The clerks in Dwayne Reade look scared. The man was menacing looking and looked as if he was going for a gun. Shrugged and put his hands in the air.
Jesus Christ I can’t deal with 2008
He smiled and walked out.
Stumble it!
Voyeur in New York
Stumble it!
New York Voyeur
Shayna moved her blog again. I blogrolled her immediately–though the big T (technorati) didn’t pick it up, and I didn’t take out all her other blogs for I adore Shayna and the more Shayna the better. She imported the “Eugene” stories and they’re great.
Here’s a vocabulary test that can be very addictive. For each correct answer you donate a grain of rice to the UN. I had to stop before I spent all day doing it.
I know I find humor in the most stupid things but here are many many Google entries on “pour on the upper west side I don’t live on the pour floor. Though I live in the poor wing–the west wing is pricier.
Every two weeks I go out to breakfast or lunch with my favorite person, me. I would do it more often but forget how exciting lunch out with me can be.
Two weeks ago I was leaving Popover’s when I spotted an unusually handsome man, 60something a bit too much work but:
“When I was conducting Anthony Newley”
I think I know who I saw but I’m not really a celeb spotter. When I lived on East 63rd off Fifth I must have passed 100 famous people a day at least Used to say I could run into Woody Allen at a phone booth and not recognize him. Now of course neither of us would deem to use a phone booth even if our phones weren’t working–germs. Did recognize the diva of diva’s the horrible Diana Ross and the wondrous Jackie O.
Today I was having lunch at Fairway’s cafe. It’s a breath of sanity in an insane place. I wasn’t really listening to the conversation in the table behind me:
I don’t see how I can brand myself
You have the name
I don’t see it.
To many people Gael Green is more important than Martha Stewart.
I wanted to jump up and down. I wanted to say that I would make a donation to Meals on Wheels, her cause, if she would call my sister. Green isn’t just a great writer but somebody who helped define modern cuisine. To call her a foodie, a term I abhor, would be like calling Martha, a cook. I like Martha Stewart but Gael Green I love. I was in an awkward position, the next table up, and couldn’t get a great look at her but I think I know why she probably still does well under sheets.
This didn’t at all equal the first time I met Caroline Kennedy–when after being introduced to her, and she left the event, I ran out to call my mother, but….
I comforted myself by thinking that I will be back in New York often, not have constant responsibilities here, and will be able to finally celebrity watch.
My apartment should be on the market in two and a half weeks. Watch out New York, I’m selling.
I’m taking the time to make it triple mint as I was grossed out by apartments, and their owners, who didn’t make an effort when I bought. It is and isn’t for extra money. It’s pride in ownership. As the people working on it can only work in early morning and evening, it’s taking that long. Otherwise it would be ready by the end of the week.
The Times had an article on steep declines in housing sales. The New York City area declined 0.3% one month and 0.7% another month. Which is a polite way of saying that it’s declined by a percent. They didn’t separate out Manhattan. Hopefully….
My sister just called and said I missed the opportunity of a lifetime to say to Gael Green “yes, you appeal to me more than Martha,” as I jumped up and down. My sister’s sure I just missed my chance to have a book published. Love my family, I do.
Just let me enjoy, overhearing conversations while not being in people’s faces. Maybe I should have been. Maybe my entire problem is that I don’t take advantage of connections or run to make new ones. I have soap star friends. I know the last thing in the world they want is privacy. Yet I persist in a myth of my own making that people want privacy.
Maybe this was a private conversation that shouldn’t be blogged about. Then don’t talk in restaurants where the tables are almost on top of each other.
Stumble it!
Things to do on a perfect weather Labor Day
Wake up feeling more energetic than you have in days. Tell yourself it’s good that you missed Rafe’s barbecue. Immediately get stuffed nose and begin to cough.Revise the second half of the fourth chapter. For once you haven’t waited for the Wombat to point out that it needed something. Refuse to use 60’s jargon, except for one word, on the grounds that you always hated it and never used it. Especially that word. It isn’t groovy which is not as gross a word, but not a word you would use.
Write the reunion message for your high school class’s possible reunion. If nobody else goes you know five people who will. Make it funnier than any blog post you have ever written for several reasons:you thought these people hated you in high school when in reality you were Little Miss Snot. Now you’re BFF’s. __High School has been the theme of your year. You want people to see that while you might have been the first hippie in__and the most staunch anti-war person, you do have a sense of humor. Somewhere.
Blast music so that the sounds of construction, yes on Labor Day, will be muffled. Other buildings don’t have the strict rues your coop has. They believe a great time to begin drilling is 7:30 AM on a Sunday, but in the summer when people are supposed to be away. If you’re not away on a summer Sunday, obviously you deserve to be woken up to drilling.
Have several email threads going at once.
Do your monthly Google check, down from weekly, down from daily, down from once every three hours.
Be glad that you did a post about the truly stupid picture in The Daily News You did know you would find it. You just didn’t know it would be picked up by uh several cell technology newsletters.
Get a message on your computer: batteries in mouse critically low. Look to see if mouse is dirty. It isn’t. Open desk drawer. With your new efficient system you know you will find batteries—someday. Find checks you have been looking for.
Become hysterical for a second and open other drawer to look for passport you will need Saturday having misplaced your non-drivers license. Passport is in proper place. (This is how your mind works sober and not medicated.)
Remember that the new efficient you put batteries in a bedroom drawer because you change more batteries there.
Go through all your night table drawers. Go through bedroom dresser drawers. Prepare to be defeated and actually go to Duane Reade for new batteries.
Open top desk drawer once more. The batteries are in the near left corner as they were supposed to be. Wonder if your imaginary friends have become real.
Change batteries. Remember that both positives go toward the front. For the first time in your life change mouse batteries without incident. Actually you just have never remembered before that both positives….
Wonder if being efficient is a good thing or if takes too much time.
Though it’s not hot, your apartment is stifling and your nose is even more stuffed. Attempt to clean AC coils. Wash filters and front casing.
Try to finish a further chapter in your book. Stare at screen and wish a message would come on telling you to do something.
Wonder if you want to take a walk or will be angered by all the people returning from the summer. It’s not them personally you’re angry at but last week was the first time you were in New York in years it was somewhat deserted. You found three separate reason to walk across Central Park to the Upper East Side because it was truly empty, and very beautiful from all the rain.
Decide that when you come home from North Myrtle you will prep your apartment, get it appraised and rent a condo in North Myrtle so you never have to be here to mess the apartment up during the sale. Also you won’t meet the people until the closing so you can’t tell them every perceived defect.
Wonder: will you be able to afford this? Will you be to afford not to do it?
Feel stupid about reunion notice. Then remember this is you who braves stupidity every day or two to three times a week in this blog. You used to brave stupidity in two blogs constantly. If nothing else you’re a braving stupidity writing pro. Wonder if they give awards for that. Maybe you should start one.
NO YOUR FOCUS IS NO LONGER ON BLOGGING but braving stupidity in writing everywhere else.
Call assorted friends to see if they want to do dinner. Don’t leave messages. Nobody checks missed calls anymore. Well you don’t so you missed three important ones in the last several days. And a few not so important ones. Had you checked missed calls you would have had assorted friends to do dinner with. Wonder if you will ever get over the 80’s. Does anybody else say “do dinner?”
Remind yourself to check missed calls daily. Wonder if you will remember. Put posties on desktop and laptop.
Go into bedroom to read The Secret Lives of Bees This begins a big internal debate if you should wait until you’re in South Carolina to read a book that takes place there. Then debate moving to a state known for many things you’re not known for….Then you remember–townhouses, good prices, beaches. Truly nice people.
87 minutes until The Closer Much as you love Kyra Sedgwick, and you always have, will have to wait until 9:23 to miss the commercials.
Begin to get excited about the TV stations in Myrtle Beach. Love their commercials. Love the radio stations. Time Warner Cable experiments with new things in Myrtle Beach. You have always been an early adapter. Now you can be a pioneer adapter.
Put on winter robe over summer clothes. It’s worth freezing to get rid of the allergens in the air. Wonder if you’re living a worthy life. Remember the days you talked about your imaginary friends in your blog. You might bring them back as they do play an important role in your life. Toto does bark.
Stumble it!
I really don’t like Harry Potter
Overheard on the Upper West Side: Are you sure you’ll feel good enough to go out tomorrow? You sound windy. I have never heard “windy” used in that context and was left with endless thoughts on what it could be.
If you read me through Google reader or an RSS feed, I take posts down. I edit endlessly on occasion, usually when I have something much more pressing to do. They stay cached in Google. I don’t find myself to be endlessly fascinating. I probably take down the best posts. I’m also going through a “who cares what I think” period which is death for a blogger.
Who cares if I don’t think that Harry Potter or for that matter Oprah made the world read again? I can’t imagine life without books but I’m older and thus old fashioned.
It makes me sad that I want to write about how the whole Harry Potter thing is a crock, but feel I will be demonized That kids who like to read other genres are actually at a disadvantage because Harry is so stressed, fawned on and read.
Sara Gruen just got a five million dollar book contract because she relates well to animals and writes half decently.
Animals? We care more about pets than people. I have nothing against animals and hope to have some pets when I move.
I gave up on the Stephanie Plum books after the second or third as they all began to feel like one, but I will take a female bounty hunter over any animal.
I like the animals I read about to have two legs and not be cavemen. Or fantasy creatures. There’s something reasurring to read about human foibles. I am partial to good mysteries because they explore the human condition so well. Good memoirs and good fiction do the same thing. Good is of course subjective.
I think we have lost something basic in our zeal to embrace the Internet era. We have lost the face to face encounters that are basic to our need to grow. We have lost true solitude that can also be necessary to regroup and face the world again.
Our choice of reading materials shows that disconnect. We don’t care enough to read about basic human interactions. Instead we chose fantasy and animals.
I can’t be held to a schedule this summer but I will have an interview with a woman who wrote a memoir I really like this coming week or the next.
Stumble it!
Like A Virgin
It was the most beautiful Sunday since sometime last year or maybe the year before. In New York when the weather’s amazing, people run into the parks.
Lucia and I were going to a photography opening at Rafe’s salon. All the photos are of flowers. None look like flowers.
I have always used Central Park as a crossway. It is I admit the most breathtakingly beautiful crossway, and my backyard
Riverside Park is my front yard, and I love the water. Not that I have a river view apartment, and the building’s entrance is on a side street, because my street is not lovingly referred to as “wind chamber.”
If you’re going to the East 60’s from the Upper West Side, the fastest way, is to walk down the 72nd Street cross walk, proceed the east park pedestrian way through the zoo and then to my old street. There are more beautiful be one with nature ways, but I like this one when in a hurry.
I especially love it because the exit from the zoo leads directly to my youth on East 63rd Street off Fifth.
We could hear people clapping at the Greek parade on Fifth Avenue. Lucia told me that she arranged the people and applause for me, for my birthday.
My birthday is in July. The same day as Central Park’s birthday. One year over a million people sang “Happy Birthday” just to me about four times. Lucia arranged it, you know.
It was impossible to be in a hurry today but for some reason the crowds didn’t bother me. We ran into my good in the hood friend Joey and Lucia practically threw herself at him.
Then she remembered he’s single, straight, rich, intelligent, nice, and not boyfriend material. I can’t and won’t say why. He isn’t funny is as far as I will go with that one.
We arrived at the opening where Anastasia, Rafe’s wife was by herself, in a corner of the salon. Rafe is one of my two best friends and I love him with all my heart, but he is a one-man TV show. He will spend money on anything but parking. It’s sad really. Rafe will do anything to help anybody. He has a generous heart and cheap veneer.
He used to spend his one free day in traffic court fighting the tickets. Fortunately the city cracked down on meters and made the tickets too expensive.
Unfortunately for Anastasia he made her sit in the car in various locations for two to three hours. I tend to believe Anastasia’s three hour version. He went to the salon to do last minute prep work. Just explaining the car situation.
By the time Lucia and I arrived it was going on five and Anastasia had been sitting in cars or in the salon the whole day. Nobody should have to on a day like today. Rafe was chatting up prospective clients.
We walked back to the park and sat near the fountain. It was about as crowded as I have ever seen it. We made fun of, talked about old friends,some other things and Rafe and Anastasia’s daughter who is finishing law school next month. She has guardianship of the family dog which makes Anastasia a grandmother.
A man on a bike said something. We ignored him. Anastasia is a size two-four and looks like a Russian stacking doll that isn’t cloyingly cute. She’s always been hot and gets hotter with age. She met Rafe when they were teenagers in hairstyling school and have been together ever since.
We met when we were young and events like this happened all day every day. Even to Rafe, actually. T He looks like a Latin Elvis without the bloat and with much class.
One of the big reasons I’m so close to Rafe is that he loves Anastasia passionately and it shows, even when he makes her sit in a car for three hours. I’m kind of an expert on friendship with Hispanic men, and while he plays the macho stud bit, he is a hair stylist and feels he has to overcompensate through speech not action. he’s a wuss, really
This incident was a bit or a lot weirder than most. You decide.
The guy said all the standard pick up lines. He just wouldn’t go away.
He said to Anastasia:
“Don’t listen to your girlfriends. Think for yourself. Don’t you like me? I like you.”
We were trying even harder to ignore him as he repeated this about seven times. Each time he swooped around us on his bike. Finally he said to Anastasia:
“Are you a virgin? Tell me if you’re a virgin. You’re a virgin right. I really like you. You’re a virgin right? You are a virgin. I know that you’re a virgin.”
Then he fell off his bike.
We made our escape but we could hear in the background:
“You’re a virgin. I know you’re a virgin. You’re a virgin….”
There are nine million stories in the naked city and this is a bit more creepy than most. There are boundaries normal people don’t cross. Even normal semi-perverts.
The park was crowded. There was no real possibility of danger but we didn’t want to respond, You just never know who is dangerous or not.
This wasn’t really a voyeur story, but
I wasn’t the only person who wrote a virgin story this week. I do have a subscription but wrote this story yesterday and didn’t see a copy until i got my mail at four PM
The opening was lovely though only about a hundred people came. Something to do with a beautiful day and a Greek parade.
Here’s a link to Bill Moyers
examining the free passes the media gave to Bush & Company. There will be a Moyer’s special on PBS. When Moyers was editor of Newsday it was the first daily paper to come out against Viet Nam.
That was a big risk as Long Island was thought to be redneck country. I grew up on the Island. The sole adult I knew who was for the war was my father who didn’t believe that people should actually serve in the war. Hence his love of “Alice’s Restaurant.” This does go far in understanding me.
Stumble it!
