The 'Book and the tree

I have been conspicuously (and by conspicuously, I mean in my own mind) from the blogosphere for a while now. I start blog entries and then forget about them. I wonder what there is to say that anyone could possibly care about. I still get comments on old blog posts and start writing but lose interest. Facebook and Ancestry.com have tightened their grip on me.

My friend Michelle invited me to join Facebook almost a year ago. I resisted at first, but I thought it would be a good way to research social networking, since my department was looking into building virtual communities. I thought the best way to study them was to become a member. Now I'm hooked on Facebook, and like the Internet itself, I can't imagine what my life was like before it. Well, actually, I know what my life was like before it. It wasn't full of poking, flair, and status updates by the nanosecond.

I've always felt somewhat alone in the blogosphere; Facebook, on the other hand, lets me connect with any of the currently 140 friends I have. I had no idea I knew 140 people, but they are, in fact, people I know, from work, school, the neighborhood, blogging, the gym, the past, my family. Some are casual acquaintances; some are people I've known for many years. In many ways my contact with them mirrors how I would interact with them in real life, but in other ways I've gotten to know people better by observing and interacting with them virtually. For instance, a colleague of mine is in the hospital recovering from a serious illness and was unable to speak on the phone. His wife, through Facebook, was able to keep us all up to date on his condition and relay messages to him. It was better than wondering how he is and having her be bombarded with phone calls and e-mails.

On our recent trip to London, I saved money on cell phone calls by contacting my cousins on Facebook to set up places and times to meet. I saw photos of our friends' new baby who was born while we were away. I correspond with my friend Michelle, who lives in Mongolia and is already living tomorrow. To me Facebook is not a substitute for human contact, and if someone lives hundreds or thousands of miles away, this kind of interaction makes sense. Oh yes, and many of my loyal readers are on Facebook!

But Facebook is only part of the reason why I've put aside blogging. The other part is my genealogical pursuit, which has grown considerably since I started 3 years ago with about 20 people in my tree. Now there are almost a thousand. I've gone back 6 or 7 generations on all four sides, taking me, in some cases, to the late 1700s. I've expanded across generations to almost 700 blood relatives, 400 of them living! I've uncovered cousins in Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, Italy, and many parts of the US. I've met dozens of new cousins both in person and through e-mail (and Facebook). And so far I've helped solve three family mysteries. But that's another blog entry. Stay tuned...

Continue reading...

Bailing our eyes out

I try hard to not look at my 401(k), but I can't help it. Even after putting most of my meager fortune into fixed income, I watch it spiral downward each day like a banker on his way to meet the pavement. Thankfully I'm not anywhere near retirement, but I do wonder what the markets will look like when I get there.

I don't play the stock market, since I've proved time and time again that I'm no good at it. I got into the market at the tail end of the dotcom boom. I didn't understand what on earth I was doing. When eBay went public in 1998, the anticipated $18 share price blasted up to $53 before falling back to $47 the first day. A few weeks later it had settled down in the $20s, and I remember saying to Luis that buying it probably didn't seem like such a good deal after all. So I missed that boat.


So now almost all of our money is in real estate, the building that we bought with our friends 3-1/2 years ago. In 3-1/2 years you can build hotels and condo buildings of much greater size, apparently. Our little shanty has been tied up in some sort of bureaucratic morass since we've owned it. It took a year and a half to get a zoning variance, and for the last 2 years we've been paying various other agencies to get permits, approve plans, and bicker over things like whether we should be allowed to have Juliette balconies (they are classified as "obstructions"). We had hoped to be well into construction by now, but the most we've gotten is a gutted shell that will need to be razed completely anyway. And we've already laid out more than $100,000.

Now we are about to attempt to get a construction loan in the middle of a serious financial crisis. The contractors' bids have come in, and we're meeting with our architect next week to figure out our options. Luis spoke with a banker yesterday who said that we might be able to get 60 percent financing, which is better than a kick in the teeth, but that means we'd have to collectively front about a half-million dollars.

I'm seriously thinking of writing to HGTV to see if they'd be interested in our project. Or maybe Warren Buffett will come to our rescue.

To celebrate Luis's birthday, we're going to Danny Meyer's Shake Shack, where burgers cost $3.75. Desperate times call for delicious measures.

Continue reading...

Correction

"Beyoncé" is not a trannie or a drag queen!

Continue reading...

Cazwell throws some shade

I was beginning to think camp was dead. But it's not; it's just different.

I'm old enough to remember pre-AIDS camp. Back then, "camp" was synonymous with "gay." "Gay" meant "underground." "Underground" meant "immoral." Camp was subversive, dangerous, even anarchical. It defied description and categorization. You just knew something was camp. If you were not on that wavelength, camp meant nothing to you. In mainstream America, camp was unpatriotic. It was up there with Communism.

The camp icons I remember most in the 1960s were Charles Nelson Reilly, Liberace, Paul Lynde, Alan Sues. Women were not camp, but rather the objects of camp: Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and, of course, the obligatory Judy Garland. Despite featuring men in drag, the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot is not camp, unless you count the presence of Marilyn Monroe. A man's mere wearing of a dress doesn't make him camp or gay or immoral--or funny, for that matter. An illusion of reality has to be created. As much as drag could be considered a distortion or exaggeration of women, it is really an homage to them. Post-Stonewall drag queens like Divine, RuPaul, and Dame Edna portrayed women as confident, sassy, and complex. They inspired empathy and affinity, but they were still camp. The difference is they were in on the joke.

By the 1970s, essays like Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp" redefined "camp" to emphasize "artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess." Sontag said, "You can't do camp on purpose." In a way, she's right. Camp has to come from the heart, however misguided. In the past 15 years, the gold standard of camp has been, of course, Showgirls, an earnest, jaw-dropping, 15-car pileup that purports to portray the real-life, gritty underpinnings of exploited Vegas performers.

On television there have been camp-like roles, such as Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, the women of Sex and the City, and Karen in Will and Grace, but there's a self-consciousness there: gay spirits inhabiting the bodies of real women. I think that one reason straight women and gay men get along so well is because they concurrently fought to be treated as equals and in the past 30 years have gained political clout. They can now use mainstream media to express themselves and large numbers of people don't see them as subversive anymore. That's a far cry from the creepy innuendoes of Paul Lynde's bitchy retorts on The Hollywood Squares (which, by the way, are still hilarious).

The other day I stumbled onto a YouTube video by gay rapper Cazwell called "I Seen Beyoncé at Burger King." At first I thought it was amateurish and not funny, but about halfway through the viewing, it hit me: This is John Waters for the New Millennium. This is the new camp!

But is it camp if the intent is deliberate? To me it is, since it incorporates the three main components of camp: attitude, humor and allusion, and drag.

If the grammatically flawed title doesn't clue you in, the garish, seizure-inducing, psychedelic color scheme and irritatingly monotonous synth track will. Influenced by artists such as Deee-Lite, Caz crafts a novelty song that's as clever as it is annoying. Decked out in what can only be described as white-trash rapper couture, Caz and his over-the-top homo-nerdy sidekick Jonny Makeup let viewers in on their dirty little secret: they've spotted Beyoncé in the Home of the Whopper chowing down on a host of calorie-laden food items.

In the video, "Beyoncé" is a tranny who uses her wiles to get Caz to lend her 10 bucks because her car is parked 3 blocks away and "that's just too far, too far." Caz lets on that he and Ms. Knowles are tight, as he nonchalantly advises her that she'd better repay him. In a subsequent encounter at JC Penney, Beyoncé shows up in her '94 Chevy bedecked in curlers and shades and asks Caz to watch her car while she shops. Caz reminds her of the 10-dollar loan, which she dismisses with a fierce "f**k it." And then Ms. B delivers the ultimate bitch slap, mistaking Caz for a liquor store employee while she shops for a case of beer.

This far-fetched sequence of events is interspersed with shots of Makeup in various ridiculous getups (the nosy neighbor, the fashion-challenged queen) gossiping with a half-stoned Caz, himself dressed in a pink scooped-out tank top and bling, about the alleged sightings. Whether intentional or not, the addition of backup dancers in Burger King uniforms and kitten outfits is a great tribute to camp variety shows like Hullaballoo.

The line on whether this video is more satire than camp is blurred. The premise of a white-trash gay rapper dissing a glamorous hip-hop star in the 'hood is a smart statement on what constitutes celebrity and reality, something John Waters exposed so brilliantly in Pecker. Everyone has something to say about Britney, Lindsay, and Paris, but what do we really know about them?

The YouTube commenters don't seem to get what's going on here, but then viewing comments on that site is like visiting a putrid cesspool. Uh-huh, the music is lame. Yeah, the cinematography is garish. OK, the acting is silly. That's the point. The best that YouTubers can muster up are unironic remarks like "GAY," "Retarded," and "Fucking stoopid!"--remarks that indicate camp is still the purview of those who are in on the joke and that Beavis and Butthead are alive and well and surfing the Web.

Continue reading...

Terminal disappointment

In the final scene of Love, Actually, hordes of hot, smiling people swathed in flattering lighting and fresh makeup come bouncing off planes into Heathrow, and it makes you think, "Damn, international travel is sexy!"

In Rome, Dublin, London, Singapore, Tokyo, Vancouver, and even Paris, I've never had problems figuring out where I need to go. The arrivals halls are usually well designed, with clear, well placed signs. Passport control (a more civilized term than Immigration) is well managed, except at Charles de Gaulle, where queueing is optional, and agents are usually helpful and courteous. ATMs, restrooms, food, and transportation options within sight.

And then there's JFK.
Compared with other international airports, arriving on an overseas flight at JFK is like being on the Dating Game. When you get to the other side of the wall, it can be highly disappointing. Whenever I come back from somewhere else, I brace myself for unhelpful employees, surly customs agents, and confusing signs. I'm not surprised, but I expect better.

The BA departures hall is all right, but the arrivals hall is dismal. Imagine it's your first time jetting in to New York and you're looking forward to bright lights, big city. Instead you enter what looks like a prison waiting room, or worse, the department of motor vehicles. The waiting area looks like an afterthought. If, like we did, you have to wait over an hour for your party to arrive, there aren't a lot of options. You need bionic vision to figure out where the restrooms are. And let's not even talk about what those are like, shall we? There's little thought given to what people might expect once they arrive. After enduring the trifecta of endurance--Immigration, Baggage Claim, and Customs--you'd think you'd get a cheery welcome. Oh, you get a cheer all right--a Bronx cheer. Sucker!

The only kiosk open when we were there was a Subway. I took a picture of the signs on the soda machine, which exemplified JFK's commitment to quality of service: No Cherry Coke, No Root Beer, No Lem., No Ice T, No Hi-C, No Sprite. NO REFILLS. Only Coke or Diet Coke. You don't want that? Fuhgeddaboudit! Welcome to New Yawk.

Next!

Continue reading...

A world away

Luis took me with him on a real estate listing today to a six-story building in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the neighborhood I was born and raised in. When I saw the building again, it brought back to me an extraordinary incident that happened there, coincidentally 33 years ago to the day, an incident that for me symbolized the end of my innocence.

I vividly and fondly remember my childhood in Flatbush in the 1960s and 1970s. I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything else. We lived in a six-story building on Ocean Avenue called Ethel Arms (which Luis likes to call "Ethel Flabby Arms"). Ocean Avenue was once a sleepy path leading to Sheepshead Bay, but in the 1920s, as immigrant waves kept rolling in, high-rise apartment buildings sprouted all along the avenue, urbanizing it. When I was growing up, Ocean Avenue was a four-lane street, and the most popular sport was dodging cars to get to the other side. Once across, you entered Ditmas Park, where the scenery changed markedly and you felt like you were in the country.

The side streets were--and still are--lined with shade trees and stately Victorian homes dating from the early 1900s. The nearby Pink Palace in Sophie's Choice exemplifies those homes. Erasmus Hall High School, alma mater of Barbra Streisand, Susan Hayward, and Donny Most, was the closest public high school. Movie stars such as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford lived in Flatbush around the time it urbanized. By the early 1970s the only famous local residents I knew of were Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, a few soap actors, and Barry Manilow and his mother. The giant, fenced-in house across from my building was purportedly the home of a porn director, but I never knew whether that was true.

I always felt safe growing up in Flatbush, and evidently so did my parents, since they let me play unsupervised out on the big, open dangerous street. We weren't really unsupervised, as hundreds of invisible pairs of eyes somehow managed to report unseemly activity to our respective parents. Assaults and thefts were rare, but there did seem to be a fair amount of arson. On Hallowe'en my mother and some friends' parents would escort us to select homes around the neighborhood, including the Ebinger house on E. 19th Street. For those unfamiliar with Ebinger's, it was a family-owned bakery famous for its chocolate blackout cake.

The local movie palaces were the spectacular Loew's Kings (Baroque) and Rialto (Beaux-Arts) theatres, both now houses of worship. I realize now how magnificent some of the local architecture was. I remember old ice-cream parlors like Karp's on Flatbush and Newkirk, where my mother would get me a little cup of Coke syrup to combat an upset stomach.

At the time, I was unaware that the rest of the world was not like mine. Mine was what would be categorized today as "diverse"--a concept that is now enforced politically rather than organically. My building was like a mini-United Nations of different races, religions, and family status. The Pavlicases were a middle-aged Greek couple whose apartment smelled of cardamom, anise, and cumin. Our Jewish neighbor Miriam was a housebound single hemophiliac living with her 80-year-old widowed mother. My best friend, a black girl named Angela Barnes, had a white mom and a black dad. Glenn was a soft-spoken Jamaican man who I think was probably gay. I had friends who were Argentinian, Chinese, Haitian, Italian, Irish, Norwegian, Puerto Rican, Russian. I started studying Spanish on my own when I was 11 by sitting with El Diario and a Spanish dictionary so I could try to understand the Hispanics around the corner. Later, when we moved to an all-Irish block in Sunset Park in my late teens, I realized that worlds like mine were the exception rather than the rule.

In the summer of 1975, I was in love with a beautiful Trinidadian girl named Allison whom I'd been hanging out with for 6 months. When people ask me whether that wasn't a sign that I was straight, I remind them that we were both 12 and neither of us had gone through puberty yet. When we'd watch "Gidget" movies together, I was far more interested in James Darren than Sandra Dee.

Every Sunday morning I went to 10:00 mass at Our Lady of Refuge Church. I sometimes served as a lector, reading from the New Testament before the priest delivered the Gospel reading. I was a faithful churchgoer, a good little Catholic boy who never questioned authority, at least not until much later.

That was the first summer I had been allowed to cross Ocean Avenue by myself and play at my friend Chris's house on E. 19th Street between Ditmas and Newkirk avenues. I had a pretty large group of friends of different ages and backgrounds, and we all hung out together, forming cliques and clubs and factions but in the end always coming back together. Ditmas Park was like living in a suburban community without the sameness. On summer nights a big group of our friends would divide into teams and play Ring-o-levio for hours, using the 16-block grid of Ditmas Park as our playing field.

On August 9 of that year, the news broke that Sam Bronfman, a son of Seagram's heir Edgar Bronfman, had been kidnapped. At first there were reports that Bronfman was tied up in a cave somewhere, but then it was discovered that he was being held in an apartment building right around the corner from our building! My friends and I stood on the corner for long periods, trying to see if there was any action, but all we saw were black cars with tinted windows waiting for something.

One night, a news reporter said that one of the kidnappers was Dominic Byrne, the father of one of my classmates, Tommy. Everyone in the area knew Mr. Byrne, a small, slight Irishman who used to own a liquor store on Newkirk Plaza and then became a limo driver. No one could believe that he could be involved in such a caper because he was so unassuming. There was hushed talk of homosexual activity between Tommy's father and the other kidnapper, a fireman named Mel Lynch. (Lynch later claimed in court that he and Sam Bronfman had met at a gay bar and had been lovers and that Sam was a co-conspirator in the kidnapping, an allegation that was never proved.)

At church the following Sunday, the priest asked everyone to pray for Mr. Byrne, an upstanding usher known to everyone in the community. It was all anyone talked about for weeks. When school started a month later, Tommy wasn't there, though I think eventually he returned after the publicity had died down. Tommy's father went to prison for 3 years, for extortion, not kidnapping.

When I saw the building that was the scene of the crime yesterday I felt a little sad. It was the first time I realized that the kidnapping symbolically signaled the end of the Flatbush I had known and loved, or maybe I'm just older and more cynical.

In October 1975, New York City went bankrupt, and the federal government refused to bail the city out. Garbage piled up on the streets, and crime spiked as cops became scarcer. In 1976 the brand-new 10-speed bike I got for graduation was stolen from me at knifepoint in broad daylight on Ditmas Avenue, half a block from my building.

By 1977, the burning of Bushwick during the NYC blackout and the Son of Sam shootings were further emblems of the city's ailing health. Many of my friends and their families were moving to the suburbs or to other states to escape the worsening climate. My mother was mugged in the vestibule of our building, and my father had his wallet stolen several times. And then, the coup de grace: some random teenager picked up my 8-year-old brother and dropped up him on his head on the grass down the block for no apparent reason. In September 1977, we said goodbye to Flatbush.

It was strange walking around the area. I found a faded patch of concrete where a bunch of us had etched our initials in the then newly paved sidewalk. And there was the fence--or was it the fence?--we climbed over to get to our favorite hiding place during Ring-o-levio. Everything looked the same as it did 30 years ago, only smaller and less magical. Today I live only 3 miles from my childhood home, but in so many respects it's a world away.

Continue reading...