The Poodle's Manhattan

I'LL TAKE NEW YORK
lyrics by: Tom Waits
Photo by: Jeff Ferzoco

I'll tip the newsboy
I'll get a shine
I'll ride this dream
to the end of the line
I'm goin places
I'll take a ride
Up to the Riverside
I'll take NY
I'll let it happen
I'll pop the cork
tear off the wrappin'
I'll make a splash on the Hudson
that's how I will arrive
Hey, do you have two tens for a five?
Roll out the carpet
Strike up the band
break into the best
champagne when I land
Beat the parade drum
hit all the bars
I want the moon and stars
But I'll take NY
I'll make it happen
Blow out the candlels
tear off the wrappin'
And I know someday
they'll have to name a street after me
right next door to old Franklin D

East Village Timeline

this is cool

The Krishna's had a point...

mean people suck
mean people are filled with their own shit, I think it actually backs up and makes their complexions go sour

Mean people are mean because they are hiding some insecurity issues.

Pathetic small minded mean people- you suck, try to remember who you wanted to be.

Amy Winehouse

new favorite thing: Amy Winehouse singing, "They try to make me go to rehab, I say no no no."

http://www.amywinehouse.co.uk/

placebo effect

There's a new Radio Lab available. It tells the story of how the placebo effect works, from shamans to depression to parkinsons disease. Apparently, 25% of the time, the placebo effect works on parkinsons - - it stops their hands from shaking. Someone mapped which part of the brain is "expecting" pain relief from the placebo effect and found it deep in the middle of the brain, making opiates. We make our own morphine when we think we need to.
Lots of other brilliant stuff on the show too.

The Immortal Eddie Boros 1934-2007

Eddie Boros was an artist in the East Village. He created the tower sculpture in the community garden on Avenue B and 6th street. Once, he stole a truck from an army base and made it drive over a cliff, into the ocean, just for fun. He then called the army base, told him he found a truck, and they gave him the week off-he was cool. He often wore pearls. He painted Jac's living room wall red. He died on Friday at the age of 74.

My organic friend

This past weekend I travelled to High Springs, Florida to see my good friend who is an organic farmer.



It was so good to just relax and pick herbs and vegetables from his garden, cook, play with his animals and hang out. Even though my friend has restaurant clients he delivers to, I am trying to get him involved with a community supported agriculture program, or even a farmer's market. At one point, I became this marketing freak when I saw the quality of his crops, I wanted him to feed as many people as possible, and make money!! Farming is a solitary act in his case, so he is not accustomed to marketing his crops beyond his few clients. I spent much of my visit as a pushy New Yorker, trying to get my friend to expand his business.

Later, my friend told me his crops do not go to waste, that he will call up local community groups and give them what he doesn't sell. That made me happy, so I relaxed.

My family's response to the Larry Kramer letter: Why do Staights Hate Gays?

Here I am putting the question to the dominant societal norm- straight culture:
Straight People Why Do You Hate Gays?

God Bless him, my cousin actually spoke to me today on the phone about the Larry Kramer "open letter" to straight people, which I had sent to him to speak to me about, whenever he could talk about it. He chose today to discuss it with me. He actually had to have me hold the line for a minute, while he closed the door to his office, he was at work. My cousin expressed that he had wanted to respond to me but he wanted to do so in a conversation, not in an E-mail which he felt could be taken the wrong way. As he spoke in a low voice, I started to get the sense of how he felt about the topic- shame.
His main point came right out of the gate: Straights hate gays because they feel homosexuality is rooted in sex not love. Sad, but when I pushed him further he said that he could not imagine being with a man or being in love with another man. He explained further that straight people see gays as people who like sex a certain way, much like someone straight would have a preference for a certain position like: "Doggie Style" or masturbation, and there aren't any parades for this.
He was not kidding, this is what he said. So, I said that I could understand given this perspective how two lesbians celebrating a mass together in church, or cooking dinner for one another in their home would not be hot therefore it just doesn't exist in his male fantasy, but 2 lesbians in bed together- that's the only space for lesbians to exist. I had no idea my cousin had seen me so flately.
Oddly, I'm not angry with my cousin, I told him to imagine a world in his mind where to be gay was the norm, and then to take the feelings he has for his wife and place them in this context, that this love was not the love that you are "supposed to feel"
-a side note I referenced Ancient Greece and homosexuality as the more pure form of love expression that humans can experience.
I told him to try to think about this when he could, maybe then he might start to understand or at least see gay and lesbian love equal to straight love.
It was good to discuss this with him, perhaps we'll keep talking.

Yeah, the revolution will be televised- if you signed the release.

What happened to our queer revolution? You remember our revolution- it was before the internet.
I had a conversation and E-mail exhange with Rex Wockner today regarding a photo he took at and AIDS drug protest on Oct. 11, 1988 the day ACT UP took over the FDA. The producer of the documentary would like to use a photo release with an indemnity clause that holds photographers accountable should someone pictured in the photo decide to sue the LOGO Network, which is owned and controlled by Viacom, for all legal fees and damages caused to the network. The photo release clearly states that the photographer as the "sole" owner of the material has in fact obtained releases from everyone in the photo.

Darlings I know it may have been awhile since you have ventured out into the streets to support a cause, but surely you can remeber the late '80's when we were all throwing "blood" onto the white marble steps of our government. I myself was big into WHAM- remember them? If you ever took pictures or video footage at any of these protests then you may recall that you would never have been asking for a release from the thousands around you. I mean it was clear then as it is clear now, if you are involved in a public protest you are apart of a news and later, an historical event.

I think it is silly to try to make photographers lie about having releases for news events, even if these lawsuit hardly ever occur. However, if someone did want to make a case about appearing in a photo taken at an AIDS rally in 1988, say now they are an "ex-gay" it would mean the small freelance photographer or filmmaker is responsible for all legal costs and damages - not the corporate giant.

I have seen some historical / political documentaries on LOGO -but if these documentaries were acquired after they were originally produced and distributed it is likely that LOGO acquired the rights from its makers. Did these filmmakers sign indemnity clauses that therefore hold them responsible for capturing an historical event such as a protest or demonstration? It just doesn't seem fair to me.

I do know that LOGO edits films for broadcast, they told me that when I was interviewing to work for them, it was going to be one of my responsibilities.
LOGO airs news segments produced for the network by CBS, why then aren't documentaries produced for LOGO held to the standards of reporting news?

So this the revolution Viacom has delivered.

How are we meant to write and share new history? Why is Viacom attempting to shrink the public sphere?

happy hippy homemaker

i got a recipe for a non-toxic bathtub cleanser from treehugger.com. it works so well! my kitchen sink is shiny, the bathtub is utterly clean, countertops... anything you might use Fantastik for. it rinses beautifully, it's slightly scrubby, and it smells lovely.

2 parts baking soda
1 part castile liquid soap

put baking soda in a bowl. add soap slowly. stir. you can keep it in an airtight jar or plastic container for a year.


no more Dow chemicals! hooray!

cherry whiskey

just say no.
even if it's your birthday.

Why isn't this big news?

There's a new process that creates a fuel that comes from stuff we now throw out that can be used in a car with an internal combustion engine and existing fuel supply infrastructure. The process emits no carbon at all. We already have enough biomass on hand to supply all our fuel needs, if we use this process. Everything. Cars, trucks, trains and planes could get enough fuel from biomass we already have. It's call H2Car, and it was created at Purdue University. Researchers there are applying for a patent. If this isn't big news soon, i'm going to create some conspiracy theories.

Anyway, here's a tangent: Let's say that this process gets widely used. And then let's say that lots of open space is preserved for parks, farms, wildlife, pasture, etc. Will there be any arguments left against suburban living? If someone wants to spend hours stuck in traffic each day, who cares as long as he's not polluting or making us do business with Saudi Arabia? And if someone wants to live in a big house on a cul de sac with a Wal Mart close enough to walk to but no way to walk there, who care since open space is preserved? All we're left with are opinions - - your mall is nasty, your yard is selfish, your children are dysfunctional, blah blah blah ...

The V Word

I can't believe this crap. A few students in Westchester wanted to perform a skit from The Vagina Monoglogues for their school open mic. They were told the couldn't say "vagina" because there would be children in the audience.

I came across an editorial that sums it up well: "women and girls exist in a sexually explicit and often violent world, the same world where a word unique to their sex can barely be uttered."

We just watched This Film is Not Yet Rated. It shows how motion picture raters have outlawed any depiction of women having fun in bed. Meanwhile, violence against women is allowed in movies from G on up. The raters wanted to give But I'm a Cheerleader an NC17 because of a scene with a girl masturbating; American Pie was no problem. They wanted to give Boys Don't Cry an NC17 because Brandon Teena wipes his mouth after going down on a woman; meanwhile, every other R rated movie has a woman going down on a man. Most of what the raters object to is simply a camera on an actress' face when she's having sex. Why can't we see that? It's such a nice thing. Wait, i know. Because it would make it harder to watch all the rape, torture and humiliation of women we see in the rest of the movies. Years of this crap coming out of Hollywood has apparently worked on at least one school principal in Westchester.

The MPAA can bite my vagina.

more radio bliss

listen to Maria Bamford discuss communal living and try to define "eco pets" (cats that eat their own poo?), and this, where Maria does a calm breathy LA woman just perfectly:

Maria: You know, I make a pretty good living, I could take a year off and help people somewhere.

LA Friend: Maria, you already do so much. You make people laugh – that’s the greatest gift in the world.

Maria: But I only do that maybe an hour a night. In the off time I could sponge bathe the dying or just hose things off a little bit in general.

LA: Why don’t you just buy a pair of fair trade shoes made of recycled materials and do your part?

Maria: I already have 80 pairs of shoes! Don’t you think conscious neglect is the equivalent of perpetration?

LA: Ok, it sounds like somebody needs to take a bubble bath.

Ladies and gentlemen, the camel toe...

Living in New York City has it's moments of affirming just why one loves it here amoungst the filth and the starlite. The other night I found myself in the company of some performative hipsters. After all the singing and dancing, there was carrying on at an afterparty.
I love an afterparty, in fact I think I live for it.
While bathing in the afterglow of entertainers with some really nice and really expensive drinks,I took in the moment. I particularly liked the fact that my cognac was served in a rather thick, heavy, square shaped glass, and I had asked for cognac on the rocks, causing my hipster friends shriek and recoil in horror, but I don't care, I liked the way it's cold and the square glass made me feel like I was drinking out of a giant, hollowed out ice cube. I was too busy being delicous.

But I digress..
While previously on stage during the performace, one luminary had remarked that his pants were yellow, to which the host of the evening's entertainment replied that the color was now referred to as camel. Now, at the afterparty, my hipster enclave brought up the pants again-I guess everyone loves talking about pants as much as I do.
Soon, it became like playing the game telephone, except it was like playing telephone with Madonna, and you are both drunk. Out of a cloud of smoke appeared Kiki, love her, to call Mr. Yellow Pant out:
"Darling, you have a camel toe!"
His response was an embrace: "A camel toe, I wish!"
It was camel toe envy.

radio bliss

listen to margaret cho and neil gaiman say what they would put on a record if they were going to send it into space, knowing the record would outlast this planet. It's Radio Lab, "Looking Up." the whole show is good. it starts out with star gazing on fire island.

a woman just came on the radio representing the national vaccine information center. She said, "i've been doing this work for 25 years."
what side will she be on? she must be on someone's side. anyone who has been doing anything for 25 years must be an advocate, or very very patient.

I remember San Francisco

Ok, I tried to live in San Francisco once when I just graduated from college. I found that I missed NY terribly. Now that I have lived in NYC for 13 years, I sometimes get this romantic vision of San Francisco, like it's callling me to try to live there again. My best friend moved to Berkeley, so I would have a support system, but hey, it was hard to be involved in TV and live in SF. I guess I could work for Current, or maybe I would begin a career in the healing arts.
That was meant to make everyone laugh.
Did you ever wake up one day and think to yourself, I should be living in a different city, working in a different field?
I would want to keep the girlfriend - maybe she will get some job in Northern California and I will be "forced" to live out there- hey, I can dream.

snow angels channel world peace

Thousands of people flap their arms and legs in unison, creating angel imprints, during a world record attempt for the most snow angels, in Bismarck, N.D., Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007. Organizers said they believe almost nine thousand people took part in the event. The previous world record was 3,784. (AP Photo/Will Kincaid)

this accupuncture thing works

I have been getting accupuncture treatments for weeks now. I am recovering from sciatica which was getting me down, and out of my life. It is incredible if you just take the time to deal with your body when it needs some help.
My accupuncture doctor said during one treatment "oh this leg, she is complaining, she is so tired, she is saying: "you use me so much."
Every treatment I have had so far, has brought me back to feeling like myself and not frankenstein.
I have to admit that I was afraid I would freak out about needles.
If my doctor places a needle in a place that is sore and tender, I sometimes wince, but she just touches the area nearby and I am ok- it's local and temporary. The really good treatments hit points where I can feel the energy sink down-that is so powerful.

Every time I go, my doctor examines me, and knows exactly where to put the needles- it's uncanny.
I am in bliss after lying there with the needles for 30 minutes.
I am so happy that I trusted myself to try this, and that I found a really great doctor.

Hell's Angels Club Pride- Now More than Ever!

Ok, this investigation with the Hell's Angels is getting way out of hand. Last week a car with a loud speaker announcing if anyone in the neighborhood has seen anything to come forth to the NYPD.
Listen, I am a neighbor of the big red machine and these guys are great neighbors!
I don't belive for one minute that they had anything to do with the beating of Roberta Shalady.
I still feel as I did when I moved in to the neighborhood in 1994 when the NY Times asked me to quote on the 1994 Clubhouse verdict

I do not feel intimidated by the Hell's Angels- they have been guardians of this street since I have lived here AND I AM A WOMAN!
There is alot of traffic on 3rd street, pedestrian and vehicle- the hell's angels literally keep the peace in an orderly way, like neighbors, I do I think that anyone who tries to start anything with them is just stupid- and believe me I have seen people start shit with them and get at the very least a verbal assault.

I do not know anything about the events surrounding Roberta Shalady's attack, but I do find it hard to believe that she was thrown out on the street in front of the clubhouse by hell's angels inside the clubhouse. It's not easy to obtain entrance inside the clubhouse. To me, that's the part of the story against the Hell's Angels makes the least bit of sense.

I hope this gets solved soon, so the neighborhood can rest.

Type O negative

I have had this debate about the blood type diet with my best friend Kim since Dr. Peter D'Adamo wrote the book Eat Right for your Type, the blood type diet book.
I have been a practicing vegan for 2 years until recently.
Since this past holiday season I added tuna to my diet, as Kim had visited before Thanksgiving and we had again engaged in this debate. Kim is a type A blood type, and it was her vegan example that inspired me to be vegan.
I told Kim that I felt like I was eating too much soy and was bloating from it, Kim again suggested the blood type diet, and that I should think about eating meat- beef - and see how it made me feel.
Just the last week, the opportunity presented itself. I was at a gala at the Waldorf Astoria for the Citizens Committe of NY with my girlfriend and a filet Mignon was placed in front of me. I had said to my girlfriend that I wanted to eat it. It wasn't this earth shattering event at first, but the next day I noticed that my belly had gotten smaller, it was funny.

So now I am no longer vegan and I think there is something to this blood type diet- if it is practiced correctly.
I still feel like I am betraying some vegan cause- even though that was not why I went vegan in the first place- i did it for health-not to save the planet. How weird that it turns out to be healthy for me to eat red meat!

What I find myself eating when I have beef, there is no grain, but salad- thai salad and beef, specifically cilantro and beef is what I eat. I do not want to eat chicken- chicken is neutral and for that matter I 'd rather have the tofu andjust not over do it.
But I find it strange that red meat is healthy for me after following a vegan diet. I did not think I would be on this side of the debate-ever! There is also the fact that my family's medical history weighs heavy on my mind and makes me not want to eat red meat often.
Eventually, I am going to seek the services of a blood type diet practitioner and try to strike a balance that is right for me, I am serious about my health, it seems 2007 has brought health issues into the foreground, and I am addressing them.

Puppy Bowl

This goes in the "things worth watching" category... Animal Planet's yearly answer to the Super Bowl, it's the Puppy Bowl. (ads are easily muted)

there's a Kitten Half Time Show.
and there's the water bowl cam.

time well spent, Animal Planet friends.

i like to watch...

... stuff blow up. boobs. confused animals.

unlike the many movies and tv shows where you never see anything except people talking to each other, the Beastie Boys video anthology includes the following entertaining images, in order of appearance:


giant robot
kung fu
dancing matching dolls
mad scientist
lobster claw
subways
electrified pitchfork
people pretending to fall
fist fight
space travel
disco
kitten on a turntable
cheering section made of fruit
sulfery, misty hot springs
earth from space
bombs exploding
fighter jets lined up on a field like a suburban subdivsion
gun getting smashed with a mallet
rubble
burning oil fields
dog tongue
casino
guys in tuxedos
sushi
mariachi band
cowbell being played by a wall with arms
scuba diving
sex
dance contest
cast of characters
a whip
surfers in slow motion
skateboarding
the moon
a cat through a fish eye lens
chasing that cat with said lens
doing so while repeating "it's gonna get ya!"
snowboarding
a complext heist
a man with a nightcap being beheaded
swordfight with a ninja
bunny slippers
powdered wig man
human slingshot
helicopter chasing black sports car (yes!)
machine gun fire
car tumbling off cliff
executive air cabin
jumping from a plane
fighting in mid air
a bird attacking a man
plane blowing up
parachute landing
underground lair that resembles a 1950s hat box
fiesta ware
lava
tornado
nuclear explosion.

Conversing in dementia

My best friend Kim let me know last week, in case I had forgotten, that my life is frought with irony. She's right, and what's even stranger is that irony was one of my favorite devices as an English major at Rutgers when I was an undergraduate. I lloked for it in every book I read, anticipated it. When I went to film school after I graduated, it was the same thing, but with a keen critical eye.
Last week, my nana who is an old Italian lady of 89 years- soon to be 90 in June, experienced another mini-stroke. I am the primary care taker of my grandmother, my sister is also a caretaker, but I think it is fair to say, I shoulder much of the burden of caring for my grandmother in a big picture sense, in other words, I am a problem solver, I make things happen.
So when I got another one of those dreaded calls one who is in the position of responsibility gets in the early AM, I leapt into action. Alexis was right by my side- no hestation, wow, thank you, really.
I called my sis and we all converged on Somerset Medical Center, as my nana was found "unresponsive" for a bit and then came around later, she was out long enough for a trip to the hospital.

When I saw nana, her face lit up, although she did not recognize me fully, it was enough that I was a familiar. My grandmother has the condition of non-stop speaking stream of consciousness and asking questions. This was very entertaining and I'm sure helped me define my critical eye when I was younger, now as a 40 year old woman, it is interesting to be present to the same questions I have been getting for years. I found myself answering her, comforting her, tending to her, the routine I have taken up as her granddaughter. I knew she would be confused in the hospital, an unfamilar, unfriendly environment, and I did not want her to be there long without me, so I could converse with her, answer her questions, let her know that she is not alone.

It was interesting fodder for a script I may write someday, if I bring myself to it.

You fainted and that's why you are in the hospital, to make sure you are OK.
No, this isn't the morgue, you are not dead.
You are not bleeding downstairs.
You have enough money to be cared for, for the rest of your life.
Your husband died 5 years ago, I know it must be hard to want to remember that.
I'm Jackie Anne, that's Lisa.
This is not Raritan, but it's close.
You are not alone, we are here.

Reviews: film, dressing rooms

Film
I had never seen Ghost World. How could that have been? What an utterly Necessary film. I feel about it the way 30-year old jewish men from new york city with intellectual parents feel about The Squid and the Whale.

Just to be clear, The Squid and the Whale sucked. To me. Nothing ever HAPPENED in the film. It just introduced some characters, and then there they were, all gross. You never get to watch them do anything really worth watching (like ride a motorcycle, or fight an alien).

Ghost World is a little more plot driven, but not much. basically nothing happens. I just liked it because i'm a 32-year old jewish woman from the suburbs with irrelevant parents.

and it was a comic book movie (best kind). plus scarlet johansson is so damn hot, even then, and thora birch is too, although she's costumed in unflattering lines.

Dressing Rooms
The other day i went speed shopping. I entered 3 or 4 dressing rooms in about 45 minutes. Here's what i noticed: the nicer the store, the crappier the dressing room, and the less security there is in the dressing room. Macy's has barely-standing stalls in a messy back room and no one on staff. The Gap has decent stalls with doors and someone directs you to an empty one. Daffys (where i got a fabulous stripy thing) has well-lit little private rooms and a staff person who counts your clothes and gives you a cartoonishly big tag that you fear might burst ink all over you at any moment. I plan to enter a few more over the next couple days. I wonder if the pattern will continue.

air cannister does not mean NOS

I did not mean to assume that what I heard off the street was the truth!
I do not know if the air cannisters were nitrous oxide.
sorry.

"they've turned Third Street into Fallujah"

Last night the Hells Angels Club House was raided by the NY Police after a woman was found badly beaten and unconscious in front of the club house.
People on the street said that the woman was beaten after ingesting nitrous oxide.
Kevin the Hell's Angel I am friendly with, told me today that they are being set up by NY Law frat boys who beat the woman up in a near bar where she had been drinking, and when the woman fled the frat boys, she knocked on the Hell's Angel's club house for help.
The NY Post reports that someone from the clubhouse let the woman inside, and this is where she was allegedly beaten, then thrown back out onto the street.

The police did recover 20 odd nitrous oxide canisters from the club house during last night's raid.
This incident is making me feel like I am living out a sequel to BLUE VELVET.

Analog dreams

I woke up today from a dream so obvious to everyone but me, but hey, I'm the dreamer. I have been getting rid of old things in my life, and the dream was about being back in the house I grew up inside. In the dream, I've found a vast collection of lp's - record albums. Everything from my entire family's collection: everything from my grandfather's Dean Martin, to Dad's Johnny Cash (ring of fire which is Johnny's sexiest album cover- HOT!), to my sister's Muppet Christmas Album, to my gay dj uncle's Sylvester, to my early Phil Collins, yes, I used to bust out to "in the air tonight."

As the dreamer walks past the wall of albums, fingering tracks, she realizes she could save money if she would digitize all these lps, so she runs to the apartment building's basement and puts an album on the turntable left behind by Frankie Knuckles when he lived here. The needle drops and the album is spinning, she has forgotten how much of a mechanical spark one could find in the analog world! The dreamer opens her ears- yes, you can do that in dreams- stretching to Volare through the static and scratches. This sucks, it's old, no one wants to hear static.

I woke up.

Cut to real life:

This week, I
a) sold my car.
b) disconnected my land line.
C) all of the above

wiki how

i came upon wikihow.com (who knew) and, after reading "How to Build A Snow Cat," which is also excellent, found this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-What-Kind-of-Thinker-You-Are.

How to tell what kind of thinker you are. Isn't that like 20% of all forwards you've ever gotten?

It ends with recommended physical exercises, which may have a political agenda ... it's unclear.

but wikihow is great. you can browse by popularity of search. It's heartwarming to see How to Make a Paper Snowflake up there with How to Get By in Prison.