OTAS, you found it

Every time I don’t think I can sink lower, I surprise myself. A while back I signed up to an internet dating service. Those who don’t know (or will at least public admit), gay internet dating scene is basically a brokerage for anonymous sexual encounters. Being a little sick of that (I can’t seem to bring myself to do it) I signed up for a site that caters to all – meaning you don’t have to specify your dick size, if you prefer to fuck or get fucked, or PNP (“party and play” – doing coke while you are having sex).

And on this journey to normality and to get a normal boyfriend, I found myself chatting with, eeer, a guy from a rural part of Russia. What started out as a casual conversation is now absurd. He tells me he’s a jealous person, then he calls me “his love”, then, uuuugh, it just get better and better. The icing on the cake is his engligh, which is atrocious. I would tell you more but I cannot do the actual dialogue justice. So below is the latest. What the fuck am I doing? LOL

Hi my dear Matt! I am glad again to speak with you! Though we and not badly have had fun, but on my soul was a melancholy! By the way, yesterday I had quite good evening with my friends. Also, we reached in one club, there we were some hours. First we had the good supper and some glasses of champagne, then played bawling,also danced. I have remained good impressions, only when I saw , as some my girlfriends danced and kissed the men - I had small envy to them. I thought of you and represented for myself, that you, Matt, beside me.

That you embrace me too and whisper to my ear gentle words. And you
Matt, when you see around the in love people, - you recollect me? How often do you with your friends reach in any bar or club? When you are in these places girls, of course, try to get acquainted with you?

Women approach to me very often and try to begin
acquaintance, but I at once help to understand them, that these things fail with me. Matt, I often think about your messages and I
understand, that you are serious concern to me. I do not think too that our dialogue an entertainment, and I write you some very personal words and things, as to the close person. And I want to tell you Matt, that I am glad, that I have such kind person - as you! I wait for your messages and I think of you. My gentle kisses to you!

Your Sergey

Working in luxury retail, we have been gearing up for our new fall fashion - planned about two years ago from our merchandising departments – and selling our customers on what’s hot (and what’s not).

Publicity is what gets this done. We complete with other New York fashion houses (Barneys, Bergdorf, etc - believe it or not, Bloomingdale's is considered low-brow to us) but with an advantage: Our store sits right across from the world’s most famous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. Leading up to Christmas our windows are filled with Chanel, Gucci, D&G, Versaci, etc. And at Christmas we launch campaigns to mail out our take on top designers’ clothes, do trunk shows with our clients, and generate interest in fashion. This is all capped off with Christmas, where we lure the common and uncommon to our store to awe at the designs.

How does marketing get this done? It’s through the creative side of the house (not my thing) which puts together our “creative”. But on a tactical side they need to understand who to mail this stuff to and who to do the shows with – the fashion “influentials” that drive our image home. That’s what I’m in charge of.

So I’ve been working with the marketing department to statistically understand who is driving those sales and styles and who will best respond to these campaigns. For the last few years we’ve been doing a lot around a number of campaigns that revolve around snowflakes. And if you don’t already know this has been made famous, with those that have never put their foot into our stores, with our public displays during the Christmas season: When it’s not Christmas they will remember this store and check-in with us on the designs we think are hot.

So, despite the humidity and heat, I’ve been working on Fall, and, in particular, Christmas marketing campaigns (I can’t wait ‘till it’s over).

Check out our snowflake campaign.

Last night’s Democratic “YouTube” debate last night - supposedly ushering the Democrats, and politics, into the 21st century – was a circus. It was, in some ways, politics as usual: candidates shunning real answers with meaningless generalizations, jabs, and grandstanding.

Add to this a snowman curious about global warming policies, Californian vegans, gun freaks and lesbians wondering what the potentials will do for their single-issue minds, and what you have is politics sinking to a new low. I realized, quickly, that in a society where anyone can post something on the web for everyone to see, and determine the next pop star with a call-in vote, what we lack is elitism.

Bringing a presidential debate to this level was a mistake.

But the circus of the event could have allowed the candidates to show the American public how they could rise above it with some dignity. Perhaps the only candidates that came out of it with an iota of dignity – dare I say—were Clinton and Obama. It certainly was not Edwards, who looked like an idiot even before his ridiculious/sexist comment about Clinton's suit.

Clinton will crush them all. Consequently, we are going to have another Republican in the White House for the next decade.

God help us all.

Sorry to obsess (I'm drinking). But these are some great scenes of Beverly Sills on YouTube. Check them out even if you don't know anything about opera. . . Effortless high notes, coloratura and expression.

Beverly Sills's final performance
Beverly Sills as Baby Doe
Beverly Sills sings the Mad Scene from Lucia Part 1
A scene from'Il Barbiere Di Siviglia'
Beverly Sills as Queen Elizabeth
The Muppet Show 1
The Muppet Show 2


You rose to artistic heights despite an industry that didn't like you, you raised a deaf and a retarded child, you took care of your sick husband, you raised the New York City opera to heights from financial ruin, you kept Lincoln Center (Julliard, the Metropolitan Opera, NYC Opera, NYC Ballet, NY Philharmonic, etc.) together when she was starting to come apart, you brought the new GM to the Met and let it out of its cave, you brought opera to the Muppet Show, Carol Burnett, Carson, and into Americans' rooms, and now -- I just saw you a month ago -- to the movies, you were also my first opera recording.

And now, finally, you rest in peace.

I miss ya, Bubbles.

Last week was the anniversary of our nation’s birth; and with that came the inevitable afterbirth. . . Mom and dad flew in to see New York’s fireworks, the world’s largest, go off over the east river. The evening started out with rain, which let up for the fireworks. The moisture in the air kept the smoke low which meant we couldn’t see anything except a bright ball of grey. We were on Roosevelt Island in reserved seating with a bunch of families with screaming kids and old fogies without alcohol. Ugh.

I know my parents are getting old when they both announced they “loved it and would do it again next year.” I protested. There’s no fucking way I’m stuck out on some remote island with the only way of getting home being that fucking cable car used in one of the Superman movies. They are getting old.

Looking at myself in the mirror lately I’ve been finding more and more grey hair. WTF. THEY are not just getting old, I AM; and jaded, AND intolerant, AND crabby.
Well, this 4th has welcomed me to the beginning of my mid-life, eeer, whatever

I have to say the outpouring of grief from Beverly Sills’s death is amazing. All the major newspapers in the city had run huge tributes to the American Diva, Lincoln Center dimmed its house lights, the city’s flags were flown at half-mast, and full-page ads from the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Julliard School, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, were published in the New York Times to mourn her. Even the Metropolitan Opera, who snubbed her for years, replaces its usual website with a tribute to her.

Yea, she was born in Brooklyn and made her career on New York’s stages, so that could be part of it – an important local dies. But my mother brought a paper from Fresno and there is a good two-page tribute to her with pictures not only from operatic productions, but her with Kermit, Tony Bennett, Randy Travis, and other popular icons. Mom then points to a full-page ad in the New York Times "Beverly Sills: 1929-2007" and says: "Now that's respect."

She was, the newspaper said, “the diva next door” and represented the can-do American spirit.

Sills was not a "diva", per se, to Americans. Sills was an inspiration.





Remembering Sills

Taking Opera to the Heights and Down to Earth (NY Times)
Lincoln Center Mourns (NY Times)
Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, is Dead at 78 (NY Times)
Wanted: A New Cheerleader for Opera (NY Times)
Sills transcended opera stages (Fresno Bee)
Opera star Beverly Sills dies of cancer (Times Picayune)
La Sills sang and spoke to all of us (LA Times)
America's diva popularized high art (Chicago Tribune)
A Voice that Carried Weight (Washington Post)

You get the point. . . . the nation, rich, poor, urban, rural, pays homage to America's first primma donna and champion of the fine arts.

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We've lost Beverly Sills:

Beverly Sills, America’s first Prima Donna, died a few hours ago in her Manhattan home – its all over the news here in New York. She was the first truly American Diva – at a time when singers were going to Europe for training, she received all hers in the United States.

Her singing, which I know well, was distinctly American; she was straightforward, acted the parts well, and had flawless technique. She achieved fame in the lesser New York City Opera for quite some time before finally making an international career, then her debut – well at the end of her vocal peak – at the Metropolitan Opera (with a 19 minute ovation). She was the singer that set the standard as Violetta in La Traviata well before I’d ever heard it live: Her recording is listed in the New York Times as the greatest recording of this soprano-crusher.

And her fame also reached popular status. For people who never put their foot inside an opera house or even heard an opera, she was opera. She appeared regularly and as a guest host with Johnny Carson and Carol Burnett. Ms. Burnett said, at one point after doing a duet: “You must sing an aria now.” Millions of Americans even heard their first aria that night.

Despite her fame, it was a long, hard, fight before she was recognized as a leading singer. Nonetheless she would triumph in all the major opera houses. Personally, she had overcome more than most: A deaf daughter, a mentally retarded son, left her with little more than her work as a singer. Nonetheless she rose, not only to stardom, but to head up as chairman of the New York City Opera, than the Metropolitan Opera, than all of Lincoln Center, where she would introduce American audiences to the first English surtitles that dominate the world today.

I also remember an interview with her in the Met’s Playbill where she accused today’s media for underestimating the attention span of the general public for the fine arts.

For me, she was the first time I’d heard La Traviata, Rigoletto, Manon, and Faust: She hooked me.

Who would have known this Brooklyn-born, hardscrabble Jew would be on the cover of Time and have some of the greatest recordings of the operatic staples.

Her life was tough, but music that kept her going. We should all be so productive with our misfortunes.

I, and most Americans, will miss cultural life without Mrs. Sills. For just a few months ago she was hosting the first HD theater broadcasts of Il Trittico, Barbiere, and other triumphs of the reigning singers.

More in the New York Times.