The Daly Blog

Today, I learned that I am a suspect in the ongoing War on Terror.

Since 9/11, I had heard about the curtailing of certain rights and privileges in the name of "homeland security." Meanwhile, I have also heard that we're spreading freedom all over the globe. "Freedom" has now apparently taken on a new definition in these unstable times. To prove my point, I will now use it in a sentence: "You could smell the freedom from a mile away."

But I digress. Since the terrorist attacks on our nation, I have for the most part been shielded from the adverse effects of "homeland security." Yes, I have been patted down before entering Shea Stadium to see the Mets play, and missed an entire inning of opening day this year lest someone attempt to smuggle in a landmine that they presumably would manage to plant under home plate. But I have not flown on an airplane, even domestically, because to do so would mean risking the loss of my house keys, which would of course be confiscated because they could be used to poke a snarky flight attendant's eyes out.

Hence, little did I know that I would find myself knee-deep in the War on Terror when I went to the Motor Vehicle Commission this afternoon to renew my driver's license.

It seems some of the guys who flew those commercial airplanes into our buildings had lived in New Jersey, and while they were here, they had managed to obtain phony driver's licenses under our old DMV rules. As such, our state has since instituted a six-point system by which we must now establish our true identities before we can get our licenses renewed.

Being that this was my first time renewing my license under the new system, I arrived unprepared. Silly me: I thought my current New Jersey photo driver's license would suffice as proper ID. But no. There is, after all, an infinitesimal chance that my exact double is in New Jersey, had managed to get a hold of my current driver's license and had memorized both my home address and Social Security number.

Of course, no one raises this possibility until you have already spent a fair amount of time filling out forms and standing in line.

The man at the counter said I would need either my birth certificate or passport, a copy of a current utility bill, urine and blood samples, liver and onion samples, a retinal scan, four fried chickens, a cup of hot fat, the head of Alfredo Garcia, a Davy Jones lunchbox, Davey Jones' locker, and the home version of "Wheel of Fortune" to meet the identification requirements.

So I made the 10-minute drive back to my house, somehow secured the necessary items, drove the 10 minutes back to the MVC, got back on line, and finally made my way up to the front, only to hear the woman behind the counter sigh: "I need another point."

"But the man said..."

"Ay, I'm going to go home right now."

"...this is what I needed. It's all here."

"I need your Social Security card."

I no longer carry that card around. It's a ragged, crumpled, decades-old piece of flimsy cardboard that has been crammed inside far too many wallets and gone through at least two laundry cycles. "Can I give you something else?"

"How 'bout an ATM card?"

That I had. And so, having produced enough documents to fill a three-drawer file cabinet, I was issued a number and pointed to one of the many chairs I would be forced to occupy over the next few hours.

This of course gave me a chance to stew. You know, I was born here, raised here and schooled here. I have spent all but 10 days of my life in this country. As a white, adult American male, I'd long since grown accustomed to my place among the least-oppressed segment of the world's population. Yet here I was, being forced to prove -- at three different checkpoints, as it turned out -- that I met the identification requirements to renew a driver's license I'd earned in the friggin' 1980s, for crissakes.

This was a pile of freedom so high I would need a shovel to dig my way out.

We won't go on to discuss the ridiculous game of musical chairs my fellow drivers and I subsequently had to endure, or the fact that the statewide MVC computer system crashed when I was three seats away from getting my new license. Such is the stuff of which "a day at the motor vehicle agency" cliches were born ages ago.

We expect inefficiency, incompetence and downright rudeness at the DMV, or the MVC, or whatever the bureaucratic bunglers decide to call it next. What we don't expect, having been born in the U.S.A. and played by the rules all of our lives, is to have to pass a series of tests in order to prove it. We don't expect to be treated as suspects -- nor do we deserve it.

And so, to the State of New Jersey and its Motor Vehicle Commission, I say: Thanks for the Freedom Sandwich. Please note that I did not eat it with a smile.

Ode to the Nice Guys
This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl's every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they're at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don't end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn't worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you'd ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn't have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing "serious" between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: "oh, but we're just friends!" And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you're nice like that.

The nice guys don't often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don't seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can't. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as "oh, he's too nice to date" or "he would be a good boyfriend but he's not for me" or "he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn't possibly ask him out!" or the most frustrating of all: "no, it would ruin our friendship." Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can't figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I'm going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn't last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you're sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003

Sep 16, 2:09 AM (ET)

CHRIS T. NGUYEN

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band "The Ramones" that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55.

Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band's longtime artistic director Arturo Vega.

"He was the guy with a strategy. He was the guy who not only looked after the band's interest but he also was their defender," Vega said in a telephone interview from New York.

Ramone, whose birth name is John Cummings, had been hospitalized in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Johnny Ramone was one of the original members of the struggling Ramones, whose hit songs "I Wanna Be Sedated" and "Blitzkrieg Bop," among others, earned them an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Johnny Ramone co-founded "The Ramones" in 1974 in New York along with singer Joey Ramone, bassist DeeDee Ramone and drummer Tommy Ramone, who is the only surviving member of the original band. All four band members had different last names, but took the common name Ramone.

Joey Ramone, whose real name is Jeff Hyman, died in 2001 of lymphatic cancer. Dee Dee Ramone, whose real name is Douglas Colvin, died from a drug overdose in 2002.

Clad in leather jackets and long black mops of hair, the group started out in legendary New York clubs like CBGB and Max's Kansas City, where they blasted their rapid-fire songs.

Since its debut album in 1976, the band struggled for commercial success, but they left a formidable imprint on the rock genre. Though they never had a Top 40 song, the Ramones influenced scores of followers, including bands such as Green Day and Nirvana.

Even Bruce Springsteen was moved. After seeing the Ramones in Asbury Park, N.J., Springsteen wrote "Hungry Heart" for the band. His manager, however, swayed him to keep the song for himself and it became a hit single.

The band had encounters with other big names, including producer Phil Spector, who collaborated with the band in 1980. During the session, the late bassist Dee Dee Ramone said Spector pulled a gun on the band.

"The Ramones had it rough," said Vega, who's worked with the band for 30 years. "The band almost had to be protected from people who were taking advantage of them. There was never any money made."

Johnny Ramone changed that by demanding more money for performances, but still kept a close watch on the band's budget; Vega recalled how Johnny Ramone would insist that the band drive nonstop between Boston and New York for shows instead of spending the night in a hotel.

In addition to his financial conservatism, the guitarist was politically conservative - the late Ronald Reagan was Ramone's favorite president, Vega said.

Fans have remained loyal to the Ramones, and the Ramones over the years have been loyal to their fans. In 1979, while shooting scenes for the film "Rock 'n' Roll High School," the Ramones - ignoring the director's order - played a concert-length session for fans who had paid to be extras, Vega said.

"The Ramones never ever lost their image, their aura of being the ultimate underdog, the voice of the angry young man," Vega said.

A tribute concert and cancer research fund-raiser was held Sunday in Los Angeles to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary. It featured performances from Los Angeles punk band X, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry Rollins and others.

Along with his wife, Linda Cummings, Johnny Ramone was surrounded at his death by friends, including Pearl Jam rocker Eddie Vedder, singer Rob Zombie and others. Other friends who gathered at his Los Angeles home included Lisa Marie Presley, Pete Yorn, Vincent Gallo and Talia Shire.

He is survived by his wife and his mother, Estelle Cummings. He will be cremated during a private ceremony.

It all began innocently enough, as it does for me most every day, in Clifton, NJ. My biggest concern was how to squeeze a stop at the bank into my usual morning sojourn to the train station. Having done that, I hit Mary Ann's Deli on Clifton Avenue, where the owner knows me not by name, but by my order: cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese, bottle of Poland Springs, Daily News. He looked into his bagel bin without my asking, shook his head and offered: "I got a raisin bagel with butter already made."

"Aw, what the hell," I replied. "They can always unclog my arteries later." This prompted a good-natured exchange about what's supposedly good or bad for you; first it was no eggs, no butter, no coffee, then it was no margarine, no decaf, and go ahead and have those eggs. "All depends on who's payin' for the study," chuckled the deli man, whose name I don't know, either, except to say that it's probably not Mary Ann.

"Only thing that doesn't change is what happens if you step in front of a bus," I remarked, allowing that having butter on my bagel today, regardless of the results of the myriad studies or who funded them, probably wouldn't kill me.

As I looked for parking near the station, I noticed the particularly lovely brunette I see most mornings, headed for the train. Today was the day I decided to talk to her, to say more than just hello. I noted which car she was getting on, followed her lead, and occupied the bench directly across from her.

"Hey, how ya doin'?" she smiled.

"Good. Did you have a good day yesterday?" And off we went: She talked about her "long" Monday, and I mentioned that I was a part-time musician, and I'd taken a vacation day so I could drop off demo CDs at places where I'd hoped to land gigs. My weekend had been spent performing at the Jersey Shore; hers had been spent in Atlanta, visiting her brother who plays cello in a symphony orchestra.

Then the commute to Hoboken settled into routine; she drifted off into her paperwork, and I into my newspaper, and all was a little bit better than it had been before. I barely noticed when, shortly after our stop in Kingsland, a cell phone rang a few rows ahead of me and a young blonde woman answered it. "Oh, yeah, I can see it," she said, as she craned her neck to look out the window. After a few minutes, she hung up the phone and announced, "My friend just called to tell me that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center."

We all clamored to get a look. The tower closest to us, which from our distance looked to be about the size of a matchstick, had smoke billowing out of some of its upper floors. My first thought spilled out of my mouth: "Must not have been a very big plane." A guy across the row smirked.

The brunette turned to me, her jaw agape. "I wonder if it was a commercial plane," she said.

"You work down there, don't you? I never see you on the PATH to 33rd Street."

"Yeah, I do work down there," she responded.

"I'd imagine the World Trade Center trains won't be running."

"Well, I usually take the ferry anyway."

And so, as usual, we parted ways at Hoboken. The World Trade Center trains were indeed shut down, but my 33rd Street line was still running. I found a seat, put on my DiscMan and disappeared into the music on a CD I'd burned, filled with new songs I'd hoped to learn for my upcoming weekend gigs. In what seemed like no time we had reached our final stop, and I trudged along with my fellow commuters to make my connection to the F train, which I took to Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street. Then, to get back above ground, I climbed the stairs to the street and hopped on the M42 bus that would take me down to Second Avenue and my office.

As I got on the bus, I wondered how many people knew about the plane crash. Turned out everybody knew. A guy apparently reading news items on his Palm Pilot said, "Oh, my God, chunks of concrete are falling from the building onto the street."

"Yeah, I saw the smoke from my train in Hoboken," I chimed in.

"Two planes crashed -- one into each of the towers," said a woman standing next to me.

"So it looks like it's terrorists?"

She nodded. "I'm here from Iowa -- I just want to go home." I could sense she was a bit more than half-joking.

"Hey," I said, suddenly compelled to defend New York somehow. "This kind of thing happened in Oklahoma City, so it could happen anywhere."

"Anywhere there's a federal building, anyway," another man offered.

"That's true," said the woman, seeming somewhat chastened.

Finally, the bus stopped at Second Avenue, and I walked toward 43rd Street for my usual giant cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. I saw an elderly woman, obviously nervous, come out of the building that houses the Israeli embassy to ask questions of a female cop who patrols the area from a tiny booth stationed outside. "Yes, it's true," said the policewoman. A few strides away, a Dunkin Donuts employee was staring down Second Avenue. I turned to see a huge plume of smoke, some 50 blocks away, but large enough to give it the appearance of being much closer.

I got my coffee, crossed the street and headed for my building. Outside, a security guard muttered something about how we should "bomb all those motherfuckers," and a co-worker cautioned, "It's not a great day to have an office with a window."

On the elevator, strangers who barely acknowledge each other most mornings were chatting up a storm. Someone mentioned Oklahoma City; another reminded us of our close proximity to the United Nations.

I got off on the eighth floor to find several radios blaring the latest details. "This is fucked up," said Paul, an art director from Long Island. "I don't even know what I'm doing here."

"I'm a wreck," howled Amanda, the diminutive stand-up comedian who works in production. "I live down there. I saw the whole thing!"

Once in my office, I added my radio to the chorus. I learned that the craft that had hit the first tower was a hijacked commuter plane. Next one of the towers was collapsing into itself. A collective shudder swept across the eighth floor. A now-constant stream of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks screamed through the neighborhood.

"Jesus, we're right across the street from the Israeli embassy, and the U.N. is only a couple of blocks away," someone exclaimed.

Minutes later, word came that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.

I began to field phone calls, e-mails and instant messages from my friends in Jersey, all expressing concern for my welfare. Through those exchanges I learned that the second of the twin WTC towers had also collapsed, and that another commercial plane was apparently headed toward the White House at a very high speed, with the Air Force in pursuit and poised to shoot it down.

Then, someone in the office announced that the police had closed down Second Avenue and they seemed to be evacuating the Israeli embassy. A newscaster declared that every airport in the country was closed, and the entire continental United States was now a "no-fly" zone. People started reaching for their carry-alongs as if to head for the street.

"To go where?" I blurted out. "The subways are all shut down. Nobody can get in or out of Manhattan."

"All I know is, this is not the safest neighborhood to be in right now," said Travis, the nervously smiling photo editor.

"Are we safer in the street?" I wondered aloud. I thought about it for a few seconds, and then told my friends on the phone and the Internet: "I'm getting the fuck out of here."

Down on the sidewalk, a few of my co-workers discussed whether we should wait things out at a bar. We looked across the street and instantly realized that the two adjacent restaurants were not going to be opening today. In the face of danger perceived or otherwise, all solidarity went out the window, with most people splintering off to head west on foot.

I began a solo exodus up 42nd Street, my headphones tuned to the news radio. My idea was to find the building that houses the advertising agency where my friend Kerry works; I had been there a couple of times, and I remembered that it was somewhere in the upper Thirties near Herald Square.

The sidewalks were flooded with pedestrians, some nervously exchanging information with friends, others merely commiserating, and still others, like me, wandering alone and dazed, with only a lukewarm clue as to their destination. There were lines at the pay phones and ATMs, and people trying desperately and repeatedly to get calls out on their cell phones.

At certain points along the way, the sound in my headphones grew louder and took on more bass; I'd slip them off to find a crowd of people gathered around a boom box or a car with its doors open and radio blasting, listening to the same station I had tuned in.

We were all hearing accounts from people who had seen what had happened, or worse yet, had been in or around the trade center and had experienced the horror first-hand. A tearful man was lamenting the uncertain fate of a co-worker from whom he had become separated.

I started to become angry, but for all the wrong reasons at first. Why had I been allowed to come into the city this morning in the first place? When the hell where they going to let me out? And then I focused on the real issue: I was angry that there existed a group of terrorists brilliant enough to hatch such an elaborate and sophisticated plan, skilled enough to carry it out, and crazy enough to believe they were doing it on orders from God.

And furthermore, I was angry that my country had been caught napping.

I spent two separate quarter-hours trying to find Kerry's office, wrapped around another half-hour of aimless wandering, before I gave up. I wanted to sit in Greeley Square and sip a bottle of something strong while waiting for the PATH trains to start running again, but the only liquor store I could find was closing its gate at the very minute I arrived. The bars in midtown were all full, at least in terms of seats, so I made my way over to a fast-food place that was relatively uninhabited and reacquainted myself with the bill of fare offered by Roy Rogers, which had all but abandoned my neck of the woods in the past five years. Throwing caution to the wind, I ordered regular Coke instead of diet, supersized my order, and loaded up the "fixin's" on my quarter-pound cheeseburger. Life's too short, I muttered to myself.

After polishing off my purposely unhealthy lunch, I managed to get a call out on my cell phone to the voice mailbox of my ex, with whom I've been at odds for more than a year, to say that while I don't always like her very much, I will always love her, and I wanted her to know it in case something random and senseless prevented me from making peace with her.

And then I thought about the people who had worried enough about me to try to get in touch with me at work and make sure I was okay. I told myself that when I got home (where, as it turned out, I had a half-dozen voice mail messages from other concerned friends and family members), I would write about this experience, and at some point I would let them know how I feel about them. So, to all of those special people in my life: I made it home okay. Thank you. I love you.

Back out in the street, I ambled over to Greeley Square for what must have been the 10th time, to find the same huddled mass waiting at the top of the stairway to the PATH station. The yellow police tape blocking it had been removed, and people were filtering up the stairs, but no one seemed to be going down them. I decided to brave it for the rest of us, but once down there I found the station locked down tight, with still no prospects for catching a train back to Jersey.

Returning above ground, I heard something on the radio about free ferry service running from the pier on West 30th Street. I was six long blocks and three short blocks away, and though my legs were aching and my bag was growing increasingly heavy, I decided that I just had to get off this island, so I started to walk...slowly. All along the way, the sounds of tragedy continued to fill my head via the radio. A huge throng was assembled outside Penn Station, the kind you only tend to see when the Knicks or Rangers are in the finals at the Garden, only this time, they were anxiously waiting, as I had been, to get the hell out of Dodge. A handful of them had heard the same report I had and began to head toward the pier. I felt as if we were all sharing a relatively well-kept secret.

Along the way, I thought about the annual Labor Day party I'd recently attended. Every year, my friend and host, Carl, is in charge of "The Name Game." Each person gets a sticker placed on his or her back containing a secret identity, and we each determine who we are by asking a series of yes or no questions: Real? Fictional? Living? Dead? Man? Woman? This year, Carl, knowing how impatient I sometimes get about the game, perversely assigned me an obscure character from pop culture. Several people read my name tag and said, "I have no idea who that is." Still, somehow, I managed to rack up enough clues to figure it out: I was "Snake Pliskin," the guy played by Kurt Russell in the film, Escape From New York. The coincidence made me chuckle.

When I finally got near the pier, a guy who appeared to have no official standing whatsoever was playing Answer Man (a trend which became a continued annoyance for the remainder of the day). He told us there was a five-hour wait there for a ferry, and we'd have more luck if we headed down to 23rd Street and the Chelsea Piers. I wearily followed the pack.

Once there, we were told that Spirit Cruises was offering free service to Weehawken, where there would be shuttle buses waiting to take us to the Hoboken terminal. The line was long but moved fairly quickly, and as we boarded the ship, dubbed The Spirit Of New York, I mused that it was the first Hudson River cruise I had ever taken. As we made our way across, several people told stories about having been in or near the World Trade Center during the disaster, and having walked for two-and-a-half hours to make it to the pier. It became clear to me that my day had been easy; I had been at worst inconvenienced, and was never in any real danger. As I looked around at my fellow passengers, it occurred to me that we were all like war refugees, being herded out of harm's way on a boat called The Spirit Of New York, on a day that the spirit of New York had been crushed. As if he'd picked up on my telepathy, a man to my right remarked: "This is what it's like in Jerusalem all the time."

As we disembarked at Lincoln Harbor in Weehawken, another loud un-official was bellowing that there were no shuttle buses to Hoboken terminal, and no trains or buses running in or out of it. Although this was in direct conflict to everything we had been told in Chelsea and what was being reported on the radio, most of us (myself included) foolishly took his word for it and began to walk toward Hoboken. (I later learned that, had we waited and not listened to this imbecile, we would have eventually found everything he said to be false.)

The terminal was something like 20 blocks away, but I motivated myself by deciding that I would cut the trip into two parts by stopping at the Goldhawk, a bar owned by a few of my associates. As I slowly made my way on foot yet again, a group of people came up behind me, one of them a black woman talking very loudly about someone who had tried to tell her to be calm. As they passed, I saw that she was covered head-to-toe in dust, and was wearing a triage tag and a paper breathing mask. Apparently she had been on the 82nd floor of one of the twin towers and had managed to escape with her life down a stairway. "Those motherfuckers were all tryin' to tell me to be calm," she yelled. "You're in that situation, there's no way you're gonna be calm. You get the fuck out of there as fast as can."

Another total stranger pegged me as a fellow commuter and stopped to swap war stories about how each of us had "gotten out." What's the equivalent of Hoboken in Israel, or Bosnia for that matter, I wondered to myself.

At the Goldhawk, roughly 10 young men sat drinking beers, their eyes glued to the TV screens, while a couple more oblivious types played a noisy, sports-oriented arcade game on the other side of the room, punctuating the reports from CNN with a recorded voice saying, "Hi, I'm Pat Summerall." Ah, well; they did offer us some leftover pizza, of which I was happy to partake, so at least they served some useful purpose in the midst of this miserable experience.

An hour later, filled up on Guinness and pizza, I decided it was well past time to get home to Clifton, so I paid my tab and headed toward Washington Street with the hope of finding a cab or bus that would get me to the terminal. This was accomplished surprisingly quickly, and soon I was just a few blocks from my destination, albeit snarled in traffic. After a while, I figured I had already walked about five miles over the course of the day, and another few blocks wouldn't kill me, so the driver graciously let me off the bus at what was definitely not a designated stop.

I headed down Washington toward the terminal, and when I turned the corner I saw what was causing the traffic jam: People were staring gap-jawed across the Hudson at what had been the site of the World Trade Center. The twin towers, which had become commonplace to us, but served as an awesome spectacle to millions of tourists over the past three decades, had suddenly been erased from the urban landscape. They had been replaced, for now, by a pile of rubble and a huge funnel cloud of smoke; later, presumably, it would become a vacant lot, soon to be transformed into a memorial for the as-yet-untold thousands who gone to work on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and were never coming home. We can surmise this because Oklahoma City had already set a horrifying precedent, but the destruction by terrorists of what was once the tallest building in the world, a monument to New York City that loomed large on both sides of the Hudson, has egregiously raised the bar. Its conspicuous absence will repeatedly drive home the words that had been on the lips of the thousands of people I encountered during my six-hour stint as a war refugee: From this day forward, life will never be the same.

Regardless of your political preference or even interest, it's hard to deny that the 2004 election is the most important one to come along in our lifetime. If you're not registered to vote, or know people who aren't, here's a Web site that makes it easy to get involved in the process: The Voter Registration Toolkit.

Knowledge is power. Pass it on.

NEWS ITEM: Recording Companies Agree to Pay $50M
May 4, 9:58 AM (ET)

By DEEPTI HAJELA

NEW YORK (AP) - Major recording companies have agreed to return nearly $50 million in unclaimed royalties to Sean Combs, Gloria Estefan, Dolly Parton and thousands of lesser known musicians under a settlement being announced Tuesday.

A two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office found that many artists were not being paid royalties because record companies lost contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments.

"As a result of this agreement, new procedures will be adopted to ensure that the artists and their descendants will receive the compensation to which they are entitled," Spitzer said in a statement.

The Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the companies, planned to comment after the official announcement, said spokesman Jonathan Lamy.

Representatives for Combs and Parton did not immediately return calls for comment. A spokesman for Estefan, reached prior to the announcement, was unaware of the settlement and had no immediate comment.

The participating companies include: SONY Music Entertainment; Sony ATV Music Publishing; Warner Music Group; UMG Recordings; Universal Music; EMI Music Publishing; BMG Songs; Careers-BMG Music Publishing; BMG Music and the Harry Fox Agency.

Under the settlement, the music companies agreed to make good-faith efforts to track down artists to whom royalties are due. If the artists still cannot be located, the money will revert to the state.

(END)

Next time the RIAA threatens to sue 12-year-old schoolgirls and and 70-year-old grandfathers for "illegal downloading," we should remind them of this story. Funny how the artists mentioned here are not only alive, but still in the public eye, yet these major record and publishing companies couldn't "find" them when it came time to figure out where to mail their royalty checks.

These days, when I come down with a case of "spring fever," I get a yearning for...a case of beer.

Not just any beer, mind you, but one in particular: Saxer Lemon Lager.

It is exactly what it says it is. I have tried other "summer brews" that purport to be flavored with lemon, but none of them back it up the way Saxer does. It's light, smooth, tart and slightly sweet. There's none of the "skunk" that comes with cramming a lemon wedge inside a bottle of Corona. And it doesn't have the chemical aftertaste of those godawful "hard lemonades."

One small problem: It's made in Portland, Oregon, and not widely distributed on this side of the country. Luckily, there's a place in North Plainfield, N.J., that routinely stocks it. I drive down there and buy a case in early spring. When it runs out, I repeat the process, until the weather turns cool and my tastebuds start to crave something more full-bodied.

So that's the story: I love this beer.

(Apologies to those who were hoping for something sexier.)