Who doesn't love lilacs? (That's Finney sniffing the lilacs.)
My friends Matt Belanger and Marianne Petit who helped, she says she was a sidekick, have two new websites. Here are descriptions that Marianne sent me, but just go. I love this sort of thing, these collections of stories, and I love how Matt does them. You'll see what I mean if you go.
Disappearing Places is both an archive and collective map of places that no longer exist, at least not as they once did. Users can upload stories and images about a place, link them to a corresponding location or street address and tag them accordingly, as well as browse the stories and places other individuals have submitted.
Time Indefinite is both a repository of significant moments and a collective timeline so that we can chart where we all stand in time next to each other during our individual significant moments. Users can upload stories and images about a specific moment in time and tag them accordingly, as well as browse the stories and moments other individuals have submitted.
(PS: I can take Marianne in a fair fight.)
What the hell?? My desk make-over is apparently a total flop. I was going to put a nice, tall house plant where the lilacs are now (lilacs are in season, YAY). It would have been quite dramatic and make-over-y. But I decided I prefer buying myself flowers from time to time instead. Oh well.
I've been cleaning for two days, and if nothing else, my apartment is nice and clean and relatively organized. I think I might take tomorrow off. That reminds me. I saw two movies recently that I would recommend. The Host and Hot Fuzz which stars the Shaun of the Dead guys who I just adore. I wish they were my friends so I could hang out with them and play video games. (I don't actually play video games, but it seems like the kind of thing they would like to do and it would be fun with them.) I watch Shaun of the Dead every time it's on TV. It never gets old. Hot Fuzz was great too, but it's hard to beat zombies, but still. It was great and totally worth seeing.
I need a break from writing so I've decided this weekend will be my spring cleaning weekend. I love spring cleaning. Not only will my apartment be freshly, wonderfully clean and organized by the time I'm done, but I give myself various rewards at the end. For instance, I'll go through all my clothes and figure out what I don't wear, doesn't fit and take them down to the local church thrift shop. My reward: one piece of replacement clothing!
In addition to all the usual stuff, my desk is getting a makeover. It's not bad as far as messy desks go, and after reading that Times article that was very convincing that some clutter is better than excessive organizing the object isn't so much to clear it. For instance, those two piles on the left? I need them, and according to the Times, a few piles like that can be a good thing. Nonetheless, there must be someway to make it all look better, even with the clutter. So this is my before shot.
I was talking to Chris yesterday about the perfection of our pet's bellys. There is nothing more vulnerable and sweet and endearing than a cat (dog, etc.) belly. Here is Finn's.
In other news, I've got a birthday coming up and I find a video of me on the Charlie Rose show from 1994. 13 YEARS AGO. If you're curious about what I looked and sounded like when I was still a sweet young thing, go here and click on the middle box down on the left. Christ. I was still in my 30's. This was just before Mosaic, which became Netscape, which became everything we have now, when Gore was calling the internet the Information Superhighway. God I loved and still love that man.
Please give it another go Al Gore. PLEASE run again.
There is no relation between the title of this post and this picture. I just like to have a picture in my post every day, and this is today's. It's across the street from one of the movie theatres I go to and I call it the "I Quit, Give me a Burger and a Cupcake and Take Me Now Cafe."
Nadine, a reader of this blog, is visiting NYC with a friend this week and I wanted to say hi! Apparently they brought the president with them, so thank you for the all-day gridlock, Nadine and friend!! (Kidding.) But it's also their BIRTHDAYS.
Speaking of which, I prefer the cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe on 18th between 5th and 6th, and a great place to eat lunch is on that block, City Bakery. So if you have time, you could go to those places one day, but you should definitely get birthday cupcakes at the Cupcake Cafe.
I took this picture at the movies last week, when I saw Year of the Dog, which I didn't really enjoy, I'm sorry to say. I'd love to recommend it, and if anyone was the audience for this movie I was, but it made me feel bad.
So here I am, on what is supposed to be a lovely day in the 70's, planning my day and I'm thinking movies. What is wrong with me?? But the guys who made Shaun of the Dead, one of my favorite movies, have a new movie out called Hot Fuzz, and really, there are so many others to see as well, and I must catch up. It's my job. Okay, it's not my job.
I'm in a good mood because I'm working on a chapter about the haunting of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem. At one point I thought I might be writing a book about this, so all the research is already done. I've edited what I have down to only the best parts, and it's a killer chapter, and, because I had already done all the research, it feels like I got a chapter for free.
It's pretty outside my window right now, if you like grey, which I do. Rain rain rain is imminent. I rarely have anything substantial to say, it seems. I do think about things, a lot actually, but then I write all the time and by the time I get here I'm down to: "I like grey." ("Fire bad, tree pretty." The cool kids will know this reference!)
I wrote that at around 7 a.m. I think, and it's 4:20 in the afternoon now.
My birthday is still a month and a half away, but I like to get all my ducks in a row and I've already started preparing. I scheduled a hair appointment for a few weeks before. I'm going short again. That's the main thing. Then there will be brow appointments and pedicures, it's nuts I know, but it gives me a nice regenerative feeling. What the hell?
Right now we're arguing on Echo about should Virginia Tech have "locked down" the school after the first murder. I'm on the side that says we only know that the first murders were a warning sign after the fact, there was no way to know that at the time, and how do you lock down a campus anyway, and given that the killer was a student, what would that have accomplished? He could have ended up locked down somewhere with a different set of victims. But I'm all for learning what we can from the experience, and perhaps coming up with the best ways to send crucial information to all students quickly for the future (but again, in this case, that same information would have been sent to the killer).
I've had a terrible headache the past couple of days. I still have it. But I'm sitting on the couch relaxing, with crappy TV on in the background, and I feel like posting.
Why this week sucks:
- 33 dead kids in Virgina.
- 171 dead in Baghdad, and that's just today.
- The Supreme Court upheld a ban that will limit our abortion rights.
I've got a picture of Buddy because he's just a big old sweet, innocent, leaf-eating ("bad cat!") cat. I also offer the last stanzas from the Walt Whitman poem Darest Thou Now O Soul that Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music and we'll be performing next month. He's musing about what will happen to us when we die. I don't imagine it as Whitman does, which is why I am posting his words instead of mine.
I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.
On a happier note, this new chapter is going well. Who do you think is going home on American Idol this week?
I'm supposed to go out to the Parapsychology Foundation today, but it may get called due to the rain. I'm waiting to hear. Can't say I blame Lisette if she doesn't want to drive in the rain.
The chapter I've just started is going to be freaking amazing. I'm telling the story of a haunting in Harlem in the sixties. The haunting part is mostly already written, it was the story I used in my book proposal. So now I have to research what the current thinking is about hauntings. It's like I said in the proposal, what's more fun than a ghost story? I wish there were more of them!
Breaking News! We're postpoing until next Monday. Okay, so different day. What shall I do! The library is closed, I read all day yesterday so I need a break from reading. Hmm. I guess today will be: write and go to the gym.
(Picture courtesy of http://www.fashionologie.com/.)
I'm posting to see if this new entry wipes out yesterday's entry. Crossing my fingers. My picture of the day is from what I call my Laze series. Here, Finney and Budd are lazing on the desk (it's minutes before feeding time, and they want to make sure to remind me of their existance and the need for feed-age).
I've been trying to get a film of Finney doing this fall-over thing he does. He'll be sitting on the rug, and when he sees me coming he literally falls over, like someone who has fainted. It's not a nice, laying down thing, but a keel-over, collapse on his side thing. He does it and then flips on his back so I can rub his belly. It's the cutest thing and I want to show him off doing it, but I haven't caught him yet.
In other news, I just finished a chapter, and I'm thinking of treating myself to a movie, The Lives of Others. Everyone I know who has seen it raves. But I also want to see The Year of the Dog.
Then, tonight, I'm going to the Loser's Lounge with friends.
Meanwhile, I am so sad Friday Night Lights is over for the season. That is such a freaking amazing show. And Medium is too. Love the middle child, Bridget.
Okay, hitting publish and save!
Update! It worked! Yesterday's post is still here.
We upgraded to a new webserver and there were problems with my blog. I'm going to just blab for a second here and see if this works.
I took this picture walking through Central Park the other day.
I had planned to curl up in my down comforter on the couch today and read, but when I picked up my comforter from the cleaners they gave me someone else's and they don't believe me that it's not mine. I'm waiting for a callback. I hope they find mine, because it cost hundreds of dollars. Lots of hundreds, and I don't really have that now. This one isn't nearly as nice and besides, it's someone elses. The idea of using it creeps me out.
In other news: Sanjaya is never going home, is he? That reminds me, I have never liked Jennifer Lopez, something about her has always rubbed me the wrong way, but she won me over during her appearance on American Idol.
That's what I asked Adina when the guards wouldn't let me take a picture of anything at MOMA. She pointed up, and sure enough, it was pretty up there. This is what you see when you look up at the Museum of Modern Art. We were there to see Jeff Wall's photographs. I was going to put one of his pictures here, but they really have to be seen in person to get the full effect. Here they are if you want to take a look. But seeing them online does not do them justice. They are huge, for one, and lit from behind.
Before MOMA we were at the Guggenheim to see another photo exhibition called family pictures.
Then I went to the library and solved the Boston Strangler murders. Okay, not really, but I uncovered new information. I'm so excited, but frustrated because I have to wait until Monday to call anyone about it. But still!! Very exciting. I was going to call the 80 year old son of someone who was briefly a suspect, but then my brother and sister-in-law and their kids sent me an online Easter card and I thought now would not be the time to call some guy to say, "Okay, so, your dad was a murder suspect ..." (Of course in reality I would never broach the subject like that.)
Yesterday, on my way to the gym, me and a bunch of people had a near death experience. Two cars playing some sort of chicken game were heading straight for us. There was no way of knowing if they'd keep coming straight at us, or veer left, or veer right, and they were so close and coming so fast there was only time enough to pick one direction and try to get out of the way. But if you chose wrong, there'd be no time left to head back in the other direction, you'd be dead.
I was smack in the middle of their oncoming path so I decided to wait until the last second and jump in the appropriate direction. This was one of those instances where all the options are weighed and a decision is made in a split second. Plus, if I had to jump left, I'd jumping into on-coming traffic, and they could see what was going on so they were all making their own split-second decisions, except their decisions were probably not going to result in their DEATHS OR MAIMING.
I didn't have to move. They veered right, completely away from where we all stood. No one was hurt. But we all stood around for about ten seconds going "We almost died!" "Oh my god, that was scary!" "Did you freaking see that??"
We glared at the drivers, but I figured you don't want to mess with people like that. I didn't say a word.
I went to the gym, but I was shaky the whole time. But then, for the rest of the day I was in a good mood. At the end of the day I got a call for a gig, and normally I wouldn't have gone, out of sheer laziness, but I totally wanted to go. I cleaned my apartment (suddenly it need cleaning RIGHT THEN) showered, drummed for a while to get warmed up, and went! The whole time there I was in the best mood, I danced in the hallway outside of the party, I was so happy to be with my friends who I only see once in a blue moon when I show up for a gig.
I took the picture above before we played. I don't think those people liked us too much, the applause was lukewarm, but fuck em! I didn't die!
Not really. I'm fine, except a little worried about Finney. This is how my day went yesterday. I went uptown for an appointment to see about learning this thing that was developed at the University of Massachusetts, MBSR, Mindful Based Stress Reduction. I know how roll-your-eyes that sounds, but there have been studies that indicate it works. I decided to walk home afterwards. I went through the park, where the dogwoods were in bloom. Oh wait, maybe it was magnolia? Okay, I admit it, I don't know anything about nature!! Something with big flowers on it.
From there I went past Columbus Circle. Here I am with text boxes and arrows again. Experimenting a little with color. This place had an amazing view of the park and lots of glittering lights. I think my choir sang here too, come to think of it. We did! It was for a birthday party, for NBC or something. And we were there as this hugh choir singing happy birthday.
From there I went to the Museum of TV and Radio to see if they had a couple of shows relating to my book that I needed to see but they didn't have a single one of them! From there I went to the New York Public Library and they didn't have what I wanted either! Then I went home and did billing but it didn't work. There were problems, which were finally figured out.
Then, American Idol was BORING. I guess after they beat Blake and Chris Sligh down into the ground for experimenting with arrangements a couple of weeks ago everyone is afraid to try something different, but man I wish some of them had done something differently with those songs last night.
Then, at 3 in the morning Finney threw up. I took him to the vet a couple a months ago because he was throwing up occasionally and it didn't seem like the occasional furball. But everything checked out fine. When the pet recall happened of course I wondered if it was related but I don't feed them anything on the list, and besides, it had been a while since he threw up. But then last night he did. He's absolutely fine otherwise, so I'm not panicking, but I am concerned. I will call the vet this morning.
Oh God, that was the most boring post EVER, wasn't it? Sorry.
This is the old web server, sitting here in the cabinet on the right. I remember when it looked so new and compact and shiny to me. Oh man. I should put together a small collection of pictures of the hardware of Echo. We've been around for 18 years. We went from a computer sitting underneath my desk at home, to a bunch of computers in our own gorgeous offices in Tribeca, to these two thin, sleek machines sitting in a co-location site, with a bunch of other machines belonging to God knows who and NO people. It's a very spooky, 1984-type place.
But below is the new server, sitting on top of the machine that runs Echo. That's Joe from Panix in the back, hooking up the server to the world.
I'm also learning how to insert text boxes and arrows and whatnot. What do you think? I think I need to go back to the drawing board. I could make it clearer, and more aesthetically pleasing. Expect to see text boxes and arrows in my photographs for a while as I learn to get the hang of them.
Anyway, I'm sure one day these sleek, thin machines will eventually look old and clunky to me, too. As we all will one day look old and clunky to ourselves. Except it's not a good analogy. Whereas we all really will be old and clunky, the machines don't change, only our perception of them.
I've been working like a dog all weekend, getting ready to replace Echo's webserver next week, and keeping up with my book deadline. But I have to stop and relax now. I'm totally burnt out and any work I do at this point is useless, anyway, so STOP STOP STOP. (I am shouting at myself. In my mind.)
I am luring myself away with a baby dog on a keyboard, which was sent to me almost simultaneously by two separate friends. Couldn't you just die?? Don't you want him?? Why oh why can't he be mine?? Oh little baby doggie, I love you truly.
Okay, I think I will go curl up on the couch now. I have America's Next Top Model to look forward to.
