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...)