Saw a guy on the subway today with a Kindle, caressing the thing like it was Natalie Portman in that movie where she played the stripper. And, at the same time, I saw about ten women reading books. While I have been hearing that the Kindle is going to devour the book market, I believe that sales figures will eventually bear out that, after the initial curiosity fades, it will be a largely male phenomenon.

Bottom line: it’s a gadget. A book is nearly a living thing. I know that sounds crazy, but to me, there is nothing like a first edition, hardcover book with beautiful paper and a sumptuous typeface. (Nerd alert.)

I had dinner a few weeks ago with my friend and her husband who is a smart, super-successful guy. Nice too. But he’s a total boy, in the way that he has to have the latest-latest everything. And he showed up and raved about his Kindle.

I told him I probably would never get one. He scoffed at me. Like I was joking.

“Come on,” he said, in disbelief.

I shrugged and replied, “I like books.”

And he said, “So do I. But I have 1,200 books on mine.”

To which I replied: “All you need is one at a time.”

My friend laughed.

I have said some pretty outlandish things in this here space at Selectism. Some of it I really meant, because I get angry at people for mostly silly reasons. Or silly people for real reasons. But most of it I was just saying because it sounded funny. I know that is kind of crappy of me, to make fun of others’ misfortune merely because the words strung together amused me. Making fun of the face-transplant lady? I’m a regular Mother Teresa.

All of a sudden and all at once I have been asked to contribute to a number of charities. I’m sure you have too. Everyone is running or walking or just asking nicely, and to some of them you can’t not give something.

But, like a lot of you, I am watching my money more so now than ever. And by ever, I mean ever ever. I was a spendthrift for a long while, mostly out of necessity, but also because I was afraid to be without money—just in case.

Today’s straits are not as dire, some would argue that mine are not even straits, but the uneasiness is starting to creep in again. I told someone today that our economy is being ruled by fear. Look around you at work, if you even still have a job: do you think anyone is feeling good about the prospects of their jobs being there in twelve months?

And so into hunter’s stew of freakedoutedness come these friends of your’s talking about their good causes. And, while you immediately feel guilty because the last time you raised money it was for…uh, never mind, you also feel skittish about donating what is left of your meager savings, and talk yourself into blowing them off. No one could blame you. Seriously. But you know what?

Give them some money, you cheap bastard. Even $5 apiece. Do it for the kids. For the dogs. For those discriminated against. For any one of those 6,000 charities that Alyssa Milano so nicely promotes on Twitter. Hell, even for the older, sick people. (Yes, even for them.)

But most of all, do it for yourself. Everyone has a few dollars lying around—even Homeless Joe who sits outside on University Place stacking piles of coins, sitting amidst his detritus. (Compared to some people I know, he’s a Rockefeller.) For a little perspective, that beer you just had the other night?

That money could be used to bandage one child’s tiny hands so he could continue to assemble your iPhone and get it to you by the Holidays.

Think about it.

(Yes, I said that because it sounded funny.)

The Yankees just finished smothering the Twins with a pillow, like Othello on a sleepy Desdemona, and I am already yawning as they spray champagne over each other. The series had all the excitement of buying a Metrocard.

I would rather repossess a convent filled with infirmed nuns than root for the Yankees. Is that clear enough for you? To me they are the redcoats to the Revolutionary War, the anyone versus the Jews in ancient times. A force so overwhelming and a conclusion predetermined, that it is hard to root for. At least for some of us.

Most of the sports teams I root for perform weakly in the clutch. It has bothered me, as you know, because I have suffered so acutely for my loyalty for so many years. I am a lifelong New Yorker, and yet my baseball team has won exactly two world championships: ’69 and ’86. I don’t like the football Giants, who’ve won championships. I root for the Vikings, who have lost virtually every big game they have played in.

While I have a few close friends that are Yankees fans, tried and true ones, I choose to ignore that aspect of their lives so that we are able to co-exist. I think about it like it’s a disease that they have and we will get through it together, but by not talking about it.

The rest of the fans I find to be super-defensive, surprisingly angry miseries. Their anger surprises me because every year the team is at or near the top of the standings. It is what is called an ROI, or what they refer to in banking, as a return on investment. Half a billion dollars in the slot, and a trampled Twins squad pops out.

When your third baseman makes more than some teams’ entire rosters, there is an inequity that takes away much of the drama anyway from a Yankees victory.

Or how about this: Let’s say you and I decide to race some cars. You have enough money to buy a Hyundai. A nice one, but really, it’s a sewing machine with a trunk. And I show up with the new Lamborghini. And we race 100 times. Is there a chance that you may win a race or two? Certainly. Allowing for human error, a mechanical malfunction, whatever. There is a mathematical chance that you may win. It is infinitesimal, but it exists. But with an enormous advantage of horsepower, I would dominate you 99% of the time.

That is exactly the Yankees advantage over more than half of the teams in the American League, spending as much as six or eight times more than their opponents. Overwhelming all the best free agents every year to join the beat-down.

It bums me out and makes me really hate what they represent. The players themselves seem like an affable lot; conducting themselves in a dignified manner (except for A-Rod, who is a cheater and a joke). They have always been gracious winners, and that is the highest compliment I can bestow on anyone.

“What they’re doing is totally legal,” a friend whined to me the other night. I have heard that argument plenty. As if legality means anything, when compared to sportsmanship. Like, the Yankees are fighting a RICO statute and no one found fingerprints on the stolen money. A technicality.

The reason that this goes on is that the Yankees pay a luxury tax, bribing the small market teams with bags of money at the end of each season. As if to say, “you don’t complain about us outspending you by $175 million and we will give you enough money to buy you a fourth-rate pitcher.”

Understandably, it was kind of gross watching the Yankees overcome the Twins in the playoffs with their glittering new toys, every year another pile of All-Stars. All while the Twins were looking for a guy named Kubel and one named Span to perform like Mantle and DiMaggio. And alas, it didn’t happen yet again.

Sure, once in a great while David beats Goliath, but all things considered, I sure as hell would rather be the big guy.

Wouldn’t you?

I was pondering “With age comes wisdom” on the subway home this evening, from 49th street, while watching two youngsters awkwardly small-talking. He: a late-20’s shaggy haired guy who looked to be either a sales guy for a hipster magazine or a freelance (cough cough) something or other. She: 24 tops, first job out of college, four-eyed, freshly Ann Taylor-ed and commuter flat-ed, and about the size of my femur. Some sort of finance job. But cute in a “well, I never actually broke up with my boyfriend from home, but he totally knows it’s over” kind of way. Cute, but not minx-ish. Never minx-ish.

It was a crowded train so I was looming on them like Serena Williams on one of those Belgians. From my vantage, it was clear to see that she wasn’t feeling his action. She was polite enough but, by 42^nd street, her body language—like an impatient Jiminy Cricket—with her arms folded across the Coach shoulder bag that I am sure she got for graduation—shouted at him to stop talking. I felt like the kid from The Sixth Sense.

He was telling some story about his friends from Williamsburg who have parties where everyone brings a bottle of liquor to some guy’s apartment and they mix it up in a tub and then everyone has to drink it and the person who comes up with the best name for it…

“Oh, Jesus,” I said out loud, at about 34^th street, forgetting that I wasn’t watching the TV. I do this quite often. It’s really more of an art than a skill.

She was smiling grimly, clearly not even listening, glancing down at her no –service cell phone, examining her fingernails, doing everything but miming, and he kept on with this story about him and his puny (undoubtedly) friends.

“So?” he asked.

“So…w-w-w-what,” she answered with a look on her face that was horror mixed with revulsion.

Can’t be, I thought. He cannot be asking her out. Not after she had done everything but projectile vomit on him.

“So….do you want to go? To the party. At my friends.” It was as if he was trying to use Morse code to communicate with her cerebellum. At 23^rd street, she started getting antsy but I had a feeling that she was  heading through the tunnel. To Manhattan’s farm system—BK to the fullest, baby.

I couldn’t help but think that he really had no clue, unable to pick up the signs that his lunch buddy had no desire to explore their relationship any further. I mean, she practically had just that written on a sandwich board. I then wondered if maybe I was the same way all those years ago. And forged ahead when I shouldn’t have. Probably so. Okay, definitely so. It isn’t like I was batting 1.000. More like .275. But, after fifteen years with sensei GG, I can pick up even the most imperceptible signs. Like, immediately.

As the train stopped at Union Square, I turned to walk off, and never heard how gently she let him down. But as I walked away, without looking at either of them I said, “Bitches Brew. A name for that drink.” Not exactly the King’s English, I know.

And when I looked back after the door closed I could swear that I saw her smile.

Life is not really marathon, as is often claimed. It’s more like a series of windsprints. And then, if you are lucky, you have a half marathon at the end.

As I look around me, It seems to me like everyone is leaning forward, trying to will themselves to pass through these uncertain times as quickly as possible.

Today, 180 more magazine folks were tossed out on their ears. A couple of good friends, a bunch of acquaintances, and a lot of people of whom I have never met but hold in a great deal of respect. I am not sure what is happening in the world when the premier food magazine (Gourmet) and a magazine that I have regarded as a real gem, Cookie, cease publishing. To me it means that no one is safe.

I can also give the nuts-and-bolts reason: the flawed-business-model-in-a-recession spiel, but that is a little to dry for a column that just spoke about Errant Ballshots just the other day.

What it means is that everyone else out there, with jobs, had better step their games up. Because it’s like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were released into major league baseball’s general population and teams get to choose among them.

I have a good friend at a huge multinational financial company. He is a huge-whig and the smartest guy I know, bar none. Let’s call him Whitey. A few months ago, Whitey told me that at his firm, “A’s and B’s are replacing Cs and Ds.” His industry had naturally undergone a huge purge. And only the strong survived.

There are a few more magazines heading toward the cliffs, and some overstuffed editorial staffs that will be thinned, so it is only going to get harder out there. So if you are reading this, and in publishing, you would do well to start stretching.

And, for godsakes, don’t look back.

I like slapstick humor. I mean, I like cerebral humor too, but if the Three Stooges are on TV I seriously have trouble breathing from laughing so hard. Back in the day, when my idea for “Cripple Idol” was a mere glimmer in a twentysomething man’s eye, I had an idea for an   “America’s Funniest Home Video” style television show called “Errant Ballshots.”

My theory—and yes, I am a regular Sir Isaac Newton—is that videos of guys getting peppered down south by an assortment of projectiles like footballs and part-time weapons like drum sticks or my personal fave, the versatile wiffle ball bat, would be comedy gold and certain to set the world on fire.

I never shopped it around, mostly because I wanted to be considered dating material and, let’s face it: if you are on a path of career suicide, it’s hard to ask a hot chick to follow you.  Not to mention, the only people I could’ve shopped it around to were people delivering my food. And they had enough trouble with English.

Now, however, I watch all sorts of humiliation reality shows and I think back on how my instincts proved correct. I could’ve made all sorts of money! And then I look over at GG and realize: it would never have worked. She is mos def not an  “Errant Ballshots” kind of gal.

Have a nice night wherever you are.

Ban television commercials for anti-depressants.

Veterans get to go to any hospital they want to, anywhere and at any time.

“Whoever tells us where Osama bin Laden is, we will give you one billion American dollars. In cash.”

Men cannot marry women more than ten years younger than them, but women can marry whomever they want to.

Federal death penalty for the super guilty.

A single, uniform ballot for everyone in the country to vote with.

Creationism is taught in churches, not schools, if at all.

You know who gets to wear concealed weapons? Law enforcement.

If you question someone’s patriotism, you need to establish your own in court.

Zero hungry children in the United States.

Drinking age goes to 18, but for the first three years, only beer and only on weekends.

“America’s Most Wanted” is on every network.

One set of laws for everyone—no matter their race, sexual orientation or affiliation to the Yankees.

Fox News needs to lose the word “News”.

Presidents get paid according to size.

Legalize it, already.

Had dinner tonight with my friend Kasia. As they said in Swingers, she’s money. Super smart, funny, charming, loyal, motivated and is tougher than an Argentinean steak on the Leidseplein. A first-stringer, she makes stuff happen, like daily.

But anyway, we went for sushi somewhere in Chinatown and it was great because the sushi spot is across the street from a hipster taqueria y más and we got to watch the “men” in their skinny jeans scurrying too and fro, pretending to be warm even though they were sportin’ rice-paper-thin fitted jackets that they have lied about paying retail for, when they were really bought on Gilt. Like, ridiculous-looking, waif-like birds with stringy hair and purse-strings held by their parents. It was a parade of skinny ties and three-day growths to cover their new-potato chins. And eyeglasses, despite having perfect vision. And calling each other “bro”. And accusing one another of being—chortle chortle— “gay” for reasons unknown.

“They should be so lucky,” I can almost hear my friend Ashok commenting.

But anyway, K-Dub and I talked crap for a couple of hours and I walked her back home through some of the foulest-smelling garbage I have ever encountered. I could swear I saw a rat wearing a SARS mask. Seriously. Then I put on the new Jay Farrar-Ben Gibbard album and, with the weather so crisp and it being a Thursday, I decided to walk home through LES neighborhoods jam-packed with perfumed possibility.

Using that Met Life clock as a North Star, I lumbered (trust me) uptown to my apartment in the village and to the lovely GG who I knew had a breaking news story to report. Although report doesn’t do justice to the level of editorializing that goes on. I am often treated to her impressions of the news before I find out just what the hell happened.

Occasionally, GG is on the phone with her grandmother as much a night-owl and news-junkie as I have ever had the esteemed pleasure to call family and they hash out the news, as it happens—like co-anchors—as I take it all in and try to decipher what is real and what is conjecture. If the story involves a Kennedy, for example, whatever forces oppose said Kennedy just need to “grow up” or “mind their own business.” Stuff like that.

So I come home and she tells me the David Letterman blackmail news and my first thought is that this is going to hurt him. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dave and couldn’t care less who he is sleeping with, although I do find infidelity to be quite distasteful, as you know. But really, his own personal failings are his own. He did the right thing by coming forward. Take it from me, paying off a blackmailer never works. And that is all I am going to say on the matter.

But Letterman is also one pretty sanctimonious bastard and has been mighty cruel to both of the Clintons, among others, over the years. And that is a tough pedestal to hop back atop. I have a bad feeling that he will begin to lose his footing and wonder why he needs another whatever million to go with his whatever million he has socked away. For his sake, and because I hate that his ratings suffered at the hands of that square-jawed buffoon for all those years, and also because he has a humiliated family at home, I hope that I am wrong.

But, man, I doubt it.