Category: General

on the use of “happy holidays”

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

a lot of people think this phrase is a politically correct copout.

i don’t agree.

i’m a christian. you are not. or maybe you are. how the hell do i know? saying “happy holidays” is just being sensitive of other people’s beliefs, and doesn’t assume that everyone believes the way you do.

more importantly, i’d argue that saying “happy holidays” promotes the concept that god reveals himself, herself, or itself through many religions and traditions, all of which can be a conduit to truth and peace. that’s what i believe, anyway.

so my use of “happy holidays’ is, in a sense, much more spiritual than just saying “merry christmas”. and spirituality is what religion should be about, right?

so there.

i was told on the phone the other day by someone, “happy holidays, if you celebrate one”.

now that’s going too far.

dreamgirls tickets obtained

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i went early to pick up my $25 dreamgirls tickets. i thought maybe if i picked them up early i’d get better seats.

swiped my credit card, the tickets print out. row lll (that’s three l, the letter that comes after k) seats 17 and 19.

i ask the usher where the seats are.

she points to the sign.

row lll–last row.

seats 17 and 19–the last seats in the row.

that’s right. my $25 + $25 + $2 service charge = $52 bought me the worst seats in the biggest movie theater in manhattan. guess going early didn’t help. although the theater is sold out through thursday, i think, so i should be glad i have tickets at all, right?

woo hoo. this movie had better be good.

today is “reveal your blog crush” day

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at least according to this website, it is.

from the site:

So, I’ve been asked what technically IS a Blog Crush? It’d likely include some, if not all, of the following:
A) You can’t wait to read what they post next.
B) You want to be friends with them.
C) You think they are the cat’s meow. Meow!
D) You might find them attractive- physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever floats your boat.
E) If you met them in person, blushing might occur.

i guess that, in that case, my blog crush is fake steve jobs. i think that counts. even though he’s fake, someone writes it. so i guess technically i have a crush on the real author of “fake steve jobs”. except not really. i have a crush on the fake persona of the real person.

this is just too complicated.

what’s going on

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

tis the season, and all that. lots of fun stuff coming up:

» dreamgirls tickets on monday. we got them at the ziegfeld, which is the best movie theater in manhattan. great popcorn, enormous auditorium, huge screen and great sound, red velvet curtains, serious patrons. and, for special engagements like this, reserved seating. the tickets were $25 each, but they are treating it like an old-fashioned road show movie. you get a special program, and they have all the costumes and memorabilia in the lobby for you to look at. plus, it’s one of only three theaters in the country showing the movie, and the only one in new york. so, expensive, but exclusive too. i can hardly wait.

» kiki and herb christmas show at the bowery ballroom next wednesday. i’ve rattled on before about kiki and herb, and i won’t bore you again. but this is the event of december, if you ask me.

» we saw the radio city christmas show this past wednesday. i never miss this–i’m a sucker for the pageantry, the excess, and the splendor. great new “twelve days of christmas” tap number. plus there’s all your old favorites–the wooden soldiers, the dancing santas, the midgets blurting “christmas” from behind the little doors of the midget house, the kick line, the 3-d movie, mrs. claus singing “man with the bag”, and of course the nativity scene. and of course i get there 45 minutes early, so as not to miss a minute of the mighty wurlitzer. i’m a big pipe organ fanatic.

» finally, there’s kirk in “taming of the shrew”, part of the pied piper children’s theatre’s season. that’s not to be missed, either.

thanksgiving pictures and more

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

here are a few pictures from our pennsylvania dutch thanksgiving goodness, from haag’s hotel:

« click on thumbnails to view pictures »

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haag’s pumpkin pie

haag’s cherry pie

let me see if i can get this list right and complete. tapioca pudding. apple butter. chow chow. cope’s corn. pickles. stewed fruit. applesauce. homemade cottage cheese. sweet potatoes. pinto beans. ham. green beans. potato filling. pepper cabbage. pot pie. rolls. gravy. grilled vegetables. pie (your choice of apple, cherry, pumpkin, or shoo-fly).

oh, and turkey. it was all you can eat, $12.95. amazing place, amazing food. it’s one of my favorite places in the world to eat–the breakfasts are good too.

a couple of cuisine notes. pot pie, pennsylvania dutch style is really kind of chicken and dumplings, except the dumplings are thick noodles. shoo-fly pie is a molasses pie with a crumby topping. and cope’s corn is dried corn that has been reconstituted when cooked.

and a technical note: these pictures were taken with my new fuji finepix f30 digital camera. no flash used–this camera is amazing in low-light situations. i bought it to take food pictures on my upcoming paris trip, and this was the dry run. pretty successful, i’d say.

a week after thanksgiving, kirk dressed as hedwig for our friend george ennis’s fiftieth birthday, at the red lion pub in the village. george was the sound guy for hedwig, and has had quite an interesting life. he referred us to the jeweler who made our hedwig wedding rings, so we have a special place in our hearts for him. he sang with his band, which was a real treat. he kicks ass, vocally.

hedwig waits for the train

george ennis sings

and afterwards, one more evening at danny’s. kirk sang “my romance” from billy rose’s jumbo, and “have yourself a merry little christmas”, which is my favorite christmas song and which was a great and welcome surprise for me.

and 87-year-old oscar winner celeste holm sang with her 43-year-old opera singer husband.

only in new york, kids.

time off update

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

quite a bit of time off work–last thursday through yesterday (tuesday). back at work and getting caught up, so this’ll be a quick one.

» thanksgiving dinner was excellent. i’ll post some pictures later–outstanding pennsylvania dutch food in large quantities, followed by a turkey dinner at home. yummo, as rachael ray would say.

» the closets are organized. i spent too much money on plastic containers, and put all the loose items in my closets into them. so much better.

» the christmas cards are in the mail. kirk and i do a custom card every year, and this year’s version is amazing (if i do say so myself). if you know me well enough to get a card, and you don’t get one, let me know and i’ll put you on my list. hint: this year’s card is round, shiny, metallic, and full of bits and bytes.

» kiki and herb’s christmas show is at the bowery ballroom this year. we have tickets–you should too.

more to come later. stay tuned.

the best $100 i spend each month

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a couple of years ago i had surgery on my lower back. although surgery is often not necessary, it was in my case. unless i wanted to be a depends-wearing cripple with a metal strap around my foot and no sexual function.

and, really, who wants that?

the surgery was very successful in that i don’t wear depends, don’t limp or have pain, and jamie jr. functions well. but i’ve realized over time that i need to look at the root cause of what caused my back trouble in the first place.

recently, prompted by what i thought was some unrelated shoulder pain, i had a deep-tissue sports massage. i’d had massages before, but nothing like this. pain? lemme tell ya. searing. barely tolerable. screaming into the pillow. but the guy (gary) clearly knew what he was doing–he works on professional and amateur athletes for a living.

as an aside, i asked him how the athletes tolerate it. he said they are pretty much used to it, but the deep-tissue work he does with them is more like a 9 or 10 on a scale of 10.

my massage? it’s a 3. three? jeebus. i don’t want to know from 9, if what i’m having is a 3.

anyway, my shoulder is much better now, and the concomitant benefit is that my lower back is much better as well. who knew that all that “knee bone connected to the hip bone” crap wasn’t crap?

i’m thinking now that a lot of my lower back problems were caused by upper back stuff that manifested elsewhere. because, even though it’s an hour of near-torture, that hour of massage gets me right for a full month. great stuff.

if you are in the new york city area, drop me a line and i’ll give you gary’s contact info.

it’ll be the best $100 you spend each month, too. a bargain at twice the price.

trust me on this.

breaking news you missed

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great article bemoaning the [lack of] importance of stories classified as “breaking news”, via daring fireball.

it’s true. the wedding of tom cruise and katie holmes is not breaking news.

and at the end of the article, there’s a link to a devastating article about the unsealing of a holocaust archive. from the article:

A visitor to the archive comes into direct contact with the bureaucracy of mass murder.

In a bound ledger with frayed binding, a copy of a list of names appears of Jews rounded up in Holland and transported to the death camps. Buried among the names is “Frank, Annelise M,” her date of birth (June 12, 1929), Amsterdam address before she went into hiding (Merwedeplein 37) and the date she was sent to a concentration camp (Sept. 3, 1944).

Frank, Annelise M. is Anne Frank.

She was on one of the last trains to Germany before the Nazi occupation of Holland crumbled. Six months later, aged 15, she died an anonymous death, one of some 35,000 casualties of typhus that ravaged the Bergen-Belsen camp. After the war, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” written during her 25 months hiding in a tiny apartment with seven others, would become the most widely read book ever written on the Holocaust.

But most of the lives recorded in Bad Arolsen are known to none but their families.

that’s as much breaking news as tom cruise’s frigging wedding. the holocaust story at least deserves to get a tenth of the attention that the wedding will get.

the media could spare a few moments to highlight this, really, if they could tear themselves away from cruise, britney spears, and michael richards for just a moment.

evening of planned excess

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

it’s not my fault, really. it just worked out this way.

tonight is the first night of beaujolais nouveau. “beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!” as the french say.

and kirk and i will be sampling tonight at le jardin bistro. we got an emailed invite from them–buy dinner and have as much beaujolais nouveau as you want, straight from the barrel.

sold.

it’s among our favorite french bistros in new york, so we like going there anyway. the beaujolais nouveau is just a bonus.

dinner is going to be followed by a late night performance by kiki and herb at joe’s pub. i’ve written a lot about kiki and herb, but my recent viewings have been in broadway and off-broadway theaters. joe’s pub is a tiny (by comparison) performance space seating maybe 200 people. i’m really looking forward to seeing them again in an intimate space, where kiki can again walk on my table and throw matches at me.

nothing like it.

and, best yet, i have the day off work tomorrow. good thing, since kiki and herb don’t even get started until midnight. but i have to be up by 2:00 or so, because we have tickets for the new bond movie, “casino royale”, at the ziegfeld. great place to see a great movie. probably the best moviegoing experience i ever had in my life was seeing “moulin rouge” at the ziegfeld. they have real red velvet curtains that open to reveal the screen, and when they parted, the movie started, and the first thing you saw was red velvet curtains parting, in the movie, to start the film. amazingly cool.

but i digress.

it’ll be a great night. more detail to come, assuming i can remember it.

fisher price technology integration

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think your job is boring? think again.

from the article:

Ryan H was pretty excited to start his new job as a developer. But his excitement quickly faded after he started. It didn’t fade into apprehension, disappointment, or regret — just into nothing; he simply stopped feeling anything at all. This type of apathy is to be expected when one is given the type of assignment that Ryan was given: absolutely nothing. Ryan’s day to day job was to sit and patiently wait for the company to start up a project.

great piece of writing, this, and quite the cautionary tale. if this had been my job, i’d have headed for the hills.

by the way, in acknowledgment of posts like this, which are made in lieu of actual creativity and original thought, i have created a new category: lazy-day reposts.

hello, nairobi

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i recently started using google analytics to see what i could find out about how my site is used.

to start with, let me assure you that there’s no personal info collected or recorded. it’s all just aggregated info, like how many people came from google, and yahoo, and msn, and who uses internet explorer (stop that!) versus firefox versus safari, and which pages are the most popular, and if you have flash installed and which version it is, and so on.

and there’s a section called “referrers” where i can see if a lot of people are coming from a particular site. that’s how i learned that the grey gardens site had linked to my review page.

if i had ads on this site, which i don’t and [probably] never will, it would tell me a lot of stuff about those things, too. but that’s a section of google analytics that means nothing to me.

the most interesting part of google analytics for me is the neat little map of the world i get on the front page. on this map are little dots that correlate to the location of the people who visit my site.

and i don’t get that friggin’ many, about 100 per day to be exact, more or less, so the dots are pretty distinct. i’m sure this map is meaningless to a person who ran a high-traffic site, but every one of my dots means something to me.

like my nairobi dot.

that’s right–there’s someone in kenya who visits my site. and pretty regularly, if the map is to be believed.

hello, nairobi. thanks for stopping by.

if you’re a regular visitor, and want me to notice your particular dot, leave me a comment and consider it done.

evil dead, the musical

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saw the early show (7:30pm) of “evil dead, the musical” friday night.

i was slightly skeptical, to be honest, as i’m not a fan of horror films. but after reading a ny times review i was a bit intrigued, and we got a deal on tickets, and there you go.

thankfully, our seats were toward the back. the first three rows are splatter central–even though the fake blood washes out, it’s still a pain and i didn’t feel like dealing. plus, the younguns were clamoring to be splattered, so let them have the fun.

and even though i wasn’t splattered with gore, i still had a tremendously good time. the attitude of the book and the music is just right–it’s a complete parody, never takes itself or the genre seriously (and the actors don’t, either). the tunes are especially catchy and hilarious, my favorite being “what the fuck was that”.

went home humming that one. and others, too.

grey gardens-style high art it ain’t, and it’s not supposed to be. it’s just meant to be a lot of gory, bloody, funny, silly fun, and it succeeds at this wildly. we’ll probably go back at some point, and take some friends.

a nice surprise was seeing our old friend kenny working in the box office–he used to work with kirk at the westside. we like kenny quite a bit.

and afterwards we had a few (o.k. then, more than a few) at danny’s. gotta go there every chance we get, before it closes in january. i’ll miss that dump.

eucharist, and a movie

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

the new york times has a new daily email they call “urbanite”. i like it quite a lot; yesterday, they had a blurb about a presentation of a movie by paul festa at st. bartholomew’s church called apparition of the eternal church that sounded fun. all i knew was that it was named after a strange and rarely-performed classical piece written by messiaen for the pipe organ, and it had justin bond of kiki and herb and john cameron mitchell of hedwig and shortbus. and also that the strange and rarely-performed classical piece would be performed on the church’s pipe organ (the largest in nyc) after the movie.

i love me some pipe organ. it’s the only reason i go to the radio city christmas show every year–to listen to the dual duelling pipe organists before the show.

good enough for me. i got tickets.

so i buy my tickets, and in the process i discover that st. bart’s is an episcopal church. who knew, and me episcopal and all. and we had time to kill before the 7:30 movie start time, and they had a 6:00 eucharist.

hence, eucharist and a movie. actually it was quick dinner at lou’s cafe, eucharist, and a movie.

this is what my life has come to. big night on the town for jamie. woo-hoo. it’s a blowout. church, followed by church.

anyway.

the movie itself was fascinating. various people, famous and not famous (infamous?), put on headphones and listened to the piece. and described in words what they heard, and felt. you couldn’t hear the piece yourself, only the words of description.

and only at the end of the movie did you get to hear the piece itself. it was a brilliant setup–a perfect way to get at the meaning of a piece of music without being intrusive on the piece itself.

and the stories were funny, moving, stirring, wistful, frightening, hopeful–the gamut from a to z, or a to at least q or r.

i bought a great t-shirt with the movie info and a picture of miss kiki du rane on it, along with the dvd of the movie. it’s not likely to play in your town–it’s a small movie without any real distribution–but if you can get a copy it’s well worth the trouble and expense.

the performance afterwards? a bit disappointing, to be honest. the people in the movie, who were wearing headphones, kept talking about how loud it was, and how they could feel the notes in their spine, and all. and while the organ was powerful, i kept wanting the volume to be louder. i didn’t get blown away.

i love the piece, though. it’s all sustained notes and harmonics that build on each other in a fascinating and disturbing way.

i’ll definitely be getting a messiaen cd, and putting on the headphones.

freedom

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i swore i’d never embed a youtube link on my site, but this one is just too good to pass up. it was made before the election, and with the exception of the ned lamont bit, it turned out to be remarkably prescient.

brilliantly assembled, set to an outstanding george michael classic, and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

unless, of course, you are loyal to the minority party.

wow, it’s good to say that.

news alert 1, and news alert 2!

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

news alert one just hit my email inbox: Tester defeats burns for the montana senate seat. great news, but not unexpected.

news alert two followed two minutes later: rumsfeld to resign.

damn! damn! finally we’re getting somewhere!

some facts about the new order

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some random thoughts, blatantly stolen from various uncredited sources this morning:

karl rove was the mastermind of the largest electoral setback for republicans in quite some time. go karl. not such a wizard now, dude.

america’s message to george w. bush: shut the fuck up.

this is the first morning in the long march toward eliminating the evil influence of christian evangelicals in this country. christians like me are no longer going to stand for their nonsense.

the power has shifted from the south of america to the coasts, with a sprinkling of midwest for good measure.

not that i ever would have, but i’m glad i didn’t move to canada. if you actually did move to canada, shame on you. but you should come back now.

lost in the noise of this election: katrina. let’s not continue to forget it.

assuming that the democrats’ lead in virginia and montana senate races holds, the democratic party will have pitched a shutout. actually, make that a near-perfect game, except that they walked senator-elect bob corker from tennessee.

the country’s message to democrats: clean up the mess. be sensible. don’t overreach. you have a mandate for change, but it’s limited in scope.

gay marriage ban defeated in arizona

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there is so much to celebrate this morning. the house has returned to democratic control, and, much more improbably, there’s a good chance the senate will too.

but the news i’m cheering the most is from arizona. that very republican state became the first state in the country to reject a gay marriage ban.

the importance of this cannot be overstated. combined with much narrower majorities passing gay marriage bans in other states, and with the court decision in new jersey, it looks like we may have turned a corner in the battle for marriage equality.

my sense is that many arizonans possess that western conservatism, that libertarian-ish barry goldwater-like streak that says “stay outta my private life”. and those people combined with the social liberals to provide a majority to defeat the gay marriage ban.

there’s a road map there, and a great lesson for those in the marriage equality movement. that’s a winning argument that can be duplicated elsewhere. the dynamics of this victory will be, and should be, studied to an infinitesimal degree of precision. every nuance of meaning needs to be extracted.

and you combine the arizona victory with the defeat of the anti-abortion law in south dakota, and the passage of the stem-cell research proposal in missouri, and you have a formula for driving nutty evangelicals, well, nuttier.

it’s a good, good, morning in america.

rev. ted haggard to undergo reparation therapy

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did you see this coming a mile off, like i did?

i know he’s a hypocrite, and i know he’s done irreparable damage to gay rights through his support of anti-gay initiatives, and i know he’s a liar, and a scumbag, and every other pejorative word you could come up with.

but today i read that rev. ted haggard will evidently be subjected to reparation therapy as part of his “recovery process”.

and his therapy will be supervised by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

that’s not something i’d wish on my worst enemy, really, even though rev. ted haggard comes as close to my worst enemy as anyone does.

from the article:

The counseling process, called restoration, could take years, said H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based ministry.

“I think it may be more in helping to set the requirements of the restoration, set the ground rules,” London told The Associated Press.

they may call it “restoration”, but that’s just a code word for ex-gay therapy.

i’m going to pray for ted haggard. i’m going to pray that he finds the strength to become whoever he is, honestly, deep in his heart.

i suspect that deep down there he’s a gay man. i hope someday he can face that truth, and be comfortable and happy with it.

i have a feeling, though, that all this therapy will “cure” him, and he’ll end up being as deeply unhappy and repressed as he is now.

update: rev. james dobson has withdrawn from the team. the reparation itself continues.

steve reich’s “the cave”

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i saw a performance of this work on saturday–the ny times had a great review (free registration required). according to reich, it’s a “documentary video opera”. sounds dense, you say?

it’s not. and it was surprisingly engaging and enjoyable.

kirk was the assistant stage manager for touring “cave” performances for a while, so he was familiar with the piece (though until saturday, he’d never seen it from an audience perspective). he’s been going on about it for a while, so when it came to nyc as part of steve reich’s 70th birthday celebration, we got tickets.

the three-part “opera” asks (in turn) jews, muslims, and americans/christians five questions: who is abraham? who is sarah? who is isaac, who is ishmael? who is hagar? the answers go a long way toward explaining why there’s still so much tension in the middle east.

there are five video screens showing snips and clips of interviewees’ responses, and there’s an orchestra, singers, and a performer “playing” a computer keyboard that puts relevant bits of scripture (the torah, the koran, and the bible) up on the screen, underpinning the answers. the answers aren’t linear–the responses are edited down to one or two words–and the meaning comes from the repetition, and your assemblage of the clips, the chanting, the scripture, and the music into a narrative thread in your mind.

i admit to a large degree of complete ignorance on this subject. i barely even knew the basic story, so i learned quite a bit of fascinating info from this piece. i won’t bore you with vast detail, but here are some very salient points:

abraham’s first wife was sarah, and his first-born son ishmael was born not of sarah, but of her handmaid (sarah couldn’t conceive). isaac, abraham’s son with sarah, came later (guess she could after all). this is oversimplifying matters, but jews descend from isaac and muslims from ishmael. four thousand years later, jews and muslims are still fighting battles over holy sites (such as the site of the cave where abraham, isaac, sarah et al. are buried) because of the complications that ensue. jews claim primacy because sarah was the first (and legitimate) wife. muslims claim primacy because ishmael was the first born son.

reich’s piece underscores how immediate this still is for jews and muslims–for them, the four thousand years might as well be yesterday. most westerners can’t imagine this concept, a point which the third act makes.

and to complicate matters, there’s the story in scripture of abraham’s abortive sacrifice of his son on an altar at god’s bidding. the torah says that this son was isaac. the koran says that this son was ishmael.

it’s no wonder there’s so much conflict. but “the cave” itself makes you really understand how sticky and intractable this situation really is.

i can’t stop thinking about it. “the cave” is presented intermittently, and is well worth seeing if you get the chance.