Category: ultrapersonal

Goodbye to the Cheyenne




Farewell, originally uploaded by Goggla.

Well, looks like there’s another reason not to bother going back to New York. My beloved Cheyenne Diner is finally closing down.

I used to work down the street, and spent many, many happy lunch hours there, enjoying almost perfect platters of grilled cheese with fries. It was also a favorite spot to drag anyone I ever had to meet in Midtown, and not just because I’ll take any excuse to get a decent milkshake.

I can’t say that I’m shocked about the closing. In fact, I’m amazed they resisted the pressure to cash in on that real estate for so long. Still, it’s a shame to see another free-standing classic diner go away, especially one that felt a little like home every time I went inside.

The Cheyenne was the kind of place I have in my mind every time I crave the perfect diner experience, a thing that doesn’t really exist in Boston or the UK, the only two other places I’ve ever lived. It’s not the that food is incredible, but that it’s just right: comforting, tasty, familiar, and not trying to be fancier than necessary. Most of the seats are booths lining the windows that look out on the street, with room to relax for one or two, or room to squeeze in a bigger group of pals. One of the waitresses would proudly show us pictures of her son in his dancing-school costumes, and occasionally give us free slices of cake.

(Tip o’ the hat to Norm for catching this for me.)

All hope is not lost for American cities, though. One of the handful of things I really love in Los Angeles — Phillipe the Original, home of the French Dip sandwich and the 9¢ cup of coffee— is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

My Idol

John Waters by Nan Goldin

For well over twenty years this man has been my hero. No lie. No exaggeration. It was John Waters and his affectionate fascination with with trash — and his own stylish, articulate, and eccentric way of blazing his own trail — that encouraged me to fully embrace whatever aspects of the high and low culture around me that caught my fancy. I was always a quirky kid. It was John who taught me that was a good thing.

Waters is most famous as a filmmaker, of course, but it was actually his books that first blew my mind. From the moment in high school when I first read Shock Value and Crackpot, I was hooked. When I finally caught a double feature of Polyester and Desperate Living some time in 1987 or so, they just confirmed what I had already come to treasure about his view of the world.

It’s easy to peg Waters and his work as campy irony or immature shock tactics, but everything he’s written, ever talk I’ve heard him give, and every interview I’ve ever read has made it clear that he really believes in the underdog and the honesty of being what you want to be, no matter how trashy. In Waters’ world, you’re only evil if you’re a superior asshole who doesn’t want others to be happy doing their own thing. For a man of refined tastes, his sense of irony is not something he uses to maintain a distance from anything, it’s a way of celebrating the lovable in the generally unloved.

He’s demeted and sweet and mischievous. When Hairspray first came out, I loved that the master of trash had made a subversive movie the whole family could love. Even the musical version throws a sucker punch or two in the midst of its squeaky clean reinterpretation of the movie:

Waters is entirely unconcerned about his oeuvre becoming softened as it goes broad. “In a way, the most subversive thing I ever did was think up Hairspray, because now families are sitting there watching two men sing a love song,” Waters said, as a car finally pulled over. “Who would ever have thought that Jerry Mathers, who I grew up with” — the child star in the title role on Leave It to Beaver, who now plays the father in Hairspray — “would be singing to a man in a dress on Broadway in something I wrote!” (From his New York interview)

I want to keep trying to be like him as I keep trying to grow up.

Danny Boy

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the Muppets (via Sean):

I can’t stop laughing once Beaker chimes in. It’s perfect.

Danny BoyAs you might imagine, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Danny Boy, since it’s effectively been my family nickname my entire life. The story goes that my Uncle John came waltzing in the room singing it at one point when my mom was pregnant with me, and it stuck.

It is a lovely little ditty, though, if it’s done right. Most versions of it I run across are a little over-the-top Oirish-y or — even worse — a little too vocally precise but lacking in heart. (Shane McGowan gets it right, if you ask me: a little sad, a little sweet, a little boozy, and a little rough around the edges.)

My favorite version is actually by Harry Belafonte:

Danny Boy — Harry Belafonte

I never really appreciated the song very much until one of the times I saw Joe Jackson in concert in concert. He sometimes does this brilliant bar-by-bar analysis of Danny Boy (well, I guess technically it’s an analysis of The Londonderry Air, which is the original melody that was grabbed for Danny Boy in 1913), detailing exactly why it’s the perfect example of a Irish ballad that can “bring tears to a glass eye”, as an intro to the Faustian story in a song of his own:

The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy — Joe Jackson

Rufus Wainwright and House of Pain do songs called Danny Boy, but neither one is quite the same.

Status Report

American accessories

Before too much more time passes, I suppose I ought to say something about my big trip back the America for Christmas and stuff. It was my first time back in over a year, and in the weeks leading up to the trip I realized how nervous I was getting about it. When I came to England I didn’t know if I would stay or not, but I knew I was trying to leave rather a lot behind. (Like, many years of bad decisions.) During this last trip, though, I tried to squeeze in as much as I could of the things I’ve missed, while hoping to avoid the stuff I haven’t.

I had only limited success. I wasn’t able to see or talk to a lot of people I care about, but I still had three weeks of quality time with many of the key players. I ate delicious food for a longer, more consistent stretch than since I came to England, but I was also kind of full and uncomfortable because of it a lot of the time. I couldn’t avoid everything that bugs me about America, but I still had a swell time by just enjoying it like a visitor.

And I was dog tired most of the time, due in no small part to a busy schedule, three weeks of sleeping on couches, and not much time to myself for recharging. So overall: great, but exhausting.

And that’s probably the shallowest, least informative description of what was, all things considered, a really big deal for me — realizing that I feel more at home where I am now than I did there, but also realizing that I’m a lot lonelier here than I was there. It’s a bit of a dilemma, frankly.

But here I am. I’ve done a pretty shoddy job with my past, but we’ll see what the future holds. I’ll just keep plugging away.

Temporary separation

The early days in Bushwick

People are always surprised to hear that I haven’t been homesick all year. Although there are lots of things — and certainly lots of people — that I miss, I was really ready to leave the States, and in particular to leave New York. I’m notoriously nomadic and it’s certainly possible that I’ll feel like settling in New York again, but it will be a while.

Last night I heard this LCD Soundsystem song that put its finger on some of what drove me away:

LCD Soundsystem — New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down (buy it)

Busy Bee

Progress on my dissertation has been an uphill battle against two very demanding design projects I’ve been plowing through at the same time. One, thankfully, is on its way to turning out very well after a few hiccups on press preceded by lots and lots and lots of passionate input from the authors/clients. It’s been a lot of work, but the end result is very exciting for us all. (I hope. Oh god, I hope we’re all equally excited at this point.)

The MATD Group Specimen is underway

The other is a horrorshow of trying to polish a turd for a client who doesn’t quite know what they want, can’t quite agree about what they’re trying to do, wouldn’t give me any time to help them figure it out, and has reduced the budget to just about a bag of peanuts and a glass of tap water. But I care, so I can’t just let myself blow them off.

Meanwhile, there’s still a ways to go on my acutely insightful analysis of typefaces for mathematics that I need to finish so I can graduate.

The Matter of Anti-Matter

Oh, and in my free time time this year I designed a book, too. It’s also my first design project to get its own MySpace page, since it’s about indy music stuff and the music folks apparently use the MySpace once in a while. It’s by my good friend Norm, and you should buy it.

Anti-Matter

Seriously, though, it’s a fantastic read, especially if you have any interest at all in hardcore and post-punk bands of the ’90s. (If you do, you probably know who Norm is anyway.) Anti-Matter was a zine he published that featured these amazing, insightful, totally natural interviews with a bunch of great bands. Norm had (well, still has) an amazing ability to get past the party line and get people to really talk to him, and that honesty is what makes these collected interviews so engaging, even if — like me — you might only be familiar with a few of the bigger names included.

And the photography! I haven’t seen the book in print yet, but if they reproduced the photos well then this is even more of a must-have for anyone into that era’s scene. Seriously, just buy it.

Surprise!

My pal Dave moans all the time about how dull and unoriginal he is. The truth is, he’s amazing and always has been — even when I first met him 19 years ago, when he still had a mullet and acid-wash jeans — and it’s totally in character for him to pull off a caper like this. Mazel tov, my trusty sidekick!

Introducing Gina

introducing_gina.jpg

Another deadline finished! We turned in our typeface files last week, and I just turned in the specimen booklet this morning. Next it’s an essay on the development and production of the typefaces, and after that it’s on to my research dissertation. Needless to say, there’s no Summer vacation for me this year.

Even with the other deadlines looming, it’s an incredible feeling to have finally “finished” the typeface. (I use the quotes because there are still problems to address, and I’ll probably spend a lot more time fleshing out a real family of fonts instead of the two I have now.) This was an entirely new undertaking for me, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I look forward to getting better as time goes by, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done so far, and pretty grateful to everyone who helped it come together.

Before I spend the next week or so writing about the typefaces themselves, I’d really like to take a moment to say something about their namesake — my old friend/boss/mentor/inspiration Gina Brandt-Fall.

gina_sparky.jpgGina was an extraordinary woman who passed away in April 2001. Although she had been having an ugly, all-out battle with breast cancer for the previous two years, and knew her days were running out, I don’t think she was prepared for the sudden liver failure that claimed her in the end. I know I wasn’t. Gina, who I worked with for years, moved to California a few months prior, planning to start a new life in the wake of the cancer that she fought so aggressively. Her doctors discovered more cancer, though, burrowed further into her chest and lungs where they couldn’t get to it without major surgery that would have left Gina in excruciating pain for her last months. She opted for more chemotherapy instead, so she could have a few good weeks out of each of those last months — time to enjoy the sun, to be with her friends, to be able to pull together the fragments of the wonderful book she had been working on for so long. Even during her illness, Gina was incredibly vibrant, emotionally and intellectually engaged, empathic, thoughtful, insightful. Gone, just like that.

Gina and I took to one another immediately went I first interviewed with her for some freelance typesetting work in about 1996 or so. From the very first day, I was taken by her enthusiasm, humor, and quick mind as our conversation went from typesetting to typography to books to literature to life, and that spark never faded during all the years we worked side-by-side. I learned an incredible amount of new things from her, and I was actively encouraged by her to take those new ideas to new levels, and to always leave myself the energy to do what I love. And I laughed with her. Oh my, how we laughed when we were together! Even when we started out bitching and moaning about the workplace and the larger world, we were able to put things in perspective and mix joy in with the righteous indignation. She was not only a friend and a colleague and a teacher, but also an inspiration. That’s cliché, I know, but true: I aspire to her level of passionate interest in life.

Once I knew I was going to set aside life as I knew it to follow a dream, it seemed like the perfect tribute to Gina to dedicate a part of that dream to her. Not only was she the one who made me learn how to typeset math (or rather, she was the one who made me realize how fascinating it could be, and who encouraged me to keep learning as much as I could), but she was the one who showed me that it’s good to hang onto your dreams and jump at them when you have the chance.