Cross Town Thoughts
As we confront conversion to robots and drones taking over our everyday lives. Hearken back to another time. The clang clang of a bell out the window. Mister Softee? No. Much more resonant. Like a trolley. What could it be? Mike taps the disk with a blade. A relic from 1941 still serving the community. The Knife Sharpening truck. And a customer. Perfect after Turkey-carving day.
Or. For those scissors to cut down NO PARKING signs.
Balloonistas from far and wide have left the ‘hood. Bleachers still up. Banging and clanging to come for the annual return of our sidewalk. Soon. We hope. Along Central Park West. Can park on our block again. Even if the No Parking signs linger. Scissors at the ready or they’d be up until May.
A rollicking fun weekend. Delicious non-turkey feast at the Oxbow. Parades. Family visits. Post Stuffington Frittata. Respite from politics. Even if. Some wore their opinions on t-shirts for lively dinner conversations. Until next year.
It’s that time of year again. Bleachers banging and clanging until they’re up. San Remo and Langham building guys erect wooden barriers around their shrubs. Slanted boards across windows. No Parking Signs for 3 days. Sweepers screaming and cleaning. Tow trucks at dawn. Opening up the streets. Taking down the traffic lights. Room for the balloons. Metal gates sliding and gliding along the curbs. Ready for the Macy’s madness to descend upon the ‘hood.
If anybody comes this year. Forecast. Windy and cold. Even the Grinch may stay indoors.
So lucky our microwave is big enough for a 25-lb. frozen turkey!!
Injured Reserve List (IRL) has replaced the NFL. Washington Redskins’ QB Alex Smith. Another on the long bench of fractured players. Fox Sunday’s Jay Glazer devotes an entire segment to the gory banged-up details of who can’t start each week. It’s longer than Rob Riggle’s comedic picks.
Condoleezza Rice is up to coach the Cleveland Browns. She should be Commish. For a new equation. Less Mass X Speed = Fewer Broken Bodies.
Something’s gotta give. Besides ligaments and bones.
Best of the Year
Golden Hill, Francis Spufford
Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
Autumn, Ali Smith
Shipping Out, David Foster Wallace
Read the rest of her 2018 List at BOOK-TREKS.COM
The silent FLOTUS seems to have found her voice. After apparently having taken a laissez-faire approach with Kelly and the West Wing, she’s suddenly speaking out. Calling for the firing of a woman in the NSC. Melania’s requests for promotions for her own staff went ignored for months. So. Something must have happened to set her off with Mira Ricardel. Or. Maybe Melania just finished watching Claire on House of Cards. She and Robin Wright can both rock a Chanel suit.
The final season of House of Cards is a pathetic celebration of stereotypes. With a little ridiculousness added. Claire Hale Underwood. The first woman President schemes to become Vice President before she inherits the job from a complicit murder of Frank Underwood, her President husband. Then she spars with her bff mean-girl rival born of old prep school jealousies. Random. Lame. Finally. She becomes hormonally psychotic in the Oval Office. Even Hillary seems sane compared to this. Sorry feminists. Claire makes you all look so bad! Sad.
Robin Wright v. Diane Lane. The latter better in The Romanoffs.
Already voted for Mike Bloomberg for President. Wrote his name in. 2016. He’s making noise about running in 2020. Too little too late? Think so. Frank Bruni’s column in Sunday NYTimes outlined traits a Democrat candidate would have to possess to beat Trump. Larger than life celebrity, toughness, centrist, unifier, connects with white middle America as well as people of color, deep personal pockets. The only person to fit that bill? Oprah.
Halloween costumes this year. Nope!!
Ghost. Appropriating unsettled dead people.
Witch. Appropriating coven worshippers.
Fortnite Blue Hair. Appropriating Smurfness.
Chimney Sweep. Black face.
Mariachi Skeleton.
Appropriating Mexican grave dwellers.
You get the idea. Skippy Hallow. 2018.
In Alexandra Pelosi, The Speaker’s daughter, I find a kindred voice. Her travels around “real America” revealed a country very different than the one portrayed on cable news everyday. Pelosi’s documentary Outside the Bubble is on HBO.
“If I hear the term ‘blue wave’ one more time, I am going to personally walk up to MSNBC and punch someone in the face,” she joked, in the HBO cafe overlooking the New York Public Library. “Yes, there’s a blue wave coming out of Manhattan and Los Angeles, where people are sitting home knitting their vagina hats. There’s no blue wave in Alabama. There’s no blue wave in Ohio.
If bridging today’s partisan chasm seems an Augean endeavor, Ms. Pelosi believes cable news is to blame. “There’s too much profit being made right now on the divide,” she said. “How many people in those cable news studios ever really go spend the night in America, not just in the Four Seasons in wherever Trump is at the moment, but I mean really go to somebody’s house, have dinner and talk to them?” – New York Times, October 24, 2018
Side Trek . NYC 