In so many ways, my father was a hero. In so many other ways, he was a failure.

That is, he was only human.

He was born in ’23, on a kitchen table on Garden Street. This is off Southern Boulevard, not too far from the Bronx Zoo. He went to Monroe H.S. From there, he went down to his draft board on Gerard Avenue and asked them to move him up, so he could join the fight with his buddies.

Big Mort fought the Nazis in WWII. He was a Tech Sargent. His job was fixing weapons under .50 cal. The southern boys broke his balls for being a Jew, and rubbed his forehead in search of his Jew Horns.

Big Mort was deployed to England. Then his unit went to France, then Belgium and, finally, Germany. He saw his buddies blown apart in front of his eyes. He was bombed every night during the Battle of the Bulge. Later on, he flushed Nazis out of henhouses at gunpoint and saw a Russian officer “interrogate” a captured Nazi by shooting him in the face.

When he came back to the states, he was trained for deployment in the Pacific. Then Truman dropped the big one, and he came back to The Bronx and married the girl who would become my mom.

He didn’t talk about the war to anyone. Now they call it PTSD. Back then, the stoic “suck it up” personality was just “being a man”. You know, Gary Cooper. The “strong, silent type”.

He bottled it all up in a lead-lined box in his heart. But the poison leeched out, as it always will. Out of nowhere — at least that’s how it seemed, as a little kid — he’d explode. We probably dropped a toy, or yelled at something on TV. “God dammit it to hell!” he scream. “No sudden outbursts!” He’d scramble out of his chair, clench his fists, and charge.

Me and my sister would run under the bed for cover.

Most times, he didn’t speak much. He drank his Scotch before and after work, came home, complained about his job over dinner, and usually fell asleep in his Archie Bunker chair by 9 p.m. Every morning, as I readied for school, I saw him chug from the bottle before heading off to midtown on the 4 train. “Aaah, smooth…” he’d say, smacking his lips.

As a dad, he was remote. Once, as a kid, I asked him for some advice. “I don’t give advice,” he said, and that was that. End of discussion.

He drank, smoked, and ate to the point where he suffered a heart attack by age 47. He had multiple bypass surgery at age 67.

As a youngster, then teen, then young adult, I never understood why he couldn’t seem to pull the trigger on key life decisions. Moving to a bigger apartment? Replacing our clunker of a car? No can do. No proactivity whatsoever.

Today, I understand a bit of what led to that level of passivity. Who is prepared for the horror of war? On the other hand, his older brother and their sister — the middle child — were pretty much the same way. And they were stateside. Something weird was baked into the cake of that nuclear family.

Fast forward. I became a dad in 1987. People would watch me interact with little D and say, “wow, you’re such a natural with him. What a great dad you are.”

I came to understand that, on some level, fatherhood gave me a shot at healing myself and being the dad to D that I wish I’d had. “Being a dad is easy,” I’d say. “I just remember how my father would handle something, and then I do 180-degrees the opposite.”

It was a flip remark. Every parent makes mistakes. No parent can be perfect. You need a license to operate a motor vehicle, but you don’t have to pass a proficiency test to become a dad. I, too, would explode and scare D. I’m sure D can tell you stories.
But I tried to push in the clutch before it escalated, at least most times.

I try to be the best dad I can be. I’ll continue to make mistakes, Who doesn’t. But I’ll keep trying hard to improve, And when D becomes a dad, I pledge to help D and M and their kids as well.

Even as I write this, though, I can’t help but wonder what toxic stew my dad had with his father, to make him the passive, remote, frighteningly explosive guy he was. That’s something I’ll never know, and something my cousins can’t figure out either when we discuss our granddad’s M.O. But that’s another story for another day.

Meantime, Happy Father’s Day. Have one for me.

This is actually a post about Brian Wilson, so stay with me as I crab walk up to his importance in my life.

I may have mentioned this before. You know, that the New York Public Library probably saved my life. It provided shelter from the storm. At home. School. Life.

But also, so did music, back when I was a lost soul, a punk kid trying to survive the bad vibrations of my home life (yelling + screaming + hitting = color me gone), and the heroes and villains in school (De Witt Clinton H.S. was, um, challenging).

One of the few positives of my life was that, one day, my father decided we needed a record player better than the tiny unit that folded into a little suitcase, the one with the tiny, tinny speaker, felt-topped turntable, and needle about as thick as a construction spike.

Big Mort took me to Fordham Road to shop for a stereo. We looked at the Magnavox store’s offerings, near Joe’s Army-Navy, and then we went across the street to Davega. For some reason, he decided upon a huge wooden console model, made in Germany, with an AM/FM/Short Wave radio and turntable that played 78s, 45s, and 33 1/3 LPs. He put it in the foyer of our cramped four-room rent-controlled apartment, and we played it during dinner at our drop-leaf foyer table.

Whenever possible, I commandeered the stereo and played my growing collection of 45s and LPs purchased at Alexander’s, Spinning Disc, Cousins, and — my favorite — Music Makers. These were all on or near the Fordham/Concourse intersection. That is, the center of my universe.

Early on, I realized the only way out of my situation was to earn money, and not the chump change from delivering groceries to old piss-pots for nickel tips, or shoveling snow for storekeepers around Fordham and University Avenue.

My best friend told me about library jobs. Cushy. Indoors. And, holy smokes, a dollar an hour! Since I was on the early shift at Clinton, I could work three to six p.m. after school and make a whopping $15/week! Sweet, right? I got working papers on Gerard Avenue, for I was way younger than 16) and then went downtown on the four train to the NYPL on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Whoa! Stone lions in front! Huge reading room! I found the business office. I filled out the application. I had my first interview.

I got the friggin job! Yay me!

I worked for Mrs. Gibney in the Bainbridge Branch of the NYPL. It was just north of Fordham Road. I was a library page. I shelved books, repaired them, and traveled all around the city to shuttle them from one branch to another. I was in heaven because I was surrounded by books.

But my love of music always came first. My weekly loot freed me to buy all the records I wanted, without parental interrogation (“Why are you wasting your money?”). I remember the slant of the 6 p.m. sun on sultry spring days. After work at the library, I’d step with purpose around the corner to Music Makers. They stocked all the top AM-radio hits on 45s and my collection grew.

I remember the freedom I felt with the cultural winds at my back and some coin in my pocket. I absolutely remember the day I bought Sloop John B. But the Theremin infused Good Vibrations really helped me achieve lift-off, in terms of exiting my Bronx-provincial chrysalis. I was off to another kind of life. I was growing up to be a man.

The year 1967 was a confluence of counter-culture ethos, war, and rioting. Societal fabric was being ripped asunder, The Beach Boys’ music was like an application of Coppertone in the scorching sun of Orchard Beach, protection from the nightly horror unfolding on Eyewitness News. And the daily domestic drama.

I read about Brian Wilson’s childhood somewhere — maybe it was Rolling Stone or Creem — and totally grokked his plight. “Tortured genius” doesn’t come close to doing it justice. My situation was nowhere as bad. But I sure had rachmonis for his agony.

The decades passed. I escaped. But not Brian Wilson. Dead at 82. My guess is that he’s been long gone for years and years. My mind hurtles back in time to those sunny days of youthful optimism so distorted by the fires of riots and war. The times were a-changin’ for sure, and music was the lifeboat.

And today, here we are again. Hasn’t anything changed? If only there were more geniuses like Brian Wilson here to lift our spirits and help us navigate the shoals of life.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Genghis hated Tank with a passion, and the feeling was very much mutual.

The two dogs were, 95 percent of the time, sweet peas. Genghis was my 85-pound fawn boxer, floppy ears, docked tail. Tank was a brick shithouse of a Chesapeake Bay retriever. His owner was a burly, curly-haired guy with a big black beard who looked like he played upright bass in a band on the Americana charts.

Genghis would lick the bare toes of babies in strollers, and the babies would giggle maniacally. Tank loved to play with any human up for a game of tennis ball fetch.

And yet. If either of the two dogs spied each other from a distance, their barking would start. And escalate to Defcon 1 in a heartbeat. Theirs was not yippy barking, but rather a vicious cur display of hatred that communicated: “Get the fuck outta here, this is my street, move now or I’ll rip your fucking balls off you sonova bitch bastard…”

Upon sighting one another, Tank’s master and I would immediately cross the street and walk in opposite directions. We’d roll our eyes as each dog strained at their pinch collars, muscles bulging, eyes bugging, eager to end the other’s life or die trying.

Around this time fifteen years ago, Genghis’ life was in final descent, for big-breed dogs are not known for longevity. He left it all on the field after years of hard play during off-leash hours in Prospect Park. He had a luxated patella repaired (that is, knee surgery), and was riddled with arthritis.

Our walks grew shorter, our play times way less spirited. He’d chase his ball a few times, and then lie down on the grass, with the ball between his paws. He’d methodically peel and eat the fuzz off his tennis ball, as if it was the fur on a rabbit’s head.

My wife and I decided to leave Brooklyn after 25 years. There were a variety of factors. But we were out of there, and worried if Genghis would hang in there for the move. We’d leave for another round of viewings with realtors and return to find that Gengy had another horrific gastric accident behind a couch, or in a far corner where he thought we’d never find it. As if.

He was sick and failing fast, closing in on 12 years. We got him as a puppy from a home breeder in nowhere’s-ville New Jersey. He was a purebred Boxer but not a show dog. But he was our dog, our noble friend.

We breathed the same air for years, ever since I started my business and the little wildling would position himself under my bicycle, which leaned against a bookcase, and paw the pedals, his little white belly dotted with chain lube. I drove myself hard back then, building a portfolio of clients. Gengy would visit me around 11:45 or so, and jostle my right elbow with his massive head as I typed. It was as if to say, “Break time big guy. Plus, I gotta go pee.”

And then we’d go outside for our lunch hour constitutional. I’d be on the lookout for Tank. I’d feel vibrations run up Gengy’s leash as a low growl rumbled from my big dog’s chest. With Tank blocks away, I’d cross the street, or head into the park, but not before stopping at a stone fountain and filling a discarded Poland Spring water bottled plucked from a garbage can. I’d cap it and hand it to Genghis, who would proudly carry his beverage in his vise-like jaws.

Genghis never made it to the promised land. We had to help our furry friend, and a week before we moved, he stopped eating. It was game-over.

And so it was, too, for Tank, I was told. It was Ali and Joltin’ Joe Frazier. Two heavy weight champs, gone now for all time.

Their lives are so compressed. Their love is unconditional. And we, their humans, know the secret. That is, their clock is ticking.

As is ours.

I recently saw this movie. You may have heard of it. It’s called “The Friend”, based upon a novel by Sigrid Nunez.

SPOILER ALERTS FOLLOW:

Picture this: a writer/teacher lives in a unicorn of an apartment — cute as a button, rent-stabilized, and in Manhattan. She’s in early midlife, single, nursing the remnants of a longstanding, partially Platonic relationship with her mentor, her long-ago professor. The fabric of their relationship is woven with diligent discussions of the wonder, pain, and laughter of life.

She then learns that the professor has taken his life. The woman was played by Naomi Watts and Bill Murray was cast as the older man.

But here’s the thing: The professor had found a five-year old harlequin Great Dane. He named the regal beast Apollo. The professor’s final instructions are to have Naomi’s character adopt his 150-pound pet Brontosaurus.

https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/the-friend

Chaos ensues, as the Naomi character struggles with problems both practical and existential, for the presence of this dog both upends her monastic life and acts as a catalyst for the character’s deeper understanding of healing, love, friendship: bereavement.

It was very poignant. Yeah, I snot-cried at times. When we rescue the helpless, we rescue ourselves. My son rescued Fizz from death row (kill shelter). My wife and I rescued two dumpster diving kittens found in the loading dock of Target.

We lavish our little guys with attention. The house is littered with cat toys. The pantry shelves are stuffed with canned food from Chewy that costs more than the Bumble Bee I buy at Stop and Shop. The living room is dominated by a five-foot tall cat condo covered with cheesy brown plush.

When we care for them, these little beings, we repair ourselves. We baste them with love, attention, and care. It’s a salve for our own psyches, however damaged. When Felix and Oscar get the zoomies and careen over tables and chairs like squirrels on meth, we giggle, for their happy antics warm our damaged souls.

In “The Friend” we see how Apollo’s massive presence allows Naomi to heal as she grieves and processes the loss of her longtime, one-of-a-kind, friend/lover/mentor.

Non-sequitor (or, is it?): One warm summer day, long ago, on a bench in Brooklyn, just outside Prospect Park, I sat with my aged Boxer, named Genghis. He was in his final descent, for big breeds are not known for longevity (like Apollo, in the movie). He was achy from arthritis and years of raucous play in Prospect Park.

As we sat, a Mercedes sedan driven by a middle-aged woman pulls up to the curb. Genghis turned his massive head to see the car doors open. The woman tugs a leash and out of the back seat hops an old, purple-tongued chow-chow. She walks the dog to a tree. The dog lifts his leg and does his thing. Genghis’ ears twitch; he senses something.

Genghis was right. The lady reaches down, unbuckles the leash from the dog’s collar, gets back in her car, and starts the engine. Her dog looks back.

And the lady drives away! “Hey,” I scream. “Hey!!!!” But she’s gone, and the dog is all alone. I had friends involved in animal rescue and I called them to get the chow-chow.

What the hell, man????

There’s a guy in my building now with a super cool two-year old pit. A beauty. He found her out in the pouring rain, alone, no collar, by the lake in Van Cortlandt Park. Again: WHAT THE HELL????

So I think of the lyrics to the song, “Rescue Me”: “’cause I’m lonely, and I’m blue…I need you, and your love too. C’mon and rescue me.”

Tikkun olam, baby. Repair the world. Do it for the helpless. Do it for yourselves.

OK, this is very weird. Out of the blue, I remembered the smell of the yellow lined paper my first grade teacher, a blankety-blank anti-semite named Mrs. Lynes, would pass out for “pre-tests” during the week. It was a musty scent, not unlike a grandma’s coat closet, sans mothballs. (First-grader joke: “Ever smell mothballs?” Response: “Sure.” Reply: “Well, how do you get their little legs apart?”) The stomach of the six-year-old kid that was me would clench, as the paper was distributed to each row of pupils in class 1-1 in P.S. 86. I was afraid to fail, afraid of repercussions of a poor grade. Afraid of Principal Kline, who was — how do I say this delicately? — a prick.

In time, other smells of youth informed my sense of the adult world. These include:

Scotch/Cigarettes/Newsprint: This is how my dad smelled when he came home from work, after 45 minutes on the Woodlawn Express from downtown to Fordham Road. It was, for me, what men should smell like. That, and top-notes of Old Spice after-shave.

Gasoline: I loved the smell of gasoline. My dad would drive our used ’60 Olds into Mike’s Texaco station on Bailey Avenue and Mike would fill ‘er up. The smell of gasoline meant adventure. Power. Machinery. It was divine.

Alexander’s Vestibule: Alexander’s Department Store (“Uptown, It’s Alexander’s!) was my home away from home. In younger days, I’d be schlepped there to buy school clothes (always irregular huskies). As a teen, I’d head to the basement to buy LPs (coded C, D, or E for the double-albums), either monaural or stereo. When I was feeling flush, I’d pop the extra buck for stereo. But the smell! As you opened the door to the side entrance on 190th Street, there was a certain scent. Was it the smell of steam heat mixing with the snow residue from our galoshes? Was it carpet off-gases? Was it being pumped in to stimulate our parents’ desire to shop? (In Vegas, they pump in oxygen to keep the gamblers going.) It was a curious smell, but it meant (a) I’m getting stuff, and (b) I’d have to wait while my mother and grandma endlessly perused tables tossed with apparel as sales associates screamed behind us: “WATCH THE RACK! WATCH THE RACK!”

Loewe’s Paradise Lobby: Ah, now we’re talkin’! On Saturday’s we kids would have a choice of activities. Play sports. Bowling at the upstairs lanes near Krum’s. Slot car racing at the place on Sherman Avenue in Inwood, or movies. And movies meant the Paradise, the RKO Fordham, the Lido, the Valentine, the Grand, the Ascot (where I saw my first “art film”: Closely Watched Trains). Best of all was the Paradise, one of the company’s seven “wonder theaters”. We paid our 50 cents at the booth, stooping down to appear shorter in order to get the 12-and-under ticket price. inside, the carpeting was plush, goldfish swam in marble ponds, brass railings directed foot traffic — and the glorious scent of fresh buttered popcorn filled our nostrils with atomized carbs. From inside the closed theater doors, we heard a muffled “BOOM…BOOM…” The movie was “Guns of Navarone” and we little kids knew from the sound it would be action-packed with minimal “talking parts” and virtually no icky “love parts”. We got a small bag of popcorn for 15 cents and headed to the children’s section, where flashlight yielding matrons policed our every move, and threatened us when we noisily rolled our empty bottles of Yoo-Hoo we’d smuggled in down the aisles. Our fingers greased with popcorn butter, we’d wipe our grubby hands on our cuffed jeans and watch as the Allies beat those Nazi bastards.

These are just a few of the smells I remember from my early Bronx days. What are yours? Let me know.

In Westchester County, an affluent address just north of New York City, spring has sprung. Irvington, once one of a string of Lower Hudson Valley armpit towns, and the long-ago home of Washington Irving — he of Sleepy Hollow, Headless Horseman fame — is alive with pleasure. Pleasure greater, even, than that of a Newport cigarette.

It is Saturday, and I am taking my wife shopping at Eileen Fisher. I am at peace and reminded of that lovely song by the Decemberists, “June Hymn.” When I say “at peace” it’s a relative term, for I am forever fomenting. The brown river water laps the Irvington shore. I lean over the rusted metal Hudson River railing and spy the George Washington Bridge to the south. To the north, that jazzy new Tappan Zee just upriver. The latter is now called the Mario Cuomo Bridge, but fuck that. I don’t call the Interboro Expressway the Jackie and I don’t refer to the Triboro Bridge as the RFK, either. Some might beg to differ, but I think of myself as a traditionalist blessed with timeless values.

Much like the fashion of Eileen Fisher.

At tonight’s the Met Gala, I daresay no boldfaced name will say “Eileen Fisher” when asked “So…who are you wearing?” The House of Fisher began back in the 80s, when Eileen started her little company in the Village with a few hundred bucks in the bank and a smattering of SKUs. Today, Eileen Fisher’s company is an international power brand with northward of $800 million in annual turnover.

That’s a whole lotta linen.

Saturday, eleven o’clock, and the parking lot down by the riverside is packed with Volvo plug-in hybrids, for this is a sustainability-driven clientele. No wonder Eileen Fisher headquarters and store are here. No wonder the company rebranded their “used clothing” (such a declasse term!) program. It is called “Renew”. These pieces, according to the company website, are “Gently Worn Clothes — Wardrobe staples you’ll reach for again and again. In fabrics that stand the test of time.”

There’s a lotta money in that used white crepe.

The 5,000 pound, $70,000 Volvo SUVs — four-wheel drive behemoths rivalling size of the Conestoga wagons that once crossed the prairies — are parked. The closest these tanks get to going off-road is the gravel parking lot of the Amagansett farmer’s market, but I digress.

Vehicle occupants flit to the store’s front door like iron filings magnetically drawn by the allure of sustainably crafted Tencel twill pants suits. Tencel is derived from the cellulose of wood pulp, sourced from (what else?) sustainably harvested Eucalyptus trees.

The apparel is attractive, well-crafted, easily mixed-and-matched, ridiculously expensive, and safe. You can’t go wrong, for every piece goes with every other piece, snapped together like linen Legos.

I see a featured outfit, a very tailored hounds tooth suit that Tea Leoni, in her “Madame Secretary” role, might wear to a particularly important parent-teacher conference.

The shoppers are lighthearted and in full spending-spree modality, for it is spring, the sun is abundantly warm, and post-purchasing lunch awaits. Perhaps they’ll frequent the upscale Greek joint next door, MP Taverna (which started as a high-zoot Astoria souvlaki-teria), or the Red Hat bistro (cucumber and fennel martini, anyone?) where bread and butter is served upon request.

There is a frenzy of activity and dressing rooms are filled with frocks. As we approach lunchtime, credit cards are proffered and the crowd thins. Unwanted apparel is removed from the dressing rooms and re-racked by the store’s skilled, patient, and professional sales staff. These people work hard, and know how to do retail. That, in itself, is refreshing in an era of clerks who seemingly only know this disdainful response: “No, we don’t have that in stock.”

The good news for me is that store management intelligently includes overstuffed seating near the dressing rooms, so the shoppers’ guests can relax comfortably and provide expert, thumbs-up/thumbs-down advice.

My wife looks amazing in every piece she tries on. It’s a thumbs-up kind of day.

Outside again, the sun is strong. We load our Subaru wagon with sustainable bounty. The sky is still blue and I am still reasonably at peace. I look down-River, then up-River one last time. A few boats bob on the calm waters of the lower Hudson River.

And I think: there are worse things in the world than being the anti-Fiurucci. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, what’s so funny about “simplicity, sustainability, and timeless design.”

And what do I know, anyway? I get my clothes online from Cabela’s Bargain Cave. “Tonight, Marty is wearing Carhartt. Stunning cargo pants, Marty. Tell us about it, won’t you?”

I drive out of the parking lot, past the Metro North train station, and head back to the Bronx. And as I do, as the sun causes me to reach for my sunglasses for the first time this season, I think of this verse from the Decemberists’ song, “June Hymn”:

“A barany of ivy in the trees, expanding out it’s empire by degrees. And all the branches burst a’ bloom, into bloom. Heaven sent this cardinal, maroon.” And, then, that chorus:
“And once upon it, the yellow bonnets, Garland all the line. And you were waking, and day was breaking, a panoply of song. And summer comes to Springville Hills.”

For a Saturday of clothes shopping, it could have been way worse.

If you don’t tear up after hearing this song, you don’t have a human heart.

I haven’t posted since early January, and for good reason. Where’ve I been? Inundated with medical issues and related doctor appointments.

Long story short, I’ve been sidelined with medical issues. January was a total knee replacement, followed by arduous physical therapy. Breaking down scar tissue hurts. A whole lot. The eff-bombs flew as my physical therapist bent my knee to achieve optimal flexion.

“Breathe through it,” she’d say.

“Goddamit!” I’d shout, tears of pain rolling down my face.

As things got better flexion-wise, they deteriorated edema-wise. My operated leg got fatter and fatter. Then my other leg swelled up. Then I started gaining weight, for no apparent reason, and I was short of breath on the shortest walks.

I went to the doctor, after gaining 10 pounds in one week. He hooked me up to the electrocardiogram. Yipes! Heart rate of 200??? No bueno. He whipped out his cell phone and called for an ambulance. Then he ordered a crash cart as we waited for the EMTs, and called ahead to the ER, saying I’d be there in minutes.

Four days in ICU, and three days in cardio step-down unit. They squeezed twenty pounds of liquid out of me. They got my heart rate down to way under 100. My orthopedic surgeon, affiliated with the same hospital, came downstairs to visit me and check on my knee. It was not improving, as I couldn’t do the painful exercises while laid up in bed.

After three cardioversions and an ablation, I was released. Along with a short leash. No salt, minimal liquids, pills in the morning, pills in the evening. I sourced some very expensive pills creatively and now have an ample, affordable supply.

Every morning, I must log in my weight, BP, and heart rate. Thanks to various diuretics, I now plan my daily movements to ensure handy access to urinals. The fear of getting stuck in traffic, without a nearby men’s room, is constant.

Once upon a time, we’d laugh at the myriad doctor’s appointments noted on the white board in my mother in law’s kitchen. The laugh’s now on me. My weeks are studded with visits to various doctors. I’m poked, prodded, jabbed like a pin cushion.

Bette Davis was right. Old age is not for sissies. “Where’ve I been?” Battling, folks. Battling.

I annoy my family with my awful Brit accent and, especially, a phrase meaning “dammit” or “carajo!”

I drop the “H” and shout in a musty, late 19th century, Sir Topham Hatt voice: “Oh, Bloody ‘ell!!!”

Lately, it’s a phrase that applies to a spate of horror movies that revel, wallow, slip and slide in blood and gore. Well-done gore, state-of-the-art gore, but gore nonetheless.

Bloody ‘ell!!!

And I have to ask myself: “Self, why all the blood and gore at this moment in time?”

In the Great Depression, escapist films were the order of the day. Calgon, take me away!

Film noir was a popular motif as we licked the psychic wounds of WWII’s ravages.

Pictures that skewered the establishment splashed through the 60s and into the 70s.

I’m sure you cinemaphiles have many more examples of film motifs that match the cultural zeitgeist of their era.

These days, there is a raft of well-regarded body-horror pictures now available, with more to follow.

I’m looking at you, “The Substance” (Best Screenplay – Palme D’Or/Cannes; Best Picture Nominee, Golden Globes), “Nosferatu”, “Wolfman”, “Presence”.

Here’s one theory: At this writing, we collectively fear what’s coming once January 20th happens. We tentatively push the door open to our incoming administration and cringe. What horrors await?

Will we be trapped inside a haunted house (“Presence”, out later this month). How much can we truly trust our closest contacts to act in our best interest (“Wolfman”, out later this month). We fear the blood-sucking body snatchers capable of draining us of our will (“Nosferatu”). Of our very lives.

And, all the while, we obsess over bodily perfection and youth/vigor worship (lose weight with diabetes meds, just shoot up every now and then), even as our population ages out (“The Substance”). Who hasn’t dreamt of a better version of oneself?

In the world of high finance, it was once thought that stock futures could be predicted by activity at lower Manhattan hot dog stands. More sales, higher stock prices. Another measure: the correlation between the popularity of auto colors and economic mood. When times are good, bold colors make a comeback. When fear is in the air, consumers pick safer, neutral shades.

Oh, bloody ‘ell!!! Everything’s really OK? Isn’t it?

Maybe yes. Maybe no. What do YOU think? Post your analysis below.

I’m about done with the tears of restaurateurs, spilled to reporters as they explain why they’re closing, why restaurant ownership is so difficult, why this, why that — nearly five years since Covid obliterated the diner-to-restaurant relationship.

This goes for special occasion, high-end spots, and pre-Covid favorites — local joints we’d populate weekly.

I’m about done with restaurants serving $11 pints of beer ($8 at my local). And glacial service, as order after order flies out the door on the wings of Grub Hub. And $19 appetizers, $17 mixed drinks, $44 entrees, $8 espressos. And, perhaps most egregiously, $44 bottles of $15 (at retail) Chianti (the latter at my nearby red-sauce joint).

I’m about done with $18 for a large delivery pizza (+$4 for each topping). And $18 chicken-with-bok choy orders at the Chinese take-out.

I get it. They’re making up for years of lockdown. And rising costs of veg, meat & poultry, and commercial rents. And good people are hard to find (and about to get wayyy harder).

Guess what? Covid knee-capped my income — and disposable income — too.

The restaurant — and delivery — models are broken. They raise prices and reduce portions, and eliminate staff. Diners, in turn, forego the experience of having professionals prepare and serve the food.

It’s a race to the bottom. Deal me out.

Covid taught nubies how to cook, and lockdown gave experienced home cooks plenty of time to learn how to cook even better. We rediscovered the fun of having people over for dinner, and simultaneously lost interest in barreling out into the cold, in search of the new hot place (or revisiting neighborhood favorites).

A sad, sodden order of red tablecloth veal parm for $28, that takes 45 minutes to arrive tableside? Hard pass.

The restaurant (and take-out) experience once was a treat, not a chore. Not a punishment. I have access to topnotch butchers and seafood stores (thank you, Arthur Avenue), and I have an H-Mart that has the provisions for me to make my own lo mein and sizzling shrimp, thank you very much.

Jacques Pepin’s videos show how economical, tasty and easy the process can be. See: Jacquespepin.com.

And so, dear restaurateurs, save your tears for someone else. I’ll visit you, once in awhile, but not like the old days. Reservations? I don’t need your stinkin’ RESERVATIONS!

This morning I woke up to learn that my old backyard, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, is on fire. The area is near the doggie lake, in the Nethermead section, where we used to take our tyke to the Halloween “scary walk” every year.

Who knows what started it. A cigarette spark? A still-burning bbq briquette? What does it matter, really, when the last few days feel like our whole world is on fire? Like our brains are on fire.

A few days ago, in Budapest, some Americans wept at THE NEWS. Yes, THAT news. The feeling is that a runaway freight train has been loosed, and no one, nowhere, will be spared. That is, no one but “the chosen few”, the billionaires, the so-called power brokers.

Does anyone remember the tales of those who leapt from ledges, their fortunes in flames, back in 1929?

“Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull.” That’s what Springsteen sang around 40 years ago. How prescient.

There are freight trains running through the middle of our heads. People can’t sleep or even think. Paralyzed, they Google “tariffs”. “Authoritarian”. Or they simply play Wordle and post their scores on the Book of Faces.

There are those who think bad things can’t happen. That the system will be a fire-break and stem the conflagration. They are certain the center will hold and that our better angels will prevail.

We apparently have no better angels.

A recent trip to the Czech Republic, Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary proved instructive. We stood where 85+ years ago, men and women cheered an Austrian housepainter, a little man with a funny mustache and a way with words. These citizens of the post-WWI trauma embraced his pathology, his promise of newfound pride for the forgotten, those left behind. It felt all too familiar.

Causation? A confluence of calamities, like the fires of Prospect Park. Bad things can, and do, happen. Where I visited, millions were murdered. Walls were built and cities partitioned. Dreams were demolished. All by cruel, damaged little men with withered, dark hearts.

Humanity is capable of greatness. But ultimately, the species is sad. How disappointing is it that we cannot remember the ghosts of the past. Instead, we cling with a limpet-like grip to our optimism bias.

We are a failed, silly, species.

In Prague, in Budapest, the streets bustle and, yet, there are top-notes of despair and cynicism that pervade the zeitgeist. Nothing good can ever really happen — that was the vibe in some quarters, where people had the positivity beaten out of them for many years.

Is that where we’re headed?