uh...blogger? is there something you want to tell us?

i went to post a comment on a blog and the word verification word was "kholes". is that funny to anybody else?

so i went east...

i'm fighting things i cannot see

i think it's called my destiny

that i am changing

i'm not sure i would classify it as a rough spot, what i am going through right now. if it were, then by definition pretty much my whole life would be a rough spot. maybe that's the case.

i don't think i am ever totally at ease, but sometimes i feel like there are points that i am and that i should strive for those. other parts of me think that being at ease is at best a bad idea, and at worst a myth.

i suppose that lately i just find myself in a grind that is largely made up of something i don't want to do, which is work where i work, doing what i do. at the same time, i suffer, as i always have, from a critical lack of ambition. i don't think i'm lazy, i don't think i'm slack...but then, maybe i am. you've heard this all before in this space. i question it all the time. it can be neatly summarized in a two-part question: is there something wrong with me? and if so, what the fuck is it?

on top of that, i occasionally(and by occasionally i mean a whole lot of the time) feel as if i am locked in a life-or-death struggle with my head, with the old devils, as john vanderslice calls them, so appropriately. and i am so tired of it. i am so tired of the repetitive loop of self-loathing nonsense that never seems to leave me. i cannot help but despair at times that i will never rid myself of it. that it will eventually become my defining characteristic. that it would be already if i weren't so good at disguising it for the company.

i want to write, but every time i even start thinking about it, before i even get close to sitting down in front of the screen, my ideas have already been dissected by invisible critics, handing out book-jacket length blurbs in my head. why can't i just get fucking started, at least write a paragraph or two before the reviews come in? why must my head be so full of nonsense all the time?

i know, i know...i sound as if i should be roaming around a subway platform muttering to myself. not quite yet, but maybe soon.

and if you swear that there's no truth, and who cares, then how come you say it like you're right?

perhaps this is just the aftermath of an incredibly up-ended year where i have had little time to actually sit here and sort through the contents of my head, to analyze my actions and their origins, and now that the dust is settling, it is, well, unsettling...

i want to be the best version of me that i can be, if for no other reason than that life has, unexpectedly, handed me happiness in a form i did not see coming, and would have never counted on. and the frustration lies in trying to get all those points to line up at the same time for once. and in trying to keep myself on a keel that is even. or at least something close to even, so that i don't pedal backwards while my every intention is to go forward.

sorry, i had to balance out the extreme lightheartedness of the thanksgiving post with something dark from the depths of the lb head. someone should invent a head vacation. and no, i don't mean a cocktail of prescription anti-psychotics. i mean, you should be allowed to check your head, a la the beastie boys, for a few days at a time. and let yourself fucking breathe! for goodness sake.

turkey '06, in pictures.

it all seems kind of unreal, as if it happened in a triptophan-induced dream state, but we pulled off thanksgiving at our apartment. east harlem style.naturally, i have photos, so lets do the ol' photo-essay type thing. starting...now.

here's the man behind the man behind the thanksgiving success. he doesn't like to be photographed, as i have mentioned in the past, so mostly we will be seeing his arm, or back, or as the case may be...cutting board.





























southerners do crazy things like dump tons of sugar on top of yams and then add half a bottle of maple syrup, but good lord, it tastes amazing.
















ab, sarah and curby were here! ab's face is contorted in pain incurred while watching the dallas cowboys cheerleaders reality program that airs on CMT. i think it's great, but occasionally make that face too.
















other special guest stars included brain, tiffany and boomer, my moms and neighbor scott(from when we lived across town, all the way over on third ave) here are brain and tiff gettin' down with the amazing food spectacular, created by charles, assisted by scott and our bobo-ass mini stove. i need to point out that all of this food, as well as the turkey that you will see in the next picture was created in said stove without the benefit of a microwave. word.


here it is, our collective moment of zen.













(also, i would like to make use of this space to point out that boomer managed to avoid being in even one picture. not in the background, nothing. and i took, like 70 pictures. cw wishes he was as lucky.)















when it was all said and done, charles allowed me a photo of the victory pose. but really, we were all winners.


here are some more pics of the festivities...
















ab sleeping it off on t-day morning with curby, the patron saint of canoodling and thanksgiving. ab and i were up 'till seven a.m. sailing with the captain, as per usual.

















speaking of which, this is what first avenue looks like at 6:44am on thanksgiving morning. i shouldn't know this, but i do.


















here's the curbster doing his piglet impersonation, while deftly positioning himself for the belly rub. he's the man.

i'm pretty pissed that i didn't manage to get a group shot...blame it on too little sleep and too much turkey excitement, i suppose... also, the entire event was plagued by the absence of one alison michelle ball, the youngest member of the family and future supreme ruler of the universe. we missed you, love.

i must hand it to us. we only moved in a month ago and already we are hosting holiday blowouts complete with massive turkey feasts. we rock.

countdown to holiday greatness, '06

listen, thursday is going to be about the following things: copious amounts of food and beverage, our fucking awesome apartment, ab, sarah and curby, football and charles williams iii's thanksgiving debut. oh, and poker.

yes, i agree it's madness.

charles got the last minute instructions/pep talk from his moms, who has been training him for this moment from day one. he also got a whole bunch of cooking gear that we had ordered but thought would arrive too late for t-day. everything is aligning to make this the greatest turkey day since last years fried turkey extravaganza.

there will be pictures, many, many pictures, even though cwiii tried to tell me that i could only take three that featured him. whatever.








look! that's one.







i am so excited, i just want it to be tomorrow already.

i'm going to sign off with this little gift, from me to you...youtube footage of the script ohio, from saturday's ohio state-michigan game. you gotta hand it to college kids, man...for a bunch of drunken messes they pull off some serious shit.

not so much.

i am here to tell you that the only part of the previous post that held any water was the sentance about how tom brady was gonna show up like godzilla and make me look like a fool. he also arranged to have brett favre's arm broken, put up 35 points on the hapless packers, and during the highlights, scrambled our television so we couldn't watch the colts-cowboys anymore. damn.

i'll never cross tom brady again.

football picks, the lauren way.

so last night i was watching 'inside the nfl', which is my favorite football-related program because it combines bob costas(boob co-stass!) and nfl films which is pretty much like the rapture from where i'm sitting, without the end of the world and all that.

i just digressed big time. anyway. they were discussing the pats and the jets last weekend, and the pats and the colts the monday before, and then boob was like, so...does anyone here think that green bay can beat the patriots this sunday? and dan marino and crew all kind of simultaneously went "uhhh...no." as if that were the most absurd scenario around. and i see where they are coming from, i do. but it gave me an idea.

i think green bay might beat new england this weekend. i have a black cat-friday the thirteenth kind of feeling about it. look at it this way...brady and the pats are teetering on that oh-so-fine line between having a couple of bad weeks and a houston-we-have-a-problem type situation. or at least as far as the guys who sit around that big espn table and get paid to harp on that kind of stuff are concerned. they are all subconciously pulling for this sort of thing to go down. that's weeks of endless hypothosizing and scrutinizing and all sorts of other izings...

add to this that brett favre has been acting as if someone sprinkled some football viagra on his cornflakes, and i think the packers have a shot. yes, i am talking straight out of my ass, and yes, i am almost certainly wrong: tom brady will probably take the field at lambeau like godzilla, steam pouring out of his nostrils, ready to annihilate brett favre's seventy-five year old ass, eat his children and embarrass him in front of all of green bay. but i can't get that image of brady getting sacked in the last seconds of the jets-pats game last sunday out of my head...it looked like foreshadowing to me.

regardless. i'm calling green bay for sunday. we shall see how it all plays out.

it's unfortunate: espn.com will not let you copy their pictures(wonder why?) and there is a really great shot of peyton and brady having a brief exchange as they leave the field after the fighting peyton's handed it to the pats. tom brady looks like he wants to chow down on some plate glass.




wait wait! late breaking...you CAN save espn.com pics... i'll probably get sued(some bored intern will catch it and use me to propel himself out of the internship mire) but it's worth it. aside from eating glass,
brady also looks like he wants to gouge peyton's eyes out.








also, while over at espn.com, i noticed that they have added a new section to their tabs for nfl, nba, nhl, mlb, etc... it's "dancing". as in, with the stars. adding emmett smith(and jerry rice before him) to the show really got the sports types interested, eh? right now, somewhere in new york city, there is a room full of marketing douchebags with a giant "mission accomplished" banner hanging in the background. how does that make you feel, boys? next up, they are gonna recruit y'all for the oxygen network. just watch.




i will leave you with this...yet another stellar image from our bad-ass new camera, and, of course, new york city...

and now i know, spanish harlem are not just pretty words to say...

indeed, sir elton john. indeed.

spanish harlem is my new home, and boy, do i love it. here's a view of first avenue from our fire escape. full disclosure: it's not normally that packed with traffic, even at rush hour...there was probably some backup on the triborough, but we were happy for the photo op. sorry, drivers!



















below you will find the first posted pics of the living quarters. the living room gets first view because it has grown up so fast... there is so much more to do, but now we can actually live in it, and that is fucking awesome.



















here's charles, no doubt searching for some law and order: criminal intent for our minds. vincent d'onfrio rocks. oh, and sorry baby, i know you hate showing up on the internet. at least it's not myspace...


what else? well, i got to take in the nyc marathon last weekend, from the aforementioned fire escape...







(remember?)







it was one of the more amazing things i have been lucky enough to witness firsthand. i got to watch the leaders of all three categories(wheelchairs etc, women and men) go by, and that was really cool. and so was the two hours or so of wall to wall marathoners, all shapes and sizes doing this crazy thing...running 26.7 miles through all five boroughs of new york.

oh, and lance armstrong ran right past me, with forty-seven of his closest running buddies and a camera crew, but it was still cool.

living on first avenue is great.

what else. oh, i finished the dave eggers book, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. the thing i liked most about it was the way he was able to translate that crazy, freaked out, tenuous, uncomfortable feeling that takes over every running system in your body when you brush up against untimely death. someone elses. i think it is the opposite, almost, of the feeling that comes from narrowly avoiding some version of your own: in that scenario, there is that incredible sense of relief and amazement to accompany the weirdness of a close call. and more importantly, the idea that it is ridiculously improbable that it would actually happen, when it just almost did. so there is a false comfort in that. when it happens right next to you, it makes you feel like it is just moments away from popping up again, like one of those things at the carnival where little heads would pop up at you and you would have to smack them with a rubber mallet. any second, it's going to happen again. and this time, maybe to you, or worse, to another person you love.


anyhow, he did well with that. i liked the book a lot. but i guess i'm a bit late to that party, so i will leave it at that.

thanksgiving is upon us, and i am crazy excited, not only because ab and sarah will be in nyc at OUR VERY OWN APARTMENT, but also because charles williams iii is going to cook his ass off, and the glimmer he has had in his eye since we decided he would cook has me riled into a thanksgiving eating frenzy. and though there probably won't be any t-shirts again this year, there will be new york fucking city and three football games. THREE!

finally, i have inspiration to write, and i am going to start work on something tomorrow, and i am really excited, for a variety of reasons that would be super hard to explain on something like a blog, and maybe could only be explained while extremely intoxicated to someone equally intoxicated and then forgotten because it won't make sense anywhere else, so therefore, i'll just keep it to myself. and hopefully there will be fruits of this labor at some point...