Dorothee Golz, Concept of Life 2004

At the Lentos contemporary art museum in Linz, I saw this piece by Dorothee Golz. And I really fell for it.

all i want for (american) thanksgiving

This goes out to everyone I love. Especially you. Yeah, you.

All I want for (American) Thanksgiving.

I don't want a lot for Thanksgiving
There's just one thing I need
I don't care about the turkey
Underneath the gravy
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Thanksgiving is...
You

I don't want a lot for Thanksgiving
There's just one thing I need
I don't care about the cranberry sauce
Underneath the turkey
I don't need to sit my ass
There upon the dinner table
Football games won't make me happy
With tight-pant players on Thanksgiving day
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Thanksgiving is you
You baby

I won't ask for much this Thanksgiving
I don't even wish for pie
I'm just gonna keep on waiting
Underneath the bus shelter
I won't make a list of allergies and send it
To the kitchen for the cook
I won't even stay awake to
Hear those post dinner Gastro Intestinal noises
'Cause I just want you here tonight
Holding on to me so tight
What more can I do
Baby all I want for Thanksgiving is you
Ooh baby
All the sales are on
So cheaply everywhere
And the sound of children's
Whining fills the air
And everyone is shopping
I hear those cash registers ringing
Father Thanksgiving won't you bring me the one I really need
Won't you please bring my baby to me...

Oh I don't want a lot for Thanksgiving
This is all I'm asking for
I just want to see my baby
Standing right outside my door
Oh I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
Baby all I want for Thanksgiving is...
You

the meet-pack-in district?

www.pinkelephantclub.com on 17.11.07 (i can't remember if i've been doing day/mo/yr or mo/day/yr - oh well. i've never been sharp on the details.)

above is the (virtual) site of my first (physical) experience at a big ol' meatpacking district box club. V.K., who has been in town for about 3 months now, and i finally made a plan to hang out. we had been thinking about going dancing. with her height & hotness & my dexterity & lack of shame, we make a pretty stellar combination. V.K. had heard of pink elephant, so we made a plan to go. we met around 10 pm. which was clearly way too early to go to a club, apparently. after the fact, apparently. so we went into a nearby restaurant, had an appetizer & drink while we waited / warmed up. oh yes, it was super cold. i had thrown caution to the closet & worn a slinky dress. i made the mistake of wearing that dress without an under camisole on another ladies night excursion and spent the entire night staring at my own cleave, wondering if i was pulling a tara reid, boob-hang out sesh. anyways. no need to worry this time. the rustle of air created by someone walking across the room (a la butterfly effect) would not turn my outfit into a malfunctioning wardrobe or scandale (shucks.) we wait in line for a long time, but it probably wasn't a long time. it felt like an eternity since my toes had long ago conceded defeat to the elements and had fallen into a hibernation or coma or had moved into survival mode. there were three lovely young ladies behind us, all from minnesota. one was living in ny and had just moved to ny about 3 weeks earlier, and the other two were friends visiting for the weekend. everyone in line was about as clueless as V.K. and i about the club (the music, the cover, whether they would ever let anyone in, ...). but we stuck it out, and finally moved up to the front of the line. we entered the club as a group of 5. V.K. later pointed out that one of the minnesotans was extremely tanned for such a northern clime. maybe she was part cherokee or something. i doubt it. anyway, we get inside. the decor of this place is really something else. as you walk in, there's someone standing there (doorman / bouncer) who checks ID and takes a picture of it or something. he actually took a picture of my passport. what kind of fool takes her passport to a club. in a small handbag that she dangles from her wrist. precariously. good question. apparently, i do. so i haven't actually gotten a NY state id card which would not be expired, as my alberta driver's license is (even though i haven't expired since i'm about as alive as i can be, the door person gets nervous and i didn't want there to be any reason to punt our asses back to the street.) of course the picture on my passport makes me look like the leader of al qaeda's lesbian sleepy cell. but all clear. we actually enter the threshold of mega-club. all along the wall are lush green plants / faux plants (unsure). pretty lush and exotique looking. inside is tiered (a little bit) with two dj stations are the far end and two possible dance floors (one slightly larger than the other.) it's not a big club by any stretch. that would make it exclusive in club-speak. not just any plebe from the street can get in. only plebes from the street who waited in line, endured the cold, patiently waited past the doorman's posturing about VIPs, VVIPs and guest lists actually did get in. V.K. and i were just so impressed with ourselves for getting dressed up & leaving our homes & showing up & waiting in line. her friends who were going to join us ended up bailing so it was a party of 2, smoking. smoking hot that is. but i digress. anyway, there were small tables, low to the ground placed around sectional-couch type seating. those were the "tables". you could only sit at a table if you wanted table service. table service (according to some people departing the wait at the door) was minimum of $2000. could that be true? i have no way to confirm but it's as true as anything else i can tell you. so it's pretty much law. anyway, V.K. and i (not being the ballers we aspire to be) pretty much figured we'd stand / dance anyways, and decided to keep our $2000, thankyouverymuch. we went to the bar, ordered two wines and went to scope out the scene. by the time we got in (sometime after 11:30), it was still pretty empty, but it became ridiculously packed very soon after. as hordes of kids with gucci & fendi etc& came in and went straight to the tables. some of these "kids" looked like they had just finished their SATs and came out to party afterwards. hey kids, the bowling alley is down the street. but whatever. i'm an old crone with delusions of youthful frolic. as we were standing looking around, V.K. and i were approached by a man in his mid-40s. he was the proprietor of some choice table real estate in the club. he struck up a conversation with us and in due course we found out that he had brought his wife to pink elephant after the stevie wonder concert (which opened with tony bennett & prince) at madison square garden for her birthday. he was wearing a concert t-shirt and genuinely seemed friendly, nice & not perverted. plus, he invited us to partake in the flow of champagne, patrone and whatever else they had going on at their table. so we did get to sit down. in the course of our conversation with J and his italian wife V, we learned that he used to work for citigroup in some sort of making-lots-of-money i-banker capacity, that he retired young and now spends half his year in italy and the other half in westchester. V, his wife, was beautiful & in such fantastic shape. J made us guess her age. i guessed 35 because i figured she hadn't been his child bride so she must be somewhere around his age, but i took off significant years of age (she was turning 43). V.K. guessed 25. so V (the wife) fell in love with V.K., while i kept J occupied by pretending i understood what he was talking about and speaking to him in french which really seemed to please him (his mother is french-canadian from quebec city but he doesn't know french.) apparently, hearing us butcher french was titillating. we went out on the dance floor with J, V.K. and i. it was fun. i coined a name for his dance style -- unoriginally, "the J" -- it basically consists of stationary feet and a sort of weaving, bobbing & swaying of the upper body only, with no movement about the torso except the shake of a head once in a while. i amused him with my witty put-downs and general wryness which moved him to the point of telling me that he'd scoop me up if he were on the dating market. to which i said, "ohhhh, cave man style. that's hottttt." ahhhh. the evening turned out to be lots of fun, despite the waiting in line, $20 cover each, packed dance floor & $28 tab sans tip (for the two drinks we bought ourselves -- 2 glasses of red wine that the bartender couldn't even identify by general classification.) the other highlights were that the giant disco ball in the middle of the dance floor moved up & down, which was kind of freaky at first. and they also sprinkled us with some sort of foamy stuff. for birthdays or maybe just celebratory champagne table service, the wait staff would bring the bottles with a bunch of sparklers stuck to them. kind of a big production. with confetti and cheering.

and that was the time when i went to the meet-pack(ed)-in district to a club. though J.H. tells me that the location (27th & 10 Ave.) isn't meatpacking district, but whatever. close enough and it's harder to make a fun pun on chelsea.

adios.

viva cafe

the picture below is of viva cafe - the place that G.S. and i went to play tavla, drink tea & smoke nargile in istanbul.

(another example of) me being a jerk

11.11.07:

the y. today. post-work-out changing in the change room. there is a mom with 2 kids -- an older girl, and a younger boy. they were at the y last time i was there too. these kids are the most ill-behaved & loud children i have ever encountered in a confined public space. the mother does nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to parent her monsters & instead starts yelling as loud as they are, if not louder. this is the second time i actually got a head-ache while in the change room as a direct result of loud children running around & screaming.

so, in a possibly-jerk-ish move, i put a suggestion in the suggestion box. i suggested that the y remind / tell parents with children in the change room to make sure their children aren't misbehaving and for their children to use "indoor voices" while in the gym. also the change rooms aren't monkey houses. geez louise.

anyway. who knows if anything will come of it. but i felt better after making my suggestion. yippy skippy.

so the kids' behaviour is not the really annoying thing - the really annoying thing is how this mom appears to absolve herself of responsibility for watching / correcting her children's behaviour. i'm not a child hating monster, but c'mon, if you bring your kids to a public place, at least TRY to make sure they aren't annoying wretches.

enough said.

another post, at long last

9.23.07:

lest you think i forgot this humble piece of narcissism that exists in cyberspace to bring gratification to me and my adoring public of 0.5, i return with the completion of travels that occurred in september. yes, it is november now. i turned 32 in the interim. i have traveled a bit for work in the interim. and i will soon be traveling again. in the exterim. i have also discovered scrabulous on facebook which strikes a deathblow to productivity & blogging.

i will have to be brief here because memory is failing me.

the day started off right with breakfast with A.K. on the drive. excellent. then i had made shopping/hanging out plans with S.L. so i moseyed over to her place, taking a ride on the no. 99 "bee" line. ah memories. i saw S.L.'s new place. very nice, though she was packing to move into another place close by. it was definitely a cut above the slum-haunts of new york, let me say. but i digress. and my woes about nyc apartments are fairly well-heard. so no more on that subject for now.

S.L. and i kicked around on main, shopping, stopping, not-stopping and more shopping. we wandered back and had coffee at her local cafe, which was super delicious (can't remember the name of it) but it's a check plus plus on my list of caffeinating holes. vancouver never disappoints in the caffeination context. that's a huge plus plus for moving back. or visiting lots.

i had plans to meet up for dinner with J.C. (a good friend / former roommate from UBC/thunderbird days). we hadn't seen one another in ages. J.C. is engaged to A.L. another friend from undergrad, who i haven't seen or spoken to since 1997 basically. anyway, we met on the drive at a cool mediterranean food place and chatted for hours & hours about life, this, that, A.L., NY, marriage-ness, foibles of life & career. J.C. is a lawyer too. J.C. and A.L. are coming to brooklyn soon for A.L.'s rotation at a hospital here. can't wait. it's SO cool to reconnect with someone who was in your life every day, and who you watched the X-Files with religiously.

I flirted like a crazy cat lady with our waiter. who was 23 and easy on the eyes. he had to run out to a grocery store for some fruit the kitchen had run out of, and he came by to let us know he wasn't deserting us. i asked him, with my patented twinkle in my eye, if he could get me some gum while he was out. i gave him some money for it. and much to my suprise, he did it! wow! that was chutzpah / weirdness on my part. and good humour on his. but really, he was extra cute. lived in israel. omg. another reason to move back to vancouver.

i had plans to meet J. (whose last name initial i fail to remember now). J used to live in victoria, but i met him in montreal through N.F. & P.T. crazy, crazy montreal party at the loft, i believe. anyway. we planned to meet up. he'd since moved back to vancouver & i hadn't seen him since his montreal days. so, we went out for a beer at a place (again) on the drive. we had a really fun chat mostly about relationships, which i then proceeded to make weird by quasi-flirting in a really aggressive/obvious way. clearly still high off my waiter experience, i think i freaked J out like 1000 times over. shameful. shameful.

i got back to A.K.'s and we had a quiet rest of our evening, chatting up storms. i slept like a baby on that couch. oh, i miss that couch.

a return trip is in order.

9.24.07:

today i was flying back to NYC. earlyish. i grabbed some breakfast on commercial drive & then made my way to the airport. realizing just before my flight that i'd left my blackberry & phone charger at A.K.'s. ah well. who needs access to modes of communication. A.K. did send them back to me and they are happily resting on my window sill, no doubt happy to continue fulfilling their destiny.

alright. that was a whirlwind of memory-lapses. but i have completed my diarization of vancouver for S.B.'s and YJK's wedding! hallelujah. if anyone is actually reading this, thank you.