I recently received a postcard from a 4-year-old which read, in part:
I saw a Megolodon’s jaw at Underwater World. It could eat you even though you’re a giant turd.
How I believe he views me:
Family Portrait
Entries in the “Personal” category
Last night I had a dream that a large magazine, think Vanity Fair or The New Yorker, hired John Cleese to install a display of bricks in their office. He spent a week, and the display consisted of crooked, broken bricks haphazardly piled, with mortar dripping out all over the place. It looked like a work of art.
The magazine was most unhappy, and publicly complained and ridiculed Mr. Cleese on his bricklaying skills, saying, “If Mr. Cleese performed comedy the way he lays bricks, he would have failed as a comedian and would probably have become a decent bricklayer.”
When asked about his bricklaying skills, Mr. Cleese explained that he had thought they hired him for his interpretation of a pile of bricks and added, “If you want bricks installed properly you hire a bricklayer, not a bloody minister of funny walks!”
Seen on a recently closed Boston sports bar located about three blocks from my apartment:
While I agree with the sentiment, I just wish whoever wrote it could spell.
When I walk by it almost every morning, I get a little embarrassed, and my OCD makes me twitch and begs me to stop and correct them. However, I know that as soon as I whip out a Sharpie and begin the correction I’d hear the “bwoop bwoop” from an NYPD cruiser, and then I’d have to explain/convince them that I was just correcting a fellow Yankees’ or Jets’ fan’s horrible spelling. They’d probably let me off with a warning out of loyalty to the teams or, more likely, because they’d think I was crazy.
I can’t be the only one who really wants to correct them, can I?
Back in 2006, in the span of four months, I attended both the opening of Apple’s flagship store in NYC and U2′s book signing. At U2′s book signing, I thought one of the members of the press looked familiar, and I made a mental note to go and check my Apple Store opening day photos to see if he was there as well. It’s been about five years, so I guess it’s time to do that.
I got home a little while ago and noticed that my neighbor (the Steelers fan) had taped the bottom of his apartment door with masking tape as seen in the picture below:
Door bottom with tape
This is the second time that I’ve seen his door taped in this fashion, and I have no idea why.
June 20, 2010
July 9, 2011
My old apartment had an old style peephole which allowed me an undistorted view through my door. Combine that with the fact that I had an end apartment which had a view of the entire hallway of my floor, and the voyeur in me couldn’t help but take a peek at my neighbors whenever I heard them in the hallway.
After noticing that my Coolpix 990 fit perfectly over the peephole and could take pictures silently, I decided to try to take a photo whenever I heard something going on in the hallway.
The following twelve photos were taken between late 2001 and early 2003.
Reading the ramblings of Sleep Talkin’ Man remind me that, while I don’t talk in my sleep (that I know of), I sometimes say and do things in that weird, semi-conscious state between sleep and wide awake consciousness. Things that are strange, and strangely related to the context of the waking environment. Things that I don’t often mean.
For example, I was once awakened by a ringing telephone on my nightstand at 4:30 a.m. In my haze, I went all Maxwell Smart and tried to answer a shoe which was not far from my bed. I remember trying to hit the answer button on the bottom of my shoe, holding it up to my ear to talk, and being perplexed as to why it was still ringing. It took about 30 seconds before I realized what I was doing, but by then it was too late to answer the real phone.
Another time, I incorporated my dog’s nails clicking on a tile floor nearby into my dream as rain hitting the window. I shot up out of bed, and tried to close the window to prevent the rain from coming in.
And it can be worse when there’s someone else there.
I have a standard spiel where I tell overnight guests that they should just ignore anything and everything, good or bad, that comes out of my mouth for the first five minutes after I wake up, especially if I’m awoken suddenly by an alarm clock, an inadvertent kick, etc.
Tracy did not heed my advice.
Growing up in Manhattan means that you sometimes have to do things a little differently than, well, pretty much the rest of the country, and as Halloween approaches, and I compare stories of youth with colleagues and friends, I’m beginning to understand just how different Manhattan Halloweens are compared to others.
An atypical example of Manhattan Halloween decorations
I’ve heard about it from friends and seen references to it in movies, but since I’ve never seen it in person, it’s sort of like Bigfoot…I’m beginning to doubt it really exists. In Manhattan, there isn’t that one special house in the area that goes overboard with Halloween decorations; that one special house that everyone from several streets over comes to visit because everyone knows they have the best candy and obscene amounts of it; that one special house that truly embraces the spirit of Halloween and shames all the others around it for even trying to be festive. Unless you live in an area that has single-family townhouses (which is somewhat rare on this island) you really won’t see Halloween decorations, or any other holiday decorations, adorning the outside of a building. Multiple dwelling abodes must conform to the lowest common denominator wishes of its inhabitants, and it’s always safest to not display any decorations than risk offending someone who, for whatever reason, is offended by Halloween.
On October 13, 2009, I was summoned for petit jury duty in New York State Supreme Court at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. This is the second time I’ve performed jury duty for the state, and the first in criminal court.