Musings: or, New York is a relaly weird place...

So today I was thinking about how I haven't seen that many interesting New York things lately. I like reporting on weird people and happenings, but nothing has stuck out in my memory lately as being particularly weird or funny. New York seems to have grown lethargic in the heat.

But then I realized I was just being stupid. It's New York. It's summer. Weird stuff is happening all over the place. I've just been so wrapped up in the craziness happening in my life that I wasn't paying enough attention to the following things I've seen over the past few weeks:

1) A man walking a miniature long-haired Dachsund and a Great Dane at the same time. This spectacle was so hilarious that I reached for my camera phone but didn't get it out in time to snap a picture. Trust me, it would have convinced you once and for all that if an alien landed somewhere and saw these two dogs sitting next to each other, it would have no idea they were of the same species.

2) A man in a wheelchair pulling himself along with his very-much-working feet, at 1:00 am in Harlem.

3) A man in a wheelchair with an American flag sticking up off of it and who was missing one leg, which was apparently being replaced by a traffic cone.

4) An old man passed out asleep on a bench in Astoria in 85 degree heat... first at 6:00 pm, when I walked by on my way to my friend's, and again at 7:30 pm, when I walked by again, on my way to the bus. How he could have stayed asleep in that position for that long, I have no idea.

5) Barbara Walters, who was crossing Madison Ave this morning as I was going the other way, on my way to work. Or, if it wasn't her, she could have been a body double.

6) A man dressed all in purple, with a purple wig, playing a purple saxophone in the subway.

7) A woman wearing spotless new dark blue jeans, a bright yellow and immaculately clean fleece shirt, and with a fresh French manicure, begging for change in the subway because she was reportedly "broke" and trying to get food for her family. Ain't nothing 'broke' about your manicure, honey.

I'm sure there are others, but they've slipped my mind at the moment. All told, though, I guess my past few weeks haven't been so ho-hum as I thought.

With that, I'm off to spend a week hiding out in Pennsyvlania and working my butt off on my new column, some interviews for a new publication I'm working on, and so on and so forth. I will also be feasting on fresh corn from the fields, whoopie pies, ham and bean soup, chicken corn soup, and tomatoes straight out of the garden. Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Back to the city

Well, I'm back in the city after five glorious days of laying around with friends, chasing Libby's children around, drinking, eating, and generally loving having more than a foot of space on every side of me NOT filled with some smelly person or garbage. It was glorious.

I got back to the city on Tuesday night and immediately felt the full weight of the next few weeks settling on my frail, frail, sore-from-boogey-boarding shoulders. I realized while in North Carolina (ie, the South) that I have way too much going on in my life. Too many social engagements, projects, plans, etc, and that I really really need to work on just slowing down, taking things day by day, and making sure I have some time off every now and then to decompress. But when I looked at my planner I realized that I have maybe three days in the next month that aren't already booked. And, well, that was not good. Cause I have a lot of things I want to do in my own time, for myself, by myself, that just can't happen when I'm so busy, even if I'm busy doing fun things with friends.

So, on Wednesday night I had a little bit of a meltdown. And by little bit I mean, of course, giant calamitous fit of neurosis. I accomplished nothing and started crying at the mere idea of folding laundry. It was bad.

But, the next day, on my way home, I walked by the H&M on the corner of 59th and Lexington, and out of the corner of my eye I recognized my friend Tom Napak from college staring at me in black and white from the store window. "Whaaaat?" I said, and whirled around. Yup, there he was, in all his uber-sexy glory with band-mate Tom Furey (the two of them make up Dangerous Muse), advertising their super-awesome Fashion Against AIDS shirts!! I flipped out, took a bunch of pictures on my phone, and immediately texted Tom to say congratulations.

I just got back from the H&M on 5th and 52nd, where Dangerous Muse is in the window as well. They're so sexy that their picture is hanging in more windows than Dita Von Teese, Cindi Lauper, and Katy Perry, just to name a few. Yeah. THAT sexy. Anyway, I bought a shirt - SO cute! The girl shirts are yellow and have a purple design of male and female condoms shaped into a heart! When you purchase a shirt, 25% of the retail price ($16.90 for girls, $14.90 for boys shirts) goes to HIV/AIDS awareness projects. And you get to look super awesome and chic and support the awesomeness that is Tom. Check it out. http://www.hm.com/us/#/faa2009/

So, I'm feeling better. Hell, if Tom can be in the window of H&M, I can damn well get some writing done and have time to paint, too. I'll figure it out. But I may have to lock down the old schedule for a while and say no to al ot of invites in order to get my sanity back.

Ta!

See you later, alligator(s).

I'm going to New Orleans. I'm sorry I've been missing posts, but the past week has been a little, well, insane, and now I am going on a short trip for my BIRTHDAY! So I'll try to get up to speed next week, and till then: See you later, suckaaaas!

Two posts in one!

Ok, the most important issue of the day today, obviously, is:

1) IT'S DAVID BOWIE'S BIRTHDAY!! He is 62 years old. As most of you probably know, I have a serious obsession with the man. I can't explain why or how it developed, but I think it has something to do with my love of the movie Labyrinth from a very early age, which introduced me to his sparkly nature, his awesomely sexy accent, and the gigantic... er... talent... that is displayed when he wears very tight pants. As I got older I started to listen to his music and realized that he does indeed rock my world in every possible way. The man has been ten years ahead of the curve musically since the late sixties, pioneered the glam rock movement, and I'm pretty sure actually is an alien living among us. He married supermodel Iman, who I think is also an alien, and their super-perfect babies will rule the earth someday, I'm sure.

He is older than my parents. But I would still say yes if he asked me to marry him, or spend the night with him, or let him eat sushi off my body, or... well... anything. That would be after I either wet myself or just made a fool of myself generally by blathering stupidly about the weather for twenty minutes or some-such, just because he had spoken to me. Yes, I may have a problem, but at least I am honest about it.

So, everyone, please go home tonight and listen to your favorite Bowie song, and lift a glass to the man that has had more influence on modern music than most of us realize, who was sexy enough to be probably the only man ever caught naked in bed with Mick Jagger, who can wear tights and sparkly eye makeup and still be sexy, and who could probably turn you into a bowl full of jelly with one piercing, two-toned look from his creepy/sexy eyes, and who, weirdly enough, has not yet made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Madonna has, and although I like Madonna, I think she should have told them she refused to accept her spot there until they put him in. Cause, I mean, she'd be nowhere without him... But that's another blog.)


2) And the second thing I want to bring up here is not quite as important to me at the moment, but will probably be a bigger eveny than Bowie's 62nd birthday in the long run. The iPod people will soon market the iBreath. A breathalyzer for your iPod. (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-idrunk19-2008dec19,0,3073178.story)
This seems like a good idea on a very, very altruistic level. The guy who thought up the idea, Don Bassler, calls it a safety device that "may save lives." He told the LA times that "the hope is that the iPod's cool factor will take away some of the stigma of acting responsibly and using a breathalyzer," which is all well and good. But...

Well...

Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who uses iPods the most? Who are the most tech-savvy people out there? What group of people finds out about new gadgets and must have them as soon as possible? And who goes to parties and follows peer pressure to drink heavily to the point of critical intoxication? Who are generally inexperienced and naive enough to think that they can handle anything and that nothing bad can ever happen to them? The answer to all these questions is the same: image-conscious high school and college students who have lots of their parents' money to spend.

Given what we know about the implied target demographic for the iBreath, then, what is the likelihood of that demographic using this device for good instead of for getting as wasted as possible? Sure, there will undoubtedly be a few responsible honor students out there who keep the iBreath safely in their pockets or by their steering wheels, but the majority of drunken high school and college students I've known in my day would be much, MUCH more likely to sit in a circle chugging jungle juice and seeing who can blow the highest reading before passing out, vomiting, or having their stomachs pumped. (For an in-depth description of the evils of hand-held breathalyzer devices in the past, please refer to Tucker Maxx and his "Famous Sushi Pants" story: http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/the_famous_sushi_pants_story.phtml)

Thank goodness others have followed the same reasoning as myself: "Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she worried that young people would use the breathalyzer for drinking games." I'm not alone in my fears, then, but when was the last time that MADD actually had an effect on the youth drinking culture?

All I can say is, I'm worried, people. As if the iPod and the iPhone weren't already sinister first waves of a frightening trend away from human interaction and the use of the brain that will inevitably lead to our downfall when robots take over the world with their superior ability to follow orders unscrupulously and their inability to make errors (so what if I'm conservative about technology?), now we're all going to become DRUNKEN drooling morons who can't leave the house without being plugged in to fifteen gadgets. We're making ourselves easier targets for the robots here, people.

That is, of course, unless we allow the Bowie Alien Child to rule us all, in which case I'm sure we'll be in good hands. Judging from the formidable might of the Bowie-Iman alliance already, their offspring will probably have the necessary technology and genius, and of course the sparkles, necessary to defeat the robots.

Oh my GOD. I just re-read what I've been writing. I'll stop now.

(PS - Post-Christmas musings.)

I know I was a crazy mess of nerves before Christmas, and to some degree I probably still am. See, I love buying things for people. I LOVE it. I am the kind of person that will spend hours in a flea market, pawing through every bit of rubble to find the PERFECT gift for each person. Throughout the year I make notes to myself when I discover something that someone would like, but that I have no excuse to give to them until the holidays. So I wait and I wait and I wait all year until the season is upon us, and then I go absolutely wild in an orgy of spending that leaves me bankrupt for months, for which I reproach myself until June, at which point I start looking for gifts again.

So, I can understand people who go a little crazy from holiday stress. I understand it. This year I was so out of control with stress that I literally got sick as soon as I was done opening my gifts. My body said, "Oh my god we MADE IT! Time to crash!" and I spent the rest of the day bitching and griping and laying on the couch. It was kind of nice.

But be all that as it may, some people's Navidad Nervous Breakdowns were far too publicly on display this morning when I got my grumpy ass out of bed to come the most pointless day of receptionist work at an art gallery - EVER. (But that's a whole different set of gripes...)

First thing that happened when I left the house was that I noticed the overwhelming amount of animal feces on the sidewalks. Normally there's a bit here and there, but most owners are respectful enough to pick up after their pets. Apparently not on Christmas. Too important to get back to the eggnog.

So I stepped carefully through poos of all sizes toward the train. As I came around the corner by the Duane Read drug store, I saw an elderly woman who had her hand on the door as if she were about to go in. At the last minute she turned around and looked right at me. I smiled, and when she realized she had my attention, she flicked her head toward 3rd Avenue with the cars going by on it, and said, "My GOD, are they turning it into a HIGHWAY?" I looked at the road. 3rd Avenue is pretty big - two lanes each way with a left-hand turning lane at the big intersections, and there were some cars moving around, but... It's 3rd Avenue. In the Bronx. There are stoplights EVERYWHERE. I looked back at her and said, "What?" Her eyes were huge. "It looks like they're going to turn it into a HIGHWAY!" she said, staring at me as if I would know. I guess I WAS walking down the street. And I WAS in a coat. So OF COURSE I'm now the local traffic maven. WTF? I just told her I didn't know, and kept walking.

When I got to the train station I walked toward my usual waiting spot right between the two benches, but then turned immediately and walked back toward the center station, because there was a man sitting on one of the benches who was being straight up, balls to the wall, batshit crazy. Luckily for me, my train came pretty quickly, so I wasn't around for the full showcase, but during the minute or so I was there, I saw him gesticulating wildly and screaming, throwing his hands in the air and laughing maniacally, and making some sort of noise that could have been an owl hoot or a song. Not sure. Wow.

So when the train came I stepped in and found myself face to face with an older white man whose eyes were almost popping out of his skull because he was staring at me so intensely. I sat far away from him.

Once off the train, I made it to work with minimal crazy, if you don't count listening to a native New York African American lady cop trying to give directions to completely non-English speaking Eastern European tourists. I thought I'd had my share of insanity for the day.

Wrong! Aside from the fact that there are eleven of us here the day after Christmas, making us the ONLY gallery IN NEW YORK that is open today (I guess there are some poor desperate souls out there who might go into gallery shock and decide that they NEED ART NOW and it doesn't matter who it's by or what it's of or where they get it, THEY MUST HAVE IT, and if this happens then we will the only ones here to supply it to them, in which case this is a great idea), there was more crazy in the wings. A man came in at around eleven, said hello, and then walked back into the gallery. He looked at the art (I'm assuming, anyway) quietly for about ten minutes and then suddenly burst into hysterical, uncontrollable, very loud laughter. It was so over the top that at first I couldn't tell if he was laughing or hysterically crying, but either way I just kept thinking, "Oh my god, don't let him come here and talk to me because I do NOT want to deal with this. And please, please don't let him be pooping in the corner!" Eventually he walkd out, still chuckling to himself. He was not on a cell phone. There is no comic art up in the gallery. I have no idea what was going on in his head.

So, as of this moment, I have 2 hours left till closing, at which point I am going to get on a train at Penn Station. Which, as many of you may know, is in fact where the crazy people in New York go to hang out. So. I'm hoping to make it to Pennsylvania to give out my hand-selected, awesome Christmas presents without first getting mauled by a lady who thinks she's a cheetah, or cornered by an overly hyper out of work mall Santa Claus. Wish me luck.

More Halloween musings, and a religious pamphlet I approve of!

Last night was Halloween. In case my rambling passage from yesterday passed you by. I'm not sure what exactly I was trying to say - obviously. But I was tired and annoyed at the day in general by the time I wrote it and wasn't thinking clearly enough to write anything worth reading. Still, I think there's a little nugget of truth in there somewhere if you dig for it.

Anyway, here I am, shamefully, at work the day after Halloween. I absolutely love Halloween and I wanted to be out till dawn last night, rocking out my fabulous Jessica Rabbit costume (still haven't come across a decent Maleficent costume I could afford... sigh...), then come in here today hung over enough to show what a blowout night I had. But alas, I was thwarted in my attempts at being ultra-NYC-party-fab-cool. By my shoes. As always. I don't know why I always seem to think I can get away with wearing ridiculous cheap shoes - they always kill me.
We stood out at the parade for an hour and a half, waiting for the Project Bueller ((http://projectbueller.tumblr.com/) float to go by, and by the time it passed and we had run after it, singing "Twist and Shout" and reveling in the fun, my feet were so sore that I had to hold on to Connor's arm to walk. So we ended up, rather than floating from bar to bar on the wings of our awesome costumed-ness, sitting barefoot on our friend's couch in Stuyvesant Town. Not that the party was lame or anything - it was actually a pretty great soiree- but I was definitely shut down by my shoes. Didn't want to go anywhere.

Why do I, and other women, keep doing this? Sure, my legs looked good in the 6-inch heels, and sure, they complimented my costume, but for God's sake, why did I think I would be ok to walk around in them all night without my body rebelling against the completely unnatural position into which they forced my body, and the loss of blood circulation they inflicted upon my toes? Why did I think a pair of $10 shoes from Danice in the Bronx would carry me around effectively all night? For that matter, why do we think the ridiculous shoes we buy, regardless of price, are ever a good idea? They are sometiems just as bad to our bodies and comfort level as foot binding was to Chinese women. They have become an implement of female torture in Western society, put into a positive light by the fact that they turn men on, and make women look oh so good. Popularized for women by Catherine de' Medici in the 1530's to increase stature and make one look fashionable, high heels have become a symbol of sex appeal in modern culture. Not only do they reek of sex, but women seem to have turned the logic of trying to attract men around, making the ability to walk confidently in stilletos and other crazy heels a matter of self-confidence and strength. Every day in midtown I see women walking around in five-inche stilleto boots and pant-suits; high-powered business women totter around in less-than-pencil-thin pumps, feeling fabulous because they think/know they look good and they can totally 'handle it.' And by 'it,' of course, I mean discomfort, difficulty balancing, and being forced to walk more slowly than normal in order to pay attention to where they place their feet. WHY?

The funny thing is - I'm ranting on and on about this, and I don't have an answer. Nor am I going to stop wearing heels. To be honest, I don't wear them nearly as often as many women, especially here in NYC, but I do have several pairs of 3-5 inch heels ranging from platform chunky versions to stilleto boots that I have to veer around subway grates and holes in the sidewalk in. And I will continue to wear them because... well... they make me feel awesome and sexy.
What can I do?


Also:
On my way into the subway this morning I was handed a religious pamphlet. Knowing I'd have a while to wait on the platform, I took one, thinking it would be a good laugh. But it was, surprisingly, well-written. And, bizarre-o faith language and fallacy-laden logic aside, it actually made some pretty good sense. It was about how salvation isn't a sure thing, and how even those who have been born again and who are very "good" practicing Christians must keep their eyes open and work at it to be sure they've been assured salvation. I don't really pretend to understand all the finer points of the reasoning in there, or the Scripture, or what have you, but I found no bad grammar, no misused punctuation, no nonsense sentences, no badly used words... In short, it was well written and appeared to have been edited by someone who knew what he or she was doing. There were a few standout sudden changes in point of view, but beyond that it was impeccably put to paper. I was cheered.

I am by no means a Christian, but I have no ill will toward the religion. It works well for some people, and like most other religions I think it's just one way of looking and experiencing the Great Mystery we all seek. And it's not a bad way to go. If you want, you can be an emotional Christian who falls down on your knees in passion and praises your God, or you can be an intellectual, ephemeral, philosophical Christian who uses very important and well-laid out theological texts for study and contemplation, or you can choose from any number of different paths to "salvation" between those two extremes. It's a wide open way of looking at life and what it means, and I think that's great. But I have read some pamphlets in my time that have turned the idea of being a Christian into this ultra-low-brow, horrendously conceived, and badly executed miraculous cure-all for all the ills of life. I have read misspelled words, grammar that a five year old should be able to correct, and arguments that simply made no sense, and I have grieved for Christians who seem to know what they're talking about relying on the skills of some hack who can hardly communicate what he wants for dinner, let alone the finer points of faith and religious dogma. It's just sad.

So Kudo's to Robert Lehigh, editor of "Bible Helps" pamphlets from Hanover, PA. I commend you.

Halloween

Somebody asked me today if Halloween is a real holiday since it's not a Federally observed day off work. I don't quite know the answer to that, and I am in the kind of mood that does not allow for research, but my response was something along the lines of: "Well it damn well should be. There are f***ing spirits walking the earth today! We should be allowed 24 hours of pure revelry!" My friend agreed with me in that same amused tone that people tend to use when I rhapsodize about ghost-hunting, haunted houses, mythology and Maleficent. They see my point of view on these things as mildly morbid and sort of cute, and they nod and smile while I go on about them.
But this is serious stuff, people. Halloween is one day during the crazy rushing around of the rest of the year when we are asked to think about the dead, and the spirits that accompany them and ourselves every day, as entities rather than ideas. We do not celebrate memories of those lost, we do not talk about some sort of historical or religious thing that happened long ago in a land far away, and we don't even have to get together with our families or have barbeques.
Halloween asks us to open ourselves up, using masks and costumes and revelry, to the possibility that there are other things walking amongst us, disguised as people just as we are disguised as whatever we choose. Halloween is a celebration of the fact that that which is usually unseen is nonetheless a part of our lives every day, moving us in ways we don't often recognize.
I don't know if on this day there is any more spirit activity in the world than on other days - hell, I don't even know what I mean, exactly, by "spirit activity." But it's an opportunity to think about what terms like "spirit activity" mean, and how much of it we believe in. We can admit to the possibility of things we ignore or deny every day, including the demented and twisted and morbid parts of ourselves that we turn off to appear "normal" most of the time.
I think that's why the idea of costumes appeals to me so much. I love to don a costume and go to a fabulous party, where real identities can be forgotten and one can let one's sense of self become liquid, fluid, nonexistent. We can let ourselvs forget the rigid walls we spent all day inside of, the restrictions we impose upon ourselves in our everyday life. Most people can't handle letting themselves go this way every day, even if they don't realize it. And most of us can't handle the ideas that Halloween allows us to explore about the supernatural in and outside of ourselves. But on Halloween we are allowed to do that, briefly. Why not take the opportunity, open ourselves up? Eat some candy? Admit to the possibility that maybe what we see isn't all there is?
So this year, for the sake of your sanity, let yourself go. Put on a costume and go out, and don't just wear it - become it. Let yourself be lost in the wildness, put on another identity, and for goodness' sake, go throw eggs at something! Go sit in a cemetary and dare yourself to take some pictures. Dance in the street. Get lost in a strange neighborhood. And keep your eyes open.