Over beverages late Sunday night, Milton and I agreed that the toughest aspect of a lovely three-day weekend is Day Four, returning to the grind – what we did on Monday as I write this on Tuesday, technically Day Five.
My friend’s weekend started a tad more sophisticated than mine. Last Friday he scored a free ticket to the Metropolitan Opera’s new critically and now Milton-acclaimed six-hour production of Wagner’s “Walküre.” Milton was so thrilled with this second installment in the staging of the complete “Ring” cycle, he completely forgot that he was ravenous until it was over. Afterward, still donning the Brünnhilde garb he keeps in his closet for super-special events like this, he salted the side of a building and devoured it in one swallow.
Ravenous Milton.
While Milton was watching warrior maidens cry, “Hojotoho,” I joined my colleagues, Ling, her bf, Lowell, and The Quiet Man, at Wicked Willy’s, a pirate-themed bar, to watch my sidekick, Greg, alternately play saxophone, bass clarinet, and clarinet with his still-yet-to-be-named three piece band.
Greg fingering his sax.
Hanging out in college bars on a Friday night usually does not make my to-do list, but Greg promised me that he would not wear a pirate hat, so how could I resist hearing him play? Check him out!
On stage, Greg was in his bliss, and afterward, he remained rather exhilarated too.
On Saturday, Milton and I attended together — with six of our favorite people – Ling, Lowell, Albee, Lola, Miguel, and our terrific fellow blogger, Enchilada, Young Jean Lee’s show called We’re Gonna Die at Joe’s Pub. This provocative and incite-filled playwright commands the stage and delivers humor-inflected tales about what makes the neurotic life worth living — self-loathing, rejection, humiliation, alienation, loss and death. What’s not to like on that play list?
Young Jean Lee
These downer themes are interspersed with pop songs she’s written played by her band Future Wife. What should be an evening that makes you want to leave and immediately stick your head in the oven, actually closes with enthusiastic audience participation. We joyously chanted, “We’re gonna die, we’re gonna, die, we’re gonna die and it’ll be alright!” After we left, we felt so high, Lola declared:
Lola: I feel like dancing!
So we went dancing … After doing a crowd-clearing move I taught myself called the Head Through the Windshield Bossa Nova, I shifted gears and went taping. The video embedded below is ridiculously dark, but an image is there for those with fine-tuned imaginations that are willing to look very hard.
We’re Gonna Die plays three more performances at Joe’s Pub April 29 and 30.
Sunday night, Milton and I had 99-cent-seat tickets to see the staging of Born Bad at SoHo Rep, a fifty-five minute production about a dysfunctional family written by Debbie Tucker Green, who won the Olivier award for best new playwright for this work in 2003. The ensemble cast is terrific and Leah C. Gardiner’s direction is inspired. The play is not a conventional narrative, but vignettes illustrating the deep and disturbing divisions in a West Indies family, presumably living in the UK, where this black British playwright is from. Much of the language is rhythmic and repetitive as characters beat each other almost senseless with their opposing recollections, opinions, and anger. Basically, people choose to believe what they want to believe. Milton was enraptured from start to finish. For me, I nodded off a time or two or twelve in the middle, and briefly dreamt about Mr. Ed – who definitely never appeared on stage in horse-form or dialogue. Yet, it did completely regain my attention again in the last third and the ending was powerful. Born Bad has been extended through May 7.
Last week Coco and I attended a preview screening of Bill Cunningham New York. When my pal was in the third grade, she was assigned to write a Thanksgiving essay about what she was most thankful for. Unlike her classmates that were thankful for their parents, grandparents and pets, Coco tossed her thanks to Macy’s because they carried Jordache jeans. Fast forward twenty-odd years later to the present where this grown-up fashionista is so excited about attending this screening, she’s sprouted a rather eye-catching full beard resembling a maroon dyed raccoon.
Coco petting her Abraham Lincoln beard with a studded cashmere Michael Kors glove.
Bill Cunningham is a New York Times treasure, an intrepid man on the street photographer whose On the Street columns (and in recent years, videos) chronicling fashion trends and the New York social scene are reliable highlights of the Sunday Style section. This is a film made with love, wit and deep respect for this reluctant star. Directed by Richard Press and produced by his partner in work and marriage, Philip Gefter, this dynamic duo gives the audience an intimate glimpse into the life of an extremely gracious, painfully modest, very active and eternally optimistic artist as he approaches age eighty during the course of filming (Bill’s now 82).
A very private man by nature, even Bill’s closest friends and colleagues admit they know next to nothing about his personal life. Some facts about Bill are obvious, such as his distinct patrician accent every time he utters his favorite word, “Maahvalous,” betraying that he was born and bred in Boston. An unanswered question is raised asking if Bill is the product of wealth. During the q&a Press said that Bill revealed to him that his father worked for the US Postal Service, but did not elaborate further so he had no way of knowing if pere Cunningham was a common letter carrier or the postmaster general.
Bill does possess a very strong philosophy about money that borders on contemptuous. He refused to accept any payment for his photos published in Details magazine where he worked during two of the happiest years of his life. He was allowed complete control and was in his bliss. He reasons, “If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing.” Fiercely independent, Bill shoots all of his photographs on film and he owns all of his negatives. He is the last photographer on the Times staff that shoots film adamantly refusing to go digital. The Times allows him what appears to be complete autonomy, as well as a bevy of assistants he drives crazy.
During the year Press and Gefter followed Bill, he was faced with having to vacate his bohemian utopia, a rent-controlled studio apartment in Carnegie Hall, where he has resided since the early fifties. Bill’s room is a simple sliver of space (with no kitchen and a shared bath in the hallway) that’s cluttered with metal file cabinets packed with his thousands of negatives. He sleeps on a narrow cot atop piles of magazines. His clothes hang on wire hangers on the cabinets’ drawer pulls. His longtime neighbors include his colorful friend, 96-year-old portrait photographer Editta Sherman. Hopefully, someone will soon film a documentary about her.
This apartment has clearly been the key to Bill’s unique degree of independence. Very low overhead and paying next-to-nothing rent would be a godsend to all struggling artists and hack bloggers today if this dream option still existed in New York, but it doesn’t. Therefore, if you’re not born into wealth, you fail to wed a rich spouse, and you’re not on the winning side of a pot of lottery ticket gold, try to find a day job that is not entirely soul-sucking, and when need be, a source of material.
Bill’s never had a life partner but in a very moving scene, he answers some blunt questions about his disciplined personal life. He doesn’t own a TV, and claims he does not have the time to see films or go to the theater, but admits he does enjoy music. He gets his fix when he attends church on Sunday. He has no interest in fine dining and subsists on cheap deli sandwiches and take-out coffee.
As monastic as his private life is, Bill is possibly the hardest working, most inspired member of the Times staff as he navigates Manhattan on his thirtieth three speed bike. The previous twenty-nine were all stolen, but he has an almost zen-like acceptance about that. He is not a guy that sweats the small stuff. The street is where he wants to be as he hunts for subjects.
Almost everywhere he goes, he’s welcomed warmly, but there is a hilarious moment when two identically dressed teens he photographs turn on him, curse him out and threaten to break his camera. Instead of fleeing in fear from these angry kids more than sixty years his junior, he is entertained, giggling impishly as he pedals away.
A man who thrives on beauty, Bill has an expert eye for detecting trends. From one of his favorite perches, the four corners of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, often outside Bergdorf Goodman, he waits with his camera poised for prey — anyone stylishly dressed. The clothes he photographs need not be expensive. What’s required for a snap from Bill is that a subject looks original. He takes his photographs with an unabashed enthusiasm lithely chasing objects of his admiration as they cross the street, scampering for a better angle, and occasionally directing a subject. He is a guy who is most in the zone when he is clutching his Nikon. He even snaps shots while pedaling from one location to the next.
His work ethic is so dedicated that it borders on obsessive. Bill’s typical day usually starts around 8:30 am and ends at midnight. He is also a walking encyclopedia of fashion trends past. Since he is disinterested in pop culture, and his main focus is clothes, he is equally indifferent to celebrity. In Paris, during fashion week, photographers swarm fashion icon Catherine Deneuve as she enters her limousine. Bill stands back with his Nikon at rest. Later, he matter-of-factly explains that she wasn’t wearing anything interesting. As he waits to enter another fashion show amongst a horde of press, a minion questions Bill who waits patiently wearing a bemused expression. When her boss appears, he brushes past the youngster, and gives Bill instant access declaring, “He’s the most important man on earth.”
While in Paris, Bill receives a prestigious award, a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. He seems to much prefer photographing the guests, but he does deliver an acceptance speech mostly in heavily American-accented French that he emotionally concludes in English, “If you look you can find beauty in everything.”
As Coco and I left the screening we marveled at Bill’s devotion to his craft and the overall purity of his spirit. I vowed:
Me: I’m going to further downsize my life! I’ll completely commit myself to the written word! I’ll be the Bill Cunningham of blogging!
Then, we hit a bar where I proceeded to drink my weight in sake. I screwed off for the remainder of the week and did not publish another post until the following Friday.
Coco, had a more sober reaction:
Coco: I’m going to hang out at 57th and Fifth every chance I get.
"We all get dressed for Bill," Anna Wintour. "But some way more than others," Lame Adventures Woman.
Bill Cunningham New York opens today for a two week run at the Film Forum in lower Manhattan, and will roll out in major cities nationally.
My usual mode of transportation is a $104 Metrocard that is sucked out of my weekly paycheck in $26 installments. Toward the end of every month, Bronislava the Expressionless from Accounting, visits me and performs the somber Handing Out the New Metrocards Ceremony. Only recently, did I Google search her name and discover that in her native Russia it means “glorious protector.” Over here, I guess it’s been revised to Glorious Protector of the Metrocards.
Bronislava quietly creeps into my department where I am usually sitting at my desk before my computer heavy lidded, slack jawed, drooling and occasionally, snoring. To gain my attention, she might mumble in fluent monosyllabic a sound that I think doubles as my name if my name were pronounced “Va-heen-na-ha.” Or, depending on where she is in her fertility cycle, she might gesture silently with a sheet and pen that I am supposed to use to sign that sheet indicating that I have received my new card. After I scawl my atrophying signature onto the sheet, she proceeds to hand me my new card. This transaction always takes place with an economy of words where I often do all the talking when I say:
Me: Thanks.
Over the weekend, I was walking from the East Village to the West Village enroute to meeting a friend for a beverage when I nearly suffered whiplash throwing out my neck at the site of this adorable 1970 Fiat Abarth 695 parked on Mercer Street.
Come home with me.
If I had ever seen one of these cars anyplace other than in a Fellini film, I don’t recall it, and my pulse has always quickened for compact European vehicles.
Hey, who's been fondling your rear engine?
It is a nice caboose.
This one was such a beauty! Oh, to ride this to work in lieu of the crowded 2 Express train or, better yet, to ride it to someplace bucolic and far from the daily grind and full of fun. <sigh>
Let's get lost!
I wanna see your instruments!
Of course, bucolic has always triggered my nasal allergies, parking in this city is a major pain, and I need to own a car, even one of the sexiest cars in the world like this one, about as badly as I need a brain tumor. Yet, this one sure was a delight to ogle and photograph and a lot prettier than my Metrocard.
I was running errands on the Upper West Side. Everywhere I looked I encountered piles of discarded Christmas trees heaped on the sidewalk waiting for the trash collector, another post-holiday Gotham City tradition that is not as exalted as when those same trees were standing tall and fresh or when they were clad in traditional tree-drag.
Battalion of trees at 72nd and Broadway
Trees with rigor mortis still clad in tinsel.
Tree suffering double indignity piled under snow and carpet.
That afternoon, they were simply reduced to piles of tree corpses that were of no further use to their owners. Most New York City apartments are tight on space, so the average resident is not going to be inclined to compost his or her tree. Last week, I tried a new Trader Joe’s cereal containing a key ingredient that could have been mulch. I gave it to my sidekick, Greg.
Bark in a box.
At the risk of encountering the wrath of The New Yorker and a beating from the angry ghosts of Harold Ross, William Shawn, and their current fire-breathing legal department, pictured below is one of their more profound cartoons by Jack Ziegler that perfectly captures the post-holiday spirit.
Another New York City tradition, dumping trees in any available trash can.
This cartoon is also available as a holiday card on their The New Yorker Storeweb site.
Some years back I had a next-door neighbor that kept her over-sized holiday wreath hanging outside her door for six months. By February, it was shedding needles so profusely I had to sweep my apartment’s entryway every time I entered. By April I was practically vacuuming hourly. Possibly, every time she entered her apartment, she was blind to the shower of needles forever falling. Maybe this wreath had some sentimental, or more likely, mental symbolism. I recall that she worked for Lord & Taylor, or Ann Taylor, or maybe she was a tailor. She did not strike me as a tree hugger-type. Several times, I considered politely asking her to “please take that eye-sore the hell down,” but it was her wreath, her door, and it was not as if she was hanging a giant holiday fruitcake that had attracted every fly on earth.
Finally, one day in June while I was home indulging my favorite hobby, procrastinating, I heard a thunk outside our respective sanctum sanctorums. We simultaneously opened our doors to find her wreath collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Me (thinking to myself): Oh happy day!
Neighbor: How’d that happen?
Me: Old age or suicide.
Neighbor: Do you think I should take it down?
Me: Or piece it back together. I have a mini pine forest in my vacuum cleaner that I can pass onto you. Christmas is barely six months away!
Tuesday was my first day back at work following my seventeen-day hiatus. Due to the mountains of garbage bags piled high on the sidewalk because trash collection has been hindered since December 26th’s epic snowstorm, there was a very narrow lane to walk enroute to the 72nd Street subway station. I could have done what a guy in a trench coat did – walk in the middle of West 73rd Street, but this is New York, where oncoming traffic speeds up even if you’re in the sidewalk with the walk signal on your side. I had zero desire to wind up road kill on my first day back at the grind in the New Year. Therefore, I was stuck walking up the narrow swath of sidewalk behind a drip of woman with a little less sensuality than Olive Oyl – no thought provoking fantasies playing in my head there, unless trampling her counts. She walked so slowly, she could have been a Yugo stuck in park. I felt myself feeling a tad anxious:
Me (what I wanted to scream): Move your boney ass, girlfriend! I’d like to get to work before the weekend!
Me (thinking): Calm down. Don’t set off your gastritis. So you might be a little late. It’s not the end of the world.
I entered the subway station – just as the packed express train heading downtown was pulling out and a local with empty seats had entered. I hopped on the local. This I only do when I’m not running late, but today I thought, “Screw it. I want to read my New Yorker.” I worked my way over to two guys hogging four seats – the death defying dude in the trench coat and a chub built like Buddha. I could feel Buddha reading over my shoulder, but when I opened my magazine to the massively wordy The Talk of the Town section, he re-focused his gaze on material more suited to his interests, a discarded Kit Kat wrapper lying on the floor.
With the theme from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon playing on my internal iPod, an orchestration I would appreciate played at my funeral (click the link; it’s well worth a listen), I exited the train at my Tribeca stop and low-tailed to my place of employ a full ten minutes late.
When I enter, who do I see standing at the front desk, leafing through her pile of mail? Elsbeth, my boss. Since I have been the middle finger of her right hand going on seven years, and this is the first time she has seen my scowling face in eighteen days, if she’s aware that I’m late, she doesn’t mention it. I approach her.
Me: Happy New Year, Boss.
Elsbeth: Looks like someone went through the mail while I was away.
I normally retrieve her mail when I enter. My Lord and Master hands a stack of junk to her husband to discard.
Elsbeth: Happy New Year. Did you have a nice vacation?
Me: Yes. Did you?
Elsbeth: Yes.
It is evident that my leader is feeling as morose as me about being back. Comforting.
Elsbeth and I are given an elevator ride up to our fifth floor office, so I’m spared having to climb five flights of stairs; the highlight of my day. We enter the office where we greet the staff. Everyone looks dour. I mingle with my two closest buddies, Ling and Greg, and although I’m truly happy to see them, we’re all in agreement that it sucks to be back.
By early afternoon, the bane of my existence, the printer, has begun jamming incessantly.
Did you miss me?
By day’s end, I’m ready for another seventeen days off.
One night after work this past summer when I was feeling overheated, cranky and tired, I needed to run an errand. I needed to purchase shampoo. Even though I have downsized my life radically since suffering a 20% pay cut in January 2009, which remains fully in effect almost two years later, I will know I have completely bottomed out when I can no longer afford my favorite brands of toothpaste (Tom’s) and shampoo (Kiehl’s). Initially, when my pay was slashed, I did try cheaper brands. In both cases, my body violently rebelled. The cheap toothpaste tasted terrible and coated my teeth with a film that nearly made me vomit. The inferior shampoo gave me the impression that I was developing scales on my scalp.
Immediately, I returned to using Tom’s and Kiehl’s.
On this humid summer evening, I enter my neighborhood Kiehl’s store to purchase a bottle of Protein Concentrate shampoo, a wonderful herbal product I have been using loyally for many years.
Best shampoo ever.
When I last tried to purchase it a few months earlier, it was out of stock. Since I was almost out of shampoo, I sniffed every tester and settled for the one with the most innocuous scent, Tea Tree Oil. On this summer evening, it is still out of stock, and so I seethe. If I am going to purchase a luxury product shampoo, I want to at least get the one I like most. I again snag the Tea Tree Oil variety and head to the register, where I encounter a cheerful cashier who makes some friendly banter that sets me off like an atomic bomb.
Me: Where’s the Protein Concentrate shampoo?
Cheerful Cashier: We’re out of it. I’m so sorry. This Tea Tree Oil is very good.
Me (exaggerating like The Customer from Hell): I hate it!
Cheerful Cashier (stepping on a landmine): Why don’t you try the Amino Acid?
Me (channeling my inner Ted Kaczynski): Because I don’t like smelling like a Pina Colada!
To appease me, the clerk calmly reveals that she’s the manager and I can have the bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo gratis. Instantly, I deflate and wonder, “Am I behaving like a mental patient over shampoo? Is this outburst going to screw up my karma? Will the penance for this meltdown result in Nadal and Federer not meeting in my dream men’s tennis final at the US Open?”
A few months later, after Nadal defeats Djokovic in the men’s US Open tennis final, I am running low on my free bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo. I check the Kiehl’s web site to see if the Protein Concentrate shampoo is available on line. It is, but it’s out of stock. Just as I am accepting this as a sign that the product is being phased out, I learn that my shampoo is displayed prominently on the Twitter site wallpaper of the company’s president. This gives me renewed hope.
I visit my neighborhood Kiehl’s store again, but alas, my shampoo is nowhere to be found on the shelf, but again, the manager is behind the counter. She is reading a document and declares that she has good news for me. My shampoo is not on the discontinued products list.
Me (barking): Then, why isn’t it on the shelf?
Manager (insisting): It doesn’t appear to be discontinued yet.
Me (snarky): It shouldn’t be. You know, it’s prominently displayed on Mr. Big’s Twitter page.
Manager: WHAT?!
See for yourself. Best shampoo ever circled in red.
She gives me her card, takes down my number, and says she will investigate the matter further. I urge her to do so quickly, “I’m running low on shampoo.” I look at her card. Symbolically, her name is Pains. If I were completely paranoid I would assume she has two business cards, one where she calls herself something like Dolores, and another for migraine-inducing customers like me.
I do not hear from her, so I send her an email asking about the status of my shampoo. She does not respond. A week later, I am walking up Columbus Avenue with my friend, Lola, en route to dinner. As we are walking past Kiehl’s I notice Pains inside the store. We enter Kiehl’s. Pains recognizes me.
Pains (cheerful): Hi!
Me (cutting to the chase): You don’t have the capacity to answer customer email? What’s the story with my shampoo? Pains, I need shampoo!
Pains (defensive): We’re still out of it!
I groan thunderously and grab a bottle of the Tea Tree Oil variety and return to the register with a deranged look in my eye. I slam the shampoo bottle on the counter with force … or maybe it was more like an anemic tap.
Pains (sympathetic): Why not try the Amino Acid?
Then, Pains recalls how much the Amino Acid sets me off. On cue, I am so angry; I suffer a full body spasm. Pains looks at me in alarm.
Lola (reassuringly): Ignore her. She just got fitted for a new strait jacket.
Pains starts coughing uncontrollably.
Me: What’s wrong with you?
Pains: I have allergies. They’re out of control.
Me: You should try eating local honey. Honey acts as an immune booster.
Pains (finally losing it): I live in Queens!
Me: This is New York. We have everything out here.
Pains, coughing endlessly, tosses yet another free bottle of Tea Tree Oil shampoo my way — and urges us to leave, but resists adding, “Please, don’t come back!”
Lola: You have an effect on people.
Me: Do you think my riding her back is going to cost me in karma? Do you think something terrible will happen like the Yankees won’t reach the World Series?
Lola: You better find her a bottle of Queens honey fast.
Although the beekeeping ban was lifted in New York City this year, finding a beekeeper in Queens is not as simple as determining how to attain world peace. For the two weeks it takes me to find this source, the Yankees plow through the Minnesota Twins during the first round of the divisional playoffs, but they struggle against the Texas Rangers. With the Yankees down three games to two in the ALCS, and make or break game 6 occurring that night, I score a bottle of Queens-based honey harvested by the Queens County Farm Museum.
In Floral Park there’s an anomaly, the Colonial Farmhouse Restoration Society, a non-profit corporation owned by the NYC Parks Department. This farm also happens to house their own hives. When I call them I ask in a tone reeking of cramps, “Do I have to go to Floral Park for a single jar of your honey?” I imagine if I do, with my limited sense of direction, I could end up in Delaware. They bring a jar of it to their stand in the Union Square greenmarket.
Real deal fall harvest Queens honey.
With honey in hand, I rocket to my neighborhood Kiehl’s. Pains must anticipate my visit for she is nowhere in sight. I consider leaving it with a member of the staff, but instead I ask the greeter at the door:
Me: Where’s Pains?
Greeter: Who?
Me: Your manager.
Greeter: Do you mean Dolores?
Ah ha! I knew she had two business cards!
Me: Whoever’s the manager; that person.
Half expecting a 50-year-old man named Egbert Firefly to emerge from the back office, I see Pains. She sees me and makes explicit eyeball sign language at the Greeter:
Pains (speaking in fluent eyeball): Don’t go far and call security. Also, whoever removed that copy of People from the bathroom, put it back.
I extend the jar of Queens honey.
Me (demure): This isn’t a regift. It’s Queens-based honey I got just for you.
Pains looks suspicious, but when she realizes there is not a lit fuse, she graciously accepts my peace offering.
Pains: This is thoughtful.
Me: I’m doing it more for the Yankees.
Pains: What?
Me: How are your allergies?
Pains: Still pretty bad.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe eating this honey will help.
Not that I believe that for a nano-second. This woman’s seasonal allergies are so severe, she needs to visit Lourdes.
Pains: I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. It’s about the Protein Concentrate shampoo.
Pains draws a cut line across her throat.
Cue the music from Psycho.
I could not control myself. I blow a gasket, and deliver a ten-minute soliloquy about every disappointment in my life starting with discovering that Santa Claus is a sham through the ascent of the Tea Party.
That evening the Rangers make mincemeat out of the Yankees who lost Game 6, 6-1. <sigh>
This weekend I was itching to see a highly touted French film called Mesrine: Killer Instinct that opened Friday. It stars Vincent Cassel in the true story of a notorious gangster called Jacques Mesrine. It is playing in two Manhattan movie theaters, the Angelika, a multiplex located downtown with screens the size of thumbnails, a sound system modeled after my sister’s ancient 45 rpm record player, seating so cramped whether Rocky or Bullwinkle sits in front of me, it’s highly likely that the middle section of each subtitle will be obscured, and last but not least, I will be distracted by the rumble of the nearby subway throughout the screening. For this completely unrewarding film-going experience, the price of admission is $13.00.
The other theater is the spacious AMC 25 located in Times Square. Even the smallest screen at this theater is larger than the Angelika’s, the seating is stadium guaranteeing that the view is always perfect, the sound system is so superb when bullets fly I’m prone to duck, and the price of tickets for all screenings before noon is $6.00. Did I omit any other pertinent details about this movie palace? Oh, yes.
It’s infested with bedbugs.
Or, at least theater management claims that two were discovered in early August, but then a theater patron complained of being bitten ravenously mid-month so the entire multiplex was closed for extermination – if that did any good.
Dark zipper. Stay away.
Now showing: nothing.
Apparently, DDT all but wiped out bedbugs in the forties and fifties, but the critters that did survive eradication are resistant to pesticides today. Knowing that there is now a super-race of bedbugs invading New York and other major cities is not a comforting thought. Since mature pregnant females can lay between 300-1000 eggs in a lifespan of six to twelve months, how about spraying them with some toxin that renders these bloodsuckers infertile? The ingredients in my grandmother’s ghastly tasting polenta might be a good place to start.
According to a Marist poll one in ten New Yorkers have had bedbugs in their homes, New Yorkers making less than $50,000 a year were twice as likely to have bedbugs as opposed to people earning more, 2% of Republicans admit having them whereas 12% of Democrats did. There is no figure on the extent of Republican denial about the problem. I read these results and reasoned that even if I do not leave my apartment again for the remainder of the year, according to that poll, I’m doomed since so many of the infested are people like me.
Normally, I am not a fearful type. I don’t live my life worried about the next terrorist attack, I ride the subway daily, and I like my steak so rare that when I stab it, I can hear the cow scream in agony, or maybe that’s myself suffering stomach cramps six hours later due to monumental food poisoning. Yet, New York is the number one bedbug infested city in the country and that disturbs me a million times more than a mosque near Ground Zero. Muslims do not scare me. My Egyptian hairdresser is Muslim. She doesn’t bite. Bedbugs do.
AMC 25 went into overdrive to keep this problem on the down low for as long as possible since an infested movie theater is the kiss of death. Knowing that they could continue to lurk there has stigmatized this theater in my mind. As much as I’d love to have my head filled with French car chases and gunfire, I’d prefer not having my limbs gorged by parasites as well. Therefore, I chose to be a coward. As much as I’m itching to see Mesrine, I can live without seeing it in a theater that could give me the nastiest of itches and a home invasion. I love gangster movies, not horror.
For the past four days, Gotham has been cloudy and rainy. It feels much more like October than August, but considering that most of July felt akin to being trapped in Hell’s basement, particularly while being broiled alive on the subway platform, I’m not complaining. Well, not complaining much. My hair does look like a big brown cloud, and I am not too thrilled about that. Pictured below are the crippled remains of an umbrella; an umbrella that was very likely purchased by some drenched sap or sapette for around five dollars from a New York City rainstorm institution, The Umbrella Man.
Undignified ending.
The Umbrella Man is a guy, and always a guy — I have never seen an Umbrella Woman, that miraculously appears on every Gotham City street corner and outside subway stations the second it starts to rain with a pile of cheap, crummy umbrellas. He chants, “Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella …” almost as if this word was on an endless loop. Every so often he zeroes in on a potential customer, usually someone holding a soggy newspaper or wearing a plastic shopping bag – the definitive rainstorm fashion statement — over his or her head. Directly, The Umbrella Man says to this target, “Five dollars,” but controls the impulse to add, “You fool.”
I’ve lived in New York so long, I remember when these guys used to charge three dollars. Since I am almost always equipped with my own umbrella, I have two turbocharged models that might have been manufactured by Maserati for they almost pull my arm out of its socket when I press the button that opens them, it’s possible that The Umbrella Man might be charging six dollars or more by now. One thing that I am certain of is that the quality of The Umbrella Man’s umbrellas remains trash can worthy, and that’s the likely destination of the vast majority that are not ditched in the street like the one pictured above.
Almost as soon as you open one of The Umbrella Man’s umbrellas, if there is as much as a Chihuahua’s sneeze in the air, it will instantly blow inside out, so you can imagine how sturdy they are under gale force wind. It has occurred to me that these umbrellas might blow inside out if opened under a sunny blue sky, simply because there is an umbrella industry conspiracy in play here. The conspiracy is that The Umbrella Man’s umbrellas are purposely designed to blow inside out to ensure that customers will either buy more umbrellas from The Umbrella Man, which could be another definition of insanity, or just before these users commit themselves to a mental institution, these same customers – people like me – break down and invest the equivalent of a one way plane fare to New Orleans on JetBlue in a top of the line umbrella instead. Also, if I were inclined to visit New Orleans this time of year, it would probably behoove me to pack my performance-enhanced umbrella.
Returning to the subject of the defective nature of The Umbrella Man’s wares, the handles tend to be wobbly and the little round piece at the top holding the entire apparatus together has been known to fall off, especially if you’re like me and bought one that said Totes. That batch of The Umbrella Man’s umbrellas was probably manufactured in the same third world sweat shop that produces knock off Coach and Louis Vuitton handbags.
If the user of an umbrella purchased from The Umbrella Man is able to get three uses out of it, that user is qualified to be ABC News’s Geek of the Week, and/or they should make a guest appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman to discuss this phenomenon, for it simply does not happen.
If sneezing were an occupation, I would have a career, or maybe even find myself CEO of a multinational corporation, one called Sneezers, Inc. It was Friday night, Milton and I had tickets to see our close mutual friend, Albee, star as Vincent Cradeau, the coward sent to hell, in an Off-Off-Broadway staging of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential masterpiece No Exit. The basement theater, 13th Street Repertory, was a tad musty.
As soon as the lights dimmed, I suffered an allergy attack, started sneezing, and managed to sneeze my way through the entirety of this very entertaining ninety-minute play. When I am at home or at work, I generally sneeze with hurricane force, but in this intimate setting, I stifle my sneezes for fear of shattering the cast’s concentration, as well as distracting my fellow theatergoers. Afterward, Milton assures me that my incessant sneezing was “remarkably quiet, I barely heard you. I’m certain no one on stage did, either.” Albee later told us that the only distraction he suffered was minor, seeing his father dozing in the third row. If my father attended, I doubt that he would have fallen asleep, but I am sure he would have asked many questions:
Dad: Where the hell were they supposed to be, hell?
Me: Yeah, it’s set in hell.
Dad: So they were just driving each other nuts for eternity?
Me: Yeah. Sartre’s most famous quote is from this play, “Hell is other people.”
Dad: Huh. Can’t argue with that.
Although this was minimalist staging, and the first production by this new theater company, Marble Bath Productions, when great writing meets talented acting and inspired directing, it’s theater that works well. It will be very interesting to see what MBP stages next. In addition, all of the proceeds from this initial production benefited Haiti. This prompted Milton to remark, “Haiti now has more of my money than I do.”
Professionally, Albee uses the easy to remember stage name Kuros Charney.
A possible side effect of having 327 sneezes implode inside my head over the course of ninety minutes, I wake with a significant headache Saturday morning. I pop a fistful of high-octane head pain reliever, and just as the pain begins to lift, I hear rustling and jangling outside my window. Constantine, my next-door neighbor (see Lame Adventure 3: Neighbor and Muffin ), is in the process of hanging wind chimes. Who the hell hangs wind chimes in New York City? You hang wind chimes in the country, places with space and soft warm breezes, not cramped urban places rife with airborne soot. Furthermore, why not hang these wind chimes in one of his other windows, such as the one not facing my bed, and in essence, my aching head? Now I am feeling beaten in the brains with tubular bells.
I consider raising a fuss about this, but it’s not like he has a belching bagpipe or a screaming car alarm sitting in the windowsill. Therefore, I decide that getting dramatic about this is rather petty on my part, and besides, my headache has subsided. I go out and take a walk, burn off some steam. When I return, I see Constantine leaving our building.
Constantine: Hi, how are you?
Me (thinking): Woke with a brain tumor, my neck is always stiff, I can’t stop sneezing, I suffer constant dry eye, and I hate your wind chimes. Hell is other people.
Me (saying): Pretty good. Can’t complain. And you?
Constantine: My sister in Greece got me a belated birthday present, wind chimes! They sound so soothing! I hung them between our windows so you can hear them, too.
If I strangle him, would this be called neighborcide?
Me: Oh, you shouldn’t have. You’re just too thoughtful.
I enter my apartment, glare at the chimes and sneeze voluminously. They tinkle.
Lame Adventures 