New York City Twilight

Normally, my weekday shifts at work are 9-5. On occasion, a co-worker may ask to switch so that I work 12-8 instead. Most of the time, I don't mind. It allows me to sleep in just a little bit more, I can always watch the 8 o'clock tv shows a little later online, and it gives me the chance (in spring and summer, at least) to witness New York City twilight.

The air is warm, but breezy. Once 8 o'clock hits, the population of Times Square and its surrounding hamlets drops as the crowds drift in and out of restaurants and plays like swarming schools of fish. There's a relative quiet, and even the trumpeting neon lights seem to whisper. The stars in the sky are still hard to spot, but once I reach Bryant Park and see the lights from the circumambient buildings peeping through the swaying boughs of the breezy trees, I forget that stars ever existed. Here's where the beauty is.

When I begin my stroll from work to Grand Central Station, the sky is a bright Chase Bank blue, as if I'm staring into Picasso's "Woman with crossed arms." When I reach the main library (which, by the way, is under construction and the facade makes it look like a dumpy modernist social hall), I notice that painters are still working by lamp light, and their magical aura causes me to expect Michelangelo himself to be among them. By the time I reach Park Avenue, Picasso's blue has melted into dark midnight satin.

And as I reach Grand Central, amid the closing shops, and the flocks of speeding yellow cabs and a sky threatening to turn darker yet, I know that I have refreshed the magic potion that makes me love this city still.

Wordless Wednesday

Beluga Cam

Make sure you check out the Vancouver Aquarium's  Beluga Cam. There's a baby!!!

Happy World Penguin Day!

It's true. It's World Penguin Day. Supposedly, the relation of April 25th to penguins has something to do with the arctic penguins' migration. Sadly, I haven't been able to locate much information because I've been busy looking for a functioning penguin cam. I had found a website that claimed to link to over 10 different zoos or aquariums (and two actual native penguin locations) with penguin cams all around the world - Jersey, Omaha, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Antarctica, the UK, etc. But almost all of them either had dead links, or had cameras that were not up and running, either due to malfunction or an end in their penguin cam program. Jenkinson's Aquarium in NJ claims that I need a Java Plug-in, but as my Mac's Java is up to date, I say they are wrong. I finally came across a website with not one, but three functioning penguin cams. You can check them out at the California Academy of Sciences. The penguins are kind of boring right now, but I suppose that's because it's not feeding time at the moment. Although there are two penguins I can see on the Biologists' Cam that look kind of suspicious. Black market fish, maybe? Hmm.

Friday's Fotos

"This Side of Paradise" - Lost

For years, artists have been struggling to create a coherent vision of the tragedy of Scott & Zelda that translates to the stage. In my senior year of high school I had a student directing project that I was so sure of. Initially I was going to do a conceptual multimedia production based on a series of poems written by Vietnam War vets; that might have actually worked. But instead I was inspired by William Luce’s biographical solo play, The Last Flapper; this turned out to be a fool’s errand.

Overall, The Last Flapper is a beautiful amalgamation of Scott & Zelda’s life together, taking into account their own works as well as letters, and accounts from friends and relatives. It makes for an excellent frame, but suffers from the same disease that all prior and subsequent versions (including, now, Nancy Harrow and Will Pomerantz’s over-directed theatrical which opens tonight at the Theatre at St. Clement’s): telling the story from Zelda’s perspective.

In Luce’s case, where the production is not only told from Zelda’s perspective, but by Zelda all alone, thus limiting the exploration of her life and censoring her dramatic and tragic death. For a moment, in Act II of this new incarnation it seemed that we might just reach that pivotal end. Harrow and Pomerantz have allowed their concept of the production to lapse and open a door to such a possibility: they hand the narration over to Scott & Zelda’s daughter, Scottie (played here by the taxing Mandy Bruno – Having seen soap star Bruno now in three New York productions, across pretty wide spectrum of characters, I believe it’s safe for me to say that sometimes even the third time’s not the charm).

Scottie narrates from her high school graduation through to her father’s death, and then seems to linger alongside Zelda’s narration once we return to her sorrow upon Scott’s death (probably the most beautiful and affecting moment in the entire production). But then the show ends abruptly in a reprise with Zelda hugging her younger self while her daughter looks on – itself a reprise of some of the most uncomfortable moments of the evening.

This abrupt ending is a direct result of an inability to see Scott and Zelda as two sides of the same coin. As mentioned before, their arc is truly hard to capture because of the (dare we say) abrupt way in which their fun ends. The fun in this production is stilted – ask most people about the Fitzgeralds about they’ll tell you about swimming in fountains and riding atop taxi cabs, here represented by just some dancing and some drinking. We never grasp the height of their free-living ambitions (however, one more reprise of “This Side of Paradise” or “God I’m Sophisticated” and I might have to throw up from hearing about how beautiful everyone is - the show's repetetive melodies and lyrics are migraine-inducing with the exception of one or two numbers, specifically Scott's city-themed solo in Act II).

Told in flashback (as so many of its predecessors are), the stilted ambition is wrapped in the pain we already feel from the older Zelda looking on as everyone has their stilted fun. In Luce’s production, Zelda relives everything as part-memory, part schizophrenic hallucination. In this production, older Zelda seems relatively sane compared to the memories. This version fails completely to mention her book, Save Me the Waltz which is essentially Scott’s This Side of Paradise plus all of the subsequent events of their lives told as fiction. By denying Zelda that outlet, here younger characterization seems sanitized, institutionalized even, as pale as the walls of the set. The production values are mostly quite high – the lighting is actually stunning – but seriously? White walls?

Very early on in the show, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope in Scott & Zelda’s first meeting. Michael Shawn Lewis as the dashing Lieutenant Fitzgerald seems to stand up to the glimmer and bravado of his character’s personality in his first scene with Zelda. It feels like we've just entered a banquet hall where a large beautiful meal has been laid out for us. But the moment that we switch from real scenes to interactive letters, we lose the meal, and all we're given is a pile of cold leftovers.

The one consistently beautiful performance came in the form of the incomparable Maureen Mueller as older Zelda – not only does she look the part more than anyone else in their respective roles in this production, but she glides about the stage with the grace of a young Jane Alexander and the voice of Joni Mitchell. Depressing and somewhat ravaged, her character may be, but she packs a punch where color and awareness seem lacking in everything else. At the end of the day, I’d rather watch her do a musical version of Luce’s The Last Flapper, preferably with the epic fiery Michael-Bay-choreographed ending that Scott and Zelda have deserved for so long.

Time Among the Dead, by Thomas Rayfiel

When I picked up Thomas Rayfiel's newest novel Time Among the Dead I was curious mostly because of the way in which it had been described to me. Perhaps due to misinformation, or perhaps in an effort to gain more readership, it had been illustrated as "ranking with other recent Neo-Victorian publications - Such as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters - without having to resort to anything paranormal", and as "written in a British Regency style [reminiscent of] Jane Austen and the Brontë Sisters." All I can say is, I hope that "Jane Austen and the Brontë Sisters" is a band from the late 1800s that I've never heard of because the book lived up to none of its descriptors.

First of all, to describe something as Regency would be to say that it has been written in a style captured best by novels from 1811 to 1820. To describe something as Neo-Victorian would be to say that it has been written in a style that captures the essence of the Victorian era, that is 1837 to 1901. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, being based on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility would be considered Neo-Georgian or Neo-Regency (because the source was published in 1811, but the original manuscript was written prior to 1796). Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë are all Victorian writers (not Regency) and they all wrote in very dissimilar fashions. 
What this novel should be compared to is Barbara Michaels' Mystery on the Moors (later retitled Sons of the Wolf) which is an epistolary novel written in the popular Neo-Gothic style (i.e. actually reminiscent of Jane Eyre) as adopted in the late 1960s.

Time Among the Dead focuses on the last weeks of an old man's life. His grandson has given him a journal, but it's never explained as to why. Did he want his grandfather to write about the past? About his current pain? About his wishes for the future? His will, perhaps? What we end up with is a few panicky entries from an old man who finally has time to sit and consider his life for what it has been - a disappointment.

Unfortunately, it's completely stagnant. The old man doesn't attempt to better his life, nor does he change his ways. In revisiting his past, it seems the reader is expected to acknowledge and accept his reasons for being the way he is. In the end, it seems that his tolerance for modernity and "the way things are" seems to increase only as it encompasses his former actions, but to what ends?

Written now, when gay men and women are struggling for acceptance and for equal human rights, what does it matter that an old man has become semi-tolerant of his grandson's potential proclivity towards homosexuality? What are we supposed to get out of this? A few shots of young man's bare chest and a shock-inducing (not) moment where the word "penis" is mentioned? The whole of the novel gives the impression of trying too hard to not try hard enough.

Fleshed out, it could be a really interesting study on sex and lables in whatever period it's supposed to be, and in the hands of a very great author, it could be a good novel. But the theme of homosexuality is so side-stepped and so carefully handled that all we get is limp prose in an impotent style.

Time Among the Dead
By Thomas Rayfiel
160pages
Permanent Press
(June 1, 2010)

Springtime Allergies and how I hate them

It's one thing to be allergic to animal fur or pet dander or whatever it is they call it when getting cat hair on you makes your head want to explode. That's at least controllable - stay away from cats and dogs and other furry friends.  That's what LOLcats is for. But seasonal allergies? You can't really hide from them. I can't, at least. Whether I stay here in New York or go back to Florida, springtime allergies will get me. And this year, they're getting me bad.

Of the 50 Million Americans who are affected by seasonal allergies, you'd think that New Yorkers wouldn't have it so bad. We live in a concrete jungle with very little actual physical contact with the green world. But I guess it doesn't take much. In midtown, when I'm at work, I've got the pollen blowing over from Bryant Park, and I've got the Hudson breeze carrying all sorts of allergens from Jersey. And on top of that, dust. Anybody? No? Dust. The rest of the year, it doesn't affect me too badly, but once I've got all of these other allergens clouding my head, the dust from my office recreates the symptoms of my childhood asthma.

Today, I left work three hours early because breathing was actually becoming an issue. I couldn't catch my breath between calls, I could feel my lungs tightening up, and I just knew that if I didn't get out of there that I never would. The second I got off the train up here in the Bronx, I was fine. My breathing was normal, I wasn't even stuffed up at all, and that's with being right across the street from a giant park full of budding new green life. It wasn't until after I woke up from a long nap that my nose started running and my eyes began to itch anew.

The bad thing is, aside from the dust I can't even identify what it is that I'm allergic to. You can say oh well the wind-born pollinators like grass and trees, those are easily the culprit--but my allergies in Florida are from bee-pollinated plants: jasmine, orange blossoms and azaleas. Just thinking about the sweet, thick, heavy scent of orange blossoms and jasmine actually makes my eyes itch, and makes my lungs tighten up.

My eyes are the worst part. I can deal with a runny nose (and the raw swollen nose that results), but my eyes get so itchy and I can only self-medicate with Visine-A so many times a day, and then I'm rubbing my eyes like nuts. As a result, the tissue around my eyes is all puffed up, I've got at least one stye now, and I'm just waiting for the nightmares to come. Every spring, without fail, I start having nightmares that I've rubbed my eyes so hard that they actually pop out of my head. I can't wait.

Unfortunately, all I really can do at this point is wait. By the end of May, the pollen will have subsided, the summer rains will come, and maybe I'll actually be able to breathe. But for now, it's a constant parade of anti-histamines, ibuprofen, visine, vicks, and my humidifier (which is shaped like Winnie the Pooh and therefore makes me quite happy).

The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, by Elizabeth Hardwick

My knowledge of Elizabeth Hardwick is limited: I’ve read her 1974 collection Seduction and Betrayal, and I knew she was from Kentucky. Thus ends my knowledge. However in reading this new collection being released in June of this year, I felt as if Elizabeth Hardwick knew me. Hardwick died in 2007, so she couldn’t possibly know the “me” I’m talking about – the “me” hardened by being “very busy” as “the urban clocks tick away fatefully,” the “me” that has learned to know and appreciate what it is to be “permanently temporary.”  On some deep and dark level, her stories of New York relate inherently to the New Yorker. The beautiful imagery, the fated language, everything points to New York as what it is, what it has always been – a constant study in transience, a timeless hub of all entertainment, a preoccupation with being preoccupied--for all of us are transients in the world of showbiz, keeping ourselves preoccupied. 

Hardwick’s themes are timeless (love, beauty, missed opportunities, innocence – and how we notice these things once we’ve left the city, superficiality, education, talent – and how they contradict one another), even if all of her people and places are not as timeless. Her characterization of Mrs. Wayland in “A Season’s Romance is that of a gritty Lady Catherine de Bourgh; there will always be women like her and she lasts in our modern memory. But in the same story, her daughter Adele is trapped within her mother’s web like a “povera butterfly” because she could not shed her talent and artistry for the sake of superficiality. This is something that we see less and less of as time goes on. Women are stronger than that now. What may have been true of women in society in 1956, when the story was written, is not true today. Just like the Fifth Avenue bus that runs north to south today but in “The Purchase” (1959) it runs in the opposite direction. 

I felt sad in “Shot: A New York Story” when we met Joseph, whose reaction to Zona’s death is “I’ve known Zona for fifteen years. A long time for New York, I guess.” It’s a statement more than truthful in its evaluation of the New York connection. Yet, in our transience we feel “equal to the disappointments and irritations of life even if [we are] certainly not above them.”  Even in death, our brief relationship with a person will continue to engender an elaborate bridge of loose connections on which the city is founded and refounded with each passing generation.This is what Hardwick understands, and what this collection allows us to hear from her -- that New York is not just a city, but a living, breathing thing with synapses just lying in wait for a connection to need them. It is a chemical wasteland from which life and art is sprung on the smallest of scales.

Our entry into the collection is a story of a New Yorker going back to her Kentucky roots. The personal feel of this story - knowing that Hardwick was from Kentucky and that this story was likely very close to her own revelations about her family and her past - it makes her vulnerable and that much more relatable. We're invited not only into Hardwick's observations of the city, but into her heart. Every sad love story and every bitter ending - they are hers, and they are ours. They belong to New York, as we do. 

There were some points where I felt like the stories were really grasping to belong in the collection. Some stories just don't reflect or involve New York so much as the others, but overall it works and it manages to maintain Hardwick's cynicism from front to back with few interruptions. It is well-conceived and bears the mark of a true New Yorker without alienating other readers. But more than anything, it made me feel at home. 


The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick
By Elizabeth Hardwick
256 pages
NYRB Classics 
(June 1, 2010)

LOST

 In September 2004, I was in the midst of working on a production at Fordham called The Blind Age. This was the year that I lost touch with television. "Buffy" had ended in 2003, "Angel" had ended in May of 2004 and "Bones" would not begin for another year. The only show I watched on and off (beyond late-night Lifetime sessions of "The Nanny" of course) was "House" and even that I eventually stopped watching. As The Blind Age was coming to a close, I started work on an outside-of-Fordham production called Chicken Delight, and the following semester I was working on some studio production. Suffice it to say, "Lost" (which began in September 2004) escaped me. This is not difficult when your scariest villain is a cloud of grey/black smoke that ticks like a taxi meter.

The following September, I was starting my internship and I think the only show I managed to watch regularly was "Bones". Lost didn't even cross my mind. The following Spring, my roommate was studying abroad and I wasn't friends with my new one so I started spending more time, while in the apartment, in the living room. As a result, when one of my roommates was watching Lost incessantly (she'd never seen it, so she was watching it from the beginning) with her boyfriend, I caught part of one episode (Season 2, Episode 7 - The Other 48 Days). I didn't get it. Of course, if you know "Lost", then you know that of all the episodes to just watch arbitrarily, that particular one will do absolutely nothing but confuse you because it's not about the main characters.

Over a year later I was living in Washington Heights, having graduated Fordham and now working, and subletting in a co-op. Either one of my roommates was watching it, or I simply had nothing else to do, but the finale for Season 3 of "Lost" (Through the Looking Glass) was on. I only caught part of it - again, a disastrous situation to be in with this show since all I saw was the last few minutes in Looking Glass Station with Desmond and Charlie. It was at this time that I made the decision to wait. I'd heard people talking about Lost with their theories and numbers and obsession, and I decided I would just hold off until the end.

This past January, the sixth and final season of "Lost" began. I knew that I wanted to catch up in time for the finale so that it wasn't spoiled for me, so I figured I'd wait til March and then begin getting the season DVDs from Netflix. Only in March did I realize that all 5 of the previous seasons are on "Watch Instantly" on Netflix, meaning that I wouldn't have to wait for DVDs or for the USPS, I could simply watch whenever I wanted to as long as I had an internet connection.

So I started on one of my weekends. I think I finished Season One in almost two days. I watched Season Two intermittently over the next few days, and then found a way to download Season Three so that I could watch it while at work. It should be known that the first three seasons each have over 20 episodes apiece, so getting through those was a bit monstrous, whereas seasons 4 and 5 (and now, 6) all have fewer than 17 episodes apiece, so they were a bit easier. Since Season 6 is ongoing, it's not available on Netflix so I watched what I could of it on outside sites before getting to the five most recent episodes which are available on the network's website (and no longer ate up my daily time allotment from Megavideo). I also downloaded Season 5. I kind of want to burn it, though, since it's such a messed up season.

As of last night (today, after midnight) I'm caught up. There are 5 episodes left, and the next one airs tomorrow. I wonder what I do with myself now. I got so caught up in it that there was no pacing myself. With the luxury of Netflix, I didn't have to go through the rigmarole of watching 72 minutes (an episode and a half) and then resuming with the next half + next episode 54 minutes later. That's what happens with Megavideo. If I'd had to do that with the first 5 seasons, I might not have finished until June. I have to admit, I let it get to me. I haven't really started conspiracy theory-ing everything, but I've been paying attention, and I've been reading the clues correctly. Except everything about Charles Widmore, who just pisses me off and I like to pretend he doesn't exist.

It really is an interesting show. It's well-thought out and obviously well-planned (at least, until Season 4. Some stuff that happens in 5 and now 6 I'm kind of like "Reeealllly? Didja...didja have that planned from the beginning cuz....if you did, I'm going to slap you.") I could do without some of the religious undertones but, then, what's a good hostile takeover without a few religious undertones? And I really like the cast. Everyone is well-cast and everyone seems to handle the adjustments well. By this I mean the flashbacks, fastforwards and flashsideways. They're all produced very convincingly. I could seriously do without some of these things, though. Season 5 was absolutely insane. But Matthew Fox is still pretty.

I'm very glad that I only got into it now. Had I invested years of television watching into this show, I would feel some sadness and some pain when the show ends in May. However, having adapted myself only temporarily to the lore of this show, I can assure myself that when it ends, it shall simply end. I'll come out of it knowing that I've appropriated my time appropriately and that my attachment to it has been only short-lived. However, if Kate and Jack don't make up and get together, I might cry.

I'm thinking of starting "Firefly" next. It's also available for Instant Watching on Netflix, and it is only one season, and it's not as if there's a finale coming up. It's completely in the past which means I don't have to worry about maintaining my viewership aaaand it means more Nathan Fillion, who is pretty. But perhaps not as pretty as Matthew Fox.