thats me at about 192nd street and the palisades. technically, the bronx da bronx. the school of hard knocks, clearly driving UNDER the GW is the best way to avoid traffic.
I just LOVE to do it. thats IF i can get my steadily expanding ass out of the water. the other day i kind of had a bit o' troublez. it was a sign that i need to get back into shape. note to self: MUST WAIL ON PECKS.
I call BULLSHIT because any guy who has been 15 knows fully well that this is impossible. At 15, a boy has to try hard to think about anything BESIDES having sex with his female teacher (attractiveness is assumed). That's really all they want at that age and unfortunately, 15 year old girls are still pushing them away. To actually get the chance to do it, with an attractive teacher no less, would have been a gift for any 3 guys of normal developmental speeds. considering how much they have to learn at that point and how many times they will screw it up on their own anyways, getting a small head start is nothing to frown at.
The Law needs to recognize that there might be a double standard here that makes sense. Girls might not be ready at 15, but boys ARE (making it extra hard since they can't get it within their age group all that easily). if there are any real men in the legislative body, they would protect these "considerate" teachers and not make it such a crazy breach for them to oblige young lads. if we continue to make it such a big deal just for the sake of being PC, then boys will have to wait another set of years for the joy of sex, which at that age, is like being sentenced to decades of blue balls.
in this case there were two other guys. so she was even outnumbered. thats like 45 years of boy to 22 years of woman. Are we to believe that all three boys got overpowered by little ms. Singh?! WHATEVER. I am tired of seeing pretty female teachers getting locked up for...TEACHING.
Truth be told, if you haven't guessed already, I had the serious hots for more then one of my teachers back then. I even wrote a short story to one of them that all but asked her to sleep with me. The next day she asked if i would wait after class. I was SO excited i nearly crapped my pants. Sadly, she told me that she got the meaning of the story and she liked it, but for her to act on it would be irresponsible and illegal. I STILL disagree (at least with the first part) :)
DEAR, (random Jamaican), FINKELSTEIN, BASK1, (random jamaican#2), ZEN2 in Jamiaca 1998. One glorious benefit of being a city kid, is that friendships made in the city can often last since most people from NYC tend to live in 3 places. NYC, LA, or San Francisco. Mostly because to live anywhere else, for somebody used to 10 million neighbors, is akin to finding oneself submerged in a vat of light whipped mayonnaise.
So that being said, the other day i went to a Yankee game, as is a hopeful tradition recognized by a core group of buds from high school. it has already become a tradition to us and we have already designed a somewhat regular itinerary. first we meet at the giant Bat at Yankee stadium, then we insult anybody who is late and mock how we are going to leave them high and dry sans their ticket, then we pile in, get drinks, get hot dogs, and commence to speaking so loudly and grotesquely that people for rows stare at us incredulously and grab the ears of their children. we don't care. fuck them, where are THEY from anyways?! this is the Bronxgoddammit. fuck that pussy suburban shit. what?
we actually tend to increase our volume on and around any moment where the surrounding fans want silence, like the national anthem, even during fleet week. not that we don't care about our nation, or about the soldiers, to the absolute contrary. we just don't think that being a bunch of idiot meat heads, singing all at once like sheep, proves our patriotism. being a patriot doesn't mean we feel it at moments, no, we feel it all the time. meaning that every second of every minute of the last eight years has been a constant slap in our patriotic faces. we're not singing or caring about this song or these people because we get the impression that its this mob sentiment that got us Bush shit in the first place. no, we need to think outside the box FOR our country. we drop loud "F" bombs and laugh for freedom, m'kay?! we pay a LOT of taxes so we don't have to put a stupid yellow ribbon on our cars and vote for people who then veto educational bills for vets. fuck-faces, all of them (Yankee fans sitting near us). real new yorkers like the Mets by the way.
Or, i might be reading too much into it, maybe conversations about how hairy some girl's bush was in high school is, no doubt, way more interesting then some song we've all heard a thousand times. not that we are even hearing about the special vagine for the first time, heck no, we talk about the same shit over and over, but even after all these years...it's STILL more interesting then the anthem. never underestimate the pull of hairy vagine in a loud group conversation.
so anyways, it came to my attention from two individuals that i have neglected to mention some of my most important buds on this online journal o' random turd-like thoughts and memories. so first off i'd like to mention Mr. Finklestein, a wiz kid with the writing thing and the books thing while still maintaining the "cool guy" status. nowadays he's a famous News Reporter, although it remains to be seen how long he can maintain the coolness with that shirt and tie on(sucka). a guy who guided me through my hard transition from inner city school of lawless-sex-crazed-xylophone-players to liberal-money-pseudo-boarding-school-drug-lovers of Fieldston. When the two worlds collided, he and i recognized in each other similar needs. like subtle, yet palpable destruction for the biologically inferior chump ass guidos of Riverdale.
So he and I and two other hooligans decided one day that Manhattan college, just down the block, needed some healthy defacing and humiliation at the hands of youthful, don't give a fuck, future leader prodigies. just what they wanted, really, seeing as how they were still rocking out in mullets and acid wash despite being at the tail end of the eighties IN one of the five boroughs. so we broke onto the campus, found (or maybe it was a happy accident) the administrative building, ran down the hallways tearing down bulletin boards, filled the elevator buttons with chewing gum, knocked over the school alter (god i hope you're not into those weird leftovers from the dark ages, cause i'm not), and terrorized the president's secretary (that was before we called them executive assistants). it was going along great until suddenly, out of nowhere, two of us got pinched by the cops. Finklestein and I looked at each other, and immediately knew the two caught chumps would sing on us, so we opted for the free ride back to our school.
Another friend who shows up to the Yank game, is a guy i have mentioned as a fellow train gamer and train fartwitnesser, is also a partner in crime in both writing (he writes DEAR), but also a fellow blogger. and the man who once got me to a hospital after i was knocked in the eye with a flying bagel. don't laugh, it's not funny. we used to have something called bagel Mondays in high school, it was some kind of deal with H&H bagels that our school would get bags and bags of NY bagels. we loved them like smart girls love gossip magazines, or dare i say it, like fat kids love cake. i could eat 3-4 without any milk or cream cheese. actually we didn't have either, which is why i even mentioned that.
but what would always end up happening, is that Tuesday would roll around and there would be a large supply of stale bagels left over. naturally, these bagels were discovered to have the gift of flight. being slightly UFO shaped and all, they tended to make great missiles. we, of course, soon developed a little game of...dodge-bagel. it was all fun and games, until one day i was coming around the main corner in our freshman year corridor. i came under fire from several people and had to duck incoming bagels. unfortunately i stood up too soon. just in time to see my friend Half-E whip one right at me. i literally watched the bagel, my eye was on it like a baseball, right up to the point where it lodged in my eye socket and stayed there motionless. i think i could make out the individual molecules of the hard bread up against my cornea, or maybe it was the crushed and damaged optical nerves misfiring off fake scientific visual information.
either way, the bagel had to be pulled out by somebody...whole. my eye ended up having a scratch right next to the pupil. it was at that point that all i could do was ask for help to get to a doctor. it was also at that point that my now old friend, Dear, volunteered to guide me down to the train to get to the hospital. we hardly knew each other before that, but ever since that forced march, we have been buds of the first order. i might be wearing a patch and in the middle of a lawsuit with H&H if it weren't for his random act of kindness. thanks for being there Mr. Finklestein and Dear. you guys suck, d'i mean, you're cool.
I was always playing football(soccer) in the plaza del sol in a neighborhood called Gracia. it was an old medieval part of town, one of the small villages that basically got swallowed up in the growth of the city. it was a very hip, very laid back area with little plazas where people gathered and hung out. the plaza del sol was my favorite one because it was so lively. there were several outdoor cafes whose tables often overlapped and there would be performers and people playing games. this is a video of the plaza i found on youtube, my game used to happen right behind where he is sitting and the cafes were off camera to the left. of course this guy has to rap, because that's what people do there.if you speak spanish and can't understand all of it, it's ok, he's mixing in Catalan.
i tended to sit and draw a lot at first. but as i became more used to the place i became friends with some local guys who played a lot of ball and smoked a lot of hash cigarillos, or "pourros". they were really nice and always brought a boom box and played music like the "gypsy Kings" or Led Zeppelin as if it were their personal soundtrack.
this one day we were playing ball, and it was starting to get dark. my guess is it was a saturday or friday evening because it was a bit too crowded to still be playing a relatively rough game. i was playing defence and the guy on the other team was about to score on me. i blocked the ball and punted it towards the other side of the plaza. only thing was, i punted it way too hard. the ball flies up over every one's head, well, everyone in the game that is. it thankfully cleared the outdoor tables of one of the cafes. i thought it might be ok, but i was still doing the obligatory act of holding my head with both hands with my mouth wide open.
unfortunately the ball was a direct trajectory to disappear inside an open restaurant door. one of the outdoor cafes had an indoor restaurant where people went for a more intimate, better ambiance kind of experience. basically, very well dressed people out on the town for a candlelit dinner. well, we see the ball go right in at a high velocity and angle. the bounce alone was probably going to be over 30 feet. from the sounds that came pouring out of the place it seemed like it must have ricocheted about 5-6 times. there were loud screams, both of the men and women pitch, there was the loud crashing sound of shattering plates and flying cutlery. i think i said something like "oops" and looked at the other guys and shrugged. i half expected a mob to come out with pitch forks and a police chase to ensue.
what happened next, is the clearest, most accurate summation of why Spain kicks serious ass. a waiter comes walking out very quickly with the ball. i get the feeling that we have trouble coming since he seems so determined. but then he holds the ball in two hands, pulls his arms up and back behind his head, and releases the ball towards us with his back foot properly still touching the ground. he had thrown the ball in as if he were a player, proper form and all. not a single curse word, or any angst whatsoever. imagine if Americans could ever be THAT tolerant?!?!
before there was personal home delivery services in NYC , there were several ways to score a "Nickle" bag of funk. My first purchase, when i was the tender age of 13, was from a guy hanging out at Needle park. Needle Park is now the quaint park adjacent the new 72nd street train station entrance. The park was a very sketchy little spot, called "needle" not because it is the shape of a needle tip, but because you could find somebody shooting up there.
But as my friends and i started smoking ganja more and more often, we found out about the Bodega spot system. these were little Bodegas that fronted as regular stores but were actually weed spots. some of them really sold regular stuff, but some of them had a doorbell, so they only let in people they trusted, and inside, they only had like one can of soda and some candy. The guys were usually kind of ill looking and you wanted to just get the bag and dip on out. some spots, like Deborah's on 102nd and Lexington, gave you candy with the purchase just in case a cop stopped to you to see what you bought.
the kind of weed and the size of the bag varied wildly and it was always exciting to find a new spot with a better deal or stronger weed. the nickle bags were the perfect size because as a kid, i never had all that much money and smoking with your friends usually meant rolling a blunt, which was usually one to a half a bag. so you could chip in like a buck with four other guys and get lifted on a stoop. often the spots labeled their stuff some random name that made it sound better, like Machine Gun Funk, with little guns printed on the baggy. there was one spot, on 106th and Columbus that we called Tabla. it was a little tiny pitiful looking bag. like a few dirty looking crumbs that were very damp and DEFINITELY sprayed with some kind of "extra"...my guess is PCP or something evil like that. because no matter how small the amount was, everybody who took a drag started spinning. it was so harsh that we would be passing it around and at any point in time about 3 of us would be doubled over, hacking and coughing up spit and snot. it was...AWESOME. i can't even imagine the damage thousands of blunts of that mystery meat did to my body and brain cells.
there was one time, when a guy who we went to school with suddenly decided he wanted to hang out with us all the time. he was a cool guy and was even bold enough to do murals with us on the "ledge". but one thing he wasn't prepared for was the Fuerza of Tabla. we smoked him out on the last day of school senior year. we had smoked near the school and were walking back to the Quad when all of a sudden his eyes kind of glazed over and he started lurching at me like a wild zombie in 28 days later. naturally a backed away from him since he was a huge guy and he continued walking or lurching towards school. we knew that he needed to NOT go to school but it was too late. so we hopped in our car and left school for the last time ever. that's how i last saw my highschool, running away from a friend who was clearly O.D.ing on Table. he ended up falling down a grassy hill in the middle of our school and into the arms of our dean. apparently his first words to our dean were "I smoked weed with Zen2, Zar, and Self"...our dean really didn't want to see us anymore so he pretended he didn't here that. our friend ended up getting into a lot of trouble with his college, but worked his way out of it. I still feel kinda bad about running away, but we were SO close to the finish line and i couldn't get involved in that noise.
Other odd uses of Table were that we used to smoke it to get pumped up for a bombing graffiti mission, and usually, it would just scare the shit out of me. because going bombing (writing graffiti all night) was scary enough without the induced paranoia of an illegal substance...plus a black cat ALWAYS crossed my path as i started. but that's another story.
One place that i will never forget was the Pope of Dope spot down in the meatpacking district. this fat guy, the Pope of Dope, who was one of the main characters behind the annual Pot Parade. It was a "comic book store" that had exactly one comic taped to the window. once you got in through the front door after being buzzed in, you were faced with a lone desk sitting in the middle of the room. the fat pope of dope would ask "how many?" and then he would count out the "Nicks" and hand them to you. he put the weed in envelopes for some unknown reason. he was one of those things that just made the Village a "different" kind of place back then.
The weather has cleared up a bit so i can't bitch about that so much, but i can get a bit upset over the Florent closing down after so many years. I started going there for brunch with my mom,step-father, and sister around 1987, maybe two years after it changed from the old R&L Diner. We lived a few blocks south in the west village. back then the area was pretty much the last place you would want to go eat in. It was always hard to maintain an appetite walking through the old meat packing district because besides the crack heads and tranny whores, there was the ever present stench of rotting meat. there would be whole chunks of bloody carcasses lying discarded on the cobble stoned streets and in the heat of the morning sun, it would instantly start to decay. the whole area seemed like it would never clean up and the Diner was just this anomaly of hipness and Parisian decor that stood out as a juxtaposing perspective on the area's future. well, the Florent was right in it's gamble, the area was meant for a different future then what was expected, and unfortunately for the restaurant/diner it's own prediction ended up being its own demise. rent that was $1300 dollars 23 years ago, has just topped $30,000. and the only rotting meat in that area is the rot of the bridge and tunnel pseudo foo-foo culture that has taken over.
so sad. i haven't had any Florent-style BoudinNoir in over a decade, but knowing that is a culinary delight that will soon disappear still disturbs me. It was nice just knowing that i COULD get some of the delish black saussiche if i really wanted too. It was nice to know my childhood sanctuary from the endless racks of dead cows and blood stained union butchers still resided on its ancient cobblestone street. I loved taking shelter from the stench there, and believe you me, they didn't have outdoor seating until well after i left the area to go to college. outdoor seating would have been a sort of olfactory torture. like nose water boarding.
notable memories are spotting Marla Hanson every Sunday. She was the up and coming model whose face got slashed by her landlord and some hired goons. I remember thinking how pretty she was despite her slashed up face. That made me wonder why those scars would have affected her career. I thought it only supported her good looks as they stood out anyways. it just revealed how bad the fashion industry is at really knowing what is really beautiful about women. that's around the time when i figured out that it's really not straight men who drive the distorted look of fashion models. the waifishskinniness, and all too perfect and androgynous faces you see on fashion magazine covers. I was always told, in a slightly accusatory tone, that it was men who created these visions. At least, that's what the girls in my school always accused me and my ilk of doing. pressuring them, through these mags, into losing weight by controlling the media. but i never bought the idea that that is what men project onto women as being beautiful. not for a second. if there are men who like that look, then they are most likely the ones NOT sleeping with women.
Moving on, getting into the Op/Ed section i come across another Thomas Friedman piece about how we are losing our super power advantage to the rising economies of the global market. he's right again, as he usually is when it comes to America's failures. I don't agree with some things he has said, like that we needed to spank Iraq to pop the "terrorism bubble". that comment was a bit on the extreme side. i, by no means, think the Iraq war was needed or a good idea on any level, thanks to my sister for pointing that out to me.
But in this case, he's right, but he's not happy about it. that's why i really like him. he's kind of a liberal hawk. His almost feverish patriotism always bubbles out in his pieces in the middle of impaling the administration and the country's politics. he is kind of like me, very concerned with the success of America. not only because he is Jewish and knows that Jewish success on the planet is very much dependant on America's success. but also that he is American, born and raised, and he wants us to lead the world just as much as any cowboy on the range does. And he knows that just remaining a super power is more important then America's current policies towards Israel and the rest of the world, because if it doesn't remain on top, then it's policies won't even matter anymore. He points out that we are all busy discussing whether or not we should be having dialogues with our enemies (which we currently don't, unfortunately), meanwhile, some of these enemies are caring less and less IF we talk to them at all. Friedman speaks of our biggest failure post 9/11 not being Iraq, although that is horrible, but really the failure is to make some quick and decisive changes to our fundamental dependence on oil.
"The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image."
I agree with this whole-heartedly. Not only is oil a pollutant which might be destroying our environment, and a limited polluting resource at that, but it also what gives power to our enemies. Considering that it is the vast amount of oil profit and resources that are enabling the theocratic and monastic regimes of the middle east to rake in money, as well as Venezuela and Russia. If we weren't paying so much for the stuff at the pump, these countries wouldn't be emerging despite our ignoring them or even sanctioning them diplomatically. the more we need the juice the more power they claim regardless. It seems completely ass-backwards to remove taxes on gas, or somehow pad the price to put a band aid on the problem...it's kind of like putting a filter on a cigarette, instead of quitting smoking.
when really, the spiraling gas price is our only hope of having the "natural" and "reactive" forces of capitalism define a new infrastructure that finds its energy elsewhere. i hope the price of gas keeps on going up, not only because it would initiate change as it loses control, but also because my investments are solidly in the oil and gas sector. i hope our economy flops around dealing with it for two reasons, i will profit, and America will finally realize it has to ween itself off. our system has always been good in a clutch, so maybe its high time we got squeezed like this. i know this bodes worse for the poor average American who uses food money for gas. but it will anyways be them who makes the biggest sacrifice. its the poor that sends its finest soldiers to die for the stuff in the middle east, and its the poor that have lost money while the oil execs claim the largest profits in history, and it will be them who loses work when the rest of the emerging economies of the world compete for the same limited amount of oil. i say bring it. America, if she can get her head out Bush's ass, will be very capable of overcoming this. it's high time we checked ourselves in at the Betty Ford clinic, and figured out how to cut ourselves free and to redefine technology and re-organize the energy consumption of our very capable and versatile economy. i have all the faith an agnostic can muster in this great country.
In the meantime, do yourself a favor, invest any spare change in Natural Gas and Oil Trusts and stocks. There is still a growing global dependence coupled with a depleting supply. it's simple math really. And, as long as your heart and vote is going in the right direction, feel free to profit off of everybody else's short-sighted politics. they certainly are in the white house.
My big beautiful car that brought me so much joy and excitement in California, the one i NEVER scratched or dented the three years I had it on the left coast, is in the shop again getting yet another garage related wound fixed. it's bumpers look like they suffered chickenpox as a child and the doors have all sorts of minute imperfections. this is ALL related to NYC parking, and a $500 monthly garage spot. you would think for that kind of money, there might be a smidgen of consideration from the guys who slam it into its spot everyday when i am not looking. they seem to do this with no mind to the car, a skill only mastered by a true new york mindset. Meanwhile, the shitty weather is yet again, cold and raining, and I am forced to walk through White Plains in the constant downpour so i can take the Metro North back to the city. no doubt I will be doing this all week since nothing gets fixed in NYC in under a week. But what is most egregious about the cold weather is the fact that May is almost over. May is usually the one month of nice medium weather, after the cold but before the real searing heat. If we don't get a nice may here it has the effect of winter slamming into summer without a break from extremities. Come June suddenly its 100 degrees and the city becomes a roaring medley of drippy A/C units and sweaty butt cracks. yay.
So here's my question to myself. WTF am i doing living here?!?! I have this rent-controlled apartment with a large private garden on the upper west side. i know, i am absurdly blessed to have this. but i am also cursed by it. i continue to keep the place and live in it out of obligation to the fact that is such a rare commodity. so rare, that even the hint of the idea that i would give it up makes people shutter. so, in the end, it really keeps me. it keeps me from enjoying months of great weather. it keeps me from the beach most of the year, and certainly from good waves. it keeps me from living in the same neighborhood as most of my old friends. it keeps me from good, convenient skiing (if anybody mentions Vermont, then they haven't done the math. it takes the SAME amount of time to fly to the Rockies as it does to drive to VT, and the mountains are actually big and get powder.) it keeps me from enjoying a generally higher quality of life, eating superior sushi, Mexican food, and wearing flip-flops all the time.
Am i seriously putting up with yearlong dreariness and nature isolation just to rub elbows with the hoards of suburban stripey shirt wearing rude-sters that populate the island of Manhattan now? is it that i really like swerving all over the 20 foot wide sidewalk avoiding baby strollers being pushed by an army of surly nannies so i can go to a real museum every now and then? it's really starting to look like insanity to me. or at least a failure to let go of my hometown. but it let go of itself a long time ago. or rather, it let go of it's beloved funky natives when it decided it was ok to quadruple every body's rent. now natives Manhattanites live in Brooklyn, or god forbid, even further. unless, like me, they ended up with one of the few rent-controlled anomalies that slants the rental market against the very people that used to make NYC a special and different place. it was once a sanctuary from the mundane, and the boredom, and the endless repetition of franchises that is America. now it's just like the malls of the mainland, only WITHOUT the convenience.
I was in a sunny and beautiful place this last weekend. I actually got a tan. The airport was a breeze and the food was great. the night life was easily accessible, even for a clueless visitor, and the dance floors were crowded and active. I don't know if anybody has noticed, but dance floors in NYC are only for places with cabaret licenses. they are rare and usually a 20 dollar cover IF you can get past the bouncer. That's the kind of system that Footloose was dealing with. the second i landed in the big rotten apple i was struck with just how decrepit and ugly the place is. fucked up streets all under construction that never seems to get finished, cars that look like they got into a death match with Ironman. big, old, brick projects that should have never been built staring smugly across at big, new, ugly, glass condos that should never have been built. the whole scene is just plain depressing and indicative of a place that is WAY past it's prime.
but first, before all that fun, i needed to go to the bathroom at La Guardia. I was suddenly faced with a looong line of guys waiting to destroy one of 3 dirty stalls. just 3. that really says it in a nutshell. thousands of swinging dicks, and just three toilets.
It all used to be worth it. Simply because the city was SO wild and crazy. it was so funky and fucked up back then, that most of the people that live here today would have gotten mugged and moved back home a while ago. it was a place to visit, to say that they had been there and seen it, but to live there one needed real guts. Now? it's the very people that i got to avoid by living in NYC that now surround me. It's their bumped up cars that bump mine in the expensive garage.
It's really really hard for me to just give up on my hometown like this. But clearly, it's just not as cool or pleasant as living on the west coast anymore. my days here are hopefully numbered. At least on a seasonal basis.
I look forward to one day complaining about traffic on the 405, the lack of good bagels and pizza, fog in the bay area, the slow driving skills of people in the north-west. those are complaints i know i can live with in the long run.
Of course, flash forward 10 years and i will probably still be ranting like this and living here. So maybe i just need to get really good at voicing my complaints just for the therapeutic effects.
It was 2002. I was having lunch with a friend on Abbot Kinney Boulevard one sunny day in Venice California. i had my face half submerged in a huge burrito when my phone starts vibrating in my pocket. I usually don't answer my phone when i am eating with company, but since my friend had just gotten up to go to the bathroom, i take advantage of the situation and answer it.
"Hello, is this Zen2?" An unfamiliar voice asks.
"this is him speaking" I reply.
"This is Monty from PDI/Dreamworks. We have reviewed your reel and we would like to fly you up to San Francisco to meet with some of our people, would you be available this friday?" my jaw dropped and my heart leapt out of my throat. I had gotten the call....and the music starts playing...ooooh child things are gonna be easy, oooh there gonna be alriiiight. i had just made it to the promised land.
Over 6 years before that, in 1996, i went to a very fateful interview for a master's degree at SVA. I ended up applying to an MFA program in "Computer Art", thinking it was to master Photoshop and graphic design, since that was the only thing i had been introduced to through an internship at a fashion magazine. But fortunately for me, i had mistaken that for what was really an Animation program. the woman at the interview listened to my whole shpeel about being a painter and a graff writer and wanting to go digital. she said "i think you have us mistaken for the Illustration department". i was embarrassed and disappointed until she said that she would love to hold onto my application and see what happens. long story short, i ended up getting in, finding out that it was one of the best programs for that kind of work, and also, finding out that i LOVED IT. it's like graphic design on steroids. it's SO complex and technical that it makes my head spin even now. it's also, once you've mastered the unbelievable amount of technical data, completely unlimited in what you can do with it. so suddenly i could visualize the images and dreams in my crazy head, only i had the tools to really make them look real, unlike my shaky painting hand that could never really truly paint what i was imagining. in painting i always looked at the final product and realized that i had only paraphrased what i wanted to see. the images where always a kind of visual compromise. i liked them, but i never admitted that they fell far short of what had originally been in my head. with computers, the limits of my hands were removed. it was up to my imagination, and how much skill i had as a 3D artist.
There are a few defining moments in my career as an animator. These are mostly incidents that can be seen as milestones which were a clear indication that i had chosen the right path in life. One early moment was when i took a job being tech support for an in-house agency animation department a few months after starting grad school at the School of Visual Arts. i got the job and quickly realized that there was one, lone SGI (a unix based special animation computer) box with the 3D program i was learning that nobody in the building knew how to use. since the computer and the software cost over 50,000 dollars and was just collecting dust, the fact that i could use it made me a shoe in. so before i was into my second semester, i was getting limo rides to school from the Ad Agency and back again so i could leave my motorcycle at home and show up to school like Ricky Schroeder in Silver Spoons. I had thousands of dollars worth of computers at my beckon, while students in my classes were fighting over scraps in the lab. giving me a rendering advantage to make my thesis...
please excuse the horrible compression and low volume. it is remastered from a smaller movie i found posted on the internet. when i get a chance i will find the orginal and post that...
Another moment was when I got a call from R/GA in midtown. at the time, R/GA was the best animation and fx studio in the city. they had seen my thesis animation at the North East Regional Animation Showcase (which i hadn't even been told had accepted my work). I knew when i walked down the hedge lined path to the front door of what looked like a star wars glass office that i was well on my way. from then on, i was turning down calls for work regularly. and that was before 2000. i also ended up getting sent out to Tel Aviv and working there. that was an intense and glorious experience in my life. It was scary and strange, but extremely interesting and a real learning experience. both on a cultural level, and just in terms of my ability to go to a far away place and make a life for myself not knowing a single person, or even speaking the language. the ironic thing about that job and how i ended up leaving it, was when they offered me a permanent position i turned them down because my loving father had made me nervous about the escalating Intifada. a week before i was offered the position, a club on the beach near my place had been bombed. i had gone to that club regularly and 17 people died there, so i was in agreement with my father and how i needed to get the fuck out of dodge while i still was alive. Well, i got back just in time for September 11th. but that's another story.
But hands down, the moment that i will never forget was the moment i got called up to go to PDI/Dreamworks. I had been moved out to LA by a place called Blur Studio. It was a fantastic place in Venice, full of really great talent and an owner who was more about the artistic integrity of the work and the cohesive family feeling of the staff then making stupid clients have their way with him. I loved it there, but was hell bent on working at a big movie studio. One studio had always stood out to me since the first time they made a presentation at my grad school about what they work on. At the time, they had already made Shrek and Antz, and from the first time i saw Antz, back when i was just learning how to key-frame for the very first time, i knew i wanted to be there. I rarely set such specific goals in life so this was almost a first for me, besides wanting to be a king graffiti writer, of course.
I had also gone to see A Bug's Life by Pixar and knew instantly that it was PDI/Dreamworks that was really bringing the rich lighting and deeply complex environments. Pixar had great character animation, development, and story. PDI/Dreamworks brought the art of the image to it's highest level at that point in time. I consider myself a visual artist and it was the color, the richness of the backgrounds, and the subtle complexity of lighting that really sealed the deal in making me pick them over Pixar. So, with that in mind, i went about building a reel from commercial work in NYC, since that was the arena i started in and to just jump into film is a huge leap for an animator.
So it was at an animation convention in LA, right after Tel Aviv and a week or two before 9/11 that i dropped my VHS reel into a basket full of reels. it was totally random and i had zero connections to the place. not even an old classmate who i could go through. it was that anonymity that makes the fact that they called me even more gratifying for me. it was solely based on my work. they called me up, flew me to SF and within a week i had an offer on the table. I can't even convey how great that felt. i had made it. not only was i going to live in San Francisco, a city i had always wanted to live dating back to the horrible disappointment of being rejected by UCBerkely when i was applying to college. now i was being moved there free of charge, and was going to get the big movie money at a big movie studio. i remember the conversation i had with my father, who i always keep posted on my career decisions. he would be proud of me no matter what i did in life, but the fact that when he asked me what this meant, that i could and did say "Dad, this is like being a baseball player and getting called up to play for the Yankees...from here on in, i can work on anything, anywhere i want. it's like being a "made" man the second i step foot in there." and this is true. i could here his pride overflowing on the other end of the line. he had worried so much about me when i was growing up, the graffiti, the tough friends, the school trouble. he had worried even after college when i became a bike messenger, as he worries about everything, including getting struck by lighting. but here, it was TRIUMPH. i was doing something incredible and he was filled with joy and relief for his son, the animator. Here is one of my shots from Shrek the Third. I was a lead lighter, I would light a sequence envrironment and a few key shots, then my team of about 6 lighters would go in and make the rest of that part of the film look like my stuff.
ever since that conversation, my dad always defers to my decisions, he always inserts, "I know you will make the right decision no matter what happens, you always do" well that, my friends, means a LOT to me. my mother has always approved of everything i did, including graffiti, because she is something of an anarchist and a free thinker and would approve of me if i were a ditch digger in scranton. but with my dad, his more "mundane" concerns, and his experiences with his own father, a harsh and disapproving Russian bear of a man. there was much more on the line. not that i chose animation or did any of that for my father specifically, but to get his absolute approval and his amazement at my achievement was a major major part of the success of getting the call from Dreamworks.
I look forward to more of these moments in my career, hopefully, there will be more milestones and goal reaching achievements, but there will never be again, such a huge transition from the unknown to absolutely positively perfect opportunity that came from the random "slip in shit" happen-stance of that first interview at SVA to the moment i walked through the door at Dreamworks. that was when i knew that i had made all the right choices and i had achieved what thousands of animators only dream of.
Here is my reel as it stands right now. the compression on youtube made it a lot darker so some of the stuff is way too dark to look at, but it's mostly viewable.
pretty much nails it. except for the celebrity part. I am a native and i look celebs right in the eye. plus, like with Tony Bennett, i like to yell "Tony!", like he knows me. By now he should, i've only done it to him like 4 times. Ed Koch too, I once hugged him in a vestibule.
Jackie O. and i had a moment. It was about 17 years ago, I was skating down 5th avenue near the Metropolitan Museum on the sidewalk. I guess it was her building that i was passing, because all of a sudden she comes flowing, all regal-like, out the front door and straight into my path. I swerved out in front of her to avoid a collision. It was not really a very close call, but she saw me and stopped to let me pass. i smiled big as i realized who she was. when i actually passed her i was about 3 feet from her so that i could literally smell her perfume. the most amazing thing about the incident was that she looked right at me and she gave me a big warm smile and a slight nod.
needless to say, it was a brief but glorious moment when this almost mythical legend of a woman gazed upon me and smiled in such warm, personal approval. she could have given me the stink eye because i forced her to yield way on her own block, but she didn't. maybe she liked skaters, or maybe she was in a good mood, or maybe she was used to dare-devil boys in her life, i will never know what about my intrusion she liked. but just having this brief shared moment made me feel very much alive. somehow, more so then the second before. before that, Jackie O. was too big to be aware of little old me. but when that happened, i grabbed a small little snapshot of her grand life and it was just between me and her. the fact that she seemed almost grateful for it, and her eyes really looked into mine, it really had the affect of making me feel like i had just received a seal of approval from the white house, and/or the queen of Camelot, Guinevere. it was like skating through a fountain spraying class, class, class all over me.
This is friggin' unbelievable. I just came across a witness to the Croton fight (see previous post), WHO WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE.
So, I was checking out the group "I hung out with you in The Meadow in the mid-to-late 1980's" and noticed that a familiar looking girl had answered one of my comments on the groups Wall about Bigfoot the drug dealer. I also noticed that she listed Croton-on-the-Hudson as her hometown and that she was my age, so i had to ask her if we might have met. Here's the convo....
me-- Hi , you look familiar, do I?
croton girl-- I noticed you went to fieldston in the same class as 2 good friends of mine. Do you know Jesse or Eric? I think they had their band Schleigho and another one even then.
me-- i was at Eric's and Jesse's place several times, including a party that ended up in a big fight and some Croton guy getting a head injury and then, later that night, nothing short of a Croton lynch mob coming back to the house for justice. it was LOCO. maybe you were there? croton girl-- OK, I'm sooooooo embarrased to admit this. I was at the party and tangentially responsible for the lynchmob. It was our Croton graduation night.....and I was hooking up w/ the asshole who got his head (deservedly) smashed in and ended up taking him to the hospital. That is probably one of my worst moments in life and I will forever feel so bad for Eric and his parents. But such is a 17 year old libido. The guy was cute and I was a moron.
My friends and I created a crew, as is traditional in the NYC world of graffiti writing. I'd like to say that we gained a good amount of recognition in the city, but in the grand scheme of time and all 5 boroughs we only held down a small window of modern city history. but there are a lot of "old school" writers (old as in late 80's and early 90's, which is to some, new school) who remember us and who we were.
One thing we were really good at, besides street art and getting into trouble, was annexing real serious hoods from the upper west side, when it was littered with "thugs" and the like. i had a friend, Zar, who had childhood friends from the local projects and they were really kind of fun to hang out with, plus they were GREAT allies in times of need. at one point i remember rolling down Broadway with 30-40 guys and basically "wilding". stealing stuff from newspaper stands, terrorizing pedestrians, and making cops somehow disappear. they used to vanish when real trouble came around, i picture them seeing the rukus, and slowly backing up a side street until they were out of sight. a trait that they used to be skilled at in the times of Mayors Koch and Dinkins. I am not really ashamed of those times, at least not as much as i should be, considering the person i am now. in retrospect, trying to understand how important it was for young guys like us to finally feel empowered in an otherwise hostile environment is something that doesn't really apply anymore, now that i am older and the area in question is TOTALLY tame and benevolent. it's really hard to explain to people these days, why that felt good. but back then, after years of getting chased for no good reason by crews of scary characters, when i was just trying to walk home. it was nice to suddenly be the chasers, rather then the chasees. once we did it a few times we could basically sit back and ride on our laurels or reputations. we did some pretty high profile things, like crash big parties and in essence just take over. we took all the paint and writing materials from several writers in other crews, one notable was a relative of Robert Deniro's. not that dropping a name like that really meant anything in the world of graffiti but it did spread quickly through the NY social networks at the time.
another thing we became good at, was defending ourselves. a group within the crew, the core of it, formed a rock band, named DISBAND. it was a hardcore/ska band and just about EVERY time there was a performance, there ended up being a fight. I like to think that it was because people in the audience were jealous of the band's skills, and also of how their girlfriends seemed to swoon a bit. but it was really more a result of the hardcore sound of the music and the lead singer's LOUD vocals. like the time we got into an all out pitched battle at CBGB's over a heckler who had targeted the singer. i ended up fighting side by side with my friend Half-E's golden glove champion ex-marine father. but really, all these incidents started with one guy. the star and the lead singer, Self-Uno. He was the voice of the band, and he was also the friction manifest-er, he never backed down, and we never let him fight alone. he could pick a fight easier then he could pick his nose. One time he refused to stop singing at a private school on the east side and he ended up in a tussle with a big union maintenance man. I had to jump up and sock the guy because he seemed to think he could hit a kid without the kids friends getting involved. his mistake.
one of the more "epic" battles that we got into, which is legendary in our group. was upstate in a town called Croton. One of our friends from our school lived up there, and somehow he ended up throwing a huge party with most of the kids from the local high school...and their football team. Disband was asked to perform for the party and so we all went up to accompany them and to party. well, one thing that wasn't expected was that the football team would not be into the Hardcore flavor of the music. it was a very hard sound and most of these guys were fans of BonJovi so the music didn't really match the crowd. after a song or two the football guys made a few loud comments and of course, Self made some back through the microphone.
one thing led to another and a huge brawl broke out. a brawl that was quickly won by my side despite being outnumbered and out-sized by a large margin. the Croton guys didn't expect the ferocity of the our crew in fighting. more specifically the cold blooded tactics we were comfortable using to win. like grabbing furniture and turning it into weapons and projectiles. the bassist, Half-E, grabbed a sock and filled it with batteries, and...well you can imagine what these podunks went through when the weaponry started raining down on them. My friend Lefty was swinging a wooden lawn chair like a gladiator would swing a medieval mace. Lefty is a guy who once had to get tackled in a fight because he had a canoe oar and had it cocked back for a large swing at this weight lifting college frat guy. had he not been tackled by a "friendly", he might have beheaded the guy since the oar was rotated in such a way that it would have hit the guy edge-wise rather then the flat way. The guy realized what had almost happened to him and he backed out of the fight instantly, despite his size. at least he wasn't such a muscle head that didn't know the fact that crazy beat strong everytime.
at one point a large Crotonite managed to catch and grab Lefty's chair mid swing. they tugged on it for a second or two, the bigger guy showing that he could fling Lefty's smaller weight around, until Lefty reached back, grabbed another chair and swung that overhead to crash down on the bewildered football jock's head. that was just how he rolled.
the first fight ended with one of the football guys having a rather large laceration on his head. so they retreated and left the house, apparently to go to the hospital. i think that my friends were MUCH more used to the idea of fighting in a lopsided battle and employing whatever methodology to avoid losing and being injured then the country boys were. maybe they thought my friends would just lose the fight since they were outnumbered 3 to 1, and that's just what happens out there. but that just made my crew more frantic.
we settled down and started recanting the minute details of the victory, as some of our crew returned from a beer run...it wasn't even all of us in the first fight. we thought it was over and just continued to drink and be merry. until about two hours later, a large crowd suddenly showed up in the drive way. it was basically a lynch mob, country style, and it was lead by the guy freshly out of the hospital with bandages on his head. we all hid inside the house and looked out at the angry mob. unfortunately we couldn't hold our position because one of us had been caught by the mob. they were beating him pretty bad against the front steps. i was completely drunk and almost done drinking my 40 oz. Olde English and somehow got the "rage" in me. i ran out and confronted the whole gang with the bottle in my hand as a weapon. i had no plan, but i knew i needed to stay at the top of the steps looking down, what limited military strategy i knew had me aware that having the drop was the best way to maintain any kind of advantage. i was up against some rather thick hedges so i knew there was no way to quickly escape gracefully.
i remember sizing up the situation, seeing my friend holding his head at the bottom of the steps and all the angry faces looking at me. i was next.
"yo, hit him again and see what happens!" i can't believe that's what i said, but it is. maybe i thought i could bluff them into being scared. it didn't work. my friend looks at me like i am crazy, he goes "what?!" and sure enough the bandaged guy kicks my friend and then looks at me with a shitty grin. i lost it.
i had to jump. there was no backing out now. i launched down half the steps and knocked this guy right in the bandaged head with my bottle. i knew not to swing the bottle with all my might. i had seen that done several times in the city and it was the kind of thing that could end really bad and with possible jail time. so it was more of a controlled swing with little real force behind it. but it successfully met its target without shattering and made a very audible "TINK!" sound. the impact wasn't crushing, but it was hard enough to knock him down clutching at his bandage, groaning. what happened next is something that i can say happened to me more then once. i got BUM-RUSHED. like 30 guys ran at me at the same time. you would think that the outcome of that situation is obvious, but the 3 times it happened to me in my life, i found out that a large group of very drunk, very angry guys can often end up in chaos. the kind of chaos that can give the me an edge in escaping. the crushing weight of all these guys hitting me at once made me fly back up the stairs, but i tripped on the top step and ended up falling backwards into the thick hedges. they fell with me, and in the dark chaos of the crazy melee, i actually managed to wiggle out of the way of the flying fists and feet. the guys who were the first to get to me and the hedges ended up catching most of the blows and by the time they realized i had ran back to the house in the shadows, they had already punched each other many times.
we locked the door and hid in the garage while we heard things like plant pots and windows being broken outside, and a hell of a lot of yelling. i guess they finally realized they would have to break down a door to get in. their good ol' country upbringing must have gotten the better of them because they eventually dispersed, leaving us the clear victors once again. i'd like to say that i am ashamed of these memories now that i am in my 30's and consider myself a collaborative member of society, but really, the stories still make me laugh with my old friends. we never tire of bringing them up. and this is really just one out of MANY.
-Me doing the Worm in 1985, before puberty... I gained the usual changes by going through puberty. most of them obvious, like the ability to have sex, a manly voice, hair on my face and chest, broader shoulders, and i finally achieved a height just a fraction of an inch shy of 6 feet tall. it was a relief when it happened somewhat late in high school because i had fallen behind in development, compared to most of the guys in my grade. I was one of the shorter kids in my class for a bunch of years. Being short for a guy is probably the biggest game killer known to man. even more so then being a complete asshole and a wife beater. tall wife beating assholes to do just fine in life, but ask a short guy how women treat him in general, and barring the super rich, you will get a sad answer. woman like to think that they are above men when it comes to being base about how they select a mate. like men lean entirely too much on boobs, and looks while they care more about men's personalities. but hang out with a short guy for one night at a bar or club and you will see the world of hurt they go through just to meet a woman.
Anyways. puberty got me a lot of these necessary aspects and some extra bonus ones, but at the same time it robbed me of some other, less known qualities that i had before i turned 15. like the ability to breakdance, and specifically to do the "worm". a maneuver that uses the same "technology" as the wave, but applies it to the body as a whole. at one point in my pre-pubescent life i could do it so well that my feet would be above my head as the worm started, plus i could do it down the block and turn a corner. It was my signature move. that and a really good electric boogie got me into a performing group that actually did some pretty big performances in and around 1985.
Now fast forward a bunch of years to about 1993. i was living for a year in Barcelona Spain, and a combination of factors led me to try the move again in front of an audience at a club near LasRamblas. it was called Jamboree and it was a big place below an ancient municipal building in a Plaza Reial. you went down worn stone steps and entered an underground vaulted catacomb. flying buttress arches and a cold hard stone floor had been converted into a really hip dance club. and in Barcelona that meant the place was bananas from midnight until well after the sun was up. the Dj's spun American and french hip hop and all sorts of music i was very fond of, PLUS, the people treated dancing as an art form. there were bar tables and gogo stages meant for anybody to jump up on and take over. to my surprise, i encountered a practice there that i hadn't witnessed since Koch was the mayor of NYC. the dance circle. somebody would start breakdancing and a circle would clear on the floor to give them room. when they were finished they had to either point at somebody or somebody had to jump in otherwise the circle was wasted and would close on itself. this picture was taken recently, but when i was there it was an old stone floor. they probably fixed it because so many breakdancers broke themselves on it :)
Naturally, when i first saw this, i had to do it. the fact that my balls had dropped since the last time i had attempted it didn't even occur to me. the fact that i was wearing Jesus style scandals i had bought in Santorini Greece for 500 Drachma (2 bucks) also seemed to have slipped my mind. I guess after drinking several Estrella Damm beers and witnessing Spaniards try to clone what i had grown up doing a decade earlier, i just couldn't have resisted the temptation. well, needless to say, i FUCKING SHOULD HAVE.
So, i believe the song was Dr Dre Stranded on Death Row and a Spaniard who thought he could do the windmill had just failed miserably, possibly because the ancient stones he was spinning on were far from slippery and had never been shellacked or varnished or whatever it would have taken to make the surface break-spin friendly. there was a pause and everybody was looking around for the next performer. I had already opened my big mouth about my breaking ability to a girl i was trying to impress with my broken Spanglish and my NYC background. it seemed to work, except she looked at me expectantly, like "OK Americano, whatchugot?!"
I had to do it. my "rep" and possibly more was on the "ligna". I jumped out and started my old choreography. I had managed to get good enough back in the day that i didn't just jump out and blow my load on the worm, i worked up to it. using a combo of the electric boogie and some pretty tight leg work, i had people cheering and clapping. it was all going to plan thus far. i could see that she was smiling and elbowing her friends to watch, and i could see the Spanish guys nodding in approval. i was rocking out like i used to. it wasn't a battle so there wasn't anybody i needed to focus on or anything like that so i was all over the place. finally, when i had exhausted my preliminary maneuvers and it would have been repetitive to do anything else besides "El Wormo" i dove right in. literally. i always dove in to start. so it would look like i was about to land on my head. but instead, i caught myself in a handstand, and then rolled my body down, first my chin, then my chest, stomach, pelvis...and then my balls. only i had never used my balls before. because they had never really been there before. so the new body part really surprised me as much as i surprised it (or them). it was basically tantamount to getting them smashed in a vice. only it was 500 year old stone. there was no give, or mercy to the stone. through the centuries, it hadn't given sway to the sieges of cannon balls hurled by the French Empire or the Moors, so why would it yield to my delicate Americanhuevos? lets just say the pain was excruciating. but that wasn't all the stone floor had for me. when my legs alleviated the intense pressure off of the sacred family jewels, they transferred the final part of the wave to my toes, which were completely bare except for the thin Greek leather under them. so i smashed all ten toes against the stalwart floor as well.
But that wasn't enough. i had to man up and complete the worm so as not to let anybody know my intense internal melt down. there could be no failure now that i had committed. so i braved through at least 6-7 more waves o' pain. it was like having somebody repeatedly kick me in the groin and then drop a cinder block on my bare feet. roll, smash, roll, smash, roll, smash... by the time i was done doing a number on my extremities and manhood i was near the other side of the circle. i managed to do the final wave and kick it high enough to land back on my feet like i used to. the mechanics of the move were still within my physical ability, but the pain was a whole new bag of chips. I pointed at one of the guys on the edge of the circle who i knew was waiting to go and moonwalked the fuck out of there.
I got a good amount of applause, i noticed the girl was one of the cheerers, but at that point i could care less. i just wanted to crawl into a hole in the wall and disappear while the waves of excruciating pain washed over me. i couldn't have spoken because my voice was all twisted up in knots and my stomach was inside out. i had to back out of the circle because my smashed toes weren't going to allow me to walk forward without an obvious limp.
i think i managed to retreat in such a way that it looked like i had done my dance, and was going to leave the audience thirsty for more. but between you, me and the ancient stones, i just wanted to die right there on the spot. I don't remember what happened with the girl, or if i managed to stay any longer. but i do have a memory of limping home that night with only a bag of Churros to console me and my smashed cahones.
this is an example of the worm as performed by a KID.
thats me at about 192nd street and the palisades. technically, the bronx
da bronx. the school of hard knocks, clearly
driving UNDER the GW is the best way to avoid traffic.
DEAR, (random Jamaican), FINKELSTEIN, BASK1, (random jamaican#2), ZEN2 in Jamiaca 1998.
this is a painting i did after coming back from Barcelona, it is about the mix of memories i have about hanging out at the Plaza Del Sol.
before there was personal home delivery services in NYC , there were several ways to score a "Nickle" bag of funk. My first purchase, when i was the tender age of 13, was from a guy hanging out at Needle park. Needle Park is now the quaint park adjacent the new 72nd street train station entrance. The park was a very sketchy little spot, called "needle" not because it is the shape of a needle tip, but because you could find somebody shooting up there.
there was one spot, on 106th and Columbus that we called Tabla. it was a little tiny pitiful looking bag. like a few dirty looking crumbs that were very damp and DEFINITELY sprayed with some kind of "extra"...my guess is PCP or something evil like that. because no matter how small the amount was, everybody who took a drag started spinning. it was so harsh that we would be passing it around and at any point in time about 3 of us would be doubled over, hacking and coughing up spit and snot. it was...AWESOME. i can't even imagine the damage thousands of blunts of that mystery meat did to my body and brain cells.
The weather has cleared up a bit so i can't bitch about that so much, but i can get a bit upset over the Florent closing down after so many years. I started going there for brunch with my mom,step-father, and sister around 1987, maybe two years after it changed from the old R&L Diner. We lived a few blocks south in the west village. back then the area was pretty much the last place you would want to go eat in. It was always hard to maintain an appetite walking through the old meat packing district because besides the crack heads and tranny whores, there was the ever present stench of rotting meat. there would be whole chunks of bloody carcasses lying discarded on the cobble stoned streets and in the heat of the morning sun, it would instantly start to decay. the whole area seemed like it would never clean up and the Diner was just this anomaly of hipness and Parisian decor that stood out as a juxtaposing perspective on the area's future. well, the Florent was right in it's gamble, the area was meant for a different future then what was expected, and unfortunately for the restaurant/diner it's own prediction ended up being its own demise. rent that was $1300 dollars 23 years ago, has just topped $30,000. and the only rotting meat in that area is the rot of the bridge and tunnel pseudo foo-foo culture that has taken over.
Rant, START:
Meanwhile, the shitty weather is yet again, cold and raining, and I am forced to walk through White Plains in the constant downpour so i can take the Metro North back to the city. no doubt I will be doing this all week since nothing gets fixed in NYC in under a week. But what is most egregious about the cold weather is the fact that May is almost over. May is usually the one month of nice medium weather, after the cold but before the real searing heat. If we don't get a nice may here it has the effect of winter slamming into summer without a break from extremities. Come June suddenly its 100 degrees and the city becomes a roaring medley of drippy A/C units and sweaty butt cracks. yay.
It was 2002. I was having lunch with a friend on Abbot Kinney Boulevard one sunny day in Venice California. i had my face half submerged in a huge burrito when my phone starts vibrating in my pocket. I usually don't answer my phone when i am eating with company, but since my friend had just gotten up to go to the bathroom, i take advantage of the situation and answer it.
Here is one of my shots from Shrek the Third. I was a lead lighter, I would light a sequence envrironment and a few key shots, then my team of about 6 lighters would go in and make the rest of that part of the film look like my stuff.
Jackie O. and i had a moment. It was about 17 years ago, I was skating down 5th avenue near the Metropolitan Museum on the sidewalk. I guess it was her building that i was passing, because all of a sudden she comes flowing, all regal-like, out the front door and straight into my path. I swerved out in front of her to avoid a collision. It was not really a very close call, but she saw me and stopped to let me pass. i smiled big as i realized who she was. when i actually passed her i was about 3 feet from her so that i could literally smell her perfume. the most amazing thing about the incident was that she looked right at me and she gave me a big warm smile and a slight nod.
this picture was taken recently, but when i was there it was an old stone floor. they probably fixed it because so many breakdancers broke themselves on it :)
