Bon Voyage (and some Blog Housekeeping)

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?

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

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

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

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

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 Belmont 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

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

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.