Wednesday, April 30, 2008

struck down in the prime of my life

by the wretched curse: seasonal allergies (shudder)

i haven't been in the world much at all lately. except to buy kleenex (puffs ultra being the tissssssss-ew of choice), go see an allergist, get acupuncture & make use of tickets to see satyagraha at the met opera.

la-di-da, i have become so cultured. 2 operas in one season! mon dieu.

anyway, i will post about satyagraha soon-ish. but first i must shake the cobwebs from my head, drain my nose of mucous, delete 94 new messages in my inbox and curse nature.

adieu bitter-sweet world. adieu.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

where's the pro in procrastination?

I am legend when it comes to procrastination. P.S. Yeah, I'm still working on a birthday gift for you. Really, I am. Just haven't found the just-right item.

I have been sitting on (well, not literally) 3 pairs of shoes that are in dire need of repair. They are 3 shoes I really love. For those of you with 3 pairs of shoes total, this post might not be all that interesting.

When I realized they were in need of repair, I researched cobblers - the best place, where Marc Jacobs sends his shoes to be repaired. Where supermodels flock when a heel has fallen off after a night of drunken & coked-up revelrie in the meatpacking district. I found the place I will use. Yes, I found that place. 2 years ago. I have the address, I called for their hours of service. TWO YEARS AGO.

Why do I bring this up now? I am going through that emerging from the winter spring cleaning fiesta that I love so much. And I found the shoes again. Tucked guiltily in pockets of my shoe wheel. Shoe wheel - check it out here. Best internet purchase ever.

Please help me make this shoe repair a reality. Hassle me, threaten me. Do what it takes.

P.S. To the sh*thead who wouldn't move over 2 cms to make room for me on the 2/3 this morning, happy phuckin' wednesday. assface.

Friday, April 18, 2008

the pope hearts new york




[pope benedict XVI & guru nanak dev]

the pope arrived this morning at the south street heliport which is obscenely close to my office. it's the pad where the president launches when he's town. launches, not lunches. when i arrived at work, a big-gish group of people were waiting for a glimpse of divinity at the courtyard in front of my building. there was coast guard, NYPD & helicoptors crawling around everywhere. quite a spectacle. i joined the pope-watchers and saw someone descend from the helicopter. it could have been anyone from my vantage point. a decoy pope? the helicopter pilot? vatican officials?

will the pope heart new york? i hope so. a lot of new yorkers seem to heart him.

it sort of reminds me of when i was living in toronto and pope john paul II came to town for catholic world youth day. a be-jillion catholic youth were in town, easily identified by their world youth backpacks. clogging up subways and what not, standing around outside zanzibar (exotic dance locale) on yonge street, maybe praying for the souls of those inside that den of iniquity. i went to the huge papal mass that took place at downsview park during that visit. in the pissing rain.

the rain put a damper (haha) on the event to some extent & getting to downsview park is a schlep even on the best of days, but it did get me thinking. is there anyone in the sikh community i would go to see? short of guru nanak arising from the dead, no. in a word. i suppose the closest figure to the pope in the sikh religion is is the jathedar of the akal takht. the akal takht is the seat of the supreme religious clergy of the sikhs. the jathedar of the akal takht (there are 5 takhts) is one of the ordained leaders of the faith. the jathedar of the akal takht is currently sardar joginder singh vedanti.

i have been to the akal takht. it's part of the golden temple complex in amritsar, punjab. it was part of my self-discovery / mother-daughter bonding trip to punjab & delhi.

anyway, that's a huge digression on the main topic: the pope is in town!!

p.s. this picture of guru nanak is similar to the one we had prominently displayed in our family room. watching over us, one might say. it's also the picture i would tell everyone [okay, every whiter person] was of my grandfather. until we got a family picture with my grandfather at the portrait studio. the ruse was up.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

take mortality & shove it


L.B. works with Gins & Arakawa, the masterminds behind Bioscleave House in East Hampton. The NY Times recently wrote an article about Gins & Arakawa & Bioscleave House. The link to the article is here.

Gins & Arakawa have, for some time now, been working on what they call reversible destiny. Reversible destiny is against death. The contours of the philosophy are thus (quoted directly from the reversibledestiny.org website):

"That human life is expendable as a matter of course, that we are mortal, that life comes thus blighted as a matter of fact, as a matter of hideously brutal fact, is antithetical to any ethics putting the highest value of all on the preserving of life. An ethics that fails to take a stand against what counters it must be seen to have been subverted by it. It is illogical (and arguably unethical) for an ethical system that values life not to see mortality as fundamentally unethical. In thus arguing it would seem that you wish to make a mockery of our ethics, a critic might reply. There is death and then there is death. That life must not be extinguished, yes, that is our teaching. But when it comes to mortality itself, to try to uphold that standard would be equivalent to trying to stop a flood with a finger in the dam. No, no, one must give up on that score. And so, most ethical codes simply put to one side the issue of mortality and proceed to go on, we put it to you, quite unrealistically from there, starting off on the thither side of the crucial fact, and so, going along always to one side of the facts as they stand.

An ethics that permits no category of event, not even mortality, to be set apart for special treatment, and that considers there to be nothing more unethical than that we are required to be mortal shall be called a crisis ethics."


I wonder what they think about euthanasia.

Here is a picture of the man, the woman & the house.

Monday, April 14, 2008

the pope is in town; bless your bike.

in nyc, having your bike blessed may not be such a kooky idea. i'm still (after 3 plus years of being here) freaked out by the thought of riding my bike on any major streets (even ones with bike lanes). of course, my bike is a low-to-the-ground bmx but still. taxis swerve, people don't bother to signal, helmets are a rare sight. scary.

so the bless your bike event held at the NYC's cathedral church of st. john the divine sounds pretty sane to me.

anyone (any faith, no faith, anti-faith) can bring their bike in to have it blessed -a sprinkling of holy water & a blessing from reverend canon thomas miller. awesome.

the event's traditional reading is ezekiel 1: "wherever the spirit would go, they went and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels."

really awesome.

check it here

Sunday, April 13, 2008

zz top spake no wrong

at least when it came to sartorial splendour:

"Clean shirt, new shoes
And I dont know where I am goin to.
Silk suit, black tie,
I dont need a reason why.
They come runnin just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy bout a sharp dressed man."

at least this girl is.

i woke up this morning with this song bobbing around in my head. weird. since i haven't actually heard any zz top, let alone this song, in about 40 years.

brunching with J.P. today, visiting from t.dot. i will report on any brunch-related celeb spottings today, though 2 days in a row would be unbelievable. wouldn't it? this is NYC, though.

my celeb spottings have been mostly (ha ha) spotty. at best. apart from waiting for someone outside a theatre on broadway alongside kyle mclachlan (aka AGENT COOPER!!) and unknowingly sitting beside the original "average joe" of reality tv fame at a show, i haven't been in true awesome gawking distance of anyone, not unless you count the time i stalked johnny depp for about 10 minutes in yorkville. (okay, it was more like 20 minutes and it would have been longer if i didn't outwalk his pace.)

oh wait, i was a few people behind monica lewinsky once at a bodega in chelsea. i am 94% sure it was her. not absolutely positive. she was not wearing a blue dress.

ok. i have to run. i wanted to fire this off before i forgot the dream about zz top (o god, i hope the dream was about sharp dressed men & not about zz top).

Saturday, April 12, 2008

omg. omg, omg, omg. omg.


best celebrity sighting ever!!

who: me, P.T., J.P. & A.B. (aka adrien brody)
what: kicking it
when: 04/12 - some time around 1 pm
where: zaitzeff, avenue b
why: that's how we roll
how: right place, right time

yes really.

the deets:

i met up with J.P. & P.T. for brunch today at alias. we brunched it up & then headed north on clinton / avenue b in search of bloody marys. we landed at zaitzeff, sat at the bar & ordered bloody marys x 3 (spicy!). we chat, we crack nuts.

all of a sudden, i spot a lil piece o' heaven sitting further down the bar. is it, could it be, omg -- adrien brody! i ask J.P. to confirm if it is (in fact) A.B. it is.

THEN i officially turn into a puddle of drool. P.T. comments on just how cute my massive melt-down is. man alive. no, hormones alive! A.B. sat at the bar drinking a juice and checking his phone / blackberry.

some of you may not know but i have a long-standing thing for this particular citizen of hotttistan. yeah. when he used to tout for zegna, i actually went up & down the escalators on the menswear floor at holt renfrew on bloor because there was an absolutely gorgeous poster of him at the bottom of the escalator. uhm. yeah, seriously.

before leaving to go hit up paragon sports (where i did some plastic damage), i went to use the washroom. in doing so, i had to walk right past him. my arm brushed his chair!

i do my business & emerge from the washroom [picture my hair blowing in a breeze that conjures only for me]. he happens to be looking in my direction. we make eye contact. he smiles his incredible smile. i smile my dorky-cute smile. i am now officially having "a moment" with A.B.

hello heaven!

we are going on a [manhattan] holiday (part 2 of 2)

yes, finally. part deux.

i told you all about tristan und isolde. incidentally, during a subsequent performance, a part of the set fell and tristan slid down stage. awesome.

L.B. and i stayed overnight in our swank hotel - having negotiated the "late" checkout of 1 pm. woohoo. we slept in, lounged about, read the paper, gazed out the window at our "park view" (!!) & generally acted the part of decadent youth. we even trashed the hotel room to keep it real.

we bad like that.

anyway, most of the saturday reverie escapes me. two things are amazingly memorable:

(1) so the hotel (le parker meridien) has a gym. the gym has book-marky things they leave in the hotel rooms to entice people to pay some ridiculous fee to use the gym. the advertising is hi-larious. prominently written at the top of the bookmark is: "there's nothing like a gentle pounding to calm your nerves". & "gentle pounding" is bolded. excuse me! how is that going to calm my nerves! aggravate them maybe. of course, it's a plug for the roster of world-class masseuses they have on hand. but talk about innuendo-driven advert. sex sells everything. including the gym at the parker meridien.

(2) we wandered a bit looking for food. found a mexican place quite near the hotel. the decor was kitschy-cute. the food wasn't so cute. it was fine. fine meaning we were mostly too hungry to care. for the most part. we felt ripped off though by the "mexican hot chocolate". which was weird tasting hot chocolate (not nearly chocolate-y enough) with a rainbox sheen on the top. the sort of sheen one identifies with oil mixed with puddle water. it looked like they'd put a pat of butter in the cup. ewwwww. L.B. had an explanation for this phenom, which is apparently de rigeur at india cafe (the cafe i went to in calcutta, where the "special coffee" also had this un-delightful sheen to it.) barf. double time.

we did salvage that experience by walking around in central park & climbing up on rocks & generally being a little bit silly. or a lot bit silly.

that's really all i have to say about saturday (aka day two of my manhattan holiday). super fun!!

Friday, April 11, 2008

yes, yes

i know.

today is april 11. march 19th is the date of my last post. i have a post out there in circulation characterized as one of two. two is nowhere to be found.

i'm working on it.

the cheque is in the mail, people.