Smokin' Room

Really? Still?

Dead tree carcass spotted in Riverdale on Saturday Feb 12...

Separated at Birth...

Casa Malaparte...

...and the TKTS booth in Times Square.

 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell 1993-2010

R.I.P., you dirty bastard...

Blake Edwards Film Director 1922-2010

Edwards on the set of The Days of Wine and Roses in 1962.  RIP

Let nothing you dismay

I knew the dark days were here when I snapped at a woman over wrapping paper yesterday.  I was minding my own business at Jack’s when she appeared, musing out over whether to buy this gift paper or that.  Slowly it dawned that her loud utterances were an attempt to suck me into her indecision (“oh, this one is pretty, but…I don’t know…”), a misguided meet cute if ever there was one.  After a few moments of this, I wheeled around and said, “What is the big deal?  Either you want 6ft or 1ft for 1.99—it’s that simple.”  Startled, she hastily grabbed a fat cheap roll of paper and left. 

Miss Holiday Cheer had met her Grinch, er, match of the season.  And I regretted it.  This is why I go out of my way to avoid buying such things at peak hours, lest I confront others whose IQs suddenly drop when surrounded by the shiny offal meant to celebrate the aggressively poor Baby Jesus.  Why I start looking for gifts as early as the end of summer, and limit my exposure to things like holiday parties and stores that play treacle-rimmed renditions of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.”  At the best of times my patience with meandering crowds is nil, but in a store that shouts, “Spend Money!  Be Happy!  It’s Christmas!” as people stagger like zombies, well, let’s just say I discover how quickly my heart shifts from chocolate melt to cinderblock. 

I confess the times are out of joint.  I’m enduring a layoff, the first time I’ve been without a job since I was 14, and the financial challenges of unemployment (the tiny payout is the price one pays for living in the world’s greatest city).  My feckless sinuses have tortured me since October; the flu shot I got on the first of December has induced the genuine article, which means my nose runs like a faucet as I endure the kind of coughing spells that give me headaches.   But these triggers are simply variations on an old background: these holidays have been a trial since I was a kid.  Face it, Christmas is a child’s holiday, and the joy of it hinges on expectations of gifts under the tree—as the sixth of ten children I always found that aspect, compared to that of my friends (who of course came from smaller families) wanting to say the least.  

As an adult I experienced a paralyzing loneliness my first few years in New York.  I couldn’t afford to return to my hometown; my then-spouse was an only child whose folks flew him back, leaving me to wander NYC streets devoid of their usual spark.  Years later, that same man slowly died over a series of Christmases and New Years as I and his friends looked on; years after that, I could barely look at a lighted tree or do an office party without being plunged into a deep depression. 

That quotient of sadness lingers, albeit in a muted form.  I find that I can bury the emotion for the sake of my dear friends (one bonus is that suddenly everyone has more time) and a boyfriend who doesn’t share my history.  I’m happy to make it all about him, and in this I’m consoled by a pleasure I’d indulge no matter the holiday: I get to give him gifts of things he wants and things I think he should have (read: I get to make him over.  Sly, huh?).  We even get a tree, which fills our place with a nice smell—and when the thing turns brown, my boyfriend lets me pitch it off our 5^th floor fire escape while he stands below to make sure no one gets impaled.   The tree makes a nice crash on the sidewalk below.

For the rest, well, I’ve learned to limit my exposure.  No Christmas music.  No holiday TV specials.  I do the bare minimum of holiday parties.  And I take a lot of daytime walks to forestall the gloom of those early nightfalls.  Mostly I try to manage my attitude, hold on the awareness that for others it’s an excuse to be deliriously happy.   If I keep my mouth shut, maybe some year I’ll finally get swept up in the bonhomie and some of that tinseled cheer will rub off.  Just don’t get any on my sweater, okay?

 

Stop the Bullying. No Place for Politics in Art.

Not to mention religion.  From the New York Times Arts Beat Blog, a  response to the Smithsonian's recent excision of the late David Wojnarowicz's (pictured above) work from their current exhibition, after harassment from the head of the Catholic League and a few bullying Republican Congressmen.  Bravo to Wachs and his board--we cannot allow politics to dictate what people can, and can't see. And shame on the Smithsonian for such cowardice.

DECEMBER 13, 2010, 3:18 PM

Warhol Foundation Threatens to End Financing of Smithsonian Exhibitions

By KATE TAYLOR

The Andy Warhol Foundation is threatening to stop its financing of Smithsonian Institution exhibitions if the institution does not restore a work of art that was removed from an exhibition after it drew attacks by the head of the Catholic League and some Republican members of Congress. The Warhol Foundation gave $100,000 to the Smithsonian for the exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” at the National Portrait Gallery, from which the work was removed.

In a letter sent on Monday to the head of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, Joel Wachs, the president of the Warhol Foundation, said that the foundation’s board voted unanimously on Friday to demand that the Smithsonian restore the work, an excerpt of a video by the artist David Wojnarowicz, to the exhibition or the foundation would reject any future grant requests.

“I regret that you have put us in this position, but there is no other course we can take,” Mr. Wachs wrote in the letter, which the foundation also sent to news organizations. “For the arts to flourish the arts must be free, and the decision to censor this important work is in stark opposition to our mission to defend freedom of expression wherever and whenever it is under attack.”

A spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, Linda St. Thomas, said that she did not know if Mr. Clough had seen the letter yet, but “as far as I know we are not putting the video back and we are not changing anything else in the exhibition.”

The video by Mr. Wojnarowicz, “A Fire in My Belly,” was pulled from the exhibition two weeks ago on Mr. Clough’s orders after the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, described it as hateful to Catholics because it includes an image of ants crawling over a crucifix. House Republicans condemned the exhibition as an “outrageous use of taxpayer money.”

In the last three years the Warhol Foundation has given a total of $375,000 for various Smithsonian exhibitions including, in addition to “Hide/Seek,” the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Yves Klein and Anne Truitt exhibitions, and an exhibition of the art of William T. Wiley at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

“We felt it was really necessary to take this strong step, and we are going to back it,” Mr. Wachs said in a telephone interview. “I’m hopeful that others will follow suit.”

 

Ancient Evenings

When I first moved to New York I knew a girl who fancied herself a kind of Holly Golightly.  Oh, her nights!  Always, she was full of stories about the latest film that mustn’t be missed, or that cool art opening she crashed the previous weekend.  She represented the possibility of inclusion: one day those of us whose faces were pressed against the window of Manhattan would be welcomed like she had been.  One day I’d obtain the polish, the confidence that would grant entry into the special places trumpeted in the society pages.

One such place was Elaine’s.  One of the first stories she told was about a night spent at that stronghold of the literary/celebrity set on the Upper East Side.  It sounded more interesting to me than a night at Studio 54—I imagined Elaine’s as a place where you actually talked to people about substantial things, like books, movies and music.   “Everyone goes there,” she used to say in a way that was part promise, part threat.  Even if the opportunity arose I doubted I'd have the courage to enter such a place; the confluence of talent would be too intimidating, too overwhelming for a lowly actor living on cheap beer and Kraft’s Macaroni and Cheese.  Still, when I found myself in that neighborhood, I made it a destination.  I’d peer into the windows, hoping for a glimpse of magical people, I don’t know, eating soup?  Maybe Norman Mailer would slug someone; Fran Leibowitz might sneer at a too-full-of-himself waiter.  Something… 

I haven’t seen my old friend in almost 20 years; since then her exploits are tempered by revelations that she fabricated many aspects of her fabulous life (not uncommon among Middle-American transplants to the city, I’ve found).  Age, and a finite number of waking hours, has made me value quiet nights at home vs. life lived in thrall to the social whirl.  This morning when I read the obit for Elaine Kaufman, I recalled a time when I was too hayseed to partake of the NYC I adopted in the 1980s, but mesmerized by the myth of place.  I still am: Elaine’s remains to this day part of the legend of a city bedecked with golden haunts, dazzling backrooms of culture and wit where the air is electric, where magical evenings still occur.  I plan to go…one day.  RIP, Elaine Kaufman.

 

They lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow

When I tuned into NY1 for the 9/11 ceremonies to hear the reading of the names they’d only made it to F; when I went back later they’d reached the R’s.

I’d missed hearing the name of the only person I knew who perished that day.  Rebecca Kaborie was a college classmate from Ohio, a fellow theater major who’d moved here in the early 80s to take her stab at the bright lights like the rest of us.  She was a saloon singer in her bones, but she was also a crackerjack comedian with large, pleading eyes, a mop of short curly hair and a mezzo belt, one of those inimitable vocal instruments built for torch songs or those usually handled by the soubrette in musical comedies.   That’s how I got to know her intimately—we were principle players at the local summer stock theater in Cincinnati, a place called the Showboat Majestic where I spent some of the happiest days and nights of my young adulthood.

Once we moved to New York she and I lost track.  Occasionally I’d run into her at a party thrown by mutual friends—the Cincinnati theater mafia was as strong then as it is now, judging from all the Broadway thesps who credit the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music as their alma mater—or in midtown, in passing.  We’d be running errands, or on our way to temp assignments or auditions.  It was always a pleasure, a reminder of a happy past and good times before the realities of life and career took over and shook us awake.  The last time I saw her was like any other, except that she’d let her hair grow out.  By then we were both in our 40s.  She was a hair older, but I remember thinking, wow, she still had that spark, and what beautiful hair—a pity she’d deprived us of it in her youth.  I can’t describe the heartbreak when I opened the NY Times to see her photo ( in the Pulitzer prize-winning Portraits in Grief section), the short essay describing her love of music, and the realization that no one would hear that voice again. 

Ultimately it didn’t matter that I failed to hear her name read this morning.  In my mind I’ve heard it all day, and I’m grateful.  Its sound is a needed corrective to the relentless  dickering about who owns 9/11: the other families of the deceased who’ve perhaps had too much of a say over what happens on that hallowed ground where so many perished; the zealots who, in the name of patriotism, have conveniently lost sight of what that event truly represents, to the extent that it’s difficult to tell the difference between them and the terrorists; the real estate magnates who’ve dragged their cans, making it all but impossible for people to move on.   Hearing the names should give us all perspective, or at least wake us up to what exactly was being attacked on that bright September morn.   Please stop talking, everybody—listen.  I can’t think of a better honorific for Rebecca Kaborie and all those other innocents who didn’t see it coming.

No guilt over this pleasure...

Patricia Neal, Actress 1926-2010

 
Neal in Hud (1964).  R.I.P.