about a year and a half ago, i was getting coffee at a place near work, and i got a mercury dime in my change. i almost dropped it in the tips, but it looked more black and silver than it should have, so i noticed it. i've kept it in my desk ever since then, and today, for the first time, i took it out and played with it. it's from 1928.


a mercury dime

it reminds me of a time when i was working at a bar job, and i went to give someone his change one day, and one of the pennies didn't feel right, so i set it aside. (yes, a bar that fooled with pennies. not a good sign.) when i finally got a chance to look at it, it didn't look like anything i recognized, and later i ended up taking it to a bookstore and searching through the big, fat coin collector books until i discovered it was a two-cent piece from the 1860's. i still have it somewhere, but i forget where.

that made me wonder about it. had it really been masquerading as a penny for almost a hundred and fifty years? how did it end up in my cash register, involved in a transaction for a white zin? what unlikely fate.

there isn't much that gets me as down as cold weather. don't get me wrong--i do love it when things are in harmony and are as they should be, and sometimes i walk outside in the snow and think about how great winter can be. but today is warm--warm enough to get by on a white tee-shirt and a jacket--and it is so great.

does this mean winter is broken? and if winter is broken, do i care? i'm happy winter is broken. sorry, winter. long live the jacket weather. open the windows, clean the apartment.

now i'm going back and forth to the laundry, washing sheets. it reminds me i'm a new yorker. no one in the laundry uses english as a first language. when the chinese guy comes around with his handful of dvd's, i know what he wants, and i say no thank you before he speaks. he smiles at me, even though i turned him down. it's so cozy. and it's so warm outside.

when you see young professional people in the city, do you feel the prejudgement that they "must not have started their life yet"? it's an involuntary feeling, because, sad to report, i always think that. but that is antithetical to every single value and opinion i have. every single one.

it's the sure sign of something pulled out of the collective brain of the world--something you feel without even thinking you feel it, or wanting to. next time i see the poor doctor man get off the 125th street subway stop, i should stop him and say i'm sorry for wondering why he hasn't moved to westchester with his beautiful blonde wife.

occasionally osmium (the website; or myself) seems to be stuck in a rut. this will be the third entry in a row dealing with bars, bar life, alcohol, alcoholism, et cetera. but sometimes this happens. generally i do not like newsy things, but i wrote about broyard dying, and that kept the beer thing going, which began with how to pour beer. and now i am writing about what to write about, which is very sloppy.

the paragraph just preceding is referred to, in writing, as "throat clearing." and the constant analysis of a medium, in that very medium, is referred to as "deconstruction." i believe deconstruction is sloppy. which brings us full circle back to sloppiness.


in cleveland, the euclid tavern

i mean, why even try to pull things back into line and write about the euclid tavern? a somewhat nighttime, somewhat melancholy few paragraphs referring to lost, confused feelings of youth--this would replicate many osmiums past. add in a mention of being in one's early thirties, and a rather trite realization that past a certain age one ceases to "grow up," and one feels at 31 like a slightly fuller 23-year-old. mention that people in their 80's wonder how they got so old.

when i was a teenager i didn't really ever drink beer. then along the way, somehow, i grew into the charming young man with the curly hair i am today. and this man has been known to tip a glass.

i learned to drink, i suppose, at the euclid tavern, in cleveland, ohio. i think it's now been closed for many years, perhaps even five, and whenever i'm in cleveland i see it--there it sits, as if nothing is wrong. trying to remember the interior takes the same kind of effort as to remember the landscape you just saw in a nice dream. you can see the details, but they go away if you try to look right at them.

also in the euclid tavern--i remember that i learned to chat up a girl i didn't know. and, equally a growing experience, i learned that if she seems self-important and ridiculous, i can also kind of make fun of her, to her, if i'm subtle about it. this takes confidence. but, but wait: more pure in karmic value, there i also learned how to dance by myself without feeling self-conscious. these are important things.

and while we're on what i learned there--i learned to like jam band music there, which is a very important first step toward learning not to like jam band music--a sure path to adulthood.

i don't remember what the point was. i had it, then i lost it. oh well. half these paragraphs would normally go. but i'm leaving in the throat-clearing, and the messy sloppiness. and the ending.

the owner of the Saturn Bar has passed away. i received the following from roy; it is from the times-picayune:

O'Neil Broyard, owner of Saturn Bar, dies
According to a report from the Southern Foodways Alliance, O'Neil Broyard, the wonderfully eccentric owner of New Orleans' well-known Saturn Bar, passed away on Thursday, December 22nd.

The following posted on the SFA website on Friday, December 23:

"The SFA heard from O'Neil's nephew, Eric Broyard, who said that O'Neil's heart just gave out. Last we knew anything about O'Neil, he made it through Hurricane Katrina and was in the process of cleaning up his beloved Saturn. He will be missed, and our condolences go out to all of his friends and family--at home and at the bar. O'Neil's family is in the process of organizing a gathering to be held in his honor at the Saturn Bar sometime in the New Year. We'll be sure to post more details as they are available."

To read the SFA interview with Broyard, which is part of the Bartenders of New Orleans oral history project, click here.

the saturn bar was a favorite when i lived in new orleans. if you scroll down to the bottom of osmium you will see the same neon light fixture as shown in the photo in the interview.

the man and the bar were one. good-bye, saturn bar.

i came home tonight and opened a beer and poured it into a glass. while i poured it, i left the glass flat on the counter, and the glass filled up from bottom to top with foam. i poured that exactly right i thought to myself, kind of happily, while i watched the foam rise up to the rim. but you see, i poured that exactly right, in the proper fashion, egg-zact-ly right, and i got rewarded with a bunch of foam. which i drank.


celebrator chimay etc

you're supposed to pour beer straight in the glass without tilting it. you're "supposed" to. i was someplace recently where someone poured a beer that way (i believe out of laziness), and someone else gave an extemporaneous lecture to the entire table about how "that's how you're supposed to pour a beer, very good." that's right, you poured that exactly right. i don't remember where i was. who was it? if it was someone who reads this bullshit, i apologize. i still love you. however, i have to admit, it kind of makes my teeth hurt when people share little facts like that. how you're supposed to do things. "don't you know you're supposed to swirl that," or something like that. who cares. i would like to do things the correct way, yes, but i don't think one should talk down to one's fellow man. it's just not proper. don't you know you're not supposed to do that? (ha.)

but hey, i might sometimes be guilty of this. of course. whatever. i am large, i contain multitudes.

it was raining out, and i found myself in a cramped used bookstore not wanting to go back out. it was only a matter of time, because eventually i would have to go. the rain was bigger around the street lights out on broadway, and it felt really peaceful, when combined with the musty smell of the books.

i was the only other person there, and the woman who ran the bookstore came up and we watched out the door together. we talked, but both watching outside. people were going here and there out on the sidewalk. i always prefer it to be warmer and raining, i said, and i found out she would rather it had been colder and snowing.

there are few noises in the world more comforting than the mysterious acoustics of your radiator pipes. outside it's cold, and the windows are cold to the touch, but there's this bunch of strange pipes that bang and hiss, and it's warm.


clang hiss

i have no idea why the noises of the steam pipes don't bother me, because they're loud, but instead i really like them.