Mile high

I stumbled across Ben Saunders' web site sometime last year, when he was hiking the Arctic.

Yeah, hiking it. Alone. And blogging it, with photos, nightly.

For a somewhat-world-traveler like myself, I have to say: That rocks. There is nothing cooler. (No pun intended.) I've never met the guy, never even sent an email, but I love the notion of his devoting his life to just doing way cool adventure things, and doing it with a real love, not mindless ambition or clueless commercialism. (There is some sponsoring going on, as this kind of trek isn't free, but it's fairly unobtrusive and even a little exciting itself.)

Ben, I have since learned, is the youngest person ever to reach the North Pole, and holds the British record for longest solo Arctic trek.

Anyway, he's going to do something like that again -- only this time, head South. The project is called South.

And the sponsors are ... all of us. Anyone. You can buy a mile. Among other things, your name will be on a flag he'll plant at the South Pole. I'm trying to decide if it's a complete idiocy to throw money into buying him a mile, or not. But if I do pick, I've already got my number chosen. I'll be amused by the person who buys mile 666.

Because, you see, there are 1800 to choose from.

Go Ben!

Get outta town

"Best-Selling Book Names New Yorkers As Among Those Harming America

BY JACOB GERSHMAN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 3, 2005

New York City, the center of commerce and culture in America, also happens to be home to a plurality of the country's most caustic, destructive, and dangerous citizens, according to a bestselling book.

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, Columbia history scholar Eric Foner, presidential candidate Al Sharpton, and inveterate political adviser Robert Shrum are among the New Yorkers who show up in Bernard Goldberg's "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37)." The polemic is no. 3 on the Book Standard's list of nonfiction best sellers, and rising."


Look, folks, we're ready to leave when you are. Secession anyone?

Your right to be entertained shall not be infringed upon

Hmm.

"A judge approved an agreement calling for Sony Pictures Entertainment to pay $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the studio of citing a fake movie critic in ads for several films, an attorney said Tuesday.

Moviegoers who saw the films "Vertical Limit," "A Knight's Tale," "The Animal," "Hollow Man" or "The Patriot" during their original theater runs must file a claim to be eligible for a $5 per ticket reimbursement, said lawyer Norman Blumenthal, who represented a group of filmgoers who sued Sony Pictures in 2001."


Frankly, I'm torn. I went with my friend Lynda to see "The Patriot" and we have to admit, it was a craptacular piece of history drama -- but it was a freakin' funny comedy.

And it reminded us of one of our favorite "Simpsons" episodes, where Mel trashes the Senate in his remake of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Of course, the "Simpsons" episode came out in 1999, and the film in 2001. Who's zoomin' who?



NOTE: Tonight (8/4/05) our local Fox affiliate showed this particular episode. Coincidence? I think not!

Been caught stealing

I ranted this morning. Kind of made me feel good. Mid-email I decided to post the rant. My friend Anne emailed me this link:

http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html

And I replied back.

For what it's worth, a defense of fan fiction:


Anne --

She's definitely a little ... strident.

Of course, she's entitled to her opinion. But I think the primary flaw in her argument is that you can all but see that little person on her shoulder going "It's mine! It's mine! It's all mine!" And because it is hers, it is inviolate.

What she doesn't seem to have is perspective: On writing, on what it contributes to the culture, and what the purpose of art is in all forms. This is also the narrow view that's making copyright law more restrictive rather than less: It's the heirs or the creators of the works going "Mine! Mine! Mine! Forever and ever amen!"

Well, no.

I'm all about a writer or artist getting his or her due, financially and credit-wise. I'm not all about a writer or artist taking sole and complete credit for his or her work ad infinitum, and in all permutations forever and ever amen.

Robin Hobb was inspired by someone to write, consciously or subconsciously. She didn't wake up from a 20 year coma with her ideas and characters fully formed. In some sense, we are ALL fan fiction writers, because what we see and absorb filters through us and becomes our creations. Some are more literally chosen, and some are not.

In Hobb's view, using someone else's work without permission -- that's the part that makes me grin, which I'll get to in a minute -- to create new work is fan fiction, and is bad for many many reasons. (Mine! Mine!) But that means if someone does an all-girl version of "Macbeth" it's just as wrong as if someone writes a story based on her characters. If we take themes from "The Odyssey" and use them in modern fiction, or if Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade shows up in a Woody Allen film, it's stealing.

It's not. It's what art does. Good art lives, breathes and continues on to infiltrate and influence the next generation. An artist who truly believes that someone will feel differently about the original work having read the deritivate "illegal" versions doesn't have much confidence in her work -- and also has little sense of the real purpose it has out there in the world.

Someone needs to tell Robin Hobb that the purpose of art is not to make her money. It is not to solidify her reputation and name through the eons. The purpose of art is to edify us all, to rise up humanity in whatever small ways there may be, to make us think differently. It is an education. To be miserly about it makes the author that much smaller. Sad.

And if there was any question about Hobbs' miserliness -- let's return briefly to that "it's only bad if permission wasn't given." This just proves the point that she's not in it for art. She's in it for control, and a paycheck.

In the end, I think it's unlikely we'll hear from Hobbs the way we hear about Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Woody Allen, The Odyssey. In part because of her talent's size, but more likely because of the smallness of her heart.

And then, this afternoon....

There were Raspberries.

TV is one of those things I can live mostly without; a few years ago I went through a period sans cable and ended up not watching nearly so much, and listening to the radio a lot. But once I got the new job it became a) a necessity and b) a business expense! So I went and got cable. (Another advantage, c) meant I could finally afford a cable modem. Whee!)

Since then, there is really only one channel that matters to me, and that's VH1 Classic. I don't think it's unfair to say it's most of the reason I even keep cable, because I still don't watch much TV. Or if I do, it's background just to keep me informed; most TV shows don't require a full brain to process. But VH1 Classic is videos, videos, videos! And largely from the 1980s! I get to regress into nostalgia every morning while I sweat up a storm on the exercise bike, and it's been such a treat to see videos I've never seen (Beat Surrender) to ones I know by heart (Take on Me) to ones I never knew had a video (Games Without Frontiers). And if you can name the three bands who sang those songs, this is a network you should have.

Today I had cause to go and visit the VH1 Classic studio, which is on the 7th floor of a building in the garment district, tucked away and small and buzzing with sweet things far too young to have really been there. The general manager is 38, and he's like an elder statesman there. Nice guy; we had a good chat. Since I know everything, I even asked if I could submit show ideas. I have no idea how this works, but he was interested and told me how to get them copyrighted first (the poor man's copyright, that is, which is to mail them to yourself and not break the seal on the envelope) before discussing them with him. I'd be stunned if it actually played out, but we shall see.

In any case, I was there to interview him and then stick around for the to-be-taped performance of the band visiting the studio. And it was the Raspberries. A band which hadn't toured together since I was about 4, and who I largely knew via the singer Eric Carmen, who cursed us all with the maudlin "All By Myself" and much later, songs on the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack that included "Hungry Eyes." I'd heard they were a real bastion of pure power pop outta the 70s, a la Big Star, a band who can be clearly heard in Fountains of Wayne but are rarely heard as oldies on the radio. I'd certainly never heard much, and figured I'd stick around a bit and enjoy a few tunes then duck out.

Oh. My. Word!

It was lovely, purely lovely, I tell you. There's a song called "Last Dance" which practically had me in tears, except then it shifts course the way "Band on the Run" (Wings, folks, Wings) does and ignores your interest in sentimentality. There was the cute but memorable "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)" which is sly in a very presicent way, plus three others whose names currently escape me. The harmonies were tremendous, not quite as surfy as the Beach Boys but along those lines; the guitar was clean and exquisite. And this is from guys who not only just reunited last November having not played together in about 32 years, but who're far from being the young sprogs they were when they formed the band in Ohio back in the day. Here they are rehearsing for their NY gigs this weekend, just two days ago.

And they were nice guys, despite that some smoke like chimneys (having not been around smoke in a long time it reminds you just how obnoxious it is; that said, it's hardly rock and roll to tell someone to douse a butt). I had a quick chat with Eric and the drummer (I gotta get his name); Carmen's a bit overtanned and leathery but it is true that somehow rock is a great preservative -- they all looked quite fit and generally had good hair.

Once again, radio has let us down in not giving these tunes more play. I'm not surprised, just annoyed. I'm also going to go get myself a greatest hits album straight off.

What could be nicer than going to your favorite place in the world and discovering something even cooler inside it?

One last thing: I've been informed that Paul Weller may be coming back in September to play in the VH1 Classic studios. I've made friends. I will be there. Yay!

The point of children

If that doesn't describe my current opinion of the weather, nothing does.

I met Werner Herzog last night, which should have been one of those amazing experiences, yet had a somewhat deflating quality. I've been a fan of his work since I was hauled over to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA in the 1980s by a film student a few years older than me, and made to watch his films. (We also had to watch Fassbinder, which I enjoyed far less.) Anyway, we saw "Fitzcarraldo" and "Woyczek" back to back, and later on I saw "Aguirre: Wrath of God" and started reading up on Herzog's prickly (to put it lightly) relationship with his constant actor, Klaus Kinski (who was really, really, nuts and simulatneously deeply sexy in a crazy way).



Herzog isn't far off from that, but he's more self-contained so it doesn't show as much. (He once ate his shoe, on camera, as the result of losing a bet with Errol Morris.)

In any case, I try to foist Herzog films on everyone I can get my hands on, so meeting him prior to a special screening of his new documentary, "Grizzly Man," was to have been a real treat. There was a cocktail hour prior to the screening (held without a drip of irony, considering the film's subject) in the American Museum of Natural History's large mammal exhibit hall. Herzog, as was his prerogative, appeared mere minutes before the screening was to start -- and then seemed ticked that there were interviewers who wanted to talk to him. The NY Times and Variety got in their licks before I did, and he fairly flew away from the Variety reporter, around the corner. I nodded at the publicist, who wasn't paying attention: "He's absconded." "Where??" "Around the corner." She found him at the drinks table getting some water and then decided that that was the right time for us to be introduced. He sort of ignored me as he gathered up a few veggies and with some deep embarrassment I tried to introduce myself and ask a few interesting questions, but got almost nowhere. He did respond, but eye contact was fleeting, and I felt like a jerk for intruding. Then again, it's the job, so that's how these things go. I always like to think I'm going to have the one question that makes them stop and think, "What an insightful young woman!" and want to talk to me for hours, but it doesn't work that way.

The movie was fantastic. The story behind the movie is fantastic: This guy Timothy "Timmy" Treadwell -- who probably went around as not fully-diagnosed manic depressive; to watch him is astounding -- went to live in the wildnerness of Alaska to watch and "protect" the bears there. An admirable, if reckless thing -- he was unarmed always -- but as the movie unfolds his motives for doing so seem to take on an almost narcissistic quality. Anyway, he went there for 13 summer seasons; the last five he took a video camera and, sometimes, a girlfriend. At the end of the final season, he and the girlfriend were attacked and ... eaten. It's not gory, though apparently an audio recording of the event exists. Herzog listens to it on the camera but insists it isn't something anyone should listen to. Instead the coroner describes much of what's on the tape, and frankly, that's plenty. So what we're left with is some of Herzog going back to the scene of things (oh, my lord the mosquitos swarm around his interview subjects in that wild so loudly and plentifully you can hear them on the microphone) and a lot of Treadwell's filming. He (Treadwell) can be awfully twee, singing and talking to the bears like they're out of Disney, and he can be awfully frightening (going off on camera in a rant at the Park Service), but he's definitely unique.

Herzog, on the other hand, tries to make the case that the biggest mistake Treadwell made was to believe that if he was warm and friendly to these carnivores, they would return the favor. He makes a good point. But then he makes statements that can make no sense. Apparently the girlfriend who died wtih Treadwell was not just fearful of bears, but really, really wanted to get out of there. Herzog comments, "Inexplicably, she stayed with Treadwell." Inexplicably? It's not like she could walk out and catch a cab. Maybe they had radios for emergency purposes, but that's never mentioned.

After the film, Herzog was part of a panel that included a woman who had been Treadwell's girlfriend and ran his organization with him, a bear expert who had once been mauled and lost his eye by a bear, and the host of Studio 360, Kurt Andersen, who moderated the whole thing. The bear expert liked to point out that Treadwell would have done the bears more protecting if he'd stayed out of their way and maybe observed from a tree. Herzog said he felt some of the "save the" feeling we all have for whales and bears and spotted owls should be applied to indigenous peoples who are in such shrinking communities that their cultures and languages die off when they die. (This coming from a man who filmed "Fitzcarraldo" in the Amazon jungle and, like his primary subject, had no problem using local labor -- some of whom were injured trying to get that steamboat over the mountain.)

I headed out once the panel devolved into audience questions, but as I left I heard one guy stand up and ask: "What was the point of this film?"

Herzog shot back, "That's like asking, 'What is the point of children?'"

We're really rockin in Brooklyn

I have never yet been to Coney Island when it did not rain. Fortunately, the complete deluge (likened to the one in "War of the Worlds" by my bud Kelly) that greeted me in my last 20 minute above-ground trip out to Coney Island (for ridiculous reasons it takes 1.5 hours to go from where I live in Queens to Coney Island via subway) cleared up by the time I met up with her at Nathan's yesterday. Out came the sun and it dried up all the rain and the itsy bitsy rock'n'rollers climbed out on stage again.

She works for a magazine that's a sister pub to my own, and we sit across from each other at work, so when Kelly landed free tix to see Bryan Adams and Def Leppard play at the minor-league ballfield at Coney in July, who could resist? I've got about equal fan fervor for both (that is, I liked a few hits and remained indifferent to most of the rest of their collective oveure) and it was free and we were guaranteed press access, so no muddy field wandering for us, no siree.

After a terrifying ride on the Cyclone (it's one of those old wooden rollercoaster which no matter how they strap you in you feel like you will fall out, and it goes quite fast in a rattly way) we headed over to the ballfield and met up with the super-nice promoter (which I know doesn't seem likely, but he was cool). He was pissed at the owners of the park, which had (against all logic and common sense and, well, tradition at every other venue in the world) made him and his company liable for anything that might go on during the show. So if the bleachers collapsed, he was screwed, even though it's not his ballfield. That made the show not cost-effective, and though it was too late to pull out, he said there was no way he'd be back.

But such issues weren't our problem and we hung around the upstairs press box, hoping to get a promised-for photo with the promoters and the band(s) for Kelly's mag's Web page. When that wasn't materializing, we ran out for fries at Nathan's and an enormo lemonade. Others were taking advantage of the 64 oz beer cup, which had Kelly's eyes bugging out. Back at the venue the show got started (the opening act, Randy Coleman, was pretty blandly bad; at the end he gave thanks to his dad -- Dabney. OMG!), and Kelly's friend from another sister pub, Katie, and her ride Marco, arrived. We jammed to much of Bryan Adams from the press box area, then spotted another of Katie's co-workers Bram, down in the seats. We all yelled at once to him and he came up with a bunch of his Playboy-mag friends; we ended up on the far side of the fourth-floor venue towards the latter part of Adams, which just sounded better and had its own bar, plus plenty of room to move around.



Katie it turned out was a big Bryan Adams fan from back in the day, and was going nuts. When he sang his sappy "Everything I Do (I Do it For You)" with those lyrics -- "I'd lie for you, I'd die for you" we started making up more: "I'd bake a pie for you, I'd catch a fly for you." So beer and laughs were had, and much poking of fun was made at Adams' selection from the audience -- Mandy from Michigan who worked at a Michael's Arts & Crafts store and apparently had come with her mother and grandmother to the event. They sang a song, badly. But he was personable.

Kelly kept to her task, however, and told us that at 9 we'd need to go to the buses downstairs for the photo op. After threading ourselves through the venue Spinal Tap style, we passed through the food services area ("Anyone for buns?") and out to the loading dock, where the buses, idling and stinky, were waiting. And then it was time for the pictures! Kelly snapped off the official ones she needed of Bryan Adams, who was standing around talking to people, and as she went off to get the Leppard men, I grabbed Bryan's hand, told him what magazine I was with and said Katie was such a fan, could we get a picture. Marco appropriately took my camera and told me to get in. Bryan -- much more slight than he appears on camera -- told me to go ahead and grab on to him, and there you are.



The Leppard fellas were about to go on stage, so we didn't have much time with them either; Adams was waiting to get on his bus and get the heck out of there -- but Kelly got a snap. I stood next to her and also took one, but it was so dark back there that even with a flash it's not all that clear.



The promoter is in there somewhere, as is another guy -- John Scher, I think is how you spell it, who apparently has been a big NY promoter dude for many years. Both were very nice to me. Of course, mentioning the magazine never hurts either.

And finally, back upstairs to have a fist-pumping, devil horn-fingered-raising good time with the Leppards. I was all about "Rockit," which is one of the dumbest songs I've ever heard but which had me going bonzo for all 9 minutes. Maybe the free Sam Adams from the hospitality suite the promoters had set up had something to do with it....

Inside out

I have several blogs I read on a regular basis. Thirty-nine, if my del.icio.us account is to be believed. Of those, I read maybe 10 with any frequency, and the others are just there so if I wanted to, I could check up on some fun and interesting thinking. And pass the time at work, which just doesn't keep me as busy as I'd like sometimes.

But all of them have been blogs of strangers, until recently. One way or the other I've stumbled across people whose writing and sense of humor and take on various things intrigues me, and brings me back for more. Regularly, I'll read Lileks and the advice column in Tomato Nation. Sirenita is infrequent, but has wonderful, quirky stories to tell -- and interesting photos at the same time. And when one just goes away -- oh, Shelleyness, come back, come back!

Such good times, and with people I've never met. And thus the distant intimacy of the internet takes hold.

That changed earlier this year when my friend Lynda let me know she keeps a regular blog at LiveJournal. She's got a regular group of friends who respond and read her, which was funny because I guess it never occurred to me to find out that any of my friends did this, too. I don't tell most people about this blog, and if anyone stumbles across it fine, but I guess for some reason I thought I'd know if she had one. So now I keep it in my list and it's one of the first ones I go to in a day. She'll do anywhere from 1 to 5 posts a day and then reply to her replies (having a boring job means even more free time to do that kind of stuff) so I feel like I "see" her with greater frequency than ever, considering she's in Baltimore and I'm in NY. I know more about what's going on here and there in her daily life, and that's fun. It's almost better than shooting emails back and forth.

At the same time, it feels like having a conversation while standing just outside the group; I'm getting the information, but what I may or may not say about it is irrelevant, because there's all this other feedback coming in. And now I sometimes wonder if, because she knows I read the blog, whether I'm supposed to respond all the time and know these things even if I haven't been personally told the details.

All of which is a useless hang-up, frankly; we chat and get together and hang out, and it's kind of fun to see her other, more local friends, at least virtually so. But again, there's that odd Internet distant intimacy. Which apparently pops up whether you know the blog subjects -- or not.

New Stuff

You never know what you're gonna learn that you didn't know the day before.

When I woke up today, I didn't know this was gonna be the day we all learned who Deep Throat was.

But we did.

I now eagerly anticipate the:

- re-release of "All the President's Men"
- the Mark Felt interview on Dateline, 60 Minutes and Prime Time Live (the latter of which will no doubt inform us he had an affair with one of Woodward's secretaries)
- the Woodward book on the subject
- the Bernstein book on the subject
- much discussion on keeping sources secret for 30 years.

Also tonight, filed under things I didn't expect to do:

- Meet Alfonso Cuaron, who is a hottie
- Meet Darren Aronofsky, who is not
- get drunk off of one screwdriver
- try to get Cuaron to come with me to Brooklyn to see this. In my stupor I was thinking the parody was done of his Harry Potter, not the first one. Fortunately, the man had to pack to go to London to, well, make a new movie and politely turned me down. But he did take my card.

And it's only Tuesday!

Reading is soooooo hard!

"Sherre Sachar comes from a book-loving family. Her father, Louis, is an award-winning author, and the graduating senior thinks that settling down with a good book should be one of life's great joys. But as she prepares to leave high school and head to Cornell University in the fall, she is tired of reading. The extensive required reading in her high school classes — including Advanced Placement English Literature, where she flew from one classic to another — left her with no time to pick up books she thought would be fun."

My AP English class was one of the best I ever took. They gave us a list of books to read over the summer, everything from "Red Badge of Courage" to "Heart of Darkness" to the (dreadful) "Billy Budd." I had a teacher, Mr. Sampselle, who was dry-witted and hilarious and let us call him "Uncle Dave." I was thrilled to be forced to read the classics, as the lame-o classes I'd taken up until that point had given me "The Odyssey" and "Great Expectations" -- and that was 9th grade. And that was pretty much it until the 12th grade with Sampselle. We had a ball, I learned a lot, and yeah, I read a lot. It's Advanced Placement.

My big whine is that I wasn't forced to read more classics. Yeah, I might have picked them up on my own, but fact is I needed some guidance with the bigger picture in several books, and having a class to help me through "King Lear" was beneficial. I just wish I'd taken classes where they led us through some of the other greats, because in the end I feel like I got short-shrifted. My friend Julia was reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" and a book about the history of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 6th grade, and I tried to tag along. That was about the sum total of my classics reading before 12th grade.

The fact that a reader gets "burned out" by too much required reading -- screw off. Don't take the class. Sit with the lower levels and manage your way through the easier stuff. It's called learning.

Now, later on in the article a girl opines that they basically had to read the texts and explicate them until they bled, and I agree: That stuff is a pain in the ass, and can sap a story of some of its fun. I mean, as Mark Twain says before one of his books kicks into gear, all metaphors and so forth are completely unintended. It is important to understand the story beneath the story, but the fact that "Red Badge of Courage" is an anti-war book ... you know, I can get that on my own. But knowing about "Heart of Darkness's" "noble savage" trope, and the metaphor of the river as heading into death -- that's good stuff. That shows up everywhere. It's useful.

My brain probably was tired, too, and I remember being completely pissed that of all the books we studied, not one was on the AP Essay portion of the test, and I had to dredge up what I remembered about Richard Wright's "Black Boy" to write something coherent -- a book I'd read for fun. That said, I should have just thrown caution to the wind and done "Gone with the Wind," which if I remember right is what my canny friend Lynda wrote about.

I wish people would quit letting students whine for being too well educated.

Hands across the ocean — shake or wave?

So, because I have an inability to just let things rest, I have now gone and stuck a stick in a place that was, so far as I knew, fairy stable.

It's a completely self-indulgent gesture, but knowing that I have a hard time not knowing all the gory details about a thing, I've long wanted to find out the answer here. So last night I sent off a brief email to a total stranger to confirm he was who I thought he was.

And got an immediate email back this morning confirming it -- but from a different email address. A little hostile, even: "Why do you ask? Who are you?" they wrote back. I've since replied.

More details as this progresses. The way I see it is this: The hotter the teapot grows, the larger the uncovered tempest is. If it all just is a big shrug, then there was nothing worth wondering about in the first place. Based on that one responded-to email, I put this tempest at a 7 of 10 (with 10 being explosive).

My big concern is that this total stranger will now contact people I have known before ... and it could get ugly.

My bigger concern is that he never writes back.

Oh, I guess I am a big drama queen when all's said and dne.

The art continues

This is the Luke Chueh artwork I really wanted; he's just issued it in a second limited edition print, and so I will now have three. And then I gotta stop.


"The Soundtrack of My Life"

Spring fever

I'm not sure if it's in the air or what, but the number of crazy people in my neighborhood has been growing exponentially in the last few months.

When I first moved here I didn't notice any; it's a pretty stable family type neighborhood. And then one morning a squirrel woke me up with chattering, and I was pissed because it was something unreasonable like 8am on a Saturday. So I got my water pistol and went squirrel-hunting. I was just getting him to go when this woman on the ground walking her dogs yelled up at me and I took aim and and then ducked back in. I've since seen her later on but she doesn't seem to connect me with the incident. She walks two overly-hairy hounds who look like they really could use a bath, and if you approach her with your own dog she'll keep you locked in place at least 20 minutes. This alone is not a crazy thing. But if she catches me and the dog running out for our late-night pit stop (which involves running outside, doing the thing, and fleeing back inside) she breaks out into cackles of laughter even if she's halfway down the block. So, a little more nutty. Then one time I was walking my dog back into the house and she was (dogless) leaning up against the wrought iron fence and standing next to what I thought was a folded-up grocery cart but was likely more like one of those cart/walker items. Since she likes seeing Ciara fleeing down the sidewalk home, I gave the dog her head and we ran, and as we passed her she let out this blasting series of epithets and claimed we were trying to run her down and couldn't we see she was taking a rest right there and what is wrong with people today!

The next time I saw her she made no reference to the event. So now I treat her with a wide berth. And think of her as the Crazy Dog Lady.

Now we have at least two more, neither of which I have any intention of interacting with: One, a great big hulking guy who's over six feet and probably 275 pounds, unshaven and kind of sloppy but not quite homeless looking with a really deep voice. He's the nightmare crazy man because he looks like a Sopranos enforcer and makes bizarro comments when you walk by. You feel like he's going to lunge out and grab you and try to send you back to the Planet Zoltron. I've seen him more than once and he's the kind of person who you hope isn't talking to you but maybe he is so you'd better pay attention in case that pisses him off and then suddenly he's continuing on his muttering way.

I'm reminded that briefly we did have a semi-crazy homeless woman living in the hood, who is now gone: She was Asian and sat in a very low-to-the-ground beach chair on random corners and often had an umbrella over her head.

So, this morning I saw our third. I was walking Ciara and heard a woman on a far opposite corner of the block yelling in what I think was Spanish. Since I couldn't make out what she was ranting about at first I thought she was yelling at someone across the street, but as we got closer to that side of things, there was no one there. A teenaged boy was standing and waiting for his ride, but I've seen him before and she didn't seem to be addressing him. We continued down the street and by the time we got to her corner she'd crossed and was standing about a yard or so from the boy, continuing to rant. Then she very deliberately jumped up and stamped down with both feet on the pavement about 6 or 7 times. When we got back around again, she was gone.

So, I'm beginning to worry about the water in the Heights these days.

If I lived in South Park....

I'd probably fart a lot more.

And I'd look like this:



This image brought to you courtesy of this site.

The Weekend in Central Park

Friends in from out of town with their triad of offspring (adorable and weepy in alternating moments; we went to the zoo, climbed on things, petted goats and got ice cream) ... all within the general Central Park area.

At the pooping elephant statue:



Becoming turtles. This is my favorite shot.



Then returned to the park at 8:15 this morning (!) for the 10K AIDS Walk which took us through the park and out the top, down Riverside Drive and back in again. Foot is hurting! But who can resist any charity effort that includes these dancers right at the very end?



Favorite shirt: "I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is." Worn torn and clipped to the back of a man's shirt. The man in question was in electric blue clingy pants and carrying a cane across his shoulders. Always entertaining!



The crowds. I think they were expecting half a million. I raised (with generous help) $275, so imagine that amount times half a million. Sweet.

Awww, a baby!

So, we're starting to very slowly go through my late grandmother's things.

While I was home recently I came across a small photo book called "Grandma's Brag Book."

Since we never thought of her as "Grandma," only "Buddie," it seemed fair to call it "Buddie's Brag Book." And, of course, put the contents online.

Have fun!

Celebrity Skin

I can't decide what's worse:

1) This site
2) Being on this site (mercifully, I am not)
3) Being on this site and being part of an overstock discount. Poor Dr. Drew!

Surely, a joke. Yes?

Snopes has nothing to say on the subject.

New favorite game

Guess The Google

Ah, wasting time really is an art form.

High art!

I bought art!

Well, prints of art. But signed and numbered prints!

I love this guy: Luke Chueh. Sometimes the titles of his works are as good as the works themselves ("Everything you love will destroy you" is the title of a drawing of a big pink bunny stepping on a cowering human) but there's something both adorable and melancholy about his style.

Here's what I got (because they were the only ones available):


Possessed

and


Locked


I am a patron of the arts now. Heh.

Small things

There is a munchkin in our cafeteria.

This guy (not Mickey Rooney) is selling his book, which recounts his time on the set of "The Wizard of Oz"; apparently he was either the mayor or a minister or something like that. He also appears to have kept the costume, or gotten a replica, as he's dressed in a purple and green hat that curls on the end. He also looks like an old woman from a distance.

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

P.S. That is not ME in the photo above. Just a pix I nicked b/c I don't have a camera with me.