NYCweboy

"New" New York

I hear more about the "new" New Orleans these days (sadly, you can believe some of the hype, and not for the right reasons) than any "new" NY, but one need only satisfy one's Law & Order addiction - as I'm doing as a side project to my PhD - to see how much NYC has changed over the years.  Of course, Weboy has documented it well here, and, in keeping with the spirit of writing about not too much this week, this post is not a wonkish treatise about urban development and politics.  (I know, I know, you miss my lecturing ways.  Prof. Redstar will be back mid-January, after I shop my screenplay in L.A.  But I digress...)

Instead, I'm extemporizing here about my upcoming visit to NYC, which involves four nights of visiting friends in the outer boroughs.  And I'm not talking about the hipsterati in Brooklyn.  Nope, instead, with thirtysomething boyfriend in tow, I will be staying with friends and their families (collectively, three children under the age of five) in the Bronx and Queens.  Saturday night involves a trip downtown for a joint ABD status/birthday dinner with my best girlfriend from college and her husband.  And New Year's Eve is still shaping up, but the likelihood of me blindly finding my way into a cab between 2 and 4 a.m. is about as high as one of the "lesser-known [presidential] candidates" debating on C-Span right now actually winning the election (someone take the remote away from the M.A.S.). 

Sure, I still have friends who live in Manhattan, and I'm still uncool enough that most of them live uptown (the married ones anyway...and I've never been cool enough to have less than a handful of friends living in Brooklyn), but really my NYC reality now is visiting my 22 year old cousin as she fashions her own version of my quarterlife adventures in the city.  Most of these friends are also out of town right now, on vacation with their young families, on mini-breaks with new flames, and just generally living their lives in the ways we know now, which mean that our paths cross less and less frequently, and generally only for special occasions such as reunions, weddings, etc.  My world is shrinking, and shifting. 

This post is not rueful, even if it is nostalgic.  This man of mine has a growing Flickr collection of us posed in front of extended family Christmas trees and dinner tables, at far-flung weddings, and in various leisurely settings.  Apparently, this is now my life.  And I'm wiser, and happier and fatter for it.  But what a kick, commuting from Boston's own periphery of Brighton to the 'hoods of Riverdale and Jackson Heights.  Places - mainly the latter - I'd consider living if I ever came back to NY.  A hope I still keep alive, even as I relax behind the wheel of my stepmom's hand-me-down Pontiac, commuting between Newton and Quincy and Hanover and Connecticut in my own (re)new(ed) life in Red Sox Nation.  Who knew.

Special thanks to Weboy, an enduring presence no matter where we roam, for the privilege of posting here these last few days.  I know I didn't live up to his usual hard-hitting journalism.  But he did get me writing, a least a little bit, every day, and hopefully you all enjoyed - or tolerated - my random musings.  I wish you all A Very Happy New Year - Be Safe and Have Fun!

More or less cross-posted at The Redstar Perspective.

I Picked The Wrong Week To Quit Sniffing Glue

When Larry Craig got caught this summer, during Andrew Sullivan's annual progress to Provincetown, I said, "what a week for him to take off."

Well, now I know how that feels.

All right, yes, I made it all of maybe 36 hours, but Benazir Bhutto is dead.

Here I am trying to take the time off, be a good boy and stick to my knitting... and something happens that up-ends the entire news cycle.  Events like this are the reason I started blogging.  No really.  I'm the guy, among my friends, who passes along the late breaking story, offers the immediate reax, throws in my two cents for what it's worth (about 2 cents, not counting the subprime mortgage).

And here I sit, with my opposable thumbs stowed in a drawer.

I don't really have much to add on the Bhutto assassination, outside of my observations a while back - her death compliocates things, but the mess in Pakistan was bigger than her all along. Malkin, oddly, is the most on the story, and there's good commentary flying over at The Corner; conservatives would love this to be an indictment of Democrats (see the folks at Lucianne), but no one, really, has a good handle on Pakistan's politics. This is not - except to Condi Rice, maybe - an intellectual exercise, despite the way Americans look at it.  Bhutto's symbolic presence as a sign of political reconciliation and change was very real to her supporters.  Losing her cannot be a good step.

But what do I know... I'm supposed to be under a tanning lamp.  As you were.

I'm Starting with the Man in the Mirror

In keeping with Weboy's preferred use of song lyrics as post titles...  I'm hinting at some New Year's resolution-appropriate self-reflection here, but really I've got nothing of the sort to offer (in part because my Google reader keeps crashing every time I try to catch up on 900+ blog posts).

We're in the lull between Christmas and New Year's...unsurprisingly, my brain is a bit of a mush and I've got a 1000 things and nothing to say at once.  I took back-to-back yoga (gentle) and N.I.A. classes tonight.  Never done that before, and there were moments when I didn't think I'd get through either.  I'm trying to pack the physical activity in before the next debaucherous weekend begins on Friday, and am treating the 72 hours b/w the end of Christmas and the beginning of four days in New York as a detox of sorts.  I just got caught in the rain for the second time in four days, my car will be officially snowed in for two weeks tomorrow, and there's virtually nothing on t.v.  I even fell asleep before midnight last night, practically unheard of (though I did wake up at 4:30 a.m. worrying about product returns for an hour until I heard the first subway train outside my window and drifted off back to sleep).  Seriously, this is what I've got to share with y'all.  Maybe I should have thought twice before agreeing to post for Weboy during this lull!!

I did spend almost three hours in my pajamas updating my iTunes and making new playlists before loading my snazzy new Nano.  Ooooohhhh, shiny.  While downloading more easy listening faves like Christopher Cross's Ride Like the Wind and Billy Preston & Syreeta's With You I'm Born Again, I came across an iMix (??) called something like Songs We're Embarrassed to Admit We Like.  And I thought to myself, this is a list we haven't made.  Sure, we've all got our opinions on the best Michael Jackson hit - I say Smooth Criminal, others nominate Man in the Mirror - and Weboy's been tallying our votes for awhile on the Worst Song Ever.  But have we really come clean on the songs we're most embarrassed to have come up in our iPod shuffle?

May I sheepishly reveal a random sample of my iTunes guilty pleasures (there's SOOOOO many I didn't feel I could really generate a Top 5 of almost 2k songs):

1) Woman in Love, Guilty, & The Main Event/Fight - all Barbra Streisand

2) Nights are Forever Without You & We'll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again - Dan England/John Ford Coley

3) If You're Not the One - Daniel Beddingfield

4) Mockingbird & Haven't Got Time for the Pain - Carly Simon

5) Where is the Love - Roberta Flack

Lest you believe I am only chagrined by my 70s or singer-songwriter proclivities, I also have "I Think I'm in Love" by Jessica Simpson, "Lucky" by Britney Spears (and some video footage of my friend K and I singing it in Tanzania, oy), and "Careless Whisper" by Wham.  Aigh.

Mama Dramas wishes us all "self acceptance" in 2008.    I guess that means I shouldn't lower my voice when singing Carly's Coming Around Again as I pass by the bus stop.  What songs are you secretly blaring??  May we all be loud and proud in 2008!!!

Cross-posted at The Redstar Perspective.

Yo Ho Ho!

Merrrrrrry Christmas from another red wonder!!  This is guest blogger Redstar, home from a six-city holiday tour (yes, really) with her boyfriend, the M.A.S., filling in for the inimitable NYC Weboy while he gets some much needed rest at his mom's place. I hear he even *forgot* his phone charger, lest we try to ring him to death with well wishes and holiday cheer.  Let's let him be.  I'll be posting here for the next three days, on topics still unknown to me too. 

Should I tell you a bit about me?  I'm a regular commenter and supporting actor here at NYC Weboy.  For those who missed our biopic on Lifetime, Weboy and I met 10 years ago (Happy Anniversary!) at what was my first job out of college/in NYC, a healthcare marketing/ad agency in Soho where we worked for the small medical education subsidiary.  We were fast friends, star-crossed, really, and despite the occasional work-related ups and downs (such as during the brief period when I was his boss on a project and he called me "imperious"), we've been close, close friends ever since, from NY to Boston and through his transitions from digital media work to free-lance writing, and mine from business school to an urban planning doctoral program. 

One of our favorite games, besides arguing about politics and shopping, is to envision the future Redstar Administration that will finally move this country forward in an equitable, progressive direction.  And give Weboy - as my Communications Director (and spiritual advisor) - and me access to the globe - and all its latest fashions - via private military jet.   Although, after reading a piece in The New Yorker this week about the first megachurch in New England, I'm wondering if I'm not better suited as a mega church pastor than leader of the free world.  There I can have my flock and my pulpit without all that nasty, relentless business of campaigning, free to lead at arm's length over a congregation and highly lucrative business enterprise.  I do have the head for it; now all I need is the ideology.  The Church of More Affordable Housing and Poverty Reduction through Stylish Cross-cultural Activism and Coalition Building? I'm still working out the name, obviously. 

Regardless of where I end up, I know Weboy will be right there beside me, as he's been for the last decade.  And vice versa.  For now, it's just after noon on the 26th and I need to finish my morning coffee and begin to unpack the loot I've accumulated as an only child of divorced parents and member of a family of almost 40 cousins spread out across southeast New England.  I've got less than 72 hours of reprieve and caloric de-tox before the New Year's weekend activities kick off.  I'll definitely be back here later, hopefully with more insightful commentary than this holiday-hangover couch potato chatter.

Thanks for having me!  It's great to be here. 

A Holiday Album from your favorite JoBiv

Plenty of people have a hard time with their families during the holidays. Therapists are double-booked. Malls, restaurants and grocery stores teem with misery as people frantically pull together their holiday to their families’ exacting specifications. Add weather hazards and forced cheer at the workplace and you have an entire population stretched to the very limits of their humanity. 

Tally the usual stressors with the following: my recent back surgery; paltry employment; a controlling, substance-abusing father; and the upcoming 90^th birthday of the family Matriarch, my Grandmother.

The Matriarch, as I privately call her, is an ornery, bizarrely healthy, sharp, irascible woman. Her brood consists of the ever-extending families of seven of her children (she lost two in their early childhoods.) Of these seven kids, only my father remained local. Everyone else scattered for safety. My closest aunt lives in North Carolina. My Uncle J moved to California at first. When he realized it wasn’t quite far enough to outreach the tentacles of his parents, he moved to Maui. The lucky bastard comes to New York once an eternity, and who could demand his presence when it’s such a financial burden? (I have cousins in Europe who’ve figured out the same slick system. We’re smart people, we Bivs.)

In other words, Grandma’s 90^th will not be a huge reunion, reeling everyone in for a big happy party with baked ziti and ambrosia salad. As much as we love her, or resent her, or fervently remold her in our minds until she’s a softer, gentler woman with a super-squishy heart only to be terribly disappointed upon the next conversation with her, we must acknowledge the terrifying achievement of this woman reaching her ninetieth year.

The Holiday Haikus Of J in Balto, Part The Eighth

Toy Trains

Miniature trains
circumventing tiny towns,
never quite arrive.

The Holiday Haikus Of J in Balto, Part The Seventh

Having Friends Over

Because nothing says
Christmas quite like handcuffs on
Mario Lopez.

Gift

You know who you are.
Each year I tell you my size,
and yet still no shirt.

The Holiday Haikus Of J in Balto, Part The Sixth

Wise Men

From the shepherds’ fields
came the rumor that the myrrh
had been regifted.

Green and Red

How many outfits
are lost to this vendetta
between red and green?

The Holiday Haikus Of J in Balto, Part The Fifth

Reindeer

Searching for Rudolph,
Clarice and Mme. Donner shared
other interests.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Perhaps in the end,
100 bottles of beer
would have been less mess.

The Holiday Haikus Of J in Balto, Part The Fourth

Christmas Cookies

Darn Russian Tea Cake!
Your flavor has spilled onto
my snickerdoodle

Christmas Carols

Unless done in Sign,
"O Holy Night" remains a
karaoke don't.