MKP-Hearts-NYC

I think he said he wasn't finished with this one, but it's been days and days and since I figure he might have fallen into the Seine, I should post this now.

All i can say about Versalles is this: I took 600 photos there this morning, equal to the rest of my trip. Words cannot describe the glory of the Hall of Mirrors; the pagentry of the Hall of Battles which celebrates all 33 French victories (there were that many?! Were some of them wars on poverty or drugs or silk stockings or escargot?): Perhaps the 6 or so albums of pics will tell the story better. I suggest that you look into them on your own time; except that you can't because none of you know who I am, my facebook name not being Gigantor. Ah well.

PSA - none of these alleged pictures are on Facebook. My suspicions that he's just hanging out at Springfield Mall continue to grow.

The Somalian street vendors where I purchased my souvenirs did the haggling for me today, (Those of you at home know that I'm a tremendously poor haggler)(It's true - his haggling often comes down to "Here, why don't I give you more money, and you keep your stuff? Here, have some of my stuff.) - giving me discounts that I didn't even ask for, much less expect to be given.

Then again, in the rest of Paris, the pickpockets are ruthless; more blatent, more hostile, more numerous than any American city I've ever been in. The worst are the ones who ask you to hold a string while they tie you a friendship bracelet, then don't untie you until they have extorted enough Euros: we were luckily forewarned and thus forearmed, and so escaped unscathed.

I saw the Arc du Triumph today. Insert obligatory French military joke here. Way ahead of you, buddy! My personal favorite is that they built it "just in case".

On a more serious note; the German war memorials have been the most moving part of the trip for me (Anne Frank house aside). I have long been a military history buff  nerd but had not until now ever seen the German half of the war from a human perspective. One really can't understand ever what it is like to lose two world wars, but one can come closer to it through the viewing of the list of German dead in the memorial that I saw. This was a memorial only to the dead of Kqppelrodeck; my village, and yet there were 46 names from the First World War, and over 150 from the Second. My homestay brother's grandfather died in 1941 invading France.

To be continued when he bothers to shell out the 5 francs for internet time....

Jazz standards and classic showtunes have been my dear friends for far too long for me to be one of "those people" who "hates jazz" because it's "just noise." For one thing, my jazz piano teacher of yesteryear would kill me. For another, whatever the Aged P may think, my music education was not wasted because I can listen to pretty chaotic jazz and still hear the chord movement, if not diagnose the progression.

But tonight's MoMA jazz concert consisted of 10 minute+ compositions that strained my patience a little. They eventually did an arrangement of "My Funny Valentine" that made me not-hate the song, actually, which was cool, and there was this big flock of birds in one of the garden trees that chirruped frantically for the opening two pieces so that it almost sounded like they were trading twos, which was also neat.... but the rest, well, was not silence and at moments it was hard to take.

Plus the bandleader's self-authored program notes talked a lot about the spiritual experiences people get from his music and church music influences that go into his music and I came away neither hearing church nor feeling the spirit. Still, it was a beautiful night to be outdoors with a good friend and attractive New Yorkers in their summer clothes. But to me, the best jazz has a singer at the front of the group for at least part of the time. Take all the band solos and interludes you want, and alternate songs with instrumentals as often as you please....but give the lyricists their shoutout by, you know, singing their lyrics occasionally.

Also, the leader of the band was wearing some sort of leather poncho.

FURTHERMORE, K-Cup insists she smelled no skunks the other night! We each have a window facing the back alley, and were both awake at 2 am the night in question...there is no reason, other than my having suffered a particularly obnoxious form of stroke, that I should have been the only one to detect the presence of The Odiferous Ones. Next time I am waking her up. She says she'll lock the door and ignore me, but I have my ways of setting the apartment on fire of getting her attention when I need it.

As we roll along in this cool and beautiful summer we're having, I've become an avid observer of these nuanced sunny, breezy days. Today's sky is blue and clear and utterly cloudless. The sun is friendly, not vicious, and the tree that overgrows the alley out back of my ancient and little Brooklyn apartment building is shifting gently with the moving air.

Today's the day, I decided when I woke up this...let's call it morning.... to meet my fire escape. It's a basic black railing'd affair, with a small plaque of some sort that in theory warns of fire safety protocols but in reality has been painted over so many times I'm going to have to break out my black crayons and some rubbing paper to figure out what I'm supposed to do. I spread a cotton shawl my advisor in India gave me out on the floor of the escape's balcony. I debated sitting on the steps for the langorous draping pose, but realize my knee-length skirt will render that a prime flash-the-traffic posture and opt to sit with my back against the railing facing away from the street and towards the alley where lately I was locked out.

The Aged P sent me Joseph Heller's Coney Island-immersed autobiography, so I took that and my iced coffee and a cherry popsicle outside to read, while the strains of NPR's Sunday music show drift out from my clock radio. Heller's voice when recollecting his childhood is calm and centered and quietly amused. I was happy to see it corroborate some of the hallmarks of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I finished reading a few weeks ago - like when street musicians used to play outside on Brooklyn corners, mothers would wrap pennies in newspaper to throw them. There was some sort of unspoken contract where the local kids would collect for themselves any loose pennies, but if wrapped in newspaper they handed them over to the musicians without complaint.

It is such a glorious afternoon - no construction, no heavy traffic or garbage trucks, just me and my pink toenail polish and Heller's Coney Island memories and mellow prose. The music selections are predominantly Sinatra for the first hour, and I sing along whenever I recognize the standards - "My Shining Hour" comes on. The radio announcer announces that it's Hammerstein's birthday and in his honor they're going to play the first song written with Rodgers as their collaboration began.

Hugh Jackman's voice begins to tell me about that bright golden haze on the meadow and all of sudden it's too beautiful to be borne and I burst into tears, alternating laughter and sobs because honestly how can life be this lovely on the Sunday I happen to decide to sit outside as generation after generation of Brooklyn residents has done since the city was settled. Ridiculous.

As "Make Believe" from Showboat comes on I realize I should probably give my skin a break from the flirtacious sun and besides, my writer's brain has been insisting for a while I stop enjoying the actual experience and come inside to write about it instead. Don't know what that says about me, aside from the fact that I'm rarely of just one mind about something. See you on the fire escape once I've refilled my coffee glass.

Back in this blog's first early days, when I was adjusting to my senior year at WTF College @Hoth/Naboo, I became aware that my domicile was situated nearby an animal-housing-establishment known as a bunch of trees and a drainage pond. I was not happy about it. In fact, you might say I was outraged. Not because I hate trees, or resent early morning deer feeding sightings, but because along with the singing birds who helped me shower and dress myself before tying a ribbon in my hair, came the skunks.

You would have thought, as I in fact did think, that returning to the metropolis wherein I store my heart would have removed me beyond the reach of these dread creatures. But no. It has not. There are skunks in Brooklyn. Specifically, there is an Urukai-sized herd somewhere in the back alley. They must have gotten overexcited when they saw me climbing the fence when I got locked out because now they are back, haunting my olfactory, making my eyes water, and making me dash, gasping, to turn the fan direction to "exhaust" in the hopes of not bringing any more reek into the apartment. Then I had to have a popcicle, and I ate it really quickly to try and drive out the smell, and now my head hurts.

I hope you're happy, stupid skunks. Keep in mind that if we ever do meet face to face, your reception will be like this:

One of the perks of traveling back to No.VA to see the fam is getting to reconnect with our piano and the song books (mostly fakebooks - just chords and melody) that I played all through high school and college. I taught myself initially out of one of those "Teach Yourself Piano" books, and as soon as I learned all the block chords I was racing through my Broadway standards book like whoa.

The thing is, I'm not the biggest fan of practicing. I like to just play through things and move on if it gets too difficult (the two piano teachers I've worked with loved that quality in me, obvi). This is largely because when I play at home, I usually have an audience, and the best way to pander to an adoring public of two is not to stumble and halt over actual notes when you can slam down a g-minor chord and call it a day. Another fun fact is that my left hand knows all the chords way better than my right does - Lefty can play around with voicing and rhythmic accompaniment, righty's better with actual rhythm and harmonizing in thirds. It's weird.

Some of the time I feel too self conscious to sing along, but Thursday night after being sick for-freaking-ever I was just happy to have my voice back and let'er rip. I worked my way through the Broadway songbook, Harold Arlen, Rodgers and Hart, a book of cabaret standards.... Revisiting some songs I hadn't played in at least 4-5 years, my voice reverted to the way it used to sing them - touching the high notes lightly, getting tense whenever I came upon something above a D, trying to belt in the lower register - instead of the more full-bodied sound I can do now.

In voice lessons, I was always worried about the quality of the sound or not getting the purity I wanted. I never really let go because like so many worthwhile things, it felt freaking awkward. I also don't think I've ever bonded with a voice teacher to a point where I was comfortable making mistakes in front of them. But for the past 2 years I've not been doing much solo singing, and because I was singing into a common sound it was ok to sing out, Louise . And this week at home I was able to let some of that loose for the fam.

Going back to some of the songs I sang in early recitals and high school shows with my Grown Up Voice was pretty cool. Plus, since the first time I sang "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" I've actually been in love, been broken hearted, lived on the edge AND had to move. When I was a teenager, any song that had the lyric "I have never felt like this" was quite literally true... the songs didn't have meaning outside my romantic imagination. 6 years and some breakups and personal trauma later, let's just say I get what they're talking about. Of course, anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber still sounds and feels exactly the freaking same - in fact, lamer, now that I have actual life experience.

I may never audition as well as I sing in my living room, but at least I can put on a decent show for the Aged Ps.

More from everyone's favorite oversized traveler. My interjections are in italics.

In Holland now, The Hague to be precise. I thought a lot about what world court joke to make here but it turns out that world court jokes aren't funny. Then again, this hotel has not only an AMERICAN keyboard, it also has bar soap for me to collect. The moral of the story is, The Hague is better then Lenzerheidi. I escaped from the Hell of Koblenz, which can be summed up in the following points-

-In square feet, a double room and a triple room were the same size.
-A doorknob snapped off when I touched it for the first time.
-The Hotel staff complained about the noise despite us being the only people on the entire second floor.
-The hallways were as wide as our rooms.
-One person was both bartender and receptionist so you couldn't ever get service.
-In Koblenz, the big attraction was the supermarket. Really.
-Koblenz after 18:00 makes Stuttgart look like Kappelrodeck. Eighteen o'clock? Anyone else beginning to doubt he actually left the US?

In summary, there are no upsides to life in that town.

Tomorrow we go bike riding, through a windmill farm. I plan to joust the hell out of those Dutch bastards. I am I Don Gigantor, the Lord of La Mancha....

I bought some mini-clogs for a friend of mine, whose name I shall not say for fear that he reads this blog. I should tell him to.

I had probably the most ADD moment in the past year, it went something like "Allen, we don't judge time based on your persona- PIGEONS!" I wish I could say I was joking, I haven't had a total train of thought derailment in some time. Anyhow, the pigeons here are much tamer than at home and I achieved a childhood dream in Heidelburg when I tagged two of them. Honestly, finally catching a pigeon I was chasing is on the top ten list of favorite European moments.  Also a childhood dream of Irish Setters and miniature Schnauzers. Great

We cruised down the Rhine River two days ago, and I counted 16 castles before I gave up (and we reached Koblenz, where they hate castles, like they hate all good and wonderful things.) I love rivers. We sailed down the Amsterdam canals- it's the Venice of the North- and there is no joy like the joy of a city unwinding behind you.

I must run now, but I send all my love to everyone at home. Today was a new first- I picked up the first of several items that I will have to declare to customs when I come home. Or smuggle. We'll see which sounds cooler when I reach the airport.

Guest Blogger: GIgantor. The boy is working off a Swiss keyboard that switches some letters; he asked me to proofread but I have elected not to as I find it more amusing this way. And I may wind up adopting the style mzself. Mz interjections are in italics. Enjoz! 

As I sit in the lobbz of this hotel, the German man behind me whistles ABBA tunes. It is something I like to call surreal. Out mz window I can see a house that is infact a gigantic coocoo clock- at the hour, a wooden bird the siye of an eagle emerges and chimes the hour, then figures the size of children dance a German waltz. I went hiking in the Black Forrest yesterdaz, and saw the famous night slugs, the 4 inch long brown creatures that can only be described as nightmare inducing. Todaz I have a service project on the river Rhine, cleaning up weeds etc for the good of Germany.

Then on to homestays. This part of the trip I am genuinely psyched about. I have prepared several gifts, mostly Nationals themed, which I pray the Germans will not take as an insult. I think we should be praying that about a lot more things.

For my German souveniers I have obtained a beerstein with the flag and crest of imperial Germany upon it, as well as a wineglass with the hotel logo on it. Also, a Frankfurt newspaper. I don't know why all my gifts are beer themed, it's a by product of living in Germany, I guess.

I wish all of zou could know about these keyboards. First, Y and Z are switched, which I am ignoring, and letting Darling Sister proofread. Secondly, the enter and shift keys are different sizes, meaning that if I donät reach far enough, I type something utterly different. Thirdly, the apostrophe key is replaced by the A with an umlat key, something else I leave to Sister to replace. With luck, none of you will see these gross errors, and so you should giver her a nod for making me intelligible. (cue M: "nothing could do that, boy-o!" hA.) Boy knows me, I'll give him that.

Germany is interesting. The toilets in public places cost .5€, but you get a coupon for that amount that can be used in any store that has pay toilets. In Switzerland, everyone spoke SOME English (except the woman who offered me newspapers when I asked for soap) and it made shopping very much easier than if could have been. Not so with Germany. I bought a chocolate croissant at a reststop and only was able to do so by waving the pastry and 2€ together at the cashier.

It doesn't help that we have to recalibrate currencies- a Swiss Franc is equal to $1, which made appraising zour goods very easy indeed. A Euro is worth something like 1.5USD, which makes an attractive Swiss price (below 20 francs) something very different. Of course, just because our currencies are the same value doesn't make prices affordable. For example, I recently shipped a package to America with an estimated value of 12 Francs, and paid 22 Francs postage for it. This is why no one else will be recieving packages. Also, he doesn't love any of you.

I can't tell if it is because the Swiss standard of living is higher or because we are in a tourist town. Probably both. I really wanted to bring dad a Swatch, but the cheapest swiss watch costs twice my Swiss budget, so that was not really an option. Still, there were plenty of things to buy, which I did.

I believe that I have a line of Germans building up behind me at the hotel's onlz computor, and we all know what happens when you get a group of Germans angry. I'll sign off here, with more updates as the situation warrents.

I would say two of my only remaining inconvenient vices are a tendency to oversleep and an uncanny ability to lock myself out of places. Oh, and procrastination, but I'll tell you about that later. After my dentist appointment.

As a kid I often found myself crawling in the back window of our house after school having found my parents had cruelly locked the door upon departing and I had stupidly left my keys inside. In college I had to spend more than a few hours in the lounge waiting for my key-bearing roommate to come home, and there were at least 6 times I wiled away the hours on my porch in Harlem doing the exact same thing.

But see, in Harlem (and college, for that matter) all it took to lock oneself out of house and home was stepping outside without keys or a resident roommate. Here in Brooklyn our apartment door doesn't lock automatically when you close it, and there's a buzzing system that would allow me to alert anybody who was home that I was an idiot and wanted to come back inside. (Or I could do Sam Spade's trick in the Maltese Falcon and ring all the bells figuring someone would just buzz without asking questions. That way I could lose Gutman's gunsel and still make the place presentable for Brigid O'Shaunessey's visit).

Naturally, my locking-outing-of-oneself-ing skills needed to make a superior effort to demonstrate themselves. Which they did a little while ago when I locked myself in the little courtyard that leads to the basement laundry room. Most people remember to prop the door open. I did not, and returned from preparing my colors and delicates for their spin cycle to find a very shut door, and no obliging neighbors poking their heads out the window to let me in.

My options were to:

A) Somehow pull down the fire escape ladder and climb in my own window - which was definitely my first choice because fire escapes are awesome and I still haven't used mine.
B) Shout until someone heard me - backstory, I once sliced my thumb way, way open in a mysterious accident and actually waited in line at the pool's reception desk to ask for help until the people in front of me had finished checking in. Freaked the lifeguards right the eff out. I was not about to start shouting.
C) Climb the Fence of Death that encloses the trash and recycling area around back of the building (the building is shaped like a C, so the courtyard is 3/4 building, 1/4 fence, with a corridor leading to the alley in back).

I couldn't reach the fire escape ladder with any of the chairs scattered around the courtyard (which should reassure my mother that nobody can climb up and get me), and the ladder leaning against the side of the building was too tall to weild comfortably without leading to a comical Chaplinesque tipover. And I clearly wasn't going to attract attention to myself. So climbing it was.

Now is probably the time to mention that I was in my pajamas, braless and barefoot. My apartment building is surrounded by traffic, construction projects and the attendant construction workers. This was going to suck.

Still, I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life locked in a cement wasteland. So I tucked my keys into my waistband (That's right, I had made sure to take my keys with me. so I wouldn't get locked out), figured out where to place my feet, where to swing over the Very Pointy Gate with minimal risk of impalement, promised my future hypothetical children I'd adopt if something went horribly horribly wrong, and heaved myself up. Maybe 7/8 of the way through an older lady on the third floor popped her head out of the window and said "Did you lock yourself out?" 

I nodded sheepishly and said yes. "Well call us next time and we'll let you back in!" she said, looking at me like I was insane.

Instead of pointing out that I didn't have a phone, didn't know her number, her apartment didn't face the courtyard and asking where was she 10 minutes ago, I just said that next time, I would, and walked (still barefoot) around to the front of my building and let myself back in.

As I rounded the corner I passed a guy heading in the same direction - he didn't notice a thing. I heart NY.

Immediately after surviving her precarious climb, the author scrubbed her feet clean, propped the damn courtyard door open and retreated to her room in high dudgeon. She has not yet resumed her laundry.

Since moving to Park Slope exactly one month ago, I have had very few complaints considering all the griping I did about never leaving Manhattan. The neighborhood is peaceful without being isolated, not that hard to get to, and there are cute boys in my building who I can spend hours of mental time composing witty introductory lines. Win-win-win, really. Except for the unfortunate few boys I actually try those lines out on.

Anyway, the one thing that's getting to me are the gourmet bodegas. They can't accept that they are just selling chips, soda, beer and newspapers like every other newsstand/bodega dating back to the Dutch colonists who went to Jahn van Eckdenwandern for their meade and hardtack.

But that's not good enough for Park Slope, noooo. They have to have their Gourmet Natural Organic "Grocery" and sell upscale chips and vegan microwave pizza and imported beer. All this I could overlook (probably wouldn't, but I could) except for their pathetic attempts to carry their new exalted tastes into the frozen-sugar-on-a-stick department.

When I need some sort of impaled ice cream product, I am not looking for a $4 haagen-dazs bar. I'm not looking for a $3 chipwich, or a $2.25 klondike bar. Nor am I looking for an 8 pack of insouciantly grinning soy-based ice cream sandwiches.

What I want is a chocolate eclair bar. Or an ice cream crunch bar. And I want it to cost a dollar. Which it does on 4th ave. 4th ave is home to body shops and McDonalds and a Staples and a skuzzy looking diner. But inch towards 5th ave even 2 buildings and you're in gourmet bagel land. By 7th ave, forget it. You can't even find regular old popcicles or italian ice carts. Instead you'll get stymied by Organic Frozen Fruit abominations.

It's like they don't want me to have a cheap and accessible source of fat-saturated goodness. It's SUMMER, people. Whatever you eat you'll sweat of because there's NO. AC. What's that, 7th avenue? All your 19th century townhouses have been retrofitted with a/c units while the brass historical plaques went up on the door?

Hmph. Screw you guys. I'm going to one of the bottom-of-the-heap bodegas I can trust. Let me know if you need any phone cards to Venezuela, New Zealand or the Philippines. Or a poster of Carmen Electra on a Viper.

Yesterday was my introduction to Coney Island. I prepared provisions (vegetable: an apple, a nectarine and a handful of sugar snap peas, mineral: diet cherry pepsi, animal to be provided by Nathan's...and hoo boy was it), and in the midst of arguing with myself (neither of us wanted to wear a skirt or jeans) stumbled upon a pair of jeans I hate and voila, DIY jean shorts.

Donned my favorite loud tie-dye shirt (I say my favorite because there are several) (loud tie-dyes to choose from), my Perfect Mets Cap and rounded up some entertainment, and set off. Took the R to the D to Stillwell Ave, cracked open Walking Brooklyn and made my way from Nathan's (chili dog, fries, lemonade, stomach ache, bliss) past all the furniture stores named after the amusement parks they were bulldozed to build. It was slightly surreal. I like that in rehabilitating parts of Coney Island they really just put it back together with some duct tape instead of updating or sanitizing.

The Coney Island Walk took me in and around the still-standing amusement park areas, then down and through Little Odessa, which was beyond cool. Lots of older residents who have clearly been in Brooklyn forever, young people growing up speaking Russian and wearing Converse. On the end nearest Oceanview, most of the store fronts were in Russian. Nearer the Oceana complex, I spotted a Starbucks (Oh, and that complex is hideous).

I turned on to the Boardwalk near its southernmost point, in Brighton Beach, and walked up into a gathering overcast sky. Passed open air restaurants and watched the parachute tower get closer. The NY Aquarium, not-the-original Nathans, saw the overlap between Russian- and Spanish-speakers as I got closer to Coney Island. The demographics changed, the roster of kiddie rides and carnival games did not.

It was hard to believe I was just 45 minutes from Broadway (though not in New Rochelle, thank goodness). It felt just like any other beachy town, like Rehoboth where the sea and I first became chums (ha), but without the tourist trap motels and constant souvenir shops and hermit crabs.

Passed the Cyclone, and the Wonder Wheel (briefly became concerned it was broken when I saw the carriages sliding from the inside to the outside of the wheel). Walked all the way out on the fishing pier where folks, totally unconcerned with the historic nature of everyone's presence here, were fishing. KeySpan park is right near the parachute tower, which is right next to Child's restaurant - the shuttered and ornate building that served as Sandra Bullock's childhood community center in Two Weeks Notice (one of my favorite-of-all-time New York + RomCom +Low Budget films).

Queued up with the rest of the Cyclones fans to get into the stadium, as they opened the doors it started pouring, and it continued pouring until 5 minutes before game time. It was rough, it was damp, it was unpleasant and I almost bailed... but then they removed the tarp and everyone cheered and rescheduled the game for 7:25 I had a knish and died and went to heaven. Seriously. Knishes, people. If you haven't tried them, you have failed at life. I can say this honestly now that I've succeeded.

The BabyMets played the Renegades from Hudson Valley and managed to both out-score and out-error them. I kind of love single-A ball because it gives me hope that I too could have a career in the minor majors someday. Especially since they offer baseball camp to grown-ups! 

I really liked it - and not just because I had fun and enjoyed being there, but because people have been enjoying Coney Island since they had to wear corsets and bowler hats. Since before it was normal to go up in the air or go over 25 miles-an-hour for any reason! People have been digging their toes in that sand since they need a changing tent and an anchored tow rope to go near the ocean. It is mind-bottling how cool that is. And yesterday I was surrounded by hundreds of people who didn't give a damn about any of that - for lots of them, Coney Island just has always been and *fingers crossed* always will be, in some form or other. Whatever they build on the landward side of the boardwalk, the beach and the ocean will always be exactly the same.

Thing the first: I passed Brian Stokes Mitchell, Broadway God and Idol Extraordinaire on the street. I recognized him from the back, creepily enough, and fake-checked to see if a bus was coming to confirm once I passed him. And when I saw that it was him...I didn't gush or jump and down or generally accost him with my exuberance. I appear to have finally learned The Starstruck Lesson - that just because I think it is 80 flavors of awesome to have seen him does not mean he will appreciate my listing all 80 flavors. I also did not loop around the block and stalk him. Personal growth! Gold Star! 

Thing the second: I bought non-prepared-food groceries and ingredients to make a lasagna that will feed me all week. And I made dinner from amongst my purchases. Of course, the Cooking Gods regarded my sandwich-and-salad-making with a smirk and made the ONE non-dry-solid food totally combust all over me. I hate salad dressing. I hate vegetables. I wonder if I could work out a deal with the neighboring restaurants where they feed me and I review all their food as awesome? Anyway, I avoided any and all take-out and made preparations to do so for at least 2 weeks. Gold star. Slight demerit for the ice cream bar I needed to console me after a 2 hour bureaucratic choir meeting.

Thing the third: I canceled my gym membership. Arranging to exercise less wouldn't normally be gold-star-worthy, but there isn't a Planet Fitness any closer than Staten Island, so I had to cancel it. In person, no less. Which meant a trip back to Harlem, during which I swung by the Apollo to see what MJ-related paraphrenalia had sprung up. Someone must have printed up thousands of t-shirts practically over night, because everyone who was still selling family portraits of the Obamas on everything from pins to cutlery is now selling King of Pop memorabilia. The Apollo's having an open memorial event tomorrow from 2-8, and they put up a wall for signatures and candles against the fence. People were signing, taking pictures, crying, news cameras were still there, folks selling DVDs and posters and t-shirts... Pretty insane. The coolest thing was that someone had taken the image of Michael Jackson leaning from the Smooth Criminal video and made a stylized stencil they spraypainted in rows on the ground in front of the fence. The posture, fedora and spats make the likeness unmistakeable.


Tomorrow I'm headed out to Coney Island for the first time! Tres thrilling. I'll keep my eyes peeled in case I see three sailors, a lady cab driver, and a paleontologist looking for Miss Turnstiles.

- Saw Easy Virtue, The Brothers Bloom, Up, Away We Go, The Proposal, Summer Hours, a Kennedy center concert and Shakespeare's R&J at 1st Stage Spring Hill.
- Watched a lot of late night cable movies and mourned my lost youth.
- Rifftrax'd X-Men 2, Hary Potter, Star Wars I, VI and V, Manos Hands of Fate, "Too Much Affection"
- Played a lot of The Sims, got a new family from marriage to grandkids.
- Reconnected with the newly tuned family piano and the Rodgers and Hart songbook
- Got epically, grossly sick and slept for hours.
- Coughed
- Hung out with Gigantor at home, at the mall, at the optomotrists, at the movies, at Chipotle, in the car and at the neighborhood pool,

Me: *pantomiming stabbing G with my keys*
G's friend: Don't key your brother!
G: Huh?
M: But I wanted a kidney!
G: Wait, what? You were going to key me?! *storms off dramatically*

He's carrying his storm off to a whole nova lebul and hitting Europe for 3 weeks, during which time we will all miss him very much. Have a good trip, giant one! Have fun storming the castle and stifling your urge to ask your German host family awkward WWII questions (the boy's a history nut).

And a big thank you to the Aged Ps for putting me up as 5 days became two weeks. Whatever our individual flaws (of which I'm not convinced there are any), we have such a good time uniting to laugh at one another and switching sides to laugh at others as it suits us.

Everyone's said it and way better than I'm about to...plus most of his youtube videos aren't embeddable so I can't even give you an in-blog example of how I want to remember Michael Jackson, But I'll say this.

At worst he was a totally disturbed pedophile, and in reality he was definitely troubled and mentally ill. And it sucks that we have to remember and acknowledge all that.

But on the artistic side? Unbeatable. When I was five I owned a cassette of Black or White and loved it. My green plastic casio tape player and I spent many, many hours playing that tape over and over again. One of the first CDs I bought was Thriller, and one summer at the beach house in Rehoboth it was nothing but that and Moulin Rouge in rotation. Weird Al's parodies taught me most of Bad, and I remember when Invincible came out at the height of my TRL/MTV obsession, and seeing the making of "Rock My World".

All his videos from the crazy to the epic, from the inspiring to the disturbing are running on a loop on all the music channels. Seeing them all lined up that way, his progression from smiling beautiful boy to sick reclusive enigma is startlingly clear. His lyrics reflect that straightforwardly too - I think he must have found the world a very troubling place.

The entire generation of pop stars who got me through adolescence owe a great deal of their existence to Michael Jackson's music and his videos and his choreography. I don't think the boy band craze could have happened, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Usher, every R&B artist ever...none of them would have become the performers they are without Michael Jackson's influence.

Yeah there's clutter and mess and he was not a well man..... but I'm still really sad both that his life took the turns that it did and that he's gone. It would have been incredible to be in Harlem last night, too.

As often happens when I change climates and expose my tender (though subway-hardened) immune system to germ-toting family members... I am sick. We're pretty sure it is in fact The Swine Flu. The first day I was totally weakened. Yesterday I was 1/2 weakened, 1/2 congested. Today I'm maybe 1/5 weak, 4/5 OMG WHAT IS IN MY THROAT.

Fortunately I don't just know how to rest and drink liquids. I know how to fight sinus congestion like a voice major. There were whole periods of my life where my grades and quality of life pretty much depended on whether I could croak and squeak on pitch, without falling over. When I woke up this morning, I was pretty much a dead person from the neck up, with the neck itself also being pretty much totally dead.

BUT! After a shower, and liberal application of Mucinex DM, Afrin, Ibprofen, cough drops and a vat of water... I can breathe, sit upright and no longer feel the urge to kill my mocking family members. Sure, the temptation is there, but it's easier to ignore.

Gigantor and I are mainlining Rifftrax versions of the Phantom Menace and Empire Strikes Back....there might be more in our future, along with Thai food (spicy food also beats back the scourage of plague). This stupid flu has made me miss a Mets game and a live Daily Show screening, and I'm not sure I'll be up for traveling back up tomorrow, so the Rifftrax are flowing and flowing plentifully.

So....despite loving Stalag 17 and Hogan's Heroes, laughing at Chicken Run and recognizing references in The Parent Trap and The SImpsons.... I hadn't seen The Great Escape until tonight. And as I told K-Cup in a saddened and disillusioned late night gchat.... it reminded me of the Swiss Family Robinson. As in..."Where did they get all that stuff?" and "How long did that take?" and "Really?!!?!?!?!"

Like any great scholar, I headed to Wikipedia to figure out how much was Hollywood Movie Magic and Wasn't WWII Exciting? And how much was, you know, Real. Here is what really happened. Here is a synopsis of the movie for anyone else whose film education was lacking until...as soon as they see this movie.

I do like the idea that Germany decided to put all the flight risk POWs in the same camp and then was shocked, shocked to learn there was escape-attempting going on here. Also, I appreciate seeing a young James Garner in a variety of sweater-turtlenecks. (Do I think they're due for a comeback? Certainly not - we are not all Rex Harrison from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, but thanks for asking.) I can also understand the filmmaker's concealment of how much material was sent to prisoners from outside the camp and friendly guards inside - Wiki says the POWs requested that particular element not be portrayed so as to not make life difficult for other real life prisoners. I will therefore accept that they made mechanical bellows out of scraps.

What I find irksome is how polished all the equipment in the movie appeared. for stuff made from milk tins and knapsacks. And the inflation of the Americans' roles - what was so wrong with letting it be a British-centric story? And the insistance on one immortalized-by-Sheryl-Crowe actor on inserting an anachronistic motorcycle in a totally fabricated scene is particularly outrageous. I agree with the Times critic who said "But for much longer than is artful or essential, "The Great Escape" grinds out its tormenting story without a peek beneath the surface of any man, without a real sense of human involvement. It's a strictly mechanical adventure with make-believe men."

Plus you never get a sense that 76 guys escaped, however temporarily. It looks more like...12 guys. 5 of whom you recognize and the last of which you want to smack upside the head for being impatient. Years spent forging documents and nobody thought to lay the ground rule of "don't move until you're told"?

I haven't been so let down since somebody let it slip that the Von Trapps actually hopped a train out of Austria. Maybe the station was just over that singing hill? 

What Stalag 17 captured that Escape misses was a sense of the people, and how frightening it must have been to be in those camps. Sure there are hijinks (and it's a completely fictional plot) and comic relief that would make Jar Jar look...reasonable....but whether it's due to the inherant beauty and fearfulness of black and white film or the jarring contrast between silliness and danger.... Stalag 17 gave me nightmares the first time I saw it and still makes me cry if I catch it late at night. Great Escape left me tense, but irritated.

1. People notice that I talk fast. I don't even think about it except when I get some of that ultimate New Yorker praise - "you sound like one of us" from a native, but down here people say y'all unironically and take 8 years to order a burrito.

2. Chipotle is So. Much. Cheaper. I handed the cashier 3 extra dollars yesterday when I totally didn't go to Chipotle, choosing instead to eat the groceries graciously provided by --- oh screw it. Gigantor and I totally went to Wendy's for frostees and Chipotle for...well...you know. And I'm not ashamed.

3. Fambly! I have people to go see movies with all the time - so far Gigantor and I have seen Brothers Bloom (A), Mom and I have seen Easy Virtue (A for Colin Firth and the soundtrack, B- for everyone else) and Aged P, Mom and I saw Summer Hours (B+) - and a sibling to squabble with pretty incessantly. Gigantor and I had an exchange that pretty much consisted of him trying to tell a joke and my interrupting it, or making a face like I was thinking of something to say that would interrupt it which was enough to send him into shouts of incoherant rage, at the conclusion of which he forgot the joke. Also, we've watched the RiffTrax for Star Wars and Twilight. We know how to have a good time, we Ps.

4. Vroom vroom. Aka cars to drive. I've noticed that after spending long amounts of time in the city, I get carsick really easily, but when I actually drive it's like...when you play a racecar game and switch to the view that only goes out the windshield. Oh sure, I check my mirrors and blindspots, but I'm not really aware I'm driving a vehicle around. It kind of feels like flying, which is neato.

5. My childhood in VHS. After I absconded with two dozen of my favorite childhood Disneys and teenage RomComs, K-Cup pointed out that she, living in the 21st century, doesn't own a VCR. But here, the video cassette recorder is in steady rotation for those films we haven't outsourced to Netflix or replaced with DVDs of our own.

6. YOU GUYS, WHERE ARE ALL THE BRIDGES? I CAN DRIVE FOR LIKE, 20 MINUTES AND STILL BE ON THE SAME STRETCH OF LAND. WTF?! THIS IS UNNATURAL.

I am obsessed with "Baby's On Fire"  from Velvet Goldmine - I started to post the clip here but uh, the scenes it underscores in the movie are NSFW, Not-safe-for-parents and generally...um...yowza. Sooo you'll just have to imagine, so here's the song and an alien-looking album cover of "Brian Slade/Maxwell Demon/Jonathan Rhys-Myers.

Anyhoo...my weekend plans include going to Staten Island for a friend's birthday (yes, she's a good friend and yes that's the only reason I'm going), going to a Brooklyn Pride Rally in the park around the corner where the Dodgers played before they were the Dodgers, and going home to the fam in No.VA to see Shakespeare's R&J at First Stage, and clock in some quality time with Gigantor before he goes off to Europe and I start my term of service with NYC Duz Gud - about which, incidentally, we had this convo:

G: So tell me about this new job
M: Well, they're rounding up a ton of up-and-coming do-gooder student types and -
G: Burn them?
M: No! They're going to assign us to non-profit groups to help out with their -
G: Heating bills?
M: No! To help organize and improve their structuring and such. Plus it's too hot to need to -- ....  They're not going to burn us!
G: Are you sure?
M: Yes! And I don't know where I'll be assigned yet - this is just the first year
G: Or maybe there just aren't any witnesses from last year's group of burning victims.
M: Stop talking about burning! They're not going to burn us. I'm not going to talk nonsense to you anymore.
G: Oh-ho Wow. This is a major turning point. The end of an e-potch.
M: You mean "epoch"
G: E-potch.
M: I'm extremely sure it's pronounced E-pock.
G: How much do you want to bet.....
M: $20
G: ....Of dad's money
M: So if I win, dad pays me $20.
G: Aha - you said it! It's on the record.
M: And if you win, dad pays you $20.
G: Everyone wins except dad! 
M: And there's nobody transcribing this conversation.
G: Oh isn't there?
M: Gigantor is a stupidface
G: Heyyy
M: Too late - it's on the record now.

A slightly bizarre day for a neighbor...

Since I now have a future (I was accepted into....a city organization to which I had applied...and for which I had to undergo a background check...and to whose attention I do not wish to draw this blog by name dropping it...and which I will henceforth refer to as NYC Duz Gud), I let today get off to a lazy start. Plus the Aged P and I had a busy 24 hours in which we ate at a diner, meandered around midtown, lounged in Columbus Circle, saw Angela Lansbury and Rupert Everett and Christine Ebersole in Blithe Spirit, had Thai food and iced tea that kept us both up until 3 am, strolled around Park Slope, ate at another diner amidst sepia Brooklyn photographs, met up with my aunt for Guys and Dolls and then put him on a bus. So I was due for a lie-in. And some Flight of the Conchords. And then a nap.

Anyway, I finally got up and about. At the friendly local TD Bank, I had to make a deposit and try to cash in a Penny Arcade receipt from, um, February 2008. Like..when it was still Commerce Bank. Like, when I was waiting for my paychecks to start coming in predictably and needed to convert my Hillary Mug o' Pennies into $14. Of course, on that long ago day I'd promptly lost my receipt and with it any chance of redemption. Or so I thought! One of the great things about moving (possibly the only great thing, aside from a justifiable reason for ordering pizza and eating nothing else three days in a row) is finding things inexplicably tucked in random places. So it was with the Penny Arcade receipt, and I bore it with a hopeful heart to the counter. And got laughed at. They eventually agreed to cash it, on the condition that I always redeem future receipts on the same day, at the same branch.

But my long-lost receipt was not the strangest thing in TD Bank on 5th ave today. The strangest thing had to be the woman in sweatpants clutching a bedraggled cat wrapped up in a towel. The cat was in the towel, not the woman, and in between disgruntled yowls the woman was kissing and nuzzling the cat's face. The woman wasn't yowling, the cat was.

And when the woman had reached the front of the queue, she turned to me (who was standing several steps back, waiting for the cat to get fed up and begin seeking blood) and said "I'm waiting for this black guy, because he's the only one who knows me, so you should go ahead, whoever opens up." 

I swear - I cannot think of a stranger thing that has been said to me since I moved to New York. Or maybe since I developed ears in utero. 

When the woman finally made it to her one true friend the black guy bank teller, she began to explain that the cat was on his way to be shaved, "and how is your tender lovin' baby muffin?" (this is an approximation, as I was two tellers away pleading my case for the Penny Arcade receipt and trying not to make eye contact with the by-now thoroughly displeased feline)

* * * * 

I commenced my walk, originally planned to be a 5 mile jaunt around Windsor Terrace, south of Prospect Park, culminating at the saddest of sad places, the apartment complex built on the ashes of Ebbets field. I made it past an interminable number of row houses, antique fire stations, filming locations for Al Pacino and Helen Hunt (different movies) and Stanford White columns all the way to the Parade Grounds, where I finally succumbed to the gloom of the misty afternoon and caught a Q train back to civilization. I mean, back to the other side of the park. But not before passing a seriously freaky abandoned hospital center, a liquor store with beautiful stained glass windows spelling out "Candy. Ice Cream. Sodas." and a Pie Shop that I will need to revisit. And a man checking his mail at the gate and allowing himself the occasional loud and embarassing bodily function. I had hoped these didn't happen in Brooklyn, but I suppose anything is better than an entire corner devoted to public urination at the end of one's block.

Once back on familiar ground, I stopped at (the original famous) Ozzie's for coffee, followed by the Community Bookstore for a perusal of the next Dan Simmons novel and a snuggle of the ancient and reasonably agreeable white-pawed black cat, who made no argument when I scooped him off the floor and onto my lap for 20 minutes of one-handed-petting-while-reading.

Then I stopped at the trumped up "All Natural Organic" corner store which differs from other bodegas only in that its frozen pizzas come in gluten-free and vegan varieties and cost $9 (Queried Gigantor - "How many times have you go continued to go there after realizing that?" Answered I "Only 3, but I needed frozen rosemary and garlic potato wedges!"). It's clearly an adaptive mechanism the surviving bodegas have evolved after watching the neighborhood be flooded with yuppies and hipsters and other crunchy granola manifesto ascribers. Most of the cigarettes-and-beer-sold-here joints now also proffer gourmet trail mix and pesticide-free nectarines alongside the Village Voice.

I'm just pleased I didn't make my entree into life-sustaining corner store regular status by dropping seltzer water and ice cream all over the floor like I did up on 130th st. No sirree. I may have purchased four bottles of seltzer water and a celebratory chipwich into (chip)which I tucked before even leaving the store...but at least I didn't drop anything. All natural organic or otherwise.

This is karma for lip-synching while everyone else in every single show was singing their heart out.

I'm happy Liza won, outraged that Hair beat West Side Story, and was very giggly over the collection of all my Broadway faves in one place. There is something special and magical about the theatrical community you don't find anywhere else in the world, and though I may not shout it as scarily as Alice Ripley, I agree that art > most other things.

The NPH jab at Jeremy Piven was hilaaaarious, and built very subtly considering how not-a-secret the Bway community's irritation is.

Shows I Must See Now include:

Next to Normal
Billy Elliot
Norman Conquests

And the ones I will be seeing this week with the Aged P, God of Carnage and In the Heights

( House season 5 spoiler! )

I'm so glad my choir wrapped up when it did because ZOMG tomorrow in Prospect Park David Byrne is giving a free concert and you should all be there because I WILL SO BE THERE.

(h/t to Matt Chait on Twitter and Broke Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website for the heads-up)