To Jerome

In 1999, before we met and long before we were married, my wife was living in Giles County, Virginia. In need of a pet, she answered an ad offering a litter of barn cats to good owners. One of the cats was a strong, aggressive little orange tom. She fell in love and took him home, naming him "Jerome" after one of Morris Day's backup singers.

Over the years, my wife has told me many tales of Jerome's feats of strength. One of my favorites is the story of the bird: my wife swears that she once saw him pluck a bird out of the air. According to her, Jerome jumped between fifteen and twenty feet straight up, grabbed a bird, took him down, and killed him. Another great story involves Jerome's complete domination of a raccoon. According to my wife, she once saw Jerome drown a raccoon in a creek.

I don't know if either of these stories is completely true, but I'm inclined to take my wife at her word. He was an amazingly strong cat. Besides, the image of our sleek orange cat pulling down a bird or taking out a wily raccoon has never failed to amuse me.

When I first met Jerome, he was an outdoor cat living in the wilds of Giles. Although he was a little standoffish, I was immediately impressed by his considerable strength. Even after he was neutered, he was still a brawler; lifting him, I could feel that he was twenty pounds of solid muscle. Frankly, it was hard to make Jerome do anything that he didn't want to do.

When my wife moved in, Jerome came with her. We initially had a slight adjustment problem, as it took him a little while to figure out that he was no longer the dominant male in the household. I convinced him of this by grabbing hold of him and snuggling aggressively, refusing to let him go until he stopped struggling. After a few days, he learned to just give in. We became great snugglebuddies, and he decided that he loved the life of a housecat. He would often bug me to pet him, and regularly climbed in my lap when I sat down.

However, I was also loath to try to make Jerome do anything that he didn't want to do. For example, I never clipped his nails, as doing so involved wrapping him in a towel, pinning him to the ground, and getting my wife to release, and clip, one paw at a time. Besides, Jerome was pretty careful with his hygiene; he would gnaw off his nails and spit them out when they got too long. It was a little disconcerting to come across discarded cat nails, but the alternative was pretty miserable.

When my wife went to New York, Jerome and I bonded still further. We both missed her, and he got used to curling up in bed with me every night. On our own ride North, he was a total sport, sitting for two days in the car with a minimum of yowling.

As I mentioned previously, he acclimation to New York was not nearly as easy.

A couple of weeks ago, Jerome became ill. He had been listless for a couple of days, and stopped going to the bathroom. We called around to a lot of local vets. Before we even had a chance to tell them what was wrong, the doctors offered to euthanize him. Their rates were very competitive, but we told them that we preferred to give him a chance at survival.

We finally found a doctor in Riverdale, a ritzier section of the Bronx, who offered to see what he could do. We had to give him an initial deposit of $450, as he had a lot of customers who had run out on their bills. This was more than we could afford, but Jerome was a special cat, and we wanted to do everything we could for him.

He kept Jerome for about a week. It turned out that our cat had crystals in his urine. This, in itself, was not that big a problem, but he had caught an infection that had caused his urethra to narrow. The crystals had caught in his urethra, causing urine to back up into his bladder and kidneys. His kidneys had shut down, and he had been near death when we brought him in. Over the course of the week, Doctor Cedeno gave Jerome a large quantity of antibiotics and bladder medication, constantly retested him, and ultimately pronounced him stable, if not exactly healthy. We were tasked with giving him a daily bladder dilator and continuing his course of antibiotics. The doctor was honest with us; Jerome wasn't out of the woods, but he had a good chance of survival. If he continued to get worse, the only other course of action was an operation that would effectively turn him into a female cat.

We compared notes with a good friend who is in vet school. She assured us that Dr. Cedeno did everything by the book. In fact, according to our friend, he ended up charging us about a quarter of the going rate for the work he did. Even so, Jerome's medical bill cleaned us out. Still, as long as he was willing to keep fighting, we were going to do everything we could to help him.

Over the next few weeks, we gave Jerome his medication, an often miserable task. He was clearly suffering, but was also fighting hard. As his energy was low, we set up a bed, food, and water for him in the bathroom, where he could relax and not have to deal with our other cat, Bagheera.

On Tuesday, Jerome stopped fighting. He went quietly, on his bed. I was petting him, and he was using the last of his strength to purr. Finally, he closed his eyes and stopped purring.

Jerome was a strong, friendly, amazing, and oddly vulnerable little guy, and I am grateful for the time I got to spend with him. In a household filled with women, he was my sole male companion and consistent co-conspirator. He brought a lot to my home, and I'm going to miss him a lot.

Diorama

Please excuse my recent absence from your blogs. Unfortunately, Verizon has recently cut off my internet connection, so I can only access the web from the local library! Hopefully, the problem will be dealt with soon. In the meantime, here's a final Flushing Meadow post.

Near the Unisphere, there's a huge marble neoclassical building that is the only surviving remnant of the 1939 World's Fair. Named the New York building, it originally housed the New York exhibit in the first fair. Afterwards, it became a recreation center and ice rink. Later, from 1946 to 1950, it became home to the United Nations General Assembly. This, in fact, is the building in which the partition of Palestine and creation of Israel occurred.

It was subsequently renovated for the second World's Fair and, in 1972, became home to the Queens Museum of Art. Half of it houses the museum, and the other half still has an ice rink.

Most of the art in the Queens Museum of Art is fairly interesting, but isn't particularly worthy of a visit. However, the museum has an amazing collection of World's Fair paraphernalia. Of particular interest is the New York Panorama.

The Panorama is somewhat misnamed. Actually a diorama, it was built for the 1964 World's Fair. It is a gargantuan model of New York City, featuring every building, park, field, and waterway. Every so often, it is updated to reflect the changing face of the city.

The Panorama is showing its age somewhat. It has visible creases showing where the individual sections are connected, and the city could do with a bit of dusting, but it is still pretty amazing. Best of all, a glass pathway goes most of the way around the room, making it possible to view almost the entire city from a fairly close range.

All in all, visiting the Panorama made me feel a lot like Godzilla.

Here's a picture of Manhattan looking South from the Bronx:


And here's a somewhat blurry picture of George, my wife, and our friend Katie laying on the glass for a birds-eye view:


Here's Prospect Park, near my sister Jen's apartment:


This is Northern Queens, looking South from the Bronx. LaGuardia airport is on the right:


Here's Flushing Meadow:


Here's the Fordham area of the Bronx, where I live:


And here's a close-up of my neighborhood. Poe Park is on the right:


This is Coney Island. The parachute jump is toward the left:


Here's my wife, looking out over the whole thing:


And here's my foot, hovering over a small part of the city as the denizens lie below, unaware of the threat that sits but a few feet above their sleeping heads:


It's hard to avoid feeling godlike at the Panorama.

Down and Up

Walking through Flushing Meadow, it's easy to forget to look down and up, but some of the most beautiful remnants of the World's Fair are on the ground, in the sky, in places just out of the range of easy sight.

When you enter the park from the Shea Stadium subway stop, there is a plaza with several mosaics. One of them, by Andy Warhol, shows Robert Moses:


Up close, he looks a little psychotic, and appears to have a major cavity:


Another one, a few steps away, is an abstract piece by Salvador Dali:


As far as I can tell, it is a mermaid, bent double, over the black outline of a heart. That Dali--such a kidder!

I don't know who did the one of the "Fountain of the Planets," bit it's beautiful:


Unfortunately, the real fountain is empty and gated. It looks like an industrial waste dump:




Over near the Unisphere, there is a small plaza with sandblasted murals commemorating both World Fairs. They are almost impossible to see, and are usually covered with skaters, but are really beautiful:


A few hundred feet away, the remainders of the New York State pavilion are still standing. The towers were designed as platforms for viewing the Fair and the city, and the oval space beside them had a fiberglas "tent" over it, covering a gargantuan map of New York state.


After the fair, the New York Pavilion was made into a roller skating rink. However, it had a few major design flaws. A few years later, the fiberglas covering started to fall apart, so it was removed, and the floor was patched with concrete. Finally, though, the whole space was fenced off and left to rust.


In the meantime, the towers were also shut down. One of the glass elevators was stored in the sub-basement, while the other was left halfway up the tower, where it has spent the last thirty years falling apart.


Having seen Men in Black, I expected the towers to be slick, exciting, ultra-modern structures. In person, though, they look incredibly depressing:

Corporate Art

Wandering through Flushing Meadows, one sometimes comes across huge cast-metal sculptures. Poorly proportioned and painfully self-conscious, these statues don't have a lot of artistic merit, but they say a great deal about the combination of sophistication and prudery that was New York in the mid-1960's.

One of my favorites lies between the Unisphere and the Fountain of the Planets. It has an impressive-sounding name, "The Rocket-Thrower."


For me, though, the sculpture hearkens back to adolescence, when I was first discovering the wonders of masturbation. Looking at it from this angle, the connection becomes a little clearer:


And the surprised expression on the sculpture's face also seems very familiar:


I see it as a mixture of amazement, pride, and abject terror, something along the lines of "Dear God! I'm never going to be able to clean this all up!"

Aah, childhood memories...

Oddly enough, "Spoogius, the Rocket-Shooter" seems to be flying on a huge turd:


Over the years, Spoogius has gotten a little weathered, and the streaks of water have created beautiful patterns of tarnish:







Near the U.S. Open Pavilion, there's a huge statue of a man and a woman floating on a bunch of birds. I'm sure it's called "Leda and the Swans," or something similar:


I call it "Anorexius and Minimus," after the classic Greek myth featuring a starving woman and a man with a very small "hoplite." I'm sure the sculpture is supposed to honor the ideals of athleticism and the classic ideal of victory, but the woman is really, really skinny, and her ponytail hairdo seems a little out of place:


Overall, it looks as if Joani Cunningham from Happy Days decided to go bird watching while naked.

The male counterpart is actually kind of scary. He's also really thin, and has a very, very small penis:


Ooh, look! It's an innie!

The unintentional subtext of this sculpture is that the man is allowed to be naked, but he can't be threateningly well-endowed.

All in all, the sculpture seems to have a very confused perspective regarding art and nudity. On the one hand, the sculptors realized that nudity is classical and artistic, but they couldn't bring themselves to openly support it. Going for a middle path, they offered a starving girl with bizarrely huge boobs and a man with almost no penis. The subtext is clear: heterosexual relationships bring emptiness and castration. One wonders if this was a piece of subtle homosexual propaganda, an indication of a general scorched-earth policy toward relationships, or merely evidence that the artist had never seen anyone with their clothes off.

The 1960's are so weird.

Unisphere

When I was a kid, Indiana Jones was my hero. James Bond, Bruce Wayne, and Clark Kent were all well and good, but I could imagine nothing cooler than hours of research followed with hours of fieldwork, as I pursued the world's greatest treasures, a pack of fiendish Nazi rivals hot on my heels. I knew exactly who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Somewhere between then and now, a few things went awry. I never quite got around to learning Aramaic, Hebrew, or even Latin, and my few experiments with bull whips nearly cost me an eye. I must admit that I look very cool in a fedora, but I avoid khaki pants with a passion, having been forced to wear them in High School.


While my career path has not brought me to foreign lands, I have never lost my love of discovery. When I was growing up in Northern Virginia, I spent hours traveling to Civil War and Revolutionary War battle sites, poking around ruins, and imagining the events that unfolded there. When I moved to Southwest Virginia, my interests switched to neglected railway tunnels and overgrown mining settlements, both of which were common in my area. I would wander the woods and trails, noting signs of neglected habitations and trying to imagination what the area had looked like before it was abandoned.

I thought that I'd have to give up this hobby when I went to New York. After all, in a city with millions of citizens, how could there be any areas that were abandoned or neglected? Surely, every inch of land must be constantly used and reused, adapted to the changing purposes of the community!


Surprisingly, I have not found this to be so. Sometimes, New York seems like a city without a memory. It has numerous little parks and hidden treasures that have been ignored, abandoned, or forgotten. Even when these little spots have been remembered, as is the case with Poe Cottage, there seems to be a total lack of understanding about what they symbolize or why they are noteworthy.

I've coined a term for my park explorations: Parcheology. This is the study of forgotten civic spaces. It focuses on areas that were once famous, and which city planners, officials, and citizens once spent millions of dollars developing. These spaces were fads: incredibly popular for a time, they have long since been consigned to the rubbish pile of history. Wandering around them, I've learned a lot about what people once considered vital and important. Although tastes have moved on, these places have stayed. They aren't really meaningful anymore, but they exist as mementos of forgotten eras, and they allow us to relive our cultural history.


Some Parcheology spots that I've already covered include The Hall of Fame of Great Americans, Poe Cottage, The Bronx Community College Library, Woodlawn Cemetery, and Grant's Tomb. However, the mother of all Parcheology spaces is the World's Fair at Flushing Meadow, Queens. The site of both the 1939 and the 1964 World's Fairs, Flushing Meadow was a huge trash dump until Robert Moses decided to reclaim it.

Moses spent a fortune to create the ultimate exhibition space, an area that showed New York's optimism would cement its position as one of the World's greatest cities. After the fair, many of the buildings were demolished, and fairgrounds were allowed to lie fallow.


A few decades later, several prominent businessmen had fond childhood memories of the Fair. Wanting to recreate it for a new generation, they approached Robert Moses. He had lingering disappointment over what he perceived as the failures of the first fair, so he began planning for the next one.

Several years and millions of dollars later, the 1964 New York World's Fair was ready for the public. Featuring pavilions from countries around the world, the fair focused on the idea that the world is becoming much smaller, even as the Universe seems to expand. After two years, however, the fair closed and most of its exhibits were demolished. The fairgrounds were once again allowed to fill up with grass, and the few remaining structures were permitted to deteriorate. A few statues, a few buildings, and the occasional piece of art remain, letting the viewer imagine the grandeur of the World's Fair.


The central structure of the World's Fair was the Unisphere. Twelve stories high, it weighed 900,000 pounds, and was created by U.S. Steel. Surrounded by a ring of fountains that were designed to obscure its base and make it look like it was floating in space, it had three rings suspended around it. The rings represented Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, and the first communication satellite to orbit the Earth. All of this was illuminated by a state-of-the art light display.

The light display has long since stopped functioning, and the Unisphere is starting to look a little tarnished. A few years ago, the State spent a lot of money to clean it up and get it running again. From some angles, it's beautiful; from others, it looks a little sad. It has plants growing in some spots and the fountains don't work any more. Still, it is huge and impressive at a close range.


The Unisphere, and its surrounding pool, are now the preserve of skaters. They're generally friendly and seem willing to share the space. On my second visit, I climbed up the base of the Unisphere and took some pictures. It was scary, but exciting, and I got to touch both Antarctica and South America.

One final note: from the U.S. Open Tennis pavilions, the Unisphere is a shiny, beautiful sculpture, glowing as it floats above a perfectly landscaped garden:



From the other side, it's dingy and tired-looking:

I Feel the Need...

I actually had a post lined up for today, but I was doing a little You Tube surfing with my friend Jorie last night when we came across this trailer for Top Gun.

There have been a few recut trailers that made me laugh out loud--for example, The Shining romantic comedy, the Mary Poppins slasher flick, and the West Side Story zombie movie. The thing, though, is that most of these edited trailers completely change the meaning of their films. This one, on the other hand, draws out a subtext that's in the original movie. I've always wondered about Maverick and the Iceman, and this trailer only increases the questions.

I hope you get a kick out of it!

Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Part Two

One of These Kids Is Doing His Own Thing



In the 1970's and 1980's, at about the same thime that I was bugging my father to take us to Grant's tomb, it was caught in a rapid decline. A lack of interest about the Civil War, a major increase in crime, and a total lack of vision on the part of the Park Service, led to vandalism, graffiti, and generalized decline. The Grant Monument Association's website states that there was evidence of prostitution, homeless residence, drug activity, and the use of high explosives in the area. The website even claims that the tomb was used as a site for animal sacrifices.

I don't know about the animal sacrifices, but I believe their assertion that vandals used high explosives to blow the beaks off the gargantuan granite eagles that sit in front of the tomb. Although the statues have been restored, it is still possible to see where they were damaged:


Here are some pictures of the graffiti and other damage to the tomb:





In the 1990's, the remaining members of the Grant family threatened to re-inter Grant and his wife in Illinois if New York did not refurbish the tomb. This, along with a lot of lobbying and lawsuits, led to a massive cleanup effort. The change has been massive, and it is difficult to connect the tomb as it now stands with the disaster depicted on the Grant Monument website.

This is not to say, however, that some jarring notes don't remain. With its marble and granite materials and elaborate ornamentation, Grant's tomb represents the height of Beaux Arts memorial architecture. Inside, however, this is paired with a gray cloth cubicle divider that is used to display contextual historic material:


The Office Space look really clashes with the marble and granite and, generally, looks tacky as hell. Of course, compared to graffiti, dead animals, and human excreta, a jarring cloth divider is a pretty minor problem. The bigger disaster waits outside.

In 1972, the National Parks Service spent much of its budget for the upkeep of Grant's Tomb on the creation of a collection of mosaic-covered benches. Here's an example:


This bench, from the "alien autopsy" school of furniture design, seems to hug the tree, even as it mirrors the structure. Here's another image from the Grant's Tomb website. It juxtaposes the side of the tomb with the horrifying benches:


And here's a shot of one of the benches, sporting a scorpion motif:


One wonders how much of the NPS' grant to the artist went toward the purchase of psychedelic drugs:

This particular section looks like a dragon ate a big box of crayons and took a crap all over the plaza:


More psychedelia:


Yay! A cab:


One massively under-represented segment of American society is the druggie chess players. After all, it's not easy to play chess with a head full of acid, and society tends to ignore their need for a place to inspire the hallucinations while one battles opponents. Luckily, the National Park Service is nothing if not understanding, and created this space for the guy who can't choose between Timothy Leary and Boris Spassky:


I don't want to seem like a snob, but, well, I am. I tend to regard the artistic produce of the late-1960's and early 1970's with a critical eye. This isn't to say that the monstrosity surrounding Grant's tomb doesn't have its place: I think it would be perfect in a playground.

Preferably next to a school for the blind.

Deprived of the jarring colors, I'm sure that blind children would be able to really enjoy the exciting contours and textures of the sculpture. They could spend hours crawling on the uncomfortable surfaces, playing with the designs.

That having been said, however, the benches definitely don't belong next to Grant's tomb. The two structures have nothing in common whatsoever. Next to the benches, Grant's tomb appears stodgy and standoffish, and next to the tomb, the benches appear amateurish and cheesy. I can only wonder about the combination of blackmail, drugs, and oral sex that the artist must have employed to convince the Park Service to sign off on this travesty.

Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Part One

The Death of Restraint


When I was a kid, my father had dozens of little routines that he constantly threw out. My sisters and I were placed in the role of straight man as he hit the key punchlines in various Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Marx Brothers routines. One of his favorite lines was "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Unfamiliar with Marx's TV show "You Bet Your Life," I always assumed that this was a legitimate question. After all, maybe they built a huge crypt for Grant, but then someone more deserving died, so Grant ended up in a narrow grave while some other ex-president or a supreme court justice was buried in his tomb.


This, by the way, is what happens when you get used to trick questions. I had a little trouble dealing with the obvious.

When I got a little older and began displaying my nascent tourism interests, I asked my father where Grant's tomb was. He told me that it was in New York. When I asked him if we could ever visit it, he gave me a vague answer that it was "up North" and that we might go there "someday."

Based on his evasive answer, I assumed that the tomb was located somewhere in upstate New York, maybe near the Canadian border, and that we would never visit it. Years later, after I came to the city, I realized why my father was so loath to visit the site: it was located above 59th Street. As I might have mentioned once or twice, my father had a little paranoia about the city, and Harlem might have been Timbuktu as far as he was concerned.

One day, after dropping George off at day care, I decided to stop in and visit Grant. After a little research, I found out that his tomb was located at 122th Street and Riverside Drive, about fifteen blocks South of George's day care.

When Grant died, the national outpouring of grief was immeasurable, and areas fought over the right to hold his body. After a lot of politicking, New York City gained the contract, and a huge public subscription paid for the structure itself. The then-president, Benjamin Harrison, used a golden trowel to lay the cornerstone. The tomb itself, the largest individual mausoleum in North America, was based on a few classical references, including the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus (which was one of the wonders of the ancient world) and Napoleon's mausoleum. The original plan called for a spur of the Hudson rail line and a dock on the Hudson river so that pilgrims could use numerous routes to come pay their respects.

Ultimately, these plans were scaled back somewhat, and they abandoned the dock and rail spur. However, the site is still a little over the top. To get to the mausoleum, one walks down a long, tree-lined plaza. The building itself is a huge pile of marble and granite, with a huge rotunda, gigantic granite eagles, and angels surrounding the slogan "Let Us Have Peace."

Inside, it's even crazier. There are three mosaics that detail events in Grant's Civil War career, a huge open cutaway (or oculus, if you want to be really particular about it) in the middle of the floor that displays the high-gloss caskets of Grant and his wife. There are also side rooms containing flags from the war, as well as painted murals outlining the major battle sites. After I talked to the guard a little, he let me go down to the caskets on the floor below.

The coffins of Grant and his wife sat side by side in their underground area, surrounded by busts of famous Civil War generals. It is simultaneously intimate and overwhelming.

It is also a little tacky and excessive. After all, Grant ranks with Dubya and Warren G. Harding as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. By his own admission, he was in over his head as a politician and statesman, and his presidency was marred by one terrible scandal after another. This is not to underestimate his incredible performance as a general, and the amazing honesty of his memoirs, but Grant was a disastrous President.

When one considers the comparatively humble graves of Lincoln, FDR, Jefferson, and Washington (not to mention Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and even Kennedy), the fact tht America's largest and most impressive tomb is dedicated to Grant seems downright insane.

On the other hand, it's an amazing space, and it makes me nostalgic for the days when people would dedicate millions of dollars to create incredible public monuments. Once upon a time, people decided that they wanted to honor their greatest general and worst president. They saved their money and built an outrageous memorial that dwarfs the imagination and honors both Grant and their own excessive exuberance.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I didn't put up a big post today, figuring that most of you will probably be driving all over the place, visiting family, and consuming mass quantities of food. However, if you have a moment or two in the midst of your revelry, you might want to check out The Perry Bible Fellowship. It's loaded with disturbing, bizarre, and utterly inappropriate comics like these ones. If you can't read them, try clicking on them, as it will make the images larger.






Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

They Call Me the Wanderer

When I was preparing to move to New York, I raided the Virginia Tech library's collection of New York books. It was an eclectic selection, leaning heavily towards dense histories and scholarly treatises. After reading a few of these, I was overjoyed to discover David Yeadon's New York Nooks and Crannies. A strange and eclectic guidebook, it was a fun read, and I finished it quickly. I soon bought my own copy, and it has become a well-thumbed, heavily-attotated addition to my book collection. It's filled with pieces about various areas of the city, and directs the reader to all sorts of lesser-known spots that are absolutely amazing. Yeadon views his city with wonder, love, and awe, and passes those emotions on to his reader.

The only trouble is that the book is thirty years old.

There are good sides to this: using Yeadon, it is possible to travel not only across space, but also through time. He describes a New York that is caught in the grip of crime, but is still beautiful and proud. In his city, Fourteenth Street is loaded with meat markets and hookers, instead of chain stores and boutiques. Union Square is a dangerous cesspool, rather than a benign hangout for pseudo-hippies. With Yeadon, one can imagine the city that was, where ethnic enclaves brushed shoulders with each other, while danger and delight went hand in hand.

This isn't to say that there aren't dangers. However, the biggest threat is probably urban renewal. Many of Yeadon's hangouts have long since been replaced by chain stores or destroyed by wrecking balls. With some trepidation, I followed Yeadon's directions to Arthur Avenue, the Bronx's Little Italy, terrified that I would find a collection of vacant storefronts or, worse yet, a line of Forever 21s, Starbucks, and KFCs.

This quest was not just idle curiosity: I was genuinely interested in finding an authentic Italian enclave. Today, if you ask New Yorkers about Little Italy, they usually direct you to the South end of Manhattan, where three blocks of Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal are pretty much all that remains of what was once a sprawling Italian neighborhood. This is the famous face of Italy in New York, where Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello grew up, where Coppola shot The Godfather, and where numerous legends of murders, kidnappings, and assorted dirty deals were cemented in the public imagination.

Over the years, most of the Italian residents of Manhattan's Little Italy have moved on to greener pastures, leaving the area to an aggressive and rapacious Chinese population. All that remains is a small street, lined with great restaurants and little ethnic stores, that caters to tourists. Every night, the restaurants and stores wrap up, and the employees drive home to Long Island and New Jersey, leaving the street to the Chinese who now live there and who will one day swallow up Mulberry Street like a final, dry meatball. In the meantime, I wouldn't say that Manhattan's Little Italy isn't authentic; it's every bit as authentic as Busch Gardens, or Epcot, or The Olive Garden.

I was pleased to discover that, not only is Arthur Avenue still up and running, but it is also a genuine and authentic Italian enclave. Like Manhattan's Little Italy, it is filled with great restaurants and stores, some of which are definitely aimed at the tourist trade, but the difference lies in the people who populate it. For example, there is Ciccarone Park, at the corner of 187th Street and Arthur Avenue. In the summer, the park is often full of people playing bocci or chess or just watching their grandkids. As evening comes, they aren't rushing to get in the car and get home before the kids get out of hand. After a while, I started to realize that they weren't in a hurry to go because home was just a short walk away.

And this relaxation bleeds through everywhere. On my last visit to the community market on Arthur Avenue, the counterman proudly pointed out the "Arthur Avenue" olive oil that he named after his daughter. A few doors down, the guy in the cheese shop cut me a deal because he knew that I'd be back. Ditto the guy in the Calabria Pork Store, where aging sopressata sausages hang in clusters from the ceiling and my wife had to leave because she saw a greasy plastic container that was full of pig viscera. On another visit, my wife and I sat outside Giovanni's restaurant and pizzaria. I sipped on a limoncello while she drank a glass of wine and we both watched the people strolling down the street. It didn't take us long to realize that this is a neighborhood, and these people are invested in maintaining a friendly, comfortable space.

I'm not going to dig too deeply into the reasons that this place seems comfortable. This, after all, is the setting of A Bronx Tale. Chazz Palmintieri grew up near the corner of 187th Street and Arthur Avenue, in the heart of the district, and the movie details his childhood struggle to decide between mob life and the civilian world. Even now, there are little things that seem peculiar. For example, regardless of the time of day, the "North Bronx Athletic Club" on Arthur Avenue always seems to have a few heavy-set Italian gentlemen playing cards and smoking cigars. As far as I can tell, there isn't any working out happening.

(Incidentally, this is also the birthplace of Doo-wop. Among the residents, the area is known as Belmont, after Belmont Avenue, which runs through the neighborhood. Dion DiMucci, a local resident, borrowed the name for his group, Dion and the Belmonts.)

Regardless, the street feels safe. I've walked around late at night, but have never felt any danger or need to look over my shoulder. The people are nice, by and large, and generally seem willing to chat, answer questions, and fuss over George. In fact, the biggest danger, and the reason that we probably won't be moving to Arthur Avenue is the food. I haven't done a full accounting, but I think that there are roughly a dozen first-rate bakeries in a four or five block radius. I have done a little exploration of them, and have discovered that Madonia brothers has the best procuitto bread, onion bread, olive bread, and cannoli. Addeo is a close second on the prociutto bread. Egidio has amazing cream shells, and Morrone has cookies that will make you weep. Palombo is the most tourist-centered, with a large dining room and a selection of high-end pastries that are dazzling. Gino's, on the other hand, is very old-fashioned, with a few traditional offerings, like Osso di Morte (bones of the dead) cookies, which are great when dipped in cappucino.

This, of course, doesn't even go into the prociutto and melon appetizer that I've had at Giovanni's, the incredible roasted halibut with olives and capers at Enzo's, and the oysters on the half-shell that they sell on the street outside of Umberto's clam house. Suffice to say that my life on Arthur Avenue would be happy, but short, and might be punctuated with insulin injections. After all, it wouldn't really be fair to live in the area without sampling everything that it had to offer. Moreover, given my inclinations, I would have to compare the pastries at every bakery, the pizza at every pizzeria, and the pasta at every restaurant. Anything less would be unfair.

Before I leave, here's a shot of the scourge of Arthur Avenue, the fresh-filled mini cannoli at Madonia Brothers:

Live Nude Chickens

This summer, while in the process of moving to New York, I regularly stopped in to visit my friend John in Alexandria. John was an amazingly helpful resource: he once lived in the Bronx, had several other friends who had also made their homes in the blighted borough, and generally had a good feeling for how things worked in the City. Also, his home lay roughly halfway between New York and Southwest Virginia, which made it the perfect stopover if I was feeling particularly exhausted. Best of all, John's local bar, Kitty O'Shea's, is the home of the infamous Three Mile Island shot, not to mention a pretty impressive selection of more generic tipples.

Anyway, one evening, as we were drinking beer in Kitty's, John and some of his friends started telling stories about the Bronx. John's big tale of the night began with a train stoppage. Apparently, John was on his way home from work when his subway train randomly halted in the middle of the Bronx. The conductor kicked everyone off, leaving them to find their way home. Anyway, John had to walk a mile or two through some pretty skeevy neighborhoods. On the way, he passed a store. Sitting out front were two Muslim boys who were crying inconsolably while their mother was inside with the proprietor. Looking closer, John realized that the store was a live butcher, and that the mother was dropping off a goat.

John paused to take a sip of his beer and light a cigarette. As I waited for the conclusion, one of John's other listeners looked up from his drink and said, with beery gravitas, "They named it."

John laughed and said "they named it." The rest of his listeners nodded their heads like a jury confirming a verdict. "They named the goat." We all paused to reflect on the cruelties of youth, the hard-won wisdom of age, and the fact that a half-pint beer glass is pretty insufficient for anything more taxing than a urinalysis.

Flash forward a couple of months, and I now realize that every third or fourth butcher in my area has a sign outside his store that says "Vivero" or "Pollo Vivero." When I initially saw these signs, I felt a little thrill. The idea of live animals struck me as quaint and amusing, a sort of nod to the past. I liked the link to a simpler time, when healthy animals were fed by humans, not feed tubes, and killed by butchers, not machines. This, I thought, was infinitely more attractive than the concept of said animals being slaughtered, plucked, chopped, shrinkwrapped, shipped hundreds of miles, and rearranged in a grocery store to hide the scrapes, freezer burns, and assorted rotted spots.


The reality, I must admit, can sometimes be a little disturbing. As John and I were walking back from the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, we came upon a Pollo Vivero store. I was immediately disarmed by one of their signs, which read "Nobody Beats Our Prices: We Kill Halal."

I'm not sure how I'd advertise a live butcher, but I have a feeling that cute little pictures of rabbits, turkeys, chicks, and roosters isn't quite the way to go. On the bright side, it probably weeds out the squeamish, but it also might drive away customers who don't want to imagine their dinner posing for a Keane painting. In the painting, the animals appear prosaic, filled with barnyard dignity. They don't look like food so much as characters from Babe or Charlotte's Web. I don't mind eating real, live animals--in my opinion, we have canines and incisors for a reason. For that matter, most of the vegans that I've known have been passionless, weedy-looking people who did not look even remotely healthy. That having been said, I have also read The Chronicles of Narnia, and try to avoid eating animals that look like they have souls. The chicken, in particular, gets to me, as I can easily imagine her singing "One Day More" from Les Miserables.

Moving on...

The next sign was equally disturbing, in its own special way. It featured the name of the company above a picture of the World Trade Center. I'm not sure about the juxtaposition of the words "New York Live Poultry" and the scene of New York's greatest tragedy. I wondered if the idea was that patriotic Americans eat live chicken, or if the owners are somehow hinting that live killing keeps the terrorists at bay. Regardless, it seemed a little exploitative.

I'm guessing that Thanksgiving is a big time in the "Pollo Vivero" biz. After all, with the family coming by, every cook wants to do his or her best. And what, after all, is better than a freshly-killed turkey?

That having been said, I really could have done without the irony of a picture of a turkey, over the words "Holiday Special," with its head missing.

While we were hanging around outside, I peeked through the door. It looked like a vet clinic or a pound, with row after row of cages. Overall, it seemed pretty clean.

A little story about the woman in this picture: while John and I were looking inside the store, a young Dominican woman came out clutching a bag. As she exited, she opened the bag, glanced at its contents, and dry-heaved. John and I agreed that she was probably a first-generation American doing errands for her mom, and was unprepared to face the bloody realities of where dinner comes from. I'm not sure that I can blame her.

As a side note, it isn't always easy to get pictures of things in the Bronx. Usually I can get away with taking things from oblique angles, using the close-up function on my camera, or pretending that I'm taking pictures of my kid. On the occasions when these options aren't open to me, I do my best to be quick and subtle. On this particular day, I was neither, and one of the Pollo Vivero guys came out to express his displeasure with my photojournalism:

 

John and I went quickly on our way.

The Cat with Hands

It was an interesting day. It began with three and a half hours at work in which I trained my wife to do the job that I've been doing for the last two weeks and which she will be doing for the forseeable future. It was a lot of fun, and most people seemed sad to see me go. There's some talk of bringing me on in a part-time capacity. We'll have to see what happens.

Afterwards, we met Sue, my eldest sister, for lunch. There was a problem with our debit card; while minor, it was still kind of embarrassing. Thankfully, Sue was quite cool about it. When my wife went back to work, Sue, her daughter Emily, and I went on a jaunt to Arthur Avenue, the Italian section of the Bronx. I've been wanting to bring Sue there for a long time, and it was a kick. We wandered through the little markets, cheese shops, butchers, and bakeries. Sue got to see where we live and George's day care. I, meanwhile, got to spend some time with my niece, my sister got to spend time with her niece, and a good time was had by all.

Once I got home, I started cooking dinner and went out to move the car, only to get nailed by the police for talking on the cell phone. They let me off with a pretty minor ticket, but my base tendency is to get really freaked out when approached by anyone with a uniform, so I'm still a little wigged out.

Mixed in with all of this, there have been problems with Jerome the cat and various other minor dramas. Long story short, it's been a pretty full day, and I'm a bit fried. However, I want to show you this. I've been told that it's a little scary, but I really like it a lot. It's creaky and cool in a Richard Gory/Addams Family/Tim Burton kind of way, and I hope you get a kick out of it:



Excuse the flakiness--I should be much more with it tomorrow.

Rockin' Girl Blogger

Monty, the infamous CEO, was kind enough to nominate me as a "Rockin' Girl Blogger" a few months ago. Unfortunately, I was knee deep in packing and getting sodomized by the White House Moving Company, so I didn't thank him and pass the award along.

As a liberated male, I, of course, aspire to be as evolved, brilliant, and generally with it as even the least advanced woman.

(Incidentally, indulging one's feminine side is not just a way of becoming more well-rounded, thoughtful, and wiser; it's also a great way of picking up chicks. I know: obvious joke.)

As a man, even a somewhat liberated one, there is only so much that I can do. Luckily, I have a lot of blogs that show me the way. It's hard to find people who haven't already gotten this award, but the following five writers have somehow slipped through the cracks. Their blogs beautifully define femininity in impressive, exciting, and completely individual ways:

Franki, of Frankily Yours, is smart, funny, and sharp as a tack. She tends to go right to the point, and is none-too-subtle in her analysis and attacks. All too many women define femininity in terms of silence, docility, and lack of self-respect. Franki shows that strength and self-awareness can be very feminine.

As I may have pointed out once or twice, Jamiesmitten is a little random, a little silly, and a lot incisive. Somewhere in this apparent contradiction, she stakes out a very brave and very feminine space.

Odat usually puts up short, happy, life-affirming posts that are the perfect antidote to a stressful day. Every so often, however, she holds forth with a longer, more personal piece that reminds me of how impressive and deeply thoughtful she is.

I don't know if Spellbound would describe herself as a "girl," but she definitely should. In the time that I've been reading her blog, I've watched her rediscover her youth, her sexuality, and her femininity. In the process, she's helped her husband rediscover a lot of his own youth and vitality.

Philanthropster doesn't often post, and more's the pity. The cautiously optimistic side of its author's personality, this site is a simple consideration of all the beauty, truth, and hope that hide in plain sight.

Be the Blog

Recently, My Reflecting Pool nominated me for the "Be the Blog" award. I was honored, but also really surprised. When I started blogging, I saw it as a way of emptying out some of the ideas buzzing around my head. Rather than have all these random thoughts taking up a lot of my time, I thought, why not write them down somewhere. I could come back to them later on; in the meantime, they would be available for people to look at, laugh at, critique, yell at, etc...

As I started getting more into blogging, I began using this space to document aspects of my life. This has been particularly helpful lately, as my life has been changing a lot, and it's given me a place to think about who I am, what I'm becoming, and how my world is changing.

All that having been said, being the blog is something that I've aspired to, but not necessarily something that I've reached. However, I know a few people who have done just that. Here they are:

Claudia, of La Vida Claudia, has been working on becoming a photographer. In the meantime, she's had all sorts of daily struggles, moments of artistic confusion, and family troubles. She has moved from place to place, and has used the experience to explore how she feels about the concept of home. In other words, Claudia has grown in the time that I've read her, and she's been bold enough to put that growth out on the internet for everyone to see.

Slaghammer hasn't posted much recently, but his blog has always been one of my favorite stops. In addition to the fact that he writes beautifully, Slaghammer is also in the middle of many changes, and has used his blog to document his physical pains, his slow coming-to-terms with his past, and his own artistic struggles.

Mystic Wing is also exploring his own potential. He's documented his struggles with finding inner peace, his occasional moral struggles, and his difficulty in dealing with a body that isn't always as young as his soul. Through it all, he's embraced change and shared that change with his readers.

Call him Monty, call him David, call him CEO...regardless of his name, the proprietor of The Morning Meeting is as interesting as they come. In the time I have been reading him, he has lost a few beloved friends, had health problems, survived said health problems, and gotten a job. Along the way, he's documented his life with humor and humility, and has taken the time to encourage a lot of other bloggers on their own explorations.

Lex, of On Second Thought doesn't seem to take anything for granted. She explores her struggles with religion, race, work, body issues, cooking...you name it, she's thinking it through. My favorite thing about Lex is that she constantly encourages me to reconsider my own assumptions and have the bravery to address my own issues.

As a blogger, I try to use my little space to entertain people and share my ideas; most of all, though, I try to use it as a place to be myself, but more so. It's an area for me to document the changes in my life even as I think them over and consider how I will respond to them. These authors, and several others, have shown me how to do that with grace and artistry.

Poe, Poe Edgar

While I was doing my research on Bronx literature, I came across a couple of Yiddish poems about Edgar Allen Poe's cottage, which is located just off Kingsbridge Avenue, near my home. My first impulse, of course, was to wonder why Yiddish writers would choose Poe as a subject. On the surface, at least, they would seem to go together like gefilte fish and bananas.

After thinking about it for a while, I got the connection. After all, the Jewish community produced Franz Kafka, who is kind of like a second cousin to Poe. With a little imagination, it's easy to imagine how Poe's terror and sense of impending doom could find fertile ground in Jewish literature. Besides, the Bronx was filled with Yiddish writers in the 1920's--it's statistically likely that at least a few of them would be Poe fans.

One of the poems, Abraham Walt Liessen's, “At Poe Cottage in Fordham,” is a little too bombastic and overwritten for me. Here's Liessen's description of Poe:
I see him upright, as I close my eyes
Embittered, near a cloud of luminous lace,
Choked with pride, his heart agonized
Staring forlornly at the cold fireplace;
Lethargic he pines, galled in fever—
A phantom disheveled, aquiver.

Embittered, choked with pride, agonized...I get the feeling that Liessen's Poe was a little too precious for this harsh world. One imagines him swooning, hand against forehead, moaning "creamed corn again. ALAS!" before falling to the ground in a trance.

On the other hand, Zische Landau's “A Little Park, with Few Trees” isn't too self-important, has some funny bits, and gives a nice portrait of Poe's cottage. Best of all, it's by a guy named "Zische." Seriously, what a cool name. I mean, you're getting extra cool points as you sit there reading his name to yourself. Say it aloud and you'll need to start wearing sunglasses and listening to jazz.

Zische Landau, “A Little Park, with Few Trees.”

A little park, with few trees growing;
a wooden house sits humbly there,
on which appears a painted raven-
it all has such a childish air.

And on the wall there hangs a tablet,
and from the tablet you will know
here lived in eighteen nine and forty
the poet Edgar Allen Poe.

The name, the raven wake within me
a memory of years before.
And since one is allowed to visit,
I let myself approach the door.

In a kimono red as scarlet,
a woman’s looking through the pane.
I’m so repelled by red kimonos
that in a flash I’m out again.

To stand outside suits me much better;
I clasp my hands and focus all
my thoughts upon the roof’s brown shingles,
and on the cottage’s white wall.

Within my mind are mixed together
a verse of Poe’s, a word, a rhyme.
Where have I heard them, come across them?
I feel they’re from a distant time.

And yet, in dream and fact, they soothed me
and frightened me to my heart’s core.
All this was only yesterday.
But will it come back? “Nevermore.”

Okay, Ziche's a little maudlin, but what do you want--he's a Jewish guy writing about Edgar Allen Poe; maudlin comes with the territory. What's cool, though, is his depiction of the cottage. It hasn't changed much in the 80 or so years since Landau wrote this poem, although they've gotten rid of the raven. It's a mouldering, peeling wreck that is largely ignored and seems somewhat out of place in the park, which features a bandstand, a playground, and scads of screaming, playing Dominican kids.

(I'll admit that I was a little nervous about Poe park. Before I moved in, Rich told me that it was a hangout for transvestite hookers, who would often catcall passers-by. I confess to being a little confused about how this is really all that bad, but Rich assured me that being yelled at by "Tranny Hookiz" is really horrifying.)

I also have to admit that I was a little disappointed when I found that the park only featured screeching kids and some teen-aged hispanic goths. I was looking forward to the dangerous trannies, so the relatively banal sight of a bunch of mothers watching their kids was a real let down. All the same, the cottage is really close to my home, so I was constantly reminded of it. It soon became a comforting, familiar site. Even without the cross-dressers.

When I was a little more settled in and started wandering around, one of my first visits in the Bronx was Poe cottage. I came on a Saturday, during one of the few hours that it was open. I felt a sense of foreboding as I approached the building. A cold shiver ran up my spine. The house had a carefully manicured garden and a wind chime, neither of which were appropriate to the time. I began to worry that this was going to be a travesty, an insult to the memory of Poe.

When we knocked on the door, a weedy, redheaded woman cracked it open, told us to wait for about fifteen minutes, and went back inside. I decided that her furtive behavior gave the cottage a little more panache than I had expected, so I waited contentedly, only occasionally snarling at the irritating wind chime.

We finally got to go in, and our tour guide, Joy, proceeded to show us the five rooms in which Poe, his wife, and his mother-in-law had lived for three years. The furnishings, she told us, were not original, except for one or two that Poe's mother-in-law may have sold to the neighbors. Joy showed us the Poe bust and portraits that shared space with his living quarters. I, meanwhile, grumbled to myself about the historical innacuracy of putting all the contextual material in the rooms where Poe lived.

Joy also showed us the bed where Poe's wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis. Supposedly, Virginia died under Poe's West Point coat, the only warm covering in the house. The bed, on the other hand, was covered with a polyester fleece blanket with a plaid pattern. "Yeah," I thought to myself, "That's historically accurate. Where are the flannel sheets and Laura Ashley comforter?"

Joy took me through the rest of the house. I was going solo at this point, as my wife had abandoned the tour, citing a whining child. Personally, I think she was pinching George in order to create an excuse for ditching me. I could understand, as Joy's spiel was a little canned, and the "historical reconstruction" of the house bordered on the blasphemous. The highlight was the holes in the walls, which were covered with plastic sheeting and blue masking tape. Apparently, they're planning a major renovation. Between this and the furniture, I wonder if anything will be left of Poe's cottage.

The coolest part was after the tour was over, when Joy told me that she and her significant other live in the house's basement, rent free. They rarely come out, presumably to ensure their safety. Joy, apparently, has a graduate degree in history as well as a law degree, and is trying to get a writing career going. She is using her sojourn in Poe house as a way of making a few bucks while she works part-time in the public schools and tries to figure out what she wants to do next. Joy doesn't seem to like the neighborhood very much and tends to avoid interacting with the neighbors. It think she's a little afraid of the brown people.

I've since brought a few friends to visit. Katie and Heather told me that, overcome with compassion, Joy "broke down" while discussing Virginia's death in the cottage, and was a little loony during the rest of the tour. I later went through with John, hoping to catch some emoting over Virginia's death, but was denied.

When I read Landau's poem, I couldn't help but laugh at his description of the crazy lady in the red kimono taking care of the cottage. It seemed so funny that, 80 years later, Poe Cottage has another moderately crazy woman showing visitors through its lonely rooms. Sometimes, as I pass the cottage on the way home from the subway, I imagine Joy in the basement, listening to the wind whistling through the holes in the house. I envy her.

Me, in Flannel

The amazing, incomparable Glamourpuss has nominated me for the "Blog Most Likely to Inspire a Pair of Pyjamas" award. I was, of course, deeply honored, although her post forced me to look up the word "winceyette," which apparently refers to a kind of flannel that is soft on both sides. I'm already trying to find ways to fit my new word into sentences. Of course, I could go with the obvious:

"Are those pajamas winceyette?"

Unfortunately, however, my limited contact with pajama wearers makes it difficult to pull this one off, so I need to explore my options. I'm considering the poetically ironic:

"Your love embraces me like a winceyette straitjacket."

Alternately, there's the disdainfully ironic:

"Maine's nice, if you're into winceyette lingerie."

And one can always go for the ironically surreal:

"Michael Jackson isn't into children. He just has a winceyette fetish."

I'm sure that I'm woefully misusing the word (not to mention overindulging in irony), but such is the cost of innovation. While I work on my winceyette usage, I feel obliged to pass on this outstanding award. Oddly enough, it only took me a couple of seconds to imagine the pajamas that the following five bloggers inspired. I think that this, more than anything else, demonstrates the genius of this award!

1. Hearts in San Francisco would definitely be silky, colorful, and sophisticated. Perhaps it's just because of her Wizard of Oz avatar, but I envision something in black and dark green, with a dramatic splash of red sequins.

2. Judith seems suited to something flowing, yet subtle. Perhaps a celestial screen print, accented with occult symbols, on a background of dark blue.

3. Maybe it's just the photograph on Nosjunkie's blog, but I see her pajamas as being more dramatic. Perhaps black vinyl, perhaps leather. Basically, I imagine her pajamas as a cross between a Cenobite from Hellraiser and Hugh Hefner.

4. Odat's pajamas are warm, fuzzy, and embracing. They're multi-layered, made out of flannel, and perfect for curling up with a cup of hot chocolate. They come in warm, friendly colors and are embroidered with monkies.

5. When I was coming up with Jamiesmitten's pajamas, I cheated a little: I looked at the Halloween pictures on her blog. Her pajamas are relaxed, playful, and come with a pair of ears.

So there you go. One award, five bloggers, and the pajamas that they inspired. Have a very winceyette day!

BEWARE: RANT AHEAD

Every so often, just when you start to question your path, something comes along that makes you realize that you've made the right decisions...

Over the past month or so, I've had a few moments of weakness, in which I questioned my decision to leave academe. I've wondered if, having lived in the rarified atmosphere of the university for so long, I am capable of surviving in the "real world," or if I am destined, like a crack addict, to return to the only environment that truly feels like home. I've wondered if I have the survival instincts needed for a life outside of the classroom.

What makes this harder is the fact that I have a nasty little addiction to teaching. I was a very good teacher and I really loved my students. I got a kick out of exposing them to new things and watching them get excited as intellectual doors opened a little wider and things seemed a little more possible.

Worst of all, it seems like everyone in New York is taking a class or working on a degree, and seeing my fellow subway riders reading textbooks and cramming for exams is a little tough. It also doesn't help that I'm surrounded by universities. All this combines to make me feel like a recovering coke addict who just got transferred to a job in Medellin, Columbia. When people find out that I'm a former teacher, they ask me if I'm looking for jobs at colleges. I respond "Hell, no, bitches! Colleges be lookin' for ME!"

Actually, I don't say that at all, but I'm working on my ghetto smack-talk skills.

I was recently starting to weaken, to make the sorts of little deals that hearken back to the days when I was quitting smoking. I told myself that, maybe I'd just teach a little class in one of the community colleges, or get a sub job or something. You know, a little something to tide me over (imagine me wiping my nose on my sleeve at this point). Just in the nick of time, my old pal Bob sent me an e-mail to remind me why I left in the first place. Apparently, a teacher in my old department is about to make a presentation titled "Telling Stories about Genocide: Ethnicity, Memory and Polyphony in Rwanda." In her own words, this presentation features:

Some unfinished thoughts about using poststructuralist theory to address issues concerning storytelling and memory in the aftermath of great tragedy and violence, plus some pictures of memorial sites.

Ooooh! Vacation pictures!

For those of you who are lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Poststructuralism, it is, basically, an academic parlor-trick in which the individual theorist uses double talk and clever rhetoric to deny the existence of any sort of absolute reality or truth. It tends to be a springboard for overgeneralized statements about "The Patriarchy," "Colonialism," and "Western Imperialism."

The French are big fans of Poststructuralism.

Personally, I think Poststructuralism is a great way to annoy friends and make yourself look smart, but it grates against my humanist leanings. When I see it applied to any real human tragedy, I start to get creeped out. This, after all, is the tool that we use when we want to talk about how 9/11 wasn't really an immoral act, and how the Holocaust was a matter of perspective, not a verifiable historical fact.

Added to this is the fact that I personally know the person making this presentation. I sat in her class for a semester and watched her wage personal attacks against several of her students, specifically targeting the males. Later, as an instructor, I had to put up with her regular assertions of moral and intellectual superiority and, again, got to watch her treat her colleagues like dirt. I have no doubt that the department will embrace her clever interpretation of this tragedy, and her presentation will become yet another feather in her cap as she continues her grim, endless accumulation of academic power.

At the end of the day, this is, basically, a university professor climbing the academic ladder over a pile of corpses. I tend to think that using tragedy to play out a narrative about the variable nature of meaning borders on the blasphemous. To see a teacher that I personally know do it reminds me of why, exactly, I am glad to be out of academia.

Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous

Woodlawn cemetery is about a mile north of my house. It's roughly 400 acres large, and is chock full of famous people, including Herman Mellville, Miles Davis, Fiorello LaGuardia, Duke Ellington, Countee Cullen, and many, many others. The most amazing graves, however, are the gargantuan crypts that New York's movers and shakers built for themselves in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In the early 1860's, the graveyards in lower Manhattan were almost full. Unfortunately, New Yorkers continued to die. There were cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens, most notably Green-Wood, but the ferry passage across the East River was very hazardous. Women often weren't allowed, and quite a few people had impromptu (and unintended) burials at sea. When Woodlawn cemetery opened in 1863, the rich and powerful embraced it, and it soon became THE place to get buried.

Over the years, Woodlawn became the site of an ongoing contest between various rich people. The goal was to build the most opulent, outrageous mausoleum. I'm not sure who won; everyone I've brought to Woodlawn has his or her favorite crypt. However, I am pretty confident that Woodlawn is among the most beautiful outdoor art museums in the world.

One mausoleum theme was the "temple of antiquity." My favorite one of these is Frank Woolworth's crypt, which was funded by his chain of Five and Dime stores, and imitates an Egyptian temple.

Nothing says "classy" quite like nippled Sphinxes:

Another rich guy who went with the "ancient temple" theme was Jay Gould. He was a famous financier, speculator, and railroad developer. His tastes leaned more to the Greek than the Egyptian, hence his decision to build himself a copy of the Parthenon:

This doesn't seem all that impressive until you realize that Gould didn't just build himself a temple. He also bought an entire hill on which to place it:

In a move worthy of the Pharoahs, Gould also placed many of his cronies and hangers-on in crypts at the base of his little knoll. Here's my favorite of the bunch:

I forget who's buried here, but it's a relatively small crypt--only about twenty feet high--and it does a beautiful job of mixing various colors and textures of stone.

Another fun crypt is George Ehret's:

Ehret was a famous brewer, and his crypt is insane. It's over forty feet tall, has two huge stone lions, and has a secluded "yard."

Incidentally, I held the camera straight. The crypt is crooked. Honest.

Another awesome crypt is the Armour mausoleum. It's amazing what a meat packer could buy in the nineteenth century. The crypt looks like something from The Prisoner:

And here's a shot of it from the front:

It was straight when I lined it up, but then the crypt shifted. Seriously.

Another one of my favorites is the Foster crypt. It is a huge monument, complete with dome and narrow steps:

And here's a picture that gives you a sense of its scale:



And, lest you think that gaudy, audacious crypts were only a 19th century phenomenon, here's a crypt that dates from 1999:

Unfortunately, I can't show you the entire exterior, as it has the family name on it. However, I can tell you that this place is the size of a small cottage, constructed out of pink granite with black marble columns, and has two carved lions out front.

Inside, it looks like a cross between the Fortress of Solitude and a disco. I'm not sure why they included a mantle.



One of the most interesting things about the massive monuments that these people created for themselves is the fact that the mausoleums greatly outlasted their fame. Most of the once-famous occupants of the cemetery are now well past their fame. In some cases, they even seem to have outlasted the concern of their loved ones. A good example of this is the grave of John R. Hegeman, which I call "The Havisham House":

From this angle, you can see the faded curtains in the front door and the overgrown lawn that sits on top of the crypt's base. The sides of the crypt also have windows. These have tattered curtains, through which one can see an abandoned sitting room, with a dusty carpet, chair, table, and window-seat. On the table sits an abandoned Bible:

I used to think that this was the saddest, creepiest crypt. However, on our last visit, the wife discovered this one:

This crypt is almost completely overgrown. It has a short stairwell on either side. These lead to little vestibules that are also overgrown. The whole place smells like rot.

Deep in the Batcave

Thanks to my incredible friend Alex and the wonders of Picasa, I can now pepper my blog posts with pictures. This is particularly lucky, as I went exploring this weekend.

I went back to the Hall of Fame yesterday. My friend Justin was visiting, and he'd never been there, so we took a little walk. As always, it was deserted.

He chose to have his picture taken with Thomas Jefferson.

Here's a random picture of the Poe bust. I took it a few months ago, when I first visited the Hall of Fame:

Doesn't Poe have the coolest plinth? I love the little raven and (presumably black) cat. The rest of the plinths are unadorned.

I really like the word "plinth." Unfortunately, I can't use it very often.

As we were leaving, I noticed a pathway that led underneath the colonnade. Following it down, we came to an unmarked door that was open. As there were no "Keep Out" or "No Trespassing" signs posted, Justin and I assumed that we were permitted to look around. We went down a creepy hallway:

It was incredibly hot in the hallway, as the numerous radiators were all turned on full-strength. I was a little nervous about meeting a janitor or security guard, but figured that I could bluff may way through, if need be. My bigger worry was that we might meet a homeless person who had chosen to move in. However, the hallway was pretty clean, apart from the occasional empty water bottle or candy bar wrapper.

We soon came to to another hallway, which had cell-like doors:

We couldn't understand why this section looked like a prison or insane asylum. Some of the cells were filled with files:

While others looked like creepy musical practice rooms:

And still others looked like 19th-century court rooms, complete with gallery:

We eventually came to a huge auditorium. It was beautiful, and was in great shape. It was clear that it was used regularly. Access to the upper level was blocked with velvet ropes, so we stayed on the lower floor:

After we left, we wandered up another stairwell. This one was more ornate:

It led into the library. I'd been inside the library before, but hadn't wandered around too much, as it is a little forbidding.

From the outside, the library looks like the Pantheon. Inside, it is circular, with beautiful marble columns. It has four floors, and is capped with a rotunda, which features statues of the muses ringing the interior:

Behind the columns, the walls have compartments painted with the names of famous authors. Justin noticed that one of the compartments in the Ancient Roman literature section was pushed back, revealing a room behind it:

As there were no signs warning us to not trespass or keep out, Justin and I determined that this was a legitimate place to wander. On the other side of the door, we found room after room of empty bookshelves:



Some of them reminded me of the creepy gothic house in Edward Scissorhands:

We carefully watched our step. It was clear that there has been minimal maintenance in this library since NYU moved out in 1973. There were places where the wooden floor looked untrustworthy, and some of the glass brick tiles were cracked. Still, it was an amazing library, with little reading rooms and places in which the stacks continued through the floor:

There were also beautiful stained-glass walls:

For all of the deterioration, the library was in surprisingly good shape. Considering the fact that it has been neglected for the last 30+ years, it's amazing how well it has held together. Stanford White really knew what he was doing!

After walking from floor to floor, we finally found ourselves at the top of the library, in the rotunda:

Apparently, they have tours of the old library. I'm going to have to look into it, as I really want the wife to take a peek. I wonder if they'll let us walk all the way up to the rotunda.

Something Amazingly Weird

I'm sure that most of you have already seen this, but for those of you who haven't, it's amazingly cool. I'm not going to give anything away...just check it out!



Rejected has reached the level of mythology in our household, to the extent that we occasionally screech "I am a Banana!" or "My anus is bleeding!" and laugh maniacally, while other people stare at us.

I hope you get a kick out of it, too!

Thinking Blogger Award

One side effect of taking a couple of months off blogging is that you miss an awful lot of things. One thing that I missed was the massive proliferation of awards. This isn't to say that I didn't get any awards; rather, I didn't get the time to give them the attention that they deserved, nor did I get the time to pass them on to the bloggers who move, inspire, and stimulate me.

So, anyway, one of my favorite bloggers, Glamourpuss, was kind enought to give me the "Thinking Blogger Award." I was particularly appreciative of this because I think that this is exactly what my favorite bloggers do: they enable me to see the world through another set of eyes and reconsider a few of my basic assumptions. I hope that that is part of what I do for you, because it certainly is what you do for me.

With that in mind, I nominate the following (alphabetically organized) five bloggers for the "Thinking Blogger Award," and thank them deeply for giving me another viewpoint:

1. Claudia of La Vida Claudia. Claudia is in the process of developing her artistic ability, even as she deals with all sorts of messy life events. She documents all of this with a smart, funny, and slightly cynical viewpoint. It's fair to say that she's a total delight.

2. Franki, of Frankily Yours is someone who I have had the joy of meeting, so this is a little bit of a cheat. Her posts are generally short, funny, and tend to grind up sacred cows.

3. Jamiesmitten, of Tell All Your Single Friends, tends toward the sort of random, playful thoughtfulness that so often leads to great ideas and sparks of genius.

4. Judith, of Aucturian Nighmare is one of those people who makes you realize that diversity is just so much more diverse than anyone gives it credit for. I mean, I though that I'd lived an eventful life, but Judith makes me look like a shut-in. Although she is currently out of circulation, I wait with bated breath for her return.

5. I've followed Pool across two blogs, and I will gladly follow her across many, many more. To put it bluntly, she demonstrates a keen, sharp intelligence and eloquence that puts me to shame. On top of all that, she also doesn't suffer fools, and has some beautiful stories about her refusal to do so.

So, there you go. Five bloggers who regularly show me new ways of seeing the world. I cannot overemphasize their talent or thoughtfulness.

Hope your Saturday is proceeding nicely!

Datsa Nice

One of my hobbies has become reading novels and stories written about the Bronx. About a month ago, I was reading "Vito Loves Geraldine," a short story by Janice Eidus. Most of Eidus' stories fit into the "self-important literary fiction" genre; they're peopled with oversensitive prima donnas who are having incredibly meaningful moments that change their worlds forever in ways that lesser souls could never understand.

In other words, they're absolute dreck.

"Vito Loves Geraldine" is different. It basically tells the story of Dion from Dion and the Belmonts: a 1950's-era Bronx doowop star and the girl who falls in love with him. It is clever, funny, and filled with local detail. Vito's catchphrase, "Aaaay! Geraldine Rizzoli!" quickly became a staple in our house. Georgia, of course, picked up on it, and would walk around piping "Aaaaaaay! Dewadeen Bazzoli!" She sounded like a miniature, lisping version of the Fonz.

Georgia's gotten to the age in which she is compelled to repeat everything she hears. One big problem with this is that Virginia and I both swear like sailors. This isn't too surprising, given the fact that we are both the children of sailors, but it is getting to be a little dangerous. We've started watching our language and policing each other, but we still slip up from time to time. It's generally pretty easy to figure out who George is imitating. If she says "shit," the culprit is my wife, while if she says "fuck" or "douchebag," I am usually to blame.

I never realized it before, but swearing is as idiosyncratic as any other form of expression. Personally, I don't care for "shit," and will only use it on the spur of the moment. My wife, on the other hand, thinks it's the shit.

Another problem is the fact that George's renditions of classic swear words are pretty funny. Her version of "doos bag" particularly kills me. Of course, we can't laugh, as she will see this as encouragement, which means we spend a lot of time biting our lips and trying to think of sad things.

The other night, I said "goddamn," and immediately regretted it. My embarrassment came a moment too late, as George immediately picked up on the word. She even gave a perfect copy of my intonation: "GOD-DAAAAAAM...god-dam, goddamn, goddamn...GOD-DAAAAM!" I found myself trying not to laugh as I told my daughter "okay, honey...once is enough...okay, you can stop now...Look! Dinner is on!"

To her credit, my wife refrained from scolding me.

This isn't to say that we are George's only influence. She also peppers her language with words from Spanish, generally delivered with a Dominican accent. Often, we think that her words are childish gibberish, only to discover that she's simply speaking another language. For example, she recently told her mother "Keefer shirt!," followed by "keefer shoes," "keefer pants," and "keefer socks." We subsequently found out that the Spanish word for "to remove" is quittar, which sounds a lot like "keefer" when you say it Dominican-style.

Her time in Little Italy and Spanish Harlem have also given her the gestures and attitude of a miniature Caporegime. Tonight, I picked her up from behind after we were done watching a movie. She leaned back and snuggled against my shoulder. I smiled and said "that's nice." She leaned into me further and said "Ohhhh...datsa nice. Datsa weely, weely nice" while giving me little slaps on my cheek. My wife couldn't stop laughing. I couldn't either.

Generally Crappy Day

Sorry for taking so long to post today. It's just been a generally crappy day. To begin with, Georgia's getting over a cold, which meant that she was cranky and sluggish about going to day care. I couldn't really blame her, as it was a bitter and blustery day, and I would have preferred to stay at home, too.

After I dropped her off, I rushed off to work. That's right, I've got a job: I'm temping as a personal assistant at a legal staffing firm. Actually, it's worked out so that the firm has provided me, as a temp, to itself, and is paying itself a fee for my services. Added to that, I am actually doing what will ultimately be my wife's job. She's giving her two-week's notice at her current job, and will end up working at the legal staffing firm that I am currently working for, doing the job that I am currently doing.

Yes, I have almost confused myself. However, it makes sense, even if it's plagued by the sort of slick, handy deus-ex-machinae that would seem out of place in a work of fiction.

Anyway, I like work, as I'm learning new things and the people are fairly nice, but it leaves me wasted at the end of the day. Today, I had to go to Long Island City, where I'm working on a sitcom script. I've been doing this every week since August, and I love it, but there are some days when I really just want to go home and crash.

Right before I left for Long Island City, I found out that a friend of mine recently had a cancerous lump removed from her face, and is going back to get more surgery done next week. She's being incredibly brave and cool about it, and I just wish that I could figure out something useful to say or do. However, I really don't know what to say, and am terrified of saying the wrong thing.

My wife gave me a call as I got off the train in Long Island City to tell me what was going on with the cat. One of our cats, Jerome, has been listless for the last day or two. One vet told us that it was either a hairball or he had eaten rat poison, so he would either be okay or he would die. After a brief discussion this evening, we decided that she should take him to another vet. It turns out that he has a bladder infection and might need surgery, which will cost a lot of money that we really can't afford. My wife had a little meltdown at the vet's office, which she told me about, and another little meltdown with me on the phone after I got out of my meeting.

I was walking to the Subway with one of my co-writers when all of this happened, so I told her about it. She responded by telling me about the deep emotional scarring that she was having over the fact that her cell phone is dying. I realize that this might seem shallow and meaningless to the casual observer, but I should probably point out that she's really "obsessed" with this phone and "loves" it, and that she will not be able to transfer her text messages and pictures to another phone.

I told her that I had nothing for her, and that she would really just have to deal. She put on a brave face.

On the way home, I saw a guy on the Subway who had no legs. When we got off at Kingsbridge, I wondered how he was going to navigate his wheelchair down the steep stairs at the station. I didn't want to insult him by asking to help, so I walked near him, in case he seemed like he needed assistance. When he came to the stairs, he turned his wheelchair around, got a firm grip on the bannister, and rolled backward down the stairs. After he went through the turnstiles, he repeated his feat on the lower stairwell. When we got to the bottom, I walked up to him:

"Senor!"
He looked up at me "Yes?"
"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen."
He grinned. "Thank you. I used to wait for someone to help me. Sometimes I had to wait an hour or more. Finally, I just decided to learn to do it myself."
"I was afraid of insulting you by offering."
"I saw you standing there, in case I needed it. I have to be self-sufficient, though."
"I know how hard it is to carry my daughter up the steps every day."
He nodded. "In a stroller?"
"Yeah. I can't even imagine how hard it must be to carry your own weight and a wheelchair."
"You learn to do it." He smiled and shook my hand. "Have a good night."
"You, too."

So, at the end of the day, here's the scorecard: my wife and I are healthy and employed, my daughter seems to be almost over her cold, my cat may or may not live through the night, my friend may need some surgery, another friend will have to learn to deal with the heartbreak of switching phones, and I saw an amazing act of human strength and courage.

It's been a very, very full day.

Imagine Peace

I had some vague plans for today's post, but I forgot about Peace Day. When this day came last year, I had only been blogging for a few months, and it was one of my first glimpses of the blogging community. I was surprised to see that many of my favorite blogs, which were so different from each other, had gathered together to think about peace: how to achieve it, what it meant, how it made them feel, and so on. Later that day, when my new friend CEO sent me my own personalized "Dona Nobis Pacem" banner, I felt the connection of blogging. I was amazed that a stranger, hundreds of miles away, would take the time to make something for me. CEO went from being a stranger to being a friend, and blogging went from being a solitary passtime to a community activity that was never far from my mind.

A lot of bloggers are writing about peace today, and their eloquence is inspiring, but I don't really have anything profound to say. I'm not an optimist about peace. There was a time, years ago, when I thought that humans might, one day, be able to live together. I could imagine a time when there might not be any wars in the world. Right now, though, I find it hard to even imagine a time when the United States won't be shipping its children overseas to kill people.

When I was a teacher, I would often have my students read George Orwell's 1984. One of the hardest things for them to deal with was the idea that "War is Peace," and they tended to dismiss this famous quote as empty rhetoric about totalitarian governments. Looking deeper, though, we noticed that war does, indeed, lead to peace. It inspires cohesion, nationalism, and a setting-aside of all the meaningless little things like free speech and the right to assemble. In fact, one could argue that the shortest route to internal peace and security is external conflict.

I wonder, though, if we could claim the converse of Orwell's statement. If War is Peace, might not Peace be War? Maybe, if we really want peace, we will need to approach it as a real war. It's a battle between those who financially benefit from war and those who physically suffer. It's also a battle between those who believe in America's beautiful rhetoric and ideals and those who can't see past its global primacy. In other words, the search for peace is a conflict between the path that our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence promise and the path that our government has chosen to follow.

The gap between these two extremes is so wide that I wonder if it can ever be bridged. I think that, if we hope to find a way across it, we must begin by abolishing the exceptions that we are so inclined to make. There should be no exceptions to our freedom of speech, or our freedom to assemble. There should be no exceptions to our defense of habeas corpus or our prohibitions against torture. Every exception we make is a deterioration of the very freedoms that we claim to honor and a step away from peace. At the end of the day, we cannot protect who we are by destroying the things that make us unique.

And we can't achieve peace by fomenting war.

Hall of Fame for Great Americans

My friend John came for a brief visit last weekend. As I tend to do whenever I've got a captive audience, I set out to expose him to some of the wonders of the Bronx. In John's case, this was a little harder than usual, as he lived in New York for several years, and even stayed in the Bronx for a while, so he's seen a lot of what the green borough has to offer.

(I'm field-testing nicknames for the Bronx. Given that it has far more parkland and undeveloped lots than any of the other boroughs, I think "The Green Borough" might be the best bet. At any rate, it sounds a lot better than "The Economically-Depressed Borough," "The Drinking Booze from a Paper Bag Borough," or "The Borough Where You're Most Likely to Get Stabbed.")

At any rate, John's been to Woodlawn and many of the parks and, since it was a blustery day, we didn't want to venture too far from shelter. We started off with a visit to Poe's Cottage, where Edgar Allen Poe lived from 1846 to 1849, and which deserves its own huge post. Since we still had a lot of time when we were done, I decided to take him to The Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

The Hall of Fame sounds very impressive, and John must have thought that I had gotten lost as I led him to it. It is on the campus of Bronx Community College, and the neighborhood around it is pretty rough. He had to have been even more surprised when I told him that we had to walk a little further, as one of the entrances offered "the best view of the campus."

To his credit, John was game, and he went the extra mile. When the campus security guard let us in, John was on the phone with a buddy, but I watched him scanning the campus as we walked past beautiful buildings and well-kept lawns. When he was finished with his phone call, he said "THIS is a community college?"

His confusion was understandable. Bronx Community College began life as the estate of a wealthy landowner. In 1894, New York University, looking to expand from its cramped space in lower Manhattan, purchased the land. Attempting to create a first-rate campus, the University hired Stanford White, the pre-eminent architect of his time, to design the school. White built a collection of beautiful halls, which were inspired by classical structures. I think the coolest one is the library, which looks like the Pantheon, and has incredible cast-bronze doors.

Around the library, White built a curving colonnade, which became the home of the Hall of Fame. It's easy to imagine the enthusiasm that went into the walkway. To begin with, there's the name, which is beautifully excessive, but borders on the redundant. After all, it's not like anybody's going to build a Hall of Fame for mediocre Americans.

That's what Presidential libraries are for.

Then there was the selection process. Although NYU administered the Hall of Fame, the selections were made by an independent review board, and private citizens and regional groups waged huge, expensive campaigns to get their favorite candidates elected. This, combined with the dedication and popularity of the Daughters of the Confederacy, helps explain why Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee managed to get into the Hall of Fame, but Henry Ford and Sacagawea didn't.

In an article about the Hall of Fame, R. Rubin noted that, in its heyday, the hall of fame was more prestigious than the Nobel Prize, which is borne out in its description as "A Secular Shrine" for the United States. However, the declining neighborhood and looming bankruptcy conspired to make NYU sell the University Heights campus to New York City. In 1973, the campus became Bronx Community College.

The Hall of Fame got lost in the mix. The state of New York occasionally earmarks funds for its upkeep, but the private donations that used to keep it going have long since dried up. Added to this, people have simply forgotten about the Hall of Fame. I've visited it three times and have never seen more than one or two other visitors there. I imagine that it was once a busy spot, but now it tends toward the quiet and contemplative.

My wife and I have established a couple of traditions for our visits. One of these is making fun of some of the inductees, and expressing disbelief at the heroes of prior ages. We also like to laugh at some of the more outrageous busts. The most ridiculous one is Alexander Hamilton, which looks like a cross between Julius Caesar and Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On this last trip, John and I pulled out a ten-dollar bill for comparison purposes and agreed that the Romanesque, nude Hamilton bore no relation whatsoever to the guy on the money. John surmised that some of Aaron Burr's descendants might have been responsible for the horrifying likeness.

Our other Hall of Fame tradition is making our guest choose his or her favorite Hall of Famer. Afterwards, of course, we photograph the two of them together. My hero was Edgar Allen Poe. When I first visited the Hall of Fame, his bust sported a perfect spider web over one eye. Poe, a spider web, a secluded old monument, a windy hillside in the Bronx...what's not to love?

After a great deal of deliberation, John chose Mark Twain, and I decided that it's interesting to find out who your friends' heroes are.

Priceless Postcard

In the mail today, amongst the bills, library notices, and magazines, I found this postcard:


It was a gift from Nat Dickinson over at Nat Dickinson Doing Art. Nat is trying to complete NaBloPoMo, so he is posting every day. As an enticement to other bloggers and blog readers, he is giving away a selection of postcards on which he has done drawings and paintings. My super-cool pumpkin top was one of the first, but his later cards have been equally amazing. I strongly encourage everyone to go over to his site, look at his art, and post a response or two. Who knows, you might end up with your own beautiful piece of art!

Beggars and Buskers, Musicians and Thieves, Part IV

I'm running late, as usual, and am trying to find my way out of Union Square Station. I see a handy exit sign and am headed toward it when I hear a familiar-sounding song with acoustic guitar accompaniment echoing through the station. It's a young man's voice, a soft tenor, and it's pleasantly rough. I stop and listen. After a few seconds, I realize where I've heard it before. It's Dorian Spencer.

My wife discovered Dorian Spencer one day as she was fighting the crowds in Times Square. He was in the main performance area, near a colorful mural, and his simple rhythms and soft voice caught her attention. She stopped to listen for a while, and continued to stop whenever Dorian was in the station. She finally bought his album, which she played for me.

He's on another platform, so I can't easily reach him, but the acoustics are nice in that part of the station, so I lean against the wall and listen to him finish his set. When he's done, I leave and catch up with my wife.

"I heard your boy," I tell her.
"Dorian Spencer?"
"Yup."
She smiles, "In the subway, where he's meant to be heard."

Here's a video of Dorian. It's not bad, but it's no subway performance!



Dorian's one of the best, but he's not the only good musician on the subway. There are bluegrass bands, R&B acts, an awesome Japanese rock band, steel drummers, sitar players, jug bands, jazz groups, dulcimer players, a barbershop quartet, gospel singers, flutists, pianists, opera singers, saxophonists, bongo performers, and a lady who plays a saw. Some are incredible and some are bizarre. One act, titled "Latin American Cultural Attraction" featured a grizzled old guy with a white beard and a keyboard playing music for a bunch of dancing mechanical dolls. It was one of the stranger, more surreal things I've ever seen, and the effect was augmented by the keyboardists intensely serious fingering and soulful swaying. Clearly, he felt that he was pouring his heart out in Times Square, and the bouncing dollies were helping him drive the message home.

The best performers usually play in Times Square, Penn Station, Union Square, and the other major stations, where they have to try out before they can perform. The organization that runs this program is "Music Under New York," and it has been licensing buskers since 1985. According to its website, it currently features over 100 musical acts that perform 150 shows per week in 25 venues. Here's their webpage, which lists the incredible array of artists that they feature, along with performance sites and schedules.

This isn't to say that all the subway musicians are in league with "The Man." For a rougher sound and a more outlaw thrill, there are the quasi-legal buskers who ply their trade on the crowded subway platforms. At Times Square, there is a Japanese guy who plays a child's electric saxophone. He only seems to know "Edelweiss," but he plays it with charm and beauty.

This summer, there were a lot of steel drummers on the four line, and some of them were really good. Others could only play a few songs. One, in particular, offered his renditions of "Over the Rainbow," "God Bless America," and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in endless, overlapping repetition. In his hands, the three songs sounded remarkably similar.

One day, in the long tunnel between Bryant Park and the 7 line, I heard a bagpiper. I love bagpipes and, having visited Scotland a few times, I have some incredible memories with bagpipers on the soundtrack. That having been said, bagpipes in a narrow, tile-lined tunnel are downright sadistic, and my ears were ringing for most of the evening.

My wife has made a study of the subway musicians and has rated them on a variety of scales, but I'm an uneducated observer. I like most of them, even the talentless guy in Grand Central who dresses like Michael Jackson but resembles Little Richard. He can't sing and he can't dance, but he looks fabulous in a gold-sequined jacket and white glove. I even gave him a quarter one day, just because he (literally) lit up my life for a few seconds.

Beggars and Buskers, Musicians and Thieves, Part III

The Stand-Up Guy

I'm sitting on the two train on my way to pick up Georgia from daycare. The car is full, but not stuffed, and I've got room to read my book, so I zone out. Suddently, I hear a couple of guitars, a concertina and some familiar words:

AY YI YI YI
Canta y no llores
Seben y crecen..."

It's the Mariachis.

Clad in jeans and straw hats, the Mariachis sometimes show up on the one, two, and three trains, and I usually bump into them in Harlem. They play a bunch of Mariachi classics, which I only know by sound, and one of them collects money in his guitar. I'm a pretty soft touch for the Mariachis, not only because I like loud Mexican music, but also because they are usually a welcome surprise on the train.

The Mariachis are part of the ongoing entertainment that runs on the trains. There are basically two types of acts: musical and vaudeville. My other favorite mobile musical act is the Drum Player. He is a black guy with dreads and a beard who claims that his day job is teaching elementary school. I sometimes see him on the four train. He carries a couple of African drums with him, which he plays with consummate skill.

There's one other act that I like a lot, but I only saw them once. They were three older homeless guys who performed a nice Doo Wop routine. I heard them at the end of their set, as they finished up, parted ways, and agreed to meet together the next day. I never saw them again.

The Vaudeville acts are pretty awesome, too. There's the tumblers and dancers, who are usually younger guys and kids. The tumblers do cartwheels and other feats, which are pretty impressive on a moving train. The dancers do breakdance routines, which, again, are amazing, given that they're trying to do their thing as the stops and starts and bounces along.

There's also a ratty magician who plies his trade on the four train. He has a moth-eaten red coat and top hat, but I think that the low-rent look is part of his act. He does some classic stage magic involving making doves disappear and reappear in inappropriate places, and the combination of his patter, his appearance, and his birds usually creeps out a few of the other riders. He plays into this by choosing one of the more skittish passengers as his unwilling assistant. This poor shmuck usually ends up uncovering a live dove or having a ball bounce surprisingly. It's a lot of fun, and I often give him a little cash.

Far and away, my favorite performer on the subway Vaudeville circuit is the Stand-Up comedian. Based on this guy's layered, dusty look, I'd say that he's homeless, and when he gets on the car, everybody tends to avoid him. He, of course, usually opens his routine with the standard "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN..." However, instead of giving a list of his miseries, he wanders through the train giving a Henny Youngman style act, in which he complains about his fat wife, who eats all his food. I remember one day when I was on the train and was seated just a bit down from a generously-sized matronly Puerto Rican lady. By the sour look on her face, I figured that she'd be a really hard touch. She and I looked at each other, and I could see her desperately trying not to laugh, as if she knew that laughing would give away the whole game, and she'd have to cough up a buck or two. By the end of the ride, she had broken down and was reaching for her pocketbook. I gave him a buck, too.

The best thing about the Stand-Up Guy is that he doesn't need any special skills. He can't play an instrument, and he can't tumble. He doesn't know magic, and he probably isn't a great dancer. His routine is so old that my grandfather was probably laughing to it, and it's been the exact same every time I've seen the Stand Up Guy. Yet, every time I've found myself laughing uncontrollably as I hand over my cash.

Beggars and Buskers, Musicians and Thieves, Part II

The New York Face

I had been here for a few days and was still feeling my way around. It was a sunny day, and I stepped out to do the laundry. I would later realize that this was a particularly dangerous time, as a laundry bag automatically translates into a pocketful of cash. As I was crossing Bainbridge, a black guy in a doo-rag started walking towards me. Catching my eye, he grinned widely.

"My man, my man, my man. How you doin'?" he asked, extending his right hand. I shook it and smiled back at him. I'm not a fool--I knew that the other shoe had yet to drop--but I was new to the neighborhood, and saw no need to make enemies. I smiled at him. "How YOU doing?"

His smile got a little wider. "My man, welcome. I'm sorry I wasn't here to welcome you earlier, but you know how it is." Wow, I thought, this guy is really putting it out there.

"Yeah, I know how it is. What's up?"

"Well, man, you see, my Moms needs an operation. She's waiting for some money to come in, and I need to help her out." I zoned him out as he wandered through his spiel, because I already knew what the last line was going to be: "You got any money I can borrow?"

Rich told me to expect this, but I thought he was kidding. He also told me that, if I gave money to one guy, I would be fair game for everyone. I had to nip it in the bud, and I had to do it with some style and class. No need to make enemies in the neighborhood.

"You know, I'd really like to give you some cash, but I don't gotta job right now, and I ain't gotta lotta money." I smiled at him. "Hey, man, you get me a job, and I'll help you out!"

He smiled back. "Hey, you honest. I like that." He thought for a moment, as if considering whether to pursue it further. He decided against it and shook my hand again, then walked away.

I have a hard time saying no to beggars. I've been really poor, and I know what it feels like when you can't afford food. I've had to take care of a kid, and I've had an untreated illness, and most of the cliches hit me pretty close to home. But there's simply too much--too much poverty, too much hunger, too much desperation. We're living pretty close to the wire, and can't even begin to fill the empty pit of need that surrounds us every day.

I like to help people. If I see tourists who look lost, I tend to ask where they're going, and then help them get there. I help ladies with strollers get up stairs and old men with walkers cross streets. I give up my seat on the subway whenever I see someone who looks more needy or tired than I am. Sometimes, it feels like I'm a walking nipple, out to nurture and help everyone.

Within the first few days of our life in the Bronx, it became apparent that Rich was right and I would have to build a shell around my natural tenderness. The sick mother guy was followed by a few more neighbors. I think it got out that I was a cheap bastard, so it's been about a month since somebody hit me up. The last one was a lady who caught me counting my quarters at the laundromat. Few things make you feel more like Ebenezer Scrooge than holding a pocketful of cold quarters while a lady tells you about her sick daughter. Still, I feel like passing out money on my street definitely counts as shitting where you eat.

In those first few weeks, I said "No" so many times that some of my neighbors must have wondered if it was the only word I knew. Sometimes I was polite about it and sometimes I was dismissive, but there were days where it seemed like everybody on the street had some need or another and had decided to ask me to help them through. I quickly saw why Rich warned me: as the token white guy on the street, I could very easily have become the official dispenser of wealth and aid.

I'm not a hardass, but I quickly realized that the endless need of these people did not automatically translate into my responsibility.

Saying no has become second nature, to the extent that the sound of an interrogative sentence almost automatically elicits a negative response. "Do you got money?" "No!" "Can you give me a quarter?" "NO!" "Do you want cake?" "NO...wait, could you repeat the question?"

This has come in handy on the subways where I have quickly adopted my New York face. If you want my dough, you're going to really need to work for it. My wife and I have set up a simple rule: if you make our lives more enjoyable or more interesting, we'll open our wallets. But if you're going to go the veiled threat route, keep moving. And if you're only claim to my money is the fact that you have a need, well my kid is going to need braces. I've gotta get some dental work done. My mother's dead, and my cat's kinda bitchy...

Major Fan Geekage

I'm going to interrupt this particular series of navel-gazing posts to insert a little non-paid advertisement.

Raymond Chandler is God.

Okay, I've been reading some Chandler lately, as I am working on my story plotting skills and figured that it would be a good idea to take a peek at some of the best. I had previously read a few of his short stories, but had never really delved into his longer works. I am totally blown away.

Chandler has been endlessly imitated, and I have long since gotten tired of the "A dame walked into my office. She had the kind of legs that would stop traffic on the Union Pacific, but her eyes were as cold as the slabs at the county morgue..."

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I can see why people would want to imitate Chandler, in the same way that I can see why people would want to climb Everest or channel Katherine Hepburn, or paint like da Vinci. However, some things can't be copied. Check out this description from The Big Sleep:

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest of stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim with enough melodic line for a tone poem...

Later, they talk:

Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."

"I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

One thing that I never realized is how funny Chandler is. Marlowe, his main character, has an absolute distrust of the world, yet is able to laugh at the comedy that surrounds him, even when everybody takes it so seriously. Chandler realizes that, at the end of the day, none of the nonsense really matters all that much, but we still need to play the game.

He also has an eye for description that I usually associate with women. He discusses clothing and furniture in intimate detail, drawing out important personality traits from fabric choices and paint colors. There were a few times when I wondered if "interior decorator" might be something that Marlowe (or Chandler) left off his resume.

A guy who investigates murders yet is amused by the suspects, who is a man's man, yet has an eye for interior design, who presents a constant, ever-changing interpretation of reality... Using Marlowe, Chandler creates a world in which truth becomes incredibly flexible, and the search for truth becomes life-threatening.

In academia, it's amazing how often you hear the words "post-modern" and "existentialist" thrown around with very little understanding of the meaning that can underlay them. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Chandler is that he completely embraced these concepts and used them as an underpinning for his work, but did so with a smile and not a smidgen of self-consciousness.

I am totally in love.