Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

I know, I know…

Rode my bike to work the last two days!!! It was really fun.

We built this city… on trash!

Biggest pork rinds ever

This is the cake I’ve chosen for Patrick and Kelly’s wedding. Contact me for bakery phone number.

Jeans for sale, Williamsburg.

Mary, supporting our troops!

He ate this donut before going to Peter Luger’s.

This is how Jeremy sees himself.

We went to Peter Luger’s this morning and for breakfast had steak-for-four, creamed spinach, canadian bacon and shrimp cocktail. I feel like this is turning into a food blog. Afterwards I felt really lightheaded stumbling around treeless Williamsburg.

Adam Perlmutter’s birthday

My favorite projects, 5th Ave.

I chose a Contemporary Adam cupcake.

This apartment used to be a secret pool hall.

Look familiar?

In one of my first entries, I mentioned soundwalk audio walking tours. I snuck out of work early today cause it was so beautiful and finally got to do it with Jeremy. This was the one for the Lower East Side and it started at the corner of Clinton and Stanton. I was really, really excited about doing this. Less will be said about Jeremy’s feelings. And he was kinda vindicated cause it was super lame. I mean it’s a great idea: that you would listen to a cd audio tour in a neighborhood and it would be full of sound design and commentary. And it’s like those books I used to have when I was a kid, the kind that came with a little 45 and you turned the page when tinkerbell rings her bell or whatever. And it was really exciting to be standing in a spot exactly where the voice in your headphones tells you to stand. My favorite part of the whole thing was when we turned on the corner of Suffolk to Delancey Street and “Wildside” by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch came on. I’m still really into this idea. I want to make mix CDs for people where it tells you to stand at a certain spot and walk down a certain street and you’ll hear music I want you to hear walking down that street. I think that’s kind of a cool new way to tell the story. And there were a couple of neat locals pointed out, like this unassuming gothic building on Suffolk Street that was this notorious crack/whore house during the eighties. The worst part was the narrator. They got this cheesey girl who did this dominatrix act and said things like ‘you’re my slave, do exactly what I tell you to do,” which felt so lame cause it was a nice day and the streets were full of people and I felt pretty corny. And strangely oblivious to the surroundings even though I was listening to this piece about the surroundings — which was so fucking cool!!! And there were these lame characters she kept introducing who we were supposed to pretend were walking up to us and talking and they tell us how dangerous the neighborhood was (we saw 3 different movies being shot) and said things like, ‘Only in New York!’

Technically, this was Cuban Ice number two. Jeremy got grape, which was much better than the nasty strawberry (being made below, from a vendor on Houston Street).

A friend made at the end of the tour.

ROOFTOP HAIRCUT!

Ghost Katherine.

I don’t know enough about photography to understand how shutter speeds work, but I like how much these pix look like the NYTimes photos of Bagdad from the war.

no JLo, sorry

I walked past Tower last night, where Madonna was doing an in-store and there were all these people standing out in the freezing barricaded street. I overheard a woman tell her friend, “I’d wait in a line like that for JLo, but not Madonna,” which seemed very fitting. I was just glad there was no line for Othermusic, where I got the new Arab Strap album. It’s pretty good, but I’m digging this Zombies compilation I got better.

I heard a 911 story on the way out.

On Monday night at around 10, the fire alarm at my office went off and those of us that were still here, were kinda like, ‘fuck it’. But myself and two other folks decided to split and we walked down the fifteen flights of stairs, hearing fire alarms go off on every floor. By the time we hit street level, there was already a fire truck and all these fireman breaking down the doors of this storage space on the first floor. It was pretty dramatic. But mostly I just wanted to show how end of the world my street looks at night.

Nina Simone may be dead (I dare everyone to listen to her cover of ‘I Love You Porgy’ and not be crippled by tears), but I found this to offer some hope for the future.

Beef Satay with homemade peanut sauce.

Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge today. It was my first time this year. At City Hall we saw them shooting a scene from Spider Man. Jeremy and I saw Toby Macguire on Friday on 57th street and was shocked at how short he was. Whoever that was in the Spidey costume seemed a lot taller.

A group of us set out for the Matthew Barney show at the Guggenheim today. But when we got there it was jam packed and since it was one of those incredible rare spring days (and we were right next to the park), we decided to walk around instead of elbow our way through the crumbling museum.

Horrible traffic on Lexington Ave.

Chairs for sale on Flatbush Ave.

Walking around Central Park, Jeremy saw Celia Watson (from Alice!) and said hi to her. Later on, we ended up on Roosevelt Island, which was really interesting and had unbelievably depressing housing.

A year ago today, I spent the afternoon walking around Midtown with Jeremy. Today was the same, except I started from Chelsea and walked up and around there for hours. I went to the Soup Nazi place and ate it in Central Park. It was really good! It was tempting to not ask for bread or be a total jerk. The guy was so mean. I felt like such a tourist.

The most depressing specialty cakes I’ve seen in a while.

As an ex-altar boy, I felt incredibly compelled to go inside.

The excellent creepy exoskeleton around the AOL Time Warner building is really impressive.

The Discount Bank of Israel on Broadway, such nice chairs and desks!

Ronald McDonald on 42nd Street, in hell

The fascinating Oyster Bar in Grand Central.

And now I’m going to bring it down a beat. Walking home from the subway tonight, I noticed the demise of ‘Excuse Me M’lady’ on Flatbush. I know that wasn’t the actual store’s name, but who cares, that was the name I gave it. And now it’s gone. It seemed so weird, since Biscuit is enjoying this brisk hipster buisness. Anyway, I’ll miss that hilarious sign (pictured below). And yet… the new Duane Reade opened the other day a few doors down so fuck it!

.

Can I buy this sign?

My Sexy Stalker

I had my Instant Messenger on today and I got this invite to talk to ‘Sylvia Duchamp’. I had no idea who this was, but I thought what the heck. Last night walking home from work I was flagged down by somebody on 23rd street screaming my name. It turns out he worked at my old company in LA (after I left?) and he knew all this stuff about me and frankly it was really weird. Like, what the fuck?, did they make big mural of me in the lobby that someone would recognize me 20 yards away???
So this is the IM conversation that follows:

Sylvia Duchamp:hey
Sylvia Duchamp:hows it going?
scottysouling:who are you?
Sylvia Duchamp:who is anybody really?
Sylvia Duchamp:so, hows it goin?
Sylvia Duchamp:hello!
Sylvia Duchamp:i love that scotty souling song
Sylvia Duchamp:i think its ike and tina
scottysouling:it is! it’s an Ike Turner song.
Sylvia Duchamp:so scotty souling, do
you live in LA?
scottysouling:no, sorry
Sylvia Duchamp:well dont be sorry. we
cant all live in LA
Sylvia Duchamp:so what do you do?
scottysouling:i’m an editor
Sylvia Duchamp:is that to say a film editor?
Sylvia Duchamp:or a publishing editor?
scottysouling:film
Sylvia Duchamp:really? anything i might have seen?
Sylvia Duchamp:you know, im something of an actress
myself.
Sylvia Duchamp:well, actress/model/photographer
really.
Sylvia Duchamp:here’s a pic of me and
my sister:
http://www.twinsworld.com/headshots/susan-sylvia-headshot-med.jpg
Sylvia Duchamp:well, you’re not very
talkative, scotty souling. so i guess ill go now.
Sylvia Duchamp:bye.

Okay. I was pretty freaked out the whole time. I forwarded this to Katherine and Chevy, who thought I was the subject of some prank. But Jeremy suggested this was a real person, like a complicated (new?) version of personalized spam. Like there’s some person in an internet spamming sweatshop (I used to work above one of these offices last year - these guys all had the requisite messenger bags and whatnot, but we all knew they were the lowest form of scum) where somebody is at their cubicle trying to lure me to their site to check out their sexy internet pix, for a price. Gross! I tend to think Jeremy is correct here and now wish I wasn’t so freaked out earlier and would have played along to find out what this was really about. But maybe this was just somebody who happened across my user name. I mean the opening was so strange. “Scottysouling” is the name of an incredibly obscure Ike Turner song, the specificity of that is kind of impressive and seems like a lot of work for somebody luring me to their sex site. But the picture attached totally makes me think sex site. Plus I have received sex-solicitation IM chat invites before. Has this happened to anybody else? I have to know.

Sylvia! Write back! All is forgiven!