Category: Happy

Kate Mayne, a wonderful friend of ours, although not an American, lived here for a couple of years prior to moving to Antwerp a few years ago. She wrote a response to my posting, “wanna make it in New York?”

I really enjoyed the piece about moving to New York. It graphically brought back many memories for me. I think the actual struggle to live in the city is quite insignificant considering the return one gets from the experience. Living in the city has made me a far more rounded and aware person; life for me in Europe and the States, well, the world, has taken on a more profound aspect, having experienced life on both sides of the water. I am sympathetic to and aware of the differences.
I frequently take the train between Brussels, Antwerp, the Netherlands. Somehow I always manage to pick out the New Yorkers (and I consider myself to be partly one of them), or we pick each other out of the crowd and have a great chat (the trombonist from Rome who spent a year at Julliard, the singer songwriter from Brooklyn who wouldn’t take off his shades, the elderly dealer of african art and playwright from Manhattan telling me what really counts in life for him). Maybe New York is like a positive trait that you catch when you spend time there: the swirling, myriad possibilities that confront you wherever you look, that way of seeing, affecting your vision wherever you go. The hutzpah which took me so long to learn. The knowledge of the promise that you can have great lows but many great highs; it has something to do with optimism.

And wanting to keep your eyes always open, like Kate.

In the category of, “there will always be an England,” or, “is the Times running fiction in the obituary section now?

“Setting off down the Thames in a bright red boat on Sept. 2, 1979, from the east London borough of Greenwich, the expedition sought to circle the world, but not by an east-west route. Instead, Mr. Burton and his colleagues followed the imaginary meridian line that connects the Royal Observatory in Greenwich — from which longitude and Greenwich Mean Time are calculated — to the North and South Poles.
The expedition was led by an old Etonian baronet, Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykenham-Fiennes, and besides Mr. Burton comprised Sir Ranulph’s wife, Ginnie, the family terrier, Bothy, and a former beer salesman, Oliver Shepard. The expedition’s patron, the Prince of Wales, described its members as “refreshingly mad” as he bid them farewell.

They actually did what they set out to do, returning three years later to a welcome by Charles. I’m hoping the terrier made it all the way as well, although the paper neglects to tell us.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
W. Somerset Maugham

[Thanks to Louise]

A savy and amusing navigation of the perils in store here for those who just can’t take it elsewhere any longer, and it’s not just for gypsies.

I can’t help quoting from Kirk Wood Bromley’s recent play about The American Revolution:
Admiral Howe- Tell me, Major Andre, of yon Manhattan,
Where I expect to sleep tomorrow night.
Major Andre- You will, sir, I’m afraid, get no sleep there.
Cornwallis- For yon Manhattan is the noisiest,
Filthiest, sleaziest, sauciest mess
Of anti-civilized, counter-cultural,
Money-grubbing yahoos ever festered
Unflusht in the devil’s antique outhouse.
Madness and mayhem, sir, that is Manhattan.

Some things never change. See, Manhattan does respect tradition!

I know dozens of people who leapt at New York City, but couldn’t get a toe-hold, and so fell back to where they came from. Thinking over these experiences, I’ve concluded that the three tricks to successfully living in New York are to find:
1. An apartment you can tolerate,
2. A job you like,
3. A community you love.
Focus first on these things, not on getting an acting job right away. There’s no sense getting cast in a play if you don’t have an apartment and a job. You’ll be distracted and may even be forced to drop out of the show (a real career killing move, by the way) if you find you can’t make it in the city.

This article comes from the wonderful Inverse Theater Company http://www.inversetheater.com

This from a blog (belonging to a beautiful woman who writes as Bazima) which I clearly visit with not enough regularity:

Friday, July 12, 2002
An Important Message from My Gay Boyfriend
I noticed that my two “straight” male friends now also refer to each other as *girl*. On the cab ride downtown: “Girl. Is this crazy cabbie gonna take 5th Avenue all the way down?” Answer: “Girl. I don’t know.”

Just where do we go from here?

“I also understand how tender the free enterprise system can be.”—White House press conference, Washington, D.C., July 9, 2002
[from The Complete Bushisms]

It’s been ten months since September 11, but in the U.S. political humor is still not safe. In Israel however, in a society far more deeply threatened by the terrors originating both from its own government and from others, it is still possible to laugh at the hardships and even tweak the most sacred of cows—gallows humor and satire in prime time television during a real war!

Limor [the name of character of one of the co-stars of the show, “Only in Israel,” originally] embodied what Israelis call a “frecha,” a bimbo. Much of the show poked fun at her marriage to a cabdriver in the blue-collar town of Holon.
….
The mild tone suited the political climate. When “Only in Israel” ended its third season two summers ago, Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, was headed to Camp David, presumably to complete a peace agreement with Yasir Arafat.
After going on hiatus in the 2000-2001 television season, “Only In Israel” returned to the air in November in a far different Israel. By now, viewers learned, Limor had divorced the cabbie, moved to Ramat Aviv, the nouveau-riche suburb of Tel Aviv, and started a love affair with Anthony Zinni, President Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East.

The show appears each friday night, almost regardless of what tragedies might have made the news in the few hours between taping late in the afternoon and broadcast at nine in the evening. In the event of really horrific news, the episode will include a lead-in informing viewers that “the program was taped before the last terrible events happened.”
Unfortunately we can’t match such hutspah here.

I don’t know how it happened, but I swear that I didn’t know who Martha Stewart was until just about four years ago. Never heard of her.
Now, of course none of us can get away from her and the news blitz her latest adventures inspire, whether it’s the new society, financial, media, editorial or, perhaps especially exciting, gay angle. It seems however that the spunky family which now lives in the Nutley, New Jersey, house in which she grew up has the hardest time of all. Still, they do appear to be having some fun with it.

“When we bought the house, the gardens were absolutely gorgeous,” said Angela Cheney. “I killed everything.”
“There were irises. I killed them,” she said, grinning. “The rose bushes, I killed them when we put a deck in. The wisteria tree, I’ve tried to kill that. It brings a lot of bees.”
“I’m no Martha Stewart.”
….
Kooks have been sneaking into Cheney’s backyard since Stewart put the address in her magazine. Some fanatics swipe figs from a tree. Others dig up dirt. One guy even ate the soil.
“They must think it’s more fertile than normal dirt,” said Cheney’s daughter Nicole, 21. “It’s tough keeping up with Martha Stewart.”

Yup, just satire, but even Einbildungenschadenfreude makes us happy for a moment.

El Paso, Texas (SatireWire.com) — Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.

Is this for real? The Paper of Record actually published this letter, supposedly defending SUV’s, in today’s edition. [I’m putting it under “Happy,” because I can only find it ludicrous, definitely not serious enough for any other category.]

The fuel cost is borne entirely by me, and though this makes the United States more dependent on foreign oil, it is also the most powerful method of introducing capitalism and democracy into corrupt oil-producing nations.

Have you no shame, Mr. Mullen?