Life in NY at the end of the American Empire

h n y

2012-01-02T14:00:00.001-05:00

and away we go...

end of empire: signs

2010-08-07T07:38:00.000-05:00

from Salon:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse

Yes, I admit....

2010-07-28T20:07:00.003-05:00

I am a card-carrying member of the Park Slope Food Coop...but if want some good recipes and other eco/environmental info., check it out :

http://www.foodcoop.com/

Takin' bout oil spills....

2010-07-28T15:26:00.001-05:00

Let's look at Nigeria...photo essay by National Geographic Editor, Ed Kashi, whom I had the great pleasure of working with...

http://edkashi.com/index.php?section=64

EVERYTHING about MOVING IMAGES

2010-07-28T15:20:00.001-05:00

A 2-year labor of love thus far:

http://schools.nyc.gov/offices/teachlearn/arts/canda_film.html

Lawd have mercy-out of NY again!

2010-07-28T14:03:00.009-05:00

Plopped down into Texas.

'N cuz y'all been talking Photoshop, amongst other things, watch it:

*(click the link below the image)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP31r70_QNM

Time Out of NY

2008-07-12T01:03:00.002-05:00

Hmm, I may well be on the freggin moon, but it is nice to go away and experience space.

Water--down the Hatch

2008-06-21T22:37:00.003-05:00

On the training ship for the US Navy in New London, CT. This was long ago a German ship that we took as booty during WWII but is built quite soundly--you know the master engineers they are.

This week's theme: SHOES--how fabulous!

2008-05-23T21:27:00.004-05:00

So apropos for my favorite subject. Here is M on the most special day of Fulan getting her Phd at NYU. Isn't it fabulous? One month later I was so inspired to buy my very on Miso Pretty oil cloth bag at the Victoria&Albert in London on a wild weekend of shopping, art and other debauchery.

But since then the oil cloth bags have become more and more available--bought a whole bunch up in P-town last summer...

Pee Wee and Tila

2008-05-18T20:20:00.004-05:00

Has anyone noticed that when Tila Tequilla and Pee-Wee Herman shout at people, they sound exactly the same?

Time: Infinity

2008-05-03T01:29:00.004-05:00

Like who isn't obsessed with death?
This is taken in a crypt at the Greenwood Cemetery, Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It smells stale and earthy down there. Each October, my friend, choreographer, Martha Bowers, has a performance where she makes the entire space activated by angels.

Odd Signs

2008-04-27T00:37:00.002-05:00

A Visit to the Frida Khalo Show at the Philadelphia Museum

2008-04-25T07:46:00.004-05:00

Seeing the Frida show at the Philadelphia Museum was like visiting an old friend that you hadn't seen for a long time although you didn't really know why you drifted apart. Suspiciously absent from the narrative, although curated by Hayden Herrera, one of my original sources for all things Frida, were her affairs with women. I found this odd because they did mention Noguchi and Trotsky and of course those of Diego the frogs'. It was however lovely to see the beautiful Frida cross-dressing in her family photos and no one seemed to mind.

Of course I enjoyed seeing Frieda in the collection of Dolores Huerta that I saw when in Xochimillo, Mexico after a ride in the floating gardens. The paintings somehow belonged there, in their context. I couldn't help thinking what Madge has in her collection--I think the great one with the white lace around the face. I was compelled to buy that image as a scarf.

A highlight was the mini Moses mural--a cross between something you'd see in El Barrio and a head shop for it's cosmic elements. Damn, she packed a cast of Cecil B. DeMille in such a relatively small frame!

The overarching theme of intense pain made my spine curl into a spiral twist, but all was greatly assuaged by the excellent mini-mall of visual merchandising at the end. Life sized, 3-Dimensional representations of the best portraits bowled you over as if one of the baskets of bloody fruits that you just left seeing in the show hit you smack in the head—I got dizzy! Her work became one giant vanitas, and, I had to cling to life by swiping my credit card mightily with big swoops and my friend’s 10% off membership discount. He had to hold me back from buying coffee mugs with any of the more bloody depictions, but I’m sorry I did not buy the fake mustache kit!

13+1

2008-04-18T22:40:00.002-05:00

Photo Hunt: Glass...as in Shattered

2008-04-05T19:49:00.002-05:00

Photo Hunt Theme: High

2008-03-29T23:52:00.005-05:00

HIGH above Washington Square Park, the view from NYU's Skirball Center reveals an urban crop circle. When they go to renovate this amazing urban gathering space, they reveal...a potter's field....How ironic for all the partying and pot smoking that has gone on here.

This Week's Photo Hunt Theme: PARTY

2008-03-01T02:10:00.001-05:00

It's a party in motion; the Colombian chiva.

PhotoHunter 2/16: Free

2008-02-15T18:21:00.002-05:00

Somewhere on 23rd Street, a hand opened, and some balloons went...
freee....

PhotoHunter Theme: Heavy

2008-02-05T04:22:00.000-05:00

Downtown Medellin, Colombia, the main plaza is full of sculptures created by the city's native son: Bottero.

This Week's Photo Hunt Theme: Narrow

2008-02-01T03:57:00.000-05:00

Down in Jamaica, Mun, a visit to Bob Marley's house/shrine, people just want to sell anything, in
any way possible!

PhotoHunter Theme: Old-Fashioned

2008-01-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

It's 75 year old tea brewing up just outside London in Camberwell, UK.

Photo Hunter: This week's theme: Important!

2008-01-17T01:16:00.000-05:00

I usually try to post this every weekend, (discipline.) But because I am going away again, I'll post this important image now. Dedicated to my Burmese student-friends...

This was in a very central square in Milano when I was there in November. It's across from La Scala, the opera house and right by the what inspired the shopping mall: Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleria_Vittorio_Emanuele_II

The Metamorphosis

2008-01-13T04:22:00.000-05:00

Nano-fiction (must have an exact word count of 55 words, including the title)

On one of those deep night piss calls, she became startled; a large green creature had landed on the full-length bedroom mirror. Determined, photographed it-finally captured in its glory. There in the Brooklyn night, she fell back to sleep, having no idea how it left. She knew it was time for a change…

Photo-Hunter: This week's theme: skinny

2008-01-11T19:21:00.000-05:00

PhotoHunt

PhotoHunter: This week's theme: Delicious

2008-01-06T10:08:00.000-05:00

This man, sitting on a random bench, in a not really there, pretend, "green-space"? (I guess), sitting on Flatbush Avenue was savoring his meat.

NY at Night; a place still most special

2007-12-09T18:08:00.000-05:00

I attended an event at the Winter Garden...then I went out walking....

At night there is always a magic and a little danger, 'specially for a Steppenwolf.

The mess that this place is is metaphor for the rest. Although, yesterday I hear they are zooming up the engines to "pave paradise and put up a parking lot", read 3 tower sky scrappers of shopping malls....just what the doctor (mayor) ordered.

2007-08-25T06:34:00.001-05:00

Nocturnal Emission

2007-08-25T06:24:00.001-05:00

Having traveled through many countries and their respected time zones, I decided to go early to shop at the Coop when it opened at 6am. With nothing in the fridge, I hoped to find something open, to sip, before I could get to the store.

I entered the heavy summer night air and passed the lines of trash in their neat bundles representing an anthropological study of the middle class; a homeless man startled me, (or I he) as his body moved and eyes fluttered from the niche his body had formed into the Methodist Church steps. Bagel stores gates were half rolled and bakery deliveries ambled down making big truck noises. Another homeless fellow with a packed shopping cart was doing push-ups on the corner of Third and that burst of energy made me cross over and turn back on Seventh and head to my destination instead of meandering in the dark.

Passing PS 321 on Second Street I saw a very wasted black prostitute servicing a rather young white male. She on the stoop, he standing. How very sacrilegious on our pristine public school, known as the best in the city.

2007-07-10T02:16:00.000-05:00

Summertime, and the living ain't easy...

2007-07-10T02:14:00.000-05:00

Barbecues turn into bombings someplace else in the universe-- it's connected to your inner psyche, you see a world spinning out of control; inside/outside, BUT sometimes just sometimes you get to eat fish with friends with fresh lemon labels too! Love to all!

Twin Light Towers Where there Once were Two

2007-06-08T02:42:00.000-05:00

Staring in the Pit of Death

2007-06-08T02:36:00.000-05:00

New Yorkers are truly some of the most resilient people in the world. Then again, perhaps all war-torn people have this great resiliency; the second skin, like a coat of Teflon upon which the affective filter turned up so high that the negative emotion does not effect one outwardly; the daily motions are still in place, while inside there may be a great sense of eternal havoc. In some ways our courage is testament to the human spirit which transcends the daily grind. And perhaps it is here, in NY, where we as artists display this spirit on a constant basis through our productions of dance, theatre, music, writing and the visual arts. Theses are the testaments that there is a spirit, a collective soul that we chose to let out or allow others in through our words, gestures, and various productions, even in the acceptance of the other by allowing them to look into our eyes.

Not Quite Talking Heads

2007-05-26T09:44:00.001-05:00

SuperStarSub-Set/Passing the BabyBoomerBaton

2007-05-26T09:23:00.001-05:00

Last night saw a performance billed as "Miranda July and Friends " at the NYPL on 42nd St., yeah, the one with the lions. It was an evening, moderated by its new host, whose name is something German-Dutchyish with a lisp, and that's why the evening was so perfectly timed out and even included an intermission with free artesianal wine and cheezes for the masses of NYers who now the library is trying to attract to it's lively Friday night chats.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of Miss July. Her film, You, Me, and Everyone Else we Know, was interesting if not somewhat tedious to me with a distinctly LA, but anti-Hollywoodish quality . I wondered if her slightly awkward gait and pauses where calculated or deliciously adorably real. The audience, us of the most jaded quality, seemed mostly all very present with her and I did enjoy her stories.

The next in the venue was Becky Stark who wore a rust colored dress with buttons up to the neck with matching collar and cuffs and sang simple repetitive lyrics in a high pitched tone and looked pure as a virgin from the Ozarks not yet incested by one toothed uncles and other kin folk. What the hell was this chickee's rap? Was it all created up at Bennington Vermont or something like that?

Finally, the man who got me through all my college all-nighters, dancing in sub-terranian darkroom, high on color chemistry fumes: David Byrne. He looked splendidly gracefully aged with a tan and shock of spiked but soft full hair of a color indeterminable Grecian blue. He was the moderator for Miss July. He pulled out filmstills in Powerpoint and Quicktime clips and commented on their schematic qualities.

By then I had had 4 glasses of the hand-made wine (as opposed to feet made wine?) and so started scribbling notes and drawing things on my worn green pad with the Andy Warhol cover that maybe I'll look at later or maybe throw away. However, what was clear is that the show had Mr. Byrne last and the two youngings in the spotlight, although I did enjoy watching Miss Becky and Mr. Byrne play guitar together as the finally act, and Mr. Byrne displayed a feeling for the music as expressed in slightly jerky neck movements.

I think the mostly floral, somewhat polka-dotted , and solid linen summer dressed crowd on NYers liked it as evidenced in the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" type of sing along that we all participated in singing aloud, in perfect harmony. But I guess that's why they served the artesinal wine to us first--it takes a lot for us stoic, jaded New Yorkers to follow the bouncing ball.

Did you notice Miss July changed her headband from yellow to green between acts??? Aha...

The House Began to Twitch

2007-05-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

With my auto insurance policy up for renewal, I called Geico to go over my policy and see what might be trimmed. I had seen an ad of theirs that said for $25 you could buy identity theft protection (heck, at this point you can have it) so I wanted to look into it. I learned that that type of stealing your personality is only included with their homeowners policies. So I asked if I could get one of those and the pion on the other side said "Oh no, we don't insure THAT area it's wayyyyy tooooo dangerous!" My Brooklyn pride rose in me and I retorted that crime was way down here and this was like the Gold Coast. She told me many insurers were dropping the homeowners policies because the danger was not the crime but the impending hurricane and that's why I should buy the umbrella policy to cover any kind of catastrophe in my car or in my home. And so I wanted clarification as to what would be covered: would you cover: a flood? a meteorite? terrorist attack? How 'boutt a scud missile through the window? Well the agent pressed on but I assured her/him (I couldn't tell) that the building was quite sound and that I would think about it....

We Love Korn

2007-05-20T18:36:00.000-05:00

Chai

2007-05-20T08:01:00.001-05:00

2007-05-20T06:56:00.001-05:00

Lot in Life

2007-05-20T06:53:00.000-05:00

On weekends I am often a zombie. This is due to my work schedule because I must arise at 5am and I leave my job on most days at 5pm. I wake up automatically and go through repetitive motions. I feel like a carriage horse with blinders on and no other possible direction but forward and without peripheral vision. For when I do look sideways I get stuck in the mass amounts of minutia that exists around me. Alas, the job pays the bills and gives me medical insurance, and every now and then, some satisfaction.

stange weather

2006-12-12T13:14:00.000-05:00

Last night it felt like early spring. Friday was freezing and I began to winterize my windows. The building's thermostat caught up with the Friday temps and last nite was like a sauna. Today is communist gray but mild. I walked around the neighborhood where I work in LIC and it's a combination of amusing and depressing at once, but, at least the hidden under the Seven Train the post office never has a line. A rare NY occurrence. And a postal clerk who loves to show the various stamp collections off. I chose American quilts, Hattie McDowell, and Judy Garland. I was appalled to learn of the Ronald Regan stamp. Perhaps I should buy some and smear black paint all over it.