A Death in the Village

On Janna’s way to work this morning, she snapped this image with her iPhone and emailed it to me.  She’s done that in the past with a copper moon, and a Steve Jobs memorial, but these flowers, and this mourning this morning was different.

This shrine was filled with hurt and rage and you can find it all right now at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the corner of West 8th Street and the Avenue of the Americas; for this is the spot where Mark Carson, a 32-year-old Gay man, was gunned down a few days ago — shot in the face by an impromptu stalker just for being who he was — and so the latest Greenwich Village New York City hate crime is now on the police blotter, written in blood on a public sidewalk.

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Chris Brown’s Urban Semiotic Problem

I’m not a big fan of singer Chris Brown.  I don’t like how he treated his girlfriend, Rihanna, but I do appreciate the pressure he’s feeling from his neighbors over an invented Urban Semiotic problem that he’s deeply invested in on a career angle.  No, I’m not talking about his Graffiti album, I’m talking about his driveway.

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Tripping Over Times Square

Last night, Janna and I were rushing home after teaching in New York City, and in the middle of Times Square, I had a moment I hope I never get to repeat.  I tripped — over my own two feet, or the curb, or a break in the sidewalk — and instantly fell long and hard on the sidewalk.  I was stunned for a moment and didn’t quite know where I was.  Janna was behind me somewhere and I remember one woman bending down to ask me if I was okay.

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Great New York City Architecture on the Upper East Side

I work on the Upper East Side in New York City, and as part of my job take a walk — sometimes twice a day, when necessary — to the main building of Weill Cornell Medical College, to pick up and drop off mail at the mail room and to pick up and drop off any deliveries that may be needed among the various departments of the College. It is quite a pleasant walk, chiefly because of all of the sights that I am fortunate to see, and the beautiful architecture I can enjoy daily.

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The Saddest Little Carnival in the World

There’s a thin strip of land in the Jersey City Heights wedged between the street and the edge of the baseball field near the reservoir.  A few times a year, a carnival, of sorts, will encamp in that one-block-long urban landscape, transforming the area into the saddest little carnival in the world — filled with emptiness and longing and no joy to be had anywhere for any ticket price.  Even the Fire Ball circle roller coaster has no flame.

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My SimCity Review: Even Though I Have Yet to Play the Game

I enjoy playing online games, even though finding just the right game that suits my style can be a challenge.  I have loved SuperPoke Pets in the past, and now, this week, I have a whole new endearment to endorse — SimCity — even though I have yet to play the game!

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Yes, I am Filling Up on Bread at the Bryant Park Grill

On Thursday, Janna and I shared a lovely lunch at the Bryant Park Grill.  I, of course, filled up on bread and made no apologies.  The parsnip soup starter was delicious.  The Vegan Organic entree was truly awful.  If you’re going to offer a Vegan choice on the menu, you need to provide massive chunks of lots and lots of hearty root vegetables, not a chiffonade of greens with a sprinkling of quinoa and a few, limp, tiny pieces of eggplant; and you certainly don’t put the main dish star — the portobello mushroom — in a side cup chopped up like a disrespected, diced, carrot!

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The Post Office as the Last Great American Place

I am confounded by the hatred of the Post Office by Republicans.  There is nothing more American than the United States Postal Service.  I don’t understand why the GOP are so willing to kill a necessary, national, institution.  I love getting mail.  Yes, I pay my bills electronically, but I still send and receive lots of paper letters and cards. The latest game of the 2006 GOP is being played out in August of 2013 — and the horrible result is forcing the Post Office to cease Saturday mail delivery.  Email didn’t kill the mail — the fax machine didn’t kill the mail — the Republicans killed the mail.

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As Ed Koch Dies, His City Lives

Ed Koch died this morning at 2:00am in New York City.  He was 88.  All the Manhattan television stations are plastered, pixel-to-pixel, with memories and videos from their vast archives memorializing his large life.  Ed was my first New York City major, and he embodied everything you wanted in a public leader:  He was brash and brilliant and caring and tough and brutal when he had to be.

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A Modest Proposal: The Clean Streets Brigade

I would like to make what I feel is a modest proposal that will help make the streets a bit cleaner if not entirely clean. I walk the streets every day from when I go to the synagogue in the morning, often in the dark, until I am walking back home at night. I encounter far too much trash along the way, seemingly no matter what route I choose. There is, unfortunately, only so much that I am able to pick up and relocate in the proper receptacles. We can ask ourselves why the streets are so dirty but knowing the answer today won’t make them any cleaner tomorrow.

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Return of the Obama Zombies!

On January 20, 2009, I wrote in this blog about the “Rise of the Obama Zombies” that dealt with the silly photographs of new Obama Staff members who were made to look, for some reason, like the undead in the pages of the NYTimes:

There is a delicate line between Art and Politics that must never be crushed:  Mocking politicos for aesthetic profit.  The New York Times, for some reason, decided to publish 50 crushing images of those working for the Obama Administration and, for some reason, the Obama campaign agreed to this public humiliation of their employees.  The published images cruelly, and purposefully, make these good people look like Zombies.  Let’s call them “The Obama Undead” — with their blank faces and ghoulish eyes — and we are left to feel terrible for them because they have been manipulated and mocked for paper profit.  We know their uncomfortable skins.  Only the glassy look in their eyes, and the familiar “thousand-yard stare,” gives away the fact that, at one time, they were human, and not the joke of the day.

Well, the NYTimes is at it again, and again, for some reason, the Obama administration is playing right along and allowing its staff members to be memorialized again as the undead in the official newspaper of record:

Four years ago, on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this magazine devoted nearly an entire issue to a photo essay by Nadav Kander, “Obama’s People.” Here, we revisit those top advisers and aides, four years later.

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Running for the Train with Howard Stein

One of my earliest, and most frightening, experiences in New York City was when I first met Dr. Howard Stein at Columbia University in the City of New York to decide if I wanted to attend graduate school with him or not.  Howard was Chair of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York.

I met Howard on a hot August day and he was in a mighty hurry.  He was late for a meeting at the Shubert Organization in Times Square and we were at Columbia University at 116th Street and Broadway.  If I wanted answers from Howard, I would have to ride the subway to the Shubert Theatre with him.  I told him I was with him and we were off!

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Being Fined for Poor Hiking Preparation

Being ill prepared usually brings about it ill consequence, depending on what is being done — sometimes disastrous, even. There are not too many examples I have seen of people being fined by the police for being poorly prepared for something, however — until I came across an example of exactly this. A gentleman in Victoria made plans to go on a three day hike and only took the most paltry of provisions — potatoes and naan, to be exact.

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