I’d seen the Clash play twice before, or maybe more appropriately one and a half times before. The first time was when they opened up for The Who at Shea Stadium. A couple of years later, I saw the fake Clash (the band was without their guitarist Mick Jones) at my college. The latter show doesn’t even count, it was like seeing the Stones without Keith Richards, but the Shea Stadium show left a big impression. They kicked The Who’s ass even before they played a note, from the moment they entered the stage with the swagger of a 1950’s street gang I knew I was in for something special. Joe had a mohawk and I remember very distinctly the way Mick Jones tapped his foot with a certain nonchalant coolness. I have to admit I was there to see The Who. I was not a cool kid, and I’m fully aware that Clash shows from earlier tours were far better, and I wish I could tell stories of the legendary Clash shows at the Palladium or Bonds but I can’t. but maybe this shows exactly how powerful a band they were. They emitted a stage presence so strong, 300 feet away from me in centerfield at Shea Stadium that I would never listen to The Who again and I became a Clash fan.

I was hoping to see them at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies this year. I’m a voting member of the Hall but just because you vote doesn’t get you into the ceremony, but as soon as I heard that they had been elected in I started trying to pull some strings. This was going to be a great moment seeing the band on stage and seeing them play together again.

It’s funny how that works, I’ve been thinking them a lot lately. A few years back someone at Sony music gave me a Clash box set of all their albums. And about eighteen months ago I was in the presence of the great Strummer. I’ve worked in the music business for 15 years and I can say I don’t usually get nervous about meeting my heroes, but when Joe Strummer showed up to the show of a band I work with in LA I was kind of awestruck. And I wasn’t alone, my friend Dennis who never gets nervous was apoplectic. It was he who spotted Joe hanging out in a bar at the after show party. He nervously suggested we go meet him. I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t know what to say. Later I saw Dennis who is usually full of bravado, meekly introduce himself and through stutters explained what a huge fan he was. Joe was very cool, he smiled and shook Dennis’ hand as if Dennis were a little child. As Joe left that night he stopped by the drummer while I was talking to him. Joe told him how much he enjoyed the show. The drummer smiled and politely and said, “Thank you.” I could tell that he thought he was just some record company person or something, When I told him that it was Joe Strummer who had just complimented him, he fell on the floor and couldn’t believe that Joe Strummer not only had been to his show, liked it, but that he didn’t recognize him. Of course the drummer had the excuse of being 5 years old when the Clash broke up.

Last spring I had the great fortune to see Joe Strummer playing a show a few blocks away from me in Brooklyn at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The venue is pretty new and is not really near the St. Ann’s Church or school, but very close to the Fulton Landing at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge which is close to where I live. As I walked down to the Warehouse I thought that Joe probably saw my apartment building when he crossed the bridge to go to soundcheck and he probably had dinner at a place I’ve eaten before. These are thoughts that teenagers usually have. I was 37.

The show itself was incredible, there was no seating and I pushed my way up close to the front. His voice was uniquely sweet and hoarse. I was singing along loudly hoping it wouldn’t end, and thinking if it lasted longer I could replicate Strummer’s hoarseness. The next day when someone asked me which Clash songs he played, I couldn’t remember the ones he actually played from the ones which were evoked from seeing him so close. Joe played a second night at the Warehouse and I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t go to that show too.

I was born in Brooklyn and to my understanding it was a fait accompli that I would be a Mets fan. I was taught that all Brooklyn residents had been Dodgers fans and four years after the Dodgers sold their souls and moved to Los Angeles we became New York Mets fans. As a child raised in a non-denominational home, I followed the Mets with all the religious fervor and pride of the devout. My grandmother shared tales of the great deeds of Brooklyn Dodger saints like Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, and of course Gil Hodges, who later managed the perennial last place Mets to a miraculous world championship in 1969.

It was easy being a Mets fan when I started following them in the early 1970′s, as they were the best team in the city. I had assumed that all of my Brooklyn born friends felt the same fervor I did. But when the Yankees became the better team a few years later, most of my friends changed their allegiance as easily as they changed their socks. I realized then that being a Mets fan was not necessarily a Brooklyn birthright. And even though the Mets became a terrible team I was never ashamed of being a fan. Recently, I have began to feel some shame, not because the Mets aren’t good, not because they lost to the Yankees in the World Series, but because of the inferiority complex some of my fellow Mets fans have developed. For the last few years the chant of "Yankees suck!" has been heard nearly as many times as the cheer "Let’s Go Mets!" in Shea Stadium. Who are the fans addressing? The Yankees can’t hear it. What purpose does it serve?

Some sixty blocks from Shea Stadium a similar scenario was being played out at an Irish bar/restaurant, the Coach House. The Coach House showed the weekly match of the Scottish football team, Celtic. The team hails from Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, and like the Mets they are a very good team, but not as good as their cross-town rivals and perennial champion, Rangers.

I came to the Coach House during the 1998-99 season through a Scottish friend of mine named Eddie. When he visited some years ago we went on a day-long sports odyssey: first driving down to Washington DC to see an afternoon soccer match between the US and Scottish national teams, and then stopping in Philadelphia on the way home to see a night game between the Mets and Phillies. It was after this game that Eddie declared himself a Mets fan and I declared myself a Celtic fan.

For me, it was like pricking our fingers and mixing our blood together. Eddie had brought two gifts for me: a Celtic jersey with my name on the back and a Jimmy hat – a tartan cap with red hair sewn into it which Scottish fans wear to international matches. I wore both at the US-Scotland game and two men in kilts yelled something indiscernible to me in thick Scottish brogues, which I returned by pumping my fist in their direction.

Back in Scotland, Eddie got to see the Mets play a few times that year as once a week a baseball game was broadcast. I didn’t know how I was going to follow Celtic until a friend of mine, Rick, told me about the Coach House in Woodside, Queens.

Along with Rick and my friend Russell, who had met Eddie on a trip to Scotland the previous year, we began a ritual of going to the game Saturday mornings. Upon entering the Coach House, we paid a $10 admissions fee to an older gentleman wearing a tartan hat similar to the Jimmy hat but without the fake red hair. Behind the bar was Celtic memorabilia, a placard identifying this as the Queens New York Celtic Supporters Club, and a slow moving, sleepy eyed, rather fat bartender. The bartender was like a child that mimics the emotions of the adults around him without understanding them. He would cheer after Celtic scored a goal, or groan when they let one up, always a step behind the rest of the supporters.

One time I remember there were problems with the satellite signal and the picture was constantly breaking up. When the picture became totally overrun by static the twenty or so supporters started screaming. The bartender screamed too until he realized that the rest of the bar was not screaming at the televisions but at him to fix the reception. With his back turned he hunched over a gadget for a few seconds and turned towards us slowly, smiling proudly as the reception got better, but instead of being applauded he was being screamed at again because somehow his adjustments had landed the hated Ranger’s game on the bar’s four television screens. This time he quickly turned around and made some more adjustments and the Celtic game came back on, taming the supporters.

As much as I enjoyed the games, I equally enjoyed the dry, somewhat acerbic announcer. I liked how he would call a well passed ball near the goal a "tempting ball," or a man who positioned himself strategically during a penalty kick "loitering with intent." The supporters were great too, screaming at the screens, "For fook sake’s, will ya score a goal!"

I went to five or six games that year but never one against Rangers. Rick went to one and told Russell and me how the bar was packed, singing Celtic songs and screaming anti-Protestant slurs. This had caused a slight crisis for both Russell and me as we hadn’t realized there was a religious connotation in rooting for a football team. We should have figured it out as Woodside is heavily Irish and most of the supporters were not Scottish, but Irish. A Scottish Protestant friend told me that in Glasgow, along with putting down Catholic on your birth certificate you might as well as add Celtic and vice versa for Protestants and Rangers. Russell and I have Scottish-Protestant blood and we wondered if maybe we should switch allegiances. But ultimately we decided to place our loyalty to Eddie over religion.

Celtic won all but one of the games we saw that year. We saw them win against Dunfermline, easily; Kilmarnock, Dunfermline, who they beat again in a rout this time; Aberdeen, and again Dunfermline who they really routed this time. But despite these wins Celtic finished a distant second to Rangers in the final standings.

If you are interested in some Celtic merchandise, the team web site sells all sorts of interesting items, including these attractive hand towels.

The following year, the 1999-2000 season I didn’t go to one game at the Coach House as my wife and I had our first child. I followed the season through the New York Times , which printed the results every Tuesday. Celtic had a good season, but Rangers were undefeated most of the year and won the league title again.

This season I was itching to get back to the Coach House and the Celtic Supporters Club of Queens, New York.

Celtic were having a terrific season, undefeated until a loss to the third place Rangers. Barring a total collapse, they were going to win the league title. On the Celtic web site I saw that they were playing Hearts the team from Edinburgh and invited my friends to a game. And while Russell couldn’t make it, Rick said he would go as long as it wasn’t against Dunfermline. But when we arrived at the Coach House we saw that i not only had it changed its name to The Bridge, but it didn’t show the game anymore. For half an hour we walked aimlessly down Roosevelt Avenue hoping that we would stumble across the place where the game was. We didn’t. That night I called the Bridge and learned that the Supporters Club of Queens had moved around the corner to Woodside Avenue and Sixty First Street, to a place called Copper Faced Jacks.

I went to the Celtic web site Celtic web site and saw Celtic’s next opponent and laughed out loud: it was our favorite Dunfermline. I immediately left messages for Rick and Russell. Neither called me back, but I decided to go by myself. Unlike the Coach House, Copper Face Jacks is only a bar. The games are played in the mid-afternoon in Scotland, so with the time difference most games begin at 10 AM. And while most of the patrons didn’t seem to mind drinking alcohol in the morning I stuck to cokes. I ordered them from a young Irish woman. I guess the slow moving bartender didn’t make the trip to Copper Face Jacks. He must have kept The Queens New York Celtic Supporters Club plaque, too.

It didn’t take long for me to see the same defeatist inferiority complex that I’d noticed at Shea. In the first minute of the game, Dunfermline did what I had never seen them do before, they scored a goal. The supporters screamed at the three televisions and one giant screen television, "Jesus Christ we need a new goal keeper if we’re going to do anything this year," and "Fook it all, our season’s finished," almost oblivious to the fact that it would be nearly impossible for them not finish on top.

Then Celtic scored three goals and won the game, and for a moment the ghost of Rangers were erased from the supporters’ minds, and The Celtic Supporter’s Club of Queens, New York, was, for a that brief moment, a happy place. 

We all need a mortal enemy the way that we need true love. True love is love that will sweep us off our feet. We’ll live our life happily ever after if we find it: we won’t need to pay bills, we won’t have a cold or any illness, we’ll never have to take the F Train. I’ve yet to meet anyone that has met this person. I’ve known a few people who have fallen in love with someone so rich that they don’t need to worry about paying bills, but I don’t know anyone that doesn’t get sick from time to time, and you’re just plain naïve if you think you can spend a lifetime in New York and never have to take the F Train again. I believe in true love, though, and I believe in mortal enemies.

Your mortal enemy is just as important as your true love because it can give you a cause celebre, which really helps in planning your day (first breakfast, then there’s the staff meeting, lunch, another meeting, and then maybe trying to kill your mortal enemy). The position of mortal enemy is actually much easier to fill than that of true love, the demands we place on the mortal enemy are far more attainable.

Even so, I personally didn’t have a mortal enemy until recently. All my feuds ended amicably or just petered out. But several years ago I came face to face with my mortal enemy is the men’s locker room at the Eastern Athletic Club on Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. The reason it hasn’t fizzled or been resolved is that my mortal enemy has no idea of my intense hatred towards him.

I was having a good morning. No, it was a great morning.After completing my workout, I would shower, shave and get ready to go to work as I did most mornings, feeling invigorated from the gym. But after the shower I encountered my mortal enemy. I was wearing only a towel (they always know how to get you when you’re most vulnerable) and shaving, probably using a Gillette Atra in those days, before I had made the switch to the Mach 3 (oh, how the Mach 3 gives a positively divine shave! — I would recommend it to all but the blades seem to be in short supply, and they do cost considerably more than most). I was thinking how incredibly great I looked when this red faced, white haired man, wearing a worn out tan-green baseball cap, and fully clothed in sweats appeared in the mirror and said, “Can you turn off the water as you shave? We’re in the middle of a drought.”

“Bastard,” I thought to myself, where does he get the nerve to approach a stranger with a sharp object? I should have smote him with my Atra right there, but I didn’t, in fact I acquiesced. Like Lex Luthor knows Superman’s weakness to kryptonite, he must have known mine lay with my strong sense of civic duty. I smiled weakly, and turned off the faucet, only putting it back on when I needed to rinse my razor.

On the accursed F train on my way to work I looked at the paper and said under my breath, “Double bastard,” because there, on the weather page, I learned I had been doublecrossed. That’s what mortal enemies do, they doublecross you, like the Joker did countless times to Batman. On the weather page they tell how close to capacity our reservoirs are and this read 78%. Which I did think was quite low, until I read that the normal for this time of year was that very same figure, 78%! Oh, how I wanted to kill him or better yet punch him in the nose and make him feel what my brother calls the “ginger ale effect,” that strange vibrating sensation one feels after being bopped on the nose.

I quit the gym a few months later, for how could I work out and gain strength in the very lair where my mortal enemy was seeking to do the same?

Most of the people I used to see at the gym I haven’t seen since, but this is not the case with the Water Man. I see him all the time walking the streets of Brooklyn Heights without a care in the world. Unfortunately, there are usually people around so it would be inappropriate to punch him in the nose. I need to do it in an abandoned warehouse or on the docks, some site where Batman, Superman and even Spiderman fight battles with their arch-rivals. After all, I could get arrested for giving someone the ginger ale effect. Instead when I pass him I mutter just barely audibly, “Bastard Water Man.”

“What did you say,” my wife asked me one time when she and I encountered the Water Man. I had never told her about him, because I didn’t want her involved with this arch villain.

“Nothing,” I said.

“No, you said something, I heard you.”

I was caught and told her everything, because in later issues Clark Kent did reveal his secret identity to Lois Lane. I told her that I was pretty sure that he was secretly stealing the city’s water supply for his evil plans to take over the earth.

“You’re insane,” she said. I thought it was better she think that I was crazy than to have her involved in our war. “Some day you and the rest of the world will thank me,” I thought to myself.

My mutterings upon seeing him went on for years, always seeing him on the public streets, because he knows I have this civic duty side to me that would never want some innocent bystander hurt. But then a few weeks ago I saw him in a desolate area near the waterfront, near the piers, near where there used to be abandoned warehouses until the yuppies gentrified Dumbo.

I was going to get my car, which is parked in a lot about thirty miles from where I live. New York City is the only place where people get exercise by driving, because most of us have to walk thirty miles to get our parking lots. I saw him sitting on the curb wearing the same stupid hat, wearing the same stupid sweat suit and smoking a cigar. He didn’t bother to look at me or even acknowledge my presence, probably because he was anticipating feeling the ginger ale effect. And I was going to do it too, my teeth were grinding, my face became taught, tears of intense hatred welled up in my eyes, oh how sweet revenge was going to be.

I walked towards him with purpose, my fingers folded into a fist, my arm cocked and then he finally looked up at me, the sun reflected off his glasses into my glasses, I paused, dropped my arm, and walked past him and muttered, “Bastard Water Man.” I didn’t even look to see if he stared at me while I walked away.

Did I chicken out? In a word, yes, and with good reason too. I mean the guy is in his late forties at the youngest and probably his fifties and possibly sixties. How would that look if I punched him and made him feel the ginger ale effect? Or worse, what if I punched him and he hit me back harder. After all, it was evident from his sweats that he still works out and me, well I’ve spent the last few years becoming a little soft.

I’ll still mutter, “Bastard Water Man,” every time I see him, but he shouldn’t feel too confident. Some day I will thwart his plans of taking over the earth.

I needed a barber not a stylist, in a barbershop not a salon, owned and operated by one man, not a local franchise of a national chain, who would cut my hair, not tag my head like some graffiti artist. I wanted a barber.

"I know what you need," my friend Nick said as he interrupted the litany of haircutting demands I was making. He was smiling, sitting across from me at our regular restaurant. He’s been going there for years, the food is good, but most importantly they let him smoke. Before telling me what I needed he slowly put his cigarette to his lips, puffed out a cloud of smoke and watched it rise before it gently broke apart into the air.

"You need to see Sal the Barber." My mind immediately leapt to Sal "The Barber" Maglie, former New York Giant and Brooklyn Dodger pitcher nicknamed "The Barber" because he often threw at batters’ heads, giving them close shaves.

"His shop is on Mott between Prince and Spring," Nick continued. "They got two chairs there, but he does all the cutting. He doesn’t have a phone, so just show up, and if you have to wait he’s got these photo albums of pictures he took in Naples. Get a shave too, it’s the closest thing to heaven. The whole thing will run ya twenty. That’s without the tip." Then he leaned in and turned his head slowly to the left and then to the right, as if he were telling me a secret. His eyes were bright, his eyebrows raised as he said the words he knew would send me directly to Sal, the one thing I wanted from a barber, "Pal, he’s even got one of them old fashion barber polls outside his joint." He moved back and took another drag on his cigarette, but instead of looking at the smoke or me he folded his arms and looked away giving me a moment to contemplate what he had just said. He knew what I wanted, I wanted the old school Barber, the old school haircut, one that was classic and timeless and nothing symbolized that more than the barber poll.

The next morning on my way to Sal’s I was struck by how much Mott Street had changed. It used to be a neighborhood where men wearing untucked shirtsleeves would sit outside their homes and social clubs on folded chairs on nice days; talking, yelling, reading papers while other men passed and shook their hands and joked. Where gangs of boys would walk aimlessly with purposeful strides up and down the street all day, stopping only to gawk at pretty neighborhood girls. It was a neighborhood of juxtapositions being a hub of organized crime with no street crime, an ancient village in the most modern of cities replete with customs and shibboleths that separated its locals from outsiders.

Old School Mott Street: A barber
pole, a chair to take in the day.

These days the barriers have been broken down and the outsiders have opened up boutiques where you can be guaranteed that you’re paying the highest price possible; young and beautiful men and women walk up and down the street in a certain these-are-the-good-old-days swagger, with a fearlessness that these good old days will last an eternity. These are halcyon times in the city, it’s the safest big city in the country, the only crime, one could say, are the prices at the Mott Street boutiques, but these new Mott Street pedestrians don’t seem to mind.

Sal’s barber poll seemed to be out of place in this space where it once fit so comfortably. Walking in I knew immediately that the shop was the last vestige of the old neighborhood and old village ways. I later learned that Sal’s business hours were indicative of this. Like a mom and pop shop he keeps flexible hours. "Sometime I open at nine," I would hear him tell a customer in his thick Neapolitan accent on a subsequent visit. "Sometime I open later."

On the walls were three brilliant celebrity photos unlike any I had ever seen. There was the picture of Martin Scorsese with his parents (Scorsese grew up a few blocks away on Elizabeth Street. His autobiographical film Mean Streets takes place in Sal’s neighborhood). Next to Scorsese was a picture of an actor, whose name I didn’t recognize but underneath his name read the line, "The Robert DeNiro lookalike." The third picture was of the Robert DeNiro lookalike smiling that side of the mouth squinty eyed Robert DeNiro smile standing next to an uncomfortable and serious looking Robert DeNiro.

I asked for a haircut and shave.

"No shave, buddy," he said sharply, and then turning on his clippers asked, "you want it short?"

Two things I have learned about Sal: he calls everyone Buddy and he always wants to cut your hair short.

"Not too short," I said nervously. Sal chuckled and said under his breath, "Not too short," and put down the clippers and grabbed his scissors. "Buddy, I won’t make it too short," he laughed as he began snipping furiously.

As the haircut proceeded, I tried to angle for the shave. I asked him if he knew my friend Nick, but he said he wasn’t sure.

He asked me if I lived nearby, and I told him that I lived in Brooklyn. He stopped cutting and said, "I live in Brooklyn too, Borough Park, I started cutting fifty five years ago, right after the war." Before we could bond over Brooklyn, he turned on the clippers to shave the nape of my neck. When that was done I started to talk about Brooklyn, but he didn’t seem interested.

I had given up. He was putting the finishing touches on my hair when he asked "You like this music?" The music was coming from a radio in the corner of the shop. It helped supply much of the old time ambiance, playing nostalgic big band music on an AM frequency. The DJ announced in an easy and dulcet tone that the station was from a small town I’d never heard of in New Jersey. He thanked us for being in The Make Believe Ballroom. It was a great station, playing not only big band music, but also some of the more obscure songs by well known artists. It was as if the Make Believe Ballroom was created and broadcast solely for Sal’s Barbershop.

"Yes," I said.

"Really?" he chuckled skeptically.

"Oh sure, I like Louis Prima, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman."

"You really like Frank Sinatra?" He was still skeptical.

"I love Frank Sinatra," and I told him which albums I owned and how I went to see Frank the last time he ever played Madison Square Garden.

"Okay, I give you a shave." I had passed the ultimate test of the old school barber, the appreciation of Frank Sinatra.

It was incredible.

The many sides of Sal

First there were the hot towels, and the warm shaving soap and the gentle brushing of the straight razor across my face. My eyelids grew heavy and I closed them. Occasionally, I opened them to see Sal’s eyes behind his black framed glasses studying the small motions he was making as though he were sculpting my features. Then came the details. With his fingers he pulled my nostrils apart and cut my nose hair, he put his hand in my mouth so that it was smooth and he shave around its edges. When he was done my face was smoother than it had been since I hit puberty.

"So, you like your first Mott Street haircut and shave?"

I did, although I am a little miffed that he asks me that every time I see him. But then, we’re all just Buddy to him.

That was how the story was going to end, but then I called my brother. On my recommendation, he’d started getting the short haircut I had turned down from Sal. After his first cut, he called me. "He’s like an artist," he said.

"He’s great," I said.

"He’s better than great, he’s an artist," he said.

"Like Van Gogh," I said.

"That’s a bad choice of artist for a barber," he said.

"Sure, with the ear and all," I said.

"Michaelangelo works better, because he sculpted too and he’s Italian and all."

"Michaelangelo," I said.

But just yesterday, my brother actually got a bad cut from Sal, one that he had to cut further when he got home, because Sal had missed a spot. And there were other things wrong too. There’s no Make-Believe Ballroom, anymore. The music is from a soft rock station, an FM station, no Sinatra, only contemporary classics. My brother learned that someone broke into his shop and stole his radio, and the new radio can’t get AM that well. Maybe that’s why Sal didn’t seem quite himself.

"Poor Sal, did they take anything else?" I said.

"I don’t know, I didn’t ask," he said.

Who breaks into a barbershop? I wondered. Is there a big black market for scissors, clippers and AM radios? What kind of people would have done this? Was it vandalism or theft? Did Sal keep a secret stash of money in the shop, and how much could that have been? And, besides, I thought the city had rid itself of crime. Maybe the radio could be replaced, but where can one find a good AM radio these days?

Sal with the tools of the trade, most notably, a mirror.

I vote at a Public School in Brooklyn Heights and the scene there was surreal. They had evacuated all the kids to the basement where the voting machines were and they were explaining what had happened across the river and that everyone would be safe. As I got into the voting booth, the kids started singing Kumbaya.

I voted and then I was obsessed about getting to work. I decided (and this will show what an insane state of mind I was in) that the best way to get to work would be to walk on the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan. When I got on the Bridge it was crowded with scores of people walking towards me, away from Manhattan towards Brooklyn. They were the living dead. I was staring at the fires on the towers, trying to pick my way through when I heard a rumbling and then saw a terrible site: one of the towers was collapsing. It happened in slow-motion, like some Hollywood movie. Then someone screamed, “It’s the bridge!” and people started panicking and running.

Survival took over and I started running back towards Brooklyn. When we realized it wasn’t the bridge people slowed down. A heavy set black woman was crying in to two other women’s arms, yelling and sobbing, “My husband worked there, oh, my husband.” It was heartbreaking.

I realized two things then: first someone I know, a friend, acquaintance, family member of a friend, died, and I probably saw it. Then I thought about the towers themselves. I’ve lived in my building most of my life. I remember when they were built. It was amazing, you could see it being finished floor by floor.

I got home (my wife had taken our son to his second day of nursery school and was out) and received a call from my brother. There was something about talking to him, (he had seen the towers being built with me, it was a big deal in our childhood) that caused me to be overcome with grief. I just said, “It’s gone.”

When my wife got home I told her that I had been on the bridge, and she started crying, and I realized how crazy that had been, because in all of this I hadn’t thought about my safety.

Then I got another phone call from my brother in Los Angeles saying that his wife was going to the hospital to have labor induced.