Anyone seen...

...First Class Man? It's apparently a play based on the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan by Alter Ego Productions and is on until the 21st of October off-off-off-off-off-off-off Broadway. Much as i find the choice of subject matter laudable, I have to say that i find stills from the show rather underwhelming.

And that's a pity--Ramanujan's life is infinitely fascinating, and the biography by Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity is, hands down, the *best* biography i've *ever* read.

Kanigel's sexy, almost-SF title doesn't hurt any either. First Class Man, OTOH, sounds like the story of a math-geek journeyman with mediocre academic ambitions. That or a stuffy frequent flier.

Still, the tix are relatively inexpensive ($18), and it might be worth checking out.

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EXCHANGE

(for A.D.L.)

DMV. In my lap, Hardt and Negri.
Did you happen to see the breasts
Umm--the person--umm--lady, in a vest
With Playboy bunnies on it?
Just the uhh. Uppers falling out
were the size of well grown rabbits.

Your mouth shapes some
Quite ordinary comment
[“time to feed the meter.”]
But my waiting giggles trip
Like bunnies. Bouncy bunnies
With sweet shiny eyelashes.

For no reason, your eyes
glaze, say compliments.
I think, happily, that
you know nothing of beauty
And-or too much of love.
Loved like this, even glitter
changes to gold, then treasure.



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Sweet Deception

If you happen to visit and I claim, with mandatory sweet smile and saintly mien, that I made payasam (kheer) just for you, don’t visualize me reading War and Peace in its entirety while I stirred a pan of boiling milk to the right consistency.

It’s more likely that I spent the $ 0.49 (buy two, get one free) on Priya brand Kheer Mix, added it to water, stirred the goo for 10 minutes, and then snuck in a tin of condensed milk, a bunch of ghee-fried almonds, cashews, pistachios, raisins, and a few strands of saffron.

If I didn’t tell you, you’d never know. And that wouldn’t be right. Where the payasam’s concerned, love Priya (not maya).



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Parallax

This is how a modeling gig works: Assorted assistants fuss over you, paint you, fiddle with your hair etc., then the lights go on, and the photographer says, “beautiful” or “perfect.”

This past couple of weeks, there have been zero modeling gigs on my calendar. I’ve seen entirely too many doctors (and they’ve seen too much of me, but that’s another matter).

But this is how a visit to the doctor goes: Assorted assistants fuss over you , paint you (with gel), fiddle with your hair etc., then the lights go on (or off, if it‘s an ultrasound), and the doctor says, “beautiful” or “perfect.”

Neither the photographers or the doctors are really talking about me at all, but the doctors even less so than the photogs. That’s almost as ‘ironic’ as a black fly in your frigging chardonnay.


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The Last Cliché

So I had an hour and a half between doctors' appointments yesterday and snuck into the Lowes on Second Av to watch Zach Braff’s The Last Kiss.

(I went alone. Big A owes me bigtime for dragging me to The Aristocrats and Clerks 2, but, for all its failings, The Last Kiss wouldn't have been punishment enough. I’ve decided to punish him with The Lake House, which has his least favorite male actor plus his least favorite female actor, plus a leaky-bag plot. His pain shall be my entertainment. 

Anyway, The Last Kiss is a heap of clichés. You have guy pals who are upped from the Boy Meets World magic number two in ZB’s first movie, Garden State, to an Entourage-ish four, trapped in varied stages of sucky coupledom, throw in a mom (the cadaverously beautiful Blythe Danner) jealous of her daughter, and also in there is a college-aged girl who is the Natalie Portman character from Garden State gone unbelievably toxic.

All the women, mom and daughter included, are potential or actual PSYCHO-STALKERS and if you have sex with them you will get PSYCHO STALKED. (Men, you have been warned.) All the men dick around in assorted but uninventive ways and then !finale! decide to return to their women. (Women, you have been warned also.) It was like monomaniacal street-theater director wannabe meets complex Freud manqué, only not as sexy and without berets and cigars--i.e. disappointing.

The best part was that I suddenly realized close to the end of the movie that i had four minutes to make my appointment, so i had to dash for it and didn’t see the eponymous last kiss. It *was* the best part--not having to watch that too, i mean. One thing i learned yesterday--that I never want to watch Zach Braff having emotionally awkward sex that has been choreographed to tediously "ironic" music ever again.

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The Point

I’ve got Big A, my favorite grownup in the whole world, waiting for me in the living room with a DVD of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which was, so long ago, my first sneak-peek at a real grownup movie. About love. With sex! And I’m not talking about the soft-focus succubi group sex--preverts!).

So I’m, unfairly as it turns out, trying to edit Li’l A’s bedtime talkfest a li‘l bit.

In the middle of one particularly long-winded story--

Me (diffidently): Ummm, does this story have a point?

Li’l A (indignantly): Yes!

Me (hopefully): Then can we get to the point?

Li’l A (blissfully): But I want to tell the story first!


Sorry, kiddo; my bad.



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One of my heroes has got to be right....

from Seamus Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy" 1991.

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.


from U2's "Peace on Earth" 2000.

Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth?
This peace on earth.



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