Score One for the Liberal Arts Colleges

I just joined an online discussion group called "AnthroDesign" with the following description:

This group consists of individuals interested in anthropology and design. Group members are interested in the role of applied anthropology in the different contexts, including corporate, government, public sector, and medical contexts.

Not all list members are anthropologists, but group members share the common interest of applying ethnographic techniques and social sciences theory to industrial, software, and other types of product design.

(Almost) Literal Dickhead

Those Italian bastards at Astor Place Barber got no self-control, no self-control I tells ya. When I get a haircut, I always tell the guy that I want "an inch off and clean the rest up". I rarely have a problem. My hair is extremely easy to cut. But this guy gets on my case about an inch not being much of a difference, so I tell him take a bit more, but not too short.

Then I take off my glasses.

And I know that's a bad idea going in b'c I'm flying blind out there. And he's bought his ticket, reserved his seat on the train and this mother fucker is going to town. He didn't hold the scissors so much as brandish them with this excessive flourish, snipsnipsnip, the hair just falling off in sheets. So when all is said and done he tells me "short on the sides and long on the top". Zug? Who requested that? So now I have this Eraserhead hairdo and bear a striking resemblance to a cock.

"RiG" shirts are ordered. All my GLBT MFs will have one in time for Pride.

Rehabilitation and Capitulation

We must all resign ourselves to the fact that the Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. But didn't we have fun, gang? The movies! The walks! The parks! The naps! The food! The love! Boy howdy.

I breathed some life into my ailing Netflix subscription and neglected pressing responsibility. What the fuck did you do, fuckface*?




*Profanity, the last refuge of the slave to the five-day work week.

Outsourcing Steve

I've got another potential website for a comedy duo on deck. Fuck me, I haven't finished anything. I'm freakin' out man, I'M FREAKIN' OUT!

I need two more of me and one less day job.

Shhhhhh...

Don't tell anybody.

Nearing Completion

I finished the much ballyhooed CRACKTION Movie last night. Up until 5, I was. Therein lies the problem with desktop video editing...it will always take longer than you anticipate, hundreds of hours longer. That said, I would've been done ages ago if I chose to sit down for three consecutive days and do it all at once. But there were TV shows to watch and naps to take. But it's still good. Epic, even. I'll probably look at it with fresh eyes a week from now and fine tune some blips and blurps.

I applied for two more jobs. One is a site design gig. The other a long shot. Between now and Monday I will clean, watch movies, draw and code. Isolation is king!

Back

I'm back from Texas. The trip was great but brief. I am busy doing things. Peep!

Rock Star Resumé

I designed a new resume for myself. Don't be mad just 'cuz mine is cooler than yours is. Back page coming soon.

Ding, Dong, Dubbs Is Gone

Chris left on Tuesday and now Reagan's gone home until early June. So that means I've got the place all to myself, free to do as I please. I'm showering with the door open. Hell, I'm shitting with the door open. I'm going to walk to and fro with nary a stitch on, sporting a raging hard-on just because I can. For the next two weeks, my penis and I are kings of all that we survey. Cast your eyes upon my turgid member and tremble.

Bye, Bye BAMF

Chris is leaving today. I had to go to work though so I bid him a fond farewell this morning as I walked out the door. It was sad, sure, but I'm able to dissuade myself from sulking b'c of the very real likelihood that Chris'll be moving back in the coming months. That'll be grand. By the by, if you knew me in the past and we're still on good terms, there are plenty of apartments in New York. Why haven't you moved here yet?

Last night we all grabbed some fish 'n' chips at the Chip Shop. And then we just hung out, burned DVDs of music, took some pictures (flickr) for upcoming comics and Chris bought some shirts and buttons. Then we were tired so we stayed up another hour watching Conan and Chappelle stand-up. Then we were really tired and we adjourned to our beds. And it all ended.

Spread the Word

Some of my OG readers may recall that, while I’m employed by The College Board, I work in rented office space owned by the American Bible Society (ABS). For the last five days the ABS staff, in honor of their 190th anniversary, has been reading from morning to midnight from the Bible. A stage was erected on Broadway and employees have been taking tag teamed turns reading The Good Book cover-to-cover. And there’s always a small gathering of employees taking praise breaks, loitering in front of the stage and following along in their own dog-eared copies.

It’s fucking humiliating b’c I have to pass by the lot of them and go into the bldg. five or six times a day amidst the glares of hell-bound passersby.

Last night, a rainstorm destroyed the stage. God: 1, ABS: zip. Ha! But the flock continues undeterred. The readers are now performing from a pulpit in the building’s glass-walled lobby. And their voices are being broadcast into the Midtown landscape. Just when I didn’t think it could get creepier… Granted, the mumbling hordes of dowdy men and women dressed from head to toe in various shades of khaki have dispersed. But the lot of it seems very David Blaine-y: a person behind glass, reading for days on end and God and man paying them no mind.

Bitch + Moan = Blog

Blurgh.

The Fist Kisses had a show at School Night (UCB) last night. It was pretty wicked. I heart TFK because even on our worst nights we put on a good show. Last night was better than bad, it was make-em-ups magic. A little too short and a little too muddy, but at least we managed to mock the retarded and reference nerd-based popular culture. Phew!

I think this week has been lousy, but I can't be sure. Everything seems a bit off. Can't put my finger on it. As always, there's lots to do and little being done. My boss has expressed again and again an interest in employing me full time which I'm really not interested in. She also told me she'd whip up a glowing recommendation if I wanted a graphic design job in-house here, which is sort of unappealing. I need to see what else is available for me before I settle for something here. But I would start at $50,000+ and get insured. I think I need to decide sooner rather than later.

I wish I was 12 again. Michelangleo is a party dude.

Think Big, Think Different

Last night at dinner, we got to talking about ultra wealth. Josh was telling us tales of his billionaire boss who does ludicrous things like dry clean a pair of socks for 10 bucks and hire people to make 5 consecutive trips to Best Buy for DVD players. And he's got two jets.

I asked the lot what they might choose to buy if they had a billion dollars. Josh wanted the NY Philharmonic. Dubbs wants a house kitted out with the latest in energy conservation technology (windmills, solar panels, etc.). Chris would buy and run a film studio. I just asked Jacob and he said a fully-equipped jet.

I wanted the $21,000 dollar G5 Mac I configured at the Apple Store the other day. Before you dismiss it, this mother fucker has ten thousand dollars worth of RAM. $10,000! Think different, indeed. What would you buy?

(My follow-up, once I realized that I'd failed to reach for the stars, was some dope NY real estate and a 30 monitor x 30 monitor network that I would only run Microsoft Word on. Really big fucking docs!)

Can’t See the Forest for the Beers

When Chris got into town, he made mention of this German restaurant back in college that we always intended to patronize. We’d pass it several times a week and talk about popping in for a piece of Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte. This recollection drummed up a faint memory of beer gardens in Munich which in turn reminded me of the Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall in Astoria (flickr), another restaurant I’ve known about for years now but never found the chance to visit.

Last night, Dubbs, Chris, Josh and I had dinner and drank several steins of imported beers in an honest to god beer garden. The place was amazing…serious Munich flashbacks. I had a killer pork schnitzel and some potato salad that made me weak in the knees. Chris got a plate of latkes in addition to his kielbasa, so that all of us left food comatose. We toasted away the next three hours, looking ahead to a time when Chris would be a bona fide New Yorker and recalling bygone days and the people from college we don’t miss.

Josh and I got talking about our mutual underwear crises. We each own several pairs of ancient boxer briefs that have worn through in the crotch. I happened to be wearing a pair of jeans with a newly formed crotch hole too, and when I showed Josh, he caught a wee glimpse of nut. C’est la vie. Hearty beers heal all wounds of awkwardness.

Goldie Bamfu and the New York Sojourn

Chris is in town and we've been doing the sort of things you do when someone's in town. Hey, look at that tall building. Dig this place, it has something to do with immigrants. Well I'll be, New York has a lot of concrete and eateries, don't it? It's been a gas!

Saturday night we went to Claire's place in Yonkers for the final Ferg Cottage get together. There was much frivolity and flip cupping. As well as dancing and mock chandelier swinging. I couldn't wait 'til that inevitable moment in every get together when "Like A Prayer" comes on the stereo and women are inexorably drawn to the dance floor, removing their shoes, setting down their clutches and shaking their double-X tushes. Amelia said that me running into the kitchen and bellowing, "Do you have 'Like a Prayer' on you iPod?" wasn't taken on face for the genuine anthropological interest that it was, but rather mistaken for the behavior of a man with a certain proclivity for the fellas. Goodbye 17%, hello 18%! Buggery is the order of the day.

Claire has assembled quite the assortment of friends up at Sarah Lawrence. And the lot of them (the cream of the crop, at least) have signed on for another year of East Coast toil and trouble, so the shmooze is likely to continue until 2007. Add to that the imminent migration of Chris, the relative proximity of Josh and Aurora and the summer stint of Lady Turner and you have a recipe for continued, albeit temporary, hobnobbing and pleasantness. And that ain't half bad.

A Note on Noir

I've just come to the realization that I love hard-boiled detective stories with noirish undertones. The epiphany seems odd b'c for a long time I've always held this genre with a bit of derision. Perhaps it's the formula and the clearly defined archetypes that were to blame.

But now, I think that's the precise source of my affections. Men smoking and drinking their way into early graves and sexually frustrated billionaire wives-turned-clients whose red lips and curves are illuminated in shafts of street light shining in through a set of grimy venetian blinds. Ahhhh, to die for! And I'm not being ironic. And I'm not cultivating kitsch.

In college I took a class called "Masterpieces of Literature". The title seemed a bit overwrought but there were a few diamonds in the rough. You can have the Bard, I'll take Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler any day. The stories are a perfect blend of mystery, crime, sex, violence, betrayal and moral ambiguity. I love crooked cops and killers with a heart of gold and a woman in pumps carrying a concealed pearl-handle pistol in her clutch. Leave your post-modern feminist critiques and ivory tower conceptions of quality at the door.

Related: Dubbs and I saw "Brick" about a month ago, a movie that transcribes all of the trappings and characters from a hard boiled story and drapes it over some high school-aged protagonists. A genre mash-up that (other than "Oldboy") is the best movie I've seen in tow years. Also, I just picked up the trade paperbacks of "100 Bullets". Each storyline begins with someone given a briefcase with a gun, 100 untraceable bullets, the seeds of revenge and the promise of getting away with murder. Delish.

Yadda Yadda Yaddas

Dubbs and I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Roseland Ballroom last night. Our timing was perfect, arriving in just enough time to have a wee and then weasel our way through the throngs. The show was top notch. Karen O is a mesmerizing spectacle and the stripped down nature of the music means nothing is lost when all the studio tricks fall away. Dubbs and I both agreed that the only think that would've made it all more worthwhile was a little movement from the audience. Our NY peers are typically too cool for school so physical movement was, sadly, limited to head bobbing and navel-gazing.

Chris gets in this afternoon. The excitement? Bloody palpable.

The Sleep Deprivation You're About to Enjoy is Extremely Exhausting

I'm pooped. Sleep has been at a premium the last two weeks, with me getting at most four or five hours a night. To some of you that may seem like a lot, but I have a rubbish diet, I get no exercise and I prefer double digit napping hours. I'm getting a fair bit accomplished, but I'm also building a frightening caffeine addiction. This morning I had a cup of coffee on the train ride in and I was buggin' so hard that I almost threw up on the D train. How do those Gilmore Girls manage?

These are some spec images that I just finished for an upcoming website. Swiggedy.

Comic Shop Sunday

Yesterday I stopped by my local comics supplier in Brooklyn and picked up some titles that I've requested be set aside. A few months ago, I filled out a membership form, so...I'm like...a member. There's a certifiable paper trail that makes me culpable. I'm a willing participant in the decline of my own cool. The shop pulls everything I want as it comes in and I pay a visit every couple of weeks and buy the lot.

Sometimes I worry that I'm regressing but that sort of paranoia can't really stand up in the face of Amazing X-men storylines penned by Joss Whedon.