Can You Move the Vortex? on The Nervous Breakdown

I have a new short essay up over at The Nervous Breakdown, which is, as they say, "An online literary publication type deal."

It's basically about this:

"...My entire 20s were spent living in a neighborhood which, either by default or by careful consideration, made me the writer that I am today, and I was afraid that if I moved away from it, I wouldn’t be able to write as well, as much, or at all."

and this

"If my identity was a product of the neighborhood, and my novel was a product of my identity, was it wrong to presume that the novel—extrapolated to my ability to write anything at all, forever and ever again—was contingent upon my living at the corner of 34th Street and 34th Avenue?"

Please click on over, share it, "like" it, etc.

Sunset in Astoria Park

New York in January

Morning View, Pulaski Bridge

A New Kind of Movement

I started biking to and from work on Monday--from Astoria to South Williamsburg. Already the novelty has worn off....okay, not really. But biking quickly becomes just work when you are commuting--one can't read a book and bike, not in this town. However, I'm noticing how different the movement is from anything I've experienced in the city in the last 12 years. This is perhaps something that other people would have considered before riding their bike inter-borough, but not me. It didn't occur to me until it was happening.

The scale is different. I like to walk everywhere, if possible, and I'm used to driving the huge syrup van around town for Greenmarket and other random syrup deliveries. Walking, of course, is slow. It becomes about the pavement, about the storefronts and the other people on the street, weaving in and out. Driving is this other beast, about the other cars on the road, about braking, about using force of will to make lights and other drivers do what you want them to. Biking is some kind of hybrid of the two. You're moving much faster than walking, but your scale is generally the same. So the disconnect is new for me. A new speed, at a new scale.

Where you look is different. I find myself looking--aside from the road and the cars and the people--in this middle distance, just about the second and third floors of buildings. That, and the open space above smaller buildings. Somehow, for me, biking gives New York City a new kind of spaciousness. Or, perhaps by traveling through it in a new way, it gives you a new response. The city is alive like that.

Plus, you arrive at work stoned on endorphins. I sit at my desk sort of mesmerized by all the things around me--stapler, pencils, paper clips, scissors--looking at the objects as if they are alien, as if I could never figure out their intended use. Scarfing down breakfast, gulping water and Gatorade, staring out the window at the subway train rumbling over the Williamsburg Bridge--so small, tiny people reading and checking their voice mail.

What Happened on Friday

It took me 19 minutes to get from Union Square to Astoria last Friday night. That's a world record, surely. The avenues were empty, and the bridge was so clear and gorgeous--which is often is, but I noted it, just the same. When I arrived home, in my mailbox was the first check from my literary agent, for my novel, Yield, which is coming out next fall. This was turning out to be the best day of my life. Except that, at sometime between noon and 6:45pm, a burglar had broken through my back bedroom window, swiped my laptop and my jar of change, and then bolted away. When I saw the window the first thing I thought was -- why is my window open? And why is the computer missing? Then it all sort of assembled together in my brain, and I felt numb.

Bean was still cowering in the closet, making the small, scared noises that she does when someone she doesn't know is in the apartment. (This said to me that the person could have been in the apartment even five or ten minutes before I got home, but she is also the kind of cat who would stay hidden in the dark for five hours.)

The cops came. We filled out the paperwork. They were very nice. One bitched about their superiors who, he said, were "fifteen years younger than us." "And man," the other one added, "they really bust our balls." I felt bad for them; in that moment they seemed pitiful. One of them was huge, and he looked too big for my little chair and desk. They told me they'd wait outside for the sergeant to arrive, and they probably wouldn't be calling me again. I didn't expect that they would.

When people are burgled, they talk about feeling invaded, violated--as if something from outside of them has moved into their being. But I feel the opposite -- as if a part of me has been taken out of my body and is now wandering the world. Pictures of me, essays I've been working on for months or years, my manuscripts, thousands of emails that I have saved for their important information, or for their sentimental value. The lesson here is, of course, protect and backup. Thankfully, Apple's Time Machine feature saved everything I had except for about two pages of new fiction -- and the second draft is always better.

I spent the entire day on Saturday trying to counteract the negative energy of the theft--somehow feeling the burglar's desperation, that desire, that sad karmic choice--as if it had come from within me, how strange is that? I bought some arty junk from one of the artists on the south end of Union Square. I was ridiculously helpful at the syrup stand--even to the customers that I want to stab in the eye. There was a guy playing electric guitar under the subway at Broadway in Astoria, and I put ten bucks in his hat. I needed to make choices, and I wanted to choose generosity. Do you understand how this kind of giving was about steeling myself against the alternative?

Exciting News!!!

As many of you know, I have this novel, Yield, which I started working on way way back in 1999. I was living in my very first New York apartment: three roommates, two cats, crooked walls, dramatically sloping floors, no air conditioning, bad carpet.

Every night I sat in my tiny bedroom, overlooking the corner of 36th Street and Broadway in Astoria, where the blue glare of the neon--"Quinn Funeral Home"--stretched the shadows of the spider plant across the wall. Finally, in 2005, two apartments and countless revisions and reconstructions later, it was finished.

A while ago, I submitted the novel to Project QueerLit, which is a contest held every two years celebrating authors who have yet to publish a full-length work of fiction, bringing visibility and recognition to good books. And Yield has just been honored as the top-rated manuscript of Project Queerlit 2008!!

Hooray!!

For more info, and for the previous winners, look here.

The Weekend Was....

....chock full of friends and happenings and nights in the theater, and men in latex with their asses hanging out, and short ribs and Oscars and bad sleep.

On Friday night, Kip and John and I, plus Oren and Tom, went to see Bradford Louryk in "Christine Jorgensen Reveals." We saw it back in 2006, and it was lovely to spend another hour with Christine. The show only runs through March 15 or something, so rush out if you're near. It's a quality evening, folks.

Saturday was crazy day at the syrup stand. Was there a full moon or something? Not only did He-Man stop by with his girlfriend and talk about maple candy for five minutes--that's a long time to stand and ask questions, when you think about it--but we did roughly triple the business that we normally would for a Saturday in late February. And oh, just for the record, one last time, Yes, we're cold standing out there when it's thirty degrees. Please don't ask me if I'm cold. Please don't tell me to "stay warm." Please don't ask me "how do you stand it out here in this cold?" It's my job, and that's that. Your job has some shitty aspects, too, right?

My friend Aaron from Phoenix came through NYC on his way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans (such is the way of the buddy pass, a perk for friends of flight attendants, which gives you free tickets, but strange routing.) Also, Frankie came in from New Jersey -- look, a shout out! -- plus Aaron's friend Cooper who lives out in Queens....we all ended up at Stonewall for a round of beers and something called Tokyo Tea, which, Aaron says, is his favorite drink. I met Aaron and Frankie years ago through an internet chat room for gay boys, and we've stayed in touch in real life since then--I'd never met Aaron in person. This is the great, amazing thing about the Internet, that it can, sometimes, actually connect people from across the globe, and it feels like I've known them for years--sort of, I have. Stonewall on Saturday night was having their fetish night, which included a big bull dyke shining the boots of any Mary who wanted to step up and have it done, and a bunch of normal-bodied men in lycra, latex and even an old flame of Kip's in neoprene. It was nice to see real people, a very different look from the Chelsea bars. Watching all of them in their gear, getting turned on a bit, enjoying the public aspect of their play, I realized: Fetish stuff isn't really about sex, it's just about clothes.

For the Oscars, I had Cory and Sean over to lay on the couch and be catty, and I made short ribs braised in an ancho chile/coffee sauce, plus polenta and steamed kale. It was fantastic. The first time I made the short ribs, I managed not to seal the pan with foil tight enough, so we lost a lot of the sauce as it just cooked out. This time, I added some beef broth to the mix--maybe too much--and then sealed the pan ridiculously well. The sauce was a bit too watery, but to no real drama. They still tasted fantastic, if you ask me. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. If you want the recipe, lemme know.

Oh, Oscars. Best: Hugh. Worst: That horrible number about how musicals are back. Are they? If this is any indication....

Then, I have this cold-thing that's hanging on inside my head. Snot dripping into the back of my throat. Ugh. This made for horrible sleep. Plus, my cat has taken to stretching out as long as he can, taking up as much room as possible. So, I'm squeezed between Kip and the Cat, snorting and wheezing and generally being unhappy. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Oh -- good news coming soon....

Best Gay Everything

Looking for something to warm up those cold January nights? Some of my work is included in these two anthologies, which are out there in bookstores waiting to be snatched up.

Best Gay Erotica 2009 features my story, "Mr. Laundry," about an unexpected encounter at a Queens laundromat.





Best Gay Romance 2009 includes an absolutely true essay about what happened one summer in Vermont many moons ago.

The Great Tragedies

On Tuesday night, Kip and I went to see the new Richard Foreman show, "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland," and before that we had dinner at Veselka, a Ukrainian diner-kind of place on Second Avenue in the East Village. Ten years ago, when I had three roommates (and a four-bedroom, two bath apartment with a dishwasher in Astoria for $1800,) we used to perform this ritual often. See some kind of experimental, or otherwise 'out-there' theater after having had dinner at Veselka. Sometimes we ate at Odessa, or Cafe Orlin, or Yaffa. We had more money back then--out rent was nothing. We were young, theater-going sponges.

I realize that some of you reading this will say "Before that, back in the 80s, I had dinner here, here and here, before all those places sprang up, and we saw really avant-garde stuff." "Things were different back then," my friend Scott is always telling me. "I don't know," he says, "people didn't care so much, they just were, they were really out there, it was really different in New York." Scott's always talking about people being 'out there.'

I'm usually pretty uninterested in this kind of talk, this woeful nostalgia for old New York, before Disney, before Giuliani, before, before, before. (Outside the Village Voice offices, there is a banner which reads "Where have all the crackheads gone?" But I ask you, do you really want a street full of crackheads? Really?) This is not to say that I do not feel the tragedy of it--skyrocketing rents alone have created a catastrophic housing crisis, the commercialization of culture has lead to the homogenization and stupidization of theater, and I don't think Michael Cunningham was far off when, in his latest book Specimen Days, he presented New York City as purely a theme park for the rest of America. All that said, however, I also believe in the life cycle of urban environments, particularly in cramped, bustling cities like ours. I know that someday the Starbucks will fall, and something else will take its place. I recognize the spirit of mourning Old New York, but I'm equally fascinated, perplexed, and yes, even me, somewhat optimistic about its future.

Sort of.

As I walked down St. Mark's street in the Village on Tuesday night, I was reminded of all those nights years ago, when the four of us, our bratty little gang of Tennesseans-gone-Big-City, walked the same sidewalks and ate in the same restaurants. There used to be a huge community center on St. Mark's. In it's place, there is now: Chipotle, Supercuts, and Grand Sichuan franchises, an upscale grocery store, the St. Mark's Market, and perhaps the worst of all offenders, the CBGB Fashions. This is an outlet which produces no music, serves no booze, but sells licensed products branded with the historic CBGB's logo. (The real CBGB's closed in October 2006, after owing $91,000 in back rent to it's landlord, the Bowery Resident's Committee--which is an organization that helps homeless people reclaim their lives. You see there is some gray area here. The real tragedy, of course, is that in the richest country in the world, we can't support both historic punk-rock music venues and the homeless.)

On Tuesday night, I felt really sad. I felt sad for the people whose lives were changed by that community center--alcoholics and drug addicts and battered women and art collectives and whomever else took refuge inside it. I felt sad for every other New Yorker who's walked down that street and suddenly found their ancient ritual displaced by modernism. Because what are we as a culture, if not a series of rituals? And if franchised fast-food and licensed "fashion" are our rituals, where does that leave us?

But I also felt sad for the new business owners--the intrepid shopkeeper who hopes to make a new life for herself by opening her own place--because they, too, have a right to make their own rituals. Okay, so it's a Chipotle, but at least she's doing well for herself and can actually say that America does what it promised to do: Give the huddled masses a shot at their own self-made future. This, of course, is the sentimental novelist in me, piling layer after layer of gloomy, derivative psychosis on some bright-eyed immigrant intent on forging ahead. (Can't that be true, a little bit?) The cynic in me says that the real owner is some white guy in a suit who lives in New Jersey and drives an SUV, and sends his kids to 'important' colleges. Please tell me the reality is something else.

The great tragedies are:

1) Cultural landmarks turn into fast-food joints.
2) The 'idea' of America is so much more amazing than America.
3) Nothing is how you remember it.
4) We, as a species, are ill-equipped to deal with these truths.

Ugh

Here's what happened today:

1) On my way to work, the V train got fucked up and went over the E line.
2) I went to visit a dear friend in the loony bin at St. Vincent's hospital. The forreal loony bin. He was not well, but is getting better.
3) On my way home there was a "temporary loss of power" on the entire Queens Blvd. corridor subway lines and I had to walk to the N train.
4) On my way to the N train, there was an ambulance parked on the corner. Into the back, they were loading a gurney on which laid a person completely covered by a sheet.
5) I went to the doctor, who told me I had shingles. Now I'm on three different pills.

**Update: The shingles are getting better. Thank god for pills. Still hurts like fucking hell, but, as the nurse told me, "The pain pills are working, though you may think they are not. That's how bad it hurts if you don't take them."

The Soundtrack of Your Life

I adore easily completed, vaguely meaningful, and technology-incorporating tasks such as this meme. Put your iTunes on shuffle, and let 'er rip. Now you've got the next 18 songs to underscore, literally, a series of scenes in the movie of your life. I've adopted Alex's additions, Coming Out and Leaving Home, but I've changed the order a bit, to suit my preferred narrative structure. We're taught not to begin with someone waking up, right?

Also, the role of me in the movie of my life will be played by a mostly-naked Daniel Radcliffe, who will perfect my East Tennessee accent, as well as gain and lose the same 15 pounds over and over, thus winning him an Oscar. In his acceptance speech, he will shout my name over the play-off music and everyone will say "Too Little, Too Late" in the papers the next morning.

Title suggestions, anyone?


Opening Credits -- Liar, by the Cranberries, live in 1994
This is from an unknown bootleg I have of theirs from back in the day. The intro is killer, perfect mid-90s pop, and at this point during the exercise I feel as if my computer knows how to excite an audience.

First Day of School -- Anticipate, by Ani Difranco from 2002, 11/04 Paradise, CA
"for every hand extended / another lies in wait / keep your eye on that one / anticipate." I cannot say enough about what Ms. Difranco has brough to my life. This blog post is the best I can do. This song isn't nearly one of my favorites, but I'll take it.

Coming Out -- Here I Am by Emmylou Harris
Perfection, I say! This further illustrates the symbiosis I have with my laptop. Something amazing is happening to Emmylou's voice as she gets older. It's becoming fainter, it cracks easily. It's so beautiful--nobody's recording like that anymore. In this scene, I go from place to place, coming out, and it has the look and feel of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich when she was going around town to tell everybody how much money they won from the lawsuit.

First Love -- A Lack of Color, by Death Cab for Cutie
"If you feel discouraged / that there's a lack of color here / please don't worry lover / it's really bursting at the seams / absorbing everything / the spectrum's a to z." Here I am again, overly concerned about the way some emotion is perceived, and thus I have to process.

First Song -- Dawn, by Cinematic Orchestra
I'm not sure what sort of song this would make for your first. There is no beat, and no words, only a wonderous drone for about four minutes. Maybe this first song leads to a sex scene, which later leads to the....

Breakup -- Time Will Do the Talking by Patty Griffin
"I change the lock on the door / I learn how to take a little more / I can outrun all of the devils here / But never the doubt." All hail the church of Patty Griffin. It's an instant-conversion policy, I believe.

Prom -- Danger, by Erykah Badu
For some reason, at my prom I decide to go rob a bank or maybe shoot some people. "Thinkin bout lives that you've taken / All the love you've forsaken / Niggas gon' get they fuckin head blown."

Driving -- Alone But Not Lonely, by Mary Chapin Carpenter
Then I'm driving a long stretch of dark road, while on the lam. But I'm okay. I got my Mary C.C. to guide me: "There are moments in time that are meant to be held / Like fragile, breakable things / There are others that pass us, you can't even tell / Such is their grace and their speed."

Flashback -- Since You Been Hard to Find, Kelly Clarkson vs. American Analog Set
This a great mash-up by somebody. I "archived" it from the WWW.

Waking Up -- Spring Haze, by Tori Amos, 2005 Manchester UK
"i found out where my edge is / and it bleeds into where you resist / and my only way out / is to go so far in" Tori's music is like an IV line directly into her consciousness. Hook me up, and I'm following her, wherever she wants to go. Fun places, dark places. I trust her completely.

Leaving Home -- Star Guitar, by Chemical Brothers
Have you seen the video Michel Gondry did for this song? The versions of it on YouTube are all badly converted, so you miss a lot of the greatness. So check one of them out here, but then imagine me on that train.

New Love -- Black Heart Today, by Amy Ray, bootlegged from 2005 4/19, NYC
I'm not sure what these lyrics are supposed to mean in this scene. "Take this meanness out of me / Take this meanness out of me / Take this meanness out of me."

Wedding -- Both Hands (dance mix), by Ani Difranco.
Now my iTunes is laughing at me.

Birth Scene -- Irresistible Bitch, by Prince
It's still laughing. Only this time, The Gods are laughing, too.

Final Battle -- Here Comes the Flood -- Peter Gabriel
"When the flood calls / You have no home, you have no walls / Dont be afraid to cry at what you see." This scene will be played mostly in silence, except for Peter's voice. At the end of it, everyone would be breathless and regretfull.

Death Scene -- Another Part of Me, by Michael Jackson
This is the version from Captain EO, the 3D movie that was at Disneyland for years and years. I was (read: am) so jealous of Anjelica Huston as the Supreme Leader.

Funeral Song -- Any Way You Want It, by Journey.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

Final Credits -- Lay Down, by Floetry
Somebody's getting busy right after my funeral? I'm hoping it's a throng of sobbing queens, who have an orgy on the steps of the Capital Building, one final act of civil (and totally hot) disobedience.

Let's just spend a little time,
Do a little more
Share what's in our hearts
Give each other all
Nothing more to do,
Lying right here with you
Let's just lay down

Hey Mario, Amanda and Michael, you're tagged. And you too, Rob, because Ted already tagged you and I can't wait to see what fabulousness your iTunes churns out.

Hawk vs. Squirrel

I've spent the last week doing all sorts of stuff that has shifted my attention away from the blog--some interesting, some less so. But the as-yet-secretly-named second novel has been tugging at me a bit, and for a time it was too impossible to try to do both. The language was too fragile to start working here, too. So I just didn't.

Among those other strange behaviors--not writing, that is--were: digging my van out of the snow piled up around the front end by the city's plows; writing letters to illustrious photographers hoping they'll donate something for the upcoming Circus Amok benefit performance; building a database for VUE, watching those Oscars, and riding the B61 back and forth from Brooklyn to Queens, listening to the polish women talk about whatever it is they talk about after doing their shopping.

At the market on Saturday, a hawk was having face-off with a squirrel--and after a good 15 minutes of everyone staring up at the drama in the trees, fifty or so photographers clammoring up lampposts to get a better shot, and more cell phone cameras pointed at the pair than should be allowed, they simply decided to go their separate ways, and no blood was rendered. Another farmer reminded me that those Discovery Channel nature shows take days to shoot, and include hours and hours and hours of that kind of interaction--nothing. The money shot is harder to come by. So to speak.

A Sesame Christmas

Last night, Kip and I went to the Sesame Workshop company Christmas party, which was held only 2 blocks from my house, at the Kaufman-Astoria Studios, on the set of the world-reknown show.

It was fun--all that insider vocabularly, door prizes, open bar and butlered hors d'oevres. Most company holiday parties are like this. What made this one particularly special was the performance--Elmo and Abby Cadabby hosted a "year in review" musical medly decidedly not for the regular watchers of Sesame Street. The other puppets all performed various higher-ups at Sesame Workshop. It was charming, funny and people loved it.

I also got to re-meet Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Tony-nominated former star of Avenue Q. She and Kip used to work together, and although I'd met her briefly after one Q show a few years ago, she did not remember me, and apologized profusely for it. There was no need to apologize, of course. At the first meeting, she shook my hand for about 1.5 seconds in a line of many other people. I was not offended.

Evidence of the fete you shall find below. Perhaps of all my readers, my nephew will find this most impressive.

Gooble Gobble.

After watching the parade on television, and then some of the American Kennel Club--the toy poodle, Vicki, won Best in Show I later learned--Kip and I moseyed on up to Queens, amid the rain and the wind and the other New Yorkers carrying covered dishes balanced on their laps. Thanksgiving would be at John & Edith's house in Jackson Heights, in their apartment that I have made them promise to turn over to me should they ever leave.

There was no turkey, but even better, there was fried chicken. There was a truffle Mac-N-Cheese, collard greens, tomato pie, Edith's homemade cheese rolls, and a sweet potato casserole which sort of exploded in the oven--but which still tasted glorious. Then there was pumpkin pie, pecan pie and an apple bundt. We started with dark-n-stormies, which is rum and ginger beer, then moved on to wine and more wine and more wine. Pictures from the evening can be seen here, and the even drunker ones here. It's not a very good picture of Kip, for the record. He's much more adorable in person. And somehow three of us ended up in plaid.

We went around the table, everyone saying what they were thankful for. I wasn't able to fully articulate the subtlety of what I was (am) thankful for. I tried to talk about how this entire year has been an experiment for me--new work, new writing, new boyfriend--all of it in ways I've never had before. I said that I was thankful for all the shit that you have to go through to learn life lessons. Not thankful for the shit, but the knowledge of yourself that--if you're fortunate--you can come away with when you're given the opportunity to learn stuff like that. I don't think over dinner I made myself very clear. (Have I here?) I should have just said, "this food, my family, etc."

On Friday we saw the new Christopher Guest film, For Your Consideration. It was, and I'm being kind here, rather bad. Dead on the screen, even awkward. As if the actors weren't exactly sure what they were doing, or how they fit into the bigger picture, or even if what they were doing was funny. Everyone's confidence was missing. Jane Lynch got the biggest laughs, as the Mary Hart-esque evening entertainment show host with the bizarrely calculated body language.

My brother and his wife are pregnant again, due in May. My nephew, the amazing, inimitable, inestimable, unfathomable Pryce Houck, has--I learned today--just been upgraded to a "big boy bed." I talked to him for a bit on the phone Thursday. He didn't say much, but he was really listening. He's a good listener.

103rd Precinct

I wouldn't know if the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, is a particularly busy one. If it's violent, quiet or maybe odd. My guess would be that it is not. I guess this because for two days in a row I've been trying to secure a sound permit for the Amok show in Rufus King Park on Thursday--also my birthday.

As I sat there, glancing at each policeman walking past--oh, yes, some of them are dreamboats--a woman came into the lobby. "I've been kidnapped," she said. Strangely, or perhaps not strangely, none of the officers did much of anything. One of them, a woman, came around the front of the desk and began talking with her. The woman--the potential kidnapee--hadn't actually been kidnapped. This, I gathered from the reactions of people around her. No urgency. No paperwork. Probably she was homeless--they acted as if they knew her. She was one of those egregious displays of irony that NYC offers: an unwashed, maybe crazy, maybe unmedicated, disheveled old lady carrying her belongings in none other than a Takashimaya shopping bag.

Night Court, I kept thinking, even though this was the police station--that ridiculous sitcom from the late 80s, which I always watched after school. With Marsha Warfield as the bailiff. I always liked tough women on television. We watched it at my grandparents sometimes, and Empty Nest, which I think came on Saturday nights at 9:30, and after it was over we had to go to bed. That or the Golden Girls, which was when I really started to figure out what exactly a gay sensibility was. This is what happens when you sit for long periods of time watching all this--your brain drifts and doesn't stop. Memories are like that--you can connect one to the next forever if you want to. You don't even have to want to.

Someone came to lead me upstairs, and so I didn't get to see the end of the possible kidnap situation. Then, sitting at the second desk in the community affairs office, Officer Lowe was finally writing up my permit--a truly nice guy who seemed like he'd do anything for us, despite his inability to help me out the day before, because, simply, there was no hard copy of the park permit form him to Xerox. "Daddy's Girl" written on a mini NYS license plate, thumb-tacked to the corkboard behind him.

"What happened to the bearded lady?" he asked. "She's still around," I answered. "She's off in Battery Park today trying to get that site settled." "Okay," he said, "well, tell her I said hello. Maybe I'll see her next year."

Where I was sitting--someone else's desk, someone who was, as he said "in the field"--there was a Post-It note stuck to the monitor which read: "Mary needs wigs for prostitution."

Hot Hot Heat

This always happens in New York in August--the heat arrives, as if no one had expected it, as if we had forgotten what it was like this time of year. Con Edison fucks up some neighborhood--in this year's case, the north part of Astoria, where some customers were without electricity for eight days--and then makes apologies in the news and in the papers.

I splurged yesterday in taking a car service to Jennifer's house--not so bad, only $18 with New Enrico's, my car service of choice for the last 8 years--because I had to transport 5 pogo sticks to her loft, but also because, as I later saw on the light-up sign at the bank that flashes the time and temperature that it was 1:42pm, and 106 degrees. Nuff said.

I'm also battling a sinus something-or-other. Congestion, mostly. I'm not sure if it's allergies, actual sickness, or just my body revolting against the constant hot/cold of going from air conditioner to outside and back again over and over.

Tomorrow, Sam Champion says, we'll be in a better "pocket of air." It sounds so much like space travel.

PS - Don't rush out to see Miami Vice. It sucks.

Some of What You Can Have Delivered at 11:00pm in My Neighborhood

Souvlaki
Moussaka
Penne Polo Pazzo
Baklava
Carne Asada
Chorizo
Sopes Cesina
Cabeza
Chilaquiles con Huevos Estrellados
Nopales
Halloumi
Lahmajun
Guayaki Yerba Mate
Puro Turco
Milanesa
Pasha Mundo
Coxinha
Bimbimbop
Chirasi
Tekkadon
Gyoza
Sunomono
Negimaki
Kimchi
Burek
Pastichio
Taramasolata
Tzatziki
Takuwan
Pad Mee
Tom Kha
Larb
Mee Grob
Pla Tod Kateem
Num Tak
Rad Naa
Seftalia
Zalatina
Keftedes
Loukaniko
Kaseri
Insalata di Mare
Pilatte di Pesce
Lengua a la Plancha
Chow Mei Fun
Aloo Gobi
Chana Poori
Shag Ponir
Sujbzi Jalfrazi

Easter Sunday

Today Kip and I layed around in Astoria Park for a while, watching people practice swordfighting, play with their dogs, celebrate the holiday, and get their kites miserably stuck in the budding trees. One of my favorite things about the park is that you can get on the grass all year long--something you can't always do in the Manhattan parks; Central Park's lawns aren't open until next week, and some will be another two weeks before they're fully walk-on-able. I like the grass on my toes.

Throughout the neighborhood, people were gathered in groups, wearing pastels, the girls in dresses tied in ribbons, the boys in suits too big, too bulky to make them look like anything other than children whose parents would prefer they act like adults. Girls just grow up faster somehow. Like their adulthood is already present within them when they are born. Like they hide it.

This week I had a rather unexpected breakthrough with my second novel, (are all breakthoughs unexpected?) which, though going ever so slowly, is still cranking away in my mind all day, all week, all the time. It's the way novels are written, I guess. At least it's the way mine are. Shazam, it just comes to you, like that.

Some Recommendations

Highly recommended:
Francis McDormand in "Friends with Money"
"Thing a Week" Podcast by Jonathan Coulton.
Queen Anne's Lace jam by Beth's Farm Kitchen.
Cruiserweight's new record "Sweet Weaponry."
Springtime in NYC.

Recommended with reservations:
Cyndi Lauper in Roundabout Theatre's "Threepenny Opera."
Queens branches of the United States Postal Service.
The R Train.

Not recommended:
The rest of Roundabout Theatre's "Threepenny Opera." All 3 hours of it.
Making coconut ice cream with all the proportions off.