Amber Poison, Death

It's a late October blustery full moon night and we just got out of a wedding banquet, which in fact, is more like a circus freak show. I don’t normally comment on other people's medical condition but a one breast bride and a groom who had his right arm amputated for religious purpose is at best creepy to me. There was only that much we could stomach so two hours into it, Janice and I decided that was not our kind of party, and we sneaked out.

Janice, my girl friend, is a charming, nice and intelligent character. I am suffering from a mild headache and she had let me lean my weight on her all the way since we left the ball room at the hotel across the street from the garage where we parked.

At first it appeared there was nothing unusual with this parking garage, except that we never knew it exists. That is strange because my office is just at the end of the block. I really don't see how I could have missed it, especially when it is free parking -- you go in and out without passing by a toll booth. Perhaps I have just not been paying attention.

Indeed, I haven’t even noticed that I have parked in a garage full of wrecks from last century, with flat tires and peeled-off paint exposing patches of rusty metal. There were fender benders, cracked windshields, some have the words "clean me" scribed by some punk on the blanket of dust shrouding their bodies.

Free establishments usually have inferior maintenance and this one is no exception. The floor is covered with sprawling cracks and is stained with oil spills and other sorts of fluid leaks. Overhead pipelines hidden in the dark have crumbs of rust underneath the dusty greasy white paint, waiting to burst to the surface. Florescent fixtures are flickering like lightning launched from the heavens; and Janice's high heels knocking on the cement floor, echoing across the enclosed area is the fierce roaring of thunders unleashed by the angry gods.

But the most unbearable is that suffocating sour stench of vomits.

The car is parked at a quiet shadowy corner. Janice and I are both feeling increasingly uneasy and very anxious to leave. She even tried to snatch the car keys from me and didn’t get in the car until after several failed attempts and a small fight between us.

I hop in, start the engine, put the gear in reverse, lay my right arm round the passenger side headrest, turn my head ready to back up; and then things take a very bad turn.

There is someone behind the car, in a black hood and cape.

I can see no face under the dim illumination, just a dark shadow in a cloak there in its cold stillness.

I gape in awe, as I am certain that he wasn't there a minute ago. “Where did he come from? What does he want?” I ask myself.

I pause as I gather myself to understand the situation. There's just something wrong in the picture -- with the back up signal lights brightening up things, this mysterious stranger remains dark, like a black hole that consumes even light. And I almost think he is carrying a scythe.

An intangible eerie feeling chills my spine and I feel desperate to bail. But I am reluctant to run him over. I could go to jail for that.

So I roll down the window to take a peek. But then a small white object in the adjacent VW Bug catches my eye. I squint to the translucent white face of a clown with a yellow pointed hat on, blue eyes and cone nose, just a head floating in mid air staring with a gruesome devilish grim.

Stunned and terrified, I scream like a school girl and throw myself into Janice’s black velvet gown, only to look up and find not hers but the pale lifeless face of a witch, tall pointed black hat, long dull black hair, purple eye lids and lips, moles at her nose tip and chin.

I frantically push her away with my nervously shaking hands and corner myself to the car door, uttering pleas for mercy. Wet and warm feeling spreads across my crouch.

She mutters a few complaints in Janice’s sweet voice, then turns around and stretches her arm, tipped with crooked dry bony fingers and long purple nails, towards the rear shelf. Her hand wraps around the man in cloak behind the car, crumples him up and tears him off where he stands.

I cover that gaping hole on my face with both of my hands, frozen dumbfounded for she is capable of grabbing that mysterious figure outside the car.

The witch carries that torn off piece over to my crouch. Soft and apparently very absorbent, she proceeds to soak stains off my pants with it.

There is a lesson to this story -- don’t drink like crazy just because the beer is free -- unless you don’t mind making a fool out of yourself at a Halloween make up party, throwing up on your Dracula tux, wetting yourself in front of your girlfriend, mistaking the reflection of your Jack in the Box antenna ball as a hovering evil clown head and the silhouette of a Kleenex tissue sticking out of a box as the grim reaper.

So what's it like in a New York Public Library?

I'll tell you what's it like in a cardboard New York Public Library.

My date with Pooh and friends

It was so thrilling to me, to get a chance to visit Pooh, and take pictures with him and his friends!

It's a real date this time.

The "Mr. Sanders" sign still hangs over Pooh's tree house entrance.


And it is exactly as I had imagined inside.


Soon under a partially cloudy sky, Pooh and Tigger showed up, and posed with me.


I even got to take a picture for the second time in Pooh's english cottage, this time Eeyore was there as well.


So satisfying it was.

My date with foreign dignitaries

So I had a lunch date with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and French President Nicolas Sarkozy two weeks ago while they were at New York for the UN general assembly.



Not a real lunch date really of course.

I just bumped into them a few blocks away from the UN building. Without warning or police escorts a large crowd just showed up preceeded by the press.





I rushed through the pedestrians to take more pictures when I realized who they were. But the funny part? This amateur photographer quickly turned into the photographed.






Why don't the Hollywood talent scouts do the same thing?