July 14, 2008
Three hours north of Toronto...
Tom and I stopped for lunch in a small town. At the only diner that seemed equipped to provide two hungry road-trippers with sustenance, we asked for a chicken sandwich. "Is it like a chicken burger?" I asked. "Somewhat," replied the waitress...
July 13, 2008
June 18, 2008
Shakespeare in the Park
I'm not one for celebrity. Walking the great cities of the world--London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris--I'm sure I've passed the occasional Big Name but I would never notice. And frankly, when they're pointed out to me I barely find it interesting that people I read about in People while waiting to see my physician actually exist in real life.
But I couldn't help myself feel special last night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for the opening night of the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. It was Hamlet, with Lauren Ambrose as a beautiful and charming (even in the midst of her madness) Ophelia and Sam Waterston as a dottering Polonius complete with senior moments.
Friend Marc got my friends and I into the show and the gala afterwords where the free drinks did flow copiously. In attendance? Alec Baldwin walked past me twice as did Steve Martin. Diane Sawyer, some guy from the show Weeds, and Maria Thayer, who played Jerri Blank's friend Tammi Littlenut on Strangers with Candy.
I loved the show--I really did. But then I go to the theater so rarely my critical faculties regarding what's good and what's so-so are mighty blunt. The New York Times gave it a mixed review tending on the bad side but can you trust a review that doesn't make a big deal of the fact that Tammy Littlenut was in the audience? I can't.
P.S. Tom, try as I might I wasn't able to get close enough to Alec Baldwin to lick his shoulder for you.
June 16, 2008
Exercises in appropriation
When I visit Marc in NYC we barely ever go into Manhattan. Why would we? Brooklyn is ten times better--cheaper food, easier mis-en-scenes, nicer boys, cuter cafes, more trees and parks. It's always seemed more real to me, whereas with Manhattan you are never quite sure if the tableau on the street in front of you is made up people who truly belong there. Manhattan seems like an amusement park for people rich enough to take part in a fantasy lifestyle based on a placed called Manhattan.
So when we do go to Manhattan we go for a specific reason and I make sure we never stay longer than we have to.
Yesterday we went to check out the New Museum in SoHo which was a pretty fantastic building and is probably going to be one of my regular stops whenever I am in town. With only a handful of galleries it's very manageable and while there are a few confused Midwesterners ambling around wondering what the hell they're looking at there's certainly fewer then you'd find at MoMa or whatever.
I simply had to check out the Paul Chan exhibition, which was truly mesmerizing. I first saw one of his simply-animated projections at the Whitney last year but this was an entire floor dedicated to the full seven-projection sequence of apocalypse and rebirth. Cars, cellphones, and spectacles floated into space while bodies fell and telephone wires danced in the air. Leaves on trees danced in the wind while an army with banners made out of laundry passed by underneath. Bowls of fruit ascended out of the painting's frame. I could stare at them endlessly; they never seemed to end and when they did resolve themselves it was into sunsets that became sunrises for the next day's rapture. You can check out some YouTube videos of Chan's work here and here and here.
Less satisfying but still interesting in some places was a joint exhibition of works by Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer. Guzman's half was mostly composed of transparent hipster goof-offs but Shearer's work was more interesting, exploring 80s heavy metal culture, 70s teen heartthrob Leif Garrett, and contemporary internet archives of the everyday. I was captivated by gigantic collages of thumbnail photographs culled from the Internet grouped around particular themes--heavy metal, people sleeping--but at the same time it's like, I could do that.
Okay so I am going to change the subject here. In looking for a link for Leif Garrett I've discovered all kinds of interesting websites. See for instance his an official website that showcases his music career today, one of the many contemporary freaks who are still in love with the androgynous kid, a Q & A on the USA Today website, and a mugshot of Garrett from 2006 after an arrest for heroin possession.
Yes, it's been awhile
Currently in a Brooklyn coffee shop enjoying an iced tea and listening to Last Shadow Puppets. Having a glorious time here without you.
It's been a long time since I wrote--I suppose for the same reason I sometimes don't answer the phone when good friends call I don't update this thing--nothing much to say and certainly nothing good at that. Might as well just keep my big mouth shut and keep on moving on.
But I arrived in Brooklyn on Friday on the first leg of an international, nulti-modal trip that will encompass the urban, the peri-urban, and the Laurentian Shield. New York City, Providence, the Adirdondacks, the north of Toronto, Lake Huron, and finally Chicago.
New York has been a mish-mash of hot humid weather and thunderous downpours, though I haven't noticed much because I've been quite drunk on cheap margaritas basically since I arrived. I reconnected with an old friend from London, took in Brooklyn Pride (which made me ashamed), and hopscotched around coffee shops. An old Brooklyn man lectured me on the death of Tim Russert being an example of why we should live life to the fullest, a cute restauranteur rescued me on a midnight bus ride because he had recognized me in his bodega earlier that evening, and I met Marc's new boyfriend. All in all the weekend has been what I wanted and needed.
May 30, 2008
Uncontacted no more
Spotted in the forest near the border with Peru...
Most interesting are the postures...
May 17, 2008
May 13, 2008
My neighborhood
Biking through the alley adjacent to my building yesterday morning, I saw this sign. I thought I'd help this person out but publicizing the theft. Please, please, if you took this person's compost toilet, for heaven's sake return it!
May 8, 2008
May 7, 2008
May 6, 2008
In which my secret nerdy habits and my professional life converge
Yes, I'll probably be attending John Bohannon's academic conference inside World of Warcraft, "Convergence of the Real and the Virtual."
I'm trying to get my boss to cover a month's subscription costs but I doubt that's gonna fly.
May 5, 2008
Crane, Monroe, and Toibin
In the April 17 issue of The New York Review of Books, one of my favorite authors, Colm Toibin, plumbs the recently-published Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters.
I haven't read much of Crane, but after coming across this little snippet of exchange between Poetry editor Harriet Monroe and Crane regarding Crane's "At Melville's Tomb," I quickly ordered a copy from the library:
The first stanza reads:I like this: "the so-called illogical impingements of the connotations of words..."Often beneath the wave, wide
from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones
he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he
watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were
obscured.
"Take me for a hard-boiled unimaginative unpoetic reader, and tell me how dice can bequeath an embassy (or anything else)," Monroe wrote. Crane in his reply admitted that
as a poet I may very possibly be more interested in the so-called illogical impingements of the connotations of words on the consciousness (and their combinations and interplay in metaphor on this basis) than I am interested in the preservation of their logically rigid significations at the cost of limiting my subject matter and perceptions involved in the poem.
May 1, 2008
Grand theft auto
Yeah, I had to do it.
I was remaining obliviously cool to the release of Grant Theft Auto IV this week until I started reading all the 10 out of 10 reviews it was getting. And the Crypto Jew said it was like, the best game for Xbox 360, like, evah.
So after work yesterday I traded in some games I never played and got my own copy.
After several hours of playing I feel an odd urge to abuse women.
Just kidding. As recent Eastern European immigrant Nico Bellic I'm compelled to abuse not just women, but innocent men, too, thugs, garbagemen, hookers in parks, old ladies on the beach, and police officers.
The online multiplayer function has been getting some amazing reviews too, and I tried that out a little bit with the Cryto Jew, whose online gamertag is Xepha. Yeah, it's incredibly fun. At one point I was reminded of the opening scene of Todd Solondz's film Happiness, as I calmly strolled into a crowded park where Xepha was hiding out, my AK-47 blazing and crowds scattering.
It's just a game, people.
Or?
A weird thing happened to me when I was about two hours into the game. I started to crave McDonald's. Now, I eat fast food about once a year. And I never have an urge--I usually end up eating it because I'm driving to Duluth or Chicago and I need a food-fix.
But I was dying for a Big Mac and fries while playing this game.
There's a McDonald's about six blocks from my apartment which I have been to once in my life because I never eat fast food, see? But I left my apartment in my pajama-pants, got in my car, and went through the drive-thru and damn does a Big Mac go well with knifing.
