exhibit# 375...evidence for the prosecution...

here the accused photographs himself with his wife in a photo booth...mugging it up for prosperity...clearly this is a man so in love...he is not concerned about making a fool of himself...

Dispatch: New York...

the year of weddings could only be topped off by a return to NYC for my brother's nuptials...how wonderful...now appropriate...

ms. scribe and i took my brother to dinner...and then went out for cigars and drinks...err, more drinks...


hey pal...watch your hands...


amy wanted to go here...but first i took her here...

here...

and here...


and i showed her my secret place...where we found these...


and i thought about the lives of these people...the changes they saw...the stories they could tell...

and how small and unremarkable my life feels like in comparison...

so far...

later, we went to katz's...amy thought she knew what corned beef was...now...she knows...
then i returned to the scene of the crime...


and of course, there was a wedding...


and it was almost better than chocolate...

Dispatch: Santa Barbara...

this has been the year of weddings...since september '05...we've been to five...next week will be wedding #6...but this week it was santa barbara...

a few notes about s.b....in my ignorance, i had always assumed that it was a sort of a palm springs by the sea...and so maybe you can imagine the kind of awakening i received when we got there...and discovered that it's more like boulder by the sea...I knew about ucsb...but i never thought of santa barbara as a college town...with it's own distinctive brand of homeless population...seriously...one guy had a shiny new portable generator strapped to his...electric bicycle...which leads to my only beef about santa barbara...or, more generically...towns like santa barbara...this is what has happened to the hippy havens of the 60's...not that they'll be missed...they have evolved into centers of conspicuous consumption...run rampant...case in point...this is the place people kept recommending i go to for breakfast...

who in their right mind would send a black man to eat at a place called...sambo's...several people needed a swift foot in the ass for that one...instead we found a great breakfast joint called esau's...and yesterday was their last day....closing after 45 years of operation...as gentrification closes in...and raises rents...

damn fine food...especially the clam chowder...what a shame...

farewell esau's...i hardly knew ya...

and this was our hotel...

and this was our plane...

and this is my sexy wife...

and this is a hudson super 6

but i digress...


apparently, every sunday since november of 2003...this veterans group has doing this thing they call...arlington west...each cross is for an american soldier, sailor and marine killed in iraq...amy and i found this profoundly moving...every sunday...for three years...and counting...each cross bears the name of the dead...however you feel about what's going on in iraq...until you are able to see the scope of it's cost...in human terms...it's hard to understand the realities of choosing war...

i don't know if their stats are accurate...but if they're even close to true...all i can say is...wow...what a sacrifice...in 2004 one of the arguments against re-electing bush was the potential of re-instating the draft...of course, these fears played right into the republican's advantage...re-instating the draft is the last thing they want...if every able bodied man and woman between 18 and 45 were compelled to face combat...the reality of war would be in every family's home...and there would be no war...we certainly wouldn't put up with the incompetence of how things have proceeded thus far...as long as the dead are anonymous...and silent...the war may as well not exist...

they are hard to see...on the edge of the horizon...there are oil drilling platforms...laugh or cry...it's hard not to be provoked into thinking, feeling...and maybe...doing...something...

santa barbara...thank you...

a short lesson from a master craftsman...

o henry wrote this opening paragraph to his short story...the defeat of the city...a hundred years ago...it would still be true...if it was written tomorrow...

"Robert Walmsley’s descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny struggle. He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The city gave him what he demanded, and then branded him, with its brand. It remodelled, cut, trimmed and stamped him to the pattern it approves. It opened its social gates to him, and shot him in on a close-cropped, formal lawn with the select herd of ruminants. In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in his greatness."

here's your preview of the new Denver Art Museum Frederic C. Hamilton expansion...

and then, we went to a party in someone's basement...