Tag Archives: The Write Side of 50

I’m a Scammed Artist

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Art

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"twisted 2: Josie & David's Lovers"

“Twisted 2: Josie & David’s Lovers.”

BY JULIE SEYLER

Hello from Bali. Steve and I fly home on Saturday, October 12. We arrive Sunday morning around 7:00, and the post–vacation routine commences. The mail is retrieved; the bills are sorted; the bags are unpacked. And the dirty laundry is washed. That first night home, you go to sleep with a different feeling because the illusion of being an unemployed vagabond without a money care in the world is replaced with the dread of obligations that have stockpiled on your desk over the past two weeks. The unfettered bliss of suspended reality is dashed to smithereens in about 24 hours. So, in anticipation that real life is about to descend, I shall tell you the tale from August (which is still on my mind), of Kimberly Collier.

On August 17, I received an email from Kimberly Collier:

Hello,

My name is Kimberly Collier. I am interested in purchasing an artwork from you. Kindly write back with your webpage so that I can view more of your recent works.
Thanks.
Kimberly

That was cool. She had seen some samples of my work on the website Artsicle. I sent her the link to my personal website, julieseyler.com, and the next morning, I found this message waiting in my Inbox:

Hi Julie,

Thank you for the email. I am interested in making an immediate purchase of the work “twisted 2: josie & david’s lovers  oil  52” x 30””. Can I have a detailed information about the work, its availability and pricing?  As soon as we reach a concrete agreement on pricing, I can instruct my p.a to  process a cashiers check to you for the payment of the work so that my mover can have it picked up along with my properties that are to be moved to Munich.

I await your email soonest.

Regards,

Kimberly.

This was even cooler, so I sent her the requested information, and received a reply:

Hi Julie,

Thank you for the mail. I am ok with the price of the work but I want you to deduct the shipping charges from the cost as my mover will take care of the pick up and delivering to my new resident in Munich. He has other properties to pick up for me so he would get the work along with other boxes. But before then, your cash must be at hand. Can you provide me with your full name as you want it appeared on the check, your full address which includes(street name, house number, city, state and zip code) to ensure safe delivery and your working phone number where my mover can easily reach you at. As soon as I get these details, I will fwd it to my p.a so that he can go ahead with the issuance of the check to you after you must arrived back on Saturday, August 24.

I happy to have this piece purchased as it would look good on the walls of my guest room.

Thanks.

Kimberly

But there were a few logistical problems in getting the painting to Ms. Collier. I was down at the beach in Allenhurst. The painting was in a warehouse in Union. And the keys to the warehouse were in Manhattan. Even if we did get it, I could not get it home because it would never fit in the roadster, and the schedule for the next seven days was crazy. Somehow, we had to get the painting back to New York City that Sunday.

Steve had his van, but he preferred keeping it in New Jersey, rather than dealing with parking in the city. But after numerous back and forths (and back and forths), the only option was to drive the van back to Manhattan, then back to Union to pick up the painting, then back to Manhattan. Two trips in, and one trip out, of the Lincoln Tunnel in a period of three hours on a Sunday afternoon in August is not anyone’s idea of fun. Plus, I kept fretting that Kimberly Collier would change her mind. Steve, always my supporter, said, “Don’t worry. Of course she wants the painting.”

Monday morning I e-mailed Kimberly Collier that I had the painting, and we could start making arrangements for her to send the money, and pick it up.

Two hours later, I received this email from Artsicle:

On Saturday, a variety of you received an email via the new messaging system from “Kimberly Collier” requesting more information about your work. Sadly, this is part of a known scam involving fake cashiers checks. I recommend you do not respond to this request – or simply delete the email chain if you already have.

What a bummer. But after talking to the people at Artsicle, it was confirmed that the scammers really do want the art – they just want it for free. To me, that was better than being taken just for the money.

In retrospect, there were lots of little hints this was a scam. No one pays for anything without knowing the return policy.

You Can Dress Me Up Like a Lobster Timbale (or a Sea Urchin on Pedigreed Pea) …

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Food

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Lobster timbale at Le Bernadin

Lobster timbale at Le Bernardin.

BY JULIE SEYLER

… but you should not take someone like me, whose favorite food is sourdough pretzels with aged cheddar cheese, to haute cuisine restaurants. The appreciation factor for sea urchin on a pedigreed pea with lemon zest is not going to fly high. Nonetheless, for years I have tried to be more of a gourmand rather than someone who is a repetitive orderer of spaghetti with tomatoes and basil. I am, by my own admission, boring to dine with. Plus I think people with refined palettes are more sensual than the plebe that goes for sirloin. On the other hand, one could make a good argument that nothing is sexier than a rare steak.

Steak, albeit not rare enough for some

Steak, albeit not rare enough for some.

Anyway, this summer I had a chance to dine at Le Bernardin, one of the premier restaurants in Manhattan – or so say the pundits of the food world: Le Bernardin. To a great degree, the dishes live up to their reputation (charred octopus, Alaskan King Crab “Crabouillabaisse,” and lobster timbale appetizers), but to me, a reveler of simple grilled fish, I was slightly underwhelmed by my Dover Sole, where the restaurant tagged on an $18 supplement to the $130 prix fixe. It arrived seared and tough – as in dried out – although the “Brown-Butter Tamarind Vinaigrette,” as it was described, sang rapturously. Nonetheless, the balance of the experience left me more convinced than ever that the best restaurants are not on any media lists.

Christmas Decorations: I Don’t Want to See You in September

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Men, Opinion

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Frank xmas

Too soon to be awash in evergreen and sparkly lights.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

OK. Now they’ve gone too far. Christmas advertising this year began in September! Some stores are now beginning the holiday season as soon as they take down their back-to-school decorations. The Hallmark Channel is advertising its Christmas movies already.

Now, I love Christmas as much as anyone, but do we have to celebrate it for the entire fourth quarter of the year? There was a time, not too long ago, when Thanksgiving was the Christmas firewall. Nobody dared begin Christmas advertising until the turkey was cleared from the table. All this pent-up Christmas demand soon erupted into a media-created shopping holiday – Black Friday. And as soon as that became established, it became necessary to advertise the pre-Black-Friday sales beginning just after Halloween.

Halloween held up for many years as the new Christmas advertising firewall. In fact, all the attention that Halloween received as we focused on it as the prelude to the Christmas season transformed it from the kid’s day it used to be to a sort of Fall Carnivale. It’s much more popular as an adult holiday today than it ever was when we were kids.

But now it seems that the Halloween firewall is giving way as well. Oh sure, the Rockettes don’t open their Christmas show until just after Halloween, but especially in the online world, Christmas in October and even September is a reality. Think I’m exaggerating? Have a look.

The commercialization of Christmas is nothing new. In fact, it was the theme of, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” nearly 50 years ago. But what we have today is simply out-of control capitalism.

Religious Christians have long complained that American society has secularized Christmas to the point where it is no longer recognizable as a religious holiday. I think that the fact that many American children of Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist backgrounds hang up stockings and await the visit of Santa Claus every December 25th is a testament to the fact that there is no longer any Christ left in the Great American Christmas. And I think that’s OK – as long as we recognize it for what it is.

American retailers have created a winter holiday that, coincidentally, corresponds with the date of the religious observance of the birth of Christ. It’s not the Christmas of Silent Night – it’s the Christmas of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Religious Christians have to accept that their holy day has been co-opted. They need to think of their religious Christmas as a separate, parallel-track holiday that they can observe in religious ways separate from the Santa Spectacular.

But even the secular Christmas has to have its limits. Christmas sales are becoming as unseemly as those Going-Out-of-Business sales that last for months. I know that there is no hope of rolling the commercialization back to after Thanksgiving. That ship has sailed. But can’t the honchos of television agree not to show Christmas ads until November? And while we’re at it, can we perhaps not begin the 2016 presidential campaign for a few more months?

Smile! Probing Pictures Are Being Taken from Space

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by in Concepts, Men

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Bob's Universe.

Bob’s universe. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Sitting at breakfast recently reading a magazine, I came across a photo taken by a NASA spacecraft called the Cassini probe, which since 2004 has been orbiting Saturn, exploring the planet and its moons. The entire upper portion of the photo is dominated by the dark arc of one portion of Saturn, and to the right of that, a greenish-gray swath of the planet’s rings. The tightly concentric black and green-gray lines comprising the rings resemble the grooves on an old vinyl record, except that the rings appear to be glowing gently against the black background of space. That dark expanse dominates the center portion of the photo, and at the bottom there’s a ghostly horizonal white stripe that’s either light from an unseen source to the left, or a distant slice of the Milky Way. The image is majestic, peaceful, and kind of eerie.

The sobering thing is that, as explained in the accompanying article, it’s actually a photo of earth from approximately 900 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away. I thought, at first, that the object just to the right of center was a fragment of the english muffin I’d been eating. Indeed, a toasty crumb had fallen on the magazine, so I brushed it off to reveal a minuscule white speck – 1/100th the size of my bread crumb. It looked like a nick in the ink, or a dust mote, but I couldn’t wipe it away. According to the article, that irregular speck is the earth and the infinitesmal bulge on its side is the moon, both as seen from Saturn’s orbit.

Two thoughts came to mind: We are nothing. And we are not alone. If an infininte number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite amount of time could eventually write the entire works of Shakspeare, then there must be untold numbers of other planets with Earth-like life forms spread throughout the inconceivable vastness of the universe. I decided to have another fried egg. What the hell.

But the earth photo was nothing compared to the news a few days later, when NASA made the ultimate “Elvis has left the building” announcement: after 36 years of hurtling through the void at 38,000 miles per hour, the Voyager space probe has exited the solar system and entered interstellar space. It’s now nearly 12 billion miles away, and still sends back minute radio signals using a transmitter with about the same amount of power as a refrigerator light bulb. It takes nearly 17 1/2 hours for the signal to reach Earth, and when it arrives, the wattage striking the antenna is only about 1 part in 10 quadrillion. By comparison, it takes 20 billion times more power than that to operate an electronic digital watch.

Aside from studying the planets and the far reaches of our solar system, Voyager also carries a message for any intelligent life that may find it someday: the Golden Record. This 12-inch diameter, gold-plated, copper audiovisual disk includes 115 images and sounds representative of life on Earth as well as musical selections and spoken greetings in 55 languages. Of course, to play the record, you’d first have to build a record/video disk player, speakers, and display screen. I guess they figured that any life form intelligent enough to snatch this probe from its race through space would be able to figure that out. And the NASA engineers were thoughful enough to include a cartridge and needle you could use to play the record once you’d built the machine to play it on – a good idea, since it’s hard even now, right here on Earth, to get needles and cartridges to play old vinyl LPs.

I thought back to the Cassini photo: if the entire planet is a speck from 900 million miles, aren’t we surely invisible from 12 billion and counting? Compared to the universe, our solar system is smaller than an electron oscillating in one molecule of a hair follicle on the ass of a flea. And if we’re invisible and barely detectable, who’s ever going to find us, even if other intelligent beings are out there? And if they really are out there, why haven’t they sent us their Golden LPs, begging for retrieval and playback?

Keep your eyes open, kids. You never know. And let’s just hope that if the aliens send an 8-track tape with information about their planet, they include the whole device because working 8-track players are even scarcer than record needles.

Bad Luck be Damned. I’m Now “Armed” with a Four-Leaf Clover

04 Friday Oct 2013

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BY LOIS DESOCIO

This is my inner arm:

arm redo

This is my inner arm on …:
clover arm

… not drugs. But upon waking up this morning. See what popped up overnight? It’s a four-leaf clover. On my inner arm. Is a bruise? Is it (Geez!) an age spot? What is it? Keratosis Pilaris? Psoriasis? Stage-One Melanoma? Or even worse – Keratoacanthoma?

None of the above. Because I said so. I don’t know what the scientific term or reason for artwork mysteriously appearing on flesh is, but I’ll take it. My arm is now right up there with that tree stump in Belfast, where an image of Jesus mysteriously appeared, and the infamous apparition of the Virgin Mary in the bush in Philadelphia (which ironically turned 60 this year).

(Plus, see how my arm now matches my ottoman in the background!)

I have had a steady slew (the list is as long as my arm) of bad luck for some time now. But the rough patch has been slowly smoothing – things have been looking up. And now thanks to this recent shot in the arm, I’m metaphorically thick-skinned. Impervious.

I’m not religious. But I am half-Irish. And given my dermatologist’s clinical, yet now prophetic, comment after an exam a few months ago (“You’d be surprised at what can pop up on the skin overnight, once you approach 60”), I am raising my arm up in acknowledgment to whomever – whatever – reverse-tattooed me with a (hopefully) permanent good-luck charm in the dark of night.

Thank you. Because according to Irish lore, the four leaves of the clover each represent the intangibles we live for: Faith. Hope. Love. Luck.

All things, not unlike the four-leaf clover itself, that are hard to find, but pop up when we’re not looking.

It’s a Hit: Baseball, Barbecue, Old Friends

03 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Confessional

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Fenway

Revisiting Fenway and old friends. Photo by Margo D. Beller.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

I went to college in Boston during the late 1970s. Thanks to the journalism school, and the various dormitories where I lived, I made a lot of good
friends I’ve managed to keep via phone, letter, and now e-mail over the past
three decades. I married one of them – MH.

Thanks to the proximity to Fenway Park, I became a Red Sox fan.
During my time in Boston, the Sox were in World Series contention twice,
but aside from the playoffs, and any series against the division rival New
York Yankees, it was always easy to show up at the ballpark on the day or
night of the game, go to the General Admission window. and buy a
bleacher ticket.

Although MH and I have periodically visited Boston and our friends
over the years, we had not been inside Fenway for 20 years. It
wasn’t for lack of trying. But Red Sox fans are fanatical, and except for one
recent bad year, Fenway and the Sox have enjoyed years of consecutive
sellouts. MH and I have had to keep up via radio, newspaper and the
occasional TV broadcast.

This year, I decided to try one of the online ticket services to combine a
visit with friends, and a visit to the ballpark. Perhaps the owner decided to
go to Martha’s Vineyard for the Labor Day weekend. I was able to get
seven seats together. The house was packed, the Red Sox won and my
friends and their spouses – all more fanatical about the Sox than when we
were in college, thanks to that 2004 World Series win – were very happy.

The next day we had a cookout at the house of one friend. Baseball came up, yes, but so did music, old friends in other parts of the country and the
economy. If the economy is improving, why are there no full-time jobs with
benefits, particularly for those of us who’ve been out there working for 20
years or more? Why were over 100 people cut from one friend’s
employer, their jobs sent to India? Why has another’s cut its contributions
to the 401(k)?

Why do we feel less secure as we get older after growing up hearing from
our first-generation American parents that they were working hard to make
it easier for their kids to get ahead?

None of us had answers, although we all had theories. But as depressing
as the discussion got at times, I was strangely comforted that these
friends have the same fears and concerns. It is a conversation we could
only have face to face.

That is what those who rely solely on Facebook and other services for
“friends” don’t seem to understand – real friends are people you eat with,
share fears with, see your favorite baseball team win with, and laugh with.
Face to face. My old friends have newer “friends” via Facebook, but they
know the difference.

It must be the reason they put up with me.

Vacuuming My Way into Clarity

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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carpenter street

Mowing the lawn of my youth was as cathartic as vacuuming.

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

It’s the same story every week: “Ant, the house is all dusted. You can vacuum when you’re ready.”

“Aw, I got to vacuum the whole house,” I mutter under my breath.

When I’m ready, I grab the vacuum from the upstairs closet, plug it in and click it on. While the noise drowns out the rest of the world, I focus on specks of dust and lint challenging me to a duel they will lose.

Before I know it, my head is cleared of everyday life. My mind is fogged by memories of Mom and her Electrolux that slid on metal blades across our old rug in the four-room cold water flat.

There was that time when the neighborhood version of “Benny Miller-from-Cucamonga” tried to sell Mom a new vacuum. “Would you let your eight-year-old son pick up a handful of dirt outside and eat it?”

“Of course NOT!”

“But, Mrs. Buccino,” he said, “the rug inside your house is much worse than the dirt outside.”

Hey, I was eight. I wouldn’t eat dirt in the yard. Anymore. What was this guy talking about?

Ma was unconvinced and sent him on his way. She wouldn’t even give him the name of a friend he could call on, the way a now-former friend had given her his name. We made do with that old Electrolux until after we moved to our big house, where there was now also a wall-to-wall carpet to vacuum.

That new house had an 8,000 square foot side lawn that needed to be mowed. Gone was that old rotary push mower. In my eagerness to use the new Lawn Boy Dad bought, that chore became mine.

After a gazillion pulls on the easy-start cord, the roaring motor drowned out the rest of the world. I focus on overlapping cuts, straight lines, the end of my imaginary row where I’ll turn around and head back in 200-foot paths for the next hour and a half.

Automatically, I round trees, maneuver past pits, side-cut hills, and watch for that silly little patch of blue grass growing below the black walnut tree. I kick aside the fallen green walnuts. I know where every root pops up, and where I might create a divot. I eye the neighbor’s hedges that need trimming, stop and empty the bag of clippings, leaving the mower to whine for my return. As my hands are shaken into numbness, my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

After Dad died, and I had a home of my own, Ma’s lawn was still under my stewardship. Weekly I’d haul the latest working mower and gas can back and forth between our lawns.

I’d tell my daughter, “Hey, you want to visit Grandma? We can take our lawn mower for a ride. It’ll be so much fun.”

The older I got, the larger Mom’s lawn seemed. By comparison, my home lawn was a postage stamp and hers was the novel, “Pride and Prejudice”. At least Mom was still up to doing her own vacuuming.

Meanwhile, back at my ranch, I was able to bring home a Labrador Retriever, as long as I promised to vacuum all the dog hair in its wake. No one could figure how our basement dog got her fur past the drop stairs into the second-floor attic. But there I was, vacuuming dog hair in the attic.

Two dogs later, and I’m still vacuuming dog hair everywhere. Heck, our latest Lab sees me plug in the vacuum, and heads to the sanctuary of his crate on the bare floor side of the basement.

I don’t know that my father ever touched our vacuum. Mom was a housewife. Dad went to work, Ma did her chores. Monday was wash day. Tuesday was ironing. Wednesday was scrubbing. Thursday was mending. Friday was mopping. Every day was cooking dinner.

When Mom vacuumed, the old Electrolux had a cloth bag held in by clamps. When the bag was full, Mom would empty the dirt and dust onto old newspapers spread out on the floor. Try doing that online. These days when the bag is full, I snap it out and replace it with a clean bag. Our local vacuum dealer recommends we have ours serviced about every 90 days. Huh? I don’t even change the bags that often.

Nowadays we split chores. I don’t mind vacuuming. Bachelors must vacuum their pads, no? Eventually, yes? In fact, I sometimes really get into vacuuming. I flip over furniture, zip under dining room chairs, slip under slipcovers and leave a path of no footprints. I crisscross the carpet giving it the look of center field at Yankee Stadium. All this time, I keep a business-like look on my face. You can’t let on that vacuuming is cathartic.

“Aw, I got to vacuum!” You may hear me moan, but I look forward to those moments when the noise fills the outside air and my brain solves all the problems of my little world.

Happy Birthday (to Me!) from Indonesia

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Travel

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Celebration. October, 2012

No matter where I am, I clink on my birthday (October 2012 in New York).

BY JULIE SEYLER

I turned 58 today in Yogyakarta, Java. According to my trip itinerary we shall be flying at 7:55 a.m. back to Bali, where we travel to Pemuteran in the far north of the island for a couple of days of snorkeling. We may see a waterfall, and a temple or two, along the way, and hopefully will stop at a market to go souvenir shopping – one of my favorite things to do. I am a complete tourist, and adore shopping for tchotchkes that I would not see back at home. (Although these days we live in such a global world, everything seems to be available online.)

So my birthday is a travel day, and that’s fine. I will be doing something that I don’t usually do on my birthday – like driving in Indonesia. And will definitely do something I always do – celebrate.

Knocking at My New Front Door: My 59th Birthday; Retirement

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

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Bob door

BY BOB SMITH

When you’re born, they start at zero, and count your age in days, weeks and months until you’ve completed a year of life, and you turn one. I was 59 on September 29, which means I’ve completed my 59th year on the planet, and my 60th year begins, today, on September 30. I’m not “in my 60s” as the term is conventionally used, but it’s close enough. Holy crap – suddenly I’m old.

I’m also retiring after nearly 30 years of practicing law – more than 26 of those with the same firm. It’s unsettling to be leaving a profession and a work environment that I know so well, but it’s also exciting to be setting out into uncharted waters. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do – acting, writing, and travel all come to mind. But the important thing is that I’ll be defining what I do, and when I do it. And it doesn’t matter if I earn money at it or not. My last day at work is today, Monday, September 30.

Now that we don’t need to live close to any work site (my wife retired from her job in Nutley in December), we’re having renovations done at our former vacation home in Monmouth County, and will move there permanently in a couple of weeks. We did an extensive facelift of the house, including new siding and ground-level stone, the addition of a porch on the third floor, and upgrading the siding, railings and trim around the porches on the first and second floors.

We’re also adding a brand-new mahogany front door, with a stained-glass insert in the center, and stained-glass panels on either side. It’s replacing a double door that had a white aluminum frame and full glass panels – basically, a sliding glass door with handles and hinges. The new door, by contrast, is a work of art.

As with most renovations, this project has hit a number of snags – missing/slow tradesmen, late inspectors, delayed shipment of materials, machinery, and/or fixtures, rerouting pipes and ductwork to accommodate conditions unknown until the walls were opened, etc. The usual.

As a result, the projected completion date of July 30 has now been pushed to October something-soon. My builder won’t commit to anything more concrete than after the first, but before Halloween. Although the front porch and the steps leading to it have been rebuilt, the paved path that’s supposed to run between the porch steps and the sidewalk is still a pile of dirt. Nonetheless, the builder tells me he’s ready to install the new front door. It’s to be delivered, today, Monday, September 30, and installed on Tuesday, October 1.

That’s also my first day of retirement. And the second day of my 60th year. They say that when one door – or in this case, a couple of them – closes, a new one opens. We’ll see.