Monday, October 15, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
New York life type trife da Roman Empire state
This is another half-hearted attempt to do justice to The Long List of Things I Pretended to Start. Like renouncing corn syrup. Or buying rollerblades (without the retrosexual guilt). Or not yelling at other people’s pets. I figure if one or more of these gets accomplished, my real priorities will somehow align together like toy soldiers, and we’ll march off into the city to “Hang on Sloopy."
But I’m also, like, tired of running into five-to-seventy-six known faces at any given point of the day (as is often the case with living in this city) and fearing that imminent trainwreck which seems to follow the question: “So... what is it you’ve been up to?” Never is it an issue of being for lack of words, it's more the crisis of which word to start with. Lately I've been falling back on the phrase "tending Satan", but no one seems to laugh at that. So I expect that this might, if nothing else, help me keep in check with myself to see exactly how I am, what I'm up to... and maybe if I don’t feel like answering I’ll just refer them to on this blog:
So let’s start with right now. Where I am now. Which is the Starbucks off of West 4th and Washington Square. Picture, if you will, a loud, raging ferment of Chinese exchange students translating “Things Fall Apart” via text message. A merry-go-round scuffle of cliff-notes for Bourdieau, Schiller, the Situationists, and a girl crying as she digs under them for her amphetamine prescription. Then next to her, a physics undergrad with a Hasidic beard, publicly weighing the pros and cons of testing Tesla’s theory by jumping off the Verrazano Bridge. This is why, Ma and Pa, I cannot go back to school.
I came from the West Coast after a two week boycott of reality to discover that I really had returned to fall in New York. Walking to work past the pale trenchcoats sweeping down 47th, the nurses having dyed their hair dimestore burgundy, the people hugging themselves in the subway stations, I sighed the last breath of summer and awaited the reverberations. The long list of late fees. The unfinished business breeding fresh enemies. The job I took for experience and somehow became my perception of past/present/future. Yes, I realize that I’m speaking in lists, and not without insignificant vitriol, but I really can’t help it.
It all has a little to do with my job. I’ve been working as a production assistant for D.I. Love, a low-budget film directed by Boaz Yakin shooting out of Kaufman-Astoria with Jacqueline Bissett, Josh Lucas and Adam Brody. Without going into too much situational detail (which could provide search engine fodder for some fanclub for The O.C. - or whatever), the experience has been riotous, by which I mean it has been both turbulent and completely hilarious. Somehow, in the brief span of this job, I’ve become a bus driver, tax accountant, key grip, insurance salesman, sound technician, veterinarian, mother, father, cop and freelance whore. Am I demeaning the experience? Probably. That's not to say I didn't make some solid contacts. I also can't complain about the pay. And of course, I feel that I now know just about everything I possibly could about working in this industry. Namely that I will never work in it again. After Thursday, hugs will be exchanged, the last champagne bottles will be uncorked at the wrap party, the ribbons will come down and I will be temporarily unemployed.
So in the interim, I'm going to back to bartending and spending a month-or-two to finish a play. Miraculous Lives is neither close nor far away from completion, so I’m thinking of summoning up a former project or taking on something entirely new. My friend Craig is going to print up some business cards so I can start giving piano lessons/booking private gigs starting November. And if there's enough money leftover from my $800 rent and (sometimes) gratuitous lifestyle, I plan on taking up Bando Thaing (a Burmese form of kickboxing). So that, my friends, is the abridged version of what I'm up to and my Earth dominating plans for the near future. Anyone who knows me well enough understands that I always leave room for failure and, of course, a little bit of the extraordinary.
Tomorrow, Jessica and I have two new roommates moving in. One is a designer from Aeropostale and the other is a model for L’Oreal. I know what you're probably thinking. I've never lived with fashion people either, but though my assumptions trouble me, I'm leaving them by the doormat. As Boaz says, "We're switching reels, folks... it's about to get forbidden."
Love & Other Noises From the Hall,
Trystan Trazon
But I’m also, like, tired of running into five-to-seventy-six known faces at any given point of the day (as is often the case with living in this city) and fearing that imminent trainwreck which seems to follow the question: “So... what is it you’ve been up to?” Never is it an issue of being for lack of words, it's more the crisis of which word to start with. Lately I've been falling back on the phrase "tending Satan", but no one seems to laugh at that. So I expect that this might, if nothing else, help me keep in check with myself to see exactly how I am, what I'm up to... and maybe if I don’t feel like answering I’ll just refer them to on this blog:
So let’s start with right now. Where I am now. Which is the Starbucks off of West 4th and Washington Square. Picture, if you will, a loud, raging ferment of Chinese exchange students translating “Things Fall Apart” via text message. A merry-go-round scuffle of cliff-notes for Bourdieau, Schiller, the Situationists, and a girl crying as she digs under them for her amphetamine prescription. Then next to her, a physics undergrad with a Hasidic beard, publicly weighing the pros and cons of testing Tesla’s theory by jumping off the Verrazano Bridge. This is why, Ma and Pa, I cannot go back to school.
I came from the West Coast after a two week boycott of reality to discover that I really had returned to fall in New York. Walking to work past the pale trenchcoats sweeping down 47th, the nurses having dyed their hair dimestore burgundy, the people hugging themselves in the subway stations, I sighed the last breath of summer and awaited the reverberations. The long list of late fees. The unfinished business breeding fresh enemies. The job I took for experience and somehow became my perception of past/present/future. Yes, I realize that I’m speaking in lists, and not without insignificant vitriol, but I really can’t help it.
It all has a little to do with my job. I’ve been working as a production assistant for D.I. Love, a low-budget film directed by Boaz Yakin shooting out of Kaufman-Astoria with Jacqueline Bissett, Josh Lucas and Adam Brody. Without going into too much situational detail (which could provide search engine fodder for some fanclub for The O.C. - or whatever), the experience has been riotous, by which I mean it has been both turbulent and completely hilarious. Somehow, in the brief span of this job, I’ve become a bus driver, tax accountant, key grip, insurance salesman, sound technician, veterinarian, mother, father, cop and freelance whore. Am I demeaning the experience? Probably. That's not to say I didn't make some solid contacts. I also can't complain about the pay. And of course, I feel that I now know just about everything I possibly could about working in this industry. Namely that I will never work in it again. After Thursday, hugs will be exchanged, the last champagne bottles will be uncorked at the wrap party, the ribbons will come down and I will be temporarily unemployed.
So in the interim, I'm going to back to bartending and spending a month-or-two to finish a play. Miraculous Lives is neither close nor far away from completion, so I’m thinking of summoning up a former project or taking on something entirely new. My friend Craig is going to print up some business cards so I can start giving piano lessons/booking private gigs starting November. And if there's enough money leftover from my $800 rent and (sometimes) gratuitous lifestyle, I plan on taking up Bando Thaing (a Burmese form of kickboxing). So that, my friends, is the abridged version of what I'm up to and my Earth dominating plans for the near future. Anyone who knows me well enough understands that I always leave room for failure and, of course, a little bit of the extraordinary.
Tomorrow, Jessica and I have two new roommates moving in. One is a designer from Aeropostale and the other is a model for L’Oreal. I know what you're probably thinking. I've never lived with fashion people either, but though my assumptions trouble me, I'm leaving them by the doormat. As Boaz says, "We're switching reels, folks... it's about to get forbidden."
Love & Other Noises From the Hall,
Trystan Trazon
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