Eddie Burrows

jac and i saw Eddie Burrows in the community garden this afternoon. He was sitting looking the same as usual, with a white ace bandage around one leg and dirty toes poking out. He has a few teeth but not many ... there's usually something hanging around his mouth. He's old. little tufts of white hair sprout from his head and chin. He was wearing a large pearl necklace. When we walked in, he was trying to peel and eat a hard boiled egg. This is what Jac calls "abject" using the film school sense of the word.

Eddie and jac reminisced for a while, and i looked at the giant peonies. Eddie had faced himself toward his sculpture, now 25 years old. He told us about the toy horses on it, and how they're impossible to saw through but oddly vulnerable to wind and sun. He said that when he was pulling down his original tower sculpture (must have been the 1980s) he wanted it to fall on him. It did fall on him and it didn't hurt him.

A few quotables from Eddie today:

No woman is ugly. Besides, when you're kissing a woman you're not looking at her face.

Drinking too much is like walking across a bridge. You walk and walk and then at some point, there's just no bridge. You black out.

Someone climbed up my sculpture once and left a beer bottle up there. I knew who it was, another guy from the garden. He and his wife had a plot. I told him not to do that and he just said 'why', and 'there's no gate.' So i came into the garden at night and ripped up his plot. I turned over all his plants, upside down. I liked that, and it taught him a lesson.


* Jac's glad to be back home in new york.

tapes

As I go to sleep after the DTE party, I have a pile of tapes in the corner of my hotel room that comprise of the entire telecast...how will this effect my dreams I wonder...

backstage in the green room

...it was very surreal, I watched the entire show stage right in the green room for the DTE and got to congratulate Ellen on winning and Rosie on THE VIEW, what an interesting scene that was- a mixture of tv power brass and daytime stars. Judge Judy was actually nice. Kate Welsh of Grey's Anatomy was hanging out waiting to present the drama award, we were all hanging out in thsi room with giant couches and a bar with a huge tv screen. The show went really well!

Meanwhile on the other side of the continent....

In LA, a producer: watches down all packages produced for the Daytime Emmy Awards, talks with soap stars, gets calls from LIVE! WITH REGIS & KELLY (while trying on a $560 black jacket that makes her look like Janet Jackson) about confirming that the Talk Show Host award presenters will accept award for R&K in the event they win-as "no shows."

Our heroine, the same producer is then driven by Robin Dorian and listens to the "Robin Dorian" tour of LA, eats vegan sushi for the 5th time this week, ends up buying only a GIANT ROBOT tee shirt for 21 bucks, has fun then feels guilty about ducking out of the dress rehearsal to play with Robin Dorian; later drinks a beer, takes a nap, and even later that evening will hang out backstage to meet ellen.

e-zpass, no e-zpass

the last two mornings i've gotten up at sunrise and gone to count cars. Each time i click the counter on my left hand, that's a guy with ezpass; the right hand is no ezpass. You stand in one place for 5 consecutive 10 minute counts, one for each vehicle classification. The first day, I stood on York between 59th and 60th. I saw a fancy old woman with too much makeup and a hideous phone thing stuck on her ear. Who the hell talked her in to that thing? She stepped into a cab and I thought, “you asshole. I bet you’re an asshole.” Across from me, near the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge, a bunch of guys were doing construction. Right during rush hour, they’ve got huge vehicles tying up a lane at a time, doing 3 point turns and making a racket. If I turned my head the other way, I saw so many solitary old men with cardigans and dogs, I felt like I was in London. My second observation point that morning was 2nd avenue between 57th and 58th. That’s where all the commercial vans drive, and it put me in a really good mood. Also, it was freezing - - surprisingly cold, and I hadn’t brought gloves. My hands were becoming dysfunctionally cold even in my big coat pockets. But I could see across the street, the whole time I’m doing the counts on 2nd avenue, a diner. As soon as I was done, I walked in, saw a little metal table by the door that was shiny because it was getting direct, sharp sun. I sat at the hot table and ate oatmeal and drank green tea. Fucking awesome. The next day I did the counts on the Brooklyn Bridge. I did two shifts at the same observation point, peak and offpeak hours. There was very little change in the traffic between peak and offpeak, but the people walking across the bridge changed from municipal employees to uncomfortable pairs of tourists. Nice day for it though. Also, I got to go have coffee with beth between shifts and hear the story about the poodle and the corn chip.

this one time in celebration, florida

it's raining, i'll tell an old story.

a few years ago i went to Celebration, Florida, the town built by Disney. It's a new urbanist style town, with front porches on the houses, a pedestrian-friendly main street, functional alleys and legalized accessory dwelling units... everything, seen and unseen, that's supposed to make a place less sprawl-y and more hometown-y. I went there with my sister and 3-year old nephew because we wanted to see it. Gabi wanted to eat in the 50's style diner. Little Alex was happy just to go for a drive in Gabi's giant SUV.

It was a bright and clear 75 degree day. We tooled the mama truck through Celebration, looking at the lamposts and white picket fences. Lovely place. Children were playing on scooters, older people were walking and talking in golf outfits. There were environmentally sound smart cars scattered throughout town, making it look slightly futuristic even though the architecture was so old fashioned.

We located the diner, then parked in the municipal lot just outside the sparkling town. As we were unloading Alex from the truck some boys drove by on Huffy bikes. They had fishing poles and tackle boxes fixed to the backs of their bikes. They were wearing helmets and elbow pads and knee pads, as is the fashion these days (when i rode my pink huffy in florida as a kid, i wore a bathing suit and no shoes at all). They started to ride on by us, then stopped, as a gang. One little boy pulled off his helmet, revealing a sparkling blonde head. The gang focused just past us, a few car spaces away.

Alex noticed it first. "Birdies!" he said.

There were vultures, black and evil and totally unmoved by our presence, devouring some piece of flesh on the ground. It might have been a raccoon or a possum, something large-ish and once furry. The two vultures picked and pulled, and another landed nearby and hopped over in that unsettling way they have. The bicycle boys were fully engaged. Without losing their silent focus on the goryness, they pulled off their helmets, their knee pads, their elbow pads, their wrist guards, and they grabbed their fishing poles. They walked right past us, leaving a trail of protective gear behind them. Gabi held Alex to her; he would have loved to have joined the gang. The boys went right over the vultures and started poking at them.

We walked into town away from the scene. Soft jazz was piped through the sidewalk planters, so that even outside the sensation was calming and mall-like. Old men buzzed by in their smart cars. We found the diner easily, on main street down near the fake lake. Gabi ordered pancakes and Alex proceeded to be the worst behaved child possible. He threw food, he rolled around on the floor, he shrieked, he bothered strangers. We were so proud of him. We walked back in the sun rather quickly, back to the big truck, back to the scene, Alex howling all the way, the loudest thing ever to come to Main Street. The vultures and the boys were gone of course and only tiny fragments of carcass remained.