“I read the letter and saw the word ‘wisely’ and knew it wasn’t Snookie. She doesn’t use that kind of language.” —Ronnie

For as much television as I watch, I have never seen an episode of a reality show where people must perform. Meaning? No singing, no dancing, no weight loss. (Toddlers & Tiaras doesn’t count, as I watch that to see the ogre parents.)

My favorite reality shows fall into two categories: animal payback/nature payback and ghost stuff. However, just last night I settled in to see if Sammi Sweetheart would finally give the heave-ho to Ronnie the smusher and I was shocked: what the hell am I doing still watching “Jersey Shore”?

After last season, I knew it would be compromised. All of the kids would realize why they are popular and just keep doing what they do: Snickers drinking and saying raunchy stuff; JWoww (my personal fave) threatening violence and covering up no more than 20% of her cleavage; the Situation and Pauly D avoiding grenades and scratching their heads like monkeys; and Vinny…well, I’m not sure what Vinny does, other than his eyebrows. And that needs to stop, V-Dog.

But I would’ve bet my life that I’d last one episode into the new season and then split. The World’s Deadliest Roads is starting, and I only have 8-10 hours a day to watch. Yet a funny thing happened on my way to repudiation: I got sucked in. Again.

Now, I’m not saying that anything earth-shattering happens, or that it’s an interesting or funny 48 minutes. But growing up Italian and spending time down the shore, I have seen folks like these. I have bought t-shirts from folks like these. And…that’s about it. I actually have more in common with a tree stump than these people, despite my ability to correctly pronounce marinara, mozzarella and ricotta.

Still, the new season is entertaining. And as oblivious as they still are, compared to the Miamians they encounter, the Jersey Shore kids are like Stephen Hawking. There’s enough to keep you busy, while you’re surfing the web, or pretending to listen to your parents’ phone call.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t required viewing the way “Animals Hoarders” is, but I feel like you should give it a chance. Here’s an idea: wait until a rainy day and sit through a marathon. I know what you’re thinking: 48 minutes already sounds like a marathon.

You may be right.

I went on a radio show last Friday to discuss my recent column supporting the building of an Islamic Community Center a few blocks from ground zero. Truthfully, I was pretty nervous. I consider myself to be relatively informed and, as you may have gathered, I have opinions on everything. But political discussion is some pretty deep water for someone who isn’t accustomed to the shouting and the castigation that goes on during much of the talk show culture. I like to let someone finish speaking before I begin to. It’s kinda how I was raised.

I thought it went well. The host was very nice, she mercifully didn’t take any calls, and even though my voice seemed to be two octaves higher than normal and I used the word, “fear” about 40 times, I was pleased that I didn’t sound like a liberal pussy. (Just “pussy-ish”, as my friend Pauly assessed.)

On the other end of the spectrum, today I spent a few hours flipping around the news channels and surfing the political web sites to see how the Islamic Community Center situation was being handled. I was aghast and it takes a lot to aghast me.

I want to believe that the Republicans preaching intolerance and spreading lies about Islam and President Obama on the various news outlets, and their oafish constituents who invaded my city the other day to protest in that hideous demonstration, also want what’s best for the country.

I want to believe that everyone understands the stakes here and that if New York City were hit again, some “regular” Americans (it’s a term I hear thrown around quote a bit on TV) wouldn’t think that it was just Jews and fags and intellectuals; the “liberal elite” as Republican media sneeringly call us.

I want to believe that they would feel for us, and that tonight, they actually fear for us, too. That they respect how, on September 11th, 2001, we took the shot for everyone, regardless of political affiliation. The bad guys thought they were going to break America and yet we didn’t even let them bend it an inch.

Even through our tears and grief and so much death just after that awful day, New Yorkers were conscious to put on a brave face for the rest of the country. We rallied through a pretty unimaginable horror, and we did it for everyone.

We let President Bush come here with his bullhorn and provoke the terrorists with a “come and get it” and we chalked it up to his incredible ignorance. He flexed and winked and we shrugged. But we didn’t cower. We were too busy digging, literally and emotionally.

In Texas, they prayed for us, but went to their high school football games that Friday night, while we buried our friends and family. In Georgia, the crafts fairs didn’t miss a beat, while we had our neighborhoods tested for toxins and held clothing drives. They may have lit candles for us in Missouri, but part of our city burned down.

And still we kept a stiff upper lip. That’s what patriotism really is, not a bumper sticker,  t-shirt or a Toby Keith song. It’s a bunch of four-eyed, sushi eating, Times-reading liberals (go figure) working together with blue-collar New York Post reading Jets and Giants fans who instinctively understood what had happened and how we needed to react.

I’m not blind—I recognize that there are plenty of racists and xenophobes in the five boroughs. Nor am I under any illusion that all New Yorkers are in favor of the building. For some people, emotions are still to raw to even think about supporting it. I respect them, and their opinions. And I appreciate the discussions that I have heard taking place—civilly and without histrionics and misspelled signs. (Hell, my own brother thinks I’m crazy. If I wasn’t so terrified of him, I would argue.)

Yet I was hoping that these out-of-towners, who were bussed in to rally against the center, would take a deep breath and appreciate how perilous our position was becoming, whether we are for or against the center. Poking 1.5 billion Muslims with a stick is not only wrong-headed it’s stupid and dangerous, especially for New Yorkers. And stoking the ire of mentally unbalanced Americans will likely cause violence against peaceful people who have the misfortune of being born with brown skin.

The politicians want to win—at any cost. Gingrich. Palin. Boehner. You know the names. And they think the best way to do so is to fan the flames of hatred and fear and hope the ensuing uproar would stick to President Obama, dooming him so that they would be able take the country over again and ruin it some more.

For the Republican leadership, there are always more industries to deregulate, more pockets to line, more parts of the Constitution to try and warp to protect the dwindling aging white population, their last constituency, in this nation of immigrants. They have no sense of decency, no concept of Americans as part of a global populace, and no understanding of how easy they are making it for radical Muslims to recruit young people. Or…perhaps they don’t care because they don’t live in New York City.

The rally attendees here, as opposed to the politicians, just blindly hate. They are angry, their lives are crummy, and they are desperate to point fingers at anyone but themselves. They are woefully uninformed about what has driven their families to the brink—like Bush tax cuts for companies that had shipped their jobs overseas—and know so little about Islam that they hurled epithets at a construction worker who they thought was wearing a traditional Muslim kufi, despite the Under-Armour logo on front. He was from Brooklyn and it was a beanie. (I wish that were funny, I really do.)

So these people traveled to my city the other day to rally, stoked intolerance and, with their hate-spew and handmade signs beamed all across the Muslim world, accomplished two very troubling things:

1) They put a great big target on Americans abroad, troops and otherwise. But mostly the troops.
2) They put a bulls-eye back onto New York City.

And then? They drove back to Pennsylvania, or Delaware, Ohio or Indiana or wherever they lived and resumed their lives, going to their book clubs, or poker games, or barbecues, secure in the knowledge that no one is coming to attack their annual Labor Day picnics.

Meanwhile, those of us in New York City sit here (as I am right now in my darkened apartment) and wonder when the next shot is coming. Because it is, rest assured, and we’d better be ready. The anniversary is September 11th is in three weeks. Did any of them stop and think of the significance of that?

Of course not. They have more important things to worry about. I’m assuming.

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Addendum: Tonight, on August 25th, a young man from upstate was arrested for slashing the throat of a New York City cab driver, after the driver admitted that he was a Muslim from Bangladesh. He will survive. I guess the pertinent question is: will the next one be so fortunate?

Writer’s block is the second worst kind of block, but in many ways, it’s by far the more damaging to one’s psyche. I have prided myself on never being at a loss for words, but when a recent friend asked me if I had penned a book—an obvious question for someone who writes a lot—I froze and sheepishly admitted that I hadn’t.

I’ve certainly started a few: screenplays, poetry, children’s books, a memoir (just kidding) and other long-form writing. The great American novel. And then, with a couple of notable exceptions, just when I begin getting into it, the same thing happens: I read work by someone else that completely blows me away and I become intimidated and go back to writing 750 word essays on sports, music or my eating habits.

It gives outsiders the appearance that I am too lazy to write one, and maybe I’m okay with people thinking that. The truth is probably more painful, because becoming intimidated by the likes of Hilary Mantel who wrote the year’s most sensational novel “Wolf Hall” is really pretty lame. She’s a tiny British woman, although the best writer of any sex or size working today.

The funny thing is, I’ve written enough words over the years to fill a full set of encyclopedias and some of them I actually consider keepers. The rest of them go back into my brain’s hopper. Occasionally I am working on something and have a déjà vu, like I had already written the words at an earlier date and I force myself to stop. Today someone told me one of my tweets sounded familiar and I almost barfed onto my keyboard. And then I stopped working out and hastily erased it. (Otherwise, I could work out all night long. Believe that.)

Unlike a musician, however, I am under no pressure, no deadlines and there is nobody who has a financial stake in my success, other than my wife who would really love for me to use my creativity to get us that house on the beach somewhere. She hasn’t said as much but…okay, that’s a blatant lie: she has said as much.

And so the other day, when discussing this very subject with my prodigiously talented friend, who’s also experiencing a mild case of the block in a completely different creative discipline, an idea suddenly hit me (after she politely rebuffed my attempt to have her provide me with one) and I have been writing pretty steadily ever since.

It’s a story about a guy who sits down to write something and actually finishes it. The end.

For once.

I’m a New Yorker. It is the very first thing I tell people about myself. My story usually unfolds in this order: I’m a New Yorker, I have a sensational wife and I love the Vikings.

I feel this city in my bones, find comfort that there are millions of stories intersecting on public transportation, and won’t even entertain the notion that any other city matters more than New York City. Two miles wide, fourteen miles long. That’s it—a finger of land, surrounded by a lumpy mass of well-meaning outer boroughs, where many of my friends live.

I’ve been watching the hullabaloo surrounding the proposed building of a mosque near ground zero and, naturally, a bunch of people have waded into the dispute, none of whom live here, or actually even like the city.

That’s not to say that they don’t have the right to an opinion. They sure do. Many claim how disrespectful they find the announcement that Muslim-Americans are looking to open a mosque and rec center in the financial district. I respect their views.

But when they start saying that it is an insult to those of us who lived through the events of September 11^th, 2001, I feel the need to interject. Only people who endured it can know just how much the wound continues to throb and only those people should be able to speak about what it means within the context of our own psyche.

New Yorkers don’t depend upon politicians to tell us anything, really. We took the shot and we’re still standing. They need to go worry about someone else, and try not to screw over our early responders any further, like they did just last week, denying them a lifetime of health insurance.

The pain of that day is exacerbated by the gaping hole that the site still is. That’s what really bothers me: NYU has built 19 dorms and Duane Reade has put up 247 of their haphazardly crummy stores, in the time it took WTC developers to discover the hull of an 18^th century boat, as they did a few weeks ago.

With all of that said,  I need a bunch of politicians from nearby states like Alaska, Nevada and Arizona telling me how I feel like I need a gaping hole in my own head.

The problem with Islam is the same with any religion: it can be twisted and warped to justify actions that seem contrary to common sense and human decency. Like blowing up abortion clinics, or displacing generations of families and alternately attributing it to ancient texts and the spoils of war and, obviously, murdering thousands of innocent people in some office buildings, all in the name of a deity.

I was watching Fox News, the dunce cup of American “news” outlets, because I wanted to see how simplistically they would package this into an indictment of anyone who disagrees with them. Rather than reporting on the story—which they actually never do—they stoked the outrage, showed some older stock footage of angry people with flags, and let dying-wife deserter Newt Gingrich compare Muslims to Nazis, being appeased by a bunch of namby-pamby Neville Chamberlains. I think he may have been referring to folks like me, although I have always thought of myself as more like Zhuge Liang. Only taller.

As with many New Yorkers, I know people of Islamic faith. And I come into contact with Muslims on a daily basis, along with Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and all manner of Christians,  atheists and agnostics. I find everyone occasionally infuriating, irrespective of who he or she worships.

And I don’t tie morality to faith, either. Anyone who needs to be told to be good really isn’t. You’re born with a moral compass. Either it works, or it doesn’t. There are a billion-and-a-half Muslims worldwide and only 775 of them passed through the gates of Guantanamo Bay. That’s the math that shouldn’t escape this conversation.

But this isn’t about religion; it’s about that pesky old U.S. Constitution that always seems to get in the way, whenever we decide what “they” get to do or say. People have the right to worship, even if they hold the same religious belief as the 9-11 hijackers. The location of their mosque is not an affront to me, and if it were, I would still afford them the same rights. Why? Because I’m not afraid of a house of worship. Or Muslims. I’m afraid of rats, roaches and bedbugs. Not people.

Is a mile far enough away? Two miles? How about five? Once we begin to chip away at our own liberties, we lose. Once we let fear dictate how we treat other people, we lose. Once we project intolerance to the world, the way Bush the younger did, so perfectly fitting the narrative of Americans as angry, mistrustful imperialists, we lose.

We did so much losing for a decade. The irony of religious intolerance rearing its head in a country that was founded to escape just that is not lost on either of us, I’m guessing. Can’t we all just take a deep breath and think about this rationally…except for those people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old?

So I read a poll today that said that a full two-thirds of Americans are against the building of that aforementioned mosque near ground zero. I wonder: how many of them are against Catholic churches being built next to elementary schools?

Calm down, I was just asking a question.

I used to have beef with Pop-Tarts and I don’t mean that in the literal sense. I found them, as an organization not a pastry, to be aloof, arrogant and stupid. Their crime was one of omission: omitting a shipping order to send me free crates of the effing things to my home, even when I asked super-nicely and not at all deranged-like. For sampling purposes, you understand. I was attempting to develop a hyper-sophisticated palate and thought that might be of interest to them. It clearly wasn’t. Those idiots.

Well, I’m here to say that all is forgiven. Because from the moment I stepped through the doors of the Pop-Tarts World, the mega-emporium on 42^nd street, and elbowed my way past forlorn tourists and their fat, sweaty spawnlets, I knew I was home. Or rather, in a sublet until January when the places closes its doors, like the corporate cereal company douchebags they….never mind, it’s all love from here on in.

Let me preface my drooling by stating that I’ve been in grander food establishments in my life. Dylan’s Candy Bar on the Upper East Side is pretty frickin’ fantastic with that array of squeezable SweetTarts jelly. And when I die, unbeknownst to my wife (until now) I have made arrangements to lie in state in the Harrods Food Hall, right near the marzipan counter, surrounded by sour pastilles.

Yet, as far as pop-up shops go, this one takes the cake. I am positively smitten with the area where you can get milkshakes with bitty Pop-Tarts, soft-serve ice cream with bitty Pop-Tarts, “homemade” Pop-Tarts, where you choose from an array of fillings and some angels behind the counter create them for you. Hell, you can even get something called “Pop-Tarts sushi” which, personally, I have no interest in.

There are games and t-shirts as well, but if I’m not supposed to eat it and it says “Pop-Tarts” on the package, it probably is best I keep a safe distance.

But the pièce de résistance is the Varietizer, which distributes 72 different kinds of Pop-Tarts, some whose distribution is more limited than Kanye West’s rapping. Whether you want Orange Crème or Ice Cream Sandwich, the machine will collect them, with some mechanical arm and joyously put a dozen of them into a box for you to take with you.

Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. Actually, me walking down the street with twelve Pop-Tarts is like the fox guarding Lindsay Lohan who’s guarding a crackhouse.

Know what? It might be a little bit worse than that.

I woke up the morning of August 5^th in a chic-rustic cabin tucked into Big Sur’s woods, enveloped in the thickest fog this side of Brigadoon. I opened the front door and stooped to pick up a copy of the San Francisco Guardian. The headline read “Unconstitutional” referring to a state judge’s ruling that Proposition 8 is as the headline so succinctly referred.

And just like that, the fog began to lift.

There are great tragedies in American politics: using race or cultural heritage to try and divide us; scapegoating the less fortunate, as if they are the reason we’re in such dire straits; preventing any of us from–god forbid—taking any kind of personal responsibility for what has happened to our country. It’s much easier when we can blame it on “them”, and “them” changes depending upon which Republican is running in which state. I wish that statement weren’t so cut-and-dried, but it is.

Regardless, the fact that someone put the brakes on Proposition 8, which attempts to decide who is a suitable candidate for marriage, and who isn’t, makes me gob-smackingly happy.

I have to admit, I have some skin in this game. Two of my four sisters are lesbian. Both have been in committed relationships for over twenty years, I’ve grown up with two women whom I call my sister-in-laws, and one of those unions has produced two incredible nieces.

So to watch their lifestyle (and I even hesitate to call it that, because that word connotes a choice that I don’t think exists, really) assailed by a bunch of hateful jackasses in an otherwise groovy state, really gets my hackles up. I’ve been around gay people my entire life, and besides for exposure to a few too many mullet haircuts, artwork that contain penises and women who look suspiciously like Tom Petty, my experiences have been positive.

Gays want to get married. Not just because they want weddings, but for more practical reasons: so when one of them gets sick, the hospital needn’t look to call the next of kin. The next of kin is already in the waiting room, able to rattle off the patient’s medical history at a moment’s notice. Or when one of them dies, the assets don’t go to some fat-fingered relatives, but to maintain a household and live out the rest of one’s days without upheaval, as the deceased surely would’ve intended. That’s all. How that affects you, or me, or the mayor of Santa Barbara, is beyond me.

I’m not sure that the majority people who are against gay-marriage even understand why they are. Sure there are bigots who use derogatory words. But there are also others, who have been told by hateful pundits or even pastors how their lives will change for the worse, when gays get to marry. People often speak of their God as merciful and yet whenever I see his power wielded it is in an intolerant manner. Apparently, the  “We’re All God’s Children” bumper sticker needs an asterisk in some areas of the country.

In most countries, being a homosexual is an enormous burden. In some, even punishable by death. And yet, it’s as if some voters in California had been saying, “Hey, you don’t have a tough enough road, gays. Here’s an enormous pothole for you to navigate. By the way, thanks for paying taxes and creating two-thirds of anything clever.”

But the other day Judge Vaughn Walker gave the legal equivalent of a backhand toward the worst of society’s people. Marriage is between a man and a woman? Says who? I mean, come on. This is 2010, not the Spanish Inquisition. Everyone, man-woman, man-man, woman-woman combination should get to repeat a few vows. And you know how that affects me? Beyond purchasing a few more place settings as gifts, and having more deliriously happy friends, it does not in any way impact my life and marriage. Pretend that I fed that last line through a bullhorn, because I think that it’s the crux of the misconception: that gays are asking for anything different than the rest of us. They want what we have: to live happily ever after, about half the time.

What the judge did was far more important than restoring our faith in California. He reaffirmed that the constitution was written with compassion. The framers had no idea of the scope of what was to come, in terms of growth, but threw a few darts and still wrote an incredibly thoughtful, multi-tiered argument for protecting people’s rights, against those who would try and deny them.

It’s a living document, once used to beat back slavery, and then to provide women the right to vote. Noble efforts. Not this crap. This is backward. Prop 8 should say that anyone regardless of race or gender can marry. Prop 9 should offer the same protections for those who want to adopt children. Proposition 10 should be that everyone who wants to be a citizen and pay taxes, can do that too. I would rather not discuss Prop 11 publically, but suffice it to say it involves grown men wearing tank tops and skinny jeans and…forced labor. That one’s non-negotiable.

Still, the forces of ignorance will try and fight this with nonsense about activist judges and “Jesus said this.” They try and make the Bible a living document, too, and inject hatred, but only when it suits their purposes. And they will try and pin this decision on President Obama “the Socialist” because it’s the best hand they have, albeit a shaky one: a pair of deuces.

I just want to shake them and tell them what I have known since I was a little—and I use that term very loosely—boy: that all men are created equal, even if they’re standing atop a six-layer wedding cake from Bouchon.

“I will love you till I die, and I will love you all the time. So please put your sweet hand in mine, and float in space and drift in time.”

Two nights ago, my friend Mel the yoga instructor dropped by the apartment. She was picking GG up for dinner-and-a-movie (the lesbian flick) and asked what my plans were. I told her that I was seeing Spiritualized at Radio City Music Hall with my friend Paul. Unfamiliar with their music, she asked to hear something, and, after a minute of listening said, “Does it get any better than this?” She didn’t mean it in a nice way.

The reason I’d been so excited was the band (really one guy, Jason Pierce aka Jay Spaceman) had announced that he was going to perform the his 1997 masterpiece, “Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space” for one final time, the way he’d always heard it in his head: 30-plus musicians in total—a gospel choir, strings, and a full horn section. The twin lure was that he’d pledged that he would never play it again…ever. I was swooning and immediately set about getting tickets.

Anyone who knows me (except, apparently, Mel who enjoys more earthy pursuits) has heard me speak about the particular piece of music with the upmost reverence. I have listened to it so many times, I often feel like I live inside its cacophonous chambers. As if I am walking around my home, only it has 100 rooms, yet I know where everything is and what its purpose is for being there. Even blindfolded.

Vocals layer upon each other, guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, horns all blend into one another other to create a hymnal cassoulet of sound. If Brian Wilson was British, and was blessed with today’s technology, he would have approached recording in this manner. (His maudlin masterpiece Pet Sounds, is another obsession of mine.)

Musically, it’s amazing, but lyrically it’s beyond, considering the circumstances under which it was recorded. Pierce had been involved in a long-term relationship with bass player Kate Radley  who began carrying on an affair with and eventually secretly married the Verve’s lead singer Richard Ashcroft, which is the cultural equivalent of you marrying a karaoke machine from Sears.

Can you imagine? In one fell swoop, she came home and told her man that a) she was leaving him; b) it was a lovely wedding—too bad he’d missed it; and c) she had chosen a junkie plagiarist for whom he was a near doppelgänger.

Heartbroken, Pierce retreated to his wherever one would retreat to in England and, isolated and alone, sculpted this masterpiece of longing, despair and anger, coupled with such an overwhelming mordant sadness that—and I’m gonna get killed for admitting this—I was a little emotional the other night watching it performed live. (At one point, a small Thai(ish) woman next to me leaned over and, with tears in her eyes, said, “His wife was such a fucking asshole.” We both cracked up laughing at that.)

From beginning to end, the record bravely lays open Pierce’s wounds without a thought of how anyone outside of his field of vision would react. Lyrics like, “What am I supposed to do, when all my thoughts are of you?” coupled with pleas for her to change her mind, to come home, back to the band, back to him, and back to their lives together. The relationship never had a chance to unspool gracefully. And you can almost picture him on those interminable nights, recording rueful lines like, “Now I’m wasted all the time” as asides, buried under the swirling soundscapes.

I say “bravely” because, if you’ve ever been dumped—and who hasn’t, except for Olga Kurylenko?—you always want the other party to think you’re better off. Or at least as well off. What LAGWAFIS says is, “God help me, I am so fucked without you.”

Seeing it live for the first time, I was completely unprepared for the sonic assault, and as a former heavy metal kid my ears occasionally ring like church bells or, more happily, an ice cream truck. At this concert, my eyeballs were throbbing.

Within ten minutes of the show’s beginning, as the band was barreling through “Come Together” I was covering my mouth in astonishment. I’ve seen a gazillion-billion live concerts, but I’d never heard that kind of clarity mixed with brute force; because while some of the songs can be described as lilting and gentle, others are nine-minute feedback laden drones. The music equivalent of howling in pain. Impossibly loud, indescribably loud, yet the level of musicianship was fantastic. You could hear every instrument playing its own part. I mean, literally. The acoustics were hubba-hubba. And I was left pretty breathless. And, shockingly, mute.

The choir was incredible and powerful, often echoing his statements dozens of times while the strings and horns added a frenzy that rattled my senses. Looking at photos on the web, you can see much of the crowd with its eyes closed, feeling the music, as much as watching it performed.

Two hours later the crowd, stunned by what they’d witnessed, leapt to their feet to applaud him, while he—dressed in his uniform of white pants, white t-shirt and white shoes—sheepishly waved and ambled off stage.

Paul and I walked downtown afterward, neither of us talking much, both of us a little overwhelmed by it. I just kept repeating how intense it was. And thanking God that we weren’t tripping. (I say that, even though the number of times Paul and I have tripped is one, and that was years ago in Amsterdam, for a bachelor party that the groom actually backed out of. Story for another day.)

No wonder Spaceman’s retiring “Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space.” The performance nearly killed me, heaven knows what it would do to him if he had to keep opening and cauterizing his wounds.

Sorry you missed it.