Category Archives: ho hum

Elvis lives, Elvis loves. #54

Posted on June 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

A recap of the week:

KIDS LOVE MUSIC [As taught by Emma Lee's 3rd grade music teacher. To be sung in 3- part round]:

Kids love music

everybody knows that kids love music

they are full of music from their head to their toes!

Everybody knows,

everybody knows,

that kids and music (shouted: kids and music!)
kids and music …[indecipherable , four syllable, ascending; Elvis always just mumbles]…are one!

Elvis saw three kinds of music this week: Mingus big band at Iridium, Unihabitable Mansions at Death by Audio, and Playing the Building

Heres pix of the three venues: Time Square, a dark club, and the Battery Maritime Building.

Elvis also love Lorrainne. Lorraine goes almost as far back as “kids love music”—she and Emma Lee and Elvis have been bosomy all the way back to fifth grade Seattle. Since 1991, they’ve been having good times in Seattle and New York. Recent adventures include Hudson New York, on the High Line, with the Big Buck, and on just about every corner in Williamsburg. Here she is on Metropolitan and Havemayer. Wha what:

And Elvis love the outsides. Redhook, rooftops. It don’t matter. It’s summer. Last night, Elvis and Emma Lee saw their first fireflies of the season. The ecstasy.

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51. many things are better than a sharp stick in the eye

Posted on June 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

As Emma Lee’s picture indicates, Elvis need to buck up a bit. He’s been a little long in mouth, probably because he’s stressed out about work and learning GRE vocabulary and misses the Purple Princess. Emma Lee and Elvis put together their piggy banks, and they are offering a reward for anyone who finds the fuschia-colored Specialized Crossroads with metallic purple cranks and eight-ball bell on the handlebars. Odds are the perp still has the wrench he or she used to unscrew the post to which it was attached; if so, Elvis requests that the finder of bike whack the sticky-fingered jerk the knees.

Things’ll be better soon. Tonight, they are going to see the Mingus Big Band, because Mingus is great and one of the trumpeters is a kid that Elvis played with in the 1990s. Emma Lee is steeling her self for a bittersweet evening of music: sitting with the king of rock and roll on one side, a successful baby saxophonist on the other, and listening to a now-famous boy she kissed at Disneyland, (age 14), is bound to get her jonesing for victory pie.

A double-shot of contemporary love would also work, to cut the nostalgia of the magic kingdom

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#50. this whole elvis-a-day thing has fallen out the window and landed on its ass

Posted on June 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis and Emma Lee apologize. Life these past few weeks has been busy. So busy, that at one point, Elvis wanted to spit. At another, Emma Lee wanted to drink gin and tonics with abandon, only to discover that, despite the veritable tumbler of Bombay they never get her past mildly looped. In any case, Emma Lee wanted to, and intends to again, draw an Elvis a day for the internet and the adoring internet fans.

Elvis is back in Brooklyn. He has to study for the GRE’s on top of everything else, but will try to be a better correspondent.

Here he is falling out the window. Notice that the icecream cone remains well-protected.

PS. Someone STOLE the purple princess. For people that hadn’t met her, she’s a fuschia Specialized, with purple metallic cranks, made special for Emma Lee by Toni! Tony! Toné!. Emma Lee and Elvis were a little devastated, so they ate steak and gave themselves a hangover.

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49. get this man an ice cube

Posted on June 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis survived the first Brooklyn heatwave of 2008, a not-too-miserable ninety-six hours spent largely in Emma Lee’s air-conditioned kitchen. Elvis and Emma Lee have been downright swamped with work (last night they took a four hour break, from 3 am to 7 am, to sleep), but in a really lovely development, people have been coming to Williamsburg to call on Elvis. Sunday, the dynamic duo (offspring of the 1990′s BenGabIans), met Emma Lee and Elvis in the burg, and took them to Diner for dinner (Elvis recommends the 16 oz rib-eye); Monday the music man came and bought Emma Lee a ice cream stick to eat in McCarren Park; and Tuesday, well, Elvis took a “short break” from the working because five of his favorite people were drinking about 100 yards from his front door.

By the way, Elvis says gonna be a long, hot summer.

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45. happy birthday emma lee

Posted on June 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

This morning, Elvis sang Emma Lee happy birthday, with lots of vibrato and hip shakes. It’s the 25th anniversary of her natal day, which is more wonderful than terrifying, but a little bit of both. (It helps she has a crush on a 29 year old, this makes her feel comparatively young. It also helps that four days weekend boast four houseguests, three awesome parties, two new dresses, and a picnic on the East River. Stop the sniggering, it was wonderful, except for when the wind picked up and blew trash onto her leg.) There’s also the fortunate coincidence that Emma Lee’s writing careers seems to be going the right direction. IPPY on the 30th, meeting with the agent next week. And tonight, key lime pie. Elvis is rooting all the way.

ps. bye j. chicago! safe travels!

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44. j. chicago’s last days in town

Posted on June 2, 2008 | Leave a comment

This weekend was all sorts of wonderful and busy, so busy that Elvis didn’t have time to blog about it. Once things calm down, Elvis will post an executive summary, but in the interim, portrait #44, penned by Elvis and Emma Lee’s first guest artist, J. Chicago.

J is sleeping on Emma Lee’s couch right now, because she is homeless until she moves to Chicago via Buffalo. That happens on Emma Lee’s birthday. This is a little sad but mostly wonderful (she’s going to become a doctor of the tongue), so they’ve been doing tons of hangouts.She came by Saturday they drew pictures in the kitchen, and last night they roasted cow. They’re gonna bbq tonight.

More soon, good weeks all around.

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43. elvis is ready for duty

Posted on May 30, 2008 | Leave a comment

After the excess of Wednesday (beginning with a bad pork sandwich at Spitzers, and ending with three hours’ sleep), Elvis had to take a day off. A day of dinner salads, drawing and iced coffee, then to bed by 11. Seven restful hours, and Elvis is ready for business all over again. Happy Friday.

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forty. elvis finally opens the window and it starts raining.

Posted on May 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Poppa Presley left Brooklyn yesterday afternoon.

Emma Lee and Elvis were glad to have their apartment back—it fits three, but it’s a squeeze—but were also pretty sad that their filial obligations were complete until Cousin Vic’s November wedding (they took care of Father’s Day early with the Yankees game). The day before, they had been dining with M&G, and G, notorious for her yenta-ism, asked if Emma Lee was ready for kids and a house. Emma Lee replied she was more thinking about a pet and a car, but she was ready for something.

Sometimes its great living the solo life in Brooklyn, but sometimes it’s a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and you realize you don’t have enough bookshelves. You walk outside, blinking at the light, and into a basement looking for something cheap They don’t have anything nice, so you go home and recycle eighteen months of New Yorkers and try to put your life in order and make bookshelves out of nothing. You succeed, but make a bigger mess in the process The afternoon is still gorgeous, but rearranging your bookshelf feels important, almost as important as laundry and cleaning the kitchen shelves, and all three are necessary to complete before you can do the work that you have to do this week (which is already, on Monday afternoon, an overwhelming lot). So you decline invites to play outside, and keep at it, and then it’s already five and time to go to the restaurant. At least you walked to Greenpoint in the morning.

In the apt overhaul Elvis finally threw away a plant that has been dying since 2006, and put Toni! Tony! Toné!’s jade plant in a proper pot. He hopes this will be an auspicious change.

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39. holiday monday.

Posted on May 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

Happy Memorial Day. Elvis is going to go eat brunch.

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36. multigenerationislm continues, with some squabbling

Posted on May 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis, Emma Lee and Poppa Presley went to the Tenement Museum. It was nice. Palador on Ludlow, and its ceviche, was also delicious. Unfortunately, dinner gave way to the search for a bar that would suit both Emma Lee and Poppa Presley, which was for naught in the East Village. Only after they arrived at St. Dmyphna and ordered GIANT beers did Poppa Presley get fussy and start asking about listening to jazz. Emma Lee Didn’t know what to do–if he didn’t like it at the bar, he should have said something– so they drank their beers and came home grumpy.

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