the oracle of lo - fi

This video was posted at Flavorpill several months ago. Very cool version of NYC in miniature, like a toy city:



Also, via noir_moll, more of Brandon Bird's hilarious, brilliant Law & Order art. This time Bird got other artists to interpret one-line episode synopses, and thus we have These Are Their Stories. This one, entitled "Benson Combats Terrorist Activities," (by artist Sina Grace) is one of my faves because it perfectly captures that Oliskan megalomania:



"Save the children! Save the world...FROM MY UNPRETTY CRYING!"

So I'm doing this tumblr thing....mainly because I liked the format and thought it would be a good place to put random music and pictures in a sort of online scrapbook--it's pretty handy for uploading stuff like that. We'll see if it really takes, though. But all my write-y and rambling nonsense will continue to be posted here. Like the following:

Last night I was in the bedroom channel-surfing. I had the back door leading out to the deck/backyard open, since it was a nice night, when suddenly the cat went into stealth mode and darted across the floor with a speed and determination that he has not demonstrated since the Clinton administration. (He's old.) Growling and hissing, he raised himself on hind legs--again, something not witnessed in eons--and plastered himself to the screen door.

Initially I had thought that one of the neighborhood strays had taken up residence on the fire escape near the deck (earlier that weekend we had seen a stray cat in the yard)--from my vantage point I saw a furry, bulky creature lounging there, settling into taunt mode as Bo the cat continued growling at it. I called for the missus to witness this miracle--look, the old fat bastard is agitated, and not over wet food, either!. She came out to the bedroom door, took one close look at the critter on the fire escape, squeaked in panic, pried the cat away from the door and shut it quickly.

"Don't you know what that was?" she cried.

That's when I realized: It was a raccoon. In Brooklyn.

I had read several reports of raccoon sightings (and breakings & enterings too--they will do anything to get at food) in the borough but had, of course, that stereotypical NIMBY (not in my backyard!) reaction of the urban white dweller to the various annoying/vaguely threatening aspects of city life. But yes, here in my backyard, a raccoon grows in Brooklyn.

Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't give a rat's ass about anything remotely connected to Harry Potter, whether it be book or movie or Gary Oldman's facial hair or a porn remake (Harry Potter and the Purple Double-Headed Dildo)? Please, somebody!

Yesterday we went to NYC's annual Bastille Day celebration. I always try to justify my enjoyment of the holiday by telling people I am partly of French descent (c'est vrai! une petite!) but really, I just want to drink the booze (wine tasting! That's the one, Pats!) and eat the eclairs (should have tried to coffee ones) and not piss off any of the testy expats too badly. Sadly we did not encounter any Lillet vendors on our meanderings through the hot, crowded street fair. Quelle trauma!

On the way to the faux guillotine, we shared our subway car with some chatty Mets fan on their way to the game. These were serious Brooklyn dudes, big guys with big bellies and FDNY couture. At one point, the conversation turned to...hair. Apparently, even straight men talk about their hair. The skinniest of the guys was describing a potential hairstyle:

guy 1: ...and take a bit off here [gesturing]...

guy 2: What, you want to look like a fruit?

guy 1: [long pause] Uh....

guy 2: I mean, God bless, it's all good.

So I'm wondering if this signals a genuine shift in attitudes among the mainstream, or another example of the classic New York "live and let live" attitude, or a guy simply trying to placate his buddy about his faggy hairstyle choices. Or maybe all of them. Vive la difference, or vive la Lillet at any rate.

ETA: Okay, so we have here one 10-year-old girl and her father who are NOT wild about Harry.

Today's complaint: Another great independent bookstore is closing. It was bad enough to see NYC lose a lot of its independent gay bookstores (A Different Light, the Oscar Wilde Bookstore in the Village), now this. It makes me want to go buy stuff at my favorite downtown bookstore. Must. Resist. "But holy, you always said you wanted a complete set of Proust..." Stop it right there, sister!

Today's amusement (which you won't appreciate unless you're a fan of the U.S. version of The Office): Battlestar Office-ica.

Once upon a time I had composed lyrics to the BSG theme, which I would sing at the beginning of every episode I saw, in my best Lisa Gerrard meets Edina Monsoon voice:

It's the Battlestar...Galactica!
We blow things up.
Cylons have sex.

Battlestar. Oh.

(Sorry, badtyler, I haven't been able to find the lyrics to my other hit, "Me and Robert Downey"...)

Broadway is a street; it is also a neighborhood, an atmosphere....Since she had turned seventeen, however, she had liked only to walk around or stand on street corners with crowds moving about her. She would stay all afternoon and sometimes until it was dark. But it was never dark there: the lights that had been running all day grew yellow at dusk, white at night, and the faces, those dream-trapped faces, revealed the most to her then. Anonymity was part of the pleasure, but while she was no longer Grady McNeil, she did not know who it was that replaced her, and the tallest fires of her excitement burned with a fuel she could not name. She never mentioned it to anyone, those pearl-eyed perfumed Negroes, those men, silk- or sailor-shirted, toughs or pale-toothed and lavender-suited, those men who watched, smiled, followed: Which way are you going? Some faces, like the lady who changed money at Nick's Amusements, were faces that belonged nowhere, were green shadows under green eyeshades, evening effigies embalmed and floating in the caramel-sweet air. Hurry. Doorway megaphones, frenziedly hurling into the glare sad roars of rhythm, accelerated the senses to collapse: run--out of the white into the real, the sexless, the jazzless, the joyful dark. These infatuating terrors she had told to no one.

~ from Summer Crossing, Truman Capote, an excerpt of which appeared in the New Yorker issue of Oct. 24.

Wow, he really was the people's pope.