I am at the Hotel Peabody. Peabody's "thing" is ducks. Their marketing cheif should be fired for his shameless use of duck imagery. Duck toothpicks, duck shaped soap, they even have, and I swear I am not making this up, real live ducks feeding and swimming from an enormous fountain situated in the atrium. Somehow the ducks are trained not to leave the fountain. They eat corn, splash in the water, and shit all over the floor. The fountain-poultry display serves as the centerpiece for the atrium restaurant, where I am sitting now drinking a glass of cabernet and sweating, because omg, "atrium" is code for sauna, all this garish unnecessary heat has me wondering…is it all for the ducks?
Ever so often a man, wearing a black apron with long tie strings that drag behind him like a wedding train, passes by with a squeegee and a yellow bucket. He is on duck poop patrol. He follows the ducks around the fountain cleaning up their green runny poo with his squeegee. Don't feed the ducks he tells a kid. Why have a duck display if you can't feed the damn things….they are so cute I want to let them sip from this wine glass.
I am reading this book called "100 Years of Solitude" but it might as well be called "THE MOST AWESOMIST BOOK IN THE WORLD". (I think it goes by that title in Calcutta and Singapore).
Anywho, I bought the sucker for a buck at a used book store. The book is yellowed, browned and tore up on a number of pages, which makes the reading a challenge.
But I adore a challenge as long as I can make shit up in the process. "Jose Arcadio Buendia ran into the room where his wife…" Hmm…cant read the text…"where is wife was….stripping the yellow wallpaper from the wall as she drooled puddles of blood from her mouth, carrying on her back a miniature portrait of Satan and his 12 illegitimate children."
(Another glass of cabernet? Um, no maybe some water at this point. Oh the poop guy just passed me and he smells really good, like honeysuckle and amberbach)
Why do old people do yoga? With their flatulence and gnarled feet? It ruins the experience for us young people who go to show off how hot we are in lotus position.
There are two old women with yoga mats who are stalking me. They keep circling the atrium, seriously what? What? WHAT? They know I am typing about them. Why do only old people have money?
The duck poop guy is back. "Please don't touch the piano" he says to the kiddos. Why have a piano feature if the kids can't bang on it? I think I may play on it later, I know how to play that song from Ameile.
Ameile was a fantastic movie.
When I was 6 my cousins from Mexico came to visit us in Texas. The oldest had never eaten waffles. He filled each hole with syrup, ate the waffle, and then puked on my mother's sofa. Then we played monopoly, and my brother, sister and I made fun of our two cousins because they said "yellow" like "jello". Hahaha you retards. Say it again say it again! Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!
Ah, childhood.
Now those two retards live in Europe, both have published books, one is finishing up his Ph.D. in architecture and the other is an attorney at law. And I am typing a meaningless blog to entertain you people. But I knew those fuckers when they thought yellow was jello…"Say yellow jello, say yellow jello" we would shout at them. And then they cried. And I felt bad. But not anymore.
BTW there is a wikipedia site on the Peabody Ducks. I was thinking about starting a wikipedia page on myself. How fun would that be? Like this dude..sure he invented AJAX but still, what else makes him so special that he needs his own wiki page?
Showing posts with label businesss trip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label businesss trip. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
9 PM from the Big Apple
I am in New York, again, this time on a business trip. The weather is brutally hot. I ate lunch at a small expensive sandwich shop on the SeaPort, the restaurant was crowded, the server sat me on a corner of an already occupied table. My dinner mates were from Ireland, but I was weary and not in the mood to hear tell of their family vacation so I opened my computer and did an impressive job of acting occupied through lunch.
But there was one thing I couldn't help but notice. The young girl (she was probably 15) was wearing a shirt with her bra showing in the back. The straps of her bra were twisted. It looked painful to the point when I couldn't stop myself from offering to straighten her out. "Would you like me to untangle your bra strap?" I asked her. She laughed and said yes. It was a strange thing of me to ask, and a strange thing for her to accept. But it didn't seem to bother either of us, as two women who have to deal with these inconveniences in life. I fixed it, she was grateful, I paid my bill and walked out onto the boardwalk.
Along the way back to the hotel, I stopped in Borders bookstore on Wall St and Broadway to get out of the oppressive heat that had settled over New York. I ordered a Dean and Deluca large ice tea, I drank the entire cup without stopping to breath. I would have asked for another but there were no free refills and the tea had cost 4 bucks and tasted old and filmy.
Borders was a fitting place for me to spend an afternoon. I collect books in the manner that some women collect shoes. I adore books, but more like a piece of art, rarely finding time or patience to read more than a few lines.
For this reason, and because I commute 40 minutes each way to work, I greatly enjoy books on tape. My all time favorite is a delicious little novel … Eat, Pray, Love.
Though I obviously own this book on cd, I like typography, oh and cracking book binds. For months I've wanted to buy a paper copy of that book, for a specific purpose that might make some cringe, cover your ears at this part, I want to own a paper copy of this book so that I can cut out pages and post them in my journal. Really I need two copies, in case I cut one side but needed the text from the other side of the page too. Throwing myself in front of the morality book train a little more forcefully, I admit to you that I have already cut up a number of well written book passages that have made my heart patter, including, sigh, a couple of passages from Genesis out of two gently used Bibles.
So I'm looking at Eat, Pray, Love, and it's $15, no discount. And I'm thinking about my favorite passage in which she describes a beautiful Venetian woman who fell in love with a man who left her with three children and a broken heart. The author describes the woman as saying "He was powerful, and I died of love in his shadow."
This passage makes my intestines wiggly. It moves me profoundly into a state of sad irrepair. I want to cut this passage out and paste it in my journal so that I can mourn with this woman, in an emo trance I'll call poetry.
But $15 just to mutilate this book for a passage… is that sound commerce?…. I pick up the book, fan the pages against my palm, (this is a strange habit I have which allows me to feel the energy of the book without reading it, quacky I know, bite me), and then I bend the paperback up and down looking at the cover. I opened up the book somewhere in the middle of the tale, and am baffled to look down at the words "He was powerful, and I died of love in his shadow." By dumb chance I'd turned right to the passage that I'd been mulling over for the last 15 minutes, and honestly I'd been mulling over for the last 15 months since I initially heard those words.
I don't need to tell you folks, that's some kinda magic.
Nevertheless, I didn't buy the book. Instead I picked up 2 books on graphic design and the latest Chuck Palahniuk novel.
I opened the 15 foot high doors, with relative ease, and walked out on the Manhattan streets, shoving the Borders bag into my massive yellow tote. And then I realized it was raining, pouring rain, and the road was steaming from the days heat. Street vendors quickly wrapped up the watches, t-shirts, and handbags on their tables, and replaced them with umbrellas and rain ponchos. Witnessing this efficient crossover of goods, I concluded that New York street vendors have perfected the art of opportunism. Wall Street indeed.
Back at the hotel I ordered an overpriced Margareta pizza from a local pizza oven, and cuddle under the covers to review my new books and tomorrows agenda. It's fairly quiet here, just the hum of the AC units, and distant murmur of traffic. I miss my kids. I call Chris for the 4th time today but he gets annoyed so I leave him alone and decide to live here in this hotel room for the next 2 days easing into my loneliness… After all, I've been away from home before. I can do this.
I'm still in bed now, next to an empty pizza box, trying to hack into some locals wifi so that I can post this blog. I haven't hacked in yet, but I did find out that Microsoft Word can spell check Palahniuk's name…impressive, eh? Goodnight everyone.
But there was one thing I couldn't help but notice. The young girl (she was probably 15) was wearing a shirt with her bra showing in the back. The straps of her bra were twisted. It looked painful to the point when I couldn't stop myself from offering to straighten her out. "Would you like me to untangle your bra strap?" I asked her. She laughed and said yes. It was a strange thing of me to ask, and a strange thing for her to accept. But it didn't seem to bother either of us, as two women who have to deal with these inconveniences in life. I fixed it, she was grateful, I paid my bill and walked out onto the boardwalk.
Along the way back to the hotel, I stopped in Borders bookstore on Wall St and Broadway to get out of the oppressive heat that had settled over New York. I ordered a Dean and Deluca large ice tea, I drank the entire cup without stopping to breath. I would have asked for another but there were no free refills and the tea had cost 4 bucks and tasted old and filmy.
Borders was a fitting place for me to spend an afternoon. I collect books in the manner that some women collect shoes. I adore books, but more like a piece of art, rarely finding time or patience to read more than a few lines.
For this reason, and because I commute 40 minutes each way to work, I greatly enjoy books on tape. My all time favorite is a delicious little novel … Eat, Pray, Love.
Though I obviously own this book on cd, I like typography, oh and cracking book binds. For months I've wanted to buy a paper copy of that book, for a specific purpose that might make some cringe, cover your ears at this part, I want to own a paper copy of this book so that I can cut out pages and post them in my journal. Really I need two copies, in case I cut one side but needed the text from the other side of the page too. Throwing myself in front of the morality book train a little more forcefully, I admit to you that I have already cut up a number of well written book passages that have made my heart patter, including, sigh, a couple of passages from Genesis out of two gently used Bibles.
So I'm looking at Eat, Pray, Love, and it's $15, no discount. And I'm thinking about my favorite passage in which she describes a beautiful Venetian woman who fell in love with a man who left her with three children and a broken heart. The author describes the woman as saying "He was powerful, and I died of love in his shadow."
This passage makes my intestines wiggly. It moves me profoundly into a state of sad irrepair. I want to cut this passage out and paste it in my journal so that I can mourn with this woman, in an emo trance I'll call poetry.
But $15 just to mutilate this book for a passage… is that sound commerce?…. I pick up the book, fan the pages against my palm, (this is a strange habit I have which allows me to feel the energy of the book without reading it, quacky I know, bite me), and then I bend the paperback up and down looking at the cover. I opened up the book somewhere in the middle of the tale, and am baffled to look down at the words "He was powerful, and I died of love in his shadow." By dumb chance I'd turned right to the passage that I'd been mulling over for the last 15 minutes, and honestly I'd been mulling over for the last 15 months since I initially heard those words.
I don't need to tell you folks, that's some kinda magic.
Nevertheless, I didn't buy the book. Instead I picked up 2 books on graphic design and the latest Chuck Palahniuk novel.
I opened the 15 foot high doors, with relative ease, and walked out on the Manhattan streets, shoving the Borders bag into my massive yellow tote. And then I realized it was raining, pouring rain, and the road was steaming from the days heat. Street vendors quickly wrapped up the watches, t-shirts, and handbags on their tables, and replaced them with umbrellas and rain ponchos. Witnessing this efficient crossover of goods, I concluded that New York street vendors have perfected the art of opportunism. Wall Street indeed.
Back at the hotel I ordered an overpriced Margareta pizza from a local pizza oven, and cuddle under the covers to review my new books and tomorrows agenda. It's fairly quiet here, just the hum of the AC units, and distant murmur of traffic. I miss my kids. I call Chris for the 4th time today but he gets annoyed so I leave him alone and decide to live here in this hotel room for the next 2 days easing into my loneliness… After all, I've been away from home before. I can do this.
I'm still in bed now, next to an empty pizza box, trying to hack into some locals wifi so that I can post this blog. I haven't hacked in yet, but I did find out that Microsoft Word can spell check Palahniuk's name…impressive, eh? Goodnight everyone.
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