I was never good at math -- both as a student and now as a soon-to-be-middle-aged-but-still-very attractive adult, I couldn't get my feeble brain around the abstract concepts and "laws" and all the nonsense.
Hell to me would be doing math problems for the rest of my life.
But who cares about me? My daughter LOVES math, crushes her math homework and tests at school, and even does it for fun. How lucky can a dad get?
So this weekend we took her and her sister to the Math Museum on Madison Square. Again, my hatred for this most dismal of dismal sciences was reignited but the kids LOVED it and so I recommended it to any and all parents who have children interested in math or anything smart.
We are less than 6 weeks into the year and, believe it or not, there have been almost as many water main breaks in Manhattan as there are weeks (so far) in the year.
They've erupted all over the mighty isle, from the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights to the Lower East Side and Lower Manhattan.
Nowhere is safe!
I don't know why this is happening so often now but I can posit two reasons: 1) the bizarre Winter weather that goes from cold to warm to cold again might be making the water expand and contract a lot, thereby messing with the pipes, or 2) these pipes are super old and are finally just giving out.
I'm guessing it's a combo of the two.
Replacing these pipes should be a big priority for the city but I suppose it makes the most sense for the city to just wait until one bursts and fix it there and then.
There'll certainly be a lot more of these to come.
... a celebrity -- and no, I'm not talking about on Facebook.
Last night were the Oscars and, as far as I can see, no big-name New Yorkers won anything. But it piqued my interest in posting this lengthy article by famed New York gossip columnist -- and Mr NYC interviewee -- Michael Musto about the pitfalls of being friends with someone famous.
The idea of being friends with, or maybe even dating, a famous person might seem exciting and glamorous from distance. After all, how cool must it be to hang with someone that the whole world knows and loves? How cool must it be able to brag and say "Hey I was hanging with" so and so, or even boast "I dated" so and so.
Seems cool. But the reality, like so much in life, is worst. When you're friends with a celebrity, they call all the shots. The friendship completely revolves around them -- as does almost everyone and everything in their life. They except other people to be at their beck and call every moment. They are, for the most part, narcisists and impossible to deal with.
In many ways, this isn't their fault. They live in a very strange world, a very rarified existence. They are detached from oridinary human experience. The world caters to them, treats them like deities, and indulges their every whim. Basically, they're not normal, and being friends with them is not a normal. As someone who has been around a few (semi) famous people in the past, I can assure you this is true.
Comedian John Mulaney said it best in his stand up act. When asked, after he he had worked with Mick Jagger, if the Rolling Stones frontman was "nice", Mulaney gave the perfect answer: "No! He's not nice!"
This Sunday are the 92nd Academy Awards, and amongst the nominees are Bronx-boy Al Pacino for Best Supporting Actor in The Irishman.
I saw The Irishman right after it premiered on Netflix and it reminded me a brilliant quote from Blackadder: "The Teutonic reputation for brutality is well-founded: their operas last three or four days." The Irishman is a longggg movie and, worst of all, it feels like a longggg movie. It's not bad but it's not great -- despite it's director, despite its cast, despite its operatic subject matter. I don't think Al is a favorite to win (looks like Brad Pitt's gonna get it) but Al just might pull it off since it's his first nomination in almost 30 years and a great actor like him needs to have more than only one Oscar.
Of course the big deal about The Irishman is that it pairs Pacino with his fellow NYC acting legend Robert De Niro. Honestly, although they share lots of screen time together, most of their scenes are forgettable -- including the one where they're sitting around in a hotel room in their pajamas (tres bizarre). For my money, less is more, and the absolute best Pacino/De Niro pairing is from 1995's Heat. Although they only have one big scene together -- until the climatic finale --- the tension, the dramatic build, the high stakes, the raw humanity, the brutal honestly that these titanic talents emote in their scene is powerful. In fact, Heat is a better movie than The Irishman -- there, I said it.
Believe it or not, I've written a lot about Al on this blog over the years so, if you want to know Mr NYC's thoughts on all things Al, click here.
You can also ready my admittedly Dershowitz-like argument as to why Heat is a great NYC movie -- despite its most definite Los Angeles setting. Good luck Al! P.S. Here's the best scene, by far, from The Irishman.
Vivian Gornick is a legend in NYC writing circles, having published numerous memories and books of essays about her life and times -- coming of age during the eras of Civil Rights, the Women's Movement, Vietnam, Stagflation, and many other such delights. She blazed the trail in crafting "the confessional" long before it became a mainstay of the publishing world.
She was also a reporter, who wrote for the Village Voice from 1969 to 1977.
In late October 1969 Gornick went to Jack Kerouac's funeral up in Massachusetts. The already-legendary Beat writer, scribe of the classic On the Road, had recently died from alcoholism at the age of 47. Gornick reported on it, seeing people like Alan Ginsberg and Jimmy Breslin there, and there was definitely a sense at this funeral that only had a man but an entire way of life had passed with him. By 1969, the Jazz loving, "hip-cat, groovy man", scatting don't-have-a-care-in-the-world world of the Beat generation had already become passe; now was the time of the Hippy, the protester -- and, more ominously, the Silent Majority.
I'm a huge fan of Kerouac's work, so much so that I even wrote a novel in the vein of On the Road. For me, Kerouac was about freedom, about the wildness of America, about celebrating everything great about being alive and about America. Right now we're living in another dark time, at a time when it's easy to be scared about the possibility of the American idea. A lot of people aren't happy (and you can include me, mostly, amongst them). But Kerouac had an answer for that, of sorts, probably knowing that his death was imminent and his life a short one: "Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream."
It falls somewhere within the x-y axis of insult vs. compliment to be called "ahead of your time". It means you and your work weren't that popular or appreciated in your time but was discovered and appreciated later on in -- or after -- your life, and that it influenced others who went on to become more successful than you.
For example, The Velvet Underground's music wasn't popular in its time but it was deeply appreciated by, and greatly influenced, later generations of big bands like U2 and REM.
David Brenner's career was definitely ahead of its time. A standup comic, he broke out in the 1970s doing something most comedians hadn't done before -- observational humor. Before that most standup comedy was either "da dum bum" one liners like Henny Youngman and Jack Benny or deeply existentialist stuff like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.
Brenner's was totally different -- not shallow jibes, not deep insights, but simple questions. He looked at the world right in front of him and did routines like, "Hey! What's the deal with tic tacs? How can you walk around carrying them without annoying people?" Long before Jerry Seinfeld made hundreds of millions of people of laugh -- and hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank account -- with observational humor in the 1990s, David Brenner was bringing this new style of comedy to audiences in the 1970s with numerous Tonight Show appearances.
In 1986 (until 1987), Brenner had his own late night show called Nightlife. Before the Johnny Carson/Joan Rivers dust up, before Arsenio Hall shook up the old boys network of late night, before the generational defining wars of Leno vs. Letterman vs. Conan, before The Daily Show and other topical shows redefined the purpose of late night, Brenner quietly made a big contribution to changing the face of late night comedy.
And it reeked of NYC. Nightlife was different in every way from most late night shows at the time. It was filmed here, it was syndicated, it didn't have a studio audience or an opening monologue. It was just Brenner, his guests, and comedy. It was rebellious and hip. It had a great attitude. It was very ahead of its time.
Perfect example: Nightlife was one of the first shows to put Howard Stern on TV. Besides a few appearances on Letterman, the shock jock was barely known outside NYC at the time. Brenner totally understood Howard Stern's unique comedic genius and gave him a platform when few others dared. Brenner wasn't just ahead of his time in his own comedy or with his own late night show but he recognized revolutionary comedy in others -- and celebrated it.
David Brenner died in 2014, age 78. His days as a talk show regular and host, as a big-time comic, were long over. He never achieved the gigantic success of observational comedians like Seinfeld or Paul Reiser, and was largely unknown to younger comedy fans. But David Brenner was a true comedic pioneer as his short-lived talk show proved.
This is a must read -- the backstory of how and why NYC Transit Chief Andy Byford quit after two extremely successful years on the job.
It makes for an intriguing narrative and a depressing read.
Two years ago NYC Transit was in crises, with delays and problems aplenty, the subways and buses running so slowly, with so many problems, that citizens of the city were rebelling. So Governor Cuomo made a smart move -- he hired Byford, perhaps the world's most respected transit expert with successful runs in other big cities like Toronto, to turn the system around. And he did -- brilliantly. The delays were dramatically reduce, the system running better than ever, the workers loved their boss, and things were going well.
And Cuomo couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand that his hire was getting all the credit -- and not him. Cuomo decided that had to micromanage the system, second-guess Byford, try to steal credit where he could, thereby creating a toxic relationship between the governor and the transit chief. And since Byford is someone who can get hired anywhere, he decided to tell the governor and the city to shove it -- and quit.
Thanks for Cuomo's egomania, we've now lost one of the best public servants this city has had in years. It's a real shame -- and will literally cost this town time and money.
