I spent the day at the Natural History Museum and now I'm convinced the creationists are right

I mean, really, you're asking me to believe all these totally bogus beasts existed as anything other than a joke? Or Maybe the mice created them? A girl wearing a pink Eli Manning jersey? A giant armadillo with a matching yarmulke? No.

Have I had so many Manhattans that I am in risk of getting cancer from the Maraschino cherries?

I sure hope not.
What's cooking. Wiki. Josh Sens at Salon.

No, I have never considered a hand made custom bike

But if I were to do so... Capricorn has a shop site and a blog. Just saying.

Bestest Xmas gifts, 1

Could there be better Christmas gifts? Mr. Shriner Bear is signed Pearson-Maron, #6/10, 2008. The two prints are signed J. Richel. The fellow on the left is "A Bird In Hand", 19/50, and the fellow on the right is "Who's Coming For Dinner?", 13/50

Hi-School Romance #23

The current MNIDOAILY banner comes from the cover of Hi-School Romance #23, October, 1953. Not sure where I shagged my image of the cover, but lookie here for others.

What did you leave out for Santa last night?

We left half of one of Lori's leckerli cookies, half of one of Lori's plum jam filled cookie sandwiches, and two and a quarter pounds of smoked kielbasa from Nassau Meat Market in Greepoint. The kielbasa was a mistake, and thank goodness the old Nick wasn't hungry, or we'd have gone without our traditional Christmas day dinner (with pierogi, thank you) at Chez Lorishki.

happi happi, merri merri...

w/love and sloppy kisses,
from yr ol' pal JuJu

Mose Hoagyson

Is my favorites persons to listen to right now.
Left. Right.

Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money

What do I know about money? Nothing. But I know about being nice. (Shut up.) And I think "Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money" is a snappy title for an article and pretty good guidance. Or don't take the money. (Oops! Too late!)
James Fallows re Gai Xiqing, who controlls 200 billion of China's 2,000 billion US dollars.

Barbaralee and Joe

Hey, about that video of Barbaralee Diamonstein interviewing Joe Papp back in 1978 that I pasted into the sidebar - I don't get this. I've seen videos of steaming piles of poo that have had a million views on youtube, but this incredible interview with one of the giants of American theater has had, uh, 76 views since being posted three months ago. And two of them were by me.

Hello? The Public? Shakespeare In The Park? Joe's Pub? It's the man!

For the newyawkers in the peanut gallery, dig that this was WNYC TV.

Pratt steam whistles

On Friday evening V told us all about being at Pratt last New Year's Eve for the steam whistles. Count me in!

Dear Diary, 081221

Dear Diary:

D           G6        A6
What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh
D           G6        A6   D  E   E7
What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh oh

Well! For all the hardships, haven't we seen some of our great good friends this last week? And didn't we get to see the Loser's Lounge do it's 15th anniversary Burt Bacharach tribute at Joe's Pub on Friday night!? Oh! Yes we did! Dr. D, Cuz Rochelle, Ginny, E, Cuz Kev, J - mwah!

Shame. And fruitcake.

I imagine every marriage has a dynamic that centers on a deep, dark secret. I know mine does, and it surfaces every year at this time. It's the week before Christmas, the doorbell rings, and someone wearing brown hands you a box. A green cardboard box. A green cardboard box that has been shipped for Corsicana, Texas, and holds a Collins Street Bakery pineapple pecan cake. You blush, your stomach does a flip flop. You get back inside and you say to your wife, Hey, Craig's sent us another fruit cake, ha ha. And you know for the next week you'll be leading a life of shame. Sneaking into the kitchen each evening while your wife is a few rooms away, prizing the lid of the can open, cutting off another hunk of that sticky sickly sweet cake and shoving it into your mouth, chewing so quickly you're afraid you might bite yourself. And then you feel a little nauseous. And fat. And you want more. You want all of it.

And a week later you start wondering how you can get the tin out of the kitchen and the house without making your wife wonder, Hey, where's that fruitcake Craig sent?

Sock and awe

Given that 45 million shoes had already made contact by the time I saw this, I'm guessing you might already know. But, just in case you don't. (Thank you, macinwi.)

Are html jokes funny?

Rarely. But this one made me laugh. More of a barking kind of laugh than a belly laugh. But still...
Not Valid _ Jonathan Vingiano _ 2008. You need to view the source code for the page.

WF - 158,891 - WooF

Including mine. And I'm proud of it. But I wonder if it's wise that a political party whose inititals I always immediately read as Wrestling Federation should use silhouettes on its posters that make it look like an ad for a smack-down.

It's official: 44

Short to-do list

Download some Tujiko Noriko. Been a long while since I've listened to electronica. I'm thinking I might be ready to uke it. Really.

Commission Taliah Lempert to paint a portrait of mi bikeybianchi. I think I've pointed to T. Lampert's pictures before, but now I met her yesterday at the Flea and I'm thinking, Oh, Yes, Yes of course.

Commission Mehlman to paint a portrait of me and Lori, or just me. He's already said no once before. He said, What if you don't like it, I'd feel terrible. And I'm, like, Dude, what could you do to my face that I haven't done? Gonna try again. (Lori might not want to.)

Just say no to a Christmas uke splurge - even this Richter at Fleamarket Music. (I just got a cramp looking at it again.)

Not to be a downer, but...

Just heard from a second friend in the last week who's lost his gig. Old cabineteers might remember our Nader look-alike pal?
Anyway, gonna have a big ol' shoe toss.

a hero to all of us who have long wished...

for the opportunity to fling something at that enormous waste of space known as G.W. Bush.
courtesy the NYT: Shoe-Hurling Iraqi Becomes a Folk Hero

Karen Dalton

Still catching up to things that happened while I was in high school - I'll get there, yet. Maybe.

Was listening this afternoon to the marvel that is WWOZ, heard a singer and song that pretty much mesmerized me, waited for the playlist, and that sent me scurrying to download Karen Dalton's In My Own Time (1971). Yow and double-yow and a sad ending.

My Mario Valente chicly covered my Roberto Bolaño

OK, Juju, since we're letting it all hang out.

I have this beautiful Mario Valente herringbone thigh-length overcoat. Everyone comments on it. It's the nicest piece of clothing I own. Très chère!

And, I think I've said before, I'm reading Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, at the urging of Kansas Bunny, who himself is starting in on 2666 and went to see Bolaño's translator, Natasha Wimmer, give a talk last week.

So. You know, there's this little scene early on in the first book of The Savage Detectives where Poet García Madero is in a park and is daydreaming and gets a boner and then needs to move on and has to awkwardly deal with his physical state? Well, I'm on the R train Brooklyn bound, around Pacific, crowded, standing facing a line of people seated in front of me, and reading my TSD, in which at that very moment Luscious Skin is describing a very steamy and slap-happy encounter with Maria Font, when... Uh oh!

And that is how my Mario Valente chicly covered my Roberto Bolaño.

not ashamed to confess...

juju's been sitting down for the occasion for years now ('ceptin when in location or facility where such a thing might not be convenient nor prudent...): via the NYT, on the topic of that thing we all do, that no one ever wants to talk about,15 Minutes of Fame for Human Waste and Its Never-Ending Assembly Line;
related item espied elsewhere recently, The Three Fundamental Flaws of the Modern Toilet...

and on another topic entirely, farewell to the lass that inspired innumerable fantasies, mine as well as those of many, many others. Requiscat in Pace,
Ms Page...

sometimes we all need a hand...

yah, like when you might be hoping to find a film like that one you saw that one rainy night so long ago...

via the local fishwrap, some news about clerkdogs...

and lo and behold, clerkdogs does a pretty damn fine j - o - b of it...
OH, nearly forgot-
also from the pages of the local fishwrap's food section today:
(hey dere stumperino, lemme know if the flavour truly be dere!)
gift suggestion for the baker you love, Baked, from that bakery in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood...

Money & the Arts in NY (Crain's)

Well, lookie there. A few hours after I posted this I guess the folks over at Crains decided we're not embed worthy. They don't mind sending me their email and adverts. They don't mind the occasional story in their site about my employer. I guess they just don't want Dante diluting their brand. SKANK! And Crains isn't serving DIA and the Geug very well by limiting their exposure. SKANGAGAIN!

EvoMona

Genetic programming: evolution of Mona Lisa. By Roger Alsing. Wiggy.

And, uh, Hey Hey.

Stumpster's Friday night of theremin love - be there

The man says:

This Friday's ReSiDeNt show promises to be one of the most exotic and entertaining to date:

Michael Hearst (of One Ring Zero and Songs For Ice Cream Trucks) will perform original compositions on theremin and claviola along with fellow musians Ron Caswell and Ben Holmes (both of Slavic Soul Party), and Allyssa Lamb (of Las Rubias Del Norte).

Hallvardur Ásgeirsson will perform music for LEMUR robots featuring Patrick O'Reilly-percussion, Anne Herzog - dorophone, Louise Danoise - cymbal and vocals with videos by Anne Herzog and Emmanuelle Page shot on Super8 camera.

Roy Vanegas will create a melancholy, ambient mix of beats accompanied by violin, mezzo-soprano, two guitars and the GuitarBot.

ReSiDeNt: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists
LEMUR, 461 Third Avenue, Brooklyn
Friday, December 12th
8 pm - 10 pm
$5 at the door
http://lemurbots.org

hiya keedz

ya know me misses ya when ya away for so long...


from NPR, Fresh Air, today's show, lovely conversation about wine with two lovely people, link to show here..

our own T day celebration passed enjoyably, hoping you all had fine times with friends, family, maybe, if you really lucky, both.

Shameless promotion: Melon Ride, and oddness

Well, blow me down. We met Ben Osto at a party last night. Ben is Spectacular Melon Ride Fuctifications. Totally. Took a look at his site this morning and followed a link to another of his projects - Web Wunderkammer. Yowza. The oldsters in the house will remember the long ago beloved Cabinet (on long gone editthispage.com), where some of us us first met. And I'm guessing that maybe only Lori will remember that before then I had created a Wunderkammen at panix.com, in 1997. More squishy coincidences. Ben pointed to ripping off Melies for his logo, and Melies' Trip to the Moon was, I think, the first film Lori and I collected on 8 mm, 1985 or '86? And my first big Wunderkammer piece was Lulu Calvert's Mechanical Butterfly - and Ben usess what as the index image for his cabinet?

My bottom crank is much better now, thank you

Finally, time to get back on Bikey! If not for the pure joy, then for the combined health benefit of constant jiggling over BKLYN roads and constant watchful awareness of imminent collision. But, oh yeah, I remember now, after less than a mile of riding I felt my cranks loosening. And, yes, I had my crank wrench in my bag and after a quick cuppa @ Southslope (and have you seen Christoph Niemann's coffee drawings at the NYT?) I used it, but then headed straight to the nice folks at On The Move. A few hours later I was in bicycle dreamland, having replaced by scrunched up cup and cone with a pretty good qualiy cartridge. Sassy!

Odetta

Long (20 minute), lovely video interview & songs & footage of Odetta at the NYT. Tim Weiner did the interview: The Last Word.

Odetta's first album was released the year I was born.
It's also the year that John Barth published The Floating Opera and Allen Ginsberg published Howl. 18, 19 years later I was digging all three. Most especially Barth. But Ginsberg's books could fit in your back pocket.

It's the cars, stupid

Cringley has an article on this that just has too many quotable paragraphs to quote any one of them alone. (Including a little 'up yours' to those who'd like to blame the unions.)

Us? We drive a Mini Cooper S. Happy to pay up the cost per pound scale to get fun and far per gallon.

What's Dante Oblimov doing at facebook?

D.O.'s been poking his imaginary self around facebook, and sucking down hours of my time doing it. We be older than dirt and don't know about nuthin, and the nothin' we don't know is this: makes my skin crawl in the same way that seeing corporate space taking over public space in the physical world makes my skin crawl. A little more loss of the commons. I mean, even here on a Google-owned site they can yank my plug whenever if I cross a line drawn through the user agreement, but fb feels really much more closed in. Smurf-like. Great tools, though. Would take no time to cobble together a nice presence and throb. (Unless you're Dante Oblimov and have to beg people to be your friend. It ain't easy being imaginary. Go help they guy out.)

Nina Hagen splurge

I don't know how it happened, but I wound up watching an hour of Nina Hagen videos on Youtube last night. Yow. Herman ist high, no? Maybe I was just counterbalancing the farming thing.

Greenhorns and rye

Macinwi told me he and the family helped plant rye at Shelter Island Farm this Thanksgiving holiday (yo, get blogging, farmer), and that the community doings were filmed by the Greenhorns project people. Don't know the Greenhorn, but hey, they are taking farmer nominations for inclusion in the project. Tell your maw, tell your paw, tell your twin sister who moved down east.

Diversion: Tumbarumba

Jah, Tumbarumba, for the Firefoxers in the crowd:

Tumbarumba is a frolic of intrusions—a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories—twelve new stories by outstanding authors—where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey. You can read more about how it works or just discover it for yourself by downloading it now and then browsing!

Via Rhizome. The coinkydink is that I had lunch to day with Mellie Mel and an old acquaintance / sometimes colleague of Mel's, and we got to chatting about the old text adventure games (Colossal Cave!) and programming in Prolog and all that stuff. The stories never end.

Street Fighter: Janette Sadik-Khan

Nice article about Janette Sadik-Kahn and the effort to wrest NYC streets back from automobiles, by Dana Goldstein in The American Prospect: Street Fighter.

No chefs in my kitchen (and not much lamb offal, either)

Did you see Marcella Hazan's op-ed piece in the times yesterday, No Chefs in My Kitchen? Thank you.

Coinkydink, I've been thinking of Ms. Hazaan for a week or two, since Lorishki dove in to thin out the collection of cookbooks and magazines and recipes we've been gathering for the last nesarly 25 years. There's a lot of them. A couple hundred books, looks to me. There's 30 in the give-away pile.

Anyway, I've been thinking about M.H. because I (pretty uncharacteristically - must be the new age) asked myself, If I were going to pare it down to 5 books, which five would they be? I surprised myself by getting it down very quickly to 3 plus 1.

1. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (1998);
2. Deborah Madison's Vegitarian Cooking for Everybody (1997);
3. Marcella Hazaan's The Classic Italian Cookbook (1973; my copy is the 1990 18th printing).

And the plus 1 is

• James Beard's amazing and frightening American Cookery (1972).

That last one I don't think I've ever cooked from, but I pick it up now and then and read from it like an epic novel. Oh, man, I wonder what happens to a Lamb Offal next!? (Page 396, in my copy.)

The more things change...

Well, kids, we're back home, slept in our own bed last night, on and on so long that the coffee was almost cold by the time we had our first cup. Stuff to say, and maybe we will, but first - we sat down to leaf through Lota's postcard collection and see if there isn't something there we might use for this year's holiday card - when we stumbled on the 1904 German postcard scanned below. Oy. Let me only say that we have an 11 year old nephew who is, shall we say, not tall?, who plays the bass fiddle in the county orchestra and who went out this Halloween as a mac daddy and last year as a gangster. Yar.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Mwah!
And while we're being thankful, maybe a little greenly thoughtful, too...

Meet Green Thing from Green Thing on Vimeo.

Lunchtime in Oly, WA.

Oysters, halibut, fries. Woof.
Sent via thingy.

Sun's coming up in Tacoma

Back in the lovely Murano. Can you see big Mt. R out there? I can see it from here.

Thanksgiving week, dear diary

Hey, skiddles, it's Thanksgiving week and all my attention is elsewhere. Planes & trains & automobiles and won't be at a full size keyboard again until next weekend and - oh, my god - no photoshop or nuthin! Will likely post phone-pics from my thingy. Have the bestest time. Happy Thanksgiving.

The run on the bank

Another great LOC image. 1895. "The run on the bank : a crisis in the affairs of the great financial institution. The most animated and realistic scene ever shown on the stage."

America's first city slicker

Man, I really love this painting of Ben by Anne-Rosalie Bocquet Filleul. He sassy. Jerry Weinberger essay, Benjamin Franklin: City Slicker, at City Journal.

Bob & Johnny

Gosh! Am I the last kid on the block to know? Right now get over to Aquarium Drunkard and listen to those amazing Bob Dylan / Johnny Cash session recordings. (mp3, downloadable, no drm) Yowza yowza yowza! Saw it first at Boing Boing.

People's President

"Despite the chaos, even the most dubious observers admitted that something “sublime” had occurred [...] There was no doubt that a new era of American democracy had begun. “It was the People’s day, and the People’s President, and the People would rule,” wrote Margaret Smith."

Nice account of the "The trashing of the White House that was Andrew Jackson's inauguration", at The Smart Set.

Typealizer

Thank you, Juju.

29 to 29: Double-shameless promotion!

Old acquaintance Jon Kalish, who we posted about back in May, reviewed old acquaintance Kevin Rafferty's film Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, on All things considered this afternoon. Lori worked with Kevin's brother Pierce for a bunch of years at Petrified Films (RIP - that's RIP Petrified, not Pierce). Kevin and Pierce and Jane Loader made Atomic Cafe back in the beginning of the 80's.  You remember the 80's.  No?

(NYT article re 29-29.)

Ridge Shinn Applewood, woof

Wella, wella, wella.  Ag brondo, skiddlies, umph shpendo ob pleeblingt mitten nowbst closen friendiska Mikie Mike y Pammy Pam, morden dinkin oomp shtoofin boeuf den gott.  And what was with that bull-shot thing Jonathan concocted - beef bouillon and vodka and horseradish and god knows what else.  And, uh, bone marrow in the chestnut pudding?  Rendered beef fat in the pie crust?  O Devon beeve, I am not worthy.  Bestest mostest, Ridge Shinn's talk, of Hardwick Beef and the whole grass fed effort.  Stand up, folkies, you are what you eat and (as Michael Pollen is fond of pointing out) you are what what you eat eats, and if that animal you eat eats shit poison, there you are.  Thank you, Dave and Laura.  Fantabulous.

Yes, 100 seconds is long enough for me

I don't watch a heck of a lot of TV, so the TPM TV the day in 100 seconds pieces are just dandy for me. For everything else news related I'll read or listen to radio or get the, very very detailed and somewhat editorialized blow by blow from Lori.

I am the one on the right

We partners have a little private bloggie off to the side for our nefarious local wine making endeavors. Posted the above LOC pic to it yesterday, along with a number of others.

How' it goin' you ask? MyTFine, I answer. The Cab S. is 25 days off the vine, and 17 or 18 days post press. MLF is sending out the occassional bubble. Dark and lovely. First racking some time around Christmas. Even been fiddlin with the first few label ideas. (Here. Here. Here. Here. There'll likely be a hundred or so before anything actually gets into a bottle.)

Salute!

Who that man?

Saw this real estate audio-slide show at the times. Who that dreadlocked man? Hal Ruzal? Sure looks like maybe one of NY's best known bike mechanics.

Secrecy

Like I said, Simon suggested Keefe's Chatter, and Chatter has suggested Steven Aftergood. His blog, Secrecy News, is here.

The look...

OK, I just watched Bam Bam's first Youtubed weekly address. I watched it at the 44 site that Juju pointed to and that I've rss'ed over there on the right panel. But I kept getting distracted from the speach by the Google ad on the right panel at 44: "Get the Look Michelle Obama Wore on The Tonight Show Only from J.Crew."

(Then, moments later, Lori says, Yes, I saw the clip, and she looked FABULOUS. )

Help yourself

From the digital collections of the NY Public Library. There's a peculiar series of tobacco cards there...

jess tryin' to keep m'hand in...

got big admiration for mr burnett and his works, that Raising Sand album w/Allison Krause and Robert Plant still getting lots of playtime at chez juju, and maybe this weekend's the time mineowndamnedself will loosen the purse strings enough to get T-Bone's latest album, Tooth of Crime. Wee bit of story here on T-Bone's philosophy when it comes to recording, w/additional linkage to other related stories within the item...

y otra vez, after yesterday's stint listening to The World on NPR, got some hot music related linky bit to share, story from yesterday on Spanish artist Buika, and a wee bit more from the NPR site on Concha Buika, and goodgoshallmighty, maybe really loosen up those pursestrings and buy more than one CD.

jessferdahalibut, you might consider bookmarking the NPR music page, lots and lots of worthwhile stuff available there. Experiencing some confusion here and now whilst trying to recall where yourstruly heard or read about Susan Tedeschi's new album, Back to the River, which sounds like something else we be adding to our shopping list. Damn, good thing it be payday...

Later that Same Day: extra added linky bonus from NPR site,
T-Bone Burnett plays DJ, c. 5.15.2008

Totally jaded

And topazzed. And moonstoned. Phonepics don't do it justice. Frankfurt near Pearl, under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Sent via my thingy.

Swap

NYT article re bartering. It's not so simple any more. Been interested in barter since Lori met Carolina Caycedo at the 2006 Whitney Bienniel. Little interview with Carolina that Lori & Virginia posted at the This Land site, back then.

Sunrise

Rhizome.org, Yes Men?

Now that's a nice holiday card

Jam Pony custom MOTH - oh, I feel myself slipping...

Was writing Juju a note, saying how I loved the Ausie Deus NR03 bike he pointed me too, and how I am so over that fixie lust and none too soon, when, I don't know, I started looking around and bumped into this custom MOTH by Jam Pony, and now I'm all shook up again. Skank! I was doing so well. I really thought the global financial collapse had cured my of GAS. Noooo!

John Francis walks the Earth

@ Ted, where it says:

For almost three decades, John Francis has been a planetwalker, traveling the globe by foot and sail with a message of environmental respect and responsibility (for 17 of those years without speaking). A funny, thoughtful talk with occasional banjo.

I've always wanted to take a long, long walk. Stay with the talk to the end. There's a nice pay-off.

Obama under the microscope

Cool, tiny nanobamas... as reported in today's Huffington Post.

Metrobikie

Been a little while since we've seen the Metrocard bikie in the workhood.
Sent via my thingy.

Afterglow

Almost a week now and we New Yorkers can't stop smiling. Bill Cunningham's piece "Afterparty", from the NYT.

Big, big bird

"Most of the nearly two billion children in the developing world have inadequate access to dinosaurs. Some receive no paleontology training at all. One in three has never even seen a dinosaur in person."

What to read next?

Simon says Chatter, by Patrick Radden Keefe.

“It is absolutely thrilling to see someone as young, as competent, and as gifted as Patrick Radden Keefe taking on the secret world in Washington. We need much more of this kind of work, and Keefe has made a brilliant start.”

Seymour M. Hersh

Old Purchase classmate Michael Powell says John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929.

“It is worth hoping,” Mr. Galbraith wrote, “that a history such as this will keep bright that immunizing memory for a little longer.”

But first I have to finish Garrison Keillor's Liberty.

Nice rack!

Very fine home made rack on a bike chained up in a nearby parking lot. Don't usually see a metal frame like this on DIY racks. Salute! Lori and I were here buying a fridge for her office, which we then transported in the mondo spacious back of our Mini. Seeing this bike made me wonder if we coulda...
Sent via my thingy.

Yes we did

Thanks Macinwi. Thanks Wyno. Oh, yes, we've already ordered ours.

Square toed in Brooklyn

Hey, skidoodle, apropos that oddball BAM thing we're going to this evening I was cruising about the web and came across this 1861 Vanity Fair article about - begorah - that brand new Opera House in Brooklyn. Same one we're heading to this evening, my dear.

SQUARE-TOED DOINGS IN BROOKLYN.
Brooklyn is at the other end of the Fulton Ferry, and it is usually worth two cents to go there. It is dangerous to stay too long in Brooklyn, as there is no telling what might happen to you. Mr. HENRY WARD BEEOHER attends to the place andkeeps it from going to seed. He is said to be in the interest of the Union Ferry Comnpar; if it were not for that he would in all probability live on this side of the East River like other people. Somewhere or other about the place there is, or was an Opera House, without a great deal of opera...

Church, it ain't what it used to be

I suspect Juju has something to do with this, but what? St. Thom. Aquinas in the Slope.
Sent via my thingy.

Tonight: Arjuna's Dilemma @ BAM

> Audio Preview Listen to clips from Arjuna's Dilemma.	> WNYC Pick of the Week WNYC host John Schaffer plays excerpts.
> BAM Program Notes Arjuna's Dilemma in context.	> Bhagavad Gita A warrior-prince, an enlightened deity, and more.
> Douglas J. Cuomo Sex and the City? Now with Bill Moyers? Read about Cuomo's unlikely other projects.	> On Translating the Bhagavad Gita Stephen Mitchell discusses his "musical" translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
> Music-Theatre Group Arjuna's Dilemma is produced by this New York-based company.	> New York Times Article Peter Brook's epic The Mahabharata in the Harvey Theater inspired the set design of Arjuna's Dilemma.

One BAM, not two. Shifting gears.

introducing 44 and change.gov

as we well know by now, it is in our best interests to be paying as much attention as possible.
44
change.gov, and there you'll find this announcement

What to do now?

Well, it's a question I'm hearing. It's a question I'm asking. Maybe it's time to look seriously at getting involved with the local community board (CB6)? I can do that. I think.

"Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast"

Oh, really, I didn't intend to do this, and don't intend to again - but Andrew Sullivan made me.

Would you like the President's book, signed, or unsigned?

Interesting price variations. Unsigned. Signed.

USA Arts videos

Saw this yesterday, via Boing Boing, but couldn't make myself interrupt the election-day flow. Fantastic video segments: USA Arts.

Well, really, this is sad

In the last handful of years, Murder Ink, B. Dalton, and now the Strand Annex have closed in the Financial District. Leaving one Borders, and that's it. A number of large newsstands have closed, too.

Sucks. And they say this is becoming a residential neighborhood.
Sent via my thingy.

The long and winding road...

View Larger Map
Ah, thank you Bar Tano, Bellhouse, The Gate, Barbes and Cafe Steinhoff. What a glory to be with our neighbors last evening.

Tick tick tick

Skankjam - paper ballot

Oy, the machine for the 12th 44th in 11215 is busted. Or was never unlocked this morning. Soooo, paper ballot, dropped into a cardboard box. On the plus side, the volunteers say they get counted as soon as the poll closes. By them.

In general, though, biggest line I've ever seen at our polling place: up to the Avenue and down the block. Ran into a number of neighbors. Happy day. R reports that in the elementary school she teaches in, the student straw poll went 95% Obama. The neighborhood parents are raising their kids nicely.

Sent via my thingy.

Citizen, let's go

Each if us, in our own lives, will have to accept the responsibility...

Juju reminds us where it started. Harpers, Bam Bam, the effective use of history. Includes Obama's announcement speech, lo those many months ago.

Where were you when Obama was elected President?

"Babeland, a sex toy shop with two downtown locations and a store in Brooklyn, plans to give out McCain and Obama-themed products to voters on Tuesday through Nov. 11." Crains.

Party lines - Working Families Bam Bam

Quickie reading check

Last week read Chris Buckley's Thank You For Smoking, as a tip of the hat toward his Obama endorsement and all that followed it. Thanks, again, Mr. B.

And the last few days I have been reading my next president's first autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father. It's quite something to hear the young man Obama speak frankly about sex and drugs and rock and roll and race.

As I was looking for links to include in this post, I came across a number of sites claiming Obama did not write his book, etc. Reminded me a great deal of when I was in Hebrew school, must have been 1967 or 1968, and I had a music teacher who claimed and and demanded and railed on about the fact that the Beatles could not have written their songs. The music was too good, too prolific, for these yong, long haired goys to have written. It was a deeply racist, paranoid, generational claim, not based on any demonstrable fact. (The Gershwins? Of Course. The Beatles? Absurd.) Even at the age of 11 or 12 it was clear to me that this man (to whom my religious instruction was being entrusted) was mad. I hope that most people who read the trash thrown at Obama's book see things as clearly. (And, uh, I hope they read the book. )

Priming the pump

THE TWO BIG THINGS HAPPENING IN PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
A Talk By Daniel Kahneman
At the Edge site. Amazing stuff. Text and video.

I'll give you an example of the kinds of experiments that people are doing now. You give people a pencil, and have them watch cartoons. First, they watch with a pencil in their mouths horizontally, and then with a pencil in their mouths sticking straight out. And they are rating how funny the cartoons are. Cartoons are a lot funnier if you have a pencil in your mouth horizontally, than if you have the pencil sticking straight out. Nothing has been mentioned about mood or anything else. You are creating a facial shape that is the shape of a smile, or more of a frowning shape. That influences emotions.

Get the frap out of town

Daniel Gross, in Slate:

...I propose the Starbucks theory of international economics. The higher the concentration of expensive, nautically themed, faux-Italian-branded Frappuccino joints in a country's financial capital, the more likely the country is to have suffered catastrophic financial losses.

Will Your Recession Be Tall, Grande, or Venti?

Obama's name

Last night we'd here clumps of trick or treaters approaching, "let's go to the Obama house!".

Other days and nights we've heard kids break out into some sort of song using Obama's name - something way beyond my ability to follow.

Obama's face

Took this phone snap a few nights ago on 5th Ave and Union. Brooklyn Industries has put Obama. Masks on all of it's mannequins in all of it's stores.

I saw a bunch of kids drag their parents to the store windows, "Mommy, it's Barack!".

Southside - damned good cofffee

B's been chatting it up, then it got featured in the Times, so we figured it's time we finally got there to take a taste. Mmmmmm.... damned good espresso! Definitely something to do with the big dude behind the bar wearing the Trailblazers shirt and the Ducks hat that looks like it was maybe handed down through a couple of generations. Imported help. Go, Southside!

Conversations with America

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Studs

Dying speeches I hope not to make on Wednesday

Dying speeches and bloody murders: crime broadsides collected by the Harvard Law School. Love it. Via Internet Scout.

Where to spend Nov 4... The Gate?

Well, the gate hasn't announced anything yet, but it was my favorite spot for watching the debates this year. It's the last of the bars we wound up in during the last presidential, too. Unless it was next to last. Or the one before that. It really hurts to remember. In any case, it's a fine, partisan venue.

Where to spend Nov 4... Barbes?

Maybe Barbes?

ELECTION NIGHT
We'll be showing election results all night on our big screen in the back room.
We assume it should be a joyful party, although we wrong last time. Very wrong.

Where to spend Nov. 4... Galapagos?

Maybe, Galapagos?

> Tuesday, November 4th, 6pm $10

Obama Fabulous Galapagos Art Space
Election Party!

So what are we doing for election night?

So far - besides projecting the results live - we're deciding between a 14 piece orchestra and an over the top really really fun "Yes we Can-Can!" Can can night. Or both. And then of course we'll have our Brooklyn-famous Presidential kissing booth and since it will be such a fun night we'll have a 'doctor' here signing "absentee explanation notes" for those who will undoubtedly arrive late to work the next day. And - just to add an extra dose of fabulous splendor to the night - we think Santa will make a special appearance.

once tuesday gets past us...

January's gonna seem a long time coming...

re that palin person:
in Mc Cain's own words;
and revisiting a topic we mentioned hereabouts previously,
results from the East Bay Express' S. Palin Song Contest
& the submissions (be they audio, video, whatever...) here

Sledgehammer

It's way late and we're just home from a farmer's dinner at Applewood (thank you Laura, thank you Dave) with Amy Hepworth and I hope to live long enough to write about it, and I'm supposed to be in a doc's office in 8 hours giving blood for deep study and measuring the old heart ticker ting, but instead of sleeping I'm obsessing at the mtv video site that juju devilishly sent in email and o my god, Peter Gabriel doing Sledgehammer?

Peter Gabriel |MTV Music

What I want to say but can't stay awake long enough to is, Now my 1986 is complete.

Vinous involvement

Ufta, went AWOL there for a few days while we immersed ourselves in winemaking and asthma.

6 AM Saturday morning we hit the road to be in Greenport, LI, in fields managed by Michael Kontokostas and the Kace Group, by a tad after 8.  And there the lovlies were, in their stacked pickers crates, about 750 lbs. of Cab. S. which, after chatting and bsing for a while, we dumped into plastic trash bags and loaded into the back of B's minivan (with a good deal of low-riding resulting - dude, check those shocks & your tire pressure).  Back to 11th Street and we'd finished crushing by shortly after noon, when P brought in some beautiful pastas from Bar Toto, Lori put out some salamis & bread, we popped a bottle of last year's 11th Street Sangiovesi and ate the lunch of the just.

Then, back to destemming.  Now, really, that's tedious.  It encouraged talk of retiring the mid-90's crusher we've been using and ponying up for a crusher destemmer.  B&L de-destemmed before the rest of us and declared their grapes ready for yeast.  Lori & P, bless their obsessiveness, kept destemming for what seemed like a couple hours more, then we pitched our yeasts, started the cleanup, more or less passed out.  

The grapes are much lower brix than California grapes would be, so we'll have pretty low alcohol - we didn't chapitalize.  Somewhere around 10% rather than 12%.  Worser things could happen, and when I remember how many folks stumbled out of our last year's wine celebration party, the lower content might be a positive good.  

Anyway, it's been a lot of time in the cellar the last few days, punching down, making notes.  The must is heating up, the brix is dropping and it's already smelling like wine rather than grape juice.  Giddyap.

Steal back your vote. Mine, too.

Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast: Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft.  This has become Palasts regular beat.  StealBackYourVote.org  (image from Palast site)

the weekend approacheth...

& like most of the rest o' yaz, me lookin' forward to it..

first off, a coupla things from the local fishwrap:
whoa. differences btwn page layout in the paper and some lazy ass web editor has the answers provided first in the page linked below
Test your economic meltdown IQ;
and be sure to visit D. Asmussen's Bad Reporter today.

via the wonder that is the clusterflock,
Crunking we can believe in.
and if ye were not already aware of this,
here's the NYT's endorsement of the democratic candidate
alongside recent column by M. Dowd, Moved by a Crescent.
lastly, for the moment at least, the Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

Judge bans Mongols from wearing trademark logo

"If a Mongol is wearing a vest or jacket bearing the Mongols patch, that item is pursuant to seizure based on this order," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Welk.

It is believed to be the first case in the nation in which the government has sought to take control of a gang's identity - via its logo - through a court order.

Whodathunk (AP / FindLaw)?  

Opie! Bam Bam!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

(won't play in Google Chrome.)

a handful of nuggets of linky goodness...

still enjoying my romance with NPR, this link from PRI's The World program broadcast today, and we want to point ye in the direction of the Global Hit piece;
courtesy that marvel that is MetaFilter: Buy-ology Blue;
Umbrella Today?, by way of Bifurcated Rivets;
lovely slideshow via flickr;
How to Make Fougasse, thanks to C. Corrigan & his Parking Lot;
two words: whiskey river
Otay Spanky!
dat be enuf fa now....

Uke lust: Kepasa Little Mac

See it and hear it here. And that very one is for sale at Fleamarket. Woof.

Straining, straining...

"NEW YORK, October 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- More than half of working Americans - 53 percent - have been interrupted by a work-related phone call or email while in the bathroom, according to a survey commissioned by Nokia (NYSE: NOK)."

That's nice.  Press release.  (Noun, not verb.)

David Sedaris is not undecided

 David Sedaris' piece this week in the New Yorker, Undecided: 

"To put them [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

"To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

ILLUSTRATION: ZOHAR LAZAR

psssst...

be afraid...

be very afraid...

frighteningprospect.com;

courtesty the wee marvel that is Gordon Coale's weblog

early here on the left coast yet...

here at the j - o - b wit my coffee and donut, that comestible reminding mineowndamnedself of effort by Beth B, another hardworking drone here at nonopress,
donuts for hope...

for some goshdarned crazy reason, great old tune been running constantly in my head since hangin' out the laundry early this Am, my memory of it coming from Frank Sinatra's version, tho' there be plenty of 'em out there, but the song itself, truly one of the great tunes of all time, All or Nothing at All...

some controversy brewing in a town familiar with same,
'Berkeley Big People' making locals go "ugh-ly!"...
in that article is mention of statue on S.F.'s Market St by
Stephen de Staebler, a piece yourstruly has ambled by & admired many a morning on our way to work oncet upon a time;
a picture of 'Angel" available within this page

Holy Boy!
dis seems a lot more like the version of that Sinatra tune me recalls so fondly, Xtra added linky bonus: Frankie Chords!

Elections: hacked versus flubbed

Check out the maps at dvice.  State by state ratings of polling machines least and most easily hacked, and polling machines at which people ae least and most likely to make a mistake.  Guess what.  Easy to use = hackable, hard to use = secure.  

Me, I love my NY paper punching mechanical polling machine.  Especially love the big whump! sound it makes.

via gizmodo

Zazzle fizzle

After I posted What I talk about when I talk about coughing I thought it might be fun to contact zazzle and have them make real USPS postage from the image I used there.  

Unt, today I got the bad news.  REJECTED!

Result: Not Approved 
Policy Violations: 
--- Incorporates the name or likeness of a current or former world leader or politician, or a local, regional, national or international leader, religious figurehead, or politician.
--- Parodies an underlying copyright or trademark including well recognized brands, logos, titles, or phrases.

Skank.  Will resubmit it as BAM BAM CATS.  The underlying images are PD.

Socks

Seems I never mention the neighborhood oldsters & characters in my posts any more. As a number of them have passed it felt to me a little in bad taste to be talking about them without their knowing. Or maybe I just got lazy.

Anyway, Socks I've never mentioned. He's been in the hood longer than we have, and you'll often see him shambling down the avenues and streets, a little slack-jawed, in and out of storefronts, offering up packages of cotton crew socks, white and black, always seeming a little shocked that you don't want to buy any. But this afternoon I was taking an espresso break in Colson's when Socks came in, offering his wares to both sides of the counter, and I do believe I witnessed a transaction involving Socks, one hipster counter guy, one pack of black crew (or maybe tube?), and four beautiful fresh baked croissant. Everybody happy.

The great adventure

I was going to try to put together a post about the rolling snowball of endorsements for Obama this weekend, but everyone else will do a better and more current job. Instead, I'm posting this passport photo of Luther Powell, Colin Powell's grandfather, dating from the time of his emigration to the US from Jamaica.

Photo from the Academy of Achievement - A Museum of Living History.

What I talk about when I talk about coughing

Had a bummer of an allergy / asthma evening, giving up the whole sleep thing at 3 AM and started casting about for something cheerier to read than Antonia Juhasz's Tyranny of Oil (which I'm 3 or 4 chapters into on Juju's prompting - see links there.). Wound up choosing something I knew wouldn't be cheery at all, but would engage me - and downloaded Haruki Murakami's What I Talk Abut When I Talk About Running. (Here's a NYT review - I haven't read any reviews yet and don't intend to. Shush.)

So, I'm reading a section where Murakami's talking about what he thinks about when he's running, and it's very, very familiar to me. It's my good mode when I'm not actively involved in something useful (and maybe half the times when I am). My other mode is brooding (also known as thinking), and that usually sucks. To whit:

I'm often asked what I think about when I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I', running? I don't have a clue.

On cold days I guess I think a little about how cold it is. And about the heat on hot days. When I'm sad I think a little about sadness. When I'm happy I think a little about happiness. As I mentioned before, random memories come to me too. And occasionally, hardly ever, really, I get an idea to use in a novel. But really, as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning.

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void...