Citizen of the World

Over heard today - so sweet:

Guy #1: "Have you ever heard of Prairie Home Companion?"
Guy #2: "No, what's that?"
Guy #1: "It's this radio show on NPR (National Public Radio) that airs on Saturday evening; reminds me of when I was a kid."
Guy #2: "Oh yeah?"
Guy #1: "Yeah, they have music and last weekend they had this really great band!"
Guy #2: "Oh yeah?"
Guy #1: "Yeah, and the band's going on tour."
Guy #2: "You don't say."
Guy #1: "I looked 'em up and they'll be heading to Britain first, though. But they were so good. This one girl played the crap out of her clarinet - like I've never heard it played before. So good!"

Background to this and why it's so sweet:

The Prairie Home Companion is a terribly nostalgic show. It makes me think of A Christmas Story: Kids in the pre-TV years used to hover around the radio with their parents to listen to the radio shows, Roosevelt's fireside chats, mini-dramas like War of the Worlds.  I did a self-study course in college on German radio plays from the 1960s and 1970s, which was really fun and interesting.

I just cannot for the life of me imagine someone playing the "crap out of her clarinet" before. What must that sound like?

Everywhere we go in almost every city, there is some graffiti. San Francisco, Berlin, NYC, and DC have some of the best I've seen. Philadelphia is known for their spectacular murals (which are commissioned by neighborhoods), but I wouldn't classify those as graffiti. NYC has phenomenal graffiti. A few weeks ago, we were in the Lower East Side, and I captured a couple of interesting pieces from around Prune on 1st St. & 1st Ave. I noticed - possibly for the first time - that graffiti is now being painted on sidewalks or (as the Eyeworks piece was probably commissioned) on cellar doors, but on the sidewalk nonetheless.

( Some captures of LES graffiti... )

Yesterday, we spent the late afternoon and evening in Brooklyn: Matthew had an appointment there next to the Brooklyn Brewery, so I dropped him off and spent about 30-45 minutes driving around checking out the graffiti in the area. I kinda wanna go back there and find more specimens.

Graffiti holds my interest because it's fleeting and dynamic! You see it, you appreciate it, and you might capture it.  It'll be there once for maybe a week or two, sometimes a month. Then it changes. Someone comes along to add their touch to the item.  Or someone else decides to cover that one with their own thing. The graffiti that is the most exciting is the wall that grows and expands off of one particular tag or image. San Francisco and Berlin graffiti artists, I find, tend to build on others' work, while in NYC, it seems that most artists want to be the ones on top. Perhaps the individual's or collective's cultural expression is coming through the graffiti and its placement - on top of others' work or next to and feeding off of another's.

Here are some examples of Brooklyn graffiti from yesterday's foray; notice the differences between Manhattan and Brooklyn graffiti. It's slight, but interestingly different and both unique.  Also, does a scarf wrap qualify as graffiti? Perhaps. Why not? One of the telephone poles in Brooklyn (below) has a knitted thing around the base, which is covered in graffiti. How about an old, broken, miniature skateboard? It's interesting to see that artists are using stencils and stickers more and more - why not other artistic mediums and materials - like yarn or wood? Enjoy!

( See the Brooklyn graffiti collection... )

In honor of this graffiti post, I even graffiti'd my finger!

Our cleaning lady is here today and she always does a fantastic job.  She's so sweet and always very careful. 

Today, sitting at my desk, I hear, "I'm the Hamster of Happiness, baby! And I know stuff!" then CRASH!  She had hit our big Hamster of Happiness button we got at a party a few years back and gotten startled. Apparently, she'd never hit it before.

I pictured a margarita glass splintered all over the floor and our cleaning lady standing in the middle of glass shards not knowing where to go or what to do.  Thankfully, it was only votive candle holders that had fallen on top of our bar cabinets and hit each other. Nothing broken (everything's replaceable; I was truly more concerned about our cleaning lady than anything broken). But, she and I had a good laugh.  Crisis averted.

While it wasn't Broadway, a movie, a TV show or a commercial, it will apparently be a short film, festival piece, or festival submission.  This was my first "cold read" ever. I had no copy of the script. When I arrived, there were no copies of the script. When the guy walked out of the room - The Red Room (and, well, it was behind a red door) - and did a double-take at me, THAT's when I got a copy of three pages of the script. And I got to size up my competition right then - about the same build but looked a little doughier, different features, and didn't look quite as professional (IMHO). Not sure if that matters anyway. What does matter is that THAT guy had received the whole script like two days earlier via email. I got an email response for the audition, but no attachment. They had that guy run through the full script - 10 minutes or so - twice.

It was an interesting experience and I look forward to more of these. Matt gets the information from Craigslist and other places and goes. He's got some parts in upcoming festival pieces already!  There was a part that he really wanted to audition for last week, but he was just too sick to go, which was unfortunate. But, there will be more.

I had to read through the ethereal, surreal script twice. It's basically a 3-person script; my part was the support actor to the lead.  One read-through was with the first reader, who looked a lot like Zach Braff.  The second read-through was with the other selected opposite to my role. That guy - long, brown, curly hair, smelled faintly that he'd gone through a day - a little street-worn, yet actually wasn't all that hard on the eyes.  Both of these guys were very thin. The second guy seemed to understand his role better.

The great thing is, during the entire experience, I didn't have time to get nervous at all. My life doesn't depend on any level of acting or gigs. All that sort of weight is lifted off my shoulders already. It felt good to be there going through the process of learning lines off the page enough to emote something. THAT was cool.

Oh, and here's my head shot I'm using (Matt made it slightly more "head shot worthy"):


Edits: Changed "art films" to festival piece and/or festival film, since the directors will be submitting these pieces to festivals. Also, "art films" tend to be code for porn, which these are not.

This 5-day trip to Disney was a lot of fun! We did Epcot for 3 days till we were so full of the park that we didn't have anything left to do. We did all the movies we'd never done (Canada, France, etc.) and discovered parts of the pavilions we didn't know existed like in Morocco, Norway, and Japan.  We didn't do everything in Japan or China, so we did leave some things for later visits. Plus, Epcot is always changing up stuff in Futureworld (at the front of the park).  They had a really cool educational Piggy Bank game to play.

Next time, I think we want to spend more time in Hollywood Studios. We did one 3/4 day there, as usual, and that's never enough; we've never done the outdoor shows or The American Idol Experience. Hollywood Studios is more geared for older kids and adults than the Magic Kingdom.  We spent one full, full, full day in the Magic Kingdom - till like 1AM.  When you stay on Disney property, the parks provide extended hours so you can be in the parks - either before/after the parks are officially open; they're called "Magic Hours".  During the Magic Hours, the ride lines go down and you can get on EVERYTHING till your heart's content (you have to flash your hotel/resort key). We went on It's a Small World 3 times, I think, and Space Mountain 2 times (well, Matt did - my back was out). In Tomorrowland, we were all able to go through Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (a definite precursor to Toy Story's Midway Mania) about 5 times.
It's always fun to do the parks with the kids, too. They know the parks really well, too. Michael (11) and Samantha (13) have been probably 25 times and Gianna (5) has been probably 7 already; Gianna got her first haircut there - at about 8 months old!! We always do at least 3 character meals (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) where characters come to your table for pictures and autographs. Yes, the characters sign these little autograph books - great marketing for Disney!! 
Disney is always starting up new collecting schemes. The one that Michael and Samantha slowly got me into was the pins and lanyards. All over the parks and in all the Disney stores, there are these great quality pins of all the characters (hard to find Winnie the Pooh, though), signs, vintage signs and park names, elements of the parks - like Cinderella's castle, the monorail, a turkey leg (it's a thing at the parks), the rides, the areas of the parks (Adventureland or Tomorrowland, etc.).  Some of them are so cool, but stepping outside the Disney frenzy and fervor, you realize they're absolutely wasteful.  Still, I've bought like 12 of them over time. The kids have EASILY 100s of them. 100s.  OH!  And AT the parks, the characters (any employee working around the park) will have their own lanyard with pins that only characters can purchase. The characters have them to trade with the kids running around the parks. Then the kids get the coveted "character pins".  It's a great marketing scheme.  The pins that the characters get from the kids, then go back on the shelf for sale!  They're making money hand-over-fist at the parks.One thing that's always fun to do - for us - is to wear our Pride Mickey. When we wear those, everyone comes out of the woodwork. We strike up conversations we'd never have otherwise. Sometimes, we also get a little special-er treatment, such as getting a roll of  stickers to win the kids' sticker contest or get seated in a restaurant without reservations (happens more often than we realize, actually). We also found "family" throughout the parks on rides with their families or at the tequila bar in Mexico - that was a fun evening for sure!  We were told every time we came across a "family" member that we were there a week early.  LOL  Gay Days are June 2-4 this year.I catch myself feeling the pull of the Disney fervor more and more. And by the end of each trip, I'm sick of Disney stuff but still wanna look at it and shop around.  It's a love-hate relationship.  The Disney stores spread around the country's malls and outlet centers provide very different stuff than you find at the parks. That stuff is not nearly as good as what you get in the parks, either - from quality, quantity, and selection. They want you to be at the parks because they make SOOOO much money off every person or kid that goes there.

They even make money off the seniors that go. Matt's Aunt Jenny (who loves Donald Duck - below at Chef Mickey's) went with us this time without her daughter - she's probably 83 now. Matt's sister rented her a little scooter that she could use every day and get recharged overnight for the next day. She drove that thing around the parks all day. Granted, you have to have a little finesse to drive them and park them, but at least she wasn't thoroughly exhausted every day and could keep up with the clan more easily. At the parks those scooters rent for $75 a day - on top of all the other fees - hotel, food, park entry.  This scooter Tricia rented was about $25 a day and was really sturdy. Thing is, if your scooter's not Disney property and your battery dies in a park, you're really screwed. But, thankfully, that never happened!Notice the sidewalk pic (above)? That picture was taking moments before Jenny almost whacked off her head on a chain!  Yeah, that's the picture of Jenny entering what we now call, the "Death Trap For Scooters". She rounded one of the inner corners and got spooked when the scooter jolted a bit. Instead of releasing the accelerator, she clamped down, speeding the scooter INTO a section of chain! It took FOUR BIG BURLY MEN - including Matt and me - to move her on her scooter and the scooter away from the chain to a safe place. Jenny had grabbed her neck, releasing the accelerator (thankfully) and one of the men quickly threw off the scooter key (so it wouldn't move anymore). From where I was standing with the kids, it looked like Jenny was having a seizure and we all jumped into action. She's OK, but beyond her purchases for the weekend, she's got some pretty bruises on her arm, shoulder, and neck to prove she had a fight with a chain and won!  That was surely a scary Disney moment!

Getting there and being in the hotel alone is pretty pricey. You can get a meal plan which is - in the grand scheme - economical (I think you can get this even if you're not staying on Disney property - somehow tied to your park passes). If you're paying to be on Disney property, you can take advantage of lots of "free" things - like Disney's Magical Express (AWESOME!), which takes your bags when you arrive in Orlando and transports them to your hotel room within 3 hours of your arrival, and when you arrive at the airport, they transport you to your resort. Same when you leave, but you can check in for your flight at your resort and you don't see your bag till you're at your home airport. Matt and I did that and took off to Epcot for almost the full day before we boarded the plane to come home!  We squeezed in a couple more things - like lunch in Morocco (EXCELLENT!) and a couple of beers in England.  We found out this time around that the restaurant in the Japan pavilion is AWFUL! AWFUL! AWFUL!Very memorable trip indeed. I took many fewer pictures this time around, too, than in times past, because I've now got them all - except the new goofy pictures of us in the parks, with each other, with the kids, around the characters, etc.  Oh, but at Epcot, this weekend we were there was the last weekend of the Epcot Flower Festival! Many, many Disney characters were highlighted around the park and World Showcase as topiaries.  They were (most times) really well done. The peacock under the Epcot ball was hard to photograph, but was really breathtaking.  I was pretty disappointed with the Bambi topiaries in a butterfly net house, though, because they weren't made of any flowers or plants at all!  But all the major ones were pretty good. There's also a Mickey topiary at Hollywood Studios that I captured and show at the end below.

When I'm at Disney, my inner kid comes out - fully.  Even the kids told me that I'm a bigger kid in Disney than they are!! LOL  I think that's fun.  When I get on the plane to go to Disney, I completely shut off from work and any stress around town that I've been feeling leading up to the trip - it's all gone.  It's truly always a de-stressing trip!!

We probably won't return to Disney World until 2014, when they finish the NEW FANTASYLAND!  They removed Toontown, which is probably good - it was very much a little kid's place. The new Fantasyland looks like it's going to be really cool!  They're also expanding a section of the Grand Floridian Resort, where we've not stayed yet. The picture below shows the expansion. There's also a video of our time in Spaceship Earth at Epcot and here's a link to our game you can play that we posed for (if our game doesn't show up, enter the code KQCQ2FMXMMRH8Q for our game). Enjoy!

Wow, what a fun, packed weekend!  Matt always tells me not to over-book us for stuff, "Less is more, sweetheart," he says.  For the most part, he's right and if I overbook, sometimes even I have to nix some commitment - it depends on how it plays out.

This last weekend, though, was great. We hit all the marks, even stealing some time to relax and re-group before diving back into the throes of meeting up with friends and being here & there for this & that. This was our schedule:

Friday evening/night:

• Dinner for Matt's niece's 13th birthday (yes, about 10 tweenies and two other kids screaming at the top of their lungs for about 2 hours).
• Comedy show - FUNNY.FURRY.FIERCE sponsored through Urban Bear at the Duplex in Manhattan.
• Bar night - later at Ty's (of course)

Saturday:

• Heat Wave: The Jack Cole Project at the Queens Theater for comped tickets (a WAY off Broadway show). The show highlights choreography and music from the 30s and 40s. It was an OK show, but we didn't like it enough to stay past intermission.
• 30-minute Park Stroll: Walked around the Flushing Meadows - Corona Park and took some pictures (below). I'd always wanted to go and it was really interesting - we have to return sometime.
• Cinco de Mayo Party - drove home to relax for about an hour before heading to Jersey City for a very nice party with a bunch of friends - some of whom we hadn't seen in a very long time. The food was awesome.
• Bar night - later at Ty's (of course), and at Rockbar - these were locations for the after parties from an Urban Bear harbor cruise.

Sunday:

• Urban Bear's Street Fair: Had to meet up with our buddy, Travis Smith, for his book signing. He and a friend wrote Guide to the Modern Bear, and we got a signed copy (of course). I was featured as one of their group's "beefcakes" last year.  We also ran into a few other folks we hadn't expected to meet, such as Shane Ruff (t-shirt designer), Tribal Son Peter (where I FINALLY bought one of his awesome pieces of jewelry), and Brutus de Groot, who has a new t-shirt line (??) and moved to Phoenix from L.A. (??).
• Cool-off dinner together: We went to one of our local new favorite restaurants across the street, Beyoglu - a Turkish restaurant. We literally had not eaten all day. My mood was waning REALLY fast and we both dragged our feet all the way to the place. We had food in front of us within minutes (we knew exactly what we wanted - pictures below).  We ate voraciously, took our time walking home, and basically crashed for about 3 hours before watching:
• Real Housewives of NJ and hitting the sack.

I could sleep for an entire day!

We've been having a wonderful weekend!!  The weekend started out on Friday with us getting our hair cuts.  We were about 2 weeks overdue for those.  Friday night, we visited our friends Tommy & Brian for Easter Egg coloring.  It was so much fun, and best to do with friends.
This is Brian with his most fabulous egg ever!  It's fun how some dying elements just happen and then if you take advantage of them - juuuuust right - you can make something amazing out of it! Brian cooks a mean Cornish hen and Tommy makes delicious guacamole! YUMMY!
That was the culmination!  Beautiful eggs, tons of colors, lots of creativity, and fun with friends. (Plus, I love Matt's face here: "That's enough pictures, Stephen!")

Yesterday, Matthew and I slept a long, long time. We didn't eat ANYTHING all day till dinner at Tony's di Napoli. There we met up with squirreltot*, texwriterbear, super_sean for the first time ever along with another Texan friend, Shane. Unfortunately,allsmilesbear didn't make it out, but mat_t did! jimwnyc and tinman11201* came out, too, and we met THEM for the first time in person, too!  It was a lot of fun, great food, and great company.

Dinner was arugula/pear salad, grilled shrimp, (libations - goes without saying), broccoli rabe, escarole and beans, veal salimbucca (thinly pounded veal cutlet with provolone and prosciutto) over spinach, chicken scarpiello with potatoes, peppers, and Italian sausage, and lobster raviolis with vodka penne. Don't forget the amazing Italian bread, and dessert: NY cheesecake, tiramisu, an ice cream cake (on the house), and cannolis.  Oh, and libations. Most everyone got appletinis.

Here are a few pictures from the evening (including some of the damage). More pictures from the dinner, you can find here.Afterwards, as everyone else retired for the evening, Matthew and I dashed off to Ty's for a nightcap. We hadn't been out in the city since about February, so were pretty overdue.  There we were glad to run into our buddy, Chris. Such a sweetheart.

Today, we're heading up to the Ramsay, NJ, for Easter Dinner at about 3:00 with Matt's family; we're not hosting this year (don't get me started!).  I'm kind sleepy from all this weekend activity so far; might have to go take a nap before breakfast and lunch!

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