When the world of politics and comics merge...you get HOPE MAN!
Me: Where you off to? Anonymous: Uh....Dominican--
Anonymous's girlfriend: You can tell tell them.
Anonymous: Cuba.
Despite pouring rain I made it out my door for the 5th Avenue annual street fair and consumed the following items of deliciousness.
- Empanadas
- Sausage and broccoli
- Taquitos
- Corn
- Chili
- Cupcakes
It's kind of funny that this big street fair in Park Slope occurred in the same weekend that the New York Times published an inflammatory article about the hostility directed towards my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Many neighborhoods in New York City have a reputation or stereotype, fair or unfair, regarding its denizens--Williamsburg is known for its hipsters, Murray Hill for its cookie cutter doormen apartments occupied by privileged recent Penn graduates, Upper West Side for...well, just watch You Got Mail, and so on--and Park Slope is popularly (or unpopularly) categorized as a neighborhood of "limousine-liberal yuppies" and "Stroller Nazis."
“There’s the feeling that yuppies in Park Slope are washing away Brooklyn’s grittiness and making it more like Manhattan,” said Jose Sanchez, chairman of urban studies at Long Island University, Brooklyn. “Brooklyn was supposed to be different. Park Slope, to some, now represents everything that Brooklyn was not supposed to be.”
That’s why our feelings about Park Slope are linked to our feelings about our entire city: our overpriced, chain-store city run by bankers, socialites and, it seems, mommies. The artists are fleeing and your friends, it seems, have become Park Slope pod people. (And they’re coming for you, too.) It’s starting to feel as if there’s nowhere left to hide. And that if we lose Brooklyn, we lose everything.
Of course as James Bernard, "a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6" points out all this inflammatory dialogue occurs in a vacuum--a vacuum of essentially white people talking about other white people: while it may appear Park Slope is a focus of many conversations, Bernard says "I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over there [in Brownsville]."
Read more here.
Dignified and trim at the age of 93, Claire Oesch reigns at the Café des Artistes bar, a place she has had a relationship with since the 1940s first as hostess and girlfriend of the bar owner, and later after the bar changed ownership as a guest.
By the time she immigrated to New York from Switzerland, she was already 30, having lost a husband (an Olympic bobsledder) and a baby girl (who drowned while in the care of her grandparents). She took a life out of an Ingmar Bergman plot and transplanted it into the Cole Porter songbook.
Although, she is the only patron of the bar to have a bronze plaque donated by her friends there that states simply "Claire Oesch's seat." Or to have every few years "a wealthy financier, one of the admiring throng, close down the restaurant and give a black-tie dinner in her honor..." She works full time as the hostess of the private dining room at Bank Julius Baer on Madison where she is "as much of an icon there as she is at the restaurant."
I want to age with the same quiet old dignity at Botanica passed out on one of dingy couches rescued from the Salvation Army for $45 buried underneath a pile of $2 PBRs.
Read more here.
Wikipedia has an interesting list and recap of the 22 US and British soldiers who voluntarily refused repatriation, that is return to their homeland, after the end of the Korean War much to the shock of their government. Most moved to China. One American soldier, Cpl. Clarence Adams stated the racism and discrimination he endured from his fellow white POWs and back home as a reason for his decision to not return to the US. During the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, Adams returned to the US where he was charged and acquitted of treason.
"There was racism in the prison camps just as there had been in the Army. There were those whites who openly called us niggers and told us what they would do to us when they got us back in the States. I knew nothing about communism or any other 'ism,' but during many of my sleepless nights, I questioned why America was in Korea and what I was doing there. The more I thought about my life, the more I felt I had been used, cheated and betrayed."
His autobiography was posthumously published last year after his death in 1999. His family currently owns eight Chinese restaurants in Memphis.
Read more here.
I wrote back in February about arena rock band Journey's new lead singer, Arnel Pineda who they found off various YouTube videos from Pineda's bands performances in the Phillipines. Well, it looks like GQ picked up on this musical Horatio Alger story for this month's issue.
The members of Journey talk about Pineda like he’s given them their youth back, the way thrice-married men talk about the young wives who’ve got them doing wheatgrass shots and yoga, listening to the Killers. It’s never too late to feel like you’re going to live forever. “I think we’re reborn, right now, with Arnel,” Schon says.
He talks about the band’s first show with Pineda in Chile, how Arnel was all over the stage, jumping around, surprising everyone, and making Schon—who’s playing a cordless guitar for the first time since the ’80s—feel the need to step his game up. “I’m gonna be riding my bicycle a lot, and skating,” he says, “and getting myself in tip-top shape so I can keep up with this little guy.”
Read more here.
Manny Ramirez is a pretty eccentric baseball player whose various antics and baseball mannerisms are described as "Manny Being Manny." He's one of my favorite players period and this latest "Manny being Manny" incident is a perfectly hilarious example of his unique personality as well as his impressive skills on the field. Against the Orioles recently, Manny makes a terrific leaping catch (saving a run scoring double at the least) where his momentum causes him to run up the outfield wall. There, he HIGH FIVES a lone Red Sox fan before firing off a perfect throw back to the infield to Dustin Pedroia, the relay man who tosses it to Youkalis at first for the double play. So recap: 1) Fantastic catch, 2) High five fan, 3) Throw perfect throw for a double play to end what could have been a big inning for the Orioles.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=dBWsyqne9JE]
I can't embed this video, but watch this one for better sound of the play as well as his teammates reaction in the dugout after the play. Funny stuff.
And here's an interview later on with the fan on the receiving end Manny's high five:
The crowd didn’t seem to notice the high-five so much as the great play. The only one that made note of it to me was the husband and wife next to me. He was listening to the radio broadcast and told me that they’d been talking about that play for the last 10 minutes. I still couldn’t believe it happened. It was so fast. The heckling fans behind me who were yelling at him the whole game suddenly went quiet, and didn’t say much afterwards.
And lastly, here's a good collection of Manny Being Manny moments from ESPN:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=R_SkEkXcHbc]
"Text me! Text me! I can't hear you!" from a scene in the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan's movie The Happening.
Starting with New York City, Google Maps has begun updating its street view function by blurring people's faces who were inadvertently captured by the roving camera equipped cars. This should address a lot of the privacy concerns. In addition to humans, Google is also very concerned about the privacy rights of horses:
Read more here.
Habana Outpost in Fort Greene is pretty much my favorite location, joint, hangout of the summer. Owned by the same people behind Cafe Habana (also delicious) on Elizabeth Street, Habana Outpost is basically the hotter younger sister of its Soho counterpart. Open only in the summer at the busy intersection of the Lafayette Street subway stop on the C, this restaurant has a large outdoor patio with shared picnic table style seating which is where the scene really is with a diverse and attractive collection of people. And because this restaurant is all "green" and an eco-friendly operation, you feel like you're being productive somehow by sitting outside on a lazy weekend afternoon drinking beers or frozen mojitos while chowing down on their famous corn and cuban sandwiches and listening to fresh old school songs selected by a pretty amazing DJ. And with beer starting at $2.50 you can really knock them back before the sun sets. I plan on making frequent appearances to this location all summer.
Rainbow sherbet and chocolate chip cookie dough is not a good ice cream mix to get at Baskin Robbins.
"My, like, expectancy for what girl I'm going to get is, like, so fucked-up. I've just been around really hot women my entire life, so the average high school girl won't do it for me. But instead of make me really care about looks, I look for the personality and a personal connection. Because I've been around looks all my life, and it's like, if I can't talk to her..." - Marston Hefner (Hugh Hefner's first son)
In this month's issue, GQ asks Lil Jon: Would you ever release an album as Little Jonathan?
"Little Jonathan is not a good rap name."
The jury selection process for the R. Kelly child pornography trial is taking longer than anticipated as person after person was rejected due to their partiality. The Chicago Tribune analyzes and highlights some of the more memorable responses:
Two who were kicked off offered this philosophy, one going so far as to suggest that "nature already had an age of [sexual] consent: puberty."Nothing gets prospective jurors booted faster than telling the prosecution they are a fan of Kelly's. Just ask the woman who called him a "musical genius." When prodded to say something negative about Kelly, the best she could come up with was: "He and [rapper] Jay-Z don't get along?" Prosecutors bounced her soon after.
Overeagerness to serve on the jury is a definite red flag to attorneys. When one man offered to rearrange a trip to see his parents, the prosecution bounced him for being star-struck.
When one juror failed to show up for service, deputies called his house and his mother answered. She told the court that she didn't know where her son was and that he hadn't been "right" since he was shot in the head a while back. The judge and attorneys agreed to let him off the hook.
When the judge asked one prospective juror about his feelings regarding Kelly, he cryptically answered: "R. Kelly may have led the Taliban in attacking us on 9-11, but you can't prove it."
This case will provide the definitive guide on how to avoid jury duty.
Read more here.
One of my coworkers received a singing telegram in honor of his birthday. It is the first time I've ever seen such a character, both a singing telegram and a guy in pink monkey costume with a pink feather boa in...Converse sneakers. Hysterical stuff. Perfect counter to a dreary rainy day.
Missouri adult resident Lori Drew was indicted by a federal grand jury for her role in the suicide of 13 year-old Megam Meier. Lori Drew used a fake MySpace profile under the guise of a teenage Josh Evans to cultivate a relationship with Megan who was a former friend of Drew's daughter. "Josh" then began harassing Megan. Soon afterwards Megan committed suicide. In the first case of this kind, Federal prosecutors using statues charged Ms. Drew with "one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization and via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress." Typically applied towards cases involving computer fraud across state lines, this indictment, based on the physical location of MySpace in Los Angeles, is a rather creative, if unlikely to succeed application of federal statue.
Read more here.
Neurology is just like everyone else, that is, it's just as interested in sex too. But these scientists focused particularly on what occurs in the brain during an orgasm. Not surprisingly, for men "researchers saw extraordinary activation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a major hub of the brain’s reward circuitry; the intensity of this response is comparable to that induced by heroin." For women a surprisingly indifferent result occurred. Indifferent in that, as neuroscientist Gert Holstege declared at a meeting:
At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.
What scientists discovered was that to achieve orgasm, beyond "tactile and visual stimuli" it "requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females."
The study and article however does not answer the question: Why won't she call???
Read more here.
Check out this dopey, groovy, and flat out WTF inducing bigger than life optical illusions demonstrated in 2 minutes which culminates into a giant fuck you by the video as they let you in on the fact that you just watched a "viral" ad for some Samsung cell phone. Pfffft. Okay, actually I'm OKAY with my heterocreativinduality to watch and enjoy viral ads by companies without feeling like I'm selling out or being duped into being some mindless consumer zombie. Speaking of...
Memo to self about things I NEED without which I won't soon be able to survive much longer: Apple macbook and iPod (Nano and Classic), Rock Band set, JBL speakers, bed from Design within Reach, summer season D&G boxer briefs, Patagonia spring rain jacket, black JLindenberg skinny suit, and Momofuku Ko reservation.
This video draws the viewer inside Picasso's masterpiece Guernica which depicts the aerial attack on the town of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War which essentially destroyed three-quarters of the city while the primary objective of the bombing--the bridge--was not hit at all. The painting is notable for conveying the pain, anguish, and suffering inflicted on civilians by war. Lena Gieseke video creation presents Guernica in a three dimensional framework that thoughtfully immerses the viewer into the painting and in 45 seconds contextualizes and conveys Picasso's message better than any art history textbook. At the least this video is a valuable tool for any professor or teacher lecturing on this piece.
In addition what intrigues me also about Gieseke's work here is the exciting and deft blending of old and new, analog and digital, the paint brush and the mouse.
Watch it here.