A perfect day. A perfect wife.

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

I have a consulting project lined up at an investment bank that won’t start until the 12th. In the meantime, I’m trying to make myself useful at home. I’ve made some cosmetic repairs to the house and have started to paint the family room. I need to clean the winter detritus out of the gutters.

By all rights, I should be home finishing up the painting. But it’s Friday. And after a brutal winter of pounding blizzards, a March with record-setting rainfall and a lot of unemployment drama, the sun is finally out, the sky is blue-blue, and there’s a balmy breeze. So I have put down my paint roller for the day and am in the city for what my pal Bob would refer to as a Fuck-Off Friday.

I’ll stop in the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea to view the original drawings that R. Crumb made for his most recent book, The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s book of Genesis.

Afterwards, I’ll walk over to Madison Square Park to view the Event Horizon New York outdoor installation. The artist, Antony Gormley, used his own body to cast 31 life-sized statues and scattered them throughout the park and along the top edges of the surrounding buildings. When the first statue went up atop the point of the Flatiron Building, the police received multiple calls about a suicide jumper.

A short walk away is Swann Auction Galleries, where an important rare book auction will be held next week, The Otto Penzler Collection of British Espionage and Thriller Fiction. Lots of Ian Fleming and Graham Greene first editions. The books are way out of my price range, but I want to view them before they pass into private hands.

After that it’s uptown to Christie’s at Rockefeller Center. The author Michael Crichton poured a lot of the money he made off of Jurassic Park and ER into his art collection. Now that he’s dead, it’s up for auction and for the next two weeks you can view the lots. This guy didn’t kid around. Rauschenberg, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Picasso, and the cornerstone of the collection, Flag by Jasper Johns (est. $10-$15 million.) Jesus. $10 mil for a painting. And I can’t find a staff job.

In the evening I’m meeting friends to see Alfred Molina play the troubled/suicidal artist Mark Rothko in Red, a Donmar Warehouse import from London that opened last night to stellar reviews this morning.

Do know how many wives would allow their husbands to do all that with a half-painted family room at home? While I’m out fucking around the city all day and night, Mrs. Wife will be home taking care of The Daughters. She has said nothing about my folly and had not laid any guilt trips on me.

Who has the greatest spouse on the planet? It ain’t you. I told my sister about all this and she suggested I kiss Mrs. Wife’s feet when I get home. I might do just that.

Defying death as your job description

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Have you ever been to the circus? There were three adults and four children, ages 8, 8, 5 and 3. Guess who had the most fun? ME. Maybe I’m a cheap audience (which is what I’ve always suspected) but I was in awe. I don’t think the kids get it. Kids are too young for the circus. They don’t realize how difficult these feats are and, more importantly, that the performers could die at any moment. They just assume everything will work out and it does.

The staging is a show-within-a-show. While one set of performers are in the spotlight trying not to die, a crack team of stagehands are setting up the next act where someone might die. There’s no pause in the action. It’s rapid-fire, one performance right after the other.

I felt somewhat vindicated when The New York Times ran a glowing review of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus a few days after we attended. That the circus started in the late 1800’s and is still up and running today is pretty surprising, if you think about it.

The circus doesn’t do “funny” very well—I don’t recall laughing at any of the clown’s antics—but the acts whereby performers put their lives at risk are truly amazing. I was shocked that none of the acrobats hit the ground the wrong way and split their heads open or that two trapeze artists didn’t collide in mid air and break a few limbs.

The tiger tamer didn’t have his face slashed to ribbons by an unpredictable tiger. Remember Siegfried & Roy? It happens!

Three Chinese gymnasts inside a small (small) plexiglas cube. What. The. Fuck. Just imagine the four-way possibilities.

The Bionic Brothers. Astonishing feats of strength and balance. Zero body fat.

The biggest lunatics have to be the family of motocross stunt riders. At one point, all seven ride inside a giant steel sphere, crossing each other’s path. It’s madness. How do you rehearse something like this?

A parade of elephants. Peta distributed some literature on the train pointing out that the circus is guilty of animal cruelty. Trying to spoil our fun. I’ve never seen an organization do more to alienate people from their cause than the dolts at Peta.

Meet me for a drink or two

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Not all of Manhattan has been gentrified. Yet. Some of it, especially some stretches of 8th Avenue, are still Original Recipe. For instance, we have this primo establishment on 8th Avenue and 30th Street:

Deno’s Party House and Bikini Bar??!! On a dicey part of 8th Av.? Are you kidding me?! No good could come from that. But admit it. You want to meet me there for a few drinks, don’t you? Any bar with an illuminated sign that includes tilted champagne glasses and balloons is the place for me! Above Deno’s is an aromatherapy supply company. How great is that?

But time has a way of steamrolling over your memories. Does anybody out there remember Billy’s Topless on 24th and 6th Avenue? It’s long gone and is now a bagel shop. It wasn’t so much a strip club as it was a neighborhood bar. Fun fact: When the zoning laws were toughened under Mayor Giuliani to try and rid Manhattan of the sex/strip trade, Billy’s, in an effort to avoid closure by the new puritanism, took the apostrophe from its name and became Billy Stopless and the dancers donned bikinis. It didn’t work.

Billy’s without the apostrophe

I am happy to report that the old man bar around the corner from where Mrs. Wife and I lived on the Lower East Side is still going strong. The Parkside Lounge is located at Houston and Attorney St. (And it’s “house-ton.” Not “hyoo-stun.”) Long live the Parkside.

1parkside

The buzzards of suburban New Jersey

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

Driving along on a misty gray early New Jersey morning, down winding roads, over smooth hills and banked turns, the telephone poles blur by. It’s quiet. Nobody is out yet. This bucolic scene is broken by a pair of turkey buzzards having their morning road kill breakfast. Yum-yum. Eat-’em-up.

I spent the remainder of my drive trying to think of a proper metaphor. One never materialized. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

* * *

I got the news that I was awarded a four-week contract for a project that I interviewed for at a financial institution (see below). I wish it were for a longer period of time but the pay is quite good, so I took it. That’s the upside of working for an investment bank. They tend to pay well and have top-notch equipment. Don’t laugh. There’s nothing more depressing than sitting down to do a project only to find that they’ve stuck you with a beat-to-shit computer that’s running Mac OS 6.

Before I can start I need to submit the following:

A criminal background check
A drug test
A set of fingerprints
A residential history going back five years
An employment history going back 10 years

Keep in mind that this is for a four week contract position. Who do they think they are!? I guess investment banks are tired of being burned by rogue employees and CEOs. They need to be cautious. I could be a brilliant criminal mastermind in sheep’s clothing for all they know. The next Bernie Madoff. Yeah, that’s me.

Job hunting follies

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Exile on Pain Street

I received a call from Moody’s Investor Service. They wanted to know if I would be interested in interviewing for a position working from 4:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight.

No, I would not.

Aside from the fact that I would never (NEVER) see the girls, I wouldn’t feel good about working for Moody’s. They had a hand in the economic collapse. They’re the shitheads who rated toxic investments as AAA because it was lucrative for them to do so. I feel less ashamed collecting unemployment than I would being a part of their machine.

* * *

I interviewed at an investment bank this afternoon. I had to meet with three different people. All you do sit there and talk but it’s amazing how draining it is. When I left, I needed a nap. Three interviews just for a lousy 4-week project. It was overkill. Employers can afford to be choosy. But I’ll take it if they’ll have me.

* * *

I’ve mentioned before that I’m going through this transition without the benefit of a college degree on my resume. That I made it at far as I have without one has always been a wonder to me. I talk a pretty good game in the interview room. That’s how I got into bastions of snobbery like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley.

When I was in my 20s, I was reluctant to reveal that I didn’t have a degree. You get judged real fast and rising above a stereotype is a lot of work. It’s probably what motivated me to develop a good rap.

[For the record, while all my friends disappeared into various universities, I spent six years in the Coast Guard, which was a fantastic experience. I had a hand in saving more than a few lives, thank you very much.]

After revealing my secret shame, some people would carry on about how their degree never did them any good and how they ended up working in a field that’s wholly unrelated to their area of expertise. Some even went so far to say that college a waste of their time. I think some of them sensed my unease and were being supportive. Others sincerely felt their degree was meaningless.

I received an email from a headhunter with the “perfect” position for my skill set. (They all say that.) He noted that I left my educational background off my resume. I wrote back that it was not an error and that I am, in fact, self-taught.

Unfortunately, this client has no flexibility at all re educational requirements. Will certainly hold your resume for future opportunities. Sorry!

The next person who tells me they wasted their money going to college (and means it) is going to get a swift, accurate kick in the nuts/ovaries.