season. I also have collected some interesting foodie blogs (e.g., eater.com, serious eats New York, etc.).

The more interesting creative blogs are the ones that I have stumbled onto. These are written by people who just share their daily experiences. One of my favorites is written by a web designer cartoonist in the UK, called Local Girl's Day in Pictures. I always looked forward to her posts, but I think she's losing enthusiasm -- I haven't seen anything new in 3 weeks. Another type of blog that I like is the daily photo blog, like Greenwich Village Daily Photo.

I use a couple of RSS feed readers, but mainly read blogs using Google Reader because it has a nice interface and it's easy to keep up with new entries. This morning, New York City Daily Photo had this entry:

New York City Daily Photo is closed as of today.
Thank you for the 2-1/2 years of wonderful friendship and photo sharing experience.
I will update you on what is going on in my life in the next couple of weeks or so .

I was bummed out. I had an actual emotional reaction. Over the past month or two three or four of the blogs have posted similar goodbye messages. Every time I felt sad. Often, like this one, the blog authors are quite cryptic when explaining why they're stopping their blog. I imagine this is the way that people felt after World War II when many daily newspapers began to die off. Cities that had multiple newspapers found themselves with just one. If I were a New York Herald Tribune reader who woke up one day and found that the paper no longer published I would have been quite unsettled.

From what my plugged-in new media friends tell me, the reason to enter the blogosphere is to create a following. I write this blog as a creative outlet, but for me it's more of a diary -- a place to jot some thoughts down whether or not anyone ever reads them. Since I started this blog I have been very inconsistent. Sometimes I have posted entries several times a week and then sometimes a month or more would go by with no entries. What's funny is that I've found myself feeling a little resentful towards the authors of blogs that I follow when they don't update their blogs -- but I'm more guilty than they are!

I remember when I was a kid always being so disappointed when a TV show I liked got cancelled, like the immortal classic Shirley starring Shirley Jones. I guess a blog going dark evokes similar feelings. Well, best wishes to Ming the Merciless, author of the New York City Daily Photo. I'll have to find something else to fill the 30 seconds a day I spent with his blog.

Rookie Mistake?

It's funny what catches your eye in New York City. I saw a young couple get on the subway yesterday morning. While the train was in the station, the girl reached up and grabbed the bar to hold on and the guy just stood there, holding nothing. "Rookie mistake, I thought to myself. Must be tourists." The doors closed, the train lurched forward and the guy lost his balance. I saw it coming a mile away.

Later at the gym, I went into the cardio room to run on the treadmill. Generally all the treadmills in our gym are exactly the same, so there's no reason to chose one over any other (unless you want to avoid being right smack in front of the wind from one of the fans). Now I find it quite distracting when the person running on the treadmill next to me is running either much faster or much more slowly than I am. Last week, I had Forrest Gump sprinting next to me for a half hour. I thought his knees were going to hit his chin. It's nice once in a while when it's not too busy in the gym and you have an empty machine next to you.

Anyway, yesterday there were only 2 or 3 of the 10 treadmills in use when I came into the room. I chose a good centrally located machine and went to work. To my left there was an empty machine and then a guy running two machines to my left. Well, wouldn't you know a young woman came in and although she could have chosen any of a half dozen empty machines, she chooses the one between me and the guy to my left. One thought went through my mind: a guy would never have done this, because it is a clear violation of urinal etiquette. As you know, there is a strict protocol in the men's room. Always choose the urinal furthest away from the dude who's in there when you enter the room and never choose a urinal directly next to a guy if you have any other options. I know treadmills are not urinals (thank God) but still, a guy would have thought twice before choosing that machine. Rookie mistake.