When I went out for breakfast this morning, it was snowing--which was nice! Big wet flakes, not heavy enough to stick, but pretty as they descended. And to think that the weathermen kept promising us rain! Sure didn't feel like rain in the air--it's cold out there today.

By the time I finished my second cup of coffee, the snow had stopped and the coffee shop (which had been half-empty when I came in) was packed and I could hear languages and accents from all over from the tourists ready for the Times Square celebration.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to go out tonight. I wouldn't go to Times Square, but to a party further downtown. Apparently Times Square was crammed last evening, though, and I'm sorry I didn't go out for a walk there then. It sounds as if last night the streets had the easy flow I miss on New Year's Eve. Makes me wonder why they have to regiment it so on New Year's Eve anyway, if last night people were able to wander around freely. Well, what do I know about urban security?

I stayed in last night and wrote for awhile and then I watched Meet the Fockers, which I got for a Hanukkah gift. Although there were some funny moments, mostly courtesy of Robert De Niro's line readings and facial expressions, overall I didn't find the movie that funny. Maybe it played better in a theater with a crowd? Dustin Hoffman is not a comedian; watching him on the small screen, I thought that he played the role of Ben Stiller's father too realistically and he came across as more pathetic and narcissistic than merely clueless. Barbara Streisand was good although the role was a mite on the stereotyped Jewish mother side, and Blythe Danner was good as a straight woman for De Niro's maniacal character. The movie was definitely a little long. I still have another thirty minutes left to watch.

It's funny, yesterday afternoon was the first time during this whole holiday week that I felt genuinely relaxed. I had been planning on doing some year-end bookkeeping, but I said screw it, I'll take a walk instead. So I left my book-and-DVD-crammed studio apartment and went down to Rockefeller Center and the Christmas tree, stopped in the Japanese bookstore there, and then I walked further down towards Herald Square and 34th Street. There is an old synagogue on Sixth Avenue and 38th Street--I think it's called the MIllinery Center Synagogue, but I'm not sure--and as I passed by, an Orthodox-looking guy (judging by his hat and clothes) around my age came out and wished me "Shabbat Shalom," meaning "Good Sabbath." It always surprises me when people I don't know say things like this to me because I've never felt I look particularly Jewish or Semitic; people sometimes even ask me if I'm Catholic or Italian or Irish. Athough I've always thought the Irish angle is stretching it, it was my Irish-American girlfriend from Minnesota who said it.

Anyway, I said "Shabbat Shalom" back to the fellow as I continued on my way and it was a nice feeling. Although, as I've written here before, I am not observant of the rituals except for saying the Kaddish (prayer for the dead) for my late father, I consider myself as much of a Jew as anybody else in the tribe. It's funny how saying "Shabbat Shalom" can conjure in a flash all the years of going to temple as a kid, preparing for my bar mitzvah, reading the English-language books about all the great heroes and heroines of the Old Testament, sitting at Seders and reciting the Four Questions of Passover, and going to Hanukkah parties at my great-aunt's house in Chicago where all the relatives gathered to exchange presents and eat a nice meal. Just the sound of the words "Shabbat Shalom" coming out of my mouth serve as a reminder of my long friendship with a guy I've known since junior high school, who has always been very observant and with whom I still talk on the phone, and hang out with when I visit Chicago. Our lives have gone in very different directions, and yet we still have closeness and comradeship. He's always been rather daring and adventurous, and I've always been more cautious and contemplative, and maybe that's a good balance in a friendship.

When I look back on this holiday season, I know that one of the highlights was last Thursday before Christmas when I gave my favorite exotic dancer Lily a little gift and saw her genuinely happy reaction. That was only nine days ago, but it seems much further in the past; I wonder why. Maybe it's because I've come down to earth about my finances in the last few days and I accept that I have to tighten the belt for tax time--which, since I am a freelancer, is a time I really have to shell out dough. I realize that Lily has only known the free-spending holiday edition of Sir Cranky; the January edition will have the desire to be just as attentive, however the smaller post-holiday version of the Cranky Wallet will make him less generous a swain. If Lily is the decent gal I think she is, she will understand my need to modify the flow of Jacksons from my billfold to her garter. I don't expect she will want to spend quite as much time with me, but if whatever shortened amount of time we do spend with each other is fun, that will be good enough for me. I hope.

I think I'll go take a walk now before they start putting up more barricades and regulate the foot traffic around midtown. The new issue of one of my favorite film buff mags, Classic Images, should be on sale today at the newsstand where I usually buy it in Times Square--it always comes out the last Friday in the month--and it's always a treat to see what actors or actresses are profiled in its pages.

I'll try to check in later, but if I don't again until tomorrow--Happy New Year to everyone!

One of our fellow Blogstreamers, SixFootBlonde whom I like to call Miss Six, has a nice post about kissing at her blog Venus Vexed. People had a lot of fun comments and there was rumination on the kissing booth concept and so forth. At one point somebody used the word "fortnight" in a comment too--was it Prankster?--anyway, I haven't heard that word in awhile myself, but once it was a term I heard a lot of in its adjective form: "Fortnightly."

That was the name of the dancing class I took when I was in seventh grade. It was social dancing, and it was given by the park district in our neighborhood. Lots of parents thought their children should learn how to foxtrot and waltz and cha-cha and stuff like that. The class met every two weeks on Saturday afternoons at the park's clubhouse; hence the name "Fortnightly."

I can't remember too much about the class except that the cutest girls in my grade did NOT sign up for it. Instead there were the regular looking girls, nice enough certainly but not the spectacular, haunting beauties that put everyone's imagination in overdrive; I guess the popular and ultra-pretty girls considered themselves too cool for Fortnightly. But I signed up with a couple of my friends, and I think us budding horny bastards enjoyed the company of the young ladies who did attend, although we certainly acted as if the whole thing was a pain in the ass.

Never really did master the foxtrot or waltz or cha-cha, I'm afraid. What I mostly remember is how one girl whom I really wanted to dance with had the coldest hands--man, were they CLAMMY! "Is this what I have to look forward to with women?" I thought. Fortnightly was kind of a wash, actually, because maybe we were still a little too young for the whole cha-cha-cha thing.

On the subject of kissing, all I can say is that it's one of the finest things there is. I love to kiss and one of my persistent erotic desires with any gal I'm attracted to is to go the movies and sit in the back and ignore the flick and just kiss. I have fantasies of doing this with every stripper I really like, too. No matter how old I get, kissing during a movie is appealing and that's probably because it's something I actually did a good bit of when I was a teenager. How exciting it was to savor the semi-darkness around us and the bright screen in front of us and get frisky in the corners of the grand old movie palaces like the Granada on Sheridan Road back in my hometown of Chicago. Those were innocent times; necking and maybe a little over-the-clothes petting was hot enough, and generally just about all my friends and I expected for a good while. Even the simple act of holding hands could have quite an appeal. So I say bravo to kissing booths, and I think local governments should even put "Proposition K" on their ballots for the citizens to approve the establishment of such booths at easy-to-reach locations in all municipalities!

Thanks, Miss Six, and everybody else for your comments and sending me on this whimsical little mind-walk!

The climax of the holiday season is here. New York City is gearing up for the gigantic Times Square countdown to 2006, which means an enormous crush of people in the midtown area in which I live. There will be barricades and traffic restrictions and street closings, as well as checkpoints and all sorts of security rules like no backpacks or bags. Cops poised on rooftops, hovering helicopters, and no alcohol allowed on the streets. Although the police obviously do a great job handling this surging celebratory mass of humanity, and I salute them for it, seeing the officers everywhere in such force on New Year's Eve only reminds me of how dangerous our world has become.

On New Year's Eve I prefer to look forward without having to deal with the tension that comes from being told I can't cross the street here or I can't walk there. I don't enjoy being caught in a flowing tide of people whose direction you have to follow because of the uncrossable barriers. I understand the necessity for security but on a gut level it just depresses me because it reminds me of our vulnerability. Maybe I'm too sensitive about this. Maybe I should just have a drink or two.

The Times Square celebration is something that seems to belong more to travelers from far away, and people from the states bordering New York or the boroughs outside Manhattan. I know Times Square like the back of my hand but it's the one day when I feel it's taken away from me and I must honestly admit I resent it. (Please indulge my childish tantrum.) The essence of Times Square is not its buildings or lights, or so-called family-friendly atmosphere or the last tinges of sleaze on Eighth Avenue, but rather the freedom of movement in a compact yet overstuffed urban space--freedom both of foot and eye and ear. When that freedom is regulated, Times Square feels unnatural. It feels as if it's reduced just to those buildings and lights, almost as if it becomes a waxwork imitation of itself. But what else could it be, when hundreds of thousands of people flood in and we live in an age when we are constantly looking over our shoulders?

To paraphrase the old advertising slogan for Beatlemania, that nostalgia show about the Beatles: "It's not Times Square, but an incredible simulation!"

I haven't gone out much in recent years on New Year's Eve. (Jeez, I must sound like a real curmudgeon here today. I told you I can get cranky.) I get invited to parties but they require me traveling downtown and I just can't seem to muster the energy or enthusiasm. But I did spend a good deal of time by myself this week, as a lot of my friends went out of town for the holidays or were otherwise occupied with family. So I might opt to be social this New Year's Eve and brave the crowds to take the subway down to a party near Union Square.

I have rarely gone to stripclubs on New Year's Eve, either, except well after midnight on my way home from a party. The vibe is always a little weird too, because some of the patrons are usually very drunk, as well as very horny. The sentimental connotations of the night exacerbate everybody's feeling of sexual frustration, I think, particularly when you don't have an immediate prospect of getting laid. I remember the last time I stopped into a club on New Year's Eve. It was about 2:30 in the morning and a couple of customers looked as if they were spoiling for a fight since that seemed like an easier prospect than getting a woman for anything more than a lapdance. I was getting a dance from a girl and this one guy was staring at me as if I'd taken something away from him. I had never seen him before in my life, and he hadn't been sitting with the girl I was with. He just looked belligerent. Maybe he was too bombed and she'd been avoiding him, I don't know. Well, I'm not a fighter, although sometimes I think that if somebody got me angry and fearful enough I might discover hidden wellsprings of rageful strength and I'd turn into Sir Cranky the Berserker--although that could be the wishful (and wistful) fantasy of a bookworm. At any rate, I was just easing my own loneliness by getting a dance and the guy was making me very edgy. I shifted to the other side of the club so he could focus his eyeballs on some other target.

My favorite dancer Lily is on her holiday break until after New Year's Day--in fact, I'm not sure exactly what day she is returning to work. I'll just have to call the club and see when she's on the schedule. However, if she had planned to work on New Year's Eve, I might have gone to the club for the evening. Or maybe not--I prefer to go to the club early on those nights when business is slower, so that she can spend more time with me without feeling she is missing out on other potential customers. I know she's a dancer and I'm her customer and she writhes her body on other guys, but I don't think watching her rub her butt on a bunch of guys more drunk than usual, or going off into the champagne room with them, would make my New Year's Eve especially fun.

I realized just the other day that since I became friends with Lily, I've never actually seen her dance for anybody else. This is because I arrive just when she starts her shift and she sits with me for a couple of hours until I leave, and then she tends to her other clientele. I don't think I've ever been in this situation with a favorite dancer before--I've always seen them doing their dances for other guys--but that's just how it's evolved with Lily. I'm sure at some point some other guy will get her first, and I'll just hang out and tip and talk to some of the other gals for awhile.

So, New Year's Eve is just another of the surreal aspects of living in the Big Apple. On New Years' Eve 1999, turning over to 2000 (the dreaded Y2K), the atmosphere was so paranoid in the city about all the computer meltdowns that were supposed to happen that I just stocked up on bottles of water and elected to stay home and watch a video of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the old sci-fi classic from the late 1950s. Given the way the world treats the average person these days, turning him more and more into a digital bleep in computer files, I hoped the title of that movie wasn't a metaphor for mankind's future state as we moved into the new millennium.

By the way, it took me three months to get through all those bottles of water!

There's a funny and informative short article in the New York Daily News today, written by Helen Kennedy, about the variant spellings of Hanukkah. It made me realize that I indeed settled on "Hanukkah" this year after using "Chanukah" as well for many years. I don't know why I made this choice for 2005, but for some reason I saw myself sticking to it rigorously. As far as I remember in the middle of the holiday mind-fogging, every time I referred to the Jewish Festival of Lights, I spelled it "Hanukkah."

Kennedy's article says that the original Hebrew word from which Hanukkah is transliterated into English lacks the gutteral "Chhh-" sound of other Hebrew words. I never knew this. I always thought it was properly pronounced "Chhh-anukahh," with the initial sound coming from the back of the throat. But it turns out it should have been pronounced with a plain H-sound all along!

I believe I saw "Hanukkah" used more often everywhere this year. Even the spellchecker on Blogstream prefers it. I also think there was a greater feeling, in America anyway, to make this Jewish holiday more accessible as an event to non-Jews, possibly because it coincidentally started on Christmas for the first time in 47 years. People not familiar with Hebrew or Yiddish have a harder time with that "Chhh-" sound, and putting the plain "H" in front of the word makes it easy for any speaker of English to pronounce.

And then there's the matter of--one K or two K's?

That's an easy one as far as Sir Cranky is concerned. I like the more exotic look of two KKs, simple as that. But then an expert is quoted in the article saying one K may become the more common usage!

I'm gonna stick with HanuKKah.

Another nice thing about the article was its list of the many variant spellings of the word. One is "Khanike," which sounds like the way my paternal Romanian grandmother used to pronounce it. Her Kh had the gutteral Chhh- sound, not the Asian (or Star Trekkian) "Khan." Kennedy's article made me remember how my grandmother's version of the word had the more diminutive sounding "ike" sound at the end, as in "Chhhan-i-keh." It almost brought Grandma's voice back to life for me.

Happy Hanukkah however you spell it!

An editorial cartoon that ran in the New York Post on 12/26/05 showed a bleary-eyed fella, cigarette dangling from his lip, baseball cap skewed backwards on his head, as he hunched over his laptop and typed. Nearby was a can of an unidentified libation, maybe beer, maybe soda, but probably not an energy drink judging by the dude's haggard expression--although, you never know. The cartoon's caption: "I blog, therefore I am."

The cartoon's message, by Bob Gorrell, seemed to be: "Here is a specimen of the Great Unwashed, sending his untidy thoughts out into the world, making a bigger and even more confusing stew for everyone to digest than if the cooks were just newspapers and tv and radio."

I've only been a blogger for a little over three months, but I don't see that the writing I do here is all that much different, except for its public aspect, than the diaries and notebooks I've kept since I was nineteen years old. I wrote in those journals for the purpose of clarifying my thoughts to myself, and it was never a case of "I write a diary, therefore I am." I never wrote those things with the aim of their being read by anyone else. Blogging gave me an opportunity to practice in public the skills I had developed in private, and the positive response I've gotten shows that some of my musings have meaning to others. That gives me not only a sense of accomplishment, but of community.

I think Mr. Gorrell might consider blogging himself, if he hasn't, to see that it can be more than just an assertion of personal identity in a world that sees most people only as numbers or files in a vast bureaucracy. There seems to be a curious attitude afoot in our land: if you don't rate a mention on the gossip pages, are you a real person? Well, uh, yes. And blogging is just another proof of personhood, one proof among many. Blogging can be good and bad, rapier-sharp and incoherent, useful and useless...it's a great hodge-podge that's one more example of the power and possibilities of democracy.

Democracy means: if you don't like one blog, there's always another. And if you don't like blogs, you can always read a newspaper. And if you don't like newspapers, you can always watch tv. And if you don't like tv, you can listen to radio. If you don't like radio, you can take a walk and talk to people and make up your mind about whatever it is you feel you must make up your mind about. Nobody telling you what to do or think or say: that's the great beauty of democracy.

That's what our soldiers are fighting for in Iraq: a budding democracy there, and our venerable one here.

No, Mr. Gorrell, your cartoon left too much out. The guy is bleary-eyed because, like Paul Revere, he was up late into the night spreading the word in a land that lets you spread the word. He needs that cigarette because he's a little neglectful of his personal health--he knows he oughta quit, but he's kinda busy right now pursuing the cause of truth as he sees it. He finished that can of energy drink long ago--yes, it was energy drink--but he's still so absorbed in his writing that he hasn't gone to the fridge for another. His baseball cap is backwards on his head because damn that's the way he likes to wear it and nobody has the right to tell him otherwise.

Yeah, he's a blogger.

God bless him!