Stacy Horn

Six more days until the new season!! There have been a couple of compilation-type specials on BBC America and I was reminded of how much I loved the Van Gogh episode last year. So much heart.

If you’ve never watched Dr. Who before, start with the Eleventh and most recent Doctor, Series 5, which began in 2010. It’s not a lot to catch up on and the investment of time will be a pleasure. This really is a wonderful show, it’s not what you think. I thought it was just some dated, cheesy scifi thing. But it’s this magnificent mish-mosh of heart, humor, intelligence—every show is a great, great ride. And I absolutely adore each character. I was slowest to warm up to Rory, but now if anything happened to him I would swim across the Atlantic, kidnap Steven Moffat with a fake gun, (they don’t know the difference over there, right?) swim back, park him next to the litterbox, feed him boring food, give him a bad case of poison ivy, and make him listen to chipmunks singing Bach’s B Minor Mass until he brought Rory back.

This wedding party (it looked like a wedding party) was walking down Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square Park, taking up the whole street. When the cars behind them honked they held up a bunch of bouquets and took their time getting out of the way. I thought it was rude and self-centered actually and I was on the cars’ side. They made a nice picture and I was happy for their happy day, but still.

I’ll be posting more about this book when it gets closer to the pub-date (January), but I’ve been helping to fact-check a friend’s book, New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, and it’s just so fabulous I had to say something now, even though you can’t buy it yet. Teresa Carpenter has researched 400 years of diaries about New York and pulled out a selection of entries. I haven’t even seen the whole thing yet, but in the pieces I have three things happen that make it un-put-downable for me: you get all these different points of view of a city as it evolves over time, coming from an interesting collection of people both famous and not famous, picking up information about them, the city, history, it’s just gripping.

I’ve been passing by this vacant lot over the years as it has become more and more overgrown, and it was just cleared out, except a few plants here and there, like this monster thing. Does anyone know what this is? I’m so sad. I liked its wild, Secret Garden-like ways.

I was going through a box of 9/11 materials and I found this photograph that Department of Housing Preservation and Development staff photographer Larry Racioppo had taken of me. I don’t think I’ve looked at it in 10 years. Not a comment on the photograph, which I love (thank you, Larry).

I had set up a table in the back of St. Paul’s Chapel to provide an area where the rescue and recovery workers could send thank you cards and letters back to all the kids, and people and companies that had written or sent stuff that was needed. Often by the time the letter got to us the envelope was missing so I brought my computer in every week in order to track down addresses.

I’m going to try not to be all 9/11 all the time for the next few weeks! But obviously it’s coming up a bit because of the 10th anniversary.

I was downtown yesterday for a meeting to discuss the picnic for the 9/11 volunteers, first responders and recovery workers, and I was amazed with the progress they’re making on One World Trade Center (aka the Freedom Tower, but I hate hate hate hate hate that name).

My pictures don’t capture the sheer beauty of it. Christ it’s going to be stunning. One World Trade Center, will you marry me?

Another view.

No, I don’t know why I’m watching the Bachelor Pad. I’m not quite wallowing in self-loathing enough? Except there’s a happy ending.

But first, that horrible scene with Jake asking Kasey and Vienna for help. Jake is a former loathsome bachelor (loath is the theme today) who proposed and later broke up with Vienna, who I originally didn’t think was loathsome. There was a televised post break-up interview with the two of them and Jake came off like a total pompous, sexist ass jerk and Vienna came off as not very bright and unattractively child-like, but she had my sympathy. Vienna is now with Kasey, a former contestant on The Bachelorette. Kasey was the most embarrassingly clueless person in Bachelor history, it would take too long to explain, but his idea of romance is stuck in the toddler phase. No, maybe grammar school, after you’ve watched a little more tv and have this fantasy idea of life and women and relationships, but you haven’t kissed a girl yet.

Jake is not doing well on the Bachelor Pad, no one likes him, and so he went to Kasey and Vienna for help. I don’t like Jake, (or Kasey or Vienna) but Kasey and Vienna not only said no it was literally like watching children on the playground. They reveled in saying no as only angry little children would, calling out “No one likes you,” after Jake accepted their answer and left. No grace or dignity. All that was missing was the “nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah.”

The whole show was like that. They pulled stunts like lining everyone up and then asking them to throw eggs filled with paint at the person they were the least attracted to. It was emotionally painful and the eggs hitting your back hurt as well. I kept hoping for someone to say, “What are you kidding me? NO.” It was a tv version of the Milgram experiments. Everyone just did what Chris Harrison told them to do. I could go on, every moment was lower than the next, but I want to skip to the end, when Jackie was voted off.

Jackie and Ames are a couple. I love Ames. Ames shouldn’t be on this show. Why is he on this show? He is such a thoroughly decent human being. The truth is, there must be something wrong with him if he’s on this show, but I’m certain it’s not something loathsome. Jackie was voted off, and Ames was walking back after saying goodbye to her. He had this sweet look on his face and it was like watching a kitten walk back into a pit of hungry vipers and spiders, when suddenly he smiled, waved at everyone and ran back to the limo and jumped in and left the show with Jackie.

I watched it twice. A genuinely nice moment after all that ugliness. It’s like people like Kasey and Vienna are not even members of the same species. Good for you Ames.

This bird was making a lot of wonderful noise in the window the other day.