Sold for $20

Back in the early spring, a photographer from Getty Images came through the Greenmarket and gave a bunch of us twenty dollars* each for taking our picture. Here's what emerged from that brief session--me and David looking slightly uncomfortable, but twenty bucks richer:


Here's how Getty categorized our picture:
People, Casual Clothing, Confidence, Happiness, Freshness, Table, Jar, Abundance, Retail, Vertical, Looking At Camera, Waist Up, Outdoors, 20-24 Years, 30-34 Years, Front View, Stubble, Cheerful, Caucasian Ethnicity, Standing, Smiling, USA, Day, New York State, New York City, Adult, Young Adult, Mid Adult, Syrup, Large Group of Objects, Two People, Young Men, Mid Adult Men, Only Men, Portrait, Photography, Farmer's Market, Adults Only.

*It's certain that I am violating the model's release that I signed by posting this picture here--or at least I am violating the Getty Image Bank's rules about who can post what without payment. But I loved the categories too much not to post it, and were I to go through the motions, and I priced this vaguely via the site, it would cost me about $600.00. So....

September Readings

If you are in or near the NYC area, please come out to hear me read, and get your copy of YIELD signed, at any of the following events:

Tuesday, Sept 7 - 7pm
Barnes & Noble, 82nd and Broadway
Reading/Signing

Tuesday, Sept 14 - 7pm-9pm
Sugarland, 221 North 9th Street, Williamsburg
Book Party with Open Bar/Reading

Thursday, Sept 16 - 8pm
Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street
part of In The Flesh Series

Wednesday, Sept 29 - 7:30pm
Bar on A, 170 Avenue A
part of Guerrilla Lit Series

Tuesday, Oct 5 - 6:00pm
Dixon Place Lounge, 161A Chrystie Street
with Sam J. Miller

Fridge Poems, Vol. 5

Someone gave me--maybe it was my mother--a set of magnetic poetry pieces, which spent almost 10 years stuck to one side of my fridge. In the first few years I spent living in my apartment, people made poems with the tiny words, but eventually, it became uninteresting, or too difficult, or some other reason. No new poems were made, but the old ones stuck. When I moved, I tossed the tiny pieces, but saved the poems that my friends had written via my digital camera. The pics are bad, but the poems are real. This is volume 5 of 5.

A Moment of Stuckness

For dinner tonight I made pesto from Greenmarket basil, as well as some basil that I picked from our container garden on the back porch. I kept dumping things into the food processor that I was trying to get rid of. First, it was a quarter cup of cashews, to go with the normal basil, lemon juice, and walnuts since I didn't have pine nuts. Then it was a cup or so of steamed broccoli, which was leftover from last night's dinner, then it was some frozen peas that I felt like needed to go somewhere (read: my belly.) It was a diehard Italian's nightmare, certainly.

Now Kip is upstairs watching The Golden Girls on WE, and I'm downstairs typing this and spending time with The Bean, who, as you might have previously read, isn't ready to join the other two cats in co-habitation just yet. She seems perfectly happy down here, though she does sound what we call the "Love Alarm," which is a kind of happy-sounding, somewhat-impatient sounding series of chirps and meows, which we can hear all the way through the apartment. The other day, we decided to let the three of them re-meet each other, and expecting the worst, were surprised when she hissed dramatically, and the boys were scared shitless and went running back upstairs to their part of the apartment. You just never know.

The days and nights seem slower since we moved in together, somehow. This is a good thing, not a complaint. I just want to get back into the motion of writing, which has eluded me for the last several months. First I was packing and sorting and throwing away, then I was unpacking and re-sorting and still throwing away, and now I am basically settled, but can't seem to find the steam again. The new novel is in that early stage of becoming material, but still too early to be anything substantial. In other words, I can see all the flaws, but can't do anything about them yet because I'm still working through it. Rather, the book it still deciding what it is. This is kind of a nightmare place for me to be. I feel both trapped by it, and far away from it. I try to start new sections, pick up at a new place each time, but that has just left me feeling even more fractured and unhappy with it. This is always the case at some point. Just because it's a familiar feeling doesn't mean it's not unpleasant. Ugh.

Fridge Poems, Vol. 4

Someone gave me--maybe it was my mother--a set of magnetic poetry pieces, which spent almost 10 years stuck to one side of my fridge. In the first few years I spent living in my apartment, people made poems with the tiny words, but eventually, it became uninteresting, or too difficult, or some other reason. No new poems were made, but the old ones stuck. When I moved, I tossed the tiny pieces, but saved the poems that my friends had written via my digital camera. The pics are bad, but the poems are real. This is volume 4 of 5.

Shows / Peppers / Hearse

--On Sunday we went to see Billy Elliot, which was, I regret to say, mostly stale and without focus. I think the original production was probably outstanding--the direction is the only thing that saved it from being a completely worthless evening. There are some fantastic visuals and, thankfully, the action never seems to slow. But the show has to compete with the film version, which is arguably flawless in its emotional pitch, and its ability to hang on to a moment. There were no moments in this show, only people doing what they do eight times a week.

--Alternately, we saw the utterly engrossing and fantastic revival of La Cage aux Folles on Tuesday, with Kelsey Grammer, and the incomparable (and now Tony Award-winning) Douglas Hodge. How refreshing, how inspiring, how fulfilling to see something so grand and real and hilarious! This show is full of moments. The gags come freely and lightly, with a kind of joy about them that I haven't seen on Broadway in a long while. (I'm remembering the first few performances of Spamalot, where the audience was just so crazy excited about what they were seeing.) This show felt like that. If you are nearby, or far away, go right now to see it. It's spectacular.

--Our shishito pepper plant made one giant pepper. We were shocked! Remember a while ago when I was talking about how I didn't really see plants. I didn't really get the miracle of them? Here is the miracle of growing things. You leave for work and when you come home there is a shishito pepper waiting to be plucked off, tickled with olive oil, blistered in your great-grandmother's cast iron, dusted with sea salt, and savored. Look, I shouted to nobody, a miracle! I showed Kip, "Look!" "Where did that come from?" he said.

--Here is a really new, really beautiful song by Ani Difranco.