Peyton Place

Even though it has been in its fancy new building for nearly a year, I recently went to the New Museum of Contemporary Art for the first time since it re-opened. The building has some high points and some “meh” points. Most strikingly, the elevators are very high-tech and painted in a vibrant green, which is very cool, even though it makes everyone look a little sickly. The galleries themselves are nothing to write home about (but in that they spent nearly $100 million on the building of a New York museum, the fact that the galleries are sub-par actually is worth mentioning). I can’t tell if the design includes adjustable fluorescent lighting, but the hum of the overheads distracted me while I was looking at the art. The gallery rooms are pretty small in general. I suppose that could have been used to the rooms’ advantage, creating intimacy, but the soaring ceilings negated any headway to be made on that front.

Whatever the building left to be desired, the art satisfied. The premiere show at the moment is a two-floor, mid-career retrospective of one of my favorite contemporary artists, Elizabeth Peyton. Peyton is the heir apparent of the great Los Angeles portraitist, David Hockney. Like Hockney, Peyton’s works are vibrant, sumptuous, and deliver an ethos of the subjects that is at times light-hearted and at times darkly brooding. Although she is a young artist, her work is endlessly engaging, and her talent is so immense, her background so well informed, and her skill so cultivated that one can't consider her beautiful oils without recalling masters from Raphael to Renoir. I don't mean to overstate things, but let's just say that I am fan.

I could write a tome on Peyton’s paintings, but for just a little catharsis, I only want to talk about the intimacy of her paintings. In dimension, they rarely exceed about 18 inches, making them a thoroughly engaging scale for the viewer, and most of the scenes she depicts are from a viewpoint of about one to four feet…very intimate portraiture. Her style is at once painterly in broad strokes of rich color, and delicately linear in representing the refined features of her young, often androgynous, models. Her subjects frequently are in vulnerable, quotidian situations, sometimes asleep, sometimes eating out of a take-out tin, sometimes sightseeing abroad. Still others are taken from tabloids and historic or archival photographs, especially of royalty, rock stars, and early feminists. No matter the individual, whether one of her lovers or Elizabeth Arden, the paintings have a spontaneous quality that can be breathtaking and elicit a range of emotions. If you have the chance to see this show, I highly recommend it.

On a personal note, the title painting of this show, Live Forever, was the anchor image for the advertising campaign during the 2004 Whitney Biennial, for which I had a marketing role beyond my years. I worked with Ms. Peyton for a short time in ironing out the details for the Museum’s use of the image, and our interactions were extremely enjoyable. I cannot be happier for her in seeing the first American presentation of a survey of her work. The show is lovely, as is she.

In God We Trust

Religion has played an important role in my life, but not for the usual reasons. Instead of providing me with the consoling or motivating faith of a divine presence, it has helped me to understand society, to build my cultural values, and to engage history from a third-party perspective. I guess I should explain.

The community in which I grew up was not terribly diverse, and in my High School class of 200 or so, I was one of two Jews (mind you, my mother is Jewish, my father a non-practicing Methodist). It didn’t really bother me, as I had no formal Jewish upbringing, attending bar mitzvahs only two or three times by age 18 and only sporadically attending casual Seders with family friends in the area. The first time I remember religion having a great impact on my life was when I was about 16 years old, and one of my classmates—a daughter of an evangelical missionary—found out that I was Jewish, pulled me aside between classes, and earnestly told me that she was afraid for me because I was going to hell.

Well, since then, I have made peace with my damnation, and I know it might be cliché to say it, but there is no way we all are getting into Heaven, and if there is only room for Christian radicals or exploding Islamic extremists, I feel more comfortable taking my chances with eternal fire. I am a Jew and a homo, after all, and the people “down south” likely will be more interesting anyway.

In all seriousness, the gospel in my household was Science. My mother holds degrees in Chemistry, Biology, and Geology, and my father is a practicing soils scientist. Chat around my house centered on watersheds and sandy loams. My parents left for weeks at a time, not to convert the heathens in Africa, but to map the soils of the Grand Canyon. Family vacations were spent looking at alluvial fans from the Pleistocene and trying to find glacial polish on granite throughout the American West. Sundays were anticipated, not for weekly sermons, but for the escapades of wildebeests and lions on PBS’s series, Nature.

With this background, I took a more cool and calculating approach to religion than most people might, and I really began philosophizing my beliefs while in college, when my exposure to diversity and drive to contemplate were at the highest levels to date. I came up with a system of beliefs that is not spiritual, basing my understanding of religions on my scientific upbringing, believing that all things ultimately are explainable. Sociology is the underpinning for my religion, which boils down religion to the most basic parts that have guided society for many millennia. So it is little wonder that the oldest of Western religions is the one with which I identify most readily. I consider myself a Jew, but my faith is not so much in a higher power as it is in humanity.

I believe that some Biblical accounts are historical and that some are fable. I believe that the Ten Commandments are the underpinning of Western society, not because God gave them to Moses with a mandate, but because they are the tenets that allow people to function as a group: don’t kill one another; don’t take things that aren’t yours; respect others; don’t lie; remember you need your rest. Really, I believe that the last seven commandments are the ones that have helped Western society to function for the last 3,000 years and that the first three are the imposition of beliefs on non-believers (There is only one God, I am it, and I will get angry if you worship anything else).

What is really interesting to me is that in the text, both in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, the Bible uses the notion of freedom from slavery as the reason for which this single deity should be worshipped:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…; (Exodus 20:2)

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm…. (Deuteronomy 5:15)

I do not pretend to be a scholar in backing up these beliefs. I am no holy man, I do not have an advanced degree requiring years of study, and I have not read the Bible cover to cover (though I think I might try). So you can imagine my fascination last night in watching PBS, which presented three programs on Western faith. The first, on Nova, blew my mind. It took a critical look at the first five books of the Bible—the Old Testament or Torah for my tribesmen—and sought to discover what could be factually substantiated through archaeology in order to devise an hypothesis about the beginnings of Western religion. It was captivating, and for people who are not entirely blinded by their inherited faiths, extremely plausible.

Without going into it in detail at all, the theory presented is that:

1. the book of Exodus is the oldest book of the Bible;
2. most Israelites were actually Canaanite slave classes, who rose up and conquered the elite classes, then spreading throughout the hills of modern Israel (or per Exodus, wandered the desert for 40 years); and
3. the idea of a single God and freedom from Egypt came from a small band of slaves who actually did escape from Egypt, eventually joined the Israelites, had a religious experience along the way, and shared their experience with the newly free Israelites, who were thirsty to establish a new society.

This theory is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this new society, which spawned Western religion, was based on a tale of freedom.

Is it unthinkable, therefore, that in our current age when political systems hold at their center the idea of freedom, Democracy might be replacing religion as the tie that binds people together? After all, according to Exodus and Deuteronomy, freedom is the reason for which we should believe in God in the first place. Could it be that participating in Democracy is really being in the presence of God? Is this Heaven? If we could ask a Canaanite slave what his heaven would have been, could it have been Democracy?

And in the discussion regarding civil liberties—especially right now surrounding Proposition 8, in which hell-bound Americans are up against the Catholic and Mormon churches—what should we be valuing above all else, freedom or God? And what if those are the same thing?

Unh-Unh. Not O.K.

So I started taking Chantix exactly four weeks ago today to kick the smoking habit, and that means that I have been smoke-free for three weeks.

Chantix is nothing if not well packaged, foregoing the ugly brown pill vial for a very sleek set of cardboard contraptions that organizes your dosages by week, day, and meal. I thought that the idea was borne of great wisdom, Pfizer recognizing that quitting smoking shakes up a routine and, therefore, sought to replace it with an easy and temporary regime of pill popping. Now that is something worth paying for, and when I went to fill the first month’s “starter kit,” I paid the hefty price for the meds, thinking, Well, I probably spend about that per month on cigarettes anyway, so it’s a wash.

I even got over the fact that my UnitedHealthcare plan doesn’t cover the medication, which is no easy accomplishment for a Jew working in the arts. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely complained plenty about UHC, for under my plan, Viagra costs $10 per month, but they don’t cover smoking-cessation products. It makes no sense for very obvious reasons, the most ironic of which is that smoking can cause impotence, but I will leave it at that and say that I found an inner peace in paying for the long-term benefits that Chantix would help me to attain.



So I regularly swilled down the pellets in the most elegant and satisfying ways I could—be they with a good cabernet at Peter Luger’s, or with orange juice after a poached egg on toast, or with a tequila shot at a friend’s dinner party—all the while collecting the “Good for you!” comments that have sustained me from supporting friends. I am pretty pleased with myself, I must admit, and patting myself on the back all the way to the pharmacy this morning, I braced myself for another hit to the bank account as I got my first refill of the medication.

Well, I learned this morning that Pfizer is at once wise, crafty, and opportunistic, as I swallowed my pride, did some quick computing in my head, made several Duane Reade staffers triple-check the price, and felt my face turning red. In her sweet sub-continental accent, the pharmacist told me, “Sure, the starter month is expensive, but the regular kit costs this,” indicating the label staring me down from the countertop. This=DOUBLE THE FIRST MONTH.

So what argument am I supposed to come up with now? Shucks, no big deal. I didn’t want to have dinner at per se this month anyway?

What is really disturbing is that Pfizer is profiting from my addiction, weaning me from cigarettes and increasing my dependence on their drug, just to boost the price after one month. Isn’t that sort of like what the tobacco companies did: created or increased addiction to turn a greater profit? Talk about something that could drive one to smoke again!

“Does this come with some company stock?” I asked the pharmacist, as I swiped my credit card.

Lucky Me

S and I have been dating for almost 4.5 years, and we have yet to spend Thanksgiving together. So I thought it was so sweet of him to suggest that on my trip to California this weekend, we throw ourselves a decadent little meal and call it our own Thanksgiving. S is Americano through and through, especially when it comes to food. His taste is a hybrid of down-home meat and potatoes, bearing the brand of his Chicagoan patriarchs, and creamy and fried goodness that is the hallmark of his Carolinian matriarchal line. For international flare, throw in a noodle, a truffle, or some Dijon, but variation is unnecessary to make him as happy as a clam.

Naturally, when S suggested that we have Thanksgiving, I started planning a turkey feast and turned to Ina Garten’s recipe for the perfect roast turkey. I really trust Ina (a.k.a. The Barefoot Contessa), and I have made many of her back-to-basics meals that are at once elegant, simple, and delicious. After having compiled the shopping list, S realized that we didn’t have a few of the necessary items with which to make the meal, thanks to our Santa Monica kitchen that reflects my residing in New York, S’s demanding work schedule, and our reticence to furnish it in anticipation of a major renovation. While oftentimes I have had to bite the bullet in order to get some necessities to make the kitchen functional at all (I am calling cookie sheets, strainers, and ramekins “necessities”), purchasing a roaster just for this meal seemed a little over the top.

So it was back to the drawing board, and then I remembered that my parents had given us a crock pot last year for Christmas. An odd gift to be sure, but I think they won it at a corporate party and, already having one themselves, were looking for someone on whom to unload it. And I am so glad they picked us, for last night’s meal was divine and easier than most things I ever have made.

Braised Beef Short Ribs
(serves 4)

Ingredients

• 4 short ribs of beef
• 8 peeled baby carrots, 4 roughly chopped, 4 whole
• 8 crimini mushrooms, quartered
• 1 yellow onion, very roughly chopped
• 4 celery stalks, roughly chopped
• 2 cups of beef cooking stock
• One bottle of good red wine (syrah, cabernet sauvignon, or other “big” wine)
• 8 robust stalks of fresh thyme
• 5 fresh sage leaves
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions
Liberally salt and pepper all sides of the short ribs. In a hot frying pan, sear all sides of the short ribs until they are golden brown, starting with the fat side (to render some moisture into the pan). Add the short ribs to a slow cooker, placing them in the center of the basin. Add all of the vegetables around and between the short ribs, filling in the spaces so that the ingredients are evenly distributed throughout. Tie the sage and thyme together into a bundle with kitchen twine and add them to the slow cooker. Add the liquids to the slow cooker proportionally so that all ingredients are just submerged. Give the mixture a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. Cook on low for 8 hours. Remove bundle of herbs, and serve.

12:30 P.M.

8:30 P.M.

The above recipe is very similar to a dish that my dear chef friend (and culinary partner in crime) served to 10 of her closest friends last fall, after we had spent the day at the Bronx Zoo. I mention that now because she certainly was the inspiration for our “Thanksgiving” menu, and after I had turned on the crock pot, I checked my BlackBerry to discover that she had become engaged the evening before! Coincidence? I think not. Mazel tov, sweetie!

So S and I took the rest of the day and did some shopping and saw the new James Bond movie. It was very entertaining, but A.O. Scott’s review had it right in pointing out that it lacked some of the classic Bond-ness. Most notably, the gadgets have all but disappeared, along with one of the greatest characters of the movie franchise, Q. The elegant side of Bond was not at all present, and for the majority of the film, his escapades were carried out in blood-stained suits and tuxedos (and that poor Aston Martin!). A must-see in theaters, to be sure, but not the Bond of yore, or even of Casino Royale.

When S and I got home, the house smelled incredible, thanks to the woodsy stew in the kitchen. We had a couple scotches and whipped up a variation of Tyler Florence’s mashed potatoes, opened a good Chianti, and paused to think about how lucky we are.

I passed out on the floor of the living room before dessert.

Hike!

A few weeks ago, I watched Frank Caliendo on the Tonight show, and he had me howling with laughter. I am not sure if he was on something at the time, but Frank was all over the place, impersonating seemingly dozens of people in rapid succession. At a couple of points, he even took over his own interview by impersonating Leno (much to Jay’s horror). Frank is nothing to look at, a portly, round-faced guy that is so nondescript that even his hair color is not memorable. In fact, the only time I can remember his face is by thinking about his impersonation of someone. There is little doubt that this quality is what makes him so good at what he does, a blank canvas on which to throw a new intonation, a couple rehearsed gestures, and a nuanced squint of the eye. To quote Christian Dior, grey is the best color with which to showcase any other color. But I digress.

The best part of Frank’s interview was when he impersonated John Madden. In making fun of the sportscaster’s seeming obsession with Brett Favre, fake Madden suggested that the quarterback’s number (4) be retired from the numerical system entirely, in deference to the athlete’s talent and career. He then went so far to make the outlandish suggestion that the word “farve" (misspelled for readability here, folks) actually replace the number so that, for example, my next check to Con Edison might read “Farvety-farve dollars and seventy-farve cents.” Absolutely hysterical, but is it really that outlandish?

I hate to be a stereotype, but I just don’t get football. I mean, I get the rules and completely understand the value of live entertainment (especially in-person), the drama of a good come-back, and the feeling of community that is galvanized by the home team, but football in America is like a national cult.

Two months ago, I went down to the Carolinas to visit a recently transplanted friend, and he has season tickets to Clemson football home games. When I was told that we would be getting up early to tailgate, I thought, Great! Love me a hot dog and Bud Light. What happened next was a real education:

• 6:00 A.M. – chastising awakening for not being showered and dressed already;


• 6:20 to 7:40 A.M. – 90 miles an hour from Charlotte to Greenville;


• 8:30 A.M. – procurement of McMuffin breakfast;


• 9:20 A.M. – purchase of orange chairs with built-in “coozies,” jug of water and Gatorade (at 9:10 or so, I had sobered up from the night before. Thanks a lot, McMuffin);


• 9:45 A.M. – arrival at designated parking spot at Clemson, staring at surround-sound and satellite TV system set up in the back of someone’s GMC Envoy, awe-struck by 12 coolers of beer and one cooler containing a full bar;


• 10:00 A.M. – drunk again. “Oh that’s a DOG? I thought it was a wind-up Furby.”;


• 10:00 A.M. to 12:45 P.M. – a little hazy, but because I was wearing orange, I think I made some new friends…or so facebook would have me believe;


• 12:46 P.M. – first game of Corn Hole. Life changed;


• 12:46 P.M. to 2:00 P.M. – tossing beanbags, thinking, The South isn’t so bad…;


• 2:01 P.M. – “Like hell we lost! You Jewed me out of three points!” Oh my god! What am I doing in the SOUTH??


• 2:02 to 3:15 P.M. – Port-a-potty line;


• 3:18 – enter Death Valley, 18 minutes “behind schedule”;


• 3:18 to 6:00 P.M. – Football, football, football. Drunk. Bored. Hot. “Why are those kids doing push-ups in the aisle next to us? Oh really? Citadel scored?” What on Earth is Citadel? Is that actually a school or just a football colony? “No, thank you. I don’t really like to have my face painted. I have sensitive skin.” Wait, this isn’t even my shirt. “Sorry, I thought you could smoke anywhere in South Carolina. My mistake.” Where’s my ticket stub? “Does anyone have any Pepcid?"

The extent to which we celebrate, promote, and buy into football astounds me. It’s just mania. Aside from the obvious incursions into everyday life, like the daily segment on local news broadcasts and articles on Giselle and Tom Brady in US Weekly, football constitutes a cultural norm that is just mind-boggling to me. Someone at work sent an e-mail around to request that we “huddle up to talk about this in-depth.” Grown men and women walk the streets wearing replica jerseys as casual clothing. Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s credentials for being on The View: she is cute, lost on Survivor, and is married to a quarterback. A family friend has a china cabinet dedicated solely to Super Bowl party furnishings, with everything from themed dip bowls to a helmet-shaped ice bucket. Some friends spend fall and winter Sundays out of doors, so as not to compete with their boyfriends’ enjoyment of the Giants or their horrible moods in the event of a loss. There was even a bit of an incident recently when one of these boyfriends missed the Fantasy draft and was inconsolable and unapproachable.

And the above says nothing about the cults of individuals affiliated with the sport or their acceptance in society as exceptional. Children look to football players as though they truly were superheroes, and in accordance, we often waive their tuition fees (and sometimes most basic standards) for them to matriculate at colleges, shower them with salaries so spectacular that a single team’s earnings rival the GDP’s of some small countries; and give them standing ovations when they twist their ankles and are ushered off the field with the help of six people.

Football is a game, a multi-billion-dollar industry, and an obsession that figures so integrally into the American way of life, that there is no way to get around it. So this weekend, sitting at home in Santa Monica, or having lunch out with friends in Manhattan Beach, or driving between the two, I am certain to see or hear an update on how many yards have been gained, which defense is flailing, and what coach should be fearing for his job.

But this likely will be my only blog post on the subject, for I have found peace in knowing that I never will have the zeal for the sport that is found throughout the country. And I certainly will sit through a game now and then, and even find myself surprisingly engaged, with the help of three or farve beers, of course.

Living the Dream

The Today show has broadcasted loads of segments on “Recession-proofing Your [insert concern here].” I always watched, toothbrush in mouth, thinking to myself, I have no debt, I rent my apartment, I have a stable job, I’m not retiring any time soon, and for reasons x, y, and z, I basically AM recession-proof.

Not true.

A little more than a week ago, I started this blog and distilled my life into phrases like “balancing life in Harlem, love in Los Angeles…,” and “renovation project and long-distance relationship.” These were the things in my life that most dominated my time (except for work. Work shmerk.) and, therefore, sort of defined my life.

Even I have trouble imagining, therefore, what my life is to become now. I had plans to move to Los Angeles (on my own terms and in my own time), update my relationship status to be rid of that ugly “long-distance” crap, buy a Mini Cooper, oversee an extensive remodel to a sweet house we purchased, and spend my days hopping around art galleries, walking Labradors, and visiting green markets, my grandmother, and the vineyards and golf courses of Santa Barbara County.

Sounds nice, right? Brunch in Malibu, anyone?

So I told all my friends that I was moving—again, eventually—and started making new friends of Los Angelinos, while earning Platinum status on American Airlines. Upgrade! Cha-ching!

And after, quite seriously, more than two years’ estrangement, hundreds of thousands of frequent-flyer miles, a year pouring over PDF’s with a batty architect on the line, a GAGILLION dollars invested in all of the above, and the development of some pretty big-time dreams, I discover that I am not so recession-proof.

I boarded with business class onto a 767 the week I watched Lehman Brothers go down in flames with utter fascination and a lot of sympathy (bordering on pity, I imagine). How tragic, I thought.

My parents bought the vineyard next to theirs around the same time a friend’s parents lost their home. “I am sooooo sorry, honey,” I had poo-poo’ed to her, as I showed her the latest round of architectural plans for my Santa Monica mini-manse. “Do you like the columns?”

Well, now I get it. It’s the economy, stupid. My life is on hold, and on this fabulous fall Friday in the Big Apple, I have two things to show for the past two years for which I am endlessly grateful right now:

1) A new understanding of my friendships in New York. Preparing to say good-bye to the people who have loved me and whom I have loved for the last 5 years has been a real hardship. However, I truly have reckoned with those friendships and value them all the more for it; and

2) A renewed understanding of the bond in my relationship, making it all the more unshakable, even after two years of separation.

So, as I finish this post, I am thankful for the opportunity I have had to dream, and even though the Economy giveth and the Economy taketh away, at least I know how big I can dream. And thanks to my recession-proneness, I get to dream again now and to decide which dream I really want to chase.

Progress

Last night was unbelievable.

And somehow the above statement seems just wrong. A man was elected regardless of (or despite) his skin color. Unbelievable? Well, the whole world believes it now. The whole world believes in America again because of President-elect Obama’s skin color. Doesn’t that just seem silly? Today is like all of our aunts and uncles applauding silly little America in its high chair because it finally acquiesced to eating broccoli. We finally decided that it wasn’t so bad to have an African-American president. (Please note that I did not say that we decided to “do the right thing” because the “right thing” is not unequivocally electing an African-American president.)

I am elated by Obama’s election. I am so happy that I get emotional thinking about the milestone for civil rights that it represents. However, when I think about why it makes me so happy, it is because I find beauty—and incredulity—in witnessing people act generously and responsibly. Am I such a cynic?

I am.

To me, people are inherently good, but inherently selfish. Generally, they would not wish harm on other people, unless they got too scared or it cost them too much. In terms of the long road leading to a black man’s election to the presidency, 100 years ago it would have cost the people in power too much, and 20 years ago, they were just too scared.

California voted to amend its constitution to limit the rights of same-sex couples yesterday by a slim margin, voting at the same time to send the first African-American man to the Oval Office. That means that people voted for Barack Obama—let’s face it, consciously voted for a black president and probably patted themselves on the back for it—and then a little farther down the ballot, voted to remove rights from gay people.

What breaks my heart is that California decided to do the unequivocally wrong thing, to strip people of their rights, to write discrimination into their constitution, and to deny the validity of millions of people’s ways of life across the country. California had the chance truly to be a leader, and to do so in acting as quintessential Americans: to stand up against discrimination, to act against injustice, to respect the rights of their neighbors as vehemently as they hold their own, regardless of personal differences. That is the right thing.

America is so special because people don’t often do the right thing; here, we are expected to do it. That is why I get emotional when I think about it. That is why Obama’s election is not at all silly. That is why Californians should be ashamed of themselves today. Sure, they voted for the black guy (which, again, is not the unequivocally right thing to do), but they spurned their countrymen by claiming a gender-based superiority when they really wanted just to say, “I think being gay is wrong.”

Why did they do this? Two reasons: 1) the fear referenced above (and in an earlier post). I guess the silver lining to that is that eventually people get over their fears, and at least we are not talking about it costing the people in power anything; and 2) people are trying to legislate their religious views. That is simply unacceptable. They are allowed to have their religious views because their countrymen uphold that right for them. Working to take away someone else’s rights on that basis is the greatest and most consistent American hypocrisy.

“Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.” –Thomas Jefferson

“In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country.” -John F. Kennedy

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” -Robert Frost

Harlem is basking in the glow of last night. It is a wonderful moment for so many reasons, but just as last night does not mean we have put to bed “the race issue” in America, we always must be active in protecting equality among all of our citizens. The moment we stop doing that is the moment that we lose equality ourselves.

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” –Abraham Lincoln