Smile!

It's been 10 years since I have been experiencing this phenomenon and I still don't undertand it.

"What's wrong, sweetie, why don't you smile?"
"Is it that bad?"
"Where's that pretty smile?"

Complete strangers, always men, usually older men, feel the need to tell me, and other young women, who are walking down the street minding their own business, to smile.

What is this phenomenon all about? It is certainly an extension of the construction-worker-hooting-at-attractive-female phenomenon (which is by no means restricted to construction workers, mind you). But I think it is actually more widely occurring, or at least amongst more respectable sorts of men. Telling someone to smile is rooted in the good impulse to try and make a sad person feel happier. And I would be lying if random men on the street have not at times, on very rare occasions, succeeded in doing so. But mostly recieving these comments makes me feel annoyed. But more than annoyed - and I think this is the reason such comments are so distasteful - they make me feel bad.

Why? Usually I did not realize I was not smiling, and as behavioral psychologists will tell you, emotions can follow physical behaviors. When I realize I am frowning, I think, hmm, maybe I AM sad.
I am also embarrassed, almost like when a total stranger tells you your fly is unzipped or you have a booger in your nose. It's an invasion of privacy. (In the latter cases, however, one might still be grateful for the invasion. Or one might not.)
And if I am being really honest about it, these comments also make me feel ashamed. Because by telling me to smile these men are saying I am doing something wrong by not smiling.

But I am not doing anything wrong! First of all, what if I'm in a really bad mood? What if I just lost my job? Or found out that someone I love died?? I have every damn right to NOT smile and to NOT be hassled about it? And even if nothing's wrong, if my lips happen to naturally turn downward when in the resting position, resembling a frown, I have every right to not make an effort to smile just for the pleasure of random, strange men who happen to see my "frown" as I walk by them. Even if I want to frown just for effect, just to stick it to all those men who are bothered by it, that is my right as an American, nay as a human being!

So I say this:

Men of the world: If I somehow offend you with my lack of a smile, GET OVER IT!

Walking in New York

New York is known as a "walking city." The majority of residents don't have cars and most people would scoff at taking the subway only one or two stops. Why ride when you can walk?

But British writer Will Self has put us to shame. On a recent trip to New York to promote his new novel, he decided to skip the cab and walked the 26 miles from Kennedy Airport to his hotel in lower Manhattan. Now whatever we may think about the sanity of such an undertaking, it makes us reevaluate our impression of ourselves as walkers (why am I suddenly using the Royal We? Damn Brits!)

Compared to the suburbs, yes, New York is conducive to walking. We can walk to the market instead of hopping in the car because the market is around the corner. But the kind of walking most of us do in the city entails short distances, rushing from the subway to the office, or walking from store to store running errands -- running, mind you, not walking. Most native New York City walking is done quickly. The quick pace of the city runs contrary to the kind of walking that Will Self enjoys, a leisurely pace that allows one to experience the changing surroundings over long distances. On a weekend, New Yorkers may be more leisurely about their walking, wandering through neighborhoods, stopping to look in windows, meandering across town through Central Park. But walking from the airport? Fuggedabout it!


“People don’t know where they are anymore, “ [Mr. Self] said, adding: “In the post-industrial age, this is the only form of real exploration left. Anyone can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many people have walked all the way from the airport to the city?” [A Literary Visitor Strolls In From the Airport, Charles McGrath, NYTimes, Dec. 6, 2006]


This strikes a chord. When I do travel long distances, via plane or train, I am always a little out of sorts upon arriving at my destination. How is it possible that I just left the beginnings of a snow storm in New York a few hours ago and am now stepping onto a sunny, palm-tree lined parking lot in Florida? Or even less drastic, when I was in college I would always feel a little unnerved arriving at Grand Central Terminal after a less-than-two-hour train ride from Connecticut. Being in Grand Central, with the hustle and bustle of commuters and its general grandness, meant that I was home. But being "home" meant something very different in my mind from being "at school," and I had trouble comprehending how I could get to one so easily from the other without a longer transition period.

We are used to being almost "beamed up" ("Aye, aye, Scotty") from one location to another, but it defies some primal understanding, that we have mostly suppressed, of the nature of travel and change.

Of course, who has the time to walk from the airport, or even from Brooklyn? In modern, post-industrial society, most of us do not have the luxury to indulge our primal instincts, as eccentric writers on paid vacations (i.e. book tours) do.

But when I have the time, I do like walking what I used to, before Will Self, think of as long distances. From home on the Lower East Side to work in the Meatpacking District, or even sometimes to midtown. Distances of no more than a few miles. I like the chance to get some air before sitting in an office all day, and it's also a good way to get exercise naturally, rather than walking in one place on the treadmill in the gym. Even still some people, especially those with cars, are incredulous as to why anyone would walk when they don't have to.


"When Conduit Avenue ran temporarily out of sidewalk, [Mr. Self] paused to consult with a passerby, who at first seemed to be insisting that the only way to Manhattan was to join the traffic whizzing past. “It wasn’t that he didn’t know where we are,” Mr. Self said. “It’s that he couldn’t conceptually grasp the idea of walking to New York. I love that.”


My last week of college, post-finals and pre-graduation, when seniors were given the opportunity to do nothing but hang out and get drunk together, some friends and I decided to walk back from an event that was held at a park atop a mountain a couple miles from campus. This was not an incredulous feat, we had all walked it before as had numerous others of our peers. The only problem was we took an unfamiliar route down the mountain and when we came out at the bottom, none of us quite knew where we were. We started wandering, thinking we'd find a familar street soon enough. But we didn't, so being smart girls, we stopped a passing car and asked how to get back to school. The driver looked at us incredulously and said, "You can't walk there from here."

This seemed unlikely. How far could we possibly be? After all, we had walked home from the park before. We figured he must just be one of those people who couldn't fathom walking for more than a few blocks. We assured him that we would be fine walking if he would just point us in the right direction. So he did, reluctantly, but warned us, "It'll take you hours."

We didn't quite believe that, but considered calling for a taxi just in case. However, we only had a few dollars amongst the three of us, and we actually had several hours with nothing to do in particular, so we decided to be adventurous and try our luck via foot. After over an hour walking down an unfamilair stretch of a street with a familiar name, through mostly industrial neighborhoods, some more savory than others, we finally saw a sign that said, "Welcome to New Haven." Confused, since we thought we were already in New Haven, we realized that we had come down the opposite side of the mountain and had been in Hamden, the next town over. Ha ha.

Eventually we reached more familiar territory and made our way back, regaling our friends with the tale of our peripatetic adventure. The whole walk probably took us about 2 hours, and we reasoned it couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 miles or so. The man in the car had been wrong but so had we. We were further from campus than we had thought, but not so far that it was unwalkable. And in the end, we were grateful for the unexpected opportunity to explore a new, if not particularly interesting, section of a place in which we had spent four defining years of our lives, and to have a bonding adventure together before graduating and going our separate ways.

Walking with others is a different experience altogether from walking alone. In New York most kinds of travel, even by oneself, are to some extent communal: one rides the bus or subway alone with dozens of other people, takes a cab and sits alone in the backseat but the driver is in the front, and walks alone down a street that rarely does not have other pedestrians on it. It doesn't necessarily matter. The bigger the crowd, the more alone one can feel in it.

But the best time for walking in New York, when it was truly a walking city, and in such a way that brought people together, was the Transit Strike of 2005. It was winter, and it was cold, and anyone who didn't own a car walked, and walked far. People walkd into Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx. Pedestrian walkways on all the bridges were actually being used and the sidewalks were full, but for the most part people were happy and felt a sense of solidarity with each other. A lot of walkers even supported the striking workers who were causing all the ruckus. There wasn't the same mad rush that there usually is because everyone was more forgiving about time and lateness. The pace of the city slowed down for a few days, and it was okay. It was actually kind of nice.

(For a few days.)

The Saga of the White 1-Inch Binder OR Why I Love (Love!!) the New York Transit Authority

Today the most amazing thing happened. Amazing!

But it starts with yesterday...

I.
First thing in the morning I went all the way up to 103rd St & 5th Avenue to the Museum of the City of New York, armed with a signed, blank company check and $200 petty cash, all tucked neatly into a white 1-inch binder also containing some blank envelopes, stamps, and a bunch of photocopied pictures.

For the last week I've been doing some work for this documentary about Greek immigration to the U.S. My boss is currently in Greece finishing the edit for the film, so I am her point-woman in New York, wrapping up all the last minute rights and clearances for photographs and music and things like that. I met with her last Wednesday to go over all the details before she left -- I literally saw her into her cab to the airport -- and she left me with that white 1-inch binder and all its essential goodies.

My task on this lovely Monday was to pick up two photo reproductions that the museum made for us, give the check, with the appropriate amount filled in, to Margueurite, the apparently difficult but nice woman in the rights and reproductions department there, and then FedEx the photos to my boss, in Greece, so she could cut them into the film right away. Since the Museum of the City of New York (wouldn't the New York City Museum have been easier?) is closed to the public on Mondays, I called Marguerite to ask how to get inside. But she informed me that:
"The photographs won't be ready until the afternoon, dear. And then I'll have to put labels on them."

Oh yes, labels.
She said she would call me when they were ready but that it would be around 3pm. So it was my fault for assuming that pickup on Monday meant Monday morning, but it was only about 10AM, and I didn't want to wait around all day so I took the 6 train homeward. Ordinarily I would switch to the F at Bleecker Street, but by the time we got to Union Square I felt an irresistible urge to use "the facilities," as my husband would say. So I got off the subway, clutching my white 1-inch binder, and ran into Whole Foods to use their "For Customers Only" bathroom.

[Though I did not buy anything on that particular trip, I have bought things at Whole Foods in the past and I plan to do so in the future, so I think I qualify as a customer. And I think a decent manager would agree, don't you?]

After leaving Whole Foods, I didn't feel like going right home, so I wandered around shopping: Shoe Mania was having a sale so I looked around there for a while, but nothing called out to me; I strolled through the outdoor holiday market set up at Union Square and contemplated getting some hot apple cider and a ginger bread cookie, but didn't, and then thought about buying a gorgeous, fleece-lined (so as not to itch), wool Nepalese hooded sweater for my 3-year-old niece, but didn't. Then I started to walk home, but passing Trader Joe's I decided to step in, and I put my white 1-inch binder in the shopping basket, feeling so relieved to not be clutching it against my side as I'd been doing for the last few hours. To my basket I added some cereal, granola bars (why are they so much cheaper at Trader Joe's?), mozarella cheese, apples, and salad vegetables, and as I was checking out. I pulled my white 1-inch binder out of the basket and said, "That's mine," as if the cashier was going to get confused and ring it up along with my organic granola bars and bagged arugula.

I was now carrying a sizable bag of groceries and a sizable binder, plus a perishable dairy product, so I was on the fence about walking home. Instead I started walking the route of the M14 bus and caught it around 2nd Avenue, riding it to my stop, my parcels in the seat next to me. Before heading to my apartment I stopped in the 99 cent store on the corner. Then I settled in at home and eventually got back to work.

About 2:30 in the afternoon Marguerite called me. The photograph package would be ready and labeled and waiting at the museum's service entrace for me in about an hour. "Great, and I have a check for you," I said.

II.
But hanging up the phone I started thinking, wait a minute, where is that white 1-inch binder? With the check in it? I remembered putting the groceries away but couldn't recall doing anything in particular with that binder. I thought about where I might have put it and checked all those spots. Nothing. I even looked in the refrigerator, freezer and kitchen cabinets in case I had accidentally put the white 1-inch binder in with the groceries (don't laugh I saw it on an episode of The Cosby Show). Then I had a flash: The 99 cent store! It must be there.

I ran down and asked if they'd found a white 1-inch binder. No. I searched around by the rice cakes and the counter. It was nowhere to be found. Part of me thought perhaps the cashier had found the money inside it and didn't want to give it back. But that seemed doubtful considering how busy that store is. She wouldn't have had time to look that closely. The money was in an unmarked envelope amongst other unmarked envelopes.

I went back home and ransacked my apartment again. It obviously wasn't there. I called Trader Joe's. They hadn't found it either, and anyway, I distinctly remembered carrying the binder out of there. That left one other possbile location of loss:

THE NEW YORK CITY BUS....

FF*****&&&&&KKKKKK!!!!

If I could think of the worst place to lose something in New York, besides the sidewalk, it would be on public transportation. All those people, near anonymity, it could be picked uo by anyone, or just overlooked and forgotten.

In desperation, I waited for the M14A bus, hoping that miraculously it would be the same bus I had taken and the driver would have it. The bus stopped and the driver, a friendly looking, middle-aged man with a bushy mustache, opened the door, but I had no idea if it was the same one, how often does one actually look at the bus driver? I told him what happened, asking what the protocol was in such a situation. He didn't have my white 1-inch binder, but offered, "Well, you could ride to the end of the line with me and see if anyone turned it in." That wasn't an option, and I must have looked pitiful, becaude he tried to be reassuring. "If they turned it in, it should be in the lost and found tomorrow. And they usually turn it in... 100% they turn it in. Don't give up!"

Even though they were just words, they made me feel a little better.

But I still wasn't going to get that binder, or that check, back until the next day, if at all, and I had to pick up those photographs. So I went uptown and picked them up and just didn't leave the check with the security guard as I was supposed to do. And I put out my own money for the $45 FedEx, hoping I would be able to reimburse myself. When I got home I sent Marguerite a quick email saying thanking her for the photographs and claoming that I had stupidly "forgotten" to bring the check but would put it in the mail tomorrow, hoping that I would, and prepared to send a check of my own if necessary.

I went to bed forlorn, but not without the spark of hope that the bus driver had given me.

III.
This morning I woke up and called the MTA's Lost and Found. 212-712-4500. Busy. I called again. Busy. I called again. Busy.
I waited a while. I called again. Busy.

I missed a call on my cell phone. Checked my message. Margeurite. Angry. "Rebecca, you picked up the photographs but you didn't leave the check as we discussed?!?!"

I called right back. "I'm sorry it was so stupid of me, I forgot the check, I sent you an email." She had just gotten my email. "So you'll send it quickly in the mail?" "Yes, right away."

Shit. I called the Lost and Found again. This time it actually rang!

"Lost and Found."

"Yes, I lost a white 1-inch binder on the M14A. I'm wondering if it has been found?"

"Call the West Side Bust Depot, 212-675-7353."

"Thanks." Click.

I called the number. "West Side Bust Depot."

"Yes, I lost something on the M14A bus, a white 1-inch binder?"

"Hmm, hold on, let me see..." Holding, holding. "What's in it?"

"Some photocopies of pictures, and some blank envelopes."

"Hmm, hold on... uh, yeah, yeah, we've got it."

You've got it?

HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUHAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLEY-LUJA!!!!!

I am the luckiest girl in the world. The luckiest.

"Oh my God, you've saved my life," I said.

"You can come pick it up. We're on W. 40th St, between 11th and 12th Avenue. Only building on the block, you can't miss it."

"Great, thank you so much, you've saved my life," I couldn't help saying again, hyperbolic though it was.

"Ok," he replied, nonchalantly, as though he was in the business of saving lives regularly. Maybe he is.

And so I set off for the West Side Bus Depot. It's a trek along 40th Street from the closest subway, several avenue blocks of massive, old buildings and ugly, industrial lots filled with buses and trucks, and stretches of highway exit ramps. Approaching the corner of 11th Avenue, I knew I was in the right place because there were several men in bus driver attire, a uniform I never quite realized consists of a crisp dress shirt, jacket and tie, and of course a dark cap. They're very professional looking, those NYC bus drivers.

Inside the depot was like a big, dark parking lot. I knocked on the door of the security booth and the guard let me in. He, too, was clad in dress shirt and tie, with the addition of an orange security vest, I guess so he could be easily seen by drivers in the dark? I explained my business, and he got up to escort me to the Lost and Found, putting on the jacket that hung on the back of his chair. I must have given him a strange look because he said, "I don't need the jacket to escort you, I'm just a bit chilly."

He took me a few doors down and lead me through a hallway with a seventies, bureaucratic office feel, like the DMV, and through a door, and suddenly before me lay what I can only describe as a bus driver's paradise! Turns out the depot is not only for buses but for drivers, too. It make sense, of course, they need somewhere to hang out on breaks, but it never occurred to me that such a place would exist, or that I would get to see it! There was a snack bar/cafe with long tables laid out school-cafeteria style. Uniformed drivers sat around drinking coffees and playing cards, just shooting the shit, and playing pool on the two (two!) pool tables that sat behind the cafeteria. It was delightful!

I didn't have much time to survey the place, though, because the security guard lead me straight past all of this driverly fun, directly to the back of the room and the Lost and Found, where the man who had saved my life on the phone had my white 1-inch binder waiting for me. "You know there's some blank checks in there, too," he said. To which I replied, "I know!" He didn't mention the cash, though. He made me sign a claim ticket, and handed me my beautiful, shiny, white 1-inch binder. I held it to my breast with glee, and had to restrain myself from kissing it.

"All good?" the security guard asked as he hurried me out of the secret drivers' den, but not before I glimpsed what looked to be a TV lounge for drivers to the left of the Lost and Found station. Sweet. I rifled through the binder, making sure the check and the cash were still there. Miraculously, oh so miraculously, they were! Saying goodbye to the security guard, and the dark bus depot, I headed out into the sunshine, the light glinting off of my sweet, wonderful, white 1-inch binder.

I made sure to hold it tightly all the way home.

How to Survive New York City Transportation, Part 2

This happened a couple weeks ago.

In a rush to get home from work, and thinking the subway would take too long, I decided to splurge and take a cab. I found one without too much of a problem, but we quickly hit traffic cutting crosstown on Bleecker Street. Tapping my feet and biting my gums, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision and whether I shouldn't perhaps get out and take the subway after all. We were nearing 6th Avenue and the West 4th Street subway stop, in a cramped narrow section of Bleecker St, and I was about to ask the cab driver to let me out, when I heard a screeching noise, as the cab drove right up against the driver's side of a shiny black BMW in the right-hand lane.

Oh God, I thought. The driver is going to be angry no matter what, but the question is, will he be angry and also have a gun?

As soon as the light changed, the injured car pulled up violently in front of the cab, so as to prevent it from escaping. Both of the front doors opened and two young, less than clean-cut looking guys came out and surrounded the car, one on the driver's side and one on the paseenger's side.

The first thing I noticed when I saw them was they did not look like BMW types, which meant that this was probably a purchase that had been hard-earned (through legal or illegal means I can't say) and probably much cherished. Not good.

The drive of the BMW, a skinny guy with a shaven head and baggy pants, started cursing out the driver, "You bleepin bleep, what the bleep is bleeping wrong with you? etc etc."

Just as I'm wondering if this isn't the perfect time to jump ship, the BMW driver turned his head toward the backseat and said to me, "Get out of the car, sweetheart. This guy's gonna get you hurt."

Seeing me hesitate, he said, "Don't even pay him, just get out of the car, just get out of the car."

I felt bad for the cab driver, and even a little guilty for leaving him to be possibly beaten, plus I didn't like that this lowlife called me 'sweetheart' so I threw a five dollar bill at the driver -- approximately the amount of the fare -- as I hastened out of the cab and toward the subway. But as I was all but running away the cab driver called after me. I turned around and he was extending his arm out the driver's side window toward me, handing me my back my money. "I'm so sorry," he said. And I really did feel bad for him. Partly I think he was just scared of what those guys would do to him if he kept my money.

I took it back, and dashed into the subway.

How to Survive New York City Tranportation, Part 1

F is for Foreigner Train

Last night, after having a lovely dinner with a friend at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Carrol Gardens and feeling in a generally good mood, I boarded the F train at Carrol Street only to step directly into a shower of nut shells (peanut, or possibly walnut). What a welcome!

The showerer was none other than an old Chinese woman seated directly to the left of the door, who had taken the opening of the subway door to casually throw out her trash, like when you toss garbage out your speeding car window on the open road, only this was a resting subway car in a closed station, and I became the equivalent of the windshield of the car behind you, which your refuse sticks to. (For the record, throwing trash out your car window is also wrong!)

The look on my face must have been one of absolute horror, because she immediately apologized profusely, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Indeed, I was horrified, and I ignored her apologies, and indignantly marched past her to a seat at the other end of the car, picked out the few shells that had fallen into my purse, and put on my Ipod headphones as if to say, "I must retreat into my music so as to escape this disgusting world, full of people like YOU."

But I have to admit, after a second's reflection, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Interestingly, the day before I had witnessed a teenage hispanic boy doing the same thing with a candy rapper, and I was disgusted by that, too, but had chalked it up to the immature and disrespectful behavior typical of teenagers in general, and though I hate to admit it, particularly teenagers of a particular socieconomic status. But here it took on a wholly different cultural meaning. It became a Chinese thing. Living near Chinatown, I know that throwing your garbage, or phlegm, on the street, is normal in urban Chinese culture. But I wanted to yell at the woman, "You're not in China anymore." Of course if she lives in Chinatown, or in another of New York City's Chinese enclaves, it doesn't really matter.

I don't mean to sounds like a xenophone or a bigot. Like I said, I had a sense of humor about it. I felt like I at least understood why she would do that, even if I thought it was gross. I come from immigrant stock myself, and my grandmother, who grew up in Poland and then lived in Cuba for many years before moving to New York's Lower East Side, still cannot speak English in any fluent sense. She never had to do so; she lived in a community of Yiddish speakers, and now, even her home aides are Spanish speakers, so she can communicate with them. But, sadly, not so much with me. I can understand some Yiddish, but can't speak it really, and I took French in high school.

In a sense, living in New York, I think it's wrong that I never learned Spanish. One can say that is excluding myself from a portion of my own community. Now who's un-American?

Dear God, It's Me, Rivky...

The other day I read a news item about a bunch of letters written to God that were found washed up on the Jersey Shore. (You can read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/02/unanswered.prayers.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories).

The letters had been sent to a New Jersey minister to be placed on an altar at his church and prayed over. The minister died two years ago and no one knows exactly how the letters, some of which go back more than twenty years, ended up in the ocean; they were in a bag with some of his other stuff, so apparently someone was cleaning out his home or office and decided to toss things in the ocean rather than a garbage can. The letters were found by an insurance adjustor who was fishing with his son.

There's something very poignant about this story. So many people's wishes and prayers all grouped together in physical form. The fact that they were tossed out to see, and then found (miraculous, in a sense). And found by an insurance adjustor, of all people! Fishing with his son, no less. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting.

But the thing that struck me most about the incident was the insuracne adjustor's reaction to it: "This is just a hint of what really happens. How many letters like this all over the world aren't being opened or answered?" he said.

I repeat, "How many letters like this aren't being opened or answered?"

Um, excuse me, but isn't that the point? We're not talking about little kids writing to Santa Claus. These are grown men and women writing in desperation to God. GOD! They're not meant to be opened or answered. Not in the form of a written response, anyway. Can you imagine?

Letter:
Dear God, I cheated on my boyfriend and got pregnant and had an abortion. He doesn't know about it, and he wants to marry me. I feel terrible. Please help me. -Cindy

Reponse:
Dear Cindy, This is God. Thanks for your letter. So good of you to share your anguish with me. You're a ho, but I love you, even if your boyfriend won't after you tell him what you did. Love, God

I, for one, would be more than a little unnnerved to get such a response.

But the insurance adjustor feels differently: "Lacovara said he is sad that most of the writers never had their letters read. But he hopes to change that soon: He is putting the collection up for sale on eBay."

EBAY???

I'm speechless.

Camp Art Fart

"...It is hard to imagine people used to walk around living their lives without an acute consciousness they were ‘living’ their ‘lives.’” – Daphne Merkin



A friend recently told my husband she wished he were more pretentious and brooding as an artist. It’s a strange statement to make. She was being facetious, to be sure, but still, why would she say it? And for that matter, why would the residents of California elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as their “Governator”? These may seem completely unrelated points, but I don’t think they are. Bear with me.

I was thinking about these things and having trouble clarifying my ideas until I read Daphne Merkin’s article in last week’s Beauty issue of the New York Times Magazine. She wrote about the sensibility of Camp, as defined by Susan Sontag, that has pervaded the way we live and think. More particularly, the way we think about he way we live, and most particularly, that we do think about it.

According to Merkin, Sontag defines Camp as “the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content,' 'aesthetics' over 'morality.” In other words, we are constantly thinking of ourselves, our actions, and our surroundings, in terms of how we relate to some kind of aesthetic ideal. It’s a way of relating to ourselves with a critical distance, as Merkin puts it, “a sense of radical disjunction between one's interior experience of self and one's stylized...self.”

My friend’s statement reflects this Camp sensibility. When she thinks of the idea of an “Artist” what she sees is a caricature, a pretentious and brooding figure, probably wearing a beret and railing against the bourgeois cretins and hacks who know nothing about real art, in a French accent (we can table my friend’s lack of sophistication for later discussion). She was thinking less of an artist and more of what might be called a “Fartist.”

When she says she wants my husband to be more like that, it’s because it appeals to her aesthetic sense of what an artist should be, in a funny, ironic way. Her statement was not concerned with the content or quality of his work, or even with his career as an artist. Her statement was not really concerned with anything, for that matter, beyond that ironic, aesthetic sense: true concern implies a morality and sincerity that does not jibe with the detachment inherent in Camp.

Don’t think I forgot about the Governator. I’m convinced that Schwarzenneger won the election because people thought it was funny. Though I live in New York, that election caused a big fight between two of my coworkers at the time. We’ll call them D and … (shoot both of their names begin with D)… and F. Both D and F were in their early twenties, both graduates of prestigious universities, both Democrats, and both fairly hip. But they were hip in different ways, and there, I think, lay the difference in their reactions to the election.

D was a partier from Miami, with a lot of passion for everything she did and a lot of sincerity when it came to politics. F was a hipster nerd from suburban New York, who watched movies obsessively, prided himself on liking obscure bands, and approached everything with a bitter sense of humor. D would have liked to be famous, while F was more interested in the study of Fame as an idea.

When F came in to work one day excitedly waving the New York Post with the headline about the “Governator,” exclaiming how “awesome “ it was, D flew off the handle, not understanding how on Earth what she saw as the ruin of the fine state of California was an “awesome” state of affairs. She just didn’t get it.

I, hailing from New York and being more of the sarcastic hipster nerd (or just plain nerd) sensibility, understood that F found this whole thing funny. For the Camp aesthetic, or at least the brand I am thinking of, is an Absurdist one. Had F lived in California, I’m sure he would have voted for Schwarzenegger precisely because it appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.

But back to my husband. What I think is great about him – one of the many things - is that he is NOT that kind of artist. His work and his ambition come out of genuine creativity, not out of the desire to be “an Artist.” He has standards and takes art seriously and thinks about what he does, but in order to create work that is aesthetically good, not in order to match an aesthetic ideal of himself.

Which to my mind makes him a real artist, and decidedly not a fartist.

Star-Stuck

Helen Hunt is upstairs.

She is sitting on a director's chair next to a big camera that is blocking my way to the bathroom.
It would make a great story: I peed my pants because of Helen Hunt.

But it would be terrible if it actually happened, all the more so because I'm wearing a skirt.

Actually I think as celebrities go, Helen Hunt would be an appropriate one in front of which to pee your pants. Maybe because I still think of her as Jamie from "Mad About You" and you can imagine that being a storyline on the show, or at least on "Seinfeld," which was also on NBC and to which "Mad About You" was a precursor.
Lisa Kudrow appeared on "Mad About You" as the ditzy waitress Ursala, who later reappeared as Phoebe's estranged twin sister on "Friends," which was on Must See TV Thursdays along with Seinfeld.
Anyway, Helen Hunt is the kind of celebrity you can still think of as a real person, not so outrageously famous or gorgeous to make her seem otherworldly.

I would hate to pee myself in front of Uma Thurman, for example.
Although I hear that she is actually a very nice woman who attends her children's school functions and interacts with the other parents.

Oftentimes actors are smaller in person than they are onscreen, but Helen Hunt is taller than I expected. I didn't get close enough to make any other acute observations about weight (she was wearing a long cardigan that made it hard to tell) oldness or plastic surgery or even demeanor. I heard her say, to unknown listener, "I'm so glad you're here," so at least she tries to be nice and gracious.


Update: I went back upstairs and was able to use the bathroom. H.H. was rehearsing a scene, now sweaterless, and I observed that she is indeed very thin, but not a small person overall, and from a distance of about 15-20 feet she looked very young, but that was based more on her outfit than on her face, which I still did not get a good look at. My coworker, Rachel, informed that up close H.H. looked old and drawn. She went so far as to say I was lucky not to have gotten a good look because I might have turned to stone.

Rachel has a flair for the dramatic.

Pow-Pow-Power Wheels

People are really nice when they think you have the power to give them what they want.

I just got a call from a camera operator who I phoned last night at about 9pm to see if he could work today at 10am. (That's 13 hours notice for the mathematically challenged). I left a message and he called me back this morning, apologizing profusely for not calling back before. At 9pm last night he was sleeping, in order to be awake for another job at 4am today. As far as I'm concerned, he didn't have to call me back at all if he wasn't available, especially since presumably by this morning I had already found someone to take the job (after making about 20 phone calls), but he certainly didn't have to be so apologetic about it, considering I was calling at the last minute.

After puzzling over this for about a second and a half I realized the excessive apologizing and politeness were because he thinks I'm in a position to hire him again, which I actually could be, and he wants to make an impression on me. But having spent most of my professional career on the lower rungs of the power totem pole, it feels funny when people (who aren't lowly production assistants or interns) treat me like someone who controls even a small part of their fate.

Also funny because I'm not even sure which camera op it was that called me this morning, I made so many frantic phone calls last night.

Hip Hop Hooray

What is RivkyLand?

My birth certificate says Rebecca, but growing up I was always called Rivky, a diminutive of Rivka, the Hebrew version of Rebecca. While I have at times tried to make the switch to the more elegant and professional Rebecca, Rivky has always stuck, and I've gone through my adult life confused and confusing others as to what I should be called.
The funny thing is that I've never felt more at home with the two-name connundrum than I do in my current job as the Assistant Production Coordinator on a new TV poker show called "Hip Hop Hold'Em." The idea of me, one of the whitest people you will ever meet, feeling at home in Hip Hop is ridiculous, but in hip hop - and this includes much of our crew - no one goes by their given name.

In the dungeon we call a production office, sorting through paychecks for crew, we are continually perplexed:
"Who are Duane Smith, Joel Washington, and Daschell Montgomery? Anyone, anyone?"
I am the most aware of names, and also the one who makes the call sheets, so I know the answer. "That's Stacks, Teba, and Dox!"

On Hip Hop HoldEm everyone knows me as Rivky and I've heard a few people say, "Who's Rebecca?"
So I fit right in. (I am so street.)

A side note on strange monochres:. You can imagine the fun we have with the (B-list) celebrity guests' names. The best one was International "P". We took guesses on what the P stands for, before googling him. My guess was pancake, as in International House Of.
But I was wrong. The "P" means "Pussylover".

It could just as easily have been pancake.
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My Real Life Rap Video

The other night I got a ride home with Al and Che. Al's a PA who works most of the time as a high-end driver for low-end celebrities. Che holds the same title as me on the show, but he's way more experienced and knowledgeable than I am. His mother named him after Che Guevara, and sometimes he even wears a Che t-shirt, but he's African-American, not South American.

I went out to meet Al and found him standing beside his car, a silver Ford Taurus, parked askew, all fours doors open, and music (Hip Hop, of course) blaring. Che took shotgun, and I hopped in the backseat, next to a bag full of soul food (pork chops and fried chicken) that Che had salvaged from a crew meal that never got eaten. Al rolled down the windows so everyone could hear the music, and we started on our way downtown, the bass vibrating so hard on my back I felt like I was sitting in a massage chair. Driving like that, I realized I was now in one of those cars I always want to scream at (but don't) to turn down their bleepin music. I didn't tell Al either.

A minute later, I stopped smelling the pork chops and started smelling something else. Sniff, sniff. Is that what I think it is, I thought? Al passed something lit and cigarette-like to Che, who took a drag on it. They wouldn't actually be smoking a joint in the car, while driving, would they? Maybe it was just some kind of funny-smelling tobacco, or cloves?

"You don't mind the drugs, do you?" Che asked.

So it was what I thought it was. "Not as long as we don't get pulled over," I said.

Because in my head I had been considering what my own liability would be in the unlikely (please, unlikely) situation that we would get pulled over. If I wasn't in possession and hadn't partaken, was I still legally responsible? Is there such a thing as aiding and abetting marijuana use?

"We won't get pulled over," Al reassured me, rolling up the windows and turning the music down.
And we didn't. I felt relieved after they finished the joint (and also a little annoyed they hadn't offered me a drag)...until I realized that Al was now driving stoned. But when I remembered that he must usually be driving stoned, I relaxed a little. I have a feeling he wouldn't be a much better driver sober, anyway.

After we dropped Che off, I took shotgun and Al explained to me his speaker setup and preferences. Had I noticed that the bass was way up (I had!) and that the vocals were pretty low? Sometimes after driving for hours with the music blasting, he would get out of the car and feel the same deafness you feel after going to a club. Did I know what he meant? I did. And I was oh so happy to get out of the car.

But I was also happy to have taken the ride. For all their pot-smoking, music-blasting, stoned-driving ways, they're such sweet guys!

Blog on Blogs

"Mr. Rooney. Ed. You're a beautiful man."

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is on TV.

I started writing my musings on blogs and writing in general, but I was boring myself so, instead, here's the funniest thing that I heard today, from my husband, who is funny in general. He's an artist and is having a show in a couple weeks, in which he's showing a series of paintings on paper towels and paper tablecloths. He decided to title it... "Self-Absorbed".
I love my husband.

This serves as a pretty weak first entry for my blog, but I am running off to a pre-Yom Kippur meal (for non-Jews, that is a Jewish fast day in which we repent for our sins and basically purify ourselves for the new year), and this blog is one of my (Jewish) New Year's resolutions, so I figure it's best to start now.

Welcome to RivkyLand.