Sid and the Vicious Circle

When I think of New York, I first think "Sesame Street," Woody Allen, old black and white movies about Broadway, and Edith Wharton, not necessarily in that order. But I mostly think about writers.

New York City is really a writer's city, in much the way that Paris is a painter's city, and when we made honeymoon plans, there were two places I especially wanted to see: the Hotel Chelsea and the Algonquin Hotel.

The Hotel Chelsea doesn't exactly celebrate the seedier aspects of its history, but this painting of Sid Vicious hangs in the lobby, and they will helpfully tell you he killed Nancy Spungen in Room 100.

The Chelsea, 222 W. 23rd St, was built in 1884 as co-op apartments, but became a hotel in 1905. It now has 125 hotel rooms, and 101 residential units. Coincidentally, the Associated Press reported only this morning that the landmark is up for sale. The Chelsea is almost as famous for who died there, as it is for its former residents. Dylan Thomas collapsed from alcohol poisoning there in 1953, and died. And in 1978, Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious brutally murdered his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in Room 100.

I'm always up for a good murder scene, but the real draw for me was the authors, poets and playwrights who have lived here over the years. One of my favorite authors, Thomas Wolfe, lived here in the last years of his life. That's the author of "Look Homeward Angel," not Tom Wolfe, he of the ice cream suits who always matches his shirts to his socks, although I love him too. A bronze plaque outside commemorates Wolfe and others such as Brendan Behan, Leonard Cohen, New York School poet James Schuyler, and most impressive to my husband, Arthur C. Clarke wrote "2001: A Space Oddysey" while living there.

The Chelsea lobby is full of art, like these paper mache figures. and the mixed media below.


The lobby is homey, bohemian, and filled with art in a variety of mediums. The desk clerk was helpful in a laconic way, and it seemed like a place I would love to stay if it hadn't been for the loud "artist" in the lobby with a painted face, haranguing an East Indian couple in such a pretentious way I wanted to tell him to put a sock in it.

We looked around, then set off for the Algonquin Hotel, home to the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, publishers, actors and wits who met there every day for lunch. I am always fascinated by groups of artistic people who crop up, find one another and gather for inspiration and companionship.

I read Susan Cheever's "American Bloomsbury" and was shocked to find that Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson lived within walking distance of each other in Concord, Mass. Thoreau and Emerson I knew about, since Emerson's wife was doing Thoreau's laundry while he was living on Walden Pond. (And cooking him dinner, by the way. Self-sufficency, my eye!)

The Algonquin group weren't on the same level as those literary heavyweights, but they were witty, and fed off of one another's energy. Possible best remembered of the "Vicious Circle" is author and poet Dorothy Parker, who coined such bon mots as "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." (Oh, yeah, Dottie? I beg to differ.)

My daughter Allison drinking a $20 martini in the lobby of the fabled Algonquin Hotel.

The Rose Room, where the group had their table, no longer exists thanks to a remodel of the hotel's lobby in 1998. The owners had a replica of the table made, and it sits in a place of honor under a portrait of the group.

The lobby is beautiful, and made the perfect place for a cocktail on a cloudy day. Even if we had wanted to get drunk, we couldn't afford it. Bombay Sapphire martinis were a cool $20, and two martinis, a beer and a cheese plate set us back $86. You won't be surprised to learn we ate hotdogs from a street vendor for lunch.

A replica of the storied Algonquin Round Table sits under a portrait of the members of the luncheon group.



"A Vicious Circle" by Natalie Ascencios, shows members of the Round Table, such as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, and Alexander Woollcott.

On our way to Rockefeller Center to go ice skating, we passed Charles Scribner's Sons, a legendary publishing house, who published Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others. The bottom floor is now a Sephora, but the side of the building still sports their sign.

Charles Scribner's Sons on Fifth Ave., publisher of such literary luminaries as Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Kurt Vonnegut.

Next week: Ice skating is not as easy as it looks....

New York with a brogue

The view many of our ancestors had upon arrival at Ellis Island.

I hadn’t meant for our New York City honeymoon to turn into an Irish heritage tour; it just happened.

The first day we took the ferry to Liberty Island to see the statue and Ellis Island. You wait in a manageable queue at Castle Clinton in Battery Park to buy your tickets, but when you line up to get on the ferry, you find that the line of people snakes through the park. We couldn’t even see the dock from where we were.

I wanted to get a sense of what happened when my ancestors immigrated, but I really didn’t need to recreate the complete experience. We were herded like cattle onto the ferry, shoulder to shoulder and contained inside metal fences, then off again at Liberty Island, and the whole process started again to get to Ellis Island.

We were like better-smelling refugees. Our ancestors lined up to get deloused and get physical exams; we waited forever to get through the security checkpoint.

The terrorists have won, by the way, when we have bomb-sniffing dogs and guards with machine guns making us take off every scrap of metal to go through the scanner. For the first time, I had to take off even my wire-rimmed glasses to pass.

The new ferry building on Ellis Island, an Art Deco wonder built in the 1930s.

The trip to Ellis was inspiring and educational. The xenophobia we are experiencing today in this country is nothing new, and some of the displays depict anti-immigrant rallies (with torches, no doubt), and relics of the Ku Klux Klan. It seems every generation of immigrants wants the door to America slammed shut as soon as they arrive.

The Great Hall on Ellis Island.

The Great Hall was where hopeful soon-to-be-Americans were processed: given medical exams and housed until they could be certified healthy enough to enter the country. Now there are wonderful exhibits that illustrate the gender, ethnic background, and country of origin of the immigrants.

The Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park. This is the side that faces the water.

After Ellis Island, we walked Battery Park up to the Irish Hunger Memorial, which is very close to Ground Zero. It is a very moving monument to the time of the 1846 to 1850 Potato Famine in Ireland, when 1.5 million people starved to death.

The memorial is a half-acre of serenity in the madness of Manhattan, with a roofless stone cottage imported from Ireland, and a garden featuring native plants, flowers and grasses imported from Auld Sod. There are 32 rocks engraved with the name of the Irish county they came from.

The tunnel to the rest of the memorial has first-person accounts of the Potato Famine on light-up strips along the walls.

After you pass through the hallway with strips of text about the hunger, you come into the cottage. Beyond those imported stone walls are places where you can block out the city entirely and it seems like you are back in Ireland. The reason the memorial is on a half-acre is symbolic: the Poor Laws stated that anyone with a half-acre of land couldn't apply for relief, so people were walking away from their land rather than starve to death.

The inside of the Irish Hunger Memorial features a rebuilt stone hut, plants native to Ireland, and large stones from each of the counties.

The next day we hit Central Park in search of the Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Anderson statues. As we walked through the park, I heard a lilting Irish brogue wafting on the breeze — a horse carriage driver explaining the sights of Central Park. I decided that I had to have an Irish driver, too.

Talk about racial profiling.... I wasn't sure how to go about finding one when we stumbled across carriages lined up near Columbus Circle. We sashayed down the line, pretending to be interested in the horses and buggies, but I was really listening intently.

As we passed three drivers talking on the street-corner, I heard what I had been searching for, a beautiful brogue. I stood there like an idiot, trying to find some good way to ask: which one was he? One of the drivers approached us, but his accent was pure Noo Yawrk.

Molly the horse, me, and our Irish carriage driver, who was from Tipperary.

"You want a carriage ride?" he said.
"Actually, we're looking for an Irish driver," my husband said, and the three men laughed uproariously.
"Drunk? Or sober?" they asked.
It turns out that two of the three were Irish; and furthermore, that Irish cab drivers are not in short supply.

What?? It was our honeymoon; we had to have a carriage ride in Central Park!

The day was glorious, but I underestimated how conspicuous one is when riding in a horse-drawn carriage, especially on city streets used to get in and out of the park.

I used my smart phone to find us a place to eat, and twice it returned Irish pubs. So I drank Harp on tap, and my favorite pub food: shepherd's pie. In fact, I ate it three nights out of the five we were there: at Mulligan's, O'Reilly's, and Muldoon's.

I called it research into the perfect pie, but it actually was just fattening. I can't wait to go back and do it again.

Next week: New York: the literary tour

Steampunk deluxe!

The first wedding on the BLVD! We kiss in front of Vijay Patel's 41 Pontiac the night of the wedding. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

I plopped the filthy wedding dress on the counter of the dry cleaners and smiled sheepishly.

"I hope you can get this out," I said sweetly, pointing out the hem. "It's motor oil."

The look on her face was priceless. She stared at me incredulously and sighed in a disgusted manner. I shrugged, saying "I got married in a parking lot."

Which was the truth in a sense, but how could I explain to her the wonderland that the Lemon Leaf Lot became the night of my wedding?

I found the magical transformation difficult to believe myself.

A few days before the wedding I was getting mysterious phone calls from my friend Maria Elena, the owner of the Lemon Leaf, where she would enthuse about how awesome my wedding was going to be. She never provided any details; she would just gush and say, "I can't wait until Saturday!"

Little did I know that she was watching my friends Barbara Letson and Dan Venturoli creating the elements of a steampunk wonderland in the Leaf Room, next to the parking lot.

A detail of the amazing decorations at the wedding. The wedding couple's initials and a candelabra are wrapped with wire and a variety of gears in steampunk fashion.Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

There were brass lanterns atop vines twinkling with tiny lights in the middle of each table. Everything was swathed in chocolate brown taffeta, gold sparkly tulle, ivory linens, brown tulle, and lit with a profusion of candles. Each place had a tiny wooden steamer trunk filled with dark-chocolate covered expresso beans.

All the steampunk iconography was there: huge clocks, gears, brass, and copper. Everything but the goggles. Our friend Tim Kirk brought his, just in case we'd like to have the officiant wear them. Tim and his wife Linda Lee added to the ambience by bringing in a case of wine they had relabeled with a custom "Steampunk Merlot" label which featured a caricature of Jim and me.

A detail from the wine label done by artist and friend Tim Kirk. He and his wife Linda pasted the labels on a case of wine and transformed it into Steampunk Merlot with our caricatures on it.

The napkin rings were lengths of wire wrapped around the napkins, and hung with tiny gears. Guests were turning them into bracelets and wearing them.

The ceremony itself was drama-free. I hesitated dropping my gown's train onto the cement of the lot, but it had to be done, so I tried to not think about what was becoming of it. That taffeta confection cost more than my hand-me-down Saturn is worth; I hated dragging it around.

The flower girls made it down the aisle under their own steam, presumably. I couldn't see them. Poor flower girl Tori — she had practiced strewing silk autumn leaves in my path, then was told to hold Charlotte's hand instead.

So, ultimately, no one threw leaves; the flower girls held hands on one side, and carried their baskets in the other hand. By all accounts, Charlotte clambered up on the stage all by herself. She made up for her good behavior by refusing to pose for photos on the girl's side of the stage, because she wanted her daddy.

I was rather glad I had bought her dress, when I say the state of it the next day. Charlotte took more than one face plant that night, and the front of the gown was filthy.

Valerie Estrada, of Little Blue World Photography was our wedding photographer and she grabbed Jim and me and took us out on the BLVD to pose for pictures. She had spotted Vijay Patel's 1941 Pontiac at the curb, and thought it would make a great backdrop, and it did.

My crazy sister thought we had hired Vijay's car for the evening, and sometime during the reception started filling the back seat with balloons. Eventually, she figured it out, and instead tied balloons to the luggage rack of the MG, and wired an empty can of Mike's Hard Lemonade underneath.

That was a particularly cruel joke to play on the owner of a classic car. When Jim and I made our getaway, I heard that god-awful noise and thought I was dragging my muffler. Again.

Crap is always falling off that car; who knew?

I'm still piecing the details of wedding, Rashomon-like, now that a week has passed. But so far it looks like everyone had a good time. My friend Ed Harbour did an amazing job as a DJ, and he kept the floor filled by playing 1980s New Wave.

Jim and I got to show off our hours of ballroom dancing practice, even though the tango was a little difficult with that much dress between us.

I will show more photos when I get them, but now I have to pack for my honeymoon to New York City, and I'm falling asleep. Sorry, there are no Charlotte photos. You'll have to wait until next week.

Those dance lessons with Iris really paid off. The groom is treading on my gown, but how could he not? There's so much of it. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

Getting to the altar

By the time you read this, I will be a married woman.

We’re praying that the rain, thunder, and lightning give Lancaster a pass, but one never knows.

The wedding venue has undergone considerable weather-related adjustment, because the open sky lit by hundreds of lights envisioned by our hostess, Maria Elena, is threatened by the unseasonable storm.

We already gave up the dance floor, because we couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t get rained on.

I read in the paper that this is a down year for weddings, that because of the recession, people are forgoing tying the knot. Leave it to me to buck a trend, any trend.

We have been running our own private economic stimulus program for about a year now. I wanted to postpone until things picked up, but my beloved was so anxious to close the deal, he convinced me.

At first, we wanted to get married at Union Station, in the long-shuttered Fred Harvey restaurant. Its marriage of art deco and Southwest décor, along with its unique layout would have been perfect.

The now-closed Fred Harvey restaurant at Union Station, taken during an L.A. Conservancy tour.

We are L.A. Conservancy members and the idea of getting married in the romantic old train station that has been seen in so many movies was irresistible. I pictured myself walking down the staircase on my wedding day. Alas, the cost was prohibitive.

The company wanted $5,000 for the restaurant alone.

That was for four walls and a security guard to keep out wedding crashers. No chairs, decorations, food, nothing.

Still, I clung to this idea for a long time. Then, we decided that the important thing was to throw a really fun party for our family and friends, and that five grand could be put to better use buying beer, so why not Oktoberfest?

Sure, we could hire the oompah band Anton Schnitzel and the Merry Makers to be our wedding singers, get multiple kegs of beer, and blue checkered tablecloths, but about the time my German friend Barbara (aka the Mad Psychic) started talking about dirndls and lederhosen, I got cold feet.

Those ideas rather clashed with the elegant wedding gown and suave tux I had in my head. I’m all for kitsch, but on my wedding day? Not so much.

So, sitting in the Lemon Leaf with the owner, Maria Elena, the beer-bash turned into an elegant wedding under an October sky and strings of fairy lights. Which morphed again, when I decided to have a steampunk themed wedding.

Every wedding has to have a theme which drives the color palette, decorations, and favors. It can be as simple as a spring garden wedding, or, like my daughter’s February nuptials: a winter wonderland.

I started with autumn leaves, Which frankly, was boring. I liked the colors, but it didn’t reflect my rather flamboyant personality. Then I ordered a steampunk necklace from etsy.com, where artists sell their handmade works.

Steampunk is the marriage of Victoriana and science fiction: think of the future as imagined by Jules Verne, or the old 60s television series "Wild, Wild West." The iconography is brass, copper, goggles, dirigibles, clocks, keys, exposed gears, and advanced technology powered by steam, instead of solid state circuits.

My necklace had gears, airships and keys on it, and I seized on that as my theme. I found steampunk jewelry on etsy for my attendants, and arranged to have a custom necklace made for me.

But when it came to dressing steampunk, it started all falling apart. Extending the theme to your wedding clothes is impossible to do without having it look like a costume. And I was resigned to making my dress: a Victorian gown with a removable bustle. But getting bridesmaid's dresses was proving difficult, and I didn't have time to make them all.

In the end, we went with touches of steampunk and traditional taffeta dresses. The only sewing I did was for the older flowergirl. I had intended to make both dresses, hers and Charlotte's, but I ran out of time.

I was trying to teach, grade papers for four classes, plan a wedding, stain 100 little wooden boxes for favors, and sew. Something had to give, and it was C's dress. I bought it from that adorable cart in the mall.

This is the ridiculously messy state of my tiny living room while I was sewing the flower girl dress.

This is the front and back of the flower girl dress I made in my ridiculously messy living room.

There were times when it felt like we were never going to get it all done. We were still working on the boxes of chocolate-covered expresso beans the day of the wedding. But eventually, we crossed the finish line. Next week, I will tell story of the wedding itself, and how my friends turned a parking lot next to the Lemon Leaf into a steampunk wonderland.

This is a gratuitous photo of Charlotte, just because she's so damn cute! Next week, you will see her in her flower girl dress.

Disneyland break!

Charlotte with her new best friend, Mickey. She hugged him, imitated him (Hoo hooo!), high-fived him, and gave him a sweet kiss on the tip of the nose. I think the mouse was smitten.

Disneyland with toddlers is nothing more than a really expensive photo op. The above picture, and the accompanying video (not yet posted) was worth the considerable cost. Charlotte's dad taught her weeks ago to imitate Mickey, and we've been saying "What does Mickey say?" since.

We had no way of knowing whether she would remember when she actually met the international star, or if she would freeze. But in the video, Charlotte turns back to her mom after greeting Mickey, and said "Hoo hoo!" like "Isn't that right, Mom?"

So this was why I couldn't post. We got to the hotel on Saturday night and I realized that I had no computer. So look for a new post late Saturday night. Oh, yeah, I'm getting married that day. Maybe I'll post Friday. But definitely by Sunday!

In not-so-hot water

Want a fun workout that is easy on the knees? Try aqua aerobics. This is about the age range in our water class.
http://blog.ultimatefitnessgear.com/

Cue the dramatic opening notes of Strauss' "Thus Sprach Zarathustra" for an important announcement: for the first time in my life, I have been going to the gym regularly for months.

Of course, I've been paying gym membership for years. Actually, since 24 Hour Fitness was Family Fitness, and they opened the facility on Palmdale Blvd. Hope always sprang eternal, and I knew I would get serious someday. Who knew it would take 20 years?

That's a sweet racket they have going. It's like insurance; I pay money in case the unexpected happens and I want to work out. I got a good introductory rate, and it seems cheaper to pay the amount to keep my options open. In addition to my $29 a month, I was paying $9 a month for my two daughters and their father to not go, also.

Inspired by an extremely fit coworker, I went for a spell in Lancaster during the late 90s. At 4:30 a.m. Ladies, if you can drag yourselves out of bed at that hour, you find gaggles of firefighters.

But a knee operation put the kibosh on those trips. I tried hobbling in on my crutches for a while to lift weights, but the logistics became too much.

After I had the heart scare, I decided that I should get serious. Besides, the wedding was coming up, so I thought I might take off few pounds. I don't know about the actual numbers, but I lost enough inches that the seamstress is having to alter my gown.

My crappy knees left me precious few choices when it came to cardio, so I headed for the pool. My older daughter went for a few sessions, and she was the youngest person there. You can tell how old people are by how they react to the music.

Our leader, Malyn, has a iPod stuffed with variety. I'm digging the OutKast, the boomers are singing along to "Rock the Boat" by the Hues Corporation, the Latina ladies sigh when Julio Iglesias comes on, and at the first strains of Sinatra's arrangement of "Something's Gotta Give," the over-70 ladies swoon, "Ooooh, Frankie!"

The pool is next to the steam room and the whirlpool, and the whole area is like a Margaret Mead study of suburban culture. If you're looking for hardbodies, try the free weight room. Around the spa looks more like an Alma-Tadema Orientalism painting of a seraglio, only the women aren't as good-looking or young.

The only fit people are inside the steam room. Young, cocky males with bulging biceps and tattoos use the window to watch themselves flex, insuring that those sitting in the spa see every muscle ripple, and every grimace.

The rest of us are all pretty much in the same leaky boat physically, except for the 20-something Suicide Girl who sashays back and forth from the steam room to the drinking fountain to make sure we all get a good look at her purple string bikini and myriad tattoos.

So, foam water-weights in hand, we do our jumping jacks, jack-knives, and snowboards in the water, thrashing around so the foaming water looks like it's full of piranha.

This image from amazon.com shows the water weights we use (only ours are all blue...).

I love being in the water, and I love the way I feel afterward. Now, when I don't go, I feel the difference. It's helped my knee, too.

Buy you know what I don't love? Zumba! And for some reason, the club keeps replacing our regular classes with this trendy blend of belly-dancing, cumbia, and aerobics set to world music.

That might be fun on land, but it doesn't translate in the water. Also, you don't use weights and it does nothing for your upper body or abs.

I could dance around at home, and I wouldn't have to endure the preternaturally cheerful young woman who leads this class. Sweating like a pig because she's doing the moves OUT of the water, she grins like a Cheshire cat the whole time. That ain't right.

I need to write a letter to 24 Hour telling them how much I like Malyn, and her calm, drill-instructor-like persona. I don't want to lose anymore classes to this fluff.

On the road again....

The MG is back and better than ever!

Man, I wish my dad were here to see the MG now.

After a month in the shop and an outrageous amount of money, I can actually drive the thing with a certain amount of confidence. Of course, it is still British, so anything could happen.

I still have the Lucas, Prince of Darkness wiring that means my headlights just shut themselves off when they feel like it, and I have to wiggle the on/off switch to get them back. But overall, things are looking pretty good.

The MG had been sitting in a garage for some time when I bought it, and anyone who knows anything about British cars will tell you that they loooove to be driven.

Driving down the new, improved Lancaster Boulevard.

But it seemed like every time I did drive it, something happened. My muffler fell off (you can read that story here), the cookie sheet-cum-oil drip catcher came off, my fuel pump crapped out, my carburetor needed to be rebuilt, and the poor little thing overheated and blew the heat sensor right out of the radiator.

If it weren't for my dad, I wouldn't have the car. I was short about $3,000 of the asking price, so I called him from work and asked for a loan. When I told him the details, he not only said yes, he added, "Tell him if he sells it to anyone else, we'll kill him."

Dad was also my mechanic. I worked alongside him and tried to learn everything I could. I was aware that his health was not good, and he was slowing down from his former workaholic pace. His back gave him a lot of pain, and he couldn't do everything he used to, which drove him crazy.

So I savored the time we had together, and was thankful that he managed to keep it running as long as he did. When he died, the car wasn't running, and it sat in my mother's front yard for a couple of years.

One of the reasons it sat so long was the lack of funds to fix it, but another, bigger reason was my association of the MG with Dad. I couldn't really imagine owning the car without him. Cars and airplanes were his passion, and he passed that love on to me. Someone asked me why I didn't sell the car, if I was going to let it sit in the side yard.

That sort of woke me up, and I realized that I needed to get the car repaired and drive it, if only to honor how much my dad loved it, and how much work he had already put into it.

Al and Barbara Smith sharing a laugh after his glider ride in 2007

Dad always had car restoration projects planned that never really panned out. He was forever buying things that needed fixing, but he never got around to them. He was busy, he was traveling for work, or something else needed repair.

The projects that did get complete to the point where you could drive them were his classic Ford Mustangs. He drove those as daily drivers, but every time he loaned me one, something went wrong.

Believe me, driving this car every day is no picnic. It takes 10 minutes to coax the seatbelt out of the retractor, you cook if the day is hot, there's no room to put anything because the car cover is in the trunk, it takes forever to warm up, and it idles at an obscenely high RPM until it warms up.

But damn, it is a lot of fun. It makes running errands feel like an adventure.

Yeah, it is a lot of fun. No wonder I'm smiling!