Lusk

If you know anything about me, or the me I purport to be, you know I have a deep abiding respect for one Mathieu Lusk. The story of our relatively short friendship has been told and retold, mostly for our own benefit, I doubt it is as interesting or funny to anyone else. His blog of curious moments in space and time is one of the most enchanting forums of current photography I know of. His sculpture is bizarre, lending itself a quixotic sensibility, straddling a line to the left seemingly desultory then to the right brazenly academic, steeped in a rigorous theory. He is at once totally predictable and completely original. Perhaps these things always go hand in hand. In any case, he cracks me up with a consistency few achieve.

This is where I realize a fundamental definition heretofore glazed over in the taxonomy conjured in my grey matter. Hydration and the fire hydrant. Never has it ever occurred to me that the second part of that term actually meant anything other than the shape of the thing on the sidewalk dogs like to pee on and firemen like to hook hoses up to. Also a word found on the box of coconut water my son pulls from the fridge every morning. Hydrant. Who knew?

First, I figure I could probably have a decently intelligent conversation about the parameters of John Updike's oeuvre without ever actually having read one of his novels all the way through. Then, the ridiculousness of that statement makes me laugh. Finally, (almost instantly) I go back to figuring I could pull it off anyhow.
Incidental cultural knowledge is no small thing.
Neither is the misappropriation of the word 'intelligent.'

My initial drawing for today was going to be an action shot from last night's Superbowl. The caption was meant to be "Everyone has their own weird thing going. And It doesn't have to do with you." Then I found a photo of Johanna Sigurdardottir who recently ascended to the top post of Iceland. The caption perhaps changes to "Why did my portrait subject turn out looking like a monkey?"

Sometimes the big deep breaths don't help as much as I expect them to.

So wait, how long did you think you'd live?

Last night we made the possibly perilous decision to forgo the first two hours of our nightly allotment of sweet, sweet sleep to watch this latest from Woody Allen, a director whose start and stop reactive dialogue, halting staging and neurosis narrative often get in the way of his film making. (In my opinion.) (In many cases.) However, there are certainly more than enough perfect distillations of his particular stylistic craft to make me want to see each and every one of his films. And so it was when my wife brought this film home last night we made the sacrifice. I am not going to mince any more words.
I loved it.

Paging Mr. Mullis. Mr. Mullis. Paging Mr. Mullis.

More Tips For Tourists

It isn't that I am unobservant, it's that sometimes I don't believe what I've seen.

"New in Box Vintage Throwback Reproduction"

The HD antenna signal gets all fuzzy every time a subway train goes by.

I played basketball today on an indoor court with some advertising executive types. Real nice guys. Real sort of down tempo, fun, old white-guy basketball. People working hard to set their picks, getting hands in faces, dribbling like John Lucas masterminding the '88 Supersonics backcourt. I didn't turn my ankle. I didn't get too many rebounds. I didn't hit too many shots. The lineup went from late 20s to late 60s. Mostly late 30s. A couple guys at 6'3" most around the 5'9-6'0 range. Canny body placement, wild arms, big paternalistic smells. Just the kind of game a washed-up has-been 21 addict can get with. The good guys nearly hogging the ball until their senses take hold and they dish it outside to the old-guy sharp shooters. Everyone in on the game. A fine time. I wore high tops.

Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite

The very-nearly one hundred pound (sterling) man.
And so we turn our frost bitten gaze to the newly coronated Obama administration. The excitement has already dimmed, it seems, the skeptical musings of the Onion writers, grousing amongst themselves in the elevator this morning was a cold wash of realism after yesterday's euphoria. Then again, the writing of spoof journalism is always serious business. My favorite digital antagonist Francoramon has lumped the collective sigh of relief at being rid of the Cheney Military Complex in with some sort of inarticulate mass hysteria over the Jesus-child Obama. It is, while terribly condescending, a valid perception. There is little to really hope for in regards to instant gratification in coming policy. The ship has been righted, but that does not mean it isn't sinking. As Amos points out, the heavy lifting of the definite article has been done. A black man with a relatively liberal agenda is in office, this is enough already. The thorny issues of governance are a whole other matter.

It's a story of me trying to sound real professional, real knowledgeable.
I gotta get a hold of myself.

Today I had to pay a large amount of money to pick up Lil' Fatty from the impound lot. I paid the money at a dingy marshal's storefront in Bay Ridge and picked up the car at a disorganized lot in Bushwick. The only viable subway route took me (there and) back through South Brooklyn, Wall Street, Chinatown, changing at Union Square, continuing through Williamsburg, depositing me a fifteen minute walk from the lot. Today I think the temperature peaked at 19˚ Fahrenheit. Once at the lot I turned over my receipt and car key to a very unpleasant woman and proceeded to wait, outside, with no wind cover, for an hour and some minutes. The commute was circuitous, the wait, long and frigid. I had quite a bit of time to think about certain things. I remembered things. I remembered and thought about a lot of things.
I read my brown paper bag book and thought about my clothes.
I bought the red canvas North Face jacket at an outlet sale in Carlsbad ten years ago. There was a red one and a blue one on sale out of a big cardboard box. Apparently they were design samples that "didn't make the cut." I chose the red jacket. I have been glad for it ever since.
I found the Carhartt overalls at a stoop sale on Driggs four or five years ago. Last year I wore the overalls to Mollusk surf shop where the owner, Chris, recognized me as the guy who bought the Carhartt overalls he wished he had never sold.
The blue loose wool fisherman's sweater is from a shop at Pike Place Market in Seattle, purchased in the company of my wife eleven or so years ago. It is thick and wide and can fit over almost anything as a sort of woolen suit of armor.
The green Swedish Army wool zip up sweater is from Kiosk. I remember seeing Irvin Coffee in one first. He has great fashion sense.
The t-shirt is sky blue and the Patagonia silky long sleeve shirt smells permanently of body odor.
Last year, I purchased the snug-fitting gray cotton long johns at the 99¢ store down the street. They were not 99¢ but were still very inexpensive.
My son gave me the striped socks for my birthday last year.
The waterproof Clark boots come from one of those black and yellow shoe stores that used to dot Broadway in Soho. I bought them a month or two before a trip to London and Belgium four years ago. They show remarkably little wear and tear.
My wife initially made fun of me for buying the heavy-linen woven dark gray scarf at Beacon's Closet. She thought it was ugly. This was a few years ago. She has since borrowed it multiple times.
The oldest bit of clothing worn today is the wool hat I got from a stall in Florence 18 or so years ago. It is black and white and tight fitting. I would see the African street vendors wearing the hat around Europe and when I found one I was pretty excited. I think I bought another blue one at the time and later gave it to someone. Maybe Kevin. Maybe not. Whoever it is probably doesn't have the same sort of affection for it that I do. It is called a Fezko and was made in the Czech Republic. I love that hat.
The wool gloves are of a rather heavy military variety. My wife gave them to me a couple years ago for my birthday or some other celebration of sorts.

The Milk-bloated Raisin

The shaky intellectual hubris I stand upon ought to topple daily. I ought to actively seek toppling it daily. Actively seek something that will help me topple it.
The book, the book in the brown paper bag, is becoming an interesting read. My big problem with self-help-self-realization-pseudo-spiritual books and their guru manufacturers is that they often say nothing new. No, they never ever say anything new. The authors of these books, if they are worth their sea salt, will readily agree. But it doesn't matter. Usually I read these things and just uh-huh my way through the skimming. After years of reading sacred texts, studying religions and being basically spiritually thoughtful, I feel like I can write far more dynamic prose with equal insight into the state of being. Of course, that's not the point. The point is to read true things and to be reminded by their truth.

Next time you feel bad about yourself, pent up or at a loss for perspective, do yourself a favor: find the obituary page, look up the oldest deadie and revel at all the interesting and boring things you can do in a lifetime and still kick the bucket.

More Missteps in a Life Full of Lack of Confidence

This morning, in a hurry to get to work, I missed the B61 bus by an icy quarter block. This was probably brought on, in part, aside from everything else, by a sudden compulsive need to obscure my reading material from fellow subway passengers. So there I was, rushing to get out the door, stopping for an extra few minutes to hastily construct a brown bag book cover for the paperback book I happened to spy on the book shelf this morning. I'm not sure where that particular paperback book came from, or how it ended up on my shelf in my line of sight this morning, but it was written by a fellow that Daniel Lin recently said I might find interesting. As this author's name is splashed headily in large print across the original book cover, I noticed it and placed it as such immediately. On that cover, along with said author's name and the book's goofy, self-help title (embarrassing enough in their own right) was the scourge of stamps-of-approval everywhere and self conscious subway riders alike: Oprah's Book Club. And so with equal parts curiosity, wonderment and shame, I bundled up my little guilty pleasure in brown and paper at the cost of missing the B61 bus. Fifteen minutes of client time is no match for a commute of disinterested if furtive skimming.

In an ongoing conversation with Daniel Lin, this morning the question is asked: is a new Buddha created every time we catch and release a fish?

My wife found Maggie broken, emaciated and shivering in the gutter a block from our apartment at at 5:30 in the morning a few weeks before the World Trade Towers fell. Maggie, upon our first meeting, bit my nose. She would continue to bark at, shy away from, and generally dog-harumpf me for a full year before she would be coaxed into accepting my presence as a poor substitute for my wife's. Even then, she would stare longingly at the door, waiting for the obviously better half to return from whatever trivial errand she might dare to run.
Magdalena Ya-Ya Entonces Stewart de Trejo passed with quiet grace on a warm Autumn morning late last year in the loving arms of her best friend Tina, tucked away in a corner of Carlsbad, California, the fitting place she would decide to make her pied-á-terre during her golden years, surrounded by her varied adopted homo-sapien, feline and canine minions of many stripes and sizes.
Magda, as some would call her, was an excellent dancer, a professional comidienne (of the driest variety) and perhaps this century's greatest lover of chicken (or as she would say, "Amorador de Pollo.") She was given to, among other vices, smoking menthol Capri cigarette's, fantastic bouts of disgusted shivering and an acute halitosis so remarkable as to be intoxicating. She counted among her friends and confidantes many who regularly grace the pages of Vanity Fair and Women's Wear Daily and to her last breath would regale with tales of her mercurial romances with the most handsome men and women found in our culture's spotlight. Her on-again, off-again romance with John Stamos is the stuff of a tabloidist's heaven and her long creative collaboration with Cher is the stuff of song-writing and self-styling legend. Maggie's well-timed appearance onto the early-ots Williamsburg hipster art gallery scene spawned a thousand knock-offs and vehement envy, all of which she took in stride, often quoting by way of retort the film Highlander, "there can be only one."
This small, quaint obituary is far from sufficient to paint the picture of a life so vital, so conspicuous and so entrancing. She touched simply far too many with her acerbic wit, impulsive vivacity and unrivaled sense of taste and timing.
May the roses that blush of the bush beneath which she now rests smell of her ambrosial chickenbone-marrow inspired tooth decay ever more.