One degree of separation aside (full disclosure, or whatever), I think the concept is spot on, the execution barely falters, and the song makes me wish it was a minute and a half longer. If that's not a successful video endeavor, I don't know what is.
"Old In Florida" by You Can Be A Wesley from loroto on Vimeo.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Great Shoveling Irony
As I waddled my way to the train stop this morning, over an entire block-length of three inch ice-slush (that's an inch of ice, covered by an inch of slush, covered by another layer of hard ice over top that cracks and splashes when you step over the fossilized footprints of the Slushozoic Era below. Oh, and there's water on top of that, like the Devil's slip and slide. It's perfect inspiration for next year's Winter Wipeout course.), I couldn't help but get really, really mad at Mayor Bloomberg. He is the guy to go after, afterall, right?
My superintendent gets up at the crack of dawn every day to scrape off whatever weather poop the skies have dropped in front of my apartment. He does some good old fashioned shoveling, salt sprinkling and pathway carving that makes it pretty a-ok to get up and out of the house. Everyone else on my block does the same. And the restaurants and store fronts do it 10 times better still, lest they catch me off guard on a bad day and get their asses SUED, mother fucker!
So why does the next block, with public park to the north and stalled construction to the south, sit completely unkempt and totally treacherous? Is this not the great hypocrisy of our time?
Don't shovel out your building? Get a hefty ticket. Don't clear your store front? Feel the wrath the of the civil suit, and a get hefty ticket. In fact, the law says you have a mere four hours to clear a path in front of your building. Violators can get a $150 citation from any city sanitation worker, not just police. And yet the city is all la-dee-da about their own properties. To put it in Sarah Palin's recent, brilliant words: WTF?
I think all of the people that cite poor shoveling and write tickets should be put to work hacking at the ice mounds piling up along abandoned buildings, city parks, and --hello?!-- every street corner in the entire city. How is it acceptable to leave snow compacted into the sewers, and allow five inch deep lakes of murky, city slush water to form around every one? And when I say every one, I don't even mean just NYC anymore. That goes for you too, Boston and Philly, and I would assume every other major city that gets snow.
Is there no way to solve this problem? The great minds in America have come together to create the a-bomb, perform stem cell miracles, put spaceships on Mars, but shit... how do we get the snow off of public property? How do we do it? I hope whoever gives the next State of the Union Address is sure to include this issue in the agenda. It is truly one of the great challenges of our time.
That's it. No facts. No solutions. Just rant.
The end.
PS - that woman is having the best day everrr!
My superintendent gets up at the crack of dawn every day to scrape off whatever weather poop the skies have dropped in front of my apartment. He does some good old fashioned shoveling, salt sprinkling and pathway carving that makes it pretty a-ok to get up and out of the house. Everyone else on my block does the same. And the restaurants and store fronts do it 10 times better still, lest they catch me off guard on a bad day and get their asses SUED, mother fucker!
So why does the next block, with public park to the north and stalled construction to the south, sit completely unkempt and totally treacherous? Is this not the great hypocrisy of our time?
Don't shovel out your building? Get a hefty ticket. Don't clear your store front? Feel the wrath the of the civil suit, and a get hefty ticket. In fact, the law says you have a mere four hours to clear a path in front of your building. Violators can get a $150 citation from any city sanitation worker, not just police. And yet the city is all la-dee-da about their own properties. To put it in Sarah Palin's recent, brilliant words: WTF?
I think all of the people that cite poor shoveling and write tickets should be put to work hacking at the ice mounds piling up along abandoned buildings, city parks, and --hello?!-- every street corner in the entire city. How is it acceptable to leave snow compacted into the sewers, and allow five inch deep lakes of murky, city slush water to form around every one? And when I say every one, I don't even mean just NYC anymore. That goes for you too, Boston and Philly, and I would assume every other major city that gets snow.
Is there no way to solve this problem? The great minds in America have come together to create the a-bomb, perform stem cell miracles, put spaceships on Mars, but shit... how do we get the snow off of public property? How do we do it? I hope whoever gives the next State of the Union Address is sure to include this issue in the agenda. It is truly one of the great challenges of our time.
That's it. No facts. No solutions. Just rant.
The end.
PS - that woman is having the best day everrr!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Hot on the Flesh Market
I just saw SciChi's (yeah, I said it) show "Oddities" for the first time, and it was one of the coolest. It features this shop that was clearly in New York and clearly run by some kooky individuals, and clearly I had to look it up. Enter: Obscura.
It's really real and it's really here, on 10th St between 1st and A, as was primarily expected.
ANYWAY, the store is crazy, creepy cool and I can't wait to go there with Irena and look for clams. (Holy shit they just showed a taxidermied jack rabbit posed shooting a shotgun! In a guy's personal apartment! Just casually in the background and not even part of the show!)
Here's a picture of some Obsucura wares I found on the interwebs:
It's definitely a place you want to go.
Also I realized, upon seeing all of this, that I'm well on my way to a shelf 'o' obscure oddities, though now it's mostly just obscurities (you know, old-timey shit). But seriously, I'm one mummified organism away from living room display victory, and have one more goal to throw in my pocket.
End quote from James: "Let's go buy that flesh! Let's go buy that flesh. We can buy an ancient glove with ancient flesh in it."
Update: A girl just walked in with a jar full of toenails, and then was like Siiike! I make lizard sculptures out of them!
It's really real and it's really here, on 10th St between 1st and A, as was primarily expected.
ANYWAY, the store is crazy, creepy cool and I can't wait to go there with Irena and look for clams. (Holy shit they just showed a taxidermied jack rabbit posed shooting a shotgun! In a guy's personal apartment! Just casually in the background and not even part of the show!)
Here's a picture of some Obsucura wares I found on the interwebs:
It's definitely a place you want to go.Also I realized, upon seeing all of this, that I'm well on my way to a shelf 'o' obscure oddities, though now it's mostly just obscurities (you know, old-timey shit). But seriously, I'm one mummified organism away from living room display victory, and have one more goal to throw in my pocket.
End quote from James: "Let's go buy that flesh! Let's go buy that flesh. We can buy an ancient glove with ancient flesh in it."
Update: A girl just walked in with a jar full of toenails, and then was like Siiike! I make lizard sculptures out of them!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Clam Jam #10/ Nice to See You Again
Holy shit, guys. Holy shit. And I don't say holy shit often (?), but it's officially been more than a week since I've rattled off some meaningless garbage on the good old internets. We haven't even talked about how much I'm totally obsessed with the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (or more specifically Richard Lawson's recaps of their finer moments--seriously, check it.)
I have been so much more of a legitimate adult than I've ever intended in these past few... 8 days?... 8 weeks?... whatever, but I've also gone on some honest-to-god journeys which were totally reminiscent of my high-school-going-on-college days (and Irena was here, and there was New Year's and such). The great irony is that in light of all the story-making, the storytelling mechanism gets cut from the schedule. And so there is so much life experience sludge, left to fossilize, and only emerge one day when memories get skewed.
Let's cut to the clam jam chase here. I came to talk about Icypoles by Alpine, and how it's so good and how I left my iPod in New Jersey, and how much that sucks. Fortunately, I found Icypoles on a playlist, and by the time I got to this moment the next song had begun to play. It's pretty fun. And thus it takes over. (Still check out Icypoles. It knows how to fucking rock a morning commute.)
I have been so much more of a legitimate adult than I've ever intended in these past few... 8 days?... 8 weeks?... whatever, but I've also gone on some honest-to-god journeys which were totally reminiscent of my high-school-going-on-college days (and Irena was here, and there was New Year's and such). The great irony is that in light of all the story-making, the storytelling mechanism gets cut from the schedule. And so there is so much life experience sludge, left to fossilize, and only emerge one day when memories get skewed.
Let's cut to the clam jam chase here. I came to talk about Icypoles by Alpine, and how it's so good and how I left my iPod in New Jersey, and how much that sucks. Fortunately, I found Icypoles on a playlist, and by the time I got to this moment the next song had begun to play. It's pretty fun. And thus it takes over. (Still check out Icypoles. It knows how to fucking rock a morning commute.)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
You Guys Really Didn't Pay Enough Attention to Dildo
In case you guys missed my groundbreaking, totally important, not even remotely self-serving Christmas list, let me re-highlight for you the greatest find on Google Maps to occur this side of the millennium: Dildo, Newfoundland.
To (totally un-self-servingly) quote myself, "Dildo Newfoundland is a magical place, filled with amazing sights to see. There's The Dildo Dory Grill, Inn By the Bay (where you can get it in... by the bay), and don't forget to take a short journey down to South Dildo, where you can drive down Spread Eagle Road. I repeat, Spread Eagle Road."
The best part? This is all totally real! There are no exaggerations! Dildo is an actual place, deserving our respect, adulation, and a no holds barred onslaught of derisive comments. It is also the place where the poop joke was invented.
Ok, maybe that last one was a lie, but who cares? It's Dildo!
It's also the 482nd reason why I love Canada.
Some other really fun tidbits about Dildo, which you can verify for yourself on Google next time you need an excuse not to do your laundry:
- overlooks Conception Bay
- 4 miles south Cummingers Pond
-35 miles north of the town of Placentia. (Don't act like you can't see what they're getting at.)
This is all the handywork of Captain James Cook and his (hopefully hunchbacked) sidekick Michael Lane. They mapped Newfoundland in the 1760s, and literally just thought it was funny to name things after lame, 18th Century sex jokes. Coincidentally these are the same sex jokes we're making today. According to hilarious Wikipedia phraseology, they "were not above selecting names that might offend overly sensitive readers." And the rest of us just are.
To (totally un-self-servingly) quote myself, "Dildo Newfoundland is a magical place, filled with amazing sights to see. There's The Dildo Dory Grill, Inn By the Bay (where you can get it in... by the bay), and don't forget to take a short journey down to South Dildo, where you can drive down Spread Eagle Road. I repeat, Spread Eagle Road."
The best part? This is all totally real! There are no exaggerations! Dildo is an actual place, deserving our respect, adulation, and a no holds barred onslaught of derisive comments. It is also the place where the poop joke was invented.
Ok, maybe that last one was a lie, but who cares? It's Dildo!
It's also the 482nd reason why I love Canada.Some other really fun tidbits about Dildo, which you can verify for yourself on Google next time you need an excuse not to do your laundry:
- overlooks Conception Bay
- 4 miles south Cummingers Pond
-35 miles north of the town of Placentia. (Don't act like you can't see what they're getting at.)
This is all the handywork of Captain James Cook and his (hopefully hunchbacked) sidekick Michael Lane. They mapped Newfoundland in the 1760s, and literally just thought it was funny to name things after lame, 18th Century sex jokes. Coincidentally these are the same sex jokes we're making today. According to hilarious Wikipedia phraseology, they "were not above selecting names that might offend overly sensitive readers." And the rest of us just are.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Look What James Found!
If you are a lover of nerdy city history, secret locations, and watching people risk jail time (and their lives) you will be pleased with the following video, brought to you by James.
This is UNDERCITY, a documentary by Andrew Wonder that follows this guy Steve around as he lurks through NYC subway tunnels, shows us the original architecture of the Canal Street sewer (the city's first underground), interviews some people who have been living along train tracks for decades, and climbs to the tippy top of the Williamsburg bridge.
In case you haven't guessed, Andrew Wonder and Steve are super badass. Seriously, take the time to watch:
This is UNDERCITY, a documentary by Andrew Wonder that follows this guy Steve around as he lurks through NYC subway tunnels, shows us the original architecture of the Canal Street sewer (the city's first underground), interviews some people who have been living along train tracks for decades, and climbs to the tippy top of the Williamsburg bridge.
In case you haven't guessed, Andrew Wonder and Steve are super badass. Seriously, take the time to watch:
UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.
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