New York Day by Day: Saturday

[talktooloose]

Snake found a brochure and discount coupon for the Museum of Sex at Penn Station. We were particularly interested in checking out the exhibit on 1500 years of Chinese Erotic Obsession. Further examination, however, revealed that the brochure was a year old and the exhibit was long past.

Still, we headed for that neighbourhood (5th Ave and W27) but ultimately just chose to wander the city with our Historic Landmarks guidebook, getting all dewey over the grand era of skyscraper building in the 20s and 30s.

We chilled against a cool marble wall in Grand Central Station and watched the world go by before heading back to my sister's place for the seder.

We numbered 17 at the table including some interesting guests. One was a sexy young guy who is just completing his fucking MBA at fucking Yale and is going into fucking mergers and acquistions law in LA. This person couldn't be more foreign to my existence if he were a Palauan fisherman. We had an interesting pre-dinner conversation where he turned out to be not an arch-neocon but still thought that the Walmartization of the world was just dandy because it's "more efficient!" I only had my line later on when he was seated to far away: "Efficiency without humanization is like a table of contents with no book."

The evening was also my mom's 77th birthday and Snake made an awesome (not to mention kosher for Pesach) cake with a wine custard sauce. He got lots of attention for it, especially because my 79 year old cousin is in the first stage of Alzheimer's and asked loudly every two minutes: "Who made this delicious cake?!"

I made my mom a mix CD (a concept she was unfamiliar with) and she was thrilled. The songs were a combination of things she knows and new things I thought she'd like:

1 Big D (Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews)
2 Yidl mitn Fidl (Finjan)
3 Hurshat Ha'ekalptus (Shuli Natan)
4 Scarborough Fair Canticle (Simon and Garfunkel)
5 I Wish I Were in Love Again (Julie Andrews)
6 Miss Chatelaine (k. d. lang)
7 Madeleine (Jacques Brel)
8 Ot Ot Du Vil Ich (Finjan)
9 Petit Pays (Cesaria Evora)
10 Petite annonce amoureuse (Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
11 Take This Waltz (Leonard Cohen)
12 Speak Low (Lotte Lenya)
13 Little Water Song (Ute Lemper)
14 You Can't Get A Man With A Gun (Bernadette Peters)
15 Too Darn Hot (Holly Cole)
16 Stormy Weather (Joni Mitchell)
17 September Song (Lotte Lenya)
18 The Miller's Son (Cleo Laine)
19 Love for Sale (Mel Tormé)

And thence to bed.

Comments

[a-trick-mind.livejournal.com]

That is quite a CD you put together. I've heard the name Lotte Lenya, but I am not familiar with the voice.

I might have gone with a "book without words."

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Lenya was Kurt Weill's wife and was there with him in Germany (where she appeared in the original production of Threepenny Opera) and then in America. She has a wonderful voice, full of character and intelligence. I have a CD of her singing Weill in German and English. She was Fraulein Schulz in the original B'way production of Cabaret.

Hey, is this Tim or Rick?

[a-trick-mind.livejournal.com]

Rick. Tim does not have computer access.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Hi, Rick. Nice to meet you. Do you think you and Tim would enjoy a copy of this music? I'd be happy to contribute to improving his mood if I could. And yours!

What's a book without words? Like a journal?