Category Archives: new york city

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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Lame Adventures 361: Air Raiding

Posted on February 27, 2013 | 59 comments

Because a room with a view has always been preferable to one without, the price of air in New York City is becoming more expensive. Yes, the air is for sale, but not on sale.

Robin Finn, The New York Times, “The Great Air Race”

This story is about real estate developers that build glass, steel and soulless monstrosities. They’re purchasing air rights. These rights, from surrounding low-rise properties, can cost the developers millions of dollars.  The sellers can make some serious change on these very lucrative deals. The downside for the sellers, as well as surrounding tenants, is living in the gaping shadow of a mile high blight.  Owning the area’s air rights basically guarantees that rich swells that buy into these flashy towers will have rooms with views and sun. So, yes, there is now an expensive price tag on the Big Apple’s air.

Even if I could somehow afford to live in a Blade Runner-style high rise, where I’d have to slather my chalky white pelt with SPF 110 rated sunscreen just to take a gander out the window at New Jersey, I’d take a pass.  I like small.  I like low.  I’m not into blinding sunlight, either. This is not to imply that I’d welcome living in a dark and dreary ground floor cell that faces a brick wall.  I do appreciate many of life’s modern amenities — running water, a working stove, a bed the size of Texas.

Overall, I prefer a dwelling with character.  I’m a fan of original moldings, high ceilings, exposed brick, carved staircase railings, pocket doors, bay windows, and if there’s a gargoyle or some museum-worthy sculpture jutting out of the stone façade, better yet.  Buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries are much more easier on my eye than any modern air-owning behemoth influenced by Jenga.

Houses on West End Avenue oozing character and probably high rent.

Houses on West End Avenue flaunting character.

Classic architecture strikes me as being built to last.  For example, if the ceiling caved in on me while I was visiting the Apthorp, Ansonia or Dakota, three coveted Upper West Side addresses, I imagine that I’d get killed instantly.

The Apthorp from behind.

The sturdy Apthorp from behind.

This is not exactly a comforting thought, but at least my suffering would end rapidly.

The Apthorp's rear entrance on West End Avenue.

The Apthorp’s rear entrance on West End Avenue.

In contrast, there is the ultra modern (circa 1975) Calhoun School, an architectural eyesore a few blocks north of where I live. On the plus side, it is a low rise.  On the negative, this building was intentionally designed to resemble a TV set.

If I stand in front of the Calhoun School long enough, will I get to see The Simpsons?

If I stand outside the Calhoun School long enough, will I get to watch Letterman?

If the Calhoun School’s ceiling were to fall on me, it does not strike me as a building made from the dense bedrock used in the more stately homes of my neighborhood.  Therefore, it is possible that if I was smacked with a chunk of the Calhoun School, I might survive that mishap, albeit paralyzed from the tongue down and left to suffer for decades. Another Calhoun School factoid: in 2004, four additional floors were added.  It now looks to me like an obsolete Seventies era TV with a pile of crap on top.

Even though a room with some view is nice, pictured below is the current view outside the window of my sanctum sanctorum.

Entertaining.

My entertaining view of urban wildlife.

I cannot claim when I invite a guest to my lair, I’m inclined to suggest in a seductive tone:

Me: Hey babe, check out the pigeon sleeping on the air conditioner outside my window.

I’m more inclined to entertain my guests in infinitely more creative ways rather than relying on purchasing a view in the stratosphere that would easily cost my life savings, if a collection of commemorative quarters could serve as a down payment.  Who needs a view when my guest and I can take turns reciting poetry, painting (my bathroom for starters), or I could serenade her with a rendition of Ho Hey on spoons slapped against my naked thigh?

Check out my commemorative quarters collection!

Check out my commemorative quarters collection!

I cannot deny that nighttime views of the bright lights in this big city can be romantic.  But, if the owner/occupier of that view is a shallow bore, it would be comparable to watching a TV test pattern or the Calhoun School’s cafeteria wallpaper.  Therefore, if I were in the company of someone enticing, I’d feel privileged to snuggle in a brownstone’s fifth floor attic apartment facing a bustling avenue.  In that case, I would hardly mind if every molecule of the air outside were owned by the Fat Cats of Gotham City.

If we get bored inside we could always indulge our sense of vertigo on the roof.

Rooms without a view that look cool to me

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Lame Adventure 360: In the Mood for Sap

Posted on February 18, 2013 | 77 comments

I have been so busy working on the final stages of My Manhattan Project, a project that I will unveil in the not too distant future, that Valentine’s Day almost completely missed my radar … aside from the gourmet cupcake that my boss, Elsbeth, sprang for.

If I were inclined to marry a cupcake, this would be The One.

If I were inclined to marry, this would be my soul mate.

Back to the present, here’s a Lame Adventures-style love story for sappy romantics:

That First Kiss

by

Lame Adventures-woman

Even though I bear a striking resemblance to a Chia Pet, I have had a fair amount of success with the lasses that prefer their women fuzzy and awkward.  Currently, I am dating Marketa.  My father, who is deaf as a post, refers to her as Marketing, a name that has stuck in my head.  To avoid any possible slips of the tongue, I have taken to calling my beloved, M.  She has a term of endearment for me, too: Yawn.

M and I met two years ago July in the upscale ablutions store she manages.  This is one of those stores where the staff wears white lab coats as they ring up a bottle of 8.4 oz oatmeal fortified shampoo to the tune of twenty clams.  A word to the wise: if you crave oatmeal on a chilly Saturday, but you’re too hung over to trot up the street to the store, so you nuke a third of a cup of your shampoo instead, suffice to say you’ll find yourself belching soap bubbles well into Tuesday.

Or, so I’ve heard that could happen.

When I met M on a Wednesday, she looked very thought provoking in her white lab coat.  Actually, I could barely concentrate on why I was there, ostensibly to replenish my significantly depleted bottle of shampoo, but I was so discombobulated ogling her I mistakenly purchased a similarly sized container of canine flea powder instead.  This gaffe proved fortuitous since it allowed me to return for another encounter with this vixen of my dreams.  To control my newly acquired white lab coat fetish, I reminded myself to think repeatedly of my similarly attired dentist, Ira Kluckhorn, who is also a dedicated practitioner of halitosis.  This helped me exchange the silly grin on my face for an expression akin to the gag reflex.

While exchanging the bottle of flea powder for oatmeal fortified shampoo, M and I shared a delightful dialogue.  Holding a pen in preparation for taking notes, M asked, “Is there a specific reason why you’re returning the flea powder?”

I offered, “For starters, I don’t have a dog. In addition, I keep my personal flea and tick problem under control with a sensitive skin unscented beauty bar.  Plus, I wanted to see you again.”

M scribbled, “TMI.”

She suggested, “We have an unscented beauty bar for dry, scaly skin like yours that I highly recommend.” Intrigued, she asked,  “Do you have any body piercings or tattoos?”

I reflected, “I have a single scar.  I once unintentionally crucified my left thumb with a staple gun.  I also happen to have a wide array of liver spots.  Do they count? One resembles a vuvuzela.”  Then, I wondered aloud, “Is your beauty bar available in a multi-pack for $5.99-ish?”

M matter-of-factly replied, “No.  Ours is only available by the three-ounce bar for eleven dollars each.  I love the vuvuzela.  It’s so melodic.”

I pondered her response for the length of a palpitation.  “Bargain.  I’ll take two.  Will you go out with me sometime, maybe to a concert featuring a vuvuzela-ist?”

She scribbled her number on the back of her business card and cooed, “I’m busy, but call me.  In November – after Thanksgiving.”

Encouraged, I spent the following four months organizing my humble abode into Venus Flytrap shape.  When Black Friday arrived, I called M.  The chat was overwhelmingly flirtatious.

“Hi!  Last July, you told me to call you after Thanksgiving.”

M asked, “Who is this?”

I reminded her about our flea powder exchange and her affinity for the vuvuzela. Then, I cut to the chase, “Would you like to see a film, concert, play or maybe all three in an evening with me?”  I considered adding “naked” but thought that suggestion might be premature.

M said she recalled my liver spot, and added, “Why would I go out with you?”  I explained that I was quite sure that she was a believer in love at third sight.  Then, I dropped the charm bomb, “I’m not a serial killer.  I’ve hardly ever been to Long Island.”  We started dating a week later, but M insisted on taking things slow.

I suggested that she don her white lab coat for it might be easier for me to recognize her were she clad in it.  M groaned, “You’re not one of those freaks that’s into me for that lab coat, are you?”  Quickly, I backtracked, “Wear whatever you like,” and suggested for added measure, “Or don’t wear anything at all!”  Maybe she’s a nudist!

For the next four dates, she wore a frock that distinctly resembled a burka.

Eventually, our relationship blossomed and I was confident that I could share a kiss with M without incurring too many of the maneuvers she had recently learned in a self-defense class she’d been taking.  Yet, I wanted that kiss to be magical and occur in a place with both privacy and lighting that would shave a few inches off my nose.

I recalled a quaint alley in lower Manhattan and surmised that if we were not mugged, she raped, and I murdered, this could yield a very romantic dividend.  Although we were heading to a play in Midtown, I insisted traveling there via this downtown alley would be resplendent.  As we neared the alley, I grabbed her hand and quickened our pace.  Just when I was about to pull her into a doorway for a Technicolor moment of bliss, we both slammed our brakes.  There was an unseemly splash of vomit that could have easily filled an Olympic-sized pool.  This prompted me to suggest, “Maybe it would behoove us to take a cab to the theater after all.”

Later that night, M took it upon herself to kiss me under a dogwood tree. It was a kiss that was memorably tender, caring and loving.  Such a nice offset to the five minutes of dry hacking I suffered afterward due to it being allergy season.

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Lame Adventure 359: The Idiot’s Response to Winter Storm Nemo

Posted on February 10, 2013 | 71 comments

As many already know the Northeast was ruthlessly pummeled by an ugly winter storm with the adorable name, Nemo.

The facts of Nemo (chart from The New York Times).

The facts of Nemo (chart from The New York Times).

I woke Saturday morning, looked outside my Upper West Side brownstone’s window, and saw that the back yard was inundated with snow for the first time in almost two years. A tree that I had never seen before in my life was hanging on a fence.

Look closely, some romantic drew a heart in the snow on a table.

Look closely, some romantic drew a heart in the snow on the table at the bottom of this image.

I mentioned this mystery tree in an email exchange with my devoted reader, Mike G. He suggested:

Mike G. email: Tree may have come from Long Island. It was very windy.

Me email: Yeah, I was thinking Jersey.

Mike G. email: Wind was coming from ocean. Definitely Nassau County.

With the fallen mystery tree situation solved I decided to venture outside to assess the snowfall up close and personally. Unlike other areas along the Eastern seaboard, New York City escaped the storm with a mere dusting. Only 11.4 inches of snow were measured in Central Park, not what had accumulated overnight in the two abandoned shopping carts from my go-to market, Fairway.

The Lame Adventure method of measuring snowfall in Manhattan.

The Lame Adventure method of measuring snowfall in Manhattan.

As expected, life was relatively normal in my neighborhood, as normal as can be under a blanket of heavy snow.  Sidewalks were shoveled and West End Avenue was plowed.  There were also the obvious signs that dogs were being walked.

No one eat that.

No one eat that.

Children were sledding in Riverside Park.

Good time to be a kid with a sled.

Good time to be a kid with a sled.

The sky was clear and vibrant blue.

Good time to be the sky.

Good time to be the sky.

There were also some sorry sights including bikes buried deeply, piles of uncollected trash and vehicles that were plowed in.

At least the seat will be dry.

At least the seat will be dry.

Frozen bagged trash waiting for collection.

Frozen bagged trash waiting for collection.

Vehicles on West End Avenue manageably plowed in.

Vehicles on West End Avenue plowed in to a manageable degree.

Digging out this vehicle on a side street might induce a heart attack.

Digging out this vehicle on a side street might induce a heart attack.

It is unclear when the sanitation department will surface to pick up the piles of trash that were put out for collection Friday in anticipation of the regularly scheduled Saturday morning pick-up. A pick-up that has yet to happen. I can understand why trash is put outside on Friday even though the forecast anticipated this monumental weather event and it was the top story on every newscast, major and minor. There are times when the forecast is wrong, or the Armageddon-type weather event turns out to be flaccid. This robust storm’s forecast was one that the meteorologists nailed. Now, my neighborhood’s streets are strewn with mountains of frozen garbage buried deep in snow.

Partially buried trash for recycling.

Partially buried trash for recycling.

Buried frozen bags of trash are not such an unusual sight in winter, but what I find irksome is the sight of fresh garbage the neighborhood knuckleheads toss over the frozen garbage creating further clutter on city sidewalks.

"Get this mattress out of my sight now!"

“I don’t care that it snowed almost a foot! I want this mattress out of the house now!”

We just had an epic snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot of snow on the city. Is it really necessary to respond to it with taking out the esoteric junk lying around the apartment right now, this very minute?  The esoteric junk owners likely had this stuff for years already.

"Put this table out when the neighbor's aren't looking."

“Put this table out when the neighbor’s aren’t looking.”

What’s so traumatic about keeping it inside and out of sight another few days, or at least until trash collection returns to regularly scheduled programming? I’m all for de-cluttering, but I’m also capable of resisting the urge to hold off on doing my spring-cleaning until spring, or even holding off doing it until spring 2014. What’s the rush? Clearing out the clutter the morning after a major winter weather event strikes me as just Type A, for asshole.

"Hey look, I found Granny's old wheelchair! Put it outside or what?"

“Hey look, I found Granny’s old wheelchair! Put it outside or what?”

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Lame Adventure 358: Grumpy Young Man

Posted on February 7, 2013 | 115 comments

I work in Tribeca, a picturesque neighborhood in Lower Manhattan lined with ancient cobblestone streets and ornate pre-war buildings radiating character and charm.

Franklin Street

Franklin Street

It is a trendy area housing some of the most expensive real estate on Manhattan Island. This is also a location that’s heavily populated with swells, many of them the name-brand variety.

Authentic cobblestone street.

Authentic cobblestone street.

In mid-afternoon, when I run errands, I encounter pampered youngsters clad in their colorful cold weather togs as they’re being met after school by their trophy wife mothers or their fulltime nannies. Everyone looks fashionably chic until I wend my way through the crowd, upsetting the style balance in my drab uniform, the type of duds that scant wages can afford. Compared to the beautiful mothers in their cutting edge fashions, my modest attire, best suited for office work or captivity, bears a distinct resemblance to offal.

The view out my office window.

The view out my office window.

One area where everyone is equal, at least when outside, is the great outdoors where we all suffer the consequences of the elements. Now that the season is the dead of winter, there have been days when the temperature has been frigid cold. Often, noses and eyes run like faucets.  Even when bundled up, any exposed skin can instantly suffer searing pain.  Therefore, it is best to walk at a quick clip, if only to sooner regain sensation in one’s face.

Bright blue frigid cold sky.

Clear blue frigid cold sky.

On an afternoon when the air was feeling particularly arctic I was walking up Hudson Street toward the pretty Powell building behind a handsome lad that looked to be about six.

Powell Building

Powell Building

He was walking hand-in-hand with his mother, who was in her thirties.  He was wearing a blue parka and bright orange corduroy slacks. Mom was nestled in a floor length shapeless black down coat that looked familiar to me. It brought to mind a sleeping bag with sleeves. She must have missed the winter fashions newsletter. Appropriately, they were walking briskly, but not as brisk as motoring me. Just as I was overtaking them I overheard a snippet of their conversation:

Mom: When we get home I’ll make you a sandwich.

[pause]

Boy: Shit!  It’s cold!

Although I was thinking the exact same thought myself, overhearing the little man drop the s-bomb was a most unexpected surprise. What really made me feel a bat squeak* of unease was that his mother seemed a-okay with it. I did not hear her admonishing her son in the least.

Had I the nerve to casually bleat that curse in the earshot of my mother when I was six, she surely would have detonated. As a child growing up in the sixties and seventies, an era when you served time rather than take a time out, my mother would have beaten every future utterance of both that word and the substance out of me. A beating that might not have ended until I reached age thirty.

That evening, I dined with my friend, Milton, and recounted what I had heard.

Milton: Are you sure he said “shit”? You know your hearing’s not the greatest.  You could have misheard. Maybe he said another word that sounded like shit?

Me: What word sounds like shit other than shit?

Milton looked perplexed. He suggested:

Milton: Sheeeeeeee ahhhhhhhhhhh taaaaaaa, it’s cold!

Me: That kid didn’t say, “Sheeeeeeee ahhhhhhhhhhh taaaaaaa, it’s cold!” That kid said “shit”. Even my deaf ears know the difference between shit and shinola.

I know shit from Shinola.

Shinola on display in Tribeca.

*Thank you Kate Shrewsday for adding “bat squeak” to my vocabulary.

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Lame Adventure 357: City Slickers in Crunchy-ville

Posted on February 3, 2013 | 75 comments

If you write a blog long enough, as I have these past three years, you befriend fellow bloggers in different parts of the country and/or world. Susie Lindau is one of my blogger buds. She resides in Colorado. She’s a very upbeat person, a devoted wife, mother, sportswoman and nature lover — basically my complete antithesis, but somehow we click. Go figure. This weekend she emailed me from her smartphone:

Susie: I am skiing right now!

I emailed her back in-between trips to and from my Chinese laundromat

Me: Barf.

I utterly loathe skiing. I skied once in Vermont fifteen years ago with my ex, Voom. That trip was a near total disaster. I say I skied but to be truthful, based on one lesson that lasted half the length of a sneeze, I almost required airlifting off the bunny slope. As humiliating as inching down a minor grade was for me, the lodging was the ultimate nightmare.

We stayed at a lesbian-owned and operated inn populated by ultra crunchy women. They looked at us, two city slickers in J. Crew attire that arrived in a red convertible Miata in the dead of winter, with sheer contempt. The hate was so palpable we felt like the enemy, i.e., honorary heterosexuals.

Voom, possibly under the influence of one too many martinis, booked this lodging. When I saw that the sign outside the place spelled “woman” w-o-m-y-n, I had a sinking feeling. The house was inundated with cats. There was a cat in every room for every guest. I am fiercely allergic. Needless to say, kicking our cat out — an angora the size of Rhode Island — invited more resentment.

You stay on your side of the glass and I'll stay on mine.

You stay on your side of the glass and I’ll stay on mine.

The first thing we wanted was booze, but they were anti-alcohol. We couldn’t even pull a Kitty Dukakis and cut turpentine with Coke. They didn’t have Coke, for they were also anti-caffeine. If they had any alcoholic cleaning products on the premises, they probably locked them in a vault. There was no herbal essence, either. We couldn’t drink or smoke, and since I could barely breathe in that cat-infested environment, we couldn’t get frisky with each other, either.

Horndog me had the genius idea that we should just open the window so we could hump each other wicked fast. It was frigid cold outside so the temperature in our room plummeted from 70 to 10 in about three minutes. Voom couldn’t climax.  She was certain that someone was outside our door listening. A lifelong romantic with the gift of speaking in poetic verse, I said:

Me: You’re crazy. Relax. It’s probably just a fuckin’ cat.

She insisted I go to the door and check out what was going on. As soon as I opened the door, a pygmy-sized lesbian that probably lived in a bookshelf devoted to the study of mulch scampered down the hall. I seem to recall on all fours. I doubt that the sight of me in the altogether was what drove her away.  That was the time when I was still under forty, flab-free and fit, but I’ve always been alabaster white. Possibly the glow from my pelt was blinding.

The next day at the communal breakfast we learned that they only served goat’s milk. They raised goats. I recall making eye contact with one outside a window.

Not this particular one.

Not this particular one.

The pancakes they served were also made with goat’s milk. I like goat cheese, but the pancakes tasted gamey. It was an acquired taste that Voom lacked.

They only had herbal tea. Since I am a tea drinker, I was okay with that. Voom is a huge coffee drinker, especially first thing in the morning. She was nearing her breaking point. They dug up some Nescafé, but I imagined that it had been sitting deep in a well going back to the Carter administration.

One of the other guests, apparently a longtime visitor to this labor camp, said something stunningly insensitive about the Holocaust. The hosts agreed. That was the last straw. Voom is Jewish and even though I am predominantly Italian I am a bit Jewish on my mother’s side. I expect with my ever-growing schnoz I’ll soon be a dead ringer for the love child of Golda Meier and Lillian Hellman, but I digress. I knew the remark was aimed at us and I simply would not let that anti-Semitic crack slide. I detonated. They refunded our deposit and asked us to leave. When my significant other heard that, she finally had her long-delayed orgasm. It was so thunderous I recall snow shaking off tree branches.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t take off as fast as we wanted. What prompted the delay was the goat’s milk products combined with that ghastly instant coffee brew that they served my inamorata. The breakfast rocketed through her system at warp-speed. As I was packing our bags, she was in Sappho’s sitting room purging such a whale of a deposit she clogged the plumbing. As we drove away, Voom revealed the plumbing problem that awaited them, declaring:

Voom: Victory is mine!

I pointed out that they helped pack our car. I interpreted that gesture as our hosts being contrite considering that we did bat on the same team. My partner had a more jaundiced view of the last minute hospitality: she thought that they could not get rid of us fast enough. Looking back I think her take was spot-on.

We headed to a bed and breakfast run by a warm British woman named Ruth that brought to mind Mary Poppins. We gushed our tale of woe. She made us hot cocoa and knit us both mittens.

Charcoal and black - perfect colors to highlight the bloodshot in my eyes!

Charcoal and black – perfect colors to highlight the bloodshot in my eyes!

She made us feel so welcome that we asked her to adopt us.

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Lame Adventure 356: For the Love of a Nickel

Posted on January 28, 2013 | 119 comments

It was shortly after seven on a recent chilly weeknight on the Upper West Side.

Freezing cold night.

More like a freezing cold night.

I was doing some after work multitasking – laundry and food shopping at my market on Upper Broadway, Fairway.  I had just tossed my clothes in a drier and then made a beeline to purchase foodstuffs.  As I was exiting Fairway in my usual irrational hurry, as if walking faster would somehow make my chores finish sooner,  I noticed an elderly man with a cane walking stiffly.  The expression on his face looked disoriented.  I wondered:

Me:  Is he okay?  Am I supposed to do something here?

He had a thick thatch of snow-white hair and was wearing crisply pressed casual clothes and immaculate white sneakers.  His cane looked like it was made from some fancy wood, not a piece of crap you can buy at The Piece of Crap store.  I figured that he was a long time Upper West Side resident, probably a lifelong liberal that made good money, has had at least one wife and a few kids and grandkids.  It’s possible that his family loves him very much.  He probably is respected amongst his peers, however many of them are still kicking.  He didn’t look like a bastard and might have even had dogs and cats in his life.  Possibly he might even have or had a crazy bird bursting with personality like my longtime bud,  BatPat, and her feathered friend, Buttafuoco.

"I am always ready for my close-up!"

“I’m always ready for my close-up!”

For all I know he might even have a lovely aquarium in his home right now.  This old guy was very likely a good guy, someone who will be sorely missed by many when he buys his rainbow.

As I walked on, I was haunted by the likelihood that this fellow was in the throes of some sort of health emergency.  Since I did notice him, I was his human Life Alert.  How could I walk on?  What if this man was my own Dear Old Dad, there was a woman like me that noticed that he might be in trouble, but she ignored the signs and walked away?  I thought:

Me: You cold-hearted bitch.  I hate you!

Instantly, I suffered Grade A level guilt.  I turned back to look at the man on the bustling avenue, narrowly avoiding getting run over by two completely oblivious teenage girls that had just blown past him.  They momentarily obscured my view of what was going on with this fine fellow.  This prompted me to think:

Me (thinking): Just the type of brats that would suck the marrow out of their grandfathers’ bones!  Ingrates!

Quickly, my senior citizen was back in view.  He was now looking quite contorted — bent at the waist, knees starting to buckle, awkwardly holding his cane with his left hand while reaching down towards the sidewalk with his right.  I reasoned that he was desperately trying to break the hard fall that was surely coming.  I gasped.  I shifted the gears in my feet to turbo-charge.  Arthritic knee be damned!  With puffs of exhaust jetting out of my butt-ugly hybrid winter boot-sneakers courtesy of the Land’s End Women of a Certain Age Exchange Style for Price collection, I motored to his rescue.  I could hear him groaning.  I screamed inside my head:

Me:  Hang on, Mister!  A lot of people love you!

As I was almost upon him, I realized that he wasn’t suffering a stroke or a heart attack.  He was reaching down to pick up a nickel off the sidewalk.

Crisis averted.

For this.

Coveted coinage.

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Lame Adventure 353: Fresh Start

Posted on January 2, 2013 | 105 comments

Since I am not the type that feels particularly sentimental about the past year, the year I got grayer, flabbier, ditched, and officially arthritic, I welcome moving forward albeit a bit more like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena than Jagger.  My first text of 2013 was a few lines of heartfelt verse sent in the afternoon on New Year’s Day to one of the stars in my posse, my trusted confidant, Coco.

Me (text):  Are you up and not too hung over? If so, can you get me a pair of six eyelet black shoelaces at the Converse store in your ‘hood for my black Jack Purcells? I’ll pay you back tmr.  Thanks and Happy New Year.

Adhering to the topic like Teflon she responds:

Coco (text): Hugh Hefner is married and Kim Kardashian is preggers.  Fuck.  The Mayans have won.

I then venture outside, not for shoelaces, but for a bagel knot at my anything but super, market, Fairway.

Poppy seed bagel knot

Poppy seed bagel knot.

There, I predictably encounter my first asshole of 2013.  I bestow this honor on the father that surely left his brain cells at home in a small pile behind the coffee grinder.  He is accompanying his energetic eight or nine-year-old daughter.  She is riding a scooter inside the store as if she is going for a world record in indoor scootering.  Possibly he is just too wasted from New Year’s Eve celebrating to notice that his spawn is burning rubber and has narrowly missed slicing off the toes on my right foot.  He is also blind to the steam heat that I pack in my head that’s firing directly out of my ears in billowing puffs of smoke.

Once outside again I am pounding the pavement leading back to my sanctum sanctorum when I come across the first littered movie stub on the sidewalk. I am certain that this is not the first littered movie stub in all of New York City in 2013, but this is the first one that catches my eye.  It is lying face down, so I cannot see what film the movie going litterbug saw.  After kicking at it for the better part of fifteen seconds or possibly fifteen minutes, time is so hard to measure when relying on cloud cover, I decide to risk contracting Onychomycosis.  I am aware that rare side effects of treatment for this nail disease can lead to liver failure, and if I get that, very likely I will have a one-way ticket to the big dirt nap.  Please do not send flowers; plant a tree someplace in my memory, and call that tree Inga.  I have always wanted to get horizontal, vertical, perpendicular,  trapezoidal, and truth be told every position Spirograph-ical, with a free spirited naked woman with that name, but preferably someone full figured, yet not scary-fat, more Bettie Page-like, but I digress.

As a daring and brave worrier (sic or sick take your pick), I flip over the ticket stub with my bare fingers and see that the film is Barbara, a drama from Germany that was their official selection for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  Even though it fell short of the Academy’s shortlist, my pal, Milton, has seen it and has praised it effusively. It is likely that I will never see this film because it’s not a feature that screens for seven shekels before noon at the multiplex.

Pay thirteen clams for a single movie -- not on my meager alms.

Yes, screenings of “Barbara” cost thirteen clams here in the Big Apple.

By the time Barbara hits TV, probably cable stations, IFC or the Sundance Channel, I will have long forgotten that I once wanted to see it.  I frankly prefer to invest precious and fleeting middle aged memory space in fantasizing about  free spirited naked women named Barbara desiring me.  Oops, I mean free spirited naked women named Ingrid.  Inez?  How about someone named Ida, or maybe even Idaho? At this point, I’ll even settle for a woman in a burka named Dan as long as her vagina is not dry as dust and her natural fragrance is not that redolent of salmon.  I do have standards.  Anyone offering?

Continuing on my trek, across the street from my brownstone I see the unusual sight of a muscle car from my long evaporated youth, a two door 1968 Buick Skylark.  “Cool beans,” I don’t think since I’d sooner mainline Liquid Plumr than use that expression.  I photograph it avidly figuring that I may never see this vintage of vehicle ever again.  Since it is as intriguing as it is eye sore-ish, there is the distinct possibility that it will hog space on my block long after the sheen on this New Year fades and 2013 is as dull as that forty-five-year-old jalopy’s paint.

Buick Skylark - road hog circa 1968.

Buick Skylark – road hog circa 1968.

105 Comments

Posted in Humor, new york city

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Lame Adventure 352: Welcome Home New York City-style

Posted on December 29, 2012 | 64 comments

I returned to New York from my holiday getaway in the San Francisco Bay Area on the red eye Friday morning.  Lack of sleep and total body pain that I self diagnosed as arthritis in my left knee, a pulled muscle in my right arm, and a slight headache combined with general suffering, a.k.a. the predominant ingredient in my charm, rendered me useless for the entirety of my first day back in the Apple.  I’d like to say that I slept dreamlessly, but it’s possible that I was merely hallucinating for twelve hours about lying motionless in a full body splint.  Before losing consciousness I did manage to run a few errands including shopping at my neighborhood market, Fairway.  I knew I was officially home when I approached the green bean stand.  Just as I was about to select my beans, a woman yammering on her iPhone placed her coffee cup over them.

Me:  Really?

The Yammerer responded with a line of classic New York City verse:

Yammerer:  What’s your problem?

The weather forecast for today is two to four inches of snow.  The New York Times published on their Cityroom Blog a post with a headline proclaiming, “Tomorrow, It Will Snow, Perfectly”.  Andy Newman wrote:

“The ideal city snowstorm, meteorological Platonists say, blankets the landscape without burying it, beautifies but does not burden, transforms and cocoons without paralyzing or even particularly inconveniencing.

Such an event is expected to come our way on Saturday.”

Tomorrow is now today, Saturday.  I’m not a “meteorological Platonist” – whatever the hell that is, but I can say with authority that it’s been a steady mix of slushy flakes and cold rain.  This scene surely would have made the Currier and Ives circular file.

I woke remembering that yesterday I had forgotten to pay a bill for my final blood test of the year.  If my memory is still as sharp as melted butter, that test was to determine that it’s more than ice water and soot flowing through my veins.  I used my last Forever stamp on the payment envelope and decided to trek through the icy slop to Ansonia Station, my local post office here on the Upper West Side, to both mail the aforementioned payment and to replenish my Forever stamps.

There was only one customer in line, a guy that had entered a nano-second before me.  Three postal clerks were servicing other customers, but a fourth was free so she called the guy over.  Now it was just me waiting.  Within seconds, a customer at the window nearest to where I was standing finished and walked away.  The clerk looked right at me.  I looked at her hopeful, and flashed a friendly California-style smile anticipating her to say, “Next.”  Instead, she walked away.  I looked at my watch and realized that I am such a knucklehead.  Obviously the time had come for her to take her one forty-three in the afternoon break.  I waited and waited.  All of the customers at the windows were like barnacles.  Finally, a clerk beckoned.  Now about ten people were waiting behind me in line.  I told the clerk that I would like twenty Forever stamps:

Me:  Do you have any with pictures other than the flag?

She took out a booklet of holiday stamps decorated with Christmas trees.

Me: Do you have anything else?

She looked at me as if I had asked her to give me a kidney.  She snarled in my face:

Postal Clerk:  Look over there.

Me:  Where’s “there”?

She gestured to her left, my right.  Under a glass covering a station over from hers was an assortment of Forever stamp designs.

Me:  Am I going to lose my place as I look for my stamp?

She did not acknowledge my question, possibly because hostility is so energy depleting.  I figured she’d grant me a three count to settle on a stamp so I looked at the display at warp-speed.  A series tailor-made for me called “Great Film Directors” caught my eye.

I resisted asking if I could have all Billy Wilder since he's one of my all-time favorite filmmakers.

I resisted asking if I could have all Billy Wilder since he’s one of my all-time favorite filmmakers.

I returned to the angry clerk’s window and told her what I had selected.  She said nothing.  She walked away as if she had boulders strapped on each ankle.  Her destination was a closed box that holds the picture stamps.  She returned with my sheet of Great Film Directors and announced:

Postal Clerk:  Nine dollars.

I handed her a twenty.  She gave me my change.  Eleven singles.

Me:  Thank you.

She gave me the stink eye.  I added:

Me:  For not giving me 220 nickels.

It’s great to be home.

64 Comments

Posted in holiday, Humor, new york city

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Lame Adventure 350: Time Tales at The Grind

Posted on October 19, 2012 | 87 comments

For the past few weeks, months or years, it’s been one of those days for me.  There I was at The Grind sitting at my computer that’s situated directly below a vent breeding mold faster than rabbits mating on speed.

Innocuous looking ceiling vent.

Fertile mold.

Mold shacking up over my head.

I was crunching numbers while thinking philosophical thoughts:

Me: I wonder if Trader Joe’s will have those brandy filled chocolate beans this year?  Did I lock my door this morning?  How soon before I’m as obsolete as a public pay phone?

Empty pay phone hole — metaphor for my future?

My loyal sidekick, Greg, shattered my deep thoughts.

Greg:  Are you busy?

Me (thinking): Just going blind doing math before segueing into regretting the entire trajectory of my life.

Me (saying):  What do you need?

He asked if I could go into Photoshop and add a simple date to a simple label for him. He was in a bit of a hurry and he wanted to simply complete one project before simply starting another.  This request sounded reasonably simple to me:

Me:  Sure, give me five minutes.

My computer had other ideas.

“No Photoshop for you simpleton!”

For ten agonizing minutes I am stuck in the intersection of Irritating and Annoying before I am granted access to Photoshop so I can fulfill this simple request.  Just when I am going to print the label with the simple revision for Greg, my lord and master, Elsbeth, starts printing the equivalent of the phone book.  Finally, I give Greg, who started working on another project in the intervening 45 minutes, his simple label that inhaled the better part of an hour of what remains of my simply depleting life.

A few weeks ago, Greg gave me the paperwork for a delivery of tile that we received.  Another of my illustrious responsibilities as Minister of Tile that makes practical use of my fancy film school degree is to date stamp paperwork.  I am the type that can never remember the date, so that’s why I wear a state-of-no-art Timex with date-telling capability.  My timepiece is the consummate chick magnet to grandmother-types that wet dream about watch faces with numbers as big as eggplants:

Waiting a New York minute to learn the day’s date.

My boss has strong opinions about architecture.  I asked Elsbeth:

Me:  Hey boss, what do you think about the Hearst Tower?

Elsbeth:  Which building is that?

Me:  That one over on 57th and Eighth.

The address did not ring the gong in my superior’s head so I Google image searched it for her while accessing my inner NPR reporter.

Me:  They finished the base in 1928, but due to the Depression, they held off building the tower until 70 years later.  It opened in 2006.

Hearst Tower base completed in 1928. Architect: Joseph Urban.

Comedy and Tragedy with plenty to laugh and cry about.

Elsbeth looked at the resulting eyesore, liberally dropped words like hideous, ridiculous and awful accompanied by a few f-bombs with i-n-g endings.

Result: super modern glass and steel tower by architect Norman Foster that’s been jutting out of the base since it opened in 2006.

I agreed that time was not kind to this project or to quote my liege:

Elsbeth:  What the fuck were they thinking?

Unamused muses at the base.

The crass guest that’s here to stay jutting out of the base.

This week Elsbeth highly amused my colleague, (not) Under Ling (anymore), when she revealed that the reason our shared drive runs slower than a pregnant snail carrying a boulder is because:

Elsbeth (exasperated):  People are downloading all their personal crap on it, like pictures of their dog!

Not this dog waiting patiently for his master to throw him a bone.

Nor Thurber, my family’s dog, looking anxious in this picture my sister Dovima texted me as he’s about to leave for the kennel.

A month ago, (not) Under Ling (anymore) was feeling significantly less mirth when she burned her finger using a glue gun.

(not) Under Ling (anymore) giving me the index finger.

Now a message to my seven loyal readers, for the first time in 350 posts, before subjecting myself to the next 350 Lame Adventures, this site is going on hiatus until after the November election. Since I prefer the shiny, fresh and nubile, I’m not the type that republishes past posts, but if you crave a fix of Lame Adventures-style junk food for your mind, preferably while bored at work or in the process of getting dressed down by your main squeeze for forgetting to take out the trash, help yourself to reading any of the 349 others.  Check out different years. You might even hit on a good one. If you need a nudge from me about where to go, my personal favorite is the one with the photographs.

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Posted in Humor, new york city

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