Just a few blocks from our current home in Bay Ridge, very early this morning, the amazing volunteers from Occupy Sandy, which has done such wonderful work during the last few weeks since the hurricane, were busy preparing what seemed like zillions of Thanksgiving dinners for people in hard-hit areas.
The kitchen began prep work at 8 a.m. yesterday, was open all night, and volunteers were here even at 2 a.m. 
We're really grateful for Occupy Sandy on this Thanksgiving.
The front page of The Wall Street Journal today, Friday, November 23, 2012, features an above the fold photo of yesterday's wonderful Occupy Sandy Thanksgiving dinner outside St. Camillus in Rockaway with the headline: "A Sunny Thanksgiving Feast for Storm's Victims." 
At least one person pictured was a volunteer taking a break to eat a delicious apple muffin. 
We're a little embarrassed (but not that much) to be pictured when so many of our fellow volunteers and the regular crew at Occupy Sandy in Rockaway aren't. But we are proud of being a tiny part of such a good effort. And we also like that at the extreme left of the photo you can just make out the Dayton Towers West building at 102-00 Shore Front Parkway.
For thirty years our beloved Aunt Tillie -- our grandfather's sister -- and Uncle Morris Metz, had an apartment there on the second floor, where we spent several holiday dinners (Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashona) with them and our Grandma Ethel back in the 1980s. That was the last time we were featured on the front page, albeit of the second section, of The Wall Street Journal. A story by Brooks Jackson about our presidential campaign was published on November 28, 1983, just about 29 years ago.
It ran with the headline "This Presidential Candidate Wants Jane Wyman as His Running Mate," It ended:So what's next for Mr. Grayson?
He's running for President as a Democratic candidate and accepting public financing, sort of.
"When I go down to the unemployment office, I have to prove that I'm looking for work," he says. "I figure that the presidency is a good job."
He would like Jane Wyman to be his running mate. "She has experience dumping Reagan," he says. The president's ex-wife hasn't accepted yet."
After a week that began with getting our fourth and final wisdom tooth extracted at Park Slope Oral Surgery and continued with final classes and final exams at Borough of Manhattan Community College, The School of Visual Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology, on one of our last nights in Brooklyn, 
we had the pleasure of going to indieScreen on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg to attend the New York premiere of Shoplifting from American Apparel, director Pirooz Kalayeh's wonderful adaptation of the Tao Lin novella.
It's a shrewd opening up of a deliberately airless autobiographical literary work -- its airlessness making the book brilliant to its champions and somewhat tedious to its critics (we liked it) -- with a dizzingly "meta" movie, which dispenses with the book's "Sam" and "Luis" characters and instead us the "actual" Tao Lin (who exists somewhat outside Kalayeh's film, mostly in his own videos), 
an actor (Brad Warner, real-life subject of a documentary by the director) playing the "character" Tao Lin (Sam in the novella), and another actor (an uncanny Jordan Castro, superb at channeling the mannerisms and verbal tics of the original) as the "real" Tao Lin -- along with the "real" (actual?) Noah Cicero and the "character" Noah Cicero, played by actor James Roehl.
We don't have the critical vocabulary do a "review" (the film's Los Angeles premiere last weekend elicited some nice reviews) nor the common sense, either (we once told Tao it was our opinion as a lawyer that he should never publish anything about his arrest at American Apparel), 
but it seemed to us that the financial constraints and logistical and personnel problems that limited the production -- the director at one point says something like indie filmmmaking always means things going wrong 100% of the time -- worked to the advantage of the adaptation and somehow made it truer to the vision and spirit of Lin's novella than a straight-forward retelling would have been.
By using the backstory of the writer writing about something that really happened and taking questions from both his readers and the filmmakers and actors about it, by largely abandoning the book's black-and-gray hipster New York setting for sunny Southern California and the brighter, more open bleakness of Rust Belt Ohio (in Lin's books, most of the "sense of place" is internal anyway -- or by "the soft blue light of Internet Explorer"), by calling attention to the static nature of the Gmail chats and artfully have the most self-referential, self-conscious text comment even more upon itself, 
by turning hyperrealistic fictional scenes in the store and jail into surreal filmmaking challenges -- all this "gets" what made Shoplifting from American Apparel a book that spoke to many young people ("We are the fucked generation") and makes it accessible to a wider audience.
It's also laugh-out-loud funny. We broke up at a scene where "Tao" (Castro), placing fast-food chicken bits around the Hollywood Walk star of James Dean, tells "Noah" (Cicero) and director Kalayeh that he doesn't actually know who James Dean is -- but that's only one of many comic "making of" sequences that brought to mind some of the best moments of Adaptation and Annie Hall. 
The film's performances from professional actors and nonprofessionals (some picked up, apparently, on the streets of Hollywood and Youngstown) range from perfectly modulated to surprisingly credible. Production values are high; even the purposefully ragged edges appear major-studio sleek (we hope that comment is not something people will take as being negative; sleek does not mean slick).
Outside, this evening, it was New York's annual Night of the Drunken Young Santas and Lubavitchers asked us four times on our walk from the Bedford Avenue L stop to the theater, "Are you Jewish?" (our responses were the lies "No," "No, I hate them," "Not anymore," and finally "Gai in drerde"). We were the first person to enter the screening room and so sat in the aisle seat of the last row (for the sake of our prostate)
in indieScreen's very comfortable sold-out auditorium and enjoyed the 1969-ish song from The Ohioans (Jordan Castro and Andrew Borstein) that preceded the film, along with the trailer for the director's forthcoming adaptation of Noah Cicero's novel The Human War.
During the Q&A session with Pirooz Kalayeh and several of the actors from Shoplifting, the director, wearing an "I ❤ KOREA" T-shirt, seemed grateful that given the film's, uh, complexities, no one had walked out, but he should have known better. Even our prostate didn't want to miss a scene. (We did notice Tao come in with a friend late in the film, stand in the back of the theater next to us with a drink from the bar, but soon turn with his back to the screen and then walk out a few minutes later. When we asked him afterwards if he couldn't stand watching his work onscreen, Tao said no, he'd just seen it several times before.) Anyway, we're extremely grateful for having been privileged to attend the New York opening of Shoplifting from American Apparel. When we got an email on August 27, 2007 that said
hi richard, can you give me a little legal advice? i got arrested from american apparel about a week ago and have a court date, 9/11. i just have some small questions. thank you, taowe couldn't have imagined that the incident would make for a best-selling book and now a movie that deserves a wide and appreciative audience. Of course, our imagination is limited by senescence and being a lawyer. The only friend we had who wanted to be a marine biologist was Mike, who's worked at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for decades.
We're from a different generation, people that got up every day, and did things, were proactive, got things done -- in other words, we're one of the people who suck. Frankly, we feel about Tao Lin, Noah Cicero, Jordan Castro and Bebe Zeva the way our Grandma Ethel felt about her sister-in-law Aunt Betty: we hate them like poison. 
And growing up in a Garment Center family and selling schmattes in our relative's retail outlets since age 14, we were taught to despise shoplifters.But fair is fair, and we know enough to say that you definitely do not have to be young or alienated or a hipster (who of course must deny being a hipster) to like Pirooz Kalayeh's movie version of Shoplifting from American Apparel. Although it depicts a world in which people over 40 don't exist, it's definitely a film for intelligent moviegoers of any age and level of productivity. Go know!
Dumbo Books today published Richard Grayson's The Eighties Diaries as an e-book available at the Amazon Kindle store for $1.99. 
The promo stuff says in part:Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.
Despite the crackpot nature of his lifelong project, the diarist actually did become a writer of sorts. Starting in the mid-1970s, he began publishing his stories in literary magazines and anthologies, and later in webzines. His articles have appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE MIAMI HERALD, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, THE NEW YORK POST, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, and many other newspapers and magazines. He won four state arts council grants for his fiction writing, and in addition to being a lawyer and political activist, has taught writing in colleges in six states since 1975.
ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK (1979) “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”
LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive,” and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”
THE EIGHTIES DIARIES runs nearly 300,000 words, chronicling his life and the lives around him from 1981 to 1989, in Manhattan and Miami and a few places in between.
It includes all of six volumes previously published separately: SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.
Grayson has already published his first book of diary entries, BOY MEETS BROOKLYN: 1969-70, and the next six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.
Five volumes of THE NINETIES DIARIES published include SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994, and AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE: 1994-1996.
This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Wanderyear. It is available in a 576-page trade paperback edition for $26.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.
The promo stuff says in part:Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.
But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.
ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”
Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”
Grayson’s nineteenth compilation of diary entries, Wanderyear, takes place between mid-1997 and mid-1998, when he quits his job as a staff attorney in social policy at a University of Florida law school think tank to move from place to place – South Florida, Brooklyn, Silicon Valley, Wyoming, Long Island, New Orleans, and suburban Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Grayson has published the first seven volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring BOY IN BROOKLYN, 1969-1970; SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.
The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.
WANDERYEAR: 1997-1998 is the sixth volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990; LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991; FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991; SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994; and AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996.The book is also available on Lulu and on Scribd for free online reading.
Wear multiple layers and thick gloves because it's cold out there, the National Weather Service says.
A Hazardous Weather Outlook is in effect in Brooklyn and the surrounding New York City areas for Sunday night and into Monday morning.
A Wind Advisory is in effect until midnight, with strong winds and gusts just over 45 mph, bringing down branches. After midnight, temperatures will drop to 15 - 20, and wind chills will be around or below 0. Brrr!
Go to McBrooklyn's HOME PAGE.
- Williamsburg's Fashion Weekend: "Semi-nude models writhing around onstage under red lights," T-shirts worn as pants, and mini-dresses made from scarves. Gothamist
- Woman brutally stabbed to death, reportedly nearly decapitated in Canarsie, Brooklyn. CBS
- Submissions now open for Greenpoint Film festival. Greenpointers
- NYC homeless shelters kicking out homeless families on freezing nights if they cannot prove they have nowhere else to go. NY Daily News
- Signs spelled wrong in Prospect Park. WYDNKBYANM
- Public Advocate says Christine Quinn’s affordable housing plan mainly benefits developers. TRD
- Brooklyn Botanic Garden is open today and admission is free. Examiner
- No, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)does not want to round up people, put them into camps and send them back to Mexico. That was a typo. The Blaze
- Science: You should fart on planes. Gawker
Go to McBrooklyn's HOME PAGE.
