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Here in status symbol land

October 27, 2006 – 10:34 am

Some good news for Broken Angel! Some DUMBO architects are getting some engineers to figure out how to save the building from the Dept of Buildings:

Plemel said he has called on structural engineers to help inspect every nook and cranny of the building and draft a plan to bring it up to code while retaining Wood's vision.

Of course, the Woods will still need to find a way to pay for whatever work will need to be done. It sounds promising, the guy says projects like this have gone through before and been landmarked when they come out at the end. I hope that's how Broken Angel's story ends as well. I guess it's too bad things have to come to such a head just to keep something unique in New York City these days, but whatever it takes is worth it. If Christopher Wood ever gets around to posting a Paypal donation link, I'll put it up here too.

By Jimmy Legs | Comments Off

House full of garbage

October 27, 2006 – 9:30 am

Old Bedroom, originally uploaded by Jimmy Legs.

Buzz and I went back to the old house to clean it out. Actually, Buzz did most of the work. I never noticed how dirty the walls in my old room are! The place is pretty well cleaned out now, we'll see if I get the deposit back. Then I can add that dough to the growing bottomless pit of stuff that needs to be fixed at the new house.

I'm not sure how we'll draw the line on repairs/improvements. I keep thinking of small things to fix that lead me to other, bigger renovations. For instance, in the bathroom there's a pair of towel rack ends with no towel rack. To remove these they'd have to be broken off the tile-covered wall, which would necessarily mess up some of the tiles. The tiles are kind of ugly anyway, so I'd want to remove all the tiles in the bathroom, which makes me want to replace the tiles on the floor as well. If I'm doing that, then I might as well replace the old medicine cabinet. And hey, that sink is no prize either, and the toilet has been installed at a weird angle, that needs to go too! And the shower has those same ugly tiles! They gotta go! Next thing you know, I've replaced everything except the showerhead I bought two days ago. And all because I wanted a new towel rack.

This is why my only hope is to win the lottery to generate the necessary revneue to replace everything inside the house.

By Jimmy Legs | Comments Off

I'm fucking overwhelmed

October 25, 2006 – 12:06 pm

We made it through the move fairly unscathed. What and ordeal though! There's something very psychologically damaging about rounding up all your worldly possessions into some boxes and then being forced to sift through them all in a totally new environment. Now we've already gone through all our stuff once as we packed it, throwing out the unnecessary items wherever possible. Now we're in the new house and I'm surrounded by crap. Why the hell did I keep this ugly Halloween-themed mug full of matchbooks? Did I really need these milk crates? Where is all my good stuff? I don't have any good stuff, it's all crap.

Meanwhile, the house seems like a dump. I can't look anywhere without seeing major flaws that must be corrected immediately. Of course I won't fix it all, but I don't even know where to begin. I mean, after I get rid of the asbestos. It's times like these I understand the strange looks I got from my friends when I told them I was buying a house. What the hell was I thinking? In what alternate universe did this seem like a good idea?

I'm pretty sure the feelings of remorse and panic will subside as I start working on the place. But for now, I'm exhausted. What state would I be in if we had moved ourselves, without the help of burly Russians? I hesitate even to imagine.

The cats are in the house somewhere, but I'm only seeing Hubcap on a regular basis. We're trying to keep Mr Bones sequested on his floor until at least we get a handle on all the pets. Decatur has reportedly been up on the top floor for the past day. And then there's the cat formerly known as Freddie.

You may remember Freddie as the stray cat who lived in our previous back yard. She was there ever since I moved into that place, and in the intervening years she has become more and more a fixture on our back porch. I feel sort of responsible for her now, so we kidnapped her to the new house, too. She was pretty freaked out at first, but she may be slowly coming around to the idea. It's pretty clear she once was a house cat, as she's pretty nice to humans, and she's been fixed. Now all she has to do is remember how to use a litter box.

I want to change her name to something more appropriate than Freddie (as in, 'the Freeloader') but nothing has been decided yet. Currently we believe she is in the basement, but who knows. The upside of all this is that the cats are all getting along very well. So far they're not paying any attention to the birds with whom they now share a domicile. I'm sure that will change. The birds took about 5 minutes to get settled.

By Jimmy Legs | Comments Off

Every now and then I get a little bit frightened

October 20, 2006 – 10:53 am

Man, I turn my back for five minutes and all hell breaks loose.

Well, not really, but still, much has happened in the past 24 hours. First and foremost we closed on the house. I would have put an exclamation point on that sentence, but I'm too exhausted. The stress surrounding this whole process has left me weak and ineffectual (more than usual, even). And we still have to actually move in, which happens Monday. I did hire movers, but we're packing everything, throwing stuff out, and of course spackling everything that isn't moving under its own power.

The closing was actually pretty interesting, watching three lawyers and a title closer throwing papers at each other, babbling into cell phones, running to fax machines and copiers, checking each others' math, making small barbed statements about each others' work, and finally, regaling us with an anecdote about the family dog's inflamed anal gland. If I was already tired before the closing started, I was totally comatose by the time we left. Yay, we own a house. Yay. I'm sure I'll be more excited once we're moved in and I have some time to rest.

So while we're dealing with the house yesterday, Arthur Wood was getting hauled away in handcuffs. Apparently Broken Angel received and Order to Vacate, and of course they did not vacate. So the cops showed up and put handcuffs on a 75 year old man. You know, in case he got violent. Reportedly, the Woods are staying with their son somewhere in Park Slope until the issues get resolved. That sucks for many reasons, among them the notion that we won't get to see Arthur before we move. Jeannie has always been friendly with him, living around the corner since 2000. If the worst happens and they're never allowed back inside Broken Angel, we might never see him again.

One brighter note: the woman who was attacked the other night seems to have found the perpetrator. As noted before, he dropped his cell phone, from which a fingerprint was taken. She went down to look at some mugshots and ID'd the guy, and the fingerprint matched the man she picked out. Now apparently the way it works is they're keeping an eye on the guy for the time being while they swear out a warrant to arrest him. Who knows what will happen now, but at least the system seems to be working so far.

Speaking of which, here's a couple of sites that allow you to map sexual offenders. Their locations are all a matter of public record, so I guess there's nothing really wrong with this, but it does skeeve me out a bit for a couple of reasons. One is the Big-Brotherness of it, but the other is damn, there are a lot of sexual offenders out there! There are many in the Clinton Hill area, and many more in Bushwick, where we'll be moving in a few days. Part of me is glad to have the info, but another part of me would like to have remained just a little bit more ignorant in this regard.

By Jimmy Legs | Comments Off

I'm your backdoor man

October 18, 2006 – 10:54 am

In lighter news, ever-hip Village Voice decides that Beat the Devil's lead singer is Mishka Shubaly. If you don't know the band, or know Mishka HIMself, lines like the following may not provide humor:

You wanna get there right as a Beat-the-Devil set begins, because half the fun in seeing this volatile NYC jazz-folk-blues-punk outfit lies in watching the unfamiliar react the first time lead singer Mishka Shubaly opens her mouth. Typical reaction: shock and awe. She looks tiny and jovial (especially surrounded by her menacing, dudely bandmates), but goddamn can she ever shriek, alternating jazzy, evocative moans (she's inspired Billie Holiday comparisons, and for once they don't sound totally ridiculous) with a nuclear-grade, paint-evaporating, continent-shifting howl loaded with more volume, rage, and pathos than the entire Ozzfest lineup combined.

For the record, Shilpa Ray is BTD's lead singer (and she can wail, that much is true). But Mishka is one of the 'dudely' musicians to her side, and has been a manly man for most (if not all) of his life. Here's the band. Can you tell which one is which?