Some craic in LA

Happy Birthday Lieutenant McGreal

2008-04-20T01:21:00.001-07:00

Since I'm poor this year (in bank account, not spirit), I commissioned myself to complete a painting for my Dad's birthday (April 17).

In 1970 , several years after leaving active-duty as a Naval officer, my Dad joined another armed force: The Brigade of the American Revolution , a troupe of men who re-enacted the Revolutionary War in full dress. (Actually , by default, the rest of the family participated as well. I'll write about those years at some point.) So I thought he might like a painting themed around the colonial soldier. I've also been following the John Adams mini-series on HBO, so I guess I was in the mood.

He loved the result. It's an 8" by 14" piece but here's a smaller version:(click on image for larger)

Geek Alert: Development of a Doodle

2008-04-15T22:31:00.001-07:00

This week while on a freelance job at McCann Erickson, I had some down time while I waited for my client to give me some ideas to illustrate. Lately I've been doing all my jobs completely digital on my new Cintiq monitor, (no paper -I'm a "green" storyboard artist!) which allows me to paint in Photoshop.

As I was listening to the "Return of the Jedi" soundtrack , I began to get my Geek on. I started out wondering if I could doodle a new stormtrooper idea and just kept going with it.

I think it turned out pretty cool:

Dante's Inferno is in Van Nuys.

2008-04-15T22:01:00.001-07:00

I went to a Chuck-E-Cheez once in South Florida, I think over 20 years ago. As far as I can recall, it was a violent assault on all the senses which I learned never to return to. Hundreds of little kids on dangerous sugar highs running and screaming at levels that almost drown out the staccato cries of the video games.

My brain cells have stopped regenerating. Like Orpheus looking back to get a glimpse of Hell, I agreed to accompany my friends and their kids to Chuck- E-Cheez last week.

Nothing has changed. Think twice before changing your dollar for video game tokens. If you don't obtain the crazed temerity of a 7-year old on sucrose , then you'll never get close to playing even a round of skee-ball.

New Sketchbook site

2008-04-04T15:25:00.001-07:00

I've decided to start a second blog devoted solely to my travel sketchbook pages as I archive them. Inevitably as they spark my trips down memory lane, they will probably be accompanied by anecdotes that come to mind from said journey.

The name of the blog is : 300,000 miles of Stickfigures

Snake Eyes and light starch, please.

2008-04-02T15:48:00.001-07:00

Today I went to pick up my dry cleaning (several suits I brought from the east coast which lay balled-up in a pile on my closet floor since July- no weddings or funerals this year.)

The middle-aged, bespectacled Korean proprietor took my order stubs and turned to search for the matching receipts. He murmured something and gestured to the far side of the room.

"Oh dah dies."

"Huh?", I replied

I looked over to other side of the room, to an empty counter and figured he was talking to himself.

He looked back over his shoulder to me, this time making sure that dense white kid heard him as he gestured to the far side of the room.

"Oh dah dies, peas."

Only wishing to placate him, I began to slowly slide down the counter to the far side of the room, but unsure why.
When I got to the end I spotted a small craps table:

"Oooh! Roll the dice" I exclaimed.

I picked up the dice and tossed them, not knowing what was a good roll or a bad roll. I'm not a gambler at all.

Once I went to Atlantic City for my friend Jeff''s bachelor party. It was basically me and a bunch of lawyers. I brought $100 to lose for a weekend of..err, fun. After the first hour at a roulette wheel, I was down $60 , so I walked away and never gambled the rest of the weekend. Meanwhile the high-rolling barristers were losing and winning $500 at a time.

A year later when I was in Cambodia shooting "Apsara", I took some of my crew to the Naga , a floating 24-hour casino on a ship docked off Phnom Penh's harbor. I started at the roulette wheel again and suddenly began winning $10 bets. The chain-smoking Chinese gamblers around me sensed a lucky streak and began to place their bets next to my chips. Unfortunately for them, once I reached $70, I figured in the karmic scheme of things I was ahead $10, so I walked away.
(of course one could argue I was already gambling heavily with the tens of thousands in personal savings which I was sinking into my film).

Back at the dry cleaners, the dice landed

"What you get?", he asked.

"Eleven?" I offered. It felt good but I had no idea.

"Ah, very good discount"

"Discount?" I countered, before discovering this sign on the wall next to the table :
Twenty percent off.
Not bad.
Somebody should let the Chinese chain-smoking gamblers where the real action in town is.

Stuff White People Like

2008-03-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

I came across a great blog today: Stuff White People Like . If you're white or just a really assimilated immigrant as many of my friends are you'll first laugh at this list, then it'll die down to a weak chuckle as you realize how deadly accurate it is, then you'll laugh again because the odds are that out of the 85 or so entries, chances are you only share less than half. So it's okay. You're not so easily typecast. Or at least you'll tell yourself that.

So far I'm only admitting to entry numbers 84, 83, 71, 70, 69, 58, 53, 47, 35, 24, 25, 19, 7, 52, 55, and 46. The rest I'm in denial about.

Weekly Work of Art

2008-03-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

My Dad will dig this artist. Although a CPA by trade, my father has been studying paper folding/cutting/sculpting for about 30 years now. Peter Callesen, a Danish artist, is a master at this. His site is www.petercallesen.com

Some designers at The Refinery, a print design house servicing the movie and tv industry where I've been freelancing, brought this guy to my attention. You can usually bet there's something cool on the web when all the designers are gathered around one monitor, procrastinating and remarking in hushed tones.

Sweaty Palms

2008-03-06T23:04:00.001-08:00

This is an old clip (maybe a year or so) but someday my kids (I know, I know. Colin have kids?) will not have clue what a mouse or a touch-pad is for. Now when do we get the flying cars already?

The Painful Creative Journey

2008-03-04T12:08:00.001-08:00

Last night I had my roommate, Tony Bui, a Sundance-winning filmmaker, give me his review of my "Mama" script for feedback. It wasn't easy. He's liked my premise and pitch, but he wasn't thrilled with where the script went. He felt it was obvious and had some main characters he didn't care about.
He talked about what he thought could be powerful if I just removed half the characters and rewrote it as a slightly different story. (reinforcing themes that drew me in the first place.)

It was hard to take this after a year or more of developing this script.

But you know, he was right.

The script in it's present form could be enjoyable, even produce-able, but not necessarily put me in the league of writing I'd like to be known for. Tony is working right now with Ted Hope on his next project, who produced many of the best indie films of the past 15 years. (Brothers McMullen, The Ice Storm, American Splendor, etc.) and was just passing on wisdom he says producers like Ted would be looking for.

So after so much time developing this script it was hard to hear but Tony knows what he's talking about. The question became: Do I want to move ahead with this script in its present form to just get a film going, or do I want to spend at least several more months rewriting it to try and take it to another level?

I'm leaning toward the latter, already coming up with new ideas. But it wouldn't be a lie to say it's painful being almost 40, wanting this for 20 years, and having to delay it some more. For good reasons, but I guess this is a test of the craft.

Colin Versus the Hydra!

2008-03-03T22:20:00.000-08:00

The image above is my depiction of a vivid nightmare from last night.
As far as I can recall it started out with me being chased by a criminal through a desolate and dark part of New York City, among decrepit buildings and abandoned warehouses. I was running for my life, taking turns and corner, trying to escape certain death at the hands of this dangerous and mysterious pursuer

Eventually I came to a small park who's tall trees blotted out any remaining light. The park was inky black. I stopped, feeling helpless and considered just dropping next to some small brush. But I elected to climb high into a tree and blend in with the foliage. The criminal arrived and passed through , unaware of my location.
I waited in the tree until morning and finally climbed down. As the early morning fog lifted, I found a subway and slipped in among the commuters. I remember feeling great relief that I was among life again and heading for another borough. I would certainly never see my pursuer again.

(Sidenote: I probably should not have been watching "The Shining" before I went to bed last night.)

Continuing my dream, I arrived home to my family's neighborhood. The neighborhood was perched on either side of a narrow but deep crevice, at the bottom of which lay a river. The homes were a honeycomb of dwellings and compartments, much like you'd see in the ghettos of Rio. They towered precariously above opposing cliffs.

And they were under attack.

Emerging from the crevice was a massive red Hydra monster with no eyes. It had many tentacles that acted independently, swiping groups of fleeing people and dropping them into it's terrifying mouth.

My friend Cindy Thoennessen, who I used to work at Charlex with, was there and told me the only way to kill the monster was to stab it in the throat at a vulnerable point. In order to get to the exposed throat, though you would have to not only dodge the monster's lethal flaling arms, but throw yourself off the cliff to reach the beast's throat. There would be very little chance of surviving even if successful.

I went to a nearby market and asked a shopkeeper for a knife. He gave me what seemed to be a rather overly large pocket knife as big as my forearm, with a switchblade.

Before I returned to kill the monster, I paused and solemnly contemplated giving my life so that my family and others could live. Once I had accepted this sacrifice, I went toward the cliffside.

But the monster had already been slain.

It turns out another ex-Charlex workmate, a computer animator, had simply thrown a bucket of dirty water on monster. It had the effect of acid and the beast disintegrated.

I remember standing there feeling very awkward. I wasn't jealous of the other victor, but I remember feeling depressed that I had mentally accepted my death so that others could live, and then was not able to follow through. It was a hard state to return from.

Oscar goes home with the Former Stripper

2008-02-28T01:12:00.001-08:00

I just liked this photo Screenwriter Diablo Cody posted on her blog, the morning after winning Best Original Screenplay for "Juno".

Sketchbook series # 2

2008-02-27T22:02:00.001-08:00

(click on image for larger version)
November 11, 1995. This is when I was traveling parts of the world, particularly SE Asia, by myself. Bangkok was always a gateway to several countries over there. The night I made these sketches was when I was waiting for my flight back to the States. It was common for flights to have a 5 am departure. So between check-in and security needs, you had to be there by 3am and it made no sense to spend the last night in a hotel. At the time there was nothing to do in Dom Muang International airport at that hour except walk around and count the sleeping bodies. I counted 103 that night. They made excellent models.

Drinks on the House

2008-02-27T21:32:00.000-08:00

I must have been building my karmic bank account lately because I keep getting free drinks that I should have paid for. For the past week I've been given three:

* Tonight at Coffee Bean (the west coast's Starbucks competitor) I pulled up at 9:10 to get an Ice Blended. A guy sweeping up for the night spotted me and yelled out "We closed at nine." But seeing the disappointment in my face, a broken man sitting in his little dented gray VW, he relented and yelled out "What do you want?" I said an Ice Blended and he said he could do that. So I parked and followed him inside. Just as he was about to start though I realized I had left my money at home and cried out "Wait, wait, wait!" He said he was already in motion and not to worry about it. One free Ice Blended.

* Last night I was seeing a friend DJ at a small club and went out back to an outside bar and asked if they take credit card for a vodka tonic. The bartender said only cash but I realized I didn't have enough. He asked how much I had. In my wallet there was two dollars. "That's fine" he said and poured my drink.

* A few days earlier I ordered a meal at a KFC drive-through. When I got to the window to pay, I discovered they didn't take any credit or debit cards. So I said I needed to cancel my order. The guy shrugged and handed over my drink anyway, saying " Just keep the drink."

I have been trying to commit random acts of kindness to people in the past few weeks, so although my bank account may be low, my karmic account seems to be in good shape. Maybe I should step up my random acts of kindness to Pre-Meditated to see what can really happen.

Ling-Ling Sets Me Straight

2008-02-25T18:53:00.001-08:00

For the past week I've been house/cat sitting for my friends Chris and Khue in Eagle Rock. Generally I'm allergic to cats, but every once in a while I seem to get along with one like Ling-Ling. Low dander levels or something I'm told.

Anyway, Ling-Ling and I have had a pretty good relationship this week except for one habit she has that drove me absolutely nuts.

Being somewhat nocturnal the Double L has a nightly penchant for leaping up to the top of a wardrobe that stands at the foot of the bed. She'll then stare down at me like some freaky gargoyle before launching herself into the air four feet above the bed.

This is all cute except that she only pulls these feline acrobatics just after I managed to fall into a nice deep sleep. The next thing I know I'm ripped from my slumber, bolting upright with my heart beating fast because it felt like someone just threw a sandbag into bed next to me.
I usually swear at Ling-Ling and push her out of bed, though she never seems to carry an air of remorse.

After a couple nightly performances of this, I had enough. I banned Ling-Ling from the bedroom, physically chasing her out the other night and closing the door. What followed was Ling-Ling crying and pawing at the door for ten minutes. I finally fell asleep to the dubious sounds of Ling-Ling amusing herself in the living room, doing Lord knows what.

When I woke up the next morning I found this as I opened the bedroom door:

I'm not really sure whether to be amused or freaked out at Ling-Ling's offerings. But she seemed to be delivering a message in the form of Khue's padded insoles. "Tread lightly in my house"?
Who knows.

Two Shows for the Price of One at Julian Schnabel's Opening

2008-02-22T23:10:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to my first big gallery opening out here in LA. It was superstar artist Julian Schnabel’s show at the Gagosian gallery, featuring a series of 10-12 giant digital prints based on X-rays he found in abandoned house in France after he wrapped “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” ( which is nominated for four Oscars this weekend)

I’ve been to openings in the past months, but more the Silverlake variety where it’s a storefront that’s doubling as a gallery and it’s filled with hipsters who have a seemingly nonchalant but actually very calculated bohemian look. I know because I used to be one and sometimes still play one. Collectively in a gathering though, they lose all sense of individualism and just look like a bunch of out of work American Apparel employees.

But I digress.

There were some hipsters at this event, but they were outnumbered by older film director types, aging Beverly Hills money types, rich young socialites in haute couture, sharply dressed celebs, and the requisite papparazi. The man himself, Mr. Schnabel was also in attendance along with all his kids and his attractive Spanish wife. (pics posted are from said night)

I’ll get to the guestlist and name-dropping in a minute, but first the work.

I was meeting my friends Ti, Ilka, and Bill. I was told to get there early (like before it officially started) just to make sure I could get in. I’m glad I did. I wasn’t the first but I was able to view the work with an unimpeded view of the space, which is important for these giant stark prints. Once the room filled later, you couldn’t see the bottom third of the work which didn’t matter anyway since I was too busy ogling famous people or people who looked famous.

Some of the pieces in the show, which averaged 15’ by 10’, were graphically beautiful. Each were blown up details of old x-rays that Schnabel had selected and been impressed with. Aesthetically, a few of them in the upstairs room I found very beautiful as abstract prints on their own, in a wabi-sabi sort of way. Beautiful monochromatic tones of muddy brown, yellow, and green formed by the various densities of bone, flesh and light.

Thematically though, it felt a bit of a letdown. It had shades of a super successful, rich artist who had a passing novel idea and quickly based a show on it. I didn’t get the sense that a passionate development of ideas, nor blood sweat and tears went into it, as you would feel from a less established artist. But then with Schnabel, a man who excels at the art of self-promotion, the level of labor is irrelevant. I guess it’s all supposed to fall in line with his film’s theme, which is about exploring the internal life of a paraplegic man who can no longer express external signs of life. The literal images of X-rays I guess serve as a sort of signifier as to what we really all share in the end.

Ok now the celebs.

The main gallery filled up to capacity and most of the fabulous arrived after seven (it was a 6-8 opening). They were usually announced by a sudden flurry of photoflashes at the front door. Schnabel himself, circulating around the gallery, was easy to locate by the density of photogs surrounding him.

Some of the industry-type people that showed up were James Franco, Michael York, Lawrence Bender (producer for all of Tarantino’s movies.) Steve Tisch (producer and owner of the Giants), Nicky Hilton, Cuba Gooding Jr., Mr. Chow and family (restaurateur to the stars), director Bruce Ratner (Rush Hour ), and oscar-nominated Tilda Swinton (who looked like a stunning alien and was the best dressed)

One of the more interesting sightings for me was directors Werner Herzog and John Waters in conversation.

My friend , Ilka, said "It's quite a show".

I replied, "Which one? The one on the walls or the one on the floor?"

She laughed, saying she actually meant the schmoozing on the floor.

For the past year my friend and editor Terence Ziegler has been telling me I should meet Matthew Modine because he edited both our films and says Matthew is a great guy. So when Matthew showed up at the opening I went up to him and introduced myself as Terence’s friend. He instantly warmed to me and began to chat. As we spoke there was a tall woman standing next to him, listening and smiling. Feeling a little rude I introduced myself to her. She then said a few things to Matthew and wandered off.

Matthew turned to me and said, “That woman came up to me a few minutes ago and said ‘Hi, it’s great to see you again!’ and began to talk to me. I have no idea who she is. I don’t ever remember meeting her”

I said “Well, you know, maybe she saw you at the Loew’s 84^th st. Cineplex up on the screen.”

Matthew laughed, “Maybe.”

We chatted a couple minutes more before we were abruptly interrupted by another woman who he politely greeted. I stood there a minute before telling him I know he’s got a lot of people who “are happy to see him again” and left him to his adoring fans.

Later Matthew came across our group again and joked around with me and my friends for a bit. He said he had met the legend Werner Herzog but was a bit put off by him.

When he tried to give Werner a compliment on his doc “Grizzly Man”, Werner replied tersely “That was THREE films ago!”

Matthew’s wife, Cary was a pretty warm and lively woman, too. Refreshingly they both come off as stimulating and grounded people. A great couple and inspiring that they've been married for 28 years in an industry rampant with non-commitment.

I also ran into an old friend, Mark Taylor, who I hadn’t seen since he was production co-ordinator on “Three Seasons” ten years ago back in Vietnam. He hadn’t aged at all. Now Mark is head of production at TBS.

And that’s why I came out here. For the big schmooze.

Malcolm X's departure..

2008-02-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Lia for sending me this article today. Forty-three years ago today Malcolm X was assassinated. I post this NY Times interview because it shows an introspective X who is struggling to maintain a sense of authority, externally, while trying to grasp his change in beliefs internally.

I still think Malcolm is publicly still very much identified with his extremist years as a minister of the Nation of Islam, which is not where he left off.

Malcolm started out as a young hoodlum who went to prison for burglary. There he found guidance and salvation in the preachings of Elijah Muhammed and converted to his extremist brand of Islam. Once released, Malcolm developed into a star preacher for the Nation of Islam's separatist messages, such as developing the black community completely independent of the white "devils" of the world. Eventually though Malcolm began to question the NOI when he learned his leader and mentor, Elijah Muhammed, was committing adultery with his own secretaries and validating it with passages from the Bible.
Disillusioned, Malcolm left the NOI, and became a Sunni Muslim. He changed his message to a more hopeful one after extended trips to Africa where he met Muslims of all races and cultures. He could no longer embrace a separatist mindset.

The following interview was one of his last and most human. It showed a man who's internal arc was taking him to places unexpected but also showed he was confronting one of man's heaviest fears: challenging his own hard-instilled beliefs. That's a rare thing to find in today's leaders. He was 39.

I promise I'll post something more light after this one.

Malcolm X Shot to Death at Rally Here

Malcolm Knew He Was a 'Marked Man'

By Theodore Jones

I live like a man who's already dead," Malcolm X said last Thursday in a two-hour interview in the Harlem office of his Organization for Afro-American Unity.
"I'm a marked man," he said slowly as he fingered the horn-rimmed glasses he wore and leaned forward to give emphasis to his words. "It doesn't frighten me for myself as long as I felt they would not hurt my family."
Asked about "they," Malcolm smiled, shook his head, and said, "those folks down at 116th Street and that man in Chicago."
The references, Malcolm quickly confirmed, were to his former associates in the Black Muslim movement and to Elijah Muhammad, the organizer and head of the movement. Before Malcolm X left the movement 18 months ago, he was the minister of the Black Muslim's Harlem mosque at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue.
"No one can get out with out trouble," Malcolm continued, "and this thing with me will be resolved by death and violence."
Why were they after him? "Because I'm me," he replied.
But realizing that was not enough to say, he pushed into an almost endless flow of sentences.
"I was the spokesman for the Black Muslims," he said. "I believed in Elijah Muhammad more strongly than Christians do in Jesus. I believed in him so strongly that my mind, my body, my voice functioned 100 per cent for him and the movement. My belief led others to believe.
"Now I'm out. And there's the fear if my image isn't shattered, the Muslims in the movement will leave. Then, they know I know a lot. As long as I was in the movement, anything he [Elijah Muhammad] did was to me by divine guidance."
Malcolm said that he knew many things that made him a dangerous man to the movement."
"But I didn't want to harm anyone or the movement when I got out," he added. "But I had learned to disbelieve, sir, and Mr. Muhammad knew that I would fight against him if I did not believe and he threatened."
The man, who was once the dynamic spokesman for the Black Muslims, suddenly leaned forward and began watching the traffic at Seventh Avenue and 125th Street though the large picture window of his private office in the Hotel Theresa.
He began talking again, but this time he spoke as if there was only the battered mahogany desk and the rusted, three-section filing cabinet in the small room.
"I know brothers in the movement who were given orders to kill me," he said slowing, nodding his head and rubbing his small goatee. "I've had highly placed people within tell me, "be careful, Malcolm."
"The press gives the impression that I'm jiving about this thing," he said, turning, but not accusing his visitor. "They ignore the evidence and the actual attempts."
How did Malcolm see the future and his feud with the Black Muslims?
"I have no feud with the Black Muslims, sir. This is a one-sided thing. Those that have done violence are fanatics who think they are doing the will of God when they go and maim and cripple those who left the movement."
Those who left the movement, Malcolm continued, "have not been involved in violence against those within," adding: "I believe in taking action but not action against black people. No, sir."
What about the comments by people in Harlem that now they do not know where Malcolm X stands? Is it possible to change so suddenly?
He smiled, opened his black suit jacket, and began rubbing his fingers along the black sweater vest he wore underneath.
"I won't deny I don't know where I'm at," he said with a boyish grin. "But by the same token how many of us put the finger down on the point and say I'm here."
"I know that I'm 1,000 percent against the Ku Klux Klan, the Rockwells and any organized white groups that are against the black people in this country," he said, in reference to Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the Nazi party in the United States, and such groups as the Citizens Council.
Then assessing his present situation, he observed:
"I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's control. I feel what I'm thinking and saying now is for myself. Before, it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir."

Latecomers Will Be Seated at Intermission...

2008-02-19T22:38:00.000-08:00

When Fidel and I went to a concert...

In 2000, I had accepted an invite to Havana from my friend Tony Bui for the Latin American Film Festival. As a Sundance festival winner, he was going with a group of other past winners on a cultural exchange, including Karyn Kusama (who directed “Girlfight”), Michelle Rodriguez, (who starred in the film), Rory Kennedy (who is a celebrated documentary filmmaker and Robert F. Kennedy’s youngest), as well as several other filmmakers. The rest of us friends were tagging along and surreptitiously jumping on flights out of Montego Bay.

The week of the festival happened to coincide with 20^th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination. During this time Castro unveiled a bronze statue of Lennon in a park near downtown, now referred to as Lennon Park (as opposed to Lenin). I learned that week that Castro, probably as a security measure, is notorious for being unpredictable about where he shows up. He often won’t show at a scheduled interview with the press, but next thing you know he’s standing beside you at a newsstand. So I heard.

The Latin American Film Festival is the largest Spanish-language festival in the world with filmmakers and stars from Spain, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. For the opening ceremony we were bussed to the Karl Marx theater, a massive theater at least as large as Radio City Music Hall. About a quarter mile from the venue, we were made to get off and walk the rest of the way, as security were keeping the roads open around the venue.

Our group of ten, being visiting "VIPs" got to sit about 12-15 rows back from the front of the stage and we took in all the glamorous types chattering in Spanish around us. There didn’t seem to be any “official” seating area for dignitaries and no visible security, so no one really important seem to be attending.

I was wrong.

About two minutes before the ceremony started, people suddenly launched out of their seats and gave a cheering ovation. Down the right aisle strolled an entourage of about eight in single file.

And in the middle was Fidel himself. Wearing in his dress military green with medals splashed across the front. With is chest pushed forward, he walked tall and barely acknowledged the crowd. He took a seat front row and center, about 30 feet from us.

Over the ovation we all looked at each other and pumped our fists, saying "YESSS! It's Fidel!" (Note: not an approval of his policies. Just impressed to be in the company of such a living piece of history. Wouldn't want my Cuban-American pals to misinterpret.)

I remember thinking that security hadn't really patted us down. It's not my habit to carry concealed weapons but I could have shot a rubber band at Fidel's head and become instantly world famous. Or worse.

The opening ceremony was beautiful. It started with a dark stage over which a suspended screen showed clips of Cuban movies from the 50s and 60s, all featuring a young and beautiful Omara Portuondo (the female vocalist from Buena Vista Social Club.) After a few minutes of Cuban favorites Omara herself emerged from the darkness, dressed in white and singing along to the film clips. The entire crowd suddenly began to sing along to every word, filling the hall with sentimental Cuban voices. I got the chills.

Fidel seemed to be preoccupied. Throughout the whole show, a female counsel scurried back and forth, hunched-over, to give him briefings. Fidel would keep his eyes on the stage but nod back and forth at the whispers in his ear which came every couple minutes.

Later we grabbed a car service home from a sweet middle-aged man. When we asked his name, he said “It is very easy to remember. My name is Fidel.”

He learned we were from the U.S. and began to talk about his youth and Castro’s hypocrisy.

“You know, in the Sixties, I had a Beatles party with my friends. Fidel’s policemen busted the party and I went to jail. Now, he is unveiling a statue of John Lennon in Havana.”

Taxi driver Fidel shrugged.

Fidel learned a couple of us were from New York .

“Can I ask you a favor? When you go back to New York, can you place a white flower for me on the Imagine memorial for John Lennon.”

Of course, we agreed.

Later on that trip we went to an unforgettable outdoor concert at El Malecon, the seaside wall. Near a newly-erected statue of Cuba’s National Hero Jose Marti holding a baby Elian Gonzales, Cuba’s top rock and hip-hop artists belted out a tribute to all of John Lennon’s best.

And let me tell you, there’s very few sounds as emotionally affecting as 5000 Cuban youths passionately singing along to the words of “Imagine”.

(click on image for bigger size)

My Fidel

2008-02-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

In acknowledgment of Mr. Castro stepping down after 49 years of a dictatorship, I'll post my personal Fidel moment later. Stay tuned

Sketchbook Series 2/18/08

2008-02-18T14:54:00.001-08:00

I'm starting to archive my sketchbooks from years of travelling, so thought I'd post some of the pages now and then. The above spread is from October 25, 1995 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The left page was at Ta Prohm temple, the right was at Bayon Temple where I met a young vendor. She signed her name (encircled) and I believe it was pronounced "Sau". I like that the pages have bled upon each other and the next page of a woman worker is ghosting through, thanks to Cambodia's humidity. Click on image for larger size.

Meeting a Giant

2008-02-17T21:17:00.000-08:00

Still coming off a stubborn cold this week, so have been spending a lot of time inside, reminiscing.

A few years ago when I was touring film festivals with “Apsara”, I took Maryanne, my girlfriend at the time, with me to Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama for a weekend screening. There some local friends of hers joined us.

Being a bit of a Civil Rights buff, I was pretty impressed with visiting a city known for being a hotspot of protests and clashes during the Movement in the 60’s. Birmingham is a bit of a quiet city now. On final approach to the airport, you can spot the footprints of long abandoned factories from when the South served as a source of cheap labor, before production went overseas. The Downtown area is eerily quiet, considering the violent images that came out of its past: police unleashing attack dogs and firemen hosing down its black citizens.

On our last day I dragged MaryAnne and her friends to a place I really wanted to visit: The Civil Rights Institute. The Institute tells the story and houses archives of the Movement. It’s located adjacent to the 16^th Street Baptist Church that was bombed in 1963, killing four little girls.

Inside the place was as quiet as a library on a sunny day. There were maybe two other people outside our group of four. I could kind of tell MaryAnne and her friends were half humoring me by coming along. I didn’t get the sense it was at the top of their list for spending a Sunday afternoon, (they had never been there) but they all knew it was a special weekend for me, so they took my lead.

After watching a fifteen minute video projection about the Movement in a small theater, the screen rose and revealed a large room full of small dioramas, all depicting various aspects of the Movement. There was a display of a drug store counter for the sit-ins, a display of separate water fountains for blacks and whites, etc.

We split up and meandered around the room in silence, checking out the various exhibits.

I arrived at a classroom display, featuring several children’s wooden school chairs. On a plaque before it I began to read about Birmingham’s first school integration. With the description was this photo:

It was an image of a father bringing his two boys to a white school for the first time in 1963, with his lawyers and Movement leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth in the lead. They had a federal court order to allow it, much to the dismay of the State governor and his troopers.

As I studying the photo, this man walked up to me:

He was dressed in a gray suit and had an unassuming air about him. He pleasantly asked if I would like an oral history of the school integration. I said sure.

As he spoke about the struggle to integrate schools in the early sixties, Maryanne and her friends joined us and listened in. The man went on, occasionally referencing the photo and mentioning “his boys”. After saying this several times, it finally sunk in.

The man in the light suit and striped tie behind the two boys in the photo was the man speaking to me.

His name was James Armstrong and he was the first man in Alabama to win the right to bring his two boys, Dwight and Floyd, to a white school and integrate the school system.

My jaw dropped.

When I finally realized who he was and showed my respect, Mr. Armstrong , who volunteers his time as a living part of history on Sundays, went into more detail about that time.

He and his family had lived less than a mile from the white school for years, yet had to bus their boys off to a black school ten miles away. Mr. Armstrong, a WWII veteran, had participated in some of the Movement’s protests and had decided in 1957 to band together with eight other black families to sue for the right to send their kids to the local school. It took about five years for the courts to rule in their favor.

Mr. Armstrong said that during that time all the families involved in the suit were intimidated and threatened regularly by the white population. Over those years, every single party dropped out of the lawsuit, out of fear for their families’ lives.

Mr. Armstrong and his family were the only ones to stay the distance.

When they finally won the right to attend the white school they were met that morning by 250 white hecklers and 35 state troopers who would not allow entrance. Mr. Armstrong and his boys had to return the next morning with a second court order, and they were allowed in.

Five days later, someone set off that bomb which killed the four young girls.

Mr. Armstrong told me that the Movement had taught him Gandhian principles of non-violent resistance, which he strictly passed on to his boys. If they were hit, turn the other cheek. If someone knocked books out of their hands, pick them up and move on.

That first year in school the boys were constantly pushed, teased, and spit on by the white kids who tried to provoke a reaction. Mr. Armstrong said his boys were disciplined and never fought back.

Their second year was very different. The younger boy began to receive valentines from the white girls and the older one was made captain of the baseball team. After that, things were generally fine.

One of his boys went on to be a high-ranking naval officer and the other a successful Harvard-educated lawyer.

But Mr. Armstrong paused, and said something that struck me as sad. He said the sixties were different. Then he could embrace and believe in the principles of non-violence. He said now, however, if his boys were to go through the same thing in modern times, he’s not so sure he could advocate the same principles to survive. He looked off into the distance as he told me this.

Regardless of the dubious state of present values, we thanked him profusely for his time and lessons.

I think we all felt privileged to have been granted the audience of James Armstrong, who in my mind is a giant among men, and will stay with me forever.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.

2008-02-17T00:21:00.000-08:00

Here are a sampling of some books that have figured prominently in my life and surely have had an influence on some level:
1. Watership Down , by Richard Adams.
I read this several times as a kid. This was my Tolkien. A small group of loyal rabbits puts blind faith and trust in a runt who has apocalyptic visions of their home being destroyed (land developers). They elect to set on a journey to find safe lands, much to the strong objections of their own leadership and community. It's a big allegory for trusting your intuition, testing friendship, and a society's leadership interpreting warnings as a threat to it's power. And talking rabbits. Cool.

2. Tropic of Capricorn , by Henry Miller.
This is Miller's version of Dante's Inferno, an autobiographical and surreal account of his youth in New York City before he set off for Paris to be an expat writer. Thick with Miller's stream-of-consciousness prose, he depicts himself a powerless and sad man struggling in the belly of the beast that is the city, before his rebirth as an artist. I picked up this book at the perfect time in my life, when I was right out of art school and living at the mercy of New York during the Dinkins administration, before the city was cleaned up. Crack vials on the sidewalk, prostitutes down the street every night, and a baptism by mugging two weeks after I arrived made Miller's depiction of an artist's struggle in hell-on-earth resonate. I wasn't alone.

3. The Closing of the American Mind, by Alan Bloom
I think I picked this up on one of those nights when I didn't have any dates or money, living La Vie Boheme, and trolling bookstores to kill time. It's a critical examination of how American schools teach self-validation, not self-examination in preparation for the real world. They do nothing to challenge already long-instilled values that prevent a capability of seeing beyond western-centric philosophies. I read this book in the early 90's but much of what it preaches is very relevant today.

4. A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan
Visiting Vietnam in 1994 made me realize how ignorant I was about the war and it's politics. (Movies and television had been my only real "education", which turned out to be grossly simplified and one-sided.) I realized I had easily swallowed a lot of inaccurate nonsense not just about Vietnam, but really anything beyond first-hand experience. This book was about the early period of the war when the U.S. just sending in advisers. But it was already a doomed venture as the top brass and administration only saw what they wanted to see, not what was really going on. - An ongoing American pastime.

5. The Children , by David Halberstam.
One of my all-time favorites. A very thick book (try lugging an 800-page hardcover on crowded subways for casual reading) that profiles the lives of a handful of young black college students from the time they decided to participate in 1960 lunch counter sit-ins to protest segregation, through marches and freedom rides through the south, through the power struggles between various civil rights organizations, to life in the decades after the Civil Rights bill was signed.

The reason I like this book is because it honestly tracks the character arcs of these various students and how the movement had an effect on them. Some, like John Lewis, made civil service his life's pursuit and became a popular U.S. Congressman after starting out as a sharecropper . Others like Marion Barry, seemed to revel in the attention and power in a negative way, leading to his election and then downfall as a corrupt mayor of D.C. But many others returned to humble and honest lives once the civil rights bill was signed. It's hard not to be attracted to the intense and intimate bond they all shared while fighting for something noble and just.

Following the young students around the south was David Halberstam's (who passed away this year) first assignment as a young journalist before he moved on to cover wars in the Congo, then Vietnam where he won a Pulitzer, like his peer Neil Sheehan .

ukulele - I'd Do Anything (from Oliver!)

2008-02-16T11:51:00.001-08:00

Music Video of the Year. (thanks to Monika). The jaded, cosmopolitan artist in me smirked at this guy first, but then I got off my high horse and realized he's probably much happier in his modest world of ukulelee-ing (?) that he's most likely laughing at me. Rock on, my man.

(Postdate: Looked up his YouTube profile. He teaches English in Japan and likes Harry Potter and old TV theme songs. Mad props to him for featuring an interview clip of Aung San Suu Kyi on his profile.)

Weekly Work of Art

2008-02-15T19:59:00.001-08:00

"El Jaleo" 1882, John Singer Sargent (click on image for bigger)

Kurdistan Hush Puppies

2008-02-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

This should have probably gone on my list of Things I Want but Can't Afford, but I bought a pair of the above shoes last night. They're custom-made to your size by the Kurds in Northern Iraq and apparently a staple of everyday life there. I wouldn't normally be switching up my shoe tastes except that two American guys are selling them through a site called Buy Shoes, Save Lives, an organization they founded to help finance much needed surgery for the many children in Kurdistan who suffer from heart disease but don't have access to doctors and treatment without this funding.

And I hear they're very addictive after being broken in.

Things I Can't Afford but Want.

2008-02-14T18:48:00.000-08:00

1.

The Last Emporer 4- DVD set.

2. Absolutely ANY original lithographs or paintings by Alphonse Mucha (Art Nouveau painter)
3. A vineyard.
4. An Ozwald Boateng hand-tailored suit from Saville Row 5. An afternoon with her, maybe getting fitted for my new suit before we shop for a Mucha print, pick up a bottle from my vineyard, then head home to settle in and watch " The Last Emporer" Criterion DVD. Is that too much to ask?

6. The Geek in me wants a very large gift certificate to this site: The Propstore of London. (Full disclosure: That Geek once depleted his savings for two original and overpriced storyboard frames from Empire Strikes Back from this site. It was worth it.)

Geek Alert: Something I Can't Afford but Bought Anyway

2008-02-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting one of these for a while. A Wacom Cintiq tablet. Essentially a highly sensitive screen with a pressure sensitive stylus. For years I've been drawing on a tablet below my eyeline, but watching the screen where the work goes on, which requires some weird hand/eye sync to get used to. Now I get to look where my hand is moving. They used to be far too expensive for me, but this new model is just a little expensive for me, so I jumped.

It's still not like drawing on paper, though, since the screen is very slick. Drawing on a texture like paper gives more friction which allows more control and precision quickly . The tablet can allow this but really lends itself best for loose and gestural stuff or painterly techniques (at least until I get used to it) So for VERY detailed stuff I still sketch on paper and scan it to paint in Photoshop. Below are a couple recent things done completely in Photoshop using my new toy.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T13:28:00.001-08:00

V-Day has me sick in bed, not sick in Love. Some friends had invited me tonight to..ahem... a singles event. I'm too under the weather as it happens. But in between wiping my nose I came across this photo of my cousin's boy which made me smile.

An O'Neill and a McGreal at X-mas

Old Blog - Iraq

2008-02-11T22:24:00.000-08:00

Photo 01/27/07 by my cousin Patrick McGreal, Major in the National Guard after he delivered school supplies to children in the village of Alramo, in Rabiah, Iraq. He wrote: "Today was one of the good days, because of your generosity. Hopefully, it makes a difference in the long term."

Monday, April 02, 2007

Cousin Trick in Iraq

The oldest cousin on my Dad's side (there are about 24 of them) is Patrick, 42, a Major in the National Guard in Ohio. On Father's Day 2006, with 3 daughters at home, he was sent off to Iraq near the Syrian border for a year.

Trick came home for X-mas for a couple weeks and my Dad got to see him. Trick's job in Iraq is to mediate with the local sheiks and give training to the local police and Iraqi military. He says it's a frustrating job because the U.S. government has no contract with the local soldiers, so they can (and often do) drop out or decide not to show up, either out of fear of reprisal or lack of motivation.

The area of Tal Afar, near where Trick is based , had been considered a model province where the U.S. experiment was working somewhat, with little sectarian violence.

That all ended last week when Trick emailed us an article from a journalist who had been embeded with them. A week ago a truck, loaded full of relief supplies from a humanitaran operation, drove into the center of a Shia neighborhood, naturally attracting desperate locals. Unfortunately the truck was driven by a suicide bomber who had 10, 000 pounds of TNT concealed within the supplies.

Trick was a few miles away at the base when he he felt the enormous blasts which sent a massive mushroom cloud into the sky. About 85 Shiites were killed and 200 injured.

It doesn't stop there. The next day a group of vengeful Shiite gunmen went door to door in Tal Afar, including local policemen, and rounded up 70 innnocent Sunnis and shot them dead. Finally the Iraqi military intervened and stopped the rampage.

Trick has a little less than 3 months left over there, unless they extend his tour, which has not been unusual.

Unbelievable that my cousin witnessing this all started with what I witnessed myself in downtown Manhattan 6 years ago, and then was used as flimsy opportunity by our god-awful administration.

A few weeks ago Trick emailed me to ask how St. Patrick's Day went down in NYC. Happily I was able to provide colorful commentary about seeing the Pogues at Roseland with my friend Michele, who was more drunk than me.

Old Blog - Sept. 11

2008-02-10T22:34:00.000-08:00

My Sept 11

September, 2006

I'm not sure why I'm writing this now. I guess I'm being a little reactionary to some of the "commemorations" and recent essays I've been reading in the media regarding the fifth "anniversary" of September 11. (That word seems so vulgar in context) I guess I'm also reacting to the last couple movies to come out on the subject. I can't watch ABC's version or "United 93" or Oliver Stone's latest film, no matter how artful or sensitive they are to the tragedy. No matter much support from the victim's families they all claim to have. I'm sure they are well made, insightful films. But that's not the point for me.

CNN is going to commemorate the tragedy by rebroadcasting their entire coverage from that day in real time. Why? I guess so that anyone who missed the excitement the first time can relive it as it's really unfolding? I don't know. I'm just glad I don't have cable.

There are a couple reasons why I just can't participate in these reinterpretations of that awful day.

The first reason is grief. I didn't lose anyone personally in the attack, but it's still too painful. For a year after 9/11 the NY Times ran obituaries of the 2800 who perished. Every day the paper ran as personalized obituaries as it could. I often found myself getting tearful as I read about the lives of complete strangers. Bankers, policemen, firemen, custodians, IT specialists, Windows on the World pastry chefs, bookkeepers, security guards, immigrant workers. I still see these faces in my mind, printed in black and white. At one point the paper ran photos of all the deceased it could find at once. On each page They were represented yearbook style, by row after row of postage-sized portraits above their names. It ran for 20 pages. They were my New York.

The second reason is out of principle. It's related to what I read in a New York Magazine essay. It said anyone who was downtown and witnessed it first hand does not need "reminders". No anniversary or movie is needed to trigger vivid detail of what we saw or felt that day. But the rest of the country, motivated out of politics or guilt has appropriated the grief from us. And from there some have used the grief toward their own agendas. I've always felt that anyone who makes a film about that day should do so out of pure motives. If it is truly a step for "remembering" or " memorializing" then either don't take a profit personally or give all the proceeds back to the families who lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children. To take one dime from those productions is to belittle the memories of those 2800, rendering them novel tools for your own personal gain. (As I believe some of our leaders have, but I'll try not to get too political, otherwise I might be guilty of the same)

Anyway I have never written down my own personal account of that day. But I guess I feel a need to purge those images in my head, if nothing else to illustrate how strongly I feel about the above notions

Here is my September 11^th.

At that time I was living in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, just across the river from the downtown tip of Manhattan. Since we were on the top floor, my roommate Deborah and I had a roof to hang out on, our view of the towers nicely framed by neighborhood trees. At night you could sit on the roof and study the lights of the towers, wondering what sort of people were burning the midnight oil in those offices. What people were maintaining the reputation of New York.

The morning of September 11th was the best kind of day New York could give you. There was not a cloud in the sky Tuesday morning. It was still effectively summer only without the burden of heat and humidity.

I woke up next to my girlfriend ,Yuh, and studied her face for half a minute as she awoke, too. The room was bright from the sun. When her eyes finally opened we just lay in bed beside each other taking in a very pleasant morning.

Seconds later it began for me.

I heard a loud deep explosion which rumbled through the neighborhood and I swear momentarily made everything vibrate. It confused me, as I'd already lived in the city 10 years at that point, and knew all it's normal sounds well. I turned to Yuh and said " That was not an ordinary explosion. Something happened." We lingered in bed for another minute before there was a quick knock on my bedroom door. I answered "Yeah?" and Deb quickly peered in with a concerned look.

"You've gotta come to the roof now." , she blurted.

"Why? What's wrong?", I answered.

"Just come." And at that she rushed back toward the hall stairway leading to the roof.

I jumped up and grabbed a robe, wrapping it around me and bounded up after her. Yuh lingered behind and got dressed.

When I reached the roof I saw what was the first of many surreal images I would experience that day. Our two towers, sitting between the trees were gushing black, black smoke. Gushing on a monumental scale. You could see a small line of orange where the flames spanned the whole midsection of the South tower, which was closer to us, and the North tower just next to it. Apparently because of the direction of the first plane hitting the North tower on the far side from us, we didn't hear the first impact.

There was a blonde pony-tailed laborer on the roof with tattoos on his calves. He was stomping around the roof, freaking out as he repeatedly yelled, " I can't believe what I just saw! I can't believe what I just saw!" He said he had just seen maybe hundreds of people die. He had been watching the fire from the first impact when he saw the second jet arrive and slam into the South Tower.

I was still trying to assess what was happening, putting bits and pieces together from his ranting until I realized two planes had hit the towers. Two jetliners. The notion of terrorism still hadn't gelled in my mind. The first coherent thought I remember thinking or saying was that I had once read about an air force bomber that had slammed into the Empire State building in the 1940's and the structure survived. So I reasoned at this point the buildings would stand.

Over the next hour we watched as the smoke got thicker and darker. Since the fire line in the South Tower was two thirds up the building and spanned the entire width, I began to wonder out loud how the people in the upper floors were going to get out. How the fire department was going to save them. It was bewildering.

The wind was carrying the smoke directly over us. A massive swatch of black starkly cut through the morning blue sky, trailing from the towers over our head and down toward more southern parts of Brooklyn. Strangely there was something perversely beautiful going on. Standing out vividly against the black smoke over our heads were thousands upon thousands of little glimmering points of white – paper documents floating through the air, released from the towers' offices and file cabinets by the fire and explosion. Eventually these began to float down into the neighborhood everywhere. Another surreal image.

Then the air force jets showed up. They were loud, their engines ripping through the blue sky and the sun momentarily glistening off their wings as they circled the city. However fruitless their role at this point, it had an impact on me. It was the first moment I thought "We live in a different world now." However abstract and ill-informed, I began to understand then that the world had gotten smaller and that large scale death and destruction were no longer the distant domain of tv images from overseas.

We began to shuttle back and forth between the living room tv and the roof, comparing news coverage with the real image in our backyard. At one point I saw little dark specs begin to drift from the upper floors, emerging from the fireline and dropping toward the ground. I remember thinking, "God I hope that's not what I think it is." When I later watched closer news footage, it confirmed what I feared: people leaping.

I was still wondering how rescue efforts would begin around 10 am when one of the worst moments I have ever experienced arrived. It began at the fireline of the South Tower. Little bits of charred debris began to suddenly crumble away from the building at a faster rate. With that the building began to buckle. The entire upper half leaned out a few degrees toward us, then collapsed straight down, imploding on itself. Massive amounts of dust and debris billowed up into the sky as a sickening rumbling sound filled the air, vibrating the neighborhood. It felt like someone was rolling giant boulders through the city.

I dropped to ground suddenly sick to my stomach. I KNEW there were bound to be many people trapped in the upper floors and now they were gone. I stared at the ground, breathing heavy and not sure whether to get sick or cry. I had never felt a sudden wave of queasiness like that. The others around me lost themselves in their own shock. I met Deb's eyes for a moment who mirrored my own wide-eyed confusion of emotions. We had just seen many people perish. We had seen the literal iconic face of a city vanish like we never expected. We were witnessing the epicenter of societal change in this country. But mostly we had seen helpless people perish. It was difficult to process this all at once.

I also began to panic as I knew my friend Tony lived only two blocks south of the towers. From where I stood it looked as though all of lower Manhattan could have been flattened by the collapse. I retrieved my cell phone and repeatedly tried to call Tony to see if he was okay. The phone network was overloaded and I was unable to get through.

A minute after the collapse, the cloud of debris made its way across the East river and filled the air around us. There was a beige snow drifting through Brooklyn. I was still grappling with what I just witnessed when thousands of tiny balls of cement began to dance around my face. We squinted and kept our mouths closed as a haze of debris crawled through the neighborhood. It smelled of burnt plastic and chemicals. The blue sky became obliterated behind a sheet of ash. More documents landed around us, some in tatters. I picked up one piece that was singed from fire. It had a signature on it. I wondered if the owner of that signature had made it out.

I continued to try and call Tony. Since we could no longer see Manhattan through the dust and debris we moved downstairs to watch the news coverage. Not having cable, we only had one tv channel from New Jersey . All the other local stations had been transmitted via the antenna on the North tower, which went out with the first impact. It was while I was downstairs that my parents finally got through to me on my cell to place my whereabouts and make sure I was safe. As I was talking to my father on the phone I saw the North tower collapse on tv, Peter Jenning's voice saying somberly "It's gone."

About thirty minutes later I got a call from Tony. He was disoriented and shaken, finding himself at the Brooklyn side of the Battery Park tunnel with hundreds of other Manhattan refugees. Apparently he had slept through both the initial impacts until his worried girlfriend, Sam, finally woke him up with a call and pleaded with him to get out of his building. Tony, unaware of what was going on, got dressed and passively made his way down to the street. When he got outside he looked up and finally saw what was transpiring. About 45 seconds later the first tower began to crumble. Tony said he ran in the opposite direction with everyone else, but looked back to see the debris overtake people closer to the collapse. The crowd surged toward the entrance of the tunnel where the cloud of debris finally caught up with them. Tony said it was apocalyptic. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. People were banging on cars to be let in while others were abandoning cars to run. Eventually he found his way through to the other side of the tunnel where he called me.

At this point several of Deb's friends had gathered at our place, unable to take the subways to work. One of her friends gave Tony directions to my house. A half hour later he appeared at my door, covered in ash and dust. The first thing he said was "I'm so happy you live in Brooklyn". I took him inside, let him shower, and gave him a change of clothes.

For the next month he wasn't allowed back to his building as it was technically part of a crime scene. Eventually he was allowed 10 minutes to gather his things under escort by a National Guard. Tony promptly and understandably moved back to Los Angeles.

The rest of the day (and for the week) there was a continuous trail of smoke over Brooklyn. The city shut down. We turned into zombies as the intense images of collapsing buildings were joined by round the clock footage of grieving people bearing photos of missing loved ones, which we all knew to be dead. After a day or two we had to turn the tv off. It was overload. Then the flyers of the missing began showing up everywhere, posted on street corners, in store windows. Pictures of the lost in happier times, at dinners, at parties, smiling. These images were paired with phone numbers in case they were alive but incapacitated at some hospital. A last effort at hope.

(What saved many WTC workers that day, without irony, was that it was election day for local government. Many people were late to work because they stopped at voting booths in the morning. Had it been any other normal day, there would have been many more people at their offices when the planes impacted. )

For a few months afterward, when I would ride a taxi over the Brooklyn Bridge at night, I would see the disaster zone. With fires still burning deep and rising smoke illuminated by bright work lights, it looked for a long time like the entrance to hell was found in the tip of Manhattan.

Over the next year I had a reoccurring nightmare, about 6 or 7 times. It was always the same. I was on a street a half mile away from a burning skyscraper, watching flames engulf it until it weakened and collapsed. But every time I had the dream I was closer and closer to the building until the final time, when I was yards away and could see people running for their lives inside the building as it collapsed. After that, the dreams stopped.

My memories are vivid and seared into my head. I do not need nor want interpretations to heighten the drama of what happened that day. I do not need assistance in "remembering".

Old Blog- Yoko

2008-02-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

December 8, 2005 -

Yoko's flower..

Was inside my apartment today on UWS, working from home, emailing, etc. At about 3:15 I decided I needed to get out and get some air, run some errands. Dropped off some shoes for repair, deposited a check at the bank, then realized it was the anniversary of John Lennon's assassination. Since I live near the Dakota, I decided to walk over and see if anything was going on.
At the Dakota, the police had held people back from the front entrance with barricades. Already there were 40 or so people gathered, including many press and photogs.
I walked out in the middle of 72nd street to get past them and decided to walk to the Imagine memorial to see what was going on there.
As I entered the park I saw there were a couple hundred people surrounding the memorial along with press, cameramen everywhere. News trucks lined CPW. Not wanting to deal with the crowds, I chose to keep my distance and climb atop of the one of the park benches just inside the entrance.
Just then there was a commotion across the street at the Dakota. Suddenly a large group of police and suits were walking in my direction with press running along side them. In the midst of this frenzy was little Yoko, being escorted and protected. She wore a black 70's style cap, a black winter coat, and sunglasses. As her security kept a perimeter on the far side of her, she walked just past me, close enough for me to reach out if I wanted. Close enough to see her melancholy eyes behind her dark shades. With two hands she softly protected a white flower as she made her way toward the memorial.
People were respectful. Very few shouts of "Yoko". Her group disappeared for a few moments into the masses surrounding the memorial. Within a minute she was back walking past me, staring down to the ground, not acknowledging much around her, as her escorts cleared the way. Then she disappeared back into the Dakota.