Wednesday, April 30, 2008

This is why I love the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots

LEMUR, Friday night:
This month's show features Simon Morris on his newly constructed SensorSkate, a skateboard custom-wired with sensors and programmed to control the LEMUR robots. Dafna Naphtali has been brewing up a soundstorm of dynamically controlled algorithmic improvisation and live audio processing, using Wiimotes and vocal cues to trigger and manipulate the bots. Andrew Schneider will be doing musical theater, presenting a dance number and interfacing his movements with the robots via custom-built wearable controllers. This promises to be an exotic, entertaining evening.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Write Your A** Off!

Friends, we're fast approaching the Write-a-Thon, the spring charity event for the New York Writer's Coalition, and I need your help if I'm going to have any chance of becoming the top fundraiser.

Young poet Najaya Royal from East New York is beating the pants off me! So far she has raised over $1,500!

Don't let age lose out to youth! Don't make Queens bow to Brooklyn! Sponsor me (if you haven't already) and please be generous!

The New York Writer's Coalition provides free, unique and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk youth, adult residents of supportive housing, seniors and others.

Some of the other things your money can be used for:
  • With $1000 the NYWC can provide 13 weeks of workshops for 10 teenage girls at high risk of gang involvement in Bedford-Stuyvesant through the Blossom Program for Girls.

  • With $500 they can provide 7 weeks of workshops for 10 homeless LGBT youth at the Ali Forney Center in Manhattan.

  • With $250 they can print 150 copies of 14th Street Gold, their anthology of writing by seniors at the 14th Street Y.

  • With $100 they can buy two digital recorders for students at the Urban Academy for their documentary book project, the New York City Neighborhood Story Project.

The Write-A-Thon is Saturday May 17th, and you too can "Write Your A** Off" for a very worth cause! For those of you in NYC, it’s not too late for you to sign up yourself!

Thanks in advance for your generosity and support! (and thanks Dante for letting me use your space)

Anita Pentecote

My friend, Anita (artiste, plasticienne), sent me the following:

Hello Melissa,

Here you can find some of my pin hole camera works. If you know somebody interested by an exhibit of pin hole photos!

http://perso.orange.fr/anitapentecote

and you can find some other works in google if you tape my name

big kisses

so far, hopes to see you soon


So... if you know anybody who wants to exhibit Anita's pinhole works, please drop me a line.

BamBam Dante, complete the vision

BamBam Dante - complete the visionComplete the vision.  Groveling apologies to the fabulous Shepard Fairey.

Terrible misunderstanding re HC's #2 and what the survey is trying to convey

Folks, there's been a terrible misunderstanding, and because I'm new here I'm going to try to correct it. Nooooo!  That's not ME saying Hillary's poop smells good - it does not smell good!   It smells like poop!  Like when Divine eats the dog poop at the end of Pink Flamingos?  She goes confidently in, like, I am so cool and am going to do this and you will be stone cold sober and my finger puppet when I'm done.   But then, as she's eating it, you see, oh, crap, it's making Divine sick! And that's what should be happening to Hillary, she should be gagging on the poop she's pushing around at all of us.   But she's not!   She's grosser than Divine!   She really really does believe her poop smells good. 

Oh! Begorrah! Barry O, don't let this women take you away from us!!!

Black bird, black and white cat, I'm still angry

I remember the first time I saw a red winged blackbird - summer of 64.  It was the year we'd moved from he Bronx to the Island.  It's not really possible for me to lay out how and why the bird made such an impression on me, but for these next 44 years, just about every time I've seen another, I've made a mental note - there's a red winged blackbrird.  

Then there were the years of decline (in which we may well still be, for all I know) and of course the last 28 years of straight urban living.  Not many red winged blackbirds.  Even when I went to beach where I'd always seen them in the dunes... no Daddy yet.

Then, Saturday before last, Lori and I were in Prospect Park, doing close to nothing, and there it was.  Pretty as a picture.  Flying just the way it used to with that now and then dip.  RWBB!  I said to Lori, There's a red winged blackbird, blah blah blah blah blah.  The likelihood that I'd never gotten into this at any time of the last 24 years of talking is pretty slim, but, honest, in the moment, I didn't remember.  Still don't.

Then, the next day, Sunday, there I was, doing even less, half asleep on the bench in the back yard under the crabapple just close to popping pink, and I heard a scuffling up on the fence behind me and I opened my eyes and turned and there it was, that furkin black and white scruffbag snaggling along with a dead read winged blackbird in it's mouth, red epaulet just outside the beasts jaw.  I was up in a flash cursing at beast: Eff you!  Eff you you effin eff!  I mean, I lost it.

I have never liked that cat.  I do not wish it well. 

Monday, April 28, 2008

Unhappy Hookers - FDNY

* Andrea Peyser column in the NY Post, Unhappy Hookers, re the FDNY decision to ban the Red Hook firehouse's motto and icon (Happy Hookers). I must have a photo of it somewhere...
Dee buried a coffin containing little more than her son's "Hookers" patch and uniform.
"My son will always be a Happy Hooker," she said.
It really did always give me a smile to see the Happy Hookers ladder truck go blowing by. I mean, it gave me an intense joy of place. Posted in the deadzone under the BQE at the crease of Red Hook & Gowanus & Carroll Gardens on Hamilton - is there really a reason in the world to mess with these guys' morale?

Coincidentally, just last week we saw a couple of guys from that firehouse walking around in T-shirt's they'd made up, which had the nickname worked into a rip-off of the Harley logo.

re M.Cyrus

Disney, PETA talk
W/ Lisa Simpson to make
Real meat girl w/out
Grown up sex - Groening resists
Lisa seeks Clinton support

080428 - dear diary


* The @MURAKAMI show at the Brooklyn Museum is a gas. If you don't laugh going from room to room, give yourself a good talking to. And look at all the mushrooms! The guards were having a tough time keeping people from photographing the spurters.

* Shouldn't all those Moms & Dads outraged by Annie Leibovitz and Miley Cyrus be thankful instead? I mean, if they really are upset, they don't have to buy all those items Cyrus & Disney were hawking any more. Nu?

(Why isn't it bothersome that if you turn off the audio and didn't already know, you wouldn't figure out that daughter & father are daughter & father?)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - as Ennio meant it to be.

080427 - dear diary

* The first new asparagus of the season from southern Jersey was at the market yesterday. Last night I grilled it along with some shrimp and dressed it in oil & pepperoncini & s&p. This afternoon I grilled up more of it and mixed it with sardines and some whole wheat penne (and used that pepperoncini soaked oil again). One more small batch - for tomorrow with either sausage from Flying Pigs or beef from Wicklow Orchards. Then I've give my urinary tract a break. (Stinko!)


* Well, I just have to have an Epiphone Mandobird IV, sunburst, thank you, and I'm gonna restring it for low G uke C tuning. Help me, please, won't you?

Meanwhile, I've stumbled on musurgia and retrofret.

Lorishki is in LV and saw the Raconteurs last evening. Meanwhile, closer to home, I took in the fab Jim Campilongo Electric Trio @ Barbes.

& why am I even posting here at blogspot? I have an awful lot invested in environy.weblogger.com - an awful lot behind the public pages. A little recent outage has pushed me to find someplace where I can use Safari more easily, and post by email. We'll see...

And wouldn't it be fun to revive Mr. Oblimov and Stumpy Delko and the Mermaid Slaves and all our old friends? (Maybe not. Probably not.)