2.5 Million + 1

The End, The Beginning

2010-09-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn. I miss it. So very much. I moved to Indiana about 3 weeks ago to start grad school. It's nice here, and I really do like it. My mind is getting exercised again, which is never a bad thing, and I have my own apartment, new things to explore, new people to meet, and new Italian verbs to learn. I keep having bouts of New York nostalgia, though, which involves me listening to Frank Sinatra and Jay Z loudly, probably to the chagrin of my neighbors. The pizza here is subpar, I refuse to even try the wings, and they refer to cream cheese as a "shmear" on a bagel, which is beyond weird, or at any rate, something people in NY do not say.

It's been fun blogging about Brooklyn. It's been fun reading your comments and having you all share in this wacky experience with me. So on that note, this will be the last post on 2.5 Million + 1. Enjoy reading the back entries--it functions as a journal for me, too, as I'm too scattered to keep a paper record.

The end of Brooklyn means the beginning of Bloomington, which means--NEW blog! Check that out at http://indi-anna.blogspot.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Hugs, Me.

Culture Shock

2010-08-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

Hello friends! Three reasons why I haven't written lately:
1. I moved from Brooklyn, almost 2 weeks ago now. The worst part was that with humidity it felt like it was over 100 degrees, and my poor cousin and sister had to help drag my stuff (and their stuff, we had a regular ol' caravan) onto the C train (having all sorts of elevator shenanigans on the way) to Penn Station, to get the Amtrak to Hudson, where another one of my awesome cousins picked us up, then to New Baltimore where my relatives live and where my dad was. It was a great few days there (as it always is) and then my dad, sister, and I drove the 6 1/2ish hours back to my hometown. So it was busy, and it was hard to say goodbye to Brooklyn. But actually not that hard, because it was SO. INFERNALLY. HOT. And due to a lot of people staying in our apartment, I spent the last night sleeping on a yoga mat that was half in the closet, so I was ready to boogie.
2. When I got home I promptly had jury duty, and out of the 180 people there, I was the 9th called up, subsequently got picked, and had to drive up to the county seat for 4 days. Being a unabashed nerd, I found the trial itself fascinating. We turned in a guilty verdict. I had wondered how I would feel about that--you're basically putting a man's life, so to speak, in the hands of 12 people, but he was so guilty. And as his crime was kidnapping his wife and doing a lot of terrible things to her (throughout their 18 year marriage, too) I feel zero remorse.
3. My parents have dial-up internet, so it takes a long time for anything to load on here, I'm too lazy to take my computer somewhere, and really, it's sunny out, and I have a lot of phenomenal people to see, so blogging is on the back burner. Doesn't mean I haven't missed you though! Because I have.

Anyway, culture shock. You wouldn't think you could get it within one state, but you can. I'm always annoyed when people think that NYC is full of sophisticates and that Upstate is full of bumpkins--perhaps "enraged" is a better word than "annoyed," actually. I was in line for the opera awhile ago (ha, that makes me sound like a twit) and actually had a woman say that Upstate "didn't really count as New York". You'll be happy to know that I said, as snappily as I get, "I believe that Upstate is more New York than New York City will ever be." I must admit that there are some noticeable differences, though:
--when I went to jury duty, there was not one non-white person in the room of 180 of us. That feeling of non-diversity was not something I've felt in over a year.
--my fam was heading out to dinner last Sunday and drove to 3 restaurants before finding one that was open. It was the Casino, so it was good and the lake was lovely, and it all worked out in the end, but it felt so strange not to just walk a few blocks to another restaurant (plus, most restaurants in Brooklyn don't really close, at least not for an entire day.)
--it's really nice not to have to buy my own food, or if I do, to just drive to Wegmans. I'm already getting spoiled. I have no idea why I didn't look for grad schools in close proximity to a Wegmans (seriously, what was I thinking?!) but I'm going to have to bring a bunch of their juice with me. I like to cook, depending, but it's a lot nicer when my dad makes Ratatouille with penne (as he did this evening) and the only thing I have to do is pour the wine.
--today I went to the dentist and the hygienist asked me about my grandmother (who also goes there) and how I liked "the city" and things she remembered from when I was there in January. That would not happen in Brooklyn, unless you had lived there a very long time, I think.
--also today, I went to pay a parking ticket and brought a book, because I am so used to waiting in lines (at the post office by my apartment, it was at least 15 minutes, when I had doctors appointments at the hospital, at least 2 hours). Of course, there was no line, and I was out in 5 minutes.
--the weather guy was saying how it was going to be almost 80 yesterday, and how horrible that was. Our apartment didn't get below 85, AT NIGHT, for the entire month of July. He also said he heard it was 88 in NYC, and how it probably smelled there. He would be right about that.
--the best 3 news stories since I've been home--1. the Amish man who was robbed while driving his buggy down the road (they caught the person who did it), 2. the goat who was stolen from the county fair, and was found behind the Chinese restaurant, alive, and 3. the horse who got loose in Falconer (or was it Frewsberg?), ran through Jamestown and dented a few police cars, before officers were able to subdue him.

Do I miss Brooklyn? I do. But for the moment, I'm just enjoying being here, with these people.

Pianos...Performance Art?

2010-07-20T14:34:00.001-07:00

Pianos as Public Art.

TOTALLY cool. 60 pianos were set up in NYC for people to play. Most were painted, although I suspect that most of the elaborately decorated ones were in Manhattan--the ones I saw in Brooklyn were pretty plain by contrast. But no matter. It's a cool idea, one that breaks up the monotony a bit. I only played one once--I don't like "performing" when there are many people around, so that rules out a lot of times here! This time, it was almost midnight, so things were quiet around Borough Hall. My friend and I had decided to stop there on our way home from Manhattan, to get some ice cream and sit on the Promenade. I played "Happy Birthday" (since it happened to be this friend's birthday) and a few measures from Sindig's Rustle of Spring (the only piece I could remember anything from, sadly), and the D minor scale (always has been my favorite scale.) Fun stuff. And then we covered the piano back up and went on our way.

Best of all? As my aunt pointed out, you didn't have to be a Catholic to use the pianos.

I find this reminiscent of the fish that Erie had when I was a kid--the giant ones that were painted all differently. Or the buffalo in (where else?) Buffalo. In a way it is better than the fish and buffalo, however, because with the pianos there was a greater chance for the public to become invested and involved, to plunk out "Hot Cross Buns" or some Chopin, and have a bit of fun.

The Art of the Busk

2010-07-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Busker: n., from the Italian buscare--to procure, gain; from the Spanish buscar--to look for. A person who entertains in a public place for donations.
--from Merriam-Webster

My time in Brooklyn is drawing to a close, and as usual, this is going much faster than I would like. I am so excited to go home and see my family and friends and DRIVE and sleep in a BED and have FRESH PRODUCE and go to JURY DUTY (seriously, I am excited about that), but at the same time, saying goodbye is so very hard. Some of the places I go this week I may never go to again, and that is always a terrifying feeling to have.

Anyway, one of the things that I will miss the most about Brooklyn and New York City in general is the amount of buskers who play instruments, sing, breakdance, beat box, slam poetry, and entertain on the street and on subways. I like those instances when everyone is involved in something collectively, especially if they are brought together through music or art in some way. (for an awesome example, check out this video that a friend forwarded to me--a mass Sound of Music dance number in Antwerp's Central Station. And here's another totally cool one, for those of you who tend more towards Jay-Z.) Here are some busking highlights:

--there is a mariachi band of sorts who seems to mostly stay on the R and N trains, usually in Brooklyn. I've seen them multiple times now, and they are professionals, by which I mean that they are really good at manuevering between train cars while playing, while the train is moving, which is impressive.

--Franklin Ave often has religious-y themed music on Saturday and Sunday mornings. A lot of times it is a twangy sort of guitar sound--ukelele? It reminds me of The Lawrence Welk show. The unintended consequence is that I end up with "Amazing Grace" stuck in my head for longer than I'd like.

--Atlantic Ave, which is probably the biggest station in Brooklyn (it has transfers for the Long Island Railroad and 8 subway lines) has a larger space for people to set up, so sometimes there are actual bands. Friday after work, a few weeks ago, I was passing through and there was a jazz group, made up of a few older people and some high school looking kids, who had attracted quite a crowd. People don't usually stop what they are doing to listen (NYers, as you may have heard, being busybusy people), but this group was big enough, loud enough, and good enough to draw a lot of commuters. People even clapped after the songs.

--I've been on the D train twice now when there was group breakdancing. Mostly this is men and boys between the ages of 13ish and 20ish. Seeing 5 men standing on their heads, spinning, and putting their feet on their shoulders, all while on the train on the Manhattan Bridge, is not something that you forget quickly.

--I was in the Union Square station lately, and there was a woman doing a rendition of "Something Wonderful" from The King and I. She had a beautiful voice. I suspect she may have been studying nearby, either at the New School or NYU, because she did look like a student. Either way, so good. As I headed down to the platform I heard her move into "On my Own" from Les Miserables.

--I saw someone playing a saw and someone else playing a comb. SO COOL. I forget where that was, though.

--There was a man last week who said he was auditioning for American Idol, and proceeded to sing "Lean on Me" with the words slightly changed to Brooklyn-themed ones. I heard him on one train, and then it turned out later that my friend heard him on a different one! So he is making the rounds.

--It's not all music--I've been treated to some (not very good, if I'm honest) poetry and there is a man who calls himself the Train Man and he imitates the noises of the subway--the different beeps, the "stand clear of the closing doors, please" chant, and the warning from the MTA about keeping your bags within your sight at all times.

--There is a man who is a little cracked but harmless who stands on the corner near-ish my place, playing the guitar. If you happen to be female, chances are good he will tell you he loves you. He grabbed my cousin's hand one time. Since it has been so infernally hot, he has been riding the shuttle back and forth, playing the guitar and professing his love to all and sundry.

--Parks are another great place to see musicians. Washington Square, in particular, is always hopping, although Prospect Park has its fair share, too. Even Park Slope has the man who plays the accordion on the corner!

I hope these people make money and I hope they enjoy their lives. I don't always contribute, but I hope they know that they have made my commutes better, made me smile all over the place, and helped me de-stress. I'm sure I'm not the only one they have helped.

Deus Ex Machina

2010-07-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

There have been some religious oddities happening around here lately.

Last night as I was walking home from the subway, nigh on 11 pm, I noticed that the Catholic church down the way (yes, the one that wouldn't let me use their piano) was all lit up. I could hear singing from a block away. I peered in the door and people were walking around the perimeter of the Nave, singing loudly. It looked like they were circling around, with a lot of arm-waving and feet stomping. I checked to see if it was a saint day of a special sort, but I don't think it was. I have never seen any of the churches on my street open at that time of night before, and the pentecostal one had all their lights on, too.

A few weeks ago I was walking to the library on a Sunday and there was a genuine procession from the Catholic church, but I looked that up and I think it was the Feast of Corpus Christi. Anyway, I was walking down the street, and suddenly there were all these people wearing full High Church gear--hats, dresses, and tights for the ladies, suits and hats for the gents. All walking along and singing, while the priests, in full vestments, carried the cross, high, at the front. All while it was 90+ degrees out. It made me hot just looking at them, and I admit to being a bit concerned about some of the people passing out.

Today on the subway a woman got on, dressed in what my father would call "Sunday go to Meetin' clothes" and she said something along the lines of "I'm not here to ask for money. I'm here to tell you that those signs you see on the street that spout hatred in the name of Christianity are wrong, because Jesus loves everyone. He loves all of you and he wants to let you in. 34 years ago I was ready to kill myself, but I prayed to him and he saved me, and if you want me to pray with you now, I will. Jesus is love and that is what Christianity truly is. Don't listen to the hatemongers who spread fear." She talked for about five minutes--quoting the New Testament, telling us not take drugs, saying more about her life and what Christ meant to her, but above all to trust, trust ourselves to something bigger than ourselves.

I was raised as a Lutheran (my current religious beliefs notwithstanding) and lemme tell you--testimonials, such as the one I witnessed today, are not our style. Touchy-feely religiousness, as a general rule, is not my style either. It was hard for me to listen to this woman without assigning an ulterior motive to her desire to speak to strangers on the subway. But I don't think she had an ulterior motive. I think she genuinely wanted to help people cope, to let them know that they weren't alone. Which is kind of nice.

Deus ex machina translates to "god from the machine." It's a device used in plays, of the Shakespearean variety, whereby a problem is abruptly solved in a contrived way, and things are made right for always, because god or something supernatural steps in. If you were a god(dess), what would you solve? A silly question, but mine would be 1. stop the oil leak so I don't have to look at pictures of oil-slicked pelicans and feel my heart break, 2. make it so my friends have jobs that they like, 3. make it so that I could be fluent in all languages, and 4. give each of my family members a superpower of their choice. And world peace and stuff.

Actually, I've been reading The Metamorphosis, and if I WERE a god(dess), chances are good I'd just be vindictive, changeable, and spending all my days attempting to sleep with attractive mortals. That's what they seem to have going for them, anyway.

Free, White and 21

2010-07-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you all watch The Muppets as much as I do, but occasionally Animal gets really excited when a beautiful woman walks by and he follows her, yelling, "WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN!" This particular form of flirtation seems to be popular with some of the men of NYC.

New York City male, #1

I don't like getting asked out by random men on the street, I don't like the creepy comments ("hey baby, you have cute toes. Are you single or what?"--true occurrence), and I don't like the attention. I suppose that it's flattering, a little bit, but mostly just makes me feel like a commodity. I've never really experienced this before, at least not to this extent, and being a seriously nonconfrontational person, I am pretty bad at deflecting these people. Would that I could launch into a rendition of "My Short Skirt" from the Vagina Monologues, but I can't. Won't.

New York City male, #2
"The only way to bag a classy lady is to give her two tickets to the gun show... and see if she likes the goods." --Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy

However, it's not just the ogling and the comments and the whistles. It's the way men shepherd me onto the bus ahead of them and open doors for me. Now, let's be clear--I think opening doors for people is really nice, and I do it whenever possible. I like people opening doors for me. But, I want it to be reciprocal. By my estimates, 95% of men will not go through a door first if I open it, and I'm not going to force them to go first, because that feels silly. It's all so silly.

For some perspective with my introspective feminism, I'm going to talk a bit about a piece of video art I saw a few weeks ago at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It's by Howardena Pindell and is called Free, White and 21 (1980). I admit to not being that into video art (yeah, I'm a narrowminded art historian, you will all just have to accept it) but this was arresting. I watched it twice. Pindell discusses experiences she'd had--how she was turned down for jobs that she was clearly qualified for because of her race (her BFA from Boston U and her MFA from Yale notwithstanding), for instance. The story I remember the most clearly was when she was a wedding attendant in Maine and people wouldn't shake her hand or dance with her. Then, the minister came over to see if she wanted to dance; while they were dancing he leaned over and said, "I'm in NYC a lot, maybe we should meet up sometime, work out an arrangement" and winked.

Pindell intersperses these remembrances with images of herself as a white woman, with a blond wig and sunglasses. The white Howardena chides the black Howardena for being ungrateful, churlish, and too willing to hold on to old grudges. She ends with the line, "but then...you're not free, white and 21."

Although I am assuredly more free than many, chances are decent that depending on my job, a man will get paid more than me for equal work, as will a taller woman. (I read that in a sociology book my sophomore year of college.) But things are so much better for me because of battles that my parents fought and barriers that my grandmothers broke, that it feels almost ungracious to be frustrated to be getting 76 cents for a male dollar; to be annoyed when a man on the street stares openly at my chest.

Unlike Pindell and countless others over the years, I've never been turned down for a job because I was a woman, unless it was so covert that I didn't pick up on it. The closest I've come to that feeling was in England, when one art history professor I had was intensely condescending to me and the other American woman in the class, usually dismissing what we said offhand. But I think his deal was more with us being Americans, and anyway, after we turned in our first papers he announced to the class that she and I had gotten the highest marks of anyone, and then he was fine with us.

So I don't know what it is like to have people refuse to shake my hand, but watching Free, White and 21 made me feel guilty and a little sick to my stomach. I can acknowledge the generations of privilege I have behind me. And I do. But what do I do about it? That seems to be the question I can't answer.

Overheard at the Met

2010-07-07T15:04:00.001-07:00

Marie-Denise Villers, Young Woman Drawing (1801)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (image from them, too--cheers!)

Today I was standing in front of this painting, as I often do, to admire the way the light frames her hair and simultaneously casts her face in shadow. It's one of those paintings which makes me wonder if this is, in fact, Marie-Denise Villers depicting herself (the wall label says yes), and if so, I want to know about her. She died when she was 47, and was barely older than I am when she painted this. Did she have a good life? Who did she paint for, and what did they do, and what did she say, and what was her house like? Did she have a studio? What was it like studying with Girodet? Why decide to paint yourself in a white dress when chances are good no artist would be drawing in that outfit? It is a gorgeous dress, sumptuous and lovely, and you can almost sense the shafts of sunlight that cascade over those delicate feet.

Anyway, I was musing on how big her eyes are and getting ready to mosey on, when a woman and her two kids came over next to me. The kids, a girl and boy, 3ish and 5ish years old, were looking at the painting with some interest (it's HUGE. It's hard not to look at). This is what happened next:
The mom: oh my, Lily! She looks just like you. You have the same curls.
[I sneak a glance. the girl looks uncannily like the Young Woman Drawing. Big eyes, blonde curls.]
The girl: I like her dress.
The boy: what is she drawing?
The mom: I'm not sure. I think maybe she is drawing herself. That is what is called a self-portrait.
The girl: the lady is a painter?
The mom: yes, she is a painter, from a long time ago, but we can still see what she made now, because she was such a good painter.
The girl: She IS a good painter. I think I want to be a painter too!

Ow. My feminist art historian heart just exploded a little bit with joy.

Musings on the 4th of July

2010-07-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

For someone without much nationalist spirit, I do love me a good display of fireworks. I also love smores, bonfires, eating lots of pie, canoeing, and being with my awesome family, all of which I did this weekend with my Albany-area relatives (if any of you are reading this--I MISS YOU ALREADY.)

As I say, my nationalist spirit is pretty much nonexistent, which started when I was 8 years old and was obsessed with the Daughters of the American Revolution after learning about the Revolutionary War from my 3rd grade teacher. Being a member of the DAR was my life goal. My mother had to inform me that due to my great-grandparents being immigrants (or my great-great-great-grandparents being untraceable), I wouldn't be able to join the DAR. This seemed ridiculous to my 8 year old self, and my nativism (such as it was) stopped right there. Still, I admit to having a big crush on John Adams. That Ben Franklin was a good egg, too.

Anyway, I am back in Brooklyn with quite the sunburn, and it is 103 degrees so I am holed up in the library reveling in the air conditioning, of which our apartment has none. Here are some of my favorite Independence Day-related tales:

1. Last year I went to the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, and blogged about it in one of my first posts! It was a truly ridiculous, remarkable, and revolting undertaking, and I'm mostly bummed that I missed it this year because Kobayashi got arrested! I can't imagine what Coney Island looked like while that went down. This year I spent most of the 4th on a canoe, in the creek on an inner-tube, eating gratuitous amounts of meat (seriously, the most meat I've eaten in 6 months--this is what being a pseudo-vegetarian does to you), and then going to watch the fireworks.

2. When I was in 3rd grade and learning about the Revolutionary War (are you sensing a trend?), we each got a nice piece of paper and were told to write "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny" in cursive, which we had just learned how to do. Well, I misspelled one of the words, although I can't remember which one now--I have a feeling it was "tyranny". Anyway, I was gutted because the paper wasn't white so it's not like I could white it out without it being super-obvious, and since it was nice paper we only got ONE each. I had to white it out and it looked dumb. It's weird that I remember this so vividly, but I've never forgotten the phrase "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny."

3. My grandmother went to go see "Independence Day" when it came out, on Independence Day, because she thought it was going to be a patriotic movie. She got there late and it was dark so she got a seat in the middle of the row and then the movie came on and was all gory and alien-y and she stayed, for the whole thing, because she didn't want to stand up to leave and block someones view. To this day, she describes this is as a "horrifying experience".

4. The library in my hometown has a drillteam, ie librarians with book carts doing formations, often to music or to the shouted encouragement of Earl, who drives the bookmobile behind them in the Mayville 4th of July Parade. It's quite the sight. If you want a taster of the awesomeness, check out these pictures. It's a high point of the parade. I was going to be handing out bookmarks with them one year when I was working there, but then it rained so they didn't go because they didn't want the book carts to get rusty--which was probably just as well, since the only red shirts I had to wear were one which said "the vaginas are coming" and another which featured the kids from The Boondocks.

5.

This is a work called White Flag by Jasper Johns (1955). I admit to never being that into Jasper Johns, but it's a different story when you see his works in person, which I've had the luxury to do this past year. White Flag is made with encaustic (heated wax and pigments, which is super temperamental and dries really quickly), oil, newsprint and charcoal, which basically means that this work, like many of his others, is richly textured while still being monochromatic. I don't know why I like this one, but something about the tactility of the media and the layering of the newsprint makes me think about America in all its contradictions. We are a country which whitewashes--we pretend we have overcome racism, homophobia, what we have done in other countries in the names of war and peace and safety, severe class inequalities, the way immigrants are treated--when in fact we've just covered up these injustices with slick marketing campaigns. Yes, other countries have these problems. Yes, we're not the worst. But we're not the best, either.

John Adams was the lawyer for the English after the Boston Massacre, because he believed that everyone should have a fair trial and a fair defense. He also said, "The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."(letter to Abigail Adams, 1780.)

Thanks, John.

Bon Voyage (and some Blog Housekeeping)

2010-06-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

First--today is my one year Brooklyn-anniversary (how NUTS is that??). Thanks for reading--let's make the next 3ish weeks spectacular, shall we? I mean, I did my laundry today, so we're already off to a very exciting start! Har har.

Second--check out the blogroll over on the right ----> I just updated it, and there is some good stuff on there. Art, politics, silliness, and another Brooklyn blog! (authored by one of my sweet friends, Gtown native, and fellow WS alumna).

Thirdly (and most imperatively)--my superstar cousin is on her three week adventure in the Balkans--she got a grant from the Fun for Teachers Fund, because she's awesome, and she will be blogging daily about what is happening. So, check that out here (also on the blogroll). And leave her comments! And learn some stuff. She is en route to Dubrovnik, Croatia, as I'm writing. Yaaaay Melis!

West Side Story--Brooklyn story?

2010-06-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

A-Rab (as a psychologist): In my opinion, this child don't need to have his head shrunk at all. Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease.
Action: Hey, I got a social disease!
--Gee, Officer Krupke

(many thanks to West Side Story's Broadway site for the pictures!)

I went to see West Side Story last night with The Birthday Girl (welcome to the big 2-3, lady!!). It was PHENOMENAL. I haven't watched the movie in awhile, and I'd forgotten how amazing the choreography is--that Jerome Robbins knew his stuff! I happen to despise Romeo and Juliet (which West Side Story is based on) and I'm also not that fond of the movie, but the play was so much better. I think part of the reason was that Maria and Tony weren't as dippy on stage--part of the reason I don't like the movie much is because I don't care about their love story. Natalie Wood was not able to play a Puerto Rican very realistically, and Marni Nixon, lord love her, sounds even less like one.

But this Maria (Josephina Scaglione) and Tony (Matthew Hydzik) were vibrant and real--you could sort of sense that he was so devoted to her and she was in love but more strong than he was. When he died it was awful, awful. Her line at the end--about "You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, but with hate. Well now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!" was good and so sad and not overly melodramatic. And the dancing, as I mentioned, was totally cool. I like Sondheim and Bernstein A LOT, and their lyrics and music don't disappoint with this one. Some cool dissonance and timing, which the cast did really well. I would imagine it's a hard musical to sing, but they pulled it off.

Another totally cool thing is that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book for West Side Story, directed this new Broadway revival and rewrote some of the Sharks songs ("I Feel Pretty") and dialogue into the Spanish that the Sharks, as recent Puerto Rican immigrants, would have been speaking. Here is a pretty good article about the change. And here is another one which discusses Laurents's motivation for the rewrites. AND, here is an article with some clips. The Spanish works. Very well. It adds to the tension, as one of the actors points out in one of the articles--with the language barrier, it's another alienation between the groups, which highlights the alienation between recent immigrants, established street toughs, and the cops who don't respect them and don't know how to handle them.

Before moving to Brooklyn, most of my knowledge of gang-culture came from listening to West Side Story, much as most of my knowledge of nannies comes from Mary Poppins, and most of my knowledge of fake-cockney accents comes from My Fair Lady. Here is an anecdote to illustrate this point: I was helping my cousin set up her classroom last September, and I was doodling on some of the folder labels to decorate--mostly spirals, stars, waves, etc. After glancing over at me, my cousin said, "get rid of the 5-point stars, or my Crip kids are going to think I'm siding with my Blood kids, and that could cause me some problems." I was helping her rip paper out of notebooks last week, and this time I barely even noticed all the notebooks with 5-pointed stars etched on them and how a lot of those kids only wrote their notes in red (Blood colors) to make a point. It's interesting what a difference a year makes, eh?

That being said, gang-culture is not about dancing and it's not any better now than it was in the 1950's, although the players have changed. I have trouble figuring out gang-culture and warfare because it is so different from anything I've personally experienced, but it's not alien to me anymore. I live in between two gang territories, and while it is very unlikely that I'll be caught in the crossfires (literally and figuratively), I'm aware of it. Marking your territory with graffiti? Objectifying women, in ways that I can't even fathom? Racist assumptions from the police? Stupid, macho, and it makes me lived. And yet--as Riff points out, "when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way." You always have someone to back you up, to be there for you. At the end of the day, that is something that I think we all want. At the end of the day, I can sort of see the appeal of that.

Heat

2010-06-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's my Nordic blood (or what), but any time it gets to be 80 degrees or higher in NYC, I cease to be a valuable member of society (am I ever a valuable member of society? I suppose that is a valid question). I just want to watch TV and drink sweet tea, with a fan blowing directly on my face. Probably people in hotter climates would scoff at this pansiness (with good reason!) but I will say that it is not just me. People migrate out to their stoops and stairs to catch whatever tiny hints of breeze may be found. On the subway platforms, they seem to be wilting, their make-up melting, their suitcoats damp with sweat.

I can see why the upper crust, for the past 200+ years, has gotten away from the city in the summer months. It starts to smell--backed up sewers, food in garbage cans, unwashed clothes and people en masse. On the plus side, Melis got us egg and cheese sandwiches on hard rolls this morning--if there is one food I could live on, it would be egg and cheese sandwiches.

Anyway, the point of this post is to show you this painting:
Heat (1919), by Florine Stettheimer, from the Brooklyn Museum--thanks to them for the image!

I like this work a lot, but something about it also makes me sad. There is a sense of the sinister that seems to be lurking in it, especially with the trees in the back. It reminds me of Edward Gorey meets The Great Gatsby. Stettheimer was depicting her mother's birthday (hence, the cake on the table) and has painted herself, her mother, and her three sisters. She is the one on the lower right.

It reminds me of the wiltiness that I feel whenever I've eaten a big meal (ie Thanksgiving) and just want to pull up a pillow and lie on the floor. I like the composition and how the figures kind of echo and mimic each other, leading the eye to the matriarch on the top--but I mainly like it because it makes me feel sleepy and serene and a little bit creeped out. Plus, the colors are cool.

Heat is what Brooklyn feels like today.

Not an overly profound statement, but I stand by it.

The Art Notebook Saga

2010-06-21T19:04:00.001-07:00

Since I am sporadically employed (SIGH) I had some time last week to museum-hop, which, of course, I do enjoy very much. I left the Met and was pumped because there was a man outside wearing a pink suit and playing "Oh, Canada" on the sax (the best national anthem IN THE WORLD, if you ask my relatives). Anyway, I was a few blocks away before I realized that my little art notebook wasn't in my purse, and that I must have left it somewhere.

Now, this wouldn't have been the end of the world, and there is nothing that profound in it (as you'll soon see), but I had been using this notebook for about a year, so I was pretty attached. I hustled back to the museum to look for it. Not helping matters was the fact that I'd already returned my little metal thing that you wear when you gain admission to the Met, so I had to wait in line again to get back in. I was also wearing a Holter Monitor at the time, so I looked absurd. "Like a bomber in an old cartoon," one of my friends said when I saw her later that day. "Like you have TNT strapped around your waist and you carelessly left the wires hanging out. Stay away from Times Square."

Happily--I did not get arrested, AND I found the notebook on a back bench in the Greek and Roman galleries, which was the last place I'd remembered sitting down. Since it was back in my possession, I decided to take a gander through it to see if there was anything interesting I could share with you. It is turning out to be not so much "interesting," as "notably ridiculous." Here goes.

1. Far and away the work that I took the most notes on was Caravaggio's The Denial of Saint Peter (c. 1610). I counted 6 separate mentions. Here is a sample of what I mean when I say "notes":
--PETER'S HANDS & UNDER EYE SHADOWS
--background little red flicks shadows on sleeve highlights highlights HIGHLIGHTS
--they glow from across room, through doorways, vibrant, LIFE
--today it is noses and hands ("noses" underlined 3 times)
--soldier shadowed angular distinct mustache?
--FOREHEADS
--glows from across room [again--apparently this was a theme]
Maybe I should work on coherent sentences. Or sentences, period.

2. Speaking of coherent, try this on for size:
"post--C of T--sober RCC, Ven. "Birth of the Virgin" on wall, [illegible] based Durer. quote from Cesare Vecellio--proper dress for widows = NUNS. Lotto, Portrait of Married Couple, squirrel on table (does not look like squirrel.)"
This does make some sense to me, but who the HECK is Cesare Vecellio, and perhaps I should have written down what he said? This was all one long non-sentence too--stream of consciousness art history ramblings? Yeah, that is how I do.

3. Joachim Patnir, Penitence of Saint Jerome (c. 1518.) "huge head, presumably for his massive brain. Ha! alien shaped. [I proceed to draw alien shaped Jerome head]. lovely blue robe--color stunning. cerulean meets teal? Camels cute. Jer looks too healthy, other than being old. Supposed to be penitent who beats self with rocks."

4. Here is another gem: "Triumph of the Phallus, 1540. Self-explanatory." Yes, it probably is. (But Anna, who created it, and why? Erm.)

5. And what did I have to say about George de la Tour's Penitent Magdalen? "chiaroscuro, big time. IS this the painting in Ariel's secret stash when she sings Part of your World?" The answer to that is actually no--THAT painting, I found out just now, is George de la Tour's Magdalen of the Night Light (1640-45), which is in the Louvre. I suppose I should be proud that I got the correct artist of a painting that is shown for .3 seconds in The Little Mermaid. Or maybe I should just be concerned.

6. Flipping a few pages, I wind up at the Brooklyn Museum, where I saw Jane Dickson's Cops and Headlights V (1991), and said, "compositional zig-zag, blues & blacks w/ pops of yellow headlights. FAB." It is fab, although the image they have posted doesn't really do the colors justice, but you'll have to make do.

7. Most of my notes from The Frick seem to be pretty substantial and even include drawings, but here is a good one:
"I WANT HIS BOOKS"
This follows a page on Giovanni Bellini's St Francis in the Wilderness (1480), but I can't imagine I was talking about St Francis's books. Perhaps I meant Henry Clay Frick? There are bookshelves around the house, and I was probably jealous. Who can say, really.

8. I'm not normally big on Edouard Manet, but his Bullfight (1864), also from the Frick, got a few mentions. The composition is totally cool--it was a painting which was (I believe) cut in half, and the Frick has the top half.

9. I had a lot to say about the Francis Bacon show that the Met had last summer, including:
--Head III--I like the ear, but mouth unnerving
--FB obsessed with "Battleship Potemkin"--what is that?
--Men in Blue, '50's, DREAD, Cold War, apocalyptic, drapes, shrouded, foreboding, isolation
--blood (?) looks like bubblegum

10. Skipping ahead about 20 pages: "Anthony van Dyck--Self Portrait. what I imagine Oscar Wilde looked like." [no idea which museum this is in]

11. From PS 1, a series about Helen Keller, called Punk Helen Keller (2003) by Johnathan Horowitz: "from HK: make a junk heap of your masters religion, his civilization, his kings and his customs. 1915. right on."

12. MoMA, Claude Monet's Water Lilies room, (1914-1916). "Overheard: Jack, have a look, because it's very famous... more [squiggley line] for water; more [vertical lines] for sky. celdaon, turquoise, curvy. Various times of day, different types of weather."

13. MoMA, Salvador Dali, Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933): "bread & corn. Picasso's dog allegedly ate the original loaf. True? I hope so."

14. Skip a few more pages, and I seem to end with a few to-do lists, a knitting pattern I copied from a library book, and a recipe for chicken wing dip. A bit more on Watteau, Limbourg gospels, and...finished.

Looking it over, I seem to be disturbingly Eurocentric, although I definitely go to museums more often than I take notes, so this isn't a very fair sample. I can't imagine these notes will ever help me, ever, but it did make me remember some works I had forgotten about, and more importantly, made me remember how these works made me feel. The amount of exclamation points that accompany Caravaggio sightings, the hearts I drew next to Edward Hopper's name--those tell more of a story.

City Lights

2010-06-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to watch Field of Dreams on the flight deck of the Intrepid. I've never been to a free movie series here, although there are quite a few. Also, I don't usually bandy around words like "magical" with phrases like "flight deck," but it was. Magical, I mean. We got there and passed through security with our lawn chairs, water, burgers and fries, and various types of m&ms, and took the see-through elevator up to the top of the Intrepid. The Intrepid is a large ship which is now part of the Sea, Air, and Space Museum (which I've never been in!! Must change that, immediately.) So we were actually docked in the Hudson River--the movie started at sunset, and we ate our food with the other 100 or so people who were there and watched New Jersey get brighter and brighter as the sky got darker and darker.

I have seen Field of Dreams approx. 967 times, but I still love it. My whole family is pretty obsessed--my cousin can quote the "baseball has marked the time" speech in its entirety. The friend I was with had seen bits of it before, but she was pretty uninitiated in the FoD magic, so that was exciting. The movie was winding down--I had cried at the part (as I ALWAYS do) when Doc Graham goes off the field to save Karin and he can't go back, and Shoeless Joe says, "hey rookie! you were good" (sob!) and the part when Ray asks his dad to have a catch (double sob!!). We were packing up, and simultaneously turned around, and there was New York City, all lit up. Since the flight deck is pretty high up, we could see everything--the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, all the other myriad skyscrapers with their glowing, glittering, prismatic lights.

Rarely am I speechless, but that did it. Especially considering that the end credits were playing (for a listen, check this out), which gave the moment a sense of grandeur. Everyone just kind of froze, and we stood there are a group for a few seconds, stunned. And then the spell lifted and we walked down many stairs, and the city looked less amazing from the ground--but for that minute, I understood why someone would spend a bazillion dollars for a penthouse apartment, to be able to see that every day.

Because I like to reference people who are more articulate than I am (not hard to be), I'm going to leave you with a passage from Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides. I read it a few weeks ago, and it is great--I had to take a Conroy break, though, because the man packs an emotional wallop. But I flagged this part at the time--and now I can safely say that I know what Tom Wingo must have felt like, looking over the city from Dr. Lowenstein's apartment:
"The huge buildings of the lower city turned sapphire and rose in the descendent retreat of sunlight, then began to answer back with their own interior light. The city was laid out before me in a forest of transfigured architecture, devotional and splendid. The sun, exhausted, caught one building whole in its last sight and imparted the hues of a coral reef in a thousand grateful windows, then slide halfway down as the whole city rose like a firebird into the singing night. The city shook off the last foils of sunset and in a thrown-back, overreaching ecstasy transformed itself into an amazing candelabrum of asymmetrical light. From where I sat, in complete darkness now, the city looked as if it were formed from glass votive candles, lightning, and glowing embers. In the beauty of those rising geometrics and fabulous metamorphosed shapes, it seemed to enlarge the sunset, improve upon it." (Conroy, 332-333)

Magical.

Bettin' on the Ponies

2010-06-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest here. I consider myself a pretty classy dame, but I also have a deep love for county fairs, street festivals, or any other occasion where I can consume a funnel cake. Funnel cake, corn dogs, cotton candy--this is why county fairs are awesome (that, and I like seeing all the different types of chickens.) So, any opportunity where I get to eat funnel cake, have a beer before noon (and be socially acceptable), AND people watch, is an opportunity I will be sure to take up. This opportunity presented itself last weekend, when we went to the B elmont Stakes, which is the third leg of the Triple Crown. I've never actually been to a horse race, although I've watched the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness many a time on TV, so this was new and exciting.I think the best part of the day was truly all the different sorts of people. Here are some photographic records of the best ones:

We are prepared. We bought the NY Times so we could wave it and whack it on stuff. We had massive bottles of water. We had blankets to sit on and gum to chew. We were good for the 6 hours that we sat in the sun, although it did get quite hot. We also won a bit, at least enough to break even (and I only broke even because I had to place bets for my family and my dad let me keep the money he won in the final.) Anyway, here is my stellar cousin doing a solid impression of an excited fan in the Jamaica Long Island Railroad station.

There was a man behind us on the train who was having a phone conversation, which went something like, "well Chris, it's NOT like the derby (note: how did he know? we hadn't even gotten there yet!) We went to Brooklyn Burger yesterday..yep, yep and we paid $40 for lunch. Now, I don't normally hold with paying $40 for lunch, but how often do you eat in Times Square? (note: that's why it was $40!!!) and now we're on the train..." He was right about it being not like the Kentucky Derby in that there weren't as many people wearing hats, but there were some. Nothing too elaborate, though.

Where I went to college, there was a particular breed of male that we nicknamed "Hobies" (to go with "Smithies," which is much more ubiquitous.) Hobies, in general, are gents who wear pants with embroidered golf balls, American flags, or whales on them. These pants are generally pink. They sometimes wear loafers with no socks and smoke cigars. Often, they major in economics. I had to partner with one once for a project, and I got to hear all about his yacht. My friend was in the airport last week, and a similar fella called her "champ." You get the idea. To tell the truth, I haven't missed seeing these men that much. And as I got to see some pink shorts at the races, that helped fill whatever void there was in my life. Melis said that these outfits (and the AMAZING seersucker suits that I didn't photograph) were really similar to ones that she saw in New Orleans on Easter.

A bit of monologue: "hey man, I saw you from across the lawn, and I just wanted to tell you that I think it shows a lot of guts to wear that hat. I wanted to tell you that I admire your style." I should perhaps mention that the best outfit was on my "Belmont boyfriend," but I'm not putting a picture up because it might scar your retinas. Suffice it to say, he had a mohawk which was somehow growing into a mullet, and he was wearing a see-through shirt and two pairs of boxers--black under white--instead of normal shorts.

I haven't mentioned anything about the actual races, have I? They are quite exciting for the 2 or so minutes when the horses are running, and especially during the 10 seconds when they are right in front of you. We saw 11 races, and by the time the actual Belmont Stakes happened, there were 50,000 people at the park, which is actually not that many--last year there were 150,000. There was no hope of a Triple Crown this year, so I don't think people cared as much. It was neat seeing the different jerseys of the jockeys, and betting was actually pretty fun, too. I learned a lot about trifectas and the like. I also saved all my losing ticket stubs (there were LOTS) so I should make a collage with them, or something.

What I don't know is how horse racing is for the horses. It doesn't seem like they are harmed (no whipping) but I just don't know. That will determine whether I go again or not. But either way--the Belmont was fun, the sky was gorgeous, and I got to eat a funnel cake.

Negligent Blogger Apologies

2010-06-12T19:48:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've written, and it's not because nothing is happening, but because things are happening too fast. I leave Brooklyn in 6ish weeks, which is exciting because I'm on to other things, but so sad because I feel like I just got here and I love it here and there is so much more that I want to see. And I'm working full time and it's nice out so I haven't been on the computer as much.

But! It is supposed to rain tomorrow so I'll get back in the writing groove soon enough. What have I been up to, you may ask? Well, quite a few sporting events (which is WEIRD, for me) and random encounters in parks with strange and interesting people. I've consumed a lot of bagels and finished quite a few crossword puzzles--not the NYTimes, mind, but I have to start somewhere. Today I made my first attempt at gluten-free cookies (they're good too, I'm eating one now) and then went to watch the US-England World Cup match in Manhattan. After that I met a friend and her parents for drinks and dinner, at a really good Spanish restaurant whose name I never learned. I got Paella Valenciana which is something that I've never had but always wanted to. I brought home a lot of it. That chorizo is good stuff!!! The Spanish white wine was good too, but I have no idea the name of that either. I'd be a terrible restaurant critic, eh? (although I could find the place again, so I suppose I could figure out the name.)

So things are good, I promise. More to follow, very very soon. And until we next talk--be well!

Washington Square Park, Friday Evening

2010-06-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

It was Friday. There were three of us, and we were very excited to be together, because:
1. one of us lives in Harlem which is kind of a trek, so the Brooklynites don't see her too often.
2. it was Fleet Week, which is when thousands of Navy and Marines men and women come ashore and roam around NYC in their uniforms. It's a great time.
3. it was the Friday before Memorial Day, and the long weekend beckoned.

It was a very New York City-type evening, the type that only seems to happen in movies. We went to Pala Pizza, which is a (pricey) really, really tasty pizza and pasta joint, down the street from Katz's Deli, and one of the few anywhere that has gluten-free crusts (one of us, as you may deduce, can't eat gluten.) What did we get? For starters, the potato croquettes, which were delicious, and then we split the spinaci pizza, which was spinach, ricotta, cherry tomatoes, and a bunch of garlic--probably some other stuff too, and the special pizza, which was prosciutto, peaches, goat cheese, and..olive oil? SO GOOD. We sat outside and people-watched, which is especially promising there in the East Village. A band was setting up at the club next to us, and intriguing people wandered by--I think there may be more fedoras in the East Village, per capita, than anywhere else! The waitress was great, really friendly. And I have to say, I've had some non-appetizing gluten-less bread-type experiences, but the pizza crust at Pala tastes better than most flour-based pizza crusts. It just seems lighter and fresher. Healthier. At least that's what I tell myself.

After this feast, we sluggishly wandered north, around Chinatown and further up through the East Village to get to Babycakes, which is (you guessed it) a really good gluten-free bakery. My friend's mom makes the best potato and rice flour concoctions I've ever had (her orange cupcakes are great) but Babycakes might be even better. I got a lemon one this time. They use agave instead of sugar, too. We ate those and wandered some more, using Robert Frost poems to guide us ("'And looked down one as far as I could/To where it bent in the undergrowth;/Then took the other, as just as fair,/And having perhaps the better claim,/' alright guys, Bob says we should turn away from the park"). We eventually got over to Greenwich Village (where people were just heading to dinner) and walked through Washington Square Park which glitters at night. We were in front of the arch when we heard the music.

There was a band set up, which is not too unusual: a portly man in a suit singing, a few guitar players, a fedora-wearing skinny piano man, and the usual bunch of weirdos milling about. They weren't great, musically, but what they lacked in tunefulness they made up for in showmanship. Because here was the odd thing about this group of musicians--there were a lot of people standing around them, perched on benches, en route to dinner or clubs, and EVERYONE was singing along. Yes, it was a dance party in the park. There were a lot of NYU students, but also older people walking their dogs, cops, people who were sort of drunk, people who were definitely sober, people in high heels and tiny dresses, frat boys, nerdy engineering students, business people, hippies--and us, full of pizza and cupcakes. Once they launched into a rendition of "Billie Jean," we decided to stay for a bit. We stayed for over two hours.
Here are some highlights, from what I can remember:
--the older gent with the MoMA bag who frenetically danced in front us to the Jackson 5.
--how the band changed the lyrics in "Don't Stop Believin'" from "just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit/He took the midnight train goin' anywhere," to "just a city boy, born in NEW YORK CITY (everyone cheered)/He took the Q train goin' anywhere."
--there was a guy by us wearing a black robe, and I whispered to my friend, "what's his deal, do you think he's a judge?" She responded, "he can't be a judge, he looks younger than us!" Someone must have finally asked him, because it turned out he had graduated that day, and was still wearing the robe, for some reason. So then random people were going, "congratulations, man!" and giving him high-fives.
--everyone trying to sing Lady Gaga. There was a stately looking Asian man near us who ended up slow dancing with the singer during a version of "Bad Romance."
--the obviously inebriated (although harmless) man who lurched around playing the air guitar, and telling everyone to donate to the band. "Maybe he's their manager," my friend whispered, "and he's not a very good one, so that's why they're playing in the park."
--when the piano player got up to breakdance (very well), and a woman in the crowd yelled, "move your body, white boy!" and then everyone cheered.
--the fact that we sang along to everything, even if we didn't know the lyrics--and so did everyone else.
--during "Benny and the Jets," they changed the part where it's a call between "Benny" and "Jets" to "Benny" and "Giants," and occasionally "Mets" and "Yankees" too. At one point the singer said, "Patriots" instead, and the crowd booed.
--the people who were hula hooping over to the side.
--the woman with the violin who jumped up from the benches and joined in during one of the songs.
--the way you can see the Empire State Building through the arch in the park.
--the closing song was "Bohemian Rhapsody," and it was so horribly sung (especially the falsetto) but with so much dancing and clapping, that really, who cares?

The band is apparently there a few nights a week. I may never see them again, but I want to thank them for making us laugh so hard, and dance like idiots, and see so many varied and interesting people.

A good night, in what is often a very good place to live.

Brighton Beach, Wednesday Evening

2010-05-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

Now that I've lived in Brooklyn for almost a year (HOW is that possible??) I've stopped carrying my camera with me. This means that sometimes really great things happen and I have no photographic record of them. The next few posts will be about these great things.

It was Wednesday. It was 90 degrees and I was feeling sick-ish. My evening plans were to eat some Rice Krispies and then start a Dorothy Sayers book while wallowing in my surliness and sweat. And then, like a divine intervention (or whatever) I got a text from my cousin, something along the lines of: "I just got out of work and I need to be in a wide-open space. Wanna meet at Coney Island?" The answer to that is yes, of course.

And let me tell you, Coney Island is a great place on the first 90 degree day of the year. People were hilarious. The old men had set up their chess boards, the women were stripping, and the kids were running everywhere. The handball courts were full and the ocean breeze was, well, breezy. I took a few deep breaths, buried my feet in the sand, and felt immediately better. My cousin and I found each other on the boardwalk ("I could tell it was you from far away because of how you walk," she said. Huh.) and as she hadn't eaten in awhile, we looked for a place for dinner. And we found it. When you walk down Coney Island to Brighton Beach, there are a row of Russian seafood places with a lot of outdoor seating on the boardwalk. We picked Tatiana's, which was kind of in the middle.

I don't quite know how to describe Tatiana's. The menu is in Russian on one side and English on the other, and the servers all take their smoke breaks on the boardwalk about three feet from the tables. We both got kvas to drink, which is sort of a non-alcoholic beer. I really liked it--it reminded me of a strong, natural root beer (and I do love me some root beer!). I wasn't that hungry so I ordered the calamari, while my cousin got some concoction of seafood, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and about a pint of cheese, cream, and butter. The food was more expensive than we usually indulge in, but the portions were BIG. The calamari was enough for two meals, and was really tasty--the broccoli I sampled from the other dish was good too. A man came by and offered to sell us some pillows (my question was, who buys pillows while they're eating? while my cousin's was, who buys pillows from some dude on the street?)

We ate outside, but the indoor decor deserves a mention. Think Eastern European brothel meets Czarist Palace meets some sort of classy law office. A lot of mirrors and carpets, and outside the bathroom: two lamps which were womens' bodies with lampshades instead of heads; one black, one red. There were a bunch of weird figurines--I took a pic on my phone of the shelf containing a bikini-clad woman hugging a tiger, which was flanked by figurines of Santa Claus and a polar bear. The bathrooms themselves were really nice, in case you were curious.

The sun set and the full moon rose, and the twinkling Christmas lights came on under the awning we were sitting under. It was beautiful, quiet except for the other patrons chatting in Russian and the clink of glass and far far away the sound of waves. It felt like we were on another continent. A wizened man with an accordion wandered around, taking requests. We didn't recognize the first few songs, but other people were singing along. He eventually launched into, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," "La Vie En Rose," "Bicycle Built for Two," and any American patriotic song you can think of. Let me tell you, you haven't heard the "Star Spangled Banner" properly until you've heard it on the accordion!

If you're looking for a laugh, do check out Tatiana's website here. It's hilarious, and contains both a "morning after" drink recipe, and the suggestion that men shave before going there, because "there are plenty of people to impress." Perfect antidote to the mid-week blahhs.

What is Your Word?

2010-05-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

I am in the midst of reading Eat, Pray, Love, which is crazy good. I was a bit dubious going in, because I wasn't sure how much spirituality-talk was going to happen (I tend to find that sanctimonious, depending, especially since I am untrained at meditation and when I do try and meditate, it just makes me nervous). But it is mostly not sanctimonious--it's about life getting really gross and having your heart broken in many ways and then working to make things right for yourself again, because that is what we all deserve. Balance. Pleasure. Meaning. Good food. Good friends. Travel, if you are fortunate enough to be able to do so. Happiness. Also, it made me hate Elizabeth Gilbert a little bit (even though she seems like a cool person) because I wanted to go to Rome so, so badly after reading her Italy section.

Anyway, there is a chapter in the Italy section where she and one of her Rome friends discuss how cities have one word which describes them or sums them up. He claims that Rome's is SEX, and the Vatican's is POWER. Gilbert thinks New York City's is ACHIEVE and Los Angeles's is SUCCEED. Her Swedish friend thinks Stockholm's is probably CONFORM. (Gilbert, 103-104).

My brain loves this idea. I spent most of my commute today germinating on this. What would my hometown be? I settled on BEHAVE. Although, since my hometown was founded by Swedish and Italian immigrants, maybe some combination of SEX and CONFORM would be apt (oh, it would definitely be apt). I discussed this with a friend, who thought her hometown's was probably WALLOW. What about Geneva? Maybe LEARN, or THINK. At this time of year, VERDANT. Or CONTRADICTORY. The house where I lived with my friends? LOVELY, or maybe RIDICULOUS. My parents house? WACKY. HOME. COMFORTING.

And what about Brooklyn? Today--SLUGGISH (my bus was stopped behind a semi for 10 minutes this morning). BLOSSOMING (well, the botanical gardens, anyway). HUMMING. CRABBY. I was reading Eat, Pray, Love over the weekend on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and was trying to wrap my head around meditating for 5 hours a day and how group meditation and all the energy might be able to help you commune with god(dess) (or whatever you want to call it.) Needless to say, I could not imagine how anyone meditates in Brooklyn, because I was having trouble concentrating on reading with everyone squawking around me. My neighborhood's would be COLORFUL. Or LIVELY.

Not all the words are good, though. What of those places or people that are DESPERATE, DANGEROUS, SAD, or DULL? Maybe though, even if you are those words, you wouldn't pick them for yourself. I feel like those are only words that others might label you as (you probably don't think you're DULL, but maybe I would. Or you might think I'm DULL. Very likely, actually.) I found myself doing that on the subway today--"guy in the suit. PRETENTIOUS. nurse. TIRED. man with the goatee. ENIGMATIC."

As for my word? Tricky, that. WANDERER, ROVER? Maybe, but also NESTER, HOMEBODY. Definitely LISTENER, but also definitely TALKER. SEEKER. STUMBLER (literally--over curbs, down stairs, and figuratively--into ideas, out of ideas, whatever). AWKWARD (yup). CLASSY (when the mood strikes). Mostly, though--CONTENT.

What is your word? What is your town's word? Do you wish your words were different?

Real Estate Fate

2010-05-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

With real estate there are no rules. It's like check-in at an Italian airport.
--30 Rock

I'm moving to Indiana in approximately 3 months and I have no idea what I'm doing. I think part of the problem is that I have never rented an apartment before, and have an overly romanticized view of Midwestern boarding houses. I secretly want to live in a Thin Man movie (yeah, I know they are not from Indiana) in the 1930s, with a crotchety old landlady and a raggle taggle yet good-hearted group of boarding housemates. I want to barter for services (I'll trade knitted coasters for fresh eggs or fixed tires). I realize that this kind of thing doesn't really exist any more, if it ever existed at all.

My magical undergrad advisor once pointed out the house where she rented a room when she first started teaching. It was owned by Arthur Dove's brother (yes, really). However, considering the general magicalness of this person, it is very likely that while she ended up sipping sherry with Arthur Dove's brother and hearing stories about Georgia O'Keefe rollerskating through downtown, I would end up with Grant Wood's weird great-niece, or an heir to a BB gun fortune, or a bassoon playing sociopath. I've had really, really good roommates up until now, and I don't want to tempt fate on this. Moreover, my google search for "Victorian house rooms for rent Bloomington" turned up nothing, and the subsequent search for "Victorian house turret rooms for rent Bloomington" was even more in the realm of wishful thinking.

One of the nice things about living in Brooklyn and living in numerous other places (some furnished, some not) in the past few years is that my possessions have become pretty streamlined. Although this does mean that I don't have any pots and pans, but I do have an avocado slicer, corkscrew, and garlic press, which are, after all, the essentials. I have good pillows but no towels. I have many mugs and wine glasses but no cutlery (and no tea pot.) And I don't really have any furniture...

Digressions aside, back to Brooklyn, since that is where I live, after all. I am lucky (lucky lucky lucky LUCKY) that my magnanimous cousin is letting me couch-surf, so I am not paying rent here. New York City real estate, as anyone will tell you, is insane. Just on a lark we looked up apartments in Chelsea a few months ago and it is enough to knock the wind out of a person. If you can afford it, great, and there are deals to be found (rent-controlled, or landlords who aren't up on how much prices have increased) but they are pretty few and far between.

My friend who just moved here has been subletting, which means that you aren't signing a lease, but sometimes filling in for people who are out of town for a few months. Sublets can be a few weeks long, or a few months, it just depends. It's a good way to go about moving to NYC, I think, since you can get a taster of a few different neighborhoods before committing. I've been on a few sublet visits with her and they have been...interesting. Her first sublet was rented from an older Brazilian woman who talked to us for quite awhile, and was super nice. One we visited later claimed to be in downtown Brooklyn, but was definitely not (it was near a lot of subways, to be fair).

Another one, the most hilarious of the visits, was in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is a mix of warehouses and hipster hang-outs. It was a loft apartment (those are the ones that are a large room, very open, with a few almost bunk-like bedrooms. Except they aren't bedrooms, they are just beds up by the ceiling. It would be a tricky place to live, even with really good friends.) This loft was in a warehouse, which looked like a bit like a college dorm + bullet holes, and the door of the apartment we were looking for was bright purple and pink. We knocked, and the girl who opened the door was a hipster poster child. She looked us up and down, and it was immediately apparent that we were not going to be cool enough for her (clearly, the black trenchcoats we were wearing--because it was raining--meant that we were too conservative, or something). So we go in, and it was spectacularly awkward, and both of us were getting the giggles but trying to hide it so we couldn't really look at each other. The hipsters were kind of vague about where their other roommate (who my friend would be replacing) had gone, and when we asked when they would like a decision, they said, "um, by...tomorrow?" so we figured that we were out of the running. We got out in the hall and made it about 3 feet before we cracked up about these women and their art studio and their turtle pond and the zero privacy. My friend ended up getting a nice room in a place about 4 blocks from Prospect Park, which is fabulous. And as there is an Italian Ice stand between her place and the park, well, that is fabulous too.

I wish I knew more about housing markets and how all of this stuff works. How do certain areas get so inflated and gentrified? Here, is it because of closeness to Manhattan, to subways, to other members of your racial group? The worst, the absolute worst, and something I will never get used to, is people who have no home at all. For a few months when I was working the later shift and taking the bus at midnight, I was seeing people asleep on the streets on a near-regular basis. It's not quite as common a scene in Brooklyn as it is in Manhattan, I think, but it certainly occurs. I know it happens in every town, too, but it's just such a high number here. I didn't even think about this until my cousin mentioned it--how do they get counted in the Census? The phrase "falling through the cracks" seems especially apt. And especially sad.

Greenwood Cemetery

2010-05-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

I've never consciously thought about this, but it turns out I really like cemeteries. I tend to visit them when I move or visit someplace new (much like other people scope out churches or grocery stores). As such, I have a hierarchy of cemeteries I like, based on sereneness, aesthetics, interesting statues, lawn beauty, and age of graves/amount of famous people. (Hey Jazz, remember that cemetery in Paris where we thought we'd get attacked by feral cats?) Based on my criteria, Greenwood Cemetery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, might be the best I've ever been to. It might also be one of my top three favorite places in NYC now.

The day helped. It was a sunny Saturday, I had just eaten a delightful lemon Italian ice, and I was with two people that I very much like (one of them, my cousin, took all these pictures. Thanks Melis!) None of us had been to Greenwood, but it's very neat. It was originally a 478 acre park, and is full of rolling hills, ponds with fountains, and lovely architecture, some of which was designed by Richard Upjohn (be excited, Genevans!). It is the highest point in Brooklyn and involved the first hills I've seen in awhile. A very calm, quiet, lovely place. And free, of course, which is even better.

We made it through about a third of the cemetery (in over an hour, mind) and saw a few famous plots. Louis Comfort Tiffany's was very unobtrusive (we couldn't find it originally, in fact) and Boss Tweed had an entire family plot. We were interested in seeing the Steinway Family Mausoleum and the guide by the gate told us, "you can't miss it. It is large enough for about 200 bodies." And yet, we did miss it. We walked by it, twice, both times because we spotted interesting statues farther away. But up close, the Steinway Mausoleum is about the size of a house. (for a cool Steinway story, check this out.)

There are plenty of other famous-ish people interred there: Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, DeWitt Clinton, Currier and Ives, Alice Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Lorenzo da Ponte (ack!!) and a few slightly less famous but still interesting people: William "Bill the Butcher" Poole (head of the Bowery Boys gang), Susan McKinney Steward (the first black woman to get a medical degree in NY), Laura Keene (actress who was on stage when Lincoln was shot), and Henry Bergh (founder of the ASPCA).

And here are some statues of note:

Greenwood is awesome; therefore, Brooklyn is awesome. It is one of those places that Manhattan doesn't have and never will. It's a beautiful place, especially in the May sun with good friends. After we left there was a street fair a few blocks away, and we got some roasted corn-on-the-cob and wandered among balloons and smoke and cotton candy, not to mention booming basses. Again: Brooklyn is awesome. But we all knew that already.

A Year in Numbers

2010-05-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

I graduated from college a year ago today. I was expecting graduation itself to be a teary farewell mess, but surprisingly I was dry-eyed through it all. Perhaps I was too cold, perhaps the speeches were too inane,* perhaps I knew that the people I really loved and cared about I would see again and talk to fairly often, but in any case I stayed pretty stoic. Mostly I just wanted to drink something celebratory (and bubbly), hug some professors, eat some cake with my friends, and go to sleep (which is, in fact, exactly what I did.) I feel like a lot has happened in the past 365ish days, and alternately that nothing has happened. I didn't chop off my hair, or get an amazing job. I didn't travel anywhere exotic, learn another language, or take up any thrilling hobbies. I did, however, move to Brooklyn. So things have changed, of course. Here are some figures:

Number of blog posts written: this makes 91. Word.

Number of jobs held: jobs--2, internships--1.

Number of weeks unemployed, in Jamestown, or on sick leave: 16ish (egads)

Number of cover letters written: at least 30

Number of job interviews that resulted from said cover letters: 5?

Number of graduate school admissions essays written: 5

Number of months it took me to completely apply to grad school: 3 1/2 (egads, again)

Number of Amtrak journeys: at least 20

Number of cross-state bus journeys: not counting transfers--4, counting transfers--10ish

Number of times I had to spend 5 hours in the Buffalo Bus Station--2 (fun fact: one was New Years Eve)

Number of operas attended: 3

Number of hours spent waiting in line for opera tickets: 12

Number of plays attended: 4? 5?

Number of states visited, other than NY: 4

Number of Art History books read: 6ish (bad, very bad)

Number of German verbs which I still remember how to conjugate: 2 (bad, very bad)

Number of novels read: a LOT (good, very good)

Number of times I exploded soup while pureeing it in a blender: 2

Number of immersion blenders received as a birthday gift from a friend who was concerned about my inability to make soup: 1

Number of nun themed or Virgin Mary themed presents received: 3 (and so it begins)

Number of Red Bulls consumed: 2 (by contrast, number consumed in the month prior to graduation: at least 15)

Number of different curries tried: 4

Number of museums visited: at least 15, most more than once

Number of scarves acquired: 4

Number of days when I have missed Geneva, at least in some sense: 365

Number of days when I was glad I was not in college, at least in some sense: 200, give or take

Number of days when I missed high school: 2

Number of different NYC subways I've taken: all except the M, J, and Z

Number of boroughs visited: all 5 (I think the most I've done is 3 in one day)

Number of live sporting events attended: 3

Number of times that our apartment has ordered ginger noodles from the Thai restaurant up the block: well, a lot

Number of bagels consumed: weekly? 2 or so. You do the math.

Number of days I've missed sleeping on a bed: 365

Number of days I'm glad I live in Brooklyn: 355
Number of days before I move to Indiana: 97

*(side note: I think they should not spend money on someone boring and platitude-spewing and instead have a professor make the main grad speech. They're a lot more interesting and insightful, by and large. Or, hire someone with a lovely voice to read Adrienne Rich's "Claiming an Education.")

Bus Tales

2010-05-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

There are certain points of Brooklyn that you can't get to by subway, and so you have to take the bus (like Red Hook, where I work, or Canarsie, where my cousin works). Ah, the bus. It's like a microcosm of New York City--the good, the bad, the funny, the nutty, it's all there, and it's all contained. I like it because I can look around outside. I don't like it because I can't read on it without getting sick. Also, I fell over the first time I took the bus, but have sorted myself out. Well, kind of.

So, a lot of bus riding has occurred of late, and some great stuff has happened. Here are the highlights.

B61 to downtown Brooklyn
Ahead of me boarding are two men with Fairway Market shirts on.
Guy 1: I'm sure you got the job.
Guy 2: I don't know man, I'm not very qualified, I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high..I could really use the money though.
They back away to find seats.
I swipe my card.
The busdriver, over the loudspeaker: Hey! I don't need that type of negativity on my bus! I'm sure you got the job, brother.
Guy 2 (who is now in the middle of the bus and has to yell): Well, maybe, but I don't want to get too excited about it.
Busdriver: Positive thinking, man. It works.
Guy 2: And I have a job now, so at least my family won't starve.
Busdriver: Good, that's what I like to hear.
Guy 2: Hey, maybe I want your job.
Busdriver: Brother, you do not want this job. They're cutting us all over the place.
[note: this is true. The MTA just cut a LOT of bus routes and jobs, effective at the end of June. It's miserable. And some of the bus drivers have started announcing some stops like, "Union St, transfer to the B71, FOR NOW, before somebody cuts it." Not a great climate with the MTA right now.]

10 minutes go by, and the bus has filled up a lot by then. People are standing a bit too close to the rear door, so the busdriver picks up the loudspeaker again.
Busdriver [in a deep and scary voice]: Please step away from the back door. The last man who stood that close is no. longer. with. us. Poor Tom. May he rest in peace.
[Pause]
Busdriver: That means YOU, gentleman in the blue jacket!
Blue jacket gentleman is either zoned out or does not understand English, because he does not move. The man next to me reached over and gently tapped him on the shoulder and moved him away from the door.

B65 to downtown Brooklyn
Quiet Saturday morning. I'm sitting next to a woman who has two daughters with her, probably about ages 3 and 6. They are adorable. There is a fashionable looking woman and her partner across the aisle from us.
Fashionable woman: I just wanted to let you know that your daughters are beautiful.
Mom: Oh, thank you. I had to stop telling them that because I didn't want it to go to their heads!
Fashionable woman (to the girls): just always know that you are beautiful and no one can ever, ever take that away from you.
Partner, squeezing her hand: No, they can't.
Older girl: Ok.

B65 to Crown Heights
Woman 1: did you ever have that moment when you were reading a book as a kid? And you were sitting under a tree on a blanket and thinking that you were suddenly in another world, and there was no where else you would rather be? Mine was The Secret Garden. That's when I realized what reading could do.
Woman 2: Mine was Little House on the Prairie. I felt like I was Laura. I never forgot that.
Me (in my head, not out loud): Mine was Walk Two Moons.

B65 to downtown Brooklyn
Early morning, and 3 girls get on for school; I presume they are sisters. The youngest is very young, probably 5, and the oldest is maybe 12, and the middle around 8. The 12 year old is in charge of them. She sits next to me, and they sit in the seats behind us.
5 year old: I don't like the way the brakes sound. They go squeeeeeeak.
8 year old: Me either. Hey, did you press the secret accelerator?
5 year old: No! Ready...NOW!! [they simultaneously kick the back of our seats]
12 year old: KNOCK IT OFF. Please don't embarrass me.
8 year old: Warp speed! We need the emergency break.
5 year old [poking her sister in the head]: We're going into space!! WE'RE GOING INTO OUTER SPACE!!!
12 year old: Oh, please stop yelling.
5 year old: BLAST OFF!!!!!
Me: [bursts out laughing]

B65 to Crown Heights
We are stopped at a red light and see a cab cut off a biker. It didn't seem like that big a deal to me--the cab wasn't anywhere close to hitting him--but the bike driver freaks out and punches the fender of the cab, while screaming. I can't hear anything through the glass. I think I'm the only one even looking at this scene. The cab stops. The bus driver whips out his bike lock and is waving it at the cab as if to go for the window. The light turns green and we go on.

B63 to Atlantic Avenue
The seats are mostly full, but the bus is not super crowded. An older woman gets on with a 2 year old, who toddles on while her grandma/aunt/babysitter hunts for her card. The girl is about half way to the back on the bus when the busdriver starts to pull away from the curb, and I'm not kidding when I say that every person within a 6 foot radius, myself included, lunged out to make sure she didn't fall. People stuck out legs, arms, canes, and one man held on to her until her grandmother could get back to her.

B6 to East New York, courtesy of my cousin:
A lady gets on, sits down for 3 seconds, and proclaims loudly in an amazing Caribbean accent: "Jesus is coming, people." She then continues on a rant about the state of the world. This happens on a daily basis. Finally, one day...
Lady: "Jesus is coming, people."
Random guy: "WHEN IS HE COMING? You've been saying this every day and he's not here yet."

And a bonus boat story:
I am eating lunch outside on the docks, and am walking to throw out my trash. I'm holding a bottle of seltzer in one hand. A wizened, shirtless man standing on his boat (which is called "My Lady") yells over to me, "Hey doll! Hope it's vodka in that bottle." I responded with, "oh, I wish it were," and then we waved and went our separate ways.

S'Mac

2010-05-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

I love macaroni and cheese, but really, who doesn't? I make a pretty good baked version (usually with broccoli in it), but am also happy enough to eat some sort of Kraft product, especially if the pasta is shaped like characters from Toy Story. I'm not fussy in the pasta department.

(thanks to the Retro Info blog for the image!)

So really, me google-ing "mac and cheese restaurants New York City" was not a huge surprise. And there is one, a restaurant that just serves mac and cheese, salads, desserts, and a few types of drinks. It is called S'Mac, which stands for Sarita's Macaroni and Cheese, and is in the East Village.

I was worried about the trendy factor (the East Village is so fun to walk around, but can be a bit annoying, hipster-wise) and the crowded factor, particularly since we went on a Friday night. But even if I had to wait an hour for a table, I would go there again. Plus, they have take-out. The place ROCKS.

What did we get? We all got the Nosh size, which was the smallest, and since I had lunch late it made me comfortably full. If I were quite hungry, I might up it to the Major Munch size. They serve it in individual skillets. We scraped the sides of the skillets when we were done, hunting for more--it was that tasty. I got the Napoletana (a word I have trouble saying, for some reason) which was mozzarella, roasted tomatoes, garlic, and basil. I'm not big on tomatoes, but they didn't overwhelm it in the slightest, and the basil was a tasty addition. One of my friends had the 4 Cheese and a salad (which she said was also good, the rest of us weren't virtuous enough to comprise the mac with excess green stuff). The other friend got the Garden Lite, which involved cauliflower, broccoli, and mushrooms. This friend can't eat gluten, and they not only had gluten free pasta, but gluten free breadcrumbs to put on top. Since it was officially the weekend and we were belatedly celebrating Karl Marx's birthday, we got Cabernet to go with it. It was served in plastic cups. Works for me.

Any downsides? It is a bit small inside, so when we were leaving the line was out to the street. The cashier/servers weren't outrageous friendly, but they certainly weren't surly either. Forks should be located on each table, so if you can't find them, it may be that they haven't been restocked.

You can create your own, but we went with some of the recommended ones, and there are plenty more (Parisienne with Brie, roasted figs, fresh rosemary? Cajun with andouille sausage, green pepper, and onions? Alpine with Gruyere and slab bacon? All there.)

We'll be back. You can order it online, but I feel like the delivery to Brooklyn would not be cost prohibitive, nor feasible. Plus, when I was walking from the subway I saw a man carrying a piano across the street, so the people watching is solid. If you're intrigued, do check out the website--I linked it above, but here it is again. They have some vegan-lactose intolerant options, as well as the gluten free ones. I like that they also seem to support a few different women-centered organizations.

Creditors: A Tragi-Comedy

2010-05-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

(thanks to my friend Annalise for snapping this picture in the subway)

"A superbly taut, tense and terrible little play"--a 1959 review

"Don't be afraid later, when you see me at work dissecting a human soul and laying out the bits and pieces here on the table. It sounds nasty if you're a beginner, but once you've seen it done you won't regret the experience." --Gustav, one of the three characters in Creditors

"It seemed to me to be less of a play and more an almost demonic experiment on a set of three human lab rats." --David Greif, current playwright and translator

"The characters don't argue; they use words like clubs." --Germaine Greer, reviewer

If this doesn't sound like your idea of an enjoyable Tuesday night, well, I'm with you. But it turns out I was wrong.

I had not heard of August Strindberg or his play Creditors (1888) before a few weeks ago. It passed my radar when I was looking at upcoming shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (which is called BAM.) Creditors, importantly, was directed by Alan Rickman and coming off of a very well-received run in London. Being a very big fan of Alan Rickman, and more specifically his voice, I was even more thrilled that he would be giving an artist talk before one of the performances. Hastily, two of my friends and I booked tickets and decided to go to the play as well.

Now, as I said, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, so I checked a Strindberg book out of the library, hunkered down, and realized that I would be dreading this 90 minute, no intermission battle of human emotions. There are three characters (Adolf, Gustav, and Tekla) who form a pretty twisted romantic triangle. I don't do well with plays which only take place in one room. I had more fun preparing for the Alan Rickman part, where I watched four of his movies in one weekend.

So: the day arrived, we met our out-of-town friend and had a lovely time with her. We went to the talk, wolfed some food in the lobby (between us we'd smuggled in about 1 1/2 pounds of sweet potatoes in our purses--it was pretty classy) and climbed the 70 stairs to our seats in the nosebleed section. The seats, I should add, were bar stools with backs that you had to hop into, so I was even more not excited about sitting there and being depressed.

The play was great. Genuinely heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching, but also--funny? Yep, I laughed, and more than once. The words which seemed so dull on the page came out of someplace in the actors that felt very real. Rickman must be a very, very good director (listening to him talk, you get the sense that he is.) What was intriguing about the performance is that I hated all of the characters at one point or another, and then two lines later pitied them immensely. Humans can be awful sometimes. But we recognize that awfulness, too.

Here is one thing I don't quite understand. When I read the play, I chalked Strindberg up as a misogynist, and sort of dismissed him as such (Greer points this out, too). But, as I watched the play, I realized that 1. his male characters are just as vile and cutting as his female ones, and 2. Tekla was the one with the power, the drive, and the self-confidence to do what she wanted. Since she is more powerful than the men, is that a negative portrayal of women or not?

And what about the Creditor to my heart? (ha, nice one.) Celebrity must be such an odd thing. People kept giving Rickman presents after they asked him questions, which we thought was both hilarious and off-putting. What were they, copies of screenplays they wanted him to look at? Anyway, here are my impressions of the Man, the Myth, the Legend:

(thanks to BAM online for the image!)
1. He has a way of smiling which is completely disarming. He said that his old acting coaches told him to stop sounding like he "was talking out the back of a drainpipe" but his voice is mesmerizing. He thinks a lot before he speaks, so every word takes on a certain purpose. He lingers on the words he likes, like "vicious" or "relentless" or the phrase "subtle cruelty," which he said with great relish.
2. He seems normal. Yes, I certainly wasn't talking to him face to face, but he was modest and kept chuckling (which sounded like a bear laughing) and was self-deprecating and very English.
3. He is smart. Having just watched Bottle Shock, a movie which no one has heard of but which I enjoyed (if you liked Sideways you would like it, I think), I was pretty sure he was fluent in French. Not only that, but as he talked he spit out quotes and examples from a bunch of different directors, theatrical and otherwise. He could recite theory and pop culture with the same ease.
4. He genuinely loves acting, and I think he really likes the theatre. At one point, he said that there is a "human need to be told a story," which can only be fulfilled by seeing someone in person and feeling the energy there. Having watched Creditors, I would agree. There were a few points where people around me actually jumped or gasped. Rickman also said that he hoped that truly listening would equal truly learning. Well Alan, you got certainly got me to listen.

Don't know much about Alan Rickman's career? Watch this and this and this. Immediately. For more of his voice, listen here. And for an irreverent (and very good!) impression of him by John Sessions, check this out. For even MORE irreverence, check out Strindberg and Helium.

At one point, Tekla tells Gustav, "there is no guilt, Gustav. There's just...people--men and women, fallen human beings--trying to do what they can to live. No one is to blame, Gustav. Not even you." It shouldn't be reassuring, this thought. But somehow it is.

Lilacs

2010-04-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

The lilacs are early this year. This is not something I would normally notice, but for the past few years the smell of lilacs have always been accompanied with finals. The building where I spent much time while at college has a lovely lilac collection, with many different hues of purple. One particularly bad finals period (I think it was my junior year) I turned in my last paper and skipped out of the building (I don't normally skip) and threw myself into the lilac grove and lay there on the ground and inhaled the scent.

Lilacs may be my favorite flower because of how good they smell. The purple doesn't hurt, either. Fortunately for me, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens have a sizable lilac grove, which is where I took these pictures. What totally surprised me was how people react when they see (or smell) them. Hardened New York types, whom I would assume would have no real interest in plant-life, barrel over and bury their faces in the bushes. I saw an older woman, bending over them, murmuring, "heavenly, heavenly, heavenly." People don't take as many pictures of the lilacs, but they certainly are interested in them. It's nice to see this type of love and devotion for flowers.

To me, lilacs mean school, and having silly finals adventures with my friends, that had nothing to do with books and everything to do with being outside. But my love of lilacs goes farther back than that. My grandmother's house had lilac bushes on the side of it and as children my sister and I and two of our cousins made worlds in there. Usually they were households, which each of us having a separate section or imagining different rooms. I spent a lot of time in those branches. My parents, too, have lilacs in their backyard. My sister and I would play badminton (and still do) back there without a net and would be forever trapping the birdie in the lilacs, and did not always take the proper care with getting it down. Lilacs are bigger than Brooklyn in my eyes, but they never cease to make me happy.

The Great Plumbing Adventure of 2010

2010-04-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

There are many things in this world that I don't know enough about; for example, basic geometry, boning a duck, staking tomatoes, quantum physics, Scrabble words, ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe, and...the mechanics of bathroom plumbing. So when I got up the other morning to find the toilet clogged (mysteriously, but sometimes weird things happen with the sewer since we're on the first floor) I did what I know to do--test flush, plunge, flush, which resulted in the water rising ominously...rising, rising, rising, overflowing! I went through my general stages of dealing with a crisis, abbreviated as LP3CL.

Lecturing inanimate objects: "Stop it! Do you hear me? STOP IT."
Pleading: "Oh, please stop it. C'mon, you are a wonderful toilet normally, let's not get a bad reputation." [note: this was idle flattery--it is NOT a good toilet; the handle always falls off.]
Creative swearing: [you'll have to use your imagination, since this is a family friendly blog. Keep in mind that I have a good arsenal from watching football with my flatmates.]
Calling my father: 3 times. He is a helpful advice giver, but that doesn't help when the valve to turn off the water is rusted shut. Fortunately, he is also an early riser.
Creative problem solving: tie up that ball-thingy in the tank to the wall with dental floss, which stops the water from running.
Laugh: my life is generally a series of farcical situations, and this was no exception. As some of you may know, I don't technically have a bed here, so I (usually) sleep on an air mattress, and my mattress picked the night before Plumbing Armageddon to deflate. So I was not looking or feeling my best, especially considering the fact that I am never that alert when I first wake up. Mostly this just made me giggle.

The next step was to assess the damage. A lot of water, in this case, which I mopped up quickly and bailed out. I went to harass my upstairs neighbors (who are related to our landlord, and take care of immediate problems). It is a 3 generation family up there, and the father (as opposed to the grandfather or daughter) is the one who is kind of in charge of the place. He speaks mostly Bangla, so we did some extensive hand gesturing (I had a good one for "plunging," he got in a good one for "floods".) He said, "ok, I'll call him," which I assumed meant the plumber. I emailed the museum to say I would not be in, and hunkered down to wait.

Instead of the plumber, he actually called the landlord, and something got lost in translation, because he called my roommate and told her that the apartment was flooded (which has happened before.) She took a cab home from work, and after calming down, we called my cousin (the other roommate) so assure her that all was well. The landlord called the plumber.

I waited for the plumber. He arrived, was misogynistic (definite vibe that young women didn't know anything about plumbing, which in this case was sadly true) but fairly nice. And he fixed it, with one of those metal snakes, so that is fine with me. He also checked the sewer and we got the all clear. We went upstairs for him to get paid, but it was prayer-time, so the plumber came out and sat on the sidewalk in front of the apartment on a crate, and when I asked him if he wanted anything to eat or drink, he said he was just going to "soak up the rays." He was paid, I mopped, my cousin called to see why she had multiple missed calls from us, and all went back to normal.

Lessons learned?
--When you get older you have to deal with grown up stuff like plumbing and taxes. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and if you're me at least, you're going to have some help.
--Having a landlord usually means you don't have to pay for repairs, which is nice.
--Rosemary Clooney is good music to listen to while mopping. I think I heard "Mambo Italiano" about 12 times at high volume.
--I am really dependent on modern conveniences.
--Make sure you have dental floss on hand, not just for tooth health but for minor household repairs.
--Try not to flood your bathroom on Earth Day. Your friends will never let you live down the water-wasting.
--It is a lot healthier if you can laugh about this stuff.
--My bathroom is fixed!

City Rhythms

2010-04-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn has a special pulse to it, which is something I can't really describe and I think can only be felt after you live here for a little while. It is a sense of constant movement that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Here are some sensory examples from a sunny--yet ordinary--Wednesday morning.

I sat in a coffeehouse up the street from the apartment. I was there to wait out while my laundry dried, and to catch up on my correspondence (how very Jane Austen of me!) It used to be an old glass factory, and the decor is minimalist, but light and airy. The door and windows (the whole front of the building is glass) were all opened and I could hear two delivery drivers chatting in Spanish on the sidewalk. Bikes are tied to the railing in a jumble, and a bulldog sits outside while his owner gets an espresso to go. I was perched on a green stool, scanning the NY Times, reading about volcanic ash plumes, Long Island racist crimes, and health insurance. If I was a poet (which I'm not) I would write about the feel of the newsprint under my hands, the clink of the small silver spoon next to my glass cup of mocha, and the dusting of cinnamon that speckles the foam on top. I would write of the crunch of the croissant I am eating as I try to pick crumbs off my plate, and the clicking of the hipster next to me as he types on his Mac. The baristo (is that the male form of barista? beats me) hurried outside to yell a greeting to the woman on the red bike. He is wearing a denim shirt, jeans, a red neckerchief and his arms are covered with black and red tattoos. He has a mohawk and an Australian accent and has swirled a spiral into my drink before handing it to me. I may have a crush on him. The Beatles played in a ceaseless blend of calm and noise (Strawberry Fields Forever) and prisms of light bounced off the old, leaded windows and the scarred table where I was sitting.

The sidewalks are a pockmarked mass of gum stains, tobacco stains, and spilled juice, water, and beer. Last night as I was taking the subway I noticed the same phenomena at the 86th St station--the pavement takes on an almost polka-dotted appearance with all of these marks. The security guard at the hospital center says, "good morning, miss" as I walk by. Another older man, wearing a suit, hat, and pink shirt, taps his cane on the sidewalk. "How's it goin', baby?" he asks. "Good morning, sir," I say to them both.

I am the only person in the laundromat, other than the older, stooped woman and the younger, thin woman who work there. We exchange smiles, as they snap snap snap other people's clothes that they are expertly folding. I have seen these women every 2 weeks, and I will leave here and never know their names. The completed laundry in their colorful bags look like misshapen larvae in a large pile on top of the washers. I haul my maroon bag over my shoulder and walk home, my keys clinking in my pocket, which matches the clicking cadence of the woman who passes me, hunting for change in her purse, hurrying to catch the 48 bus. I slide open the windows of the apartment and sit down to write this, to put off folding my laundry.

Ellis Island

2010-04-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

My parents were here last week (yay!), and we went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Being a history nerd-o, I really enjoyed both (even with all the tourists). Many European-descended types in America have some sort of Ellis Island story, mostly about relatives who came through the glass doors of that imposing fortress, and some who were never allowed to leave. Some died there, some were born there, some were deported--one of the worst stories I heard was of an elderly woman who had to go back to her homeland because she had a growth on her finger, and they didn't want her to infect Americans (it probably didn't help that she was old, female, and poor). Her entire family had emigrated* here and she had to go home alone, and none of them ever heard from her again. Most first and second class passengers passed through without a problem, and then those in steerage waited..and waited. If they didn't pass the physical test, then they waited for other tests, for days.(thanks to the Ellis Island site and the National Parks Service for providing these images. Minus people, the room looks much the same.)

Most of my maternal relatives emigrated in the 1880's, which was before Ellis Island was the entrance point to the United States. (At that time it was Castle Gardens/Castle Clinton, which is in Battery Park, and where my then-7 year old great-grandmother remembered picking the flowers.) However, my maternal grandfather's mother came through Ellis Island in 1893. Her name was Anna; hence, my name is Anna.

(not my relatives, but they are someone's relatives, and I am borrowing them for awhile.)

When Anna entered the United States she was 19 years old. She was alone. Young, unaccompanied women were considered a serious threat when entering the US in this time period, as they could have turned to prostitution or other unsavory means of supporting themselves in the big city. So I'm guessing someone must have met her there, or she was able to get around that rule, because in short order she got to a small town outside of Mt Jewett, PA and had married, given birth to a son, been widowed, and remarried by 1896. What was most odd about Anna's journey is that there were only 340 passengers on her ship from Liverpool, which could have held 2000. Who were they? Were they mostly young? Why leave Europe then?

I don't know anything about Anna's family or parents or much of her life in PA. She had 8 children all told, and after her husband died in a gas explosion (very young) she had to raise the children by herself, which included sending 3 of them (my grandfather included) to an orphanage in Meadville to make sure they had enough to eat. I hope her time at Ellis Island was quick, painless, and not too frightening. Although how could it not have been? Doctors with sedate suits, handlebar mustaches, practiced hands, and button hooks (BUTTON HOOKS) which they stuck under your eyelids to make sure you weren't infectious? People quizzing you about money and what you have in your bags and who is meeting you there and what your plans are? Feeling sick and hungry and homesick? How COULD it be non-awful?

Although, maybe I am just weak. I am moving to Indiana in four months and the thought of finding an apartment and meeting new people makes me feel ill. I am not hardy, and could very well have thrown up on the ferry to Ellis Island, never mind a 2 week journey on the Atlantic Ocean. Like every other tourist who visited the Island in search of their past, I am spoiled by the excesses of this country, excesses which my Anna, my matriarch and my ancestor, never experienced. Was her life in this country better than Sweden? I hope it was. And hey, I'm here because of it, so I'm glad she was here too. I picture her sweeping into Ellis Island, acing her mental test, marching to the ferry with aplomb, and setting off for New York City and promise and adventure. I walked in her footsteps last week. I sensed her terror and excitement, and I wished I knew her.

*Emigrated is when you leave a country to go to another. Immigrated is when you enter another country or new location. I honestly had no idea which of these to use until I looked them up about 5 minutes ago. Kind of like how until my senior year in high school I thought a Molotov cocktail was a drink.

The wisdom of Bob Dylan

2010-04-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

These images (of a bong store and a fancy apartment building) are 116 MacDougal St and 160 Bleecker St, respectively. And I can guess your reaction: who cares? Well, you should! 116 MacDougal is not only where Bob Dylan and Alan Ginsberg used to hang out, but also where Dylan lived for awhile. It used to be known as the Gaslight Cafe, and there were readings there by Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. 160 Bleecker is where Dylan wrote "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

I knew that Bob lived in Greenwich Village, but after googling it, I found a few definite addresses, and MacDougal Street has quite the history! For starters, Bob Dylan once got in a fistfight there was Andy Warhol. And here's a shortlist of the people who lived and wandered around there: Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, ee cummings, Miles Davis, Dylan Thomas, Gore Vidal, Paul Robeson, Eartha Kitt, Joan Rivers, and Richard Pryor. Now it's peopled by hipsters from NYU, which I feel like Bob would have something to say about.

Having been on an unofficial, meandering Bob Dylan walking tour (first with my cousin, then with my sister, about 7 months apart) I can say that if you have any interest in the musical culture of the 1960's, Greenwich Village is the place to be. To walk the same street that features on the album cover of the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan? Pretty awesome.

Moreover, Bob Dylan lyrics are good at describing everything, for a variety of situations. After consulting with my cousin, here are some examples:

Places we would like to be, other than NYC:
I like to spend some time in Mozambique
The sunny sky is aqua blue
And all the couples dancing cheek to cheek.
It’s very nice to stay a week or two.
--Mozambique, 1975

Lost love/lost friendship
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better, but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right
--Don't Think Twice, it's All Right, 1963

Freedom
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
--Mr. Tambourine Man, 1964

Post-grad life, sometimes
You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
--Like A Rolling Stone, 1965

Post-grad life, sometimes
I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m a-seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
--Song to Woody, 1961

Post-grad life, sometimes
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
--The Times They are A-Changin', 1963

Unsavory bosses
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind pa
She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
--Maggie's Farm, 1965

Sound Life Advice
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows
--Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965

Corporatism
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
--Hurricane, 1975

When considering upcoming birthdays (!!)
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young
--Forever Young, 1973

Art
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo, this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
--Visions of Johanna, 1966

Being in a Rut and Getting Out
My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind
So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine
--Mississippi, 1997

P.S. I don't think me quoting song lyrics constitutes plagiarism, but if it does, and you're reading this Mr. Dylan--I'm sorry, and I'd be happy to buy you a drink to make it up to you.

Peeps and Sweeps

2010-04-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

Melting peeps, from seriouseats.com

Confession: I don't really like Peeps, although I give props to the sick genius who decided to coat marshmallows with more sugar. But what they do provide are nostalgia. My sister blowing them up in the microwave. Mailing deliberately stale Peeps (with a slit cut in the packaging) to one of my friends, who prefers them stale. Spending all of last Easter editing my big paper, binging on Peeps, and leaving a trail of pink smudges all over the art department. The creepy sweetness of them is comforting, sometimes. And I used some leftovers a few days ago to make rice crispy treats, which was an excellent idea.

There are lots of Peeps tidbits on the interwebs. Here is a gem from wikipedia: "Peeps are sometimes jokingly described as 'indestructible'. In 1999, scientists at Emory University performed experiments on batches of Peeps to see how easily they could be dissolved, burned or otherwise disintegrated, using such agents as cigarette smoke, boiling water and liquid nitrogen. They claimed that the eyes of the confectionery 'wouldn't dissolve in anything'." And the recipes! Peepshi? Check. (and see picture below). Peeps afloat on a bed on blue jello? Check. Deep fried Peeps? Check. Peepsicles? Check.

Peepshi, also from seriouseats.com

As for all of you peeps reading this (ha ha! That was a wonderful transition, wasn't it?) I just wanted to say thanks--for reading, for humoring my ramblings, and (most of all) for being in my life. Also, I'd like to encourage you to check out the blogs I have listed on the side, as I have just linked The Cranky Professor there. I am a prior student of said cranky professor (although he's not really that cranky), and it's a fun blog.

As for the sweeps part of this post: I would like to announce that until I leave Brooklyn I will be working hard to visit EVERY neighborhood in Brooklyn, and then writing about each one for you. There might be pictures. There might be the quoting of song lyrics. There might be adventures! Also, I'm thinking of doing an art sweeps week too (an artwork a day, from little known places or artists I especially like, in the NYC area.) Stay tuned.

Thomas Cromwell & Me

2010-04-05T20:23:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I finished Wolf Hall, a door-stopper sized book (and Booker Prize Winner) by Hilary Mantel. It took me awhile to read, but it was one of the best books I've read in the past six months, or ever. It tells of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister for 8 years, and one of his most trusted advisors. Cromwell grew up the son of a poor blacksmith who beat him, and he was one of the very few members of the court without an illustrious lineage. He was smart, canny, and knew how to choose the winning side--although he worked for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey for many years (and liked him), after Wolsey's fall and death he allied himself with the Protestant cause, and agitated for Anne Boleyn to become queen.

What I like about Thomas Cromwell is that while he was a go-getter he also cared about his family and even his enemies--Mantel plays up the differences between Thomas More and Cromwell, and you get a real sense of his remorse when More is executed. A scene from Cromwell's childhood where he witnesses a Loller being burned at the stake will stick with me for a very long time. Cromwell was also fluent in French, Italian, and Latin, and had many friends in Antwerp. He did some shady work in Italy after fleeing his father, and he had military training. He liked pets and children and treated them respectfully. He consorted with ambassadors, painters, astronomers, and kings. This was a person who lived. Mantel is very good at giving the reader a sense of 17th century England, and the mannerisms of the court, the clergy, and the common folk--from the bitter Duke of Norfolk to the heretic nun.

I found myself at the Frick Collection recently, and turning a corner, I saw the portrait of Thomas More by Hans Holbein, to the left of the fireplace. I was excited, as I know a bit more about him now, but my excitement grew as I looked to the other side of the fireplace and there he was: Cromwell.

(Thomas More, 1527) (Thomas Cromwell, 1532-33)
Both works by Hans Holbein, and both images from the Frick Collection Online.

Here is part of the description from Wolf Hall, discussing the portrait:
"He sees his painted hand, resting on the desk before him, holding a paper in a loose fist. It is uncanny, as if he had been pulled apart, to look at himself in sections, digit by digit. Hans made his skin smooth as the skin of a courtesan, but the motion he has captured, that folding of the fingers, is as sure as that of a slaughterman's when he picks up the killing knife...He had time to think while Hans drew him, and his thoughts took him far off, to another country. You cannot trace those thoughts behind his eyes.
He had asked to be painted in his garden. Hans said, the very notion makes me sweat. Can we keep it simple, yes?"
(Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, p. 430)

This gave me pause--imagine that you used a mirror occasionally, but your main sense of personal appearance came from what others said about you (in Cromwell's case, that he looked like a murderer.) And suddenly, you have been painted and you are looking at yourself, really looking, for the first time. What an odd experience that must have been. In a way, Cromwell looks, well, ordinary, especially compared to More's green curtain and royal chain, not to mention the velvet sleeves. The turquoise ring was bequeathed to him by Wolsey, and it is his only ornamentation. The furnishings are wealthy, to be sure, but more in the realm of a prosperous merchant, and not the right hand man of the king.

The Frick does not have wall labels, so you listen to the descriptions and information about the works on free audio guides. I held it to my ear, and heard much about Cromwell's reforming spirit, when suddenly came this phrase: "executed in 1540." I had no idea, as Wolf Hall finishes in 1535. I gasped, audibly enough that a guard came over and asked if I was ok. A deep sense of loss, one that I really was not expecting, came over me, for a man who worked so hard and did so much, whose wife and daughters died of the plague, whose enemies fought him and connived and finally entrapped him. Henry VIII approved his execution mainly because Cromwell orchestrated the marriage to Anne of Cleves, who Henry refused to copulate with, and which resulted in some messy alliance-making stuff. Henry claimed to his death that he was remorseful for Cromwell's killing, which I can just about believe--the impression I got from the book was that Henry VIII really did admire and respect him...but kings can be changeable.

Thomas Cromwell was anything but simple. He lives on, and for one short moment on a sunny Thursday afternoon, I saw him in his study, surrounded by his books, shuffling his papers, with his sons and apprentices shouting outside. He straightens his back, pulls tighter his fur-lined coat, jokes with Hans, and goes out to face whatever comes.

Monday by the Numbers

2010-03-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Number of hours, in the past 48, that it's been raining: 48
Number of hours, in the past 48, that I've been wearing my pajamas: 45
Number of times, in the past 48 hours, that I've left the apartment: 3 (to the mailbox; next door to buy chips; to the library)
Number of rooms rearranged this morning: 2
Number of movies watched, in the past 48 hours: 3
Number of knitting projects I've attempted, in the past 48 hours: 4
Number of recipes looked up online: several hundred
Number of times I've checked my email for my final grad school decision: several hundred
Number of times I've said, in the past 48 hours, "I want a dog": 78
Number of people I saw who were wearing the same outfit as me (black trench, jeans, and a black umbrella): 12
Number of cars parked on the sidewalk in my neighborhood: 4
Number of corner stores between the apartment and the library: 8
Number of episodes of the Gilmore Girls I've watched: 2 1/2
Number of times I said, "I wish I knew Captain Wentworth and/or I wish he was real": 6
Number of student loan payments submitted: 2
Number of mysteries read: 2

Lights, Camera, Action

2010-03-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

So it is Saturday and my cousin and I went to the American Folk Art Museum (which was SO COOL, I highly recommend) and then went and got seriously good sandwiches at a place in Hells Kitchen (her: really fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil, olive oil; me: Gruyere, apples, pine nuts, asparagus, and a little honey.) But the REAL excitement happened only a few blocks from the apartment when we were walking back from the train.

A woman popped in front of us and said, "hey, would you two like to be in a commercial?" And since our judgment was impaired by the massive sandwiches we just consumed, we said ok. It was some commercial (details were vague) about the Superbowl and an ad agency, where they were asking people on the street, "what is your favorite part about the Superbowl?" and the pedestrians would say, "the commercials." So that is what we did. Well, Melis said, "the commercials" and then I had to look at her and agree, "yes, definitely the commercials." The irony of this is that she mutes the commercials in the Superbowl and I don't really pay attention to the Superbowl because I'm usually knitting during it.

But anyway, it was hilarious. We had to do about 10 takes because of traffic and people randomly walking by, and the guy holding the microphone to ask us the questions was SO WEIRD and had beady eyes. There was a director and two camera dudes and everything. And it was right by our firehouse, so I'm just really glad none of them were out there, or we'd never live it down. I looked like a total rockstar in an "Ithaca is gorges" shirt, corduroy jacket, yellow scarf, and shades. I am also fairly dubious that this will ever, ever make it on air, which would be just fine with me. However, we did sign a waiver, so if it does make it to air, I will know. And I may or may not be sharing that with all of you.

Celebrating..the Removal of Snakes? Green Beer?

2010-03-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Unlike the English, I know how to pull Guinness properly. You have to let it sit, you have to let it go black, and then you have to push it back so that not more gas goes into it. Five twelfths of an inch is the ideal head round the top. And if somebody paints a shamrock into it, you're allowed to stab them in the eye with a fork. I remember I worked in a pub in the town I grew up in, and it was a very tough pub, and they wouldn't take a Guinness off me until I'd been there for awhile.
--Dara O'Briain, on QI

I went to the St Patrick's Day Parade in Manhattan (because why not? I love parades, I love bagpipes, it seemed like a win-win.) And it was fun. The route goes along 5th Ave and is at least 6 hours long, but I only caught the last 1 1/2 or so. Conveniently, 5th Ave is also where a lot of museums are, so I just went into the Frick Collection for awhile, which is always worthwhile. (I would give some non-essential teeth or toes to work at the Frick. Go there and you will see why.) It is unnerving, however, to be inside a museum and hear banging, muffled music, and cheering from outside. The guards kept peering out the windows at the melee.

Anyway, since I've been lax on the pictures of late (my camera has lost it's tiny mind) I'm going to do a photo diary of sorts so you can experience the parade a bit yourselves. Oh, and it was 65 degrees, sunny, and gorgeous.
1. First people I saw, before even going into the museum. They were super sweet and chatty.

2. Pipe and Drum band, take 1. Unintended consequence: first time I've heard bagpipes since graduation. A little sad.

3. Pipe and Drum band, take 27. I like the swing-y kilt action. A lot of these bands had flasks (or indeed, bottles of Jameson) tucked into their socks.
4. Pipe and Drum Band, take 503. Not a great picture, but they are from BROOKLYN. Represent!

5. Pipe and Drum band, take 7006.

6. and 7. In which I am hungry, but the pretzel truck is behind a barricade on the other side of the street, and instead of eating I take a picture of my parade appropriate feet.

8. ALBANY's Christian Brothers Academy. Represent!

9. Good on you, James Connolly. This followed a lot of banners telling England to leave Ireland.

10. Now THESE were cool. There were different banners for the counties of Ireland, and people on the street who were from there would burst into their song, or cheer. And I just think the banners look neat--the parade is 249 years old, and they have kept it really traditional. The banners remind me of the ones used in suffragette parades.

11. The moment we've all been waiting for! Jamestown, yes, Jamestown High School, my alma mater, was in the NYC St Patrick'ss Day Parade. I actually have no recollection what they played, although I think it might have been Scottish.

Please note the atrociousness of the new uniforms (hello, school board, if you're reading this...are we Lancaster? Think again.) But they sounded good! And the kid getting water squirted in his mouth over on the right is hilarious.

I was near the end of the parade route (as was the JHS band) so it was pretty uncrowded, which was nice, especially considering that this was the last parade I went to, and there wasn't any room to walk around.

The verdict? Low key, some good debauchery on the sidelines, some funny spectators, some flask-passing, and general calmness--probably thanks to the huge number of police in attendance. If you're in the city next year, I would definitely recommend it!

Cake Monster, and other Friday Tales

2010-03-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

I had some SOLID people watching/random interactions today. Here is a sampling:

First Tale
I went to apply for a job at Brooklyn College this morning, and sort of snuck in--you're supposed to flash a school ID, and I was going to explain that I didn't have one and they just waved me through. It's a very pretty campus, design-wise, although the building interiors are 1970's puce green. And the HR department is very much not helpful, but it still gave me a chance to read my book, on a bench, next to a reflecting pool, in the sun. A good way to spend a morning.

When I left, I stopped at Lord's Bakery. I realized that I have not mentioned Lord's Bakery on this august blog, but let me just say: YUM. My cousin stops there on her way to school and I have been there a few times, but it's been awhile. When I went in today, my eye strayed immediately to the Red Velvet cake, which I've never had the guts to buy. The women wearing hospital scrubs in front of me was buying a piece, so I asked her if it was as good as it looks (note: it looks good.) Her response? "Oh. My. God. I keep telling myself that it's not good for weight loss but I'm just getting off of work and I figure on special occasions...erm, I guess it's not really a special occasion. But it is Friday!" Endorsement enough for me.

And if any of you like Red Velvet cake I would be more than happy to mail you a piece. I scarfed half of it while on the subway, feeling like one of those people who drink beer out of paper bags on the subway...shiftily forking cake out of styrofoam container. No matter. I ate the rest as a late afternoon snack.

Second Tale
After I got off the subway, post-cake binge, I was waiting for the shuttle and a guy started chatting to me. (Probably it was my sultry green Converse and green scarf combo that did it.) Here is how it went:
Guy: You know, I'm really tired. I'm just coming off the night shift at my job.
Me: Ah.
Guy: And it was worse than usual...because Mike Tyson showed up...and he bit off my ear. And then I fell down the stairs.
Me: Wow, that does sound like a bad time. I hope you can relax now. Oop, here's my shuttle, bye!
Guy: [yelling, as I get on the train] I was just kidding about Mike Tyson.

Third Tale
Later on in the day, I went to Prospect Park and people were out in full force--bikini wearing people AND overcoat wearing people. I set up my chair to bask and was next to a group of 7 year old boys who were having a grand time. They were running and sliding in the mud and then the one closest to me bellowed, "I found it!! I found the treasure!!!" And held out a handful of...worms. His friends were duly impressed, before then deciding that they were inhabiting Mars and found "Mars rocks" (dirt clods, which they then threw at each other) and shooting each other with "laser guns" (sticks) and generally just being funny. The tree next to me turned into a spaceship, and away they went.

I think "play date" might be the most annoying concept ever, and it grips the Park Slope yuppies, so it was nice to see these kids being silly and happy and just playing for once. Furthermore, I had blackened catfish for dinner, it is still warm out, and I have company coming this weekend. Not to mention the cake!

Spring Forward

2010-03-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn is, to paraphrase e e cummings, mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful at the moment. It got up to 60 today, and people went even crazier than normal (myself included). Prospect Park was filled with wishful thinkers in shorts and t-shirts. A man roller-bladed by me while simultaneously talking on the phone. I found myself beaming at small children and waving at tiny dogs. Multicolored girls in swirling skirts drew giant dinosaurs and flowers on the sidewalks. Kids wandered around with dazed looks and mud-spattered knees.

It smells like sewage, standing water, dirt, and petrol. It's not overwhelmingly a bad smell, but you can tell that things are trying to dry themselves out. I had to have the reference librarian get a book out of storage for me, titled Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (it's Roald Dahl's short stories, in case you thought it was something soppier) and he proceeded to sing me the song. I found a marble on the sidewalk--it's a bit cloudy, but with a shock of turquoise through it. I ate the first acceptable avocado I've had in Brooklyn.

The cars still skreetch their brakes and make me jump, and the sirens still blare, but it is sunny, so all is well.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

2010-03-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

One of the benefits (and disadvantages, actually) of living in a small town is that people "know" you. They know your history, your families history, and different things about you--hobbies, favorite food, the clothes you usually wear, etc. This being "known" is nice, in a way, but sometimes it's nice to NOT be known, to be able to invent yourself as someone else without many preconceived notions about you.

Where am I going with this? Well, it's been nice being anonymous as one of the 2.5 million in Brooklyn, but sometimes it gets a little tiring. I don't want to keep having to tell people where I went to school, or what my favorite color is, I want them to KNOW. I'm lazy. What makes it harder is that I don't have a usual spot or routine that makes me known. I'm not a consistent enough drinker to have a regular bar. I don't drink coffee, so I don't buy it from a certain bodega every morning, on the way to a job that I don't have. I don't order the same food from the same restaurants. I get bored with taking the same routes, so I walk different blocks at different times, and take different trains (not that this would matter--it's not like I stare at my fellow commuters and try to remember them.)

However, where I do go on a regular basis is the corner store next to our apartment, and I like to think that the guys who work there recognize me. For the most part at least, they know that I never want a bag, and that I'm usually buying seltzer. But here is what happened today. I sprinted to this store for orange juice (twas pouring), and lo and behold, behind the counter was the youngest brother, who I haven't seen in a few months (he's in school, presumably, so he was around a lot in the summer, but not now.) This is how the conversation went.

Store guy: LADY!! Where have you BEEN lately?
Me: Where have I been? Where have YOU been?? I haven't seen you in awhile!
Store guy: I'm here most Saturday afternoons, you must not be coming in then.
Me: That must be it. [he waves a bag at me] naw, I'm good without a bag.
Store guy: [skeptical eyebrow raise, and points out the window] do you see that? What is it doing outside??
Me: Raining...
Store guy: your juice is going to get all wet. Is this what you want?
Me: Really, I'll be fine. It's a quick walk!
Store guy: Hey, I'll see you soon right? Maybe next time you buy some seltzer?
Me: you can bet on it.

I'm known. Sort of.

Getting Lost in Queens

2010-03-09T17:47:00.002-08:00

I love Queens. I can't really explain why, but I do. And fortunately, my Super Cousin got me the Not for Tourists Guide to Queens, so I've been waiting until the weather was nice to test that out.

So after a leisurely breakfast of pancakes and cheesy television, my sister and I sallied forth to the Great Borough to the North. Our plan was to go to Louis Armstrong's house (she plays the trumpet, I like famous people's houses) and then wander about Flushing-Chinatown, and the Flushing Meadows park (where the US Open takes place.) This was the plan.

We got off the 7 train at 111 St, looking for 107th St where Armstrong's house is. Now, one would think that 107th St would be between 108th and 104th Sts, but it is in fact not. Nor, after walking around and seeing (I'm not kidding) 10 unisex nail salons, did we see any sign of 107th St. Unperturbed, because it was sunny and glorious out, we headed over to the park, with many an adventure trying to circumvent the Grand Central Parkway en route. When we got to the park, we saw the science museum, and since we like science museums, we thought we would check THAT out. Alas. It closes at 2 pm in the winter; it was now 2:15. Liz took a picture of me making a sad face in front of it, and off we sallied, again. This time, we walked over by the Unisphere, which was awesome.
(thanks to wikimedia for the image)
It's just a giant steel globe, but we took some goofy pictures of us, Atlas-like, in front of it. Also, it's the site of the 1964 World's Fair, and the pivotal scene in the great film classic, Men in Black (I'm not kidding, I thoroughly enjoy MiB, probably more than I should). We wandered some more, sat some more, basked in the sun some more, and finally looked at a map, which revealed that originally we were exactly 1 1/2 blocks from 107th St, which diagonally comes out of nowhere. We walked back, but were too late to get in--and anyway, you have to have a tourguide, and we don't like that as much. After a few sketchy pictures of the house, we went BACK to the 7 train, stopping at a bakery on the way.

Here is one of the many reasons I like Queens. You go 2 subway stops, and you feel like you're in a completely different world--then you go 2 more subway stops and it happens again. When we first got lost, we were in a Hispanic neighborhood, and the two of us were very incongruous by our different appearance (and probably by the fact that it was the middle of the day and we were wandering about.) Anyway, Latino music was blaring, people only were speaking Spanish--even all the signs were in Spanish. The bakery we stopped at had Ecuadorean soda, which I got, and we also got a roll and a croissant for snacks (VERY good, both. The soda, however, had 32 grams of sugar and tasted like a Shirley Temple on Steroids, but I enjoyed that too. Because my palate is deranged.)

When we got off the subway on Main St, Flushing, we again stuck out, but this time we were in Chinatown. So we walked some more, watched some high schoolers playing basketball, and just took in the sights--the stalls of fruit, people hustling to catch the bus, the man selling Northface jackets out of his trunk, the stores full of Hello Kitty paraphernalia, the faint scents of spices and gasoline and mangoes. And then we ate some more, obviously. This time it was steamed dumplings, from a hole in the wall tiny place. YUM. And they were 10 for $2.50, so that's hard to beat. We bade farewell to Queens, took 2 trains, a bus, walked some more, and came back to the apartment.

It may seem like not much was actually accomplished today--no museums, no sports, no plans fulfilled of any kind. But it was really, really fun. The sun helps, of course, but more than that it was just experiencing the city in a different way, and seeing the people. New Yorkers are a kind bunch, usually, and it made me glad, yet again, to be living here.

Overheard in NYC

2010-03-08T05:27:00.000-08:00

First of all, and most importantly, Happy International Women's Day! Although, why it's just one day is a bit depressing if you think about it too much... However, phenomenal women, go be fabulous, all of you. Because you are! (I took this picture in Manhattan forever ago.)Secondly, my sister is visiting, it's sunny, and once she quits lollygagging (or rather, sleeping!) we're going to get bagels and walk around Greenwich Village and check out Bob Dylan's hotspots. Should be good times. Last night we make belated-Valentines Day cookies and watched part of the Oscars. Turns out wine bottles don't make as good rolling pins as you think they might--or I may just be inept.

Thirdly and finally, the title of this blog refers to a wonderful exchange we eavesdropped on yesterday in Union Square, where we met our cousin after her yoga class for Vietnamese noodles. Walking next to us was a man with a beard and his small daughter/granddaughter/niece (I can never guess kid's ages, she was probably around 7 years old.)
Man: So my grandfather lived around here, and he used to hire a lot of men to do construction work for his company. One man was a really good construction worker, but then he started to go blind.
Girl: What happened then?? Look, that lady has a yoga mat JUST like yours!
Man: Yes, she does! Well, my grandfather still wanted to hire him even though he was blind. This man was good at working with wood and steel, but what he was really good at was stonework.
Girl: If I was him, I would have picked wood, because I think steel and stones can be *dangerous*. Do you think they're dangerous?
Man: I think they can sometimes be dangerous, yeah. But do you know why he could still do stonework when he was blind? Because he could feel the way the stones felt.
Girl: [thinking it out]...and, stones are all different, right! So you could use your hands and not your eyes to see them.
Man: Exactly. And my grandfather commissioned him to build a great BIG fireplace in his house...

And then they turned and I couldn't hear them anymore.

Love Song to a Home Town

2010-03-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I read an article that Joyce Carol Oates wrote in the Smithsonian about her hometown, Lockport NY. She told about growing up there (the glory of the public library, her poverty, having to take the greyhound to school and spend hours in the bus station with middle aged men, etc.) and then asked--would there be a Joyce Carol Oates without Lockport? It's an interesting question, as much as JCO freaks me out, with her spider limbs and her large eyes that seem to see right through people. I saw her lecture at Chautauqua a few summers ago, and she is certainly mesmerizing in an unnerving way, much as her stories are. Anyway, I hear you asking--where is Ahhna in Brooklyn "from"? How did it make her who she is? Will she ever tell us about it? Of course she will!

I am from, born, and raised in Jamestown, NY. It is what I would describe as my home town, although I haven't lived there exclusively for close to five years.

I spent most of my adolescence very ready to leave there. It felt like everyone knew me as my mother's daughter, or my grandmother's granddaughter, and it got a little old. I was bored and fidgety and wanted to be out. When I went to college, I knew that I would heartily miss many of the people, but was pretty sure I would not miss the place. That perception has been both true and not true. I've been in Jamestown for the past two weeks, hence the lack of blog posts. (I've been recouping from my skirmishes with the US Healthcare system, and have thus been drinking a crazy amount of tea, lying around, and sleeping. Lots of sleeping.) But I'm back to Brooklyn tomorrow, so I've been thinking about Jamestown and what it means to me. So, here goes.

Jamestown is the reason I can write. I don't mean this in an "I'm a good writer sense" (although I guess I do alright) but I mean when I went to college I was one of the few students I encountered who knew what topic sentences and thesis statements were. This totally surprised me. The public education system in Jamestown is (by and large) very good. For not being amazingly funded, I had some wonderful teachers--passionate, smart, literate, and literary. The "cool kids" at JHS are more along the nerd lines than a lot of high schools.

Jamestown is the reason I can play music. Again, not in a concert sense, but music is a big deal there, and there are some amazing music teachers. My piano teacher was (and is) one. It's sort of a marvel how these people end up there, but it is vitally important. The school musicals are big enterprises, as are the offerings from the Little Theater. There are always fairly good showings at local bars, too, with a variety of jazz/punk/rock/alternative/weird music. Which brings me to to...

Jamestown is the reason I can eat and drink on the cheap. Well, it's not haute cuisine, and the variety tends to be mostly American bistro, but there are some good places. Forte, which is Red Dove-ish--great decor, great food. The Taco Hut, which is Americanized Mexican, but SO good. Wings? Absolutely! (and better than Buffalo, if you ask around.) Sandwiches? Sure thing. (Go to The Pub, and you can also get a draft for $1.50.) Pizza? Most definitely. I tend toward Paces, which is near my house (go with the white garlic) but most of my friends swear by Perfect Pizza, the restaurant formerly known as Lena's. Ecklof Bakery's Pink Stripe Cookies are a local institution. And there is always Wegmans, obviously.

Jamestown is the reason I enjoy nature. Jamestown and the surrounding areas are beautiful in all seasons, except February-April when everything is wet or slushy or with grey snow. But currently, it is full of glistening icicles and snow mounds. Come summer, it will be green and the lake will be shimmering and glorious (while still smelling faintly like dead carp.) I didn't realize how much I would miss the lake this summer, the first summer I was not there.

Jamestown is the reason I can shelve books. The James Prendergast Library is the best public library I have ever been to, and I'm including alllll the NYC ones in that. It's great. The booksale is great. The renovations have been GREAT. I am biased because I worked there for
three summers, and I make all my out of town friends go there. I also make them go to the cemetary--it's a really nice cemetary!

Jamestown is the reason I can appreciate culture in many forms. Every year, my family goes to the Reuben Fenton Historical Center for the Christmas Tree Display. It's always the same--Swedish room, upside down tree hanging from the ceiling, lady in a tree dress, the string tree in the nursery, and the four story tower where you can see most of the town. I love it. The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is a fun place, for people who love Peterson and for people who love nature. The various Lucille Ball museums are cool, at least once. And the Lucy fests are people watching galore.

Jamestown is the reason I can tolerate intolerant people. I have forgotten how closeminded many people in this area are, and then I read the Letters to the Editor in the Post-Journal. And I remember. It's truly unfortunate, but you deal with it, otherwise you go crazy. Not that I never yell at the paper or anything... (and the same thing occurs with the Finger Lakes Times, too.)

Jamestown taught me to stick it to the Man. People in WNY do not like authority figures. And they love Folk Heroes. Case in point: Bucky Phillips, who killed a State Trooper, and people STILL wanted to hide him in their homes. Not that I support that. But--they are willing to agitate for things they believe in, like state parks and financial reform. Not bad stuff.

Jamestown is the reason I am content to look. One of my favorite things to do in the summer (or really, anytime/anywhere) is to drive down Baker's Hill just when the sun is setting, with some sort of rock music blaring, and all of the windows down. You crest the hill, and it looks like the opening shot of All Creatures Great and Small, albeit without the tiny stone houses, unless you drive another 10 minutes to PA. I've rode/driven that hill many times in many weathers, and it always makes me smile. It makes you slow down and just look--at the trees, cows, homes. And your home, a little ways off.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2010-02-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul Varjak: Sure.
Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!
--Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

I've only seen Breakfast at Tiffany's once, I think, and don't remember much about it, but I do remember this exchange, which I love. I've been thinking about home and security and belonging quite a bit of late, and I was thinking of what my Tiffany's equivalent would be.
--The olive bar at Wegmans
--Stewardson's living room
--the creek behind my aunt's house, particularly in the summer when everything is hazy and calm
--my grandmother's dining room at Christmas
--the benches by Seneca Lake

The themes that emmerge are water, family, and friends (and Wegmans, of course). Which sounds about right. And not, apparently, Brooklyn. I think because my roots there are still a bit tenuous.

Where are your Tiffany's? What do you do when you have an attack of the mean reds?

Guest Blog, Or Why it's Nice to Have Talented Friends II

2010-02-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

I enjoy the Olympics, but more in a "I can watch this while cooking dinner/knitting/doing homework (not anymore, HA)/folding laundry" way instead of avid-fandom. Enter the author of this next guest blog, who I met for the first time 4 years ago during the Olympics (we were living in the same first-year dorm. Ah, memories.) I soon realized that she would become one of my best friends, and would tell me about skating for the rest of my life. Enjoy! Regretably, I am a delayed poster, and Men's Finals have finished, but do watch the videos. Some of the costumes are beyond fab. And--Ice Dance starts TONIGHT!!!
---
Anyone who has conversed with me beyond greetings made in passing knows that I am an avid fan and follower of figure skating. Consequently, every four years when the Olympics roll around in February I’m typically inundated with commentary and lecturing rants regarding the performances from those who only watch figure skating once every four years; this is annoying. Not to be misinterpreted, I love discussing, watching, and explaining figure skating to the casual or non-fan. I do not, however, enjoy being ~~talked to~~ lectured on who will win, who should have won, who is a terrible skater, figure skating is not really a sport, USA should always beat Russia, etc… This is not preaching to the choir, as that statement assumes the preacher is akin to the choir, this is more George W. Bush teaching a nuclear physicist how to properly pronounce nucleosynthesis. Luckily, the birth of modern technology and the Internet has been incredibly beneficial to the figure skating community; cultivating places for hardcore fans, skaters, judges, and coaches to come together.

Nonetheless, I’ve become accustomed to the varying questions the casual every-four-years viewers ask this time of the year and typically don’t mind (truly some are quite amusing). This quadrennial has resulted in a very new and exciting figure skating query, guest blog! It was slightly difficult to decide what to write about as the sport has four disciplines and a myriad of teams and skaters within each. Similarly, skating often is accompanied by complicated back-stories and drama, notable figures with a host of connotations, nicknames, manic uber fans, and a complicated scoring system - almost all of which would take too long to explain. So, I’ll provide a brief run-down of who to watch and expect to see near the podium of the two most interesting disciplines this Olympics: Mens and Dance. Plus, my all time favorite figure skating picture game: jumpface!

Mens

This is by far the deepest breadth of skating talent and contenders I can ever remember in the Mens discipline.

Stephane Lambiel (SUI) Stephane is one of many “comebacks” this season, returning after taking a year off and relaxing his frequently injured knee. He is one of the few true artists on the ice; only a visionary would skate to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons wearing zebra print – and he won the Olympic Silver Medal in 2006 for it. Beyond his artistry and fluid skating, he is without a doubt one of the greatest male spinners figure skating has known. Prepare to be astounded by his contorting sit and blurred scratch spins, but don’t be surprised to see him take a spill on the Triple Axel.

Must Watch Stephane Program: Flamenco

Brain Joubert (FRA) Joubert is always good for a laugh, his innate understanding of great choreography is hip thrusting and generally pornographic moves translated to the ice. Don’t be fooled, however, he is an amazing technician and could easily jump his way to the top spot on the podium. He is likely to go for AT LEAST two Quads in his long program.

Must Watch Joubert Program: The Matrix

Nobunari Oda (JPN) Japan doesn’t have much of a legacy for Mens skating, but they are sending three very talented skaters to Vancouver. Nobu is young and will easily keep skating to Sochi in 2014. His Charlie Chaplain long program is probably the best long program of the season. He is a little guy with a big personality, and loves to show that off by skating in character. He actually looks like one of those gem trolls, but in a good way.

Must Watch Nobu Program: Super Mario Brothers

Daisuke Takahashi (JPN) He was sorely missed last season, out the entire year due to injury, and has had a rough year coming back to the ice. Two years ago I would have easily predicted him on the podium, now it’s a wait-and-see situation regarding his conditioning and ability to overcome injury. Despite his recent struggles, Daisuke can always be counted on for superb originality, insane footwork, and crazy hair.

Must Watch Daisuke Program: Hip Hop Swan Lake

Honorable Mentions:

Evgeni Plushenko: Plushy is returning after winning the Olympic Gold Medal in 2006 just to piss off figure skating fans everywhere with his non-existent choreography, blonde mullet, and arm flailing. If there is a lock for a podium spot it’s this man, who upon his first competition this season after four years of being away, ended his Short Program early to throw his index finger at the judges and mouth “number 1”. He is the greatest jumper the sport has known, and the proud creator of the sport’s most embarrassing exhibition, Sex Bomb.

Evan Lysacek: He is the reigning World Champ (which never bodes well at the Olympics) and the USA’s best hope for a medal. He is a solid skater, but a total idiot. You’ll notice him from a mile away, he glows neon orange and black from all the fake tan and hair grease. I have death in my soul that he will not be wearing his nipple costume from earlier this season.

Dance

Dance is known for politics, even the casual fan knows of the 2002 scandal, so typically the podium is either completely predictable (fair or accurate is another story) or completely up for grabs. This year is up for grabs. Additionally, there is the shocking possibility of a North American sweep of the podium with B/A, D/W, and V/M. [editor's note: ice dance teams often have their names combined into something catchy; think Brangelina.]

Belbin and Agosto (Belgosto) (USA): They’re the USA’s most decorated ice dancers of all time, and have revolutionized the sport in the US. They medaled in 2006 with the Silver Medal (breaking history), and will try to do better this time. I only see them winning Gold or missing the podium entirely for fourth. Tanith is the queen of perk and is basically a life sized Barbie. Plus, she has a great “O face” (O for Orgasm, a staple of Dance).
Don’t be distracted by her beauty, Ben is a fantastic dancer and the stronger of the two.

Must Watch B/A Program: Let's Get Loud

Khokhlova and Novitski (La Khok) (RUS): Welcome to acrobats on ice. Jana Khokhlova has stupendous flexibility and shows it off. Known for their strange choreography, they’ve just recently changed their Free Dance to Firebird and this costume.

Must Watch K/N Program: Night on Bald Mountain The final 20 seconds cannot be missed, the bicycle lift is legendary stuff.

Kerr and Kerr (GBR): John and Sinead Kerr are a brother and sister team, which squicks out some, but they refrain from romantic programs. They’ve always developed some of the greatest program concepts (ice skating aliens from outer space comes to mind) and Sinead is badass enough to do a reverse gender lift (the woman lifting the man).

Must Watch Kerrs Program: Scottish Highland Yes, he does wear a kilt!

Delobel and Schoenfelder (Delschoes) (FRA): Their first competition this season will be the Olympics, and much secrecy and excitement surrounds their programs. Isabelle gave birth about 3 months ago (the pregnancy being the reason they’ve been off the ice), so lets just say they haven’t been training their usual amount. They look to be in great form regardless, and are known for their superior skating skills and edges.

Must Watch Delschoes Program: Bonnie and Clyde

Honorable Mentions:

Davis and White (USA): If you can get beyond the fact that Charlie is a mass of blonde curls and Meryl’s eyes are seemingly impossibly too far apart, you’ll enjoy them. They have what many consider the best Original Dance of the season to a Bollywood Medley; a YouTube sensation over in India. They are the current US Champs, a podium threat, and a young team with a bright future ahead.

Virtue and Moir (CDN): Tessa and Scott will be on the Vancouver podium, I promise you that. Which position? I don’t know, but it could very well be Gold. They have great chemistry with one another and even to the untrained eye come across as very flowing and smooth across the ice. The down side? Many will ZZZzzzzz to their programs.

Dominina and Shabalin (RUS): I don’t know how many times I’ve uttered the phrase: “God I hate DomShabs”. [editor's note: she really does say this a LOT.] Certainly my least favorite team, and only because they are classically over scored as of late. Maxim’s knees are shot and they’ve missed the majority of this season due to his surgery. You will see a lot of national media coverage regarding this team with their controversial aboriginal Original Dance (Australia was not amused by their costumes, music, and choreography). Also note their use of suspension belts in the Free Dance, cheating perhaps? Don’t be mislead by my hating; they could possibly end up with Gold (in which case I will burn Utica to the ground).

And now for the grand finale!

Photographers LOVE to take action shots of figure skaters; it’s easy to imagine that mid jump is typically not when one looks their best. Even more amusing, is the media’s tendency to always choose those candid shots to accompany published articles. Skating fans call this “jumpface”.

CAUTION: THIS CAN BE GRUESOME

Stalkerazzi

2010-02-15T05:16:00.000-08:00

Good morning starshines! Quick update, but two of my bests from college are here (sublet hunting!!!!!! Brooklyn is about to get a WHOLE lot cooler) and we have been having a fun weekend. We were in New Jersey for V-Day, and got to see another friend (and more importantly, her cat) and hang out, which is always good. Plus there were "Twilight" Sweetarts involved, which is always hilarious. Incidentally, if you still attend WS&H, you BEST have gone to the Vagina Monologues, which are always amazing and which I miss tremendously.

Anyway, it is Fashion Week here in ol' New York, and while I was bedridden (pathetico) on Friday, my friends got to see some cool people. I was able to see Naomi Campbell (missed the phone throwing, ha ha) and Kelly Osbourne, but missed Sarah Ferguson, Posh Spice, Diane Von Fustenberg, and Alan Cumming. Granted my list of must-see celebs is fairly different than most (think: AS Byatt, anyone remotely connected to Colin Firth, COLIN FIRTH, Stephen Fry, anyone on QI, anyone in Mad Men, anyone in any PBS Masterpiece Theater production, etc.) but it's nice to know there are some "famous" folk about. And it was funny seeing all the craaazy fashions outside Bryant Park.

And, one of my friends got interviewed! (15 minutes of fame, try not to let it go to your head L). Check it out here. She's the one in the red coat looking mighty cute.

So we are off to lower Manhattan and maybe Staten Island, and then The Great Apartment Search 2010!

Case Files of the Uninsured

2010-02-12T05:34:00.001-08:00

It's been a surreal few days. A week ago I was in Atlanta, having lofty conversation about lofty things, and getting fed little goat cheese and roasted tomato sandwiches. 4 days later, I was in the Caribbean House Health Center in Brooklyn, soon to be en route to the ER. What happened, I hear you asking? Here is a break down. (And no, I'm not allergic to art history, Atlanta, or southern hospitality. Although people saying "hi" to me on the street did sort of freak me out. I'm such a Brooklynite.)

Anyway.
--I have been having some breathing problems since...Thanksgiving...but only when I'm in NYC. It feels like chest constrictions and my heart rate speeds up. The past few weeks this has been coupled with some sinus pressure in my head and throat. Tuesday night it suddenly got the worst it's ever been, while I was walking home from the museum, so I decided to finally do something about it.
--Wednesday morning, I went to the CHHC, which I picked because I don't have health insurance, it is about 3 subway stops away, and offers a sliding scale for treatment. Wednesday was also the start of "the blizzard" so there was no school, and a lot of places were closed (pharmacies, for one, I later found out.)
--so, the CHHC. It was clean, felt safe, and the people were friendly. Not much foot traffic, because of the snow, and only one doctor made it in, but I got seen fairly quickly. They deduced that I was not having a heart attack (and I had my first EKG! Wooo!) but decided I should go to the ER, as they didn't have x-rays. I said ok, but refused an ambulance, as the hospital was only 5 blocks away. I paid $40 the visit and went on my way through the snow.
--To my knowledge, I have never been to the ER before this week. So this is actually pretty exciting, I guess.
--And I can tell you all that the Kings County Hospital ER is surprisingly nice, too. This might be because there is a separate psychiatric ER, but I got into triage within 5 minutes, had to wait another 45 minutes (which I'm assuming is not terrible for an ER) and then got called back. Granted, the room I was placed into was effectively the storage closet for all the crutches and cast-supplies. But my physician's assistant was good, thorough, and my cousin came (giving up her snow day!! Sorry Melis, I owe you BIG) so I wasn't by myself. Which was really good. Because by that point in the day, I just wanted to go to Jamestown and have my parents take care of me.
--The verdict? My EKG (second of the day! my skin still hurts from having the electrodes ripped off) was normal, as was my thyroid test, chest x-rays, and my heart rate was normal-ish. They asked a lot of questions about my stress level, which I suppose could be influencing this, although it doesn't seem very likely to me. They deduced that it could be an untreated sinus infection, which is causing the head pressure, clogging my throat, and causing my heart to work a little faster. So I got hooked up with some antibiotics and a prescription for prescription level sudafed ("take it or sell it" said the p.a.)
--When we got outside it was still snowing, snowing, snowing. And people on the street were hilarious about it. Everyone was excited like they were little kids, it was great.
--I spent yesterday in bed (well, on the couch, really), surly because I was missing a Kiki Smith show, sore from getting poked with needles, and bored. Although I did watch 5 episodes of The Wire, so that was pretty excellent. And I could stare out the window at the snow removal, and feel like I was in Rear Window (minus a lobster dinner.)

Now, some analysis about the experience:
--I was the only white person at the CHHC, which includes the doctor and nurses.
--I was the only white person at the ER, not including the doctors and some of the nurses. Both my physician and physicians assistant were white. The physician also looked a LOT like my pediatrician, which as mom can attest to, means that he looked like a gnome. Or leprechaun.
--My cousin pointed this out, and the thought had occurred to me as well--the treatment and attentiveness I was shown could very well have been because I was white. And lucid and washed. For example, I said that I wasn't pregnant, and they took my word for it (granted I did get asked about 900 times). If I were 18 and African American? Might have been a different story.
--Being uninsured is a scary thing. I can testify to the fact that the health care system in this country is very, very broken, although I'm not sure how best to fix it. I do know that there is a serious race inequality about it, and a serious class inequality.
--I didn't see any gun shot wounds (thank goodness) as it was mostly older people, with a few younger, mostly male patients with broken bones. I think some of it was probably hypothermia too, from people who didn't have heat, or didn't have a home. The most heartbreaking scene was at the clinic. The only people ahead of me were a mother and her daughter, who was about 16 or 17. I think she was probably getting tested for pregnancy, as she went into the laboratory with a urine sample, and a few minutes later screamed. Not a happy, "I'm having a baby" scream, but one of anguish, one of "something terrible has happened, and I don't know what to do." A scream that made me want to put my arms around her and say that all would be well, although she is a child herself. And I couldn't promise her that all will be well.

It was quite the day. I am lucky to have had health insurance for so long, and to be (normally!) so healthy. It makes you think. It also makes grad school seem startlingly irrelevant.

Villa Villekulla

2010-02-08T14:34:00.000-08:00

People who know about awesome books will recognize this post title as the name of Pippi Longstocking's house. (Never read Pippi Longstocking, or any of the assorted books featuring her? Do so immediately. Or better yet, read them to an 8 year old. I promise my non-existent money that they will like it.) Anywho, the reason I called this post Villa Villekulla is 1) because I thought my grandmother would like it, since she's the one that read Pippi Longstocking to me (hi Mormor!), 2) because Pippi's house had personality, in that the windows sometimes looked like eyes, and 3) because I saw the weirdest/saddest house today, window-eyes and all.

I have been out of town for a few days, and was walking to the grocery store this morning, and went by a row of rowhouses, of which there are many about these parts. There must have been a fire in one, because the windows on the first two floors were all boarded up. I truthfully would not have noticed this, probably, except that people were standing on the other side of the street, staring. So I stopped, and here is why they were staring: the back of the house must have been knocked off or demolished, and so on the top floor just the front brick facade of the house was left, and you could see the sky through the unboarded windows. It totally looked like some surrealist painting, or this amazing photo that my friend Karen took a few years ago in Geneva:
It looked like one of those fake houses you see in old Westerns, where it's a cardboard front that has been propped up. And that is what it invokes: ghost towns, decay, blight. All while the sky shimmers through the gaping windows and light bounces off the charred bricks.

I've been thinking about houses/apartments quite a bit lately, and one of my favorite procrastination games is to think about what photos I've taken that I want to blow up and frame when I have a place of my own. I tried to find out more about this fire, but couldn't (even the internetz failed me). And then I started to think: these houses are all connected, so were the other residences ok? How many people lived in it? How long had they lived there? What did they lose? Are they all unscathed? Why did the fire start? Or really, was it even a fire? Was it just demolished in a non-malevalent way? And chances are good I will never know, since the records have already faded away, if they ever existed. Which is odd, since it's only 3 blocks from my apartment. Sometimes I forget how many people are in such a small radius...and how many of those people I will never meet, or even see.

To add to the uncertainty, I just tried to find out the origin of the phrase "the eyes are the windows to the soul," and I can't find that out, either. Guesses seem to range from the Bible to Immanuel Kant, to Cicero, to Arabic proverbs. If anyone knows, do tell me. :)

Opera or Soap Opera?

2010-02-02T15:20:00.000-08:00

As loyal readers of this blog know, I like opera, and my cousin and I went to see Carmen this week. I also happen to like a certain soap opera, which is the kind of thing that I tend not to publicize. However, I got to thinking about Carmen and General Hospital, and saw some comparisons in the realms of character archetypes, backstabbing (ha! literally and figuratively), and jealousy. Here's how the two stack up:
(Edward Gorey, The Blue Aspic)

Beginnings
C--Georges Bizet, premiered March 1875 in Paris, was critically panned. Revived in Vienna in October, to a much better reception (Bizet had died by that point, at the age of 36. Sad). Currently the fourth most performed opera in North America.
GH--premiered in 1963 on ABC, originally a half-hour length, and then shifted to an hour. According to wikipedia, Princess Diana used to watch the show, and sent 2 bottles of champagne for the producers in honor of Luke and Laura's wedding.

Settings and Sets
C--Seville, Spain, 1830s. This new production has updated to around the 1930's, I would guess. The sets for this production are amazing. A lot of rotating stone walls and red accents, which is fairly simple but looks great. The costumes are subtle, for the most part, although Carmen's dress in the final act is glorious--long, black, lacy, with a red line down the side. The curtain also is black with a jagged, red lighting bolt down the center, which is a nice touch too (Carmen being the lightening bolt that sets everything in motion, or on fire. Whichever cliche you prefer.)
GH--Port Charles, New York, present day. It is set mostly in the hospital (duh) and then a few people's homes, which tend to all look pretty similar, at least to me. The sets have obviously changed a bit in the past 30 years. (I told you the sets were cool! Courtesy of the NYTimes)

The Femme Fatale
C--Carmen, of course! Her femme fatale-ness is the whole point. She's too hot to be controlled, and too much of a temptress to live. Like the bull that the torreador entices and then kills, Carmen has to be sacrificed for society to continue unhampered. I hate this message, but it's a good plot for drama.
GH--most of the women, with their multiple marriages, bad mothering skills, and catty ways. Elizabeth is kind of taking the cake this year, by cheating on her fiance with his brother. There are many other examples. However, most of the bad guys, are just that--guys. Claudia Zacchara is the only woman I can think of that is (well, was) truly dastardly. Other than those random nurses that occasionally poison their patients.

Violence
C--Carmen and the bull are the only two fatalities, and Carmen and another cigarette girl do get in a fist and hairpulling fight. The soldiers are creepy and are certainly capable of violence, but it's not really shown.
GH--oh, lots. Considering one of the main characters is a mob boss, there are a lot of whackings (usually not by him, usually by his hired guns.) Add in the occasional car crash or poisoning (see above) and that is the gist of the show.

Racism
C--there is definite tension between the gypsies (Carmen is one) and the lighter-skinned Spanish. It is implied that Carmen is so wanton because of her gypsy ways.
GH--are there even any minorities on this show?? I guess there is one African-American nurse. That might be it though. So...racism, in a way?

Religion
C--surprisingly little. More concerned with tangible things; I don't think Don Jose was too worried about eternal damnation when he kills Carmen. Don Jose's original, pious girlfriend, Michaela, is set up as an obvious foil to Carmen.
GH--there is a priest (the same priest) who shows up for all weddings, funerals, christenings, etc. It is at these gatherings where violence (see above) often happens, as the town is then in a collective group. Sonny Corinthos (the mobster) spends a lot of time in the hospital chapel, as he is usually in the hospital waiting for news on someone he shot/some relative that got shot in his place/some victim of a hit gone wrong.

(ah, L'amour est un oiseau rebelle/que nul ne peut apprivoiser. Sonny knows it.)

Worthy of Accolades
C--as mentioned, the setting is amazing. The Carmen and Don Jose we saw both had colds, but honestly, I couldn't really tell. It's a weird opera in that there are only a few main characters, but with a lot of crowd scenes, and I thought the crowd scenes were exceptionally good...how you get that many adults and children to work together like that is beyond me.
GH--is it realistic? At all? Well, no. But give it an A+ for gumption.

Any opera/soap opera crossovers?
C--on the dramatic front, the original singers who were supposed to be Don Jose and Carmen had to be rearranged because they were married in real life and were getting a divorce. So the Met kept Don Jose and brought in 2 other Carmen's for the first few performances. And the NEW Carmen got amazing reviews (we couldn't get tickets for her performances).
GH--Lulu Spencer and Dante Falconeri recently went to the opera on a date. I actually missed this episode, so I wasn't sure what opera they went to, but after typing "lulu dante opera" into google, I have learned that they saw Puccini's La Boheme. I am both impressed and disturbed that other people were wondering about their opera as well...

Yes, it is sort of hard to compare the two genres--one is centuries old, rife with history, grandeur, glamour, and gore, and the other is, well, sort of silly. But they are both tremendous fun.

Also, I believe the reason that I cannot remember German verbs or when Mannerism ends and Baroque begins is because my brain cells are too occupied trying to figure out which Quartermaines and Cassadines hate each other, and why.

For even MORE irreverence, check out the orange from Sesame Street singing La Habanera here. I'm pretty sure Frank Oz is the one singing.

The Dinner Party

2010-01-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice of representation.
--Abigail Adams, in a letter to her husband John

Most of you have probably seen this painting (or read a terrible book about it):

(Leonardo, The Last Supper, c. 1498, image from Wikipedia)
I'm starting with it because Christ, both with and without his disciples, is well represented in Western art history, and this is historically what studying Western art was about (Jesus, Leonardo, perspective, and so on). One of the major problems when revising this art history is how to combine such important works of art with inclusiveness about women and their contributions (or if you even should revise history. My answer would be "OF COURSE," but not everyone thinks so). One response by contemporary artists is to address the history*, change it around, and make something new.

Enter Judy Chicago, 400 volunteers, and The Dinner Party (1979), the monumental work (both in size and scope) which has been on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum since 2007. Chicago's work came at a time when art history was shifting to be more inclusive of women's contributions, as scholars, artists, and patrons. This change is odd for me to think about, because the art historians I know are all (for the most part) very conscious of gender and a discussion of it within art history. Like good ol' Abigail Adams, certain scholars have been waging a rebellion to bring about this change, and they are awesome (y'all know who you are). Chicago's goal in the 1970's was to create a dinner party unlike the Last Supper, as the seats would celebrate women, not men.

(all images from here on out from the Brooklyn Museum's website. Thank you!!!)
The piece is rife with symbolism--it's triangular shaped (a shape associated with women) and there are 13 place settings on each side (13 being the number of Christ + 12 disciples). Each of the 39 women is emblematic of a certain period in history, and their respective sisters' names are written on the tile floor beneath--999 names, all told. The work is comprised of painted place settings and embroidered table cloths--chinawork and weaving were historically dismissed as "women's craft," and Chicago wanted to reappropriate them, as the artforms that they are. The silverware and glasses are all identical, which symbolizes the solidarity and unity of women's experience, which is a nice sentiment, but not really true. Most of the plates have flower and vulvic themes (think Georgia O'keefe) and they get progressively more defined and 3-dimensional as time goes on and progress is made.

The usual suspects are represented: Queen Elizabeth, Amazons, Sojourner Truth, Mary Wollstonecraft. However, here are a few of my slightly less well-known favorites (and in no particular order):

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) received her medical degree from Geneva Medical College, and so has a great deal of significance for my alma mater (there is a statue of her there, which people do creepy things to. Anyway.) Here's something I learned, though: she graduated first in her class, and then the college barred women from applying. Blackwell did a lot of amazing things with the sanitation movement, and founded a Women's Medical College, as she learned from her educational trials how hard it was for women to be accepted in the medical community. And I love the butterfly motif of this setting, and the spiraling stethoscope wrapping around the "E" in her name.

Natalie Barney (1876-1972) is actually someone I had not heard of prior to viewing this work, but I was initially drawn in by the colors, and the star design on the plate. Turns out Barney hosted a salon in Paris for over 60 years, and was an openly gay writer of poetry and other works.

Sophia was (is?) the personification of wisdom (Sophia means "wisdom" in Greek). She stands in for Athena, Minerva, and is a key figure in Gnosticism, which was then subsumed by Christianity. I like this place setting because the colors are muted and look like desert sands and skies. Also, this is one of the first plates, so it is pretty flat.

I am one of about three people in the entire world who cares about Marcella (c. 325-410), but I truly do. She was a colleague of Saint Jerome, and she did a lot of his dirty work (translating the bible, building monasteries, backing him up in Jerusalem, giving him a TON of money, etc etc) and she didn't get any of the credit. We owe contemporary Christianity to her work. That might be overstating it slightly, but I don't really care. The bottom of her place setting (the brown bit) is made of coarse material and looks like a hairshirt, which represents her piety and sacrifice. Marcella is the first figure in the second line of 13 plates, and this when women's contributions to Christianity (and culture, really) begins to be systematically devalued.

Do I have any criticisms? Well, yes. The work includes a lot of women, but very much focuses on white women. A few non-heterosexual women are included, but not enough. There are no place settings (to my knowledge) that celebrate African and Asian women, although there are a few African-American examples present (and some might make an appearance on the Heritage floor, but I haven't read all of those names.) It is very essentialist, and a bit segregationist, but at the same time, I think we have to give Chicago credit. This was a big undertaking, at a time when these things weren't really done. I walk around the table about once a week, and it is invigorating, and inspiring...and sad, because of how many things are still broken and need to be fixed. But it makes you feel--something--and that is important.

If you are in the city, I urge you to check it out. There is a neat system where you call a number (even after you leave the museum) and you can find out about all the different women (for more on that, see here). The museum guides that are stationed there LOVE it, too--they have read all the booklets and really want to help show you around. You have to enter in a specific way--past the heritage tapestries (which I also love), through the room with the table, and then back to an area with biographical notes about all the women. I like that there is a set path--it becomes a ritual, as you pay respect to people that were too long neglected.

For more info and a totally cool interactive guide, check the museum's website here. For the curators summary, check here. And for more on the Sackler Center itself, check here (they have rotating exhibits that are always worth a look.)

*the museum makes a point of substituting "herstory" for "history," which I like but which also feels silly to type.

Snippiness, and the Antidotes for It

2010-01-27T16:12:00.001-08:00

I haven't written much lately for the sheer fact that my camera is being a bit dodgy, it is kind of cold, and I haven't been doing much. And, well, I've been feeling a little snippy. Here's why:
--unemployed, peppering independent bookstores with resumes, will probably have to resort to corporate succubus bookstore, *if* I can get hired there.
--going blind from looking at slides of papyri at the museum for 8 hours a day.
--starting of spring semester, and I miss school, my friends, Thursday wine/coffee/tv nights, and the general silliness that ensued. Yes, I was up until 3 am every Sunday night my final semester, and yes, I do sleep a lot more now, but everytime I pass the rowhouses in my neighborhood I think of S Main St, Geneva, and wish I was there instead.
--feeling in limbo, re. future, grad school, jobs, and feeling unable to help solve major problems in world, and in the city. I am spinning my wheels, and that gets old. Quick.
--impending grad school interview next weekend, must buy dress skirt, read a few faculty authored books, stop biting my nails, and relearn major amounts of art history and German verbs. Have so far done none of that.

However, there are plenty of antidotes to snippiness:
--today was sunny and although I was on a fruitless mission to buy a business skirt and find a job (see above) I had a nice amble through downtown Bk.
--I went to Greenpoint, which is in north Bk (on an indy bookstore quest.) It's a heavily Polish neighborhood, so it's a much different feel than here. It was a nice mini-adventure.
--I also got a bubble tea and sat for a bit and flipped through the NY Post, which features stories of people whose lives made me feel good about myself (the Kardashians!? Remind me WHY these people are famous.)
--PBS's new adaption of Emma is really good.
--We are currently watching White Collar, which is the best bad show on tv. And shortly the state of the union will be on, and we will probably watch it on mute and eat ice cream.
--Continuing the tv theme--the Winter Olympics will be on (comparatively) soon too. I love the Olympics!
--my friends and family are amazing at sending mail. AMAZING. It truly makes my week.
--I do still love the Brooklyn Museum, and especially love it when it's closed to the public and I can be in the galleries by myself. Not much better than drinking a cup of green tea in the half-light of early evening and looking at a row of Monets.
--I am attempting to cook more (I'm going to make bread soon! Zut alors!) and I made salsa this weekend which was waaay easier than I thought it would be.

So really, all is well. I do have some back posts (with pictures!) to get out into cyberspace, and will do some art reviews soon too. Truly. Just bear with me through my mini pity party.

These Boots are Made for Walking

2010-01-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

I owned a functional pedometer for a day and a half.

Well, it had a good run. I got it on Monday and broke it today (actually it fell off my pants and the battery fell out and went..somewhere). I don't really need one, I suppose, but it would have had an impressive step total today. I attempted to get a cheapie ticket to the opera, but erred in that it was Carmen (popular) and apparently a really, really good production. So I didn't budget enough time and when I got to Lincoln Center, still 3 hours early, there was a massive line, and there was no way I would get a ticket. As I had already taken the afternoon off, I decided to go to the Guggenheim but rather than pay another $2.25 for a subway, I decided to walk.

Here are the problems with this: Lincoln Center is around 62nd St, on the West side of Central Park. The Guggenheim Museum is on the East side of Central Park, at 89th St (note: my sister had to look up the address for me, as I knew it was north of the Metropolitan Museum, which is on 82nd St, but that was all the info I had. And I don't have an internet-phone.) It actually didn't take me as long as I thought it would, and it was a sunny and crisp day, so I had a very good walk through Central Park. There was some good people watching, too. And I really like the area right around 75th street where there are a series of ponds and streams. Anyway, when I got to the Guggenheim, it was closed, which I know, because I have tried three times to go there on Thursdays, and it is ALWAYS closed. I apparently just had no idea what today was...I also witnessed a woman trying to get into the museum, by banging on the door, even though there are huge signs that say it's not open. So that was pretty funny to me.

I walked back to the Met, wandered around the American wing for half an hour, and then walked BACK to the 86nd St subway stop, and home. If you're keeping track, that is about 30 blocks of walking. I'm currently slumped in the VERY comfy chair in the living room, rocking my pajamas. We're going to attempt the opera soon, but for now--I'm just resting my feet.

All Aboard

2010-01-17T08:27:00.001-08:00

I am on the train back to Brooklyn, and am writing this somewhere by Batavia, NY (and proofreading somewhere by Rome, although I'll be posting it when I get back, as there is no internetz on the train). I hear you all breathe a collective sigh of relief that this blog is back, Ha-Ha. I should be hitting there about 8 hours from now. And how will I keep myself occupied until then? Here are some notes from the road (or rather, track.)
1. Gosh, this stretch is bumpy. The computer is shaking. I am anticipating some sort of freezing on the tracks which will slow us down some (this usually happens.) Actually, we’re slowing down right now. Aaannd now we are stopping. Now we are going again! (vicarious thrills; I promise and I deliver.)
2. It is a good thing I have plenty of snacks with me. I’m a train snacker (which prevents me from biting my nails). This time I am lucky to have leftover pizza (with pesto and mushrooms, oh my!), pretzels, and all the candy from my Christmas stocking, which includes (but is not limited to) candy cigarettes (eating now), candy canes, and peppermint-chocolate stick things. Oh, the prevalence of mint is due to the fact that I get motion sick and that seems to help. Plus I’ve got a stash of Dramamine, just in case.
3. The train is REALLY not crowded. I think there are four people on my car. That’ll probably change the closer we get to the city.
4. I should probably use this time to update my resume, but I probably will not do that (note: by the time we got to Poughkeepsie I was so bored that I did, in fact, update my resume.)
5. Instead, I am going to watch Up, which my sister got me for Christmas—for anyone who hasn’t seen it, it is lovely. I cried within the first 10 minutes because I am a huge sap, but it is sweetly funny and deals with love and loss and adventure; and yes it is Pixar!
6. I will be glad to be back in Brooklyn. I missed it.
7. I am going to be sad not to be in Jamestown. I miss it.
8. I miss Geneva, too.
9. I really enjoy this train route, especially as I have a window seat. As barren as the landscape is this time of year, it is beautiful—I love the rivulets of frozen water and the starkness of the trees against the sky, which right now is a pale robins egg blue. I’ve counted five hawks so far, and a bunch (a brace?) of pheasant, wild turkeys, and deer. When we pass the Hudson it’s even better, although it will be dark by the time I get there. Now we’re passing a series of frozen ponds.
10. Two plugs for Western New York stuff: Forte, which is a very tasty restaurant and bar in Jamestown, makes White Russians with chocolate vodka. I didn’t actually get one, but I sampled my friend’s, and it was good stuff. (Aunt Sue, as a White Russian connoisseur, I thought you might like to take note of this.) Also, Wegmans has introduced a line of vegetarian soups. I have Butternut Squash packed, and will report back.
11. My cousin told me once to pick carefully what song you listen to when beginning a journey, as it is something you will remember. Traveling music, as it were. I have some stand-bys (America—Simon and Garfunkel, Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, Hey Jack Kerouac—10,000 Maniacs, Sweet Jane—Velvet Underground, New York, New York whenever I enter the city—corny!) but this time I went with Mausam and Escape from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack—it makes you want to drive fast and dance. What is your journeying music??

Notes from the Homefront

2010-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hello hello! I am still in Jamestown and as some of you have noticed, have not been blogging, partly because I have been having too much fun to be on the computer, and partly because nothing outrageous has really happened. So, updates: my favorite coffeeshop closed (rip Timothy's, and your beautiful kona mochas.) Wegmans is awesome, awesome, awesome, and its wireless internet is useful when turning in ones grad school apps. The library is being renovated, so I have been forced to read things in my room that I bought years ago, and have never read. One of my best friends got engaged (YAY M! YAY S!!). My cat has taken to sitting in my bathtub and drinking out of the faucet, and when you pet him, his back is all wet. He also, apparently, has a usual seat at the dining room table. We have feet of snow. This week I have been to see two movies in the THEATER (this is big for me): Avatar (beautiful, a lot of explosions, iffy plot, fun) and Sherlock Holmes (too much slow-motion punching, good good casting, excellently realized London, fun plot) and two movie classics: A Lion in Winter (Katherine Hepburn for queen of the Universe!) and Carousel (arguably the worst movie I have ever seen. And I like musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein get a big ol' FAIL on this one..plus there is a ton of unaddressed sexism, and it annoyed me.)

I did take a roadtrip to Framingham, MA for a friend's 21st birthday, which meant that I got to stop in Geneva, and then roadtrip with the author of this guest blog, and pick up another in Amsterdam, and then on we went to MA. We surprised our friend, very spectacularly, and got to spend a little time with her before she goes to Senegal next semester. This whole trip involved 5 buses for me, and roughly 3 days in the car, but as it was with (and to see) some of my favorite people, it was WELL worth it. The main excitement (and with me, there is usually some travel excitement) came on the return trip, which happened to be on New Years Eve. I caught the bus in Syracuse, to Buffalo, where I would have to get another bus down here. We stopped in Rochester, and were searched by border patrol. This happened again while I was sitting in the Buffalo bus station, too. I don't know if this was increased border security for New Years, or what, but the oddest part was that they ask you your citizenship, and if you say, "American," they don't even check your license. I was talking to my dad about this and we agreed that if anyone should be checked for hijacking a bus, it is more likely going to be me than the group of Japanese tourists, or the Pakistani couple with children (all of whom, incidentally, I watched get questioned, and have the passports extensively examined.) Whereas I am young, unpartnered, solo, and wielding knitting needles. And I am betting that if I had been non-white, and said my citizenship was American, they might have insisted on seeing proof. It makes you think, doesn't it?

Anyway, I got to spend two hours in the Buffalo bus station on New Years Eve, which was a hot mess, to say the least. And then when I got on the bus to Jamestown at 9:30, we had to stop...twice...because a guy threatened the bus driver. He was either drunk or mentally ill, and if he had done something again they were going to pull over and wait for the police. When we got into town he was sound asleep. I made it home with 10 minutes to spare before the New Year rolled in, so I wolfed a plate of food, had a glass of champaigne, and went to bed.

Happy, happy 2010 to all of you. Regularly scheduled programming resumes next week, when I return to Brooklyn. And thanks for reading. I'm still having fun.

Bah Humbug

2009-12-22T07:06:00.000-08:00

The head cashiers at the bookstore started wearing a variety of Christmas-y hats during the holidays, so we can find them more easily (they have to give out change, do returns, deal with yellers, etc.) Anyway, a few days ago one was wearing a Santa hat which had "bah humbug" written across it. My Dominican co-worker turned to me and said, "what is bah hoombug? I have no idea what that means."

Now, try explaining Ebenezer Scrooge, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, Tiny Tim, and Bob Crachitt to someone who has no reference for them at all. It's like when David Sedaris moved to France and a Morrocan woman in his language class didn't know what Easter was, and they were trying to explain crucifixtion, rabbits, and resurrection in a really limited vocabulary (I think the best line was, "and then he died, on two morsels of lumber"). I didn't have the vocabulary problem, but I did have a time problem, since we were checking out at the same time. So I am babbling about, "well, he was bad, and all he cared about was money and he was SO mean to poor Bob Crachitt and wouldn't give him any coal, and then the ghost of his employer shows up and then more ghosts show up and then he is changed..erm." Sounds pretty feeble, and she said as much. "It sounds like the Grinch, but not as good." He's the *original* grinch, I said. She just looked at me dubiously. Dickens probably rolled over in his grave.

But no bah humbugs from me! I am home, home, home, for the first time since June. And so far I have baked, slept (lots! in my own bed!), and decorated (well, put up ornaments and then watched my mom move them around). I will write..sometime..about the NYC Blizzard, which made my last day of work very interesting, and made getting to Metro North pretty crazy as well (and I have the bruises on my knees from hauling my suitcases over snowpiles to prove it!). Now I have to go frost some cookies.

Merry Christmas to all of you. And in the words of good ol' Dickens,
god(dess) bless us, every one!

Guest Blog, or Why it is Nice to have Talented Friends

2009-12-17T06:59:00.000-08:00

I was able to sucker one of my friends into writing a post for me, because 1. she is a very good writer, and enjoys it, 2. she and I are in similar situations, but in different spots, 3. she is going to be the next Sharon Creech, and 4. she has the best rom-com collection of anyone I know. Also, I didn't so much "sucker" her as "ask" her, and she said yes. Enjoy. I know I did.

--------

First of all, a big thanks to “Ahhna” for letting me guest blog. I am very honored. I did have a Live Journal in high school (which a friend is still trying to stalk out—I haven’t deleted it yet because I like to read it from time to time and lament over how ridiculously superficial I was), but have always been a fan of the world of blogging. Needless to say, I am loving this.

So, being a 22-year old female having just graduated from college last May, I have been thinking a lot about my future.

Turns out you can do that, when your current existence consists of retail, trashy TV and the occasional chip binge.

You see, the future to me was always this semi-tangible thing, looming somewhere out in the distance. In high school, and then in college—where I really started to become aware of these things—I would think about “the future” from time to time and then turn my thoughts to whatever trivial event was happening at the moment.

But the future is here. Now. I’m living it. And I can’t say that it has (so far at least) been what I expected.

The summer before my group of high school friends left for our respective colleges, we made a “life goals” list of sort. We predicted where each member of the group would be when we turned 30, and pledged not to remove the list from its home (with one of our most trustworthy friends) until then.

I can’t remember what the predictions for myself were exactly, but it definitely had something to do with marrying a rich Hobart boy and not having to work the rest of my life.

Which, you know. I could definitely handle.

As of now, however, that hasn’t happened. I’m not sure it will either, as my perceptions of all types of people have changed dramatically over the past five years.

Anyway. The high school friends I speak of are currently in all sorts of places. One is studying at Oxford, one won a $30,000 grant to travel the world and do research, one is working an AmeriCorps job near Seattle, and one is out in Los Angeles being brilliant….

And I am here. Living with my parents.

I try not to compare myself to others. I really do. I know it will only lead to a deep spiral of depression. But from time to time, when I’m dealing with a ridiculous customer, or seeing someone from my town that I really don’t want to be seeing, it happens.

Which is why, I’ve decided, that life would be so much better if there was a soundtrack to each of our lives. Awesome songs would play in the background during epic moments that we experience, like in the movies. Think about it. Wouldn’t that be the best?

Of course, I’d want to pick the songs myself. And the music gods would have to make sure that they were soft enough that you could hear whatever was actually happening to you.

So, as a way of entertaining myself (and you as well, hopefully), the following are my top ten song choices for possible future epic moments.

“We’re Dancing” by PYT. Right after I tell my evil boss off (in an extremely witty manner) and storm out of the store, with my fellow employees clapping and cheering.

“Inner Smile,” by Texas. I envision this song playing as I walk around the Thames in London. Part Bridget Jones/Bend it Like Beckham moment. Maybe I had just clinched something career-wise. Alternately, it could be playing during a moment of sports drama. (This is a slim chance, considering I no longer really play sports…at all.)

“All the Above” by Maino ft. T Pain. Because you have to have one rap-ish song in there somewhere.

“Alone” by Heart (although I really love the Glee version too). This would occur after a disappointing break up, where I realize the guy I thought I liked was a jerk, and then this other guy (!) swoops in and saves the day.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. It would be great if this song could happen something like that “Say a Little Prayer” scene from My Best Friend’s Wedding, with everybody singing and totally in the moment. This actually DID happen at my cousin’s wedding, but I’d like to do it again.

“Everything” by Lifehouse HAS to play at some point. Preferably as I walk down the aisle at my wedding.

“Someone Like You” by Van Morrison is my go-to wedding song, though. We might have to squeeze in both.

“Black Balloon” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Not sure when this song would play, as I am not a heroin addict. However, as it is my favorite song, if it means taking up drugs in order for it to feature in my life, so be it.

“Only Hope” by Switchfoot. I could see this song playing as I’m sitting in a park or at a restaurant and a bunch of people are walking by. A good thinking/mulling over/gathering strength before the climax of the movie song.

“I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. I don’t care when or where it plays, as long as it plays. True friends of mine will attest to that fact.

As I’m reading this over I’m realizing that the list sort of transitioned from my life to complete fictional romantic-comedy movie. I can’t help it. If life was a movie, we’d all have neat and tidy endings, our problems would only span about two hours, and we’d at least know that my romantic prospects would be a main plotline. It would be quite epic.

On the other hand, when the movie is over in two hours, so are the characters. It’s kind of exciting to think about all the time I (and we) have for our lives to unfold. Kind of exciting that we aren’t allowed to see the plot synopsis of our lives before we’ve lived it.

And with that being said, I’m feeling like optimism is the only way to go from here.

Now, I will go eat more chips.

----------

And here is my question to all of you--what songs would you have on your life soundtrack?

Assimilating, Sorta

2009-12-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

I am going home in eight days (as we used to say in college, "home is in the ten-day forecast," which is weather.com's farthest date, and we were always on there checking driving conditions.) I can't wait. I really do love it here, but it's been six months since I've been in Jamestown, and that is a long time. I had to "give notice" at the bookstore since they don't give time off for holidays, at all, but that is ok (and there are far more important things than work. Aw.). However, I will miss my co-workers tremendously.

I bemuse (and amuse) my co-workers, as a recent Brooklyn transplant (I mentioned in a previous post about how they kept asking me what nationality I was, and it's still a popular conversation starter.) I say things like, "it wasn't far, I walked for 2 miles" and they will say, "ooh sweetie, where are you from? We don't measure in miles here. We measure in blocks." And don't even get them started on sub/hero differences. Thank goodness I've avoided the WNY pitfall of saying "pop" for "soda." One of the policemen on duty told me, when asking (again) where I was from, "Buffalo? How do you people get AROUND? I was there once, and there was an IHOP across the street, and I was real hungover and that's all I wanted, but I would have had to walk across the highway, so I said fuhgeddaboudit. [note: this is exactly what he sounded like. Not resorting to ugly NY stereotypes here.] Went to the Irish bar next door instead. Buffalo has got some good bars." And another co-worker, "is Jamestown near Utica? I was in Utica for 3 weeks. Never again."

On the subject of bars, it was probably my first week at work, and we were talking about good drink specials, since drinks are so expensive here. Offhandedly, I said, "there is a place in my hometown that has 25 cent drafts." It got dead silent and everyone was staring at me. One of them said, "why would you ever LEAVE there? Maybe we should visit." I tried to explain that there is not much to do, otherwise ("no really, there aren't any buses. Or subways. Or Indian restaurants.") Another co-worker told me recently that she wants to move somewhere where she can drive. "It must be so cool to have a licence," she said wistfully. Is it? Maybe it is.

I was talking about holiday-stuff with one of my favorite co-workers, a totally sweet Pakistani girl. "You're so lucky your family doesn't live here," she said. "I live with three generations and brother-in-laws and random cousins and I just want to be someplace where people just know me." I told her that it's just as bad in smaller towns, too, if not worse. And being away from my fam does mean that when we do get together, it's more exciting than if I saw them all the time. Hence: eight days. The countdown starts now. Yay!

P.S. Happy Sankta Lucia Day to all you Scandinavian folk! (yes, I know we stole it from the Italians.) Apparently there is big doings in Manhattan, my Swede co-worker told me today. Maybe next year I will check that out!

A Night at the Opera, Round 2

2009-12-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie.
--Groucho Marx, A Night at the Opera, 1935

(Susanna and Cherobino. Thanks to NYTimes online for the image!)

Today is my Name Day, which doesn't really mean much. I'm assuming it goes back to Saint Days, although we celebrate it in a Scandinavian vein; meaning, if I were home, that I would be having a cupcake from Ecklof's Bakery (actually, I would be having half a vanilla cupcake and half a chocolate cupcake, because that is the protocol on one's Name Day.) Today is also the day that my student loans become due. In honor of that, I would like to quote David Sedaris, who so often articulates what I am thinking: "I came home this afternoon and checked the machine for a message from UPS but the only message I got was from the company that holds my student loan, Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison. It scares me." (from the Santaland Diaries.)

So in honor of my impending debt, and just because, last night I went to see my favorite opera, The Marriage of Figaro (or Le Nozze de Figaro.) And it was wonderful. I waited in line for rush tickets again, although the basement of Lincoln Center is not heated, as it turns out. I did make an older-lady friend in line, although she was NOT as much a Mozart fan as I was. She has been coming to the opera with her husband since 1968, and so has seen her fair share of Figaro's...I still don't think I would ever be sick of him. She suggested some modern operas to me, which is good, because I definitely tend to the classical and need to branch out. We ended up getting seats next to each other (Row K!! For $20!! Rush tickets rock) and afterwards she patted me on the arm and said, "here's to many more years of your opera viewing, dear."

I actually think that Figaro works better in a smaller theater, since Mozart's music is so crazy good that some of the intricacies get lost or swallowed up in a theater as huge as the Met ("it sounds jewel-like in Prague," said my old-lady buddy. Good golly!). But, no matter. The sets were nifty, the singing was glorious, Susanna (Danielle de Niese) was pretty and her comic timing was great, Figaro (Luca Pisaroni) was charming and smart, and the Count and Countess (Ludovic Tezier and Annette Dasch) were smarmy and wounded, respectively, although I think the stand-out was Cherobino (Isabel Leonard) who played the dippy lovesick nobleman to perfection. There wasn't as much chemistry as there could have been between Figaro and Susanna, but I was too high on Mozart-joy to care. The conducting was also speedier than I'd heard before (the overture especially) but I actually kind of liked that--it made it especially energetic. The story, originally by Beaumarchais, tells of infidelity, intrigue, baby-snatching, cross-dressing, more intrigue, scheming servants, double weddings, and apologies. In short, it's a big ol' farce. Plus, it is funny...I think when people think "opera" they don't often think about how funny it can be. True, the misogyny in this one is pretty heavy, but I think Mozart and DaPonte were making fun of the men for being self-righteous, and anyway, Susanna slaps Figaro, like, 5 times, so it all evens out in the end. (Although, I'd like the Count to have more of a comeuppance.)

The opera ends with apologies from the Count to his long-suffering wife, who forgives him. And Figaro and Susanna forgive each other. And all is well. I would nominate Act IV's finale as the greatest music ever written; it is so manic but controlled, and fast and contemplative and lovely. Ahh. For a pretty good clip from the Met's '99 production, you can watch here. The sets appear to be the same now, or very similar. And the text of the finale states that, "This day of torment,
Of caprices and folly, Love can end, Only in contentment and joy." Forgiveness and love reigns, at least for a little while. Not much better than that, although it sounds less banal in Italian.

Click here for a review and some audio clips from this season (Figaro's aria where he's talking to Cherubino about getting ready for the military, and the Countess's hauntingly sad aria from Act III that always makes me kind of tear up.) For a review plus a little plot exposition, click here. For my past blogging about the Met, click here. For one of my favorite arias (Bartolo's La Vendetta), click here. (Although this guy has a super cheesy moustache.) For one of my favorite duets (Susanna and Countess strategize and letter-write), click here.

That Mozart. He's one of the few people I would be willing to risk pneumonia in the basement of Lincoln Center for.

Hello, I Love You...

2009-12-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

...won't you tell me your name?

I have this game I play on the subway, where I look out the window when we pull into stations and make up stories about the people on the platform. Last week I was somewhere in Manhattan on the 4 train, which is express. Traffic was backed up, so we were going slowly past one of the stops that the local makes. We were moving, but I could still see the few people waiting for the 6, although they were a bit blurry. And sitting on the bench was a well-dressed, middle aged woman with short dark hair and a snappy green blazer, who was sobbing. I thought at first she was just blowing her nose, but I started to see her shoulders shake convulsively, and then we turned a corner and I couldn't see her anymore. Not a good game to think about why someone would be that upset on a subway platform. I thought about her all day.

One thing about the comfortable anonymity of a city is that you can do whatever you want, as long as it's not overly illegal or violent, and there is a good chance that people will remember you for a little bit and then forget whatever you did. And I've cried (or laughed loudly, or whatever) in public, of course, but there is a feeling in a small town that people are looking at you and wondering why. Not so here, except, obviously, I notice these things, or else I would not be writing about them now. A while ago I was walking home from work and a woman, probably my age, was having a mega-fight with her significant other. She was screaming, sobbing, and arm-waving, even though he was on the phone. All the proper biddies in Park Slope were tongue-clicking at this display. I felt bad for her, but at the same time, kind of jealous. I have never had a fight with anyone on the street, and it must take some degree of self-confidence to do so and not care what people thing. Or some degree of self-absorption, I guess.

I think cell phone usage prompts these displays too. I've had people at my register who are fighting on the phone, or yelling at their kids on the phone, while I'm trying to check them out. It's super annoying for me, but they don't really care. Is this a phenomena of the world nowadays? Or is it just here that people are so open about airing their dirty laundry? Is this openness a bad thing? In any case, I can't help but listen in.

Anyway, the title of this post (courtesy of The Doors. Watch the song here.) doesn't really refer to love in a particular sense. But isn't it a weird feeling when you see someone on the train/street/bus/store, and you know you will never see that person again? And yet, you know something about them, something private, about their grief or love, which makes you feel like you sorta know them. And it's hard to forget.

The Melancholy Dane

2009-12-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
--Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

Yesterday, my friend J visited, which was very fun. (she is an '08 WSC grad who I haven't seen in over a year). And we went to see Hamlet! I have never been an "oh-my-gosh-Shakespeare" person, but Hamlet is my favorite. The lovely (and talented, I guess) Jude Law was playing the lead. We thought it would be unlikely that we would get the cheap-seat, day of performance student tickets, but we decided to try. When we got to the Broadhurst theater, there was a tiny line, and we got the tickets with no problem (seriously, I can't recommend enough the day of performance tickets--the seats are good, and the price is SO much better!!)

We had a few hours to kill before the matinee, so we walked by Rockefeller Center where they were setting up for the Tree Lighting, window shopped along 5th Ave, and got sandwiches from a deli to eat in Central Park. I dragged her to the Frick, which had a special exhibit on Watteau drawings. After the show we got some ice cream (healthful, yes) and appetizers and drinks, saw a mass exodus of people en route to the tree lighting, and witnessed an anti-war protest in Times Square. There weren't that many people, but megaphones tend to make me skittish (my friends and I were accidentally in an anti-police brutality riot in Montreal while on spring break, long story). Nothing too crazy happened though.

As for the play--well, it was awesome. Jude Law was good, if different. His Hamlet was mad, not in a crazy sense, but in an ANGRY sense. And with good reason--his father dies and his mother marries his father's brother not 2 months later. What I didn't realize from just reading the play is that it is really funny at certain points, especially in the scenes between Hamlet and Polonius. I thought this Polonius, Ron Cook, was very good. Ophelia was beautiful but ho-hum...I wasn't overly sad when she died. (Hamlet, however, died very beautifully.) The sets were cool too, very minimalist, dark, and gulag-like, as were the costumes, and there were occasional pops of color, in a red carpet, glowing purple thrones, or gleaming white of The Players costumes. There was also fake snow during the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, which looked neat.

The audience, which was a lot of high school kids, was generally well behaved, with only a few cell phone buzzes. The guy behind me kept falling asleep, but he left after intermission. I admit to feeling a bit sleepy myself, as the play is 3 1/2 hours long, and towards the end the soliloquies pile up. What was wonderful is that it was enunciated well and I could hear everything; even if it didn't register what the words meant, exactly, they just sounded lush and elegant. And sure, Hamlet is misogynistic and kind of a pill (I wrote some paper in high school on Misogyny in Hamlet, but I don't remember what I said, except I was angry at how he treated Gertrude), but he is also pitiable and sad. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Here we are looking cute, if damp, in the rain:

But we don't look quite as cute as this guy (even if he is anguished):

Here's a story on it all from the NY Times, and an actual review from that same august (read: pretentious?) newspaper here. And here's "What a Piece of Work is Man," from Hair, a gorgeous string of words from ol' Shakespeare himself.

What's Up?

2009-11-30T17:33:00.001-08:00

I used to say "what's up?" to my flatmates, and they used to look at me, bemused, and say, "the sky. Clouds. Ceilings." Those Brits. And "what's up?" is: not much. I had a lovely Thanksgiving, ate an absurd amount of pumpkin-related goodness, slept in a real bed, lost every single card or boardgame that I played, and brought back 3 cans of Wegmans jellied cranberry sauce (I love real cranberry sauce, like the VERY good kind my Aunt Sue made, with oranges, but Wegmans is just so fab). And I got to see my fam! (HI!!)

Brooklyn is as ever. The bookstore has started playing Christmas tunes, which means I'm about to enter into some unmitigated Retail Hell, but no matter. My roomate has put up her fake tree in the living room. I am baking peanut butter cookies, listening to some cheesy '80's pop, and actively avoiding grad apps (AGAIN.) Today I scanned period rooms at the museum and went to the grocery store. It drizzled, but not in a bad way. Some guy tried to spit on my foot as I was getting ready to cross the street this morning. I dodged it though, lest you all were concerned.

This time two years ago I was in Scotland getting a tattoo. Last year I was...what? I have no idea. Probably writing something and being a nutter about finals (now there is something I don't much miss.) As for what is "up" next for the blog--possibly a guest post! And a backstash of arty reviews, pictures of graffiti, and the like. Stay tuned.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

I thought this wall-advertisement was appropriate for all you turkey eaters out there...I passed it on my walk to Target this morning, and fortunately had my camera with me. (and if you think that I don't crack up every time I see this sign, then you don't know me very well.) The craziest part about the building is that it stands alone in the midst of browning grass and barbed wire, as you can see:

I am closing at the bookstore tonight (blerg) and taking an early train up to my aunt's tomorrow for 3 WHOLE DAYS OFF. And I'm really, really excited to see my family, eat myself into a stupor, and play a myriad of board games. Perhaps I will even post some gratuitously cute pix of my little cousins on here. I am hoping the "fresh country air" will knock out whatever NYC pathogens have taken my lungs hostage (I have never had asthma or allergies, but in the last two days breathing has become a bit of a bugger, to be honest, and I'm not sure why.)

I hope you all have a wonderful family and friend filled day tomorrow. Drive safe. And right now I am thankful for huge William Smith sweatshirts, bagels with scallion cream cheese, the fact that I *don't* have to work on Black Friday, and all of you.

The Usual

2009-11-23T21:32:00.000-08:00

I love brunch. Who doesn't? (well, I guess people who don't like eggs. But those people are probably sad all the time.) And I am a BIG fan of dive-y diners, chipped cups and all, although I draw the line at lipstick-on-a-mug. We went in search of brunch on Sunday, and walked by The Usual on Vanderbilt Ave and it looked cool, so in we went. And cool it was! It's a cash-only place and one of the walls is brick; the omelets were on the table in 5 minutes, and came with toast and heaps of home fries, and you could tell it really was "the usual" hangout spot for a lot of the patrons, which is always a good sign. Not to mention the music selection was solid--"Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" to "Ob la di, ob la da," to "Light my Fire." It also had a nice Water St Cafe vibe to it.

In other news, it is 12:37 and I can't seem to fall asleep.

The Garden

2009-11-21T07:20:00.000-08:00

Hell, you ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land.
--Delmar, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

Faith Ringgold, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, 1991, Private Collection*

I don't often recommend movies to people, because my tastes tend to run from the sappy (Colin Firth + anyone else), the cheesy (STAR WARS! STAR WARS!, but only 4-6), or quirky with a good soundtrack (The Royal Tenenbaums). However, we watched The Garden last night, which is a 2008 documentary directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy. And it is very good.

It tells the saga of the South Central Farm, which was a 14-acre garden/community in the middle of Los Angeles. The land became available after the race-related riots in 1992, and the garden was around for 10 years before a bunch of forces conspired to shut it down. The man who originally owned the land was given $5 million for it, because the city seized it through eminent domain laws. In 2003 he decides he wants it back, and the city sells it back to him--through really, REALLY questionable circumstances. There are alleged backroom deals with the City Council, and another activist group that wants to turn the land into soccer fields (well, they say soccer fields but they really mean a few soccer fields and then 10 acres of warehouses.) It complicates matters that the South Central Farmers are mostly poor Latinos, and the guy who originally owned the land is a horrid xenophobe who says in his deposition that they should be "thanking" him for being gracious enough to let them use the land. He continually calls them un-American.

And there are court orders and secrecy and shady judges and the South Central Farmers raise the $16 million that the owner wants for it (they get a bit of help at the end from Joan Baez and some others.) And he won't sell it to them (to reiterate: he is a xenophobe.) I'll let you watch it and find out what happens, but I will say that I was pretty angry and frustrated, so you can guess what happens...

Community gardens are important. The South Central Farmers were able to grow food for themselves, and it gave them something to work for, for them and their families. And it really was beautiful--tall plantain trees, multi-colored corn, fat radishes, bushels of greens. There is a community garden, of a much smaller scale, near my usual subway stop. And there are co-ops in some of the fancier neighborhoods, but a lot of places in New York have those gardens too. (I mentioned one in an older post on gardens, here.) So--if you have a garden enjoy it! At least when it's warm again.

*Faith Ringgold is totally, totally rad, and it is my not-so-secret life goal to meet her. So Professor Ringgold, if you're reading this... ;)

A Day in the Digital Lab

2009-11-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

So in my other life, when I'm not taking germy money from germy people, I work for a stipend in the Brooklyn Museum's Digital Collections and Services Lab. (note: I have a cold, which I am surly about and blame retail for. However, I like it that my voice is an octave lower than normal, because now when I sing Billie Holiday standards in the shower, it sounds more authentic. In case you were curious.)

I am at the Lab currently, scanning, so I thought I would give you an account. I am being funded as part of a grant given by the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) to the BM. This grant is used for scanning and uploading on the website some areas of the collection (over 1,000,000 all told) which are underrepresented. Prior to this, most of the images on the website were "greatest hits" of the collection, which left out a lot of works. So, the curators went in and picked out the objects they liked and found interesting, and gave us a list, and we've been scanning them. My realm is the black and white photonegatives. (Photonegatives are film, like you would have in a normal, non-digital camera, except they are a larger size. And since they are negatives, what appears black on them would be white in the actual work, and what is white would be black.)

Anyway, here is what I do:
1. Consult the master list of the IMLS objects, and start pulling slides out of the boxes. They are arranged by their accession number, which is the year in which they entered the museum. For example, 12.53.2 would be something acquired in 1912. It was the 53rd group of objects acquired that year, and the 2nd object in that group. There are 89 boxes of black and white photonegatives.
2. Once I have a pile, I power on the scanner, which is a flat thing (technical terminology, ha) which opens and has two large glass plates. I clean the plates with a chamois cloth (which traps more dust than a regular cloth, allegedly.)
3. I put on one white glove, like Michael Jackson c. 1985. With the white-gloved hand (finger-prints = VERY BAD), you grip a negative in the corner by your thumb and forefinger. Drag the cloth across both sides of it to remove dust. Hold it up to the light--the dust will show up as white specks, and then you can keep cleaning accordingly.
4. Once the negative looks pretty clean, I hold it under the light to figure out which side has emulsion on it. You can tell which side is emulsion-ed because it will not transmit light. The non-emulsion side will reflect light back at you. In these scanners the emulsion side goes UP, but it's different for other machines (were I to put the emulsion side DOWN, the image would be scanned reversed, and I would have to redo it.
5. The scanner I use fits 8 images comfortably, so once 8 are loaded then it scans and I have a few minutes to get tea or blog (yo!) or email or wander around.
6. Once the batch is done scanning, you save them in very specific folders (there is a whole naming process for each image, involving "bw" and "IMLS" and "view 1" and "a-c" and a bunch of stuff that normal people don't need to know about.) Then you open them in photoshop and crop, straighten, color correct (which for the black-and-whites involves grayscale, curves and layers and little eye-dropper looking tools.) Finally you blow them up to actual pixel size and delete any imperfections/dust/scratches. My problem is I tend to over-edit and delete things which are flaws of the work, and not just flaws of the negative (like if a page from a manuscript is torn, I have a tendency to edit out the rip, when it is really a part of the work. If that makes any sense.)
7. After all that, you look up the image in a bunch of databases, make sure the accession number is right, update the info in Microsoft Access and email a bunch of people to let them know that it is ready to be uploaded to the website.
8. Repeat. Indefinitely.

Now, if you think this sounds boring and monotonous, you are darn right it is. However, sometimes you get either totally awesome or totally ridiculous images, which breaks up the boring. Like today, on the awesome scale, I got a Rothko watercolor. I've had a few Hoppers (mmm) and some Mary Cassatt's which were cool. The JJ Audobon nature prints are fun, because they are very stylized, and you can play with the contrasts--plus the foxes are CUTE! Some of the Asian collection's hanging scrolls are great, and there is one really fun one which is a series of insects, who all have little humanoid faces...some are grumpy, some are smiling, which cracked me up. On the ridiculous scale are the period rooms, which were photographed in the '70's (the BM has a whole floor of period rooms, mostly from the 19th century). The food that is displayed on the tables is usually pretty funny--today we got one that was turkey, pot roast (we think), shrimp, peas, mushrooms, and what looks like goblets full of jell-o.

In the next few weeks I get to start scanning papyrus slides from the Egyptian collection, so that could be neat. (What is neat is that the actual photographs are over a century old and on glass plates instead of film. So at least that'll be different.) And then next time you go on a museum's website, think about how many people it actually takes to get those images to you!

Procrastination

2009-11-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

Today, I: made tea, emailed some people, went for a long walk to get tea, realized the walk was longer than I thought and took the bus home, made a veggieburger, ate a veggieburger, watched 2 episodes of "The West Wing," cleaned the bathtub, tried unsuccessfully to take a nap, and read a book. Basically, everything other than write my grad school essays. Clearly, procrastination has not left me post-graduation. And it doesn't help that I feel like a total twit whenever I have to write about myself, and I would rather do almost anything else, and so I just have 2 sentences to show for my entire day.

So, here we are, and I know what I need to do tonight, and am kind of dreading it. But I thought I would put up a picture that totally cracks me up--I took this a few weeks ago on the ferry from Manhattan to Governor's Island (I just realized I still need to write about that, whoops!) The old ship was here for the Henry Hudson 400th anniversary celebration, and it looks like it's about to do battle with the Staten Island ferry. It looks like I photoshopped it.

Buddy, can you spare a...piano?

2009-11-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

Some of you already know this story, or parts of it.

When I first moved here, I started looking around for a place to practice the piano, and decided that churches would probably be the easiest places to start: they usually have pianos, and many days of the week they are unused. My first stop was the very large Catholic church a few blocks up the street. I spoke to an aide, who gave me the priest's phone number. After calling him, our conversation went something like this:

Me: I just moved to the neighborhood, blah blah blah, I'm looking for somewhere to unobtrusively practice, on some day that would be most convenient for you.
Priest: I see. So you are in my parish.
Me: Well, not exactly.
Priest: What parish are you in?
Me: I'm not in a parish.
Priest: So you are unchurched [note: he actually said "unchurched," which to me sounds like something from the Spanish Inquisition.]
Me: Erm, well, I'm not Catholic.
Priest: Well, why don't you stop by mass sometime, and we can have a discussion.
Me: Would it be possible to meet at some time other than mass?
Priest: No. I will see you at mass. We can discuss this further then. Our church is often occupied, so meeting at another time would be impossible. Goodbye and god bless.
Me: [stares at phone]

Now I take his point that it is his church, and I am "unchurched," so perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to use his piano, or apparently even enter the building. (This begs the question of what I would do at mass. I can't take communion, nor do I say the rosary, and isn't that kinda the whole point?) He was, however, extremely condescending. I fumed about this, and told my friends, who thought it was hilarious. It's pretty funny in retrospect. It's also funnier if you know that I spent my senior year in college writing a lengthy paper about nuns and art patronage, and I actually know more about saints than normal people do (in a fit of scholarly activity, I signed up for Saint of the Day emails). I also spent a weekend in a Benedictine convent in Erie PA. I didn't mention this to the Priest, because, frankly, my nuns are too good for him.

The next opportunity presented itself a while later when I was walking to the library and passed a Presbyterian church, and figured, why not? So I met the secretary (who has blue hair, and who offered me the cornbread and greens she was eating for lunch). She introduced me to the music teacher who uses the church, and he said I could come any night that he has the church unlocked, and that he'd be happy to teach me some jazz sometime if I'd be interested.

So I've been going there once a week, or every few weeks, whenever my schedule cooperates. I volunteered to help out when they have a concert with the little kids who are taking lessons, which probably won't be until the spring. The piano seat is too high, and the bass keys stick, and chucks of paint from the ceiling occasionally fall off, but who cares? I can play and no one bothers me. It's a cool old building: cool as in there is no heat, and cool in that the rafters are hung with rows and rows of West Indian and African flags. It has a musty church-smell of candles and damp and old choirbooks. And when I leave, Mr. B asks me how I am, and we talk a little bit about Chopin, and I ask about his students, and then I go home.

And that, my friends, is what music should be all about.

Here Comes the Sun!

2009-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.
--Love Actually aka the Best Movie of All Time (which seemed appropriate because I've spent a lot of time in Penn Station the past few days)

I had a wonderful weekend, as two of my friends visited.* And what did we do? We got treated to brunch by my magnanimous cousin, we hung out in Brooklyn Heights and saw the skyline, we walked from Brighton Beach to Coney Island while the sun got larger and oranger and began to set, we got spicy hot chocolate at Joyce's Bakeshop, they got to see my "hotspots": Prospect Park, the Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway, and the apartment, of course. One went back sooner than the other, so two of us went to the wine bar up the street last night and heard some live jazz music and then went to the raver at the Museum's First Saturday party, and then got bagels this morning. There was a lot of people watching to be had.

I miss them already already already and really need to get dressed for work (who goes into work at 5 pm. C'mon now.) But it was a lovely time. I mean this: visitors ALWAYS welcome!

And the title of this post refers to the fact that it is GLORIOUS out. Enjoy it while it lasts!

*HI GUYS!! LR if you send me that pic, I will put it up here...it's not TWIP, but it'll do. ;)

The Yankeeees Win!

2009-11-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

I admit to being fairly ambivalent about baseball in general, although I prefer the Yankees over most teams. So tonight was pretty exciting, mainly because I live in The City and people are serious about their sports teams. I was at work and we put the game on in the cash office, and then intercomed it behind the registers. I felt like I was in the 1930's as we all huddled around the phone and shushed each other and tried to hear the radio through the static. Everyone working was a waste of space, and everyone in the store really just wanted to hear what was happening. It's exciting because everyone was into it. The Bronx, though, is crazy right now. As I was leaving work the security guard said, in his heavy Jamaican accent, "you walk safe, lady, and no getting boozey and tipping over cars." Sound advice. Hope other people follow it as well.

In other news, I had the worst customer I have ever had tonight, so the Yankees winning was a wonderful mood lifter. She was French, and didn't know how to work Traveler's Checks, and called me a pest, and incompetent, and as she counted out change she dropped a Euro in my hand and said, "this is a Euro. You've probably never seen one before." (you'll be happy to know that I responded with, "oh, the Vitruvian man? That's my favorite Euro design" and smiled in a way that would appear polite if you didn't know me.) It was dreadful. But then I had a guy later on who completed his transaction speaking in a fake-Cockney and then a Pirate accent. It made me laugh. The Yankees fans that are on TV right now are making me laugh too! Nothing like a good chorus of "We are the Champions" to put you in a good mood.

Bedtime. Goodnight, friends.

EDITED: Thursday 11/5. The NY morning news show (I think on CBS) made a bet with their Philly affiliate that whichever team won the World Series got to choose a song for the loser to sing on air. Which happened at 5:30 this morning, and I was half-asleep listening to it, and it was hilarious. Of course they had to sing "New York, New York" but it was completely tuneless and everyone was just laughing the whole time. If you want to watch it (and you really should), go here, type in "morning" in the search box, and pick the first one-- Hu-phili-ation: CBS 3 in Philly loses bet to CBS 2.

All the News that Fits

2009-11-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

Not much happening in the ol' Bk in the past few days (again, sorry about the pedestrian nature of this blog. I'll try to spice it up soon.) It was a really nice fall day, and I spent most of it in the library trying to plan grad school and life (clearly grad school requires more research and planning than moving to NYC, for that I just watched "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and hitched a ride out.) So I did that, and made lentil-tomato soup (Aunt Sue, I finally found a use for those hot peppers!) which was pretty tasty. It was less dramatic than the last time I tried to make soup, which some of you know about...a few weeks ago I was blendering squash soup and filled the blender too full and the blender exploded and spewed boiling squash chunks on my hair and arm and shirt, and the walls, floor, microwave, cookbook. It was like that scene in Bridget Jones' Diary when she's trying to cook, and then Colin Firth shows up (no Colin Firth this time though.) But the squash soup actually ended up being pretty tasty, too.

I was at the bookstore on Hallowe'en and helped hand out candy, and some of the kids were super cute. I saw too many Michael Jackson costumes, though. And a little girl came up and said to us at the Info Desk, "what kind of bugs live in cemetaries? Zombees!" so we gave her about 10 pieces of candy.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and I am pretty ambivalent about it because I am not registered here (and I actually forgot to request an absentee ballot from home. Bad citizenship award). But here are some more exciting news stories: 1. "Pink it's time to move: Technicolor house is for sale in Park Slope." On my walk to work, I pass through some stately brownstone blocks in Prospect Park West and Park Slope (picture where the Cosby's lived on "The Cosby Show".) But the other day, I went down Garfield Street and my retinas were temporarily damaged by a pepto-bismol pink house, still connected to all the other ones. It gives the cerulean and purple one (with a gold chimney, no less) on my parents street a run for the money. It's like in Chautauqua when they have laws about what colors you can paint your house, and what colors are acceptable for trim. (Bollocks, I say. But no one asked me.) Anyway, I think the neighbors are probably not happy with this, but it's certainly interesting. And 2. "Flatbush jobs listing mystery solved!" There are a lot of job postings on telephone poles on Flatbush Ave, which is a very long street that cuts through Brooklyn. Turns out they are placed there not by city employees, but by an older Carribean woman who prints them out at the library and tapes them up because she sees "so many young men wasting their lives," and this is how she wants to help. I just think it's nice.

P.S. M and P--Melis is sitting on the living room floor wearing her "Got Melk?" shirt and reading out loud from the Black's Law Dictionary that you two got her. I forewarned her that this might be going on the blog, and she said you'd be glad to know she was putting the Dictionary to good use. Now she is reading a Croatian children's book.
P.P.S. Now the Yankee game is starting--world series win tonight?!

Perks of Being an Art History Major

2009-10-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

Art History? What are you going to do with THAT?!
--my dental hygienist (and about 50 other people in my hometown)

I always think you people are nice to have at parties. You bring a classy air to gatherings. I think art historians are good conversationalists.
--my OB-GYN

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
--Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

If I were planning on making pots of money (which I'm not), I would be in the wrong line of work. I gravitate towards jobs in institutions which tend to have small or variable budgets (libraries, museums, liberal arts), which is not conducive to saving up, or buying things. However, a friend in high school (who went to college for violin performance) used to say that we wouldn't be rich, but we would sure be interesting, and I like to pretend that is true. And although my paycheck is tiny, the perks are sometimes big. Here are some things to tell people when they quiz you about what you are doing with your life:

1. Free Stuff. With my museum ID badge I can get into any NYC museum fo' free, which is actually pretty nice. Especially for MOMA, where the ticket takers tend to be snippy, and it costs $20. Granted, I should be willing to give money to these institutions, but it makes me feel less guilty if I just stop in for an hour or so. And I can sneak in guests. I also get half-price tickets at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and discounts in all museum stores.

2. Solitude. For an art nerd, it is REALLY nice to be alone when looking at art. I'm one of those annoying people who is taking notes or getting really close to things and getting yelled at by museum guards, so really, you probably don't want to be there with me anyway. On Mondays and Tuesdays I really like walking to my office because I have the European wing to myself, and I can examine things like a loon and not have any witnesses.

3. Openings. Art show openings are not normally my scene, because I'm a terrible networker. The exception to this was at school, because then I always had my friends to talk to and it was fun and low-pressure, but now it's slightly different. I don't know much about contemporary anything, and if I have to talk to strangers (and offer opinions, ack) I tend to smile a lot out of nervousness and play with my hair. This is one of the many reasons why I do not want to be a curator! But I put on some mascara and went to one last night, which was actually pretty fun. A few co-workers and I went to happy hour first and then returned to the show, which is called "Who Shot Rock 'n Roll" and is a collection of rock photographs. The reception had dj's and drinks and food and a performance by Blondie, which was worth it.* Debbie Harry is 60ish now, but she is still a total rocker babe. And they performed for free, which is super nice. (A bit of self-promotion for them, too...her partner, Chris Stein, is also in the band and is one of the photographers featured.) And it was cool to see the paintings in context with all the swirling lights and swirling people around them.

If you like art and art history, then all of these things are auxiliary, but they are nice. And let's be honest, I have an easier time explaining myself to people than philosophy majors do (what DO you say if you're a philosophy major and people are quizzing you about your future plans? "I'm going to think." Maybe this is why I, too, find most philosophy majors I've met kinda insufferable.) And honestly, how many economics majors end up doing exactly what they planned? None. And I think that is how it should be. For me, not much beats seeing something or learning something interesting that I didn't know about before, and that is worth it.

*"for Blondie, some Blondie." Mom, I thought I would reference your fav movie.

Hop on the Bus, Gus

2009-10-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

I just got home (it is 12:30 am) from work and took a cab. I say this with a slight sense of personal disappointment, because now that I've finally figured out the buses, I try and take them because it feels like a distinction between a REAL NYer and a tourist. Real NYers take the bus, or in my case, two buses, home when they work late. They are tough and hardy, and I did it last night, but the cards were stacked against it tonight: it was raining (I am a baby when it comes to standing ankle deep in water, and am willing to pay more money not to do so) and the bus was half an hour late!! Which has actually never happened to me before, but my co-worker J and I waited and waited and finally gave up and she called us cabs. When my cab pulled up and I got in, J banged on the cabbies window (J is about 5 feet no inches tall, and has an impressive array of berets which she always wears over her short dreadlocks. "Don't be charging her more than $10!" she yelled at him. Then, to me, "if he charges you more than $10, you can tell him where to stick it." He charged me $10. And I was home in 10 minutes, as opposed to my usual 50.

To anyone who is parentally or grandparentally related to me and is concerned about buses in the middle of the night, all I can say is: don't be. There have been a few weekend nights when I felt not super-comfortable, so I took a cab then, too. Probably the most different thing about all of this, apart from the fact that I have no experience with public transport, is that I am usually the only white person on the bus. As someone who grew up in the vast majority, it's an interesting feeling. It makes you think about the tiny population of African-Americans where I went to college, and the 5 Asian kids in my high school. I knew I stuck out last night when waiting for my second bus with two off-duty security guards, one who was Haitian and one who was Venezuelan. (I know this because they talked the entire time we were waiting. I could tell you how many siblings they have, what kind of hair products they use, and what kind of earrings they think look dumb. I'm not even kidding.) At one point, one said, "well, you know, I'm not prejudiced at all. My sister married a guy who was as white as her." (the "her" being me.) I looked up and they were both looking at me, so I did an awkward wave (I'm a master of the awkward wave) and they laughed and then I was included in their conversation by unspoken agreement. (they also know what hair products I use.) This sense of difference was particularly striking coming back from the opera, when I went from being the only white person on the subway wearing turquoise tights to being the only white person, period. (it says something about perceived social class and certain cultural activities--the exact same thing happened when I went to the ballet--but I'm not going into that now.)

But I've gotten used to the maps and one-way streets. The downside to this is I've almost ended up missing my street because I was falling asleep, or texting and not paying attention, whereas before I'd be too hyped up and staring out the window, so I would prematurely signal a stop and get off a few blocks early. At any rate, I'm home, I'm going to bed, and I have tomorrow off. Whooo!

A Night at the Opera

2009-10-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor.
--Groucho Marx, A Night at the Opera, 1935

(thanks to wikipedia for the Lincoln Center image)
On Thursday night I went to the Metropolitan Opera and saw Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Every other opera I've seen has been at Chautauqua, and some have been really good (The Marriage of Figaro) and some have been quite not good (Little Women...I may have said, "if Beth doesn't die soon, I'm going to get onstage and kill her myself.") But Der Rosenkavalier was unlike anything that I've seen before.

An Opera Maven that I know recently told me about 200 rush tickets that are set aside for sale on the day of the performance. They are orchestra level tickets (which run $275-$175) which are priced for $20 instead (a donor pays the rest of the ticket.) I decided to try this, because a normal $20 ticket is up in the light green section on this map, with an "obstructed view." The $20 ticket I got, after waiting in line for 3 hours in the basement/parking garage of Lincoln Center was in the grey section on the first level, over on the left hand side, about half-way back. SO WORTH IT. If you don't mind waiting in line (which has some good people watching opportunities, incidentally), I would highly recommend doing this.

The plot of Der Rosenkavalier is minimal at best. Act 1 opens with the Princess von Werdenberg, called the Marshchallin, in bed with her 17 year old lover, Count Octavian Rofrano. The Marschallin's boorish, lecher of a cousin Baron Ochs shows up (Ochs = Ox, good one Strauss!) and Octavian quickly dresses up like a maid named Mariandel, to escape detection. The Baron asks his cousin to supply a knight to deliver a silver rose to his betrothed, Sophie Faninal, who is much younger than he is. She suggests Octavian to be the Knight of the Rose, which is what Rosenkavalier means. And then Ochs flirts with all the maids, etc, and Marshchallin starts to feel old, and she expresses to Octavian her conviction that he will end up leaving her for someone younger. The thing is, she's not bitter about being older, she's just realistic about her fate. It'd be a cool role to sing, I think. The Times describes her as a Cougar, which is a phrase I try not to use, so pretend I didn't.

In Act 2, Sophie and Octavian meet in her father's home when he presents the rose, and they fall in love. He ends up wounding Ochs in a duel, and there is a lot of running up and down stairs and singing loudly and drama. The Marshchallin isn't in Act 2 at all. In Act 3, Ochs meets "Mariandel" (Octavian in drag) at an inn, which "she" traps him into seducing her, which gives Sophie's father a bad impression, and then Sophie is released from her engagement and Ochs has to run away from the innkeeper, who he owes money to. It's nice because he gets his comeuppance. Finally, the Marshchallin shows up, wearing about 100 pounds of fabric in an insanely beautiful white dress and wig, and gives her blessing to Sophie and Octavian, and they sing a trio that is well worth the price of admission. Curtain. For a better plot summary and pictures from the Met's 2005 production, see Opera News here.

(thanks to NYTimes online for the pictures of Renee Fleming)
Some people waited in line since 10 am, because this was a powerhouse cast: Renee Fleming as the Marschallin and Susan Graham as Octavian (in comedic fashion, the young male lead is sung by a woman, in a "trouser role"). The main chatter in line and in the lobby was whether Fleming was losing her touch, and if her best days are behind her (not unlike the Marshchallin, actually). Beats me. I have zero knowledge about different singers, and she seemed very, very good to me. It wasn't even so much the singing as her expressions or gestures--I was close enough that I could see pain or amusement on her face, or in her shoulder shrugs.

As good as the singing was, I was even more impressed with the sets. Act 1 takes place in the Marschallin's bedroom, which is all gilt and pink curtains and a ceiling fresco, with little spindly tables all over. Act 2 is in Faninal's estate, which actually elicited clapping from the audience--it was rows and rows of windows and elaborate staircases and chandeliers. Act 3 was set in an inn, so it was much different: smaller, dark, with a lot of candles. And the Metropolitan Opera building itself is crazy, with long red-carpeted staircases, muted lighting, and spiraling chandeliers. Very cool.

What was also cool was that the girl who was next to me in line for tickets (I say "girl" but we were about the same age; compared to everyone else there we were whippersnappers, though) also got the seat next to me in the theater, so we became Opera buddies. We hung out during the intermissions and talked about super nerdy musical stuff and never asked each others names. So I will probably never see her again, which actually seems like a very New York-y thing to do. I like it.

For two real reviews, see here and here. Both have good audio from this performance, particularly the second one.

And for a clip from the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera, which is a totally hilarious movie, see here (they are trying to mess up the opera for a variety of reasons). The movie also has the late (and great) Kitty Carlisle Hart in it, so you know it's legitimate.

10 Commandments of Retail

2009-10-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

Gentle Readers,
As someone who is employed in retail, and who has many friends employed in retail, I am offering a helpful list of rules that everyone should follow. Commandments, as it were. (feel free to add your own...my dogma is pretty fluid!)
1. Thou shalt not assume that anyone working in retail is inferior to you.
What we do is harder than it looks. It's a lot of standing, a lot of emotional grunt work, a lot of smiling when you don't feel like smiling, and a LOT of politeness, papercuts, and being helpful, all for very minimal pay. And by and large, everyone at the store where I work is very good at what they do: cashiers, booksellers, and managers alike. Most of us are there because we like books, and like telling people about books. When I help someone find something, and they are excited, it actually feels pretty good. Except when people treat you like you are an idiot, which happens too often. College degrees don't equal intelligence (the more time people spend in school, the less common sense they seem to have, I find), but we are (recent) grads from Columbia, Northwestern, Arizona State, Oberlin, U Iowa, NYU, Brooklyn College, CUNY Manhattan, and, ahem, William Smith. We know about a lot of different things, we speak many languages, we have kids, we have other jobs, and we really want you to read things. Conversely,
2. Thou shalt not assume we are mind-reading geniuses.
If you come into a bookstore looking for something, it is awesome if you know most of the title, or the authors last name (or if you are AWESOME, the ISBN.) If you come in and tell me you want the new book with the guy on it (this happened today), I might have trouble helping you. (I actually found the book, by the way.) Also, I have had people give me the wrong title AND the wrong author over the phone and then yell at me when I can't find what they are looking for. This does not endear you to me.
3. Thou shalt not talk on thy cell phone when at the register.
I want to help you. I am paid to help you. I cannot help you if you are talking to someone else. I do not care if your son is failing math, I do not care about the cost of your prescription pills, and I really do not care about your sex life. Common courtesy would dictate that you have have one conversation at a time, but you might be surprised at how many people ignore common courtesy.
4. Thou shalt not discuss thy political views.
In a similar vein to the third commandment, I just do not care who you voted for. It's not something I discuss with people unless I am friends with them (ditto for religious views) and frankly, it is really annoying. You can wear a Nobama button if you really want to, but don't go on about how he is socialist to me (this also happened to me today.) And it works both ways: when I was working in a bookstore last summer I had an aging academic-type liberal say to my (one) African-American co-worker, "well, I certainly hope you'll be voting for Obama!" Because they have a similar skin tone so they automatically think the same? Again, annoying, and pretty offensive at that.
5. Thou shalt not complain about the high price of books (shirts, groceries, etc.) while buying them.
We all have to eat, wear clothes, and read, and no one is forcing you to shop where you are. I know books were significantly cheaper 50 years ago, but there's not much I can do about it. There are alternate means of purchasing things if you are worried about prices (go online, buy used, use a library, etc.)
6. Thou shalt be patient.
When I am cashiering I am going as fast as possible, but if I make a mistake, it is very bad for me, and for you in the long-run. It is your fault if you double-park, and I won't rush so that you don't get a ticket. I would rather make sure you are charged the right amount, and that your merchandise doesn't get bent, and that you get the correct change. Bear with me.
7. Thou shalt control thy offspring.
The bookstore where I work is located in a yuppie, baby-heavy area (coughcough*Park Slope*coughcough) and there are some holy terror children, particularly when with their parents and not their nannies. I know it is impossible to "control" kids, but there are ways to discipline and minimize tantrums, screaming, whining, and running. Stop making empty threats, and stop, for goddesses sake, buying them stuff to stop them from crying. Learn to say no. Then your child will be adorable, and I will be happy to help you.
8. Thou shalt not abuse gift wrap.
I really like gift wrapping, but it's kind of something we do to be nice. Asking me to wrap 20 individual books, at 5:30 when the store is packed, is a little indulgent. Fortunately our security guards are also good gift wrappers, so we split it up. But at the very least, offer to help.
9. Thou shalt wash thy hands.
I'm not asking for constant handwashing, but if people could stop giving me damp, sweaty, sticky money, I would really appreciate it. I have started to over-use the hand sanitizer, since I am sans health insurance. I actually had someone hand me their dirty kleenex last week. Please do not do that.
10. Thou shalt be remembered--for good or bad.
If your kids are cute, I will remember. If you compliment my scarf, I will remember. If you are terrible, snappy, and condescending, I will remember. If you swear at my co-worker (this happened today), I will remember. And chances are good that I will mention it to my co-workers. One thing about retail is that you commiserate about good things and bad things, because that makes the time go faster, and makes you feel better if something really bad happens.

90% of people are nice, friendly, and fine. 10% might be sociopaths. Don't be in the 10%! And thus endeth the public service announcement for the day.

Don't you love New York in the fall?

2009-10-17T06:48:00.001-07:00

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.
--You've Got Mail, 1998

Happy Saturday morning! We just made omelets and I'm going to work in a bit (blargh.) But I would just like to say: New York in the Fall is something pretty great. True, it is certainly not as pretty as upstate (there are not as many trees, for one thing.) There is a smell in the air that I love (honestly, it's probably the mustiness of dying leaves...pleasant.) That plus the coziness of being inside and drinking tea just makes me feel like humming. I once had a professor who described Edvard Munch and his art as having a "morose Northern temperament," which is kinda ridiculous, but it could be applied to me as well. Probably in two months I will be browbeating the cold, but for now it is ok. Besides, anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE scarves, so any opportunity to wear them, I am happy with.

And You've Got Mail is an awesome movie, and it's like a New York City valentine (well, Manhattan anyway.) Plus, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are just cuteness. And it's about bookstores!! Except in this scenario, I am allied with evil Fox Books, the superstore that crushes indie bookstores in its wake of cheap books and cappucino. My parents actually refer to where I work as "Fox Books." Ah well. It's a delightful movie regardless.

Nostalgia

2009-10-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

The problem with going someplace really lovely, and having a really lovely time, is that eventually you have to leave. I guess that is a problem with vacations in general, but I've never gone on vacation and had to come back to "real life," ie job(s), chilling weather, and missing my friends like I would miss a limb if it was cut off.

To recap: I have been on hiatus since I went to Geneva last weekend for 4 days and have been not in the best mood since being back here. The fact that I have to consider Geneva (and by extension the Finger Lakes, and Western NY in general) as a vacation spot and not my home is creeping me out. I had a massive sleepover with 5 of my best friends, who I hadn't seen since May (we missed you, Jersey girl!!). I watched quality chick flicks, ate about 900 pounds of candy, talked and talked, had tea, saw a lot of people I care about, and now I am missing it terribly. I hate transitions, probably like everyone else does. So to preempt my current one-person pity party, I am going to make two lists. Enjoy.

5 Rad Things about Geneva, NY
1. Community. Yeah, yeah, I know communities are everywhere. And I really haven't been here long enough to create one. And I hated Geneva when I first moved there (I wanted to transfer my first semester of college, but I think that was probably more homesickness than any major problem with the school.) But it is that comfortable way of being that I miss the most, and I miss it about my hometown, too. It was the nicest part of the visit. I think I saw someone I knew everywhere I went (which has its bad side..at one point we were costumed for an early Hallowe'en celebration and were outside the art department, and I should really know by now not to be traipsing around in butterfly wings because someone is ALWAYS there.)
2. The Food. I really like The Coffee House, which has the best scones, outside of England, that I've ever had, and the Red Dove Tavern is just groovy (shoestring fries = major mmm), and there is a Wegmans, which I maybe went to every day I was there. Plus, APPLES.
3. Watkins Glen. Technically this is half an hour from Gtown, but it's gor-ge-ous, especially this time of year. And here we are, thanks to Karen's super awesome camera (and super awesome photog skillz!)

(lots of smiling went on this weekend..and laughing so hard that I felt sick. And does that shot of one of the Falls remind you of the Mines of Moria?!)
4. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, particularly Houghton House. For those of you not in the know, Houghton House is where the art department at WS&H resides, and let me tell you: it is a cool place to be normally, but it is SUPER nice when you don't have work to do. (I spent freakish amounts of time there my last year of college, and got kind of grumpy about it. Not anymore.) And the people there are some of my favorites anywhere, speaking of community. Besides, I just like to learn stuff, and I like places where I can do that, and where there are people willing to teach me.

5. The way Seneca Lake looks at any time of year. It's pretty in the Fall with the leaves, it's pretty in the winter (at least, I think so) when it's grey and the snow geese hang out on it, it's pretty in the spring (when my top picture was taken) when everything smells green and growing, and the lake is astonishingly blue in the summer.

5 Rad Things about Brooklyn, NY (in the past 5 days)
1. My cousin got some really, really good dark wheat bread from a bakery by her school and I just ate some with honey. (Honey, incidentally from Geneva. One of the people I housesat for last year has started beekeeping--hi Nan!)
2. En route to Brooklyn, we stopped by the relatives and got some squash, green peppers, hot peppers, onions, a pumpkin, gourds, and carrots from my aunt's garden (HI AUNT SUE!!). Not to go all Michael Pollan on everyone, but it's nice to know where your food is coming from.
3. I have gotten 3 pieces of mail in the past 2 days, which is always, always, always wonderful. Except when it's from Sallie Mae. Then it's not. But this was good mail.
4. I just found out that the chain bookstore I work for lets its' employees "rent" out any hardcover book with a dustjacket for two weeks. They keep the dustjacket and loan it out to you, so I now have Nick Hornby's newest in my possession. It's good so far. And I like that they do that.
5. Today while at the Brooklyn Museum (I am interning there...have I mentioned that on here?? More on that another time) I cut out of work early (whoops) and walked through the American Art floor, and they have a new Native American exhibit up, and that was neat.

Well, I don't feel that much better. But back to our regularly scheduled programming next post, eh?

Oh, and more importantly:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!

La La La Laaaa

2009-10-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

I am going to GENEVA TOMORROW (well, technically I am taking the late train to Albany when I get out of work, bunking with my friend, and then roadtripping Thursday morning.)

Here is a song for the occasion:

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
....
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

c. Harry McClintock, Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1928.

Seriously, I am obnoxiously giddy about revisiting the alma mater ever dear, although I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to handle being back and NOT being a student (it might heighten my identity crisis.) However, going to Geneva involves some of my favorite things: seeing some people I very much care about, fall in the Finger Lakes, Watkins Glen, roadtripping and creating roadtrip playlists (no such thing as too much Abba or Irish pub songs, that's my motto), slumber parties in our old house, close proximity to wineries, close proximity to lakes, apples, and the joyousness of friends. Be back late Sunday. xoxo

P.S. Lizzy, I made this song reference just for youuu!

Food, Glorious Food

2009-10-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is a post I wrote awhile ago, which has now been cross-posted at Cooking With Ideas, a blog authored by one of my ex-professors (she is still a professor, I mean "ex" in that I am out of school...) And besides being a genuine rockstar human being, she also has a cool blog, where she writes about food in the Finger Lakes, murder mysteries (especially food involved ones), restaurant reviews, and a lot of other good things (and yours truly is listed under the Geneva-related blogs). Check it out!!

Today I’ll be bringing you food news and reviews from the neighborhood. And that neighborhood is Crown Heights! Some qualifiers before starting: 1) I have only included stores and restaurants within 10 minutes walking distance of my apartment (there is one exception, but I’ll explain that later). 2) Each entrée costs less than $10 (because that is my budget). 3.) In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a vegetarian (as my mom says, “I would be one, if bacon didn’t count,” which about sums it up), but since I am living with a vegetarian, all the places I talk about will be vegetarian focused or have strong vegetarian options. 4.) I’ve never really written about food before, so bear with me!

Well, it ain’t Wegmans: Grocery Shopping
As a born and bred Western New Yorker, I have a freakish, life-affirming devotion to Wegmans, which also includes trying to shoehorn it into any conversation whenever possible (We all know this is true. But who can blame us??). There is a Whole Foods somewhere, and I think a Trader Joes, but that’s not my scene. Since I am sans Wegmans, the store I usually go to is walkable, and has the basics. The produce is on the iffy side—which is supplemented by going to a farmers’ market—and though there are holes in the floor, the music they play is danceable Spanish, and the cashiers have a tendency to sing along. The organic section is literally one shelf at the end of an aisle, which would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing (no social hierarchy of food, my foot). Although cereal and other staples tend to be much more expensive than I’m used to, big jars of curry powder and other “unusual” ingredients tend to be less. I’ve also started eating things like guava yogurt and plaintain chips, since this store is stocked for its predominantly Hispanic and West Indian customers. I can’t attest to the meat quality or price, since I haven’t purchased any here.

Eating Out/Taking In
Some categories to consider:
Pizza—like bagels, I think it is generally hard to have a bad pizza experience in NYC, although I’ve had slices that are certainly superior to others. The best, in my opinion, is either Slice of Brooklyn on Franklin or Ginos on Washington, both which are about 2 blocks from my apartment in opposite directions. Slice of Brooklyn has a good deal on slices (2 + a can of soda for $5) while Ginos is more economical if you’re buying a whole pizza. Interestingly, I have yet to see pineapple offered as a topping anywhere, which is my favorite (I know, it’s weird). The standard pizza is thin-crust with not-overly sweet sauce, and not too much cheese.

Mexican—There is a Mexican restaurant on my street, but the one I have been to is one street over, and is delightfully called Taquería de Los Muertos. The menu isn’t huge, and I’ve only tried their burritos, but OH are they good, as well as being roughly the size of a human head. I think my favorite filling is pollo rojo with the black beans, and I usually pay the extra 50 cents to make it a “super,” so it includes guacamole. They have good vegetarian fillings, like squash, peppers, corn, and mushrooms. They also make sure to tell you which bean choices are vegetarian, too.

Thai—If I were recommending just two restaurants in Brooklyn for someone to check out, it would be these two: Udom Thai and Wild Ginger. First, Udom Thai: it is next door to the Taquería de Los Muertos, and the ambiance is great. It’s small-ish, but cozy, and there are really neat wire figures on each table (each one is different) which all hold a different colored silk flower. And the food is just dandy. My standard so far seems to be the ginger noodles, which are soft, wide noodles in a spicy, gingery sauce, with shredded chicken, eggs, bean sprouts, scallions, sliced ginger, and lettuce, which provides a good crisp element. They also have food delivery-ready in a crazy fast time. I recently tried one of the curries, and that was also really good. The second Thai restaurant, Wild Ginger, is the exception to my geographic criteria. It’s in downtown Brooklyn, and therefore a bus ride away, although they *just* opened another Brooklyn branch on Flatbush Ave, only 5ish blocks from me. I am including this restaurant not only because it was delicious, but because it was the first time I’d been to a Vegan restaurant, and it has amazingly low-priced lunch specials. I got Mango Soy Protein (I didn’t know this, but soy protein has a consistency kind of like chicken and, just like tofu, tastes like whatever you cook it in). It was served in a sweet plum sauce with generously big mango slices, green beans, peppers, and asparagus, and came with brown rice with bulgur, plus miso soup. I got a ginger ale, which I think was just club soda with shredded ginger. As someone who really likes raw ginger, I loved the tanginess. Also, they get extra points for having a really cool bathroom.

The Art of Snacking
--Mr. Softee is the usual neighborhood ice cream truck (I have seen fancier ice cream trucks with lemongrass and green tea confections, but I’ll take my vanilla soft-serve with rainbow sprinkles over that.) The best part is that a Mr. Softee truck drives by the apartment at 11:00 nightly, and parks someplace nearby. One night I heard its obnoxious siren/jingle/ice cream truck call constantly for half an hour while I was trying to read, and it began to seem like an experiment to see how long the average citizen could hear the song without turning into a raving sociopath. It just adds to their charm.
--Further up the road from the grocery store is a mostly vegan (can something be “mostly vegan,” or is that like being “mostly pregnant?”) Jamaican restaurant called Natural Blends. They have substantial food too, and my cousin swears by their veg lasagna, but all I’ve had is a smoothie and a chocolate chip cookie. The smoothie was tasty, as smoothies often are, and the cookie was large and dense, with carrot and sweet potato in it and lots of cinnamon. They have a lot of really good looking baked goods there, which I plan to test out.
--Also very important to the consummate snacker are the small convenience stores, often called bodegas, which are on nearly every corner. I have the delight of living next door to one such store, which is usually staffed by a trio of brothers, the youngest of which is probably 15 and the oldest of which is probably my age. They are dysfunctional, and it’s always an adventure stopping there (for example: everyone will be outside and the youngest one will be working the cash register and he won’t know the price of something, so he’ll take candy bars from under the counter and throw them at the window until one of the other brothers comes in to help). Corner stores are good for getting deli meats, cheese, milk, and late-night seltzer and Doritos, which is my usual purchase. I also have no shame about going there in my pajamas, and in fact have done so today. Twice.

Some of the neighborhood places that I haven’t had time to try yet boast cuisines from the Caribbean, Senegal, Vietnam, France, China, Korea, the Middle East, and Japan, not to mention bagels, burgers, fried chicken, kosher groceries, pastries, organic specialty stores, and all manner of coffee. Come to Manhattan for the culture—although Brooklyn has plenty of that, too!—but desert the island for dinner. Brooklyn will be eagerly awaiting your arrival.

Julie and Julia and Me

2009-10-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

It's 10 pm and I am making a big pan of baked macaroni and cheese and broccoli. My usual choice post-work (which is now) is some form of sandwich, but sometimes you just feel like cooking, and the fact that I just finished reading Julie and Julia probably influenced me in some way. And it's rainy out, which automatically means I want pasta (even if it will only be ready, oh, one hour from now.) The roux looked too soupy (as my roux's often do, probably because I dumped the milk in all at once) but now that it is mixed together it looks pretty good. I drew the line at making my own bread crumbs, so I'm deluding myself that the Italian ones from the can taste the same.

It wasn't a terrible day of work, but I forgot my fork and had to eat my lunchtime salad with chopsticks that I borrowed from a co-worker, and saw a kid bite his mother, and witnessed a marital fight on the way over, and got out late and missed my bus. Worst of all, I had to do a shipping order for a woman who was buying girlie magazines to send to her son in jail, and had to spend some time explaining her why he might not get them right away, because the guards have to search incoming packages. "He really wants them," she said, and the thought of this woman buying "Hooters" for her incarcerated child was just really sad.

Macaroni and cheese makes you feel good, though, as did Julie and Julia. It's a fun, fast read. Julie Powell is sassy and (sometimes) likeable (sometimes she is heavy on the whining, but she usually redeems herself), and you really root for her (the premise of her blog and then book was that she would cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year; and she did.) AND she lived in Brooklyn! (Bay Ridge, I think, so well south of here, and she defects to Queens early on...but I still feel some solidarity.) Some of the recipes are just craziness, like Pâté de Canard en Croûte, which is duck stuffed with pork and veal and truffles and baked in a pastry crust. I also realized how many meats I've never actually tried: brains, liver, kidneys, marrow, veal, lamb--and I think I've only had duck once (that Julia is not big on vegetables, unless they are in some manner of sauce). I'd like to see the movie, too, since I think there is more Julia in that.

Julie mentions in her afterward (which is a few years later, and Julia had just died) that what really comes through in Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a woman who has found her place and purpose in life. Julia is joyful, and that's what is so groovy about her. You can see that when you watch old clips of her tv shows (and I watched a lot of Julia Child as a kid): the woman likes what she does. And she is not perfect and she occassionaly busts an omelet, but she doesn't let that stop her. GO JULIA!

If I ever get up the courage to make anything with pastry, I'll let you all know.

Ah, to be in Delft!

2009-10-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

I like living here, truly I do. But sometimes, I would rather live in Delft, which was the painter Johannes Vermeer's (1632-1675) hometown.

(Thanks to good ol' wikipedia for the images! Who wouldn't want to live here??)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is having a special exhibit on Vermeer through November 29th. I went this week, which is what started my whole "why don't I live in Delft?" phase, prompted mostly by the fact that en route to the Met there were some scary yelling people on the subway. But then, you look at a Vermeer and you forget about student loans and noisy, angry people and smog. Because this is what you see:

This is The Milkmaid, c. 1657-58 (thanks to Met online for the Vermeer images!), and it is in the United States for the first time since the NY World's Fair of 1939. Holland lent the painting for the 400th Anniversary Henry Hudson celebrations for his "discovery" of NY while working for the Dutch East India Company. It's one of those paintings that you look at and it feels like time stops, and all that matters is you and her, even though French tourists are shoving you in the back. Her headbent concentration as she works is a moment which is forever frozen; a moment which passed long before I was born and will live on long after I die. Thinking about death and life and immortality kind of causes a pain in my side, but regardless: this painting is cool.

The Milkmaid is about the size of Vermeer's Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, (c. 1662) which is in the Met's permanent collection with three other Vermeer paintings. If you want a boring anecdote about me, here it is: this painting is what made me decide to major in art history. I went to the Met for the first time my sophomore year of college, when I was still figuring out what to major in. I loved the art history classes I'd had, but I was also in a particularly wonderful radical-influenced political economy class, and I kept thinking that art history was pretty irrelevant to people who didn't have a place to sleep....what was the point of studying something that wouldn't do much good, anyway? So we went to the Met and I walked by this painting, and that was that. It's small, but it made me feel like the air was being suctioned out of my lungs. I looked and looked and wanted to be there, and talk to her, and see who she was. There is a wonderful stillness, just like The Milkmaid, and you can practically see the dust motes dancing in the Delft sunlight. The wall label at the Met described her as an "idealized beauty treated like a vision," but she seems real enough to me.

Even though I'd like to go to Delft, it might be better to just stick with how I've imagined it. Vermeer eating a hunk of bread and humming while mixing his paints, and contemplating whether he has enough ochre to capture the light. The girl, whoever she was,* cleaning the windows in her crisp white headcloth, while chickens scrabble over the cobblestones outside. And anyway, what if I went and the canals were polluted and the people were surly? That would be terrible. What is NOT terrible, however, is Vermeer. See these paintings in person if you can!

*A book that tries to answer this question is Girl with a Pearl Earring (after the painting of the same name) by Tracy Chevalier. I read it awhile ago, but from what I remember it was good. The book is unsurprisingly better than the movie, although the movie does have Colin Firth as Vermeer, and I would watch Colin Firth read his grocery list. I'm not even kidding.

Happy Banned Books Week!

2009-09-30T07:52:00.001-07:00

My librarian grad student friend recently informed me that Banned Books Week is September 26-October 3 (it's always the last week in September.) I suppose this doesn't have much to do with Brooklyn per se, other than the fact that I work in a bookstore, but here is my one public service announcement for the year. Spend the week reading a banned book, or just reading. And is anyone else shocked and dismayed that Slaughterhouse-Five is STILL banned in some schools?? Ditto The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And Beloved, and Tango Makes Three (which is a NON-FICTION story about PENGUINS), and Native Son, and The Grapes of Wrath...I could go on. For a list of books banned in 2007-2008 alone, see here. For the American Library Association's page on book banning, see here. For more books, and info on the Kid's Right To Read Project, see here. Oh, and if you want to see why JK Rowling did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, see here.

Having been raised by people who let me read whatever I wanted, I am mystified by people who believe in the corrupting power of literature, so much so that they go all Bonfire of the Vanities on other people's rights. (granted, I was "corrupted" in that I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time when I was 12 and wanted to, god forbid, make the world a better place.) So curl up with some tea, some Vonnegut (or whomever) and enjoy!

Also: my librarian friend (HI KAREN!) has started a blog of her own, as a class assignment, which can be found here. She will be writing about library science and information technology, among other fun things. She also supplied me with most of the links mentioned here, too. Check it out!