Choice Quotes

"Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life, and you'll see death at work, like bees in a hive of glass."

~ Jean Cocteau, Orpheus

"There's the Devil to pay and he can keep the change."

~ J.G. Thirwell

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

~ Upton Sinclair

"The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost."

~ John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

"Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes."

~ DH Lawrence, Women in Love

"There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist."

~ Terry Pratchett

"I shit on God, on Jesus, on the cross, on the carpenter who made the cross, and on the son of a whore who planted the pine."

~ Old Catalan Curse

"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will."

~ Arthur Rimbaud

"The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."

~ William Gibson

"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember."

~ Oscar Levant

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

~ Mark Twain

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

~ George Bernard Shaw

"Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty."

~ Stanislaw J. Lec

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."

~ GK Chesterton

"Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?"

~ WC Fields

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

~ Robert Wilensky

The iCar

Automobiles in the fifties aimed for a space-age design — sharp angles, tailfins, a built-for-speed aesthetic, anticipating a future of jetpacks, conveyor belt skyways, transparent domes, moon patrols, and personal android servants. Today our autos are functional but shapeless and drab. What happened to the Jetsonian future we were promised?


Not all of our technology is a disappointment though. iPads are reasonably futuristic. You can whip one of those out for some quick calculations traced on a fluid screen, a sleek little device Buck Rodgers himself might have endorsed. But Apple probably should stay out of the automobile industry. You would look very fashionable driving your iCar to, say, Miami, but as soon as you pointed it toward mountainous terrain your request would be flatly denied.

"We don't do uphill."

"But I want to go to Denver."

"Sorry, uphill was deemed too dangerous by our designer."

"Don't you think as owner I should be the one to weigh the risks and make the decision?"

"No, and furthermore due to your insolent manner your driving privileges are revoked until further notice."

On second thought that does rather sound like the future I've come to expect.

Vinegar Hill

Found myself with some unexpected time off the other day so I crossed the river into Dumbo and ventured into a quaint section called Vinegar Hill, where I remembered I was carrying a camera and so emerged with the following...


Dumbo from the Brooklyn Bridge. DUMBO is an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" and as far as I can tell has little to do with flying elephants.


A quiet street on Vinegar Hill.


The Commandant's House overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This was about as close as I could get to it without having bloodthirsty hellhounds unleashed on me.


A storefront on Vinegar Hill.


Manhattan Bridge as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge walkway.


Brooklyn Heights and suspension cables.

St Vincent in Central Park

St Vincent live sounded not unlike Regina Spektor and Sufjan Stevens crumpled into a spitwad and aimed at the head of Thurston Moore. The set started out a little bass-heavy but the capable soundperson soon got the thunderous WOOMPF under control. Meanwhile the thunderstorm was courteous enough to hold off until after the show.



Half the audience appeared to be bona fide St Vincent fans, gathering near the stage. The other half must have wandered in from their leisurely weekend parkgoing to find out what all the rhubarb was about. One enthused fan veered through the crowd, shirtless and wielding a fly swatter, which quickly attracted the attention of several security members who either suspected him of being under the influence of unnatural stimulants or disapproved of him for having so much fun.

I Write Like Who?

This I Write Like analyzer that's making the rounds is good for fifteen minutes or so of amusement. I plugged in some of my own prose and was informed my writing style resembles that of Ursula K Le Guin, whom I've yet to read. Things got more interesting when I read online that Mel Gibson rants in the style of Margaret Atwood, while Margaret Atwood herself writes more like Stephen King.

This sparked some ideas, so I tried plugging in various texts with the following illuminating results:

The Declaration of Independence - H. P. Lovecraft
Christian Bale's infamous Terminator tirade - James Joyce
Hitler's Mein Kampf - Mary Shelley
The King James version of Genesis - Kurt Vonnegut
Barack Obama's Inaugural Address - H. P. Lovecraft
Hamlet's "To Be" soliloquy - Mark Twain
Nixon's Checkers speech - H. P. Lovecraft
Brando's monologue from On the Waterfront - William Gibson
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech - Margaret Mitchell
John Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" quote - Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Cobain's suicide note - Dan Brown
Christopher Walken's watch monologue from Pulp Fiction - J. D. Salinger
This blog post - David Foster Wallace

A few snickers, a few tears. Politicians seem overwhelmingly to evoke the name Lovecraft, which would indicate Cthulhu mythos pervades the corridors of power. Little surprise there.

Keep Door Closed

[from RiotClitShave]

Extremists

Lousy environmentalists! They went too far, as extremists often do, with their technological meddling and ended up causing what they intended to prevent. Now it's summer all year round and my snowshovel business has gone bankrupt.

Today's Drink Specials at the Hipsterama Club

Living in New York, especially off the L train, makes it not entirely possible to avoid the contention between hipsters and normalfolk. Feigning obliviousness is usually the wisest tactic should a tense situation arise and an escape route not prove immediately possible. Sometimes ignoring differences is the most effective way of rendering those same differences inconsequential. Remember, you cannot capture stupidity by assigning it a category. It's like grabbing a fistful of smoke.

I can sympathize with the aggravation of having to tolerate those who are so easily definable by their very resistance to being defined. But, to be honest, were I to find myself trapped on an endless cross-country roadtrip with one faction or the other, I would gladly take the hipster's album collection of Brooklyn-based art rock and seventies-era obscurities over mainstream's obnoxiously bland chart-topping dance hits any day.

Lost Duck

I hope whoever lost their duck finds it before it is claimed by the treacherous streets of Gotham.

The Unlawful Pickle

Highlights from Fifty Bizarre U.S. Laws:

I'm probably responsible for at least six of these crimes against humanity. (Though I must say North Carolina's sounds pretty reasonable to me.)

Alabama
It's illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.

Arkansas
It's illegal to mispronounce the name of the state of Arkansas.

California
You may not eat an orange in your bathtub.

Connecticut
A pickle cannot actually be a pickle unless it bounces.

Florida
If you tie an elephant to a parking meter, you must pay the same parking fee as you would for a vehicle.

Illinois
It's illegal to take a French poodle to the opera.

Indiana
The value of pi is 4, and not 3.1415.

Iowa
One-armed piano players must perform for free.

Massachusetts
No gorilla is allowed in the backseat of any car.

Minnesota
It's illegal to paint a sparrow with the intent of selling it as a parakeet.

North Carolina
It's against the law to sing off-key.

Oklahoma
It's forbidden to take a bite out of another person's hamburger.

Rhode Island
You may not bite off another person's leg.

South Dakota
It is illegal to lie down and fall asleep in a cheese factory.

Tennessee
Selling hollow logs is strictly forbidden.

Texas
You may not shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel.

Wyoming
Unless you have an official permit, you may not take a picture of a rabbit from January to April.

Heart of the Nation

The geographical center of the U.S. contains a utility pole and an abandoned basketball hoop? It's like peering into the nation's soul.

[From Images from the Center of the Contiguous United States]

Famous Last Words

"I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis." - Humphrey Bogart

"Where is my clock?" - Salvador Dali

"I just wish I had time for one more bowl of chili." - Kit Carson

"That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted." - Lou Costello

"I am dying. Please... bring me a toothpick." - Alfred Jarry

"Born in a hotel room, and goddammit, died in one!" - Eugene O'Neill

"Don't worry... it's not loaded..." - Terry Kath

"Codeine... bourbon..." - Tallulah Bankhead

"Die, I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." - John Barrymore

"Van Halen!" - Dimebag Darrell

"Get my swan costume ready." - Anna Pavlova

"You got me." - John Dillinger

"I've never felt better." - Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

"Applaud, my friends, the comedy is finished." - Ludwig van Beethoven

"Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here." - Nostradamus

"I can't believe, after all this time, it was a bloody banana that killed me." - Ivanka Perko

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." - Pancho Villa

"I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this." - Thomas J. Grasso

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis--" - General John Sedgwick

Orpheus

"Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life, and you'll see death at work, like bees in a hive of glass."

- Jean Cocteau, Orpheus (1949)

Chelsea Vortex

Chelsea Ghosts

I took this photo in the stairwell of the Chelsea Hotel. Funny, but I don't recall anyone else being on the floor at the time. And yet, who is that reflected in the glass of the door?

Jazz in Columbus Circle

No Pussyfooting

Lindy West takes on Sex and the City 2 in possibly the best movie review I've ever read.

"SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it's my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car."

Down a Well

Gideon fell down a well. It's not entirely clear how this happened. Alcohol may have been involved. Frankly, it's not one of those things that require reconstruction. Once you find yourself trapped at the bottom of a well, how you got there is irrelevant for the most part.

"Could be worse," Gideon thought, crumpled up in a muddy puddle. "At least my leg isn't broken." Then he tried to stand and discovered his leg was, in fact, quite broken. That pretty much ruled out climbing out by himself. The soupy brick walls of the well hadn't looked promising in any case. Footholds were far and few between.

He decided to call out for help a few times, in case someone might be within earshot. His first attempt sounded too desperate, the second too self-reliant. By the third attempt he got the balance just right. My dignity is intact, his cry suggested, but I could still use an assist.

"Hello down there?" A woman's moony face appeared in the opening at the top of the shaft, peering down at him and cutting off the sky.

"Hello," he returned.
"What are you doing at the bottom of this well?"
"Calling for help."
"So I heard."
"My leg's broke. Can you find a way to get me out?"

The woman thought about this. "I can't reach you from here. You're too far down. Maybe I could find a ladder?"

"Yes, a ladder would be very effective."
"Or possibly a rope?"
"Yes, either a rope or a ladder would be fine."

"There's a hardware store not far from here, I think. They must sell ladders." She pursed her lips in thought. "You'd be able to reimburse me for the cost, won't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good, because my budget is tight, what with my gym membership and the cable bill and whatnot. Very expensive living on your own these days, you know."

"Yes, I can imagine it is," Gideon sighed. "Look, I'll pay whatever you want, just please get me out of here. I'm getting very soggy and I can't feel my toes."

The woman glanced at her watch. "Oops, it's time for my show. Today we're going to learn if Betsy is really going to leave Jim for the mullato carpet salesman. I don't think she is, but I must know for certain. I'm afraid you'll have to sit tight for an hour until it's through. Bye for now."

"Wait!" he called, but the face was gone and with it the woman.

An hour went by. Then several. The woman had forgotten about him or lost interest or something had befallen her. He felt terribly alone. Then it started to rain. It rained with a fury and an anger not seen in recent memory. The downpour lasted for several days and several more nights. The well flooded and Gideon's limp, waterlogged body floated to the surface. The ladder was no longer needed.

Rejected Album Art for Pink Floyd's The Wall

[From Rejected Version of Famous Album Covers]

Lost: The Long Con

A heap of mixed feelings on the Lost finale. I fall squarely in the emotionally satisfied, intellectual disgruntled camp. I'm not complaining about the way it ended. That was apt, iconic, symmetrical, etc. Well done there. A bit speechy in the church, but I can live with that. When the show wants you to know something, it always highlights it in neon.

My complaint is with the gross mismanagement of the entire series. I haven't been with it since the beginning. I watched the whole thing mostly in a caffeinated marathon run in the hiatus between seasons five and six. As a result I'm freshly aware of the myriad of dead ends and enough plot holes to fill the Albert Hall.

The writers have been trying to cover their tracks by insisting "it's a character-driven show." First of all, it's not. These are flimsy characters who are moved around like chess pieces to serve the plot. A character will get angry for no other reason than the story needs an angry character at that point. We're not talking Madame Bovary here. But even if it was true, this excuses nothing. There's no reason to have an entire episode devoted to Jack's tattoo, meanwhile you can't take five minutes to show who was in the other outrigger. That's just poor planning. The reason I got sucked into the show was because of the elements of mystery. What's under this hatch? Who were the Dharma Initiative? What's with all the Egyptian motifs? That's what made the show unique. Without it, Lost is just another piddling soap opera.

While season six may have ended powerfully, I accuse the writers of pulling a bait and switch. They ended with a grand flourish of explaining what the Sideways world was, but that's not a question I was asking until this season. They were counting on their audience to have short attention spans. I'm fine with mysteries being left unexplained. But I want that to be an artistic choice, and not because the writers concocted a mystery without knowing the answer and then, when they couldn't figure out how to wrap it up, decided it wasn't important. Ends remain loose not because of any artistic integrity but because they were set into play with no knowledge of where they were going. That's disingenuous, and because of it I feel vaguely conned. And so does a large portion of the audience, if the internet message boards are any indication. It's like a detective story in which the plot became too convoluted for the author to figure out, so in the last chapter he kills off an entirely new character and has his detective dramatically solve that murder, then stand back triumphantly and hope we are sufficiently distracted enough to have forgotten what drew us to the story in the first place.

I feel towards the show like I do the New York subway system. Glad it exists but pissed off at the bad management, endless construction, fare hikes, & complete disregard for its customers.

Dio brainstorming session

You've been left on your own like a...
pigeon in the park
meadow in the lark
dog without a bark
jumper of the shark
raider of the ark
hunter of the snark
rainbow in the dark

Top Five Old Time Radio Shows

The Goon Show
By gluing Wodehouse-style humor to the surrealist movement, Spike Milligan inadvertently spawned John Lennon, Monty Python, and Firesign Theater. Peter Sellers went on to cause a bit of a commotion in Hollywood. Nutjobs with names like Neddie Seagoon, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, Major Bloodnok, and Bluebottle run amuck through WWII-era Britain.
"For thirty years Caesar ruled with an iron fist, then with a wooden foot, and finally a piece of string."

Suspense
Some of the greatest writing ever to traverse the airwaves. Stories adapted from the likes of Louise Fletcher, John Dickson Carr, and Cornell Woolrich. Top-notch acting never hurt too.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
The insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account. Great writing, great sound effects. The end of the Golden Age of Radio.

The Shadow
There were several Lamont Cranstons, but Orson Welles was the creme de la creme. Its dabblings into the occult must've at least partially inspired the Indiana Jones films.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

Nightbeat
Chicago reporter Randy Stone wanders the streets at night looking for a scoop. Taut stories stocked with compassion and charm.

Top Five So-Called Children's Books

Harriet the Spy: Louise Fitzhugh (1964)
Instruction manual on how to snoop on eccentrics and keep a journal. And appreciate tomato sandwiches.



A Bear Called Paddington: Michael Bond (1958)
Mischief as an artform. What is a duffle coat and where can I get one?



Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll (1865)
Demented logic. A proto-psychedelic masterpiece.



The Phantom Tollbooth: Norton Juster (1961)
Demented wordplay. Alice for the post-Marx Brothers epoch.



The Fireball Mystery: Mary Adrian (1977)
Dupes its reader into learning about nature and astronomy under the guise of a simple detective yarn. A devious but effective tactic.

Top 5 Prog Rock Albums

King Crimson: Lark's Tongue in Aspic (1973)



Gentle Giant: In a Glass House (1973)



Genesis: Selling England By the Pound (1973)



Yes: Close to the Edge (1972)



Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick (1972)

Cape May

The Congress Hall Inn. Originally built in 1816, this is its third incarnation after burning down twice. Unsurprisingly they're not enthusiastic about guests lighting candles in the rooms.


View from the rocking chair on our balcony.


Sunset Beach, littered with fabled "Cape May diamonds," which I was disappointed to learn are actually mere quartz pebbles. No monetary value whatsoever!


Wreckage of the S.S. Atlantus, an experimental concrete ship which its builders were surprised to discover didn't float very well.


The Southern Mansion, right profile.


Typical ice cream colored house on Washington St.


The Cape May lighthouse.