Hitch a Ride to Rockaway Beach

Baffling seagull behavior. They stand expectantly on the edge of the shore like lawn ornaments pointed at the sea, waiting for fish to crawl onto the beach and into their hungry maw. Ah, but as the wave sweeps in they aboutface and flee in terror on frantic spindlelegs. Never expected the ocean to rise up and come for them. The wave soon loses its ambition and retreats back into the sea. Relieved at their narrow escape, the seagulls straighten their feathers and return to their post at the edge of the shore, certain the defeated wave is unlikely to attempt another sneak attack.


9/11 Memorial, Tribute Park



Neponsit is a quiet upper-middle class residental neighborhood. A little too quiet, it turns out. Seven in the evening and not a sound but crickets and the distant rush of waves. No one is coming home from work, foraging in the kitchen for dinner, watching TV in the darkened living rooms. No children play in the yards or ride in the streets. Bicycles lie discarded in the intersections, as though the riders were seized by talons and carried away. The entire town must've been evacuated in the dead of night, screen door still swinging in the breeze.


Warning: submerged objects

Sands Point

Manhasset Neck, Long Island -- or "East Egg," as F Scott Fitzgerald renamed it in The Great Gatsby. Home of the Old Money.


Castle Gould, built by the son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. On completion, Mrs Gould didn't like it so it was converted into a stable.


The Hempstead House -- one of Fitzgerald's "white palaces glittering on the water."


Site of Gatsby-style lawn parties.


Rocco Road.


Bootleggers' Cliff.


The Long Island Sound.


Jay Gatsby wooed Daisy Buchanan on this bench. As far as you know.

Weekly playlist

The Bonzo Dog Band: The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse
Frank Zappa: Uncle Meat
Gilbert & Sullivan: Greatest Hits
Mike Keneally: Hat
New Order: Low-Life
Apples in Stereo: New Magnetic Wonder
Van der Graaf Generator: H to He, Who Am the Only One
Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson
Sly & the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin' On

Weekly playlist

Gentle Giant: In a Glass House
Mike Keneally: Wooden Smoke
Snow Patrol: Eyes Open
Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, Vol 1
The Incredible String Band: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Frank Zappa: Freak Out
David Bowie: Diamond Dogs
Genesis: Foxtrot
Mars Volta: Octahedron
Bob Dylan: The Basement Tapes
The Kinks: Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

Foggy Empire

Weekly playlist

Talking Heads: Fear of Music
Emerson Lake & Palmer: Tarkus
Firesign Theatre: I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus
Prince: The B-Sides
Faith No More: Angel Dust
Benny Goodman: Greatest Hits
Van der Graaf Generator: Pawn Hearts
The Dead Weather
Tommy Dorsey: Sinatra, Vol 1
Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers
Brian Eno: Another Green World
Ray Charles: Anthology
Brian Wilson: Smile

Weekly playlist

Public Image Ltd - Second Edition
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Peter Gabriel - (3)
Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All
Steely Dan - Countdown to Ecstasy
Marvin Gaye - Gold
REM - Reckoning
Squeeze - East Side Story
Michael Hedges - Breakfast in the Field
Julie London - Time For Love

Weekly playlist

These tunes make the day go by quicker:

Apples in Stereo: The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
Gang of Four: Entertainment!
David Bowie: Station to Station
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick
REM: Murmur
Steve Hackett: Voyage of the Acolyte
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
Jellyfish: Spilt Milk
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain
Regina Spektor: Far
Pere Ubu: Dub Housing
Soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

15 Books

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A Conan Doyle
2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
3. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
4. The Haunted Road - Margaret Sutton
5. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
6. Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
7. Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky
8. Big Sur - Kerouac
9. A Supposedly Fun Thing - David Foster Wallace
10. The Trial - Kafka
11. The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton
12. Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
13. Journey to the End of the Night - Celine
14. Ask the Dust - John Fante
15. The Code of the Woosters - PG Wodehouse

Ye Olde Music Meme

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

Here we go...

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Voices in the Fan (Devin Townsend)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
I've Seen All Good People (Yes)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Hellhounds of Madness (Harry Partch)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (Tom Lehrer)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Afterlife (Dream Theater)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Ghost Riders in the Sky (Johnny Cash)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Fried Chicken (Ice-T)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
The Number of the Beast (Iron Maiden)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Names (Cat Power)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Fig Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family (David Bowie)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Love is Here to Stay (Dexter Gordon)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Some Girls (Rolling Stones)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Inheritance (Talk Talk)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Tokyo Storm Warning (Elvis Costello)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Teeth Like God's Shoeshine (Modest Mouse)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Sweet Mary Blues (Leadbelly)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
One Big Yes (Lounge Lizards)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
When a Boy Falls in Love (Sam Cooke)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks (Funkadelic)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Nobody Told Me (John Lennon)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Golden Ball (Stereolab)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Liberation (Outkast)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
This is What I Believe In (Adrian Belew)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Forty-Six & 2 (Tool)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Caroline Says II (Lou Reed)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Used to Love Her (Guns N Roses)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Hello From Inside a Shell (Zombies Enter the Harbor) (Of Montreal)

The Great Southwest

What follows is the photographic result of a quick little circumnavigation of the four corners of the American Southwest. Mountain paths were hiked, canyons climbed, rivers waded, horses ridden, tents pitched, skin sunburned, and egg burritos devoured. Impressive how quickly temperatures can fluctuate between 100 and 30 degrees fahrenheit in a matter of hours out there.


The Delicate Arch


The Eye in the Sky


Independence Ghost Town


Monument Valley


Zion Narrows

[Full gallery]

The Telectroscope

The backstory is this. In the Victorian age, an engineer named Alexander Stanhope St George visited the recently-completed Brooklyn Bridge and was enchanted by the ambition and ingenuity that went into its design and construction. He was less thrilled, however, with the arduous, stormtossed journey required to reach the bridge from his cheery home in England. He hit upon the concept of a complex configuration of mirrors and lenses which would allow the curious to see down the shaft of a transatlantic tunnel spanning the two continents. A "telectroscope," as it would come to be known. At first popular enthusiasm was high as St George set out to execute his idea, the romance of connecting London to New York bolstering support among the populations of both nations. The fanciful tales of Jules Verne were highly celebrated at the time and this eccentric scheme gripped the imagination in a similar fashion. However a tragic cave-in soon dampened the spirits and eventually St George was forced to abandon the project as enthusiasm waned and skilled workers became scarce. He died heartbroken in an asylum in 1917.

A century later, his descendant, an artist named Paul St George, discovered a dusty trunk in his grandmother's attic. Inside were diaries, diagrams, sketches, and various other documents concerning the ill-fated Telectroscope. Seized with inspiration, he set about making his great-grandfather's vision a reality.

In May of 2008 the Telectroscope was finally opened to the public. It took over a century, but now, at last, Asian tourists in New York can peer into the lens and see Asian tourists in London waving back at them.









Sadly the exhibit closed on June 15th. The Telectroscope is to be dismantled and the transatlantic tunnel filled in. Presumably something to do with Homeland Security.

The Ghosts of Asbury Park

Once an opulent seaside resort, now a haven for derelicts. Careful not to step on any discarded syringes in the sand.

Beacon Court

This would look much more impressive with an old clockmaker's wizened face peering over the top.

Madison Square Park

No fisheyes were harmed in the shooting of this photograph.

Photographs by Tara McGill

Lips That Touch Liquor

[courtesy of YesButNoButYes Stories]

Choral Music

"I think I hear some choral music. One hears almost no music from these backyards. Knowing absolutely nothing about music, I conclude, in a scholarly way, that it must be Puccini because of the ascending and melodramatic scale of flats. Then I hear some dissonance and decide that it must be Berg or Schonberg. The soprano then hits a very high note and sustains it for an impossible length of time, and I realize that what I've been hearing is the clash of traffic and a police siren amplified by a light rain."

--from The Journals of John Cheever

Steam Beast

In Lower Manhattan on rainslick midnights when roiling steam pours out of the grates in long flumes, it looks like the city itself is breathing. Halitosis from the jaws of a concrete Cthulhuian beast. A boiled claw reeking of sulphur reaches from the sewer to drag you down to its ancient realm of sodden newspapers, lost coins, White Castle containers, discarded subway passes, forsaken lottery tickets, condom wrappers, cigarette butts, and the occasional finger. You cling to lampposts & postboxes, but the wet pavement is a sluice down the gullet of the beast, who salivates over you, squirming slab of beef. But it's a welcome demise, as demises go. Unlike the mummified limbo of empty parking lots and cheap aluminum siding somewhere in the yawn of the great wide nowhere.

Pandas

I suspect there are demonic pandas hiding in my cellar. I hear strange chewing noises late at night coming up through the vents. It's not the landlady at her fridge, gnawing on chickenbones after midnight - no, something more feral and unearthly is at work here. They're not chewing on bamboo & ferns, but the tattered souls of former tenants. Bloodshot goggle eyes peer out from the dark recesses of the stairwell when I go out to check the mail. The postman knows. He doesn't come inside anymore, leaves my packages on the stoop & hastens away. And those rumbling noises, like hell's empty stomach. Like a great furnace crying out for fossil fuel. There are jagged teethmarks in the wooden banister & everyday they seem to rise a little higher. Who do I call about this - an exterminator or an exorcist?

Guns of August

I'm in the midst of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August right now, about the days leading up to The Great War (ha ha), trying to figure out why the hell anyone got involved in that bloody mudfest in the first place. Why it wasn't confined merely to a squabble between Serbia and Austria-Hungry while the bigger nations went about their business. Germany and France were looking for a fight, evidently. Itchy trigger fingers. They'd been looking for an excuse for years. I have yet to understand why Russia and England got involved. Treaties were in place, yes, but descending into nightmare just because your neighbor asks if you can lend a hand seems a bit hard to believe. Maybe people just took conscription much more seriously back then. Some perverted sense of honor. Or less focus on their own sense of discomfort.

The whole fiasco comes across as one big Rube Goldberg machine, starting out with an archduke getting smacked with a flyswatter and ending up in trench warfare. Four years of mud, shrapnel, barbed wire, mustard gas, and mortar fire. I have no idea how Wilson convinced America to get involved, having no great catastrophe to "avenge" a la Roosevelt and Bush. Yeah, Germany had a habit of sinking our boats which was most uncharitable of them, but was that enough to warrant hundreds of thousands of American deaths? I imagine America had recently emerged from the Spanish-American War with our uniforms barely mussed and figured this new one would be a similar jaunt. Go over, kick a few Germans while they're down, and be back in time for lunch. Certainly global warfare on this scale was unimagined and it never occurred to those in charge it would cost as much as it did. "Here, son, grab your bayonet and go make the world safe for democracy." How abstract. The lack of television probably had a lot to do with it, from America's perspective. Easy enough to send your young off to the majesty of battle when there's no carnage at your doorstep to disrupt your illusions of grandeur. After Cronkite's Vietnam we started to realize the whole thing was a lot messier than we'd imagined from all those Robert Mitchum flicks where children seldom had their faces ripped apart by grenade shrapnel.

And poor Belgium, getting trampled over because they had the misfortune of being situated between two bullies and contained some lovely flat real estate that made for superb parade grounds. Maybe in the future belligerent nations can conduct their warfare in the virtual realm and leave innocent bystanders alone. No, that won't happen. We like to get our hands dirty.

Happy Cheese Weasel Day

"Who brings the cheese on April 3rd?
The Cheese Weasel
He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird,
He's the Cheese Weasel
He's got a cute black tail
And tiny buck teeth
He doesn't bring fish, and he
Doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you wanna get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel."

For more information concerning the Cheese Weasel, consult his official website at CheeseWeasel.com.

The Rites of Ostres

Tacked to the wall of a yarn store in the East Village...

Easter Fools

Since Easter and April Fools fall so close to each other in the year, they might as well be consolidated to save time. Jesus is captured, tortured, crucified, and entombed. Then, while the disciples are mourning, he comes forth from the tomb. "Oh, we thought you were dead," they say, confounded by the resurrection of their leader. "Nope," he replies, "April Fools."

The Ghost of Seneca Village

Here's a classy piece of history I just stumbled upon. Seneca Village was settled in an (at that time) rural stretch of Manhattan by freed blacks in the 1820s. Twenty years later it had grown to become a community of working class African Americans, Irish, Germans, and Native Americans, supporting their own churches, schools, and cemeteries. The village was located roughly between 7th and 8th Avenues, in the west 80s, taking up nearly five acres. Those familiar with Manhattan will recognize this land is now a slice of Central Park. That's probably all the information you need to know to draw the right conclusions, but I'll continue.

Fernando Wood was one of Tammany Hall's most corrupt members, and there was stiff competition for that distinction. In 1857 he was re-elected as Mayor of New York, mostly with the help of the dead. Residents of the local cemeteries were probably as surprised as any to find their names on his list of supporters, courtesy of the Dead Rabbits gang who were in cahoots. Wood achieved notoriety for his part in the police riots of 1857, when he was dragged forcibly from City Hall during a clash between rival police forces.

Manhattan at that time was expanding northwards at a frantic pace, chewing up farmland and spitting out concrete. Since many of the parks of the time were private and hidden behind locked gates, New Yorkers seeking refuge from the frenzy of the city often found it in graveyards. Some, like Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant, urged for something a little less morbid, such as a great public park. Mayor Wood was convinced. He summoned up the rule of eminent domain and had Seneca Village razed to make way for Olmsted and Vaux's masterpiece of landscaping. There were no bulldozers to lay in front of in those days, and overnight the entire community gave up the ghost.

What became of the residents of Seneca Village? Good question. No descendants have ever been found. But contemporary archaeologists are scouring the site looking for clues as to what they must have been like. Funny how beneath the foundations of our great monuments of beauty and grandeur one can usually find the ashes of something a little more modest in scope that didn't stand a chance. We've almost come to expect it.