Just Flew in from the Coast

And Boy is my Nose Tired.

If you fly to Los Angeles in February, your immediate response is, "I have to live here immediately."

When I landed at JFK, I got on the Air Train and then took the E train into Manhattan. It was very cold so many homeless people are spending the night in their stink-sweat-urine, riding the rails.

Different experience than the pink jasmine of Los Angeles winter.

Pleasure is selfish and pleasurable. Painful stenches let you know that others are not having such a good time. We do nothing about it, so we might as well feel good.

 

Final Words

I am heading to LA for the LOOONG weekend. Apparently, four days of rain are in my near future.

Listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here on Pandora. I got the urge to start sending out emails… You know, those sentimental ones. I didn’t do it.

Don’t do those emails. You always feel sticky in the morning if you do.

Better to do something more tangible.

The Perfect Vagina

So, there they are in Iran, trying to get the uprising going---but they are being taken down like dogs.

Whether a spoiled American like me is sitting comfortably in the Arclight Movie Theater in Hollywood watching kids diving into mountains of feces in some Indian epic or reading Google News at 2AM in my big box apartment in Manhattan about the horrendous government of Iran, it all comes down to the same thing: I picked my vagina wisely.

The vagina is the worm hole to your future. Any of us could have picked the wrong one. Most of us do. Though my particular worm hole was a bit nicotine laden, it was still, at the time, young, healthy and surrounded by law and order, banks filled with money and nearby was the guy who was about to invent the shopping mall.

How did I get so lucky? How did you?

I now take certain freedoms for granted. As a teenager and in my twenties, I was terrified of enslavement. Of course, this United States of America is a work camp and you better do SOMETHING or you will have a miserable experience here, but other than a little bit of work (and you can even have fun work here) you really are not so controlled.

I really have no intelligent way of talking about what it would be like to live in Iran. I have never been anywhere near the place. I have known some Persians in Los Angeles, good ones, bad ones, nice looking ones, scaryass ones. I cannot draw any conclusions from these encounters. After all, these are Persians in the USA, wearing clunky jewelry, putting up columns in front of their Beverly Hills ranch houses--nothing pejorative here. I come from a column building people, too—shopping at Trader Joe’s and having backyard BarneyBounce parties. So I have no idea.

But it does seem like The Middle East is having their SIXTIES. You can feel it. It is about time. And maybe the young people there are thinking, “I was born perfectly, at the right time, extruded onto earth through the correct vagina. Praise Allah and pass the ammunition.” Nicely, the ammunition is Ghandi stuff.

We’re behind you, kids. Welcome to your lives. Your perfect lives. Plus, there were only so many Western vaginas you could have chosen from and many of them, well, they were filled with Joshuas and Peppers, clever beasts who elbowed their way into an easy existence, so there was no room left in those inns.

Old Man

It happened. I got old.

While watching the Grammys tonight, all I could think to say was, “Why is this so loud and why are all these women dressed like whores?”

I guess there has always been a flesh component to music. And I am happy for the flesh. But after tonight, I just feel like my name should be AgnesRose and I should be sitting on some porch somewhere where I hope young women will come up to me and ask for advice and I will tell them things like, “If you are going to sing, do that. Don’t dance so much.” And, “If your ass is a little cottage cheesy, by all means, cover it up. Even big plastic costume pieces can’t save you.” And lastly, “You know, I always thought you were special and talented, but have you noticed that the guys are just doing music? They don’t strip down to their coochy, why must you?”

Not a great lover of percussion, or bass, or colorful floor shows, I have missed out on enjoying much of the new music over the past thirty years. But I keep trying. I listen. I understand the big bold appeal for people who want to feel their bodies quaking a bit. But it does nothing for my ears.

So I put on my flannel robe and turn gray.

Three more things:

Barbra Streisand must have practiced too hard for the event. Poor thing, croaking it out.

It all looks like cabbage wars from where I’m sitting.

A lot of God out there in Grammy land. I bet you’d need it.

Note To Self

It is okay NOT TO KNOW.

Just One More Day

Writing about the weather is right up there with what? Flossing poetry?

I don’t know.

But listen---it was so damn cold today. And tomorrow will be a little better but not much. BUT LOOK OUT FRIDAY!

Starting on Friday, we will be living in the high thirties, low forties and for that I am exceptionally grateful.

I had this thing this winter where I was never getting cold. But today, I felt it. And it is not enjoyable.

Bring on something easy. Something we can all deal with. Eventually, one needs it to be mild.

Okay?

My Little Egypt

All this talk.

You know, when I was in high school, I was in a play called MURDER ON THE NILE. It was a terrible Agatha Christie thing on a tourist craft on the Nile. I played the young angry communist. (Does anything ever change?)

But hear this. I am a nasty cynic and I am angry (and not really communist---just for health care and education) and I am saying, “Okay, guys, do what you will. I will not be interested until it really becomes something better.”

My whole life I have been inundated with horrible news from the Middle East. In elementary school, kids went on with their oral reports about the six day war, the Yom Kippur thing, all of it. And in such sad tones, what with their grandparents, many of them, destroyed in the Holocaust. It was all so horrible. And I get it.

I never got the Arab side of things, orally. I mean, I was living less than a mile from Monsey, NY.

But it was always, always, always in the paper, in the news, in people’s faces, always.

I am kind of selfish and I want the world to be nicer, better, easier, less strife-filled for my own pleasure. I want it to be pretty and lovely. I want, well, I want heaven.

So I do not read about wars. I do not read about Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or, sorry, Israel very much. Though, I must read about Israel sometimes because my sympathies get piqued.

(I do read about North Korea, but in my life, that farce feels newish so I am not bored by it yet.)

In conclusion, in my tacky ignorant way, what I am saying is, “You frigging Middle Easterners get it together. Donny wants to read something new in the paper. And it needs to be really good.”

Proud and Shameless

This is what my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner does. He conceived of it, put it all together and edited it. Nice, right?

Shameless

Go Now Quick Before Time Runs Out

As in Life, Timing Is Everything in the Movies

 

Timepieces of all kinds are the stars of the Christian Marclay video “The Clock,” at the Paula Cooper Gallery.

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: February 3, 2011 The New York Times

Christian Marclay, the wizardly visual artist, composer and appropriator has done it again, and then some. “The Clock,” his latest excursion into extreme editing and radical sampling, is a 24-hour timepiece that ticks off the minutes — and sometimes the seconds — of a full day, using thousands of brilliantly spliced-together film clips from all kinds of movies. All of them feature clocks or watches or people announcing the time, or more obliquely conjure up the passage of time.

Thus “The Clock” is also a 24-hour valentine to the movies. It samples film from around the world and throughout the last century, from silent movies to the present. It is like a history of film for our ADD times, or the greatest movie trailer ever made, as well as the ultimate work of appropriation art, a genre that owes so much to the movies.

It might horrify movie buffs. Watching it, I kept wondering what the late, great, film critic Pauline Kael would make of it — and also how many of the often-obscure scenes she would recognize. Yet it conveys an almost unbelievably visceral sense not only of the historic sweep of the medium — the most pervasive, avidly consumed of modern art forms — but also of the passions that making movies requires, not to mention those they express and inspire.

A labor of some two years, “The Clock” was hailed as a masterpiece when it made its debut at the White Cube gallery in London last fall. Now it is ensconced in a theaterlike installation at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, where it should not be missed.

That timepieces crop up everywhere in movies is no surprise: Film was the first visual art form to capture and package time, and every movie is an elaborate manipulation of time. Time is the form and content, and, above all, the material. Moviemakers have developed endless devices to make us aware of time’s passage in their films, and to hold us in thrall, or suspense, within that artificial time — while we forget about the real kind outside the theater.

Central to the power of “The Clock” is its strict adherence to real time and its manic compression of movie time. When a clock on the screen reads 11:15 in the morning, it does so at exactly 11:15 in the morning Eastern Standard Time. The same for 11:15 in the evening, as can be experienced on weekends, when the gallery stays open and runs the piece continuously from 10 a.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Saturday. Otherwise it tells time during regular gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

But while “The Clock” is accurately parsing real time, movie time goes nuts, rushing past in an exhilarating, surprisingly addictive flood. A door opened in one movie leads into another movie. Questions asked in one will be answered in the next or the next after that.

And there are, of course, clocks galore. This includes clocks of the wall, mantel, grandfather and bedside-table variety; clocks on steeples, towers, dashboards and bombs; and clocks in train stations, shop windows and spaceships as well as the occasional hourglass and sundial. And then there are watches, which are smashed, pawned, handed down from father to son, and used as weapons. (All the James Bonds are here.) They slide down the wrists of murder victims, turn up at crime scenes and even provide forensic evidence.

It is hard to say why this panoply of timepieces and plot twists is so gripping, but it is. After watching “The Clock” from around 7:30 p.m. last Friday to past midnight, I dragged myself away, despite the desire to stay and see exactly how the time would be told, how different hours would be rung in.

In addition to asking the time in a full range of emotional tones, people check, wind or synchronize their watches, shake and listen to them to see if they are working. They argue about what time it is. With mounting tension, they mutter or shriek that time is running out. They pace, they fidget, they point furiously at clocks. Occasionally they pause to talk about the meaning of time with a capital T, segments that briefly slow the piece to a snail’s pace, seemingly on purpose. Live time. Don’t discuss it.

The hours usually arrive with crescendos of sound and image. High noon brings a bit of “High Noon.” At 4 in the afternoon, Robert Redford, as the sensitive baseball player in “The Natural,” shatters the face of the scoreboard clock with a home-run hit. Starting at 5 o’clock, multiple images of quitting time unfold. (Time clocks here.) At 8 in the evening a succession of orchestras start playing; theater curtains rise, or don’t. At midnight, Big Ben — of which we’ve already seen plenty — explodes, and Orson Welles is skewered on the sword of a life-size knight on a giant cuckoo clock in “The Stranger.” Amid all this, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in “Gone With the Wind” rushes to comfort his small daughter, wakened by a nightmare — signaling the advent of dream time.

There is also television time, specified by moments from “The Simpsons,” “The Office” (British version), “Sex and the City” and, most memorably, “The Twilight Zone.” Sorry Trekkies, but for me, William Shatner will forever be the guy on the airliner reduced to babbling by the gremlin that only he could see dancing on the wing. He’s here, but I left before discovering if the gremlin shows up in the wee hours.

Mr. Marclay frequently sprinkles in several clips from the same movie, for example, “The Time Machine.” (The 1960 version with Rod Taylor and Alan Young.) The key moments of “Laura,” with its Rococo hall clock and murderous newspaper columnist, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) are all here. Bit by bit, you’ll also see mini-retrospectives of actresses like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, aging in real time as they pass from role to role. Single scenes are interrupted by segments from other movies, intensifying their suspense and making us aware of the shot-by-shot approach to the time-related denouement.

It is fun to try to name the movies, the actors and the few TV shows as they flash past, but the piece is much more than a trivia contest. It conveys the oppressive weight of time and a cinematic version of life, encapsulated in an encyclopedic array of human interactions played out in snippets of emotion and plot — love affairs, crimes, hostage crises, death and destruction. The rapid-fire labor-intensiveness of Mr. Marclay’s effort also emphasizes the laborious, collaborative nature of films — that they are themselves elaborate clockworks of actors, directors, cinematographers, set and costume designers and makeup artists.

The presentation at the Paula Cooper gallery reiterates the synthetic nature of “The Clock.” The combination of carpeted floors, walls hung with velvet curtains and a dozen long couches lined up in four rows, with the screen high and large on the wall, evocatively conflates living room, screening room and movie theater, while even hinting at drive-in movies (the couches as parked cars).

Given that Mr. Marclay is known for artworks that incorporate music in numerous ways and often serve as musical scores, it is not surprising that “The Clock” is as much an intensely rhythmic aural compilation as a visual one, full of racing and swelling music, ticking sounds (of course) and rushing footsteps, hooves, trains and cars. And there are also recurring shots of records on turntables, unspooling linear time much the way a film reel does. Similar to the endless clock faces, these might almost be taken as portraits of the artist; they evoke especially his role as an early adapter of turntablism, the record-spinning, music-sampling technique that, starting with hip-hop, has become a staple of popular music.

Watching “The Clock,” I found myself wondering if Mr. Marclay has a computer for a brain. (He had six assistants culling movies for time-related sequences but apparently did all the editing himself.) The sense of his mind at work, piecing everything together — thinking endlessly of time and timing, of sight and sound — is one of the work’s constants. But so is a kind of anonymity: a diffuse, inclusive love of movies, the joy of movies, which he spreads before us in an immense, ceaselessly moving, pell-mell, two-timing feast.

“The Clock” by Christian Marclay is on view through Feb. 19 at the Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 West 21st Street, Chelsea; (212) 255-1105; paulacoopergallery.com.

Time, Six Things

My best friend from childhood, K., tagged this picture on Facebook today.

1. I have a hard time believing that was me.
2. I cannot believe that was me.
3. That was me.
4. It is tacky to blog about your youthful good looks. Whatever.
5. I am having a hard time with time. But time does what it does.
6. There are so many pictures of you out there that you don't know about.


 

The Gork

Though it happened by chance, I ended up seeing Wicked tonight, a musical that takes place eight times a week just one and half blocks from my apartment.

Say what you will, it is quite something and of course, highly profitable.

Besides all the annoying tying in of the book-movie story, which does get cumbersome in Act II, I believe the play is pretty smart and extremely dark. It has a dystopian, in the oppression sense, view of society. The only honest person turns evil because of the callous rejection by her peers. The young green woman, Elphaba, is fully ridiculed based on something as shallow as her skin color. Kids are cruel. Conformity is essential. Beauty is everything. Plus, it isn’t so great to have a conscience or standards. Et al. When you do not conform to what society is doing, even if what society is doing is completely wrong and twisted, you basically end up having to die, or at least having to fake your death. Being different leads to expulsion from the mainstream and this is enough to get you killed.

Which reminds me of The Gork. The Gork’s real name shall be withheld but she had a very Italian last name, one you might run into on a “Vote for ______ for councilman” in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She lived next door to the M’s, another Italian family. Both of these houses were blue collar and a hair rough for me. I am half Italian, from a basically lawful family, and I was amazed to learn that the M family had some sort of mob dealing at some point, small potatoes, but the father was spending weekends in jail. Strange.

When we first moved to our town, this young woman, The Gork, whom I hate to call such a name and it was not yet her name so let’s stop that for a second and let’s just call her Theresa for now, started to come around. You know what happens when you first move in somewhere. You make friends as quickly as possible because you have to and often the person already living in the neighborhood who needs friends the most is so happy there is a new person in town that she jumps in to be friends with you. Theresa did this very thing to my sister and was also curious about me.

Theresa was extremely tall for her age of twelve years old. She was also fat and had a face that could stop Greenwich Mean Time. Her eyes were very close together. She had no chin. Her teeth were not only buck, they were also in the shape of a V, the two front teeth practically at right angles to each other. She was, in a word, a bit of a monster. But she was so sweet. She was like Baby Huey. We had a patio area and she sat on the foot of a lounge lawn chair, one of those with the tubed plastic slats that would leave zebra impressions on bare skin. When she was finished drinking her iced tea and it was time for her to go home for dinner, she could barely get up. My mother was there, smiling kindly. We all pretended it was no big deal, this issue with gravity. But being from a thin family, we were all horrified. Theresa had the deepest impressions on her thighs that I had ever seen caused from our yard piece. She went home, her sweet high voice saying goodbye. She was desperate to return after we all had dinner. We were cautious to let her completely in so we did not say to come back right after everyone finished eating.

After she left, I asked my mother how someone so young could be so big. She said some people were like that and that she really is so sweet, don’t we think? She was. I felt so sorry for her I wanted to cry. But I hung tough. I was eleven after all. It was time.

Apparently, there was some sort of riff between Theresa’s family and the M family. A feud if you will. An Italian feud. Sometimes I think Theresa’s family ratted out the guy in the M family that was doing weekend time in jail. I don’t know. But it was basically 1970s bad blood and would have been interesting if I didn’t find it so repellant.

After a short while, my sister got in with the more dominant kids in the neighborhood, which included one of the M girls (and I got in with the younger M girl) and it became socially clear that if my sister and I wanted to join in reindeer games that Theresa would have to be dropped. Which she was. Plus, she was younger than my sister, older than me, so she was not a perfect fit anyway. We all let Theresa go with the excuse, Well, she’s not in my grade.

When I was in the Seventh grade and Theresa was in the Eighth, we took the same bus to Junior High. Junior High was set up so that everyone had their own locker but you went to different classes every forty-five or fifty minutes. Our bus would get in about fifteen to twenty minutes before homeroom. I had always been a horrific book worm and very shy. But by the time I got to Junior High I came out of my shell aided by having some obvious musical talent, a certain can-do spunkiness, a pack of cigarettes, a bag of weed and the willingness to party with the people who liked to party. We clanned up greatly.

Though the different groups did not mix much--and in those days there were really only three, the cool kids (smokers/stoners), the jocks (the jocks) and everyone else (smart kids, Jewish kids, kids who climb on rocks)—there was one thing that drew members of all stripes together, at least the boys. And this was what was known as “Going Gorking.”

Someone nicknamed Theresa The Gork. It was sort of brilliant in that it was an absolutely horrible name for someone who was not a pretty young girl, but a full blown, overweight, very tall, uniquely faced, towering monstrosity. The Gork’s locker was at the bottom of the stairs in “The new wing”. The stairwell was closed off by glass doors, the kind of glass with the crisscrossing wire in it in case someone punched it. Many of the Eighth grade guys, especially the potheads from Sloatsburg and certainly the mean lacrosse players and then a few others who just had to get out their aggression, would stand on the stairs during the first fifteen minutes of the day, at least forty of them, and as The Gork would open her locker they would start yelling GORK! GORK! GOOOOOOORRRRRK! as if baiting a wild dangerous creature. And Theresa, this being the only attention she ever got, really, would stand there and take it…then, she would make a game out of it, would run after the boys up the stairs (she was twice the size of any of them) and they would all go screaming, running away from her up to the second floor. She would go back to her locker and start opening it again and the boys would reposition themselves all up and down the stairs, leaning over the railings and The Gorking would recommence. I watched a few times, as I was friends with some of the cooler kids of the eighth grade. But I could not believe what was going on and all I could think of was how nice she was to my sister when we first moved in.

I also thought that if I was Theresa, The Gork, I would not survive. I did not know how anyone could survive that. She was a good sport, running up the stairs after those boys, ready to kick their asses, sort of. I noticed that she took extra long to open her locker. I think she liked the attention. But then it would get too much for her and she would throw things, breakdown and cry. Eventually, the assistant principal put an end to The Gorking but long after the damage was done, I imagined. In her teen years there was no way she could shake The Gorking that had happened to her so many mornings in a row. In high school, The Gork became a very heavy smoker, not unusual, grew heavier and developed (or always had?) some health issues. Everyone forgot about her. When she was in her early twenties she had a heart attack and died.

Give it Up!

A Big Kiss on the gay friendly lips of Barbara Bush, the twin daughter of W.

Thank you.

Homophobia is an old man’s game.

Happy Groundhog Eve

My father’s mother, my grandmother, died on Groundhog’s Day in the 1980s. My father is the youngest of eight children so I was one of the younger set. Grandma Cummings had 27 grandchildren (that I know of) and a bunch of great grandchildren (many of whom I’ve recently met) and an easy way about her.

I have always loved Groundhog’s Day. It is so silly, the kind of thing that deserves minor celebration—in the form of a chuckle. I did not love the movie. But I do like the mammal. We had big ones in the woods and fields near where I grew up in the wilds of Suffern, NY. Also known as a woodchuck and in some circles, unkiddingly, as a land beaver, the groundhog is actually a rodent in the marmot family of squirrels. Marmots in the Rockies are cuter. Groundhogs in the east, at least in Suffern, sometimes grew to be the size of a beagle. Good eatin’, I guess, in western Rockland County. (Most of them got their grub in New Jersey? Or perhaps, daringly, in the hollers and creeks of Stag Hill populated by the “Jackson Whites?”)

It is endearing to have a holiday that is centered upon this funny creature. I get a little sad that my grandmother had no choice in the date of her expiration. I do say, though, the mixture of solemn mortal awareness with a light hearted marmot visual happily sums up the condition of living at just about the right place for me. To experience that on February 2, which, if to look at the calendar with a fresh eye as if pretending not to know its meaning, one would shrug off its inauspicious locus. But then in remembering its significance, well, that adds a loop of surprising mirth to the whole thing.

 

A Winter Wish for You

Have a doubly great and cool Monday.

 

Tampons

I had a dream last night that I was trying to hang all groovy with a few twenty-somethings at something.

I mentioned the word tampon, in passing, and the kids asked me, “How old are you? No one says tampon any more.”

There was this incredulity. All I could respond with was, “So I guess you don’t dye your hair, either? You color it?”

They mentioned something about tampons being referred to as string wax. They did not want anyone to be talking about absorbency. They did not want anything to be natural or physical. It offended them that I suggested a word that implied differentiation, that it was somehow uncool to talk about a product that one sex needs that the other one does not.

I just had to leave.

Clearly, I've Become A Bird Freak

What is it with these cardinals in Central Park? These are migratory birds. I must learn where they come from. Did they fly down from Canada, the Adirondacks, Nanuet?

Something about the red in the white, of course, that makes you pull out your phone to take a picture and reminds you to bring the good camera next time.

There is a long history of writers who love birds, gay men who go birding, and gay writers who cannot stop talking about birds. I will not become one, exactly. But in the park, there are so many birds all year long, it seems worth the time to give them a look and a mention.

Squirrels and raccoons, too, sure. They are there. But those beasts are not as interesting or as beautiful as the cardinals.

It is a big ol' blizzard out there tonight. People in New York City act like they have never seen snow before. This is unexpected behavior.

More birds.

 

Path to Pleasure

People rather fight than switch. It's because they do not want to give up their pleasure circuits. Someone tells you that being a strong individual, completely self reliant, competitive, always at your best, clever and above all living life with a winning carriage---well, if it works and it brings you pleasure you are not going to give up anything. And you are not going to share. And you could one day become the Speaker of the House.

But what if someone tells you that sharing, being helpful, listening to others, building consensus, feeling like "you belong" and above all being open to new ideas and experiences and others is the most important bunch-o-traits?---if that works and brings you pleasure you are not going to give that up. Certainly not.

People are righteous as hell about giving up their pleasure.

So Obama was cogent tonight. There was a bit of an all-for-one feeling in the chamber (but really, it was just an I-hate-China-and-fear-it-fest of bonding) but underneath it all, people were holding on tight to their pleasure path. La plus que ca change...

I was in the park today and stood by the chain link of the nature conservancy in the southeast corner near the little lake. There were so many birds. I saw a plump cardinal. You can see him-her in the picture if you look closely. It made me so happy. I would be furious if someone tried to dismantle that sanctuary.

Then, near Columbus Circle, still in the park, was a Muslim man in army fatigues kneeling on a waterproof rug in the snow, finishing up his prayers toward Mecca. I am sure feeling at one with Allah and all other E.S.T. Muslims at the exact same time, well, that must feel pretty good. And I bet he would fight like mad if you tried to stop him.

The plastic primate mind is hilarious. And dangerous. But that's how animals are.

 

Something About the Cold that Makes Me Hot

For many years I lived in Los Angeles and I was cold all the time. Our house was a sieve. The temperature dropped at least twenty degrees every day. I felt it.

Chilled. Always chilled. Never heated.

I thought back to when I was in college in Boston and I used to run around in January with just a t-shirt and a skimpy leather jacket and I was just fine. Not cold. Fine. Maybe it was a young man’s thing?

But here in New York as an old man, when it is 17 degrees, I go out in a thin shirt and a down coat and I just do not feel the cold.

Something is going on. It must be the enzyme thing.

Okay, so this is how enzymes work, I have read. You have two full body sets. One for warm weather and one for cold weather. I think my cold weather enzymes kick in and I am completely heated up with those enzymes when it is fully cold outside. So I do not get cold. Even my hands stay warm.

I imagine in Los Angeles that it never got truly cold enough for these proteins to kick in. And the warm weather enzymes, well, they were compromised because of the vastly fluctuating temperature.

But whatever it is, it just seems so odd to be running around during the winter and to be truly warm. It is like being a teenager all over again, though now I see that age has nothing to do with it.

And now a few words about my bowel movements and ear wax.

Not really.

Three Important and Oversimplified Reviews

127 Hours
Loved it. You have to see it. Danny Boyle is simply a great director. No one needs to hear that from me. James Franco does it, full on. Wait ‘til you see him snip off his arm nerves.

Black Swan
Unbelievable, well, of course. But then, unwatchable, too? Fuck it.

Brooklyn Flea
Worth a couple of hours. Lots of stuff to buy. Then Walk West on Atlantic Avenue and go through those places.

Another Load, Another Mountaintop

People are not going to stop. I know I am not.

Every time the dishwasher finishes up a load, I think, “Well, there goes another piece of Mountaintop in West Virginia.”

The business predators on earth only rip those mountains up because they know people like me are never going to stop loading in the dishes and then pushing Normal and Start.

Never.

Business people are not creative. Creative people need to fix this problem. Come on. You can do it. Then, business people will move on to what you have done. Stand up. Be brave. Clean my dishes with the sun, the wind and the waves.

The Fat of the Land Published a Bit

My fun play, The Fat of the Land, was excerpted and published in The Coachella Review, the literary magazine of UC Riverside. Enjoy it! (Especially, all my friends and super friends who worked on it over the years. Hi Mary. Hi Dan.)

And, of course, The Interview.

Enjoy your Thursday. I continue to shop for things to fill my apartment nest. It is not exciting but it is fulfilling.

I hope your day is both.

Two Years Later

Today, a television arrived at our apartment, this forty-two inch Vizio wireless LED thing. It is quite something.

I know I have been behind the TV times. In fact, during the last two years I have not owned a television, watching Hulu and Netflix on my laptop and surviving, easily.

But it was time.

Now we have to get one of those low lying pieces of furniture. Coffin or canoe? You decide.

What a spawned out industry.

In five years, when this hunk of plastic, glass, metal and who-knows-what-else is worth six dollars, I will wonder what we were thinking.

Until then, I guess I will be spending much less time at the movies, much more at home. This is how it goes.

Why not just put in the IV drip, catheterize all openings and plunge in a feeding tube?

Could happen.

As a child, I watched very little television. I do not know why it never caught my fancy. I had “my shows” but really, they were not many.

I did love the HBO and Showtime things that were great and long lasting.

I miss the Bill Clinton days.

A Time Adjustment

I have stopped reading the New York Times. I can only explain it this way. It all started to sound the same to me.

A left-of-center stance on most things with reports about Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and North Korea, the never ending Palestine-Israel problem, the recession, the Right-Left split in this country, the very stylish real estate for sale and the book review that reviews books I want to read but never get to.

Is there any way on earth they can shake it up? Something a little more quirky?

Oh how I miss the Los Angeles Times of 1999. It was so irreverent, snide and on my side.

New York Times, do something new. Make me laugh. We agree with you. Can you move it into farce, just a little bit?

Well Wishing

May your MLK weekend be a total riot.

Yours,

Don

Tomorrow

You move into Manhattan and you think it is going to be different this time. But it isn't. You end up in a private karaoke room and Annie takes over. Naturally.

We Own Nothing In Queens

The Sports and Transportation borough is in our past.

Today, twenty-four hours sooner than planned because of the impending snow Armageddon that Bloomberg is using to polish his image, we closed on our apartment in the coop’s lawyer’s office on the fifteenth floor overlooking Flushing Meadows in Queens. (One always wonders why they girded that park with highways on either side. The residents of its adjacent neighborhoods can only wonder what is beyond those packed roads.)

The buyers and sellers (us) arrived on time. 2PM. Our lawyer was thirty minutes late but was very prepared and swift. He really is a great guy. His name is Guy. He has a fun office in Astoria. We used him when we bought this little place five years ago and so the closure on this end gave it all a nice symmetry.

The buyers are a long term couple. They seem to be in a “rearrangement” of their relationship which includes the male buyer moving into our former studio. They have been together for thirty years. They are kind and smart and knew a good deal when they saw one. I hate to have to say it, but part of the problem with their relationship is that he is now disabled. There are other things going on, I am sure, but one cannot pry when one is waiting for cashier’s checks.

The realtor, whom I will get back to in a moment, arrived five minutes before our lawyer.

The lawyer for the buyers was the last to arrive. He was old, disheveled, with an amazing head of hair and the look of a former movie star, but shorter. At one point I made a joke about his drinking before noon, then I realized, “Oh, it seems like he really has been drinking since before noon.” He cracked jokes to make up for his lack of knowledge when it comes to real estate law (he has never done this before), but he was kind enough, affable, certainly not a problem. And because our lawyer was so easy going and helpful, we pushed through without issue.

Now back to the realtor. This has been the problem all along. She was on both sides of the equation, representing the buyers and the sellers, taking the full 6% vig. During the past three months, at times she would act like she cared about us and then at times she was very combative, almost threatening, certainly on the verge of hysteria, bulldogging it for the buyers and often accused me of over overemailing when the real count was six from her for my every one.

She arrived today in a long purple coat, the color a king would wear in a cartoon, with a dark fur collar, real or not I do not know, a DG bag, whorish boots, and apparently (I did not notice but was told later) some sort of skimpy outfit that included tights, an ass grabbing skirt and some sort of chemise with a plunging neck line. She smartly never took off her fake Ready-for-Queens-Boulevard fur collared garment. She flirted with our lawyer. But here was the worst part: all she could talk about was how excited she was about going shopping with the money she was about to receive from this transaction. This was not the first time she has said, since mid-December, “I can’t wait to go shopping!” Was this person really meant for a service profession?

Why these narcissists end up in my life, well, it must be all my fault since the theme is recurring. She rode with us on the subway back toward Manhattan. She wants to come see our new apartment. She wants to sell us our next apartment. She wants to stay in touch with us. When we got to Jackson Heights (halfway between Flushing Meadows and Manhattan), it was her stop and she asked, unbelievably since we just closed on the apartment and she knew we have been living in Manhattan since December 23, “Are you getting off here?” We had to say to her, “No. We do not live here any longer. Why would we get off here? Goodbye.”

And as she walked westward on the subway platform in her Halloween outfit and the subway doors closed, we turned to each other, safe on the molded plastic subway bench, and said, “Never darken our doorstep again.”

Something about her turning the closing into a festival for herself in full fake rich woman celebration, well, it was so first generation outer borough trashy that it got my third generation outer borough trashy ire up.

Though I am grateful that she sold the apartment to the first people who looked at it on the first day it was for sale and got us a fair price. I mean, she did her job well.

For three months we have been in super bed with all these people. Now, we are not. It is like a show closing.

I deposited the checks, there were three, in Wachovia Bank (a Wells Fargo entity), went to The Container Store and bought shelving for the new place. And a cute bamboo-press-on-tri-hook for the bathroom door.

Cross Hairs

This gunning down.

I cannot add anything to the conversation but this:

Sarah Palin, though I loathe your venal stupidity, I would never make a poster of you with your image in the cross hairs of a gun. Maybe a clown in the distance throwing a pie. Maybe a sack of manure. But not a gun.

The Shrinking World

There is something insanely shrinking about staying home, writing, making sure things are in order.

The antidote might be a spy mission to Belarus. Or maybe get a few apartment chickens.

I used to be able to amuse myself when I was at home. Now, I pad around in my slippers, do edits and look forward to dinner. I amuse myself, too—but I have become very aware of the strangeness of a full grown man banging around alone all day in an apartment.

New York is quite exciting. But in order to function well, it is important to be able to be relaxed, to let your mind wander. This does require staying indoors. Most certainly in winter and summer.

I think writers are weird. How do you write about life when you are basically in a bathrobe sipping tea? It’s quite unnatural to write. It does not make sense to be alone in a room all day, looking at bare walls, kicking up your heels in excitement when you know the mailman has finished loading up the boxes.

But if you have the need to make stuff up---then you do. And if you’re doing it, well, you sort of live a life similar to someone who lives in a hospital, staring out the window, wondering if you’ll ever get out.

Where Have All the Bloggers Gone?

With all the tweeting and Facebook posting, the middle blog form seems to be losing its kick. Is Blogging the Erie Canal of communication? Vital for only a short period of time, quickly replaced by what made more sense: the railroad?

When chat, email, tweeting, posting, texting, blogging and post-tweeting become one, we will be in a situation that is about content and less about form. Why always these forms?

I do not know if the forms arise from a need in the culture or if the culture adheres to the advancing whims of technology. It is probably a mash-up of the two.

I remember my first answering machine. I was cheap. It hardly ever worked right.

'Tis a Quiet News Cycle

I feel like we are retooling. Don’t you?

I went to the Samsung Flat TV store tonight at the Time Warner Mall @ Columbus Circle.

I honestly felt like I had died, come back from the dead and was visiting a future civilization.

If Samsung can do that to some partitioned off mall box at Columbus Circle, I am certain the rest of humanity can do much more.

Because things are quiet I think they must be.

Energy Grid.
Renewables.
Education.
Love.

Don't Make Me Reach Through the Screen to Do It For You

Friends, this is my friendly reminder, my public service announcement really, to nicely chide: BACK UP YOUR FRIGGING COMPUTER TONIGHT.

You can get a little fancy and rest easy by subscribing to one of the many online backup services--Mozy, Carbonite—in addition to ALWAYS having your files (all of them, docs, pictures, music, vids) backed up onto an external hard drive.

Look, you’re busy. I know. Even if it takes you a couple of hours to figure it out right now, just do it. I meet people all the time who blow out their hard drives and they lose everything. It’s disgusting.

Not to mention---if there is ever going to be nasty warfare, I have a feeling there is going to be some “major pulse” that magnetizes and ruins a lot of your digital stuff. It’s not a bad idea to be backed up in many ways, in many locations. I’m partially paranoid. But also, as someone who is on his computer fifteen hours each day, I have blown through at least five hard drives. They blow.

So back up, friends. Back up. Back up. Back up. Do it. It’s the new year. Start it right.

And make hard paper copies of your most important documents. Put them in a banker’s box. Send them traveling.

It’s time for peace of mind. Back it up.

Namaste.

Go Back to Being Yourself

It’s time. Go back to being yourself.

I walked up to Columbus Circle in unseasonably spring weather and while passing the entrance to the Time Warner Mall, an older woman asked if I was alone, did I live in New York, would I like to come to her place to talk, to work, you know, to chat, to work.

So, she wanted me to come over to her place and she would pay me for something.

I could barely comprehend it. I went up into the park, the initial intention, and then I swung back around. I wanted to see what she was up to. Was she hawking other men?

If she was at 9:00 on Columbus Circle, I climbed back around at 8:30, looking to see if she was hitting up other guys. I didn’t see her.

People do these things for intimacy. I am surprised that it happens right on the pavement.

Happy New Year

From Occupied Manhattan

Last Blog from Queens

It's an Okie Christmas. Fleeing West into the fertile valley of Manhattan. Hope it's everything they say it is. Not afraid to pick fruit. Merry Christmas from my farm to yours!

A Consumerist Christmas Warning

Christmas Flight

Moving this week. Adds to the wild ride of Christmas. It’s worth it.

All This Talk

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell being repealed does not make me feel like the right thing has been done. That is a thought more than a feeling. The repeal makes me feel happy and a little less scared.

Two Years

I'm not one to hold onto the past for too long--but today (December 16) is the two year anniversary of our pooch's death.

She was no genius. But she was super sweet. She followed me home one night in 2001, not long after the debacle of 2001, and she moved in. She had no fur (mange), stunk like a trash heap (mange) and scratched 24-7 (mange). We just figured we would have the ugliest dog on earth for a year or two until she died. She lived 7 more years. And she was a beauty. Completely lovely.

I don't miss her day to day any longer. But when I think about her, I get a feeling that nothing else gives me. And because it is my feeling and feelings cannot truly be described, I will try my best. She makes me feel sweet and young and calm and hopeful and caring. It's so warm. And now when I type this, I smile like crazy. She was happiness. Purely.

Louise. Bye-bye again. You heart opener.


 

Beauty Everywhere

Money Chunk

You get cash from the bank when you put a deposit on an apartment. Cold and real. The agent pushes it through. The application is a breeze. Renting might be the easiest thing I have encountered. You get so much for such a small decision.

The market of anything is fun. I would like education and health care to become utilities, but everything else, make it a market. It makes people lively. Gives them spirit. And there is truth in interaction. It's even warm in nature. Certainly in apartment hunting, the broker is extremely human, midwifing you into home rebirth. Sure, he or she pushes you to get back to the office to fill out a contract, that is their goal, but until the push, there is complete humanity. It has to work that way. You are talking about where you are going to live. Pretty intimate. I enjoyed the combination of being vulnerable and then having to throw cash.

Our Coop in Queens has sold and we are closing sometime very soon.

A handful of people are getting shifted around.

Our new apartment is swank neutral in a white brick on Eighth Avenue. Noise is distant and whirring but real. Schnaz and comfort. Large and open. Easy to be there. A two block walk to my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner-Adam's boulot.

They say you can't have a dog. But friends, I've heard some barking.

Another time coming.



 

Christmas Zombies of 1972

Or would it be more proper to call them ghouls-de-Noel?

Phantom Subway

A 1940s Subway train pulled into the 4th Street station on the F line today. Its terminus was Second Avenue, Lower East Side. It was both a holiday gift and a Museum of Transit advertisement all in one. It smelled of diesel. I remember trains something like these in the late 1960's.

Everyone was so happy. It was new. Monkeys like new things. And why shouldn't we! We're monkeys!

And the phones came out, snapping pictures. Mostly smiles. People love time travel.

 

In Between

 

Strap Hanger

 

Fan

 

Schmulka

 

Gas

 

Train

 

These Republicans

Conservatives. Why?

They fear change.

It’s like, if they could go back in time and have wives and children killed and buried along with dear old important dad when he died, they would do it. And why, “Because we’ve always done it that way.”

Somehow, if you change things the apple cart might get wobbly and then the money and power might dry up and then the army might get weak and then the land might get taken over. Really?

If I were president and this was happening to me, I think I would resign and take that ambassador job in Lichtenstein. It is so discouraging here. How could anyone take it? This tax thing. This blocking of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal.

This is the kind of night that is so sad, Obama probably wants to go smoke a cigarette. I know it makes me want to just go suck a cock.

How to Build a Jesus

I’ve had Jesus on my brain all day today.

I think about Jesus a lot. And this is how I think about him.

It was time.

The earth had 150 Million people on it. This was dense. Enough communication was going on, through trade, to make enough people understand that it was time for a change. Too much shitty animal behavior and only a bit of human kindness.

Hey, what we really need, everyone starts to think, is a new way of being. But we’re so patriarchal and take our orders from on high so we better make a leader who we can look up to. Let’s pick one of these nuts who crop up weekly who call themselves the Son-of-God.

And they did.

And it was.

And though Jesus was a madman, he was the necessary madman at the time.

Going mad today to change the world might not be a bad idea. But maybe it won’t have to come from on high. Philosophers try. But logic or empiricism or rationalism won’t ever really do it because so many people are illogical, cannot see or have no judgment. As I get older and lose some of my kick, I see the appeal. It’s just easier to be a little less aware, a little less thoughtful.

Plus, so many philosophers, Voltaire, Hume and Hegel even, there was this, ahem, ego…(not that I don’t get it.)

So---you need a little magic, beyond the rational, to effect a big switch. Someone get to it. I’m too old, unready for primetime.

Ah, Jesus. Lover of lambs and everything else. Someone needs to do an installation. Jesus as many things: Cuban thief, ugly loud mouth from Long Island, whore with a heart of gold, drooling moron, gay slut bottom who can go all night, all that, in large painted panels would be good right about now. Show the world that he really was all things. And all these things are human. And, hell, why not give them health insurance?

You see, there’s a strain. There’s a strain of compassion in everyone. And there is a serious strain of competition, too. The competition is fun. Would it not be so enjoyable to act from compassion, always, while keeping in some of the competition for fun?

We need another shift.

Build a Jesus.

Local Color

Aren’t we all drag queens?

What's Dead for 2011

Global climate change denial.

Torquoise and Brown, together at last. Gone.

Make your own donut places. Meatball places. Rice pudding places.

Being against gay marriage.

Expensive cable television.

My lack of taking responsibility for the amount of vegetables I eat.

The average person’s love of the internal combustion engine.

Fear of the unknown.

The Vatican’s anti-condom stance. (Started in 2010, solidified dead in 2011).

The-Sky-is-Falling mentality toward new media, which is now feeling old.

Chemically raised chickens.

The use of the word Pussy to describe anything except for a cat or a pussy.

Plastic surgery that makes you look like you are wearing a mask. Or just all of it.

People using the sarcastic question to an obvious statement, “You think?”

The lack of proofreaders at The New York Times, which has made the paper less readable.

Rusting bridges.

Obama’s sack hanging like a deflated dog’s pouch the day after being neutered.

Pot holes.

The binary world view of the average Conservative. Eyes and ears do open.

Being Moderate is no longer uncool, but the coolest thing ever.

Quality free education and very affordable health care for everyone being at all considered a sort of communist plot.

Making fun of France. Especially if you have never even visited the place.

Any shred of respect for George Bush’s self serving biography.

Calling things addictions that are really just over indulgences.

Pretending the Smart Car is something worth having.

Friends who only see you as someone to serve their needs, nothing more.

Complaining about the weather or the distance.

Romanticizing and exploiting the art of the victimized.

All that cheese.

How?

Lately, I have run into people who have asked me for advice. It ranges from career things to “my kid is experiencing…” or something as simple as relationship squabbles.

Underneath the entreaties, I hear an underlying theme, repeated:

HOW CAN I GET THROUGH THIS LIFE WITHOUT PAIN?

And the only answer is: you can’t.

So why not enjoy the pain? All of it? It is more painful to resist pain than to live it. So live it. It passes. And it usually presents something positive on the back end.

I feel bad for us. We are told again and again that if we do everything right we will not experience discomfort, we will always be happy, there will be no struggling. But I have not met a person on earth who has had this experience.

So, “Thank you sir, may I have another,” though a bit past what we need, is not that far off.

Have a painful yet somewhat satisfying day.

Death Ball

When I was in college, I used to get high with my friend L and we would talk about what song we would like to be played at our funerals. We agreed that Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir from Physical Graffiti would be a great song. We played it over and over.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a bit about death. Mostly because winter has hit but also because this movie thing I’ve been writing, though comical, is about a big ‘ol death.

As I get older, I understand that death might be a very interesting explosion that could possibly feel good. Or at least it will be a very clear action.

And with this, I bring you this Asteroid YouTuber, with Pink Floyd in the background that is a beautiful rendering of the-end-of-days.

Storm 1

It was an Umbrella Graveyard kind of day.


 

Storm 2

But then the Sky Opened Up--and Winter arrived.

 

70% Is Not Enough?

Funny. The military is ready to let the whole Shut-the-hell-up-about-your-homosexuality law go.

And some posturing Republican senators are a wreck about it. Apparently, even though 70% of the entire military is comfortable with letting gay people serve openly, some cretin Republicans are getting in bed with the 30% who are still crying about the inevitable.

Why can’t they change? Why do they hold on so tightly to the past? Because they are homophobic. Couching it in terms of anything else, well, you can hear the hollowness.

Of course, this IS the thin edge of some big gay wedge. It is the first in a tumbling series of soon-to-be acquired equal rights that are just around the corner. And oh my! How can this HAPPEN?! In God’s World!

It is an old, disgusting thought and 70% of the military agrees with the following statement: Lying is simply bad for everyone.

And yet—

So scared Republican politicians, go ahead and posture, if that’s what you believe your constituents want. However, you will go down in history as just a name that was on the wrong side of an issue at the wrong time. And people will quickly remember you as that. Bye-bye. We have had enough of you.

The End of a Season

Get out your mittens. Time for Christmas.

Something about The Fourth of July lands you into Christmas pretty quickly. Then there is that pesky winter here in the Northeast, interminable through St. Patrick's Day. But I have come to like the seasons. They are exceptionally interesting, visually, and they are completely in charge. You cannot pretend anything else.

Give. Just keep giving and everything gets better.
Note to self: Stop counting.

 

Another Sad Jeopardy Category

Groups of Wilding Men in Times Square who aggressively Push the sale of "Original Material" CDs pretending to benefit the homeless and then one verbally attacking us for being gay with reference to which one of us was the top and which one the bottom whom I defensively responded to, "Nice. Would you like me to get all racist on you, you pig?" for 500 please.

Thanksgiving

I would like to give thanks to the mature trees of my neighborhood. The sycamores, the maples, the Japanese maples, all the others… November ends up being so nice.

The next two pictures of the yellow maple tree, kind of fun to click on them and then click again to get them large. You look in and you feel like you are in the leaves.

Trees. Come on. Thanks for the trees.


Have a good one. Off to Baltimore. Riding the rails.
 

Tree 1

 

Tree 2

 

The Ninety Minute Flu

I got my flu shot today.

A few hours later, I had that awful flu shot feeling. You know how it is. You feel like you have the flu for a couple of hours? A mild flu.

Feeling sick is interesting. It’s the vulnerability thing. I can swing quite wide between being the strongest-guy-ever to the saddest-little-lamb. It was interesting to have the lamby feeling take over for a little while. I do not mind. There is a warmth to vulnerability and a naturally rising compassion.

One wonders, at the call of death, if the vulnerability will be so great---that that will be the prize.

The Thing About Macys

Macys is ridiculous. It’s a load of floors and it covers an entire city block between 6th and 7th Avenues. It’s a monster. It’s a souk. It’s a long way from home.

Today, Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, and I did some pre-holiday shopping, to get ready for winter, all that. But this is the trouble. They tell you the men’s department is on this or that floor, but really, it’s in the basement (underwear, socks and coats), it’s on floor 1 (most of it), it’s on floor 1 and 1/2 (Black youth, young stuff, Blingy), it’s on floor 2 (All the other designers). And how do you really make peace with all that?

All that stuff, made in China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam. All those children plying the needle. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought. But I need my cheap cotton Macys shit. Kids in factories.

You can hear the screams up and down the aisles. You can hear them across the water.

I want my damn clothes.

Human desire. It’s like, it is. And it wants. It cares but it doesn’t care. Compassion, sort of.

I have to wash the chemicals out before I put the things on.

Talking Tom Loves Joni

It's really that simple.

Talking Tom Has Crossed the Pond

I have returned to the United States. Goodnight, friends. Tomorrow, I begin again in English. See you soon!

Talking Tom Makes a Generalization

In Paris, the good things are still good and the bad things have improved. See you soon!

Kingly.

Talking Tom Has a Problem

Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. But I have a curious problem. I have the face of a cat but the stomach of a pig. Excuse me. There is another patisserie on the other side of the street. See you soon!

Everyone Loves a Gargoyle

Garg 2