Hope Springs Eterenal

A few weeks ago I treated myself on a Thursday when my beautiful wife was off at a campus interview (more on THAT later...)I decided to treat myself to something I don't recall ever having done before and that is go to an Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season. It was a nice day for early April, sun drenched the field and the blue sky was picture perfect. I got on the G train and switched to the 7 at Court Square and in no time I was standing in line to purchase my ticket (and Club Pass) to Citi Field. It was my first time at the new park built in the parking lot of the now demolished Shea Stadium. A place where I never had a bad time weather my team won or lost. Weather sitting in the press box with the crew from where my mom worked at Major's Supermarket, or sneaking down into the box seats as kids to watch Seaver pitch, or climbing into the upper deck with my hobbled father who gamely followed so we could share that experience...it was seat-cushion night and when Dave Kingman finally hit a home run in a lopsided rout of the Mets, the would-be collectors items rained out of the stands and littered the field in a hilarious delay of game...or when Gary Carter ended a rain-delayed double header with a home run in the second game that went into extra innings...or when Doc Gooden as a rookie pitched a one hitter against the Cubs...or when Strawberry hit a mammoth homer in a play-off game against Houston in '86 and Nails won it with a walk-off shot that just cleared the right field fence where we were positioned to see both very nicely and our feet did not hit the ground until we got home...or at Yankee Stadium when Thurman Munson turned away laughing at the fiasco on the field as a couple of portly security guards tried to coral a streaker...or when Bobby Murcer tom-a-hawked a homer into the short porch in right...Jim Rice taking Ron Davis deep as he turned on a fastball...Reggie calming a heckler down behind home plate who was demanding the slugger get a hit...and then he doubled to right-center starting the rally that won the game...Guidry with two strikes on anybody...Mattingly braking up Moose Haas's no hitter with a line drive double off the padded wall in right... These are not all the stuff of legend, but the minute details that make baseball religion to some...In fact you can take a course at NYU, as reported by Samuel G. Friedman in today's New York Times, with John Sexton in his class "Baseball as a Road to God". To be honest most of my church-going occurred via television where I followed ardently both the Yankees AND the Mets (I know, sacrilegious to some)...I kept score one time watching channel 9 as Tom Seaver was pitted against Bob Gibson in a game that ended with a score of 1 nothing for the Mets with both pitchers going the full nine innings.

The Mets won their opener and began the year in first place with a 1.000 winning percentage. Citi Field is not Shea and I really did not have a feel for it. A visit to the New Yankee Stadium in 2010 left me with a similar impression, but the game is the same and in a very secular way it is a unique harbinger of Spring and Summer, and ultimately the Fall with the World Series and all the new play-off games.

I had my hot dogs, I had my beers and I had a great time. I can check Opening Day off my bucket list. Play Ball!!!

Of Ph. D.'s and Civil Service

My wife is a college professor. Constantly I find myself in the company of scholars and intellectuals and I know I am not one of them. I am a mason, and not the kind that knows the secret handshake either. Rather, the kind who sets stone, lays brick, and places stucco. As a building inspector, I bring my lifetime’s worth of expertise to the duty of enforcing codes in an effort to keep people safe. As I sit with the citizens of New York in a social setting, I am keenly aware of their perception of city workers in general, and of building inspectors in particular. As I embark on a new season of training rookie inspectors, my goal is to ensure that how we are perceived by the public ranks alongside the stellar reputations of Fire Fighters, Police Officers, and Teachers in the pantheon of well regarded, if not heroic, civil servants.

Bad apples are the exception, not the rule, in all walks of life. They garner the most attention because punishment must be public, while praise, it seems, is relegated to a quick sound bite on a slow news day. These are just the facts of life in Gotham and it’s taken me a long time to develop the thick skin required to press on.

I want to take this opportunity to honor all the diligent grunts in the trenches making a difference day to day by paying serious attention to the details of how our city works. The blood and guts of a modern metropolis; its plumbing and electricity, boilers and elevators receive notice only when they fail to work properly and are otherwise taken for granted. The people who work on these systems, designing them, building them, and maintaining them, know better.

The public of this great city, from the mayor to the commissioner of buildings, to your family, co-workers and neighbors, to the homeless people on the streets, are demanding of excellence and insatiable in appetite for a greater New York City. They are tough customers. We owe them and each other our best.

"Port Richmond" 1st 200 words.

"It was a bright, clear Saturday morning...they always seem to be bright, clear mornings. The kind of day when we may forget for a split second that evil could ever exist in the world. Forty five year old Miguel Gonzalez stood by the schoolyard fence at first light. His jet black hair just beginning to be streaked with strands of gray framed his tan face and wicked wind blown tears from his chilled brown eyes. A well worn, insulated Carhardt hooded jacket kept the cold from freezing his bones. He did not like heights, but work had slowed to almost nothing in the past six months, and the weather was just starting to break on this crisp fifteenth of April. The long, bitter winter reluctantly began to loosen its grip. A cantankerous, dirty, dented, old red Ford F 250 rumbled to a stop in front of him. It was laden with the platforms and rope-falls; steel hooks and irons for hanging a scaffold over a parapet wall. Miguel Gonzalez scanned the rig, and the name on the side of the truck: Ceilencio Restoration, and just shook his head in resignation before climbing into the back of a smoke-filled club cab."

Still looking to land an agent, so if you have any leads...give me a shout.

FREEZER DREAMS...and other stories

In my humble opinion, the only reason Broadway exists is so we can have Off-Broadway…and Off-Off-Broadway. So far this year we have seen BAM’s final installment of The Bridge Project, Shakespeare’s Richard the III with Kevin Spacey, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, and a reading of Jess Foster’s play in development, Freezer Dreams. We also made our first excursion to the new Pershing Square Signature Theater to see Katori Hall’s Hurt Village.


HURT VILLAGE

BY

KATORI HALL


A full three days after the fact, the language, the characters, the set, and the themes of this play are still affecting me. Hall does not shy away from stereotypes, in fact, she indulges so deeply in them that I felt almost bombarded, but instead of an alienating effect, I felt there was a moment where I went beyond the cliches and saw the characters as tragic figures, heroes and villains for whom I had the greatest empathy and sincerest sympathy as well. I could not help but love them all.

Set in a Memphis housing project slated for demolition to make way for a gentrified neighborhood where our cast of characters could not afford to live, the story unfolds with a triumphant homecoming by Buggy, a Bush-era Iraqi war veteran. That is the feel good moment in the play. It would be inaccurate to say it was all downhill from there, but the emotionally torturous ride we take is anything but smooth. The veteran returns home to continue his decline as a young black father whose only options seem to be either work for the Kingpin drug dealer, or deal drugs himself.

The language reminded me of Shakespeare in its inventiveness and its clear communication of where these characters live, what their dreams and hopes are, and what their reality inevitably is. Names like Ebony, Crank, Cookie, and Skillet evoke the nature and personal history of each character. It is a bitter, bleak existence for Big Mama and her family, 13 year old Cookie who is the light of everyone’s life in the play with her genius wit and fierce heart, and Crank, Cookie’s mother, a recovering addict. Like Chekov’s Cherry Orchard, the three have to find a new place to live as Big Mama’s home of nearly 30 years faces the wrecking ball. Big Mama, the only member of this small community with a legitimate job working graveyard shifts at the VA as a nurse’s aid, makes too much money to qualify for government subsidized housing.

Tony C. is the local mob boss who controls all the action in Hurt Village, Cornbread is a low level rival and Toyia is his main girl. Tony C. and Buggy have a history that goes way back and is perhaps the ulterior motive of Buggy’s to encroach on Tony C.’s turf. The end is as predictable as Hamlet, though, only one person dies, and he is the weakest link. In the end, that same hope and verve with which the play began somehow endures, and life goes on even if the projects don’t. Every big city has its Hurt Village. Full of struggle, dignity, agony and ecstasy. This Hurt Village will roll you over like a bull dozer.

David Gallo’s set literally pits the dilapidated institutional bunker-like housing project against the brand-name construction of new condominiums. On the wall of Big Mama’s kitchen are three photographic portraits: one of Buggy in his uniform posed with the American Flag, the other of Tiffany, Buggy’s late mother, and a third of a jovial Martin Luther King Jr. reminiscent of the famous portrait of Jesus laughing. Katori Hall is also the author of The Mountain Top which ran on Broadway this season and is about the last days of Dr. King.

Directed by Patricia McGregor, stellar performances were turned in by Ron Cephas Jones (whom we also saw last fall in the Public’s Titus Andronicus) and Tonya Pinkins (whom we saw in Kushner’s Caroline or Change). Joaquina Kalukango as the precocious, erudite 13 year old Cookie is no stranger to Off-Broadway and is a delight to behold. The entire cast turns in a solid ensemble effort and deals with the material honestly and with great pride and dignity.

“Nothing good ever comes out of the projects” Buggy says. If Hurt Village was born and raised there, in the projects, I have to disagree.



FREEZER DREAMS
BY
JESS FOSTER

The White Horse Theater Company’s New Play Development series led by Vanessa Bombardieri presented AMERICAN WOMEN a series of new play readings by female playwrights about America, Saturday February 11th at ARTNY.

Directed by Cyndy A. Marion, Freezer Dreams is a tight family drama that tells the story of post modern crisis in America as a teenager with a rare, life threatening disease struggles to survive her circumstances and how everyone’s life is affected by the choices she and her family must make to keep her alive.

Jess Foster, playwright, is no stranger to the White Horse. Her play Mourning Sun received a reading last season in this same series. With this new work in development, Ms Foster continues to blend elements of the fantastical with those of the literal to create a provocative and engaging piece by probing such issues as modern technology, socialization, and a subject I like to call “Silent Majority Fame”, the phenomenon where-by ordinary people become celebrities via exposure on reality shows or the internet. Judging form the lively post-reading discussion, Ms Foster struck several major chords and a few minor ones as well. Her gift for dialog displayed in all its electric glory last night as a panel of actors featuring Katie Hartman, Becky Byers, and Cynthia Shaw dazzled the assembly with an apt reading. Heather Lee Rodgers and Jen Wiener also brightly shone in supporting roles.


RICHARD III

BY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Directed by Sam Mendes, featuring Kevin Spacey in the title roll, need I say more? This is a theatre experience one should not miss. Sam Mendes breaks Shakespeare’s political allegory down by character, making sure at every turn you know what is happening, and who is who. With formidable use of his lead actor, combined with judicious use of multimedia, and live musicians not only scoring the action with music but creating live sound effects as well, this is a riveting interpretation of the Bard’s evil King.

Kevin Spacey turns in a mesmerizingly physical performance. His tortured, misshapen body viscerally communicated to the audience his pain and suffering which he was not shy at all about sharing with everyone on stage as well as his public in the seats. It seems the sole justification for his usurpation of the throne. Spacey uses his masterful tools as a liar and a villain to seduce us onto his side. His erotic wooing of Lady Anne bordered on fetish.

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

BY

PAULA VOGEL

Finally, I would like to write about this masterpiece by Paula Vogel. We saw maybe the first or second preview of this Modern American Greek Tragedy at 2ND Stage. I had read the text, but the characterizations of the chorus and of Uncle Peck not only illuminated their human foibles, but also the time and place in the history of human kind became immediately accessible to me. Of course, the taboo subject of this play was not so much a problem for the ancients whose values included torture and slavery. How far we have come?

The story of Uncle Peck played wonderfully by Norbert Leo Butz and Lil’ Bit portrayed by Elizabeth Reaser is told episodically and out of sequence so as to not alienate the viewer from the start. Until the final scenes, one would think this a tragic love story about a post-traumatically stressed Vietnam Vet and the inappropriate relationship he has with his niece, but it inevitably becomes a story about how we are trapped by the hypocrisy of our times and a much deeper, darker malady in the mind and spirit of an individual. Despite the disturbing turn of events at the end of the play, this is a moving night of theatre. Inventive, engaging and superbly entertaining. Highly recommended.



NEXT UP:

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

We are finally breaking down and going to see a Broadway production (just to ensure Broadway does not dry up and blow away on a stiff breeze from the Hudson). We are going to see the Andrew Lloyd Weber’s passion play. I first saw this produced back at Staten Island’s now defunct Civic Theater in the late 1970’s and have loved it ever since.

That’s all for now, thank you for reading,

Mark.

Fresh Poetry

I have been punched in the face
my nose exploded in a torrent of
Blood

More than once

I have fallen off a scaffold and had my hand lacerated to the tendon
As it went through a stained glass window

There’s nothing passive about bleeding or blood

It is an active part of life.

The poet once said, “New York seduced me”
She got that right.

One night I rented a room in the Chelsea Hotel
It cost 65 dollars. I left a poem in a bottom drawer
With a copy of SCREW magazine
And another one on the bed.

I wanted to be a great poet, I got hooked
On New York instead.
It wasn’t hard; she gives you what you like
And I have a
High tolerance for pain
And a low resistance to pleasure

So I still wander these streets
of a million doors
and a million floors
and 8 million stores

But the New York I knew is in the rear view
The City has changed and I walk
like a ghost among her ruins
looking for Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Patti Smith
and John Lennon.

And all that’s real
Is the taste of blood
Inside my mouth.

Welcome to...Port Richmond

Last year I went back to the old neighborhood, camera in hand, to do a photo essay of how the place looks now. I was also in the last pages of composing my novel and used these images, and more like them, to propel me to the finish line. Here's a glimpse at how the place looks today. These shots include the sheltered doorway of the Bridge Tavern, where Jack Simms ducks out of the rain while Mary Jimenez performs at the protest rally across the street in Elm Park.

Keep up with the blog for more photos of Port Richmond and locations in and around which have provided inspiration for scenes in the novel. You can't miss the ever present image of the iconic Bayonne Bridge, the dome of which features prominently in Jack Simms' history with his home town.

I am continuing to send the manuscript out to agents with the goal of landing a publisher in 2012.

2011 A Year in Photos

Pictures really are worth a thousand words.