Moroni?

Best "This is the Worst Trip/I've Ever Been On"

While I was eating my Baconator on Monday I got a curious call from Jeff inviting me sailing that night which I summarily declined on account of my being afraid of sailboats. As the effects of my Baconator began to wear off, I started to feel I had been too quick in my declining...and also, I felt like I needed an adventure. Jeff explained to me that his co-worker's boyfriend was a hot shot yacht racer who needed to sail his boat down from Sag Harbor to City Island in the Bronx and that we'd be motoring down, not sailing...this made me feel better...and when Jeff told me that the boat was named "Tastes Like Chicken" well, then I knew I was definitely going.

So after a car ride and a bar dinner we were ready to start our voyage at around 12:30-1:00 am. I stayed up for a few hours before catching an hour or two of sleep below deck. (I don't mean to be so technical with my boat language, "below deck" means the downstairs, inside part of the boat.) Also, that third picture? It's of our skipper charting our course on his amazing course charting computer. I'm sure these computers are commonplace to sailors around the world, but to me, it was fascinating. It had a button called "M.O.B." that you were supposed to press if a man fell overboard to mark the position where you lost him.




And when I woke up, Jeff was driving the boat like he owned the thing! I felt like Han Solo coming out of carbonite to find Luke calling himself a Jedi Knight.


But before long I was at the wheel and slowly but surely erasing my unease over sailboats.


Sailing is like camping, except on water and you're moving. You sit around and watch the water like you'd watch a fire and someone cooks you steak and eggs that taste delicious. And when you get tired of watching the water, you just go and lie down for a while.



And also, sailing is easy. You just match the headings on two LCD displays and there you are, on your way in the right direction. Also, lots of times people will go to the front of the boat and say "I'm sailing! I'm sailing!"


See how the main sail sets?


This is our skipper, Steve. Just because you're out to sea doesn't mean you don't take care of your teeth.


And here's his first mate, Ed.


As we got closer destination we started to see lighthouses


And ridiculous coastal estates (please click to enlarge and contemplate)


After 12 or 13 hours we made it to City Island and a short, hmmm, 2 hours later our ride showed up and got us back to the city. Just like that.






This BLT was a logistical nightmare

Best I Can Not Wait!

August 17th! King of Kong!

Best Question for You to Start (or End) Your Day With

What were you doing at 5am on Tuesday, June 26? Was it piloting a sailboat through the Long Island Sound?

Best Days of Future Present

Here at Steady Mobbin' I sometimes pride myself on bringing you the hottest and most important news on the hottest and most important trends. Less than 12 hours after my Baconator post of last night I bring you My First Baconator Adventure!

Where should I start? Should I start with the fact that my Baconator came wrapped in two wrappers?


Or that by this point I had already been overwhelmed by the smell of bacon?


Or that I wasn't really sold on the Baconator until I read it came with mayonnaise? (But really, can't you smell the bacon just by looking at this picture?)


Or should I just say that the Baconator...was amazing?


But don't just take my word for it...have you ever noticed that girls love Wendy's? Chauvinists, relying on outmoded notions of who loves meat and who loves salads and Frosties, would suggest the Baconator is a sandwich for men, an attempt by Wendy's to get guys to go there once in a while. Well here's clear photographic evidence that the Baconator is beloved by women as well!



Even if it is hard to keep all that cheese out of their hair.



In closing, I'd like to suggest declaring a moratorium on jokes about the Baconator making you die played out. It's not really that big, and yes, it's 850 calories...but if you skip breakfast, basically you just need to have a Baconator for lunch and then a sensible dinner, there you are. You've had your 2000 calories, you've received the energy necessary to keep you living one more day.

Now go, my readers, go and get your own first Baconator.

Best Horrible Vision of My Near Future.

Oh no. Oh dear.

Oh man. This movie is going to be great!

And maybe something is wrong with me, but I thought lots of stuff in this new Simpsons Movie trailer was funny. I can't wait for July 27th!

I can't remember the last time I sat down to watch that show.

Best Wacky Neighbors

Dear Fellow Members of the Union Square 3rd Ward (and other patrons of the 15th Street building),

You know the townhouse that got torn down down the street from the chapel? The internet can't stop talking about the apartment building that's going to be built there, an excessively balconied monster topped off by a . . . uhm, escape pod?



Here's the website for the development, it's nutty. But I'll post the floorplans here, too:



If you've been struggling to find a reason to go to church every week, maybe monitoring the progress of this place going up is the excuse you've been needing?

BUT WAIT, there's more.

It turns out that the people that are building this building live in the townhouse next door and even though it looks absolutely normal from the inside, guess what? It's nutty on the inside! They've got a waterfall, fishponds, clear stairs, cavelike rooms, you know, all the normal stuff.

Here's a slideshow tour of their home from the New York Times that's worth watching if like shaking your head and saying "That's crazy. That's crazy."

Some Links:
Curbed coverage of the development (I stole all their pictures)
New York Times on what the neighbor's think. (Guess what? They don't like.)

Best Tour Announcement

LCD Soundsystem and the Arcade Fire to tour together this fall? Billboard says so. That's something. James Murphy and Co. will be stealing some thunder.

Best Art Show

It's June and I'm walking into the depths of Chelsea, this can mean only one thing: I'm headed to another art school graduate art show! (click here for last year's art show, the one that belonged to Lexia)



This year's graduate,


Mr. Jared Clark.


And his work...


Jared was a graduate of the VCU Painting program, so he had to explain to a lot of people why 300lbs worth of figurines fused together by...uh...resin(?) was a painting. Come on, people. If it this isn't a painting, then what is it? (Hint: it's not a sculpture because the culture exhibition was in a different room)


Bonus: Here's a post on Jared's blog about the birth of this piece.

Another painting of Jared's. Better photos of this very difficult to photograph well piece available here on his blog.



Jared's work provoked admiration and contemplation in all who observed it.


Let us consider some of Jared's fellow art exhibitors. I bet going to Art School is really fun, you know, coming up with ideas and concepts, implementing ideas and concepts, constantly defending and validating your ideas and concepts and (if you so choose) attacking and invalidating the arts and concepts you encounter from day to day. Some of what I saw at the show I liked, some I did not.

Under "Like" we can definitely file this whale:



Feathers. The best way to convey the concept of "baleen." The one thing I definitely learned in kindergarten was what baleen was. And who Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't, but that's another story.

I was feeling these paper rolls, too. Stalactites/Stalagmites. Also an important thing you learn about at about kindergarten age.

And I liked this parachute drop. In kindergarten I would not have agreed to a ride on the Knott's Berry Farm parachute drop. But let me try to move away from this sudden kindergarten fixation. I need to be talking about art.

Spend enough time at an art show and you start considering the aesthetics of everything, including the walls of the elevator.

Volcanoes were big this year. I counted at least 2 volcano paintings. This would be the btter of the two.


This painting is made of paint and holes drilled in the wall.


Dozens if not hundreds of hand-painted graphs.


This cat gave me a gross feeling inside. It's the one disagreeable thing I saw that day that I photographed. One thing that I did see that I wasn't buying was a sculpture involving strings, ceramics, and a record player. Sorry. No me gusto.

I think it was pretty much unanimously agreed amongst Jared's friends that Jared's work was the best in the show. Congratulations were in order. I think it's pretty cool that Jared's thing is art and that he's totally making it work for himself. He knows where his Captain Jack compass points and he's following it.