Thoughts Out Of Season

One day a guy stops my grandmother in the street and asks her if she wants to buy a brand new color television. 25 inch, and  with a remote for pennies, $150.My grandmother tells the guy to carry it over her house and she'll give him the money. He carries it up, puts it in the living room. My grandmother gets her purse and gives the guy the money. She turns for 1 second and the guy's gone. I'm 15, my brother his 14. We live upstairs.She calls us to help her get the TV out of the box (This was the 70's). We open up the the box and what do we find" Bricks! About 10 of them. He scammed her good. I get on the phone and call my uncle Gino (her son) "Hey uncle Gino, some bastard scammed grandma. He told her it was a new TV and it's a pile of bricks" "I'll be right there" He had to see it for himself I guess He's there in 5 minutes. He looks at in the box, he picks up a brick and looks at it then silently walks over the phone. Now ...

One summer night, hot as Hell. Everybody is out. Around Crotona Ave comes Joey Scales. Everybody stops and turns turns. Why? He's holding an old black man with huge buck teeth under the arm They get close to a bunch of guys and Joe yells out " Youse are not gonna believe who this?". Everyone looks at Joey then they look at the old buck toothed black man and they shrug their shoulder. "It's Buckwheath from the Little Rascals!" he yells. A roar goes up and soon the Buckwheet's shaking a hundred hands, Polaroid's are snapping, guys who never got within ten feet of a black man before are slapping him on the back. The guy is loving it! In to the cafe. Guys are fighting with each other to by a him a drink. Twenty minutes the guys half stewed. To the next social club he goes. Again the drinks flow like water. There's a dice game going in the back. He's invited and given a line of credit. Plates of sausages, mozzarella, peppers, olives and m...

Max and I were working 18 Boy one night when we received a report of a "severe laceration on st. Nicholas and 155 street. So we fly over there. We pull up and there's about 30 people screaming from a window on the third floor. We grab our trauma bag and as soon as we enter the building we hear people screaming and crying. We rush up and are ushered into an apartment. Max is in front of me and I'm behind. As I walked in a guy grabs me and pulls me over to the refrigerator and opens the door. Looking in I saw something that, even with my experience made me a little woozie: it was the hand of a child, palm down amputated at the wrist:

I was a 17 year old virgin painfully trying to become an ex-virgin. But older women didn't find me worthy enough and those my age seemed to still be smarting from the Catholic education beaten into them (I lived in a small Italian neighborhood in the Bronx where you had two choices- one public school where all you learned was street fighting, or a Chatholic  school. Most of the boys went to public school and of course most of the girls to Catholic school where the primary goal was to teach the girls to keep their legs glued closed and wait for  the second coming. The thought of a prostitute was out of the question, especially for the first time. It would confirm the idea I had that I was untouchable. So I stuck with option most boys have at time. I always made sure the bathroom door was always locked when I was in there (a lesson for all those in a similar situation). One night my Uncle Gino called me (I always called him Uncle Gino out of respect.One day we were sitting with...

Just wishing all my old EMT/Paramedic family a happy, proud Black History Month. We had so many good times and although I left in 2001 I still miss all of you and remind you all of how proud I was and will always be to have been a member of your family

Women's groups and others in Iran were outraged but understandably quiet yesterday when Iranian officials incredibly banned dog walking. A woman who would only identify  herself as Palooska , an Iranian mother of 4 children appeared to be steaming but told a reporter quietly " This damn Bur qua was bad enough but now I can't go out even in a blind fold!". While many woman were outraged many Iranian men our reporters met with sympathized with the new law and were glad to see it passed. "It is bad enough to see her in all her ungodly awfulness at home where it screws my face up so much that when I walk down the street other men see my look of shame immediately know I'm walking a dog!" In Tehran Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini sternly told a crowd standing around but without languid posture "It is the word of Allah that dogs stay off the street and not defile His home". Later on Khomeini was overheard saying ...

Cheating on your spouse is a perilous thing to do. He might get mad, angry, pissed off, or as in my case, especially when when she stays out all night, pleasantly surprised how nice, peaceful and calm the night really is.Thanks babes. Hey I just remembered. It's Saturday. You think you could be kind enough to give us another day and night of such bliss?. Funny, I always thought I would go nuts not having you here. Guess ii was the ADHD where I get everything backwards. It's you BEING here that drives me nuts. PS: Thanks again for a break from your imbecility pulling for two in a row!!! PSS: Please shower before you come home and touch my kids. These immigrants sometimes carry weird shit on their bodies

Like I said in past posts my uncle was one of the coolest guy's around. At 15 I was smoking in front of him, By 16 I was hanging with him in some of the best clubs in NYC. Many times a bouncer would come up to me and order my 16 year old ass out and every time someone would say " that's Gino's kid". It was weird to hear apologies from these monsters  ya know being 16 and all. But mostly we hung out as his apartment while his wife and kids slept. We'd be feeling good, a bit drunk, a little high and we'd bullshit all night. He was always strict about the Rules: " Hey you break the rules, it won't be some stranger but your best friend that will pull that trigger". Most times it was mostly bullshitting. But out of the blue he'd would think for a moment and come up with the craziest shit in the world.