Laurie Sandell's Blog, page 354

A Memorial Day bike ride

[image error]Alexandra is on her way back to LA, but I have to give her props for showing me a side of New York I forgot existed. You know how it is: You live here, the weekend rolls around and you'll find yourself saying things like, "Ugh, there's nowhere to go..should we just hit Olea again?" Then a wide-eyed, happy friend comes to town, and suddenly New York transforms into this enormously romantic, culture-rich mecca with no end of activities to try. One of those activities was a bike ride around...

I see naked people

[image error]Finally checked out the retrospective on Marina Abramovic's work at MOMA, entitled, "The Artist Is Present." This show has gotten tons of press, namely because, as the title implies, the artist herself is part of the installation. She's sitting in a wooden chair on the main floor of the gallery, facing another wooden chair, which museum-goers are invited to sit in. They start lining up at 6:00 AM, but there's no guarantee they will get to face the artist since people are allowed to sit there ...

The Whitney Biennial at 1:00 A.M.

[image error]This year's Whitney Biennial is open 24-hours-a-day for the last three days of the show, so my friend Alexandra–who is in from LA and staying with me for three nights–and I heroically attended the exhibit in the wee hours of the morning, after a candlelit dinner at Café Cluny. We figured we'd either be the only people there, or we'd be there with dozens of drunk, 22-year-old hipsters. The show was packed! And though the crowd skewed young, there were all kinds of New Yorkers in attendance...

A reading and spring love

[image error]When I read at Barnes & Noble last year, this wisecracking, hilarious elderly woman came up to me and introduced herself. "I'm Norma," she said. "I do a one-woman show called The Angina Monologues." Since then, she's hooked me up with gigs around the city for the 80 and over set; [image error]today, I read at the Council Senior Center on the Upper West Side. Norma was there in the back row, saucy as always: "How are you?" I asked. "Never ask an old woman how she is!" she said. "You're not going to like...

Once again, a reason to live on Monday nights

[image error]Last night the new season of The Bachelorette premiered, and I was front and center with my Chinese food, dog, close friend Amanda, and my naked heart. Why oh why do I love this insipid and silly gem of a reality show so? I once interviewed its creator, Mike Fleiss, but came no closer to solving this great riddle of my life. The script never changes: "Gentlemen? Ali? It's the last rose of the night." The votive-choked set is cheesy and in danger of burning to the ground. And the Bachelorette ...

More lessons from Ajhan Amaro

[image error]Well, it's official: I'm totes monked-out. I ended up going to all three of Ajhan Amaro's lectures on faith at the New York Insight Meditation Center. On the second night, he gave us a meditation that helps you deal with your emotions, and since my friend Amanda used to call me "TK Emotion," I was interested to hear what he had to say. "TK" is a symbol used in journalism as a placeholder for something you plan to insert later. It's short for "tokum," a deliberate misspelling of "to come"...

An audience with a really cool monk

[image error]The British-born monk Ajhan Amaro visited the New York Insight Meditation Center last night, and gave a talk on "Faith or Belief: The difference between blindly going along with what we've been told and learning to have confidence in the implications of our own experience." First, the guy was adorable. Is that wrong to say? Look at the kindness and joy in his face. I loved his prominent ears; they were like two large, round sugar cookies. (My friend Patty's description of a guy she once...

Poets make the best memoirists

[image error]My favorite memoirs are by poets: Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss. Mary Karr's The Liars Club. Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face. Tonight I heard the most incredible essay, by  poet Mark Doty; it appears in the "Sex" issue of Granta and is called The Unwriteable. It's about a gay affair he had when he was 18 and married. He wrote, "Now I understand that his body–beautiful though no gym body of a later decade, a broad chest with a rich swath of hair, the beard pointing downward as though to...

A weekend of music and readings

[image error][image error]When I started going to artist's colonies, I became friends with artists, and now most of the art on my walls comes from friends. Likewise, I've gotten to know some musicians over the past few years, and as a result, I'm always listening to a friend's CD or going to his or her show. Last night I went to Rockwood Music Hall to hear Amy Correia perform, along with her friend Richard Julian. Amy and I shared the Joe's Pub stage last September for the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series, but...

Latest iPhone marvel

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Last night in Williamsburg I ran into my meditation teacher and his wife; apparently, we've been obsessing over the same iPhone app: The Hipstamatic camera. Today Amanda and I walked around Greenpoint, looking for a street fair, we ended up in this goth little parlor in the back of a store, snapping Hipstamatic photos. This, too, shall pass, I'm sure.