very simple

I’m normally not one to get caught up in the whole music nostalgia thing, and I like the Beatles just fine, but when I woke up this morning, NPR was broadcasting a pretty lengthy tribute to John Lennon, who was killed on this day, twenty-five years ago.

It was a little surreal – and it made me pretty sad, and I think in part it may have to do with the fact that my apartment is on the same block as the Dakota, and I now walk past the spot where it all happened on almost a daily basis (even crazier? That my stepmother, the prior resident of this apartment, had actually been living here for a good two years when it happened). There’s usually at least a few tourists out there, trying to get to the "spot" (since it’s actually inside the entryway to the courtyard, the doormen usually don’t let them past). This Saturday, there was a bigger crowd than usual, and the poor doormen were actually having a pretty rough time trying to keep the gawkers from climbing on the building pediments. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when I go outside today…

I have some memories of that day. I was only six years old, but my parents were devastated, and I remember watching the memorial services and crowds around the block (my block) on TV all day. I don’t think we left the house. I realize that living in New York, I live near history every day, but I’m normally not so conscious of being so close to it.

Anyway, I didn’t really have anything coherent to post on this subject – I just needed to get the thoughts out before I walked outside…

It’s officially been three full weeks since I left for Rome. Which, I would like to point out, is about the same amount of time that I actually got to live in my new apartment before I left on this trip.

I’m starting to feel like I’m missing things…sure, the only channels on the TV that I understand are CNN International and BBC World News, and I have relatively unfettered internet access, but something is, just, well, off.

I’m somewhat of a loner generally – there are times when there’s nothing I enjoy more than spending an entire weekend by myself, running errands, not making any "plans", just, generally, taking it easy, but I generally don’t go for three full weeks without seeing either friends or family. And I’m certainly speaking to them less on the phone because, well, it’s not exactly a local call, even if it is on a work-provided cellphone. That, and the relative alienation of not understanding anyone around me.

Maybe I’m just feeling out of it because my friend had her baby the other day (everyone’s doing great!), and I’m not going to get to see any of them for at least a few more weeks, and I know that if I was home I would at least be calling her every day to check in (as opposed to once a week) for at least the first little while…

And that’s not even taking into account the weird political shift that’s happening, like, all of a sudden in my home country…and again, I can read about it, but I can’t spend a half an hour in a co-worker’s office or on the phone with a friend just trying to wrap my head around the things that have been going on lately. When I asked my dad to send me my mail the other day, I had to tell him that I really needed my back issues of the New Yorker, and not just my bills, because I need some cultural touchstones. I almost cried when I read the cover story in this week’s NY Times magazine, and it was just a story about NY politics. But it so captured so much about why I love New York, the idea that everything that happens, happens in New York first (for good and bad), and that we’re one of the only places that was founded as specifically commercial, with no time to waste on petty puritan religious "stuff"…it’s a reason a lot of people hate New York, but it’s a reason why I love it. Ric Burns captured that essence really well in his documentary history of New York, and this article does the same thing…I know that I’m not the only one who gets sentimental when I hear phrases like "cathedrals of commerce"…

Wow, now I’m getting off track. Can you tell that I’m a little bit homesick? That, and it’s getting significantly colder and rainier around here, making it just a tad less "fun" on the rare days when I’m not working around the clock…

I so shouldn’t have had that last espresso…

I know, I know, I’m a bad blogger. It got to the point this weekend that my brother actually started hectoring me about the fact that I’ve slacking off on my "responsibilities". (reason number 1948324 to have kept this thing anonymous). Sure, some of the reason is the hurricane – I have nothing eloquent to say about it, because it’s all just so devastating. And blogging about anything else seems, just, well, frivolous. I find myself mumbling incoherently about the inadequate response of our federal government. I think Miss Alli captured how I feel perfectly.

I said to my dad this weekend that Bush should have at least given the impression that he cared, even if he didn’t. When my dad pointed out that he thought Bush just didn’t give a shit, I said "I know, but you’d think his PR advisors (who, if nothing else, are quite good at getting the president to project a certain "image") would at least have forced him to pretend, instead of allowing him to go off to fundraise in San Diego".

And look – I recognize that the levee problems were decades in the making – through both Republican and Democratic administrations, both at the federal and local level. And there will certainly be plenty of time to both repair the physical damage and improve the system. But what I’m talking about more acutely is the immediate, post-damage response of the federal government. Governor Blanco, for all of her faults in this, declared a state of emergency before the hurricane hit. Michael Brown is an imbecile – they should have stopped giving the guy access to the microphone as soon as he started blaming the victims at the same time FEMA was turning wal-mart trucks full of water away. And it’s not just him – its folks in charge of FEMA up and down the chain of command – I heard a local official on NPR on Monday, I think they were from Mississippi (lest we forget the horrendous damage there as well), discussing the fact that they had food and water to bring to stranded people, and FEMA wouldn’t allow trucks to go in without armed guards, because they local FEMA official was afraid the trucks would be hijacked. Even after the local officials told him repeatedly that there had been no incidents of violence in the Mississippi area. It got to the point where the local officials commandeered the local National Guard to take the stuff off of trucks, load it onto their helicopters, and had them fly the supplies in. At a cost of an extra $1 million in fuel. Because FEMA wouldn’t allow the trucks to go in, but said nothing about helicopters.

But I find that if I write more than that, I devolve into helpless rambling and sputtering. I keep going over the "what-ifs". In particular, it’s totally possible that instead of a hurricane, a terrorist decided to blow up the levees. Isn’t that the type of thing the Department of Homeland Security (which houses FEMA) is supposed to be there for? We would have had no warning, no time to evacuate anyone, including the wealthy white people, rather than the days of weather forecasts predicting catastrophe.

And yes, I also understand that there are always some people who will refuse to leave under any circumstances. But many of the people there couldn’t leave, whether they wanted to or not. There was no plan in place (and for this, the local and state officials are just as responsible) to evacuate the largely poor, elderly, and handicapped population that did not have access to cars or couldn’t drive. There wasn’t even an adequate plan in place to protect people in the "emergency shelter" of the Superdome. And there are some people who argue that this was bound to happen sooner or later, so why didn’t people stop living in New Orleans, like, 50 years ago? Please. Sure, I wouldn’t choose to live in a city that is in the shape of a bowl below sea level, but I (and a whole lot of other people) DO choose to live in NYC, site of two major terrorist attacks in the last 15 years. Plenty of others choose to live in flood plains, earthquake zones, "tornado alley", hurricane belts and the desert.

Argh. now I’m just ranting.

Other news. Hmm.

My brother left for the Peace Corps yesterday. He’s in San Francisco until Thursday and then he heads for Micronesia. He also promised to send more updates for the website once he’s settled. Depending on whether he’s in a place with phones/computers/electricity, it may be long stretches between updates.

I’m finally contemplating migrating the blog(s) to movable type. I think I’ve hit my limit with the iblog software and need something more dynamic. But I also think it’ll take a few months to configure everything, including templates, so I’ll still be updating here until it’s actually up and running.

I’m nicely settling into my new place, everything is pretty much done except for things like ordering window treatments.

More soon… 

Taking a break from my obsessive naval-gazing to post the following:

The American Red Cross

Y’all already know what’s going on, so I won’t bore you with a recap.  

The reason I was actually up in my new ‘hood tonight was because I had tickets with friends to see Lucinda Williams at the Beacon Theater. Which was awesome, because she’s always awesome. This is the third summer in a row that we’ve seen her play (last year also at the Beacon and the summer before that in Central Park). I love her so much that I even bought her Live at the Fillmore CD when it came out, ignoring the fact that I already own the original albums with almost all of the songs already.

Tonight she actually played a bunch of new stuff (she tests out new songs on her audience), and for the most part it was pretty great. But the best part of the show? Was when she said that she had an old friend backstage that she was going to ask to come out and help her sing a song…

…and it was Elvis Costello. People in the audience kind of went nuts at that point. They were great together, and it was just such a great little surprise.

I normally wake up to NPR’s Morning Edition, but this morning they were just feeding through a broadcast of the BBC World News. It took me a few minutes of grogginess to figure out why.

London was struck by a series of at least seven separate and apparently coordinated terrorist explosions in subways and buses during the morning rush hour this morning. The explosions ripped apart at least one double-decker bus and caused officials to close and evacuate the entire subway system.

And the were having such a good day yesterday.

I really have nothing particularly coherent to say about this.

It was announced overnight that NYC was eliminated in the second round of olympic voting. I can’t say that I was particularly surprised, but I did feel a little (very little) twinge of regret.

I was always of two minds when it came to the olympic bid. The proud New Yorker in me was always, "yeah, of course we should host the olympics. We’re the greatest freakin’ city in the world! I can’t believe we haven’t hosted them before." Then of course, the part of me that actually has to live here day in and day out was not exactly looking forward to 7 years of olympic construction mixed with an influx of an extra several million people. Which is pretty much how everyone else felt as well. Doctoroff never managed any sort of groundswell, in part because of the west side fiasco, but also because there were too many folks who were already plotting how to get out of town if we actually won the bid.

And also, in Singapore, every other bid city sent their country’s leader and we sent…Mayor Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton? Don’t get me wrong, I personally much prefer the two of them to Bush, but when Moscow sends Putin, London sends Blair, France sends Chirac and Spain sends their Prime Minister, it just looks like we’ve got a lack of national commitment when our delegation’s highest luminaries are a city Mayor and one of a hundred Senators. It also served to emphasize, yet again, how separate NYC is from the rest of the country.

They’re discussing it on the radio now, and are saying a few other things about the process, including that NY’s bid was very "ego centric", i.e., all about the awesomeness of New York, whereas bids like Paris’ were much more "international" in that they emphasized that many of its "temporary" structures could be dismantled and sent to a place like Africa to help with a future bid on that continent, which up until now has been considered an impossibility.

And they’re announcing the bid right now on the radio. It’s down to London and Paris. and it’s…

LONDON.

Wow. I was sure that Paris would get it.

Went to the Sleater-Kinney show at the Roseland Ballroom last night, and it was pretty awesome. I hadn’t really heard them before and I now need to go out and buy their new album. Even though I have come to the realization that I’m just not tall enough to go to general admission shows anymore. Sure, back in my college days I was willing to push my way to the front of the stage, but these days, hanging near the back (or the middle) with my friends, I realize that I’m spending more time watching the backs of other people’s heads than the actual people on stage. One of the guys I was with accidentally stood in front of me for a few minutes, and then apologized, and I was like "Dude, the only thing that you’re blocking for me is actually the view of the back of the head of the guy standing directly in front of you."

So it looks like the west side stadium is dead in the water, and with it, NYC’s chances to host the 2012 games. I get that no one wants a massive stadium in their backyard, but it’s not like what’s there now (a bunch of below-street level railroad sidings) is particularly appealing. It’s not like they planned on tearing down, you know, a major cultural and architectural gem to build their sports complex (yeah, Comcast, owners of that "rabbit-warren" MSG, I’m talking to you). And Silver’s complaints about preserving lower manhattan ring particularly false, since (a) it’s his district, so he’s clearly playing neighborhood favorites, (b) they can’t find any tenants for the buildings that are already in lower manhattan, so there’s nothing to really "take away", and (c) no one likes working in lower manhattan – between the crazy security, the lack of good restaurants (particularly for lunch), and, essentially, a second commute for anyone coming in from the ‘burbs (read: law firm partners, investment bank managers, etc.), it’s the least-liked business location in the city. There’s a reason that price per square foot downtown is less than half of what it is in midtown.

I’m not saying I wanted a stadium. Not being a sports fan (and certainly not a Jets fan at that!), I wasn’t looking forward to thousands of tailgaters looking for parking spots on 9th Avenue, and the Olympics in NYC is nice, in theory, but everyone who actually lives here would actually take the two weeks off and flee like it was the largest memorial day weekend in history. And frankly, the lack of a backup plan for the Olympics rests solely on Doctoroff’s shoulders – he’s no Robert Moses. Moses, of course, being the man who, when wanting to tear down Castle Clinton (and a good portion of lower manhattan) in order to build a Brooklyn-Battery Bridge (rather than the now existing tunnel), could only be stopped by FDR sending in the Navy to form a blockade. In lower Manhattan. During World War II.

I think the thing I have the biggest problem with is the way that the state and the city relate to each other. NYC residents send, on average, $3 BILLION in taxes, per year, to the state that we never see again, but we’re constantly treated like either an afterthought or a parasite on the rest of the state. The city spent years on this proposal, and to have it held up by a three-person appointed commission and a clearly biased competing sports complex with deep pockets? annoys me to no end. That being said, I’m sure that the city thought that it could force through the proposal by shouting "olympic bid! olympic bid!" over and over again.

What is it they say? the enemy of my enemy is my friend? I didn’t like the stadium, but I don’t like the other guys even more.

I know it’s a day early, but since I’m going to be running around like a crazy person all day tomorrow, I just wanted to wish everyone a good Passover, which starts tomorrow night at sundown. I’ll be off tomorrow afternoon at a Seder at my (step-) aunt’s house in Westchester.

I was actually doing a bit of research as to why Passover was so late this year (ordinarily, it falls right around Easter), because my whole 3 years of Hebrew School back in the 80’s apparently never covered the subject. It turns out to be a function of the wacky lunar jewish calendar. Which forces a leap "month" every 7 years. But instead of making up a new month to toss in there (or, you know, conforming the calendar to the actual rotation of the earth), we just, apparently, duplicate the month of Adar. And some holidays (like Purim) get to be celebrated during the "first" month of Adar, while others (like Passover) get to be celebrated during the second. So there you go.