To each his or her own, whatever color, sex, weight, age or what have you.

Then write a 1,000 word article about them!

Make that 50,000 words.

Last winter I shoveled a perhaps two-foot square section of snow outside the back gate of the NYC apartment building I live in, and a pain beyond belief shot up the inside of my left inner thigh---so bad was the pain that I had to bust out the Vicoden I got for a pulled tooth in 2006.

Fuck snow.

The curious thing is I do triathlons, bike races and run/bike/swim/lift 6 days a week.

It's the shovel, dude. If Goddess had meant us to shovel the snow, she'd have made our snoots outta steel.

My wife's Grandmother's late husband---"late" as in "died in 1978"---worked for GM for over 20 years. Grandma, 89, needed a triple bypass three years ago. She got it, plus a 3-week stay in the hospital due to complications----under her GM health insurance plan, part of her husband's pension, which she also collects every month for life, by the way.

Grandma made a complete recovery, and just celebrated her 92nd birthday.

Total out of pocket for her entire medical diagnosis, operation and recovery?

$50.

Contrast this with my severed thumb tendon, the result of an accident on a construction job in the late 90s. I'm also a professional guitarist, so I kinda needed the thumb, ya know? But I couldn't afford health insurance at the time. The operation to fix my thumb was $11,000, which I had to charge to a brand-new credit card. Let's just say I couldn't keep up with the payments because I couldn't work for 6 weeks, and my credit record got about as effed up as it's possible to get.

I'm not bawling---it was me who cut my own thumb out of carelessness. Had I understood as a kid in the 90s the financial consequences of falling off a motorcycle, cutting a tendon, or otherwise seriously injuring myself---I would not have been so careless. But I digress.

Point: Universal health insurance for all, please---as a right, as a taxpaying citizen.

Let's take care of our people.

...and, I guess--what am I supposed to do? Applaud this lifelong liar who brags about living only for himself?

Good for you, pal.

I guess.

This boy loves him some plus plus plus. But I gotta say as a lover of jazz, blues, opera and thrash that I wouldn't notice this singer or this band if she wasn't a round total cutie-patootie.

I am writing to you guys from a hotel in Paris, where my wife and I sit looking out over our balcony at the Eiffel Tower. A travel assignment for---GASP! that dinosaur, the "magazine." Just got here this morning.

Why am I here?

Because I, like Cary, went through the same 10,000 punches in the nose and kept getting up.

The secret to success in writing is to get back up, just like Jake LaMotta.

I remember sitting in my car on a 20-degree day in Park Slope 8 years ago, lamenting that I didn't have the money I needed to buy razors. "Maybe I should do something else," I said to myself.

A moment later, I banged the ever-lovin' shit out of the steering wheel.

"NO!" I screamed. "THIS is what I do!"

In 2007, I made $93,000. Tabloid reporter. Fun. Exciting. Hard, long hours. Barely time to congratulate myself on meeting a deadline---had to start researching another article, due in three days. Sometimes I had to take the photos, too, because the newspaper wouldn't pay to send someone.

They fired 40 of us last September in the newsroom.

This year, I've made $6000. And it's June. Our industry has been stabbed in the neck, chest, balls and belly and is still hemmorhaging. But I will find a way to my fortune. I have no children. I don't own an apartment. I don't do anything that distracts me from my writing. But I will, in the next 3-5 years, be the next Sedaris or Burroughs, goddamn it. You're gonna know my name. Some of you already do.

I'm writing my first three chapters early mornings and late evenings with a fury borne by rage and revenge and burning interest in words and storytelling and blood and guts and love and violence and absurdity.

Brick by brick, letter by letter, shit-detector turned up full.

I've been approached by a producer to host a TV show about my area of expertise. (Whatever---I never get those things, but it's nice to be asked.)

There isn't even a question in my mind whether or not I will "give up". There is a howling devil in my soul, and you're gonna hear about it.

The howling devil, that is, and travel stories for this magazine edited by two smart guys who leave me the hell alone to do my job and run my text as-is.

Writing isn't for kitty-kats.

Merci for listening.

Now I gotta get back to work.