a good find

I found this a few weeks ago on Bedford Avenue in Bed-Stuy/Clinton Hill. Maybe it's gross, but I can never resist picking up the funny/interesting things I find on the street. This one is a real gem..."Floaters and Sinkers" hmm. An unfortunate title, if you ask me. Since the blizzard has the ground covered in murky slush and packed layers of snow, I guess I probably won't be discovering any more winners for a little while. Just another reason to look forward to Spring, I suppose.

Laundry Day

I like the way the fluorescent lights look on video.

Been really busy. Haven't stopped makin' shit, but nothing worth showing. Stay tuned.

Yesterday was a great day. I woke up early and hopped on a free Maury bus to Stamford, CT to see a live taping of the Maury Show. I would equate the experience to attending a sporting event. Except instead of athletes, the contenders were unwed mothers and absentee fathers... Throughout much of the taping, I stood on my feet, hollering, booing, gesticulating wildly. Never in my life have I given so many two-thumbs-down boos. The whole experience got a little sweeter, too, when we learned that at the end of the show, we would receive a complimentary slice of pizza. As one of the guests (who turned out NOT to be the baby daddy) said, "Today Maury is more important to me than Barack Obama."

Well, I must say, today Jessica truly earned her wings, because she acted like an angel throughout the plane ride to New York City. She waited quietly and patiently the entire time with only a small meow every now and then. In fact, it turns out she was simply fascinated by the pilots. They took her up into the cockpit, showed her around, and gave her an American Airlines pin. The only problem's now she won't shut up about aviation school.

Although it will be sad to leave my family when I return to New York City on Monday, I won't be traveling alone. My beloved cat, my "Forever Kitty," Jessica Katz (for some reason, as I typed this, I wanted to give her a middle name, specifically "Renee" which is actually the name of one of my NYC roommates, and therefor probably a bad idea), will accompany me on the trek.

Since we haven't traveled through, or even to, New York together yet, I cannot provide an authentic pictorial representation of our experiences. However, thanks to one of my favorite features on PhotoBooth, I can simulate how I anticipate city life together might be.



Naturally, Jessica, being the independent kitty that she is, will want to take some time to explore the city on her own. She will be sure to check out the most popular sites and enjoy the full NYC experience.

If you're around the city, you might find her using the subway and other MTA services to get from place to place.

She will have a stranger photograph her standing by the "LOVE" sculpture.

I anticipate Jessica will go ice skating at Rockefeller Center.

And check out the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park.

While I respect her independence, I will insist on chaperoning her every now and then. She may resist at first but we are going to have a killer time in New York together.

Return to my Mother's Nest

It simultaneously sucks and is awesome when a magazine I want to cut up has two really great images on both sides in the same area. WHAT DO I DO?

I went to an antique store/junk shop today and bought some old photographs. These are two of them. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.

These are scanned pieces of shattered safety glass I picked up by the bus stop at the Botanical Garden in the Bronx where I'm currently working. During lunch, I glued them together, painted them, and attached a little loop so that I can wear them as a necklace. They're pretty dope if you ask me.

Today was a good day.

This little dude is pretty fucking sinister. He reminds me of my current property manager (who, unlike him, is female, but also the devil's spawn). My days of living in this deceptively evil Bushwick apartment are coming to an end. While I will miss the bedroom windows, neighborhood, 99 Cent Stores, and the stoop kids next door, I won't miss not having heat/hot water, nor will I miss the anger/fear/anxiety I feel in relation to Arlene, the most insane, demonic, and awful property manager I have ever personally encountered. Maybe I should call this guy "Arlene," but I think that'd be doing him a disservice. He couldn't be nearly as malevolent as the original Arlene.

The local 99 Cent Stores deliver again. I made my little friends out of a package of colored modeling clay bought there. Sure, the stick of pale yellow was completely hardened by the time I opened the package, and therefor useless, but the other colors (of which there were so many!) were mostly good to go. I'm not sure what I should do with these little stinkers, but I guess at the very least now I can say I made a few friends in New York City.

Happy Halloween. These guys were the first Halloweeners I saw tonight. I'm highly doubtful anyone will top this. It's so good in so many ways.

check out my package

I love sending mail. Whether I will receive something in return doesn't matter, I just like putting it all together. This is the diorama I made; I'm sending it to Sophie. In an ideal world, the contents won't get damaged or destroyed in the process, but given my luck in recent weeks, I have a feeling that Murphy's Law will apply.

As an obliquely-related aside:

The other day, while working at the New York Botanical Gardens, I hit my neck on the flipper of a giant frog sculpture while trying to capture live frogs in order to relocate them to another pond. A quarter sized red splotch that strongly resembles a love bite resulted from the mishap. In the past, I remember, my friends would explain to their parents when they had hickeys that they'd gotten hit in the neck. We all knew that the lie was stupid, because it seems totally improbable that a person would get hit in the neck and usually these friends were steadily involved with someone, making the hickey so much more likely. Who gets hit in the neck, right? Of course, it happens to me. And of course when I knock neck on something, it's on a giant frog's flipper, making my story only more implausible. If only it were a love bite.

a cute dead bird :(

strangers on a train

First, it is amazing to me that I can update my blog while standing at a bus stop in the Bronx waiting for the Bx19 to the Botanical Gardens.

Second, I find it amazing also how incredibly easy it is to get a complete stranger to start gushing about his/her life. I mean, seriously - the things they divulge. I was just on the 5 train and I complimented the lady beside me on her hat. That was basically all I said. "I like your hat."

And it was a dope hat. I liked it a lot. Kooky faux fur, white. Somehow, though, by the time I had gotten to my stop, she was starting to tell me about all of her friends who had died recently. This after talking about wanting badly to retire, her dreams of opening a barber shop, her daughter's pregnancy at 14, and the possibility of opening a liquor store with her boyfriend.

Amazing.

Thanks to Kevin for putting this beauty together.

Having a scanner that works makes me feel like a million bucks. I still don't have a chair in my room, so my work is done either from bed (which makes me feel like a shlub) or sitting on the floor (which simultaneously hurts my back and makes me feel like a kindergardener).

For the background of this collage, I used wrapping paper that I found at one of the 99 cent stores near my apartment. The box of wrapping paper at the store was full of reject rolls, which I found both awesome and amusing. Although I felt tempted by the various congratulatory wedding-themed rolls, I thought that this Barbie misprint ruled hardest and it would be ridiculous to own more than one roll of defunct wrapping paper. Until I finish this one, I guess it'll just be Barbie and me.

I miss: my cat, my parents, and watching Project Runway with my parents and my cat.

Things I got today: a job and a Moebius book - hell yes.

for alison

diorama progressing

Better, but still not finished.

pathetic diorama

At least I'm trying....

Last night I ate monster ice cream sandwiches with friends. We filmed the experience, but the file is as large as the ice cream sandwiches, and I'm having trouble uploading it to share with the world. Screenshots will have to suffice.