Six degrees of Sufferation...Six Days of Great Vacation!

You can tell that New Yorkers are lonely because the new television series are pitched directly to them. Living outside new york, i always thought they were placed here because the city was interesting and made a cool and intriguing backdrop for a show. Now that Im here, and I am privy to the unbeleiveable amount of New York directed marketing for the shows, i can see that its really because New Yorkers watch a ton of TV! They are too busy, broke, lonely and/or alienated to do a lot of socializing in the city, so they sit at home and watch shows like 6degrees, or Sex and the City, and they see people that look like people they see, walking around the streets they walk around, dating solving mysteries, getting jobs, breaking up, reuniting with long lost friends and family, eating out and buying shoes all without leaving the claustrophobic comfort of their apartment. There is intense marketing for every new show in the subways, the actual trains and in some cases huge banners hung in the stations. hoping to convert the lonely commuter with nothing to stare at to viewership. 6degrees for instance is about to launch. Its a ripoff of the Six Degrees of Separation movie, which proposes that we are connected to each other and need only examine our connections to see how close to our fellow man we really are. So all up and down the subway aisles there are signs like "the lady across the aisle is flirting with you," and " the man standing on the platform will be your boss," and "the little girl next to you will marry your son." I made that last one up, but you get the drift. And in the B'way Lafayette station there are huge banners "there is a man on Houston who will come to you for a job." I suppose it is meant to give you the feeling that everyone is somehow connected, which is a comforting thought considering the reality that most new yorkers go through every day without speaking to anyone outside of work and certainly no one they dont already know. The woman across the aisle is probably NOT flirting with you, and the truth is if you tried to talk to her she would probably pretend she couldnt hear you or look youin the face while she got up to move seats. Anyway, you know I NEVER watch TV but just by taking the train I know what all the new shows are and their premises. Most conversations I over hear are about the plots of these serial shows (lost, CSI etc) all the meanspirited reality shows (top model, project runway, american idol, so you think you can dance...) or about the serial show lives of celebrities that people here are so fixated on. Its pretty amazing. If they cultivated their real relationships with the regularity and enthusiasm that they maintain their relationships with these TV shows, what would NY feel like? I think it would be really different. Im eating a half a pumpernickel bagel with creamcheese tomato salt and pepper as I cut on NY, and it is so good. Reaping the benefits even as I dis! Lonely maybe, but the bagels are terrific.
Lets see here. Since last I wrote, the seasons began to change. Its much less hot and thank the good lord, much less humid. The grapes on the arbor outside on my porch came to ripeness and, in familiar starling/fig fashion were set apon by birds almost immeidately. my porch is covered with sticky grape juice and empty skins. I am having heretofore unheardof allergies, the inside of my head feels like a mosquito bite, thank god for Clartin OTC. I worked a photo shoot for Microsoft inhouse stock images. It was a four day shoot of which I worked three days. It was fun, I didnt get to do too much as they always want a REALLY natural look. The hair and makeup people got all the talent ready and I stayed on set to powder, smooth, comb, redo ponytails, apply lipgloss and listen to everyone complain about the producer. True enough it wasnt well organized, one day we ended up at the wrong location, the client (two nice, soft and out of style art directors that MS shipped out from seattle to oversee the shoot) was unhappy with the space and we all had to search the city for the location that they had been shown, or a similar one. A huge loft space with high ceilings, and lots of color. Amazingly we found one and we all piled back into the red motorhomes we came in and hauled uptown to midtown eastside (from tribeca, downtown westside) and set up in a design center on the 11th floor. Another day we were shooting on the beach in Sandy Hook New Jersey. That was probably the best work day I ve had to date. The weather was flawless the sand was soft and hot, there was nothing you could do about people's hair blowing in the wind off the ocean, and the client thought it looked natural anyway so I spent a lot of time with my feet in the sea, digging just below the sand for beautiful little rounded clear and amber colored agates, purple peices of clam and mussel shell, tiny snail spirals, and pure white pebbles. Half the shoot was children, who we shot running on the dunes, and playing in bright colored transparant donut floatys. They had a great time on the beach and I couldnt believe how they never forgot they were working and kept running through the same play sequence over and over like a game of its own. They were adorable and couldnt wait to go swimming when it was over. I had no idea that the Jersey shore was so gorgeous.
What else. I went on a real vacation. That was fun. When you live away from family all your vacations end up being visiting family. Which is great, but then I never really go anywhere other than seattle or LA. And Ive never seen anywhere on the East Coast. So I was feeling down about how damn ugly NYC is. So Rick (ok, his name is Ben. Rick is hilarious, but Id never vacation with anyone named Rick...Im afraid he'd take me bungee jumping!) Ben and I decided to take a trip upstate to Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. North of Lake Placid and about an hour and a half south of Quebec, Saranac is a series of three lakes which are all connected to each other (Upper Middle and Lower) and surrounded by the gentle curvy peaks of the Adirondack Mountain Range. Ben has spent his summers there since childhood and so knows the area really well. We drove halfway there, stayed in a motel north of Albany, ate breakfast at one of those really country type restaurants (hang your yarmulke at the door) where they have wagon wheels nad milk jugs lying around and rustic signs for fishin' holes and the like decorating the walls. Then we drove the rest of the way up to Saranac, its about an eight hour drive from the city altogether. We stayed in a really old cluster of cabins on Ampersand Bay on middle saranac. The cabins were all named after trees, oak, sumac, maple, birch, except ours which was called Patti. Patti was tiny and adorable with a shower that ben said was an exact to scale replica of the showers in which so many of our forbears met an unpleasant end during the third reich. We showered as little as possible.... The rest of the cabin was super quaint and gave you a real camping feeling but with a bed, a microwave and no fear of a wet sleeping bag. We had SO much fun. We hiked up Mount Ampersand (an ampersand is an and sign, you know, this one; &. I dont know why its called that or which one came first) which Ben assured me was long but "not that steep." That didnt really turn out to be the case, I mean he was right about it being long, that part is true, but its long and QUITE steep actually. Really it is. An all fours situation from time to time even. Ben does this Russian Commie style workout nearly every day. It uses these weights called Kettlebells (which I cant even lift let alone throw around like a cossack,) which apparantly makes you a climbing machine, who knew? I wasnt quite a climbing machine per se, but I kept up admirably and after a midway sandwich and quite a few breath catching breaks as the air thinned out, we made it to the top. It was well worth it. Unlike the tops of WA state mountains which are mostly snowy and craggy if not glacial, this one was round and flat with a three hundred and sixty degree view of the whole valley and the lakes and mountains all around for miles. There was an Upward Bound group up there who cheered for us as we crested the trail and a leathery polish family with a miniature schnauzer, an older pair of women, possibly lesbian, also polish who told us some other good hikes in the area and some abnormally fit senior citizens who inadvertantly made me feel pretty lame for having so much trouble getting up there. We lay on the top and enjoyed the view and the feeling of acheivement for a while and then ran down the mountain in about half the time it took to get up. The next day we went kayaking on the lake by our cabin. I was nervous about it at first but once i got used to being on the water and not so scared of the motorboat wake waves it was really fun. I like rowing. The lake was so calm and peaceful, when we stopped rowing and just glided it was totally quiet and beautiful. The landscape here is not so dramatic and breathtaking as the pacific northwest, the plants are smaller and the evergreens are skinny and short, but it is beautiful in its own way, very green, and very picturesque. the lakes are clear and very blue and there are no roads right next to them for the most part so all you see is trees on the shore and the occasional "adirondack" style house. We pulled the kayak ashore and went swimming off one of the tiny islands in the lake. the water was suprisingly cold. We also discovered some cool antique stores where I loved Ben for not rushing me and discovering lots of cool treasures, old charmbracelet charms (incl a scissors and a blowdrier!) a necklace with a V pendant and a tie pin with a little lion on it. Not for me, of course. We ate lots of mediocre town food, and had a lovely dinner with his aunt and uncle (as well as a cousin and said cousin's sweet daughters) who have a house on one of the lakes out there. We brought them famed soft ice cream from Crystal Springs Dairy which seems to be a nearly religious sacrament in the area. They serve one flavor (mixed with vanilla) per day, and have a sign posted that says "pick a size the flavor has been chosen for you!" The flavor of the day was strawberry mixed with vanilla. It was shabbat and we lit the candles and sang the prayers together. That was nice.
We had planned to go up to montreal but its pretty far even from up there and it sounded less than relaxing, unfortunately Patti was booked for the next night so we drove south took the ferry across lake champlain to vermont, stopped for an excellent organic thai dinner (what else?) in Hippiecollegeboro VT, capital of the bumperstickers, and went to stay in a really sweet b&b in Stowe called the Gables. Highly recommended. We had every intention of touring the Ben and Jerry's factory but when we got in there, saw the ice creamy family crowd and heard the tourguide's voice, we looked at each other and wordlessly headed for the door. We always want to leave things at the same time. thats good because I always like leaving things before theyre over, and its usually annoying to everyone.
By this time the weather had changed and it was drizzly and cold as we made our way back into the city. The drive was nice, you can watch the ugly set in as you get closer to the bronx. The moment we hit the lower east side, right near Kossar's Bialys a hasid with a minivan stocked with pallid wife and kids tried to cut ahead of us, not to merge or anything, just left his place in the lane hoping to get one ahead of everyone else. Ben didnt let him in, so he drove along next to us, staring and raving and motioning wildly, and honking of course honking, peahs swinging, window rolling down, for several yards like "what are you doing? how can you drive like that!?!?!?" Fully convinced that we were in the wrong. Welcome back! I know why people dont leave here, it has a lot to do with not wanting to return...
But, once you reacclimitize, its fine. Im back in BK, its virgo season which means you can wish my Bubba, Mahdis, Stephen and Jess a big happy Birthday. Mahdis is thirty!!! We have known each other for twelve years! We had a nice dinner at Pure, a raw food restaurant in the city and she is having a party, almost a year to the day of her party last year which marked my arrival to New York. The seventeenth of this month will be a year that Im here. A year. How am I doing? I will be assessing, and am taking opinions, no censorship please! Any that are submitted will (pending approval:)) be posted to the blog. Submit to vivi@vivilapidus.com