oedipus' online complexes

the other sure sign that spring is here
(or, the REAL miracle on 34th Street)

ever since manhattan's magnificent penn station was demolished and the station proper put underground - underneath the third (and undeniably ugliest) incarnation of madison square garden and an affiliated high-rise office building, there's been no way for ringling brothers and barnum and bailey circus to unload their elephants for their run of performances at madison square garden...

so, when the circus comes to gotham, the elephants get off at long island city, and are paraded through the queens-midtown tunnel, down 34th street, across manhattan - past macy's - and to the 34th street entrance of the modern madison square garden...

for a few years, i was fortunate enough to work in the building that occupies the corner of 34th and 7th avenue, smack across the street from both penn station and madison square garden, so i didn't have far to travel to witness the ritual, as i was usually at work late enough to catch the middle-of-the-night march of the elephants...

and when i walked past madison square garden from the very tail end of march through the first weeks of april, when the circus was in town, i smiled to myself as i passed the huge olfactory clue that i was headed towards the correct corner... and, since my employment at the corner of 34th and 7th avenue, coincided with a repeated (well, in the grover cleveland sense) run at the NBA, or at least the eastern conference, title...

no - we never won the title in the age of jordan, but the knicks made the playoffs during the hayday of patrick ewing's career for 15 years running, so there was always plenty of meaningful, exciting games played in the early weeks of april...

taking advantage of the fact that, for a time, i worked right across the street from madison square garden, i tried to make every important game i could, since going to a knicks game was as easy as crossing the street - which, i suppose, is easier said than done, considering the traffic and taxi queue on 7th avenue... and yes, in april in the nineties, the garden was redolent with elephant excrement which to me was the smell of victory...

Image Description: Elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus arrive in New York on March 27, 2007. (photo by Eric Thayer, Reuters)

yesterday - saturday, march 3, 2007 - i received my monthly "mystery" cassette in the mail: the audio "magazine of the month" from the National Library Service for the Blind & Physically Handicapped (NLS)... my neighbor, who had kindly brought me the mail, remarked that the "magazine of the month" was a little late, as the printed label identified it as "Magazine of the Month, January 2007"....

this news surprised me, for, since it is march, i had been expecting the february issue of the "magazine of the month" - one of only 2 predictably themed magazines of the month, which are otherwise a mystery until opened...

i was even more surprised when - listening to the mystery magazine while making breakfast - it identified itself as the "magazine of the month" for december 2006: "massage" magazine...

granted, choosing a new magazine every month to be recorded for a very varied audience, puts certain restrictions upon the scope of obscure magazines which will enjoy broad enough appeal, yet remain neutral enough so as not to stoke controversy, is a tough task, which makes for a strange and, somethines pleasant, monthly surprise...

(in case you haven't noticed, generalizing from my own experience, the blind are far from averse to criticizing any hand that provides them with a literary life-line)

february's "magazine of the month", as has held true since i first subscribed to the "magazine of the month", is invariably afro-centric, in honor of black history month

the only other predictably-themed monnth is october, whose issue is invariably hispanic-oriented, as october is hispanic heritage month, an anual celebration of which none of my friends of hispanic descent, are aware exists, until i corner them in my apartment (the womb without a view), at a bar or a party, and subject them to a beer-soaked chaos theory concerning the "magazine of the month"...

last year - or was it the year before that? they've all begun to blend together - the october selection was "Modern Latina" which i must admit, was muy picante...

now, i can understand choosing an african-american issues oriented audio magazine during black history month, and a hispanic themed issue during hispanic heritage month, but - and you knew there'd be a but - there are some months, when the choice of magazine seems either downright sadistic or simply leaves one scratching one's head unto the point of drawing blood, wondering who the hell thought i or anyone else would be interested in this?

take, for example, july 2006's selection: "Car & Driver"... that was simply cruel... why? two reasons:

i know a very intelligent blind woman, who didn't have a gestalt image of a car - although she was familiar with cars, their smells, the effects of gravity on the passenger, and, the eternal twin mysteries - where the hell are the window controls, and where the hell is the interior door latch - but until she held one of her son's matchbox cars in her hands did she put all of the dispirate elements with which she had directly come into contact together into a unified whole, rather than the sum of some of its parts...

and what if one had been a real grease monkey slash car jockey in one's pre-blind incarnation? even if the only thing one really misses is the loss of autonomy which the ability to drive endows americans - it's one of our "inalienble rights"; anyway you "look" at it, that's what we in joisey call "rubbing salt into the wounds, before dumping the body in the meadowlands"...

sometimes, the "magazine of the month" strikes eerily, not to mention unnervingly, close to the bone - for instance, how, in november 2006, did they know that i was a crazy cat person, as indicated by the audio copy of "cat fancy" magazine, which - of course - i haven't finished yet, as it isn't as interesting as it sounds...

another recent bizarre entry in the "magazine of the month" sweepstakes was an audio copy of "details" magazine...

to be honest, i must confess that most of the random magazines i am sent, are sorely neglected midway through track 1 or 2 of 4... the same holds true for a few of the magazines i receive from NLS regularly, especially the 3 from which i unsubscribed over five years ago, and from which i regularly attempt to re-unsubscribe periodically, yet which relentlessly continue to come, like the brooms in disney's vision of the "sorcerer's apprentice",..

the one audio magazine which i continue to read religiously and thuroughly, as i had before i became functionally illiterate in 1989, is the "atlantic monthly"... i am eternally grateful not only to NLS, for distributing "the atlantic" in an accessible format, but to "the atlantic" itself, whose parent foundation provides a grant to make production of the audio version possible... which is only "fitting and proper", as helen keller was a sometime contributor to the monthly, which was the only outlet which allowed her to publish her radical socialist and pacifist tracts...

i used to also religiously read the weekly issue of "the new york times book review", but unsubscribed after 7 years, as i found it increasingly depressing that i was building up a huge list of books i must read, but which i probably will never have the opportunity to read...

listening to the "journal français" is my pathetic attempt to keep up with spoken french, rather than let yet another living language follow the path of the dead languages i used to know, and slowly seep from my memory... i suppose it doesn't help that, due to the ridiculously visually-oriented nature of my brain, i once had the gift of quickly obtaining a reading knowledge of languages, and knew how to read in far more languages than i could actually wrap my tongue around...

"eligible patrons" of NLS can subscribe to a rather wide selection of magazines in alternate formats, including an audio version of "sports illustrated", but i've never heard a satisfactory recording of the magazine's annual swimsuit issue...

"playboy" is also available, but only in a braille - but not audio - version, and i know several blind dudes who fancy themselves the only peple in the world who actually read playboy for its articles...

oh, well - at least i have a variety of things to read when i'm on the john, just like a "normal" person...