TIDBITS AND RANTS . . .

Remember this??: "Alright, stop, collaborate and listen."

My friend JKo just emailed me regarding preparations for the NHF picnic on Sunday: "JW and I are going to go to Sam's Club sometime on Saturday to buy meat and buns... wanna come?" Hmmm. As enticing as the invitation sounds . . .

I spent the day in NYC yesterday and I loved it. I miss the years I lived there (Upper West Side, baby!). I miss walking the streets with businesspeople, high school students, baby strollers, bums, little old ladies and their walkers, Upper East Side princesses, club kids, street vendors, college students, neighborhood beat cops, actors, innocent transplants, tourists. I miss the constant hum of just-loud-enough-noise; the cheap-n'-tasty Indian, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cuban, Mexican, Korean, American fare on every street corner; the ease of walking everywhere you want to go or the speed of the subway when you feel like sitting down; the $10 clothing store; the neighborhood grocery with the flowers displayed out front. I miss the leisurely suburban feel of the residential neighborhoods; the hip-hop 'tude of the college towns; the manic importance of midtown; the plain insanity of Times Square; the too-cool-for-me vibe of downtown; the heavy steadiness of the City Hall and Federal Plaza blocks. HOWEVER, there is just that one thing that I don't miss: how the city air makes my boogers dirty.

According to the NY Daily News, yesterday in New Jersey (damn New Jersey), "about 200 New Jersey off-duty cops and firefighters, most of them white, heckled the widow of a slain Dominican musician at the arraignment of the four cops charged in her husband's death" by shouting "USA!" and "Go Home!" I'm just curious about a few things: (1) what does patriotism have anything to do with four police officers beating someone to death; (2) if one is a legal resident or citizen of the United States, where exactly is she supposed to "go home" to; (3) is it ever okay to heckle a widow; (4) it would be so much easier if we would all just go back to wherever "home" is supposed to be -- the white police officers can "go home" to Ireland, England, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France (oh wait, we hate France this year), or whatever other country produces white people, I can "go home" to Korea, someone else can "go home" to Puerto Rico or Spain or Ecuador. Hooch will have to leave an arm here, though, because she's part Native American. Then we can all quit heckling each other.