Thursday, January 29, 2009

Time Out New York - Letter of the Week!


Click on the image to enlarge.

Friday, January 16, 2009

My Letter to the Editor of Time Out NY

From Time Out New York / Issue 693 : Jan 8–14, 2009 /
What your personal trainer is really thinking

Worst breach of gym etiquette you’ve ever seen?

“Two people having sex in the sauna…but that’s a tie with the two people I caught having sex on a stretch table when I still worked for a facility.”

“Putting gum under benches”

“This dude smelled like a garbage dump. It was so bad, people would leave. The owner of the gym stepped in and actually suspended his membership. This guy smelled so bad, I’m getting sick thinking about it.”

“Too much unsafe gay sex in the steam rooms.”

“Guys wear very tight spandex shorts from the ’80s and you can see all the sweat coming from their ass and their penises sticking out. I even saw some members coming from the locker room and working out naked like nothing happened. The gym manager had to come on the floor and bring them back to the locker room.”

Dear editor,

Re: "Worst breach of gym etiquette you've ever seen?"

It's always fun to see gay sex show up in a list of something titled "worst." In fact, two of the five offending acts are attributed to the frisky gay men of New York's saunas and steam rooms!

Unsafe sex is never cool, I agree. But your garden variety mutual masturbation or oral sex in the steam room may be against the rules (and also the law), but it's hardly a breach of etiquette in New York City. It's the set up in a lot of porn, in fact. The proper etiquette would be to join in, look away, or take your uptight self out of there.

For me, as a gym-goer, the worst breach of gym etiquette usually involves a trainer and his/her client occupying too much space or monopolizing one (and ofter several) pieces of equipment at once. I once went up to a trainer at my gym to ask when she'd be done with a machine and she said, "Oh, we only have about a half hour more." They'd been using it exclusively already for 30 minutes.

Kind regards,
David
Brooklyn, NY

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Liza Minnelli Made Me Cry

Liza walked upstage to the piano and gripped it like a prizefighter going to the ropes. Tired and worn, she gathered her spirit - not her strength, wiped her face with a towel and came back downstage.

I had last seen Liza Minnelli during her last comeback, produced by her then husband David Gest. That had been stressful viewing. Back then, she would approach one of those big notes by screwing her legs into the stage, punching the air with her fist, while the voice would wobble out. "Please make it, Liza. You can do it," I would whisper each time.

Liza at the Palace was different, I had heard.

My friend Mitch emailed me: You have to see this. He'd never done that before. The show appeared on both 2008 top ten lists in the NY Times Arts & Leisure year-in-review. Then on Monday, Dec 22nd my best friend Bob called up to tell me that four seats, fifth row center had just magically appeared on Ticketmaster for xmas eve! We bought them, just knowing our husbands wouldn't want to miss this.

...and she was FANTASTIC! Her voice was no longer the clarion it had been. She sacrificed that too much pills and liquor. Still, she sang strong and steady. She danced. She mocked her age, making a shtick of it like a pro.

After twenty plus songs, she stood center stage, fingered the microphone with one hand and shook out her wet hair with the other. She quietly said, "A few years ago a terrible thing happened. Some people tried to hurt us, hurt our city. But, but they did not succeed. We came together as a city, as a county. Stronger. Yes. Stronger."

Tears had already starting rolling down my cheeks.

As she launched into "New York, New York," I cried. Steady streams released from my eyes.

I had been vulnerable, for sure. The holidays are hard - melancholy, demanding, tiring. My guard had been weak, but - to be true - I love New York City and I love a showtune. Liza created a pitch perfect storm.

God bless her.