Cheers and Jeers

Cheers:

1)Lloyd. Lloyd boards the Astoria-bound N train at 39th Avenue and hits us up for money. I see him a few times a year, always getting on at the same stop. He always gives some variation on this rap: "You all know me, my name is Lloyd. I used to sleep on this train, so you know there's no shame in my game. I coach a lot of basketball and help a lot of kids and grown ups to stay out of trouble. Change is greatly appreciated but if you don't have change I'll take a smile." Then he goes around the train complimenting all the passengers (mostly the ladies) on their smiles. Now I have a few questions about Lloyd, such as: Why is Lloyd so confident that everyone knows him? Why does the fact that Lloyd used to sleep on the N lead inevitably to the conclusion that there is no shame in his game? Why would a panhandler board a train a few stops before the end of the line, when people were starting to thin out and there weren't a lot of new people getting on? And most importantly, who does Lloyd think he is telling all of us to smile? At first I felt manipulated, like "Fuck you, Lloyd! I'm not gonna smile just cuz some hobo tells me to!" But EVERYONE smiles when Lloyd goes around the train complimenting the ladies. You just can't help it. So good on him for getting everyone to smile.
2)Dinosaur comics. May they bring you pleasure.

Jeers

When the movie reviewer on the AV Club wrote an article about Wes Anderson last week, arguing that his style has precedents in films like Paper Moon, Sullivan's Travels, and Bande A Part, the comments section went apeshit with people claiming it was masturbatory and elitist. Sample posts:

"The Award for most irrelevant list by hipster jackasses
THE ONION AV CLUB!
10:59 PM Sun October 7, 2007"

and


"this feature should have been called...
a load of whack off in search of a kleenex.
11:29 PM Sun October 7, 2007"


Why are these commenters so negative and anti-intellectual? What's wrong with a movie critic doing some compare-and-contrast between a current director with a distinctive style and earlier movies? I especially find bothersome the populist appeal to anti-intellectualism and the label "hipster" applied to someone who simply wants to study culture in its historical context.

Post-Competence

These were supposed to go with my last post....

Wait For It...

It's worth it. You don't want to read blogorrhea every day. It's the anticipation that makes it all the sweeter when I finally break my silence. I've been fired twice since I last wrote. My mom found out about my blog and she checks it religiously, so she'll be ecstatic to see a new post. Maybe she gave up by now. That's a shame; she was my most loyal reader. I have a myspace page now which I think you can view by clicking this http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=138891614 Notice that I only have one friend, Tom. I don't know what I'll do if Tom abandons me. I spend my days at work browsing the internet and reading the confusion, fallacies, uncritical thinking and hostility and anger people have and wishing there was something I could do about it.

(With no segue,) Here's some pictures of 1) Nickie's and my second anniversary, 2) Jon Hansen's recent visit, 3) midnight mass at Trinity Church on Wall Street Christmas Eve 2006, and 4) Kelly McKay's loft party to launch her fashion magazine, which I'm too tired to think of the name of, so I'll plug it next time, though she'll never read this to know I didn't, and no one else will ever read it to be inspired to check out the magazine based on my plug.

I keep getting Sitemeter statements for this blog saying zero people have ever looked at it, but I know that's not true. So the true popularity of my nonsense will remain, ever a mystery. Enjoy...

music tracks

My friend Jon Hansen was in town last weekend with his band, the Slats. He played a good show but there was a little clique of bands before him and all their fans left so no one saw it. Check them out at www.theslatsroc.com. Before his show I saw some friends of his from Iowa City, at least one of whom I vaguely knew. They were doing great hip-hop. See www.schafferthedarklord.com and www.coolzey.com. Anyway all this musicality made me think of my long-dormant musical project so I've been talking to people on craigslist about starting a band. I know it's not a good way to meet bandmates but all my natural friends are super-square or lawyers nowadays so I'm not likely to run into any musicians in the normal course of life. Of course they all wanna hear mp3's and they want me to have "the look." I was gonna put some mp3's on here that I could direct them to but I don't think I can. So I'm gonna open a myspace music page instead? I'll post a link when I figure it out.

Nickie's Birthday

I took a day off work last week for Nickie's birthday. We went to the city and hung out in Bryant Park, went to Colliseum Books, bought a pashmina from the street vendor, got cinnamon rolls and coffee from 'WichCraft, and went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant on the East Side called Boi. Nickie used to teach ESL in Omaha and she had a Vietnamese student who invited her into her home for dinner on her last trip to Omaha, and she's been craving Vietnamese ever since. We generally played and goofed off and took lots of pictures. Below are pics of me posing by the fountain, Nickie posing by the carousel, and us enjoying dinner.

I'm taking a continuing ed class at School of Visual Arts all about how to get your career going as an artist. It may be the best 140 I've ever spent. The teacher is Jennifer Weinstock. Next Tuesday I'm supposed to bring in examples of my work so we can start figuring out what kind of artist I am and what galleries I should focus on. Unfortunately, I barely have anything here in New York, most of my work is in storage in Omaha. I'm just going to bring in my sketchbook and small paintings I have around the house. I don't want to go off on a lot of tangents and have an unfocused discussion by showing too many different kinds of work, but the fact also remains that I have diverse artistic themes so I have to do some personal editing to keep the conversation on point.