The Poisonous Pen of Harpy Mandrake

It's Not That I'm Lazy

2007-09-12T20:49:00.000-04:00

And that's the reason why I haven't updated this in a zillion years. But things have been loco. In good ways, though!
To briefly sum up:

Man, the No Train Like Home project really started an avalanche of activity. Our second project as House of Malcontents took place in July, and was an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea party and art exhibit. Our third project, much to our surprise, will be at The Whitney at the end of the month. This will mark our first sanctioned installation, although by no means do we wish to become mere tamed lapdogs. More sneaky art hijinks TK.

I'm uhhm, almost finished writing the book I have been working on for almost 2 years now. I just have to get that done and over with asap. Not only am I sick of it, but the amount of time I spend working and/or stressing out over it is time I could be using to work on more freelance pieces and make some damn dough. Yeah, that's the one dim spot these days- I love everything I'm up to, and sort of hoping the cash catches up with all the work, but for now, I'm constantly broke. As in, I haven't even paid my rent this month. Only the fact that my mailbox is broken is saving me (as an excuse for not receiving checks in the mail in order to pay my rent).

Which is not to say I am completely without steady-ish employment. This spring, I jumped in as Managing Editor of the New York Tyrant, a literary tri-quarterly published by my friend Gian, who I met some drunken night at Siberia Bar (R.I.P.) a couple of years ago. We're currently working on the third issue and have some snazzy plans up our sleeves.

Another book is in the works, with a friend. I accompanied a photographer, Sheri Manson to the World Beard and Moustache Championships a couple of weeks ago in the U.K., which was completely ridiculous. I interviewed about 125 hairy men over 8 hours in Brighton, where the event was held. Brighton reminded me of a cleaned-up Coney Island, with a beach of rocks instead of sand and a twinkly pier of attractions, which we unfortunately were too fried to visit. 20 of Sheri's very excellent photos can be seen at Time's website. Eventually, a book will be available of those and the rest of the portraits she shot, with me adding minimal text about the contestants, and possibly some essay-ish type writing about the festivities. (There was a parade, for one thing.)

P.E.E.L.continues to chug along sans Nadxi, who moved up to Syracuse about 6 weeks ago to get her MFA. Our 5th in the series will be taking place this Thursday:

Everything else is cool. Sean is the best. That's it.

So, now it feels weird that I just wrote all that. Like I'm unsure why. If you know me, you know all this, or some of this. If you don't, then why am I telling you? I don't feel like it anymore. It's not only that I'm busy that I haven't been updating this. I think I'm done with this thing. Not that it hasn't been fun.

Hopeful yet broke,
Xoxo

Skeleton in Oil

2007-04-29T17:16:00.000-04:00

Stardust did this; it appeared in a show she had in The Catskills during the fall. This is the best illustration to accompany the story of wrasslin' Skeleton down the stairs of my building and over to her studio late last summer, a jaunt that forced me to tell a neighbor kid that I was good friends with a Science teacher in order to explain why I was carrying around a life-sized symbol of death.

Ah, summer.

I Love My Friends, I Hate Bello

2007-04-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

Often, when a group e-mail is sent out among certain of my friends, what begins as an innocuous proposal for dinner or drinks evolves into a whole other scenario, in which absurd, unrelated topics are brought up and completely take over the original message.

Recently, an invitation to a brunch transformed into a hate-fest on Bello, that horrible, stupid clown whose ridiculous image has been plastered all over New York since the early spring to herald the opening of Ringling Brothers circus. For years, I have loathed this clown. The ubiquitous ads are inescapable, hogging billboard spaces in the subway and on street corners, all featuring his hateful grinning face twisted into some irritating expression. It's the sort of ad that inspires crude anatomical additions in Sharpie by amateur subway graffiti artists. I say bring it on. Bello is an assault on my eyes and sensiblilities. I hate him like I hate the Hare Krishnas or Gary Null, a knee-jerk, reactionary, wholesale condemnation that's more primal than well-developed, but just as valid. Fortunately, I have friends that understand and agree.

Nadxi:
LADIES BRUNCH!! April 15, 1ish till whenever, my place. Bloody Marys, bagels, fishes, other stuffs, hoo-hoo.
xoxoxnx

Gretchen:
What should I bring?

Nadxi:
Ok, ladies, I’m getting some bagels and lox and making a quick veggie quiche. Can someone bring vodka and V8 or tomato juice (no Clamato, Michelle) cuz I’m brizoke.

Betsy:
Brandon’s mom will be in town and is also staying with us but I will definitely try to come by for a little while—before we head off to the Blue Man Group that is.

Me:
What? No Bellobration?!

Michelle:
I hate this guy.

I’m broke too. I can bring both juices: V8 and Orange. I think Gretchen’s the one that likes Clamato. Or is it just bearded clams she like? I don’t know, I get confused. (I know, ewh!)

Marisol:
I don’t know what about this string of e-mails prompted it, but gmail placed this ad in the sidebar:
NY Eyelid Surgery- Dr. Kwan
Preserving Asian Identity Through Cosmetic Surgery. 2 NYC Locations!

Anyway, I’ll bring both tomato juice AND V8, because people like options. I would bring vodka, but I’m no good at liquor stores. I just never know what I’m doing.

Me:
I hate that fuckin clown so much. Asshole.
The reason the eyelid surgery ad showed up is because the Blue Man Group is so boring you have to get medical help to keep your eyes open so you don’t fall asleep at the show.

Michelle:
You know someone stole that goddamn clown’s miniature bike last week? What a dick.

Me:
I know! And the jackass held a press conference to beg for it back. I hope they returned it, after installing tacks in the seat.

Kirsten:
I think that clown is the secret love child of Ronald McDonald and the “Snap into a Slim Jim!” guy.
Behold!

Me:
Don’t forget John Sex.

Gretchen:
How could I forget! Larry used to play his LP all the time.

Post script: Brunch was really fun.

What Sticks Out Most In My Memory Is the Bizarre

2007-04-25T00:19:00.000-04:00

So in trying to construct the past gap of a few weeks, that's what's coming up to the top, like the cream afloat mere milk.

About two weeks ago, me and Carol went to an taped interview for Inside Edition, a weirdo tabloid TV show. A production manager had read about No Train Like Home and requested an 'exclusive'. We were picked up in a Lincoln Town Car in Brooklyn and ferried to the mothership on 57th Street, where we were sat down in a room (set, complete with prop books placed carefully on glass-topped tables) and asked a bunch of questions by a producer, a very nice woman who reminded me of the older, bitchy girls who played lacrosse in my high school. She asked us things like:
"I mean, what...WHY, would you DO this? Decorating a subway?!"
in a very extravagant, hammy way. I guess it's to get the other person, the interviewee, to really react, but it completely unnerved me, and as I later found out, Carol.
The producer would also nod and beam in an extremely exaggerated way as we were answering questions, I suppose to encourage us. It reminded me of how a mother would act as a baby was taking its first steps.
She also mentioned how glad she was that me and Carol were not ugly. More than once. Oh, TV. Yeah.

Too bad I don't have the footage yet, because the aired piece, in its entirety, was so strange. I don't even have a working TV, so I went over to Kemba's to watch it. A three-to-five minute long jumble of shots, disconcerting jumps, and soundbites. The editors there really don't get paid enough. Really, it's half the show. I say three to five minutes because I honestly don't know how long it was. My only reaction after seeing it was that it was weird.
However, I do have one photo from the occasion: I saw this sign on the floor of the Inside Edition newsroom, and thought it was, you know, such a zeitgeistal thing and all. No. It's just silly.

Then, last weekend, I was on the phone with a FedEx lady. I had been waiting for a package for days, and since my doorbell is broken, I had affixed a note with my telephone number downstairs. FedEx ignored it, and I was told by the operator that they "don't make phone calls if there's no phone handy. Is there a phone handy?" Lady, are you kidding? Of course there's no phone in the lobby! My doorbell doesn't even work! This conversation was interrupted by the presence of two cops who climbed up my fire escape and scared the hell out of me:
Cop #1 (really just a strange man, since I couldn't tell he was a cop yet) appears
Me: What the hell?!
FedEx Lady: What?
Cop #1: Did you see anyone come up here?
Me (to Cop #1): No. What the hell?
Cop #2 appears
Me (to FedEx Lady): Sorry, not you. Two cops just showed up on my fire escape.
FedEx Lady: Oh!
Cop #1: You know your neighbors?
Me: Not really. Just to say 'hi' to.
Cop #2: You see anyone else come up here?
Me: No.

Apparently a neighbor had witnessed three men scaling the building in a similar manner, but I hadn't seen anything. The cops had to climb through my bedroom window and traipse through the apartment to get out. One of them remarked "Nice place" somewhere around the living room. The woman from FedEx probably never wishes to visit Brooklyn.

Which lead to me journeying through the edges of Queens last Friday to finally retrieve the package at FedEx. Which took forever. Highlights included walking along a expressway underpass for what seemed like years and screaming 'fuck off' a lot at truck drivers. This was about 10 minutes of a two-hour journey on foot, round trip:

However, all was not lost. Look at these hastily-sprayed words of wisdom I spied along the expressway:

Plus I got my package.

Last but not least, I accompanied Sean to his neighborhood grocery store last Thursday, which was nice in and of itself, because he is finally out of that circus of a hospital:

However, this would prove to be no ordinary grocery expedition. Intrigued by all manner of cactus and weird little apples, I was frozen-in-my-tracks, deer-in-headlights-style alarmed to see this presence in the freezer section:

Holy shit! I had stared at the packaging for echoing, endless seconds, my mind finally rejecting the last resort that it might be Guinea Pig brand broccoli florets or something. No, man. And $13.99! Well, I guess I am glad that guinea pig lives are not taken so lightly. I will note, though, that it is displayed in the most horrible manner. It would be one thing if it were beheaded and chopped up, and another if it still had the fur on, but a skinned, whole guinea pig is not something I can forget about very easily. Consequently, I have been obsessed with it for days, and yapped about it to anyone who will listen. Jesus. I used to be fun.

Report From No Train Like Home

2007-04-06T11:08:00.001-04:00

So, it took 4 of us approximately 40 minutes to decorate an entire car on the F train, including welcome mats, runners, curtains, covering all (32) of the ads, affixing the peel-off pillows to the seats and the vines to the overhead bars, and distributing magazines.

Coney Island at sunrise was a beautiful sight. It took us (the crack assembly team of me, Carol, Nadxi and Elisa, along with two reporters, a photographer, and Don, who was filming) a little while to meet up at Stillwell Avenue, and then all of us went to pee, anticipating the long ride, and already having taken one. On a side note, the only bathroom available was the men's room, which was frightening, but not as bad, Carol pointed out, as the ones that were at CBGB.

Most people seemed either bewildered, amused, or a blend of the two, aside from one exceptionally cranky woman who got on around Avenue U and was pretty interested in it until she was told it wasn't Ok'd by the MTA. All of a sudden, she got really crabby, informing us it was illegal to cover subway ads, and that we could be arrested. When the reporter for New York asked her for a quote, she told him she would 'sue him and his publication' if he were to use her name or image.

When the train was paused a few stops later, I thought we were finished. The photographer from the Post snapped a photograph of a woman cop as the doors opened on the elevated platform.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked.

"It's perfectly legal to take photos on the subway." He told her (which it is).

That was when the crabby woman informed the lady cop standing on the platform of what we were up to.

"They're covering up the ads!" she called self-righteously from her seat.

All of us, including the reporters, sat there, uncertain, as the cop peered at the woman. We hadn't done much yet, mostly just put up some ads.

"What?" the cop asked.

"I think it's an art project." Don said.

The cop pursed her lips and waved the train on.

"You tattled." Don said to the woman on the train, who turned away.

Pretty soon we finished up, as the train reached the Carroll Gardens area, and more and more people got on the car. Lots of cameras were whipped out. A couple of people thanked us. It was nice.

Metro ran a front-page piece on it this a.m., which can been seen here.

Photos TK. I have had two hours of sleep. Nap time.

No Train Like Home

2007-04-06T00:15:00.000-04:00

For Immediate Release

“No Train Like Home”
Opening: Friday, April 6, 2007; 7:30 a.m.
The F train

New York, NY April 3, 2007
“No Train Like Home” is a public, guerilla art installation/experiment designed to radically change the morning commute on the F train, if only for one day. Three Brooklyn-based artists are collaborating to redecorate the inside of a subway car, temporarily replicating a living room, and inviting all who step into the car to feel more at home on their way to work, school, or wherever they’re headed.

Upon entering the car, commuters will be greeted by welcome mats affixed to the floor in front of each door. Curtains will be hanging from the windows, houseplants attached to the overhead bars, and magazines will be distributed for reading pleasure.
The subway ads will temporarily be replaced by "family portraits" and images of book and record collections. Carpeting will be installed. The artists themselves will be relaxing in the car, wearing their pajamas and enjoying coffee.

The “No Train Like Home” project is inspired by the vast amount of time the average New Yorker spends on the subway, and how much of a second home the subway system can be for millions of commuters. It is as much of a commentary on the nature and necessity of public transportation as it is an exploration of how a fundamentally familiar yet markedly altered environment will be received, both by the MTA and its riders.

Since this is an unsanctioned, live art installation, it is a total mystery to even its creators how long it will remain intact, and how those who encounter it will react. For one morning, a to-be-determined car on the F line will be changed, however temporarily, and countless people—old, young, spanning several neighborhoods, income brackets, and races—will share the same living room, even if just for a few stops.

We'll see what happens.
Time for bed. Five hours of luxurious sleep, here I come.

Impossible!

2007-04-03T04:06:00.000-04:00

I am very tired, and trying to whittle down a 1,300 word profile/Q&A to a 800-odd word, cohesive piece for a deadline. Here is the information that Microsoft Word just gave me, as my sleepy finger slipped while clicking:
Word cannot insert a document into itself

Oh, why not? That would actually fix everything.

When Serving Coffee to a Skeleton, Do Not Be Distracted By the Light

2007-04-03T02:11:00.000-04:00

This Week Has Been Stressful Also, But Improving: Another Poem

2007-04-03T01:45:00.000-04:00

Bit-at

Bloody twice today,
for the most inane, innocuous reasons.
No barroom brawl;
I had to talk the possibility away,
I’m too old, too much of a lady.

Unusual shoes, literally dusted off
in a foolish, frivolous decision,
early spring.
Another pair of white fishnets ruined
with a bit-at heel.

A well-crafted crapshoot,
Either breezily simple
Or impossibly apart,
like the task of getting ahold
of a band-aid in a hospital.

Maybe this will end up being
as easy as something else-
something I haven’t even named yet.

This Week Has Sucked: A Poem

2007-03-25T16:06:00.000-04:00

Woodhull

Hospital days, they’ve stretched
and blended for me, too.
Wrapped around and warped inside
a continuous string of long,
fluorescent-lit hallways,
sudden shrieks of beeps and
strange proclamations from
unfamiliar people.

The Brooklyn streets hum along
with the fresh, uncertain
winds of early spring.
Some days a scarf is an option,
although there is still
one slick slab of ice
covering the length of
half a block of Broadway.
I have learned
to edge my way around it.

This has been one in the few weeks
I have known you, at all.
Full of consecutive days of
you, full of tubes, waiting,
Allotted hours divided up into
ten-minute slices,
individual minutes dotting by,
impervious to anything outside.
I have sometimes seen your
slow, small smile,
and kissed you good-bye
several times.

False balms are just that,
and after the muted panic
of Tuesday, an all-day drama
on an 8-hour stage,
It remains to be seen, what remains.

The 4th Anniversary of the War

2007-03-20T02:57:00.000-04:00

3:40 pm
Is not exactly the same as the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war, but at this point, it basically amounts to the same. I was late to the demonstration; I’d missed the march. At the corner of Fulton and Lafayette, there were mixed signals from a traffic cop. The light was red, the walk signal glowing pleasantly for pedestrians. I glanced both ways across the intersection, and hurried, and went. Across the street, a young mother and her two children started, then stayed in place. As I stepped onto the curb where they stood, the woman spoke.
“Why’d you tell us to cross then?” She said, addressing the traffic cop, in a quiet, impatient tone. I heard her. I rolled my eyes, quickly, in agreement, on my way down the avenue.
“Guess he’s a car-centric kinda guy.” She said, as I walked past them.
Resistance everywhere, in a way.

3:47 pm
As I arrived to the site, there wasn’t much to see, immediately. A hulking garbage truck obscured the entrance to the recruitment station. I wasn’t sure if the benefits outweighed the detractions. The flashing lights of a police van were visible, above the trucks. There was no way to see what was going on beyond them without crossing the street.
I crossed quickly, moving past the first window of the recruitment center. A tall, well-built, dark-skinned man in a navy blue sweater, his hair regulation-style neat, his moustache trim, peered out the window. I felt a small victory, even before I reached the site of the actual action.

3:49 pm
There were about 60 of us. I moved along the line until I located the people I knew, holding signs, passing out flyers, (A Child Predator Operates Here read one, printed on marigold yellow stock. It featured a drawing of a military recruiter looking menacingly down at two teenaged boys.) and bearing a banner. The group of people closest to the entrance of the recruitment center were flamboyantly dressed, some in almost costume, but most in a multi-layered, worn-in version of urban resistance: well-worn outer shells, hoods, often. Bags, stuffed visibly with flyers, and bottles of water. Sensible shoes, sometimes sunglasses. Dressed for endurance and warmth, Skirts, perhaps over pants.
They turned out to be the SDS, and another group, some queer anarchists.

4:23 pm
A traffic cop on Bond Street waved broadly out the window, but not exactly exuberantly, as many passersby before had. Not like the busload of elementary schoolers, who sensing excitement without comprehending, had pounded their tiny fists on the windows, kneeling in their seats and shouting against the glass, and clapping. The cop’s enthusiasm unnerved me and the people immediately beside me.

5:22 pm
I noticed a child, about 12 years old, walking along the lip of the steps at Union Square, close to where we straggled and gathered. He balanced a cup of coffee in his hand, on top of a large folder. He was one of those kids that’s so overloaded with schoolbooks you think they might fall down if a stiff enough wind hits them. Coffee. I thought. He’s pretty young for coffee.

5:33 pm
Not many people were there yet, but the crop of cops was at the ready. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra showed up, eventually. I hopped across the street for coffee at the Mud Truck.

5:45 pm
A cell phone rang, a high, tinny noise.
“Are you alone?” I heard a voice ask. I turned in surprise. It was the kid with the coffee. He hung up, quickly after, and bent down over his ruled notebook.
LIBERALS GO HOME, I watched him scrawl lengthwise across the paper, against the lines.
“Oh, man.” I said out loud, and then turned to the people I was standing closest to.
“Check out this kid. Look what he’s written down.”
They looked. “He’s about twelve.” I volunteered.
There was silence for a moment.
“He’s probably in one of those schools, those pre-military schools.” Said one of the guys from the SDS.
I wasn’t so sure.
The kid seemed to notice. Of course, he’d been conscious of us the whole time.
“Yeah, real cute, kid.” I said to him. He seemed not to pay any attention, and gathered his books and his coffee.
“I’m not a liberal,” the girl next to me mock-huffed. “I’m a radical.”
A minute or so later, I scanned the crowd assembling and assembled at the steps of the park. At the far end, the kid caught my eye and grinned at me.
He wasn’t a JROTC kid. No way. He was looking for an adventure, and found it at Union Square, resisting the resistance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bought that coffee to galvanize himself, to feel grown up.

5:55
“Wow, you look straight!” said a girl to me. I turned. “I saw you from the back and I thought, ‘How does it feel to be in a demo?’” She literally looked me up and down. “Oh, but there you go”, she said, pointing at my shoes. I had no idea how to reply, for a second. Or rather, I had a million ideas how to reply. “Yeah, I fly under the radar.” I told her.

6:09 pm
I wandered over to the band, off in a corner of the park, pulling their instruments out of cases and bags. They weren’t sure when they were going to start. If they walked around, it could be construed as a parade, which no one had a permit for.

6:15 pm
The orchestra played. People gathered. A cop walked past me. I gave out flyers. People stopped, watched, then moved on. A good-sized crowd stayed.

6:22 pm
A man in his 70s was bringing up his anti-Iraq-withdrawal opinions in a confrontational, hardened voice.
He should really make a spoken word album. I thought, But not of this garbage.
He unflinchingly flung out O’Reilly factor bits, mixture, I think, of being a veteran and gluing himself to talk radio each moring and the television each night. He attempted to get one us, any of us, to debate him. I watched him fire questions to people I knew. One of them slid his foot in the snow as he diagreed, focusing on that instead.

Another inched away. “It’s one of those things that isn’t even worth getting into.” She noted, smoking a cigarette.

The man did not relent. The girl that told me I looked straight came over and shouted at him.

6:45 pm
Rain, snowish, began to come down. I began to think about heading home, to go get ready for my friend Carol's art show. Everyone I knew there was also going. We rolled up the banner, slight flakes of snow fell onto the painted canvas. I put flyers back in someone's backpack. About 80 people still stood around the steps. I got on the train, and it wasn't even very crowded.

Comin' Up: A Short Night of Words

2007-03-11T04:03:00.000-04:00

I Hate Machines and I Can't Stop Smoking. Yet.

2007-03-07T12:05:00.000-05:00

So, my computer had a complete meltdown about 10 days ago. At this point it is old news, but I simply could not face facts for a while there. For the first couple of days, I was in complete denial, even laughing when I considered the implications of lost writing, lost photographs, and skewed deadline.

It's a very long, very involved, and boring story if I go into all the details, so I won't. The point is that one day all was fine, and the next it wasn't. Then I had to bring it to a repair shop, and when I got it back 4 or 5 days later everything was gone. This isn't even the first time something like this has happened, as evidenced by the conversation I had with my publisher, after I had to call and tell him Chapter 7 was going to be late:

Me: Yeah, so everything's gone. Completely erased.
Him: Again?
Me: No, see, you're thinking of the time someone broke into my apartment and stole my computer. This is different.
Him: Oh, right.
Me: Yeah.

I find it funny that directly after getting more work done on a tattoo of a typewriter, my fucking computer revolts and screws me but good. I am NEVER getting a tattoo of a laptop, ever.

The very day I got my stupid empty computer back from the shop, I had attended a focus group for smoking. Or, rather, I got paid $75 to show up, but I didn't have to actually take part, which is by far the best sort of focus group, and happens a lot more often than me having to do the focus groups. I mean, I told them (a lot) I don't smoke menthols, but either they didn't understand, or they didn't care. So I got to the office, filled out some paperwork, ate a free cookie, and 15 or so minutes later, was given an envelope with cash in it and told I could split. In that 15 or so minutes, though, I had developed a headache, which almost never happens. If it does, it means I am getting sick. And I didn't even feel like smoking at that point. Not that the focus group would have been me sitting around smoking menthols, but I didn't even really want to sit around talking about smoking, either. So I went home and got sick for a couple of days.

And then, with considerable aplomb, bounced right back. Despite the fact that aside from that initial headache day, I continued to smoke just like I always do, right throughout an abundance of snot issuing forth from wherever snot comes from, clear through the next two days of fitful sleeping, even while I was drinking my 8th or 9th glass of EmergenC. (Not with Theraflu, though. That's gross.) My theory is that far from it being beneficial to stop smoking while sick, that would just fool my body into thinking it's entering into something it's really not, i.e. an immediate future of healthy lungs. I shouldn't give my body the false, misleadingly easy way out. It needs to learn how to tough through the conditions I impose on it. It's got no choice.

That being said, I am hereby making the very bold statement that I think I'm going to quit soon. For real. I mean, not while I'm working on this book, because when I get into my self-imposed writing exile, I desire nothing more than a vast well of coffee that is perpetually hot and an endless cigarette that forever burns loyally next to me. But soon. I have never committed this promise in writing. Oh, wait, yes I have. But I was 16, and so that doesn't count. Who quits smoking at 16, anyway? Only squares.

Some People Get Ready To Go To Work. I Get Un-ready.

2007-02-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

After establishing how my work habits affect my sanity, sleep patterns, and ability to socialize, I've now begun to detect a correlation in the toll they take on my appearance. In short, I basically look ugly when I'm approaching a deadline.

There was a time, not so long ago, that I held jobs that required me to face the world, and every day I would dutifully groom myself in varying degrees of fanciness for the day (or evening) ahead. No more! There are weeks when I work on projects and whatnot for part of the day and then go out, but by now I am beyond fooling myself into thinking I can treat this book like a 9-5, or even 12-8, and go out each night after working on a portion of it. No. I need isolation for days on end. I need endless cups of coffee at insane times of the day and night. I need terrifying, jagged sleeping patterns that make sense to no one in the world. I need to live like a lunatic for a little while. And what lunatic has the time or inclination to care about what they look like?

This means for about a week each month, I end up resembling a cross between a mental patient, a forgotten casualty of MTV's 120 Minutes, and a frazzled housewife.

Example: Today I am wearing black stretch leggings, some weirdo sundress that reminds me somehow of 10,000 Maniacs, and a ratty black cardigan. For some reason, the more comfortable I feel, the more I look just like I did in 9th grade. Too bad I no longer own a pair of black Chuck Taylor high-tops to further draw together this insouciant, carefree (really) look. Then I could really nail 1990. I suppose it's moot point, though, when I haven't even gone near a pair of shoes today.

Inevitably and mysteriously, I always develop exactly one stress zit when I am at work like this. Definitely and reliably, my hair gets twisted up in a messy rat's nest on top of my head, not to be reckoned with for days. I end up clipping my nails short so I can type easily. Not like I usually have Staten-Island-Real-Estate-Lady claws, but it's just easier.

Over the next couple of days, pajamas (a full-on pair of which I will refuse to wear, lest I somehow trick myself into thinking I will get a satisfying night of sleep) will meld and blend with actual clothing, so I may end up wearing a permutation of my current get-up to bed, and then tomorrow, refresh, say, the leggings with a paint-splattered Joy Division shirt, which will then end up being worn to bed the following evening.

I guess it doesn't matter when I can't really leave the house anyhow. Plus it's fun to re-groom and look like myself again at the end of it all. Some people pay $$ to go to some spa and emerge with a nimbus of dewy glow around their prettified selves. All I do is let myself look like shit for a while and then get back with the program, so I feel as if I have made a great effort, but in reality just look human once more.

This concludes maybe the most shallow thing I've written in a while.
Xoxo

All My Problems: Solved!

2007-02-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

OMG! OMG! I won, I won!

I can't believe this shit still goes on.

POWERBALL LOTTO. BV
28 TANFIELD ROAD, CROYDON.LONDON United Kingdom.
POWERBALL LOTTO -wheel E-game 2007,
Date: 22nd Febuary 2007
Ref Nr: PBL/CN/6654/CP
Dear Consolation Prize Winner,

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For due processing of your winning claim, please contact the DPU Information Officer Mr.Luisa Adams who has been assigned to assist you. You are to contact him with the following details for the release of your winnings.

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Happy VD

2007-02-14T16:18:00.000-05:00

God I love this picture. I need to get me a hat like that.

Flames Need Stars Like a Typewriter Needs Flames

2007-02-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I said I would never get a tattoo. Even back when I was busy getting things pierced. Then I said I would never get any tattoos on my arms. Then I said, Ok, just one. Then it grew. Now it's done.

Fin

a.m./p.m.

2007-02-12T20:45:00.000-05:00

a.m./p.m.

Saturday night, undecided:

Go home with derision,
faint deep on a leopard-print couch
and draw streaky breaths until
a pale dawn blooms,

or else go right back out on the town,
emerge, eventually, from
a fully-formed puppet.
New dress, black and red.

These are busy times;
peopled with characters
diametric. Nights, now,
are shorter, more defined.

There is a corner nearby
that collects refuse,
several empty coffee cups
loll in the wind,
but never fully stray.

Here’s what ends up mattering:
what can be believed in morning.

The Life of Leisure (Comparatively Speaking)

2007-02-08T11:33:00.000-05:00

Holy shit, after the marathon writing binge of last week, I feel as free as a little birdie these days. Yes, sure, I have a few loose reasearch ends to wrap up, but I've been going out again, and socializing, and most surprising of all, I have been going to bed at what I realize most people consider is a reasonable hour, but to me feels alien. Asleep by 12:30? Seriously, what the hell? It's been years since I've been in bed that early. Plus that means I've been getting up before 10 am most days, which is even stranger.

Part of the reason why I'm in bed early these days is because it's freezing fucking cold, and the warmest place in my apartment is in bed, so if I'm home at night, I'm there.

Last night, so loathe to get out from under the blankets, but wanting entertainment and NOT wanting to even read, because it would mean my arms would have to be outside the covers, I messed around with my cellphone, which is a very basic and boring model. Not the kind of phone that can keep one entertained for very long. After extended listening sessions of all the different tones, I now have an obnoxious, synthesized drum solo as my ring. Then I ended up playing the stupid games on my cellphone (all two of them),* but I suck at video games, so after about 15 minutes I just went to sleep.

Of course, if I know what's good for me, I'll get going on Chapter #7. Like, this week. But that remains to be seen.

For the past few days I've been all over town, hanging out with friends, and not feeling the long claw of this book pulling me back home. I met up with my friend Carol for drinks in the neighborhood the other night, where we conspired and planned for a future art project which is going to be Very Exciting (and Very Public).
I got a chance to catch up with Ari, my old roommate in the L.E.S., and his wife Jen and their kids, and the rest of the fun activist Mom set over the weekend. Michelle came over for tea and chat the other day. I had several drinks with Elisa, Mike, and less thrillingly, ex-boyfriend Rob on Saturday.

Before me and Elisa headed over to the bar to meet them, I whined to her:
Man, what is this? I have to hang out with him all the time now that Mike's back in town. Can I tell him I'm sick of seeing him?
Elisa would not allow this.
I settled on a sardonic, sing-songy "Hellllooo again!" when we got to the bar.

Other stuff.

I know this is not very exciting for those who work regular hours and leave their homes each and every day, but after a week of solitary writing confinement, this is the relative equivalent of an island vacation. Oh, except it's been on average, about 8 degrees every day.

Today I'm going to meet with this photographer I met last Friday at a bar in the East Village. I was headed to pee when he approached me and gave me his card. I was dubious, half-drunk, startled, and therefore snippy, but I checked out his website the other day and he does really nice work. I have no complaints with people wanting to take pictures of me. As long as they're good. And I am not asked to appear as our friend Snowball Fight below.

*When I put '"snowball fight" game T-mobile' into Google Image Search, this is one of the pictures that came up:

Those are some, uh, snowballs.

But There's Nothing Wrong With It If I like It, Right?

2007-02-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

Recently there was a piece in the New York Times about a rare disorder that causes those who have it to substitute certain words for others in a way that makes zero sense. For instance, a person might claim that their favorite dinner is spaghetti and paper towels, or they'll go to the salon to get their Luxemborg cut.

In a weird way it made a sort of free-association-bebop-jazz sense, like the person had categorized ideas and thoughts in tactile categories instead of verbal-logic ones, but they were aligned. I tried to Google it, but no immediate dice, and then I just got so antsy I gave up on it. Probably because I feel like I have it right now- a few minutes ago, reading the word "Sausalito", it made me want to eat a Devil Dog.

It's probably been the scant, fleeting amounts of sleep I have gotten for the past 4-5 days (on the couch, so I don't get too comfortable) in addition to my current estimate of 16 or so cups of coffee I've downed. I have seen every sunrise since the weekend. Not seen them like I used to, where I'd be coming home and still up and then go to bed soon thereafter. No, like seeing the full cold bloom of these sparse winter sunrises, and then soon after, semi-delerium sets in, so I drink another cup of coffee as the sun becomes warmer and more golden. Of course, I only really witness this through the windows in my apartment, because- here's the most insane part- I've barely left since coming home early Saturday morning.

Yes, it's that time of the month again. I have a new chapter due tonight, plus I had a ton to add to the last one. I realize how crazy this is. I know very well I have to get better work habits so I don't do this to myself all the time, but I never seem to do it. I don't really think I can help it that when faced with an enormous amount of writing, I work best from the hours of 3 am-10 am. If that means I end up sleeping from noon until 8 pm, and then the next day from 2 pm to 6 pm, what can I really do about it? That also means I feel cracked out much of the time, have temporarily shunned all human contact (excepting phone calls and e-mails) and look like hell (seriously, I am not only wearing a striped sweater, but it is paired with an UN-matching pair of striped leggings. And I have never embraced sneakers as much as I have in the past week). But you know, that's just The Way It is right now. Somehow, that's how I get things done.

And in some fucked up way, I even sort of enjoy it. I am going to feel like a goddamn champ tonight (tomorrow morning?) when I finally finish this shit. And then I am going to sleep for a long time, in my bed. And then re-join the rest of the humans.

And maybe, in a few days, I'll look back on this post, and it will look like "shidsovhhdv. oifgrwf, eofh, eofihefowu!"
You never know.

Time for coffee!

Quiz Time!

2007-01-31T05:07:00.000-05:00

This is awesome.

Scrambling to finish the next chapter in the ever-growing albatross (kidding! kind of) that is this book by Thursday, I've been immersed in New York-circa-1975 research. You know, murder rates (easy to track down) figures on arson (not so much), all those snazzy details that are sure to make people marvel at my dedication and ability to track down depressing facts once this thing is actually published. Anyway, trying to exactify the oft-cited 13,000 fires in the South Bronx statistic, I came across this. Sharpen your #2 pencils, kids, it's time for a hip-hop quiz.

HIPHOPNONSTOPHIPHOPNONSTOPHIPHOPNONSTOPHIPHOP
NONSTOPHIPHOPNONSTOPHIPHOPNONSTOPHIPHOPNONSTOP
A THREAD IN THE FABRIC OF AMERICA A THREAD IN THE FABRIC OF AMERICA A THREAD IN THE FABRIC OF AME
BRIDGING CULTURAL GAPS BRIDGING CULTURAL GAPS BRIDGING CULTURAL GAPS BRIDGING CULTURAL GAPS BRIDG
ADOLESCENTS FAMILYS ORGANIZATIONS COMMUNITIES CORPORATIONS WORLD ADOLESCENTS FAMILYS ORGANIZATION

What is Rap Music?
1. A product.
2. Real life stories.
3. Hip Hop music.
4. Messages that help us.

What is Hip Hop?
1. Rap music.
2. A product.
3. Life.
4. God.

Where is the home of Hip Hop?
1. Hot 93.7 (CT)
2. Hot 97.1 (NY)
3. The Bronx, New York.
4. MTV.

What are the four basic elements of Hip Hop?
1. Violence/Cussing/40 Oz bottles of Beer/Marijuana.
2. Graffiti/Breakdancing/Djing/Mcing.
3. Thongs/Ice/Hennessy/Exstacy.
4. Gang signs/Ice Grill/Tattoos/Piece.

Who represents Hip Hop to mainstream America?
1. Rapper’s in Video’s (on television).
2. Rapper’s on the Radio.
3. MC’s dealing with life in the deepest parts of the inner-city.
4. Real life bullies who use the image of “Hip-Hop” to achieve individual goals.

What is a rapper?
1. What’s on the outside.
2. What’s on the inside.
3. A billboard.
4. 1 and 2.

What is an Emcee?
1. MC (Master of the Ceremony).
2. What’s on the inside.
3. A rapper.
4. 1 and 3.

Which of the following groups most represents Hip Hop?
1. Ja Rule/Eminem/Ashanti/Floetry.
2. Jay Z/Ja Rule/50 Cent/Lil Kim.
3. Nas/Foxy Brown/Talib Kweli/Justin Timberlake.
4. KRS1/Eminem/Talib Kweli/The Roots

What is most responsible for the existence of Hip Hop?
1. The music industry.
2. African-American culture and history.
3. Slavery and oppression.
4. The drug game.

What answer below is most in line with the spirit of Hip Hop?
1. The Devil/Evil
2. Life/God
3. Having a good time
4. Boasting and Bragging

If an emcee is like Superman what, then, what would be most like Kryptonite?
1. Skills
2. Truth
3. Getting’ paid
4. Love

What is Hip Hop’s most important message?
1. I am important.
2. We are all important.
3. I am the most important.
4. 2 and 3.

The original can be seen here.

It's part of a handout that was made for a youth conference, sponsored by some Mental Health Board in Connecticut. Alright. Holla, Connecticut!

*Answer Key*

If you answered mostly...

1s You are Eric B
2s You are Rakim
3s You are Missy Elliot
4s You are Matisyahu

Yay

2007-01-10T17:32:00.000-05:00

I Am Now 31

2007-01-05T03:16:00.001-05:00

On this day in 1982:

So I got suckered into doing something for my birthday. I had the idea to do nothing this year. I mean NOTHING. Like, sit at home and watch movies, and sort of revel in the fact that I no longer need booze and fanfare to herald another year of existence. This is akin to the thought I have each year of informing my family I just can't make it the whole hour commute from Brooklyn to celebrate Christmas, and instead volunteer at a soup kitchen. Which, Ok, I never went through with, but I did move to Ireland one year in early December, strictly on my own schedule, and mindful of the added benefit of avoiding the holidays. I was beat that year in possessing the willfully ignorant anti-Christmas stance, however, by my new roommate in Dublin and his girlfriend, who went to Tunisia specifically because it is a country in which Christmas is not observed. No wonder we were roommates.

It's fussy enough, having a birthday directly after all the holiday hoopla, which I loathe. To me, it just prolongs the whole idiotic ubiquity of the season. Plus, I'm usually too tired of all the tinsel and activity to want to make plans. But then the questions started getting raised, and no one seemed quite able to believe me when I said I didn't feel like doing anything. Dinner was mentioned repeatedly. Seperate dinners were proposed. A night out at a bar. Or not. I briefly considered sending out an e-mail announcing that this year, I would be observing my birthday in February.

On New Year's Eve I was hanging out with Hafeez, whose birthday is a week before mine, and who I had a joint party with a few years ago. He asked me what I was doing for my birthday and I gave my evasive run-around explanation.
"Well", he said, "Me and my friend Julia are both having a birthday party on Friday at The Delancey. So if you want to jump in on it, you can."

"Friday? that's the 5th. That's my birthday...I don't know, though. Maybe."

And still I clung to the image of myself curled up on the couch in ratty clothing, smoking cigarettes and watching some noir film. You know, just being 31.

But then I thought: fuck it.
I didn't return my movies to Netflix all week, thrown off by New Year's Day, the January 2nd moratorium on mail in honor of the late Gerald Ford, and then just forgetting. So, best case scenario, I'd be watching "Meet John Doe" again. Also, my neighbors are in the habit of blasting shitty music every weekend night, so I would be watching "Meet John Doe" in my ratty clothing and then have to be subjected to blaring reggaeton, complete with the sirens and explosions that inevitably accompany the Friday night radio broadcasts. Worse than that is when they don't turn the radio down for the ads, so I have to hear BLAZIN' HOT ON YOUR FM DIAL WHERE YOU CALLIN' FROM? CALL THIS NUMBER FOR HOT REQUESTS MEET HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA THIS MUSIC IS HOT and that's not how I want to spend my birthday.

So I decided I'd tailgate on The Delancey plans this afternoon, while in the shower (birthplace of several decisions and ideas). I sent out the last-minute message to my poor beleaguered friends, who have observed my wishy-washiness on the matter for the past couple of weeks, and very nicely, might I add.

I expect by this time tomorrow, I will be drunkenly dancing, finding several things hilarious, and secure in the knowledge that next year, my birthday will be taking place either not at all, or sometime in late winter.

Night of the Living Ex-Boyfriends

2007-01-03T16:56:00.000-05:00

Due to unavoidable circumstances, I was made to spend part of New Year's Eve with an ex-boyfriend. My good friend Mike is also friends with him, so he showed up. Except for a couple of mercifully brief run-ins, I have not seen Rob over two years. I was nice to him, perhaps because of the vintage of our breakup. He still sucks, though. I wonder if his girlfriend caught on. Me and him obviously aren't pals, and yet it must have been apparent that we know each other very well. She didn't seem so bad. She told me I was pretty.

I'm not one of those people who thinks it's necessary to be friends with people after you've broken up with them. I mean, there are real reasons why the breakup came to be. They usually don't involve a burning desire to spend time together. In most cases, it's a reason (or reasons) that make you want to put as much distance as possible between you and the other party. I am friends with exactly one ex-boyfriend, and on friendly enough e-mail terms with another, but that's probably only because he was my first boyfriend ever.

So imagine my surprise when I sent out a bulletin via Myspace about the first installment of the reading series, and received this in reply:

From: Charles
Date: Jan 3 2007 12:10 AM

awesome.
I'm glad you're getting the first one done. It's
always the hardest.
I'm finally mailing in my audition dvd to nbc, telling
them to fire carson daily and hire me.
I'm bombing them with one dvd a day for 16 days.
I know they're not going to put me on tv... but
hopefully they, at least, take that fuck off the air.
---------------------------------------------

I'm sure he never thought my reaction upon seeing he'd sent me a message would be: 'What does this douchebag want?' but yet it was. First of all, this is coming from someone who, instead of having a proper 'Ok, it's over' talk, instead chose to change his status to 'single' on Myspace after a weird meltdown-like conversation about 6 weeks ago. True, I deleted his number from my phone immediately after that conversation, but I am of the school that when things are over, you wrap them up neatly and definitively. I have no respect for the sly cyberspace switch-up.

Second of all, Carson Daily (sic)? Jesus. Come on. Your current aspiration is to replace that guy? Thanks for making me wonder what the fuck I ever saw in you.

So I responded:

I think you have this need to have everyone like
you. I can't see why else you would write this to me.
Either that or you don't see how certain of your
actions were ridiculously fucked up.

Fortunately, I don't have the same need. We're not
friends. So leave me alone.
-----------------------------------------------

And then I deleted his ass. I am sure that makes me a bitch. I also do not care.
Happy New Year!

Hmm, 'Punk' Religion

2006-12-22T02:10:00.000-05:00

So, amidst the current flurry of media all aswirl around Jay Bakker, I interviewed him the other night for a Brooklyn magazine. We live fairly close to each other, so it was a pretty fuss-free deal. We ended up meeting in a bar before whatever going on that night began to happen, so it was pretty quiet.

I'm not a religious person. And yeah, I have had the chance to decide. I went to good ol' Catholic school from Kindergarten through 5th grade, and had to go to church every damn Sunday from ages 0-16. Although, really the last 2 years I had been largely ditching it, waving goodbye to my Dad, who I could not believe actually thought I was going. Instead, I would meet some of my similarly delinquent friends and we'd go have an afternoon jaunt.

My 16th birthday happened to fall on a Sunday. I was going through some drama or other, and when my Dad suggested I quit moping around my room and go to church, I very dramatically declared that not only would I be not going to church that day, I would not be going to church EVER. Again.

And that was that.

When I first heard about Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye, literally born on-air into the world of P.T.L. and partially raised at a wonderland-like Christian retreat, who then turned into a drinkin' and druggin' Bad Kid when the collapse of P.T.L. occurred, but then got straight and began to minister to the skater and punk matinee set, and who recently began a branch of his church in Brooklyn, run out of a bar despite the fact that he's now sober, I didn't really know what to make of it. All cynicism and personal beliefs about religion aside, it is an interesting story. So when I was asked to head on over to Pete's Candy Store to see the young Bakker in action, I said sure.

The place was packed, due largely to the the fact that the first installment of a documentary about Bakker had premiered a few days before on the Sundance channel. I spoke to a bunch of attendees and the bartenders, but had to make a seperate interview time to actually speak to Jay a few days later.

You know what? The guy's really nice. Regardless of what I feel about churchy topics, he was a good interview subject, and he's a unique story on a lot of levels. And good on him for openly supporting homosexuality and reproductive rights within his church. I think it'll give him more shit than become a shining example for other churches to follow, but still. I mean, I don't want to go to church, but I can understand that others do, and if you're gay and want to go to church, you're pretty much screwed. So now they have a place to go, and can even enjoy a cocktail at the same time.

As I did, at lightning speed, just prior to the interview: despite his sobriety, Bakker actually enjoys spending time in bars, and since, you know, a bunch of people were drinking around him at the service on Sunday, I figured what the hell and ordered a beer before he got there. As far as professionality is concerned, I'm not sure where that lies, to be honest. I know a lot of people would be all exacting about it, but sometimes I think it's part of the story. When I wrote about the Rumblers and their car show at the end of the the summer, and was going to the shows and the pre-party, and dudes were standing on top of upright basses onstage, and other dudes were slamming shots, and the guys I'd interviewed asked me to meet them at a bar in Queens to conduct it, I think it's Ok that I took part in the festivities. Plus, I mean, hell- Hunter Thompson.

So I had my beer, I was looking over my notes, waiting for Jay to get there, and then I got a phone call from my friend Elisa, who guilted me about it.
Her: You're drinking a beer? Even though he's sober?
Me: Yeah. Why- what? He holds his church in a bar!
Her: Yeah, but that's different. He knows he's going to be in that situation.
Me: Really? Is this evil?
Her: Sort of. Just chug it.
Me: Chug it?
I eyed the nearly-full pint in anticipation. I don't usually pound beers on a regular basis.
Her: Or get a soda instead.
I don't usually pound beers, but I never return them to the bar after 3 sips.
Me: I think I'll do both.

Cases like this, to have to write about something political (which religion is), and seperate yourself from how you feel about it, pro or anti, is still not something I'm completely used to. And then there's the whole "punk preacher" bit. Thanks, but after reading every single piece written by all these squares that unfailingly mention that he's all tatted up, I think I will refrain from including that in my story. I understand that it's very exciting to outlets like CNN and The Washington Post to immediately draw attention to the fact that he's got a lot of tattoos, but it's not exactly news any longer. And man, that whah-oh-oh pop-punk chorus strewn throughout the show on Sundance makes me nuts. I only hope Jay Bakker feels the same.

In My Defense, I Have Only Had 3 Hours of Sleep

2006-12-20T02:44:00.000-05:00

But still, what the hell is going on with me when I see something like this wallpaper for cellphones, and I actually mumble to myself that "I kind of want that"?
I mean, really.

The other recent early-hours lapse was when I got home the other night, began dancing in my room and spilled-seriously-about 2 drops of beer directly onto my laptop. It immediately made the music playing sound like a weird, gurgling string of game-show buzzers. My remedy was to shake the hell out of it and leave it upside down overnight, which actually worked. The only casualty appears to have been the tab button. Which I do miss.

Time for bed. I don't need sleep deprivation turning me into some dancing nutjob who spends money on ridiculous cellphone wallpaper and destroys machines. Because that's just not me.

I Just Ate Cookies!

2006-12-18T03:04:00.000-05:00

And they were delicious!

How I love dumb holiday optimism, and convincedness,
and cookies.

!!

Vacation, Part 1

2006-11-30T22:13:00.000-05:00

I always knew I would love Las Vegas, and I did. Maybe enough to move there.

Of course I found it frightening in the way lots of people do: the non-stop flashing of neon, the continuous, disconcerting electronic beeping of slot machines and video poker, the omnipresence of those and other machines in not only casinos, but almost every single bar and convenience store, the pervasion of strip clubs, 24-hour bars, and the way that money means something different there- more something to be tossed around than spent with thought.
But that doesn't mean I stayed away from all of that. And it doesn't mean I didn't like it for exactly those reasons.

It's like a parallel universe. It's a city that's almost outside the rest of the country- New York is, too, but in very different ways. It has its own laws, and economy, and the entire culture is steeped in sleaze. All I could think of was how much I could write about it if I lived there for a few months. More than that would drive me up a tree, but if I had a few ideas to work on, places interested in running them, and, uh, a driver's license, I could make this work. Also, I absolutely suck at gambling, so I have no interest in it. That would help, living out there.

There was a lot more to it than this half an idea of maybe going there when this book is done, but if I'm ever going to get this book done, I have to make tomorrow's deadline.

Oh yeah, plus me and the boy split up a couple of weeks ago. It's a long story. I sincerely doubt I will ever date someone 6 years younger than me again.

Also, California was fun too.

Back to work.

Vegas, For Real This Time, and Also L.A.

2006-11-22T21:45:00.000-05:00

So it's settled.

I came close, so close, to going up to Boston the day after Thanksgiving for a friend of a friend's birthday extravaganza with a bunch of bands and a cheap trip up there- just contributing to gas and tolls.

However, Liz, who I haven't seen since the summer, since she lives in L.A., had made plans to be in Vegas for the holiday. Then at a show last week in the neighborhood, I ran into a couple of other people I knew who were meeting her there. As previously noted, I have wanted to go to Las Vegas since I was about 12 years old. The glitz! The pseudo-glamour! The sleaze! No clocks! Free drinks!

So I'm going Friday morning. Then on Sunday, me and Liz will drive to L.A., a journey that in and of itself should prove hilarious, if our previous road trip from New York to Philadelphia a couple of years ago is any indication. We're going to make a special detour to drive for the last bit of Route 66, from San Bernardino to L.A.

After a couple of days in California, I'll fly back to New York on Tuesday.

I love the last-minute trip, the semi-fanciness and fake jet-settedness of expedia.com.

Of course, this means I have plenty of homework to do between now and then for this chapter, and will be using plane time for writing and editing. So I am at the local sit-around-for-one-coffee-and-use-a-laptop-for-hours joint. The same place, as a matter of fact, that will be host to me and Nadxi's new non-boring reading series.

Although we're both writers, we usually avoid readings like one would a rabid animal. But we kept thinking we could make an interesting series, if we had the right time and place. It was an idea we'd been kicking around for a while, and I finally got the call out for submissions, which we looked over last night to put in piles of 'maybe', 'yes', and 'no'. The woman who runs the space really liked the idea when I explained it to her, and said Ok to having it be a regular, monthly thing.

The thing about this series, is that unlike open mikes, which have zero quality control and frequently result in drivel, we're curating it, and unlike most readings, which clatter on for way too long, and are usually really indulgent, we're keeping it short and to the point. P.E.E.L., as we're calling it, for the content, will begin and end within an hour, with one person reading a few (NOT 10 or 12) poems, another reading an essay, another coming up with an excerpt of something longer they're working on, and the last reading a letter they've written.

And that's it. Quick, painless, over in an hour. Then drinks.

However, most unfortunately, some open-mike strumming and warbling just began here, at new home of P.E.E.L., so I'll be leaving now.

Whatever: nothing can completely wreck the glee over my upcoming fabulous vacation. Except if I can't pack my things up quick enough before another song begins.

Don't Forget

2006-11-15T00:04:00.000-05:00

That's a hastily-executed 2,786. Although this was done only a couple of weeks ago, the number is now 2,853. And counting.

Caution

2006-11-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

30 Years of Halloween

2006-10-31T00:58:00.000-05:00

I have always loved Halloween. Sure, there have been the odd years I haven't dressed up or done anything for it, but those days are in the past. For the most part, I still view October 31st with the unfettered glee of a child. And, at 30 years old, I know I am not alone in this. Each year, around mid-September, the e-mails and discussions begin between me and my friend Gretchen about what to dress up as. The suggestions range from the absurd (last year I was hell-bent on being Mr. Peanut, while she was considering Elian Gonzalez) to the lofty (Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8; Kim Novak in Vertigo). While some people our age are more concerned with how to outfit their children, we continue to sift through ideas for ourselves, this year going the extravagant length of visiting multiple wig shops on 14th Street.

I stopped to think about what I have been for Halloween every year of my life, and I managed to pretty much nail it:

1976- I was 10 months old. My parents are, thankfully, not the types to dress up their kids in costumes unless they ask, so nothing.

1977- Still nothing

1978- Probably still nothing

1979- No idea, but I do remember finding a devil mask in my closet when I was about that age. It scared the hell out of me, mostly because I don’t know what it was doing there. I don’t know if it was worn by my brothers or me, and I have zero memory of anyone wearing it at all. In fact, I have no memory of the mask whatsoever except for that one day I came across it in the closet, and it was nowhere near Halloween. I suppose it’s possible that I was the Devil that year. It looked sort of like this.

1980- Princess Leia from Star Wars. I don’t know what is the most curious aspect of this costume. Was it that I had never even (and still have not) seen Star Wars? Or was it that it was one of those plastic flame retardant dresses that come in a box, feature a PHOTO of the supposed wearer on the front and are plain white on the back? I mean, who goes around wearing a dress with them on it? Maybe it was the fact that although these types of costumes inevitably include a mask, I did not wear the mask. No, I know what the strangest part was: despite the fact that the one instantly recognizable feature of Princes Leia is her looped-buns hairstyle, for some reason I had on a mangy looking light brown wig, under which my black bangs peeked out. The wig looked more like Chewbacca than Princess Leia. Somebody must have gone out of their way to get this wig for me, although it looked absolutely ridiculous and did not make sense given who I was dressed as. It doesn't seem like I cared all that much, though. With Colin. He was a General. I was much more concerned with candy than my absurd getup.

1981- Annie, with another one of those plastic dresses, but I did have the red curly wig.

1982- Annie, again. Man, I loved Annie. The number of times I was Annie for Halloween up until that point is proportionate to the amount of times I dragged my various family members to the movies to see it. When they revived it for a weekend at the tiny, one-screen movie house down the street from where I grew up, my brother Brendan had to take me both days, in what was sure to be some deal struck between him and my parents, who by that time were all Annie-d out.

1983- Ballerina, complete with a full face of makeup, and improbably, as much costume jewelry as I could get my hot little hands on. Not that the typical ballerina is festooned in jewels, faux or otherwise, as it would surely impede the actual dancing. No matter. I was satisfied that I appeared glamorous.

1984- Punky Brewster. Apparently I had a thing for portraying orphaned children.
The real thing, not me. But it was getting a little text-heavy here.

1985- Punk rocker, involving that requisite shitty day-glow hair spray that stank like hell and flaked off. I also had on my favorite belt, an electric blue affair with multicolored studs on it that I wore every day until it fell apart.

1986- Girl from the 1950s, wearing a poodle skirt I browbeat my poor mother into sewing. For the last two weeks of October, I would ruthlessly monitor her progress each evening, like a sweatshop boss. I begged for, but did not receive, saddle shoes. Ah, well.

1987- I must have been something, but for the life of me I cannot remember what.

1988- Marilyn Monroe. Oh, ho, ho. Now that was a sight to behold. I had on a white, floor-length gown trimmed in black lace, an unruly Harpo Marx-like wig to complement my formidable black eyebrows, and had affixed a large, crude beauty mark to my face with the blunt tip of a black eye pencil. Finishing off the look was a thick lashing of bright red lipstick and my Mom’s pair of black leather mid-length gloves, which probably made me look more like a strangler than cinema’s most enduring sex symbol. Sadly, no photos exist of me looking like a baby drag queen. I was ambitious at 12, if not quite equipped with poise.

1989- Nothing. I was, by that year, way too cool to dress up for Halloween. I probably just wore black and thought about death all day.

1990- Ditto, I’m sure.

1991- Princess. The Marilyn Monroe gown made a comeback, joined by a crown, again fashioned by Mom, from tin foil and pink carnations. With Claire as a chef, and Angela and Alexis as, uh, Mexican men.

1992- I was very busy that year.

1993- I was going to an art school upstate. I have no distinct memory of that day, but I’ll bet I was wearing black and white striped tights and fake eyelashes. Scarily, some guy I was dating dressed as a clown. It was pretty much over after that. Probably exactly what I looked like that day. Everyday was Halloween.

1994- Death, from one of the only comic books I used to read, Sandman. It wasn’t very much of a stretch for me, at that point. She just wore black, really, and had some fancy eyeliner. Done.

1995- Nothing. I lived in California that year, attending a lame-ass college where all the girls dressed as something in the “sexy cat” vein and the meathead dudes cross-dressed, secretly liking it. The following day they would go back to calling each other “fag”, as that was the pinnacle of their insult arsenal. Halloween wasn't even fun there. Me circa that time, not having fun in California.

1996- Nothing

1997- I don’t think I bothered

1998- Louise Brooks. No one knew who the hell I was. One guy thought I was Liza Minelli from Cabaret. At least I conveyed the era, I guess. With Claire as Barbarella, at someone's apartment on the Bowery.

1999- Snow White. Everyone knew who I was. Japanese tourists took photos with me at Union Square. I felt like I worked at a weird downtown Manhattan version of Disney World. The costume I bought only came in one size, which was huge, and did not have those weird little slices of contrasting colored fabric on the sleeves like Real Snow White's does. I chopped up the bodice, sewed it back together to fit better, and used the leftover fabric to detail the sleeves. The netting that lined the puffed sleeves was scratchy and irritating, so I stuffed a bunch of tissues into them and that was that.
With Gretchen, as Tippi Hedren in The Birds

2000- Jean Harlow. Since I actually did have platinum blonde hair and draw on my eyebrows at that point, it was more a case of suiting my costume to my everyday look, instead of the other way around. No one knew I was dressed as Jean Harlow, though. They all thought I was Marilyn Monroe. Twelve years too late.

2001- Ziegfeld Follies Showgirl. A very last-minute costume that consisted of a slip, fishnets, and a feather boa bobby-pinned to my head.

2002- Cleopatra. Yeah, I know, everyone does that.

2003- Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde). Really just a chance for me to wear a blonde bobbed wig and brandish a plastic tommy gun.

2004- 1950s Juvenile Delinquent, fashioned after the Drapes in Cry-Baby. I do not think I would ever wear black spandex pants in public for any other reason. That’s probably the last time I wore my motorcycle jacket, too.

2005- Zombie Scientist of Death; a completely made up and even more last-minute costume that involved me putting a lab coat over what I had worn to work that day, and applying lavish amounts of black and red eye shadow. Someone thought I was the goth chick from NCIS, a show I did not even know existed. Strangely enough, I found out later I did sort of look like her.

2006- Audrey from Twin Peaks. It was all about the wig this year, purchased the week before with Gretchen. Yes, at this point, the series is 16 years old, but at least one person knew who I was supposed to be at a party on Saturday, so I felt vindicated. And then slightly creeped out, as I noticed him taking photos of me from across the room in addition to the one he had taken of me previously. Fortunately Charles was there to intercept any further weirdness, which even more fortunately did not occur.

The best part is that I get to do it all again today.

Gary Null is a Goddamned Creep

2006-10-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

So, for some reason, my clock radio is tuned not to WNYC, but some other station. It must have been because I wanted to hear the BBC at night, and left it on. (And, at this point, since WNYC is having a beg-a-thon, I'm not missing much).

However: I came out of sleep today to hear the creepy, deliberate tones of Gary Null. He kicked off the show by blathering about obesity and vitamins, and dragged out that old horse of recommended fruit and vegetable servings, and then began to moan about childrens' health. Boring, yes, but hardly notable.

Then he gave a review of a film playing at 64th and Broadway about people in the 1800s, that he and his buddy were the only people at. He seemed more delighted in pointing out how aware he was of the rare cinematic gem than genuinely sorry that more people had not attended it. He managed to weave in a tale of how he interviewed a woman whose family had owned the farm he bought in upstate New York, and how people had different problems then than now (ie: no insulation in the barn vs. I don't know, Pop Rocks?)

After that monologue, he warmed to his topic of children, brought up "the diseases caused by soft drinks" (?), and how best to reach them with the importance of good health, the Gary Null way.

He advised parents to "use methods the current generation will understand". By that, he meant showing them violent films of animals being "tortured, beaten, and killed" to see "the hate in their hamburger". He also suggested purchasing a small video camera "the size of a pencil" and filming their cavities being filled, "everything from the numbing of the gums to the drilling" and then screening that for the kids as well, as a means of prevention.

He said all this in his narrow-ranged, undynamic, hypnotist's voice, like it was a a casual suggestion for a zucchini bread recipe and not a way to psychologically scar one's offspring. That, to me, is the true mark of a mentally ill person. I was riveted, but I got the feeling that if I didn't turn the radio off, I would be seduced into his cult. Not really. I didn't agree with him at all. But that voice! His devotees have been known to refer to him as God. Something is clearly amiss.

Gary Null, you are both smug and scary. I have been a vegetarian for 15 years, and probably always will be, but I would never show PETA films to my kids in order to get them to emulate me. Nor would I buy a spy cam and subject them to something that, for your information, looks much scarier than it is. Getting cavities filled is not my most beloved pasttime, but I would rather be doing that than watching a film of it.

I hope you do not have children. I also hope you leave New York.
You creep.

Ring of Mire

2006-10-09T15:11:00.000-04:00

Although I didn’t grow up far from the twinkling footlights and thick greasepaint of Broadway, my entire theatergoing experience can be summed up by three shows: for my seventh birthday, my Mom took me to see Annie, sparking a interest in Depression-era New York that, for a first grader, was somewhat unusual. A couple of years later there was the field trip to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, which caused much emulation of the Rockettes at lunchtime, on the part of the girls. And in junior high, our French class went to see Les Miserables, most notable for the fact that they had oversold the theater and some of us were forced to sit on the floor.

This past spring, I got a chance to my remedy my lack of theatrical appreciation. A man connected to my former job also works in the same building as a producer on Broadway, and called the office one day to offer me tickets to his friend’s new show. He said it was in previews and he could get me a pair of free tickets.
“Uh, what nights?” I asked tentatively. In retrospect, I probably should have been more appreciative, instead of behaving as if I had just been offered a stale sandwich. But Broadway is, simply put, not my thing. A natural reluctance sprang up, the knee-jerk wariness that protects me from having to endure something boring or tedious.

“Next week. It’s for Ring of Fire, the new Johnny Cash musical.” The minute I heard that, I immediately knew two things:
1) It was sure to be awful- not because I don’t like Johnny Cash, but because I do.
2) I had to go.

So I gladly accepted, and wondered who I should bring with me. I thought of a few friends who would have varying degrees of interest in attending, for different reasons. I needed to choose just the right fellow theatergoer, though—someone who likes Johnny Cash, as well as someone who could appreciate the absurdity of a Broadway musical about him. I decided to call my friend Patrick, who not only likes Johnny Cash, but has an encyclopedic knowledge of George Jones, is friendly with Waylon Jennings’ son Shooter, and has been known to tote a guitar around Hell’s Kitchen himself. And, I was willing to bet, had never been to a musical.

On the evening in question, we met at Rudy’s, quickly guzzled a beer and then walked over to the theater.
“It’s good we’re a little bit late,” I noted. “If we were earlier, we’d just have to be standing on the end of a line. That’s my tactic for flights, too—your luggage gets checked in last, your luggage comes out first.”

“So what’s the deal with this? Johnny Cash isn’t even a character in it?” Patrick asked.
“No.” I said, “Apparently not. I have no idea what it’s going to be like.”

We found our way to the seats, which were impressive, only about 10 rows back. We were surrounded by all manner of serious Broadway fans. Almost everyone looked like they were from out of town, from the number of shopping bags and windbreakers in evidence. I kindly gave over-six-foot-tall Patrick the aisle seat and found myself beside an enthusiastic, middle-aged woman who chatted with a friend, seated on her other side. Both of them had propped up their umbrellas against the seats in front of them. Their identical umbrellas, each with its own snappish-looking, jade green bird head. I noted to Patrick that both sets of beady eyes were trained on him, and we began to snicker, Patrick shifting uncomfortably in his seat with the unblinking eyes aimed at him. The woman next to me looked over, so I gestured towards the umbrellas.
“You ladies have matching birds.” I said.

“Yes! Ha ha…we got them at Mary Poppins. That’s in previews, too.” She said, and reached out to her bird, moving it slightly, so it no longer looked at Patrick, much to my chagrin.

“You went to another show today?” I asked. I didn’t know theater people did this type of thing.

“Yes, just before. They were giving these out as souvenirs.” She told me.

“Wow.” I said. Not only because I could not conceive of sitting through two musicals in a row, but I began to wonder if we would get free souvenirs at this show, too. Maybe we would receive lassoes.

I sat back and looked at the stage. It had faux-wood paneling, and was bare except for a lone guitar resting on a stool in the middle. I was about to suggest to Patrick that he walk onstage and start playing a pre-show set. “You could play Broadway!” I began, and just then, the show did.
There was no dramatic hush or sudden dimming of lights, as I recall from seeing the Christmas Spectacular when I was seven. Instead, a cowboy walked in from the wings and without fanfare, wasted no time jumping directly into what turned out to be a medley. He looked to be in his late forties, and was dressed entirely in black. He also wore one of those headset mics used by telemarketers and Madonna. Strangely, he didn’t play the guitar, or even pick it up at first. The first song was a few bars of “Let the Train Blow the Whistle”, which segued into the a cover of Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails. At one point, he gestured towards the still-unplayed guitar on the stool as he stalked closer to it and sang the line “My empire of dirt”. This was weird.

A tableau began to assemble from stages right and left—a fiddler here, a lady singing a line or two there, the drummer emerging on a motorized riser—everyone dressed in what I guess Broadway’s idea of standard cow wear is. I was immediately distracted by the costumes. I don’t care how many washboards are played, or how many jars of stage moonshine are hoisted, when I see a pair of $100 jeans on an actress, I remain unconvinced. Ditto the alterna-gas station work shirt on the drummer. This isn’t a Jimmy Eat World show.

There was a background LCD image of a pastoral scene, complete with green fields bisected by a stream and requisite bright blue sky and split rail fence. I thought it would have been cool if the clouds drifted through the sky, but maybe they hadn’t figured out how to accomplish that effect. I let it go.

Song number five and I began to wonder where the dialogue was. After a while, when the entire cast of six and another eight or so musicians were all present, the guy in black stood off to one corner of the stage. Sometimes he jumped in on the choruses, but mostly he watched the others with a proprietary air, like a Dad.

One actor wins a prize, though. For proper handling of a coffee cup. This has been a real irritation of mine for years. I swear, in every single movie, television show or commercial, every single person makes an absolute mess of what should be the easiest thing in the world. Come on. It’s a goddamn coffee cup. Actors, actresses, you hold them all the time. Just do what you usually do, instead of freely swinging them around, so it’s completely obvious the cup is empty. If you can’t act well enough to pretend something is in that damn cup, then put something in there for real. Anyway, this one young man had a glorious turn with a coffee mug. The minute I saw it make an appearance, I kept my eyes glued to it, highly skeptical. But he nailed it, he really did. And he had to hold it for a while, too.

Confusion ensued. There was a lot of skipping around onstage. I noted that only some of the cast had the headset mics on, and couldn’t figure out why. During the more boring moments, I stared at ornate, carved scrollwork of the mezzanine, or the guy in front of me wearing a baseball cap and chewing gum like a metronome. It was during one these times that the audience members scattered throughout the place began to titter, and I had no idea why. I mean, to me, the entire thing was funny, but apparently I’d missed a specific joke.

I thought of how weird it must be for the people who come to New York on a vacation from real farm country, and go to a lavish art nouveau theater in midtown to see actors portraying their home environment. Is it like when people from New York see 'Friends' and get irritated because all the characters live in huge, fancy Manhattan apartments?

No dialogue made thing really hard to follow. If anything, in fact, was continuous. It was just song after song, sometimes peppered with a line dance or two. Maybe there was a narrative, but I couldn’t figure it out. It seemed as if it was tracking the progress of a guy through the United States, but different guys kept taking center stage, so it was all sort of a muddle, with no clear action. All of a sudden, everyone was assembled before the LCD, which displayed a red barn that was labeled GRAND OLE OPRY.
The whole thing had such a hokey, hee-haw, big grin feel to it. Did everyone forget that Johnny Cash’s music was not about irrepressible joy and sparkly outfits?

Most of the show was different permutations of the main six characters (but they weren’t even really characters in the sense that they had, names or, well, distinctive characteristics) stand around singing to each other, and that was basically it.
When audience members began to clap along to the opening bars of Ring of Fire, I was embarrassed. For them. I saw they managed to make the clouds move on the screen for that song, and guessed they’d wanted to save that trick.

Intermission came. “This play is really long.” Patrick remarked.

The line to the bathroom was similarly lengthy. A nebbish-looking girl in front of me
wearing a long denim skirt answered her cell phone.

“Uh huh…what did you have for dinner? Yeah. Oh, I’m at the show.”

The show, I noted. She must do this all the time.

“Yeah, it’s Ok. We have orchestra seats. It’s country. I don’t really like country.”

After hurriedly smoking a cigarette in the cold, I went back in. Blondish women with wispy bangs walked slowly in front of me inside the lobby.

“All I know is there’s nothin’ sexier than a guy in jeans, playing guitar!” one said.

“I know.” Her companion sighed.

The second act started, and all at once, raucously, with a lot of hooting, bellowing and yee-hawing. A portly man slid into his seat on the aisle next to Patrick, just as the song began, clearly relieved to make it in time.

Admirably, most of the cast members seemed to have at least rudimentary knowledge of one or more instruments. Everyone, all 14 cast members and musicians, emerged with guitars ajangle for an ungodly Chorus Line- line take on “I’ve Been Everywhere”. I continued to be distracted by the costumes. More expensive jeans were on display, and the overall look was as if Contempo Casuals had been raided in one big spree. All the sequins and crochet did not convey a Nashville feel so much as that awful Nouveau Bohemian look of last spring.

“Sunday Morning Coming Down” was rendered by a guy whose voice, at times, reminded me of Willie Nelson. I looked at the front row audience, their bald pates and set white hairstyled heads thrown slightly back in fixed reverence as the actor sang the line ‘Wishing I was stoned’ and wondered if it made them uncomfortable.

Two people singing “A Boy Named Sue” was an ill-conceived ploy. Come on. It’s clearly about one guy, not two. It was, however, one of the more enjoyable portrayals, maybe because the song is so story-oriented, what with lines attributed to characters. It made more sense to se that acted out than other songs. They had to go and add a bunch of corny, unnecessary lines to the end, though: “Yeah, that a girl’s name.”?

“Delia’s Gone” was turned into a hammy, cheap number. It got the biggest laughs of anything in the show, the song with possibly the darkest lyrics. Hey, guess what, assholes? That isn’t a humorous song. However, with the chummy camaraderie of the delivery, I guess the audience wouldn’t know any better. And isn’t it easier to laugh at tragedy when there’s a big smile and klieg lights involved?

Thankfully, they didn’t mangle one of my personal JC faves, “Man in Black”. The Willie Nelson-sounding guy sang it without cheesing it up, and there was no eruption of group dance at the end, which I thought might happen to counterbalance the relative calm of the performance.

The second time a coffee cup came into play, it was a failure, just like every other time. But that’s Ok. I didn’t get as annoyed as I usually do because of the superb way it was handled previously.

I knew this, but I came away with refreshed conviction: these types of things are not for me. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer devices such as character development, plot, a storyline, and yes, dialogue. I felt as if I was watching a CMT showcase, except I was pretty sure the cow gear would come off the performers after the show.

The Roundup:
Lines of dialogue in two hours (not including sporadic murmurs of crowd): 11

Monologues: 5

Number of wagon wheels used as props, or displayed on the LCD screen: 2

Number of beer bottles used as props (including bar scenes): 1

Number of beer “mugs”, painted to look like beer was in them (including bar scenes): 3

Number of songs, many of them butchered, in two hours: approximately 40

Clearly, This Has Been Another Way To Waste Time

2006-09-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

Me not working, but knowing I should be.

I am torturing myself. Today I have vaccuumed, moved around a bunch of crap in my living room, wasted literal hours on websites, sent and received text mesages, and now I'm finishing the not elaborate, but still somewhat time-consuming dinner I prepared. And I have not written one word of this month's chapter, due on October 1.

Someone should make a reality show of me, for the last two weeks of every month, doing all this bullshit as a digital clock in the corner of the screen ticks away the time I have left to produce a chapter. But it would have to have the time not only in weeks, days, hours, and minutes, but also seconds. That way, the frenetic, constant changing of numbers could underscore the complete lunacy of me lacksadaisically wasting all that time, while still refusing to go out.

Supporting characters could include: my publisher, who only appears as e-mails and a fuzzy memory of someone I met twice last winter (the fuzzy image could appear to "read" the e-mails in a thought bubble over my head); The Cat, circling and meowing for one thing or another; my roommate, who only shows up once in a while, because he actually IS constantly at work, while I only pretend to be; and Charles, who takes me at my word when I say I have to stay home and write, and when he discovers that I have stayed home to do NOTHING, doesn't understand. Anyone who calls to make plans and gets a stock response that "Yeah, my chapter is due in __ days, so I can't go." gets a cameo appearance. Ditto people I text to apologize to for breaking plans. There will have to be a lot of split screen action, because I seem to think that 2 weeks a month of semi-isolation equals work. Skeleton is silent witness to my foolishness.

I mean, I know I'll get it done in time, but man. Man.

Although I Would Never Wear the T-shirt, I Do Heart New York

2006-09-18T20:28:00.000-04:00

--Frank O'Hara

It occurred to me recently that it's been quite a while since I've gone through the trapped feeling of wanting to get the fuck out of New York.

It used to happen once every few months, and was spurred on by having a bunch of ideas and no time to see them though, or periodically getting sick of the everyday bullshit, or realizing that there are, on any given day, 1,000 sets of eyes on you, whether you want them or not, and seeing this city become more and more of a repository for consumerism and fancy stores and bloodless pursuit of high-powered, high-fashion luxury condo nonsense, while with every passing year more and more rent-stabilized buildings are destabilized, and the tentacles of greedy real estate push further and further out into neighborhoods that no one would ever want to live in a few years before. And all of this still bothers me. I have read and heard and talked to enough people over the past several years to know that this is not a new phenomenon; rapid change with only a few glances back has been the mode and speed of this city since it began, and endless cycles of prosperity and decline have always marked its course, and will continue to do so.

I can't help thinking that it has gotten out of control, though. Maybe it's the conceit of me, being 30, having witnessed this firsthand only since the early to mid 90s. But it seems as if more is at stake. It is a fact that a relative few people control most of the world's money, and New York being a financial center of the world, and home to both very rich and very poor, it resonates here more than most other places.

When I was 26, I was a tenant organizer in East Flatbush, arguably one of the worst neighborhoods in New York in terms of violent crime, sub-standard living conditions, and community-police relations. Part of my job was to go door-to-door in the Vanderveer Estates, a huge, sprawling, 2,500-unit apartment complex spread out over 59 buildings. I would go every afternoon to knock on the doors of strangers and talk to them about the problems they were facing (including, but not limited to: ceilings regularly caving in, sometimes on tenants; rats; roaches; being dragged to court by management under false pretenses of the rent not being paid--clearly a harrassment tactic for longtime residents who had low rents; no heat or hot water in the winter; piles of trash not being picked up; doors repeatedly broken; and random shootings, including some done by local police, who were so terrified of the place that they would shoot first, and deal with the consequences later).
It was the worst place I had ever seen in my life, and I got involved to the point of obsession. I thought about the huge rallies that we would have to shame the management- people were actually profiting from this hellhole- and be disappointed when the the numbers of people who showed up did not reflect the interest and outrage I knew was there. I realized it was because at that point, it was my life, although it was only one part of the life of the tenants, and unlike me, they had another job, or jobs. I thought about getting media coverage, and actually did succeed in getting a reporter from the New York Times to cover it. I even thought about moving there, imagining how much more of an impact I would have if I were an actual resident, how much more I could find out about the place, and get people involved.

In the end, though, I quit, just around this time 4 years ago. I was burnt out by 60 hour work weeks, and somehow the beginning of fall, with night approaching earlier and earlier each evening, seemed menacing. I would head back to the office from Vanderveer around 8:30, and it would be dark. A spate of shootings in my last weeks began to genuinely scare me. One afternoon I visited a committee member in a building belonging to the courtyard referred to as Front Page- so named because it was a regular scene of violence, the type that ends up on the front page of newspapers- and was told that a few minutes after I left the area the previous evening, there had been yet another shoot-out. I headed back earlier than usual that night. As invested as I felt in Vanderveer, I didn't want to die there. The next day I quit.

I still think about Vanderveer, sometimes, and wonder how some of the tenant group members are. I wonder how much it's changed, but it probably hasn't changed very much. I remember knocking on doors and talking to people about what needed to be addressed, and who should be addressed about all the bullshit that went on there, and so many of them told me they didn't see the point in signing up for a tenant group, because they were planning on leaving New York, anyway.

And that's what's so fucked up. Where is there to go in New York, after living in a place like that? Nowhere. You just leave. It's not getting any better, and so you realize the best next step is to get out of the entire city. And I won't be surprised, but I will be saddened, if in the next 5 or so years I see an article in New York magazine, or the Village Voice, declaring East Flatbush the new "It Neighborhood" for it's convenient location off the 2 and 3 trains, affordable housing, and wide variety of ethnic cuisine. Because I just know that shit is going to happen.

So those are the upped-ante stakes. Not how the East Village is no longer affordable, so it's off to Williamsburg, and not how it's gotten so pricey in Williamsburg, so next stop Greenpoint. There are only so many neighborhoods in New York, and so many places to flee. What happens when the developers and landlords in one area decide, individual by individual, to keep raising the rents, and the migrations fan out into more and more formerly undesirable areas? The landlords and developers get rich, and New York becomes an ever-widening ring, the pebble in the pond effect of a rich peoples' ghetto.

But I still stay. I've lived in other places, states, and another country entirely, and I've always come back. Sure, I've considered moving to other cities in the past few years, but for some reason, I don't feel the need to leave any longer. It's like I just forgot to think about it after a while. And now it's become inconceivable.

I'm writing this in the kitchen of my apartment that straddles the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bushwick. I feel lucky because it's rent-stabilized, and I just signed a 2 year renewal lease. That's definitely part of why I haven't felt the need to vacate New York in a while, because I have relative security, and inadvertently, a front-row seat to the further advance of development. Part of me would love to get back into organizing, so I feel like I'm working against what I oppose, but I know I won't, because I'm too involved in writing, which shows a promising path if I continue to work at it, and prefer to stay close to my family and friends. I guess I can keep staying here for selfish reasons. Which, you know, isn't great, but at least my selfish reasons do not involve no geater wish than an amassment of wealth, so that makes it better.

I suppose.

$75.00 Just For Waking Up

2006-09-15T02:20:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was asked to take part in a focus group about hair removal. Daniel, the young man who called to ask me some pre-screening questions, assured me that I would receive $75.00 for my valuable opinions on razors, waxes, and depilatory creams. The only catch was I would have to be in midtown at 9:45 am, and since I have been keeping writing-vampire hours recently (to bed at 5, 6, or 7 am, up at 2 pm or so) this was going to be an effort, calling in the assistance of my alarm clock, wake-up call feature on my cell phone, and my most valuable ally, the pre-programmed coffee maker.

Adding to the challenge was the fact that me and Gretchen had gone out the night before for dinner, and I consumed the equivalent of a bottle of wine, then fixed myself a cocktail when I arrived home, which was soon neglected in a pool of gathering condensation, ice cubes melted, in favor of fully-dressed, semi-drunken slumber. A late-night call from my boy sparked off a bout of insomnia, and a few text messages about wax museums, but by 5 am, I was again blissfully asleep.

So it was with surprising alacrity that I managed to get up with so few hours of sleep, and shove off in the drizzle to Manhattan. However, I forgot how much riding the train--and in particular, the L train-- sucks in the morning. Yes, it took forever. Indeed, it was crowded. I did not even need to grab ahold of any pole, wall, or otherwise stabilize myself, because the train was so packed that the sheer volume of passengers kept me from moving at all, much less being in danger of falling over.

Regrettably, I left my earphones at Nadxi's over the weekend, so my musical entertainment consisted solely of the several tiny, tinny symphonies that were leaking from the earphones of others. I watched as one young woman a few people away from me muttered, sighed, and shook her head repeatedly, casting her eyes in a martyr-like way toward the ceiling of the train car. It always kills me when there's that one person in an inconvenient situation that has to paint a visual and vocal portrait of the immense amount of suffering they are undergoing. Yeah, I get it, this is the worst. I've been there. Oh, wait, I AM there. In 3 1/2 inch heels.

Once in midtown, I finally got to the building, late. I went up to the appointed floor and saw construction guys and power tools instead of a roundtable discussion on stubborn leg hair. Undaunted, I asked a passerby office dude where the focus group was being held, and was somewhat unnerved by the way he seemed so amused by the whole thing. Even when he was telling me to go on down two floors, he was smiling. Maybe he was just being nice.

At my next stop I was greeted by two dim-bulb girls with megawatt smiles. They had no idea where there focus group was. They were trying to sort it out. They were "backtracking" and "checking in". They were "touching base" and "getting info". They were very apologetic. Also in the impromptu waiting area, where strains of powertools could still be heard, there was another woman waiting, and she was pissed. I had encountered Martyr #2 of the day.

She paced, and growled, and demanded to know what was going on. "I've been here forty minutes". She rasped, in one of those voices that has known the bottom of a whiskey bottle many times over. She wore jeans with shiny beads sewn to the butt, the cuffs wet. I sat back calmly. I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen.

Presently, another office guy came to fetch us. This one was flashier, like he was used to sidling up to cheesy women in Upper East Side bars and charming them off their barstools with a mediocre flick of wit. Immediately, Martyr #2 launched into a soliloquy of complaints.
"I have never in my life seen anything so disorganized." She said. "No one knows anything, no one's in touch with each other. This absolutely ridiculous."

I could tell office guy was thinking he didn't get paid enough to deal with the likes of her, but I bet he does. He tried to explain about the mix-up, but that only seemed to unleash more derision on her part. "I do not see how this is possible, this disorganization."

When the three of us got into the elevator, office guy lit up when he saw a short, plump, bland girl. "Hey! Nice shirt. Scranton, huh?" he asked.

She looked surprised, but pleased. It occurred to me that he was only making conversation to avoid further assault from whiskey voice. "Uh, yeah, I was there last week."

"Wow, yeah. Scranton. What's their team?"

"The Royals."

"The Royals! Yeah, ha ha...not so royal?" he laughed at his own statement.

"No, not really." the girl admitted, and got off the elevator as we stayed put.

"Bye!" He called after her. "If I don't see you, have a good weekend!"

As soon as the doors closed, he began to hum to himself, and shift his weight from foot to foot, and sort of snap his fingers. He was hell-bent on filling the air with anything but the sound of that woman's voice. I snuck a look at her. She still seemed pissed, but not as much.

"Doo, doo, dooo, do- Oh, we're here." Said Office Guy just before the doors opened.

We followed him into another office as Whiskey Martyr peppered him with questions. "Do you work for an agency? Who do you work for? What do you do?"

We stopped into a beige room with six women seated in a ring of comfortable-looking chairs. I gazed longingly at a card table piled with coffee and bagels.

"You have everyone, right?" he asked the woman with a laptop in front of her. She nodded.

"Ok." he told us. "They have everyone they need, but we're going to pay you for your trouble."

The words I'd been waiting for.

We followed him again to another room, where he opened an envelope and handed us each $75.00 in cash, and a slip of paper to fill out.

"Did you come from outside Manhattan?" He asked the two of us. I wondered why the hell he was opening himself up for more of Whiskey's abrasive commentary. Of course she would have a thing or two to say about it.

"Yeah, Queens." she said.

I nodded. "Brooklyn."

"And the trains from Queens are a mess. The N, the R, the Q, the W, none of them work, none of them." She spat. "And if they do run, they're late. And then it's raining."

"Yeah, that's the worst." agreed Office Guy

"Social Security number. Why do you need that?" Whiskey demanded suspiciously.

"It's...Ok. You don't have to put it down." He told her.

"Thanks." She said, snatching up the little pile of bills. "God, I feel like a drink."

Involuntarily, my head snapped around to look at her. It was 10:20 am.

"Huh! I guess it's too early." She amended.

"Well, it's 5:00 somewhere." Said Office Guy, a line I'm sure he'd used in countless exchanges.

"Yeah!" She brayed, and walked off.

I decided to give her a little head start, and took my time signing my name with a flourish.

"Thank you." I said, and left.

And with my morning unexpectedly free, up unexpectedly early, and an expected $75.00 in my pocket, I headed to the MoMA.

PMS and The Cramps

2006-09-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

I suspect PMS is rearing its bitchy little head again. Oh well. It's old hat for me, but not, I suspect, for my innocently-bystanding new boy. Yes, new boy. I could only forestall the inevitable for so long. Man, that makes it sound like a bad thing. Which it is decidedly not. I guess this marks the end of my stint of being a staunch commitment-phobe.

Another good bit of news: The Cramps are playing tonight! At the old Limelight, which I have not set foot in for at least 7 years. That place was once one of the most notorious, drugged-out, drama-laden caves of vice in New York at one time. I remember going there at 17 for the first time and being completely overwhelmed by not only its size (it's an old gothic church in Chelsea, with a huge main floor and tons of rooms off rooms) but its pack of early-90s wackjob denizens. There were the Special K-ed out, candy-coated club kids in all manner of exhaustive plumage and more often than not possessing some type of irritating speech affectation; there were the luxuriously-mannered and intricately-coiffed drag queens, teetering on stilettos; the requisite bridge and tunnel dummies--who instead of drinking in the diversity and learning at thing or two about the world beyond their driveways--would point, stare, and scoff; and then there was misc: the assorted misfits and weirdos, people like the middle-aged guy with the shoulder-length curly hair who always wore spandex bike shorts only, and danced in one square foot of space all night.

I miss old New York.

Not to say this is some type of nostalgia for the era of club kids, with their crackheadedness and at least one murder (story for another time), but it seems like every time I go out, I see more and more people who instead of contributing something new, creative, or innovative to this city, are marching in a pack, dressed nearly identically, with the manners of frat boys or sorority girls (that is to say, none) and are increasing nothing except the market rents. It seems like the emphasis in New york is no longer about creativity, but money- the aquisition of it, and the frenetic spending of it.

These are not new thoughts, not to me, and not to anyone I know. And I have no answers, only complaints.
And a refusal to leave.

However, even though some of my favorite people have moved away, or are thinking about it, I am lucky to count among my friends some of the most independent-thinking, talented, intelligent people I have ever met. They are the kind of people that make it possible to ignore the hordes of medicocre plankton that keep washing up onto these shores, even if the tide is coming in closer every day.

Excuse me, I need to go beautify for the show.

Favorite Activities of My Neighbors (As I'm Working From Home To Make Deadlines)

2006-08-31T00:37:00.000-04:00

1) Screaming
2) Yelling
3) Slamming doors
4) Playing one CD over and over (I recognize the basslines)
5) Pissing in the lobby, directly under the stairs, so it wafts all the way up to the 3rd Floor
6) Performing mysterious D.I.Y. repair projects at night, featuring long bouts of repetitive banging
7) Moving around furniture, also at night
8) Stomping on the floor, in place
9) Exhorting their small children to go into the hallways and shriek at 4 am
10) Shouting for someone up the stairs, in lieu of walking up or using a phone to call the party they would like to speak to

Yeah, yeah, I'm the snippy, weird girl who's only lived here for a year. I'm not from the nighborhood, and I don't have kids, and I don't know how it is. I represent the wave of rich newcomers that are seeping in, and will inevitably saturate the area and fuck things up for everybody. Only, I'm not rich. If I were, I wouldn't be living here.

Although there is something strangely alluring about that end-of-summer, humidity-reinforced piss scent. It lets me know for certain that I am home.

Of Course, I Expected This

2006-08-24T00:11:00.000-04:00

One check from unemployment, and my former job balked.

I received a letter from the Department of Labor which informed me that ex-job had contested payment, because I had been fired for misconduct. This is just not true. So I had to fill out a bunch of forms and fax them upstate, and now I am waiting the 2 or 3 weeks until the Department of Labor decides how they are going to handle it. 2 or 3 weeks. On cold, cold tenterhooks.

Not that I expect anyone to feel truly sorry for me if I don't get unemployment. But goddamn, if ex-job would fork over all the overtime I never recieved, I could live on that for quite some time.

I never want a job in an office again. Ever. No more 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, 1 hour for lunch, 2 weeks off a year for me. It makes me feel like a goddamned robot.

To prevent that, I am now getting back to work on a book that will surely sell, although I have no idea how many copies. No idea.

My Dreams Are Coming True

2006-08-15T20:32:00.000-04:00

Two Deadlines

Wake up
Drink coffee, smoke cigarettes
Drink coffee, smoke cigarettes
Drink coffee, smoke cigarettes

Fidgety, erratic
Check e-mail
Write e-mail
Check e-mail

Laugh at bizarre caffeine-fueled idea
Start to write it down
Check e-mail
Write e-mail
Drink coffee, smoke cigarettes

Consider eating to soak up some of the stimulants
Drink water
Research frantically
Write
Write
Write

Download music
Smoke cigarettes

Frantically wander around the apartment
Feed the cat
Try to calm down
Stop drinking coffee

Make a list
Get back to writing
Research
Drink water
Curse shrieking neighbor children
Smoke cigarettes

Get text message
Send text message
Get text message
Send text message

Repeat
Ignore phone calls

Leave the apartment only to buy more cigarettes

At the end of the day, a pastiche of accomplishment:
Half-eaten bowl of cereal,
4th cup of coffee, cold and untouched,
full ashtray,
19 new songs to listen to,
6 pages written,
one nonsense list,
and a full stock of wild-eyed, palpitating, messy-haired anxiety.

This is the life I’ve always wanted.

Today I Lied to a Child

2006-08-15T01:11:00.000-04:00

So, a couple of months ago, Stardust asked about doing a painting of me and Skeleton for her upcoming show this fall. I said sure. It's nice to know that the solo fascination with Skeleton that began about a year ago when I ordered him from ebay has spread to others. I am glad that my late night photo sessions with the easiest model ever are now yielding oil portraits and modeling gigs (for Liz's clothing line, website coming soon).

We finally made plans to meet up today, so Stardust could take photos to work with. While being a terrifically malleable subject for pictures, Skeleton is an absolute bitch to move around. And not the most neutral object to move around, either. When I got this apartment, and my brother Brendan (and his friend, also named Brendan, oddly enough) were helping me move, the two of them refused to unload Skeleton from the truck.

"No way. You move that thing." My brother said, eyeing it in the corner of the U-haul.

I started to laugh. "Why?" I asked, knowing why.

"Because I'm not going to be the one to look like a freak. You wanted that thing, you carry it up the stairs."

"Fine." I said, and fireman-carried all 50 or so awkward pounds of plaster to my new apartment. Our new apartment.

Stardust had explained that she wanted to do a scene of us in a desert. We'd be lying on a blanket, like at the beach. I dressed accordingly, in a 1940s-looking black swimsuit, and decided to go with classic pin-up hair and makeup while I waited for her to show up with the car. When she called to say she was downstairs, I went over to get Skeleton from his perch in the living room and paused. I hadn't moved him around for almost a year and forgot how heavy, pointy, and unwieldy he really is. Damn ribs kept poking me in mine. I had to be extra-careful to balance in 3 inch heels. So I grabbed a blanket from the couch--which was black, and looked like a fuzzy shroud--and sort of swaddled him in it.

It wasn't until I got to my door that I realized how much of a weirdo I was actually going to look like, and to how many people. This time of year is peak activity season in my building. It's not a million blazing degrees any longer, so people aren't sealed up in ther air-conditioned apartments. Kids are having that last few weeks' hurrah before school starts, and now that I myself am not working a regular job, I have come to be certain in my suspicion that the majority of my neighbors don't work, either. I could hear kids yelling to each other in the hallway, and was sure there would be the usual 6-8 people hanging out on the stoop. There would be many witnesses to me gingerly mincing down four flights of steps in sparkly high heels, wearing elaborate black eye makeup, newly-shellacked red lips, and carefully arranged hair, carrying a skeleton wrapped up in a black blanket. The only thing stranger would be if I were toting him around while wearing the bathing suit.

As soon as I walked out of my apartment a little girl came tearing down the stairs and stopped in terror at the landing.

"Oh my god!" She said, her eyes wide. She wore a pink t-shirt, and an expression of genuine horror.

"It's not real." I assured her quickly, and smiled. To her, it probably looked as if I were baring my teeth.

"Why?...What?" She asked, stammering.

I realized then I had no good explanation. I mean, yeah, I have Skeleton for art projects. He's good like that. But that would take too much time to hash out with the still-terrified little girl, and besides, it would probably seem no less strange.

So I lied.

"My friend is a science teacher." I said. "It's hers."

She ran downstairs while I locked the door behind me. As I struggled down the stairs, I could see word had reached the neighbor kids quickly. Down one flight of steps, I saw the 2 year old from that floor, who is often wandering around the immediate area in various stages of undress and always says hi. This time he wore a t-shirt--that's it, just a t-shirt--and clutched a spatula. He seemed unruffled by the appearance of Skeleton.

"Hi!" he yelled up the stairs as me and Skeleton made our precarious descent.

"Hi!" I said, our usual exchange before he starts a soliloquy of babbling and I no longer understand what he's trying to communicate to me. Typically, I keep saying "What? Yeah!" and smiling at him as I continue on my way.

This time his sister pulled him into the apartment with a fearsome glance behind her. When I passed, the door cracked open and her and another little girl peered out at me before slamming the door shut.

On the first floor, I ran into Fernando, the Super. We said our hellos, and then I remembered the bathroom light, which emits sparks when switched on, still had not been fixed, even though he came and looked at it almost two weeks ago.

"Oh, hey-" I said, switching Skeleton to my other arm. "Is that light going to be fixed soon?"

"Yeah, next week." He told me, nodding.

"Ok, cool. Just let me know what day." I said.

It took me a minute, but I figured he didn't even look twice because he's seen Skeleton hanging around my living room from the time he first looked at the sparking bathroom light.

I made my way through the lobby and saw there was an entire crew of about 10 people out on the stoop. As soon as I opened the door, I could see Stardust and Kristen in the car, laughing.

"Oh, shit!" one of the teenage hoodie kids yelled.

"She's got a skeleton!" said another.

"Damn, move, son, move." said yet another to a guy who was still planted on the steps.

"Yeah, gotta gid rid of the body." One of the more senior members of the group noted.

After minimal fuss, we figured out that the easiest placement of Skeleton would be in the front passenger seat, so we wouldn't have to stuff him in and pry him out of the back. So Stardust strapped him in, me and Kristen took seats in the back, and we drove off to the studio, less than 10 minutes away. People began to notice. A guy walking his dog by the BQE passed us, did a double take, and kept going, smiling. I noted how much fun it would be to pick someone out, and keep driving past them as they walked, to slow down and roll down the window.

"Yeah, he wants to talk to you." Stardust said. "He wants your number, but he's shy."

Kristen was chock full of info on skeletons. "If you look at the fingers, you can tell if it's male or female if the index and middle fingers are close in length. Then it's probably a male. Also, if there's a pronounced bump on the back of the head, that means it's most likely a Native American."

The shoot on her roof was quick, although punctuated by the arrival of a guy from the building. As I lay next to a skeleton on a pile of blankets and Stardust hung over the railing of a platform a couple of feet above, directing me, and laughing.

“What are you ladies up to?” asked the guy, but it was clear that he didn’t really think it was all that strange, as he went about his business fussing with the fuse box.

We didn't have to lie to him. He didn't seem to expect an explanation.

Things That Have Interested Me At One Point or Another, A-Z

2006-08-07T23:39:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how long it stores them, but I was looking at the backlog of searches I've performed on Google, which pop up automatically as I begin to type a word into the search bar. It narrows down the possible matches the more letters go into it, until Google finally realizes that I will not again be wondering about 'average hotel rates new york' or 'brandy alexander'.

This is a sampling of things that I have been so interested about at one point or another that I turned to the swirling nexus that is cyberspace in order to satiate my vast curiosity. Taken as a composite, I'm not even sure what type of person this would be.

art deco switchplates
bo bice
crazy shit staten island
day of the dead
ellen moynihan (Yes, I’ve Googled myself)
forcing avocados
gorilla paws
how long for tempera paint to dry
irs
jehovahs witness art
knox from the vibrators band
leprechaun video mobile
members of bush administration with combat experience
new york state unemployment
opium
peignor
quotes on war and blood
ring of fire musical
super cool underwater bible adventures
‘the bachelor’ is scary
unabomber manifesto
victoria principal
we'll meet again song in the shining
xylophones invented
yahoo.com
zoos in asia

The Way I See It, I Had It Coming

2006-08-05T03:22:00.000-04:00

So I just got home and into the mailbox on the way up to my apartment, and made a delightful discovery.
I am the lucky, languid recipient of regular, fuss-free unemployment checks for the next 26 weeks of my life.

Fuck yes.

This corresponds perfectly with all my plans.

I am clearly making all the right choices.

In other news, I just passed up another visit to the Frying Pan because I was actually tired and ready to head home at this hour, which almost never happens.

And I smoked too many cigarettes this evening. But not in Vegas.

So I am clearly making 99% of all the right choices.

Still.

Vegas May Be in the Cards For Me

2006-08-03T00:59:00.000-04:00

I'm on the phone with my friend Bee right now, and we're combing the entire World Wide Web to try and find a cheap fare (for me) from New York to Las Vegas and back for her birthday this weekend. Goddamn, it's frustrating.
The other day there was a return flight for about $200, but it may as well have been a unicorn or a pot of golden-leafed winning lottery tickets for all the good it is doing me now.

Let me explain:
-She planned this trip at least 6 weeks ago, but I was sure I wouldn't be able to go because of my job and my book deadline.
-I have been abruptly done with my stupid job as of two weeks ago.
-This week, I renegotiated with my publisher, and my new writing schedule is completely acceptable.
-I handed in the next chapter yesterday.
-I now have exorbitant, unexpected amounts of free time that I should probably be filling with responsible goals and smart moves, but instead I have been entertaining out-of-town friends and secretly pretending I am a rich movie star and living my life accordingly.
-I have been sort of intrigued by/frightened of Las Vegas since high school. This obviously means I have to go.

So I am sort of hell bent on going. Best price so far, including hotel, which Bee tells me is Very Fancy, is $475.00. A simple return flight is inexplicably more expensive. And I LOVE hotels.

"It's not like The Tropicana. Or The Sahara. It's not nasty." She's telling me.

Hmm.

Sneakiness On a Boat

2006-07-26T16:41:00.000-04:00

I got back onto the the Frying Pan
last week. I was with Rhia, Bee, and Naushon, but those last two stayed behind on the pier to play foosball.

We didn't get kicked off this time, but then again, I didn't plug in my ipod and start blasting music, either. I think I have learned a valuable lesson about trespassing: Be quiet when you do it.

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Another Talented and Crazy Person Dies

2006-07-11T15:13:00.000-04:00

I always hated Pink Floyd. Hated them. This was exacerbated by the fact that I lived across the hall from the biggest Pink Floyd fan I have ever met while attending college in Southern California. This guy was Swiss, so he had access to all these crazy imports and rarities that most people in the U.S. had probably never even seen. He played them constantly, and at top volume.

However, partially due to the suggestion of my friend Tim, whose musical tastes run closer to black metal and street punk, and partially due to the great book Songs in the Key of Z, I only recently deigned to listen to part of their first album—which I am still not wild about—but also some of Syd Barrett’s solo work, which I am now into.

It’s bizarre, and sometimes vividly worded, and kind of empty in that creepy English way that made me fall in love with The Cure’s darkest music as a 13 year old. And when you think about the purported acid-riddled breakdowns and all-around weirdo behavior that preceded the recordings, it’s like getting a look into someone’s fractured brain.

So now Syd Barrett is dead at 60, after having lived the latter half of his life pretty much as a recluse. Oddly, he seems to have died last Friday, but the news wasn’t released until today. I’ll leave the details to Reuters, though.

The True Story of My One Month Stint as an Actress in China

2006-07-11T01:23:00.000-04:00

From: elleninchina@hotmail.com
To: elleninchina@hotmail.com
Subject: Diary of an Actress
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:16:42 -0800

All:

So, yeah, I realize it's kind of cheesy to send out a mass e-mail, but I don't have all that much time to be on the computer, so I figured I'd kill all you birds with one stone.

China is great. We've been shooting a lot, which means waking up at 6:00 or so AM, and, you know, the scripts aren't the most well-written dialogue I've ever read, but it's been hilarious. I play a 17-year-old who excels at math and gymnastics. Allow me to remind you, friends, that we just celebrated my 28th birthday a couple of months ago.

I just finished a scene in which I am congratulated by my ‘classmates’ for my winning a medal in the floor exercises competition. The funniest part is that they haven't altered my appearance in any way, and since I do not own anything that could be considered sportswear, I ended up doing scenes playing volleyball and basketball in army pants and that ‘Outlaw Biker’ T-shirt I found on the street. However, after much discussion on-set--in Mandarin, so I can only take a stab at what precisely was said-- the translator gave me a sort of ace bandage/brace in a vivid royal blue nylon, with a cut-out for the knee. They gestured for me to put it on, so I sat on the floor of the gym and rolled up one pant leg, as my co-stars looked on. Immediately, a bunch of Chinese ‘No’s were addressed to me. I saw that they wanted me to put the thing over my pant leg. For the camera. I guess the idea is if I don’t look like I’m dressed for sports, I apparently have suffered a sports-related injury, so am actually athletic.

The Minister of Education, who commissioned these films to be made, saw some footage of everyone’s scenes (about 30 or so are shot each day, 5-7 minutes each. They are constantly editing). He saw the ones I was in and inquired about my nose ring. I have gotten more attention from this nose ring since I’ve been in China than when I first got it as a 17-year-old, by the way. So now there might be some problem with it. They’re having a big meeting of the minds to decide whether or not it’s appropriate to expose serious young students merely trying to learn the English language through educational videos to the evil that is nose ring. I know, you would think, since India’s right next door and everything, a little nose ring isn’t so exotic. Well, if you thought that, you, as I was, would be surprised.
I’ll keep you posted on that one.

The place we're staying in is about an hour outside of Beijing city, and it's huge- there are all these different styles of architecture used in the various guesthouses- we're in the Spanish-style one, but there is also a Dutch house, with a powder-blue windmill out front, and a one-story Japanese-looking house with a small moat of polished stones around the parameter. Plus a replica of a pirate ship, which I originally thought was an unfinished residence, but is actually some type of ropes course.
There's a lake in the center and lots of winding paths and trees. There are also ostriches, peacocks and bats! The whole effect is rather like an international suburb, or if the UN and Epcot Center got together to create a university campus.

Overall, there are about 20 actors here. Most everyone is fun to hang out with, or at the very least, interesting, except for this one guy I named Oaf. Oaf is a 40-ish, socially inept, spoiled brat from Upper Manhattan who one day asked Lu Wei, the organizer of this whole production, who was putting together the shooting schedule, this: ‘Oh. I didn't know they had toast in China. Can I have three slices of toast? That's how I always take my eggs, with three slices of toast underneath.’ This was overheard by one of the people I had breakfast with, and reported back with a mixture of horror, glee, and disbelief.

We tried to visit, but didn't get into, Tiananmen Square. There was some kind of race or marathon going on inside that day. I really wanted to get in there because I'd made a shirt for the occasion. I borrowed a Sharpie marker and wrote REMEMBER 1989 on one of my t-shirts while we were driving
into the city. It didn't seem to cause much of a stir, though. I was at least prepared for some mean looks. But we did get to walk around outside, which was busy and crowded. I got some Super 8 footage of a baby waving a communist flag.

Someone we were with wanted a group photo, so we stopped for one pretty close to the gate of the Square, and we got totally overrun by people who not only wanted to take a photo of us for themselves, but gave their friends their camera so they could sneak into the picture with us. A bunch of people in our group wanted photos, so there were everyone's cameras to go through, and that just made us more of a spectacle, the longer we stood there being photographed. Plus it was hot. It was like a press conference gone awry. And the whole time, the vendors were gathering like vultures off to the side. The second we were finished with the photos, they swarmed us with postcards, lighters, and all manner of Mao-themed merchandise, my favorite being the wind-up alarm clocks.

The food is hit or miss. It's different than Chinese food in the US. There are less recognizable ingredients. No one here eats Chow Mein, OK? And I asked about fortune cookies. They were invented in San Francisco, so Confucius Say nothin'.
The quality of the meals depends largely on who our interpreter is. Most of the time, whoever it is has been really good about avoiding ordering us dishes like 1000-year-old eggs, which are considered a delicacy. Really they're just eggs that have been buried and aged (but not for 1000 years), so they emerge from the earth blue with mold, containing fuzzy grey centers.
We eat most meals family-style, with big Lazy Susans in the center of the table. As if that weren't lazy enough, the night we went out to eat Peking Duck, the Lazy Susans were electric, with a button to push when someone wanted it to move. Jeez.

In a few days, we're finished shooting, and then we're flying to X'ian (ancient capital of China) and then after 2 days, to Shanghai. I have very high hopes for Shanghai. There are lots of good movies from the 1930s and 40s with Shanghai as the setting.

Xo
Ellen
(‘Pat Davies’ to a nation of schoolchildren)

My addiction to glamourousness, explained in a poem

2006-07-06T17:21:00.002-04:00

Harpy Mandrake

I can’t remember exactly when,
but as a child, I must have been exposed
to long hours of the golden age of film:

Staticky flash of seamed-together scenes and
sharp pop of early sound before a soft soundtrack of crackling jazz.

Ladies lounging on chaises,
slightly fuzzed-up black and white sylphs stretched sulkily,
or marching smartly down streets, gloved hands and heeled feet.
Feathery wisps of smoke,
emanating from the end of a cigarette holder.

Eyes and words moving in perfect rhythm with each other,
staccato and condemning, flashing and damning,
or else wheedly-sweet with honey-hidden motives,
and, on occasion,
venomously, viciously final.

It seemed logical
that this was what it would mean to be an adult:
Marabou mules, whispering silk robes, haughty toss of head, wit.

Sometimes these ideas occur more consciously—
when, for instance, wilting in a subway station
in humidity-bloated July,
stranded behind
soft, chattering, slow crowds,
late again for work,
sleep not even shaken from my head yet,
hands creeping closer, clicking off minutes
and holding a brief threat.

I am reassured by
being able to scissor around
these obstacles,
cut a sharp path
on clicking heels
plow ahead,
eyes.

Ka-pow!

2006-07-06T01:26:00.001-04:00

Yeah, like everyone doesn't have their own endless batch of fireworks photos. And like they don't look exactly the same every year anyway.

Actually, this year, there were a bunch of firework boxes, which was weird. Somehow they were shot up to explode in the shape of cubes. However, I was so mystified by them I didn't manage to take any photos.

So, I'll limit it to three.

Taken from Katie's roof, First Avenue and Fifth Street.

Genuine Independence (Day)

2006-07-05T14:03:00.001-04:00

I never went to the Frying Pan- the restored boat/event space docked beside the Chelsea Piers- before the other night, and I nearly didn‘t that night, either.

It’s one of those places that I’ve almost been to a bunch of times, and I ended up there under what I think were perfect conditions, although I had no way of knowing so until later.

It was nearly empty, but me, Katie and Rob went in at about 1 am, no one at the door, practically no one inside. I wandered at a slower than usual pace, winding through the many ship’s rooms. There was only a handful of other people, who must have come aboard the same time we did, given that we, for a time, were all clustered by the bathroom. I lost track of my friends, among the huge rooms featuring mainly machinery, dotted by portholes, and then found them again, there, in other rooms and levels, and finally on the tin-floored bottom, smooth with wear over some years.

We’d followed the voices, been brought down by the muted, then, louder sounds. At first I thought the night had just not started, but I could feel the emptiness of the vessel, and knew something was somehow off.

We wound our way down, circled the floor.
Idiotic voices repeated banalities, echoing what one would expect to hear on a flight, maybe tapered to a boat’s experience.
“So enjoy the cruise. Anything we can do for you…” a female’s voice bounced and landed dead in the metal.

“Welcome, welcome.” a male voice joined.

I gazed at the ground I was covering, saw “STAPLE” embossed there, and wondered how old the boat was, temporarily lost track of what was occurring. When I noticed again, the female’s voice was repeating the same inane.

I walked directly up to where they were gathered, 5 or 7 of them bunched together in the DJ area. They looked a motley crew.
“Does anyone have any music?” One of them asked over a mic.

I stepped up, and climbed around a pole.
“I do.” I announced, and advanced.

Some kept intoning into microphones, pleased to hear themselves speak.

“Do you know the third chorus to the Messiah?” one kid asked me.

“You guys are really asking for a lot, you know that?” I joked, as I eased the heave of my bag onto a nearby chair, began digging through it for my MP3 player.

It took a while for me to figure out the wiring.

“Do you guys know this board? I asked, flicking switches, pressing buttons.

I received assistance, and Katie and Rob went off to get beer. I put on the first song, which eventually worked.

A blond, be-backpacked kid looked at me with recognition.
“It’s The Cramps!” He noted, and I was glad he knew it.

Further glee came from the prototypical thug intoning the chorus after it was sung:
I need a new kind of kick,
he repeated, facing offstage, although all of us were gathered upon it.

“Nice.” said the guy closest to me.
He perused through my collection, and selected Raw Power.

It began to loosen, we all realized we were in cahoots, it was alright, we shared a station and a source.

Below the sound board, there was a plastic container, with a few stray LPs inside. I began to look through the records, slightly limp with river air, the covers extra heavy and humidity-filled. I settled on Judy Garland’s Christmas Hits and wondered if I could, on the fly, figure out how to transfer to the turntable. I began to eye the switches and cords, and of course begin to really think about the implications. This place was amazing. Was it really a sort of open, actual vessel for the taking? Could it be this easy to walk in, plug in, and begin a party? I could see that although I knew no one there, after Katie and Rob had gone off in search of beer, and small groups of the rest of them didn’t arrive together, that this could be a genuine, worthwhile collaboration. This held great promise. This was what this city should be, and evidently could be. Within minutes I was having wild visions of secret good times, without a chaperon or supervisor.

Then we were busted.

A nervous-looking guy came up to our little knot of revelry.
“Did you rent this space out?” He asked us.
“No.” admitted one of the trendy Euro girls.
“You can’t just come on here. This is a rental-only space.”
”Oh.” I spoke up. “I had no idea.”
“And you can’t smoke on the boat.” He said to me.

The group began to shift, disperse.
“Is this anyone’s record?” He asked, peering at Judy Garland on the turntable.

“Yours.” I said, approaching to retrieve my ipod. He seemed satisfied, turned to leave.

“Don’t listen to him. You keep smoking.” One of the thug-like guys said to me, nodding.

As we filed out of the boat, we thanked each other. It was, technically, as a matter of fact, Independence Day, and for a few minutes it had been true independence in action.

It was fun while it lasted. No, it was great while it lasted. Anarchy, pure and driven like hope. The idea that if you’re lucky enough to wander onto an equipped boat in the middle of Manhattan and savvy enough to figure out how to make it work, and can maintain good will, there a good time is for you.

And that is an ideal worth aspiring to.

The Bright Side

2006-06-19T12:45:00.000-04:00

I am quitting my job

2006-06-13T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm through. I handed in a letter of resignation, because not only is "non-profit"
an accurate description of my salary, but I need to apply my writing skills to more than things like:

Begin preliminary planning for March 2007: Identify and contact possible co-sponsors

I tried the day job life. Clearly, it is not for me. I hate waking up early, and I hate midtown. Two more months of health insurance, however, will be put to use with glee.

Gorilla sighting on the Lower East Side

2006-06-12T00:31:00.000-04:00

A few Thursdays ago, the evening began with a couple of beers, shortly involved me trying on my friend Tony’s gorilla suit, and eventually became a full-on night out, complete with several more beers, an eight-piece Japanese band, some guy drawing my picture, conversations with a bunch of young, naïve fashion students, and a plan to take down a corrupt non-profit.

The gorilla suit was too big, but Patrick and Tony got a kick out of it anyway. The mask was huge, and the gorilla crotch nearly reached the floor. I stood in Tony’s room, trying to peer out of the eyeholes to get a look at myself in the mirror, which was tough. Then I performed a quick, perfunctory dance—you sort of have to if you’re wearing something like that—got a few more guffaws, and then took it off. That suit was too hot. I don’t know how people wear those things.

But this is really an older story.
It reminded me of a time I was in Seward Park with my then-boyfriend. It was during a vicious heat wave about two years ago. We were half delirious, drinking iced coffees from the Chinese bakery on East Broadway, when I looked up and saw two gorillas in the playground. One blue, and one yellow. And they were both wearing inflatable ducks around their fuzzy midsections, the kind kids wear in the pool to keep afloat.

“Whoa!” I said, and pointed over.

“Holy shit!” Rob had said.

“My god,” I remember saying. “It gotta be at least 95%. They must be dying in there!”

“And who are those other people with them? Why do they get to wear regular clothes?” he asked.

Indeed, there were two girls and a guy with them, all about 19 or 20, very squeaky-clean looking, wearing shorts and flip-flops. They were handing out flyers by the jungle gym, and there was lots of smiling going on. Except, I’m sure, for the poor neon gorillas, who staggered along in the oppressive heat, each one led by a hand by one of the clean teens.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Rob said, and pulled out his camera.

“You have your camera?!” I said. “Take my picture with them!” And I got up and started hurrying over to the gorillas and teens. Rob was right behind me.

The yellow one had begun to wander among the kids, so I walked up to the blue one.
“Hi.” I said. “Do you mind if we take your picture?”
Blue gorilla stood there for a couple of seconds. “Sure.” He said, finally. He must have been in a heat-induced daze.
“Great!” I threw an arm around him, and beamed the cheesiest, most touristy smile I could muster. All that fur was uncomfortable, even just on my arm. It must have sucked to have been under yards and yards of it.

It turned out they were Jesus gorillas, and Jesus teens. They were handing out flyers for something called S.C.U.B.A.: Super Cool Underwater Bible Adventures. Rob asked for, and received, a flyer.

“You should drink some water, buddy.” Rob told the gorilla. He nodded weakly before being led off to the children to work.

“Man, lemme see the picture.” Me and Rob peered at the screen and howled with laughter.

“Wow, and this is great, too.” Rob marveled at the flyer. “S.C.U.B.A.”

And then I realized what was so weird about it.
“Wait a minute. What were they dressed as gorillas for? Gorillas have nothing to do with swimming. Or religion.”

“They were probably the only things the costume shop had. Or the cheapest.”

“I’ll tell you what, while they're going on about God, it’s not very Christian to make people wear a suit like that on a day like today. I wonder how those two got stuck with it.”

“Young acolytes.” Rob said.

I don’t know if that particular method of promotion is standard, but I did find out that S.C.U.B.A. is no bizarre Lower Manhattan youth church group anomaly, as I had originally thought. S.C.U.B.A. is not only a sort of general, country-wide religious program for kids to learn bible stories, but it’s also known as Super Cool Undersea Bible Adventures in some locales.

There are so many reasons it was bizarre, beginning with the whys of the gorilla suits, but not excluding the fact that religious teachings are assumed to go naturally with kids swimming in pools. This is just the sort of convoluted idea that weirdos have all the time. They begin strangely enough as it is, and then different, wildly contrasting facets get added on, until it snowballs into something so surreal, you can hardly believe the people who thought it up don’t realize it scarcely makes any sense.

I’m not even sure what else I can say about it, so I will let this picture speak for itself.

Camaraderie Dork Gets His Way After All

2006-06-02T17:37:00.000-04:00

Having seen no rain all day, I insouciantly left my umbrella at work when I went to lunch. As I exited the restaurant, I saw it was raining, but went out into it anyhow. I was only 3 or 4 blocks away. Plus, I could cut through a building and skip a block that way. Before I got to the corner, however, the rain turned into a serious downpour, threatening to instantly soak me.

“Shit!” I yelped, and jumped into a doorway on Fifth Avenue, which turned out to be the Philippine Mission.

A couple of other people were there, all, I sullenly noted, with umbrellas.

Minutes passed. The rain did not abate. More people joined our informal little camp. I remained the only one with no umbrella. It poured. Another five minutes dragged by.

Then Camaraderie Dork showed up. I see this type every now and then- white, middle-aged, portly, and jocular, they believe the world is ready to eat up their friendly overtures and imagined witticisms with a spoon. They usually end up making me scornful and cranky. Not that I have anything against outgoing strangers as a rule, but these guys are inevitably unfunny, corny squares, and despite their sunny outlook and willingness to reach out in less-than-stellar situations, this is one of the last types of people I would want to be stranded anyplace with.

“Whoo!” He exclaimed as he ducked under the archway, making a big, hammy show of shaking out his umbrella. He looked around at everyone else grimly assembled there.
“Anyone else waiting for the bus?”

“I am.” Said a small, fortyish woman standing to my right.

“The 17?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“The crosstown?”

She paused a little before answering, to signal her annoyance, I imagined. “Yes.” She said.

“It’ll be a looong ride. And a cold one.”

A girl left the building weaving though us, holding a plastic portfolio over her head as she dashed onto Fifth.

“Yeah,” Camaraderie Dork snorted “That’s gonna do a lot!”

I glanced over at him to see his slightly triumphant expression, and looked away in disgust.

“She’s running!” he announced. “Oh, wait. She stopped. Now she’s walking.” He narrated.

No one replied, or even craned their necks to look.

“Yup.” He declared, undaunted. “Some days you’re just gonna get wet.”

I wished I had a cigarette, even more so because I was inches away from an ashtray, and the rain was bringing up the smell of the old butts, which a freshly-lit one would have masked.

A couple of more minutes went by, the rain showing no sign of lessening. I was wearing a skirt and thin shirt, my arms crossed in front of me, my shoes wet. I began to look through my bag for something to amuse myself.

“Whoa!” Camaraderie Dork said, in my direction. I looked up to see him eyeing my recently added-to tattoo

I was surprised he was trying his tactics on me. I don’t typically look particularly friendly, and especially not while I’m half soaked and visibly irritated. I’ve also been wearing my glasses this week, which I believe make me look like a mean, skeptical intellectual. In fact, my overall appearance could probably have been classified as disaffected and bitchy.

“You must be fast typist!” He said. Jesus.

“Yeah.” I mumbled, nodding my head and looking at the traffic. Out of the corner of my eye I could see he was still looking at me, maybe hoping I would add something. I resumed the search of my bag, always a good ruse: I’m very busy.

“That’s the only thing I could think of!” He said.

I continued to ignore him, and pulled out my phone to re-read a text message about a friend's birthday party that night.

Then a woman showed up, clutching a bunch of shopping bags, her hair plastered to her head. Camaraderie Dork pounced on her.

“No umbrella?” He asked idiotically.

She looked at him, slightly taken aback. The rest of us looked on in silence, in our own silent, persecuted camaraderie.

The rain let up somewhat. I hurried away, and down the street. But first I went into the deli next door to buy a pack of cigarettes.

The Extras: Shittin' Rocks

2006-06-02T13:55:00.001-04:00

When I arrived to work this morning, the usually busy street was circus-like: clogged with trucks, filming equipment and crews, and, inevitably, thronged with rubberneckers.

It never fails. Whenever there is something vaguely movie-related going on, large groups of people stop and stand around, waiting for something exciting to happen, while the rest of us push past them on our way somewhere else. It’s as if they believe being in the mere presence of some filming will lend an aura of vague magic to an otherwise humdrum life. Guess what? Filming itself is pretty goddamn tedious and humdrum. I know this because I was once a movie star in China! But that’s a story for another time.

According to Jesus, the building Super, a Chris Rock movie is being filmed. I sort of like Chris Rock, because he always seems on the verge of mild, benevolent hysteria. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a fan, but I have no real objections to him.

About 2 hours later, I went out for a smoke. The scene was beginning to break down, with cameras being loaded into trucks and a lot of rushing back and forth on the part of the crew. There was still a crowd of onlookers, though, being rewarded by the mundane sight of nothing.

A guy in a suit crossed the street, removing his tie. Nothing unusual about that in midtown. Then he met up with a similarly outfitted guy on my side of the street.

“It’s a wrap.” He said, coiling the tie and placing it in his jacket pocket.

“Are you shittin’ me?” The second guy said.

The man with no tie shook his head.

“Whoa.” Remarked the second guy. “Wow.”

Slug Tiki Bar

2006-06-01T21:33:00.001-04:00

So over Memorial Day weekend, my friend Nadxi had a BBQ in her idyllic Brooklyn backyard. Her neighborhood is so pretty that everytime I go to her house (a true house, not a euphemism for cramped apartment) it strikes me how ugly Bushwick really is. Or at least most of it.

Anyhow, a week or so before that she'd been lamenting the onslaught of slugs taking their destructive toll on her tomato and lettuce plants.

"I'm just going to get them drunk." She'd said. "They'll drown."

"That's nicer than salt." I agreed. "I know! I'll make them a tiki bar!"

"No!" she yelled. "That's horrible! It's like The Man bringing crack into the ghettos!"

"Hey," I said, "Do you want them dead or not?"

Later that night, at home, I made a note of it-SLUG TIKI IN NX'S YARD-and stuck it to my wall.

The BBQ presented the perfect opportunity. Before I left that afternoon I stuffed a bunch of supplies into a shoebox: as I threw in colored pencils, scissors, glue stick, and shiny foil paper, I got more excited about the idea, until it ballooned into a full on celebration of slug genocide, complete with tiny, to-scale skulls, and a pair of hula-girl-like drink stirrers. By the time the grill was fired up, I was too. Thanks to Nadxi, Michelle, Michael and Stardust for assistance.

The completed bar

Several skulls

At a certain point, we thought it would be a good idea to build them a bridge. Luckily there was a popsicle stick lying around.

At another point, I began to complain that no slugs were approaching. So Michelle and Michael dug around and delivered them to the beer pit.

Most of them split.

Except this one.

No slugs ended up drinking to their deaths. Maybe it's a myth.

Ow!

2006-05-26T12:11:00.000-04:00

The typewriter's old, the flames are new. That is indeed mottled bruising behind the flames. The inside of my elbow has by far been the most painful spot to have gone under the needle, and it's a particularly bloody and slow-healing area.

It hurts like hell, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see an inordinate amount of blood smeared all over my arm as it was being done, but it was worth it.

Thanks to Nick at Flyrite Tattoo who did both.

Bags of William Blake

2006-05-19T23:38:00.000-04:00

Well, it's mostly accurate. They'll be hitting the streets in June, though.

A clearer image at the original link is right here.

Lovely day for a protest

2006-05-01T19:09:00.000-04:00

May first, you did not disappoint.

I think I may have broken another camera

2006-04-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

I am cursed when it comes to cameras. Every single camera I have ever owned, roughly 8 to 10 of them, has been broken, lost or, in one case, stolen. 35 mm; digital; Kodak disc; the yellow, red, and purple Le Click I had back in 5th grade—all of them passing though my destructive hands like other people go through toothbrushes.

I think the highlight of this phenomenon was when I purchased and broke a camera within one day in Beijing. I ended up exposing all the film too, which I hurled to the floor of the bus in a fury.

Now I am on my 3rd digital camera in less than a year- no, make that 4th, including the replacement that I thankfully got for free yesterday. I also bought the extended repair plan. And my fingers are crossed, but not while I am holding the camera, because I would probably end up dropping it if I did that.

Just like Braveheart, except he's into Major League Baseball

2006-04-04T16:32:00.000-04:00

Crossing 45th Street today, I saw a middle-aged man walking with his wife- both appeared to be typical out-of-towners: holding hands, a bit slow moving, eyes raised to the tops of the buildings around them, and then swivelling hopefully towards the spectacle of 5th Avenue ahead.

She wore a windbreaker, and held one of those ubiquitous pink Conway bags. (I have never been there. Why do tourists love Conway? Beacuse they very much do.) The two of them were not, by any means, an unusual sight. Except for the kilt the man had on.

Now, it would have been one thing if if he had paired it with a heavy, white cable-knit sweaters, and then had on knee socks and the other trappings of the My-great-great-grandfather-was-from-Scotland look. But he did not. Instead, he too was wearing a windbreaker and sneakers, and in a thoughtful touch, had a vivid turquoise Florida Marlins cap perched on his head, presumably to match the hints of turquoise also found in his kilt.

It took me a second, but then I figured he must be dressed up for Tartan Week, New York's 8-day fest of all things Scottish.

I love big-deal celebrations of minor events, marginalized ideas and obscure cultures. Not that Scotland is all that obscure, but it's news to me that New York hosts a large Scottish community. Besides me and my brothers, who all share the same Scottish middle name, I don't think I know anyone in New York with relatives from Scotland.

Anyway, Happy Tartan Week.

They sell crack at Rite Aid!

2006-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

Even though it hadn't rained in New York in so long that it was actually NEWS this morning that it was going to, I left my umbrella at home. By the time work was over, it was pissing rain, so I went into Rite Aid to get another umbrella. I was paying for it, and cigarettes (how I love that I, at 30, am regularly ID'd for cigarettes) when a cell phone rang behind me. A girl answered it, and said:
"Yeah. I'm at Rite Aid. I'm buying crack-"

Fond of crack jokes myself, I sort of waited for her to laugh, or otherwise indicate that she's been kidding.

When I turned to go, I saw she had a box of Wheat Thins in her hand.

Ohhhhh.

What’s Really Wrong with the Left

2006-03-27T21:55:00.000-05:00

A much discussed topic these past few years, there has been an exorbitant measure of finger-pointing, belittling, and yes, even name-calling on the topic.

We’d all like to blame one person, or if need be, set of persons for the reasons why we find ourselves halfway through another set of the cruelly pointy clutches of a Bush administration. But it’s not that easy. The closest I can figure is: It’s not fair. They have all the money, and they are obviously more corrupt, and for some reason, the money and the privilege and terrifying decision-making are all drawn to each other, as if by magnets. It’s just a type of person we’re dealing with here.

And I’m not even a democrat. Since registering to vote at 18, while attending a Lollapalooza (yes!) held on Randall’s Island (a picturesque stone’s throw from Riker’s Island, New York City’s infamous maximum security prison), I have been a staunch independent. Not an Independent, mind you- how strange a bunch of people would choose to gather under that banner- but completely unaffiliated with a party. Which, yeah, means I can’t vote in primaries, something someone is sure to remind me each year, but to me it’s like splitting hairs, almost.

So, I’m not even a Democrat. But that is because I am more of a democrat that any Democrat, but everything really just seems so distilled and distorted at this point, anyhow. I mean, Thomas Jefferson had this to say in 1803: "As revolutionary instruments (when nothing but revolution will cure the evils of the State) [secret societies] are necessary and indispensable, and the right to use them is inalienable by the people."
That’s pretty much a 180 from the Patriot Act, wouldn’t you say?
No way in hell would any politician, let alone American president, let that gem slip into his speech anymore. Man, Democrats went soft somewhere in the nineteenth century. So not tough.

No, I’ll tell you what one of the problems is. Mailing lists. Being a subscriber to magazines including Harper’s and The Nation, having donated money to the NAACP, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood at different times, and sometimes half-heartedly signing online petitions (Do they really do anything? Really?) from the smorgasbord of Move On-related causes, among others, somewhere along the line an arrangement was made between these groups to share a mailing list. Working at a non-profit myself, I have seen these things happen. Which I acknowledge does not make me blameless, but I can still be opinionated.

Beginning sometime late this fall, shortly after moving to a new apartment, I began to get all sorts of mailings I had never been on the radar for, previously. They began to trickle in once, maybe twice a week at first, like the first small drops of rain in a spring shower. And I read them at first, each of them, listening from afar like a silent, benevolent judge, carefully paying heed to every one of their typed pleas. Sometimes I even wrote checks, took surveys. I mean, why not? Five minutes out of my day, maybe ten if I’d misplaced my checkbook or couldn’t find any stamps.

But then they started arriving in a steady stream, several times a week, sometime multiple mailings in one day. They would be stuffed awkwardly into my mailbox, crammed in and bent from being crowded in there with all their liberal friends. It got so I couldn’t keep up with them, would look at all the return addresses on the sheaf of envelopes and get vaguely depressed at all the things wrong with the world that began to literally wait for me on my doorstep at home.

I would glance at a typical sampling of organizations- Planned Parenthood, Natural Resources Defense Council, Unicef, Ms. Magazine, Oxfam- and sigh before tossing them onto a continuously growing pile of mail on my kitchen counter, knowing that although I would probably agree with most of what they all had to say, I don’t make the sort of money that can be doled out all the time to a variety of organizations. And for another thing, I just don’t see how signing my name to a piece of paper and sending it to some senator, congressman, or any other politician is going to get anything done. I mean, it could, but so far, the odds aren’t so great: Roberts firmly in place on the Supreme Court, Alito settled in, the War in Iraq continuing to rage, Social Security’s future still up in the air, and the aforementioned 6th year of Bush in the White House- although I, for one, still can’t accept that he had a right to be there in January of 2000- I just don’t see the connection between applying my name to a petition and the world’s wrongs being righted.

And mind you, I have no solution. I am not going to offer an alternative tactic or surefire solution. I would if I knew one, but I don’t.

At this point, my mailbox contains numerous pieces of liberal-oriented mail on a daily basis. Some from the old regulars, and some from new hopefuls, smiling their best winning, benevolent beauty-contestant smile from behind little cellophane windows. Sometimes they give me presents- The Nature Conservancy (I’ve never even gone camping, and the only significant amount of time I spent in a rural setting, I still wore things like leopard-print pants and kept up with the tedious task of bleaching my roots platinum blonde. But, yes, I agree, nature is beautiful.) in fact, has sent me not one, but two sets of personalized return labels in the past couple of weeks, both adorned with small, handsome, blue butterflies, sitting incongruously beside my inner-city address.

Now, some of the mail addressed to me is just bizarre. I would love to know, even if just for sociology’s sake, the flowchart of events that led my name to be added to the mailing list from Saint Matthew’s Church (a 55-year-old church; they made sure to mention four times in one letter) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This particular letter had gotten tossed along with the others in my expanding pile. I wandered over about a week later to routinely sift through the contents and fish out the bills (just as depressing, but I don’t get to choose whether or not to write a check) and saw it. The front of the envelope had on it, printed in bold letters:
TWO HOMES ARE ABOUT TO BE BLESSED…THEN IT MUST GO TO ANOTHER DEAR FRIEND
And then, below that:
YOURS FIRST!

I ripped it open.

LET 2006 BE THE BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE THROUGH FAITH AND PRAYER. GOD IS READY TO HELP YOU REACH YOUR DREAMS AND GOALS. It began, abruptly. And then, hilariously, continued:

Dear…Someone Connected with This Address,

I skimmed it, which was difficult, with the rash of underlining in red, selective all caps, and sprinkling of boldface. The letter promised me “spiritual, physical, and financial blessings of all types- dear people are receiving so many blessings that it is impossible to mention them all in a letter.”
It continued. They pray for me. They said SOMETHING VERY WONDERFUL IS TRYING TO COME TO YOU.
Then I turned it over and looked for the part where you check off how much dough you’re going to send in. And, halfway through the second page, there it was, unheralded by any different color ink or other decoration, quietly asserting the amount of money to act as “a seed gift to God’s work”
It was signed, oddly, “Saint Matthew’s”, in a large, looping script, as if the series of churches were an actual individual, sitting behind a desk somewhere in Tulsa. The enclosed envelope had, inexplicably, THIS IS THE NEXT MORNING in huge letters where a return address should be.

Then I looked at the Christ Prayer Rug that was also enclosed. Unfolded, it was an 11x14 sheet of paper, a slightly better stock than the letter had been printed on, with a color scheme of oranges and purples. A two inch border was decorated with a replica of an expensive Oriental rug’s pattern, while the center featured what looked like a reprint of a pastel of Jesus, with long, lank hair, a fuzzy-looking crown of thorns, and a single teardrop mid-slide down one side of his nose, his eyes closed. It was rendered in vivid lilacs and sedate lavenders. I went back to the letter, which instructed me to go into a room where I could be alone (just God and me) and spread the prayer rug over my knees, and gaze at the portrait until I would apparently see His eyes slowly opening.
I’ll admit this seemed appealing to me, having just drank three beers with a friend, so I tried it.

I was never good at those optical illusion posters, the ones that were semi-popular in my early college years with what appears to be an abstract, repetitive pattern until you look really hard, or close, or long, or at a certain angle, at which point a miraculous, hidden work of art would be revealed. I tried once or twice, but could never see anything other than a series of scallops or squiggles. I associated those types of posters with fans of the band Phish, anyhow.

But I was willing to try. I lit a cigarette and peered at the prayer rug spread over the range of my stove, ignoring the part of the letter that said I had to place it over both legs. I looked at the closed eyes. Lots of shading. But nothing, no soul-altering connection with this piece of paper. I glanced away quickly to make sure I was ashing my cigarette in the ashtray and not on the floor, and looked back. Still nothing.

I ended up stuffing it back in its envelope, ready to throw it in the trash, but thought my friend Mike, a religion reporter for a newspaper in South Carolina, might get a kick out of it, so I put it back in the pile of leftie mail, where it actually fell off the top of the pile and onto the floor, so precarious and tall was the stack.

The left. I keep getting mail from them. I feel like a jerk for throwing away a piece of mail from the Coalition for the Homeless, but I can’t give them any money, and I can’t give them any of my time. Somebody somewhere let someone else know where I live, and that I seem to care about these types of things- and they’re right. But do us both a favor- go after the rich people. There must be some who care about these issues as well. All you do when you send these mailings to me is make me regretful, and guilty, and waste paper (and yes, Nature Conservancy, you are a repeat offender).

But don’t worry. I’m not going to point my finger or call anyone any names. I don’t know who let my name and address slip, and I don’t need to know. It’s a collective fault. Except at you Democrats, whose committee keeps begging me for money and support, and has been doing so for months now. I am not one of you. I have never been one of you. So not tough.

Fairytale of (appearing in) New York

2006-03-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't talked to anybody yet who was at the Pogues show at the Nokia Theater on Friday, but I do know that Shane MacGowan's appearance at Southpaw later that night was cancelled, and money spent on tickets refunded.

Oh, Shane. To think that your first dj gig was accomplished from a wheelchair. Couldn't you at least have managed to play some records, drunk as you may have been? They probably would've even let you sit down this time, too.

Although he was over an hour and a half late when I saw him with the Popes in Galway a few years ago, he did indeed show up, and much to the crowd's delight, sang with his Ma on Fairytale of New York, clumsily waltzing across the stage with her. And this was at the height of his alleged junkiedom.

As of now, there's no word from Death Disco as to the non-appearance, but I did notice Southpaw plans on having Evan Dando play on May 5. Isn't he, too, some kind of unreliable substance-abuse-ridden flake?

The strongly-etched impression left by inhaling what comes out of an exhaust vent: one girl's story

2006-03-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

Chipotle must be the grossest thing there is. You know, that chain fast-food restaurant, one of the bunch they try and sort of dress up so it seems like a slightly fancier alternative to McDonald’s. No. Fuck it, it’s gross. I don’t eat fast food. It’s all disgusting. But Chipotle is by far the most repugnant.

There’s currently some construction happening on 14th Street, just south of Union Square. It results in scaffolding, and one of those weirdo wooden passageways that narrow the sidewalk space to roughly half and are usually festooned with day-glow orange net.

Being a bitchy, hurried, walker, I actually get pissed when I am stuck behind some slow-mover and there’s nowhere for me to go, and I am forced to trudge behind them when I really want to be scissoring down the street, quickly. It’s like a little bit of hell when one second you’re all sweetly free on the sidewalk and the next you’re funneled into those faux-alleys built to accommodate construction that zig and zag all over the place with hairpin turns and are jammed full of people walking single-file, and very slowly. Also, they often reek of piss. I really have to start wandering down the center of the street instead. Or otherwise avoiding them.

I tell you, though, I’d rather smell piss any day of the week then Chipotle.

I found this out the hard way. The other day I got stuck in the 14th Street fake wooden hallway. Sure enough, behind some shopping-bag-laden woman who minced along like she was still perusing the linens at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I was irritated, sure, but nothing prepared me for the wall of smell that met me, cruelly, only a third of my way through. Jesus. The stench that is Chipotle exhaust emanated hotly through the fans on the front of the place, which is raised from street level, so the vents are about six feet up from the sidewalk. Ugh. It was like being breathed on by a hundred people who just had an eating contest of exclusively barbeque. It was like being lowered into a valley thick with smoke flavoring, mixed with animals turning on spits, who had recently shit themselves. It was like an assault.

After that night, it’s like I notice Chipotle everywhere now. I’d never realized there was one right around the corner from where I work. And yet there it is. I peer through the windows at the people inside, wondering how much worse it smells in there. They never look very happy. They look bored and dazed, mechanically chewing what I imagine to be stringy meat slow-marinated in manufactured “Olde Southwest” flavors. I disdain them for their easy-way-out cuisine, sure to result in ill health. Yeah, and then I smoke a cigarette and drink a beer.

Insidious! The silent film that never was.

2006-03-12T01:40:00.000-05:00

11:37 am

4:39 pm

4:41 pm

4:53 pm 5:18 pm

5:55 pm

5:56 pm

Insidious! Others had met cruel fates...

5:57 pm

To be continued?

Hey, lady, close your goddamned legs

2006-03-08T21:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, although I completely loathe, resent and despise the fact that a large percentage of males are incapable of sitting on the subway without spreading their legs so wide they encroach upon the space of those unfortunate enough to be seated next to them, there's nothing unique in my irritation, nor is there anything unfortunately unique in the situation. Yes, there are days when some jackass has to plant his stupid feet far enough apart so a fuckin Humvee could drive through them, and his gross knees or grosser thighs threaten to sully my ladylike self with their hoggishness. This is when I bitterly wish I had sharpened spikes emanating from the sides of my legs, or a force field of electric-shock causing energy, much like invisible fencing for suburban dogs. But that's something every girl and woman in New York can relate to.
This is typical:

*No, I don't know this goon. Look at him. Legs all spread, creeping over onto the next seat. One leg is so far over it's out of the frame. If there were a woman seated beside him, unless they knew each other, I guarantee she'd be wearing an vicious expression.

Well, I'll tell you what is new about about this experience. What's unique is when a woman is the perpetrator. In my thirteen or so years of riding the subway, I have never had the displeasure of sitting beside a female encroacher. Until this evening. On the L train, somewhere between 6th Avenue and 3rd, I felt someone sit down beside me, but, you know, since that's no big thing in and of itself, I didn't bother to look up from reading. That is, until I began to feel the creep. A slightly warmer presence, some stranger's unwanted leg heat starting to mingle with my own, eventually, a completely foreign limb grazing mine, until finally, someone else's leg full-on snuggled up to me. A quick glance down confirmed what I had expected: legs wiiiide apart. God fucking dammit. I looked over, irritated, and saw a woman. And it was an old woman. Or at least older, in her 60s, I'd say. She was no dainty old biddy, either. She had some thick, beige polyester-clad legs.

"Whoa." I thought. "I'm still annoyed, but this a notable first."

The novelty did not last long, however. Especially when Legs Wide Open began to read over my shoulder. This used to piss me off a lot more than it does now, but it can still bother me, especially in conjunction with a fleshy, jittery old lady leg pressed up against mine.

At my stop, I got up, stuffed the magazine into my bag, and had to look one more time at my seatmate. Why she was looking back at me, I'll never know. I wasn't the one all cozied up against her. Jeez.

*Note: For this image, I first googled "guy hogging subway seat". When nothing showed up I googled "guy on subway", and bingo! That just goes to show you how prevalent the plague is. I didn't even have to specify the action.
By the way, that second search yielded several images of Jared, he of Subway-endorsed weight loss fame, as well as a lot of drunk, passed-out dudes.

I miss going out

2006-03-07T23:07:00.000-05:00

I left work kind of late tonight. I tell you, I did not want to go home and sit in front of another computer and do more reading and writing. I wanted to go out, throw a few back, relax, listen to loud music and laugh at things.

I walked halfway down the street, headed West, and called my friend Patrick, who lives nearby.

"Hey." I said, "What are you doing?"

"Walking over to Kieran's bar." He told me.

"I knew it! You're going to Texas Tuesdays!" I envisioned a cold Lone Star and comfortable couches, Johnny Cash on the jukebox, socialization.

"What are you doing? You want to come up?"

I hesitated. Kept up my pace for a few steps, and dragged on my cigarette. I did want to go. Ten days until The Deadline.

"I'm on the road to ruin." I declared. "I'm on the highway to hell."

Patrick began to laugh.

"It's not funny!" I said.

"I know." He said, but he was still laughing.

"Maan..Why doesn't anybody just say Shut the fuck up, go home, and write the goddamn book?"

"Well, shut the fuck up. Write your book." Patrick said.

"Yeah. Yeah. Ok. I'll talk to you later." I said, and hung up.

And went home.

I am a hater (but I have fabulous taste in music)

2006-03-07T00:30:00.000-05:00

This is Flux of Pink Indians. Unfortunately, they are long gone, and in their place is...not much. That I want to listen to, anyway. But I've accepted that this is largely due to the fact that I am old and somewhat cranky, musically speaking. I thought about current bands that I like that I actually enjoy listening to- not even new bands, but ones that are still around- and this is what I came up with:

I am old:
A handful of the only current bands I like

-The Gossip
-The Kills
-Bloc Party
-The Bloody Hollies
-Turbonegro
-The Lost Sounds
-The Dirtbombs
-Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
-Murder City Devils
-The Rogers Sisters

I didn't want to like Bloc Party. Because I'm kind of a hater. A road trip to Philly last spring with my lovely friend Liz convinced me otherwise. You win, Bloc Party. For now.

If only my neighbors couldn't hear or speak: the background

2006-03-06T16:42:00.000-05:00

Goddamn, I wish my neighbors were deaf and mute. That way I wouldn't have hear the shitty excuses for music that constantly blare from several of their apartments, or their saga-like bouts of yelling. Or their demon spawn children screaming in the hallways, retarded two way walkie-talkies or gratuitous, repeated slamming of doors. And they call me El Diablo.

When I first saw my apartment back in September, I was overjoyed to the point of disbelief. It was huge, and beautiful. There were windows in every room, new appliances, nice wood floors, and there were two bedrooms- two! For me! I had been living in the Lower East Side for the past five years, in a cramped three-bedroom, which was fine for a while. I'd had nowhere to live for three months after coming back to New York, and was astounded at my luck when I found the place. Plus my soon-to-be-boyfriend had lived down the street, and it was great to live so close for the two years or so we dated (although admittedly not as great after we split). It was--magic New York real estate phrase--rent-stabilized, so that meant that I could afford to live there even way after every Prada-clad plastic mannequin and her equally bland man-idiot financial world stooge boyfriend started throwing up all over the neighborhood on their weekend bar hops, and driving up the rent.

But good times can come to an end. I was sick of living with two other people. It was fine when it was with friends, but after my pal Ari moved out to get hitched to the lovely Miss Jen, I was stuck with two horrible, princessy, slobs: one who had been an acquaintence/semi-friend (and is no longer even semi) and another that me and Ari took in, thinking she would be Ok. Turns out she wasn't. The apartment was also a long-term sublet- the guy who I'd originally moved in with moved out a few years before to get married to the upstairs neighbor-who until then had been a lesbian-and he nicely allowed me to stay while he continued to renew the lease. Nicely. Until he began to embezzle our rent money, and I only found out when the landlord's office called and asked where the dough for the past three months was.

I had just gotten a new job, the first one in years that paid me more than just tips, and so I said Fuck All This. I need to live alone. No funny business with the rent, no fucking losers never going anyplace and camping out in the living room to form massage chains (I swear this happened). No goddamn giggling girls' slumber party, no roommates' weirdo internet dates hogging my couch, no piles of trash not being taken out, no other peoples' crap and clutter everytime I turn around, no insistence upon expensive cable TV with every fucking premium channel that exists, no, no, no.

Also, a Pentecostal church had moved in directly under my apartment a few months before. It had never bothered me when it had been on the other side of the building, but as soon as they started having their noisy homages to Christ two feet under my bedroom, I noticed. Inexplicably, the congregation was convinced it needed a P.A. to address the group of ten or so in a 150 square foot space. Startlingly, a man would bellow "HALLELUIAH!" through the lo-fi system up to a dozen times per service, which occurred five times a week. Amusingly, an old lady played drums like this: boom-tiss, boom-tiss, boom-tiss- tinny but steady. Maddeningly, when I tried to ask a lady who was always going in and out of there about maybe not using the P.A., she claimed to not know English. Bullshit. You just had half a conversation with me.

My once-radiant, inexpensive little Lower East Side home had become decidedly unpleasant. The roommates had become unbearable. One of them seemed to think nothing of leaving a used tampon inside the shower. That is, until I took a bright red lipstick-to match the blood- and scrawled WHY DON'T YOU CLEAN YOUR GODDAMN TAMPON UP? IT'S FUCKING GROSS. on the bathroom mirror. I had a hard time thinking about why I needed to point this out to a 27-year-old. This same girl "couldn't" sweep up the living room or anyplace, for that matter, because "hair grossed her out". I began to refer to my formerly happy home, my refuge from having no place to live at all, as "the shithole".

I think I reached the true end to my long, tattered rope of patience, however, when I began to hear rats fighting underneath my bathtub. That meant they were in the church, which made me spitefully glad, but that mean glee was not enough to override the disgust I felt at hearing them skritch and claw and squeal at each other mere inches from where I stood each morning to shower.
Fortunately, the end was already in sight.

Conscientious as I am, I work at a non-profit. Consequently, I am only armed in the Manhattan real-estate war with the monetary equivalent of a water balloon. Of course I went to Brooklyn. Or, more accurately, back to Brooklyn. Yes, I moved to Williamsburg 8 years ago. I was young enough so that I almost thought that it was a really cool neighborhood. Almost. To be fair, it was a pretty different place back then. Me and two friends shared two one-bedroom apartments in the same building, so it was sort of like a duplex, except you had to go out into the dingy hallway to use the stairs. Anyway, it was cheap. And fun. And we had a yard. It worked out nicely. We each paid $450. Now one of them is probably $1300.

So, this September, having been spoiled by living in my favorite neighborhood for 5 years, I reluctantly slunk back to Brooklyn, and took the first place I saw. I had been prepared for a long, arduous slog through ever-dwindling prospects. I couldn't believe the two-bedroom palace hadn't been taken. I couldn't believe I passed the credit check. The super's wife had evidently told the landlord she wanted me to move in over anyone else who had looked at the place. Both the real-estate agent and landlord told me that I was a truly beautiful girl, and they wished me luck with my writing- I'd just gotten word of the book contract. I felt charmed. The landlord even agreed to snip off a week of the first months' rent, because I hadn't signed the lease until the 5th. It was a rent-stabilized place in emerging-as-hipsterville (read: soon to be expensive), but I was not surrounded by hipsters- I was living in a tenement of families. It was bigger than The Shithole, which I'd had to share with two other people, and it was all miiiiiiiiiiine! I was ready to stay for years. Which I will, if all of my neighbors are somehow struck dumb, or become vegetables.

From deadlines to, uh, Britney Spears

2006-03-05T22:40:00.000-05:00

I've never been good with deadlines. Just the word alone conjures up unpleasant associations. The reality conjures them up further.

I have a book deadline coming up in less then two weeks, for the first half of a manuscript. Ever since I signed it, it's been a combination trophy/albatross. Really great! and really nerve-wracking. This is the biggest procrastination I've ever engaged in, and it's making me do weird things like stay home all weekend, missing out on the world, only to eye my computer and tall stack of resource material warily, like they're going to join forces and attack me in my sleep.

No going to Michelle's birthday, even with the lure of cocktails that involved blenders, and fondue (When the hell did my friends starting getting into fondue? That's yuppie territory.), no potentially fun party in the neighborhood, no seeing my friend Jennifer do her trapeze act, no trip to Roosevelt Island for an Oscars party. I don't really care about the Oscars, but going to Roosevelt Island means taking a tram, which is exciting.

Instead, I spent half of today rearranging furniture, and I vaccuumed on three separate occasions this weekend. I have faced facts that this thing is not going to get half-written on its own in two weeks. This evening I spoke to my brother Colin, who assured me this type of thing happens all the time. He pointed out that a friend of his handed in a manuscript YEARS late. That made me feel a little bit better, so I actually did begin to work on it. That is until I came across this gem, in that winding world wide web way that can lead you so off the path you were originally on, and deposit you in the world of retarded useless knowledge:

Sorry, but Britney Spears's jewel-encrusted bra is no longer for sale to benefit hurricane victims. The Associated Press reported that the bra, offered at auction on eBay, where bidding had reached $47,000, was removed by Ms. Spears because she was concerned that it was being sold as something it was not. Though she wore it for an HBO promotion, she said, she did not wear it during a performance of ''Baby One More Time.''
-Arts, Briefly Compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder, The New York Times, October 11, 2005

Everyone knows why Britney really did it. She saw the bidding price climb like that and said to herself “That $47,000 could be for me! Someday! I'm not rich enough!”
I mean, like anyone who would bid thousands of dollars on a fancy bra with the possible essence of Britney tit-sweat really cares where the hell she wore it, or for what occasion. Like she was that concerned by it being sold under hair-splitting false pretenses.

Yeah, I know it's not news, I know she's a fabulous benevolent angel and really philanthropic at heart. You go girl!

And now this first post is about Britney Spears. Great.
This deadline is making me completely irrational.