Armistead Maupin Lives

I really did mean to make it into Manhattan on 6/14 to buy a copy of Michael Tolliver Lives and, perhaps (if the line was not too horrible), I would get it autographed by Mr. Maupin, who has launched a multi-month book signing tour. Publishers Weekly gave the book a thumbs-up with: “Maupin denies that this is a seventh volume of his beloved Tales of the City, but—happily—that’s exactly what it is, with style and invention galore.” If Maupin is living in denial about this sequel how come he permits this quote prominently on the dust cover? Huh? Huh?

Anyway, I was joining some buds for brunch on Sunday and was early (what else?) so I ended up spending half and hour at Barnes & Noble hiding in a distant, but well lit, aisle reading the book. It’s a salute to what an easy and absorbing read it is (well, it’s also short with large print) that I got almost half way through it before I began to feel a little guilty about taking up space. Naturally I put back the copy I was reading, selected a fresh one from the bottom of the pile and whisked it through check-out.

I loved the “Tales” books when they were first published in the late 70’s and into the 80’s. I guess we all did and our fascination carried through to the television serial of the same name. Michael Tolliver was one of its most likable characters, known as “Mouse,” and this book catches up with him at the grand old age of 52 (if my math is right). Many of the gang are back and we get an update on those who stuck around; those who strayed and those who have left this mortal coil. Also we are blessed with several new characters—“characters” certainly being the correct word. So, welcome back Mrs. Madrigal and Mary Ann and Mouse; I knew ye when--don’t stay away so long next time. Oh, yeah, need I warn you? Michael Tolliver Lives is pretty homo-racy—you might want to cover your eyes during certain passages or, at least, pretend to.

Sea Food on the Rocks!

The honeymoon and marriage is over between me and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. When I started realizing that Pirates 3 seemed to be running really a long time and I began focusing on the air conditioning (damn, who knew I'd need a sweatshirt?) rather than the screen I knew that, now, our divorce is probably final, raisinettes be damned. Of course, Pirates 3 leaves some unanswered questions as to the fates of the lead characters and I'm sure the scripts for Pirates 4, 5 and 6 are well along on several cross-referenced disks. I wish I cared. Aside from some really stunning visuals, Pirates 3 just left me cold and stunned with a surfeit of incomprehensible plot turns and jump shots.

The calamari-faced Davy Jones from Pirates 2 was a favorite again and two consecutive eyepopping special effects with the Black Pearl (Jack Sparrow's pirate ship) stranded on a snow-like desert and then surfing down an incredible sandcrab dune were visual killerdillers; definitely worth the price of admission (okay, okay, get over it...it was a senior matinee).

But, again, it's heave ho 'tween me and those slimy creatures of the deep...both the two-footed flesh-and-blood kind and, well, the slimy creatures of the deep. So avast, me hearties, charge a round of rum and Pepsi (diet lime) to me blog...no ice please, and hold the rum!

The Ultimate Tchotchke?

Would you want this sitting on your mantel? I suppose it would tend to draw focus away from everything else in your library wouldn’t it? Should you redecorate? It’s Damien Hirst’s latest “concept” art and it’s on display and is for sale at a gallery in London. It’s a real skull, European (circa 1765), and it’s covered with small diamonds, including the nostrils (except for the one on the forehead, which is 52.40 carats). It cost $23.6 million to make and is on sale for $100 million, although I betcha Mr. Hirst's representatives would seriously consider a $90 million offer. I presume the teeth are the originals but that detail doesn’t seem to be covered in the publicist’s information kit. To me it is the current most expensive joke in the “art world.” If anybody actually buys this thing, and someone probably will, it will be just another nail in what I consider the coffin of my sanity.

Mr. Hirst is the dude who first came to prominence (as far as it relates to me, anyway) by pickling and suspending animals in formaldehyde. I saw the now-famous shark at the Brooklyn Museum when it was part of the Saatchi Corporation’s very controversial show there; the one that our (at the time) mayor (yes, the lovely current presidential candidate who was reborn on 9/11) tried to shut down because he was offended by a perceived sacrilegious painting that was part of the show. I wouldn’t have gone near the joint except I wanted to show my support for freedom of speech and art in general and hiked over there for that purpose. Yes, the shark smelled badly; but that’s another story and was probably part of the art; olfactory division.

I’m not sure what Mr. Hirst’s goal is here, other than to confound people like me. Maybe that’s his point. Yet another success.

I Loves Me Them Tony Awards

I guess I should say something about the Tony Awards since I’m pretty much locked into my love for theater in general and Broadway in particular. If you’re not, well, just skip along my pretty. It’s seems to be de rigueur to scoff at the Tony Awards show as being long and boring but, frankly, I always enjoy it. I’ve usually seen enough of the nominees to keep it interesting for me and I always have my favorites. I didn’t see either the Play (The Coast of Utopia) or the Musical (Spring Awakening) that won their categories but I’m sure they deserved the accolades. The only negative I have right now is that I’m still of the opinion that Raul Esparza was robbed for Best Actor in a Musical but I’m slightly mollified in thinking that the winner in that category, David Hyde Pierce, thought so too. Poor Raul…now but a footnote in the history of the Tony Awards. Maybe his next role will be the charm if, that is, he can land a television show to give him name recognition.

Eyesore of the Beholder

Yesterday I was drawn to my back window by the horrific shriek of metal on metal. My neighbor in the back was sawing down his clothes line ladder/tower with the help of his teenage son and I was transfixed by the sight for two reasons. Mainly because it looked like a highly dangerous endeavor that should be performed by professionals but, secondly, it was another reminder of what once was. These towers, easily 30 to 40 (or more) feet high, were put up at the rear of urban backyards many moons ago to be the anchor for clothes lines that stretched from several apartment stories, mostly outside the windows of a backroom which included wash tubs and basins. The usage of these clotheslines and towers started to become obsolete with the widespread ownership of indoor washers and dryers but hundreds and hundreds still exist and are pretty much a blight on the landscape since they were normally made of iron (the wooden ones are gone) which, unless maintained properly, rusted into a sculpture of foundry-art for some, and an eyesore to many. Mostly they were/are not thought of at all because, well, they’ve always been there and present generations just don’t notice.

When I first moved to NYC they were a phenomenon to me and highly intrusive and fairly annoying to the esthetic eye because they were 1) ugly and 2) not used. I must confess it was my influence back then that got my landlord to remove his and then that removal prompted the neighbor to the right to remove theirs. The neighbor to my left still uses hers once in a while even though she has functioning washer/dryers in her house.

This photo is taken from my bedroom window showing hers and the smaller one behind her (with the live-saver ring hanging from it). Sorry, gang, they are eyesores and serve no purpose. Hanging something from one of them just emphasizes this fact.

These towers were installed by digging very deep holes and encasing the legs in a ton of poured concrete. The rungs on the tower were climbed to install the clothes lines themselves and, early in my sojourn in New York, I was called upon several times to perform steeplejack duties in replacing old and frayed ropes and reels. Being a daredevil in those days I rather enjoyed the task but they were even more ugly close up and dangerously rusty even then. Getting rid of these towers is, I know, an extreme pain-in-the-butt but they are an urban phenomenon that no one should try to save. As they slowly disappear from the landscape they should not be mourned or missed but celebrated as a utilitarian relic of the past in photos and memories. The reality has got to go!

Oh, yeah, yesterday the neighbors were successful in taking down theirs even though it got kind of dicey in the last couple of seconds when it crashed to the ground, not quite at the angle planned, narrowly missing the back fence (and the teen-aged son). A round of applause greeted the success and it became obvious I wasn’t the only one watching out the window. Personally I had my cellphone clutched in my hand, 911 on my mind. Today the neighbor is serenading us with the steady thump and clank of a pick and shovel as he tries to rid himself of that huge chunk of concrete buried deep in his yard. Good luck with that. Just now I heard his son say, “No way.” Agreed.

An(1) Ti(2) Ci(3) Pa(4) Tion(5)

Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry utilizing approximately 5, 7 and 5 syllables in its three lines. The traditional haiku usually celebrated nature in all its forms, both actual and ethereal…sentimental stuff. Modern haiku celebrates every damn thing and gets assigned to college students regularly as an exercise in word manipulation and is used to curb overdone poetic eloquence. In other words, keep it simple; keep it direct and erase the word purple from your prose. Actually, the Japanese keep all 17 syllables in one line; it’s only in English that we make it three. Must be the visual.

Luckily I noticed right off the bat in the directions that the word “approximately” makes it clear that you can fudge a little bit when you screw yourself into a corner. So first I did this:

Anticipation:
Nostalgia for something
That hasn’t happened.

Then I did this:

Anticipation
Is nostalgia for something
That has yet to happen.

Of course a lot depends on how many syllables there are in the word nostalgia. Oh, well, I tried and it was all so damn serious my eyelids started to flutter.

Here is the best haiku I’ve seen in a long time. So pure, so to the point, so Peeps.

It's All About The Worcestershire

In spite of recent slightly embarrassing admissions of my proclivities for certain (edible) guilty pleasures, i.e., macaroni & cheese, canned Hormel chili and scalloped potatoes with sliced hotdogs; my number one choice is, of course, the cheeseburger. Even in the middle of the pizza capital of the world, NYC, the cheeseburger is what flows trippingly off my tongue when ordering comfort food. Consequently my interest, along with my taste buds, gets piqued when various surveys of local and nationwide eateries swim into my ken (newspapers, on-line) with a list of “best-of” restaurants and/or specialty foods, usually categorized by city and ethnicity. These lists feature “cuisine” of many different ilk but sometimes our various “comfort” foods are featured, including my sizzling favorite, the cheeseburger.

Just recently, knowing I would be in and around Ft. Myers, FL at the end of this month I went on-line to get the latest chopped meat poop and the cheeseburger winner seems to be Bubba’s Roadhouse & Saloon in Cape Coral…which I instantly penciled into my itinerary. I use a (not always reliable) rule-of-thumb in my searches and that is if you find a good steakhouse you can usually come up with a decent cheeseburger therein. But, as I said, there are pitfalls in this method so it’s best to stick with an establishment where the burger itself is king (no fast food pun intended). For instance, somewhere on that main drag between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami there’s a joint called Le Tub (it’s in Hollywood actually) that lives up to its reputation for fabulous cheeseburgers.

Oh, a slight digression, last month I read an article about the preparation of burgers and what really stuck out in the article was the suggestion that the very best burgers, at home or on the run, are made from freshly on-the-spot ground beef. Yeah, you gotta go to a butcher and watch ‘em grind up a steak for you…making sure it is properly marbled with the right amount of fat. Or you gotta haul out the Cuisinart and grind it yourself or you gotta buy or borrow a hand grinder…I suppose people still have those.

So…where was I…oh, yeah, what this blog is really about is Worcestershire sauce. The above-mentioned article included seven or eight recipes gleaned from the menus of restaurants whose reputations rest on their treatment of this luscious and cheesy American standard. What intrigued me was that almost all of the recipes included Worcestershire sauce as a mixed-in ingredient. Who knew? I thought you just splashed it on top along with any other preferred condiment (mustard anyone?). So the next time I went grocery shopping I trolled the appropriate aisle and chose the brand name I had heard of, Lea & Perrins. L&P, according to their own label, is “The Original” Worcestershire Sauce (since 1835) and the most expensive. (Well, if you can call $1.79 expensive...$1.79 sounds cheap to me.) Okay, here comes the shocker. I am not at all fond of anchovies and guess what the 4th listed ingredient is. Yeah, anchovies! Hmm…yet another “who knew?” moment. Also you should know that L&P has a slogan on the label that reads “Unwrap the Possibilities” which would normally be just grandiose, ad-agency-bull-session nonsense but, in this case, I’m ready to give it a try. Just knowing I’m ingesting some form of anchovy is a possible bad taste, taste-bud deterrent but who knows, I may love it and won’t have to wait three weeks for Bubba’s Roadhouse & Saloon. By the way, Bubba’s boasts of peanut shells on the floor as a positive décor item. Uh oh; hold the anchovies.

It's Curtains for you, my pretty (tourist)

Curtains (with a capital “C” for cliché) is a big, boisterous, noisy, middle-of-the-road Broadway musical crowd-pleaser with good singing of mediocre songs and fabulous dancing and a plot that is totally meaningless. In other words, it’s perfect tourist fodder for the summer of 2007 with a television star (David Hyde Pierce from Frazier) to give it recognition wallop. There is enough of a tourist in me to appreciate the effort, and I did like those incredible only-in-New-York hoofers in the big production numbers.

It was an enjoyable evening but the intellectual snob in me makes me glad I have that little piece of my brain that got theatrically fried seeing Journey’s End last week.

Robots Rule the World!

Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction novel in 1950 named “I, Robot” in which robots rule the world; pretty common plot now but innovative then. It didn’t take long for the reality to catch up to the fiction. My computer is a robot and is definitely the one in charge. Even as I write this there is some mysterious chuckling going on back in there and it sounds to me like multiple entities.

Last night I decided to download the latest version of Norton AntiVirus and spectacularly proved this point. I’m not the greatest computer techie, by any means, but I can read instructions fairly well and know when and where to click an icon when I’m told to. Duh. The first glitch was that my Internet Explorer wouldn’t function…which started an avalanche of troubles and a technical Catch 22. You need an internet connection to download the antivirus but the download blows out the connection. And then it started…a phone call to my own private computer bud who tried to help clear it with me (by phone). Unable to help, he finally suggested I call my server, AOL. AOL tried to help then told me to call Microsoft since Explorer is their product. At first Microsoft tried to pass the buck back to AOL but ended up suggesting I call the manufacturer of the antivirus program, Norton. I went through three separate customer service folks at Norton; I didn’t catch the name of my first helper but he passed me on to Babu (I’m not kidding) who subsequently transferred me to Rasheed . Five hours later my new antivirus is installed. I think. I hope.

Those far-away, incomprehensibly accented voices on the phone are now, in my paranoid imagination, coming from my computer and they are playing some sort of card game with 'puter chips ‘n dip and bytes of data, probably swallowed without chewing. So I am enslaved, just as you are if you’re reading this, and so are those five customer service people I talked to. Isaac was right. Both Asimov and Newton (that’s a very fuzzy joke about an iMac...get it?)

A peony for your thoughts...

Alas, the iris and the peony blooms are gone.

The golden yarrow and the blue salvia are now taking pride of place.







Up next: tiger lilies, dahlias and zinnias with a foxglove making a surprise appearance from last year (at least I think it’s a foxglove…weeds have a way of self preservation through emulative camouflage). In another month the hydrangea will dominate and, damn it all to hell, the forsythia bush/tree will need another major pruning. I love it all…the weeds, the work, the dirt, the sudden accidental self-watering of a wayward nozzle (and some not-so accidental). Like a kid in mud I love the feel and muskiness of dirty hands and knees and elbows, and even the sudden explosive sneezes from the dust and pollen helps give it all a certain satisfactory physicality. The rivulets of sweat, the muscle aches and the occasional bloody knuckle are not the negatives one might think. It all serves the end result: natural beauty and the feeling of success at achieving it. Indoor plants are okay, I guess; they are decorative and need to be fussed over, but there’s something really nice about tending to and contending with a big-city small backyard garden; a little patch of eden hidden from passersby out front. I do not grow vegetables.