We have had our Eureka moment. It happened Friday night while eating burgers in World Wide Plaza, that democratic space filled with revelers.
We are selling the Queens apartment and moving into Manhattan. So we shall rent.
We figured, Let’s go to the new big rental towers that are swankola and see if we would like them.
Hilarious.
First, we went to Ohm. Their sales pitch is There’s No Place like Ohm.
I immediately found the place overwhelming. It was like a huge hotel with hanging sky lobbies and purple up-lighting. The apartments were kind of cool with the floor to ceiling windows that make you feel like you have lots of space. Nice kitchens. And very spare. The views were mostly of the NJ transit railway yard which is actually kind of great. But also, the Hudson River and the metropolis.
And it has a gym, etc. etc. The apartments are overpriced because you are paying for the marketing. A very well dressed, very tall, very handsome black guy showed us around. Why do some people get to be so slim?
Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, was very direct with the questions. I was sort of hemming and hawing and getting confused. I think it was my reaction to not wanting to live there. When it was all over, Adam pointed out that the place is marketed to Singles. It’s the Club Med of Northern Chelsea! Can you imagine living there? It was an Austin Powers joke.
Onward.
We went to another tower. 505 w 37. This one mostly had views of the feeder streets into the Lincoln Tunnel. The apartments were better than the ones at Ohm, but more expensive. But horrendously, like Ohm, only two tiny closets. Their roof deck had 360 degree views of New York City. Unreal.
The woman who showed us around wore a purple scarfy-pashmina thing, had a name that started with the letter V that I could not pronounce, was clearly from Russia and was a complete bitch. I made the leap that Russian mob money financed this tower and that this tart was guaranteed a job. I think she looked at us in our t-shirts and mall walker sneakers and found us to be grotesques. I looked at her and couldn’t believe how condescending she was. She kept taunting us saying, “And how much do you want to spend? What’s your maximum?” And then laughing at us derisively when we fell short of what she knew to be the current rents.
I wanted to throw her off a balcony.
Needless to say, we will not be living in either of these places. But it is fun to start hunting around.
Queens is so sweet. And there are so many trees. But our little apartment is too little to live in any longer. I love the non-pretention of the people here. It is a high immigrant density borough. And these people work like complete dogs and with a smile. They are true heroes on earth. And my heart is large and wide for them.
But to have to zip in and out of Manhattan on clackety-clack subways every time you have an appointment, it gets old, especially since our apartment is a solid fifteen minute walk from the subway.
So, onward!
I will occasionally write about this.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
French-English Love
When I was a child I took for evidence that since France and England (yes, England) were our allies in WWII, that they had been friends forever.
Of course later on I learned they engaged in centuries of bloody wars.
But is it possible that this is how they got to know each other so well? Furthermore, is war, in some perverse way, how men develop intimacy?
And could we be developing intimacy with the Islamic world by being at war with them?
Could war be, in fact, an act of love?
Of course later on I learned they engaged in centuries of bloody wars.
But is it possible that this is how they got to know each other so well? Furthermore, is war, in some perverse way, how men develop intimacy?
And could we be developing intimacy with the Islamic world by being at war with them?
Could war be, in fact, an act of love?
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
In the Bush in NYC
Everyone who comes to New York was shot out of a cannon.
I would rather not be flying so fast.
I took this long walk tonight in my neighborhood. Luckily or not, I live in Queens and my neighborhood has these huge sycamore trees everywhere. It’s a sycamore forest. And this is very appealing.
I like to do one of those walking meditations when you walk super slow and just try to notice everything around you. I mostly notice the trees. I look at doors, too. Trees, mostly, then doors. Sometimes, I catch a window or a bush.
There is something to be said for living in a place that has an enormous amount of trees.
We are arboreal, after all.
I would rather not be flying so fast.
I took this long walk tonight in my neighborhood. Luckily or not, I live in Queens and my neighborhood has these huge sycamore trees everywhere. It’s a sycamore forest. And this is very appealing.
I like to do one of those walking meditations when you walk super slow and just try to notice everything around you. I mostly notice the trees. I look at doors, too. Trees, mostly, then doors. Sometimes, I catch a window or a bush.
There is something to be said for living in a place that has an enormous amount of trees.
We are arboreal, after all.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Obama's Sleeves
I wonder what Obama is going to pull out of his sleeve. He needs to do it soon. Not just because of the upcoming elections, but because people need things to change.
Now---it could be perfect for him. Things might simply swing around during the next year and by the next presidential election, voilá pour lui.
Mais, maintenant?
Okay, enough with the French. And I like France. I like the easy healthcare and the free tuition. I benefited from it once upon a time.
If there were enough people in this country, if the percentage was high enough, we could have the easy free healthcare and the easy free college tuition. Wouldn’t that be great?
Is Obama, on some level, happy to let things get bad enough economically so that people will ultimately be screaming for more government intervention?
Just asking.
And I would be fine with more government. But just as Bushface lied about W.M.D., I do not want to be lied to about the larger economic plan of this administration. Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist, mind you.
Now, President B. O. might simply understand that what smells bad today will easily clear out for fresher, richer days ahead. And he is just smiling, with that winning smile, waiting for the natural tide to turn. I hope so.
Now---it could be perfect for him. Things might simply swing around during the next year and by the next presidential election, voilá pour lui.
Mais, maintenant?
Okay, enough with the French. And I like France. I like the easy healthcare and the free tuition. I benefited from it once upon a time.
If there were enough people in this country, if the percentage was high enough, we could have the easy free healthcare and the easy free college tuition. Wouldn’t that be great?
Is Obama, on some level, happy to let things get bad enough economically so that people will ultimately be screaming for more government intervention?
Just asking.
And I would be fine with more government. But just as Bushface lied about W.M.D., I do not want to be lied to about the larger economic plan of this administration. Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist, mind you.
Now, President B. O. might simply understand that what smells bad today will easily clear out for fresher, richer days ahead. And he is just smiling, with that winning smile, waiting for the natural tide to turn. I hope so.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The End
I am almost finished with this screenplay I have been writing for the wonderful guys who made the movie E______.
I love it and I am so ready to get the hell out of this chair! My lower back, all of it!
I do get up and walk around, but clearly, not enough.
This is a saying I’ve heard about creating something:
“You never really finish. You just abandon it.”
So, I am ready to abandon it, soon enough.
Like mothers from Sloatsburg, NY who can’t wait for their children to go off to college so they can get their nails done in peace, I, too, would like my screenplay to go off to some place better so I can beautify.
I love it and I am so ready to get the hell out of this chair! My lower back, all of it!
I do get up and walk around, but clearly, not enough.
This is a saying I’ve heard about creating something:
“You never really finish. You just abandon it.”
So, I am ready to abandon it, soon enough.
Like mothers from Sloatsburg, NY who can’t wait for their children to go off to college so they can get their nails done in peace, I, too, would like my screenplay to go off to some place better so I can beautify.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
You Say Tornaydo
Today was a day when you realize people are a “learning species.”
My apartment windows in Queens all face due west, so I have this fun view of Northwestern Queens overlooking trees, onto the upper East Side of Manhattan. So I see all the storms coming in from the West.
Today was no exception. There was a very dark line heading toward me. I could also see where the white line was past that. Looked like a squall. Thunder and lightning were in the distance. But it all sounded so far away and I thought, “This is one of those storms that is going to pass right by. I can hear it but I’ll never see it. It’s probably up in the Bronx.”
Where did I learn this? In California, where storms just pass right over and most likely go dump their wrath up in the mountains. I thought this was the same thing. Based on just the thinnest similarity. Bad monkey!
So I put on my shorts and headed out to the gym. Still, nothing much, thunder in the distance, then a few rain drops. So I just kept walking.
Alas, some sort of tornado thing came through and a huge bolt of lightning struck and was followed by thunder almost instantaneously. I thought I was hit. I guess I was not. But I still haven’t felt right since. (Probably got psychically shaken.) It was so strong and I’ve never been that close before.
I hid out on the edge of a building when the rain and wind became ferocious. Not enough protection, so I ran around the corner and stood in front of another building’s entryway. A man and his son were there, too. The little boy was screaming and crying. It really was a nutty situation.
Then it passed. And I went to the gym.
I think the trajectory was this: Park Slope, Bushwick, Glendale-Ridgewood Queens, Middle Village, Flushing, Great Neck. At least, that was most likely the exact center of it. But Jackson Heights is triangled right into Middle Village and Flushing. It was pretty scary and strange.
I’ve never been in a tornado before. And though this was not the classic thin funnel cloud, it was definitely a tornado. A fat one. Strange. Did not like it at all. And once I read about this stuff online, they say if you hear thunder, stay indoors until you don’t hear it any longer for at least thirty minutes.
“Dorothy, I don’t think you’re in California anymore.”
My apartment windows in Queens all face due west, so I have this fun view of Northwestern Queens overlooking trees, onto the upper East Side of Manhattan. So I see all the storms coming in from the West.
Today was no exception. There was a very dark line heading toward me. I could also see where the white line was past that. Looked like a squall. Thunder and lightning were in the distance. But it all sounded so far away and I thought, “This is one of those storms that is going to pass right by. I can hear it but I’ll never see it. It’s probably up in the Bronx.”
Where did I learn this? In California, where storms just pass right over and most likely go dump their wrath up in the mountains. I thought this was the same thing. Based on just the thinnest similarity. Bad monkey!
So I put on my shorts and headed out to the gym. Still, nothing much, thunder in the distance, then a few rain drops. So I just kept walking.
Alas, some sort of tornado thing came through and a huge bolt of lightning struck and was followed by thunder almost instantaneously. I thought I was hit. I guess I was not. But I still haven’t felt right since. (Probably got psychically shaken.) It was so strong and I’ve never been that close before.
I hid out on the edge of a building when the rain and wind became ferocious. Not enough protection, so I ran around the corner and stood in front of another building’s entryway. A man and his son were there, too. The little boy was screaming and crying. It really was a nutty situation.
Then it passed. And I went to the gym.
I think the trajectory was this: Park Slope, Bushwick, Glendale-Ridgewood Queens, Middle Village, Flushing, Great Neck. At least, that was most likely the exact center of it. But Jackson Heights is triangled right into Middle Village and Flushing. It was pretty scary and strange.
I’ve never been in a tornado before. And though this was not the classic thin funnel cloud, it was definitely a tornado. A fat one. Strange. Did not like it at all. And once I read about this stuff online, they say if you hear thunder, stay indoors until you don’t hear it any longer for at least thirty minutes.
“Dorothy, I don’t think you’re in California anymore.”
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Not to Be All Eugenixy...
This is what gets me. Why is genetic difference considered a bad thing? Apparently, human beings who hail from Europe and Asia have anywhere between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA (the Cro-Magnons mated with them, true) but people of pure African blood have none of this. So let’s face it, there’s a genetic difference. If this is true, and it seems to be so, then Africans who have never left Africa share between 96% and 99% of the human genome with everyone else on earth.
Women and men have one chromosomal difference. The XX and XY. So of the forty-six chromosomes we each carry, well, one of them is always a Y in men and woman do not have this at all. That’s pretty different.
So forget equality for a second…I think reasonable people can assume there are genetic differences, some pretty major ones, between at least full-on Africans and Euro-Asians, and between men and women.
How this could not make differences in people is beyond Biological reality.
But let’s face it! Who cares! It does not mean anyone is better or worse than anyone else. It just means there are differences. Why are people so obsessed with saying that everyone is the same? I say, let’s enjoy our chromosomal varietals and have a big celebration and really find out exactly what the differences are and maximize the fun of all that.
Women and men have one chromosomal difference. The XX and XY. So of the forty-six chromosomes we each carry, well, one of them is always a Y in men and woman do not have this at all. That’s pretty different.
So forget equality for a second…I think reasonable people can assume there are genetic differences, some pretty major ones, between at least full-on Africans and Euro-Asians, and between men and women.
How this could not make differences in people is beyond Biological reality.
But let’s face it! Who cares! It does not mean anyone is better or worse than anyone else. It just means there are differences. Why are people so obsessed with saying that everyone is the same? I say, let’s enjoy our chromosomal varietals and have a big celebration and really find out exactly what the differences are and maximize the fun of all that.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Hillary: Good Luck!
When I was a lad, I lived for a bit of time in Spring Valley, New York, in an area called Hillcrest which was predominantly Jewish and is now predominantly Orthodox Hasidic Jewish.
My family was DNA Catholic, and by no means religious. Basically, we were suburban existentialists with a soupcon of greedy arriviste tendencies. So when D., in my class, got up to do her report on the Israeli wars of the 60’s and 70’s, and she had such a reverent sadness about her, I could only wonder, “Why is this Israel situation so insane? I hate war. And why is this girl, who is my age, already consumed with some sort of righteous purpose to claim its essential existence?”
Furthermore, I had no idea there had already been so many wars. Her report was enlightening. She was very upset by all of it…but even at a young age, I could tell she was merely parroting her parents. Had she been born into a Muslim family, she would have been parroting that stuff, too. It was clear to me.
Well, on a positive note, there are fewer wars in those parts. And people who live there are truly sick of it. So maybe Hillary Clinton can help shepherd in a two-state promise. If she does, I’ll eat hummus every day for a year. (I hate hummus.)
But I always end up with the same question, and I know the answer, but I have to ask it anyway. Why doesn’t Israel just give that damn West Bank to Jordan with a thin road over to Gaza, hand that off, too---and be done with it? (Come on Jordanians and Palestinians, surely YOU can all hang together? Oh, that’s right. The answer is no.)
What a mess-world. I’ve been listening to it since that oral report in grade school by somber D.
(And years later, I would have a reoccurring dream that she lifts up her plaid skirt to reveal man bits. What could that mean? Additionally, it almost always took place in the middle seat of the beige station wagon of my youth. I was in the way back.)
My family was DNA Catholic, and by no means religious. Basically, we were suburban existentialists with a soupcon of greedy arriviste tendencies. So when D., in my class, got up to do her report on the Israeli wars of the 60’s and 70’s, and she had such a reverent sadness about her, I could only wonder, “Why is this Israel situation so insane? I hate war. And why is this girl, who is my age, already consumed with some sort of righteous purpose to claim its essential existence?”
Furthermore, I had no idea there had already been so many wars. Her report was enlightening. She was very upset by all of it…but even at a young age, I could tell she was merely parroting her parents. Had she been born into a Muslim family, she would have been parroting that stuff, too. It was clear to me.
Well, on a positive note, there are fewer wars in those parts. And people who live there are truly sick of it. So maybe Hillary Clinton can help shepherd in a two-state promise. If she does, I’ll eat hummus every day for a year. (I hate hummus.)
But I always end up with the same question, and I know the answer, but I have to ask it anyway. Why doesn’t Israel just give that damn West Bank to Jordan with a thin road over to Gaza, hand that off, too---and be done with it? (Come on Jordanians and Palestinians, surely YOU can all hang together? Oh, that’s right. The answer is no.)
What a mess-world. I’ve been listening to it since that oral report in grade school by somber D.
(And years later, I would have a reoccurring dream that she lifts up her plaid skirt to reveal man bits. What could that mean? Additionally, it almost always took place in the middle seat of the beige station wagon of my youth. I was in the way back.)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Iceland
I am happy to share my happiness about having visited Iceland.
It’s a world in reverse. The air is cold but you go swimming in heated rivers and pools.
The people are lovely and beautiful, but also insular and somewhat dorky.
(There’s nothing more fun than watching an Icelandic guy laugh---while his soul resists it—so the herking and jerking of the body gets a full work out.)
The food is horrendous outside of the capitol, but inside city limits, it’s pretty great.
Iceland is a cold Hawaii. It’s a volcanic experience.
Saw the big scar of the huge volcano that delayed the planes.
Notice how I am not typing anything in the language of Iceland?
What is fun is they have a few letters in their alphabet that we don’t have. A strange looking “p” that sounds like the th of thick. And a curled up “d” with a little tail that sounds like the th in the. And a bunch of vowel things. Of course, when you see something that looks like Porsmork---you call it Porsmork (or Porsmindy) or in my final naming, Porksmear. But really, it sounds something like Thorsmurk.
There is so much beauty in Iceland, you just cannot believe it.
The people are sturdy, extremely egalitarian, but also a bit superior in their attitude of their country (not so much their culture).
Their water is, truly, the best I’ve ever tasted.
Sometimes there, you see someone who is so attractive, you just cannot believe it. Like a driver or a cashier or anything at all. Shocking.
Sheep. Lots of sheep.
Iceland has the highest literacy rate of any country on earth: 100%.
Also, the longest life expectancy.
The flight is shorter than any other flight to Europe, but it’s still longish, much of it over Canada.
Reykjavik is a young town. If you are olderish, hang out at Café Rosenberg. Great music.
I also suggest the 1PM daily, free walking tour that meets near the main Info booth.
I love the holes and vents and gurgling mud and spitting water and all that. Makes me happy to know that our planet is still fuming.
Spending hours in a huge lake of hot water is always a great time. It is so relaxing. Can’t wait to return.
Really, go. You must.
It’s a world in reverse. The air is cold but you go swimming in heated rivers and pools.
The people are lovely and beautiful, but also insular and somewhat dorky.
(There’s nothing more fun than watching an Icelandic guy laugh---while his soul resists it—so the herking and jerking of the body gets a full work out.)
The food is horrendous outside of the capitol, but inside city limits, it’s pretty great.
Iceland is a cold Hawaii. It’s a volcanic experience.
Saw the big scar of the huge volcano that delayed the planes.
Notice how I am not typing anything in the language of Iceland?
What is fun is they have a few letters in their alphabet that we don’t have. A strange looking “p” that sounds like the th of thick. And a curled up “d” with a little tail that sounds like the th in the. And a bunch of vowel things. Of course, when you see something that looks like Porsmork---you call it Porsmork (or Porsmindy) or in my final naming, Porksmear. But really, it sounds something like Thorsmurk.
There is so much beauty in Iceland, you just cannot believe it.
The people are sturdy, extremely egalitarian, but also a bit superior in their attitude of their country (not so much their culture).
Their water is, truly, the best I’ve ever tasted.
Sometimes there, you see someone who is so attractive, you just cannot believe it. Like a driver or a cashier or anything at all. Shocking.
Sheep. Lots of sheep.
Iceland has the highest literacy rate of any country on earth: 100%.
Also, the longest life expectancy.
The flight is shorter than any other flight to Europe, but it’s still longish, much of it over Canada.
Reykjavik is a young town. If you are olderish, hang out at Café Rosenberg. Great music.
I also suggest the 1PM daily, free walking tour that meets near the main Info booth.
I love the holes and vents and gurgling mud and spitting water and all that. Makes me happy to know that our planet is still fuming.
Spending hours in a huge lake of hot water is always a great time. It is so relaxing. Can’t wait to return.
Really, go. You must.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Atlantic Rift: Judy's Cream of Wheat
We are heading to Iceland for the week. It sits right on the rift of the North American Plate and the European Plate. While we are there, enjoy this bit of Americana.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
How Did They Know
That people in Queens walk so slow---you could kill them?
Thanks, Jeff.
New York: It’s a hot beaver swamp. We just have to wait three weeks and all will be much more enjoyable. Until then--
Read and laugh:
We’re Getting the Hell Out of this Sewer
Thanks, Jeff.
New York: It’s a hot beaver swamp. We just have to wait three weeks and all will be much more enjoyable. Until then--
Read and laugh:
We’re Getting the Hell Out of this Sewer
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Hump Day Happenings
No more Iraq war. And people are less than grateful with their response.
Of course there’s still violence there.
Hurricane Earl, don’t you get near the airports on Monday, please.
Hot enough in New York? I’m so use to it. Strange.
I don’t understand the expression use-to-it.
I still have trouble with garlic.
I still like cults and serial killers. The plasticity of the monkey mind, you know…
Big news---today is S’s birthday.
And K arrives in New York tomorrow for three months of TV toil. Fun!
Isn’t it awful when people use initials only?
I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love. Don’t ask me why.
I should write the shadow version: Hog, Beg, Fuck.
Has anyone else besides me had enough viewing time of Grandin Temple online?
Where DO the children play?
September 1 is still summer. Don’t let the “ber” part fool you.
Dogs. People love their dogs. And they should.
I have no problem with Spanish---I just wish people wanted to speak English at my gym.
It’s only because I get sweaty and lonely there.
If horses were beggars, riders would wish.
Remember geometry proofs? I was always bad at them. Shook my confidence.
Puppets are something we should know more about.
Of course there’s still violence there.
Hurricane Earl, don’t you get near the airports on Monday, please.
Hot enough in New York? I’m so use to it. Strange.
I don’t understand the expression use-to-it.
I still have trouble with garlic.
I still like cults and serial killers. The plasticity of the monkey mind, you know…
Big news---today is S’s birthday.
And K arrives in New York tomorrow for three months of TV toil. Fun!
Isn’t it awful when people use initials only?
I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love. Don’t ask me why.
I should write the shadow version: Hog, Beg, Fuck.
Has anyone else besides me had enough viewing time of Grandin Temple online?
Where DO the children play?
September 1 is still summer. Don’t let the “ber” part fool you.
Dogs. People love their dogs. And they should.
I have no problem with Spanish---I just wish people wanted to speak English at my gym.
It’s only because I get sweaty and lonely there.
If horses were beggars, riders would wish.
Remember geometry proofs? I was always bad at them. Shook my confidence.
Puppets are something we should know more about.
Monday, August 30, 2010
TIME
Strange thing, time. You want to feel like you have a mountain of it so you can be relaxed when you are doing something.
But you want to feel the pressure of it, too, so you feel motivated.
We have figured it out, sort of, as a group of animals. Though, lately I have been experiencing that old adage, TIME IS MONEY. Which, of course, it is not, but can be.
Time can also be Love.
Or Time is well spent sleeping.
Or
Time for dinner
Time is on our side
Time for a new fence
Time machine
It’s a commodity, it seems. You get older and you feel you have less of it, which makes you speed up, which then lessens the time you have.
So what is the answer?
I feel like, collectively, we middle aged people are happy to count things, to mark it up, to register all of it. I do not believe this helps creativity.
But without the pulse of time, there would be no creativity at all.
If I ever figure out the balance, I will let you know. In the mean time…
But you want to feel the pressure of it, too, so you feel motivated.
We have figured it out, sort of, as a group of animals. Though, lately I have been experiencing that old adage, TIME IS MONEY. Which, of course, it is not, but can be.
Time can also be Love.
Or Time is well spent sleeping.
Or
Time for dinner
Time is on our side
Time for a new fence
Time machine
It’s a commodity, it seems. You get older and you feel you have less of it, which makes you speed up, which then lessens the time you have.
So what is the answer?
I feel like, collectively, we middle aged people are happy to count things, to mark it up, to register all of it. I do not believe this helps creativity.
But without the pulse of time, there would be no creativity at all.
If I ever figure out the balance, I will let you know. In the mean time…
Sunday, August 29, 2010
ALL ABOUT EVIL
This is mostly for my LA friends for the near future.
Go see ALL ABOUT EVIL on October 8 at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre. I just saw it this weekend in Baltimore, introduced by and including my funny Mink Stole.
Party!
It’s intelligent horror camp. Hilarious. Starring Natasha Lyonne (Welcome back from the drugs, girl! You did a great job.) And Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), Thomas Dekker and of course, Mink Stole.
Peaches Christ is a midnight horror queen drag performance staple in San Francisco and has made a bunch of shorts. This is her (his—Joshua Grannell) first full length feature that (s)he has directed. It’s pretty amazing. This crazed killer, well----I don’t want to spoil it because it’s all so surprising and funny. Even the set up. So you’re just going to have to go see it.
There are other dates: September 4 in Atlanta, September 17 in Phoenix, October 8 in LA as above, October 21-24 in San Francisco. And November 13 in Minneapolis. Yay!
You’ll laugh a lot if you go see it. Great spirit. And very funny. I wish I could tell you more. But, well---Boo!
Go see ALL ABOUT EVIL on October 8 at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre. I just saw it this weekend in Baltimore, introduced by and including my funny Mink Stole.
Party!
It’s intelligent horror camp. Hilarious. Starring Natasha Lyonne (Welcome back from the drugs, girl! You did a great job.) And Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), Thomas Dekker and of course, Mink Stole.
Peaches Christ is a midnight horror queen drag performance staple in San Francisco and has made a bunch of shorts. This is her (his—Joshua Grannell) first full length feature that (s)he has directed. It’s pretty amazing. This crazed killer, well----I don’t want to spoil it because it’s all so surprising and funny. Even the set up. So you’re just going to have to go see it.
There are other dates: September 4 in Atlanta, September 17 in Phoenix, October 8 in LA as above, October 21-24 in San Francisco. And November 13 in Minneapolis. Yay!
You’ll laugh a lot if you go see it. Great spirit. And very funny. I wish I could tell you more. But, well---Boo!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Writing Question
Why do I try to write like I’m from France when I’m from Rockland County?
There is ego. There is a reach. Why the reach?
I just finished a big rewrite of a screenplay that I felt had the promise of Rohmer complexity-simplicity-tone. But really, it’s a mall thing that I wrote, hopefully a fun one.
Why do we ape when we are mere gibbons?
There is ego. There is a reach. Why the reach?
I just finished a big rewrite of a screenplay that I felt had the promise of Rohmer complexity-simplicity-tone. But really, it’s a mall thing that I wrote, hopefully a fun one.
Why do we ape when we are mere gibbons?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Has Everyone Gone Gay?
Another Republican Homosexual
You guys, you can smell the musky crotches coming together.
Gays want to get married, even conservative ones.
The time is here, nigh, now, and well, happening.
"Less government, more gay marriage?"
Or, “Don’t tread on me, but please sanction Bill and Bob with their love for each other?”
Or, “No future V.A.T. on the shiny new bikes that those dykes just rode in on.”
Something like that.
I give it a year…
You guys, you can smell the musky crotches coming together.
Gays want to get married, even conservative ones.
The time is here, nigh, now, and well, happening.
"Less government, more gay marriage?"
Or, “Don’t tread on me, but please sanction Bill and Bob with their love for each other?”
Or, “No future V.A.T. on the shiny new bikes that those dykes just rode in on.”
Something like that.
I give it a year…
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Dollars Out
As I was walking along Roosevelt Boulevard I realized that so much of the money from small businesses that is made in the United States is sent overseas.
And so many of the corporations make their money overseas.
The United States is SUCH A GREAT BUSINESS country. Set up for that.
But the money goes outside its borders. And the rest of the developed world has the cash for national health care and education.
And us? We want our pizza pockets.
And so many of the corporations make their money overseas.
The United States is SUCH A GREAT BUSINESS country. Set up for that.
But the money goes outside its borders. And the rest of the developed world has the cash for national health care and education.
And us? We want our pizza pockets.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Addiction: An Oversimplification
Though I have been lucky enough to have never been a true addict (other than to cigarettes) I have seen it in full force around me and I have felt myself heading in that direction at times (pot and wine) but never really got there because I have a weak system and cannot develop tolerance to almost anything…
Luckily, this means that after three glasses of wine, I am tanked.
But then, if I am tanked after three why wouldn’t I just stop at two?
And this is my oversimplification of addiction (or at least the edge of addiction):
Addiction to simple things (like wine, food, sex, pot) is really nothing more than the normal appetite being allowed satiation with abandon, without controls.
Now, I know my 12 stepper friends have a much more evolved understanding of this. And perhaps because I never became a full fledged drunk or pothead, I do not really understand these things. And perhaps I am only speaking for myself as it relates to, “Sure did get too tanked at that party last month,” or, “Yeah, no one smokes cigarettes, until someone shows up with a pack of them,” etc., as I see myself behaving not much differently than most people on a Saturday night.
So the big question is---why do some people have control and others simply do not? People with food and sex addictions learn how to dial it back with effort.
I believe, with awareness, one could dial back almost anything. I also believe, with awareness, one could sense the drugs that are basically going to kill you if you get too involved with them.
I’ve plowed into cocaine about a dozen times. The stuff just feels like it will kill you. So, no need for that. (And so, no need ever to try Meth.)
Had a terrible trip on hallucinogens in college. Well, strike that off the list. Once that happened, I never saw any reason for any strong substance in that category.
And there it is.
Perhaps some people have exceptionally strong constitutions and they can take the abuse. I have trouble with cheese and beans.
Addiction was once probably a monkey saver. Evolutionarily, if you are insatiable, you probably got your hands on a lot more bananas than anyone else.
Being aware of that grabbiness---could that not be enough to stop the grab?
Luckily, this means that after three glasses of wine, I am tanked.
But then, if I am tanked after three why wouldn’t I just stop at two?
And this is my oversimplification of addiction (or at least the edge of addiction):
Addiction to simple things (like wine, food, sex, pot) is really nothing more than the normal appetite being allowed satiation with abandon, without controls.
Now, I know my 12 stepper friends have a much more evolved understanding of this. And perhaps because I never became a full fledged drunk or pothead, I do not really understand these things. And perhaps I am only speaking for myself as it relates to, “Sure did get too tanked at that party last month,” or, “Yeah, no one smokes cigarettes, until someone shows up with a pack of them,” etc., as I see myself behaving not much differently than most people on a Saturday night.
So the big question is---why do some people have control and others simply do not? People with food and sex addictions learn how to dial it back with effort.
I believe, with awareness, one could dial back almost anything. I also believe, with awareness, one could sense the drugs that are basically going to kill you if you get too involved with them.
I’ve plowed into cocaine about a dozen times. The stuff just feels like it will kill you. So, no need for that. (And so, no need ever to try Meth.)
Had a terrible trip on hallucinogens in college. Well, strike that off the list. Once that happened, I never saw any reason for any strong substance in that category.
And there it is.
Perhaps some people have exceptionally strong constitutions and they can take the abuse. I have trouble with cheese and beans.
Addiction was once probably a monkey saver. Evolutionarily, if you are insatiable, you probably got your hands on a lot more bananas than anyone else.
Being aware of that grabbiness---could that not be enough to stop the grab?
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Men Who Hate Women)
Go see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Lucky for me, I have an insistent and good tasted Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner-sister-in-law, who chided us into attendance.
Good that she chided!
Friends, it’s so interesting, this Swedish movie. And I didn’t even read those books.
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salinger, COME ON! She’s fantastic and no American gum chomper will ever come close.
Why won’t Americans sit through subtitles?
I understand. They’re annoying. It isn’t as enjoyable.
Go see this before it leaves the theatres. Or netfilx it, etc. Completely worth it.
Sure, it’s a whodunit at the end of the day, so we’re not looking at a new kind of story. But at least there’s a push into good characters.
Friends, these are trying times for entertainment. Catch this one.
Lucky for me, I have an insistent and good tasted Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner-sister-in-law, who chided us into attendance.
Good that she chided!
Friends, it’s so interesting, this Swedish movie. And I didn’t even read those books.
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salinger, COME ON! She’s fantastic and no American gum chomper will ever come close.
Why won’t Americans sit through subtitles?
I understand. They’re annoying. It isn’t as enjoyable.
Go see this before it leaves the theatres. Or netfilx it, etc. Completely worth it.
Sure, it’s a whodunit at the end of the day, so we’re not looking at a new kind of story. But at least there’s a push into good characters.
Friends, these are trying times for entertainment. Catch this one.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Fried Chicken and Shallowness
I need to write about two very different things.
First of all, fried chicken. We ate in a big noisy box of a restaurant tonight in Chelsea, okay, Cafeteria. Seventh Avenue. The whole thing.
I went ahead and ordered the fried chicken because why shouldn’t I, right? I’m not afraid of a bunch of greasy bird pieces.
It’s a killer. Don’t ever do it. It’s not worth it. I don’t know how people survive these things.
Next, on the subject of being shallow, I have come to this conclusion. I think the reason why people are so upset when they perceive someone to be shallow is not so much that this perceived person is wrong or morally in the basement, it’s more because there is a loss of potential love. Someone who is shallow, who is committed to their own pleasures and vices above all else, does not have the space or time to love you. And people feel this. Even if they do not admit it.
First of all, fried chicken. We ate in a big noisy box of a restaurant tonight in Chelsea, okay, Cafeteria. Seventh Avenue. The whole thing.
I went ahead and ordered the fried chicken because why shouldn’t I, right? I’m not afraid of a bunch of greasy bird pieces.
It’s a killer. Don’t ever do it. It’s not worth it. I don’t know how people survive these things.
Next, on the subject of being shallow, I have come to this conclusion. I think the reason why people are so upset when they perceive someone to be shallow is not so much that this perceived person is wrong or morally in the basement, it’s more because there is a loss of potential love. Someone who is shallow, who is committed to their own pleasures and vices above all else, does not have the space or time to love you. And people feel this. Even if they do not admit it.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
I Feel Peaceful, Join Me
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Muslims in the Middle
By William Dalrymple
Published: August 16, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.
We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.
Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”
The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.
This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.
Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.
“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.
The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.
Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.
“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”
There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”
Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”
The Muslims in the Middle
By William Dalrymple
Published: August 16, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.
We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.
Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”
The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.
This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.
Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.
“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.
The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.
Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.
“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”
There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”
Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”
Monday, August 16, 2010
Berkshires and Buckley
We took my aged but healthy parents to Lenox and had “A weekend.”
Completely enjoyable with cool temperatures and fine restaurants and to top it all off, a great play at Williamstown called THE LAST GOODBYE.
What is it, you ask?
This is a mash-up of Romeo and Juliet, yes, the one by Shakespeare, with the music of the late and extremely talented and one of my all time favorite guys, Jeff Buckley.
At first, I was all, “Come on! This Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shit has gone too far.” Then, well, it grew on me. And by the end, I swear, I have never seen or heard a better Romeo and Juliet and when it comes to New York, you really should see it, or better yet, get thee to the mountains.
The adaptor-director is Michael Kimmel. He was listening to a Jeff Buckley song on his iPod while in rehearsals for Othello and had Shakespeare on his mind and he felt the song fit into a conversation Benvolio has with Romeo. Okay, so maybe a stretch---and one could say this sort of thing about lots of songs. For instance, “I was listening to All the Gold in California by the Gatlin Brothers and I thought, Shit, that would fit perfectly into The Merchant of Venice…”
But, it doesn’t matter where it comes from (and I wish people would not talk so much about where things come from. And can all liner notes be against the law, in general?)---in the end, it was fantastic. Mostly because of the music, arranged by Kris Kukul.
Great cast, with Damon Daunno as Romeo and Kelli Barrett as Juliet. Amazing singers. Young, hot, all of that.
Everyone else, too, sang very well and the harmonies were close and hard and lovely. Plus, the added bonus of Chloe Webb as the Nurse. ‘Cause, why not?
If you are in Williamstown, go check it out. It doesn’t run very long. These summer things never do. But I wanted to share my enthusiasm.
Long rainy drive back on the Taconic. That road needs some shoulders. And I need some new wipers.
Completely enjoyable with cool temperatures and fine restaurants and to top it all off, a great play at Williamstown called THE LAST GOODBYE.
What is it, you ask?
This is a mash-up of Romeo and Juliet, yes, the one by Shakespeare, with the music of the late and extremely talented and one of my all time favorite guys, Jeff Buckley.
At first, I was all, “Come on! This Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shit has gone too far.” Then, well, it grew on me. And by the end, I swear, I have never seen or heard a better Romeo and Juliet and when it comes to New York, you really should see it, or better yet, get thee to the mountains.
The adaptor-director is Michael Kimmel. He was listening to a Jeff Buckley song on his iPod while in rehearsals for Othello and had Shakespeare on his mind and he felt the song fit into a conversation Benvolio has with Romeo. Okay, so maybe a stretch---and one could say this sort of thing about lots of songs. For instance, “I was listening to All the Gold in California by the Gatlin Brothers and I thought, Shit, that would fit perfectly into The Merchant of Venice…”
But, it doesn’t matter where it comes from (and I wish people would not talk so much about where things come from. And can all liner notes be against the law, in general?)---in the end, it was fantastic. Mostly because of the music, arranged by Kris Kukul.
Great cast, with Damon Daunno as Romeo and Kelli Barrett as Juliet. Amazing singers. Young, hot, all of that.
Everyone else, too, sang very well and the harmonies were close and hard and lovely. Plus, the added bonus of Chloe Webb as the Nurse. ‘Cause, why not?
If you are in Williamstown, go check it out. It doesn’t run very long. These summer things never do. But I wanted to share my enthusiasm.
Long rainy drive back on the Taconic. That road needs some shoulders. And I need some new wipers.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
We Are Current, Continue
Goodbye to the Stay. How fascinating.
What saved us are the 18,000 same sex marriages that have been in full force in California for years. Oh, hm, how did that harm marriage in any way?
Hilarious time to be on the wrong side of history.
The horse is out of the barn.
Democracy always moves forward. Always.
And once California has 100,000 same sex marriages and all the almonds will not have rotted off the trees and all the wine will have continued to be sold at a fine clip and Hollywood will have kept producing its chuffastuff and straight people will have kept marrying or not and having babies or not and it will have all just chugged along and nothing really was ever a problem…well, I mean, come on.
Does it even need to go to the Supreme Court ever? I guess so South Carolina, Alabama and Utah will one day join the modern era—
Quit knuckle dragging, you bigoted hypocritically religious phobes.
The times they have a-changed.
And some kid in school, in 2110, will read about American history and how back in the day his laser-transsexual mother and her lady love at one time would hot have been given the same rights as a man and woman of another sexual identity and preference, and he will wonder how it could have ever been that way at all, ever. It does not make sense. He scratches his head. Goes outside to play. Because there will still be an outside.
If it’s in California, it’s forever.
I have always loved Schwarzenegger.
But I’m really mad, because now, I really want to marry three people or an animal. Or maybe a child or a plant.
What saved us are the 18,000 same sex marriages that have been in full force in California for years. Oh, hm, how did that harm marriage in any way?
Hilarious time to be on the wrong side of history.
The horse is out of the barn.
Democracy always moves forward. Always.
And once California has 100,000 same sex marriages and all the almonds will not have rotted off the trees and all the wine will have continued to be sold at a fine clip and Hollywood will have kept producing its chuffastuff and straight people will have kept marrying or not and having babies or not and it will have all just chugged along and nothing really was ever a problem…well, I mean, come on.
Does it even need to go to the Supreme Court ever? I guess so South Carolina, Alabama and Utah will one day join the modern era—
Quit knuckle dragging, you bigoted hypocritically religious phobes.
The times they have a-changed.
And some kid in school, in 2110, will read about American history and how back in the day his laser-transsexual mother and her lady love at one time would hot have been given the same rights as a man and woman of another sexual identity and preference, and he will wonder how it could have ever been that way at all, ever. It does not make sense. He scratches his head. Goes outside to play. Because there will still be an outside.
If it’s in California, it’s forever.
I have always loved Schwarzenegger.
But I’m really mad, because now, I really want to marry three people or an animal. Or maybe a child or a plant.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
For my Writer Friends
You know how you keep a calendar and you put great things in there? Like Go-to-Southampton and Dinner-with-Caitlin and Pick-up-the-Chicken? Well, you can do the same thing with your writing.
Next week: Act 3.
The week after: Act 4.
The week after that: Polish it up
Stuff like that. Why not? If you can keep to your calendar when it comes to chicken, you can certainly keep to it when it comes to your projects.
Okay, this blog entry is for me.
Next week: Act 3.
The week after: Act 4.
The week after that: Polish it up
Stuff like that. Why not? If you can keep to your calendar when it comes to chicken, you can certainly keep to it when it comes to your projects.
Okay, this blog entry is for me.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Healthmare
While we do not have a single payer system, the rest of the civilized world and parts of what used to be the uncivilized world do have such things.
Let us talk about real value and competition, because I would like my Right-side friends to hear this one thing---and only this one thing---and comment on this ONE point, so please don’t go off on Obama or the threat of Socialism or why there should not be a mosque at the World Trade Center Site (though, I do not believe there should be ANY religious architecture at the World Trade Center Site.)
Okay, this is my opinion: WE DO NOT HAVE AN EFFICIENT MOBILE WORKING FORCE because people are stuck in jobs that suck (if they are working at all) for the health benefits. This is such an arcane way of running a society.
It can easily take a month to adjust to a new job and to have benefits kick in. Or, one can move to another state looking for work (because, say, a teacher hears that they really need teachers in North Dakota) and while on the hunt, where does one get health insurance? And don’t say COBRA because it often is so expensive and has such problems when you cross state lines, that the only thing you can guarantee yourself is catastrophic, sort of. I have been through this.
So, you get a timid work force, a bunch of people who do not take risks, because they are afraid to be without health insurance. This creates anxiety. Thus, workers are enslaved to THE PAST.
Meanwhile, in France, China, Germany, etc., you can just up and go wherever you need to work. And your health care goes with you because it’s “the cloud”. This is so easy. And it creates a nimble culture. Why would we not want this?
So, my friends on the Right, in terms of pure math, and spare me the anger and the diatribes about Obama being born on Mars and wanting to turn your dog into a Muslim, but using math, tell me what is the upside of being able to compete globally with the work forces of other great countries when we are not as mobile, when our working people are slow, cautious, afraid to take risks and, well, as it turns out, fat and diabetic from their sessile, barker lounger, non-robust existences?
Let us talk about real value and competition, because I would like my Right-side friends to hear this one thing---and only this one thing---and comment on this ONE point, so please don’t go off on Obama or the threat of Socialism or why there should not be a mosque at the World Trade Center Site (though, I do not believe there should be ANY religious architecture at the World Trade Center Site.)
Okay, this is my opinion: WE DO NOT HAVE AN EFFICIENT MOBILE WORKING FORCE because people are stuck in jobs that suck (if they are working at all) for the health benefits. This is such an arcane way of running a society.
It can easily take a month to adjust to a new job and to have benefits kick in. Or, one can move to another state looking for work (because, say, a teacher hears that they really need teachers in North Dakota) and while on the hunt, where does one get health insurance? And don’t say COBRA because it often is so expensive and has such problems when you cross state lines, that the only thing you can guarantee yourself is catastrophic, sort of. I have been through this.
So, you get a timid work force, a bunch of people who do not take risks, because they are afraid to be without health insurance. This creates anxiety. Thus, workers are enslaved to THE PAST.
Meanwhile, in France, China, Germany, etc., you can just up and go wherever you need to work. And your health care goes with you because it’s “the cloud”. This is so easy. And it creates a nimble culture. Why would we not want this?
So, my friends on the Right, in terms of pure math, and spare me the anger and the diatribes about Obama being born on Mars and wanting to turn your dog into a Muslim, but using math, tell me what is the upside of being able to compete globally with the work forces of other great countries when we are not as mobile, when our working people are slow, cautious, afraid to take risks and, well, as it turns out, fat and diabetic from their sessile, barker lounger, non-robust existences?
Monday, August 09, 2010
Blog City
There is something about the past that draws you in because you can rewrite it. You can make it better than it was.
Since joy is not guaranteed on earth, and pain certainly is plentiful, we mentally redo the past to make it like it was golden and wonderful in order to survive.
It’s a delusion. But it works.
Like so many of our constructs.
Since joy is not guaranteed on earth, and pain certainly is plentiful, we mentally redo the past to make it like it was golden and wonderful in order to survive.
It’s a delusion. But it works.
Like so many of our constructs.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
My Big Fat Gay Weekend
In celebration of deep summer humidity, and random plans coming together, as they will, we spent twenty-four hours on Fire Island with great friends on a beach side deck with a pool in Cherry Grove.
Look, it’s just a fifty mile drive out there and a twenty minute ferry. And you get there and it’s about 100% gay, no cars, beautiful beach, cute shacks and lots of good will. First time I’ve ever been. The Pines are right there, too. And if you are so inclined, you can take off all your clothes and no one really cares. Or at least in my case no one did.
I highly recommend it. Plus, the breakfast sandwich at Floyd’s is a great deal and very welcome after a night of booze-ahol and carousing. Plus, there’s all the drama of people-on-a-barrier-island with their love dreams coming or not coming true. Like Junior High without that pesky part where you have to learn all about the Iroquois Native Americans. What were the five tribes? Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and ---oh yes, Cayuga (had to Wikki that one). Okay, so a Junior High education was worth it. Plus, wasn’t it fun to make that long house diorama?
But I digress. If you’re gay, go to Cherry Grove/The Pines. You won’t be disappointed. If you’re not gay, please don’t try to buy in. We have like three spots left on earth.
But do go see La Cage aux Folles on Broadway, gay or not. With the incredible Douglas Hodge (Tony Winner and really, he should have gotten two Tony’s) and Kelsey Grammer (who once read an Auden poem at a wedding I attended in Malibu and out-cried the bride), directed by Terry Johnson (fantastic and true) and won the Tony for best Broadway revival, why would you want to miss this? Plus, my friend Tony works on the show as the resident director and he is making sure those Cagelles keep up their splits, aerials and other shenanigans to the standards of the original staging (first produced at the London Menier Chocolate Factory---it’s a theatre, not a candy store.) And with all that tangential name-ish dropping I am doing, just because I have ego problems, what I am really saying is---go see this damn show. You’ll flip your wig. Unless, of course, you find joyful, loving gay men and drag queens somehow not worth your time. But they actually are. Additionally, I attended with my parents, sister, her family, and my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic Partner followed by dinner. All very affirming and worth the discounted price of admission (see my post about Broadway Box). La Cage aux Folles, a total pleasure. It’s funny. It’s smart. And it’s incredibly well done. Plus, they kick beach balls into the crowd.
Sometimes, you just have to get your gay on. And then, it’s back to regular life. Which includes planning trips, writing plays, singing and cavorting late hours in Hells Kitchen. So I guess, really, it never stops.
Happy are those who are members of a subculture. It does simplify the journey. However, it’s all an illusion.
Have a great summer.
Look, it’s just a fifty mile drive out there and a twenty minute ferry. And you get there and it’s about 100% gay, no cars, beautiful beach, cute shacks and lots of good will. First time I’ve ever been. The Pines are right there, too. And if you are so inclined, you can take off all your clothes and no one really cares. Or at least in my case no one did.
I highly recommend it. Plus, the breakfast sandwich at Floyd’s is a great deal and very welcome after a night of booze-ahol and carousing. Plus, there’s all the drama of people-on-a-barrier-island with their love dreams coming or not coming true. Like Junior High without that pesky part where you have to learn all about the Iroquois Native Americans. What were the five tribes? Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and ---oh yes, Cayuga (had to Wikki that one). Okay, so a Junior High education was worth it. Plus, wasn’t it fun to make that long house diorama?
But I digress. If you’re gay, go to Cherry Grove/The Pines. You won’t be disappointed. If you’re not gay, please don’t try to buy in. We have like three spots left on earth.
But do go see La Cage aux Folles on Broadway, gay or not. With the incredible Douglas Hodge (Tony Winner and really, he should have gotten two Tony’s) and Kelsey Grammer (who once read an Auden poem at a wedding I attended in Malibu and out-cried the bride), directed by Terry Johnson (fantastic and true) and won the Tony for best Broadway revival, why would you want to miss this? Plus, my friend Tony works on the show as the resident director and he is making sure those Cagelles keep up their splits, aerials and other shenanigans to the standards of the original staging (first produced at the London Menier Chocolate Factory---it’s a theatre, not a candy store.) And with all that tangential name-ish dropping I am doing, just because I have ego problems, what I am really saying is---go see this damn show. You’ll flip your wig. Unless, of course, you find joyful, loving gay men and drag queens somehow not worth your time. But they actually are. Additionally, I attended with my parents, sister, her family, and my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic Partner followed by dinner. All very affirming and worth the discounted price of admission (see my post about Broadway Box). La Cage aux Folles, a total pleasure. It’s funny. It’s smart. And it’s incredibly well done. Plus, they kick beach balls into the crowd.
Sometimes, you just have to get your gay on. And then, it’s back to regular life. Which includes planning trips, writing plays, singing and cavorting late hours in Hells Kitchen. So I guess, really, it never stops.
Happy are those who are members of a subculture. It does simplify the journey. However, it’s all an illusion.
Have a great summer.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Let's Make a List
1. This gay marriage thing. Come on Walker. Tear down that STAY. It’s not right. Tear it down, I say, like that Gorbachev wall.
2. It’s so hot and humid in New York, I actually feel like I am being born again.
3. So we have decided to go to Iceland.
4. Go to iTunes and buy Henry Wolfe’s SOMEONE ELSE. It’s great. And write a wonderful review.
5. Do not eat caramelized onions and expect an easy night.
6. My hair is turning gray. I probably need to eat more vegetables. Or get a time machine.
7. The recession is over. But the corporations are not spending any money on developing anything new. It’s their Fuck-You to the Democratic leadership of this country. And no one sees this as unpatriotic?
8. Loosen your coffers, Fortune 500’s, and hire some people and create some new things. It can’t all be about your little lives with its lush status quo, the polo ponies and the private jet trips to Cap d’Antibes. Can it?
9. Isn’t it more fun to be creative, anyway? Like, isn’t it more fun to make a papier maché bunny than it is to check your portfolio?
10. I could eat linguini with clam sauce every day. Gotta get some spinach.
2. It’s so hot and humid in New York, I actually feel like I am being born again.
3. So we have decided to go to Iceland.
4. Go to iTunes and buy Henry Wolfe’s SOMEONE ELSE. It’s great. And write a wonderful review.
5. Do not eat caramelized onions and expect an easy night.
6. My hair is turning gray. I probably need to eat more vegetables. Or get a time machine.
7. The recession is over. But the corporations are not spending any money on developing anything new. It’s their Fuck-You to the Democratic leadership of this country. And no one sees this as unpatriotic?
8. Loosen your coffers, Fortune 500’s, and hire some people and create some new things. It can’t all be about your little lives with its lush status quo, the polo ponies and the private jet trips to Cap d’Antibes. Can it?
9. Isn’t it more fun to be creative, anyway? Like, isn’t it more fun to make a papier maché bunny than it is to check your portfolio?
10. I could eat linguini with clam sauce every day. Gotta get some spinach.
Let's Make a List
Let’s make a list.
1. This gay marriage thing. Come on Walker. Tear down that STAY. It’s not right. Tear it down, I say, like that Gorbachev wall.
2. It’s so hot and humid in New York, I actually fell like I am being born again.
3. So we have decided to go to Iceland.
4. Go to iTunes and buy Henry Wolfe’s SOMEONE ELSE. It’s great. And write a wonderful review.
5. Do not eat caramelized onions and expect an easy night.
6. My hair is turning gray. I probably need to eat more vegetables. Or get a time machine.
7. The recession is over. But the corporations are not spending any money on developing anything new. It’s their Fuck-You to the Democratic leadership of this country. And no one sees this as unpatriotic?
8. Loosen your coffers, Fortune 500’s, and hire some people and create some new things. It can’t all be about your little lives with its lush status quo, the polo ponies and the private jet trips to Cap d’Antibes. Can it?
9. Isn’t it more fun to be creative, anyway? Like, isn’t it more fun to make a papier maché bunny than it is to check your portfolio?
10. I could eat linguini with clam sauce every day. Gotta get some spinach.
1. This gay marriage thing. Come on Walker. Tear down that STAY. It’s not right. Tear it down, I say, like that Gorbachev wall.
2. It’s so hot and humid in New York, I actually fell like I am being born again.
3. So we have decided to go to Iceland.
4. Go to iTunes and buy Henry Wolfe’s SOMEONE ELSE. It’s great. And write a wonderful review.
5. Do not eat caramelized onions and expect an easy night.
6. My hair is turning gray. I probably need to eat more vegetables. Or get a time machine.
7. The recession is over. But the corporations are not spending any money on developing anything new. It’s their Fuck-You to the Democratic leadership of this country. And no one sees this as unpatriotic?
8. Loosen your coffers, Fortune 500’s, and hire some people and create some new things. It can’t all be about your little lives with its lush status quo, the polo ponies and the private jet trips to Cap d’Antibes. Can it?
9. Isn’t it more fun to be creative, anyway? Like, isn’t it more fun to make a papier maché bunny than it is to check your portfolio?
10. I could eat linguini with clam sauce every day. Gotta get some spinach.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Justice Kennedy, Can You Do It?
Yeah, Prop 8, that hateful prop, was overturned today. But there’s a stay.
This thing is going to the Supreme Court.
And now it’s up to Kennedy, our Supreme swinger, to uphold the lower court’s decision to keep down Prop 8 in the garbage where it belongs.
Tricky thing is, the logic used by the lower court might be eviscerated by the upper court. Blech.
Strange thing, this happening in my lifetime. I guess strange things happen in everyone’s lifetime that very personally pertains to their specific circumstances. I just do not feel that I have the nerves for all this. At least not right now. Okay, I do. Who am I? Mashed potatoes Marvin?
I was at a dinner tonight and to my surprise, someone there did not believe in evolution. How could I know such a person? I mean, I do not know this person by choice…but still, just two degrees of separation and someone is throwing Adam and Eve stuff at me?
And how could we live in a world where Prop. 8 could happen at all?
You hate to be all, “How stupid can people be?”
But shit, I’m feeling arrogant and pissed off. I do not feel celebratory. Call me a gloomy Gus. But do call me.
Come on Kennedy. (You know today he knows that his entire career is going to be remembered for the decision he is going to have to make. And he’s excited.)
Do the thing that helps. We are not Saudi Arabia.
This thing is going to the Supreme Court.
And now it’s up to Kennedy, our Supreme swinger, to uphold the lower court’s decision to keep down Prop 8 in the garbage where it belongs.
Tricky thing is, the logic used by the lower court might be eviscerated by the upper court. Blech.
Strange thing, this happening in my lifetime. I guess strange things happen in everyone’s lifetime that very personally pertains to their specific circumstances. I just do not feel that I have the nerves for all this. At least not right now. Okay, I do. Who am I? Mashed potatoes Marvin?
I was at a dinner tonight and to my surprise, someone there did not believe in evolution. How could I know such a person? I mean, I do not know this person by choice…but still, just two degrees of separation and someone is throwing Adam and Eve stuff at me?
And how could we live in a world where Prop. 8 could happen at all?
You hate to be all, “How stupid can people be?”
But shit, I’m feeling arrogant and pissed off. I do not feel celebratory. Call me a gloomy Gus. But do call me.
Come on Kennedy. (You know today he knows that his entire career is going to be remembered for the decision he is going to have to make. And he’s excited.)
Do the thing that helps. We are not Saudi Arabia.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
One Does Want to Be Kind to Schmucks
One wants to be kind to all living creatures. So here it goes.
Dinner for Schmucks wasn’t great.
Paul Rudd is forever attractive and grounded.
Everyone else dialed it up to a wobbly 12.5.
But I liked some of the business. You know, I like comedies.
Better luck next time. I mean it.
Dinner for Schmucks wasn’t great.
Paul Rudd is forever attractive and grounded.
Everyone else dialed it up to a wobbly 12.5.
But I liked some of the business. You know, I like comedies.
Better luck next time. I mean it.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Let's Talk About the Mall that is Soho
When I was in my twenties, back in the day when Matthew Broderick was also in his twenties, one would go down to Soho to see art, hook up with an NBC executive, do some blow, have crazy loft sex, go to the SNL after party at Rockefeller Center and then wonder what the hell you were doing with your life. Of course, what you were doing with your life made total sense and if you could do it all over again, well, you would.
These days, you go to Ben Sherman and you buy a load of cotton from the sale rack. Look, I’m a bit beefy, which is a nice way of saying I could lose fifteen pounds and the world would be better off. But still, those Ben Sherman cuts, all 1960’s and British, give me a happy feeling.
Soho is a mall. A frigging Paramus-Beverly Center Redo below Houston.
Corporations made me quake today. First the artists, then the galleries, then the cafés and shops, then the corporate stores. This is the natural progression. Like bog to woods. Read about the bog to field to woods progression. It’s so fun.
And I go, with everyone else, downtown to buy my mall clothes and pretend I’m having a cutting edge experience. I mean, shit, I ate frozen yogurt.
I hate clothes shopping. Something about all that fire retardant stench in the stores. Some people associate it with optimism, fresh new times. I associate it with strange cancer odor.
But I like new clothes. And thank goodness Adam, my recognized by the State of California Domestic Partner, completely takes over when we shop. He’s a total clothing top.
Cut off the tags, wash them well.
These days, you go to Ben Sherman and you buy a load of cotton from the sale rack. Look, I’m a bit beefy, which is a nice way of saying I could lose fifteen pounds and the world would be better off. But still, those Ben Sherman cuts, all 1960’s and British, give me a happy feeling.
Soho is a mall. A frigging Paramus-Beverly Center Redo below Houston.
Corporations made me quake today. First the artists, then the galleries, then the cafés and shops, then the corporate stores. This is the natural progression. Like bog to woods. Read about the bog to field to woods progression. It’s so fun.
And I go, with everyone else, downtown to buy my mall clothes and pretend I’m having a cutting edge experience. I mean, shit, I ate frozen yogurt.
I hate clothes shopping. Something about all that fire retardant stench in the stores. Some people associate it with optimism, fresh new times. I associate it with strange cancer odor.
But I like new clothes. And thank goodness Adam, my recognized by the State of California Domestic Partner, completely takes over when we shop. He’s a total clothing top.
Cut off the tags, wash them well.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Weekend Slider
1. I have made $8.75 from my Ads on my blog via Google Adsense. It just took three months!
2. Friends, after six years of allergy shots, I am finally done. It is time to celebrate one less maintenance-y thing in my calendar. Pass the Claritin.
3. I still like to play the guitar.
4. I do not understand why poorish people (and I include the middle class in this one) are Republicans. I was at a birthday party tonight at a penthouse overlooking all of Manhattan. These people were Democrats. Why are the swanky people so happy to give money away (of course, they’ll have lots of money anyway, no matter what the government takes) but the poorer people are so terrified of ever being at the receiving end of this largesse?
5. From up high in New York, you can really see the capitalism. I understand why the poor drink. It is very stressful to be poor.
6. I would have no problem living in a penthouse. But isn’t it weird that the plumbing vent pipes come up right through the patio? Not something I would want.
7. I am getting used to the humidity. You just have to not mind being sort of filthy.
8. There are many sensitive, creative, smart people on earth. You just have to wait.
9. I want a dog.
10. But does a dog want me?
2. Friends, after six years of allergy shots, I am finally done. It is time to celebrate one less maintenance-y thing in my calendar. Pass the Claritin.
3. I still like to play the guitar.
4. I do not understand why poorish people (and I include the middle class in this one) are Republicans. I was at a birthday party tonight at a penthouse overlooking all of Manhattan. These people were Democrats. Why are the swanky people so happy to give money away (of course, they’ll have lots of money anyway, no matter what the government takes) but the poorer people are so terrified of ever being at the receiving end of this largesse?
5. From up high in New York, you can really see the capitalism. I understand why the poor drink. It is very stressful to be poor.
6. I would have no problem living in a penthouse. But isn’t it weird that the plumbing vent pipes come up right through the patio? Not something I would want.
7. I am getting used to the humidity. You just have to not mind being sort of filthy.
8. There are many sensitive, creative, smart people on earth. You just have to wait.
9. I want a dog.
10. But does a dog want me?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I AM LOVE
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, I Am Love is so worth seeing I can’t believe you’re sitting here reading this stupid blog entry when you should be online buying your tickets.
Look, the story is not so new. Oh well. I am not spoiling anything here as we all know that Tilda Swinton gets carried away by this earthy chef in gorgeous Italy.
But really, this movie is not about the story. It’s about the design, the shooting and the incredible costumes, sets and music and of course, acting. I don’t usually put much stock in design stuff (I completely walked out of The English Patient). But this movie? It’s a damn thrill, the sensual nature of it. Everything about it is so beautiful, it makes me proud to be half Italian, though the Italians that I hail from are more the servants in the movie than the industrialisti that are the center of the story.
Tilda Swinton heads a cast of such beautiful and well dressed Milanese, you’ll wonder how you are ever going to show your decent face and your ugly wardrobe again in any social setting. Tilda is Oscar bound, what with her Italian and Russian.
The music by John Adams is also Oscar bound.
So get your ballots out and mark them now.
John Adams starts with some very Copland xylophone stuff, giving the movie a very 1955 feeling. And the music keeps changing as the story gets into very different territory.
The sex/nature scenes are unbelievable. You guys! See it.
When the story does turn toward the end, I didn’t buy it. And upon reflection, I still don’t. But it’s hard to make a perfect movie, always has been. I’m letting it go.
See it in a really good movie theatre with a big screen with great sound.
Go out for a great meal when you’re done. Order the shrimp.
I Am Love
Look, the story is not so new. Oh well. I am not spoiling anything here as we all know that Tilda Swinton gets carried away by this earthy chef in gorgeous Italy.
But really, this movie is not about the story. It’s about the design, the shooting and the incredible costumes, sets and music and of course, acting. I don’t usually put much stock in design stuff (I completely walked out of The English Patient). But this movie? It’s a damn thrill, the sensual nature of it. Everything about it is so beautiful, it makes me proud to be half Italian, though the Italians that I hail from are more the servants in the movie than the industrialisti that are the center of the story.
Tilda Swinton heads a cast of such beautiful and well dressed Milanese, you’ll wonder how you are ever going to show your decent face and your ugly wardrobe again in any social setting. Tilda is Oscar bound, what with her Italian and Russian.
The music by John Adams is also Oscar bound.
So get your ballots out and mark them now.
John Adams starts with some very Copland xylophone stuff, giving the movie a very 1955 feeling. And the music keeps changing as the story gets into very different territory.
The sex/nature scenes are unbelievable. You guys! See it.
When the story does turn toward the end, I didn’t buy it. And upon reflection, I still don’t. But it’s hard to make a perfect movie, always has been. I’m letting it go.
See it in a really good movie theatre with a big screen with great sound.
Go out for a great meal when you’re done. Order the shrimp.
I Am Love
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
1933
From FDR:
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Name Playground
Have fun with this one! Find out how common your name is, when it was the most popular, all of that, at Name Playground.
Apparently, Donald experienced its peak popularity in 1934 and has been going downhill ever since. (My father was born in ’38 and I am named after him.) 1934 was the year when Donald was the name of 3.07% of the male population and was the sixth most popular name. Now, Donald is the 303rd most popular name. Quack, quack.
Names have changed so much. Because I never had a kid, I never spent much time on this sort of thing. (Except for my pooch.) But I had fun looking at names when they were at their peak.
Roger and Dianne both peaked in 1945.
Alan and Kathryn had their peak in 1951.
Michael peaked and was the number one name in 1954.
Most popular names for 2006? Jacob and Emily.
What a surprise, right?
Apparently, almost everyone named their son Gregory in 1962.
But for now, I think I’ll name my next dog Ethan or Madison.
Apparently, Donald experienced its peak popularity in 1934 and has been going downhill ever since. (My father was born in ’38 and I am named after him.) 1934 was the year when Donald was the name of 3.07% of the male population and was the sixth most popular name. Now, Donald is the 303rd most popular name. Quack, quack.
Names have changed so much. Because I never had a kid, I never spent much time on this sort of thing. (Except for my pooch.) But I had fun looking at names when they were at their peak.
Roger and Dianne both peaked in 1945.
Alan and Kathryn had their peak in 1951.
Michael peaked and was the number one name in 1954.
Most popular names for 2006? Jacob and Emily.
What a surprise, right?
Apparently, almost everyone named their son Gregory in 1962.
But for now, I think I’ll name my next dog Ethan or Madison.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Kids Are All Right
We did it. We went to see that LA movie about the lesbian couple whose late teen children form a relationship with their sperm donor dad and then he ends up having sex with Julianne Moore (as people do) and then everyone learns a little bit of something, the whole time speaking leftover touch-feely verbiage from the early 1990’s with Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson hauling out quirky, brilliant performances under the watchful, tasteful eye of director Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids are All Right.
It is worth seeing if you are in the mood for something kind of smart and adult, a little bit wry, and sexy but not really sexy at all.
Fun thing, too, my friend owns the hunk of an old brick building that stands in as Mark Ruffalo’s restaurant where I have spent many a fun party, so I felt like I was spending time with old friends. Plus it is lovely LA, the part of the U.S. that has a Mediterranean joy to it. Angst against it looks lovely.
The story was something you could see hurling at you like an Impala across a Kansas prairie. And the dialogue was sort of smug, sort of send-up and not particularly satisfying.
But the direction and acting were way up there. You do not get to see this kind of thing almost ever. I also loved Ms. Cholodenko’s 1998 High Art.
It is worth seeing if you are in the mood for something kind of smart and adult, a little bit wry, and sexy but not really sexy at all.
Fun thing, too, my friend owns the hunk of an old brick building that stands in as Mark Ruffalo’s restaurant where I have spent many a fun party, so I felt like I was spending time with old friends. Plus it is lovely LA, the part of the U.S. that has a Mediterranean joy to it. Angst against it looks lovely.
The story was something you could see hurling at you like an Impala across a Kansas prairie. And the dialogue was sort of smug, sort of send-up and not particularly satisfying.
But the direction and acting were way up there. You do not get to see this kind of thing almost ever. I also loved Ms. Cholodenko’s 1998 High Art.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Entertainment Service Announcement
Friends,
I know you’re trying to save money. But you can’t sit home every night. You have to go out, see things, have a cone.
And why stand on that TKTS line in the middle of Times Square jostling for a ticket when you can much more readily and much more comfortably go online to www.broadwaybox.com and buy your tickets there at a deep discount?
I’ve done it for years. (Thanks S.B. for the tip).
I am also a member of other things that I can get through my unions, etc. But www.broadwaybox.com is open to all and frankly has the greatest variety of shows at a great discount.
Use it. You know you like to see a show or two a year. And who the hell likes to pay full price?
Have a great weekend. Go to clean, peaceful beaches. Eat healthy food. Drink plenty of water.
I know you’re trying to save money. But you can’t sit home every night. You have to go out, see things, have a cone.
And why stand on that TKTS line in the middle of Times Square jostling for a ticket when you can much more readily and much more comfortably go online to www.broadwaybox.com and buy your tickets there at a deep discount?
I’ve done it for years. (Thanks S.B. for the tip).
I am also a member of other things that I can get through my unions, etc. But www.broadwaybox.com is open to all and frankly has the greatest variety of shows at a great discount.
Use it. You know you like to see a show or two a year. And who the hell likes to pay full price?
Have a great weekend. Go to clean, peaceful beaches. Eat healthy food. Drink plenty of water.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
8 Reasons Why I Like Thursdays
1. Because you get all that stuff done so you can be free to do exactly what you need to do on Friday.
2. Because people like to go out to lunch on a Thursday.
3. And people start softening into the weekend on Thursday night. Maybe a drink, maybe a show, maybe a vampire slaying.
4. It is not called hump day.
5. It’s a good day to fly. But not as good as Tuesday or Wednesday.
6. No one ever said, really, “I just hate Thursdays.”
7. Tone gets lighter on Thursday.
8. I was born on a Friday, so Thursday is my birth eve.
2. Because people like to go out to lunch on a Thursday.
3. And people start softening into the weekend on Thursday night. Maybe a drink, maybe a show, maybe a vampire slaying.
4. It is not called hump day.
5. It’s a good day to fly. But not as good as Tuesday or Wednesday.
6. No one ever said, really, “I just hate Thursdays.”
7. Tone gets lighter on Thursday.
8. I was born on a Friday, so Thursday is my birth eve.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
So I'm Rewriting this Screenplay
I’m having one of those years when you have to do a lot of work, which is great. At times it is intimidating. But really, it’s what I asked for.
So I wrote this screenplay for these guys who made a couple of famous movies and they are very smart and very helpful. The screenplay is my idea. The working with me is their idea. Together, this thing is going well.
However---I was in the mood to write something funny, surely, but a little more French and moody. In the end, I wrote something that was funny, surely, but a little unfocused in tone and action.
So I got their great notes and I am using them fully and these notes are working well and the rewrite, which I am in the throes of every day, is coming together. And now I realize exactly what I am writing. I am writing the movie that is playing at the mall that you THANK GOD is playing at the mall because everything else that is playing at the mall is not so great but this one is fun and funny, and damn, let’s go in and enjoy ourselves.
Sometimes, I take myself too seriously. And really, my strong suit is comedy. Dark comedy, sure, but comedy. If you can take an idea and turn it into a story with solid characters and somehow make it all funny, well why wouldn’t you do that? People need it.
Coming to a mall near you: my movie. Pick up some groovy shirts while you’re there. And maybe those special curtain thingies you’ve needed forever from Restoration Hardware.
Of course, you can wait a while and just see it on a plane for free.
So I wrote this screenplay for these guys who made a couple of famous movies and they are very smart and very helpful. The screenplay is my idea. The working with me is their idea. Together, this thing is going well.
However---I was in the mood to write something funny, surely, but a little more French and moody. In the end, I wrote something that was funny, surely, but a little unfocused in tone and action.
So I got their great notes and I am using them fully and these notes are working well and the rewrite, which I am in the throes of every day, is coming together. And now I realize exactly what I am writing. I am writing the movie that is playing at the mall that you THANK GOD is playing at the mall because everything else that is playing at the mall is not so great but this one is fun and funny, and damn, let’s go in and enjoy ourselves.
Sometimes, I take myself too seriously. And really, my strong suit is comedy. Dark comedy, sure, but comedy. If you can take an idea and turn it into a story with solid characters and somehow make it all funny, well why wouldn’t you do that? People need it.
Coming to a mall near you: my movie. Pick up some groovy shirts while you’re there. And maybe those special curtain thingies you’ve needed forever from Restoration Hardware.
Of course, you can wait a while and just see it on a plane for free.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sleep
A good friend of mine, writer of Postcards from Hell’s Kitchen, suggested that in addition to drinking lots of water, it is also essential to get plenty of sleep.
And with that, I say goodnight.
And with that, I say goodnight.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Time Travel For Dummies
This is a picture of downtown Suffern, New York from a fifteenth story window that faces North in the Mahwah Sheraton, that rocket looking building you see where the I-287 meets Route 17 and the New York State Thruway.
I grew up in a pass-through town.
But it was a fine one. In fact, I feel very lucky to have grown up there as my family (including me) had been living in a less gemutlichkeit place only five miles away until I finished the fifth grade. I had no friends in the old town. I mostly bought black mollies for my aquarium, nursed their Ick infections, played pop songs on my guitar in my bedroom and read Peanuts classics.
But then we moved to Suffern where the kids were a little more old fashioned, certainly more friendly, smarter, engaged, fresh faced, even beautiful and generally positive. And I made friends there and I still have friends from this place. Spent seven great formative years, had a class trip to Paris, worked summers in a truck stop, then headed off to Boston for college. It was not traumatic, any of this. It was, at times, depressing. It was usually fun. It certainly was a great place to take all those good high school classes and join things, whatever you were into. It was well funded. It was quite a building with a planetarium and an indoor pool and a monster theatre and, well, I just have to say it, ramps. And all kinds of kids went there---a cross section---like something you would find at a decent suburban DMV. Plus, I think we were section 9 champions in every sport but curling, or something.
Now, reunions. You know, it is best going expecting nothing. This keeps you more in the moment. You just leave yourself open to the field. You go on the Easter Egg hunt and you find all these people that you knew when they were only eleven years old, some people that you’ve known since they were twelve and then some since they were fourteen, depending on what year your classes merged together. (And now, all these years later, as you hop around with your basket, you have to accept that it is the women who all still get to keep their hair.)
I drank a lot of water the week before I went, thinking it might help with that puff-face thing. Did not get too much sleep the night before. Ironed my shirt.
I like a party. I like talking to people. I am what I would call warmly shallow. Having lived in California for years where people are absolutely warmly shallow, I have come to enjoy the breeziness of these drive-by encounters with others.
But then, at times, you see someone and their image lights up a part of your brain, a memory, and your emotional life is re-contextualized. And it’s good to let that happen, that slide into the past, because there IS context there, a place of connection, and isn’t that why people go to reunions? Not as a study of specimens but as a kind of awakening of younger and less jaded (or tired) parts of the self? I think so. It is a very enjoyable experience. And all the people around you are doing the same and they reveal things to you like “The first time I did this or that adolescent wrong doing was WITH YOU!” Ah, but you do not take any blame. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else! And people get a little embarrassed. Some people want to fall in love again. Some people profess their crushes that they had, all of that. (None of that for me.) So the breeziness gets deeper.
I spoke for a while with another guy from my class who was also gay. It was very comforting.
I got to talk to some “Mounties” that I really did not know at all. And I certainly had complete conversations with people that I knew very well. Facebook helps. It re-solidifies. In fact, some sociologists are saying that Facebook is actually getting people to spend MORE time in the flesh with other people. Could be…
Glad I went. It was warm hearted. It was open hearted, even. And though at times it felt freaky, that was only when you thought about it too much. Because really, it’s just a middle aged prom, except you don’t have to have a date, you can afford it, you can wear something that is hanging in your closet, and you don’t have to go down to the Jersey Shore afterward and rent some filthy house for two or three nights.
And there is humor. A lot of it.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Let's Talk About Water
This is the story.
Most of us are dehydrated.
That cranky feeling that you feel? It’s a lack of water.
The sort of confusion that you feel at times? It’s a water shortage.
The inexplicable exhaustion that you feel for no good reason? Get thee to the cooler.
You guys! Drink water. Lots of it. I know, I know, you have to drive somewhere or be on a subway or train or you have to go to bed. And who wants to be running to the bathroom every hour?
So try to get your water in early in the day. If you’re working, there’s no better place to drink water. Lots of it. Sit there and drink a ton of it. And the bathroom breaks are good for you. Gets you to walk around. If you are more of a runaround Sue in your daily life, well, you’ll have to figure it out. You can do it.
Headachy? You’re thirsty.
Irritable? Evian.
Strange sensation of impending doom? You need the spigot.
Drink water. It melts fat. It helps to maximize all metabolic reactions in your body. It increases your ability to focus. It gives your skin that twenty-something glow.
Your kidneys are up to the task.
Your membranes need it.
You can be the best you. It’s simple. Just add water.
Most of us are dehydrated.
That cranky feeling that you feel? It’s a lack of water.
The sort of confusion that you feel at times? It’s a water shortage.
The inexplicable exhaustion that you feel for no good reason? Get thee to the cooler.
You guys! Drink water. Lots of it. I know, I know, you have to drive somewhere or be on a subway or train or you have to go to bed. And who wants to be running to the bathroom every hour?
So try to get your water in early in the day. If you’re working, there’s no better place to drink water. Lots of it. Sit there and drink a ton of it. And the bathroom breaks are good for you. Gets you to walk around. If you are more of a runaround Sue in your daily life, well, you’ll have to figure it out. You can do it.
Headachy? You’re thirsty.
Irritable? Evian.
Strange sensation of impending doom? You need the spigot.
Drink water. It melts fat. It helps to maximize all metabolic reactions in your body. It increases your ability to focus. It gives your skin that twenty-something glow.
Your kidneys are up to the task.
Your membranes need it.
You can be the best you. It’s simple. Just add water.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Thursday List
1. New York City is really a beaver swamp. It always was and always will be. Just add beaver.
2. Being more accepting of gay people might truly make more people experiment with being gay. But is that so bad? (I do see it happening. Maybe the social conservatives have a right to be scared. However, though they say Rome fell---last I heard, Rome is still there.)
3. It’s good to lose the weight. Now, what to do with the extra skin…
4. Obama’s ratings are low. But then, whose aren’t?
5. I saw Winter’s Bone tonight. My friend John Hawkes is in it. Amazing. Check it out. It got the grand jury prize at Sundance. Damn good acting. Cool story. Beautifully shot. And wait ‘til you see the squirrel skinning and what they do with a chain saw! Winter’s Bone. Newcomer, Jennifer Lawrence (at least new to me) was fresh and real and appealing.
6. I actually don’t believe in peanut butter.
7. I cut boxes to size for shipping. In other words---I sold an Eames chair on Ebay and used two speaker boxes, refitted for the chair. Anything to recycle. But I have to say, it does take time out of your day. And it’s a mess. And I use a steak knife.
8. Garbage trucks are aggressive.
9. Did you relax at all, today?
10. Love, when administered without ego, is often not trusted. People think you’re a kook. Might as well wear clown shoes and a skirt made out of neck ties.
2. Being more accepting of gay people might truly make more people experiment with being gay. But is that so bad? (I do see it happening. Maybe the social conservatives have a right to be scared. However, though they say Rome fell---last I heard, Rome is still there.)
3. It’s good to lose the weight. Now, what to do with the extra skin…
4. Obama’s ratings are low. But then, whose aren’t?
5. I saw Winter’s Bone tonight. My friend John Hawkes is in it. Amazing. Check it out. It got the grand jury prize at Sundance. Damn good acting. Cool story. Beautifully shot. And wait ‘til you see the squirrel skinning and what they do with a chain saw! Winter’s Bone. Newcomer, Jennifer Lawrence (at least new to me) was fresh and real and appealing.
6. I actually don’t believe in peanut butter.
7. I cut boxes to size for shipping. In other words---I sold an Eames chair on Ebay and used two speaker boxes, refitted for the chair. Anything to recycle. But I have to say, it does take time out of your day. And it’s a mess. And I use a steak knife.
8. Garbage trucks are aggressive.
9. Did you relax at all, today?
10. Love, when administered without ego, is often not trusted. People think you’re a kook. Might as well wear clown shoes and a skirt made out of neck ties.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Age
I meet people lately who are older than me and I let out a sigh of relief. I used to be the youngest person ever. Then, you know, you get older and you find yourself being the oldest person in the room a lot.
Then—you meet older people and you’re not.
Older people are cool because they were the people you looked up to when you were in elementary school. They already had a car, freedom, a guitar, maybe very interesting sandals.
They were certainly more liberal than you were because they were the final march of the Sixties. And because they were more liberal, they went on to do more things for others.
Older people have an idea of life that is different than yours. Not by much, so you recognize it, but different enough so that you have to really pay attention.
I am talking about people who are only like five years older. But it does make a difference.
Older people are usually calmer than you and their egos are worn down a little bit more than yours. Unless, of course, they are of a certain type whose ego gets wilder.
Aging is interesting. I like it. You get a bit more gnarled. Feet and things. More aches, for sure. Less hair, some teeth radically altered by drills and fillers.
Hopefully, all your major organs are working so you’ll have them for when you get really old.
I have enjoyed spending time with people who are older than me after having spent so many years usually surrounded by people who are younger than I am.
But even better, it feels best to be around people of all ages at once. When you do that (especially by water) you see how pointless it is to worry about age at all since all ages are represented at once and so existentially they are there forever and you don’t matter so much.
Age is not that important. As I get older, I feel both older and younger. However, the dentist said I grind my teeth. He asked me, “Do you have an appliance?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Do you wear it?” And I said, “No.” He knew the answer before I said it but he had to ask.
Let’s all get old together. Just go light on the simple carbs.
Then—you meet older people and you’re not.
Older people are cool because they were the people you looked up to when you were in elementary school. They already had a car, freedom, a guitar, maybe very interesting sandals.
They were certainly more liberal than you were because they were the final march of the Sixties. And because they were more liberal, they went on to do more things for others.
Older people have an idea of life that is different than yours. Not by much, so you recognize it, but different enough so that you have to really pay attention.
I am talking about people who are only like five years older. But it does make a difference.
Older people are usually calmer than you and their egos are worn down a little bit more than yours. Unless, of course, they are of a certain type whose ego gets wilder.
Aging is interesting. I like it. You get a bit more gnarled. Feet and things. More aches, for sure. Less hair, some teeth radically altered by drills and fillers.
Hopefully, all your major organs are working so you’ll have them for when you get really old.
I have enjoyed spending time with people who are older than me after having spent so many years usually surrounded by people who are younger than I am.
But even better, it feels best to be around people of all ages at once. When you do that (especially by water) you see how pointless it is to worry about age at all since all ages are represented at once and so existentially they are there forever and you don’t matter so much.
Age is not that important. As I get older, I feel both older and younger. However, the dentist said I grind my teeth. He asked me, “Do you have an appliance?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Do you wear it?” And I said, “No.” He knew the answer before I said it but he had to ask.
Let’s all get old together. Just go light on the simple carbs.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Shredded
For two weeks, an auto mechanic at a generic four bay repair joint on Northern Boulevard and 88th Street in Queens tried to fix two simple things on our Ford. The trunk latch which would not lock. And the battery light kept coming on when the car was idling, indicating that the alternator was not charging the battery properly (and this happened to us, too, 10 months ago and the car died on the Palisades Parkway, so it had to be taken care of.)
The more the guys at the shop worked on the car, the worse it got. The trunk button, when pushed, would click over and over again. The trunk would not lock. When I showed this to the mechanic, he tweaked if for a second. It worked once. Never worked again.
They replaced the alternator twice. Then the battery. Still, they could not get it to work properly. All the while, they were running off to chop shops, getting faulty refurbished parts that simply did not work. And they continued to charge me more and more money. Finally, I saw the game and realized they were going to keep me there forever, diagnosing, making a mess of things until I was living in a cardboard box near CitiField.
So I complained to the evening guy in charge, quite a bit, said I was taking my car back and bringing it to my brother’s Ford Dealership in New Jersey and that I wanted a large credit back on my card. The evening guy called the owner, told him the story, put his hand over the receiver and said, “Give me a number.”
So I was dealing with negotiation over a return of money for the work they did not do, the further mess they made of things. I gave him a fair number, which was about ¾ of the amount. No budging. I was told I had to come see the owner the next morning.
Which I did. And I made my case. And he gave me a credit back for almost the full ¾. Meanwhile, I went out to NJ with the Ford. Left it with my brother, got my parents’ car they leave at my sister’s house for when they come up to visit.
Went upstate and had a fabulous time in Ancram. Southern Columbia County. Certainly. On the way home, in my parents’ car, near Peekskill on the Taconic, I heard this thumping and I thought, “It’s not me. I always think it’s me but it’s not me.”
And I looked at the cars in my rearview mirror, seeing them approach, knowing the sound would get louder and louder because it must be, for sure, them, and not me. And it did get louder and louder and the car started to shake.
Total tire blow out. Like instant rubber garbage.
Side of the road, hiding behind the guard rail. Calling Triple A. The Taconic is set up so that Triple A cannot do any towing. The State troopers have to call in someone (and then Triple A reimburses. Whatever. Mob. Mob. Mob. This East coast. Everyone fighting for their revenue.)
Nice Trooper came and checked on us. Set up flares. Ten minutes later, nice tow guy changed our tire right on the side of the road, using his huge truck as a tank-block for protection.
We got off fine.
Strange car Karma. Some sort of sign, like, “You are kind of stuck and you need to fix shit up.”
I do not believe too much in that stuff---but what was rather freaky is the car shredded its tire EXACTLY at the exit off the Taconic where I was born. Sort of saying, “Go back. Start at the beginning.”
The more the guys at the shop worked on the car, the worse it got. The trunk button, when pushed, would click over and over again. The trunk would not lock. When I showed this to the mechanic, he tweaked if for a second. It worked once. Never worked again.
They replaced the alternator twice. Then the battery. Still, they could not get it to work properly. All the while, they were running off to chop shops, getting faulty refurbished parts that simply did not work. And they continued to charge me more and more money. Finally, I saw the game and realized they were going to keep me there forever, diagnosing, making a mess of things until I was living in a cardboard box near CitiField.
So I complained to the evening guy in charge, quite a bit, said I was taking my car back and bringing it to my brother’s Ford Dealership in New Jersey and that I wanted a large credit back on my card. The evening guy called the owner, told him the story, put his hand over the receiver and said, “Give me a number.”
So I was dealing with negotiation over a return of money for the work they did not do, the further mess they made of things. I gave him a fair number, which was about ¾ of the amount. No budging. I was told I had to come see the owner the next morning.
Which I did. And I made my case. And he gave me a credit back for almost the full ¾. Meanwhile, I went out to NJ with the Ford. Left it with my brother, got my parents’ car they leave at my sister’s house for when they come up to visit.
Went upstate and had a fabulous time in Ancram. Southern Columbia County. Certainly. On the way home, in my parents’ car, near Peekskill on the Taconic, I heard this thumping and I thought, “It’s not me. I always think it’s me but it’s not me.”
And I looked at the cars in my rearview mirror, seeing them approach, knowing the sound would get louder and louder because it must be, for sure, them, and not me. And it did get louder and louder and the car started to shake.
Total tire blow out. Like instant rubber garbage.
Side of the road, hiding behind the guard rail. Calling Triple A. The Taconic is set up so that Triple A cannot do any towing. The State troopers have to call in someone (and then Triple A reimburses. Whatever. Mob. Mob. Mob. This East coast. Everyone fighting for their revenue.)
Nice Trooper came and checked on us. Set up flares. Ten minutes later, nice tow guy changed our tire right on the side of the road, using his huge truck as a tank-block for protection.
We got off fine.
Strange car Karma. Some sort of sign, like, “You are kind of stuck and you need to fix shit up.”
I do not believe too much in that stuff---but what was rather freaky is the car shredded its tire EXACTLY at the exit off the Taconic where I was born. Sort of saying, “Go back. Start at the beginning.”
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Facebook Problem
Okay, what do you do when you have this code of acceptance? I was one of those guys who pretty much accepted all comers. I knew you from high school, sure, friend. We met at a party at so-and-so’s, sure, friend.
But then you see that these people are venomous about Obama or they give praise to God just one too many times, or whatever…and you think, “You know, I really think S is a great soul. I do. And I am open. But, like, when they post strong hating stuff, I am so unhappy it is on my wall.”
And then you start to think. Is it time to remove that person? And then you think, maybe it is.
Because shouldn’t your wall reflect you? Or is that just narcissism online?
I love Facebook. I understand its popularity. But you have to face and face.
Maybe this is where we really feel the harshness. It used to be in the center of town.
Speaking of which, have you ever been to Weimar? Go. The town square is fantastic.
Facebook---you bring me so much. But you shard me, too. Vinegar and crushed glass.
But then you see that these people are venomous about Obama or they give praise to God just one too many times, or whatever…and you think, “You know, I really think S is a great soul. I do. And I am open. But, like, when they post strong hating stuff, I am so unhappy it is on my wall.”
And then you start to think. Is it time to remove that person? And then you think, maybe it is.
Because shouldn’t your wall reflect you? Or is that just narcissism online?
I love Facebook. I understand its popularity. But you have to face and face.
Maybe this is where we really feel the harshness. It used to be in the center of town.
Speaking of which, have you ever been to Weimar? Go. The town square is fantastic.
Facebook---you bring me so much. But you shard me, too. Vinegar and crushed glass.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Wednesday's Glory
I put on Christmas music today. The Charlie Brown stuff. It helped.
As much as I try to avoid it, I find myself eating street hot dogs. But let’s be honest, I don’t try to avoid it. And if the guy just threw a few into the hot water and you order one and you ask, “Is it hot?” and he answers, “Yes.” And then you bite into it and it is cold in the center…don’t’ be surprised.
Some writers wake up in a state of depression. Usually it is around rewrites. You have these thoughts, “Oh, why bother? No one cares. This is useless. People in offices get a weekly check.” Then, you eat, procrastinate, (isn’t eating a form of procrastination?), play some music—70s Pop hits—and you sit down and get to it and you start fiddling with it here and there and you go, “Oh, that’s fun.” And, “I like this scene. But could be stronger.” And, “Okay, rewriting doesn’t have to be so terrible. This is how it goes. We’re not painters, here.” And your mood elevates. And you feel you have purpose. And you continue and then it comes time for dinner and you don’t want to stop working but you have to. And then you go see friends.
Disposable contact lenses really should be disposed of when their time is up.
Heat dissipates.
There is strength in spending much time alone. I am drawn to being very social. But when you are alone, you do see who you are. Sometimes, you sort of can’t believe it. Sometimes, you think it’s kind of cool. Sometimes, you wonder how it all happened. To be able to be at rest while alone, interesting. Work in progress.
Items. You don’t need most things. However, I have noticed that things give one a certain feeling of being grounded. So though many of us look down our noses at the grand materialists, really what they are expressing is this trait. They just want to feel safe.
I love the alphabet. I only wish the alphabet was spelled abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, but you still pronounced it, “The alphabet.”
Please recycle more assiduously.
Oil drillers are getting closer to the spill. Isn’t it strange how we have all gotten used to the geyser? Oh, yeah, that’s the geyser. Was it so bad that Obama remained calm? I envy him. I wish I could stay calm under extreme circumstances. Actually, I do. I do not remain calm under medium circumstances.
I eat steak.
As much as I try to avoid it, I find myself eating street hot dogs. But let’s be honest, I don’t try to avoid it. And if the guy just threw a few into the hot water and you order one and you ask, “Is it hot?” and he answers, “Yes.” And then you bite into it and it is cold in the center…don’t’ be surprised.
Some writers wake up in a state of depression. Usually it is around rewrites. You have these thoughts, “Oh, why bother? No one cares. This is useless. People in offices get a weekly check.” Then, you eat, procrastinate, (isn’t eating a form of procrastination?), play some music—70s Pop hits—and you sit down and get to it and you start fiddling with it here and there and you go, “Oh, that’s fun.” And, “I like this scene. But could be stronger.” And, “Okay, rewriting doesn’t have to be so terrible. This is how it goes. We’re not painters, here.” And your mood elevates. And you feel you have purpose. And you continue and then it comes time for dinner and you don’t want to stop working but you have to. And then you go see friends.
Disposable contact lenses really should be disposed of when their time is up.
Heat dissipates.
There is strength in spending much time alone. I am drawn to being very social. But when you are alone, you do see who you are. Sometimes, you sort of can’t believe it. Sometimes, you think it’s kind of cool. Sometimes, you wonder how it all happened. To be able to be at rest while alone, interesting. Work in progress.
Items. You don’t need most things. However, I have noticed that things give one a certain feeling of being grounded. So though many of us look down our noses at the grand materialists, really what they are expressing is this trait. They just want to feel safe.
I love the alphabet. I only wish the alphabet was spelled abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, but you still pronounced it, “The alphabet.”
Please recycle more assiduously.
Oil drillers are getting closer to the spill. Isn’t it strange how we have all gotten used to the geyser? Oh, yeah, that’s the geyser. Was it so bad that Obama remained calm? I envy him. I wish I could stay calm under extreme circumstances. Actually, I do. I do not remain calm under medium circumstances.
I eat steak.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
The Weather
You sometimes forget about the weather on the east coast. You stay inside and you ignore it.
Summer and Winter.
Just half the year.
It is puzzling to live in a place that is so often physically uncomfortable. Seasons affect work habits, too. There is a greater pace of work and effort in the colder weather. No wonder the Yanks won the Civil War.
Seasonal situations must certainly drive economic fluctuation. Maybe this is good. You end up being subservient to something greater—nature.
In the United States West, the booms and busts are more severe. Housing markets go into sine curves. Gold is found. Then it is not found again for a long time. Or too much of it is found, confidence is inflated and then the gold is lost.
But in the east, there is no gold. Though there is a lot of cash. A transactional place. I see people taking greater pleasure in selling than in making. But for a purpose.
Since there are these seasons to contend with, the most important thing is to be ready for them. And in order to be ready for them one must have a steady power source, which of course is money. This leads to a certain cap on creativity and a dip toward conservative behavior.
Conservative behavior is reliable behavior.
I believe the Greeks became free thinking and Democratic because the weather was so good. They could relax. They could try things out. There was plenty to eat and it was nice out most of the year. It was quite a boom. But now they’re in a bust.
I prefer boom-bust weather. Must be careful.
Summer and Winter.
Just half the year.
It is puzzling to live in a place that is so often physically uncomfortable. Seasons affect work habits, too. There is a greater pace of work and effort in the colder weather. No wonder the Yanks won the Civil War.
Seasonal situations must certainly drive economic fluctuation. Maybe this is good. You end up being subservient to something greater—nature.
In the United States West, the booms and busts are more severe. Housing markets go into sine curves. Gold is found. Then it is not found again for a long time. Or too much of it is found, confidence is inflated and then the gold is lost.
But in the east, there is no gold. Though there is a lot of cash. A transactional place. I see people taking greater pleasure in selling than in making. But for a purpose.
Since there are these seasons to contend with, the most important thing is to be ready for them. And in order to be ready for them one must have a steady power source, which of course is money. This leads to a certain cap on creativity and a dip toward conservative behavior.
Conservative behavior is reliable behavior.
I believe the Greeks became free thinking and Democratic because the weather was so good. They could relax. They could try things out. There was plenty to eat and it was nice out most of the year. It was quite a boom. But now they’re in a bust.
I prefer boom-bust weather. Must be careful.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Cummings Family Reunion: Parents of the Boom
There were 8 of them, two of them did not have children, the other six had 27. My Dad is first on the Left.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Canned Soup
We keep some cans of Trader Joe Soup around. Just in case. Tonight was a just in case night. It was late. I was hungry. I opened it, heated it up and ate it.
It must be poison.
Something about food that has been frozen in time in some can…how can that be good for you?
It was calories, I guess.
There were the little chicken chunks.
The little gummy noodles.
Some spice. Carrots grown in some pesticide field.
Chicken with chemicals, right?
What was this stuff that I just ate?
It had its day. And it will go away.
But really, must we ever eat this?
It must be poison.
Something about food that has been frozen in time in some can…how can that be good for you?
It was calories, I guess.
There were the little chicken chunks.
The little gummy noodles.
Some spice. Carrots grown in some pesticide field.
Chicken with chemicals, right?
What was this stuff that I just ate?
It had its day. And it will go away.
But really, must we ever eat this?
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