gremmie.net

I have no idea what I’m doing this Saturday, but this is it. I don’t even know which team I’m on. Only in New York.

XXXXX OVERVIEW XXXXX

The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. Our Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it’s people, instead of sleds, it’s shopping carts, and instead of Alaska it’s New York City.

The race begins at Fulton Ferry Pier in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and finishes at Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. Teams of five will compete for cash prizes.

We expect teams in costumes, hot-rod shopping carts, and all sorts of ancillary mayhem. We think it will be extraordinarily silly.

Everyone is invited to race. If you would like to race and do not have a team, please send an email to jstark@nonsensenyc.com telling us what kind of team you would like to join: In It To Win It or Drinky Drinky. We will do our best to find you a good home.

There will be an awards ceremony at Kabin on Second Avenue, between 5th and 6th streets, in Manhattan.

Here’s a list of the combatants.

XXXXX REGISTERED TEAMS XXXXX

This is a working list of registered teams. There is a chance that there is a team that is not listed below; we might have just misplaced the note or forgotten what you told us late at night in a bar. Please forgive us and just send us an email to update our roster.

MINY Pain
Kostume Kult Pirate Posse
Evil Team
COBRA team 1 (Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association)
COBRA team 2
COBRA team 3
Here’s The Beef
Camp Tiger Claw
Fakework
InterExchange / Au Pair USA
Greene Dragon
Sao
SPY05
Debra
Richard Rude
Deadly Ruthless Ninja Killaz (DRNK), Christina Doyle

First of all I want to thank everyone who managed to squeeze a few pennies out of their pockets to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Charity is the gear driving civility. I heard that somewhere - probably on a Guinness commercial. Regardless, I plan on keeping a link to the foundation readily available for those who are suddenly overwhelmed by the chartiable bug and feel compelled to donate.

gremmie.net will be the recipient of a new “the Band” section in the coming weeks. Matthew Ammerman has graciously donated his services in an effort to provide an accurate archival of the Band Gremmie. For those of you who have been with Gremmie since the beginning, think of it as a reliably fond look down memory lane. A lyrics archive will be assembled along with a never before seen tablature section for all your favorite Gremmie songs. Audio and Video will follow shortly thereafter. For those gremmies with pictures of us live and in concert or out and about, please feel free to mail them here at m@gremmie.net, and they will promptly be included.

The following account has been slightly modified for the viewing public to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. I will only say that they are the kind of people who do not seek public notoriety for extraordinary deeds.

I recieved a forwarded email today from my sister. The original email was sent by someone I’ve known and respected all my life, and in the interest of privacy shall henceforth be called W.J. Calitrano. His son Danny has Cystic Fibrosis and the following story welled me up with tears in the middle of the work day and will no doubt send you to the Kleenex. When you’re finished reading, please visit CFF.ORG and make a donation, every gremmie should.

I cried today, uncontrollably, for about a half hour. They were tears of joy, and I don’t think I will be able to get any work done until I share that joy with you.

Earlier in the day I received a call from my dear friend (and former colleague) Bob Ippolito, himself near tears. He had just received a card from my son, Danny, who is sixteen. It was a thank-you card.

Truth be told, I had known that Bob would be receiving Danny’s card, because I had asked Danny to send it. I even bought the card for Danny, and I suggested some language that might be appropriate. However, I made Danny assure me that he would use only words that seemed right flowing from his pen, and I promised not to cramp his style by hovering nearby while he wrote — or even by reading the note, afterward. I kept those promises, leaving the room as Greg began to compose.

A few minutes later, Danny sought me out and handed me the card and envelope, already sealed and addressed to “Mr. Ippolito.” All I had to do was put a stamp on it and drop it in the mail.

The card thanked Bob for an extraordinarily generous contribution that he had just made to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Bob had sent the contribution to me, to forward to the CF Foundation, as part of my own fundraising efforts: My wife Kathleen and I run an annual golf tournament to benefit the Foundation. We founded the event in 1989, shortly after Danny was diagnosed with CF.

Bob’s contribution last week was not the first that he had made to the CF Foundation through our event. Far from it, Bob has been a yearly contributor since the very inception of the event. Each year, of course, I have sent an “official” thank-you note. However, over the years I have become more and more been compelled to do something “extra” to thank Bob, not only because his contributions have been so generous but because — and I pray that Bob will not mind that I mention this — Bob has his own medical struggles. He does not have CF, but his illness, like CF, is debilitating, progressive, and life-threatening. He has multiple sclerosis.

If memory serves, Bob was diagnosed with MS a few years after he had become a regular contributor to our golf tournament. He immediately became a prominent and effective fundraiser for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and his success in coping with the disease and finding the time to devote to fundraising while a full workload (and that’s an understatement) as a labor attorney has been nothing short of inspirational. More inspirational, still, is the fact that Bob’s generosity in supporting the CF Foundation — and, I am sure (knowing Bob), other charitable organizations — has never waned. To the contrary, if anything, he has become more generous each year.

Last week, after receiving Bob’s latest contribution, I began to wonder whether there was any adequate way to express our appreciation. Sending him the standard thank-you note seemed wholly inaequate. I decided to write a special note, just for the occasion. It was the least I could do. In fact, I sensed immediately that it was not enough, which is why I asked Danny to write his own thank-you note. I reminded Danny that Bob has MS, and he accepted the assignment without a moment’s pause. I think he knew that Bob’s receipt of a handwritten note from Danny would convey to Bob the gratitude of the CF community far more effectively than had all sixteen of my earlier thank-you notes combined.

I felt wonderful hearing Bob’s voice this morning, before I realized that he was near tears; I was pleased that he should take that initiative. As the depth of emotion welling up in him became apparent, I was a bit embarrassed. Then something happened that added confusion to my embarrassment: He said that he was going to send “Danny’s contribution” to the MS Society right away.

Contribution? What contribution? Kathleen and I do contribute to the MS Society regularly (not nearly as generously as Bob contributes to “our” charity), but we send those contributions directly to the MS Society, not to Bob.

I asked Bob what he meant. Struggling to hold back the tears, he replied that Danny had enclosed $100 in the thank-you card.

“What do you mean? He put a check in the envelope? I didn’t tell him to do that!” My mind was racing, confused. I knew that Danny did not have his own checking account, and I couldn’t imagine that he would have signed his name on one of our checks; he’s not the kind of kid who would have done somethng like that without asking us. Perhaps Kathleen wrote out the check, I thought. But that didn’t make sense, either; she would have told me about it.

“No,” Bob replied: “Danny put $100 in cash in the envelope.”

Silence, first. But then rays of possibility began shining through cracks in my incredulity. Danny was a generous kid, after all. And he had just recently said that he had saved up about $100, which he kept in his room. (Indeed, I had been thinking that, at 16, Danny should probably have a bank account, and I figured his $100 in savings would be enough to get started. It would be cute to take him to the bank and watch him hand up his stash to the bank officer or teller.)

But, my gracious: Danny had given his money — all of it — to Bob! How extraordinary that a 16-year old boy would would do that. How extra-extraordinary (forgive the redundancy) that he would do it and not even tell his parents. Didn’t he want at least a pat on the back? Could he possibly expect no reward other than the precocious contentment of knowing that he had done a very, very good thing? I know that I would have spoken up, if I had ever done something remotely generous as when I was 16. As a matter of fact, I probably would not have kept quiet if I had done something so generous today.

And that’s my flaw; I know. When giving alms, my right arm always lets my left know exactly what it’s doing. The very fact that I had to share this all with you exposes, I suppose, much of the same shortcoming.

But, like I said, I tried to get some work done, once the tears of joy subsided, after speaking with Bob. I just couldn’t do it; I coudn’t overcome the urge to shout from the rooftop how thoroughly blessed I am to have a son like Danny, a friend like Bob Ippolito, and countless other blessings — including, come to think of it, the means to share this all, instantly, with you.

Thanks for allowing me to do that.

– W.J. Calitrano

This past weekend, as accounted for in the post below, consisted of burst kicks and bop jazz. Goof has gracefully put together a video clip reel of the parts I left out. At roughly 30MB, it’s a small file and worth adding to your ‘Gremmie Rarities’ collection. Make sure the volume is both on and audible, otherwise the effect isn’t nearly the same.

Saint Gremmie