Tuesday, May 5^th (Manhattan)

A summary:

Blood!

What ‘free’ is worth

Comparative Cannoli

Attendees: The long lost, happily found, Ian Bivins. My nemesis, always, Jakob Holder. Gabriel Baron, the face hands of Trojan.

On Tuesday afternoon I went to the Bumble and Bumble University to get a free haircut. At my place in the assembly line of salon chairs, I stare at myself in the oblong mirror. I look tired and a little terrified and I can't stop thinking about this past January. I signed myself up to participate in a medical study on jet-lag. After spending the night in the Manhattan lab to determine we were 'normal sleepers' they flew twelve of us to France on Rolling Stone Magazine's private jet. We stayed in a mental hospital in the French countryside for four days with electrodes and multi-colored wires tangled over our faces sleeping in 20 minute increments throughout the day and drooling on our French nurses. Sitting here, waiting for my stylist, I have a familiar conversation with myself. Is this worth it? What kind of trust is this? Should I run?

My stylist, Pam, shows up blustery and reeking of cigarette smoke. Pam is from Harrisburg, PA. She is pushing fifty and wearing a Flashdance worthy get-up with artful holes to display her studio tanned shoulders in bulging little ovals. She has a horrible haircut.

Pam is 'excited about this' and wants me to know how much 'fun this is going to be'. She stabs me in the inner ear with a press-on nail.

We have our 'consultation' during which she sneaks her "so about here, then?" indicating finger ever closer to my scalp and I inch it back down toward my shoulders.

The class gathers to discuss the next steps and get acquainted with the straight razors they will be using to cut our hair. Not three feet away from me, I hear Pam say: "Wow. I'm totally scared". I turn around and catch the instructor's eye. She is saying "there's nothing to be scared about" to Pam, but she is looking right at me... "did you hear that?". Yes, yes I did.

Pam comes back to my chair. She is chatty and alarmingly jovial.

“Don’t be scared” she says.

“I won’t be if you won’t be”, I say.

She starts in on my hair. With decision and something all too close to haste. The instructor comes by and suggests calmly that Pam might want to “breathe.” And then she puts one hand on Pam’s cutting hand and says “Stop. Stop. Just take a breath. Take your time”. Pam stops. Takes a second. I hear her forcing a long, whistling exhale through tightened little lips. And then she picks up the razor again and gradually picks up speed. A moment later, she inhales quickly, says “I’ll be right back” and leaves the room.

I sit there for four or five minutes. In the mirror I catch a figure running through the room behind the mirrors on the opposite aisle. I glance down and see a clearly defined footprint on the floor, long twisted hairs caught in the treads. And a little pool of blood.

Pam comes back. She is flushed. She has a gleam of sweat on her brow and a bandage on one finger where she has closed the freshly sharpened razor on her own hand. She is kind of laughing, apologetic, but her face is gray.

The bandage is throttled around her finger to stem the flow of blood. The tip has gone splotchy white and purple and Pam is doing quick little worried beckons between cuts. The instructor comes by and suggests she might loosen the bandage so she “doesn’t lose a finger”. Pam coughs, agrees. She starts picking at the bandaid, inches from my face. I turn my entire body to the side and close my eyes.

“Oh, are you squeamish?”, she says. Like maybe I’m being unreasonable for not wanting her to bleed on my face.

“Heh. Yep, I guess I am”.

For the rest of the haircut Pam waits for approval from her instructor for every move. I am there for almost three hours. I am there until all the other girls have left. I pick up my feet so they can sweep the hair out from underneath, mop up the blood.

Pam finishes up. She has missed her lunch break.

“I need a drink”, she says.

I am given an evaluation form. Was your haircut: 1. fantastic, a welcome change 2. satisfactory, competent and workable or 3. unfortunate, a disaster. Check the box.

I check #2 and consider before starting the comment section. There is room for a lengthy paragraph. I want to start with something true, yet generous. Pam is clearly having a shit day. I shake ink into the pen:

“Pam was very nice.... ( I begin)

And then she returns, breathless, with the form suggesting the $50 of products I’m supposed to buy. She ‘borrows’ my pen ‘for a sec’... and never returns.

I sit there, grinning for a minute. Do I ask for another pen? How important is it that I include; “but she mauled herself” in my comments? I get up, ruffle my (satisfactory, competent and workable) hairdo in the mirror one last time, wave to Pam smoking on the balcony and walk out.

This, this is what you get for free.

Of note:

Malbec. Apparently this variety of wine had it's orginal life in France but now is primarily produced in Argentina. I had a lovely chat with a member of the staff at P&J's Wine shop (love this place) at Broadway and 204th? She was very helpful but I didn't buy her recommended wine... because I'm cheap.

The Dublin House (79th b/w Broadway and Amsterdam) This reportedly used to be a certifiable old man bar. It is no longer. The hipsters who are 'slummin it' have found this place out. However... there is still a decidedly old mannish, pay phone in the back, Irish-accented bartender sort of charm to the joint. We even witnessed a fight while we were there.

Jake's Dilemma (Amsterdam b/w 80th and 81st) A college bar. With a happy hour that may dupe me into returning. The back room is what might happen if Masterpiece Theatre were filmed in the common room of a dorm.

I meet Jakob for a drink on Wednesday night. We talk about self without audience and building forts in the woods and what the hell we’ve been up to for the last 4-5 years and how it’s possible that we are still the same. Standing at the bar ordering us drinks, he brushes his hair out of his face in a way he has always done, a way he may always do... and I know that I will know him forever. We laugh about “gathering” as euphemism for female genitalia, drink another, snuff all our burned bridges in leather couches and house red. The sky opens up. A wall of water. We share an umbrella to the subway... he lets me take it with me.

Sushi Mambo (Bleecker and Cornelia) I meet Gabriel here on Monday night to celebrate his Trojan gig. Excellent sushi. Incongruously accompanied by the 'Godfather' soundtrack. We had the 'couple's combo' which is really the only affordable way to stuff your face with ridiculousness. Also. they really need to let go of the fact that the Uma Thurman/ Meryl Streep shitheap of a movie 'Prime' was filmed there. We. don't. care. Take the posters down.

Caffe Palermo. (Mulberry & Grand, Little Italy) There is a sign on the front of this place that claims "THE BEST CANNOLI ON THE PLANET EARTH" in over-confident neon... which of course makes me dubious. However... their cannoli? The best I have ever tasted. The. best. The shells are fresh and crispy. And the cream has a hint of anisette. Delicious.

The Lortel Theatre. (W.Village/ Bleecker...) What a charming little theatre. Thursday I saw an invited dress of Coraline, music by Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. David Greenspan is otherworldly.

Music Hall of Williamsburg. What a great venue...just large enough to lend some scope, and small enough to afford some intimacy. I saw the Loney, Dear show on Tuesday. I love a crazy, cocky Swede who can croon with abandon and what’s more get the audience to croon with him. Photos and review by Dominick Mastrangelo, who dragged me (willingly) along.

Yummy Noodle. (46 Bowery, Chinatown) Very authentic Chinese food. Maybe a little too authentic for me. 'What does that mean?', you ask. I'd like to forget that meat has... bones... much less blood vessels and eyeballs. There's no forgetting this at Yummy (sinews and cartilage and just slaughtered frog) Noodle. It's delicious! but it will confront you. if you're a puss like me, think twice... and go anyway.

Rocco's (243 Bleecker ) I had another (inferior but still tasty) cannoli on their adorable, enclosed back patio. I walked off and left a newly purchase bottle of wine and didn’t realize it until I was at about 125^th St. I looked them up and called at about midnight. Someone answered and said, yes, of course, they would hold my wine for me until I could come pick it up. This restores my faith in everything.

Theatre. I saw three performances this week for a grand total of $0. Did I mention that I am cheap? Sunday I had the pleasure of seeing a presentation of work by the Margolis Brown Adaptor’s Company featuring the increasingly lovely Ian Bivins. Some vigorous work... made me want to move to upstate New York and have a waterfall in my backyard. And Ian, so good to see you.

Music. Tuesday, after work I saw St. Vincent at probably the last live, in-store event the Virgin MegaStore at Union Square will ever have. They are liquidating their stock, closing their doors. Somehow not sad at all. The mix is all off and her guitar doesn’t come in until the second song... but when it does, it’s ridiculous. This freckly, curly-haired thimble of a woman is a monster.

Wednesday, April 29th (The Bronx)
Attendees: Robert Aguilar, Four or five of Robert's (Bobby's) friends whose names are vague because I am old

A summary:
Zoo!
Fat boys and tigers and aging homosexuals
Cappuccinos are better with cinnamon


Wednesday... I got on the train and headed to the Bronx Zoo.
Now, after reading The Life of Pi, I'd decided that zoos were not the depressing, necessarily cruel and oppressive places I'd always suspected them to be. The argument being that animals only increase the size of their habitats and travel long distances out of necessity - to gather the nutrients needed to survive. Maybe the water is a mile west of the antelope... but if it were all in one place a tiger could... you know, get his sleep on.

And then I met Sasha. The fat tiger.

At 11:30, 1:30 and 3:30 each day one can witness the 'tiger enrichment program' at Tiger Mountain on the NE side of the Bronx zoo. What this means is that a bored, khaki-clad woman with some alarming scarring on her arms and neck that looks distinctly like the result of an animal attack shows up with an old feed bag, a chunk of horse meat and a few new bottles of perfume from the gift shop. She puts the meat in the bag, sprays it with the new scents the tiger has never experienced, opens a gate and hucks the bag at the tiger. Sasha takes the bag to his favorite corner, bullies it a bit with some petulant nudging, tears the shit out of it with some business-meaning teeth, swallows the meat without pause or ceremony, pisses on the whole mess with a faraway look in his eye.... and then...
he lies down again to get some more sleep.
He sleeps, the khaki woman says, at least 20 hours a day. And he's a fatty.
Depressing.

Before the 'enrichment', Sasha has made a little showing of his flanks, his impressive claws, his fangs - which we only see because he is yawning- while he has a lazy stroll around his pen. He clearly knows the horsemeat is nigh. There's a moment when he walks up to the glass and displays himself- all these dangerous elements made innocuous by the tiger flab and the the insuperable barrier between us. He's doing what he can to look majestically off into the 'distance' (no more than 20 yards in any direction). His teeth are dangerous, his claws are bared, but you look down and his tail is tucked between his hind legs and I catch him surreptitiously glancing toward the crowd. "Is anybody looking?" "Am I still me?"

The monkeys cheered me up a bit, the World of Birds was kind of magical, and the lemurs! Man, I love a lemur.

I said my goodbyes and walked out by myself on the West side near the Children's Zoo. East on 183rd, about 7 or 8 blocks (of old black men sharing beers on front stoops and children running you down on kick scooters) you intersect with Arthur Avenue, where, if you head north, you find yourself in this anomalous wonderland called Little Italy in the Bronx. Bakeries, restaurants, meat shops, delis, pastry shops, pasta shops, gelato shops, all things Italian you could possibly desire. I haggled with a street vendor, claiming I only had $4 cash (a lie I'm happy to claim) and bought the wallet I've been meaning to replace since I got robbed some weeks back. I wandered through bakeries and pastry shops inhaling deeply and then I found Tino's - between 187th and 188th on Arthur Ave. This place is gorgeous, full of specialty Italian foods. They make fresh sandwiches and deli goods. It's a family business and when I went to pay for my coffee, the man behind the counter nodded to his son in a gesture of 'you take this one'. The boy was nervous and pudgy fingered and charged me $3.52 instead of $3.25 with adorable dyslexia. I sat down at a table outside with a fantastic cappuccino, sprinkled with cinnamon to watch old Italian women with scarves on their heads greet smiling old men with canes. Little Tino- aka. pudgy fingers at the register- came out with a soccer ball and kicked it around with an older fellow in a shiny jumpsuit and a lanyard. Coach? Uncle? Little Tino looked a lot like JT (Tony Soprano Jr.) on the season where he was kind of a chunker... but boy could do some fancy footwork with a soccer ball.

I asked the woman inside where I could go to buy fresh pasta and she directed me to Bergatti's on 187th. Also a family run place, Father and Son are behind the counter doing impressions of each other as I check out the sauces on the rack to the right. The pasta is all hand rolled and cut and the place smells fresh like flour and salt. I order a pound of the spinach fettuccine and the son cranks down this big wooden drying rack with a rope pulley tied to the wall behind the register. The pasta is laid out in long twisted loops and he untangles a pound of it easily, barely bothering to look at the scale when he weighs it, knowing he has just enough.

On the train home there's this old queen on the train. One of these toughed up, elder homosexuals with tattoos on his hands and jewelry meant to leave dents in other people's faces. He's mumbling to himself, glaring at the man opposite him... but you look down and his feet are positively dainty. Tucked jauntily under him, stacked one atop the other in tight-laced, black hightop Reeboks circa 1982. He stops twirling the skull ring on his finger for a moment and nervously tugs at one earring, glances around the train car. "Is anybody looking? Am I still me?"




Of note:
Fresh Tortilla (207 and Broadway) Very tasty black bean tacos which I made the bad choice of washing down with a red apple Snapple - like sweet, watery Robotussin

La Sala (111 Dyckman-Inwood) The 'Hot Avocado' was delicious and messy... find yourself a veteran and study his methods

The roof of my building at night. Pigeon shit aside. Beautiful.

Tino's (between 187th and 188th on Arthur Ave.) www.tinosdeli.com

Bergatti's (187th W. of Arthur Ave.) So worth the journey

Patsy's (Union Sq. area) pretty decent pizza- fresh mozzarella, basil and garlic

The Irish Brigade (4716 Broadway) Old man dive bar extraordinaire. The five people in this bar make up for the sparse clientele by Shouting at the top of their lungs to each other. The bartender, Laura, is scrappy and friendly and will introduce you to her Mom (the older version of her yelling top volume at the other end of the bar).

SEE (312 Bleecker- W.Village) Eyeglasses, exams on the cheap. The doctor looks weirdly like Sarah Silverman and I found myself chuckling inappropriately. "Which is clearer? One or Two?" " Hahahaha... oh, um One?" Unique and affordable frames. The fellow working there was very helpful... then again, I think he may have been hitting on me. I'm a little slow, but when someone says "I could sit across from you for five or six hours and look at you if you were wearing those" ... that's a pick-up line, right?


Song of the week: Ballantines: Aimee Mann
Fun discovery: Look at this fucking hipster- www.latfh.com

The image below was this bizarre moment where some mutual understanding excited all the lemurs at once and they all went tearing down to one end of their enclosure (which, by the by, is not enclosed, but open to the viewing walkway - why I don't have a lemur in my hair is a mystery). I kind of love this shot. It looks like a Michael Sowa painting, but I swear it's just a snapshot on a low light, micro setting on my little Canon Powershot (I'd been taking photographs of these bright red, leaf-shaped insects I'll have to ask my Entymologist Papa about).

Man, I love a lemur.