the rix mix

Lindsay Lohan's ex-boyfriend says she's boring when she's sober. Give it a few years, pal, & you'll realize people are more boring when they're drunk. More dangerous, too.

An Invasion of the Jumbo Squid is all over the news today. Jumbo squid. Jumbo shrimp. Jumbo lump crabcakes. This isn't marine science, it's a menu.

When my bathroom ceiling began leaking in an alarming way, I thought the guy upstairs was overfilling his bathtub or showering without a curtain. The second time it happened, I went up & asked him what was going on. He gave me a song & dance about a stopped up drain. I said do something, & now. The building handyman snaked his drain. The leak got worse. Ceiling tiles collapsed. A pipe joint is busted, I figured, must need a serious repair. I got the handyman up there again, but asked him to have the tenant demonstrate what he was doing every night at 4 am. Turned out he was filling his tub with over a foot of water, & when he sat in it, it overflowed into the thingie that flips between the bathtub spout & the shower head. So my first guess was correct; he's an idiot. He had a thin woman with a terrible complexion staying with him for awhile. They weren't nice to each other. A couple of months ago they had a terrible fight, throwing stuff, around the time of night he now takes a bath, & she walked out, screaming all the way down the stairs. I looked out the window & saw her roller-blading down the middle of the street. Haven't seen her since.

Passed up a trip today with my art class to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My reason was sound: Lack of patience. Two vans, 15 people, Manhattan traffic, lunch, huge museum, strict deadline for arriving back home late afternoon. Last year, on a one van excursion to Newark Museum, the driver managed to get lost when he insisted on taking the back roads into Newark instead of the easy route. I got about 90 minutes in the museum, a place I know very well, but they hustled me out in the middle of watching a video art installation because I'd spent too much time in the great Tibetan galleries. My problem is that I need time & I have patience for looking at art. I don't like being rushed. At the Met, it's always best to decide ahead of time what you want to see, & give yourself a nice, long coffeebreak just as art fatigue sets in. I've always enjoyed going to exhibits with a good artist who points out all sorts of things I wouldn't have noticed. Also going with someone who doesn't know much about art, so I can act smart without being corrected.

Labels: culture, home furnishings, potpourri