A Walk.

I lost my digital camera’s memory stick for several months, but when I moved I found it!  Here’s yesterday:

Home.

You heard it here first

Unless you heard this somewhere else, such as inside a stall in the women’s restroom of Penn Station.

This is probably the most informative piece of bathroom stall graffiti I’ve ever encountered. And possibly the only piece of bathroom stall graffiti I’ve seen that makes no mention of cock.

There was also graffiti on the stall door that said organized crime’s influence had infiltrated New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, too! I didn’t know how to take any of this news…so I posted it here.

Thoughts on the city, the factory

“Oh, you’re all just so sophisticated sitting in your little cafes and looking up at the Empire State Building while the rest of us lie around in haystacks smoking our corncob pipes. Is that it?”

The summer before I moved to New York City for college, I worked in a factory in an industrial park. Everyone was really nice to me. My coworkers there were some of the most genuine and offbeat characters I’ve ever met. They were certain I was going to be killed in the big city. They would stop at my soldering station and tell me things they knew about pepper spray and karate. I’d tell them that the muscles I was building from carrying metal parts for ten hours a day would serve me well.

I learned some valuable life lessons at that job. One guy saw me chewing gum after lunch one day and he told me I should only chew gum if I had diarrhea, otherwise I could get an ulcer. I’ve never forgotten that. Another guy helped me get my finger out of the vending machine when it got stuck in the change return slot. I’ve never forgotten that, either.

I’ve been in NYC for five years now, and I’m still kicking. All my limbs, fingers still attached. That quote from David Sedaris’ book When You Are Engulfed In Flames reminded me of my old factory friends. When I left for school they told me to be careful, to learn a lot, to stay off the streets at night. Two out of three recommendations I’ve followed. They gave me a good luck card, an Olive Garden gift card and 8 worn dollar bills.

They arrive at the factory just as I’m going to sleep most nights/mornings. Their lifestyle and mine couldn’t be more opposed now, but for those six weeks, five years ago, their lives and mine were the same. I wonder how they’re all doing. The company did profit sharing when I was there. They had a catered lunch every Thursday. They gave us clothes–tons of them! But a lot can happen, has happened, in five years.

Hot Fun in the Summer

There’s something about the beginning of summer.  And there’s definitely something about the beginning of summer in New York.  Earlier tonight I headed over to Manhattan to catch a free film at MoMA, only it was “sold” out, so I resigned myself to the sculpture garden.  All the past times I’d been to MoMA it’d been winter.  I didn’t even realize they had a sculpture garden.  But they do!  And it ended up helping me reach an important revelation.  I’ll get to that in a second.

Have you ever seen 1938’s Holiday with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn?!  I’m only about 30 minutes in, but Grant’s character, Johnny Case, just had this topical little line:

When I find myself in a position like this, I ask myself what would General Motors do? And then I do the opposite!

This was GM in '38. (No need to look at any GM photos of today.)

Okay, back to my sculpture garden revelation: people don’t care if you take their photograph when they think you’re photographing something else.  Because more than anything, I think people are fascinating.  And I want to capture them.  But it’s simply no fun dealing with someone in a tizzy because you’ve pointed and clicked them.  We’ve long debunked the idea that cameras capture your soul.  Therefore, I don’t think it’s a big deal if I shoot your face.   Anyway, here are some of my photographic stealths of the day:

If you can't be immature in the modern art museum, where can you be?

Also, I completely failed to get a digital converter box.  Screw the system.