Send in the clowns...

What is divine intervention? What is coincidence and what is karma? What is it when you are confronted with what seems remarkably more than just a random occurrence in your life? I'm not religious and do not enjoy speculating over matters beyond my control, so I don't know the answers to this. But, what I do know is that when strange things happen, I embrace them to the fullest degree!

Over the past couple days, I've been deeply troubled by some personal matters. It's one of those situations where you are pretty sure there's not going to be a happy outcome, so you must find some way to be delicate about painful and sorrowful issues. I'm fine, it's just one of those things.

Yesterday, I'd finally grown weary of chewing over my dilemma and decided to pick up my young daughter from summer camp and we'd go to The Central Park Zoo as a cheer-up. About five minutes into our ride uptown, the train makes it's scheduled stop at 28th Street and about twenty clowns board our car. Clowns with bright wigs, full make-up, big floppy shoes, billowy pants, and giant red noses.

My first reaction was of panic, having been traumatized by the violence of The Dark Knight. But then my daughter smiled. The clowns were silly. They honked their noses. They gave us stickers and a balloon fashioned into a dog. They made us laugh. Wonderfully moved by this sudden circus in our midst, I asked where they'd come from. One of the girl clowns tilted her head and looked up wistfully and said in a sweet voice, "We just got back from Wall Street. Those guys are so sad and we decided to cheer them up."

I've never been much entertained by clowns, but this was pretty amazing. And, if this is performance art, it's the best thing I've ever witnessed. Wherever this troupe went, people were amused and a part of their day became extraordinary. I know ours was.

Bryant Park

girl reading, sketched 6/24/08

Bryant Park contains six flower beds planted seasonally with 100 species of woody shrubs and herbaceous perennials and 20,000 bulbs and twin promenades bordered by London plane trees (Platanus acerifolia) which can grow up to 120 feet in height. The Lawn is planted with a rye/fescue/bluegrass and is as long as a football field (300 feet) and 215 feet wide.

This is my favorite lawn in all of New York. You don't need a blanket or anything, you just walk out into the wide green sea, kick off your shoes and jump in.

----------------
Now playing: The National - Baby We’ll Be Fine

Bringing sexy back...

I'll be at the MoCCA Art Festival this weekend! Sitting at my normal tables in the large back-room, against the windows, on the ground floor. I don't have anything really new, possibly something in the works, who knows? If I have time to price and sort, my very fashionable Breaking Up original art pages will be available for purchase. But you can stop by and say hello and see my usual slew of graphic novels and trades, slightly modified versions of last year's tees, and some other art.

Haven't seen the Sex & The City movie yet since I decided to do a casual marathon of the whole show, an episode or two before I crash at night. Of course, I loved it when it aired, I was addicted to the New York antics and the stylings of Patricia Field. However, watching it now as a thirty-something it's a totally different experience. No longer is the question, which character do you identify with, but knowing the answer is you can relate with each person's issues because in some, and sum, they are all you. And, the show is so incredibly well-written, in its effort for each episode to tackle a sex/relationship issue while maintaining growth and a steady narrative through the seasons.

Especially Carrie and her emotional entanglement with Mr. Big. When she's hurt and suffering, Sarah Jessica Parker has this gesture where she droops her shoulders, pitches her head forward, in miserable defeat to this guy who rules her heart and common sense. Which I understand, I was stranded with Chris Noth in Penn Station, under the big departure/arrival board and it was quite discombobulating. Maybe also because I have this notion that Big is actually retired NYPD Detective Mike Logan.

‘Sex and the City’ Box Office Explained: They're Superheroes

Hollywood's "mystified" response to Sex and the City's $55 million opening weekend — who knew women liked to see movies with their friends? — proves once again that despite being more than half the population, women are still a niche market in the movie business. After helpfully identifying which moviegoers contributed to SATC's success ("women"), bewildered Hollywood number-counter Paul Dergarabedian added, "This was to women what Indiana Jones and Star Wars, let's say, are to men." The only people who aren't surprised at SATC's summer-blockbuster numbers are women — who've known all along that Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte are, in fact, superheroes. No, not the kinds of female superheroes invented by men for men, vinyl-clad fantasies like Electra or Catwoman. The women of SATC don't fly or have awesome weapons or even drive very often — but they do save each other from bad guys.

The media frenzy leading up to last week's release of SATC — in newspapers, magazines, and “dudeblogs” — provided every possible critique of the fabulous four, as though the movie were a study in social realism, or an Austen-like movie of manners, or (depressingly often) a nightmarish horror show with men as its victims. But early in the film Candice Bergen, as Carrie's imperious Vogue editor, Enid, nails the movie's real aesthetic when she asks Carrie to pose for the magazine's pages as a 40-year-old bride, saying she's the only woman her age who could do the shoot "without the Diane Arbus undertones." Superheroes exist outside the laws and boundaries the rest of us have to abide by; while men want to see themselves flying and fighting, women are more interested in pushing other limits. How old can you be and still be hot? How many times can you break up and still be in love with someone? How many hours of the day can four working women conceivably spend together?

Pointing out that Carrie could never afford her apartment, let alone her wardrobe, is about as useful as questioning Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to create cold fusion in a cave in Afghanistan — it misses the point of the movie entirely. Why is it okay for Iron Man to collect expensive cars but materialistic for Carrie to collect shoes? Surely her carbon footprint is the smaller of the two. Politely, we don't ask what the Hulk says about American men and their relationship to rage, so why should we tolerate attacks on Samantha's legendary libido? Sam Jones is no more a real cougar than Dr. Jones is a real archaeologist, but they're both good summer fun. So wise up, Hollywood, and start giving us some more female superheroes. And please, take a hint from Sex and the City, and dress them in Vivienne Westwood, not vinyl.

—Annaliese Griffin

----------------
Now playing: Suede - She's In Fashion
via FoxyTunes

Billie Holiday

Ten years ago, in a semi-basement loft in Williamsburg, my roommate Jonathan and I listened to nearly twenty-four hours of Billie Holiday on KCRW. Many years later, and sometimes worlds apart, he still emails to let me know that it's Billie Holiday's birthday and we listen together to the Columbia University broadcast of her songs no matter where we are.

I love NY