Most Unpleasant Thing Seen Today
There's a men's homeless shelter near the hospital where I work and there are invariably a few ragged-looking guys loitering on the sidewalk outside, pretty much any time of day. This is unnerving when I'm walking home late at night, but I've never had a peep of trouble so I don't think much about it any more. Tonight, though, there was a guy standing on the sidewalk swearing, screaming his head off at a couple of cops who were out of their cruiser, parked nearby. The most unpleasant thing about it was that while he was standing there verbally abusing them with everything he had, the two cops just kind of stood there passively, taking it all in and not getting mad or anything. I've heard homeless people complain about being ignored, but I didn't realize just how hard it must be to get anybody to pay attention to you.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Unintented consequences
Or, great features of city life that lead to un-great features of city life.
1) New York is a walking city. That's a great thing, I love walking, and urbanists often talk up (legitimately) the health benefits of walking as a benefit of city life. Indeed, I have noticed that I do not see as many obese people on the street here as I'm used to seeing in other places I've lived, and I've lost a bit of weight myself since I moved here. There seems to be an unfortunate correlary to this benefit, however: an alarming rate of shavetail among New York's young men. Yes, fit young men who, in another setting, might feature a nice pair of buttocks with which to brighten the scenery, instead have only a disappointing sag in the seat of their pants. They have, it appears, walked their asses clean off. I have become so used to droopy-drawered shavetails being the norm that I scarcely even look anymore, and that IS a shame. If a nice tush WERE to pass by, I'd probably miss it. I have even noticed a few instances of the extremely rare female variant of shavetail, and let me tell you, whereas male shavetail is merely disappointing, female shavetail is downright chilling. One more way in which New York life hardens one's soul, I guess.
2) The smoking ban in restaurants and bars has been in effect in New York City for nearly three years and by most reports has been popular even with smokers. I always kind of thought that people ought to be able to smoke in bars, but I admit that it's pretty nice not to walk into that stinky haze when I go out, and nicer still not to wake up to it the day after on my clothes. Fortunately for me, I am not a nicotine addict, so there was really nothing to lose on my part. But the downside of the smoking ban is that it pushed all those who ARE jonesing for nic out on the sidewalk. And outside of popular bars or nightlife areas, they're all over the sidewalk in big, stinky, loud, drunken messes that block sidewalk traffic. A particular annoyance is this one bar that I pass on the way to my bank. It's apparently a hot spot for singles of the bridge-and-tunnel persuasion who work in midtown. So when I pass by, I not only have to hold my nose against the smoke, but against the similarly smelly spectacle of the mating rituals of bland, midtown yuppies. To make matters worse, scaffolding has recently made it impossible to step into the street to walk around them, so I have to just hold my breath and wade right in.
Or, great features of city life that lead to un-great features of city life.
1) New York is a walking city. That's a great thing, I love walking, and urbanists often talk up (legitimately) the health benefits of walking as a benefit of city life. Indeed, I have noticed that I do not see as many obese people on the street here as I'm used to seeing in other places I've lived, and I've lost a bit of weight myself since I moved here. There seems to be an unfortunate correlary to this benefit, however: an alarming rate of shavetail among New York's young men. Yes, fit young men who, in another setting, might feature a nice pair of buttocks with which to brighten the scenery, instead have only a disappointing sag in the seat of their pants. They have, it appears, walked their asses clean off. I have become so used to droopy-drawered shavetails being the norm that I scarcely even look anymore, and that IS a shame. If a nice tush WERE to pass by, I'd probably miss it. I have even noticed a few instances of the extremely rare female variant of shavetail, and let me tell you, whereas male shavetail is merely disappointing, female shavetail is downright chilling. One more way in which New York life hardens one's soul, I guess.
2) The smoking ban in restaurants and bars has been in effect in New York City for nearly three years and by most reports has been popular even with smokers. I always kind of thought that people ought to be able to smoke in bars, but I admit that it's pretty nice not to walk into that stinky haze when I go out, and nicer still not to wake up to it the day after on my clothes. Fortunately for me, I am not a nicotine addict, so there was really nothing to lose on my part. But the downside of the smoking ban is that it pushed all those who ARE jonesing for nic out on the sidewalk. And outside of popular bars or nightlife areas, they're all over the sidewalk in big, stinky, loud, drunken messes that block sidewalk traffic. A particular annoyance is this one bar that I pass on the way to my bank. It's apparently a hot spot for singles of the bridge-and-tunnel persuasion who work in midtown. So when I pass by, I not only have to hold my nose against the smoke, but against the similarly smelly spectacle of the mating rituals of bland, midtown yuppies. To make matters worse, scaffolding has recently made it impossible to step into the street to walk around them, so I have to just hold my breath and wade right in.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
I Am a Big Fat Racist
And now for some gratuitous racial generalizations:
1) African-American women take the subway stairs slow. Really. Really. Slow.
2) Chinese bicycle delivery guys have a death wish.
3) Young Russian dudes dress like it's still the 80's.
4) Mexican guys really ARE pretty short.
5) Teenagers love their cell phones. Jersey chicks love their cell phones. Japanese and Korean people, I am told, seriously love their cell phones. But I have never seen anybody who loves a cell phone like an orthodox Jew. They got the bluetooth headpiece action and everything.
6) White boys look hella stupid with dreadlocks.
7) Everybody looks hella stupid with fauxhawks.
8) Caribbean ladies talk too damn loud on the subway. I like a Jamaican accent as much as anybody else, but not at 70 db. And the Dominican ladies with the spanish shouting up and down the car, oy. Shut up.
9) Somebody needs to knock the snot out of all those bratty hispanic kids on the south side.
10) I don't think it's just the language difference: Mexican charismatic preachers sound even crazier than white or black charismatic preachers.
11) Black guys are the most likely to monopolize the equipment at the gym.
12) Asian guys are the most likely to look kinda psycho when they're working out at the gym.
13) White guys are the most likely to make annoying grunting noises at the gym.
14) Working-class Italian-Americans conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
15) Jewish girls from Long Island conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
16) White gay guys in Chelsea conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
17) Yemeni grocers are dangerously excitable when the subject of the Saudi royal family comes up.
18) Chinese people make shitty Mexican food. A tip to my Eastern Hombres at the "Tortillas Grill:" I don't know if vegetable enchiladas are an authentic Mexican dish, but if they are, it's a safe bet that the ones in Mexico don't have bok choy or water chestnuts.
19) Puerto Ricans make better bagels than you'd ever imagine. I am serious.
20) I really don't like to contribute to the women/asian drivers stereotype, but I'm willing to admit that the last two times I've been afraid for my life in a car was with a Chinese woman driving. Just sayin'.
21) White people don't take their kids on the subway.
22) Indian people, apparently, don't take the subway at all.
And now for some gratuitous racial generalizations:
1) African-American women take the subway stairs slow. Really. Really. Slow.
2) Chinese bicycle delivery guys have a death wish.
3) Young Russian dudes dress like it's still the 80's.
4) Mexican guys really ARE pretty short.
5) Teenagers love their cell phones. Jersey chicks love their cell phones. Japanese and Korean people, I am told, seriously love their cell phones. But I have never seen anybody who loves a cell phone like an orthodox Jew. They got the bluetooth headpiece action and everything.
6) White boys look hella stupid with dreadlocks.
7) Everybody looks hella stupid with fauxhawks.
8) Caribbean ladies talk too damn loud on the subway. I like a Jamaican accent as much as anybody else, but not at 70 db. And the Dominican ladies with the spanish shouting up and down the car, oy. Shut up.
9) Somebody needs to knock the snot out of all those bratty hispanic kids on the south side.
10) I don't think it's just the language difference: Mexican charismatic preachers sound even crazier than white or black charismatic preachers.
11) Black guys are the most likely to monopolize the equipment at the gym.
12) Asian guys are the most likely to look kinda psycho when they're working out at the gym.
13) White guys are the most likely to make annoying grunting noises at the gym.
14) Working-class Italian-Americans conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
15) Jewish girls from Long Island conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
16) White gay guys in Chelsea conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
17) Yemeni grocers are dangerously excitable when the subject of the Saudi royal family comes up.
18) Chinese people make shitty Mexican food. A tip to my Eastern Hombres at the "Tortillas Grill:" I don't know if vegetable enchiladas are an authentic Mexican dish, but if they are, it's a safe bet that the ones in Mexico don't have bok choy or water chestnuts.
19) Puerto Ricans make better bagels than you'd ever imagine. I am serious.
20) I really don't like to contribute to the women/asian drivers stereotype, but I'm willing to admit that the last two times I've been afraid for my life in a car was with a Chinese woman driving. Just sayin'.
21) White people don't take their kids on the subway.
22) Indian people, apparently, don't take the subway at all.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Best Thing Seen Today
Stairs are usually the big bottleneck getting in and out of the subway, and you
always want to avoid getting behind wobbly old people or ladies with strollers
going up the stairs. Mothers trying to get strollers up the stairs by
themselves, especially, are a major traffic blocker, and sometimes you'll see
strangers help out by grabbing one end of the stroller while the mother takes
the other, and they ascend the stairs together. So today I'm getting off the L and
realize that I've gotten behind this petite, young latina mother with a
stroller, and just as I'm about to try to worm around and pass her, she grabs
the stroller in both hands, lifts it way up, nearly sideways, and bolts up the
stairs, taking two at a time. It wasn't a small kid, either -- at
least two years old, a toddler. I was impressed, let me tell you.
Stairs are usually the big bottleneck getting in and out of the subway, and you
always want to avoid getting behind wobbly old people or ladies with strollers
going up the stairs. Mothers trying to get strollers up the stairs by
themselves, especially, are a major traffic blocker, and sometimes you'll see
strangers help out by grabbing one end of the stroller while the mother takes
the other, and they ascend the stairs together. So today I'm getting off the L and
realize that I've gotten behind this petite, young latina mother with a
stroller, and just as I'm about to try to worm around and pass her, she grabs
the stroller in both hands, lifts it way up, nearly sideways, and bolts up the
stairs, taking two at a time. It wasn't a small kid, either -- at
least two years old, a toddler. I was impressed, let me tell you.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Questions for Public Radio Newscasters
1) Do you guys like to cultivate the image that you're dumb? I ask this because you're constantly pointing out how confusing and hard everything is. This morning, for instance, I heard a news analyst going on about how complex and conceptually tricky federalism is. Um, no it's not. It's really, really not. Warren Olney of KCRW's To The Point is one of the very worst offenders here. Every time he gets somebody on to talk about tax policy, social security, or really any policy question, he will actually interrupt his guest periodically to comment on how very confusing it all is, however will we all understand it, much less make voting decisions about it, etc. Hey Warren: if you'd shut the hell up while your guest was trying to explain it, we'd be that much more likely to understand. Stop acting like a retard. In a sense it's even more aggravating on the (few American) science shows. I love it when a scientist is on as a guest, says something perfectly clear and nontechnical in non-jargon, and the host asks him to explain it for their non-scientist listeners. By which I think he means all the dead people, pre-verbal children, and animals who are listening to the show. Because everybody else got it the first time. Tip to my radio host homies: you may be stupid, but we aren't. Shut up and let your guests talk.
2) Now that it's one of the most heavily-covered news items since the September 11th attacks, is it too much to ask that you learn how to pronounce "New Orleans?" I mean, seriously, there IS actually a correct way to say it, it's not just a matter of personal expression. People from New Orleans say "New OR-lins." Wanker northeastern newscasters who view southern culture as exotic and quaint say "New OR-lee-ans" or "New or-LEENZ." Why? If you got on nationally broadcast radio and started talkin' 'bout "IlliNOIZE" or "Shi-CAY-go" or "SEEtle" or "Santa FEE," everybody would think you were a dumbass. Know why? Because you would actually be a dumbass. Look, I'm not asking you to get all Foghorn Leghorn and start saying, like, "N'Awlins." Just say it like regular, educated, residents of the city say it: New OR-lins. That's how you say it.
3) Is it really so important that you do your station ID on time that you interrupt a guest, like, actually in the middle of a sentence? I understand that you have to manage the time and everything, but do you seriously not have enough flexibility to wait until the end of a sentence to break in?
4) Do you realize that when you decide to do a show on the big Intelligent Design "controversy" that not only are you revealing yourself to be stupid, but you're making all the rest of us stupider at the same time? Do you realize that when you have these wankers Dembsky, Behe, and whoever the hell else on, that when they talk, they're not making any sense? The first time I heard one of these shows, I realized that you don't even HAVE to know anything about evolution to argue with them, because their claims don't even stand up on simple logic. And do you realize that they just plain lie? Do you realize that when they say stuff like "Darwinism is increasingly controversial" and "scientists are finding holes in evolutionary theory" that this is equivalent to claiming the moon is made of green cheese? Could you pleeeeze stop wasting the time and dignity of actual scientists by making them feel like they need to get on the radio with these prevaricating loons just to preserve basic science literacy?
5) This a special shout-out to my man Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday. Ira, do you think we can't all tell that you're not paying any f***ing attention to your guests when they're talking? Sometimes, when I'm listening to you on Science Friday, I think about those times when I'm on my cell phone, and say, I go into the store to buy something but I don't tell the person on the other end of the phone, and for those few minutes I'm at the counter paying, there's no way I can concentrate on that AND participate in the phone conversation, and so I'm inevitably either saying, "uh huh, uh-huh" when it's not appropriate, or I'm failing to answer a question I didn't hear, and it's completely obvious that I'm not paying attention, and the person on the other end starts saying, "are you there? Is everything okay?" I listen to you, Ira, and I think about those times on the phone, and I know that I'm just as busted as you are.
6) Do you ever listen to your colleages on British and Australian public radio when they're doing a political interview and reflect on what a bunch of mewling, useless pussies you are? Haha, kidding of course. I already know the answer to that one.
7) Could you please, for the love of God, for the sake of the dear sweet little baby Jesus and all the kittens and puppies and bunnies on Earth, give it a f***ing rest with the puns? Have you ever thought of a punny headline to a news item and been able to resist using it because it was too obvious? No, I know the answer to that one, too. They're not clever, you know.
8) Do you ever reflect on why nearly all the best reporting on the war and political culture in this present ugly era has been on entertainment shows like This American Life and Fresh Air instead of news shows?
9) To my man Chris Lydon: Just between you and me, Chris, before you go on, is it a couple lines o' toot? Or a hit on ye olde crank pipe? Or just a tankertruck full of Starbuck's? Because, I mean, I get twitchy just listening to you. But I'm glad you're back on the air, baby.
1) Do you guys like to cultivate the image that you're dumb? I ask this because you're constantly pointing out how confusing and hard everything is. This morning, for instance, I heard a news analyst going on about how complex and conceptually tricky federalism is. Um, no it's not. It's really, really not. Warren Olney of KCRW's To The Point is one of the very worst offenders here. Every time he gets somebody on to talk about tax policy, social security, or really any policy question, he will actually interrupt his guest periodically to comment on how very confusing it all is, however will we all understand it, much less make voting decisions about it, etc. Hey Warren: if you'd shut the hell up while your guest was trying to explain it, we'd be that much more likely to understand. Stop acting like a retard. In a sense it's even more aggravating on the (few American) science shows. I love it when a scientist is on as a guest, says something perfectly clear and nontechnical in non-jargon, and the host asks him to explain it for their non-scientist listeners. By which I think he means all the dead people, pre-verbal children, and animals who are listening to the show. Because everybody else got it the first time. Tip to my radio host homies: you may be stupid, but we aren't. Shut up and let your guests talk.
2) Now that it's one of the most heavily-covered news items since the September 11th attacks, is it too much to ask that you learn how to pronounce "New Orleans?" I mean, seriously, there IS actually a correct way to say it, it's not just a matter of personal expression. People from New Orleans say "New OR-lins." Wanker northeastern newscasters who view southern culture as exotic and quaint say "New OR-lee-ans" or "New or-LEENZ." Why? If you got on nationally broadcast radio and started talkin' 'bout "IlliNOIZE" or "Shi-CAY-go" or "SEEtle" or "Santa FEE," everybody would think you were a dumbass. Know why? Because you would actually be a dumbass. Look, I'm not asking you to get all Foghorn Leghorn and start saying, like, "N'Awlins." Just say it like regular, educated, residents of the city say it: New OR-lins. That's how you say it.
3) Is it really so important that you do your station ID on time that you interrupt a guest, like, actually in the middle of a sentence? I understand that you have to manage the time and everything, but do you seriously not have enough flexibility to wait until the end of a sentence to break in?
4) Do you realize that when you decide to do a show on the big Intelligent Design "controversy" that not only are you revealing yourself to be stupid, but you're making all the rest of us stupider at the same time? Do you realize that when you have these wankers Dembsky, Behe, and whoever the hell else on, that when they talk, they're not making any sense? The first time I heard one of these shows, I realized that you don't even HAVE to know anything about evolution to argue with them, because their claims don't even stand up on simple logic. And do you realize that they just plain lie? Do you realize that when they say stuff like "Darwinism is increasingly controversial" and "scientists are finding holes in evolutionary theory" that this is equivalent to claiming the moon is made of green cheese? Could you pleeeeze stop wasting the time and dignity of actual scientists by making them feel like they need to get on the radio with these prevaricating loons just to preserve basic science literacy?
5) This a special shout-out to my man Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday. Ira, do you think we can't all tell that you're not paying any f***ing attention to your guests when they're talking? Sometimes, when I'm listening to you on Science Friday, I think about those times when I'm on my cell phone, and say, I go into the store to buy something but I don't tell the person on the other end of the phone, and for those few minutes I'm at the counter paying, there's no way I can concentrate on that AND participate in the phone conversation, and so I'm inevitably either saying, "uh huh, uh-huh" when it's not appropriate, or I'm failing to answer a question I didn't hear, and it's completely obvious that I'm not paying attention, and the person on the other end starts saying, "are you there? Is everything okay?" I listen to you, Ira, and I think about those times on the phone, and I know that I'm just as busted as you are.
6) Do you ever listen to your colleages on British and Australian public radio when they're doing a political interview and reflect on what a bunch of mewling, useless pussies you are? Haha, kidding of course. I already know the answer to that one.
7) Could you please, for the love of God, for the sake of the dear sweet little baby Jesus and all the kittens and puppies and bunnies on Earth, give it a f***ing rest with the puns? Have you ever thought of a punny headline to a news item and been able to resist using it because it was too obvious? No, I know the answer to that one, too. They're not clever, you know.
8) Do you ever reflect on why nearly all the best reporting on the war and political culture in this present ugly era has been on entertainment shows like This American Life and Fresh Air instead of news shows?
9) To my man Chris Lydon: Just between you and me, Chris, before you go on, is it a couple lines o' toot? Or a hit on ye olde crank pipe? Or just a tankertruck full of Starbuck's? Because, I mean, I get twitchy just listening to you. But I'm glad you're back on the air, baby.
Okayokayokay
I was away for August (more on that later) and in the intervening weeks since I've been back, I've had to contend with the new, "improved" Blogger that is no longer interested in talking to my ancient-but-beloved Mozilla (that's old-school Firefox, for you kids). I've now worked out something of a system for writing at home and posting at work, until I finally get serious about moving to OS X at home. (Yep, still using OS 9, can you believe it?). I'm insanely busy with The Big Conference looming, but I'm basically back in action now, as it were. In fact, I think I feel a proper post coming on...
I was away for August (more on that later) and in the intervening weeks since I've been back, I've had to contend with the new, "improved" Blogger that is no longer interested in talking to my ancient-but-beloved Mozilla (that's old-school Firefox, for you kids). I've now worked out something of a system for writing at home and posting at work, until I finally get serious about moving to OS X at home. (Yep, still using OS 9, can you believe it?). I'm insanely busy with The Big Conference looming, but I'm basically back in action now, as it were. In fact, I think I feel a proper post coming on...
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Strangest thing seen/heard today, but not really that strange
Sometimes the mildly strange is strange enough.
1) I'm working late tonight and just came in from getting some fresh air. The security guard at the hospital entrance was not one of the guys I'm used to seeing during the day. He was, in fact, a strikingly handsome, middle-aged guy. I'm talking head-snapping, movie star looks, but also definitely well into his 40's, with that thick, middle-aged guy build and a bit of salt in his pepper. Why is this weird, you ask? I dunno, it's just that given the elements "security guard," "really handsome," and "middle-aged," I can imagine an intersection of any two of those, but not all three. He nodded to me as I walked by. Just like they all do.
2) At the coffee shop, I overheard two guys having a lengthy and detailed discussion of strategies for dealing with traffic in... the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a weird moment of mental dissonance as the words "Dunbarton bridge" and "880 South" filtered into my consciousness. The two coastal chapters of my life are rather separate in time and thus in my thoughts, but I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that there are other people in the world who've lived in both San Francisco and New York.
Sometimes the mildly strange is strange enough.
1) I'm working late tonight and just came in from getting some fresh air. The security guard at the hospital entrance was not one of the guys I'm used to seeing during the day. He was, in fact, a strikingly handsome, middle-aged guy. I'm talking head-snapping, movie star looks, but also definitely well into his 40's, with that thick, middle-aged guy build and a bit of salt in his pepper. Why is this weird, you ask? I dunno, it's just that given the elements "security guard," "really handsome," and "middle-aged," I can imagine an intersection of any two of those, but not all three. He nodded to me as I walked by. Just like they all do.
2) At the coffee shop, I overheard two guys having a lengthy and detailed discussion of strategies for dealing with traffic in... the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a weird moment of mental dissonance as the words "Dunbarton bridge" and "880 South" filtered into my consciousness. The two coastal chapters of my life are rather separate in time and thus in my thoughts, but I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that there are other people in the world who've lived in both San Francisco and New York.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Speaking of Urban Triumphalism
This is seriously the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. After this goes through, Jetsons flying cars can't be far off.
This is seriously the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. After this goes through, Jetsons flying cars can't be far off.
Perspective
Last weekend I had the unexpected experience of attending a gay softball game. I haven't played, much less taken seriously, softball since elementary school. Anyway, my friend L- dragged me there as a good deed, I think, trying to get me to be a little more social, and he probably had a point as far as that goes. Talking to one of the players, here's the thing that struck me:
The team I saw play was part of a gay softball league based in NYC. There are, I think, about 10 people on a softball team. There are 4-8 teams per division, and there are 5 divisions in the league. Now, I realize this amounts to, at most, a few hundred people in a city of millions. But here's the thing: that's just the gay people who like to play softball, as opposed to the gay people who play some other sport (I know of a gay roadrunner's club, swimmer's club, and triathlete's club in NYC, off the top of my head). And THAT's only the gay people who like some sport enough to play it competitively as opposed to all the others out there who might be playing whatever but don't have the time or inclination. And THAT's only the gay people who LIKE sports, as opposed to those with some other social hobby.
The lesson here: there is a whole mess of gay people in New York City. The Big Island of the gay archipelago, you might say.
Last weekend I had the unexpected experience of attending a gay softball game. I haven't played, much less taken seriously, softball since elementary school. Anyway, my friend L- dragged me there as a good deed, I think, trying to get me to be a little more social, and he probably had a point as far as that goes. Talking to one of the players, here's the thing that struck me:
The team I saw play was part of a gay softball league based in NYC. There are, I think, about 10 people on a softball team. There are 4-8 teams per division, and there are 5 divisions in the league. Now, I realize this amounts to, at most, a few hundred people in a city of millions. But here's the thing: that's just the gay people who like to play softball, as opposed to the gay people who play some other sport (I know of a gay roadrunner's club, swimmer's club, and triathlete's club in NYC, off the top of my head). And THAT's only the gay people who like some sport enough to play it competitively as opposed to all the others out there who might be playing whatever but don't have the time or inclination. And THAT's only the gay people who LIKE sports, as opposed to those with some other social hobby.
The lesson here: there is a whole mess of gay people in New York City. The Big Island of the gay archipelago, you might say.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
A Much Funnier New York Blog Than Mine
www.overheardinnewyork.com
I think this is my favorite. Damn STRAIGHT you can't beat a spicy rock...
www.overheardinnewyork.com
I think this is my favorite. Damn STRAIGHT you can't beat a spicy rock...
I Did Not Know That
You can stick a big fat "?!" after each of these, as far as I'm concerned:
1) Ann Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks
2) There was an attempted fascist coup against FDR
3) George W. Bush is "sex-positive"
4) Orrin Hatch wears a mezuzah pendant around his neck
5) William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dated, back in the day.
You can stick a big fat "?!" after each of these, as far as I'm concerned:
1) Ann Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks
2) There was an attempted fascist coup against FDR
3) George W. Bush is "sex-positive"
4) Orrin Hatch wears a mezuzah pendant around his neck
5) William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dated, back in the day.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
File Under: No Shitting
This is a terribly written article and the scientist in question is rather sketchy but the basic finding of this study is pretty straightforward (ha, ha... did I just say "straight?"): If you take a bunch of guys who say they're bisexual and show them gay, dyke, and het pr0n, they mostly only pitch wood when there are boys on screen. I know, shocking, innit? I believe the investigator's next study involves determining the religious affiliation of the pope.
This is a terribly written article and the scientist in question is rather sketchy but the basic finding of this study is pretty straightforward (ha, ha... did I just say "straight?"): If you take a bunch of guys who say they're bisexual and show them gay, dyke, and het pr0n, they mostly only pitch wood when there are boys on screen. I know, shocking, innit? I believe the investigator's next study involves determining the religious affiliation of the pope.
Internet Movie Dumbass Bonanza
As we all know, there are a handful of websites that have become basic internet tools for anyone who spends much time online: Google, Mapquest, Weather.com and so forth.
If you're a movie fan, there's IMDB, the Internet Movie DataBase. I probably visit at least once a week. Where have I seen that actor before? Damn, that was a good movie - what else has that guy directed? That sort of thing. It's an excellent resource, and the more I've started to explore older and foreign films, the more I rely on it to gain some context for what I've just seen, or am considering seeing.
That's why it's such a disappointment that the forums on IMDB are filled with the biggest bunch of booger-eating morons I've ever seen. You'd think the message boards for the biggest movie-themed website out there would be crowded with tiresome art school cineastes waxing ironic, right? I wish. From what I can tell, they're full, instead, of thirteen year old wankers who expect all movies to conform to the standard of television. There is scarcely one word of considered criticism, either positive or negative, that I've seen there, and reviewers and commenters alike appear to be people who haven't actually seen very many movies. The overriding sentiment is either confusion over some obvious plot development or anger that the movie in question is not identical to some other movie the commenter liked.
When I started this post, I had big plans to surf on over and cut n' paste some examples of forum crapitude from the IMDB boards, so we could all have a chuckle but frankly, I just can't do it. I cannot read through that idiocy looking for especially retarded comments because they're all retarded, and I become retardeder by the second as I read them. The best I can offer is to recreate the flavor of IMDB from my tormented memory:
hey guys can anybod tell me who that cute guy was who plaid the brother i think he was gr8t!!!
this movie totally sucked it was just like pulp fixion only pulp fixion was better
Taranteeno sux!!!
no YOU SUck you obviously dont know anything about directign this movie totally stold everything from tarnatino and you cant say anythign intellient about the movie so your just attacking me bc you dont have anything to say
hi everyone can u tell me where getting this movie i am in norway and play area 2 DVD
dude u need to move to a real country
And so forth.
Can it really be true that there isn't a mainstream internet forum where mentally competent adults go to discuss the cinemar?
As we all know, there are a handful of websites that have become basic internet tools for anyone who spends much time online: Google, Mapquest, Weather.com and so forth.
If you're a movie fan, there's IMDB, the Internet Movie DataBase. I probably visit at least once a week. Where have I seen that actor before? Damn, that was a good movie - what else has that guy directed? That sort of thing. It's an excellent resource, and the more I've started to explore older and foreign films, the more I rely on it to gain some context for what I've just seen, or am considering seeing.
That's why it's such a disappointment that the forums on IMDB are filled with the biggest bunch of booger-eating morons I've ever seen. You'd think the message boards for the biggest movie-themed website out there would be crowded with tiresome art school cineastes waxing ironic, right? I wish. From what I can tell, they're full, instead, of thirteen year old wankers who expect all movies to conform to the standard of television. There is scarcely one word of considered criticism, either positive or negative, that I've seen there, and reviewers and commenters alike appear to be people who haven't actually seen very many movies. The overriding sentiment is either confusion over some obvious plot development or anger that the movie in question is not identical to some other movie the commenter liked.
When I started this post, I had big plans to surf on over and cut n' paste some examples of forum crapitude from the IMDB boards, so we could all have a chuckle but frankly, I just can't do it. I cannot read through that idiocy looking for especially retarded comments because they're all retarded, and I become retardeder by the second as I read them. The best I can offer is to recreate the flavor of IMDB from my tormented memory:
hey guys can anybod tell me who that cute guy was who plaid the brother i think he was gr8t!!!
this movie totally sucked it was just like pulp fixion only pulp fixion was better
Taranteeno sux!!!
no YOU SUck you obviously dont know anything about directign this movie totally stold everything from tarnatino and you cant say anythign intellient about the movie so your just attacking me bc you dont have anything to say
hi everyone can u tell me where getting this movie i am in norway and play area 2 DVD
dude u need to move to a real country
And so forth.
Can it really be true that there isn't a mainstream internet forum where mentally competent adults go to discuss the cinemar?
Monday, July 04, 2005
I Confess
I have to admit that I really dig it at night when there's no traffic around, but the streetlights keep the outdoors pretty light, and I can walk right down the middle of the street in my neighborhood as if it were daylight with nobody around like a ghost town. It's weird, but I like it, I do.
I have to admit that I really dig it at night when there's no traffic around, but the streetlights keep the outdoors pretty light, and I can walk right down the middle of the street in my neighborhood as if it were daylight with nobody around like a ghost town. It's weird, but I like it, I do.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Dilogies
Friday night I was in the mood, for the first time in a while, to see a movie out at the theater. There's a big multiplex right near the hospital, so I headed over after work to see what was playing. The answer of course was all the usual summer dummies. I gave serious thought to seeing Star Wars - I'd seen the other two movies in the 2nd trilogy, after all, and this was supposed to be better than those stinkers. But... I just couldn't get into it. I don't care what happens next. I realized this is the second time recently that I crapped out on a big movie trilogy; the other was The Lord of the Rings. I actually liked the first two movies, but after the passage of time, I just didn't care any more about what happened, not enough anyway to pay $10 and sit there for 3 hours. It seems a little odd to me invest in the first two movies of these two trilogies and pass on the third, not because I hated the other movies but just because... eh.
So instead, in the spirit of filling out a lapsed series, I went to see Batman Begins. I hadn't seen any of the Batman movies after the first two (not counting, of course, the great Adam West original, which will always be the BEST Batman movie) and I can't really imagine why I even saw those. Dreadful. So why'd I bother with this last one? Two words: Christian Bale.
Woof.
As brainless superhero movies go, it was pretty good, approximately as uninsulting to the intelligence as Spiderman was, but with more kung fu. Yeah, I know, kung fu! Ninjas, even! That was a plus, as was watching Michael Caine as the butlerAlfie Alfred, just because watching Michael Caine do anything is a plus. On the down side, there was seeing Liam Neeson embarass himself playing a villain who was half over-the-top silly and half take-it-easy-with-the-Osama-bin-Laden-references disturbing, and wanting to smack the puffy lips off Katie Holmes for a) being convincingly self-righteous in the film, and b) having anything to do with Tom Cruise, who, by the way, is why I did not even consider seeing War of the Worlds. On the subject of Katie Holmes, I don't quite see why she's supposed to be such a knockout. Most of her looks comes from looking young - she IS young, for one thing, and she has babyfaced features that make her look sort of archetypally young. But she's not really beatiful like, say, Nicole Kidman, who's so perfect she makes your teeth hurt to look at her. It seems to me like Holmes' appeal is less to an ideal of beauty than to a barely-legal impulse. And now she's a Scientologist. Ugh... Tom Cruise - So. icky.
Yeah, so the summary review for Batman Begins: Christian Bale - hotter than anyone but me seems to realize. Katie Holmes: not as hot as everyone but me seems to think. Batman Begins - fortified with extra kung fu and a much cooler batmobile than that prettyboy sports car of Tim Burton's. Speaking of looks-good-less-filling Tim Burton, I may not like him, but I'm still going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
One note on the movie theater - I like going to the movies alone (as well as with other people) because I get to sit in my favorite seat: the very front row. Friday, though, I actually had to get up and move 4 rows back just to be able to resolve what was on the screen, and because the headrests on the chairs made it impossible to comfortably tip your head back and look up to the middle of the screen. The nice thing is that the screen was huge, but the couple rows were just too damn close to do anybody any good. Now, my question is, what's the point of that? I know that theater owners want to maximize ticket sales and minimize square footage, etc, but there's no way I would sit still for being stuck in the front row in this theater even in a sold-out situation. And I like sitting in the front row. So how could it possibly work out for this theater to have 3-4 aisles that are too close even for first-row enthusiasts like me? I don't get it.
The only other thing to be said on this subject is a little love note to the MPAA. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the bodega here on my street to get some... whatever, milk, bread, beer, etc. The Yemeni guy who owns the place was entertaining himself behind the counter with one of those tiny-size DVD players like you can rent at the airport. The movie he was watching? Batman Begins.
Friday night I was in the mood, for the first time in a while, to see a movie out at the theater. There's a big multiplex right near the hospital, so I headed over after work to see what was playing. The answer of course was all the usual summer dummies. I gave serious thought to seeing Star Wars - I'd seen the other two movies in the 2nd trilogy, after all, and this was supposed to be better than those stinkers. But... I just couldn't get into it. I don't care what happens next. I realized this is the second time recently that I crapped out on a big movie trilogy; the other was The Lord of the Rings. I actually liked the first two movies, but after the passage of time, I just didn't care any more about what happened, not enough anyway to pay $10 and sit there for 3 hours. It seems a little odd to me invest in the first two movies of these two trilogies and pass on the third, not because I hated the other movies but just because... eh.
So instead, in the spirit of filling out a lapsed series, I went to see Batman Begins. I hadn't seen any of the Batman movies after the first two (not counting, of course, the great Adam West original, which will always be the BEST Batman movie) and I can't really imagine why I even saw those. Dreadful. So why'd I bother with this last one? Two words: Christian Bale.
Woof.
As brainless superhero movies go, it was pretty good, approximately as uninsulting to the intelligence as Spiderman was, but with more kung fu. Yeah, I know, kung fu! Ninjas, even! That was a plus, as was watching Michael Caine as the butler
Yeah, so the summary review for Batman Begins: Christian Bale - hotter than anyone but me seems to realize. Katie Holmes: not as hot as everyone but me seems to think. Batman Begins - fortified with extra kung fu and a much cooler batmobile than that prettyboy sports car of Tim Burton's. Speaking of looks-good-less-filling Tim Burton, I may not like him, but I'm still going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
One note on the movie theater - I like going to the movies alone (as well as with other people) because I get to sit in my favorite seat: the very front row. Friday, though, I actually had to get up and move 4 rows back just to be able to resolve what was on the screen, and because the headrests on the chairs made it impossible to comfortably tip your head back and look up to the middle of the screen. The nice thing is that the screen was huge, but the couple rows were just too damn close to do anybody any good. Now, my question is, what's the point of that? I know that theater owners want to maximize ticket sales and minimize square footage, etc, but there's no way I would sit still for being stuck in the front row in this theater even in a sold-out situation. And I like sitting in the front row. So how could it possibly work out for this theater to have 3-4 aisles that are too close even for first-row enthusiasts like me? I don't get it.
The only other thing to be said on this subject is a little love note to the MPAA. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the bodega here on my street to get some... whatever, milk, bread, beer, etc. The Yemeni guy who owns the place was entertaining himself behind the counter with one of those tiny-size DVD players like you can rent at the airport. The movie he was watching? Batman Begins.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Strangest Thing Seen Recently
It's going to have to be a tie:
1) Friday night, I'm in a bar in Williamsburg, a place I wandered into. On one wall, a Japanese anime movie is being projected without sound, while a band plays in the corner, this sort of chill, noodly art-rock sounding stuff. Two young hassidem in black and whites walk into the bar, which is otherwise full of standard Williamsburg hipsters (and me). They're there to play pool, and so they do. Sitting to my right is a mixed-race couple of very beefy and very flamboyant gay men around my age, who appear to be having a recreational argument. Then up to the bar comes a trio of girls who have Long Island written all over them. Nothing wrong with that, but boy, are they out of place. They're all dressed up to look pretty and meet some boys I presume, and here they've come into this mostly empty little Williamsburg bar with its art rock and anime and billiard-playing hassidem and quarrelling queens. I don't think they're going to have a good night. And then... they DO! Two guys who must be barely old enough to drink, look like skaters, come up and start talking to them and buy them drinks (Coronas with lime, of course!). This is when I think, Is it possible that I am sitting in the very strangest place in all of New York right now? Probably not.
2) Last night on the subway, I get on and notice that some teenagers are staring at a man standing near me and giggling. I can't figure out what they're on about at first, and then I notice his ears. Now, it's not such an uncommon thing for old men to have hairy ears. The Sharper Image catalog must be selling those battery-powered ear & nose hair clippers to somebody, right? And in a rare moment of disclosure, I will share with you, my dear readers, that I have this one, translucent hair that grows from the outside edge of my ear; that is, until it gets long enough for me to yank it out. But this man on the subway, his ear hair was something different altogether. All along the outside edge, rather than from the hole (that's pinna and meatus, respectively, if you like the clinical terminology) of each ear grew a dense thicket of long, flowing black hair, flipped back a la Farrah Fawcet. It was a sight to behold. Dear lord, when I become an old man, please see that there is someone to look after me before I go out in public.
Related to both of these stories... the variety of humanity here is one of the very best things about New York, maybe the key to everything good here. But recently I overheard a conversation as I walked by a restaurant. The conversation was in French, although for a moment I couldn't tell if it was in another language or if I just wasn't close enough to hear what was being said. And when I recognized that it was in French, I suddenly felt tired. Because that's the way it always is here - a thousand conversations going on around you, and who knows what language they're in. A thousand strangers around you, and who knows what planet they're from. The variety that is often so pleasantly stimulating is sometimes just overstimulating.
It's going to have to be a tie:
1) Friday night, I'm in a bar in Williamsburg, a place I wandered into. On one wall, a Japanese anime movie is being projected without sound, while a band plays in the corner, this sort of chill, noodly art-rock sounding stuff. Two young hassidem in black and whites walk into the bar, which is otherwise full of standard Williamsburg hipsters (and me). They're there to play pool, and so they do. Sitting to my right is a mixed-race couple of very beefy and very flamboyant gay men around my age, who appear to be having a recreational argument. Then up to the bar comes a trio of girls who have Long Island written all over them. Nothing wrong with that, but boy, are they out of place. They're all dressed up to look pretty and meet some boys I presume, and here they've come into this mostly empty little Williamsburg bar with its art rock and anime and billiard-playing hassidem and quarrelling queens. I don't think they're going to have a good night. And then... they DO! Two guys who must be barely old enough to drink, look like skaters, come up and start talking to them and buy them drinks (Coronas with lime, of course!). This is when I think, Is it possible that I am sitting in the very strangest place in all of New York right now? Probably not.
2) Last night on the subway, I get on and notice that some teenagers are staring at a man standing near me and giggling. I can't figure out what they're on about at first, and then I notice his ears. Now, it's not such an uncommon thing for old men to have hairy ears. The Sharper Image catalog must be selling those battery-powered ear & nose hair clippers to somebody, right? And in a rare moment of disclosure, I will share with you, my dear readers, that I have this one, translucent hair that grows from the outside edge of my ear; that is, until it gets long enough for me to yank it out. But this man on the subway, his ear hair was something different altogether. All along the outside edge, rather than from the hole (that's pinna and meatus, respectively, if you like the clinical terminology) of each ear grew a dense thicket of long, flowing black hair, flipped back a la Farrah Fawcet. It was a sight to behold. Dear lord, when I become an old man, please see that there is someone to look after me before I go out in public.
Related to both of these stories... the variety of humanity here is one of the very best things about New York, maybe the key to everything good here. But recently I overheard a conversation as I walked by a restaurant. The conversation was in French, although for a moment I couldn't tell if it was in another language or if I just wasn't close enough to hear what was being said. And when I recognized that it was in French, I suddenly felt tired. Because that's the way it always is here - a thousand conversations going on around you, and who knows what language they're in. A thousand strangers around you, and who knows what planet they're from. The variety that is often so pleasantly stimulating is sometimes just overstimulating.
Homo Holiday
It was gay pride weekend here in New York… and everywhere else too, actually, but it isn't as big a deal everywhere as it is in New York. I marched in the Dyke March on Saturday, mainly because the only gay people here I know are lesbians, so if I was going to get my pride on with company, it was gonna have to be with girl company. Today I watched the much larger Pride parade, or part of it anyway, as I walked to work. Here's a "Harper's Index" style run-down:
•Best T-shirts seen at the Dyke March
1) "Hawaiian Girls Grow Nice Coconuts"
2) "Ban Republican Marriage"
3) "Vagitarian"
•Number of breasts seen during the march: 0
•Number of breasts seen immediately after the march, in the fountain in Washington Square: Way too many
•Number of times I thought to my self, "hey, that guy's kinda cute" only to realize it was a girl: Way too many
•Best T-shirt seen at the Pride parade: "Rip Taylor" with a screenprinted picture of the actor's face on it.
•Best slogan seen at the Pride parade: On a sign held by a member of the gay Asians' contingent, "Out, not take-out"
•Most surprising feature of the Pride parade:
1) the number of black and latino faces both in the parade and in the parade audience. Surprising because of how often I still hear about exclusivity in the gay community, and homophobia in the black and hispanic communities.
2) On one of the floats was a gigantic black and white picture of three buff twinks in their underwear, and looking up at it, I realized I knew one of the guys in the picture. In the, uh, biblical sense. Even though there was no-one around who knew this (not even the underwear guy, who of course was just in the picture) I suddenly felt really embarrassed.
•Most disappointing feature of the Pride parade: it may be bigger than the San Francisco parade, but for sheer spectacle, San Francisco's got New York beat.
•Most encouraging feature of the Pride parade: Seeing Bloomberg and Chuck Shumer and all the politicians running for something show up to march in the parade and suck up to the city's gay electorate.
•Number of blocks I walked against the parade before I got tired of the whole thing and went to work: 26
It was gay pride weekend here in New York… and everywhere else too, actually, but it isn't as big a deal everywhere as it is in New York. I marched in the Dyke March on Saturday, mainly because the only gay people here I know are lesbians, so if I was going to get my pride on with company, it was gonna have to be with girl company. Today I watched the much larger Pride parade, or part of it anyway, as I walked to work. Here's a "Harper's Index" style run-down:
•Best T-shirts seen at the Dyke March
1) "Hawaiian Girls Grow Nice Coconuts"
2) "Ban Republican Marriage"
3) "Vagitarian"
•Number of breasts seen during the march: 0
•Number of breasts seen immediately after the march, in the fountain in Washington Square: Way too many
•Number of times I thought to my self, "hey, that guy's kinda cute" only to realize it was a girl: Way too many
•Best T-shirt seen at the Pride parade: "Rip Taylor" with a screenprinted picture of the actor's face on it.
•Best slogan seen at the Pride parade: On a sign held by a member of the gay Asians' contingent, "Out, not take-out"
•Most surprising feature of the Pride parade:
1) the number of black and latino faces both in the parade and in the parade audience. Surprising because of how often I still hear about exclusivity in the gay community, and homophobia in the black and hispanic communities.
2) On one of the floats was a gigantic black and white picture of three buff twinks in their underwear, and looking up at it, I realized I knew one of the guys in the picture. In the, uh, biblical sense. Even though there was no-one around who knew this (not even the underwear guy, who of course was just in the picture) I suddenly felt really embarrassed.
•Most disappointing feature of the Pride parade: it may be bigger than the San Francisco parade, but for sheer spectacle, San Francisco's got New York beat.
•Most encouraging feature of the Pride parade: Seeing Bloomberg and Chuck Shumer and all the politicians running for something show up to march in the parade and suck up to the city's gay electorate.
•Number of blocks I walked against the parade before I got tired of the whole thing and went to work: 26
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
Best Thing Seen (and smelled) Today
A fiftysomething man, having the appearance of a blue-collar joe cleaned and dressed for work, standing out on the corner this morning, having his morning coffee and smoking his morning… reefer.
Worst Thing Seen Today
On the First Ave. L platform, a boy & girl duo of dirty, inked, fauxhawked, pierced, hippie-hipster subway musicians, both playing the banjo. The BANJO. It’s as if their very object were to offend.
A fiftysomething man, having the appearance of a blue-collar joe cleaned and dressed for work, standing out on the corner this morning, having his morning coffee and smoking his morning… reefer.
Worst Thing Seen Today
On the First Ave. L platform, a boy & girl duo of dirty, inked, fauxhawked, pierced, hippie-hipster subway musicians, both playing the banjo. The BANJO. It’s as if their very object were to offend.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Best Subway Ride Ever
First of all, on the first truly hot day of the season (high 87°F), it is my intense, dehumidified, pleasure to announce that MTA subway cars are air-conditioned. After a sweaty trudge to downtown(ish) Williamsburg to catch the J (because the F-ing L is down again!), I transfered to the 6 and there, on a mostly empty car, is a middle-aged black lady in a flowery church dress, plugged into her diskman (when I said everybody has an iPod, I didn't really mean everybody) and singing her ass off. I mean, full volume and full head-bobbing action. There were a few disapproving or "what a loon" looks cast her way by other riders, but I, for one, couldn't suppress laughter. Sing out, sister.
At the first stop, a guy gets on who screamed music nerd, complete with thick-rimmed engineer-glasses and black & white checkered Vans on his feet. He no sooner sits down than he's pulling his new treasure out of the plastic bag: a big, worn, double-album of some forgotten hippy/psychedelia band, by the looks of it. As he looked at it, you would have thought he was a 13 year old boy with porn from the look on his face. I have so been there, dude. I can almost smell old-record smell and hear the crack of the double-album spine just writing about it.
And then, the Uptown 6 transformed into the Treat Train. With every following stop, all of these hunky guys just kept getting on the train, striking pouty poses and taking advantage of the tricep-tightening overhead handles to give full benefit to their new tank-tops. I don't know if there was a male model convention on the Upper East Side or what, but that train was positively crowded with beefcake by the time I got off. Of the train, I mean.
Yep, that trip's gonna be hard to beat.
First of all, on the first truly hot day of the season (high 87°F), it is my intense, dehumidified, pleasure to announce that MTA subway cars are air-conditioned. After a sweaty trudge to downtown(ish) Williamsburg to catch the J (because the F-ing L is down again!), I transfered to the 6 and there, on a mostly empty car, is a middle-aged black lady in a flowery church dress, plugged into her diskman (when I said everybody has an iPod, I didn't really mean everybody) and singing her ass off. I mean, full volume and full head-bobbing action. There were a few disapproving or "what a loon" looks cast her way by other riders, but I, for one, couldn't suppress laughter. Sing out, sister.
At the first stop, a guy gets on who screamed music nerd, complete with thick-rimmed engineer-glasses and black & white checkered Vans on his feet. He no sooner sits down than he's pulling his new treasure out of the plastic bag: a big, worn, double-album of some forgotten hippy/psychedelia band, by the looks of it. As he looked at it, you would have thought he was a 13 year old boy with porn from the look on his face. I have so been there, dude. I can almost smell old-record smell and hear the crack of the double-album spine just writing about it.
And then, the Uptown 6 transformed into the Treat Train. With every following stop, all of these hunky guys just kept getting on the train, striking pouty poses and taking advantage of the tricep-tightening overhead handles to give full benefit to their new tank-tops. I don't know if there was a male model convention on the Upper East Side or what, but that train was positively crowded with beefcake by the time I got off. Of the train, I mean.
Yep, that trip's gonna be hard to beat.
Friday, June 03, 2005
The Jacko Paradox
It's a common enough observation that while Michael Jackson has sold something like seven gazillion records, it's hard to find someone who will actually admit to liking him. Obviously somebody likes him enough to buy all those records, but I sure don't, never did, and not only do I not know anyone who does, but I'm pretty sure they're telling me the truth when they say so.
So what I wonder is, by the same token - coverage of the Michael Jackson trial has been all over the news. Even the BBC can't shut up about it, for pity's sake. And yet... do I actually know anyone who cares about the outcome of the trial? Like, at all? Not that I know of. And yet, somebody must care, right, to justify all that news coverage? What is it with Michael?
It's a common enough observation that while Michael Jackson has sold something like seven gazillion records, it's hard to find someone who will actually admit to liking him. Obviously somebody likes him enough to buy all those records, but I sure don't, never did, and not only do I not know anyone who does, but I'm pretty sure they're telling me the truth when they say so.
So what I wonder is, by the same token - coverage of the Michael Jackson trial has been all over the news. Even the BBC can't shut up about it, for pity's sake. And yet... do I actually know anyone who cares about the outcome of the trial? Like, at all? Not that I know of. And yet, somebody must care, right, to justify all that news coverage? What is it with Michael?
Monday, May 30, 2005
Best Thing Seen Today
It's a tie:
1) A bunch of people lined up along the fence at the baseball diamond in the waterfront park, rapt before a dramatic game being played by local Little League teams. The impromptu audience was clearly made up of people not planning to be there -- runners, dog-walkers, etc, and the players were little Little-Leaguers.
2) A man getting on the subway in full pimp-regalia. I'm talking, white suit with tails, wide-brimmed hat, gold-tipped cane and everything. Now, this man may not have actually been a pimp, but from his demeanor, I have no doubt that he was not wearing those threads ironically.
It's a tie:
1) A bunch of people lined up along the fence at the baseball diamond in the waterfront park, rapt before a dramatic game being played by local Little League teams. The impromptu audience was clearly made up of people not planning to be there -- runners, dog-walkers, etc, and the players were little Little-Leaguers.
2) A man getting on the subway in full pimp-regalia. I'm talking, white suit with tails, wide-brimmed hat, gold-tipped cane and everything. Now, this man may not have actually been a pimp, but from his demeanor, I have no doubt that he was not wearing those threads ironically.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Things I Find Unsettling
1) Finding homeless people sleeping in the ATM lobby of my bank every time I go there.
2) The sheer number of black women I see in New York pushing around white babies in strollers and creaky old white ladies on walkers.
3) The shrine for unborn "children" I walk by every day on the way to the train.
4) The frequency with which I hear someone trying the knob on the door to my apartment when I'm home, day or night.
5) Seeing a big, colorful ad for an HIV drug on the subway station wall, amidst all the big, colorful ads for movies, teevee shows, and FreshDirect.
6) The amount of hair I pull out of the shower drain on a regular basis, and not knowing whether it's mine or my roommate's.
7) Having our trashcans set on fire.
8) My landlord's crazy -- I hope -- theory that the garbage men set the trashcans on fire because they were mad about bad recyclable-sorting.
9) The way my boss makes me repeat every thing I say to him even when I know perfectly well he heard me the first time.
10) The way goldfish will follow you with their eyes when you pick them up out of the water, even when you turn them upside down.
11) The fact that Spanish is the primary language spoken on the payphone outside my apartment even though I do not live in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
12) The way my cell phone displays my voice-mail PIN in gigantic, full-color, back-lit digital glory when I check messages in public.
13) The fact that everyone I've ever heard making smalltalk on a cell phone sounds like an asshole, leaving me to conclude that when I'm making small talk on my cell phone, I must sound like an asshole, too.
14) Practically everything I ever hear on the news anymore.
1) Finding homeless people sleeping in the ATM lobby of my bank every time I go there.
2) The sheer number of black women I see in New York pushing around white babies in strollers and creaky old white ladies on walkers.
3) The shrine for unborn "children" I walk by every day on the way to the train.
4) The frequency with which I hear someone trying the knob on the door to my apartment when I'm home, day or night.
5) Seeing a big, colorful ad for an HIV drug on the subway station wall, amidst all the big, colorful ads for movies, teevee shows, and FreshDirect.
6) The amount of hair I pull out of the shower drain on a regular basis, and not knowing whether it's mine or my roommate's.
7) Having our trashcans set on fire.
8) My landlord's crazy -- I hope -- theory that the garbage men set the trashcans on fire because they were mad about bad recyclable-sorting.
9) The way my boss makes me repeat every thing I say to him even when I know perfectly well he heard me the first time.
10) The way goldfish will follow you with their eyes when you pick them up out of the water, even when you turn them upside down.
11) The fact that Spanish is the primary language spoken on the payphone outside my apartment even though I do not live in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
12) The way my cell phone displays my voice-mail PIN in gigantic, full-color, back-lit digital glory when I check messages in public.
13) The fact that everyone I've ever heard making smalltalk on a cell phone sounds like an asshole, leaving me to conclude that when I'm making small talk on my cell phone, I must sound like an asshole, too.
14) Practically everything I ever hear on the news anymore.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Strangest Thing Seen Today
At the laundromat: a man, approximately late 30's/early 40's, tall, beer belly, beard, balding, hairy forearms, wearing bluejeans, untucked button shirt and well-worn sneakers -- appearing, in other words, to be your basic white ethnic Brooklynite straight guy -- occupying himself between loads by... knitting (crocheting? I dunno) what looked like a pink lace antimacassar.
You know, I realize that by now, violations of gender stereotypes shouldn't seem strange. And yet, I still just wasn't expecting to see that.
At the laundromat: a man, approximately late 30's/early 40's, tall, beer belly, beard, balding, hairy forearms, wearing bluejeans, untucked button shirt and well-worn sneakers -- appearing, in other words, to be your basic white ethnic Brooklynite straight guy -- occupying himself between loads by... knitting (crocheting? I dunno) what looked like a pink lace antimacassar.
You know, I realize that by now, violations of gender stereotypes shouldn't seem strange. And yet, I still just wasn't expecting to see that.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Subway Musicians
I haven't looked into the details of how it works, but the City of New York has some sort of procedure for licencing subway musicians so as to avoid turf wars. I think there might even be some kind of audition where you actually have to prove that you can play something. (I remember visting New York in the eighties and seeing all these homeless guys who had somehow gotten ahold of Casio keyboards, and would set up on the sidewalk, turn on one of the automatic rhythm accompaniment routines -- "Marching Band…Bossa…Cha cha cha…" etc -- and doodle out "When the Saints Go Marching In" or whatever with one finger. It was pretty excruciating to listen to and apparently somebody decided to put a stop to it. If Giuliani had anything to do with it, for that, I'd be willing to give him some credit). Clearly, you don't have to be able to play that something well, just passably, which is fine since I guess you’d be playing professionally for a paycheck instead of in the subway for change if you could really play WELL. Still, it's a little disappointing to realize that the myth of struggling young talents, or forgotten old ones, playing their hearts out to unappreciating commuters is just that, a myth.
Some are worse than others. I have the misfortune to have one of those Peruvian pan-flute players stationed at my regular morning-commute platform. He’s quite well outfitted with a microphone and PA and even has a little synth-string recording he plays along with. If he were just doing "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail" it would be one thing, but I think he's been inspired by the incidental music on "Survivor" perhaps, and he's prone to dramatic dynamic gestures like pausing for extended periods while the synth-strings languidly wheeze away in a kind of prelude, and then abruptly honking out glissandos that end in piercing overtones that distract you from your magazine and probably freeze all the subway rats in their tracks. The fact that he works the heritage routine so hard, with a multcolored pancho pulled over his head and his shiny black hair pulled into a tight braid, only reinforces the impression that he’d be much more welcome at say, Epcot, with a rain stick and some bird calls added to the soundtrack, than on a Brooklyn subway platform.
Although he's the most annoying subway musician I come across regularly, he is not the least talented. That distinction belongs to the young white guy on the G train platform who chops out Velvet Underground songs – exclusively, I think – on an acoustic guitar but instead of too-cool, spare Lou Reed style vocals, he sounds like Jandek, or maybe Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Gilbert Grape, with lots of volume but no real relationship to pitch. Coming down the stairs to the platform, you can't even hear the guitar, just the sound of some guy hollering like he's been hurt.
Easily the saddest case is a middle-aged asian guy who plays on the 4-5-6 at Union Square. He clearly has some classical training, because he’s always playing Bach or Mozart or sometimes tunes from Italian opera, but he can't afford a real instrument and so he does it all on this wretched little battery-powered synth-saxophone thing that makes even well-executed classical sound like a wino playing a boosted Casio.
There are some that are actually good. The first guy I ever gave money to was an old gent playing some kind of exotic asian or middle-eastern 3-stringed instrument. The music wasn't much technically, but on a Sunday morning, the meandering atonal rasp seemed meditative and filled up the empty Bedford Ave L station and made me feel like I was in an underground sactuary in Istanbul or something, instead of in the subway eating a bagel.
There are sometimes whole bands, and one group of young guys who sounded like Liquid Soul had the 14th Street station bumping with a trumpet soloing over a repetitive-but-definitely-funky riff from a drum, guitar, and electric bass rhythm section. More peculiarly, on Friday I saw a band made of all black girls, that sounded exactly like a white frat-rock college band.
The closest thing I've seen to real, undiscovered talent was a young guy who looked like a motheaten Ben Harper and had just a stunning voice – Seal's timbre and depth with Jeff Buckley's range and vibrato – playing rambling, pentatonic melodies of his own composition. He apparently had some appreciation of his own talent, as he was the only subway musician I've ever seen selling his own CD's.
He was probably the best, but still not my favorite. My favorite was a guy actually playing on the train (which I don’t think they're supposed to do). He was playing one of those things, I don’t know what they're called, that you blow into but has a little piano-style keyboard; it sounds like a toy organ. His repertoire consisted entirely of teevee theme songs, and some of the all-time best ones: I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Hawaii Five-O. It was hard not to get into a good mood listening to him, and by the time I got off the train, a fair number of riders were snapping along to The Addams Family.
I haven't looked into the details of how it works, but the City of New York has some sort of procedure for licencing subway musicians so as to avoid turf wars. I think there might even be some kind of audition where you actually have to prove that you can play something. (I remember visting New York in the eighties and seeing all these homeless guys who had somehow gotten ahold of Casio keyboards, and would set up on the sidewalk, turn on one of the automatic rhythm accompaniment routines -- "Marching Band…Bossa…Cha cha cha…" etc -- and doodle out "When the Saints Go Marching In" or whatever with one finger. It was pretty excruciating to listen to and apparently somebody decided to put a stop to it. If Giuliani had anything to do with it, for that, I'd be willing to give him some credit). Clearly, you don't have to be able to play that something well, just passably, which is fine since I guess you’d be playing professionally for a paycheck instead of in the subway for change if you could really play WELL. Still, it's a little disappointing to realize that the myth of struggling young talents, or forgotten old ones, playing their hearts out to unappreciating commuters is just that, a myth.
Some are worse than others. I have the misfortune to have one of those Peruvian pan-flute players stationed at my regular morning-commute platform. He’s quite well outfitted with a microphone and PA and even has a little synth-string recording he plays along with. If he were just doing "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail" it would be one thing, but I think he's been inspired by the incidental music on "Survivor" perhaps, and he's prone to dramatic dynamic gestures like pausing for extended periods while the synth-strings languidly wheeze away in a kind of prelude, and then abruptly honking out glissandos that end in piercing overtones that distract you from your magazine and probably freeze all the subway rats in their tracks. The fact that he works the heritage routine so hard, with a multcolored pancho pulled over his head and his shiny black hair pulled into a tight braid, only reinforces the impression that he’d be much more welcome at say, Epcot, with a rain stick and some bird calls added to the soundtrack, than on a Brooklyn subway platform.
Although he's the most annoying subway musician I come across regularly, he is not the least talented. That distinction belongs to the young white guy on the G train platform who chops out Velvet Underground songs – exclusively, I think – on an acoustic guitar but instead of too-cool, spare Lou Reed style vocals, he sounds like Jandek, or maybe Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Gilbert Grape, with lots of volume but no real relationship to pitch. Coming down the stairs to the platform, you can't even hear the guitar, just the sound of some guy hollering like he's been hurt.
Easily the saddest case is a middle-aged asian guy who plays on the 4-5-6 at Union Square. He clearly has some classical training, because he’s always playing Bach or Mozart or sometimes tunes from Italian opera, but he can't afford a real instrument and so he does it all on this wretched little battery-powered synth-saxophone thing that makes even well-executed classical sound like a wino playing a boosted Casio.
There are some that are actually good. The first guy I ever gave money to was an old gent playing some kind of exotic asian or middle-eastern 3-stringed instrument. The music wasn't much technically, but on a Sunday morning, the meandering atonal rasp seemed meditative and filled up the empty Bedford Ave L station and made me feel like I was in an underground sactuary in Istanbul or something, instead of in the subway eating a bagel.
There are sometimes whole bands, and one group of young guys who sounded like Liquid Soul had the 14th Street station bumping with a trumpet soloing over a repetitive-but-definitely-funky riff from a drum, guitar, and electric bass rhythm section. More peculiarly, on Friday I saw a band made of all black girls, that sounded exactly like a white frat-rock college band.
The closest thing I've seen to real, undiscovered talent was a young guy who looked like a motheaten Ben Harper and had just a stunning voice – Seal's timbre and depth with Jeff Buckley's range and vibrato – playing rambling, pentatonic melodies of his own composition. He apparently had some appreciation of his own talent, as he was the only subway musician I've ever seen selling his own CD's.
He was probably the best, but still not my favorite. My favorite was a guy actually playing on the train (which I don’t think they're supposed to do). He was playing one of those things, I don’t know what they're called, that you blow into but has a little piano-style keyboard; it sounds like a toy organ. His repertoire consisted entirely of teevee theme songs, and some of the all-time best ones: I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Hawaii Five-O. It was hard not to get into a good mood listening to him, and by the time I got off the train, a fair number of riders were snapping along to The Addams Family.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Things That Make Me Irrationally Happy
1) Those little brown birds that you see on the sidewalk when the pigeons aren’t chasing them away.
2) The way really nerdy people sometimes swing their arms a little too much when they walk.
3) Catching people micro-dancing on the subway.
4) My new Ikea pole-mounted dresser/shelf combo that looks like it’s floating in space. Yeah, it’s particleboard, but it looks hella Jetsons and that makes it good.
5) The food cart I pass on the way to work that has “LIVE, LIFE, LONG HEALTHY SAFETY” painted on the side.
6) There’s some brand of shoe out there that makes the soles out of bright yellow rubber, and it’s great to watch people walk toward you in those. [Addendum: today I saw a woman wearing white high heels with hot pink soles, which was also pretty good. The fact that her feet were spilling over the sides of the shoes made it even better.]
7) Hearing our lab technician Dores, with a very heavy Chinese accent, refer to fish larvae as “baybay.”
1) Those little brown birds that you see on the sidewalk when the pigeons aren’t chasing them away.
2) The way really nerdy people sometimes swing their arms a little too much when they walk.
3) Catching people micro-dancing on the subway.
4) My new Ikea pole-mounted dresser/shelf combo that looks like it’s floating in space. Yeah, it’s particleboard, but it looks hella Jetsons and that makes it good.
5) The food cart I pass on the way to work that has “LIVE, LIFE, LONG HEALTHY SAFETY” painted on the side.
6) There’s some brand of shoe out there that makes the soles out of bright yellow rubber, and it’s great to watch people walk toward you in those. [Addendum: today I saw a woman wearing white high heels with hot pink soles, which was also pretty good. The fact that her feet were spilling over the sides of the shoes made it even better.]
7) Hearing our lab technician Dores, with a very heavy Chinese accent, refer to fish larvae as “baybay.”
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Riding the Mystery Mobile
Two nagging mysteries recently solved:
1) Recently, I’ve been wondering why, after over 100 rat perfusions in grad school, doing perfusions on fish has me pulling the garbage can to my side out of fear that I’ll vomit. For those who don’t know, transcardial perfusion is a method for preserving highly perishable brain tissue for observation under a microscope. I’ll spare you the details, for although it’s completely painless for the experimental animal, it is a truly gross experience involving lots of guts and postmortem wiggling. Unless you are a coroner or one of those people who extract semen from prizewinning livestock, you will probably never do anything more disgusting. Anyway, doing the rats never bothered me much – much to my surprise, I have to say – but the fish are killing me.
And finally, during the last one I did, it dawned on me: Oh. It’s the smell.
I thought I was getting grossed out by fish guts (which are, like everything about fish, slimier than their terrestrial counterparts) and I couldn’t figure out why fish guts would be so much grosser than rat guts. They’re not. But fishgut smell is WAY worse than ratgut smell. To that list of gross jobs up there, I should have added “fish processing plant employee.” I can’t say that fish innerds are the worst thing I’ve ever smelled – mouse colonies, vitamin B oil, and fear-induced loose rat stools are way at the top of the list – but those win partly out of sheer strength. Fish guts don’t necessarily smell strong, they just smell really, really, bad, and when you’re perfusing, your face is all right up in there… oh god, I’ve gotta …
2) Speaking of bathrooms, the other mystery of late has been the litter of paper towels in the mens restroom on my floor. For some reason, there’s always a pile of paper towels scattered right around the inside of the entranceway to the gents’. I don’t understand it; it’s a whole floor full of nothing but scientists and lab technicians and a couple of office admin types, not exactly the sorts who pull all the paper towels out of the holder and throw them down punk rock style. And I know that the custodians clean there every day because I see them do it (they come at around 11:00pm, fyi). So what gives?
Today, after a “rest,” I went to leave the privvy and there was a paper towel stuck in the door handle… and it all made sense. We have a germ freak on the floor. He goes to the bathroom, like, 700 times a day, to wash his hands like the compulsive nut he is, and uses a paper towel to open the restroom door, and then just discards it onto the ground as the door shuts behind him. One can imagine the custodian shaking his head scornfully picking up the mess each night.
And now I’m left secretly observing everyone I ever see in the W.C. for signs of germ-freakyness. I’ll catch you, you big weirdo.
(And for the record, no, I did not use every possible synonym for “bathroom” in the post. I’ve got loads more.)
Two nagging mysteries recently solved:
1) Recently, I’ve been wondering why, after over 100 rat perfusions in grad school, doing perfusions on fish has me pulling the garbage can to my side out of fear that I’ll vomit. For those who don’t know, transcardial perfusion is a method for preserving highly perishable brain tissue for observation under a microscope. I’ll spare you the details, for although it’s completely painless for the experimental animal, it is a truly gross experience involving lots of guts and postmortem wiggling. Unless you are a coroner or one of those people who extract semen from prizewinning livestock, you will probably never do anything more disgusting. Anyway, doing the rats never bothered me much – much to my surprise, I have to say – but the fish are killing me.
And finally, during the last one I did, it dawned on me: Oh. It’s the smell.
I thought I was getting grossed out by fish guts (which are, like everything about fish, slimier than their terrestrial counterparts) and I couldn’t figure out why fish guts would be so much grosser than rat guts. They’re not. But fishgut smell is WAY worse than ratgut smell. To that list of gross jobs up there, I should have added “fish processing plant employee.” I can’t say that fish innerds are the worst thing I’ve ever smelled – mouse colonies, vitamin B oil, and fear-induced loose rat stools are way at the top of the list – but those win partly out of sheer strength. Fish guts don’t necessarily smell strong, they just smell really, really, bad, and when you’re perfusing, your face is all right up in there… oh god, I’ve gotta …
2) Speaking of bathrooms, the other mystery of late has been the litter of paper towels in the mens restroom on my floor. For some reason, there’s always a pile of paper towels scattered right around the inside of the entranceway to the gents’. I don’t understand it; it’s a whole floor full of nothing but scientists and lab technicians and a couple of office admin types, not exactly the sorts who pull all the paper towels out of the holder and throw them down punk rock style. And I know that the custodians clean there every day because I see them do it (they come at around 11:00pm, fyi). So what gives?
Today, after a “rest,” I went to leave the privvy and there was a paper towel stuck in the door handle… and it all made sense. We have a germ freak on the floor. He goes to the bathroom, like, 700 times a day, to wash his hands like the compulsive nut he is, and uses a paper towel to open the restroom door, and then just discards it onto the ground as the door shuts behind him. One can imagine the custodian shaking his head scornfully picking up the mess each night.
And now I’m left secretly observing everyone I ever see in the W.C. for signs of germ-freakyness. I’ll catch you, you big weirdo.
(And for the record, no, I did not use every possible synonym for “bathroom” in the post. I’ve got loads more.)
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Things that Don't Mix Well
1) Coffee and microsurgery.
2) Goldfish brains and water. (I know, you wouldn't think, right?)
3) Cell phone audio and English as a second language.
4) Nudity and employment at a coffee shop. (yeah, there's a story here, but it's not really worth telling. Honestly. Suffice it to say that even after the shop is closed and you think people can't see, it's best to keep your clothes on.)
5) Walkers and bikers, on the Williamsburg bridge. (Maybe it's just me, but the sign very clearly says, pedestrians on the left, bicyclists on the right. I don't know why it's so hard.)
6) Wing tips and hot bagels with cream cheese. (think about it)
7) Gin and Chinotto.
8) Cole Porter and hollering winos on the subway.
9) Me and fire, apparently (three uh, incidents, in the kitchen in one week.)
10) Now that we're getting some nice weather, tank tops and hairy shoulders. Not mine, of course.
1) Coffee and microsurgery.
2) Goldfish brains and water. (I know, you wouldn't think, right?)
3) Cell phone audio and English as a second language.
4) Nudity and employment at a coffee shop. (yeah, there's a story here, but it's not really worth telling. Honestly. Suffice it to say that even after the shop is closed and you think people can't see, it's best to keep your clothes on.)
5) Walkers and bikers, on the Williamsburg bridge. (Maybe it's just me, but the sign very clearly says, pedestrians on the left, bicyclists on the right. I don't know why it's so hard.)
6) Wing tips and hot bagels with cream cheese. (think about it)
7) Gin and Chinotto.
8) Cole Porter and hollering winos on the subway.
9) Me and fire, apparently (three uh, incidents, in the kitchen in one week.)
10) Now that we're getting some nice weather, tank tops and hairy shoulders. Not mine, of course.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Everybody!
How about another list:
1) Everybody here wears black. I'm not sure how to characterize it, but there is a particular look to the way people dress. One year back when I was in high school, we went to New York for Thanksgiving, and I remember my stepdad Jim observing that everybody dressed in dark colors. They’re still doing it. Not only is the dress generally dark, but it’s generally… kind of shabby and self-consciously awful. Everybody’s bluejeans are dirty and frayed at the bottom. The mens jackets all fit a little too tight, but their sweater sleeves are a little too long. The girls wear old lady clothes and lots of bobby pins in their hair. It’s weird, and if I were going to try to do it myself, I don’t think I could pull it off. I’d probably need to stop wearing all the brightly-colored ski clothes I got used to up in New Hampshire.
2) Everybody in Williamsburg ought to be a straight guy, because man, are there a lot of cute girls here (and I use "cute girls," rather than, say, "attractive women" deliberately. These are cute girls.) And man, are they hanging out with a lot of homely guys. Oh well.
3) Everybody in Brooklyn was on my commute train this morning. I remember this Richard Scarry book I had when I was a kid that showed how people (in the form of clothed, bipedal animals) from all over the world lived. There was a picture of people piling onto the commuter trains in Tokyo, where the subway attendents had to squeeze people into the trains to get the doors closed, like you’d sit on an overpacked suitcase to get it zipped. (I can't remember whether the Tokyo commuters were cats or dogs… you’d think that’s the kind of thing you’d remember. Are Japanese people more like cats or dogs, you think?) Anyway, it was like that. Lots of stranger-touching. Not that I’m complaining really; stranger-touching is about the best action I'm getting these days. But it was different.
4) Everybody in my neighborhood is coupled. It's nauseating. They clog up the sideway traffic, walking arm-in-arm, all slow-like, because who can really walk fast while you’re hanging onto your girlfriend's ass? Even the non-romantic types are coupled, apparently. When I go into the grocery store, everyone's shopping in pairs. Even the straight-guy roommate duos (yes, you can tell). Who does that? And why? Did I mention that the whole room is refrigerated?
5) Everybody's in such a goddam rush to get on the train. Let’s take a hypothetical: what do you do when you’re waiting for an elevator and you’re not an asshole? I’ll tell you what - when the door opens, you wait for exiting people to get off the elevator, and then you get on, and if you were the first one there waiting on the elevator, you stand a good chance of being the first one to get on it. You’d think it’d work the same way on the subway, but it does not. Even when an obviously full train is just waiting to spill its passengers, people are trying to climb on the second the doors open. And you could be standing there with your nose literally touching the doors and no one else around, and the instant before they open, at least two people will worm up in front of you and dart on the train before you. The same thing applies on the street. If you come to the intersection and there’s a "don’t-walk" signal, and you step off the sidewalk, a little bit into the first lane of traffic to wait for the light to turn, I guarantee that the next person to come up and wait will step just a little bit in front of you, even if they end up standing in the middle of the street to get there. I don't get it.
6) Everybody only takes cash. The grocery store, they only take cash. The video store, they only take cash. The subway machine actually takes cards, but I couldn’t make it work, so effectively, it only takes cash. In principle, I think this is a good thing since they’d only be entering my purchases into some giant evil database anyway if I were paying with a card, and of course, the cash, it encourages good budgeting habits. But it’s not so easy to work with when you’re waiting on that first paycheck.
7) It was raining like crazy this morning, and everybody was trying to put my damn eyes out with their stupid umbrellas.
8) Everybody who has a good public radio station in their community should thank their lucky stars because here I am in arguably the greatest American city, and of course the "bluest" of cities (and we all know what a bunch of Marxists they are at NPR), and my public radio station blows. There is some good original programming like On the Media and the Brian Lehrer show, but the national programming is limited and during those periods I'm most interested in listening to news programming – weekends and nights – the programming consists of a bland mix of thematically neutral classical and "American songbook" programs that always manage to alternately bore and annoy and include way too much Frank Sinatra. And, most unforgivable of sins, my prime public radio listening time, the sleep-in hours on Sunday morning, is violated by the execrable “Sound and Spirit.” To top it off, it’s recently been pledge-drive time, and I have never heard such aggressive fundraising from any of the many public radio stations I’ve supported. Usually the idea is to hold the popular shows hostage by begging on-air in between portions of the programming. But during the WNYC membership-drive, I frequently forget what "show" was even on, because I’ve heard nothing but guilt-tripping fundnagging for the last half-hour. Maybe that’s what it takes to get to hardened New Yorkers, but in only a short while of regular listening, I’ve grown to hate my local station enough to just turn it off.
9) Everybody, but everybody walks around wired either to an iPod or a cell phone. The iPod people I like, because the music is rarely loud (although I am interested to note that it turns out that it is, in fact, possible to listen to extremely uncool music on an iPod… I figured there’d be a block or something…”iMullet,” etc) and sometimes you get people who just can’t help themselves and bust a subtle move right there on the subway, and that’s kind of cute. I recently tried my iPod out on the subway for the first time, with mixed feelings. I’ve long had this attitude that I wasn’t so into portable music because I wanted to listen to the music of real everyday world sounds, blah blah zencakes, etc. But now I can totally see the appeal of walking around with your own little soundtrack and anyway, Stereolab sounds better than most of the subway musicians. Plus, those white earphones always give someone a certain allure: what cool-ass music is that cool-ass person listening to on their cool-ass media player? I don’t know, but I could use some allure, I think, so I’ll be wearing the white earphones at the very least from now on even if the jack is only plugged into my shirt pocket. The cell phone people, on the other hand, are pretty obnoxious because the cognitive tension generated by trying to distinguish between annoying people talking on cell phones and crazy people talking to themselves is appreciable; cues from someone’s appearance are less helpful than you’d think (see #1).
10) Everybody sleeps in. At first I thought it was just my lab – the PI commutes in from somewhere on Long Island, and waits until 10 or so to leave in order to avoid traffic. Naturally, the people who work for him will tend to conform to his schedule. But after a few rides in on the L at 10:00 AM myself, I had to wonder – why are there so many people on the train mid-morning? Nobody works? Or everybody comes in late… Yeah, well, everybody comes in late. It dawned on me when I found I couldn’t use those precious hours between 9-11 in the morning, when I can reasonably be up without anyone expecting me at work, to get a haircut. Because none of the salons open before 11. As it turns out, a lot of businesses don’t open before 10. City that never sleeps, I guess.
11) Everybody in Manhattan is moving to Williamsburg, apparently. There was an alarming article in the real estate section of the Times last weekend that had a half-page map showing all the new and planned construction in the neighborhood. I couldn’t swear to it, but I remember the little red dots on the map which depicted developments as being shaped like little cartoon bomb-flashes; maybe they even said “POW!” Everybody here who I’ve mentioned it too gets really irritable about it, and I think there’s a widespread feeling of dread as everyone gets ready for a yuppie invasion and braces for the inevitable rent hikes. I got out of San Francisco just before the internet bubble crapped up everything, but perhaps my timing wasn’t as good in this case.
12) Everybody was right: it costs a fortune to live here.
How about another list:
1) Everybody here wears black. I'm not sure how to characterize it, but there is a particular look to the way people dress. One year back when I was in high school, we went to New York for Thanksgiving, and I remember my stepdad Jim observing that everybody dressed in dark colors. They’re still doing it. Not only is the dress generally dark, but it’s generally… kind of shabby and self-consciously awful. Everybody’s bluejeans are dirty and frayed at the bottom. The mens jackets all fit a little too tight, but their sweater sleeves are a little too long. The girls wear old lady clothes and lots of bobby pins in their hair. It’s weird, and if I were going to try to do it myself, I don’t think I could pull it off. I’d probably need to stop wearing all the brightly-colored ski clothes I got used to up in New Hampshire.
2) Everybody in Williamsburg ought to be a straight guy, because man, are there a lot of cute girls here (and I use "cute girls," rather than, say, "attractive women" deliberately. These are cute girls.) And man, are they hanging out with a lot of homely guys. Oh well.
3) Everybody in Brooklyn was on my commute train this morning. I remember this Richard Scarry book I had when I was a kid that showed how people (in the form of clothed, bipedal animals) from all over the world lived. There was a picture of people piling onto the commuter trains in Tokyo, where the subway attendents had to squeeze people into the trains to get the doors closed, like you’d sit on an overpacked suitcase to get it zipped. (I can't remember whether the Tokyo commuters were cats or dogs… you’d think that’s the kind of thing you’d remember. Are Japanese people more like cats or dogs, you think?) Anyway, it was like that. Lots of stranger-touching. Not that I’m complaining really; stranger-touching is about the best action I'm getting these days. But it was different.
4) Everybody in my neighborhood is coupled. It's nauseating. They clog up the sideway traffic, walking arm-in-arm, all slow-like, because who can really walk fast while you’re hanging onto your girlfriend's ass? Even the non-romantic types are coupled, apparently. When I go into the grocery store, everyone's shopping in pairs. Even the straight-guy roommate duos (yes, you can tell). Who does that? And why? Did I mention that the whole room is refrigerated?
5) Everybody's in such a goddam rush to get on the train. Let’s take a hypothetical: what do you do when you’re waiting for an elevator and you’re not an asshole? I’ll tell you what - when the door opens, you wait for exiting people to get off the elevator, and then you get on, and if you were the first one there waiting on the elevator, you stand a good chance of being the first one to get on it. You’d think it’d work the same way on the subway, but it does not. Even when an obviously full train is just waiting to spill its passengers, people are trying to climb on the second the doors open. And you could be standing there with your nose literally touching the doors and no one else around, and the instant before they open, at least two people will worm up in front of you and dart on the train before you. The same thing applies on the street. If you come to the intersection and there’s a "don’t-walk" signal, and you step off the sidewalk, a little bit into the first lane of traffic to wait for the light to turn, I guarantee that the next person to come up and wait will step just a little bit in front of you, even if they end up standing in the middle of the street to get there. I don't get it.
6) Everybody only takes cash. The grocery store, they only take cash. The video store, they only take cash. The subway machine actually takes cards, but I couldn’t make it work, so effectively, it only takes cash. In principle, I think this is a good thing since they’d only be entering my purchases into some giant evil database anyway if I were paying with a card, and of course, the cash, it encourages good budgeting habits. But it’s not so easy to work with when you’re waiting on that first paycheck.
7) It was raining like crazy this morning, and everybody was trying to put my damn eyes out with their stupid umbrellas.
8) Everybody who has a good public radio station in their community should thank their lucky stars because here I am in arguably the greatest American city, and of course the "bluest" of cities (and we all know what a bunch of Marxists they are at NPR), and my public radio station blows. There is some good original programming like On the Media and the Brian Lehrer show, but the national programming is limited and during those periods I'm most interested in listening to news programming – weekends and nights – the programming consists of a bland mix of thematically neutral classical and "American songbook" programs that always manage to alternately bore and annoy and include way too much Frank Sinatra. And, most unforgivable of sins, my prime public radio listening time, the sleep-in hours on Sunday morning, is violated by the execrable “Sound and Spirit.” To top it off, it’s recently been pledge-drive time, and I have never heard such aggressive fundraising from any of the many public radio stations I’ve supported. Usually the idea is to hold the popular shows hostage by begging on-air in between portions of the programming. But during the WNYC membership-drive, I frequently forget what "show" was even on, because I’ve heard nothing but guilt-tripping fundnagging for the last half-hour. Maybe that’s what it takes to get to hardened New Yorkers, but in only a short while of regular listening, I’ve grown to hate my local station enough to just turn it off.
9) Everybody, but everybody walks around wired either to an iPod or a cell phone. The iPod people I like, because the music is rarely loud (although I am interested to note that it turns out that it is, in fact, possible to listen to extremely uncool music on an iPod… I figured there’d be a block or something…”iMullet,” etc) and sometimes you get people who just can’t help themselves and bust a subtle move right there on the subway, and that’s kind of cute. I recently tried my iPod out on the subway for the first time, with mixed feelings. I’ve long had this attitude that I wasn’t so into portable music because I wanted to listen to the music of real everyday world sounds, blah blah zencakes, etc. But now I can totally see the appeal of walking around with your own little soundtrack and anyway, Stereolab sounds better than most of the subway musicians. Plus, those white earphones always give someone a certain allure: what cool-ass music is that cool-ass person listening to on their cool-ass media player? I don’t know, but I could use some allure, I think, so I’ll be wearing the white earphones at the very least from now on even if the jack is only plugged into my shirt pocket. The cell phone people, on the other hand, are pretty obnoxious because the cognitive tension generated by trying to distinguish between annoying people talking on cell phones and crazy people talking to themselves is appreciable; cues from someone’s appearance are less helpful than you’d think (see #1).
10) Everybody sleeps in. At first I thought it was just my lab – the PI commutes in from somewhere on Long Island, and waits until 10 or so to leave in order to avoid traffic. Naturally, the people who work for him will tend to conform to his schedule. But after a few rides in on the L at 10:00 AM myself, I had to wonder – why are there so many people on the train mid-morning? Nobody works? Or everybody comes in late… Yeah, well, everybody comes in late. It dawned on me when I found I couldn’t use those precious hours between 9-11 in the morning, when I can reasonably be up without anyone expecting me at work, to get a haircut. Because none of the salons open before 11. As it turns out, a lot of businesses don’t open before 10. City that never sleeps, I guess.
11) Everybody in Manhattan is moving to Williamsburg, apparently. There was an alarming article in the real estate section of the Times last weekend that had a half-page map showing all the new and planned construction in the neighborhood. I couldn’t swear to it, but I remember the little red dots on the map which depicted developments as being shaped like little cartoon bomb-flashes; maybe they even said “POW!” Everybody here who I’ve mentioned it too gets really irritable about it, and I think there’s a widespread feeling of dread as everyone gets ready for a yuppie invasion and braces for the inevitable rent hikes. I got out of San Francisco just before the internet bubble crapped up everything, but perhaps my timing wasn’t as good in this case.
12) Everybody was right: it costs a fortune to live here.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Milestones
Yesterday on a walk, I saw my first New York City rat, whom I startled into flight when I brushed his trash can as I passed by. If this one was representative, then it's true: they're big. Later, on the same walk, I was able to give some strangers directions to the subway. Me - I gave directions, and they were even right. I just want you to appreciate the significance of that. And then of course, earlier in the day, for the first time ever I paid someone else to do my laundry.
I must be settling in.
Yesterday on a walk, I saw my first New York City rat, whom I startled into flight when I brushed his trash can as I passed by. If this one was representative, then it's true: they're big. Later, on the same walk, I was able to give some strangers directions to the subway. Me - I gave directions, and they were even right. I just want you to appreciate the significance of that. And then of course, earlier in the day, for the first time ever I paid someone else to do my laundry.
I must be settling in.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Check
This afternoon I walked over to the Dartmouth graduate studies office with a box full of my dissertation. I spent 20 minutes filling out paperwork and palavering with the all-powerful graduate office secretary, and then I left with an empty box, feeling much lighter indeed for the burden left behind.
I think this means I'm really done with graduate school, in an official sense. It comes in many steps; there's the commencement ceremony in June, and of course I defended months ago now, but with this last item checked off the list, there's really no way I nor anyone else can undo my degree. I guess I'm really, finally, done with graduate school.
What to say about the end to this era? All in all, not the healthiest thing I ever did.
This afternoon I walked over to the Dartmouth graduate studies office with a box full of my dissertation. I spent 20 minutes filling out paperwork and palavering with the all-powerful graduate office secretary, and then I left with an empty box, feeling much lighter indeed for the burden left behind.
I think this means I'm really done with graduate school, in an official sense. It comes in many steps; there's the commencement ceremony in June, and of course I defended months ago now, but with this last item checked off the list, there's really no way I nor anyone else can undo my degree. I guess I'm really, finally, done with graduate school.
What to say about the end to this era? All in all, not the healthiest thing I ever did.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Strangest Things
Strangest thing seen on the subway recently:
A grown woman, probably mid-20's, sucking her thumb. Like, full-on thumbsucking, complete with index finger curled over the bridge of her nose. She contentedly sucked away for the whole ride. Oh, and her nails were painted, too.
Strangest/dumbest thing seen on the highway:
A truck with a scrotum. Seriously, some yahoo outfitted his pickup truck with a pair of plastic (?) testicles, blue to match the paint, swinging away there underneath the trailer hitch, as if the truck were a big metal bulldog. And that's probably just how the truck's owner thinks of it.
Strangest thing seen on the subway recently:
A grown woman, probably mid-20's, sucking her thumb. Like, full-on thumbsucking, complete with index finger curled over the bridge of her nose. She contentedly sucked away for the whole ride. Oh, and her nails were painted, too.
Strangest/dumbest thing seen on the highway:
A truck with a scrotum. Seriously, some yahoo outfitted his pickup truck with a pair of plastic (?) testicles, blue to match the paint, swinging away there underneath the trailer hitch, as if the truck were a big metal bulldog. And that's probably just how the truck's owner thinks of it.
Friday, March 11, 2005
What City Parks are For
This morning on my walk to the subway, I walked as I always do past this wretched little "park" that consists of an awkward triangle where three streets intersect. There's almost nothing there except for some benches a few trees and a fountain that doesn't work, and it's mostly used as a latrine by local dogs and homeless people.
But as a I walked by this morning, a breeze came up (brrrr) and there was a sound... the wind went ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh as it blew through the scrawny, bare trees, making that wonderful sound that I recognize from sawgrass on the lake in Florida, and creekside liveoaks from camp in North Carolina, and pines around Tahoe, and birch copses in the farmland outside of Syracuse.
This morning on my walk to the subway, I walked as I always do past this wretched little "park" that consists of an awkward triangle where three streets intersect. There's almost nothing there except for some benches a few trees and a fountain that doesn't work, and it's mostly used as a latrine by local dogs and homeless people.
But as a I walked by this morning, a breeze came up (brrrr) and there was a sound... the wind went ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh as it blew through the scrawny, bare trees, making that wonderful sound that I recognize from sawgrass on the lake in Florida, and creekside liveoaks from camp in North Carolina, and pines around Tahoe, and birch copses in the farmland outside of Syracuse.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Procrastinators in the Park
On Sunday I transformed myself into a real live New Yorker by getting up, eating a bagel and coffee for breakfast, taking the train into the city, meeting JP and a crowd of his associates for dim sum in Chinatown, and then joining all the other people in New York who’d been meaning to get to the park to see The Gates on the last day before they were taken down.
It really was a great day for such an outing; cold enough to make me actually enjoy the hot cream cheese smeared on my chin; sunny enough to make the orange cloth of the Gates glow, and apparently Sunday is a big market day in Chinatown, so there were hordes of people spilling off the sidewalks, haggling over unidentifiable (to me), inedible (to me) desiccated sea creatures. Um, there are a LOT of Chinese people in New York, by the way. I don’t mean to take anything away from my beloved San Francisco, but New York Chinatown is a whole different ballgame from San Francisco Chinatown. In San Francisco Chinatown, you can wander through a couple of blocks and, especially if you’re a tourist, kind of imagine yourself back in the bazaar in quaint, exotic Olde Shanghai or whatever. In New York Chinatown, you can walk for block after block looking at nothing but Chinese people and Chinese writing on the signs and start to worry that you accidentally slipped through a hole in the Earth and ended up in some random neighborhood in Beijhing and how the hell are you going to find your way back. But the dim sum were good and someday I’m going to get brave and eat some of the extra weird shit.
The Gates were pretty neat. There was a ton of people in the park and in fact one of the most visually compelling parts of the Gates was looking across where sections of the path ran in parallel, and seeing the lines of people shuffle under the lines of gates. I heard some cynical types describe the color as “safety orange” or “hunter’s orange” but really the color was about as beautiful as I could ever imagine orange vinyl and nylon being. I think the common description in the press of the color as “saffron” was either clever or fortunate. It may or may not be true; I have no idea how well it matches the color of Buddhist monks’ robes, but after the very notion was out there in circulation, it was hard not to think of the Gates as saffron rather than orange, and that made a difference – instead of traffic cones and barricade lights, one thought of sunsets and airborn monks.
One of the most interesting things about the Gates is the reaction to the Gates. Or maybe, the meta-reaction to the Gates. The mere labelling of the Gates as art seems to require that people have a position on them, and that’s the part I find funny – people can feel so strongly over such low stakes. There’s pretty much no political angle; the Gates cost the taxpayers nothing at all, proceeds from all the Gates schwag they were selling goes to NYC park maintenance, they were only up for two weeks, and they were made entirely of a stuff for which there is an established recycled-materials market. Estimates from commerce types are coming in and indicate that the Gates drew in enough extra people to make a measurable difference to local businesses, but not so many people that there was bad traffic or other infrastructure strain, or even inconvenience to anyone but a few weekend runners who’d rather have Central Park a bit less crowded. So in other words, whether you want to bitch about the Gates or sing their praises, you’ve got only one thing to base it on: how they looked.
I thought they looked mostly interesting with an occasional beautiful here and there. But then again, I’m interested in anything novel, and I’m constitutionally inclined to think, “Ooh, pretty!” when I see a sunlit piece of bright orange fabric billowing in the breeze (for roughly the same reason as that kid in American Beauty got off on the windblown plastic bag). I haven’t actually talked to any real people about what they thought, but the media voices have sounded to me like either one of two opinions:
The sentiment: The Gates are art! Art is good! Yay!
The subtext: Isn’t it handy to have a monumental art installation to call attention to the fact that I like art, and am therefore cool, and I live in a city where we have monumental art installations, and I am again therefore cool.
Or
The sentiment: The Gates. Whatever.
The subtext: Isn’t it handy to have a monumental art installation to call attention to the fact that I know enough about art to be able to say what’s good and bad, and I will demonstrate it by implying without actually saying that the Gates are bad, and I am therefore cool, and I live in a city where we have monumental art installations and we are all so cool that they’re not even that big ‘a deal. Did I mention that I am cool?
What I haven’t heard is that “the Gates are a masterpiece,” or that “they fail as art because…” And I think I haven’t heard this because there is no real way to say so. More than anything else, what they are is neat-o because of their novelty; they’re beautiful if you’re the kind of person who can see them that way, but they force no particular vision on the world, they ask nothing of us except attention, and even that, they make easy. I’m inclined to look unfavorably on their detractors, because, since there’s nothing else at stake, they’ve basically defined themselves as people who, given the choice to see beauty, chose ugly instead.
I guess leaving art history behind was the right choice.
On Sunday I transformed myself into a real live New Yorker by getting up, eating a bagel and coffee for breakfast, taking the train into the city, meeting JP and a crowd of his associates for dim sum in Chinatown, and then joining all the other people in New York who’d been meaning to get to the park to see The Gates on the last day before they were taken down.
It really was a great day for such an outing; cold enough to make me actually enjoy the hot cream cheese smeared on my chin; sunny enough to make the orange cloth of the Gates glow, and apparently Sunday is a big market day in Chinatown, so there were hordes of people spilling off the sidewalks, haggling over unidentifiable (to me), inedible (to me) desiccated sea creatures. Um, there are a LOT of Chinese people in New York, by the way. I don’t mean to take anything away from my beloved San Francisco, but New York Chinatown is a whole different ballgame from San Francisco Chinatown. In San Francisco Chinatown, you can wander through a couple of blocks and, especially if you’re a tourist, kind of imagine yourself back in the bazaar in quaint, exotic Olde Shanghai or whatever. In New York Chinatown, you can walk for block after block looking at nothing but Chinese people and Chinese writing on the signs and start to worry that you accidentally slipped through a hole in the Earth and ended up in some random neighborhood in Beijhing and how the hell are you going to find your way back. But the dim sum were good and someday I’m going to get brave and eat some of the extra weird shit.
The Gates were pretty neat. There was a ton of people in the park and in fact one of the most visually compelling parts of the Gates was looking across where sections of the path ran in parallel, and seeing the lines of people shuffle under the lines of gates. I heard some cynical types describe the color as “safety orange” or “hunter’s orange” but really the color was about as beautiful as I could ever imagine orange vinyl and nylon being. I think the common description in the press of the color as “saffron” was either clever or fortunate. It may or may not be true; I have no idea how well it matches the color of Buddhist monks’ robes, but after the very notion was out there in circulation, it was hard not to think of the Gates as saffron rather than orange, and that made a difference – instead of traffic cones and barricade lights, one thought of sunsets and airborn monks.
One of the most interesting things about the Gates is the reaction to the Gates. Or maybe, the meta-reaction to the Gates. The mere labelling of the Gates as art seems to require that people have a position on them, and that’s the part I find funny – people can feel so strongly over such low stakes. There’s pretty much no political angle; the Gates cost the taxpayers nothing at all, proceeds from all the Gates schwag they were selling goes to NYC park maintenance, they were only up for two weeks, and they were made entirely of a stuff for which there is an established recycled-materials market. Estimates from commerce types are coming in and indicate that the Gates drew in enough extra people to make a measurable difference to local businesses, but not so many people that there was bad traffic or other infrastructure strain, or even inconvenience to anyone but a few weekend runners who’d rather have Central Park a bit less crowded. So in other words, whether you want to bitch about the Gates or sing their praises, you’ve got only one thing to base it on: how they looked.
I thought they looked mostly interesting with an occasional beautiful here and there. But then again, I’m interested in anything novel, and I’m constitutionally inclined to think, “Ooh, pretty!” when I see a sunlit piece of bright orange fabric billowing in the breeze (for roughly the same reason as that kid in American Beauty got off on the windblown plastic bag). I haven’t actually talked to any real people about what they thought, but the media voices have sounded to me like either one of two opinions:
The sentiment: The Gates are art! Art is good! Yay!
The subtext: Isn’t it handy to have a monumental art installation to call attention to the fact that I like art, and am therefore cool, and I live in a city where we have monumental art installations, and I am again therefore cool.
Or
The sentiment: The Gates. Whatever.
The subtext: Isn’t it handy to have a monumental art installation to call attention to the fact that I know enough about art to be able to say what’s good and bad, and I will demonstrate it by implying without actually saying that the Gates are bad, and I am therefore cool, and I live in a city where we have monumental art installations and we are all so cool that they’re not even that big ‘a deal. Did I mention that I am cool?
What I haven’t heard is that “the Gates are a masterpiece,” or that “they fail as art because…” And I think I haven’t heard this because there is no real way to say so. More than anything else, what they are is neat-o because of their novelty; they’re beautiful if you’re the kind of person who can see them that way, but they force no particular vision on the world, they ask nothing of us except attention, and even that, they make easy. I’m inclined to look unfavorably on their detractors, because, since there’s nothing else at stake, they’ve basically defined themselves as people who, given the choice to see beauty, chose ugly instead.
I guess leaving art history behind was the right choice.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Plenty o’ Nuttin’ goes to New York!
I am happy to announce that the Plentynuff International Headquarters have relocated to Brooklyn, NY, USA. I started my new life out right by catching this show by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at a local venue, because I can do that sort of thing now, and should you ask me "Was it funky?", I will assure you "Oh yes it was." Sharon Jones is the baddest soul sister since Lyn Collins and she is even badder than that. Ledisi*, if you’re even still out there, Sharon Jones is who you’d wish you were if you had the good sense to go wishin’. Yeah, so, anyway, it was a great show.
I remember when I first moved to Berkeley, one of my first impressions was Man, this whole place could use a coat of paint. Similarly, my first impression of Brooklyn is Man, this whole place could use a pressure wash. It’s a bit grungey everywhere you look, but I learned to love Berkeley’s weather-worn drabness, so I’m sure I can learn to love Brooklyn’s gritty dingyness.
I’ve been here on and off for a couple of weeks now, shuttling back and forth between here and Hanowhere. Even though I’m not really through with Hanover-bound obligations, I realized it was time to make Brooklyn my home base because I just wasn’t mentally in Hanover anymore, anyway. Too much has happened in the last month to do a play-by-play, but allow me to abstract the experience – with all respect to Merlin Mann’s hilarious 5ives – in the form of a few lists:
Things Learned Too Late to Do Me Any Good
1) New York is warmer than New Hampshire. A little. A very little.
2) The elevator at the medical school labeled prominently with a sign that says “This is the A elevator” is, in fact, the B elevator.
3) There’s a street in Lebanon named “Hough Street.” I don’t know about you, but I can think of only one way to pronounce that.
4) The snow shovel with the grippy handle on the top end was probably worth the extra five dollars.
5) When the physician’s assistant asks about allergies, she really just means allergies to medicines. Not cats.
6) When you’re defending a dissertation, and the defense committee asks you questions, they’re not always trick questions.
7) If you walk around in sub-zero windchill temperatures, getting your exposed parts good and chapped, and then you shave, you’ve got a two-tone face.
Things I’d Prefer Never to Do Again, Which I Stand a Good Chance of Being Able to Avoid.
1) Defending a dissertation. At 4 1/2 hours, I’m told I hold the department record. Nobody told me not to argue, I thought that was the whole idea.
2) Moving during a snowstorm. All of the bad part – that bit where the truck fishtailed – only took up a few seconds. It was the anxiety over what might happen that made it suck.
3) Drive from New York to New Hampshire with no heat in the car.
4) Drive from New Hampshire to New York at night during heavy freezing rain.
Pleasant Surprises
1) I live near a bakery. This is pleasant not only for the obvious reason – the yummy bread-baking smell greeting me in the morning – but also because it’s a blast of nostalgia. When I was in high school, I drove past the Melita factory every morning, and the baking-bread smell was such a welcome incongruence, zooming past on the highway, and a punctuation to an otherwise dreary commute. It’s a two-for-one.
2) Some New Yorkers are indeed cranky and unpleasant. But others are not, and you can’t always predict which way it’s gonna go.
3) The City of New York is quite flexible about the parking laws during and following a snowstorm.
4) Right here in the neighborhood is a French bistro and jazz bar that doesn’t charge a cover, even when they have big-name acts playing.
5) My local grocery store, Tops, while it’s no Co-op, and it’s certainly no Berkeley Bowl, is still really pretty good. And the entire cheese-beer-meat-juice-egg-produce-dairy section is one giant refrigerated room, which is kind of cool.
*Apparently Ledisi IS still around, and she's got herself a website, which I was going to link to, until I saw that it's so bloated with Flash and illegibly funky fonts, and so full of remarks like, "with the chops of Ella Fitzgerald" (I mean, for pity's sake) that there's no way I would send my faithful readers (and they'd have to be faithful, wouldn't they?) there. If you really want to know, there's always Google. Ledisi, baby, the longer you go, the harder you suck.
I am happy to announce that the Plentynuff International Headquarters have relocated to Brooklyn, NY, USA. I started my new life out right by catching this show by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at a local venue, because I can do that sort of thing now, and should you ask me "Was it funky?", I will assure you "Oh yes it was." Sharon Jones is the baddest soul sister since Lyn Collins and she is even badder than that. Ledisi*, if you’re even still out there, Sharon Jones is who you’d wish you were if you had the good sense to go wishin’. Yeah, so, anyway, it was a great show.
I remember when I first moved to Berkeley, one of my first impressions was Man, this whole place could use a coat of paint. Similarly, my first impression of Brooklyn is Man, this whole place could use a pressure wash. It’s a bit grungey everywhere you look, but I learned to love Berkeley’s weather-worn drabness, so I’m sure I can learn to love Brooklyn’s gritty dingyness.
I’ve been here on and off for a couple of weeks now, shuttling back and forth between here and Hanowhere. Even though I’m not really through with Hanover-bound obligations, I realized it was time to make Brooklyn my home base because I just wasn’t mentally in Hanover anymore, anyway. Too much has happened in the last month to do a play-by-play, but allow me to abstract the experience – with all respect to Merlin Mann’s hilarious 5ives – in the form of a few lists:
Things Learned Too Late to Do Me Any Good
1) New York is warmer than New Hampshire. A little. A very little.
2) The elevator at the medical school labeled prominently with a sign that says “This is the A elevator” is, in fact, the B elevator.
3) There’s a street in Lebanon named “Hough Street.” I don’t know about you, but I can think of only one way to pronounce that.
4) The snow shovel with the grippy handle on the top end was probably worth the extra five dollars.
5) When the physician’s assistant asks about allergies, she really just means allergies to medicines. Not cats.
6) When you’re defending a dissertation, and the defense committee asks you questions, they’re not always trick questions.
7) If you walk around in sub-zero windchill temperatures, getting your exposed parts good and chapped, and then you shave, you’ve got a two-tone face.
Things I’d Prefer Never to Do Again, Which I Stand a Good Chance of Being Able to Avoid.
1) Defending a dissertation. At 4 1/2 hours, I’m told I hold the department record. Nobody told me not to argue, I thought that was the whole idea.
2) Moving during a snowstorm. All of the bad part – that bit where the truck fishtailed – only took up a few seconds. It was the anxiety over what might happen that made it suck.
3) Drive from New York to New Hampshire with no heat in the car.
4) Drive from New Hampshire to New York at night during heavy freezing rain.
Pleasant Surprises
1) I live near a bakery. This is pleasant not only for the obvious reason – the yummy bread-baking smell greeting me in the morning – but also because it’s a blast of nostalgia. When I was in high school, I drove past the Melita factory every morning, and the baking-bread smell was such a welcome incongruence, zooming past on the highway, and a punctuation to an otherwise dreary commute. It’s a two-for-one.
2) Some New Yorkers are indeed cranky and unpleasant. But others are not, and you can’t always predict which way it’s gonna go.
3) The City of New York is quite flexible about the parking laws during and following a snowstorm.
4) Right here in the neighborhood is a French bistro and jazz bar that doesn’t charge a cover, even when they have big-name acts playing.
5) My local grocery store, Tops, while it’s no Co-op, and it’s certainly no Berkeley Bowl, is still really pretty good. And the entire cheese-beer-meat-juice-egg-produce-dairy section is one giant refrigerated room, which is kind of cool.
*Apparently Ledisi IS still around, and she's got herself a website, which I was going to link to, until I saw that it's so bloated with Flash and illegibly funky fonts, and so full of remarks like, "with the chops of Ella Fitzgerald" (I mean, for pity's sake) that there's no way I would send my faithful readers (and they'd have to be faithful, wouldn't they?) there. If you really want to know, there's always Google. Ledisi, baby, the longer you go, the harder you suck.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Happy New Year
My only New Year's resolution for now: in 2005, I will always compose my posts in a text editor first, and then copy it into Blogger so that I don't lose any more long posts like the one I just finished that was supposed to go here. (self-administered dope-slap)
I'm not going to try to rewrite it, so here's the distilled version:
Salutation and theme: Happy New Year's (like the title says)
Dissertation: Turned in.
Defense: Scheduled; this Tuesday. Committee members making scary noises about what to expect. I can take it.
Freedom: Imminent.
Date of relocation: Second week of January; to be confirmed.
New Contact Information: Will distribute after arrival in NY; don't panic, current e-mail address is good for another 6 months.
New Year's Resolutions: Postponed until I have some basic information about what my life is going to look like - will I be working crazy hours? will I be in NY or Paris? will the temptations of urban life lead me down the path of wickedness? To be continued.
Likelihood of more frequent posting after the move: High, but I'm not promising anything.
Likelihood of more frequent contact of some other sort after the move: High; I will promise something, but I won't say exactly what, or when.
Self-pity level: Refreshingly low, for a change.
Valediction: I can't promise to be a truly new man in the new year, one who remembers all the birthdays and promptly returns the calls, but I can say for sure that once this shit is over with, I will be in a much better position to earn the loyalty my friends and family have shown me. I am looking forward to rejoining the living and talking a lot more, and more personally, to everyone who still reads this, who used to read it and gave up, and who I wish read it.
That is all for now. Stay tuned.
My only New Year's resolution for now: in 2005, I will always compose my posts in a text editor first, and then copy it into Blogger so that I don't lose any more long posts like the one I just finished that was supposed to go here. (self-administered dope-slap)
I'm not going to try to rewrite it, so here's the distilled version:
Salutation and theme: Happy New Year's (like the title says)
Dissertation: Turned in.
Defense: Scheduled; this Tuesday. Committee members making scary noises about what to expect. I can take it.
Freedom: Imminent.
Date of relocation: Second week of January; to be confirmed.
New Contact Information: Will distribute after arrival in NY; don't panic, current e-mail address is good for another 6 months.
New Year's Resolutions: Postponed until I have some basic information about what my life is going to look like - will I be working crazy hours? will I be in NY or Paris? will the temptations of urban life lead me down the path of wickedness? To be continued.
Likelihood of more frequent posting after the move: High, but I'm not promising anything.
Likelihood of more frequent contact of some other sort after the move: High; I will promise something, but I won't say exactly what, or when.
Self-pity level: Refreshingly low, for a change.
Valediction: I can't promise to be a truly new man in the new year, one who remembers all the birthdays and promptly returns the calls, but I can say for sure that once this shit is over with, I will be in a much better position to earn the loyalty my friends and family have shown me. I am looking forward to rejoining the living and talking a lot more, and more personally, to everyone who still reads this, who used to read it and gave up, and who I wish read it.
That is all for now. Stay tuned.
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