Making life for the movies

BY STEVE JANOSKI

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S. Thompson

I was never fond of the idea of a “bucket list.”

In my eyes it was a pretentious sort of thing to write down things that you determine you must, beyond all reasonable doubt, do before you die, or else you would declare all your years a waste.

Either do the things or don't, but posting your list on your refrigerator door like Martin Luther with one of your kid's animal magnets seems insincere at best.


Death, of course, has a way of changing things, and breaking down my innate cynicism I've worked so hard to sharpen, and so two weeks ago, as I looked over my grandfather's laid-out corpse, I couldn't help but feel a tingle of my own mortality.

It happens every time I go to a funeral, and that's why I avoid those functions as much as possible.

But even as I took in the sight of him lying in a casket, there wasn't that sense of overwhelming regret and destructive sorrow- he was 84 years-old, and had lived a long life that was truly, and in every sense of the word, worth living.

Born in 1926, he was a part of what's been called the “Greatest Generation,” having signed up with the Navy at the tender age of 17 in 1944. He was promptly sent to the Pacific Theater, where he was part of the crew of a PBY Catalina, the “flying boat” type plane that could land on water.

The PBY was often used as a sub-hunter in the Pacific, and although the details of the engagements were left out, an eager energy would trace across his old eyes when he recalled the adventure of those days.

During one of those missions, his head was grazed by a .50 bullet that barely missed- one inch the other way, and this writer wouldn't be here.

Over the course of the war the years immediately after, he was stationed across both America and the South Pacific, and by the age of 22, he'd seen more of the world than most of my generation will see in their entire lives.

Being a young man watching these old lions die brings home the reality that no matter how long life seems, it is truly a harrowingly short ride that should be enjoyed with the most intensity that can be drawn from each breath.

So recently, as a way of keeping my intentions straight- you guessed it- I'm beginning to write up a bucket list. I'm not going to call it that, because I still think it's a ridiculous term, but I've admitted that there are certain things that I've thought about doing but had considered out of my reach for one reason or another.

Unlike the movie, I'm not going sky-diving, because I still can't figure out why someone would want to jump out of a plane that isn't falling as fast as they are.

However, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? Absolutely. I've gotten into the outdoors much more in the last few years, and summiting Hemingway's legendary conquest would be a story worth living myself.

I'd like to take a boat down the Amazon River, because the sheer natural brutality of that region has captured my imagination for years.

One day, I'd like to stand at the Straits of Gibraltar, and then later on that day, get drunk at a bar that lies at edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

There are many journeys I plan on embarking on, and with my natural tendency to seek out the worst people and seediest parts of wherever I am, I'm sure they'll be interesting.

This way, when I'm done living this life, I'll be able to say that I made it all worth it, and lived a life that the wild men of the world would look on with approval after some producer makes a movie out of it decades from now.

As one man I know often says, “It's better to wear out than rust out.”

There could be no better motto for anyone's life.

Crushing the last smokes

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Since I was 16, everyone and their mother has informed me about the evils of smoking.

Women (and it was always women) would come up to me outside pizza places while I was enjoying an after-meal cigarette, and impart their knowledge on me of the human body and its propensity to die.

"Oh honey, you know that causes cancer!" they said.

I'd roll my eyes.

"Does it? Oh wow. Thanks. You've saved a life right here lady. I'm forever in your gratitude," I said as I'd stub it out and walk away.

Yea, a little harsh, but I don't offer advice to strangers who seem to be minding their own business, and I never liked those that feel its their job to do that for me.

But it's been a decade of smoking for me now, and even a hard-headed fool like me knows that the older I get, the more the damage stacks up.

That, along with my turning 26 this year, has convinced me that I'm apparently in this for the long haul, and I should start walking away from the things that are gradually killing me.

So the day before my birthday, I took my last drag of a Marlboro light, crushed the remainders, and started the dark, arduous journey to freedom.

When people tell you the first three days are the worst, they're not kidding.

A friend of mine, who was watching me chew gum and jitter with a scowl on my face while at a barbecue, asked me how I was doing with it.

"Well…let's just say that right now, I'd cut the head off a baby seal with a spoon and beat an orphan with it to get another smoke," I said, shaking my head.

He laughed. Kind of.

It's a difficult thing to take something that you did 20 times a day, every day, for 10 years, and just stop — a non-smoker asked me what it was like, and I said it was like being told that you can't use your left arm ever again.

After three days though, and some tribulations that came in the form of massive cravings while drinking beer, it started to dissipate.

Two weeks later, I've become used to not stopping for a cigarette when walking into or out of a building or bar.

I like waking up in the morning not coughing so hard my stomach wrenches, or being able to go a couple extra rounds on the heavy bag without gasping for breath.

My tongue has returned to the pink color that I assume it was supposed to be, and I can actually taste things that I've been eating and drinking for years like coffee and wheat bread (which I've now realized that I don't actually like that much).

I won't dramatize it by saying lies about how I've got a new lease on life… but I do feel better, and I'm almost convinced that it was worth it.

I miss smoking insanely; it was a nice crutch, and a good way to be able to disappear from awkward situations or other places I didn't want to be in, if only for a few minutes.

By quitting, however, I'm truly hoping that I dodged the one place that I really didn't want to be — and that was in some doctor's office in a few decades, and having him tell me that I have lung cancer.

And that's worth whatever I've got to deal with in the meantime.



http://www.northjersey.com/news/health/96534534_Crushing_the_smokes.html

New York crashes Jersey’s Giant party

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI 

I’ve heard it on the radio waves, on TV, and seen the excited announcements on Facebook for the past week— our very own Giants Stadium is finally going to get the Super Bowl in 2014.

This is a good thing for both the area and the NFL. It’ll bring business to the state, and it will also be nice to see football being played once again as the real men used to play it—outside in the brutal elements, come snow, sleet, or rain.

With the right weather conditions (or the wrong ones, if you’re playing), we might even have a repeat of the legendary Ice Bowl—the 1967 NFL title game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the temperature was a balmy negative 13 degrees at game time and the referees couldn’t use their whistles because they froze to their lips on contact.

That’s some manly stuff right there.

Of course, even with all of the excitement over the game, there’s one thing that bothers me—people, it seems, need a geography lesson on where exactly Giants Stadium is.

Say it with me boys, all you announcers and pundits and sportswriters across this great land—it’s in "New Jersey."

I know you want to forget about us except when making your poor jokes about the shore or big hair or any of the other…stuff…that has floated around about us over the years, but now, you’ve got to acknowledge us.

Too long have we taken the back seat to that shining city across the Hudson, and this latest affront on the part of the national media in referring to it as a "New York Super Bowl" is recklessly belligerent toward our state.

This won’t be a "New York Super Bowl" any more than the Knicks are a New Jersey disgrace—we will be dealing with the traffic, we’ll be putting up with the tourists, and most importantly, we’ll be bringing in the cash from it.

And rightfully so.

New York has long claimed the Giants as their own, even though the team played in three different states at various times before finally settling in the Meadowlands in 1976; while East Rutherford is only 7 miles from Times Square, you’ve still got to cross one big state line to get there.

Although I can only talk as a Giants fan, even the New York Jets, by far a more "New York" team, have played at the Meadowlands for 26 years after hustling out of Shea Stadium.

What’s that say about the city and football?

What says even more is that in all of the Giants games I’ve ever been to, I have yet to hear any kind of New York accent or talk to any fancy folks from Manhattan or Queens who made the trek out to the swamps to come see "their" team play.

It’s folks from Wayne or West Caldwell, Bayonne or Belleville, that go the games, pay the exorbitant parking fees, and trade their less-used appendages for the $10 beers.

I’ve accepted that the team that plays in New Jersey in the stadium built for no other purpose than to house them still has that damned "NY" on their helmets—some things just aren’t going to change.

But at least for the next four years, I want it tattooed on these announcers’ foreheads that East Rutherford isn’t New York, and that this game will be among New Jersey’s shining moments whether they like it or not.

So no more "New York Super Bowl."

No more "NY/NJ Super Bowl."

No more "New York Area Super Bowl."

It’s New Jersey. Get it right, especially you New Yorkers.

Otherwise, I might just have to start confusing Manhattan and Long Island…and we all know how much you’ll like that.

"Manhattan? Mastic? It’s all the same to me."

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/pro_sports/95480194_New_York_crashes_Jersey_s_Giant_party.html

Roy Jones's Last Chapter

Steve Janoski- It was with some trepidation that I read Vivek Wallace’s article, “Roy Jones: Closed Chapter, Open Book.” My fear was that somehow, through his last few fights, Jones is regaining his stature, at least amongst boxing writers, as a top player in the game. Upon reading the article, I saw these fears confirmed.

I have been a long time Roy Jones Jr. fan, and one need only watch one of the plethora of tributes on youtube to see why. In his prime, Roy was not only one of the greatest to step into the ring, he was also a showman worthy of P.T. Barnum’s stature.. Roy not only won the fights; he put on a spectacle that would leave fans with everlasting impressions that cemented his greatness- crushing Virgil Hills’ ribs with brutal right hand, making James Toney look like a fool for taunting him mid-fight, and pulling a page out of a cockfighting technique book in his stunning knockout of Glen Kelly. The man is to boxing what Dominique Wilkins was to basketball; a human highlight reel that not only triumphed, but made your jaw drop while doing it.

But those days are long since past. Since Jones’ knockout loss at the fists of Antonio Tarver, he has not recovered the strut and swagger that he once had. It has returned only in flashes, little pieces of excellence that Jones cannot quite draw together. He showed those pieces in his fight against Trinidad, in the first round of the Calzaghe fight, in his demolition of Lacy. But to say that the man is still a “top talent in the sport” is a vain attempt to resurrect a fighter whose body is not in the game anymore.

Wallace says that Roy is 5-1 in his last six fights. That’s true. But who were they against? Prince Badi Ajamu and Anthony Hanshaw were the first two. If anyone knows who they are, go out tonight and meet some girls, because you watch boxing too much.

The next was Tito Trinidad. Legend? Of course. Fading at age 35, fighting at 23 pounds above welterweight after taking three years off? Just a bit. Omar Sheika was another journeyman fighter, a guy whom Jones fought in the back of a convenience store somewhere in Florida in March. And follow that with “Left Hook” Lacy, whose meteoric fall is rivaled by few fighters in recent memory after his domination by Calzaghe. In other words- the worst college football team in the world will look invincible when playing at a high school level. This has been the story of the last few years.

And then, the one fighter I skipped over, Joe Calzaghe. I’m not a fan of Calzaghe because I find it hard to be a fan of anyone who hides in Europe and fights in a weight class like Super Middleweight, and only looks to fight the superstars the day after they get their AARP card in the mail. How good Calzaghe really is we’ll never know, but on that night in November last year, he was a damn sight better than Roy Jones.

Jones looked older than his age in that fight. There were few combinations, and none of the speed and ferocity that he has fought with in the past. Jones was an rusting hero leaning against the ropes, constantly trying to muster a counterattack against an overwhelming opponent who was tailor-made for him. Calzaghe had perfect angles, rapid fire punches, and even taunted Roy, getting inside his head and playing mind games with the man who so easily psyched out so many.

With under a minute left in the third round, Calzaghe was literally forehead to forehead with Jones, arms at his sides, firing off shots at will. Jones could do little more than move forward with his hands up, missing with the occasional hook while getting tagged with all sorts of shots. His legs, once so light and agile, were cinder blocks that could have left drag marks on the canvas. Perhaps the most heartbreaking part is that it really looked like Roy knew that this just wasn’t it, and with every punch that Calzaghe slipped and ducked, a piece of Roy’s heart fell apart.

And I feel for the guy. To have such talent, and to have it leave so quickly, is a horrific thing to deal with. I wonder how regular people would feel if the talent that they once had slid away from them, and there was little they could do to regain it. Roy is a mechanic who looks at a car and knows what he has to do, but isn’t strong enough to loosen the lug nuts. He is the writer who cannot remember the names of his characters, a comic who can no longer make people laugh.

After the Calzaghe fight, I was hoping he would retire. I wanted him to leave us with the highlight reels and the magnificence, and to not keep fighting on, hurting himself more every day. I don’t want to see such a character end up like Ali or Frazier or Hearns because he just didn’t know when to quit.

Roy Jones may very well defeat Danny Green. Although Green is younger, the Australian exhibits little head movement or defense, things which, even though Roy is older, are still needed to come away with a win against him. But if he gets a shot at another title, or even an equally aged but far different fighter in Hopkins, he will be shown once again that his glory days are not today.

The old adage is that boxers are the first to know, and the last ones to admit, when to quit. Roy Jones is not the exception. He must learn that this is, unfortunately, not Cinderella Man. Reflexes, once gone, don’t come back, and hand speed, once it fades, is gone for good; no training or trainer in the world can fix that.

Whatever the outcome, Roy will remain one of my favorite fighters. He will go down as one of the greatest of all time, and in his youth, I would have put my money on him to defeat any fighter in history. The grit and determination that he has showed in the last five years has also elevated him, regardless of record, because it has answered all questions about the amount of heart the man possesses. But should he fight on, he should remember his legions of fans that wish to see him healthy for the rest of his life. It’s a sad time when fighters realize that there is more to life than the fight itself. I myself wish Roy would see this…for his own good.

Article posted on 28.11.2009

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=22069&more=1

Cotto Will Shock the World

By Steve Janoski - Manny Pacquiao is not invincible, and will be beaten on Nov. 14. There, I said it.

I have been accused of “hating” Pac for my views, which is laughable because I’ve never met him. He is simply another sportsmen to me, a very good fighter in an era filled with them. His place in the history of boxing is neither assured nor agreed upon at present; how History judges him will undoubtedly be a result of the next five or so years..

There are, of course, certain things that the attentive observer cannot deny about Pac. He’s got a terrific left hand, and he has developed, under the guidance of trainer Freddie Roach, into a complete fighter that uses all the weapons at his disposal effectively. He has been outsized in a number of his fights in the past two years, and has come up on the winning end against fighters far more accustomed to the heavier classes. But does that mean that he can really move up to welterweight, and expect to win this Saturday?

The answer, in short, is no. Though very evenly matched, Pacquiao lost both fights to Marquez. He defeated David Diaz (who?), and then beat De La Hoya’s trembling ghost into submission. He also beat Ricky Hatton, and because I am not one that subscribes to the “Hatton is a club fighter” theory, Pac gets credit for this- he beat a very good fighter by dismantling him with hand speed and power. Fair enough.

Since that May night, the message boards have been alight with praise of Pacquiao. With the accolades heaped upon him, one might think that the little Filipino could kill Sampson if only given the chance, or slay a Klitschko or two if he had the opportunity (maybe both at the same time). His singing career, his movie, his profile in general, has risen off the charts, and rightly so. He’s worked hard, and deserves the fruits.

But there are holes in this story, and the hero is not actually invincible. Upon a closer look at his lightweight fight, Diaz, bleeding and shocked in the ninth round, was still landing flush shots on Pacquiao’s face. They didn’t do much because it was David Diaz throwing them… but what will happen when it’s Miguel Cotto who’s throwing them?

And since the Diaz fight, Pac has barely been hit by a punch. De La Hoya looked as if he’d stopped breathing sometime in late November but someone put him in the ring anyway, and Hatton barely landed a shot before being viciously Anquan Boldin‘d by Pacquiao’s fist.

This means that Pacquiao’s chin (and, more importantly, his liver) remain untested against a hard hitting welterweight. While Cotto is not the one-punch knockout type, he certainly has power- enough power that when he hits Pacquiao, he’s going to know that he got hit. What does this mean for a guy who twice got knocked out at 112 lbs.?

If the Puerto Rican lands that straight right on the chin in the eighth or ninth round, will Pacquiao be able to stand and trade? Will he be so quick to come in on a guy who has stood with, and defeated, the likes of Sugar Shane Mosely, Joshua Clottey, Ricardo Torres, and Zab Judah? The man who took 11 rounds of a beating from Margarito. That left hand will not likely be so potent against one who has stood in against bigger sluggers for the last three years, and has seen all those fighters had to offer.

On top of that, there are distractions galore. There is blatant discord in the Pacquiao camp as evidenced by HBO’s 24/7’s, as Roach seems to be going toe to toe with Pacquiao’s leaching, Rasputin-like “advisor” Michael Koncz. Koncz, who seems to ooze the kind of vile that you see only in the villains in Disney cartoons, looks like the sort that can drive a man’s career into the ground with the weight of his silver tongue. Who else would have Pacquiao spar with Jose Luis Castillo, who won his last fight in 1932? Not Roach, to be sure.

The flood-addled training in the Philippines, the meetings with politicians, the celebrity status…these things take away a boxer’s focus, and training when one’s mind is wandering is not the road to victory. Maybe Pacquiao doesn’t have problems concentrating… but it would certainly make him different than the rest of us.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings with heavy, serious eyes, is Cotto, training, training, and training. He has ferocity carved in his face, with the drawn look of a man who knows that his time is now or never. He is not a brash young fighter with little experience, and he is not a worn-out, drained-down old man. He is, at 29, in the prime of his career, at that peaking point when a fighter has been through enough wars that he is always comfortable in the ring, but young enough that those wars have not yet caught up with him. With his jab, his straight right, and his left hook to the ribcage, he seeks to end Pacquiao’s seven-title dream run, his Cinderella story that has gone on just a little too long.

Don’t be surprised if, on the night of Nov. 14, Cotto ends this story, and shows Pacquiao that not all fairy tales have happy endings.

Article posted on 10.11.2009

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=21838&more=1

Where is Floyd's Fighter's Heart?

By Steve Janoski - When I heard that Floyd Mayweather was returning to the ring, my first thought was, “This will be it.”

I had envisioned him returning to the sport like a conquering hero, a modern day Hernan Cortes, crushing those welterweights who he had been accused of ducking over the years with sharp left hooks and stiff straight rights. After these brawls, he would join the pantheon of boxing heroes and be called one of the Greatest Of All Time, alongside the Alis and Fraziers, the Durans and Lenoards, the Haglers and Hearns..

Yes, I thought. This must be it.

And then…I heard that he was fighting Juan Manuel Marquez… and I knew that this year‘s “Money” wasn’t any different than the last one.

Not that Marquez isn’t a great fighter, mind you- he most certainly is. However, he’s a small great fighter, one that is two weight classes lighter and five inches shorter in reach. On top of this, Floyd Mayweather is an incredible fighter, a once-in-a-lifetime talent with superb reflexes, impeccable ring generalship, and yet-unmatched hand speed.

Floyd has been blessed with that we mortals could only dream of having; even more remarkable, his skills, which for most men fade with age, have seemed to have only been enhanced, more defined in their perfection.

And that may be the real reason why Floyd is a rarity amongst fighters- unlike most warriors, whose hearts and wills outlive their skills, Floyd is the opposite- a fighter whose skills have outlasted what his heart, and maybe his head, tell him he can do.

Once upon we had a Floyd Mayweather Jr. who truly fought. We watched him embarrass the indomitable Chico Corrales, knocking him down five times in 10 rounds. We saw him in 24-rounds of war with Jose Luis Castillo, winning both times, the first by the narrowest of narrow margins.

Later, he battered the heroic Arturo Gatti into submission, raked Zab Judah (after Judah’s pre-requisite “Four Good Rounds” were over), and out-brawled Baldomir. He out-thought De La Hoya, and out-slugged Hatton. Two weeks ago, we saw him “come back” to the sport we all knew he never left against a determined, but outclassed, Juan Manuel Marquez in a decidedly one-sided fight that featured Mayweather at his finest.

Those last names are big ones to be sure; Hatton and De La Hoya are amongst the most popular fighters in this generation. Unfortunately for Floyd, that’s all they are- just names.

The Mayweather-De La Hoya fight was done plainly for the money. It was not the finest matchup that could be made- a 154 lb. Mayweather fighting out of his weight class, and being more conservative than normal against the quickly-aging De La Hoya who had always performed less than brilliantly in his biggest fights. Ricky Hatton was another one of those odd mismatches, with the tough Englishman who always struggled at welterweight stepping up for only the second time, and ending up way above his head. And since then, there was… well, silence.

Not from boxing fans, mind you. Since “Money” decided to move up to welter, we’ve all wanted to see him fight the big dogs; no more old warriors or blown up 140-pounders or 8-loss brawlers. No, we’ve wanted to see him get in with the lethal fighters, the Sugar Shanes, the Killer Cottos, the Clotteys. I would love to see him fight the Paul William, Andre Berto, hell, even the Collazo or Quintana. Just fight full size welterweights, the guys that he knows (and they know) could actually hurt him, the guys aren’t going to get in the ring with their hands down or forget to jab.

But that won’t happen. On Sept. 19, we saw that Mayweather knew full well that his smaller, slower opponent could hurt him no more than a puppy can hurt a pitbull. Unfortunately it seems that this is how Floyd likes things, and it is beginning to appear that this pitbull is silently fearful about facing dogs his size.

The look on Mayweather’s face when Sugar Shane Mosley got in the ring after the fight showed us all we needed to know- Floyd, looking more shook than Max Kellerman, didn’t react with his typical bravado. While not one man in the boxing world questions whether Sugar Shane would fight him, we all question whether Floyd is so willing. The “banter” after the fight did little to dispel that belief in those of us who hold it.

Regardless, Floyd will go on his way. He will beat Pacquiao in similar fashion as he dispatched Marquez, and probably go on to fight another fighter that he is sure he could beat before he retires again. He will make loud noises about how he is the greatest, but no one will listen. Why? Because for most fighters, it’s the names in the win-and-loss column that that defines their legacy; for Floyd, it appears that it will be the names not in any column that define his.

And that is not only a waste of God given talent, but also a God damn shame.

Article posted on 02.10.2009

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=21388&more=1

The bold man and the sea

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

The older I get, the more I am convinced that one day, I want to live near the ocean. This feeling, which tends to come on harder in the summer, struck me again this weekend as I was down in Long Branch for a friend’s wedding.

Long Branch is no prize of a city, and seems to mirror other shore towns that were once beautiful retreats but have fallen into disrepair as the years catapult by.

But standing on the ninth floor of a high rise hotel overlooking the sea, I was again enthralled with watching the waves roll in as the fishing boats lined the farthest piece of the horizon. The salt curled off the water and permeated the air, and again I thought to myself, I could certainly live next to this.

It’s there every summer when I go out to Long Island on an annual shark-fishing trip, driving through the small coastal communities to the marinas filled with eager boats in the cold early morning, swaying as they face down the great expanse of the Atlantic.

When I was a young kid, I read all of the stories that began in “Treasure Island” fashion, stories that invariably began with a naïve boy running off to the seas and landing squarely in the middle of great adventure, pirates, and daring conquests.

When I got into my college years as an English major, I read all of the stories and essays of the early American Transcendentalists like Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed their stories, I could not identify with the writers themselves— Emerson seemed like a hopeless idealist, Thoreau struck me as a bit of a Nancy, and Hawthorne like a suicide case.

One writer stood out when my professor described him, however, and that was Herman Melville, the famous author of the novel “Moby Dick.”

Melville had left home at 21 for a great brawling lifestyle on the high seas, and his writings reflect his wandering spirit, which seems a sharp departure from the other writers of that time.

My professor described him as a man more inclined to a fight than to weep, more likely to jump on a outgoing ship than surround himself with the solitude of the woods.

It was his time on the ocean, I’d wager, that made him a little more hard, a little tougher than his compatriots; I don’t believe it possible to spend your life on the groaning deck of a wooden ship in the nineteenth century and not, at the very least, be sure of yourself.

Although it may be a good thing that life isn’t as hazardous now as it was in Melville’s time, I do believe it a shame that as people, we’ve lost touch with the ocean.

Back in Melville’s time, if you wanted to travel anywhere from America, a ship was the only way to do it.

Average people had to steel themselves to the possibility that these voyages were lengthy and dangerous, and the chances of some disaster happening were decent.

This has all changed with the airplane, which has allowed travelers to cross thousands of miles while feeling as if they never left their living room.

This is much different than being in an uncomfortably small vessel in the middle of the ocean, and feeling with every rocking wave the power that you don’t have over whether your life continues or not. It is sobering and humbling, and makes me further admire the seafaring men.

And as I stood on that balcony, cigarette smoke mixing with the salty air, I thought for a moment that I wouldn’t mind if I had been born back then, and that that kind life would have suited me better than this one.

It’s a fleeting thought, of course, one that might fade quickly after a day on the water. But I do still wonder.

Finding solace in the night

BY STEVE JANOSKI

The transition from working blue-collar jobs to working at a desk was a difficult one for me. The language I used had to be mildly cleaner, the aura was more laid back, and I was no longer working with a bunch of cats that can sit around and compare the quality of the Gatorade that's served at the state's various county jails.

The most unexpected part, however, was the gut that I began to get, as instead of doing five miles worth of walking every day while lifting stone or metal, I was sitting around drinking coffee for most of the day.

Without a change in eating habits, this meant that in a year, I was 15 pounds heavier than I wanted to be at too young of an age - I was still lifting weights, but I wasn't getting all of the non-exercise physical activity that I used to.

This could not go on, I decided.

At the time, I had just gotten a lab-mix puppy named Lola that was either born wild or had a secret PCP stash that she didn't let us on to, so I resolved to begin walking the little maniac every night as a way of tiring her out and getting myself moving more.

We only walked at night, because I have always been slightly anti-social and didn't want to have to converse with every wandering soul in my neighborhood. Lola had no problem with that - she's slightly anti-social as well, and feels the same about dogs as I do about people.

Every night, we ambled along in the brutal frigidness of the New Jersey winter, making our way through the gentle hills of my neighborhood, and I began to join the long line of men (and dogs, I'm sure) that found solace walking through the lonely night.

There are many characters throughout history who found that same comfort- the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was known to take long walks about Paris, and used the time as a respite from the ever-modernizing society he lived in.

“These hours of solitude and meditation are the only ones in the day during which I am fully myself and for myself, without diversion, without obstacle, and during which I can truly claim to be what nature willed,” he wrote in his “Reveries of a Solitary Walker.”

Benjamin Franklin was another who enjoyed the strenuous work of simply moving, saying once in a letter to his son that, “There is more in one mile's walking on foot than in five on horseback.”

Boxers have long known the benefits of walking - an 1825 manual called “The Art and Practice of Boxing” advised walking at least two miles a day in between skill training, while heavyweight legend Rocky Marciano was known to walk for miles at night, regardless of whether he was preparing for a fight or not.

“His idea of a little walk is five miles out and five miles back after a meal. It keeps his legs in shape and, besides, it perks up his appetite,” said Rocky's trainer Charlie Goldman in 1953.

I found this to be true as well, as with a tighter diet and a couple miles a night, I began to drop weight.
Day after day though, I discovered other little nuances that being free of the protective shell of a Ford endowed me.

After a month, I could tell which houses had fireplaces by the thick aroma of burning wood that rolled out into the streets.

I watched as the constellations leisurely rambled across the night sky, and noticed that the water in a nearby reservoir had frozen in the shape of waves. The world truly does fall away at night, and gives us a glimpse of that which we've ignored when we're racing around in the streets.

One night, we stumbled upon a herd of a half-dozen deer - I caught the sight of their glinting eyes in the road first; Lola kept walking in a merry fog until I yanked her leash.

“Aren't you supposed to see them before I do?” I asked her sarcastically. She looked at me dismissively.

Four months and many arctic miles later, I'm back at my fighting weight of 171.

Of course, as the nights get warmer and life gets busy again, it's easy to get lazy.

“We'll go tomorrow…I've got stuff to do,” I say to her…but she won't let me forget, and perks up anytime I put a jacket on after dusk, watching me with her curious ears up.

“Not tonight pup. Tomorrow.”

Her eyes follow me, accusing. Before I leave, I turn to look at her again, sighing. Her eyes are bright, questioning.

“Alright dog. Let's go. A quick one though.”

She's out the door before me every time.

Big Easy’s pain strikes close to home

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
By Steve Janoski

When the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl this past February amongst a chorus of “Who dats” and pre-Mardi Gras debauchery, we all heard about was how good this would be for the people of the city after the apocalyptic destruction that Hurricane Katrina had heaped upon them.

Katrina? I thought. Wasn’t that like five years ago?

Saying that the Saints winning the Super Bowl made people forget about Katrina seemed like saying the Bears want to win this year so Chicagoans can get over the great fire of 1871.

After five years, I thought, the city was probably back to where it was before with high-rises a Superdome and Cajun food, because this is America, and we rebuild speedily and without mercy — and I rooted against the Saints because of this.

How wrong I was.

I didn’t understand this until I stood in Pequannock’s lower end last month, and saw for myself what a flood does. It not only destroys houses, but after throwing up all of the trash and sewage we dump in it, sucks the people’s spirits with it on its return to its banks.

It was in the despondent eyes peaking out from under slouched hats as the men gazed towards their swamped homes, or the aimless wandering that people do when they have nowhere to go, nothing to do except stand in the rain.

The only chorus in Pequannock that day was the rattling machine-gun song fashioned from the generator engines that showed that some folks just wouldn’t leave, come hell or higher water.
The cleanup has been massive, and the reconstruction will be that much harder.

Many people have had enough, and are looking to be bought out so they never have to deal with a watery plague ever again; ugly catchwords and phrases like “FEMA,” “catastrophe,” and “Army Corps of Engineers” are uttered in our own streets.

Coinciding appropriately with our own flooding, HBO has begun running a new drama called “Treme,” which focuses on the people of New Orleans immediately after Katrina — and finally the vicious picture has begun to gather in my head.

The Pequannock flooding was unruly — the New Orleans flooding was armed to the teeth while on steroids and meth.

We’ve all seen the pictures of the bodies floating in the hurricane water, heard the ugly stories about the armed mobs and the utter devastation — we’ve been under a media inundation for the past five years about Katrina that rivals the height of the waters themselves.

Under those conditions, it becomes easy to have a calloused heart about the city and to believe the positively selfish idea that, “It’s their problem. We’ve all got our own.”

But Treme is the first show that’s put a regular face on the people and doesn’t ask us to pity them, but to just acknowledge that they’re still there.

It is written with the colorful flair and fiery style that only New Orleans has, and writer-producer David Simon focuses (as he did with Baltimore in his previous series “The Wire”) on the city as a living, breathing character, not simply a place where people live.

The human characters’ eyes hold the reflections of the those shattered neighborhoods in the pictures we’ve all looked away from, while the city’s character stems from all the things that New Orleans has become famous for, from the jazz players (many of whom play themselves in the show) to the food to…yes, its football team.

So I take it back, Saints.

Your city needed that win to strengthen its spirit, to remind the people that the Superdome is more than just an evacuation site, and that if a team once nicknamed the “Aint’s” can beat Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl, anything can happen.

I hope that it steels the spines of that trickle of people who are, five years later, just returning to their homes, and makes them fiercely determined to build New Orleans into the great city it once was, a city that, in John Goodman’s character’s words from Treme, “lives in the imagination of the world.”

If it does, then that game was worth its weight in old New Orleans rum.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/91784854_How_the_Big_Easy_s_pain_finally_struck_close_to_home.html

Where have all the rockers gone?

Wednesday, April 7
By Steve Janoski

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, the Doors, Motley Crue, Buckcherry.

They didn’t begin modern rock n’ roll, but they’ve kept it going through its toddler years of the 1960s and have kept it rolling since, bringing this hard, swaggering style of music to the masses by playing show after show for year after year, paying their dues and rising to fame.

And that’s the one thing that they, along with most other rock bands that have “made it,” share: they all started somewhere.

It was in some guitarist’s parents’ basement in Los Angeles or Freehold or Jacksonville that they got together.

They progressed, as we’ve seen so many times in “Behind the Music” fashion. They played in smoke-choked, dimly-lit bars, sold their brand to swaying, drunken crowds who, at least at first, didn’t care that they were there.

They lived in roach-filled apartments, drove for miles to play gigs, and kept on playing until they got so damned tight that you knew they were in it for the long haul, live or die. And eventually, they got “noticed.”

At least, this was the formula back then. Now? I’m not so sure.

In my carousing across New Jersey’s nightlife, I’ve come to believe that there just isn’t anybody playing their own guitar-driven, gut-busting, fight-starting rock n’ roll anymore. It’s become a “scene” of lowly cover band after lowly cover band, playing the same Rolling Stones and Billy Idol cover songs before their huge finale of “Sweet Home Alabama” rolls out.

C’mon. Really?

I’m not sure why this has all gone down the way it has. There are less venues to play than there used to be, but that’s not a reason that long-haired 17-year-olds should lay down their guitars, take their torn Maiden t-shirts off, and start going to school.

There are definitely enough places for these cover bands to play — they seem to find where I’m at every Friday night, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be an original band instead, or even a band that plays original songs at least half of the time.

I’ve never been in a band myself, but I’d imagine that there’s a kind of special feeling that happens when four or five guys get together and create a new song that they play for the first time and say to themselves, “Damn…that was good.”

It’s probably a way better feeling when they play that song out in public the first few times, and get a reception from the crowd that shakes the rafters and knocks beers off the table — I suspect that’s why musicians get into the whole thing in the first place.

There’s a clip on YouTube that I found recently of AC/DC performing their song “Whole Lotta’ Rosie” live in 1978 at what looks to be a small club in England.

The people are packed tightly together like toothbrush bristles, while onstage a shirtless, tattooed Bon Scott howls on the microphone while Angus Young races around headbanging and kicking and tearing through solo after solo, captivating his rollicking audience of reckless youths and the thing is just the embodiment of wild energy and passion, of fire!

Somewhere, sometime, that band played to an empty bar when they began; maybe they thought about just playing covers on the weekends when someone told them that they weren’t any good.

But they forged ahead… and look where it got them.

I hope the kids today are doing the same, because without them, rock n’ roll will soon die off, and the only things playing at bars will be the same half-hearted Skynyrd covers or the whiny songs from the bartender’s iPod.

Until then, though, I keep hoping that every bar I walk into, the next Bon Scott is nervously getting ready to walk onstage for the first time, tapping his fingers and shaking his leg, waiting to hear what the crowd will say about his band’s set.

To those about to rock: we’re all waiting for you.

Defending our last bastion

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
By Steve Janoski

Only in Brooklyn could the idea of bringing a baby inside a bar sound anywhere near a good idea — but that's what happening, according to Jessica Ravitz's recent article on CNN.com, "Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars."

Ravitz chronicles the story of one Matt Gross, 35, an editor for the blog DadWagon and the columnist who writes the Frugal Traveler in the New York Times. He's also the stay-at-home father of a 14-month old daughter.

In the article, Gross says that he "longs for adult contact," and that though he has a child, he "doesn't want to be excluded from the adult world," so he brings his daughter with him to the bar.

The craze has apparently caught on in Brooklyn, where bar patrons are forced to put up with middle-aged adolescents who can't tear themselves away from the bottle for long enough to raise a kid.

My objections to this are multilayered. As a 25-year-old pub connoisseur, I am revolted by the idea of sitting in my neighborhood dive surrounded by children.

The guys I know go to bars to be out with other adults. We go to hit on women, or to commiserate about what said women have done to us. We tell stories about other nights drinking, laugh at crude jokes, and, depending on the night of the week and the amount imbibed, other things that the majority of society frowns on.

But it's OK. Why? Because that's our escape from the straight-laced job or the overbearing wife, and our last, great hiding place from the never-ending responsibilities that are heaped on us over the course of life.

Children, however, have the run of the country. Everything is about "the children" — some celebrity has a costume malfunction at the Super Bowl, and it's "What about the children!?" If an athlete gets arrested for some indiscretion, its always, "What does this tell the children!?"

Kids can go to any movie theater or restaurant, and other patrons are expected to put up with any kind of screaming fits or other baby issues they might have. And that's fine — this is the way it is.

But honestly, the bars? Have they no mercy or compassion for this last bastion of true adulthood? We who go to bars do not want to be surrounded by children and strollers and other reminders of either present or future responsibilities…we just want to have a beer after work or enjoy a Friday night.

And on top of that, what does it say about the fathers themselves, putting a little kid in harm's way at a bar because you "long for adult contact?"

Any place where alcohol is served en masse' is going to come with a certain degree of danger, and bars are known for being the place where you…well, get drunk. And when those people get drunk, they act in wholly different ways than they would otherwise.

Alcohol is involved in a good chunk of violent crimes — you don't often hear about the guy who drank too much Gatorade one night and decided to shoot his wife. Why put a little kid in the same spot where a lot of crimes start, and a good amount end?

The danger is not just from a lone drunken basket case, either. What happens if a guy has a couple beers and loses his balance and knocks the kid off the stool, falls on them, or even gets run into while he's standing? While these things can happen anywhere, things tend to end worse when booze is around, and it's the child that will pay the price.

The amount of fights I have seen in bars is also beyond count, and it doesn't matter what time of day you're there, because things happen. Is it worth it for a kid to be around that instead of just springing for a babysitter?

I don't have kids, but what I learned from my father about it is that when you do end up having them, they have to come first. You put their safety above everything else, and you don't do anything to jeopardize it.

I'd like to tell Mr. Gross that when he decided to have kids, he should have understood that his life wasn't going to be about what he wants anymore, but what his daughter needs — and what she doesn't need to be around is the kind of people like me who spend a lot of time at the local pub.

And if he wants some "adult contact"… join a book club.

http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/89085917_Defending_our_last_bastion.html

It's finally here. Slainte.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

By Steve Janoski

What's one of the quickest ways to irritate your friends? Ask them the same question, all year long.

"Hey man, you know what's coming?"

They'll get a confused look on their faces. What could you possibly be talking about?

"No…. what?"

"Saint Paddy's Day!" I say elatedly.

They shake their heads, and say over their shoulder as they're walking away, "dude, it's July."

Generally people look at my Italian features, or my Polish last name, and wonder where this affinity for such an ethnic holiday came from.

I tell them, as I have so many times over the years, that ethnicity is more than a matter of how you look or what name you've got— it's about what lies in your heart.

Growing up, I was taught by my grandmother that St. Patrick's Day was a day of celebration, infused with a historical sense of pride at being both Irish and Catholic, and each year, we'd go into New York City to watch the parade and honor that pride.

She'd tell me never to wear orange "because it's the Protestant color," and point to the green line painted down Fifth Avenue to mark the parade route, saying how in the early days the Protestants would come douse it in orange paint, enraging the Catholics.

We would watch from near St. Patrick's Cathedral as the U.S. Army's "Fighting 69th" New York regiment led the parade off, as solemn and fierce looking as the men who made the unit famous long ago by making some of the most brutal but gloriously valiant charges of the Civil War.

Their flag, famous for its deep green background and golden harp, is still carried throughout the parade, with the regiment's motto inscribed on the bottom of it: "Riam nar druid o sbarin lann"— "Those who never retreat from the clash of spears."

We'd see the Irish wolfhounds trudge by, along with hundreds of bagpipers of various societies, and the wails of "Scotland the Brave" would flood the great boulevards.

Eventually we'd eat at an Irish pub of some sort, with a young me catching my first glimpse of the densely packed bar crowd that I'd eventually join— and after turning 21, I did so with gusto.

Of course, many St. Paddy's Days since then have turned into a Mulligan stew of rowdiness that I can't write about until I'm entirely sure that the statute of limitations has expired, but even looking at the holiday through the amber bottom of a Jameson-filled pint glass, I've tried to remember what this holiday is really for… and it's not drinking.

It's for every son of Erin who came over to this strange new land during the Great Famine, covered in fleas and dying of starvation, and built this country up by the labor of their hands and the force of their will, carving out their own little corner of the American Experiment.

It's for those who stepped off the ships and straight into the Civil War, and fought to end a form of slavery that mirrored their own brutal oppression in the Old Country.

It's for my great-grandfather, James Lynch, who left his comfortable home in Jersey City to load up on the big boats and fight in the Great War, sitting in sodden trenches in France working the artillery, unsure if he would ever see the shores of home again.

It's for Jack Dempsey and JFK and Whitey Bulger, for the Molly Maguires and Micky Ward and every O' or Mc' who ever wore a patrolman's shield in any city. It's for Brendan Behan and Paddy Murphy and the Easter Rising, for Yeats and the Dead Rabbits and the IRA.

It's for every Irish firefighter who ran into those buildings on 9/11, and whose only remains were found in the form of the countless claddagh rings found in the rubble.

It's a day for best and the worst of us, whether we came here long ago or just yesterday, who share the blood of that tough little island that defeated one empire and helped to build another, and have made the "Irish experience" in America worthy of the annals of history.

To all of you, to all of us— Slainte. Enjoy.

http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/87304097_It_s_finally_here__Slainte_.html?page=all

The sick bed of Cuchulainn

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2010, 12:32 AM

BY  STEVE JANOSKI

When I had come home in the wee hours of what was now Friday morning, I saw her lying on her side in the kitchen, her famously long tongue hanging lazily out of her mouth and a small puddle of drool collecting on the hardwood floor.

It was almost over. We both knew it.

A decade ago, Zoe had been spry and wild-eyed, wonderfully goofy in the way that only a yellow Labrador puppy can be with gigantic paws that flailed awkwardly as she made her first attempts at running.

The people at the pet store had given us a warning when we first bought her, saying with sly smiles, "Well, she really likes to eat…"

I held her in my lap on the way home from the store, and it was one of the last times I was able to—her genuine love for food of any and all kinds eventually led her to "fill out" and become broad-shouldered, 115 pound behemoth; I have no doubt that many a fearless animal was surely struck with terror as she lumbered near over the years.

She made it clear to us from the start that she was going to live on her own terms. She slept on our all-glass kitchen table like it was a waterbed, and when we broke her of that, she took to the couch, lying lazily on her back with all four paws in the air.

In order to tame her never-ending lust for life, we brought her to an obedience school where the owner, an older man named Bob, did his best to train her to "heel," "sit," and do those other things that dogs are supposed to do.

Unfortunately old Bob didn't realize that we'd bought the William Wallace of the dog world; on Zoe's last day of training, she went after his two big German Shepherds, and sent both running after a brisk fight.

Even then he was impressed, though, and said that if we had decided not to keep her for some reason, she would have been excellent to train for search and rescue. Why?

"Because she's so stubborn," he said.

Over the years, her daily swims in our backyard pond, her ceaseless endeavor of trying to exterminate all squirrels that crossed her path, and the constant intimidation of any dog that had the gall to look her way all became things that defined who she was: she was big, she ran everything, and damned if you didn't know it.

But she was a wonderful dog. She had a genuine love for people, and would eagerly approach anyone who looked pleasant or smelled of food, her massive tongue hanging out and a broad dog's grin on her face. My father liked to say that she was the "Marilyn Monroe" of yellow labs.

She loved children as well, and the kids in our neighborhood would stop their skateboards and come over and pet her whenever she was being walked.

Her tail would wag furiously when she heard them yell, "Hey Zoe!" from down the street— her walks were the highlight of her life, and she is still the only dog who I have seen that learned to look both ways before crossing the road.

These days, things were different. She became stricken with Lyme Disease (and possibly some other unknown killer) which quickly sapped her strength and all but eliminated her once formidable appetite.

As I sat there on the floor with her in hours before sunrise that Friday, I knew that this warrior-dog was simply running out of fight.

I tried to make her bring her tongue back in, but even this proved too much. The next day, the life began to slide out of her.

Our young puppy tried to force her to play, and put her squeaking toys on Zoe's back, expecting her to react with her typical gusto. When she didn't, the pup looked at her warily, not understanding what happened to her big companion.

"It's OK old dog," I whispered to Zoe, running my hands through her soft fur. "Go to where you dogs go."

Less than an hour later she was dead, gone to whatever pleasant pastures that dogs roam when they die, where disease doesn't exist and the world is warm with life.

All that was left on the kitchen floor was a withered and meaningless husk, a silent reminder of the fearsome fire she once possessed.

Sometimes I wonder if a decade of "wonderful" makes up for the misery that is so hard to shake after they pass.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com