Trip in vain

I had hoped a sales jaunt up to Northern New Jersey would yield some good blog fodder, but not really.
Yes, I saw an Assyrian Orthodox Church, as well as a Greek one and a Russian one.
Yes, I saw lots of cops waiting by the sides of roads, one even sniffed my butt.
Yes, I went through two toll booths on the Turnpike when the stupid reader wouldn't recognize my badge for jah knows what reason, when the ones on the Parkway were just fine with it.
Yes, some stupid woman in a rusty Dodge Neon spewed oil all over my car.

But really there was little of note. Probably was looking too hard. There was a thing in the New Yorker not long ago about this guy Milch who was a writer for Hill Street Blues and then NYPD Blue and now Deadwood. Mary said that I needed to read it because the guy's just like me: alkie, Yalie, visionary in his own mind. So I read it. In many ways the guy's a pretentious primadonna with Matthew Barneyesque macho stylings, but then he gives his advice to young writers: write 20 to 50 minutes a day, write dialogue, and don't think about what you're writing before you do it. Makes sense. You can't force it.