Tower Power

This is pretty much what the new One World Trade Center looks like as we speak. I happened to be driving on the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan this week and was pleased to be confronted by an unblocked visual of it. I must confess to an unexpected emotional reaction; totally mixed. Pleased to see it rising and, conversely, horror remembered. For years all of the work has been underground and it was an agonizing wait for something concrete (literally) to make an appearance. It looks to me to be about 70 stories high right now and the structure seems to inch up almost daily. I suspect, but I’ve not read one word about this, they’ve covered some of the façade with glass just to create a pleasing visual to hold us over. The current estimate for completion is “the end of 2013” but I certainly wouldn’t count on that, especially when so many shameful delays toyed with our trust in the powers that be.

When finished, and the media tower on the top is in place, it will measure 1776 feet and, hopefully, provide us with the symbol we’ve been waiting for. It’s hard to be dispassionate about this building even though, frankly, it will become the tallest building in the world totally dedicated to office use, because it rises from some pretty horrible circumstances and will forever be connected with the destruction of the buildings that preceded it. It’s made of glass and steel and I just pray it provides hope instead of breaking our hearts every time we see it.

Puppet Love

Rod and Ricky, the two gay puppets from the off-Broadway production of Avenue Q got married today, the first day same-sex marriage became legal in New York. My heartfelt congratulations!

Lucian Freud 1922 - 2011

A few months ago I quizzed about 50 people regarding their choices for owning a work of art by any artist, living or dead. The total responses eventually reached 64 and I was fairly amazed by the vast variety of artists chosen; way beyond the old masters and/or impressionists that I assumed would be the favorites. Narrowing it down to just one artist was difficult for some folks but, on the other hand, several people just couldn’t come up with anybody; not being at all interested in art of any kind. It was a nice little study and proved intuitive, to me at least, about the basic psychology of my friends and acquaintances. I have mostly kept these conclusions to myself but I can almost always connect the artist dots to the people who chose them in my survey. Some people surprised me but most fit into the groove I had already dug for them.

My own choice was a common one, being Claude Monet, but I think if I had narrowed the category to modern, living artists it would have been Lucian Freud. Although I had been aware of his stuff for some time I still recall a definitive exhibit of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in about 1993 that knocked my socks off. From bucolic Monet to fleshy Freud is quite a leap I know but what can I say. His paintings had, and still have, an emotional impact on me and it’s with regret that I heard that he passed away this Wednesday. He was 88.
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Update July 23, 2011: There is a great (as in terrific) "Appraisal" of Freud by Michael Kimmelman in today's New York Times. Worth the Google.

Not My Game

I tried hard last week, I really did, to learn to like the most popular team sport in the entire world. I loyally watched the US women’s team in two games, against France and Japan, in this year’s World Cup. I learned some of the rules from newspaper coverage and the rest, I think, by osmosis by just watching. It didn’t work for me. I feel left out. There is no remedy.

The Zen of the Bobblehead

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Update August 2, 2011: This was a bit more Zen than I realized. During the building of my bobblehead I was in e-mail correspondence with its sculptor, Grace. I tried some friendly banter but she was strictly business. Now I understand. My bobblehead was delivered via FedEx and the return address is:

QMM Co. Ltd.
No. 236 IND, TUAN JIE VILLAGE
XinHja Huadu
GuangZhou, 510800
CHINA

No wonder Grace didn't understand "it's cool" or "horizontal hairline."

Mermaids…packed in water or oil?

This question somehow surfaced at brunch the other day, which reminded me that one can engage in a serious discussion about the silliest damned things. To wit: how do mermaids and mermen procreate? Is intercourse involved, or does the female just lay a bunch of eggs and the male comes along and haphazardly bombs-away like jellyfish? Or, like our seagoing mammal friends the dolphins, whales and manatees, do they actually mate? Is the human half of mer-people mammal? Also, where are the genitalia?

The general consensus was that, yes, mer-people are mammals and their sexual organs are kept safely internal in a pouch-like configuration located anatomically in the same physical area as humans. Reproduction is accomplished in the usual way. Our discussion totally fell apart when the subject of recreational anal sex was broached. Although an intriguing topic, we voted to table this issue when the eggs benedict arrived.

When in the course of human events…

“The New York Times Store, in collaboration with The Caren Archive, is proud to offer one of the most important documents in American history.” This sentence starts a full-page ad currently running in The Times and it is selling one of only six original copies of the Declaration of Independence. (I’ve always thought “original copy” was an oxymoron like “military intelligence” or “rap music” but then that’s another, more personal, subject). The asking price is $1.6 million.

The questions cascade: who the hell is The Caren Archive and how did they get this DoI in the first place? Although there is a purchaser-caveat in the body of the ad, “This genuine Declaration of Independence will be sold to the first qualified buyer;” who’s to say Al Qaeda couldn’t buy it through a legitimate go-between and then publically set a match to it in the ruins of that compound in Pakistan where he-whose-name-we-no-longer-invoke met his timely demise? Why isn’t this particular document in The Library of Congress, which doesn't have one? Where is the one copy that’s not accounted for (in the ad at least). Would I qualify as a buyer? Do you suppose I can offer $1.4 million in this flea market of important historical documents? Would it look good hanging next to the Hirschfeld etching (probably a forgery) of Charlie Chaplain I have hanging in the small bedroom? Would owning it get me laid?

Probably some of these answers can be obtained from our buds at Google but I don’t think I’ll bother. Still, it will be interesting to see who forks over this $1.6 million (or less) just for the cachet of the act of forking. Maybe some hedge-fund billionaire will take it out of petty cash and donate the document to The Library of Congress where it belongs. Doubt it.
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Update August 3, 2011: Still for sale!

Master Class

Sometime in 1995-1996 I saw the Broadway production of Terrence McNally’s Master Class, which starred Zoe Caldwell. I remember being blown away by both Caldwell and a then-unknown (by me at least) actress, Audra McDonald. They both won Tony awards for their performances.

A Broadway revival is opening this week but I was a little reluctant to see it because I didn’t want to fool with the very positive memory from 1995. But circumstance, and a little chicanery, brought me tickets for a preview performance on June 24th and I needn’t have worried. Tyne Daly is a worthy successor to Ms. Caldwell and brings her own singular pizazz to the role of Maria Callas teaching an operatic master class. The actress playing the role originated by Ms. McDonald was very good and sang beautifully (if you like that kind of singing…lol) but she doesn’t quite have that, well, that powerful and charismatic personality that engulfs an audience.

The show seemed a bit long to me, especially in the second act, and there were a couple of rough spots technically but, of course, the show was still in preview and that stuff has probably been overcome. Overall, this Master Class was as riveting as I remember it and held up its end of the bargain in comparison. Frances McDermond should thank her lucky stars that Tyne Daly was not yet eligible for a Tony Award nomination this year. It would have been a horse race otherwise with neither the favorite.

Geezer Computers

There is a short essay by Mireille Silcoff in today’s NY Times Magazine that is phenomenally topical to my present situation. Its title is “The Memory Problem; Which will last longer, the old man or his old computer?” Although the grandfather in question is a tad my senior (he is 102), he has been plagued by the failure of his 1998 iMac and it was giving him that old-man disease; conniptions. My computer isn’t all that old (an HP desktop I bought in, I think, about 2005) but it is still on a downward slope and plagued with various viruses (probably) and conniption-causing corruptions.

Encouraged by a friend’s generous gift-card to Best Buy I took the plunge this week and bought the very latest version of the computer I had gotten so familiar with over the last semi-decade. The young man who waited on me at BB was actually very impressed by the fact I actually owned a working computer that old and, being an inveterate geezer, I had to explain to him that my generation fully expected all appliances, etc., to last at least 25 years with no malfunctions. It is to laugh; which is exactly what he did. His generation (it’s a stretch to think he might be 21) seems to think it’s normal (and okay!) when a piece of equipment, especially electronica, becomes obsolete within a couple of years (or months).

The point of this is that the granddaughter-author of the essay kept putting off buying grandpa a new computer because, hey, nobody expected him to outlive it. Even now, although she doesn’t say so, she can’t see the forest for the trees and paid a ton of money to get his old iMac fixed, rather than buying him an upgrade for half the price. So he continues to write his “vignettes” (his word--which I translate into “blogs”) and is humming happily ever after; entertaining himself and his extended family with a lot of lumpy prose. To quote from Ms. Silcoff’s essay, “This is a man’s lifeline. He was born in 1908. He is my hero.” Amen.