Sitting at the sidebar

A favorite by Al Green.

Click the music player at the sidebar.

You say Virgina

Annie: "Mom!" What in the world are you reading?"

Katie: "The Vagina Monologues."

Annie: "I wish you would read the Virginia Monologues, I think that would be more appropriate!"

Red hot jazu

Watch these girls tear it up with Mingus.

In real time

A glass of wine and the computer will live.
Home reading, a little writing and a bit of Burrell.

Sitting at the sidebar

Here's another of my all-time favorite pieces of music, Haitian Fight Song. It's performed by The Charles Mingus Big Band who, lucky for me, plays every Tuesday night at Iridium.

Click the music player on the sidebar to listen.

More on Charles Mingus.

Weekend image #1

Columbus Avenue near 83rd Street.

Weekend image #2

Symphony Space, NYC.

Quote

"Life changes fast, life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

~Joan Didion

It's October 15th

The day bloggers are encouraged to share their concerns about the environment.

Click here to learn about just one of the things on my mind.

Sitting at the sidebar

Sometimes there is simply nothing better.

Goodnight.

Prose from the pillow revisited

Originally posted September 2006.

There are views from bedroom windows far more fantastic than mine, but living in New York one learns to carve out space, create structure, and appreciate the composition of a view more than its beauty. The way the corner of a building comes together with a piece of blue sky, the way a tree stands to paint a perfect picture. A view. When I open my eyes each morning, that's what I see. Framed by my window is a slice of sky, a puzzle of brick, branches and leaves from the big tree, home to the songbirds.

I would be awed to wake to a breathtaking landscape, to hear waves crashing or the rhythmic pounding of a tropical rain, but I like the distant sound of the delivery trucks’ squeaky breaks and murmured voices while bacon cooks; I like the sound of workmen’s banter and kids on their way to school.

I'm thankful for the sounds I wake to each day, for the images that exist only from my pillow. It is my view, my little composition, and the sweet gift of light the sun lays so softly on the edge of the place where I dream.

Sitting at the sidebar

I love this song, and I love him.

40,000 germs in every kiss?

Becoming infected never felt so good.

Klezmer is coming

Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz will be among the over 75 Klezmer musicians from around the world, performing this Sunday at Symphony Space in Manhattan.

Click here for more information on the event, and here to learn just a little about two of my dearest friends.

In real time

Rain falls, Annie & Giselle work, and the music playing is Map of the World by Pat Metheny.

Picture this

Changing position

After 14 months, my bed has finally found its home.

I wish it were as easy for me.

I Overheard in New York

Macho guy on cellphone: "You do everything I tell you to do, that's how you'll show me you love me."

Sitting at the sidebar

Little One, from Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage.

George Coleman (Tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (Trumpet), Ron Carter (Bass), Tony Williams (Drums).

Recorded at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, May 17th 1965.

Annie on art

Click here to see what she sees.

To be or not to be

When you find yourself at forty-four in the midst of a new romance, it's much like it is when you're sixteen. Fun, sweet and ridiculous; you want to hear him breathe, he pours out what he's been keeping inside, you feel happy because he wants to take you away, make you laugh and share his art. But unlike sixteen, he brings years with him, as do you, marriage and children and new found independence that's protected like a precious stone and guarded like a wounded heart. Soon he calls you sweetheart and you call him baby, and soon after that he runs to his corner and you to yours. This is the moment when, regardless of what he does and whether you spend another year together or just one more day, you decide to call it quits or take a chance.

8 minutes left

To wish him a Happy Birthday!

Siting at the sidebar

Embraceable You by Clifford Brown.

Sigh...

I've been busy with work, family and romance, but I will blog soon.

Secret...

Today, if I could, I would run a million miles away from myself.

After 4 long months, Annie has broken her silence. Click here to see what she has to say.

Happy Birthday!

To Dennis Kucinich, the only politician allowed at the Half Note.

Music Note

Bill Milkowski is an author, music critic and acquaintance of mine from the neighborhood who has been a great resource when I'm looking for new music or concerts to attend.

One day I handed him my dear friend Eddie Reyes' CD, Lost World, which Bill ended up reviewing for Jazz Times.

Click here to read the review, here to purchase the CD, and here to see books by Bill, including a must-read, Jaco: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius.

Just the two of them

Michael with his George Clooney haircut, and Tai looking radiant.

Sitting at the sidebar

Hermitage, from Pat Metheny's New Chautauqua, is one of those pieces of music that I put on to escape sadness, and evoke it at the same time.

Sitting at the sidebar

Secret: I like to play Foo Fighters at full volume.

Friends

"Look at that Katie, we have the same junk."

~Chloe Fischbach

"Jiggle the handle!"

~Something my father used to shout daily.

Mother's little helper

Katie: "Annie, we're having dinner, please put down your comic book."

Annie: "See Mommy, I did just what you asked without arguing because I am calm and tranquilized."

Sitting at the sidebar

There's just no way I can listen to Three for the Festival by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and not smile. No way.

Handsome Johnny

I found this picture a while ago posted on Rev. Shawn's blog, it's of Johnny Crawford who I met and fell madly in love with when he and my brother were in a play together in Los Angeles. I was 11... Johnny was 28. Needless to say, he loved his pancakes more than he ever loved me.

The not-so-sparkling quality

The "Not-so-sparkling quality" is a term made up by me and my friend Tai back in the 1980's. We used it to describe a person we would otherwise find agreeable, if not for a flaw in their personality or character that could not be ignored.

Mother knows best

"Stop trying to get into their head, you have no business being there!"


~What my mother tells me when I struggle to figure out what someone else is thinking.

School's out forever

Annie: "If my 3rd grade teacher became the teacher for 6th grade, I'd leave the school!"

Katie: "If she became your teacher again, I'd leave the city!"

Annie: "I'd leave the state!"

Katie: "I'd leave the country!"

Annie: "I'd leave the planet!"

Katie: "I'd leave the galaxy!"

Annie: "I'd leave the universe!"

Katie: "I'd leave the mulitverse!"

Silence.

Annie: "Damn, you're good."

Cup of coffee

A "Cup of coffee" is a term meaning a sexual climax. The phrase is generally used in the context of an agreement with a sex worker, for example, when discussing how many cups of coffee are included in a particular session.

~From Talk the Talk, The Slang of 65 American Subcultures.

Sitting at the sidebar

I know there was a Jewish holiday recently, I know there is another coming up, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you which ones they are or what their meanings might be. But when I listen to Shalom Aleichem by Dave Grisman and Andy Statman, I'm one hundred percent Jew.

In real time

Two girls study, birds in a tree sing, I drink good coffee, and in this moment I have everything I need.

Who's her daddy?

Yesterday, Annie brought home a contract to sign that says she understands the rules she must obey in school. David read the part about gum chewing and made sure to attach the following message to the signed contract.

I have seen teachers chewing gum on school grounds during school hours. If gum chewing is an offense punishable by detention for its students, then teachers and staff should likewise be prohibited from chewing gum on school grounds. Fair is fair.

David Kosh

For another example of the kind of advocate David is for his little girl, please click here.

Fruit Booter

A "Fruit Booter" is a term used by skateborders that means rollerblader. It's also used as a derogatory term to describe a skateborder that doesn't know what he or she is doing.

~From Talk the Talk, The Slang of 65 American Subcultures.

Let's just

The phrase, "By ear" goes back a long way in a figurative sense. It’s a metonym, the substitution of a word by another with which it is closely associated.

It’s in much the same style as Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”. He meant this figuratively, asking his audience to lend him the thing their ears contained, their function — in other words to listen to him, to hear him out. In phrases like "By ear," the process is taken one stage further: not merely the function of hearing but also being able to accurately reproduce a melody one has heard, without needing written music. So we have phrases like, "He has a good ear for music," and "She can play anything by ear."

The saying has been taken yet another step further away from anything literal when people use it to mean doing something in an extempore way, without planning, according to circumstances as they arise.

~From World Wide Words.

Wouldn't it be nice...

... if we could all open as easily as this?

Sitting at the sidebar

Caravan, one of my favorites by Gary Regina.

Surprises

Praise specific things you love about your woman 5 to 10 times a day. Find out what happens.

~David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man.

Fact #87,888

Although he had 10 fingers, my father wrote every one of his novels and all his short stories with just two of them.