one thing today

  Tues 8/31 Everyday I see a lot of supers on the street with a freakish number of keys on their belt loops .  I always wonder if they know without a doubt what each of them unlocks. The majority of the keys look ridiculously alike - like lifeless twins, triplets, octuplets who have no feelings for each other and no opinions about their uncanny resemblance. It's hard to believe their keepers treat them right, like the steadfast, hard working entities they are, door in and door out.  Yet, somehow, they do. 

Tues 8/30 ... when I was a weird teen with a big curiosity ... and the 60s was about to detonate ... there was nothing more exciting than the TV Guide Fall Preview.  What's new, what's over, who is gonna sing and dance on Hullaballo and Shindig? Will the Man From Uncle and Dr. Kildare continue to operate?  Will The Flintstones and The Twilight Zone and 77 Sunset Strip return? Will The Fugitive and Ben Gazzara and the I Spy guys still run for their lives?  I couldn't wait to find out.  Everything was fast ahead and endlessly thrilling.  

  Mon 8/29 His Girl Friday is on my top ten and I love the circus of   reporters and politicos and con men it features.   They don’t make character actors like they used to.   The best one in the movie is Abner Biberman.   He plays Louie, publisher Cary G's shifty eyed eyes and ears on the street.   He says to Hildy/Roz R …   about his sidekick girlfriend ... "Evangaline?  She ain’t no albino.   She was born right here in this country. “  

  Sun 8/28 I have a big shady country backyard pool afternoon.   I float beneath giant aged oaks, tallest firs and new day sky.   I close my eyes. Soft lapping song and Rothko clouds fill the time and move along to somewhere as wonderful.   I stay where I am.  

  Sat 8/27 Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name And they're always glad you came You want to be where you can see Our troubles are all the same You want to be where everybody knows your name

  Fri 8/26  There’s a soap opera baby actor who constantly cries like he's just been bitched slapped by Jason Momoa.    Whenever he’s in a scene, he's inconsolable.    Does he have an ironclad contract for some freaky reason? Is he the network chief's  trophy wife’s excessively gassy nephew?    His fake mom and dad are always turning his writhing body around, trying their best to keep his tiny tear stained face off camera.    How does this nine month old thespian continue to draw a paycheck? Mad props to his representation team.

  Thurs 8/25 People are water skiing in a movie now and it reminds me of how great it was when our parents surprised us and did something we never imagined they’d do.    When I was six and on vacation with my family, my mom skied on the lake and took the rope handle in her teeth, bent her knees, wiggled her butt and waved at the 8mm camera.    It was like seeing a squirrel play ping pong.  

Tues 8/24 There was a letter in the advice column in the paper today about whether or not to leave a thirteen year old boy alone in the house while the family goes on vacation.   Even if he’s a great kid - it’s highly unlikely that every other new teen in town is, too.   My parents and siblings went away when I was sixteen and I invited a few friends over one night.   One of them said something to someone about me having a party and before I knew it, there were about thirty kids in my house and squid in the freezer somehow found its way to behind the washing machine in the basement and my sleuth-y friend got back my father’s German beer stein from some thief.   To this day, he doesn’t recall how he rescued it. Who is he protecting?  

Tues 8/23 Collective nostalgia is a shared longing for what society used to be like. When people share a longing for a specific kind of world, if a large group wants to bring the past into the present, they oftentimes turn violent. But collective nostalgia can be positive. We need to miss freedom but not restriction, diversity and not exclusion. L P Hartley

 Mon 8/22 I had my Zoom interview to be a docent at the Rubin Museum this afternoon.  It was a group interview.  Five of us.  We had to spend five minutes explaining how we do something.  One of us showed how to make jewelry, another explained pasta making, another how to play the board game Go, another how to make collages and another how to do National Park Passport.  Everyone was very engaging.  To be continued.

  Sun Aug 21 I step out the front door of my building and an old, short, raggedy clothed man whizzes by, talking to himself like he’s late for an important date and it’s clear he’s not about to meet anyone anytime soon.   A guy I used to see in the bars decades ago, tall with a beautiful Central American mug crosses the street.   He always wore clothes that looked brand new and his manner was always as clean as  his cargo pants and wrinkle free shirt.   Two young women walk into a parking garage.   One cries and allows the other to cup her forearm. A man pushing a stroller close behind them with a happy baby inside calmly says to them… “I’m coming, I’m coming.”  

  Sat 8/20 I have kept a journal since 1969. A friend of mine once said it's a great expression of self love. I never thought of it that way. Doing it affirms that life is rich with experiences, joy, work, stories, family, disappointments, friends, tragedy, sex, music, surprises, boredom, art, triumphs, memories, loss. It's a record of what impresses and and troubles and excites me.   It marks time and place and people. 

  8/19 I wrote a play called Rent-a-Beatnik.  It was inspired by a real party service created by the staff photographer at the Village Voice.  A lot of the slang from that time has stuck around more than Sixties argot like bummer and groovy.  It really is the ginchiest. 

  Thurs 8/18 The Night of the Hunter is the only film Charles Laughton directed but it's so beautifully wrought and so unnerving that it practically qualifies as a full-scale directing career unto itself. The sequence in which the two children escape the murderous Robert Mitchum in a small boat, drifting down a silvery moon-dusted river as assorted woodland creatures look on, is both eerie and magical.  New York Times 1955

  Tues 8/17 This is my portrait of Lucian Freuds self portrait.   He was the legal father of fourteen, but may have sired as many as forty children.   He said he liked to make his own models - since most of them had to sit for him forever.   He was an off the charts gambler and hated when we won because he didn’t have to paint as much when he was flush. His opinionated grandpa Sigmund said “love and work, that’s all there is.”  

Tues 8/16 My journal from a year ago.  Looking back always confirms one thing.  Life is change. Yet again, I have been dealing with severe depression. It was slow coming during July … but steady … and it’s grown more intense. I should have addressed it sooner but confusion/false hope/procrastination are all part of the dark package. This is the 4th or 5th go round I’ve had with this circumstance. It’s difficult to be submerged in this malaise that has nothing to do with reason. Lack of interest in anything and anyone, most of all me, reigns supreme.

  Mon 8/15  "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" on YouTube. 

  Sunday 8/14 Went out to visit friends on the north shore for the weekend - a good dinner with new friend strangers … long goofing around about choosing a father daughter wedding dance song… i.e. Bonnies “I can’t make you love me” … like that.    Nassau museum and masterful paintings including a Dutch masters like painting of a woman and ducks and flying fish painted just a couple of years ago.  A visit to Davids basement where he has been building a four passenger plane … a Jordell ??? …   for a decade. He’ll have to blow out a side of his house to get it out of there.   Its an extraordinary thing whereas I continue to master making the perfect salad dressing from scratch. Different strokes as Sly sang.

  Sat 8/13 Roddy McDowall Home Movies on YouTube.   Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Judy Garland, Kirk Douglas, Sal Mineo, Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazarra, Julie Andrews, Jane Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Suzanne Pleshette, Lee Remick, Christopher Plummer, Tuesday Weld, Jack Lemmon, Anthony Perkins. Hope Lange, Robert Redford

  Fri 8/12 Carry around a fat book and people talk to you. On my way to returning a 1000 page Larry McMurtry novel to the library, I stop at the nearby pocket garden. The friendly guy who sits at the entrance asks me what I’m reading.   I show him and he says he's read Lonesome Dove and that his wife’s best friend was up for the female lead in the TV series but she lost out to some “bitch” and she stopped acting.   “Angelica Houston” I say.   “Yes, you’re right.   That G od damn bitch.”  

  Thurs 8/11  Photographer Eadweard Muybridge proved that a horse's legs, which had been represented in art incorrectly for thousands of years, did all leave the ground at the same time while in a trot.  A guy on Waverly Place this afternoon wore a cool t shirt - seven horses galloping across the desert.  He was very big and wide with a jiggly belly and every time he took a step his hoofed sidekicks seemed to leap off the ground a little and stay in the air for a split second and then fall  back down . Street fashion zoology.

  Wed 8/10 Sylvia Plath described August as "the odd uneven time."   And author Elizabeth Enright wrote " around the tenth of August, any year, you can look up in the sky at night and see dozens and dozens of shooting stars.” 

  Tuesday 8/9 It was William Holden day on TCM.   A  classic 20th century movie star.    Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, Picnic, Bridge on the River Kwai, Stalag 17, Born Yesterday, The Wild Bunch, Network, more and more. He had grace, charm, humor, a Roman coin profile, glossy American hair, a sexy warm smile and voice and he drank himself to death. He once said “hell is paved with good samaritans.” I'm not sure what that means.

  Monday 8/8 Ailurophile is the word of the day on dictionary.com. S ince nothing happened today ...  besides Olivia Newton John dying and Trumps crib being FBI invaded ...  here's a word quiz.   Ailurophile means ...  a. a cat lover b. a prop plane enthusiast c. an artist who favors orange

  Sun 8/7 I love that kids still make clubs.    When I was young, the Little Rascals had the He Man Woman Haters Club.    A good friend of mine has a grandson who told her he’s a member of   the Bad Boys Club. “Can I join” she asks. “No, you’re a girl, grandma.” “What does your club do?” “We don’t listen to our teachers or parents.”    He’s five.

  Sat 8/6 Horn of plenty … a goat's horn filled with grain and flowers and fruit symbolizing prosperity.  I came across the phrase tonight in a book I'm reading and I flashed on a restaurant by that name on Bleecker Street when I first moved to the city in 70s.   We could never afford to eat there but they  had a dessert room.  Once in a while  we’d go there late at night, very stoned and eat two dollar pieces of very delicious cake. 

  Friday 8/5 Your self-belief may be unlimited but your physical energy is not, so to get the best out of the coming year you must focus on just two or three major projects. And don’t forget that what you do with your life affects the world around you too.

  Thursday 8/4 Went up to times square for toms sign off party from thirteen. Fun but not as fun as walking home down 7th ave - short, tall, beautiful, hideous, kids, racers, hunks, dancers, messes, sloths, kidnappers, farmers, beauty queens, shoe salesmen, smelters, tanning consultants, astronauts, zombies, cowboys, sinners   - from kings and queens to the scum of the earth. fun and wild and wonderful.   no place like and  my eyes took it all in four ways for always. 

  Tuesday Aug 3 TV Guide voted the kiss up Eddie Haskell one of the 20th century's  greatest tv characters.   He would flatter Beaver’s mom in the kitchen ("Your hair looks lovely today, Mrs. Cleaver”) and then go upstairs and creep on Beaver.  There’s a syndrome named after him … someone who is oversolicitous to adults.   My Girl Scout cookie   robbing bestie Paul S was a Eddie H type.   My baby sister Jessie liked him a lot.   She had a pet fly - even though our dad forbid her to have it - and one day Paul told her it winked at him.  

  Tuesday 8/2 Please welcome Olivia to our building!!! Born on Saturday, July 30th!!! Olivia -   Here is a thoroughly modern Mondrian doll for our thoroughly modern newest neighbor.   

  Monday 8/1 11pm and nothing much to put down on this dog day of summer.  In ancient Greece and Rome, the Dog Days were believed to be a time of drought, bad luck, and unrest. Today, they  refer to the time of summer’s peak temperatures and humidity that coincides with the year’s heliacal (at sunrise) rising of  Sirius, the Dog Star.  It's s part of the constellation Canis Majoris and, not including our own Sun, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.