BY REV. JEN MILLER | As my columns grow increasingly more depressing, I’ve decided to go one step further and entitle this one “Everything is a Disaster!”
If you read my last column, you are aware that I was evicted and am writing this as a homeless person, staying with friends and trying to remain relatively sane while desperately missing my boyfriend, Joe, who is being treated for cancer. My life is like a combination of “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Midnight Cowboy.”
At least I’m not Sir Thomas Hanks. He’s been captured by Somali pirates, been stranded on a desert island, once got AIDS, had to dress as a woman in order to find affordable housing, and now he has to land a crashing plane safely! My life is a breeze in comparison. Still, let’s focus on the many ways my life has recently been a disaster.
MY ART SHOW WAS A DISATER! | When a gallery called Chinatown Soup (16 Orchard St.) offered me a chance to resurrect my Troll Museum and show my art, I was ecstatic. I threw 600 troll dolls and several paintings in my roommate’s car and headed from Brooklyn back to the street I’d just been evicted from. However, the gallerist didn’t show up for the installation. Someone there let us in and a group of Art Stars began to paint the walls psychedelically (like the original Troll Museum), while hanging shelves in 100-degree weather, with no AC. As with the entire account of this particular debacle (and the general narrative of my life), I maintain that I had already established, with the gallerist, that I could paint the walls however I liked; but when she arrived 10 hours later, she flipped out. I then flipped out.
There was no laminated price list, no bio, no CV. I’ve been working in art galleries since I was 20 and she didn’t seem to understand: An art gallery works for the artist, not the other way around. Exhausted, I headed home, only to return the next day to find my beloved two-headed troll on the floor. “Where is the psychedelic pillar that held my Double-Nik?” I asked, to which the gentleman “working” there replied, “Oh. She painted it white.”
Are you kidding me?!! Who censors a f**king pillar? Despite the ugly white pillar, the opening was packed. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito even showed up — but there was still no price list, only a donation box (that I made). Memo to Chinatown Soup: Artists need to make money so they can eat. The exhibition stayed up for a little over a week, until they randomly started taking it down. When I arrived to discover this, I also found that my handmade Troll Coloring Books (that go for 20 bucks) were missing. “What happened to my coloring books?” I asked the dude there. “Oh. I just gave them away.”
WHAT?
After the debacle, I found out that Chinatown Soup is largely funded by NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts; nyfa.org) — who now owe me not only a long overdue grant, but, also, money for the cost of 10 “Jumbo Troll Coloring Books.”
MY CAT, TENNEY, IS A DISASTER! |One day about four years ago, when I was working at The Tenement Museum, it was my day off. They called and said, “We have a situation.” Apparently, this demonic little stray panther had found a way to get its noggin stuck between a pillar (another pillar!) and the front door. They “unstuck” his head and brought him inside, where he proceeded to piss on everything in the store (nice work, pal). I put up 50 posters and no one responded. I carried him everywhere, looking for his human, an adventure that led to me being chased out of a Chinatown gambling den by a woman wielding a frying pan. So he became my cat, Tenney. He didn’t purr for the first year I had him…and then I met Joe. Tenney started purring, and I started purring. Yet Tenney remained a wild young thing. Whilst staying here in Brooklyn and in the midst of my art show, he went missing. I was beside myself.
A massive cat hunt was soon underway. I’d just lost my job, my home, and almost lost my boyfriend, Joe — and I was not about to lose my goddamn cat. And then something magical happened. Joe came to visit. He could only stay for less than 48 hours. At one point, I was sleeping and Joe got up to pack his things and go, when guess who waltzed up the stairs to say hello and goodbye? My little juvie of a feline. My roommate, Jen, knocked on my door. Joe and her were beaming with joy. “Look what we found,” Jen said. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt happier. But I also knew that, like Tenney, I wanted to say hello — but I never wanted to say goodbye.
SEA-MONKEYS ARE A DISASTER! | OK, this isn’t “recent” — but since we’re on the topic of pets, how is it that, as children, we were all duped into believing they wore little crowns and Doris Day hairdos? My Sea-Monkeys didn’t wave to me; they just died almost immediately upon hatching. Sea-Monkeys are crustaceans designed to teach children about death.
MR. LOWER EAST SIDE (THE LAST ONE WAS A DISASTER!) | For the past 17 years, I have hosted an annual male beauty pageant known as “The Mr. Lower East Side Pageant.” Last year, both venues I had previously booked cancelled for various reasons. So, on the day of the pageant, I was forced to find a new venue. I ran around Downtown and found a bar located in Chinatown, above a bus station — and told them I was having a “birthday party.” They were down with it, and, at first, everything went swimmingly. Super Bad Brad kicked off the night with an amazing rendition of “Kung Fu Fighting” — but then, noted Art Star Master Lee took the stage. For some reason (that I will never discern), two women took off their clothes, revealing themselves to be painted in wild body paint and accosted Master Lee, actually trying to beat up the black-belt comedian.
In the fracas, a cabinet was broken and all 87 members of the audience were thrown out. To their credit, as the manager screamed, “All of you get out now!” he asked me, “Do you want a beer?” I replied in the affirmative. So Claude Debris, who won well over a year ago (after, for the talent portion, lifting computers that were tied to his wenis while calling his mother), has remained the Monarch. But the pageant is coming back on October 22nd, 8 p.m. at Footlight Bar (465 Seneca Ave.) Years ago, someone predicted that the pageant would eventually end up in Queens. They were right. Why? Because the Lower East Side is a disaster.
But, while everything is a disaster, I still have my cat, my dog, and Joe. I just hope we don’t ever have “President Trump.”
