Jake Meets The Bloomberg

Last month I met mayor Bloomberg at a reception for New York Cares, a volunteer organization through which I run the St. Luke's Saturday School in Harlem.

Bloomberg isn't the most sociable guy in the world; seemed quite uncomfortable that I even said “Hi, Mr. Mayor” before we turned to face the camera. Explains the completely tense expressions on our faces. I never want a life in politics.

Whassup me maties. The sun is out and it's Springtime for Jake. When you're in your groove the world comes to you. This is the approach we're taking with the coaching. Had my session Sunday, and goddamn on the subway ride back home there was suddenly this cute girl in a tank top striking up a conversation with me. Out of the blue - I was reading a book and probably talking to myself as usual. She sort of smiled and giggled at me on the platform, we entered the train, and she started telling me about how much she'd walked that day. I thought am I on Mars or is this girl flirting. This has got to be a tourist. But no, she lives on the upper west - she's a cute 20-something female in New York who has lived in New York for a few years and is actually making the first move on public transportation. Unprecedented! Okay, unprecedented for me. Not so unprecedented for me, I felt weird asking for her number - felt completely out of the blue and a little pathetic for some reason, as if this was the only time a young woman had ever started flirting with me on the subway of her own volition. As IF! I froze up and let it go, said take care and got off at my stop. Not the end of the world of course, but jesus I could have said hey, this is my stop, you want to keep talking. She would have either said, sure and gotten off the train with me for an afternoon frozen margarita or most likely given me her number or email address so we could talk again some other time. Ego is the downfall of man! Still, highly encouraging. Then I had improv last night, and I rocked the fuckin hee-ouse. Everybody did, but I can't speak for them - I had a ball. I started a scene with this girl Kelly, great human being, great at improv, lots of fun, very playful. We started by just looking at each other, and imitating each other's mannerisms, starting out sort of nervous and as if we were trying not to laugh about a secret, but it started getting bigger and bigger until we were breathing and snorting and flailing around, then choking ourselves like we were in an insane asylum, then falling to floor and having epileptic seizures together, all in sync, and then I leapt to my haunches, and she sat up alert. We locked eyes and played this really tense and exciting cat and mouse thing, where I'd move as if to pounce, and she'd move as if to run but not quite, and she'd do the same back, and we'd try to psych each other out about standing up, and did silly things like blowing air at each other and making noises. We kept doing that, and it was just a fuckin ball; we didn't really care if it was funny, it was just fun connecting with someone like that and letting it jiggle all over the place. We didn't say anything the whole scene. When the teacher stopped it she said the entire class was beaming the whole time, that they couldn't help it. It was fun - we didn't say anything because we were having a lot of fun not saying anything and I didn't have any particular ideas popping into my head and neither did she. Then I did a scene with Patrick, where I started out eyeing him from across the room, and he imitated that, and I slowly closed in, and we were looking each other up and down, and we did this for a minute or so, registering and locking in with each other, and looking at each other like we could see this guy was the goods, and then he said, "You are a hell of a salesman." And I said, "And you... are a hell of a customer." It became this scene about selling him a car. I said "I was with that lady over there, but I saw you walk in said forget her, this is it." But it really started taking off when he asked "Are these halogen?", pointing down. I looked down at them, not knowing what the hell he was talking about for a minute, realized after a couple moments that he meant the headlights, and then turned to him and said, as if we were sharing a private joke, "You know, I have no fucking idea." A salesman who has no fucking idea about the car he's selling. Then I said, "This car isn't about halogen man. This car isn't about headlights! It isn't about tires. Hubcaps. Drain pipes." He came back with "Steering wheels!", I popped back "Lava!", he said "the sky!", I said "clouds!" Balloons, clowns, linguini, this isn't about girls in fucking bikinis man! It got bigger and bigger with all the things it wasn't, and we were circling like cats, it was great. It was a scene about two guys that were fated to meet each other and were making their first huge connection. The teacher stopped us because we were building it to this huge level and it was time for somebody to let it loose but we didn't know what to do with it. We talked about what the scene was really about, that the car was our relationship, it was about two guys meeting and becoming immediate best friends. And that we shouldn't avoid the meat of it - just hit it at some point. WHAT IS IT ABOUT! It's about you and me. It was a blast. I felt in control of myself and in control of the stage, sharing it with the other person. I felt connected to my scene partner, and as if the scene was our chance to have fun with each other regardless of what the audience thought of it. I'm going to this improv show on Thursday called The Mixer, where it's a free-for-all, anyone at any level can jump in there. I'm going because 1) improv is clearly a blast when you let go and stop being funny, so it'll be fun, and 2) because it's a chance to get over my stage fright for our class' showcase in a few weeks. It'll be much easier to get up there for the first time when everyone in the audience is an improv person and much more worried about themselves than anything I might be doing, instead of at the showcase, where the audience isn't worried about much except exactly what I'm doing and expects to be entertained. I like what's going on. I'm having fun.

Floss for the Heart, by Jill Aitoro -- Endeavors, Winter 2000

Public service announcement. Flossing very likely prevents heart disease:

After analyzing the population’s general health, Carolina researchers found that people with severe gum disease were more likely to develop heart disease than those without gum problems. Other studies showed that pregnant women with severe gum disease were seven times more likely to deliver premature babies. ... Oral health may be as important in preventing heart attack and premature births as smoking and alcohol.

I've been told, by my oral hygienist and dentist, that this is because the bacteria that cause heart disease enter through the gums (I don't know if the plaque buildup that causes some heart attacks is the same as the plaque that develops on the gums, but I'll bet they're related). So you can probably improve your health in general by flossing. This makes sense - our gums are one of the few places on our body where the skin is not continuous, where there's a seam that lets bacteria enter. The body has special defense systems set up at these seams, like your gums' ability to prevent plaque if flossed daily. Most people are amazed to hear this:

"One of the talks I give is called, 'Investigating the Links Between Periodontal Infection and Vascular Disease: Are We Nuts?'" says Desvarieux, from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "It's not a connection that people naturally think of."

That's an unfortunate name for a school of public health. One person I told about the power of flossing said it sounds like another myth made up to scare us. I agree that there's a lot of that out there, but I'm not too worried about the impact of a periodontal-industrial complex. I don't think businesses are all that interested in improving anyone's health. My oral hygienist told me that plaque buildup is a 24-hour cycle, and forms at the gums, so flossing every 24 hours will prevent it. Your gums need stimulation; it's like exercise for them. You don't even need to floss much - I just touch the gums quickly with the floss between each tooth, and my gums are in great shape. If your gums hurt or bleed when the hygienist cleans them, it means your gums need your help. For god's sake floss!

Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming (link to The Independent)

I have no idea how to stop this problem given how the world really works, but it's a biggie. Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming - Independent Online Edition > Climate Change

Dude, I pee a lot. I think I've literally peed about 8 times in the last 5 hours. I'll post photos. So I met with my new life coach Dani Rukin this weekend. She's kickass, full of energy and she knows bullshit a mile away. We had a great time talking in Prospect Park for a few hours. She had me close my eyes and do a visualization exercise sitting up against a tree. She talked me through becoming very relaxed first, which was damn cool in itself - imagining that I was a still lake, and that she was dropping pebbles one by one into the center of the lake, the waves that flowed out were waves of relaxation. It was quite effective; I felt still. I never feel still. Then she had me imagine traveling up a beam of light out of the Earth's orbit, and back down another beam of light that took me to my future self 20 years from now. I landed on a sort of patio on a cliff overlooking the ocean, like a villa, except the house was clay or stone, with no window panes or door - made me think of Mexico - and my future self was standing in the doorway waiting for me. He took me inside and we sat at a rugged wood table, which at some point turned into a couch. He was wearing a white, loose linen shirt, and his eyes were sort of knowing, amused, but kind. He was completely relaxed but there was a lot of energy behind his eyes. He had a playful, vulnerable way about him, but he was very, very grounded. He took his time. Focused and gentle. Dani had me ask him what he remembered from the last 20 years, what advice he had. He said man, no one gives a shit what you do. They're all too worried about themselves, and they're all full of shit. So do what you want, have fun, and go for it. I liked him. I like that that's where I'm going. When I opened my eyes, for a little while I was there - I was aware of the leaves on trees, and the ground beneath me, and the tree behind me, and the movements of people nearby in a way I hadn't been before. Dani saw it too; it was good. We're going to get me there. I noticed a huge difference in my improv class the next night. I'd also seen a show called TJ and Dave on Saturday night, which was improv in a way I'd never seen it. It wasn't the SNL-type of wacky thing you usually see when you go to an improv show. They weren't forcing funny down our throats. It was more like a play that just didn't have a script - it evolved organically, and was both heartbreaking and hilarious. These guys are masters. They started out practically babbling to each other, and within a couple minutes two well-defined, unique characters started forming. They didn't rush or make any leaps. They stayed rooted in the present moment, remembering everything that had occurred on the stage up till then so they could usei t later (to hilarious effect usually), and the scene evolved naturally. They went slowly, experiencing every moment they created fully (and letting our imaginations experience them fully), and then reacting to that experience naturally, not contriving anything out of step for shock value. It was so natural that it looked unbelievably easy. Which is the trick - it's very, very hard to stay connected to the present like that and be so connected to the other person onstage, not to mention and all the imaginary people you've created onstage; they would turn and talk to characters one or the other had created and left somewhere on the stage but weren't at that moment playing, and dealt with them so specifically that you could imagine the imaginary characters' reactions. Which was all incredibly funny. They built up this stageful of information until there were two main characters that formed the emotional core of the scene, with two other characters that were almost main characters themselves but not quite, and two brief cameo characters, more caricatured, that furthered the plot a bit. It was magic. So when I went to improv Monday night, I stopped trying to be funny. I only worked on remaining relaxed and connected to my scene partner, and on not rushing. The result was great - it was somehow funny on its own, and I actually enjoyed it this time. It wasn't uncomfortable the way it had been up till then - I'd been completely up my ass about everyone watching. But when I looked around the class, I saw what my future self was talking about - no one did give a shit what I did up there. They were all worried about themselves. And everyone was a little full of crap, some more than others - this layer of ha-ha they were trying to plop onto the scene. So I stopped worrying about them and had fun imagining that what was going on in the scene was really going on, dealt with the other person onstage instead of thinking about the audience or the effect, took my time with it, and observed the results. And funny things occurred on their own, things I didn't even realize were funny. I was still trying to think of interesting things, and still had a certain level of bullshit going that froze me up, but much less than before. I wasn't afraid of the other actor, or the other students in the class, or the teacher. One step forward.