Miscellaneous: Freaks

Dara writes:

If you really want to see marginal people, visit the post office. I have come think that only those of us on the fringes of society dare venture there. If you work in an office, well, you use their postal supplies to mail letters. If you have access to the internet, well, you can also order things like stamps and envelopes online. But if, say, you live under a rock or spend a great deal of your time at the Port Authority or hanging around the statue in Rutherford Park on lower Second Avenue, well, then you go to the post office.

Yesterday, waiting in line to buy stamps--many, many stamps, thus precluding my use of the multiple stamp vending machines--I noticed two such fearsome creatures. One was a hobbit in army camo. He had a pointed beard, an eye patch, and a cane--I kid you not. So wee he was that in order to submit his missives into the slot, he had to kind of shimmy up his cane and wedge his hob-nail boots in a crack in the wall.

Two windows, #13 and 14, purported to sell stamps. #13 had a line behind it and #14 did not. So I stood behind #14, until a sage man whispered to get the hell to the back of the line. I did, whereupon a 3 foot 8 inch tall nun wobbled up to window #14. She had on full habit, wheezed, and certainly was buying postage to send the letters of needy children to Santa. No one whispered anything to her.

In a somewhat related freak note, the new book by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast came out this week. I am looking forward to perusing it, and someone I met last night could easily be a character in one of her vignettes. You know, she is the neurotic woman whom visions of Ebola virus and middle age keep up at night.

I met this character at a dinner at Gramercy Park's National Arts Club, of which I am a member. From the caged birds roosting on the second floor to the eighty year olds playing snooker in the basement, the club is quite eccentric. As was my dinner companion. He is obsessed with the poetic form of haiku. Everything he says can relate back to verse. A few of the folks at dinner were from Montclair, New Jersey. Haiku man says,

"Montclair--Iliana Rigilio is from Montclair, and she is very important in the world of haiku."

One of the guests works at Newsweek magazine. Haiku man says,

"She is so wonderful. Twenty years ago she let me review a book of haiku and it was the best day of my life."

The poet James Merrill used haiku to brilliant effect as a kind of resting space in his long poems about Japan in his penultimate book, The Inner Room. Generally, I am not a practitioner--let alone fetishizer--of the form. I did, however, pen one about an old boss of mine with a Napoleonic complex. The kind of boss who would leave messages on my work voice mail at four in the morning and phone me from a booth at 57th Street's Brooklyn Diner just so it would look to other patrons as though he were networking. Of said boss I wrote:

Sign of a bragger,
Telling Bianca Jagger,
Message please.

TV: Studio 60

Dara writes:

In an earlier post, I noted that I liked the latest creation of Aaron Sorkin, Studio 60, because its main character was a writer and the show did a good job of conveying exactly what that means--agony, being blocked, fatigue, ill humor, catharsis, et. al. I mentioned too that Matthew Perry did a good job as said writer. As the series has evolved, Bradley Whitford has become my favorite character. He is never more boyish than when trying to woo the network executive Jordan McDeere, played winningly by Amanda Peet, who, we learned two episodes ago, is pregnant. I don't know if Danny Tripp, Whitford's character, is the father, but he is in love with McDeere.

Tripp is a recovering addict--he is not exactly everyone's dream date. He tells McDeere,

"I know you want to run. But I will come after you."

This was extremely cute, especially since McDeere's mouth was full, since she is "eating for two."

I have not watched TV, except for Seinfeld re-runs, for some time. But I really like this show, and it is fun to feel part of mainstream culture again. Like I have something to contribute at the water cooler. If I worked at a place with a water cooler. If I worked. Anyhow, Alessandra Stanley, the head TV critic for the Times, corroborates my allegiance:

"And at their best, the two shows are unequaled by anything else on network television,"

she attests of Studio 60 and its more slapsticky counterpart, 30 Rock.

Raymond's in Montclair: Mayberry's Odeon

Dara writes:

Yesterday James dragged me, sorry, brought me along on a trip to the Montclair Art Museum for an afternoon lecture on the 19th-century American landscape painter George Inness. I was sort of excited to visit Montclair, where I had never been, because I know that many NY writer-types live there and commute to the city. From our apartment near Union Square in Manhattan, the drive took about forty minutes. Not bad, yet I kind of always hold my breath through the Lincoln Tunnel, and has there ever been a more prosaic road than the NJTP? Highway 101 out of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge it is not.

I very much enjoyed the Inness paintings. James appreciates the painter for his varied techniques: he painted both exact landscapes and almost abstract, emotional nature scenes. In one image, Sunset, in the museum's collection, brilliant orange sun beams peak out between two leaning trees. From a distance, there seems to be extraordinary depth behind the trees. Up close, the painter has daubed bright orange between the trees and in fact what seemed like depth now appears to be surface. I'm not an art historian, so I'm not sure of the significance of that observation, but I was intrigued by the work. Interestingly, an Inness collector and benefactor of the wing in the museum was on hand to give us a personal tour of the collection, which was delightful.

It was about 6:30pm, and James and I needed sustenance. The museum's director pointed us to Raymond's, down Bloomfield Avenue not far from the institution. Now, the museum is perched on a hill, and driving down Bloomfield toward the restaurant entailed a breathtaking view, on this clear night, of Manhattan.

Raymond's, which opened in 1989, is retrofitted to look like an old malt shop. Imagine an Odeon--albeit one estranged from the scene in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s--in Mayberry. We had to wait about ten minutes, and in that time I noticed a nice-looking--and chopped--cobb salad, and that most people were ordering burgers. While deliciously ripe avocado slices perched atop the lettuce, tomatoes, blue cheese, bacon, and chicken in the salad, and while the chicken was very moist, the salad lacked crispness and taste. The chef mistakenly thought heavily mixing the salad, so the blue cheese kind of spread its wealth, could compensate for a lack of dressing. No. A cobb salad should not just be creamy, but should taste of something. I ate more of the french fries that came with James's burger than I should have to get some salt and snap.

Could I see myself in Montclair? The main street was very well tended. The museum was estimable. But part of me feels if I will leave New York I will really leave it, not to a town on a hill where I will always feel like an outsider peeking in the window at the action.