New York Journal - Part Seven

Ahh! I have too many jobs!


September 22, 2008

I am occasionally stupid.

It's just about 5:30 am, and I'm chilling at the JFK International Airport after having spent the night - or at least a few precious hours of nighttime - in the nearby Days Inn. For $128.

"But Mark," you cry, "weren't you supposed to leave yesterday? From the Newark airport?

Why, yes. That was the plan.

Woke up promptly at 10:00 yesterday, and got myself showered, packed and generally organized while the rest of the house slowly woke up. Tried calling Linda, re: picking up the Bronx guitar, but there was no answer. Called Nadia to warn her the guitar thing might not work out.

When everyone else was up and alert, the whole gang of us - ooh, let's see if I can do names: Luke, Kate, Tom, Tracey, Andres - headed over to the Life Café for brunch. There was a nice circularity to that: the first and last place I visited on my NYC debut.

Just as we're finishing, Linda calls. It's about 1:30. We arrange to mee at, like, 149 St or some shit.

Quick trip back to Luke's for my suitcase. Whirlwind goodbyes. I briefly consider an online check-in, but figuring out the printer seems like more trouble than it's worth. Stop by the Pourhouse to drop off Kim Marie's gift (a blank notebook, for her memoir). Long-ass subway ride to the Bronx. Long-ass subway ride to Penn Station. Long-ass NJ Transit ride to Newark Int'l. I roll in around 4:30; flight schedule to leave at 5:25. I scramble, sheepishly, to the Air Canada counter.

"You're late," she tells me. "The flight is closed. I can't check you in."

It takes a few minutes for the message to sink in. Yes, the plane is still here. No, you can't make a run for it. Yes, the flight is closed. No, I can't check you in. No, neither can anyone else.

Well. Shitballs.

A woman rolls up next to me, same situation. She tries the freak-out approach. I try the nice-guy approach. We are equally unsuccessful.

No direct flights until same time tomorrow. No connecting flights that will work. Oh, but there's a 7:55 leaving from JFK tomorrow morning!

... whoopee! ...

Before I leave my new aircare friend, I clarify: "If I'd been here, like, ten minutes earlier, I could've checked in?" Yes. "If I'd done a mobile, paperless check-in on my Blackberry, from the train, instead of reading FFWD articles online, I could've moseyed right on to that awaiting flight?" Yes. That would have been a very smart move.

Call Mom. Call work. Call Luke - "Hey buddy, feel like sharing your pull-out couch for one more night?"

Ooh. Yeah. About that...

Turns out, after I left, Luke had a conversation with his condo-owning, London-dwelling brother. Who didn't know Luke was hosting couch-surfers in his pad. Who is not particuarly taken with the idea.

Okay! Onward!

Long-ass NJ Transit ride back to Penn Station. Long-ass subway ride to JFK. I sit next to a couple of gentlemen, who carefully adjust their (respectively) bleached-blonde, long-banged and brown faux-hawked hair an discuss Fashion Week at length. As I continue to eavesdrop, I learn that one or possibly both work in theatre, and are networking to get a shot on Broadway, or TV, or whichever comes first. The blonde, clearly the alpha, "needs all the fans he can get", so he doesn't talk about politics or religion on his video-blog, which, btw, he feels has been lackluster for the past couple months, but he feels obligatedd to keep updating.

They take, then proceed to admire and evaluate, several subway self-portraits. They've clearly done this before. I don't have their mad photo-posing skillz.

Short-ass AirTrain ride. I loudly announce that I'm in search of a cheap hotel room, end up at the Days Inn, and I spend the evening channel-surfing, mostly between Men in Black II and, um, Men in Black. I order a too-large mushroom and jalapeno pizza and two Coronas. I regret the peppers, but not the beer.

I sleep for a couple hours, dream that people are using my bathroom. Wake up at 4:00. Catch the 4:30 airport shuttle.

Which brings us up to date. Except, of course, those two days I've skipped over.

I'm gonna get me a fuckin' muffin.

---

I just had an egg & cheese croissant, some mango juice, and a fuckin' muffin.

So, flashing back, I ended my MOMA experience with a trip to the bookstore (where I nearly bought The 1,000 Journals Project, then... didn't) and ventured to their neighbouring exhibit, part of the special pre-constructed architecture collection. They actually went ahead and built... five? ... structures in the soon-to-be developed lot next to the gallery. I really enjoyed that aspect of it, taking a time- and site-specific opportunity to flesh out a project. The buildings themselves, though, were to my eyes unremarkable. The experience of walking through them was eerily like condo-shopping. People were continually opening drawers, or pointing into a room and whispering to their companion. "Look, hon. Wouldn't our sofa look amazing in that bare, mass-manufactured room?"

The whole experience was uncomfortably reminiscent of driving through a Calgary suburb, with cookie-cutter houses off the assembly line. Shudder.

I had dinner with Eliyanna, who I met at the wedding, at a fun little diner/café called PUSH. It was our server's first day, and she was resultingly scattered, but still cute. Eliyanna is awesome. We talked about sex conferences, and our wildly different appreciations of Spring Awakening, and politics, and her wife's Disney World fixation. She overpaid for her meal (for which I, the cash-deprived tourist, was most grateful) and hailed me a taxi going in the right direction. I learned how to distinguish occupied, vacant and off-duty taxis! It's not rocket science, but I hadn't clued in without guidance.

Off to PS 122! I'd been thrilled to discover, while walking home one night, that this world-famous performing arts venue was, like, next fuckin' door to Luke's. It's a public school-cum-performance space, with a really kick-ass vibe. I ventured through the somewhat labyrinthine hallways and emerged into the first performance site, a small black-box theatre. The seats were curtained off, and the audience - mostly standing, though there were two benches - surrounded a square, demarcated with a series of wooden structures. Wooden picture frames, stretched with white projector screens, were scattered around the edges, and a web of canvas rope hung from the ceiling.

So, yeah. My kind of set-up.

A woman split from the crowd and began a wide-eyed exploration of the square. A projection covered the floor, and we were introduced to The Passion of Joan of Arc.

I first saw the film at the final Mutton Busting Festival, when the Summerlad played a live soundtrack. I found it very off-putting then, and no less so now. There are nigh-constant close-ups on Joan, looking desperate, grief-stricken, pained, tortured, hopeless, confused, etc. Cut to a crowd of judgemental, angry men. Cut back to Joan. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

Granted, the film has a cool-and-weird history. The first version was lost to a fire, then the second version, spliced together from outtakes, was also lost to a fire. Years later, a third version is found in the closet of a mental hospital.

Like - shit, yo.

That, in large part, was the subject being tackled in The Passion Project. The square was surrounded on all sides by some pretty impressive projectors. The perormer spins and scurries about the space, thrusting frames in the air to pluck a face from nothingness - a judge, an accusor, Joan. She hangs a fram,e then holds up another, hangs it, takes them both down, holds up another, hangs it. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

Okay. There were solid elements. Often, a static, hanging frame would depict an observing judge or a member of the crowd, which by association positions us as members of the mob. At the end, she hangs all the frames, roping them together into a flaming pyre as Joan burns. The fragments of film, drawn from all three versions, nicely represent the film's own fiery demise(s). And it was created and directed by a dude who works with the Wooster Group. Let's face it, that's neat.

But it was boring. The dazzle of technology and the performer's technical aptitude wears off, and you've got a mournful woman desperately thrusting screens in the air to campture images of another mournful woman. Over and over again.

Such a cool concept. Such a great execution. Why couldn't it be more interesting?? Alas.

Then, down some stairs into a larger studio and Southern Promises.

I was surprised, given the venue's reputation, to discover a comparatively traditional theatre piece. Proscenium, script-based, the whole deal.

[SPOILER ALERT]

The story beings with the death of a slave-owner, who frees his slaves in his will. His wife reverses the will, then rapes the main male slave. Her brother-in-law comes to help her free the slaves, then professes love for her and they get married. He rapes the wife of the previously-raped slave. Shit goes south, white lady gives birth to black baby. Black lady is sold, black baby is murdered, white lady is murdered, black man escapes thanks to a large box and the U.S. Postal Service.

It was actually quite good. Shocking stuff - some very harshly racist portrayals, including liberal use of the word 'nigger', and profoundly disturbing scenes of violence, sexual and otherwise. My thoughts kept going backstage: actors who treat each other so horribly on stage, night after night, must have incredible bonds of trust and respect.

I'm not sure why this show was chosen for a space known for multidisciplinary innovation - unless I'm putting my own biased lens on PS 122 - but it was challenging, and politically important, and totally worth seeing.

Then! A few blocks southwest, for a performance of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, by the New York Neo-Futurists, as recommended by Ms. Amanda Middleton.

All I knew about the show, going in, was that it was touted as '30 shows in 60 minutes', performed by the NYC branch of a Chicago-founded group. Sketch?

I arrived relatively early (y'know, early by my standards). Having pre-bought a ticket, I was put into a special short line and given a toy. I got all four balls into their respective holes, which bonded me with the other four pre-purchasers: an elderly couple from hawaii, and a young couple. He works on Wall Street, which was apparently been crazy lately! Go figure.

Enter the Kraine Theater, under the KGB Bar and above a comedy club. A cozy little theatre. The rest of the audience files in slowly; the price is $10 plus the roll of a dice. As we enter, an earphone-clad woman shouts "What's your name?", then ignores your answer and scribbles something on a nametag. My name was "Mashed Up". We're given menus: 30 items, each with a different title. At the end of each "play", they say "curtain", at which point we shout out numbers. The performers snatch the first number they hear from an overhanging clothesline, and perform that scene.

It was a nightmare evening for them. First, the sound didn't work, forcing them to run sound from an on-stage portable stereo. Then a pipe starts leaking - a pretty hardcore leak - on the audience, leaving them to monitor the water level of hastily-placed buckets on top of everything else they're already doing.

Despite the various and extensive setbacks, the show was one of the highlights of my trip.