A Hothouse Survival Tale
Sweating buckets when the AC goes out during a heat wave
By Ben Krull
I turned the knob and nothing happened. Don’t panic, I told myself, as sun poured through the blinds.
It was a 90-degree Sunday earlier this summer and the window air-conditioner in my studio apartment was dead. First came denial: the four-year-old machine just needed to ease into the June heat. All it needed was some rest. Read more
The Reluctant Visitor
Memories of summer camp from two perspectives
By Ben Krull
I worked myself into a frenzy thinking about the tasty food and heartwarming reunions. But not everyone shared my enthusiasm for visiting day at summer camp.
From the ages of nine through 15, I spent my summers at Camp Scatico in upstate New York. I have wonderful memories of sleeping on sagging mattresses in un-air-conditioned bunks, where I participated in water balloon fights and laughed at fart jokes. Read more
Ben for Shortstop
Yes we can put a true fan of the national pastime on the All-Star team
By Ben Krull
The league bosses have excluded me from the ballot and ESPN refuses to cover my candidacy. But if you join my write-in campaign to play in the 2010 Baseball All-Star Game, we can send a message to the establishment. Read more
Dissecting My Fox Fix
There’s nothing like Sean Hannity to get your Democratic blood rushing
By Ben Krull
It’s hard on my nerves and gives me nightmares. But like a rubbernecker who gawks at a highway accident, I am unable to look away.
I am addicted to Fox News; hooked on O’Reilly, Beck and the Obama-bashing Fox and Friends morning show. But my drug of choice is Sean Hannity.
A promo for Hannity’s book, Conservative Victory, summarizes his politics: “Hannity surveys all the major Obama players… He exposes their resulting campaign to dismantle the American free-market system and forfeit our national sovereignty.” His nightly show is a parade of Rush Limbaugh wannabes peddling books and Republican presidential aspirants, pandering to Tea Party types.
What differentiates Hannity from his snarling Fox counterparts is that his rants have a good-natured delivery. His congenial demeanor makes me want to punch his nose and say, “Wipe that smile off your face.”
Most of what I hear on Hannity’s show is lies and misrepresentations; double-talk and hyperbole. While watching him, I feel like kicking in my flat-screen, yet I am too enthralled to even change the channel.
You might wonder why a hardcore Democrat like myself is drawn to such toxic talk. I have come up with several theories: as a columnist I want to keep up with the latest journalistic trends; being a liberal, I want to know my enemy; I have a subconscious crush on Sarah Palin. But none of these reasons ring true.
I asked my psychologist-friend, Amy, what she thought.
“The anger you feel enlivens you,” she said. “That’s why some people like to feel pain—it makes them feel alive. Fox does that for you.”
While it is disquieting to think that my television viewing habits are akin to sadomasochism, Amy has a point. Even as it drives me nuts, Fox produces a surge of emotion that gives me a high.
Some of my politically minded friends watch MSNBC, Fox’s left-leaning competitor. But Keith Olberman, Ed Schultz and the network’s other Democratic cheerleaders do nothing to raise my blood pressure. Listening to opinions I mostly agree with is like watching a 3-D movie without the glasses: flat and boring.
I am also turned off by the network’s partisanship. While Fox’s emotionally charged rhetoric sucks me in, the same tone in liberal clothing makes me wince.
As a graduate-degree-educated, New Yorker-reading, PBS-watching (when I’m not watching Fox) NPR-listening liberal, I want the side of the political divide I identify with to be defined by rational, intelligent discourse. So when I hear my fellow travelers hyperventilating about the right (Keith Olberman on Sen. Scott Brown: a “homophobic, racist, reactionary… tea-bagging supporter of violence against women…”), it makes me embarrassed to wear my “YES WE CAN” T-shirt.
Despite my complaints about MSNBC, watching the network causes me no stress. Not so with Fox. I recently had a nightmare in which President Obama was overthrown in a coup. The plotters replaced him with George W. Bush, who was wearing a Caesar-like crown. The dream was so realistic that when I woke up I nervously turned on MSNBC to see if Morning Joe had been replaced by Joe the Plumber.
To preserve my mental health, I have taken a break from Hannity and his cohorts. To ease my withdrawal, I have been listening to sports-talk radio. Although the Yankee-haters (Richard from Queens: “Yankee fans are such hypocrites. They’re up in arms when Jeter gets plunked by Beckett, but said nothing when Clemens hit Piazza”) give me nightmares, it is less disturbing to have bad dreams about the Red Sox and bats, than red states
and pitchforks.
Ben Krull is a lawyer and essayist who lives on the Upper East Side.
A True Believer Believes Again
In verdict for surrogate judge, a validation of Democratic screening process
By Ben Krull
The acquittal earlier this month of Manhattan Surrogate Nora Anderson, of charges stemming from her successful 2008 judicial campaign, was more than just a victory for the accused. It was also a reprieve for Democrats like myself, who have an almost religious belief in the sanctity of Manhattan’s judicial election process.
Anderson was accused of skirting New York’s $33,122 campaign donation limit by accepting $250,000 in loans and gifts from her law partner, and funneling the money into her primary campaign. The jury bought Surrogate Anderson’s argument that her maneuver could be interpreted as being legal under New York’s murky campaign finance law—a verdict that has allowed the suspended Surrogate to take the bench. Read more
Bag Ladies
By Ben Krull
New York has become a city of bag ladies—especially during rush hour.
While I once commuted amid unobtrusive pocketbooks, nowadays subways are packed with women carrying duffle-sized satchels, leather backpacks and cavernous totes. It is commonplace to see these bags carried in combination: an oversized satchel hanging from the shoulder, a knapsack strapped to the back and a hand clutching a purse. As a hard-core evolutionist, I predict that future generations of females will be born with a kangaroo-type pouch, because of all the bag-schlepping today’s women do. Read more
A Nose for the Cold
When a chronic sinus condition has anti-social side effects
By Ben Krull
In wintertime my nose acts as a thermometer. As a cold front approaches I find myself using more Kleenex than usual. When freezing temperatures arrive, my sinuses function as though someone has clipped a clothespin to my schnoz. Read more
Hard Times on the Hardwood
The demise of rough and tumble basketball in the Big Apple
By Ben Krull
The “city game” isn’t what it used to be. The Knicks are on course for another losing season, and it has been years since a local college team has made the NCAA tournament, much less contended for a national championship.
New York’s basketball picture wasn’t always so bleak. The five boroughs were once as well known for basketball as they were for bagels and nightlife. Read more
Mr. Disconnected
A man makes a stand against a wireless world
By Ben Krull
As I walk to the subway during the morning rush, I wonder why everyone except me is furiously working their thumbs or gabbing into their cell phones. Do my unmoving hands and lips mean that I am unpopular?
I wasn’t always so self-conscious about being behind the communications curve. When cell phones first came on the scene I was a holdout, telling everyone that modern technology was threatening social intercourse—a line that I hoped also explained why I still had a rotary phone.
Yet saying that I was sans cell phone became like admitting I was without a watch or a wallet, something usually only heard from ex-hippies suffering a ’60s flashback. I was terrified of what it would do to my reputation if someone I knew caught me making a call from a phone booth. They’d probably think I was a drug dealer.
Owning a cell phone has made me face an embarrassing truth—I don’t need one. Last year I lost my mobile and bought a new one. I asked the salesperson to recommend a calling plan.
“I see that the usage of your last phone was very low, so you should go for something basic,” she said.
“I’m always on my land line,” I lied, lest she think I’m unsociable.
Not only do I rarely call anyone, but few people call me. This is convenient when I go to the movies or a funeral, since I don’t have to remember to turn off my phone, but it otherwise makes me feel like a hermit.
When I’m out to dinner with someone who is constantly interrupted by calls, I’ll take my phone from my pocket and look at it, making believe that I’m checking my missed calls. “I keep my ringer on silent,” I’ll explain.
Recently I was at a work meeting when my phone rang. I excitedly removed it from my pocket and fumbled it to the floor, before pressing the correct button.
“Your time to consolidate your credit card debt is running out,” the automated voice said.
“I’m in a meeting, I’ll call you back,” I said, as if I were talking to a live person.
The phone-free subway used to provide me a break from worrying that I looked like a loner. But ever since straphangers began typing away on their BlackBerrys, my underground respite has become another venue to advertise my unimpressive social life. (I’m convinced that because of all the texting, mobile emailing and twittering we do, future generations will be born with eyes under their chins and an extra thumb.)
I wish I had enough friends to require a non-stop communications stream. But I can’t imaging needing to email on the go any more than I can see myself talking on the phone while walking to my therapist’s office—where I talk about why I don’t have more friends to send text messages to.
Sometimes I wish I were elderly. Walking down the street—eyes looking straight ahead, useless hands at my sides—passersby would assume that I was too set in my old-technology ways to use a BlackBerry or cell phone. “Probably on his way to see his friends at the senior center,” they’d think.
Until then, I have decided to walk around hooked up to an iPod. This way people will know that I’m too busy listening to Beyoncé, Bruce and Bono to talk to anyone. To keep my thumbs occupied, I’ll play air guitar. n
Ben Krull is a lawyer and essayist who lives on the Upper East Side.
My Adult Fantasy League
The secret life of an apartment pro athlete
By Ben Krull
You may think that turning 50 has made my fantasies about playing Major League Baseball a bit implausible. But I perform like an athlete half my age.
While my studio apartment is too crowded with breakable objects for me to swing a bat like I once did in my spacious childhood bedroom, I still dive on my carpeting, snagging screaming line drives and lay down perfect squeeze bunts using my toilet plunger as my bat. Read more
