Another Letter From My Great-Great Aunt Ell To her Husband James, October 3, 1917

This is another letter written by my great-great aunt about six months after the US declared war on Germany.

Of particular interest is the fact that Ell wrote this letter from a house (pictured below) only a few blocks from where I lived when I first moved to New York seventy-eight years later.


Postmark: Brooklyn, NY
October 3, 1917, 7:30 PM
Addressed to: Mr. J.J. Gildea
Ashley, PA
#49, Luz. Co.
Top Floor
362 Greene Ave., Brooklyn, NY

My dear Jim,
Lonesome yet? So far this week has been quite stren(u)ous. Sunday, Anna and I went to Mass and came right over here expecting to see Bill* before he left. Well, we got here and Bill was not to leave until Monday. We got up Monday morning and were down at Sheepshead Bay at 10 o'clock (for those who don't know Brooklyn geography, even by train this is quite a schlep - JH). At four o'clock, the company he belonged to, left. Imagine me all that time without a bite to eat. We went to a small restaurant and all they had was hot coffee, everything else sold out, so we had the coffee and it helped some. It was a good thing Bill was in Co. B. because he was in the second train load. There were twelve companys(sic) and the last left at six thirty. The poor fellows must have been tired. The last company remarked that the first co. would be in France before they left Brooklyn.

They are going to Spartansburg, S.C. Charlie** has not been home for two nights and Aunt Mary*** is afraid that probably he has gone. Because they won't know when they are going. Will be sent right off without any warning. Only some of his clothes are here. Aunt Mary is keeping up fine.

Monday night, Helen (Cousin Helen McBride) and I went to a movie. Yesterday Mae (great Uncle Pete's wife?) and I were over to Pete's. Stayed for supper and came back by way of Mame's.

Mame has a very nice smoking set for you. A genuine mahogany stand with the glass ash tray, match box holder & two cigar holders. It stands beside your chair when smoking. Some class. No more saucers or papers for your cigar ashes. She said just a little remembrance for your kindness to mother. It's supposed to be a surprise.

This morning, Mae & I were down town to the stores and this afternoon we are going to Cecil's. Tomorrow aft. I am going over to Mame's to see a Red Cross Parade and, in the evening, to Mamie's sewing circle at a girl friend's house. Friday I expect to go to Pete's (I am assuming this refers to her brother Peter who lived in either Jersey City or Sunnyside, NY at the time-IHH) to stay over Sunday and then I will come back and spend the rest of my time at Mame's. Mamie Mc has a nice little apartment and very nice furniture. She is getting dinner ready now. Some cook. She's a joke. Haven't sent a postcard yet but will get some today. Jim (since she has just referred to Mamie Mc, I believe the Jim here is Jim Anderson, who was Mary McBride's husband - IHH) just got up. We let him get his own supper Mon. & Tues. night and have designs on tonight and tomorrow night. Good natured skate.

Haven't heard from you yet.
Will close with lots of love from your darling.
Don't want any money yet.
Lovingly yours,
Nell

______________________________________
*Bill - a reference to her cousin William McBride, who is also mentioned in the previous letter.
**Charlie - this is her cousin, Charles McBride, a veteran of WW1 also.
***Aunt Mary - Mary McBride, Sarah Ruddy's sister, and mother to Charles, William, Mary (Mame McBride Anderson) and Helen.
There was also a daughter Susie, but so far no mention of her in any of the letters.

Letter From My Great-Great-Aunt Ell To Her Husband James, September 30, 1917

My mother (IHH) has been the family historian and genealogist for a couple of decades now. She recently sent me the text of several letters written by her great aunt Ellen (Ell or Nell or Ella) Mulhern Gildea to her husband, James, during Ell's visits to the New York City area. The first is dated just a little over a month after the death of her mother, Sarah Ruddy Mulhern and almost six months after the United States declared war on Germany and became actively involved in World War I.

New York City
September 30, 1917

"Here comes the servant with our breakfast..some speed to your wife."

My Dear Heart,

Mame has gone to eight o'clock Mass and, not being able to find ink, here goes with pencil...a good blunt one at that.

After an uneventful trip, I arrived on time. I had a seat to myself all the way; although quite a crowd of people got on along the line, no one bothered me, with the exception of a little girl who borrowed my magazine for her father.

The two Mamies* and Anna met me at Jersey and talk about soldiers. The 23rd & 71st were at Jersey, had been there from 5 AM waiting to go. The poor fellows, some were all in, sleeping on anything they could put their heads on, others strolling with their arms around their sweethearts and others holding their youngsters in their arms. Almost every woman you saw had nice red eyes. One poor little thing came into the car with us and she simply could not control herself. She would look at her wedding ring and start to sob.

Will** expects to go today. I am in hopes that I will get over before he leaves. They expect that he will go to the Philippines.

Mame just got in from Church and I am getting quite hungry. I suppose her (servant) will soon bring her breakfast, likewise mine. Anna*** & I are going to the ten o'clock Mass and go right over to Brooklyn.

Anna left the Plaza and starts tomorrow to work for Mame in the linen room. This is Mame's busy time, so I will stay in Brooklyn for a new days now.

Well, my dear, take good care of yourself and you can go to see any miss daisy (note: I have no idea what this means, IHH) you wish, providing you leave at ten PM and come home alone to your own wee bed, with the nice we (sic) spring and mattress and think about your darling once and a while, if it is only when you are cracking your own eggs. I told Winnie (Reilly, probably. IHH) to come over and take some tomatoes, both green and ripe.

Will close with lots of love,
Your loving wife,
Nell

_________________________________
*The two Mamies, I think, are most likely her sister, Mary Mulhern, and her cousin, Mary McBride Anderson.
**Will is most likely her cousin, William Mc Bride.
***I am not completely sure who Anna is. There are no McBride cousins by that name...I wonder if it may have been Anna Smith, who was a close friend of the Mulhern girls all their lives.

Pictures Of Fireworks Celebrating The Death Of Jesse Helms

On Friday there were fireworks demonstrations in New York celebrating the death of former Senator Jesse Helms. The fireworks were no doubt symbolic of the eternal torment that Senator Helms is now suffering in Hell, in addition to being really really pretty.

Yesterday

When I lived in Washington DC, I worked with a bosomy, matronly woman who feed off of other people’s grief. If someone in the office had some difficulty in life, major or minor, she would be there to nod and lend a sympathetic ear, prodding them for more details, keeping the hurt going as long as the person was willing to talk. Then she would make her way around the office, trying to draw anyone who would listen into a conversation about said misfortune, shaking her head and choking back emotion about how bad it made her feel.

A yenta will tell you “there’s someone for everyone,” and this woman’s foil was another woman who worked in the office whose life was a slow motion train wreck. I suspect the train wreck woman was also a pathological liar and invented tragedies to cover her increasingly erratic behavior. They completed each other: the train wreck found an attentive and sympathetic audience for her tales of woe and the bosomy busybody found a steady supply of misfortune she could vicariously feel bad about.

When someone I care about has suffered a great loss, I’m always self-conscious about appearing like An Emotional Vampire feeding off their sorrow, regardless of how I feel. I still have mixed feelings about this post, despite the genuine eerie sadness I was experiencing.

Yesterday I learned that Nikola, a friend of my friends Bob and Michele, had died. I had met him three years ago when I was in Paris; hung out with him one night at a French rock club (written about here). His death makes me sad beyond my concern over my friends’ heartbreak. He was so gregarious I just assumed we would hang out again someday.

Two of Nikola’s comments from the previous posting stand out:

one
They end their set by throwing their instruments on the floor and knocking over some of the drum kit, leaving the audience to stare at the inert instruments while listening to the feedback created. Nicola is disgusted.

"Come on. I mean...now someone has to clean that up."

two
He also mentions a more disconcerting fact: No-one in [the band onstage] is much beyond 16. "Oh wait, the drummer just turned 17." I mention (actually, I yell above the sound of the band) that that makes me feel old.

"No, no, it should make you feel young!"

R.I.P.

Park

Yesterday I went to the Guggenheim to see the exhibit by Cai Guo Qiang: I Want To Believe. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, there was a line to enter the museum, which I've never seen at the Guggenheim. A straight line at that: surely the queue should have been rounded? Regardless, I left without seeing the exhibit. I want to believe, but I'm not going to wait in line to do so.

Too nice a day to be disappointed, I went to Central Park. I walked for a while in looking-without-thinking mode, and watching the people play and interact, I was overcome with a sense of euphoria, mixed with feeling like an idiot for being so happy that I was on the verge of tears. A guy was playing the vibes and a short distance away, a duo of girls sang while playing violin and acoustic guitar. I searched for a spot where I could hear both equally, hoping to mix Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" with Guns & Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine." At one point, I thought of the park as Heaven, except that most of the people were white. I sat on the ground, taking photographs of birds and running my hands through the grass as if I was patting the Earth on the head.

It was a familiar sensation. On July 12, 1997, my friend Lynn and I took Ecstasy and went to Central Park. The reason I know the exact date is that Sleater Kinney was playing a free show in the park, and to my ears at the time, their music sounded like RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" which I now know is not a bad description of their sound. We sat there talking and I ran my fingers through the grass and I felt good. But after yesterday, I wonder if it wasn't the Ecstasy so much as it was the park.

I feel its necessary to record these moments of bliss, of pure joy at being alive, to remember when things in life aren't so good.

The Glamorous Sights of New York City

Living in New York, you get used to the sight of tourists taking pictures just as you get used to how slowly they walk and how they're not really looking where they're going. I've learned, as a courtesy, that if someone is taking a picture, to walk around their back so as not to ruin the shot. I often glance at where they're aiming their cameras and think "what are they taking a picture of?"

Not today - today it was fairly obvious. I saw a guy dressed in camouflage pants, t-shirt, white Yankees' cap, taking a photo of one of Manhattan's great landmarks: the Hooters sign which hangs about the restaurant.

A Message For President Bush

Thank you for the $600 rebate check. Really.

However, you can't buy my love or approval for a lousy $600. My first inclination is to donate this to the Obama campaign, but given how bad our economy is doing, I'm saving it. Sure, I need new clothes for work, but I was going to buy them anyway. I'm not picking up any books or cds that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The $600 is going to sit in the bank until needed.

While it's always nice to get $600 you weren't expecting, it doesn't begin to make up for the thousands of people, American soldiers and innocent civilians, killed in Iraq due to your war.

There are many scenes in The Sopranos, where, after gangsters beat someone close to death, they give him some money as a "make good." It's seems so familiar now...

So, thanks again. Really.

But it doesn't change how I feel about you or your administration.

John's DVD of the Month Club - May 2008 Pt 2

West
Gone (an episode of Spaced written by Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg, directed by Edgar Wright)

So the theme of this month’s dvd was duality: two selections from two different media (film and television) showing two cultures (East and West), each highlighting the conflicts between men and women, reality and fantasy, comedy and tragedy. May is the first of two months partially under the sign of Gemini the twins*. Etcetera, etcetera.

After the creepy beauty of Miike’s Box, there’s something refreshing about the frantic silliness of Spaced. Anyone who stays over at my apartment is inevitably introduced to Spaced, and what starts with “You might like this – let’s watch this one episode” invariably ends three hours later after watching an entire season in one shot with promises made to watch the remaining episodes the following day. There’s only two seasons of Spaced, a total of 14 episodes, which is both a source of frustration and an explanation as to why the show is so good. They stopped before they ran out of ideas.


The setup is this: Tim and Daisy are friends who must pretend to be a couple in order to rent a cheap flat. Around them rotate Tim’s friend Mike; Daisy’s friend Twist; Brian, the artist downstairs; and Marsha, their perpetually pissed (in the British sense, not the American) landlady. The setup is nothing: it’s almost deliberately sitcom-cliché and rarely figures in the show. It acts as a frame on which to hang a fast array of jokes: visual humor (the way the S on a canister doubles as the first letter in “Six Hours Earlier”), character humor (soldier-wannabe Mike’s wistful “yeah” in response to the description of men as being nothing but destroyers), verbal humor (“There’s been a misprint on one of the covers of the new issues.” “Which one?” “Total Cult.” “Oh.”), slapstick (the climatic shootout) and pop culture references. There’s so much funny coming so fast that the number of jokes that do work is remarkably high. What’s more impressive is that the jokes that don’t work don’t ruin the show. The characters never act out of character just to score a laugh. Even when indulging in the most outlandish fantasy, it remains true to the characters and their situation. And funny.

An example of how good Spaced is is that its pop culture references don’t annoy the hell out of me. I’m beyond burnt out on comedy based on pop culture, which means my taste is completely out of fashion with contemporary humor, which seems like nothing but pop culture references. Not jokes, mind you, but references alone. “Tina Yothers” “Charles Bronson” “Gary Coleman” are considered witticisms in and of themselves. The backbreaking straw was when, apropos of absolutely nothing, a moose showed up on the Simpsons’ front lawn accompanied by the theme from Northern Exposure. There’s no joke there, no context, and no commentary of any kind. The moose is only there to flatter those who recognize the reference. This was when I began to dislike The Simpsons. But when Tim and Daisy mimic the frozen Jack Nicholson from the end of The Shining it’s funny because it builds off the previous line of dialogue and because their faces are funny. You could also argue that this is how Tim and Daisy see the world: real-life experience filtered through a media-based framework. It explains Tim’s description of their night out being represented by cartoons and the slow motion "gunfight" at the end.


I feel a certain nostalgia watching Spaced because it reminds me of my twenties and early thirties, years spent living with roommates, hanging out with friends in bars, enjoyably wasting time so as not to worry about the future. The show is a pleasant fantasy: there’s something reassuring about its philosophy of silliness as a way of life. Who doesn’t want to live in a world in which you can escape a beating by spontaneously playing shoot-out with a bunch of hoodlums?

I thought Spaced was coming out on dvd in the US next month, but it's not currently listed on amazon.com. Watch for it - it is well worth getting when it does come out.





*the best sign in the zodiac, I might add.

John's DVD of the Month Club - May 2008 Pt 1

East
Box (a segment from Three Extremes directed by Takashi Miike)

Anyone who recognizes his name certainly can’t be blamed for saying “Uh-oh” when they read “A Takashi Miike Film.” Miike is a Japanese director who works very quickly, finishing three or four features a year. Even though he works with different genres and in wildly different styles, there’s always a sense of menace to his films. He’s perhaps best known for Ichi The Killer and Audition, films that, all hyperbole aside, feature some of the most graphic and disturbing depictions of torture and mutilation ever caught on film. Any trepidation on the part of the viewer is certainly understandable.



His short Box is the third part of an anthology film Three Extremes, which includes work by three of Asia’s leading genre directors, the other two being Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan and Korea’s Chan-wook Park. Part of why I like Box so much is that I hated the other two Extremes – context is everything. Chan’s section features a hazy, soft focus style that recalls soap operas and tampon commercials and his story was about a food that keeps you eternally young: dumplings made out of human babies. When the main character discovers the food’s secret ingredient, she continues her diet of baby dumplings because, you know, women are so vain. Park’s film is an exercise in offense in both form and content. It’s about an extra taking revenge on a film director by forcing him to make a heinous choice: if the director doesn’t kill an innocent child, then the extra will kill the director’s wife. An ugly story done in an in-your-face style I hate, one that uses showy but pointless camera moves and a self-consciously cartoony set design. But Miike’s film hooked me as soon as I saw its quiet opening shot of a bare tree in a winter field that’s blue with cold.

I have the movie playing on the other half of the computer screen right now but the images are too distracting; it’s taking me twice as long to write this as it should. It has the easy prettiness of a music video – with a different soundtrack it could be a Smashing Pumpkins video. However, unlike music videos, the pace is slow, contemplative. The lingering shots mimic the magician’s obsession with the one girl but also draw the viewer into this world and its mysteries. The cold of the city that contrasts with the warm reds and oranges in the circus tent. The silence during scenes of horror versus the overamplified roar of fire and crinkling of a plastic sheet.



Hypnotized by its beauty, but the story also interests me. Box is, along with The Wizard of Oz and Mulholland Drive, one of the few films in which the “oh it was all a dream” ending doesn’t feel like a cheat or a cop out, but is instead a clue to the psychology of the main character. The question is: what is the dream and what is the reality? The obvious answer is that most of what we have seen (the circus act, the tragic death, the magician’s revenge) is the dream of one half of a pair of Siamese twins which reveals her desire for independence mixed with guilt for wanting to be free of her sister.

But the film ends with the magician walking away from the field where the girl has been buried alive, which creates another interpretation: most of what we have seen is real, and the sequence with Siamese twins is a brief fantasy occurring right before death, and an acknowledgement that she will never be free of her sister.

My apologies to those with kids. I meant to include a warning with this month's dvd that it was not appropriate for young children but forgot. Again, my apologies and I promise to include such warnings from now on.

Tomorrow: a discussion of the West half of the disc.

Last Night's Dream

I promise that I will not be posting my dreams here on a regular basis.

I was either watching a program on television or someone was talking to me in person. It's hard to say, as it sometimes is in a dream. But this person was informing me that earlier civilizations didn't value the ear that much. Consequently, painters rarely bothered painting ears on their subjects. Yes, sound and music were important, but the ears themselves were not. That's why you rarely see Christ's ears in paintings. The eyes are important, as were His wounds, but His ears? Not so much.

The dream included images of old paintings that proved this thesis, though whether the paintings exist in the real world I can not say. When I remembered this dream late this morning, I accepted its conclusion as true even if I don't know if I agreed with its reasoning, such as it was. You don't generally see the ears in old painting, particularly religious ones. Do you?

If I wasn't so busy at work today I probably would have probably done some research to see if this was true. This may be like the time I was in an altered state, and realized that one of the things that was special about the word "wasps" is that it was the only word in the English language that made you makes the cymbal sound when you said it. Wah-SSSPSS! I was so taken with this realization that I recorded myself saying it over and over. Wah-SSSPSS! It wasn't until two days later, long after the altered state had passed, that I thought of words like "asps" "grasps" "clasps" and "lisps."

Comments on "The Boy with Green Hair" From My Friend Troy

(Edited from two separate emails.)

I wanted to say thank you for sharing "The Boy With Green Hair" with us. As a surreal parable about the ills of war, it has an odd choice of metaphor - shocking green hair standing in for spring-like renewal. That and "Nature Boy" as the theme song and an amazingly naturalistic performance by a young, young, young Dean Stockwell makes this quite an interesting treat. And intriguingly anti-war for 1948, which is perhaps more compelling, in context.

Reading your commentary on your blog reminded me of the boys interaction with the war orphans and how interesting is was. While they were initially presented as some sort of immovable tableau, only to react to him once he acknowledged their presence, his own take on them was much more pragmatic than theirs to him, which was lofty and surreal, since of course, he was their messiah

They responded to his comments with unreal clarity and a sense of the epic, whereas his retorts were snappy and generally annoyed, an interesting contrast I greatly admired. Here they are - these metaphorical visions of tragic suffering and he's cranky because he woke up with green hair, priceless. But once he gets the message, well then...

I also thought the scene where he gets his head shaved was oddly compelling. As Andrea mentioned, there is little to no music in that scene, at a time when most films were over scored, thereby increasing the sense of anguish. It's amazing how upset the townspeople seem over the situation, like they didn't know what else to do, but had to go through with it anyway. It's like a far subtler version of what Lars Von Trier seems to shoot for in many cases, "Dogville" for example.

Troy -
The difference may be that, unlike Von Trier, the makers of The Boy With Green Hair (Joseph Losey, Betsey Beaton, Ben Barzman) seem to have sympathy for their characters, even those who turn against the boy. They also seem to believe in their film's message - the earnestness and lack of irony is one of the things I respond to. Von Trier doesn't seem to believe in anything within Dogville, which limits the film. He wants an exciting climax of the heroine ordering the massacre of the townspeople who wronged her, but wants to justify her doing so as a philosophical and moral point rather than simple revenge, and then taunts the viewer for wanting to see the massacre. To accomplish these contradictory goals, Von Trier's characters have to indulge in a debate of twisted logic that demonstrates there is no meaning to Dogville beyond audience manipulation.

---------------------------------

How 38 years and hanging out with Dennis Hopper can change you:




He is so fucking suave...

Favorite Comment (So Far) About John's DVD of the Month Club

Courtesy of an email from my friend Gavin:

As a neurotic, one of the things I dread most is searching for and deciding on a movie to watch. As a member of John's DVD of the Month Club, all I have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy!

If I was going to advertise, this would be my slogan, even if it meant I ended up with a bunch of neurotics for customers.

John's DVD of the Month Club - April 2008

The Boy With Green Hair

One of the consequences of knowing a great deal about something is that it can sometimes prevent basic pleasure. After getting a degree in film production, I find I analyze movies and television shows rather than simply watch them, as if they’re homework assignments and I’m the teacher who must grade them. This means that most things I like, I “appreciate.” But it also means that I especially treasure anything that overwhelms my critical facilities and reminds me of how it felt to watch a movie when I was young. I’m either engaged or bored, like or dislike, without analyzing the reasons why. Charmed while watching The Boy With Green Hair, I decided to share it with as many people as possible and came up with the idea for the DVD of the Month Club. The movie isn’t as obscure as I thought. Two different people, upon receiving their discs, said “Oh, The Boy With Green Hair. Dean Stockwell.”

I’m not sure what lead me initially to record The Boy With Green Hair rather than one of the other old films on Turner Classic Movies, but it may have had something to do with a story from my youth. The first time my cousins visited us after they moved to Florida, they told stories about what seemed like an exotic and foreign land. My favorite story came from my cousin Pat, who told us he knew a kid with green hair. It seems his hair was normally light blonde, but he went swimming every day and his parents had a tendency to over-chlorinate the pool, to the point that his hair turned a light shade of green. I thought that was the funniest story, though, like most stories that impress a child, it was mixed with a healthy dose of “there but for the grace of God go I,” despite the fact that I have dark-hair and swam infrequently.

Things I liked about the movie:

- The montage of various homes the boy lived in.

- The cartoon-like sequence of Paps singing his song. I’m a sucker for non-authoritative Irish man-child characters because I had one for a father.

- The propaganda: “Be nice to war orphans.” They had to make a movie to tell people that? Overt messages in films are considered obvious and counterproductive, but I love them for their primitive approach. Have the war orphans appear in a quasi-religious vision. Make the main character look directly in the camera and deliver your message. Make sure the audience gets the point. Propaganda in films now is much more subtle and much less fun.

- Given that extreme hair color is barely noticed today, it’s almost quaint to watch a story in which unnatural hair color is not only shocking but threatening. The movie has an individualist vs. conformist theme, but the boy doesn’t really choose to have green hair, he just makes the best of it when it happens.

02:43 Reading Comics

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean
Douglas Wolk

Wolk’s book on comics attempts to establish comic theory, analogous to film theory or literary theory, as a starting point for discussing comics. Wolk himself seems to know how hapless a task this is, pointing to the example of how Scott McCloud tied himself in knots just trying to define “comics” in his book Understanding Comics, only to find his definition immediately denounced by some readers. There never has been a consistent, universally acknowledged approach to understanding and writing about literature, film, music or any of the arts. Criticism is an art, not a science, and is prone to the re-thinking, revisions, and arguments attendant to other art forms. At least literary theory is in the same language/form as what it discusses, a fundamental drawback in film and art criticism. McCloud seemed to recognize this, which is why Understanding Comics is a work of criticism in the form of a comic book. Wolk is determined to codify comic book aesthetics as an initial step in discussing the art form, hapless task or not.

Reading Comics is divided into two sections: an overall history and theory of comics, followed by reviews of comics Wolk likes. The first section is the less successful of the two. Wolk attempts to define theory and detail 60+ years of history in under 150 pages, not only for those familiar with comics, but for those unfamiliar with the form. I read comics and know what he was talking about, but I’m not sure it would hold the interest of those who don’t. I found myself engaging less with his ideas than looking for nits to pick.

His reviews in the second half fare better. I remember reading many of them on Salon.com and they’re intelligent essays, neither stuffy nor puerile. His essay about David B’s Epileptic made me want to put down this book and go read Epileptic – a compliment to Wolk. On the other hand, his piece on Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles made it sound incomprehensible and, even worse, a complete drag. I’m working my way through Morrison’s work right now and it is neither. He finds new things to say about the Hernandez brothers and his dissection of Chris Ware is perfect. “There is insight there” as Pauline Kael would say, and Wolk is at his best when he focuses on individual books or creators rather than overreaching for a theory to describe an entire medium.

Uh-oh...

Saw the above online but it took me a moment to realize that "Ark." meant "Arkansas" and not, you know, Noah's ark.

I think forecasters would have a little more faith in Noah's shipbuilding abilities.

01:43 Born Standing Up

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
Steve Martin

Steve Martin’s autobiography covers the most interesting part of his career: the early years of doing standup in obscurity, then unexpected and unprecedented renown and success, early retirement from the stage in favor of movies and writing. There’s a little bit of psychobabble, and obviously emotional topics are written about in his dry, detached voice. But Martin is able to write with wit without coming across as an annoying jokester.

Like the best memoirs, Born Standing Up recreates a lost world, a world that Martin himself had a hand in destroying. Entertainment was not nearly as ubiquitous when Martin started out as it is today. There’s wistfulness in the passages about the small time entertainers who inspired and trained him, and his summers spent performing in a broken-down theater in which the audience could hear the toilet flushing backstage. It was an era when entertainment was a minor part of most people’s lives before it became a constant need and a major engine of our economy. Just as the unprecedented success of “Star Wars” forever changed the movie business, the comedy boom of the late seventies, of which Martin was a large part, expanded the role of entertainment in American life.

Martin himself is a fairly serious person and though he never directly discusses this change in society, it’s not hard to surmise his attitude when he writes about why he quit standup at the peak of his success. It was all too much: too many concerts, too many people, too many demands, none of which seemed conducive to comedy. Further proof: this slim book made me laugh out loud.

Announcing John's DVD of the Month Club

Since getting a new computer I've really enjoyed burning dvds for friends. I'll see something on tv and think "Oh, so-and-so would probably love to see that - I'll burn them a disc."

Well, I was watching a movie this past Friday when I had the idea of John's DVD of the Month Club. Here's how it works: you subscribe by sending me your name and mailing address. Then, at the beginning of each month, you'll receive a dvd of something that I found interesting: an old movie, a documentary about weird religion, episodes of a BBC series not available in this country, whatever. Each dvd will be a surprise.

It's free to subscribe and you can unsubscribe at anytime. The discs are your's to keep or pass along to friends or throw away.

If interested, please send me an email with your name and address and "John's DVD of the Month Club" as the subject. Please don't post your address in the comment section of this journal.

The first disc will be arrive the first week of April.

Vaarwel Aan Dat Alle

Every week I check Time and Newsweek's websites, though I don't know why. It's rare that there's anything I want to read, and the websites, much like their parent magazines, are Weekly Reader For Adults: "We'll tell you news that flatters your mainstream middle-class self-image, and if by chance the news does not, we'll sugarcoat it as much as possible so as not to upset you."

So I was fairly surprised when I saw the following on Newsweek.com:

Turn Out the Red Light?
Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. Not everybody is happy about it.

(story below, copied for archives sake)

They're closing down Amsterdam's Red Light District? Or rather, kicking out all the prostitutes to make way for little shops? Never thought I'd see the day. Not only am I surprised that it is happening, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it elsewhere. I would have thought it would have merited some mention in the current issue of Whore Monthly, to which I have a subscription (it was a gift). I guess not.

However, I don't think anyone who doesn't live in Amsterdam deserves to have an opinion about this. Entitlement at its most arrogant expects others to deal with the downside of a situation just so it can have what it wants. Since I don't have to deal with the side effects of legalized prostitution, it's wrong to bemoan losing its benefits, some of which are more symbolic than actual. Considering my experience in the Red Light District consisted of getting so stoned I felt like I was trapped in a maze from which I could not escape (partly due to the fact that I couldn't handle crossing the street) I'll excuse myself from the debate.

In theory, I think prostitution should be legal. If a woman (or man) wants to charge for sex, fine. But in actuality, legalizing prostitution wouldn't benefit the whores as much as it would the pimps, to whom it would offer protection and confer legitimacy. Prostitutes seem to be a mixed bag, but there's one overriding trait that all pimps share: they're all assholes. So I have very mixed feelings about the issue.

In any case, here is the article from Newsweek.com, copyright 2008, etc etc.

Turn Out the Red Light?
Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. Not everybody is happy about it.

By Thijs Niemantsverdriet
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 2:50 PM ET Feb 8, 2008
Two weeks ago a young Dutch fashion designer named Bas Kosters opened a new store. His colorful and sumptuous creations—skirts, handbags, sweatshirts—merit attention. But the most striking aspect of his new venue is the location. Kosters's work is on display in Amsterdam's Red Light District behind two tall windows that until recently were used as a brothel. The ladies have vanished. The red lights and curtains have been removed and replaced by Kosters's hyperfashionable clothes.

Kosters found this studio thanks to an ambitious plan by the Amsterdam city government. Arguing that too many brothels and sex bars are linked to criminality, the authorities plan to all but erase the Red Light District. If the plan goes through, the peep shows, sex shops and prostitute windows that line the small alleys and canals will have to go, giving way to galleries, boutiques and upscale restaurants and bars. Goodbye to the big neon signs advertising every possible form of sexual indulgence.

Amsterdam without the Red Light District? Wouldn't that be like Paris without the Eiffel Tower? Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, and his aldermen have demonstrated little nostalgia for the district, which has been the world's most famous home of sexual permissiveness since the 15th century. They first unveiled the plan to close it in December; last month they revoked the licenses of two widely known sex venues, the Casa Rosso and the Banana Bar. The next step is to buy out the real estate owners. Last fall the city struck a deal with a powerful brothel owner, Charles Geerts (known as "Fat Charlie"), to buy 20 buildings.

The driving force behind the cleanup is Lodewijk Asscher. A young star of the Dutch Labour Party and deputy mayor of Amsterdam, Asscher believes it's time to deliver his hometown from sleaze—even if he's scuppering a $100 million-a-year industry in the process. He is pleasantly surprised, he says, by the public support he's gotten for the plan. "Every day I get e-mails," he says. A recent survey confirms the sentiment: the city administration's polling agency found that 67 percent of Amsterdam's population supports a clampdown on sketchy business. The Amsterdam City Council approved the plan about two weeks ago by an overwhelming 43-2 majority.

But not everybody is happy about the change. Jan Broers, owner of Royal Taste, a hotel in the heart of the Red Light District, and eight prostitute windows, has formed a protest committee called Platform 1012 (named after the area's ZIP code). He claims to have collected thousands of signatures. This week the group staged a protest march, starting in front of the Casa Rosso and ending in Dam Square, where thousands of people shared a minute of silence. They carried pink balloons and signs saying "Hands off the Red Light District" and a poster of Asscher doctored to look as if he was with a street hooker.

Broers is afraid that fewer tourists will come to a sexless Amsterdam, harming legitimate, legal businesses. Most of all, he says, he feels "stigmatized" by the city government. "With all his rhetoric, deputy mayor Asscher is giving the district a bad name throughout the world," he says. "People phone me up from abroad every day, worried we might be gone already." Broers questions the city's premise that prostitution leads to criminal activities in the area. Indeed, the city, which is acting under laws that require only a suspicion of criminal activity, can point only to studies from the mid-1990s. "It's a shield. The city just wants to gentrify the neighborhood, so they can make some good money. And they're using public funds to buy all the real estate."

And what about the ladies? The Red Light District has about 450 windows where women offer their services. The majority of those will be closed down. Where will the inhabitants go, once they're forced out of work? Asscher says most of the prostitutes are part of international human-trafficking networks that draw on women from Eastern Europe, and they will most likely move on to Antwerp, Hamburg and other European cities. For those that remain, the city administration may start certifying pimps and require that prostitutes who work for them to be 21 years old.

The Dutch Sex Workers Union fears that many women and girls will be forced to start walking the streets. On its Web site the union calls the city's plans to certify pimps "bizarre." Since prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, it argues, sex workers don't need pimps to find a place to work. Ruth Hopkins, a Dutch-English investigative journalist who has written extensively on prostitution in Amsterdam, says the city government overstates the extent of involuntary prostitution. "Even though there are gangs of pimps, a lot of women, mostly Africans and Latinos, do their work in complete independence," she says. Hopkins fears that a cleaned-up Amsterdam will be a boring city.

The crackdown fits into a nationwide backlash against the excesses of 1960s "happy-clappy" liberalism, as a conservative Dutch member of parliament recently put it. Over the last few years the Netherlands has adopted a stricter policy on selling marijuana, and a ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms is slated to go into effect later this year. "People in Amsterdam and the rest of the country are starting to discern real tolerance from bogus tolerance," says Asscher. "When Rudy Giuliani started to clean up Times Square in the mid-'90s, some people were warning that no one would ever again want to come to New York City. But as far as I know, it has had record tourist numbers each year since." Perhaps Giuliani, who this week dropped out of the U.S. presidential race, should run for office in the Netherlands.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/109373

That Old House

After living there for over 30 years, my mother has sold her house, the house I grew up in. These are some photos I took this past Christmas Eve.

The New Superba, and Other Little-Known Adventures Undertaken With My Family

And to think there are people today who don't know what a Superba is...

Pretty Ladies Making Planes

These photos come from the Library of Congress' collection of photos from the Office of War Information. Thanks to Joculum's livejournal page for posting the original link. There's over 1600 incredible color photos from the 1930's - 40's, and if you have a couple hours to spare, they're well worth checking out.

If I Only...

Last year at this time, I posted my 2007 New Year’s resolution, which was to finish 42 books by year’s end. How did I do? I think the proper term is “failure.” I only managed to finish 28. Halfway through the year I realized I was behind schedule and planned a huge push to meet my goal. A few months later, when I realized I still wasn’t going to finish the fabled 42, I said “screw it” and stopped worrying about it.

On the one hand, this isn’t too disappointing. One of the reasons for the exercise was to read more than I normally do, which I accomplished. The other reason was to have something to write about in this online journal. However I stalled after writing about book #8, a collection of Brecht’s plays, even though there are things I wanted to say about each book. I will eventually post about each of the books; if not a full essay, then at least a paragraph.

Why didn’t I manage to finish 42 books? I’m too easily distracted by other media, of which I have plenty. Those who have been to my apartment know I have piles of dvds, cds, comics, magazines, and a dvr that’s always filled with movies and tv shows to watch. I’m also lucky enough to live in a city of perpetual distraction, a land where there’s always a band playing, an art gallery opening, or a walk to be taken. Like a child at school who’s always up from his desk, it takes effort for me to sit and concentrate and I’m not big with the self-discipline. Once I do manage to sit and read for more than a few minutes, I’m hooked and I don’t want anything else. It’s just getting over that small roadbump that’s the trouble. It’s the same with my meditation.

The 28 Books I Finished Last Year:
1. Bottomfeeder by B. Fingerman
2. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
3. What If Our World Is Their Heaven? Edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter
4. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
5. Not God but God by Reza Aslan
6. The Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino
7. A Void by George Perec
8. Brecht: Collected Plays Vol. 2
9. The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
10. Endless Things by John Crowley
11. Hatchet Jobs by Dale Peck
12. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Froer
13. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
16. Mischevious Art of Jim Flora
17. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
18. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
19. Heroes & Villains by Angela Carter
20. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
21. Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
22. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
23. Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by Michael Palin
24. How to Read by Harold Bloom
25. As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem
26. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
27. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
28. I Am Legend and other Stories by Richard Matheson

Favorite Non-fiction: The Nuture Assumption (runner up: Untold Stories)
Favorite Fiction: Endless Things (runner up: Life of Pi)
Biggest Surprise: how much I liked Franny and Zooey
Biggest Disappointment: how much I was bored by Michael Palin’s diaries

So what’s my New Year’s resolution for 2008?

To read 43 books. By God, I’m going to keep trying this until I accomplish it.

Hope everyone has a good year.

Boxing Day

I had to work the day after Christmas, and after work, I decided to treat myself to the yummy Chicken Curry - half on french fries, half on rice - at Kinsale Tavern.

Kinsale is a neighborhood Irish bar on the Upper East Side, a few blocks away from the lower lip of Spanish Harlem. Despite the fact that I moved to Brooklyn three years ago, I occasionally make the trek because it's that kind of warm neighborhood bar. Most nights, that is.

It wasn't particularly crowded the day after Christmas. I was eating my dinner when I began to overhear the conversation at the end of the bar. The reason I could overhear it is because the people were screaming at each other. "I think you are a Nazi pig!" a lady screeched. She didn't mean this rhetorically, but literally. A German gentleman at the bar was trying to explain why his countrymen got a bad rap for WWII, and the lady, whose family had to emigrate from Europe to Puerto Rico to avoid Hitler's armies, was having none of it. Loudly having none of it. The German gentleman tried the emotional appeal, saying that his father was killed fighting the communists and that he's tired of Germans getting blamed for everything.

As both the pitch and the volume of their argument grew, I thought: is this still controversial? Isn't it a given that the Third Reich was, you know, wrong? Not just misunderstood, not an example of relative ethics, but genuinely bad. It's not like the man was denying the Holocaust - their argument hadn't even gotten that far. Did he really expect to get a sympathetic hearing in an Irish bar in New York City?

The fact that his argument's thesis was the emotional and personal (father killed not only needlessly, but fighting for the wrong side) pretty much guarantees that shouting would eventually play a part in the debate. Still, despite the fact that I probably disagree with everything he would say, I can't help but be touched by the fact that this old man is still upset at the death of his father more than 60 years ago. Old grudges never die, in which case I guess he does make sense that he was in an Irish bar. My friend Tammy worked with Bosnian refugees and discovered that people are still angry about wrongs committed before World War I.

I found it interesting that the gentleman kept mentioning that his father and the Germans were fighting "the communists." Not the Russians or Soviets, mind you, but the communists. Every other group in the discussion was referred to by their nationality: Germans, Americans, the French. But the Russians were only referred to by their economic system, a propagandist play for sympathy. Had there been any Russians present, I'm sure the argument would have been even louder, and I certainly wouldn't have blamed them. I wouldn't want to be referred to as a capitalist rather than as an American.

So the yelling went on and the bartender didn't step in until people began cursing. Then "enough" was declared and everyone took their last cheap shots ("I should know better than to ever discuss politics with a woman"). Old nationalist resentments continue on.

What was I doing while all this was this was going on? I was reading all about "The Carol Burnett Show" in TV's Grooviest Variety Shows Of The 60s And 70s because I'm an American.

That Was Then, This Is Now

A true story

Yesterday I was waiting to cross the street when I overheard a father say to his two young daughters "Hey, do you see what's on the third floor of that building?" I looked up and saw the ballet school he was referring to. The daughters made an uncommitted acknowledgement, but then got excited when they saw what was on the second floor.

"Oooh, a DJ scratch academy!"

Oh, Damn...

One of the project ideas I've had for a while, which I started but planned to get back to just as soon as I had the time (along with my other various projects), was to cut up old illustrated books, encyclopedias mainly, to reveal the various images inside. It would be a way of creating a collage by revealing what was there but hidden, rather than pasting elements together. It was an idea that interested me and not something I had seen before.

Last night I received an email from my friend Stacey:

"These are pretty cool and for some reason I thought of you
http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/#more-550"

And there it was: my idea, but done by someone else and much better than I could have done it. I particularly like the pieces featuring colorful abstract shapes. The whole thing depresses me despite how much I like the work.

I know that there is nothing new under the sun and that there is nothing stopping me from going ahead and trying it myself. But my enthusiasm for the whole idea is gone. Why bother?

One point of interest: in the comments section, a Jonathan says

"Hey, did you read Italo Calvino’s “If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler?” If not, you should, because there’s a character in there who does exactly this…"

Well, I have read If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. It's one of my favorite books, but I have to admit that I don't recall the character who does this. But knowing this reminds me of two years ago when I was in Venice and found myself inexplicably thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, only to discover that that book is indeed about Venice. It's odd that Calvino's work seems to plant seeds that later bear fruit, albeit bitter fruit in this case.

A Real Letter to a Celebrity Magazine

I know someone who works at a well-known national celebrity magazine. Below is one of the many unsolicited letters the magazine has received. I have removed some of the identifying info from the letter.

I am not making this up.

Dear Sirs:

I am writing tonight to follow up on a tip I submitted a week ago, and will go into more detail about a possible connection between the fall that actor Christopher Reeve had from a horse, and the fall from a horse that recording artist Madonna had more recently.

My feeling is that there was a conspiracy of white supremacists, rather than one weirdo acting alone.

I feel that the white supremacists are killers, rapists, perverts , and domestic terrorists.

They are organized in a fashion that you might expect of something such as a secret society of Hate like the Ku Klux Klan.

I live in Texas, and they enjoy flaunting symbols to display their beliefs, such as the Confederate flag. They also get kicks from using terms like "nigger" or "greaser" in public places where they know the minorities can overhear them.

I will begin with five examples of domestic terrorism that are not in chronological order:

In 1996, I had a part-time job as a substitute teacher for the [XX] School District.

I happened to mention to a class of elementary school children that I had worked at WFAA in Dallas. One of the children, 9 year old Amber Hagerman, wanted the address to write to WFAA to suggest a story about her mom, Donna Norris.

WFAA is the ABC affiliate locally, and was preparing a story about Amber, when she was abducted in broad daylight by a man described by a witness as a Hispanic in a late model black pickup truck.

Amber Hagerman was brutally raped and murdered, and her body was found in a cement ditch behind the [XX] apartment complex where I was living with my wife and child at the time.

I will now follow up with another example of a brutal rape and murder to terrorize elementary school children:

In August 1982, the month that I graduated from college, the actress Jane Seymour visited my apartment in [XX].

That evening four visitors came by in an effort to meet Jane Seymour: [AA], [BB], [CC], and a young female student from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM) that used to be in Fort Worth, Texas. I don't recall the name of the young woman.

At about 7:30 a.m., the following morning, the body of the young female TCOM student was found in a Fort Worth elementary school playground. She had been brutally raped and murdered. The Fort Worth police did a high profile house to house search looking for evidence.

My point here is that an elementary school playground had been chosen by the conspirators on purpose in an effort to make children afraid to go to school.

In the mid-1970s, when I was still in junior high school in [XX], a female student from Sam Houston High School was brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight in front of a Montgomery Wards that had been at what used to be called the Forum 303 Mall located at Pioneer Parkway and Highway 360. A witness to that one said that the killer had been a black man who escaped across a nearby field.

Again, what we see here is an effort to terrorize the local school children.

In 1974 or 1975, when I was still to[o] young to have a drivers license, one of my friends from junior high was struck by an [XX] Police car right before my eyes, and dragged hundreds of yards down the street and back.

A witness to this is:

[name and address of DD]

[DD] was also standing right there. The three of us were the same age.

The incident took place in [XX] at the intersection of Park Row Drive and Sherry Street.

Joel Eden was on a 10 speed bicycle, when the [XX] Police car purposefully veered out of its path, and knocked him off. His bell bottom jeans caught the bumper, and he was dragged down past Thorton Elementary School and back, screaming.

Joel Eden was dead on arrival at [XX] Memorial Hospital. There was even some fake propaganda in the local newspaper the following day saying that he had been so intoxicated that the was almost unconscious, and that he had struck the police car.

This was not the case. the police car had purposefully veered out of its path to mow him down, and then disregarded his screams.

It was a hate crime, and another example of an effort to terrorize school children.

Essentially giving them the idea that it's not safe to shop at the store, play in the neighborhood, go to school, etc.

I graduated from [EE] High School in [XX] in 1977. A friend of mine who graduated the year before in 1976 was named Fred Kurz. Fred was also killed in a "freak accident" that also involved an [XX] Police car.

Fred was killed in either 1979 or 1980. He was a student at the University of Texas..., and was part of a college fraternity that had a frat house that used to be on Center Street.

Fred was in front of the frat house with his girlfriend, when he was the victim of a high speed chase. A vehicle was trying to speed away from an [XX] Police car, when it jumped the cub, and struck both Fred and his girlfriend. Fred was killed instantly, and the girlfriend was seriously injured. Please note that there were no police sirens to warn them to step out of the way. The person driving the car claimed it was an "accident," and thus got off with a light sentence.

What I have just presented here are example [sic] of young people who actually died.

I will follow up on this in a few days with reports of others who suffered some type of "medical misfortune" or had their outstanding reputations purposefully ruined.

I have seen first hand the actions of these "perverts," and they actually get sick pleasure from causing their victim's "medical misfortune" or "disability."

Today's Reading

I've begun going to church again, as my godson's Confirmation is coming up, and I need to be a Catholic in good standing in order to take part. But until then there are little rewards for going to church, such as hearing the first reading today as follows:

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.

So far, so good. But then:

As long as Moses held up his pants, the Israelites were winning,

What?

but whenever he lowered his pants, the Amalekites were winning.

It wasn't until I heard the following sentence ("Aaron and Hur held his pants up—one on one side, one on the other") that I realized it wasn't Moses' pants, but his hands. Completely changes the meaning of the passage.

I once asked my friend Bob which he would chose: deafness or blindness. He immediately picked deafness, not only because he is an artist, but also because loss of hearing would spare him all the annoying noises of the city. I also chose deafness: not just because the deaf have a tight-knit, insular community, but because, as today's reading shows, I would then live in a wonderfully surreal and silly world.

From Now On

I was woken Wednesday morning by the sound and cool temperature of rain. After getting up and making some water of my own, I looked out the window and saw that the rain was hard enough to flood the streets, but oddly enough was not coming in my windows. So I left the windows open and fell back asleep to the soothing sound of a summer thunderstorm.

An hour or two later I woke up and saw that my sister (she's been staying with me) was dressed and ready for a job interview. "You're heading out?" I asked. "Nope, the subway system is shut down because of the rain." As I do when anything out of the ordinary happens, I got up and watched it on tv. Indeed, so much rain had poured down in such a short period of time that the subways flooded, making the trains unable to get through.

It reminded me of a conversation/prediction I had made four years ago. In 2003, you may remember there was a blackout in New York City. Apart from the blackout itself, the main item of interest was how well people in the city dealt with the power outage. Unlike the blackout of 1977, there was little looting and a sense of society coming together rather than disintegrating into chaos. So soon after 9/11, it seemed that people wanted to be good, that people wanted to help others and meet the challenge when things went wrong, as opposed to the summer of 1977 when everyone seemed pissed off and couldn't even imagine their better natures, let alone act on them.

The '03 blackout occurred while I was at work, which meant I had to walk down 59 flights of stairs. I walked behind one of my co-workers, who was a little concerned but trying to be brave as we made our way downstairs. Being with someone more anxious than I actually had calming effect: I got to be the rational one for a change. I wasn't wearing pumps, for one thing. Preparing for the worst, I was actually surprised when we got to the street. There didn't seem to be any tension or panicking. I saw people at intersections directing traffic and the drivers obeying rather than ignoring them. Making my way home, it seemed as if the entire city had been transformed into a series of block parties. I stopped at a bar and had a Guinness (cause it tastes good warm). Outside the bar, someone blasted music from the back of their truck and everyone just hung out, listened and swapped stories.

A few days after power was restored, I was relating my experiences to my friends Troy and Andrea, particularly my realization that the blackout was an indication of things to come. Enjoyable as it was, I knew that it was also a sign of the future. American infrastructure is fairly old, and has been pushed to its limits. Unfortunately, the prevailing mood in this country is to build new rather than repair old, and, even worse, that tax monies shouldn't be wasted on such things as repairing roads or upgrading utilities. People have been feed the line (fishing metaphor implied) of "less taxes is always good!" that they've forgotten the sort of things for which taxes are meant. I believe...I hope...that I sounded more accepting and cheerful than apocalyptic when I told my friends "this is how it's going to be from now on. Things are going to fall apart and we're just going to have to deal with it. The age of progress in America is over; now comes the age of everything falling apart."

Our subway system can't withstand a lot of rain. A steam pipe explodes in mid-town this summer. A bridge collapses in Minneapolis. New Orleans. They're all part of a list of the way things will be from now on. They are not the exceptions, but the rules.

Birthday Massage

On Monday I went for my annual Birthday Massage. I was about a month late, but my schedule didn't allow for the massage any closer to the actual day. After every massage I think "I should do this more often -- at least twice a year" but never do.

On my way, I saw a typical tourist family consulting maps and trying to orient themselves. The parents were wearing matching "I [heart] New York" shirts. I thought of telling them "Thank you, but you know you don't have to wear those shirts. It's not like a law was passed." Although if Giuliani had remained mayor, I'm sure one would have been.

My massage was scheduled at a spa for men located in an old bank building. The decor is New York Chic: minimal furnishings, steel gray walls, catwalks leading to the different rooms, what I assume is good feng shui. An impressive place, the effect of which was undone by bright yellow water in the toilet I went to use. Apparently the massages are so good that you're too relaxed to flush when finished.

08:42 Brecht: Collected Plays Volume 2

Brecht: Collected Play Volume 2
Bertolt Brecht

Lead to this book because of my interest in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, I discovered it was actually my least favorite of Brecht’s plays, preferring A Man’s a Man and The Threepenny Opera. I’m rather bad at reading plays – even Shakespeare – never getting as much from the text as I do from an even halfway decent performance.

But some understanding of Mahagonny was needed as I was going to see an experimental film that used the entire opera, sung in German, as its soundtrack. The filmmaker Harry Smith was (wikipedia puts it best) “an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and Kabbalist.” As your grandmother might say, Harry was a “real character,” the kind that used to populate Greenwich Village and gentrification has dispersed to God-knows-where. Smith’s film of Mahagonny divided the screen into four equal quadrants, showing a variety of images in each quadrant. Often the same image would be shown in two quadrants though reversed in one, creating a mirror effect. The images were home movie quality, shots of New York as it was in the 1970’s and stop motion animation using whatever Harry happened to have in his apartment, mostly cigarettes and liquor bottles. I had seen the film several years ago and this time, read Brecht’s play beforehand, thinking that a familiarity with the opera would add to my understanding of the film.

Sadly no. I realized fairly early on that there isn’t much correspondence between Brecht’s text and Smith’s film; or rather, that like much of Smith’s work, the connections and meaning are so esoteric and personal that viewers remain outside. Brecht’s play itself is said to be a satire of America, following the experiences of immigrants to a golden city who seek only to get rich, become vulgarians when they do and eventually succumb to the city’s violence and corrupt legal system. I can see why it would appeal to a bohemian like Smith; what I can’t see is what it has to do with his film. As nostalgic as I am for the New York of 30+ years ago, my second viewing was a restless experience.

Brecht’s play features the standard Brechtian devices to remind audiences that they are not seeing reality but a play, a representation of reality. Culture, not nature. But the vaudeville-type satire is rather tiresome, despite the inventive technique involved. Again, this is as text. It’s likely that a well-staged production would reverse my opinion. Better are the two earlier plays included in this volume. The Threepenny Opera features the scheming and fighting among the criminal underclass and has better characters and a narrative drive lacking in Mahagonny.

The real surprise was A Man’s a Man. A group of soldiers, fearing the wrath of their sergeant when one of their company goes missing while drunk, convince a local dockworker to impersonate the missing man. He agrees with the ruse, thinking it to be temporary, but stays and eventually becomes a better soldier than the rest of the troop. It’s a funny take on identity as being determined more by your surroundings than anything innately personal. The military farce is silly enough to be an episode of Sgt. Bilko or a lost chapter of Catch-22 and its theme on the malleability of identity haven’t dated at all.

07:42 A Void

A Void
Georges Perec

I thought I had first learned of Perec’s A Void -- a novel in which the letter e never appears -- from The Book of Lists, which I read and re-read as a teenager. However, I just checked The Book of Lists and there is no mention of either Perec or his novel, a strange disappearance completely in synch with A Void. My interest was reawakened when I found myself constructing sentences without the letter e while half-asleep (details here). My sister Ann gave me a copy of A Void this past year for Christmas and I was off.

Reading the book, you can’t help but be aware of the game the writer is playing, and as you read, you constantly check to see if he slips up. Nope, he never does. Some stylistic indulgences are to be expected: past tense is avoided and some numbers are represented by digits rather than spelled out. Even though the book is based around a clever conceit, there is a sense of sadness and loss. Written as a mystery, it begins with the disappearance of the main character’s best friend, soon followed by the death or disappearance of others in his life. It includes the genre’s conspiracies, hair-pin turns and sudden reversals to portray a stable world sinking into chaos. It’s interesting that Perec, a life-long Parisian, wrote this, the most rule-bound of novels, during the political turmoil of the late sixties. It is anarchic in its imagination though reactionary in its respect for rules and order.

How clever is the book? Well, the second section and the fifth chapter are “missing” (because e is the second vowel and the fifth letter of the alphabet). Not content to craft his own work with one letter tied behind his back, Perec also rewrites and incorporates Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Poe’s “Black Bird” (“Quoth that Black Bird ‘Not Again’”), and, for the ultimate achievement in being a smart-ass, Shakespeare’s “To Be Or Not To Be”:

Living or not living: that is what I ask:
If ‘tis a stamp of honor to submit
To slings and arrows waft’d us by ill winds,
Or brandish arms against a flood of afflictions,
Which by our opposition is subdu’d? Dying, drowsing;
Waking not?…

I should point out that A Void is a translation, skillfully handled by Gilbert Adair from the original French, which may actually be the greater achievement. It brings to mind the old line about Ginger Rogers being a superior dancer to Fred Astaire because she had to do everything he did except backwards and in high heels.