Le Trumpet
Madeleine warms up, pictured. All six notes are the same to me but God bless her - she drags her suitcase to school and back and no complaining. Monty bolts.
London, England
Madeleine warms up, pictured. All six notes are the same to me but God bless her - she drags her suitcase to school and back and no complaining. Monty bolts.
at 15:18
Madeleine turns eight - pictured, and takes breakfast in bed which has become a birthday tradition thanks to Sonnet. Note her "buddy" which is a gift from mom. Madeleine opens her presents which include books, a rocking chair from us and "Gross Magic" from Eitan (who hands me £12 or the amount he borrowed on top of his savings to get Madeleine's gift). My gift to Madeleine a bug box since bugs have fascinated her ever since I can remember. An added bonus (the promote tells me): "bees and brilliant garden pollinators while ladybirds and lacewings such as greenfly, blackfly and spidermite. One ladybird is able to eat more than 5,000 aphids ... " Go figure. This week Madeleine made a bug book with various garden bugs patiently observed, drawn and noted. The afternoon otherwise spent at the movies and home-made pizza for dinner - the birthday girl's request.
at 17:47
Any given day of the week, pictured. I am up early to see George the taylor and we are the only people alive in Fitzrovia. His shop is below street-level so I climb down a steep flight of stairs - he looks through the window tentatively to ensure I am a customer. Inside, his space cluttered with wide rolls of different cloth, finished and half-finished suits, thread racks and mannequins. Clutter. George has been a master of his trade since arriving from Cyprus in '49 and I have to assume his shop has been here ever since. While I am only picking up today we drink coffee which he boils on a bunson burner ("Turkish coffee the only thing the Turks have left" he says) and we exchange pleasantries. He pokes fun of my Jewishness and I his age - "you will be hunched over too, young man, what is important that you get something in return for what you have given up." What I like about him most is the twinkle in his eye - he loves his work - and he always has a joke. Today: "A man has a terrible disease and goes to his doctor - 'I'll pay you anything for a cure' he says. The doctor tells him he must drink the milk from a woman's breast. After a time, the man finds a willing woman and soon she whispers breathlessly 'may I offer you something more?' He asks: 'Do you have any biscuits?'"
at 07:40
Linda Evangelista whistling. Yes, I fetishise but don't we all? At least we did - the so called "supermodel" elevated to pop culture status by the '90s with multi-million dollar contracts, endorsements and campaigns. Beauty and glamour and money - we had it back then. These gals oozed confidence - Christy Turlington for Maybelline in 1991, Claudia Schiffer and Chanel; Cindy Crawford and Rolex while Kate Moss dated Calvin Klein. With Naomi Cambell and Linda above: the "Big Six" - a group who dominated magazine covers, fashion runways, editorial pages, and advertising. You name the medium, they owned it (Nb this group potted in the '80s: Cheryl Tiegs (owned that poster), Christie Brinkley (owned that poster too), Paula Porizkova and Elle Macpherson - while super, they did not reach similar celebrity status).
at 17:27
This beautiful sculpture greets visitors first thing at the V&A if entering from the Westward side. Shocking perhaps? I have seen her before.
at 16:46
Ana Carolina Reston, a 21-year old model from Brazil, passed away last week due anorexia. She weighed 88 pounds.
Last night Sonnet, Lizzie and I join favorite law firm Brown Rudnick for champagne and Jeremy Musson, an architectural historian, writer and broadcaster with a particular expertise in .. the stairwell. Brown Rudnick located at 8 Clifford St in a 17th Century brickstone which enjoys a remarkable foyer whose frescos, it is believed but not confirmed, by British painter Sir James Thornhill, famous for his Italian baroques (baroque BTW from pearls - as in their imperfections). Musson takes us on a journey through similar stunning entrances - Versaille, the Louvre, Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall, Hampton Court, Petworth; he describes the eye drawn upwards, towards light, presenting a viewer with geometricly pleasing shapes .. and paintings that, more often then not, depict some serious matter like Hellfire or Damnation. Musson explains the artist's challenge of creating something to appease the moving viewer who, afterall, is walking by the wallpaper. Not easy, he convinces us. It is hard not to admire Musson's ecentricity, which I find as interesting as his subject. He makes jokes over everyone's head. He name drops the Greek ancients. He gesticulates wildly. He is madly in love with his subject. There is no doubt in my mind that Musson went to the St Paul's school for the strangely talented boys. It is also clear that England's top 1% the smartest in the world, which they once ruled. God bless.
Me: "You call that cleaning the table?"
Eitan: "I would call it a rough job."
Sonnet: "Have you ever heard somebody lie?"
Eitan: "I have seen footballers lie."
Sonnet: "How does that make you feel?"
Eitan: "It is not respectful to the fans or the referee."
Madeleine: "Billy stepped on my foot and said he didn't."
Sonnet:
Madeleine: "To the teacher."
at 19:30
Photo from 2008. How these kids change. I have dinner at Zuma, London's hottest Japanese, with Gerrard and David who returns from Davos where he accompanied David Miliband as Special Advisor (an aside re Zuma: while the sushi sublime, it is the crowd that attracts, in particular the young women - 24 to 29, I would guess, toned, polished and on show. Colorful skirts and slender legs. Not the slightest trace of disappointment nor life's struggle. Theirs is tonight).
at 11:16
Well, the last time we saw Tony Blair was January 13, 2009, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by el presidente. Bush said Blair given the award "in recognition of exemplary achievement and to convey the utmost esteem of the American people" (pssst: poodle).
at 16:57
Madeleine blows the lights out on 7 - can another year have gone by? (I give Sonnet a kiss for being a great mother). Neither of us realise the impending over-night where the real work begins. The six kids, including Eitan, have ongoing boundless energy. They spread their kit on the top floor and hunker down for a night of .. screeching. Jumping. Wrestling and so on and so forth. Sonnet or I may bark occasionally but otherwise we are resigned for a wakeful evening, oh, boy. Finally, Madeleine too tired to continue and begs for her bed. A scuffle breaks out re who will join her room and I command: enough! and send each to his quarters. The separation seems to work and I hear only whispers (Madeleine to Jackson: "Don't lie too close to the radiator because you might catch on fire."). By 1AM, all is quiet. Home free, I think.
at 15:02
at 16:37
at 10:15
And so here we are again, Friday morning. I return home on yesterday's red-eye and, just like that, on the other side of the planet. From Heathrow, the motorway jammed by rush-hour so my driver takes the side roads which, I can assure you, less then inspiring on a grey, damp London morning. I have learned, post long-haul, to power through the day and avoid aggravation. Like work. Or talking to other human beings. JD Salinger. All of us wish to believe we are Holden Caulfield a little bit. I read "Catcher" in tenth grade, as did many of us, selected then I suppose for its impact on our forming psyches. In many ways Holden's dis-association, his isolation, what we crave - a fantasy of independence free from others stupidity. Free from government. Free from taxes and stupid wars, adults and everything else. Who hasn't found himself wandering a late-night urban scene after being dumped by a girl or feeling without a friend in the world? Such lovely self-pity. I know I've been there and happily can report: like many things, a passing phase.
at 18:34
Now this is how a skyscraper should look. Powerful. Direct. Pointy. None of the new fangled designs with their space age materials compare. Prince Charles agrees BTW.
"In other words a worn out antiquated system run by worn out antiquated people. The other thing I learned was that LU had very little information about what was actually down in the tunnels. In modern engineering, we call this "configuration control", which is the business of understanding how your equipment is configured. This can be challenging when you have a large system spread out geographically with many people working on it. People have to keep accurate records or you pretty quickly lose control. Apparently, it was not uncommon for crews to go into the tunnels at night (the window of opportunity is very short from about 1:00 to 5:00am) to do installations or repairs and discover that the equipment or layout of the equipment that they went to work on didn't match the drawings and they didn't have the right parts to make the repair or the new equipment wouldn't fit where it was planned.
God bless.
at 14:04
Katie on a high-powered business call. She sticks her tongue out at me and signals "peace" with her fingers. Her offices on 5th Avenue and 28th or several blocks from Madison Square Park, named after President James and famous for the weirdly triangular Flatiron Building, one of the city's first skyscrapers. You've come a long way, baby. I meet several of my sister's colleagues from Fenton Communications, who support her Op-Ed Project and where she co-habitates. We then go to dinner at Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village. The restaurant a hole-in-the-wall seating twenty and the latest venture of husband-wife owners of successful sushi Jewel Bako. It is perfect in a New York kind of cool. Candles and clutter. Joining us is Duane who engages my sister on her favorite topic - media. Each has a view on the Internet's disruption and for a moment I think all may be lost. But Katie does not take the bait and it is all good. From dinner, Duane's evening begins while Katie and I head to the Upper West Side. 10PM, dude, and I am lights out.
at 12:56
Tim and I meet at a diner on Clark Street in Brooklyn and head north, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge then Canal Street and China Town before settling for lunch in the Lower East Side. The weather torrential and I am soon soaked - my umbrella useless in the wind and my down jacket worse. We observe Stuyvesant Town - one of the most successful post-war private housing communities in America - which was bought by Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion in 2007 - at market's peak. A tenant-sponsor offer was rejected BTW. The dough boys bet on the fly boys leaving, by will or by force, taking their "rent control" with them. Everybody sued and today, by coincidence, Tishman gave up the ghost by handing Stuyvesant to the creditors and avoiding bankruptcy.
at 02:39
This photo of Eric and me from, I believe, my wedding day (sent by Best Man Roger). That said, none of us (Eric, Roger) can remember the exact where or when or why I am in a tuxedo and Eric black Converse All-Stars. A mystery, no doubt. What I do recall from that day: while Sonnet with Catherine doing her preparation, Roger meant to perfume and prime me at the barbershop. Instead, the three of us went to a Chinese on Russian Hill then took a two-hour nap before the 5PM kick-off. I am still earning that one back, oh boy.
at 02:00
Eitan checks out the football scores, pictured. His KPR defeated Hampton Youth 3-nil in an away game this morning. The boys a bit rusty following the year-end break and bad weather post-ponements. Us dads, meanwhile, in full force: Jergen sold a division of his company; Eric back from Amsterdam with his family ("we went one canal too far" and confronted "with an enormous pair of tits" he reports); Jean Luca moving into a new house ... meanwhile the boys grunt and puff, back and forth, their breath visible in the cold air. Madeleine had the option of joining or sleeping in, which she does until 9:30AM. Good on her.
at 13:08
Eitan has been talking about Madaeleine's birthday present for several days so today, following football, we go to local toy store Pandemonium. He, like a radar guided missile: "Gross Magic." Eitan reads the box on the ride home: "Gross Magic is just revolting. It's the most radical thing in magic you can get. If the idea of dragging a brown sticky blob out of a toilet upsets you then Gross Magic is not for you. It isn't pretty, it isn't nice but Gross Magic is very funny. Gross Magic plumbs new depths in bad taste (and bad breath). Take a filthy snot rag and clean it with the flick of a wrist, liquidize an eyeball into red goo and shock your audience with "live" Cockroach eggs. Yeuchy doesn't begin to describe it." Eitan: "Do you think mom will like it?"
at 11:53
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