THE HOOD

Last night a guy on a motorcycle stopped us while we were walking the dogs. Turns out he lives up the street and is an off-duty detective, and is part of our Neighborhood Patrol. He has the Friday/Saturday shift. We can pay a few hundred a year to help support this service, and in exchange you get a sign for your front lawn, and they'll pay extra attention to your house. Frankly, it sounds like a good idea.

There have been car break-ins lately, and an increase in crime in general across Atlanta. In the gay areas crime has been fairly brutal--including knifings and stabbings. A guy walking home from Blakes was attacked by some thugs, and they forced him to take them to his house. Once they got there the victim's big-ass dog went fucking nuts, and the attackers took off.

We're in an idyllic little storybook land back here in LaVista, but that won't last forever. The cop noted that the local high school is a problem, and the few hooligans he has caught have been from there. Also, with all the condo construction going on, the population here will soon explode, and our little lane will likely become a cut-through for everyone trying to avoid the traffic light (avoiding traffic lights is a local custom here...they'll drive over your fucking lawn if need be).

We aren't too worried. This kind of thing comes with city life (though curiously I never experienced a lick of crime in all the years of living in NYC). We're just hoping that Cheshire Bridge Road, our local Bowery with gay bars, prostitutes, seedy motels, porn shops, nightclubs, and a Waffle House--will remain intact and not become another stretch of heterospectibility. If a little crime is the price of that, then so be it.

The dogs are currently our alarm system. They howl like hell if so much as a leaf crackles outside during the night, so I dont think anyone is getting in here. I've promised to put locks on all the windows this weekend (we finally found the old 1950 originals in the shed). And now that we have a hot muscle daddy cop watching our house, I dont even need to draw the shades anymore.

WAY TO GO, GUYS!

There are some dumb gay boys out there, but you two who took your daughters to the Folsom Street Fair in SF get the booby prize. The dog collars are a nice touch, too.

I don't think we need to curb anything in our culture to appease the breeders, but what the fuck were you guys thinking? There is already a huge boycott against Miller Lite for sponsoring the notorious fair, so the media was just looking for trouble....and you dragged your freakin kids there? This isn't a Pride parade, this is guys pissing on each other for crissakes. The Folsom Street Fair is the raunchiest thing going, and even though I don't give a shit about your kids (and I think these two girls will survive and life will go on), they. don't. belong. there.

This is what draws the most hateful rabble to the polls on election day. The "protect the children" argument is what makes it so easy to get legislation against our First Amendment rights, as well as ensuring gays dont get to adopt, marry, hold jobs. That may not matter to a pair of crack-pipe-hittin leather piss pigs like yourself, but there's actually gays outside of the Castro who have futures, careers, and sometimes actually ponder civil liberties while you're getting fisted in a sling while on break from your job as a cashier at Rainbows & Triangles.

And to the Fair management....you don't police yourself? No carding? No restricting minors?

Big round of applause for you guys.

mc-man-shun (n.): houses too big for their tiny lots. see also "scale" and "hack architects".

This is across the street from us. It's not the worst of this ilk by a long shot, but it's ridiculously out of scale with the nighborhood (note the house to its right). There's a lot of this in Atlanta: small homes are bought and torn down, and huge new homes are built in its place, regardless of its relation to the street. (And there's a growing movement to stop this activity). At least this one has a yard--typically they are zero lot line situations. There's one on Sheridan Rd that I swear if you fell out of the front door you would be run over by a bus.

I count at least 8 building materials slapped on this: brick, stone, cedar shingles, and aluminum siding. There's tin on some of the eaves. Plus the standard roof shingles and the plastic shutters. Then what looks like an oak front door that clashes with the whole mess.

WTF?

Well, I'll tell you what the fuck...this is what happens when couples get too involved in the design of their custom home, and you get 85 different things going on.

There's a newer one further down that's just preposterous, though at least it's all brick. The biggest folly is that the houses cost about $800,000, but at night you can see right into the living rooms, and there are cheap torcheres from Ikea and crappy Jennifer Convertibles sofas. As in most American homes, the whole bankroll is spent on the house and the cars, and then there's no money left for the furnishings.

god save the queen.

I had to laugh when I awoke this morning and, through the haze of a dirty martini hangover, a xanax, and the cup of coffee the husband served me, took a good look at my nighstand.

On it is the following:

1 gay porn magazine
1 copy of Traditional Home magazine
1 copy of Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters
1 copy of Darwin's Descent of Man
1 copy of Mencken's Minority Report
1 copy of Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great
1 tube of Keihls balm to shove up my nose to ease the blow-induced dryness
1 Murano Glass lamp with paper shade trimmed in French Blue grosgrain.

When The Rapture comes, my ass is grass.

45 SECONDS WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH

Since my commute is only about 5 mins, I dont get as much right wing radio fun as I used to. Today I caught but 45 seconds of Rush Limbaugh...

Rush was in a tizzy. Upset that he was getting fuming emails from his listeners.

Rush had said earlier something to the effect of "OK, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

His inbox instantly filled. Hundreds of emails from enraged listeners.

Rush took it back. He was just trying to make a point that this is what you needed to concede in order to get through to the Democrats.

It's been so long. I had forgotten...

There are still people who are convinced there are/were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And these people vote.

BOBBY, via Emilio Estevez

Poor Sharon Stone. A capable and interesting actress forever choosing poor roles. In Bobby there's a little glimmer of the Casino days, and we see what Scorsese must've seen in her. As the hotel beauty shop manager, she's old school Sharon Stone again--less camp, more heart. When she gets unfaithful hubby William H. Macy in the barber chair, and grabs a pair of scissors, we're not sure where she's gonna go, but we know it's gonna be good.

Most of the other stars in Emilio Estevez' Grand Hotel updating--Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Harry Belafonte, Demi Moore, Heather Graham, Lindsay Lohan--are not as successful. With little to do in their tidy story threads, they feel like the star turns in an Irwin Allen disaster film, with Bobby Kennedy's death as the volcano/earthquake/tidal wave/fire/meteor.

That said, it's a decent effort, and nice to look at (the set design is spot-on, and doesn't look like an ad). Estevez splices in period footage to maximum effect throughout. It's not jarring, and our thirst to hear an articulate politcian speak, even if from the grave, keeps it from feeling gimmicky.

Bobby isn't subtle, but it's as honest as a rosy nostalgia piece can be, and one appreciates the preoccupation with the "what-ifs" of a world not taken over by right wing interests and warmongers. By the end even the dimmest viewer will know what Estevez was getting at.

A word on Lindsay Lohan: Though she is now a punchline and a mess, she is an excellent actress...the possibility is there for another Hepburn (Kate, that is). Think of Mean Girls as her Alice Adams. It's not hard to picture her in a remake of The Philadelphia Story or, in 30 years, in Suddenly Last Summer. In fact, it's downright exciting to think of her in a redo of Woman of the Year. There is something there, alright--everything except Kate's iron will. Kate made about 6 bombs in a row in the late 30s, and was effectively finished in films...so there is still hope for this actress to get her shit together.

A GONER...



I'm usually an opponent of chopping down trees, but its time to gain some control of the backyard. The magnolia tree sheds its leaves all year long, leaving hundreds of big boat-shaped rubber leaves on the ground...which each hold a little pond of water after it rains...ideal incubators for mosquitoes. Like everything else in the South, the mosquitoes are grown 10x larger and more ferocious than anywhere. They are out of control, and my legs, arms, and feet are covered with bites (scratched into Tom Savini gore).

Last week the husband spent two whole days raking the leaves up, and in about a month the back yard will be covered with them again. Magnolia trees apparently dazzle when in bloom, and I'm sure it's lovely, but we've decided it's not worth it. There wasn't enough rain this year, so there were only about 3 blooms in all. I'll happily just appreciate the neighbors' magnolia from afar.

And frankly, the yard could use less shade, as we hope to start a garden in the spring. Among the overgrown area in the far back there's irrigation in place, tiered landscaping, even a bench built into a stone wall--proof that somewhere along the line the owner had visions of a lovely English garden, a vision the husband and I would love to complete.

Right now we have about 10 trees on the property, some as much as 150ft tall. There are precarious limbs hanging over the house (as well as the neighbor's houses), and one good ice storm and we'll be in deep shit.

An arborist came by the house on Wednesday and quoted about $1800 just to prune the trees...that doesn't even include the one that needs to come down entirely.

The expenses simply never stop when you own a home. $1800? Goodbye trip to Paris!

PRETEND YOU DON'T SEE IT

There is no excuse for this being in my house. It's a heterosexual, platinum powder-coated eyesore. It reeks of Gil Gerard in Buck Rogers. It stands in denial of the very aesthetic of the flat screen technology, which was invented to free big screen TV from its Olympian bulk and provide it with style and grace.

But its like movie buff crack, and now that we've gone 60" we cannot go back.

It was purchased at Costco. For almost nothing. It has its own room. Opposite is an old slipcovered sofa. There is nothing else but my two vintage movie posters--Wonder Bar and The Woman in Red (both 1934), an autographed picture of Julie Andrews, and a framed colored pencil drawing of an old Warner theater, drawn by my father. (There was a rug, so essential to good acoustics, but the dogs threw up on it)

Though I've had it for months, it is the toy that never gets tiresome.

This is my Roxy. My Loew's Jersey. My Rialto. And I'm tempted to annul, almost without exception, every bit of movie criticism I have previously offered. For so many films have been viewed in improper circumstances over the years: grainy late night broadcasts, impossibly smudged VHS dupes, laserdiscs that needed flipping at minute 59:00, letterboxed slivers across 27" screens. What chance did anything, minus the most simian Adam Sandler fare, ever have?

My apologies to FW Murnau, whose silent film Sunrise had once only garnered simple appreciation from me. On a large screen it is as frightening as it is gorgeous (and "boo" to Fox who have only made it available as a promotional DVD, available in a "Best Picture" boxed set). It contains the most famous of silent title cards..."couldn't she get...drowned?" is the enthusiastic suggestion of a woman in a plot to do away with her rival. The word drowned suddenly melts down and off the bottom of the screen. On a small screen it might actually elicit a laugh. On a large screen, in the darkness, my heart skipped a beat...

Friday night I had the house to myself, and screened The Birds. Framed properly in widescreen, in a dark room, it looked like actual film...and that is not a compliment I use often. It's an excellent movie, still one of his best, and though I've seen it perhaps 5 times, its hard not to be impressed with its structure, and its easygoing shift from early 1960s frivolity to an apocalypse. Considering this was Hitchcock's TV era, it's a very big-screen movie (a label you cannot apply to just about anything else he did post-Psycho). Three times the size should have made Tippi Hedren's performance three times more artificial. But it didn't. If anything she seemed more vulnerable, less plastic than I remember her. The Hitchcock DVD boxset I bought includes a widescreen version of her problematic Marnie, and I wonder if she'll fare better again this time around.

The High Definition is just ridiculous. We watched the Discovery channel's Planet Earth series in its entirety, and were blown away by the depth of the picture. There are no proper superlatives. I thought I was going to cry.

The schedule is full of big screen delights to come: Bad Day at Black Rock, 2001, Branaugh's Hamlet, Reinhart's Midsummer Nights Dream, Vertigo, Queen Christina, Titus, The General, The Painted Veil, and Night after Night.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. MENCKEN

As a test of my Husband's love, I dragged him to the HL Mencken house in Baltimore in 2006 (and to the B&O Railroad museum!). He was a total trooper. Love confirmed.

It was my second pilgrimage to the home of the 20th Century's greatest commenator (20th?! Bah. He's still commenting on this century, 50 years after his death). It's no longer a museum, so you need to make due with a plaque and a carboard cut out of him in the window.

Mencken is sorely missed. He took on the hicks, Christian lunatics, fakes, quacks, imbeciles, hypocrites and boobs that even in his day got all the press. You can find an occasional Mencken moment today from unexpected corners (Christopher Hitchens' uproarious obituary for Jerry Falwell, and subsequent skewering of the ludicrous Sean Hannity on Fox News, comes to mind).

The problem today is everyone takes themselves too seriously (especially Hitchens!). The genius of Mencken is his unacknowledged role as a great humorist--on a level with Twain and Groucho. In private, he rolled with laughter at all of us. He was entertained not only by the demagogues, but the asses who voted for them.

In an age when Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly and others who speak in bumper stickers are our popular national "commentators," Mencken winks at us from his typewriter on Hollins St, reminding us that nothing has changed.

BRITNEY, DONT GO...

Though I am no psychiatrist, I do hope someone has Britney Spears on suicide watch. I did not actually view the VMAs last night, but instead watched a clip of her performance on CNN today.

CNN misdiagnosed her as a "trainwreck." No, I believe one must fail in earnest to qualify as that, meaning one actually tried in some way, thus allowing for a certain fascination value. What I witnessed was a bored, tragically disinterested woman who is showing signs of heading to Kurt Kobainville. I'm reminded of middle-aged, saggy-tittied strippers gyrating at some little bar on a road that's gone to seed since they put in the new highway. I can think of no other celebrity in recorded history who has had their own gradual oblivion paraded around so publicly. It is painful.

I've always been fascinated by this girl, a subject far more worthy of study than Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, and other such voids in the landscape, who have left almost nothing in their wake. Though Spears was a Bible Belt product that professed to be a Christian and a Virgin, the stylists and choreographers sold her as a dazzling underage whore, and within minutes little girls everywhere were dressing like jailbait. Anything that sends Christian parents into apoplectic fits gets my eternal respect.

She was predicted to be the next Madonna, but that was hogwash--Britney Spears has no style of her own, she is a "product." Though that criticism has also been leveled at Madonna, its clear that Spears truly has no agenda whatsoever. Not even to endure.

Interviews revealed her to be a simpleton (immortalized in Farenheit 9/11), and her reality TV show let it be known the Virgin days were over, and no one can convince me she wasn't on crystal meth (or at least paint thinner) for the entire season. Then she kissed Madonna on the mouth, sending the Fundies again into shock. But it was downhill from there.

I stopped paying attention, pausing only long enough to download the "Toxic" remix into my iPod one year, and next thing I know she's fat, bald, dull, and has squeezed out a couple of children, neither of whom uses car seats. She had morphed magically, as if in a re-imagining of Bergman's Persona, into my brother's ex-wife Jessica.

And "White Trash" is the second-to-last stop before actual suicide.

FAMINE STYLE




This is up the street from me on Cheshire Bridge Rd.

Ethipian cuisine. And yes, that's a skeleton on the roof.

PUPPOIS










Some dogs like to play ball.

My dogs? They like to cruise around with the top down.

"Section 2257", a federal law to "combat child pornography," was amended last year to include anything the government decides to call porn. This year that amendment is about to be enforced. It will require all hook-up and dating websites, as well as pretty much ANYTHING with explicit pictures, to have a drivers license on file to prove your age. And, of course, that information can be used by the FBI in any way they see fit.

It may not seem to be of importance to most Americans, but I'd argue its among the most important threats to free speech in years. The government has been itching to regulate the internet, and we see now that vague laws concerning such vague, buzzword concepts as "kiddie porn", can be expanded to include the curbing of just about anything.

Why? Because as with regulation of anything that involves "child" and "sex", any dissent you may have labels you an instant pederast. So clearly no one is going to balk at this law or its Nazi amendment, lest a commercial appear one day to the effect of "...and in 2007, Senator xxxx voted FOR child pornography."

OK, I'll ask it: exactly how prevalent is child pornography as a full-on industry affected by any regulation whatsoever? In my 17 years of surfing the internet, with occasional excavations into its lowest depths, I have never seen it, been offered it, or noticed the slightest hint of its existence. I have no interest in it, so have never sought it, but I have witnessed every human atrocity you can imagine on the net, and never saw a trace of this.

That means nothing, except that a relatively monumental internet regulation such as this one, to help curb something one has to use a stick of dynamite to even find, makes me suspicious of the motives.

My understanding is that "kiddie porn" is a home-made product, and that the losers who engage in it tend to deal it in absolute coded secrecy. Also, its my understanding that it often originates overseas. This law can only be enforced in the US, and it can only be enforced against that which is essentially a "legitimate" and traceable business entity.

I would not, under this law, be able to download a picture of my cock to a hook-up website. This could, says the Justice Department, be the cock of a child. As could Candy Canyon's triple D boobs or Joey Stefano's bootylicious butt. If your site features an explicit shot, you will need to have that person's ID on file.

At last the government is getting what they have been jonesing for...regulation of that wild, wild west known as da internets.

Big government, interference in your private life, regulation of business, and further elimination of your civil liberties.

How conservative!

DEFENDING MICHAEL VICK

Whoopi Goldberg defended Michael Vick today, saying that dogfighting is typical in the South, because, you know, that's a valid argument.

"Typical in the South." So was lynching.

Michael Vick is a thug. His name has been linked with other criminal acts in the past that have been swept under the rug. And with millions in the bank, he and a group of his thug hangers-on friends operated a stage where dogs ripped each other limb from limb, while they bet their chump change on the winner. And when those dogs ceased to serve a purpose, he took out his thug aggression on them and basically killed them with his own 2 hands.

It wasn't a crime of passion, or a bad decision like drunk driving, or a sterioid scandal, or some shady corruption. He operated a business based on torture and prolonged death, and he did it for fun. He didnt even need the money.

This mumbling country idiot, this hopeless jockstrap dolt does not deserve defense, and he sure as hell isnt worthy of being cannonized as some black martyr of the justice system or the media.

And Ms. Goldberg, as a woman, should be able to make the connection that the neandrathals who do this sort of thing will likely beat the shit out of their girlfriends and their kids. Torturing dogs is what serial killers do before moving onto teenage girls.

Whoopi Goldberg is an ass. Put me on fucking The View tomorrow.

And you havent lived until you've heard other less luminaries stepping up the local radio/TV microphones to lend support of his thug. Its like the old people who are still sending in money to fallen televangelists.

Just asking for man boobs...

My parents are in town for the holiday weekend, which translates into A) get projects done around the house and B) eating out for every meal.

Yesterday my dad helped us clean out one of the sheds in the backyard (there are two...both 50 years old, both collapsing). Lots of treasures found. All the old window hardware! The old swinging door for the kitchen! One of every insect EVER!

Did breakfast at the Pancake House. No, not IHOP, but a local place open only for breakfast. It's a gut-buster...from the heavy whipping cream thats put on the table for your coffee, to the half-price "short stack" of pancakes thats almost impossible to eat all of. The waitresses are, for most part, older black women who have been here for years. The service makes you feel like you're eating in someone's home kitchen. It's a shock to those used to the indifferent attitude often found in city restaurants.

Dinner at Mary Mac's Tea Room, another Atlanta institution. Had the fried chicken (literally the first fried chicken I've ever eaten that was not from KFC...how can that be?), plus cornbread dressing in gravy, and cabbage swimming in about 3 sticks of melted butter. Oh yes, they kept my glass full of "sweet tea," a heroin-like drug that was 5 parts sugar to one part tea. My dad and the Husband somehow found room for dessert, while my mom and I slipped into a food coma.

Naturally, outside were the usual panhandlers that are roaming about downtown Atlanta. It's almost as bad here as in NYC...and certainly more aggressive.

TRILOGY OF (t)ERROR



I was tempted to see Rob Zombie's long awaited remake of Halloween tonight, but the reviews have been wretched, so I'll save my $20 and wait for Netflix. I adore the original, and was very influenced by Tom Allen's famous review in the Village Voice. When Criterion brought out their deluxe widescreen laserdisc in the early 90s, it was a milestone in getting some respect for the maligned slasher genre of the 70s and 80s (though many of those films, honestly, still do not deserve rediscovery).



3 horror movies I've been waiting to see recently popped up on Pay-Per-View, and all were disappointments:


The Amityville Horror remake is irrelevant, and proves (along with the disastrous remake of The Haunting) that no one knows how to make a haunted house movie anymore. The director is more focused on leading hunk-o-rama Ryan Reynolds, who is shirtless for about half the running time, than in doing much to re-imagine the discredited source material. Reynolds goes nuts faster than you can say "Jack Torrence," and the audience sighs in relief when he finally starts weilding an axe, for the end may be near for the bratty kids and milquetoast wife. Someday the feedback may make a difference: special effects ghosts are Not. Scary.



I was living in NYC when Murder Set Pieces came out, and incredibly it was reviewed in the Times and taken seriously. That version, NC-17 and apparently a gorefest like none other, goes essentially unseen today because Blockbuster wont carry Nc-17 movies (though they will carry "unrated" versions of crappy mainstream movies). Lionsgate, the modern day PRC Studios, took the film and edited the bejezus out of it, leaving this tale of a Las Vegas serial killer without the very "set pieces" that made it famous.


I can only comment on the truncated version, which is no easy feat to sit through. The director was obviously courting controversy by his use of children, including a genuinely terrified 2-year-old (the parents obviously needed crack money), and the use of 9/11 footage. Perhaps a minor trash classic could have been discovered here, but the main character is such an asshole, and his victims such blank dullards (real life hookers and porn stars, incidentally, and some apparently dropped out when they found out what kind of scenes they'd be participating in...if that tells you anything), it's difficult to see why this bore has a following.

I had to watch Hostel on the down-low, because the Husband is upset by the sound of people being tortured (he walked out of Wolf Creek). I disliked Eli Roth's laborious Cabin Fever, and this has a similar doesn't-know-when-to-stop feel to it. Excellent though the premise is--wealthy men paying to torture and murder kidnapped tourists--the movie goes off the rails in its third act, painfully reminding us that the poster says "Quentin Tarrantino Presents..."

The best scene arrives first...an opening credits sequence set to a man whistling while he mundanely mops up a torture chamber. Wait, is that a tooth?! The key moment, when a main character awakens to find himself in said torture chamber, could be anthologized: it's excellent, and an exciting, convincing piece of horror snuff for those so inclined. Then things go cartoonish, and you'll need to be in the mood for people with eyeballs hanging out of their socket (I wasn't).

A pleasant surprise after these 3 strikes was the elegant Disturbia, the billionth unofficial remake of Rear Window. Cell phones and camcorders are introduced into Hitchcock's tale (imagine Grace Kelly with a webcam strapped to herself while snooping through Raymond Burr's apartment, and you'll get the idea). It's strictly After School Special horror--its' rated PG-13--but it holds its own against most thrillers of late.

WEEDS

Now, typically, I do not allow the Husband to take on the role of programmer for our home theater.

A "Matt Film Festival" will often involve whatever DVDs had hot men on the cover (a noble gesture indeed, though for all the talented gay men in Hollywood, nearly every "gay movie" is an unwatchable catastrophe), or it will be something like Talledega Nights, which I just can't get through.

But enter my hot little man with the Season One DVDs of Weeds.

I was reluctant to let my life be taken over by yet another Pay TV show, after years of life being defined as something to do between Sopranos episodes. But I've happily surrendered.

By episode 3 the main character's 8-year-old son was staging his own version of the Dan Pearlman beheading video for the family camcorder. Like anything worth looking at, it's the sickest thing you've ever seen, or the most brilliant. Guiding us through the steps one takes from grieving widow to successful suburban drug dealer, Mary-Louise Parker proclaims herself "Worst. Mother. Ever." She isn't, of course (her neighbor, Elizabeth Perkins, is), and by Season Three (currently airing on Showtime), you'll come to embrace the subversive shocks of this show as the most utterly natural things in the world.

A more delicious piece of suburban Americana does not exist. (Even in John Watersland)

IDAHO? YOU da ho!

I admit my spirits are lifted when yet another Republican/evangelist/"ex-gay" activist/etc is caught with his lil' weenie hanging out, but it's always somewhat of a bitter pill. What we're celebrating is the very witch hunt these guys help put into action. Money from my paycheck is paying for an undercover cop to troll around public bathrooms, with the intenton of making sure gay men arent propositioning each other for sex. The very propositioning is illegal, and can get your ass thrown in jail.

In the same airport that nailed Senator Larry Craig, two hetero strangers with families at home could be sitting in the First Class private lounge in a full flirtation--one that might end up with someone getting sucked off. Maybe they're gonna wait til they get a hotel, or maybe not. Point is, no one's watching them, no one is being paid to watch them, and it's unlikely anyone is going to jail for the offer.

The same moral bullshit police entrapments are fueling the current mayor of Ft Lauderdale, who's making a name for himself by holding weekly press conferences about gays in public bathrooms (I've been to Lauderdale, and I almost lived there...public sex is the least of that shithole's problems).

Craig is an assclown. The very anti-gay climate he's been supporting with his votes has come back to eat him, and that's probably as it should be.

But I support to the death his right to walk up to you and offer you a nice blow job.

THE LIVING ROOM LIVES






New houses are now being designed without living rooms. Why? The morons of real estate development have deemed the American Living Room dead. The focus now is the Family Room, i.e. two puffy leather sofas and a big screen TV.

Nonsense. In planning our house we deliberately banished the big TV to the guest room, leaving this front room strictly for cocktail hour and entertaining. 3 good dinner parties and a Michelle- Pfeiffer-in-Scarface-inspired bachelorette party have been rousing successes in this room. It is an absurd notion to think a room without a TV is somehow lifeless and beside the point.

It's a total flea market in there, acquired over the last 4 years, the pieces now all sitting happily together, begging not to be thrown in another moving truck again:

The concrete top coffee table (which I thankfully never sealed, and has taken on a fascinating patina of dirt and coffee mug stains) and the gold lamps are from Crate and Barrel.

The gesso Louis XV frame over the sofa was from the Chelsea Flea Market in NYC (we very nearly came to blows with an Asian girl over it). The frame is the art. Guests who ask whats supposed to be in the frame are never asked back.

The side tables are $45 acquisitions from Target's first Global Bazaar collection., the very night it was set up in the store (Picture 2 caffeinated fags, a flatbed cart, and a credit card).

The sofa is Baker ($8000, though I got it as a floor sample AND got my discount)

The round Regency table at the window is from an import shop in Naples (...Naples Florida, and in a strip mall with a Big Lots)

The chinese chair is also Target, as is the black urn. The chair is not comfortable. It is sculpture.

The bamboo rug is Linens N Things, as are the linen drapes and window hardware.

Club Chairs are vintage 1950s in Florence Knoll fabric (the Husband inherited them).

Between the chairs is a vintage walnut octagon table (1950s), with vintage Chinoiserie Lamp and oiled amber parchment shade.

The white things on the walls flanking the frames are not smoke detectors, they are awaiting sconces (donations being accepted, if anyone is ditching a pair of old regency wheat shaf fixtures)

The black blob in the chair is Sofie. She has just rolled around in the back yard.

THE PLANTATION

After a day with a pointless real estate agent bent on showing every cat-pee-soaked, Brady Bunch-era dump in Atlanta, we set out on our own and came across this place completely by accident. Those four glorious words for sale by owner were enough to get us in the driveway, and after one peek in the window I told the Husband "this is it."

It's a circa late 1940s cottage on an absurdly generous 1/2 acre lot, right smack in the heart of the city. I cant stress "scale" in this photo enough: those trees around us are immense (one good ice storm and we're F'cked).

It rains pine needles and leaves all year, hosts a summer-long mosquito convention, is too small for all our shit, needs a new roof, has a goddamn ghost and of this writing is getting its front yard dug up for a new sewer line. The kitchen has a pepto-bismol pink counter top, and the limed oak cabinets have only marginally been saved by the new brushed nickel hardware I picked out. The crawlspace is full of bugs, and the dogs are already ruining the hardwood floors. The electricity is suspect at best, and upgrades have pillaged our savings and postponed the Italy trip a good 5 years.

But I can nest all day on that front porch with the Husband and the dogs and a book and my Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and I notice I havent yearned to be any place else.

Two movies that have languished at the tippy top of my "must see" list for almost two decades can finally be crossed off.

Nightmare Alley is a mess: rushed and interminable at the same time, like many of director Edmund Goulding's movies. But a day later, I'm almost nostalgic for its wierdness. It's not every film noir that throws in tarot cards, a fake ghost, morality speeches, alcoholism, manslaughter and a guy who bites the heads off live chickens in exchange for booze. Carnival barker Tyrone Power gets drunk, literally, on the success of the con games he masters with phony psychic Joan Blondell. When he sets his sights on high society and tries to mindfuck one singularly unethical psychiatrist (appropriately named Lilith--were the writers of "Cheers" fans of this film?), it's not difficult to see where things are headed. The film could really use a Freaks-inspired ending (I wonder if the book does? I tried years ago and couldn't finish it)--but as it is, it's worth watching. There is nothing else from the 40s remotely like it.

Design For Living is the most famous of all racy pre-Code films, unjustly. The situation--a woman living in sin with two men--is saucy, but it yields almost nothing memorable aside from the famous conversation about sex, or rather the discussion not to have sex. Writer Ben Hecht apparently got rid of most of Noel Coward's dialogue, so now I must try to find Coward's original play. I adore the brittle, fidgety, distracted Miriam Hopkins (her turn as the whore in Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde is remarkable), her style fits the film perfectly. She's famous in real life for having had a sort of revolving door on her bedroom, and supposedly she fucked just about everything that moved. I hope she had a chance to ride co-star Gary Cooper--that man is fine.

It's official: All of Canada now allows same-sex weddings, so my marriage is safe. Well, at least until that plague of boils known as Born Again Christians dream up some way to overturn it. Naturally, the U.S. press is all "gay marriage legalized despite fierce opposition," towing the line as usual.

Today as I was walking down 60th street I barreled through a group of red state tourists that were gathered in front of the resturant Serendipity. It's likely none of them deserved to be pushed out of the way like that, but I've had it up to here with red state rubes. It's irrational, I know, but I look at them and think "you come visit a liberal, well-educated city...you probably attended a show written by gays and starring gays...you are probably enjoying a hotel designed by gays...you are soaking up an urban energy that is created by tolerance and diversity, and when you return to Ohio you'll probably cheer the Gay Marriage Amendment, sign onto a referrendum so your state can outlaw domestic partner benefits, bless James Dobson, and light up the giant fucking "W" on your front lawn."

I'm going to amuse myself all summer by being a total cunt to every redneck tourist I encounter. Where's Rockefeller Center? Oh here, you just take the "L" train out to Bushwick, Brooklyn. When you get out of the station, walk to the middle of the housing projects and stand and wait for the bus. It'll take you right to the "Today Show" store! Matt Lauer is waiting for you! Welcome to New York!

Gay Pride Weekend approaches. It used to be like Senior Prom: pick out something to wear, choose which parties to go to, which drugs to get fucked up on, starve yourself for 3 weeks prior so you're ripped and gorgeous when you peel your shirt off on the dancefloor.

BAH! This year I'm not buying into it. Friday I'm going to the best Mexican restuarant in the city--Rosa Mexicano--with The Husband, my friend from LA and my partyboy doctor friend. It's "Restaurant Week," which allows mortals like us to eat a prix fixe dinner at a rarified joint for $35 each, which would usually run more like $75 a person. Of course, with drinks it will still add up to $75. The evening will no doubt turn into a boozy epic.

Saturday--hangover permitting--the Husband and I are off to Playland in Rye, NY--a 75 year old amusement park upstate with wooden rollercoaster, ice rink, ride-thru haunted houses, etc etc. A true old fashioned park, which I love. It's one of the few amusement parks on the National Register of Historic Places (I think Kennywood, in Pittsburgh, is the other). I'm sure it won't compare with glorious Coney Island, which everyone must visit before they die, but I'm psyched to finally get to this place. There's a train out of Grand Central on Saturday morning that takes you right to it.

Saturday night the Husband's best friend is throwing herself a mammoth going away party at some club, before she moves to Chicago next week. She was a fixture of NYC nightlife, and her vitality could enhance any situation imaginable. She's just one of those people, those dazzling urbanites, that simply glow. Once she's gone, it's yet another reason for us to move away soon--it won't be the same here anymore.

Sunday I'm watching my mouth-watering Netflix line-up. Three movies never before released in ANY video format, that I've never seen, that I have drooled over for decades, finally available: the carnival-set film noir Nightmare Alley, the notorious pre-Code comedy Design for Living, and the trashy melodrama The Damned Don't Cry--a Joan Crawford movie that promises to be far, far gayer than the Gay Pride parade happening down the street.

Ugh. I put my phone on mute yesterday because I was tired of hearing it beeping, and now I look at the Received Calls list and see that my boss called. What the fuck is he calling me on a Saturday for? I know. Some client's goddamn delivery didn't happen on Friday and I'm supposed to be following up. Not sure what I or the store can do about that on a fucking weekend. He didn't leave a message, so I am no doubt getting placed in an iron maiden on Monday morning.

I am just exasperated with this job. I spent this whole week on another installation, working from 8am to 11pm every day, tackling last minute "emergencies" like lampshades and pillows and bathroom accessories that my colleague never ordered, and getting annihilated for my efforts. Since my boss just barks distractedly in every direction all day, his "instructions" must be deciphered with a book of codes that I obviously do not possess. I'm ordered to be more aggressive, yet even pea-sized moments of initiative on anyone's part are shot down with a cannon. Little productivity is possible when most of your time is spent answering Why did you do this? Who did you call? When did you call them? What was their name? What did they say? Why did you let them say that? Who told you to call them? Why didn't you just go in person? What are you going to say when you get there? Why are you still standing here?????

On Thursday he was able to make my 33-year old male co-worker cry, in front of a room full of construction workers. I slinked away in disgust so I wouldn't need to witness it. Luckily, I've been able to detatch myself emotionally, because I'm aware that the boss' fury is not personal, but a deep down cry for medication. This is the sort of design firm that habitually fires people, so I've pretty much got my bags packed and ready. I'm a smart guy and have already proven my talents to myself and others. I like to think my inability to work for an unhinged, impossible old queen does not reflect on my character in any way.

SATURDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

I'm attracted to movies with unsympathetic characters, so last year's Closer was like the Super Bowl for me. The pathological search for the truth, to know every detail of the infidelities, results in a few showstopping conversations. The Brits--Jude Law and the amazing Clive Owen--have a frankness that borders on brutality, while the Americans--Julia Roberts, whispering as always, and Natalie Portman--are more guarded and full of shit. If all the characters were American, you'd get another Unfaithful--all internal strife and lies--and one of these people would have found themselves with a cap in his ass.

Our cheating double feature concluded with Joseph Manckewicz's A Letter To Three Wives. Three ladies, about to board a boat for an all-day excursion, receive a telegram that someone has run off with one of their husbands. But which one? The three marriages unfold before our eyes in a series of flashbacks, crackling with some of the best marital banter since Dodsworth. I'd love to see a remake, though The Husband correctly pointed out that the ladies would need to be stuck on the boat somewhere with no cell phone reception. Ah, cell phones. It's true, if you're writing a screenplay, and your plot would unravel if someone just made a fucking phone call, you'd better address that fact somehow.

Now THIS is a DVD collection. "Casablanca" can suck my white ass; this is some of the greatest stuff to come out of the studio system. Cheap (all 9 films together cost about the same as 30 seconds of "Revenge of The Sith") but ultra-sophisticated B-movies from RKO studios in the 1940s; even if you hate horror they are a prime study in lean filmmaking. Doug Pratt said of "The Seventh Victim" that "some movies just come to life after midnight." I'd apply that description to the whole series.  

I either am very smart, or have something very wrong with me. The biggest potential client I could ever hope for--maybe one of the richest men in all of America--landed in my lap, and wanted me as their designer.

It took no deliberation time: I said "no way." I rolled it up to the firm I work for. I would still play a part, and lend my talents where needed, but the headaches (and, thus, the profits) would belong to the company.

I don't look at it as an act of generosity toward my boss, because I would not willingly hand him a tissue to sneeze in, much less hand him a financial windfall. I look at it as a gift to myself. I could do the job, of course, but I'm not going to give myself the heart attack. It would be like a 2-cow dairy farm supplying all of Ben & Jerry's. The idea known as "spread thin" would have a new mascot. I'm just not doing that stuff alone anymore.

Tomorrow night I get to accompany Darth Vader, Prince of Darkness to the initial meeting with this client. By rights I should be nervous or excited. Alas I am neither. As with everything else at that firm, it will be a joyless and exasperating ordeal, but at least the toil will end promptly each day at 6pm. I do love the idea of the buck not stopping with me, and am curious to see if I am rewarded for this referral when it comes bonus time.

Today the Husband and I itemized our monthly expenses against our earnings in an Excel grid. The results were sobering: both of spend exactly what we make, with almost nothing left over to apply to a joint savings account. I still have my profit from selling my apartment last year, which will be our down payment on a home some day, and he owns shares of family business and properties and such that are not his to liquidate. In other words, we both have assets we can't or won't touch.

Since we never go out anymore, and our most lavish spending are cheap plane fares to Florida, the only place to cut expenses are in basic utilities: take the cable box out of the bedroom, get rid of the HD channels, lower our cell phone plan. He can cut out cabs (I never take them), and I'll halt buying books and the occasional DVD or video game. If we're ruthless we can maybe save a whopping $100 or so a month.

It is amazing that at 33 years of age I am still sacrificing in order to etch out an existence. In many ways I am in the exact same spot I was 10 years ago, made all the more frustrating because I leave behind me a trail of accomplishments and success stories, with plenty to be proud of. Measured in what I've done, it looks great...but the numbers on my bank statements are the numbers of a kid just out of college.

Since I'm ambitious in the most lackadaisical, sporadic, and Leo-ish way, it makes sense that I'm where I am now. If I were more ruthless about marketing my skills, exploiting my connections, and touting my accomplishments, I'd no doubt be making more money.

But the cost of that isn't pretty: I don't want to end up like my boss--bitter, taxed, wizened, sleepless.

Time to face facts. It's hard to be a success and be a lazy bum.

True to form the New York winter ended last Wednesday, when it was about 40 degrees, followed immediately by leaden 90 degree weather. I have never known a "Spring" while living in this city, so those hesitant to move to a warm locale lest they miss "the seasons" can lick my taint, because there are no seasons.

We left for Naples, Florida on Friday, opting to take the new "Air Train" to JFK for $5 instead of a $50 cab ride. You take the "E" train to the second to last stop in Queens (it's an express). Along the way is one of the unsung tourist attractions we have to offer: the Ugliest Subway Station In The World. Someone in the 80s, high on PCP, the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" blaring from his cassette Walkman, picked out a dark, glossy reddish-orange tile and covered every single surface of the Jamaica-Van Wyck stop with it. It's dark as pitch, and thoroughly depressing. As if living this far out in Queens isn't sad enough, having that subway station greet me every morning would make me put my head in the gas oven.

The Air Train wisks you from the subway to JFK in just a few minutes. I'm no civic specialist, but this was a genius idea, one of best-run things I've ever seen in the city. Some day it is supposed to extend all the way to the World Trade Center. [which reminds me--Albany nixed Bloomberg's precious stadium today, and naturally within 9 seconds he was whoring himself to the media and talking about all the "lost jobs". What the fuck ever. New York does not need another 250 minimum wage vending jobs. Nor does Hell's Kitchen, where rents are climbing to $2500/month for one bedrooms, need an "economy boost." And we don't need the goddamn Olympics either, since the city is mobbed with tourists all year as it is. What universe does Bloomberg live in? So disconnected from reality. What a fucking tool. Republican. Of Course.]

Uneventful flight. I'm the spokesperson for Song airlines. Satellite TV, a personal juke box, in-flight trivia tournaments (which I always win), a full menu and FULL bar--they shake the martinis right at your seat--before you know it you are at your destination: Relaxed. Drunk.

Weather was cloudy and muggy, but we got some pool time in on Saturday, and managed to burn to a crisp despite the overcast sky. Husband's birthday dinner at Red Lobster. Shopping at Marshalls, Costco, and Old Navy. We have suburbanized beyond recognition. I'm surprised Manhattan even lets us back in.

En route to Barnes & Noble from Costco, Husband quote o' the day: "We gots $25 worth of dip in the back seat, so we need to pick out a book post haste." Just never expected to ever hear that sentence.

Here's the plan: August we go down, buy a car, and store it at the beach house. Then we go down every few weekends, drive the car to Ft Lauderdale and look for a house. Maybe buy something now, sell it for a profit by the time we are ready to move down there. Genius.

Back Sunday night, flight less relaxing: I didn't score exit row, and the ones who did were frat and sorority losers. Loud. Loud. Loud. The girls were rugby players. All girls with calves bigger than my brother Danny's are loud.

The woman behind us changed her baby's dirty, poopy diaper mid-flight. For a sense of how this smelled, and how impossible it was to dislodge that odor from my nostrils days later, you need only reach in your toilet, pick up a turd, and wedge it deep into your nostrils. Thanks. And I bet that woman has one of those honkin big strollers that she packs half the fucking living room into, and takes up 3/4 of the sidewalk as she pushes her poopy spawn around. Watch out for me...outta my way world...watch me knock every fucking thing over that isnt nailed down....I'm a mom and I have a stroller. With a big loud poopy spawn in it! Smell the poop. Love the poop. Know. The. Poop.

Read James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere. Racy stuff! Who do we have to thank for American cities being the relentlessly mundane and ugly commercial strips they currently are? Modernists. le Corbusier. Mies van der Rohe. the Bauhaus. Thank them all for the non-functional, ugly boxes architects have been giving us for 50 years. Amen.

Whee! Half-day Fridays started at work this past week, presenting me with the absolute only reason to stick with this job through the summer. 9am-Noon Friday shifts all summer...count me in.

Friday night put $200 up my nose, for the first time in 2 years, and remembered why I ended such behavior in the first place. Ask everyone in the room about their sex lives? Check. Reveal every skanky, unspeakable back-room sexcapade I have ever participated in? Check. Make 25 trips to the ATM for more money? Check. End up cracked-out at some club at 4am, dancing to bad music? Check. Spend whole next day in a coma, thinking about how many orchids or books or sushi dinners I coulda bought with that money? Check.

Today saw ad for a fucking cool Dean-Martinesque 1950s ranch house in JUST the part of Florida we want to live in, with a built-in pool to boot, and in our price range. Hopefully the housing stock will not dry up before I move there. By Christmas I should be poolside in a big floppy straw hat, with a strong frozen drink in my hand, Lola pissing on palm trees, while the Husband barbeques up some dinner on the grill. Holla!

JACKPOT

Saturday morning we hit the Chelsea flea market again. What loot we walked away with!

--A 1950s watercolor of a street in Spain, in its original frame. We saw it at the flea market 2 weeks ago, but the woman wanted $45 for it. We were overjoyed to find it still there, and we talked her down to $25.

--Another 50s watercolor, much smaller, possibly of Paris. Very stylized. The frame is a mite too shabby-chic for us, but we'll live. $20.

--A set of lamps, sans shades. Small, black, with three iron rings making up a "globe/gyro" shape atop each pedestal. Need to be rewired. $20.

--Another set of table lamps sans shades. Huge, heavy--look like someone took a fancy wrought-iron gate and wrapped it into a tube. Very glamorous once they're cleaned up and fitted with linen barrel shades. $28.

--Black tub chair with "X" back, possibly from the 60s. Immediately covered the Miami Vice style fabric on the cushion with an David Hicks-inspired chocolate & baby blue small scale print, which looks glorious. This was such a find. $75.

--Saw a pair of "turned" brass candlesticks you'd fork over $500 for on Lexington Ave, for a mere $10, but in the excitement of finding the globe lamps I forgot to buy them. Hopefully, they'll still be there next week.

Course, uh, the pee on the parade is that after finding all this we had to cook up a way to get it all home to the east 80s, which may as well be in Chile, because there is no easy way to get there from the west 20s. There were no cabs for over an hour, and if there was a cab the douchehole would refuse to take us because it was 4pm, when all the cabbies go off duty. Luckily this way-hot young Latino cab driver agreed to drive us home, and I gave him an $8 tip on a $12 fare. Maybe he stopped because he liked my ass, or maybe he just felt sorry for the 2 fags standing at 5th and 26th with a chair, four lamps, two paintings and an orchid.

Ghosts that haunt me: I still regret not buying these things in the past: the original Chinese Chippendale chair for $300 (what the fuck was wrong with me??) and the mid-century laquered wooden side chair for $100. I'd give anything to find them again.

The Chelsea Flea market vanishes forever in September. They are building a condo on the old parking lot. Regrettable. I'm surprised it has lasted this long. Why hasn't Bloomberg put up a fucking stadium at that corner by now?

A Netflix account shared by two people. Sometimes, you find yourself watching a movie whose trailer you wouldn't even normally sit through. Occasionally this yields happy results, as with Sunshine of the Eternal Spotless Mind, and sometimes not so happy results...like Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Though the Husband asked me, at minute 45, to turn off the prophetically-titled Lemony, I let it play to the end (so far, Troy and White Chicks are the only movies I have abandoned before even the midpoint).

Just a disaster--as heavy, boring and ungainly as The Grinch. Jim Carrey is like some unearthed Vaudeville performer, playing to the back row of the highest balcony in the theater. Watching him is like watching those unlikely "I Love Lucy" episodes when Fred & Ethel Mertz would do a "number" at Ricky Ricardo's club. Not a shred of scenery goes unchewed.

Called in sick today. Yesterday I felt terrible, and last night I spent entire night having the most vivid nightmares in recent memory. I'd wake up in a cold sweat, dry off, walk around a bit, return to sleep...and sure enough would just pick right up where the nightmare left off. All I remember now is that I was living in an apartment over a church. Whatever was taking place there must have been unholy indeed, because the Husband says I was yelling loudly. Now I have a migraine, and I'm exhausted, and something tells me not to stray too far from my own bathroom today. The beginnings of a fever? malaria? plague?

This weekend my youngest brother, Flowers For Algernon, who currenty is living in LA, is bringing his new girlfriend up to New York for a visit. He's been dating her for almost a year, but I have yet to meet her--though the entire family is in love with her. She's from movie royalty...her dad wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, and her uncle is George Lucas. Not a bad lineage!

As a literate and talented person, she's had a great effect upon Flowers For Algernon, whose cultural illiteracy is legendary ("Who was Princess Di?," "Pay taxes 'by quarter'?--you mean I only pay 25 cents?"). He is now reading books and engaging in the world around him. Last week he defended the Iraq war to my mom. That's a befuddling stand for someone who could be drafted, but at least it IS a stand! I plan to carry this new girlfriend around on my shoulders.

My other brother, Toby Keith, also had an Iraq war discussion with my mom last week, and he ripped her a new one when he heard she wanted to read the new Jane Fonda book.

This is typical, as Toby Keith likes to load up on AM talk show sound bytes and then belittle my mom for her liberal views. Since I no longer live there, there is no one there to systematically destroy every "point" he makes and make him look like the fat dumb asshole he is.

I'm tickled when I meet 28-year old anti-Jane Fonda activists, who not only have no ties whatsoever to Vietnam or a veteran, but curiously have failed to enlist in the current army to go to Iraq and "defend our freedom".

The last time I saw him, Terri Schiavo was in full swing, and he was making heavy weather of some murder plot conspiracy involving Terri's husband. He took exception to my opinion that Schiavo being exploited by conservatives, and called me Michael Moore before walking away.

He has never said a peep about gay marriage. Should he spout some Sean Hannity or Michael Savage sound byte at me, I would be compelled to rip his throat out, and at least he is wise enough to know this.

I suspect Birth was a deadly experience in a crowded movie theater, but at home one can watch this exquisite film without the distractions of impatient moviegoers around you. For long stretches the movie is idle, but all the better to gaze upon Nicole Kidman's heartbreak, or watch as other characters merely squirm with discomfort. The chilly New York setting is matched by the uptight 5th avenue apartment, which for all its botanical wallpapers and fresh flowers, is as homey as a meat locker.

It got me thinking. Why is Kidman's character necessarily wealthy and well-educated? Would a poor woman have handled the situation the same? Would she be as patient with this intrusion? Would the audience buy the plot twist in this instance? Could you imagine the contents of the buried package belonging to a middle class administrative assistant who attended community college?

The movie has something to say about class (the child is from Brooklyn), but my brain is too destroyed from Saturdays at the Roxy to expand on it.

A lot of "evil child" tales take place among the educated and affluent--The Omen, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby. What's our fascination--our delight--with seeing little devils penetrate into wealthy families and create havoc?

In any case, I'm just in love with this movie.

****

A much trashier form of high art, Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera looked delicious on our widescreen TV, and comes with a first-class surround sound mix, but much of my enthusiasm ends there. The story has never been interesting in any of its incarnations--the fascination really lies in the how the phantom became The Phantom, and the romantic presence of waterways and secret chambers beneath the Paris Opera. The movie delivers on these points, then sadly returns to the Andrew Lloyd Webber score, which is atrocious (and I like Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar). At least on Broadway you can just focus on the chandelier of the theater, cuz you just know at some point it's gonna fall. The phantom guy is hot, by the way. I'd do him, even if he does have pizza face.

****

Scads more fun is 1959's ludicrous book publishing melodrama The Best of Everything, just out on DVD, in all its Cinemascope majesty. Not only is it set in Mies van der Rohe's then-brand-new Seagram Building, it has loads of sleazy affairs (gasp...one is intergenerational!), a suicide, and a predatory old Joan Crawford telling her new secretary "the mail goes there...not there or there or there, but there." Good times.

I sit here on Sunday afternoon rehearsing how to handle my Monday workday.

Choices are:
A). Offically Quit
B). Just never show up again
C). Go in and rip my boss a new asshole, and let him fire me
D). Just show up and work, remebering that in about 6 months I am moving anyway.

Just a fucking miserable week--one of the worst of my life.

I was excited to be pulled off my desk on Monday to go help with a design installation. As a "junior designer" in the design firm I am well aware of what this means--unpacking boxes, putting lightbulbs in fixtures, moving furniture, filling up the bookshelves, running around town for last minute things, solving minor disasters, etc. Sometimes it means even vacuuming and scrubbing floors if the cleaners don't show up, none of which I have a problem with. When it comes to delivering a perfect home to a client I am eager to roll up my sleeves and make it happen.

But I am also 33 years old. That means I am less willing...no, maybe just simply unable...to be abused for the sake of my career. I am a notoriously small rubber band anyway. I can only be pulled so far before there is a snap, and the enemy is laid to waste.

MONDAY: Things are going well. The senior designer on the job is stressed and spread thin, but things are looking good. There are about 25 painters, electricians, movers and cleaners in the house, but there is good energy. I leave that night at around 8pm, exhausted but revved up.

Bask in the triumph; it is short-lived.

TUESDAY: Upon arrival at the jobsite, I immediately feel the grave-like chill in the air, for our boss, Darth Vader, is there. Cheery and inspiring as always, he fails to return my "hello," and the look on my co-worker's face tells me our boss is not happy with anything. Though he is all charm with our client the homeowner (who is thrilled with the apartment, incidentally), Darth Vader treats his employees with disdain, and often in front the client--as a way to demonstrate his extraordinary power.

He is, on his best day, a shockingly smug and unpleasant human being, another obvious example of the ruinous price of fame and success to one's humanity. My game plan is to just stay the fuck away from him, as I always do.

Some background: we are working in a Park Ave building, which come with lists of rules regarding apartment renovation. For one, that all workers must be out of the building by 4, and everyone must use the service entrance and elevator. The service areas are tight and crowded with union workers from Jersey and cunty designers from Manhattan. The staff of the building is almost entirely Eastern European men in their 40s and 50s--a group noted for exhorbitantly joyless dispositions and a policy of not even holding a door for you unless it has been specified in their job descriptions. It's a powder keg.

The work of Monday and Tuesday, along with the client unpacking her 650,000 boxes of clothes and do-dads, has created a mountain of trash. The building workers refuse to take care of it, stating that it is our responsibility to deal with it. My co-worker asks if I can deal with the trash while he walks around with Darth Vader, and I agree with the utmost sportsmanship. The pattern so far has been for everyone to dump their trash and packing material into larger boxes, so this is what I do as well. We probably end up with 25 boxes full of trash, 25 boxes full of more boxes, and 30 or more garbage bags.

To take out trash at this Park Ave building, one must:

1. Haul the garbage into an un-air-conditioned service hallway, which is about 3x4, and summon the freight elevator, which is run manually by a handyman. When it arrives in about 15 minutes, 5 or 6 construction workers pile off the elevator into the apartment, each carrying toolboxes the size of ottomans, so you must move all the trash to let them through. Then the handyman watches while you load trash on the elevator. Once in, you are taken to the basement.

2. From the basement you pile trash into a small grocery cart--with a broken wheel-- stolen from Waldbaum's. You push said cart down a nearly mile-long, Shining-like maze of wallways to the building service entrace.

3. Once at the service entrace you push open a heavy iron gate and struggle to pull the cart through while trash falls off all over the place, as 10 building handyman stand around with coffee in their hands watching you.

4. Go to the guard window to get the key to the gate that leads to the courtyard. Since there are seemingly dozens of guys working this window, you never get the same person twice. So, 100% of the time, when you ask the Tony Soprano or the Rasputin for the key, you get a "who are you?". Not a "WHO are You", or a "Who ARE you?", but a "Who are YOU?". So they have to look up your name and then let you through. To take out the trash.

5. Once in the courtyard, you walk across a city block to a hydraulic lift, and you load the broken shopping cart spilling trash onto the lift, and you press a button till the lift takes the cart to street level. Then you climb stairs and meet your cart at the top, and wheel it over to the street and pile it up.

6. Return to building, argue with the guards who pretend to have never seen you before, and return to the apartment for more trash.

7. Repeat until all 100+ boxes and bags of trash are taken care of.

It is almost 3:30 in the afternoon when I'm "done". I haven't been on break, had a drink, or rested for even a minute. I stink, and whats more I've cut my finger somehow and am bleeding all over myself. I get back in the apartment and alas more trash is piling up because the client and her 3 maids are unpacking more stuff, and there are still painters and electricians making piles of garbage everywhere. I find some toilet paper and wrap my finger, when Darth Vader happens along.

"Where have you been? Why is it taking you hours to take the trash out?"

I can think of no response. The rest of the day is a blur.

WEDNESDAY: I arrive at the jobsite and still there is pandemonium, as the electric is fucked up, and there is still furniture and art and carpets being brought in. Darth Vader is in full swing, and my co-worker looks as though he may cry. I have a migraine and a back ache, not to mention a war wound on my hand.

My co-worker breaks the news to me that the building is very angry about the trash. You cannot just put boxes of trash out there, you have to break each box down, cut it into a 2x2 square, and wrap all the boxes together with twine--otherwise the trashmen will not even pick it up. All of the boxes containing garbage must be emptied, and the garbage put into bags.

So, today is to be spent re-doing yesterday's trash project. Worse, more trash--mountains more--have piled up again in the apartment and in the basement. The A/V guys have installed dozens of flat screen TVs and major stereo systems all over the place, and just left their boxes and styrofoam everywhere. That's not including what the client and her maids were able to produce by unpacking until 11pm the night before.

At this moment, my cell phone rings. It's the designer I typically work for back at the office, Golem, and he sounds huffy. I'm not surprised that he's irritated. I was, after all, yanked unexpectedly out of the office to help someone else, and was unable to be his bitch at all this week. The assignment he gave me to do still has not been done.

I'm in a complete mental fog while he screams at me on the phone for 10 minutes, incapable of articulting the obvious fact that I cannot very well be there doing that when I am here doing this.

He finishes off his tirade by giving me some phone numbers to call so that I can order a fabric for him, and announces

"You are of no use to me if I have to keep following up with you."

My shoulders grow heavy and I find myself in control of barely a first grade vocabulary as I mutter "sorry" and hang up the phone.

I find a box cutter and head out to cut up all of yesterday's boxes and wrap them in twine. As I'm unloading loose trash from the large boxes--including used toilet paper & tissue, half-finished lunches, blades, nails, broken glass, and assorted mystery soiled paper towels--into trash bags, I get a mutinous surge and sneak away for 10 minutes to buy some water from a deli and maybe inhale a sandwich. While I'm walking I notice the wound on my hand has reopened and that my hands are covered with dried blood.

I get back in the apartment around 4pm. Darth Vader again belittles me for taking so long with the trash--something to the tune of "are you doing surgery down there?".

That night I get home to find an email from school that my summer class has been cancelled, which destroys my graduate-and-get-outta-NYC-by-December plan.

THURSDAY: A calm before the tsunami. Vader is off destroying other people's spirits most of the day, and I get trash done in a atom-smashing quick 3 hours, now that I know all the rules and have seduced the building workers into holding doors open for me in exchange for blow jobs.

I'm in the Master Bath installing one of 6 agnozing light fixtures when Vader walks by and sees me. OK Good, I think, he sees me working, so I'll be spared his wrath today. I decide to go on break and get something to eat, taking an immoral half hour for myself. When I get back I go right back to the bathroom light fixtures.

Naturally, Vader happens by at this moment, and seeing that only one fixture has been finished surmizes that I have been dilly-dallying all this time.

"Well since it obviously takes you a thousand years to hang a light fixture, come with me and I'll give you something else to do," he imperiously declares in front of the client's maids.

I nearly bit my tongue off in anger at this. This is the sort of boss who manages to always catch you when you stop to rub your eye or tuck in your shirt, and deduces that you have nothing to do and need a task. And he is famous for degrading his employees in front of everyone and declaring you the stupidest person alive.

Whoa!, I announced with sheer contempt--I was on break between now and the last time you waltzed by and looked in, so--uh--guess what?--it did not take me a thousand years to hang a light fixture.

It was a tiny victory. I had never seen anyone defend themselves to him, and frankly I had had quite enough. I was working hard for this guy, and his comments were uncalled for. It was difficult to look at him without spitting. I channeled my disgust into helping move pieces of furniture entirely too heavy for me, and succeeded in hurting my back.

I left the site at 8pm, went home and just went to bed, as I was too tired to even lift the TV's remote control.


FRIDAY THE 13TH: Last day at the job site. I show up at the building and am stopped at the service entrance.

The superintendent says that you arent allowed up to the apartment today until you take the trash out, some handyman says to me.

It was not what I needed to hear. All week I had supressed a well-deserved tirade about this dip-shit building staff ordering me about, but no more. You tell that fucker I don't work for him was all I could articulate as I huffed past. And sure enough, there in the basement is another 9 tons of garbage to go out.

I get upstairs and the client announces she needs her "2 boxes of toys" out of the storage area in the basement so she can unpack them for her baby's room. No problem. On my way out her maid tells me I really need to take care of the trash. Thanks Rosario, I'll fucking get right on that.

I get deep into the sub-basement and find the "boxes" of toys are the size of coffins, and so densely packed as to be virtually immovable. I lug one to the elevator, hurting my back so bad I am almost in tears. When I get it upstairs it won't fit in the service hall, and so I have to rip it open, unpack all the toys and carry them, one by one, through the city-block-sized apartment to the kid's room, where the client takes each and put it on a shelf. This goes on for nearly an hour.

This completed, I go to tackle the trash. I'm bundling up boxes with twine when my phone rings. It's my brother. My dog, Chester, has had a seizure and is lying paralyzed on the floor urinating all over himself. They have to take him to the vet immediately to be put to sleep.

I collapse in tears right there, standing in refuge outside a Park Ave building--hot, overwhelmed, and just beaten down. The thought of going back in and possibly facing the wrath of my boss is more than I can bare, and so I walk over to Central Park and just sit in the park for about a half hour and cry.

I pull myself together and go back to the apartment, to be greeted by the client. the shelf in her closet has fallen down, can I get some larger grommits to hold the shelf? Of course. My pleasure. I head toward the foyer and Darth Vader is there, arms akimbo.

"Where are you going?" he asks, already exasperated by an answer he hasn't even gotten yet.

I explain the task at hand, to which he responds loudly, eyes rolling and just so angry and disgusted with my stupidity, "you buying grommits is about as productive as you sticking your finger up my ass."

I crinkled my face in horror as though I had just smelled poop, and shook my head in disbelief. Who is this person? Why do I work for him? What sort of vile filth is this bitter old queen made of anyway?

I managed to get away and obey the client's wishes and get her goddamn grommits.
Upon coming back Darth Vader tells me to get, and I quote, "a tubular ladder" from the living room and take it to the client's storage room. In the living room is a metal, tubular step ladder, so that's what I take.

I come back.

"I thought I told you to take that ladder out of the living room?" he snarls at me.

He brings me this long metal pipe, one that unfolds into a library ladder. Never seen anyhing like it before.

He stares me in the eye, and in a fit of anger announces "you know, I'm really getting tired of having to explain everything to you because you don't know anything."

Well, folks, that's it. That's when I just shut down. I didn't erupt in a blaze of glory, or smash a $50k vase over his ugly head, I just shut down. There I stood, a 33 year old man with an undergrad degree and an interior design degree from one of the best design schools in the country. A guy whose dog has just been killed. A guy who has been taking trash out for 5 days and had to endure getting yelled at by russian maintenance men while transferring snot rags and broken glass from boxes into trash bags. A guy who has barely eaten or drank anything all week because if he takes a break he's afraid he'd get fired. A guy who has barely seen his husband all week because he stays every night until 8 or so to help get this job done. A guy who has achieved great success on his own but talked himself into joining a world-famous design team and having a killer resume for when he moves to another city.

...A guy who is the biggest fucking chump ever.

I took the, uh, "tubular ladder" to the storage bin and when I came upstairs my boss had gone for the day. I felt so sick I thought I was going to vomit, so I gathered my coat and bag and just went home.

The very idea of going back to the office tomorrow, to face not only Golem but Vader as well, is almost crippling to me. The rubber band has been pulled and broken, and the fury will need to be released.

All I can wonder is who, tomorrow, is going to be the first person to press the wrong button.

Today installed a thrilling Park ave apartment for my firm--one of the best things I've seen us do so far. The closest thing I can think of as the "inspiration" for it would be a 1910 Beaux Art Public Library: light grey venetian platster walls, and doors all made out of statuary bronze. The doors alone cost nearly $250,000. In foyer we placed a round metal table with a wood inlay top featuring an elaborate "North arrow" star configuarion like one would find on an old map. The table, found in a Paris antique shop, was once on a ship, and still has the bolts on the bottom to prove it. Above it we hung a 1920s German glass tube chandelier. The floors are all stone. If it is possible to achieve sexual pleasure through interior design, I'd say we discovered it.

Possibly the only accessible feature I could copy in my own home are the ultrasuede walls in the bedrooms. Ultrasuede costs alomst nothing--maybe $30/yard, but the effect is extravagant. When I have a house I plan to upholster the library walls this way. It's positively cocoon-like.

This past weekend we found a Chippendale-style console table at the Chelsea flea market, and had it delivered today. A steal at $225, and it sits in the living room as though it has always wanted to be there. Last week at a little dive on Lexington ave. I found a Chinese mirrored lamp in antique brass, with silk shade, for $350. There was only one, so I paused. It is best to buy things in pairs when at all possible. I'm going back tomorrow--if it's still there, the it was meant to be mine. If it's gone, I was meant to blow money on something else.

It seems poor judgement to be buying furnishings when we are buying a house soon, but I figure we have to furnish the thing anyway, so why not buy special pieces as we see them?

People ask me for design advice all the time. The best advice I can offer is that you shop for things one at a time, and from boutiques, antique stores, flea markets, craftsmen--especially while traveling (easiest just to have it shipped home). eBay is a goldmine. A piece or two from one of the chain stores is fine--a side table, a chair, but that's it.

And buy the most expensive fucking things you can possibly afford--or just do without til you can.

No one. EVER. Has regretted buying the perfect piece of furniture, regardless of its cost.

The trailers for House of Wax (2005)were great fun, and internet rumors of groundbreaking, MPAA-offending gore have been circulating for months, so naturally I had to see it opening day. Technically, a marvelous piece of business, especially in its first big horror moment--where the only likeable character is tortured, then strapped in and sprayed with hot wax--and the setpiece grand finale where the house goes up in flames (the only sequence that this film shares with the 1933 and 1953 versions). It's short on smart-alecky heroines and BOO-oh-its-just-you frights, thank God. Paris Hilton is the only touch of in-joke in this grimly serious movie--and the filmmakers obviously enjoyed murdering her.

The 1953 Vincent Price version is bland in a Saturday matinee, Creature Feature kinda way, but the 1933 Mystery of The Wax Museum (see Fay Wray, above, en route to getting strapped to the ol' embalming table) is the real deal. Part early 30's pre-code newspaper comedy, part Gothic horror, with a classic performance from Glenda Farrell. It's filmed in 2-color early Technicolor, and set in a German Expressionist nightmare of New York, courtesy Anton Grot. It's an important film--one of the first--if not THE first--to update horror to a modern, urban setting (some would argue it's 1932's Doctor X, but that movie cops out and heads to a country estate for the second half). Mystery is included on a double feature DVD with the 1953 version. 

Suffering after a Cinco De Mayo party last night, were 2 margaritas knocked me on my ass. My F. Scott Fitzgerald days are definitely over. It used to take at least a bottle of vodka to get a lampshade on my head.

This was my first outing with the office crowd, and they're a good gang--a group that has survived in the bondage of working for a very famous, influential, and absolutely evil boss. I even flirted a bit, though rather than making me feel guilty it made me happier than ever to be married, and to go home to a hot, easy-goin' southern boy who--somehow--has chosen to spend the rest of his life with a hybrid of Emperor Nero, Bette Davis, and Sylvia Plath.

Hanna and Her Sisters had no effect on me when I first saw it in the late 80s (I found it trying, actually), but I saw it again 2 nights ago and was an emotional wreck afterward. In the late 80s, I had never been in a serious relationship and had never cheated on anyone, but in the ensuing 15 years I've actually lived life--painful break-ups, unrequited love, cheating, dead-end careers, marriage, etc--and the film plays quite differently after all that.

I'd say the film's third act, from the lunch scene with the three sisters, to the extremely troubling final sentence that raises new infidelity questions, is the triumph of Woody's whole career. I love Bullets Over Broadway and Manhattan Murder Mystery, but now they feel like cartoons. Maybe this slightly damaged, totally jaded New Yorker finally "gets" the serious Allen.

Christ, I'd rent Interiors now but I'm afraid it might send me back onto Prozac.

Ask any New Yorker and they'll confirm that the transit system is worse than ever. I live on 86th street on the east side, and my office is at 59th street, also on the east side. That's probably a mile--mile and a quarter TOPS. It should take about 10 minutes to get to work. But this being New York, it doesn't work out that way.

To get to work by 9am by bus, I need to leave my apartment at 8:15. Because the buses on York ave are so rare, each one is typically packed to standing-room-only, making local stops every other block, with an inevitable wheelchair to pick up along the way. It's a simply miserable commute. I get to work at the stroke of 9 if I run from the bus stop.

To get to work by 9am by train, I need to leave at about 8, because the trains reach 86th street after having snaked through the entire Bronx, and are so packed you can't get into them. Allowing for 1/2 hour delays because of accidents, terrorism threats, people jumping in front of trains, sick passengers, and just general MTA gross inefficiency, you can get to 59th street by about 9 (well, if you can get around the tourists, lollygaggers, homeless people, gangstas, Carrie Bradshaws with lattes gossiping on their cell phones, and all the other animals that make it an all-day affair to get out of the 59th street subway station).

To get to work by 9am by taxi, I need to leave home at about 7:00 am, because every yenta in my neighborhood takes their kids to private school in a cab, and after about 7:05 there are no free cabs again until about 10am.

Yesterday I discovered that if I just walk, it takes 20 minutes. That would be fine, except I'm now arriving at work in the advanced stages of frostbite, because it's May 4 and about 31 degrees outside.

I love me some New York!