11-6-05

Finally figured out which images will go in the New York Night calendar. Was having trouble coming up with something seasonal and nocturnal for January and realized that Midnight Grand Central was perfect (New Year's Eve). I'll be putting up a preview page showing all the images included soon.

I also managed somehow to tear myself away from the PC and do some shooting at the Marathon yesterday. I think I got some good stuff - mostly of activity in the crowd; but also one shot of a lone female runner coming up first avenue with a little girl watching her pass (the type of p.c. shot that should insprire a generation of little girls to be marathoners). Though it had some artistic merit as well since it was foggy on 1st avenue early on. Still had 1600 Tri-X in the camera when I started so that'll be going into Microphen.

Between the calendar and the marathon and the ads I was so out-of-touch with "the real world" that I forgot that I was supposed to be at Tony's Italian Restaurant (not the one by Billy Joel) last night for my sister's birthday and got call at 6 p.m. asking when I was planning to be there.

Be where?

Tony's. We're all here waiting for you.

Oh, my God. Sorry. I'll be right over.

Tony's is the super mega family Italian restaurant which was so noisy that you couldn't hear the person next to you even if they were yelling in your ear with a megaphone (which no one had).

The reason it's so crowded is that the food is good and served family style. But they've stuffed customers into every possible square inch of floor space, and their must have been some echo system in the ceiling because it felt like having dinner at a rock concert where ordinary conversation was all that was on the program.

And there were a lot of old people at the table and no one could hear what anyone was saying. When someone wanted to tell a story, we assigned relayers at each end of the table to amplify what the story-teller was saying. They did this sort of thing in Central Park when the Dahli (I don't feel like looking up how to spell the man's name, though I can assure you that Dahli can't be right) Lama spoke, though they didn't use human relays as we did.

For some reason, I had taken care of the ordering for the ten or so people who were at the table and naturally when the bill came, the waitress put it down in front of me. Without looking inside the leather case containing the bill I immediately passed it, behind my back to my other sister (behind my father's back); and she looked at it and passed it back to me. No way I'm paying for this thing.

I pretended that I had to talk to her about something and dropped the bill in her lap and then moved to another side of the table to chat or pretend to chat with my aunt.

Eventually dear old dad looked at the bill - pretended to faint - but paid and we went on our merry way. I had paid my share when I had money. These days - I don't even offer anymore.

So the check was paid. But one awkward problem remained: no gift for her. Fortunately, my father had returned from somewhere - Amsterdam? And had a present of a small Van Gogh poster (Vincent's Room) for me. I managed to arrange things so that dad got into a cab first, and then I gave the poster to my sister wishing her happy birthday and making up a story about how I had asked dad to bring me the poster for her birthday. A lie so blatent that she laughed - and she said at least that she loved the poster. But what if dad came over and saw it in her house, she wondered?

Oh - I wouldn't worry about that, I said. He doesn't remember these things anymore. And, obviously - neither do I.