Man @ Work

When I eighteen years old, I was mad — mad, I tell you — for Men at Work, the Australian band that brought us "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under." I played that CD until I managed to scratch the living hell out of it — on, I think, the last camping trip I've been on to date, during which my wallet fell into the Youghiogheny River at Ohiopyle, PA, and squirrells ran up and down the length of my tent roof for three nights straight. It was a glorious trip.

And you wonder why I want to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Anyway. As all things, Men at Work finally died away and its members went their own ways. What I didn't know was that the band's front man, Colin Hay, who was a bit of a clown in those videos, had stayed in the U.S. and has been recording albums all along. Go figure.

I really dig the new and improved Colin Hay.

My latest obsession — way too many years after a certain someone actually introduced me to the idea — is emusic.com. It's a subscription-based music download site. I just got 25 free downloads for doing a trial subscription, and now I'll get 40 downloads a month for $9.99. Totally diggable.

So Colin Hay's album Going Somewhere is one of my first purchases, and I'm loving it. You can get a taste of it here, but in doing so, I have to insist that you go out and buy it. It's important that you support artists I like.

It's all about me, after all.

I Wanna Be HIM When I Grow Up:

I'm A Very Good Driver

Okay, so Fozzie likes to joke about how he's all OCD; he can be obsessive about certain activities, and needs things just so before he can be comfortable enough to relax.

I'm beginning to think I've got him beat, though.

If I find a song I like, I can listen to it over and over again. And I don't just mean three times. I can have it playing — at full volume on my earphones — for, like, hours at a time. So either I'm crazy-fixated on it, or I really like listening to the same song until I know the lyrics by osmosis. Pretty soon I'm gonna be watching Judge Wapner.

Welcome to Crazy Joe™.

I don't know if I'm getting better or worse at the whole HDR thing, but I have to say, crazy colors not withstanding, I really like this photograph. It's the vibrant blues and oranges. I just stare at them like the bug drawn to the zapper in A Bug's Life, only I don't end up dead. Just mesmerized. Or, if you're British, "mesmerised."

As we're trending toward the dull, gray days of winter (I know, I know, you're saying to yourself, "Whoa, slow down there, Sparky! What happened to autumn!?!" I can't help it. I had the pessimism chip installed at the factory, and it's hard to overwrite your base programming), I need all the vibrant color I can get. If it's not there naturally, I'll manufacture it.

How I'm Feeling Lately

HDR

I've long been a fan of a style of image processing called HDR, or High Dynamic Range, photography. There are a number of really great practitioners of it out there — my favorite, by far, being the work of David Nightingale at chromasia.com. I think his work is really pretty stunning, and if ever I find myself with leftover money, I'm going to buy one of his large-scale prints for my walls. That link is provided just in case someone who loves me to an obscene and self-damaging degree wants to blow their money on presents for me.

In any case, I've only recently started trying my hand at HDR imagery, and, as you can see, mine's nowhere near as subtle as his. But maybe in the future I'll learn. Still, I have to say I do like that photo. It's of the view from my fire escape in Brooklyn, looking back at Manhattan.

In any case, let me know what you think. I promise not to be offended.

Hello, Ketchikan, AK!

Every once in a while, I'll get an e-mail or comment on my blog from an unexpected source.

I've always kinda assumed that the only people reading this thing were my far-flung friends and maybe one or two internet-savvy members of my sprawling family.

But with comments I've gotten from complete strangers on one or two blog entries over the years have made me wonder exactly who was coming to visit, and taking a peek into my life.

So, recently, I signed up for Google's new free web metrics service, Google Analytics, and I've been getting all sorts of information (none of it identifying, little of it which I understand) about the people who're visiting my site.

One of my favorite features of the service is its Geo Map Overlay, which shows where visitors are coming from. On a map.

I'm here to tell you, I don't know anyone in Ketchikan, AK.

But knowing that someone in Ketchikan was catching up on me made me curious about the town, so I looked it up. Turns out it's a town that seems to service a lot of cruise ships.

Aside from the fact that it's overrun with tourists (and, really, can anyone living in New York City really fault anyone for living in a place swamped by tourists?) it looks like a really cool town. There appears to be a thriving arts colony, it's clean and it's pretty. And it's surrounded by forests and mountains... perfect for taking pictures! And communing with nature.

Just the kinda place I'd dig if I could thrive in a place that wasn't New York.

I do have to confess to wondering how someone in Ketchikan, AK stumbled across my humble blog. And what might be bringing them back. My Ketchikanian (?) visitor has been back several times. It's both incredibly neat and a little unsettling to me that I can know that, but I do, thanks to Google Analytics. Go, Google.

Anyway, hello Ketchikan, and welcome to my world. I hope you enjoy it.

All Hail MUG

This is why I love Charlie Suisman, whoever he is, and his fabulous daily email Manhattan User's Guide:

"My, my, my, everyone's so sensitive these days. You can hardly call someone a macaca in the South any more without people of color taking offense or broadcast a mini-series that rewrites history for partisan purposes without a whole whoop-de-do deposited in its path.

Something is always setting someone off somewhere, have you noticed? Do you remember the woman whose epilepsy could be triggered by hearing the voice of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart? "It would set off abnormal electrical discharges in the brain...Upon hearing Hart's voice, the woman would rub her stomach, hold her head, and 'look confused and far away...and out of it.'" True story – if you can believe the New England Journal of Medicine. (Grist, too, for a Seinfeld episode – Kramer convulses when he hears Hart's voice).

We knew it had to happen sometime. Last week, a woman whose 2-year-old son was missing was subjected to an on-air grilling (via phone) by CNN's Nancy Grace. The next day, she committed suicide. Whether or not the mother had anything to do with the child's disappearance, as Grace insists, we have a sense of how she felt: when we hear Grace's voice on a guilty-as-not-yet-charged, tried or convicted harangue, we look longingly at the nearest plastic bag, or at least bag of spinach.

If the White House has its way, the rules on torture (deemed quaint by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an apparatchik so loathsome that he almost makes us miss John Ashcroft) may get an upgrade: Geneva Conventions 2.0. It's just the administration's way of saying, hey, it's still the Free Pass Decade, baby. Accountability is for girly-men. When Congress releases the Geneva upgrade, we expect Grace to get grandfathered in, so that waterboarding, snapping dogs, and pressure under Grace will be considered legal coercive methods."

Sorry, Virginia

Alas, Santa won't be coming to Astoria this year.

Fozzie and I were walking back to his place from dinner at Wave Thai on Sunday when we came across the remains of the Christmas in September Massacre.

We were the first on the scene -- the cops hadn't even arrived yet -- but it was pretty clear that Santa wasn't recovering from this. Looked like homicide to me. He was just left there on the sidewalk to die.

Of course we'll have to wait for the coroner's report to come back, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that maniacal looking doll half-hanging out of the remains of Santa's bag had something to do with it. Like maybe he was some sort of Spawn of Satan™ sent on a mission to kill Santa who got caught up in his own plan and couldn't get away before everything went south. I mean, just look at his face.

It was totally unnerving. Santa just laying there, with his cold dead eyes staring up into the sky, wondering what had happened to him. Where it had all gone wrong. Wondering, I'm sure, why he'd wasted his best years trying to satisfy generations of ungrateful, selfish, greedy children who would grow up to ravage the earth and fight war after war after war, always striving for mastery and slaughter.

I'm just saying.

I doubt that the Powers That Be™ will be very anxious to announce Santa's death, so I wouldn't bother looking for any more info from the news.

The New Sincerity

Apparently there's a whole new philosophical movement of which I'm unaware, and about which I couldn't be more happy. This, from the September 8 edition of The Sound of Young America in which Jesse Thorn is interviewing Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler, founding co-editors of the magazine Bitch about their 10th anniversary collection of essays from the magazine:

The Sound of Young America

They're speaking about literary and cultural criticism in pop culture, but I think it applies to the wider public discourse. No one argues rhetoric anymore... they just insult and denigrate those who think differently and congratulate themselves for having won some sort of intellectual battle.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm right there on the front lines of wielding ironic snark, but that doesn't mean I don't find it wearying.

Okay, the good news is that I got to talk to my mom on Sunday, and she's faring a little better. A quick catch up for those of you who're wondering: She fell again a couple weeks ago, and -- I think I'm remembering this correctly -- bruised a couple of ribs. Her recovery's been a little slow, but she's been feeling a bit better, and she's started physical therapy. So we're keeping our fingers crossed.

She'll be leaving for San Diego soon, to spend the rest of the year with my brother there, so I won't be seeing her for the holidays. Since I don't want to wait 'til next spring for her to return to Pittsburgh, I'm going to hop a flight in for a memorial mass for my dad in early November, and stay through the weekend. This is good, for hopefully I'll get to see him, him and them. And her. And her.

Basically, I'm screwed and there can't possibly be enough time. Which won't stop me from trying.

I'm Addicted

I've discovered that there're an abundance of free podcasts available for download out there. Oh, but I've just been a little lamb that's wandered in the woods, waiting for smarter shepherds to find him and guide him home.

What a fool I've been, thinking that I needed to pay for my entertainment.

Witness The Roadhouse podcast. Produced by Tony Steidler-Dennison, it's a weekly show of the best blues around or, as he likes to say, "the best blues you've never heard." The show invariably rocks.

I've also discovered the beauty of The Sound of Young America, talk radio done hipster style. Just don't let Jesse Thorn hear you calling him a hipster.

My favorite, though, is the weekly podcast of Alan Watts' lectures.

Watts was my introduction to Eastern thought. Back when I was a youngster in Pittsburgh, WDUQ -- the local NPR affliate -- used to play Watts lectures every Sunday night. I used to lie in bed and listen to them before dropping off to sleep. It's like old home week every week.

Oh, the joys of the iTunes. I love it well.

Whoa.

You know what? I knew that yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and I figured there would be some sort of memorial, since no one here seems to be able to get their frakkin' act together enough to actually establish and build a permanent memorial.

But I didn't realize they were going to whip out this one again.

Kudos to you, feckless jackasses:

At the Risk of Being the Cliche I Am:

I imagine everyone's posting a pic like this today. But somehow this is the way I want to remember the day. I want to see the towers without the black smoke, without the gaping holes, without the crumbling and the massive death.

I'll leave all that other shit to CNN. Did we really need to relive it real time?

Bloodsuckers.

There is, at least, this. And yes, though it's a little ridonkulous to think he had anything more to do with it than the previous guy who held his job, that little item is still somehow immeasurably satisfying to me. Maybe people will wake up and realize what kinda imperialist morons they voted into office.

I'm just saying.

Catching Up

I spend a lot of time relecting on the past. It's in my nature or, probably more true, my upbringing. I'm not alone in this. My siblings spend a lot of time thinking about the past, too. I don't know where it comes from.

My family's gone through some very tough times. Fiscally. Emotionally. And -- forgive the gross generalization, as I'm sure some of them probably have contrary (and very supportable) takes on this -- as a group, I think we tend to dwell on those times.

I'm always amazed when I meet people who have come through difficulties and resolutely want to look ahead, without dwelling on the past. I think to myself, "How do you do that?" The past weighs on my thoughts always. It seems as though, for my family, there's no escaping it. It's not a matter of just saying, "Oh, I'm just not going to dwell on it anymore." If it were that easy, I think we'd have moved on.

And I don't mean to suggest that we're a non-functioning bunch of emotional cripples. We have moved on. We make our lives and sometimes they're joyful and sometimes they're sorrowful and sometimes they just skate along as boring as could be. Some of us, granted, are more successful at it than others, but that's true of any family.

So I wonder what makes us different from those people who just let go of the past.

I hate those people.

I've had precious little time, lately, to just hang out and snap photos.

Hopefully, I can manage to rectify that soon.

But I was going through some old photos recently, and came across a number of them that I rather like, mostly 'cuz they showcase some vistas of which I'm rather fond:

I decided to force myself out over the weekend and wander around Prospect Park. I took a lot of photos that I ended up not loving, but I got a couple of the fountain by the arch at Grand Army Plaza that I really, really dig.

So, for what it's worth:

So I'm not really sure if liking this makes me a hipster, or just gay. Only time will tell.

Yikes!

My, how time flies. Can it possibly be a year since the end of this glorious summer?

Where does the time go?

Look Ma, I'm an Hipster

iTunes featured free download this week is Sugarcult's "Los Angeles," from the band's forthcoming album Lights Out.

I love it. Must. Buy.

Kevin, of Lagemæ fame, would have two words for me: Fucking. Hipster.

How Was Your Weekend?

Okay, I'm not saying this is anyone's fault but mine, but I spent the entire Labor Day weekend in my apartment.

My prodigal friend returned from his travels and had to juggle the chance to see me with the chance to see his new beaux. A couple of them. So I tried to be gracious and let him see them, thinking we could catch up later.

And my boyfriend rushed off Saturday morning to do his homework so we could be together Sunday and Monday. But he managed not to get it done on Saturday. Or Sunday. So we weren't together at all this weekend. Except for Friday night which, of course, was great.

So that's how it came to pass that Labor Day weekend '06 became all about cable TV, and the second season of The O.C. on DVD. And take out Chinese food.

The good news is that after much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, I also managed to get the wireless router for our apartment to work, so now my roommate can surf the web from anywhere she likes. And so can I, if I ever get my godcursed computer fixed. Yay me.

Memories of Days Gone By

Now that I'm in the new place, free and clear of the Terror of Bushwick, I've been unpacking boxes and generally tidying up my living space.

In the rush to remove the last of my stuff from the old place, I came across a box of family photos that... well, how do we put this? Reveal me for the geek I am?


Yes, my friends, I was a serious little dork when I was growing up. A pretty serious geek.

But you know what? I was kinda a cute dork! I never realized it before; you know that I'm not one who's that quick to compliment himself, but I was a cute little devil.

Of course, there're exceptions to every rule. In this one I look like a baby from one of those crazy Christian Childrens Fund commercial. I look like I'm about to be a victim of malnutrition. Only one that's starving to death while having christmas presents heaped on him.

The thing I don't understand, of course, is how my family could ever see this picture and not instantly know that I was gay. I mean, really? Footie pajama tights? And the way those legs are crossed?

I'm just saying.