My pics from my trip to DC last weekend are all up! I'm getting faster at this photo gallery thing.
Next to come...pics of the Marilyn costume. It was a success last night and no one tried to lift my skirt except my LUNATIC cousin who dressed as a stoner and tried to act like one too. He took a picture under my dress. I WILL maim him, mark my words, if that picture and its negative are not destroyed.
I was backstage at Wicked, when I saw it happening.
A cast member sat entranced at the television. Bottom of the 8th. 3-0. The curse was about to evaporate.
We went to a bar on 50th Street. People were climbing on top of one another. Top of the ninth.
We drank a little. I had a Bombay Sapphire martini, he a Bacardi and coke. I dragged my poor interviewee, who knows nothing of baseball, to this bar to "watch history!" as it occurred. "This is Americana, right here, you're lucky to see this," I told him. "You're lucky to be in America, in a bar, to watch as this huge piece of history happens right here, right now, tonight."
We stood by the bar, standing room only, waiting for it. Like counting down to New Year's.
We toasted to an excellent night and then, following a roar that surprised us, turned to the screen. The pitcher savored his throw to first base.
People were screaming, jumping on the bar. Our drinks spilled. We might as well have been in Boston. I tried to explain how this was more than sports, this was more than passion, how this was emotional. How baseball gets under skin and nerve and competition, and cuts to the heart.
This was making my face split in a painful grin.
This was nothing anyone I've ever met has ever seen.
This was New York, tearing itself to pieces over the team that just decimated us in the playoffs.
This was the Boston Red Sox, winning the World Series.
This was very cool.
Oh, my side still hurts. It's been one of those splitting, aching, laughing-till-you-bust nights and it included hot tea towels, barbecue sauce, hush puppies and a lot of text messages. And now it will continue, because tonight it will continue with some IZZARD, baby, and continue this streak tomorrow with lots of shopping and then a show. Tea towels! I'm still busting up.
This day has started in the best way possible.
Our entertainment editor came over to me. "Melissa, you're into Eddie Izzard, right?"
"Uh, yes!"
"Well, here, we're done with these."
He opens a package and dumps the three new Izzard DVDs on my desk. Unrepeatable, Definite Article and Glorious, all in glorious DVD definition (I've seen them but on bad videotapes or heard them on audio).
How can this day get better, I ask you? I don't know if it can! Ooh, I'll check my voicemail, surely it's not someone screaming and yelling about an article, surely not noooooooooooooooooo...
...it was. My glorious Eddie day has not been damaged, though.
So, it seems I was wrong. Kathleen's boy doesn't work for the Mint anymore; he graduated from metal money and moved up to paper. He works for the Treasury, which means he works right next door to the White House and has a special pass that lets him eat lunch between the two buildings. It's very cool.
It's been a very full weekend and I've had such a wonderful time. A nice, drama-free, fun and relaxing weekend was just what the doctor ordered. Pics in full coming soon but here are some quickies of my condemned old house (Heather, check out who's in the window), my gorgeous alma mater, my old newspaper office, Kathleen in her hero headquarters (her classroom), the World War II memorial (at night) and the National Cathedral. We also went to a pumpkin patch and walking around Alexandria, and now we're off to watch Farenheit 9/11, as if any of us need any more reason not to vote for Bush. (There, Leaky readers, my political affiliation is revealed, here on my site where it's perfectly fine for me to unveil it. Though, if you've been reading this site for more than a few months you would have known it anyway. I will be voting for John Kerry with all the gusto my little voting finger can muster. I fear I'll break the machine.)
Politics abound down here (as expected). They are everywhere. In every conversation - and we were in gardens and pumpkin patches, natch - the snatches you grab as you walk by always have the word "vote" or "our guy" our "our people on the Hill" or "come November" in them. Much moreso than in New York. It's interesting.
I am OUT. Forty hours of overtime in two weeks and it's time for a BREAK. Off I go to DC, where there shall be Kathleen, kitties, Georgetown, condemned houses, coffee, shopping, ghosts, pumpkins (the good kind), the Key bridge, the Exorcist steps, fall foliage, white houses, new houses, new houseguests, futons/rollaways/sheets on hard floors, lots of food, music, movies, laughs (dear, old, wonderful laughs), politics, pennies, nickels and dimes (Kathleen's boy works for the Mint), old talk, new talk, carousing, happiness, drinking (I'm sure), and AT LAST after months and months and months a special weekend to catch up with a very missed friend. Oh. I can't wait.
Tyler Kepner of the New York Times summed it up best:
It was actually happening. The nerd was kissing the homecoming queen. Paper was beating scissors; scissors were beating rock. Charlie Brown was kicking the football. The Red Sox were beating the Yankees for the American League pennant.
...my college house, at 3301 Prospect, has been condemned. Last week a house across the street was the second to erupt in flames, and a Gtown senior died. The city got moving making inspections, and lo and behold, the negligence of our nonexistent landlord has produced a result. Horrible story.
Let's talk Halloween for a moment.
In a fit of craziness my sister, while I was visiting her at work (at my father's office. This is a family affair. She is now A Big Time Fordham Law School Student at night, and working her way through her days as a receptionist for my father instead of her old hoity toity job the description of which I couldn't remember if you paid me. She was like Chandler, who you knew was big and important and got paid a lot, but if it came to a trivia contest and you were asked her job description, you would totally lose your apartment to the boys' team).
What was I saying? I lost my thread there. Oh, right, while visiting her at work she brought up the company's Web site from whom she bought her costume. She's going as Daphne from Scooby Doo, and her boyfriend is Fred. I don't think I could have imagined a better matchup.
So, I start clicking through the costumes. And I see Marilyn Monroe. And I think...why not?
Why not indeed. So I order two costumes, one the cheapy and one a nicer one from a different store, because I had a sneaky feeling the cheapy one would be...cheapy. Boy was I right. The thing is see-through and the V-neck dips to my freaking navel and it's a gross satin and the skirt isn't even PLEATED. A Marilyn white dress that's not pleated! WTF?!
But the official, REALLY nice looking one is $200. No way. I found one for less than half that at another place, and this one came yesterday, and it's pleated and pretty and will look good ... if a little risque.
And the wig. The wig, which is supposed to be this official Marilyn wig, is like a patch of burnt grass sitting on top of my head. My hair shows at the edges. There's no discernible shape. I need to go find something that fits my head. I think my head is just too big.
Except now I feel I'm a little insane. MARILYN MONROE! What am I thinking? People are going to try and lift my skirt all night! I've got two parties back to back and they're going to do this at both.
Lucky for me David might come and protect me. I told him to dress as Elvis or JFK. But I'm not singing happy birthday to anyone.
All right...I hope I did this correctly...I used an offline method and uploaded everything, so, fingers crossed.
I present...the Hawaii 2003 Gallery. (LAST year's, not this year's.) Enjoy, I hope!
Update: I tried to add a scrollbar to the pic popups and now everything has gone beserk. I'll fix it this eve.
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Staten Island ferry crash.
At the time I had been working at my newspaper for six weeks, and was still working at night. So when I was dressing, and watched the crash happening on telvision, I had no gauge on how much of my life it would affect. I knew I was watching my job unfold in front of my eyes, but surely for something this important the more respected, better-known, more proven reporters at our paper would be taking the bulk of the work.
On the way into the office my editor in chief called me - proving just by that fact that the newsroom was in utter chaos. He told me to go straight to one of the hospitals to await victims, to get victim reports.
I got sent to Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze, where most of the most injured patients were treated. At first I was the only one there and almost made it inside the emergency room before a security guard wised up and escorted me to the front. I didn't know what to do. Why wasn't any other press there?
My question was soon answered; two reporters and a broadcaster were interviewing someone on the sidewalk, someone with the dust of the Andrew J. Barberi ferryboat still clinging to his jacket. I ran. I got that story, and met my colleagues for the night - the Daily News, Newsday, the New York Post, the New York Times, and me, six-week baby reporter from Staten Island. I tried not to look too intimidated.
Victims streamed in but we were made to wait on the sidewalk. We shivered. We talked to who we could. Someone brought us coffee. We talked shop. We didn't quite feel what was happening, because we weren't supposed to.
After five hours we were called to the emergency room doors, where there was to be a press conference with doctors. Victims still were streaming out of the doors. After the press conference most of the press...left. Just left. And it was me and a guy from CBS, hanging outside the doors of the hospital.
I had been wrangling with our friend from the hospital to get me something all night. Anything, a victim, anything exclusive. It didn't feel carnivorous at the time; we just wanted a good story. After I stood outside for a while - there was no real reason for me to stay but it just didn't feel like I should go - the security guard who had been evil to me all night walked up to me. He said, as if he were Deepthroat, "Go to the lobby. Something you'll like's in the lobby."
I nodded and ran around the campus to the front. Our hospital friend took me by the arm and walked me into the emergency room.
I was expecting worse carnage than I saw. Some victims were still bloody but the waters had calmed; the most extreme patients had been put into rooms, but I did go into a trauma room to speak with a few more. They were in disbelief, staring straight ahead of them. Henry Bennudriti was smiling, clearly exuberant to be alive at all.
I was escorted out. I still stayed at the hospital. I didn't feel I was done. I figured out the code for the emergency room doors and went back in. I talked to an attendant, who still looked sickened. I think to this day he's the only hospital personnel (minus the litany of specialist that had press conferences) that spoke freely about the crash.
I left. I was at the paper all night long. The names of the dead came in at 6 a.m. We started calling their families.
The next day was supposed to be my day off. No way. There was a press conference at my hospital, and I went. There was Paul Esposito's family, begging the woman who saved Paul's life to come forward so they could thank her. This would become the centerpiece of most ferry coverage for every news organization. The hopeful and optimistic Esposito and his British angel, heroics onboard the boat and a tearful, joyous reunion. I didn't cry about any of it until I listened to Kerry Griffiths, the nurse who saved Paul, tell the story.
This week has been very hard. Talking to people, reliving all of it, listening to them break down - not easy. Of course, it's much, much, much worse for them and I'm starting, just now, to truly understand what they all went through. I hooked back up with Henry Bennudriti and spent this week poring over his story, his terrible, horrible, heartbreaking story. And of course I spoke with Paul, who I've interviewed at least 20 times over the year, about his unending optimism. No legs, and he is probably even happier than he was before the crash.
I and another reporter worked our tails off all this week, and we're truly proud of the coverage our paper put out today on this anniversary. So, here it is if you want to see it. A special section, on the occasion of the anniversary of the day that I can say for certain changed my life.
(PDF files, all over 1MB)
Ferry Section page 1 (A7)
Ferry Section pages 2 and 3 (A8 and A9)
Ferry Section page 4 (A10)
The new place doesn't yet have internet, so I'm at my coffee shop (yes, MINE, even though I don't own it; it's right around the corner from my house and is the best coffee shop I've ever been in. Squashy chairs everywhere, Gryffindor-common-room-like; couches, antique lamps, walls full of local photographers' work, a bathtub full of books when you walk in the door, and the back room has either poetry readings or local bands every night. A lot of fun and very diverse people come in and out, and you make friends easily. And there's free wireless internet. I have spent a lot of time here in the past week). I'm working on some work that I couldn't stand to do at my desk anymore; this revisiting of the ferry crash is very sad and hard, and as much as you're supposed to be able to put aside personal feelings, sometimes speaking to widows and the traumatized has a power that pervades that.
But that's not the point of this. The point is that there are these IDIOTIC kids here and they are ruining it. There should be an age minimum to get into this place. They're like 15 years old and are bitching each other out for being mean to someone's brother or something. They're wearing bandanas and jeans with chain links hanging out of the pockets, and have too many piercings. They're loud and obnoxious and curse a LOT. They're having loud arguments in my little sanctuary and I want to smack them up. "Why don't you just go die, that's your place!" one of these "friends" said to the other, just now. "Go lick balls!" someone said back.
I mean... wow...
...ah. I get it now. It's amateur poetry night. They all just trudged to the back room to read their poetry. I can just imagine. "I told her to die / because that's her place / but she said to lick balls / and I think that's kind of gross / and she should just f*** off / and a butterfly shall rise from the ashes."
Gag me!
It really has to be said, and it's going to make me sound like more of a gay man than I already am (but that's all right, because my roommate is a straight "gay man" too, so we make a fine pair), but Audra McDonald is a goddess.
That is all. I'm listening to her right now. "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home." I literally danced in my kitchen to this song, all by myself. Yes I'm a big fat dork. But...man. MAN. Where did she COME from?
Okay, that's all from the gay man in me. Now the journalist is going to return to doing the story she's put off all week.
guffaw of the day (not like I have time for one - why is it when you're most busy you procrastinate most?) comes from David, from an email:
"I just want [Harry Potter] Book 6.
(to be read to me, in my bed, by Michael Phelps.)"
Dude. Me too.
True or false (especially TLC readers): I have on my person right now a button that says "Welcome to the 2004 Republican National Convention," that I took from my roommate (who photgraphed the event).
Is it a trick question? Hmm...maybe!
