Choire Sicha

Saturday, July 5

I forgot how much I liked this short piece when I first read it. It contains two really important quotes in particular:

[Laraine] Newman would hang out at [Gilda] Radner's house, and Radner would be eating a gallon of ice cream and Newman would be snorting heroin. Then Radner would go to the bathroom to make herself vomit, and say, "I'm so full, I can't hear." And they would laugh. "There we were," Newman recalls, "practicing our illnesses together."

and

We are inclined to think that genuine innovators are loners, that they do not need the social reinforcement the rest of us crave. But that's not how it works, whether it's television comedy or, for that matter, the more exalted realms of art and politics and ideas.
⊕

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Friday, July 4

Expensive haze hangs high in the thick air: the crowds drunkenly thread their way back west. Fights break out, a baby screams while four strangers on one corner unhappily hail cabs. The fireworks are over, the East Side is emptying out and the great listing ship's deck of Manhattan can roll back to level with the massive weight transfer.

I don't like fireworks. I get terribly Marxist at huge useless displays of money wasted. Also, jingoism plus alcohol always equals violence. Two men were behind me on St. Mark's Place discussing taking people's money, and I believe they meant mine. I pulled out my massive keychain and turned and walked through them into the deli.

I was going against the crowd before the fireworks, too. I went to Taylor's Bakery on Second Avenue and 12th Street before it got dark, and purchased a large ginger sugar cookie, and an even larger marshmellow Rice Krispies square. I took them in a paper bag with me to the movie theater on Third Avenue. The air conditioning blasted out through the small holes in the plexiglass of the ticket office. Completely alone in the cold at Charlie's Angels while thousands watched the pointless pretty explosions over the river, I ate and laughed and thought about plot.

As we're the last two people we know in New York City, Baz and I are leaving town tomorrow morning. She's in love, I speculate, and I'm in love, no doubts there. Together she and I will go off and celebrate that. Instead of aching with distance and separation while my man -- the one with the most beautiful sad and funny eyes in the world -- is out of the country, I'll be happy and lucky and busy, because I am and I am and I am. Lucky me. Before this I never knew that life really was like the movies.

What is the key feature of a plot? That after its climax is revealed its opening volleys gel, and that if you meditate hard enough at the beginning of the story, even then you can see the vines of the future growing back to you. That's comfort, that's reason for security, things making sense. At least enough sense to live here now, and kick a little ass, and bend the mind to the discipline of creativity, and go to the beach, and laugh a lot. ⊕

Two July 4th related items:

"I play terminator, but you guys are the true terminators." --Arnold Schwarzenegger in Iraq.

The "American flag, the symbol of American patriotism, has an almost magical effect on all possible negativities." Uses of the flag. ⊕

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Thursday, July 3

Many times a day I am asked from whence I refresh my supply of gracious malice. The answer is simple; there are five little catechisms to memorize. We learn these in the form of Joan Didion's responses to critical letters to the editor at the New York Review of Books. These five fantastic lessons are:

Praise from the stupid is contempt.

Brevity counts.

Do not let others own your game.

Acknowledge accuracy and fallacy.

Punish those who use the Bible.

Voila. Read, lather, repeat. Welcome to the club. ⊕

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Wednesday, July 2

In case I die in some Fourth of July terrorist attack (white powder! bridges closed! subways down! info here!), just remember that my last wishes as a proud American New York martyr are for our country to bomb Swaziland and Rhodesia. Or Prussia. Or Siam. Or whatever country chafes you the most at the moment. That's what I'd want, so do it. Find some brown people and bomb them back to the Stone Age from their Bronze Age.

Ah, New York, New York. The city of people so stupid they had to name it twice. I'll be happy to die for it, really. ⊕

This morning I ran into producer and rock fox Aaron Espinoza of the band Earlimart. He was lugging his very punk rehearsal equipment down the street. I've been meaning to find out more about the sad/country/rock/something band since I bought their great Avenues EP a few months ago. The EP is lovely and quiet and pretty and tense. They have a full album out that I ridiculously haven't purchased. Won't you join me in buying it? Also, Earlimart is playing Maxwell's tonight in Hoboken. Perhaps you'd like to attend. Mp3s and videos are here. ⊕

Re-entry to New York is hard. I rolled into town yesterday morning and went straight to the office. I felt a little homesick for the New York City that isn't actually here anymore. Britney Spears is in town? Britney is a demon to suck your mind. She flutters her carapace in the sky every night to keep us from our needs. I urge you to renounce her and her pale ilk. The vampiric celebrities of the USA are stale. Go finish your novel. Go happily make your bed, but don't tuck the corners too tightly, you won't be able to move your feet all night.

In very local news, this site will undergo some physical changes in the next week or so. I am tired of writing in this little corner every day -- and I know there are those of you who are tired of this segregation as well -- and so the short and the long will be consolidated. An entente of form will result. A good omen, no?

In any event, please pardon my dust. ⊕

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Tuesday, July 1

P.S. I'm not actually gay myself anymore? But if I were, I'd get my gay news at Queerday. ⊕

There was the going to the airport, which was delusional enough. And then the fact of the airport itself, its nests of tiny planes dripping nuts and bolts, each visibly rusting. The driver was to wait until "wheels up" so there was always a chance for cowardice. I did not leave. I had beautiful help with me. We marched across the hot tarmac to the 8-seat Citation X and I didn't take the sleeping pill. It was hot inside the tiny tube. It was so small I could see through the windshield and both side windows at the same time.

We jumped some other little toy planes waiting for the runway. Then it was nose up and make believe.

At the same time, I held two ideas: I couldn't understand why I never fly. It is so easy. The passenger's job is to do nothing. The plane flew like a monorail, like a physics experiment. On the other hand, I never ever wanted to do it again. Is shock treatment the cure?

As soon as we hit 40,000 feet, Mach .7, we began to descend. The sun was endlessly setting to my left. I seesawed from abject horror to a freedom or victory. I also had an absolute moment of clarity of which I still retain some vague blueprint or sculptural form in my mind. I have to think about that.

And descent was a joy. I love flying low. There was the coast, and there were houses, and patterns. The runway appeared to our left and then spun before the windshield, as we evened out at 300 feet. Then it disappeared.

Landing was aborted until the runway lights would be turned on again. We circled like a grinding ferris wheel and it was giddy-making. Stunningly, we landed somewhere, on an emptied field. It was night, and much cooler than the land that we had left. ⊕