7-Year Old Daughter was wearing a leather necklace that I hadn’t seen before so I asked her if it was new. She said she that it was and that, “It’s a magic necklace.”

“Is that so? And what makes it magical?”

“Well, whenever I see one of my friends in trouble, or if I see two adults fighting, I take it in my hands [cups the pendant] and I whisper [she whispers] Please help my friend. And then, everything is better and everyone is happy again.”

Honestly, I thought she was going to tell me that she uses it to make a new pair of shoes appear out of thin air. What a cynic! I promise to make a concerted effort to not foist my neurosis on her or her little sister.

We walked to the local Italian Ice stand last evening. This place is a Jersey shore summer institution and it will soon be closed until next spring, so we had to get our final licks in.

The walk takes us down our street and over a short bridge that spans the Navasink River. At this time of year, you can see jellyfish swimming under the bridge and people are crabbing both off the bridge and in small boats bobbing in the river.

Mrs. Wife was pushing 3-Year Old in her stroller (it’s too far for her to walk), 7-Year Old was slightly ahead of us and I was trailing. I was watching the oncoming traffic and saw a woman approaching in an older model white sedan.

She was in her mid-50s and looked to be the product of too much inbreeding between her aunts and uncles. The car was traveling about 25-30 miles per hour. In one hand she held a cell phone up to her thick skull. In the other hand she gripped the steering wheel and a lit cigarette.

Then, as the car approached dear family, while still yammering on her cell phone, she let go of the steering wheel to take a long drag on her cigarette.

Have you been watching True Blood? When madness grips one of the characters, their eyes go completely black. That was me. I pictured the car hitting a bump, careening out of control and heading towards 7-Year Old. I imagined that I was Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man (same superpower, different publisher). I elongated my arms and with one I snatched 7-Year Old from the car’s path and with the other I smashed the driver’s nose into tiny bits of cartilage.

She finished her puff and the car passed by without incident.

Initially, I wasn’t going to do a post about this because I have a tough guy reputation to protect. But for the sake of great art I will humble myself to you all.

I was having a bitch of a week—awful from top to bottom. At the very moment that things reached critical mass and I was on the threshold of losing it, this song came on. I hadn’t heard it before and am only vaguely familiar with the artist. Before he got to the second verse I had burst into tears like a little girl—something I haven’t done for a very long time. Not even when my mother passed away a few months ago. It was awful and cathartic.

Who needs a psychiatrist or religion with stuff like this floating around to help you out of the rabbit hole and through the thick bramble? This is The Weight off of Twelve Mondays, the new album by Ari Hest.

I’m going down to the riverbank this morning
Way before the family is awake
Gonna lay me down at the foot of the water
And spill out all my troubles for everyone’s sake

You can’t have love when you never can surrender
I’ve been spreading around my anger like a plague
I’ve sailed this far with my boat on fire
Fighting flames each day, too stubborn to expire

I will soak my soul
Let the river take control
I know it’s not too late
To let go the weight

The sun will rise and shine on me this morning
It will seep its way into my heart
And untie all the knots that have hardened me through the years
And I’ll embrace wisdom that sun will impart

And with this heat burning inside me
I will warm all of the people that I love
In their darkest of hours and weakest of minds
I’ll light up their nights with every star I can find

Ah, the tall, majestic pine trees of central New Jersey. You can almost smell…hey. Waitaminute. That’s no pine tree!

It’s hard to tell from this photo (it’s from my cell phone) but that’s not a tree. It’s a cell phone relay tower. We were in one of the more tony neighborhoods of New Jersey and the people who live in big houses that are situated on big plots of land care a lot about the aesthetics of their community. They don’t want any ugly-ass cell phone towers littering their beautiful landscape. But, of course, they need cell phone service. Can you imagine life without it?

So the cell phone providers came up with this fantastic idea. They disguise the cell phone towers as pine trees. Call me cynical but they’re not fooling me one bit. I wonder if the birds are duped and build nests in them?

If you click on this you can see some of the white antennas sticking up out of the branches. Do they have these things in your community?