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ntwicm next generation 2 (mix)
 

In The Heat Of The Night
 

Dune
 

Gillespie: Well, you're pretty sure of yourself, ain't you, Virgil. Virgil, that's a funny name for a nigger boy to come from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?
Virgil: They call me Mister Tibbs.

Last weekend my friend Julia and I got together for the first time in about a year or more. We've known each other since sixth grade, which is a pretty amazing feat in and of itself, and usually spend most of the time we're together just yakking, but we haven't had much time together since she moved off to The Gambia and started doing her human rights work over there. She's a lawyer, so it's not quite like she's serving soup to the hungry, or protesting by waving a sign around -- it's more complex than that. By the way, here's the country, a little finger of a place. But clearly big on the riverfront property. If I lived in southern Senegal, I'd be cheesed.

Julia's been there in one capacity or the other for about eight years now, living just outside Banjul, and apparently if you have a job the living can be pretty good. She's got a house and a maid and she's only a short distance walk from the job -- it's a human rights group she's set up -- but I'm just too selfish: I want her back home full time. So does her long-time boyfriend, who finished getting his PhD (or was it a masters?) and now teaches economics at Columbia University. So there's a concerted effort to get her to uproot to a place where the Atlantic Ocean is on the right side of the map. 

There has been progress: She's agreed to come live in New York City for a few weeks with the boyfriend to see if they can make things work, but I know she doesn't want to give up everything she's set up "for a guy," and I sympathize with that totally. And he's not about to move out over there, even though he could get a job at the University ... going from Columbia to Banjul U just is a bit too much of an unnecessary downturn in his mind, I'd think.

Meanwhile, I take what I can get. So we headed out to a local Italian place, where the water boy and the waiter gave us a little bit too much personal attention and we didn't get as much time to talk as I'd hoped. I couldn't tell if the bb/w were attentive because the place was nearly empty or because they thought there was something weird/kinky/potentially good for them about two women being out alone. It was a rather Thelma and Louise moment.

But there's never enough time: Julia isn't around long enough to see everybody, and invariably she squeezes everything she has to do back to back -- so while she got over here at about 7 on Sunday night, she had to meet a friend for lunch the next day at noon. Noon! So went the big day off I thought we'd spend roaming around the city or doing something silly like lying around the apartment. But the weather was total crap -- a lot of rain that didn't start until we were out of the place -- and cold, too. Still, talk about an enduring friendship -- she even agreed to come with me to pick up my VCR from the horrid, horrible repair shop That Never Would Return It. I've been fighting with Kim's Electronics (remember that name if you're in Queens, and don't use them!) since the end of December to get back my VCR that can't be repaired (well, it could, but apparently cost-wise I'm better off buying a new one.) (How ignominious that when it died on me the tape it had sucked between its jaws was Buns of Steel. I do not have and will never have buns of steel, iron or any metallic product. My buns are absolutely made of, well, chocolate chip cookie dough and that's how it goes.) Anyway, the jerk (Ted Kim) who said -- nay, promised, in his own pidgin English way -- he would bring it two Saturday mornings in a row finally pissed me off enough that I said I'd go get it. We got half-assed directions from the shop secretary, and set off for Grand Avenue. Emerged in deepest Elmhurst in the rain (at least Julia had a hat) and headed off down Queens Blvd. Found the address on Queens Blvd., which decidedly did not look like a repair shop -- in fact, it had a big brass elk standing on a pedestal outside, and the lobby just led to a locked door, through which we peered in and it all seemed rather abandoned. I thought I'd figured out why the store was so horrible -- it was just a guy operating out of his broken-down apartment, but then we figured it out: We meant to be on Grand Avenue, not Queens Blvd. Doh!

The shop looked fairly respectable, and Julia even bought some purple and green power strips (she has a theory that each small detail of life contributes to a person's overall mood, and therefore should be as festive as possible) and I got the VCR and I got my money back and then I had to lug the whole stupid thing in the rain back home, seeing Julia off on the subway. I can't tell you how much it bit my non-buns of steel to have to schlep all the way out there to get a VCR that was broken, but that's just me being pig-headed and refusing to let them have it for parts. That, and $25. By the time I got home I was exhausted, and it was barely 1pm. I took a nap.

There's some weird politics being played on my building's co-op board. I ran into the woman who sold me my apartment in the hallway the other day, and she started in on how at a recent meeting (I skipped it -- it seemed it was just going to be to meet our new managing agents, yawn) she was basically ousted as President and put in as Vice President by the rest of the board (can you have coups on co-op boards?) and it all seemed rather shady and weird. I didn't quite get all that she was talking about -- she seemed of the opinion that I knew more than I really did. And it turns out the Mr. Cristian to her Captain Bligh is my next-door neighbor. Anyway, it all was rather unnerving. Then, a few days later a memo was slipped under everyone's door indicating that she had tendered a "verbal" resignation. (Which, she says, was basically her standing up at the meeting and saying, "Er, you can't do this, and I'm not staying around to support it." And then walking out to applause.) I have to say I rather liked having her in charge a) because she seemed to know what she was doing and b) since this used to be her apartment, if I had crap from other tenants I could go to the Board President and likely get a favorable hearing. Without her on the board, I'm cast adrift. I'd heard about co-op board politics, but I never knew what people meant until now. Why can't everybody just get along?

Speaking of which, the World Economic Forum is coming to New York City, so expect large-scale difficulties to crop up, if the protests approximate anything along the lines of what they've been in other cities around the globe. I don't know that I'll be in the protest lines, but the Green party has gotten in touch with all of us Greens and asked if we can provide a floor for protestors to sleep on. I've volunteered because naturally I have a lot of space and probably have no common sense whatsoever, but it could be an interesting experience. It seems there are a lot of offers out there of space, so I don't know that anyone will be staying for a few days, but we'll see. This feels so sixties, somehow, which I know is a very silly way to refer to it, but all of the movies I see about the protest movements, everybody's crashing on other peoples'/strangers' floors and having deep discussions ... I can dig it, man. Then I have the nightmare where the one radical chick who stays here will turn out to be caught by the police and give my address to them and then I'll get hauled in.

Rockin', man. Then I could call my human rights lawyer friend, Julia. I'm all set now. See, that's why we have to have her around more often!