New design, new CMS engine (Movable Type), new host (Cornerhost) and a new domain name (www.self-aggrandizement.com or www.selfaggrandizement.com). Try and contain your excitement.
Doubtless there are flaws everywhere. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience they cause.
Went up to Berkeley last night to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform three short ballets. The first two – both recently written – left a bit to be desired. Repetitious, dull choreography paired with imprecise, passionless dance. At least the second piece, a West Coast premiere of a ballet written for the Winter Olympic’s Cultural Olympiad, featured imaginative new music by Wynton Marsalis. At many points, I found myself paying more attention to the music than the dance.
The third piece, Revelations, the classic that put Alvin Ailey on the map in 1958, was quite an experience. Not so much because of the ballet itself (which I’d seen performed before, more solidly, several times in the past), but rather because of the audience. Certainly, Revelations is extremely strong and has aged well – but so has Swan Lake, and the New York City Ballet doesn’t perform that every single year. Ailey Dance, however, has performed Revelations nearly non-stop since the early 60’s, largely to the exclusion of Ailey’s 78 other ballets. The audience certainly didn’t mind – they were whooping and screaming, ready to jump to standing ovation. And that was before the piece even began.
Still, I got the odd sense that they were applauding almost for themselves. Look at me, they were saying. I’m sooooo cultured, I even know a ballet. I suspect most of the audience had never attended the acclaimed San Francisco Ballet just across the bay, and most probably never would. So perhaps Alvin Ailey’s clinging to Revelations is a good thing. Sort of the ballet equivalent of smooth jazz – easy, safe, accessible, and with just a taste of the real thing.
Each time I return to the Bay Area, I’m hit with a wave of homesickness. The perfect weather, the laid back lifestyle. The beaches, the mountains. Green everywhere. Wow, I always think. I should move back.
And yet, something is missing. Wandering Palo Alto this morning I finally realized what it is: hot girls. Women in New York are just better looking than in San Francisco. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s indubitably true.
Cue up the Sinatra. Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leaving today…
I’m switching hosting services to Cornerhost.com – they seem friendly, competent and reasonably priced. The changes are underway and should occur seemlessly; I apologize in advance for any unexpected problems that may result.
Shortly after moving to the City, I went on a date with a girl I had picked up at a gallery in SoHo. Naively, I had reasonably high hopes, as it was a second date, and the first (a safe early evening drinks date) had gone remarkably well.
We went to Zocalo, a trendy Upper East Side Mexican joint, and the evening actually started off fairly smoothly. Until, that is, the waiter didn’t bring chips quickly enough. (Shock! Horror!) The girl proceeded to not only bitch out the waiter, but actually yelled at the manager as well. The manager. Over chips.
Clearly, there was no relationship potential with a girl this incredibly high maintenance. But I figured I could be mature and polite and make it through an otherwise relatively pleasant dinner. Wrong. Things went from bad to worse, as apparently a few margaritas were not a good way to calm the girl down. By the end of the evening, we were actually asked to leave the restaurant. That would be a first – I had never been thrown out of a restaurant before. Of course, I had also never been at a restaurant with a girl who threw a plate of beans at the waiter’s face.
Dating in New York is never dull.
I headed into San Francisco this morning for the meetings that had brought me out West, borrowing my mother’s car for the trip. On the way out the door, I grabbed a couple of CDs from my father’s collection – by and large, we have fairly similar musical tastes. Without looking, I threw the top CD in and turned up the volume. From the first strains, I new something wasn’t right – The Phantom of the Opera? I checked the pile – all musicals. Tossing down the CDs with disgust, I reached for the eject button. But something stopped me. The overture was vaguely soothing, I reasoned; I would just eject it at the end of the song. Or maybe the end of the next. By the third, I was singing along. I mean really singing along, belting it out like it was my job. I listened to The Music Man next, then Les Mis on the way back home.
Reason hit me as I walked back through the door of my parent’s house. I would just put back the CDs, return to New York, and never speak of it again. After all, what self-respecting guy likes musicals? And yet, apparently, I do. Bringing my masculinity into serious question as it may, I’m ready to own up to it: I like musicals. There should be a support group for this.
Received a few complimentary emails today regarding my writing and the site’s design. While flattered, I was a bit surprised, as I consider myself a rank novice on both counts. None the less, one writer was seeking words of wisdom – not having any of my own, I’ve appropriated those of beat poet Charles Bukowski:
how to be a good writer
by Charles Bukowski
you’ve got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don’t worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible
learning to win is hard –
any slob can be a good loser.
and don’t forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don’t overexercise.
sleep until moon.
avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn’t a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong –
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient –
time is everybody’s cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you’re not ready.
drink more beer.
there’s time.
and if there’s not
that’s all right too.
Made it to my parent’s house in Palo Alto in one piece. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” — Robert Frost
Not the smoothest flight. I’m reminded of a trip several years back from Washington DC to Hartford where a blizzard forced us to take six or seven landing passes, before finally giving up and turning the flight back to Washington. Some 50% of the passengers tossed their cookies, and I spent most of the flight clutching my barf bag preemptively, doubting the integrity of my previously reliable and flight-tested stomach.
A few Advil, a couple of hours of sleep on the flight, and I’m now virtually hangover free. I’m in 6B, a middle seat, which is problematic, as I have a bladder the size of a walnut. Or perhaps I just drink more water than average. Either way, I’m climbing over the little old lady in 6C every 45 minutes for a bathroom run. Still, I’m a happy camper because everything about JetBlue is just better than their competitors. Wider, more comfortable seats (just shy of business class size but at sub-coach prices); cooler snacks (blue potato chips, biscotti); nicer (and better dressed) flight attendants; and cool little TVs on the back of each seat offering live satellite TV. I’m just waiting for them to start a frequent flyer program.
My seat TV is tuned in to the Cartoon Network, currently replaying a vintage episode of the Snorks. I’ve thought about this show intermittently over the past few years, but haven’t actually seen it since the mid ’80s, and I had completely forgotten about some of the central characters: the red octopus/dog thing, the big blue shark, the snork with two snorkels. Cartoons, I realize, are the perfect peer-group litmus test. List off childhood cartoons and anyone within a couple years of age chimes in enthusiastically, while those further apart respond simply with blank stares. Short lived Cartoons like the Snorks provide the most accurate carbon dating – I suspect only my immediate peers could sketch out a Snork on demand. We don’t have a label, my peers and I – too young to be Gen X, but too old to be Gen Y. A strange, transitional group, bridging between the slacker hip of our predecessors and the earnest enthusiasm of the next set of teens. Perhaps we should be called Generation Snork.
Actually, that’s a pretty apt title; the denizens of that sub-oceanic world are as transitional as we are. Far evolved from Gen X’s Smurfs, yet still well short of Gen Y’s Little Mermaid. Sort of a missing link. Generation Snork.