Ducks Out Of Water

"I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for the fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't make the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway." Catcher in the Rye


THE BIG, OFFICIAL McBurney event isn't for another month (if I decide to attend), but with a day off yesterday and a Knicks-76ers game in the hopper for the evening, nostalgia was the order of the day as my fellow "Highlander" Johnny Starr and I decided to hold our own mini reunion-slash-J.D. Salinger tribute a little ahead of time. So with that in mind, we met in front of the old landmark facade (all that's left of the grounds) on West 63rd Street at 2:30 and hit Central Park with plenty o' time to take in the sights and sounds on a summer-like pre-spring afternoon.

If you really want to know the truth of it, the school itself closed shop in 1988 -- a piece of New York history gone forever after 72 years. Ten years later they announced plans for a condo tower to be built over the original five-floor building, and sure enough in 2000 there she rose 40 floors up. There's your progress in action, yes sir.

The old YMCA is still next door, where we had our locker rooms and shared the pool, gym, etc., with everyone else. We couldn't remember if the pool was on the 3rd or 4th floor, but we did manage to walk right past the front desk and wander about, trying unsuccessfully to find the cafeteria, the barbershop where me and 3 other members of the wrestling team shaved our heads one fateful morning, the cramped stairwell all the teams ran up and down as a punishment drill for whatever infraction or shortcoming the coaches came up with...

Right across the park wall is the rock where all the heads in high school would congregate and do their thing. Beyond was the rough patch of green between softball fields where we held football practice every day. The whole field was fenced off on this day, probably being resodded, and as we later discovered, so was the entire Sheeps Meadow.

The ducks were indeed alive and well and seemingly content in the Duck Pond, perhaps distant relatives to the ones the real Holden Caulfield would have ruminated about while spending 9th and 10th grade at McBurney in the '30s. Much later in the day we stumbled on the Carousel, still a New York bargain at only 2 bucks a ride, where Catcher's pivotal scene plays out: Holden for once totally in the moment, at peace with himself, watching his sister Phoebe on the Merry Go Round.

GOT TO THE GARDEN at about 7:00, then hung out at the Play by Play watching the start of the game on the bar's big screen until John's friends showed up, which was well into the first half. We didn't actually get to our seats until well into the second half. Which was just as well, because my pathetic 76ers, clad on this night in their eyesore all-red uni's, couldn't get it done yet again, losing 92-88 -- even with the Knicks missing their two best players in David Lee and Wilson Chandler.

Desperate Measure

I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS STORY when it came out, but a blog I follow, LIQCity, had a post about it. Seems a 38-year-old Greek guy, distraught over his very sick mom, over losing his job from taking time off to be with her, over his house being foreclosed -- you know, little things like that -- leaped to his death from a Long Island City condo tower last Saturday. Anastasi Calatzis evidently posed as a prospective buyer, then, while the real estate agent was showing him an apartment on the 25th floor, he texted his brother, asking him to take care of mom, waited for the agent to turn her back, and calmly jumped from the balcony as if he had planned the whole thing out. Another overwhelmed soul overcome by unforgiving circumstances in a city that can seem heartless even in the best of times.

The LIQCity post included a link to the hideous New York Post, where, in typical nutzoid fashion, some sick fuck in the newsroom made the appalling editorial decision to accompany their story with a photo of the condo tower and a big red arrow pointing down from the 25th-floor terrace to the street below where the poor guy landed. What is the purpose of this? In case you didn't have the mental capacity to figure out which direction a person falls from 25 stories up, the Post is there to help with its asinine diagram. Anyone who buys this dying tabloid needs to have his head examined. If it was free I wouldn't use it to wipe my butt if I ran out of toilet tissue.

In a not-so-unrelated matter, I happen to detest the very idea of these Astoria high-rises and the selfish yuppie scum that dwell therein, but hey that's just me; I'm only born and raised here. I'm not breaking any new ground here, but Astoria has become inundated with these self-absorbed hipsters who think they've discovered some authentic urban landscape, who come here from their small towns trying to "make it" and within 5 minutes consider themselves native New Yorkers. I've had it with these oh-so-interesting-in-their-own-minds "indie rocker" types who live four to five to an apartment and go out in packs frequenting all their favorite new sushi joints and fusion bistros and organic health food emporiums in the neighborhood, probably looking down on all the uncultured locals. They haven't earned that right yet. If anyone's gonna look down on Astoria dumbasses, it's me. But I really don't need to see Astoria or Long Island City turning into the new Williamsburg or Park Slope. Doesn't do a damn thing for me but drive the cost of everything up.

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I Work, Therefore I Am

TODAY MARKS A WEEK of workdays at the new, albeit temporary job. It may be premature to justify labeling me some kind of fancy Leading Economic Indicator, but the current stretch is by far my most intensive period of employment in well over a year. And that's nothing to sneeze at, mostly because with no health coverage of any kind, how can I afford to even cough?

Followers of this very space undoubtedly already know that in a previous life I worked at the same place for over 15 years -- which meant for better or worse I knew exactly where I was going almost each and every weekday morning. Technically, we're talking three different offices in three different office buildings: first 99, then 100 and finally 67 Wall Street. But my point if there is one is that freelancing is almost diametrically opposed to working at The Transcript all those years -- now day to day, even week to week I have lit'rally no idea where I'll be, and not in any existential sense either. Although sure, there's some of that too. Maybe a lot of it. But characteristically, I digress.

It's a very quiet office where I'm at now, bordering on monastic with its long stretches of silence and its hushed, almost reverential tones. I'm situated between three or four obvious veterans of the company, who speak their art department jargon over and around me. They're keeping me fairly busy with material, except for today which was deathly slow, but there's a Mac on my desk that I can use. After three days last week and two this week, still no feedback of any kind, which is unusual but not unheard of. I always like to explain my edits to the person on the other end, that's just the way I was raised.

I quickly discovered there's no affordable eats around the 60th & Madison area where I'm currently stationed, so for my first lunch excursion I foolishly grabbed a hideously lukewarm "hot" dog from a street vendor on Fifth Avenue near Central Park for 2 bucks. Next day let the record show I made my way to the more egalitarian confines of Lexington Avenue, where the food choices were sure to multiply exponentially. I was rewarded for my wandering, conveniently happening upon a thriving outpost of a dining establishment that evidently can trace its lineage back to none other than the Original, Famous Ray of antiquity. I made my way inside the bustling dining hall and took advantage of one of the house specialties: an Italian dish known as pizza pie. For a reasonable cost of two-dollars-fifty-five per individual slice, it's well worth the trip to partake of this traditional, hearty ethnic fare whilst sitting among my fellow working men and women, who I daresay are as unassuming and convivial a lot as the denizens of any large city you're likely to encounter no matter how wide your travels. In fact, I can say with some degree of certainty that this branch of the Ray's family culinary empire shall serve as my go-to locale for regular midday caloric intake.

Finally, let me close by relating to you my Readers that after one such luncheon, as I leisurely perambulated back to the office, I had a real-live celebrity sighting -- if, as I do, you consider PBS' long-time talkmeister Charlie Rose such a notable personage. Let me also pass on that as I espied Mr. Rose slowly shuffling along the Avenue, he looked quite the worse for wear, even acting a little bewildered as he piteously clutched a rather large beige valise. Then I remembered old Charlie had major heart surgery not too long ago. So there's that too.

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Sex A Peel

I FORTUITOUSLY STUMBLED upon a small cache of Avengers DVDs at the Lincoln Center library a couple of weeks ago, and ever since it's been a veritable Emma Peel Marathon in my living room. With about 4 episodes per DVD, I've worked my way through about 8 of the hour-long shows, and see no good reason to stop now.

More to the point, is it just me or is it every male of a certain age's fantasy to be harshly interrogated at the hands -- or better yet leather boots -- of the smashing, winsome Mrs. Peel, played to perfection by Diana Rigg? I mean, WNTFL (what's not to fucking like)? With the possible exception of the sumptuous Julie Newmar as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman TV series -- also usually clad not uncoincidentally in a tight black leather jumpsuit -- nothing spoke to my already quite disturbed preadolescent psyche like watching Rigg as the take-charge Emma Peel dashing across the TV screen and beating up villains. Oh yeah and Patrick Macnee as debonair spy John Steed was pretty good too. I looked 'em up on Wikipedia and was glad to discover that he's still alive, in his late 80s now, while Diana Rigg is still kicking at 71.

I took out two DVDs from 1965 and one from '67 -- the latter episodes being in color. But you know what: I like the black & white joints much better. Now, my family didn't even have a color TV set until the early '70s, so growing up The Avengers and everything else was in black & white, and maybe that's why I prefer the series in B&W to this day. (I know there's an Avengers movie starring Uma Thurman, but Uma really doesn't do anything for me so I never got around to seeing it.)

There's one Avengers episode called A Touch of Brimstone that was supposedly banned in the U.S. for a while, yet was the most watched episode in series history in the U.K. when it aired in 1966. It's the one where Emma Peel goes undercover as a dominatrix called the Queen of Sin! AYFKM (are you fucking kidding me) or what? Coming across that episode would be akin to finding a great prize in your box of Crackerjacks when you were a little kid -- only now you have a better way to celebrate. No, believe it or not I've never been in therapy; why do you ask...?

And I didn't put together that clever little video here combining two of the finer exports 1960s England bestowed on the world: the original Avengers TV series and The Kinks. But I wish I had thought of it first. What I'd really like to find is a decent Time Machine in working order and beat it back to Swinging London a la Austin Powers. Until then I'll have to "beat it" here.