Observations from the Roof 6.9

The VQs, Ash and Chloe, have turned up here and on my Flickr a lot over the years. It might be because they seem to be very photogenic. It might also be because they are the VQs in the first place, something I call them because they don't ever seem to sleep. Vampire Queens, VQs for short. There may be other pretenders but there are only two VQs.

Chloe

Honstly the reason they show all the time is because they are two of the best friends I have ever had. They have been together longer than I remember and I would like nothing better than to take my first ever wedding shots at theirs but I didn't say that. Wait, I said it, wrote it, and posted it. Don't tell them I said it. I'm seriously screwed and not in a good way.

Good things are happening to both my girls this summer. Chloe has a four month summer job doing some stage work for The Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. Hopefully that will be just the thing she needs on her resume to get more serious offers in the city.
The Wisp tries harder than anubody I know and deserves everything she gets and more.

Ash

As for Ash, her little art business is doing so well that for the first time she broached the subject of leaving the gallery. Not that I take her totally serious yet, more like throwing the possibility out there. If she were to leave I probably would have to give serious thought to doing so too, it just wouldn't be the same without her.
As always time will tell.

I think Ash will be spending a great deal of time this summer riding the rails between New York and Boston. I may have to join her once or twice. Purely for business purposes of course, the art biz goes mobile.

This summer of change I have been predicting for some time is getting
a lot more personal than I ever dreamed.

Observations from the Roof 3.18

After a long hiatus blogging, and more importantly drinking, has returned to the MacDougal Street roof. Five of us may not make a quorum but it's should be enough to declare the roof again open. It seems more like a mid June night than a mid March one but I'm not about to complain as I sit looking at a blazing super moon hanging over the Village. But I do want to know why the full moon seems to keep falling on a Friday. Neither Fridays nor full moons are anywhere near lucky for me so the combination is enough to make me reach for another drink.

Speaking of drinking, a major topic of conversation today was my theory that adding green food dye to beer makes the next day's hangover worse. I’ll call it the green hangover. Normally beer doesn’t give me a hangover but today I woke up with, well, a hangover. Almost like the drinking gods were trying to tell me that green beer isn’t natural, as if I didn’t already know that. I actually ordered a bloody mary with breakfast but than wasn’t quite sure if a green hangover required a green bloody mary along with the green eggs and ham. I seriously drew the line at a green bagel because that’s just a totally different green and I'm not going there. Hemingway supposedly alternated drinking tomato juice with one hand and beer with the other to rid himself of a hangover. I rather like the thought of that but I've never tried it, maybe next time.

But enough of all that drinking talk. I have a road trip to make early tomorrow and I really have to try and keep Ash from tossing bottle caps off the roof. I don’t care if she thinks it’s some kind of tradition or not, it just aint kewl.

Supposedly POTUS picked 24 of the first 26 NCAA men’s games right, I only hope he did is well in the women's tournament.

Damn this moon is fucking bright ....

Observations from the Window 3.16, Spring

With the clocks changed and less than a week till the first day of spring I seem to be getting that feeling that this winter from hell will in fact end this year. This will be my second spring in the Village and I think I might do better this time around, I’m hoping I do anyway. I know last year it was as much a sad time as happy one because I missed my spring in the mountains but those mountains are farther in the past now, another time. I’m not so sure I believe that but it helps some to say it. So now that I did a good job of reminding myself of the mountains let me see what spring brings.

Tax day. Tax day is enough to make me want to drink and it's a good thing because St. Patties Day is Thursday. Green beer, green Corona with lime, green Mexican beer on an Irish Catholic Saint's day, that just makes my head spin. So maybe we should skip to Easter. If I see a pink bunny walking down Bleeker Street I know I have had too much to drink. This paragraph is just sad but its how my mind seems to work sometimes.

Sorry, I was off on a drinking tangent there, let me get back to thoughts of spring. The little buds I see on the trees below me along the street. Those first flowers blooming in the sunshine, a little known secret being that I love flowers, fresh cut flowers. Flowers, candles, a bottle of wine, and a nice warm bath do the trick every time. Grilling hamburgers on the roof, watching the sunset, and drinking cold beer as the last light falls into the river is another one that works. Oh it's just hopeless; all my thoughts of spring seem to lead to alcohol.

Yet with spring two things non-alcoholic are certain. It's time to take Foxy out on the road again this weekend. Time to drive down to my Dad's and get the soft top back on her. And it's time for my seasonal change in musical tastes. Time to lay off the Lady Gaga, nice ass or not, and turn up the Foo Fighters.

Happy spring people ....

Foo Fighters - Rope

Observations from the Window 2.11

It was below twenty degrees again last night. I don’t really care how far below twenty it goes, below twenty is cold enough for me. I just sit in the window watching the people walk down the street all bundled up and all looking like smokers who found a way to smoke without cigarettes. Even my vendor has disappeared for now, his spot on the corner replaced by of trash appearing under a melted snow pile which is now frozen into some macabre urban ice sculpture. It all combines to make me dream of spring, something that at times seems farther away every day.

My brain has started a list, a sort of psycho wish list, of things to keep itself warm. So ....

I want it to be warm outside; I'm talking 70 or 80 degrees warm. I want to be able to say I'm hot and not just be looking in the mirror when I say it. I want to hear that I have the house at the shore for my annual week of relaxation or solo debauchery or whatever it is I do there. I want to sit with my feet buried in the sand while I sip on an ice cold Corona and chew on the lime. True, I don't actually sip beer but I like the thought just the same. I want Fred's. I want to drive Foxy with the top down, the stereo blaring, and peeps thinking I must be totally insane. I want to buy sunscreen and not just need it for my face because the snow is too damn bright.

I want to sit on the roof in a tank and shorts and watch the stars all night.

Now that I have probably totally jinxed myself I do have one realistic thought that is warming. Phillies pitchers and catchers report Sunday. Maybe spring isn't that far off after all.

Sheryl Crow - Anything But Down

Observations from the Roof 9.25, on Movies I Love

After the Phillies game last night I was up on the roof talking to my neighbor just enjoying the warm night and a few too many beers. The conversation turned to our favorite movies, the ones we know by heart or feel like we can’t do without. Sara’s list was dominated by comedy where mine is way too serious and filled with things that go boom. I'm not sure at all what that says about me, than again I do but I'm not going to say.

So here you go, in no particular order, my list of twenty movies I would want on that proverbial desert island. These are the ones I go back to again and again yet never seem to get enough of. Some of them I do know by heart and some I have certain scenes that I can play over and over. For the record a series counts as one movie. That way I get to take more movies to Kaui, I mean that desert island. I can be awfully sneaky like that but who is going to count?

“Casablanca”, “Rachel Getting Married”, “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (“Return of the King” is the best), “The Matrix” trilogy (the original “Matrix” is the best), “Underworld” both I & II, “Kill Bill” both I & II, “Out At The Wedding”, “”Domino”, “The Hurt Locker”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Gladiator” (makes it on the ‘My name is Gladiator’ scene alone), “Curse of the Golden Flower”, “Almost Famous”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Animal House”, “Bound”, “Kissing Jessica Stein”, “Amour de Femme” (“Love of Women”), “Zwartboek” (The Black Book”), and finally “South Pacific” (yeah I know but one of my mom’s favs and filmed on Kaui).

This is just a list pretty much made off the top of my head so I know I probably missed something I love but these will do just fine. I love movies and when I am at home I have them going in the background almost as much as I do music. So, like a list of fav music, this list could change over night. Also, back in February I did a list of the ten tunes I couldn’t do without so here is a link if you want to check it out (l).

Sick Puppies - Maybe (accoustic)

Observations from the Roof, the Vendor

I had a rather eye opening day today and I seem to be back on the roof where it all started last night. After a night of chatting with the vqs I tried to get to sleep early, well early for me. For various reasons I found myself tossing in bed unable to sleep. Around four in the morning I pulled on a sweatshirt and some cutoffs and decided to go wander the neighborhood. I wandered the dark and empty streets, or what passes for dark and empty streets on a summer night in the Village.

Eventually I stopped to get an early edition Times and ended up drinking coffee and talking to the vendor. I guess he doesn’t get much company at that hour because he proceeded to give me a life update. At one point he was telling me about his daughter who lives out on the left coast and whom he hasn’t seen in years. But than he pulled out his cell phone and told me he talks to her every day.

Something about that hit a loose wire in my brain because, as he talked on, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I have been thinking about it ever since. Now I always talk about how I ‘burn bridges’ leaving people behind like so many piles of bones alongside the road of my life. Not that it has to be my way all the time, more like I find it hard to deal with life’s problems and I find it so much easier to just walk on and leave it all behind. Its why have so few really old friends and always seem to depend on my family for support.

What makes this all more intense is the fact that at the moment the friends I do have seem to be scattering to the four corners. My sister is deep into field hockey, Ash’s girl friend is off visiting family and attending a theatre seminar and one of my best friends is off in wilderness unknown hunting bears.

After a day of thinking I came to determination of sorts. I just don’t think I am any longer the loner I once was, the loner that all my life I thrived on being. Maybe part of it is living in such a totally and constantly intense environment or maybe its just I’m getting older. Maybe I’m just maturing into a more normal person after twenty eight years. Honestly I have no idea why the vendor’s story did this to me. Karma, always karma.

The only thing of any substance to come out of all this meditation is this. I have a friend I call Pitts, its short for Pittsburgh and the reason is worth a blog post all its own and maybe one day I’ll get to it. She left PSU just before me, moving to LA and a job at UCLA just before I moved to the Village. For a long time we would talk everyday but now we just don’t seem to do it as much. I guess its one of those another place and another time type stories, things would have could have been so different had i met her at another time in my life. But today I realized I don’t want her to become one of those piles of bones along the road, honestly I miss her. There are only so many tall dark arrogant bitches in the world and we have to stick together. So I called her, talked for like two hours, and until we said goodbye it seemed like we were never apart. It felt good.

Well this turned into one of the longer posts i have written but I still have to get back to my newspaper vendor. After finishing my coffee and a last smoke I decided that the nicely caffeinated muah really did need some sleep after all so I said goodbye and headed for home. Hopefully I get to talk to him again but when I finally woke I wasn’t so sure the whole episode wasn’t just a dream. Than I found a paper next to the bed and realized that it really did happen. Strangely I found these words scribbled on the paper in my handwriting. I have no idea if I saw or heard them somewhere before or they came out of my sleepless brain. Ill finish with them because they seem fitting ….

No one knows till they have it
No one cares till they lose it
No one bleeds till they live it
No one wants to admit it
No one can be without it
No one truly lives till they feel it

The journey continues.

Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good

Observations from the Roof 8.13

Finally a cool night in the city, yesterday’s storms and this morning’s showers finally breaking the heat that had gripped the city for days. Now the barest of sliver moons floats over the Village in a clear sky, the beer is icy cold again and not the temperature of pool water tainted with, oh you can fill in the blank yourself.

It has been so hot for so long this summer, a feeling exaggerated by my being in the city all summer, and it just reminds me how much I hate August. I was born in August yet it is second only to February on my month hating list. By the time I get to my birthday my beach trip is always long gone and I am just tired of the heat, just ready for those first cool crisp mornings in the mountains. Oh wait, I’m not there, guess I’ll be ready for those first semi-cool mornings in the city instead. I’m ready for football and the Phillies annual run into October. Hockey isn’t far off and, possibly the most important of all, I miss my leather jackets. No I don’t name them like my car but I should because I think I have one for every letter of the alphabet. So take that Kanye and your leather pants tweets. One only needs one or two pair of leather pants but one can never have enough leather jackets.

Speaking of leather jackets, a friend pointed out that there was a kewl one in the VS catalog. She was, as always, correct and I found there are two online. So any of you need a last minute birthday pres feel free to order me one or both for that matter, I’m easy.

At least I have a couple of road trips coming up to get me through the rest of the month. Sunday I’m taking Foxy up to the mountains to help my brother move into a new apartment as he begins his final semester at PSU. Sadly this might mean the end to a family tradition. Hey sis, you reading this sis? You can’t ask for more than photography, field hockey, and the mountains. Later in the month Ash and I are heading out to the Hamptons to check out some galleries and the beaches along the way. That should bring just up to the first Penn State game and than it’s back to the mountains I go.

Finally I want to announce my undying love of Judge Vaughn Walker. I think I need to travel to California and marry that man. Oh I know what you are thinking already, a gay and a lesbian it will never work, but it’s worth a try. Now that I bring it up I’m not even sure it is legal yet. Have to put that one on the agenda next cause I want to hear the wingnuts arguments against gayzbo weddings. It would probably be totally hilarious!

But now I have to go as Ash just went totally baby and tossed another bottle top over the edge because she knows it drives me insane and I’m not paying attention her latest Lady Gaga rant.

So happy Friday the 13th my peeps. Life goes on.

Katy Perry - California Gurls

Observations from the Roof 8.2

Just a short post, a beautiful night on the roof, I give you the symphony of sound that is my city at night ….

Cars, horns, shouts, rumbles, tunes mingling from clubs, sirens, cries, laughter, jets overhead, gunshots (maybe), screams, sirens, bells, impacts, screeches, sirens, bottle tops falling on the roof ….

You just have to wonder

Billy Currington - Pretty Good At Drinking Beer
Drive-By Truckers - Women Without Whiskey

(couldn't decide)

Observations from the Roof 7.24

I’m sitting on the roof enjoying the light show on a Saturday night. To the one side an almost full moon big and bright, to the other side one hell of a lightning storm off over the ocean. But I’ll tell you what, this is just wrong, its 90 degrees and it’s almost 11 at night. The vqs seem to like it but I’m feeling a bit like the wicked vq of the west, I’m effing melting here. But the beer is ice cold and the limes are fresh, some things are always good.

I think it’s finally time I made a confession. I should have told you this long ago but I didn’t do it. Underneath this tall, dark, arrogant, artsie, antisocial dyke skin lurks another heart. Contrary to the image and reputation I have carefully crafted over the years, at times I am a total geek. There I said it, I admit it, and I feel so much better now.

I have two flickr sites, plurk, twitter, youtube, tumblr, and the blog. I have so many site accounts that one password would unlock the world for you, and no not just porn. I has mad computer skilzs that make a comp sing like Pavarotti singing Turandot to packed house. I love Lisbeth Salander not for her sexy tats but because she can make her comp sing too. Actually I want to take Lisbeth home to make my comp sing but that’s another story. I have a first life, a second life, and I'm sure a third lurks in the back of my brain even sluttier than the first two. And as further proof I'm writing this on a Saturday night.

I’m only telling you this because the heat and Corona are getting to me so don’t go spreading it around. After all I do have a reputation to protect.

But now I must go because the vqs are dragging me out for a night of training. See you all for breakfast. Black attire is required.

Black Veil Brides - Knives and Pens

Observations from the Roof 7.2

Let me start by saying all fireworks are highly illegal in the five boroughs of New York. Yeah right! Somebody queue Francis Scott Key and tell that to all those peeps in Brooklyn cause I’m sitting in the rocket’s red glare here. I might be embellishing that a bit but these people are seriously rocking the sky.

Moods are a capricious thing. One day it’s all dark skies and Armageddon and the next it’s sitting on the beach under a full moon in a way to big sweatshirt. Today I woke up in a mood I best described to a friend as a ‘good arrogant summer bitch' mood and it still fits. How do I explain this mood? Well it’s a good mood and it is summer so that explains part of it. It’s the kind of mood where I do what I want and I really don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about it. I just give my inner weirdness full bloom and damn you if you don’t like it because I just don’t care. It's a fuckin Linkin Park mood and it’s a fun mood to be in but it never lasts long enough.

And why do people think New Yorkers are so full of themselves? Just because we live in the center of the universe and a select few of us live in the epicenter that is the Village. So we have the best in art and culture. We do know it doesn’t make us any diff or better than the rest of the world. It just is what it is. I would take a survey here but I’m surrounded by New Yorkers at the moment so I think the results would be a bit warped. I do know one thing that ‘native’ New Yorkers are full of. It’s their damn sports teams. There isn’t a team in this city I didn’t grow up hating and I don’t see myself changing now. They just don’t realize that the sports center of the universe lies a hundred miles south of here in Philly. I keep trying to explain this to them but they just don’t get it. Something about winning the World Series last year keeps getting in the way.

Finally from Plurk comes the word of the day, synthetic asshat. I have no idea what it might be but I so like it!

Linkin Park - Faint

The View From The Roof

flickr

The view from the roof is so different from that of the street, or the window for that matter, that one has to wonder if it is of the same world. Just a few flights above the window seat is a place to utterly lose one’s self. The street and its sounds are lost in the canyons below. On the roof the city itself swirls around you in all its myriad scents.

At dawn the sky is a bright pastel with cool crisp air blowing up from the water. Sunset brings more muted hues and thick calm air as the sun falls into Jersey. The beer tastes good at either time.

When you sit on the roof and ponder life you begin to understand one thing. This really may be the center of the universe.

Jungleland

Observations from the Roof 5.31

Memorial Day began, or Sunday night ended, with Ash on the roof smoking cigarettes and watching the sun rise above the rooftops and the last of the Corona chilled and lonely in a bucket of melting ice. A solitary pretzel vendor moving up the empty street with his cart decorated with tiny American flags.

It’s the beginning of the end of one of those strange periods of life. Those times you look back at later and just have to smile. A weekend of bartending, little sleep, and crawling into bed well after sunrise only to get up so few hours later. A Sunday dawn found us at Battery Park with the Statue of Liberty in front, the sun rising over the narrows, and the ships of ‘Fleet Week’ up the river to our right. I sat with my friends shivering in a tank top, yet drinking a cold beer, as the breeze came off the harbor. I was told this was a very good romantic vamp movie moment. I still have to smile thinking about that one.

Bartending in the middle of Fleet Week, which ends Tuesday, the club filled with sailors on leave and with money burning holes in the pockets. And how many times *can* a gay girl get hit on by guys? A bet made between Kirby and I to see who got hit on the most. Sadly I lost track and ended up buying breakfast.

Hot humid air give the city a feel of an early summer night. The sailors, dressed top to toe in bright white uniforms, couldn’t be more different from the people they mingle with. Actually rumor has it the pregnancy rate rises dramatically during Fleet Week. I have no idea myself nor was I going to find out. Also I was informed I should be riding a Harley, whether alone or hanging on to some hot biker babe I wasn’t told. Another smile.

More than one time this weekend I found myself alone with one friend or another sharing a special moment. Drinking beer, thinking, or chatting about nothing particular. Some of those moments that makes a life worth living. Three days that went by in such a blur I have to sit back and think about them and enjoy them all over again.

Now if my Flyers could win tonight, well, life is good but it could get even better.

tuneage, Skillet - Monster

Observations from the Roof 5.21

After a rather melancholy start to the day I find myself feeling much better as darkness falls. Sitting on the roof with fiends surrounded by empty pizza boxes, a cooler of beer, a bucket of limes, and the trusty beer can ashtrays we watch as the sun dips below the rooftops.

I am writing this mainly to quash all rumors that I had anything to do with the theft of five paintings, worth an estimated $613 million, from the Paris Museum of Modern Art. After all there were no van Goghs taken in the theft. But I’m always up for a good quote so I give you Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr, director of the Palais de Tokyo museum. ''These five paintings are un-sellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them.'' I can only imagine that with a French accent.

In other news of the weird the Jonas Brothers (gag) performed a free concert in Central Park this morning. You probably wonder why I even care. Well seems all those fans decided to spend the day in the city turning the gallery circuit into a teen day from hell. Like OMG !

Finally my tard award today goes to a member of the Texas School Board which voted today on curriculum for the next ten years. This tard in waiting wanted to refer to the president by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, but was howled down by the few liberal members of the board. The full names of no other presidents are used.

I must close my laptop now as I have been informed nobody sits on the roof in the Village with their laptop. ‘It just isn’t done!’

Like OMG !

tuneage, Marilyn Manson - Personal Jesus

Obsevations from the Roof 4.30

(4-29) Darkness falls later and later in the Village every night. After last night’s bright full moon an overcast sky makes it hard to see anything above the city but the flickering lights of jets heading who knows where.

Did you ever come to a point in your life, a seminal moment maybe, where paths seem to lead off in every direction? Leaving you standing alone in the crossroads wondering which path is the one to take. Standing there knowing deep down in your heart that each one leads to vastly divergent futures. One path leading to happiness, one to possible fame and glory, and another possibly the path back to hell. You have no idea which is which as the sun passes farther and farther below the horizon.

The night gets darker and darker, the darkness itself beginning to swallow you as you stand there alone, still wondering.

(4-30) As of now I don’t know which path to follow but I think it’s time to start figuring it out. A combination of a beautiful night and slight glow down one path tells me a road trip is called for. So tomorrow I think I’ll set off to reconnect with some roots. Meet up with Sean, Court, who I haven’t seen since I moved, and maybe a little walk in my mountains.

I have some projects going I need to finish up. Ash still tries to convince me that I should be her partner in her little art buying and selling endeavor. A week at the beach house not that far away, with Fred’s once again calling my name. Time is slowly running out on my chance to go back to State and JoePa. It seems an interesting summer lies ahead. Once again I have a major decision to make and once again I have no effing clue what I will do. But I think a dawn run to the mountains is called for.

But I do know one thing. This fucked up life of mine is one hell of a ride.

'you can’t quit until you try, you can’t live until you die
you can’t learn to tell the truth, until you learn to lie ....'

tuneage, Sixx AM - Life is Beautiful

Observations from the Roof 4.6

With the coming of spring I have added a whole new vantage point to my view of the city around me. If the window seat is like a cocoon looking out onto the city the roof feels like the city giving me a big hug. Fill the cooler with beer, grab the limes, and climb the final two flights of stairs to the roof and a new world waits. A world centered on friends, broken down deck chairs and beer can ashtrays.

Looking out over the rooftops on a clear warm night the city seems to pulse with energy. Car horns replace crickets, neon lights replace lightning bugs, and a sheet of worn indoor outdoor carpet replaces grass in this world. Ok it’s not summer yet and I’m getting ahead of myself, but still i can feel it tonight.

It’s a funny feeling sitting up there sipping beer and talking. I first sat up here last summer on vacation and it was an instant hit with me. Than again beer is always a hit with me but I digress. Of all the things I have done since I moved here, exploring and such, up here I feel more apart of the larger city than at any other time. It’s loud and quiet, bright and dark, scary and tame, all these things at the same time.

It helps to share it with your best fiend too. Sometimes sitting around talking, talking about nothing and everything, seems to part the clouds in front of your eyes and you just have to smile.

Sports update – Phillies beat the Nationals to start the new season. Look out World Series, here we come again. F&%# the Yankees !!

tuneage, Norah Jones - Young Blood