He Knew All The Words

I just heard the sad news that German choreographer Pina Bausch has passed away. She was 68 years old. I love her theater pieces and her choreography and never missed her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, when they came to New York. I hope the company will continue to perform her works — and tour with them.

I saw her wonderful production of Gluck’s Orfee et Eurydice at Paris Opera in 2005, which was the best combination of dance and opera in a single production that I’ve ever seen. This past December I brought my parents and Patsy to BAM to see her company’s Bamboo Blues — and made three new Bausch fans out of them. Here is BAM’s trailer for that production, followed by a clip from a much earlier production….

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[mobile]BAM’s Bamboo Blues trailer

Cafe Müller clip[/mobile]

If you’ve bookmarked “blog.davidzaza.com” you’ll want to update that bookmark to simply “davidzaza.com.” It’s been a long while coming, but this site needed to be refreshed. I’ve abandoned the bright pink background to make for easier reading. If you miss it, go to the link in the right-column navigation called “Archive of Pre-2009 site.” All the old stuff is there.

In redesigning the site I’ve also changed platforms. I’ve switched from Movable Type to WordPress, and I have to say I’m very impressed with WordPress. It’s easy to use, very flexible, and a heck of a lot faster. And it allows me add a few nice features I couldn’t before.

First of all, everything is all on one page. No more separate sections. The right-column navigation features links to me and others elsewhere on the web, a search feature if you’re looking for a particular thing I wrote in an entry, an archive of past entries archived by month, and a tag cloud. Yes, finally, the entries will be tagged. If you want to see only entries about family (or politics, or photos), click the appropriate tag. The tag cloud shows which tags are most used by making them larger.

Images, too, will no longer have their own section. As I’ve been doing for the last year or so, I’ll be posting a few images within individual entries, and then linking to complete galleries of images at my MobileMe account. Apple has simply made it too easy for me to upload those galleries from my computer for me to try to do the heavy-handed photo-editing and individual uploading of images I used to do. Furthermore, images in the blog entries are now in “Lightbox,” which is a format that allows for small thumbnails that open up onto same-page full-size images. Take a look at the 40th-Birthday entry below, and you’ll see that when you click on an image a large black background opens and the image scales up. You can click on the right side of an image to go to the next image, click the left side of the image to go to the previous image, or click the close box at the bottom to return to the blog.

The best new feature for those of you who have both boring meetings and mobile devices: this blog is now mobile optimized. If you have an iPhone or a Blackberry or some other web-browsing phone, the site will look something like this:

Another feature is that comments will now have to be approved by me before they appear on the public site. This will prevent the spam comments that I’ve often received and which then I have to go back and delete. I promise I’ll be quick to approve comments, because I know sometimes you all address comments to each other….

In terms of content, nothing on my end is changing, with the exception that I’m going to try to have a few guest bloggers at various times. I know so many interesting and smart and funny and talented people, it seems a shame to keep them all to myself. More on that as it develops.

I hope you like it. The new layout is more straightforward and much more mainstream blog-like. But I’m 40 now, not some naive upstart who’s looking for anything fancy. So there it is. There may be additional design tweaks over the next couple of months as I get a feel for the new layout… Thanks for reading!

This past Thursday I saw Camera Obscura at Webster Hall. They were terrific. It took a few songs for them to warm up, but a few songs in they were really on fire. They played my favorite song–James–and then even better, for their encore they played one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs–Tougher Than The Rest. Awesome!

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Me, at 40….. [Click all images for larger; Lots more pictures of the party can be found here…][/nonmobile]

Well, I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. And I don’t feel any different, so I guess I’m okay.

My parents came for five days, and we had a great time. Besides my party we had nothing planned, so we were free to float around the city and enjoy some relaxing time together. We went to the movies, we went to the Met, we ate and drank with friends, we cooked at home. Fun!

I received so many wonderful cards, emails, Facebook notes, calls, texts, presents, drinks, and general well-wishes that there can be no doubt that I am more loved than any person deserves. And lord knows I love being the center of attention so it was an especially gratifying week!

I booked the evening of June 3 at B-Flat, which is an authentic bar, right down in Tribeca near my office. The B-flat guys–all of them but especially Shin and Takaachi–are terrific in the extreme and they really helped make the party a success. The food was delicious, but more important, the drinks were absolutely perfect. These guys are like chemists behind that bar–they know exactly how to make a cocktail so that while you’re drinking it it’s the best cocktail ever made and as soon as it’s gone you’re wanting another!

I think about 40 people showed up–friends, colleagues, and family. My folks, of course, were up from North Carolina, and Stephanie and Joe flew in from Atlanta for a just-over-12-hour jaunt through the city. But the surprise was that Adrienne popped up from Orlando, and in her inimitable style arrived as the first guest at the party and made my day right there and then.

Patsy made me a cake–two actually: one round layer cake to look pretty and then a larger rectangular sheet to feed the masses. It was a yellow butter cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting. Are you seeing a pattern there? She used eight pounds of butter in the production of it. Oh my. Last time Patsy baked me a birthday cake was for my 21st birthday. In the days after this year’s party we were talking about all the different details of the event and Patsy mentioned making the cake for my 50th birthday. Shut up! Jeez!

We started the day at Balthazar for breakfast with Mark Fox. Lovely as always. Mark had to miss the party because of work, so he and Elizabeth joined us for a post-party family supper at Landmarc. It was awesome up until the point I spilled bone marrow all over my (extremely expensive) jacket that I bought in Paris. I almost cried, but pulled myself together, removed the jacket, dabbed my shirt with some water and went back to celebrating. We got home pretty late, and I opened presents and cards.

My parents bought me a fantastic ring from David Yurman. It’s beautiful, and just to my taste. It’s big and bold and I’ve received tons of compliments on it these past few weeks. Other booty collected includes two–yes two!–big-ass iPods, a tie, lots of champagne, gorgeous flowers, sunglasses, chocolate, dinner invitations, opera invitations, and a pair of fabulous cufflinks. It was quite a haul.

So yeah, I’m 40. Kind of freaks me out to be honest. But, as they say, it’s better than the alternative!

Lots more pictures of the party can be found here…

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Special bonus feature: While I was in Ohio last week I was shown a picture of myself when I was, uh, slightly younger. I once was skinny, and it seems I used to tan:

Maria Catullo and David Zaza dancing at Jerry Zaza’s bar “The Belmont,” “The Shadows Lounge” sometime in the 70s

I have been rather silent on Obama’s complete and utter abandonment of LGTB issues. All the promises and declarations of support have turned out, so far, to be wholly empty. Until last week, that is, when his administration argued in court in support of the constitutionality of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” and therein compared gay relationships to incestuous ones. I know he wants to be “bi-partisan” and all, but using failed Republican anti-gay talking points is really crossing the line, don’t you think?

So I was delighted to read this blog entry at Americablog. It ends with this righteous demand: “No more empty statements of ‘support.’ No more explanations as to how powerless you are to get anything done. We want action. You’re the leader of the free world. Start acting like it.” A-fucking-men.

PS. Also check out another important and informative entry at Americablog.

UPDATED 6/16/09 12 noon to add:

Once again, Howard Dean gets it right:

I spent a glorious week indulging in family fun and selfish birthday extravaganzas (more on all that soon!). But history and politics rolled on without even tipping their hats! I just watched the president’s speech that he gave yesterday in Cairo. I am very moved by it, and I remain convinced that we elected the right person at the right time. The speech is well-constructed–as always with Obama–and it builds to an ending that allows for the whole to be more than the sum of its parts. If you haven’t watched it, please do:

I do not want to see this president turn too far outward at this point–we have far too many domestic issues to address. But so far he has proven his ability to handle more than one task at a time. This speech gives me hope–for the first time in a long long time–that something can actually move forward on the Israel/Palestine issue. (I’m still pessimistic, but for once I actually have hope). More importantly, I think a speech like this truly indicates Obama’s commitment to changing the awful course of violence and stupidity that our previous president set us on. Finally, I should note that this speech, which was completely addressed to religious peoples, gave me, a firm non-believer, some confidence that tolerance actually stands a chance of survival in our world. Please god I hope that’s true.