Hey, Mr - ! You watching?

When i was younger, my back hurt less, i was quicker to anger, i couldn't carry a tune and i could bowl a wrongun, flipper and top-spinner to compliment my stock leg-spinning ball. i also never wrote the word 'God'. i'd instead write 'G-d'. This was due to a belief ingrained in me by parents and teachers, that somehow writing God/G-d's name in it's complete form would somehow incur his wrath. This is a strictly Jewish belief, because i am yet to encounter it elsewhere.


Anyways, time passed, i ate pork for the first time, turned the on TV on Shabbat and decided not to be frugal with my money at all and visit doctors less. i turned my back on the life offered and conceived for me. But supplanting a hyphen for the letter 'o' was a habit that took longer to shake. For years, i'd avoid writing the word altogether because i was both embarrassed to go the hyphen and held uncomfortable by the thought of not. Even today, as i construct this little post, i'm avoiding the word.

New Town

What have they done to the old home place, why did they tear it down?

And why did I leave the plough in the field and look for a job in the town

J.D. Crowe, 'Old Home Place'

My mate the Canadian placed her in the 'girl next door' genre. I suppose he was referring to how she drew attention in response to an easy warmth she projected rather than an eye catching strikingness. True. The thing that caught my imagination was the wake of a just passed knowing grin, that told me of an analytical wit at work. This is how i chose to see her anyways. It could have just been an uneasy smile. The sort one displays when slightly uncomfortable and nervous. But as de rigour, I ran with the more romantically appealing snap judgement.

There were a couple of hindrances to my confirming or otherwise of my first impression.  The Canadian and I were in the middle of our own activity and conversation, whilst she dined on an early dinner with her two companions - one male and one female. It was hard to tell if any of them were in a commited agreement to any or each of the others.

Value

On the world financial market, the US Dollar is the barometer for ascribing value. It's the constant against which one can define the value of the gold, coal or Yen you have stashed under the bed. The exchange rate of USD to GBP dictated the amount of Pounds the aggressively eager, Pakistani man pushed under the thin slit in the thick perspex window at the Bureaux de Change, just outside of Leicester Square. This was an ever so simple transaction to understand. I expected how much i was to receive due to the rate displayed on the A-Frame board out on the sidewalk and i surmised the numerical total by reading the numbers printed large on the banknotes. What is a little harder to understand is what is the actual 'real' value of 1 Pound. What it actually gets you on the High Streets and how much is needed to maintain the lifestyle i've come to enjoy and expect.

Got A Cough

Once again, i've taken a slight extended break from posting. There's the practical hurdle of being free of direct computer access, but this would be only a cheap excuse. No, there's a contributing-factor that is playing a far more dominant part in the explanation of my absence from this page. I'm flat. It's not writers-bloc, i have a multitude of subject matters to cover, songs to quote, grumpiness to expel and witticisms aplenty to sprinkle around. It's a general malaise that has descended upon me. Not just me, but, seemingly, most of the city around me.

House Hunting

I had an hour spare between the apartment hunting appointments this week and found myself outside the very impressive Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway. A massive stone and concrete, turn-of-the-20th-Century affair, it's a hulking edifice complete with the almost ubiquitous Museum Roman Columns. But you'd probably miss them at first glance, for they've dressed the entire entrance side of the building with a bizarre 3 storey high, glass and steel 'bib', that serves as a reception area. It looks completely out of place and entirely like the 100-year-later-afterthought that, in reality, it actually was/is.

Vice

'You keep me searching for a heart of gold and I'm getting old'

Neil Young, 'Heart of Gold'

I have a question i sometimes ask upon meeting new people that intrigue me. I firstly define the word 'vice' to mean 'a particular thing that you enjoy. Something you derive a heightened sense of pleasure from, yet at the same time, it can and does also have a somewhat detrimental effect of you - whether that be health, wealth, emotional state, lifestyle or other'. Then, i ask:

"What's your vice?"

Pornographic Zoetrope

'My life has been full of terrible misfortunes - most of which never happened.'

Michel de Montaigne

 
I was thinking of all the women I've seen naked in my life. Not those on a page or a screen, but rather those i'd seen up close (up close and very personal). I wasn't thinking about them in a manner akin to gazing into a pornographic zoetrope in my mind, but rather of the actual people themselves. To be even more specific, I was thinking of how many might now regret revealing themselves to me in such a manner. Not because of anything I may have done at the actual moment of the clothing hitting the floor, but due to something that may or may not have happened further on down the track to make them feel not so fondly of/towards me.

What's in a Neighborhood

The party is over. My free-rent lifestyle is about to be curbed. Up until now, i have been crashing in the spare bedroom at my sister and her husband's apartment in Brooklyn. Whereas the neighborhood itself has been sparsely providing and entertaining (unless you're into the whole Kosher/oily food/girls in wigs thing), it has provided a perfectly stable and efficient jumping off point for my time in The City. But now this experience must come to an end. The reasons are many, but suffice to say- even if you do find the proverbially impossible 'free lunch', at some point, Lunchtime will end.

White Hats

Kansas City to Memphis town, Arkansas on down; Come on into Mary's kitchen if you want your sausage ground"

Old Crow Medicine Show, 'Mary's Kitchen'

The work crew have a tradition. In fact, they have many traditions. Some of these traditions could be somewhat more accurately termed as 'addictions', but this particular example, whilst accommodating to some of those addictions, is very much a tradition. On the evening of Gay Pride Sunday, they rustle up as many folk willing to part with $30 and buy tickets that allow them to join the masses clambering aboard a large floating vessel that circumvents the island of Manhattan, whilst the aforementioned masses extend on the celebration of the day of pride.

It's not a 'quaint' tradition. Not at all like how you all might gather on the anniversary of your Grandma's death to solemnly remember her life. Neither is it equitable to a more joyous annual event like the Jewish festival of Purim. However, it is a tradition and it is annual and they really give the whole thing a (here comes the obligatory Australian cliche) 'A red-hot go!'.

On The Run

"I've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness. I'm out there running just to be on the run"

Alabama 3, 'Speed of Loneliness'

The back page of the New York Times on Saturday had a wonderfully dramatic panoramic photo of the skies above the so called 'Subway Series' baseball game between the Yankees and the Mets. As night invaded, the stadium lights increased in effect and overhead hung these impossibly crimson tinged clouds, glowing as consistent as a neon light outside some dodgy gay nightclub. As far as I gather, this was an extremely rare occurrence for New York. But back further down south beyond the equator, I've experienced this several times.

Fear

I haven't been on here for a while. It's not because i ain't had much to say - in fact, I've had plenty to say. It's just that I've felt unwilling to share. Scratch that. More accurately, I've been afraid. Not sure of what. It could be of anything that could occur anywhere along the spread from the action of conception of an individual blog, to you reading my wavering thoughts of the past weeks or so. But i feel that despite being unable to define and place the fear, i can be certain that wherever it lands it is misplaced. Fear so often is.

Daytime Movies

I love a trip to the movies. I go on my own and i go during the day. As a member of the Hospitality Industry, i live and work outside the hours of accepted, polite society. This can cost me so much socially, but one of the liberties it provides in quid pro quo, is sunlight hours to be enjoyed inside an overly air-conditioned cinema.

As i am particularly pretentious and somewhat artistically sympathetic, i feel most comfortable in an Arthouse cinema environment. So, i headed off to the Landmark Sunshine Theater, located in the Lower East Side. Now, i haven't really done that much research into the building. In fact, I've conducted none at all. All i know is that it was under very overcast skies that i scurried up to the entrance and the building itself looked and felt nothing even remotely landmarkish (yes, that is a adjective i have just invented). However, from the country that gave us The 'Big' Mac, The Baseball 'World' Series and 'President' George W Bush. i think one could expect and accept the odd bit of creative exaggeration.

Of Trains

"Train arrive 16 coaches long. Well that long black train got my baby and gone"

'Mystery Train', Sam Phillips

Duke Ellington's grinning face behind an almost impossibly reflective, laid-out piano, is an image that always served for me as an emblem of New York City. Despite the fact that Washington D.C. was the city that stood in witness at the birth of Edward Kennedy Ellington, it was the flickering lights of Uptown Harlem that announced, proclaimed and maintained the birth of the legend that was and is The Duke. Together with a handful of equally legendary peers, he transformed a few dance halls, ballrooms and speakeasies into at first ultimate destination venues, then establishments and finally into cultural and historical icons - not only of these United States, but rather, of this entire dusty globe.

One of The Duke's most regarded passions was trains. Many a title of a song referenced trains and he often spoke of trying to capture the rhythm, movement and swing of those grand old steam powered beasts into his songs.

Seagulls

'K.C. left Memphis at quarter to nine, was in New York City bout supper time.'

'K.C. Jones', Mississippi Fred McDowell

Lots of folk come here from somewhere else. There's alot of other great cities of the world that seem to magnetize escapees, yet i reckon this is different. Here, even the locals, those who've been here for generations (plural) want you to think they just got off the Greyhound from some far flung, dust swept town, nestled hard up against the border. Where i come from, Melbourne (that's Melbourne in "I can't believe they have Jews in" Australia) , a city defined by it's various and multi stages of immigrational flux, those that have had the 3000 postcode for over 50 years, wear that distinction with, well, distinction. But here?.....not so much.

Alarm Clocks and Weekends

I remember Jeff Buckley once describing the end of a long solo gig as being similar to an athlete at the end of a gruelling game of (what these Americans call) football. Something about how the exhaustion motivates totally unique and inspired maneuvers, twists and turns and how only at the end of a long stint on stage did he feel his best isolated moments of musical expression and genius occur.

I don't know about this.

Why romanticize being tired?

Right now, I'm beat. It's been a long day. I've worked hard and I'm all spent up. Simple, natural, wholly uninspired and very unspectacular. There's no heightened level of consciousness. In fact, if anything, I'm simmering in a heightened state of sarcasm. Yes, i know what you're thinking: " Is that really possible?? You, more sarcastic??"

Well it is - deal with it.

Here Comes Old Age

'Never missed the East Coast till i moved to the West. Never saw the moonlight, till it shone off your breast'

Tom Waits, 'San Diego Serenade'

Bar Veloce is a "European-Styled Fast Bar" (their words, not mine) with a couple of locations Downtown. A thin strip of a room, the SoHo location almost feels like a crack caught between two buildings. I've always felt that the closer the distance between the walls, the easier it is to trap in a vibe. Last night, not even a matchbox could have held any vibe. There was just four us filling up the vestibule -the two women at the end of the bar, both with a descending level of unattractiveness bordering on plain ghastly and my workmate (The Ukrainian) and I. I was contemplating further extending my night and was planning to use the one drink at the 'Fast Bar' as an almost dress rehearsal or physical test to see if my exhaustion would fade.

It did not.

Introduction

In Tennessee Williams' epic tribute to failed expectations and mendacity 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', the protagonist, Brick Pollitt, delivers one of the crispest summations of better times passed;

"..people like to do what they used to do, even after they've stopped being able to do it"

In many ways, this blog is about me fulfilling the very opposite sentiment. I've never run a blog, i've never kept a journal, and save for the odd, abstract Facebook Status Update, i've never published my various trivial emotional movements to the wider world. However, this blog does feel like something i'd like to do, even though i've never been able to do it before.




A couple of days ago, the Washington Square Fountain reopened after nearly 18 months and $16 million worth of works. It seems that the enormous fountain didn't seem to exactly align with the mini Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Square. So they shut the whole park down and moved the 100 year old fountain a grand total of a couple feet!!

I think this is the perfect metaphor for my time here.... I hope it doesn't take either one and a half years or millions of dollars to re-align myself, but i do believe i've only gotta do about a meter's worth of work.