No Happy Fun Time.

Toxins are seeping from my pores. I left work a little early, walked to Chinatown for an hour massage, then had an alternately teary/angry walk home. Blood sugar. Should have eaten something immediately. Of course the large groups of fun-seekers were out in hordes, it being still the holiday season. Of course they like to amble at .000000002 miles per hour in lazy packs of four or more. It's frustrating to live in New York because you can so often feel it is not yours. It gets hijacked by everybody all the time.

Then I come home and my cats start screaming at me. I screamed back. I realized some time ago that I would probably not manufacture babies, in part because the world is a sack of shit and I wouldn't present it to someone I loved, but also because I screamed at Ichabod, one day when he was especially whiny, "Shut the fuck up, you fucking asshole!!!"















Frankie. My longest-term relationship thus far.





























Ichabod. I called him a "fucking asshole."


Frankie is soooo needy lately. Of course she is. She's an elderly lady of 17 with many ailments. In addition to the physical care she needs, she needs my love and affection for reassurance. I am mostly more than happy to give it to her. When I came home tonight, I was needy. The massage and the end of year-ness made me realize how stressful this year has been for me. I wanted one moment when my ears weren't assaulted by some bleating unbidden noise.

Why does Gerald Ford deserve five days of national mourning? And why the hell didn't he come out with his criticisms of Bush before dropping dead? Out of personal or party loyalty? I would have more respect for him now if he had piped up sooner. Was he afraid maybe he would have had zero influence? Wouldn't it have been worth a try? What did he have to lose at age 90 by coming clean? What was the matter with him? Why sit on it?

Speaking of the unevolved, the super in the adjacent building is a hose-aholic. Every day, usually when I am coming home in the evening, he goes to town on the sidewalk with the hose. But not just the sidewalk. Today I saw him spraying the stacked garbage bags. Oh yeah, those bags of trash really need to be gunned down with 20-gallon jet streams.

When I just now looked out my window he was spraying a flattened cardboard box! To make it flatter! A water jet as a trash-smoothing device? How stupid do you have to be? He is wasting so much water, not to mention the entire area is sopping. You can tell he gets really into it too because he won't even stop to let you by. Standing there glaring doesn't do it. One time I said, "Please?! New boots." One morning I was trapped in my lobby while he sprayed my front doorway! I thought it was raining at first and turned around to get my umbrella. This guy is psychotic. I'm calling 311.

Crappy Mood, Don't Care Who Knows It.

I've had a shitty year, and not only that, it seems like I say that every year. I.e., I might be having a shitty life. Yes, lots of people's lives are shittier, but that is certainly not going to cheer me up.

I'm not celebrating the new year. I already know that. I could care less that it switches from Sunday to Monday. Seen that switch thousands of times already.

Not much good happened this year.

I'm skipping the celebration and getting straight to work.

Dodge City Sunday.

What a sexy line-up for Dodge City tomorrow:

Ann Carr is a bottomless well of multi-faceted nutjob characters. Don't tell them I said that. Will it be Hickory? Paloma? Carol?

Mike Dobbins is a genius. Like if Einstein and the Violent Femmes merged and did comedy.

Astrology-addicted Rachael Parenta, host of I Love Jack, is an always funny downtown favorite.

Joey Gay returns to the site of his former long-running Train Wreck. Maybe you saw him around town or on Last Comic Standing?

Greg Walloch really gets around. He globetrots, is a Moth and NYC comedy regular, and still has time to make a lot of movies where he looks really sexy and makes out with people.

And me. I don't have anything to say about myself right now.

The weather's gorgeous this weekend. Take a stroll on over to the Parkside. No cover, and there's free karaoke after the show.

Dodge City
Sunday, Dec. 17, 9 pm
Parkside Lounge
317 E. Houston St. @ Attorney
Between Aves. B & C
F/V to Second Ave.
JMZ to Delancey
No cover

I Go To Staten Island So You Don't Have To.

I went to Staten Island recently to go to a thrift store that had been mega-hyped.

But first. Memories.

I worked on Staten Island for a few months in 1996, as a PA and locations assistant on a low-budge indie film that was my own personal Living In Oblivion. I wrote a production diary for it that I never published anywhere. I will dig it up and post it soon.

I think it was a couple years before that that Giuliani was elected mayor. In the same election, there was a referendum about whether to allow Staten Island to secede from New York City. The outcome: Staten Islanders were largely responsible for electing Rudy, but they failed to get enough votes to leave NYC. I remember wishing that if they elected him, they could also leave and take him with them.

And BTW I just heard that SI is that fastest growing New York City borough.

No offense to Staten Islanders, but I hate it there. It makes me feel unclean. Strange because it's probably cleaner than Manhattan. It's certainly more rural. I think it's the ferry ride that does it. I always think it's going to be fun, taking a ferry across the river to the island, but it isn't. Everyone waits behind the vast glass doors. It's a holding pen that gets more and more crowded until the large digital clock turns to the half hour. When the doors open there is a stampede. You have to carefully calibrate your pace or else trample or get trampled.

When I worked in legal publishing, I knew a nice fellow who lived on SI, who brewed his own beer, and I attended a Halloween party of his once (as Divine*). And at my current job there is a very nice SIer. Please save me from anti-SI bias.

I did hear my very favorite overheard line of all time on the Staten Island ferry, however. A girl told her her girlfriend, in an SI accent, "I would neva, evah, wear leathah in this weathah."

The thrift store, Everything Goes, should be called Everything Blows. It's at 140 Bay St., a few blocks from the ferry terminal. They don't appear to have a web site. Yes, everything is pretty inexpensive. Everything is also pretty ugly. In addition, you have to factor in, in your risk/benefit analysis, that not only is it an expedition, it's one you might resent having gone on. They might have to have mint Puccis for ten dollars or something for me to go back.

There is also an Everything Goes bookstore nearby, which I visited to use the restroom, and it seemed nice, a cozy hippie joint with an open mike, and an Everything Goes furniture store, also nearby, that I did not visit.

The most interesting thing about Everything Goes is that it is run by the members of nearby Ganas, "NYC's most exclusive commune."

How many communes does NYC have?!


*Not just Divine, but Female Trouble-era, post-facial acid scar Divine.












I wish I could say that's me. But I have no photos, sadly.

Referrers.

Jeff Mac, they're looking for you.

They're also looking for Truman Bean.

Please Print And Distribute.

Howsa 'bout that drawing by Sarah Fisch? Nice, ayuh?

I May Have Lost The Will To Blog.

I need a new template.

I'm at odds with my blog.

My blog and I are in talks.

SHUT UP, BLOG!!!

Talks over.

I can't imagine why I never posted this before. It's been in draft mode for months. Now published for your repugnance. SHUT UP, BLOG, don't tell them how to feel!

I'm cleaning out my drafts folder for you guys, maybe Jeff Mac and maybe some others. That's how much I may have lost the will to blog. Maybe I lost your attention when I disappeared. I don't care, alright?! I was happy to blog in obscurity in draft mode while I figured out a new template and other matters.

So take a gander at Soviet movie star Timofei Spivak: