November 2009
1 post
Kevin takes Manhattan on Halloween (Ever After)
p.s. Woody Allen was wrong. Unrequited love is not the most romantic. Especially not when it is competing with a lovely “lady” prancing around in drag.
August 2009
3 posts
The Sawing
I live in New York.
So, basically, I live in a shoebox.
I also play the piano. And one of my favorite pastimes is to gather humans around the piano and sing crappy renditions of Beatles songs. Tipsy irish jigs. Or shiteous improvised songs that one could only love if one was delusionally happy or shit faced under the influence. It was for this reason I was compelled to buy a spinet, so I could...
1 tag
WatchSomeone once told me that when they were a boy they told their Mother that they thought Times Square was the most beautiful place in the world…
(My first 8mm film. Paired with the Charles Mingus composition Moanin’, which coincidentally came off the album “Nostalgia in Times Square”)
Square Dancing in Cape Cod and How I Learned to...
(Justyna in the Boat Yard where Square Dance was held)
Square Dancing is my new favorite pastime.
It is also an excellent candidate for a blog I saw recently, “What White People Like To Do”.
Part of living in New York is getting out of the city in the summer so you dont go completely insane. And Cape Cod seems to be one of the classic New England destinations. So Justyna and...
July 2009
4 posts
Just for the hell of it.
It was the night that Michael Jackson died that I first saw him.
A balmy, propitious night - perfect for sitting on a stoop. Which is exactly what Justyna and I were doing. A radio at our side, we were playing the lets- see-how-long-we-can-play-Michael-Jackson-continuously-using-only-the-radio-dial-as-a-compass game. (A relatively simple feat, since more than half of the radio stations were...
Close Encounters in the East Village: Starring the...
Wouter Van Twiller bought Governor’s Island from a tribe of Canarsee Indians for “two axe heads, a string of beads and some iron nails.” I am not quite sure what he bought the East Village for but I am relatively confident the currency was of a comparable dimension, and it was there that he set up his farm. Around 1651, Peter Stuyvesant, leader of the new settlement New...
Cinematic SynchroniCITY
I dream kaleidescope dreams! Atonal, rainbow, prismed fancies. Sun rayed extravaganzas, war time ballads that go on forever. Hallucinatory type galas where ladies sing in synchronicity and kick high steps to the moon.
Which is why, I am hopelessly devoted to Busby Berkeley.
In the summer, New York is all a flurry with films. Hundreds of New Yorkers watch movies in parks around the city....
There once was a man from Nantucket...
(It was pouring rain the night we drove to Hyannis. Yes….Hy a nnis……The drivers side windshield wiper had broken off a few days earlier on Santiago, the car I am borrowing for the summer. A convertible soft cover 4-Runner, an Indiana Jones type relic that jiggles at the first appearance of disturbance. So, in the spirit of all beaters, the first half of the trip was spent...
June 2009
8 posts
Chinatown Fair Video
In 1887, Americans in fear that Chinese people would threaten “…their livelihoods and take all the jobs” decided to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, which most prominently, along with a variety of other demands, said that Chinese men could not immigrate their wives and children to America. This resulted is what they called a Bachelor’s Society and produced the nice round...
Justyna takes New York (Part 2)
Bufallo Bill’s defunct.
However, in the year 1883 he was well and living, and rode into town to wrangle a show together for the lovely spectators of Brighton Beach. It was with Bill’s extravaganza and other vaudeville shows, such as the Brighton Beach Music Hall (which was called ”the handsomest seaside theatre in the world”), that the oceanside became an alluring...
Justyna takes New York (Part 1)
(“The Muppets take Manhattan” was Jim Henson’s final achievement before he died an untimely death at fifty-three of Streptococcus pneumoniae. If you havent seen the film, then you should, along with everything Jim Henson ever did, including this 1960s Jim Henson short that is amazing in its technicolor-like loveliness.
...
1 tag
Fire Escapes and How Good Jewish Girls Get Dates...
(Firemen spotted on the corner of Canal and Bowery, Chinatown)
Sometimes stereotypes are so perfectly lovely, that you can’t help but indulge them. Nevertheless, it is essential to remember that most stereotypes are dirty lies rooted in vague truths, yet sometimes your idealizations do materialize into predictable Hollywood scripts, and one is most satisfactorily vindicated.
Firemen in...
Fleet Week!
I’ve never liked white shoes. And for that matter I’ve always thought all white suits were an anomalous and brassy aberration, that was better suited for the 70s or revival Halloween costume parties. But as with all unreasonable phenomenon, there is always an exception to the rule. And, in my opinion, the one acceptable mutation (other than Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta) of the...
Nocturnal Camp
The other day Al, David and I were discussing our childhood escapades over a slice of pizza. More specifically extra curricular activities we had engaged in. Al was our expert regarding camps and she proceeded to share the extensive lists of camps she was acquainted with, which were as questionable as the list was long……Law and Citizenship camp, Pioneer Camp, Arts and Crafts camp,...
It's all the rage...
If you go into the village one night and you see a group of kids on the corner with a stick. Don’t run. Don’t worry. This isnt the 80s and you are far from Central Park. No wilding here.
It is all very simple and very amusing. A game, and the best kind, because everyone can do it. Drunk or sober. So here is what you do…..
Find a group of derelict youth, (yes you included, if...
you are a whore new york
New York is my apathetic beau, a callous sort of lover, that showers me with his lavish gifts and then refuses to reciprocate. He has the patient condescension of a seasoned broad gentleman, an accomplished sort of arrogance. He really is insufferable, with his stoic importance. He just stands there scraping at the sky with a lackadaisical distinction, it really turns me on in the most horrible...