november 5

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less famous is  this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Okay, so we'll let that quote speak for itself. Whilst watching The Princess Bride the other evening for the nth time (only this time on DVD!), I was intrigued that it could have some kind of current relevance....  Kind of slow going at the moment. My Martha Stewart project got glowing reviews from all concerned. Basically it went like this, since I can't seem to find a photo anywhere and I've thrown away the drawing I might have scanned: Blow up balloons. Paper-mache (using watered-down Elmer's when you can't find freaking' wheat paste) orange strips of tissue paper over said balloons. Dry. Repeat 2-3 times. Cut out Halloweeny images using hand-drawn stencils imitated in Martha's magazine. Paper-mache the stencils. Dry. Pop balloon, cut out hole in bottom. Fill with candy. Paper-mache over the bottom. Dry. Voila! Impressive little bally things like pinatas with candy inside. The ladies at work were sufficiently impressed. Also gave one to the candidate and his manager, who were also suitably impressed. I'm chalking that whole episode up to a non-starter at this point. Typical. But work's a bit slow. I get the 15th through the end of Thanksgiving off, so I'm basically counting the days. I had the Hollywood Reporter article from hell to do, but that's done, and I'm fairly well caught up at work, so I'm kind of piddling along. I took off Tuesday to hand out pamphlets for the elections. Which I sense is going to be boring and yet frustrating at the same time. Just our party's luck, to have a mayoral candidate running with the last name of Green. You can't even shout, "Vote Green!" Because then you're suggesting they vote for an oily bohunk. Here are the candidates (well, the ones who matter, at least):   green (democrat) willebrand (green party) bloomberg (republican) Okay, so first off: What is up with that unnatural tan Green has? He's the most untrustworthy, oily bohunk I've ever seen get this close to being Mayor. And he's the better of the two (Julia, with her trusting, motherly face hasn't got a chance). Now, shift your eyes to the no-lipped greaseball on the right. What is that thing he's doing with his hand? Oh, right, he's showing the audience the size of his heart. What a bunch of goony men. It's embarrassing. Why wouldn't you vote for Julia? Julia even came to the New York City Marathon race party I went to this morning. I'm not much for the race one way or the other -- I'm not much into running. But a party's a party, so I got up super early for a Sunday and spent an hour and a half on the subway (you go anywhere in Manhattan you're golden; Queens to Brooklyn and you'd better have a good book) getting to the place. We had a lovely breakfast prepared by Rachel and David, Greens both. She's into composting, so they have two bins under a table in the tiny kitchen full of fruit peels and other organic matter. She's spoken to our group of Green toastmasters about this before, and she's right -- it doesn't smell. In fact, it's a neat idea, but it's also hard to ignore that there are tiny flies circling the general vicinity and beyond. That'd drive me nuts. She's also a "raw foodist," explained David, who spent most of the time in the kitchen, making yummy smoothies (they had a slip of paper in the living room where you could check off your fruit choices and then turn it in like an order -- I had pineapple, banana and kiwi, yum), "so she had the gas in her stove turned off." Instead, they cook all of their food, when anything needs cooking, in the microwave. David looks like he'd be a rabid veggie, too, but turns out he'll eat "anything," although he doesn't do much meat. Not sure why any of this matters, but the idea of only eating raw foods doesn't do much for me. I need warmth in my tummy. As much as I like sushi, if I couldn't get my miso soup, I'd be an unhappy camper. But Rachel's very sweet, and every time I've seen David prior to this he's seemed very tightly wound over various Green Party issues, so it was nice to see them more or less relaxed. The rest of the gathering included some neighbors and other friends from areas I never fully divined. But we ended up having a woman wearing a blue wig named Barb (the person, not the wig, heh, heh -- according to Rachel in the old days it was customary to attend the Marathon wearing costumes, so Barb had an electric blue wig that drew much attention, and had brought over a tall Marge Simpson rubber wig that Rachel kept on most of the time. There was a woman who made a vegan banana bread loaf, which was dry but had just the right amount of walnuts, which is almost nil. Another couple featured a man wearing a T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt (such a fashion don't; I'd divorce someone who left the house that way) that read: "Bad Spellers of the World: Untie!" There was a mother-son pair of neighbors; she only spoke Spanish. An older woman brought a Marathon poem which, thankfully, was more prosaic than poetic, and actualy gave you a good sense of how horrendous running 26 miles through all of the five boroughs could be. She would know -- she ran it three times in the mid-80s. There was a guy who I think was in costume -- surely he didn't leave the house in a shirt of that print and pants straight from the 70s -- who apparently runs the Brooklyn Choice web site. There was a sum total of one cute guy, Bruno, and he appeared attached to Barb and her blue wig. Eh.   About a half hour after the race started, we all walked downhill a block to 4th Avenue and watched for the runners to start coming. First you have the wheelchair/disabled people cycling or rolling by. They all come with yellow-shirted "guides." Everyone applauds loudly. Above us circled helicopters. I love those whirlybirds -- it kills me how they can remain perfectly still, hovering, then fly sideways. As the "real" runners got closer, we were treated to a procession of police cars, cycles, and finally the car with the official race time at the top. I snapped a picture -- -- and completely missed taking a shot of the lead group of runners, because I didn't realize it would happen so fast. They were all clumped together. Got applause, kept moving. From there on out, it was a mix of the really good runners -- the lead women runners passed by on the opposite side of the street about five minutes after the lead men -- and the average Joe runners. The longer it took, the less serious they clearly were. We were about 5 miles from the start of the race, and some people were already walking. A few carried flags; sometimes around their neck, sometimes in hand. A lot of runners had their names written across their chest, so you could yell, "Go, Gavin!" and give them a reason to grin, even though they didn't know you. Barb of the blue wig was right out front and got lots of, "Nice hair!" comments. One guy stopped, grabbed her arms and asked her name. When she gave it, he gave her one of those "end of the war" kisses and fled. Barb was too shocked to speak. I kicked myself for not snapping a photo of that. Some had costumes, a lot of people had tiny flags across their noses, like protection from the sun. (It was gorgeous and about 60.) At one point Barb and Rachel's friend Ro stopped where we were (she knew how to find us because of the signs they were waving) and got a goodie bag of sports cream, some dried apricots, and then they decided to switch shoes -- Ro gave Barb hers, and vice-versa. Ewww. That's friendship, sharing foot odor. After maybe an hour my throat was raw and the runners were starting to fade away. If you stood on 4th Avenue where they had passed and looked down it, the road ahead looked packed with human bodies, all flickering and pulsing along. It was pretty spectacular. Finally, a man in an armadillo suit ran by. Apparently he does that every year; Rachel had promised a prize to the first one of us who spotted him. I'd forgotten completely, but he passed when my back was turned anyway. So since nothing says "time to go home" like a fleeing armadillo, I made my farewells and thanks and headed home -- another hour and a half on the subway. And then I finished painting my kitchen. Who says I can't keep myself busy?