foggie day at the beach

i can ride out to the beach in the morning and go for a swim.

funniest thing heard on the beach, Mother to a child of 3 who is making a sandcastle: "This is why mommy doesn't like to take Christina to the beach. Look at how dirty you are getting." like there wasn't a giant bathtub a yard away.

or the environmentalist kid, who, after bringing a handful of shore sand inland four yards, said, "I have to put this back where i got it."

niagra falls

love

serendipity

i ran into candice in the street yesterday, literally almost ran her over in Lara's car, the little dear. she jumped in and said she was going to a print shop. i thought she was going to get supplies, but it turns out it was an open studio.

this amazing work was on the street across from the open studio.
i love the slyness of the eyes



this one is by mike houston, one of the guys who were being grilled by candice and team. i'm sure this work is copyrighted...but this was the print shop candice was going to check out. cannonball press. totally amazing. and clean, too.
this is the otherguy who told us about these giant prints they make the size of walls.
plus they're both darling.


right next door to their studio works a scupltor named Aurora Robson. her stuff is made of reused plastic bottles and is so completely amazing and, ironically, feels completely organic and monsterous, in a cute way, even though it's made from inorganic, non biodegradeable produces.
to top it off, balthrop alabama played at the b&t.

camp red hook goes to the zoo on the subway

that's mick's hair, francis, me (looking like an alien) lecy, and whiskey.

this is on our way home. we're still smiling although we saw close to no animals. who knew that barry could get twenty people to take public transit all the way to the zoo for a day? i think it was mick's first last day, or birthday, or something. which makes it over a year ago.

fur elise

so the most rad thing today, or really the only rad thing, is i discovered that the piano at the johnson's is a player piano. so i can listen to fur elise, and the few songs that are programmed in like i'm in a department store and it's christmastime.

aside from that, think about this sticker-grafitti. what are they thinking? they think stickers of ronald reagan are secretly subversive the way andre the giant was? first off, come up with a new idea, but does the person who did them know there is a whole foundation formed just to get things named after ronald and that in the end it's anti subversive?
what i would like to think is that an 8 year old saw someone's late night grafitti and made it into a hopskotch, but i suspect the late night graphitti maker and the hopskotch maker were the same person.
i love trying to trick people into jesus in the same way they try and trick people into LIVE GIRLS shows.

We need an anti anti graffiti truck

i was running over the 3rd street bridge over the Gawanus Canal this morning and I saw a terrible sight. there was a man with paint, painting white paint over the graffiti that was on the red bricks.

then i came upon a truck that said, "keep new york clean from grafitti."

dude! the only reason to live in new york is for the grafitti.

i mean neckface might not be monsuir chat. and the octopus guy certainly isn't space invader.

but i love neckface. and i love the solumn guys on union street. they better not paint over them. i'm going there tomorrow. i think i might cry if they have.

Easter with big pictures

what's easter without Ross dressed for a yacht in a searsucker suit and boat shoes and busking in the garden? and snow.

Lara and Grayson came sans kids. Mark was up from Miami (?)

supposedly Jimmy hurt his foot, but i think he's carrying the cane so he can look more like a dandy than he does already

Ani has a pretty serious forhead, but i think she'll get over it, once she learns her father's zen way of life. "it's snowing. it's so beautiful."

Easter at Zach and Shanny's

the gretta off

gretta

vs..

gretta

maybe i should write a kids' book about them

cats are kind of fun to draw even if they do make my eyes go all red and give me hives.

kara walker

it's constantly interesting to hear about how other people justify their existence while making art. listening to my friends talk about forms of expression, yesterday, before, after and during a reading in the west village, i was confronted with the enormity, irresponsibility and absurdity of it all. we all fee like we are called to it: forced somehow spiritually to make art, whether it be painting or music or writing. but what then is it for? why must we express ourselves is the greater question?
kara walker said in an interview i saw today, "how do you make representations of your world given what you are given?" which seemed to reverberate with me. whatever you (one) is given are both the physical tools and the mental ability to see and express.
but the why it matters i can't justify. i know that when i read something that says something to me, or see a piece of art that makes something about life more meaningful if only for it's acknowledgement of life, or hear a song that makes me dance or cry, i feel better about being alive, but why?
how can i not contribute anything useful to society, no food, clothing, work, even, these days, and exonerate myself from not making the world worse by my behaving like a spoiled child.
why is art important?
i still don't know.
i guess what i'm asking is not why Kara Walker's statement got me, but why is it that we're trying to make representations of our world, when we already live in an un-derivative version of it.

man am i a quote dork today.

this is from the preamble to Leaves of Grass.
sometimes i need to remember why i write, even if i don't write poetry.


"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for thestupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hatetyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towardthe people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to anyman or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons andwith the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves inthe open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine allyou have been told at school or church or in any book, dismisswhatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a greatpoem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in thesilent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyesand in every motion and joint of your body."--Walt Whitman

i am the walrus

would you buy wine from this dude?

someone at the subway bar stole my arm-warmer

Tiberon Greatness

this is the sign on the deli on my corner. what do you think the hatch marks on the bottom are for? is the credit talking like archie?

chinese new years

yes, it happens. only under duress did i leave red hook on a sunday. apparently scott had read about a pig race that would happen in the chinese new years parade.
chris came and interrupted my quiet drinking of coffee at the diner while i read the times book review.

we had pho, not chinese. but i think they all have the same new years and it could be called pan-asian new years if that weren't too dumb.










the a for effort went to verizon's float. with hot chicks singing.

and a giant pig shaped ballon.











these are grapefriuts as big as watermelons.

merch buying fireworks to explode on st.john's last night bartending at the b&t

as if the 99 cents store was highway robbery, here is a store in chinatown for the rest of us.

strong sentiments?

or just hungry?

was it neckface? or is it a neckface knockoff?






it started to snow that night, during ryan and heidi's going away party at the hope and anchor.









later, scott exploded those fireworks at an unsuspecting driver, racing away from fairway while the germans attacked with snowballs from pioneer street. was a good time.

ah

forget it.

Best American Short Stories

Dude. McMillian got a Honorable Mention Best American Short Stories!



Along with the Pushcart prize Scott Geiger got last year, and Jon McMillian winning the very prestigious "Chapbook Contest" at the New School, maybe the One Sentence Challenge is the best writing group ever. Geoff published a bunch too. Now if only Jesse and I would get our novels finished we can be a whole literary scene.

We may need a few more scandals under our belt.

NO MORE WHISKEY!

rock and roll

reminder never to drink whiskey ever again
there was a really good art thing at Glasslands, which is kind of a cool spot, although the place was packed with belter-tucker duchebags, which was this, that you can barely see. it's a collage made up of really awful headshots. it made me smile. then i stole the elephant and got in a cab and left. but still good art piece.