Turkeys, Rent and Remembrance

About three days before Thanksgiving it occurred to me that I was hosting dinner at my house and had better secure a turkey pronto.

Wish I could have seen the turkey strapped to the back of Brian's motorbike as he sped across town.

Had a great holiday with my sister Liz and Brian's good friend and fellow bandmember in from LA. He's scoring shows for cartoon network. I never realized they had adult level animation programs after 10 p.m.

I remember 100 years ago when my nights used to begin at 10.

Last night I went with Liz to see the movie Rent.

Yes, there are some quick shots that include our building which thrilled me to no end. The NY Times complained that most of the locations are not accurately identified. Who cares!!? Although I did wonder why they shot the bar 7b as the Life Cafe location. Also the apartment building the characters live in and its outside street scenes are definitely not the east village (and maybe not NYC).

I never saw the musical and thought the movie pretty powerful. I saw it in the Zigfield Theatre in midtown where they have a great sound system.

As far as I'm concerned, it captured the feel of the East Village in the late 80's/early 90's and how AIDs decimated the community one torturous death at a time. Meanwhile the government watched and did nothing.

Brian handles the archives at NYU. It includes a special area dedicated to the artists, performers, writers, and poets of the East Village of the 70's, 80's and early 90's. The majority are dead.

I was working in major gift fundraising for AIDS research at that time. It was so gut wrenching to have doors slammed in your face again and again.

Of course some people didn't slam the door. Which is why my brother in law and his partner are still alive twenty years later.

And we certainly gave thanks for those people of vision and faith on Thursday afternoon as we sat down to feast on turkey in our little pad overlooking Tompkins Square Park.