Hippie Birthday, Rivka!

Riva = 30 years on Planet Earth


Joseph realized his dream in Phoenicia.


That's when we began the spoon-themed birthday celebration.


Mahalia was our spoon-nosed guru.


Everybody fell into line.


Riva, spoon, jazz hands.


Then we drove back to Shokan for birthday party prep.


Gaela's perfect cake and cupcakes.


Joe and I gave Riva an ice cream maker plus accoutrements for the big thirty.


Served, dinner.


Beautiful Merle, my Aikido soulmate with beautiful Riva, my ice cream soulmate.












And then the spooning began again.




Pooped.


Joe and I baked challah,


and made challah French toast for breakfast.




With the help of the adults, Eden made mixed-berry muffins.


Still waking up.




Happy birthday to my Best Friend, Riva. I love you profusely/wildly/unabashedly/blazingly/blatantly/verbatimly/literally/sans hyperbole.

Packing it in

Weekend Chaos:

Friday-
Homophobic movie screening of the year, Bruno with Matt B. and Joe.
Commiserating about the movie over drinks at the Old Town Bar.

Saturday-
Scrub apartment with Joe for four hours to prepare for subletter's viewing.
Show apartment.
Go to the Whitney Museum to see Dan Graham and Sadie Benning.
Dinner at Odessa.
Screening of Lake Tahoe.
Stay for Q&A with Writer/Director of Lake Tahoe and one of my favorite films, Duck Season, Fernando Eimbecke.

Sunday-
Joe and I meet up with Kasey, Amy, and Sara for brunch at Cheryl's Global Soul.
After brunch, we all roll over to the Brooklyn Museum to view Yinka Shonibare and the New Feminist Video shows.
Joe and I go back to Brooklyn where we spend the evening making an instructional video for work.
We fall asleep, fried from the weekend, watching a cheesy gay movie from the early eighties, Parting Glances.

Old Man and the Sea

My father is who-knows-where in not-even-a-town in Northern Minnesota, fishing with one of our cousins. Since my dad is now an All-Bran star, I thought I would continue with my characterization. Yesterday I received the following email from my mother:

dear gili,
rick just radioed that daddy caught a 17-inch walleye, so i bet he's happy.
love,
mother xxxxxxxx

Celebrating My Dad's Beautiful Heart! (Part II)

Ms. Warsett,

How thoughtful of you to take the time to let us know your father has enjoyed Kellogg's® All-Bran® cereal. We are always pleased to hear positive comments from our consumers. Thank you!

Everyone at our company devotes a great deal of effort to developing wholesome, appealing products, and it is good to know he thinks we have been successful. We know that eating developing a healthy eating routine and including high fiber products can have a very good reaction to certain health conditions, your father is proof. We are happy to send you some gifts to send him in our appreciation of his loyalty. Please allow these gifts 7-10 days to arrive.

We appreciate your interest in our company and products.

Best of Health,

ANV
Consumer Affairs Department

Invasion day

Who: Joseph/Gili
What: Observance of Independence Day
Where: Fire Island, New York. (spec. Cherry Grove)
When: July 4th, 2009
Why: Don't Ask; Don't Tell.
How: subway, train, transfer to second train, shuttle, ferry (traveling time approx. 4 hours)

Another example of why most of my friends are books:

On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion

"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.... Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss....

"...I tell what some would call lies. 'That's simply not true,' the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event....

"How it felt for me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook....

"We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of effacing.

"But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable 'I.'

"It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."

***

Just read the whole essay. For that matter, read all of Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Maybe you'll also feel a little less alone, a little less malcontent.

Belated Father's Day Post

The last time I visited Florida, my father had collected about 60 (maybe 70?) boxes of All-Bran in the kitchen cupboard. These pictures don't do justice to the magnitude/seriousness of his stockpile. I meant to build a tower of boxes and photograph the sculpture, but time escaped me.

Happy Father's Day to the most fibrous of fathers!

I had the idea to send these photos along with a letter to All-Bran with the hopes of the company rewarding my father in some way, but then I realized there may be a lot of other All-Bran fans, who are just as zealous about the cereal as is my father.

(Check out the bottom of the second picture where you can see all the other cereals lined up in our cupboard. Apparently it's our family's goal to keep Kellogg's in business.)

Sweet nothings

(A cab hailed for Harvey in the rain.)

After a very long day, it's time to take a muscle relaxant and lie down with no plans to move my body until the morning.

Favorite
current movie: $9.99
latest read: Once the Shore by Paul Yoon
pick-me-up: Billy's chocolate cake with mocha icing
escape plan: Turkey in August


Great news:
My story, "The Giraffe Knocking Over the Elephant Knocking Over the Leopard Knocking Over the Ostrich" was one of three stories nominated by the editor of the magazine where it was published for the 2009 Million Writers Award! More information is available here.

The Proud Folks of New York

Joe, Kasey, and I spent Sunday fabbing it up at the Pride Parade.




This year's theme was 40 Years of Heritage in honor of Stonewall's anniversary.


His shirt reads: "Ass The Other Vagina"


The parade lasted for four hours or maybe longer.


Though I've been to many Pride Parades in my lifetime, I'm pretty sure New York's parade was the longest and the most conservative.


Still, a few Leather Daddies managed to slip into the action.




Happy Pride!

Bulldogs forever!

Today I found out that some of the guys at Aikido call our fifth kyu group Bulldogs because we're tough and tenacious.


After class we had a rooftop party at the dojo.


We're all a bit socially awkward, but we managed.


Good friends and conversation.


I spent time with amazing people like Ilsa and Alex.


We stayed upstairs until the downpour.


After my time away, I'm glad to be back.

Today I learned that Sensei loves Scotch, Elvis, and cigars. Personally, I'm not a fan of these three things. But the love of Aikido is mutual.

15 Things About Today (in a less-than-particular order)

1. I had black-poodle-envy in Cambridge.

2. Farrah Fawcett died.

3. I tickled Brian Bouldrey's neck at Lesley.

4. I made peace over facebook.

5. Kimberley drank blueberry juice.

6. Valerie and I unintentionally wore almost the same outfit to the Camera Obscura concert.

7. A Claude Cahun book was found and purchased... USED!

8. Riva taught me that according to PBS, a person remembers more when they hear something in their right ear instead of their left.

9. Michael Jackson died.

10. Abbey sent me the most genius text ever (re: Michael Jackson): "I'll hold ya like the River Jordan."

11. A canvasser told Riva and I that we look like nice people; we adamantly disagreed.

12. I've come up with my new favorite ice-breaker: If you were stranded on a desert island, which personal issue would you take with you?

13. I decided to take my long-chin-insecurity with me to the desert island. I'd abandon my insomnia and anxiety in a flash.

14. I forgot and then remembered all four names of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' characters.

15. I could only come up with 14 things about today, not including this one.

Ah, New England Summers

First activity in Boston: Riva's sailing lesson.






Riva had things under control.


I entertained myself with the camera.


She's a natural.

Intersections

Tara and I have known each other longer than any other friend I have. This doesn't include Facebook "friends," like a certain old friend of mine from elementary school, who is now a youth minister and very publicly anti-choice and anti-feminist.

The nice thing about knowing Tara for so long is that in many ways, our lives have remained parallel. She's been away at school for the past two years, and I've been living in her sister's hand-me-down apartment. Tara's back in New York for the summer before she begins an MFA program in the Midwest, and yesterday we ran around town, catching each other up on the past two years. We fell right back into our friendship. I'm excited to have her company over the next couple of months.

I love how New York invites intersections. But for today, I'm escaping New York. I'm on the bus to Boston. Free Wi-Fi! Thinking about Sandra who is somewhere far away, enjoying the good life that the West Coast offers. I'm taking time away from New York for a short trip to see Kimberley and Riva, and to take some space from Aikido, which is currently causing claustrophobia.

There's a little girl in the back of the bus who is singing the alphabet out of order.

I can't wait to get a good night's sleep in Kimberley's perfectly curved futon, with a nook in the middle to hold my body in place.