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London, Part 4.

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Did I mention that we went to theater? ‘Cause we did. We saw four pieces of theater and some stand-up comedy. Let me run through the theatrical stuff real quick-like for you.

1. Warhorse. It’s going into previews at Lincoln Center right now. It was fabulous, one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. I highly recommend it. That being said, it is also a total cry-fest. Ooooh, you’re gonna cry, possibly forever. It’s based on a children’s war story. What the hell, England? War stories for kids? You read that material to them at bedtime? “And then the grenade exploded, and Michael was blown to smithereens right in front of his childhood friend Alan. Alan then had the metallic taste of Michael’s blood in his mouth. Nighty-night kids!” Anyway, the roles of the horses are played by giant, horse-size puppets run by three people each. You can see the puppeteers, but after a while you don’t even notice them there. The horses breathe, and their ears wiggle back and forth, and they snort and slap away flies with their tail, it’s just amazing. It’s going to be one of the best pieces of theater you’ll see in ages. Here are some pictures I found online.

Quick recap: Phenomenal theater, you will cry until your face puffs up and people think you got punched in the face in a brawl over syrup.

2. The Woman in Black. This is spooooooooky bit of theater. Since you’re never going to see it, I can give you the plot summary. Woman A has baby out of wedlock. Her sister, Woman B, offers to take the child and raise it as her own. Woman B is a lady of means who lives in a big house surrounded by spoooooky marshes covered by spoooooky mist. Woman A is distraught but has no other options, so she agrees. Woman B says Woman A can visit the boy, but must not reveal her true relationship to the child. When the boy is six, Woman A, while waiting by the window of the big house for the boy to return from an outing, sees the pony and cart that the child and a caretaker are riding in. She then sees the cart, pony, child and caretaker fall into the marsh and get sucked under. Woman A is completely emotionally destroyed, develops a wasting disease and dies. Her ghost now haunts the big house her sister lived in. If you see her (woman dressed all in black, skeletal face), that means your child will die shortly after. Everyone in the nearby village avoids the house because – hey, shocker! – they don’t want to bump into her and have their kids die in unpleasant ways. But a young lawyer goes up there to close out the estate and organize the finances and creeeeeepy things happen.

Anyone who knows me knows I do not like child-based terror. This show had all the things that make the skin on my back get icy and leave the room. Rocking chair with no one in it? Check. Music box that no one opened but is playing anyway? Check. Flashlight zipping around a room filled with children’s toys and clothes? Check. M. Night Shyamalan-style build-ups of silence and suspense following by loud screaming that caused me to crap my pants? Check.

Quick recap: Spoooooooky.

3) The Children’s Hour. It was meh. It had lots of famous people in it (Carol Kane, Ellen Burstyn, Kiera Knightley and Elizabeth Moss), but some of the people are just not very good stage actors. Combined with a script that is not exactly riveting (Are they lesbians? Aren’t they? Who cares?), it made for a very tepid experience. And at no point did Carol Kane say, “LIAH! LIAH!!”, which was a disappointment. But the good thing is that you can drink beer outside. Here is Cricket drinking beer outside the theater.

Quick recap: Meh.

4) The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Okay, I admit, this is a wholly American show, but I love the hell out of it and I wanted to see how the Brits handled such New-York-y material (answer: really freakin’ well). Since it was the first night of previews, Cricket and I had front-row seats, which was exciting. I was reminded how great a show it was and if it ever comes back to this area, I highly recommend you go see it. I have rarely laughed so hard.

5) And the stand-up comedy. It turned out to be terrific, but I won’t lie – Cricket asked me to pick some stand-up, and I picked this one solely based on the fact that it was being held at a place called The Slug and Lettuce.

If you go to London, go to this show. It’s called Soho Ho, it’s held at The Slug and Lettuce on Saturday nights, and you get a discount to go to an disco down the street called The Loop with a real light-up floor a la Saturday Night Fever in the basement. We did not go to The Loop because we were coming down with Travel Plague, alas, but had we been healthy, we would have.

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London, Part 1.

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

I’m back from London, and I have brought with me the dreaded Lung Rattle, Accompanied by Nasal Snot. I make this upsetting horking noise, like a cat regurgitating lawn clippings, it’s not good. But other than that, it was a great trip. I have sorted through all the pictures, and I will end up blogging about 110 of them. They’re all cropped and organized, but first I want to talk about the picture-free aspects of the trip. I was in London for six days. I had been there before, but Cricket had not, so we did all the tourist attractions, and since I hadn’t been there in eight years it was nice to have the refresher course. London is a wonderful city, but it has one huge tragic flaw in my book: its street layout. Here’s the city planning of London – Romans arrive and name it Londinium in 43 A.D. There are some houses. They put a street near those houses. Then there are more houses. Another street appears near them. And so on and so forth, with absolutely no concern whatsoever for, you know, any kind of order or anything. It’s a horror to navigate. A street map of London looks like Dr. Seuss took some acid and dropped uncooked spaghetti on the floor. Here’s a map I found on the web.

See? The streets change names and have odd angles, and they’re leaving out all the smaller streets and alleys and dead ends. It’s like Lower Manhattan, but all over. I was so sad. If I lived there, I would have to have a chip put in my neck so people could find me after I wandered off so I wouldn’t get mired in a peat bog and be found perfectly preserved thousands of years later.

My favorite comedian in the whole wide world is Patton Oswalt, and I have a bootleg performance of him in Atlanta in 2002. He talks about one of his trips to England and Ireland, and I pulled a small chunk out for you to listen to. Warning: some coarse words.

patton-oswalt

Now, I’ve heard that for years, and I was like, oh, game shows can’t be that different in England. Hoo boy, was I wrong. I was in the hotel one afternoon and I caught a bit of a show called Countdown. First of all, it’s like the SATs. You have to be good with both letters and numbers. Second, they have a resident lexicographer named Susie Dent, who they occasionally go to for fun word info (in the episode I caught, she explained the origins of some of our favorite dinosaur names for a good three minutes, which in game show time is a month and a half). There’s no background music. There’s no cheering. Watching it is like penance for a crime. These two contestants bust their humps with word and number problems for a half-hour. The loser got (I’m not making this up) the Oxford Dictionary and a mug with the Countdown logo on it. The winner, who was on his eighth day, they didn’t even mention what he was going to win, whenever that happened. I had to look it up. Brace yourself: He or she wins a leather-bound copy of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary, worth £4,000, which is about $6,000 (okay) and THE UGLIEST TEAPOT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

So let’s review: The contestant I saw had been on the show for eight straight days, I have no idea how many more days he has to be on to win, and when he does wins, finally, he will bring home $6,000 worth of books and an affront to mankind masquerading as a teapot which he will most likely display on his mantle to appall people’s good taste for years to come. I’d like to see this show last on American television for two episodes. On the Game Show channel, at 2:00 in the morning. Even then, it wouldn’t happen.

Tomorrow, I’ll start on the many cultural wonders I saw, but for now, after editing all those pics, I’m going to bed.

Posted in New York, The Telly, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Prince and the New Year.

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

Did we all have a nice New Year’s? I got to see Prince live, people. Live! I’ve been wanting to see him since high school, so this was super-exciting for me. I went with Börrke. He performed on a stage shaped like his Glyph symbol, and since we was in the mega-crappity seats, I was very grateful for the big screens. Prince is a little man (5’2″, woman’s size 4, itty bitty man), and when you’re up against the ceiling, he’s just a vibrant purple speck in your vision. Here are some pictures I took during the concert.

We were surrounded by all kinds of people, but the best people were the middle-aged black women. They were into it – singing, dancing, etc. One woman behind us had been appreciating hard liquor earlier in the evening, and she was hell-bent on hearing Prince sing a song called “Adore”. Every time he started playing something, she would scream out, “PRRRAAAAAAANCE! ADOOOOORRRRRE!!!” At one point, I said to Börrke, “Do you think she understands the concept of a set list? As in, the song are set in advance? It’s not a ‘yell out stuff’ list. Don’t be all screamin’ ‘Free Bird’ and whatnot.” Anyway, the super-awesome concert ended, and we decided to take the stairs down from the roof of Madison Square Garden (about ten flights). So does Adore Lady. She turned to me and says, “You know the song, right?” and she started belting it out. We’re smooshed in there with everyone else in the known universe and we’re moving at the speed of a glacier. A man started howling like a dog in response to Adore Lady’s enthusiastic singing. I turned to Börkke and said, “This is my hell – trapped for eternity on a never-ending downward-heading stairwell with a thousand other people moving really slowly while this woman sings ‘Adore’ and the other man howls like a castrated wolf. My hell. Welcome to it.”

Finally, about a million years later, we made it outside where I saw the Empire State Building. I would like to think it was purple in honor of Prince. So until someone tells me otherwise, that’s what I’m going to do.

And since I’m sure you’re curious, here’s a link to the song “Adore” (which Prince did not sing).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkw3p2xRgI

Posted in Music Videos, New York | No Comments »

T’raveling to T’ronto.

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve gone. I have been working like a dog. Brutal brutal work. I was busting my butt at my normal 12-hour-day-pace, and then I was asked to go to a high-end casino/convention hall for a meeting, which would kill my Saturday, Sunday and Monday. No problem, I packed up a bunch of laptops and clothes and plugs and dongles and clickers and toiletries and took a car to the casino, where I got to spend a lovely evening not gambling. I don’t gamble, so most of the charms of casinos are lost on me. But I did get to eat good food and sleep in a mad-comfortable bed and take a 900-degree shower where I came out looking like a boiled ham (that was my desired appearance, strangely enough. I like very hot showers.). I came back to the office on Monday evening expecting a nice relaxed week, but no! I was immediately told not to unpack because hey, you’re flying to Toronto tomorrow for another meeting! Jolly fun! Here’s the problem: I don’t mind working. I HATE HATE HATE flying places for business. To begin with, flying is a hassle of epic proportions. Now add two big ole heavy laptops and a projector to your carry-on, all of which you must unpack and lay out for the scanner along with your shoes and jacket and other possessions of DANGER!, and you have a colossal pain in the posterior. I make a very poor pack-llama. But for the bulk of this trip I was kickin’ butt, until The Incident. The pitch team and I were holed up in a meeting room at one of our sister offices, Publicis Toronto, which is in an old factory. The benefit of that are the giant windows and the wide-open spaces. The not-good thing is that the floor subtlely changes height all over the place by about and inch and a half. All over. So when everyone went to dinner, I decided to stay behind and work on some stuff, the CCO kept me company, and I got a phone call. So I’m not rude, I went into one of the cubicles waaaay on the other side of the building. I jabbered away, finished my call, and stepped out of the cubicle, not noticing the distinct difference in height. I then proceeded to collapse on myself like a fat deck of cards, lightly twisting both of my ankles, but mainly twisting the hell out of my right knee. I laid there like the Heisman Trophy on my side, making hissing and groaning noises and trying not to poop myself from the pain. Which is how my company’s CCO found me. Awesome. Really dignified. I made it through the meeting on the next day and got home with my 40-pound, $6,000 carry-on luggage, but I did it all while hobbling like Frankenstein. What tiny shreds of sex appeal I had blew away in the breeze when I entered the room with my stiff-legged Weeble penguin gait. Here’s the best part: I called my mom that evening of The Incident to inquire on the best type of care (apply ice). I then asked her to make a doctor’s appointment with an bone-n’-joint doctor. The next day she tried to make an appointment but they asked for my insurance info, which she didn’t have. So she called Cricket and asked him if he knew it, and she also called Börrke at the office and asked her. Now that Mummy had informed the entire planet of my debacle, I kept getting text messages like “ARE YOU OK????” and “Call me!!!! R U in a hospital?!?!!!” and the like. Lots of unnecessary drama. It turns out that I have what the medical community likes to call “a boo-boo”. Basically I just twisted it, now there’s a little swelling and a lot of ouchies, but it should go away by itself in ten days or so. Moral of the story: Jessica better not have to travel for work any time soon, because it sucks so very hard. I swear to God, I will go all Münchausen and break something on myself every time until they stop making me go.

In an unrelated note, I love how Canadians say the word “sorry”.

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Rammstein.

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

Cricket, being German, wanted to go see Rammstein in concert. Rammstein, for those of you who do not know, is a German industrial band. All their songs deal with death, misery, sadness, rage and sex. No rainbows, no flowers, no koalas. They had one big hit in the US with “Du Hast” (“You Have”). Rammstein doesn’t like the U.S. at all, so this is their first tour here in about 11 years. Cricket was super-excited. So I bought him tickets (Madison Square Garden sold out in under two minutes!) and we went. We were seated about two rows from the ceiling, so all my pictures are not-so-great. Luckily, other people with better cameras took pictures as well, and I found them on the internet to sprinkle amongst my crappy shots. Here’s a picture of the band for you.

First of all, there were the fans. Almost all white people, mostly dudes. A great deal of black garments, especially those oversized black canvas pants with tons of zippers and latches. A lot of t-shirts featuring Slayer, Lamb of God, Metallica, etc. An ABUNDANCE of piercings. One guy had multiple piercings on his hat. (I wanted to ask him if it hurt, but I didn’t feel like getting killed.) Cricket, in his tasteful zip-up jacket, and me, in my dorky puffy coat, were not the ideal audience. We sat quietly during the opening act, CombiChrist, while people around us drank copious amounts of beer and yelled stuff. And then Rammstein came on (and immediately Cricket and I were in the center of a swirl of pot smoke). Has everyone seen “This is Spinal Tap”? Spinal Tap, the fictional band in the film, was famous for having elaborate, ridiculous set pieces, and Rammstein does the same. They need twenty trucks to go on tour with them to hold all their stuff. And pyrotechnics. Hoo boy. If you type “Rammstein Live” in Google Images, this is what it looks like. FLAMEY.

So, there was steam…

And crazy lights…

And insane amounts of fire.

It’s important to know that I’m not making up anything I say from this point on. Till, the lead singer, comes out on stage for the first song wearing a red leather apron, a hairnet, a red feathered neckpiece, and an apparatus that wraps around his cheek and lights up the inside of his mouth. For the tour, he wears the metal thing that goes into his mouth and lights up, but to film their latest video Till actually pierced his cheek, put a grommet there and wired the light into his mouth that way.

Then, in one of their later songs, the keyboardist, who goes by the name of Flake, comes down and knocks Till over. Till picks up Flake and tosses him into a large metal bathtub. Till then picks up a really weird-looking arm gun and fills the bathtub with sparks. Shortly after, Flake comes out in a sequin-covered suit and goes back to the keyboards, were he walks on a treadmill while he’s playing. None of this has anything to do with the song they’re playing, or any song they’ve ever played, or anything that’s ever happened anywhere, ever.

Then, for the song “Engel” (“Angel”), Till comes out wearing a giant pair of metal wings, which slowly open. Then fire shoots out of the tips of them and sparks fly out of the middle bits.

But, by far, the piece de resistance is during the encore, when they play the song which, for reasons of tastefulness, I will call “Kitty”. During “Kitty”, Till gets on a giant, pink cannon that shoots foam all over the general seating area. Still not making stuff up.

It was a hell of an experience. Aside from the fact that I had to stand the whole time, it was delightful. For pretty much the whole show the guy in front of me was rockin’ the devil-hands, so that was nice.

And the sea of camera-phone lights were beautiful.

The best part was that earlier that day, something called SantaCon had taken place, so many audience members were still dressed as Santa. Very trippy. Here are some pictures of SantaCon.

Here’s a link to their latest video. They filmed it on their travel set, so you can see the light in Till’s cheek, the pyrotechnics, the sequined suit and the treadmill. Also, one of the lines in the song is “barbed wire in your urethra.” Magical, I tell you.

http://www.muzu.tv/sonisphereuk/rammstein-rammstein-ich-tu-de-weh-promo-video-music-video/578200?country=us&locale=en

Posted in Activitays, Music Videos, New York | 1 Comment »

All I want for Christmas is a nap.

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

Ugh. I keep forgetting that my work has ebbs and flows, and this time of year is always horrendous. I have had to work so flippin’ hard these past two weeks, I haven’t had time to blog. Or bathe. Or keep my sanity. I do apologize that my posts have been so slackerly, but hopefully the upcoming months will be less work-consuming. I hope.

Now, things I have seen in my travels in New York. But first, there was this sidebar on Buzzfeed.

I thought it was magical. I didn’t click it. I like the version I have in my head better.

I work across the street from a Mrs. Field’s Cookie-Procuring Facility, and in the window they were displaying this.

Yeah, taking a heart-shaped cookie and flipping it upside-down to make Santa’s face isn’t working. His beard looks like a butt and the blob of red twisty frosting representing his mouth looks like a very special holiday sphincter. Next time, use an oval-shaped cookie.

I also work down the street from Koreatown, where many restaurants and bars and karaoke lounges. One of them had this sign outside.

I think they meant “Happy Hour”, but every time I walk past the sign it feels like a frat boy is yelling at me. “Come in here! You’ll be happy all friggin’ night!!”

In keeping with our wordy theme, I often complain about the unnecessary use of apostrophes, but recently I came across the absence of an apostrophe and it made me equally sad.

Awww. Unhappy emoticon here.

This dress caught my eye and made my day.

It looks like a regular black cocktail dress, but through the use of expensive ruffled ribbon and oddly-shaped sequins, it became beautiful and unique. Hey! People at home! Pay attention! A little elbow grease can turn ordinary garments into fancy-pants evening wear! Heed my words! DIY clothes need not be horrifying! Thank you!

I was on my way to Times Square, and I passed a pop-up Sanrio store in the middle of Broadway. And parked next to it…

It’s a cute little Smartcar covered in Hello Kitty heads! And a truck covered in other characters! So adorable!

Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all. I’m off to have Chinese food, as is the way of my people.

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Macy’s Christmas windows.

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

I tend to only get excited about Saks Fifth Avenue windows and Barney’s windows, but this year I was super-pleased to read this article:

http://theater.lohudblogs.com/2010/11/17/proof-of-purchase-at-macys-windows/

That’s my alma mater, y’all! Since I graduated from the Theater Design Tech program at SUNY Purchase with a degree in Set Design and I work across the street from Macy’s, I felt obligated to check out my former classmates and their activities. So the other day I sauntered across the street and checked out the windows. Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

They built the whole thing out of paper, which I think is a great idea. I think they did a swell job with the forced perspective and all. They even did the animatronics as well (we’ll get to that later). It bothered me that the characters they built didn’t match the style of the environment at all. I also think that while there are spots where the paperwork is spectacular, there are some spots where they didn’t push far enough with the material. That being said, I can’t judge them at all because who knows how much time they were given or if some Macy’s bigwig came in and gave his opinion and even though it was crap, they were forced to follow it. I don’t know the politics behind the making of the windows. So I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. Here are some of the more beautiful paper details.

And there was one window that gave me chills because it looked EXACTLY like draftings I had to make when I was a sophomore. I mean, uncannily similar. And since these people took the same classes as me, it’s very possible that it is taken from those draftings. I had a really rough time at college (entirely my own fault, but still) and it took me right back there, like a ‘Nam flashback.

Ahhhhhhhh.

Each window had some form of animation, things sliding into frame, things sliding out, etc. and my favorite was the village with the tree in the center.

The whole village lifted up, but if the tree didn’t move forward, the hole cut out for it would scrape the paper off the tree, so they have the tree tip forward when they lift the set. It was neat. I made an animated gif for your enjoyment.

Ah, it was delightful. Here’s a picture of the wee children enjoying the experience with their eyes full of wonder.

Hopefully this week I’ll have a chance to run over to Saks Fifth Avenue and see what they have goin’ on window-wise.

Posted in Advertising, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff | No Comments »

Meet the Breeds.

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Back a few months ago, before work took over my life, I went to an event called Meet the Breeds in the Javitz Center in New York. It was supposed to have 140 breeds of dogs and 60 breeds of cats. Alas, that was not true: they had closer to 50 breeds of dogs and 25 breeds of cats. AND they didn’t have my favorite breed of dog, which is the Borzoi or Russian Wolfhound. Also, it’s only the second year they have done this, so it was quite chaotic. But I got to meet a whole bunch of doggie breeds I previously didn’t know, and that was exciting. Here’s a brief and extremely late recap.

As I came in, I was greeted by cat agility, which caused me to giggle. Note how well it is going. The cat is just looking at the hurdle. It ain’t jumpin’ for anything. This could take days.

I went up and down the rows, dogs first, then cats, and I came to the realization that both dog and cat owners are equally insane. They owners were allowed to decorate their display space any way they wanted, and some people went as far as they could go. In the Saluki booth, they had an entire Saharan tent, with leather poofs to sit on and carpets and everything. I imagine if they could bring in a camel, they would have. The owners often dressed up as well. We’ll get to that.

I went late in the day, so many beasties were starting to get tired. Like this itty-bitty teeny tiny Chihuahua. It must be hard holding up that giant bulbous forehead.

One of the breeds I was introduced to was the Cirneco d’Etna. Etna is an active volcano in Sicily (when I went to Sicily, Etna was oozing black goop and ash, very thrilling).

Here is a picture of the Cirneco d’Etna. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but his owner is eating a sandwich, and the dog is very interested in the sandwich. I think he is willing the sandwich to float over to him. COME TO ME, he is saying. I MUST EAT YOU.

Another new dog I was introduced to was the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. I love that name. Alliteration makes me happy, and this name has it in spades.

And there it is, the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. It was a long day, and the doggie was tired. I might recommend to the owners next year not to match everything to the color of the dog. You don’t want to camouflage your beast, you want it to pop. Perhaps next year, a deep blue-green petrol color garment and pillow. Just a suggestion.

The third breed I was introduced to was the Xolointzcuintli (pronounced sho-lo-intz-queent-lee), the hairless Mexican dog.

“Hairless” is a bit inaccurate, because the dog (which is really sweet, by the way) has a tuft of white hair on the top of its head.

Now, concerning the dressing up: People wanted you to be excited about their breed, so often they would dress up to something pertaining to their breed. For example, there is the Corgi. The Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, loves corgis. So, if you look in the background, you will notice a woman dressed as the Queen in front of a fake castle.

And there is a breed of cat called the Ragdoll. So this owner dressed as, well, you know.

Where I draw the line is dressing up your beast. There’s some breed of cat that is related to the Wild West or cowboys in some way, and this is what the breed aficionados decided to do to them.

Okay, I don’t know much about alotta things, but one thing I do know – you do not put a tiny cowboy hat with an elastic head-holder-thing on a cat AND a kerchief AND then perch it on a saddle for long periods of time. If you do that and the cat scratches all the skin off the soles of your feet while you are sleeping, then the cat is completely justified. In fact, I would suggest we give the cat an award for showing self-restraint and only flaying your feet and not all the way up to your knee. Good kitty.

Posted in New York, Stuff | 1 Comment »

Happy Fangsgiving!

Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Happy post-Thanksgiving, y’all! I haven’t written anything for a while due to a combination of nothing interesting happening to me and being worked to the bone, but I’ve had a few days off and I have recuperated, and I also went to see the Thanksgiving Day Parade again from my office, which I will delve into momentarily. But first, I hosted the festive feasting at my apartment this year, and I cooked everything myself for the first time. I’ve never had that much raw dead poultry in my personal space before, I wasn’t really prepared for the sheer ookiness of the whole thing. I got parts-of-bird instead of one giant turkey because most of my family likes dark meat, so I was marinating the many legs and thighs and the one breast in a variety of vessels in my fridge overnight. I would forget they were there, and I would stumble into the kitchen for a drink in the middle of the night, open the refrigerator door and – AAAHHHHHH! Corpses! Corpses littering my – and then I would remember, that’s right, I put them there. This happened at least three times. Then I had to rub the skin with butter, really massage it in there, which caused me to have a total Silence of the Lambs moment, and the worst part of the directions was “put the remaining butter in the chest cavity.” Dear God, cooking can be so gross. But dinner went smashingly, except that I couldn’t find all of my grandmother’s fancy cutlery and that caused a few small problems. Have you ever watched people eat jello mold with herring forks? It does not go well. It looks like they are all unwillingly participating in an obstacle for a Nickelodeon game show. But the next morning I got to go with my father and see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade from my office, and that was delightful. I’ve covered it before, and everyone has seen it live on TV, so I’m going to only talk about specific bits that were of importance to me. Many of the pictures are mine, and the rest are taken by my beautiful co-worker Lor who was stationed on the ground and often had a better view.

Because they’ve changed the parade route, they performances no longer happen right in front of my building, but around the corner, so the only way I could see the dance routines was to watch the reflection in the mirrored building across the street. If you look above the Foot Locker sign, you’ll see the reflection.

Pokemon went by and he had a really great preceding float. I believe all of the balloons had little floats before them or following them. I thought this one was shnazzy.

My favorite float was the Jimmy Dean Breakfast Food Items float. While I actively dislike his breakfast food items, specifically his sausage, I am enamored of the commercials and this float. Damn you, Jimmy Dean, and your sub-par product! You taunt me with rainbows and solar systems! You are like the Lisa Frank of pork sausage!

There were two castle-type floats that caught my eye. One was the Office Max float. Why they picked a Foster’s Home of Imaginary Friends-type house as their float, I do not know, but I thought it was great. Then there was the pink castle. Now, I am a female, I have always been (despite some rumors to the contrary) and I like girly things just fine. But this pink castle, it was just so, PINK. I was overwhelmed, like I had been slapped in the face with a uterus. Filled with glitter.

There were two costumes/floats I desperately want to be on or in some year. One was at the base of the Murakami balloons. Here are the Murakami balloons.

And here is the costume.

Maybe they’ll let me borrow the headdress part and I can wear on the weekends while I run my errands. I think that would be super.

The other thing I wanted to be a part of is the small following float of Spongebob Squarepants. There was a very nice mermaid riding a lobster.

I MUST RIDE THE LOBSTER. I would wave so hard, my arms would fall off. Mayor Bloomberg, let me ride the lobster please!

This girl had a hell of a job, walking in front of the Big Apple float with Kanye West on it. I wonder if people threw stuff at her.

And here’s Kanye.

Following the Big Apple/Kanye float was a herd of people dressed like cops and robbers because…crime in New York is up? Or down? Maybe Riker’s Island paid for the float? I don’t know.

The other bizarre combination was a Statue of Liberty float (okay) covered with the little minions from Despicable Me (huh?). My father has not seen the film and insisted they were salt shakers. What was neat about them is they were all little people in there, but I don’t think there was any way for them to see out, so the ones on the float were fine, but the ones wandering around the street waving each got their own handler who would hold their hand and gently steer them around.

There were two balloons I had never seen which looked like the die (dii?) from Dungeons and Dragons. They weren’t really near anything else recognizable, so I wonder why they were there.

I was really excited about this float: you all know that I painted a piece based on the story of the world being on the back of a tortoise, and then there was this! And I was there with my dad, who told me the story! I felt like singing “Circle of Life” from The Lion King.

I also loved the Ukrainian ball balloons.

And that’s about it. I’ve spent the rest of the weekend so far working on my own artwork, so hopefully soon I’ll have a cool post about that. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a healthy and happy Thanksgiving weekend.

Addendum: The person in front of the Murakami float was, in fact, Takashi Murakami. So the chances of me getting to wear that costume are slim to none. Someday, though, I would like to be as happy as he is in the second picture. So. Happy.

(These two photos of Takashi Murakami are from slamxhype.com.)

Posted in Apartment, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

The gamut of emotions in mere minutes.

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that the last two Christmases seasons I have been obsessed with these dripping lights draped all over the trees outside my office. Every year I try to make an animated gif of them to capture the magic. I fail every time, but it doesn’t mean I won’t stop.

I decided this year to look at see if I could find them for myself and I could have drippy Christmas lights all year ’round, which would be GLORIOUS. So I did a hunt on the internet, and lookit! I found them!

(This is part where I am happy.)

And then…I see the price.

Holy crapbadgers! That’s five lights (I’m not counting the amount of bulbs, I’m just counting the tubes) for over $100 a tube. Ehhhhh.

(Now I’m sad.)

Maybe they sell shorter, thinner, less industrial versions. I’ll look for those.

And they do!

(Happy-ish.)

Aaaaand, then there’s the price again.

(Sad.)

Okay, now they’re $33.00 a tube. Better, sort of.

Long story short, they sell itty bitty ones for about $10.00 a tube. But it’s a really short tube and there are only 18 LED bulbs in each tube, so I would have to see them in action to see if they have the same effect as the long ones. It’s all been very emotional. I need a nap.

Addendum on December 7th: They have not put the lights in the trees. I am concerned. Perhaps there will not be drippy lights in the tree this year. I therefore see no reason to go to work until January.

Posted in New York, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

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