Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.28

I was doing some work from home today when it suddenly got weird. Even considering this is my life I am writing about it was weird. The New York area was expecting thunderstorms all day so when it started getting dark outside I didn’t think anything of it. However the green tinted sky I saw over the Village was something I wasn’t expecting. I don’t think I have ever seen a green tinted sky and I had no idea what it meant. What I half expected to see were agents K and J pulling up in front of our building in their black Crown Vic. 

I quickly googled 'green tinted sky' and found this which was written by a storm chaser. "A green tinted sky is from the suns rays reflecting off moisture and hail stones up in the clouds. This means that the storms updraft is very strong. A very strong updraft is one of the key ingredients for forming a tornado." Now I'm not one to panic but given recent news from the south and west I wasn't at all thrilled to read that. I have seen the movie "Twister" and know how cows blow down the road in a tornado and my thought was the gods only know what would blow down a New York street in such a storm.

Still, in a situation like that there is only one thing to do, grab the camera and go for a walk. I got as far as Union Square when the heavens opened up and I dove in the nearest shop which as luck would have it was Trader Joe's Wine Shop. I guess there are worse ways to spend a thunderstorm than discussing something I know absolutely nothing about, wine, while my storm hair dripped on the floor. And damn the wine at Trader Joe's is cheap too. As the storm passed I claimed two bottles of Spanish Syrah for only $10 and was on my way home.

I know it sounds a little silly to go for a walk when the sky is green but how would we get all that good stuff for the Weather Channel if everybody did that? I just asked myself what Joe Cantore would do.

Flyers update - After last night's win the Flyers are now 9-6 in seventh games and 6-3 when they are played at home. Stanley Cup round two begins Saturday afternoon with the Flyers home against the Boston Bruins in a rematch of last year's series which the Flyers won after trailing 3 games to none. The puck drops at 3PM or shortly after “God Bless America" is song by that known hottie Lauren Hart.

Observations on Art 4.24

Anybody that knows me also knows by now that I have a love affair with black & white photography. It's something that I have had for a long time, long before I even started thinking about taking photos myself. I can even tell the exact time it started, the summer of 1996.


My dad has always subscribed to Rolling Stone and it was one of the first magazines I read regularly. The July issue in 1996 was the yearly summer double issue and had Jenny McCarthy showing her boobs on the cover. That may have been the reason I picked it up but something I found inside in ways changed me forever. In an interview of Patti Smith I found this quote, "When I perform, I can't say I feel like a male or a female. What I feel is not in the human vocabulary." I was so fascinated by the interview and quote that I combed my dad's massive vinyl collection and found her debut album.

More important than the music I found on "Horses" was the cover. A stark black & white portrait I just found stunning. The cover notes said it was by Robert Mapplethorpe so i did some more digging and my love affair with b&w was born. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were many things too each other - collaborators, lovers, each others muse, and lifelong friends. Through it all their one goal was to create art and they did just that through poetry, drawing, music, and photography. Mapplethorpe's photos are breathtaking, beautiful, and at times brutally graphic yet they seem somehow emotional to me, at one instant tense and at the next simply beautiful.

I'm not sure why this has all come back to me now. I think a major part of it was the realization that I live within walking distance of his 23rd street loft where Mapplethorpe did much of his work and Smith lived but a block away from here during that time.  I recently picked up a copy of the book "Just Kids" by Patti Smith which is her story the years together with Mapplethorpe. The book ends with their last days and conversations, as Mapplethorpe died of AIDs in 1989. In the back of the book are the lyrics to her memorial song for Mapplethorpe ....

"Little emerald bird

Wants to fly away

If I cup my hand

Could I make him stay?

Little emerald soul

Little emerald eye

Little emerald soul

Must you say goodbye?

All the things that we pursue

All that we dream

Are composed as nature knew

In a feather green

Little emerald bird

As you light afar

It is true I heard

God is where you are

Little emerald soul

Little emerald eye

Little emerald bird

We must say goodbye"

footnote - In February the J. Paul Getty Trust and Los Angeles County Museum of Art jointly acquired the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. The 200 artworks, 2000 photographs, 3,500 Polaroids and 120,000 negatives are worth in the neighborhood of $30 million.

Patti Smith interviewed by Tom Snyder in 1978. This interview is just classic.

Happy Easter

Not that I am turning religious or anything of the sort, it just seems to fit. Happy Easter everybody, now get out and find those golden eggs ....

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.22

The internet gods truly are annoyed with me. Once again I was consigned to internet purgatory for sins real or imagined. I’m not sure what office of Verizon decides that point, I’m not even sure what side of the world the office is on. After yet another long phone conversation I’m beginning to think I have the answer to the last part.

It's not the modem, not the wiring, or my comps, and I don't buy the theory that rats are chewing on my wires because I feed the rats regularly to avoid just such an occurrence. I even stretched a 50' wire down the hall and plugged into Verizon directly only to find it was just as weak at the source. So I am out of theories of my own and I'm open to any opinions but I did accomplish one thing today. After threatening that my next call was going to be to Time Warner I was told a technician would be out sometime this weekend to check any of their equipment in the area. Sometimes it does pay to be a bitch.

Speaking of bitches; In an update to my last geek post I want to say that, contrary to a minor rumor on Twitter, Madonna and I are not at all close. Funny thing about Madonna and I though, our birthdays are the 15th and the 16th of August so I guess karmically speaking we are a lot closer than I thought.

Game 5 of the Flyers playoff series against the Sabres is about an hour away so I just have to forget my internet ills for now. After game 4 ended in a major fight this should just be awesome.

midnight update - The Flyers fell to the Sabres 4-3 in overtime and now find themselves facing elemination Sunday. This series goes a long way towards explaining why I love sports the way I do. Not that I enjoy watching my fav team lose but anything can happen. The thing is last year the Flyers made the playoffs on the last day of the season after a late season surge and they ended up making a run all the way to the Stanley Cup finals. This year they dominated the NHL for most of the year only to tire near the end and slip to second deed in the east. Still things still looked good going into the playoffs until they ran into Ryan Miller who is playing goal as well as the position can be played. Two of the Flyers' three losses in this series have been 1-0 shutouts and that is something that has never happened before in their storied history. You just never know.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.19

Yesterday was just a day of uber-geekness that was followed by a night of sports overload. These are just some random thoughts I typed on my netbook but I never got around to connecting.

I had a geek meltdown when I awoke to find I had internet loading speeds equivalent to a wretched dial-up connection. As my empire began to crumble around me I spent an hour on the phone with a friendly enough gentleman who finally informed me what I already knew, my modem was probably shot. He said in would send me a new one that should arrive in approximately six business days. Now I know the call center was in India but I didn’t know Verizon shipped their products from there. The one thing that did irritate a bit was when the automated system had an Indian accent, jesus I yell at them as it is. "Sorry I didn’t understand, sorry I didn’t understand." I just wanted to say I don’t effing understand you either but all I would have gotten back was "sorry I don’t understand!"

In one of my ultimate geek confessions I admitted to a friend that I owned possibly a dozen Madonna CDs. Previous to this it had been a very well kept secret but that no longer seems to be the case. To make it all the more pathetic I latter ripped all the CDs and now have a huge Madonna playlist on iTunes.

A Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer declared last night basketbockey night because the Flyers, Phillies, and Sixers were all playing at the same time. The Flyers won their playoff game against the Buffalo Sabres and now lead the series 2 games to 1. The Sabres have never won a series after falling behind 2 games to 1, this will be their 13th attempt. The Phillies lost in extra innings and the Sixers were totally crushed by LeBitch James and the Miami Heat in their playoff game.

After a bad outing in game two, a win in which he was replaced early, the Flyers didn’t even dress rookie goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. I know the powers that run the Flyers are reading so I just want to say that I think it was a totally bad move. Goalies in any sport a flaky to start with, witness my brother, so it was a bad enough move not to start him. This was only magnified by not letting him backup Brian Bouchet. Time will tell what it does to his confidence. 

I really just wanted one of those mellow spring baths I wrote about.

Madonna - American Pie

Observations from the Bar 4.15

Sitting in my bar watching the Phillies game and reflecting on the Flyers rather inauspicious start to the playoffs. After having the best record in the NHL for most of the season the Flyers went into an end of season funk, losing 5 of their last 6 games, and slipped to just 2nd seed in the Eastern Conference. They lost their playoff opener at home 1-0 to the Buffalo Sabres. I only hope that hit them like a hard slap to the face and they hit back with a win Saturday.

What made the loss worse was a bad case of torn loyalties between the Flyers and Penn State. Penn State alumnus Terry Pegula purchased the Sabres in February for $189 million. Pegula is also the force behind the new Penn State men's and women's NCAA division 1 ice hockey programs. Along with his wife Pegula donated $88 million to the school to start the program and build a new multi-purpose arena, the Pegula Ice Arena.

Now I see nothing wrong with spending your money on a sport you love, there are far worse things to spend it on, but during the game I was reading tweets from PSU ice hockey and PSU sports and this is where I got irritated. It seems Pegula's box at the Wachovia Center was filled with Penn State alumni and hockey people all wildly cheering the Sabres victory. This is somehow just wrong and I plan on boycotting Penn State ice hockey for a few years, maybe till they begin Big 10 play in 2012.

For the record Terry Pegula is a 1973 graduate of Penn State with a  bachelor of science degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering. You can guess where he made all that hockey money.

And the Phillies lost too. Perfect.

Observations from the Window 4.14

Something about the coming of spring, the official sunny warm walk outside without a jacket coming of spring, that puts me in a mood. I don't know what the right word is to describe it. Sexy, sensual, passionate, alive. Not that I don't feel this way other times, its just that the feeling is so magnified this time of year. An all consuming urge to explore and enjoy life, to go out and create.

It makes me want to fill the tub with my fav Bath and Body Works Black Amethyst bubble bath scented with bergamot and sandalwood. Do the whole routine with bubble bath, body wash, and spray. Take a long warm bath with the door open so the sun falls through the window into the bath. The slightest bit of steam rises from the water so the scent fills the room as I just lean back with a towel behind my head and soak with jazz quietly playing in the background.

It make me want to sit on the bed in my silk robe and do my nails with China Glaze midnight seduction, another fav. I won’t even bother straightening my hair, which seems so cold weather, just pull in back in a wild mess of black curls. Than just a last spritz of body spray before I pull on some grungy clothes and a pair of flip-flops. I'm ready to go out and take some pics.

Not that I did all that, no never.

W. Somerset Maugham wrote "It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

So much truer in the spring.

Observations on Politics 4.13, TBFM

I may have mentioned before that I have a temper but I don't dwell on it because lately I’ve been doing a good job of keeping it under control. Well last night I was looking at headlines when I came across one that just made me want to scream or honestly just smack her. "Michele Bachman calls for criminalization of same-sex marriage during speech in Iowa." (l)

During a speech to the right-wing and anti-gay group The Family Leader Bachmann called Planned Parenthood the "LensCrafters of big abortion" and than said this, "In 5,000 years of recorded human history, neither in the east or in the west, has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women."

What a totally ignorant bitch. Numerous societies have a broader definition of marriage or family than that and a broader understanding of human sexuality than purely heterosexual. To me faith-based is in such direct opposition to fact-based that it starts to approach pathology. "If I believe it strongly enough, it's true!"  Iraq had WMD's, Obama is a foreign born Muslim socialist and the founding fathers wanted the American government to be based on a narrow, radical and extreme interpretation of the Bible. Believe it? It's true.

Igor Volsky of Think Progress was there and asked the Minnesota congresswoman if she agreed with the stance of group head Bob Vander Plaats that homosexuality is a risky lifestyle akin to smoking. Bachman's answer was "Um. I don’t have an answer on that. I don’t have an answer. Why don’t I have another question." Because you are so damn pathetic you don't deserve another question.

Bachman often quotes this verse from the Bible, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). Personally I think the first part of it is might be true, it's much better with a woman, but I have no first hand experience with a man to base that on so please no e-mails. The larger abomination here is that Bachman was elected to Congress at all and that she is taken seriously as a contender for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

From this moment on I will simply refer to Bachman as 'TBFM' or  That bitch from Minnesota.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.10

This should have been posted as 'Observations from my Bed' but I was busy and never finished it. It would have been much more fitting a title though.

Sometimes I have dreams when I sleep. I know that is a strange thing to say but normally I don’t have them. There was a time that I did more often but that was long ago. I don’t know if it's the fact that I don’t sleep nearly enough, I drink too much, or if it is something related to my past as a pharmacist. I have never asked anybody why.

When I do dream it is almost always one of two ways. Some are very hot and sexy but I should add that I'm always alone in those dreams. I have been told that these dreams may come from a struggle to find a balance between the genders in my personality. The mystery lover of the night trying to show me the right balance of firm and gentle, bold and caring, yin and yang. It sounds a little deep but it could be true, who am I to say.

The other type I can only describe as an abstract type of dream. Physically I'm not in them but yet I am, or maybe you could say my soul is in them. I tend to style my life and art in shades of black and white yet these dreams are always colorful and graphic. I think of them as my inspirational dreams because they sometimes give me an idea for a painting or a shot I could take even if it has nothing to do with the dream itself.

The rarest form of dream I have is a combination of those two. You could say it's the most enjoyable of the three and that is where this post came from because I had one of those dreams last night. When I woke up I had what I think was an awesome idea which I'll post as an update later tonight. Rare as they are I have always thought that my dreams try to tell me something, it's just that I don’t always know what it is and I don't always listen if I do know.


"falling Down"

4/11 update - I stumbled on this quote by John Steinbeck that seemed to belong with this post. "People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all." No comment.

Observations on Politics and the Coming Shutdown

Some random thoughts on the government shutdown from my increasingly disillusioned mind as we approach 'zero hour' tonight at midnight ….

The fact that the Republicans and their teabagger members will shut down the federal government over the funding of Planned Parenthood strikes me as insanity or political theatre at its absolute worst. They keep saying it doesn't have to be debated today yet they don't offer to take the rider out of the budget bill.

I still miss Keith Olbermann but I'm finding that Lawrence O'Donnell is a worthy replacement. In some ways I like him more than Keith, he seems to be more in your face than Keith and less obsessed with Fox News. Still Olbermann's show on Current TV is slated to start in late May or June and I'll be watching from day one.

It has just amazes me to see so many young, healthy, rich white men debate women's health. All they seem to be proving is how little they know about it and how much less they care. They should know that Planned Parenthood can't spend any federal money it receives on abortion but it doesn’t seem to matter at all. So what does it spend the money on or what is it they want to cut? Teen pregnancy services, diabetes testing, breast cancer screening, and pap smears to name a few. I guess they think the oil companies deserve our money more.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reminds me of the spoiled little rich kid on the playground. The bratty kid who was so full of himself because his parents would do or get anything for him and always had that I’m better than you smile on his face. The little shit that would run home and tell daddy when the weird girl yelled at him because nobody else would. Anyway, Cantor reminds me of that little shit, I mean kid.

Finally a question, who do you think would make a better President, Donald or Daffy Duck?

18:00 update - Going to share a bad joke I just received in an email. I'm not sure if I am saying it's bad because it isn't funny or because it's all too true. "What does the Republican party have in common with the Taliban? Both want to use terrorism to take away women's rights and return us to the world as it was like 1000 years ago. Difference? Republicans don't demand a burka.

Observations from the Window 4.8

A beautiful morning in the Village, sunny and not quite as cold as it has been, but I’m still waiting on the arrival of spring. The trees below are covered with buds, my vendor is back to selling all his tourist paraphernalia, even the pigeons are primped and ready but the weekend weather forecast dropped that magic 70° mark. Still it’s a gorgeous sunny morning as I watch the people rush up and down the street. Gorgeous enough to declare it a work from home day, which means I will accomplish nought but so be it.

I feel like going for a walk but yet I don’t want to move. I feel like eating but I’m afraid to look in the fridge to see what might or might not be in it. Work from home normally means answering email, washing the black stuff, doing some cleaning, and maybe running up to market for food but for now I just feel like sitting here and watching the people pass by.

I was just thinking about writing, how much I seem to be addicted to it. I remember when I finished writing my 700 page ‘paper’ to finish my degree; I swore I would never write that much ever again. But here I am typing away about nothing in particular and doing it without even thinking about it. I just sit with my netbook on my lap and type away just to see what I come up with. It really doesn’t seem like it’s going to be anything profound today.

I do know one thing about all this typing, it’s just hell on my nails. There was a time not so long ago when I was just so proud of them. Long, black, and glimmering; the word immaculate comes to mind. Even sports didn’t seem to hurt them because that’s what gloves are for and I had quite a collection of hockey gloves. All black and all leather. But now my nails look like crap and I think I need to start spending more time on them or maybe just start chewing.

I warned you this wasn’t going to be anything profound. Maybe I should declare it a work from bed day instead.

3 Doors Down - When You're Young

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.5

Just a copy of the transcript of Chris Matthews' final segment on "Hard Ball" last night. I don't usually just post other peoples words but I thought this was very good on the day President Obama announced his re-election bid. I wish there was somebody to push him just a little but I don't see who it could be in the Republican Party. I think it's a political party that has truly sold its soul to the rich, the corporations, and the far right religious zealots. I don't see how it can ever turn back now.

"Let Me Finish tonight with what I see happening to one of this country‘s historic political parties. The Republican Party has given us great moderate leaders in the past: Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower. It‘s given us flawed leaders who are nonetheless great Americans, I think of Ulysses S. Grant, for example, who won the Civil War and was a true believer in reconstruction after the war.

I don‘t know where the tradition I‘ve just described broke off and this new thing took over. I think it was passage of the Civil Rights bill back in ‘64, when the enemies of civil rights flipped from the party of Jefferson to the party of Strom Thurmond. Or maybe it was the Supreme Court ruling banning prayer in public school. But what we have today is a different, deeply different, Republican Party than the one that fought slavery and championed conservation in the old days.

I listen to Palin and Gingrich and Bachmann and Huckabee and what they believe. I listen to Romney and Pawlenty and now Trump trying to talk their language and I think we‘re talking something very different from the mainstream Republicanism, the kind that has long won in the independent, moderate suburbs, won with the people I grew up with, with my family, actually. Palin talks like thinking isn‘t necessary; it may not even be good for people. Gingrich uses his mind to say truly hateful things. Huckabee is a theocrat, someone who statements about the Mideast are downright incendiary. Mitt Romney knows better. So does Pawlenty. I‘d hate to see Haley Barbour start dueling in these woods. He might be smart enough to beat those folks at their own game.

But beware, Haley, or anyone else who‘s thinking of joining the jamboree. The evidence out there is that the Republican Party today, you can‘t say you believe in science, you can‘t say you believe in evolution or in climate change or in gay rights, or even in separation of church and state. If you do, you lose the zealots, and the zealots will be waiting for you in Iowa to make sure you eat your words.

John McCain tried to beat them, the zealots, once. The family values types went after his family. George Bush‘s father tried to take them on. Ronald Reagan managed to charm them, but he was a rarity. The danger today is that the only way to win the Republican Party presidential nomination is to get past the gatekeepers of the right, and they aren‘t looking to let anybody past who isn‘t dead right like them.

Maybe this is God‘s will, that Obama not have a reasonable opponent out there. How‘s that for an incendiary statement?"

Observations

Observations from the Road 4.4

Saturday was the first day of trout season in southeastern Pennsylvania. It seemed early but that is because starting this year it opens two weeks earlier in the southeastern part of the state than it does in the rest, something to do with warmer temperatures. As I cast my first line I thought that was a lot of bs because the air temp was a balmy 42° when I arrived at the stream. It didn’t seem to bother my dad at all because he was standing in the middle of the water which might explain why he caught dinner and I didn't.

It was just another one of those fun family things with my dad that once prompted a not so open minded friend of his to ask if my dad had ever had any daughters. He learned a long time ago not to let comments like that bother him and instead seems roll with it. I don’t know why but my dad just doesn't have that smart ass gene that his three children seem to have inherited.

As I wasn't about to touch my camera with bait stained fingers I'll try and describe the scene. In ways the four of us are so alike, and very close, but at moments like this the differences in personalities are so damn apparent. You have my dad who is knee deep in the stream and so totally serious about his fly fishing. He never has let on but I swear he must have taken that fly fishing class at Penn State. My sis seems to be the best at multi-tasking, that girl can cast with one hand, text with the other, and I let her know I’m suitably impressed. I think I'd have my line wrapped around my neck and my phone in the water. Now that I think about it my brother isn’t too bad at multi-tasking either. He seems able to listen to music with one ear and listen to the rest of us with the other. At the same time he did refuse to get his new Timberland boots wet and so fished from the bank. Not quite as serious about it as my dad but if any of us could ever be described as stoic it's him.

And than there is me. No I don't fish in a leather jacket, actually the only black I had on was an old Flyers warm-up pullover and the Under Armour hoody under it. I didn’t fish much, always the observer I just sat on a rock taking it all in and enjoying the moment. Maybe I'm wrong about Sean, maybe I'm the stoic one. I didn’t catch anything, my excuse being that I didn't try, but I did make a dinner of Cajun trout. Sear trout covered with Emeril's Cajun seasoning in an iron skillet than throw in the oven with green peppers, jalapeños, onions, diced tomatoes, and bacon. Yes that is pretty much how I cook so I don't expect miracles but it wasn't bad, wasn't bad at all.

I have an awesome recipe for salmon too. Just sayin.

The Kills - Satellite 

Observations from the Window 4.1

It seems I’ve been downer blogging lately so in attempt to purge it from my mind I'm going to tell you some things I like. Things that make me feel good. Just things that go a long way towards making my life worth living.

Pancakes covered in syrup and fresh strawberries, steak, big greasy cheese and jalapeño covered hamburgers. Real Philly cheesesteaks, and not the damn chicken ones. My own chili, both the red and the white versions. Ice cold Corona with lime, tequila on ice, and hot Sidamo coffee. French fries covered with Old Bay seasoning or covered with chili and cheese. Seafood burritos or breakfast pizza on the boardwalk. Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.

I adore my family and friends, all my friends, in both my real life and my 'second' life. All the people I have met online, so many and all of them such awesome peeps. When either the kid or the sis call me just to say hi and watching a Phillies games with my dad. An intelligent conversation and even more than that I like an intelligent argument. Taking very hot steamy bubble baths with candles lit, wine, and jazz playing. Yes I said jazz; you have a problem with that? Anderson Cooper.

I love the feeling I get when i finish a painting or go through a hundred shots to find that one photo that makes me smile. The look on somebody's face when they see something I did and I know they like it. The feel of my Nikon in my hand and the smell of a new canvas. Losing hours in a museum or gallery just sitting and looking at a painting and taking in every little bit of it. Van Gogh. Moma. The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Sports, both playing and watching. The Phillies, Flyers, Eagles, and always Penn State. Running or just walking on the beach, ice skating. Stone Harbor, Fred's, and spending time doing nothing at the beach house. Waking up on the deck under the stars and hearing the waves crash on the beach. Beaver Stadium on a cool fall night, white out nights, and driving much faster than I should. Waxing Foxy.

Waxing Foxy ....

Sometimes life is good.

Finger Eleven - Whatever Doesn't Kill Me