Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

The past regained: The Henry Moore Sculpture at SUNY Purchase.

Now that Katherine has a car, there’s the option of weekend road trips. But since nobody really wants to go anywhere in particular or spend a lot of money, the idea of visiting my old college, SUNY Purchase came up. It’s actually possible to get there by public transit because it’s right off the Metro North into Westchester. I went to school here for my freshmen and sophmore year and hadn’t been back in over ten years. It was pretty strange. The first thing you see when you drive on this secluded campus are the strange mannequins picutred above. There were guys with their heads stuck in the ground all around the perimeter. This is the kind of thing that you really need to stop the car and examine. The suits were pretty nice and look like they hadn’t been messed up by all the bad weather we’ve had for the last couple of months. All of us were wondering if there was a grounds crew that came around each day and stored these or put some kind of protective plastic around them. Even stranger was that this campus was COMPLETELY ABANDONED and these sculptures were mostly the only other people around.

Windowless concert hall.

Quad with Library in the center.

So yes, actually, this is the ugliest most Eastern European/maximum security prison-looking place anyone has ever seen. And yes, the entire campus and the dorms are made of the same material. Jeremy and Katherine were shocked that I lived here for two years. I tried to explain that the place was full of interesting and super creative people and there’s was always lots of drama and fun. But looking at it now, even more run down after all this time, I thought what a great idea it was to get the hell out of there.

Nothing had changed in the ‘Fim Program’ building.

Portchester.

After examining every inch of Purchase (it’s a pretty small campus), we drove down to Portchester, which is the nearest town that is vaguely livable. You pretty much had to have a car up there because the school is on a giant piece of land that used to be a diary farm. Compound that by being in Westchester, which is beautifull but there’s no restaurants or bars or anything to do really. Portchester is kind of a dump comparatively and it was where the really cool off campus kids lived. There was still nothing to eat there so I made Jeremy and Katherine go to the one diner I remember, Pat’s Hubba Hubba, which was still pretty gross.

I know this is all yawn city and extremely self-indulgent. But then I bought these amazing fire crackers at a gas station on the way out of town. Even better are these old dixie cups Jeremy brought back from Raleigh for me. And they were autographed!

An inconspicuous cell phone tower is located amongst these trees. Can you spot it?

Tolls both ways. Thanks Robert Moses! I just finished watching that Ric Burns documentary about NY, which has a lot about Moses’ career of terror. You really see it driving north through the Bronx. I wonder if the Bronx would still be like Brooklyn (to the degree that it’s neighborhoody and nice - mostly) if he hadn’t destroyed it.

SUNDAY

Jeremy tried to drum up business by playing his guitar, which was for sale, but was too depressed.

We had a yardsale on Sunday in the afternoon. I mostly sat there reading the paper cause I was afraid to deal with anyone, which isn’t fair because I’d say most of the time people are very friendly and talkative in a good way in NY. And perhaps it was becaue of the incredibly nice weather and everyone was out strolling, but it felt like some kind Paul Auster/Sesame Street version of Brooklyn where that multicultural cross section of interesting friendly people stop by and chat. And sitting in front of my building with the breeze blowing. Jeremy kept talking about how he had to have a porch and it seemed like a really good idea.

There were some crazy people who freaked us out. There was a woman who grilled me for five minutes about a Miles Davis CD for sale for fifty cents. Then she walked away with it without paying. I guess I have incredible salesmanship powers. I guess. At least I got rid of some stuff.

No more ‘dirty’ blue duck.

I’ve walked past Economy Candy on Rivington Street a couple of times and just thought it was a bodega. I didn’t realize inside it was full of every kind of obscure candy in the world and they even had some old board games for sale up at the front.

To give Paul a sense of the downtown area, we walked from Union Square down Broadway to St. Mark’s Place down Second Ave to Houston, throught the LES to Nolita to Little Italy and then Chinatown and that’s when it started pouring, which sucked cause I was ready to drag this tour out all the way down to Battery Park and ultimately across the Brooklyn Bridge!

The entire day was like this.

Katherine, Julie and I went down to check out the galleries this morning and got caught in a downpour.

My brother arrived from New Orleans around six, after one of those cab rides where the driver has no clue about the geography of Brooklyn. Later, he and I and Mary and Jonathan went out to dinner at the Chip Shop, which was great but we got the worst table in the place: right by the breezy front door. I was a feeling a little nervous, becaue in the hungry rush to get some food, I forgot to grab my camera. And becaue of this right in front of my eyes, a man dressed as Mickey Mouse and a woman dressed as Raggedy Ann got into a big shouting match on the sidewalk right in front of my eyes. I was so pissed off. Then they walked off. Just to rub it in, an hour later they passed by coming from the opposite direction. They seemed to have worked out whatever was bothering them.

I sent my creepy ‘tree art’ picture to the Woostercollective website and they put it on their site as “email of the day”. I’m flattered.

Tree art, Grand Army Plaza.

I usually get really angry watching music videos now, but I heard about this one yesterday and admired it’s early 80’s spirit. Check out the making of and see how people with only a $1000 can do just as much compositing as George Lucas.

The frightening Sardis on 44th Street.

Yesterday after work, I invited Jeremy and Katherine to do the Times Square soundwalk with me. The starting point was McHale’s bar and there was a lot of commotion as all three of us tried to get started. Since the little connector port on my ipod is cracked, I’ve been having problems with it crashing and saying it’s out of power (even though it charges all day). So I had my old CD player as backup. And Katherine wasn’t able to get her borrowed walkman to read her CD. Meanwhile Jeremy is already listening to the audio tour and we’re shouting, ‘Wait! Wait!’ cause it’s kind of ruined when everyone is out of sync, which was a little bit of the case throughout anyway.

I was really excited about this one after enjoying the tour of Chinatown. Added to that, the narrator of today’s tour was Speed Levitch, who the subject of the documentary, “The Cruise”, where he goes on and on about cool obscure details of Manhattan encyclopedically and without restraint. And this seemed like a perfect part of town jam-packed with stories and hidden history, so I was frothing at the mouth with anxiousness.

But it really sucked! We spent most of the time on the sidestreets between 7th and 8th avenues hearing about the Broadway theaters, a quick foray in front of the abandoned Scientology building (I gotta say, Hollywood has NY beat for terrifying Scientology headquarters). We stopped in front of and were encouraged to go into Sardis, but those caricatures have always freaked me out ever since I was kid. There was brief detour to Birdland (I always thought it was in the village for some reason), which just looked like a Holiday Inn lounge now (and one of the headliners on the calendar for this month was Joe Piscapo!). Not to mention that Levitch doesn’t come across very well as your guide. He spews every cliche in the book about the area and leaves out all the salty details. I mean, it’s Times Square for christ-sakes!!! Who cares about Shubert’s alley?!?

I do highly recommend visiting Show World on 8th Avenue. The front entryway is this surreal temple decorated with clown statues and hundreds of pieces of tiny mirrored squares. And at the end, Levitch guides you into the Marriott for a sneak ride in the glass elevator, which was pretty thrilling even though it doesn’t deliver on the Manhattan vista as you’d expect from a glass elevator. Overall, I give this tour a D-. Afterward, Katherine had the best idea: that Bobby Young should give one of these headphone tours in the neighborhood of his chosing.

Psychadelic carpet in the Marriott.

Jeremy brooding over what steak combo meal to eat at Tad’s Steakhouse (there’s three in the Times Square area, but I recommend the one on 42nd Street for best wallpaper).

Glasses of wine individually wrapped with cellophane are the classiest! Otherwise Tad’s grossed me out completely. And I still can’t help but think about the dumbwaiter next to the cashiers station, where the chef/busboy lowered dirty dishes to the basement. Being a dishwasher in a basement on 42nd street is going to keep me awake at night for days to come…

Again, while walking between 10th and 9th Avenue tonight on 24th Street, I saw Stephen Merritt. This time he was by himself and wearing a silly baseball cap. I thought about angrily (then very, very desparately) demanding another Magnetic Fields’ album but he’s really short and mean looking in person, so I felt intimidated even though he was by himself.

At least I have “Strangers With Candy” to look forward to. The first season comes out tomorrow (Tuesday). I urge everyone to buy several copies, since that might convince Comedy Central to release the other seasons.

Oh gosh, did NOTHING this weekend.

I worked till 3:30 am on Friday night and then slept through the bulk of Saturday. I haven’t taken a good picture all week. Or any pictures! Sigh.

I have become minorly obsessed with Peter Arkle News. It’s this homemade magazine that comes in a manilla envelope on the theme of this guy’s daily life. I haven’t been able to find out much about him, but the drawings are really cool and it’s all about living in Park Slope. I picked up a load of back issues at Printed Matter, which is my new favorite bookstore, even better than McSweeneys on 7th Ave.

As part of my infantile birthday demands, I insisted that everyone accompany me to the Queens Museum at Flushing Meadows (yeah, we all thought about that Simpson’s episode, too) to see the giant diorama of NYC as well as the highly impressive Unisphere.

Of course it was pouring raining. I was done in by the few errands I did that morning on Flatbush and said maybe we should just postpone until tomorrow or whenever. But by that point, there was all this momentum and we’d even snagged Jon to come along with us before going back to Philadelphia. I sketched out this incredibly round about way of getting there that would limit our rain saturation. This brilliant plan resulted in getting to Shea Stadium stop on the 7 line a little after four o’clock, just forty-five minutes before the museum closed, as well as a long walk through the old world’s fair grounds, which allowed all of us to get completely soaked anyway.

One can only hope that thousands of years from now Planet of the Apes-style archeologists will be baffled by this remnant of the world’s fair.

Behold!

I’d been wanting to visit this even before I moved to New York (check out thislife.org and search ‘Welcome to America’) and was happy to see that it was just as impressive as I’d imagined. Though I did think the model would strive a little harder to look like the city. The non-realistic colors and white (!) bridges made the diorama seem like a vast birthday cake.

The Empire State Building.

The Starrett Lehigh building (the terra cotta building in the center) is where I work. It’s cool to see the center of my Manhattan day depicted here with the train yards to the left and projects above, but there’s a whole building missing to the right of us (I think it’s a sanitation building) and that pier jutting out from the building is gone as well. But it’s cool that I can see the terrace where I smoke cigarettes.

Coney Island, minimalistically re-imagined.

Trash in Staten Island.

Giant ice cream treats satelliting us in heaven.

At this point, Katherine stepped in as navigator and got our group back home to Brooklyn in about half the time it took to get out there. There wasn’t much time after that to get to The Jekyll and Hyde Club for dinner. On the way there, I found a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People”. It’s pretty dated and hillarious. One of the six ways of making people like you is to model your behavior after Dale’s loveable mutt, Tippy, who from his description was kind of a pathetic doormat for the author. But while glancing at this on the train, there was massive friend-building and (perhaps?) influencing going on in my subway car. This multi-ethnic group of young Spice-Girl-esque women got invited to a party by a white guy with dreads and Seatle ‘92 look. Directly across from me, a goth couple playing some kind of gin-rummy with tarot cards befriended a group of heavily-pierced Goths at the NYU stop. And there just this over all suspicious amount of smiling and cooing going on.

The wheelchair-bound grandma pops five feet out of her chair if you try to touch her.

Dinner here turned out to be a blast. Bartow, Ginny, Karen, Dan, Katherine, Jeremy, Mary, Jonathan and Anna met me there. The staff had super fakey British accents (except for our waiter, who seemed to really be from the UK) and there were animatronic robots and skeletons built into the walls that they did little routines with. Plus, there was a floor show, which was next to impossible to see. If you’re ever thinking of going here, insist on first floor seating. At one point, a giant statue of Zeus started singing the Three’s Company theme. This was exactly the kind of place I daydreamed about going to when I was a kid, so I’m glad I got to go now that I am truly no longer a kid.

I snuck out of work today to check out the galleries and ran into Jon Owens in Printed Matter, which was would have seemed really strange if he wasn’t already staying with Jeremy and Katherine this week. We all watched The Temp last night.

This giant silk walk in sculpture is the recreation of the house the artist grew up in, except this one’s mostly transparent.(see below)

The treehouse looked really good in person, but the paintings at this show were the best part (below). The Larry Clark show across the street was a fun sex romp as well.

Turned 30 yesterday. Barf!