The last two weekends at the barn have been blissfully quiet. (See previous blog post, An Old’ Fuckin’ Wives’ Tale) When I've arrived, Norah and her sister Madge have remained in the tack room, their sanctum sanctorum. The tack room has a fridge, a dusty old sofa, and a TV with… Read full post »

 I’m tired of feeling guilty about being an impatient New Yorker. In our Deepak-Chopra, slow-food-movement, yogafied world, rushing has gotten a bad rap.

So, enough about the Power of Now. How about the Power of Get the Hell Out of the Way?

 Here are the… Read full post »

“I watched the debate last night, you know, the one with that awful fellow, Rick Sanatorium,” said my 91-year-old neighbor, Joan.

“Santorum,” I corrected.

“Anyway, I watched that Sanatorium for an hour and a half. It made me sick to my stomach. I also heard he‘s… Read full post »

Italians are brilliant.

 I’m not talking about daVinci and Michelangelo, here. I’m talking about modern-day Italians.

 Modern-day Italians in government.

 Modern-day Italians in the branch of the government devoted to tax collection.

 Now, I am aware the above sta… Read full post »

‘Tis the season for little envelopes stuffed with cash. The minute December hits, we who live in a city with lots of service providers start to fret about the holiday tips we must distribute. You’d think this question would get settled once and stick. But every year most Upper East Siders… Read full post »

In New York City this year, real estate taxes are up 15% and fuel costs are up 50%. Which means budgeting time at the co-op board is grim. In our building, half a dozen middle aged co-op board members gather around a coffee table to pour over spreadsheets and debate whether… Read full post »

I bit my cuticles the entire drive up to the barn. I was late. Every minute that ticked by, I knew Hershey was painfully alone in his stall. In the pantheon of things horses hate, being left alone is at the tippy-top of the list.

 Normally, there are four… Read full post »

A Horrible Utterance Heard Recently on the Upper East Side:

“I absolutely must have the floor cleaner by tomorrow. That’s when my cleaning lady comes. Yes, I’ll pay the ten-dollar delivery charge.”

A Horrible-Utterance Analysis, in Ascending Order of Horror:

1. The utterance
… Read full post »

Fact 1: Many New York City buildings’ heat and air conditioning run off the same system.

In the summer, cool water goes through some pipes and compressors to facilitate air conditioning. Then, in the winter, hot water goes through the same pipes (not compressors) to facilitate heat.

Fact… Read full post »

In the early days, Steve Jobs came to a company Halloween party dressed as Jesus (NYT, link below). Now, after his death, the media and fans are treating him like a dead messiah.

It is surely tragic when an extraordinarily talented man dies so young. And all Steve Jobs’ accomplishments… Read full post »

  Because I’ve been writing this blog about the Upper East Side, people have been asking me the question:

 Is there nightlife on the Upper East Side?

 Immediately I began to wonder if people are asking me this question because secretly they suspect there is… Read full post »

Recently, a friend of mine, Marcia, came over for dinner. She and her husband walked across the park from where they live in the West Seventies.

Upon arriving, Marcia remarked, “It’s amazing when you come over here. The Eastside really is its own fashion universe!”

I asked her wha… Read full post »

Most Saturdays and Sundays, I leave the Upper East Side and travel about 20 miles north to Greenwich, CT to ride my horse, Hershey. Though many are unaware, a little known and uninterrupted network of historic horse trails stretches all the way from Bronxville up to Brewster. Traipsing these bridle p… Read full post »

Is it just me, or has the UES been unusually dead this summer? We’re all used the place being a graveyard until Labor Day, but in 2011 it’s like we’ve surpassed tomb-dom and hit something deader. Like the innards of a full-on, sealed-up, pre-Schliemann crypt.

It’s that same f… Read full post »

Many a Madison Avenue ambler has now had the experience: You pass Greenberg bakery, and are still considering whether to double back for a black-and-white cookie, when your neck snaps like whiplash. Was that a wild boar? On top of a deer? Wearing a broach?

Yes, it was all that.… Read full post »

I moved to the Upper East Side during my 2003 identity crisis. Since Beverley Hills 90210 formalized the idea that you are not only what you eat, you are what you zip, I thought returning to the site of my roots would be just the ticket to answer the question that… Read full post »

Say you’re out of work, as four million Americans now are, and you’re paying a $230,000 mortgage on a house that’s now worth $90,000. Is walking away from your mortgage justified, or even moral?  

In a movement reminiscent of Egyptian protestors, more and more Americans ar… Read full post »

I could not have felt more out of place at DrupalCon last April. As I walked around in San Francisco’s Moscone center in a suit, a sea of Drupalers in jeans and all manner of droplet t-shirts, bandanas, and even body art recoiled from me. I was not one of them.… Read full post »

In July, I offered a salary of $120,000 to a young guy (he looked about 12) with only a high-school diploma.

He turned me down for a higher offer.

In August, trying to win another candidate, I upped the number to $140,000. This guy looked older. After all he… Read full post »

It’s sleek. It’s fast. It’s powerful, yet whisper quiet. All the controls are at your fingertips.  

Like the engineers designed it just for you. 

No, you’re not behind the wheel; you’re in front of your keyboard. But your manners are no better than those o… Read full post »

When I weigh the issue of meat-eating, one inescapable image comes to mind: A priest at my First Holy Communion holding the host over his head like a moon saying, “Behold the body of Christ,” and me trying desperately to wrap my seven-year-old head around the transubstantiation of the Euc… Read full post »

We should have been on the broad and familiar Autostrada, but instead we were deep in the narrow back roads. The Italian countryside slid by, dark as an oil slick, with only the white flank of a cow surfacing occasionally by the window. At barely six that January morning, the GPS… Read full post »

Not just hate: despise.

Loathe.

Actually, I can remember an even stronger word from SAT vocab books. Here it is: execrate – a word for what you feel when someone you trusted, even loved, has betrayed you profoundly.

Until now, hating Apple was my deep, dark secret. The rest… Read full post »