My birthday is in a couple of weeks. Normally, there are a few things I want and have begun dropping hints about: fresh kicks, a Vikings jersey, a trip to Amsterdam. Basically, the same crap I wanted 20 years ago. As GG says, I am both easy and complicated, at once.
This year, however, I can’t think of one thing I would be psyched to receive. Certainly not more stuff. The year’s been impossibly long already and I feel like my circle of friends is reeling, a bit. I want that to stop, first of all.
Here are some other things that would make me happy to get:

I want Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf to host the fourth hour of “The Today Show.”

I want all my friends’ boyfriends to get a fucking clue and propose already. Good grief.

I want Conservatives to stop rooting against the country.

I want to spend a week on an island with my wife, some Lincoln Rhyme mysteries and a box of Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas.

I want, whenever I shout, “cherry dip soft serve!” for a cone to magically appear.

I want midgets and dwarfs to live together in harmony. In France.

I want Patton Oswalt to follow me on Twitter.

I want to eat at Nobu three times a week.

I want Arizona to suffer cruelly for its immigration policy…until it’s changed.

I want Josh Ritter, Dev Hynes and Diane Birch to become disgustingly (and appropriately) wealthy.

I want Prince Harry to marry Lily Allen and move to the Village to found “the New York City Polo Federation.”

I want Sting to finally pay Andy Summers for writing the melody for “Every Breath You Take”.

I want all of my friends to get great, fulfilling jobs.

I want mosques to be built right next to churches and synagogues.

I want Bret Favre to come back for one final season.

I want Osama bin Laden’s head on a stick.

I want everyone who puts his or her hands on someone weaker to lose them.

I want Nerds to come in a blue-raspberry/tangerine flavor combination. (I know: I’m a broken record with this one.)

I want a cure for cancer, autism, AIDS, chemical dependency, Yankees fandom.

I want health care to be considered a right, not a privilege; gay marriage to be law; no hungry children; a path to college for everyone.

I want a happy ending.

So tell me: Is that really too much to ask?

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the whole art vs. commerce debate. It’s a pretty relevant topic these days, as everyone (certainly most of my friends) are scrambling to make ends meet. And so smart, creative folks wind up doing things to pay the rent and things to float the boat. I was able to claim both at once on more than one occasion in my career; now it seems more like I am alternating between the two. Good thing the boat is moored in calm waters.

On that subject, I’d heard a story about a famous artist who was so popular that his agent was selling his work before it was even finished, for over a million dollars per piece. (And no, it isn’t me, but good guess.) And this guy, whose name rhymes with “Muck Mose”, was pretty livid because he felt—rightfully so—that it would affect how long he worked on a piece before he deemed it, quote-unquote “done.” If the money was already in the bank, the temptation would be to stop working, sign it, and ship it out.

I don’t have that problem. Nor do you, I presume. Usually I work on things—ideas, pitches, one-act plays about how deadline-oriented I am—and then send them into the maw of a hierarchical consumerist organization. And then I wait.

But what I have noticed is that some of my friends have begun to spend more time on their labors of love than their labors of like-to-get-paid. Not me. For better or worse, I certainly don’t spend a moment less wasting your time here than I do someone else’s time who may be paying me tons of money to hear what I think about music, sports or candy. Likewise, if it’s a commercial endeavor that isn’t the most exciting work in the world, I don’t give it a short shrift, in terms of brain power. And I use that term loosely.

I have a friend, whose name rhymes with “hay” (actually, it’s Jay Sylvester and his email address is jaysjunk@aol.com, if ya need some design work) and he actually takes my columns and does some pretty amazing graphic designs to accompany them. I cannot imagine that he puts any less effort into them than he does his own work. And I don’t post them here because I feel, in some ways, it would devalue his intent, which is basically to make me jealous that he is so much more clever than I. No, I think it’s just to say that he cares.

And that’s priceless, you know?

PS Here’s a logo that he recently did for BP. I know, I know, he’s brilliant. Don’t remind me.

BP ReBrand

Perhaps, in the quieter moments since his news was announced, in his bungalow or whatever they call it, LeBron James has begun to reflect. After the parties on “South Beach” that Mecca of hair gel and body wax, after he’s had to glad-hand all sorts of business-card-toting creeps and losers, none of whom have any idea what passion of basketball is about, he will wonder about his legacy. The man who once wore the mantle of ‘King’, now wears a different one, however unjust he may think it: carpetbagger, with a side of coward.

I’ve seen athletes take tumbles in the court of public opinion before. I remember when Robbie Alomar spit into umpire Mark Hirschbeck’s face; have watched Terrell Owens spiritually groin kick his way into near obscurity. And let’s face it: there’s always OJ Simpson’s “timberrrrrr!” moment.

But I have never seen an athlete held in such high regard pull an act of self-sabotage that instantaneously turned a legion of fans into haters; and encouraged a gaggle of endorsers to begin to question, whether he’s worth the trouble.

LeBron James is a gifted basketball player. He is not, nor will he ever be the next Michael Jordan. That’s Kobe Bryant. And it’s always been Kobe Bryant. Instead LeBron, by going to a team with two established All-Stars, will go down as the greatest complimentary player in NBA history.

Maybe.

Because Scottie Pippen has six rings. And Sam Jones has a grip, too. If LeBron considers rings as the ultimate yardstick of greatness — which I do not, because last time I checked, basketball was a team sport — he has a long way to go.

The most unfortunate part of the whole decision wasn’t the decision itself, but “The Decision.” Cleveland deserved better than to be front and center for a televised humiliation fest. Whoever gave such advice to LeBron should be sent packing. How the folks at Nike, or the NBA’s twin geniuses Stern and Silver, or anyone, weren’t able to convince him that he was dynamiting his brand, and tainting theirs as well, is beyond me.

The guy didn’t have to stay in Cleveland. That’s for sure. And no one outside of that burg would’ve faulted him. And it isn’t even the destination that hurts him the most (although I’m sure Jordan now regards him with a five-letter euphemism for cat). It’s that he chose to do so publicly and made sure everyone was watching when he spurned his childhood sweetheart. In short, it was a real dick maneuver from a guy who has never seemed to behave like one.

And so now he is in Miami. If ESPN created one of those poll-map thingies, there would be 49 states rooting for James and his buddies to fail. Whereas MJ and even Kobe (who has actually given folks reason to boo) have been cheered in all but the most enemy of territories, LeBron James gave up that option when he decided to let Jim Gray give him a televised sponge bath.

Again, this isn’t about what he did, it’s about how he did it, which makes it really difficult to understand and impossible to fix.

I wrote the following post in February and someone reminded me of it yesterday.  And so I dug back into my archives and wanted to see what I had said about the ending of that show Lost. Let’s see how close I came, shall we? (pats self on back)

February 3rd, 2010

If ever a show was aptly named, besides for The Biggest Loser, it has got to be ABC’s extravaganza of confusion, Lost.

I’ve tried over the years to see if I could wedge the show into my busy viewing schedule since I’m a late starter. It took me three years to get into 24, I missed a half-season of Gossip Girl due to my own stupidity, and I just watched the first few episodes of MadMen.

I’ve wanted to like Lost, because as you know, I pride myself on going along with the crowd. And I’ve certainly enjoyed watching my friends interact the morning after another episode with doofy, confused smiles on their faces, trying to decipher whether that flashback actually had a foreshadowing and…never mind.

Everyone is looking at each other to see if anyone knows what is “really going on.” On a television show. Seriously. Even after all these years, no one truly knows what the hell has happened, is happening, will happen.

If I can’t figure out what a show is about in 10 minutes I am outski. My friends obviously feel differently and I do not begrudge them that. In their defense, they think there has been some grand master plan all along. That each numbingly confusing episode is one small piece of an elaborate, and ultimately satisfying, whole story arc. That one day, in the near future, their faith and their time will be redeemed.

And I am nearly 100% positive that their theory is bullshit. That the two creators have cobbled together a storyline on the fly, never thought the show would be such a success, and when the final season ends in a few weeks, they will peddle an ending that will leave my friends furious and unsatisfied. And I will have been proven correct. Yet again.

When that happens, please think of those developments as one of those umpteen Lost flashbacks. Only this one, it will make perfect sense. I promise you that.

“A man obsessed is a man possessed by a demon.”—hubert selby jr

If I had to make a list of my favorite authors, hubert selby jr would be near the top. You might know him from his harrowing novels “Last Exit to Brooklyn” and “Requiem for a Dream” (the movie version of which still haunts me—thanks Jennifer Connolly). Yet, to me, his finest work is a novel called “The Demon.”

This out-of-print masterpiece is about a guy named Harry the Lover. He is as his name suggests: a player. The thing is, he only sleeps with married women and he still lives with his parents, so there are no complications.

Slowly, though, he becomes obsessed with his sexual proclivity and its accompanying danger. He gets busy in the closet at work. In the park. In the frantic moments before his lover’s spouse is to arrive home. Eventually the thrill of that wears off and his obsession with danger grows to the point where he wakes up one day and wonders: what would it be like to kill someone. But not just anyone. Someone important.

I thought of Harry last night when I watched that A&E show “Obsessed.” As you know, I had been watching both “Intervention” and “Hoarders” but stopped because the shows were all degradation and no payoff. I have yet to see someone on either show arrive at a place where I can visual them being cured. Because if you’re drinking booze out of a toilet tank, a 60-minute TV show ain’t helping you. Especially if you’re family is busy battling their own demons. On “Intervention” everyone seems to have his or her own issues.

For its part, “Hoarders” is just a game show pity party, where some WASPy chick goes to a pigsty and tells the owner, basically, “You have 48 hours to rid yourself of a lifetime of crap before a) you get evicted; or b) you die alone under 400 pounds of cat litter. So get busy, wackjob!”

But “Obsessed” is a different story. These are real three-dimensional people who attempt to carry on otherwise normal lives, despite being burdened with spending 8 hours on a treadmill or taking 34 showers a day. No, literally.

They are being helped by an assortment of likeable therapists, who seem to inject a whole lot of common sense stuff into their treatments. These folks don’t ship the people off to rehab like “Intervention” but instead deal with the problems without disrupting their family lives. And unlike “Hoarders” they aren’t forced to make split second decisions in a dizzying purge of memories and, occasionally rodent corpses.

And yet, watching last night’s episode I could see something that is often missing from the other shows: hope. Maybe not so much for the treadmill lady, who had pretty atrocious bangs, buckteeth and whose husband seemed ready to hop on board the first train out of crazytown. But for the over-showered fellow, the future looked bright. And clean, too, which should go without saying.