Monday, November 29, 2010

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.

 
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Sunday, November 28, 2010

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.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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.
 
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Tree 1

 
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Tree 2

 
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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.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

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.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Talking Tom Has Crossed the Pond



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

Monday, November 15, 2010

Talking Tom Makes a Generalization

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

Sunday, November 14, 2010

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!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Talking Tom Goes to France

Hello friends. I'm going to Paris for five days. Come with me and revisit some French lessons. See you soon.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

A/C + D/C

I usually keep my cool around celebrities because I kind of have to because I kind of deal with them in the entertainment business. Plus, no one likes a braying Santa.

And I kept it down tonight. But there I was in one of those places that people go to that does not have a sign on the door because it's one of those places that does not want people to know it's there so that a certain type of clientel will come that does not include Texans in town who have arrived in search of Wicked.

And who was there? My damn boyfriend, Anderson Cooper. He looks even more like my this-must-be-my-true boyfriend in real life. Every other man and woman in that sort-of-private-theatre-shack felt the same way.

Lineage, looks, ability and cash. And the boyish grin. My man.

As I typed this I just choked down a huge bowl of macaroni and cheese.

Normative Pain

It does feel good to be part of a large group that is working in sync. Look at the opening of the Beijing Olympics. China is exciting in that way. But we did not see the rehearsals.

Normative pressure, which pushes people into behaving according to the rules of the primary group of any culture, in our case, Conservative White Men, is always a painful process for those in the nut screw. Look what they did to women, Jews and African Americans in the past.

The Chinese continued to take over that middle-kingdom-area until they were stopped by a resistance that was strong enough to stop them. And the only strong enough resistance to stop any primary group is usually solid weaponry.

Women and Jews had no armies. Africans had inferior technology. None of these people could win.

Gays do have weapons. They are in the military. And they are subjected to this pressure. But they obviously cannot use their weapons to force people to “accept them.”

What is so disappointing and so infuriating is that if enough strong, self-serving people get together and take leave of their natural compassion, they will bully others into either being exactly like them or they will tell the “offending others” to SHUT THEIR MOUTHS.

This Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell law is a law written to appease bullies (in the name of cohesion). It is a strong finger of the two hands of anti-enlightenment and normative pressure. We are not Chinese. We will never have an opening ceremony that is that cohesive. Not being in sync in society makes for a certain kind of loneliness. But this is the price we all pay for being Westerners, brave individualists, Jews, Brown-Black-White-Red-whatever people, Women, Male Nurses and mano-a-mano sex dudes. You cannot be for individual freedom and for oppressing others at the same time. I mean, you can be---but then, you are a bully. What is that doing for you?

I found the opening ceremony of the Beijing games to be exciting and dull at the same time.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

These Were My Choices

It was either Fair Game or the movie where James Franco cuts off his own arm. So we went to see Fair Game.

I was very concerned about getting Sean Penned in my face. He only did it one and a half times. He has this 11:59 monologue about Democracy that’ll make you want to eat your empty Goobers box…otherwise, he goes straight forward.

Naomi Watts was full on direct, clear headed, an almost flat affect smart girl forever.

They found “the family story” in all this. Which makes sense. Makes it human. The other way would have been to go really deep into the Washington side of it, all those characters, but even doing that a little, which they had to do, was sort of silly. Karl Rove stand-in and the like. That stuff is always a bit wax-museumy-SNL-freakish.

So, best to stick with Wilson and Plame, the lesser known and of course, victimized ones. And they did. Doug Liman, whom we all know is a great director, directed this beautifully. Somehow, though, the whole thing comes off a bit over important and well, yeah, sermonic.

Not that the Plame case was any small deal. I mean, it was the excrescence of the lie that was lanced. But when it comes to entertainment, well, you have a lot of journalistic truth here. And as I read recently, written by some journalist, “Journalism isn’t art.”---Not that we need art so much in this area. Oh, I don’t know. Let’s get out of this paragraph.

I despised the WMD lies. Plus, I had this egotistical feeling that if I really needed to lie to get into a war, I would have come up with something so much more fanciful and complicated. They went for the simple lie---like, There’s a flesh eating monster under your bed or NAIR really will remove that hair on your back, and you believed it because you needed to so badly.

I would say, honestly, you can wait for Netflix. I hate to do that to a movie. But maybe I can help the economics of Hollywood along by offering a mild time sensitive suggestion. If a movie isn’t doing well after ten or fourteen days, let it hit Netflix by day twenty-one so the movie can still ride on some of the marketing budget already laid out for the plexes or in this case aht houses.

Wilson and Plame now live in Santa Fe. They should. It’s really nice there. And it’s a much more sensitive town to the feelings of human humans. Oh, wink. Do I need to? Damn.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Natural Thoughts

Darwinian thought might be a perception more than a truth. In other words, there may well be a bigger picture we have not seen yet.

We all want abandon. Finding healthy abandon is the key.

I have been very thankful for the street I have been living on this year. It is loaded with old trees and gardens. At the end of the street is a church yard with old apple and cherry trees and Japanese maples and others. Big trees really matter.

Dogs.

Separating off in order to distinguish yourself is what one does. But it does not necessarily make one happy. In other words, it can disturb you. But in this culture, it is necessary to some extent.

If you are a sound person, you can ground your nervous system by spending time working on seeing. And vice versa.

It is easier to be snarky than it is to take notice. You can always be snarky later.

After a big depression often comes a big relief. After a big expenditure, often comes a big let down. After, after, after. It waves. No sense in standing in the way.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Pass Me the Lotus

In this poorly run real estate environment of Coop sales in New York City, we finally got our hands on signed contracts today from the buyers of our Queens nest.

How did we do it? Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, had to walk over to the buyer’s lawyer’s office to pick up the contract. Because for some reason, that law office never heard of the Post Office.

The lawyer took on a high and mighty act and added a rider and since he is a litigator, made everyone feel uncomfortable with his attitude. But after all that, the contract just sat on his desk because neither he nor his assistant felt like following through on the last step of delivery? What kind of people are they?

So right now, sitting on my Yamaha Keyboard is an envelope with the contracts and the deposit checks. Everyone acts so professional and scary, but then are just fine when we, the sellers, turn into a messenger service.

It is absurd.

The worst thing about transactional reality in New York City is its angry ego and excessive greed. Los Angeles has its vanity and lies. But those seem so much less harmful. Or at least less brutal. Pass me the lotus.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

God Is Love

There is reason to be optimistic. Though the Republicans now have a House Majority, they still cannot pass legislation without Democrats. So this is really not the end of the world.

Plus, Obama will now have people to play against. He can respond to them rattling their sabers. He needs that. People who live more in their heads than in their hearts (thank Goodness) need a little punching to get moving.

Nancy Pelosi is still my Queen.

Look---this is going to get interesting. And let us not forget for a minute how much Obama has done during his first two years with his Democrat majority. It was a sight to behold. This nation moves incrementally. Like a snail in molasses going uphill. We made some big strides, faster than the usual mollusk pace, and let us not forget it.

Sure, the Republicans want to keep Bush’s tax cuts until we colonize Mars…but they will not get it. I insist.

Adam, my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner, believes Republicans and Democrats are an object lesson in speciation. We are separating off from each other and eventually, if we would simply stop interbreeding, we would become two separate animals. Probably.

My simple notion is the brain can be trained to become almost anything. And parents train their children to be just like them.

I believe in the power of love. Just like the song. And I believe Democrats have more love in them than Republicans. And love always wins. Call me a cheese ball---but please, make sure it’s the one with the nuts on the outside.

Monday, November 01, 2010

The Rolling Bread Maker

I Really Tried.

Just spent a longish weekend in Los Angeles and rented a SMART CAR. I don't know. Every bump in the road feels a bit like getting that long overdue colonoscopy. It goes very fast on the highway--but if you were to run over a piece of plywood or a shredded truck tire, Allah help you.

It is roomy. And there is plenty of storage for something this size. I hauled a few large boxes around.

And it is good on gas, but not great. The car acts as if it is a manual, taking you through each gear change, and you feel it. Parking--yes--parking is amazing.

I would buy one as a second car, used, to zip around the neighborhood for groceries and flowers. But therein lies the end of that.


 
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