Tag: daily photo

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Last night was indescribable. A standing room only crowd showed up to watch six amazing performers. I was surprised by a fantastic cake, and one of the grooviest gnome presents ever. At the end of it all, Jeff, one of my oldest friends, asked me what I thought and after fumbling for words I simply had to say that I had nothing left to wish for. To see all those brilliant people sharing their talent with each other over the past three months, to have been the catalyst of events where good will prevailed, where people had in the words of Tom Tom Club, “Fun, natural fun”, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I’m sure I’ll have more crabbing to do soon enough. But just not now.

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I’ve been around here for 49 years.

I have to say that the past few years have proved to be among the most surprising in all of my life.

As I noted last week, despite occasional gripes, I am one lucky duck. People talk about who they were in their past lives. Even if I believed in reincarnation, I really don’t have any curiosity about other existences, because this one is just too good.

I’ve gotten to do so many of the things, big and small that I hoped to. And I get to be in touch, through this medium, with so many thoughtful, questing minds. I wouldn’t want to be alive any other time.

If you can read this, know that I value knowing you. Have a great day.

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For some reason my block was infiltrated this morning by a platoon of gulls. As I set out for work, I noticed that the pigeons and sparrows had been cowed into sullen clumps along the the north side of the street, while the sea birds wheeled above the overflowing gutters.

I don’t know what this incursion portends. For the most part the gulls have restricted themselves to occasionally haunting the parking lot of Western Beef, a couple of blocks over. This is the first time that I’ve ever seen them take an interest in my block. For what it’s worth I live pretty much fully inland in terms of Brooklyn, and I’m not thrilled at the prospect of them becoming full time residents. We no longer even have a full size phone booth to take refuge in, should things go awry.

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All errands accomplished today. Score one for our side. But damn, this cold is not playing around. The sort of weather that just makes me want to huddle indoors nonstop. Where’s the service bottom with my toddy?

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Fix what you can, forget what you can’t and learn to know the difference. Sound familiar?

Among my other restlessnesses lately has been some beard dissatisfaction . So after seeing some pictures on Thor’s blog, I reached for the clippers and set to work.

One new thing – going grey makes it much harder to shape your beard, because you have to decide whether to follow the contour of the grey or just assert a shape. There’s a problem with doing that though, because as any painter knows, contrasting lights and darks tend to make shapes independent of the surface they reside on. Thus I found myself looking at odd shapes in the beard that I didn’t quite know how to tackle. It’s all much easier when you buzz things to a uniform length, but I’m not prepared to go back to that again.

Something else about facial hair shaping: It felt like I was putting my recent illness behind me. Something purgative about it all in all. I had been growing the goatee and mustache portion out for a while, but its flat shovel shape was irking me.

Here’s the result:

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I’ve left a little tab on the front for those who like to tug it. And the mustache wings probabaly won’t make it through the weekend, but they’re fine for now.

And now to get back to the art I’m working on.

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In no particular order:

The first truly satisfying episode of Top Chef this season aired last night. Pouty, self-styled intellectual gets sent home, goofball gets the win, Eurotrash gets slapped around, and some of the food made me hungry.

Today’s lunch: Pesto Chicken salad wrap from deli on 43rd, supposed to have tomato, cucumber and avocado. But once I check it back at the office, I find universal green. Where are my tomatoes? Wrap is passable without them, but still. Banana provides some solace, eaten with multivitamin.

Said banana was bought at Grace Building news agent’s (nervous greedy checking tells me that the Mega Jackpot for tomorrow is 40 million, too low for me to play) along with the latest New York Review of Books. Julian Bell writes on Watteau

Thus I am reminded of the death of John Updike; It says something about my LJ friends list that the passing of Eartha Kitt garnered far more notice; I certainly felt a deeper regret when I heard she died. Updike remains for me one of those indigestible lumps of American culture that always seems to be standing in the way of some other, more interesting activity. I think his art criticism to be sensible and well made, but reading his novels was an experience that I found similar to having to watch sports on TV with my dad. There was clear evidence that the activity mattered to many people, but I could never work up the enthusiasm for it.

Here is a fascinating post on the authority of cultural institutions in the current web climate.

And that white stuff that fell from the sky over Brooklyn a couple of days ago? This picture is what it looks like this morning.

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Today has had just the kind of weather I hate, the kind that results in two foot wide puddles of soupy slush at every New York corner, the kind that makes all forward motion on the street a series of twists and flinches to avoid the chill wind, the kind that makes you feel ungracious about any and all things between yourself and the next sheltering doorway, including all your fellow pedestrians.

I got into work feeling dazed and generally unhealthy. Something is paining me in my shoulder, my nose and throat have been packed with phlegm, I’ve got low level aches and acid reflux. (Note to my body: OK, I get it: next week you begin your 49th year on the planet. Is there something you want to tell me about my warranty?) Alka-Seltzer, my secret lover banished some of my symptoms, so that I could go and be a curmudgeon in class, mushroom-barley soup helped with some of the others. It also helped that I made contact with some of the organizations I’ve owed contact to and straightened out some financial matters.

My interest in poetry podcasts has led me to sampling a bunch of other podcasts on iTunes. They’ve been giving me some ideas for what to do with the WordPress version of this blog, namely to make it more bloglike: more linking, more informational in general. We’ll see how that plays out.

There is a crazy-making aspect to WordPress though: because so few people comment, it’s a little hard to be a comment-whore in the way one can be on LJ; instead, there is the ultratantalizing “blog stats” page which provides you with a running tally of how many people are looking at your blog, and lays those figures out on a day to day graph that looks like your own little popularity roller coaster. It’s really hard not to just hit the refresh button one more time to check out if any more people have come by. Utterly addictive evil.

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The staff being sufficiently developed, I was able to go to the library and activate my card. The DVD collection looks pretty good, The place was packed, but still seemed to be working quite efficiently, despite the numbers. I had to exercise some restraint, keeping out of the stack for the most part because I could easily how quickly I could have picked up a huge, unrealistic pile of books. As it was, I just took a couple and toddled off to a newish vegan place in the slope.

It’s been a rough week. I’m still not feeling 100 percent health-wise, and I’ve only been able to take the smallest of steps on my commitments. As always too much to do.

I hate it when my body makes me a dullard. My thoughts tramp along without striking the slightest spark. I can’t bring my mind to focus.

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I felt sorry for Elizabeth Alexander, the poet selected to follow the President. Talk about a tough act to follow. And how intense has Dianne Feinstein’s life been? Seeing her make the introductions, looking remarkably similar to when she announced the Moscone/Milk shootings (I mean hairdo and all, not in bearing) made me think that you truly cannot predict the arc of a life or the consequences of an act.

I’m back on the job after three days away (back to everything really – I’ve been without lj, wordpress, email and cellphone), most of them spent being sick, just at the point that I was congratulating myself on not getting sick like everyone around me. The hubris stick, it hurts.

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It’s not easy being a one man shop; somehow I thought it was a good idea, and convinced the curator, that we should do the catalog for the current show as a series of 500 word entries, one on each included piece. Basically either she or I am writing the entire thing. And that writing is coming harder to me than I thought it would. Because it always does.

I know what I have to do, but am having a hard time doing it. And that’s why this post is short.

(edit) Oh hey, while I’m at it, have a great time at MAL, all my pals who are going. I’m sorry I won’t be in attendance.

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Here’s a nice thing that’s happening with the current show: more people are finding the blog and connecting it with the work. There’s a lovely post about Gorge here. It’ll be interesting to see how these new types of access change what we think of as a viewing public, and what that public’s experiences and expectations of encountering art turns into. We’re used to having gatekeepers, i.e. critics, articulating what the experience of the work is, with the assumption that “average people” can only ever formulate an evanescent “thumbs up or thumbs down” response. But now there is the possibility or a public that is neither inarticulate nor professional critics. That’s exciting.

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..what about if you can’t get to the door to open it?

I’d let my Brooklyn library card lapse years ago, but recurring trips past the revived main branch kept reminding me that I should really get my ass in gear and sign up again. Public libraries are one of the best uses of my tax dollars, ’cause reading is, like, fundamental and junk.

Nowadays you can apply for your card online (I remember the rite of passage walk with my parents up to the local branch in Manhattan to solemnly fill out the card application in all too permanent ink). ANd then you go to the branch to “activate it”. This morning, having a bit of extra time before work, I jumped on the B41 bus and marched up to the doors surmounted by two gilded owls, only to find out that today is “staff development day for all the branches in the system” meaning once again, no admittance.

Curse you lallygagging librarians and your “development”! How will I cruise the stacks now?