The Last Exorcism

Saw The Last Exorcism film yesterday at the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square.

Creepy in more ways than one...

This well acted mockumentary has a perverse psychological plot twist that keeps you guessing...

I recommend it to horror buffs like myself!...

And, so, I don't want to say too much more about it... No spoilers here...

(Special thanks to Postal Lady!)

Set the Tone: Time is Now

"No matter how much or how little time you have, the only time to make use of it is now".
-- Ralph Marston

Night Music: See This With Them

Caught A Little Night Music last week... Wasn't gonna see it... But, a friend of a cast member (OK, one of the stars!) gave me a free ticket to join her...

I'd seen an original production way back in the day... Can't recall if I saw it on Broadway or when it toured in Baltimore or Washington... I remember seeing Hermione Gingold... But beyond that... Who knows? (See Wikipedia entry on A Little Night Music)

I was completely unimpressed as a twenty something self-involved youth... French Farce has never been my forte... I couldn't see a role in there for me. (What? No twenty-something colorful ventriloquists?) And so, it's quite likely that I had bolted at intermission... That was often my wont when I was bored to tears by things I didn't understand...

This time??

OMG...

First thing: This fabulous brilliant Stephen Sondheim score is completely AMAZING! The Hugh Wheeler book is lean and mean in a tastefully clever and perfectly uppity way...

And the cast? Well: Sublime...!

Bernadette Peters, in her first ever replacement role, was a terrific Desiree'. She comes across on stage easily twenty years less her real age (1948 sez Wikipedia! Ouch!)... Her Send in the Clowns was entrancing and moving. My date was in tears...

Elaine Stritch? She's a phenom and I'm glad I saw her in this. I enjoyed her immensely... That being said??? Couldn't she at least have attempted to become a European great lady from a certain time period?... Instead of a true Madame Armfeldt she was her typically acerbic American 2010 "Elaine Stritch: At Liberty" title role... In a wheelchair this time. We got a begrudged Liasons... And to great comedic effect, nonetheless... But instead of a, aristrocratic Euro-Dame, we get a mouthy American Broad.

My true hunch is that the Director, Trevor Nunn, was afraid of her! Ha!

Elaine May, went to see Stritch backstage the other night and told her "You landed every pause". Stritchy roared with delight. Yes, she paused a lot... She milked every line of dialogue and every lyric with impeccable comedic timing... But ... She's all wrong... She's delightfully all wrong ... So go see her! LOL

The rest of the cast?... Superb!!!

It seemed somewhat obvious that they were all cast as a better match to the original Broadway cast of the two lead women... less so for this particular cast...

For example, one of the paramours seemed far fetched in his swash-buckling attraction to this particular Desiree'... While I can well imagine he was a perfect fit for Catherine Zeta-Jones...

But that's a quibble...

See this show... It's a Stephen Sondheim classic with this legendary cast (Both uniquely made into stars by other Sondheim works!)...

And you'll always be able to say... "Oh, I saw that with them!"

Have a Great One

It has been an incredible week of weather...

... After the first three rainy days of the week... But at least they were cool!!!

Today was a sunny, blue skied, brilliant sunny day...

August could be much, much worse... Of course...

Enjoy your weekend!!

Blogging Blatherings By Blogger's Bursting Brain

I'd been a good boy about blogging every day. I have.... Although yesterday DID get away from me...

Downright cool in Hell's Kitchen this morning... And that's perfectly fine with me.... Windows are cracked. Door is ajar for a cross draft and the window A/C units are cranked up on fan only... Out with the old air and in with the new air...

I'm sure it'll will heat up enough to get down to one of the Hell's Kitchen piers of the Hudson River Park and catch some sun in another hour or two... I do a half hour of sun once every week (or two) and find that's enough to keep me bronzed... Always have... Though the jury is still out as to whether that's enough for the daily requirement of Vitamin D... I dunno...

We had a dreary three days of rain and dampness to start the week... And I loved those dreary days too... Nothing dreary about any day off from work!!! No complaints here!

Oh.... Ugh! My fabulous and long awaitied and throughly-enjoyed-so-far summer vacation is waaaay too quickly waning... I'm desperately trying to *not* let it's impending end weigh too heavily on obstructing my enjoyment of the present moment(s). ... Always a challenge!

I just seem to have have much more pep in my step at the beginning of a summer vacation when 10 weeks lie ahead than I do when it's all largely behind me, and ten work months lay imminently in my path... I guess it's human nature...

It's a conundrum... And living in the present moment of now is the aim of the "Day at a Time" philosophy as well as it being quite perfectly Zen...

Oh, I saw A Little Night Music last night on Broadway... Need to blog about it soon...

Decluttering is coming along nicely... Though, there's "always something" more...

Got about a thousand photograph images (!) off in a packing carton to Scan Cafe for digitizing (Thanks Lisa for that tip!)... There are thousands more in a Rubbermaid tub on my floor that I decided not to digitize (no people in them, blurry, duplicate shots or multiple shots of the same event...). eventually I'll FaceBook or Blog or Flickr many of them...

I did manage to throw out several giant tubs of VHS and 3/4" tapes, that I had digitized several months ago... Larry talked me into saving the original tape clutter "just in case"... But Donner thankfully convinced me to throw it all out and rely on the blessedly tiny stack of DVD memories...

Eventually, I'll figure out how to transfer some of these to whatever the file type is that makes them YouTube friendly... Well, some of them, anyway...

Had a retro Chinese Restaurant lunch special at Ollie's up near Lincoln Center yesterday... Sesame Chicken with broccoli, brown rice, and Hot and Sour Soup... Reminded me of those days when I used to rely on those Chinese lunch specials as my main meal of the day during the leaner freelance years... Now it's been a couple years since I had one like that... Julie would call this "A Heart Attack on a Plate"...

I've also been tackling a wonderfully clear and intuitive manual titled Evernote Essentials by Brett Kelly to the computer program Evernote and making headway setting up widgets on all my new computers and browsers to make it easier to digitally clip things rather than clip paper clippings... Acer desktop, Asus notebook, and the Android mobile.. the three A's... LOL

I'll do a post on this software program after I manage to finally master it, get it up and running, and start relying on it...

Caught the PBS airing of Rogers & Hammerstein's South Pacific on the DVR... It was fabulous, especially in HD... I'm sure it will be available for purchase or rental or rebroadcast eventually. Don't miss it!

Still need to set up a home wireless network... Yesterday's informative but daunting NYTimes article A Simple Wireless Network? Not Likely, suggests the danger that microwave ovens can cause conflicts has me rethinking whether I should waste the time tinkering with this old Netgear (that Keith assures me is durable);  and/or whether the close proximity to other microwave signals in our compact Hell's Kitchen community might gravely conflict with my own signal strength and bandwidth within my own little man cave...

I was just emailing Danny, that my summer time list of out-of-town places to visit was once again largely untouched... There's toooooo much fabulous stuff to see and do and enjoy in Hell's Kitchen and vicinity... And I have no regrets!

Now... Off to the Hudson River bank! Will grab some assembalnce of a picnic lunch along the way...

Wednesday's Word: Nappish

Nappish

def: The drowsy state of feeling tired and craving a nap... Either because one is genuinely tired, is just lazy, or is procrastinating doing something or many things. Often induced on wet, rainy, gray days...

Usage: Third day of rain, many boring chores yet to be done, and here I am feeling terribly nappish...

Site of the Week: NabeWise

NabeWise self-describes as: "The easy way to explore neighborhoods and find the perfect place for you!"

Schools and statistics, reviews, and neighborhood rankings make it an efficient and lively site to shop for a new home base for yourself, your family, or your business...

So far, they are in: New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, and coming soon: Los Angeles

They welcome you to suggest a city to add to their mix... And encourage feedback...

It's also fun to drop by and check out your own 'hood just for kicks... Explore 266 New York City neighborhoods!

Here's the NabeWise page for Hell's Kitchen. I think they did a nice job on capturing us in a nutshell....What do you think?

Set the Tone: Beware the Shallows

"I think the reason why people are so upset when they perceive someone to be shallow is not so much that this perceived person is wrong or morally in the basement, it’s more because there is a loss of potential love. Someone who is shallow, who is committed to their own pleasures and vices above all else, does not have the space or time to love you. And people feel this. Even if they do not admit it".
-- Don Cummings, Open Trench blog

This is Sunday Morning

I stlll hear Charles Kuralt's voice every time I say the sentence in the subject line... He was the distinctive voice of an American magazine show of the same name on CBS that used to required viewing for your blogger back in the day...

Rain is one thing. Humidity is the other. The two together?? The worst... Well, maybe not the worst.... Blazing sun and humidity are prolly the worst...

Chores: Been up and down to the laundry room a few times doing things like comforters, throw blankets and a slew of canvas and other bags that I'd been using in school for the last few years...

One last load in the washer needs to cycle over to the dryer in 15 minutes, while woof down some reheated Turkey and Bean Chile from the westway doctored with fresh veggies from yesterday's Green market and today's morning run to Stiles...

Thing about momentum... Is ya gotta go with it. If I sit, that'll be the end of the accomplishments... Believe me...

Just two more weeks til the Labor Day weekend, and the end of summer vacation...

How do I feel about this???

Don't ask!... I'm trying not to think about it til I absolutely must...

Still adding to lists of stuff I want to do and/or accomplish before that fateful day after Labor Day...

Gad, I love my summer vacation!

Thank You, Mayor Bloomberg

Not often that I want to thank Mayor Bloomberg for anything... I disagree with him on just about EVERYthing...

But the Summer Streets Park Avenue bike ride was fabulous this morning!! I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic if it were too hot and humid... But the weather was perfect today... I guess I can't thank him for the good weather exactly...

But, hey...

Pedaling under the former Pan Am building? Amazing.... Getting a rare photographic angle of Grand Central Station where one woulda never been allowed to stand and focus in regular traffic...

Those dinky dumpster pools looked ridiculously fun and silly...

The bubble-ologist making giant bubbles in Soho...

Catching a Twitter Break at Petrosino Square...

Riding down through the East Village and Lower East Side toward City Hall! Kewl!

I shoulda gotten out there right at 7am when it all first started to avoid some of the family and kiddy congestion... It got particularly crowded down around Soho and South to City Hall, but all in all was a breeze....

 

The rest of the ride up to East 72nd was truly wonderful...

 

Thank you Mayor Bloomberg for championing this and other kinds of public events and arts...

A More Mortal Matisse

MoMA is doing a summer exhibition of Matisse that's not your usual Summer Exhibition fare...

I caught it recently.

Instead of  Matisse's most colorful and famous masterpieces...

...The curator captures a five year stretch where the artist did some of his more experimental and daring work...

Some of it looks plainly amateurish. Some of it is unfinished. Some are sketches. Some are clearly reworked and painted over. This makes for a mortal Matisse.

Much of what's on display here certainly would not be displayed in a major art museum if it hadn't been done by Matisse...

Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917
July 18–October 11, 2010
The exhibition is organized by John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Art Institute of Chicago.

Here's some additional text from a MoMA press release:

In the time between Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) return from Morocco in 1913 and his departure for Nice in 1917, the artist produced some of the most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works of his career—paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by shades of black and gray. Works from this period have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as an aberration within the artist's development, or as a response to Cubism or World War I. Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 moves beyond the surface of these paintings to examine their physical production and the essential context of Matisse's studio practice.

Sit Like A Man

Thanks to A Ridiculous Raw Youth

Taking A Virtual Art Gallery Walk

It's humid. I have loads to do inside the apartment...

So rather than take a couple hours and go stroll over to the uptown 57th Area art galleries, I decided to do a cyber walk-through...

Had there been something that I thought I needed to see, I woulda made a point to wander over, and I still might at some point...

The only show that I'm mildly curious about is the first on the list... More to see this new space than the hetero couple interwined...

Here's a list culled from recommendations in the listings of Time Out New York and New York Magazine...

Haunch of Venison "Four Projects"

Bruce Gilden at Amador Coney Island scenes fronm the 1960s to 1980's.

Summer Place at Bonni Benrubi captures the Rockaway's surfing culture and more. (See Brian by Adam Raphael image posted here)

Austrian Cultural Forum, NineteenEightFour, on surveillance.

Marian Goodman Gallery featuring Rineke Dijkstra.

Tibor de Nagy Gallery's Town and Country

Now that I did all the work... You can take a stroll yourself while I unpack plastic storage tubs and find places to store all these work supplies...

Tuesday Rumbings and Ramblings

T-minus three weeks remaining and counting...

Besides all the new foods and restaurants, new art, new friends, I've made a huge dent in learning two new computers, a new operating system, a new mobile platform, and a new camera.

Still should tinker with the video feature on the Canon though... Just to make sure it works if nothing else...

One of the best pieces of advice I received in Graduate School when professors preached theories I didn't necessarily agree with.... "Do you want to be right? Or do you want to graduate?" In other words, "Shut up!".

I pass that advice onto Obama. (What do you mean, he doesn't care about my advice!? LOL)





















Waiting in the back of a Hell's Kitchen sandwich shop for Windows 7 to update on my new Asus notebook over a free wi-fi. It's taking a while.... Not the downloading as much as the installing....

Gonna be another hot one. 90 or more... And humidity is already high.

I gotta wean off of caffeine... It's not excessive. But still...

Still gotta stash all the stuff from my office at work into secret places in my apartment. The challenge will be in the remembering... Oy!

I can't get my old Palm Zire 71 to synch into Palm Desktop on the new Windows 7 on either my new Asus or new Acer. Probably time to let that old format go... Kinda sad.

Passwords are the challenge... I wish there was a failsafe system to do them without a need to store outside my own brain's internal memory... But that means simplifying to a level that's too easy to crack... Dilemmas dilemmas... Ya know?

Anyone have a trade secret for password management that doesn't involve writing them down? Or saving them as a file somewhere?

One big gratitude list.... Last night I sat and looked over the last few weeks of blog posts to remind myself of all the great things I've done since vacation started...

Three weeks from today is the first day back to work...

Let's see... What kind of further mischief can I get into before then?
 
(Message composed in my new mobile device, please forgive typos).

Set The Tone Monday: Don't Interrupt

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
- George Bernard Shaw

It's All Cool-age To Me

I've always been a fan of collage... Not sure why. I just think it's cool.

Scooted over to Perry Rubenstein Gallery this afternoon to see “Shred,” a new exhibition focusing on collage-based work. Curated by Paper magazine senior editor Carlo McCormick, “Shred” incorporates a wide range of creative talents – from those that sort of pioneered the art of collage to new artists growing and challenging the medium in contemporary art.

Here's a blurb from their press release:

The exhibition will include works by Bruce Conner, a prominent member of the Beat community; California-native, Jess, whose oeuvre includes collages based on alchemy, religion and comic strips; downtown darling Dash Snow; Gee Vaucher, who is central to punk visual culture; and Jack Walls, whose self-portraits incorporate photographic imagery taken by his long-time partner Robert Mapplethorpe.

Provocative new works that were specifically created for the exhibition will be included by artists such as: the collective FAILE (represented by Perry Rubenstein) who will show a ripped painting featuring brand new iconography; Shepard Fairey; Leo Fitzpatrick; Mark Flood; Erik Foss; Swoon; and, Judith Supine. Also to be shown are a finely cut paper collage by Brian Douglas (Elbow-Toe) that resembles intricate painting, while Shelter Serra will present three-dimensional work—red roses cast in white silicone. Video works by Martha Colburn, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Bec Stupak will be featured, with Stupak premiering a new piece.

Through August 27, 2010, at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, 527 W. 23rd, New York, NY.

Here's a few shots I took today... But better ones are on their website and at Curated Mag

Met Museum Summer 2010

Was so glad I got over to see the Picasso exhibit today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It closes in a few hours and was definitely worth the trip... I scooted around the museum and took a few shots of the other things on display this summer. They had two photo exhibits that I found to be b-o-r-i-n-g... And the bamboo stuff on the roof? Not for me. But Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was terrific...

All In The Same Boat

Had a swell day yesterday meeting up with two old friends. We're talking the mid to late 1980's... We had done a lot of globe-trotting together. We were all in the same boat back then... Both lit and fig...

Our freshly minted Facebook group picture makes us look not too much different than we would have looked crowded and leaning in with huge smiles around a Captain's table on the Royal Odyssey back in the day... But today's shot was thankfully taken with a gracious wide angle lens at a polite distance...

Since I gave up the "Just for Men" look, I sadly couldn't compete with these two lovely ladies... Not anymore.

(Photo by Cameron Christopher Dunn)


We strode from their Hotel Metro (near Macy's) down toward Union Square...

I brought along a little guidebook about the Madison Square Park art installation Antony Gorman's "Body of Work". Miss Kitty did the best job of spotting the lifesized fiberglass statues perched above the surrounding architectural towers... "There's one". "There's another one." "There, too"

Miss Kitty always did have an eagle eye.

Julie was more delighted with the earth bound cast iron ones standing around the park at ground level...

As for me, I was wondering if these were really cast from the artist's actual body and/or if he had taken artistic license in exaggerating certain features... Hm.

Same thoughts, different decade...

A great lunch down by Union Square at the Blue Water Grill. We all shared all our food... Miss Kitty rightfully observed that generous food sharing was a skill we all learned on the ships so we could all try all the local exotic cuisines wherever we went... (Few of my land lubbing NYC friends share this enthusiasm)

Julie remembered the night she and I shared goat testicles in Bali with a belovedly bossy German tourguide lady and a confused bisexual pathological nutjob but cute preppy man that both she and I had a crush on. That was one meal, (and after-meal) I'd tried to forget...

And so, after several wonderful hours that picked right up where we had left off...: We hugged and kissed each other goodbye. These girls were not-so-secretly dying to start their NYC shopping phase...

While Miss Kitty was hugging me goodbye she was looking over my shoulder and muttering... "Oh look... There's another statue there"... "And another one on top of that building over there..."

"No, Miss Kitty, those are chimneys"... The EventHorizon exhibit ended 10 blocks away...

A quarter of century had passed, but it all seemed like just yesterday...

(From March 26 through August 15, 2010, The Madison Square Park Conservancy will present Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, a landmark public art exhibition, as part of Mad. Sq. Art 2010).

Despicable Me

Charming. Original. Funny. Beautiful. Entertaining. 3D. See it!



With thanks to Postal Lady!

The Latest Unresolved Manhattan Clutter Dilemma

Remember how hard I worked a few weeks ago to get my place together?... The deep clean, etc...??

Well, it's a disaster area again!

Besides the new computer packing materials that I'm trying to hold on to at least through the 30 day warranty period, in case I have to return any of this....

... I had to move a ton of stuff out of my office at work, since I'm making a location switch with the same employer... I won't have office space at all with the new job... And sooooo, I need to store this stuff on my own...

My recent most colleagues were DElighted with all the gifts I unloaded and gave away to them... And yet, there's still this stuff that I will much more than likely need for myself in the months ahead in my new position...

And sooooo... For all the de-cluttering... I have now more clutter...

I am opposed to paying for storage space... I've made that mistake in the past... That monthly fee adds up in no time... And yet, I don't have enough room in my tiny Hell's Kitchen Man Cave for all my personal stuff AND more/less running a business out of here...

Dilemmas, dilemmas!

So, this dilemma is today: Unresolved!...

A Hot Wednesday Art Walk

It's another hot one here in Gotham City...

Scooted down to Chelsea for a late morning walk-around to six art galleries that I had clipped out of Time Out New York, New York Magazine and The New York Times that I've been wanting to see before they close for the season...

The most colorful and fun one was the skinny boys in bathing suits... More formally named: The End - Venezia by Ragnar Kjartanson at the Luhring Augustine Gallery.

And David LaChapelle's "American Jesus" was remarkable and jarring. That was at the Paul Kasmin Gallery location on Tenth Avenue.

I got a kick out of the found object assemblages of Candy Ternigan at the Greene Naftali... Especially "Ten Things That Have been Run Over" And her "Pot Crushed on Houston". LOL...

Got to my favorite hidden away Mongolian Barbeque at 34th and Tenth for a self designed dish... And then had two chocolate sundae's with peanuts at the McD's across the street before walking all the way home along the blistering avenue...

Took a cool swim when I got home in my very own giant iron bathtub. OK, more like a soak, but I could use my imagination....

Thoughts and prayers to my good friend Ralph Howard who got a new lung 48 hours ago and is recovering well!

Wednesday's Word: Salahi

Salahi, verb

definition: to sneak into a party uninvited, preferably past the Secret Service or some other high falutin regulatory security agency.

Usage: I heard there was a special party for teachers in the White House Rose Garden this week. I wish I could have Salahi'ed myself right into it!

Source: Me

Cazwell's Ice Cream Truck

Silly fun on a hot & humid August day....



Thanks to Ian.

I Heart Andy Warhol

I do heart Andy Warhol. I do.

Simple. Respect for pop culture. Homo.

What's not to heart???

This exhibit Andy Warhol: Last Decade at The Brooklyn Museum was a brilliant glimpse of his last ten years when he returned to painting by hand... and portraiture... and??

Well... You'll see...

Brooklyn Museum's Secret Treasures

So, I went to Brooklyn Museum last week, and I'm in the elevator and a woman confides to me that she thinks this is the best museum in all of New York City.... She should know cuz as a little girl she got thrown out of it for staying in after hours and exploring all the places where museumgoers aren't allowed to go...

Reminded me of  having read From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler in elementary school.

Meanwhile, I did enjoy my trip... I got there, as I usually do, at all museums, right as they open the joint as it gives me the best chance to scoot around without stumbling over tourists... And when photography is allowed, to take art pics w/o people... for the most part...

I got a sense of the lady's sneaky joy when I visited the fifth floor Luce Center for American Art... Here they have treasures from the Museum's permanent collection in beautiful environmentally controlled glass storage units...Each item bears a clear accession number and computer terminals abound where you can enter any number and access everything you might want to know...

"Visible storage and study center", they call it. "Fabulous", I call it!

Oh, I wish my friends at the wonderful Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta could afford such a venture for their own warehouse annex...

Anyway, this is a treat...

Site of the Week: Walking Off the Big Apple

Walking off the big apple has lots of great walking tour routes and ideas for New York City metro area hikes and so forth...

Ponderings from a Brooklyn Bound IRT

(Wrote this post at 10 am this morning on a train to Brooklyn...)

I like having a subway map at the ready in my messenger (man-)bag. It's comforting to have old-fashioned dependable paper to unfold and refold and store... And one less reason to have to scroll through computer screens...

I am pretty good with the general layout of the NYC Subway system. Still, there's an occasional change or new destination it's good to double check without having to lean over the unfortunate traveller who unwittingly chose the seat directly in front of the posted subway map in each car.

The new subway map has a fatter Manhattan and bluer blues.

Happy Birthday to famous author Ciar Cullen, who I went to high school with 35 years ago... That was Baltimore! And in the 1970's, when Indian warriors could be your school mascot without offending anyone. PC didn't mean politically correct. And since personal computers were but a dream, I guess PC stood for nothing...

I like having a messenger bag. Always fully stocked with essentials.... Just grab wallet, keys, cel and go...

Off to Brooklyn Museum today and to traipse around one of my old neighborhoods... Hope to catch up with a friend or two on the fly. We'll see...

Not having a doggy makes it easier to do stuff like little daycations to outer boroughs.... But I do miss the little devil, even after 10 months. No, I don't want another one. Not today anyway...

Sometimes it's much better to stay on an air-conditioned local subway seat than to wait on a steamy platform for an express train. Sometimes you feel like pushing the envelope all the way til the last possible moment.... In this case, Chambers Street on the IRT (IRT? Damn, I'm old! Ha!).

After a crosstown midtown taxi ride at rush hour yesterday, I'm recently reminded how stressful it is for cabbies and customers when pedestrians cross in crosswalks against the light... I'm reminded. Doesn't mean I'll stop doing it! I'll just be more mindful. So there.

People who try to get across town in taxi's during rush hours are stupid. They deserve to be held up by pedestrians! LOL.

Tourists who walk on the wrong side of starwells and walkways unnerve me. Sidewalk traffic runs like traffic patterns. Keep to the right, and let faster people pass on the left. This is the American traffic pattern we're talking about...Not Europeon traffic patterns.... This is America!

When deli cashiers decide to go prepare a coffee order instead of taking the next person in line's quick cash for an already prepared sandwich... They run the risk that the latter hurried customer will just abandon the sandwich... It happens... As it should. This is New York!

I forgot that you get a bonus subway ride at the 23rd Ely subway stop in Queens... Something about all the trains not connecting properly... So within a 2 hour span, your return trip counts as a free transfer. Nice bonus after my visit yesterday to MoMA @ PS1... I'm all for it!

On going to Park Slope... I used to have to tolerate this looooong subway ride ALL the time when I lived in the Slope in the 1980/90's... And then I had a looong walk home afterward. I don't miss that. But I do miss the trees.

What Happened in the 80's Stays In the 80's

This is is soooo ridiculous... What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? And what happened in the 1980's stays in the 1980's!



Thanks to Nicomar for sending this...

A Few Inches Can Make A Real Difference

I'm blogging on my mobile from Le Rosier Cafe' at MoMA PS1 at the moment... Throughout the museum are these giant black block letters conveying the following bits of observational wisdom: "Much larger than it used to be"; "A few inches can make a real difference"; and "Erect and Massive"... OK.
The exhibitions this summer are eclectic, youthful, largely sexy, and usually fun... Photos of the artworks are prohibited, so this blog post is sadly boring... On this horrid hot August Thursday, just know I'm off in Queens soaking up the A/C and a big s%$!load of wild art...

Wednesday's Word: PowerDisking

powerdisking. verb, to powerdisk
 Definition: To watch several episodes of a TV show in a row, usually from a DVD box set. This can be done over several evenings, or a marathon weekend.

Usage: Todd HellsKitchen missed the last two seasons of True Blood, so he'll eventually get around to renting them and powerdisking all the episodes in order to be up to date.

Adapted from: Urban Dictionary

And Now A Word from Our Sponsor

Talk about your white meat... LOL



Thanks to my buddy, Wonderman

Happy As A Pink Baby With a New Canon On Flickr

Interestingly, my Pink Babies is my most popular photo on Flickr... Odd little shot for such popularity, eh? So... Ya never know...

But I DO think a lot of Flickr-philes are interestingly odd, eclectic, eccentric and fetishy... There's the Dark Shadows and Divine devotees, the Bakery Truck and Fire Hydrant collectors, and whenever I post some barbeque or pizza closeup I get a slew of requests to post it to some of the Special Interest Groups on Flickr. Mannequin and Pinocchio groups are clearly my own two personal favorite Flickr Groups.

See... Flickr is more than a photo service, it's an interesting little social community, too... Fun!

Before I start uploading the new pics from my brand new point-and-shoot Canon (SX 210 IS) camera (I'm still learning to use it) let me bid a proper farewell to my old point-and-shoot Canon (SD 700 IS) by noting that it steadfastly produced 15,715 items that resulted in 23,915 Flickr views (to date) on my Flickr page.

Still gotta figure out how to set up the nifty Flickr Uploader here in the brand new Acer 'puter's Windows 7 and I would love to be able to re-package all the old cam's photos into a seperate folder, but I gotta spend some time on Flickr seeing if their Collections and Sets apps would let me do such a thing??

Digital photography has become quite a nice little hobby for me these last few years... And it's a natural artistic outlet and accoutrement to the blog...

BTW, I'm a huge fan of Flickr as the best service of it's kind... Though I do have friends on Picasa and SmugMug that might disagree...

I pay the nominal annual fee for the Pro account cuz it allows me to upload without worrying about the monthly totals. Summer is always especially heavy for me in photo uploads. Some months during the work year, mean upload counts of zilch really...

Andy Warhol once said: "Every bad picture is a good picture".

I like to think Warhol woulda loved my Pink Babies and would have been one of my most avid Flickr friends... He was certainly odd, eclectic, eccentric, and fetishy enough to fit right in!

Half Full August

It's August 1st!

Oy!

The summer vacation is half over...

The good news is that the summer vacation is only half over...

I like to think of myself as a half full kinda person...

Which kind of person are you?