I went for a jog in Riverside Park today. It's been days and then weeks and even, yes, a few months of indolence, ever since my beloved 37-year-old bike's pedals broke off and I landed first on a car and then bloody on the pavement and returned the damned antique deathtrap and became bikeless.
I went for a jog in Riverside Park today, my head aswirl with a million little things, and as I thudded my way north toward the tennis courts, a falling leaf hit my cheek. It caught briefly between my eye and glasses before it slipped away in a whiff of sycamore. That was the first contact I've had with sycamore since my backyard, where every year around this time, a strange double-trunked tree kept the lawn covered in spikey seedballs and wide dusty leaves. Then I looked up and saw thousands of fallen leaves, flattened on the muddy running paths, littering the grass, cluttering the gutters where the paths meet pavement, and dotting the air between the trees and grass as they transitioned from sky to mulch. And though the park is still a rich deep green underfoot and overhead, I realized that yes, fall is on its way. Ta-da. As if yesterday's cataclysmic thunderstorms hadn't already told that tale.
And time is passing. Today presents a momentous moment in that passage, because it was nearly 21 months ago that I drove away from my house in the Hollywood Hills for the last time. It's taken this long to settle, in both senses of the word, in/on an apartment in New York. And o, the circularity! Twelve blocks from my grandmother's old building, three blocks from my own first NYC apartment and two from the last place I lived while at college. And to get really maudlin and encyclopedic, about two miles from where I was born. Whillikers!
Why is today is a big day? Today, all my things will be delivered after 21 months in storage. And this pristine, booming space that I've considered more a locker than a home for seven weeks while I was traveling will suddenly be choked with all the artifacts of my life. All those things I left behind -- and some I even missed -- will be within striking distance once again. Blender. Art. Giant ceramic carp head. CDs. Coffee table. Bed. Octopus plate. Rugs. Full-size speakers. Bike. A dresser again, jesus christ, a dresser. It has been weird living without socks and drawers drawers this long.
Actually, it's been weird being transient this long. I'm looking forward to seeing the things from my old house transposed to my new one. I anticipate both a deliverance and a burden. And then, after the challenges of assembling the new mise en scene, a season of parties. Now that I practically breathe wine, I have an obligation to share it via festive occasions. And as a party-thrower who's been limited by location until now, I'm starting to feel very festive all over again.
The mover just called. They'll be here between noon and 5.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
For Your Wish List
Here's a strange corner of the mercantile world for your viewing pleasure: used amusement park rides for sale. If you've already seen that site, kindly disregard this post. But if you haven't, you may be interested to know that poor beached Willie the Whale and his cephalopod pals can be yours for a trifling 32,000 clams. But don't believe me -- believe this: "Vehicles are in great shape, this ride has great potential with an hourly capacity of over 640 per hour."
(Sorry -- owing to hasty typing, the above link was broken upon first posting. It works now.)
Monday, July 16, 2007
Working for the Yankee Hairspray
I wrote a short promotional video for a social / contest site, and it ties in with a new movie this week. You can see the video, as performed by Nikki Blonsky, Ricki Lake's successor in the newest version of "Hairspray," plus a short ditty I wrote, on this page.
Update (3/21/09): That website was eliminated a few months ago by its corporate overseers to cut costs.
Update (3/21/09): That website was eliminated a few months ago by its corporate overseers to cut costs.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Dear Angeleno friend,
It’s true, I’ve been gone for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten you, or the city where you live and I don’t. Hope you’re thriving.
Here’s a link to a 1972 love letter to L.A., as conceived by an English architecture professor who was besotted by the city long before people like him saw anything worth looking at in its helter-skelter welter. Tons of great footage, from Watts to Hollywood to the Gamble House (where he stayed) and the Eames house, long before scenesters were crawling all over it (you know who you are).
I saw this lively, nostalgic program at the Getty a couple years ago, but now -- thanks to the Internets -- you can see it in the comfort of your own home or office.
“You see, I think freeway driving is interesting in and of itself.”
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (52 min.)
Best,
Barak
It’s true, I’ve been gone for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten you, or the city where you live and I don’t. Hope you’re thriving.
Here’s a link to a 1972 love letter to L.A., as conceived by an English architecture professor who was besotted by the city long before people like him saw anything worth looking at in its helter-skelter welter. Tons of great footage, from Watts to Hollywood to the Gamble House (where he stayed) and the Eames house, long before scenesters were crawling all over it (you know who you are).
I saw this lively, nostalgic program at the Getty a couple years ago, but now -- thanks to the Internets -- you can see it in the comfort of your own home or office.
“You see, I think freeway driving is interesting in and of itself.”
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (52 min.)
Best,
Barak
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Brevity
A few dozen writers responded with extreme care to a challenge in the Guardian:
(So economical they forgot the period.)
I like Blake Morrison's. See for yourself.
- Ernest Hemingway once said his best work was a story he wrote in just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' We challenged some contemporary authors to be equally economical
(So economical they forgot the period.)
I like Blake Morrison's. See for yourself.
The Passover Diaspora
(The following essay ran in Hebrew this past weekend in the magazine section of Yedioth USA, a Hebrew-language paper read by about 30,000 Israelis living in the U.S. The editor asked me to write about Passover from the perspective of a half-Israeli American, a POV his readers rarely see. I'm not sure I fulfilled the request, but he was happy with the result. I would never have written so openly for publication in English, but now that it's done, and it's too late to flog it elsewhere, I decided to air it here. Translations follow Hebrew and Yiddish words.)
The Passover Diaspora
If you're reading this, you have your own story of exodus and struggle, of shaking off the bonds of history and forging a new identity in a promised land. As a refugee people, Jews are forever applying the exodus metaphor and a new meaning to the modern diaspora. We do it to remember … we do it to make the next generation remember.
I have my story too. I'm the American product of an Israeli-American marriage, and I am not like you. I am not quite an American, either. I am an other, in between, for various reasons, and Passover always makes that very clear.
The Last Seder
When I was seven, just a few years after their divorce, my parents staged a final seder for my sake … even though they barely knew what they were doing. Dad forgot the kippot (yarmulkes), so I made sailboat-shaped hats out of newspaper for us and our three guests. He led the blessed event, but because he'd actively rejected religion his entire life, he lost his way occasionally, and one of his Israeli friends had to keep jumping in to help him. Mostly, what I remember is the hats.
Jews and hats. My saba (grandfather) Avram wore a hat every day. He was a tzaddik (righteous man) who walked to Jerusalem from Vilna in 1926 and basically spent the next 60 years in a shul (synagogue). My dad was a "wild kid" who hated shuls and hats and eventually fled from Katamon (a poor, older neighborhood of Jerusalem) to Manhattan with $50 in his pocket. He left behind a huge family and 5000 years' worth of religious observance. Feh! Out with the Old World, Into the New! Sound familiar?
Dad worked at the Israeli Ministry of Defense on 57th St. as a night guard, went to college, and did electrical work on the side. That's how he met my mom -- he was doing some work for her parents. My grandfather Leo was a socialist and an atheist. He didn't bring a lot of kippot to the table either. Nobody in my family cared about religion, except for a little lip service and shul time three days a year.
Clearly, the odds were against me hooking up with god. I dabbled a little (a Thursday bar mitzvah, a month at Camp Ramah, a visit to the Aish yeshiva (a center of intramural proselytizing in the Old City), but it meant nothing to me. I've never liked prayer, never felt moral uplift, and never felt a sense of belonging at a shul or any other Jewish organization. And that was fine for a long time.
Return of the Prodigal Father
Then, after 25 years of living the American dream and what he now calls a "pagan" life, dad moved back to Israel. He started to reconnect with religion after his father's death. And his observance grew and grew and it's still growing to this day, like some kind of science fiction movie monster that just won't stop growing. He's not wearing the beaver hat and probably never will -- don't exaggerate! -- but once the Rabbis have their hooks in you, Boom -- game over. High on religion, armed with the delusion of the true believer, dad decided he could just restart my Jewish education.
This happened when I was in my 20s, and it caused some friction, to say the least. Religion is inclusive and exclusive. You're either inside the shul or you're outside. I poked my head in briefly, but it's not for me. I'm outside, and I like the fresh air. It doesn't make him happy, but dad understands now that I will probably never come inside. I want to jump out of my skin when he starts to explain some point from the gemara (Jewish books of learning), but I've trained myself to sit still and let him go, because some day he won't be around to bore me with his god talk … and then I might miss it.
So I'm a sport. If you're thinking of inviting me over for dinner, don't worry -- when I'm a guest, I play along. And I've been playing along for almost 40 years. Which brings us back to Passover.
The Eternal Guest
Ever since that paper-hat seder 38 years ago, almost my entire life, I have been going to other families' seders. I used to go to other families' seders with my dad, but from the year I went away to school at 14, I've generally been on my own. That seemed normal when I was just another kid. It was still pretty normal when I was a college kid. In my 20s, I started taking my girlfriends along, and we'd be like any other visiting couple -- except that my girlfriends were rarely Jews. That added a little spice to the matzo balls.
Lately, I've been a freak at the seder table, a single adult male over 40, either because I was between girlfriends or didn't want to subject the lucky girl to the ritual. I'm so tired of those hardened eyes sizing up my non-Jewish date. I can barely face another year of going it solo, but hey -- I'm tough. I've been wandering in my own personal Passover diaspora for 38 years. If the story holds, I only have two to go. Then what?
The Jewish Defense Force
Until a few years ago, I used to liven up seders by reading my paragraphs in a funny accent -- either Israeli or Yiddish. People laughed and laughed. Most of them, anyway. For me, the seder was always a time for easy laughs. From slavery to comedy in five easy millennia. Then one year, after too much slivovitz (plum brandy), that shtick got tired. The hostess told me so the next day in very clear language.
I guess I grew up a little that year. I lost my taste for fun. All comedy is hostile, but my Passover comedy was becoming a transparent act of passive-aggressiveness.
Just over a year ago, I moved back to New York, so this is the second year I'll be a guest at my cousins' seder. I like my cousins a lot, and I appreciate their invitations, but every holiday dinner at their house is a reminder of my detachment, of the paths not taken. She's my age, and the oldest of her three kids is applying to college. Other guests half my age have their own babies already, and soon they'll stop coming. They'll be hosting their seders at their houses. Not me. I'll remain the constant guest as all around me the cycles of life race by like sped-up clouds in a car commercial.
I have a friend, a non-Jew. He's successful, straight, over 40, and single, and he can't stand Christmas: "I just want to take a vacation and get as far away as possible. What could be worse than having to spend time with all those families?"
Will he ever have kids? He doesn't know. Will I? My parents haven't given up hope. Never say never. But let's say I do have kids. What then? Will I lead my own seder … or will I pass on my broken traditions and raise a new generation of guests?
The Festival of Unleavened Bread
At the seder table, watching some apple-cheeked cherub stumble through the Four Questions, I feel my prolonged adolescence acutely, like an estranged anomaly, an affront to the natural order. If I were gay I'd have an excuse. Hell, if I were gay I might have adopted a kid by now. But I'm not gay -- I'm just stuck in a folded paper hat at the festival of unleavened bread.
At Sukkot (a holiday) last year, these same cousins almost sat me at the children's table. I wouldn't have minded, but I couldn't help wondering how they had arrived at that decision.
"Look, we still have too many people at the main table. Can we disinvite your mother?"
"Not again. She's still complaining about last year. What else can we do?"
"Well, Barak is alone again, and he's like a big kid. More or less…"
"Good idea! Let's put him there so the Rubins can sit together. Barak can talk about DJs with David. Or being a vegetarian."
"Do you think he'll mind?"
"Who cares if he minds? I just don't want him hitting on the Goldbergs' 19-year-old daughter."
At the last minute, I got an upgrade to the adult section.
The Three Questions
My safta (grandmother), may she rest in peace, had a little seder (not just the Passover dinner, but literally "order" or process)of her own whenever I came to visit her in Jerusalem. She ran that seder like clockwork, and it consisted of The Snack and The Three Questions. She'd feed me a crooked slice of cake and a glass of tea and ask:
• Why are you so skinny?
• Why did you come for such a short visit?
• When are you getting married? (Matai teet-khaten?)
That was the routine, without fail, for fifteen years, until the year she stopped asking questions. She never liked my answers.
Many years ago, safta told my first cousin Gila, "Marriage isn't for now. Now it's fun to be single. Marriage is for later." Gila took that advice to heart and found a guy at a religious mixer in the Catskills. They moved into the land of Queens, and she bore him five children, and there they dwelt, building a mountain of equity and a bigger mountain of disposable diapers. Amen. But Gila always wanted a family.
No Answers
Most of the time, I live my life on my own terms, and for better or for worse -- it's my life. A few times a year, our heritage reaches up like that hand from the grave in "Carrie" and drags me into the mulch of our traditions, where it rubs my nose in every decision I ever made or didn't. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," but as far as I can tell, the examined life isn't all it's cracked up to be either.
As the seder draws close, I confess to mixed emotions. No, I don't want to pray, and I don't wish I were having my own seder, but I feel a little bad about the pizza in my freezer. I'll be eating hametz (leavened bread, forbidden during the eight days of Passover), but I wonder if my saba Avram, a man who essentially lived in a shul, was right. After all, he led a happy and fulfilled life, while I'm forever wandering through my own modern diaspora. Yet my revulsion for religion and the religious and all those easy answers keeps me from delving into the four or forty or 400 questions that nag at me. Was saba Avram right? Was Socrates?
This year, I'll be reading my paragraphs in a sober, clear voice. No jokes. I'm not going for the easy laughs anymore. No, I have a very adult seder plan this year. I'll bring a real horseradish to make sure everybody feels the pain of history. I'll have my four glasses of wine when I'm supposed to. I'll eat my matzoh, read like a mensch, and maybe help some kid hide the afikoman (a piece of matzoh that kids hide and hold for a ransom).
And I decided to invite my girlfriend. She's not a Jew, and she's never been to a seder. She's looking forward to it.
The Passover Diaspora
If you're reading this, you have your own story of exodus and struggle, of shaking off the bonds of history and forging a new identity in a promised land. As a refugee people, Jews are forever applying the exodus metaphor and a new meaning to the modern diaspora. We do it to remember … we do it to make the next generation remember.
I have my story too. I'm the American product of an Israeli-American marriage, and I am not like you. I am not quite an American, either. I am an other, in between, for various reasons, and Passover always makes that very clear.
The Last Seder
When I was seven, just a few years after their divorce, my parents staged a final seder for my sake … even though they barely knew what they were doing. Dad forgot the kippot (yarmulkes), so I made sailboat-shaped hats out of newspaper for us and our three guests. He led the blessed event, but because he'd actively rejected religion his entire life, he lost his way occasionally, and one of his Israeli friends had to keep jumping in to help him. Mostly, what I remember is the hats.
Jews and hats. My saba (grandfather) Avram wore a hat every day. He was a tzaddik (righteous man) who walked to Jerusalem from Vilna in 1926 and basically spent the next 60 years in a shul (synagogue). My dad was a "wild kid" who hated shuls and hats and eventually fled from Katamon (a poor, older neighborhood of Jerusalem) to Manhattan with $50 in his pocket. He left behind a huge family and 5000 years' worth of religious observance. Feh! Out with the Old World, Into the New! Sound familiar?
Dad worked at the Israeli Ministry of Defense on 57th St. as a night guard, went to college, and did electrical work on the side. That's how he met my mom -- he was doing some work for her parents. My grandfather Leo was a socialist and an atheist. He didn't bring a lot of kippot to the table either. Nobody in my family cared about religion, except for a little lip service and shul time three days a year.
Clearly, the odds were against me hooking up with god. I dabbled a little (a Thursday bar mitzvah, a month at Camp Ramah, a visit to the Aish yeshiva (a center of intramural proselytizing in the Old City), but it meant nothing to me. I've never liked prayer, never felt moral uplift, and never felt a sense of belonging at a shul or any other Jewish organization. And that was fine for a long time.
Return of the Prodigal Father
Then, after 25 years of living the American dream and what he now calls a "pagan" life, dad moved back to Israel. He started to reconnect with religion after his father's death. And his observance grew and grew and it's still growing to this day, like some kind of science fiction movie monster that just won't stop growing. He's not wearing the beaver hat and probably never will -- don't exaggerate! -- but once the Rabbis have their hooks in you, Boom -- game over. High on religion, armed with the delusion of the true believer, dad decided he could just restart my Jewish education.
This happened when I was in my 20s, and it caused some friction, to say the least. Religion is inclusive and exclusive. You're either inside the shul or you're outside. I poked my head in briefly, but it's not for me. I'm outside, and I like the fresh air. It doesn't make him happy, but dad understands now that I will probably never come inside. I want to jump out of my skin when he starts to explain some point from the gemara (Jewish books of learning), but I've trained myself to sit still and let him go, because some day he won't be around to bore me with his god talk … and then I might miss it.
So I'm a sport. If you're thinking of inviting me over for dinner, don't worry -- when I'm a guest, I play along. And I've been playing along for almost 40 years. Which brings us back to Passover.
The Eternal Guest
Ever since that paper-hat seder 38 years ago, almost my entire life, I have been going to other families' seders. I used to go to other families' seders with my dad, but from the year I went away to school at 14, I've generally been on my own. That seemed normal when I was just another kid. It was still pretty normal when I was a college kid. In my 20s, I started taking my girlfriends along, and we'd be like any other visiting couple -- except that my girlfriends were rarely Jews. That added a little spice to the matzo balls.
Lately, I've been a freak at the seder table, a single adult male over 40, either because I was between girlfriends or didn't want to subject the lucky girl to the ritual. I'm so tired of those hardened eyes sizing up my non-Jewish date. I can barely face another year of going it solo, but hey -- I'm tough. I've been wandering in my own personal Passover diaspora for 38 years. If the story holds, I only have two to go. Then what?
The Jewish Defense Force
Until a few years ago, I used to liven up seders by reading my paragraphs in a funny accent -- either Israeli or Yiddish. People laughed and laughed. Most of them, anyway. For me, the seder was always a time for easy laughs. From slavery to comedy in five easy millennia. Then one year, after too much slivovitz (plum brandy), that shtick got tired. The hostess told me so the next day in very clear language.
I guess I grew up a little that year. I lost my taste for fun. All comedy is hostile, but my Passover comedy was becoming a transparent act of passive-aggressiveness.
Just over a year ago, I moved back to New York, so this is the second year I'll be a guest at my cousins' seder. I like my cousins a lot, and I appreciate their invitations, but every holiday dinner at their house is a reminder of my detachment, of the paths not taken. She's my age, and the oldest of her three kids is applying to college. Other guests half my age have their own babies already, and soon they'll stop coming. They'll be hosting their seders at their houses. Not me. I'll remain the constant guest as all around me the cycles of life race by like sped-up clouds in a car commercial.
I have a friend, a non-Jew. He's successful, straight, over 40, and single, and he can't stand Christmas: "I just want to take a vacation and get as far away as possible. What could be worse than having to spend time with all those families?"
Will he ever have kids? He doesn't know. Will I? My parents haven't given up hope. Never say never. But let's say I do have kids. What then? Will I lead my own seder … or will I pass on my broken traditions and raise a new generation of guests?
The Festival of Unleavened Bread
At the seder table, watching some apple-cheeked cherub stumble through the Four Questions, I feel my prolonged adolescence acutely, like an estranged anomaly, an affront to the natural order. If I were gay I'd have an excuse. Hell, if I were gay I might have adopted a kid by now. But I'm not gay -- I'm just stuck in a folded paper hat at the festival of unleavened bread.
At Sukkot (a holiday) last year, these same cousins almost sat me at the children's table. I wouldn't have minded, but I couldn't help wondering how they had arrived at that decision.
"Look, we still have too many people at the main table. Can we disinvite your mother?"
"Not again. She's still complaining about last year. What else can we do?"
"Well, Barak is alone again, and he's like a big kid. More or less…"
"Good idea! Let's put him there so the Rubins can sit together. Barak can talk about DJs with David. Or being a vegetarian."
"Do you think he'll mind?"
"Who cares if he minds? I just don't want him hitting on the Goldbergs' 19-year-old daughter."
At the last minute, I got an upgrade to the adult section.
The Three Questions
My safta (grandmother), may she rest in peace, had a little seder (not just the Passover dinner, but literally "order" or process)of her own whenever I came to visit her in Jerusalem. She ran that seder like clockwork, and it consisted of The Snack and The Three Questions. She'd feed me a crooked slice of cake and a glass of tea and ask:
• Why are you so skinny?
• Why did you come for such a short visit?
• When are you getting married? (Matai teet-khaten?)
That was the routine, without fail, for fifteen years, until the year she stopped asking questions. She never liked my answers.
Many years ago, safta told my first cousin Gila, "Marriage isn't for now. Now it's fun to be single. Marriage is for later." Gila took that advice to heart and found a guy at a religious mixer in the Catskills. They moved into the land of Queens, and she bore him five children, and there they dwelt, building a mountain of equity and a bigger mountain of disposable diapers. Amen. But Gila always wanted a family.
No Answers
Most of the time, I live my life on my own terms, and for better or for worse -- it's my life. A few times a year, our heritage reaches up like that hand from the grave in "Carrie" and drags me into the mulch of our traditions, where it rubs my nose in every decision I ever made or didn't. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," but as far as I can tell, the examined life isn't all it's cracked up to be either.
As the seder draws close, I confess to mixed emotions. No, I don't want to pray, and I don't wish I were having my own seder, but I feel a little bad about the pizza in my freezer. I'll be eating hametz (leavened bread, forbidden during the eight days of Passover), but I wonder if my saba Avram, a man who essentially lived in a shul, was right. After all, he led a happy and fulfilled life, while I'm forever wandering through my own modern diaspora. Yet my revulsion for religion and the religious and all those easy answers keeps me from delving into the four or forty or 400 questions that nag at me. Was saba Avram right? Was Socrates?
This year, I'll be reading my paragraphs in a sober, clear voice. No jokes. I'm not going for the easy laughs anymore. No, I have a very adult seder plan this year. I'll bring a real horseradish to make sure everybody feels the pain of history. I'll have my four glasses of wine when I'm supposed to. I'll eat my matzoh, read like a mensch, and maybe help some kid hide the afikoman (a piece of matzoh that kids hide and hold for a ransom).
And I decided to invite my girlfriend. She's not a Jew, and she's never been to a seder. She's looking forward to it.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Keeping Cubes Clean
Amazing. Germophobia has infiltrated the office supplies market. I gues this is how you make people buy new versions of things that never break: "antimicrobial staplers" at Office Depot.
I'm as germ-conscious as the next guy -- heck, more so -- but I am agog at the array of products that "feature a compound that is added to the plastic to prevent growth of bacteria and molds." What about the rise of supergerms? What about all those little marketing coordinators who will grow up without antibodies?
I'm as germ-conscious as the next guy -- heck, more so -- but I am agog at the array of products that "feature a compound that is added to the plastic to prevent growth of bacteria and molds." What about the rise of supergerms? What about all those little marketing coordinators who will grow up without antibodies?
Thursday, January 11, 2007
He's a Super, Man
Home sick today. Read all of Peter Bagge's "Hate," a bday present from my Clinton Hill pal, an ex-Seattlite. Ate sparingly. Drowsed. Gave the Brita a workout. But all this laying about was good for getting out the vote. The mayoral bid is picking up steam.
In case you're not keeping up with the Zimses, I'm running for Mayor of My Apartment, in advance of Bloomberg's imminent run for the POTUS spot. Yesterday I got the endorsement of my bedside table and two pairs of shoes. The windows are still on the fence, but I see through them. They just want me to wash their backs. The magazines aren't organized, so they may never have a unified voice, but I have a back-channel plan to win over all the New Yorkers. I think the BusinessWeeks are looking for a more fiscally minded candidate. An early poll of the eggs in the fridge shows sentiment running high against me, so I ate two of them just to show how far I'll go when pushed. We'll see how they feel about me tomorrow morning. At breakfast time. Now that I have a new stove.
LordZim readers wouldn't know this, because for a mayoral candidate I've been a very slack little blogger, but my oven went down. Not sexually -- permanently. According to the mustachioed expert from Speedway Appliance, "mice chewed up the wiring." Mice! Now that would be a wily voting bloc. Happily, not one has ever shown its whiskery nose in my presence, so I bear them no personal animus.
Hey -- anagram alert. Animus = I'm anus. Were truer words ever typed? Now let's move on to palindromes. Here's the famous one: Madam I'm Adam. OK, ready? Madam I'm Anus, Tsunami Madam. (I'm also the perfect storm, a Mayoral candidate with a lot to ADD.)
But we were talking about how my oven went down for the count. Once down, it dragged the dishwasher with it. Happily, I don't wash lots of dishes or cook much (turncoat eggs aside), so the loss of these two appliances was no deathblow to my bachelor lifestyle. In fact, my bachelor lifestyle seems to have shrugged it all off and gone to Tahiti without me. Curses, lifestyle -- I'll have my revenge on you yet.
You must be wondering how an oven can break a dishwasher -- outside of Appliance Rodeo season, of course. Allow me to explain. By now you must have seen the stacking washer-dryer "units" popular in condo closets. As space-saving as these are, they are not trendsetting. In fact, these days they border on passe, now that the Europeans have brought two-in-one laundry machines to our shores.
One ring to unite them all: Preciousssss.
One big steel box to wash and dry them all: Priceless.
(To the tune of "Troglodyte," by The Jimmy Castor Bunch) But way back in the days when John Lindsay ruled New York, there was a space constraint that too many people knew about. And every night, about a quarter to ten, the doors would swing open. A hulking frame would appear. It would be none other than …
Modern Maid. Before she was swallowed up in the savage appliance-maker consolidations of the last century, Modern Maid made modern but now extinct kitchen combos like the one that used to dominate this leaderless cubby.
Ingenious solutions flourish in the space-starved shoeboxes that pass for dwellings here in the modern city, though no space-saver is as genius as the combo oven-stove-dishwasher package -- or "unit" -- I had to surrender yesterday. It was black, and it featured a dishwasher at floor level, four gas burners directly atop that, a "work area" above that, and then an oven at eye-level. It also had a clock, a timer, lights, and even a noisy fan that I always turned on when cooking -- only to discover yesterday that it wasn't vented to anywhere. (No wonder this place got so smoky.) When the "mice" chewed up the oven wiring, they wrecked the dishwasher too.
In brief, the whole thing died last month, so yesterday a guy showed up to dismantle and remove it. Why was I not surprised to find a big pink wall where the unit used to stand? (Note to Campaign Staff: This pinko streak may be very useful when I assemble my Coalition for Victory.) Once upon a time, apparently, someone painted the whole kitchen a lurid shade of bubblegum. Time passed, and soberer hues (white, white, white, and more white) prevailed in the visible areas, but no one ever bothered to paint behind the Modern Maid. Now that the Maid herself is but a fading memory, a stick of gum looms above the new oven, a Frigidaire four-burner that hulks low and white where once towered a mighty black space-saving giant.
Why have you just read all this?
I don't know. I just work here. But here's the soft pink underbelly to the foregoing. The inspirational money shot.
When I saw the super today in the lobby, he said, "You have a new stove!" (He knew the old one was shot when he looked at it a month ago. He didn't need no stinking mustachioed experts, but the landlord did.) I agreed and told him about the pink wall, saying the landlord wants me to paint the wall for her, and given the rent I pay, I don't see why I should do any work here. Then -- are you ready? -- the super channeled Oprah: "When I used to rent, this would happen to me too, but I always painted the wall or did the fixing myself. I did not do it for the landlord -- I did it for me."
Speechless, I was, before this textbook example of a fully realized, balanced adult behaving maturely. Why, this mindshift could change my whole life. It could provide a template for a new approach to the world. Though it pains me to refer to Nietzsche twice in a week, it was a perfect example of an ubermenschlich action, even if der Uberman was only ein Renterman at the time.
Did I march right upstairs and take control of my life? No, of course not. I reasoned his good sense right out of my head. Of course he painted things -- he's a super, man. He's good at painting and spackling. I am not. I have a history of postponing home repairs for years, even when the home belongs to me. If someone were to ask me to help them paint a room elsewhere, I'd be willing. That's usually kind of fun. But I'm busy. And with regard to the spackling arts, I'm lazy.
Apart from all that, to be honest, I'm not really ready to paint over the one note of delirious color in my austere precincts. When I look at that giant gumstick above the stove I have to smile. If I squint, I can almost see in its raw edges and random pencil scribblings ("19") a third-rate Ab-Ex canvas.
So maybe I don't want an all-white kitchen just yet. Maybe I'll wait till after the election. Besides, I think that wall vote is a cinch once I nationalize the Swiffer and agree to let the gays marry.
In case you're not keeping up with the Zimses, I'm running for Mayor of My Apartment, in advance of Bloomberg's imminent run for the POTUS spot. Yesterday I got the endorsement of my bedside table and two pairs of shoes. The windows are still on the fence, but I see through them. They just want me to wash their backs. The magazines aren't organized, so they may never have a unified voice, but I have a back-channel plan to win over all the New Yorkers. I think the BusinessWeeks are looking for a more fiscally minded candidate. An early poll of the eggs in the fridge shows sentiment running high against me, so I ate two of them just to show how far I'll go when pushed. We'll see how they feel about me tomorrow morning. At breakfast time. Now that I have a new stove.
LordZim readers wouldn't know this, because for a mayoral candidate I've been a very slack little blogger, but my oven went down. Not sexually -- permanently. According to the mustachioed expert from Speedway Appliance, "mice chewed up the wiring." Mice! Now that would be a wily voting bloc. Happily, not one has ever shown its whiskery nose in my presence, so I bear them no personal animus.
Hey -- anagram alert. Animus = I'm anus. Were truer words ever typed? Now let's move on to palindromes. Here's the famous one: Madam I'm Adam. OK, ready? Madam I'm Anus, Tsunami Madam. (I'm also the perfect storm, a Mayoral candidate with a lot to ADD.)
But we were talking about how my oven went down for the count. Once down, it dragged the dishwasher with it. Happily, I don't wash lots of dishes or cook much (turncoat eggs aside), so the loss of these two appliances was no deathblow to my bachelor lifestyle. In fact, my bachelor lifestyle seems to have shrugged it all off and gone to Tahiti without me. Curses, lifestyle -- I'll have my revenge on you yet.
You must be wondering how an oven can break a dishwasher -- outside of Appliance Rodeo season, of course. Allow me to explain. By now you must have seen the stacking washer-dryer "units" popular in condo closets. As space-saving as these are, they are not trendsetting. In fact, these days they border on passe, now that the Europeans have brought two-in-one laundry machines to our shores.
One ring to unite them all: Preciousssss.
One big steel box to wash and dry them all: Priceless.
(To the tune of "Troglodyte," by The Jimmy Castor Bunch) But way back in the days when John Lindsay ruled New York, there was a space constraint that too many people knew about. And every night, about a quarter to ten, the doors would swing open. A hulking frame would appear. It would be none other than …
Modern Maid. Before she was swallowed up in the savage appliance-maker consolidations of the last century, Modern Maid made modern but now extinct kitchen combos like the one that used to dominate this leaderless cubby.
Ingenious solutions flourish in the space-starved shoeboxes that pass for dwellings here in the modern city, though no space-saver is as genius as the combo oven-stove-dishwasher package -- or "unit" -- I had to surrender yesterday. It was black, and it featured a dishwasher at floor level, four gas burners directly atop that, a "work area" above that, and then an oven at eye-level. It also had a clock, a timer, lights, and even a noisy fan that I always turned on when cooking -- only to discover yesterday that it wasn't vented to anywhere. (No wonder this place got so smoky.) When the "mice" chewed up the oven wiring, they wrecked the dishwasher too.
In brief, the whole thing died last month, so yesterday a guy showed up to dismantle and remove it. Why was I not surprised to find a big pink wall where the unit used to stand? (Note to Campaign Staff: This pinko streak may be very useful when I assemble my Coalition for Victory.) Once upon a time, apparently, someone painted the whole kitchen a lurid shade of bubblegum. Time passed, and soberer hues (white, white, white, and more white) prevailed in the visible areas, but no one ever bothered to paint behind the Modern Maid. Now that the Maid herself is but a fading memory, a stick of gum looms above the new oven, a Frigidaire four-burner that hulks low and white where once towered a mighty black space-saving giant.
Why have you just read all this?
I don't know. I just work here. But here's the soft pink underbelly to the foregoing. The inspirational money shot.
When I saw the super today in the lobby, he said, "You have a new stove!" (He knew the old one was shot when he looked at it a month ago. He didn't need no stinking mustachioed experts, but the landlord did.) I agreed and told him about the pink wall, saying the landlord wants me to paint the wall for her, and given the rent I pay, I don't see why I should do any work here. Then -- are you ready? -- the super channeled Oprah: "When I used to rent, this would happen to me too, but I always painted the wall or did the fixing myself. I did not do it for the landlord -- I did it for me."
Speechless, I was, before this textbook example of a fully realized, balanced adult behaving maturely. Why, this mindshift could change my whole life. It could provide a template for a new approach to the world. Though it pains me to refer to Nietzsche twice in a week, it was a perfect example of an ubermenschlich action, even if der Uberman was only ein Renterman at the time.
Did I march right upstairs and take control of my life? No, of course not. I reasoned his good sense right out of my head. Of course he painted things -- he's a super, man. He's good at painting and spackling. I am not. I have a history of postponing home repairs for years, even when the home belongs to me. If someone were to ask me to help them paint a room elsewhere, I'd be willing. That's usually kind of fun. But I'm busy. And with regard to the spackling arts, I'm lazy.
Apart from all that, to be honest, I'm not really ready to paint over the one note of delirious color in my austere precincts. When I look at that giant gumstick above the stove I have to smile. If I squint, I can almost see in its raw edges and random pencil scribblings ("19") a third-rate Ab-Ex canvas.
So maybe I don't want an all-white kitchen just yet. Maybe I'll wait till after the election. Besides, I think that wall vote is a cinch once I nationalize the Swiffer and agree to let the gays marry.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Starving the Beast
Traffic down at LZ, waaay down. They say that the Republican approach to government is to "starve the beast" -- strip Washington to so poor and impoverished a state, shuttering bureaus and weakening laws that government collapses in on itself and surrenders to the rule of business. (Worked good, guys. Make way for Dems!) And yes, that's just what we've been doing here at LordZim: starving the beast. Yes, it's true. The traffic to this blog had grown so vast and demanding, the requests for ideas so unrelenting, the requests for pages so server-crippling, that I, as Lord and Zim of all I survey, had no choice but to weaken the public's grip on my spare time.
So I went dark. Swam down to the inky depths and took my thoughts with me. The loyal audience suffered, no doubt, but you knew it was good for you. A long-needed respite from the regular luxuriant infusion of ideas and philosophy to which you and you had grown so accustomed. Dare I say addicted?
I dasn't.
So what do I do now? Well, first, I announce my candidacy for mayor of my apartment. With Bloomberg setting his sights on Washington, a void in the body politic looms ahead, and civic-minded New Yorkers are already jockeying for position. I'm warming up. I'm acting locally, thinking globally. Dig the new breed, baby!
Second, I announce a temporary abdication of the iron horse, owing to sciatic issues. This too poses a void, insofarasmuchas my recreational commutes have given way to the grimy subway lifestyle. I have to make my own endorphins in the bathtub now, employing a complicated algorithm stolen from Bell Labs.
Third, I announce a moratorium on announcements.
Thank you. Thank you for your time, and now, a few items from the news department.
1. My mom. Yes, my mom. My mom yesterday swung wide the doors of her digital domain and accepted the majesty of broadband in to her life. Praise Roadrunner! Praise the cable! Praise Nelson the installerman. Praise cable modems and pass the content, because here comes my mom, watching online video for the first time. I also explained Nietszche's concept of the superman and the slave, and it seems to have gripped her powerfully.
2. New Mac. Yes, a silvery new Mac for the new year, and soon -- tomorrow! -- new higher-speed broadband service here at LZHQ. The March of Progress is unstoppable.
Well, that's our show! Duty calls, and I must run. Happy new year to you and yours, and stay tuned.
So I went dark. Swam down to the inky depths and took my thoughts with me. The loyal audience suffered, no doubt, but you knew it was good for you. A long-needed respite from the regular luxuriant infusion of ideas and philosophy to which you and you had grown so accustomed. Dare I say addicted?
I dasn't.
So what do I do now? Well, first, I announce my candidacy for mayor of my apartment. With Bloomberg setting his sights on Washington, a void in the body politic looms ahead, and civic-minded New Yorkers are already jockeying for position. I'm warming up. I'm acting locally, thinking globally. Dig the new breed, baby!
Second, I announce a temporary abdication of the iron horse, owing to sciatic issues. This too poses a void, insofarasmuchas my recreational commutes have given way to the grimy subway lifestyle. I have to make my own endorphins in the bathtub now, employing a complicated algorithm stolen from Bell Labs.
Third, I announce a moratorium on announcements.
Thank you. Thank you for your time, and now, a few items from the news department.
1. My mom. Yes, my mom. My mom yesterday swung wide the doors of her digital domain and accepted the majesty of broadband in to her life. Praise Roadrunner! Praise the cable! Praise Nelson the installerman. Praise cable modems and pass the content, because here comes my mom, watching online video for the first time. I also explained Nietszche's concept of the superman and the slave, and it seems to have gripped her powerfully.
2. New Mac. Yes, a silvery new Mac for the new year, and soon -- tomorrow! -- new higher-speed broadband service here at LZHQ. The March of Progress is unstoppable.
Well, that's our show! Duty calls, and I must run. Happy new year to you and yours, and stay tuned.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Green Tea-Crusted Insalmonia
OK, what raving genius invented "green tea-crusted salmon"? The same free spirit who first dipped whole coffee beans in chocolate? What's next? Meth-infused cupcakes? Cocacinos? Polonium speedballs?
I guess the better question is what the hell was I thinking when I ordered something so wrong for dinner? The worst of it? I loved it. Perversely cursed with a taste for all things caffeinated (except soda pop) and a system that just can't handle caffeine, I periodically lapse into a willful disregard of the facts, facts that might stick with me were my intolerance likely to provoke anaphylactic shock or even hives rather than insomnia, the (very) invisible killer. So tonight, at dinner, at Yaffa Café, I had this nutty dish, the likes of which had never before crossed my palate. And I had it all. Every last crunchy twig of green tea crust. Yum! Kill me now. So here I sit, twitchily typing away the pre-dawn angst after twice flying out of bed completely unable to sleep.
Don't think I'm not tempted to use this rocketing wakefulness to recount all the adventures of LordZim since the last post, but it's just too dense a constellation. Sorry for my absence.
The issue is that so much happens here in the precincts of LordZim that it’s hard to capture everything. To do it justice. For example, recent weeks have found your humble narrator prosecuting two circumnavigations of Manhattan Island. Exploring shipwrecks on the Hudson. Moviegoing. Spectating the modern dance. Spectating a rocknroll "Woyzeck" in Dumbo, where the river-bridge-citylights vista was so colossally magnificent my eyes nearly exploded. Traversing the Brooklyn Bridge back by night. Dining at fancy spots for free before or just after their openings. Riding the bike along the railroad tracks on a gravelly track of fist-sized chunks of rock well into Riverdale. Lassoing parking meters at midnight in Tribeca. Doing battle with the forces of evil at Palm Inc. and Verizon. Working more than usual. Waxing nostalgic. Visiting L.A. for 10 days -- and hating it. Observing parrots -- wild quaker parrots -- in Brooklyn profonde, where the committed birdwatchers are even more watchable than the birds themselves. Ruminating on the end of an era at the last days of Tower Records, where thousands of pop CDs sit unwanted in disarray, yet the classical department is stripped.
There's more, but hey ... I'm getting sleepy.
As for this sudden onslaught of winter ... I love it. Sure, call me up in a month and see how I'm doing, but for now, I bask in the freezing wind as the parched man flings himself into a brackish pond.
Glub.
I guess the better question is what the hell was I thinking when I ordered something so wrong for dinner? The worst of it? I loved it. Perversely cursed with a taste for all things caffeinated (except soda pop) and a system that just can't handle caffeine, I periodically lapse into a willful disregard of the facts, facts that might stick with me were my intolerance likely to provoke anaphylactic shock or even hives rather than insomnia, the (very) invisible killer. So tonight, at dinner, at Yaffa Café, I had this nutty dish, the likes of which had never before crossed my palate. And I had it all. Every last crunchy twig of green tea crust. Yum! Kill me now. So here I sit, twitchily typing away the pre-dawn angst after twice flying out of bed completely unable to sleep.
Don't think I'm not tempted to use this rocketing wakefulness to recount all the adventures of LordZim since the last post, but it's just too dense a constellation. Sorry for my absence.
The issue is that so much happens here in the precincts of LordZim that it’s hard to capture everything. To do it justice. For example, recent weeks have found your humble narrator prosecuting two circumnavigations of Manhattan Island. Exploring shipwrecks on the Hudson. Moviegoing. Spectating the modern dance. Spectating a rocknroll "Woyzeck" in Dumbo, where the river-bridge-citylights vista was so colossally magnificent my eyes nearly exploded. Traversing the Brooklyn Bridge back by night. Dining at fancy spots for free before or just after their openings. Riding the bike along the railroad tracks on a gravelly track of fist-sized chunks of rock well into Riverdale. Lassoing parking meters at midnight in Tribeca. Doing battle with the forces of evil at Palm Inc. and Verizon. Working more than usual. Waxing nostalgic. Visiting L.A. for 10 days -- and hating it. Observing parrots -- wild quaker parrots -- in Brooklyn profonde, where the committed birdwatchers are even more watchable than the birds themselves. Ruminating on the end of an era at the last days of Tower Records, where thousands of pop CDs sit unwanted in disarray, yet the classical department is stripped.
There's more, but hey ... I'm getting sleepy.
As for this sudden onslaught of winter ... I love it. Sure, call me up in a month and see how I'm doing, but for now, I bask in the freezing wind as the parched man flings himself into a brackish pond.
Glub.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Sleuth of Rock
It's rock month at Lord Zim, apparently. "Rocktober," as those wags on the radio like to say. Not like I planned it or anything. We don't have an editorial calendar here ... there's no 12-month schedule of topics, excursions, obsessions, weird celebrity sightings, and general moodiness. Nope, it's all very seat of the pants in these parts -- a posteriori. And that's what gives the product its crisp, fresh, lively mouthfeel. That, and a wasabi-ketamine speedball every four hours.
OK, speaking of addictions and freshness, hard on the heels of last week's remarkable house party, Lord Zim had a sort of referred rock 'n' roll sighting yesterday.
The setting: Fairway. (For the sake of readers outside the TriState area, we'll note that Fairway is a gourmet supermarket that manages to be upscale, personal, and mass-market all at once, in a very New York way.)
Dramatis Personae: Hundreds of shoppers, dozens of store employees, and me. And one person on the clock.
I'd just filled a basket with food and was waiting to pay and get out. The end of the shortest line put me behind an unmanned cart filled with dozens of quarts of orange juice and milk, plus two big boxes of Twinings tea, and unusual quantities of everything else.
"Craft services," I thought. If you don't live in L.A. or New York or work in TV/movie production, you might not know that craft services refers to the people who provide food and drink on sets. Yet I'd seen no evidence of a production anywhere in the neighborhood (74th and Broadway). Coincidentally, the one time I visited Fairway's supersized Red Hook branch I'd witnessed a $5,000 shopping spree conducted by a brisk Latino in a "Sopranos" sweatshirt. The entire checkout area was in a low-grade uproar, because his six carts were causing a serious traffic jam, yet as a known and highly valued customer, he had everybody's full attention. In the parking lot, when I asked, he explained that it's his craft services company and he does the shopping himself to ensure that the finickier actors are happy with their provisions. Brooklyn, Hollywood -- stars are true to form everywhere.
Back on Broadway, a blonde in jeans and a black sweatshirt showed up behind the cart. She had the capable, gregarious, yet disinterested look I usually see on lesbians (insert hate mail here), but because I'd paused to let her pass earlier, she acknowledged me briefly on seeing me again in line.
Aha. The famous lips and tongue logo on her sweatshirt. The enormous radio clipped to her belt. The major event at the nearby Beacon Theater later that night.
"Are you also picking up bottles of Jack Daniels and Rebel Yell?" That was me, the smartypants, posing an annoying question. She looked at me with studied blankness and replied, "Why would you say that?"
"Well, you've got a cart full of craft services, the Stones are playing across the street tonight, and you're wearing the logo on your sweatshirt."
She smiled slightly and bent to unload the cart. "Well, you guessed right, so we're good."
Seemed like a weird way to shut me down, but I bet she gets that "Say, aren't you --" kind of wiseacre commentary all the time. As if regretting her brusqueness, she added, "I wear this because it's the free stuff they give you. Plus I've got this giant radio on my ass, too. Kind of gives it away. Are you going to the show?"
"I'd love to, but the tickets are probably out of my range." And then, rather than take the opportunity to abase and prostrate myself in pursuit of a backstage pass which would never have happened, I took the opportunity to validate a longheld belief. "Is it true that Keith always has to have a bottle of Jack Daniels and bottle of Rebel Yell in his dressing room?" I'd heard this years ago, back when I was drinking the Yell like lemonade.
"You're right about the Jack."
"No Rebel Yell?" I must have looked crestfallen, because she said something like, "Maybe at other venues."
Well, I still like it.
As for the tickets ... I later read in the Observer that the show was only for those worthy burghers who donated upwards of $60,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which is hosting it as part of the former President's 60th birthday hullabaloo.
Longtime LordZim readers may recall that I met Wm. Jefferson last year at a speaking engagement in L.A. He was speaking, not me. In case you were wondering. Yes, there is a photo of the handshake, but I posted a far livelier picture from the same event, in which the well-known ladies man appears to be puckering up to lick my friend Steve's grandmother's hair. See for yourself. I love that picture.
Here's what the Glimmer Twins and their entourage were sucking down backstage last night, exclusive of whisky.
OK, speaking of addictions and freshness, hard on the heels of last week's remarkable house party, Lord Zim had a sort of referred rock 'n' roll sighting yesterday.
The setting: Fairway. (For the sake of readers outside the TriState area, we'll note that Fairway is a gourmet supermarket that manages to be upscale, personal, and mass-market all at once, in a very New York way.)
Dramatis Personae: Hundreds of shoppers, dozens of store employees, and me. And one person on the clock.
I'd just filled a basket with food and was waiting to pay and get out. The end of the shortest line put me behind an unmanned cart filled with dozens of quarts of orange juice and milk, plus two big boxes of Twinings tea, and unusual quantities of everything else.
"Craft services," I thought. If you don't live in L.A. or New York or work in TV/movie production, you might not know that craft services refers to the people who provide food and drink on sets. Yet I'd seen no evidence of a production anywhere in the neighborhood (74th and Broadway). Coincidentally, the one time I visited Fairway's supersized Red Hook branch I'd witnessed a $5,000 shopping spree conducted by a brisk Latino in a "Sopranos" sweatshirt. The entire checkout area was in a low-grade uproar, because his six carts were causing a serious traffic jam, yet as a known and highly valued customer, he had everybody's full attention. In the parking lot, when I asked, he explained that it's his craft services company and he does the shopping himself to ensure that the finickier actors are happy with their provisions. Brooklyn, Hollywood -- stars are true to form everywhere.
Back on Broadway, a blonde in jeans and a black sweatshirt showed up behind the cart. She had the capable, gregarious, yet disinterested look I usually see on lesbians (insert hate mail here), but because I'd paused to let her pass earlier, she acknowledged me briefly on seeing me again in line.
Aha. The famous lips and tongue logo on her sweatshirt. The enormous radio clipped to her belt. The major event at the nearby Beacon Theater later that night.
"Are you also picking up bottles of Jack Daniels and Rebel Yell?" That was me, the smartypants, posing an annoying question. She looked at me with studied blankness and replied, "Why would you say that?"
"Well, you've got a cart full of craft services, the Stones are playing across the street tonight, and you're wearing the logo on your sweatshirt."
She smiled slightly and bent to unload the cart. "Well, you guessed right, so we're good."
Seemed like a weird way to shut me down, but I bet she gets that "Say, aren't you --" kind of wiseacre commentary all the time. As if regretting her brusqueness, she added, "I wear this because it's the free stuff they give you. Plus I've got this giant radio on my ass, too. Kind of gives it away. Are you going to the show?"
"I'd love to, but the tickets are probably out of my range." And then, rather than take the opportunity to abase and prostrate myself in pursuit of a backstage pass which would never have happened, I took the opportunity to validate a longheld belief. "Is it true that Keith always has to have a bottle of Jack Daniels and bottle of Rebel Yell in his dressing room?" I'd heard this years ago, back when I was drinking the Yell like lemonade.
"You're right about the Jack."
"No Rebel Yell?" I must have looked crestfallen, because she said something like, "Maybe at other venues."
Well, I still like it.
As for the tickets ... I later read in the Observer that the show was only for those worthy burghers who donated upwards of $60,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which is hosting it as part of the former President's 60th birthday hullabaloo.
Longtime LordZim readers may recall that I met Wm. Jefferson last year at a speaking engagement in L.A. He was speaking, not me. In case you were wondering. Yes, there is a photo of the handshake, but I posted a far livelier picture from the same event, in which the well-known ladies man appears to be puckering up to lick my friend Steve's grandmother's hair. See for yourself. I love that picture.
Here's what the Glimmer Twins and their entourage were sucking down backstage last night, exclusive of whisky.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
This Sporting Life
"Intensely caring ... More like my long-lost home every day"? Yecch. Who wrote that crap -- Mitch Albom? Sappy crappy way to end a post. The worst thing about leaving this screed stagnant for more than a week is that everyone who stumbles upon that slice -- and for some reason, a lot of people did -- assumes it reflects all I am; in this case, a flibbertigibbet who gads about every night and gives not a thought to the serious issues besetting our poor tired planet.
Is that so wrong?
I'll leave those judgments for posterior.
(A seat-of-the-pants decision.)
Miss Langston Regrets
This just happened tonight:
"You don't care about this, do you? How can you live like that?" Miss Langston, a stately, slender woman of middle years with mahogany skin and a determined chin, is astonished. She is standing behind the front desk in my building's lobby, where she works. When we first met, one night last month when I had a package to retrieve, she called me Mister _____. I asked her to use my first name, but she refused, condemning such casualness as "unprofessional." "My name is Miss Langston ... like Langston Hughes," she said levelly.
Then she softened and wanted to talk about the Mets. Or was it the Giants? Though happy to see her so engaged, I neither weighed in -- I can't -- nor conveyed my raging disinterest in any way other than a slight glazing of the eyes. We'd repeated the mismatch a couple times since. The only time she smiles is when she's talking sports, so I haven't had the heart to tell her I don't know what she's talking about. Tonight, however, she is acknowledging my apathy. I have to come clean.
"I don't know anything about sports."
"No sports at all? None?"
"You figured me out."
"You like soccer, right?" She tilts her head, sure that I'm at least one of those effete soccer fans.
"No, no sports."
"None? Do you play tennis?" Now she's giving me even more effete points.
"No. I ride my bike."
"You don't know what you're missing." Miss Langston just shakes her head, saddened and amazed.
"Could be."
"Man, I don't know what I'd do without my Shea Stadium, without my Giants Stadium.... How do you spend your time?"
"I find ways."
My Ways
When last we saw our benighted hero, he was still smarting from a swastika-shaped contusion on his nose. That has since healed, and the nifty green Band-aid is, despite its striking effect on members of the opposite sex, gone. No swastika scar mars my semi-semitic nose. Sic transit gloria rhino.
Papa's got a brand new bike. The bike trouble mentioned in passing just a few weeks ago led me to the East Village, where I wandered into Busy Bee Bikes, a tiny second-hand store presided over by a man anointed, he asserts, by the NY Times as the city's leading expert on English three-speeds. And there I was, having wanted an English three-speed for nigh on twenty years. When I said I wanted a Rudge, a Humber, or a Raleigh, he started paying attention. "You know your bikes. Those are the three top brands." He said if I came back to buy one, he'd pull out a few choice choices. He wanted to make sure I was serious before he committed resources to excavating inventory. The tiny storefront offers little room for humans to stand; most of its floor and walls bristle with bikes of all styles, colors, ages, and values, united only by NYC grime and a complicated stacking algorithm. I went away and had my Peugeot's crank replaced elsewhere (it's a looong story you can thank me for omitting), and a week later, finding time to burn in the East Village on a drizzly evening, decided to see what he had.
I was lucky, and what he had is now mine: an unrestored Raleigh "Sports" with a leather Brooks "saddle" (that's Pretentious for "seat") and original black paint, made in September 1970. A "Gene's Bicycle Shop, 417 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, CT" decal still adorns the downtube. It's perfect. Not the fastest bike on the macadam, but among the more historic. And it's faster and more comfortable than the old Peugeot, which I traded in and he sold a week later. This bike feels stately. And solid. And sexy, in a weird way. Maybe because I've wanted one like it for so long.
Madame Tussaud's House of Rock
I was lucky again last Saturday, when I attended a superrich person's Upper East Side birthday party. My old pal's sister married into a third-generation real estate fortune, affording my friend a speculum into the lap of luxury. (He's the opposite of upscale: "We have rent-control in our blood," he e-mailed me last week.) The food and drinks were just right, but the older, well-dressed crowd wasn't very engaging, and the Art Nouveau décor, though impressive from a Sotheby's perspective, left me cold. So why was I there? Tray-passed lobster canapés? Bottomless flutes of bubbly? Strained conversation with robber barons? No. I was there because Elvis Costello performed a two-hour set in the living room.
Playing a variety of guitars over a breathtaking sound system, he noisily yet carefully knocked out 25 songs from his rock years for the amusement of 150 docile guests. Predictably, the thirty- and fortysomethings were his loudest fans, while most of those outside the target demo tuned out and looked politely bored after the initial novelty had worn off. This seemed to me both funny and depressing.
Nothing seemed to depress Elvis. He bantered just enough, served up two requests, and mugged with the same wry, bemused look he trains on everything that appears to compromise his legendary integrity. He even amended the name in "Alison" to the birthday girl's own. Afterward, he posed for snapshots with the hosts and then vanished.
How do you get Elvis to play at your house? By paying him a lot of money. Anyone can well afford to look wry and bemused when making $1,000.00 a minute. (This preposterous figure is merely my estimate, and it doesn't reflect anything anyone told me -- except one guest, a former music biz guy who'd heard such gigs can fetch $200K.)
Elvis's deal forbade photos and recordings of any kind, but dozens of phones captured fuzzy images of the formerly angry young man.
It's hard to process an event like this. On the one hand, it's undeniably exciting to stand ten feet from a guy whose first album dominated my ears for several months in 1977, watching and hearing him play songs that used to mean a lot to me. (I was stuck on three of his subsequent records too.) And of course I was happy to have been invited, to have been there for such a weird scene. But if any of Manhattan's energy still derives from the unusual proximity of high and low culture (the way it used to before the rise of the freakish, isolated ultrarich class), that juxtaposition is an awkward place ... like the grinding edge of the San Andreas Fault. Caught between, no place to stand as the ledge shears away, and ever mindful of the hot magma future incinerating loose ends. Nothing evokes youth and its discontents like the music of long-gone malcontents, and few things cast one's accomplishments into a harsher light than exposure to the achievements or inheritances of others. Though I know comparison is not merely odious but idiotic, knowing isn't quite doing.
Oh, boo-hoo. I got to drink champagne and ride my sexy antique bike home through Central Park.
Is that so wrong?
I'll leave those judgments for posterior.
(A seat-of-the-pants decision.)
Miss Langston Regrets
This just happened tonight:
"You don't care about this, do you? How can you live like that?" Miss Langston, a stately, slender woman of middle years with mahogany skin and a determined chin, is astonished. She is standing behind the front desk in my building's lobby, where she works. When we first met, one night last month when I had a package to retrieve, she called me Mister _____. I asked her to use my first name, but she refused, condemning such casualness as "unprofessional." "My name is Miss Langston ... like Langston Hughes," she said levelly.
Then she softened and wanted to talk about the Mets. Or was it the Giants? Though happy to see her so engaged, I neither weighed in -- I can't -- nor conveyed my raging disinterest in any way other than a slight glazing of the eyes. We'd repeated the mismatch a couple times since. The only time she smiles is when she's talking sports, so I haven't had the heart to tell her I don't know what she's talking about. Tonight, however, she is acknowledging my apathy. I have to come clean.
"I don't know anything about sports."
"No sports at all? None?"
"You figured me out."
"You like soccer, right?" She tilts her head, sure that I'm at least one of those effete soccer fans.
"No, no sports."
"None? Do you play tennis?" Now she's giving me even more effete points.
"No. I ride my bike."
"You don't know what you're missing." Miss Langston just shakes her head, saddened and amazed.
"Could be."
"Man, I don't know what I'd do without my Shea Stadium, without my Giants Stadium.... How do you spend your time?"
"I find ways."
My Ways
When last we saw our benighted hero, he was still smarting from a swastika-shaped contusion on his nose. That has since healed, and the nifty green Band-aid is, despite its striking effect on members of the opposite sex, gone. No swastika scar mars my semi-semitic nose. Sic transit gloria rhino.
Papa's got a brand new bike. The bike trouble mentioned in passing just a few weeks ago led me to the East Village, where I wandered into Busy Bee Bikes, a tiny second-hand store presided over by a man anointed, he asserts, by the NY Times as the city's leading expert on English three-speeds. And there I was, having wanted an English three-speed for nigh on twenty years. When I said I wanted a Rudge, a Humber, or a Raleigh, he started paying attention. "You know your bikes. Those are the three top brands." He said if I came back to buy one, he'd pull out a few choice choices. He wanted to make sure I was serious before he committed resources to excavating inventory. The tiny storefront offers little room for humans to stand; most of its floor and walls bristle with bikes of all styles, colors, ages, and values, united only by NYC grime and a complicated stacking algorithm. I went away and had my Peugeot's crank replaced elsewhere (it's a looong story you can thank me for omitting), and a week later, finding time to burn in the East Village on a drizzly evening, decided to see what he had.
I was lucky, and what he had is now mine: an unrestored Raleigh "Sports" with a leather Brooks "saddle" (that's Pretentious for "seat") and original black paint, made in September 1970. A "Gene's Bicycle Shop, 417 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, CT" decal still adorns the downtube. It's perfect. Not the fastest bike on the macadam, but among the more historic. And it's faster and more comfortable than the old Peugeot, which I traded in and he sold a week later. This bike feels stately. And solid. And sexy, in a weird way. Maybe because I've wanted one like it for so long.
Madame Tussaud's House of Rock
I was lucky again last Saturday, when I attended a superrich person's Upper East Side birthday party. My old pal's sister married into a third-generation real estate fortune, affording my friend a speculum into the lap of luxury. (He's the opposite of upscale: "We have rent-control in our blood," he e-mailed me last week.) The food and drinks were just right, but the older, well-dressed crowd wasn't very engaging, and the Art Nouveau décor, though impressive from a Sotheby's perspective, left me cold. So why was I there? Tray-passed lobster canapés? Bottomless flutes of bubbly? Strained conversation with robber barons? No. I was there because Elvis Costello performed a two-hour set in the living room.
Playing a variety of guitars over a breathtaking sound system, he noisily yet carefully knocked out 25 songs from his rock years for the amusement of 150 docile guests. Predictably, the thirty- and fortysomethings were his loudest fans, while most of those outside the target demo tuned out and looked politely bored after the initial novelty had worn off. This seemed to me both funny and depressing.
Nothing seemed to depress Elvis. He bantered just enough, served up two requests, and mugged with the same wry, bemused look he trains on everything that appears to compromise his legendary integrity. He even amended the name in "Alison" to the birthday girl's own. Afterward, he posed for snapshots with the hosts and then vanished.
How do you get Elvis to play at your house? By paying him a lot of money. Anyone can well afford to look wry and bemused when making $1,000.00 a minute. (This preposterous figure is merely my estimate, and it doesn't reflect anything anyone told me -- except one guest, a former music biz guy who'd heard such gigs can fetch $200K.)
Elvis's deal forbade photos and recordings of any kind, but dozens of phones captured fuzzy images of the formerly angry young man.
It's hard to process an event like this. On the one hand, it's undeniably exciting to stand ten feet from a guy whose first album dominated my ears for several months in 1977, watching and hearing him play songs that used to mean a lot to me. (I was stuck on three of his subsequent records too.) And of course I was happy to have been invited, to have been there for such a weird scene. But if any of Manhattan's energy still derives from the unusual proximity of high and low culture (the way it used to before the rise of the freakish, isolated ultrarich class), that juxtaposition is an awkward place ... like the grinding edge of the San Andreas Fault. Caught between, no place to stand as the ledge shears away, and ever mindful of the hot magma future incinerating loose ends. Nothing evokes youth and its discontents like the music of long-gone malcontents, and few things cast one's accomplishments into a harsher light than exposure to the achievements or inheritances of others. Though I know comparison is not merely odious but idiotic, knowing isn't quite doing.
Oh, boo-hoo. I got to drink champagne and ride my sexy antique bike home through Central Park.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
The Week in Coincidences
Warning: The following is way more like a regular blog than usual. Full of bla-bla-bla about my life, without the rich detail you've come to expect. But the coincidences and some of the dumb comedy impelled me to put it all down.
Last Friday night at dinner at my cousins' house, I narrowly avoided being the only adult at the children's table -- how this still happens to me I'll never know. I ended up at the grownups' table after all, between a small, spritely man with white hair and a quiverful of forced puns and, on my left, a striking brunette with an easy smile and a small Band-aid on her eyebrow. The gent and I had already spoken before dinner, so as he carried on with the woman on his right, I engaged in chitchat with the Band-aid woman. She has five kids -- four with husband the first and one with Mr. Right Now -- but that wasn't what made her so very interesting. No, what made for a highly engaged conversation was the fact that we'd gone to high school together. It sort of came up naturally, and once it did -- and the fact that we'd been there at the same time -- we had plenty to discuss. Neither of us remembered the other, though her maiden name sounded familiar, but we'd both been fans of Jos. Hoppenbrouwers, a stern yet intensely caring and funny Belgian man who used to teach French at our school. He was a sort of secret treasure, and L and I both delighted in finding someone else who had recognized that. We promised to be in touch and of course nothing's come of it, but it was fun while it lasted. Viva Manhattan.
The next night, I had dinner at another cousin's house, way downtown on Grand St., where I met an Israeli filmmaker who's met my Israeli filmmaker pal Anat Zuria. Her husband thinks he knows my pediatrician friend MC (whose book I should be working on right now), because they're both North African-French Jews, and apparently that's a pretty tight-knit little world here in NYC. These two live in Williamsburg, and MC is opening up the first Manhattan-émigré-friendly pediatric clinic in Williamsburg ... do I sense a match here? I made the introduction.
You've already read about Saturday night in these pixels earlier. Circle Line, etc. Glimmer glimmer whoosh. Blogging under the influence. There was this one disturbing image in Times Square, which is rife with disturbances on a Saturday night.
(Apologies for the phonecam image quality.) Times Square makes my old Hollywood Blvd. stomping grounds look like kid stuff. The chief distinction is that Hollywood Blvd. is rarely home to hundreds of armed cops and marshals, all of whom seem to be standard-issue after dark in Times Square. I walked past this scene at about midnight, and the same guy was still on the sidewalk a half-hour later. By then he was horizontal, and the crowd was a little bigger. No coincidences.
Sunday the bike broke in Central Park. Later, I met my most fun friends, the Minneapolitans, at the karaoke bar. As usual, all their friends were fun, lively artists too. After I shredded my throat channeling a Neanderthal in rut on "Baby Hold On," one of them, a bona fide perfessional musician, asked, "Dude, what do you do? Are you a singer? You have a great voice." That made it all worth it. Even if I could barely hold a note for two days. Creativity through adversity. Arbeit macht frei.
Speaking of Arbeit, on Monday I put in a full day at the office, then met an editor for dinner. No coincidences. No rich comedy. See previous post for details.
Tuesday I worked again and then met a friend for happy hour at Sapa, followed by a return visit to the karaoke bar at 2nd and 2nd. That was no coincidence either. That was when I hit myself in the nose with a microphone. That was the sake talking. It didn't hurt, so I barely noticed it. Except for all the blood. Blood, blood everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Blood on my hands, blood on my shirt, blood on her shirt -- Jesus, I was geysering blood and all I wanted to do was get back to the music. So I excused myself for a moment.
In the bathroom, trying to wash off the affected area, I couldn't stop laughing at the size of the contusion. How could such an innocuous little tap cause such dermal mayhem? Blood clotting, we went back to the music. Later, when I got home, I found that the mike's screen had left a swastika-like grid imprinted deep on the bridge of my nose. I thought to make it less conspicuous by applying a Band-aid, but the only Band-aids in my cabinet were "Grinch"-branded tie-ins -- bright green with Sneetches on them. Each one says “Official movie merchandise.”
The Band-aid is both comical and intensely stupid-looking, an effect which only grows richer when I try to explain what happened. In fact, I like my green Band-aid so much I may keep wearing it after the wound is gone. Chicks dig it. The hard part is making the incident sound anything but pathetic. Which it is. Why fight it? One woman -- the tall, glammy neighbor with whom I shared a cab to JFK three weeks ago (when it turned out we were both taking the same flight to Minneapolis!) -- laughed in my face in the lobby two days ago and said, "You have to come up with something better than that!"
Well, I'll see what I can do. Nobody believes me when I say I had a nose job. Or got into a fight. Maybe I'll say I left it on the grindstone too long.
OK, back to the coincidences. Thursday evening, I was riding my newly repaired bike past my friend P's mom's building on 96th Street. I was thinking, "Hey, that's P's mom's place," and then there she was, walking toward the subway. I stopped and we talked for a little while. She was going to see Lawrence Lessig talk about Creative Commons at the Public Library. Ten minutes and a thousand tiny southbound revolutions later, I was waiting for the light to change at 57th and Broadway when along came Jon of Jon Valdi, a small boutique I used to visit in L.A. I hadn't seen him since he and his design partner moved here a few years ago. We talked for a few minutes, and then I resumed my southerly progress toward the studio of a painter I'd met the previous week. Those coincidences? He was born the same year I was, and whereas I was born in NYC and moved to LA at age four, he was born in Santa Monica and moved to New York at age four. Later that evening, visiting a neighbor and new friend, , I discovered that she'd gone to high school with my close college pal A, right here in NYC. (I met P (of P's mom fame) through A, for what that's worth.)
Friday, I met MC for lunch in Williamsburg, where he's building his new clinic. Afterward, I roosted in the backyard of a coffeeshop on Bedford for a few hours, tap-tap-tapping away, and then caught a train back to Manhattan to meet J, an old pal, at her new office for a drink. We were half a block from Sapa, so back I went. Though we sat on the other side of the place, the same guy took our order. I don't call that a real coincidence, but still. Jigmed. That's his name. Jigmed. It's Tibetan.
After that, I was supposed to meet P for another one uptown, but he called from downtown to say he'd just had dinner with Lawrence Lessig ... and did I want to come meet him and Vernon Reid for a drink?
I'm still wearing the green band-aid. And New York feels smaller and more like my long-lost home every day.
Last Friday night at dinner at my cousins' house, I narrowly avoided being the only adult at the children's table -- how this still happens to me I'll never know. I ended up at the grownups' table after all, between a small, spritely man with white hair and a quiverful of forced puns and, on my left, a striking brunette with an easy smile and a small Band-aid on her eyebrow. The gent and I had already spoken before dinner, so as he carried on with the woman on his right, I engaged in chitchat with the Band-aid woman. She has five kids -- four with husband the first and one with Mr. Right Now -- but that wasn't what made her so very interesting. No, what made for a highly engaged conversation was the fact that we'd gone to high school together. It sort of came up naturally, and once it did -- and the fact that we'd been there at the same time -- we had plenty to discuss. Neither of us remembered the other, though her maiden name sounded familiar, but we'd both been fans of Jos. Hoppenbrouwers, a stern yet intensely caring and funny Belgian man who used to teach French at our school. He was a sort of secret treasure, and L and I both delighted in finding someone else who had recognized that. We promised to be in touch and of course nothing's come of it, but it was fun while it lasted. Viva Manhattan.
The next night, I had dinner at another cousin's house, way downtown on Grand St., where I met an Israeli filmmaker who's met my Israeli filmmaker pal Anat Zuria. Her husband thinks he knows my pediatrician friend MC (whose book I should be working on right now), because they're both North African-French Jews, and apparently that's a pretty tight-knit little world here in NYC. These two live in Williamsburg, and MC is opening up the first Manhattan-émigré-friendly pediatric clinic in Williamsburg ... do I sense a match here? I made the introduction.
You've already read about Saturday night in these pixels earlier. Circle Line, etc. Glimmer glimmer whoosh. Blogging under the influence. There was this one disturbing image in Times Square, which is rife with disturbances on a Saturday night.
(Apologies for the phonecam image quality.) Times Square makes my old Hollywood Blvd. stomping grounds look like kid stuff. The chief distinction is that Hollywood Blvd. is rarely home to hundreds of armed cops and marshals, all of whom seem to be standard-issue after dark in Times Square. I walked past this scene at about midnight, and the same guy was still on the sidewalk a half-hour later. By then he was horizontal, and the crowd was a little bigger. No coincidences.
Sunday the bike broke in Central Park. Later, I met my most fun friends, the Minneapolitans, at the karaoke bar. As usual, all their friends were fun, lively artists too. After I shredded my throat channeling a Neanderthal in rut on "Baby Hold On," one of them, a bona fide perfessional musician, asked, "Dude, what do you do? Are you a singer? You have a great voice." That made it all worth it. Even if I could barely hold a note for two days. Creativity through adversity. Arbeit macht frei.
Speaking of Arbeit, on Monday I put in a full day at the office, then met an editor for dinner. No coincidences. No rich comedy. See previous post for details.
Tuesday I worked again and then met a friend for happy hour at Sapa, followed by a return visit to the karaoke bar at 2nd and 2nd. That was no coincidence either. That was when I hit myself in the nose with a microphone. That was the sake talking. It didn't hurt, so I barely noticed it. Except for all the blood. Blood, blood everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Blood on my hands, blood on my shirt, blood on her shirt -- Jesus, I was geysering blood and all I wanted to do was get back to the music. So I excused myself for a moment.
In the bathroom, trying to wash off the affected area, I couldn't stop laughing at the size of the contusion. How could such an innocuous little tap cause such dermal mayhem? Blood clotting, we went back to the music. Later, when I got home, I found that the mike's screen had left a swastika-like grid imprinted deep on the bridge of my nose. I thought to make it less conspicuous by applying a Band-aid, but the only Band-aids in my cabinet were "Grinch"-branded tie-ins -- bright green with Sneetches on them. Each one says “Official movie merchandise.”
The Band-aid is both comical and intensely stupid-looking, an effect which only grows richer when I try to explain what happened. In fact, I like my green Band-aid so much I may keep wearing it after the wound is gone. Chicks dig it. The hard part is making the incident sound anything but pathetic. Which it is. Why fight it? One woman -- the tall, glammy neighbor with whom I shared a cab to JFK three weeks ago (when it turned out we were both taking the same flight to Minneapolis!) -- laughed in my face in the lobby two days ago and said, "You have to come up with something better than that!"
Well, I'll see what I can do. Nobody believes me when I say I had a nose job. Or got into a fight. Maybe I'll say I left it on the grindstone too long.
OK, back to the coincidences. Thursday evening, I was riding my newly repaired bike past my friend P's mom's building on 96th Street. I was thinking, "Hey, that's P's mom's place," and then there she was, walking toward the subway. I stopped and we talked for a little while. She was going to see Lawrence Lessig talk about Creative Commons at the Public Library. Ten minutes and a thousand tiny southbound revolutions later, I was waiting for the light to change at 57th and Broadway when along came Jon of Jon Valdi, a small boutique I used to visit in L.A. I hadn't seen him since he and his design partner moved here a few years ago. We talked for a few minutes, and then I resumed my southerly progress toward the studio of a painter I'd met the previous week. Those coincidences? He was born the same year I was, and whereas I was born in NYC and moved to LA at age four, he was born in Santa Monica and moved to New York at age four. Later that evening, visiting a neighbor and new friend, , I discovered that she'd gone to high school with my close college pal A, right here in NYC. (I met P (of P's mom fame) through A, for what that's worth.)
Friday, I met MC for lunch in Williamsburg, where he's building his new clinic. Afterward, I roosted in the backyard of a coffeeshop on Bedford for a few hours, tap-tap-tapping away, and then caught a train back to Manhattan to meet J, an old pal, at her new office for a drink. We were half a block from Sapa, so back I went. Though we sat on the other side of the place, the same guy took our order. I don't call that a real coincidence, but still. Jigmed. That's his name. Jigmed. It's Tibetan.
After that, I was supposed to meet P for another one uptown, but he called from downtown to say he'd just had dinner with Lawrence Lessig ... and did I want to come meet him and Vernon Reid for a drink?
I'm still wearing the green band-aid. And New York feels smaller and more like my long-lost home every day.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Two Nights
Becalmed. Oops, ouch, stilled. Bike broke. Walkin' blues. But there is a virtue in living the city at everybody else's speed.
Two nights ago, I met S at her hotel as she arrived from LA and we went off for a drink and then a walk on the West Side. I like water. I mean, I love alcohol, but I like looking at water. We went to the river. I took us to the river. There we found the Circle Line dock, and we started walking along it toward New Jersey. That is to say, we walked west on the Circle Line dock, encountering no wizened security guards, no infrared sensors, no nothing --- just a long walk on a long pier past half a dozen of those freshly painted Circle Line ships, until we reached the end, where we turned right at the rope-swoggled cluster of piers and found an unassuming shelf at the outermost reach of the Circle Line's extremity. There, facing the river, some meditative soul had set up a single folding chair on the pier's end, but I took a seat on the seawallish edge and slung my legs over, again toward New Jersey. Over the rushing water. It was a move far more frightening than it deserved to be. S, possessed by a confounded sense of self-preservation, sat demurely on the other side of the same low wall, feet pointed landward. She lacks a certain desire for eternity. She has a job. A house. A dog. I wondered how shocking it would be to jump into the water. Cold, clearly, but no colder than the Minnesota lakes where I swam night and day just a week ago. And a rushing current, sure, but would it overmatch my strong strokes? And darkness and directionlessness too -- the worst of it all ... but would it really be so bad after a few drinks? Out in Minnesota I found I swim better when I've had a few drinks (he said with the certainty of the doomed.) I hold my breath longer, quickening fear forgotten in a swanning wash of alcoholic calm, and my swimming is commensurately stronger. Weightlessness. Freedom. How you gonna keep 'em down on the dirt once they seen Atlantis?
Look at that river, I said. Sparkly. Eternal. New Jersey lights shone us a bright soft horizon and long-distance reflections, local illumination flashing back off a million little wavelets, and uncommon quiet floating over the post-midnight vista. There we were, blithely perched on the edge of Manhattan, feet a dangling. Glimmer glimmer. Whoosh.
Tonight, I met an editor at a new (two weeks old!) eatery on W. 21st that announces its intentions with a steerhide carpet on the sidewalk outside. First NYC beachhead of a celebrated Ft. Worth spot, this place trumpets its carnivore cred not just via floor coverings but with such delights as kangaroo carpaccio and a split marrow bone for smearing oily protein sludge on bread. If I want to look at dog treats all night, I'll bring snacks and a bedroll and hunker down at Petco.
But what we had was very good. If scallops were always cooked to such perfection, they'd be as popular as shrimp. (What happens to all those scallop shells as it is? Do scallop middens clutter shores near and far? Do most folks even know what a midden is?) All my stuff was good, and the editor didn't comment on his giant stuffed tenderloin. No half-dead kangaroos bounded past the table -- just a half-dozen worried-looking staffers.
Eventually we left and walked a few blocks. I accepted a cigarette -- sure sign I'd had enough to drink -- and then he got into a cab and I was left to call my good-time Charlene pals the Twin City dancer lesbians, but they didn't answer. Neither did my uptown Solomon, so I ducked into an inviting spot called Gstaad, where surfing films played on a screen opposite the bar and modish blond wood furniture from Switzerland helped establish le vibe. Der vibe.
That was drink 6. Or maybe 5. Being so very good at holding my alcohol on dry land and in lakes by moonlight, I mattered it not at all. Eventually I left again and occupied myself walking westward in cell phone conversation with a pal in NoCal.
I found my way home, wrote the preceding in a pickled state, and went to sleep. Then I woke up, reread it, deleted a few sentences, and posted it here for your diversion. Don't worry -- I won't be jumping into the river. I'll swim at the gym like a good model citizen.
Two nights ago, I met S at her hotel as she arrived from LA and we went off for a drink and then a walk on the West Side. I like water. I mean, I love alcohol, but I like looking at water. We went to the river. I took us to the river. There we found the Circle Line dock, and we started walking along it toward New Jersey. That is to say, we walked west on the Circle Line dock, encountering no wizened security guards, no infrared sensors, no nothing --- just a long walk on a long pier past half a dozen of those freshly painted Circle Line ships, until we reached the end, where we turned right at the rope-swoggled cluster of piers and found an unassuming shelf at the outermost reach of the Circle Line's extremity. There, facing the river, some meditative soul had set up a single folding chair on the pier's end, but I took a seat on the seawallish edge and slung my legs over, again toward New Jersey. Over the rushing water. It was a move far more frightening than it deserved to be. S, possessed by a confounded sense of self-preservation, sat demurely on the other side of the same low wall, feet pointed landward. She lacks a certain desire for eternity. She has a job. A house. A dog. I wondered how shocking it would be to jump into the water. Cold, clearly, but no colder than the Minnesota lakes where I swam night and day just a week ago. And a rushing current, sure, but would it overmatch my strong strokes? And darkness and directionlessness too -- the worst of it all ... but would it really be so bad after a few drinks? Out in Minnesota I found I swim better when I've had a few drinks (he said with the certainty of the doomed.) I hold my breath longer, quickening fear forgotten in a swanning wash of alcoholic calm, and my swimming is commensurately stronger. Weightlessness. Freedom. How you gonna keep 'em down on the dirt once they seen Atlantis?
Look at that river, I said. Sparkly. Eternal. New Jersey lights shone us a bright soft horizon and long-distance reflections, local illumination flashing back off a million little wavelets, and uncommon quiet floating over the post-midnight vista. There we were, blithely perched on the edge of Manhattan, feet a dangling. Glimmer glimmer. Whoosh.
Tonight, I met an editor at a new (two weeks old!) eatery on W. 21st that announces its intentions with a steerhide carpet on the sidewalk outside. First NYC beachhead of a celebrated Ft. Worth spot, this place trumpets its carnivore cred not just via floor coverings but with such delights as kangaroo carpaccio and a split marrow bone for smearing oily protein sludge on bread. If I want to look at dog treats all night, I'll bring snacks and a bedroll and hunker down at Petco.
But what we had was very good. If scallops were always cooked to such perfection, they'd be as popular as shrimp. (What happens to all those scallop shells as it is? Do scallop middens clutter shores near and far? Do most folks even know what a midden is?) All my stuff was good, and the editor didn't comment on his giant stuffed tenderloin. No half-dead kangaroos bounded past the table -- just a half-dozen worried-looking staffers.
Eventually we left and walked a few blocks. I accepted a cigarette -- sure sign I'd had enough to drink -- and then he got into a cab and I was left to call my good-time Charlene pals the Twin City dancer lesbians, but they didn't answer. Neither did my uptown Solomon, so I ducked into an inviting spot called Gstaad, where surfing films played on a screen opposite the bar and modish blond wood furniture from Switzerland helped establish le vibe. Der vibe.
That was drink 6. Or maybe 5. Being so very good at holding my alcohol on dry land and in lakes by moonlight, I mattered it not at all. Eventually I left again and occupied myself walking westward in cell phone conversation with a pal in NoCal.
I found my way home, wrote the preceding in a pickled state, and went to sleep. Then I woke up, reread it, deleted a few sentences, and posted it here for your diversion. Don't worry -- I won't be jumping into the river. I'll swim at the gym like a good model citizen.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
I Guess You Had to Be Me.
I am sitting in the solarium working. I am listening to Blondie via headphones. I am moving a group of work-related emails into a folder. As I open the "Jobs" folder, I see the name of a friend and client on a sub-folder. At that moment, the song "Hanging on the Telephone" starts. As you may know, it begins with the sound of a European phone: "ring ring!" Just then, as if on cue, my cell phone rings too: "ring ring!" Same rhythm, similar tone. That throws me a little, but then I look at the screen and see the same friend/client's name I just saw on my laptop screen. I am ... well, amazed. We haven't spoken in a few days. Of course, when I try to explain this to him, he's significantly less awestruck.
Well, I guess you had to be me.
And were you me, you wouldn't bother to ascribe any significance to this either.
Well, I guess you had to be me.
And were you me, you wouldn't bother to ascribe any significance to this either.
Monday, September 18, 2006
The Cramps (Hollywood Palladium, 3500 seats, $15)
I generally assume that no one I know reads this thing. But every once in a while, a post excites reaction, and friends surface to offer compliments, comments, even corrections. The last item, my hastily assembled reflections on a recent Cramps show, was just such a post. B up in the verdant fields of Vermont said it was the best thing I'd done in a while, while A in Brooklyn both praised my prose and contended that Lux Interior is in fact about 70. Holy cow. That would make the man on stage still pulling down his pants almost my dad's contemporary.
From A's email:
But where were we? Here. Here, in all its jejeune, prolix prose, both constrained and inspired by the clipped weirdness of vintage Daily Variety style, is the first review I ever wrote, retrieved from a dusty drawer by She Who Shall Remain Nameless (my mom).
And now to, as the DJs say, set it up (and split an infinitive), with a little history:
In 1986, Daily Variety was still an intensely scruffy, family-owned operation slapped together five days a week in a one-story cinderblock structure surrounded on Cahuenga Blvd. by auto repair shops. A few years would elapse before global publishing powerhouse Cahner's bought the paper from the founder's descendants, moved it out of Hollywood proper, and glitzed it up to leverage the equity inherent in so powerful a brand. As the kids say.
Yep, it was quaint. Sales and editorial were divided by an actual wall, and we the ink-stained were discouraged from socializing with the well-groomed toothy types on the other side of that wall. Copy editors used to edit hard copy with Ebony pencils and then use antique manual typewriters to hammer out headlines on half-sheets of yellow paper. These we'd attach to the first sheet of each article with a few deft brushstrokes from our individual mucilage pots before handing off the marked-up, restacked sheaves of copy to our editorial betters for fine-tuning. Lest readers think such systems were common then, they were not; our methods were already absurdly outdated. The paper was simply run on a shoestring by two parallel dynasties: the Pryors, who controlled editorial, and the Silvermans, who had inherited the publisher mantle.
The paper was then full of "characters," but perhaps the most memorable was our drama critic, a gray-haired fellow well-known for the following habits at the theatre:
1. Sitting in the front row
2. Knitting (loudly)
3. Falling asleep.
Though I went on to see many concerts, I never knitted at any of them. Not once.
This piece was my first in a national publication, and it ran on page 18 on July 15, 1986, right next to a short, unbylined squib entitled "CBS Records, Liberace Pact." Speaking of bylines, reviewers didn't merit them at Variety way back in the Pre-Cambrian Era; we went instead by weird little four-letter abbreviations called "slugs." Three- and five-letter slugs were not allowed.
For my efforts, an extra $7.50 per review graced my meager biweekly paychecks. As it happened, by volunteering to lend the music editor this reviewing assist, I invented the rock "stringer" position at Variety; the paper soon added other byline/slug sluts to round out a small corps of underpaid music critics. I ran into Publisher Michael Silverman one afternoon outside the building and mentioned how low the reviewer fee was compared even to the tight-fisted L.A.Weekly's per-word rate. Cornered, he pled impotence (not his term), but within a month, all freelance fees rose to something approaching the low end of market rate. And yet, no plaque commemorates my achievements. *Sigh*
Though I labored over this review, it was edited, of course, which annoyed me to no end but today lets me blame any rough patches on that other guy. Now that I'm a much better editor than he was, I can laugh at how at sea he must have been in the face of this weirdness, not only to let me switch tenses and refer to the singer by his first name, but worse, to let me wax so damned long-winded. I'm tempted to cut this relic by half, but that wasn't the point of reproducing it here. Let's do the time-warp again.
* An error. As longtime L.A. music journo Chris Morris informed me that week in a gracious hand-written note, "She Said" is not a Cramps original; it was written by rock 'n' roll wildman Hasil Adkins. I was mortified, but went on to become friendly with Chris, who might otherwise never have contacted me. You can hear the original here.
** That unnamed song was "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" but Variety's unofficial Standards & Practices Dept. deemed such raciness too blue for the godless showbiz audience.
From A's email:
- As far as Lux's age goes, I have repeatedly heard that he was 39 in 1975 when the band first started; thus the assertion that he is now (you do the math) either 69 or 70. Knowing his propensities, I'm sure he's been waiting to be 69 for some time. BTW (as the kids say), the Cramps are the only band I ever got autographs from. I've met a lot of rock-star types, but I never wanted souvenirs from most of them. Lux was probably the nicest rock star I ever met .... The fact that he is closer in age to Duke Ellington than to Glen Danzig must mean something, but I'll leave it to wiser minds than mine to figure out what.
But where were we? Here. Here, in all its jejeune, prolix prose, both constrained and inspired by the clipped weirdness of vintage Daily Variety style, is the first review I ever wrote, retrieved from a dusty drawer by She Who Shall Remain Nameless (my mom).
And now to, as the DJs say, set it up (and split an infinitive), with a little history:
In 1986, Daily Variety was still an intensely scruffy, family-owned operation slapped together five days a week in a one-story cinderblock structure surrounded on Cahuenga Blvd. by auto repair shops. A few years would elapse before global publishing powerhouse Cahner's bought the paper from the founder's descendants, moved it out of Hollywood proper, and glitzed it up to leverage the equity inherent in so powerful a brand. As the kids say.
Yep, it was quaint. Sales and editorial were divided by an actual wall, and we the ink-stained were discouraged from socializing with the well-groomed toothy types on the other side of that wall. Copy editors used to edit hard copy with Ebony pencils and then use antique manual typewriters to hammer out headlines on half-sheets of yellow paper. These we'd attach to the first sheet of each article with a few deft brushstrokes from our individual mucilage pots before handing off the marked-up, restacked sheaves of copy to our editorial betters for fine-tuning. Lest readers think such systems were common then, they were not; our methods were already absurdly outdated. The paper was simply run on a shoestring by two parallel dynasties: the Pryors, who controlled editorial, and the Silvermans, who had inherited the publisher mantle.
The paper was then full of "characters," but perhaps the most memorable was our drama critic, a gray-haired fellow well-known for the following habits at the theatre:
1. Sitting in the front row
2. Knitting (loudly)
3. Falling asleep.
Though I went on to see many concerts, I never knitted at any of them. Not once.
This piece was my first in a national publication, and it ran on page 18 on July 15, 1986, right next to a short, unbylined squib entitled "CBS Records, Liberace Pact." Speaking of bylines, reviewers didn't merit them at Variety way back in the Pre-Cambrian Era; we went instead by weird little four-letter abbreviations called "slugs." Three- and five-letter slugs were not allowed.
For my efforts, an extra $7.50 per review graced my meager biweekly paychecks. As it happened, by volunteering to lend the music editor this reviewing assist, I invented the rock "stringer" position at Variety; the paper soon added other byline/slug sluts to round out a small corps of underpaid music critics. I ran into Publisher Michael Silverman one afternoon outside the building and mentioned how low the reviewer fee was compared even to the tight-fisted L.A.Weekly's per-word rate. Cornered, he pled impotence (not his term), but within a month, all freelance fees rose to something approaching the low end of market rate. And yet, no plaque commemorates my achievements. *Sigh*
Though I labored over this review, it was edited, of course, which annoyed me to no end but today lets me blame any rough patches on that other guy. Now that I'm a much better editor than he was, I can laugh at how at sea he must have been in the face of this weirdness, not only to let me switch tenses and refer to the singer by his first name, but worse, to let me wax so damned long-winded. I'm tempted to cut this relic by half, but that wasn't the point of reproducing it here. Let's do the time-warp again.
The Cramps
(Hollywood Palladium, 3500 seats, $15)
In their first L.A. show in two years, The Cramps turned in a crowd-pleasing madhouse of a show, spotlighting new material and their trademark versions of trash-rock classics.
Four-piece combo plays driving unclean garage rock. Its style derives from sources like country and rockabilly music, horror and porn pix. Having dwelt in voodoo, psychedelia, madness, monsters and junk culture in recent years, emphasis now is on sex, with much fine earlier material unaired this outing.
Singer Lux Interior, his powerful deep voice echoplexed, handles audience rapport alone, in total command of an ecstatic crowd. Two girl guitarists, longtime mainstay Ivy Rorschach and new addition Candy Del Mar, sport guignol sneers of disgust throughout. Drummer Nick Knox is consistently poker-faced behind his skins and sunglasses as he rivets the guitars onto a strong percussive frame.
Not a band given to stagy warmth or endless jam sessions, members barely acknowledged each other from far-flung corners of the stage. Occasional sloppiness dovetailed nicely with trashy musical intentions.
The show started on the good foot, Lux taking the stage in a gold lame suit for high-energy original "She Said."* Shedding the jacket within minutes, he spent the rest of the show bare-torsoed, posing his long skinny body dramatically. With his Gene Vincent-meets-Godzilla vocal style and striking physiognomy, Lux is a captivating performer.
After several fast numbers, band slowed for a tremolo-heavy version of the late Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town," played dirge-like and alienated.
Cover of a Presley beach pic tune, "Do the Clam," was a nod to band's surf music influences, and the dedication of "Hot Pool of Womanneed" to Johnny Cash further staked out sources.
The drily satiric "Good Taste," followed, laughably, by band's latest single, in an opposite vein,** raised the mostly teenage crowd to a fever pitch as the band sank into gut-crunching guitar hell.
Version of the Human Beings' old hit "Nobody But Me" traded the original's brash '60s confidence for a hollow exultation more in tune with the era and the audience. Echo ranting and massive fuzztone bass, sounding like a bulldozer in fourth gear, carried the version effectively without the original's backup shouters.
Encore consisted of showcaser standard "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen. Band hurtled through the one-chord tune with stops all out, pausing only at the midsong vocal excursion for much highly unnatural microphone abuse. Tune ended in chaos, band members leaving in disgust as Lux, trouserless, writhed and moaned in a pool of blood-red wine. He finally had to be wrapped in a bathrobe and carried away -- twice! -- tights around his ankles in a cloud of Knox's cigarette smoke.
Band's cartoon aspect, an in-joke in the Gotham punk scene nine years ago, is now an institution, and the dementia and menace so refreshing in the late '70s have long been a series of contrived, if uncompromised, poses.
Though the Cramps have grown older, their audience has become younger, with the result that everyone's basest impulses are indulged in a show that actively pursues the lowest common denominator and makes it irresistible.
Zimm.
* An error. As longtime L.A. music journo Chris Morris informed me that week in a gracious hand-written note, "She Said" is not a Cramps original; it was written by rock 'n' roll wildman Hasil Adkins. I was mortified, but went on to become friendly with Chris, who might otherwise never have contacted me. You can hear the original here.
** That unnamed song was "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" but Variety's unofficial Standards & Practices Dept. deemed such raciness too blue for the godless showbiz audience.
Monday, September 04, 2006
The Cramps ... Again
The Cramps were the first band I ever reviewed. I was working at Variety in Hollywood as a copy editor, spending more than a little time repairing poorly written reviews of operas and ballets. It dawned on me that I could do at least as well as the waxworks whose choppy prose cluttered our pages, so I convinced Managing Editor Pete Pryor that even if he hadn't heard of them or seen them on the charts, the Cramps were the Next Big Thing. He believed me.
I was happy to get free tickets and a modicum of special treatment at the venerable Hollywood Palladium, a former ballroom then as now given over to a rotating cast of alt-rock would-bes and has-beens and estrellas Latinas. That was before we called it alt-rock.
It was July 1986. I went on to review about a hundred shows over the next few years -- Frank Sinatra! R.E.M.! Guns N' Roses! Luther Vandross! -- until I so thoroughly detested reviews and reviewing that I stopped. By then, I was getting free tickets and music anyway, and was happy to attend shows where I didn't have to take notes and plan paragraphs.
Tonight, a balmy late summer evening two decades later, I saw the Cramps again for the first time in at least 15 years. I think -- and this may be the degenerative effects of age on the brain -- they were just as good. Maybe better. They've certainly had a lot of practice playing their horror-movie-influenced "psychobilly." Way back when, Lux Interior, the tall skinny ghoul who fronts the band, was a nice-looking young man who made a lot of faces and howled and pulled his pants down more than almost anybody could have wanted him to. That was then. I wish I'd seen them a few times in recent years, so I could have seen him growing into the look he seems always to have wanted. When he was 30, those scary faces he made went away when he stopped making them. Now, like a terrifying illustration of mommy's warning that if you don't stop, that face will stick, it has. They don't. Go away. Once he played at Grand Guignol -- now he's the Grandest Grandee of the Guignol in Gotham, as I might have written 20 years ago. He's still tall and rail-thin, but he looks like Dorian Gray's portrait. Or, as my friend Don wrote just yesterday, the blonde rinse (on a head that's been covered in jet-black hair as long as anyone can remember), makes him look "like Christopher Walken reincarnated as a particularly dissolute vampire." That's no stretch. But the steel caps on his teeth? He's grown into himself in his mid-50s. And yet his longtime partner, Ivy Rorschach, seems hardly to have changed at all. Her face isn't as taut as it used to be, but whose is? In the plus column, she laughs a little more now than she used to -- but not so much that she comes completely out of character. And that enormous auburn mop must be a wig ... was it always? Does it matter? The ersatz and the genuine are as entwined in their act as their act is in their life.
So why did I hie myself down to the former Limelight, now the Avalon, still a deconsecrated church on the edge of Chelsea, to see a band I liked when I was a teenager? For reasons unclear to me, I started hearing their songs in my head a few months ago. Just like that, they started playing. I think I read about this phenomenon in the Times a few years ago. It's a function of faulty wiring. It might have been the bike riding that brought it all back. Or hearing their song "Garbageman" in the moderately funny movie "The Matador" this past spring. Whatever caused it, the music wouldn't go away. One night I was in Kim's Mediapolis near Columbia and there they both were -- the band's first and second LPs, even including their first singles -- all shrink-wrapped and waiting for me. I took them home and haven't been able to stop playing them since. That was more than two weeks ago. Imagine my delight at discovering the band itself was coming to town.
Did you imagine it? Good. Now imagine the ambivalence that followed, when I considered the grim reality of standing in a crowded club for two or more hours, jostled, breathed on, view blocked, toes stomped ....
Okay, you can stop. That all happened, but it was a great show and I didn't much care about the inconvenience of it all. I used to be used to it. It's like riding a bike. And whooo, what a show. They even started with the very song that was crowding my head on the way downtown, "Mystery Plane." How'd they know?
The next song was an Arthur Lee cover, which Lux outroed thusly, declaiming: "That song was dedicated to Arthur Lee! One of the greatest rock singers ever! He's dead! But I'm not! And I'm not chopped liver either!"
Because I don't write reviews anymore -- now that everyone does, who needs it? -- I'll just say the show was well-paced and energetic, drawing from several eras and albums, punctuated with comical asides, and enlivened by exciting tricks with a bottle of red wine. (Lux would clench his metal teeth around the bottle's neck, tilt his head back, and blow a bloody geyser of wine and wine vapor out the sides of his mouth. The red would run down his chin and soak his shirt, as if he'd just torn someone's neck open with his fangs. Caution: Dissolute Vampires at Work. May Cause Pandemonium.)
Near the end, up in the balcony, one of the hundreds of tattooed girls pulled her spandex top down to show off her perfect breasts. She and her even more tattooed boyfriend simulated sex and more for a good ten minutes on the rail, her pocket camera at arm's length recording their digital antics, until the band left the stage, whereupon she demurely hiked her top back up.
Then the bottle blonde and the fright-wigged drag queen who'd introduced the band returned to the stage to say more incredibly useless junk ("Was that amazing?" "Amazing." "I mean, the Cramps!"), and I slipped out the side door to cross a long line of future revelers waiting on the sidewalk for my place on the dance floor.
I'm going kayaking in the morning. Endless summer.
I was happy to get free tickets and a modicum of special treatment at the venerable Hollywood Palladium, a former ballroom then as now given over to a rotating cast of alt-rock would-bes and has-beens and estrellas Latinas. That was before we called it alt-rock.
It was July 1986. I went on to review about a hundred shows over the next few years -- Frank Sinatra! R.E.M.! Guns N' Roses! Luther Vandross! -- until I so thoroughly detested reviews and reviewing that I stopped. By then, I was getting free tickets and music anyway, and was happy to attend shows where I didn't have to take notes and plan paragraphs.
Tonight, a balmy late summer evening two decades later, I saw the Cramps again for the first time in at least 15 years. I think -- and this may be the degenerative effects of age on the brain -- they were just as good. Maybe better. They've certainly had a lot of practice playing their horror-movie-influenced "psychobilly." Way back when, Lux Interior, the tall skinny ghoul who fronts the band, was a nice-looking young man who made a lot of faces and howled and pulled his pants down more than almost anybody could have wanted him to. That was then. I wish I'd seen them a few times in recent years, so I could have seen him growing into the look he seems always to have wanted. When he was 30, those scary faces he made went away when he stopped making them. Now, like a terrifying illustration of mommy's warning that if you don't stop, that face will stick, it has. They don't. Go away. Once he played at Grand Guignol -- now he's the Grandest Grandee of the Guignol in Gotham, as I might have written 20 years ago. He's still tall and rail-thin, but he looks like Dorian Gray's portrait. Or, as my friend Don wrote just yesterday, the blonde rinse (on a head that's been covered in jet-black hair as long as anyone can remember), makes him look "like Christopher Walken reincarnated as a particularly dissolute vampire." That's no stretch. But the steel caps on his teeth? He's grown into himself in his mid-50s. And yet his longtime partner, Ivy Rorschach, seems hardly to have changed at all. Her face isn't as taut as it used to be, but whose is? In the plus column, she laughs a little more now than she used to -- but not so much that she comes completely out of character. And that enormous auburn mop must be a wig ... was it always? Does it matter? The ersatz and the genuine are as entwined in their act as their act is in their life.
So why did I hie myself down to the former Limelight, now the Avalon, still a deconsecrated church on the edge of Chelsea, to see a band I liked when I was a teenager? For reasons unclear to me, I started hearing their songs in my head a few months ago. Just like that, they started playing. I think I read about this phenomenon in the Times a few years ago. It's a function of faulty wiring. It might have been the bike riding that brought it all back. Or hearing their song "Garbageman" in the moderately funny movie "The Matador" this past spring. Whatever caused it, the music wouldn't go away. One night I was in Kim's Mediapolis near Columbia and there they both were -- the band's first and second LPs, even including their first singles -- all shrink-wrapped and waiting for me. I took them home and haven't been able to stop playing them since. That was more than two weeks ago. Imagine my delight at discovering the band itself was coming to town.
Did you imagine it? Good. Now imagine the ambivalence that followed, when I considered the grim reality of standing in a crowded club for two or more hours, jostled, breathed on, view blocked, toes stomped ....
Okay, you can stop. That all happened, but it was a great show and I didn't much care about the inconvenience of it all. I used to be used to it. It's like riding a bike. And whooo, what a show. They even started with the very song that was crowding my head on the way downtown, "Mystery Plane." How'd they know?
The next song was an Arthur Lee cover, which Lux outroed thusly, declaiming: "That song was dedicated to Arthur Lee! One of the greatest rock singers ever! He's dead! But I'm not! And I'm not chopped liver either!"
Because I don't write reviews anymore -- now that everyone does, who needs it? -- I'll just say the show was well-paced and energetic, drawing from several eras and albums, punctuated with comical asides, and enlivened by exciting tricks with a bottle of red wine. (Lux would clench his metal teeth around the bottle's neck, tilt his head back, and blow a bloody geyser of wine and wine vapor out the sides of his mouth. The red would run down his chin and soak his shirt, as if he'd just torn someone's neck open with his fangs. Caution: Dissolute Vampires at Work. May Cause Pandemonium.)
Near the end, up in the balcony, one of the hundreds of tattooed girls pulled her spandex top down to show off her perfect breasts. She and her even more tattooed boyfriend simulated sex and more for a good ten minutes on the rail, her pocket camera at arm's length recording their digital antics, until the band left the stage, whereupon she demurely hiked her top back up.
Then the bottle blonde and the fright-wigged drag queen who'd introduced the band returned to the stage to say more incredibly useless junk ("Was that amazing?" "Amazing." "I mean, the Cramps!"), and I slipped out the side door to cross a long line of future revelers waiting on the sidewalk for my place on the dance floor.
I'm going kayaking in the morning. Endless summer.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The Invisible Beirutis
Last night I was speaking with a friend who grew up in Lebanon and asked him -- gingerly -- what he thought of the war. I know, I know -- I keep saying I'm not going to talk about it, but he's a good friend and is about as vested in this as I am, so I had to know.
"I wish they'd finished the job," he said.
Here's a perspective from Lebanon that no one is publicizing via photos or stories.
"I wish they'd finished the job," he said.
Here's a perspective from Lebanon that no one is publicizing via photos or stories.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Ninth Avenue Dining Club
Recently, right after a decent Hell's Kitchen lunch with a cousin, I stopped by the fish market to get some, well, fish. For my mom. Lulu and the Doc weren't there, but Dominic and Tony were both working, as were a few other guys I'd seen but not often. I was telling one of them what I wanted when Dominic called to me.
"Hey, come over here," he smiled, his head inclined.
I felt very "Who, me?" as I excused myself from the younger fishmonger to talk to the paterfamilias of the fish market. He was standing at the top of a flight of stairs.
"I want to invite you to have lunch with us," he said, touching my arm with one hand and gesturing below decks with the other. "We're eating downstairs. Are you hungry?"
I wasn't, but who cares? "Thank you, that sounds great. I'd love to join you."
In the low-ceilinged basement, darkness shrouds the farthest reaches and the walls are covered with shelves, boxes, tools, equipment, pails, stoves, refrigerators, and a riot of other dusty things. It looks like my old garage. But in the center of the room, gathered around a long wide well-lit table, sat half a dozen people talking, eating, and drinking. Dominic indicated an empty spot at the near end and showed me where to get my "tablecloth" -- a 3x4 sheet of paper. As he shuffled over to the stove, the woman next to my place pointed out a jumbo box of plastic forks. I approached the stove, fork in hand, and Dominic pulled a tray of roasted tuna belly from the oven. He spatulaed a browned slice onto my plate and filled the rest with spaghetti and tomato sauce from a giant pot on the stove.
"Who's the chef?" I asked.
"Me!"
"Dominic, thank you for inviting me. I would have brought a bottle of wine if I'd known..."
"No, no, don't worry about it. Enjoy yourself!"
I sat down, and the woman next to me introduced herself and her husband.
"How'd you guys get invited?
"We just live in the area and come here a lot. Dominic does this every [week on this day] at 1."
"So you're regulars."
"Every week when we can."
He filled our glasses from a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Paisano Red, and she handed me a light, crispy hand-rolled breadstick (from Trio French Bakery on Ninth). We spoke while he kept up with the table's main conversation. She's a translator-interpreter -- mostly corporate stuff, but her favorite recent jobs were a movie junket and a gig at Jack Welch's house -- and he paints large geometric abstractions.
The fish was perfectly done, a little overdone but chewy and substantial, impervious to an extra few minutes in the oven. Readers with recall will recall that's the fish Dominic was taking home the last time I'd seen him. Now I know why.
A steady dripping noise came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing the ice machine upstairs, where thin white chips fall ceaselessly into a hopper all day. Across the room, three massive cast iron stove burners stood against the wall, at the bottom of the steps leading up to the sidewalk. At the top of those stairs, a thin "H" of sunlight shone between the steel cellar doors.
"My mom would love this," I said to my neighbor. "She used to come here all the time."
"Ask Dominic for some to go."
When I was done, I did, explaining , "She's been coming here for ten years -- she told me about this place."
"Sure -- but let's do it now, before it's all gone. Get one of those cartons." He filled it with tuna and pasta, and then excused himself. "I have to go upstairs and work. But come back any week -- [today] from 1 to 1:30 you're always welcome. But don't come at 5, because there won't be anything left!"
The party was breaking up. The friendly couple to my left were also standing and getting ready to go. "Is your studio near here?" I asked.
"Yes, I've been there for 15 years. Next time you come, I'll take you there after lunch."
As I washed my plate with a fistful of steel wool, his wife was talking about sea salt with the last straggler, an olive-skinned middle-aged woman who said she likes Argentinean salt best. She brings it back with her whenever she goes home.
I chimed in to blather briefly about how great my visit to Argentina was, and the salt-importer lit up. Then the interpreter complimented her necklace, a chunky affair of silver and semi-precious stones.
"It is from Syria! These stones are amber."
Uh-oh, I thought. Then the couple said goodbye, till next week, and went upstairs, leaving me alone with the amber salt woman.
"And where are you from?"
"Los Angeles."
"Before that."
"I was born in New York."
"No, I mean your people, before that."
"My father is from Israel."
"From Israel!" Her features grew sharp as she leaned in and asked, "And what do you think of what they are doing to Lebanon?"
I paused. I paused some more. I've been discussing this issue with American friends all week, and they usually don't know much, or they invoke unreliable, easily dismissed sources like Alexander Cockburn. But I hadn't engaged on the topic with someone so vested on the other side. So we began. It turns out she's originally from Lebanon.
After a few adrenalin-flooded minutes of banging our heads together and barely even addressing facts -- though she did go far enough off-topic to assert that the Armenians may have deserved their genocide -- we agreed never to discuss these issues again at Dominic's lunch table.
"I don't even like to talk politics," she said.
"Then why did you ask what I thought?"
"I thought you were Italian!"
Wouldn't that be easy.
Upstairs, the Lebanese-Argentinean and I bade each other cordial goodbyes, and I bought some fish for my mom.
"Hey, come over here," he smiled, his head inclined.
I felt very "Who, me?" as I excused myself from the younger fishmonger to talk to the paterfamilias of the fish market. He was standing at the top of a flight of stairs.
"I want to invite you to have lunch with us," he said, touching my arm with one hand and gesturing below decks with the other. "We're eating downstairs. Are you hungry?"
I wasn't, but who cares? "Thank you, that sounds great. I'd love to join you."
In the low-ceilinged basement, darkness shrouds the farthest reaches and the walls are covered with shelves, boxes, tools, equipment, pails, stoves, refrigerators, and a riot of other dusty things. It looks like my old garage. But in the center of the room, gathered around a long wide well-lit table, sat half a dozen people talking, eating, and drinking. Dominic indicated an empty spot at the near end and showed me where to get my "tablecloth" -- a 3x4 sheet of paper. As he shuffled over to the stove, the woman next to my place pointed out a jumbo box of plastic forks. I approached the stove, fork in hand, and Dominic pulled a tray of roasted tuna belly from the oven. He spatulaed a browned slice onto my plate and filled the rest with spaghetti and tomato sauce from a giant pot on the stove.
"Who's the chef?" I asked.
"Me!"
"Dominic, thank you for inviting me. I would have brought a bottle of wine if I'd known..."
"No, no, don't worry about it. Enjoy yourself!"
I sat down, and the woman next to me introduced herself and her husband.
"How'd you guys get invited?
"We just live in the area and come here a lot. Dominic does this every [week on this day] at 1."
"So you're regulars."
"Every week when we can."
He filled our glasses from a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Paisano Red, and she handed me a light, crispy hand-rolled breadstick (from Trio French Bakery on Ninth). We spoke while he kept up with the table's main conversation. She's a translator-interpreter -- mostly corporate stuff, but her favorite recent jobs were a movie junket and a gig at Jack Welch's house -- and he paints large geometric abstractions.
The fish was perfectly done, a little overdone but chewy and substantial, impervious to an extra few minutes in the oven. Readers with recall will recall that's the fish Dominic was taking home the last time I'd seen him. Now I know why.
A steady dripping noise came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing the ice machine upstairs, where thin white chips fall ceaselessly into a hopper all day. Across the room, three massive cast iron stove burners stood against the wall, at the bottom of the steps leading up to the sidewalk. At the top of those stairs, a thin "H" of sunlight shone between the steel cellar doors.
"My mom would love this," I said to my neighbor. "She used to come here all the time."
"Ask Dominic for some to go."
When I was done, I did, explaining , "She's been coming here for ten years -- she told me about this place."
"Sure -- but let's do it now, before it's all gone. Get one of those cartons." He filled it with tuna and pasta, and then excused himself. "I have to go upstairs and work. But come back any week -- [today] from 1 to 1:30 you're always welcome. But don't come at 5, because there won't be anything left!"
The party was breaking up. The friendly couple to my left were also standing and getting ready to go. "Is your studio near here?" I asked.
"Yes, I've been there for 15 years. Next time you come, I'll take you there after lunch."
As I washed my plate with a fistful of steel wool, his wife was talking about sea salt with the last straggler, an olive-skinned middle-aged woman who said she likes Argentinean salt best. She brings it back with her whenever she goes home.
I chimed in to blather briefly about how great my visit to Argentina was, and the salt-importer lit up. Then the interpreter complimented her necklace, a chunky affair of silver and semi-precious stones.
"It is from Syria! These stones are amber."
Uh-oh, I thought. Then the couple said goodbye, till next week, and went upstairs, leaving me alone with the amber salt woman.
"And where are you from?"
"Los Angeles."
"Before that."
"I was born in New York."
"No, I mean your people, before that."
"My father is from Israel."
"From Israel!" Her features grew sharp as she leaned in and asked, "And what do you think of what they are doing to Lebanon?"
I paused. I paused some more. I've been discussing this issue with American friends all week, and they usually don't know much, or they invoke unreliable, easily dismissed sources like Alexander Cockburn. But I hadn't engaged on the topic with someone so vested on the other side. So we began. It turns out she's originally from Lebanon.
After a few adrenalin-flooded minutes of banging our heads together and barely even addressing facts -- though she did go far enough off-topic to assert that the Armenians may have deserved their genocide -- we agreed never to discuss these issues again at Dominic's lunch table.
"I don't even like to talk politics," she said.
"Then why did you ask what I thought?"
"I thought you were Italian!"
Wouldn't that be easy.
Upstairs, the Lebanese-Argentinean and I bade each other cordial goodbyes, and I bought some fish for my mom.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Killing the Oceans with Trash
"The amount of plastic in the oceans has risen sharply since the 1950s. Studies show a tenfold increase every decade in some places. Scientists expect the trend to continue, given the popularity of disposable plastic containers. The average American used 223 pounds of plastic in 2001. The plastics industry expects per-capita usage to increase to 326 pounds by the end of the decade."
That's from an L.A. Times article entitled "Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas," where you can read about the huge, huge masses of garbage and other detritus floating in the Pacific and killing all kinds of sea and air creatures. It's an environmental crisis comparable to that old chestnut the ozone layer, which no one talks about any more, now that we have global warming to keep us busy.
"The debris can spin for decades in one of a dozen or more gigantic gyres around the globe, only to be spat out and carried by currents to distant lands. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of the oceans. About 70% will eventually sink.
"An estimated 1 million seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic nets or other debris every year. About 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate."
That's from an L.A. Times article entitled "Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas," where you can read about the huge, huge masses of garbage and other detritus floating in the Pacific and killing all kinds of sea and air creatures. It's an environmental crisis comparable to that old chestnut the ozone layer, which no one talks about any more, now that we have global warming to keep us busy.
"The debris can spin for decades in one of a dozen or more gigantic gyres around the globe, only to be spat out and carried by currents to distant lands. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of the oceans. About 70% will eventually sink.
"An estimated 1 million seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic nets or other debris every year. About 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate."
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