Christo, Change-O!

I’m just mad about Saffron
Saffron’s mad about me
I’m just mad about Saffron
She’s just mad about me
—“Mellow Yellow,” Donovan

So what did my dog Ilsa and I stumble upon early this morning as we entered Central Park from Columbus Circle?

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates,” $21 million worth of saffron-colored posts and drapes covering 23 miles of the park’s walking paths. The local news had been abuzz about this mammoth art project for months. But I’d been so out of the loop—working, commuting to a client in New Jersey and ironing out the kinks in my business plan—that I hadn’t realized it was finally unveiled last Saturday. Needless to say, we hadn’t been to the park in a while, either.

But as we crossed Central Park South, the sun just beginning to glint off the building facades staring to the east, there it was, bidding us to enter as a gust of wind blew back the first few drapes along our favorite walking route. Her leash removed, Ilsa darted ahead and then stopped to sniff the base of one of the posts; animal smells, no doubt. A little further on, I noticed a tree branch had snared one of the drapes. Leave it to Nature to remind us mere mortals who's boss, I thought.

I’m not a big fan of conceptual art, but I have to say, “The Gates” impressed me. Walking to the top of a hill, you could begin to sense the grand scale of this project. Everywhere you looked, posts and banners lined the paths like an army specially dispatched to herald the arrival of every soul entering and traversing the park. I could only imagine what the view must look like from any one of the high-rise apartments ringing the park’s borders.

“The Gates” is art that makes you feel quite glad to be alive and breathing in 2005, thank you very much. Inasmuch as it dominates the scenery somehow it doesn’t shine a spotlight on the egos of its creators; nor does it bear any trace of the “Look at me! I’m controversial!” school of postmodern art that abounds today.

Instead you get…lots and lots of orange. Very late ‘60s or early ‘70s. Very Donovan. Looking at "The Gates," you want to yell, “Hail Atlantis!” You can’t help but smile over the fact that a fellow human had the chutzpah to dream this thing up. Not to mention the clout and resources to pull it off.

At the end of the month, “The Gates” will be taken down after a gleeful run of 16 days. Then Central Park will just be Central Park again. Just in time for Spring.

Doing the limbo

I’ve been a bit edgy, scattered and handball-off-the-wall lately. So much up in the air, and nothing settled. Where will I end up living next month? Will I get the loan I need to start my small business? Will my business get off the ground? Have I miscalculated the market? Can I keep up with these seven-day workweeks? How long can I go without a personal life?

Right now there are more question marks before me than there are on the Riddler’s leotard.

“And now, Batman, you will die. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Not so fast, Riddler.”

And talk about stress. You don’t know nothin’ about stress until your biggest client, a multibillion-dollar international corporation, plays havoc with your cash flow by failing to pay you for seven consecutive weeks. This lapse comes at a time when Christmas bills, a health insurance payment and estimated taxes have left nothing but a quarter for this old altar boy.

If it weren’t for a teller’s check from a brother on Long Island—a loan I’ll repay as soon as that check from the multibillion-dollar corporation arrives and clears—I’d be in deep doo-doo indeed. This weekend my brother gets treated to a chicken parmigiana dinner at Ralph’s Restaurant on Ninth Avenue. Call it family values interest on the loan.

If stress has any upside, it’s the way it can propel the body to action. People under serious stress get things done. Sure, they also tend to gnash their teeth and froth at the mouth a lot, and that extra hour of spin-cycling at the gym might not be driving the turbine of progress, but you won’t find work accumulating in their in-boxes.

And so, stressed but hopeful, I press on to the 99-thousand-dollar answers I seek, doing the limbo and hoping I get all of my moves right before all of these powerful people who control the purse strings to my future.

It’s times like these that I’m reminded why I’ll always be a Democrat, albeit a conservative one. When Democrats remember they’re supposed to be the party of the little guy, and quit kowtowing to the well-heeled, trust-funded elites who think they know what’s best for the little guy, then they’ll have put themselves on the road to recovery. And not a moment before. Little guys don’t need to be told what’s best for them. We’re not looking for handouts. We just want a fair shake as we dip under that bamboo pole.

Is it super yet?

So the New England Patriots win another Super Bowl, their third in 4 years, this time around beating the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21. Exciting game, right?

You mean you nodded off as well? How could a game that was decided by a field goal contain all the excitement of an Ambien pill? Both teams played terribly in the first half. When McNabb fumbled the football in the third play of the game, it looked like it might be a long night for Eagles fans. But then the much-vaunted Patriots started stinking up the joint as well. Now we have a football game, I thought, not exactly one for the ages, but at least one that would engage me for the next few hours. Not.

Both teams played to a sloppy tie at halftime, something that has happened only once before in Super Bowl history. (Did I hear that one right?) Then out came Paul McCartney and his Hofner bass to restore some luster to the halftime show following last year’s debacle. It’s amazing how a 62-year-old former Beatle can, in four songs, shame many of today’s pop stars by trotting out everything they lack: solid songs, crafty musicianship, live singing, and a genuine connection with his audience rather than his wardrobe. Good show, Macca!

Too bad the pregame festivities—at least what I saw of them—weren't nearly as good. In her performance of “America the Beautiful,” Alicia Keys got upstaged by video of the late Ray Charles. Was I the only one who noticed her ad lib, after the line “God shed his grace on thee,” “Lord knows we need it”? Now what was that all about? Did I sense a veiled huff?

The tribute to the Greatest Generation was okay. The sight of a B-24 Liberator flying over the stadium moved me personally. My late father flew 33 missions on one of those babies in the ETO during World War II. Why can’t we fill a football stadium with people who are there for no other reason than to honor veterans? Now that would be a tribute. I can hear the screams from the Left even now. In their bizarro world, a salute on that grand a scale to the men and women who defend freedom would be likened to Hitler speaking at Nuremberg stadium.

Both football teams played better—but hardly super—in the second half, and so did the commercials. Ameriquest Mortgage’s “Don’t judge too quickly” spot with the cook, his cat, some spilled tomato sauce and a carving knife was a hoot. So was the careerbuilder.com ad featuring a guy who worked in an office full of monkeys with a fondness for whoopee cushions. The Anheuser Busch “Thank you” message for veterans was touching.

“So Bones, you’re not much of a football fan, are you? Here you are at the end of your post [thanks for the correction, nausikaa], and you’ve written perhaps a half-dozen sentences about the game.”

Well, I would have wrote more, but someone told me if I did, the Easter Bunny gets whacked.

Iraq redux

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
—“Blackbird,” Lennon & McCartney

I’m certainly behind in my time. I think this is the longest gap between blogs since the Hell’s Kitchen Dispatch went online last November. Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

I don’t have much to add about the elections in Iraq. My bet is on some exotic form of democracy taking root and flourishing there. I mean, even Mark Brown, a liberal columnist in Chicago, is having second thoughts.

Iraq has survived the brutality of Saddam, the appalling violence of the Islamic lunatic fringe, the greed-mongering of the UN oil-for-food scandal, and the bombast of pundits of every political stripe. Iraq will outlive you and me.

And the coalition soldiers who served there will one day tell their grandchildren of the brave men and women who died in the cause of bringing freedom to a people whose oppression mattered not to most of the world. Their grandchildren will find it hard to believe that most of the world could be so shortsighted, so cold. But they’ll learn.

On Veterans Day these aging soldiers will march in parades and be cheered by aging civilians who protested the Iraq War and burned President Bush in effigy. Time doesn’t necessarily heal wounds, but it can be oh so forgiving on the details.

The last I heard, the numbers show that up to 60% of registered Iraqis turned out to cast ballots—sometimes walking miles to do so—amid the death threats and tantrums of a wicked insurgency that is slowly melting, melting. Viewing the video feeds beamed back to the West throughout last Sunday’s election, I had never seen so much joy and resolve in so many faces. Freedom is precious. Freedom is worth dying for. The 37% of registered American voters who sat out last year’s election should take note.