November 1st. My brother Philip and I join the “Day of the Dead” revelry at “Forever Hollywood” cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. By the time we arrive, the sun has set and prayer candles of orange and blue have been placed on top of tombstones throughout the grounds. The winding walkway leads us to the reflecting pool commemorating the Douglas Fairbanks, father and son. The surrounding area has been set up with decorative, skeletal altars celebrating family, friends and even Hollywood icons that have passed on. One group has spread a buffet over an above ground crypt, complete with tablecloth and candelabra dripping its waxy tenants. I decide that I like this holiday very much, predicting that it may prove to be my favorite in years to come.
Honoring deceased ancestors is traditional among several diverse cultures; and such celebrations are traced back as far as ancient Egypt, China, Japan and Aztec Mexico when departed souls were venerated during the great festivals of Osiris, Ching Ming, Obon, and Dia de los Muertos. My favorite is an African tribal ritual mourning the dead over a three-day period. On the first, they physically fight to beat out their anger; the second, they weep; and the third, they feast in honor of their loved one’s final rite of passage. Also traditional are “Irish” wakes where everyone gets drunk, cries, fights and then doesn’t speak to each other until the next wedding or funeral. Say what you want, but there is something civilized about this admission of feelings. Certainly Americans observe Memorial Day, but it usually entails ribs, beer and a four-day workweek. And yes, there’s Halloween, the dead conjured up by children pushing around a oujii board in the attic, sugar dripping from their mouths. During his interview for an HBO special on “6 Feet Under”, Alan Ball asserts that in America, death is a topic largely avoided, that most of us have a hard time acknowledging grief. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but I can relate to that.
Later, my brother and I splurge at Sushi Ryo on Western near an “adult magazine” shop and a Chinese/Donut take-out, common in the Los Angeles Basin. For you outsiders, don’t be fooled, the best sushi bars are often in grimy strip malls. Over our spicy tuna, we talk about our father, a subject we have managed to skate around. We agree that not a day goes by that we don’t think about him. He was a memorable person, bringing a bright light to every space he filled. Both Philip and I were with him when he left this life. I don’t conjure up the night he died very easily. Don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to talk about it. Maybe that’s why I feel part of my life has been stilted, rendered somewhat immobile, as if in wet cement. I’m stuck in the Bubble Lounge in lower Manhattan trying to decide whether the CPR I learned during my 6th grade swimming lessons will revive my father.
In the past few years, defibrillators have become a mainstay in public places. Many people over sixty have them installed at home. After the Angry Man’s sister in law, an ER doctor, bluntly announced their 85% success rate, I had to leave the room. I thought I was going to be sick. Instead of honoring my father’s life, I’ve been avoiding my own grief.
When I find the courage to go back to March 25, 2002, I remember it to be a perfect evening. I was working for Disney, preparing for the premiere of “The Rookie” in New York. Bob was a huge baseball fan and many of the old timers he knew would be attending, Fred Lynn, Willie Mays and Yaz, among them. I was thrilled he could be there. I arranged for him to meet me at the hotel where we would hook up with my brother and get dinner. It all sounds so boring in retrospect, but the thing is, we had a great time. We motored down to Raoul’s on Prince Street in Bob’s Chrysler LeBaron, (I liked to call it his old man car). Bob had a few martinis, smoked a pack of Benson & Hedges and expostulated about his favorite subjects: sports, politics, Marilyn, Jack and Bobby. But he also took the time to tell us how proud he was of us, how he was grateful that Phil was pursing his music, that Siobhan & Frank were wonderful parents to their children, that I had followed my dreams. He gave me some much needed advice, was saddened by the disappearance of a family member, worried about my mother’s health, thought the democratic party was going to hell in a fast car. We talked about so many things of relevancy, snatches of this conversation come up even now, and I think, is it weird spiritual coincidence, or did he have a gut instinct that he would be leaving the earth soon, just as soon as he shook hands with Willie Mays? What I remember most clearly, for myself, is looking across the table, through the smoke, and smiling, thinking, “I love this man. I really love this man”. And I should feel lucky that I have that, that there was no unfinished business, that we had a pretty honest relationship.
When people ask about it, half of them will say, “What a way to go. Steak, martinis and jazz”. My friend Vanessa, who was performing at the club, recounted, “One moment I was looking over and there was Bob smiling, one kid at either side, and the next moment, he was gone”. It was as quick as that. I even thought I could see him the doorway, trying to tell me that it would be OK. Later on, the doctors said there was nothing I could’ve done. That if the EMTs couldn’t revive him, I probably couldn’t have either.
His exit strategy was especially poignant as Philip and I steered the LeBaron through a freak late March rainstorm, meeting my sister at a truck stop along I-95 truck stop during the eight-hour drive she had from Massachusetts. But the rain. It blinded us, threatened to deter our way, but we refused to pull over. I think my brother would have driven to the very bottom of Florida if we hadn’t been on autopilot.
My mother stretched out her arms to us, already having emailed family and friends, arranged for his body to be transported to Virginia, requested death certificates, written his obituary, and kept herself busy, busy, busy. How do you fill a space that’s been occupied for over forty years? Two days later, strangers occupied the pea green velvet pews of the Elkton church. The minister started her sermon with: “I didn’t really know Bob…” Having only lived there for about four or five years, there was no way she could have fully appreciated the spirit he was given. Thankfully, an old friend, Big Jim, recalled some funny stories from the Pittsburgh days and my cousin Rob got up and spoke. Three of my oldest friends flew in from Sudbury. My mother’s family had moved mountains to be there. My oldest brother, Frank, gave a moving eulogy.
When I got back to LA, and my bed, and my desk and all of those cards and phone messages that are so very nice, but what do you do with all of them? I couldn’t think. And for the past three years, I’ve been avoiding the memory. It’s so painful, that I’ve adopted forgetting as my anesthesia. But the drug wears off eventually, and the energy spent trying to forget is really the aspect that brings the most pain. I knew my family was grieving as well, but when you are 3000 miles away from the inner circle, it becomes easy to isolate those complex emotions. And once you’re in that isolation, it’s so difficult to move away from it. It becomes the womb of wounds.
I recognize that I probably remain in shock, although it’s a combination of shock and gratitude. Emails announcing that Miss Trouble will be performing at the Bubble Lounge I cringe at, but I’m grateful that I was there, with my father. That he wasn’t alone. That Philip and I were by his side when he left this world, holding his hands, and that we were able to share a good meal, some loud liberal politics and a couple of Beefeater martinis for the road.
It was good to walk through this labyrinth of the dead and see people with hopelessly sad memorials for children, girlfriends and soldiers lost too young, but also to see people laughing, as if the skeletons they had erected were the source of humor and the dead were laughing right along. My father would have liked that. So, my brother and I decided that next year, we are going to create an altar for Bob, who’s spirit justly rightly deserves to live on and inspire others to love their life, whistle a happy tune, enjoy the subtleties of barbequing.
According to Oaxaca tradition, family should put out things that the dearly departed loved. That would be a very dry martini, garnished with green pimento stuffed olives, steak medium rare, Sinatra on the ipod. I put on “You Make Me Feel So Young”. This is the day I will remember, and by remembering, celebrate, my father.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Friday, November 11, 2005
The Angry Man... Part 2
The truth is out. I’ve been avoiding all of your questions about The Angry Man and the result of my trip to Martha's Vineyard. It’s also come to my attention that he’s discovered “google blog search” . When he used the phrase “coveted family retreat” to me in a snort one afternoon, I knew he had been snooping around. To be brief, I know he's read, and he knows I know. And, well, he’s still in the picture. On the periphery. Our relationship is like a photograph that you angrily tear up but then regret that you did because you may never see that person again, so you dig around your desk for scotch tape and put it back together, only to rue the sentiment and tear up again. Right now, that photo is in an envelope waiting to be tossed or restored.
But I digress. Back to August 19th.
Angry, we’ll call him for short, met me at the docks of the Edgartown ferry with a bouquet of pink roses. Roses! (I use an exclamation point because never once in the history of our lame excuse for a relationship has he ever sent me flowers, let alone stop and smell a flower). Although I tried not to show it, I was surprised and the gesture left me nervous. Angry had made such huge ruckus about meeting his father, who, he told me, was waiting at the house to greet me. However, it was the entire family whom were gathered in the kitchen, and introductions were hurriedly made before we were whisked off to a beach only accessible by kayaking across a small bay. This was not the nude beach, there were children present; but you may remember that Angry and his father frequent the other beach. “It’s not really a nude beach”, Angry explained, “it’s clothing optional”. This is a tradition that dates back to the 30s.
As the story goes, it is all attributed to those ”crazy artists and writers from New York City” remnants of the jazz age, frolicking in the surf. Lucy Vincent, whom the beach is named for, was not a nudist, but the town librarian circa 1890s who was so obsessed with the English language, she had a penchant for physically cutting words she didn’t like out of the very books she was charge to. It’s ironic that someone so iron clad on usage of language would be named for a nude beach, but as racy as it sounds, the Lucy Vincent really isn’t an orgy of naked bodies I supposed it would be; most people are in suits, and the shore is populated by the seasonal locals of Chilmark.
After his brother and the kids left, we hiked out to the same location for the rest of the week. There’s no diverting this plan. This is where father and son set up shop and proceed to hold court every day. It’s amazing. We would cart out about 50 pounds of beach chairs, umbrellas, water, books, various newspapers and then they sit in shade, clad with huge sun hats and SPF 50, greeting neighbors taking in exercise as they walk up and down the shore. It’s the little Lucy Vincent Beach social club.
The Vineyard is a nice life. You make your way to the kitchen/dining room in your own time, where coffee is brewing and the New York Times has already been rifled through, everyone having taken their favorite section, then you throw on your suit, haul your crap to Lucy Vincent for a couple of hours before heading off to the “Porch” for lunch where everyone you've just met at the beach has gathered now for 1/2 a meatball sub, come home, swim in the pool, take a hot tub, a shower, a nap, head over to Menemsha, (you’d recognize it from “Jaws”), for fresh lobster at “Larsen’s” (where Angry has an account) or clams at “The Bite”, sitting out on the beach watching the sun disappear in what was always a spectacular setting. Later, at home, everyone piles into the state of the art screening room to watch movies. And then you do it all again the next day. I’d like to add “summer” as a verb to my vocabulary.
At the beach, it was established that I was not Jewish. I was looked over and questioned by the older women who had been keeping an eye on Angry for years. He can be quite charming when he wants to be and I wasn’t surprised that he had a personal fan club. Blushingly, I answered their questions with “I think it could be very serious”. And his family loved me. His dad even called me a “tomato”, a sort of '50s slang for “hottie”. Why wouldn’t I think that things might be moving in a more permanent direction? I mean, I’m here, right?
Some of you stated in your comments, with a frankness that deserves heeding, that I should be forewarned of a person I call “The Angry Man”; a moniker which has stuck. I leave the Vineyard; spend the next week with my friend Robin on the Cape. Angry actually leaves the island to meet my family and friends in Dennis; my sister and brother-in-law coming up for the weekend especially at my request. And he was delightful throughout the BBQ steak and lobster meal, realizing that this was his “try-out”. And he boarded the first Hy-Line Ferry the next morning to Martha’s Vineyard. And for the rest of the time I was in Massachusetts, I didn’t hear from him, that is, unless I phoned him.
I tried, as an experiment, you see, if he would perchance, call me. After three days, I got “Hey, where have you been?” I slowly realized that I was doing all of the work. This lack of attention may work for some people, but I’m not one of them. I think you’ll agree that I’m not needy, but I do want a man who will call me, and maybe, just maybe, think about me at the end of the day and let me know. Let me steal a scene from “Beautiful Girls”. Tim Hutton and Uma Thurman are sharing a whiskey in an ice-fishing house when he asks “what does it” for her. She responds: “I need to hear four words before I go to sleep: Good night, sweet girl. I'm easy, I know, but a man who can muster up those four words is a man I wanna stay with”. And wait! Here’s another from “Singles”, that Cameron Crowe classic set in the Seattle scene before there was a Seattle scene. Bridget Fonda has narrowed down her impossible list of relationship requirements to a simple “bless you” after she sneezes. This is what I’m talking about. It’s not much, but these gestures mean the world to me. O.K. Maybe I’ve been working in the delusional, imaginative world of movies for too long, but I believe in that kind of love, and it’s what I want.
This is what I tell him, a month ago, back in Los Angeles, away from the Vineyard summer fantasy. As Kate Hepburn says “clean break up, no hangovers”, and our third was just that, neat. I think on some level, he understood. Agreeing on friendship, we met at the Nine Inch Nails concert for which we had previously gotten tickets (as a sidebar, it was great. Trent… sigh). This past month, we canoodled at Sonny McLean’s to watch the last game of the World Series.
But this no-fault breakup hasn’t prevented the hangovers. Last Friday, I received a phone call from Angry, who was on his way to see the Lakers opening game. Would I meet him at the
Grove?
It’s hard to resist the Grove; this is my guilty pleasure, the crème de la crème of shopping malls. However, I had volunteer work to do, was on my way west and told him so. My sixth sense should have warned me, I could hear the purring in his throat. I tried to change the subject, really I did. I asked about his best friend, who he met for dinner the night before. “She thinks we should be married” to which I sputtered and coughed. Oh really. “What do you think?” I replied, “and if the answer is yes, I have a list which is topped by a two carat flawless Tiffany Lucida ring. He said “Two carats. How much will that cost me?” I said I didn’t know and I didn't care, but it would remind him that I would be the priority in his life, not the bottom of the barrel after every last relative and Kobe Bryant. But when he said: “I think you should blow off your volunteer work and meet me at the Grove”.
Now don’t give me crap, but I did. He made a very convincing argument.
I diverted my course on the 101 to the 405 and headed over Laurel Canyon. When I got there, he was waiting for me at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf with a very passionate kiss and coffee. We lollygagged around the shops, ending in Lucky, where he insisted on buying me jeans that would accentuate my curves. I told you before, he loves my ass, and it’s hard to say no to that. He was shameless with the shop girls as I tried on ten or fifteen pairs until I found the perfect ones. I’m unclear as to future of this relationship. I love him. I know he loves me. I love these jeans. I've worn them every day since Friday. And as you know, the diamond has been elusive. Oooo, I’d love to have that diamond, even if the relationship doesn’t work out. You’re thinking I’m shallow, I'm superficial, but this girl loves sparkle. I had tried on this ring at Tiffany’s in the Bellagio Hotel with the speedracer/townie/metrosexual. He turned a greyish color, got nauseous and broke out in a visible flop sweat. My sister was there and she’ll tell you.
He refers to our little mess as the "Puddy Syndrome". David Puddy is a character on Seinfeld that dated Elaine. Apparently they broke up a lot. I didn't catch his reference, never having watched much Seinfeld. "I wouldn't admit that" ...said Puddy... I mean Angry.
But I digress. Back to August 19th.
Angry, we’ll call him for short, met me at the docks of the Edgartown ferry with a bouquet of pink roses. Roses! (I use an exclamation point because never once in the history of our lame excuse for a relationship has he ever sent me flowers, let alone stop and smell a flower). Although I tried not to show it, I was surprised and the gesture left me nervous. Angry had made such huge ruckus about meeting his father, who, he told me, was waiting at the house to greet me. However, it was the entire family whom were gathered in the kitchen, and introductions were hurriedly made before we were whisked off to a beach only accessible by kayaking across a small bay. This was not the nude beach, there were children present; but you may remember that Angry and his father frequent the other beach. “It’s not really a nude beach”, Angry explained, “it’s clothing optional”. This is a tradition that dates back to the 30s.
As the story goes, it is all attributed to those ”crazy artists and writers from New York City” remnants of the jazz age, frolicking in the surf. Lucy Vincent, whom the beach is named for, was not a nudist, but the town librarian circa 1890s who was so obsessed with the English language, she had a penchant for physically cutting words she didn’t like out of the very books she was charge to. It’s ironic that someone so iron clad on usage of language would be named for a nude beach, but as racy as it sounds, the Lucy Vincent really isn’t an orgy of naked bodies I supposed it would be; most people are in suits, and the shore is populated by the seasonal locals of Chilmark.
After his brother and the kids left, we hiked out to the same location for the rest of the week. There’s no diverting this plan. This is where father and son set up shop and proceed to hold court every day. It’s amazing. We would cart out about 50 pounds of beach chairs, umbrellas, water, books, various newspapers and then they sit in shade, clad with huge sun hats and SPF 50, greeting neighbors taking in exercise as they walk up and down the shore. It’s the little Lucy Vincent Beach social club.
The Vineyard is a nice life. You make your way to the kitchen/dining room in your own time, where coffee is brewing and the New York Times has already been rifled through, everyone having taken their favorite section, then you throw on your suit, haul your crap to Lucy Vincent for a couple of hours before heading off to the “Porch” for lunch where everyone you've just met at the beach has gathered now for 1/2 a meatball sub, come home, swim in the pool, take a hot tub, a shower, a nap, head over to Menemsha, (you’d recognize it from “Jaws”), for fresh lobster at “Larsen’s” (where Angry has an account) or clams at “The Bite”, sitting out on the beach watching the sun disappear in what was always a spectacular setting. Later, at home, everyone piles into the state of the art screening room to watch movies. And then you do it all again the next day. I’d like to add “summer” as a verb to my vocabulary.
At the beach, it was established that I was not Jewish. I was looked over and questioned by the older women who had been keeping an eye on Angry for years. He can be quite charming when he wants to be and I wasn’t surprised that he had a personal fan club. Blushingly, I answered their questions with “I think it could be very serious”. And his family loved me. His dad even called me a “tomato”, a sort of '50s slang for “hottie”. Why wouldn’t I think that things might be moving in a more permanent direction? I mean, I’m here, right?
Some of you stated in your comments, with a frankness that deserves heeding, that I should be forewarned of a person I call “The Angry Man”; a moniker which has stuck. I leave the Vineyard; spend the next week with my friend Robin on the Cape. Angry actually leaves the island to meet my family and friends in Dennis; my sister and brother-in-law coming up for the weekend especially at my request. And he was delightful throughout the BBQ steak and lobster meal, realizing that this was his “try-out”. And he boarded the first Hy-Line Ferry the next morning to Martha’s Vineyard. And for the rest of the time I was in Massachusetts, I didn’t hear from him, that is, unless I phoned him.
I tried, as an experiment, you see, if he would perchance, call me. After three days, I got “Hey, where have you been?” I slowly realized that I was doing all of the work. This lack of attention may work for some people, but I’m not one of them. I think you’ll agree that I’m not needy, but I do want a man who will call me, and maybe, just maybe, think about me at the end of the day and let me know. Let me steal a scene from “Beautiful Girls”. Tim Hutton and Uma Thurman are sharing a whiskey in an ice-fishing house when he asks “what does it” for her. She responds: “I need to hear four words before I go to sleep: Good night, sweet girl. I'm easy, I know, but a man who can muster up those four words is a man I wanna stay with”. And wait! Here’s another from “Singles”, that Cameron Crowe classic set in the Seattle scene before there was a Seattle scene. Bridget Fonda has narrowed down her impossible list of relationship requirements to a simple “bless you” after she sneezes. This is what I’m talking about. It’s not much, but these gestures mean the world to me. O.K. Maybe I’ve been working in the delusional, imaginative world of movies for too long, but I believe in that kind of love, and it’s what I want.
This is what I tell him, a month ago, back in Los Angeles, away from the Vineyard summer fantasy. As Kate Hepburn says “clean break up, no hangovers”, and our third was just that, neat. I think on some level, he understood. Agreeing on friendship, we met at the Nine Inch Nails concert for which we had previously gotten tickets (as a sidebar, it was great. Trent… sigh). This past month, we canoodled at Sonny McLean’s to watch the last game of the World Series.
But this no-fault breakup hasn’t prevented the hangovers. Last Friday, I received a phone call from Angry, who was on his way to see the Lakers opening game. Would I meet him at the
Grove?
It’s hard to resist the Grove; this is my guilty pleasure, the crème de la crème of shopping malls. However, I had volunteer work to do, was on my way west and told him so. My sixth sense should have warned me, I could hear the purring in his throat. I tried to change the subject, really I did. I asked about his best friend, who he met for dinner the night before. “She thinks we should be married” to which I sputtered and coughed. Oh really. “What do you think?” I replied, “and if the answer is yes, I have a list which is topped by a two carat flawless Tiffany Lucida ring. He said “Two carats. How much will that cost me?” I said I didn’t know and I didn't care, but it would remind him that I would be the priority in his life, not the bottom of the barrel after every last relative and Kobe Bryant. But when he said: “I think you should blow off your volunteer work and meet me at the Grove”.
Now don’t give me crap, but I did. He made a very convincing argument.
I diverted my course on the 101 to the 405 and headed over Laurel Canyon. When I got there, he was waiting for me at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf with a very passionate kiss and coffee. We lollygagged around the shops, ending in Lucky, where he insisted on buying me jeans that would accentuate my curves. I told you before, he loves my ass, and it’s hard to say no to that. He was shameless with the shop girls as I tried on ten or fifteen pairs until I found the perfect ones. I’m unclear as to future of this relationship. I love him. I know he loves me. I love these jeans. I've worn them every day since Friday. And as you know, the diamond has been elusive. Oooo, I’d love to have that diamond, even if the relationship doesn’t work out. You’re thinking I’m shallow, I'm superficial, but this girl loves sparkle. I had tried on this ring at Tiffany’s in the Bellagio Hotel with the speedracer/townie/metrosexual. He turned a greyish color, got nauseous and broke out in a visible flop sweat. My sister was there and she’ll tell you.
He refers to our little mess as the "Puddy Syndrome". David Puddy is a character on Seinfeld that dated Elaine. Apparently they broke up a lot. I didn't catch his reference, never having watched much Seinfeld. "I wouldn't admit that" ...said Puddy... I mean Angry.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Sushi Comes to Sudbury
In the summer of 1997, my parents sold the house at 187 Pratts Mill Road, a 7-room Cape called home for 27 years. I was between jobs, and in the clutches of my 20-something debt, but I knew I had to get back to Sudbury and help my parents pack up the house. With $400 remaining on my Choice Visa, I bought the ticket and headed east.
Maybe because I’ve been clearing out the drawers, closets and shelves in my house that it’s time to sweep out the attic in my brain. Usually I stay with my sister four or five towns away, not wanting to disturb or distort the memories of my perfect, dysfunctional childhood, but during this trip, I am inspired, (and perhaps brave enough), to drive the Old Boston Post Road and into downtown Sudbury.
New England suburbs are distinguished by their history, houses painted white with black trim, placards announcing the original owner’s name and date of erection and Sudbury is no different, although when I drive into town, I pass the odd juxtaposition of Selim Alptekin, DDS, who promises “Whiter Teeth in An Hour!” and Longfellow’s Wayside Inn where I had worked as a front door hostess replete in period costume sewn by our neighbor, Mrs. Bausk. Another common oddity shared by New Englanders are the town militias who dress up and recreate revolutionary war events, even marching to Concord at 4:AM every April 19th followed by a pancake breakfast hosted by the local church. In fact, Sudbury even boasts the zip code 01776. Rumor has it that the selectmen fought to get this sequence of numbers when zip codes were assigned in 1963. I imagine the men were thrilled to lord this over the neighboring Concord, (where the first of many famous battles with the Red Coats occurred), and Lexington, (where the shot heard round the world was actually fired), and probably pleased as punch that Philadelphia (where the Declaration of Independence was signed) began with 19000. Sudbury isn’t home to any famous authors where Concord is the primary residence of Louisa May Alcott, Emerson and Thoreau, (my siblings and I learned how to swim in Walden Pond), although Washington did sleep at the Wayside Inn. But let’s face it, Washington was on the move. He slept everywhere.
Despite this slight historical disadvantage, I loved the Sudbury of my youth. It was a wonderful place to grow up, to get a great public school education, to lie outside on the lawn while the breeze lightly brushed your face or play kick the can with the neighborhood kids until Moms rang bells for dinner. On the fourth of July, banana bikes bedecked with streamers, Minutemen and fire trucks lined up behind Star Market, all waiting to wave to our families sitting on the steps of friends’ houses along the parade route. Screen doors were kept open all summer long, filling the corners of the house with the soft tolling of the bell from the First Parish Church, the spire crooked, legend has it, from a musket shot. We’d spend evenings at Featherland Field watching dads compete against each other at softball; my father in center field, cigarette dangling from one hand and the worn in Rawlings glove on the other. At least a month in advance, my mother would ask us what we wanted to be for Halloween in order to give her enough time to design and sew the costumes for October 31st, trick or treating beginning as early as possible. We rode our bikes through the back roads, side streets and secret passageways behind the woody expanse of people’s yards until winter, when we would throw our skates on as soon as the bus dropped us off in hopes to chase the last bits of sunshine gliding around Stern’s Mill Pond, incidentally, where the old Babe Ruth house still stands. Probably the reason my father chose the house on Pratt’s Mill.
Driving through those densely forested parts with finger ponds and lakes, the lack of urban sprawl was a wonderful surprise. Thick, verdant tree cover hovers over the long stretches of road that join Upton to Hopkinton, Stow to Hudson and all of the townships in between. What I really treasure about August on the east coast is the lushness. The air feels soft; smells sweet, as if lawns were perpetually mowed and the lilacs forever in bloom. Summer has wound down. Football practice is in session. The Red Sox at the tail end of the season. Teenagers are anxious about starting school. At least my niece is.
While Uxbridge, Upton and Andover have retained their sense of small, Sudbury has not. The town selectmen, and the folk that have since moved in, have changed the landscape of the town forever and there is no restoration in sight, nor do I believe it possible. Although my parents saw the advantages of Sudbury, they never liked the town politics. Looking back on video I shot during the summer of ’97, they all but predicted Sudbury’s sad fate.
The farmland has diminished as the population swelled, developed into huge houses complete with granite counters and walk-in closets. I recall my parents balking at the first house priced at $100,000. They couldn’t believe that anyone would ask for such an outrageous sum. You can guess what these soccer moms, driving around in their hands free Lexus’s in a scene eerily similar to “Desperate Housewives”, paid for the 01776 ideal. The tree farm, once part of Babe Ruth’s homestead, was parceled off in the mid-‘90s for at least a baker’s dozen of abfab homes punched on a postage stamp spread.
The main road is congested with traffic monitored by local policemen on shiny white Harley Davidsons. Imagine a cop ticketing someone for disturbing the peace while bombing around town on a Harley. I smile to myself, the pigs driving hogs!
Maroney’s, where we went for donuts, has been sold. For the three years we were Catholic, we fought with the rest of the church going population for chocolate covered custard and glazed donuts, peeling out of the Our Lady of Fatima parking lot, making a mad dash for the bakeshop. For coffee and donuts, one has the choice of Starbucks, lodged in the colonial looking strip mall (and quite unfriendly, I might add) and the uber New England drive- thru, known in Sudbury as “Dunkin’ Donuts Place”, abiding the town’s zoning ordinances about lighted signs.
I’m grateful to hear that Sudbury Pizza, my first real employer, enjoys the same weekend crowds. When I see the owner, Nick, getting out of his minivan, I don’t stop, although he’d surely remember me, having an uncanny total recall of every face and corresponding pizza order. I prefer to keep this observation to myself, an insider on the outside. It was at the Pizza Place where I learned about bribing the cops. Everyone at the shop was in on it, trading free pizzas in return for a little leniency on future driving incidents. This favor coming in handy one summer night when I got pulled out of a car where I had been sucking face with DW, (the townie/speedracer/metrosexual), my blouse moving towards unbuttoned, suddenly the flashlight blinding me. I thought for sure David would get cuffed and hauled off to jail, possibly even beat up. Instead, the officer squinted at me and said, “Hey there, you work at the pizza place, right?” I nodded. With a wink, he instructed me to get right on home. The crime rate has never been much; random robberies, drunk driving arrests and sporadic teenage assaults on mailboxes. Currently, my friend Suzanne tells me the menace is coyotes.
But the real slap and tickle is that sushi has come to Sudbury. Sushi! Imagine it! Sushi, that once decadent Far East delicacy is now a staple. And get this, there isn’t one, but two restaurants, “Oishii Too” named after it’s original Boston location and “Fugakyu” which sounds pretty suspicious when you sound it out loud. Go ahead, try it. The thing is, donuts, pizza and Chinese were always a treat; dinner out reserved for special occasions. It was the sushi restaurants, (plural), that threw me off my reverie of memories. After that, it was if my eyes adjusted to the light. I remembered how the Vanas sold their house with the driving range and miniature golf course that was their livelihood for a generation to developers who put in an upscale strip mall with the usual homogenized shops. I had picked golf balls in the wee hours of the morning with Kim Vana. It wasn’t easy work and I’m sure the range didn’t bring in much money. The Vanas were one of the larger families in town. Why shouldn’t they have some money to make their lives a little easier? I don’t blame them, nor do I fault the Maroney's, who sold their family business and home to develop “Carriage House Lane”, address to at least fifteen condos priced at 1/2 a mill each. It may not seem much, but the loss of the driving range, the bakeshop and other the other Sudbury staples of my youth have left a gaping hole where people once communed.
I couldn’t stomach driving by my old house on Pratt’s Mill Road, not with other people living in my house. This was where my brother was born, where I had been allowed to stay up late with my father to watch Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers dance on the ceiling, played hide and seek, built a tree fort, a flower garden, got ready for my senior prom in a black gown I made in home-economics class, fooled around with Paul Dalpe (a townie/photographer/metrosexual), on the stairs while my parents watched “Jeopardy” in the TV room, celebrated my sister’s marriage, and listened over the railing to my parents and their friends singing “Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris” in the wee hours of the morning after one of their famous parties. It’s too painful to face those homeless memories. I loved my house. I believed in the haven it provided, the fact that there was always someplace you could go in the world, a safety net, if you will. Once it was sold, I lost that sense of security.
There’s a new Audioslave song on the radio these days, “Doesn’t Remind Me”. I love this track because I know that reminded, I can go directly to the dark places in my mind without a flashlight and become disoriented by the topography. I’m sharing a space with a presence that makes me uncomfortable, prickly. I find my way back to Siobhan’s in the dark with only the lights from the dashboard, the stars that manage to peak through the oak trees and sparse incandescent bulbs still used for streetlamps in these parts.
Maybe because I’ve been clearing out the drawers, closets and shelves in my house that it’s time to sweep out the attic in my brain. Usually I stay with my sister four or five towns away, not wanting to disturb or distort the memories of my perfect, dysfunctional childhood, but during this trip, I am inspired, (and perhaps brave enough), to drive the Old Boston Post Road and into downtown Sudbury.
New England suburbs are distinguished by their history, houses painted white with black trim, placards announcing the original owner’s name and date of erection and Sudbury is no different, although when I drive into town, I pass the odd juxtaposition of Selim Alptekin, DDS, who promises “Whiter Teeth in An Hour!” and Longfellow’s Wayside Inn where I had worked as a front door hostess replete in period costume sewn by our neighbor, Mrs. Bausk. Another common oddity shared by New Englanders are the town militias who dress up and recreate revolutionary war events, even marching to Concord at 4:AM every April 19th followed by a pancake breakfast hosted by the local church. In fact, Sudbury even boasts the zip code 01776. Rumor has it that the selectmen fought to get this sequence of numbers when zip codes were assigned in 1963. I imagine the men were thrilled to lord this over the neighboring Concord, (where the first of many famous battles with the Red Coats occurred), and Lexington, (where the shot heard round the world was actually fired), and probably pleased as punch that Philadelphia (where the Declaration of Independence was signed) began with 19000. Sudbury isn’t home to any famous authors where Concord is the primary residence of Louisa May Alcott, Emerson and Thoreau, (my siblings and I learned how to swim in Walden Pond), although Washington did sleep at the Wayside Inn. But let’s face it, Washington was on the move. He slept everywhere.
Despite this slight historical disadvantage, I loved the Sudbury of my youth. It was a wonderful place to grow up, to get a great public school education, to lie outside on the lawn while the breeze lightly brushed your face or play kick the can with the neighborhood kids until Moms rang bells for dinner. On the fourth of July, banana bikes bedecked with streamers, Minutemen and fire trucks lined up behind Star Market, all waiting to wave to our families sitting on the steps of friends’ houses along the parade route. Screen doors were kept open all summer long, filling the corners of the house with the soft tolling of the bell from the First Parish Church, the spire crooked, legend has it, from a musket shot. We’d spend evenings at Featherland Field watching dads compete against each other at softball; my father in center field, cigarette dangling from one hand and the worn in Rawlings glove on the other. At least a month in advance, my mother would ask us what we wanted to be for Halloween in order to give her enough time to design and sew the costumes for October 31st, trick or treating beginning as early as possible. We rode our bikes through the back roads, side streets and secret passageways behind the woody expanse of people’s yards until winter, when we would throw our skates on as soon as the bus dropped us off in hopes to chase the last bits of sunshine gliding around Stern’s Mill Pond, incidentally, where the old Babe Ruth house still stands. Probably the reason my father chose the house on Pratt’s Mill.
Driving through those densely forested parts with finger ponds and lakes, the lack of urban sprawl was a wonderful surprise. Thick, verdant tree cover hovers over the long stretches of road that join Upton to Hopkinton, Stow to Hudson and all of the townships in between. What I really treasure about August on the east coast is the lushness. The air feels soft; smells sweet, as if lawns were perpetually mowed and the lilacs forever in bloom. Summer has wound down. Football practice is in session. The Red Sox at the tail end of the season. Teenagers are anxious about starting school. At least my niece is.
While Uxbridge, Upton and Andover have retained their sense of small, Sudbury has not. The town selectmen, and the folk that have since moved in, have changed the landscape of the town forever and there is no restoration in sight, nor do I believe it possible. Although my parents saw the advantages of Sudbury, they never liked the town politics. Looking back on video I shot during the summer of ’97, they all but predicted Sudbury’s sad fate.
The farmland has diminished as the population swelled, developed into huge houses complete with granite counters and walk-in closets. I recall my parents balking at the first house priced at $100,000. They couldn’t believe that anyone would ask for such an outrageous sum. You can guess what these soccer moms, driving around in their hands free Lexus’s in a scene eerily similar to “Desperate Housewives”, paid for the 01776 ideal. The tree farm, once part of Babe Ruth’s homestead, was parceled off in the mid-‘90s for at least a baker’s dozen of abfab homes punched on a postage stamp spread.
The main road is congested with traffic monitored by local policemen on shiny white Harley Davidsons. Imagine a cop ticketing someone for disturbing the peace while bombing around town on a Harley. I smile to myself, the pigs driving hogs!
Maroney’s, where we went for donuts, has been sold. For the three years we were Catholic, we fought with the rest of the church going population for chocolate covered custard and glazed donuts, peeling out of the Our Lady of Fatima parking lot, making a mad dash for the bakeshop. For coffee and donuts, one has the choice of Starbucks, lodged in the colonial looking strip mall (and quite unfriendly, I might add) and the uber New England drive- thru, known in Sudbury as “Dunkin’ Donuts Place”, abiding the town’s zoning ordinances about lighted signs.
I’m grateful to hear that Sudbury Pizza, my first real employer, enjoys the same weekend crowds. When I see the owner, Nick, getting out of his minivan, I don’t stop, although he’d surely remember me, having an uncanny total recall of every face and corresponding pizza order. I prefer to keep this observation to myself, an insider on the outside. It was at the Pizza Place where I learned about bribing the cops. Everyone at the shop was in on it, trading free pizzas in return for a little leniency on future driving incidents. This favor coming in handy one summer night when I got pulled out of a car where I had been sucking face with DW, (the townie/speedracer/metrosexual), my blouse moving towards unbuttoned, suddenly the flashlight blinding me. I thought for sure David would get cuffed and hauled off to jail, possibly even beat up. Instead, the officer squinted at me and said, “Hey there, you work at the pizza place, right?” I nodded. With a wink, he instructed me to get right on home. The crime rate has never been much; random robberies, drunk driving arrests and sporadic teenage assaults on mailboxes. Currently, my friend Suzanne tells me the menace is coyotes.
But the real slap and tickle is that sushi has come to Sudbury. Sushi! Imagine it! Sushi, that once decadent Far East delicacy is now a staple. And get this, there isn’t one, but two restaurants, “Oishii Too” named after it’s original Boston location and “Fugakyu” which sounds pretty suspicious when you sound it out loud. Go ahead, try it. The thing is, donuts, pizza and Chinese were always a treat; dinner out reserved for special occasions. It was the sushi restaurants, (plural), that threw me off my reverie of memories. After that, it was if my eyes adjusted to the light. I remembered how the Vanas sold their house with the driving range and miniature golf course that was their livelihood for a generation to developers who put in an upscale strip mall with the usual homogenized shops. I had picked golf balls in the wee hours of the morning with Kim Vana. It wasn’t easy work and I’m sure the range didn’t bring in much money. The Vanas were one of the larger families in town. Why shouldn’t they have some money to make their lives a little easier? I don’t blame them, nor do I fault the Maroney's, who sold their family business and home to develop “Carriage House Lane”, address to at least fifteen condos priced at 1/2 a mill each. It may not seem much, but the loss of the driving range, the bakeshop and other the other Sudbury staples of my youth have left a gaping hole where people once communed.
I couldn’t stomach driving by my old house on Pratt’s Mill Road, not with other people living in my house. This was where my brother was born, where I had been allowed to stay up late with my father to watch Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers dance on the ceiling, played hide and seek, built a tree fort, a flower garden, got ready for my senior prom in a black gown I made in home-economics class, fooled around with Paul Dalpe (a townie/photographer/metrosexual), on the stairs while my parents watched “Jeopardy” in the TV room, celebrated my sister’s marriage, and listened over the railing to my parents and their friends singing “Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris” in the wee hours of the morning after one of their famous parties. It’s too painful to face those homeless memories. I loved my house. I believed in the haven it provided, the fact that there was always someplace you could go in the world, a safety net, if you will. Once it was sold, I lost that sense of security.
There’s a new Audioslave song on the radio these days, “Doesn’t Remind Me”. I love this track because I know that reminded, I can go directly to the dark places in my mind without a flashlight and become disoriented by the topography. I’m sharing a space with a presence that makes me uncomfortable, prickly. I find my way back to Siobhan’s in the dark with only the lights from the dashboard, the stars that manage to peak through the oak trees and sparse incandescent bulbs still used for streetlamps in these parts.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Beverly Hills 9021ZERO
I’m on South Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, sister city to Cannes, France. Imagine Beverly Hills having a sister city. Funny. At 1:30 pm, there is no parking. I am already a half hour late for my appointment. In fact, both of us are caught in the parking crunch, driving aimlessly around looking for a meter or an opening in the public garage. The streets that branch off from Beverly are restricted, the homeowners clearly having a questionable “in” with the city council. There is absolutely no parking without a permit, thus the curbside remains pristine and empty, yet, the parking police wait, they wait patiently all day long for someone to fuck up and forget to feed the meter or park sans permit.
This ticket alone can mess up your driving and insurance record for at least five years. As if to accentuate their pretense, the speed limit in BH is 20 mph and the police station looks like a manor house. I was pulled over one Saturday night on Wilshire Boulevard alongside an African-American guy who stood aside as his yuppie-looking Toyota got the full work over while another officer searched his sax case. It was laughable in a predictable, stereotypical kind of way. Here I was, driving a rusty old ‘71 Superbeetle that backfired. Yes, I was driving over the 20 MPH speed limit. I smiled sheepishly at my cohort, as if this was some sort of consolation. This was the beginning of my bitter dislike for BH 90210.
I am walking down the street to my meeting at Peet’s Coffee passing four girls with BH High cheerleading outfits and matching black UGGs who sip their frosty coffee drinks and dangle cigarettes while junior agents, (not yet able to afford the blue tooth technology) tail them making lascivious comments.
I finally arrive where my friend and I share our parking tales of woe. To avoid the pile up in the alley behind Peet’s, I turned the wrong way out; it’s either that or gets caught up in the quagmire of stopped traffic. I am quickly reminded at the corner by a biker pedaling along that I’m going the wrong way. I know that. But I smile and say “Thank you for pointing that out.” None of this gets under my skin, I just notice my snotty response and stifle a giggle. I gain a space in the garage after illegally waiting on the street with my engine idling. I glance around Peet’s after ordering hot regular drip. The Good Samaritan biker is there, curbside to the counter. I smile at him and say hello; he bites into his lemon bar and looks away.
This ticket alone can mess up your driving and insurance record for at least five years. As if to accentuate their pretense, the speed limit in BH is 20 mph and the police station looks like a manor house. I was pulled over one Saturday night on Wilshire Boulevard alongside an African-American guy who stood aside as his yuppie-looking Toyota got the full work over while another officer searched his sax case. It was laughable in a predictable, stereotypical kind of way. Here I was, driving a rusty old ‘71 Superbeetle that backfired. Yes, I was driving over the 20 MPH speed limit. I smiled sheepishly at my cohort, as if this was some sort of consolation. This was the beginning of my bitter dislike for BH 90210.
I am walking down the street to my meeting at Peet’s Coffee passing four girls with BH High cheerleading outfits and matching black UGGs who sip their frosty coffee drinks and dangle cigarettes while junior agents, (not yet able to afford the blue tooth technology) tail them making lascivious comments.
I finally arrive where my friend and I share our parking tales of woe. To avoid the pile up in the alley behind Peet’s, I turned the wrong way out; it’s either that or gets caught up in the quagmire of stopped traffic. I am quickly reminded at the corner by a biker pedaling along that I’m going the wrong way. I know that. But I smile and say “Thank you for pointing that out.” None of this gets under my skin, I just notice my snotty response and stifle a giggle. I gain a space in the garage after illegally waiting on the street with my engine idling. I glance around Peet’s after ordering hot regular drip. The Good Samaritan biker is there, curbside to the counter. I smile at him and say hello; he bites into his lemon bar and looks away.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Life is a Ball and Don't You Forget It!
Last Tuesday, our moods adding up to a pitiful sum, my date and I hid out at the Laemmle’s Sunset 5. In a moment of good sense, we opted to see the documentary on the U.S. Paralympics Rugby team, "Murderball" over the Kurt Cobain tribute, “Last Days”. It was a wise decision, an amazing film and I can’t wait to tell you about it.
“Murderball” blends together a group of compelling characters who deal out adversity with panache; a dash of current events when two of the players pay a sobering visit to Veteran’s Hospital in Virginia where young, newly amputated troops appear shell-shocked at their present condition; loud cursing, smutty sex talk and crashing around on the court in the name of professional rugby. This type of unique content is exactly why this documentary raises the bar.
For myself, the film’s subject matter was much more personal. While clips from the Athens 2004 Paralympics flickered in front of us, my date turned to me in genuine awe and said: “Wow, the world has certainly changed”. I found myself moved to tears at how much.
Certainly having Christopher Reeve as a spokesperson elevated visibility of people living with disabilities in the ‘90s, although it is important to remember that a sizable part of this population was living in state nursing homes until as late as ‘70s when de-institutionalizing began and Vietnam Vets began to appear on the streets. One of the featured men in “Murderball”, Joe Soares, a former quad-rugby player turned coach, maintains that his life would be different if his parents didn’t emigrate from Portugal. Remembering the ethos of decades past, as a polio victim he would have been sequestered from sight. The progress this community has made over the decades is enormous. However, we, as the rest of society, are unaware of these steps; taking it for granted that we are physically able to go wherever we want, and easily so.
I was first exposed to physical disability when a ramp was installed in our garage so my father’s friends and colleagues from work could enter the house on their own, often joining him in loud, ranting play by plays during weekend Red Sox games. During his tenure as Executive Director for the Boston Center for Independent Living, my father was one of many instrumental in implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act set forth in 1990. Beginning as a small company in the back of a True Value hardware store, BCIL subsisted on donations, United Way grants and a handful of truly committed people. These centers were created to teach self-advocacy, lobby for increased housing, jobs and education for those living with disabilities. Remember that up until this time, there were no buses equipped with elevators, ramped sidewalks or designated parking spots. With the exception of the Architecture Barriers Act of 1968 in which any new construction of federal buildings required accessibility, most of the world was not.
While we meet a group of extraordinary men who have overcome extreme difficulties, reflecting on their tragic circumstances with gratitude, the filmmakers take a pointed unsympathetic view on their subjects, a directive which prompts reviewers to colorfully describe the featured players as everyday guys, like, “Hey, they’re just like you and me! They’re ballsy, athletic and talk trash about sex!” Even the Rolling Stone review qualifies by apologetically stating: “it’s about quadriplegics in wheelchairs – but wait, it's not depressing!”
Obvious and ignorant as it sounds, the sentiment requires attention. The other day, I mentioned “Murderball” to a friend of mine, who immediately shook her head “I can’t watch that film!” Society’s blinders prevent people from seeing this film. We naturally gravitate towards subjects we want to look like, act like, dress like, and be like, not people who don’t function like we do. It’s the fear of simultaneously feeling gratitude and guilt for being “normal”.
All of the reviews I’ve read glow with keen admiration because, let’s face it, how many people have actually seen wheelchair sports? Or knew that the Paralympics have taken place the week following the Olympics since 1960 and in 2004, counted 136 countries representing 25 sports categories? It’s impressive. But what truly sets this documentary apart is how the film itself transcends disability, a feat that provokes an unambiguous connection, prompting us to look inward. How do we overcome that which holds us back? How do we harness the actual strength of spirit each of us possess; strength we rarely tap.
This point is dramatically made when we meet Joe’s 11-year old son Robert, a bookish violinist who doesn’t carry his father’s athletic gene and we witness Joe’s harsh treatment as if Robert were the one with a disability because he’s not like him. The chair doesn’t hold Joe back, his inability to see his son’s unique gifts does. Joe’s growing awareness is a poignant moment, speaking to the binary relationships we have with our parents, our children, the care we want from them and perhaps, how they, in turn give care, especially when the shit hits the fan.
The film isn’t about a bunch of guys crashing around like gladiators and talking about picking up chicks at bars. It’s about people whose dreams were stripped away from them in an instant and how they created new dreams for themselves. It’s about the ability to see ourselves for who we can be and the courage to harvest our character. It’s about love and service. It’s about a small, but valuable percentage of the world’s population making progress with courage and the desire to make life a little easier for themselves and others to come.
In a world constantly blinking by with new episodes of CSI and Jaguar models, it’s easy to become myopic to remarkable ways in which the world has evolved. It reminds of me of that Margaret Mead quote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.
The “R” rating and the subject itself is killing “Murderball” at the box office. I encourage you to see this film. I challenge you. Bring your friends, bring your children and tell your neighbors about it. You can handle the sex talk and the swearing, and I promise, you’ll walk away inspired that world is a better place.
For me, watching “Murderball” was an earnest reminder of my father, his passion for his work and the community he hoped to build for all people.
“Murderball” blends together a group of compelling characters who deal out adversity with panache; a dash of current events when two of the players pay a sobering visit to Veteran’s Hospital in Virginia where young, newly amputated troops appear shell-shocked at their present condition; loud cursing, smutty sex talk and crashing around on the court in the name of professional rugby. This type of unique content is exactly why this documentary raises the bar.
For myself, the film’s subject matter was much more personal. While clips from the Athens 2004 Paralympics flickered in front of us, my date turned to me in genuine awe and said: “Wow, the world has certainly changed”. I found myself moved to tears at how much.
Certainly having Christopher Reeve as a spokesperson elevated visibility of people living with disabilities in the ‘90s, although it is important to remember that a sizable part of this population was living in state nursing homes until as late as ‘70s when de-institutionalizing began and Vietnam Vets began to appear on the streets. One of the featured men in “Murderball”, Joe Soares, a former quad-rugby player turned coach, maintains that his life would be different if his parents didn’t emigrate from Portugal. Remembering the ethos of decades past, as a polio victim he would have been sequestered from sight. The progress this community has made over the decades is enormous. However, we, as the rest of society, are unaware of these steps; taking it for granted that we are physically able to go wherever we want, and easily so.
I was first exposed to physical disability when a ramp was installed in our garage so my father’s friends and colleagues from work could enter the house on their own, often joining him in loud, ranting play by plays during weekend Red Sox games. During his tenure as Executive Director for the Boston Center for Independent Living, my father was one of many instrumental in implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act set forth in 1990. Beginning as a small company in the back of a True Value hardware store, BCIL subsisted on donations, United Way grants and a handful of truly committed people. These centers were created to teach self-advocacy, lobby for increased housing, jobs and education for those living with disabilities. Remember that up until this time, there were no buses equipped with elevators, ramped sidewalks or designated parking spots. With the exception of the Architecture Barriers Act of 1968 in which any new construction of federal buildings required accessibility, most of the world was not.
While we meet a group of extraordinary men who have overcome extreme difficulties, reflecting on their tragic circumstances with gratitude, the filmmakers take a pointed unsympathetic view on their subjects, a directive which prompts reviewers to colorfully describe the featured players as everyday guys, like, “Hey, they’re just like you and me! They’re ballsy, athletic and talk trash about sex!” Even the Rolling Stone review qualifies by apologetically stating: “it’s about quadriplegics in wheelchairs – but wait, it's not depressing!”
Obvious and ignorant as it sounds, the sentiment requires attention. The other day, I mentioned “Murderball” to a friend of mine, who immediately shook her head “I can’t watch that film!” Society’s blinders prevent people from seeing this film. We naturally gravitate towards subjects we want to look like, act like, dress like, and be like, not people who don’t function like we do. It’s the fear of simultaneously feeling gratitude and guilt for being “normal”.
All of the reviews I’ve read glow with keen admiration because, let’s face it, how many people have actually seen wheelchair sports? Or knew that the Paralympics have taken place the week following the Olympics since 1960 and in 2004, counted 136 countries representing 25 sports categories? It’s impressive. But what truly sets this documentary apart is how the film itself transcends disability, a feat that provokes an unambiguous connection, prompting us to look inward. How do we overcome that which holds us back? How do we harness the actual strength of spirit each of us possess; strength we rarely tap.
This point is dramatically made when we meet Joe’s 11-year old son Robert, a bookish violinist who doesn’t carry his father’s athletic gene and we witness Joe’s harsh treatment as if Robert were the one with a disability because he’s not like him. The chair doesn’t hold Joe back, his inability to see his son’s unique gifts does. Joe’s growing awareness is a poignant moment, speaking to the binary relationships we have with our parents, our children, the care we want from them and perhaps, how they, in turn give care, especially when the shit hits the fan.
The film isn’t about a bunch of guys crashing around like gladiators and talking about picking up chicks at bars. It’s about people whose dreams were stripped away from them in an instant and how they created new dreams for themselves. It’s about the ability to see ourselves for who we can be and the courage to harvest our character. It’s about love and service. It’s about a small, but valuable percentage of the world’s population making progress with courage and the desire to make life a little easier for themselves and others to come.
In a world constantly blinking by with new episodes of CSI and Jaguar models, it’s easy to become myopic to remarkable ways in which the world has evolved. It reminds of me of that Margaret Mead quote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.
The “R” rating and the subject itself is killing “Murderball” at the box office. I encourage you to see this film. I challenge you. Bring your friends, bring your children and tell your neighbors about it. You can handle the sex talk and the swearing, and I promise, you’ll walk away inspired that world is a better place.
For me, watching “Murderball” was an earnest reminder of my father, his passion for his work and the community he hoped to build for all people.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
The Angry Man
Memorial Day. I don’t attend any BBQs. I spend the day at Kaldi writing my bleeding heart out. The next day, I board a red eye to New York where the man I am seeing is waiting for me.
What I’ve not told you is that while spending the past six months lamenting the C/R/M, I’ve been involved with someone sporadically for over 18 months. I call him “The Angry Man”. Although he definitely has metrosexual qualities, it’s harder to categorize them. He does a little magic, watches a lot of basketball, likes good sheets and he never steers you wrong when it comes to eating out.
In fact, the next morning, after the unnamed hyphenated man had left me to motor on to his ex-fiancée’s house (I’ve only just figured this out, sometimes I can be so obtuse), he was the one I called, having bawled until I gave myself a migraine and then threw up. With a jar of dill pickles in hand from Langer’s Deli, he took one look at my puffed eyes and said: “He dumped you, didn’t he?” which prompted the waterworks all over again. I probably shouldn’t have rang him, but I’m glad I did. He’s the only man who has ever been there for me 100%.
Last summer, prompted by one of the girls in the New York office, I called him and told him that he was a pill and pissed me off most of the time, but that despite that, he made me laugh, he challenged me, and I loved him. We broke up about two months later, but I have no regrets about telling him I loved him. I know the golden rule is to let the man tell you first, but that was just the way I felt. I still feel that way.
In fact, when I left his apartment this morning after a rather loud squabble in which he once again announced something completely preposterous, I yelled “I’m going home and I’m going to WRITE about YOU in my BLOG!” Taken aback, he replied, “You have a blog?” I didn’t respond. He has not been on my emails alerts where my latest adventures lurk. He bores easily, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to hear the silence on the other end of the phone when asking his opinion. For someone who claims not to read, he sure has a lot of literary opinions.
After clearly defining the fact that he is not a rebound relationship, I decided to embark on more serious byways. Inspired by LeeAnn’s elopement in Oahu last month, I called The Angry Man and frankly announced that we should have a baby together. Life is short, right? I know he wants to be a father, he’s great with kids and I’d love the experience while I’m still under 40. I’m not sure about the full time mother stuff and the insane schedules I watch my friends keep and I told him that. What I said was “We don’t have to get married, we can have an alternative lifestyle and you can be the primary care giver.” I thought it sounded quite reasonable in this chaotic world. He started in on custody arrangements and stipulations about leaving the country. I was laughing, this was perfect, so him. Instead of getting caught up in the moment, or maybe my chaos, he launching into all sorts of reasonable questions. When I pointed this out, he yelled, “What do you mean you don’t want to marry me? If we’re having a baby, we’re getting married!” and hung up the phone.
I’m not pregnant, and we’ve not talked about getting married, but I have been invited to the coveted family retreat on Martha’s Vineyard which I will ferry off to in a couple of weeks.
Despite his assertion about not reading, he pours through two newspapers a day and will clip articles he thinks I’d be interested in. He’s incredibly bright, and during our first spat, said, “You’re used to being the smarter one in the relationship, right? Get over it!” later assuaging my ego with “You’re almost as smart as me”.
He’s my biggest critic, but constructive and frighteningly accurate. He’s also my biggest fan and wants the best for me. He sees me clearly. He thinks I'm sexy and should wear bikinis and jeans that show off my butt. He’s funny and he loves to go to theater, museums, or drive up the coast, stopping to buy strawberries. He can usually get me to try things I’ve never done, although I am steadfastly refusing to join him at the nude beach in the Vineyard and anything related to Dim Sum. I think I’m going to lose the Dim Sum fight soon. He can work a room, but would prefer not to. He is an ardent Red Sox fan, Beatles fan and connoisseur of the best restaurants. During one of our earlier dates, we were at a loss of words, staring around the restaurant trying to feel each other out, when he pulled out a red scarf from nowhere and started a mini-magic routine. It was then I knew he was special.
For those of you “Thirty-Something” fans, you may remember the episode where Gary is describing his new girlfriend, Susannah, to Michael. Michael wants to meet her, and we, the audience, are secretly hoping he gets back together with Melissa. Gary smiles and says, “You’re not going to like her”. I think this is the first impression that The Angry Man gives. He’s churlish and doesn’t suffer fools lightly. He also seems rather fond of the word “battle”, I’m not sure why. We have many similarities and appreciate our differences. He’d never be caught doing yard work or manning the grill, while I get great pleasure out of mowing the lawn. He also secretly loves that I call his favorite basketball team “The Fakers” and has a beautiful singing voice.
Last weekend, I picked up Laura Schlessinger’s book, “What Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives” (relax, it was at a friend’s house) and spontaneously turned the page to a bold paragraph heading “Adult Relationships Are For Adults”. Could this be an adult relationship? Readers, I’m dying to know.
What I’ve not told you is that while spending the past six months lamenting the C/R/M, I’ve been involved with someone sporadically for over 18 months. I call him “The Angry Man”. Although he definitely has metrosexual qualities, it’s harder to categorize them. He does a little magic, watches a lot of basketball, likes good sheets and he never steers you wrong when it comes to eating out.
In fact, the next morning, after the unnamed hyphenated man had left me to motor on to his ex-fiancée’s house (I’ve only just figured this out, sometimes I can be so obtuse), he was the one I called, having bawled until I gave myself a migraine and then threw up. With a jar of dill pickles in hand from Langer’s Deli, he took one look at my puffed eyes and said: “He dumped you, didn’t he?” which prompted the waterworks all over again. I probably shouldn’t have rang him, but I’m glad I did. He’s the only man who has ever been there for me 100%.
Last summer, prompted by one of the girls in the New York office, I called him and told him that he was a pill and pissed me off most of the time, but that despite that, he made me laugh, he challenged me, and I loved him. We broke up about two months later, but I have no regrets about telling him I loved him. I know the golden rule is to let the man tell you first, but that was just the way I felt. I still feel that way.
In fact, when I left his apartment this morning after a rather loud squabble in which he once again announced something completely preposterous, I yelled “I’m going home and I’m going to WRITE about YOU in my BLOG!” Taken aback, he replied, “You have a blog?” I didn’t respond. He has not been on my emails alerts where my latest adventures lurk. He bores easily, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to hear the silence on the other end of the phone when asking his opinion. For someone who claims not to read, he sure has a lot of literary opinions.
After clearly defining the fact that he is not a rebound relationship, I decided to embark on more serious byways. Inspired by LeeAnn’s elopement in Oahu last month, I called The Angry Man and frankly announced that we should have a baby together. Life is short, right? I know he wants to be a father, he’s great with kids and I’d love the experience while I’m still under 40. I’m not sure about the full time mother stuff and the insane schedules I watch my friends keep and I told him that. What I said was “We don’t have to get married, we can have an alternative lifestyle and you can be the primary care giver.” I thought it sounded quite reasonable in this chaotic world. He started in on custody arrangements and stipulations about leaving the country. I was laughing, this was perfect, so him. Instead of getting caught up in the moment, or maybe my chaos, he launching into all sorts of reasonable questions. When I pointed this out, he yelled, “What do you mean you don’t want to marry me? If we’re having a baby, we’re getting married!” and hung up the phone.
I’m not pregnant, and we’ve not talked about getting married, but I have been invited to the coveted family retreat on Martha’s Vineyard which I will ferry off to in a couple of weeks.
Despite his assertion about not reading, he pours through two newspapers a day and will clip articles he thinks I’d be interested in. He’s incredibly bright, and during our first spat, said, “You’re used to being the smarter one in the relationship, right? Get over it!” later assuaging my ego with “You’re almost as smart as me”.
He’s my biggest critic, but constructive and frighteningly accurate. He’s also my biggest fan and wants the best for me. He sees me clearly. He thinks I'm sexy and should wear bikinis and jeans that show off my butt. He’s funny and he loves to go to theater, museums, or drive up the coast, stopping to buy strawberries. He can usually get me to try things I’ve never done, although I am steadfastly refusing to join him at the nude beach in the Vineyard and anything related to Dim Sum. I think I’m going to lose the Dim Sum fight soon. He can work a room, but would prefer not to. He is an ardent Red Sox fan, Beatles fan and connoisseur of the best restaurants. During one of our earlier dates, we were at a loss of words, staring around the restaurant trying to feel each other out, when he pulled out a red scarf from nowhere and started a mini-magic routine. It was then I knew he was special.
For those of you “Thirty-Something” fans, you may remember the episode where Gary is describing his new girlfriend, Susannah, to Michael. Michael wants to meet her, and we, the audience, are secretly hoping he gets back together with Melissa. Gary smiles and says, “You’re not going to like her”. I think this is the first impression that The Angry Man gives. He’s churlish and doesn’t suffer fools lightly. He also seems rather fond of the word “battle”, I’m not sure why. We have many similarities and appreciate our differences. He’d never be caught doing yard work or manning the grill, while I get great pleasure out of mowing the lawn. He also secretly loves that I call his favorite basketball team “The Fakers” and has a beautiful singing voice.
Last weekend, I picked up Laura Schlessinger’s book, “What Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives” (relax, it was at a friend’s house) and spontaneously turned the page to a bold paragraph heading “Adult Relationships Are For Adults”. Could this be an adult relationship? Readers, I’m dying to know.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The New New York
Twelve years ago, I packed up my apartment on 19th Street and, via Paris, headed west, my last address burned in my memory ever reminding me that I still think with one foot planted firmly in Manhattan.
My various careers have led me back east frequently, however, ten months have passed since I worked
M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Pillage” premiere in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The space between gave me the opportunity to see the obvious changes collectively, if not lucidly.
“Destination New York”, as my friend Dr. Crosby dubs it, is a cleaner, sparkling place. On June 28th, the Times featured the $150,000,000 redevelopment plan for the East River esplanade. It was amazing, sure to give the city “a much-needed break from the quaint…vision of New York that is threatening to transform Manhattan into a theme park version of itself…” But hasn’t that already happened? The article recalled the park’s “gritty integrity” and I thought of its broken down amphitheatre, since renovated by Erin Brockovich in 2002, as one of my favorite hideouts.
The subway stations are no longer lit by bare bulbs hanging from crusty, water damaged ceilings that promote mysterious growth, the N & R train suddenly lurching to a stop beneath the 57th Street Bridge and a crackling voice from the depths of the car reciting: “This train is now out of service” at which point everyone on the train would slam their copy of “Bonfire of the Vanities” shut and make eye contact with each other, sighing, cursing or stifling snickers.
One can no longer quote "A Chorus Line", once the Broadway mainstay, “New York is falling apart” to which my late mentor, Norman Rothstein, would always reply, “New York is always falling apart. “
Gone are Carmel Cars’ beat-up Caprice Classic fleet, replaced by two-year-old Lincolns, and frankly, quite luxurious.
Gone is the bus station quality of JFK’s United terminal, having recently gotten a glossy, pastel face-lift. The grime seems to have moved to the outskirts; and although I enjoy the comfort of the new United terminal, I miss the grime.
Gone is the thrill of hitting every green light on Ninth Avenue, your taxi driver weaving in and out of lanes pockmarked with potholes. Traffic jams the city at all hours. Tokens are obsolete. One is encouraged to purchase a plastic Metrocard, preferably from the machines rather than the clerk, fares currently $2.00 per trip, a 200% price increase from when I moved to town.
Gone is the Beekman Theatre, immortalized in “Annie Hall” when Alvie Singer, waiting for Annie, is accosted by a fan from the cast of “The Godfather”.
Gone is the St. Mark’s Theatre, where on my 25th birthday, I watched my favorite film “Gone With the Wind” for the first time on the big screen and wondered why everyone tittered. Could GWTW be melodramatic?
Gone are the creative outfits in the past. As if at a loss for some originality, fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s June 27th Sunday Times spread featured an onslaught of gold over-the-shoulder tote bags.
Gone are the Staten Island ferry girls with their bunched up socks and high-top aerobic sneakers. Two decades have passed and big hair is a relic, but I shuddered witnessing several ladies on the avenue caught in a sudden summer thunderstorm without a change of shoes. Ruined shoes were a reoccurring NY nightmare for me and could easily throw me into a funk for days.
It’s summer. Normally, only the die-hard New Yorkers would be in residence, a cold bath the only respite from the swelter, but the streets are festooned with ladies in pretty floral skirts and strappy sandals that show off pretty pedicures. Every female, age indifferent, resembles Carrie Bradshaw a la “Sex and the City”, a desperate attempt to imitate a shiny New York that only wet down streets and film cameras can bring to a celluloid reality. To emphasize the illusion, one can actually book a "Sex and the City" bus tour.
PAX and Cosi, “upscale” gourmet eateries offer a pricey alternative to the Korean delis that flourished during the ‘80s. For the first time in decades, Dean & Deluca have rivals. On the Upper West Side, Whole Foods Market competes with Zabar's and Fairway. Living on the opposite side of town, I shopped at the blue-collar Gristede’s and wistfully recall how my brother could easily shoplift a steak and the hit and run rat sightings we would compare. Think what you want, but these were the adversities that brought everyone together.
Restaurants are huge, meaning spatially enormous, invoking envy from renters struggling to find that extra bit of room. And speaking of restaurants, 145 Starbucks populate the island of Manhattan alone. 145. That means if you were to walk from the bottom of the battery to the tip of Washington Heights, that’s one almost every block and a half. Not that I mind. I am a devoted Starbucks customer and find myself frothing if I can’t find one near me, especially in a city that boasts 145. The city is also wild with French bistros, as if New York restaurateurs are out of the closet, blatantly admitting their Francophile status. While nyc.com lists 92, Yahoo does not discriminate, claiming 121. From the Hotel Gansevoort, I could've thrown a stone to either Pastis or Markt on opposing corners. I also discovered two L.A. hot spots, A.O.C. and Le Pain Quotidien. Are New Yorkers acknowledging their sister city on the other coast? When I lived in New York, L.A. was known as “Hell A”.
And yes, I know you're asking, "Where Have All the Hookers Gone?" It’s hard to coolly overlook the revamping of 42nd Street, a feat that Norman, once a member of the “42nd Street Restoration Committee”, would declare could never be done, not without “at least 25 million bucks”, which no one in those days had or wanted to part with. But millions came in the form of The Walt Disney Corporation. The impeccable restoration of the New Amsterdam Theatre and the installation of Disney’s “The Lion King” replete with vendors hawking beanie baby Simbas up and down the aisles during intermission laid the groundwork for a full block renovation, attracting other corporate entities to plug into the 42nd Street glorification like Starbucks, Chevy’s, Bubba Gump Shrimp, and London’s famous Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.
Hiking up to the theatrical production office on 43rd & 8th which employed me, disembarking at Times Square station, coffee and roll with butter in hand, my comrades on the street of dreams were working girls and cops flipping through the porn magazines at the peep show entrances. Now, bar signs on 8th Avenue have all been painted to look like quaint village taverns and only McHale’s sports its original neon sign.
Most surprisingly, Red Sox fans have come out of hiding, as if to provoke the defeated Yankees, people sporting hats and t-shirts everywhere. In 1991, I went to a Yankees-Red Sox game where the number of fights threatened to stop the game.
Why this melancholy reflection? It all started with the Basquiat Retrospective hosted by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Rather than wait until the show traveled to L.A., I wanted to see Jean-Michel on his own turf. I left the galleries depressed, prickly and peevish. I jotted some notes down, struggling to figure out why my mood swung into such a low and bleak place. Certainly Basquiat will do that to you. His paintings are angry, lonely, sad and we witness the artist at the beginnings of his career, never getting to see what might have been accomplished had he lived to be an old man. But deeper than that, Basquiat reminds me of the 80s and a permeated sadness that dwelt in the city during that decade. Maybe it’s the me I miss when I first arrived here, fresh off the Amtrak. I miss The Palladium, The Limelight and turning 21, feeling like an adult ordering my Absolut Tonics and long neck beers here’s-my-ID-thank-you-very-much-off-we-go-to-an-after-after-hours-party-and-still-make-it-to-work-at-10:AM. It was messy and dirty and fabulous. During those days, a full face lift wasn't required, the city swept the mess under the carpet.
In fact, if any of you have seen “Party Girl”, “Pieces of April” or even the biopic, “Basquiat”, that is the New York I remember. Small dark apartments with hundreds of coats of paint so much that the cornices and crown molding from the 19th Century look like globs of toothpaste. No matter. Your apartment is where you sleep; the city is your living room, your den, your piazza, your dining room and back yard.
I lamented these observations with a few friends. Most people agreed that the city had lost its edge. You could be in Chicago. You could be in St. Louis. Jon commented that the last time he returned east, he thought he was “going to New York and ended up at City Walk”.
That said, New York is still one of my favorite cities and is home to many of my favorite things, like Café La Fortuna, Arturo’s Pizza, Katz's Deli, ABC Carpet, Strand Bookstore to name a few.
I also love walking home in the early morning hours without a care in the world. I love that you can sing out loud, talk out loud, dress out loud and no one will take notice. I love that random newspaper sheets still blow down Broadway and tackle people in the face. I love taking the subway out to Coney Island. I love how green the trees get in August, how summer hosts a parade every weekend, how Century 21 is still the best place anywhere bar none to get a great deal on designer shoes. I love walking past the Neil Simon, the Music Box, the Golden, the Walter Kerr just after the curtain goes up, wondering what the audience, seated in the dark, thinks about the mystery unfolding before them on stage. I am thrilled that the amphitheatre I once dreamed on has gone through rehab and is home to the East River Music Project.
And I love those moments that you can only have in New York, like this one: I was on my way home via the N Train suffering from what else but “mal d’amour” as Norman would say. Dejectedly looking out the window, a homeless man stood in my periphery by door. As the train pulled into the next station, he blew up a red party balloon, twisted it into a flower, and presented it to me saying, “You look like you need this”. That to me was the spirit of New York, a complete stranger, more down on his luck than I, putting my emotional welfare before his in the most surprising way. He stepped off the train before I could say thank you.
According to Jerry Quickley, for whom volunteered for at KPFK last week, I’ll never really be a New Yorker because I wasn’t born there. And I thought it was because I wouldn’t embrace the Yankees as my home team. However, the eight years I put in marked me in a beautiful way, (and I’m not talking about my first tattoo!), and I think of them lovingly, without regret, but with the nostalgia that maturity brings. Those messy years are moving so far away.
My various careers have led me back east frequently, however, ten months have passed since I worked
M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Pillage” premiere in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The space between gave me the opportunity to see the obvious changes collectively, if not lucidly.
“Destination New York”, as my friend Dr. Crosby dubs it, is a cleaner, sparkling place. On June 28th, the Times featured the $150,000,000 redevelopment plan for the East River esplanade. It was amazing, sure to give the city “a much-needed break from the quaint…vision of New York that is threatening to transform Manhattan into a theme park version of itself…” But hasn’t that already happened? The article recalled the park’s “gritty integrity” and I thought of its broken down amphitheatre, since renovated by Erin Brockovich in 2002, as one of my favorite hideouts.
The subway stations are no longer lit by bare bulbs hanging from crusty, water damaged ceilings that promote mysterious growth, the N & R train suddenly lurching to a stop beneath the 57th Street Bridge and a crackling voice from the depths of the car reciting: “This train is now out of service” at which point everyone on the train would slam their copy of “Bonfire of the Vanities” shut and make eye contact with each other, sighing, cursing or stifling snickers.
One can no longer quote "A Chorus Line", once the Broadway mainstay, “New York is falling apart” to which my late mentor, Norman Rothstein, would always reply, “New York is always falling apart. “
Gone are Carmel Cars’ beat-up Caprice Classic fleet, replaced by two-year-old Lincolns, and frankly, quite luxurious.
Gone is the bus station quality of JFK’s United terminal, having recently gotten a glossy, pastel face-lift. The grime seems to have moved to the outskirts; and although I enjoy the comfort of the new United terminal, I miss the grime.
Gone is the thrill of hitting every green light on Ninth Avenue, your taxi driver weaving in and out of lanes pockmarked with potholes. Traffic jams the city at all hours. Tokens are obsolete. One is encouraged to purchase a plastic Metrocard, preferably from the machines rather than the clerk, fares currently $2.00 per trip, a 200% price increase from when I moved to town.
Gone is the Beekman Theatre, immortalized in “Annie Hall” when Alvie Singer, waiting for Annie, is accosted by a fan from the cast of “The Godfather”.
Gone is the St. Mark’s Theatre, where on my 25th birthday, I watched my favorite film “Gone With the Wind” for the first time on the big screen and wondered why everyone tittered. Could GWTW be melodramatic?
Gone are the creative outfits in the past. As if at a loss for some originality, fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s June 27th Sunday Times spread featured an onslaught of gold over-the-shoulder tote bags.
Gone are the Staten Island ferry girls with their bunched up socks and high-top aerobic sneakers. Two decades have passed and big hair is a relic, but I shuddered witnessing several ladies on the avenue caught in a sudden summer thunderstorm without a change of shoes. Ruined shoes were a reoccurring NY nightmare for me and could easily throw me into a funk for days.
It’s summer. Normally, only the die-hard New Yorkers would be in residence, a cold bath the only respite from the swelter, but the streets are festooned with ladies in pretty floral skirts and strappy sandals that show off pretty pedicures. Every female, age indifferent, resembles Carrie Bradshaw a la “Sex and the City”, a desperate attempt to imitate a shiny New York that only wet down streets and film cameras can bring to a celluloid reality. To emphasize the illusion, one can actually book a "Sex and the City" bus tour.
PAX and Cosi, “upscale” gourmet eateries offer a pricey alternative to the Korean delis that flourished during the ‘80s. For the first time in decades, Dean & Deluca have rivals. On the Upper West Side, Whole Foods Market competes with Zabar's and Fairway. Living on the opposite side of town, I shopped at the blue-collar Gristede’s and wistfully recall how my brother could easily shoplift a steak and the hit and run rat sightings we would compare. Think what you want, but these were the adversities that brought everyone together.
Restaurants are huge, meaning spatially enormous, invoking envy from renters struggling to find that extra bit of room. And speaking of restaurants, 145 Starbucks populate the island of Manhattan alone. 145. That means if you were to walk from the bottom of the battery to the tip of Washington Heights, that’s one almost every block and a half. Not that I mind. I am a devoted Starbucks customer and find myself frothing if I can’t find one near me, especially in a city that boasts 145. The city is also wild with French bistros, as if New York restaurateurs are out of the closet, blatantly admitting their Francophile status. While nyc.com lists 92, Yahoo does not discriminate, claiming 121. From the Hotel Gansevoort, I could've thrown a stone to either Pastis or Markt on opposing corners. I also discovered two L.A. hot spots, A.O.C. and Le Pain Quotidien. Are New Yorkers acknowledging their sister city on the other coast? When I lived in New York, L.A. was known as “Hell A”.
And yes, I know you're asking, "Where Have All the Hookers Gone?" It’s hard to coolly overlook the revamping of 42nd Street, a feat that Norman, once a member of the “42nd Street Restoration Committee”, would declare could never be done, not without “at least 25 million bucks”, which no one in those days had or wanted to part with. But millions came in the form of The Walt Disney Corporation. The impeccable restoration of the New Amsterdam Theatre and the installation of Disney’s “The Lion King” replete with vendors hawking beanie baby Simbas up and down the aisles during intermission laid the groundwork for a full block renovation, attracting other corporate entities to plug into the 42nd Street glorification like Starbucks, Chevy’s, Bubba Gump Shrimp, and London’s famous Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.
Hiking up to the theatrical production office on 43rd & 8th which employed me, disembarking at Times Square station, coffee and roll with butter in hand, my comrades on the street of dreams were working girls and cops flipping through the porn magazines at the peep show entrances. Now, bar signs on 8th Avenue have all been painted to look like quaint village taverns and only McHale’s sports its original neon sign.
Most surprisingly, Red Sox fans have come out of hiding, as if to provoke the defeated Yankees, people sporting hats and t-shirts everywhere. In 1991, I went to a Yankees-Red Sox game where the number of fights threatened to stop the game.
Why this melancholy reflection? It all started with the Basquiat Retrospective hosted by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Rather than wait until the show traveled to L.A., I wanted to see Jean-Michel on his own turf. I left the galleries depressed, prickly and peevish. I jotted some notes down, struggling to figure out why my mood swung into such a low and bleak place. Certainly Basquiat will do that to you. His paintings are angry, lonely, sad and we witness the artist at the beginnings of his career, never getting to see what might have been accomplished had he lived to be an old man. But deeper than that, Basquiat reminds me of the 80s and a permeated sadness that dwelt in the city during that decade. Maybe it’s the me I miss when I first arrived here, fresh off the Amtrak. I miss The Palladium, The Limelight and turning 21, feeling like an adult ordering my Absolut Tonics and long neck beers here’s-my-ID-thank-you-very-much-off-we-go-to-an-after-after-hours-party-and-still-make-it-to-work-at-10:AM. It was messy and dirty and fabulous. During those days, a full face lift wasn't required, the city swept the mess under the carpet.
In fact, if any of you have seen “Party Girl”, “Pieces of April” or even the biopic, “Basquiat”, that is the New York I remember. Small dark apartments with hundreds of coats of paint so much that the cornices and crown molding from the 19th Century look like globs of toothpaste. No matter. Your apartment is where you sleep; the city is your living room, your den, your piazza, your dining room and back yard.
I lamented these observations with a few friends. Most people agreed that the city had lost its edge. You could be in Chicago. You could be in St. Louis. Jon commented that the last time he returned east, he thought he was “going to New York and ended up at City Walk”.
That said, New York is still one of my favorite cities and is home to many of my favorite things, like Café La Fortuna, Arturo’s Pizza, Katz's Deli, ABC Carpet, Strand Bookstore to name a few.
I also love walking home in the early morning hours without a care in the world. I love that you can sing out loud, talk out loud, dress out loud and no one will take notice. I love that random newspaper sheets still blow down Broadway and tackle people in the face. I love taking the subway out to Coney Island. I love how green the trees get in August, how summer hosts a parade every weekend, how Century 21 is still the best place anywhere bar none to get a great deal on designer shoes. I love walking past the Neil Simon, the Music Box, the Golden, the Walter Kerr just after the curtain goes up, wondering what the audience, seated in the dark, thinks about the mystery unfolding before them on stage. I am thrilled that the amphitheatre I once dreamed on has gone through rehab and is home to the East River Music Project.
And I love those moments that you can only have in New York, like this one: I was on my way home via the N Train suffering from what else but “mal d’amour” as Norman would say. Dejectedly looking out the window, a homeless man stood in my periphery by door. As the train pulled into the next station, he blew up a red party balloon, twisted it into a flower, and presented it to me saying, “You look like you need this”. That to me was the spirit of New York, a complete stranger, more down on his luck than I, putting my emotional welfare before his in the most surprising way. He stepped off the train before I could say thank you.
According to Jerry Quickley, for whom volunteered for at KPFK last week, I’ll never really be a New Yorker because I wasn’t born there. And I thought it was because I wouldn’t embrace the Yankees as my home team. However, the eight years I put in marked me in a beautiful way, (and I’m not talking about my first tattoo!), and I think of them lovingly, without regret, but with the nostalgia that maturity brings. Those messy years are moving so far away.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Taos Lingers
I’m guilty of guilty pleasures. I read People Magazine in the checkout line. Being in film publicity for the past seven years, it was an everyday habit and old habits die hard. So when I hear “Taos”, I picture Julia Roberts lounging around her fabulous southwestern spread, native art adorning the walls and designer landscaping; and yet there is always some sort of spiritual descriptive connected to anything one reads about New Mexico. Taos is no exception.
Arrival
Leaving Ojo Caliente at well over 265,000 miles on the odometer and my Rand McNally road atlas, I drove into Taos County from the south passing three doublewide trailers from which hundreds of car skeletons spill out in metal crop circle formations, the dormant airport marked by a lonely windsock and an Enterprise Rental Car outpost. Clumps reflecting bright shimmering sunlight appeared as an oasis out of the long deserted desert road one drives from Santa Fe. This is a Biotecture development known as The Greater World Earthship Community. These buildings could double as the set of “Dune” and are made of recycled material, mainly old tires. They self-generate enough energy to get off the grid. Even this section of Taos has its celebrity resident; Dennis Weaver of “McCloud” fame is a proud owner and hosts a promotional video demonstrating construction. I did not see him, or anyone for that matter, hauling rubber.
Past the eco-community is the seemingly unstable Taos Gorge Bridge, voted the “World’s Most Beautiful Steel Bridge” in 1966 by the American Institute of Steel Construction, proving that yes, Virginia, there is an award for everything. Spanning 1200 feet, canyon rocks spilling 850 feet down into the Rio Grande, the bridge is rumored to be haunted by a woman clad in blue jeans and a white t-shirt and a popular place to throw yourself over; fatalities averaging three per annum. Once over the span of death, I entered a valley surrounded by snowy peaked mountains, the town spreading out before me, adobe housing blending into the foothills.
Triple-A cites Taos as a “hippie haven” with an “anti-establishment influx” due to the “counterculture idealists” who flooded the town in the 1960s. As if to prove this, parts of “Easy Rider” were filmed here in ’69 and Dennis Hopper is one of the Hollywood homeowners. Despite these quixotic descriptions, Taos thrives on people with deep pockets. An April 15th 2005 travel article from the New York Times makes no pretense about the fact that Taos is ultimately a place for buying art, getting a massage and enjoying the natural surroundings. The grey lady is in most respects, correct, however, what she omits is that while Taos is destination tourist, local tolerance for outsiders is about 48 hours coupled with an underbelly of gangster wannabes, heroin addiction, and sordid crimes right out of a David Lynch movie including a decapitated developer left to be eaten by his West Highland terriers (OK, that crime dates back to 1929, but authorities never did find the head) and a local senator pummeled by his wife with a hammer after she found him with another woman. He lived and filed for divorce, see page one of the Taos News, May 16th.
One road connects the North side to the South side of town, known by several names, but commonly, "Main Road". Both begin and end with the small eatery, “Rita’s Tacos”, and “The Bean” coffee shop where, quoting “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, Julia can be spotted, disheveled and unwashed even! The smell of exhaust mingled with diesel fuel from monster trucks permeates the air like a busy street in Bangkok. There is an alternate route that the locals know about, secretively called “bypass”. The main street is unabashedly stuffed with art galleries and shameless tourist shops that proclaim “I Love Taos”. Sagebrush and surprising lilacs grow everywhere reminding me of summers on the east coast. There is no escape from the sweet, pungent scent.
The must-see tourist attraction is the Taos Pueblo, located on over 100,000 acres deeded back to the Taos Indians by Nixon. The Pueblo is over 900 years old, home to several multi-storied buildings housing cozy beehive fireplaces within, but to maintain historical standards, no running water or electricity has been added to the Pueblo proper. At least 150 people live within the traditional settlement and every tribal member speaks the Tiwa language. We are given a tour by a young Native American college student named “Ilona”, which as she informs us, is Hungarian. Given the bellicose history between the Taos Indians and the Spaniards, I’m surprised to discover that the pueblo is 90% Catholic, although they worship the Earth Mother and leave Christ off to the side in a child-size casket. The magical Red Willow River halves the pueblo’s center, but the surrounding meadow has been cleared for a parking lot. One of the elders sports a WWII Veteran cap and flashes the brightest blue eyes. These men group together, selling buffalo pouches and bolo ties. One of them asks where I’m from and promptly informs me that California is going to fall into the sea. He whispers that I should go live with them, although I wouldn’t be allowed up to the sacred lake. He confides that the Indians listen to the earth, and this I know, but I can’t help but think he is trying to seduce me or sell me something. This is the New Yorker in me, and while I acknowledge the cynicism, I’m not buying.
The Community
Over the two weeks, I talked to three transplants, each of who had been living in Taos for over ten years. All of them sort of arrived there and never left, either participating in a workshop, waiting on parts for broken down motorcycle or finding a lover that you just can’t quite leave yet. I can understand the desire. Taos lingers. It invites you to carve out a niche, find purpose, or disappear. Natural beauty abounds and the cache of local secrets I found devilishly attractive. I longed to puncture the tourist pleasantries and get down to the heartbeat
Triple A is also correct in printing that there are three distinct influences within Taos proper: Spanish, Native American and Anglo. Although the guide also states that they mingle, I learned otherwise. One of the folks I met told me that occasionally, someone well into their cups will curse him out ending with a loud “Whitey!”
I spend an evening out with Mark, our lovely concierge from The Indian Hills Inn, where we hop from the Taos Inn to the Adobe Inn, but even though I greet the baristas from World Cup Coffee, (simply the best coffee in the world and to which I’m an avowed lifelong fan and a twice-daily customer), they are not quite friendly in return. It’s as if you’re welcome as a tourist, but they don’t want you in their shit and they certainly don’t want you hanging out at their local bar. I don’t know if I could pick up and move to a small town on my own because there seems to be a bit of hazing involved with the process. First you’re a curiosity, then ignored until you can prove you have something to offer. The other fact I found unsettling was that virtually no one we met, with the exception of Mark, was interested in the fact that we were building for Habitat for Humanity or even knew of the Taos affiliate. The Saturday following our arrival, the local radio station heavily promoted volunteer orientation seminars for Habitat and I was disheartened to learn that only two people showed up.
There is definitely a disconnect, as though the many Taos websites cannot even use the influence of the Internet to create community. When my friend Lonn asked me what I thought it was, the word “heartbreak” came to mind. The land breathes an overwhelming sigh. It is a place for people to forget, be separate, belong, start over, start drinking again, become the artist they always hoped they’d be. Not surprisingly, there is a large amount of alcoholism. According to the Albuquerque Journal, “Taos County is one of the worst in the state for alcohol-related crashes.” For a town so small, the inhabitants keep to their own kind, everyone protecting their slice of reality or sanity.
The Build
Many people asked me who in Taos needed homes, since real estate is expensive, a surefire result when celebrity moves to town. From the pages of US Weekly, Taos appears to be the Malibu of the South West, however the medium income of its 7000 residents is $18,000, most employment being service-related, typical for a ski/summer sports town. Keep in mind that for a family of four, that’s the 2004 poverty level rate.
We are entrusted with the families' names and their stories, but I will tell you that a home will change their lives. For domestic habitat builds, it’s very difficult for the families to take time off of work, many of whom have more than one job. Such is the work ethic in the United States. When I was in Thailand, the entire family pitched in, including neighbors and tribal chiefs. I am there to build, that is the bottom line, but associating the faces with the houses is a very important part of Habitat, it gives the “humanity” portion of the company clear definition. Since a day off was impossible, we were invited to the pueblo where a dinner was held in our honor. It was incredibly moving, reminding me that I have not known real struggle. My parents worked in social service and didn’t really make any money, yet we had a house and a back yard that we loved for 27 years and never wanted for anything. It breaks my heart that people, native to the area with family surrounding them, are forced to move elsewhere because of the outrageous land prices. By the end of the evening, everyone shed tears. I felt blessed to be there, to be part of this and to be able to somehow make some small difference in the lives of these beautiful, courageous people.
The houses will not be finished by the time we leave. The first one is about 85% done and the second, 60%. We roofed, chicken wired, hung doors and sheet rock and secured the vigas that act as support beams across the roof. You would be surprised at how cool the homes are inside as opposed to outside, about 20 or 30 degrees. For days, all one could hear was the pounding of hammers and we diligently worked, I lost in my thoughts. Our site leader, Kyle, was the pure definition of positive energy and kindness. At one point towards the end of the trip, he asked me if I was staying, suspecting that I had felt the famous “Taos Pull”.
One of the group suggests the “Taos Hum”, a low throbbing sound from deep in the earth. I do some research and find the following "straight dope". But I know it is the heartbreak and the beautiful Rocky Mountains, the Rio Grande and big sky that draw me near like a strong set of shoulders to rest on.
It's true... Taos lingers. After a tearful goodbye to my new friends, I pick a bunch of lilacs to accompany me on my way back to Los Angeles.
Arrival
Leaving Ojo Caliente at well over 265,000 miles on the odometer and my Rand McNally road atlas, I drove into Taos County from the south passing three doublewide trailers from which hundreds of car skeletons spill out in metal crop circle formations, the dormant airport marked by a lonely windsock and an Enterprise Rental Car outpost. Clumps reflecting bright shimmering sunlight appeared as an oasis out of the long deserted desert road one drives from Santa Fe. This is a Biotecture development known as The Greater World Earthship Community. These buildings could double as the set of “Dune” and are made of recycled material, mainly old tires. They self-generate enough energy to get off the grid. Even this section of Taos has its celebrity resident; Dennis Weaver of “McCloud” fame is a proud owner and hosts a promotional video demonstrating construction. I did not see him, or anyone for that matter, hauling rubber.
Past the eco-community is the seemingly unstable Taos Gorge Bridge, voted the “World’s Most Beautiful Steel Bridge” in 1966 by the American Institute of Steel Construction, proving that yes, Virginia, there is an award for everything. Spanning 1200 feet, canyon rocks spilling 850 feet down into the Rio Grande, the bridge is rumored to be haunted by a woman clad in blue jeans and a white t-shirt and a popular place to throw yourself over; fatalities averaging three per annum. Once over the span of death, I entered a valley surrounded by snowy peaked mountains, the town spreading out before me, adobe housing blending into the foothills.
Triple-A cites Taos as a “hippie haven” with an “anti-establishment influx” due to the “counterculture idealists” who flooded the town in the 1960s. As if to prove this, parts of “Easy Rider” were filmed here in ’69 and Dennis Hopper is one of the Hollywood homeowners. Despite these quixotic descriptions, Taos thrives on people with deep pockets. An April 15th 2005 travel article from the New York Times makes no pretense about the fact that Taos is ultimately a place for buying art, getting a massage and enjoying the natural surroundings. The grey lady is in most respects, correct, however, what she omits is that while Taos is destination tourist, local tolerance for outsiders is about 48 hours coupled with an underbelly of gangster wannabes, heroin addiction, and sordid crimes right out of a David Lynch movie including a decapitated developer left to be eaten by his West Highland terriers (OK, that crime dates back to 1929, but authorities never did find the head) and a local senator pummeled by his wife with a hammer after she found him with another woman. He lived and filed for divorce, see page one of the Taos News, May 16th.
One road connects the North side to the South side of town, known by several names, but commonly, "Main Road". Both begin and end with the small eatery, “Rita’s Tacos”, and “The Bean” coffee shop where, quoting “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, Julia can be spotted, disheveled and unwashed even! The smell of exhaust mingled with diesel fuel from monster trucks permeates the air like a busy street in Bangkok. There is an alternate route that the locals know about, secretively called “bypass”. The main street is unabashedly stuffed with art galleries and shameless tourist shops that proclaim “I Love Taos”. Sagebrush and surprising lilacs grow everywhere reminding me of summers on the east coast. There is no escape from the sweet, pungent scent.
The must-see tourist attraction is the Taos Pueblo, located on over 100,000 acres deeded back to the Taos Indians by Nixon. The Pueblo is over 900 years old, home to several multi-storied buildings housing cozy beehive fireplaces within, but to maintain historical standards, no running water or electricity has been added to the Pueblo proper. At least 150 people live within the traditional settlement and every tribal member speaks the Tiwa language. We are given a tour by a young Native American college student named “Ilona”, which as she informs us, is Hungarian. Given the bellicose history between the Taos Indians and the Spaniards, I’m surprised to discover that the pueblo is 90% Catholic, although they worship the Earth Mother and leave Christ off to the side in a child-size casket. The magical Red Willow River halves the pueblo’s center, but the surrounding meadow has been cleared for a parking lot. One of the elders sports a WWII Veteran cap and flashes the brightest blue eyes. These men group together, selling buffalo pouches and bolo ties. One of them asks where I’m from and promptly informs me that California is going to fall into the sea. He whispers that I should go live with them, although I wouldn’t be allowed up to the sacred lake. He confides that the Indians listen to the earth, and this I know, but I can’t help but think he is trying to seduce me or sell me something. This is the New Yorker in me, and while I acknowledge the cynicism, I’m not buying.
The Community
Over the two weeks, I talked to three transplants, each of who had been living in Taos for over ten years. All of them sort of arrived there and never left, either participating in a workshop, waiting on parts for broken down motorcycle or finding a lover that you just can’t quite leave yet. I can understand the desire. Taos lingers. It invites you to carve out a niche, find purpose, or disappear. Natural beauty abounds and the cache of local secrets I found devilishly attractive. I longed to puncture the tourist pleasantries and get down to the heartbeat
Triple A is also correct in printing that there are three distinct influences within Taos proper: Spanish, Native American and Anglo. Although the guide also states that they mingle, I learned otherwise. One of the folks I met told me that occasionally, someone well into their cups will curse him out ending with a loud “Whitey!”
I spend an evening out with Mark, our lovely concierge from The Indian Hills Inn, where we hop from the Taos Inn to the Adobe Inn, but even though I greet the baristas from World Cup Coffee, (simply the best coffee in the world and to which I’m an avowed lifelong fan and a twice-daily customer), they are not quite friendly in return. It’s as if you’re welcome as a tourist, but they don’t want you in their shit and they certainly don’t want you hanging out at their local bar. I don’t know if I could pick up and move to a small town on my own because there seems to be a bit of hazing involved with the process. First you’re a curiosity, then ignored until you can prove you have something to offer. The other fact I found unsettling was that virtually no one we met, with the exception of Mark, was interested in the fact that we were building for Habitat for Humanity or even knew of the Taos affiliate. The Saturday following our arrival, the local radio station heavily promoted volunteer orientation seminars for Habitat and I was disheartened to learn that only two people showed up.
There is definitely a disconnect, as though the many Taos websites cannot even use the influence of the Internet to create community. When my friend Lonn asked me what I thought it was, the word “heartbreak” came to mind. The land breathes an overwhelming sigh. It is a place for people to forget, be separate, belong, start over, start drinking again, become the artist they always hoped they’d be. Not surprisingly, there is a large amount of alcoholism. According to the Albuquerque Journal, “Taos County is one of the worst in the state for alcohol-related crashes.” For a town so small, the inhabitants keep to their own kind, everyone protecting their slice of reality or sanity.
The Build
Many people asked me who in Taos needed homes, since real estate is expensive, a surefire result when celebrity moves to town. From the pages of US Weekly, Taos appears to be the Malibu of the South West, however the medium income of its 7000 residents is $18,000, most employment being service-related, typical for a ski/summer sports town. Keep in mind that for a family of four, that’s the 2004 poverty level rate.
We are entrusted with the families' names and their stories, but I will tell you that a home will change their lives. For domestic habitat builds, it’s very difficult for the families to take time off of work, many of whom have more than one job. Such is the work ethic in the United States. When I was in Thailand, the entire family pitched in, including neighbors and tribal chiefs. I am there to build, that is the bottom line, but associating the faces with the houses is a very important part of Habitat, it gives the “humanity” portion of the company clear definition. Since a day off was impossible, we were invited to the pueblo where a dinner was held in our honor. It was incredibly moving, reminding me that I have not known real struggle. My parents worked in social service and didn’t really make any money, yet we had a house and a back yard that we loved for 27 years and never wanted for anything. It breaks my heart that people, native to the area with family surrounding them, are forced to move elsewhere because of the outrageous land prices. By the end of the evening, everyone shed tears. I felt blessed to be there, to be part of this and to be able to somehow make some small difference in the lives of these beautiful, courageous people.
The houses will not be finished by the time we leave. The first one is about 85% done and the second, 60%. We roofed, chicken wired, hung doors and sheet rock and secured the vigas that act as support beams across the roof. You would be surprised at how cool the homes are inside as opposed to outside, about 20 or 30 degrees. For days, all one could hear was the pounding of hammers and we diligently worked, I lost in my thoughts. Our site leader, Kyle, was the pure definition of positive energy and kindness. At one point towards the end of the trip, he asked me if I was staying, suspecting that I had felt the famous “Taos Pull”.
One of the group suggests the “Taos Hum”, a low throbbing sound from deep in the earth. I do some research and find the following "straight dope". But I know it is the heartbreak and the beautiful Rocky Mountains, the Rio Grande and big sky that draw me near like a strong set of shoulders to rest on.
It's true... Taos lingers. After a tearful goodbye to my new friends, I pick a bunch of lilacs to accompany me on my way back to Los Angeles.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Will Someone Fill In Those Dang Potholes?
An old friend of mine was visiting from Minneapolis last week. I hadn’t seen her in six years, and was delighted to hear that “Kat Tales” had kept her completely up to date. However, as we walked little Lily through Madison Square Park, she revealed that she didn’t believe half of what I wrote. I stifled a guffaw and asked which entries she was talking about. “Well”, with a sideways look that reeked of skepticism, “the cowboy/roadie guy and the angry man? Is that for real?”
Her reaction wasn’t original.
People call, send private emails or publicly comment on the blog about my interludes with the opposite sex. One person even sent me a prayer card. If I had a chick lit book in the cards, I would call it Still Looking for Mr. Right, Still Sleeping With Mr. Wrong. It’s a good title.
Naturally, I take a tiny margin of poetic license. Let’s call it 5%. I’m certainly not James Frey here trying to pass off a work of mostly memoir and I don’t relish the thought of getting bitch slapped by Oprah, but I’d rather use my trip down the rabbit hole to entertain rather than subjecting you to the fine print. I replied to Andrea, and not a bit proudly by the way, that they were all true. Everyone has their cross to bear in this lifetime, mine happens to be relationships with men. OK, cigarettes could fall into this category… and when to say “No” to coffee.
For most of my twenties, “relationship” did not exist in my vocabulary. I was too busy, too self involved, too ambitious to allow any sort of intimacy in my life, but I seem to have fast tracked this path, getting caught up for all the years I’ve been on the career turnpike of life.
I don’t pretend to know that much about the male species. I try to think of behavior as gender non-specific, but there are some things that definitely fall into the X/Y factor. For example, there’s a “Sex & The City” episode where Carrie meets Baryshnikov, (who manages to grand jeté his sixty year old self over a taxi at least once during his romance with Sarah Jessica Parker). After declaring that she’s going to take him as her “lovah”, Carrie realizes that after multiple copulation engagements, it’s no longer a sexual relationship, but a pathway to a real one. “Nesting” as Carrie says, “is in our DNA”. As I marked over a 150 emails I had received since November, preparing to delete, I pondered over where it went wrong. How had I fallen into the same pothole again?
My current situation with the Soccer Hottie has abruptly terminated. I should have known what I was dealing with when he told me that he thought he was incapable of having a serious relationship, but it’s as if I have an invisible hearing aid and the volume has been turned down on. And when this sexy guy is saying the blah blah blah, but whisking you off to a mountain retreat in Vermont where you spend almost every last second not skiing, well, I’ve always been taught that actions speak louder than words. In this case, the words were loud and clear, the actions were… well, I don’t think I need to elaborate. When this same someone arrives almost twelve hours after you’ve touched down in New York with birthday cake and sweet nothings, it’s easy to go deaf. But when he later says to you, “I’m attracted to you. I’m attracted to a lot of women”, this is probably the right time to turn up the volume. My ex - the speedracer/townie/metrosexual - actually laughed right out loud at that sentiment.
The bitter end began when I pulled the girl card and brought up direction. Where was this going? I wasn’t sure how I felt, and after the past weekend, I wasn’t getting a read on his feelings either. When he relayed that the next time he visited, he would be staying in a hotel, feeling that we needed to put the brakes on; I’m thinking, and maybe I’m crazy, but I’m thinking that it meant he want to take things slowly; let it marinate, when the translation is I AM NO LONGER INTERESTED IN YOU. I WANT TO BE FRIENDS. My relationship hearing aid was beginning to hum and crackle.
Towards the end of a five-hour conversation spanning two days, (if you think I talk a lot, I have nothing on the SH), navigating this murky marinade while simultaneously consulting the ancient scrolls of mantalk, I demanded from the Soccer Hottie a clear explanation of his feelings. His reply, and I quote: “I feel that we’ve exchanged information. I feel that we have a rapport with each other.” These are not feelings. These are facts. And although I reiterated this during the course of this deranged and extremely tiresome circumlocution, I couldn’t help but push Mr. Hottie into a corner where he thrust this finality: he was not interested in me romantically, that he didn’t love me and could never be in love with me.
Well, thank you, it’s very clear now. There was a nasty last minute rant where colors were exposed; truly a notable spark of emotion, and the phone appropriately went dead. I don’t expect to hear from the SH; my repeated sentiment was that friendship had been taken off the table when he started adding spicy innuendo to the lengthy daily communication we had begun.
My approach to disaster relief: I spend the morning bleary eyed. Call back up and got both support and criticism. Two of my favorite reactions: “You can really pick them, can’t you?” and “What is wrong with you!?!” My sage, Dr. Crosby, reminds me in an email “Montaigne said you can't know a horse until you've seen it trotting in the street, charging on the battlefield, and resting in the stable.” Taking all this advice into account, I hop the 6 train to Soho’s DopDop Salon for a super chic haircut, reverse directions uptown for free Friday nights at MoMA where some of the worlds most incredible art hangs, including a few of my favorites, Chagall’s "Birthday”, Klimpts “The Park”, Hopper’s “Gas” and Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.
Longfellow said “Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine.”
Today, I decide on candy apple red lingerie and the fabulous mascara I have discovered (by the way girls, after years, and I mean years, of looking for the perfect mascara, I’ve finally found it, Benefit’s Bad Gal Lash), turn up the Rolling Stones’ “Made in the Shade” and dance around the apartment singing Bitch and Happy with the drapes wide open, letting in the rainy grey light.
Fully clad, I don my rose-colored sunglasses. This is how I prefer to see the world. And the next time I spot a pothole, I'll take a different street.
Her reaction wasn’t original.
People call, send private emails or publicly comment on the blog about my interludes with the opposite sex. One person even sent me a prayer card. If I had a chick lit book in the cards, I would call it Still Looking for Mr. Right, Still Sleeping With Mr. Wrong. It’s a good title.
Naturally, I take a tiny margin of poetic license. Let’s call it 5%. I’m certainly not James Frey here trying to pass off a work of mostly memoir and I don’t relish the thought of getting bitch slapped by Oprah, but I’d rather use my trip down the rabbit hole to entertain rather than subjecting you to the fine print. I replied to Andrea, and not a bit proudly by the way, that they were all true. Everyone has their cross to bear in this lifetime, mine happens to be relationships with men. OK, cigarettes could fall into this category… and when to say “No” to coffee.
For most of my twenties, “relationship” did not exist in my vocabulary. I was too busy, too self involved, too ambitious to allow any sort of intimacy in my life, but I seem to have fast tracked this path, getting caught up for all the years I’ve been on the career turnpike of life.
I don’t pretend to know that much about the male species. I try to think of behavior as gender non-specific, but there are some things that definitely fall into the X/Y factor. For example, there’s a “Sex & The City” episode where Carrie meets Baryshnikov, (who manages to grand jeté his sixty year old self over a taxi at least once during his romance with Sarah Jessica Parker). After declaring that she’s going to take him as her “lovah”, Carrie realizes that after multiple copulation engagements, it’s no longer a sexual relationship, but a pathway to a real one. “Nesting” as Carrie says, “is in our DNA”. As I marked over a 150 emails I had received since November, preparing to delete, I pondered over where it went wrong. How had I fallen into the same pothole again?
My current situation with the Soccer Hottie has abruptly terminated. I should have known what I was dealing with when he told me that he thought he was incapable of having a serious relationship, but it’s as if I have an invisible hearing aid and the volume has been turned down on. And when this sexy guy is saying the blah blah blah, but whisking you off to a mountain retreat in Vermont where you spend almost every last second not skiing, well, I’ve always been taught that actions speak louder than words. In this case, the words were loud and clear, the actions were… well, I don’t think I need to elaborate. When this same someone arrives almost twelve hours after you’ve touched down in New York with birthday cake and sweet nothings, it’s easy to go deaf. But when he later says to you, “I’m attracted to you. I’m attracted to a lot of women”, this is probably the right time to turn up the volume. My ex - the speedracer/townie/metrosexual - actually laughed right out loud at that sentiment.
The bitter end began when I pulled the girl card and brought up direction. Where was this going? I wasn’t sure how I felt, and after the past weekend, I wasn’t getting a read on his feelings either. When he relayed that the next time he visited, he would be staying in a hotel, feeling that we needed to put the brakes on; I’m thinking, and maybe I’m crazy, but I’m thinking that it meant he want to take things slowly; let it marinate, when the translation is I AM NO LONGER INTERESTED IN YOU. I WANT TO BE FRIENDS. My relationship hearing aid was beginning to hum and crackle.
Towards the end of a five-hour conversation spanning two days, (if you think I talk a lot, I have nothing on the SH), navigating this murky marinade while simultaneously consulting the ancient scrolls of mantalk, I demanded from the Soccer Hottie a clear explanation of his feelings. His reply, and I quote: “I feel that we’ve exchanged information. I feel that we have a rapport with each other.” These are not feelings. These are facts. And although I reiterated this during the course of this deranged and extremely tiresome circumlocution, I couldn’t help but push Mr. Hottie into a corner where he thrust this finality: he was not interested in me romantically, that he didn’t love me and could never be in love with me.
Well, thank you, it’s very clear now. There was a nasty last minute rant where colors were exposed; truly a notable spark of emotion, and the phone appropriately went dead. I don’t expect to hear from the SH; my repeated sentiment was that friendship had been taken off the table when he started adding spicy innuendo to the lengthy daily communication we had begun.
My approach to disaster relief: I spend the morning bleary eyed. Call back up and got both support and criticism. Two of my favorite reactions: “You can really pick them, can’t you?” and “What is wrong with you!?!” My sage, Dr. Crosby, reminds me in an email “Montaigne said you can't know a horse until you've seen it trotting in the street, charging on the battlefield, and resting in the stable.” Taking all this advice into account, I hop the 6 train to Soho’s DopDop Salon for a super chic haircut, reverse directions uptown for free Friday nights at MoMA where some of the worlds most incredible art hangs, including a few of my favorites, Chagall’s "Birthday”, Klimpts “The Park”, Hopper’s “Gas” and Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.
Longfellow said “Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine.”
Today, I decide on candy apple red lingerie and the fabulous mascara I have discovered (by the way girls, after years, and I mean years, of looking for the perfect mascara, I’ve finally found it, Benefit’s Bad Gal Lash), turn up the Rolling Stones’ “Made in the Shade” and dance around the apartment singing Bitch and Happy with the drapes wide open, letting in the rainy grey light.
Fully clad, I don my rose-colored sunglasses. This is how I prefer to see the world. And the next time I spot a pothole, I'll take a different street.
Monday, May 23, 2005
The KROQ Weenie Roast and My New Love for Tom Morello
Last week, upon re-entry to Los Angeles, my new friend, Lonn, invited me to join he and his daughter to the KROQ weenie roast in Irvine. Fortunately, I was carpooling with his pal Mark later in the afternoon. Not that I didn’t want to see who was on the second stages, it’s just that a hot afternoon filled with sausage smell and general “street fair” fare is not my scene. Everything smells like Italian sausage, gyros, someone’s always throwing up and there is trash everywhere. At the Verizon Amphitheatre, it was no different, although when we arrived, people we just starting to pile into the amphitheatre, the Red Bull guzzling contest was just ending and sunburned bodies were peaking on their beer red bull buzz. The line up that I caught was The Killers, Audioslave, the Foo Fighters and Motley Crue. The audience was fantastic, all types of tattoos adorned everyone, the crowd a mixed group of ages and races, multi-mankind brought together by music the boom boom of the bass from The Killers, covering Depeche Mode. Girls in t-shirts and tiny shorts proving that rock chicks will always be rock chicks, there is no change in fashion. Long hair, short everything and heels. It’s like a timeless uniform. The energy pounds through you, my heart sped up and I felt about 15 years younger, wishing I could get down on the floor. Rock concerts are the only place, I’m convinced, in this day and age that people can be openly sexual. It’s the way everyone was moving and grooving, like a come on, transformed into their animal spirits.
The Killers were great, and having saw Audioslave the night before at the Wiltern, they were consistent in their outstanding performance. Tom Morello is thing of joy to watch. I remember seeing Yo Yo Ma for the first time, tears coming to my eyes at being able to witness someone whose soul was identical to his instrument, his music and his love for it. Tom Morello is no different. I could watch him play a Back Street Boys song on his guitar and weep with the beauty of it. If you haven’t seen him, you must. He also plays under the name of The Night Watchman. The stage spins after Audioslave wrecks me with their song "Like A Stone" and The Foo Fighters begin playing and don’t stop for at least an hour. I’m still trembling in awe. All Hail the Foo Fighters! It was the most spectacular musical/band performance I’ve seen since Prince, and if you saw the show, that was pretty hard to top. Dave Grohl is a herculean rock star.
The evening was capped by Motley Crue, Tommy Lee manning his drums with make up that rivaled Peter Criss and actual pyro! I was instantly transported to the 80s and scene from “Spinal Tap”. Indeed, I heard there was one too many Jaegermeisters thrown down back stage, but no matter. It was great – shout at the devil man!
The Killers were great, and having saw Audioslave the night before at the Wiltern, they were consistent in their outstanding performance. Tom Morello is thing of joy to watch. I remember seeing Yo Yo Ma for the first time, tears coming to my eyes at being able to witness someone whose soul was identical to his instrument, his music and his love for it. Tom Morello is no different. I could watch him play a Back Street Boys song on his guitar and weep with the beauty of it. If you haven’t seen him, you must. He also plays under the name of The Night Watchman. The stage spins after Audioslave wrecks me with their song "Like A Stone" and The Foo Fighters begin playing and don’t stop for at least an hour. I’m still trembling in awe. All Hail the Foo Fighters! It was the most spectacular musical/band performance I’ve seen since Prince, and if you saw the show, that was pretty hard to top. Dave Grohl is a herculean rock star.
The evening was capped by Motley Crue, Tommy Lee manning his drums with make up that rivaled Peter Criss and actual pyro! I was instantly transported to the 80s and scene from “Spinal Tap”. Indeed, I heard there was one too many Jaegermeisters thrown down back stage, but no matter. It was great – shout at the devil man!
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Fearless or Foolish?
When my friend Joanna invited me to join her Taos Habitat for Humanity build in May, I jumped at the chance. It being January, I couldn’t predict how long my melancholy would last, and besides, I had heard that Taos did wonders for the soul. I could have taken Amtrack direct from Union Station to Albuquerque, but I opted to test out the Benz’s abilities and on May 3rd, began my solo journey from Eagle Rock to New Mexico stopping in Flagstaff, Gallup, Santa Fe and finally Taos.
Was I being fearless or foolish? I didn’t think about it, I just got in the car and drove, not in the least bit worried to be traveling alone. The most dangerous place I could be was in my head, which, as irony would have it, I had no shortage of time to spend with. With camera in left hand, knees on steering wheel and pencil in right, I documented my random thoughts from the road. Enjoy…
First Impressions
America’s Favorite Highway, Route 66, transformed into Interstate 40 in 1984. Due to popular pilgrimages, signs along the way encourage drivers to get off and experience the once Main Street highway; roadside attractions include meteor craters, dinosaur remains, petrified wood, Indian-made blankets, and no shortage of slots. The expansion of casinos across the South West is the most noticeable difference in the landscape since I drove this route a decade past, having taken off in the middle of the night after quitting my job in rock radio, resolute that Graceland had the answers. Unlike historical markers, casinos have easy pull on/pull off ramps and many are attached to gas stations covered by heavy duty tenting with Port O’Sans conveniently located on the side. Everyone wants in on the money. I wonder if they pump in oxygen like they do in Vegas. Is poker keeping the truckers off crystal? Are they making their deliveries on time? I don’t see many free spaces in the parking lots.
Flagstaff, Arizona
When one is accustomed to traveling on a company that puts you up in four-star, soundproof rooms containing heavenly beds fitted with 1000 thread count sheets and room service, Travelodge can be a rude awakening. I don’t mind getting my own ice or the scratchy linen and dubious blankets, but the level of noise at 5:30 A.M. is a challenge. High pitched screams to unruly children, hundreds of Harley riders revving their engines in anticipation of Canyon roads or, if faithfully following Route 66, the railroad, which blows its whistle hourly. In fact, so many people had complained, that the Flagstaff Best Western posted a disclaimer stating that no; they could not control the train whistle. Flagstaff is cute little town, with vintage boutique hotels spread along the main street, 90% of which proudly display a color newspaper portrait of the new pope at the registry. Don’t be deceived by the geranium lined streets and brick faced shops, the teenager who checked me in told me that someone had been just murdered at the elementary school, confirming my belief that I’m safer in a large city.
Sedona, Arizona
I make it a point to revisit Sedona. Several years ago, I accompanied the Tech Director of a theater company I had been involved with to deliver a set to the Sedona Shakespeare Company. Not only was I dumped off at a prep school, but then abandoned for eight hours with a bare light bulb for company, (I am not kidding. It was just the light bulb and I, the truck kicking up dust before I could grab my gear). I also discovered that my companionship was all part of a very willful lesbian seduction the T.D. had planned, asking me several times over the course of the drive whether or not I had sex with women in college. Angelina Jolie she definitely was not and when I got out of the truck, I got out of the truck, if you know what I mean. I needed to reverse the bad energy I felt about Sedona and drove into town searching for the vortexes I was confident would cure this negative vibe. One does feel a tingling sensation atop these monolithic mesas, a connection to the earth. Feeling full of nature, I threw on my boots and went for what I thought was a short loop. Not having bothered to unpack socks, I arrive almost three hours later, blistered, limping, and hoarse, discovering I had just walked seven miles. I climb back up the vortex. Shortly after, I am pulled over for crossing two lanes of traffic while making a beeline towards a coffee shop. For the first time in my life, I talk my way out of a ticket, pointing out that I was not speeding and had used my blinker. The spirits are with me. We chat about Sedona’s coffee houses, the officer giving a hard sell for Von’s Starbucks counter over any of the local java joints.
Gallup, New Mexico…
On my previous trip, I visited the beautiful Sky City Acoma Enchanted Pueblo outside of Gallup, now host to the Sky City “Big Rig” Casino where high rollers can actually win a custom rig. I return to the Historic El Rancho Hotel, home to the movie stars. Gallup is the perfect place to film westerns, and the walls of the hotel are adorned with publicity photos of Ronald Reagan, Joel McCrea, Jane Wyman, Kirk Douglas among others. I picture Bogart at the hotel’s bar, just a regular guy with a regular job, which is the way he saw his profession. I can’t imagine that any of the celebrities I’ve worked with would stay here. The Zuni Mountains encircle Gallup and have their own form of rainbow, the spectrum glowing from within, from green to reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. As you drive out of town, power plants choke the middle of this beauty, offsetting the vista with steel towers and smoking chimneys and not a person in sight.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
The Rio Grande lives up to it’s name and you can spot the delta and track the river’s course from the Cottonwood trees that spread out in a green belt from water’s edge. There are pyramidal mountains, perfect for UFO landings and lots of developments being built. Once ancient volcanoes are grown over and have spewed forth their rocks across the high desert floor, leading the way to petroglyphs, a form, I’m convinced, of ancient graffiti. Everyone has something to say. I walk up to the top and interrupt an impromptu service being given by the Light and Liberty Jail Ministry to a flock of one. The words “liberty” and “jail” together strike me as funny and I stifle a smirk, not lost on the young minister.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The streets are filled with women bedecked in recent purchases of silver and turquoise and red coral. We women are such suckers for the glitter. I salivate over leather jackets. Santa Fe seems so elite, so expensive. Galleries and shops surround the Plaza while Native Americans sell their wares on the curb outside the Governor’s Palace. Oddly, a Kentucky Derby party is held at the Historic El Dorado Hotel. I realize I’ve never watched a horse race, let alone attended a Kentucky Derby Party. I wander around, have breakfast with an old friend and decide to spend my last day on the road in the healing waters of Ojo Caliente.
Ojo Caliente, New Mexcio
Not quite an oasis just south of the Colorado border. It is Mother’s Day and the spa is full. I desperately needed peace and quiet to quell the storm brewing inside my brain, but I entered into a world of illiterates wading around the arsenic and iron pools. Despite the numerous signs proclaiming "Quiet Zone. Please Maintain the Tranquility and Do Not Speak Above a Whisper”, people happily chat away about Hawaii, the oil business and the myth of skin cancer as they fry up in the hot desert sun. Two unruly boys leap from pool to pool, their parents ignoring more signs: “Children Under 12 Not Allowed.” A two and half year old repeats in a shout “I’m two and a half!” and a sixteen year old sighs wistfully “I can’t wait until Armando falls in love with me. I hope he’s not crazy”. Sister, I want to say, hold onto your hat, love is wild ride.
It's as though the sanctuary I’m struggling to find in my head has been usurped by abundant noise in the middle of nowhere. Women parade around in bikinis with bodies reminiscent of an R. Crumb strip. Nobody preens or stares at themselves in the mirror like they do at Burke Williams. Women are women here and proudly shake their bountiful asses. I feel at home among them, a tribal member of the Large Ass. I vow to buy a bikini when I get home. That night, having opted for a room with a TV, I locate a cable, but no TV. The night clerk informs me that there is no Television, Internet or cell service at Ojo Caliente. It is 9:PM, dark and very, very quiet. Having wanted the silence, I find myself strangely uncomfortable in it. I paint my toes a brilliant shade of “I’m Not Really A Waitress Red” and listen to nothing. I arrive in Taos the next afternoon.
visit ojo caliente
Was I being fearless or foolish? I didn’t think about it, I just got in the car and drove, not in the least bit worried to be traveling alone. The most dangerous place I could be was in my head, which, as irony would have it, I had no shortage of time to spend with. With camera in left hand, knees on steering wheel and pencil in right, I documented my random thoughts from the road. Enjoy…
First Impressions
America’s Favorite Highway, Route 66, transformed into Interstate 40 in 1984. Due to popular pilgrimages, signs along the way encourage drivers to get off and experience the once Main Street highway; roadside attractions include meteor craters, dinosaur remains, petrified wood, Indian-made blankets, and no shortage of slots. The expansion of casinos across the South West is the most noticeable difference in the landscape since I drove this route a decade past, having taken off in the middle of the night after quitting my job in rock radio, resolute that Graceland had the answers. Unlike historical markers, casinos have easy pull on/pull off ramps and many are attached to gas stations covered by heavy duty tenting with Port O’Sans conveniently located on the side. Everyone wants in on the money. I wonder if they pump in oxygen like they do in Vegas. Is poker keeping the truckers off crystal? Are they making their deliveries on time? I don’t see many free spaces in the parking lots.
Flagstaff, Arizona
When one is accustomed to traveling on a company that puts you up in four-star, soundproof rooms containing heavenly beds fitted with 1000 thread count sheets and room service, Travelodge can be a rude awakening. I don’t mind getting my own ice or the scratchy linen and dubious blankets, but the level of noise at 5:30 A.M. is a challenge. High pitched screams to unruly children, hundreds of Harley riders revving their engines in anticipation of Canyon roads or, if faithfully following Route 66, the railroad, which blows its whistle hourly. In fact, so many people had complained, that the Flagstaff Best Western posted a disclaimer stating that no; they could not control the train whistle. Flagstaff is cute little town, with vintage boutique hotels spread along the main street, 90% of which proudly display a color newspaper portrait of the new pope at the registry. Don’t be deceived by the geranium lined streets and brick faced shops, the teenager who checked me in told me that someone had been just murdered at the elementary school, confirming my belief that I’m safer in a large city.
Sedona, Arizona
I make it a point to revisit Sedona. Several years ago, I accompanied the Tech Director of a theater company I had been involved with to deliver a set to the Sedona Shakespeare Company. Not only was I dumped off at a prep school, but then abandoned for eight hours with a bare light bulb for company, (I am not kidding. It was just the light bulb and I, the truck kicking up dust before I could grab my gear). I also discovered that my companionship was all part of a very willful lesbian seduction the T.D. had planned, asking me several times over the course of the drive whether or not I had sex with women in college. Angelina Jolie she definitely was not and when I got out of the truck, I got out of the truck, if you know what I mean. I needed to reverse the bad energy I felt about Sedona and drove into town searching for the vortexes I was confident would cure this negative vibe. One does feel a tingling sensation atop these monolithic mesas, a connection to the earth. Feeling full of nature, I threw on my boots and went for what I thought was a short loop. Not having bothered to unpack socks, I arrive almost three hours later, blistered, limping, and hoarse, discovering I had just walked seven miles. I climb back up the vortex. Shortly after, I am pulled over for crossing two lanes of traffic while making a beeline towards a coffee shop. For the first time in my life, I talk my way out of a ticket, pointing out that I was not speeding and had used my blinker. The spirits are with me. We chat about Sedona’s coffee houses, the officer giving a hard sell for Von’s Starbucks counter over any of the local java joints.
Gallup, New Mexico…
On my previous trip, I visited the beautiful Sky City Acoma Enchanted Pueblo outside of Gallup, now host to the Sky City “Big Rig” Casino where high rollers can actually win a custom rig. I return to the Historic El Rancho Hotel, home to the movie stars. Gallup is the perfect place to film westerns, and the walls of the hotel are adorned with publicity photos of Ronald Reagan, Joel McCrea, Jane Wyman, Kirk Douglas among others. I picture Bogart at the hotel’s bar, just a regular guy with a regular job, which is the way he saw his profession. I can’t imagine that any of the celebrities I’ve worked with would stay here. The Zuni Mountains encircle Gallup and have their own form of rainbow, the spectrum glowing from within, from green to reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. As you drive out of town, power plants choke the middle of this beauty, offsetting the vista with steel towers and smoking chimneys and not a person in sight.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
The Rio Grande lives up to it’s name and you can spot the delta and track the river’s course from the Cottonwood trees that spread out in a green belt from water’s edge. There are pyramidal mountains, perfect for UFO landings and lots of developments being built. Once ancient volcanoes are grown over and have spewed forth their rocks across the high desert floor, leading the way to petroglyphs, a form, I’m convinced, of ancient graffiti. Everyone has something to say. I walk up to the top and interrupt an impromptu service being given by the Light and Liberty Jail Ministry to a flock of one. The words “liberty” and “jail” together strike me as funny and I stifle a smirk, not lost on the young minister.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The streets are filled with women bedecked in recent purchases of silver and turquoise and red coral. We women are such suckers for the glitter. I salivate over leather jackets. Santa Fe seems so elite, so expensive. Galleries and shops surround the Plaza while Native Americans sell their wares on the curb outside the Governor’s Palace. Oddly, a Kentucky Derby party is held at the Historic El Dorado Hotel. I realize I’ve never watched a horse race, let alone attended a Kentucky Derby Party. I wander around, have breakfast with an old friend and decide to spend my last day on the road in the healing waters of Ojo Caliente.
Ojo Caliente, New Mexcio
Not quite an oasis just south of the Colorado border. It is Mother’s Day and the spa is full. I desperately needed peace and quiet to quell the storm brewing inside my brain, but I entered into a world of illiterates wading around the arsenic and iron pools. Despite the numerous signs proclaiming "Quiet Zone. Please Maintain the Tranquility and Do Not Speak Above a Whisper”, people happily chat away about Hawaii, the oil business and the myth of skin cancer as they fry up in the hot desert sun. Two unruly boys leap from pool to pool, their parents ignoring more signs: “Children Under 12 Not Allowed.” A two and half year old repeats in a shout “I’m two and a half!” and a sixteen year old sighs wistfully “I can’t wait until Armando falls in love with me. I hope he’s not crazy”. Sister, I want to say, hold onto your hat, love is wild ride.
It's as though the sanctuary I’m struggling to find in my head has been usurped by abundant noise in the middle of nowhere. Women parade around in bikinis with bodies reminiscent of an R. Crumb strip. Nobody preens or stares at themselves in the mirror like they do at Burke Williams. Women are women here and proudly shake their bountiful asses. I feel at home among them, a tribal member of the Large Ass. I vow to buy a bikini when I get home. That night, having opted for a room with a TV, I locate a cable, but no TV. The night clerk informs me that there is no Television, Internet or cell service at Ojo Caliente. It is 9:PM, dark and very, very quiet. Having wanted the silence, I find myself strangely uncomfortable in it. I paint my toes a brilliant shade of “I’m Not Really A Waitress Red” and listen to nothing. I arrive in Taos the next afternoon.
visit ojo caliente
Monday, May 02, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Long Beach. Wrong Beach.
Forgive me readers; it has been two weeks since my last blog. I have once again, been out of town and as you’ll learn, out of touch.
Three weeks ago, when my sister asked me what I was doing in Long Beach, Washington, I pondered the question and replied, “I don’t know”.
In my quest, I decided a positive plan of action would be to purchase another property, fix it up and join the flipping market. I love doing the work and I think I have a knack for it. I’ve found this takes a lot of research and a plethora of real estate agents. Since Long Beach seemed to be a great place to invest, I made up my mind. I would certainly find a good deal, rent my Oak Grove house, move south and spend the next year renovating the new property. I came across a listing on Pacific Realty dot com; a house that for Long Beach, California seemed too good to be true - a 1921 pretty little cottage on two acres within walking distance of the beach at a bargain price tag. This should have clued me in, but since I'm not really familiar with Long Beach, I eagerly emailed the listing agent. I didn’t find out until after the email exchange was in full swing that the property was in Long Beach, WASHINGTON. I was two states misplaced. The word “pertinacious” comes to mind as I reminisce on what followed. I googled the area, spent a few minutes watching the live web cam hooked up on Main Street, discussed the property with the realtor several times and decided that my next residence was going to be in the most remote part of the world, truly the edge of the west.
Being a good little consumer, I completely bought into the realtor’s six phone calls letting me know the market was booming and that the house had two families from Los Angeles bidding on it. I consulted a few people who I knew would agree with my irrational reasoning, purchased a last minute deal on Cheap Tickets and found myself driving a white Pontiac Sunbird out past Cape Disappointment onto the historic peninsula, right where Lewis and Clark burst out of the wilderness only to be, well, disappointed. To speed up my travel, I left Burbank on the first flight to Seattle, arrived at 9:AM and made it to Rhonda’s by 12:30 PM. That’s right, we are very far away from major airports.
The house was fantastic, truly my kind of project, however, Rhonda, a former B-Actress, told me quite plainly, “I’m not going to lie to you”. I listened with mixed feelings as she told me of the variety of unattended allergens flying through the air, the most popular being black mold and, believe it or not, ladybug infestations. Other highlights of Rhonda’s tell-all included a shoreline that was at least a mile away due to the protected marshland as well as a “no rent” policy on houses for summer vacationers. At this point, semi-resolute, I answer my sister Siobhan’s query and navigate my way to the Plum Village Inn while avoiding being mowed down by the convoy of 3500 series monster trucks that literally everyone drives. (Yes, of course there were flashbacks to the cowboy/roadie/metrosexual! The signs are everywhere.)
I check into the dubious looking old Sands Motel, which has been bought and renamed “Plum Village Inn.” Fellow travelers, it is very important to read customer feedback when booking rooms off the Internet. Once again, here I am, well-traveled, and I find myself in a scenario resembling “The Shining”. I meet the owner, a silicone valley fallout who has moved his wife to the area where they are now hoteliers. I discover that I am the very first guest. The “inn” consists of one solitary unit painted lime green with plum trim, standing alone while the other former Sands Motel cabins, weathered naturally with chipped blue paint and white shutters, surround it, waiting to become a member of the Plum Village Inn family.
The finished unit has been divided into four separate rooms numbered 6 – 9 and have clearly been furnished from the new Ikea catalogue. The innkeeper lets me inspect each and decide on which one I like. I pick number 7, where I can reach my car in a hurry. There are no phones and cell service is sketchy.
The next morning, I leap out of bed around 8:AM. It is freezing - about 40 degrees. I walk down to the beach and sure enough, it is four miles of beautiful coastline. Almost instantly, the weather turns belligerent. I fend off an attack of angry rain pelting my face like tiny ice picks while being hurled off the beach by the wind. The ocean, aptly named “The Graveyard of the Pacific”, threw its querulous waves at me as if to say “Go Back, Go Away, Get Lost. You Don’t Belong Here”. I struggled to keep track of my footprints in the sand, the only map I had to the little set up I was staying in. As soon as I crawled back through the mile deep marsh, the wind died and the sun spread it's golden warmth.
I took Rhonda the realtor’s advice and drove to the most northern part of the peninsula, sweetly named “Surfside”. It was exactly the oceanfront I was looking for, reminding me of Cape Cod, Cape Hatteras and the Jersey Shore. The houses were perfectly aged, grey from the combination of wind and briny water. Heartened, I drove through Surfside to Oysterville where the year round industry is evident by the eight foot piles of oyster shells left by the sides of the road. An old train depot has been converted into “Bailey’s Bakery” where a cheesy bread aroma mixes harmoniously with the salt air. I find beach access and decide to face the ocean for a second time. The walk is incredible and for the next two miles, my spirits rise and I look to the sand dollars speckled in the shore as a good omen. There is no sound so sweet as the wind in my ears and the waves rolling, rolling in. This, I think, is the place. I note available property and head back to Rhonda’s office.
After looking at some very promising lots, I discuss my building plans with Rhonda. Now I’m a builder. I’m going to build my next house right here on the most western shore of the West Coast! The thought that I might be isolating myself crosses my mind, but I shrug it off. Who wouldn’t want to visit me at my fabulous organically built house at the beach! Property is selling, and Rhonda is certain I can get a permit to build two houses on the acre she shows me. Holy crap - I’m a developer!
Although Rhonda asks that I drive to become more familiar with the island, I don’t think she’s happy with her decision. She sucks in her breath and whispers “oh my” several times. We drive to Cape Disappointment. We drive to the North Head Lighthouse; we drive to Port of Ilwaco where a group of artists have renovated the old pier into galleries and cafes. We’re happily discussing the future of the Long Beach Peninsula, the businesses I could start there, the annual Kite Festival. Just then, just as I’m designing my beautiful beach house in the middle of nowhere while driving through Fort Canby State Park, I ask Rhonda about the ocean. Since the season for vacationers is April – October, I’m curious when the ocean would be warm enough to swim in. What else do people do here? She flatly replies, “I’m not going to lie to you. If you go in, you die”.
I think she’s talking about the temperature, but no, she is serious. I learn that we are at the mouth of the Columbia River and the current is so dangerous that going in over your knees puts you at risk. In fact, she warns me that there are no lifeguards and that if you get carried out, none of the locals will go into save you. She finishes this tale of terror by adding, “Whenever I see parents letting their kids splash around in the water, I say to myself, there goes another one”. I listen quietly, all the while thinking, “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?” I drop Rhonda off at the office promising that I will think about the property and speed off to Seattle. In fact, I have a ticket to prove it. At 68 MPH, the infraction totals almost half the airfare and car rental. In hindsight, I probably should have refrained from telling the officer that 68 was hardly speeding.
I check my email at the airport. My mother has sent a quote: “When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity... I can be sure that I am right.” - Federico Fellini
This lifts my spirits and I arrive home, to my beautiful house on Oak Grove, where the poppies are bursting out in reds, oranges and pinks and my animals are crying to greet me.
** Since I haven't had any traffic violations in the State of Washington in the last eighteen months, I will not incur points on my license. This is good news. You can imagine what my insurance is!
Three weeks ago, when my sister asked me what I was doing in Long Beach, Washington, I pondered the question and replied, “I don’t know”.
In my quest, I decided a positive plan of action would be to purchase another property, fix it up and join the flipping market. I love doing the work and I think I have a knack for it. I’ve found this takes a lot of research and a plethora of real estate agents. Since Long Beach seemed to be a great place to invest, I made up my mind. I would certainly find a good deal, rent my Oak Grove house, move south and spend the next year renovating the new property. I came across a listing on Pacific Realty dot com; a house that for Long Beach, California seemed too good to be true - a 1921 pretty little cottage on two acres within walking distance of the beach at a bargain price tag. This should have clued me in, but since I'm not really familiar with Long Beach, I eagerly emailed the listing agent. I didn’t find out until after the email exchange was in full swing that the property was in Long Beach, WASHINGTON. I was two states misplaced. The word “pertinacious” comes to mind as I reminisce on what followed. I googled the area, spent a few minutes watching the live web cam hooked up on Main Street, discussed the property with the realtor several times and decided that my next residence was going to be in the most remote part of the world, truly the edge of the west.
Being a good little consumer, I completely bought into the realtor’s six phone calls letting me know the market was booming and that the house had two families from Los Angeles bidding on it. I consulted a few people who I knew would agree with my irrational reasoning, purchased a last minute deal on Cheap Tickets and found myself driving a white Pontiac Sunbird out past Cape Disappointment onto the historic peninsula, right where Lewis and Clark burst out of the wilderness only to be, well, disappointed. To speed up my travel, I left Burbank on the first flight to Seattle, arrived at 9:AM and made it to Rhonda’s by 12:30 PM. That’s right, we are very far away from major airports.
The house was fantastic, truly my kind of project, however, Rhonda, a former B-Actress, told me quite plainly, “I’m not going to lie to you”. I listened with mixed feelings as she told me of the variety of unattended allergens flying through the air, the most popular being black mold and, believe it or not, ladybug infestations. Other highlights of Rhonda’s tell-all included a shoreline that was at least a mile away due to the protected marshland as well as a “no rent” policy on houses for summer vacationers. At this point, semi-resolute, I answer my sister Siobhan’s query and navigate my way to the Plum Village Inn while avoiding being mowed down by the convoy of 3500 series monster trucks that literally everyone drives. (Yes, of course there were flashbacks to the cowboy/roadie/metrosexual! The signs are everywhere.)
I check into the dubious looking old Sands Motel, which has been bought and renamed “Plum Village Inn.” Fellow travelers, it is very important to read customer feedback when booking rooms off the Internet. Once again, here I am, well-traveled, and I find myself in a scenario resembling “The Shining”. I meet the owner, a silicone valley fallout who has moved his wife to the area where they are now hoteliers. I discover that I am the very first guest. The “inn” consists of one solitary unit painted lime green with plum trim, standing alone while the other former Sands Motel cabins, weathered naturally with chipped blue paint and white shutters, surround it, waiting to become a member of the Plum Village Inn family.
The finished unit has been divided into four separate rooms numbered 6 – 9 and have clearly been furnished from the new Ikea catalogue. The innkeeper lets me inspect each and decide on which one I like. I pick number 7, where I can reach my car in a hurry. There are no phones and cell service is sketchy.
The next morning, I leap out of bed around 8:AM. It is freezing - about 40 degrees. I walk down to the beach and sure enough, it is four miles of beautiful coastline. Almost instantly, the weather turns belligerent. I fend off an attack of angry rain pelting my face like tiny ice picks while being hurled off the beach by the wind. The ocean, aptly named “The Graveyard of the Pacific”, threw its querulous waves at me as if to say “Go Back, Go Away, Get Lost. You Don’t Belong Here”. I struggled to keep track of my footprints in the sand, the only map I had to the little set up I was staying in. As soon as I crawled back through the mile deep marsh, the wind died and the sun spread it's golden warmth.
I took Rhonda the realtor’s advice and drove to the most northern part of the peninsula, sweetly named “Surfside”. It was exactly the oceanfront I was looking for, reminding me of Cape Cod, Cape Hatteras and the Jersey Shore. The houses were perfectly aged, grey from the combination of wind and briny water. Heartened, I drove through Surfside to Oysterville where the year round industry is evident by the eight foot piles of oyster shells left by the sides of the road. An old train depot has been converted into “Bailey’s Bakery” where a cheesy bread aroma mixes harmoniously with the salt air. I find beach access and decide to face the ocean for a second time. The walk is incredible and for the next two miles, my spirits rise and I look to the sand dollars speckled in the shore as a good omen. There is no sound so sweet as the wind in my ears and the waves rolling, rolling in. This, I think, is the place. I note available property and head back to Rhonda’s office.
After looking at some very promising lots, I discuss my building plans with Rhonda. Now I’m a builder. I’m going to build my next house right here on the most western shore of the West Coast! The thought that I might be isolating myself crosses my mind, but I shrug it off. Who wouldn’t want to visit me at my fabulous organically built house at the beach! Property is selling, and Rhonda is certain I can get a permit to build two houses on the acre she shows me. Holy crap - I’m a developer!
Although Rhonda asks that I drive to become more familiar with the island, I don’t think she’s happy with her decision. She sucks in her breath and whispers “oh my” several times. We drive to Cape Disappointment. We drive to the North Head Lighthouse; we drive to Port of Ilwaco where a group of artists have renovated the old pier into galleries and cafes. We’re happily discussing the future of the Long Beach Peninsula, the businesses I could start there, the annual Kite Festival. Just then, just as I’m designing my beautiful beach house in the middle of nowhere while driving through Fort Canby State Park, I ask Rhonda about the ocean. Since the season for vacationers is April – October, I’m curious when the ocean would be warm enough to swim in. What else do people do here? She flatly replies, “I’m not going to lie to you. If you go in, you die”.
I think she’s talking about the temperature, but no, she is serious. I learn that we are at the mouth of the Columbia River and the current is so dangerous that going in over your knees puts you at risk. In fact, she warns me that there are no lifeguards and that if you get carried out, none of the locals will go into save you. She finishes this tale of terror by adding, “Whenever I see parents letting their kids splash around in the water, I say to myself, there goes another one”. I listen quietly, all the while thinking, “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?” I drop Rhonda off at the office promising that I will think about the property and speed off to Seattle. In fact, I have a ticket to prove it. At 68 MPH, the infraction totals almost half the airfare and car rental. In hindsight, I probably should have refrained from telling the officer that 68 was hardly speeding.
I check my email at the airport. My mother has sent a quote: “When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity... I can be sure that I am right.” - Federico Fellini
This lifts my spirits and I arrive home, to my beautiful house on Oak Grove, where the poppies are bursting out in reds, oranges and pinks and my animals are crying to greet me.
** Since I haven't had any traffic violations in the State of Washington in the last eighteen months, I will not incur points on my license. This is good news. You can imagine what my insurance is!
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