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!

Lazy Friday post: or, this is just fun to watch

Big Friggin Announcement

Hello, loyal fans. Many of you think of me as a close friend, a confidant, perhaps a sex object. And those of you who don't know me personally certainly think of me as a bringer of news, a blogger, a paranoid whack job. Well, here's a new title for you to put by my name in your brain books' margins:

Writer.

Real, serious, honest-to-god-is-getting-somewhere Writer. I don't know if you all know this, but there's no time like the present to come out with it: I've been writing about sex and pornography for several publications and for my own book project for almost two years now, and it gets weird. Being a practical, if not radical, feminist, an intelligent, career-minded woman, and a porn writer all at once can be surreal and sometimes even difficult. But, as a writer, the money is what matters. And so is the chance to turn my experiences into a column or a book, that would maybe someday turn me into a capital-W Writer.

That day has come.

I have just landed, in no uncertain terms, a column at McSweeney's Internet Tendency. They announced it. McSweeney's is a great website, but also a prominent publisher of books by notable authors, including (I can't help it, I've gotta name drop here) Dave Eggers. And they LIKE ME! Gah!

I'll be publishing, starting sometime between now and mid-October, two columns a month for them on the subject of being a sex writer and a woman, and the issues/weirdness/hilarity that goes along with it.

I waited a few days to post this announcement because, honestly, when I got the initial e-mail I was at first too excited to type anything. I literally slammed my hands on my desk, got up and jumped up and down for a good minute, then danced around and tried to get my heart rate down to a safe level. For the next two days I convinced myself that I'd dreamed it and that it was, in fact, too good to be true.

But now it's online. And as we all know, once it's online, it's forever.

As for how this development will affect my blogging on this here site, I can't say just yet. This fall is going to be a big lurch forward for me as far as the amount of material I have to produce each month, and along with my many other projects, my blogging could be taken back a notch. We'll have to see what happens. In the meantime, I'm gonna just bask in my Writerliness. Is that a word? Hah! Who cares? I'm a Writer! I just MADE it one!

(PS - Also just got word that an anthology featuring a story of mine, which was supposed to be released in April originally, is finally finished. A buy online link with more info should be available soon. I'll post it when it is. GOD, I'm on FIYAH!)

For Jenelle

Prepare to go on a trip, whether you've eaten drugs or not!

Good Things Should Never End.

The great mosquito conspiracy: or, I am really itchy...

The mosquitos are in league with somebody, folks. Some force of evil out there has caught on to my prophesying and has hired a force of mosquitos to hunt me down and persecute me mercilessly for trying to warn the masses about their plans to kill off humanity. It might be the slime molds; in their multi-species proclivities and doom-mongering depravity, they would seem to be rather well disposed toward going into cahoots with a group of blood-sucking, still-water-loving jerk-offs like mosquitos. But then again, it could be the robots, because they know it'd seem unlikely for them to team up with any organic life form and therefore I might not catch on to their little scheme. Or, god help us, maybe it's the slime-mold robot! God, I hate that guy.

Anyway, the point is, I'm wise to their game, whoever it is that's overseeing it. I'm no dummy. I know the difference between the acceptable number of bites I can expect to get in an evening of sitting outdoors in the city. For me, the number is higher than it is for many, since I've always been a mosquito magnet, but it hovers somewhere around 3. 10, however, is unacceptable, abnormal, and extremely f-ing uncomfortable. Especially given that on the night in question, during which said 10 bites appeared, I was with a group of at least 6 people at all times, none of whom have told me they are suffering from a single bite. Furthermore, for much of the time in question, I was seated in a beer garden the size of a football field, surrounded by hundreds of other people. There is no way that my 10 bites are proportionate.

And, yes, I know it's been a wet summer, leaving more than the typical amount of standing water sitting around in the city and leading to a lot more mosquitos than there usually are in the urban colossus. I know this. But even my usual high level of attractiveness to vampiric bugs, multiplied by the above-average number of the little monsters hanging about, still does not equal the overwhelming number and intensity of bites I'm trying to cope with in this hot weather. It's just not mathematically correct (yes I've done the math, but it's way too complicated to post up here. Most brains just can't handle it.). These bloodthirsty cretins are after me, specifically. I'm certain of it.

I know it sounds paranoid. I was thinking maybe it was. So last night I put my theory to the test and took a chance on walking outside in a friend's backyard to see his tomato plants. It was around 11:00, and we stood out in the garden for less than 2 minutes. When I went back inside, I told myself that if I didn't have any mosquito bites, I'd let the mosquito-robot/slime mold theory go. If the bastards aren't really out to get me, I'd be unlikely to get a bite in such a small amount of time.

Well. When I walked back in and looked down at my knee, there was a mother-f-ing mosquito ON IT, sucking out my lifeblood. 2 minutes, people. 2 minutes of outdoor activity (during which I was constantly swatting the air, running my hands over my limbs, etc, in pre-emptive fear of blood-letting), and I was already a banquet.

That's it, you bastards. I'm on to your game. You will NOT drain me to the point of hospitalization, thereby shutting down my warnings about your plans for world domination and doom! I will not leave my readers in the lurch of your evil scheming! Anopheles quadrimaculatus, you, your gang of buddies, and your robot/slime mold employers will not bring me down!

I bought some bug spray, dammit. And I'm using it every time I step out the door. For all your scheming, mosquitos, you're pretty easy to repel with storebought spray. So take that and shove it up your proboscus! I'm armed and ready. Bring it.


(Post Script: I figured all this out last night and am now carrying my bug spray in my purse, displayed prominently near the top to warn the suckers that I'm not afraid to fight back. Well, whoever it is that hired the mosquitos to track me is apparently on top of things. This morning, at the 59th and Lex stop, I got literally attacked by a COCKROACH. They're bringing in the big guns. I was walking toward the staircase to the street, and a cockroach the size of my big toe suddenly came running at me--me, specifically, out of the entire crowd of people!--from across the stairwell. Well, screw you guys. I can carry Raid around, too, if you want.)

The underutilization of English majors: or, how I plan to make a living...

Well. I have not been posting much lately, and I do apologize. I've been going through an intense period of thinking about my writing as per its career aspects, and where I'd like to consciously take it from here. It's been quite overwhelming and stressful, and I've been pretty busy to boot.
But I think something is afoot. Last week I purchased a new computer, which will arrive in a day or two and hopefully make my life as a would-be writer easier (the one I have now will no longer work unless hooked up in just-such-a-way to one single socket in my apartment and no other, nor will it connect to the internet, no matter what type of connection I try to establish; its Graphics driver has stopped working, and I think it basically just wants to die, so I'm letting it), I'm embarking on several new projects (co-producing, casting, story editing, and generally helping a friend with his awesome webisode, taking night classes in Illustration and publishing starting in a few weeks, and working with a musician on an album), and... oh my god, you guys... I just accepted a year-long, once-a-month column at McSweeney's Internet Tendency!!! AAAAHHHH!! I'm a writer!! Holy crap!!!

!!!!Exclamation points!!!!


...ok. Now that that's over with. There's a reason I'm exposing you all to my own self-congratulatory festival. Namely that, with all these projects and classes going on, I'm looking at my schedule and thinking: "This is nuts. How am I ever going to make time for all this without going crazy?" And, of course, since I'm at work, my brain is giving me sneaky answers like: "You're probably going to have to quit your full-time gig at the gallery." Which, my other, less sneaky, brain answers with: "That's ludicrous. How could we ever pay our bills?"

To which my third, more rational yet also creative and fun brain, answers: "Work the English major angle."

Ok, I know some of you are probably snorting with laughter at that. "What English major angle?" you're giggling. "That's no angle at all!"

And it would seem you'd be right.

But think about this. When's the last time you walked down the street, drove down the road, or even sat down at a restaurant without seeing a grievous error in spelling, grammar, or punctuation? I might see these errors more often than others because I live in a predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood, but I'm sure many of you share my annoyance when you're handed a menu at a decent dining establishment and find an option like "Chicken Brest" or "Sasoned Rice." It's infuriating to me because I'm trained to notice things like that, and I would imagine it's mildly annoying to other people; but more importantly, it hurts a business when the people who write the signage and menus are made to look like fools to their clientele, or to anyone else who can read. Websites are even worse; I don't really even want to talk about the horrific crimes committed against the English language on the Web. But, suffice it to say...

That's where I think English majors should come in. Like many other people these days, English majors are hurting for cash and jobs, but unlike many other demographics, for English majors this is almost always the case. We're the slightly more academic Art Historians of the modern world; we have lots of practical knowledge but rarely find good ways in which to use it. Why not mobilize against the forces of stupidity? Why not take arms against a sea of idiocy, and by opposing, end it?

I think, if in my frantic writing/singing/running about this fall, I should lose my full-time job, I would march directly from the gallery over to Staples and have 250 business cards with my name and number and the words "English Major for Hire. Will proofread, edit, and correct any and all signage, menus, and online text."

I'd then go around to every business I could find and drop off my card. Simple. You pay me a very small amount, I fix your language problems. My fees would be modest. $5 for all your signs. $10 for signs and over-the-counter menus. $20 for paper menus. Maybe $.05 a word or something websites, maybe less (haven't done the math to see if that makes sense). It would benefit everyone: the business and its employees would look smarter, which would draw more clients, and the general public would be exposed to less bad English, thereby reinforcing good English.

Soon enough, we'd have a movement. English majors being paid for what they're good at anyway, making some money to pay the bills, and feeling good about their decision in college. More people knowing how to spell and use punctuation. It'd be a happier, better world.

Now, I know I'm too busy right now to start this revolution, but who knows what might happen in the next few months? If I do get kicked out of this high-falutin' gallery anytime soon, I'll start it myself. And if not: English majors, I urge you to unite! Help your less-educated neighbors learn how to spell! Become a positive force in your society! I emplore you! Please, for the sake of the Chicken Brest with Sasoned Rice.

Why I hate Abercrombie: or, gagging and coughing on my way to work.

I have about had it with the goddamn Abercrombie and Fitch flagship store, guys. It's bad enough that people--excuse me, not just people, but midtown tourists, on whom I love to lavish contempt because I'm a New Yorker and they're not, and because they clog up the sidewalk with their slow-ass walking and sudden stops in the middle of a crowded corner and cause me to almost lose my balance as I swerve out around them daily on my hurried route to and from work--line up literally around the block to get in all day every day. And it's obnoxious enough that the reason they line up for the overpriced and not-all-that-cool merchandise inside is because they post a shirtless beefcake in the store to chat with the ladies and get his picture taken. Seriously. See the above picture. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to beefcakes, and I certainly don't want to give the impression that the sight of a hot piece of manflesh doesn't get me excited, but when it's being blatantly used as a ploy to get me into a store, that kind of makes me angry. From the perspective of someone who hates to see anyone's sexuality being blatantly abused to sell stuff, it's just kind of gross.

But if those were the only obnoxious things about the store I probably wouldn't mind so much. It's the fact that apparently the lines that beefcake draws are not enough for them. Whoring out a man's body is not enough for them. Oh no. They can't stop there: they also pump the scent of their godawful cologne out of all their doors in clouds so thick that I literally cannot walk through them without gagging. It makes the entire corner of 56th and 5th reek at all hours of the day. I can't figure out how the tourists can sit/stand/lounge around for the hours they typically do waiting to get in without passing out from lack of oxygen. No, I am not exaggerating. It is really that bad. And the cologne in question is AWFUL. It's like Preferred Stock mixed with lead or something. It smells like metal and fakery and is completely unsexy. And they pump it out into the already-polluted Manhattan air like it's a tonic for what ails people.

I guess maybe the idea is that the scent of the collogne, when combined with the lure of the hunk of man-meat inside the store, will inspire in women an overwhelming pseudo-sexual urge to go inside the store and buy things. On a social acceptability level, I guess this works. There are people lined up out there all the time. But, really, it's a bad plan: researchers in Chicago have found that the smell of men's cologne actually reduces blood flow to the vagina (no blood flow, no arousal).

Take that, Abercrombie.

Sorry to those of you not at Literary Death Match on Thursday...

For those of you who weren't there, just check this out:
Bobby McFerrin Plays the Audience



And for those of you who were at Lit. Death Match, or who care to read some rambling pseudo-poetry-cum-argument, here you go:



On the abstract use of language in poetry:
or, why Abraham Smith deserved to win Literary Death Match #16.


To use words aesthetically, he says,
is unacceptable.
The universally recognized meaning therein predisposes
the free flow of sound to strike the listener
or reader
as confusing. As nonsense.
To use words as nothing more than aural blocks in a polyphonic structure,
to deny their universal subjectivity,
is to set oneself up for failure.
The audience will be baffled, annoyed.
Words have meaning, he said.
One cannot use them so.

Banana.
Delivery truck.
Deer, swallow, rotator cuff.

Doesn’t work, he says.
Should be illegal.

But I must then ponder the meaning of poetry as Art
in its most specific Platonic form.
Poetry as a vehicle,
--a delivery truck--
with which to bring up, display, impart
an idea.
Simple enough.
But how to transmit this idea
from the ether to the eye?
Therein lies the dilemma, the argument, the very breast meat.
The Art.

It must be said that language,
the most baldly literal medium for such a transmission
from ether to other,
surely muddles abstraction.
How can one submit as mixed media
a collection of letters, which, to every eye and ear,
unfailingly signifies a concept—perhaps not identical but nevertheless uniform?
Deer is not a series of sounds,
he would argue,
but as literal a form as the human figure in oils,
brought about by phonics and working as its own agent in
a pre-existing paradigm separate from its aesthetic parts,
and, therefore, unacceptable as abstract form or media.

But I say (for the sake of argument only,
for I do not enjoy an more than he does the experience
of being shouted at by some wheezing Alabaman poet
jerking and twitching on stage to the sound of his own
fiddle-like voice, deeply involved in the tones and arcs of his musicality,
“Tick, bladder, bucket, kitten-sack!”)
But nonetheless...

…nonetheless, (for this idea is itself such a one as must be transmitted)
I must argue
that the finest and tightest-held hope
of artists, the dearest ideal of Art,
is that of the ineffable spirit who can wield the idea, the concept, the Point of It All,
so powerfully, flawlessly,
using whatsoever he will to transmute his idea from the ether to the observer,
and still, against all odds, be understood.
He makes Art.

To transcend the paradigms inherent in the medium one has chosen,
to showcase, whether it be via such an easily and perhaps even cop-out-edly accessible
form as the human figure or, in this case,
the vagaries of the English language and its tonality, consonant-laden ends and nonsense grammatical structures,
the idea, pure and shining and pinhead-small
against the black velvet backdrop of the void,
and to force into the materials at hand the meaning therein…
That, right there, is Art.

Surely we must—those of us with the desire to create, at least, who
fling ourselves into that dark shadow of predefined mindsets,
screaming desperately at nothing—
concede that words can be whatever we ask of them
if we have but the power or the genius or the tenacity or the obliviousness
to try and fail and try again to make them something other than their signifieds.
And surely those who can do so, or who dare even make the attempt,
are such folks as we can only respect and vaguely wonder at,
minds, like jaws,
agape.

I must then write it, though it pains my practicality:

Deer. Deer. Swallow.

Some Dudes are A-Holes: Exhibit C

The other day I went to the grocery store on my way home and then proceeded to walk down Melrose avenue, weighed down by my purse and several bags, hot and sticky and feeling full of malicious contempt for everything around me, when I walked by two guys in the middle of a conversation on the corner near my house.

They were young and, one would think, had stuff to do or at least to talk about. But when I walkd by, one of them stopped talking in the middle of the conversation and made a kissy face at me, complete with lip-smacking noises.

Dumbfounded by this audacious display of uncouthe stupidity, I ignored him and kept walking. He paused for a moment, then turned to follow me with his face, and started up again with the kissy face and noises. This continued until I had crossed the street and turned the corner.

I just... I can't imagine in what world that seemed like a good idea to him. Did he think I would throw myself into his arms shouting "I love it when men make ridiculous faces at me and demean me publicly!"? Or was he just trying to be an A-hole? Cause he sure succeeded in that endeavor. But the issue I have with this idea is that as far as I can tell, the point of making fun of or otherwise demeaning another person is to make oneself look comparatively better. But this guy was standing on a street corner puffing up his face like a fish and making stupid noises. I fail to see how that gives him the upper hand, or, alternately, sex appeal.

I'm befuddled.

But also, dude was being an A-hole.

Some Dudes are A-Holes: exhibit B

So on Tuesday I was sitting here, as I am now, at the desk at the gallery, no doubt working on something VERY important. (That's how I roll. I look like I'm just surfing the internet but I'm actually almost always working on one project or another of my own. And they're important. Top secret stuff. You wouldn't understand.) It was mid-afternoon, the time of day when my mood invariably takes a sudden turn. Sometimes it's into the realm of indiscriminate randiness, when I can't stop thinking about sex for an hour at a time. Sometimes it's laziness, which in turn inspires drool-inducing, mind-numbing, ripping-my-own-hair out boredom so profound I can't even come up with any ideas for things to do. And sometimes, particularly this week when I've had a bunch of deadlines and projects to work on and lots of things on the agenda, it's hysterical, headache-causing stress, which in its turn morphs into annoyance and very near explosive bouts of temper every time the phone rings.

On Tuesday, it was stress/anger. I was trying to keep myself under control to avoid head-explody (nobody wants brains on the artwork, after all), when a middle aged gentleman in khakis, a very very bright orange polo shirt, and black suspenders walked in. The outfit in itself was warning of a really annoyingly unselfconscious geek of a human being, but to add insult to injury he was carrying a gigantic camera in a case strapped around his neck.

He walked right up to me, blinking behind his thick glasses, and said, in a nasal and wheezing voice, "Excuse me, I hate to bother you," --PS, when people come into a retail establishment and say this to the person at the desk, they ALWAYS, very definitely DO mean to bother you-- "but could I ask if I have permission to take some flash photographs of the beautiful sculptures downstairs in the entryway to the building? The flash isn't very bright, but there is a flash on it, but I just thought those sculptures were so beautiful, and..."

"Yes," I cut him off. "Those sculptures are open to public view and as such they can be photographed. People take pictures of them all the time."

"Oh, well that's good," he started up again. "I always like to get permission before I take photographs of any artwork because sometimes, if you don't and you start to take pictures, then the man at the desk in the lobby will come and tap you and say, 'You can't do that.' So I always come in to ask permission first, and I was just out to lunch nearby and saw a way to get from 56th to 57th near your building so I walked through and there were these beautiful sculptures and I thought, 'I should ask if I have permission to photograph these wonderful artworks'..."

He just kind of kept going like that for a while. He talked as if everything were one long sentence, jam-packed with fuckery. While he was going through his laundry list of inane prattle, the phone ran several times, a few other people walked by and spoke to me, and he just kept going. I went back to whatever I'd been doing on my computer, even, and he kept right on. Eventually he did seem to pick up on the fact that I wasn't listening, and then leaned in: "May I have permission to take a look around this lovely gallery, then, before I leave?"

I'm sure I shot him a "please go fuck yourself and/or die" look, but I said as politely as possible, "Yes, go ahead. We don't permit any photographs in the gallery, however."

"Oh, no, of course not, I wouldn't want to..." he started talking as he walked away. For all I know, or care, he could have been talking to himself the entire time he spent walking around the gallery.

He was admiring the lovely artworks for a good 20 minutes before meandering back my way, at which point he IMMEDIATELY started up with the boring chatter. I was astounded. This happens from time to time at my job, it's nothing new that somebody decided I was to be their next victim in a long line of serial attacks of drivel, but I'm always amazed by them. I mean, are these people really just lonely and possessed of a smidgen of acumen which tells them that above all other people in the universe, gallery receptionists are helpless to get away from them? Or do they do this to everyone? I get images of them sitting in busy restaurants, telling the waitstaff in great detail about the spices they uses on their own tilapia at home, while food goes cold at the order-up window and other customers wait impatiently for service.

This time, dude was telling me about how he comes from a family of artists; his sister is an artist and his aunts are artists; his daughters are artists; except the one daughter who started out in a program for studio art in college but then switched to English; but she produced some really great pieces that friends are constantly praising; he thinks someday she'll go back to art; because there is no reason to do just one thing; we can choose what we do...

In the middle of his slowly unspooling yarn of crap, the phone rang several times in a row and I was able to stay on the phone just long enough for him to lose interest. He thanked me and then walked away. I heard him press the button for the elevator, and in a spirit of profound thankfulness, I finished my calls and hung up.

Well, he HEARD me hang up. And to him that meant I was fair game for a lecture on mental handicapped-ness, from someone afflicted by it. And that bastard turned right around, just as the elevator was opening for him, and walked BACK to my desk!! He immediately launched into a story about how his English major daughter had made a painting when she was 2 and 1/2 and they'd framed it and given it to his parents, and those parents invited some art experts over for dinner, and the art experts thought that the painting was very good, and it was just so funny because it had been done by a 2 and 1/2 year old. And he just always really resonds viscerally to art even though he's no expert; he just sees things and likes them; and he's kind of an artist too; he's from an artistic family, you know; he takes photographs of art, flash photographs, with not a very bright flash, and his relatives have all said that his photographs are very good...

Seriously, this went on for a good ten minutes more. My co-workers kept walking past the desk and just leaving me out to dry for this ass-hattery. He wouldn't go away. Let me tell you, when I'm in the depths of a stressed-and-angry bout, this kind of situation makes me virtually shake with suppressed rage. I was ready to knock his block off but had to keep myself in check because I was, after all, at work.

I suppose he either lost interest, or I just began so blatantly ignoring him that he got bored, and wandered off, out into the July heat, to wear the nerves of more helpless gallery workers down to their very thinnest and last wire.

Dude was an A-hole.