Convent of Extinct Nuns

music for yoga

David led Eddie and Jeff through a morning routine without requesting the subtraction of Parliament Funkadelic.

Weekend in Connecticut

Languid. Serene. Leisurely. Food we'd never eat in real life, but once of a summer Saturday won't kill ya. Joey, not used to a soft mattress, received an expert adjustment that worked wonders.

Brunch

Cook, eat, blog, yoga. (Note the trivia about Lorenz Hart on the TV screen).

They Travel Well

All settled in, we pile into both cars for the hop into the Wretched Little City to attend a monthly gathering of 200 gay men at the downtown Marriott. Proving the significance of what two hours travel time away from NYC can mean, and while making introductions, several of the locals actually asked for a definition of blog, and, nobody had ever read our Joey.

Here are
1 Joe
2 Aaron
3 Tom
4 Eddie
5 Chris
6 David
7 Jeff
8 C
9&10 Tony & Ken of Connecticut and Key West

Only in New York

What started out as a Sunday afternoon tour of Central Park's Bethesda Terrace and Fountain (don't miss the newly restored Minton tile ceiling) ends with a startling and yet typical "Only in New York" encounter. I wonder if he caught anything in his fish nets.

Brooke Astor

The delightful and admirable Brooke Astor has died at the age of 105.

I recently read Frances Kiernan's bio of Brooke entitled The Last Mrs. Astor. I recommend it for its insightful treatment of her leadership of the Astor Foundation.It is also not without nuggets:

"As someone in a highly visible position she could not wear the same outfit too many times. Such gowns as she did not pass on to the Costume Institute she passed on to her friend Kitty Carlisle Hart, who put them to immediate use in her role as a regular panelist on the television game show "To Tell the Truth". In those days TV shows did not provide performers with lavish wardrobes and the newly widowed Kitty Carlisle Hart did not have much money to spend."

A Second Look at Greenpoint

(magnifiableviaclick)

Greenpoint Sunday

On Sunday we took the subway to Long Island City and walked across the Pulaski Bridge into the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Its desolate industrial buildings have been re-zoned and are now blending into adjacent Williamsburg where swarm the skinny kids with jet black hair and walking cell phone addictions and parents who pay the ratcheted cost of their condos. Their voices drove me nuts, but the frequent sound of spoken Polish was a soothing reminder of what Greenpoint had been, and still is slightly. We walked past McCarren Park, and, at a cafe called Sweetwater, I had a decadent dessert that combined a warm dense chocolate cake with dolce de leche and banana. At the Brazil Coffee Shop in Long Island City, I had a deliriously moist cappuchino muffin. These parts of Brooklyn are a kaleidoscope. This one collage samples just a bit of it and really needs a larger format to help you rummage through it, but your click will help a bit.

this ought to be fun

On Friday, 6-9AM, Florida time, Fort Lauderdale's Mayor Naugle will co-host a radio talk show on News Talk 850, WFTL, addressing the accusations of bigotry and homophobia that have come his way because of...his bigotry and homophobia.

This may be enjoyed via the internet at http://850wftl.com

Starved as I am for entertainment since the conclusion of the last round of American Idol, I'll be glued to my laptop.

(UPDATE: This was a total waste of time. The cable TV repairman will be here in a few minutes. Maybe that will be better.)

The Controversial Mr. Cavett

The brilliant Dick Cavett is back, and he has a blog in The New York Times! He recently posted an extremely controversial piece. I cannot simply link it because you have to be a "Times Select" subscriber to get to it that way. Instead, I will reprint the whole of it below. He has received a mountain of replies, many of them from long-time fans of his who were nevertheless outraged by his position. Here it is in its entirety. What do you think?


July 25, 2007, 9:30 pm
Is Bigger Really Better?
It was only a few years ago that I first noticed an obese person in a
commercial. Then there were more. Now, like obesity itself, it has gotten
out of hand.

This disturbs me in ways I haven’t fully figured out, and in a few that I
have. The obese man on the orange bench, the fat pharmacist in the drug
store commercial and all of the other heavily larded folks being used to
sell products distresses me. Mostly because the message in all this is
that its O.K. to be fat.

As we know, it isn’t.

It isn’t, mainly, because of the attendant health issues. The risk of several cancers, crippling damage to joints, heart attack, stroke, diabetes and sleep apnea — a much under-publicized life-threatener — defies sense.

So why is it so prevalent in our culture and in the media? Could it be that the ad agencies — always with our best interests at heart, of course — are making use of the appalling fact that obesity in the United States has doubled and rapidly redoubled to the point where one-third of the population is imperiled by gross poundage? Fat people, the commercial-makers may feel, are entitled to representation. What’s wrong with that?

Everything.

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed. I’ve done shows with Ku Klux Klansmen, Mafiosi and Nazis (both domestic and Third Reich). Despite my being not overly cordial to them, always a nagging little voice in me wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with having them on at all. Was it somehow a tacit endorsement, just putting them on television? After all, there’s that sign in the variety store that sits atop the pyramid of schlocky plastic vegetable slicers: AS SEEN ON TV! Just being seen on the tube . . . it’s gotta be good.

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy’s show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen. I guess a nice person would not point out that Jerry Springer’s guests and audience frequently bring to mind (particularly for those of us from western states) a herd of heifers. But there it is. I’ll try to be nicer.

Television comedy, in particular, has become an equal opportunity employer of the gigantic. It seems as if nearly every sitcom has a requisite fat, sassy black lady (or man) or a fat, avuncular white Uncle Jim large enough to absorb the scripted fat jokes. I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn’t include someone the size of the Hindenburg. Frequently the comic is black or Hispanic — the two groups, according to many studies, currently bearing the brunt of the obesity plague.

These comics’ routines invariably center on their weight vs. their erotic life — the abundance of former and lack of the latter. When being huge is a jokester’s bread and butter, remaining so becomes a professional necessity as well as an encouragement to over-inflated young would-be performers eager to emulate them. They see that fat is funny. And funny is money.

(Fat jokes, of course, have long been standard in comedy: When you get on a scale, does a card come out saying, ‘Please, one at a time?’” Long ago, that sort of thing risked offending only a few.)

When I was a kid in Nebraska and the eagerly anticipated (and wildly politically incorrect) freak show came to town, it starred such favorites as The Cone-Headed Savages; He Has Two Noses; Alzora, The Turtle Girl (if you’re still out there, Alzora, please write to me!); The Pig Man; and, for an extra quarter and behind curtains, something called Is It A Man Or A Woman?

And, of course, the ever-popular Fat Lady. Dora, in this case. The idea that Dora’s rotundity would be a novelty rare enough that one paid to look at it is sad. (Today, in a two-block walk, I can safely predict seeing at least one woman who could put Dora out of business.)

In the playground, did you too have the nasty little ditty beginning, “Fatty, Fatty, Two by Four”? In Nebraska, we had the song – but no one to torment with it. No one was fat. Sounds incredible now, doesn’t it, in the midst of our current tragedy.

More recently I found myself in Tiananmen Square, and a Chinese guide pointed to a bus unloading what seemed to be half a mile away.

Americans, he said.

How can you tell from here? I naively asked.

Fannies, he said, making the wide gesture with both hands.

Every summer Irish girls come to Montauk, L. I., to work. Some years ago, when obesity was getting into surge mode, I asked two of them if they noticed any difference in America from year to year. They sort of giggled and conferred, not sure if they should say it, but then they did: “You are so huge!”

But it’s no longer true that Europe and Asia can point to America and smugly sing, “Fatty, Fatty.” We’ve exported our revolution with our fast-food chains. Japan now has obese children for the first time in its thousand-year history. Mad for anything American, young Japanese have made McDonald’s (charmingly: “ma-ca-do-naru-doz”) their second – if not first – home, partaking there more than once a day.

But fear not: we still have the lead. And in a future column, perhaps, we can explore just why an ever-growing portion of America’s population treats the body as if it were a Strasbourg goose.

Hymenocallis Amaryllidaceae

Many years ago, we grew restless while staying with a friend on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. A lady whose husband owned a nursery suggested we go to the island of St. Bart's. Her sister owned a hotel there. Her phone call got us a room and getting a flight was surprisingly simple. A day later we were in paradise among the many Parisians who had made this island their secret tropical playground long before Hollywood types discovered it.

The hotel, Le Petit Morne, was high on a bluff overlooking both the beach at Flambards and a Rockefeller estate. Our suite had an open-air kitchen/dining room. ($90 a night!) Every morning the housekeeper changed the flowers in the bedroom. Some of them had a scent that was indescribably sweet. I asked about it and she called it a chocolate lily, and that is just what it smelled like. They grew wild in all the craggy places on the island, sometimes wedged in rock crevices that got sprayed by the ocean but mostly a safe distance from the waves.

We drove all over the island in one of those glorified golf carts called "mini-mokes". In the delightfully seedy port town of Gustavia, we drank at a bar called Le Select which was shared by everyone and anyone willing to get along with everyone and anyone. The Swedish navy sailed into port one evening. They all looked like C, but twice as tall. I stood among a gorgeous forest of them while a French woman could not stop swooning over my eyes. "Les Yeux! Oooo Les Yeux!" she kept shrieking, for I was wearing opaque violet contacts, newly invented that year and quite startling.

On our way to the Gran Saline beach where one tumbles about in the violent surf nakedly, I purchased a chocolate bar called "Copaya". It is by the Suchard confectioners. It was "Chocolat Blanc A La Noix De Coco." The most wonderful thing I have ever consumed. I ate the whole bar while C drove. It made me literally higher than anything I have ever smoked. I made C turn the moke around so I could buy every bar in that store. I saved the wrappers. I wonder if it is still available. Surely it is illegal.

As we packed to leave St. Bart's, I pried a small lily bulb out of the ground and hid it in my suitcase. Several years later it bloomed for us and produced five green three-valved capsules the size of filberts. I placed these on a marble credenza in the sun and was surprised when a tiny white tendril poked out of each one. I potted them and they grew for a few years next to their fat-as-a-grapefruit old mother who has bloomed reliably every summer and has produced other bulbs from her roots but has never again made fertile seed pods.

The plant is commonly called a spider lily. (Hymenocallis Amaryllidaceae). There are about twenty-five varieties, all of them fragrant.

Jeff recently mentioned his desire for a plant that can withstand a broad spectrum of circumstances and occasional neglect. We gave him one of the babies and warned him that it might not bloom for a few more years. Surprisingly, it sent up a flower stalk as soon as he got it home and into some dirt. Here it is, thriving in foster care.





It has four siblings who are still with us and need good homes. I would be willing to give one to anyone who is willing to pick it up in New York. The price of adoption? One bar of Copaya. That's right. I'd trade my babies for another hit of that stuff.

Perfection

I want to call your attention to what I consider to be the best delivery of a song anywhere anytime by any singer in the history of the world. Judy Garland sings Ol' Man River and her performance is flawless.

Try to take your eyes off her as she invests each phrase with a million shades of meaning and feeling. The power of this rendition is amplified by the fact that the song sums up her entire life.

Of particular interest to me is the fact that the arrangement and orchestration, typical of those days, does not enhance or support her, but acts as an enemy that she must do battle with throughout the piece. In the end, she wins.

Perfection.

Two Good Seaweeds

Your rain and lightening slapped Farmboyz took it on the chin and decided to go to the movies on Sunday afternoon (after C made a superb frittata, and I made a disastrous Galkyd-laced painting of eggplant, zucchini and Hungarian peppers). The 3pm was sold out, but we got tickets for the 4:30pm (where else in the world but on the Upper West Side can you walk one block from your house and be inside a megaplex without an umbrella let alone a car?)

I am still softened butter from yesterday’s seaweed wrap. C gave me a spa treatment at The Spa at Chelsea Piers for my birthday. This is how we are, having learned that the best gift is often a totally impractical splurge that we would never allow ourselves in Real Life. My poor business-harried baby got himself a soothing massage while I chose the seaweed.

The buxom blonde and crystal blue-eyed lady who performed the treatment began by asking me (in what I suspect was an authentic Swedish accent) if I had any allergies, especially to seafood. She then explained the procedure. “First, I gonna exfoliate you and then I give you the gloves to take home. Then, I gonna apply lotion and then I gonna apply the seawid. Next, I gonna wrap you in a hot plastic shit and then hot cotton shit.” I tried not to laugh. What followed was heavenly, and while I was wrapped, she sprayed my face with a citrus concoction and performed a head massage that put me to sleep. Later, we lounged on the deck over the Hudson River and watched the chartered yachts come and go as the sun went down over New Jersey. Whirlpool, steam, sauna, eucalyptus, aloe and olive oil moisturizer. I am reduced to limp velvet. I want to stuff the thick terry robe into my bag just for the memory, but do not. I can barely walk to the subway. Back home, I pour a glass of Orvieto secco (savoring its rough flavor and raw grassy color) and open a recent biography of Machiavelli. I read three words and fall asleep.

But my purpose in writing is to review the new movie “Hairspray”. I have been eager to see this, having loved both the original John Waters film and also the Broadway musical.

Would Travolta add something to the definitive tracks of both Divine and Harvey Fierstein? Or, would he fail as miserably as did Bernadette Peters in her dreadfully stillborn revival of Gypsy?

I had read his comments about the extreme amount of thought he put into his decision to accept the role and his decision to play Edna as an aged and obese but still voluptuous Sophia Loren.

Despite the fact that there were some transcendent moments in his performance, when, carried above his own thinking by the power of the music and the choreography, you find yourself happily in love with his Edna, I think he was still the weakest part of the movie and an unfortunate choice for several reasons.

His vocal register was entirely misplaced. Perhaps he had tried out a number of possibilities, all of them unsuccessful, and resorted to his natural voice, hoping that the visual impact of Edna would surely define any voice that went with it. He had said in an interview that he had researched and delivered an authentic Baltimore accent. If this is true, there must be only two or three people left in America who employ that accent, because it is totally unrecognizable as indigenous to Baltimore. Why deliver an accent so unrecognizable (albeit etymologically perfect) as to be un-endearing and therefore unfunny?

Travolta’s Edna is heavy on agoraphobia and light on ferocity. She is a weak-chinned and fearful Laura Wingfield whom he never quite manages to set free from a diva’s imprisonment in fat even though the script calls for more than one moment of exalted liberation.

Travolta’s “Timeless” duet with Christopher Walken, one of my favorite songs from the Broadway version where it was a showstopper, was a bit disappointing. No sexual chemistry, and that is exactly what the song is about. I kept suspecting that Travolta should have taken the role with trust in the director who might have been better able to elicit a performance that was not a copy of the previous two standards while able to stand on its own fat legs.

If not for Harvey’s excellent turn as Edna, I’d be tempted to say that because the part was so perfectly written for Divine, anyone else would fail in it. Travolta has said that he did not want to play it as a man in drag, but as a real woman. If so, he should have devised a voice that would have helped us believe it, and he should have envisioned a woman with stronger passions and frustrations beyond a mousey and fidgety anxiety over carbohydrates. Maybe he just didn’t take the time to meet and understand Edna. Even John Waters did not fully understand the Edna he had created until one day, on the set of the original movie, when Divine first appeared and took his place at the ironing board. Waters reports that everyone cheered, and that Divine looked at him and said “No matter how hard you try, you can’t make me look less than beautiful.” It is exactly that inner conviction that is missing from Travolta’s performance.

Among the many successful turns were those of Nikki Blonsky who easily shoulders the entire package and delivers a perfectly lovable, spunky and energetic Tracy Turnblad, Michelle Pfeiffer as the scheming Velma Von Tussle, Zac Efron as the adorable Link Larkin (in one of the film’s most inspired moments, singing to a framed black and white photo of Tracy that sings along with him), and best of all, Elijah Kelley as Seaweed. Some actors winningly draw the audience into their face while singing and dancing in movie musicals, and he is one of them. While the camera is on him, you forget all and any cinematic devices and are swept away by his instinctive magnetism.

The same cannot be said for the sadly miscast Queen Latifah who delivers herself of Motormouth Maybelle with exactly the same breezy laziness that she brings to her television cosmetics commercials.

We were seated next to two very proper women of a certain age who had arrived at the theater hoping to see “No Reservations”, and had chosen “Hairspray” only because their first choice was sold out. They had seen neither the earlier movie nor the Broadway show. When the lights came on, I turned to them and said, “Sooo? What did you think?”

“Fun!”

And that it is. I recommend it based on the music alone. Also, it is a fine example of the newer style of movie musicals established by Chicago and Moulin Rouge in which there are no slow parts that one must endure for the sake of plot motion.

I wonder, however, how much better it might have been with Baz Luhrmann directing the first ten minutes. He would have known how to fly over Baltimore and into Tracy Turnblad’s bedroom for the rousing “Good Morning Baltimore” in that style that makes your heart stop when you watch the opening of Moulin Rouge.

And why couldn’t Harvey Fierstein have played Edna? And although Ruth Brown died last November and was probably not up to recreating her Motormouth Maybelle, Darlene Love who currently plays the part on Broadway would probably have been a better choice. And why did they save “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now” until the end of the credits? According to Wikipedia, Ricki Lake and Marisa Jaret Winokur (two previous Tracies) sing this with Nikki Blonsky, but there is no good reason for clipping it from the body of the film and tacking it on at the end.

I agree with the ladies. Slightly less than wonderful, but definitely fun.

Michael Albetta, Dean Trantalis and Norm Kent video

At the end of the rally at City Hall, Michael A. Albetta, President of the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus (and perhaps the most powerful speaker overall at this event) introduced City Commissioner Dean Trantalis who took a moment to introduce the Norm Kent, publisher of National Gay News.Com whose proclamation summarized much of the day.

I've listened to a lot of gay hooting and hollering for rights over the years, most of which could be chalked up to beer and would be burned away by the next day's sunlight, but this event was superior. Those who spoke demonstrated a closing of ranks among the local leadership against a seriously out-of-control bigot, Mayor Naugle.

fort lauderdale city hall

At the “Flush Naugle” rally, I concluded that Fort Lauderdale’s City Hall is the ugliest public building in the world. As is always the case with an ugly building, the viewer tries to imagine improvements short of demolition. Would replacement of the precast aggregate slabs with spandrel glass alleviate its “urban bunker” quality? Maybe, but the basic proportions are clumsy. The garrisoned upper level protrusion is irrational.

The spiraling cord around the telescoping antenna of the media van was like jewelry, and there’s that sole palm tree weeping over the landscrape.

Flush Naugle

flushnaugle rally#3
Originally uploaded by farmboyz

Local political leaders came together on Tuesday to close ranks against Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle whose bigoted comments have finally galvanized an otherwise sleepy gay community.

The rally at City Hall attracted about a thousand participants, mostly gay men. The impressive roster of speakers included Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, whose words were strong and clear, directing Floridians to shun Mayor Naugle and to exclude him from any gathering of decent people.





The real product of the "Flush Naugle" movement is a unifying grassroots movement that will probably result in the eventual toppling of the bigoted mayor and his replacement with more inspired leadership.

It was a pleasure to be part of this crowd. Interestingly, these are mostly not the men one sees out at the bars and sex clubs and bath houses and gay beaches of Fort Lauderdale, but these are the men whose work will guarantee the rights of those guys, making Fort Lauderdale an even better gay mecca. I suspect the "Flush Naugle" movement will expand rapidly and will develop some real muscle.

pears

In the produce aisle of the Publix, I find pears from Argentina.



Problems that need correcting:

a) muddy bowl

b) shadowing

c) color balance: the background is too dark or the table too light by comparison.

Things that can't be corrected:

a) positioning of the pears in the foreground. They looked pasted on.

b) the dividing line between surface and background should have been higher or lower rather than cutting the picture in half.

What I'm OK with:

a) the stems.

b) open brushwork

(I have substituted a better photo, tues. 7/24)

Tarpid Behavior

Calling it “The Eagle in Exile” is no joke. Fueling suspicion that the Puritans actually landed at Port Everglades rather than Plymouth Rock, I need to drive out of town to get to this improper twice-a-week sex romp that had once been located in Fort Lauderdale proper.

It’s ten exits and ten minutes up Route 95 at the edge of Pompano. (Yes, that very same Route 95 that runs through New York and New England, making the difference between here and there an easily memorized handful of left turns barely more complex than the placement of a message in a bottle into the Atlantic which follows the path established by this interstate.)

“The Eagle in Exile” is located in a tired single-tiered failing concrete strip mall (as is literally everything in Florida). I feel nothing but affection for these malls, emptied of their original pizzazz and blemished with consignment shops, tattoo parlors, check cashing venues and those similar businesses that move in once the owners surrender any hope of better-paying tenants.

The cheerful man (think retired Princeton language scholar with two grown daughters) inside the door is the same fellow who greeted me a year ago when this club had been located on Sunrise Boulevard. His gracious welcome and a blast of chilled air erase the dreariness of the spongy parking lot and I am launched within.

In its glory days, this might have been an Anne Francis Swimwear Shoppe, a Denny’s, a GNC Health Food store or maybe a Radio Shack. Now it is a collection of tarpaulins covering any surface likely to be defiled by the attendees and hung from the mullions of the dropped ceiling to create “rooms” (interestingly employing the exact same aesthetic rules used by Edith Wharton in the establishment of her formal outdoor garden “rooms”). Some of the tarps are duct-taped to the carpet under the seven sofas draped with white sheets that act as navigation points in the dim light.

There are also three port-a-slings (identical to that owned by a certain celebrity blogger who shall remain nameless) set up to facilitate the watching as well as the pounding. Sure enough (and this is always the unfortunate case), some toad set himself up in one of those slings and spent the entire evening with his eyes closed, head turned to one side and legs splayed in the air, gently swinging and available to any and all comers, of which there were none.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself and made the place seem horrid which it is not, so let me rewind a bit in order to establish its terrain.

Once inside, you are in a lengthy room that looks like most any gay bar in America. The bar itself is roughly fifty feet long (I use the length of a seventy-five foot swimming pool to calculate this) with a dozen stools and four tables each attended by four more stools and governed by overhead video screens giving forth the recommended activities (not the Food Channel). A very friendly, well-tanned and handsome bartender in black briefs offers to check my clothing and wants to give me a drink (admission gets you three coupons redeemable for beer, wine or spirits, with soft drinks for the asking), reaffirming my decision that my next career really ought to be one in which I can work in my underwear.

According to their website, the place opens at 8PM, and given that this is a Wednesday night, I have arrived at a respectable 8:30 with hope that I’ll be back home with a book in bed by midnight. Unfortunately, it is immediately clear to me that I am among the earliest arrivals. (Don’t arrive until 10:30) There are but a dozen naked men wandering about and watching the door hungrily. I chat up the bartender and then wander into the farther two recesses which are a step or two up and around corners. These contain the aforementioned furnishings and I am pleased with the lighting, good enough to inspect the details of the occupants but weak enough to erase a few years from anyone’s age.

A slim young guy with short black hair and goatee has followed me into an empty area set up to accommodate several dozen men. He is Ricardo, Puerto Rican, the comptroller of a real estate company and owner of the expressive and impressive dick poking at my belly button as would a third person attempting to crash our conversation. We eventually give in to the insistence of his dick which I introduce to my own, as would two gentlemen walking dogs in Central Park let their pets play with each other while continuing their conversation. We are soon joined by a short man with a silvery brush cut and a powerful gym-built chest who unleashes from his white jeans (not everyone is naked) a pit bull of a dick that is not as well trained as our own. The game changes when he announces to us that he can cum simply by our biting his chest. He demonstrates the truth of this and heads off to the bathroom. He is one of those men who paces himself through several such climaxes in the course of a night. We were the recipients of his “first up at bat” and I saw him prove his stamina at least three more times in the course of the evening.

Back at the bar, I meet a very tall and magnificently proportioned black man wearing a t-shirt remembering Barcelona. He has been on one of those Atlantis Mediterranean cruises that include some Greek islands, and he highly recommends it. We share our affection for the beauty of Barcelona and end our conversation without needing to verbalize our mutual decision to get frisky with each other later in the evening. This commences several minutes later, when, sprawled next to each other on one of the sofas, with one of his long and powerful arms yoked behind my neck and over my shoulder, we take note of the various men who kneel in front of us, sometimes lifting a head out of one of our crotches and applying it to the other’s as if to say “This guy’s real good. Try this one.”

Back at the bar, I introduce Ricardo to Barcelona and the evening develops a fine pattern. The three of us would convene wordlessly in the play areas, create a tableau vivant and then escape back to the bar whenever the press of the onlookers became too frenzied.

In the course of the night, I cannot imagine that the attendance exceeded seventy-five, that being a dismal number, but I had a convivial time of it, and was glad for the good company what with C, and everyone else I know, up north. Tonight I will attend a special meeting of our condominium association called to decide whether or not to replace the carpeting of the party room with tile. I’m going to suggest tarps.

Barks and Bikes

Ours was a balanced weekend including the riotous crowd crammed into Shubert Alley (“the heart of Broadway”) for the annual “Broadway Barks”, and also, a bike trip to the serenity of Wave Hill, a city-owned garden/mansion on 252nd Street in the Bronx (We put our bikes on the subway).

At “Broadway Barks”, with Pal Joey, who had to make a stop at the nearby 7/11 done over as a Quicki-Mart, to purchase memoribilia, I loved being less than ten feet from the long line of celebrities who took the outdoor stage on behalf of dogs and cats needing adoption. Mary Tyler Moore, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Jo Anne Worley and Harry Hamlin, to name a few.






At Wave Hill, we toured the seventeen distinctly different gardens, overlooks, buildings, exhibits and paths that comprise this twenty-eight acre dreamscape packed with rare trees and flowering plants. Panoramic vistas of the Hudson far below us, and of the cliffs of the Palisades.

Getting there was easy. An elevator at 66th Street accomodated our bikes, and, in line with subway policy, we wheeled them into the last car which we had entirely to ourselves all the way up to the last stop on the #1 line: 252nd Street. From there, you have to carry your bike down a long staircase to street level, and, you have to bike uphill for 15 minutes. This effort is rewarded by the touring of some shady streets featuring enchanted cottage-mansions designed by Dwight Baum (crazy brick, stucco, eyelet windows under slate, very arts and crafts. We'll be back to see more of these and more of the Fieldston neighborhood in which they are located. Hard to believe you are in the Bronx.