Crazy Stable

I don't watch much TV, so maybe I'm the last person in the world to catch the latest Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" ad, but in case you missed it, here's what Advertising Age called "a worthy cause, a brilliant strategy, a flawless video." It is called "Onslaught," and if you're the mother of a daughter, it is downright painful to watch:

I love the Dove campaign, and not just for the obvious reason that I am the mother of a (beautiful) daughter who is already grappling, before her teens have begun, with these devouringly powerful ideas and images. I am also the daughter of a mother who was beautiful and glamorous in her youth, and whose self-esteem was destroyed by the minor cosmetic flaws left by a skin condition in middle age. As a girl, I winced inside as my smartly attired mom, having touched up her lipstick and given herself a dab of Chanel No.5, would turn one last time to the mirror and say, "God, how I hate my face." Now I do my own share of kvetching in front of the mirror about encroaching signs of age and long-resented imperfections, and wince again to hear my daughter say with exasperation and a note of pain, "Mommy, you look fine!"

She thinks the house is beautiful, too. Maybe I should shut up and listen.

...there, beneath the blue suburban skies...Ahem, and now we return to our regular programming [shifty eyes].  Go figure: My pal Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York links to CrazyStable as a font of information on Victorian Flatbush (or at least our little corner of it), and a wave of guests click over and encounter...posts about a cat show and a mouse embryo. Sorry, we're a bit distractible here. It's why the house isn't done yet. (Well, that and the money.)

I've actually been planning to share my discoveries on (a) our surrounding micro-neighborhood of "Caton Park," or, as I like to call it, NoProPaSo (North of Prospect Park  South) and (b) the True Actual Recorded History of the Crazy Stable (it actually had some illustrious residents back before its precipitous fall from grace). I will do this very soon, but meanwhile, here are the most Caton-Park-o-centric posts from the archive, all staggering works of heartbreaking genius, as Mr. Eggers would say:

On life next to, but definitely not in, a posh historic district: here.

Our William Styron/Sophie's Choice connection (it's a doozy): here.

Exactly what I think of Dodgers/egg cream/stickball nostalgia addicts: here.

Demographics, or, the gorgeous mosaic meets reality: here.

More multicultie follies--our racial steering story: here.

A walking tour of Prospect Park South: here.

Coming soon: cool facts about Caton Park yanked from the mists of Flatbush history, including True Crime Stories and Tales of Primeval Brooklyn Golf. Meanwhile, below is a chunk of a 1908 map, which doesn't show our streets south of the Parade Grounds laid out yet, although by that time, they were. I guess the "Electric RR" was the trolley along Church Avenue, long gone and surely much more fun than the lumbering B35 bus. 

Yesterday was cool, crisp and gorgeous, perfect weather for entombing my $50 worth of bare-root astilbes and hyacinth bulbs in the autumn garden--but when your little girl wants to go to the CFA Cat Show in Madison Square Garden, you refuse at your peril. Actually, it's an extravaganza that, like Vegas, should be experienced by everyone at least once--well, okay, once might do it.

Picture a phantasmagoric scene that's sort of half backstage-at-Fashion-Week,  half bar-scene-in-Star-Wars, with kitty litter. The people-watching is as good, if not better, than the cat-watching;  I can't decide whom I love more, the people who are exactly what you expect when you picture folks who travel around the country on the show circuit with fluffy kitties, cosmetic cases, and theme-decorated cages...or the folks (like this beefy-T guy with a genuinely red neck) who are cast totally against type.

Here, because I cannot but share with you, our personal all-stars of the day:

Meet "Reddie Eddie," a redpoint Colorpoint Shorthair. People with these guys like to push their ears back to show their resemblance to Roswell aliens.

This is "Sumo," a grey Persian. His name is self-explanatory. There is more of him that wouldn't fit in the frame.

These are the scrawny freaks that draw stares at cat shows--the Nicole Richies of the cat-fancy universe...the hairless Sphynx.  Some call it a breed; I call it a sad mutation. And I don't know what you call the pink-sweater thing.

A dog-person familiar with the agility and obedience trials at the Westminster Kennel Club show once asked me, "What do cats at cat shows do?" Well, mostly they sleep in overdecorated cages for hours; then they are briefly hauled to a show ring where a judge checks out the bod for perfection of breed standards, and the temperament by waving a little feather on a wand. If they go cheerfully nuts, like this Maine Coon champion, that's good. If they slump there like Kate Moss after a hard night's partying, points off. If they physically assault the judge like Foxy Brown, game over.

On the runway, don't ever look for a plus-size model to rule the day; and at the CFA, don't bet on anything but a flat-faced fluff monster to bring home top honors.* Monsieur Smiley-Face here doesn't seem to share the joy of the moment--but if you'd been sprayed with as many grooming aids as he has, you might glower too.

*Update: This year's champ was a recognizably cat-looking Japanese Bobtail!

Finally, no fashion show is complete without a bit of celebrity gossip: thus, The Ragdoll and the Rapper.  Set-up: Ragdoll cats are notoriously gentle and tractable. As a kitten, this Raggie did modeling, her owner told me, and an animal agent hired them for a shoot with thug-posing rapper Fifty Cent. Something about "softening his image."  

But it turned out that tough-guy Fiddy was too freaked out by the fuzzball to pose; handlers apologetically hustled kitten and owner away and paid them for the whole day. As they left, a posse member was heard to say reassuringly, "It's okay, Fiddy, the kitten's gone."

This amazing image is a mouse embryo, shown in both visible and ultraviolet light to show the biochemical difference between the embryo (pink) and its yolk sac (green). The picture, by Gloria Kwan of Memorial-Sloan Kettering Institute, won first place in the Nikon 2007 "SmallWorld" competition. (The others are cool, too.)

Why a mouse embryo, you ask? Well, it spoke to me on several levels.

1. I really, really wish I had a camera that could take great ultra-close-up shots like this.

2. "Mouse fetus" is an incredibly funny phrase, especially since Spouse and I used it years ago to refer to our erstwhile New York Senator, Al D'Amato.  (Although there is some physical resemblance, we coined the term after searching for some perfect expression of his moral smallness. )

 2. We're overdue for the first cold snap, when the mice will come in and look for winter quarters in the CrazyStable. Now I will feel even more guilty when the cats get one (which isn't very often, but then Charlie is untried--so far, his skills with a catnip training dummy have been impressive).

3. When you live in a very big house, as in a very big cosmos, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and insignificant. Some people get depressed after a space show at the planetarium--impressive, sure, but who am I when our whole solar system is just a speck in the known universe? And who are we to contemplate refinishing three thousand square feet of wretched flooring? Chesterton assured us that it was, in fact, a "cozy cosmos," but when that wisdom escapes me, I go microscopic in my metaphysics. The mighty and unfeeling God who tossed off the Milky Way also figured out how to layer the keratin on my hair shafts and regulate the passage of calcium ions across my cell walls to keep my heart beating. When I stare down the throat of one of my "Grandpa Ott" morning glories, His glory leaps out at me--without that numbing sense of my own littleness.

4. I attribute part of my fascination with things "micro" to my own superpower--"Supermicrovision." I am legally blind without my corrective lenses--we're talking "couldn't cross the street"--but I have astonishing visual acuity at the end of my nose. I can practically see freakin' cells divide. One joy of being stuck with glasses again after years of contact lenses is the ability to whip them off and indulge in stuff like the glistening globules of an orange section or the hairs on a bee's knees. Dead mice are cool, too, especially their toenails (although I have fortunately not had the chance to examine any unborn ones).

5. Speaking of unborn, I love unborn critters. I was one myself, once. No word on whether the scrupulously tenderhearted folks at PETA have taken Nikon to task for any possible "cruelty" involved in harvesting this little fellow for his photo op; I suspect they'll back off, given the "slippery slope" involved. (Nat Hentoff once famously asked his fellow liberals to "think of the [human] fetus as a baby seal.") Perhaps my passion for things microscopic and meticulously constructed (dare I say designed?) has been the driver for my pro-life passion; all you need is a microscope to see plenty of "inconvenient truth" about the smallest and most vulnerable among us.

(Thanks to Dappled Things for the tip on the Nikon contest!)

Do you know what we baby boomers want as we head toward retirement? Thank God it's Thursday, so that the New York Times' Home and Garden section can tell us! According to today's Times, "they want challenging hobbies like astronomy, and have enough cash stashed away to afford to build their own observatories." That's a quote from a busy builder of home observatory domes, which run between $10,000 and $40,000 for the basic equipment and between $50,000 and half a million for the whole stargazing shebang. Here is the observatory-crowned home of a certified public accountant named John Spack. Mr. Spack clearly prefers stargazing to more earthbound pursuits like gardening, but I digress. He says he found it a "pain" to haul out and set up his telescope, so he built a dome atop his Chicago house. "Now if I want to get up at 3 a.m. and look at something, I just open the shutter," he crows.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Heck, if I want to get up at 3 a.m. and look at something, I can flip on an infomercial for that Ronco rotisserie, where the guy roasts the leg of lamb and the whole audience loves the smell and learns about the free tools that come included in the same great price. Well, we decided awhile back to aim our sights higher, ahem. Yes, it's true: We, too, have a home observatory atop the CrazyStable. It was a challenge, given our steeply pitched roof, but nothing a half-million wouldn't fix.

Unlike some of the whiny neighbors described in the Times article, who pestered their visionary neighbors about the cosmetics of a domestic dome, our block has been fine with it--thank God we're not in a designated New York City landmark district!

This being an old house, we went for a vintage vibe in the interior, carefully chosen to mesh with the circa-1910 CrazyStable. Here is Spouse seeking a peek at the Milky Way after a hard day at the Planetarium.

We've encountered just one problem, however. Despite our use of all the latest digital technology to reduce the urban light pollution, we have yet to see a single star. Our Home Observatory Consultant says he's stumped, but is continuing to tweak the hardware and the programming. You see, no matter what setting we use, or where we point our telescope, we see only one strange and disturbing image:

We are hoping it is some distortion caused by solar flares.