OneSaneVoice

Remember who you are and act accordingly

Posted on July 21, 2009 by onesanevoice

A major source of cool when walking around Manhattan is the celebrity sighting. It ranges from, “I know that woman’s face; now who the hell is she?” to “Hey, there’s the guy who co-starred with Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies back in the 80’s,” to “Holy shit, it’s Cher getting out of that taxi. I thought she was taller. Maybe without all the feathers…”

If anyone truly well-known passes your field of vision, you can bet the German tourists in their giant leather sandals and gold-prospecting cargo shorts have spotted them also, and then you have to decide which show to watch: the celebrity or the gawkers. Fortunately, we New Yorkers are trained to think on our feet.

Daughter lives in the city so it’s no big deal for her to pass famous faces on a regular basis. She only reports to me on her/our favorites or extremely amusing stories. Like when a bicyclist screeched to a halt inches from the bench she was sitting on in Madison Square Park and she looked up to yell, “Hey, watch it!” only to see Owen Wilson scratching his nuts.

Or when a woman and her two children shared a pole with her on the subway and she got to listen to Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City question her kids about their day at school. Daughter reported it sounded much like she remembers me sounding in her own childhood. I wasn’t surprised. In the grand television series of life, mothers all read from the same script.

I’m in the city often now, so my stargazing quotient has risen dramatically. On a corner of Broadway the other day, I passed an entourage filming a familiar blonde infotainment anchor whose voice is unmistakable, but whose name I’ve never committed to memory. It was very hot and she was in a tight blue dress reporting the latest on the custody issues surrounding Michael Jackson’s doomed kids. She had one assistant handing her a water bottle, followed by another assistant handing her a lipstick to be reapplied after the water bottle. The second the camera stopped rolling, the blonde anchor held her hand out for each of them in succession, like a surgeon waiting for instruments. Except she probably makes more money.

In a Times Square Starbucks, I was waiting to use the rest room when I noticed a guy on the coffee line was Jim True-Frost, an actor from one of my favorite shows, The Wire. He played troubled Detective Pryzbylewski who found redemption in Season 4 as a schoolteacher. The young guy on line behind him spotted him also and started looking around for confirmation. His eyes came to rest on me and I nodded my head yes, it was Prez. The guy furtively snapped Prez’s photo with his cell phone and then started tweeting all his twits. On my way out, I tapped the actor’s sleeve and told him he was terrific in The Wire and I really enjoyed watching him. He was genuinely pleased I stopped to tell him. I had to. I don’t tweet.

Then on a crosstown bus the next day, a scruffy middle-aged man with a folded stroller and an adorable toddler sat down across from me. I immediately recognized him from his recurrent role as a pedophile on Law & Order: SVU. Since I couldn’t recall anything else I’d seen him in, I decided it would be unseemly to compliment him on being a superb pervert. Instead, I just smiled and said, “Cute kid.” “Thanks,” he said, with a big, creepy grin.

Let’s leave the city and travel to Budapest via Cousin’s Photos from his recent trip

Buda Castle

Chain Bridge

Statue of Liberty

Parliament

Chain Bridge at night

Posted in All the World's a Stage | Tagged Cher, Cynthia Nixon, Jim True-Frost, NYC celebrity sighting, Owen Wilson | Comments Off

Duh, she said

Posted on July 17, 2009 by onesanevoice

Pieces of things, either broken or unfinished, really nag at me, which explains my need to be the fixer and completer. Former President Bush, of the W variety, didn’t leave much behind that was good, but the practice of adding an ‘r’ to a word to make it a noun might just be his legacy. As in, “I’m a decider, not an avoider.” It’s a very handy thing when you can’t think of the exact word you’re looking for, a plus in a pinch, but not in a President.

The nagging broken thing I’m referring to is a lamp I’ve had many years. It’s a brass table lamp, I believe the style would be called hurricane, with the broken part being the glass globe that sits atop the base. Without saying who accidentally knocked it over, it’s important to acknowledge that Husband was very sorry. Since the globe’s dimensions were not standard, no lamp store had a replacement, and the base was stored away for a number of years.

Until I was in an antique shop a couple of weeks ago and spotted the exact globe needed, even prettier than the one that broke. Taking a guess it would fit, I plunked down $20 and spirited it home to meet its base. You could tell it was love at first sight. A perfect fit. While Husband watched TV in the next room, I dashed over to one of the two outlets in the room I was in and plugged in my new fixture. There was a snapping noise, followed by the lamp’s bulb going POP! and the other lights in the room going off. Shit. What a time for an outlet to burn out, just when I needed it.

I unplugged the lamp, put in a new bulb, and carried it across the room to the other outlet. I plugged it in, the bulb went POP, a burnt smell filled the air, and the TV Husband was watching next door went silent. In fact, the whole upstairs went dark. Husband’s silhouette suddenly filled the doorway in a posture that didn’t appear happy. Because he’s a social worker, he doesn’t get mad right away. He kind of warms up to it with some therapeutic questions first.

HUSBAND: What’s going on?

OSV: There’s something wrong with both the outlets in here.

HUSBAND: The outlets? What’s different in this room than before? Do you think maybe it’s the lamp?

OSV: Possibly.

HUSBAND: I’m not happy.

OSV: You’re not? Think how it feels to be the idiot who plugged a deranged lamp into both walls.

Husband descended the stairs to check the fuse box in the basement, and came back with the news that we needed an electrician. The other news was that the exertion of going up and down the stairs had not released sufficient endorphins in his brain to create a state of happiness.

The final tally for the electrician coming to the house, my taking the lamp out to be rewired, purchasing a stand to display it on, and the lucky find in the antique shop that started it all, came to about $200. We couldn’t have gotten more marital bang for the buck if we’d gone to Vegas.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos scream It’s A Crowded House

full of fun

chinatown

collection at MoMA

out to the curb

Posted in 'Til Death Do Us Part | Tagged crowded house, domestic humor | Comments Off

Family Deja Vu

Posted on July 13, 2009 by onesanevoice

Daughter turned 28 this past week, and when Husband and I asked how she planned to celebrate, she returned to a request she’s made many times before: Can we all do something together as a family?

Both my kids are very family-oriented; Son is especially so with his friends’ families. They think of him as a son. Funny, so do I. On holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, he is known to make several stops visiting all his surrogate mothers. Many of Son’s friends speak Spanish in their homes, and that’s one of the reasons he’s been fluent in the language since his teens. In fact, when he transferred from a public high school to a private academy, some of the parents on his baseball team asked him to tutor their children in Spanish, which he did with great success. I was newly divorced and working full-time, so I used to sit at the top of the bleachers by myself during the games since the other parents didn’t seem so welcoming.

After a game one day, a group of the mothers approached me as I descended the stands. They stood in an awkward bunch huddled together while one of them said, “H-e-l-l-o! We know your son, the pitcher.” Here she made a throwing motion. “He tutors our kids in Spanish. He is a bueno teacher, do you understand? He says it is very different here from his school in your homeland.”

I blinked. “Our homeland? Do you mean Brooklyn?” Surprised by my command of English, the spokesmother waved her hand to clarify, “I think he meant the school before that, the one in your real homeland. Peru.”

PERU? Great, he’s sitting at these people’s dining room tables, eating their brisket and knishes, telling stories about his childhood in Lima, and the other parents aren’t approaching me in the bleachers because I don’t speak English. They weren’t snobs. I was just a foreigner. I looked around until I spotted Son, who does not have a Spanish name, and yelled, “JULIO! LET’S GO!!” as I tried to decide what language to kill him in.

As for Daughter’s yearning for family bonds, it has been a lifelong theme for her, punctuated by the death and divorce that have shrunk our already sparse number. What did she want to do as a family? See In The Heights, 2008’s Tony award-winning musical about street life in an upper Manhattan barrio. The tickets were a fortune, but Daughter was worth it, to say nothing of the warm memories it would bring Son of his childhood in Latin America.

And since nothing quite goes as planned, Husband came down with bronchitis two days before the play, so Daughter recruited her good friend, the Artist, to act as understudy in case he didn’t rally in time. The night before the show, as Daughter celebrated at her birthday party with friends, I called and left her a voicemail saying, “The quarterback is down. Have the Artist suit up; we’re putting her in tomorrow.”

Husband was sorely missed, the play was astonishingly good, and our Family Day lives to be rescheduled with all members present. Another happy birthday to Daughter, and thank you to the Artist for being such delightful company on a moment’s notice. Her website of striking original work can be viewed by clicking this link right here. And now, as we say in our homeland, hasta luego.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos show The Way Out

have fun

escape

bloomberg

up the wall

Posted in 'Til Death Do Us Part | Tagged Broadway, Brooklyn, family humor, In the Heights, Peru | Comments Off

Loose Cannons, Inc.

Posted on July 9, 2009 by onesanevoice

I do not consider myself a political animal, except to say that Ann Coulter scares the shit out of me. I picture her eating her young. In a tight black dress. Then picking her teeth with their bones. Maybe that sounds a tad melodramatic, but weigh it against her harangue of the 9/11 widows as being grief-obsessed harpies enjoying their husbands’ deaths. My point here is it sometimes takes the outrageous to engage my interest, especially in matters political.

The former Terminator, the governor of California, shows me he now understands the long-held belief of others that his beloved state is ungovernable. Arnold is looking weary, much more so than when giant titanium-coated life forms from the future were pummeling his face. True, he was younger then, but what damage a few Propositions can do. His wife is looking tired, too, in those Come to California! commercials currently showing on TV. Their lips say “Come!” but their eyes say “Come get us out of here!”

My own state Senate’s antics have me looking for updates in the paper every morning. It’s like watching our tax dollars at work making a Marx Brothers movie instead of legislation. I’d love to cast Governor Paterson as Groucho, but he doesn’t seem to have the timing. Are New York’s senators reading the paper in between their rat pack fraternity games? Do they not realize what we now see for ourselves? It’s worse than The Emperor’s New Clothes. You don’t elect an emperor.

We didn’t elect Michael Jackson either, yet here he is in a commemorative pullout section in the paper the day after his funeral. I saved exactly two pullout sections in my life, both of them in 1969. No, not Woodstock, but I can see you have your thinking cap on. The first was in January after Joe Namath led the Jets to a gorgeous upset over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. The second was that summer when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. The King of Pop was a remarkable talent, but my bar has been set pretty high for moonwalking.

Just as remarkable to me is the platform that the Reverend Al Sharpton repeatedly assumes without restraint or rebuke. For this spectacle, he was the Eulogizer. Past spectacles have seen him as the Apologizer, demanding one for Tawana Brawley before it was revealed she fabricated her story of rape, and more recently, as the Absolutionizer when Duane “Dog” Chapman sought forgiveness after his hatefully bigoted telephone conversation was leaked.

As Eulogizer, the Reverend dismissed those who focus on the mess in Michael Jackson’s life, saying what’s more important is the message. What is that message, you ask? He taught the world how to love. He refused to let people decide his boundaries. He made it possible for Oprah to be on TV and Obama in the White House. You got the impression the Reverend was referring to Him with a capital H.

Sharpton’s most vociferous praise was for the Jackson parents, who, ironically, are no doubt the reason their son struggled with how to express love inside boundaries. For their legendarily abusive father, the Reverend said to the Jackson siblings, “There wasn’t nothing strange about your Daddy. What was strange was what your Daddy had to deal with.” Where are those titanium-coated life forms from the future when you need them?

Speaking of universal love and boundary breaking, check out the chorus from P.S. 22 on Staten Island. If these fifth-graders don’t blow you away, count yourself all alone.

P.S. 22 Chorus on SchoolTube singing Coldplay

Daughter’s Featured Fotos showcase the great, ungovernable State of California

the colors of san francisco

hidden lizard (later revealed to be dead)

a building to watch over me

fashion back then

come!

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged Ann Coulter, California, Michael Jackson, P.S. 22 Chorus, Reverend Al Sharpton | Comments Off

The Laws of Newton and the Arms of Michelle

Posted on July 5, 2009 by onesanevoice

Gravity is not your friend. You discovered this when you first learned to ride a bicycle and the lessons keep coming. One day you look down and notice what was once there has moved. Things fall and it’s generally not good, unless you count falling in love, which is fine as long as you also count falling out of love. Like I said, not a fan of the falling.

Our toned and fit First Lady has awakened my inner panic that I will live out my remaining days avoiding tank tops in summer and leggings in winter. If you’ve battled weight all your life, maybe it will bring you some comfort to know that those who haven’t are not necessarily in any better shape. They’re just hating gravity from a different gene pool.

So I began a scavenger hunt for sculpted shoulders and die-for thighs. Just like in real estate, it’s all about location. Where would I exercise to achieve the most probable degree of success? The basement, which had just sucked away twelve hours of my life getting it organized. It owed me. In one corner was all of Daughter’s high school and college debris that she swore she’d remove as soon as she lived somewhere larger than 500 square feet. In the opposite corner was Son’s legacy, which he scrutinized recently and hinted that it was all too messy to put in his nice new house. I wonder how he’ll feel about the charred remains.

Husband’s old NordicTrack Pro Skier was resistant at first, unhappy at being pulled from its deep coma within the hum of the dehumidifier. I oiled its tracks and polished its wooden slats to a showroom shine. Everything had to be in perfect feng shui or I’d lose my drive, my project would fail, and Marge Simpson would never come take her arms back. I had the place, I had the equipment; I just needed the music.

One of the kids left behind a JVC boombox that still had great sound. Yeah, I could really feel the burn with this baby. All I needed was the remote so I could call the shots from the NordicTrack. An hour-long search of the organized basement turned up no such remote.

I went to my computer and looked up the number for JVC and was connected by phone to their customer service division in upper Estonia or Bombay or you say where and it doesn’t matter because after another hour it was clear that our unit was from 1995 and getting a remote for it was as far away as me having Michelle Obama’s triceps. I asked the service rep how I could program the stations without a remote. He said I couldn’t. His professional advice was sound. Go on eBay.

An hour of surfing eBay listings led me to a Buy It Now for the exact remote I needed at $9.95 including shipping. The seller said he’d send it out the next day. I took a deep cleansing breath. This exercise routine was wearing me out. Maybe a DVD would be better. I drove to Target and bought Minna Lessig’s “Tank Top Arms, Bikini Belly, Boy Shorts Bottom.” A triple workout! Now all I needed was the exercise mat I bought for that yoga class I never took. The hall closet would be the place to start looking. Yoga….hmm.

Daughter’s Fotos sample exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art

MoMa

i see you

ready

broken dishes light fixture

corrugated chaise lounge

city to the wettest june on record: don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out

Posted in MindFrame | Tagged exercise, First Lady, MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, sculpted shoulders, toned triceps | Comments Off

The Full Marilyn

Posted on June 30, 2009 by onesanevoice

A very small handful of celebrities manage to attain the status of worldwide icon. It’s a combination of raw talent and hidden truths that create the legend of stars like Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Then those conjoined twins, commerce and the media, help them live on decades after their final songs.

Another handful of celebrities reach death before they reach their potential. If you look for them in stardom’s early days, you could begin with Jean Harlow, with her platinum hair and ruby lips, gone at age 26. In the fifties, there was James Dean, the ultimate daredevil rebel, dead at 24. And Buddy Holly, whose plane crash death at 23 was called The Day the Music Died.

The sixties and seventies gave us almost more names than we could list, with a menu of unnatural causes: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, Sam Cooke, Jim Croce, Marvin Gaye, Elvis. Then Lennon in 1980, and on to more recent exits by Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Tupac, Biggie Smalls, and England’s crown jewel, Princess Di. As far as the American political theater goes, we can just say “Kennedy” and be done with it.

Daughter called from her vacation in California the other day, the day Michael Jackson died. She reported that people were crying in the streets. She herself said the news took her breath away and flooded her with emotion. In many ways, he was the most watched person in the world. Along with being the strangest, the most brilliantly talented, the most impossible to fathom, and at times, even recognize.

I was pregnant with Daughter in 1980 when John Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan in New York City. We were living in a Manhattan apartment building next to the hospital where Lennon died, and where Daughter would be born. Although the sirens had awakened me late at night, I first heard why the next morning while watching the Today show. It was Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw who delivered the shocking news, but it was the entire public that felt its blow. I remember clusters of strangers in the subway hunched together over newspaper headlines, collectively grieving.

There will be much to say and hear about Michael Jackson’s life and death in the coming weeks, months, and decades. Onstage since age five, there are few child stars who grew up to evoke our adoration, fascination, and revulsion as completely as the King of Pop. From his gender and race ambiguity to his towering achievements as an entertainer, from his brutal childhood to a lifetime of bizarre behavior, submerged in a sea of debt and moral shambles at his death, Michael Jackson has now reached a place where he can be worshiped eternally by his fans without having to explain himself. As if he ever could.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos give us Close-Ups

horizon

cracked

drippy drip

salvage boat by abby goodman

Posted in All the World's a Stage | Tagged celebrity deaths, John Lennon murder, Michael Jackson death | Comments Off

Talk to Mister Ed

Posted on June 26, 2009 by onesanevoice

“What’s the story with dust?”

This question was asked of me recently by Son, who I mentioned in Mad Skillz is the new owner of a nicely furnished home with flat surfaces that no doubt attract more than just compliments.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean growing up, I used to hear you complain that you were always dusting because we had oil heat and it’s not as clean as gas. Well, I have gas heat and every time I turn around something’s covered with dust.”

Damn, I knew it would catch up with me. All lies do. It was time to come clean.

“I was always complaining about dusting because the truth is I hate to dust. It’s pointless and never-ending and utterly impossible. Like cat herding.”

Son nodded in agreement. He’d been up against many foes in his time, but none as insidious and elusive as the airborne particles in his home. He ate a chicken cutlet and left my house armed with a can of furniture polish, a stack of old t-shirts, and a box of those Swiffer dusters with the little blue handle. He turned at the door with one final question for the horse’s mouth of housekeeping.

“If you’re giving me the Swiffer dusters, why do I need all these t-shirts?”

I never find Son more endearing than when he’s asking me a question I was born knowing the answer to. The way I see it, the desire to keep his home tidy far outweighs any uncertainty he might have about how to do it. This is in stark contrast to the lack of patience I feel when an adult male I share a home with feigns ignorance, or worse, really IS ignorant, about how to clean something basic like a toilet.

Back in my days before children, when it’s possible I might have lived with a guy I wasn’t married to, I recall asking my boyfriend to pitch in and clean the bathroom once in a while. He asked me what he should use. I put a can of Comet on the toilet tank and left for work. When I got home that evening, I went into the bathroom and lifted the lid to find the toilet seat covered with a layer of white powder. Dry white powder on the TOP of the toilet seat. Could a grown man actually not know how to clean a toilet? Did he think it was magic fairy dust that would miraculously scrub the bowl if he just sprinkled it all around? I couldn’t have been more annoyed if it was cocaine and he was snorting it off the seat.

“Well,” I told Son, “you need the t-shirts for when you use the furniture polish. Just cut them up into smaller pieces first. The Swiffers are for quick dusting in between polishings. Make sense?”

Son nodded attentively, and I could tell he was treating this like a school subject to be memorized and stored for future reference. He reached the end of the driveway, then stopped and turned around with the cleaners bundled in his arms.

“Did you already tell me why I’m cutting up the t-shirts, or was I in the bathroom when you said it?”

Daughter’s Fotos depict FIGMENT ’09 on Governor’s Island, a 3-day celebration of collaborative art and interactive fun. Click here for more on the outdoor sculpture garden that will remain season-long

let the sun shine

on the move

turfurniture

city of dreams installation

tipping

styrofoam AND day-glo

Posted in The Kids Are Alright | Tagged dusting, FIGMENT, housecleaning, Swiffer | Comments Off

When the circus comes to town

Posted on June 22, 2009 by onesanevoice

The streets of New York have a scattering of makeshift designer dumping grounds known as Sample Sale rooms randomly strewn throughout the city. They pop up without notice or fanfare in an otherwise empty store on a busy street, and you could easily walk past the hand-lettered sign out front that says simply, ‘Sample Sale’. Oftentimes there are bargain treasures to be found. Just as frequently, you get to see firsthand that designers occasionally make the same misstep as other businesses in predicting what the public might want.

Inside one of these unassuming, visually bland storefronts might be a few tables of Kenneth Cole shoes next to some racks of Calvin Klein clothes, all of which were left unsold in the designers’ workroom or over-produced for their target market. It’s not like real store shopping because the pants you love may only be present in size 2 or 12, and if you’re an 8 you just have to fall in love with something else. Fortunately, love is fickle in spring.

Daughter met me on the Upper West Side the other day following one of my doctor appointments, and on our stroll down Broadway we ducked into a Sample Sale to check it out. I pulled a pair of intriguing capris off the rack and walked behind one of the shower curtains in the back that passed for a dressing room. The designer capris I tried on were a pretty blue and resembled harem pants, only shorter. Daughter’s voice called my name from the other side of the curtain and I told her to come in.

DTR: What are these about?

OSV: They’re like harem capris. I think they fit pretty well.

DTR: I think you should take them off.

OSV: Why do you think that?

DTR: Because they make you look like a clown.

OSV: Come on, don’t sugar coat it. Say how you feel.

DTR: No, really. You need to take them off.

I love these moments in our ever-unfolding mother/daughter history that show I can still do something relatively innocuous that has the power to mortify my offspring. They’re incidents that call to mind the moment in both my children’s adolescence when I was required to drop them a block away from where they were going so their friends wouldn’t see them getting out of my 1990 Volvo 240. Ah, memories.

A number of years ago, I read an article about the ways parents unwittingly manage to embarrass their children, and one particular anecdote stayed with me. My ex-husband had a really off-key singing voice, and the kids would make him promise not to sing along with the radio when their friends were in the car. In this article, a guy who had a daughter around Son’s age was saying when he went out somewhere in public with her, she always made him swear he wouldn’t embarrass her by singing. The guy’s name was Billy Joel.

Alternate Transportation comes to mind in Daughter’s Fotos taken on Governor’s Island

Posted in The Kids Are Alright | Tagged designer clothes, Governor's Island, parents embarrassing their children, pop-up store, sample sale | Comments Off

Congratulations! It’s a bouncing 7 lb migraine

Posted on June 18, 2009 by onesanevoice

The headache center called with a last minute cancellation, so I got in yesterday instead of waiting until the end of July. I wrote about my face ache recently in Something For The Pain, in case you’re coming to the party late. Wednesday saw a rare break in the weather, and me hopping in my car headed downtown.

I believe in omens. The early appointment was Omen #1. The ridiculously perfect parking spot right on the street at East 75th and Park Ave was Omen #2. Walking past the parking garage sign advertising $34.83 for the first hour was Omen #2½. And complimenting the neurologist on her stunning red slingback wedges and her taking them off to show me the brand was Omen #3. I live in a tightly ordered world of my own making. Don’t we all.

Over the course of a nearly two-hour visit, the doctor and I outlined a course of potential treatments that would try several things in succession, with enough time in between to see what worked. She gave me samples, adjusted a current daily medication I’ve been on for several years, wrote out a schedule of dates and durations, and handed me eight prescriptions to hold until needed, if ever.

She also strongly recommended a chiropractor to help with the neck and shoulder misalignments I have left over from a head-on collision in 1990. I walked away from that accident with the insidious affliction known as whiplash after my chin hit the steering wheel and my head snapped back against the headrest. Even after the many months of physical therapy, exercises, x-rays and acupuncture, I always knew I wasn’t done with that crash. Or it with me.

With my million dollar parking space and a rare sunny day, I decided to stroll over to Central Park past the luxury co-op buildings with their spiffily attired doormen. In front of one building that overlooked the park, a Hummer was waiting by the curb while a woman, her two very young children, and their two nannies tried to figure out how the back of it opened so the doorman could load their gear. Their gear included two Louis Vuitton backpacks. Could they belong to the children? It was an interesting thought, pitting the exclusive private schools with their fabled waiting list against the backdrop of our bleak economy. To say nothing of a Hummer in Manhattan. The only sight more absurd would be Rush Limbaugh sitting on a planter reading The Feminine Mystique.

I was feeling positive, empowered, and sunned on, so encouraged by the good omens that I decided to push all my chips into the middle. I called the chiropractor on the Upper West Side the neurologist had recommended and the receptionist said to come right over. The M72 bus that goes through the park was waiting on the corner as I hung up. Not that I’m counting, but that would be Omen #4. I was unstoppable. Flex your shoulder blades with me, one, two….

Daughter’s Featured Fotos give us Sights You Haven’t Seen Before

plastic people

chair dragon

the lady who knits and knits and knits and. . .

hoof heels

Posted in The Doctor Will See You Now | Tagged chiropracter, headaches, migraine headache, migraines, New York | Comments Off

The first rule of Fight Club is You do not talk about Fight Club

Posted on June 13, 2009 by onesanevoice

After several false starts and postponements, the FCC has officially switched over from analog to digital broadcast for the nation’s televisions. I think I’m pretty smart, and I know Daughter is, but we still engaged in the following dunderhead conversation several months ago.

DTR: I got my converter box with that coupon the government offered so I’m good to go when they make the change.

OSV: Wait a minute. Don’t you have cable in your building?

DTR: The building has cable. I don’t have cable.

OSV: But I’ve watched your TV. You have great reception. Nobody in Manhattan gets good reception unless they have cable.

DTR: That may be, but my reception is off the roof antenna.

OSV: So that means you’re analog? You get TNT. That’s a cable station. Wouldn’t that make you digital? Your set is like 2 years old. Aren’t analog TVs the really old ones, the ones with the rabbit ears?

DTR: Rabbit ears? I’m waiting until June 12th to see what happens when I turn on the TV. Then I’ll set up the converter box if I have to. There’s just no other way to tell.

There hasn’t been this much confusion in the streets since Orson Welles commandeered a radio frequency and read The War of the Worlds while people jumped out their windows. My elderly uncle is in a nursing home up in Westchester, and I’ve been getting mail from them asking if I want to order him cable for a monthly fee or buy my own converter box and have them connect it. Most of his television viewing is done in the library with the big TV, but he has a 13″ in his room to watch the news at night, etc. So yesterday being the 12th of June, I drove up there to check things out.

I walked into his room and saw they had installed a Cablevision box on top of his little TV. I took a stroll down the hall and noticed all the private sets had cable boxes. Maybe the nursing home was feeling generous. Uh-huh. I also noticed everyone now had the standard Cablevision remote. I knew right away this was trouble. The first thing you do for an elderly relative in a nursing home is buy them one of those giant remotes with the three enormous buttons: POWER, CHANNEL, VOLUME. Any additional button is only a distraction to be accidentally pushed over and over without purpose. The Cablevision remote has about 50. Little. Buttons.

A half hour later, after my basic tutorial failed to train my uncle in which controls to ignore, I whipped out the black Sharpie pen that I always bring with me to the nursing home because something invariably needs to be marked. I drew the giant P, C, and V he’s come to know and love around the corresponding controls and told him to ignore the others at his own peril.

OSV: By the way, Uncle, did you sign something when they came and installed that cable box?

UNCLE: Sign what?

OSV: Your name. On anything to do with the TV.

UNCLE: Not that I know of.

It now being the 13th, Daughter must have already turned on her TV. I figure that soon I’ll be getting her analog call, and the nursing home’s digital bill. The powers that be have spoken.

The Gritty City unfolds in Daughter’s Featured Fotos

nightcall

i love a parade

bushwick

sunset over 6th ave

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged cable box, Cablevision, elderly, jumbo remote, nursing home, rabbit ears, roof antenna | Comments Off

OneSaneVoice

Remember who you are and act accordingly

Duh, she said

Family Deja Vu

Loose Cannons, Inc.

The Laws of Newton and the Arms of Michelle

The Full Marilyn

Talk to Mister Ed

When the circus comes to town

Congratulations! It’s a bouncing 7 lb migraine

The first rule of Fight Club is You do not talk about Fight Club

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