Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

It was Rachel, Rafael, Tom and I, minding our own business over at Karin and Ronnie's. Suddenly, Karin's phone beeps. It's her work phone, weird that someone is trying to reach her on a Saturday night.  Here's the text she got: The text Karin got on her work phone at 7:13 PM Saturday night. Karin has no idea who any of these sassy ladies are. What a puzzle.  We make some deductions. Clearly, the gal pals have gone away for the weekend. And one of them has texted photos to a wrong number. Tom checks the metadata on the photos, as you do, if you're Tom. We feel our suspicions are confirmed. The photos were taken and sent from a resort in Florida: The Metadata on the photos reveals the photos were taken at a resort in Florida. We are woebegone with envy. Here are these ladies whooping it up poolside, while we are indoors because it's freezing and pounding rain in New York. Someone has a great idea. We should re-enact the photos....

When I go to Carnegie Hall, I like to dress the part. I take my Grammy’s mink from the back of the closet. Sometimes I find a hat. Definitely a vintage velvet handbag. It’s hectic to pull this kind of finery together on such short notice, but you can only get the $4 rush tickets a couple hours before showtime. Also, comfortable footwear is a must, given the endless and dizzying staircase up to the nosebleed section.  I like it up there. The musicians on stage are several miles away, but you’re really close to the ceiling. Plaster artisans back in the day had some kind of attention to detail.  The stage at Carnegie Hall from the nosebleed seats. Most lately, we were up there with Kent and Darcey before they left town. We settled into our red velvet seats, bathed in the cavernous golden glow of the place, occasionally brushed by a crystal from one of the massive chandeliers dangling just overhead.  The gorgeous chandeliers in...

This weekend I learned a valuable life skill. If your parents give you birthday gift that happens to be compost-pile related, it's the not the best idea to leave it in the car for three days.  A bag of cow shit tied with a festive ribbon. But seriously, what girl doesn't love some fresh cow shit to sprinkle on compost? Thanks, Mom and Dad! 

My dad was out riding his bicycle and he got pulled over by the cops. Here's his account of the incident: I was biking south on winding Sandbridge Road in Virginia Beach last week.  The road was being prepared for a much needed repaving and the construction crews had milled about .7 mile section of the road creating a surface a Paris-Roubouix bike racer would find challenging.   The milled area was far worse on the edges where the grooves were deeper.  Though there were smooth spots where car wheels had worn down portions through the travel lanes.  I escaped the first section of creases by riding a multi-use lane that more or less paralleled Sandbridge Road.  The multi-use lane, as many do, abruptly ended forcing me out on to the milled roadway.   I now had a choice to ride the side of the road with strewn gravel and deep milled  ridges or take the far smoother, cleaner travel lane flattened surface. The road is heavily traveled and I felt...

Just got back from dodging babies on the streets of Havana. It's not a sight I'm accustomed to, toddlers striding purposefully down the sidewalk that close to midnight. Some are off to the ice cream shop. You have to hold the door because these shorties can't reach the handle. It's easy though. You just pull open the door and they saunter right under your arm.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like munchkin city. But once you say "excuse me" to a member of the under-5 set like you'd say "excuse me" to any fellow pedestrian you almost tripped over, your worldview scrambles just a little bit. We were very busy in Cuba, and I mean even beyond Mission Mojito, which I think we won. Upon arrival at our Air BnB, I spotted a thick packet of papers tucked between some magazines on an end table. It was a print-out of a Powerpoint presentation, clearly left by someone who stayed in our room before us. The Powerpoint detailed a very, very, v...

Last week at English Language Conversation Hour, a lovely twenty-something from Puerto Rico was in my group. She said she was having trouble with a word. I said hit me with it. “Bitch,” she said, enunciating very clearly. “Mmm, I think you got it,” I replied. “No, no,” she said kind of frantically. “I don’t mean bitch. I mean like ‘It’s really hot today so I was thinking of grabbing my bathing suit and my sand bucket and heading to the bitch.’” We spent about ten minutes of me saying “BEEEEEETCH” and her replying “BIIIIIITCH.” Finally, I suggested she might want to skip 'the bitch' and just go with 'the shore.’ Discretion is the better part of valor and there are worse things than sounding like you’re from jersey. 

So what's new with you, Rat? At Uncle Bob’s birthday dinner, someone asked what was new with me, and I said I’d just seen a remarkably huge rat galloping down 51st street. The rat swerved out of a garage, covered some quick ground and vanished through a hole under the door to someone’s office. It was the size of a herd animal, this rat. It was big enough to harness up and plow a field, which could have major implications for sustainable micro-farming.  Because the family is generally okay with inappropriate dinner conversation, Sue remarked with some remorse that she didn’t recall any personal incidents involving a rat. Not to worry, I have plenty. My all-time favorite was the one in the 2nd Avenue F-train stop.  We looked down the subway tunnel and saw a newspaper billowing in the air, coming toward us. Odd, because there was no wind. At all. It was one of those sultry nights where the still air becomes a Petri dish and the s...

Ella wasn’t hungry and Jack said he would only eat a hotdog. Only a hotdog. Mark was hungry and so was Tom but Seth and Mary were not hungry. So we canceled our lunch reservation at the place across the street and walked to the closest hotdog joint - Chelsea Papaya.  In a wild coincidence, Chelsea Papaya occupies the exact former location of  my grandfather’s furrier manufacturer business . So we felt right at home, even though the furrier manufacturers lost their lease sometime prior to 1950. We ordered a vat of deep fried nitrates. Turned out, Jack didn’t want a hotdog at Chelsea Papaya. He wanted a dirty dog from a midtown food truck.  At the bar table by the window, Uncle Tom played a fun game called “talking about the tourists on the sidewalk but not pointing at them.” It’s harder than you’d think. With no need to waste valuate time eating anything, Jack practiced holstering his finger for the durat...

I covet a sauna. I like a sauna all right. I like the rocks and the earthy smell of your hair smoldering. But then, a couple days ago, I read about the fantastic health benefits of sauna-ing. I began to covet a sauna.  Our friend Guy has a sauna in his basement. His very own sauna. It is electric powered, but an all-wood and glass real-deal. It kind of looks like a small woodland-style enclosed porch. When Guy's daughter was little, she had a playhouse (aka the box their new washing machine came in) positioned right next to the sauna. It was like father-daughter tiny neighborhood. Seriously, I wanted in. But the YMCA has a sauna. Any day of the week, I can go over to the YMCA and sit in the sauna.  So I did.  I was sitting in the sauna, not staring at my phone. Phones fry in saunas. As do Apple Watches. I stared at the wall thinking deep thoughts. This whole sitting-in-the-sauna-at-the-YMCA experience was pretty much exactly the same experi...

Something -> Dinner -> Dessert -> Drinks Last Friday night, it was Dinner -> Dinner -> Dinner. Mainly because Tom, in a failed attempt to take his cholesterol medicine, popped a sleeping pill by accident at 2:30 PM. He began walking into walls about 3. He drank 2 pots of coffee and a large Dunkin' Donuts Columbia Blend and managed to remain upright. Of course, adult beverages were not an option for him. For safety reasons. Also because if he drank any more fluids he might have exploded his bladder. But we were starving, so we had an early dinner. And then we went to a cabaret show that had a two item minimum. And Tom could’t drink, so he had another dinner. Then we met up with some friends who hadn’t eaten. So we had another dinner. Each successive dinner got smaller, however. I don’t want you to think we’re complete pigs. Mostly, we do Something -> Dinner -> Dessert -> Drinks. I’m talking about your average Fridays and Sat...

It wasn't so much of a march... more like a mosey, I'd say. Actually it was more like standing around for a hella long time, punctuated by short busts of mosey. And when I say, "standing around," I mean standing as still and straight as a bottle of beer nestled firmly into a 550,000 pack. It was an amazing experience I wouldn't trade for even the most luxuriously non-claustrophobic conditions. Here's inside the metro subway car on the way into the city: Inside the metro train. Picture a medium sized room. Picture 250 people in that room. I had carpooled to DC with four friends, some of them brand new friends, staying with Casey's cousin and her husband-- two more brand new friends. Casey's cousin had bought a metro card for each of us earlier in the week. Luckily. Because the lines to the ticket machines were an hour long. And that didn't count the line down to the platform and the massive rabble in the station after we arrived downtown: ...

Tom and I bought a blender for ourselves for Christmas. Tom wasn’t as keen on the blender idea as I was. But don’t get me wrong, the blender still counts as a gift in the Tom column. That box is checked. Our new blender: http://amzn.to/2ioeDv1 I didn’t pick out one of the really really fancy blenders. We aren’t good enough chefs to warrant a blender that costs as much as an artificial leg. But our blender is good enough to have a smoothie setting that makes your cheeks vibrate when it gets going. The little wheel spins like a helicopter blade. The whole blender might go airborne if you don’t clamp your hands around the chassis. As soon as the new blender arrived on the scene, I got busy with it. Nothing has been safe from categoric pulverization. Early on, I had a broccoli moment. We had a lot of broccoli. I jammed a bunch into the blender and it was go time. Except not much happened.  The little wheel was spinning around like a champ but not connecting...

Most people are their own worst enemies when it comes to dressing right for cross country skiing. The possibility of being cold gives noobies panic attacks. They think to themselves, "It's better to be warm than cold because you can always take something off." I'll grant you, there's some logic there, but only if you dress so it's possible to remove a layer and not be left in only your sweaty underpants. If I were a brand new, or almost brand new, cross country skier, this is what I would wear. But first, let me run through my assumptions: I'm assuming you will fall down a few times. It's almost inevitable, even if you are a downhill skier. Some of the best schadenfreude I've ever had the pleasure of indulging in was watching cocky-ass downhill skiers put on a pair of cross country skis for the first time ever. It takes them about five minutes to get their shit together, but those five minutes are bloody terrific. I'm assuming you'l...

To be candid, I was taken by surprise last night at Penny Arcade's performance at St. Anne’s Theater in DUMBO. Apparently, when I buy tickets to shows, I’m more of a “look at the pictures” kind of online shopper. Here’s the show promo: I thought we signing up for some sort of drag cabaret. I thought there might be cake. I was wrong.  In case you are unfamiliar with the work of Penny Arcade, as I was until yestereve, let me clue you in. She’s a 60ish ingenue formerly of the Andy Warhol set. She's hell bent to rage against the machine for 90 minutes. Except it’s not a rant. It’s art. This was a thing in the early 80s downtown. I can distill 90 minutes with Penny Arcade into four bullets, and I mention this because it’s actually my main point. But here we go: Penny Arcade considers herself in the “control group” immune from the idiocy perpetuated by uptight suburbanites and their entitled lily-livered, gay and straight children who indulge in artisanal r...

To get into the luxury boxes in Madison Square Garden, you gotta know a guy. Or Diana. She gives you these big fancy red tickets and you plan all week how you'll approach the ensuite buffet.  Tom, Stacie and I arrived early. We wanted to take full advantage of the amenities. This was an astute move since Tom required six trips through the metal detector to successfully empty all his pockets. We stepped out of the damp and noisy crowd and into a serenely quiet private elevator reserved for suite guests. A tall man looking awfully suburban was already in there. He chatted up the elevator guy. He said to us in a jocular tone, "So nice to get out of the plebeian masses." We didn't do a fist bump or anything, but there were "same here" looks all around.  Then the suburban man told the elevator guy he was going to the 9th floor. We said we were on the 7th, closer to the stage. The man gave us a mock salute. We totally won that round. Upon arrival, we ...

I went to the alternative doctor today to see what could be done about these sinus headaches. He looked at my tongue and told me my digestive system was weak. He advised me to immediately: Give up coffee. No dairy. No gluten. Quit drinking. Go to bed before 11pm. (He actually said 10pm, but given that 10pm is like the middle of the afternoon, I am deliberately not hearing that right.) I didn't even make it 2 hours. Tomorrow I will try again.  NaBloPoMo #28. 2 More Days!

A pressed cloth napkin on Greenwich Avenue near 7th. I imagine someone got up from a lovely brunch and made it the whole way out onto the street before the napkin static-clinging to their pants tumbled to the curb. A huge dead rat on 8th Avenue by 15th Street. The rat was grey and very well fed. It lay on its side, in the dead center (ha ha) of the sidewalk. Someone had carefully stuck a red baseball cap on the rat's head. At first, I thought it was a "Make America Great Again" hat, but it turns out it was not.  NaBloPoMo #27

Friday turned into Saturday and family turned into friends. Then other friends bearing Gibson Les Pauls and Fender amps (twinsies!). And drums. And a ukulele. And some kind of weird cigar box slide guitar thing. We found Tom a microphone and. Band Night. Darcey with the recap: "I don't mind talking into a microphone. But singing...." "I can play Gs and As all day." "We should be called The Soft Pants." Now it's 1:30AM and we're watching old music videos. Everlong. Closer. Karma Police. Toxic. Toxic?

Our family knows how to do Thanksgiving. We stick to a tight agenda: 9:00 - Arise. 9:00-12:00 Eat Breakfast. 12-4:00 Eat Lunch. 4:00-6:30 Eat Dinner. 6:30-7:30 Play heavily censored Cards against Humanity. Great for the under 10 and over 70 crowd. Also the 10-70 crowd. 7:30- 8:30 Play some new charades game with the phone on your forehead that was on the Ellen Show and somehow Tom cottoned onto. Turn off all the lights and play a cut-throat game of hide-and-go-seek in the dark. 8:30-9:00 Watch OK Go videos. Fight over which one is best. 9:00 - Build an elaborate nest out of pillows for Mark to sleep in. 9:15 - Go to Bed. NaBloPoMo #24!

I don't know why Daniel Kitson doesn't wear velour trousers. I think he would relish velour. He reminds me of the kind of guy who would appreciate an excellent soft pant. During Mouse , Daniel Kitson's latest one-man show, don't get me wrong, his attire was perfectly serviceable. He looked comfortable. He's just so uncomfortable. I like Daniel Kitson. I want him to be happy. If this Mouse show were a painting, I'd say it would be this painting by Paul Klee : I'm imagining Paul Klee had just broken out a fresh canvas and dabbed some red on his brush, maybe to mix it on his palette, but no. There came a gigantic red drip, right in the middle of the composition.  Klee steps back from his easel and stares and stares and stares. Against impossible odds, he makes a painting that looks like it was supposed to have a giant red hypnotic dot in the middle of it. And so I imagine Kitson with this mouse thread of a story. He's a little spectrum...