The always-excellent ScoutingNY blog has an excellent post tracking down all of the exterior locations in Ghostbusters. I was pretty amazed to see that the firehouse that was the Ghostbusters’ home base is still functional, and just a few blocks from my gym — right there on the corner of North Moore and Varick Street.
Naturally, I went over there and took a few pics:
It’s still fully functional. I wonder how long it takes for the magic to wear off for the firefighters that get assigned there.
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Austin. Right now I’m in an airport hotel outside of Dallas, after a pretty serious cock-up this afternoon in freeway traffic that lead to me missing my flight. A couple hassled phone calls and one sad sandwich later, here I am.
I’ll be in Austin, TX from March 10th to the 17th, taking part in Spring Break for Aging Hipster Nerds, AKA South by Southwest Interactive. If any of you folks want to say hi, hunt me down. Last year a woman recognized me on the freaking street, which puffed my ego up for several months after. Maybe it doesn’t need your help.
You can arrange something via the comments here, or find me on Twitter: @jeffsimmermon. Just rock up to me whenever, it’s fine. I’ll be the tall bald-headed white guy with bourbon in one hand and barbecue in the other. Just to narrow it down a little, I’ll have on glasses and also some Converse.
If you know of any cool bands, parties, or shows, do please let me know. This thing is overwhelming, to say the least.
I have learned that there is a SUPERVOLCANO (which is a real thing not made up by an 8-year-old kid, apparently,) underneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. This supervolcano has erupted in the past, and was possibly partially responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to one guy (who keeps saying “million” when he means “thousand”, which you’d think would be problematic for a physicist,) it WILL erupt again, and everybody who lives in the huge area depicted here will be pretty well f*cked.
Coincidentally, on the same day that I learned that 11 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces are just incontrovertibly screwed six ways to Sunday, I came across this amazing and hilarious Jack Kirby drawing from 1972 of what our future might look like after “A GREAT CATACLYSM!”:
Now she’s working on a one-woman show show that traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.
The show’s called Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.
I’ve been writing and editing and re-writing my story for this Monday’s Moth GrandSLAM, just scribbling it over and over on a legal pad to make sure I’ve got it. The theme is “Into the Wild,” which poses a challenge. I’ve pretty much told and re-told what I like to think is a pretty solid story on that theme. I’ve told that thing right into the red dirt, to be honest. I’m sure my friends, family, and the odd person I am totally trying to impress is sick to their guts of it. I think I’ve worn a track in my brain from repeating it so damn much.
I got one of the best passive-aggressive guilt trips about this that I’ve ever had from anyone that wasn’t my own mother recently. She’s a great friend I met through the Moth, and when I suggested I wanted to visit that old incarnation of that story for the theme, she said “Yeah, I mean, you could do that. But if you won with it, I think you’d feel pretty cheap.”
She’s right. So I’m working on it, but brother, you never know you’ve got something until it’s over and done with. The challenge here is to find other material in that experience, stuff that didn’t make the first cut and massaging it into something brand-new. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night in a “discount store” in Prospect Heights, I came across an amazing little item. See, not only have factories in China been producing unauthorized knockoffs of popular toys (which is nothing new)… it seems like they’re hitting the “shuffle” button with whatever figures they have left in stock, and coming up with new super-teams too! Case in point: the SENSE OF RIGHT ALLIANCE!
Apparently, a robot-armed Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, the yellow Power Ranger, The Thing, and a redheaded Reed Richards and have teamed up…
…to FENCE AGAINST THE EARTH!
And on top of this already delicious ridiculousness, when I took a closer look at their approximation of Superman:
My old friend Eliza Skinner is a wizard at improv comedy, stand-up, and musical improv comedy. She performs with the musical improv comedy groups Diamond Lion and Baby Wants Candy, does stand-up all over New York and is the person who is personally responsible for getting me into The Moth and storytelling in general. I’m pretty much always going to be grateful for that.
A lot of New Yorkers keep a folded-up copy of the New Yorker poking out of their tote bag and talk all about Mad Men and This American Life all the time, then go home and gobble trashy pop culture like they have some kind of cultural eating disorder. Eliza doesn’t front like that — she loves what she loves and she loves it real hard. Like Tyler Perry movies, comic books and dance movies.
Here, she’s fused her love of both vampire movies and dance movies: “The only thing better than a dance movie is a vampire dance movie.”
Since seeing the Episode of the Six Million Dollar man in which Steve Austen battled Bigfoot (Played by Ted Cassidy), I have been fascinated with the Legend of Bigfoot.
As a kid I was intrigued by the fact that a monster COULD exist, and so I went to my Jr High School library and took out a book called The Search for Bigfoot. Written by Peter Byrne – whose bragged in his introduction that he was “…the only man alive who has made a profession out of this extraodinary search and through the support of many dedicated associates and sponsors, continues that profession on a full time basis twelve months of the year.”
I found that just as fascinating as the monster. What kind of person decides “I am going to hunt Bigfoot for a living!” And my family thought I was plotting a life of silly risks wanting to be an actress!
Since age 12, I have watched hundreds of hours of cryptozoology programming in which Bigfoot is never ever found. If I am stressed, the thing that will distract me more than anything is Bigfoot stuff. This mild obsession has been my solace during many a dark sleepless nights. But again, it is not just the monster that makes me smile…it is the folks who claim to have seen him. Read the rest of this entry »
