one thing today

Fri 9/30 I went to see Bros today.   It was great to hear bigs laughs in a theater. It’s smart and feeling and daring and very funny.   It made me realize that it's been great to see so many places I know very well in so many films for so many years. It’s a new kind of movie but made me feel good in an old fashioned way.

  Thurs 9/29 I was staying in Woodstock many summers ago and one day I saw hundreds of fox babies in a store window on Main Street. I was with my friend Mindy and I said “wow that is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” I still might think that.   She got me one a couple of days later and it’s been on my kitchen shelf ever since. I wish I knew more about the strange thing but I know the sight of it still makes me happy.  

Tues 9/28 Todays thing of beauty - the city block long barge docked on the river. The braided ropes are as thick as melons and the tires are three times the size of those on eighteen wheelers.   Everything is gigantic and rusted and a mess and muted browns and reds and yellows. It would make an outrageously great fashion set.   Yin and yang the rosie, pockets full of posies.   Where for art thou new Avedon? 

  Tues 9/27 I went to see the Bowie doc today.   It’s bloated. He has the most magnificent, changing face in r&r and, besides making lasting music, he said very cool, trenchant things - like beware of “philosophical opulence” and consider "the outward appearance of meaning.” He was spot on a great deal of the time and very often he created the spot.

Mon 9/26 When I was a kid, I loved everything about the Fantasy theater - the flashing yellow light bulb marquee, the posters of panavision stars... loud music, popcorn, frozen milkshake bars, air conditioning. Once I got the courage to go see a gold painted naked woman with flowing blonde hair sprawled out across a bed. Sean Connery’s voice made everything sound like a poem or a scary invitation. I had read that if they didn't leave a small unpainted dot on her body somewhere, she would have died right on the spot. Who cares if the world, meaning my mother, thought I was way too young for such wild things. Sometimes disobedience was compulsory. I had to stay true to my plan of finding the things that were waiting for me to discover them.    

  Sun 9/25 Occipital Neuralgia is a condition in which t he nerves that run through the scalp, are injured or inflamed. This causes headaches that feel like severe piercing, throbbing or shock-like pain in the upper neck, back of the head or behind the ears.

I miss fun mean waitresses.  Mary at Cookie Bar on Hudson was built like a jukebox, had zero patience and she really liked you if she let you piss her off. Tiny   at Bluejay on 57th had no time for you either. If you made her crack up in front of your co-worker friends, you ruled. One day she won the lottery and she was a scrappy server no more. And the midtown Manganaro sisters made you feel like a wuss if you and a pal split one of their ruler long mega stuffed chicken parm big boy super heroes …. “oh, you poor little girly girls, can’t you finish a sandwich all by your itty bitty selves? Want two, maybe three fries with that?"  The best.

Fri 9/23 I went to a Diane Arbus show today.   My fav foto of hers isn’t considered one of her classics.   I bet there are ten reasons why I love it.   The moody setting - a sketchy area, maybe a port town, maybe Marseille.   The print is as fuzzy as the story and the two past their prime characters.   She is small, unkempt hair, a little top that makes her look like she’s still trying some.   She still has her waist and her pocketbook and her hand on his arm.   All her attention is focused on him.   She is angry and she’s been here done this a million times.   He looks far away with a “fuck, not this again” look.   He has a cigarette on the ready in case he needs to do something other than address her distress.   He wears a shiny shirt that makes me wonder what color it is.   It’s not bad, in between casual and dressed some.   He's a party boy.  He’s got good hair, it’s cut well, he’s vain about it.    T hey will amp up and then calm down and then eat and listen to music. Again.  

Thurs 9/22 I may have given a dollar to someone on the street this morning who wasn’t asking for it.   It was raining hard and he was in front of the deli in a wheelchair and dressed scruffy like his weathered face and when I passed him the bill he looked extremely surprised and a little confused before he said thanks.    When I saw him again after getting my coffee he was holding the bill like a bunch of flowers in his fist.  It’s harder to tell what’s what and who’s who lately and what's OK to do and say.  Thinking  thrice is the order of the day.  

Tues 9/22 My friend Sharknado sent me this picture of our junior hs class.  I replied I thought the two of us were the best looking boys - and he agreed and then I wrote him  ... well, there's Kevin M and John C, Jimmy Mc G, too - after inspecting the photo more closely. Four are dead that I know of - some for a long, long time. What to think and say about us back then ... hard to say. Lucky I suppose.

I went to a benefit tonight for a friend who runs a kids puppet project here in the city and spoke with a reporter for CBS Sunday morning.   We talked about media and how Gayle King should cool it with her statement necklaces and show off eyewear - and how cool Channel 13 was in the early days when I was there. I told her she always seems like she has so much fun reporting on what she reports on and she said I made her night before we said our goodbyes.   It broke my recent, lingering  malaise about the current, flagging big picture world and made me feel like I still have some charm left in my tank.  L ovely night.  

The members of the King’s Guard wear hats that were designed  to make the infantry appear more fearsome and tall during battles. They were used in the Napoleonic wars and are called ‘bearskin’ hats because they are  made from the skins of Canadian black bears.  Fainting is not an uncommon occurrence in the King’s Guard.  The soldiers learn a “proper” way to go down. 

Sunday 9/18 I lived in a small, fab Village apartment from 1978 to 1992.   It was recently featured in the NYT’s real estate section in one of those “which would you choose” articles. The young woman has this huge frig and big bed and I wrote and told her to get an under the counter mini frig and combine her sofa and bed into one piece of furniture by the windows … and then enjoy the new square footage.   I see it as a conceptual/correspondence art project, a la Ray Johnson.   I don’t have to be told all of this is a weird thing to do.  

  Sat 9/17 I miss Silvia.   She was my neighbor for 25 years - the most beautiful 90 year old woman I’ve ever seen with a beautiful voice, too.    She was mowed down by a skateboarder in Union Square and never was the same and eventually went to live with her daughter in Brooklyn.   She painted and when I told her I really liked the painter Joan Mitchell but didn’t know why she said “I do.” Even though most people think Mitchells stark gestural style was influenced by 19th century post-impressionists, particularly Matisse - Silvia told me "in her early life she was an ice skater."

  Friday 9/16 They tease and please together poke and toke and smoke together coffee and laugh and lunch together sit and rest and smile together lift and throw shade and bricks and yell together share heat and ice and pain and sun and worries and joys and seasons together.

  Thurs 9/15 Joey Heatherton turned 78 yesterday.   She’s from my hometown and school and church. She pranced on the premiere of Hullaballo, made bad movies, went to Vietnam with Bob Hope, divorced a football star who exposed himself to little girls, did coke, fought anorexia, sold mattresses, stabbed her drummer lover, slapped a passport office worker, and now lives in Los Angeles where recently she brained her downstair neighbor with a high heel for waking her up with her loud blender.   As Cindy Adams once inquired of her on the cover of the Post - Joey, what the hell happened ?  

  Wed 9/14 All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.  Every edit is a lie. Cinema is the phrasing of moments. There is no terror untempered by some great   moral idea. I make film to make time pass. Clumsiness is not a mark of incompetence but of reticence. I want to be together with everyone else but stay lonely.

  9/13 ducks the size of tricycles … scrumptious babies not with their moms … tight men in tight tees under sprinkler spray … smoking Chinese fishermen with three poles each … trainers, players, rowers, brainers, workers all and everyone by water under sun in early bright day splendor.

Monday 9/12 It’s a lovely afternoon and the word “dappled” applies to the light I see. I am wearing my summer uniform - t shirt, cargo shorts, baseball hat. The block is closed to traffic and I walk in the middle of the street. Suddenly, a bicyclist behind me shouts “step aside, grandpa.”    How did he know I was old?    And why did he assume I had children who have children?   Stupidly, the incident and h is words linger.   W e are such foolish, delicate flowers.  

      There is a Village couple who I’ve only seen together for forty years.    She has smiling eyes, orange day glo hair, a tiny sweet grin and very cool clothes. He has leading man looks and a tight torso still.    They’re always arm in arm and seem very peaceful.    What must that be like?

  Sat 9/10 Every now and then, our dreams can be very surprising and clever.   I have been estranged from someone for a very long time and, while I slept last night, we drove a distance together to see a movie.   The Long Island town we travelled to was Centerreach, a place I have absolutely no connections to or associations with.   We never made it to the film and went back to our homes.  

  Friday 9/9 I turned off an awful Kazan movie from ’69. The Arrangement … could have been Kirky D’s not very soaring swan song. It reminded me of the time when I was on a city bus, a kid about five years old and his mom sat across from a very fleshy, friendly looking guy. His Spartacus cleft was the most pronounced thing about him. The kids stared and stared at him and finally pointed at the guy and said …”look mom, that mans got an ass on his chin.”

  Thurs 9/8 I just finished reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and I can’t ever recall thinking a book was a thrilling experience.    I wish I had read it while my father was alive. I would have given it to him so he could have basked in the beauty of words woven together in a such an affecting way.   

  Wednesday 9/7 Over thousands of years, dogs have evolved special muscles around the eyes to better communicate with humans. The facial musculature of dogs and wolves was similar, except above the eyes. Dogs have a small muscle, which allows them to intensely raise their eyebrow, which wolves do not. Dogs manipulate humans due to domestication.

  Tues 9/6 Apparently “end of summer blues” is a very real thing.   Two things that might be bullshit or may not - talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you care about who’s grappling with the seasonal malady - i.e. gently. Secondly, instead of thinking to yourself “I’m sad” - say   “I notice I’m feeling sad” and then take things from there. It’s all about how you approach the beast.  

  Mon 9/5 My father loved John Wayne so, of course, I had to hate him.   Until relatively lately, say the last ten years.   John Fords 1939 Stagecoach is a timeless thing of beauty.   There’s nothing more achieved than the Ringo Kid’s robust wholesomeness and Claire Trevor’s luminous self incrimination and Andy Devine's melismatic croaking, everyones archetypical grandeur.   

  Sunday 9/4 Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreos. Diane Arbus

 

  Fri 9/2 I was a huge fan of selfie taking, sign language using and kitty caring fine art painter extraordinaire Koko. Her sumptuous simian intelligence was world renowned, her favorite movie was “Free Willie” and now, a podcast called “Fine Gorilla Person” chronicles Koko’s final years and troubled legacy that, unfortunately, includes sexual harassment lawsuits that rival hairy Harvey Weinsteins’.  

  Thurs 9/1 It’s been a singular summer.   Thugs used to take money, a phone, jewelry, a bike when they mugged someone.   Now they bolt from the scene of the crime empty handed.   Motiveless, anonymous assault is the disorder of the day.   I was in the deli this morning and Larry was saying how weird things were and how they were gonna get weirder and the guy next to me in line shrugged and very matter of factly said “psychosis is the new common cold.”