Andrew J. Lederer

A girl I know was having a birthday party on a rooftop Saturday and I really wanted to go but was heavily drugged due to allergies and basically slept for about 24 hours.

However, I forced myself out of bed just after midnight only to find myself thwarted by the subway, after which, raindrops started to periodically drop out of the sky.

Things just weren't going my way.

I got to the location maybe a little past 1 and after walking a number of flights of stairs, arrived at the roof only to find that nobody was there.

But . . .

There were colored lights all around, beyond them a spectacular view of Manhattan.

There were tables and chairs, a well-stocked bar, platters of food, even an iPod charging in its charger.

I had raw veggies, a little apple tart kind of thing, some fruit, some nice cold ham.

I fixed myself a bourbon; sat at one of the tables overlooking the city.

It was magical.

Afterward, I treated myself to a slice at Smiling Pizza, one of my favorite places.

The rain was now coming down outside, yet I was dry. I felt very lucky.

But they had given me a reheated slice.

And so, the spell was broken.

So, I now have a venue -- The Counting House, daily at 12:50pm,

However, I'm now dealing with the Fringe programme department's resistance to including my listing at this late date.

I know from experience that they can still add a show to the programme if they want to and that they've done it many times, when they've wanted to.

I also know that I antagonized the guy who runs the programme department in previous years by playing (necessary) "check is in the mail" games in order to get listed despite insufficient funds.

Oh, pardon.

The programme guy, in an e-mail to me this morning, wrote, regarding this factor, "We don't hold grudges at the Fringe.."

Well, I guess that's it then. Couldn't possibly be a grudge.

Eyes itchy.

Nose stuffed.

Sleepy from medication. Just wanna be left alone.

Knock on the door -- roommate needs something.

Knock on the door -- roommate wants something.

Knock on the door -- roommate has to get something.

Knock on the door - roommate wants to know something.

. . . Oh, sorry. Distracted for a minute. Roommate had to tell me something I neither wanted nor needed to know.

I'm going out where the air is filled with allergens that will make me feel worse than I do now.

Where there are people everywhere you turn.

And I can be left alone.

seemed to think I meant, in yesterday's post, that I had never before understood anyone's perspective apart from my own.

Of course, I was referring to a specific set of circumstances where the other party's attitude was upsetting me, partly because I just didn't like it, but largely because I couldn't understand how someone who had experienced so many of the same things that I had could come to such a different conclusion about them (and me).

I still don't think the other person is right. Quite the opposite. But I was able to figure out how a person in this situation could come to those conclusions and that took me out of the realm of "I just don't get it"-instigated hyperventilation.

By the way, this might be a good time for me to mention what should be obvious, but from the flack I've gotten, must not be: This blog is my perspective.

I am honest here but it's an honest accounting based on the way I see things, not a documentarian's clean rendering of events from an outside vantage point (which may be impossible to achieve in any event).

Someone told me recently that it's not all about me; that it's very rarely about me.

Well, not here.

Here, it's always about me.

This is the one corner of the world where my perspective, by definition, prevails. (And that's just in the Andrew J. Lederer blog. Even the main Chortle blog diminishes my primacy. Just the other day, one of the other bloggers unfairly decided to make my whining look trivial by getting sick.)

but yesterday, after writing about remembering things properly (and before the allergies required stupefying medication), I was walking through the sunny, Spring-colored, tree-dappled edge of the government office section of Manhattan, when suddenly, the other side of an issue that's been disturbing me for days became clear to me.

All of a sudden, I could see how and why someone could see things or feel differently about something than me.

It didn't fix things; didn't change the actual circumstances of my life at all.

. . . But I felt better.

in the last couple of days, to remember real images of London -- vivid summonings of places there -- for the first time since I returned to the States two months ago.

It's like, "I remember now."

But until the other day, I was simply in my New York life and remembered England intellectually but not with any resonance.

I didn't need any -- it had just happened and other stuff was happening here and now.

Question is, do memories always return? The real memories, not the stories we've crafted to protect ourselves and guide our daily lives in what we've decided are the best and most productive ways?

Or do people really forget the way chunks of their lives actually felt and instead, separated from the distractions of reality by internal blinders, live as if their belatedly-created narrative was the whole truth?

so I could use them as fodder for my blog and storytelling shows.

I tried to explain that it's not true, that blogs are what you get when you don't get what you want; that I want to be happy, that I want love, that I want success, that I want it all. That those things can be hard to obtain but that stories are easy to come by.

Not sure if I got through, though.

Anyway . . .

I had a very upsetting experience recently, which engendered in me feelings similar to those which followed the death of someone close to me. (Fortunately, this time it was only the death of a dream.)

There was a family dinner that night and, as had been the case when the person close to me died, I was funny and charming and ate my gefilte fish (I might not have had gefilte fish the last time) and was generally normal to the people around me, while simultaneously feeling a great loss inside.

After dinner, I walked downtown along the East River rather than heading for the subway 'cause I needed to think and I needed to feel.

The moon was high. There was a quality to the night that was part crystalline and part suffused. The man-made mountains of the city seemed composed largely of light, both sharp and soft.

I wanted to keep walking; to walk across the Queensboro Bridge before taking the G train home; to see the city from a great height and the Manhattan skyline as it receded into the distance; to be alone, both in and above my city, as I worked out my fate and made sense of my pain.

But the pedestrian entry to the bridge was two avenue blocks further west than I'd hoped and by the time I got to it, it made sense to just take the nearby Brooklyn-bound F.

I mean, we were talking about a lot of extra walking.

However, in movies and stuff, the guy in pain always walks across the bridge and I knew it would look good in my blog.

So, I headed up the ramp toward that long trudge across the river and home.

How does one keep from bring a bad person? In effect, if not in intent?

How do you reconcile your own needs with the needs of others? When are others needs more important than your own?

Who decides this?

How much can you bend to to others' determinations without betraying the lesser-known but very important commandment (or strong suggestion), "Don't be a schmuck"?

And if you live in a world where assumptions seem against you in the first place, is there any way you can win?

Assert your own prerogatives and people will see you as wrong. Yield to others' perceptions and you throw away that small, undeniable bit of you.

And when you do that -- or when I do that -- the "others" don't seem to care that much anyway.

Except perhaps to feel a kind of victory.

And, if possible, even more right.

The kind of thing you might use to rip open a deer.

So, don't judge me.

have all been "talked" out and I will not wallow in them today. Instead, here's a thing that's been kicking around my brain for a bit. (I wonder if it has resonance for anyone else.)

I've recently had reason to reflect upon the time a woman with whom I had a complicated relationship was -- in the grip of certain psychiatric issues -- brandishing a large, extremely lengthy knife at me, menacingly. Ultimately, I found myself hurling her across the room to ensure my safety, even my continued survival

I knew she had serious back problems but I guess it had to be done. However, under the circumstances, I have to admit that I enjoyed it a little.

Anyway, I have, if not physically, of course, been on the other end of the hurl.

And I have to wonder . . .

Just how much pleasure is being felt by the hurler?

Smells like summer outside, though.

and it couldn't come at a more appropriate time as someone who's been very important to me in recent months seems to be passing me over.

Who put the ram's blood on my door?

(Charlton Heston dies and all hell breaks loose.)

So, rather than being part of the "Edinburgh Comedy Festival", which seemed a real possibility, I am now part of no comedy festival.

I don't regret waiting and not contacting other venues, however, as that would have been contrary to the notion that I sincerely wanted to make an arrangement that would make good on a debt.

I did consider asking Alex Petty for a slot at The Counting House when it became available a couple days ago, but then I risked alienating Peter Buckley Hill, to whom I have also been quietly trying to prove a point, that I am not merely an opportunistic venue-seeker, rather a believer in higher ideals.

Actually, I am an opportunistic venue seeker and a believer in higher ideals.

Earlier this year, I asked Peter for a slot at the Canon's Gait, where I've worked twice before, and only the Canon's Gait, because, quite frankly, it was the only one of his venues that seemed suitable to my needs. (Now my needs are simply to have a venue -- oh, how the world has turned.) He rejected my request because, among other things, he felt I was not a "team player".

That's not entirely true but certainly Peter and his "Free Fringe" do not take priority over professional concerns when I'm making Edinburgh plans. Also, when I went with Laughing Horse's "Free Festival" last year, rather than Peter's operation, I knew neither the extent nor the actual nature of the rift between the two.

Even now, I have no idea who's "right". It's entirely possible Alex said or did something truly terrible to Peter (or not) but I've not been made privy to any of the details. I do, however, believe that Alex seriously exaggerated the merits of Berlin, the venue I was in last year, so my orientation in the realm of free venues has turned increasingly toward Peter. (An orientation it became easy to maintain when Alex lost his most compelling venues).

Whatever.

To prove my essential goodness (though I don't think I should be required to prove it), I decided I wouldn't even investigate Laughing Horse opportunities for this year. I didn't say anything about it. I just figured it would ultimately send its own message.

So with free venues off the table (but no money) , I resurrected a plan I'd submitted to a major venue two years ago which would have paid them back money I owed them without upfront cash from me. (A win-win.)

They weren't interested then, but as I said in my previous post, they were, they said, interested now.

Well, that interest was apparently not enough to make it a reality. And I'm not fool enough to have missed the potential downside of waiting for the deal to come through. Still, I didn't want to appear anything less than sincere (which I was), so except for a note asking what was going on because another potential venue had come into the picture (The Counting House, which I never inquired about but, after seeing it had come available and with the major deal still in limbo the day before the deadline, I figured maybe I should), I kept myself available to the last and beyond. ( I did submit notions to a couple of other venues but for a show other than the one I'd held for the major venue and those proposals remained simply proposals.)

Anyway, in case I had to make a last-minute play for The Counting House, I reached out to a name comic close to Peter Buckley Hill, to see what his opinion was of the Peter/Alex thing. Was I being a fool, I asked in a note tho him, for having resisted contacting Alex? Did he, as a friend of Peter's, think that Peter was being unfair to people and that I should do what was right for me? Maybe this guy knew something I didn't that would help me judge this thing.

Well, if he did, he didn't tell me, having failed to respond to my inquiry, though we had exchanged messages about something else just days earlier.

So, on the day of the Fringe programme deadline, while trying to prove my good character on two fronts, with the possibility of venuelessness looming, I had to decide whether to antagonize Peter Buckley Hill by trying to get one of the Counting House slots. (And they were apparently going fast.)

Except it wasn't just a Peter/Alex thing. What about Peter's influential friends (who would never do their own shows in a free venue but whose integrity is apparently not in question)? Could I risk antagonizing them?.

My storytelling show needs a continuing supply of guest acts. What would happen if some of the "hippest" were unavailable to me?

So, no venue.

Man Without a Venue.

"The Man With No Venue"

(Cue Ennio Morricone music here.)

I made an offer in good faith to one of the major Edinburgh venues that was designed, in a way that worked for me me but was very favorable to them, to pay back an outstanding debt.

They said they were interested but, since then, nothing has been forthcoming except the barest contact necessary to keep me waiting for a solid offer in return.

Well, you know, deadline for the Fringe programme is theoretically tomorrow and I've thought for a while that I might end up getting screwed.

But, as I said, I made my offer in good faith, so I decided to wait 'til the (perhaps) bitter end, regardless of consequences.

I may be left venueless or outside the programme, but no one will be able to say I didn't go out of my way to make good on this debt.

Feels strange. Like I'm writing somebody else's adventures instead of my own.

Anyway, I was inducted into the Chinese Entertainers Hall of Fame, yesterday and . . .

(Hey! That didn't happen to me.)

I see that the Cheyenne Diner, one of the last of the real New York diners, has closed and, though I thought about it, I never went there.

New York, as it was, is vanishing, replaced by a whole other city, and I never really got to know the old one.

Been to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden twice lately, though.

Every year, I think about going but don't generally get there 'til the Magnolia Garden is essentially gone, its remaining blooms browning on the branches. But this year, I've seen the trees as they approach full glory, watched the members of a wedding framed by their petals, been imbued by their sweet, somewhat narcotic scent.

Why can't there be a city parks department for things like shops and buildings and lifestyles and historical/cultural moments that preserves and maintains the world for us to visit when we get around to it, maybe with free admission on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings?

How come some guy is allowed to build a multi-story building in a place where I've yet to have a hamburger?

-focused.

-obsessed.

-involved.

These are usually used as negative descriptions.

But people are naturally self-oriented, aren't they? It would be a disfunction if they were not. The problem arises when people see things from inside a prism of self-focus and don't balance that against anything else.

Well, someone, somewhere must have found a stash of these prisms and given them to the people I know.

They would say I'm the one in that prism, but that's just the prism talking.

This post is not necessarily about you.

Dogs are not really our best friends because they can't talk to us. For that, we are forced to seek people.

Or maybe dogs are man's best friends because they can't talk.

I mean if they did, what would they say to us? Would it be as confounding and unsettling as what people say?

Maybe they would say, "I'd really like to kill and eat a meaty animal." Would you want a friend who said something like that?

Or maybe, "Why don't you lick my balls for a while?" A little familiar, don't you think? (Under most circumstances.)

So, we're stuck with people.

Who are really not good friends at all.

(Maybe it would be better if they barked.)

The vivid dream I had toward the end of the night was of me reading a magazine article. The visual was a close-up of a page in a magazine and I was reading the article.

This is my fantasy life.

I don't even think it was an entertaining feature article. I think it was news-related.

At least it had an illustration. But more of a chart kinda thing than a real illo.

It had color, though.