Another for my dangerous place list

2-Year-Old Hit at Ga. McDonald's Dies
Add McDonald's to Denny's, Wal-Mart (a two-time loser) and Starbucks to my list of dangerous places to avoid.

Weird websearch of the day (yesterday, actually)

Somebody was looking for oxford suspenders electrician and found my blog. As far as I know, neither the British nor the American meaning of "suspenders" involves electricity, so what this person was really looking for I have absolutely no idea.

Plats du jour: grad tags?

Me? I was WIS 70.

Websearch of the day

pictures of edie falco's legs found my blog.

Sorry, but I don't have any pictures of her legs. Or any other part of her.

Plat du jour

Yes, Kim should get some tender loving care.

Another '60s rock 'n' roller dies

Freddie Garrity, of Freddie and the Dreamers, has died--another one of the rock 'n' rollers of my teen years.

It makes me feel old.

My name for them: freeloaders

There's a story in today's New York Times, No View, No Garden, Just a Wall (registration required), about two neighboring upper east side Manhattan families who are feuding over one family's building of an extension to their home that blocks the view of the other family--a view of the first family's garden, which goes behind both properties. Both sides have gone to court over the matter.

I'm no expert in the New York City Building Code, and I wouldn't care to hazard a guess as to whether this particular extension is legal, but I'm pretty sure of this: They are probably entitled to build something on their land. The second family is not entitled to a view of the first family's garden. They didn't pay for it.

One can buy these rights. They're called easements, and they can entitle one to traverse a neighbor's property, or merely to have the view (an easement for light and air). But they have to bought from the owner of the property in question. Here, the complaining family, and the previous owners of their property, never did so.

Thus, all this time they've been getting a gift, a free view. Now they're unhappy it has ended. I'm not surprised--I've heard this kind of complaint before here in New York a number of times. People think they are entitled to views just because they've always had them. But they're not. One side of my apartment is on the lot line, overlooking a walkway to the rear of the next building. I know that the building could be extended right up to my windows--not that it's very likely. But if it did happen, I know I'd have no legal standing to complain.

And the second family here is not complaining about that, at least not in court--they are claiming the extension is illegal on other grounds. But what they're really unhappy about is the loss of their view. Well too bad. Their free view is no more. They should be happy they had it as long as they did.

Plat du jour

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Still a PITA

In the wake of my wallet loss, I'm now updating all of the places that automatically bill my Discover card with the new card number. Though I'm a lot more organized than before, it's still a PITA.

Bush is one to talk

Bush Wants Newcomers to Learn English

"What the president has said all along is that he wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language," Snow said.

The way Bush so frequently murders English, making up the most Presidential words since Warren Harding coined "normalcy," he could use some English lessons.

Better yet, he could actually start reading books.

Plat du jour

I think this stands for the New York Road Runners Foundation.

Observation of the day

The US dime does not say how much it's worth, like the penny ("one cent"), the nickel ("five cents," though you have to look very hard on the new ones) or the quarter ("quarter dollar"). It just says "one dime," as if everyone in the world is supposed to know what that means. They don't. Just ask some foreign tourists.

Plat du jour

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Covering all the bases

An AOLer found this blog by searching for tv cd ts group meetings nyc caprice bellefleur.

Plat du jour

I have no idea what this one means.

Interesting blogsearch

Someone at USA Today did a blogsearch for bra seat belt and got my post below, among others. Is someone there writing a column or something? Stay tuned.

When in Tampa, wear a bra

Seat Belt, Bra Save Woman From Gunshot
If I should ever decide to return to Florida (an event of low probability) and wind up in Tampa, I'm definitely going to wear a bra. My steel-ribbed corset should help protect me even further.

Sometimes Democrats get in trouble, too

Now there's a Democratic congressman facing a bribery investigation. I try to be fair. Not all of the crooks in Congress are Republicans, and Louisiana congressman William Jefferson may be one of the Democratic ones. But the large majority do seem to be Republicans.

BTW, I apparently lost my Google position for "republican in trouble." Maybe this post will help restore it.

Icky websearch of the day

thick tushy blog I don't even want to think about this one. At least I was on page 5. Of course, that means this person went through a lot of results until s/he got to my blog.

Plat du jour: Is Ros perennially late?

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Mexico's Fox concerned about U.S troops on the border--ha!

Mexico's president Vicente Fox is concerned about the border with the USA becoming "militarized," after President Bush's plans to send the National Guard came out. Gee. I wonder why. Could it possibly be that this would impede the flow of un- or under-employed Mexicans into the U.S., where they a) are no longer his problem; and b) send back lots of money to bolster the Mexican economy? (I'm just guessing, but are these border crashers Mexico's most profitable export save maybe oil?)

I depart from the liberal camp on the question of illegal aliens (I'm not going to call them "undocumented workers," like they merely overlooked their paperwork.) I'm a lawyer, and I have high respect for the law. It disturbs me greatly when people enter our country illegally, or overstay their visas illegally. Frankly, I don't know what to do with the ones who are already here. The lawyer in me wants to round them up and deport them, but I realize the practical problems with that. However, I do think we should be doing more to secure our borders, to keep the situation from getting worse.

So send the National Guard. Better yet, use the troops we have over in Iraq, who are wasting their lives while that country grinds its way into civil war.

Plat du jour

Previous installment of this series.

Two headlines = zero

In the High Tech News section from the AP on my excite.com home page the following two stories appear consecutively:

• High-Definition Video Could Choke Internet
• Web Video Compression Could End Congestion

Another one who puts a question in a websearch

how can i tell my sister in law i want to be like her but i am a man who crossdresses was an AOLsearch (naturally) that found my blog--I was first and second for this one.

Dynamic flickr spell

I have changed my template to make the "glob" in pictures that I get from flickr dynamic. If you don't like the way it looks just refresh the page.

So now I don't have to change my template every day to put in a new set.

Waiting for my weight

I never completely trust what my scale says the first day back after traveling, especially from Europe. A 30 hour day, 8.5 of which were spent sitting in an airplane, tends to distort things a bit. Nevertheless, what my scale did say today was that I gained all of half a pound during my two weeks in Spain.

I'm not surprised. I was bit careful in what I ate while I was away, and I did do a lot of walking. I knew I couldn't have gained much, just because of the way my clothes fit. The problem is, I gained weight before my trip--five pounds since January, and I certainly wasn't anywhere near where I want to be back then. I have to somehow figure out how to exercise for 1.5-2 hours a day and have time to clean my office.

Of course, it would really help if I didn't eat so much. I'm so weak.

I'm back

I'm back in New York, after an eight-hour, three movie flight. Right now I've got to go out and get some groceries, unpack, look at the mail, etc. But I will blog some later--if I'm still awake. I gained 6 hours, so it's really like 10:20pm for me already.

What time was that flight again?

Report from Spain IV: The second mishap of our trip occurred Tuesday. I confused the time of our flight to Granada with the time of the one we will be taking back to New York from Madrid, 11:00am. Actually, our flight out of Barcelona was scheduled for 10:25. It didn't help that my e-ticket was in Spanish, and I didn't recognize the column headed SAL meant departure time. We arrived at the airport some time before 9:45--in plenty of time, we thought. We waited in the slow-moving Iberia Airlines check-in line. When it was finally our turn, the agent said it would be a miracle if we made the flight. We were dumbfounded. We asked why, since the flight left at 11. No, she said, it leaves at 10:05--just to make matters worse, they had changed the departure time after I got the tickets, without notifying me--why not, I don't know. They certainly had my e-mail address.

We still had a few minutes though, and I think we might have made it, except that we had to pay the overweight charges for our luggage. And unlike in America, they don't don't handle payments at the check-in counter. We had to go over to the Iberia sales counter to pay. So we went over there, and waited for a couple of Romanians to buy tickets to somewhere. We finally paid, took our receipt back to the check-in counter, got our boarding passes, and ran to the gate. There was no hold-up at security (which seemed much more laid-back that in the U.S.).

But we were too late, the gate personnel sadly informed us. This was one of those bus-to-the-plane deals, and they had already called for a bus just for us, but the plane had already moved out.

We were told to go to Belt 22 to reclaim our luggage. We went there, and watched a planeload of people get their bags. But ours weren't among them. I checked over by the lost luggage counter, but they weren't among the few they had there. Back at Belt 22, my wife flagged down an Iberia staffer, and she said they usually sent the returned bags to Belt 20. She advised us to watch both belts, but if ours didn't come in 15 minutes to see her at the lost luggage desk. We did that, but nothing of ours came on either belt.

I stayed and watched the three lonely unclaimed bags on Belt 20 make their unending circumnavigations, while my wife went to the desk. Eventually she returned and said our bags had been located (thank goodness), and they would be put on Belt 28--which was all the way at the other end of the baggage claim area. So we trekked over there, and found Belt 28, which stood motionless. So we sat down to wait. Ten minutes or so later, the belt started up, and we were finally reunited with our luggage.

Then we went back to the Iberia sales desk to see about another flight to Granada. The line wasn't too long. But when we gave the agent our boarding passes and explained what had happened (first in my wife's Spanish, then in her English), the agent was totally perplexed. As far as their system went, once the boarding passes were issued the tickets were used, so she couldn't exchange them. She came out of the sales booth and said she had to go over to the supervisor's office. She came back (rather quickly, actually) and told us that our tickets had been re-validated. Furthermore, they would do our re-booking at no charge, on the excuse that they had changed the departure time from 10:25 to 10:05 without notifying us.

The next flight was at 4:30. There was actually room on it.

We got our new tickets and headed back to the check-in counter, first removing all of the tags on our luggage from the missed flight. I hoped we could find the same check-in agent as the first time, but she wasn't there. But the check-in was easy anyway. There wasn't even a question of the over-weight charge--our prior receipt worked just fine.

So it was just a matter of waiting. We went back upstairs, through security again. Still laid-back. We found a sit-down restaurant and sat down. One of my three lambchops actually had a significant amount of meat on it. I wondered about the steel table knives--there was nothing to prevent someone from pocketing one and boarding a plane. I said that security was laid-back. But I think they are more worried about suicide bombers than hijackers at this point.

There were still nearly three hours until boarding time. There are a huge number of stores at the Barcelona airport--it's a shopping mall, basically. My wife got a cute skirt, and a pantsuit she had been wanting for a while. I got a newspaper and a little 8.50€ chotchka to remind me of the fun(?) I had in Barcelona.

Song of the Day (Monday): I Left My Wallet in Barcelona

Report from Spain III: Report from Spain II actually told of what we saw in Barcelona before my first report if you can follow that. This post details what occurred immediately after I posted that.

We left the internet place and decided to have some dessert. (This was after the over-priced mediocre paella at the tourist-trap restaurant we had wandered into.) We found a place and had sacher-torte and coffee. We then decided to take the subway back to our hotel. Big mistake.

I was the victim of one of the notorious pick-pocket gangs of Barcelona. It was the classic stall and distract method when the victim is getting off the subway. A wide, heavy guy got between me and my wife as we exited. She was out on the platform yelling while he blocked me, ostensibly to let a woman off. In the five or ten seconds it took him to do this, someone else got my wallet and my money clip, which was probably nestled in the wallet. I never felt a thing, despite having my wallet in my supposedly safe front pocket. He then moved out of my way, and I got off the train. Thirty seconds later at most I realized my wallet was gone, and I immediately knew what had happened.

They got all my credit cards, my ATM cards, and my driver's license. What they did not get was very much cash. My money clip had all of 10 euros in it. My large bills were safe in my other front pocket, along with my passport. There was also $41 in my wallet--my usual "emergency money." So they got about $54 in all. Assuming this was a crew of three, they averaged $18 each--less any service charge for converting the U.S. dollars.

We returned to the hotel, and I then started the hassle of trying to get new cards. I got the phone numbers to call from my wife's cards. (Hint: to make a collect international call in Spain, dial 1005.)

Citibank, American Express, then Chase for my Amazon Visa (Second hint: Make a list of all your card numbers and contact phone numbers and leave a copy back in your hotel room--I wish I had done this.) Complicating things was the fact that we were leaving for Granada the next morning. Since we were only going to be there three days, I was hesitant to have the replacement cards sent there, so I had them sent to the hotel in Seville, our next stop. Citibank and Amex were no problem. Chase faxed the data to Visa International. They said I'd receive a call from Visa International within "a few hours." Ten hours later we checked out of the hotel--no call from Visa International. We later checked our messages on our answering machine back in New York. That's where Visa International called.

Report from Spain II

Hi all! It's been quite a week, since my last post. I don't know how much I'm going to be able to post right now, since I'm on a computer at my hotel in Seville out in the hall for all of the guests to use, and I don't want to hog it.

Even though I have been able to hook up my camera to the computer, and view my photos on it, I don't seem to be able to upload them. So no pix right now.

First let me expand a bit on our time in Barcelona. It's a marvelous place. Antoni Gaudi's fantastic "moderniste" architecture is amazing, and there's plenty of other beautiful buildings to lend support. His Casa Batllo is unbelievable. It's hard to imagine that a family actually lived there. His Casa Milà, actually an apartment house, has a wonderful permanent exhibit in the attic about his work, and they have made one apartment into and example of what it would have looked like 100 years ago, with period furniture. Of course his amazing cathedral, which they've been working on for the better part of a century, draws huge crowds, but I liked his smaller works better--though his Park Güell was fun.

I'm going to divide up my posting, so it's not going to be one huge report. Stay tuned.

¡Hola!

We made it to Barcelona in one piece (each)--with way too much luggage. Why did I ever think I needed 5 pair of pants for 15 days? I spent 10 weeks in Europe back in 1969, and I think I had two pair.

Anyhow, we leave here tomorrow, already. Barcelona is lovely. I never knew about the great architecture here.

Traveling with other people is not the greatest--somebody always wants to do something different, and decisions can take a while to make. People do things in different ways. We were here with two French couples who live not too far. They used the tourist bus (those double decker things) for transportation. Sure, you get a commentary, and it usually gets you where you want to go, but it´s slow. We wasted at least a couple of hours going around and around the city, instead of just going directly via the subway and buses. Oh, well.

Tomorrow we fly to Granada--assuming the plane can make it off the ground with all our luggage. Í'll try to blog some more there. Right now we're in some public intenet cafe, and my Euro is running out.

Hasta la vista

I'm about to go off on my vacation to Spain. I'll be away for a couple weeks, sans computer. Hopefully I'll be able to find a way to get on the internet and continue to blog--perhaps the Spanish laundromats have rental computers, which is how I got on the web in Martinique.

In the meantime, do visit the blogs I've listed over on the right. Some of them are just a tad more serious than mine, but variety is the spice blah, blah, blah. Hasta la vista.

Plat du jour: a breast fetishist's ultimate fantasy?

See the first installment of this series here.

Weird websearch of the day

WINNIE THE BOOR PERSONALIZED T SHIRTS
Winnie the Boor???!! Oh, bother!
(And I was listed number one for this, no less.)

New York City: We're number one!

Survey: NY Ranks Number 1 in Toilet Clogs
I did my share to help us win this honor, just last week.

Plat du jour

I assume the owner of this car comes from the Bronx. Unless it belongs to an electrician.

This is the first of a series devoted to the interesting vanity license plates I see. Please feel free to add to my collection--just add a comment.

This is a Blog Against Heteronormativity

Better late than never, I'm signing up caprice's glob as a Blog Against Heteronormativity.

As nubian put it:

in brief, heteronormativity is a term that can be used to describe institutions, policies and beliefs that reinforce the rigid categories of male and female. these categories, supposedly, determine our sex, sexuality, sexual desire, gender identity, and gender roles.

While I haven't seen the term defined as broadly before, I think it's right. The ideas that there are only "men" and "women" and that heterosexuality is normal are just plain wrong. There are plenty of people who are neither men nor women, or who are some of both (I raise my hand). And plenty of people who are not heterosexual.

I am always skeptical when anything is termed "normal." Too often it is more of a value judgement than a description of frequency. People who don't conform are termed "abnormal." Even if they are in the minority, that doesn't mean there is anything undesirable about them.

Me as a South Park character

Make your own at http://www.planearium2.de/flash/sp-studio.swf

My week in review, part 2

OK, I know it's been a while since I posted part 1--this is actually a week ago, not this last week. Is there a word for a blogger who's so busy she doesn't have time to blog? I'll try to get up to date.

Anyhow, this time I'm really going to try to be brief. If anyone wants me to expand on anything here, leave a comment.

THURSDAY (4/13): I was going to go see The Threepenny Opera with some friends from CDI, but the available seats were so poor we didn't bother. I still hope to get to see it, after I come back from vacation.

FRIDAY: We went to see The God Committee with another couple. I really wasn't that interested in the subject matter (deciding who gets a heart transplant), but my wife wanted to go, so I went.

First we had the usual adequate dinner at Sam's, then we walked over to the Lamb's Theatre. The off-Broadway theatre is actually part of The Manhattan Church of the Nazarene, located right off Times Square. It has two stage spaces. The God Committee was in the smaller one.

I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this play, so I wasn't disappointed. The only surprising thing was that instead of the committee having to choose from among people all of whom deserved to go on living, it was contrived (by the sudden death of the intended heart recipient while the organ was on its way) that they had to quickly choose one of three people, none of whom should have gotten a new heart--all had something that would have normally made them ineligible.

The writing was poor: the characters frequently launched into speeches instead of conversing. There was a really ridiculous distraction that kept popping up: the action took place on St. Patrick's Day, and someone kept piping in the sounds of the bagpipe bands into the conference room. Several of the characters had serious baggage of their own: the doctor chairing the committee had terminal cancer, the psychiatrist was grieving over the death of her teenaged daughter, the social worker was a paraplegic. And the hospital board sent a priest to the meeting to "observe"-- who just happened to have had a long career as a defense attorney before entering the priesthood. (They used his arrival as the reason for explaining the details of the heart transplant decision process to the audience.)

The direction was also lacking: as I said, speeches were launched into, far faster than anyone would be able to think about what had just been said, and to respond--even under the time pressure the committee had to make its decision.

I'm sure I would have had a much more enjoyable evening at the other Lamb's performance space--they had the Moscow Cats there.


SATURDAY: it was back to Times Square for The History Boys. This award winning import from the UK's National Theatre was a much, much better theatre experience than the previous night's. Eight high school (or whatever they call it over there) graduates were getting special tutoring for the Oxford-Cambridge ("Oxbridge") entrance exams in the mid-eighties. They were all very bright (well, maybe one wasn't), and we saw two very different teachers trying to prepare them in very different ways. Another teacher and the school headmaster were there more as observers and commentators, helping the plot along.

The discussions the boys had with the teachers were at a rather intellectual level--though what they talked about among themselves was another matter. One boy lamented being small, Jewish and gay. Another boy was having an affair with the voluptuous secretary of the headmaster.

It was extremely well-written, and very funny--though I wonder how much non-French speakers got of one part, where the boys improvised a scene of a man visiting a brothel. They did it all in French. The play makes use of video screens to show most of the action that takes place outside of the school--just silent scenes connecting things up. This worked very well.

The acting was excellent, although it was a bit difficult to understand one of the teachers sometimes--he didn't project as much as the others.

All-in-all, it was one of the better plays I've seen in a while.

SUNDAY: afternoon we went to a Lincoln Center "Great Performers" series performance of George Frideric Handel's oratorio Solomon. This was performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a group that uses "period instruments"--instruments as they were back in the 1700s. They were accompanied by a bunch of young singers--five soloists and a thirty-voice chorus called the "English Voices."

Before the concert, though, we heard a talk on the piece by Ellen T. Harris, a professor at MIT. (She's also a soprano soloist, and it was the only time I've ever seen a performer, much less an academic, list an appearance singing the National Anthem at Fenway Park on her bio.)

The oratorio is much less frequently performed than Handel's Messiah, and only the opening of the third act, the "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba," is familiar music. Nevertheless, it was quite enjoyable. Handel was living in London when he composed it, and the libretto (author unknown), is in English. (It is not directly from the Bible, though the events described do come from it.) We were sitting down close, and we could understand the singers quite well, without having to refer to the text.

The counter-tenor singing Solomon was adequate, though he, Australian David Hansen, lacked the power of the other soloists. (Handel originally wrote the role for a mezzo-soprano.) There were two sopranos, oddly both from Sweden, dividing up the female roles: Malin Christensson was fine as Solomon's Queen, and the First "Harlot"--one of the two women claiming the same baby fom the familiar biblical story. But it was Marie Arnet, as the Queen of Sheba and the Second Harlot, who impressed me even more. She was able to convey the harsh character of the false claimant, while still producing a beautiful sound.

There wasn't anything about the "English Voices" in the program, and all I could find about them on the web was their origin apparently from Cambridge. But they were excellent. Conductor René Jacobs held everything together nicely--after performances in the UK earlier in the month they were all well-rehearsed.

Afterwards we hurried over to Telepan, a recent restaurant discovery we stumbled into when we couldn't get into our usual pre-Lincoln Center dinner place. It was excellent. I had the best roast duck in my life. It's not cheap, but it is certainly serving some of the best food I've had in quite a while. The service was excellent also--friendly and attentive, but not intrusive.

Is this like a fish and a bicycle?

From the Metropolitan Diary column of the NY Times:

Some kids stopped me on the street a few weeks ago and asked me to buy a raffle ticket for a drug rehab center.

I bought one, and put my dog's name on the stub.

I just received a phone call that "Melvin" has won a steam iron.

In the printed edition there's an accompanying cartoon showing a dog ironing his dog suits, which are hanging on a line behind him.

Weird websearch of the day (yesterday)

putting a shoebox under your bed with a red rose, egg
Umm, I just don't know what to say about this one. Not only does my blog have nothing on this subject, it doesn't seem like any of the sites MSNsearch found do either. They're all just places that have some of these words in them some place.

I wonder, is putting a rose and an egg under your bed a recipe for fertility?

Happy birthday, Your Majesty

Today is Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday. She's showing no signs of slowing down, let alone abdicating (her mother lived beyond a 100.) So hopefully there will be a lot more of these birthdays to celebrate.

Of course, this is only her actual birthday, not the official one. That's June 17, this year. It's always a Saturday in June. I wonder if she gets cake twice.

If you want to send her a greeting, go here. I did.

I'm number one for "republican in trouble!"

Someone Googled "republican in trouble," and my blog was the first entry! And the second! I'm so proud.

First and second out of "about 21,800,000." I guess "republican" and "trouble" just seem to go together--much more than "democrat in trouble," for which Google could only find "about 11,500,000."

Two headlines, one thought

I use excite.com as my home page, and I have their "Top Stories" as my leading category. Today they listed these two headlines in row:

• Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes Welcome New Baby
• Experts Suggest Spacing Pregnancies

In their case, I would suggest spacing them fifty years apart.

Shouldn't that be "womanhandled?"

Manhattan Transsexual Charged With Assaulting Mom
Posted: Tuesday, 18 April 2006 10:48AM

New York (1010 WINS) -- The trial of a transsexual accused of breaking her wealthy mother's arm during a fight over money is expected to start Tuesday.

A judge ruled Monday that a jury will hear testimony about other alleged violence against Constance Joyce Cheney, 85.

Diane Wells is charged with harassing and assaulting Cheney on May 10, 2005, in the Central Park West apartment where they lived.

Judge Ellen Coin says she'll allow evidence that Wells manhandled her mother, when she pushed her into a wall causing her head to hit a picture frame and that she blew smoke into her face during an argument.

Wells' lawyer says Cheney was in the hospital for several days without mentioning the defendant. He suggested that his client's brother encouraged their mother to blame his client.

Seriously, though, what does the defendent's being a transsexual have to do with this case? The media jump on these type of stories, but it reminds me of when newspapers identified a person's race or religion (when it was a minority) when it was not germane to the story at all.

Daffodils want the spotlight?

I tried putting this picture in the article below, but it kept screwing up the display. I tried all sorts of different ways. I'd say I had too many pictures, but the problem only seemed to be with this one. But it's fine here. I dunno. Maybe the daffodils just want to have an article all to themselves.

Yesterday: From low to high

Yesterday did not start out terribly well: my toilet overflowed and...you don't want to know the messy details.

But, in the afternoon, we took a walk up to the Conservatory Garden in Central Park. This little gem across Fifth Avenue from Mount Sinai Hospital is a formal garden packed with beautiful flowers. The crabapple trees were in full bloom (though one other type of flowering tree had already dropped its petals).




The tulips were just starting--some were up, but not a lot. But the daffodils (see picture) were out in force. I never knew there were so many varieties.








They haven't turned on the fountains in the Garden yet, but it was still lovely. Despite the sun it wasn't that warm, so there weren't too many people there, and we could sit and enjoy the colorful sight in peace and quiet.

Someone at the NY Times has a sense of humor

On the front page of today's New York Times' business section there is a prominent article about the Page Six gossip column in the New York Post. The article continues on the business section's page six.

My week in review, part 1

Busy, busy, busy. I won't bore you with all my errands. Instead I'll bore you with the political and leisure-type fun activities of my week. But come to think of it, some of the errands were more fun than some of the leisure. Anyhow:

MONDAY: A conference call of the NYS GENDA Coalition. Basically I told them I couldn't do a lot of the work on setting up in-district meetings with the state assembly co-sponsors, because I'll be on vacation in Spain.

TUESDAY: I went down to CDI, changed into some semi-lawyerly clothes, then went and helped someone with her name change papers. (If that seems strange, take my word for it that I'm not the only lawyer in the world that makes house calls. Besides, I don't have a real office.) Then we went for a little Mexican dinner and a nice conversation.

I returned to CDI and changed into some decidedly non-lawyerly clothes (shimmery black and gold skirt, gold tank top covered by a sheer black blouse, gold accented fishnets). Then it was off with my friend Madeline to Happy Valley, where there was sort of an after-party to the official launch of the Amanda Lepore doll. The doll is a fundraiser for DIFFA - The Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. (If you don't know who Amanda Lepore is, let's just say that she's a TS who likes to run around wearing nothing but lingerie, and who's had much more than her share of plastic surgery. I really think her doll should come with interchangable parts.)

We got there pretty early, and were warmly welcomed by the woman handling the door. No cover charge. We checked our coats, and went into the main room. After getting a $10 gin and tonic we went upstairs. The velvet ropes to the VIP area were pushed to the side, so we just walked in and claimed a couple of seats. A tiny, high-heeled woman wearing short-shorts came by and said she'd be our cocktail waitress. There was a menu there for bottle service: $300 per bottle. After drinking a little of my drink, though, I realized a bottle might be a bargain--I didn't get much gin for my $10.

We sat and watched the people flow in. A few danced. The music was loud, but not extremely--you could have a conversation if you really wanted to. But it really wasn't worth the effort.

This was really my first encounter with "club kids"--the 20-something (at least according to their IDs) people who dress wildly and/or fashionably and party the nights away in places like Happy Valley. (There really weren't any when I went to Duvet last September--which was the only other time I had seen Amanda Lepore.) Except I noticed that not all the "kids" were that young. Lots of cleavage, some of both genders wore extensive make-up. A few of the costumes were quite inventive--obviously home-made by someone who knew how to sew. There were also a few guys in high drag--I think I recognized one from the Imperial Court. But the costumed ones (ourselves included) were maybe slightly outnumbered by, how shall I put it, the mundanes--though I didn't see any backward baseball cap-wearing frat boys one online reviewer complained about. And the mundanes were frequently on the older side of the scale--lots of 40+'s.

The anti-smoking laws were violated by a good number of people, especially up on the balcony where we were. The only thing the club did about it was to diligently sweep up the cigarette butts from the floor.

We sat and watched as the place filled up. Eventually Madeline's friend Sheila showed up. We had another weak drink--after Sheila went off to find the waitress.

Some time after midnight they auctioned off one of the dolls--apparently the last unsold one. It went for $1500--and they would have gotten more had they noticed a woman at the side trying to bid. Sheila left, as she had to get up to go to work the next morning. After a great deal of effort we flagged down the waitress for one last drink. A female mundane leaned over and told me that I was the hottest one in the place, and I would "certainly get something" that evening. Yeah, right. I thanked her for her compliment.

I finished my drink, and we decided to leave. On the way downstairs I lost my cellphone. After my unsuccesful search I gave up and we went to retrieve our coats. We had to pass through a very long line for the restroom--I'm glad I didn't have to go.

While waiting on the coatcheck line (much shorter than the restroom one, thank goodness) Amanda Lepore herself passed by--we almost bumped elbows. I discovered she is tiny! Even in her heels, significantly higher than mine, she was two or three inches shorter than I am, and I'm only 5'5". She's taller in photos. But she's even more weird-looking in real life.

WEDNESDAY: We hosted a Passover seder for 11 people at our apartment. I should say my wife and her friend hosted it. I'm not real big in the religion department. But I did supply logistical support--like running to the supermarket at 4:30 for parsley and raw horseradish. Since it was a school night, and a good proportion of the attendees were students or teachers, it didn't run real late.

The evening wasn't totally useless, though. I learned something new. I learned that even four sprigs of parsley dipped in saltwater do not do much for my hunger.

Non-news of the day

Pope Celebrates Easter, Prays for Peace
So a religious leader celebrates a religious holiday in the usual way, saying the usual things. Why is this news?

Bravo Metropolitan Museum!

A few weeks back the Metropolitan Museum removed the scaffolding that had obscured the front during its refurbishing. I was struck by how handsome the building was. Not only was it nice and clean, it was free of the huge banners they always used to advertise the current exhibitions. There were normally five banners, including three huge ones that sometimes flapped noisily in the breeze. I thought I wouldn't have very long to enjoy the sight of the unencumbered ediface before they hoisted some new ones.

But to my delight the big, distracting banners were replaced by three small ones, directly attached to the facade, covering only some plain wallspace. I guess I wasn't the only one who disliked the old mess.

Bravo, Metropolitan! Your building not only contains art, it is art, and it should be seen in its glory to the utmost.

Yay, Delta!

Union: Delta, Pilots Reach Tentative Deal
It looks like my trip to Spain is on. I was worried about the possibility of a strike--Delta operates the only flight from New York to Barcelona.

So we're off to buy new luggage--ones with real wheels.

It's spring!

We took a nice walk in Central Park today, in the beautiful 75º weather, looking at the pinkish-white flowers on some of the trees, and the nice yellow daffodils with some sort of blue flowers sprinkled among them. We sat in the late afternoon sun for a bit. It was lovely.

If you needed any more proof that Hollywood is the land of the unreal

Winnie the Pooh Gets Hollywood Star
You don't have to be a real person, or even a real animal, to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (You do have get someone to pay for it, though--the honorees have to pay a fee to be honored.)

I'm VERY unhappy

I lost my new toy last night. I was leaving a club, walking down a flight of stairs overlooking the dancefloor. My phone was in its liitle pouch, which was securely hooked to my purse strap. But the Razr is so thin that it wasn't a tight fit like my old phone. The bouncing going down the stairs sent it out of the pouch. I felt it hit my knee, then it descended into the crowd below.

I looked around for it the best I could. Nobody turned it in to the bar. They said to call the club office when it reopens this afternoon. I'm not hopeful.

I've tried calling it several times. At first it rang, and then went to voicemail. I think someone did answer it once, but said nothing. Now it's off, and my call goes directly to voicemail. Of course it might just be that the battery is empty (though it wasn't that low).

It is covered by insurance, with a $50 deductible. But it's still a big hassle, going down to the police precinct to file a lost property report, filing a claim, etc.

Grump, grump grump.

Wow! I agree with Bush on something!

Bush Glad Cheney Not Running for President
I think our reasons are just a tad different, though.

Liz Smith screws up again

Last September Liz Smith used the wrong Yiddish word in her gossip column. Today she has this:

OUR PAL Charlie Rose, of the talk-show biz, is one lucky man. When he experienced shortness of breath while working in Syria, he was helped quickly on a plane to Paris and out of the Middle East by Syria's king himself!

The king of Syria? Syria hasn't had a king since 1920, when the French army threw him out!

My week in brief(?)

As I said in Project (non)progress report, I was out every night this week. Here's a semi-quick summary of what I was doing:

MONDAY: I went to hear Namoli Brennet sing at the Bitter End--a Greenwich Village institution that I had somehow missed ever going to in 30+ years of the living in New York. I had last heard Namoli at a little "house concert" in January at Ed Mannix's place in Brooklyn, and I was glad to see she was performing in a commercial venue--especially one in Manhattan, where I wouldn't have to suffer the vagaries of the subway system.

It was a rainy night, and I hopped in a cab to be there early, as Namoli's publicity advised--she was the opener. I arrived to find several people taking shelter under the Bitter End's sidewalk canopy--they weren't admitting anyone during the various performers' sound checks. I found Ed, and he introduced me to a couple of his friends. We huddled in the cold for about 20 minutes, until they finally let us in. So much for arriving early.

We marched past the bar and its huge mural of the caricatures of the now-famous entertainers who had performed at the Bitter End (immodestly flaunting its institution-ness). We greeted Namoli, and she introduced us to Wendy Layton, her manager. We claimed a table and ordered drinks from a charmingly-accented waitperson.

Soon Namoli took to the stage and proceeded to draw the audience (most of whom were probably there for the performers to follow) deep into the poetry of her songs. Later Ed said this was very unusual for the Bitter End of late, where normally people talk during the performances and treat the songs as background music. By the end of her second number the audience was quiet, except for one boor who had to be shushed to silence.

Namoli was in fine form. I was particularly impressed by one song she did accompanying herself on the piano, instead of her usual guitar. It showed a side of her that's mostly hidden behind her serious singer/songwriter persona: she is an entertainer, out there to give her audience an enjoyable show--which she was doing very well.

Her 50 minutes went by all too fast, and after paying our check we went to meet her over by the bar. She was greeting fans (more new than old, perhaps), while Wendy sold a few CDs from a little suitcase. As the next set of performers started up, she, Wendy, Ed and I adjourned to the Japanese restaurant next door for dinner.

Namoli was as charming as she had been at the house concert at Ed's. She told us of a recent visit to her Tuscon home by Venus DeMars of All the Pretty Horses. [I have removed the links to the Venus and the All the Pretty Horses sites because they seem to have a virus or something. Beware.] Wendy was just as charming. She related how she had to pull over to the side of the road when she got a call from my friend Kristine James (the founder of Crossdressers International), who wanted to book Namoli for Transgender 2006, the annual convention of the International Foundation for Gender Education. Ed tried to convince Namoli to return to New York for the Outmusic awards in June.

At the conclusion of dinner Wendy gave Ed and me a little preview CD of three songs from Namoli's next album. Then the two returned to the Bitter End to join some people from Albany who had come down to hear Namoli. (They had already eaten, so they decided to stay for the following performers.) I cabbed it up to the O.W. Bar for Kenny Dash's Bingorama. I really had a good time there: Kenny was a lot of fun, yakking it up with the audience while calling out the bingo numbers. Perhaps because there were only five of us actually playing, it was really sort of a group conversation. We discussed income taxes and the NYPD's raids on several nightclubs the previous week. And I won a T-shirt and a CD.

TUESDAY: A private meeting of people on the MyHusbandBetty Message Boards. Some of us went out for drinks afterwards.

WEDNESDAY: I started with a meeting of board of directors of the LGBT Law Association Foundation of Greater New York. I was hoping that it would be short, as there wasn't too much on the agenda--I wanted to catch at least some of my cyber-friend Johanna Weller-Fahy's show at the Duplex. Alas, things did not go according to plan. We started with an item not on the Foundation Board's agenda, a long discussion of the Association's amicus curiae brief in the New York State same-sex marriage case. (The Foundation and the Association are legally separate, but the boards are overlapping, and meet the same evening. I'm on the Foundation's Board, but not the Association's.)

By the time I got down to the Duplex the show was over. But Johanna was still there, finishing up her business with the club. So I did get to go out to dinner with her, and her marvelous friends (oh, to be as young as they all are again). This was the first time I had met Johanna in real life.

After dinner I caught up with some of the people who had been at the Crossdressers International (CDI) open house. I had a drink while I watched them play pool, and while some guy kept trying to pick us up. After a half-hour or so we left, and I called it a night--it had been a long one.

THURSDAY: I had a meeting of the New York County Lawyers Assn. Committee on LGBT Issues down at the "House of the Law" on Vesey St. Before that though I did a little shopping at Century 21 (the department store, not the realty). Mostly I was looking for some pajama bottoms. (See Pajama woes.)

The meeting was extremely short--25 minutes or so, and I jumped on the subway up to the Village and got to the Duplex just before Johanna started! (This was the last performance, and I had not expected to be able to see it.) It was a very nice show, "Johanna Weller-Fahy at the Whiskey Bar," an hour of songs by Jacques Brel and Kurt Weill, connected by a quite funny monologue. Johanna has an excellent voice--in fact a couple times I thought it was too pretty for the gritty lyrics she was singing.

After the show I went and said hello. She actually recognized me rather quickly, despite my presentation as a man that evening. She autographed a program for me, which I told her I would be selling for a fortune on eBay when she got famous.

FRIDAY: was the opening night of Wolfpit, the new production of the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. My friend Betty was in it, at least her male persona was. The play is the story of a medieval English village that discovers a pair of totally green children speaking an unknown tongue. Unbelievable? It's based on reports written by two 12th century monks!

The play was very good. The acting was excellent. The writing, though in language of some vintage that is not modern, was quite understandable. The story was quite believable, if one can accept that a pair of green children can suddenly appear somewhere. Most of the characters seemed quite true. A couple of times the lighting failed, but it returned in a few seconds--the actors handled it.

There was a Q&A with the playwright, director and cast afterwards--though most of the actors said nothing. A reception followed. I didn't get a chance to ask either of the women playing the green children how many jokes they had heard about auditioning for Wicked--it was quite clear at the reception that the make-up did not come off quickly.

SATURDAY: it was over to the west side for a Metropolitan Opera performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. As we walked across the Lincoln Center Plaza there was a big crowd by the fountain. There I immediately recognized what they were looking at: eight or ten people from The Imperial Court having their picture taken--then I remembered that there was a performance by the New York City Gay Men's Chorus in Avery Fisher Hall that evening. (What I didn't remember was that I had a camera phone in my pocket--and there was enough light so I could take a decent photo, unlike the ones of Namoli and Johanna I had tried earlier in the week.) One man there asked me if all the Court people were men. I assured him they were. But I sure hope they weren't planning on sitting in the audience at the concert--some of those wigs would have blocked the views of a dozen people behind.

This was a new production of Fidelio, at least to me. It was set some time during Franco's dictatorship. I'm not sure why--I don't think there were any agitators for freedom like Floristan during that period. If there were, I don't think they would have to be hidden in a jail from the provincial governor. It didn't make sense. Nor did some of the stage direction--at the the end, when Leonore has saved her husband and they sing a duet about being together again, they do it from the opposite sides of the stage--they should be in each other's arms. And why did she take off her jacket in the freezing cellar?

All that didn't really matter. The music is wonderful. Beethoven is my favorite composer, and he wrote little that was better than Fidelio. He used parts of the final chorus in the last movement of his great Ninth Symphony. The performance was quite good. All of the singers were fine, even Karita Mattila, who had to cancel her Leonore last week. The tympanist did have trouble at one point in the last act, I think. He seemed to be off the beat for several measures--weird, in an orchestra of that calibre. But all-in-all it was an excellent evening.

Then I came home and watched my recording of the NCAA men's hockey national championship game--which made it an even better evening.

Wisconsin rules college hockey!

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's men's hockey team won the NCAA national championship last night. Their women's team won the national championship a couple weeks ago. I think it's safe to say that Wisconsin (my alma mater) rules college hockey.

This was the sixth NCAA championship for the Badger men, but the first since 1990. I was at the first one, in 1973 in the old Boston Garden. But there was no college hockey for women back then.

One of the interesting factoids coming out of this that one family has a member on each of the squads. I wonder if there has ever been a brother-sister pair on national championship teams in the same sport before.

Project (non)progress report

You may have noticed I haven't posted any progress reports on My Great Office Clean-Up Project lately. That's because there hasn't been any progress lately. I have been out ten out of the last eleven days, and I've got an opera tonight. Most of the rest of the time I've just been trying to keep my desk clear, handling the incoming mail. I haven't even had time to blog about what I've been doing this week. Maybe I'll do a short one tonight when I get home.

Obviously this is going to take a lot longer than the month I originally estimated.

Tomorrow I've got nothing, and Monday just a conference call, so I should be able to get some real cleaning done. Right now, though, I'm going to turn off the computer and see if I can completely clear the desk before it's time to get dressed for the opera.

Pajama woes

I'm very picky about what I sleep in. I hate having any buttons, snaps, strings or any other accoutrements interfering with my close connection to the sheets. Also, since I de-haired my arms and legs, I need warmth: long sleeves and long pants, made of a thick material. (It's amazing how cold you can get when you have neither a layer of male fur nor one of female subcutaneous fat to protect your limbs.)

What I've been using for pajamas the last few years is a long-sleeved flannel t-shirt and a pair of flannel men's Nautica "lounge pants." I'm not sure who would ever want to lounge in these things, but they work just fine in bed. They have a simple elastic waist, no fly, and they even have elastic bands at the ankles to help prevent them from riding up in bed, or from my stepping on them when walking (I have relatively short legs).

I've gone through two pairs of these pants. The first one needed to be replaced when the elastic in the waistband failed. The second pair, while the waist is beginning to get too stetched out, has a more serious problem--I've simply worn through the flannel fabric. There are little holes popping up all over the place, and I caught my toe in one of them down by the ankle and made a big hole in the thinning material.

So it's definitely time to replace them. Except Nautica doesn't seem to make that model any more. All they (and the rest of the manufacturers) have now is ones with an elastic waist and a tie string. Sort of like a belt and suspenders. I'll try it with the tie string there, but I suspect I'll end up cutting off the ends at least. (I can't just pull the string out, beacuse it's anchored at the back.)

And there's one more problem: there's no elastic at the ankle--I'm going to have to have the legs shortened, or I'll be walking all over them.

Grump, grump, grump.

Go fug yourself

I have added a link to the blog Go fug yourself. This wildly popular blog is by two young(?) women who delight in pointing out the fashion mistakes of celebrities.

As they put it, "Fug" comes from "fugly," which is a contraction of "fantastically ugly." Their blog is fantastically funny. I can't help wasting time reading it.

Maybe I should start a new category of links: Guilty Pleasures.

Very curious web search of the day

Someone found this site doing a Google blog search for "feingold." They found the snippet I posted earlier today, Leading the race for my vote:. What was very curious was that the searcher's ISP is the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms. What is the someone in the Sergeant at Arms office doing searching blogs for one of the senators, especially when they keep going at least to the fourth page of the search results? (At the time of this post I've been pushed down to the fifth page.) Very curious.

Republicans on fast track to oblivion

In Analysis: DeLay Leaves Troubling Legacy a long-time Associated Press Washington reporter quotes political strategist Frank Luntz as saying, "It's hard to believe that in just 12 years, Republicans could end up in the same situation that it took Democrats 40 years to get in." That's a Republican political strategist, one of the people behind the 1994 GOP "Contract On America" oops I mean "Contract With America," admitting the sorry state of the Republican party.

He did get one thing wrong. It's not hard to believe. Far more Republicans than Democrats forget who they're supposed to be working for when then achieve office. Far more Republicans than Democrats are beholden to the big corporate interests for their campaign money. It is very easy to believe how fast so many Republicans found their way into ethics scandals, campaign finance law violation indictments, if not outright bribery convictions. Big Business looks at laws as things to get around, so they can maximize their profits, and their philosophy flows right along with their money going to Republican causes.

Republican politicians, like a lot of corporate leaders, are now finding out the hard way that the laws can't be gotten around, not when the violations are so big. Small, local corruption may escape unnoticed, but when they hit the national stage their misdeeds are much more likely to be uncovered.

Good times for the Democrats.

Leading the race for my vote:

Feingold Says He Supports Gay Marriage

Another Republican bites the dust

DeLay Announces Resignation From House
Maybe DeLay put on his glasses and read the writing on the wall a little closer. He's got enough trouble just trying to keep himself out of jail, much less retaining his seat in Congress.

DeLay thinks his exit will cause the donations to his Democratic opponent Nick Lampson flowing in from all over the country to dry up. Ha! I'm sure my inbox will be filling up with solicitations from all the various groups I support. DeLay thinks this is all about him. It's not. It's about removing all the Republicans from the positions of power that enabled them to misuse the public trust. If anything his resignation will make this easier, not harder.

I wonder who the Republicans will choose to replace him on the Appropriations Committee, which they rewarded him with when he had to step down as House Majority Leader. Maybe this time they can find someone who's not under indictment.

New template

So I got home after a nice night out and checked to see what was going on in cyberland before heading to bed. There had been problems all day with the internet connection before I left in the afternoon. I got to my blog, and found it was blank.

After the paramedics finished restarting my heart, I got on to Blogger and found everything was really still there. Something was screwed up with the template, apparently. So I trashed the old one (saving a copy first), and started over with a new one. I carefully inserted my additions one by one, making sure everything works.

So now I have this. In some respects it works better than the old one ever did.

My apologies to anyone who came here and found nothing.

Tomorrow (or I should say, later today, after I get up--I've still got to get to bed) I'm going to back up everything. Then I won't need to call the paramedics the next time my blog disappears.

My new toy

This is a self-portrait of my new toy, a Motorola RAZR V3c camera phone. So now I'll have a camera with me all the time. Which means I can take pictures to put on my blog all the time.

It's thin and sexy (unlike its owner). It was basically free. In fact I also got one for my wife for free. Verizon charges $150 for one with a two year contract. But you get $100 credit when you fulfill your previous two year contract, which I did. So they charged me $50 (plus tax) for the phone. But Motorola has a $50 rebate, so all I'm really paying is the $4 and change tax. Then Verizon is having a two-for-one sale on these phones (I think it ends today). So I got a second one for free for my wife.

Aside from having a camera, the thing I like about it most is that the ringer is much louder than my old phone's. If I had that thing in my pocket (forget about when it was in my purse) I couldn't hear it, even when it was turned up all the way. The only thing I don't like about it so far is that there doesn't seem to be a way of assigning a ring tone for all "restricted" (non-caller ID) calls. You win some, you lose some.

So get ready for more pictures on this blog.

Oooops!

I just noticed the time on the clock above was wrong. I didn't realize it had to be changed for daylight savings time manually. Sorry.

Requiem redux

Saturday night was a regular New York Philharmonic subscription concert: Music Director Lorin Maazel conducting Giuessepi Verdi's Requiem Mass. I just heard this last fall with the London Symphony, the opening concert of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series. Same music. Same hall. Different musicians.

Well, not totally different musicians: the bass soloist, Orlin Anastassov, was the same. This time he was joined by soprano Fiorenza Cedolins, mezzo-soprano Luciana D'Intino, and tenor Franco Farina, a replacement for the ailing Ramón Vargas. All four soloists were making their New York Philharmonic debuts. The New York Choral Artists provided the chorus. They were under the direction of Joseph Flummerfelt, who seems to run every large chorus in the New York area, at least the ones that perform with the Philharmonic.

Comparisons with last fall seem in order: Maazel (who seemed to have missed an appointment with his haircutter), was as much in control as Sir Colin Davis was--but seemed more relaxed. He took advantage of a new podium (I think maybe a couple inches higher than the old one). It has a handsome curved wood railing, which Maazel sometimes put his left hand on when he turned towards the violins. The orchestra was as good as ever--even the trumpets stuck up in a rear balcony to play a few bars.

The chorus was good, maybe not quite up to the level of the London Symphony Chorus, but more than adequate.

That leaves the soloists. Anastassov (the only one who did not use a score), was even better than last time. His voice literally echoed in the large hall. If anything Varga was even better than Anastassov. He was great in his small role, with a powerful presentation. Unfortunately the women soloists were not as good. There was nothing particularly wrong with either, but they both lacked that extra something that is the difference between a thrilling performance and a merely competent one. (Both also covered their gowns with shawls for the slightly chilly auditorium. Cedolin's was this thick fuzzy thing, which really detracted from her black, sparkly dress that bared her shoulders and arms. D'Intiro wore a midnight blue gown with a slit that bared her leg well above the knee when she sat--though she did wear dark hose. But her shawl covered the dress so much that it was hard to tell what was underneath.)

The Verdi Requiem is a great piece of music, and I certainly didn't mind hearing it twice in one season. I might give the nod to the London Symphony last fall, mostly on the basis of the chorus. But there wasn't that much of a difference overall, and I really enjoyed both.

Rabbit Hole

Thursday night, after an excellent roast duck dinner at Marseille (I've never been disapponted there) I went up a few blocks to the beautifully renovated Biltmore Theatre to see Rabbit Hole. This is playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's fourth work for the Manhattan Theatre Club, though I haven't seen any of the previous ones.

The main attraction of this play was the pairing of two great actresses, Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly. The subject matter was off-putting though: the effect on the parents of the accidental death of their four-year-old son. Despite that, it was a great night of theatre.

The reactions of the parents to their loss were quite different. The mother (Nixon), tried to eliminate the reminders of her child from view, while the father (John Slattery) clung to them. He faithfully attended a support group for parents of children who died. She dropped out of it.

The situation is complicated by the mother's sister (Mary Catherine Garrison), who reveals she's pregnant, and their mother (Daly), who also lost a son--a suicide at age 30. And then there is the teenaged driver (John Gallagher, Jr.), trying to handle the fact he killed someone, even though it was at most only slightly his fault.

Lindsay-Abaire's characters ring true. All of the actors were excellent. The sets were highly imaginative: they were stationed on a large turntable plus a smaller one at one side, that allowed to the audience to see the living room from the kitchen and vice versa. My only quibble was some of the vocabulary used by the grandmother and aunt. They seemed to be from a lower middle class background at most--which the mother had risen out of. Not a lot of education (the aunt said she liked school, but she was never very good at it). Yet occasionally their words seemed above them--"prologue," for instance.

As I said, the acting was great. The mother was the biggest role, onstage almost the entire play, and Nixon was fine. Gallagher managed to portray the awkward high school senior quite convincingly--I was surprised to learn he is approaching his 22nd birthday.

But the real star is the story. Not surprisingly, I've never heard of a play on the subject. The only similar movie to my recollection was Ordinary People. But watching the parents work through their grief, and manage to reach a common point, made for a memorable evening of theatre.

I can hear the comedians now

Government to Settle Denver Mint Bias Case

DENVER (AP) - The U.S. Mint agreed Friday to pay $9 million to female workers at its Denver plant who alleged their bosses demanded sex in exchange for promotions, harassed them and retaliated when they complained...

The $9 million will be paid in nickels, dimes and quarters.

I'm afraid the city may have been too much for him

Hal, the Central Park Coyote, Dies
I first noted Hal in A coyote in Central Park??!!. This is sad.

More worries for Ney?

Republican Rep. Tom DeLay's (himself under indictment) former deputy chief of staff pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge involving convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff today. He promised to help in other investigations. His testimony could be quite damaging to Rep. Bob Ney, whose situation I noted back in January in ANOTHER REPUBLICAN IN TROUBLE. (Gee, I keep using that headline again and again).

More fun times for the Democrats.

Curiouser web search of the day

Yesterday I noted in Curious web search of the day that someone at the House of Representatives found my post Another Republican in trouble? doing a search for Jim Ryun. Today they did it again, and found Curious web search of the day. I wonder if tomorrow they'll find this post.

Assuming they work weekends.

Curious web search of the day

Somebody was searching for references to "Jim Ryun" in blogs and found my post Another Republican in trouble?. The searcher was on the U.S. House of Representatives ISP. Someone in Ryun's office, maybe?

Weird web search of the day

novelty:"pickle key chain" lists my blog as fourth. What makes this even weirder was that the searcher was on the Disney ISP. Hmmm.

ND/NF: Eleven Men Out

My only film at this year's New Directors/New Films Festival was Eleven Men Out (Strákarnir okkar), the story about what happens when an Icelandic soccer star, Óttar, announces he's gay. (Don't confuse this with Guys and Balls (Männer wie wir), the story about what happens when a German soccer star announces he's gay.)

The strange thing is, we never learn much about him at all. We learn much more about Óttar's family: his son (typical 13-year old), his ex-wife (alcoholic former Miss Iceland), his father (homophobic jerk), his brother (misogynistic jerk), and his sister-in-law (dull-witted victim of the misogynistic jerk). His coming out is a spur-of-the-moment attempt to move an article being written about him to a more prominent position in the magazine. Then things just seem to happen all around him, frequently for no good reason other than people are stupid.

He's thrown off his team (which is coached by his jerk father), joins an amateur team that has a couple gay guys quietly on it (thereby sending all of the straight players fleeing), attracts a bunch of other gay players to the team, and starts a relationship with one of them. No one wants to play the gay team, so they keep winning by default, and end up in the play-offs. Except their opponents are from a little fishing village, and half the team is on a trawler at sea, so they don't play that game either.

Then somehow it's decided the gay team will play Óttar's old team. The game just happens to be scheduled for the same day as Iceland's gay pride parade--thereby ensuring a huge crowd.

I won't tell you the game's results--just in case there is actually someone out there with enough interest in Icelandic films (or gay soccer movies, which seems to be a growing sub-genre) to want to see this thing. I will tell you that as a comedy, it's not very funny, as a character study, they're all one-dimensional, and as a drama, the plot is ridiculous.

Oh, one other thing. There is hardly any soccer shown in the movie at all. But there is a fair amount of nudity, and some gay sex. And a lot of rain.

Another Republican in trouble?

While lobbyist Jack Abramoff was given nearly six years in jail to consider the error of his ways, another Republican Congressman has been added to the list of those alleged to have benefited from a deal with an Abramoff-linked group. Rep. Jim Ryun bought a home from a non-profit group funded by corporations linked to Abramoff for much less than it was worth, it has been claimed. Ryun claims he paid the "fair market value."

There are more and more of these deals coming to the surface. Abramoff could get his sentence reduced for his co-operation with prosecutors, and the start of his jail term has been delayed so he can do this. We'll have to see how many of his former friends end up in jail with him.

Fun times for the Democrats.

5,000 visits!

Today this blog logged its 5,000th visit. Wow! Considering that I don't write deep political analysis, or get into a lot of interpersonal relationship issues, or talk about sex, just slices of my life, that's a lot. Thank you to all who keep coming back.

As long as we're on the subject, here's a thin slice: last night I had an excellent mahi-mahi at East of Eighth with a friend in town on business. (A word to the wise: they get their fish delivered on Tuesday and Friday.) Then we went to Snapshot, "A Party for Queers...and their friends" at Bar 13. It was mostly young lesbians (very young...I was probably twice as old as almost all of them). Some "boi"s. (My friend said one nerdy one looked like her in high school, except without the pocket protector.) The music was pretty good (cute DJ), and not too loud for conversation. A few people danced occasionally, but it was mostly people sitting along the walls, just talking. Someone said it really got busy around midnight, but my friend had an early meeting today, so we had to leave before that.

Surprise of the day (NOT)

'Brokeback' Takes Top Film at Gay Awards

A new transgender resource

I've added a link in my Blogs and Blogoids list to Transgender Workplace Diversity. This looks like a good place for the latest developments in anti-discrimination laws, among other things.

Save some trees: OptOut

My mail today consisted of one magazine, the Carnegie Hall monthly guide, a "personalized pocket directory" of restaurants at which I can get discounts, and four solicitations for donations or membership renewals--but not a single offer of a "pre-approved" credit card. I realized I haven't had any in a while. This was not an accident (nor a reflection on my credit rating, thank you).

A few weeks ago I "opted out" from receiving such offers. I went to OptOutPreScreen.com and requested a stop to these things for five years. (To get a permanent stop you have to send a letter.)

The OptOut operation is not something the credit reporting companies are doing voluntarily, of course. They are required to offer consumers this by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

It's a great idea. I used to get at least a dozen of these things every week. Frequently I'd get one in my male name, and an identical one for Caprice (I think I asked for an optout for each of "us.") The thing takes a few weeks to go into effect, but it really seems to work.

So do yourself, the forests, and your postal service deliverer a favor: OptOut!

Some people never know when to give up

Someone found this blog by doing a search for "dominant crossdressing." I'm 579th on the list!

Searching for Clayelle

Last fall I wrote a little post concerning Clayelle Dalferes, one of the weekend announcers at WQXR, New York's classical radio station. I e-mailed it to her, and she sent a very nice reply, which I posted as a comment. Almost every week since then one or two people find this blog doing a web search for her. On Saturday one of them added the comment, "Clayelle Dalferes could hold my attention just reading the phone book." Just now someone did a search for "Clayelle Dalferes beautiful voice."

Yes. Her voice is beautiful. It is sultry. It is, I'm going to say it, sexy. Not what one would expect on a classical music station. I'm not at all surprised at the number of web searches for her.

Over the months a number of the searches have been for "Clayelle Dalferes photo." Well there aren't any on the web, other than the baby picture she put on her profile on the WQXR site. She remains the mystery woman, at least visually.

Judges on the dance floor?

Thursday was the LGBT Lawyers Assn of Greater New York Foundation (LeGaL Foundation) Annual Dinner, Dance, Art Show & Sale at the Ritz-Carlton downtown. This was the second one of these I've been to, my first as a member of the board of directors.

Things started out much better for me this year--my cab driver knew where he was going. Last year we had to wander around Battery Park City for a while, until he found it.

On my way in I saw my friend Ivan Dominguez, the chair of the New York County Lawyers Assn (NYCLA) LGBT Issues Committee. He was walking in, as he works (and lives) nearby. No cabs necessary for him. We went in together, and a hotel staffer directed us to the second floor, where we were given our name tags. I got two: my regular one, which indicated I was seated at table 21 (in the teeniest type), plus a second one identifying me as Foundation board member. I stuck the first one in my purse, and clipped the second one to my blouse.

Ah yes, my blouse. It was this nice multi-colored print overblouse that I've had forever, which I wore with my good old black-on-black embossed paisley pants. And even with maybe 150+ gay guys there, you have no idea how much my blouse stood out. They may have been gay, but they were still lawyers, coming from work--it was a sea of grey and black suits. A few had colorful shirts. (Of course there were a good number of women there also. But lesbian lawyers dress even more conservatively than the gay male ones. There were two that wore red sweaters.)

We were pretty early, and there wasn't much of a line for drinks. I got one and strolled around, looking at the artwork being auctioned (the only thing I really liked were these very small oil paintings of various views through windows in Europe. But at $400 minimum each I thought they were way overpriced.) The hors d'oeuvres were served frequently, but I stuck to the bite-sized ones--trying to eat chicken on a skewer is quite hazardous to my make-up.

I said hello to a number of people I knew, mainly from the board, but a few others--unlike last year, when I knew only about two. I caught a brief sight of Congressman Rangel, who I think was the only high official to actually show up, if only for a few minutes. (At the dinner we were read a long list of officials who had accepted invitations, but outside of the judges I don't think anyone but Rangel and a City commissioner representing Mayor Bloomberg actually attended.)

Eventually they opened the doors to the dining room, and I went in and found table 21--at the outer edge near the far wall. I was the first, chose the seat most directly facing the dance floor, and started glancing at the program. Just as some other people arrived at the table, Ivan came and invited me to sit at the Cadwaladar table, where they had an empty seat. His firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, was one of the "Platinum" sponsors of the event, so their table was one of the best, closest to the center. I accepted this "upgrade"--though I had to assure one my now former tablemates that it wasn't something they said. (I found out later that one of the former tablemates was Tom Shanahan, who has represented a number transgender people in high-profile cases. It may have been he whom I had assured.)

But I went off to the Cadwalader table, where everyone except Ivan was a very young associate at the firm--one had just started a couple weeks ago. We ate the dinner (a nice salad, decent chicken, a good chocolate tart), while a short presentation was made. We heard a letter from Mayor Bloomberg read by one of his commissioners (with jokes about it not being a proclamation), and awards were presented to all of the past presidents of the organization. Ivan excused himself right after the meal--he had to get up for a breakfast meeting with Mayor Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion the next day.

Eventually people were encouraged to get up and dance to the disco music that had been playing in the background all evening. There were male couples dancing, female couples dancing, even a one or two couple of opposite sex! I recognized two or three of the dancers were judges. Now I know that there are human beings under judges' robes, but somehow seeing one doing the frug just destroyed my image of the profession (can anyone imagine Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing the frug?)--very much like how my image of teachers was destroyed when I joined my wife and her former colleagues at a bar where they had been TGIFing for a couple of hours (not to mention an end-of-term party we went to).

No one enticed me to the dance floor, so after a little while watching I left. There was a nice line of cabs waiting, and a hotel doorman to call one and handle the door, and I went off to Lips for a nitecap. I sat down at the bar next to Stephanie of MyFemSpirit, and we had chatted. Frankie Cocktail, the bartender, asked if we knew each other. Did we know each other? For years and years--I got measured for my first custom corset in her apartment. I was too late for Jesse Volt's show (though I did get to say hello to her), but Ginger did a couple of special numbers for some friends there: Good Morning, Baltimore from Hairspray (one of the people was visiting from Baltimore), and Talk Dirty to the Animals. She was great.