Crazy Stable

 First, Stephen Colbert runs for president. Now, I have renamed my neighborhood through the complicity of the New York Times. Has punditry run amok in this country, blurring the lines between snark and serious discourse? Huzzah!

In this morning's Times City Section, a full-page story tells the tales of how many Victorian Flatbush enclaves yearn for landmark status to avoid being pillaged by developers and scarred by teardowns and high-rises. The CrazyStable's little sliver of Flatbush, Caton Park, is given a respectful and fairly accurate accounting:

 Caton Park, which sits just south of the Parade Grounds athletic fields, is one of Victorian Flatbush’s smaller micro-neighborhoods, with about 50 Victorian homes on a handful of blocks. Its diminutive size means that each house remodeled (or, as many in Victorian Flatbush like to say, “re-muddled”) represents a blow to the neighborhood’s prospects for preservation.

The reporter, Evan Lerner, gets it slightly askew when he says thatWilliam Styron "lived in one of the many large homes that were subsequently converted into boardinghouses"  (Styron lived on the corner in a home that had already been converted to a boardinghouse), but I quibble. Here is the gem:

Some residents worry that too many homes have already been torn down or remodeled beyond recognition. The neighborhood also has the disadvantage of being the product of a number of different designers, unlike some of the areas to the south. But these drawbacks have not stopped the community’s more preservation-minded residents from seeking to keep intact the area they call NoProPaSo (North of Prospect Park South).

Gack! There is just one problem here: Absolutely nobody on earth calls Caton Park NoProPaSo except...me. As a joke in the blogosphere. A joke I shared,  with broad eye-rolling irony, with a New York Times reporter.

[Which japery, incredibly, has been documented in stalker-like linguistic detail by one Barry Popik, an expert on "Americanisms" and a contributer to the Oxford English Dictionary; Barry's  article correctly points out, “"NoProPaSo'—sounding somewhat Spanish, like the Texas town of “El Paso”—had very limited use before the New York Times article. "]

Very limited use indeed, consisting of my inane posts to Brownstoner and, um, here.  Mr. Lerner interviewed me and a few other Caton Park neighbors for the story, although none of us are quoted by name; he took notes rather than use a tape recorder. Perhaps he jotted down "NoProPaSo" and neglected to add a smiley face. Perhaps this is payback for my having continually referred to him in our e-mail exchanges as "Columbia J-School Young'un"  (itself a fond, if labored, running gag from a Times columnist when preparing to share advice with neophyte reporters).  Or maybe this just continues my strange history as a Quote Magnet for the Times (including, once, Sunday page one above the fold, first graf). Even when they leave my name off, they jes' cain't quit me.

Well, let's throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. NoProPaSo, to the barricades!
 

Trailers? On-street breakfast catering? No parking signs plastered everywhere? Oh, yawn...not another major motion picture shoot in the neighborhood! The perils of life in Victorian Flatbush! 

A short walk down Rugby Road revealed the location of the shoot: a lovely corner home that was surrealistically swathed in snow and Christmas decorations. (A nearby platform-lift truck must have been used to apply the rooftop snow earlier this morning.) A crew member told me that the movie was "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie, and that, no, Angie wasn't here today. From the trailer, the flick is a darkly fantastical shoot-em-up, slated for release this June; I wonder if these were very late re-takes, since most of it appears to be "in the can."

How do you make it snow on a sunny day in Brooklyn? Here's how: buckets of white stuff and a steam-producing flare, and lots of running around when the director yells "Snow!" (The director of this flick is supposedly Russian, but the guy today had no Russian accent; maybe it was an AD.)

The whole scene was just a quick Steadicam shot of an actor getting out of a car and walking up the festively decorated steps of the house. The Steadicam looks very cumbersome in use.  Here's the shot.

Right across the street, two parties had reason to feel snubbed by Hollywood's minions. One was  this mockingbird, who ran through an amazing repertoire of calls but was non-union and therefore couldn't be included even as background.  

The other was the neighboring "Spiderweb House," which was a location for "My Super Ex-Girlfriend." This house had been feeling pretty cool about the whole Uma Thurman connection...and then the one across the street scores Angelina!

On Sunday, I made the family stop and wait while I bought an air plant at a delightful store called GRDN in Brooklyn. The little epiphytic plant, which was heavily blogged about recently, can live in partial light with no soil and just a regular misting, making it a perfect candidate to enliven the north-facing third-floor guest bathroom.

Once inside GRDN, however, I was swept away by their delicious decor, sort of "Tuscan villa meets English manor-house mudroom," and all lush and consistent enough to make Martha Stewart's art director weep.  Where on earth does one find blush-lavender roses and white lilacs at the cusp of March? And how could one ever live up to them unless draped over an antique chaise-longue swathed in pearl-colored peau de soie, sipping an apricot-colored glass of dessert wine?

Stores like this (or magazine layouts depicting similar hyperstyled scenes) hypnotize me into thinking that, by buying an objet or two, or an armload of flowers, I could transform our space into...well, into theirs. It's magical thinking, of course; in reality, one gets one's purchase home and perches it against one's real life, and there it is. (The air plant, however, seems content enough alongside my Aunt Louie's collection of tiny bronze pagan goddesses.) For the chronically cash-strapped CrazyStable, achieving a consistent aesthetic, a "look," has always seemed like a distant dream; 20 years into this enterprise, we're still hoping to get all the holes in the walls plastered over.

Which is why I was inspired last Saturday night at the theater. By the play, definitely--the "Scottish play" (I won't jinx my beloved Patrick Stewart, who was thrilling as the "Thane of Cawdor, King hereafter"). But also by the interior physical space of the old Majestic Theater, a 1904 ruin that was semi-renovated by the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a slightly avant-garde performance space. (It was also renamed the Harvey Lichtenstein Theater, alas.) The notion behind the Majestic was to freeze its decrepitude while adding in functional modern amenities; architect Hugh Hardy must have agreed with Katisha of The Mikado that "there's a fascination frantic/in a ruin that's romantic; do you think you are sufficiently decayed?" The critics agreed, praising the "intimate, otherworldly feel" evoked by its crumbling columns and water-stained, peeling paint; Lichtenstein himself, the BAM head who oversaw the renovation, declared, "What I love about the Majestic Theater is how alive it feels when you walk in; how your interest is awakened as you scan the walls, the pillars, the ceiling, the boxes. There is a palpable energy and vibration."

Yeah. That's what first-time visitors to our house are thinking: not, "When the hell are they ever going to finish this place?" but rather, "Wow! I'm digging the palpable energy and vibration of those crumbling walls!" As I said to the generous dear friend who treated me to the Scottish play (the production was quirky but thrilling, by the way), "You know, we liked this look so much, we did the entire house in it!"  

BAM image: Durston Saylor 

Sometimes, it's the little milestones that matter. Today, on a grim February afternoon, after a long day for both of us, the Child and I shared a cup of coffee for the first time.  She has been working her way up to the CrazyStable Elixir of Life for awhile now, sipping fluffy dessert concoctions from Starbucks or Dunkin, but this was her first honest-to-God fresh-brewed cup straight out of the old Melitta pot. Plenty of sugar and half-and-half; she may outgrow that or (like Spouse) maybe not. It matters not; we sat at the big kitchen table, chilled and tired, and the caffeine flowed between us like a happy electric current. Suddenly, she understood...and I exhaled a wish for countless cups in many years to come, a river of mother-daughter java that could heal all wounds and mend all rifts. So far, she is not noticeably jittery; that's my girl.

 A note on the image: Trolling the net for a "vintage coffee" image, I fell in love with this antique postcard, (yours for 10 Euros), since it depicts the approximate age at which I began urging the Child to drink coffee (and offers a good role model for helping grind the whole-bean at a tender age). But "Graine de poilu"? I knew graine meant "seed" from my college French, and figured maybe it meant "coffee bean" that the tot was grinding into "juice for Papa" who was apparently away at the Front. However, a variety of online translation engines produced the following: "Hairy seed"; "seed of the hairy one"; and, my mains-down favorite, "the hairy one granulates." Finally I stumbled on the key to poilu: it's fond slang for a rustic French soldier from about the time of Napolean through World War I.  Presumably graine de poilu is an idiom meaning, approximately, "little shaver de Gomer Pyle," since the term crops up in other quaint-tots-in-uniform shots.  Folks, you cannot buy this kind of cultural literacy.

Every year they do this, but it never fails to touch me.  My little attempt at a "yellow garden" on the south side of the house never got its fall leaves raked off, but the crocus don't care; they just go for the light.

This little shrub, which I stuck in frantically before frost last fall, likes to leaf out very early, it seems. I forget its name; I usually do, which is why I will never make a good Plant Snob. I can't even remember common names, much less the Latin cultivar names that garden-club ladies toss around with abandon. This time of year, I just call most of my plants "Sweetie," as in, "Oh, sweetie, you're back!"

Crooning to my plants is much more enjoyable than thinking about the asbestos and the scary electrical service on life support in the accursed and demon-filled basement. So far, I've gotten two quotes from abatement guys, both of whom were highly recommended but seemed a little--odd. One recommended a halfway solution that I could afford; another insisted we had to scrape off every flake for twice the price. Needed this week: a tie-breaker vote and more research. Aren't I supposed to be sitting around sipping tea and pondering paint swatches at this point in our This Old House story?