A New Look!

Over the next 48 hours, I will begin experimenting with some new looks for this blog - NYEastsideEntertainment.blogspot.com.  I have long been telling you, my readers of the progress we've been making.  However, do to the dynamic layout I was previously using, it was difficult for people to access the tab functions and see the progress that we have made together. Although it was easier to see stories that were previously written, it just was too difficult for some people to do the normal access.  So we'll try it this way for now...as I stumble through these new discoveries.

Feel free to let me know if you like the new layout.  There will be more tab functions to come.  Everyday is a new experience as we share the positive notion that will all the negative around us in our lives, it is fear that is always our true enemy.  Not hatred.  Fear only fuels it.

Change is good.  I am not afraid to grow.  So...we grow together.

Introducing NYGenerations.blogspot.com!

Oh yes...I have been a busy busy bee.  I spent much of the week working on a neighbors virus infected computer, more cleaning out of my basement for some construction work and of course - working on yet another blog.

I will be posting my computer clean up stuff on my other blog over the next couple of days.  It has been an adventure as the machine had close to 600 various infections and required the use of at least 3 different anti viruses to clean it up.  That will be on my BigKidsGadgets.blogspot.com within the next 48 hours.

Then...today marks the debut of yet my latest idea.  I call it, NYGenerations.blogspot.com.  Simply put, it allows me, my family and friends to have some input in immortalizing some of the positive lessons that they've learned in life.  I've improved my profile for all my blogs so that people can have access to reach out and contribute to this blog - or any of my other blogs.  I have email, Skype, Twitter, Kik and, oh yeah...a phone number now listed in my profile.  The contributions to NYGenerations isn't limited to those that I know.  My blogs are visited from people from around the world and I welcome them to be able to add anything positive that they would like to add.

Well...this was my break.  It's time to get back to business.  

A Night Out At A Local Bar part 2

Nothing like sitting at the bar and hearing a handful of women over 40 belly ache about their ex husbands.  Oh yes ladies you are going to be quite the catch tonight.

I told my bar tender Ally that if I hear her talking like that in ten years I was going to punch her. She's in her early 30's, and divorced.  She burst out laughing. She knew where I was coming from.

Just because you're divorced doesn't mean that you have to sound so bitter about life and men. Some of the men in the bar were not too much better.  Some of them had their own women issues. Doesn't matter. The amount of ale I've had does sooth the brain from such negative emotional things. Spell check also helps me in sounding somewhat sober.

Hmm.... gotta correct that.  Summer 2013. Hot, humid and hysterical.  Bottoms up!

A Night Out At A Local Bar

Umm hmm. I'm celebrating my year blogging in style.  With the help of my bartenders Ally and Debbie...I'm letting my hair down and tossing a few cold ones down.

You can see and find out a lot of things about life in a bar.  First, everyone is human and full of strengths and weaknesses. Second, it still is a great way to actually interact with people...provided that you're not completely intoxicated.  Third, interacting with people is definitely an art form. Perhaps a lost art form.

And it's always nice to have a familiar face working there. My next door neighbor.  Let games begin!

The Irrepressibility of Hope Aflame

The Irrepressibility of Hope Aflame

by John S LES  (originally a doodle from 1984 in my college notebook)


The burning zeal, captured in a candles heat,
It's crackling sounds resound in the night air
The sweet smell of it's waxy feet
Gives substances to what our eyes shall bare
And those magnificent people affected utter fourth it's name
It's the irrepressibility of hope aflame


Some question if it would be fair for the vigils to lose their beat
After blood shed from four hundred years
Which fueled the fire to it's crimson peak
Yet those magnificent people still utter fourth it's name
It's the irrepressibility of hope aflame

A gallant call from  million of tears
People standing tall, born from the primordial progress of 10,000 years
Redressing the lies of history's pages, slavery, slaughter and low wages
The truth rises again, as it has throughout the ages

You must let my people go, when you form your new nations
for I am the Truth, and this - all around you is my creation.
Evil may star and steal the light of a single day...
But the truth will shine brighter and show progressive mankind the right way


So the People gathered in the dark or even the daylight
and said in one voice...
Freedom is inalienable birthright
to all men, it's God given, not a choice..

From every country side, to every mountain side
From every hamlet, to every big metropolis
From every nations' pride
No evil can ever topple this...

No tyrant or dictator can forever win the game
Not when you have the Irrepressibility of Hope...Aflame

New York City Monuments Aglow For Fourth of July 2013

For the first time in 12 years, in the city that never sleeps...a city that if you can make it here...you can make it anywhere...the Fourth of July night skyline was illuminated by some familiar monuments:  The Empire State Building and the new Freedom Tower.  The first two pictures were taken from a center point southeast of Empire State Building and northeast of Freedom Tower.

These next four pictures were taken while walking up to Freedom Tower until I was finally right next to it.  Just outside of the building and sort of in between Freedom Tower and the fully operational PATH station, there is a picture of a Calvary man seated on a horse.  I have yet to find out what his symbolism is to the building, but I will look further in a day or so and update this post.  Either way I took his picture, with the American flag flying next to him.

This last picture was taken with special camera effects to illuminate the picture.  It's a night photography setting.  This was my first time using this particular camera.  I was a little challenged by it's over abundance of camera effects.  But the building is beautiful none the less.  Happy Fourth of July New York.  May God watch over you and guide better men to find better ways to settle their differences around the world.

One Year Ago I Started This Blog

Exactly one year ago, I was pushed by many reasons to do what I've always loved to do - to write and share my positive thoughts, humor, real life and fictional stories with other people via the Internet and this blog.  Exactly one year ago I sat in a hotel room out of state and started a story of what it was like to be a traveling sports parent.  Certain events drove me to stop fiddling around with my desire to write after a few failed attempts at screenwriting and manuscript writing in years past.  Some real life events just pushed me emotionally to just stop wasting time and to get on with doing what I like to do.

12 months and well over 12,000 plus pageviews, plus 5 additional blogs later - I must say that this has been a fun and very rewarding experience.  I have been able to share smiles, laughs, fictional drama, retrospective memories as well as some thought provoking discussions.

When I started this blog I had no idea that a major hurricane striking my area would push me to some thought inspiring writings on what our society might be facing to when we lose one of the most simplest natural commodities - oil.

When I started this blog, I had no idea Google would continuously prompt and push their products and dare me to switch this blog over to their  Google Plus format - just so that myself and other writers could stimulate their new product.  I am a hold out.  I like this Google blogging format just fine.  So I balked at changing from this format.  I believed that with fresh ideas and challenging storylines - that this format was more suitable to people around the world and outside of the Google Plus format.

When I started this blog, I had no idea that one long time friend and a recent friend would get offended by my efforts to resource items, photographs to help push my writing.  Whatever the case, right or wrong, they decided to end a friendship.  Turned out to be just fine because others friends stepped in on multiple levels and helped me transform my  ideas into a reality right from the ground up.  They donated their time, resources, pictures, ideas - whatever I needed, and that they could give.  They did not judge me.  They waited to see what I would do with what they gave me.  THANK YOU!  That idea growth model then lead to similar approaches to other stories and ideas that I introduced in this blog.  With 12,000 pageviews and private feedback from people from around the country and around the world.  So in spite of the loss of friendships - I've gained so much, much more.  I found out who my real friends are.  I know who I can trust and who is willing to help push me to another level.

Their appreciation and commentary for the finished product is priceless.

When I started this blog, I had no idea that one of my other blogs:  WhereDidOurLoveGo.blogspot.com would go from a meager 120 pageviews in nearly four months to over 600 pageviews in just two and 1/2 months after I interacted with a fascinating new friend in the Netherlands.  Her thoughts on life, way of life and free energy inspired me to take my own emotional constraints off and fly free with my writings on love.  From that day on - my pageviews on that blog soared.  She knows who she is, and I thank her a million times over!

Not that my friend in the Netherlands, or close friends, work friends, neighbors who've helped me this year should be forgotten or overlooked.  Nor can I forget a friend I made along the way down in FL, who I promised I'd send her my first company t -shirt when I get it started.  I'm sorry darling, I haven't registered just yet, but I won't forget you.  I keep my promises to all my supporters.  One other friend who's name I'll just mention is Steve.  Steve, you know who you are - thanks for your support these last 12 months.  Printing up my fictional stories and making them into your own personal book is exactly the point I have been trying to make!

All of that being said, I feel like the glass is definitely only half filled.  There is more that I wanted to do within the last 12 months, but couldn't get to just yet.  More life stories, more fictional stories, more writings in some of the other blogs.  Some days and mostly nights, I would sit at my laptop or desktop and simply be so drained from my regular life, that I didn't even know how I got through the last thing that I wrote.  But it doesn't matter.  When I do get to putting something out and I see the pageviews go up and up, it's instant acknowledgement that all of you out there are getting it.

It would be nice to turn a profit in all of this and help pay some of my life bills.  But even if that never happens...all of you now and any future readers of my work...the 12,000 plus views (and growing) is a blessing.  It's a momentary fraction of time that we are connecting, in spirit, across many, many miles.  There simply is no way to put a price tag finding ways to connect with dozens, hundreds, thousands of people on a single positive thought.  It is truly, truly priceless.

Recently, I found out that a coworker at my workplace has cancer and hasn't been given very long to live.  He's a really wonderful guy, with one of the most positive outlooks on life.  I hope that he can beat the odds.  I will do what I can to help him.  He's situation is a sobering reminder that we all will be leaving this life eventually.  The last thing I wanted to do was to leave this life without having shared some of my positive thoughts, ideas and life stories with other people.  The responses from all of you out there who continuously read this and my other blogs...tells me that I am accomplishing my life goal.  Thank you!