You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2010.
(1: color photo of Julie Weingrad in Israel (oops, Greece!). To Class, a poem by Julie Weingrad to Kate Donnelly, 1997)
(2: Rabbit art sticker by Pat Conlon, Intrepid Royalty a poem by KBD, Sophia Coppola in part in stripes, AOL IM from Kate to brother in his Phish days.
Off the Patti Smith recommendation brings another memoir to mind, quite different in tone yet a great read. Pick up, Donald Hall’s Unpacking the Boxes. Donald Hall is a historian with a devils wit.
Once again, the New York Times pens a banner review.
“Growing up on the crest of World War II in Connecticut, Hall was warned off masturbation by his father, but found relief in Flaubert and Tolstoy: “My understanding of what took place in locked carriages was imperfect, but I knew that it was something wicked and worth dying for.” He took on Keats and Shelley. “Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious.”
I have not called in sick to work in years, maybe ever, but two weeks ago I was having a bad day, my left arm has been going numb for a while now, it crawls all the way up my cheek and lasts for a few minutes, and I finally just called in sick. The day before I called in sick I was in a meeting with my Boss and a Super Star singer/actress and my arm fell asleep and creeped up the side of my face. The Singer was nice about it, but I figured maybe I should rest, see a doctor, and admit I am sometimes sick for just one day. I am sitting at the doctor with an IV of steroids in my arm when my Boss’ new producing partner calls my cell phone. She has only been at our company for three weeks, and her voice has a phony ring of concern as she asks me if maybe in light of my recent flare-up of Multiple Sclerosis I should consider taking some time off. By time off, she goes on to say, she means a few months, and then I should get a job somewhere else. I can barely lift my head from the pillow in the hospital room as I gasp, “Are you firing me?” She sighs, as if this is the hardest thing she has ever had to do. “I just don’t think you can handle this job,” she says faux-sadly.
There is a flurry of activity that includes my Mother, who is a right-wing politician, calling my Boss and demanding to know if her daughter just got fired for having Multiple Sclerosis, and a letter being delivered to my hospital bed signed by no less than eight lawyers calling the whole event a “mistake”. Hospital beds, lawyers, concerned mothers, panicked Bosses, none of this is familiar territory for me and my prevailing thought is what could I have done to make this Producer hate me so much? I will admit I don’t like her much, but I didn’t know she knew that, and I was just getting used to having a job again, a real Hollywood job with buck slips and business cards and my own little office. Even though my Boss hired me back as soon as I called to tell him what happened, I have a feeling nothing is ever going to be the same for me at this job again.
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D-GIRL was a development girl in Hollywood and New York City for many years. While finding projects for actors, directors and producers to make into movies, she amassed a number of salacious tales of questionable morality that became an internet column entitled “D-Girl Diary.” She left show business to become a full-time writer in 2001.
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
Per the New York Daily News, please Paul, please be careful. We don’t want to go down the Beatrice Road again, do we? Ollie and co. SHAME ON YOU for posting those smoking cig photos on your glossy site. Although the one of you, Ollie, well, it’s just so cool.
Kitty Bawler is back…finally. After a five year stint of silence, the hip have once again spoken. Having been around the block, she’s studied the trends and inner-workings of all the uber-pretentious, black labeled culture of the downtown New York crowd. She’s cynical and a bit jaded. She detests aviators. She’s patient and doesn’t mind writing about, you know, cool people.
(Kenmare photo; NY Daily News. Ollie photo c/o Purple Diary)
(New York Times; Royal Tenenbaum list; New York Times Magazine; Ecstasy cover (remember it was the craze peeps!) Polaroid; Tarka and Jimbo by KBD)
Tarka related pieces: Stepping Out on Spring Street Alone + Lovely New York and Tarka.
(Wash banner found on the floor of Madison Square Garden after Pearl Jam concert, July 9,2003, my pricey operation bill + Chargill postcard.)
You are certainly amiss if you haven’t picked up Patti Smith’s JUST KIDS. Since reading the banner review on the New York Times. Without sounding like a broken cliché, I’ve not been able to put the book down. It truly captures the essence of leaving your ground, arriving in New York when the place was teeming with cool and slowly by slowly succeeding. I haven’t read memoirs this good in years…truly.
Because I have no voice this week and cough a song of something lungless, I’m peeking into my old collage + inspiration books from 1998-2006.
Charlize Theron; Vogue Magazine, Maratime Hotel Coaster, NYC, Cuba postcard compliments Cafe Habana and Fire Truck postcard Nicky Hotstamps.
There’s nothing quite like a big ole bowl of Max‘s (51 Avenue B) homemade fettuccine with Max’s tomato sauce and a glass of red vines to make a grey day go away. What about the giant Max meatballs? Specials should never be missed. The fresh bread and tomatoe-olive oil spread. Man, do I miss Max. It’s a bowl of comfort. In the Spring, it’s great to sit outside in the back patio with a Peroni under clothing racks and tenement buildings.
Wow, as I type this under a gray domed sky, it surpises me a victory was commanded via the Shack. Curbed reports (via other reports) indeed, Danny Meyers withdrew his plans for the Nolita joint to sit cemetary side from Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It still doesn’t mean neighbors should chill-ax (to which some seem to really have wanted those burgers).Nope, this battle isn’t over. Something will venture to that desloate, high rent real estate.
Promise you that.
The Shake Shack invasion of New York is throwing down take-out style in Nolita. Eek. Granted, Danny Meyers (a Midwesterner) endeavor cooks up a mean steak burger (much like what I grew up on in Kansas City at places such as Winsteads), still, it’s cropping up on holy ground. Old. Saint Patrick’s ground. Yes, I wish I concepted the idea, packaged and brought it to New York pearly gates. Still yet, the neighborhood already T-boned by long lines is about to further T- bone itself. The Villager reports Nolita nabes aren’t totally down with the idea:
“Residents of the historic Little Italy neighborhood of Nolita have reacted with a mixture of shock, dread and horror as news spread of the hamburger chain Shake Shack’s proposed location in the heart of the picturesque area,” read a press release from concerned neighbors, including the Little Italy Neighborhood Association and the Little Italy Restoration Association.
According to residents, the proposed outdoor seating area above the sidewalk-level eatery poses overcrowding and noise problems for the tenants living in an adjacent residential building, as well as for the 195-year-old St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral and cemetery directly across the street. Neighbors fear that without sufficient seating, the restaurant will force customers to flood the streets to scarf down their orders — disrupting the area’s quality of life and impinging on the historic church’s presence.”
As Bill Murray might conjure in Ghostbusters; “Nobody steps on a church in my town.” Bill, we need you. (a related piece on the No-Ness factor at the Nolitan.)
I am feeling very overwhelmed lately with a sudden influx of job/writing career/relationship success, its hard to keep it all straight but I am certain the Private Investigator my insurance company has sent to keep an eye on me will sort it all out. I don’t think he has much else to do except sit out front of my apartment building behind his tinted windows watching my stream of male admirers enter and exit, and I wonder if they will cancel my insurance policy because I am suddenly so popular. I suppose they are casing the joint to find out if I actually have Multiple Sclerosis, and I want to knock on the guy’s window and tell him I would gladly give up my insurance policy not to have this disease, and to be able to walk without wobbling for two days in a row.
Meanwhile my Boss has been keeping an eye on me to make sure I am doing my job and that all my recent success has not made me lazy, and I am extra vigilant via the internet about making sure my non-boyfriend is not non-committing to any girl he has met on his travels. And finally, my nemesis Lorna McSlutchen has taken to tapping into my emails to also see if I am doing my job, we are all watching each other closely, and it’s frankly keeping me up at night. There is a nice guy who worked at this company right before I left who reads my Internet Column, and he now works for a notorious book publisher with a past even more checkered than mine, and he has brought her my work and they are offering me a small book deal. I should smack down a copy of my manuscript as soon as I finish it right on the windshield of the Private Investigator’s car, it will tell him everything he needs to know about me.
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(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
