Events, Places, and Things
DIARY 12950
4/28/78
ROLF AND POPE AND ASTROLOGY AND STOCK MARKET
Back on DIARY 12922 I mentioned Rolf describing the stock highs of April 14 and April 17, and when I asked for a psychological feeling from the activity, he said it was as if there were a band of men slogging and slogging and slogging through an endless tangled forest, they're tired and thirsty and hot and wet and irritated, and then they stop one night and decide to fuck the whole thing and break out the booze and get roaring drunk--- and then the next day they have to go back to slogging and slogging and slogging. He said it was like a safety valve going off, throwing caution to the winds, something discontinuous that seemed to have no RATIONAL reason, and I was very surprised that he would go so far into something that HE considers as irrational as astrology to explain it. He said that he KNEW that the first time was a sheer accident, but the second time it might happen, people could begin to see a pattern, and trying to cash in on the pattern would stop it from ever recurring in EXACTLY the same way again, but I guess he wanted to be in on the NEXT one, cashing in, before the pattern was caught on to generally. So I gave the facts to Pope: 44 million previous high, 30M traded on Thursday, 52M on Friday, 63M on Monday, and over 35M on Tuesday. Pope called me to say that Jupiter means peak activity and that NYC and the US is Cancer, and every 12 years Jupiter goes INTO Cancer, generating an expansive mood and making the market more speculative. But Cancer is also a FEARFUL sign, and there might be some recklessness associated with it. He said that he'd JUST heard something on the radio: REMEMBER I told you that the stock market would go up when Jupiter went into Cancer, and he's sure it's due to that, having started about Wednesday, and Rolf said that it really could have started sometime during the week before. This 12-year cycle wouldn't make him very happy--- not going to wait around to 1990 to try heading it off again, I guess, but there might be some SUBcycle that could be studied, something that happens every 6 months or so that could be studied to give a "pattern" that's not LIKELY to be seen, but you could continue to milk the top off a curve that's predictable ONLY to yourself and a few friends.
DIARY 12992
5/15/78
ROLF DISCUSSES FREEPORT MINERALS
He suggests there's rumors of someone (Ralph Schrader(?) who sent around newsletters to major stockholders when the company was saying nothing) advising some assayers on tenders for United Asbestos at about 4.5 (it's at 1.75-2 now in Canada, about where I'm breaking even--- has to be equal in the United States or it's against arbitrage--- whoops, it would BE arbitrage) and then it would be good to "take the money and run" and invest it in a stock that's up to 22, might be back down to 18, but currently returns $2/share and looks to earn $6-8/share in a couple of years, AND gives $1.60 yearly dividends. Larry Price says they'd be cutting off their own wisdom to cut out the dividend; Rolf thinks of it as giving away good money. They deal in minerals: control about 20% of the U.S. sulfur, which they get by the Frash method (three concentric pipes into a salt dome, pump down water and pressured steam and pump up sulfur) in Louisiana (and they sold a salt dome named Norman's Mound to the government, for storing oil from the Arabians so that the U.S. could last more than 6 months in an oil embargo by the Arabs to give us time to think what to do, for $15M) and mine phosphate rock from Florida (where it isn't sand) and barge it to Louisiana where they first make sulfuric acid, which is widely used, and then phosphoric acid, which is the basis of the phosphates in fertilizer, AND from the waste they've been refining uranium, on which they expect to make a 50% profit, since it costs them little extra, since they have the raw materials right THERE. Their basic copper market is in poor shape: last year copper was (say) $20/lb and people were thinking of melting pennies and opened hordes of new mines (which take about two years to get started), then with all the new mines, the prices dropped to (say) $10/lb, lots of little mines closed down, and now no one's making a profit. Zinc is even worse, since the automobile companies stopped using it in cars, since it weighted too much, now everything's in aluminum. But if copper "turns around" there could be a good profit THERE. Then chatted about asbestos safety, and I hazarded that the "2 fibers/cc/8 hrs" could be reduced to .2, and he said it's ALREADY been suggested to reduce it to .5, but then he said that asbestos occurs reasonably naturally, so probably numbers of dirt roads have a higher concentration when a car passes. Also noted that the metal filings reputed to be in the subway tunnels are from the brass brake shoes eroded by applying the brakes; and then noted that among NON-smokers in asbestos factories the cancer incidence is the same as general public's, but smokers fare worse: "Maybe the tar GRINDS the asbestos into the lungs, who know?" as he put it. Another data-filled talk.
DIARY 12997
5/17/78
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART GALLERIES AND MOVIES
ISLAND was pleasant about the vacating (which you'd know only from the program notes, not from the movie) of Oilean Torei, which just MIGHT be Tory Island, with nice shots of great surf against spectacular rocks and NO cultural events.
TO FLY was tear-jerking with shots of idyllic rivers and woods and rocket shots to the moon and lots of flowery prose and NICE symphonic movie-music.
JUST IMAGINE was SO bad that it was WORSE than so-bad-it's-good: Maureen O'Sullivan was enough to make Ruby Keeler look talented, and John Garrick deserves his no-reputation now, even though Marjorie White as a Gracie Allen-bright, Fanny Brice-belting songster, stacked comedienne was quite good and even Frank Albertson shone next to the lead. El Brendel was simply awful as Single O), and the Looloo/Booboo, Boko/Loko (even if the latter WAS the queen!) twins were rock-bottom, as was the ghastly humpy-bumpy dancing of the demon-devis in the idol scene, and Flash Gordon owed LOTS to this movie, however, and there WERE no cars, as in the poster and stills, in the movie itself. The songs were all ghastly, and only Wilfred Lucas as X-10, the inventor, looked real.
MODERN DRAWINGS FROM THE JOAN AND LESTER AVNET COLLECTION were mostly non-representative, and I felt anew the DEHUMANIZING influence of such silly art (and John Gardner that night said life influences art to be awful, and then art influences life into thinking it's OK to be awful--- my paraphrase of his ideas, of course), and I went through it quickly, ignoring famous names.
PROJECTS: REEVA POTOFF was a cardboard "Bristol Bluffs" that hopefully was a joke.
NINE WINDOWS BY CHAGALL look like all his works and I didn't even both to enter.
BANG AND OLUFSEN: DESIGN FOR SOUND was more fun than I'd thought, and it was nice to be able to turn dials and slide slides and turn things on and off. They should have had prices, however, but it was STILL a very "cheap" exhibit.
MEXICAN ART was mostly propagandistic, some fairly forceful, some colorful, but few sexy and few "entertaining" which was what I seemed to be looking for.
JERRY DANTZIC AND THE CIRKUT CAMERA was fun as a gimmick from 180Ε to 420Ε, travelogues.
HOLLYWOOD ART DIRECTOR was the best thing, with matte-film as an extra, and some of the drawings were really great, and I MUST see DeMille's "Madame Satan."
DIARY 13003
5/18/78
DISTANCING FROM MONEY
It's almost as if they're talking about jelly jars or Monopoly money, and the guide is so new and so spaced-out that she seemed not quite to know what's going on. They talk about $16 BILLION at official rates, about $68 BILLION at market rates, of gold in the 80-foot basement, shuttling by conveyer back and forth from one country's bin to another, some on display earmarked with the oval tree of the Rothschild family, and I pick up a clean white canvas bag with $1000 in quarters which weighs 49 pounds, and all I can say is that "I'd rather not run around the block with it." Ask if there's anything under the floor, and she says "only bedrock," and I say "So I could come up from underneath," and all she can say is "If you can swim." SHE said that the subways had to be built around this building, erected in 1918, but Arnie said that the subways were built BEFORE that, and when I walk down William, there are the grates right in the sidewalk, so there can't be THAT much bedrock between the subway tunnel and the gold. But she said the building has NEVER attempted to be robbed: there are 16 TV cameras that sound a silent alarm and "a security force the size of a small town" converges on the alarm floor with shotguns, and most of them are experts. She describes how the HALLWAY we pass through is a LOCK: the cylinder rotates, beams pass through the doorway from within, and the whole thing DROPS 3/8 inch? Foot? to become TOTALLY sealed, but not to worry, if anyone IS trapped inside, there's enough air for three days from 4:30 Friday to 8:30 Monday morning. Automatic counting machines can throw out a $20 among $10's, the women flicking through stacks of money can tell phonies in THAT amount of time, and automatic coin counting machines throw out other denominations and all non-US coins. But it's all commodity, commodity, not WEALTH, not RICHES. The check-handling apparatus has just been redone and can't be visited, but they have banks of computers. Beautiful building, silly piped-in music, lots of guards at each door, smiling men in the gold room to see the tours come through, and she said that at 1 pm on Thursday the committee on reserves meets with the press in the 10th-floor conference room to determine the reserves of the week, and the direction the financial ship will sail. LOTS of brochures!
DIARY 13051
6/8/78
THRACIAN GOLD AND ATTITUDES OF LIFE
The program credited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but looking in their handbook showed nothing from here, and though the Negro-head-acorn plate LOOKED like the Negro-head-bee plate, the latter from Scythia led me to the book on THAT which showed Thrace across the Black Sea from the Siberian and more easterly Scythians, so while there may have been a trading-cultural connection between the two, it wasn't mentioned. The Scythian gold book DID quote Herodotus about the "Issedoreans, who cut up sheep with their dead and ate the whole thing," rather like the Thracians (EB has NOTHING worthwhile about them), who "rejoiced at death and mourned at birth," and when the chief died, his wives competed with themselves in joy to find who would be killed and buried with his body, and each year a warrior decided to be tossed upon a nest of spear tips: if he died, it was a good omen and everyone was happy, if he had the poor sense to live, he was disgraced and another one gladly went to his death. What kept them from constant suicide, or AT constant reproduction, was an unasked question. Having just started "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," which says very much the same thing: "The greatest climaxes came just at death, and then they dwindled into terror until the person was captured by a womb and born again." And this is SO unlike my clinging to life, wanting it to continue, despite the worries and the pains, desiring more of the "fatal disease called life which always leads to death" because I want more of the food, sex, travel, knowledge, entertainment, writing, and pleasure to be afforded by it. Will this be changed by "feeling God" (see DIARY 13055) or will it reduce to the fact that God IS the one who wants to be reborn, if we're all God--- he could surely stop it all if he DIDN'T want it to continue--- so God DOES want it to continue, and those who reach Nirvana are REALLY the dropouts from LIVING! But all these pages are beginning to be thematically entangled, just as threads of my life seem to be becoming more closely knit--- in my death shroud? If I were Thracian, I would DELIGHT in that, but as I am, I feel vaguely disgusted and want to move away from the final subject, back to banal entertainments to forget the oblivion.
DIARY 13056
6/8/78
NEW YORK JUST GETS WORSE AND WORSE
Mrs. Johnson's rent is raised to $199 when she got new windows, and new rentals in the building are going for $350, and AGAIN I think about "the time I leave New York," since entertainments are getting less attractive and the city is getting more repulsive. Subways seem to be dirtier and more crowded and less on schedule than before, people seem to get lower and lower (and note now I resist suggesting that I get higher and higher?) and dirtier and smokier and drunker and stupider and poorer, while the rich more and more remote and protect themselves PHYSICALLY from the dirt and the muggers and the kidnappers and the terrorists. The government gets more repressive, gay-rights movements are reversed, the city finances collapse because of the burden of welfare, and the mode becomes "Fuck you: you do it and I'll mess it up, 'cause that's the way it's meant to be." Junk takes over the positive values (there's nothing to read in the Voice, less to read in Soho, and almost nothing in the Times other than the TV section, and all that's left there is Channel 13), and the negative values increase and increase. Maybe Actualism WILL be the panacea by giving me a PLACE to move to (anywhere on the West Coast that they are), give me something to DO (though I still can't see myself as a teacher, though I still don't see myself as POWERFUL and SEEING the power and USING the power as you'd have to to be a teacher who wasn't a hypocrite, and they put on too good a show to be that), and a future to look forward to, and there MIGHT be enough time to do your own thing when the REAL teachers get going, so that I can still write or read or put ideas together if I want to--- unless I'm given NEW WAYS OF GETTING ideas, and all the questions CAN be answered, which WOULD change things around quite a bit, and THEN there could be a transformation SO total that it would make MY head spin: no more diary, no more lists, no more books, no more dependence on PHYSICAL human relationships, no more seeking because I would have found it, and only relating to people who were looking for it, too, and the whole thing COULD become quite a revolution, and I'll have to check the stars with Pope to see WHEN something like this could take place.
DIARY 13062
6/10/78
STAMPS AGAIN
First time since October last year into them, and they DO take time but I DO like putting them in order, and the US and UN stamps haven't been FINISHED for over two years, so that's not TOO much time taken with them. Then the envelopes had just been pushed aside, and they're reorganized in a better way, for expansion, too. Now I look forward to getting the new blank pages because the stamps are IN the pages that are already there: figured I'd get the pages and THEN look to see what's what, but it would have taken a long time before I even STARTED using some of the pages for the larger countries, and by that time my enthusiasm would have predictably faded and I would have put them away AGAIN largely undone. I may do that again, but it won't be with more than 5-6 countries, since only that many have above 100 stamps to be even DEALT with. And I look forward to COUNTING the stamps in the books, both of them, and debating buying sheets to put between the facing pages on which stamps always get caught on each other: maybe I'll distribute the REST of the 200 pages I'll get from A&S when they come in, and then I can take care of the WORST ones that are damaging the stamps to a very small extent, and it won't be so much of a problem. And then the books will probably be big enough that I'll begin looking for a THIRD album so they won't be so big, and then the collection would be about as big as the largest Scott multivolume albums, but be in the much better strict country order rather than that ridiculous method of being divided by YEARS of issue. And since a year's supplement for ONE country sells for $1 or $1.50, I've made the right decision to just go to blank pages, and just expand the countries I HAVE lots of, rather than getting pages and pages of some silly countries that I have few of ANYWAY. Obviously hinges and album pages are designed to increase one's desire to BUY stamps, anyway, with the obvious end result that you can only SELL them to people who really don't NEED them, which means that anyone would be lucky to get 1/10 Scott value for something sold to a dealer, who'd be willing to sell them to someone ELSE for 1/5-/1/4 Scott and make a good profit. But it's fun twice a year.
DIARY 13073
6/16/78
ICE AGE SCULPTURE AT MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
First they don't have a lovely huge brochure containing reproductions of everything, only a tiny thing for 65¢, which has lots of logical and typographical errors in map reading. Then the placards are mislabeled and some of the items just don't seem to be as described. Then only a part of the Altimira ceiling is there, and the striking idea is that it was in THREE DIMENSIONS because they accented the shapes of the bodies of the cattle they thought they saw there, and the lighting is so flat there's no way of getting an idea of what it REALLY looks like--- in fact there's no notation of what SIZE the actual is in relation to the top, the repro seems much SMALLER? Then the glass tops are poorly placed so that reflections from the spotlights are impossible to avoid, and in one glaring (ha) error it's not even possible to see what they've so carefully set up a mirror underneath to show. I want to shout to someone about it, since they've spent so much money for enormous photomurals of cave entrances and exits, slanting carpeted walkways to make it easy for wheelchairs, of which there are a few, and don't even have the school kids screaming through, which is a relief. The similarities among all the Venuses, from a wide range of geography, DOES bring up the tantalizing question of cultural exchange 30,000 years ago, and I'm surprised to see that there are SO MANY caves around Europe in which these things have been found, and it was as long ago as 1875 that a man-drawing of a mastodon convinced everyone that man must have lived BEYOND 4004 BC ago. The drawings are very helpful, but sadly they somehow detract from the dim lines on the actual artifacts, where they have them, mainly from Boston, and it makes the reproductions doubly questionable: if they got a GOOD one, did they make sure they didn't damage the original; and if it's a BAD one, what must the original look like? The "half pregnant" woman isn't at all convincing, and I recall with pleasure the BEAUTIFUL shard from--- where? Somewhere in Germany or Belgium that wasn't represented with its deer at ALL (or if it was, so badly done that it lost everything, and how to reproduce what I recall to be the INKED-IN lines of the deer I remember so beautifully)? So though I intend to go back, it's not with the greatest of pleasure.
DIARY 13089
6/17/78
BRAHMS SYMPHONIES WITH NEW EARS
Read an article by Alan Rich in New York (May 22, 1978) about Brahms' music after many years: "like meeting an old lover, well dressed but fat and warty," and he talked about the "tortuous, arbitrary, and grating harmonic progression that brings on the recapitulation of the first movement of the Third Symphony," and that the "finale of the First Symphony ... fragments prove ugly and unwieldy," and "the constant pushing onward ... sometimes borders on hysteria (the end of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony comes to mind)." I listened to these "dead ends in music" and found I couldn't enjoy his noodling in and out of melody: I HEARD the torture, groaned with the ugly, and got hysterical at the end of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony. Not that I knew what he was talking about! I couldn't tell a "harmonic progression" from a counterbass, and it seemed that the WHOLE of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony was arbitrary and grating. Where I'd loved the melodies and wondered what was going on, now I know that what was going on was "broad and clumsy gestures, huge, blocky ideas that, once stated, cannot progress farther." And, for a critic, the supreme non-kudo: "even Anton Bruckner, for all the holes he neglected to fill in his large-scale works, had a skill superior to Brahms's at creating half-realized ideas that could then spin out to completion under their own momentum." And then he concludes "Brahms left no followers. It was probably just as well." Then the liner notes are even more saddening: he kept disparaging his own work, kept hoping people would like them, kept suffering upon being called to follow in Beethoven's lordly steps, and now he's praised for his little works (and I put the article in the jacket of the First Symphony, just to remind me), and what's amazing is how I HEAR different when I READ something that has little to do with how I actually ENJOY listening to music, or WHAT I listen for. Maybe I can hear them in the future (like Ponchielli without hippos) without the burden of Rich's comments, but how possible it would be for a TEACHER to fill the student's mind with all sort of drivel that could be ILLUSTRATED and BELIEVED--- which will then change completely in ANOTHER 20 years.
DIARY 13101
6/21/78
HIP PHYSICAL EXAM
Cheery Dr. Becker asks what my questions are first, and from 2:15-2:25 she indicates that fasting for 7 days is fine if it makes me feel better, any sort of exercise seems OK for me, standing on my head she says makes buzzing in my ears and sort of says "Why?" Colonics are like a severe case of diarrhea, she says, of no medical use, water absorbed IS pure, and DAILY colonics disturb the water balance. Shaving warts happens to everyone (she calls them furuncles) and they'll disappear. Nothing will get the pores to be smaller, she didn't even want to hear about what looked to be plugs in them, and she said to just leave them alone. She says she'll look at my hemorrhoids and went to get a glove as I took my pants down and lay on my side, and she said I might get the start of one, and recommended sitting in a comfortable hot bath with a good book for half an hour for two or three nights, calling them sitz baths. She noted that I wanted to be checked for parasites, and the woman gave me a thing to smear and "cool and dry" for 12 hours and bring in, and a formalin-bottomed jar "That's not water, so don't drink it" to fill with "two tablespoons" of feces and bring back. The thing on the back of the neck she says was a scab, and she didn't flinch when I said I'd just pull them off when they were on the face, so it's OK. She said broken toes are usually not treated at all, except for splints, and then they move around a lot anyway, so it's OK, but I should be careful about shoes for bunions. The splinter she thought was gone, but didn't believe in poking around because of danger of infections, and said I should give it hot soaks, in water only, 4-5 times a day and it would "just float out," if it was still there. As for the sniffles, she said that 80% of New York had it, was just something with the season, sort of put in that I might have allergies, and said it might be connected with the air. Then down for "an hour's wait" for X-rays that took about 20 minutes talking to cheerful black who "takes you as you come, early, but if I'm sick, she don't start till 9, so don't worry about it," and she takes blood and chats, saying you're more sluggish blood-wise AFTER you eat than before, and says I have to get another white sheet when I bring in my smear tomorrow. Oh, Becker said my blood pressure was "within limits of normal," something like 120 over 86, so OK.
DIARY 13148
7/8/78
MACY'S FIREWORKS FIZZLE IN 1978
Avi said he heard 9:15, but the radio station he had on kept insisting it was at 9, and Pope the next day said that HIS station announced that it would be at 9:15 at the earliest and would be delayed up to an hour afterward if the winds demanded it, so that explained why the people were so patient around--- along with the cigar-sized joints the group in front was smoking, the joints passed around in our group even after Joel and Dennis got lost, and the luminous necklaces everywhere and the mismatched radio music at first and the trivializing disco tape at the end. About 9:20 a large set of them went off down about 20th Street, far enough away so that it wasn't really impressive at all (and I can't imagine how Pope could have seen even the higher ones from the Promenade as he said he did), and when it finished we wondered if that was the end, but then a barge with a lit "Macy's" sign came slowly upstream, so we waited around with everyone else. It was cool enough to be comfortable and amusing to listen to the pretentious "Star Wars," "2001," "Close Encounters" recordings that went on the radio station ANYWAY. Then that finished, Avi gave it until 9:35, and then the guys moved with the tape decks with "Gonna Boogie All Night" repeated so that it SOUNDED as if they'd do it all night, and then someone shouted "Turn it off," and I shouted it too, but they left it on and OTHERS started saying to leave it on and turn it louder. Then it started going off upstream, and then a second and a third and a fourth barge joined, though not in any kind of sequence, and from a brilliant start of lots of high ones it fizzled into lots of singles, some spectacular three-from-the-same-center bursts of equal size, and some of ELECTRIFYING blue-violet color like something from Mympths or Peter Max drawings, and some nice pink, too, and some confetti-smoke effects when lots of little ones were set off together, but they just ENDED about 10:05 without a CLIMAX of any kind. We waited more, but then took off, amazed how idiots could set off firecrackers and even ROCKETS in the middle of the crowded area, how people fought over fences and railings, how kids seemed to think talking was more important then looking, and how the whole thing was trivialized by the banal repetitious non-pretentious music. Met Fred Courtney on his bicycle following friends and lost Avi, but now have to call Fred to see what's up.
DIARY 13217
7/24/78
BEAR MOUNTAIN FOR A DAY ON DAYLINER
The DAYLINER is a definite disaster: people sitting everywhere, stuffing food into their faces, most hallways loud with radio noises (though the trip back was strangely blessedly silent!), very hot and humid on the top deck, though the sights of the Washington and the Tappan Zee Bridges going overhead were impressive, and the Palisades just go on and on. But never again. The park itself is rather pleasant: Hessian Lake is cool but very rocky on the bottom, and Winston and Rebekah and Malcolm lead the way in with the various children, so I join them, feeling cool from my wet shorts for the rest of the afternoon. Marilyn shares cooling cucumbers and lots of cheese, which Dorothy gets lots of, too, and Maureen's wine and cheese are welcome, too, and they'll take none of our chicken. Dennis and I go to the natural history museum, passing quickly through the geology and the botany buildings, but the bear, opossum, turkey, fawns, rabbits, fish, birds were nice, the geology trail silent until the tourists at the end talked about Germany and we stared out over the quiet river, glad to be away from the crush, and then back through the mass of people around the refreshment stands and the screams from the primarily black pool, and Dennis wonders what desperation will drive people up here. We don't try any of the bought food, but sodas for 30 seemed reasonable enough, and it was only 25 for the pool, and someone retrieved a drifting paddle boat and scooted around for awhile until it started filling. Bob Dukes was sexy in shorts, volunteering for bodywork after Sue Lieber surprised BOTH of us by volunteering to come over Thursday morning for a session here, my first, though I debated calling Bob Monday night before getting to these pages. But even the crowds can't destroy my enjoyment of the raspberries, the green of the trees not yet wilted by the summer heat (hottest was 93Ε, though he saw his bank's reading of 97Ε at 8 pm, which was rather too high, I think), and I reddened but didn't burn at all, thanks to getting seats on an east-facing deck and looking at the effect of the sun on the scenery, not into the sun itself, and a Jamaican egged-on women he tried to push past until they were aching to hit him, and he was willing to oblige, and when a kid almost fell over jumping from the second deck, I decided to wait until we tumbled downstairs and over the gangplank, Dennis chatting with someone from Farfel's record shop and LATER saying he was sorry to grump.
DIARY 13241
8/1/78
BOX TREE RESTAURANT
Entrance pleasant being met by tuxed owner Peage (?), and he DID have a candle for the cake at the last minute, loved how Dennis TOOK the Vacherin from his coaxing, which WAS a cake, and it WAS good, with the Vacherin and crème brulee sweet and interesting and textured, raising the whole thing from a 6.5 to a 7, but still not the peak of greatness for $28.50 + $11 Sancerre, which he confessed was NOT the same one on the menu, for $68 + 5.50 + 11.50 tip, an $85 meal, second only to Mr. and Mrs. Foster's, and THAT was mainly from the wine. The décor was nice (though the Stilton exploded when a spoon fell onto the floor, scattering cheese crumbs, though the port was nice with it), but the tables in back were TINY with maximum 8, and 8 out front left lots of room, but I'd hate to see it filled to maximum of 20, let alone 22, and Dennis rightly admired the kitchen for having 5 dishes for so FEW people. His vaudaise (snails out of shell with pernod au gratin) were chunky and perfectly cooked, rather cool, and tasty, though not of pernod, and I thought my Croustade des crevettes was a bit too creamy, but nicely buttery, going well with the Sancerre when the steward FINALLY got one of the two books around to us, and it was nicely cold, and Dennis joked with owner (?) about the greenness of everything: both soups, introducing him to sorrel, which I liked more than I liked the zappy yogurt-dill Bulgare soup, both nicely green, even the Sancerre chartreuse, and his plume de veau was not quite as tasty as D'Angelo's for less than half the price, thicker and tougher, and my sweetbreads had a delicious sauce with the bread crusts but were on the small-serving side, and sliced so as not to be perfectly clean, but LOADED with truffles, and his wood-mushroom taste with the veal was super, though the vermouth was dark. Salad tasty, desserts a sensation, and we were among last to leave at 12, so it's not bad getting people out on time, though since he had two drinks BEFORE coming, it's good we didn't have an aperitif, and the bill would have been even higher. Rather return to Windows on the World and try new places before returning, but it was sensational enough for his real birthday offering, and he seemed to like it better than I did, and Dorothy Donegan made a sensational ending for the evening, too, though I don't think he liked my going home alone, "Thanks for sharing my birthday" seemed to say that.
DIARY 13251
8/7/78
WINDOWS ON THE WORLD A SECOND TIME
Bar was elegant, Isao was smiling with gray and gold and white teeth, but the place didn't look NEARLY as elegant in daytime (more like a glitzy coffee shop) as it did at night, though the sides were clear and there was even a bit of sun before the clouds closed in the view completely at dark. We sat right on the corner, near where we'd sat before, but our old waiter was off on a lower side and Paul told a dreadful story about Tour D'Argent and the very young waiters, the price-less menus, and the $160 dinner with fabulous duck and not very good anything else. Our waiter hustled around with everyone changing our reserved table for 5 from a table of 8, with lots of moving around, and I ordered carafes of wine which did NOT arrive during the appetizers, and when it DID, they wanted to know who wanted which, rather than just bringing two glasses. Dennis's quail in aspic was beautiful but not very spicy-tasty; my duck and orange perfectly ordinary around an orange slice; Paul's Cervelat a treat in VERY rich sauce and good sole, pike, and lobster mousse; and Isao gave me a clam I didn't care for and Sol didn't share. Dennis's mussels in crème fraiche disappointed in a grayish sauce without the richness of crème fraiche, though he got another serving of mussels, which filled him up, but THEY were filled with little beads that I didn't care for and he hated. My veal and wild mushrooms (2 kinds, wood and Chinese, not very special) was not as good as Dennis's at D'Angelos, Paul's trout crust LOOKED great but was soggy and ordinary, Sol kept his duck to himself, and Isao's beef was thin, rare, and tasty but not much. Our chocolate-pecan soufflé had VERY little pecan, but it was good in cream sauce for a small portion, but $7 for ONE soufflé is a bit much; the kiwi sundae was as Dennis reminded we were told the FIRST time: very ordinary: just whipped cream, mashed kiwi fruit, and vanilla ice cream, but Isao's lemon sherbet was quite tangy and nippy. The wine went fast and we found it was HALF-carafes for some reason, so only $7 for wine, but the meal with tip was STILL $31 apiece; oh, they'd insisted on drinks, and my Dubonnet was better than Dennis's Stock Merger, which they called Half and Half, and probably better than Sol's Campari, and that added a lot to the bill, like $3, which wasn't really worth it. I said I'd rather go back to Box Tree, and Dennis tended to agree, and NOW we agree with all those who said that the food isn't really that special there.
DIARY 13339
8/27/78
DON MALOOF'S AT EASTHAMPTON
Far from practically anywhere, over a roller coaster road of hills and curves through forests with surprisingly large trees, the "little bit of New Jersey" sits on a plot just big enough so that the neighbors through the trees can't see TOO much of someone wandering nude, but the two days are uniformly cloudy, so we can't do much at the beach except gather shells. Happily, most of the meals: tacos and ribs the first day (no, lunch second day was inside and dinner was at restaurant) were outside, where the birds of a dozen sorts clustered around the feeder, and early in the morning blue jays took over with brilliant colors, brighter than the few cardinals. But the dogs rule the place, having to be locked in or they'll shit all over the place, which they do with disquieting frequency, and Don "can't" handle them so Ernie has to whap them. Don constantly snipes at Ernie for various things, and he takes it manfully, knowing that he's getting as much as he's giving, but the radio on in the living room first thing in the morning, even left on when we leave, and the TV constantly on with the dreariest soap operas during the afternoon while they're sleeping or fucking, makes me glad that Don doesn't have much of a vacation to absorb all this, and Ernie said that his ex-lover did the same thing, so he just learned to live with the constant din in the background. There's not much affection between them except when Don's shouting "This is the wrong time, why don't you get horny at the RIGHT time?" and his constant concern about how people look and what they want to do, though he's not shy about saying what he DOESN'T want to do. Never a thought about anything serious, which Ernie is rather into, which is good, since he does NOT seem to be good at small talk, and he'll brightly talk about whipping candle wax for froth around candle making, and it'll fall on deaf ears, getting no reaction, and we just go on to something else, not even giving him credit for TRYING. I don't feel envious of either of them, but it seems that they both rather desperately WANT someone, and they've found each other, and they could work it out rather nicely--- now if only Ernie could learn to drive as fast and recklessly on the other side of the street as Don does in his car, they'd both be content that they've gotten the better end of the deal.
DIARY 13367
9/22/78
CONEY ISLAND FOR 1978
Get a crispy-potato-coated relleno, but the meat inside tastes sour or spoiled, then out onto pier as the sun sinks lower, to watch people catching crabs in traps and fish with beer-can reels, and then he likes to ride after the sun goes down before it gets dark, so we're in for Jumbo Jet, always first, and then onto a cycling wheel that the guy jams and says "Never touch that," but Dennis threatened to get sick, so I let it go, he jammed it back, I let it go again, and this was after some stupid-ass girl pushed ahead of me and made a huge scene about it, and the dude smiled and said I didn't know women, and I smiled right back and said "You sure got what you wanted." Spent $8 in all, including $1.50 for a Cyclone ride that Dennis didn't want to repeat for only $1, and he DID want the funhouse for 75¢ (where the ticket said 20¢), and we played a lot of games in the amusement galleries, usually me winning first, he winning second, me winning third, and then I tried the "over the falls" with quarters that had to be exchanged for GIFTS rather than the cash deals everyone surrounded outside, and with 100 coupons I got a magnetic chess and checkers that we played on the way back for 85 and a neat magnetic snake-top toy for 15, after looking for a LONG while at the junk available. He didn't want the Thunderbolt, the ONLY other coaster left, and a sky-flume across Surf Avenue was closed. Many of the duller rides were hyped up by being ridden in the dark with fluorescent lights and disco music, like the Scrambler, and Dennis pointed out a number of garish chromos as great examples of amusement park decorations. Got a taco and a wrapped taco-meat thing for 75¢ each, but passed up a hot fudge sundae after we went across to a Kosher Kitchen for sodas since we were thirsty. Many of the shops were closing even at 9:30 on the boardwalk, the water looked dirty, some of the bodies were nice, but there wasn't THAT much to look at with pleasure, lots of empty lots; horridly sad-looking older people at the concession booths, lines for the disco bumper-cars, no more sideshow, and POP is only good through that week, $5.95 from 12-6 or 4-10, but not holidays. He refused to ride the Enterprise at the end and we subwayed home tired but happy.
DIARY 13384
9/13/78
JACQUES MARCHAIS TIBETAN MUSEUM AT LAST
Told Dennis that I was FINALLY seeing THAT sight that I've MOST wanted to see in NYC for the LONGEST time, somewhat over 15 years, and I guess the NEXT most-wanted sight would be the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. We both are astounded at the rural quality of the bus ride, though many of the neighborhoods appear to be black, and we ride about 40 minutes to get to Lighthouse Road, which is still only halfway across the island. Up the steep shaded road past luxurious houses to find a rock façade with a desk charging $2.00 instead of the usual 50¢, and it's crowded with people and all the special food (nettle soup, in particular) is gone and the ceremony is over, so we get the evils of crowds without the pleasure of the special event, since we don't take time to pay $3 for Tibetan Fortune Telling, for which there's a large line. Coffee and tea are 30¢, I buy a guide for $2.50 that says it's a SHE that established the museum when she loved playing with 13 brass figures given her by her grandfather, and she never left the country, and the best part is a library with MANY books on esotericism, all bound the same and painstakingly numbered, in a place full of people selling things. Monks sit around answering questions, a cassette plays arresting sounds which are NOT on the album that they sell for $5.50 from Kulu, there's the smell of incense, the sound of bowl gongs, and I tell Dennis about some of the figures on the tankas, others listening in and smiling, and some of the shrines are arrestingly brassy for being made out of wood. Tell him about the prayer wheels, the Buddhas and holy men born in lotuses, and we look down over levels of gardens that are closed, urns filled with water, Hindu bija on various objects, colored strings marking off-limits paths, and some nicely built young men who seem pleasant enough to look at, and a spaced-out woman who seems to have trained her eyes to remain half-shut to give her an air of "knowing." Can't think why I'd want to go back, but some of the stuff she had was interesting and I'd like to have copies of some of her books, I'm sure. Somehow, maybe because it took more time, the ferry and the bus rides were more interesting than the museum, which only took an hour.
DIARY 13386
9/13/78
WILTON BOOK AUCTION AND EFFIE ARTHUR
She's a marvelous hostess, giving us endless food and things, and I feel a bit displeased that Dennis didn't bring her anything, but she's such a grandmother type that she talks of her husband, advertising with the Chicago Sun, or some such paper, who died years ago, how she's giving tea to a bunch of old ladies who live in a local hotel and don't have cars, how she doesn't have money, and she has a $5,000 coin collection from her lifetime: 1902-now. The cathedral living room has whirligigs and weather cocks all over, her cabinets are filled with hollow, light, museum-quality chalkware, and her toys (spinners, push-pulls, boats that rock and row, marble towers, miniature cities with trains that are music boxes), and lots of cartoon greetings from her gay boyfriends who look like the cigarette-ad fellow, and one who was to come visit but he'd had hepatitis and some disease he'll doctor for if it lasts another day. Then to the fair, putting six-seven books on the table to be auctioned off, but it goes so slowly, the dealers are SO coy (won't START at $20, but at $5, and END at $25, just to see if they can't get it cheaper), and the auctioneers are so wasting of time with personalities, that they don't get to them, and all we've gotten is Dennis's 2 lots of 10 cookbooks for $32, rather too much, except that he wanted the Toklas and the couscous cooker. I missed out on the super-athletes, Porter's Appalachia, and "This Is New York" by E.B. White, which looked like a treasure, but not as MUCH of a treasure as a tiny chipped copy of H.D., who turns out to be Helen Doolittle, writing as an Imagist along with Edna Ferber, or someone, as given in the OLD EB and NOT in the new! THEIR old EB, 11th edition, went for $130 because it didn't have an INDEX volume with it! At the end they grouped books together and people paid up to $5 apiece anyway, so it seemed that they'd make a better deal if they just went down to the Strand and bought them for half list-price, or went to USPS auctions and picked them up. The grandest bargain of them all was the 10 remaining tables that went for $110 when they just wanted to get RID of them, and it was obviously two dealers, one of which wasn't interested. A HORRID old guy kept strolling up to the auctioneer's podium to see what was going off, and it's awful who the library field attracts. But it was an entertaining afternoon, and we MIGHT go back again.
DIARY 13405
9/18/78
SAN GENNARO FESTIVAL GUYS AND GAMES
Huckster seems to say that the front ones are "bonus" ones, and I look in and get intrigued because they SEEM better, with stacks at the edge, but he says that it's HARDER but the CHANCES are better, so I get 32 quarters and push them in to get about 10 back in all, which I feed in, and only THEN does it REOCCUR to me that they ALSO slide to the SIDES from near the front, and the stacks will FALL (as one did) before they mount the slight slope to the edge, so it's a REAL sucker thing that I fell for, and I slink away without wanting anyone to see me. I end up following the "parade," which turns out to be the statue with pamphlets (like I got in the church itself, along with TWO of the medals), with pitches from the loudspeakers to donate, and a preceding phalanx of three church banners and a following band. I get caught up with the band and don't move for a long time, and made time by going down the sidewalks, but the views there weren't so great, and it turns out (surprise!) that the views are mainly concentrated on the sleeveless arms and open shirts of the Italian males with their girlfriends, and some of the tight jeans of guys alone, and not on the stalls of Philippine, Italian, Swedish, German, Spanish, or Japanese cooking, nor on the ring-over-Coke-bottle, ball-through-toilet-seat, penny-into-glass-through-water, bounce-ball-greyhound-races, or put-dime-in-circle for a puppy or $200 games. Dressy dolls being sold for $10 beyond the press, stalls had to lower their awnings to let the "parade" pass, people in church kissing the hanky-wiped icon (and why isn't the hanky as dirty as the kisses?), and people eating and spilling stuff on the filthy streets, and kids being pushed, crying, in buggies that nip at the heels of those moving too slowly in front. Dennis said La Puglia was great this afternoon, sidewalk tables were all filled with people nursing one soda, and crotches, blond hairs over tanned muscled arms and backs, thick thighs through tattered jeans, and bulbous asses and chests were still the center of attraction, and I just got hornier and hornier (as in the movie I got hungrier and hungrier) as I concentrated on all the good stuff TO BE had that I wasn't getting any of.
DIARY 13434
9/25/78
DECIDE NOT TO SHOP FOR VIDEO RECORDER
Video recorders had always exerted a "buy me" urge (as did Moog synthesizers) from the first time I heard about them, but the urge heightened 9/17/78 when I wanted to watch "Battlestar Galactica" versus "Dumbo" and "Kong" on another channel, and videotaping would let me do that. HOWEVER, I find that it had to take the signal from my ANTENNA, which has to be set at VERY DIFFERENT settings to get the best signal for each station, so I would have to get an AWFUL recording, or watch an AWFUL station, depending on which I set it for--- or have BOTH of less-than-peak images with some between-setting. So I'd best wait until I'm on some sort of CABLE (which doesn't look like it'll happen soon, cable coming to Brooklyn) so that ALL reception is good. THEN I thought there were only 2-3 brands, and then I find out there are at least 10: Sony/ JVC/ Sanyo/ Akai/ Quasar/ Panasonic/ RCA/ Magnavox/ Zenith/ Hitachi/ Philips, which makes the problem of SHOPPING and SELECTING more difficult (though I hear there are only TWO manufacturers, Sony and Panasonic--- which leads Rolf to ask "No Americans?"--- but it may be that MANY going to 4 hours (which seems to be a relatively new thing) will force ALL of them to go to 4 hours, and maybe a few more years will weed out some of the competing glitches, so that one COMPATIBLE tape evolves to make things simpler and cheaper at a much faster rate. Then rumor keeps saying they're not PERFECTED yet, too. AND THEN I watch "Footsteps of Buddha" on TV and get REMINDED that the idea is not to ACCUMULATE things but to GET RID of things, and I'm worried that I'm involved in TOO MUCH right now, yet not even using my SONIC recorders to the extent that I'd like to, so the VIDEO recorder craze is just another thing to keep me away from WRITING and PUBLISHING and doing the OTHER things that I want to do that would give me the MONEY so that I could HAVE these things without WORRYING how much they cost or how big a discount I could get on them or how much the TAPES would cost after I've invested in the original machinery. Like my MOTION PICTURE camera, which I don't use so much, which replaced my SLIDE PROJECTOR almost completely, new toys don't really serve me very long, and then I'm captured by the NEW thing that comes along.
DIARY 13465
10/3/78
ENGLISHTOWN FLEA MARKET
Across the rickety bridge to see "ostrich eggs" that are white eggplant, and Don buys 10 pounds (more like 11 with over-weighing) for $3.50 and we take them right back to the car. Clouds of breath fill air as there's a good movement in sweaters, shawls, and gloves for the frigid morning, but then the sun comes up about 7 am and it warms up to midday where my jacket comes off, my yellow shirt rubs me raw in the dust (which isn't THAT bad, but it's there), and there are a few shirtless males. But they seem to sell EVERYTHING: macramé, old books and records, toys, Lionel trains, rusty hinges, Italian sausages, leather jackets, kitchen cabinets, Lloyd stereo sets for $59, wall fans, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, paper, scissors, any tool you can think of, walls of hubcaps, auto maintenance books, musical instruments such as accordions and trumpets (don't remember seeing any drums), sinks, mirrors, clothing of every sort, shoes and boots and sandals, lawnmowers (no farm equipment that I noticed), old comic books of which I bought a 1952 (so I would have been 16 on reading, a bit late) Captain Marvel Jr. with only a FEW bizarre crotches, plastic trays that I was tempted to buy for 49, roasting ovens for $5, pressure cookers for $8, shoes for $9, Levis for $5-8, meat, fish, shellfish, gold and jewelry and watches and junk, Herculon throws, barbershop boxes, battered cans at about Key Food prices, opened and retaped boxes of macaroni, noodles, and spaghetti, old candy and cookies, Softee cones, pillows by the hundreds, hand-knit throws and shawls, chickens and rabbits and pigeons, religious groups, junk foods of all types, used games, picture puzzles with one piece missing, books with covers torn off to get price refunded and they're selling them now at 2 for 25, and I look at the PEOPLE: woman carrying 50 pounds of potatoes on her head, guys cruising girls, people walking dogs and bicycles and baby carriages, women doing their everyday shopping, rich ones just seeing the sights, and I got full up with people and THINGS, wondering how it would be for this to be preserved as THE cross-section of mezzo-American culture, and Don and Ernie bought and bought and bought, bargaining and taking cards and promising to come back and carting their cart and filling their trunk and bragging how much cheaper some things were than in the city, and delighted at being there for the second time this year, and I can't see going back for 10 years.
DIARY 13475
10/5/78
CHRYSLER FIREWORKS IN CENTRAL PARK
I hope they make it a yearly, expandable thing, since it was GREAT to see! Sheep Meadow wasn't so crowded (though I was amazed to see so many completely bald patches, baseball-diamond size) that we couldn't walk anywhere, and I thought to investigate lower field, but we couldn't get across easily, so we went toward the sound truck and listened to announcements about seven countries and the grand finale, and sat down to listen to the march from Italy, and they had lots of red, white, and green, and lots of noise, but it didn't seem that great: like the old Italian jokes come alive in fireworks. Then there were boos from the audience when the People's Republic of China was announced, but the Chinese orchestra accompanied the most beautiful display of the evening: long-lasting twinkling stars that must have been ballooned phosphorous bombs floated down lasting many seconds, comet-like streamers made the audience gasp, and the almost soundless bursts had an elegance and beauty that the razzle-dazzle of the bombs and rockets just couldn't match. Shocked comments came from all over, which were never again equaled. Then came France and the Gaité Parisienne, but their powder might have been damp in the moist evening, because lots of their displays seemed to get caught in the treetops and not rise above the ground, and it seemed there were pauses in the middle and it was over too soon. Then came a mambo from Brazil, and again it was rather disappointing: as if they couldn't afford to spend too much money. Great Britain came on with pipes in the music and whistles in the air, which were kicky: like swarms of goldfish suddenly left out of school with exuberant whinnies of pleasure. Japan's music was on the koto, and some of their flowers were stunning, but by that time we were having enough of it. The United States "Stars and Stripes" was better music than fireworks, and nothing went beyond THREE tiers, let alone four or the vaunted five-layered ones. Then the finale built up during "Sidewalks of New York" and started battlefield-blasting during "Ease on," so that it just couldn't be heard, and they went ON and ON and ON until I cried and beamed and gaped at the same time, and then the "Gallant Seven" escorted us off the field, whether this tribute to the Seventh Regiment was planned that way or the whole thing was mistimed, like the sound almost was for announcing, is unknown. FUN!
DIARY 13479
10/5/78
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
They don't have a guide to the galleries, and I thought it was a kick that "Street Kids," shots mostly of VERY poor people (and a heart-wrenching one from 1890 of slum kids tying cross-braces to a broom handle stood upright in a rag-filled pail, and dangling all their toys from the skimpy braces in "Constructing a Christmas tree" in the knee-dirty and waterlogged wood-apartment in Poverty Row), led right into "Classical Silver" in their light blue settings, flawlessly polished, each occupying more room than one of the kids had in the more crowded picture. Hardly anyone in the entire museum, and whole spotless rooms were filled with boring stilted primitive portraits of early New Yorkers, but they might not have more than 4-5 visitors per day. Toured the Rogers figures to find he was singularly sexless, and then up (via a Fulton Fish market photo with the only adolescent cock in the whole Kids show) the elevator to 4 to see again the fabulous Thomas Cole series on The Course of Empire: from Savage to Beginnings to Culmination to Destruction to Desolation, and looked at the "exhaustive book" on him and find ONLY a sketch for the last one, and they said they had no reproductions of either the Coles, the Bierstadts, or the quieter but somehow more beautiful Durands of the Adirondack region. And Cole's "Titan's Goblet" was neat though I hardly looked at it. Down side aisles to see more rooms filled with spotless furniture, Stuart portraits, and absolutely no one looking at them, passing guards with underarm odor strong in their uniforms, and remember fondly the "in small" section of doll houses, dolls, furniture, books, and toys, displayed along with miniatures and other tiny works of art, but again no one would come in to look at them after their semi-fashionable opening, and it seemed so sad to see such a proud institution begging for dollars at the door, some floors closed for lack of funds, but new exhibits being installed for AGAIN no one to come to look at them, and it seemed a sad waste of effort: both from the artists who did the work, the generous people who gave it to the museum, the museum for preserving it, and the poor people who have to work there with their vanishing small attendance, compared to the instant sellout of the Tut Treasures.
DIARY 13480
10/5/78
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Gallery 77 is all about Papua New Guinea, and I spend most of my time there, obviously not able now to take my time to notate all the areas for goodness in the catalog that I just bought. Find that the Eskimo area is closed temporarily, back through to look at the Biology of Birds, fascinated again by the reconstruction of the dodo, a flock of passenger pigeons, a heath hen which is looking at one of two surviving examples of nests of eggs, and a chart of birds extinct or in danger of becoming extinct. But it seemed musty and unused, as opposed to the bright-unused quality of the New York Historical Society (see DIARY 13479). Many of the biology exhibits seemed too scholarly for quick seeing, the small mammals and the mammals of the western hemisphere (or whatever) were all familiar from ages of visits long ago, and then I looked at some of the filmstrips about flies and bees to see there was too much there to see, and then down to the enormous room with the whale in the ceiling, and find that it's been transformed by the simple method of putting in new risers on the marble stairs, making the descent more elegant, and carpeting the room in blue, with white tile walks to central kiosks with TV-like films of fish and crabs and anemones that can be watched SITTING down, which is a relief, and the magic of the dioramas are still there, even though I've seen them many times and even if they look somewhat yellow with age and dusty with accumulations of years. Down to the basement to see that there is in fact nothing there in the line of displays (and the Discovery Room was, in fact, closed except on weekends) but that they'd redecorated the cavernous cafeteria to look more like a midtown office-company's cafeteria with white tablecloths (maybe only for the evenings?) and sleek new stands and cash registers. Then the auditorium was glorious, seating 1000 people, stark white begging for gold trim, and the dance program was interesting enough (see DIARY 13481) for me, but Arnie slept through most of it. Liked the rather commercial air about the Papua thing: selling wood and shell-selling ideas, portraying money and butterflies and proof sets from the Franklin Mint, and lots of cocks on wooden statues and pleasant bodies on the young-old men in the slides working in jungles and fields.
DIARY 13546
10/23/78
STORM KING ARTS CENTER
I pay $5: $2.50 for pamphlet "Sculpture: A Study of Materials," 50¢ for their guide, and $2 for the entrance fee, and wander around the gothic columns from some original mansion, down to the deSuvero's which look GREAT against the cloud-fleeced blue sky and colorful trees of autumn, the thruway traffic humming insectly in the distance, and see people walking from far away to find they'd just walked that way for the view, find the Von Schlegell's unmarked, the Schleeh "Family" fetching where I see the baby's mouth coterminal with the mother's nipple but Don can't see the kid at all, and then inside to lots of wooden Nevelsons, about as many Smiths are outside, imaginative, the Baizerman is sensuous when he does men, Calder is too familiar to be interesting, Dehner was the wife of David Smith and made neat stacks of laminated, sawed, glued wood; Eva Hesse is so simplistic I copy her ideas in the program, Huntington disturbs Don with his juxtaposition of rock and steel, and Marja Vallila is more brown than interesting. The house had been luxurious and they whiten and flatten everything for the museum. The vine-covered stone house with cornerstones of 1740 and 1782 across the road is MUCH more interesting and wealth-flaunting. Outside to wander among the Shelsons and attracted to the egg-wombed Noguchi, feel relief to see a human form in "Golgotha" by Hrdlicka, which reminds me of Dennis's body, and then down forest paths to see SIGNS for Johanson's "Nostoc II," but it's either not there OR it's the blue thing I see when I clamber UP the path again! The enormous Liberman's are sort of fun, Don wears out, Ernie wants to walk across ("That's not the same as climbing, is it?" the Grosvenor "Untitled," we think that Pfann's tooth-like "Growing Forms" will dissolve in the rain someday, and back up past the DiSuvero's, so enormous they take over, except from the OTHER distance where Streeter's "Endless Column" zigzags up and Hawkins' "Four Poles and Light" shifts shapes as we circle around it. Many are lost, some appear intrinsic to the landscape already, some too obtrusive, but most of them benefit from having a playground to themselves and their kind, and I'd never been so pleased to see so many pieces which individually I wouldn't care for.
DIARY 13552
10/23/78
HAITIAN ART AND NUBIAN ART AT BROOKLYN MUSEUM
HAITIAN ART had large unshaded areas of simplistic colors, and some of the stories of white and black goddesses, pink flamingos, women who were butterflies and bees in flowers, but soon the primitivism got tiring, the crowds watching the TV shows of interviews with artists, the Ra-Ra voodoo festival, and types of art in the country were so crowded that we couldn't see them. He said we'd see the Nubian Art first and then return, but we didn't have time. Lots of blacks seemed not at all interested in technique or story, just there to be seen or to shop for things for their living rooms, it seemed. Crying kids all over, and Dennis got a kick out of the visitor's book. Crowded but not impossibly so, nice to see so many people at a museum for a show that was designed for them in mind. Hope the museum gets cash.
NUBIAN ART seemed for the most part a rip-off of Egyptian art, though there were a couple of interesting 3rd millennium BC flat-chested female goddesses that I might have liked to buy the guide to have pictures of. Lots of rather boring incised pots and jars, but some grand gold and silver pieces of jewelry with "canine-type animals" took us through the little-known names of the region: Napata and Kush and Meroe and Karpana and whatever else there was. One woman clapped the glass inadvertently and murmured "I'm sorry" when she was pointing out something to a friend, lots of sexy guys whose crotches seemed more interesting to me and Dennis than the artifacts from the deep past, and I would have liked more photographs of the ruins or the burial grounds that these came from, but there was lots of print and not too much visual stuff, and the pieces are rather starkly displayed without anything around them to give them a context. Kept telling him that today there's only Egypt and Sudan, kept being more impressed with the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the adjoining galleries, but just got to the contemporary art and the printed fears of the extinction of the Nubians in general when the place started closing and we found ourselves in the backyard's abandoned SCULPTURE MUSEUM with paving of 10 different materials, lots of GREAT caryatids and sculptures and carvings and cornices overgrown with ivy, some even indoors.
DIARY 13554
10/23/78
FLORIDA VIA ITT LAND
Ed Mascali's a huge pocked-faced guy in a green suit and a HUGE pot who is so impressed with my books that he talks about being organized, what's an indexer, oohing and aahing about my Pediatrics book, getting started with his slide show about 1 pm after being told he has to leave at 2, which makes MY discovery that it's 2:20 unpleasant. He breezes through rather impressive slides except for the ACTUAL plots of land, then looks at sector 28A, block 3, lot 20, a corner that's 125x100 feet (for a dentist or doctor), for 12,500 square feet (which is less than 1/3 acre!) at $7,200, "completion" in 1980, which seems to mean roads, canals, and sewage, for which I pay $850/year starting the second year--- which is wild, since--- no, no, only $850 in ALL, and ITT pays taxes until FULL payment, when you ALSO pay taxes and interest. I copy down the 10-year plan at 5% payment, coming out to $86.65 monthly with a finance charge of $3,558, to an 8% interest with 10% down for $80.35 per month, and $68.38/month for 20% down, and then looked at 5-year plan for $141.99/month for 5% and $132.95/month for 10% down, and wondered what would be the best for taxation purposes. He wanted me to sign, but I insisted on reading the contract (even though I agreed he wasn't trying to hide anything (though $250/tree stump removed seemed a bit steep) and he went through all the sections--- but when I read it I find that I SHOULD see the NY and Florida offering papers AND get a notice of cancellation BEFORE I sign, not to mention showing the papers to a professional, even though the government has insisted that an escape clause be entered) and wanted his card and a copy of the plan that lets me pay $141 to fly down and get two days there to look it over, at which point I can cancel and get a refund if I don't like it, and he says he'll be over at Montague Wednesday and will come past to see if I've signed it then. Try to call Rolf but he's not home, Susan didn't hear about it but thought it was a wild idea, though she liked the indexing idea even more, and Amy thought it wasn't something to harm me, but I looked at it and just wondered if I wanted to get INVOLVED in something more, ANYTHING more that would take more of the TIME away from me!
DIARY 13586
10/31/78
INDIAN EXHIBIT AT CUSTOM HOUSE AND NEW YORK SERENDIPITY
The Custom House itself has been cleaned and looks very impressive, and the audiovisual presentation in the darkened corridor leading to the men's room is a marvelous example of sights and sounds: slightly changing positions of artifacts as a few at a time are changed in alternating-merging slides, drums and jingles and rattles are sounded as their pictures come on, sometimes alternating quickly to form an illusion of motion, and the QUALITY of the items lends a RICHNESS of velvet and jewelry and glitter and feathers to the Indians' life that I don't usually associate with it. The central court is impressively bare of reading material, huge mosaics above impressive as architecture, and the side alcoves are being given guided tours that I listen to with pleasure, beetle-wing earrings and shell jewelry impressive. Then to the shop to find nothing, and hit the astounding gold room with the silver and finely wrought objects, and the library collection, and leave much impressed with the simplicity and the quality and quantity of what I've seen.
OUTSIDE, the bagpipes can still be heard, and there's still a ripping quality to the sound that brings ideas of orgasm to mind, and the stepping-in-time hairy knees are fun, too. There's an electronic display on the front of the newest bus that constantly changes, and padded seats and a special route for it, and people are climbing to the old and new double-decker tops to watch the ceremonies below, later, when I see Mayor Koch for the first time, and he's issuing a proclamation saying that it's mainly thanks to the subways that the days-long carriage journey from the Bronx to Coney island is reduced to a few hours, and I listen in Bowling Green Park, which I don't recall having actually BEEN in before, and it's pleasant with eaters and sunners sitting on the maintained benches, and the bright sunlight on the business-suited crowds, elderly magnates greeting each other, cheers me considerably, On the subway is a perfect example of contrast: gray-haired, tailored, suited, neatly done-up man reading American Banker across from the unshaved, uncombed, fat, greasy, untied shoelaces of the prematurely aged 30-year-old reading The Racing Form, and meeting Andre after his unemployment signing adds that note of coincidence that could happen "only in New York."
DIARY 13658
11/24/78
FOOD-FILLED THANKSGIVING
Not only is my refrigerator filled with fruit and yogurt and cheese (most of which I take to hosts) and unused food from the party last night, but Dennis's refrigerator is so crowded with the chicken and half and half and leftover punch that he has no room for the rice, of which I cooked three boxes for 24 people and they ate about 2/3 of. So we don't eat anything until we gorge ourselves on Don's hors d'oeuvres platter, and I take care not to drink too much, though Ernie douses my Tab (though I suspect, as say so, that DON nudged his elbow with the rum), and the wine's too dry and the turkey isn't fabulous, but I'm still full and am hoping for a 2-3 hour intermission, but when we get, dripping, to Catherine's, she's EATING already, so we have to get plates and fill them with turkey and dressing and gravy and yams and salad and eat AGAIN, since Catherine stares at us and says "I hope you're just STARVING!" She's AWFULLY black-eyed, and some of her guests are weird: Madame is quiet in black, Deborah brassy in blond, Cam feminine and fawning, Lyn would be sexier if he were thinner, and he keeps looking at me; Nikolaides is too inquisitively conversational, not even letting me enjoy the early Blake illustrations in "Night Journey" by myself, and then he gets into a ludicrous "life after death" argument with Millie, who's into PR for others and NOT for herself. I.W. is brash and too loud in tone, and Sonia moons around the place, and they leave to whip cream, which gives me a chance to say I've had three courses, and I'm feeling out of place and too tied up with my cold. Love the cat, but my right eye itches and then I rub and rub and RUB the dander of the cat into it, I guess, because it gets VERY red and when I turn my eyes the skin of the cornea appears to bubble under the eyelid, frightening me, but I just say I have to leave and wait for a crowded subway and ride home to feel SO bloated that I have to drink more water just to get things down, and decide it would be a catastrophe if I didn't stay seated for a bit to give things a chance to settle down, but it's just about as much SOCIALIZING as I can take in a dense space of time, too, I just didn't have anything to SAY at Catherine's, so I was glad to (make up?) have an excuse to leave ANYWAY.
DIARY 13670
12/1/78
AFTERNOON IN THE LIBRARY
Add 38 books from the 1978-79 Books in Print, a total cost of $303 added: 4 by Huxley, 1 by Heinlein, 4 Blackwoods, 2 Burroughs, 3 Nabokovs, 1 Sturgeon, 2 Teilhard de Chardins, 1 Sheckley, 3 Bradburys, 3 Updikes, 2 Eiseleys, 2 Purdys, 4 Dahls, 3 Fowleses, 2 Coovers, and so many of them are children's' books or books of poems or limited-edition books that seem CREATED to make life miserable for collectors like me--- though I'm sure these are the very ones that will command premium prices in the years ahead--- that I seriously think of just chucking the whole thing: after all, I STARTED the list of books I wanted MERELY because I wanted to have a supply of books to READ: now I have something like 200 to read and don't seem to be diminishing them over the past year, and STILL I'm adding books to the list and buying new ones. So I should do it more casually, and I won't have to buy so many more new bookcases to put the new books onto. Then I pass time reading about the "Death Cult" in Time and Newsweek, which devotes 24 pages to the whole thing, and then the New York Magazine that the mailman didn't deliver this week, then the National Geographic on Ebla from 2400BC when it was a city of 250,000 people, possibly the largest on earth from this newly discovered culture with 4 times as many preserved wedge-incised tablets than all the other contemporary civilizations put together; then Rolling Stone which was somewhat a bore; Esquire, which was MORE of a bore without either women OR men to sex it up; Popular Science, which seemed to be all PRODUCTS; Science News, which was just tiny, about 16 pages; Fortune, for which I noted "Ugh"; Photography, which was 264 pages of ADS; US News and World Report which was unexciting; Money, which was boring; National Review, which was bookish; and Ms, which wasn't much. By this time I'd about cleared out the English language magazines on the shelf except for Sports Illustrated and Atlantic Monthly and lots of Spanish language magazines that didn't look like they had a bit of sense about them. A German magazine, too, but I didn't see any in French or I would have been tempted to look at it: and a bound copy of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, too, to round out the collection.
DIARY 13776
1/1/79
"OUT ON THE TOWN" RESTAURANT OBSESSION
I keep wanting to use all the tickets, but it's good that I started throwing away coupons as they became outmoded as the time neared 12/30, so that when I ended up with only 14 tickets used, I wasn't particularly concerned with the 40 or so that I DIDN'T use, and felt that in general results were good:
SAVED TOTAL
1) COYOTE (Dennis) 6/27 $20.90-14.40 $6.50 SAVED Good place.
2) GOLDEN CURRY 6/29 11.07-7.00 4.07 $10.57 Not again.
3) MARTAS OF BERGEN ST 7/14 16.20-10.45 5.75 16.32 Never again.
4) D'ANGELOS 7/28 31.40-23.65 7.75 24.07 Too expensive.
5) BRASILIA 8/20 17.45-12.70 4.75 28.82 Good food.
6) PUGLIA 9/9 23.00-19.00 4.00 32.82 GreatLoudPlace.
7) MONASTERY 9/13 22.50-15.50 7.00 39.82 Mediocre.
8) MONTMARTRE 10/17 31.75-23.00 8.75 48.57 Poor bargain.
9) LA FRONDE (Art) 12/19 29.35-22.00 7.35 55.82 InterestNoMore
10) BLUE HAWAII (Amy) 12/21 11.50-7.00 4.50 60.42 Awful.
11) LA PROVENCAL (Andre) 12/22 "Changed hands, no discount." Mediocre.
12) TAVOOS (Arnie) 12/26 24.75-16.00 8.75 69.17 FabulousFood$$$
13) HUNAN ROYAL (Ernie) 12/27 14.75-10.00 4.75 73.92 Poor,not again.
14) GAYLORDS (Andre) 12/28 24.20-16.00 8.20 82.12 Poor,not again.
So for the $25 payment and $2 tax for $27, we got over 3 times the investment back in food, but had to SPEND a lot of money in restaurants we wouldn't have ordinarily gotten to, though 4 out of 14 is not an AWFUL average, though I would guess that we'd get a better average by going to places that we'd heard of or wanted to eat in for OUR reasons, rather than because they wanted to increase their food sales. So I don't think I'd like to do it again, particularly after getting burned a couple of times, and finding out that their phone number "is not in service at this time," so there's no court of last resort to get satisfaction. And it's not easy to get interest in GOOD restaurants if mediocre ones seem to be wastes of time, despite the kick of seeing how much food we get for free. The TIME isn't worth it in the long run, and the pressure of so many OTHERS to try out is so overwhelming.
DIARY 13909
1/7/79
TREASURE OF DRESDEN AT THE MET MUSEUM
I get a cassette, which Dennis hates, and there are lots of people and a stupid guard who keeps shouting to people to move inside, and the paintings are brilliantly lit, the little jewelry cases are thronged with people, though we have a time at the Rose Garniture for good looks, and then to the prints that had been kept in books and not exhibited separately, and to the Kunstcamera which is so chock-a-block with things that people press in on the plastic separating we from it and no one can see anything, and it's just a commentary on what WE are doing: THEN it was unscientific and all lumped together, but a FEW people saw it and cared for it and KNEW it--- it PROGRESSED to where it was scientific and separated and lots of people looked at it and knew it--- and NOW it's lumped together JUST because it came from Dresden: paintings and prints and china and bronzes and statuary and jewelry and architecture and armor and guns and swords and diamonds and reading material and scholarship and spectacle and crowds--- and MILLIONS of people see it and hardly ANYONE gets more than just a "gee whiz" from a few items before they're out on the street with mental indigestion, an impression of "what that must have BEEN like" and then EITHER a more-than-glutinous continuation through other sections of the museum, until physical fatigue stopped even us, or a strict avoidance of ANYTHING more with the sated feeling of Thanksgiving, when there's so much and it's so good that afterward all there is remains the regret that we hadn't done it more wisely. Even reading the BOOK won't satisfy all the curiosity, the museums THERE are endless, and here we push through past masses of people, and find ourselves more drawn by a sexy crotch on a blue-jeaned faggot than to the priceless enamelware on the high shelves where we can more easily see the bottoms of the pedestals than the tops of the pieces. Even the respectful cassettes seemed condescending: "here is where you SHOULD pause in reverence and think your own thoughts *beep*" But it IS a dynamite exhibit, it IS better than not having gone to Dresden, or having lived at that time, or having BEEN that KING OF POLAND, yet it's part of a super-sales super-hype that merchandises Tut and museums like another kind of status symbol: like grand ballet or opera that people go to from DUTY rather than desire, another PLEASURE relegated to the DO LIST for the Jones-followers!
DIARY 13938
1/13/79
IBM DEMONSTRATES SYSTEM 6
Cathy Chen is surprised doing her own work, but she starts talking about her "index" file, which she's made terribly simple, and I ask her how she can ignore the prepositions to sort on when sorting the subentries, and she comes up with the idea of a DIFFERENT FIELD, which she chooses to put in back but which I'm sure could be put in front, which is contiguous for OUTPUT purposes but NOT sorted upon. Later I ask if there's any possibility of page ranging, and she says no, and it's not even possible to "place a constant" when pages get very large, like 1211, without putting in a code which would be longer than the page number. We get into codes, too, and she says that the global operation can only be done on TEXT, but there's no easy way to convert a file from INDEX to TEXT, though I seem to think it can be done, and she tries, then substitutes ///lougy for all the various "ology" entries, and manages to REPLACE all her GOOD entries with ///lougy! But she'd read the original file onto a magnetic card, so she's practically saved. Over to the NEXT-door computer for the global feature, but the dryness of the day and the thickness of the carpet produces such static electricity that the printer promptly goes down, much to their chagrin, so we're back to the original room while Cathy tries to sort on subentries and Rolf gets what paper information he can from Bill, and has been VERY impressed with the daisywheel printer which prints JUST like a typewriter at 10 characters or so per second, and with the GREAT clarity of the screen, which, though small and needing to switch from fields 1-60 to 61-120, IS clear enough to work with, THOUGH the constant clicking through of OPTIONS which you want to start on looks TERRIBLE for Cathy to repeat, though she's standing on her head to try to make the things look good. She uses sheet after sheet of paper, but even with REVERSING "sort on field 3 and 7" to "sort on field 7 and 3," it just DOESN'T seem to work: the reverse LEAVES OUT the main entries that HAD subentries, and there's some sort of global problem that we can't solve, so Bill says she'll do it or send it down to Houston or Dallas for the main MSR's (marketing systems researchers, or something) to handle, and she'll get back to him and he'll get back to her, though Rolf and I rather agree that they'll probably decide it can't be done anyway--- though he's not pressing for the $50,000 System 32 OR the smaller System 1 that Rolf asked about at lunch.
DIARY 14023
1/29/79
DINNER WITH JOHN/GEORGE/DENNIS AT HUBERT'S
John and I chat about his new job from 4-8 pm daily, and how he'd been expected to pick up computer-oriented typesetting from a beginner's manual, which leads me to think training for indexers might not be such a bad request, though some like Andre might not be capable of learning that way. Dennis is chatting briskly with George behind when John says Hubert's beef Wellington Christmas Eve wasn't the greatest, and Dennis says, "You have to speak up when you're talking about food." After the usual 20-minute wait, during which Karen said she thought of Amy whenever she saw me, Hubert greeted John warmly, as did others who had been there then, and George tried little better than vainly to look connected with us. We sat at the front table, at which George considerately kept his cigarette smoke out of our faces, and laughed loudly at John's descriptions of his white-greeting to me as he crossed the lawn surrounded by cosmos in Manali, marveled at his remembering the man who died while setting out the thousands of candles for the film at the Udaipur City Palace Hotel, and the fat French photographer who wafted across some Jaipur lake island when we grabbed onto the tour (and I noted he said "We" when I rather recall he didn't like my pushiness in getting us on board). Dennis told again about his circle of Kennedy for 6 hours while reading Anna Karenina, George put in a few bon mots that made us laugh, and we greatly enjoyed the papad, highly spiced, the delicious (best I ever ate) clams and coconut, the cardamom-y dahl soup with rice and onion tops in dabs on top, the most delicious chicken in yogurt, and the strange fudge-shaped non-sweet squares. But the three bottles of rosé were a bit much (see DIARY 14024) and I couldn't finish the beer we ordered at the end, rather due to John's insistence he didn't care for wine with the meal, but he kept saying "Just one more tiny sip" and had his share and then ended up having NONE of the beer. We all compared vocalizing, talked of John's readings, Dennis's job, my looking for teachers for indexing, George's job in the McGraw-Hill library through which he met Guy, enabling Dennis to meet him before he met him through Paul at Tree, and we were all pleased with each other's company and others, to my enjoyment, led the brisk walk back through chilly Brooklyn streets at 12:30 in the morning.
DIARY 14159
3/9/79
SUSAN AND ROLF RECYCLE RED HOOK
Susan talks about some waterfront area in Boston that's far from public transportation which became very elegantly restored, and she keeps saying how "beautiful" all old warehouses and stone walls and wrought iron detailings are, but I can't quite see it that way. Rolf talks about how it would have to be done on a LARGE scale so that it would START, rather than a few people getting together and starting it for themselves and hoping it would grow. They compare knowledge of government financing for this sort of thing, chatting about the Eagle Warehouse and the factories between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges (where he says the noise of the bridges is excessive, but Susan says she grew up in the front bedroom of the Leiber's second-floor-above-toy store apartment on Atlantic Avenue, so "automobile traffic is like crickets to me") and other sites where the city and state are pouring in seed money to get things going. Susan burbles about hydrofoils shunting people back and forth from pier to pier, to and from Manhattan and Fulton Ferry, and how she almost bought a house in Fulton Ferry and how she'd love to buy property here, though Rolf says that some of the tenement construction is shoddy inside, with very low ceilings, since they were built for POOR people rather than being built by individuals for their own homes. She talks of the Brooklyn real estate business and what blocks are good and which aren't, they chat about the various streets and highways and buildings undermined by ground water in Brooklyn (and say that the St. George had artesian wells for salt water for their pool right under the building!), and he talks about the real-estate cycle and how we haven't reached the 1973 peak after the 1975 slump in "real" dollars, though we may have in inflated dollars, and she questions his figures since the prices in Manhattan seem to have risen completely out of sight of ANY previous high, but he seems to be talking about some industry average. They talk mortgages and cash flow and rent loads and reconstruction and plumbing and loans and I just listen, impressed that I know people who know all about this, but feeling quite uninterested in learning all about this sort of thing for myself. They seem to like each other, but I request that he keep "our" car "mine" for Susan's ears.
DIARY 14191
3/19/79
TRIP #1 WITH THE CAR: STATEN ISLAND/CONFERENCE
The entrance to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is closed off Atlantic, and the car chokes and almost stops once below it, so Dennis is eager to stay off the freeways, but we drive through lower Brooklyn scenically and then onto the expressway around Hamilton Street, then follow signs to the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, pay $1, take the exit to Hyland Boulevard, and it's like driving along the south shore of Long Island, or as Dennis says, in Southern California: fast food places, palatial catering halls, old restaurants with flashy neons, ice cream parlors and a few old homes and lots of new tract houses and lots of billboards for autos and real estate and insurance and various merchandise. Huge Master's Shopping Center with a flea market, some interesting appearing restaurants with lobster tails for $5.95, and then past aborted streets with only signs and curbs and forests, a monstrous enclave for Mount Loretto, and then a blocked road-end and the Conference House. Knowledgeable guy tells us the history, inauthenticity of most of the furniture, tunnel to channel, wet basement, bricks from Holland, brochure for 25, few other visitors, amusements on nearby point in the turn of the century, and we're down on sodden grass to look at still-lifeless trees, bricky sand, oil freighters in the channel, and rustic New Jersey across the way. Back by way of Amboy Road, and that was better: tiny communities linked by this as the Main Street; small shops and hair stylists and aquariums and older nicer houses, rather like New England or better Pennsylvania, and some views over the ocean, and nice roads going farther inland that we might try sometime. Joining to Richmond Road it got busier and less interesting, and the way to the bridge was clearly marked and Dennis had to think for a long time before he agreed to pay for all the tolls for short trips and gas for long trips and nothing much else, saying he hadn't planned on spending $2.50 for a short afternoon's outing, but he said he enjoyed it, we liked looking at houses and street names and the Conference House and driving around the countryside of Staten Island not believing that this, too, is part of the City of New York, and more to come.