Christmas on the Empire State Building

Last Night I Dreamt of Letterman

Thursday night I dreamt of David Letterman. Really.
No, not in that way.
I was a guest on his show doing a comedy bit and I did so well that afterwards he came up to me and shook my hand and offered to have me come back for another go round of the character.
I then ate a couple green grapes and chatted to the regular writers that appear occasionally on the show.
Then, yesterday I was out and about doing errands and just happened to pass by the Late Show theatre where they were replacing bulbs in the CBS sign.
This means one of two things:
Either I have a premonition of a career breakthrough happening any moment; something that will be a 'lightbulb' moment.
Or the prednisone that I"ve been taking in combination with the sleeping pills to calm me down from the poison ivy I've been suffering from the past two weeks has finally taken it's toll.

I desire to believe the former. :)

Glass Ceilings

The Mighty

Earth Day

First Sign of Spring in New York City

Entrance to the World

Cityscape

Mooring

Today I'm going to throw it out to you..... what does today's title and image spark in YOU?

Write your comments below (or merely think about it although I'd love to know!)

You'll Just Have To Wait for Me

Last weekend when the BF and I were at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens we noticed this little boy being persuaded to look at the camera for what I'm sure would be a beautiful shot (with the purple flowers in the background) but the little boy just wasn't interested in cooperating prefering instead to reach for what HE wanted (a flower, a bug, some dirt) Even though he had one, two, three, four adults (and one out of the shot who was noticing what was happening), the little boy didn't feel pressured to face forward.

Now you can wring three different lessons from this little boy:

1. Things will happen in their good time when they're good and ready.

2. Everyone will wait for talent.

3. Divas are born, not made. :)

Good Morning, New York City!

Another beautiful day in paradise. :)

This is a shot from a few days ago at the main post office just down the street from where I work. To think that this could have been torn down at some point because it was 'old'!

Man, This Place is Like a Circus

Yesterday 2 friends of mine invited myself and a friend of theirs who has a seven year old daughter to go to the Ringling Brothers circus at Madison Square Garden. Four adult gay men and one 7 year old girl. It was like the time I directed a play at the California Theatre Center in Sunnyvale and four of my friends drove down together but I didn’t know whose name to give for the tickets waiting for them and so I said to the woman who was in charge of the ticket table, ‘you’ll know them, four grown gay men, no children’.

Anyway, yesterday’s trip to the circus gave me the following reflective thoughts:

1, The spectacle of hundreds of whirling thingabob lights throughout the crowd is one of the most beautiful man made sights. A child’s smile reacting to said sights is one of creations more beautiful sights (no matter how much said smile is stuffed with the man made delights of hot dogs, cotton candy, popcorn or snow cones).

2. I love elephants and feel that no matter what I know about how they might be treated and trained, I still want to see them and the entire day was made for me at the sight of a dozen pachyderms parading through the coliseum, some with beautiful ladies in colorful costumes riding them. It’s a simple pleasure and I can’t underline enough how happy this made me and I’m willing to look the other way on animal rights abuse issues (ok no I’m not but I was for the few minutes they were out there).

BTW I could swear I saw one elephant snark to another. Three of them were lined up to come out onto the main floor; one of them ducked their head to the other in a way that said to me “hey, pal, get a load of THIS crowd, wanna go crazy with me and watch everyone run in terror? We’ll totally be put down but what a way to go, and hey, we’ll be on the news!” to which the other one just did their best ‘harumph’ at and ignored them. I still maintain that one of the elephants when walking past me winked at me. Just me. No one else. Really. Why don’t you believe me? :)


3. There is not much at the circus to hold my interest: the clowns are too broad and are shouting, straining their voices too much to be funny/heard; the ‘magic tricks’ creep me out (anything having to do with knives, flaming pokers, steel plates, etc slicing people up upsets me); the high wire and aerial tumbling acts frighten me and while I love the animals, my bleeding heart liberal mind can’t get around the fact that these creatures are being subjugated into doing the bidding of others, something they didn’t choose to do. Add to that the very plastic feel and the over consumption of it all, I don’t know that I’d go back.

4. The Roadies were almost more interesting to me to watch than the main acts.. although in concert with the performers, the Roadies completed a sort of ballet --- actions (walking to a spot to put a chair or bench down while something is happening elsewhere in the better lit area) and reactions (taking said chair away, or helping a performer down a rope ladder from a tiny staging area on the ceiling) were somehow compelling to me. Although that the Roadies seemed completely indifferent to acts around them left me feeling both confident that they had seen it all before and there was no real danger and worried that they were getting to complacent and Something Bad would happen because they weren’t paying attention.

5. There are people who are still willing to get up on all sorts of manners of ropes, wires, cages and moving contraptions and walk, run, ride bikes, do flips and generally endanger their lives for the entertainment of others. There are still lots of people who find this entertaining. What’s wrong with me that I don’t?

Half the fun of a circus (from what I can remember in my one or two childhood experiences going to them) seems to me to be not only the sideshow attractions and the games but also the smell of a circus, the gritty odor of live animals mixed with cotton candy and popcorn.

I think it’s part of the same fun that’s lost on me with big theme parks. To me, ‘riding the rides’ (as my Texas friend Karen said in the 80s when we were working for the Bible camp) means walking through the dirt fairground and the fairway and seeing the town you live in from the top of the ferris wheel.

In any event, it was nice to spend some time with friends and over and above everything else, that alone made the circus worthwhile. J

WE PEDAL UPHILL OPENS TODAY AT THE CINEMA VILLAGE IN NYC

For the New York Times review of WE PEDAL UPHILL go to http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/movies/20peda.html?scp=2&sq=We%20Pedal%20UPhill&st=cse

For tickets to the Cinema Village's showings (now through Thursday March 26th only), go to:


http://www.readyticket.net/webticket/htmlshowtimes/27/.\ShowTimes39892.html





And for a trailer of the movie, go to: http://www.wepedaluphill.com/

Amazing What You Find When You Throw Shit Out

So, Life happens.

For better or worse, it happens to all of us whether we want it to or not.

Along the way it's easy for things to get pushed off to 'tomorrow' but somehow 'tomorrow' becomes six or more months later.

Over the weekend my roommate and I threw a party and as is usually the case with parties, I tend to pack stuff up with the intention of unpacking it later. Whooops... well, as I was unspooling afterwards, I discovered a bunch of papers that I had put away after the last party in December only to discover things like the Con Ed and Time Warner bills that I wondered about (so THAT'S how they got so high so 'quickly', I didn't pay for a couple months.. whoops!) as well as a small check for a job I had done some weeks ago (it wasn't enough to miss but it'll be enough to go out to dinner on.. at least by myself) as well as a bunch of magazines.

Now I know that everyone has The Stack of magazines in their home/apartment that they always intend on 'getting to'.. but I actually for the most part, tend to get to my Entertainment Weeklys and New Yorkers (and uh Soap Opera Digests) pretty quickly. I'm a little less likely to read my Dramatist Guild magazine (which might be tied into my lack of motivation to write lately) and yikes, there's like a half years Smithsonians and Harpers sitting there eyeing me, waiting for me to lovingly take them in hand and open their immortal pages and read their sage wisdom.

So I dug. I dug into New Yorkers around the Inauguration, just around the time that I spent every waking moment watching Battlestar Galactica (well, no wonder I didn't notice that I'd gotten behind on my magazines) and some Entertainment Weeklies especially one with cover model Robert Pattinson from Twilight who, swear to God, looks like he's stone off his gourd (not that I'd know anything about THAT, mind you).

I get into these grooves every so often.. playing catch up with old papers and magazines and papers and wonder what it would be like to be caught up all the time. Does anyone actually live like that? I fantacize about what it would be like not to have a stack of "things to do" on my desk and one day I'll achieve that goal.

In the meantime, I found the note I wrote to myself about a dental appointment six weeks ago (I went without the reminder and had a great checkup) as well as the phone number from a childhood friend who lives in New Jersey whom I didn't call when she was in town in the autumn (it was hard for me to think of anything else at the time other than a couple of family crisises.. one with the New York family and one with the Mosinee one). But I digress. It's time to call her back (if she'll still speak to me!).

The last time I did this I ended up with a pretty big trash bag full of stuff, and my apartment isn't even overrun with piles of papers, I'm not entirely sure where it all came from but I was glad for all of it to leave.

The worrisome part is of course the thought, is there another pile in the closet from the November party we threw that I still haven't found (where ARE those w-2s anyway??)

While I panic about that, here's a couple thoughts pulled from a couple different magazines that I had circled at some point indicating my desire to share them on this blog.. enjoy!

"OLTL is layered and smart and it makes sense. You don't feel like asucker for spending years of your life in Llanview and then having themilestones you've invested in not matter" - Carolyn Hinsey, Soap OperaDigest

"Well, you know, ever since I stopped sending him my holiday card he'sbeen ticked off. I don't know what to think about it. Do you know whatI'm thinking about? I'm going to finally get to see my kids after amonth. So that's all I give a fuck about" - Rahm Emanuel on Castro. NewYorker, March 2nd, 2009

WE PEDAL UPHILL OPENS FRIDAY MARCH 20TH!

It's finally here! This Friday Roland's WE PEDAL UPHILL will open at the Cinema Village here in Manhattan and I hope you'll be able to join us! Tickets are $10 and can be ordered online here:

http://www.readyticket.net/webticket/htmlshowtimes/27/.%5CShowTimes39892.html

If you're not familiar with the flick, check out the website and trailer here: http://www.wepedaluphill.com

Will look forward to seeing you all there and when buying ticks, keep in mind that there is a q and a with Roland and a couple of the stars following both 7:30 showtimes on Friday March 20th and Saturday March 21st.

Meanwhile, back in New York City....

So Sunday the BF did our usual Walking Tour Sunday thing (the weather was finally nice enough to do it again) and we had the distinct pleasure of visiting the New York Tenement Museum down on Orchard Street just at Delancy.

It’s a really great (and grim) representation of how life was for our city’s immigrants in the mid 1800s and through to the early part of the 1900s …although truth to tell I’ve had friends who have lived in apartments about as big as some of the ones they showed us.

In fact, if you could get around the crumbling wallpaper and disheveled ceilings, the apartments wouldn’t be half bad. I mean, other than the lack of personal bathrooms, running water, adequate sanitation. And of course they’d be great for one or two people…. But maybe not so much for a family of 12.

You can find out more about them by going to their site, www.tenement.org

Visions of New York tonight at 10 on Thirteen

OK so I know it's a little cheesy to embed a promo from my day job but I really love this series and tonight's features aerial views of New York.. ymmmm!!

Doom and Gloom Begone!

Elsewhere in New York, The Whitney is sick of the doom and gloom pervading all of us and is offering two ways to beat the recession to a pulp.

First is that you can go to this email link www.whitney.org/www/promotion/email to sign up for their email list.. you’ll get a coupon to print out which will get you into the Whitney for a mere five bucks now through Saturday March 8th (the day – ahem – before my birthday btw just in case you didn’t know)

That’s a pretty good deal considering they’ve got some great exhibitions going on there (like artist Alex Bag’s newest installation, whom I have to admit I’m not familiar with but the description on the site looks fun)

The second way to beat the recession is to head to Whitney on Friday nights for their ‘pay what you can’ admission policy and go to their free concert series. This Friday February 20th it’s jazz musician Dave Burrell. http://daveburrell.com with Billy Martin on percussion.

A Not Just West Side Story

It was Valentine’s Day and so the BF and I decided to head to the Chelsea Clearview for a late night showing of WEST SIDE STORY. Being a fan of film from a young age I’ve seen a lot of movies but generally prefer seeing musicals on stage to movies. It’s just the way that I am which is how it is that I turn 45 in a couple weeks and have for the first time ever seen WEST SIDE STORY.

Well, just wow. It’s strange how dancing gangs of guys seem funny at first but become normal about a third the way in. The best part? The flick was a mere $10. This I guess shouldn’t sound like a great deal but it is considering that movies have ballooned up to $12.50 here in Manhattan.. making it like the third or fourth price increase in about a year.

I’d be fine with the price increase if the concessions were going down (they’re not) or the movies were really great (they are SO not).. what’s the way to keep people away from your business? Make it too expensive to go.

So phooey on Chelsea Clearview and any theatre charging $12.50 for crap like THE INTERNATIONAL (even if it does star Clive Owen who can, for the most part, simply sit in a chair and I’d find it interesting).

Rain Date

Every year around the anniversary of my father's passing, I remember him by doing something that reminds me of him. A day that we might have spent together doing things that he would have liked to do.

As I planned this year's day it occurred to me (as it does, I think, every year that I do this) that many of the things that he liked to do are things that I already regularly do so taking time to do something 'out of the ordinary' is really redundant.


Still, this year it meant a lot to me to remember him this way and for I think the first time ever, I brought someone along - the BF.


8am The day started off with busywork: laundry. The price I pay for not going to the gym: doing laundry while the BF works out. It's been a long time since I've been a regular gym goer and while I sort of miss it (and am watching my waistline enlarge) I'll take sleeping in any day.

9:30 Breakfast. A Dad breakfast with eggs and sausage.

10:30 I stop at a Lens Crafters across the street from the BF's place in order to transfer my account from another store across the city to them. The workers at this Lens Crafters are incredulous and roll their eyes when the other store wants to charge me $10 to fax my records to them. I say to them: "now you know why I don't want to be a patient over there any longer"

11:00 I stop by Ricky's Halloween store to pick up a costume. I'm MCing two Halloween contests in the next few days and I've got to have something that's a little sexy (they are, after all, contests in gay bars) but not too revealing (that waistline and all) as well as affordable, reusable and easy to manuever in while I'm ushering contestants across a stage.



I pick a fireman outfit. It's a little drab but I think I might be able to sex it up a little. Did I just say that? In any event, as I write this I remember I used to have terrible nightmares growing up that the house would catch on fire. I'm sure someone smarter than me could analyze that.

Noon The BF and I leave the apt and have a harrowing cab ride from the West Village up to the upper east side. We arrive shaken AND stirred at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, become members and spend the next two hours nosing through exhibits both permanent (Greek, Roman, Oceania) and temporary (Jeff Koons). Dad would have stopped to read every card on every object and painting but neither of us do that. Yet.











1:30 We discover the cafeteria, settle down with a couple cokes, a salad and soup. The woman next to us has trouble opening a super sealed cellophaned bag of three chocolate chip cookies. The BF asks if we can help. She shows us three cookies in a cellophane bag sealed with a twist tie. I struggle with getting the twisttie unraveled but that doesn't work. Then I struggle with getting the twist tie up and off. That's not working either. This is one strong flippin bag.



Success, I finally open the bag and the kind woman offers me one of the incredibly moist cookies.


As I bite into it I realize how much chocolate chip cookies remind me of Dad.

It doesn't hit me until I'm writing this that what saved us from losing our minds at his funeral was Pastor Holten's ridiculous analogy how "God doesn't throw away his children like a baker tosses out a bad batch of chocolate chip cookies". Later, the BF asks me if I think Dad (and a mutual friend who passed away) are still with us. I say 'yes' but I don't think I know exactly why I think that until this very moment.



2:30 We're walking down Fifth Avenue enjoying a cloudy and occasionally rainy autumn day. The leaves on the trees are still green but there are bunches of yellow and brown leaves swirling on the sidewalk aside the Park. It's gorgeous out.











2:45 Dad and I used to enjoy the Best Popcorn In The World from a little old fashioned red popcorn wagon that sat next to a bookstore in Wausau and so to that end, the BF and I decide to catch a show at the Paris on W. 58th just across the street from the Apple Store. This is a bust. The 2:20 show has already started and the line for the Apple Store (I think Dad would have been all into the gadgets so it seems a sort of natural place to go) is so long that we opt out of both and in the confusion I forget about the popcorn. We'll catch up on this sometime this week as the movie (A Secret) looks really good.



3:15 We're walking across 57th Street passing by Rivoli Books (Dad would have spent hours in there) and dodging raindrops when we pass by what used to be a typical sight in New York - people being outrageous. This has nothing to do with Dad and everything to do with just wanting to get a picture of the fabulousness. I ask to take his picture, he consents, I tell him I'm a New Yorker and he says "well, then definitely yes, then!"















3:30 We arrive at the newly renovated Museum of Art and Design (MAD) on Columbus Circle. Back as a kid I read Harvey Comics (the ones I would file away in the metal filing cabinet drawer that dad gave me) which had a Columbus Circle address but by the time I moved to the city, they'd moved their offices to Florida and Columbus Circle was a dreary muddle of outdated buildings.





Over the past 15 years I've seen in evolve into one of the most spectacular parts of town and the renovation of the building that now houses the Museum is the final touch.


Back three years ago when I recovered from a crippling relationship, the fountains in the roundabout in Columbus Circle had just opened up and Somehow they spoke to me and I would go there and sit and enjoy the calm (in the midst of cars .. I know, strange).


Perhaps appropriately, MAD's premiere exhibit features objects given a second chance - forks made into a vortex, spools of thread creating a picture of the Mona Lisa, vinyl records shaped into butterflys and so on. One ooohing and aahhing piece after another topped by the opportunity to watch artists create pieces for the exhibit. The staff is still a little rushed (they just opened a month ago) but the museum is a must stop for museum lovers.

4:30 Our feet are tired and we're a little cranky and so we subway back to Chelsea and top off the day with a pizza but pretty damn excellant at Roccos on 7th Ave.


5:30 Between the cookies and the pizza, this has been a pretty food filled day but we head to Baskin Robbins anyway. Dad, mom and I would often have dinner at Shakey's pizza joint followed by ice cream at Howard Johnson's, but neither exist in New York (do either even exist at all anymore?) so we got the next best thing. But BR is cleaning their ice cream vats and so we're out of luck but given everything that we've done already, I'm good.



Yeah, I think Dad would need a lay down on the couch with NPR on at this point and I think it's pretty much what I'm going to do as well.