Elvis has a new therapist, his name is Dr. Faber-Castell

A strange thing happened this weekend. Elvis and Emma Lee were stuck in Brooklyn, working at the restaurant, breaking some hearts, bruising some shins, and slogging through a nine-hundred page Michener novel…the usual… when Elvis had a bit of a panic attack. Itshouldn’t have been a big deal: they were just off work, and feeling okay, kinda sleepy and bummed out to be inside all the time, not sure what they were doing with their Saturday night because nine of their top ten were all out of town, either to new residences in other states or the outerbanks or Israel, and a boy that shouldn’t have been a big deal was being a big deal in Emma Lee’s brain, when it hit like a ton of cinderblocks. It was a profound sense of something like devastation; Elvis wrote “devastation” on the wall. That helped a little—much more than talking to assorted well-intentioned girlfriends on the telephone—so they decided to draw a picture about it with their favorite Faber Castells. The results, pictured above, did the trick. Elvis feels so much better.

Thanks you, colored pencils. And a big hat tip to Ed Ruscha.

The rockstars next door, and the king in your pocket

A band that says yea is on the radio (to be distinguished from the band that says “yeah”). The fellas of which it is comprised used to live next door to Emma Lee and Elvis. Their lofts were limned by a long hallway. Their walls were drywall, hardly ligneous material enough to keep their band practice from traveling across the building and into Emma Lee’s larder, where her roomate was invariably sorting dry beans or doing other money-saving measures (he was in grad school). Emma Lee was loath to complain about the noise (they threw good parties), and it was not so bad as to produce lassitude, so she settled into conversation with her second, always loquacious, roommate, and waited for it to end. Limpid he was not, he always had some sort of litany to unfurl, turning to litotese and the more obscure corners of the lexicon on a whim. Labile was the name of his game, he went from laggard to a manic cat in the blink of an eye.

The band that says yea was full of latent talent, although at the time, they struck Emma Lee as your usual libertine twenty-something dudes. She maintained this position right up until she saw the fellows, preening leonine, on the front page of the NYT arts section! Then, she listed towards their favor: it wasn’t an act, these boys had a lien on the bigtime. She apologized in her head for any legerdemains she’d thought, and promised to never call them “those lilliputian chicos across the hall” again.

The elderkind of Bedford and Elvis’s I’s.

The test is looming, noontime tomorrow. Elvis has become so inured to studying for the damn thing, he’s not sure what he’ll do with the new found freedom. Perhaps he’ll inveigh ETS for putting him through such horror, or unleash an invective against the summer’s sun for making studying so hard. It would be impolitic to budget that he’ll get any real work done tomorrow after the immured testing session, better to immolate the afternoon for relaxation. He’ll have a few hours interregnum between the test and dinner with the Lizzach, perhaps he’ll inveigle down Fulton Street Mall—he’s taking the test on Livingston Street, after all—interpolating himself between I Heart NY t-shirt vendors and the Obama-for-president pin man.

What can he do impecuniously? Emma Lee wants them to get pedicures, but at about $1.50 a toe, Elvis points out that would be improvident. Imbibing beverages could be equally costly, although Burning Man has offered to buy jugs of martini. If he wanted to keep himself from insolvency, he could peddle back up to the burg and sit down with the imperious queen of the former Pennylick’s. The matron of North 8th and Bedford sits imperturbable on their white bench just about every day. Imponderable she is not—she owns a whole assortment of inimitable silk moomoos, and wears fashion jewelry enough to sink most small crafts. He has yet to see her eat the deserts sold inside, but she makes good use of their bench and importunes anyone within earshot to share the plank with her. Inevitably, the conversation turns to the Brooklyn youth’s impiety, each person under 30 walking down the street is an instant ingrate. Under six are occasionally granted leniency enough to be ingenuous, but even they may be held accountable for the insuperable hipness of their parents. She is in intractable in her opinion of the wayward generation; her unrelenting assails continue until impuissance sinks into the listener. Her intransigence, insipid more often than not, makes even the vegan ice cream taste bland. Next.

In other money-free options, Elvis and Emma Lee could look for the bunny-bum. He has been seen around the neighborhood, launching imprecations and impetuous outbursts to any and all passersby. He once greeted Emma Lee with a breathy, “Hello, lover,” but his imperious tone and impertinent presumption that the two had known each other intimately did nothing to change
her inviolable position of relative sexual innocence. When she did not respond he turned irascible and scuttled away in his bunny slippers. That is correct, bunny slippers. The man inveterately wears plush rabbit foot coverings, which round out an outfit of American Apparel metallic knits—an invidious fashion choice for a rotund, aging man such as he. The next time she saw him, he was insouciant to her earlier rebuff; he smiled and leaned in, “Hello, Miss  Transcendental.” An allusion to David Lynch’s recent lecture series? To her inimical air walking down the street? Some impalpable connection she has with a higher being? TBD, Elvis, TBD.

Two rivers, one bridge, and the letter F

This Sunday morning, Emma Lee and Elvis were feeling fettered to their desk, so they forswore their practice essay and went for a run to the Hudson. Reaching the Williamsburg Bridge was the facile leg of the journey, as they rose the acclivity they got a bird’s-eye view of the fallow lots of north Brooklyn. While not quite primed for tomatoes, they were ready for some plantings–of the more fatuous, condominial variety. Soho’s fulsome streets felt less excessive before 9 am, the only souls frittering their time away on the cobblestone streets were foreign tourists who knew no better. The fractious cabbies, the fulminating stroller moms, the functionary doormen… all were still in bed. No jewerly peddlers foisting their wears, no evangelicals fomenting on west broadway, no factitious blondes plowing down the sidewalk with their Gucci bags. All was calm, and then they reached the Hudson.

The return trip took some additional forebearance, as Emma Lee and Elvis made thier way through Chinatown. There the streets were already fructified, vendors peddling apples and lilies, fecund and florid displays. Emma lee weaved through the floes of Grand Street and back to the bridge’s Delancy-street base. Up and over, the felicitous jog returned her to the burg, all before the febrile weather could set in.

Elvis is on vacation.

He and Emma Lee are in Wilmington, NC this week. They’ll give you a summary of their shenanigans upon return to Bklyn. In the meantime, kisses all around.

62.Grab your Kiffeyeh, it’s time for the desert

Elvis spent the whole week watching Emma Lee write a chapter about the DESERT. Specifically, Israel and Egypt in the mid 1950s. They went to the NYPL yesterday and read “Rivers in the Desert,” a history of the Negev desert settlements, from cover to cover. It was really neat, Elvis especially liked the idea of the wadi.

It’s hot enough to be the desert in Brooklyn this week. HEAT WAVE. Good thing that Elvis and Emma Lee are off to go camping in the Rockaways. Wish them luck!

elvis is so busy he wants to spit. #46

Elvis has too much work. It makes handling this elephant look easy:

As a side note, Emma Lee says drawing the elephant was easier than drawing Elvis.

elvis goes multigenerational. 35

Poppa Presley arrive last night, in anticipation of Emma Lee’s 25th birthday. Seeing Emma Lee all growned up, Elvis got a little sentimental about youth. Here’s pic #35:

Emma Lee, on the other hand, is a little less into the babies. Overheard at a recent dinner: “I don’t really like babies. I mean, I like them for a few minutes at a time, and I’m sure that in ten years I’ll want to have them and make them cookies, but right now I prefer the company of dogs.”

She may have scared her dining companion with that one.

Poppa P took Emma Lee to Aurora last night, Egg this morning. Hello, cholesterol! How delicious you are!

elvis is going to be late today

Elvis stayed out until 4 last night, had a 10 am conference call, and has to go to the restaurant now.

And Emma Lee skinned her knee, and decided Frank was no longer a friendly ghost.

Big sigh.

30. industrious elvis

Elvis and Emma Lee finished their book proposal, all but edits and 70 plus pages. Whew. And they made a cake, for J. Chigao’s graduation, and another, for Mikaela’s birthday. And they are doing laundry right now. Busy as bees, those two.

Here’s the alliterative cake (chocolate, coffee, cream cheese and cherries):

After torrents yesterday, it’s sun sun sun for Saturday? What does that mean? Picnics. Elvis got out the Hawaiian shirt and Emma Lee put on a dress full of ladybugs.

Happy Spring.