I don’t know about you all, but I spent MY last Saturday biking around Red Hook, getting selectively sunburnt and looking for weird scenes that I could make a little weirder. Mid-afternoon (after a stop for some amazing pulled pork and root beer on tap at Brooklyn Ice House), I happened upon an abandoned baby stroller between a couple of warehouses and went to work with the colored tape. Here is the result:
I was walking down Bedford Avenue to Five Leaves with a couple of my tight bros from way back in Norfolk for brunch, right. That god-awful heat like Galactus-sized dog breath had broken, we hadn’t seen each other in way too long, things were pretty much perfect, really.
Then this guy came around the corner and topped that sundae with a shiny red cherry:
Then I will tell you that the live show I am promoting is in New York. I know, we are being a little New York-centric with the past couple of posts. But we can only do live shows in places we are. Perhaps we can fix this in the future.
Anyway, Brian Wecht is the co-producer of Story Collider, in the video he is at our old show in Long Island City. Tonight, Cyndi will be doing his show and I will be there to drink. The show is at Pacific Standard, which is where we are doing our new show, The Standard Issues, which will be on the 24th of this month and the theme will be “Jerks.” So if you like what you saw of Brian, come check out the show tonight and, if you are not in New York but liked what you saw, I am currently plugging through my back log of storytelling videos and will bring you more as soon as I get them cut.
My wife, Cyndi (who all of you got very acquainted with yesterday) and I live at the corner of three neighborhoods. To the Northwest is the Mexican neighborhood, Southeast is Chinese, and Southwest is Turkish. The restaurants have Cumbia Karaoke, the grocery stores have water chestnuts in a can and wasabi paste in a tube, and the coffee shops have hookahs and they’re for men only.
So, it’s always an education. But some things are not spelled out and it is up to you to figure out what it all means. And so, I give you Defa Lucy and her packaging. There are an infinite number of ways Lucy’s cryptic copy can be interpreted. The simplistic view is “Oh, those crazy foreigners who can’t speak English.” But I tend to think there is more going on here. You have to think of the demographic.
These dolls are being sold to the children of people who have left their homes to come to a place that is (no matter how many planes land at JFK in a day) far away from everything, because they have some idea of what the place offers them in the way of a future. There is something in this broken English that speaks to me of what these folks want and what they expect and what they think is expected of them in their new home.
Nothing makes television more fascinating than watching it through someone else’s window. Normal, boring stuff – folding laundry, watching people watch a TV program you don’t even like, eating dinner — it’s all hypnotic when you watch other people do it, when they have no idea that you’re there watching them.
When I was a kid I’d take forever to walk the dog, walking as slowly as I could so I could safely gaze into open windows while still moving down the street. Stopping to really take it in or moving closer into the bushes, that’s creep territory. Usually my dog would smell a squirrel or something and yank me away before things got TOO weird.
There are several high-rise apartment buildings across from my office building. Sometimes when I’m on the phone I look out there and see blinds opening and shutting, people walking in front of the windows, sometimes leaning out. It blows my mind, to think of all that eating, sleeping, cleaning and living that goes on right over there while I have my face up against this electronic lotus flower.
Somebody else must have found my tossing and turning the other night to be pretty mind-blowing, too. When I woke up yesterday morning, I could see two perfect handprints in the dust outside my bedroom window: Read the rest of this entry »
My self-promotion-averse co-blogger D.Billy has been colossally busy as of late. He was responsible for having to help prep Cooper Union for Obama’s visit this week, a task that I’m sure glad I didn’t have to perform. I can barely remember to put out a fresh roll of toilet paper when people come over to my place.
D.Billy’s also been slogging it up and down 95 on various buses to see his lady, a process that I am abundantly familiar with. That really, really sucks, because you can’t even complain about it properly. I mean, shit, you still got a girlfriend at the end of the bus ride, right, so who are you to fuss?
There is ALWAYS somebody who is either 1) freestyle rapping to their headphones 2) eating something deep-fried or 3) wearing huge sunglasses and an empire-waist dress and talking in a nasal whine about some guy they’re “just hanging out with, whatever,” on the four-hour slog out of New York on the bus on a Friday night, though. And lady at the end or not, that gets mighty old.
None of this is a valid excuse for not blogging much, though. The real reason this blog’s been fallow lately: we both just tired as hell.
I’m pleased to report that D.Billy has not been too busy or tired to throw up a new Site Intervention, though. Check this bad thing out:
There’s a pretty powerful, fast-moving scavenger ecosystem in my neighborhood. People (I think) snatch up clothing, books, whatever like crabs picking over a fish carcass on the sea floor. There are a lot of forgotten bike frames chained to sign posts around there, stripped of their seats, wheels, chains, pedals — anything that is remotely mobile or useful. Sometimes you just see a chain looped around a sign post. Whenever I see that, I always think “Damn. Another one of those bike-eating sharks must’ve got that one.”
I’ve been walking past this bike that’s been locked up on Broadway under the Williamsburg Bridge for YEARS. It looks like it was dragged up from the ocean floor, doesn’t it? There’s the requisite grease and grime there, but it’s covered with a thick patina of dust, dried river mud and pigeon shit. The mirrors are useless, covered with old dirt.
It’s always sitting upright, though, and always in a slightly different position. Sometimes it feels a little warm, like it was ridden just a few hours ago.
I like to think that some slippery creeping beast shambles up out of the East River every night and stumbles to the bike with thick, dripping footsteps. Its shoulders steam with a green toxic runoff, and its face is half-eaten away, revealing a horrific skeletal grin. It turns up its moldering jacket collar and slides a Bob Seger tape into its Walkman, then sets out to cruise the neighborhood, working out some “Night Moves” …
A while back, the folks at Gestalten included a few of my site intervention projects in a lovely book called Tangible: High Touch Visuals.
I highly recommend it, and its sister book Tactile. They’re both chock full of excellent artists and designers, and I break them out in a fit of “you-gotta-check-this-stuff-out” fever to anyone who comes anywhere near my bookshelves.
I am absolutely thrilled to share a volume with people like Mark Jenkins, Joshua Allen Harris, William Lamson and tons of other artists who endeavor to smack the urban landscape with the giant cartoon glove of whimsy, and I hope y’all will check it out.
Urban Interventions is 69 beans if you buy it direct, BUT, as of this posting, it’s 37% off if you buy it on Amazon!
Or you can just wait until it’s in the big bookstores and hunker down between the rows, all sprawled out taking up aisle space.
I know how you do, ’cause I do it too.
I talked to a bunch of folks about it ahead of time, none of whom could make it out. Fair enough. Zach’s a nice young man, and was kind enough/self-promotional enough to post the video on Vimeo. Here it is, see for yourselves:
