One of the places I have always loved going in New York is the Museum of Modern Art. From the time I was a child and was brought here by my parents, to when I was an architecture student (mmmkaay, Scott?) living here in the late 80s, to my various visits back to the city, I always loved how MoMA would present an inspiring mix of ideas that cut across painting, sculpture, photography, video and design. MoMA for me has always been as Tiffany’s was to Holly Golightly: A place where nothing bad could happen to you. I hadn’t been back in probably 5 years and wandering around there for a few hours was pure pleasure. The new building pulls off that most difficult balancing act necessary for a museum: It manages to be both beautiful to look at in its own right and a place that doesn’t get in the way of displaying the work.
It turns out that Josh’s building is the site of a creepy crime that took place 21 years ago. In the base of the building is a restaurant called “Shutters” where model Marla Hanson had her face slashed by attackers hired by her landlord/stalker.
After a lovely dinner with two really sweet friends of Josh, we all headed over to Brite Bar to see the farewell performance of Candis Cayne. I had never heard of her, but I have to admit she was spectacular. Clearly in a line descended from the great Lypsinka, something about Candis is way more modern. If I had to put my finger on it, I would say that there are extra levels of irony and self awareness present in her act. Several times during the performance we were doubled over laughing as she left the bar to go dance and lip sync in the street with traffic zooming past. And at the end she performed an oldie but goodie, reenacting the “why-did-you-adopt-me” bit from Mommie Dearest. It was a campy homo delight.
Josh, Gabe and I had a fantastic dinner at a place called Trestle last night, after which we went to the Eagle for a drink, met a really dull 28 year old Italian guy (who could have passed for 45), walked around squinting like crazy trying to make out the faces of people, decided to take our leave, trotted down to a club called Hiro(which was cute with good music), noticed that the line at the coat check was crazy long, and feeling a bit lazy and non-committal, we carried our winter coats around the club, looking somewhat silly, drinking and chatting a bit before deciding that we were in fact pumpkins and heading home.
Josh just told me to remember to add the part about the bitter, freezing cold wind.
Thanks to my cousin Josh, I got to fulfill a childhood dream: to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall! Ok, perhaps it wasn’t a childhood dream exactly, but I do remember hearing about the famous Rockettes all the while growing up. To my young kid self growing up in the boring old Midwest, they represented something uniquely New York and big city, a kind of innocent American Classic of another era. Being in the season, we went to see the “Christmas Spectacular“. It was a kitschy delight, with amazing dance numbers and many encores of that famous line of synchronized, high kicking, Rockette leg action. Although most of the dance numbers were very old fashioned, Busby Berkeley inspired routines, there was some pretty amazing technology present as well. There was a lot of CG on the back screen and some impressive 3d going on too. They for some reason felt the need to insert the story of baby Jesus at the end, something that made it distinctly less secular, but what the hell, it was still an amazing show.
Satori, Stephen on 14 December 2007 @ 9:32 AM — 2 comments
I have spent the last couple of days helping out with some technical things like home alarm and VOIP systems, continuing some genealogy research, and meeting up with friends and family. I have also been apartment hunting (via internet) in Mexico City.
My current plans are to go to New York on Saturday and visit with (even more) friends and family and the city for about 3 weeks. Then I am moving to Mexico City for a few months to improve my Spanish and explore parts of Mexico (and possibly further south). Stay tuned…
I believe this is the longest time I have spent in Indianapolis since I first left in 1985. It has been great seeing the family and getting reacquainted with the city. It is a far different place than the one that I left over 20 years ago. The city has grown up a bit (as have I). It is a lot more culturally diverse and interesting than it seemed to me so long ago. It still doesn’t feel like “home” to me, but then what place does? When people ask me where “home” is, I reply with a blank stare. If it is just a question of scale, I could say the Earth. Earth definitely feels like home.
Then again, home is a feeling and not a place at all. I feel “home” at the Thanksgiving table. I feel “home” when talking politics with my family. I feel “home” when giggling with my nieces and nephews. I feel “home” when I am with friends sharing a great dinner. I feel “home” when I am walking on a beautiful day in a remote or familiar place. I feel “home” when I am confronted with a new idea. I feel “home” when I am laughing. There are many physical locations that I have this feeling, although I am not bound to any of them. Mostly I feel “home” when I am in the present.
This is getting really fascinating. I have been pouring over original documents with rapt attention. Here are a few tidbits I have found out about my ancestors:
-It appears my paternal great grandfather and grandmother had a 20 year age difference between them and it was the second marriage for at least one of them. It looks like my grandfather may have been the only child of them both, with several half siblings.
-Several of my male ancestors list “Peddler” as their profession. This probably accounts for why they moved around so much in their younger years.
-On various documents, information reported will change. Normally this will involve a year or two fudging of age or arrival date.
- One of my ancestors lists (on his WWI draft registration card) that he is a citizen of both Russia and Poland, and then that he was born in Romania and Hungary. Could this have something to do with shifting boundaries?
-In many cases for the first immigrants, in the census where it asks for language spoken, they wrote “Jewish”. I am pretty sure today that we refer to this language as “Yiddish”, but it is interesting how the names of things will change over time, partially obscuring them from us.
At this point it is sad to say that I doubt I will be able to find out much more before any arrival in the US. There are many reasons for this including name changes on arrival as well as bad or no records of place of arrival or ships boarded. It would seem difficult to pierce this veil.
