Many Splendored Things

It's been easy to get out of the habit of blogging recently what with working on the Thirteen Facebook blog (the Grain for Your Brain newsletter I've started posting here) and a few other projects that I've got going and sometimes, and lately it just feels as though I'm being too negative about things.


For example, the BF and I went out to a restaurant, L'Express, on July 4th. It's a French bistro on Park Avenue down near Union Square and because it was a holiday and raining, we were practically alone in the restaurant. We had a quiet dinner, slow paced because we didn't really have anywhere to go and besides I'd been having some stomach problems recently and wasn't ravenously hungry so I was trying to make a point of eating slowly.


But we barely had put our forks down - with food still on the plate mind you - when the bus boy started taking away the plates. We said politely that we weren't finished and he retreated. This repeated every time we put our fork down - about three other times - until we had eaten the last bite. The busboy literally scooped up our plates while we both still had food in our mouths.
This isn't the first time... I've noticed this happening more and more over the last decade and it's not just in New York City, it's everywhere. But what good is writing about it? I doubt such an ingrained trend will stop anytime soon and writing about it just makes me sound cranky.


We also recently followed a friend of ours, a brilliant performer who spent years playing acordian in Paris, to a little garden performance space in the east village. The seating was something you'd find in someone's backyard, the folding chairs, benches and so forth. The stage, professional with lighting and sound. She was part of a lineup, some better than others but what took us both out of the moment of enjoying the music were the couple drunk audience members who said "fuck the neighbors!" when the organizer, a talented singer, guitarist in his own right, announced that since it was already past 11:30 they would have to wind down before the neighbors complained.


Considering the amount of neighbors surrounding the garden space, the fact that no one had yet called the police to complain showed that they lived in a peaceful coexistance with the organizers and a tacit understanding had been made about how late into the night performances could go. Sigh. Anyway, writing about that also seems pointless as I feel as though it's just another complaint, so what's the use?


Finally, there is something.. I went to see WALLE recently.. what a gloriously fun and inventive movie this is.. I laughed, I wept, I was moved and changed by the story and that's in short supply these days in all forms of entertainment. Even the BF liked it (and he hates these kinds of movies in general). There are tons of allusions to other sci fi movies, the animation is realistic and somehow the writers have made even a cockroach a sympathetic character without even one word. The people at Pixar are truly the best storytellers of the past 20 years.
 OK there.


That IS something positive to write about. I knew I could do it!