Does anybody really know what time it is?...

does anybody really care?....and so we approach the end of 2021...or as I now refer to it as 2020 2.0...here we are again...omicron is rampaging...you can't get a testing appointment...a home kit...well, you can...but you'll wait...pay mark-up...if you were negative when you get on line, you'll be positive by the time you hear "next"...I think all of this is kind of like groundhog's day...the angst replays over and over...and the stupidity too...and it makes the concept of time very elusive...it still seems to slip through your fingers...but what have you done...because this is like fire...which needs oxygen to burn...and covid's oxygen is a host...to infect and mutate going forward...and that leads to vaccination...not just here, but in countries you might never have heard of...and the line between the haves and have nots...the inequality of this world might just kill us...and so I look to my salvation...the arts...and all those who are pushing back...still creating...giving us novels...streaming...music...movies...art...and I want to be wowed...because I need to be wowed...want to love a new movie...not based on a critic who heaps praises on it for its credentials, not substance...but this year that has not happened...so far this year I have only found that "wow" in one book...and two performances...the book is "Matrix" the latest from the immensely talented Lauren Groff...for the few days it took me to read, I was taken away from the relentless horrible news cycle here...and transported to an abbey in the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine...and taken to other terrible times...but also times of great redemption and heroism...and then last week...watching the segment on Joni Mitchell at the Kennedy Center Honors...Brandi Carlisle singing "River"...Brittany Howard singing "Both Sides Now"...google and watch...then google and listen to Joni in her prime...close your eyes...ignore breaking news on your cell...skate away on that river with Joni...breathe deep...glide into 2022 with time on your side, and hope in your grasp...

maybe not just like that...

and just like that I watched the first episode...the much anticipated continuation of the lives of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda...and the ghost of Samantha...so, how is it?...well, first, as a writer, let me weigh in...I could hear all my professors...workshop compatriots...screaming...SHOW, DON'T TELL...Michael Patrick King and the writers need to go out on that limb...accept the audience has a decent baseline intelligence level...we can follow...don't bog the 41 minutes down with explanation...second...is this going to be 10 episodes of mea culpa?...we all know SATC was very white...it also was less than flattering in Charlotte's conversion to Judaism...or in its portrayal of "waspy" old money...and were Stanford and Anthony gay stereotypes...yes...then, no...in trying to right what current cancel culture dictates as wrong...the series risks get strangled as it tiptoes the politically correct minefield...I've been reading comments on Twitter, and elsewhere..."OMG, how could they do that to Big?...uh, wake up...our beloved characters are in their fifties and sixties...and dear Mr. Big already had a cardiac wake-up call way back when...and for the record...Carrie and Big's love story was messy and complicated...much like real life...this death may actually drive the plot...or not...let's see where they take her going forward...but here it is...the real problem rests with some of the show's audience...for women who were in their teens and early twenties watching the original...you aren't where these characters are now in life...so I hate to spout generalizations but you might not get it...whereas the original, with "Sex" blazing in its title...pushed boundaries within the confines of HBO...I am hoping this new chapter pushes boundaries of our dated perception of post-menopausal women...their relationships with significant others...children...peers...best friends...but most importantly themselves...if the writers can get there without tripping on the clumsiness of our "girls" navigating new territory...well, I'll raise a Cosmo to that...

ball of confusion

so there I was...Broadway...back in a theater...first time since early March 2020...before the shit hit the fan...theater is different in this world of Covid...and no...we are not post-Covid...we may never be...and even double vaccinated, boostered, masked...there is pause when the person sitting next to you is almost in your lap...the Imperial Theater...home to "Ain't Too Proud" is an oldie...which prompted a women a few seats down to comment during intermission...how small were people when it was built???...or is it the double whammy of that and Covid caboose...anyway...it is sad for me to admit...and I hope so much it changes...but much in the way that I felt last week...nestled in my seat at an early afternoon showing of "Belfast"...only 10 of us sprinkled throughout the audience...the thrill is not gone...but dulled...Covid has numbed my sense of joy...and that leaves me angry...but at who?...or whom?..."Ain't Too Proud"...there they were in front of me...an amazing cast...singing the incredible repertoire of the Temptations...songs that I know so well...the earworms of my youth...when they got to singing "Ball of Confusion"...well...I perked up...written over 50 years ago...not much has changed...and so when we venture out...try to resume life as we know it...there is a low flame of fear burning inside...fear of the intensity of this virus...fear of the growing unrest and violence of our immediate world...and fear that we are powerless in the face of all of it...maybe it's all like riding a bicycle again...wobbly and shaky the first time or two...then soaring with the wind in your hair and not a care in your mind...the sound bites and inane social media kings and queens can't rule you...you've reached a perfect state...and jump from your seat to applaud...like the Temptations sang...cloud 9...

Café Oy Vey...

so there I was at Le Pain Quotidien...my new guilty pleasure...get some walking in at Roosevelt Field...reward?...a hot, frothy café au lait...dutifully standing 6' behind the ladies in front of me, I suddenly heard a voice to my left...maybe a Covid-panicking 1 foot away...at least we were both masked...a small women leaned in to talk...she felt compelled to tell me of her woe...rambled about the fact that when she'd eaten a bread purchased here two weeks ago, her LDL was out of whack after, so there must be butter and other non-listed ingredients in the bread...she went over her exercise regime...the number of steps she did...I mentally thought of my walk that morning...I felt like Sherri the Sloth...she was petite and obviously trim, about ten years older than me...and she wouldn't stop...I was thinking about the croissants at the register...but with my paternal genes just looking at them filled my arteries to the brim...then I thought, without meds they did that with oatmeal...so maybe I would get the croissant...I kept my inner monologue going because the little lunatic to my left was now telling me how she wanted to move to Greenwich and I was hoping it might be in the next minute...I noticed the barista had left her station...or was that baristette here...anyway, now the register person was running back and forth and despite having ordered, it might be Christmas before I got my order...I lost my LDL friend though...she was chewing off the ear of the other woman behind the counter...who was probably glad for the mask as it hid lines of exasperation...I finally heard "Sherri" and took the cup...quickly exited the mall for a walk in the sudden cool air...Indian summer a lovely memory...the wind whipped my hair...tangled my earrings in mask straps that I ripped away bringing the hot cup to my lips...closed my eyes and smiled...then wondered...what was my LDL at my last visit?...oy...

I want my MTV...

money for nothin' and your chicks for free...so there I was watching the 2021 VMAs last night...I am certainly not the target audience...although any one of my contemporaries from NYU TV days...before it was Tisch...when equipment looked like it fell off a truck on 10th avenue...can tell you that we were tinkering with music videos before that launch in August 1981...and so I did kind of watch with amazement...that a show celebrating the medium of video would expect such amnesia from the audience...oh, let's look at Doja Cat dangling from a wire...ooo....ahhh...Pink, anyone?...lots of black dominatrix attire clinging to flesh...wow...except you had the queen open the show...Madonna...and so it went on...for several hours in Brooklyn as everyone put Covid in the rear mirror and celebrated 40 years of MTV...totally forgetting that the medium itself...video...is there for posterity...a permanent mirror capturing society at a moment in time...so if you want to writhe...crawl...bump...grind...you'd better bring something new...because it's been done...and MTV has the tape to show you...don't get me wrong...there were some good moments...and for the target audience...I suppose great moments...if that audience looked up from cell phones long enough to watch...as for MTV...it will go on...how do I know?...sadly, in the pearly white smiles of new video heroines Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish...angst and disdain never looked so pretty...but as the great Peter Allen once sang...everything old is new again...

"you can check out any time you like..."

 "but you can never leave"...it certainly was a surreal feeling last night at Madison Square Garden...my first concert in the age of Covid...and first time seeing the Eagles...after so many years of their music strumming in my head...pleasant earworms...and while listening last night...I realized just how easily the music and words could transport me...way back...I could digress...talk about the men sitting behind me discussing everything they thought they knew about the Eagles...loudly...with a steady stream of misinformation...or about the woman screaming in the ladies room for the attendant...apparently she had seen the largest roach known to mankind in her stall...welcome to NY lady...but instead I will tell you about Deacon Frey...that would be the late Glenn Frey's son...who with Vince Gill has stepped in...trying to fill a space left when Glenn tragically passed too soon...instead creating something new and quite lovely...and when Deacon stepped to the microphone for my favorite song, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"...all the anger inside...bubbling since Covid strangled life as we knew it...seemed to fade...Deacon, living testament that art is created as a mirror of life as the artist perceives it...intimate and universal...and can be reborn with new artists...from generation to generation...and so...well, at least for today...before I look at the headlines...deadlines...frown lines...I'll treasure the lyrics..."don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy"...

the heat is on...

excuse me while I schvitz...another heatwave...wildfires across the globe of epic proportion...tempers on both sides of the vaccine war...political careers aflame...how to cool off...not the ocean waters of Long Island...Jaws-back with a vengeance...such is the summer of 2021...the second year in this decade of our world afire...so how to avoid the rabbit hole of despair...we skirt it every day...and when I reach for the pen or keyboard...and feel nothing...I know I am dangerously close to becoming Alice floating away...I started this blog nine years ago...and much has happened...and not happened...kind of like "breaking news" having a lovechild with "Seinfeld"...and there have been attacks of writer's block...the thoughts don't always coalesce...even if the feelings do...but lately the heat...or life as we know it...is sapping my creative mojo...and this raises my ire...and so this half-assed blogpost...it's my mojo on the offensive...trying to reclaim inner strength...energy...and resistance to all that is swirling around us...that which can fry our health...and that which incinerates our spirit...so I try...a poem here...a letter to the editor there...and pushing this blog uphill...one post at a time...through twenty-first century hell...there's always a little heaven when this writer hits "publish"...

American song...

 "still, when I think of the road we're traveling on I wonder what's gone wrong"...Paul Simon's words from another time...America...she's older and fractured...in dire need of repair and rehab...where's the skilled surgeon...the compassionate treatment team...when can she rest...she's like a nurse in a covid wing in the deep south...pulled in so many different directions...sad, because she knows she will lose some patients...angry, because it didn't have to be that way...and hope is just a frayed thread holding her together...I thought about this nation many times in the past few weeks...as I often do around July 4th...for every beautiful color that lit the night in fireworks...there were cherry bombs and worse that scared animals to death...literally...what the hell does that have to do with us as a nation...or maybe it's the most accurate...we seek to recreate that which is the loudest and ugliest...have we truly become the Ugly Americans?...what exactly can lessen the deep chasm that has formed...it splinters and grows as respect withers in a vacuum...how we move forward...even if we fail...is not etched in stone...it is a series of steps we take as a nation...at times one step forward, two steps back...but always moving forward...together...no one left behind...giving this nation...America...the support she needs...and in turn...hopefully getting what we need...what we deserve...

next to normal...

and so we slide towards summer...covid restrictions are lifting week by week...we are seeing family and friends...vaccinated, we hug...lunging towards life as it had been...but we really can't...we are in the new normal...a unique state where we excitedly embrace all that we have missed...but with pause...for those who lost someone to covid, life will never be as it was...for those of us who had covid, there is either a leeriness to the rapid fire reopening...or a sense of invincibility...to a degree, to move on we kind of need to ignore the news...we did have falling numbers of cases...and hospitalizations...this morning I read of a concerning plateau...which paired with sinking vaccinations rates and increases of a more virulent and dangerous delta variant could spell an unsettling fall for the unvaccinated...and they are a formidable number...but people spin the dial on that one...the thought of another pause is too painful...there are hockey playoffs...and tickets to buy for the return of concerts and Broadway...cheer fellow Americans at the Olympics in Japan...a country currently drowning in the virus...there are masks to burn...and school board meetings to scream at...time to get front row seats as deniers eviscerate Fauci...a modern day Roman coliseum headliner...watch out for the cougher in row 2...

Coffee, no sugar...

and so yesterday, I finally made my way back to the office...in the city...after 13 months...now, understand, I do work largely from home...going in one or two days a week at best...but...so there I was...bracing to see this city...my only city...after a long absence...the changes are there...but in honesty they were there before...the changes are, in part, due to the ravages of a society where the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" is stretched beyond the limit...where there has been a mayor who still cannot get beyond singing "Kumbaya" and really do the work...the sometimes ugly and unpopular work that is needed to run this city...there was a sad sigh in seeing it all...the barrage of "closed" and "for rent" signs...the homeless, both breaking your heart and leaving the hair at the back of your neck standing at attention...and so I did my Dorothy skip on the yellow brick road...making my way down the street...avoiding the dog crap...at least I hope it was...dotting the landscape...and opening the door to my favorite coffee shop...which was open and survived this era of Covid...leaving a tear in my eye...the wonderful early morning aroma of fresh brew and warm pastry...and there she was...the manager...cheerful and welcoming as if we had never missed a beat...we talked briefly...I told her it was my first day venturing through the midtown tunnel...and smiled at her...but the mask...could she see the smile lines crinkle in the corner of my eyes?...in the office...placing my hot paper coffee cup in the middle of the desk resembling a Mt. Vesuvius of papers...I sat...and closed my eyes...yes, it is like the seventies out there...without the good music...but it is my fervent prayer we come back again...the hustle...the bustle...the people...the only city...New Yawk...

Under His Eye...

timing is everything in life...just ask Margaret Atwood and her creation The Handmaid's Tale...I admit I am late to the Hulu series...binging through Season Two as I type...but as both a reader, and writer, I was not late to the game when the book was released in the mid-80's...a fictional...some said science fictional look at life in 2005...gee, what could have been her inspiration...the good times of Thatcher and Reagan?...the book, revered, dismissed and sometimes banned left more than a little food for thought...and now, a few days shy of 61, sometimes it is hard to fathom how much things have changed for women...and not...for me...as a girl in the 60's heading off to school...having to wear pants under my dress on cold days, then remove before class started...I look at the credit cards in my wallet...it wasn't until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that women could get a credit card without the co-signature of a husband or male family member...Mondale takes Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket in 1984...McCain takes Sarah Palin in 2008...and now Kamala Harris...always a bridesmaid in my time...maybe not in the future...back to Handmaid's Tale...the series has chosen to modernize it to reflect our times...interracial couples...gay couples...Atwood was more blunt about what would happen to people of color in her Gilead...but the red cloaks remain...the simmering anger and fear when watching are elicited...in the U.S. today birthrates are declining...reasons range from  economics... choice...environment's possible influence on fertility (something to ponder on Earth Day)...and that, my friends, is one statistic that creates underlying panic in some circles...circles with clout and money...and so I continue to binge and watch Elizabeth Moss and clan...and note painful similarities to changing mores and laws...and wonder...why the hell I chose to watch this at the second year marker of this endless pandemic...but as much as I'd rather watch a repeat of SVU I find I cannot look away...episode after episode...under his eye...

wabbit season...

chocolate bunny rabbits...Cadbury eggs...Peeps...pristine baskets wrapped in a spring palette...the youthful joys of Easter are quite lovely...and as much as Passover will always be my favorite Jewish holiday...you gotta admit...how can chocolate covered matzoh or macaroons compare?...cause after the chocolate rush...they sit in the pit of your stomach like lead...which explains our forefathers wandering in the desert for 40 years...that, and you, might be thinking that Moses never would have turned to Zipporah for directions...but I digress...it really is a season of rebirth, religiously speaking, for many...and our second such season during covid...the pandemic creates a sort of underlying fear that permeates everything...kind of brands us without conscious realization...we miss...no, we crave the rituals...the things that tie us to one another and keep us sane...and grounded...painting, then hiding Easter eggs...the long Passover table meticulously set with the finery of relatives long gone...this year, depending on where you sit in the vaccine or antibody curve...maybe there was a table set at Passover...or one today waiting for relatives to take seats after church...or maybe you are not ready...and so it is small or zoomed...whatever your celebration...we all know deep down we pause and look forward to next spring...wabbit and Moses season...healthy with loved ones...our only complaint - MLB trades...as we reach for a glass to toast the host...Happy Passover and Happy Easter everyone!

525,600 minutes...

"how do you measure? measure a year?"...and here we are...a year later...the words to Jonathan Larson's "Seasons of Love" keep resonating with me...how are we?...whether we admit it out loud...or deep within when we are up at night...and we all have been up at night...we are all a little worse for wear...putting one foot in front of the other...just to go to the other end of your living space for so many weeks...well, that does strange things to your head...as Covid cases mounted...the odds were stacked...we all knew someone who had Covid...maybe it was us...we all knew someone who didn't make it...and now the scramble for the vaccine...a sense of encouragement...but we are weary and don't want to "be good" anymore...because somewhere inside we realize that the longer it takes to resume life as we knew it...the harder it will be to do so...and life will not be as we knew it...it cannot be...and that is a painful truth...tell me there won't be a shiver down your spine that first time you travel...or dine inside, if you haven't...or see a movie...and hopefully, a Broadway show...or sporting event...tell me what your fight or flight instinct will do when someone coughs more than once...this is the collateral damage of a pandemic...there is no reference point for any of us to look back to...this is the point going forward...the page in history books that will always be a part of our psyche...much in the way of September 11th...and I wish we were at the point where we comment on looking back...in as much as there is light at the end of the tunnel...we are still traveling through...thinking about what this year has meant...what lessons we have learned...what we will choose to take forward as we near the end of the tunnel...maybe Jonathan Larson, in his too brief life, had it right..."remember the love"...

The Hunger Games...

ready...set...go...log on to the computer...refresh...try the phone...dial the number...leave it on speaker...is covid gone?...is Springsteen touring?...no, you are trying to get a vaccination appointment...every state has different protocol...or none...so if you live in a state where your neighbor's retriever is in the new group...others...like us weary New Yorkers...are stuck in neutral...the city bitches that "outsiders"...you know, Long Islanders...those from Westchester...are taking their appointments...and there you have it...frustration and anger under the skin of a society locked down for a year...there really is no method to this madness...and as this unfolds we watch states like Tex-ass plan on removing mask mandates...a state where roughly 6 million of a total 29 million Texans have been vaccinated...that's not a herd immunity state...methinks Gov. Abbott took statistics with Betsy DeVos...when the governor of Alabama disagrees with this...you realize how truly screwed up the whole thing is...healthy, younger not yet vaccinated New Yorkers...working and commuting...walking through the leper colonies of Penn, Port Authority and Grand Central...where the mentally ill unmasked population greet them each work day...I hope there is light and vaccine at the end of the tunnel for all...I hope we reach that herd immunity that's been drummed in our ears for months...if you have gotten the vaccine...good for you and I hope it keeps you healthy...stop bragging about it like you got front row seats opening night for Hamilton a few years back...somewhere out there on your social media feed is someone waiting for their turn...out there every day trying to do their thing...praying that the commuter coughing in row 3 has allergies...

(Don't) take the A train...

I happened to google "what happened in history today"...and there it was...in 1941 Duke Ellington first recorded "Take the A Train"...uh, no thank you, Sir Duke...if you've seen the weekend NYC news you will know that a 21-year-old man was arrested for a string of stabbings on the A train line...two people dead...others wounded and traumatized...although ridership is nowhere near what it was before the pandemic hit, subway crimes are up...unless you ask the mayor's office...then you will be met with charts that say no...this is not true...actuarial versus actual...just ask New Yorkers who do ride the trains...and many, I am sure, will profess less of a fear of Covid while riding...and more of a fear of accidentally brushing up against someone and being flung onto the tracks...or sliced like a Thanksgiving turkey...the abundance of mentally unstable individuals living underground is evident...the police have had their hands tied in legislative red tape as to how much they can do...and those who need the subway to get from point A to B to pay the rent...they are caught in a dangerous power play...an MTA teetering on bankruptcy cannot afford this public relations nightmare...the city cannot keep citizens from fleeing unless there is real help for the mentally ill...who need to be separated from the endlessly growing homeless population...so that when outreach groups try setting up housing for the homeless throughout the city they are not met with fear and anger from neighborhood residents...it's all easy to write in a blog...in reality, it takes money, and dedication...new laws, and revocation of laws that cause more harm than good...only then can we all ride that A train up to Harlem with a song in our steps...and not terror in our hearts...

Shadow dancing...

 tomorrow the length of winter is determined by a groundhog...yes, in the twenty-first century, we seek scientific advice from rodents...Punxsutawney Phil...Malverne Mel...Staten Island Chuck (who really should be called Staten Island Sal who goes to Denino's after for two slices)...tomorrow the rodents will be laughing from Pennsylvania to New York...and all along the Northeast corridor...the joke is on us...winter is back after last year's sabbatical and with a vengeance...but what I want to know...what's gonna happen in March when we hit the one-year mark from last year's quarantine...when they take Wuhan Willy - an ugly ass bat - and hold him in the sun?...will we get sprung loose...or endure six more months of quarantine...these are the things that float in my head...scary, huh?...because after almost a year of living in this painful alternative universe...this is what happens...I am like a lab rat...a rodent...a groundhog...subjected to a haphazard study of the effects of social distancing on the brain...when they take me out and hold me up tomorrow...will I see my shadow...or not?...it won't matter...me, I'm just waiting on Wuhan Willy...

Holier than thou...

 I am in the 2%...roughly...that is where as a Jew in 2021 I fall in the charts tracking religion in our country...Christians, which combine Protestant, Catholic, and Mormons, rack up somewhere around 65%...there are other small figures for many other of our fellow Americans, but the largest following Christianity is Unaffiliated...and yet, even in this little 2% sliver...I am subject to the anti-Semitic rhetoric and t-shirt display blatantly flaunted in our Capitol on January 6th...from a group dedicated to our current President...and for this, to date, there has been no condemnation from him...no distancing from this message...and so, if I follow "a" to "b"...this is more than a silent nod of approval to the rabid dogs who stormed the Capitol...theirs was merely a Pavlovian response to years of dogs whistles going back to Charlottesville...which leaves me in a sad and bitter place...if you are reading this and have ever been subjected to prejudice and hatred because of religious affiliation...or the color of your skin...or the accent which inflects your speech...you will understand that there are triggers...mild to severe...which will always lead you back to where you were left feeling your worth was less than zero...with all the visuals and audio from January 6th...it was actually those t-shirts that brought me there...and it leaves me wanting for a quiet seat in a synagogue...by an Eastern wall...to ask why?...why again and again?...and also begs me to ask...to the 65%...is this what Christ would do?...I think not...

A Capitol Offense...

 I promised I would not blog...after all...news and events are fluid...how can a writer capture change...so I will call this a written snapshot...today's events should surprise no one...the volcano exploded long ago and this is the lava pounding the streets you cannot outrun...Americans are allowed to feel disappointed in a close election...just ask Gore supporters 2000...they are allowed peaceful assembly...protest...they are not allowed insurrection...sedition...treason...I am strongly of the mindset that all Americans be given a basic civics quiz when registering to vote...you fail, you don't vote...kind of like driving...because the dangerous stupidity quotient is strangling this nation...do not throw the BLM protests in my face...because all those who peacefully protested had my support...the fringe inciting property destruction and violence did not...we all know that if these were BLM protesters on the Capitol steps today, smashing their way inside...we know they would have been shot, gassed, arrested faster than you can say MAGA...those who stormed the Capitol...confronted DC police...who refuse to leave now should be arrested...charged with treason...denied any stimulus checks...government financial support...they have severed the aorta of this country...they have broken my heart today...and they did it smirking, maskless, as so many of their fellow Americans are dying in hospital beds coast to coast of covid...I don't know where we go...I do hope to look back one day to this post...and nod my head that it was the lowest point for this nation...but of that I cannot be sure...can you?...