They get the job done but...

Green Lawn White House

Thought I'd post some pics of the recent trip to washington. we went to see the Sydney Theatre Co's Streetcar Named Bazza...oh wait...called....Desiiiiiirreeee.....and bloody loved it. This shot is of The White House at 4am...

the luck of the irish

I was at a bar the other night in one of the nearby hotels in this area. The bar is on the 12th floor...There were only a handful of men and women sitting around. There were two guys at the bar that had had a skinful...an American and an Irish fella. The Irish guy was goading the American as to what he was drinking...but the American wouldn't tell him. This went on for about an hour until finally the American relented and told him what it was he was drinking, he added that having three shots in a row kinda made you feel superhuman...The Irish guy was laughing and teasing the American guy until finally the American fella downed three shots and went to the balcony and literally leapt over the edge of the balcony. Everyone naturally freaked out but within seconds he appeared through a side door to the bar...I think he jumped over and ran along an outer ledge...Anyway, the Irish guy was laughing and applauded him and said to the barman, 'give me three shots as well!' The barman did, the Irish fella downed the shots and leapt over the balcony ledge and promptly fell to his death on the sidewalk twelve floors down...The barman turned to the American and said, 'You can be real mean when you're drunk Superman.'

bruce says sorry...

Last night at the restaurant Manny came in. Manny is one of the locals, born, raised and returned, after a brief stint of a marriage, to the two bedroom walk-up his family have held onto for generations. Rent controlled. He was at the bar when a journalism student came in to research a story about Mulberry Street. 'A digital voice recorder with brand new batteries.' The student was asked by Manny why he came to write about Mulberry Street. Shrugging, the student replied, 'someone suggested it.' Manny is in his mid-forties and he's lived through the changing face of Mulberry Street over the decades. He remembers the time when downtown (where we live) was unoccupied at night. 'We'd play baseball on Layfayette and Spring. There were no cars.' Manny also remembers when the neighbourhood was run by the gangsters and wiseguys. He remarked about how everyone was looked after. There was no trouble. A great number of people have left the neighbourhood, 'to the burbs or to jail. Gotti is dead, things have changed,' says Manny. Upstairs though there still lives a man who 'can be counted on,' in Manny's words. He did time. Considerable time. He is perhaps the last remnant of the bygone Mulberry era. He is seventy four years old and will 'get you gone' says Manny, in the blink of an eye. Manny took the student by the arm and led him downstairs to the bakers oven, 'where people got cooked,' and to the beer garden where 'more gambling went on here than in Vegas.' Soon after Manny and the student returned a couple entered the bar and sat down and sure enough became part of goings-on. The guy started scribbling on a bar coaster, the cartoonish image struck me as familiar. The gal got into a heated conversation via phone, with her bank regarding a cancelled credit card. And Manny started talking about his brother Steven. Steven went to Baghdad, came back home after a few years a changed man. Ended up blowing his brains out in a Florida carpark. Manny's son idolised his Uncle Steven and wants to be a Marine like him. Manny is worried. 'I want my boy to save lives, not take them,' says Manny. 'I tell him to be a pediatrician.'
The gal downed her glass of wine and continued to berate the distant voice of a stranger and the guy turned to me asking, 'What's your name?' After telling him the guy signed the coaster 'Gary Baseman' and said, 'hold onto it.' He finished his drink and left to meet his gal outside. They wandered into the night. An Albanian by the name of Kursh turned up at the bar and distracted Manny enough to allow the student to pay his bill and leave. I'm not sure the student heard any of the stories Manny told. We closed up shop, echoes of the night trailing away. This morning I woke and went across the street to the deli for a sesame bagel, toasted, with ham, salad and honey mustard. 'You get Swiss with that,' said Jose from behind the counter. He was right. I usually do. 'Thanks, yeah that's right,' I replied. Waiting for the bagel I stood back and watched the passing pedestrian traffic. A lunchtime swarm hovering over the buffet. There was noise but none that I particularly focused on, aside from Jose's co-worker behind the counter pleading to his customers to find Aliesha. 'She's five foot six, asian, skinny. I'll give five hundred to whoever finds her. She works around here. I think she even works on the block across the street. Five hundred notes just to find her. I mean it. You don't think I'm serious but I am. You find her, you tell her, Bruce says sorry.'

is a chef...

Jacques Pepin is a chef of French origin now living in the United States. He is a master chef who has a television show, which appears to be re-runs from a decade ago and which while it looks a little dated compared with the style of celebrity cooking shows currently exploding onto our sets, is a breath of fresh air...His 'show' is influenced not only by his humble early life as one of several children in a poor family, but also by what I believe is a very European 'peasantry' sensibility of never wasting anything...poverty and not wasting things go hand in hand. Usually. Mssr Pepin uses every last bit of celery or cut of meat. He turns water into stock in the blink of an eye and If he does discard something it's after his life-long experience has taught him that the seeds of a cucumber for example, are pretty difficult to wrangle into a stand alone dish... I like him because he will also refuse to cook during some episodes. Instead, he will teach about knife skills, or indicate a variety of ways to chop a clove of garlic, depending on the dish one cooks. So, he is all about technique as well. Some of his dishes do seem old fashioned or 'classic'. Yet, to watch his old hands work (he must be near 80 yrs) is to witness an Artisan create. I also like him because he always has a glass of wine at the end of the show which he will raise in a salute to life and food and family and friends.

waking life

There's the same homeless man down there on the street that I've seen around here before. Dressed in filthy rags and covered in dirt. He stares at a couple of Japanese tourists eating hotdogs and gestures wildly at them. They aren't watching him. He takes out some money from his pocket and counts several notes. He asks a man for money. He gets no response. Opposite him, across the street, there's another homeless man who has staked out a little patch of territory where he sleeps. He knows me and I know him. I leave food or water for him every now and then. Yet only when he sleeps. It's easier if he doesn't know it's me. He calls me 'brother' and I call him 'man'. I'm pretty sure it was not him who was pulling his pants down the other Monday morning preparing to defecate between two parked cars. I looked away before seeing anything. I think it was the other homeless man who sometimes is passed out near the entrance to the bank. Once, myself and a Japanese business woman called the ambulance because we thought he was dying. But he suddenly woke up and staggered away. The ambulance was cancelled. I think it may have been him that was squatting between the cars. I think he might be a junkie. These homeless men are all black men. There is a white man, across the street, on the corner of the block. He is often cursing and spitting out words which are hard to make sense of. He drinks. And he is covered in sores and filth. He is usually lying down holding his stomach. A building near where he sleeps collapsed some months ago and I was surprised that he was not found dead. In the apartment next door someone I've never seen practices classical piano. It's a beautiful sound to focus on. Like the echo of a dream.

back in the u-s of a

so I caught zee plane back from sydney..I feel a million miles from starting the day wandering in the shallows of beautiful Clovelly Beach...anyway, was going to be holed up in LA for most of the day but managed to get on an earlier flight...and here's where my gripe begins...Why, when Qantas does fly into NY, and I have purchased a Qantas ticket do I have to take an inferior domestic carrier 'American Airlines' from LA to NY? The staff were rude, hostile, and downright....hmmm....american. I had such a lovely experience on the Qantas flight - apart from the inflight audio needing to be a bit louder...So..during the american airlines flight I was returning from the bathroom (not really a room) to my seat. A hostess had the food trolley in the aisle and she moved it into the kitchen galley for me to pass. Then she, leaving it there, went to attend to something. However as I was passing the trolley a steward told me never to move or touch the trolley again. I asked him what he was talking about and he said, rather too dismissively, 'You heard me. Do not touch the trolley.' I told him that I did not touch it and he had the audacity to remark, 'well how did it get here then?' To which I responded by telling him to 'Come here mate!' Once he did I pointed (yes pointed) at his co-worker down the aisle and told him that in fact it was she who had moved the trolley. In this I was backed-up by the gentleman seated in the row behind me. The steward said nothing...Now this steward was the same one who I had earlier asked if I could pass through the galley to access the vacant toilet in the aisle opposite and had told me that no-one was allowed to pass through it...although during the flight he allowed some people to pass through it and yet not others...In short he seemed to be making all white people walk the long way around....what the hell? was this some sort of in-flight racism...Anyway, I wasn't that disappointed when during a spot of turbulence he landed on his arse and an open cup of coke fell from the galley bench and soaked the back of his shirt...which he had to wear throughout the flight...