Artsy-fartsy at the Frick

The weather has dominated lately, spring is supposed to be here, but it’s making a reluctant showing. Perhaps it’s shy in front of strangers. Lately I’ve started several blog postings and they’ve all begun with a weather report:

18 February: Four seasons in ten minutes
Well, Melbourne, you thought you had contrary weather. This morning we woke up to bright sunshine, by the time Ahmed had got out of the shower and ready for work it was very gray and cloudy, then during breakfast it snowed. He hadn’t been gone to work five minutes (I took pity and let him have the car) when it stopped snowing and blue skies were in view again. Yesterday we had rain. The only consistent thing about it is the temperature. After a few days of almost coat-less weather, we’re back to arctic temperatures. Who says winter is not exciting?

8 March: Bigger than a Blizzard
So here I was, writing a note to a friend yesterday, gloating about how I could feel spring in the air, and today the sudden snowstorm that has arrived makes our ‘blizzard’ look tame. I can’t see Ahmed’s office building from the window and can barely make out anything for 200 yards in any direction. The wind is howlingly loud, whipping at the flyscreens and hurling snow in every direction.

Ahmed asked me at 5am whether I needed the car today, and as I had a couple of errands to run, I made him walk to work. At the crack of dawn this morning the weather was lovely(-ish) and by mid-morning, warm and pleasant. However, five minutes after I got home from the shops I was calling him and asking if he wanted a lift home tonight. Nobody can walk in this. As it turns out he needs to do a few things for work so we’ve done a car swap – he now has the vehicle, so I guess that means he’s on the school pick-up run. Yasmin’s to small to walk home from school in this weather – she’d be blown away in no time, and I’m darn sure I’m not going out in it to get her anyway.

30 March: Today
Fine and sunny, and according to the locals, hot. Well, hot enough to be out without coats, apparently. I’ve seen them out running in tank tops and shorts, walking sans winter outerwear, even one Mum dropping off at school this morning in thongs (the foot kind, not the underwear kind, though I didn’t ask…). It’s all of 55 degrees F which translates to about 12 degrees in real money. The haze of winter has removed all common sense as to temperature. You can’t just wish it warm by wearing summer clothes. If that worked I’d have been in shorts in January – like all good Aussies are supposed to be.

But enough about the weather…To keep myself amused and to keep a severe case of cabin fever from manifesting, I took a trip into NYC a couple of weeks ago. I needed to go to the New York public library and get a final piece of data for my thesis. It’s a bit of a trek to get in, but the train does most of the work, at least until Grand Central Terminal. Then the library’s just up the street and I managed that bit by myself.

What a magnificent place to work. Pity I’ve finished all my serious research, at least for now, I could so easily spend days at a time in there. Three stories high, painted ceilings, art works, and that glorious hushed studiousness of grand literary establishments. Yes, that’s what does it for me. I admit it, I’m a library geek. (Given that Ahmed’s a computer geek, is there any hope for Yasmin to be any kind of non-geek?) The staff couldn’t have been more helpful, an unusual trait in a New Yorker as it turns out, and I found what I needed and was finished in under an hour. But I took a stroll around anyway. Then I had to find something else to do. After all I had a train ticket valid until mid-afternoon and nothing much to do when I got home. So I took the subway uptown to visit the Frick Collection.

The Frick Collection is a collection of artworks that are [from the pamphlet that accompanies the entry fee] “housed in the former residence of Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), which was designed by Thomas Hastings and constructed in 1913-14”. It is a private residence (house is an understatement) that Mr and Mrs Frick once resided in (these kinds of people ‘reside’ rather than ‘live’), and throughout their lives they assembled a magnificent private art collection. It has some of the best known paintings from some of the major European artists, sculptures and small bronzes. The collection has been open to the public since 1935, after the house was remodelled by architect John Russell Pope. Presenting the art this way removes the ‘art gallery’ feel and makes it more like walking through someone’s home, except there is no actual sign of actual residents.

But it is a collection of classical art, no contemporary works here. Lots of portraits of imperious old geezers in wigs and women in crinolines. I recognised some of the artists names, but not being a huge fan of this type of work, some of it was lost on me. But I was fascinated in a ‘how’d-they-do-that?’ kind of way. Which got me in trouble with a security guard. Without thinking, I was leaning in trying to see how the brush strokes had created the effect I liked when I get a firm tap on the shoulder and a brusque ‘Ma’am’ in my ear. I didn’t twig right away and turned with a look of ‘what?’ on my face but he said no more. I kept looking at him about to repeat out loud ‘What?’ when it dawned on me that I had to get my face away from the painting. Its all very subtle and understated, but the communication in those kinds of places is as distinct as at a football match. All around me the grey-haired ‘serious’ art lover visitors, of which there were plenty, were quietly frowning my way and tut-tutting amongst themselves. Oh, I felt great - the klutzy country cousin who dared to put breath within inches of a great work of art. I’d almost finished seeing everything anyway, so I mustered my dignity and strolled the last of the galleries then got my coat and left. Outside I headed back to the subway only to find it was broken – the line I needed was out of action. I followed the crowd, got my replacement ticket, and found the bus stop. Once I started queue jumping like everyone around me, I felt better. I knew how to handle this type of social space, and up close and personal wasn’t a problem.

I made it back to Grand Central in time to grab a drink and board the last Off Peak train for home. Nice day out. Next time I’ll try Madame Tussaud’s or the Museum of Modern Art. Some place where I won’t be the youngest person visiting.

The Oscars

I'm a couple of days late posting this, but here's where I was at on Sunday night:

Good Lord, its 10.15pm already and we’re only just up to the cinematography award. There’re 50 Oscars to be given out tonight and we’re barely a fifth of the way through it. Australia, be glad you get an edited version of this tediously, strained, ponderous affair. There is such gravity about the whole occasion. Where’s the fun? I reckon a computer science prize-giving would have more zing – where’s the pizzazz? What a boring way to spend a Sunday night. But there’s sfa else to do tonight. Ahmed’s away in London, Yasmin’s asleep in bed and I’m trying to entertain myself with a minimum of intellectual exertion.

So far Cate Blanchett has won the Supporting Actress Oscar for The Aviator, and following that, so many other awards have gone to the same movie. At this point in the evening, doesn’t look as though Best Director and Best Movie are going to be too much of a surprise.

Tim Robbins came out to present looking like he’d forgotten to wash, shave or comb his hair. Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana are doing a song together, with Mr Banderas, not a bad singer actually, looking like Tim Robbins’ hairdresser did his ‘do’ tonight. Are the hairdresser’s on strike this evening? Or did Beyonce’s transformations between songs take all hands on deck?

How much of a blip on the US radar screen is Australia? Well, I’ll tell ya, it doesn’t even register. On WE channel, Sandra Berhardt is doing an ad-break cutaway show of the Oscars called the Ladies Room, and has just called Cate Blanchett English. Then her and her co-host, a gay-black-male fashion designer (politically correct?) have just suggested that McLeod’s Daughters is a spin off from McCloud, the American private investigator series of the ‘70’s. I know they’re supposed to be being funny and witty but, no, not succeeding. Just looking stupid. It gets better – last week on the game show Jeopardy, ‘Antipodeans’ was a question category. There were half a dozen questions about famous Australians (NZ isn’t even antipodean apparently), all but one requiring photographs of the famous person. Steve Irwin was the easy question, followed by an Elle MacPherson question (sans photo), a Peter Garrett/Midnight Oil question. Then a picture of John Howard, our PM, was next and no-one knew who he was. But they guessed the next (and rated harder) picture of Ned Kelly. That’s Australia – an outback stereotype, a near retired model, a retired rock musician (his political career wasn’t mentioned), an unknown and uninspirational leader and a woodcut print of an historical outlaw. The only other times I’ve heard Australia mentioned was twice on the evening news sports report during the Australian Open, and on the day the Kyoto Treaty was to take effect, in the list of the only two countries who didn’t sign the accord – America and Australia.

Australia take note – if you’re planning on wasting an evening watching America’s movie business awards, you can bet your bottom dollar they won’t be watching ours.

Ok, so it’s now 11.30pm and we’re nearing the end. Seems we were saved by a whole bunch of technical and artistic awards having had their own prize-giving a few days ago. So go see Million Dollar Baby, Morgan, Hilary and Clint wont their categories (Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress and Best Director), but it is a good movie, as demonstrated by its Best Motion Picture Award (that’s just been announced this minute). Others I’ll get to are Ray (Ray Charles biog), Sideways, Hotel Rwanda and Vera Drake. Or maybe I’ll wait till they come out on DVD. I guess The Aviator just didn’t do it for the academy voter. It seems Martin Scorsese will have to wait for another day. And poor old Annette Benning, pipped at the post by Hilary once again.
So having found something to do while being bored by the Oscars show, what’d I think? I thought Chris Rock was a little out of his league as a host, but then who else is there available? I thought the frocks were a so-so, nothing stood out as spectacular (except the ridiculously large necklace Beyonce wore to sing with Andrew Lloyd Webber). I thought it was one of the dullest ways to spend three hours and 40 minutes of my Sunday night and I recommend that industry prize-givings and end-of-year work functions be kept behind closed doors in future.

To other news:
Last weekend was a long weekend with Monday being President’s Day. No, I’ve no idea what it is or why (clearly something to do with the local ruling elite) but I’m beginning not to care. We’ve had Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Veteran’s Day and Labor Day, all of which make as much sense as any of our public holidays (Queen’s Birthday?) and there’s still Memorial Day to come.

Whatever the reason, Ahmed (this time) suggested we go somewhere and so we decided to pack up the car, prepared to stay away for the night and head off west till we got far enough to get back in time for work on Tuesday. We drove down the I-95 (Interstate 95 is the main highway along the coast of Connecticut), got a bit confused trying to cross the George Washington Bridge on the other side of Manhattan but had the forethought to pack the laptop with that (%^&*) map. This time it worked and we figured our way across the Hudson River via the Geo.Washington. Once over that magnificent steel structure, we kept going until we got to the split in the turnpike and had to make a decision to go south into New Jersey or west into Pennsylvania. I let the driver make the decision (ah, I’m so giving) and he decided to head west.

Right into the path of an oncoming snowstorm, as it happens. I guess we should have checked the weather before we left. After having braved the ‘Blizzard of 2005’ as it is being called, we thought we’d tough it out and see how far we could get. Ahmed was intent on trying out his new car’s front wheel drive/traction control/ABS and I figured we had OnStar emergency call facility in the car so we’d probably be ok (but no show shovel which could have been a mistake). I’d heard that the storm wasn’t due until the following day, but by the time we went out for dinner at Smokey Bones in Scranton, PA, there was a thick coating on the roads and car park, and it was much heavier snow than we’d seen from our window during the blizzard. That didn’t stop us enjoying a feast of ribs – baby back and St Louis spicy – with a long, cool margherita. Mmmm, thy do good ribs over here. After driving all afternoon we were all a bit tired and weren’t concerned about being out any longer so we slid and weaved out way back to our hotel, getting ‘misplaced’ along the way as is our habit (it’s so much harder to read street signs when the snow is falling). We made it back to the hotel not long after Yasmin nodded off in the back seat, but not so late that we missed our weekly instalment of Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal.

The next morning there was a good 3-6 inches of snow covering the car, but the roads had all been ploughed so we could drive home. First we had to scrape the snow off the car. If you leave it on the roof it falls down over the windscreen the first time you brake hard enough, and it flies off in chunks and bothers the driver’s behind you. Or so we found out the hard way when following the ‘snow hats’ along the highway. At first we didn’t know what it was, but didn’t take long to figure out that it was chunks of snow from other lazy sods who couldn’t be bothered cleaning off their roof.

As we headed home via a different highway to catch some new scenery we saw lots (and lots and lots) of trees with snow frosted limbs, snow covered hillsides, frozen lakes, rivers and puddles. Lots and lots. Not a great deal of variation in the view, which is very pretty but after a while, a bit the same. It wasn’t till we stopped at a roadside rest stop with toilets and tourist information that we discovered all the ski fields and sight-seeing was on the road we’d come in on. Of course not knowing where it was at the time, we’d missed most of it. But we did go over the Pocono Mountains and through the Delaware Water Gap (a gorge) – you have to, to get to Scranton via the route we did.

Because of the weather we didn’t really see much of Scranton. Getting lost on the way to and from the ribs place gave us a bit of a chance to see the houses, shops and suburban streets, but apart from that, it seems Scranton is just a town like any other, with a name that made me want to see it. There are plenty of peculiarly named places I want to see before we head home.

I guess you don’t notice the landscape and houses are different until you cross back over state lines. Once we got back into New York State, I realised how much prettier eastern Pennsylvania was. Then we were through NY and back into Connecticut, nicer again. Even with bare, wintry trees, I still like going for drives around the country. The snow storm didn’t stop us from enjoying the ride and we were glad we’d taken the time to get out and about.

Coming up next…..
Another snow storm, this time we’re looking forward to 8-12 inches of snow Monday afternoon and night and a bit more on Tuesday. Pity I broke the sled on Friday.