Joe Bones gives 2005 one swift kick

Farewell, goodbye, although I'll cry
Ain't that a shame?
My tears fell like rain
Ain't that a shame?
You're the one to blame
--“Ain’t That a Shame,” Antoine “Fats” Domino & Dave Bartholomew

A day early, here’s my personal worst of 2005:

1) Onetime FEMA head Michael Brown, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin take the top spot on my list for their shameful and incompetent handlings of the Hurricane Katrina mess. Right on down the line, each bobbled it from the outset, and then had the chutzpah to play pass the buck in the media. Meanwhile the MSM, in its predictable one-note fashion, blamed it all on Bush.

The way I see it, the whole vile affair exposed, under an unforgiving spotlight, not only corrupt politics in the deep South and the ridiculous nonqualifications of the president's FEMA appointee, but also how profoundly unaware the country is of the reality of climate change, and how unprepared it is to do anything about it.

There were so many hurricanes in 2005 that the National Weather Service ran out of names (21 in all) and had to start identifying them by letters of the Greek alphabet. Currently, brush fires ravage drought-stricken Oklahoma and Texas, and I’m receiving fax blasts from Wall Street speculators predicting that water will be the next hot commodity.

I remain unwavering in my support of President Bush when it comes to national defense and foreign policy in the war on terror. But he absolutely needs to first acknowledge and then start seriously addressing climate change. Taking the lead on this issue could also help constructively reengage disgruntled citizens and traditional allies. Mr. President, what say you? Acknowledge that global climate change is happening? Or keep your head buried in that oil well?

That’s all for my worst of 2005. (Gets down off soapbox.) No, really. Everything else—excluding, perhaps, avian flu—is small potatoes. NSA surveillance of international phone calls? A mere bag of shells. (Remember, you're reading the words of someone who lives one block from the New York Stock Exchange.)

OK, you want more? I rarely watch television because reality shows are real only in that they completely suck; I’ve lost interest in my favorite sport, major league baseball, because some of its biggest stars are chemically enhanced (shame on you, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro and God knows who else); “King Kong,” a film I really wanted to see, was so smitten with its cool digital effects that it took an hour longer than it needed to make its point; Ilsa the wonder dog came down with a stubborn skin infection that took a month of antibiotics and several adventurous baths to get rid of, and I probably overspent on equipment for my business by about 800 bucks.

See? Small potatoes.

So here’s to giving 2005 an easy but swift kick in the keester. And here's wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2006!

As is becoming tradition, I’ll greet the New Year without regret and with the Fabulous Faustones at Walker’s in trendy Tribeca. Fausto says, “We'll be doing a variety of swing, jazz, rock, blues, reggae, Cajun, you know, roots music.”

Real live music in your basic neighborood pub, even if the neighborhood happens to be Tribeca. Now we're talking.

Joe Bones sounds off on his personal best of 2005

I have to admit it’s getting better
A little better all the time (It can’t get much worse)
--“Getting Better,” Lennon & McCartney

My personal best:

1) Iraqis turn out en masse to elect a government. With 70% of eligible voters dipping a thumb in the purple inkwell, the December 15th election represented a crucial victory for our soldiers and allies serving in the cause of freedom and a blow to Islamofascists and obstinate leftists everywhere. Best related personal moment: Attending a holiday party in Brooklyn the Friday following the election, being introduced as the only person in the room who voted for Bush, and being greeted with something other than disgust(!). One guy, after several glasses of Martell, confided that he secretly admired me. Whoa. Might the anti-Bush hard line be softening? Hardly. But I do sense more introspection among leftists in their entertaining the notion, what if Bush had it right about Iraq?

2) New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explores the forces that facilitated the rise of global digitization and lays out challenges for the free world in his highly thought-provoking book, "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.” Reading it on the subway, I had passengers approach me twice to tell me what a great book they thought it was. And strangers almost never talk on the subway. A must-read for everyone who senses the world is undergoing the biggest socioeconomic changes since the Industrial Revolution.

3) Paul McCartney remembers he was once a Beatle, hires a producer (Nigel Godrich) who wouldn’t suck up to him and releases his finest, most consistent solo album since “Ram” (1971). On “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” the 63-year-old McCartney plays to his greatest strengths—melody and musicianship—crafting a soundscape that draws freely from his own rich musical legacy. He also pays closer attention to his lyrics (“I’ve been sliding down a slippy slope, I’ve been climbing up a slowly burning rope,” he sings on “Friends to Go”), although it’s the music that really elevates this album. Amazingly, ‘Chaos’ is nowhere to be found on The Village Voice “Pazz and Jop Poll.” Then again, McCartney has never rated with hipster critics as a solo act. Why should I be surprised this time around? Their loss. The album is a pop music classic that’ll be around long after many of the records that made the list have faded. To my ears, it’s the best of the Grammy nominees for “Album of the Year.”

4) I finally launched my business, and after going through a few fits and starts and a scary summer drought, it closed out 2005 with a flurry of new jobs and a client list that stands at nine. Not too shabby. I’m enjoying this week off, but look forward to reopening on the 3rd and seeing what I can do to double output by June. In the meantime, I wish I had a million dollars!

5) A niece in Oregon gives birth to her second son, Owen, weighing in at 8 pounds 3 ounces, on November 22. Congrats Lizzie and Josh!

Saturday: Bones reveals his personal worst of the year. You’ve been forewarned.

And to all a good night

Heavy sigh.

All’s quiet in the company inboxes at my home office; the presents are bought and clumsily wrapped; the place looks reasonably clean, worthy of the antique white glove test at least; Ilsa the wonder dog is snug in her bed, licking her crotch; and in iTunes, the Tallis Scholars are chanting the Laudes Deo from the “1st Mass of Christmas.”

Ah, better than Valium. Much.

Tonight this retired Catholic altar boy heads over to Broadway to attend the 9:30 pm Christmas Eve service at Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish. (If my mother only knew.)

The rest of the world came to know this landmark of Lower Manhattan in the days after 9/11. It appeared in many newspapers and magazines, its then 155-year-old Gothic Revival architecture standing out amid a soot-filled sky; papers and other debris from the offices of the collapsed Twin Towers filled the churchyard where Alexander Hamilton lies buried.

For a moment there, red- and blue-state America gazed at those images, and in its crushing pain felt a glimmer of hope that united its people. How soon we forget.

Tonight’s service features the music of Tchaikovsky, Howells, and Charpentier. I know Tchaikovsky well, but I can’t say I’m sophisticated (or perhaps Anglicanized) enough to have heard the other two. I’m just looking forward to gathering with other believers in a festive atmosphere and hearing music performed by a choir and orchestra. If you’re interested, you can learn more about Trinity Church, or watch a live webcast of the service, by clicking here.

After that I’ll go home, make a pot of coffee and pop in my video of “A Christmas Carol.” The only version of the Dickens classic that gets it completely right is “Scrooge,” starring Alistair Sim as the wretched miser who finds redemption on Christmas morning following a series of interventions from the spirit world.

Among the notables of the English stage in this 1951 production you’ll find Patrick Macnee, Steed in “The Avengers,” playing a young Jacob Marley. And the Christmas morning exchange between Scrooge and his housekeeper, Mrs. Dilber (Kathleen Harrison), has to be one of the most tenderly rendered moments committed to film. All in all, a film well worth its 85-minute running time.

That’s all Bones wrote, for now. To all of my friends, family and readers, have a great holiday. And to Christians everywhere, a very merry Christmas.

Pilgrim's progress

It's a cold and fairly quiet night here in Lower Manhattan. The transit strike is over, but there's no rumble of the subway yet beneath Broad Street. The wind is still and voices carry, so much so that walking my dog, I could hear not only a New York Stock Exchange security guard talking on his cell phone across the street, but his wife on the other end as well.

The gargantuan Christmas tree out front of the exchange--with all of its multicolored lights of red and green and blue and yellow--reminds me of how my childhood home was this time of year. Of course, children love Christmas, and well they should, especially the ones who have a home and a tree and two parents and presents. But it's the ones doing without that I'm thinking of now as I count my blessings and a strange and somewhat disconcerting 2005 winds down to single digits.

This year I learned that in business you can be the best in what you do and still end up on the underside of down if you’re not always careful. In addition to hard work and perseverance, making it is all about luck and money, really, luck in making the right connections at the right time and money in having enough of it to see you out of the red and into the black. A little more of the former makes a little more of the latter, and with both I'm cautiously optimistic I'll grow my company in 2006. The building I’m in now was sold and is going co-op, so it looks like I’ll be moving across the East River to Brooklyn in April, unless someone wants to lend me $805,000 to buy the space I’m in now. (I didn’t think so.)

On a personal level, this year I saw two friendships fizzle over Iraq and Hurricane Katrina (as if I was calling the shots in Washington). The left has got to learn to cool its jets. Self-righteous indignation never gets you anywhere.

In June a trusted coworker bolted the company before we had it out of park. That event remains a mystery. I'm still learning the ropes of running a business, and every once in a while I run hot. But I'm not that bad.

I used to dwell on misfortune. But like the thousands of commuters walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to work during the transit strike this morning, I’ve learned that when hard times come knocking, it’s best to just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

A musician who hasn’t let politics get in the way of our friendship e-mailed me a great mp3 this afternoon. Kris Kristofferson, another relic of the ‘60s, has a new album coming out in March called “This Old Road.” If the other songs are half as good as the one that blew me away today, it’ll be a classic.

Am I young enough
To believe in revolution
Am I strong enough
To get down on my knees and pray
And am I high enough
On the chain of evolution
To respect myself
And my brother and my sister
And perfect myself
In my own peculiar way
--"Pilgrim's Progress," Kris Kristofferson

Wall? What wall?

Outside the moneyed world of Wall Street, a wall of another kind is making big news.

Today the talk of Lower Manhattan is the unearthing of a 40-foot by 7-foot section of mortared-stone wall dating to the 18th--and possibly 17th--century. The wall was found about 10 feet below ground by excavators working on the expansion of the Bowling Green subway station.

I know the area well. The new tunneling to Bowling Green cuts across the northern tip of Battery Park, directly underneath the park entrance Ilsa the wonder dog and I use on our early morning treks. The problem is, you can't see the wall. Steel beams and wooden planks conceal the subterranean workspace. I had to ask a construction worker where the wall was. He pointed to a row of planks 20 feet to my left and said, "Under there." I asked if the wall was going to be removed and placed aboveground where people can see it. He said, "Parts of it will. The rest we're blowing up." Now I call that a New York compromise.

Swimming with dolphins

They call him Flipper, Flipper
Faster than lightning
No one you see is smarter than he
And we know Flipper lives in a world full of wonder
Lying there under
Under the sea
--William Dunham & Henry Vars, theme song from “Flipper”

An enormous Christmas tree has gone up directly outside the New York Stock Exchange. I first saw it Saturday morning as I left my apartment building for a walk with Ilsa. Standing in the center of Broad Street, workers swarming about it, the tree looked like King Kong being fitted for a suit. It's that imposing.

We watched, chilled by a brisk early morning breeze, as two men in cherry pickers strung lights along the upper branches while others sawed away at the low branches to clear walking room (for security reasons that block of Broad Street is closed to all but pedestrian traffic). Christmas orbs as big as soccer balls, some bearing the “NYSE” logo, were meticulously hung. A gift box the size of a piano crate and adorned with a huge red bow was placed over the tree's stand.

Wall Street does everything in a big way, and ‘tis the season of the bull market’s return and mammoth Christmas bonuses, so why not a gigantic Christmas tree?

I don’t know why, but I’m not particularly keen on Christmas this year. It’s not that things are bad. My first year running my own business hasn’t gone as well as I would have liked, but it hasn’t been a complete disaster either. I see potential. In fact, I’m hopeful the company will break into the black in ’06.

I don’t really know why I’m out of sorts about Christmas. If I had my druthers, come December 25th, I think I’d rather be doing something unusual rather than traditional. I could see myself in Florida, perhaps at one of those marinas where you can swim with dolphins. My Christmas with Flipper.

Or maybe I’d head north to Canada for a word with Paul Hellyer, who said recently,“UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.”

For those not counting, we now have, in addition to this former Canadian defense minister, two former US presidents (Carter and Reagan), three former astronauts (Gordon Cooper, Edgar Mitchell, and Storey Musgrave), a former British defense minister (Lord Hill-Knorton), a former CIA director (Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter), and a world-famous theoretical physicist (Michio Kaku), all reporting their own UFO sightings and/or stating publicly their belief that UFOs represent a phenomenon worthy of serious scientific scrutiny.

In 1999, an extraordinary report, prepared by high-ranking French government officials, scientists and defense personnel and issued to President Jacques Chirac, concluded that UFOs are real and the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the most logical explanation for their existence.

Dr. Richard Haines, a recently retired senior research scientist for NASA, has compiled a database of over 3,400 aircraft encounters with UFOs dating to the dawn of human aviation.

And yet one finds the ridicule factor surrounding UFOs is so entrenched, no mainstream media source—indeed, not even the blogosphere—will tackle this subject seriously. The possibility of extraterrestrial visitation just isn’t as sexy as the Jessica Simpson-Nick Lachey split, Washington scandals, corporate malfeasance, or Howard Stern’s $500,000,000 contract with Sirius Satellite radio.

Frankly, this year, I’ll be glad to see the holidays end and that King Kong–sized tree taken down. It’s kind of blocking my view.