New York Medium Tour
May 29, 2009
I am running a circuit meeting editors and writers at the big magazines and media outlets here in thecity before I return to DC tomorrow.
So far:
Joseph Button– First Things
Kevin Williamson- National Review
Hendrik Hertzberg- The New Yorker
On the Docket:
Clayton Sizemore- CNN
MTV
The New York Times
Lights Lights Blinding
May 22, 2009
My friend Kate soaks in the view from the Vogue– just blocks from our(temporary) home in the shadow of the Empire State Building.
Searching for Bobby Fischer
May 19, 2009
I passed a leisurely Sunday afternoon roving the chess shops of Washington square and observing brilliant homeless me plying a wholly unprofitable trade.
Mendicant Cuisine
May 17, 2009
“There isn’t usually much funny about the homeless,” says Michael Race, a bicycle messenger smoking cigarettes in a park on Broadway. “But I’ll tell you a funny story about a homeless guy.”
“Wednesday there was this homeless guy in bad, bad shape down in one of those allies,” says Race indicating a labyrinth of narrow streets running off Times Square. “There was a guy down there just eating garbage out of a garbage can—he was just pulling filthy stuff out.”
“I could see him from the deli window where I am eating lunch, so I decide to do my good deed and bring the fellow a sandwich,” says Race.
“I get over there and interrupt the guy and he says, ‘well what kind of sandwich is it?’ in a haughty way as if I had interrupted tea with the Queen,” says Race who starts shaking with laughter in his recounting of the story.
“So I just started laughing then too and I said ‘why would it matter?’” says Race. “You are eating banana peels and eggshells right now, I mean, do you only eat certain kinds of sandwiches?”
Race is losing it now. Tears are dripping out of the corners of his eyes.
From that particular deli, the homeless guy, it turned out, only likes only the turkey and Swiss, says Race. He’s says he tried every kind of sandwich the deli makes and turkey and Swiss is just his flavor.
“Turns out he didn’t take it,” says Race. “It was a freshly made bologna and cheese sandwich and he didn’t want it.”
“So he kept eating garbage, “says Race. “ And even though he was right that the bologna in cheese is not the best sandwich the deli makes, I ended up having that sandwich for dinner.”
Aint No Love in the Heart of the City
May 16, 2009
A young African American man on the corner of Broadway and 34th dips and sways to the hot winds of his own sermon late Friday night. The fire burning in his eyes dances like a match sticks flare just before it extinguishes. So I go to ask him about the ‘hope that is within in him.’
“Yes I have hope,” says the man who calls himself Priest Zabach. “America is going to burn up. America is going to go straight to hell. We are going to enslave the white man and the other nations for a thousand years.”
Zabach is talking about me and is wearing a long black robe and a belt coated with gold tin foil. A Star of David swings defiantly across the front of his cloak. He says he is talking to me because he thinks my name sounds Jewish and my expired Capitol Hill press pass looks legitimate to him. Zabach is a member of the radical religion Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Zabach has that passion and hope in his beliefs that you and I always wanted so badly to have for our own.
Hope like that makes winning a presidential election look like a game of pick-up sticks. With hope like that I would move mountains and bring back the long doubted days of miracles.
“We have hope that the so called ‘blacks,’ the Native Americans and the Hispanics are going to wake up, come back to God realize who they are as God chosen people,” says Zabach.
I know plenty of people who would shout amen to that. A dozen or so African Americans gathered around Zabach and his brothers do shout amen.
“There going to get the hell away from American and these other nations,” shouts Zabach.
But for some reason no one shouts amen to that hopeful part of the sermon.
White House Correspondence Dinner
May 11, 2009
Chris Matthews
