One Way to Impress a City Boy

Just back from Indiana, visiting my brother. He lives in the woods and everyone there treats deer more or less as common pests. I'm sufficiently citified that I find them pretty fascinating. We saw a family of four (a doe and three kids) a couple of nights ago. Yesterday morning I woke up and thought "I wonder if the deer come into Rob's yard" so I looked out the window and there was this handsome buck. We stared at each other for a while until then he finally gave a disdainful roll of his eyes and very slowly slid back into the woods.

The Shrug of the New

Went to the new New Museum this weekend. It's the first new museum building to be put up in NY since the Whitney in 1966. Right now, it's sort of two experiences: seeing the building from the outside (pretty good) and then going in (no big thrill).

It's located at Bowery and Prince, a few blocks too far east to really be Soho. It's basically the Restaurant Supply Neighborhood, where everyone goes to buy their twelve-burner ranges and heavy-duty kitchen storage.

From the outside, the building looks like a series of six stacked boxes, shrouded in mesh. It's high-tech and hard-edged, both a childish stack of blocks and a uber-architecty comment on same. Not as lovely as the new Gehry, it shouts its minimalism at the neighborhood, but the neighborhood holds its own pretty well.

The "Hell Yes!" rainbow sign isn't permanent--it's art, and it's temporary. It's amusing and engaging and, alas, one of the best pieces on display at the moment.

Inside, the gallery spaces are stripped down and aggressively uninteresting. I can live with that, mostly because I hate the opposite aesthetic even more (architecture that competes with the art, as in the new MOMA). However, they decided to open the museum with a 3-floor exhibit called Unmonumental, which is as aggressively uninteresting as the interior spaces are by themselves. The brochure has a lot of blather about "unskill" and so on, but what you're left looking at is a lot of sloppy art that is neither conceptual nor visual, but a tepid combination of the two. Two of the better pieces: a knit vase embedded in a concrete block and an artfully heaped pile of chairs. Downhill from there, as we hurry past a sofabed skewered with a fluorescent light, a giant mobile of construction debris, a clump of neon tube trees. Basically, it's a lame collage here and a pile of sundry stuff there.

The top floor is the library and has some nice windows and a bunch of Internet terminals. I find these attempts to integrate Internet and museums awkward at best, but at least the views through the mesh are nice.

Oh, I liked the bright green color inside the elevators.

So, it'll be a nice place to visit on Thursday nights (when it's free) when there are better shows to be seen.

London, Fall 1982

Yesterday I thought of Reinhardt, as I do every once in a while. I met him while spending my junior year in London. It was a great year, filled with tons of theater (well, theatre), great friends crowded into a pricey but really spiffy flat, and some limits pushed. Testing my newfound outness, I went to the open meeting of a theater group called Consenting Adults in Public. I think I'd seen a notice in Time Out, or perhaps City Limits. Anyway, I rode my flea market bicycle, Fish, to a charmless concrete community center in North London. (Yes, I'm afraid I was exactly the sort of twenty-year-old who names his bicycle.) I joined a handful of scraggly sorts pushing the few broken classroom chairs against the wall and then we sat in a circle to discuss plans past and present. I think they were surprised by my showing up at what was really just an organizational meeting, but being British, they managed to hide any reaction to me, pro or con. Discussion focused on a recap of the previous month's performance of skits at a street fair, and then some vague suggestions for future activities. I didn't need to see any of the skits to know that the crew at CAIP lacked any special talents. Still, I was determined to make the most of my brave first step.

So when Andy invited me home for dinnerI said sure, hopped on Fish, and off I went to Islington, then a rather raunchy neighborhood, now nothing but luxe condos. Andy was several firsts for me: my first encounter with British teeth (it's true, it's all true) and my first visit to a squat. He lived in a ramshackle series of dirty rooms with three or four mates. The only one I remember clearly is Reinhardt, a German leather dude who loafed around the flat in his dungeon gear, sneering. At one point I opened a dresser drawer and found it packed full with handcuffs, leather straps, and so on. As I was trying to determine the usage for a particularly mysterious pair of metallic doohickeys, Andy came over and shut the drawer, reassuring me with a simple "That's Reinhardt's."

So there I was feeling quite pleased with myself, heretofore sheltered Shaker Heights/Hamilton boy with both eyes wide open in the strange new world of a gay squat in Islington! I recall smart slacker debates about books and poetry, piles of papers sliding every which way when you walk down the hallways (the apartment seemed to be more than half hallway, with tiny rooms sticking off here and there like polyps), broken but functional furniture, innovative cooking techniques, and lots of unwashed crockery. We ate supper family-style at a large table, and I was in full-on observer mode, which I use to feel participatory without actually participating. Alas, Reinhardt saw through that guise rather easily, and when Andy offered me seconds of some sort of rice stew, Reinhardt glared at me and snapped "Fuck him if he's too shy to take it himself."

But Reinhardt turned out to have a sweet side, too. The next morning he brought everyone in the house tea in bed, going from room to room, perching next to each of our tatty mattresses on the floor, setting down a fresh cup of tea. The fact that he wasn't wearing pants or underwear probably did more to wake me up than the tea.

But when I say that I thought of Reinhardt, surprisingly, that's not the image that springs to mind. No, I always see him as he was after dinner, trussed into a black harness, belly slightly protruding, buckles and metal loops all over the place, thick legs pushed into well-worn leather pants, de rigeur Doc Martins. But the outfit's only half of the picture, because what really makes him memorable, even this many years later, is what he was doing in that get up. I've always wondered if maybe Reinhardt was in England because he wasn't quite German enough for Germany, despite his lederman vibe and his love of restraints. Because Reinhardt was sitting in the best chair in the squat (the only one with any upholstery left in it), contentedly knitting.

An Odd Thing to Put on Cheese

Someone (presumably Pete) at our local grocery has a curious idea of marketing. Here's the label he put on a tasty item that was on special this week. 

Penguin Joke

No comment needed, I suppose. Fun on so many levels, all of them vulgar... (But I'll just add that my favorite phrase is "poor little guy.")

Spin, Baby, Spin

It's cold outside and I'm not fond of running in tights, so I'm back to taking spinning classes. No, not like this:



More like this:



The bikes have weighted wheels, which add momentum to the spin. There's a teacher who tells you what to do, hopefully pushing you harder than you'd do on your own.

Ann finds Spinning too dweeby for words. In Concord, apparently all of the Spinners are taut type-A women, scrawny of limb and of spirit, trying hard to push all of the femininity out of their sharpened bodies. I prefer to think of it as what Lance might be doing on the off-season.



Which reminds me of a story Gary told me. A British poet named John Betjeman was at a pub with some writer friends who were joshing him for his extreme reserve, noting the nearly complete absence of sex in his poems. He demurely accepted the leg-pulling, but the following week, he gigglingly said that he'd written something very dirty indeed. "In fact, it might be the dirtiest poem ever written," he suggested. Here it is:

I think that I should rather like
To be the seat upon a bike.

(I realize that anecdote works much better without a picture of a naked Lance Armstrong immediately preceding it, but it's too late now. Just try to imagine you hadn't seen the picture. It'll be more amusing.)

Now, obviously, spinning class depends a lot on the teacher. My favorite is Jack, a Broadway chorus boy who plays cheerful disco classics and often signs along. Earlier this week, we had a substitute, who was also good, more military in style ("8-Go!-7-Go!-6 and 5-Go!-4-Go!-3-Go!- 2 and 1") and quite challenging. Alas, the Thursday teacher really gets under my craw. I was hoping that after 2 months away, they'd have given the class to someone else. No such luck.

He's a New Age flake who uses the class as an opportunity to spread his get-in-touch-with-yourself malarky. He'll say things like "connect with the multi-layered experience," or "Don't do what I say; become the embodiment of the instructions" or "I want you to slowly, almost intimitately increase the resistance. Only everything is delivered in a skin-crawling reptilian drawl, so it sounds like this: " I waaant youuuu to slooooowly, almost iiiiiiiintimately increeeease the resistanccccce." Worse, he walks around the class, giving individual tips. Nothing useful, like "your shoulders are too rigid" or "spin faster, lazybones." No, he gives each of us a botched mantra, like "Become the texture of the wheel." He stands too close and you can feel his breath, which in this case is not a good thing.

And his music sucks, too. A long loop of droney throbs, including--really--a techno remix of the Flower Duet from Lakme.

I may have to just use the treadmill on Thursdays...

Hype and Circumstance

Sometimes the hype gets it right. Went to a great concert last night, the last night of Gustavo Dudamel's debut with the New York Philharmonic. He's a very young conductor (26) from Venezuela who learned music through a remarkable public education program known as El Sistema, that has taught more than 270,000 poor kids from tough barrios. Dudamel conducts the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (with whom he made an apparently triumphant Carnegie Hall debut earlier this year). In 2009, Dudamel's going to become conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.



The concert began with a charming 13-minute curtain raiser by a Mexican composer named Carlos Chávez. Lots of percussion and energy, which suits Dudamel's dramatic style. But it was a mere trifle compared to the tremendous version of Dvorak's Violin Concerto with violinist Gil Shaham. OK, lots of the credit goes to Shaham, who is simply terrific. He has a relaxed virtuosity that allows you to relax and enjoy his glorious sound and skittering technique. But he also has an extremely generous nature and was clearly enjoying working with Dudamel. Whenever he wasn't playing, he stood back a step and gave an I-have-the-best-seat- in-the-house smile while watching Dudamel's bouncing flourishes and pounces. The two of them together really did make a joyful noise. (OK, Dvorak helped. He's my pet composer and almost never disappoints. But his great pieces, and this is one, are melodically stirring and soulful in a way that confirms and heightens the power of folk music.)

I hadn't heard Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony before. It definitely fits the "fifth is a winner" pattern established by so many composers (Beethoven, Tchaikovsky,Shostakovitch). Great, pounding floods of music, again, well-suited to Dudamel's energetic passion. The first act ends with a section that is rock-music loud and so cathartic that you could feel the whole audience sitting on their hands to keep from giving the ovation it deserved (sometimes the rules of classical music are too restrictive. Honestly, it would have felt good to clap there, even though it would have broken the unity of the piece.) The orchestra gets a work out as it swerves from rapid, jittery passages intoelegiac lines (it was written near the end of World War II) and then into an elated, skipping finale. It was a great piece, and Dudamel clearly carried the orchestra with him.

It'll be very interesting to see where he goes from here.

Winter + Dog

Fall ended abruptly and the dog's pretty happy about it. Every winter on the first snowfall we all tromp a block away to the small and neglected Gertrude Kelly park. No dogs allowed (Both Bobby and I have had run-ins with the Park Police there). I take the same pictures every year. Here are some from this year's batch.



In the little display on the camera, this photo seemed promising--I thought it looked like Aggie was attacking Bobby. Alas, actual size it looks more like she's falling on him--or glued to his jacket...

Ghastly Genius

Just heard this gem from 1966 for the first time. The song is nothing special until it gets to the title hook, which is a simple couplet that is both incredibly awkward and instantly memorable:

you're so mystifyingly glad
I'm Mr. Dieingly sad.

The tortured syntax and that ugly ugly adverb (luckily, when you listen to "dieingly," you can understand it; when you read it, it looks like a typo or a Jumble puzzle waiting to be anagramed into the correct answer... Why'd they go with that weird spelling, instead of "dyingly"? Well, that looks weird, too, i guess.) The internal rhyme of "mysti-" and "Mister" would be clever if it weren't clumsy, forced, and fakey. And yet...

Here's the original group, The Critters (named, yes, after the breakfast cereal Crispy Critters), with their big hit, "Mr. Dieingly Sad." Like a great car wreck, I can't keep myself away.



The video is as dull as the song, but it does have charming youths from another era (the young are always more charming when they aren't contemporary) and some amusing subtexts. Watch the poor sap trying to clap energetically to what is essentially a dirge. He keeps looking around as if to say “Come everyone, clap along!” and later “Hey, why aren’t you clapping too, kids?” and then, finally, “Damn it, I started this song clapping and that’s how’s going to end it, because otherwise I’d look silly, do you hear me, silly.”

Where I'm Going With This...

As I consider what this blog will be from NY, one of the obvious formats would be a critical forum posting my thoughts on the many shows I see here (about 50 a year these days, not counting concerts, movies, readings and so on). But I don't wanna. Here's why.

Two nights ago I saw the new play by a downtown writer/director I admire a lot. His early works were some of the best I've seen in the last decade or so, formally inventive and really exciting. But lately he's been going down a bum road. Where once he found intriguing depth in the banal, colloquial verbiage of daily life, nowadays he's exploring a sticky poetic dialogue that's a pretty hard slog. I just don't think it's his strength. I respect him for trying to break out of what had become a reliable formula, but I hope he finds a new direction soon. (And I've still enjoyed the recent plays OK, they just haven't had many of the sweet shocks of his earlier stuff.)

And last night I saw a pretty good play that got better and worse in the second act. The writing came together nicely, but a crucial performance took a serious nosedive. As a result, what had been a prettyimmersive experience became one of those annoying bi- or tri-level evenings. Instead of just watching one good play, I wound up watching the play being presented by a good (minus one) cast, and then imagining the play as it was written, as well as how it might have been with a knock-out performance in that role. In the end, I was mostly satisfied, but not transported.

If I were going to write up blog entries about those two plays, I'd have to name names and air my disappointments and regrets, and I just don't want to do that. Here's where I'll get as New Age-y as you'll ever hear me. Refunfuño notwithstanding, I hate the idea of adding any more negativity to printed world. I don't mind at all sharing a poisonous opinion among friends, or even in an e-mail, but posting it here ("publishing" it, for what it's worth) feels like adding another twig to the bitchy inferno we call home. Or, to mix my metaphors, I feel as if negative writing gets packed into spiritual suitcases we all have to schlep with us wherever we go.

So,I'll leave this blog for commenting on oddities, noting my occasional (and probably ill-founded) insights, and extolling things I like, which, of course, could be a play or a movie or a book or whatever. And, yes, I'll keep complaining about things that get under my craw, but most of them probably won't have names attached (though whoever designed that stupid NYC Taxi logo might be exempt from my negativity ban. Sometimes you just have to fan the fire...)

Still Fall

Some pics from a lovely walk across Central Park on Saturday after visiting the Met with Ann, Stona, Amelia, and Claire (Miguel gave us a very nice highlights tour, including the as-spectacular-as-advertised gilded panels from Ghiberti's doors). A very late fall has cheered me up—I was resigned to missing most of it while I was in S. America. Turns out, it's just beginning to lose steam now.

While I Was Gone

Lots of small changes in just six weeks away from New York. Since most of them are far from improvements, this will likely be another post to justify my blog name.

A hideous new logo for New York taxis has been slapped onto most of the fleet. It's a horrible jumble of typefaces and consumerism, a feeble attempt to brand NY Taxis (as if they needed branding) and make them more consumer-cuddly.



I wouldn't mind so much if the logo were any good, but it's awful too spacey, unhip and unattractive, with type that manages to look out of focus and too severe at the same time. Dozens of designers, from pro to amateur, have submitted designs much, much better than this one, which looks to be a sad result of design-by-committee, in which everyone's input was considered and accounted for, resulting in this ghastly set of compromises that achieve nothing. (Just change a few of the nouns and I could easily be writing about the textbook industry...)

This is, or rather, was Macondo, the last Spanish bookstore around.



Five months ago, there were two Spanish bookstores on 14th Street. Now there are none. Lectorum (owned by Scholastic) closed this summer and now, the smaller Macondo shut it's doors on November 1st. It had been clearly dying for quite a while (apparently they hadn't paid their rent in 10 months), but both stores fell victim to two obvious trends: the delatinization of the neighborhood (which used to be very Spanish, oh, about 20 years ago) and the fact that nobody reads books anymore, regardless of the language. This space will probably be another nail salon or pocket bank by early 2008.

On the not-so-bad-but-was-it-neseccary? shelf we have the new storefront placed onto the local deli where Bobby buys his coffee soda. It's glass and modern and makes the place look sort of like an aquarium. I can't imagine that it's really going to improve the traffic in there (it's already pretty busy), but it's not an eyesore. Though I am sad they got rid of a metal bar that made for a very conventient dog-hitching post.



And yes, some changes are actually for the good. They added an interesting new bike line on 9th avenue. By moving the row of parked cars away from the curb, they created a safe, protected bike line with metal rods separating the parked cars from the bikes.



Instead of regular parking meters, there are these muni-meters, which accept coins (at last, a use for those pesky Sacajewa dollars) and charge cards. It only goes from 23rd St. to 16th, which is about a minute and a half if you don't hit a red light, but still, it's progress.

El Día de Accion de Gracias

The Spanish translation of Thanksgiving cracks me up. It seems so focused on the physical: "The Day of the Act of Thanking" But also, because I never really think about the literal meaning of the word Thanksgiving. Just a word.

Nonetheless, it was a very nice night, with good food and good friends. Here's how the apartment looked before we were ten. (Bobby and me; Ann, Stona, Amelia, and Claire; Miguel and Carter; Gary and Stephen) (Eleven counting the barky barky dog who also managed to break a glass with her tail, though happily, not a very nice one.)



The brined turkey turned out well. I hacked it apart using the Times butchering method, to mixed results. Basically, you cut everything off the bones first, then slice it. The idea being that you get more meat and slicing against the grain is better. It was easy and fun to do, but to slice across the grain, you have to cut quite thick slices, or they'll fall apart. I sort of miss the traditional, thinner turkey slices. It was great for the dark meat, though, so maybe next time I'll hack off the thighs, and then do the rest conventionally.



Pumpkin pie and apple tart by me, pecan pie by Stephen with the assistance of the pastry chef at the restaurant (Veritas) where he words. She had extra filling. Very tasty. (He also scored some appetizers--salmon tartar and an extraordinarily tasty pate with duck breast, foie gras, pork belly, and some other stuff.)



I have a long history of forgetting to put out at least one dish. This year it was the cranberry sauce that sat in the fridge, waiting patiently. Ah well. Not as tragic as the year I made three kinds of cookies as well as fudge for the holidays and then left them all in a box in the kitchen while Bobby, the dog, and I drove to Cleveland. I realized about two hours into the journey and seriously considered turning around...

I don't like taking photos during events, and I don't do it well. Anyway, here's one shot Ann took of Bobby, Claire, and me later in the evening. Amelia's legs featured in the lower right.

From Casa to Home

Smooth trip back to NY. One final communication failure with my driver on the way to the airport, just to keep me from feeling too cocky about my Spanish comprehension (about which I was feeling fairly good this time 'round). When we pulled into the airport, he asked me something, so I replied "American." He looked confused and asked again. I repeated "American," trying to enunciate more clearly. Well and good if he'd been asking me what airline I was flying, but less helpful when he was actually asking if I'd like to pay...

Here's one corner of my Buenos Aires garden as I left it.



And here's a spiky plant I bought this on impulse from stall on Corrientes.



And here's the surprise that greeted me in our garden in NY.



Our Japanese maple has been thriving for the last couple of years, since we repotted it, but it's never had a very impressive fall display. The color is usually a sort of yellowy tan that might not be out of place on a tasteful woman's suit, but is a bit dreary for a garden. Well, this year, it's putting on quite a spectacular show.

Here's another view of the garden, which is surprisingly greenish for November.



It's nice to be home, tho I miss Bs As, too. My bifurcated life requires regular readjusting, but I think that's for the best, actually. Keeps the brain humming. Or at least annoyed, which is nearly as good.

Chau, Baires

Back to NY this evening. Here's the place I'm saying goodbye to, for now, for those of you who haven't see it. Our door is the one on the left.



Had an excellent week of goodbye dinners and lunches with my porteño pals. Victoria's forgiven me for my crush on Alejandra, and Martha and Micky and Martha's niece (Aldana?) and I actually cracked the Clarin crossword puzzle, which was quite an accomplishment. (More on Spanish puzzle solving to come in a later post.)

Diego and Alejandra were talking about me (she remembers me!) and by way of a compliment, he told me that they both agreed I'm not nearly as stupid as I sound. That is, when I speak Spanish with my terrible accent, one's inclined to think I'm a dolt, but if you can get past the excruciating sounds, you'll find only a semi-dolt underneath. I'm pretty sure that's the word he used, terrible. I might need to work on that. But I'll focus on the compliment side, for now, and not think about the rest.

And I'm now officially in contact with Gabo Ferro. Wrote to him via his website and he wrote back right away. He'll be in California next February/March. So my new sideline as a booking agent is off and running. If anyone reading this has any contacts at Joe's Pub, let me know.
(Actually, my sister might already have a semi-connection for me to follow-up on. Thanks, Ann!)

Next post from NY. See ya there.

Leaving Town

I've been awfully gabby lately, so just some pics today. I leave tomorrow. Don't know what will happen to this blog when I'm back in old New York.

Overlaps

It's a big city, but a small world. Lots of overlaps and synchronicities this week.



I figure I know about 50 of the 2.7 million people here in Buenos Aires, so it was a surprise to run into Diego and Jesus on the street three corners from home. But then, I've read that statistically speaking, it's extremely probable that some extremely improbable things will happen—you just can't predict which ones. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that even within my very tiny circle, some of the separations turn out to be much fewer than six degrees. It turns out I'm in trouble with one of my regular blog readers, of whom I estimate there are five. Remember my crush on Alejandra, the actress? Well, it turns out that she's an ex-girlfriend of the ex-husband of my good friend Victoria. Oh dear. (Hi, Victoria. Love ya lots!)

(My actresses post seems to have caused friction in various circles near and far. My sister subtly suggested--well, said-- that she didn't care to hear (or read) anything at all about me having crushes on exotic foreign actresses. Meanwhile back here in the Southern Hemisphere, Alejandra's husband apparently wanted some reassuring that this yanqui plays for the other team...)

Surprising coincidences aren't restricted to the physical world--they can happen in the brain, too. At that Oliverio Girondo symposium I went to on Monday, they did some poetry reading. I could follow enough to get some of the imagery, but let's face it, it's hard to keep paying attention to poetry even when you speak the language. So after a poem or two, my mind was wandering. But I get points for the fact that it was staying on topic. I was working on a concrete poem I have in mind that is much more fun to think about than it would be to read. It's nothing more than a list of Spanish words I like. Of course, refunfuñar makes the cut. So do desafortunadamente, mamotreto, paracaídas, nunca, ronronear, latido, chupapijas, tragaluz, esmalte, and pulular. (Only one of those is dirty, though I suspect that if you don't know Spanish, several of them sound a bit saucy.) But at this moment, I was reconsidering the position of felpudo. And just as I was thinking "Now that's a great word, it should be up at the top of the list, maybe even the title" I tune back into the poetry reading and what do I hear? The reader actually says felpudo! I'm not making this up. And it's not like it has some common, general meaning that would occasion its use in lots of poetry—like, say, because, sunset, or feeling. It means doormat!

And in a less impressive but more personally-satisfying synchronicity, I met Gabo Ferro! It was at an appealing event called Confesionario (Confessional), in which two guests and one musician are casually interviewed about their private lives. I love the idea, although the confessor, Cecilia Szperling, wasn't nearly as probing as I'd have liked. She was quite content sticking with amusing anecdotes, as opposed to actually digging for private sins and public embarrassments, which is what the concept really begs for. Anyway, Gabo chatted and sang a half dozen songs or so. It was in a tiny venue, about 70 seats, so it was easy to just go up and chat with him after. I've been thinking lately about how much I want to hear him sing in New York, specifically at Joe's Pub, which would be the ideal place for him. So I say Hi, love your work, want you to sing in NY, and the first thing he says is that's he's been trying to get into Joe's Pub! OK, it's not crazy amazing, but he kissed me twice (greeting and parting), which is much more important.

Needless to say, at the Carlos Fuentes reading I attended last night, I neither spoke with the reader afterwards nor received two kisses from him. Some wildly improbable events are just that and nothing more.

!Ay!

Let's time travel back to October 5. It's the second night of the Blue Coyote production of Departures and I'm out at South's bar with the gang afterwards, congratulating them on another show well done. The food there is always surprisingly tasty, so when Gary offers me a sip of his hot soup, I say sure. I have two immediate responses: a) Mmmmm, tasty, and b) Ouch! What is that searing, stabbing pain shooting through one of my teeth?

Well, the pain went away about as quickly as it arrived, but since then I've been having off and on problems with that tooth. It's been sensitive to hot and cold, making eating helado a mixed blessing—not that I've let a little hurt stop me from even one delicious mouthful of pain-inflicting goodness. The tooth eventually got bad enough that I actually hassled Silvana, my friend who's a dentist in Haedo, to look at it a few weeks ago. She did, x-ray and all, and found no particular cause for alarm--no hidden infection, just a sensitive tooth. Just another indignity of aging. She gave me lots of free samples of sensitive tooth toothpaste.

Jump forward last night, when my lingering tooth pain apparently decides it has been a back-seat presence long enough. ¡Ay! is Spanish for ouch, as in: ¡Ay! It's midnight and my damned tooth hurts! or ¡Ay¡ It's 3:30 and I still can't sleep with this pound-pound-pounding! or !Ay¡ Good morning, torcaza, you stupid — ¡Ay! — bird!

So I called Silvana and she wonderfully said to come see her a lunchtime today. I hopped on the train to Haedo (it's about 3o minutes to the West).



You'll notice that there's no charming old rusted sign at the Haedo train station. That's because a couple of years ago, local juvies burned the station down in a small riot over poorly managed trains. This is one of the reasons Silvana and Adrian don't, in general, like the idea of me taking the train to Haedo. But it's quite safe and unriotlike during off-peak hours. You do need to choose your train car a bit carefully, though. Some of them don't have any seats at all. At rush hour, these get completely jammed from wall to wall and beyond with people like cattle on their way to...never mind. Just get on a car with seats.



So Silvana picks me up at the station and drives me the few blocks to the lovely consultorio she shares with her father.



Her mom is also a dentist, as are her brother and sister-in-law. I think there's another dentist in the family, too, but I forget who it is. I'm a bit apprehensive about my first Argentine root canal, but it goes quite down OK. Well, I could have lived without the first part, where they had to cut off the old crown to get at the bad stuff underneath, but after that, it was smooth going. Silvana's definitely the sweetest dentist I've ever had, cosntantly apologizing for every small twinge or pressure.

Here are my dentists. ¡Muchísmas gracias, Silvana y Enrique!



Anyway, you learn all sorts of interesting things having an emergency dental procedure in a foreign country. Like: you can just walk into a pharmacy here and ask for antibiotics without a prescription. And the Spanish words for root canal, throbbing pain, rotten tooth pulp, and don't be such a baby.

On the Bus

I haven't taken a taxi since Bobby left town almost 4 weeks ago. They aren't expensive by US standards, but once you get used to paying for things in pesos, it seems silly to pay 10 pesos for a trip that costs 80 centavos by bus or 70 by subway. (Taxi fares went up this week, actually, though I don't know by how much. I imagine it's not enough to make any difference at all to tourists.)

I'm learning to navigate the bus lines a bit more smoothly, and had as real breakthrough moment last weekend when I could actually help a local woman figure out which bus line to take.

Here's the #1 Colectivo, which I saw for the first time this weekend. Look at that amazing, fat, chunky #1. Yes, at first it's almost unrecognizable as a number, but in context (every bus has a number there, so you know it's a number) it's quite beautiful.



Once you're on-board, the ride is an always-entertaining combination of lurching, listing, and turning sharply down tight corners into narrow streets that will never accommodate a bus but somehow do. Sometimes the squealing brakes and wheezing hydraulics of the doors opening and closing can be almost as annoying as, say, a twittering torcaza at 4:45 in the morning. (Ahem. It's 5:01 right now and guess who, despite a dark plodding rain, just started up? Good morning, idiot bird.)

For all of their physical irregularities, it's surprising that the only actual malfunctioning I've seen has been with collection boxes, which seem to be the colectivo's Achilles' heel. On one trip, one or two customers were having trouble getting change. The driver tried in vain to help them out. One young guy couldn't pay because of the problem, so walked into the back anyway. At the next stop, a uniformed bus agent got on and started collecting tolls manually. I have no idea how he knew to come—I guess the driver must have called or signalled him somehow, but it seemed to happen too quickly. Perhaps the problem had been going on for some time, although I'd been on the bus for ten minutes or so and the fare box had been fine for all of that time. The collector (at the driver's prompting) even hunted down the young guy to get his 80 centavos.

Today I was riding home from Malba, the nice modern art museum, having seen an interesting round-table discussion and poetry reading about Oliverio Girondo. I'm very pleased to have discovered a bus (102) that takes me practically from my door to the steps of the museum. I have a seat on the way home, which is a luxury. There aren't that many people because I had just missed the bus a few minutes ahead of us. After about 10 minutes, a guy tries to pay his fare and can't. The driver hits a button, but it's no good. Another person gets on, and can't pay the fare. At the next stop, the driver lets a few people off, but waves off the three or four people waiting to get on. They don't even look too angry, so I guess this happens a lot. (Well, one of them did look pretty peeved, actually.) The driver then reaches over and pulls out a cardboard sign that says "Máquina Fuera De Servicio," which he now waves at every stop, leaving behind quite a lot of people to wait for the next bus (they come irregularly, but quite frequently. Sometimes you'll see three or four of the same bus line in rapid succession.) So for the rest of the ride, he's just decanting passengers, I guess until the end of the line when they'll try to fix the máquina.

And speaking of buses, I have something horrendous to show you. Shield your eyes if you're aesthetically sensitive.



Oh, the horror. This started happening last year. In the name of progress, some bus lines have traded in their stunning traditional graphics for ghastly modern digital displays. One look at that soulless blot of light and I might as well be in the Bronx.

(Speaking of which, the chic neighborhood here is Palermo. Over the years, it has expanded to included regions now called Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood by many. Amusingly, the newest extension has renamed a chunk of what used to be Villa Crespo as Palermo Queens.)

Mine

Let's take a little stroll over to my bookshelf, shall we? ¡Dios mio! What's this?



Why, that looks like Victoria's copy of The Buenos Aires Affair, doesn't it? In my bookshelf? Did I steal it after all? No! Its mine, mine, mine.

It turns out, blogging can be practical, too. Or at least it can help you satisfy your unnecessary, greedy desires. While I was writing my first post on this book, I tried to find a picture of the edition that's currently available. Well, I never found one that was big enough to include here, but while surfing, I accidentally hit the jackpot. I found several booksellers here selling that very edition. So I surfed around some more and found copies for sale from 40 to 90 pesos. The 40-peso copy was for sale at DeRemate.com, which is the local Ebay. As in most seemingly simple transactions here, it required dauntless perseverance (and a little deceit), but I did it! To register at the site, you actually need a DNI, which is like an Argentine social security number. I don't have one. I tried using my SSN on the registration form, but that didn't work. Now, I now that DNIs have only 8 digits, so I tried again, using my SSN but without the last digit. Success! Well, sort of. My account was active for one day only, until they realized something was up and told me I'm suspended until I correct info in my profile. But ha ha ha, it's too late. I already made it through to the seller.

The auction system is different from Ebay in that after the auction is over, you arrange payment and delivery directly with the seller. Going to his place to pick it up and paying him there seems to be the most common option (and the most convenient for me). Turns out, the seller is a book store in—irony, you saucy fellow you—Caballito, about ten minutes from Victoria's house.

I took the beautiful old wooden A-line subway to pick up my booty. Here I am there, looking smug.



It's a charming place with the mandatory bookstore cat heavily asleep on top of the computer monitor. Cat slightly rouses to give an aloof OK to my scritching. The bookseller gets my book—Yes! I want it!—and then I notice that inside the front cover, the price is marked as 20 pesos. Hmmm. I guess there's a rather steep buyer's premium for being sucker enough to use the Internet. I sniff around the shop, but one lust object is enough today, so I go to pay, and he just asks for the 20 pesos. Oh joy—I got the girl and she's a cheap date, too. How do I feel? Call it smug².

(Actually, my copy has a very slight oil stain in the white background field to lower left, so it's a tiny bit less perfect than Victoria's. Luckily, I haven't noticed that.)

Actresses and Me

What is it about actresses that makes them so exciting to be around?

I was heading for a fall. Thursday night I went to see El pasado, the not-especially-good new Gael Garcia Bernal (from Y tu mama también) movie, and even though I found it annoyingly cryptic, I was very pleased to understand a huge percentage of it, even on a word-for-word level. So last night, I was deeply humbled when I went to see a show with Diego that his friends were involved with. The pre-show scene was chaos--huge crowd waiting in small hallway. I couldn't understand anything (background noise kills me) and everybody knew everybody else which meant--aargh!--comic repartee. They might as well have been speaking Tagalog. The show started at least half an hour late and turned out not to be a play but a band playing songs that apparently have intellectually piercing lyrics, not that I could tell with the predictably lousy sound mix—even the song sung in English went by in a garbled blur. What was left was OK, but a bit heavy on the clowning and circusy beats for my taste. Afterward, of course, more mingling, during which people--rats!--started trying to talk to me. I pulled through, but felt about as exciting as a cardboard box.

So, I was fearful of the group-dinner-after, but it turned out to be lovely because there were just four of us (I'd been expecting a long table of 20, which always makes me claustrophobic after half an hour or so), Diego, myself, his actress friend Alejandra, and one of her acting students, Sergio. We went to El Cuartito, a well-known Pizza joint, and now that I could actually hear people, I fall quickly under Alejandra's thumb. In moments, I become one of her admirers, hanging on her fluid gestures and quickfire expressions, jostling with the other boys for her attention, which she gives generously and completely. She has that way of looking at you when she's talking that makes you feel loved. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've felt it before with other actresses. Your mind is shouting "Snap out of it, sap—you're nothing special. She looks that way at everybody" but you tell your mind to shut up and think of something clever to say to her. Of course, I'm at a handicap, because she's very verbal and quick-witted. Although I miss huge swatches of her pun-filled banter with Diego, I can nonetheless admire its pace and timing. Even so, she liked at my torcaza imitation, so I'm still in play here. (Good lord, is that me doing bird calls to get attention? So it seems.) Sergio's sitting next to me, facing her, and I don't have to even look at his face to feel his puppy-dog attention, not sexual, but eager to follow her anywhere.

We get to talking more about theater, I'm relaxing a bit more, putting together better sentences, saying things that I actually believe as opposed to things that I know how to say. And voila, I'm now feeling more like myself in Spanish than I ever do. Her energy is contagious and so, apparently, is her self-confidence.

(Here's her pic from the local theater website.)



Still, as if I needed proof that her attention has nothing to do with me, at the end of the meal she orders coffee and is told by the somewhat stiff waiter that they don't serve it. She complains, but in such a charming way that she turns what should be an annoying customer grievance into a playful and affectionate first date. He clearly wants to be indifferent, but he can't. She's doesn't give him the option.

How smitten am I? While she was in the john, the three of us had decided to order a ham and pepper pizza. She came back and preferred a calabrese. They explained to me what that is, but I didn't catch it at all. Still, I'm not fussy pizza-wise, and it was clear that all of us wanted to make Alejandra happy. Turns out, it's got thin-sliced sausage, tomato, and garlic. It was very good. I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering a lot of calabrese pizzas from here on. Tasty, yes, but she likes it, too.

Earning My Title

I've heard complaints (well, one) that while occasionally engaging, my blog is poorly named because, bread and cheese notwithstanding, I'm not actually doing all that much grumbling. So OK, refunfuño it is.

It's a mostly gray, mostly rainy day here. As a treat, I decided I'd go back to the Oliverio Girondo show I liked so much to take a guided tour they have on Friday's at 4:30. The subway was late-arriving and crowded (it always crowded nowadays. I don't know what happened, but a lot more people seem to be taking the subway lately). So by the time I got off, I had to hurry. Of course, I walked in the wrong direction, thanks to a street sign that was exactly 90 degrees out of whack. I figured that out fast enough, turned around, hurried to the museum, and arrived just a minute or two late. I knock on the door (because they lock it all the time, even when the museum's open. You knock, they let you in, then they lock it right behind you, I guess in case you're tempted to make off with the art.) and the desk clerk lets me in. I ask about the tour. "The guide didn't show up." No explanation, and clearly no expectation that she's likely to arrive any time soon.

So much for my afternoon treat.

On to a more personally wounding grouse. I finally wrote an e-mail to Marcelo Damiani, the professor of that literature class I'm taking. We never get to speak during class, but he did say once that if we wanted, we could write to him. So after the Kafka class, I actually had something somewhat interesting I wanted to mention. I spent quite a while crafting what I thought was a suitably compelling and fairly error-free e-mail and pushed send, imagining the beginning of a sporadic but writerly e-mail exchange in which he and I banter ideas about whatever books happen to be inspiring us at the moment. You know, just a once-in-a-while tossing-around of ideas among peers. So I waited patiently for his response. Which never came. During the next class I listened alertly for a wee reference to the topic I'd mentioned. Nope. After class, while he was talking with Martha, he parenthetically apologized to me for not answering my post, and then immediately complained that he gets 30 to 40 e-mails a day.

So much for our great correspondence.

And speaking of grousing, Bobby complains that I don't mention him enough in this blog. There.

Axel Krygier

I saw this guy last April on a free double bill with Juana Molina. He was earnest, but as often happens, he pushed his live set toward a sort of crowd-pleasing bland rockiness. I like this video better. Cool combination of angsty strings, wheezy horns, theremin, and a mopey, dopey minotaur.



I won't translate the whole thing: here's the gist:
I'm having fun with with some friends when all of a sudden I understand the weight and horror of being alive. Feeling. Thought. Thought. Feeling. (It rhymes in Spanish: sentimiento/pensamiento) What torment. I could be begging with my heart clearly bleeding, but my mind keeps playing around. Seems like it's making fun of me. Feeling. Thought. etc.

Taunt the Tourist

I was at my favorite flea market in Dorrego and saw this charming little beat-up planter. It's a set of Spanish tiles stuck onto a cement box. The tiles are real and were really nice once, but as objects go, it's a bit crummy. I wanted it anyway. So I asked the price and nobody knew whose it was (or wanted to admit that it was theirs). Finally a kid went off to ask someone. I'd set 100 pesos as my absolute limit, not wanting to spend that much, but I know that individually Spanish handpainted tiles go for quite a lot. Well, when they're not stuck on a cement block, anyway.

So the kid comes back and says "200 pesos." My heart sinks, and I sort of look glum/thoughtful, trying to justify the ridiculous price. After a few moments he gleefully says "¡Mentira! ¿No te parecía mucho?" ("I'm lying! Didn't that seem like a lot to you?) The real price was 30 pesos. So I bought it and schlepped it home on the subway (for a tiny pot, it's heavvvvvvvvy).

I decided to leave the mint plant and weed it came with for now (I repotted them with new dirt), so it looks a bit spare. I expect that when I come back at the end of March, it will be a lush green wonder. And the tiles will have repaired themselves, too.

Change

I've always been intrigued by this sign on my street corner (above one of the old pharmacies) for the Argentine Institute of Diving.



Alas, Professor Tito Rodriguez seems to have hit hard times, because here's what the sign looks like as of this week.