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Train Wreck

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I staggered through the depths of the Atlantic Avenue subway station Saturday afternoon ready to admit defeat. I had been so looking forward to this day, when my blogging buddy Xris of Flatbush Gardner and his partner would be hosting one of their fabulous get-togethers at their beautiful home. There was no hemming or hawing on this one; no debating if I should or shouldn’t go like I do before just about every other occassion that catches my interest. I happily RSVP’d the second I got the invitation. This was going to great, I thought. And indeed, it was. I had an absolutely wonderful time meeting new people whilst merrily munching away on all sorts of delicious eats. But I had to work my way through several circles of Hell before arriving at my destination, thanks to the MTA. I knew things were going to be rough when I learned that my local subway, the R train, had been shut down for the weekend for several stops in my neighborhood and replaced by a free bus service
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Scrappy Night in Red Hook

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I stood at the corner of 9th Street and Fourth Avenue, checked my phone and made a decision. “I can walk this,” I said aloud. I had been waiting for a bus that would take me from Park Slope down to Red Hook. But there was no sign of one and I didn’t want to be late for an event being held down by docks, so I elected to hoof it. This was on Friday night and I was getting out of my comfort zone routine of Dr. Praeger's veggie burgers and Netflix. I prefer to lay low at the end of the work week, but I’ve been looking to shake things up a little and scrubbing my regularly scheduled hibernation seemed like a good start. I was attending the Scrappy Reading Series , which was being held at Compere Collective on Van Brunt Street, the kickoff for Red Hook Open Studies, where local artists’ studios and workspaces open to visitors for the entire weekend. “Celebrate all that it is to be scrappy with some of the finest locals on the planet,” the event’s organizers said in an onlin
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The Other Side of Paradise

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So now I finally know the real story behind Max Paradise. Back in 1980s there was a horror anthology show I occassionally watched called Tales from the Darkside . It was a kind of Twilight Zone knockoff and while there were a handful of decent episodes, there were a lot more misses than hits. The series aired in October 1983 with “Trick or Treat” with Barnard Hughes, which was one of the better episodes. Another favorite of mine was “Going Native” whivh concerns an alien who infiltrates a therapy group so she can study human beings up close and very personal. Kim Griest plays the extraterrestrial and she spends a good portion of the episode narrating her observations over a series of still photographs depicting earth as cruel, savage place. The episode accomplishes a lot on a low budget and few locations. And then there’s “Distant Signals”, which stars one of my favorite actors, Darren McGavin, who was the lead in Kolchak: The Night Stalker in 1970s. Mr. Smith Goes
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Downey We Hardly Knew Ye

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I was watching an old Sixties spy show on YouTube last night that opens with the hero being ambushed at Lincoln Center. Three bad dudes start shooting at him in broad daylight at this legendary location, managing to both miss their target and avoid any contact with the police, who apparently were out of town that day. Our hero reacts to all this flying lead by turning tail and running away from Lincoln Center as fast as he can. After our treatment at the famed performance space on Saturday afternoon, my family has a pretty good idea how that guy must’ve felt. Granted, nobody reached for his shooting iron, but we did have to contend with some high caliber attitude and bulletproof indifference. This was supposed to be a day at the theater for me, my sister and auntie. We’ve done many such outings over the years, where we agree on a show, pick a restaurant and enjoy the day together. On this we were all set to see Iron Man star Robert Downey, who was making his Broadway debut
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Another 48 Hours

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Thank God there was a bathroom. As my body ages, I find that I’m heading to the loo a lot more often than I did in my younger days. It’s gotten to the point that I’ll check the location of the lavatory upon entering a new place before scoping out the fire exits. I understand that this is a fact of aging, but there’s no law that says I have to be happy about it. I spent the day on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Saturday after signing up for The 48 Hour Film Project, a contest where teams write, shoot, and edit films in the allotted time period. I had done this last year with the idea of getting more experience on a film set and gaining enough confidence to shoot a short film of my own. A year has gone by without me making that film, so I figured I’d join this competition again as way of acquiring additional knowledge so I could get my rear in gear. Like last year, I was the director. I wasn’t at all happy with my directorial debut and I was determined to do a better jo
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Welcome Back

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The greeting was written in chalk on the sidewalk outside of P.S. 102. “Welcome back,” it said. This was the first day of school in New York and the buildings were gussied up to encourage returning students and put a positive spin on the least favorite day of a kid’s life. At least, it was for me. Another message in chalk encouraged students to “Dream Big.” A wonderful sentiment, but I couldn’t help thinking about a school in Georgia where chalk was probably being used to draw body outlines and the only dream was the living nightmare of yet another mass shooting in America. By now, I’m sure we all know about the massacre at Apalachee High School, where a student at the Atlanta area school killed four people—two students and two teachers—using the mass shooter’s special: a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle.” Gee, where have I heard about this weapon before? Oh, yeah, that’s right—at just about every other mass shooting in this demented country. Welcome to America
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See You in September

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“I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” — Friedrich Nietzsche I was rolling by the produce aisle in my local supermarket yesterday when I got a sudden craving for some citrullus lanatus. As we all know, this is the formal handle for watermelon, that famed flowering plant species of the Cucurbitaceae family. Watermelon was synonymous with summer when I was a kid, and I’d have a healthy helping of the stuff nearly every single day. There were some nice pieces in the refrigerated section, and I thought about treating myself to some of this large edible fruit. But then I stopped. This was the last of August, meaning we were hours away from September, which means summer is over and I shouldn’t indulge in warm weather eats. I’ll have to take out the air conditioners, pack away my beach chair, break out the cold weather gear and prepare for months short days and freezing temperatures. I’ll relentlessly complain that summer goes too fast and th
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