“It’s been my life’s dream to see the parade live. Once it starts, it means the holidays are here. My other dream is to get a jet pack.“
– NICHOLAS PERDUE, a 16-year-old at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Category: Kitchen Table
The phrase comes from Owen, who once compared the conversation among blogs to chatting around the kitchen table.
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Dreams come true
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Parodies of office life
I tried watching The Office but not only didn’t find it funny, it was a little painful. I mean, office life, particularly in big companies, is actually like that, why go home and watch more of it?
On the other hand, I was happy to find Netflix carries The Newsroom, a parady that understands you need to go to lengths of realistic absurdity to be funny. This series, from the CBC, made an unfortunately short trip through public television a few years back, but is one of my personal favorites.
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A foray into paper publishing
An essay I wrote in 1991, Music and Censorship, will be included in an upcoming Pearson textbook, Music and Culture. Even more surprising is my company, the likes of (beware shameless name dropping) Copland, Paglia, Quindlen, and Bloom. It is some of my better writing: though the argument is weak in sections my style hasn’t been as sharp as when the university had me pumping out an essay a week. Mostly the piece has the distinction of being rare; apparently there aren’t many rigorous looks at music censorship, at least not on the internet where this continues to get a fair amount of page views.
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The High Line Redesign
There’s a vestigal bit of elevated railray called the High Line that runs through about 20 blocks of the far west side of Manhattan. A contest to turn it into a park has resulted in the selection of Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro who proposed a mixture of concrete paths and gardens. I’ve been psyched to have a new walking spot, as I live about 75 meters from it. Supposedly, when I walk out my front door and turn left I’ll see this. That spot on the left where the kids are dancing presently borders a gas station/Subway/Dunkin Donuts combo, the corner presently looking like this. So this is quite a change in feel, if we’re to believe the proposal.
I have the usual Jane Jacobs-influenced reaction, which is you’re messin’ with the character of my neighborhood with your modernist crap. On the right in these pictures is my local, the Half King, one of the best pubs in the city, and I fear it overrun by the club kids moving north from the meat packing district (which has gone from stimulated to overbearing in about a year). I wished that, instead of spending 20 million dollars, they would just clean it up, plant vigorously, provide access, and let us use it, as Paris did.
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InfoDesign interview
Peter J. Bogaards was kind enough to chat with me for the InfoDesign Profile series. One question I didn’t have an answer for was, Who is your role model? It’d be great to have one, but it feels like the world is changing too fast for anyone else to consistenty interpret the world in a way I strive for.
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The Clearing
Once in a while the Monopoly game of life tosses us Second Prize in a Beauty Contest card. Last night, courtesy of the nice people at the New Yorker and Johnny Walker, I saw a preview of the film The Clearing with Robert Redford, Willem Dafoe and Helen Mirren. The plot was thriller, but the genre was drama, focusing more on the characters than the suspense, which was fine with me as the extensive dialog between Redford and Dafoe is music to the ears. The event included hor d’oeuvres and scotch (of course) and capped off with a Q&A session with director Pieter Jan Brugge and writer Justin Haythe, all in the theater of the Tribeca Grand hotel. It all felt very priviledged and very New York.
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Touring Ground Zero
If someone was to ask me how the new PATH station at the World Trade Center was situated and how the train arrived, I know what I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t say it comes in above ground (the PATH is mostly underground) and tours the perimeter of the property, first traveling East along the North side before turning around and traveling in the opposite direction before stopping, ready to head straight back into New Jersey. But that’s just what it does, giving the rider a panoramic view of the ground at Ground Zero. It would be weird if Ground Zero wasn’t essentially a construction site these days, and if all of this wouldn’t be underground soon, under buildings and footprint pools and footprints. I snapped this lame shot from the window as the train rounded the corner…
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NYC Taxi Tips
My heart breaks when I see newbie tourists in Manhattan. The young woman the other day carrying armloads of luggage in the rain politely asking the cab driver if he drives to Queens. Here’s two tips to avoid the worst:
- Taxis must drive you anywhere in the five boroughs of New York City, period. The trick is to get in the taxi, close the door, and then tell them where you’re going. Don’t get out until you are at your destination. If they give you grief because they don’t want to drive to a particular neighborhood, threaten to write down their name and license number and report them. Pretend you’re on Law and Order, it’s fun.
- If you have anything in the trunk, upon arrival get out leaving the door open, remove your items from trunk, then close the door. This avoids the taxi accidentally speeding off with your stuff.
Bonus tip: on the subway, if you don’t get a seat, you’re gonna wanna hold on to the hand rail, really.
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Otterness
There’s so much good art in galleries and museums in New York, the public art pretty much sucks, having put our resources into nifty architecture and parks instead.
The rare exception is Tom Otterness, who has installations all over town. Many, like the figures sprinkled throughout the 14th St IND station, carry a clear political theme, like cute little capitalists being dragged into manholes by alligators.
I used to walk through Battery Park on the way to work, where there’s another group of Otterness oddities. The funny thing about them is that little stories can unfold depending on which viewpoint you have. I used to walk by and wonder about this little guy and his worm friend being eyed by the bird…
…and later noticed the lemur-like creature eyeing the bird…
…and much later, only be taking a different path home around the wall, did I notice the dog eyeing the lemur…
…but the dog is tied up to the water fountain. Why? Is he doomed to watch this scene as it unfolds, unable to participate, to save the bird or bite the lemur?
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The Brides of Central Park
Walking through the park today, we saw four or five wedding parties taking photos in one area. I started snapping photos of them, and walking on each corner we turned produced more brides .
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Opera in the Park
Lying on the grass listening to La Boheme reminded me of when I was young, lying on the grass listening to Godspell in Thomas A. Edison Park.
