Month: December 2007

I called Con Ed and asked them to come back and check the gas again, and sure enough, they found a gas leak in my apartment. The cats and I have been sucking gas for three months. That can’t be good. Also, even though they turned off the gas, it still seems to be emanating from the spot I told them to check, and where they found the leak. I’m calling them back today. Ugh.

Meanwhile, remember the other day I posted about the old entrance to the country club my family once belonged to? My brother Peter took me there on Christmas Day so I could get a shot. This is about half it. But you get the idea. It’s lovely, right? The road itself is starting to collapse in. I wonder what causes that. This is in Huntington.

I was going to write a piece about the club, in fact I’d still like to. It started out as a men’s athletic club in Brooklyn, and then they bought space out in the “country,” the estate of someone named Roy Rainey (who I hadn’t researched yet).

From the September 8, 1892 New York Times: “Fine play and plenty of it marked the club handicap tennis tournament of the Crescent Athletic Club, Brooklyn, yesterday afternoon. The entry list was unusually large. Handsome prizes for firsts and seconds were offered in singles and doubles.”

It’s almost a fitting title, given the assassination of Benazir Bhutto yesterday. God, the world we live in. I sometimes think that I’m a very fearful person, and then this happens and I realize, not even close. I’m not even on the same planet in terms of intensity of fear compared to someone who could do that. Although it’s more complicated than that, of course. Actually, how does someone get that fucked up?

This is a short film of my brother Douglas getting us all together for a family photograph. Notice how at the end when he tells me to put my camera down I immediately obey.

I got a new bag for Christmas and left the one I brought with me out on Long Island. It had my camera in it, among other things. But this is a picture I took a few days ago of Finney quietly munching on my arm. You have to realize that I reached over, picked up my camera, turned it on and took the picture and all the while he was quietly munching away. Look at that contentedly evil face. Evilness!

I’m finishing up my final draft and delivering to my editor mid-January. I’m also going to be actually showing it to some people, like the daughter of the head of the Lab I’m writing about. So yeah, that’s going to be scary. It’s very very weird showing your book to people who know more about the subject you’re writing about. I went through this when I showed my last book to the detectives I wrote about. Here I am writing what is supposed to be a definitive book about unsolved murder and handing it over to the guys who have been living that for the past 20 or 30 years. Not a secure feeling. And now I get to feel that again! Woohoo!

Okay, first, it was the end of the night. People have been drinking, (but not me) there were few of us left, I didn’t realize that because I was carrying the camera my voice would be picked up the most, and because I was holding the camera I just wasn’t paying attention to my singing and so I went a little flat at times, and, and, what else, I was wet from the rain, God made me go flat, every time I went flat an angel got its wings … alright, I’m done. This is me and a few choir friends at the end of a caroling evening in the rain, in some bar in Brooklyn.

I think everyone in New York is just not in the mood this year. The Christmas decorations in the East Village were nothing this year. Seriously, nothing. I did, however, pass by this pretty, sparkly dress. Which I cannot possess.

In other news, I’m supposed to go caroling for a good cause at 4pm in Brooklyn today, and I wake up to the television news saying flood watch and high wind advisory beginning at 4pm. I go to my computer and there’s email from the girl coordinating this which says, among other things, “If it’s a torrential downpour — meet me at Pete’s at 6 & we’ll just do a few carols for the bar and have pulled pork & beer. Not bad for a Sunday!” (It won’t affect the money we will raise.) Don’t you love her now?

Caroling at Liz & Jim’s last night was fun as usual! Thank you, Liz and Jim. Thank you for accompanying me so I could sing from The Messiah. Man. Now I feel like doing the whole thing. It’s probably way too late to find one in the city … looking … yeah, December 23rd is way too late, alas.

I need to say more things so the text reaches the bottom of the photograph on the left, otherwise the whole thing lines up funny. The rest of this post will be kinda filler-y: Stacy London is charming on Fashionably Late and their make-overs are fabulous. It sucks that The 4400 is cancelled. Space heaters are like comfort-appliances.