You'll Shit a Million Stars

Heroes of the Underground

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Four Tracks

I used to always see this guy who reminded me of an emaciated Moby walking around my neighborhood holding hands with a tall, rockabilly/Betty Page looking chick. I called him Fauxby. I just realized that I hadn't thought about him in maybe a year, and that I never see him anymore.

Other things my neighborhood has lost in the past three years:
•Rumblestreet Music (my old roommate Jamie bought an amp for his bass guitar there)
•A black sports memorabilia store whose name I have forgotten
•The coco helado lady who used to hang out in J.J. Burn Memorial Park
•The Palestinian couple who ran the laundromat between 5th and 6th Streets
•Park Slope Office Furniture (I bought my desk and bookshelves there)
•The 99 cent store across the street
•The print shop where I once tried to interview a haggard old man who smelled of urine (it was the only place I found with a Bush/Cheney sign in the window)
•The Bodega at 9th St and 6th Ave
•Its street cred
•The Fifth Avenue Committee
•The junk shop where I bought a bizarre line drawing of two men in some kind of argument
•The gas station at the end of my block (I don't miss it)
•The Chess Club on 4th Ave. that I passed on the way to the F train
•The lady who was walking her two dogs every morning while I was walking to work

Robots Also Cry

[This essay is set to "af607105" by Charlotte Gainsbourg]
I flew to Seattle once, when my sister was still living there. It was a strangely planned trip. While I was flying out west, she was heading to my parents home in Maryland, where I lived at the time. I can’t remember why it worked out that way. All I remember is that I wanted to go to Seattle, then eventually make my way up to British Columbia to snowboard at Whistler/Blackcomb. I had an old magazine with pictures of the mountains there that I used to study. In it, the boughs of tall pines had been piled with powder that seemed unreal, as if it were made of meringue and styled with a spatula.

On the flight out I was seated next to a young woman, probably a few years older than me. I took in her appearance quickly then settled into whatever novel I had been reading at the time without saying a word; I found her pretty, and my attraction to her had made me feel bashful. She had pale skin and straight, long brown hair. Several minutes after take off she began crying, very quietly at first. I could not believe what was happening. I made a sort of abortive attempt to see what was going on without directly turning my head. But I could not clearly see her in my peripheral vision, she was seated too close to me. She held the window seat and had angled her body outwards, toward the sky. But I could hear her crying quite clearly, there was no mistaking that. It was a tranquil sort of cry I guess. There were no histrionics. No sobs. No gasping for air. It did not seem to be a cry born of grief or calamity or shock or disbelief. Thinking back on it now, it seemed to have been poured out of a still sadness that lived inside her, or at least that she had been living with for some time.

This was wholly unexpected. What was I, the awkwardly positioned bystander, supposed to do? Ask her what was wrong? And then—if she had confided in me—attempted to comfort her? My body was frozen with fear. I felt my face grow hot and my hands clammy with perspiration. I locked my gaze directly in front of me and studied the words on the page of my novel more intensely than before, as though the story was so compelling that I had become immune to any external stimulus. After some time she stopped crying. I had not realized it, but I had been holding my muscles taught from the stress. Finally, I let go, allowing my rigid body to relax and sag back into my seat. She seemed now to be settling into sleep, but my impression of her actions was bounded by my inability to turn in her direction. Everything she did seem removed from me, as though she were wrapped in a gauze that confounded by ability to discern her actions or emotional state.

I pretended to read my novel until I was somewhat certain that she had actually fallen asleep, though I could not concentrate on anything but her. I don’t remember the rest of the flight, but I am sure it passed uncomfortably for me, maybe in fitful attempts at sleep or distraction. But I could not bring myself to simply turn and look at the woman seated next to me. When we finally arrived in Seattle I quickly grabbed my bag and deplaned. After we entered the airport’s sterile terminal I casually slowed my gait to allow the woman to catch up. I managed to gather my courage, stealing a quick glance at her she passed by. She was beautiful. She had clear blue eyes and smiled when I looked at her, though not at me. I don’t think she even noticed me. Her eyes were unfocused, staring at something in the distance. She seemed to be smiling to herself.

I Heart French Narcoballadeers

The lighting in those new robotrains is very unflattering in the morning. Maybe just always.

Makin' Your Way in the World Today

Takes everything you got.



Friends don't let friends drink and ride.

The Elegant Variation

Everything always seems better after a nice, cold one.
Items are improved by a separate beneficial, frigid item.
Here, enjoy this fermented concoction of hops, barley and water (it's been refrigerated and will make you feel great).
I drink beer; despues, estoy alegre.
Alcohol: the cause of--and solution to--all of life's problems.
Etc.

Everybody Get Fucked Up

Get shit started, get retarded, ah one two.

Beautiful/Deadly

Rich people are killing New York. I managed to catch a set by Miho Hatori tonight (I missed Suphala's set) at the soon-to-be abandoned Tonic in the LES, which is now swaddled in million dollar condos. I was really fucking bummed when Martin told me of its impending doom, though rumours of its demise had been milling about for some time. Cultural homogeny sucks! if Brooklyn is the new Manhattan, does that make Queens the new Brooklyn? Fuck it, I'm moving to Jackson Heights...

Jai Coney Island

You Will Never Be Able To See Yourself As Others Do

I just got home from an event hosted at NYU's Kimmel Center for University Life (yeah, that's really what it's called) that was intended to examine ten years of South Asian arts and activism in New York City. It functioned as an interesting reflection on the progressive/artistic groundswell that was just coming into being in the city at the time. Or at least that's what I gathered from the panel, which was composed of several female artists and educators.

During the Q&A an older man who identified himself as a third-generation Chinese American asked a question I had been wondering myself: where were all the men? The panelists seemed to take the query as an insult, dismissing it with comments like, "studying finance." I was taken aback at how quickly some of them had assumed the mentality of those elements of mainstream and south asian culture set on presenting desis as the "model minority," a phrase that functions as a perjorative within some elements of desi culture.

I attended a university with an undergraduate population of 30,000, but met only one other desi male who was active in the political activist community on campus. I had never thought about that fact before this evening. So where were the men? Was there a male gender vacuum in this political and artistic movement? Are there any progressive or artistic role models for 15-year-old boys?

I did not raise the point for fear of seeming quarrelsome.

Small Caps When You Spell the Man's Name

The invention of the bicycle ushered in a new spirit of freedom during the late 19th century. The Golden Age of Cycling reached its pinnacle in 1895--that same year French painter G. Massias created one of the great Parisian art posters advertising a fashionable new bicycle: 'Cycles Gladiator.'

Yay!

Uh, this picture makes me laugh out loud. Enjoy!

Runs With Two Horses

The score to the ocean life film exhibit at the Museum of Natural History constitutes some of the best music I've heard in the past month.

Math is the New Black

Oh The Horror

I read a really interesting essay in my writing class yesterday that touched on the illusory, transient nature of memory. Or I guess just all human thought for that matter. It also reminded me that determining the essential truth of a person was a highly subjective process that can really fuck you up. Kind of like in Rashoman. I also learned that cipher can mean a person of no influence.

All-City Like Phase II

Two of my favorite graffiti pieces ever, both located within a block of my apartment.