A couple of weeks ago, the weirdest thing happened. I went to my local bagel shop, which I have gone to for ten years or so, and I happened to be wearing a suit. I thought the guys who worked there were going to make fun. They’ve seen me hundreds of times over the years and sometimes I come in looking…bedraggled, and let’s leave it at that.

But anyway, I order my bagel and coffee and pay while two of the fourteen hundred or so guys who work behind the counter are arguing. My bagel comes out and one of the two asks me for the money. I told him I had just paid him.

“No you didn’t,” the guy said, all accusingly.

“I sure as shit did pay, ” I responded angrily, not quite processing what I was being accused of.

“No, man, you didn’t,” the guy says.

When he used ‘man’ I lost it: “Dude, I’ve been coming here for ten years. I remember your first day here,” I say, trying to sound calm, but sounding as calm as Paulie Walnuts. “And now, after all these years, this is my big score: an everything bagel and a fucking coffee? Huh, is that it?”

The people behind me start chuckling. “And I decided to wear my suit as a disguise? Like James Bond?” The older woman behind me laughs out loud.

He looks at me and says “sorry, man” and I grab my food and tell them that I will never set foot in there again. And I mean it. For about 12 hours, when I want a bagel badly and have to get one of those Dean & Deluca technobagels. Ugh. But a promise is a promise.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t have them delivered. Who’s always thinking?

I write two blogs simultaneously. The other day a friend asked me how I decide which story is for which blog and I replied that the other one was more personal. I say that with full knowledge that my other blog’s readership is probably 50% female and this is much less than that. And that one is so that my friends can see that I am still breathing and this one is for people, most of whom I don’t know.

I have been thinking about putting my other one on hiatus because, after all, I have other shit to do. But I won’t. Because I love to write and, especially when I am not encumbered by purpose, and can just sit here and ramble—as I am doing right now—it is quite liberating.

I used to hate blogs because I was always like, “Who gives a flying fuck what that bozo has to say about anything? He lives in (fill in city name, other than NYC).” But then I realized that it’s not like anyone is being forced to read them. It’s a free country after all. You don’t want to read about my navel-gazing nonsense? Go read Tim Yu’s. He’s much smarter anyway.

On another note, I met a guy who works for the Sc-Fi channel at a party the other night. I told him I was a big fan of “Ghosthunters” and he seems surprised, as the show doesn’t really do well in NYC. I didn’t understand that. Not sure if you are familiar with the show, but it follows some plumbers from RI and their friends around the country, as they investigate haunted areas. Usually they come up empty, but have lots of “personal experiences”.

But I told the guy that I don’t watch the show because of the ghosts, I do so (and have done so for five years) because I am more interested in the inter-personal relationships between the two main characters—Grant, a mild-mannered guy who is always so concerned with how his people are feeling, and Jason, a big bald cat, more of a hothead, but also a big softie on occasion. (And also a doppelgänger for Joe the Douchebag Plumber.)

They are such opposites and it’s always nice to see how they pick each other up in the face of another gutterball of an investigation; and how they deal with the underlings and the property owners and such, with such grace, even though their employees are a bunch of nutjobs (except relative hottie Kris Williams, who seems very agreeable, even while they use her for bait to attract male spirits). And after the investigations, these guys go back to Warwick, RI, back to their Roto-Rooter van, and act as if nothing happened.

Which, if you watch the show, you will realize that nothing actually did.

I realized earlier today that, of all of the things I have written about—and they are all crucially important topics, especially yesterday’s about that full-grown dwarf that I loathe—I have yet to write anything to give you any indication of the kinds of things that I have grown obsessed with over the years. In other words, what about my cool shit?

Therefore I wanted to give you a Top Five things that will be the last of my stuff to go, after everything else disappears:

1) Jerry Koosman game-used glove from the 19689 season—he was a Mets pitcher and a favorite of mine and the glove is so badass. It costs $1,100 in 1996. Before I was married. You understand.

2) A 16 x 20 photograph of Tom Waits from 1975 by Henry Diltz, who was a big rock photographer in the 1970s. Tom is at the mic and he is singing and smoking and it is so cool.

3) A folk art rendering of myself by the late Rev. Howard Finster. I used to go to Sommerville, Ga. to visit him at his bizarre compound (a house made from silverware? Sure. Keith Haring’s burial statue? Of course.) Anyway, he scrawled it on a container of corn soup he had just finished eating and…have I grossed you out yet?

4) A book: “Life and How to Live it” by Brivs Mekis. He was the basis for the REM song of the same name. He self published his book (about 100 copies) with helpful tips about hygiene and evil Jews and such. Lunatic. But I found the book, in a bookstore in Ruby Falls, Tennessee and have held onto it, for reasons I am still unclear of.

5) Autographed copy of “The Breaks” by Richard Price, an author (“Clockers” et. al) and who I rolled up on at a book signing and embarrassed myself.

I’m small. Not physically, obviously, but spiritually, I guess is the correct term. I care too much about what people think of me, and I am such a man-puss when I think I’m the butt of a joke. I can laugh at myself, certainly, but get surprisingly humorless when someone strikes a nerve. Friends will testify to that.

Now that you know all of that it is understandable when I tell you that I revel when someone I think is a douchebag screws something up and gets his just desserts

I wish I wasn’t like this. Truly. I have friends who are all Zen and they say things like “Just worry about yourself” and “Don’t wish bad things upon people,” but I cannot help it for the life of me. And sometimes I actually wish ill on the Zen-bastards for pitying me. (I know, I’m such a catch.)

I can’t believe that I am actually telling this story, but when I was a little kid, I was a New York Rangers fanatic and I used to pray that the New York Islanders team plane would crash on the way home from Vancouver. And whenever Derek Jeter hits the dirt, I pray that it is for good, I do. (Sorry, LC.)

But here’s a newsflash: I have been trying to change. Trying to become a more well rounded person who doesn’t measure his success against others. I also say this because I was just thinking of some who is also small—although in stature and nature—and I am trying my best not to wish ill on him, despite the fact that he is an abysmal little man.

So far? Not so good. I’m big enough to admit that, at the very least.

Perhaps because uncertainty loves company, New Yorkers seem to be redoubling our efforts at cultivating relationships, both through forging new and resuscitating old friendships, and by attending the networking events that have become the new Irish wakes.

As the fabric of our economy unspools ungainfully, and the less fortunate of us are tossed around like deck chairs on the Titanic, we have been forced to live in the moment; the here-and-now and let next decade be damned. It is terrifying but also liberating, kind of like those astronauts on spacewalk: still tethered to society, but enveloped by a universe of uncertainty and opportunity.

Instead of sifting through the wreckage of our retirement plans, I believe that we are listening to our friends better, our children more attentively and our parents, even somewhat.

It’s like those powdered coffee advertisements of yesteryear, where we are celebrating life’s moments. Because, contrary to the notion that what makes NYC so exhilarating are things like the wine-flight at Chanterelle, is actually the smaller moments that truly matter. At least in my opinion.

Despite this terrible cloud hovering over our city, it’s a wonderful life indeed. Now go vote.