Everything Looks Smaller from Here

Some friends just moved into a new apartment building with a roof deck that offers views of ... everything.

The Morning Mews

My vision was filled with cats as soon as I opened my eyes this morning.

Weddings+Snow=Spring in New York City

My friends John and Vincent got married today. Like my husband and I, they've been together for nearly 30 years (29 in their case, to be exact), so in a sense, the wedding was putting a bit of legal icing on the cake of their relationship (a horrible metaphor but weddings make me think of cake, I guess). I was honored and joyful to serve as a witness, and I also got a kick out of seeing once again the clockwork machinations of the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. There were hundreds of folks there when we arrived, each group waiting for their number to be called.

It was the first day of Spring, a typically fickle time weather-wise, so it seemed appropriate that by the time we left, snow had begun to fall.  By late afternoon, the trees in Riverside Park were thoroughly (and beautifully) covered.

Noah Baumbach

I saw a screening tonight of While We're Young, Noah Baumbach's new film, due to be released in 10 days. It's a funny, fast-moving film peripherally about documentary film-making but mostly about aging and the poignant allure of youth (in this case a young Brooklyn hipster-y couple) to those entering middle-age (in this case a childless, somewhat directionless couple whose biggest thrill comes from Googling information on their iPhones).

In answering the question "How do other films influence your work?" he explains in the clip I filmed below that the black socks with brown shoes worn by Robert Redford's character in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN had "a real impact" that influenced his film THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. He doesn't explain the impact further but the comment elicited a chuckle from the crowd.

Capital(ist) Improvements

I know countless people have photographed the many statues of Tom Otterness' Life Underground installation at the 14th St. & 8th Ave. subway station, so there's no real need to add to the gazillions already spinning through the internet. One of the many charms of the little statues scattered throughout the station is how they're smoothly integrated into the environment of the station. In this instance, this little guy, who looks like a close relation of Monopoly's Rich Uncle Pennybags, appears to be  waiting patiently for the next subway, presumably so he can take the sack of money he's clutching to the bank. This day, however, he enjoyed a brief respite from his perpetual waiting as transit workers installed a new pipe within his line of sight, and I felt that this break in the ordinary course of events was worthy of capturing with my cell phone camera.

Snow: the Good & Bad

New York has two faces when it comes to snow storms. There's there the beautiful moment when the snow is fresh or even still falling, and the flakes collect on branches and sidewalks, softening sounds and conveying tranquility. The calm and beauty is especially evident on side streets, like 43rd between 10th and 9th pictured.

Then there are the days post-snowfall, when the white turns gray. Sometimes, at busy intersections, the gray appears instantaneously, especially when the new snow combines with old snow. Such was the case a few minutes ago in Times Square, where a man was trying to squeegee away a huge puddle of slushy snow from the corner of 42nd and 8th Avenue.

Podcast No. 14: 200 Years after the Luddite Revolution

While science fiction often seeks to imagine the impact of new science on the future, Rod Duncan explores an opposite: what happens when science remains frozen in the past.

In The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter, the Luddites prevailed in their protests 200 years ago against labor-replacing machinery, leaving science and culture stuck for generations in a Victorian-like age.

Against this backdrop, Duncan introduces Elizabeth Barnabus, who outmaneuvers the restrictions placed on her as a single woman pretending (with the help of quick-change-artist skills) to be her own brother. “Gender identity and gender presentation is a theme that runs through Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter because in order to do certain things in her world she needs at times to cross-dress and do it in a convincing way,” Duncan says in his interview with me on New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Elizabeth’s mastery of disguise—and her knowledge of deception acquired from her circus-owning father—allow her to earn a living as a private investigator and accept an assignment that brings her face to face with agents of the International Patent Office.

In January, The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, validating Duncan’s decision to take a stab at science fiction. “I like to let ideas play in an imagined world and see what happens,” he says.

Asked if he found it difficult to write a first-person narrative in a woman’s voice, Duncan points out that all writers must overcome countless barriers to fully enter the minds of their characters.

“The book is about illusion and any writer trying to write from the point of view of someone different from themselves is trying to pull off some kind of illusion; they are trying with smoke and mirrors to seem as if they are realistically that person. Now sometimes that person may be different in all kinds of … ways from the writer.”

Duncan explains that he is dyslexic. “So for me is it a bigger challenge to write from the view of someone who is not dyslexic or is it a bigger challenge to write from the point of view of someone who is from a different time or someone who is a different sex?”

In the end, Duncan says that all writers, like his protagonist Elizabeth, are cross-dressers “in a psychological sense because we have to put ourselves into the minds of other people.”

Related links:

The interview touches on the conjuring illusion "the bullet catch" from which the book derives its title. Ned Ludd and the Luddites also come up.

The conversation concludes with a mention of Duncan’s role in the movie Zombie Undead. The trailer is on Rotten Tomatoes and the entire film in on YouTube.