The Rain. Will. Not. Stop.

This has to be some kind of record -- for the SEVENTH straight weekend IN A ROW it's going TO RAIN.

A LOT. 

Basically, ever since Labor Day, ever since Fall descended, the city has been bombarded with rain on the very days of the week when we'd all like to be out and about.

Mondays through Thursday have been, for the most part, pretty nice. But starting on Fridays, through Saturdays, it's been non-stop deluge after non-stop deluge, weekend after weekend after weekend. 

And it's driving New Yorkers crazy.

It's also having an economic impact: outdoor fairs and festivals are getting cancelled, outdoor dining -- at the very time of year when it's most pleasant -- isn't happening, people aren't going out as much. People are training for the upcoming New York City Marathon and it's hellish for them to run with rain bombarding them in the face.  

It's even stopping people from getting laid! 

Dear Lord, let the rain stop -- I beg to you on behalf of 8.8 million people.

By the way, I've blogged about other such bizarre rain events, you can read it here. 

It's the rage!

June 2009 will go down in history as the month where NYC practically drowned. Literally.

Twenty days into this month and it has rained every ... single ... day.

Unstoppable. Relentless. It just keeps coming and coming. We get a moment of sunshine here and there, and then ... it rains again.

Oy vey. No relief for the weary.

Perhaps its global warming or a some kind of fakata pressure system. Whatever. It's annoying. And it won't stop.

This rain has been wrecking havoc on weekend outings, BBQs, baseball games, outdoor parties, you name it. People have had to re-schedule -- and then re-schedule again -- their outdoor activities. Even funerals.

This city is losing its mind.

The New York Times has a great term for psychological effect its having on people -- rain rage.

Count me as one of the raging. It has repeatedly delayed our much anticipated pilgrimage to the new High Line park. Who wants to walk around this amazing new creation ... all wet?

At least it gives me and everyone I know an excuse to stay in doors and be lazy. But it's the summer ... and we New Yorkers want to go out -- literally! -- and have fun!

The only thing to do in a frustrating time like this is to try to see the ... poetry in it. Try to see the ... music. And when it comes to poetry and music and rain in NYC, I can only think of the closing words of Suzanne Vega's timeless "Tom's Restaurant" where she beautifully sings:

"Oh, this rain
It will continue
Through the morning
As I'm listening

To the bells
Of the cathedral
I am thinking
Of your voice...

And of the midnight picnic
Once upon a time
Before the rain began...

I finish up my coffee
It's time to catch the train"

R.E.M. at Jones Beach ... in the rain ...

Yours truly and friends had the privilege of seeing REM this past Saturday at Jones Beach. This is one concert I will never forget.

It had been raining REALLY REALLY hard during our drive out to Jones Beach that afternoon but it had stopped by 7 PM which is when we got there. That's about when the show started. The opening acts were The National and Modest Mouse and they were awesome. I must admit to being unfamiliar with their music but I dug it.

About two hours into the show, just as the opening acts were finishing up, there began to be a series of lightening flashes. Then -- as they might have said on the old "Batman" show -- KAPOWWWWWWWW! -- a bolt of lightening hit the theater in a blinding flash. The rain, which had been drizzling for a bit, transmogrified into a monsoon, dumping an ocean on us. Our umbrellas were useless in the onslaught.

Over the PA system they urged us to evacuate and head to our cars!?!?! Off we went, streaming into the crowd, my beloved and I getting separated from our friends. Cells phones and serendipity re-united us downstairs and, with the rest of the crowd, we waited for about an hour until they let us go back up to our seats.

It was still raining, but a little less intensely, when REM took the stage about a quarter after ten. Michael Stipe said "Welcome to REM Survivor 2008!" The band immediately launched into "Have you ever seen the Rain?" -- hahaha -- and then played several songs off their new album "Accelerate." In between then new songs and Michael Stipe making a variety of rain related jokes -- "You guys look like garbage bags from here!" -- they played some of the classics like "What's the Frequency Kenneth", "Losing My Religion", and the "It's the End of the World As We Know It" (see above). Regardless of the weather, it was an excellent show. Jones Beach is a great venue, with a beautiful view of the beach and water, the lights glittering in the night sky. While the rain was a burden at time, it also managed to give everything a romantic aura and vibe.

We left around midnight, soaked and happy.

Classic Mr NYC

In the last couple of weeks NYC has experienced a lot of rain -- and more is scheduled for this week.

I remember that a few years ago I blogged about a period of almost unending rain and was surprised that it was almost exactly ten years ago. For almost the entire month of June, 2009 it rained every single day in NYC. This resulted in "rain rage", people living in perpetual fury that their plans and lives were being constantly disrupted by the weather.

Read here about a moment in time that's completely forgotten now but, at the time, seemed neverending. 

Review: "Black Rain" (1989)

NYC movies are a metaphorical dime-a-dozen -- but movies about displaced New Yorkers, people from the city but far from home, are an interesting sub-genre that's quickly becoming my favorite. 

Recently I saw one such movie, Black Rain from 1989, starring Michael Douglas, about an NYC cop who goes to Japan. He and his partner (played by Andy Garcia) witness a mob hit by a member of the Yakuza and, after they arrest him, are tasked to bring him home -- only to lose him as soon they arrive in Japan. What follows is a classic "cat-and-mouse" plot, lots of violence, lots of action, lots of cops and bad guys yelling at each other, lots of badassery and nonesuch. It's a noirish thriller of crime and culture clash and, while not a great movie, it's a lot of fun -- the kind of well-made pulpy movie they don't really make anymore. 

"New York is a grey area," says the Douglas character at one point, when trying to explain his hometown to his Japanese counterpart. This movie is about the constant moral grey zone all New Yorkers live in, and how we can never escape it -- even when we go to the other side of the world.

This is a great movie to see if you like noir crime movies, like NYC, like Japan, like Michael Douglas (before he was doing streaming shows about him being an old man), and just like fun movies (I also like it because they filmed part of it near where I live). You can find Black Rain on Showtime Anytime or Showtime On Demand. Check it out. 

Who'll Stop the Rain?

Oy vey! For the last two days NYC has been pelted with lots and lots and lots of rain. And it's driving the entire city nuts! You know how when it usually rains, it rains for a while ... then stops ... then rains again ... then stops again ... maybe rains a little more, then stops for good? Not this weekend. It's just been pouring and pouring and pouring non-stop since yesterday morning -- no relief in sight. And the wind has been even fiercer and it's apparently destroyed so many umbrellas that the sidewalks are littered and the trashcans are full of wrecked, cheap umbrellas. It's a mess. The rain is supposed to keep going like this for the next couple of days, then it'll be beautiful. Let's just hope the city hasn't drowned by then. The good that will come out of this, I suppose, is that at least we won't be suffering from a water shortage anytime soon.

The Subway floods ... and our public officials are surprised

"It's an outrage!"

That was probably Ed Koch's most famous catch line after "How'm I doin?" And after Wednesday's subway flooding disaster, it's never been more apt.

You've probably know about (and lived through) the torrential rainstorms that flooded the subways and roads and basically shut NYC down two days ago. Immediately folks like Bloomberg and the head of the MTA were on TV saying, "We didn't know ... We could never have predicted this ... We didn't see it coming."

That's funny, because I saw it coming. And I think most New Yorkers who aren't the Mayor and who don't work for the MTA could have guessed that heavy rainstorms would paralyze the subways and a disaster like this was waiting to happen. I cannot begin even to count the number of times that heavy rain has caused the subways to flood, causing delays or disruptions of service. This keeps happening again ... and again ... and again ... and again the MTA and the city do NOTHING to fix the problems! It appears not even to occur to the MTA to say "Hey, you know, when we get a lot of rain, the subways flood and everyone goes nuts. Let's do something to fix the infrastructure to prevent the flooding."

Now, and only now, after this latest disaster, is the MTA and the city willing to actually ... study the problem ... and make ... recommendations. Oh joy! Thankfully our free press is digging up stories and examples from the past where this flooding had gone on and they are showing the woeful lack of action by our public officials on this problem. I know most subway commuters aren't big campaign contributors but they work for the people who are, so don't you guys think that fixing the subways would be a good idea ... so they can keep going to work to make the money that the contributors then give politicians?

It's simply embarrassing that the transit system of the world's greatest city in the 21st century is so vulnerable. To water no less. This must end. Write you city council person, the Public Advocate, our State Assembly and Senate Members to demand that they push the city and MTA to act. You can find the links to the city and state governments on the right.

PS. And it's not only the subway. Walk the streets after a heavy rain and you'll see big puddle after big puddle. They almost always pop up in the same spots on the streets. Why can't these spots be fixed?

PPS. I wanted to blog about this earlier but Modem problems made this impossible. Unlike a public official, however, I take full responsibility.

Yankees ACLS Game 1

Last night your humble shlub had the pleasure of going to the first game in the American League Championship Series where our very own Yankees battled the Los Angeles Angels. It was the place to be in the city last night and, happily, it turned out to be a good game. The Bronx Bombers won!

The weather report for last night was ominuous with forcasts of heavy rain and freezing temperatures. Fortunately, the rain only appeared lightly at the beggining and end of the game, and the temperature never fell below 40 degrees. The wind was mild too. So even though the weather was colder than usual, we were comfortable and enjoyed the show.

The Yankees scored two runs in the first inning and two more later in the game. Even though there were no homeruns, Damon, Jeter, and A-Rod earned their salaries with some hard line drives down the center, getting the players on base, and then delivering with some tight runs to homeplate. Damon scored twice and, in the most dramatic moment of the night, A-Rod slammed into the Angels catcher to take home. The Angels only scored one run and the final score was 4/1 Yankees.

The real star of this game was CC Sabathia. Man, that guy can pitch! He was awesome, at the top of his game. He did everything a great pitcher should and struck out Angel after Angel. He was quick on his feet, pivoted at the drop of the dime, and wore the Angels down. The Angels pitcher was no match for CC who truly showed why he's a great Yankee. Manny came in during the 8th inning to finish the Angels off and leave us fans singing "New York, New York" in celebration on our way out.

So while it may not have been the most exciting, wild game ever, it showed why the Yankees are a great team: surgical hitting, great pitching, marvelous technical skill. A hell of a team.

This also marked my very first trip to the new stadium. I have to say, I liked it. The seats were good, plenty of footroom, and the bathrooms and vendors were easily accessible. I'm no expert at what makes a great ballpark but I think this one does the city proud. It may not be the House that Ruth built, but I think the Babe would approve.

RaiNYC

New York City got a lot of rain on the day of our lord, September 29, 2023.

Like, a lot, a lot 'o rain.

Apparently city officials of all stripes were yelling about it late Thursday night, early Friday morning when the extent of this was becoming clear. If you monitored social media, local elected reps were literally waist deep in water, trying to help their constituents. But the mayor ...

... well, rumor has it that, while Thursday night the city gubment was getting warning of a massive rainstorm headed our way, Mayor Eric Adams was out late at a club. No statement, no press conference, no plan. And he slept in Friday morning while the city was getting hit by a monsoon, the commute disrupted by flooding, all kinds of mess -- and he was nowhere to be seen or heard from for hours.

I blogged in August about what kind of Mayor Eric Adams is -- and, yet again, as this lack of response to this mess proves, I was ahead of time.  

Hanna Comes and Goes

Yesterday the local media got New Yorkers all crazy with the threat of Tropical Storm Hanna. They said it would pound us mercilessly, bringing up to eight inches of rain, and the flooding would be nasty.

Fortunately none of this came to pass. The rain dumped down for a few hours, then went away. Walking the streets today, I couldn't even tell that it had rained at all. We've lived through much worse, like the storms that shut down the subways last year, and then the media hadn't given us any real warning about that.

So the lesson, I guess, is to be prepared when the media says that a major storm is coming but also don't be surprised if it doesn't turn out to be that bad, just like Gustav, thank the Lord, didn't turn out to be anything like Katrina.

Remembering Ben Gazzara

Almost all of my blog posts this week have been about actors so I think I'll end the week by writing about one more -- the late, great Ben Gazzara.

The quintessential character actor, Gazzara had a long and impressive career. A native of NYC, a child of Italian immigrants growing up in Kips Bay, Gazzara got his start in local theater and the Actors Studio before his big break, starring in the original production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, directed by Elia Kazan.

Numerous plays, films and TV appearances followed through the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, including A Hatful of Rain and movies with the John Cassavettes including the classic Husbands in 1970 and Opening Night in 1977. 

Gazzara's brief flirtation with movie stardom happened in the 1970s when he starred as Al Capone in Capone (1975) and the Peter Bogdanovich classic Saint Jack in 1979, playing an American running a prostitution ring in Singapore -- a thriller about the depths of human greed and depravity. 

Gazzara continued to work into the 1980s and 1990s, and I became aware of him when he had another golden era in the late 1990s with such classics as David Mamet's brilliant thriller The Spanish Prisoner, the super dark comedy Happiness by Todd Solandz, and as the sleazy Jackie Treehorn in the The Big Lebowski.

Then in 2002 he won an Emmy for his role in the HBO movie Hysterical Blindness.

A few years later I saw him on the Broadway stage in a revival of the Clifford Odets play Awake and Sing! He was an adorable, charming presence in that first-class revival. 

Gazzara died in 2012, leaving behind an amazing body of work. A great NYC, the last of a great acting breed.

Review: "Bugsy" (1991)

Recently I blogged about The Godfather Part II where the character Hyman Roth talks about his childhood pal Moe Green who invented the city of Las Vegas. In reality Hyman Roth was a gangster named Meyer Lanksy and his friend was Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, the mastermind behind the gambling mecca of America. Like Lansky, Siegel was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who grew up to be one of the most feared and powerful gangsters of his day -- or ever. 

Bugsy was a killer and a visionary, a psychopath and a builder, a monster and a genius -- in many ways, the ultimate product of his hometown and country.

The 1991 movie Bugsy tells the story of the man's creation of Las Vegas. In the early 1940s, the powerful NYC mobster traveled to Los Angeles to take over the gambling rackets for his bosses in NYC, only to realize that next door in Nevada gambling was actually legal, and that an entire city and industry could be built around it. Bugsy's pursuit of this dream leads to his greatest professional triumph, something so much more than the life of crime and violence he had previously lived. But as his dream comes to fruition, his destruction comes with it. It's the story of triumph and tragedy, creation and death -- the American paradox that fuels our history.  

Warren Beatty, nearing the end of his leading man days, plays the title character, and a young Annette Benning, in one of her break-out roles (both as an actress and Beatty's future wife) plays Virginia Hill, Bugsy's movie-actress mistress and partner in creation of the Flamingo, the first Las Vegas hotel. The supporting cast is the real treat of this movie -- Harvey Keitel plays Siegel's one-time adversary-turned partner Mickey Cohen, and the absolutely brilliant Ben Kingsley plays Meyer Lansky in a career-best performance (with all due respect to Gandhi, both the man and the movie, this may be his best work). It was directed by Barry Levinson, coming off his great success with Rain Man, and this movie is beautifully directed and produced. Made almost 30 years ago, this is the kind of dark, brutal, mature, literate, deeply dramatic movie that the big studios used to make and don't anymore. It was, in many ways, the last of its kind. While not a great movie like Chinatown or The Godfather flicks, it's worth seeing. 

Bugsy is yet another in the unofficial Mr NYC canon of movies about New Yorkers far from home who either go on to greatest or ruin. This movie is really about both. 

Review: "Sterling Point" (2026)

Over the years I've enjoyed posting short reviews of movies and TV shows about New Yorkers who travel far from the city and get into wild adventures.

Most recently, it was the show Tulsa King, and earlier it was movies like The Ninth Gate, Shaft In Africa, Angel Heart, Road House, Black Rain, even Ishtar. 

A new entry into this genre is the Amazon Prime show Sterling Point. 

It's about a prim and proper Brooklyn teenager named Annie and her dopey but funny brother Connor who inherit an island in Canada from their estranged grandfather -- and go to check it out.

Lots happens. Friends and lovers are made and lost and made again, buried family secrets are revealed, some pot is smoked, some sex is had, and some silly and serious situations ensue.

It's a great time. The main cast is young, gorgeous, and talented, the adult actors are excellent, and the show manages to be both very funny and emotionally dramatic at once. Really good.

I'll admit I'm biased because, yes, it's a show about displaced New Yorkers but it also takes place somewhere I know and love very well.

Sterling Point is a gorgeous, fun end-of-summer treat. 

Review: "Six Degrees of Separation" and Its Legacy

In 1981 a deeply disturbed black seventeen year-old named David Hampton ran away from Buffalo to NYC to start a career as a con man. He had nothing, knew no one, and was lost in the big city. But he was determined, in his own scary way, to "make it there."

He did -- sort of. 

A decade later his bizarre story resulted in a hit play, a movie, and the popularization of the "six degrees of separation" concept into American culture.

In 1983 David Hampton showed up at the home of a wealthy Upper East Side couple, claiming that he had just been mugged in Central Park. He said that he was friends with their children at an Ivy League college and that he was also the son of Sidney Poitier. David "Poitier" was extremely charming, funny, insightful, and he won over the couple instantly. They allowed him to stay the night at their apartment -- only to wake up the next morning to find him in bed with a gay hustler.  David vanished before the police arrived and soon the couple found out that David was a con man who had infilitrated their lives. The playright John Guare knew the couple and, after learning their story, wrote a great play about it -- Six Degrees of Separation -- that eventually became a so-so movie.

The fictional drama expands upon the real story. In the play, David's name is Paul and, after he escapes, the couple try to help the police to find him -- meanwhile he continues to seduce men and con them and others out of money (Paul/David had found this couple in the first place after he had, earlier, randomly seduced a troubled rich kid who really did know this couple's children). But Paul's interuption of this wealthy couple's life makes them realize how fragile, how fake, and how empty their existence truly is. They realize that Paul has, in a strange way, made them examine their lives, their marriage, their relationships with their children, and the whole world that surrounds them -- a world that people like David covet without truly understanding, a world that this couple comes to realize doesn't give them any real happiness. The couple comes to understand the pain that motivates Paul and the pain that they feel but can't acknowledge to themselves -- until Paul forces them to. They come to realize that everybody in the world feels pain, and that randomness, that chance meetings between people, plays a huge role in everyone's lives, and changes their fates. The climax of the play is a monologue that the wife gives. It concludes with:

"I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. I find that A) tremendously comforting that we're so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection. It's not just big names. It's anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It's a profound thought. How Paul found us. How to find the man whose son he pretends to be. Or perhaps is his son, although I doubt it. How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people."

Heavy.

The play takes the always uncomfortable issues of race, class, privilege, socioeconomic advantage and envy, and puts them front and center. It makes people look at themselves, think about themselves, in ways that are both uncomfortable and illuminating. And thirty years ago, this was an even bolder thing to do than now -- John Guare was ahead of his time. 

I remember as a kid when this play was being staged at Lincoln Center. I was going to school near there and remember seeing the enormous banner for it on the street every day. I also heard ads for it on WQXR -- "See ... Six Degrees of Separation" -- and on TV. It ran from the fall of 1990 to early 1992 -- and a straight play that runs for more than a year is a big hit. The movie came out in 1993 and wasn't a big hit -- but the legacy of Six Degrees of Separation is immense. 

The success of the play caused David Hampton to threaten John Guare with violence, try to get a cut of the play's profits, and eventually sue the playright (unsuccessfully) for $100 million. And Hampton continued his con man life well after the play and movie were produced, using his newfound celebrity as well as new identities to con people. Eventually he migrated, at least for a time, to Seattle but wound up back East, dying in New Jersey in 2003 from AIDS. His life was tragic, obviously, and ironic -- the most legitimate and successful thing he was ever a part of was something he didn't create, wasn't actually involved in, and didn't get to enjoy the money from. He was like the gangster Henry Hill -- a truly bad guy who's life inspired a truly great work of drama. 

The original 1990-1992 NYC run also inspired a lot of careers from actors I love and who found great success afterwards. The most famous person in the cast at the time was Stockard Channing who had already done Grease and would later be on The West Wing. She was one of the only people from the play to do the movie -- and got an Oscar nomination for it. Courtney B. Vance originated Paul, and others in the cast included Anthony Rapp (Rent), John Cameron Mitchell (a huge actor and playright), Evan Handler (Sex and the City, Californication), David Eigenberg (Sex and the City), and Robert Duncan McNeill (Star Trek: Voyager). Later on Kelly Bishop (pre-Gilmore Girls) replaced Stockard Channing, James McDaniel (pre-NYPD Blue) became Paul, and a very young and totally unknown actress named Laura Linney also joined the cast. Another replacement actress was Deidre Lovejoy would later be on The Wire. In the movie, a young actor nameed JJ Abrams had a small part -- and now he's one of the biggest directors in the world. 

But the legacy of Six Degrees of Separation goes beyond the life of this man and the real and fictional drama he inspired: the concept of "six degrees" became popularized, it became conversation fodder, it became an idea, a meme, part of the popular lexicon -- that we're all seperated in this world, in this life, by only six people. It gripped the public imagination. So much so that a popular game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" was created (finding actors who worked with him or worked with other actors who worked with him) that has saved many an awkward conversation. There was even a bad TV show called "Six Degrees" several years ago (that had nothing to do with the play).

Before social media and COVID-19, Six Degress of Separation reminded us that we're all connected to each other, directly and indirectly, one way or another.

I'm pretty sure David Hampton didn't realize, in 1983, that so many great careers would be spawned, and American culture altered, by his one-night con. 

The world truly is a random place. 

Postscript: I never saw the play when it ran in NYC but I saw it a couple of years later in Washington, DC with Marlo Thomas in the lead role. She was great but sadly I don't remember much else about the production.

You can read all of the various articles The New York Times wrote about Six Degrees of Separation here. 

Interview: Natalia Singer on New York, Work, and Optimism

Natalia Singer doesn’t just write about the 1980s. As an English professor at St. Lawrence University, she combines her love of literature and writing with her passion for travel and the beauties of the world, both literal and otherwise.

In this final part of our interview, Natalia tells us more about her work as well as her love for NYC, upstate New York, and other great places. Also, she tells us why, despite the ugliness of the daily headlines, she’s feels good about the future. 

You work in upstate New York and edited a book of essays about the region. Can you tell us a little about this book and what inspired it? 

Living North Country: Essays on Life and Landscapes in Northern New York was the assignment I gave myself when I came up to St. Lawrence University to give a job talk in the '90s—which led to my moving here. I drove up from Western Massachusetts (I’d just gotten my MFA in creative writing at U-Mass/Amherst) on a cold February day, which was the first time I saw the Adirondack Mountains. By the time I hit Blue Mountain Lake, where people were ice fishing under a brilliant blue sky, I was intrigued. Where was I going? How far north was this place? (Very far, it turned out. I now live near the Canadian border.) I promised myself that if I got the job I’d do my homework and find out more about the region, and I did. I teamed up with a talented writer and editor from this area that we call The North Country, Neal Burdick, and we put together the collection. We wanted the anthology to be partly an act of community-building so we solicited essays from writers both experienced and well-known (like Bill McKibben) and others who had never written literary nonfiction before, and we held a writing retreat with the first-time authors. It was a project by and about community.

Tell us a little more about your work in general and what you're working on today. 

I write fiction (including flash fiction), literary nonfiction (essays, books, lyric essays, and political journalism) and I teach creative writing and environmental literature.

For the past decade I’ve worked on a novel set in France. It opens in 1989 and ends in 2015, just after the Paris Attacks. My agent is sending it out in early May. Fingers crossed! It’s been a labor of love and has brought me back to France about a dozen times for research and creative exploration.

In that time period I’ve also drafted a new memoir, which I plan to return to after I send the novel to my agent. It’s about losing my dog to cancer, about our long walks on the river, about learning how to meditate, and about grief and mortality, as well as mindfulness and nature. I’m hoping to finish the fourth draft of it this year and send it out early next year. Then I have some other projects that have been in the back burner for a while, both fiction and nonfiction.

Since this blog is mostly about NYC, how do you compare life in upstate New York to the city?

There is no comparison. We might as well not be in the same state. And I love them both so much. NYC is one of my favorite cities on earth. If I had to list my top five, I’d say it’s NYC, Paris, London, Seattle, and Rome. I also love New Delhi. I’ve never had a bad day in NYC. Even if it’s pouring rain, and I’m waiting in line for hours on a crowded pavement to do something unpleasant, like get a visa in an office where someone will be mean to me and tell me I have the wrong documentation, I still feel more alive in New York City than I do almost everywhere else. I love walking down a crowded street and feeling the mass of humanity all around me, the smells of street food, the found art in everything. When I’m in NYC I always feel like I’m eighteen years old again on my first visit, where I discovered sushi and Star Wars movies and off-off-off-Broadway and got stung by a jelly fish on Long Island all in the same weekend. The sewer steam puffs and the sight of messenger bicyclists and yellow cabs and dog-walkers with six very different breeds, from Dalmatian to Shih Tzu, and Madison Avenue stores and bodegas and bookstores and graffiti and political pamphlets and kiosks and cumin-infused sweat on the subway: I love all of it.

On April mornings like this one I wake up in my home in the North Country to the sounds of the geese coming back. The geese are confused. They thought it was spring but then we had the same Nor’easters you had in the city, and this week we had an ice storm and lost power, twice. I pass my days attuned to small changes: sunset coming later each day and dropping a red fireball on someone’s barn when I drive to dinner with a visiting writer. The trillium that blooms in the woods in early May, along with fiddlehead ferns that we eat with pasta and pesto. The river that flows past our house still carries ice chunks away now; in warm weather my husband and I will get into that river in our canoe with our dog. Our big excitement for the summer ahead: dinners on our new screened in porch—bug-free bliss.

I feel very lucky to have the job I do, where I teach undergraduates literature and writing, but I also get to take them places. Locally we’ll go to farms and the students will help with the harvest. And I have had the good fortune to take students to France (twice), India (twice), and I have taught a writing course to students who spend the semester in the Adirondacks living in yurts, hauling their own water, splitting wood, and learning woodworking. Fitting all these very different locations and activities into one career and one life feels like living multiple lives at once.

Any final thoughts or something you'd like to share?

So I’ve just bombarded you with doom and gloom in all my answers. The '80s was a warm-up act that paved the way to the nightmare we’re living through now under Trump, our new normal in which every value so many of us hold dear—the right to have a good public education, clean water and air, shelter, health care, safety from violence—is being demolished with savage cruelty and indifference. It might not be evident that I’m also a humorist in a lot of my writing. I come from a people that laugh a lot—sometimes, just to keep from crying. And because I’m a professor and spend most of my time with people 18-22 years of age, I’m not a pessimist, despite all the doom and gloom I’ve lived through. I have great faith in the millennials and post millennials whom I teach. They’re smart, sensitive, kind, nuanced in their thinking, and they’re not going to let the recent tax scam and other heinous policies rob them and the planet of a future. When they’re in charge, we may very well achieve that “Great Society” that President Johnson saw as the ultimate fulfillment of The New Deal. But until then, we all have our work cut out for us. It starts with voting. And in active resistance: calling our representatives, writing op eds, and taking to the streets—a lot.

Thanks Natalia!

Blame it on the Rain

The biggest news story in NYC right now -- besides Jeffery Epstein -- is the weather.

This past weekend it was scorching, brutally hot. If you went outside you became drenched in sweat within minutes. Well, the heat went away but now we're still getting drenched --  literally. For the past two days, the city has been pummelled with downpours, the heavens opening up and dumping water on us all. There have been floods and washouts galore across the five boroughs. It's wrecking havoc!

Global warming is truly having its fun with NYC -- massive storms are the new norm.

Oh Milli Vanilli, you tried to warn us!

It's over

Hurricane Irene has come and gone. Now NYC goes through the process of assessing the damage, pumping out as much of the water as possible, and getting back to normal.

I don't know what it was like overnight but, from our vantage point, the storm didn't seem all that fierce. There were certainly some heavy winds and rain but nothing that seemed life threatening. I heard some reports about power outages and such, but apparently there was nothing massive.

Last night, around 9 PM, I went out in my neighborhood to see what was going on. It was raining and windy but nothing severe. However, you could feel a weird vibe in the air -- people were waiting, scared, nervous, even exciting -- everyone wondering what the impact of this hurricane would be. There were some people on the streets but not a lot, some businesses were closed but most that would be open at that hour were open -- bars, laundromats, even a burger place (that had a sign in the window that said "Don't be a bitch, Irene -- which I'm sure hurt the storm's feelings). By the time I got home I had a feeling that everything would be alright -- and, so far, it seems to have been.

Anyway, the great storm of 2011 has come and gone. We live to tell the tale. Sadly, however, mass transit is still suspended so many of us might be stuck into tomorrow. Go here to find out what the status of your subway and bus lines is. Hopefully, by tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.

Earthquake!

About an hour and a half ago, NYC felt a tremor from the earthquake in Virginia that sent a ripple up and down the East Coast.

People were scared!

Buildings were evacuated!

The mayor went on TV!

It was a really doozy!

Actually it wasn't. It was more like a big sway. The Big Sway of 2011. After about 45 minutes calm was restored. Heck, the subways didn't even stop running -- and considering that the subways get snarled the moment a drop of rain touches it, you know it really wasn't that big a deal.

So all in all, the earthquake here in NYC wasn't all that, you know, earth shaking.

Review: "You're a Big Boy Now" (1966)

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the classic movie The Godfather which made its cast (Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and others) into huge stars (and cemented Marlon Brando's cinematic comeback). It also made its director, Francis Ford Coppola, into a household name.

Prior to The Godfather -- which became the highest grossest movie of all time when it was released in 1972 -- Coppola had only directed a few movies (Finian's Rainbow, The Rain People), none of which were successful. But prior to his Mafia classic, Coppola made his first movie in 1966, and it's actually one of his best: You're a Big Boy Now. 

Set in NYC during the psychedelic '60s, the movie is about a young man named Bernard (Peter Kastner) who lives under the thumb of his controlling parents (Rip Torn and Geraldine Page) and works at the New York Public Library. Bernard and other library flunkies move around the stacks looking for books and documents on roller skates and daydream about leading more exciting lives. Bernard decides to move out of his parents home on Long Island and into an apartment in Manhattan. Naive, virginal, innocent and sincere, Peter roams around Times Square and the city, finding temptation around every corner. He falls for a go-go dancer and actress named Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman) who teases him constantly, all the while being pursued by a sweet girl named Amy (Karen Black), a former classmate of his. Many hijinks ensue including with a rooster that attacks attractive women (!) and that take young Bernard from the streets of the city into walk-up apartments, off-off-Broadway theaters, Central Park, and adult stores. 

But, fear not, true love prevails. 

You're a Big Boy Now is what I'd call a "romp": there are many wacky surreal scenes that would be annoying if it wasn't for the fact that we really like Bernard and are rooting for him. The characters are all very unique and well-drawn, and all of the acting is first-rate. Most of all, this is a very stylishly-directed film -- unlike Coppola's later slowing-moving, epic films, You're a Big Boy Now is fast-moving with lots of quick cuts, clearly influenced by the French New Wave and rock'n'roll spirit of the times (music by The Lovin' Spoonful plays throughout the movie). 

The movie came out a year before The Graduate and shares, in plot and tone, much in common with You're a Big Boy Now. But whereas the 1967 California-based movie is a very mainstream, straight-forward telling of a young man's coming of age, this 1966 NYC-based flick is an odd, eccentric, art movie about the same subject. 

So, to sum up: You're a Big Boy Now is a very  good, very 1960's, very NYC movie about moving into adulthood, and, since it's the debut film of one cinema's greatest directors, it's a must-see.  

P.S. This was the first movie made under the Mayor's Office of Film and Television. I remember, years ago, seeing an old clip of Mayor John Lindsay giving a press conference, announcing the creation of this office and this movie being shortly going into production. Standing right behind him was a young, fully-bearded Francis Ford Coppola which Lindsay pronounced "Cap-polla." 

Diana Ross Sings in the Rain (Central Park) 1983