Month: June 2008

This guy, James O’Brien, just saved that bird’s life!! [The link I had to a story about this no longer works.] Isn’t that the sweetest picture? The guy looks so happy and the bird is all, “WTF?? Okay, thank you, but you can let me go now.” Which James of course did. This is James’s website [that link no longer works either, unfortunately]. What a nice guy.

So, it’s raining. My plans of going uptown to check out who lives in a former 5th Avenue haunted house and then taking a nice walk home are wrecked. Hmmm. Curl up with a book?

Note to self: Don’t forget to buy a converter box for the little TV in the bedroom which you NEVER use, but on the one in a billion chance that you ever turn it on again, you’ll be glad you bothered, right? Plus, you’ve got the $40 off coupon from the government. It will feel good to use it, even though, technically, you may be using it on something you don’t actually need. Which is insane and belongs in the category: This is How They Get You.

Last summer, along with many people all over the world, I danced with Matt Harding. Here is the result. I can actually see myself! I’m in the New York City one, on the left-ish, in a white top. My favorites: anytime he is dancing with children or animals, dancing with the crabs on Christmas Island, the orchestra in California, the demilitarized zone in Korea, inside Nellis Airspace in Nevada, and India, New Guinea and Turkey.

It’s actually worth it to go to YouTube and click on “watch in high quality.”

SYTYCD Comment: Marquis was robbed!

Before I get to my So You Think You Can Dance round-up, may I present a cat playing a theramin:

The video I linked to no longer works.

So yeah. Jesus. Last night’s show made me mad a bunch of times. Mia, who I love, was a jerk. Plain and simple. Mia, Mia, Mia. Normally I love that you are the Simon Cowell of the show, and actually tell the truth, but last night you were just … wrong a lot. Did anyone else notice how critical she was of only the women, for the most part? I think only one of them came through unscathed. And if she couldn’t find something to be nasty about with their dancing she’d find something else, like smiling, although I think some people agree with her about the smiling. But taken with her criticism throughout the night as a whole, it was just finally too much and I’m glad Nigel stepped in.

Second, there was a lot of bad bad bad choreography last night, and I’m mad that not one of the judges mentioned it, and instead blamed the dancers. Perfect example was that routine for Chelsie and Thayne. HORRIBLE, and yet I thought the dancer’s charm shone through in spite of it. And then, Mia says the exact opposite, that the dancers didn’t measure up to the choreography. I feel weird saying she’s wrong, what do I know, but she was wrong.

This is a competition for the dancers, so I guess they don’t want to get into criticizing the choreography, okay, but don’t blame the dancers.

Oh, and Gev, who I haven’t gotten until tonight, I get. I thought the two of them had a great chemistry, once again, completely disagreeing with the judges.

My official crushes: Thayne, even though he’s gay and is somewhat reminiscent of Benji, but he’s a sexy version of Benji, Will and Twitch.

I went to the American Folk Art Museum to see the paintings by Henry Darger, but I have to say, I enjoyed everything else more, not that I didn’t love the Darger, I did. But the museum had all these other paintings and objects that spoke to me more. Including the artists they’d showed who were influenced by Darger. This first one is by Anthony Goicolea. Yeah, I guess it’s disturbing, but it was just stunning in person.

But this one by Amy Cutler was even stunning-er, and it’s bugging me that it doesn’t carry here and I couldn’t find a better picture of it. All of her paintings there were just amazing.

The whole place made me want to paint again, and I haven’t painted in 30 years and even then it was only because I had to. My undergraduate degree is in fine arts and they made me take painting classes, but I’m glad they did. I loved it.

Waiting for The Day of the Triffids to download. This is a BBC series version. I loved the book, loved the old Hollywood movie version, and now I’m looking forward to watching what the BBC does with it. It came up in conversation on Echo when I was talking about the problems with The Happening.

The other day I watched a documentary about the Ramones called “End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones.” I was always ambivalent about punk rock. Loved some of the songs, the fashion, but I remember whenever I went to CBGB’s the anger and the toughness felt fake. A bunch of boys pretending to be bad, except sometimes someone came across as very genuine, but that wasn’t exactly preferable, it was actually sad and scary, but still. The Ramones were everyone’s favorites though, and this documentary was fantastic. And sad.

Sigh. That was my youth, the late 70’s and early 80’s. But the punk rock scene was only my occasional scene. I had my anger like everyone else, and I had friends who played there, but I was still mostly a happy young girl, happy to be in New York City and going to hear live music was pretty much my favorite thing to do in all the world and whenever I was in CBGB’s I had a hard time keeping my smile off my face. I must have stood out like a sore, but twinkling and grinning thumb.