Monthly Archives: March 2013

Lame Adventure 366: Birds of a Feather

Posted on March 25, 2013 | 81 comments

I thought it was an interesting coincidence that on a day when I found myself nodding out at my desk at The Grind, a pigeon that perched outside my window had the same idea.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Where we diverged was that after it completed its snooze, the reinvigorated avian extravagantly stretched its wings and took flight. I remained in groggy land-locked captivity on the other side of the bars. It’s possible that I drooled.

The Boss had ordered me to work on a Very Important Assignment, the kind of mission with no margin for error. If it’s screwed up she’ll likely have her head handed to her on a plate. Therefore, I am under pressure to be perfect. Even if nothing is screwed up, I can foresee someone down the line getting cranky about some aspect of this project and blaming her. This brings to mind that I have a tendency to philosophically reflect on my fellow man, or on the woman that announced to me, just as an off-Broadway  play that I was volunteer ushering was about to start:

Woman (whispering): You’re sitting in my husband’s seat.

I nearly suffered a heart attack. The House Manager had assigned me that sixth row dead center seat. He’s always on top of his game. I thought:

Me (thinking): The play’s starting RIGHT THIS SECOND. What am I going to do?

Lightning fast, I spring to my feet and apologize profusely for this snafu. I envisioned her husband bolting out of the bathroom, bursting through the house’s closed doors and hotfooting down the aisle at that very moment.

The woman reveals:

Woman: I turned his ticket into the box office. He’s not here. Sit!

She finds my heart stopping terror hilarious. As a volunteer with an obligation to represent this theater in the best possible light at all times, I press my personal mute button hard to silence what I am thinking:

Me (thinking): Are you a psychotic crazy person?  Was that really necessary to say to me right at curtain?

I suffered shallow breathing well into the first act. When an ominous looking bread knife was brandished on stage, I realized that there just might be a little Norman Bates in me, too, but I digress. As I tend to philosophically reflect on my fellow man and woman, factoring in my own experiences with members of the human race, I have concluded that many people are assholes.

Other people at my company are basically treating this project that my boss is spearheading like a hot potato. No one wants to touch it. Therefore, the potato has been handed to me. Maybe when it’s finished I should ask for a title upgrade to Minister of Potato. If I were Elsbeth, my superior, I would have dumped it on me, too. I’m excellent with detail, over-educated and underpaid. What a bargain until …

Oops.

Oops.

I lose consciousness and key in 83,338 of a product that costs $1,416. The line item calculates to $118,007,080. Fortunately, I came to before hitting the ‘enter’ key and reduced the quantity to the intended amount: two.

In my next life, I hope I return as a New York City pigeon. I’d be free. I’d never be bored. I could fly, mate at will, stuff myself with street food, but best of all, I could crap on annoying theater patrons and get away with it. Hey, I’m just a doity boid.

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Posted in Humor, new york city, theater

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Lame Adventure 365: I, Numbskull

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 64 comments

In February, I received an email from the Public Art Fund announcing that a new outdoor art exhibit was opening on March 5th called United Enemies. It’s comprised of two monumental bronze sculptures by Thomas Schütte.  Both sculptures feature a pair of angry men tied together but struggling to pull apart.  They are so consumed with contempt for each other their faces are distorted.  Naturally I thought:

Me: The Democrats and the Republicans!

Apparently, I was onto something for I learned some specifics about its origin:

“Conceived during a residency in Italy at a time when several politicians had been arrested for corruption, this series of works refers obliquely to these individuals, though the figures represented in the work are mythical characters rather than specific people.”

Last week, the Public Art Fund sent me an email reminding me that the exhibit has officially opened, or at least that’s what I thought the email was about. I didn’t read the email’s text.  I looked at the image and instantly thought these pairs of freaky gents would be welcome on my site.

Take fifteen seconds to read this.

Too busy to take fifteen seconds to read this.

On Sunday afternoon, I hopped on the downtown 1 local subway train, exited at 59th Street and walked east down Central Park West, prepared to take my usual mediocre photographs. As I passed each entrance and exit to the park, I was confounded for I could not find these sculptures. I knew they weren’t lawn jockey size.  Since they were bronze behemoths I thought it was highly unlikely that they were stolen or damaged.  When I reached Fifth Avenue, I considered asking a carriage horse driver if he knew where they were, but that struck me as absurd since they were obviously nowhere to be found.

I then proceeded to retrace my steps going west. I looked closer at each entrance and exit to the park, but still, there was no sign of these sculptures and my bafflement escalated.  Why didn’t I read the text in that email?  Was this exhibit postponed or opening at a later date?  I walked up Central Park West and looked over the lower end of the park.  All I saw was a woman walking two poodles clad in coats that surely cost more than my crappy down jacket.

Then, I had a light bulb: I’d look at the email!  Last Xmas The Boss gave me a refurbished iPod Touch.  I turned it on, but could not access the internet.  I felt foiled and regretted only being able to afford a dumb phone.  I really did not want to return home to read that email on my home computer, but then I had another light bulb: I may have a dumb phone but I have friends with smart phones. First, I called Milton, but he wasn’t around.  Next, I texted Coco, but she wasn’t around.  Last, I tried my pal, Lola.  She wasn’t around, either. I gave up and proceeded to walk home.  As I neared 66th Street Milton called:

Milton: You rang.

Me: Yeah. I’m trying to photograph a Public Art Fund exhibit near the entrance of Central Park, but I don’t know what entrance it’s at.  Can you research it for me?

Milton: What’s the name of the exhibit?

Me: The artist is Thomas something, a German-sounding name.  Just Google Public Art Fund.

Milton: What’s the first word I’m Googling?

Me:  Public.

Milton: What?

Me: Public.

Milton: Say again.

Me: Public.  Like the Public Theater, but don’t Google the Public Theater

Milton: Oh.  Public. The Public what?

Me: Art Fund.

Milton: The Public Art Fund.

[Channeling Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins: By Jove, I think he’s got it!]

Milton: It’s in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. Who’s Doris C. Freedman?  Where the hell is that?

Me: I have no idea. I’ve just spent the last hour walking up and down Central Park West like an idiot.

Milton: Figure it’s by the Plaza Hotel.

The Plaza Hotel.

The Plaza Hotel.

Me: I was just by the Plaza Hotel.

Milton: You were probably on the 59th Street side.  Go to 60th.

Just then a 66th Street cross-town bus arrived. I stood behind two senior citizens that paid their fares in loose change.  This took an eternity to accomplish.  I counted the traffic light change three times and began regretting not carrying a sleeping bag.  The bus crossed the park. I exited at Fifth Avenue to continue my crusade.  Metal stands left over from the St. Patrick’s Day parade were still crowding the sidewalk.

Metal stands hogging sidewalk.

Metal stands hogging sidewalk.

I noticed several well-heeled pedestrians carrying shopping bags from the tony department stores in the area walking in the street.  Clearly they have better health insurance than me. Finally, as I approached 60th Street I saw the sculptures in the distance.

Hallelujah moment.

Hallelujah moment.

Putting their best peg leg forward.

Putting their best peg leg forward.

From this angle these guys brought to mind former governor of Alabama George Wallace.

From this angle these guys brought to mind former governor of Alabama George Wallace.

Two more miserable bronze dudes.

Two more miserable bronze dudes.

Pastoral shot of park doubling as eyeball cleanse.

Picturesque shot of park doubling as eyeball cleanse.

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Lame Adventure 364: Favorite 4-letter F-word

Posted on March 11, 2013 | 86 comments

Yes, that word is indeed free. The one that rhymes with luck is a close second. This is a Lame Adventure that touches on both, free and luck, but first some roundabout way of getting to where we’re going.

The current issue of Time Out New York is emblazoned with a headline screaming: WHY NYC IS THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD. There were three sub-headings, too: Best sex shops, Subway film series, and Splashy new seafood. Clearly New York City has it all from sex to film to fish.

Great story about the greatest city.

Great story about the greatest city.

The magazine lists 50 facts proving New York City’s superiority ranging from the iconic skyline, to bars that are open until 4 am, to bodega cats. One of my favorite city factoids is “Because New Yorkers live longer than almost anyone else”.  Apparently the third oldest person in the country is a New Yorker, 113-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones.  TONY thinks that a factor in the average New York City resident living two years longer than the national average is that the residents here “walk more than other Americans and eat fewer trans fats …”

I was recently walking down West 20th Street in Chelsea en route to volunteer usher an off-Broadway play staged at the Atlantic Theater Company, The Lying Lesson, written by playwright Craig Lucas.  In this drama, Carol Kane plays screen legend Bette Davis circa 1981. She travels to a coastal town in Maine for the dual purpose of purchasing a house and to reconnect with a flame from her youth. There are some spot on moments when she rails bitterly about her dead rivals, Joan Crawford and Miriam Hopkins.  Carol Kane captures the essence of Davis. It officially opens Wednesday, so that’s when the critics will weigh in.

Bette David eyes or Carol Kane eyes on poster?

Bette Davis eyes or Carol Kane eyes on poster?

As I was a block away from the theater, I heard an unseen woman exuberantly scream out the window of an apartment building:

Unseen Woman: I’m in love! I’m in love! I’m in love!

Next, I heard an unseen man scream, with a degree of exuberance to complement the woman’s:

Unseen Man (screaming): Yeah!

I resisted chiming in:

Me: I’m in turmoil! I’m in turmoil! I’m in turmoil!

Actually, I was rather charmed by the mystery woman’s declaration, but I wondered if the man was the woman’s source of joy or just a guy that heard her and was infected with her happiness?

When I checked in at the theater I met my co-usher; a pleasant woman around my own age who was wearing very cool glasses. We did not have to stuff Playbills, so we had time to kill before the house opened. My co-usher observed:

Co-usher: When I first saw you, I thought you were Fran Lebowitz.

I hear that occasionally, even though Fran is almost a decade older than me, makes piles of money, and is a very heavy smoker, so heavy that she advocates for smokers’ rights.  In comparison I am a pauper and such a dedicated non-smoker, I hate it when I have to walk behind a smoker on the street, even if that smoker is a sardonic wit who’s been compared to Dorothy Parker.  My co-usher, in an effort to play up her powers of lookalike observation added:

Co-usher: On the way here I saw someone that looked just like Johnny Mathis.

Me: Maybe it was Johnny Mathis?

Co-usher: It was a woman.

After the gig I was once again walking on West 20th Street en route to the subway train uptown.  There was no more yelling from the rafters about being in love, but I was now feeling pretty good since I enjoy seeing theater for free, something else that I think is terrific about living in New York City.  Fortunately, for my continued longevity, I had the capacity to resist blurting at the top of my lungs:

Me: I’m a volunteer usher! I’m a volunteer usher! I’m a volunteer usher!

Screaming that might get me smacked in the kisser with an airborne can of kitchen cleanser. The dense powdery kind. Then I looked down on the sidewalk, and I did have a very pleasant surprise; I saw a crumpled ten-dollar bill.

Actual crumpled ten bucks photographed later.

Same crumpled ten bucks photographed later.

No one that could have owned it was around, so I pocketed it.

With a spring in my step I entered the 18th Street subway station ten clams heavier only to see the electronic message board announce that all uptown local trains were running with delays.  Immediately, my world reverted to normal. I had the opportunity to use my second favorite 4-letter F-word. The one that rhymes with luck.

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Lame Adventure 363: Outsourced Lame Adventure – Riding in Style

Posted on March 7, 2013 | 52 comments

For everyone that has read the previous installment of Lame Adventures, you are very aware that I am suffering melancholy over the pending close of my go-to neighborhood watering hole, the Emerald Inn. On the heels of the news of this tragedy, my workweek started with additional acid reflux for I finally got around to calling my health insurer. This call is the exact type I live to avoid. It’s right up there with having to make an appointment for an invasive procedure requiring intubation, coincidentally my least preferred type of hollow body-filling bation.

This was a call to argue a claim. I knew that my fifteen-day grace period to pitch a fit was quickly drawing to a close. Therefore, I had to suppress my gag reflex, ring them up, sail through several electronic prompts and one irritating disconnection, before finally getting through to someone with a faint pulse that fell short of his dream career, undertaker. The quasi-corpse did not tell me what I wanted to hear. Dreaded telephone conversations like that one are exactly why the Emerald Inn has served a medicinal purpose in my life for nearly thirty years.

Meanwhile, my boss, Elsbeth, had yet to arrive at The Grind. Her absence compelled me to multi-task. Task One was venting the little that remains of my mind into the cold dead ear of my insurer about why I was now being charged a king’s ransom for a routine medical procedure that had previously cost me little more than the court jester’s breath mints. Task Two was simultaneously keeping a watchful eye on my computer screen, should my Lord & Master send an electronic missive my way.

Sure enough, Elsbeth did send a missive. The Boss’s message was simple:

Elsbeth’s email: You’ve got to love this one!!!

Elsbeth's Goggles Dog iPhone gotcha shot.

Elsbeth’s Goggles Dog iPhone gotcha shot.

I certainly did! Here’s a bit of backstory: while Elsbeth and her husband, Stu, were returning to Manhattan from the country, she noticed The Goggles Dog looking her way outside the car window. The Boss instantly thought:

Elsbeth (thinking): This Goggles Dog belongs in Lame Adventures!

Striking a pose, it is evident that The Goggles Dog was in complete agreement with my superior. Is The Goggles Dog a Lame Adventures hound or what? I vote “woof”!

52 Comments

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Lame Adventure 362: There Goes More of the Neighborhood

Posted on March 4, 2013 | 63 comments

Recently, I was in Tribeca, walking down Hudson Street en route to my bank. Ahead of me was a mother around age thirty pushing a tot in a stroller. Walking ahead of them was a woman around sixty wearing a mink coat and chic black leather boots. Mink Coat either stopped or slowed down and Stroller Mom bumped into her. Mink Coat gives Stroller Mom the hairy eyeball.  Stroller Mom says:

Stroller Mom: Sorry.

Mink Coat finds the one-word apology insufficient so she looks at me, a witness that is completely indifferent to this crime, for support. I say:

Me: I blame the economy.

Then, I blow past both of them.

The following evening, I am in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side. Milton and I have tickets to a performance of Ann, a one-woman show about Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas who was a pistol and a liberal with a wicked sense of humor. The show, written and starring Holland Taylor, is currently staged at the Vivian Beaumont theater in Lincoln Center.

Entertaining one woman show.

Entertaining one woman show.

I thought that it was a fun tribute to a great American woman. Milton had qualms. During intermission, he said he was certain that Taylor’s performance would rate a Best Actress Tony award nomination this season:

Milton: But it won’t rate a nomination for anything else. I can even see it closing early.

After the second act, he gave it a standing ovation and declared:

Milton: I liked the second act a lot more than the first.

I liked both acts and found it thoroughly entertaining.  It is also possible that Milton was feeling cranky about the show because as soon as we were in our seats, he confided that was starving. After the applause and standing ovation, Milton transformed into Usain Bolt and rocketed out of the theater so fast, if the doors were not already open, he surely would have plowed through them leaving a Fred Flintstone-style imprint. Once outside we headed straight to our go-to Columbus Avenue watering hole, the Emerald Inn. When we arrived, Milton peeked through the window and groaned.

Milton: It’s packed. Every table’s full. Think of someplace else to go. They’re not going to be able to seat us.

Me: Let’s just go in and find out.

We walk in. Our usual waitress sees us and says:

Our Usual Waitress: Two minutes guys.

Two minutes later, we’re sitting at table, marveling at our luck.

We order beverages, foodstuffs, and further discuss the play. I show Milton the latest prototype of My Manhattan Project. He’s impressed and we talk about whatever else we talk about over the course of a few more drinks.  Even though it’s flurrying outside, we both radiate a comfy glow. It’s been a good evening. Then, Our Usual Waitress approaches.

Our Usual Waitress: You know guys we’re closing at the end of April.

Milton and I look at her, shell-shocked.

Our Usual Waitress: Didn’t you read the article in The Times?

Under the glass on Milton’s side of the table is the heartbreaking article included in All the News That’s Fit to Print. After seventy years in this location, and being my home away from home for almost thirty years, the Emerald’s rent has been doubled from $17,500 to $35,000. They’re shuttering to make way for a trendy Kate Spade clothing store that will take over the space. We feel violated. Our Usual Waitress says to me:

Our Usual Waitress: You’ve been coming here forever.

My Liver: That’s true.

Me: No way is that Kate Spade store going to last seventy years! I doubt it’ll last seven!

Our Usual Waitress agrees with me. I ask:

Me: What’s going to happen to you? Where are you going to go?

She smiles wistfully.

Our Usual Waitress: I don’t know.

And neither do Milton and I. When he and I first met about a dozen years ago, following a screening at the New York Film Festival, we went to the Emerald. I have frequented this watering hole with almost every member of my posse, and select lady friends, including a few times, an Irish direct from Ireland lass. I thought:

Me (calculating): We go here and it’s going to be score for me!

She had alternate plans.

Irish from Ireland Lass: I love your bar! It’s great! Too bad you’re not my type.

The Irish bars on the Upper West Side are all being forced out. As they close one by one, they take with them another piece of the neighborhood’s soul. For that, I really do blame the economy.

Opened the year that Mick Jagger was born. Closing during the era of the neighborhood’s slide down crap mountain*.

*An expression I acquired from my Chicago-based blogger bud, Jules at Mccrabass, who I hope will visit me before that very last round is called.

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