"everything's always in french, and then i wake up"

a quote from my friend clementine macnair. she and i had really fluffy pancakes today at the pink pony. our destination of the day was the faile show at this old glass factory on chrystie. i wondered how "faile" was pronounced - i initially thought it would sound like french "faille", the cloth head-covering worn by women in flanders. clem said so too, adding that she frequently dreams in french and it carries over into her everyday life. she is an avowed existentialist, and really did read sartre and other philosophers. the only one i ever liked reading was nietzsche, and i even cherry-picked over his stuff. oh no - i may be a pseudointellectual!

well, faile is a team of two guys named patrick and their name is pronounced fail. their work is a pastiche of political and comic book/pulp images, advertisements, and it looks both painted (or silk-screened) and papered, like subway wall ads.

it was really a great show, and propelled us to our next destination:

the newest whole foods on e. houston. i am a whole foods hater from way back. i think they're overpriced (although i know they have to charge more because of the quality or organic sources or whatever) and prefer the cheapass trader joe's - even if it is like shopping in the ussr sometimes. i actually liked the store. it's two levels and semi-warehousey and industrial-looking, but still retains a human scale. everything - even organic herbal soaps and hemp flip-flops - looks delicious. clem and i walk around touching everything and saying "wow". it was like being andy warhol for a few minutes.

jackson heights garden tour

this is where i live in jh. we were part of the annual garden tour yesterday, and i spent a couple hours meeting and greeting all the folks who came to see us. i also hung out with neighbors and we talked about how lucky we were to buy our apartments before they got too expensive. dunolly is still one of the more affordable places in jh (i call it the people's co-op), but it's not as cheap as it used to be. according to a friend on the board, most of the new arrivals are coming from manhattan, astoria and brooklyn - and they are middle class white people! i am too, and it's nice to see more people like me around here, but i don't want to see the multiethnic, working class character of this place go by the wayside. some of us are thrilled that fresh direct has finally started delivering here, but i think it's the beginning of the end. ran into lorene and sundar in the garden today (these two are very plugged in to dunolly and the nabe at-large) and they told me there's a couple across the street who are opening an espresso bar on 37th avenue next month (yay!), but that there is also a starbuck's coming. they weren't sure when or where, but i know they don't traffic in rumor. i'm sure the real estate guys are going to be jumping for joy, but we kind of think it will suck . . .

Flight Of The Conchords

these guys are my favorite thing in the world right now.

the week of steely dan

the mayor must have proclaimed this to be steely dan week or something. actually, it started a couple weeks ago when my co-worker richard was telling me about seeing them at the beacon theatre. he's probably over 10 years older than me and they were what a lot of sophisticated youth were listening to back in the '70s. he asked if i was ever into them and i hated to admit i wasn't. they were always too slick for me. so i talked with him about how beautiful the beacon theatre was and how i saw siouxsie and the banshees there in 1985 or 4. i was kind of sheltered in my subcultural wanderings, i guess. that was where i found out that goths existed.

so early this week i get this great party invite to "don't take me alive!" saying it was a night of steely dan and there would be "black cows" and more. although i was happy to be invited and cannot wait to go, i feel compelled to learn something about them. a couple days after, i was out with friends at collins bar and we were talking about other bars in the area. the topic of what other bars you frequent and love always seems to come up in good bar conversation. there was bellevue (much-missed), siberia (soon to be missed), and last but not least, rudy's. jake related that steely dan had mentioned them in one of their songs. i couldn't believe steely dan would know about rudy's! so i google it at work today and found that the reference is in "black cow". so now i know why we're having black cows at the party . . .

night out at collins bar

sex shop next door

had some drinks with mylene and jake tonight at collins bar (8th ave. and 46th), a nice dim bar with free popcorn and a good happy hour. i already had fake names in my head for these two if they didn't want to be in the blog, but they didn't care. glad that they consented to having their picture here. it's blurry, but they still look cute as all get-out!

rapid transit

took a trip out to bayside today for an upper gi. i was all freaked out by the distance between here and there, and my appointment was at 9 so i took car service. right now, the beloved 7 train is not up to speed - then you have to catch a bus once you get to flushing . . . i just couldn't hack that.

it was fun seeing that most of the signs along northern boulevard from flushing to bayside are in korean. some nice houses and side streets out there. and you get to cross the utopia parkway of myth, where joseph cornell lived with his mother. anyway, i digress. this radiological exam i had was the real trip. in the best sense - getting to be in the company of health professionals who are really cool, explain everything to you, and have a sense of humor is refreshing in the age of healthcare as business. i got to wear an ankle-length navy blue poly-cotton robe. i got to drink barium that was, as promised, better-tasting than my last gi 15 years ago.

they told me that the test could take an hour or 4 - no telling, since the barium has to travel throught the small intestine and it varies from person to person. they take xrays every 15-30 minutes of this process. as i suspected, the transit was pretty quick in me. i was out in 2 hours.

visiting jersey city

i'm lucky to have a friend in j.c. aaron is the coolest thing to come out of indiana since james dean. and his neighborhood is full of little gems. these pix were taken there in december.

at pace wildenstein - rosalyn drexler, a wonderful under-known painter of the sixties.

reflections

reflections in a chelsea window

nicer chelsea pictures

what i really come to chelsea to look at: art.

new daniel buren at bortolami dayan, now just bortolami.

God bless America!

spotted on w. 24th street on my way to the galleries. tough to see, but it's doo-doo that the gwb flag is planted in. i hate to encourage people not to clean up after fido and start sticking agitprop on turds, but it would be funny to see this become a trend.

rotting piers

just call me bloggy-come-lately. after watching seemingly everyone in the world (and more recently, friends of mine) blogging, i am setting forth into this new land (for me, anyway). a brief raison d'etre: it's a great way to share my thoughts and pictures, and i want to garner some attention - even if it's from my little circle of friends. i've had enough of keeping all this crap under wraps! now i let it loose upon the world. and there will be some delightful things as well as crap, i hope. in the spirit of the confessional, i won't hold anything back. well - in the interest of pleasurable reading and wanting to be funny, i'll make the more personal stuff palatable. i hate to bore people, so it'll be more fun than weird. ok? as the midget from twin peaks would say: let's rock!