I just landed back in New York. I cannot describe the feeling of pleasure I get when I get back to nyc. You feel so blessed to come back and realize that you live here. what a joy. anyway, You ever notice that there are people who are into golf? I mean, they’re really into it. like, they like it. On the plane today I noticed an older couple watching golf on the TV in front of them. a hundred channels and they are watching golf. For me golf is boring enough to play, let alone watch other people play it on a TV. Couldn’t imagine. I would love to get in the mind of people like that and see what’s going on. find out what makes them tick.

[o.k. check this out, as fate would have it, I am sitting in my favorite little smoke shop on fiftieth and lex in a big old leather chair just happy to be back in the city; in a few minutes we will begin shooting for the TV show trailer, and so I’m just chilling and typing here and this special comes on TV explaining how the US open is so cool because its this championship where anyone can qualify to play in it. even regular joes like you and me and that’s what makes it so special. That in fact this one guy who’s is this total blue collar worker qualified this year and couldn’t afford to go so he put himself up on eBay for a sponsorship and a north Carolina health care company got the high bid and gave him $7600 to pay for his travel and lodging and other expenses. The most he ever made playing golf. Now that’s a cool story. I’m not sold on golf necessarily but I appreciate it a lot more now. goes to show, information is the key. The more we learn about something the more we can get into it. I’m telling you, I think sometimes that God is just really focusing attention on me right now, as if sometimes he just lowers his hands down and lifts me up and places me into situations as if to show me things… I can’t say I mind so much.]
 
Today Tree called me. which is rare. He never calls any of us anymore. Weird because I was just writing about him. right? the invisible hand. anyway, he didn’t call to chat. He called because it turns out a good friend of ours from high school died over in Iraq. Dan Binster. Everyone called him Binky back then. when I first heard the news I was angry and sad. I felt for his family, but my initial reaction was ‘well it serves him right. he knew what he was getting himself into. what the hell was he doing over there killing people anyway? I mean, you go invade a foreign country, yeah there’s a risk that you’re going to get killed. And here we are mourning for the 1600 Americans who have died and here they’ve killed more than 100,000 iraqis so far….’ I warned Tree that I wasn’t the one who was going to be sympathetic about this situation. I said bro I’m not the one to call about this. you know how I feel about America invading Iraq or any other country that isn’t attacking us. now I thought Tree was going to be pissed at me for saying this. but he wasn’t. he said he agreed with me but found it hard because these guys have their president coming on TV all the time telling them that invading Iraq is the right thing to do and that they’re helping to free the Iraqi people and save the Americans. We both just sat there talking about how fucked the whole thing is and now one of our friends is dead because of this. and how many more American guys are injured or wounded in some horrible way? fucking bastard government. And now its home for us. a good guy right from our own little private high school. From this forward on in the concept we call life here on earth this guy will exist no more. he is dead. He is a memory. And he was killed because he was invading another country because the president of this country told him to go there and do it. and now he’s dead. And his family and friends will forever suffer and miss him and wonder the hell happened to Binky. And in the meantime tomorrow bush and his war monger administration will wake up and eat their breakfast, tell a few jokes, maybe even play a few rounds of golf. They’ll give a few speeches to the press about how we must keep going and complete our mission, whatever the hell that is, I think the whole fucking country at this point is wondering about that one. and day by day thousands more Iraqi people will die and hundreds more Americans will die. There will be a Binky from every town in America dead before this thing is through and bush and his administration and their families will be just fine because they aren’t over there fighting. Nope. They’ll be just fine.