strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Feb 28 07: on feeling like dancing
W00t.
By this afternoon, I still felt better than I sounded, so I decided to stop loafing and do something productive with some part of my day. So I went to get a much-needed haircut. Mr. Joseph’s is an old-school sort of place, although the old Italians who used to man the chairs are slowly giving way to a bunch of Montenegrans in their early 30s. The reading material there was the usual mix of lad mags and tabloid newspapers, mostly, but somebody had left behind a copy of the Village Voice. More my style. And it was in the Voice calendar pages, among concert listings for four hundred bands that I’d never heard of, that I saw it.
Surely there wouldn’t be tickets. Not for a concert just three days away. Surely not. But upon leaving the barbers with my ears newly lowered, I grabbed the first train for Madison Square Garden. The woman at the box-office window checked her computer for me. “Oh, you’re in luck. These must have just been released, because we didn’t have anything ten minutes ago. Wow, good seats, too. Do you want them?”
And that, my friends, is how I got a pair of tickets for the Scissor Sisters show this weekend. All I have to do now is pick out a suitable outfit, oh yes. Again I say unto thee: w00t.
bleah
Home sick today with a cold. I actually sound much worse than I feel; in the periods between violent sneezes and oliphaunt-caliber nose-honkings, I’m pretty okay. But my nearest coworkers sit a foot and a half to either side of me, and I just couldn’t be That Guy Who Sneezes All Over Everybody. So I’m keeping my plague to myself.
On the up side, a friend commented to me just last night that my new bass-baritone telephone voice is ‘kinda hot.’ So there are positives.
Tonight is, of course, chorus rehearsal. Normally I’d be fine with taking a night off, but tonight’s rehearsal is a special one—we have a Big Famous Voice Teacher coming in to do a masterclass of sorts in the absence of our usual conductor. I may go sit in the back of the room and see how much I can learn without actually singing.
Until then: chicken soup and Miyazaki!
Feb 26 07: zincing fast
So I stayed up late last night to watch the Oscars with a friend, because, well. Gay national holiday, and all that.1 But the nascent cold I successfully drove back on Friday—or perhaps one of its cousins—has returned, and it’s angry.
We’re going to try a second application of the techniques that worked so well last week: miso soup, spicy food, a decent night’s sleep (for once), and as many zinc lozenges as I can handle. Alas! That means another day with Zinc Mouth. Gleh. My kingdom for a cold-fighting solution that doesn’t leave one’s mouth tasting like mine tailings.
1 Not that I’d seen, like, any of the movies in question. Wait, no. I saw Pan’s Labyrinth, which I loved loved loved, and The Queen. Basically I watched the Oscars so I could see Helen Mirren accept her award. I would cheerfully watch Helen Mirren read Chinese take-out menus for two hours, no lie. Beyond that, we amused ourselves by making derisive and/or adoring comments about the attendees.
Feb 21 07: the smudge
Ash Wednesday is not a holiday that has any real significance for me personally. But I do enjoy how it changes the feel of the busy city sidewalks, just for a day: the usual crowds of scowling stockbrokers secretaries dentists editors gemologists security guards museum curators et cetera are all going about their business, but every now and then you see one of them with the Smudge. The one that says I took a moment today to think about matters spiritual. Any sign that any of us has carved out a moment from our day for meditation is a good one, I think.
Plus you get to study the various artistic techniques of the city’s clergy. Sometimes the Smudge is crisp and cruciform; other times it just looks like the banker in question was cleaning out the flue on his lunch break. I’m standing in the lobby at Juilliard at the moment, tapping this out on a public terminal as I wait for rehearsal to begin, and on my way here I saw a guy who was doing a spectacular impersonation of the Ace of Clubs.
Which makes one wonder what his particular meditations were about. Atlantic City, maybe. Whatever it was, I hope it brought him a little peace.
Feb 20 07: a cry for brains
Dear National News Broadcasters:
She’s been dead for days, and she is still dead. I realize that in the past I have had my issues with that Anna Nicole woman, but I don’t think that should preclude me from pointing this out. And I realize that it would be unreasonable of me to ask that we simply drop the matter altogether, because obviously those who, like me, fail to understand why she was ever a celebrity should get no say in the workings of our culture. But the legal stupidities are going to go on for a while; surely there are more pressing matters that could be covered right now? Rather than live broadcast of the who-gets-the-body hearings?
I hereby request a moratorium on the play-by-play, until:
- some sort of decision is reached, or
- the residual psychoactive chemicals in her corpse undergo a freak reaction with her embalming fluids and cause her to rise up off her shelf at the funeral home and into the streets of Hollywood (FL) to feast upon the living.
Ideally the latter, but I’d settle for the former.
My thanks,
AW
ps: while we’re on the subject of zombies, I hereby recommend that everybody go listen to Jonathan Colton’s song Re: Your Brains.
Feb 16 07: deliquescence
The snow is melting. We were excited when we heard it was on its way, because the City has been frozen solid for weeks with nary a flake of nothin’. But when it first started to fall on Wednesday it was already disappointing: hard and granular and not flaky or fluffy in the least. Like having somebody flick the contents of an unflavored sno-cone on your face, very fast, for the whole time you were outside. Still, it piled up on the cars and the newspaper boxes prettily enough, and even if it made lousy snowballs the kids in my building all seemed delighted.
Unfortunately the honeymoon phase never lasts. The boots and trucks and taxis and Chinese-food delivery bicycles rapidly get the whole entropy thing underway, and soon the sidewalks are shin-deep in grey-brown slish. By Wednesday night the intersection of 96th and Broadway was a vast and nauseating lake of Scuzz Margarita.
We watch it go with mixed emotions. End of today, or tomorrow morning at the latest, it’ll be gone again, and we’ll be back in the same stultifying, sinus-cracking deep freeze we had before. (A science moment: when the weather drops below a certain point, iPod headphone cables lose their flexibility. Turn your head too fast and they pop out of your ears, twanging back and forth in mid-air, unable to keep up with you. Re-seating them requires taking your hands out of your pockets, though, so do it quick.)
By night I dream of the beach.
Feb 12 07: disappointment
This weekend was pretty low-key. I went to Big Gay Yoga, I relaxed at home working on various projects, I hung out with friends, I went to swim practice. All good.
I had hoped, though, to use this space to announce that I’d passed a personal Big Gay Yoga milestone. Those hopes were dashed. No, it’s not the handstand thing, although I still can’t do one of those either. Specifically, I still cannot hear an instructor say things like “Keep breathing deeply, and feel that breath spiral back out from the navel center,” without thinking,
“…Bethesda?”
Feb 7 07: on loving humanity
Most of the time the tabloid papers in this town drive me to despair for the future of the human race. But every now and then I realize that they also make me proud to be a New Yorker. To wit: today’s headlines regarding the crazy astronaut lady and her plan to kidnap (and murder?) a romantic rival.
The New York Post:
LUST IN SPACE
Astro-Nut Faces Slay-Bid Rap
The New York Daily News:
DARK SIDE OF THE LOON
Astro-Nut’s Murder Plot is Out of This World
Priceless. The folks at the tabs have got to be on their knees weeping with gratitude over this story. I mean, it’s got everything. Sex! Murder! Bad wigs! Diapers! Unflattering mugshots! Astronauts! Whoo. It’s Christmas in February!
Meanwhile, the debate Just How Icky Are Queers, Anyway? rages on. Recently, the Washington State Supreme Court defended the “reasonable state interest” in restricting the right to marry to those couples capable of producing children. In the interest of protecting this laudable desire from further frivolous legal challenge, the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance has drafted a modest proposal: a ballot initiative that I think any reasonable-minded Washingtonian can get behind.
If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:
- add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
- require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
- require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
- establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
- make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.
If I lived in Seattle, I’d be printing out reams of blank petitions on company time right now. Alas, all I can do is make a plea on the behalf of poor defenseless marriages everywhere. Washingtonians, to the barricades! You have nothing to lose but Western Civilization.
JUST TO BE CLEAR: The people behind the ballot measure recognize that the idea is completely insane. They know that it is not what you would call a Good Idea. But it certainly gets their point across, doesn’t it?