I got a phone call from Susan Sarandon just before the primaries (date some women once and they never leave you alone) and I was disappointed to find it was just a recording. Turns out she was endorsing Jonathan Tasini over Hillary Clinton in the US Senate race because Hillary had supported the invasion of Iraq and still did not want to bring the soldiers home — unlike Tasini who was ready to start loading the troop transports in Baghdad tomorrow.

I have a lot of reasons to distrust Hillary — she seems only too willing to fudge or pull a complete reversal on any number of positions, from a woman’s right to choose to a consumer’s right to declare bankruptcy, if it’s politically expedient or there is money for her future presidential race involved. And if nominated she will surely cost us the election again, given the Satan-like associations she has for many — though the simple fact that so many hate her that she is doomed from the start does not seem to be enough to stop her from becoming her party’s first presidential nominee, an honor she doubtless thinks of as her birthright.

But though I can’t forgive her and the rest of the Senate their decision to give Bush a blank check going into Iraq, I believe she sincerely thought Saddam posed some kind of global risk. And as wrong as she and Colin Powell and Tony Blair and millions of others were on that score, and as much as I hope the Vulcans who drove this bus are punished in international courts if not eternal hellfire for their pursuit of this policy, I don’t see how we can just pull out of Iraq. What do we say to the people whose nation we have destroyed? “Sorry about that”? Even if the idea of dividing Iraq into three sovereign states (Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd) is a non-starter as many Iraq-watchers believe, the US has no choice but to stick around and do some nation rebuilding.

We cannot magically turn our soldiers into peace-keeping troops because there is no peace to keep. We cannot unscrew this pooch, even once the Vulcans are out of power. (And as they head for the exits, look for more blame to be shifted to past presidents, the press, anyone but the people who got us into this mess.) But we cannot walk away from a disaster of our creating. We have to reinvent our role in this war. Start by restoring electricity.

So sorry Susan et al. This position puts me deeply in the purple category in this very blue city — but I always hated that division anyway. I lost a lot of friends on the left coast since 9.11, specifically in the uber-blue Bay Area, people so blue they think it’s unfair to the other colors to characterize blue as liberal or Democratic, people who want to show solidarity with colors on the other end of the spectrum — and who decided to make blue and red primary colors, anyway? Periwinke has rights, too. These were people who thought even going after Al Qaeda was unfair. (A typical comment before the Iraq war: “Who is this majority in the polls who support this invasion? I don’t know a single person who is for the war!” Having not been outside of Alameda, Marin or SF county in 20 years…)

So don’t look for me at the peace rally, shouting “Troops out now!” I’m going to take my purple crayon and write right here.

I was stuck in the house all day, working on the Rushing book and measuring the occasional showers. Before the sun set I thought it was sufficiently dry to take the dog for a walk. As we perambulated up Lafayette to Washington, over to DeKalb and down to Clermont, I was posed three questions, after having been asked nothing all day.

“What’s Bonerama?” a man said, reading my T-shirt. (A New Orleans band composed of four trombones with a sousaphone for a bass, I told him, and he looked suitably amazed. You should hear their covers of “Crosstown Traffic” and “The Whiffenpoof Song.”)

“A gas station attendant pushed me when I asked him for money and I punched him in the mouth,” a homeless man told me. “Can I be arrested for that?” (If he walked away, I said, he probably won’t press charges. But stay away from that gas station, just in case.)

“What’s the desperation?” a man on DeKalb asked as a woman barrelled past, running for the bus. “If she is that desperate, why not take a cab?” (Maybe she doesn’t have the money, I said. Besides, have you ever tried finding a cab on DeKalb?)

Glad to be of service, folks. Now it’s back to work.

“Gentlemen songsters off on a spree/Doomed from here to eternity…”

That was a plot device in Wim Wenders’ 1991 film Until the End of the World, a rather amorphous future-noir in which a bunch of disciples of Max von Sydow’s use a machine he has invented to record their dreams. Unfortunately this proves more habit formng than Tylenol PM, and soon no one is doing anything but sitting around watching instant replays of last night’s circus of the subconscious, barely rousing themselves to sing a valedictorian version of “Days” at the creator’s cremation…

I was reminded of that dream-recorder last night when I got around to watching a week’s worth of shows I had recorded. I don’t know about you but if it wasn’t for Tivo I would probably not see anything but cable news (“Everywhere is war”) and a few baseball games (subway series?). First I sampled the pilot of Studio 360 on the Sunset Strip (our friend David Handelman is on the roster of writers serving Aaron Sorkin) and found it as entertaining as advertised. Then I watched some short films that TCM had shown last week, including a couple early shorts by David Lynch.

It was great seeing TCM’s genial host, Bob Osborne, who is more comfortable introducing films starring Gregory Peck or Grace Kelly, grimace his way through the Lynch set-up. He looked like he was selling gum surgery. And indeed “The Grandmother” (1970), the longer of the two films, was the most horrifying thing I’ve seen coming out of my Sony since Bush addressed the UN. If I hadn’t been so tired I might have gotten up off the couch to get rid of the images of the vampirish little boy (half Brian Ferry, half Eddie Munster) who grows a monster grandmother to rescue him from the animal parents who alternately abuse and neglect him.

It wouldn’t be quite fair to say I have never seen anything like it; it’s a preview of coming Lynch attractions, most obviously Eraserhead. In the director’s subconscious, so close to his film world, the birthing process is monstrous, children are monstrous and the only thing more monstrous is the world they are born into. Eraserhead was the first film of his I saw; it played at midnight at the Roxie in San Francisco for months. I remember being so impressed that I took a girl I was seeing at the time to a screening. It was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

I erased “The Grandmother” and the equally horrifying but shorter “Alphabet” from my Tivo but I can’t delete them from my dreams.

Among the many hats I wear is that of what my friend Jessica Greenbaum would call “domestic scientist,” her name for the person who stays home and tries to figure out, through tireless experimenting, the proper temperature at which to serve a roast, the best way to patch a screen door, how to interpret the mysteries of NY recycling (milk cartons go with glass bottles and cans, of course) and so on. A housewife, they used to call us, or in my case, househusband.

(Jess herself is a fine poet, as well as loving wife, mother of two beautiful girls, active community member and so on. And when I’m not being a domestic scientist I am teaching, writing two books — with one hand! — giving moral support and nourishment to my wife and children and trying to save Brooklyn and the world, not necessarily in that order.)

I don’t think those who are not also domestic scientists realize just how much time and effort are involved in some of the most mundane but necessary tasks. Take my kitchen sink — please. We remodeled our kitchen back when Saddam was still in his spidey hole and among the new hardware we installed was a Leonardo faucet with a sprayer attachment (the Davinci 970, for those playing at home) the architect loved. It has a cool little button on the sprayer itself — push down for a shower effect, pull up for garden-hose stream — which works great. Until it doesn’t. Which turned out to be about three months after we bought it.

After several emails to architect and several calls to AF Supply, the Whitney Museum of plumbing products, I was offered a replacement. Which broke about six months later, as well. The button comes off with no way of putting it back on. Now I am in negotiations with AF for a different model, with phone calls being exchanged about once a week. Developing story. Meanwhile, Saddam’s trial is dragging on and the judge has gone on record telling the defendant that he is not a dictator. This judge is becoming the Lance Ito of Iraq…

I guess I’ll have to find another way to wash my spinach.

How unchecked is your ego? Most of us have moments where we like to think of ourselves as king of the forest (not queen, not duke, not prince) but generally we have reality to keep us in our place. Your parents can generally be counted on to keep you in line, not to mention your children. A good friend can deflate your head when it gets to Macy’s Day proportions as well, providing you are wise enough to listen.

Some writers, like Page Six celebrities, make the mistake of buying their own press — or taking that little voice too seriously, the one that is up late brushing up their Nobel Prize acceptance speech. (Most of us have enough daily humiliation dished up by the publishing trade that we don’t need any extra deflation.) A writing program I am affiliated with recently circulated the bios of my fellows and they were filled with the usual thumbnail sketches, who had published what where, and what accolades, if any, they had collected. But one writer, who shall remain nameless, was identified as “among the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time.”

Golly! If this were someone like, say, Joan Didion, who is in fact one of the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time, this might not seem so embarrassing. But this is merely a writer who writes a lot, and often not well, on a number of topics — a name you are familiar with but not one that would make you buy a magazine just because the writer was in it. Worse, these sorts of bios are submitted by the writers themselves, like the actors CVs that appear in the back of a playbill. No hiding place down here.

Of course it’s possible the writer’s agent submitted this piece of puffery for their client, unbeknownst to them. It’s not much of an excuse — kind of like telling the kids at school that your mom made you wear those stupid shoes that have made you a figure of fun at recess. But it’s better than admitting that you picked them out yourself. Most kids in those circumstances will go home to hide those shoes in the closet, never to be worn again.

It reminds me of a lunch I once had with the editor of a fashion magazine. We were discussing a writer who had made a career of sorts writing about his misadventures in dating. “This guy has dated every A-list woman in New York,” she said, “including me!” Made me wonder about the writers who tackled all the B-list babes out there, and what they did with their castoffs.