When I was in maybe fifth grade a large portion of my time was taken up with planning and writing, with my good buddy Derek, an epic post-apocalyptic feature film entitled "THE WAR OF NEW YORK". It was going to be great. We were both imaginative (if a bit a aimless) and were crazy about "Escape From New York", the 1981 John Carpenter classic. THE WAR OF NEW YORK (TWONY for short) owed a pretty significant stylistic debt to Escape From New York, but was honestly it's own story. I really wish I could remember the plot -- some mumbo-jumbo about two rival gangs fighting for ownership of the New York, the last remaining city on earth. I can't even remember the character names that Derek and I had for ourselves but they were, I am sure, brilliant. We would talk friends and hangers on into working on it, so long as we gave them juicy parts to play (I remember Gloria, Derek's next door neighbor, was willing to help us so long as she could be the witch queen of the bad guys: dark, powerful and mysteriously sexy (in a fifth grade sort of way). Her name would be Diana (pronounced dee-AH-na, natch)). We were going to film the bulk of TWONY behind the Child World, by the dumpsters at White City plaza in Shrewsbury Massachusetts. Near Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sadly, and shockingly, despite all our hard work and thought, it never got off the ground. I think, somehow, the TWONY saga set a hard-to-shake precedent in my artistic life: pretty good ideas, pretty spotty follow-through. Ah well. Also, somehow, I think that when as a young adult I moved to New York City, it was partly because I had spent all that time and energy imagining it as a child. Erin and I went back to New York, and Massachusetts (although we didn't make it to White City), this past week. We had not been back since we moved here to Texas. It was great. Our reason for going back east was to attend my mother's ordination as a Unitarian-Universalist minister (Yay, mom!), and we did, and it was wonderful. We figured, if we were going to spend the money to go all the way out there we owed it to ourselves to hit the old haunts while we were there. We did many, but not all, of the things we miss most about New York. We ate Brooklyn pizza, Nathan's hot-dogs, Papaya King hot-dogs, polish food, Dunkin Donuts and Italian Ice. We attended a rooftop BeerBQ, a backyard BarBQ and a backyard brunch. We went to Coney Island and rode the Cyclone, and went to the top of a tall building to look down (Top of the Rock instead of the Empire State Building. Very nice). We spent time with most, but not all, of the people we miss. I was afraid that we'd get to New York and be filled with regret and sorrow, and want to move back immediately. That was not the case at all. We love New York, and had a great time, and can't wait to visit again but neither of us want to move back. Go figure. I should mention that, right before we left, our team made the kickball playoffs, third seed out of 8, from 22 teams! Woo! We won our first playoff game, but lost the second on three terrible calls -- too tiresome to detail here, but so bad that the team who 'won' (and went on to win the tournament) took very little joy in their victory. They knew what had happened as well as we did. Funny though, after the first INSANE call Erin got up in the umpire's face and really hollered. I thought she was going to take a poke at him. I had to go over and pull her away and calm her down. One of the bystanders, not anyone we knew, was shouting about how bad the call was too. Later, once the game was over Erin apologized to the umpire for getting so worked up. She said "I'm really sorry I got angry. But, you see, we're all elementary school teachers and we are very concerned with rules and fairness" Ha! I got a full-time teaching position for this upcoming school year, second and third graders. I am delighted and terrified.