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June 30, 2003
Trends in Lower Limb Amputation
No, it's not the next logical step in piercings and other body modifications...
Posted by me at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)
Freelancer's Journal: Article on Sesame Street
6/28/03
12:32 My sister Sylvie has this way of dropping her jaw in an open-mouthed grin which I find totally incapacitating. She does it when she's trying to bolster an obvious lie, or put an amusing face on a pathetic situation, or just when she's playing around. I think I actually do it too. I know one or two other people my age who will; Wade is one of them. But our parents do not do it. Where did we learn this gesture?
It's a Muppet thing. Imagine Kermit the Frog introducing an act of shambling monsters which he knows hasn't practiced well. Imagine Ernie trying to joke around a cover-up of how Bert's favorite lamp got broken, or Fozzie delivering a punchline. We were raised by furry little homunculi without the facial muscles to turn up the corners of their mouths, and damned if we didn't learn a thing or two from them beyond G sounding like "guh guh guh guh" or "juh juh juh juh." (It's the latter for Gillian, the former for Gus, thanks.)
3:27 Alarming number of blind alleys in this article. I keep writing whole paragraphs and then junking them. It tends to be the same subject matter, too – I'm having a very hard time figuring out what it is about the early days of Sesame Street I should be summarizing.
3:34 Half-conscious decision to turn off my ear for prose style and just blaze from idea to idea, for now, will I hope be helpful. Or maybe I will come back to the paragraph later, freak about how crappy it sounds, and yank it out.
4:40 After another break, another large chunk of text is consigned to the bottom of my document to await future use or deletion.
5:00 Tearful letter to editor not yet sent. Paragraph on Sesame Street and positive male role models deleted. I didn't have much to say and none of it was firsthand. Is there any way I can think of these things in advance, when I'm interviewing, so I don't come to holes like this later?
5:08 Rewrote and sent tearful letter to editor. Is she going to have to hand-hold me through this? How much of a freak am I? I remember reading about Tom Wolfe having trouble figuring out how to write a piece and just stream-of-consciousing the whole thing to his editor, but I'm no Tom Wolfe and there are limits to what's acceptable. Sometimes I feel like I'm always going to be stuck in the first few months of Michael Lesy's class, unclear of what's expected of me, trying to drag myself through assignments I am supposed to be personally invested in when I'm not anymore, agonizing over the structure which will best support my material, wishing like hell I'll amount to something someday and knowing that I probably won't.
It's time to take a shower or play DDR or do something else which has nothing to do with this article, even though I can't justify it when I've taken so many breaks since I started.
6/29/03
7:38 Procrastination #280,403: Libations for my homies -- homies who are slugs. They get the Coors Light that has been sitting around my house forever, poured out in a lovely petunia-shaded setting. Coors Light: it's the right beer now -- for slugs!
7:52 Finally a breakthrough: my problem is that computer screens are too small. I print out various drafts and return to the tried-and-true method of moving around snippets of paper. Without this tool, I crawl from paragraph to paragraph like a caterpillar, unable to see the direction the tree is growing. Glyph: see? I need meatspace. Your machines still can't do this for me yet.
8:21 The neighbor comes over to regale me with a recap of his depressing trip to his in-laws'. I make it very clear that I am working, and don't want to talk. He pulls up a chair anyway. I don't make eye contact, and continue to make notes. As he gets up to leave, he looks down at me taping snippets of article together and says "Well, you keep working on your project." Hon, it may look like arts and crafts, but it's not.
8:50 I am on the most unbelievable roll. The piece has an ending, even, I'm actually laughing at things, and I've rediscovered an urge to actually write compelling prose. Hooray! Now the cheap reward of Malcolm In The Middle reruns.
9:00 Damn you, Rupert Murdoch! What is this made-for-TV-remake-of-some-fakeass-jihad-terrorist-bullcrap?! I want my relatively healthy family sitcom!
9:02 PBS is running a documentary on Margaret Thatcher. What is this, some vast right-wing conspiracy? (Oh. Right.)
9:07 It's too late to see the plants I'm watering, but I do anyway. More reasons to love meatspace: just as I was starting to complain there were no fireflies this year, one blazes past my window. And it smells like someone in the neighborhood is roasting marshmallows.
10:36 Unbelievable heat lightning out here tonight, or heat thunder at least. There's a constant rumble outside.
12:36 I don't think I've looked up from my computer in the last two hours. I also can't believe I'm done before one a.m. when this has bedevilled me so badly, eating up every moment of my free time over the past week.
Posted by me at 12:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2003
More milestones
Unfortunately, it turns out that because of this post I am the #1 Google hit for (a certain pair of underage teen stars) in (a certain famous nudie mag), in addition to still being #1 for Dancing the Crip Walk and some combination involving "brown recluse spider bites" which I haven't figured out yet. This is sort of the horrible downside to Google. I do like getting traffic, but I wish there was some way I could drive Harper's and Granta readers to my site instead... the people who hit this page are absolutely bathetic morons.
Posted by me at 4:53 PM | Comments (4)
June 27, 2003
So Long, Oolong
Oolong, the Internet superstar, apparently died at the age of 8, a ripe old age for a rabbit, I think. (warning: link contains very sad dying/dead rabbit pictures). Apparently it was some time ago; I hadn't heard.
Usually when you see pictures of domestic animals, they're posed horribly (more so today with the horrible image-warping abilities transferred to us by various pieces of software) or burdened with maudlin sentiments (need I even mention the Hang In There! kitten?). And of course, because how we feel about our pets is generally not conveyed well by those of us without professional photography skills, many personal pet photos are poorly lit, poorly framed, plagued with redeye, etc.
And as for wild animals -- I'm thinking back to my Ranger Rick days, here -- in addition to the sentimentality problem and other issues of representation (majestic eagle! free mustang! graceful dolphin! which would all just as soon bite you as look at you), there's the problem of catching them at all. When you see their photos, they've often been separated out from anything indicative of what their environment, expressions or postures mean.
I don't know how the Oolong oeuvre reads to Japanese readers -- for all I know, what I translate as the weirdness of putting a waffle on a rabbit's head may have all the cloyingness of a beribboned basket of kittens to this guy's neighbors -- but there was something hypnotic in the routine attention the photographer paid to the rabbit, his expressions (not easy to capture; rabbits, unlike dogs, have mostly inscrutable faces), his half-domestic, half-rural environment, and his interactions with his owner, many of which were very nicely captured.
I don't want to get too maudlin, but there's something soothing about seeing someone on the other side of the world caring for a small animal. At the risk of apologizing for too-featuresy news (which I'll generally apologize for anyway, because I am a features gal at heart), I think it's a nice counterbalance to news that people in the rest of the world are preoccupied with killing you. (I have to say, though, the front page of the New York Times had an unusual amount of heartening news today, what with the Supreme Court's getting itself out of the private lives of gay people, some stabilization in the city budget, Strom Thurmond wobbling off this mortal coil, and a NY state court finally recognizing that the state underfunds NYC schools so we can maybe get to work on that problem now. Oh, and Bush provided some much-needed comic relief by trying to pretend he knows how to solve Africa's problems. No links for you, I'm busy.)
Anyway, as James said, wear a pancake on your head in memory.
Posted by me at 11:47 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Rock on a Spring
I swear, I nearly wet my pants. It is a damn good thing that Brooke Spangler is finally putting up her own essay site, because she is the best goddamn narrative humor writer I know (and no slouch in other genres, either). (Apologies to my other very funny friends; most of you are in other genres anyway. I mean, Jon does cranky consumer reviews, the folks over at The Weekly Week do surrealist journalism... you know.)
Brooke wins the Thank You For Saving My Ass Award this week. If it wasn't for her Rock on a Spring bit totally making me lose my shit, I probably would not be making so much headway on the Sesame Street article which has been bedevilling me for weeks. Here's a tip for those of you who are still baffled by my tendency to self-destruct moments after we make contact: a little levity is always, always, always the best way to greet me. Hey, I think it's the best way to greet anyone. Asking "how are you?" is more likely to make me dwell on the irritating things of which my life seems to be composed. I am almost always willing to talk to Glyph because he tends to either lead with some compelling new idea he has, or knock me completely clear of my rut with some comically hyperbolic or inappropriate greeting. Jacob had this period where he'd say "HELLEWWWW?" when he answered the phone, which led to soothing, distracting, twenty-some-odd-minute koans of repeating the phrase.
So yes! Be on your toes! All the time! It's BETTER FOR ME (tm) that way. (BETTER FOR ME (tm) is a registered trademark of the DSWJ and may not be employed, no matter how appropriately, to describe the self-absorption of any other blogger. We have lawyers, you know.)
Posted by me at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2003
Just what I've been looking for!
Some of you probably saw this on Memepool, but it's too good not to pass along. Someone has created a tee-shirt apologizing for Bush's actions, helpfully translated into all the official UN languages! I was really looking for one that would apologize for American foreign policy generally, but this is a very satisfactory substitute.
Posted by me at 2:52 PM | Comments (1)
June 22, 2003
Detritus: G is for Growing Weary of PR Flacks, A is for Agar, Y is for Yuppies...
Had a few truly awful moments today in trying to finish my article on Sesame Street. I called a major Muppeteer and more or less had the door slammed in my face... as part of my reciprocation to the party who gave me her number I had to agree not to mention who gave it to me, and make it clear that the Workshop wasn't responsible either... This made her nervous, which I guess made sense, especially since I was calling her at home. It struck me after I hung up and went to hang out in the rain with my tomato plant, rocking self-nourishingly on the front porch, that had I simply dropped the name of a veteran kids TV writer/producer I know personally, she would probably have been willing to talk to me; that's worked in the past. I was momentarily irritated by the fact. Personal connections make journalism easier. Somehow the field feels like it ought to be more "scientific," more clinically detached from one's own social standing... Just another one of those see-through democracy moments.
* * *
Here are sites I visited while half-researching, half-procrastinating on the Sesame Street piece:
Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?, first hit on Google's second page of results for "sesame street." So much for the PR department's attempts to keep the words "Sesame Street" and "bitch" off the same page. Get with the program, PR... you can't protect your memes forever, no matter how many lawyers you own.
A Salon article on a Snoop Doggy Dogg TV show, in which he sounds like a parody of himself -- like Herbert Kornfeld.
* * *
I have a crush on the Chrysler Building. I stare at it for what seems like hours at a time when I get to go to the printer and retrieve my documents. It looks different every time I look at it. I want to take pictures. I think the woman whose office I am looking through would freak out, but I want to. It makes me feel dirty and corporate, but then the rest of the job does too.
Although I should note it's one of the friendliest and most pleasant offices I have ever worked in, despite the periodic outbursts of base idiocy. People joke and talk all the time, and don't even pretend they have to get back to work. I wonder how long this will last for them.
* * *
I have wandered into a weird ether of Friendster where I click on a friend of friends of friends and when the page loads I discover that I have ventured too far off of the initial chain of connection and I am actually more closely connected to the same person through a different set of people. I have also found the first person who is connected to me two completely separate ways and one of them does not go through God. Although it still goes through Jessamyn which is about the same because she knows everyone. Anyway I think these phenomena have something to do with Amherst and Brown. The dish of agar we yuppie larva swim in has a very definite hard plastic boundary. It is round.
* * *
In other news, my brain is ON FIRE. I have not eaten enough today and my brain is where I feel it when I don't eat enough. And nobody comes to feed me because I live in Queens. And appear to be a functioning adult. Where's my wife? I thought I ordered one last week. Yes, Mom, I ordered one for you too.
Posted by me at 2:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 20, 2003
(cue minor key music)
Does anyone know what kind of insect this is?! They come crawling down from my ceiling in the summertime, frequently right over my bed. I saw an article in the New Yorker a few years back about some endangered species of centipede which lives on leaf mulch in Central Park and wondered if this was it. Unfortunately, after shooting this particular specimen I knocked it down and subsequently lost track of it. This means it is crawling around my room someplace, untracked.
Right then. If I die of some horrible bite, you all know who to blame. Mr. Legsy O'Terrifying, there. I mean, look at the size of those freaking antennae!!! And what kind of harmless insect has the exact same antennae coming out of its ass?! And black-knuckled leg joints?! Jeebus! I mean, it looks like a centipede, it looks like a daddy long-legs, it hangs out over my bed and doesn't have a very good grip on the wall -- what's not to love?!!!!
Posted by me at 1:02 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 17, 2003
My Birthday
... is July 16th. If you want to give me something, please consider helping me sell my car or find a roommate for September instead. I would rather live with friends I know, but I'm not hearing the moving song from any of you, so I'm not all that hopeful :\ I should clarify that I am being kicked out of my all-too-sweet deal in Sunnyside, so don't come to me looking for free rent. I'd be happy to move someplace else in Sunnyside, though.
If you are in the New York area or were planning to visit around then, let me know whether the weekend before or the weekend after the 16th would be better for you to partay. A rather astounding array of brilliant people I know are in town nowadays. You really need to meet each other.
Posted by me at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2003
One Hundred Unfinished Projects
Finally, the debut of a project that kept me from posting on my blog most of this spring:
This came out of a night when I was trying to get an essay on being bourgeois to work, realizing I wouldn't be able to, looking back over the path of broken potshards that is my hard disk, and feeling depressed. Also to some extent by Lynda Barry's encouragement to paint out your own demons in One! Hundred! Demons!. Unfinished projects are definitely my demons. I feel better having purged them. Enjoy.
Posted by me at 12:05 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
June 14, 2003
Today's Illustrated Delight
I have been to Spike and Mike's animation festivals for years, with some recent absenteeism, but somehow I did not become an ardent fan of Don Hertzfeldt until introduced to him last night (thank you, Phaedra!) He's much like Jhonen Vasquez both in eyeball-drawing style and outlook. Alas none of his animation is on the site, but he has some strips which are great. I especially like Election. And this is one of those sites where the commentary (in this case a FAQ) is every bit as funny as the art it goes with, so go read it.
Oh, crap. The man was born a year before I was. Like it's not bad enough that one of my Hampshire classmates was published in Harper's this month. What the fuck am I doing with my life? sshjjeeeeeebus.....
Posted by me at 10:38 PM | Comments (2)
June 13, 2003
incestuous
That sounds painfully incestuous. -- baconPosted by me at 8:57 PM
June 12, 2003
Fries and Tammy Faye and Propaganda
Check The Good Senator for additional coverage of this week's spree, including a soul-searching, boundary-breaking evening on Second Avenue.
Trailer Park
Manhattan, 23rd St. at 8th
G: Oh, this is where I wanna be.
J: This is a good place to be.
G: This is exactly where I want to be.
J: This is just like Bimbo's. Did I take you there when we were in Seattle? No, I think we were too fry-focused. It's got the exact same kitsch.
G: There's more than one picture of Tammy Faye Bakker here. (beat) The pregnant woman with the cigarette and the beer and the flamingo slippers is a little over the top.
J: (looks around and sees the mannequin G is referring to) Oh, I thought you meant a real woman.
(there is a pole-and-base paper towel dispenser on the table)
G: Nice touch.
J: Just like my house.
* * *
The waitress appears. We negotiate cheese fries.
Waitress: We only have sweet-potato fries.
J: Fascinating.
G: We'll try that.
W: Do you want the cheese sauce? They make it here, it's really good.
J: (quickly) No.
G: It's a matter of scientific accuracy.
J: Is that what it is.
Waitress leaves with order, returns with drinks.
G: The iced tea is like dishwater.
A waiter with precious Williamsburg-boy floppy hair arrives with the cheese fries and gives them to the two men at the next table down. We don't stop him until our neighbors see the basket and recoil in horror.
J: These are good for you! Yes, they are quite satisfactory.
G: I don't know what I think. Some of them are underdone.
J: (with a string of cheese dangling from her mouth) They're fall-off-the-bone tender!
G: They're no good with ketchup.
J: Ketchup is a fine idea! (adds more)
G: They are blister-my-mouth hot.
J: They are full of grease and charm. They could use some bacon.
G: YEAH. The liquid consistency of the cheese and the fries is about the same, which is great.
J: There appears to have been a layering oversight.
Roy Orbison sings in the background
* * *
J: (casting an eye over the nearby gumball dispenser) Are those chiclets only five cents? Do you only get one?
G: The question is are they all fused together.
J: It's worth finding out.
She returns with a fistful of scabrous white chiclet tabs plus a red and an orange one
J: I really like the white ones, but... Do you want the red or the orange one?
G: (hesitating) Orange. (chews) This is very off. Not crisp.
* * *
Fries, iced tea and a Sprite came to $12.80!!!
G: Most expensive fries ever.
J: (quoting the receipt) "Book your private shindig with us -- birthdays, wedding receptions, bail jumping, parole violation party, etc.!"
G: That doesn't make up for the high price.
Posted by me at 7:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2003
Fries and Propaganda: Wake Up and Smell the Bacon Cake
Rainbow Diner, Woodside, NY J and G are joined via phone by Mack
J: And you can't give it back to them! You can't stare at their dicks because it just makes them happy. (pause) We just have to shoot them.
G: (dutifully writing on placemat)
J: Are you gonna put the part about shooting them?
G: Just the part about burning them. Did you say that? Oh, I guess it was me. Here, you write.
J: That's not part of what I do. I'm chasing the bugs off the table. I'm busy. Editor's note: they were only gnats
* * *
G: (returning from getting cash) Mack Elder tells me he has six degrees of separation from the New York City watershed. (to Mack) You'll have to hook me up, I need some water.
M: Need a shed?
G: I don't need a shed, I need a shack.
M: A love shack? Baby love shack?
G: Yes, a love shack baby love shack.
J: (delivering a look that is just fraught)
G: I'm getting a look, gotta go. (hangs up)
(censored)
* * *
G: These are good. Not cheesy enough, though.
J: They're not layered. You need to start bringing your laptop.
G: Ketchup! All over it!
J: Bring Laurie's.
G: These potatoes are subpar. Nice shape, though. (Little half-circles)
J: I like the way they're lightly charred.
(beat)
G: Mack's the only one I know who says "Yum!" when I say "cheese fries."
J: You know, you think I'd at least be able to get Gregor into it. But we went out to a bar, it was on St. Patrick's Day, and we had some chili fries -- I don't mean with chili, I mean with chili powder on them -- and they made us sick.
* * *
J: Those were like 3,000 times better than the Whately fries. [The Whately fries are] the only ones we're gonna remember except Ivar's, with the dive-bombing seagulls.
G: We've gotta do this with some famous person sometime. (thinks) Derrida.
J: What is wrong with you?!
G: Bob Balaban. Just because they have funny names.
J: Bloomberg.
* * *
J: (reveals Nat's plan to send Dan Savage a bacon cake, as per his expressed longing in his book.) Sure, like the editor at The Stranger is going to accept a piece of cake for Dan Savage from some guy off the street. "I'm sure I haven't pissed off anyone in my nationally syndicated column lately..."
* * *
J: (writing on placemat) The guy sitting behind you is eating something that smells like feet.
G: I just smell glorious dinerly aroma.
J: Wake up and smell the feet, Andrews.
Posted by me at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 9, 2003
System Update
In case any of you have been trying to reach me via my Hampshire mail since the weekend, please be advised that the server was taken offline over the weekend and as a result mail is badly backed up if not outright blocked. Please try my gus at twistedmatrix (It's Dot Com (tm)) address instead.
Posted by me at 2:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 8, 2003
Unfreundlich
I got on Friendster (why does it make me feel so dirty?!) and I discovered I am two degrees of separation away from Martha Stewart.
Dude, I hate Friendster. I don't want to think about all the people out there I could be dating right now. I don't want to read about how boring and provincial everyone is, and think about how boring and provincial I am among them.
Posted by me at 7:32 PM | Comments (3)
I've met Eric Raymond. I've conversed with Eric Raymond.
And contrary to his own opinion, Eric Raymond is no 007.
Posted by me at 4:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 6, 2003
Dialogue from the Office
Co-worker A: And it's supposed to rain through this weekend.
Co-worker B: What is this, June?
Co-worker A: (disgustedly) I don't want to hear anything about a water shortage.
Me: (explosively, from another cubicle) But it's not the same thing!
(office falls silent)
Me: Sorry, I just get a little exercised about this...
Co-worker A: What do you mean it's not the same thing?
Me: The rain that's falling now isn't necessarily going to replenish the water tables.
(office still silent)
Me: It's the same thing as with global warming -- you're looking at the big picture, at an overall pattern.
Co-worker A: OoooK.
Me: (realize I've blown my cover, guiltily return to adjusting the volume of a Zap Mama sound clip)
Co-worker A: Somebody's a little passionate...
Me: (silent prayer) please instruct me as to whether there's some purpose to my being in this office among these profoundly passionless people. Just give me the strength to do what I need to do here without blowing my cover before I bail out, and the prudence not to go on some ill-thought-out rant about ignorant Americans' responsibility for 9/11.
Posted by me at 2:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 4, 2003
jesus-shaped monkey
I think he's awesome, really, but I just imagine him with this big jesus-shaped monkey on his back -- anonPosted by me at 11:26 PM
Quote of the Day
"Korea is a part of China, right?" -- woman in my office
You'd think by now she'd have her ears open AT LEAST enough to know that just saying "Korea," as if there was only one, was silly...
Posted by me at 3:04 PM | Comments (0)
Poll Time
I don't have polling software, so please respond in comments. Here's the question: do I work at a pharmaceuticals advertising co. this summer, or a summer camp?
Pros of pharma co.: Opportunities to learn more about this fascinating ('hem.) field which will probably feed into and inspire work I do in the fall, officemates I know I can tolerate for three months, supervisors who think I am a genius, more chances to pad my resume as a copy editor, lots of free brainspace for dreaming up writing projects.
Pros of summer camp: Fun work, pretty neighborhood, ostensibly reasonable management, not sitting at a desk all day, get to feel like an important member of a loving community, will feed into and possibly inspire work I do in the fall, will build on prior experience in teamwork especially.
Cons of pharma co: EVIL. May stain the soul or eventually corrode my mood about working there.
Cons of summer camp: The commute is an absolute bitch (Washington Heights from Sunnyside?! An hour and twenty minutes!) and I would be required to be "on" for eight hours a day with a bunch of kids, as the most senior member of a classroom team. Plus my resume already has more than enough of this kind of work on it, and I don't want to be typecast.
Salaries are pretty much equivalent, and this is only for three months. Please respond by right away, the pharma co. wants me deciding Wednesday.
Posted by me at 11:01 AM | Comments (4)
June 3, 2003
Small World Dept., Bureau #33411
Cat and Girl's creator mentions Eugene Mirman in her donations section on June 2. (That link will quickly go stale.) She misspells his name, though. It's funny to think I might have seen her around town and not known it, and funny to think she thinks Eugene is cool enough to mention. Not that I don't. I think she's cool, too.Posted by me at 11:03 PM | Comments (1)
"Remove her clothes and give her a hub, say 'Thank you!'"
Contrary to Japanese popular opinion,, cats don't really like cross-dressing as chickens. I have to admit, though, the cats shown here do not seem to be too irritated by the costumes, and it's all very cute. Maybe it's because most of them are Scottish Folds. Or maybe they've been stuffed.
Posted by me at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)
PUPPET EMERGENCY
Gizmonics.com is up for sale. Where is Joel Hodgson?! Is he all right?!!
OK, ok, I'll stop panicking; he's writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live (ecccch).
Posted by me at 1:59 AM | Comments (1)
Hyperbolic Estate
I had another unbelievable New York conversation last night. It rivals the one Klahr and I had the other day, in which he decried the Archie Bunker stereotype of Queens, saying he mostly only sees Koreans out here now, and told me what I ought to be writing about in Coney Island is the gated community of white folks in the middle of a rather dejected piece of urban blight (Stereotype B, he said) which rests on the smoking grave of an amusement park (Stereotype A). All very well and good if you're Tracy Kidder, I thought, but this is a puff piece for the borough president.
(The b.p. apparently hated the lede from my Coney Island article, which ran "Coney Island is not what it was, nor is it ever likely to be so again. Such is the nature of entertainment: the tastes and sophistication of audiences change." The other article, a jerry-rigged piece of blow about Brooklyn studios which had neither style nor substance, he adored so much he changed all of two words in it. I will never understand some people. For example, myself. Where did I get this ability to write crap which is pitch-perfect for the ears of local bureaucrats? Did I really pick up that much during one summer at Sunset? Or was it all those thank-you letters my mom made me write?)
Sorry, major digression. So I was talking with my editor, and when we hit the first line of the studios piece, about the skyrocketing prices of Manhattan real estate, she went all Old Faithful on my ass about how Manhattan has always had wildly overpriced housing, even back when her grandmother was young.
"To live in Manhattan, you had to live like a god or you lived like a rat. There was no in-between," she said.
She proceeded to give me a run-down of exactly what had happened to just about every neighborhood in the city, in such a tone that the entire time I wasn't quite sure if I had made her mad. Carroll Gardens has always been nice Williamsburg has always been nice; Canarsie -- African Americans now, had been all white-Jewish before, but all the Jews moved to Jersey (she has moved to Jersey); the Lower East Side was DISGUSTING, Park Slope was DISGUSTING. Quite a few neighborhoods were all-capitals DISGUSTING in her estimation. Park Slope was, she said, where all the "wealthy people from Manhattan" had infiltrated.
"In the seventies, you walked on Sixth Avenue (in Brooklyn) with your key out your sneakers on your glasses on and you MOVED," she told me. The spiel ended with "It's a different world. We grew up with black and white TV."
With apologies to Itamar, New York City has got to be the most hotly-argued-about piece of ground anywhere. Or maybe I just think that because I've been living here too long. New York has a way of severely limiting your perspective, I think. You get a sense of how big it is, and you give up on having perspective at all. You pick one little half-acre of rhetorical ground to hoe, one three-block area to get incensed about, and you develop a flawed and nearsighted case to argue about it over and over. And it's better to watch than a fireworks display, because you have absorbed the fine art of hyperbole if you've lived here long enough. No offense, Klahr. I just think you natives are funny. Like humorous funny. No, I do not want a pair of cement boots, put those away.
Speaking of living here too long, I had a frisson the other day which I never thought would come over me: I considered moving back to Pasadena and thought to myself "Good lord, how provincial, I never." Venice Beach maybe, the Bay Area certainly, probably West Hollywood or Silverlake, but not Pasadena. And Barstow also sounds less doable than it did a few months ago. I am addicted to places which are about art now. Pasadena has art, and it has many other wonderful things, but it is not About Art. It is About Its Friends And Relations, I think, more than anything else.
Parts of New York are most definitely About Art. I am having some serious problems getting out the sand which collected in my shoes while I was in Coney Island. Some people out there are trying -- how successfully? -- to make it About Art. It's a weird place to have escape fantasies about -- it is only sixteen miles from here -- but it's the beach, and there's some lovely weirdos out there. More on that eventually. That's all for tonight.
Posted by me at 1:03 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 2, 2003
Trixie Belden Yaoi
That somewhere out there (in Oklahoma?!) there is a person who runs both a Trixie Belden fansite and a yaoi site (that's gay Anime pr0n, for those of you who, like me, were not paying enough attention; alas, the rest of the site is not as steamy as the front page) just about makes my day. That this person also has a child makes my week. I am less than excited that all the sites I can find bearing this my new favorite pr0n make all sorts of worried noise about having MALE/MALE SEX on them (folks, it's anime -- all the men are effeminate! nobody can tell anyway!), and I am of course less than thrilled to find yet another blog devoted to one's daily purchases. Still, shine on, you crazy gaddam diamond.
Posted by me at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
Activism: Powered by Guiltium (tm)
I feel really, really, really, really bad that I didn't write my elected officials about the relaxing of the FCC regulations. I kept putting it off, and then I got busy and then it was too late. And goddamn it, it's ostensibly my issue...
So to make up for it, I'm going to link to a bill to change regulations on overtime pay so that employers have more flexibility to give workers comp time instead. Everybody go send a letter, it only takes a second.
Posted by me at 8:50 PM | Comments (0)
SEE! The Dancing Sausage Live In Performance!
My dance studio is having an open house this Saturday starting at 4:00. I'll be performing a short West African dance called Goombe with my class. Please stop by! It's a good opportunity to check out the studio, as many of its incredibly diverse dances will be on display (belly dance, various Indian classical -- and non-classical! -- styles, and probably flamenco at the very least will be on display; I know we also have a hula class, a Thai dance class, and a Native American dance class using the space). The studio is Lotus Arts, at 109 West 27th Street, 8th Floor in Manhattan. And no, I am not linking you to their website; I don't want you running away screaming just because their website is so goddamn ugly. The studio is much better than its site, though it is small. Saturday June 7 at 4:00! Be there! I'm going to run out to watch the Belmont Stakes afterwards and if you're inclined to take in a truly peculiar set of events that day you can join me.
Posted by me at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)