http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-15-1-columns-ny-life.html MY YOUNGER SISTER strolled nonchalantly into the kitchen, water glass in hand, and said, “I pushed the enema button.” “Enema what?” I asked, my brain spinning like a washing machine cycle. I’ve mainly known buttons with simply defined functions: stop, start, pause, record.They’re directives not requiring further description. I guess you could say the same thing about an enema button. However, I lacked ingredients crucial to any journalism tale.When.Where. And most frightfully, why and how?]]> IT IS NO secret that my biceps and triceps are floppier than spaghetti, barely able to hoist an unabridged dictionary above my head.]]> “I THINK WE’VE traveled far enough for a piece of fried chicken,” my friend Matt says, applying his bike brakes. Like a game-show girl, he fakesmiles and gestures to our impediment— an industrial canal featuring a 15-foot plunge into fetid water, with train-topped railroad tracks looming beyond.]]> Here on the top floor of our building, located on the second-largest hill in Brooklyn, we are privileged to be able to get a close-hand look at a number of different types of hawks. When we first moved here, I was startled by a screaming sound just outside the bedroom window. It was the shrill squawk made by many infants of many different species. When I went to the window, there on a standpipe, possibly 3-feet away, was a young fledging red-tailed hawk, bawling in complaint.]]> “Daddy's thirsty,” I said, as my girlfriend and I emerged fromour Brooklyn subway stop. Of late, I’ve referred to myself as daddy, though, much to my mother’s chagrin, we are not expecting children. “Daddy wants a beer.” Understanding that a buzzed Josh is a content Josh, my girlfriend agreed to a bodega detour. ]]> THE 7TH AND 8th grade performance of Meet Me in St. Louis at the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School auditorium Jan. 21 and 22, 1983, has taken on almost mythic status.With each passing year, more and more people claim to have been in attendance on those magic nights in Princeton Junction, N.J. I was on stage portraying Fred Gregory, suitor of one of the four Smith sisters. Sharing the stage and playing the role of Lon, the Smith brother, was 12-year-old Ethan Hawke. Even though I was already 13, I liked Ethan. He was a nice kid. Little did I know the parallel lives awaiting us.]]> WHEN MOST FOLKS travel, they return bearing snow globes or perhaps a T-shirt. I buy beer.The last couple months I've hopscotched from Beijing to Portland, Maine, to the North Carolina coast, securing sixers of Bell's Two-Hearted Ale, Duck-Rabbit Amber Ale and Tsingtao Stout.]]> MY EDITOR’S EMAIL glowed in my inbox like a firefly, the subject line beckoning me to click: “Would you be interested in…” it read. “Not again,” I muttered. I’m often my editor’s guinea pig, munching deep-fried cod sperm and salsa-drizzled brain tacos for the sake of journalism. Heck, last week my editor requested my attendance at— I’m clenching my legs as I type—a testicle festival. “They want to chow down on sheep balls to up their virility or something,” he wrote. Or something, indeed.]]> Thursday, June 28, 2007, sometime before noon: A colorful pheasant materialized near the drive-thru window of the Burger King located at 7100 Amboy Rd. on Staten Island. Employees walked outside to greet the peacock with offerings of love and bread. Moments later, John Potts, 32, an area man with a known history of mental issues, entered the parking lot and began violently attacking the bird.]]> Over the last three decades numerous dubious foodstuffs have passed twixt my lips, from spicy horse jerky (chewy!) to sautéed lamb mammary (squishy!) to stir-fried pork bung (rubbery!). But till last week, I’d never experienced the gustatory pleasures of sperm. To rectify that glaring culinary omission, I licked my lips and sought out shirako, aka cod milt, aka cod sperm. Come winter, the cod is mature and raring to mate. Before it can spread its seed, the cod is caught and its baby batter—a fat blob that recalls brains—is carefully harvested. ]]> If nothing else, New York City is divine at destroying itself. I could harp on Penn Station and Ebbets Field—architectural monuments martyred to the gods of progress—but I’m too hairy to be mistaken for Jane Jacobs. Besides, I’m more concerned with comestibles.Thus, this’ll be an elegy for the oyster. More than 150 years ago, New York’s waterways were choked with oyster beds, which provided sustenance for city-dwellers of every stripe: High-class swells could sup on oysters Rockefeller at Delmonico’s, while the proletariat dined on bivalves by the pail. Shuck ’em, slurp ’em, chuck ’em—oysters seemed as inexhaustible as bison. Oh, the 19th-century’s sweet naiveté.]]> I’m the kind of guy who apologizes for a bump on the subway in the middle of rush hour. I don’t want to ruffle any feathers or cause trouble. This is the same mindset that dictates avoiding eye contact and wearing a hood at all times. I guess this could make me a good target for scammers, seeing as how I would rather err on the side of caution and give a guy five bucks for accidentally breaking his bottle of booze, than fight with him over it. Ah, the follies of freshmen year. But that all changed one day when the con was so obvious, the lie so transparent, that I couldn’t help but take a stand.]]> During my hormone-ravaged youth, I’d often encircle my younger brother with elastic luggage straps then suspend him upside down, like a side of sevenyear-old beef. Or I’d lock him in a darkened closet with no company except his racing, panicked thoughts. “Let me ouwwwwwwt!” Jon would holler, cries drowned by Smashing Pumpkins cranked to 11.Yes, today was the greatest day I’d ever known.]]> PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS telling me that the early bird gets the worm, but for as long as I can remember, the satisfaction of sleeping in has far outweighed the promise of any worms that could have come my way.]]> It was a lazy weeknight, with a computer on my belly broadcasting horror flick Santa’s Slay, when my girlfriend’s scream pierced the night like a steam whistle. I hit pause—satanic Santa had just impaled a Jew with a menorah—and sprinted to the kitchen. Had hoodlums descended our fire escape? Or was something nefarious afoot at the neighboring assisted-care facility? Narcotics, the elderly and nurses can be a wicked brew.]]> Like millions of Americans celebrating baby Jesus’ birthday, I spent December 25 at a movie theater. But how many people prepared for a film by watching their girlfriend’s brother puff pot in a windy New Hampshire parking lot? “Want to get high?” asked the bro, his muttonchops as thick as his eyes were red. I reached for the smoking bowl and then recoiled, as if it were a hissing rattlesnake.]]> To the long, irrational list of substances I despise, allow me to add champagne, that celebratory bathwater better suited for spraying than sipping.Though bubbles can be as invigorating as a Coney Island plunge come January, I find champagne’s dry sourness as noxious as Glenn Beck. When toasting, I favor effervescent Stoudt’s Pils—a lively low-alcohol beer that doesn’t cause a temples-crushing hangover—to champagne’s morning-after gift.]]>