Home invasion ends. Nudity for its own sake, peeing with the bathroom door open, and like-a-chimney smoking resumes.

The last of G's relatives boarded a plane Sunday morning, so after eleven days we are finally, blissfully alone. Not that it wasn't great to spend time with his family -- it was. Really. Cross my heart. Even if it meant spending WAY more money and time in parts of the city we who live in the city go to great lengths to avoid.

Like Times Square. God I fucking hate Times Square. Hatred I hide very poorly, I've discovered, through the lens of first-time visitors who believe those six blocks ARE New York. Our differences on the topic became apparent immediately; starting with one family member's announcement that their hotel was in the heart of TS, and me uttering a knee-jerk "Oh, how terrible. I'm sorry," never once realizing they were bragging, were delighted by their good fortune. I honestly thought I was being helpful with warnings like, "You don't want to go to that (restaurant, bookstore, movie theater) the concierge recommended...it's smack in the middle of Times Square." I was stymied by the deer-in-the-headlight gaze, the that's the point! reaction, the why would anyone want to shop or dine anywhere else? look I knew I couldn't counter without intimating that their taste was in their mouth.

But thankfully we didn't spend all our time there, we were able to catch some good movies (in the Village), good dinners (in Brooklyn). However I couldn't shake the feeling that whenever we dragged the fam away from The Great White Way, they spent each second wishing they could get back to the 'real' New York. I found myself wondering if all the couples who live and work in Orlando Florida have ever been successful in convincing their guests that there's actually a whole city of Orlando, that it's more than the place you have to land in and drive through to get to Disney World. I was doubtful.

The big perk of having my time monopolized for a week and a half was the vacation from world events. I was gleefully ignorant of all things political the entire time, didn't turn on the computer, the TV, didn't pick up a paper. Until Sunday, when the canonization of Reagan began. Wouldn't it be great if everybody's personal life history was revised when they die? What a nice last gesture that would be. The feeling of comfort you would have on your deathbed knowing that no matter how many people you made homeless, no matter how many people died of AIDS because you refused to spend a penny on research or prevention education for some "gay cancer" spreading like wildfire through the country, whether or not you refused Gorbachev's initial offers to willingly disarm all his nuclear warheads because without the Soviet threat you couldn't justify your (still inoperable) multi-billion dollar Star Wars plan. If you saw fit to be anti-abortion and slash funding for single moms and their children, got rid of subsidies for struggling family farms forcing thousands of them into foreclosure, created a line of bullshit designed to convince a country they should be happy with the dregs, a "trickle" of the US riches controlled by 2% of the country's most wealthy, all the while telling the working poor (a class you created) they are poor out of choice...shitty, economy destroying, racist, classist, homophobic policies all, would be artfully spun into a story of how you singlehandedly saved the entire world. Wow. Makes you choke up a bit, doesn't it?

On Air America Monday, Randi Rhodes suggested a fitting tribute to Reagan would be putting his likeness on currency. The million dollar bill. That way the only Americans he ever cared about could have one. Much more appropriate than this 'greatest President ever' crap, I thought.

Posted by Antigeist at June 9, 2004 10:45 AM