I paid a visit to the New York Public Library to view a copy of the excruciatingly rare and valuable The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. From Wikipedia:

The book was originally produced in a limited edition of only seven copies, each handwritten and illustrated by J. K. Rowling. One of them was offered for auction in late 2007 and was expected to sell for $103,000; ultimately it was bought for $3.98 million by Amazon.com, making the selling price the highest achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript.

All that money went to a charity. She’s a good egg, that J.K. Rowling. She motivated a lot of kids to pick up a book and read. Huzzah to her for that!

The other six copies are all in private hands; a gift from the author. The copy on display at the Library belonged to someone at Schoolastic Books who was instrumental in getting Harry Potter published. It’s a really beautiful book. The binding is elegant and Rowling’s drawings are actually quite nice. And what spectacular penmanship! She hand-wrote all seven copies. It must have given her a terrible cramp.

I’m finally back from Ohio. A worry has not been laid to rest, but the momentum to solve the problem has been created. It was a successful trip but becuase I have so many dragons to slay here in the metro New York/New Jersey area, I couldn’t stay another day. Plus, I missed all my girls.

While in Cleveland, Mr. Z and I were lucky enough to see Rock-a-Billy Godfather Robert Gordon and legendary guitar player Chris Spedding at the fabulous Beachland Ballroom and Tavern. Here they are then (circa 1977)…

and now…

They were fantastic, as always. Are you anywhere near as cool as they are? No, you are not. Pop over and listen to the three songs posted on Robert’s MySpace page. Fire was written for him by Bruce Springsteen but the song was robbed, ruined and a big hit for the Pointer Sisters. If you only have time to listen to one song, listen to The Way I Walk. He opened with it on Saturday night. That song is a dark, evil night, baby! Turn it up good and loud. You’ll thank me later.

My Giants just lost their playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles. How could this have happened? It’s unthinkable. I have a theory.

After an Eagles touchdown, I saw Donovan McNabb, the Eagles quarterback, point up to the sky with both index fingers and “thank God.” I know many Giants fans who were praying for a victory so, obviously, God turned His back on them. It’s all God’s fault. God is a loser.

Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby so why don’t you kill me?

Still in Cleveland. This afternoon, I found myself driving from one end of the city to the other through a raging snowstorm to visit my oldest friend. I first rode my bike to his house 34 years ago. How many people do you have in your life like that? Eh? Family doesn’t count.

The WZIP Saturday Moring Polka show was playing on my radio. The Blue Bell Polka! The Too Fat Polka! The Beer Barrel Polka! The soundtrack of my childhood. My father, who was no hero to me, always played polka music. I was ready for those old familiar feelings of simmering resentment to boil to the surface but instead I was drawn into the music and was overwhelmed with pleasant melancholy. They’re such bouncy-happy songs.

It takes a man with a steely sense of self to play the fool but I am willing to play along if it means an amusing post.

Before I left for Ohio, I made an impulse purchase on iTunes. I was about to undertake an eight hour dive all alone and I wanted a familiar album to listen to that I haven’t heard in a long time. Here’s what I ended up with:

I want yooooo-huuuuuu
To show me the way.

What the hell was I thinking? But I did sing along quite loud.

Do you remember the last scene of Carrie where a hand reaches up out of a grave and grabs Amy Irving’s arm, and it turns out it’s just a dream? Okay, that skeletal hand is 2008 and the arm belongs to me and this ain’t no dream.

I’m in Ohio. There’s some family stuff I needed to attend to, so I took a drive out for a few days without my daughters and wife. There is some odorous residue of 2008 that I can’t seem to shake.

I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and flopped around in bed for two hours while being tormented by my inner demons. I finally got out of bed at 5:00 and was on the road by 5:30. I got on Garden State Parkway (a main artery into New York City) and merged into a wall of traffic. At 5:30 a.m. We were traveling the highway speed limit, but it was like a NASCAR race with speeding cars packed together just inches apart. I don’t know how people do it every morning. It woke my ass up, that’s for sure.

As I held the steering wheel in a death grip and drove through the darkness, my mind was racing in a loop of angst. Worries at home. Worries in Ohio. I missed my daughters and wife already and I wasn’t even in Pennsylvania yet. Then, on the Howard Stern radio program, they played the following clip from an Oprah Winfrey interview (emphasis hers):

I feel far more comfortable talking to people on television that I do with this whole role as a cover girl for my own magazine. Doing a photo shoot is a major big deal because there’s a team of people. This past year has been really difficult because I didn’t feel like being a cover girl.

I almost drove into a fucking tree. Are you kidding me?! Hey, Oprah, how’d you like a taste of what’s on my plate? I wanted to reach through my iPod and strangle her. Usually I can laugh at this sort if thing (as Stern was doing) but it was the exact wrong time for me to hear it.