Here are me, my mane, and Raghu Dixit. My phone was out of juice, and Barry is not good with his camera, so Raghu had someone take the pic with his phone and then posted it to Twitter.
So many random things on my mind...
I work a block from the Union Square Greenmarket, which is the best farmer's market in the city, and especially wonderful in the summer. Yesterday I came home with: local peaches, local nectarines, two kinds of plums (shiro and Santa Rosa), a quart of small heirloom tomatoes, a couple of Kirby cucumbers, French breakfast radishes (very mild), and a couple of young, mild red onions. Ate tuna last night mixed with chopped onion, tomatoes, cucumber and radishes. When I'm there, I tend to buy as much as I can carry. Barry is especially fond of the heirloom tomatoes. He loves tomatoes, but they're basically horrible and flavorless for most of the year. Most tomatoes have been bred to travel well and to be "attractive" (round shape), so most of them end up kind of hard and mealy...they look good but don't taste like much. "Heirlooms" are grown from old, non-hybrid seeds, and are grown outdoors and in season (as opposed to year-round in greenhouses), so they not only taste wonderful, but they're bumpy and delicate and irregular and all kinds of wild colors. When they're around, we basically eat them with everything, or eat them plain, and then buy more.
Splurged a bit today (hey, it's payday) at Sephora on a rollerball of Marc Jacobs' Honey. I got some small samples a week or so ago, and I love it, which is no small thing, considering that I am way picky about cologne and have only ever liked wearing a handful: Bellodgia (Caron), Coco (Chanel), Rush (Gucci), and Escape (Calvin Klein). I've tried others, but those are the ones I return to over and over. I go to Sephora a lot and just walk around and look at things, and always feel rather daring when I actually buy something, since you're basically spending at least $15 for a single item. And my inner cheapskate comes out when I look at $23 lipsticks, no matter how nice they are. I also bought a facial treatment I really like, an at-home facial peel. It's for daily use (yeah, right), but a box of five lasts me a month and only costs $15.
This is Patricia, who does cat rescue and set up near my office on nice days. She's a little wacky, but I love her to pieces. She never lets anyone touch the cats - but she lets me. This is earlier today - she's bottle-feeding three-week-old kittens. I admired one of them today, and she just handed it to me. We've tried to adopt from her a couple of times, and as much as she likes Barry and me, and knows we are long-time cat owners, she stalled and stalled and made excuses until we gave up. She kept saying she had to check this and that with her sister, that her sister would call us, and it never happened, even when we were trying to adopt an older cat - we thought she'd let him go easily, since older cats are much harder to place than little kittens. Still, since she lets me hold tiny kittens, we're still pals.
Raghu Dixit is playing in New York on Thursday, but it's a bad week and we don't have money for tickets. So even though it's been a while since I tweeted him (I'm rarely on Twitter of late), I tweeted him and asked if he could comp us:
These past few weeks have just been killing me. Students and faculty are back, school is pretty much in session, and I am being crushed by work. This is the time of year when I come in and find 25 or 30 emails waiting for me, some of which I answer right off the bat, others requiring a posting on a to-do list that often has nine or ten items. Then add in the almost constant worry about money. I just have a lot of days when I'm very anxious and a lot of nights where I'm something of a vegetable. I just don't feel like doing much at all.
I did recently watch "Marley," the documentary about Bob Marley, and found it quite wonderful.
I haven't had much to say about old Amitabh lately. The truth is that I'm finding him to be rather pompous, with a lot of rich-guy problems, very insecure and needful of constant praise. And some of the other fans just lather it on way too strong, and I'm talking about straight men, here. The whole thing has gotten a little icky for me, though I still do love his movies.
I've pretty much planned out the necklace I'm going to make from Raghu's popped guitar string. The center bead will be an Indian bead, coral, self-capped with silver which has small coral and turquoise cabs inset. It's actually the first bead I ever bought, before I started making jewelry. I saw it in an Indian store and had to have it. The rest will be chips of green American turquoise I've been hoarding for about 5 or 6 years. And I have some silver-colored ethnic-looking spacers. I've been concerned about the closure because of the nature of the wire, but I'm going to try a loop and button. I have an extremely pretty pearl shank button, about 28 mm, round, and I'll make a loop from the actual wire. My plan is to use a crimp bead and then wrap around it with gold-filled wire for a good hold. Let's see if that works. Then I promise to get a picture taken, somehow.
Saw Tamsir the other day for the first time in eons, maybe since January. He came to the office and fixed something, took a couple of laptops home to work on. Love to hang out with him. Tamsir, if you ever have the time to read this blog again - I love to hang out and talk with you!
To my readers in Russia: I wanted to clarify what I wrote about my experience living in the Brighton Beach community, which is heavily Russian. I had a lot of hopes when I moved there. Apart from having found a beautiful apartment and being so close to the Boardwalk, I was hoping to make friends in the community, learn a little something about the culture and customs, and even learn a bit of Russian. My intentions were all the best. I was deeply disappointed by the hostility and unfriendliness I found there. The only person who was at all nice was one woman who sold pastries at a particular store: she was always smiling and pleasant to my husband and me. No one else treated us nicely or even politely. My feeling is that the community is very insular and although very interested in their opportunities in the US, were not particularly interested in mixing with Americans, at least not in their community. I did not mean to imply that Russians as a whole are not likeable or pleasant. It was just that we were unwelcome in a community that was almost entirely Russian.
And if someone would like to leave a comment and let me know why so many people in Russia are reading this blog, I'd be really interested to know.
I went to Rifftrax Live last night, and it was truly enjoyable. Then I got home and Barry was back from his trip; he and three other counselors took seven men from the residence to Baltimore and DC for four days. So I didn't see him for five days (Sunday was a travel day), and we missed each other a lot.
We now have tickets to see Raghu Dixit in New York on September 3. I'm excited, and got a nice tweet back from him when I said I had my tickets and was looking forward to it.
It's Quiet Time at work, the calm before the storm. Next week I'm interviewing for a second fall intern (Caitlin is staying on), and after Labor Day (September 3), everyone comes back. Classes start on the 10th. This is one of the couple of truly dead weeks in the year, when I can kick back just a little.
I have started seriously lusting after a Smartphone, and am going to try to make that happen soon.
I just watched this video again (for the zillionth time), and it got me to thinking about the impression Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna made the first time I watched it.
It was the first Indian movie I ever saw. I particularly enjoyed this song, because it was exactly the kind of thing Americans identify as "Bollywood." I knew nothing about the actors at all: no idea I was watching father and son. Clueless about the beautiful woman in pink who was in no other part of the movie. Hadn't the vaguest notion of how well-known or popular any of the actors were...though I remember thinking that "the older guy" was probably very famous. There was just a certain ease and charisma about him that suggested a great deal of experience. I was very taken with Shah Rukh Khan, although I found his movie character shockingly obnoxious. I thought it was kind of cool the way this song mixed some English in with the Hindi. I thought the older woman was splendid, and loved her chemistry with the older guy. I couldn't believe how long the movie was. I'm not sure if I noticed that no one kissed on the lips. Since the movie didn't have American-style credits identifying the characters and the actors who played them, I'm not even sure how I learned Shah Rukh's name, although I believe his was the first actor's name I learned. I thought he was quite cute, and made a point of watching a few of his movies in the month or so after. Then I didn't watch another Indian movie for about two years.
Two years later, I remembered how novel KANK had seemed to me, and I watched it again. I believe that was October 2011. I don't really remember how I went about researching and finding out who these actors were and what Indian films were all about. (I get so wrapped up in new passions so quickly and deeply that I often can't remember where they began; they fast seem to be things I've always done and known. I can't remember for the life of me how I started making jewelry, for instance.)
What happened the second time I watched the movie was that I was fascinated by Amitabh Bachchan. I had been right the first time I watched the movie: he was the real deal. I expect I learned his name through my film bible, the Internet Movie Database, and I simply began to follow him; I started watching his movies almost exclusively, and branched out from there. It took me about two weeks of tooling around on YouTube before I learned how to pronounce his name; I also had his name written on a piece of paper by my computer to aid my searches, since it took a while for me to get the spelling down.
My second start with Indian movies was the real one. I knew there was a lot in the movies I didn't get, and did exhaustive internet research to learn some of the social context. I started to some some of the major actors I enjoyed: Shah Rukh, of course, Abhishek Bachchan, Kajol, and so on. I started to learn about playback singers and item girls and some of the top producers and composers and directors; I found out that no one ever kisses on the lips. I discovered Amitabh's blog, and started to make some internet friends in India. (Most particularly Shiva, who kindly pointed people to my blog via Twitter, and translated an interesting Twitter conversation for me between Amitabh and Ram Gopal Varma; also Pankaj, who recommended Aamir Khan's films. Another friend dear to my heart is Moses, an Israeli who learned Hindi from watching 3,000 Indian movies, and proclaims daily, "I love Amitabh Bachchan!")
I have one friend of Facebook who always calls me "Aunty," which I hate, but I love him anyway.
And of course I met Rochelle, an Amitabh mega-fan - a Jewish woman one year my senior who lives two neighborhoods away. Never imagined that Indian movies would bring me a new in-person friend who shares a lot of my tastes and background.
Barry noted that I have had far less depressive moods since I began watching Indian films. I am deeply appreciative of being led to so much fascinating study. I probably know about 40 or 50 words in Hindi. I have discovered some amazing Indian musicians, film musicians or non. (And I am including Adnan Sami in that group, although he's not Indian - if I have it right, he is of Pakistani descent, born in Canada, raised in England, and now living and working in Mumbai.) I taught Shiva some Yiddish via email, and recommended American films to Pankaj.
It's been a pretty fruitful nine months.
I've also become active on Twitter during this time; I joined a year or more ago, but never really cared for it. I found the 160-character limit stifling. Now I adore it, way more than Facebook. Neat little jokes and messages and information fly through the ether, and I can reach out to people I would never have encountered before. And of course it's always thrilling to get a reply or retweet from someone I admire from afar. I've had replies from Amitabh himself (only one, but that's plenty), from Raghu Dixit, and often more than once a day from Adnan Sami (brilliant man with a great sense of humor). Some nice replies and retweets from one of my heroes, Dick Zigun, "the unofficial mayor of Coney Island." (I used my blog name as my handle, @northofconey, so I'm followed by a lot of Brooklyn-based people and organizations.) I've said hello to Dick here and there over the years when I've seen him around Coney, but last Friday night, when I introduced myself at the Mermaid Parade volunteers meeting, he knew exactly who I was. I've had some nice replies from the actor John Ortiz and former jockey/actor Gary Stevens. I've also had some Twitter exchanges with a couple of the "Deadliest Catch" captains. In fact, on that week's "After the Catch" (kind of the postgame show for "Deadliest Catch"), they put my live-tweet on the air! (Not having a smartphone or laptop, I had to run to my computer to live-tweet during the commercials, but it was well worth the fuss. It was a pretty major moment, seeing my tweet on TV.)
Whiplash change of topic: it is now apparently considered old-fashioned, when writing, to put two spaces after a period or colon) instead of one. It feels weird. Makes me feel a little old (though not quite like being called "Aunty").
Yes, I had my first volunteer experience at the Mermaid Parade, and sad to say, it didn't go well. I was assigned to sell merchandise, went to the meeting the night before (Rochelle was there, too), signed in on Saturday morning, got my free tee shirt and a bottle of water, and was told to go to 21st Street. Met up there with two of the people who were also supposed to sell merch (we were told there would be three tents with four people each), but there was no one to tell us where to go or what to do. The three of us sat under a tent, where there was a cooler with bottled water and a porta-potty, and waited for an hour and a half. We kept asking staff people what was going on, and some of them radioed in, but we never got any information. A couple of times, one or the other said, "I think you're supposed to go to 22nd Street," or some other location, but no one at those locations knew anything, either. (I very much enjoyed meeting one of my co-merch-volunteers, a woman in her late eighties, who had sold merch in 2011 and had some very interesting stories to tell about her life.) We didn't get the lunch that was supposed to be provided. It was an extremely hot day. After and hour and a half, one of the staff said something about a problem with the merch set-up, and I walked the ten blocks back to the volunteer station. The woman there said that there wasn't going to be merch, apologized and gave me lunch and another bottle of water. (I have to say, they were very on top of having plenty of water.) She said I could carry a banner, but I knew that was beyond my stamina limit at that time. Barry and I found each other, but it was already a half-hour before the start of the parade and impossible to get a decent place to watched. We tried to watch a little, then went home.
I emailed the volunteer coordinators about my experience. The next day, they sent a group email to all of the volunteers, and apologized sincerely for any glitches. A day later, I got a very lovely personal email from one of the coordinators, apologizing again. So I kind of got to be part of the event; tried my best. At least I got the tee shirt. I think I'll give it another shot next year.
Amitabh shows how it's done, in the title song from Bol Bachchan. The young man with the mustache is Ajay Devyn and the cleanshaven young man is Junior Bachchan, Abhishek.
I have a bad trigger finger and a not-so-bad trigger finger, and it's back to Dr. Patel for me on Monday. If you weren't around for last year's trigger finger here's what it's all about. So it's either going to be a shot of cortisone. or what I had done last year:
"Percutaneous trigger finger release:
Trigger finger release can be performed in the office under local
anesthesia using a percutaneous technique. Numbing medicine is injected
in the hand near the base of the finger. A larger needle is then
placed through the numb area and is used to divide the pulley that is
causing the triggering. Advantages of this procedure include that it
can be done in the office and does not require an incision. The main
disadvantage is that the surgeon cannot see the pulley or nearby nerve
and there is a possible higher risk of injury to the nerves or an
incomplete release. While these complications are unlikely, patient
should take them into account when choosing to have a procedure."
It's gonna hurt like hell if he has to do this again, especially on two fingers. I remember being in howling pain the day after. The bad one is the right-hand pinkie, and PTFR is usually done one the middle three fingers. The not-yet-as-bad one is the left-hand ring finger, so it may be a wait-and-see, or a PTFR. And if I have the surgery, there's physical therapy after, for maybe six weeks.
So I may be very limited as far as using the computer, although of course I'll have to at work. Send good thoughts for a nice needle full of cortisone.
Recent reading: The Leftovers by Tom Perotta. Surburban folks try to get along after a Rapture-like event. Love the way he writes, and the post-Cheever look at surburbia. See also, his Little Children.
Somehow, I hopped into another post-apocalyptic novel right after, Stephen King's Cell. Just started it, and it's pretty much as un-put-down-able as most King books. I am an unabashed fan.
Too much to write about with hurting fingers: out in Yardley with Jannah last weekend, Saturday night party on her boat (six boats all tied up together), and then slept on the boat. The whole deal was kind of like camping but less grubby. Relaxing by the pool on Sunday, parade on Monday. I dearly love the Memorial Day parade in Yardley...I hate to use the word "quaint," which it isn't, quite, hut it very old-fashioned and I look forward to it every day - I've been going there for Memorial Day the past 4-5 years.
Very hard, busy season at work, what with classes ending, getting evaluations from teacher, updating transcripts, trying to get a second summer intern, overseeing registration, orienting new faculty, etc. If I must say so myself, I've been coming through like a champ, but I'm seriously exhausted. Part of me (no lie) is kind of hoping to spend Tuesday in bed, on painkillers.
I'm having a really good time on Twitter, especially when I get replies from (can't deny it) well-known people. This past week: Raghu Dixit and Adnan Sami. Both good dudes, and Raghu is supposed to come to the US in the fall. I also have a little joke-topping thing with @Disalmanic, who is a damn funny guy.
@northofconey if you want to see for yourself. I go smart-ass on some famous people sometimes and don't even care if they respond. I did get a retweet from Merrill Markoe, which made me happy for a whole day. I'm connected to almost a totally different set of people than on Facebook. Of course I mostly follow well-known people I don't know, I was found there by Tricia Vita, who writes the excellent Amusing the Zillion blog about Coney Island. Now I'm also linked to one or two other Coney Island groups. We post links to things about how fucked-up business interests are trying to ruin Coney Island and how much we hate Mayor Bloomberg. (a lot.) I'm loving Twitter, though I read a lot more than I write. I retweet and sometimes reply. Fun.
I am glad Amitabh is going home soon. I am glad Shiva is feeling cheerier (and that he likes seeing his name here). I am glad that Barry had a job interview today. I am glad I am going to Jannah's this weekend. I am glad Bob Steiner is being a bit flirty on Facebook; I was fairly crazy about him when we were teenagers at summer camp. I am glad I went to that Indian store on Second Avenue last week and bought silk pants and glass bangles; there were photos of Indian movie stars taped up inside the dressing room. I am glad to be learning how to get the glass bangles on and off without busting them, and I am glad for the pretty sound they make clinking together on my wrist. I am glad that my jewelry is in a store, for the first time in many years. I am glad it was a warm day. I am glad I had a big discussion about knishes on Facebook today with someone I never got to know well at college but always admired.
I am anxious for a friend who won't read this because she's too busy doing the thing I'm anxious about.
Knish (pronounce all the letters) is a savory pastry usually stuffed with seasoned mashed potatoes but sometimes with kasha (buckwheat). It's about the size of your fist. There are other kinds, but potato and kasha are the only ones that matter. A knish is old-school Jewish food, meaning that it's extremely heavy, about the density of lead, and one of the most delicious things you've ever eaten.
I've explained Yiddish words on this blog on and off for some years now. I don't know nearly as much as I'd like to; American Jews of my generation have parents who felt it was not "modern" to speak Yiddish, that it made them like their old-fashioned parents, so my parents didn't pass it on the way their parents did. Barry's parents were about ten years older than mine, so they spoke more Yiddish, Barry knows more than I do, and I've learned a bunch from him. It's way cool. It's extra-cool when you hear it from people you wouldn't expect. There's an old James Cagney movie, The Fighting 69th, where he suddenly says a line in Yiddish and it's a shock. Cagney was very Irish, but he also grew up playing in the New York City streets with other children of immigrants.
One day I want to see Salman Khan turn to the camera and say, "Meshugganeh ayeh, meshugganah lockshen." The literal translation, "Crazy eggs, [so] crazy noodles," basically, "the kids turn out like the parents." I would write a whole screenplay around having him say that. Salman Khan is in love with Kareena Kapoor, but she's a little odd. He goes to her house, and meets her father, who is totally wacky (Johnny Lever?). Then he says the line, then they sing and dance next to a tree, alternately dressed in tacky disco clothes and rich traditional garments. Subplot: Salman's widowed mother (maybe Kirron Kher) meets Kareena's wacky widowed father, and it turns out that she's also kind of wacky, but has always felt she had to act in a very serious manner. Kirron: I've finally met a man I can be myself with! Then they sing and dance in a colorful marketplace, during which they grab different things from the various vendors (a scarf, a piece of fruit, a pot) and do funny things with them. I could so write this movie.
Next up: I write a movie around Amitabh singing "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
Last but not least:
Raghu Dixit is a crossover artist in the best sense of the word. His western sensibilities are from acoustic singer-songwriters, not glossy pop stars. And he sings without some elements of the Indian vocal style that are peculiar to a western ear not acquainted with Indian music. I said to Barry, "It's Indian David Hidalgo!"
Actually, if you put Cesar Rojas' beard on David Hidalgo, he would kind of look like Raghu Dixit.
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