Bizarre-O Singing Guy POSES A DILEMMA...

...but, here's the thing, readers. In exchange for my valuable advice about where to find weirdos on the street, today I am asking for something in return. As I was considering how to describe Bizarre-O Singing Guy's location, I considered mentioning The Art Students League, which is right across the street from Lee's and Singing Guy. I've checked it out before and it's a very enticing place - low cost art education that doesn't give you a degree, but teaches you what you want to know, offers cheap figure-drawing and -painting classes as well as full programs of study and certification, and generally is a great fixture of the community.

This got me thinking about whether I should invest in taking some classes there. I'd really like to, even if it's just one class a week, to keep myself working artistically. Deadlines work for me better than musings like, "I should really draw the characters from 'A Wocket In My Pocket' and put them all over the apartment in the appropriate places... someday..."

But THIS got me thinking about how I have virtually no time to even finish my musings, much less put them into action, and how the number of projects I'm working on now should kind of preclude me from starting new ones on a whim. Which led me to thinking about how I really need to learn how to prioritize a litte and focus more on the things that need finishing, so I can get to the things that need starting. Which led me to the realization that in general, in life, I have a serious problem with commitment to ANYTHING. I have a desire to dedicate myself with toal abandon to every one of my friends, every hair-brained scheme, every project and every piece of art that I have, which sounds great, but only works in my head. In reality, I never have enough time or energy for everything, which leads me to having not enough time and energy for ANY thing.

Which led me to realize that this whole 'writing a book' thing is stressing me out enormously, mostly because I can't seem to pin down the appropriate time in my schedule for leg work like researching, writing, and organizing. I want it to happen, and I can't really expect it to if I continue on the general fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants course I've been on. Which led me to realize that I have to figure out what I'm doing and try to actually commit myself to a plan of action. Ideally, I'll be able to get a lot of work done at the gallery this summer, when all the rich people and gallery directors are out of town and I have less to do than usual (which is saying a LOT, let me tell you). But generally speaking, I can't really accomplish a whole hell of a lot during the workday because I am, even on the best of days, getting interrupted regularly by the telephone and visitors to the gallery. I can write, but I end up repeating myself and being very unfocused and then just having to rewrite later on when I'm not at work. Which is a strategy, but it's not the best.

I really want to try to dedicate myself to this book in the evenings after work, but it can be supremely difficult with the number of other responsibilities I have, including, you know, laundry, dishes, and general hygiene. Not to mention a social calendar, two other part-time writing gigs, a full-time gig, and the billion incidental happenings that come along with living in the city. I haven't had any luck with the efforts I've made so far, beyond a few stops and starts here and there, which are always aborted after a few weeks due to some new scheduling dilemma. But I want this thing to move forward, to research, to write, to get an agent, to sell the thing, to write the thing, to have a BOOK.

I ALSO really want to start taking night classes toward a career that might actually be a career in illustrating/publishing. Mostly I just want to know how to do something besides answering phones and reading books, and to have a piece of paper saying as much, and even have the option of having a job in a field that interests me instead of this piece of crap whittling away my days trying futilely to write the book that will get me out of here - which, in reality, probably will NOT get me out of here but just earn me a few grand, optimistically. There's a publishing certificate program in publishing that has a specialization in illustration at CCNY, which is inexpensive and which I could do on my own time, at night, in a few years. If I don't get the book done, or if I do and it doesn't get me out of here, this certificate could at least help me switch into an actual career if I wanted it to. BUT it would require the sacrificing of even more of my evenings to something besides the book.

So, here's my grand question to you guys:
Should I keep the certificate program on the back burner for now and try to force myself into a commitment to this book, then maybe take classes AFTER the book things is over, either through failure or being published?
Or, should I just sign up for classes, sacrifice the evenings, and hope that the book can continue to grow while I do it? I mean, the added stress on my schedule might actually help me budget the rest of my time so I can work more effectively on the book... MAYBE. Or maybe I'll be so stressed I'll have a total nervous breakdown and finally get the two months of rest in a mental ward I've always wanted... win-win?


I really can't make up my own mind here... Help!

Bizarre-O Singing Guy...

I have been feeling rather beaten down lately - had a whirlwind weekend with two visitors in my tiny apartment, a fantastic birthday celebration, much walking around, and the beginnings of a sickness which has only begun to abate today. Hence the lack of posts, and also a lack of attention to detail, which sadly made my adventursome weekend a blur and didn't allow for me remembering any of the funny, quirky bits I saw around the city as I walked ALL over it.

So today, now that I'm feeling better, I was very excited on my lunch break to head over to Lee's Art Shop on 57th between 7th and 8th. I love this store because it is a very full-service, 4 story, serious art store where one can find all manner of supplies for virtually any art project, but it is also a trap for little old ladies and middle-aged housewives with too much time on their hands and a penchant for shiny things. I am, apparently, both an artist (heh!) and a middle-aged lady at heart, because I can be walking by that place with my sights set on the Duane Reade down the block for, like, nail files or something, and get drawn into Lee's without even noticing it's happening, while my brain chants "Sparkly stuff, sparkly stuff, sparkly stuff," and suddenly I'm buying $50 worth of Mod Podge and a fridge magnet with a Roald Dahl quote on it...

Anyway.

So today I was on my way over there to look for invitation cards and standing outside, as he usually is, was Bizarre-O Singing Guy. I suddenly realized I've never written about him on this blog, and that is a damn shame, because as far as strange New York specific people go, he is right up there with the best of them. Bizarre-O Singing Guy is a middle-aged to elderly gentlemen of uncertain ethnicity and nationality who stands outside Lee's every weekday and sings to himself and/or passersby. His ethnicity and nationality are uncertain because his song does not seem to be comprised of words, or if they ARE words, the language he's singing them in is so alien to me that I can't even venture a guess as to what it could be. I have a feeling it's a "speaking in tongues" kind of thing, musical style. He actually has quite a powerful voice, if not an operatic one, and could probably do a mean Indian restaurant zitar theme if he wanted to, but he doesn't seem interested in making money. He's not out there singing for change. He's giving out pamphlets. And here's where he gets sneaky: those pamphlets have a picture of a gift-wrapped box on them, and they say "A Gift For You." So of course I eagerly snatched one up one day, equally charmed by his bizarre-o singing and eager to see what kind of valuable present lay in store for me inside the folded piece of paper.

Well, let me tell you, there was no gift in there, friends. Just really badly written drivel about accepting Jesus Christ into my heart and such. Not that I have anything against the idea of Jesus in my heart, exactly, I just can't stand badly reasoned and even more badly written proselityzing. If you're going to write it down, at least make sure it makes sense. The only gift I got was Bizarre-O Singing Guy's song.

But despite his crafty pamphlet passing, I have a soft place in my heart for this dude. He's fun and he seems to be enjoying himself and he's not even particularly pushy. So more power to him. So today as I passed him I realized that I had to write a blog entry about him, and encourage my readers to go check him out sometime. If you ever happen to be in midtown, near the Brooklyn Diner, you should be able to find him during normal business hours.

Sad news

I'm sure everyone who reads this already knows, but I wanted to at least mention the tragic passing of actor David Carradine, discovered dead in his Bangkok hotel room on June 3. Rumor has it he hung himself, and he was a guy who was known to contemplate suicide, so that seems believable. But there has not been an official investigation yet, and it WAS in Bangkok, so I guess we'll have to wait for the official report to know for sure.

Tip a glass to him when you go out tonight, folks. :(

In happier news, I had a dream last night that I was out busting ghosts with Bill Murray. We were fighting a somewhat mysterious apparition that was causing a lightning storm of sorts over a small observation tower at an airport, I believe, but unfortunately we were the only two at the scene, and instead of the Ecto-1, we were driving a somewhat beat-up white Honda with a very small trunk, into which Bill (he was Bill Murray in the dream, not Peter Venkman) had packed all of our equipment. Everything was stuck in there, and really hard to get out, and I was informing Bill that he was going to have to invest in some much lighter proton packs if he wanted me on the team because those things were way too big for me to be carrying around. Then I woke up. It was pretty sweet.

Beyond that I don't have a whole lot to report. It's a pretty disgusting rainy day here in the city, and I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of a good friend who will be crashing at my place for the weekend, so I'm gonna peace out, beyotches.

Unibrows, low-lifes, and garbage compacting...

Ah, more New York happenings. Today feels like Friday. It's not Friday, but I've asked several of my co-workers and they all agree that it feels as if it should be Friday today. I wonder what tomorrow will be like. Perhaps we'll all just sleep in and forget to come to the office... Oh, that would be delightful.

I'm a little pooped because last night I was at the gallery until 9:15, manning the front desk for a benefit party and auction for Pure Vision Arts, an advocacy/representation group for artists with developmental disabilities. While I totally support the idea, and think it's really great that there are people dedicating themselves to helping artists who might have trouble getting representation otherwise, the evening in reality was really, really, really awkward. It was me, a bunch of caterers and organizers, two other people who work for the gallery (one of whom, who lives upstate, had just contracted Lyme disease a few days ago and we were basically trying to make sure she didn't pass out the whole time), and 200 guests. About a third of the guests had developmental handicaps ranging from Downs Syndrome to autism. It was... well... awkward. But the event was catered, I got paid overtime for doing very little, AND they had Perseco. So it's all good. I'm just a little tired today.

But, nevertheless, I've seen and heard some fun things in the past two days so I thought I'd post them for your entertainment!

1) Last night, during the event, I was in the lobby of the building talking to the night front desk man, George. He's great. While we were discussing home prices in New York versus Puerto Rico, a delivery man came in with a late dinner for someone on one of the upper floors. I don't know where this guy was from - he was white, spoke very good English, but had a heavy accent of some sort I couldn't quite identify. He was mostly bald on top, with salt and pepper hair around the sides, and the most AMAZING Unibrow I have ever seen. The thing was utterly glorious. I can hardly do it justice with words, people. Now, I am not exactly a fan of the Unibrow look, but when something is done right, you have to give credit where credit's due, and let me tell you - this Unibrow was the Platonic Ideal of Unibrows. It was thick, dark, and made a perfect V on this guy's forehad right between his eyes. Perfectly symmetrical. If Spok had a Unibrow, it would look like this man's. I was in awe. I didn't say anything to him about it, because I have a feeling he hasn't cultivated it purposely and he might be offended if I said anything. But, wow, I really wanted to shake his hand.

2) On my tired, several-Perseco-ed way home, I just got on the first train to come to 59th and Lex, without looking to see if it was a 4 or a 5. Turns out it was a 4, and I ended up at Yankee Stadium, really pissed off and tired and waiting for the downtown train along with every idiotic Yankee fan ever. Usually I identify with Yankees fans and try to appreciate their zeal, but last night I was NOT in the mood. I ended up getting on a train next to this dorky older guy and his 13 year old son, who was asking kind of annoying questions to his dad, who was then mumbling the answers unintelligibly. But I did catch this little gem of conversation:

13 year old boy: Dad, how long is this train ride going to take?
Dad: Well, it's about 10:15 now, and we're at 161st street, so I'd say, depending on the low-lifes, we'll get home around 10:45.

...I can't fathom what low-lifes would have to do with the length of a train ride. Maybe he meant the MTA? But then you'd think he'd say "The low-lifes at the MTA." Certainly there were lots of low-lifes among the people leaving the stadium, but they were all already on the train and couldn't hinder it from going whatever speed it wanted. I'm stumped.

3) This morning on the 5 on the way to work, two very tall guys got on at 125th Street and stood in the doorways of my car. They were being kind of loud and annoying, almost as if drunk, but it was 9:15 in the morning. Not that I'm judging anyone who's durnk at 9:15 in the morning. But... seriously. Anyway, at some point I looked toward the one guy and noticed a giant streak of SPIT runnng down the door and onto the floor in front of him, where it was forming a big frothy puddle. DUDE! If you have to spit THAT bad while you're on the train, go OUTSIDE and spit BETWEEN the cars! Don't f-ing spit on the FLOOR! God! The subway is filthy enough with all kinds of mysterious grime and dirt - the last thing we need is somebody spitting on the door AND the floor at 9:15 in the goddamn morning! I was so angry. Sometimes I really want to just get up in people's faces and yell at them about common decency and respect for one's fellow man, but... eh... I'd probably lose the fight. This IS New York.

4) I had to run to the post office at Rockefeller Center today to drop off a package. On my walk down 6th Ave, I passed a bunch of guys who were bringing large metal grates of some sort out of a back door of a building and across the sidewalk to a truck. I just tried to get past them without getting knocked down by one of the grates, but as I went by I heard this horrible crunching, grating, squealing noise, and turned to see tha the truck they were loading was a GARBAGE truck! There were a bunch of guys around it, loading the metal grates into it one by one and watching them get crushed by the giant compactor in the back of the truck. Funnest thing ever!!


And, lastly, from our friends at OverheardInNewYork.com:

Texting teenager: Is there two "L"s in "Fordham"?
Teenager's friend: Uhh...just one, I think.

Let's see how this works...

Oh my. The internet is down at the office, and I have left my flash drive at home. So I have, at the moment, absolutely nothing to work on. I could be free-thinking about work on my book, I suppose, or composing brilliant poetry, but I thought it might be fun to freestyle on the blog instead. I’ll just write something up in Word, save it, and post it when the interwebs are back up and running.

So, fun New York adventures: it’s catch-up time!

Firstly, I haven’t actually seen a whole lot of particularly interesting bits lately in the city, and I can’t really imagine why. Perhaps I’ve just been enjoying the fine weather and listening to my fine music too much to be bothered by the craziness going on around me, or perhaps everyone else is so busy doing the same thing that they aren’t putting their usual hardcore effort into being weird. But suffice it to say, the city has been pretty darn normal lately.

I have, however, run across some fun things here and there. For example:

1) On the subway on Monday morning, which was incredibly packed and gave me no choices about where to look except at people’s shirts to avoid eye contact, I spotted a man in a white T-shirt that featured a black and white drawn picture of Chucky. Child’s Play doll, you know, who’s supposed to be wearing a cute little jumper and striped shirt combo? Well, in this picture, he was gangsta. Puerto Rican gangsta, to be specific. Headband tied in a knot, big T-shirt, bling necklace, and sagging pants. I couldn’t help but laugh. Dude, the whole reason that Chucky is scary is that he looks like a sweet innocent child but is actually evil. Chucky as a Crip… not so scary.

2) Last night I had my first run-in with a restaurant that served $6 Vietnamese rice vermicelli bowls – delish! – but also had shark fin on the menu. I wasn’t sure what to do. I can’t support shark fin. But I sure as hell support rice vermicelli! I just got the curried shrimp with coconut milk over noodles and resolved not to ever go back there. So sad.

3) On Sunday morning I got up at 6:00 am, after a rooftop party in Queens and a late-night kitty visit at Kate’s, to do a homeless model photo shoot. It was way fun. I’m going to try to post a few of the photos here via Model Mayhem but you may have to have an account to see them – let me know if they don’t work and I’ll try another route:

Oh, wait!

I know what to blog about! Check me out, I'm published TWICE this week!

Firstly, a while back I may or may not have made a big deal of having a short story accepted as part of an anthology called "Memoirs of Meanness." It's coming out THIS WEEK from Pergola Press, after much hemming and hawing over formatting and such. Dude, it's a BOOK. I don't have many details just yet but when I know more about where you can buy them and if/when/where there are any readings, I'll post up here.

Secondly, my friend Carlos and I had a talk the other day about surrealist fiction, so I sent him two of my stories. They're not relaly surrealist in the hardcore literary analysis way, but they're surreal nonetheless. So, turns out, he loved them! And he published on on his lit mag, The Whiskey Dregs! Check me out!

Stumped.

Well. I really want to blog today but I just... I'm stumped. All I can think of to do is regurgitate some news article or post some video or ramble on about my weekend, but none of those things seem to fit the theme of the blog.

I think I've got a summer fever or something. All I want to do is just go sit in the park, where it's so green I could've sworn they were enhancing the trees with some sort of fake green color until I realized I was IN it, not watching it on TV. Creepy how we assume we're looking at everything through a lens these days, isn't it? Is that how you spell lens? Wow, I'm brain dead.

I had 3,000 words to write today for a magazine, so maybe I have an excuse, but I don't feel like anything I wrote really justifies my stupidity at this point. Also I guess I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I should have over the weekend, so maybe that's part of it.

I worked on Saturday morning, after a night of much vodka, and then had a modeling session/photo shoot on Sunday morning after much beer and three hours of sleep. The modeling was actually fun this time - partly because I really like the photographer and partly because I haven't done any modeling for so long. I really only ENJOY it when it's a concept I'm behind, and this one was hilarious: I cut up a wife beater and wore a pair of really beat up jeans, got myself all grungy looking (mascara for dirt under my fingernails and streaked on my skin, with some green eyeshadow as grass stains on my feet), made a little cardboard sign that said "Starving Model: Please Help" on one side and "Will Pose for Food" on the other, and went and posed enar this vacant lot in my neighborhood. It was hilarious. It was only 7:00 am so the streets were mostly empty, but a few lonely souls wandered by and gave us the weirdest looks. I'll put up some pictures when I get them, I suppose.

I've also had this idea that I can't decide if I want to model in/make happen photographically, or draw. But the other day on the train back from JFK (a loooong train ride, and I was verrrry tired, so my brain was doing interesting things), I thought how cool it would be to have a series of images of a woman climbing around and using the poles in the subway car as props. Like standing on seats and leaning out, holding onto the overhead bar, wrapping on leg around the middle bar and reaching out to the side bar with her hand, just kind of writhing and wriggling all around a totally empty car like that. Or, better yet, a full car, but that complicates the whole thing. And in my head she's like this creepy kind of heroin-chic fairy lady in a small, clingy dress - or if I draw her, totally nude - that looks like she's somehow a ghost or a spirit totally out of place on the subway... I think I might see if I can get a photographer on board and try it out, at like 3:00 am on a Tuesday or something... Input?

Oh, also...

Check this out.

http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto/

Happy Saturday!

Some days, when you drank a lot of vodka the night before and still have to get up to go work 4 hours of completely useless overtime on a Saturday morning and your head hurts and when you walked up out of the subway you almost stepped in a really horrendous pile of vomit on the stairs... You just need to put on some makeup, turn on the tape deck, and pull the wig down from the shelf...

Back to the city

Well, I'm back in the city after five glorious days of laying around with friends, chasing Libby's children around, drinking, eating, and generally loving having more than a foot of space on every side of me NOT filled with some smelly person or garbage. It was glorious.

I got back to the city on Tuesday night and immediately felt the full weight of the next few weeks settling on my frail, frail, sore-from-boogey-boarding shoulders. I realized while in North Carolina (ie, the South) that I have way too much going on in my life. Too many social engagements, projects, plans, etc, and that I really really need to work on just slowing down, taking things day by day, and making sure I have some time off every now and then to decompress. But when I looked at my planner I realized that I have maybe three days in the next month that aren't already booked. And, well, that was not good. Cause I have a lot of things I want to do in my own time, for myself, by myself, that just can't happen when I'm so busy, even if I'm busy doing fun things with friends.

So, on Wednesday night I had a little bit of a meltdown. And by little bit I mean, of course, giant calamitous fit of neurosis. I accomplished nothing and started crying at the mere idea of folding laundry. It was bad.

But, the next day, on my way home, I walked by the H&M on the corner of 59th and Lexington, and out of the corner of my eye I recognized my friend Tom Napak from college staring at me in black and white from the store window. "Whaaaat?" I said, and whirled around. Yup, there he was, in all his uber-sexy glory with band-mate Tom Furey (the two of them make up Dangerous Muse), advertising their super-awesome Fashion Against AIDS shirts!! I flipped out, took a bunch of pictures on my phone, and immediately texted Tom to say congratulations.

I just got back from the H&M on 5th and 52nd, where Dangerous Muse is in the window as well. They're so sexy that their picture is hanging in more windows than Dita Von Teese, Cindi Lauper, and Katy Perry, just to name a few. Yeah. THAT sexy. Anyway, I bought a shirt - SO cute! The girl shirts are yellow and have a purple design of male and female condoms shaped into a heart! When you purchase a shirt, 25% of the retail price ($16.90 for girls, $14.90 for boys shirts) goes to HIV/AIDS awareness projects. And you get to look super awesome and chic and support the awesomeness that is Tom. Check it out. http://www.hm.com/us/#/faa2009/

So, I'm feeling better. Hell, if Tom can be in the window of H&M, I can damn well get some writing done and have time to paint, too. I'll figure it out. But I may have to lock down the old schedule for a while and say no to al ot of invites in order to get my sanity back.

Ta!