Tag Archives: elvis

61. Elvis cues the strings

Posted on July 15, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis saw the NY Philharmonic last night in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. He and Emma Lee rode bicylces, and then ate olive bread and listened to Finlandia. It was wonderful. They were really close to staying at home, but were sure glad they didn’t.

Before that, Elvis had a busy week of travel. He spent a couple days in the Hamptons, in the house where Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe spent one unsuccessful summer. Morning runs to the beach, and dinner of grilled halibut in an architecturally notable house. Elvis loves early Richard Meier. And peaches on beaches.

Elvis also went to New Haven to hang out with Emma Lee’s college roommates. The crew (Fitz the Yorkipoo in tow) went to Guillford to look at water and talk about their lives since the last time they saw each other, which was easter of 2007. It looks pretty there. One of Emma Lee’s old roommates is studying to be a gyno, so the King of Rock and Roll learned a whole lot about what could go wrong with his female reproductive system.

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59. elvis skips town to look at art

Posted on July 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

This week was a frantic one—five states in four days—but the fast clip was well worth it. Over that span, Elvis and Emma Lee viewed a slew of art that would make any undergraduate art history major weak in the knees. It may even get an art history minor swooning.

The pair went to Boston to catch up with a long-lost college roommate and their new Yorkipoo, an endearing ragamuffin named Fitz. While their kind host and hostess were at work, Elvis and Emma Lee spent 24 hours cruising Beantown.

First order of business was clam chowder:

Then they visited the MFA. The pair caught the el Greco to Velzaquez show, which featured a number of Elvis’s favorite El G’s from the Metropolitan, along with some strangers from DC. Elvis’s favorites are still at the Prado—they’re hard pressed to loan the Holy Trinity out—but it was great, as was the Antonio Lopez Garcia exhibition. For a while Emma Lee was thinking about getting the dove from el Greco’s Pentecost tattooed on her back, right between the shoulder blades. The jury’s still out, but nothing’s gonna be done until the end of swimsuit season. Don’t want to burn that sucker while he’s fresh.

Thursday morning was a South Boston adventure to the new Institute for Contemporary Art. The ICA’s Anish Kapoor show was that great. And the water window. That Diller Scofidio and Renfro really know their shit.

This week also brought the birthday of our fair nation, and that of Elvis and Emma Lee’s dear old friend Gale. The trio spent most of the 1980′s, and an embarrassingly long stretch of the 1990s making parades to commemorate both events, simultaneously. Gale’s mother made watermelon sorbet, and Brother John was known to play some Sousa on the trombone.

This year, they celebrated on a rooftop with no less that 80 blue crabs, a couple hammers and a mound of Old Bay seasoning. Oh, and a jumpsuit. The white one, with the gold studs.

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58. Elvis will put on pants in time for dinner

Posted on July 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

Another day on the ranch (read: apartment), means Elvis probably won’t get dressed until early-to-mid afternoon, even though he started working at 7. Such, such is the life of a freelancer. Good thing he and Emma Lee have matching bathrobes for every season.  Or at least, they both have one for summer and a big terrycloth one for winter.

Last night, in a gesture of awesomeness, Diana Ross and Blondie (formerly Lorraine), cooked Emma Lee and Elvis dinner. Gazapacho, and those ladies roasted their own beets. They mean business.
Delicious business

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57. the other recession.

Posted on June 30, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis crying on the inside

From Dictionary.com:

re·ces·sion [ri-sesh-uhn] –noun
1. the act of receding or withdrawing.
2. a receding part of a wall, building, etc.
3. a withdrawing procession, as at the end of a religious service.
4. Economics. a period of an economic contraction, sometimes limited in

scope or duration.
So, we’ve all heard about the economic recession of 2008. But Elvis is going through a bit of a more personal recession. No, it’s not a culvert or some other sort of concave architectural feature; it’s a necessary emotional retreat. Not from friends, nor from family, but Emma Lee got burned twice recently (once by a match on her middle finger, left hand; once by the music lawyer), and it left Emma Lee tired and slightly more bewildered that she would like to be. Elvis suggested a staged withdrawal from some of these more volatile aspects of life in Brooklyn and the heart.
While Emma Lee and Elvis plan to lay low for a bit, they have drafted  a three-part resolution for future encounters with men carrying lovebugs in the breast pocket.
1. No more talking to ghosts. Even if they say they want to be friends, even if Emma Lee still likes them.
2. Emma Lee cleaned out her cell phone. There were some jerks in there. Their names and numbers are the contents of the latest chapter of the lost boys. They should not be called under any circumstance.
3. Be better friends with the friends. This means more face time, less facebook. “Screw the internet, ” Elvis says, “let’s go drink coffee, watch movies and catch fireflies.”
In other news, Emma Lee and Elvis saw Wall-E. It was great. Go.

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56. basking

Posted on June 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis, basking in brooklyn

Friday was a good day. Beyond the unavoidable basking, in the muggy New York Sun that has thoroughly soaked the city, there were a certain number of moments of G-L-O-R-Y. Some of these moments were brief, others small, and blonde, and some probably don’t merit all caps, but a series of glorious nonetheless.

First and foremost among them, Jollyship the Whiz Bang. Elvis and Emma Lee used to play in a noiserock band with the drummer. And they’ve see other productions by the same folks, namely the Paula Abdul/vampire/colonial pennsylvania mashup, which was brilliant. And Emma Lee’s ex-boyfriend made the puppets. But even if the crew was a bunch of no-name-never-heard-of-’em jerks from Williamsburg and Bushwick, it still would have been well worth the trip over to the no-man’s land of Ars Nova (54th, btwn 10/11). Its run has been extended into July, so go go go. And bask in Nick Jones, the captain of that demented ship. If you manage a hug, maybe some of the brillance will rub off.

The other basking moments were faster, smaller, and more symbolic. Emma Lee left Elvis in the corner of Playing the Building, and had the opportunity, on a number of occasions when someone may or may not have wandered into a hazardous area at the end of the long hall, of sprinting across the Battery Maritime Building. Emma Lee likes sprinting. And before anyone got there, she sang in the hall for a while. She likes that, too.

Two tiny blond children at the installation prompted what may have been Emma Lee’s most positive interaction with the pre-K set in a number of years, trumping even family reunions with cousins (sorry, lil’ Pete, Hannah, Anna, Natalie and Monica,). And at lunch, in a moment of symbolic glory, Elvis turned in their application to be writers in residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. It was a bunch of work, and Elvis is happy it’s done. Fists in the air, and fingers crossed.

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55. did you see that? elvis did.

Posted on June 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis has seen a number of notable things in the past few. Chris Burden’s new sculpture at Rockefeller Center, in all of its erector-set glory. A Mariner’s shut out, in a national league park no less. Michael Stipe on Houston. A truck at Astor Place full of delicious bread pudding. Fire flies in Prospect Park. Oh, and he was one of Ikea of Brooklyn’s first visitors.

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52. archival fever* is making elvis weak in the knees

Posted on June 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

Perhaps Elvis is just easily amused. Could be that he’s got a thing for sepia. Or maybe Elvis really never should have left the Victor Building. It’s there that he spent the summer of 2003, largely on its concourse level, thumbing through the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

In any case, he left and life went on. Elvis was sure that the AAA’s archives could never be surpassed, but in recent weeks, Elvis has been hording all sorts of goodies in Emma Lee’s bedroom. Recent acquisitions include a photo of Muhammad Ali, taken by Candace Bergen (yes, that Candace):

He’s also gotten his hands on a banned book from the Jewish Museum. Software was one of the first computer art shows, and for all its groundbreaking and innovation, it was a bit of a logistical trainwreck—the catalogue included a full frontal of one artists, which would not, and could not fly with the administration. Because of that, the show went largely undocumented. But thumbing through the log, the art was various degrees of amazing. Case in point: way before Nicholas Negroponte started making one laptop per child–before he even began the Media Lab, he made Seek, a piece about computers and gerbils. Computers were new and confusing, and apparently, in 1970, few Americans knew about gerbils, either. (They were relatively new to the US, having stayed in central Asia until the mid 1950s.) Here’s two of them in NN’s sculpture now:

* The reference to archival fever comes from the show at ICP earlier this spring. It was wonderful, full of archives real and imagined. A moment, now, for Cornell Capa.

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48. The adulation of South Street.

Posted on June 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis and Emma Lee have been hard at work having goodtime on South Street, in Manhattan’s FiDi.

Friday was devoted to David Byrne, and his efforts to jerry-rig the old Maritime Building into a gigantic organ, as part of Creative Time’s summer installation, Playing the Building. There are three sounds—a percussive tone, made by magnets on columns, a deep rumbling (motors on the skylight’s beams), and pvc flutes. Elvis spent three hours making sure no one went out the emergency exit. By the end he and Emma Lee were harmonizing from the back of the room.

The next day, Elvis was on South Street again, this time taking a ferry to Governor’s Island. They had a stupendous picnic—wine and cheese and pimento bread—and Emma Lee made strawberry shortcake. Emma Lee and Sammy G played catch, and  Elvis got a sunburn, but only a little on his shoulder.

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elvis is so busy he wants to spit. #46

Posted on June 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

Elvis has too much work. It makes handling this elephant look easy:

As a side note, Emma Lee says drawing the elephant was easier than drawing Elvis.

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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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