Observations on Irene 8.27

12:00PM - We have the weirdest sky now, all dark and swirly, something I don't associate with a hurricane. More like a twister movie sky.

Electric shutdown, “If a shutdown of those substations did become necessary, the affected area would be the southeastern tip of Manhattan, bordered by the Brooklyn Bridge on the north, Broadway on the west and the East River on the south and east, said Chris Olert, a spokesman for Con Ed.” Well that's bad for them but good for me.

1:00PM – The bar is open and the Phillies are going to try and play. I hope I didn't make a mistake leaving the alcohol with the VQs though. I could get back to a storm shelter for theatre types and that isn't how I want to spend my hurricane. Forget this as the Phillies game was called when the outer bands of Irene arrived over Citizens Bank Park. That means the Phillies now have no days off until the end of the season, 33 games in 33 days. Not good at all.

6:00PM - Made one last check on Foxy and did my usual weekly engine running routine while I called my dad to check-in. It's getting breezy there but not raining much yet which is good because they already had over a foot of rain this month. For the first time I'm glad my parking space is on the third floor, she should be fine.

I'm starting to get a slightly depressed feeling as the storm tracks up the coast. I love the shore, I always have, and one by one some of my favorite places are being trashed. Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks went first and will soon to be followed by Ocean City and Rehoboth. When Irene hits Stone Harbor later tonight I might just cry. Supposedly 95% of Cape May County, which includes Stone Harbor, has been evacuated. It will be days till I know how the house made out.

11:00PM - Heavy rain started falling not long ago and with it came the first sounds of thunder. The winds are gusting to about 30 mph now but should rise to 50 mph by midnight according to NY1. The latest predictions have us getting wind speeds up to 90 mph and a six to eight foot storm surge by early morning. When Anderson Cooper goes live at 6AM I don't think he will be standing in Battery Park where he was Friday night. The street below is pretty much deserted now, honestly I think I saw more activity out there during the blizzards this past winter.

More useless hurricane trivia. On October 16, 1955 Hurricane Katie was born with winds of 115 mph. It lasted three days, caused $250,000 damage (1955 dollars), and left seven deaths in its wake.

And now the first lightning. I have the feeling it's going to be a long night.

Observations on Irene 8.26

I thought maybe I would take some early morning photos so I rode an empty subway train down to the soon to be forbidden zone of Battery Park. Truth be told I didn't take much of anything because it was just a cloudy dreary humid morning and on top of that the Starbucks was closed. If this is the calm before the storm I think I'll pass.

Irene came ashore in North Carolina around 7AM as a category 1 storm. The weakening doesn't change the situation much here as the problem is how long the storm will batter the city and how much water will be pushed into the harbor, the rivers, and down the street. Later today ConEd will decide if it is going to shutdown the power to lower Manhattan. Because the cables are all underground they are vulnerable to saltwater if they are in use but not if they aren't in use. Now I understand why there are no batteries to be found in the Village.

Everybody says be prepared so we stocked up with the following....

One case of Corona, one case of Corona Light, and two bags of ice in the freezer. Multiple bottles of red and white wine because Ash can't decide which is the right one for a hurricane and one must follow the wine rules at all times.
A bag of limes and one bottle of Jose Cuervo Black Medallion tequila because one shouldn't ride out a big storm with cheap tequila.
One carton of Misty Menthol Ultra Lights otherwise known as Misty Silver under the theory that people think ultra-light smoke is healthy and will think silver isn't.
One carton of Marlboro Menthol 100s because Chloe isn't a lite weight like me and smokes a real cigarette, or so I am told.
New lighter to light those above named cigarettes.
Two camera and two laptop batteries charged. A camping lantern and flashlights along with a jumbo pack of priceless D size batteries. The latter I am tempted to sell on the street because, well, they really are priceless right now.
My older digital camera packed in a towel and zip-lock bag. Don't ask on this one because I'm not going to tell.

Shit I forgot to get food.

A bit of worthless hurricane trivia that doesn't seem so worthless now. If the storm is a category 1 at ground level it is a category 2 ten stories up. I can hear the glass raining down already.

No subways running down below and it just started raining in the Village. I suppose this really is the calm before the storm.

Let the games begin.

Neil Young - Like A Hurricane, Berlin 1982

update - Due to some concern I would like to add that we have cookies, coffee, and two cases of bottled water too.

Observations from the Window 8.26

At times it seems like I might be mellowing in my old age because I just don't feel like writing about politics like I had been. Maybe it's the reverse that is true and I haven't mellowed at all but just don't want to write about it because when I do I think and when I think I just get pissed off. I'll go with that because I know I haven't mellowed at all and never will. I'm just destined to be the bitchy old woman at the artists' home in Montreuil which is a future I don't find all that unappealing.

I know I have talked before about writing more on art and photography only to get sidetracked by one thing or another but I'm going to try to do that once again. Last week I took a photography seminar at the Tisch School of Arts at NYU and it, like the Armory Show earlier this year, has me wanting to get some things written. While I was there I was looking into the course offerings and saw two I would really like to take, the Advanced History Seminar (photography) and Business of Art (photography). The problem is I really don't have the time to do either.

As for now I'm about to be sidetracked yet again as hurricane Irene is heading in my direction. I'm not too worried because I'm in evacuation zone C which is well outside zone A, and a block away from zone B. This is from the NYC Office of Emergency Management website, “Residents in Zone C may experience storm surge flooding from a major hurricane making landfall just south of New York City. A major hurricane is unlikely in New York City, but not impossible.” Damn, reading that makes me feel better already.

One sad thought has crept into my head and that is the idea that by Sunday morning 'my' beach house may be gone forever. Sitting on the beach in Stone Harbor it now seems that there isn't much chance of it not being hit hard. I toyed with the idea of driving down and sitting at Fred's as the storm rolled by but Stone Harbor already has evacuated non-residents and as of 5PM today all liquor sales will be suspended till Monday. Worst of all Foxy would be parked in the open and that I will not do.

Is it wrong that I worry more about my car than myself?

Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary

Late afternoon update - Cape May County NJ ordered a mandatory evacuation of its barrier islands which include Stone Harbor, Fred's, and the beach house. Also New York City ordered the first mandatory evacuations in its history today. So far they just include zone A but that includes all of Battery Park City, Coney Island, and Rockaway Beach.

Observations 8.24

I love movies and one of my fav is the Luc Besson's French thriller Nikita which starred the gorgeous Anne Parillaud and was released in the US as La Femme Nikita. The film inspired the American movie Point Of No Return, TV series La Femme Nikita, and the current TV series Nikita.

I was excited when I saw this trailer for Colombiana which is a movie made by the creators of the original TV series. I honestly don't see as many movies as I would like to in the theater but this is one I might drag myself to see.

YouTube Link

You can tell me I'm not right, I'll understand.

Observations from the Earthquakepocalypse

You just know I would be remiss if I didn't report in from one of the greatest natural disasters in the gallery's history. Well maybe a minor disaster, alright it felt like an overloaded trash truck driving down our narrow street. A 5.9 magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia rattled our windows and sent Ash scurrying for bottles of wine as she is wont to do during natural disasters.

I shouldn't joke because I did see video of the crowds in Times Square which looked to me like New Years Eve had come in the afternoon. One thing I hadn't thought of was how people in the towers would react to the quake. People thought of the 9/11 attacks and had a 'oh god not again' reaction than instinctively got out. Thinking about it now I have to say I would have done the same.

With the Mets visiting the Phillies tonight the best tweet I saw was from Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer who covers the Phillies. “Citizens Bank Park was evacuated. No one allowed in. But the Mets are still inside. Really.” Another, which came from the Phillies, was funny just because I couldn't believe I was reading it. “Tonight's 7:05 Mets Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park will be played as scheduled following today's earthquake."

I did learn a few important lessons today. During an earthquake do not under any circumstances stand next to tall buildings, duh. Do not immediately check twitter because if you do you won't get in that all important cell phone call because the system will already be down till you get to it. Do not whine about the quake online because anybody you know on the left coast will laugh and call you a drama queen. Do get on foursquare as soon as possible and check into earthquakepocalypse because if you are lucky like I was there will already be 8,000 people there and you can score the 'epic swarm' badge.

In the end we of the gallery survived the quake but we can't dwell on our luck for long as Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the east coast and is expected to be in the New York City area late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. "Quite honestly I am more concerned about our preparations for the approaching hurricane," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a press conference on the earthquake.

Stay tuned.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 8.23

I haven't done much writing in the past week in what is possibly the longest drought sinse I started this blog. Truth be told there are a couple reasons for that. One is that as much as I love it I'm just totally turned off by politics right now. I just can't think of anything good to say about it and I'm trying to be good. I'm just a sweet little girl trapped in a tall bitches body trying very hard to let her out.

Seriously the collection of circus clowns chasing the GOP nomination for President is just pathetic. The emergence of Rick Parry from his neanderthal cave in Texas would make it all the more laughable if we weren't talking serious shit here. Charles Blow said it best in his opinion peice in Sunday's New York Times (l). "The Buzz Lightyear-come-to-life bravado of Rick Perry, complete with delusions of grandeur and accomplishment." Personally I think he is just a poor impersination of that last President from Texas whose name escapes me at the moment. Than again maybe I was right months ago when I said former Utah Govenor Jon Huntsman would end up being the GOP nominee for the simple reason that he is the only one running who seems sane enough to actually win. Last Thursday he tweeted "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." He picked up 7,000 followers the next day.

Than I read this on Politico (l) yesterday and it just gave me another reason to think this country is run by a bunch of loons. "President Obama decides to vacation while world burns. White House aides say he deserves to spend time on an island with extremely rich people in order to get in touch with America. Aides also cite fact he has not played golf in at least several days. Good publicity follows: Though Obama started war in Libya in belief he was preventing a genocide and it appears to be a war the United States will actually win in under 10 years, headline on Washington Post website Saturday is: “As rebels close in on Tripoli, Obama getting updates on Martha’s Vineyard.'" Actually I found that pretty amusing along with GOP law makers complaints about Obama's vacation. When was the last time any of them were in Washington?

Oh i guess I still love politics but at times it all makes me want to dye my hair the same color as Hayley Williams and run away screaming.

Paramore - Monster

Observations from the Window 8.21

Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day of classes at Penn State. The first day of classes for my sis. The first day of classes for the third and final member of our evil sibling triumvirate to attend State. For sure it wasn't her first choice but karma being karma there she is and I wish her the best.

I'm so excited for her but I'm also a little bit sad. Seems my little sis is all grown up which is a slight fact didn't really sink in until now. Our conversations slowly changed over the summer as she became less my mini-me and more my equal in so many ways. I'm going to miss my mini-me but I also welcome the company of the fine young woman that is my sister.

And so a vid in honor of my sis, my school, and the soon to begin 125th season of Penn State Nittany Lion football. For the record JoePa will be 85 in December and has been Penn State's head football coach since 1966, he still rocks.

Late update - In all the thoughts of my sis' start at Penn State I forgot another important bit of information. This was the first time in five years that classes started and my brother wasn't there. God what a torn day.


Link

*geek speak - I dabbled with getting rid of the YouTube control bar for aesthetic reasons and it does look much better. Prob is you can't turn off the vid than.

Observations on Art 8.15

Dreams take many forms but is a dream worth everything? In that I mean is it worth giving up all else to make that dream happen? Everything comes at a price, even a dream, one just has to decide if it is a price you are willing to pay. The price of turning that dream into a reality.

"Notre devoir, en tant qu'hommes et femmes, est de procéder comme si les limites de notre capacité n'existait pas. Nous sommes des collaborateurs dans la création."*
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin


Paris de Women are Heroes from La Boite Concept on Vimeo.

Ile St Louis is one of Paris’s oldest and most exclusive districts, a district of cobbled streets and tea-shops. It became the home of an installation by French artist and photographer JR called Women are Heroes. For the Women are Heroes exhibition JR and his volunteer assistants pasted up miles of posters of women’s eyes around Ile St Louis and the Louis Philippe bridge that links the island to Paris’s right bank.

Everybody has a dream. Some are fleeting, some are not.

*"Our duty as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. 
We are collaborators in creation."

Observations from the Window 8.14

I was planning on a lazy Sunday at the bar watching the Phillies but the gods decided we needed rain so the game was postponed. It's been raining all day in the Village too but it's a nice soft rain falling in cool air so it was actually nice. I find rainy days like this romantic in a way, I just want to watch it as I sip coffee and listen to jazz which is something I rarely want to do.

This morning the VQs dragged me out of bed to take me out for an early birthday brunch. We went to a Brazilian place on Varick Street called SOBs. The fresh tropical fruit, ginger-lime snapper, and champagne were all excellent but I passed on the banana stuffed french toast. I did have to try a Devassa* beer which is almost impossible to find. Pretty much it tastes like beer. It's called the 'Bossa Nova Brunch' and they have live music but I had no clue where the rap of MGK fit in so we bolted before he got far.

The VQs and I were watching a show about Woodstock the other night and it turned to Jimi Hendrix jamming "The Star Spangled Banner." One of the guys that produced the festival, I forget which it was, said you could hear everything that was happening in Vietnam at the time in the Hendrix rendition of the song. People screaming, napalm, death all around, but I could hear none of it. I guess it was the times and you had to be there because I just didn't get it.

In the end my lazy baseball Sunday turned into a lazy day of eating and shopping. My dad gave me money for my birthday and said to spend it on myself. I didn't spend it all yet but I did buy the biggest bouquet of sunflowers I could find which I put in a vase on my window seat.

Than I sat in the window and smiled.

*Devassa Beer Commercial

Observations 8.12

Nothing here other than my geek side testing the embedding of movie trailers from Yahoo Movies. I don't quite understand why photos go out in the email but embedded videos do not.

While I'm here I think I'll add that as always I have a thing for Anne Hathaway and I wish they would have called me to play Dexter in this. In my opinion it would have made for a much more interesting movie, although it may have lost that PG13 rating. "One Day" is adapted for the screen by David Nicholls from his bestselling novel of the same name.

update - Short answer is no it doesn't email, I really didn't think it would. It's probably because a photo is really a link but an embedded video has characteristics more like a file. Vimeo videos have a link in the email, Yahoo and Youtube don't.

Observations from the Window 8.12

It may seem like I haven’t been writing much and this is true, it's just that there is so much bad news lately and I'm trying to keep a good mood going. I can't write about politics because I just get pissed off and go all negative as my tablet goes flying into the wall. I thought maybe I would write about what some would, and have, called a weakness of mine. It's just I have a thing for horoscopes. There I said it and i feel better already. Not that I live my life by them in any way because the gods know there isn’t the tiniest bit of truth there. I thought maybe a bit of description of a Leo woman was called for so I did some reading. You can decide for yourself.

Leo is the supposedly dramatic sign but is full of contrasts. While outwardly confident, aggressive and fearless Leos are inwardly sensitive and their feelings are easily hurt. They are the proverbial pussy cat in the lionesses' clothing. I read Leos can be playful, ambitious and loyal only to read on and see they are "quite egotistical, demanding, intolerant, domineering, lazy and stubborn." Because they hate ordinary day to day living they live life to the fullest, doing nothing the safe way, and in the end they thrive on drama.

In relationships Leos are trusting, loyal, emotional, and romantic. However they can equally become possessive and jealous if they don’t feel secure. "Always dramatic this is the sign most likely to have champagne, roses and satin sheets in their bedroom." I don't know about that, more likely beer, sunflowers, and flannel sheets. They are spontaneous adventurous lovers with a strong sex drive but their love of beauty makes them a bad judge of character and they are often disappointed. All things being equal Leo women are amongst the kinkier but a skillful partner soon learns that to be a 'good idea' something should be 'her idea' first.

"And the sign Leo is all about play, children, self expression… it is about getting in touch with your inner child. And, so it smiles brightly on the arts, all of them."

Bah it's all crap.

For the record, some of my fellow Leos: Amelia Earhart, Coco Chanel, Andy Warhol, Barack Obama, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jerry Garcia, Louis Armstrong, Madonna, Napoleon Bonaparte, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Mick Jagger, Claude Bragden, Bill Clinton, and Mario Bernardi.

Medina - Addiction

Observations on Art 8.11

I was looking for videos from Afghanistan when I found this cool film. It just reminds me of when I zone out staring at a painting in a museum. The height of the palace creates the stunning depth of the background and the only color the pale blue of the drained and wasted pool contrasted against all the neutrals. Just stunning.

Theatre of War from Richard Mosse on Vimeo.

"Shot in Saddam Hussein's hilltop palace in the mountains overlooking the River Tigris, Theatre of War is a slow, virtually static video piece redolent of classical history painting. Audio was recorded at the official US military hand-over ceremony at the nearby city of Saniya. A mullah's prayer for unity among Arabs is spoken, after which the pan-Arab national anthem, Mawtini (My Homeland) is played, emphasizing Arab national solidarity and a pan-Arab territory. Made in Iraq in March 2009."

Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten
Digital Color and Post Production by Jerome Thelia

Observations from the Coffee Shop 8.8

Over the weekend Ash and I made an art related road trip to Boston. I have never spent much time in Boston, I think because it must have more sports teams I hate than any other city other than my current home. The main concentrations of galleries in Boston are along the eight blocks of Newbury Street running west from the Boston Common. There must be two dozen galleries here with Lanoue Fine Art being my favorite. The Boston art scene seems a bit more formal than the Village, less laid back and not nearly as dark. The two of us felt pretty much out of our element but we survived.

Now I want to categorically state that we had nothing to do with a spate of recent gallery heists in the Boston area. I had to laugh when I told a friend that Ash and I were going on a road trip to Boston in a rental van. She emailed me back that she had a vision of me in black leather carrying an uzi. For some reason I find that vision appealing although I might need to add a smoke, something that is probably going to get me smacked. Better still, did you ever see the Tony Scott movie "Domino" with Keira Knightley and Mickey Rourke? It's based on the true story of Domino Harvey who left her life as a Ford model to become a bounty hunter. In its review of "Domino" six years ago The New York Times said: "The real Domino Harvey, who died at 35 in June from a heart attack with a toxic level of painkiller in her system, lived her life as if she were a character in a Tony Scott movie. That life was stranger than fiction, but perhaps not so strange as this."

Getting back to Boston, we stayed at the Fairmont Copley Plaza because it was close to the galleries. I found the hotel, which opened in 1912, comes with a bit of art trivia. It was constructed on the original site of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and gets its name from the early American painter John Singleton Copley. I just love big old buildings like this and I laid in bed that night imagining ghosts walking the halls. I'll give you my style of hotel review. The bed was huge, soft, and warm in the cold air. The in room "refreshment center" was cold and full, and the waffles from room service were simply awesome. Would have been even better had "Battle Los Angeles" been on the screen instead of "Arthur" but I didn't pick the movie.

All in all a fun little trip.

Tom Jones / Stereophonics - Mama Told Me Not To Come

Observations from the Window 8.6

I tried, I tried so hard to stay away from politics for now but like a junkie needing its fix I just couldn't do it any longer. When every economist says this is the worst time for the government to cut spending we have massive spending cuts. The debt ceiling debacle, sorry I meant deal, could actually end up cost 1.5 million jobs. In July the illustrious Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said on the senate floor that the poorest and not the richest Americans need to pay more in taxes. Where the money for said higher taxes is to come from he did not say.

Living and working here with Ash makes my situation hard to explain. I live in the highest rent area in the world yet pay almost nothing because that is how Ash pays me for the work I do for her. Because of the gallery and some photo work I have money for the things I need and some things I want. I save some money by doing a lot of work on Foxy myself but I get killed on health insurance because of my history. I shouldn't complain at all because my situation involves choices that have made in my life and I could be saving if I had taken another path but I choose to do this. I just wish I was saving more so when that Paris opportunity arrives I'm ready for it but it is what it is.

Than you have my brother who graduated from Penn State in December with a degree in environmental science that included two minors. Six months later he is still waiting tables at place near my dad's and he thinks the recent national debt bullshit will probably kill his one recent hope because it involves government funding. The sis will be starting at State later this month and was just hit with a 4% tuition increase due to cuts in state funding to the university. The Department of Education already listed Penn State as the most expensive four year public college in the nation.

So where are we going in this country? Polluted water, smoggy skies, falling bridges, less education funding, and unhealthier Americans seems to be the direction. I'm proud Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States, I'm proud I voted for him, and I can say right now I will again. But Obama boasts that we will now have the lowest domestic spending levels since Eisenhower was President yet fails to mention that spending in Afghanistan avoided the knife entirely.

When I heard him say that all I could think was I wonder how the first black President of the United States would have liked living in the Eisenhower era.

Manchester Orchestra - Virgin