Month: July 2014

I just read this wonderful article in the Times about Brooklyn. When I was growing up on Long Island, Manhattan was always my goal. “I will live there one day, damnit!” But I loved Brooklyn too. Brooklyn has this … feel. To this day, whenever I go out there I have a sense of deja vu, like I’ve come home. I wonder if everyone feels this? I swear to God I feel like I once lived there, long ago. And I feel it in every neighborhood.

You can time-trip in Brooklyn, something that is harder and harder to do in Manhattan. This happens when you come upon a spot that is relatively unchanged and you feel suspended in time. When it happens in Manhattan you feel like you’ve gone back to a time and place where people worked and played. In Brooklyn it’s where they lived. Again, home.

My friend Aly Sujo, who died in 2008, was the first of my friends to move out to Brooklyn. I forget what year, but it was way before anyone else, sometime in the 1990’s. It broke my heart. In many ways, Aly was Manhattan to me (although he grew up in Caracas and London). He lived a few blocks from where I live now, and he played in a band which played in all the clubs that are famous now, and long gone, like CBGB’s. A little bit of life left the city when he moved out.

From time to time I tell myself that I really do need to make more new friends, to replace the ones I’ve lost. But I’ll never be able to make ones to replace those who shared my youth, our youth. We won’t have history. As you get older it’s harder to create history together because we only have so many decades/years left! Aly was my twenties.

I took this picture of Aly sometime in the early 1980’s and it hangs in my living room now. I forget which club it was alas. He looks a little insane in this shot, but that’s one of the reasons why it’s my favorite picture of him. He was crazy. Unfortunately, that’s also what killed him. But it was also what made him so explosively and thrillingly alive. He lived and he felt everything so intensely and it made us feel so intensely about him.

I miss you, Aly.

Holy mother of God. Have you all read this? If not, READ THIS BOOK. Lawrence Wright is such a great writer, such a brilliant researcher. I will always love him for writing the sentence below. It’s from his book about 9/11, The Looming Tower. Wright is describing the CIA and how it would not share information with the FBI. However I must point out that the FBI is guilty of being the exact same way with the NYPD. I laughed when I first read these words though, a laugh of horror about how un-exaggeratingly true they are.

“… the agency was a black hole, emitting nothing that was not blasted out of it by a force greater than gravity …”

But back to Going Clear. It’s a history of Scientology, and what I learned was so terrifying and so jaw-dropping that when I started to talk to someone about it I felt a jolt of fear. “Are you a Scientologist,” I asked the person, before continuing.

I’ll never forget when a bunch of Scientologists surrounded us on the highway, after 9/11. The West Side Highway was closed down except to recovery vehicles and we were there holding up thank you signs to the workers as they went in and out of the site. Sometimes the workers would stop and chat with us after their shifts. A group of Scientologists walked up, circled us, looking for all the world like a bunch of big cats eyeing their prey. I swear to God that I’m not saying this in hindsight, I immediately felt threatened.

“Who are you?” I asked. They wouldn’t say! But I kept insisting and finally they said they were Scientologists. They left soon after. I’m sure they thought SP (suppressive person) about me, or Potential Trouble Source (these are real Scientology terms). They were there to offer a detox program, which, like everything else in “Scientology,” has no real basis in science.

I appreciate the position our government and the IRS were in but they certainly dropped the ball with respect to Scientology. Anyway, the book is an exhilarating read, and I recommend it highly.

Bleecker, known in our house as “the destroyer,” comes upon another famous destroyer, Godzilla.

I just calculated how much money I’ve saved since I volunteered in the summer of 2011 to be a haircut and color model as part of the Bumble & Bumble Model Project.

For the record: your hair is cut and/or colored by professional stylists who are there to learn a new way of cutting or coloring. I know people are afraid of getting their hair done by inexperienced students, but that is not the case. Also, the teachers are watching everyone like hawks so there’s really no danger of something going horribly wrong.

The amount I’ve saved: $2,100.00!! It’s such a great deal. I’m shocked they are not over-loaded with volunteers. Except, maybe they are and I just lucked out getting a spot. I love my most recent cut! This is me, just rolled out of bed, after having slept on it last night while it was still wet after swimming and showering, and it still looks good.

Current Miles Swum Tally: 5 + 74 laps. Last night was my personal best, 230 laps (224 laps is 2 miles).

Except for daily updates at the end of my posts about how many miles I’ve swum. So! We have 25 days to swim 25 miles. That means I have to swim every one of those days and I have to swim more than a mile if I want to win 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Update: I just realized I thought the contest ended on August 8th, but it ends on August 29th! I’m such an idiot. We have 40 days to swim 25 miles. Piece o’ cake! (I went back and fixed the date on earlier posts.) I just realized my mistake, the contest for who swims the most miles ends on August 8th. So whatever you have swum by that point counts for that contest.

1st place is out of the question however, if the woman who won last year stays in the competition. Last night in the same amount of time she swam 274 laps and I swam 204. In my defense, I kept getting cramps for some reason and I found I didn’t get them if I swam back or breast stroke, the slowest strokes. But I thought about it. I have to swim freestyle at a moderate rate in order to swim longer. I only swam the slower stokes for about a quarter of the time. Had I swum freestyle the whole time I probably would have only picked up another 10 laps. If that. Honestly, I’d be happy just to get 3rd place again and ecstatic if I come in 2nd.

Current Miles Swum Tally: 3 + 68 laps.

They were shooting the tv show Blue Collar yesterday in the Meat Packing district. I didn’t see any stars, alas.

Last night was the beginning of the summer lap swim contest sponsored by NYC Parks & Rec. I have to swim at least 25 miles by August 29th. There’s also a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize for the man and the woman who swim the most miles in their division. I’m entered into the Night Owl division so only the laps I swim at night count. Last year I came in third.

I honestly don’t know if I’m going to stay in the contest. The woman who came in 1st place last year already said she isn’t going to do it. It’s fun at first, but then after a while it feels like a chore. But the party at the end is a blast! I’m torn. In any case, I’m entered so we shall see.

I can’t swim every night and I calculated that I need to swim 140 laps each time to make the 25 miles. I’d have to swim more than that to place 1st, 2nd or 3rd. I swam 200 laps last night. 224 is 2 miles so I’m off to a good start.

A mini-high school reunion with Jane and Daniel at the White Horse Tavern.