Wednesday, October 26, 2005

It's what's for lunch




I feel like I must be 5 years old again. For lunch today I had soup and jello. Well, either 5 or sick (six? heh) but I'm neither.

That said, no 5 year old would consider slurping on Karen's (local restaurant) squash-and-coconut soup concoction (which is amazingly yummy), so I think that excuses things.

In any case, it was a colorful lunch, in a clashing way: The soup was brownish-squashy, and the jello was ... well, lime. Electric radiation-spill lime.

Yum.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

My name is Michael Caine




There are real perks to the gig. Last night's came after running through the remnants of Wilma storming through town, following a decent movie called "The Weather Man," just beyond a lovely dinner eaten while overlooking Columbus Circle as the rain streamed down the great glass wall and made New York look like a Matisse painting: I got to meet Michael Caine. (Sir Michael Caine, if you go in for that sort of thing.) And he was completely lovely. Not only did he get up from his table to stand and talk with me away from the others, not only did he have a nice warm firm handshake, but he actually made and held eye contact.

I told him "The Man Who Would Be King" was an all-time favorite. "It had a good director," he grinned.

Told me about why he had a beard: He's filming a role in London (for "The Prestige") that requires it.

We discussed his role in "The Weather Man," which is supporting. But he's a grandfather whose grandkids call him Pop-pop, which is a name I've never heard any grandparent called except my own, so I was touched. We talked about that.

He talked about doing smaller roles, and why that's just fine: Having to basically self-promote "The Quiet American" a few years back, when Miramax went full-guns for Oscars on "Gangs of New York" rather sapped him, so commanding a picture is a little more than he's up for these days.

And then I asked what he really thought of the remake of "Alfie" (since the director told me Caine had given him approval of it), and in essence he was most diplomatic, and I agreed: Caine said that his version of Alfie in the 1960s was a seducer who was really quite an innocent, and by the end of the picture, his last line is "what's it all about?" meaning that he's questioning the universe now. But -- and he qualified this by saying he quite likes Jude Law, which I also agree with -- he said "when Jude Law shows up on the screen in that first minute, you know he's someone who's seen everything, and who knows everything already." So there's no curve, no arc, and it's a static picture.

And then I shook that warm firm hand again and headed off to dessert, buzzing.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Walking on the moon



It's taken a week for the whole thing to go up online elsewhere, so I've been waiting, but this is what I was up to last Sunday afternoon: The MP3 experiment 2.0, brought to all of us by ImprovEverywhere.

Absolutely surreally incredible. Once alerted to the event, all you had to do was download an mp3, not listen to it, then bring it with you on an iPod or a CD you'd burned to Sheep's Meadow in Central Park. At or near 3pm, a man would walk to the center of the field with a bullhorn and announce "one minute," and then he counted down with a few seconds to go. At that time, you were to start the mp3 and do what it said. And what it said, among other things, was to stand and wave at all your new friends, wave up at the sky at "Steve," walk like a zombie, bust a move, and then everyone was divided into four groups who all followed a new "leader." Our leader was an astronaut, who had us walk on the moon and plant American flags. (That's me in the picture above, in the red jacket. We're moon walking. I look larger than expected, which I suppose is, conversely, expected.) Anyway, then all four groups faced off in a rock-paper-scissors competition (the bees won) and we were all "Graduated" by being given small blowup beach balls, which we triumphantly tossed in the air. In the middle of all of this, anyone in Sheeps Meadow who didn't have the mp3 was wonderfully, baffingly, amused at seeing 200 or so people zombie walk across the grass. I can only imagine what they thought. As we all dispersed to Bethesda Fountain to the tune of "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago, it was impossible to get rid of the totally silly grin on your face. A marvelous effort. And so very, very New York.

Since then I've been a little busy but have encountered: An assumed (but not verified) man on stilts, walking down Broadway around 6pm on Wednesday evening. No circus spotted nearby, no reason for him to be there, yet, voila. Later in the week, a woman all in white danced in a religious frenzy throughout a mostly-empty subway car on the way home. In one direction she didn't say anything; the second time around she was muttering words for Jesus.

This place does keep you hopping.

Addendum: There's another mp3 experiment on October 26. Info here.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Caged heat

One consequence of having an adorable ball of fur which requires regular attention and maintenance is that when you're not there to do it, someone has to take over.

I have a perfectly good kennel I stash Ciara in when I go out of town: Mossland Kennel, which has been around since 1946, is family-owned, and has owners who write things out on 3x5 cards rather than type away on computers. And they're only $16 a night. Of course, there's always a but -- they're in College Point, which is officially a Pain in the Ass to get to. It's either $20 bucks or more each way with a car service, or it's a subway ride to the end of the line and then a bus another 10 minutes or so. I called the Pet Delivery car people; they'll charge $35 each way to pick Ciara up and drop her off. So it's down to me. Since the place is so cheap, I just factor it into the overall cost -- the car service, I mean -- and it's still cheaper than kennelling her anywhere else. Not like there are a lot of options: Queens, for some reason, has tons of dogs and no walkers and almost no kennels. (Compare viz. Brooklyn, where the dogs can come into restaurants.) I digress.

So I'm looking around and I learn that the Queens Animal hospital is within reasonable walking distance (or one stop on the subway) and only charges $20 a night. Around there is where the but begins: I took a quick tour and they're cramped compared to Mossland, plus being noisy, plus you're leaving your dog in an area where sick dogs might be, plus they're just ... a wee ... bit ... flaky. I went to have my tour, which I'd called about ahead of time and really only required about 5 minutes -- and waited about 45. Ok, par for the course, they have patients. I was still willing to give it a shot for the end of this month, when I'll be going home for a couple of days.

So I call: Oh, she'll need to be examined. I hear "ca-ching" and say, "Are you sure, because I spoke with the doctor" -- while I was there the doctor came out from seeing patients and gave me her card -- "and someone else on the phone and nobody ever said she'd need a checkup. She's caught up on her shots and I can have all of that information sent from her regular vet." So, fine, I talk the receptionist down from her high platform and call my doctor and off go the vaccine records, etc. I call back to make sure they've received them, and schedule Ciara to be taken in.

I get a call later. You can't bring her in; she has to be examined officially. Again: "ca-ching." The dog doesn't need an examination; she's well and healthy and up to date and has her own doctor. I feel fleeced, and I feel as though someone should have told me this ahead of time. Like, say, when I first called, or when I visited and sat around for 45 minutes. When I was finally told, it seemed like a policy nobody was really sure of, and that's why the receptionist backed down. All I wanted was for someone to tell me, "Hey, we messed up. Thing is...." and take a little responsibility. Instead, the yahoo who called me got all snippy and started getting into this meta conversation: She insisted the doctor could never have seen me when I came to visit, and furthermore insisted that the doctor would never have said she didn't need a checkup. This was not my issue: I wasn't trying to prove a positive (that the doctor told me she wouldn't need a checkup), I was trying to assert a negative (that I wasn't told about a checkup by anyone who should be in a position to tell me these things). But she kept going on in this very hostile manner, as if I had slandered the doctor, which made me hostile, when all I wanted was to be told that they'd erred. "I have the doctor right here with me and she swears she never met you." (Like, she would remember me how, exactly? From my name alone? I didn't even bring the dog when I came last time.)

I get very worked up sometimes for stupid, stupid reasons, and then have a hard time backing off. Particularly when I feel like I'm dealing with morons. So I finally asked: How much is the stupid checkup? $35. Familiar number. But I was so annoyed I just told them to forget the booking and I hung up. Doing the math, it'll actually cost me $15 more if I do the car service both ways to take Ciara to Mossland but you know what? That's where she's going.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

A Place Called Vertigo



Talk about a bookended weekend; Friday night was all about the Who supporting a cause they felt was worthy: Samsung. Tonight, U2 came out to support a different kind of cause -- a gallery opening in Chelsea of photographer Anton Corbijn's work. You'd have to be in a hole not to know Corbijn, at least by his style: High-def, deep-grained (mostly) black and white portraits (and plenty of videos) for, among others, rock's reigning royalty: U2, REM, Depeche Mode. So not only was Corbijn coming to the opening, at the Stellan Holm Gallery on West 24th -- but so were the Edge and Bono.



I got there about a half hour into what was announced as a three hour event (no longer than 8pm, since the band (I think) are playing at Madison Square Garden). Since nothing ever starts on time, and certainly never starts on time when musicians are involved, I figured a half hour would make sense. In a way, I was right -- unlike the others who got there early, I only had to stand around about 15 minutes. (Some people had been there since 4:45. In another way, I was badly off, because the small area around the very small gallery was choked with people, and the bodyguards were getting testy. I asked where the press list was, and learned that the gallery was already too full to allow for more people. Since they were hardly the fire department, I located someone else in the press and asked if they had the PR woman's phone number. She didn't. I said, I did, if she had a cell phone. So we called PR woman and got ushered in. As Ferris might say, so choice.



Unfortunately, the gallery was quite small. There was a wide-ish open lobby area ringed with portraits; half of the room was clogged with the photo pit. Guards wouldn't let the group advance past the narrow hallway opening at the back, which led past offices and into the main gallery room, which was only marginally wider and pretty full. (I walked down the hall at one point looking for the can; I could have sworn I saw Dave Gahan, of DM, in one of the offices thumbing through a book.) I had it in my head (and had been told by the PR woman) that I could chat with the band for some quick quotes, and stayed up front in the photo pit. Hence, the photos I landed -- these are actually mine, mostly taken by holding the camera aloft over the heads of the real paparazzi.



I stood next to a redheaded woman with an MTV microphone, and a reporter from OK! magazine; someone from the competition also arrived (at least, I think she's with the competition, I've seen her before). There was grousing. And then everyone arrived in a flash of bulbs and a thrusting of the photographic pit. Lots of shouts of "Bono! To your right! Anton! Edge! Bono! To your left!" (Not me, by the way.)



In truth, I didn't think there was much point in pursuing the band for interviews; if it happened, great, amazing, fine. I mainly wanted to say hello to Corbijn, whose office I used to work in. When I was doing work-study in England in the early 1990s, my intership was with the music video firm State. That was where I met the Sundays, Ultra Vivid Scene, Inspiral Carpets and even Tina Turner -- worked on all their videos. That was where I also learned just how cliquish the whole thing was and how unlikely it was I would do it for a career. Still, it was fun. I only met Anton once -- he was always off doing scouting for a Depeche Mode video; this was just after his "Enjoy the Silence" clip was getting so much play. He came into the office one day, expansive and adorable, this Dutch whirlwind. He handed everyone a bottle of Champagne. Which I thought was The Coolest Thing Ever. So I wanted to re-introduce myself, thank him for the drink, and then get a few quotes.



That's Anton in the scarf, in case it's not completely obvious. He still has this open, friendly face, just less hair. But it was all not to be. After the band passed through the lobby and into the narrow hallway, word came back: They needed time to chill before interviews, so out to everyone other than interview press. (So I got to stay.) Then, about five minutes later: The band wants to see the exhibit, so everybody out. They'd invite us back in later.



After ten minutes of standing across the street with MTV Girl, nearly getting run down by traffic and Lizzie Grubman-ed out of existence, then watching some Famous Person with Curly Hair dash out of a black sedan to squeals and then into the gallery, I decided I had better things to do, and got cupcakes over at nearby Billy's. All in all, a decent evening.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Who?



Went to a little party held at the Samsung "We're not Apple!" Experience store this evening. Not a bad way to wrap up an evening: free drink, free air conditioning (because, somehow, it's tropical in NYC in October these past few days), free chance to ogle some nice techy equipment -- and a chance to equally ogle Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, who were present to announce a DVD set featuring live performances of "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia," plus some interviews, live clips and so on. (And, on your way out, a free copy of said DVD.) So, an all around swell evening. (Spotted: Ian Buchanan, who played Duke Lavery on "General Hospital," and shut up; a guy who I've seen in a million character parts who reminds me of Wallace Shawn yet is not Wallace Shawn; and, somewhere hiding in the back apparently -- Mike Meyers. And dozens of regular schmoes like me. An interesting collection of humanity.)

There is a point: Townshend strolled right in through the crowd, with a few bodyguards not having to really do much bodyguarding, went right up to the podium and hung around with some of the more official looking people. This is the genius of the band: He's the writer, he's the windmill guitarist, and off he goes like nobody even realizes that. Which of course they do; at least half of the room are Who fans.

Which they prove when Roger Daltrey strolls through, on the same course, a few minutes later. He's smaller and a lot less head-hairy (though far from losing it) than I'm expecting; I suppose the smaller part should be a given by now, they're all smaller than you expect, but I keep thinking he's going to have "Tommy" hair or something. Er, no. Anyway, I'm standing behind a low glass partition, raised up about a foot on the far side of the store, so I get a good look down on the group. He almost makes it to the stage area, then backs off and starts talking to people. And people take pictures. And everyone is suddenly taking pictures, with cell phones, with digital cameras, officially by asking and unofficially by just snapping, and surreptitiously by sneaking one in, and one woman next to me leans over the glass partition and even gets an autograph. He's eating it up in a generous, kind way and even stays in the audience when the presentation begins, thoughtfully pressing a finger up under his nose while the Samsung chief does his meandering introduction.

But there I am, looking at this whole spectacle and thinking: Cheez, that's a practiced professional. I can't imagine how I'd stand it with dozens of people clustered around me, all asking for something at once, all grabbing at me (not necessarily all at once), asking, poking, pestering, lights flashing. You hear stories about how "Jesus, [fill in your actor/musician/whoever] was such an asshole, he wouldn't even let me [take his picture/kiss his cheek/sign a paper for my kid]" and you can completely see how Daltrey could do this for probably hours and then, when he finally had enough and told one guy "Look, we've got to cut it off" -- that'd be the guy who'd go home and say that shit. Okay, 30-odd years in the limelight means you get a few chances to practice with the crowd. (And we all know The Who have not always had good luck with crowds.) But I just sat back and watched it all happen, completely impressed that he stepped on not one toe or hurt not one person's feelings and just hung with the group.

Classy.