Stand Your Ground

In which an unarmed minor dies of a gunshot wound wielded by a suburban vigilante, who decided to take the law in his hands even though Trayvon Martin was not breaking any law and the 911 dispatcher told him to stay inside his car.
No one saw the altercation. No one was on the street. In places like Sanford, Florida people live in gated communities in houses where they can go weeks without seeing a neighbor. Then they get in their cars by themselves. They live in fortresses, and because of this isolation, they are paranoid that someone is going to harm them. This is why they feel they need to have guns to defend their property. They act as if there is no one around them, and they are all alone in the world. No society, no community. This is why they have absurd laws like Stand Your Ground. Although we can surmise that had this entailed the shooting death of a white 17 year-old with skittles in his pocket, murdered by the same man, Zimmerman would have fried, his white last name notwithstanding. Because it is about race, but race gets worse in the suburbs.
In a city teeming with people we share the space with all kinds of other people. We feel safer because we don't feel so alone. And we know better than to assume that because someone is black and wearing a hoodie, our lives are in imminent danger. We may think racist thoughts, but we learn to recognize signs. We simply are more in contact with all kinds of people and this creates a certain social cohesion that seems to be missing from less crowded places.
Racism of course, plays a big part. But the more you live in proximity to different kinds of people, from different ethnic backgrounds, socio-economic levels, beliefs and gender orientations, the more you share the space, the broader criteria you have to wield your prejudices. The city provides a saner reality check than the lurid fantasies that come from living in isolation. We laugh about the people we hate in the subway, but we live in peace with them, in very tight quarters.
Living in the suburbs may give you lots of space, but it is isolating and can lead to delusions of blacks coming to rob you, immigrants coming to steal your job and use your hospitals, and you, some sort of lonely Daniel Boone, armed in your own cocoon, fearsome of everything that is out there.
Zimmerman is already rotting in a hell of his own making. 

Spacey the III

Don't think I haven't noticed that my posts involving Shakespeare are suspiciously popular.
All ye who intend to "borrow" this for your term papers, use quotation marks or relent!
In any case, this is a review of the production of Richard III currently at BAM, starring Kevin Spacey and directed by Sam Mendes.
Kevin Spacey is a great actor. Richard III is a great villain and William Shakespeare is the greatest writer that ever was. So how's the production? Good, but uneven. Mendes has conceived a very sparse production with contemporary overtones. The costumes are modern Elizabethan (and rather boring), the stage is mostly bare, surrounded by many doors symbolizing the many victims of this proto-mass murderer. For Richard is a political serial killer, reminiscent of a Stalin, or a Mao. Thirsty for power, he kills what he fears, and because he kills so much, he fears everybody, so he has to dispose of everybody.  Homicidal tyrants have existed since day one, but it takes Shakespeare to make one into a character that clearly defines a complete psychological space.
Richard is deformed, prematurely born; it is said of him that he had teeth before he had eyes. To hear him tell it at the beginning of the play, everybody's happily carousing in times of peace,

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up...

(Has anybody ever written so beautifully about ugliness?) Since Richard cannot carouse, he has to scheme. He is physically a monster, and perhaps because of the cruelty of nature and society towards him, he is cruel himself. Poor Richard lived long before political correctness and bleeding hearts (a phrase that comes from this play!). One can imagine the bullying he endured. The play hurls spectacular insults at him, but fortunately Shakespeare is not from the age of pitiful self-justification. He is not as cheap as to want us to feel sorry for the guy. He makes him human, and therefore one ends feeling a pathetic sort of pity for him. What a waste of intellect, what deformity of purpose, which is what one always thinks about people who use all their mental energy for destruction. Think Assad Jr. now in Syria, or Ghadaffi, or any totalitarian monster of our age. There is a wonderful soliloquy when Richard is finally visited by conscience, which expresses the psychic isolation and engorged ego of the sociopath:

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?

Excuse me while I plotz.  This profile could have been written, less adroitly perhaps, by one of those forensic psychologists at Quantico. Its modernity blows me away.  Everything is I with this man. He is alone and apart from human society. A classic sociopath.
Well, Spacey goes to town, emphasizing Richard's duplicity and his terrible need for attention. It is a powerful performance, a bit shticky, in my view, very Spacey-like, which is not bad, since he is the master of dripping sarcasm. My biggest problem with this characterization is that he screams like a maniac. Many times, the screaming obscures the words. This is unfortunate, because Richard is one of the most verbally compelling characters in all of Shakespeare. This is one Richard hell-bent on garnering attention, full of mercurial fury, but it would be more interesting if he would connive more quietly and let his fury seethe inside his crooked frame. As you saw above, Shakespeare goes to beautiful lengths to describe his physical weakness, which serves as a stunning contrast to his robust capacity for evil. It should surprise everyone at court that this pathetic cripple harbors such gigantic homicidal tendencies, but Spacey is not a wee man, nor is this a quiet performance. He wears a polio brace and has a crooked leg and a bent foot, the iconic hunchback, relies on a cane and is totally misshapen. As he ambles up and down the stage he looks suitably grotesque, but it would be far more chilling to see his power come, not from throwing tantrums, but from a powerful tsunami of a mind inside a shriveled frame. After more than three hours, the outbursts get annoying and lose effectiveness. I will confess, this reminded me of my Mom and Dad's dueling parenting techniques. Mom was a frequent hell-raiser, while Dad was a quiet seether. Guess which one sent me into paroxisms of fear? One look from my Dad's silent anger was enough to make me wither in my chair, whereas my Mom's operatic outbursts eventually caused my sisters and me to roll our eyes.
Less is always more.
Spacey shows off his verbal dexterity and riffs around with the rhythms interestingly and at breakneck speeds, if not always eloquently. Still, he has some incredible moments, as when, in a mediatic event reminiscent of the putrid piety of today's Republican candidates, he pretends to pray in church (holding a Bible as a prop, of course) as he orchestrates his usurpation of the throne. Here, he reminded me of Newt Gingrich. Richard has members of his clique actually beg him publicly to become king as he feigns modesty and surprise. This is done through a live video feed on a big screen so we can see what Spacey does best, which is to show us what he's thinking through the most minimal gestures. At one point, he coyly averts his eyes, but there is more than false modesty in this tiny act; there is a weariness which encompasses everything that has happened up to that point and everything that will happen next. Mendes equates Richard's appetite for power with the megalomaniac personality of a totalitarian dictator. It makes perfect sense for our day and age.
Spacey is valiantly over the top for the entire play, giving a physically generous, possibly quite painful, exhausting and unsparing performance that has him sweating buckets, and in a clever use of his real sweat, Richard is constantly wiping his brow, which adds a layer of sliminess to the character, sweaty like a Tricky Dick.
Alas, just as Richard's monstrous ego takes up all of the play's space, Spacey takes up all of the stage. Most of the actors are nowhere near his level. The men are mostly inconsequential. The women fare better, but except for Gemma Jones, excellent as Queen Margaret, and the actress who plays his poor mother, the rest of the actors are left in the dust, and this smacks of headliner vanity to me. Why are the two young princes Richard kills portrayed by young women? The horrifying shock of their murder is grossly diminished by this arbitrary piece of casting.
Still, for the most part, the production is visceral and bracing. Mendes has some cool visual ideas, particularly towards the end, when Richard and the good Richmond share a dream, sitting on opposite sides of a long table as all the spirits of the murdered appear to haunt one and inspire the other, and a fantastic coup de theatre when a finally dead Richard is hoisted up from a meat hanger, feet first, to dangle like a piece of butchery, himself reminiscent of all the blood he spilled.
So how is Richard human? We know he has suffered, he is unloved and worse, incapable of love himself. Shakespeare was too cool to change Richard's nature just to appease the audience. He shows how human nature is, not how it should be. There is something heroic in Richard's determination to stay true to himself, in his relentless quest for some sort of social redress. He has never known love, how would he change? I am I. He is pitiful for his ignorance of human restraint, for his incapacity for mercy. He knows what he is, and this must be so painful.

The Aftermath of Disaster

This was published in Spanish by Reforma exactly one year after the attacks.

After the initial shock, apparently I went back to my normal, ornery self:

Tuesday, September 11. Night.

South of 14^th Street, the island is cordoned off. Nobody can go below 14^th Street unless they show proof of residence in the area or are joining the rescue mission. Phones don’t work very well. I have less trouble calling my family in Mexico than making a local call. I feel relatively quiet, but I know my emotional distance comes from some automatic defense mechanism and not from my own volition.

The silence on the street is total, except for the sound of police sirens, helicopters and fire trucks, which is rather sparse given the magnitude of the disaster. I get international calls from some concerned friends. They know I live nearby. I watch TV and have internet on at the same time. On TV they regurgitate the horrible images of the explosions and collapses over and over, ad nauseam.

I have never heard such silence in my block, a spot full of usually crowded bars. A city in which people go out to eat, to drink, to dance seven days a week, has been completely silenced. A permanent hum scares sleep away. I don’t understand where it comes from. I open the windows to better listen to it. The smell of burnt rubber invades my apartment. I realize that what I’m hearing is the labored breathing of the buildings. 

Wednesday, September 12.

Today it smells worse. Giuliani has said that we should stay at home and we obey him. Giuliani, resented by many in this liberal city because of his abrasive personality and his puritanical and paternalist tendencies, behaves compassionately, intelligently and prudently, and he inspires trust. I have been cooped up at home all day. The phone rings every 15 minutes. Friends from all over the world call to comfort themselves that we are fine. Their calls make more bearable the loneliness and terror that have settled in the pit of my stomach. My intuition is that they are just as scared of the new world disorder that threatens to engulf us all. The calls are of mutual support. My friend Delia writes that her young daughter dreams at night of people jumping out of windows.

Between the acrid ashes and the media coverage, I’m disgusted. I decide to go outside and sniff around. Kids play under the cloud of dust and ash, followed closely by their parents. Some bars, restaurants and cafes are open. I see clusters of people standing on the corners that look south. I don’t understand what they are looking at. People wander around aimlessly from one corner to the next, shooting pictures and videos.

In this town of screamers, few people talk. At the corner of Houston and Sixth Ave, next to the fire station, a crowd gathers. People cheer every time rescuers or ash-covered firefighters go by. A young woman scrutinizes a lamppost and I decide she is crazy until I focus my eyes on the post and see the flyers with the pictures and names of the missing and the desperate messages imploring for news of their whereabouts.

I cry because these bastards have paralyzed my unstoppable city. But not completely. On the opposite corner, two Italian restaurants have opened their doors and the beautiful people eat pasta and drink wine au plein air, air rife with traces of asbestos, pulverized concrete and what in my view have got to be the human ashes of at least five thousand souls. However, I’m not surprised. I always knew that New Yorkers would never relinquish their inalienable right to go out for dinner, regardless of whatever catastrophe the future may bring. With this logic, I tell my husband, who is safe and sound in Panama, that this is the best week to make reservations at the hottest New York restaurants. But who has the appetite?
Since there is no traffic south of 14^thSt., some people make their dreams come true and glide through the empty streets on their rollerblades and bicycles.

Something never before seen: people look you in the eye as they pass you by. Men see me walking alone and look like they are ready to comfort me (and look like they are ready to be comforted back). The way things are, it seems that this week all the single girls may find a beau.

A guy gives me a small comic book. The doodles are very modern, but the content turns out to be an exhortation to return to the lap of our lord Jesus Christ, sponsored by one of those sects there’s no shortage of in this country, of loony evangelicals who are way too eager for the end of the world. Of course, they could not take long to materialize. How did they get to New York is beyond me, Greenwich Village even more so. Or were they already here?

At night there is thunder and lightning and military planes zoom by. I’m not scared. I have the air conditioner on to avoid hearing the silence. 

Thursday, September 13. 

North of 14^th Street, Manhattan seems perfectly normal, except taxis refrain from honking their insane horns. In the advertising agency I work at, I learn that one of our colleagues has lost his niece. My eyes tear up with indignation constantly.

Some of our clients have asked us to take a look at our commercials currently on air to make sure they don’t say things like “ A delicious explosion of flavor” or “A bomb of refreshment”. We make jokes in bad taste: “The Osama of sodas”, “A Jihad of nutrition for your family”.

Bush has declared that we all should go out at noon and pray at the worship place of our choice, which seems to me the stupidest idea that can occur to the president of a country in crisis, in a city which may still harbor extremists strapped with explosives. Besides, as an agnostic, I feel frankly discriminated against. In fact, I feel very alone in my distaste for these government-sponsored paroxisms of spirituality.

To judge from the tone that the media here have adopted, from now on we will be exposed to an indiscriminate barrage of sentimentalism and cheap patriotism. I have already started getting despicable chain letters with feelings of unity, prayer and revenge. The news are no longer news. They are lachrymose testimonies of the poor people who are desperately looking for their dead ones. I wonder what they are saying in the Middle East. What does Saddam think, for instance, what has Muammar declared, what’s the story in Kabul. If I watch the local news, I’m never going to find out. Here they are showing a paramedic that found a doll amid the rubble (there’s always one) and he intends to erect a monument with it if no one claims it.

The cloud of acrid dust has spread beyond 14^th street. I search for mouth masks at the drugstores. They are all out.

Bush, who since the incident, has the mien of a kid lost in the supermarket, uses an inflammatory and reductive rhetoric that seems taken straight out of a Hollywood action flick. We’re gonna smoke them, he says, Wanted, dead or alive. I haven’t the slightest doubt that this helps incite the incidents of harassment against members of the Arab-American community, and what is worse, against anybody who wears a beard and/or a turban. An idiot screams at the owner of a falafel joint nearby, “you make money here, but this is my country”, followed by a string of invective. Even though there are four Arabs and one aggressor, they remain silent. Standing half a block away, I can feel their fear. I don’t dare intervene.

Between testimonies, I read in the CNN news ticker the following item: an Islamic extremist in a German jail called the American authorities and warned them that there would be an attack on the WTC. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about the fact that Osama was trained by the CIA and that the Taliban is the result of American intervention in Afghan affairs. Nobody mentions these details, except some liberal friends that send me emails with such information. But, like Seamus Milne of The Guardian said, Americans react as if this instance of terror is a sheer impulse of evil that came out of nowhere, random and incomprehensible. They can't conceive that they may have done something to provoke it. They don’t know how much and why they are hated. It’s true. Information exists in this country and it is available to anybody, but few are interested. In general, the lack of American curiosity about the world is alarming.

 Union Square has become a spontaneous meeting ground to write thoughts, leave votive candles, hang pictures, play the congas. A group of young people sing and dance Give Peace A Chance, a song I’ve always found intolerably kitschy. A vigil has been organized at 7 pm. People are asked to light a candle in memory of the victims. A big crowd has gathered. A couple appears dressed as the Twin Towers. They are on stilts, dressed in black velvet leggings covered with shards of mirrors. They dance among the people, who are taking pictures. Why do these expressions of solidarity disgust me so much? Because they are vulgar, childish and innocent. Everything becomes a circus. I go to a movie and spend the entire screening thinking that an extremist is going to blow us all to pieces. 

Friday, September 14.

A regular day. North of 14th St. it looks like nothing ever happened. Taxis blare and create jams, people eat in restaurants.  New York, as usual.  

Saturday, September 15.

A friend who was upstate at the time of the catastrophe wants me to go with him to Canal St., which is now the border of the city. He wants to see something concrete. The only concrete thing to see are hordes of people with little American flags and tourists. People are snapping up postcards with pictures of the towers. The only concrete thing there is to see is a smoking crater at the end of the city’s canyons.

We have lunch at a restaurant where we are treated as if we had descended straight from heaven. Every two minutes they ask us if the food is to our liking. In fact, it is excellent. It is the first decent meal I’ve had since Tuesday. I feel it has been prepared with an intense desire to forget everything and come back to our banal normalcy. It tastes like glory.

A group of friends and I go to the movies. We need to get out of this funk. We pick Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of The Assassins, based on the book by Fernando Vallejo. The film is in Spanish, which is delicious. And it turns out to have plenty of resonance. It’s about a different kind of terror (drug violence in Colombia), but it is hilarious, blasphemous, violent, and we enjoy it. A lot of its dark humor escapes the small audience. One of us says that when you live with the social injustice that causes this kind of savagery, you have a much more refined sense of irony. A phrase in the film is burnished in my mind. I paraphrase: 

“But child, don't you know that the difference between thought and action is civilization?"

My friends go home but I don't want to go to sleep. I go back to Union Square. The candles and the congas are still there. There’s a group of pale bearded guys and skeletal women with long skirts that sing songs only they know. Another sect. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of lit votive candles, bouquets of flowers, poems, exhortations for moderation, prudence and sanity. The catch phrase of the day is "An eye for an eye and we all go blind". People, respectful, are silent.

I find a Mexican flag. Someone has written on it 500 mexican ilegals (sic) unnamed. I find it an exaggerated number, but I don't doubt it. They are the kitchen helpers, the pizza delivery guys, the bathroom cleaners. I have not seen photocopies of their portraits, nor their names, or faces or teary relatives on TV. 

I can’t say I’m praying for them and their families, but my mind finally becomes silent.

We The People

As seen in the West Village on July 4:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Better than the ubiquitous flags. 

Crowd Control is Getting Out of Line

I was very happy when I heard the news that the Marriage Equality law passed in New York. No less is expected from New York. For this is New York, and it is how it should be.

So now everybody is going to have equal access to the Wedding Industrial Complex Ripoff Machine (flowers: $20; same flowers for a wedding: $200). Mazel Tov!

I wrote to Republican senators Saland and Grisanti on Friday morning to remind them that this is not a religious issue but an issue of legal discrimination and civil rights.
I'd like to believe that they read my letter and said, what the hell, why not?

On Friday night there were lots of people celebrating in front of the Stonewall Inn, and I wondered just how many of them actually feel the immediate hankering to get married. But even though the legalization of gay marriage in NYS is an enormously important issue with real-life consequences for many couples and families, it is also a highly symbolic issue that positively affects those who have no intention of marrying. It means that the barriers are coming down. It means that we are becoming a more evolved and fair society.

The barriers that seem to keep multiplying, however, are those horrid methods of crowd control used by the NYPD since 9/11. The first gay pride parade I ever witnessed in NYC was about 14 years ago. People would line up in the streets and the parade would go by. I barely remember a barricade. But now, NYC crowd control has has an almost fascistic, authoritarian feel. We got out of the subway on Sheridan Square and because parade watchers were squeezed inside the barricades like human Spam, we decided that we didn't want to be penned in like cattle so we wanted to go back into the subway from which we had just emerged less than one foot away, yet the police made us get on a tortuous line and snake around the block in order to do so. I respect that there is order. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy living here is that people respect order, but this is ridiculous.

Americans are oblivious to the fact that they are the best behaved crowds in the world. Americans see a random person standing in front of them and they instinctively form a line. Where I come from, and in most countries, rich and poor, people either do not fathom the concept of an orderly crowd or they do anything in their power to fight it.
Just see what happens every time you try to board a plane going somewhere other than the US. It doesn't matter how many times before people have been in the same situation, they crowd around the gate as if they were in a mosh pit. So since Americans are so good at policing themselves at crowds, why does the police feel the need to treat American crowds like POWs? Americans are so good, that even when they are treated like cattle, they quietly obey (for the most part) and they continue having a good time. In other places, these kinds of constraints would spark stampedes or rioting.
I see this as the next great civil rights issue: the right to enjoy a parade without feeling punished by the police.

The Asphalt Jungle

...is right here in my backyard, which is called New York City.
As a couple of hawks make their nest in prime real estate, overlooking Washington Square Park, down below, in the park itself, there is another kind of wildlife. And it's not half as civilized as those peaceful birds.
To wit: I met a friend from abroad and we had a lovely conversation in one of the benches. Later, in my house, she realized she had forgotten her cellphone in the park. I called the number and someone answered. For a split second I thought a decent citizen was about to give us the phone back, but the voice on the other end quickly disabused me of the notion.
"You gonna pay for it?"
I could hear it was still in the park because I heard someone playing the trumpet.
"Why should I? It's my phone".
He hung up.
I called back.
"Hey, you have my phone".
"Yeah. How much you willin' to pay for it?"
I, oblivious to the notion of negotiation with an extortionist, insisted that I should not pay for squat since the phone belonged to me.
He hung up and turned it off. My friend wished I had bargained.
It was already dark and we started looking for any of the many homeless denizens of the park that all look like they were run over by a particularly gnarly steamroller. I profiled anybody indigent with a cellphone in his hand, of which there were several.
Then I heard the trumpet player. So we followed the sound. He was serenading a couple who looked blameless. I asked a very tall guy with two phones and camo pants. I got screamed at in that menacing way that some Black people use to scare White people.
So one of his friends tells me to pay him no mind, he is a drunk, but he himself happens to know who has my phone and he feels our pain and he can get it for us, but the guy is going to want money for it. Yep. And I'm from Missouri. I was ready to go to the police, but my friend was willing to pay a forced reward. So she bargained from 40 bucks to 20, to 30. The guy left (I am convinced he had the phone in his pocket the whole time) and then after no more than five minutes, came back with the phone. But my friend only had two twenties and I had not brought my purse, so he went to give the money to "the guy" and came back to tell us we could go get the change ourselves, pointing at some other dude who was walking away. When we balked, the good Samaritan turned on a dime and became extremely aggressive, a studied but convincing performance designed to scare the hell out of us. It didn't scare me, but I was not about to find out whether he was hamming it up or really meant it. I wanted to go to the police camper parked next to the park, because the principle really bothers me. I don't care if your ass is full of crack, I just hate to be taken for a fool. But my friend, a peaceful soul, a believer in the healing power of positive energy, was just happy to get her phone back. I wish he gets such an enormous feast out of his $40 worth of crack or whatever it is he takes to be so dumb and so smart at the same time, that his brain explodes. Karma.

Broadway Scorecard

What I am about to do may seem dastardly, but I feel like doing it anyway. Here's a quick guide to what shows to see on Broadway, according to moi. Go to the TKTS booth on the day and you may be able to find 50% off tickets for most of these shows.

• Good People by David Lindsay Abaire, with Frances McDormand. A decent play but worth it just for seeing McDormand tear up the stage. Tate Donovan and Reneé Elise Goldsberry are also excellent.

• Marie and Bruce by Wallace Shawn, with Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley. An acid, surreal romantic comedy, if you can call it that. The two leads are very good. Warning:  this play is not a crowdpleaser.

• The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirguis with Chris Rock and Bobby Cannavale. Quite entertaining, if predictable and underwritten. Chris Rock is no actor, but he can land a punch line. The rest of the cast is excellent.

• Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. If you need a very engaging mental workout, this ambitious and erudite play may be for you. A beautiful production.

• Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Joseph Rajiv, with Robin Williams. Subpar writing on the level of a pretentious semi-literate teenager with delusions of genius.
Avoid like the plague.

• Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth with Mark Rylance. Not as incredibly awesome as its enormous buzz but pretty brilliant. Also pretty long.

• The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare with Ben Stiller, Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Good revival directed by David Cromer. The dames are awesome and the play is a hoot.

• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Brian Bedford is sublime and so are the oneliners. 

So Much For Letter Writing

Oh well, my lovely missive to Mr. Pei was totally beside the point. It turns out that because the community opposed NYU's plans to add a fourth tower to Mr. Pei's design, and he disagreed with the fourth tower, now they are going to punish us even worse, by razing our supermarket and building a much bulkier, bigger and uglier building right on the corner, right across from the only building that does not house NYU faculty.  This is the monstrosity they plan to erect in front of my windows:

 

They claim Pei's firm likes this plan better. If they do, they are blind and utterly insensitive to the people who live in the area. This is not a victory for the community. This is much worse than the proposed tower, which at least tried to be graceful and blend in with the existing layout and was not really closely obstructing anyone's view. No matter what the plan, the fact that NYU's insistence in building smack on the superblock is horrible.  Now we are going to have to put up with far more people, in an already crowded area, our lovely plaza is going to be deformed and overcrowded and where the hell are we going to go for overpriced groceries? Plus, Greenwich Village is going to look like downtown Detroit. But unfortunately NYU owns the land and they can do whatever they please. They can raze the Village and build their repulsive eyesores all over it as they have been doing for years. I hate that Philip Johnson library of theirs, which looks like a bunker. I hate the Skirball building across it. We already live in their campus. They tried to appease the community, which was fighting not to compromise on anything and this is the terrible result.

A Letter To I.M. Pei

Do you know what cranky New York alte cockers like me do? We write letters! I have been known to write to Mayor Bloomberg (rats, the demise of small businesses), to Chuck Schumer (universal healthcare), to American Airlines (a flight to Buenos Aires with not even a towelette), etc.
I wrote this one to distinguished architect I.M. Pei, the man who designed and built the place I live in:

Dear Mr. Pei:

I live in one of your Silver Towers. I have been enjoying my spacious and bright apartment here since 1992. As I’m sure you are aware, NYU is planning to build a 400-feet high hotel tower on the superblock site of your towers. This building will strongly affect what I think is your lasting legacy, which is the lovely harmony of the towers as they stand today, but most importantly, the open communal spirit of the plaza that anchors the towers.  I wish you could see what goes on on our plaza every day. Children play, elderly neighbors huddle together to catch the sun, people have lunch alfresco: it’s a wonderful public space, with an expansive sense of openess, a unique luxury in a city like New York. It is now being threatened by the forced inclusion of a fourth tower in an area that is already quite densely populated.   

So many of us live in the Silver Towers and yet the plaza is never too noisy or too busy. It’s an incredibly civilized urban space, where people come together. Bring in a hotel in the entrance to the plaza and part of the open and spacious spirit of the plaza would be lost.

Since NYU’s expansion plan began, I have been impressed by our community’s efforts to preserve the superblock as it is. It got landmark status, but this does not seem to deter NYU. I am an amateur lover of architecture and I know cities must change and new buildings must arise (as they did in 1960 when you built these towers). But I truly believe that squeezing in a fourth tower here would destroy the wonderful harmony of the space you designed and would impoverish the quality of life of its residents.

If you have any say in the matter, I respectfully urge you to consider the lives of the neighbors that are enriched day by day by the graceful and unique place we live in. This hotel can be built somewhere else.

Sincerely,

 

The Grande Enchilada.
(trying to do my part).

Halloween Vs. Day of Dead

Spooky holiday deathmatch!
And the uncontested winner still is the Mexican Day of the Dead! Both holidays, I assume, arise from the same Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve, or Día de Todos los Santos, in Spanish. I'm a Jew, so don't think for a second that I am about to give you the historical context for this asseveration. I'm talking out of my ass. But I can still tell you why Day of Dead kicks Halloween's ass. If this starts the next Mexican-American war, so be it.

Basically, there is a very simple reason: Day of the Dead, which I assume, also out of my ass, has been going on in this continent longer than Halloween, has not yet reached a stage of commercial apotheosis in which its original meaning is totally lost under the maniacal ringing of the cash register. Yes, you can buy pan de muerto, Day of the Day bread, or sugar or chocolate skulls with your name or that of your loved ones inscribed on them, but most of the money spent on Day of the Dead celebrations goes towards buying bunches of cempazúchitl, the orange flower that decorates the altars to your beloved dead, and the stuff that goes in said altars, which is the stuff the dead used to love when they were alive (mostly involving tequila, mezcal, cigarettes, Japanese Mexican peanuts and other sundry pleasures and vices). No need to be gouged on a green itchy wig and a cheap Tinkerbell costume at Ricky's.

Moreover, the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition is a fascinating combo of the indigenous cult of the dead of the Precolumbian cultures with the Christian tradition that was shoved down their throats later on. Whereas Halloween has long ago lost its connection to its original intent, whatever that was, Day of the Dead insists on getting emotionally and spiritually close to the actual dead, not just look like them.  Besides, in Mexico, people are natural artists. They make things with flowers and paper and cardboard, not just plastic made in Taiwan.

Unfortunately, Halloween has made enormous inroads all over Mexico. I spent Day of the Dead in Oaxaca several years ago and kids were dressed as mummies or ghouls and trick or treating for cash, as opposed to candy, which comes in handy when you actually have issues getting enough food to eat. But the beautiful, deeply personal, deeply heartfelt tradition of Day of the Dead prevails.

That's my hero, Benito Juarez in the left bottom corner.

Yes, there were some obnoxious rich Mexican juniors after midnight in the cemetery who hired a band of Mariachis and were disturbing everyone with their drunken hollering (and, of course, if the humble people honoring their dead were as annoyed as I was, they did not show it). But to walk into a cemetery late at night and see the graves lit by candles surrounded by these gorgeous flowers, and see the families sitting at the graves, bringing their dead their atole (sweet corn porridge), and communing with them, that certainly beats the hordes of drunken idiots tottering about the Village in New York City. I'm no party pooper. I used to hate Halloween when I was a child, but I like it in New York because the grown ups get dressed up. I think it's lots of fun. But it has become pointless. And isn't it richer when celebrations actually have a point?

Halloween masks in Oaxaca

"I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round..."

Grave at the cemetery. 

The entrance to Oaxaca's cemetery at night

American plastic ghosts decorate a grave with Mexican panache

"You are dust and to dust you shall return"

A humble cemetery during the day.

High Holidays

Today, as I was coming back from my Tai Chi class, I shared the elevator with this family of neighbors, who I always thought were Hindu. The father is about my age or even younger, but he has several teenage boys. They are all extremely handsome and polite. In fact, of the people I run into in the elevator, they are among my favorite. They are always sunny and unfailingly nice. They don't have that horrid NY custom of not acknowledging anyone you don't know, or going into an elevator without greeting people.
Today they were wearing these beautiful embroidered white Nehru suits and I told them they looked fabulous. Special occasion?,  I asked. "Our holiday, the end of Ramadan", they tell me. The father was carrying a small rug for prayers. 
So they're Muslims. Who knew?
"It's our holiday too, the Jewish New Year", I say.
"Happy new year!", they tell me. I ask if they are fasting. The fast ended yesterday, and tonight they feast. We feast tonight too, I say. In fact, I'm on a diet until feast time.
Through my mind, and maybe theirs as well, ran thoughts of ugly attacks against the downtown mosque and even uglier images of morons with ridiculous mustaches and retarded Koran burning notions. I almost wanted to apologize, but I figure that the whole point of our convo was that here we are, living in the same building, in the same city, following similar ancient customs, liking each other without the intrusion of prejudice, hurting no one.
So my point, children, is, that we can all fast and feast in peace and harmony. There is absolutely no reason not to.
I always wish for peace and health and joy during the holidays. Let's add intelligence and common sense to the mix.
Happy Ramadan
Shana Tova
Everybody behave!

Memo to Manhattan District Attorney:

You better prosecute this bitch.
Otherwise, I will call for a massive rampage of shoplifting at Sephora, since they are so very forgiving. 

I posed this splendid idea to my fellow blogger Laura Martinez, but as she wisely pointed out, if she or I attempt to shoplift $100 worth of beauty goodies, we're as good as deported and wearing pink boxers chez Sheriff Arpaio. (Actually, not me cause ich bin ein American). But maybe Laura and any other girls without the right papers, complexions, connections or last names.
So (and I say this with pain in my heart, for I heart Sephora), let's boycott Sephora, or vote against that particular district attorney when the time comes. Or express our enormous displeasure at the fact that the very spawn of a self-righteous law enforcer, is getting a pass. And that goes for La Lohan, too. Wasn't she supposed to spend 90 days in the slammer?
WTF?
No Justice. No Peace.

My 2 Cents on The Mosque

At first, when I heard somebody wanted to build a Mosque near Ground Zero, I thought, like I assume most everybody: why pinkt there, of all places?  But now that it looks like it's going to happen, and after learning that it is not going to be the headquarters for Al Qaeda or the Taliban, as some people seem to think, I say why not? It's gonna have a swimming pool, for crying out loud, how fundamentalist could it be?
We have been complaining since that terrible day that there haven't been enough, if any, moderate Muslim voices in the West, or elsewhere, to REPUDIATE and neutralize the fanatical fundamentalist minority. That there is not enough public presence of moderate Islam to shift the balance back to the religion as most Muslims practice it (without bloodshed and savagery).
So now that there is such a thing, The Cordoba Initiative, people react as if it Osama Bin Laden himself was building the thing. Stupidly, they counter radicalization and extremism with more of the same.
The people who display knee jerk reactions against the Mosque are not interested in context, content or subtleties, and probably don't even know what Córdoba stands for (the greatest period of prosperity, scientific and cultural advancement and interfaith tolerance during Muslim rule in Spain). Their arguments go from the emotional to the idiotic. From "it's an insult to the memory of the fallen", to the ridiculous "Muslims like to put victory monuments in places they conquer".
There is not much more I can say that Mayor Bloomberg did not say more eloquently in his excellent speech yesterday in favor of the building of the Mosque. He was a shining example of common sense: a Jew and a Republican (at least on paper) making an impassioned and sensible case for why blocking the Mosque is contrary to everything this country stands for.
I'm tired of people like Sarah Palin and her fellow Republicans, most of who live outside of this town but appropriate 9/11 and pollute it with cheap patriotism (still the last refuge of the scoundrel) for their own political gain, who do not understand what New York is all about, but who represent everything that is anathema to this city and the diverse people who live in it: censorship, pettiness, intolerance, racism, ignorance.
Not that we are perfect, but the haters are mistaken that this is about political correctness and liberal bleeding hearts. It is about true democracy. It is about true freedom of religion. About true separation of church and state. About the true values of the Constitution.
In New York City we share the sidewalks with people of all stripes and we live together in close proximity, unprotected by cocoons of cars and forbidding suburbs that bore people to inanity and keep everybody safely separate in their stupid prejudices.
That is why we are the greatest city on Earth. And why we refuse to have the mentality of a suburb. We are not Arizona. And never will be. So back off. 

I'm breaking my silence

Can't take it anymore.
Warning: I am exceedingly cranky.
Broken foot in wonderful Spring weather: not good for the mood.

1. Reporting a smoking car to the police is not heroic. It's what anybody in their right mind should do under the circumstances.  If there is one thing about the American mentality that drives me crazy is this obsession with heroics. Heroism is to step into an oncoming train to save a person's life. Or to speak out against injustice at the risk of losing your freedom or your life. Seeing a suspicious vehicle about to catch fire in the most crowded area in America and calling the police is not heroism. It's common sense. So all the vendors: not heroes. STFU.

2. A trader's error (and Greece) send Wall Street into a tailspin? A simple misguided finger is capable of wreaking havoc on the world's economy? Very scary. Traders, look where your fingers are going, okay?
As for Greece, shut up and put up. You are rife with corruption. Your rich don't pay taxes, and you live beyond your means. Fuck you.

3. Hapless fucking idiot bomber: You are an idiot. All of you people who allow your brains to be manipulated by sick extremist clerics are monumental morons, including those of you who are competent. There should be a circle in hell devoted to abject human stupidity. And it should be the one with the worst torments. Either that or Guantanamo. I'm always against Guantanamo, except when things like these happen, where I should think we should make an exception and hang these people by the balls. Seriously, I do believe that this guy is an American citizen and should be tried in a court of law in the system we know. I'm just ranting.

4. Joe Lieberman is a cunt.

5. Question: Why does the American media pay attention to vantz from hell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Why do Charlie Rose and George Stephanopolous think that he deserves to be interviewed? What do they expect he is going to say? Something rational? Something worth listening to? They like the public humiliation?  This guy comes to New York, he should be ignored. The pustulent little vantz loves the attention. Stop giving it to him.

May Day

                                                     La Pasionaria, Jr.

Real Terror

From the NYT, reporting on yesterday's bomb scare:

A group of people on a high school senior trip from Jacksonville, Fla., said they were stuck for about an hour and a half in the Bubba Gump restaurant at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue. 

Now, that is horrifying.

Today, life goes on. We're going to demonstrate our solidarity with NYC by checking out the food truck fair in Hell's Kitchen.

Easter Parade

               Great idea for an Easter bonnet. Mexicans Represent!

I'm no Bill Cunningham, but considering these were taken with the iPhone camera, not too shabby.

Tourist: "This is the greatest city in the world!"  You said it, sister.

They were also in attendance. 

Thursday in the Park with Moi

Everybody was out catching sunshine today in the afternoon in Washington Square Park, a place where the crazy, loony, eccentric, bohemian, neurotic, rich, poor and middle class villagers still converge, the Universe bless this park.
You can sit for three hours on a bench and just watch shit unfold in front of your eyes. It never gets boring. I saw a burly Black guy happily give a foot massage to his girlfriend, who lay prostrate and with the sense of entitlement of the Queen of Sheba. Good for them.
I saw a chorus of extremely white kids that looked way too wholesome for New York and who were clearly influenced by Glee. Their shtick was to sing unsingable pop songs a cappella, such as Beyonce's Crazy In Love, a song I hate even with full orchestration. Their wholesomeness was very disturbing, but I'm not sure that they were Christian evangelists, as I always suspect of people who are too wholesome, too happy and too white.
I made friends with Henriette, a totally lucid and charming 100 year old Belgian woman, who will be 101 in July and who recently had a stroke and was a bit frustrated she couldn't walk anymore. She didn't look a day over 90, wheelchair notwithstanding. Usually I don't speak to anyone, because I am a New York crank of the sullen variety,  but she complimented me on my green sneakers and we struck up a conversation. She was lovely.
It looks like the fashion among the young is an exhumation of the worst of Eighties style, sans shoulder pads. Apparently it is the height of chic to walk around with shredded pantyhose, ugly booties and uglier skorts, looking pasty and wearing hideous colors and shoes the color of dogshit.
As is usual, the eternal hippies with their jam sessions were in attendance.

This dude slept so profoundly and in such an uncomfortable position, that for a moment I thought he was dead. A homeless-looking Black guy, one of those pesky nutcases who love to engage with people, seemingly unaware (or perhaps much too aware) that his sociability is totally unrequited, looked at him sleeping and poked him hard in the chest a couple of times, yet the dude didn't budge. When he finally woke up, it took him like 20 minutes to discern he was on Earth, then he smoked a cigarette and fell asleep again. I wonder if he is a junkie, a narcoleptic or a very exhausted man.
The same Black crazy guy then decided to participate with the Wholesome Wonder Bread Choir. He didn't sing; he imitated their dance movements with absolute precision and in total synch with them. It was hilarious. They paid him no mind, which gives them New York brownie points for a good display of indifference. Perhaps not so wholesome after all.
Speaking of dance, there was a really obnoxious troupe of what I assume are modern dance students from Tisch, showing off their tacky moves and wanting to be far more interesting than they were. They really annoyed me, with their studied pretense of unselfconsciousness and their jerky, ungraceful movements. In this park it's hard to say the next sentence about anyone, but these people were embarrassing.
What else did I see? Three neurotic Schnaussers barking like madmen at any dog that went by.  A guy who also looked homeless sat next to me and started fishing out something from his pocket. It crossed my mind that he might be engaging in some happy time with his dick, to judge from the urgent way he burrowed in there. But it turns out that once he found this little stub of a pencil, he started drawing in a pad, copying from nature, and pretty well. He gave a gummi bear to one of the schnaussers, who almost choked while trying to eat it, but came back for seconds anyway.

China Chalet

Yesterday night, out on the town with my favorite party peeps, I keep hearing we're going to a party at a place called China Shelly, that I've never heard from before. After many a frantic iphone call, it is determined that this thing, whatever it is, is on Broadway and Broad St, down at the tip of our magnificent island, where fortunes are made by few and lost by many, every day.
So a most fearless and enterprising friend gets the nine of us into a limo waiting outside Balthazar.
Driver: You called for me?
Fearless and enterprising friend (lying): Yes.
Eight bucks a pop to ride to our destination in style, yet with a delicious frisson of embarrassment (are we a little long in the tooth for this?), and for some, bittersweet prom memories, but, admit it, pretty much everybody having a ball. Some riders demand the limo stop at the corner before, to avoid looking like douches (needless to say there isn't a certified douche in this group, so I don't understand their concern). They can cover their faces a la Lindsay Lohan when she steps out of cars without her panties, for all I care, but we rode a tacky limo and by tacky limo shall we arrive.
So it turns out that the mysterious China Shelly is something called China Chalet (am I going deaf?), which makes more sense, if not decor-wise, for China Chalet is one of those Chinese restaurants where the idea of elegance seems to have sprung from the mind of a Beijing bureaucrat, circa 1975. 
We are greeted by a longish line of mellowish arty type supplicants at a carpeted staircase. The two-headed Cerberus at the top of the stairs is comprised by a young stairmistress wearing some sort of one-armed fur a la Fred Flinstone, and by the best bouncer out of Central Casting I have ever come across.  He has to be Eye-talian. He wears his jet black hair with a black suit and a black shirt and a yellow satin tie. His face is lined with deep creases, I'd like to venture as a result to dumping way too many bodies in the East River. But he is suave. He cracks wise. He means business. His idea of humor is to tell someone they can proceed, and then say, "just kidding". He tells a group of nine that only five can make it in (why do they do this shit, bouncers?) But in the end we all get in without waiting too long or supplicating too much, once again through the ministrations of our fearless and enterprising friend, who seduces Yellow Tie with her wily charms.
The moment we step into the place, number one, and as is usually the case, it's not as full as the guards outside would have it, and number two, it looks like a Bar Mitzvah. Not because of the age of the people (although a lot do look like tweens), but because of the space, which is a generic banquet space with tables covered in white cloths. Relaxed arty types sit and talk quietly; a most urbane and well behaved crowd.
There is a bar space, where an endless loop of Billy Joel's greatest hits is playing (highlight: New York State of Mind), and when that is not happening, some old fashioned Cuban music I suspect is the province of the old bartender, also out of Central Casting, who moves at the speed of silence. For some unexplained reason, the bar is not chock full of thirsty types, and ordering and drinking is a leisurely and enjoyable affair. Way in the back, a carpeted room has been made into a dance floor, (not only comfy, but not as noisy), and a dj is spinning solidly good dance music. It's a great place to have a party and the only Chinese restaurant I've ever been to with nary an egg roll in sight. No semblance of food whatsoever, which, to judge from the look of things at China Chalet, may not necessarily be a bad thing.

The Snow Effect

                         
 1. New York is QUIET. In the Park it's even QUIETER (except for the lovely shrieks of joy of sledding kiddies).
2. People in the park say hi and smile at one another (in the city slush, not so much).
3. Central Park is too beautiful. Too spectacularly, gorgeously, magnificently, awesomely beautiful.

4. We ran into a fashion shoot wherein a model was wearing like 6 inch heel sandals with BARE feet. And a straw hat. And a Summer dress. Neither rain, nor hail, nor wind nor sleet, nor snow will prevent fashion from being ridiculously idiotic at all times. Her handlers were pretending to be concerned for the wellbeing of the model, but we know better. "Screw her frostbitten little toes, let's get the shot".
5. After walking in the snow, we were ravenous. And I feel like I've been tumbled around by an avalanche.