Nylons

Some years back I ordered a book online that was written by a friend of mine, a humorist named Robert Lanham. (Rob's first book, The Hipster Handbook, was a small cultural sensation, and an unfortunate one if your zip code happened to be 11211.) I can't be sure which of his books it was, but it was either Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic, or The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right. I'm leaning toward the latter, though either title would do my story plenty of good.

Leaving my house in a hurry a few days later, I saw a yellow envelope on my front stoop, grabbed it and stuffed it into a bike pannier on my way out to wherever I was going. I forgot about the package until the next day when I was leaving a friend's place in Queens, again, heading who knows where (a reality of my freelance status is that I have no routine in my life), when I remembered the book in the bike bag. I took it out of the pannier, and removed the book from the envelope, tossing the now empty, yellow (manila?), mini-bubble-wrap-stuffed envelope into a municipal New York City trash can (a tall green metal affair with a small hole on top, designed to prevent people from dumping their household trash in city garbage cans—even though the same agency collects both kinds of trash and brings both kinds to the same place) on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street.

Let me tell you about the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street in Sunnyside, Queens. There is now a fancy Korean deli there, called, simply, Jonathan Market (perhaps a distant cousin of Susan Laundromat, the Chinese laundry near my house in Brooklyn). Thank God for Jonathan Market. For years, the corner "store" at Forty-Seventh & Queens was an establishment nobody in their right mind would ever want to enter. They "sold" or rented "videos"—not DVDs, but VHS tapes inside boxes so dusty you couldn't read the titles. I only know this from glancing in the windows when I walked by. I never went in there, as there are enough dusty items at my place already. But there was something else in there—a collection of items several notches below dusty, used VHS tapes on the desirability scale. On the shelves of a tall metal rack--the kind you'd expect to find reading material on in a church narthex—against one side wall were displayed packages of ladies' nylons from 1960 or thereabouts, or so I would guess. (Do I need to mention dust again?) These were not your L’Eggs variety of packaging, but nylon stockings folded around a very thin, flat cardboard insert, nestled inside a clear plastic sleeve.

Around the time my Lanham book had arrived and I was leaving my friend's place and was opening the yellow (manila?) envelope on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street, the corner store was starting to undergo the transformation from un-shopped in, dusty VHS tape and ancient ladies' nylons hot-spot to the aforementioned and glorious Jonathan Market. The metal rack with the flat packages of nylons had been hefted out to the corner where it now sat, a sidewalk relic to fifty year old "fashion". The rack was ten feet away from the municipal green garbage can with the narrow opening on top. (I'd be lying if I said that I paid more than a glance's worth of attention to any of this. That's a great thing about New York City: so much happens all the time that it's as if nothing does. The two things that draw crowds are 1] heinous crimes and 2] crowds themselves. Just yesterday, on my way to a meeting, I witnessed a crowd of people gathered on Prince Street in Soho. A mixture of tourists and locals stood in concerned clumps, variously glancing west, reacting to something--or so it seemed. I had to investigate. I steered my bicycle over there to see what had happened. [Please, not another dead bicyclist.] I reached the space in front of the mass and finally saw... nothing. Like street fish, New Yorkers collect in schools for no other reason than that they saw others standing there looking at... nothing.) Seconds after passing the rack of nylons I tossed the empty envelope into the garbage can.

Three days later I walked into my house and noticed a thin yellow envelope at the bottom of the small piles of bills and other junk my landlord had kindly left for me on the stairs up to my apartment. The envelope looked familiar—and upon further inspection, I saw that the return address was the same as had been on the envelope when Rob’s book arrived earlier in the week. Indeed, it was the same envelope, and it was still open where I had torn off the cardboard strip on one end. Inside was a dusty old package of ladies’ nylons.

Letter from Chicago

From Tara: "Chicago has a prison downtown. Arrow slit windows and all. Tall, with an excercise yard on the roof. Guys in bright orange are always whistling at women walking on the street thirty stories below. Across from the prison is the building I work in. Across from the building I work in is a garage, the roof of which is level with the tenth floor of my building. Ladyfriends of the convicts like to go up to the roof of the garage and strip for the prisoners when they are in the excercise yard on the roof. If your office is on the side of the building that faces the garage, you could be having a board meeting and suddenly have nakedness appear across the narrow alley that separates our building from the garage. Most of the tenants don't seem to mind too much. Still. I have to call all the tenants on that side of the building to ask if they have seen any 'objectionable behavior' lately."

The Burrito Incidents, Parts I & II

From Lynn:

Part I
"We are here. In Maine. I am getting a little restless with some symptoms of Cabin Fever. Yes, my foot is healing and is no longer purple and as big as an overgrown zucchini. I was not able to personally acquaint myself with the guilty bone spur, the size of a human thumb. It would have made a great pendant. I do use crutches sometimes but that is only for support. I feel fine about driving which apparently there is some difference of opinion on that matter. I tried to take the car out for a spin but [the wife] blocked my way and I couldn't leave. Locking the doors was probably not a good relationship-building move on my part, but I committed an act in desperation and I did let her in once she stopped yelling. Speaking of always acting appropriately, [the writer's wife] had another pushing-the-envelope type of incident the other day. In public. At a restaurant. With people who didn't know her THAT well. So does one apologize for manually squishing someone else's bean burrito or does one assume that everyone knows it was just a joke? Or does one assume that a couple glasses of wine just does that to people and it's okay. My point of view is that there are different standards of appropriate behavior, and that some people may interpret the burrito strangulation as an act of anger or at least not very friendly, and that an apology or at least an explanatory conversation might soothe some jittery social climbers who think decorum in public involves food respect. One friend considered an appetizer "up for grabs", whereas an entree violation would be beyond accepted community standards. He also distinguished between a dry food squeeze as opposed to a mushy refried-bean-and-salsa-type attack. The former was slightly more acceptable than the latter, the latter requiring a hand wipe and that is just going too far. In any case questionable behaviors always result in some type of consequence: passive negativity, active gross out, vicarious rebellion, physically lashing out, various levels in the humor category, or shunning. This is the normal progression of social mores that effectively controls explosive outbursts and maintains our high level of human conduct in our society today. All these reactions are still potentially active for the 8 to 10 women involved. We will see them tonight at a kids' basketball game since that is the only common denominator here. That and gender and not one of them is bald. Phone calls of mild remorse have been made, messages left with members who are suspected of being the most likely to take offense. No returned calls, however, have been received which opens up more advanced speculation. The true test will be in face-to-face contact. Judgments will be made on evidence presented. Criteria will include type and length of eye contact (if any). Length and general tone of conversation (if any), duration and type of physical contact (if any), reference to the Causal Event (if any) and who may be the initiator of contact (e.g. victim, causal agent, neutral third party). Ideally, number values could be attached to help determine the level or degree of inappropriate behavior. "Man, you were up to a level 9 last night" That would prompt an immediate and embarrassed apology. A level 2 or 3 likely could be shrugged of as alcohol induced or generally clueless. Levels 4 through 6 certainly would make you review your conduct and appropriate remedial measures should be introduced in a timely fashion. Level 10. Well, there may be no hope and the consequence may be permanent. One friend (the entree vs. appetizer guy) thought the highly effective Code Red/Orange/Yellow system that has won universal appeal for its clear, effective, concise service in winning our War on Terror, could be adapted. I objected, thinking that these types of behavioral situations are far more complex and require much more consideration than assignments to the color wheel. At any rate the real victim in this drama is the burrito owner. She APPEARS to be un-phased by the Situation and ate her burrito anyway. Later, [Name Withheld By Request]"

Part II
"K. I don't care if you want to reprint this account since it already has been repeated and much discussed. I think you should proof read it and doctor it up a bit. I still am not clear about the whole Blog idea. Partly this involves my slow grasp of the computer concept and whether they are here to stay. I understand that other people read the Blog, perhaps people you don't even know. I guess if I wrote a novel I would expect people I don't know to read it. Anonymity is critical. The identity of the Burrito Victim-as well as my wife with whom I try in my own way to successfully live--should be concealed. Maybe even change the identity of the burrito. I thought about lasagna or manicotti but then I had a manicotti incident involving [again, his wife] about 20 years ago that still comes up in conversation. Nothing erotic, mind you, just a face plant. So, maybe a pastry, or a dumpling. (Thinkin' New York.) A fast food item like a McNugget would lend a political element but lacks the mess equivalent. An enchilada would be way to coincidental. How about spaghetti or American chop suey? The gush factor would be strong and I think that is important as is familiarity and instant identity. The ethnicity somehow plays a significant role, so I'm thinking the American chop suey. I'm not sure what prompted The Squeeze. I can't remember if I asked about that particular detail or not. Sometimes when you hear a story, the climactic conclusion is so eventful that you forget about the preliminary details and you spend all mental energy trying to analyze what happened. In truth The Squeeze may have simply been a reaction. Something said. The food arrives. A response delivered. Situations just happen. That's the weird thing about boundaries. If you have none--or fewer--a lot of possibilities open up. Thus, if you are having a fun, generic conversation and a tasty-looking food item appears, one reaction would be to eat it. Another possibility would be to engage in counter-spin and render the product into a pulpy, indistinguishable mass. I think the shock effect was dominate, the contradiction effective, the surprise and advantage and the irreverence desirable. Really, I don't know what prompted this. I do know that the reactions at the basketball game were muted. It helped that Will's team pounded their archrival and the kid who Will was guarding (their best scorer) left the game in tears about which we were all very proud. A couple of attendees claimed to have not witnessed the burrito event and were sorry about that. At least one person thought it was funny. Others thought an apology really was not necessary. I felt that there was sufficient eye contact. An adequate degrees of friendliness was available from one and all. Length of conversation seemed significantly brief which is worrisome, but then the basketball game was pre-empting conversation... I did not notice any flagrant snubs so that is good unless that was the goal. Of course everyone who was at the restaurant was not at the game. So the jury is still out I think. This seems to happen a lot with humans. Everything is so damn complex. Are they telling the truth? So do they really not care? Did they really not notice? You just don't know. Then the judicial system was developed to help decipher the Truth and nothing but the Truth. So you have twelve people or whatever who pow wow about what they think happened and try to come up with one answer that sounds pretty good. Maybe they can agree. Or not. Can two people agree on one source of conflict? Did you see that animated movie Hoodwinked? Where you got to see the viewpoints of the different characters and Little Red Riding Hood. Kinda’ opens up your eyes about different points of view. She was a manipulator, and a tramp. Great movie. Then of course inevitably you come around to a comparison to the Last Supper with the twelve guys and all. That was before Equal Opportunity. Yeah, the more I think about it, I think you should really make some changes in the story. Usually, fiction is better than reality since movies, TV, and novels are our basis for reality anyway and they are always good. (However, the radio show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", Saturdays 11 AM, on NPR is my all time favorite where reality is really weird and funny both). So I am happy to lend you an idea to riff on. Take it and run and make it your own, but don't feel bad about plagiarism. When the movie comes out I could have a cameo appearance as Myself, like Gloria Allred in Rat Race, one of my top ten, but even then I think I would change my name. Later, [Name Withheld By Request]"

Another Dispatch From Maine

Another email from a friend in Maine:

"Spring happens in amazing ways.
Last week was the full moon.
On the same day the deer carcass on the ice in the pond finally fell through.
Maybe I won't swim there for a while.
L."

The Mysteries in Life Continue

An email from a friend in Maine:

"K. I was thinking about butt sniffing in context to high mammal behavior. I haven't thought a lot about this, but occasionally I have observed this type of behavior, primarily among dogs of course. And cats. Also cows, wildebeests, not sure about whales, reptiles or amphibians, or chickens. You know how with the Humanoids there is so much complexity to the issues. As I mentioned before behaviors can be misinterpreted and reactions can have varying degrees of severity. Now with butt sniffing, you get what you see--or smell. I'm not exactly sure what all a dog sniffs out, but man oh man, s/he must get a powerful message out of a snoot full. In many situations, there is the initial nose greeting, then quickly to the butt for a more meaningful acqauintance. So it appears to me that the nose smooch is just the preliminary formality. It is the other end that really counts. I would love to know the information they get out of that. And if they enjoy it. I know there a lot of taboos involved here in translating to human terms, and I am IN NO WAY advocating a change to the saluatation system. This is merely observation and comparison. The dogs just have it all pared down to simplicity which is the part I like. Most dogs can do the meet and greet and move on happily. One exception is our dog, Muna, who skips the greeting and lunges snarling for the throat. Bitch. Maybe she takes offense to the norm. Don't blame her really. Anyway since you seem to be curious about my observations, I thought I should pass this along. We as humans have evolved way beyond the sniff test. Instead we react with disgust to any product from the lower extremity. I can be that way too. I'm just saying that dogs in particular really get off on it. So the mysteries in life continue. Later, L."

In Memory Of

We will miss you, Anne, you bright star, you rapscallion, you heavy metal Brooklynite in bangs. I thought you were getting better. You said you were getting better. But now we know you weren't.

You were younger than all of us. Stupid world. Stupid me. I should have called more, but I didn't, and I'm sorry. I hardly wrote you, or even texted you. I never visited, or sent you singing-telegrams. I would have liked to have seen you one last time. Your smile was magical. Cliches abound regarding your beauty. You were in every way beautiful. Mostly, I knew you from work, but it didn't feel like work, because of you. You understood things. You just got it. You were good, and you were good at what you did. I understood the things you said, and I liked working for you.

I always wanted to know you better. You collected belt buckles, and had a rhinestone encrusted telephonic-device like Paris Hilton's before anyone besides Paris Hilton had one. You liked beer, and you wore black t-shirts featuring bands that were popular circa 1981. You loved your family. You drove a hybrid car. You acted the part of the Hippie Flute Player in Buck Nelson Presents: Lifting the Cloak of Mystery Off Rock Drumming, a movie you also produced, and which I will probably never see, no offense to anyone.

I have often been jealous of your close friends, because they were your close friends. But I'm not jealous of your close friends today.

I find solace in thinking of myself as your "close employee," possibly a category of one. Once, a long time ago, you sent me a text message that said "Stop flirting with me. I'm your boss. You can't flirt with me." But here's the thing: I hadn't been flirting with you. I had been texting you something about work. There is a difference between flirting and texting about work. Besides, you told me to stop flirting in a text message, so that's a two-way street, little missy. If you were here, I would bring this up, no matter who was around, and I'd purposely make us all feel very uncomfortable, and I would enjoy every second of it.

But you're not here, and that makes me incredibly sad. I really wish you hadn't left. I miss you already. We will all miss you. We all love you.

We love you! We love you! We love you!

Q: What's the Difference Between God and a Cinematographer?

A large number of cinematographers on American film sets happen to be from countries other than the United States. I honestly believe some of them land DP jobs not merely by dint of their talent, but because of their thick accents and cool-sounding names. Hell, some of their names are cool looking. I have personally worked with Polish, German, French, Japanese, British, Peruvian, Mexican, Dutch, Australian, and Danish cinematographers.

Nigel Bluck (not pictured here), a talented Direktor von Fotografie from New Zealand, once mentioned to me that no appropriate adjective exists to describe something from his country. His statement left me with many follow up questions, all of which he refused to answer--an interaction that could stand in for almost any interaction beween an AD and a DP on a film set.

I worked as the first assistant director on an Egyptian movie that was produced by a French company. We shot in New York and New Jersey. (I don’t know what they were thinking either.) One of the producers was a wonderful and entertaining man named Daniel whose English grammar was pitch-perfect, but who spoke in a deliciously thick French accent. Everything he said sounded tasty, or intellectual, and sometimes both. His chain smoking no doubt added a lot. One day he described for me the decidedly odd filigree of our cinematographer, who was soon to arrive in New York from his home in the U.K.

“Hong,” (also not pictured here) he said, “is Chineeze of fayze, Sowz Afreecan by birz, and Eengleesh in manner of speaking.” Years later, and I am still laughing about that one.

There are plenty of talented American cinematographers too (one is pictured here), but none of them sound as fancy-pants as the foreigners when they ask where craft service is.

[A: God doesn't think he's a cinematographer.]

As I Wrote About Thurber

As I wrote about Thurber, my eyesight weakened. As I wrote about Ross, my ten year-old ulcer reared its head. As I wrote about Winney, I fell into financial disarray. As I wrote about White, my style improved. As I wrote about Woollcott, my waistline increased. As I wrote about Gibbs, I began to sound like Gibbs.

Gotta Be A Spirit, Can't Be No Ghost

Bulworth is a political movie made prior to 9/11. Syriana is a political movie made after 9/11. Bulworth is funny, sometimes hilarious. Syriana is serious to the point of being depressing. The comedic plot of Bulworth follows a traditional storytelling structure. The papery plot of Syriana was soaked overnight in alkali, removed and hung out to dry during a desert sand storm, lit on fire, and finally run over by a Hummer. Warren Beatty wrote and directed Bulworth, and played the lead role. The main character in Bulworth inspires hope, only to be assassinated in the last reel. The main character in Syriana, played by George Clooney, demonstrates the ruthlessness and cruelty of geo-politics, only to be blown to bits by a rocket in the last reel.

The Unskeptical Eavesdropper

It was the fact of overhearing the advice the woman on the bus was giving a friend about a certain homeopathic medication that made the advice seem at all desirable. Had I known the woman and had she been speaking directly to me, I would not have taken her seriously--not for a second. My skepticism switches on only when I am not eavesdropping.