I'm wearing the 2001 flag shirt that I bought from Old Navy the day after it happened.

The whole thing was tragic and sad. Thinking back on that day gives me the blues.

Its a tragic event that I won't soon forget. Sad it had to happen.

I Think Bin Ladin is somewhere near Vegas running a whorehouse...

Viva Las Vegas! That was him at the VMA's, in the Kanye West hosted Hugh Hefner party suite, knockin' back the mile long yard of jagermeister, followed by the 20 shot platter of Rumplemintz. I think it was actually him that flashed his bare cooch at the camera rather then Britney. Cover that grisled sh*t up, dirtbag.

If it were only that easy. :(

Did I ever tell you all about Saddam Hussein and our cruise to Alaska? There was a guy that- I **** you not- looked exactly like Saddam Hussein, post capture. (This was before he was captured, if I remember right). Anyway, he was bearded and bedraggled and spent a lot of time in the casino. Eric tried to surreptitiously snap a pic, but none of them turned out.

On an "Interesting"note - I was at the park today - wasn't busy at all - I figured if anything was gonna go "down" might as well have a front row seat. Sick thinking, I know.

But I went over to Screamin' with my single rider pass and I got wisked into a seat without a seconds thought. Seated next to me was a gent of "arabic" likeness - beard and all. My thought was, initially, not only do I get the front row, I get to sit next to the guy. This should be a fun ride.

Naturally, all was well and I"m typing this - so I wasn't blow up on Screamin' and the 99 Virgins will have to wait. I mean, I should get something since I would have been sitting next to him - right?

What a surreal day that was. First, trying to wake up and make sense of the image on the TV, that of one of the world trade center towers engulfed in flames. Then, before I could even fully comprehend that, watching a plane fly into the other tower. I simply couldn't wrap my mind around it. Driving into work with my roommate and listening to Howard Stern, who was completely out of character and justifiably freaking out, saying " we don't know how much longer we will be able to broadcast." He said that another plane had hit the pentagon, possibly the white house or capitol building and it was then that I realized that this really was an attack.

But the thing that I will remember most about that day is sitting around our office, trying to get whatever new information we could, when my friend called to ask if I was watching the news. I told him I wasn't but was well-aware of what happened. He made a statement that made no sense to me until I was able to later get to a TV and confirm it for myself, that "the towers are gone". Huh? On fire, sure. Gone? What the hell does that mean?

And then, when I returned to a television and caught my first glimpse of my beloved NY Skyline, without the twin towers, it was as if I was looking at a different city. In my many excusions into the city as a child, those were the first things that we saw, the first inkling that we were getting close to this city. I would stare at them in awe and wonder the entire way. Gone?

Gone?

My next thought was towards an old friend, one who had contacted me a few weeks earlier through classmates.com . He had written to touch base and had told me that he was NYC firefighter now. Thinking of him, my heart sank. I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever hear from him again. I wrote to him but received no response. Finally, about 4 days later, I got an email from him, written from a person clearly exhausted beyond imagination. He had the day off on 9/11 and was home in Long Island. Immediately called into work, he had been on the job for 4 days straight, only stopping to sleep for a few moments here and there on the sidewalk. He told me that the television images didn't, couldn't, capture the horror he had witnessed. I've never been so happy to receive an email in my entire life.

And six years later, the horror has lessened but the anger has grown, especially knowing that there were warning signs that were ignored. That famous NY skyline still seems wrong every time I see it and it always will. That isn't the NY I remember.

hmmm, even though I used to spend many lunch hours at the top of the trade center, and of course hate how it is they came to fall .... I'm glad they're gone.

They were an architectural blight on the city. They were giant, over-scaled blocks of complete ugly. The way they simply dominated everything else in Manhattan with their monolithic hugeness was horribly wrong, and I'm very glad they're not part of the skyline any more.

Oh, sure, New Yorkers got used to them, even grew to love them. They were a bizarre oddity that, after a few decades, became accepted and often cherished by the people of New York.


But it literally took decades. The buildings were commercial, artistic and social failures until the late 90's.


And, yeah, since I clearly remember my father's business being forceably relocated to make way for the Towers, I have a secret delight that they were doomed from the start.

I bemoan all the human loss and unspeakable tragedy of that day. But in the long run ... good riddance to the World Trade Center.

Well, like I said, in my particular instance, they were something that had always been there. I'm sure that has a lot to do with my feelings about them.

I hate the Mainplace Mall in Santa Ana because it resulted in the demolition of the minimall where my father had his business. Of course, it had long since failed, but that's beside the point.

With the exception of the Empire State Building's proximity to the Chrysler Building, don't most "world's tallest buildings" overwhelm their surroundings? Does Taipei 101 blend in? Did the Petronas Towers? And the Sears Tower's not so much to look at either.

No, the WTC did not overwhelm by height, but by bulk. They were twin featureless monoliths that blotted out the entire sky if you were anywhere in lower Manhattan, and appared as two absurd out-of-scale children's toy models of square blocks from further away.


The horrific architecture and overbearing bulk of scale ruination were decried quite accurately when the monoliths appeared in the 70's. People gradually got used to them, but they were monstrocities of size and boredom that had little to do with thier height alone, and bore no relation to other towering structures of the world.