Best I Give Up, I Totally Give Up

I cannot pick better colors for this blog. I cannot pick a proper typeface. I cannot design it one bit.

I am ashamed to have ever called myself a design/style/etc. blog.

This is a blog about what I eat and who I see. And some jokes. It's time for me to face the facts.

Listen. All of you. If you can make my blog not look so embarrassing, I need you.

Best Tales of a Two Day Weekend pt.3: Pie Night! (and not a single picture of pie)

Sunday night. Sunday night Carol had a pie night. I got there a little later than usual expecting to find a dozen people sitting on the floor, talking and eating pie. Nope. I show up and it's a total major gathering. Word.

Before getting too deep into things, I have to take care of two dedications.

This post is dedicated to Dave for teaching me about sRGB.


And there's a secondary dedication to the IR filter on its way here from Germany that will get rid of the purpley hue that pervades these pictures.


Okay, let's get busy. Most of these pictures were not taken to me. Pie night was my new camera's first major social outing and I happily let it free amongst trusted partygoers. Many of these pictures were taken by Lexia, later on they're taken by Hillary, after that Ben. In between? Other people.

And you know what? Forget captions. These are people, people having pie. Without any pictures of pie. Deal with it. If you don't know who Carol is by now, you never will. And if you don't know who that one dude is, it's okay, I don't either.


























Funny how the last 8 are framed just about exactly the same, huh?

After this my weekend ended. That's what happens. Can you even believe it's July 30th?

And maybe I shouldn't have fixed the white balance?

Best Excerpts from Sirens

A Siren reading Ulysses. Google Images never fails!

Well, maybe not the best passages from the Sirens section of Ulysses, but these ones jumped out at me this time. Not much need for context, I post them here as art for art's sake*, but Sirens takes place in a restaurant (although it includes much wandering of thoughts and remembering of times past) and is a musically-themed chapter.

Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings of reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers, touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When at first they saw, lost Richie, Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn’t expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. (273-274)

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness… (275-276)

And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind. (276)

Next Time: From Cyclops, a drawing and quartering drawn beautifully.

*Footnote: After I define postmodernism for you I've also got a functional unifying definition of art I could share.

Best Tales of a Two Day Weekend pt.2: Reunions, Run Ins, Manhattan

Saturday. In the morning I wrote a talk, saw 500 Days of Summer, and ran essential errands.

In the afternoon I saw Lars for the first time in ages. He's back. Lars is back. Did you not hear the trumpets? Did you not feel the drums?

We were all meeting uptown for Westside tacos. We ate well. Every single one of us ordered a quesadilla. Almost every single one of us had our quesadilla with a different meat.


After lunch come across the neighborhood celebrating itself. Not that it can be blamed.


Our parade was cheered by the casual locals.

Tiny and completely inedible it turns out.

The sound of children begging the purchase of pirated toys.

You throw a street even and regardless of the demographics meat on a stick shows up to be sold.

We reached the park, I had to break the Fellowship. I had somewhere important to go.


First visit to Andy's in ages. But it was an ambush. The missionaries were there. And a cat.


Mr. Wu. I don't care if he's paid, he's a saint.


This is me. Wearing a t-shirt I've had for 15 or 16 years.

From Andy's, which is at the ends of the earth, I walked through chinatown, Soho, and the West Village. It might have been only 3 neighborhoods, but it was nearly 4 miles.


And at the corner of Hudson and 12th an amazing double coincidence occurred.

First, I ran into Lars and Jared hanging out on the corner. West Village, yo.


And a bit later, Hillary appeared, just sauntering up the street at the end of the day, piercing the dusk with new sunshine.

Soon you'll see that Sunday was great, too.

And come around sometime, I want to take your picture. We'll learn together, figure this camera out.

Dave told me this way that I can change something in my RGB to make pictures look better on the web. I'm going to figure that out.

Best Tales of a Two Day Weekend pt.1: Last Week Brooklyn Adventure #2

This weekend something remarkable happened: We weren't allowed to go into work on Saturday (because of construction in the office) and we had to go home at 5 on Friday (because of construction on Friday). This meant I had a two day weekend! My first in ages! (Not counting last week when I was in Chicago, that is)

So I did something not done for so long: I went out on a Friday night and I stayed out late on a Friday night. And it all happened in Brooklyn.

I met Carol and Hillary for pizza at Franny's in Park Slope. It was an excellent wood oven pizza establishment, contemporary hip pizza after the notion of the traditional Italian tradition.



We sat outside informally in the back, there was a snail by our table.


Post dinner we walked over to a spot on the very edge of the Parkslope/Red Hook divide for an evening of Tribute Bands. We caught the last song of the Radiohead cover band and the entirety of the Caucasian Morrissey tribute act.


Here's something I haven't been 100% clear about but I've been trying to make known: I bought a new camera a couple of weeks ago, a Leica M8. Here it is being Jimmy Olsen'd by Hillary. What a beauty. (And Hillary's not bad either)


The club was a place to test the limits of it's high ISO/large aperture capabilities. (My camera doesn't have a flash, that's one of its fancy features)


Those in attendance, minus Nick: Abby, Chateau, Carol MyselfCarolHillary, Damien.

Show ended, we hit the streets wary of figurative threats.

Eyeball.


I got these for you.


Pouting on the streets of Brooklyn.

Up in the Bodega frowns turn upside down.


Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?

And who watches the Watchmen?


And here is the previously not pictured Nick.


Out on the street: a bear claw.


When I got back to Manhattan I dawdled home photographing at windows (here find just one example)...

...this lead to the making of a new friend. What a full night!


I wish to bring charges against blogger for squeezing a lot of the beauty from these photos. If you come over I'll show them to you on my computer, they're much better that way.