Read James’s account of our encounter with the “Jews hate Bush” lady.

Why are there always teddy bears at things like this? I find it sort of creepy.

This bench is in front of the grocery store where James’s brother shops.

I went to see Andy‘s show Potty Mouth last night (or is it early this morning). As we waited outside to be let in, there was an adorable little dark-haired kid playing on the sidewalk. When some air-conditioner condensation — I hope that’s what it was — started pouring off the awning above our heads, he jumped into it and got all wet. He then proceeded to try to embrace all of the gay guys in line. A future performance artist is born!

It was GREAT. I had seen part of it “in process” at Dixon Place, but that was months ago, and I think it has really come together into a fabulous raunchy, moving, hilarious piece of one-man theater. It runs through October 25. Go!

I am still so jet-lagged. I got my second wind around 2am, and went with some of my fellow bloggers/audience members to Lolita. I liked the vibe of the place — low key (and cute) bartenders, and a crowd that was about half straight and half gay. Not enough places pull that off successfully in NYC, even on the Lower East Side. There were gorgeous photographs of the abandoned buildings at Ellis Island in the back. The even had Brooklyn Weisse on tap!

Do I have to list all of the bloggers that were there and link to them here? I’m tired. The one person I hadn’t met before, at least not in “the real world”, was Mark. At one point, when Andy talked about gay men with cats, we both groaned simultaneously — getting a reaction from our performer.

For those that missed it, e.g. Glenn and Sparky, James was sick and didn’t make it either. We might go see it on October 18 at 10pm if anyone wants to join us.

Bob Crane — of Hogans Heroes fame — was a home pornographer. His son has a web site where you can get pictures, videos, etc., and he’s rather obsessed with how hung his dad was — to the point of publishing his dad’s autopsy report to prove it.

Titled Doubts set in on Afghan mission, it says that the Americans are looking increasingly like occupiers to the Afghans and themselves. The soldiers have also been given little plastic cards (they show one to the reporter) telling them what to say to the press. Via cursor.

I should be doing work, but several shows were about to close, so we went to a few Chelsea galleries this afternoon. I’m writing this while I wait for Apache to compile on a few clients’ machines — security release!

I wasn’t that excited by some of the shows, but there were a couple I would recommend going to see before they close:

• James Hyde at Brent Sikkema
  
• Group show at Paula Cooper, especially the Dan Flavin
  
• Group show at Kravets/Wehby (web site not updated in a year!), especially Kanishka Raja

As I walked home, I noticed that 17th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues certainly is gentrifying! There is a Karim Rashid store, plus an upscale hair salon, where people were waiting out front drinking sparkling water from wine glasses — glass ones, not plastic.

I love Jesus because he keep oil cheap for my SUV — spotted out in front of the Catholic Church on 10th Avenue:

Random broken window image:

Choire says it better than my still jet-lagged brain can. Go sign Michael Moore’s petition, and send some letters.

This should be the last one. These are some notes I took on the flight to New York.

• Looking around the departure lounge at the information boards for other flights, I really felt like we were rather “east” — there were flights to Pristina, Kiev, and Damascus in nearby gates.
  
• The area next to us was for a flight to Cairo. There was one Arab woman near us wearing a sweater and well-fitting camel-colored wool pants, and her son was named William. Most of the women for that flight wore head scarves.
  
• The airport bookstores have quite a bit of gay porn for sale — most stores would only have straight stuff, especially in America. They also all have special sections for books on the Nazi period. One tiny store had a fountain in the middle with fish.
  
• There were two female flight attendants – one a chubby latina and the other a black woman with a shaved head — pushing around the duty free cart. They were FABULOUS. I told them I loved them both, but I didn’t feel like buying anything. The latina suggested I buy the big box of chocolates, suitable for sharing with the crew. When I laughed, the black one asked me what I was laughing at. I said, “you laughed, so I did too.” Her response: “Good answer. It’s like the old Welcome Back Kotter show — I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.”</p>

• One of the rooms we visited in the Schoenbrunn in Vienna was the room used by Franz Josef II for his audiences. Any citizen of the empire had the right to an audience with the emperor, even peasants from the provinces. They were instructed to wear formal attire if they had it, or native costume if not. The descriptions from the time talk about farmers and country people wearing their native costumes, and today the waiting room before the audience room has mannequins wearing traditional garb from the various regions: Tirol, Carinthia, Galicia, etc.
• Empress Elizabeth, known as Sisi, the wife of Franz Josef II, was fanatical about her weight. She dieted and excersized for hours every day. One of the rooms in the palace still has exercise rings hanging in one doorway.
• One of the popular drinks at this time of year in Austria is Sturm — “young wine” — barely alcoholic grape juice.
• When we visited the Alte Pinakothek in Munich to see Breughel, etc., we bought t-shirts in the museum shop by Sean Scully, with the words “Starr/McCarthy: Two Great Americans”.
• I forgot to mention this, and it was important. The Melk exhibit on the town during the Nazi period which I mentioned earlier specifically mentioned homosexuals in the list of people sent to concentration camps. A lot of exhibits only talk about Jews, and maybe political prisoners, failing to mention homosexuals or gypsies.
• I highly recommend Hotel Austria, where we stayed in Vienna.
• When we visited the Wieskirche, there were areas of the church where people had left gifts of thanks, or votive offerings in hope of some holy intervention. There was card for a fireman named Tommy, lost on 9/11. There was also a letter of thanks from a man who had prayed there for God to send him a man, and he was thanking the church for his happiness after finding a wonderful mate. I guess the Church really is often better on a local level than at the archbishop-on-up level.
• I felt bombarded by news about Iraq while we were there. Every paper — German, Austrian, French, etc. — had Bush and Iraq on the front page every day except 9/11.

We went to the NYC premiere of Philip Glass’s new opera “Galileo Galilei” at BAM last night. It was very disappointing. The music wasn’t that interesting, the libretto wasn’t so hot, and the directing was terrible. It seemed like a good idea: Galileo, Philip Glass, and director/co-librettist Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses).

As James said, it was more like a masque than an opera, but it just didn’t work. The direction at times drove me crazy. At one point several people are moving in a gondola. It moves because a person at the front pulls it, but there is a gondolier there making the motions. That’s fine, but once they get to the middle of the stage and the boat isn’t actually moving, both the gondolier and the person with the rope at the front continue to move as if it is. I get the idea, but I was so distracted by the fake motion of the guy pulling the boat I couldn’t listen to the music. At another point in the opera, Galileo refuses a drink from a servant when invited to share some wine with an important cardinal in the garden of his villa. I don’t think so. Even if he didn’t drink, there’s no way he would have refused the glass.

Bad art is so depressing.

—

Followup on Thurday: The NYT review. It’s one of the most non-committal things I have ever read. One good quote though:

But without wishing to disparage either Mr. Glass or “Galileo” — which is notably fresher than Mr. Glass’s last few operas — can it really be that, 20 years on, Mr. Glass is still the standard-bearer for what’s “next” in music? Isn’t the festival now an entrenched orthodoxy with a postmodernist accent?