Archive for December, 2007
Song Poison: Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
At least the super put some kind of Christmas tree in the lobby of my building. I smelled it before I saw it. Such a gorgeous scent, pine. I love walking to the grocery store past the French Canadians selling trees on the sidewalk. They live for six weeks in a van on the corner and camp out among a forest of leaning pines to make their sales. (But rather than heating a tin of baked beans by campfire, they have any number of empanada shops or Columbian and Ecuadorian pollo kitchens to choose from.) It must be one of their models in our lobby.
It sat there for two days, fully erect in its plastic base but bound with twine. Then one night, I came home to find it expanded to its full width, draped rather sadly in multicolored lights. Left untrimmed, the branches have resolved themselves into a shapeless mass, a far cry from the mythical triangular pines of Christmas card landscapes. A single string of chasing golden lights running in an upward spiral around the trunk gives it an air of hasty indifference, and the splash of shiny red plastic ornaments look more like a constellation of acne than a project of holiday inspiration. There is no garland; there are no bows — no star or final touches of any kind. It stands in front of the main doorway like someone half dressed and waiting for the mail.
But it is our tree, and it still fills the hall with that singular odor of Christmas. How can I not love it even for its mediocrity? I only hope someone is watering the poor thing.
I Heart Ms. Pac-Man
Snow
Today when I woke up, there was a fine dusting of snow on the ground and on the rooftops and in the trees. As if on cue, the night of December 1 was the first occasion of snow accumulation in New York City. I couldn’t be more delighted.
I watched Fargo again last night for the first time in years. Ignoring for a moment the more gruesome elements of the story, and my absolute adoration of Frances McDormand‘s Marge Gunderson, it is primarily for me a strong reminder of Minnesota winters. Minnesota is not exactly the remote, desolate wasteland the Coen brothers would have you believe. There is a lot of open country along those highways. And, sure, you can take your life in your hands driving from Minneapolis to Leech Lake in the dead of a December night. But winter is a time of year that brings most Minnesotans to life. A state with so many lakes to freeze knows how to live it up when the temperatures get down.
All it takes to put me in a good mood is the random occurrence of rising moisture on the cold side of a low pressure system and the freezing of water vapor condensation into six-sided crystals heavy enough to fall to the surface of the earth. I’m not asking for much, really. Yet as simple and random and, frankly, common as it is, snowfall never fails to delight and inspire me.
I think what is less common and more remarkable is the stillness. For lightweight snowflakes to fall so gently in a more or less straight line, things have to be pretty calm. It’s worth taking a few minutes to notice and appreciate — especially in the city. Five floors up, the world is impressively silent and peaceful. Some of the larger flakes are swirling around as they meet the building and flirting with the window panes on their way to the courtyard below. There is a cat, big, fat and lazy, on my lap, and I am drinking strong coffee, listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing about something that came upon a midnight clear. I am definitely a northern lad, grateful for snow. I pity the South.
Wonder Woman, Diva
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If I had ever entertained any hopes of passing for straight, I dropped them like shorts at a circle jerk when I gasped at my first sight of a poster advertising an intimate evening with Lynda Carter. She was on tour and was to make her New York cabaret debut at Feinstein’s at the Regency, performing jazz standards with a six-piece band.
Thanks to Lifetime Intimate Portraits: Lynda Carter, one of my dearest possessions on VHS, I know that she first tried to make it big as a singer way before Wonder Woman and before becoming a beauty queen.
I had no idea she was still at it. Something like this could be amazing — or completely awful — but either way, what self-respecting homosexual could pass it up?
Don’t believe me that she can sing? Check her out on The Muppet Show:
(For more YouTube fun, check out those Maybelline Moisture Whip Lipstick commercials. Who could forget those? Honestly, love her as I do, I don’t know how people can do these things … or say the word “moist” so much without cracking a smile.)
The erstwhile Wonder Woman still looks heroic at 56, thank Hera. And she’s still got the pipes. Her October show was lovingly previewed and
favorably reviewed in the New York Times.
Intrigued as I was, I had to put all hopes of seeing Ms. Carter’s show out of my mind, because that same night, November 3, Jeff and I had a hot date with Annie Lennox, who was staging one of her achingly infrequent Stateside performances.
I don’t know who went to see Lynda Carter, because all the gays in three states seemed to be at the United Palace up on 175th Street that night. Throughout the long A train ride up to Washington Heights, we revealed ourselves as the passengers thinned out. When the doors opened at 175th, I had no worries about finding the place with such a large, lemming-like exodus of gay couples to follow. (I found it sadly telling that, after the show, the subway stop was so crowded again that we were at a virtual stand-still until someone opened the emergency gate to allow the flood through — in such a rush we were to high-tail it out of the neighborhood, apparently.)
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| The invisible jet must be in the shop. [youtube.com] |
Interestingly, Ms. Lennox appears in her music video, Dark Road, dressed as a sort of homemade Wonder Woman sitting as a bus stop. For her Nov. 3 appearance, a tastefully be-glittered black sleeveless camisole and a rather conservative pair of flared black slacks was all the costume she needed to showcase <a href="http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/ny-etlennox1105,0,5100553.story
” target=”_blank”>her super powers. Her richly layered voice was color enough.
Given the chance to speak to her in person, I would thank her for not subjugating her show to a lecture. I have no problem with famous people using their celebrity and influence to do good in the world. What I take issue with is the often sanctimonious way they go about doing it. Her pet project, Sing, whose goal is generally to bring attention to the African HIV/AIDS pandemic and specifically to help implement the Mother to Child Transmission Prevention Program in maternity hospitals throughout South Africa, should be supported. And after the recent release of an album called Songs of Mass Destruction, clearly infused with feelings of despair and frustration in the wake of a globally unpopular war, it is reassuring that her intention with this tour was to project hope and joy. She had the good sense to remember that both she and her audience were at a rock concert, not a lecture hall, and everyone was there to have a good time.
Lennox rightly observed during her mercifully brief PSA that it is a privilege to be able to use her art to draw a spotlight to a worthy cause. During an extended round of applause, she stopped us. “No, please don’t,” she said. “It’s nothing. I’m going to shut up and sing now.”
... but enough about me 