My grandfather:
He looks sweet, right? HA!
I FOUND A PICTURE OF HIM!
October 13, 2011Mazel Tov, Grandpa
October 13, 2011Removed for editorial reasons… Oh the suspense!
Thursday Night Activities
October 12, 2011
My face is blurred in order to protect my identity from PETA, those crazy fuckers. The chicken's face is seen because let's face it, all hope is lost for that little guy. He was my exchange, my substitute, my expiation. This chicken went to death and I shall proceed to a good, long life and peace. SUCKER!
Last Thursday night was a very special night in the life of this little adventurer. A retelling:
First up was the inaugural meeting of the Harold Pinter Appreciation Society at a dark and cozy midtown bar, the location of which can’t be revealed because, well, then people would stalk and try to join us (whereas if they are interested, all they must do is email us at HaroldPinterGroupies@gmail.com and perform for the committee the monologue version of “The Tea Party.”) At this wildly successful event, we drank wine, read aloud from The Dumb Waiter and speculated as to what mess, exactly, Ben and Gus leave behind for whomever to clean. The next meeting was scheduled and plans for upcoming more elaborate performances (with costumes and larger casts, perhaps) were made before the meeting was adjourned.
At this point I hopped on the F train to Brooklyn for my second activity of the night: kapparot, the ancient Jewish ritual of swinging a live chicken round your head and then giving it to be slaughtered. I met my friends the Zs and after a quick costume change (we decided M’s red skirt wasn’t frum enough), we hopped into the Rabbi’s minivan, picked up another couple and headed for the exotic and far-flung neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn’s enclave for the Lubavitch Chasids. We walked into the heart of the hood and, surrounded by an army of Yiddish and Hebrew speaking schoolgirls and young boys asking for change for the Rebbe, engaged in Kapparot. The three men went and bought live chickens, held them by their wings, brought them back to us ladies (standing at the periphery) and, as we recited a prayer, twirled them around our heads three times. There were a lot of high-pitched clucking/squealing noises (babies and chickens sound very similar.) After we recited the prayers, we took the chickens ourselves, walked up to the little slaughter booth, where there were a few men who deftly snatched up the chickens, cut their throats, and tossed the carcasses on a pile behind them.
M and I were feeling a little queasy from the smell of fresh blood so we walked away from the ado and visited a nice bakery across the street, where I bought some delicious looking rugelach for my own YK observance and the Zs bought some snacks that we consumed after thoroughly soaking our hands in Purell (which I don’t even believe in but because my hands smelled like chickens, I made an exception.) After this, we walked over to the Rabbi’s house, passing the infamous 770 Eastern Parkway (spiritual center of the deceased –– perhaps? –– Menachem Mendel Schneerson) on our way, to pick up some palm fronds for our sukkah hut (lulav) and also some etrog, these bastardized hybridization of a lemon and a gourd. We had to wait for a while in line because there were a few pushy dudes who seemed BFFs with the Rab, but no matter as we got to discuss the perils of palm frond selection and admire the pious decrepitude of the abode. After we had purchased all our holiday necessities, we hopped back in the van and drove back to more gentrified pastures.
HA SIKUM!
I wish I could tell you about my upcoming adventure, but sadly, if I reveal our plans now, it may ruin the whole thing. Just wait, though, it’s damn good. One thing I can tell you is that the question of what to wear is so loaded it trumps even the one I asked myself pre-Kapparot.
Afternoon Poem
October 11, 2011Yenta
This
poem
is as
thin
as a
reed.
I
ought
to
feed
it a
pie.
Eat
up,
little
poem!
Eat
up!
More Lennon, and Beatles
October 11, 2011From Lewis Lapham’s With the Beatles, about their 1968 pilgrimage to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:
“On Friday evening the Maharishi spoke to the entire student body in the lecture hall, charcoal fires burning in braziers set in rows against the whitewashed walls, candles flickering on the armrests of the wicker chairs, the night air softened with the scent of incense. Behind a bank of flowers and a battery of microphones, the Maharishi perched on his platform-sofa at the end of the hall nearest the river. A coquettish smile strayed across his face when he clapped his hands in joyous exclamation and announced the presence of the Beatles, ‘the blessed leaders of the world’s youth,’ seated in the front row just below the portrait of the Guru Dev. The announcement was both superfluous and late. The Beatles had arrived a few minutes before the Maharishi began to speak, and their entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed –– the four most famous musicians in the world vividly costumed in purple velvet and gold braid, their feminine accompaniment trailing behind them in white and orange silk, drifting into the candlelight at the slow and solemn pace of figures maybe once seen in a Christmas pageant or a psychedelic dream. Nobody needed to be told that the ashram had been blessed with a visitation of divine celebrity.
Satisfied with the omens, the Maharishi set about the task of conducting what I was told was his regular evening broadcast. He first asked how long everybody had managed to meditate since he’d last seen them, and when a Swedish woman eagerly raised her hand, he nodded in the manner of a proud and doting schoolmaster.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘How long, please?’
‘Forty-two hours, Maharishi.’
‘Was the meditation harmonious?’
‘Oh yes, Maharishi, very harmonious.’
‘And do you remember anything of it?’
The Swedish woman looked down at her hands in an attitude of sheepish apology. ‘No, Maharishi.’
The yogi assured her that she had made no mistake, and then, directing his voice to the company at large, he asked if anybody could report forty-one hours. Hearing no response, he proceeded to count down the hours from forty, to thirty-nine, to thirty-eight, to thirty-seven. At thirty hours, a Canadian woman tentatively raised her hand to say she had accomplished three ten-hour segments interrupted by fifteen-minute breaks for warm milk and honey sandwiches.
‘And you felt what, please?’
The woman replied in the matter-of-fact voice of voice of a nurse reading a patients blood or urine test. ‘The usual disassociation from my body in the first segment’ she said, followed, in the second segment, ‘by a sensation of intense and pleasurable warmth.’ During the third segment she’d begun to sing old music-hall songs, the words to which she thought she’d forgotten.
The Maharishi continued his counting. At twenty-three hours, Gunther, the Lufthansa pilot, stood up to say that his friend, George, who didn’t understand English, had experience a feeling much like fainting, which had alarmed him. The Maharishi pronounced the difficulty irrelevant. ‘In hospitals they call it fainting, ‘ he said, ‘In Rishikesh we call it transcending.’ Meditations of less than seven hours didn’t warrant discussion, and the Maharishi asked only for a few show of hands. When he completed his review, he accepted more subtle questions from people curious about the distinction between ‘God-consciousness’ and ‘supreme knowledge,’ wanting to know whether ‘rapturous joy’ always accompanied ‘the descent into pure being.’ The answers were discursive and abstract, taking place in what Geoffrey later identified as the two dimensions of primary meaning, at the level of the root and the level of the leaf.
Before bringing the lesson to an end, the Maharishi cast his soft, almost feminine glance upon Prudence Farrow, Mia’s sistser, seated in the front row.
‘And Prudence?’
“Twelve hours, Maharishi.’
The answer was barely audible, but it so pleased the Maharishi that he pressed his hands together in praise of the Guru Dev, and then, turning toward a small altar decorated with ferns and palm fronds, he performed a ceremony involving the burning of sandalwood, the chanting of a Vedic scripture, and the ringing of tiny bells. The ritual inspired a good many of the older students in the hall to prostrate themselves at full length upon the cow dung floor.”
My next field trip, I’ve decided, is to visit Prudence Farrow (now Bruns?) and take a TM lesson from her in northwest Florida.
The Fiercest Heidi Braids I Ever Done Seen
October 11, 2011
As John Waters would say, I genuflect to Yulia Tymoshenko's tyrannical top braid. So Eastern European, so tight.
I hope she keeps her hair immaculate while imprisoned.
SZERETLEK, YT!
A Shameless Plea for a Job
October 10, 2011John Waters
c/o Atomic Books
1100 W. 36th Street
Baltimore, MD 21211
Dear Mr. Waters,
I am writing in reference to a short portion of your book ROLE MODELS, which begins, in my version, on page 29:
“I hate to think about it –– what will happen when Johnny Mathis and I die? Who will guard my humble tawdry belongings? Will Johnny have to worry about the posthumous exploitation of his signature songs? Will his estate deny the commercial use of his hits the way Johnny Cash’s did when Preparation H tried to license ‘Ring of Fire’ for a hemorrhoid commercial? Or will they exploit his publishing copyright the way Elvis’s heirs did when they allowed ‘Viva Las Vegas’ to be resung as ‘Viva Viagra’ for a TV commercial?”
I would like to volunteer to be the caretaker of your possessions after you have passed on. I have no doubt I will excel in this position, for reasons including but not limited to the following:
1. My favorite thing in the entire world is bathos. I am highly educated in the useless (literature, philosophy, etc.) but only appreciate these things when they are juxtaposed with something else, such as a tasteless cancer joke.
2. I am terribly nurturing and sensitive, and will treat your possessions like my poor, deformed little inbred infants, and be insistent that they go to good houses as opposed to hemorrhoid commercials (well, depends on how well written the commercial is –– that has the potential to be hilarious.)
3. As long as we’re talking about Catherine of Siena, I have two enormous calluses in the middle of each palm from a lifetime of digging my nails into my hands. Why? I suppose I was just born very serious about reverse dogma.
4. It’s not all doom and gloom though –– I have a sense of humor. I like to wear a baby alligator claw (I painted the “finger” nails bright red) as a brooch. My favorite accessory, however, is a tear drawn on my face in thin-tipped Sharpie. I’m about five foot nothing with blond hair and a chubby cherub face. People think it’s funny when I say I got the tear in Rikers, but I don’t see what’s so funny about my prison ordeals.
I look forward to hearing from you and setting up an interview, preferably one that will occur on East Baltimore Street.
Regards,
Itinerant Daughter
Happy Birthday, John Lennon!
October 10, 2011DAMMIT This was supposed to go up yesterday, but I got distracted by the beautiful weather and scampered out into the sun instead of focusing on BLOGGING! For shame.
***
I wanted to post an excerpt of Lewis Lapham’s With the Beatles but unfortunately do not have enough time to do both, so here, on this holy day, is a tribute to and by the man (and his other half) many love oh so much:
Questionnaire Proust Filled in by Lennon and Ono at the Amsterdam Hilton
John’s answers are first, Yoko’s are second, though you can probably figure it out even without any direction…
Birthdate: 9/10/40, 6:30 PM Feb 18th, 1933, 8:20 PM
1. What is the utmost misery for you? Jealousy Jealousy
2. Where would you like to live? With Yoko With John
3. What is your idea of earthly happiness? Yoko John
4. What kind of faults do you sympathize with? Yoko’s and mine John’s and mine
5. Who are your favorite personalities in literature? Yoko John
6. Who is your favorite historical personality? Yoko John
7. Who are your favorite heroines in literature? Yoko John (!)
8. Who are you favorite heroines? Yoko John (!!)
9. Who is your favorite painter? Yoko John
10. Who is your favorite composer? Yoko and me John and me
11. What characteristics do you appreciate in a man? Yoko John
12. What characteristics do you appreciate in a woman? Yoko John (!)
13. What is your favorite virtue? Yoko John
14. What is your favorite occupation? Yoko John
15. What you have liked to be? Yoko John
16. What is your most important characteristic? Yoko John
17. What do you most appreciate in your girlfriend? Yoko to keep off John
18. What is your greatest fault? Yoko John
19. What is your dream of happiness? Yoko John
20. What would be your greatest disaster? No Yoko No John
21. What would you like to be? Yoko John
22. What is your favorite color? Yoko John
23. What is your favorite flower? Yoko John
24. What is your favorite bird? Yoko John
25. Who are your favorite authors? Yoko and me John
26. Who are your favorite poets? Yoko and me John and me
27. Who are your heroes in real life? Yoko John
28. Who are your heroines in history? Yoko John
29. What are your favorite names? Yoko John
30. What do you dislike most? No Yoko no John
31. Which historical personality do you detest most? Sam Smith Nobody
32. Which military event do you admire most? Sam Smith None
33. Which reform do you admire most? Yoko John
34. What natural gift would you like to possess? Yoko John
35. How would you like to die? With Yoko With John
36. What is your present state of mind? Yoko John
37. What is your motto? Yoko and John forever
Audition
October 6, 2011So in my dream last night, I was at a singing audition of sorts with a bunch of members of my family as well as some of the cast of Glee (which I don’t even watch) and a panel of judges and I kept debating (aloud and to myself) whether or not I should audition, and finally I agreed to do it, and I got up and sang “On My Own” from Les Miz (embarrassingly) and KILLED IT! I felt it was somehow the closure on all the unfinished business I had with memories of childhood auditions. So why don’t I feel more peaceful today?
An Art Piece
October 1, 2011My brother and stunningly genius collaborator, PS (aka Itinerant Son) and I will drag the bear from “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” from Park Avenue down to the Gavin Brown Enterprise (620 Greenwich Avenue), dump it into “You,” douse it in lighter fluid, strike a match and dance and sing ecstatically as it burns.
