267 Eggs!

Through Friday, April 25:  See contemporary takes on Faberge eggs at Rockefeller Center on the Plaza.  This exhibition is outdoors and well worth the trip.  Read all about the project and the artists at http://thebigegghunt.org/news/  The captions below are my own interpretations of these wonderful objects.

Here are my favorites from my visit today.  Happy Easter to all who celebrate!  And Happy Spring to everyone.

Purple and blue with eyelashes

Faces

Tourist -- I think I bumped into him!

You must know this fellow!

I love the drippy, abstract characters.

Mosaic in the Faberge style

Night sky Everywhere

Traditional

Robin's egg with nest intact

A fitting companion to Atlas' Globe, 5th Ave.

American Quilt style

VERY popular with tiny tourists

Delicate as Wedgewood

Collision

Sunday, April 14, 2014.  Report from the front.  Fairway is one holy mess this morning, as Passover and Palm Sunday collide.  I went early, thinking it wouldn't be too bad.  All the checkout lanes were jammed, but the express led almost back to the entrance on 74th/Broadway.  Breathe, step, inch forward ... got konked in the shin by a shopper with an over-full basket and nowhere to move. 

Can't wait to see the lines across the street, outside Levain, the destination bakery.  (I'll be hitting the deli downstairs.)  You have to be battle-ready to shop at Fairway the days before holidays.  At least everyone seemed happy and ready to go.  Overheard:  "Are you all done?"  "No, I have to clean my kitchen."  "Oh, I did that last night."  "Wow -- good for you."  Just life, ordinary life.  Life all around.

Television

When times are tough, I watch TV.  Today it's golf -- the Masters.  Yesterday evening, it was the final game of the Chicago Bulls on WGN America.  On Thursday night, it was Under the Gunn and then I forgot to turn on Vikings.

In an economic slump (which leads to a slump of the spirit), I turn to things that look nice, sound nice, or provide an escape.  Or all three.  Lately, I've been watching a lot of TV, but this is no different than when I was young.  I depended on shows like "Bachelor Father," "Hazel," and "The Addams Family" to provide models of family life.  Even the strangest families were comforting as long as they had a predictable dynamic.

I must have seen this on television:  meat loaf every Thursday night, with mashed potatoes and canned corn.  I begged for this but was ignored.  Just something predictable -- that's what I wanted.   So, when the summer began, I started to count off the days until the new television shows started.  Ads said "six weeks until ...!"  I couldn't wait because then my friends would be home from summer vacation.

I think I became near sighted watching too much TV, even though I observed the six-feet-away rule.  Once I watched so much television that a blood vessel burst in my eye and I had to sit in a darkened room for several nights.  That was nice, because my grandfather read me stories (even though he couldn't read English too well).  I think he made them up -- things about honey bears and birds flying early in the morning and an old mulberry tree that had to be cut down.

Sometimes I turn on the television for company, in the background.  And so, the evening comes and I wait for something familiar and that leads to comfort and then to sleep.

What I Remember & What I Have Forgotten

I remember how much I love the movies.  All those off-afternoons spent in the Regency Cinema on Broadway (where Ollie's is now), watching festivals with Charles Laughton, Myrna Loy, Basil Rathbone.  Silent film festivals.  Noir festivals.  I didn't care too much for musicals, but I went to see  those, too.  I avoided the first-run films (those hit the Regency a few weeks late) though I did see some bad ones -- such as Fletch and Fletch Returns.  I was not working those days and I liked the New Orleans scenery. 

On a hot Sunday, I could spend hours at the Regency.  I saw Ghostbusters II there and bumped into my hairdresser and her son who thought it was all just too silly.  The bathrooms were upstairs and the popcorn was fresh and it was one of the last single-screen theatres to survive.  While I am not a big fan of nostalgia, I do miss the Regency and I miss the days that went along with it.

My love of the movies goes back far beyond the days of the Regency, back to the Hi-Way and Colony Theatres on the Southwest Side of Chicago.  The Hi-Way was near the store that sold Florsheim shoes for kids and the Colony was next door to Gertie's ice cream parlor.  (In its last days, the Hi-Way became a porno theater and the Colony was closed down.  I thought it was very cool that my grade school drama teacher had an apartment above the colony, on a corner with a rounded bay and next to Dr. Ramesh Prakash dentist, open all the time.) 

All the kids in the neighborhood went to the Saturday matinees and ate gooey candy that ruined my teeth and ripped out a filling or two.  (Charleston Chews were the worst.  There was also a candy called 7-Up that had seven kinds of fillings in seven different compartments in one dark chocolate bar.)  I saw Hard Day's Night at the Colony and later, The Way We Were.  At the Hi-Way, I saw moody films such as Mary, Mary and the Trouble with Roses and was happy to see that Patricia Neal triumphed over her stroke and returned to the screen.  The Hi-Way had a long, dark lobby and a long glass refreshment counter.  It had more sophisticated films than the Colony, but the audiences were sparse.  I guess people preferred to go to the Evergreen Cinema in the shopping center farther south.  That theatre was new, bright, big and every Thursday night (for a while) they showed the complete run of Eugene O'Neill plays on film.

I need to get out more to the movies now!