Friday, May 17, 2002
My Shrinking World of Consolidated News
Two of my favorite IVs linking me to vast sources of news headlines are cutting my supply. I know, I know, they want me to pay for me news, and I probably should, but it was just so much easier and more fun when it was free. The New York Times signed an agreement with Yahoo! yesterday to sell the Times' archived stories. Not coincidentally (I presume) the free daily NYT content disappeared from Yahoo! My home page has been set to My Yahoo for about two years now. It is chock-a-block with headlines from just about every major news outfit I can cram on there. Suddenly, I've just lost the New York Times content for business and technology. "This content is no longer available." However, I can still get "top stories" from the New York Times.
And just yesterday, I happened on click on the MSNBC channel - via AvantGo - on my Palm Pilot. "We're sorry, MSN Mobile does not offer an offline channel at this time. To experience MSN Mobile, we recommend you get a wireless modem and service or similar wireless connectivity and visit our site. …" Well, excuse me. At least all the New York Times content is still available for free through AvantGo.
Racism - The Game
The New York Historical Society is exhibiting a collection of Victorian era board games. The web site has some appealing samples, but leaves out the shocking ones. While you can check the web for a well-dressed bull and bear shearing a sheep in "The Great Wall Street Game," you have to hike up to the museum to see the sensational stuff in person. There was one called "Cats on the Wall" with this explainer: "Since alley cats were considered pests, few blinked an eye at the way street kids used them for target practice."
The worst are grouped in a collection called "Back to Square One: Racist Imagery in Victorian Board Games." Among the children's games are "Jim Crow Ten Pins" c. 1900, "Game of the Watermelon Patch," c. 1896, "The Darktown Fancy Ball," 1894 and a disturbing puzzle game, circa 1875, called "Chopped up Niggers."
The museum is in no way glamorizing these points of view, but rather documenting "how clichéd images of African-Americans were an accepted element of 19th-century visual culture, unfortunately reinforcing and perpetuating racist views."
Premonitions and The Dark Side
Without giving away much of the new Star Wars plot, there is a section on the movie where the Jedis try to figure out how none of them sensed the Dark Side was up to a big evil plot. It got me back to thinking about something I've been pondering for the past several months about Sept. 11 and psychic abilities.
How come no one predicted it or anything even close to it? Nothing in the bible, from Nostradamus, the Jean Dixon crowd, or even from the people personally hit by what happened that day. Nothing. It was just a warm, clear day with not a cloud in the sky.
I don't pose this as a joke. I've had a few weird things happen to me personally over the years that make me believe people can have premonitions, visions and whatnot. What I wonder is, here's an event that touched thousands of lives deeply and put a physical scar on one of the world's biggest cities. If there were ever an event in our time you'd think would have revealed itself to people open to those signals - wouldn't this be it?
Learning to Love Crime in the West Village
I've been in the West Village for almost two years. It's home to the gay pride movement and makes my PC-college look like a rally of College Republicans. I live on a route frequented by drag queens - mostly black and many Latinos. I've got no problem with that, but several months ago, the "working" boys picked our apartment building as a great place to turn tricks. They broke the lock downstairs and over several weeks left loads of used condoms in the hallways, along with cigars, cigarette butts, nearly-empty bags of pot and on at least on occasion, used needles. The landlord replaced the lock, which was immediately broken again. Then we got a pickproof lock, which has prevented the interlopers. One of my first floor neighbors told me a few days ago that the boys are still engaging in business on the steps outside our building. He said his latest blush-inducing encounter was at 8 a.m. on Sunday.
They guy at the Laundromat last week said a group of children were actually offered drugs by some of the dealers. (I thought that only happened in after-school specials.) The cops say we now have Crips and Bloods coming in. Supposedly the criminal element came down this way after Times Square was cleaned up and the prostitution moved to Eighth Avenue, the Meat Market and eventually into the Village.
Since they started screwing outside my apartment door, I've attended a few of these community meetings. Among that crowd, they are angry about the crime, they are angry about the kids coming in from Jersey on the PATH train, and they are angry that new apartment buildings are going up and rents are rising. Some of them started a little local organizing, trying (and getting) extra police for the neighborhood. Last week, I walked over to one of their meetings, which I think was supposed to get the attention of the police department and the mayor's office. It succeeded in that, but it also got the attention of an angry group of the transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual youths. They took over the meeting, often with friendly little shouts of "bullshit" when they didn't like what was being said by the residents.
The Villager had a pretty decent story about the event, but left out some of the most outrageous statements. I was particularly struck by the reasoning behind one man's remarks: "If we need a place to live, give us a place to live. If we need a place to hang out, give us a fucking place to hang out. … Whose quality of life are we talking about?" There was a sign stating, "Sex workers demand social services, not street corners. Jobs not jails." Their message to the residents was that the residents weren't really against crime, they just want all the gay black kids gone. The residents' call for more police has led to gender and racial profiling, they argued. "Residents of the West Village should be ashamed of themselves because you act like little kids," one woman said. "You really are racists in denial."
I felt sorry for these protesters, who probably aren't the ones offering drugs to the kids and leaving gunky condoms in hallways, but they managed to align themselves with the bad element that is. What surprised me though was their sense of entitlement. Somehow they got the impression that since they are of a certain sexual orientation, that the Village owes them something. The Village should not merely be accepting of them, but should also provide each with an apartment, a place to hang out and recreation - all apparently for free. The city's homeless shelters aren't good quality they said, and the Salvation Army will have nothing to do with gays. So their anger was with the Village residents complaining about the crime. They delivered several gems: "You shouldn't move to Christopher Street if you want to sleep on a Saturday night" and "If you have a problem with urine on the street, why do you live in New York?"
Pondering this dilemma makes me feel old. What's the answer? More cops? High-quality homeless shelters specifically for gay teens? The city is short on cash right now, so demanding something for nothing won't get you very far these days.
Lifesaving Stairwells
USA Today has a story today about how the unusual placement of a stairwell in the WTC South Tower saved the lives of 16 people. Because multi-ton elevator equipment had to be located in a room near the center of the 81st floor, architects had to put the stairwells in odd places, with only one on the far side of the equipment room. Turns out the elevator equipment blocked some of the impact and the far stairwell was the only one spared by the jet.
I've actually been annoyed by the stories and commentary that asserts the towers should be studied to determine how to build skyscrapers that would withstand future plane crashes. Many of these stories adopt a tone that implies the towers' design was faulty and builders should have built the towers not to merely withstand a hit from the biggest jet known to man at the time, but even bigger ones constructed in the future. In my book, it's amazing they stood as long as they did. The study is good, the condescension isn't. But what USA Today did, looking at the placement of a life-saving stairwell, could have practical implications for any tall buildings, regardless of whether they're hit by a plane.
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
What the White House Knew Before Sept. 11
Wow. It took the White House eight months to acknowledge it had some sort of warning about Osama bin Laden hijacking planes? Shocking. Imagine how much worse airport security must have been in the months before they issued that secret warning.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Queen of the Lion King
Either I'm the luckiest person in New York, or Lion King tickets aren't as hard to come by as legend has it. My college roommate was coming to town and she and her mom wanted to see the Lion King. But she heard it could take up to three years to get tickets.
Since I knew there was a trick to getting Producers tickets, I told Kerri I'd drop by the box office and see if a similar trick would work. So last Wednesday afternoon, I dropped by the box office and asked for Saturday or Sunday tickets. What do you know - two seats in the eleventh row on Saturday night. I bought them for the regular price of $100 a pop. I asked Mr. Box Office if there was a trick to getting those seats, knowing full well my husband had hoped to take my stepson sooner than that three-year mark. The guy in the ticket office said there is no pattern - they are seats held by Disney in case they need to give them to someone (the VIPs, I assume.) They release them at no specified time before the show, he said. He also told me I should go play the lottery given how charmed I was at that moment.
About 10 minutes later, I actually took out the tickets to have a look, and saw they were for Friday night at 8 p.m. - about an hour after my guests would arrive at their hotel if their airline and traffic cooperated. So Friday morning comes, and Kerri calls me from the San Jose airport to say their flight has been delayed and there's no way they'll make it to Lion King. No problem, my husband and stepson used those. But then I decided I might as well call Ticketmaster to see if more seats happened to open up. After about 15 minutes on hold, the operator came on and told me there were two seats open for Sunday evening - in the 10th row. I bought 'em. So if you're doing the calculation, on Wednesday afternoon, I got a pair of tickets for Friday night. On Friday afternoon, I got a pair of tickets for Sunday night.
Two other Broadway ticket items: We went to see The Producers a couple weeks ago (the tickets had literally yellowed since I purchased them in August) and there were two guys scalping tickets out front about five minutes before the curtain went up. … This past weekend, my friends bought front row tickets to Proof via the TKTS booth downtown on Saturday morning. The price was about $40 each.
And while I'm at it, might I just throw in my cheap review of Edward Albee's The Goat: It was baaaaaaaad.
Gilroy Quake
The only earthquake I ever heard was one near Gilroy about 10 years ago. I was sitting in my apartment, with my oblivious cat near me, and there was a loud boom - like a sonic boom. A second or so later there was a little rumble. If I remember correctly, it was only about a 3-something on the Richter scale, but I heard the boom first because I was less than 5 miles from the epicenter. Gilroy had a bigger one last night, a 5.2. The US Geological Survey has a cool map of all the recent activity in the area.
Radio Silence
Hey folks. Sorry about the inactivity here. I had friends in town and had very little time to update this page. (Though lots of interesting bits coming soon. Promise.)
The tourists wanted to do the NBC studio tour over at Rockefeller Center, which turned out to be an overpriced commercial for the network. The cool part though, was sitting in the bleacher seats in the Saturday Night Live studio. The tour guides gave us the low-down on the ticket acquisition: You are more likely to be struck by lightening a couple times, win the lottery and cure cancer than get a ticket to SNL. It's all about who you know. Every August, you're supposed to send in a postcard requesting a ticket (which I actually did a couple years ago.) Of the million or so postcards they get, each week the NBC folks select about 20 for free tickets. All other tickets go to cast members, NBC executives and the like for distribution to friends.
However, I did find out how to get primo Lion King tickets. Stay tuned.
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