NY Cab Conversation

Scene: I'm at the corner of 10th Ave. and 34th St. 7:30pm I'm waving my arm at traffic going North, wearing a hand-made dress from Zachary's Smile, Cheap Monday jeans and lipstick (shoes, a purse etc... just remember, I'm dressed modestly).
Cab pulls over, I get in.

Anne: Hi. Greenpoint, please. Take the midtown tunnel to the Pulaski Bridge and turn right on F____ Street.
Cabbie: OK. Greenpoint.
[Pause]
Cabbie: You're coming back here tonight, right?
Anne: (Text-messaging and anyway, oblivious) Yeah maybe... I might stay there.
Cabbie: Uh huh... OK...
[I look up at the rear-view mirror and he's staring at me. I am now wishing I didn't have that conversation with a complete stranger. No one needs to know where I live or spend nights. But. For the record: The only reason I'm not sure where I'm ending up this night is that I crash on said friend's couch after long nights in North Brooklyn all the time.]
Cabbie: Are you going home to Brooklyn or you live in Manhattan is what I'm asking.
Anne: What? I live here. (We're still in Manhattan)
Cabbie: Uh huh... OK...

Fifteen minutes later, approaching F____ St.
Anne: Right here's fine.
[Cab slows down.]
Cabbie: So...business is good?
Anne: ...ye...ah...

This cab driver thought for some God forsaken reason that I was a fucking hooker.

Can I Help You? Well... can I?

I know complaining about customer service in NYC is like taking candy from a child, which is like the most awful expression ever, but here is an astounding lapse in courtesy I felt like sharing anyway:

UHAUL. I arrive at the U-Haul counter at 4:30pm. No one's in line, and the clerk looks up from her computer screen, makes eye contact with me, smiles. I approach her and say, "I have a reservation for a cargo van." She says, "sure, no problem." She picks up a regulation office phone receiver, dials a number, waits a few seconds, then says...

Hi. It's (Jane) at U-Haul. (Pause) Yeah I'd like an order of Shrimp Lo Mein...(pause) yeah, exactly. With extra vegetables. (pause) Yep, exactly. (Laughter) I know (pause) Same thing every time. (Laughter) Alright see you in a few minutes.

She lets out an audible sigh. Types into the computer. Then says:

License and credit card, please.

I blink. I look behind me and ask my imaginary Yelp commentor, "did that just happen?" He answers, "yes Anne, that really happened." Of course I eventually get my cargo van. I just hope the gasoline I poured over Jane's shrimp lo mein tasted good.

Briggs Meyer... Shivers

This is what The Briggs Meyer Test has to say about me.

[And in parentheses, what I have to say about it.]

People naturally confide in the Champion (ENFP). [This statement implies that the confidence is misplaced.]

That's why they make such good mediators, counselors, teachers, consultants, and reporters. [I would suck at all of these positions. Especially the teaching bit. But I guess I can make an exception for one of these jobs--consulting--which I currently hold. Honestly, I'm just glad I have a job, even if it means having no clue what I do and some days I wake myself up screaming into a pillow. Damn. That describes 80% of the teachers I had growing up in the public K-12 system. I guess I would be cut out for teaching after all.]

Any position that outreaches to others can fit the Champion. [OK this is just a really PG way of saying I'd make a good hooker.]

They can be columnists, journalists, publicists, copy writers, advertising account executives. [I can't think of anything more diametrically opposed to an ad accounts shlub than a journalist. Whoever wrote this has clearly never worked in advertising. I doubt if Edward R. Murrow would ever take a dozen Japanese businessmen high on MDMH to a champagne room in the Bronx just to seal a Daihatsu Account.]

In the arts they can be character actors, cartoonists, art educators. [Correction, I'd make a poor hooker.]

If they choose jobs such as restaurateur, be sure that their business sites will be unique and designed for a particular type of customer. [What the fuck does this even mean? Who's making sure my business site is unique if not The Champion herself, hellooooooo.]

Don't be surprised to see them as an inventor. [Don't act surprised. Shhhh. She thinks we're not onto her! Tee hee...]

This type of personality wants to experience the whole of life and may change careers more often than many other types. [OK this might be true. Just replace the word "career" with "boyfriend" and "types" with "humans with a modicum of morality" and you got yourself Anne Ishii.]

Says Charles, "I've had a number of jobs and when there is nothing left to create, I move to something new. I want my life to be spiced with newness, love, and joy." [Absolute lie. Charles never said such a thing, now did you Charles. Charles, I'm not feeding you till you put the fucking hand towels in the right cabinet shelf...]

Famous ENFPs: Phil Donahue and Joan Baez.

[Awesome. I can aspire to looking like a lesbian and then pretending I'm not one.]

Famous Virgins. Boys-to-Men.

1. It's hard to believe but it's true. Carl Sagan (the Rocosi Freddy of Quantum Physics) said it himself in Cosmos (anagram of "Splooge"). Sir Isaac Newton died a virgin, but then again... he discovered gravity and intertia. Same difference as fucking.

2. The Jonas Brothers. As long as they know that incest counts as sex, they'll be fine.

3. American Pie, cast. All of that sex they pretend to have in the montage sequence was actually just rubbing "varsity patches."

4. Soichi Negishi, from DMC. My pointing out his virginity is a shameless plug (pun completely intended) for my work.

DMC 6 comes out (more intended, shameful punning) this week.

BUY IT, OR LORD JOHANNES KRAUSER II WILL BE A VIRGIN FOREVER.

I hate to be the pretentious pseudo-luddite, but...

Getting rid of my TV has been one of the greatest things I've done for myself.
Now, I should to say for the record that I didn't give up TV the way people give up drugs or porn addiction (e.g. in 12 steps). There was no purposed health benefit or some public message I wanted to make in the boycott of mass visual communication and commercial marketing. I work with an ad agency for crying out loud.

I just got rid of my piece of shit roundscreen TV when I moved last year, intending to get a nice new one, but never did. Besides, A.) Because I travel so much I get plenty of hotel and "mom's house" TV B.) The Internet, and C.) My friends with cable want nothing more than for me to come over and hijack their remotes so that I can flip back and forth between reruns of The Golden Girls and Cheaters.

Here are a few things that happen when you don't have a television:

1. When I do finally watch TV, I am agog. Everything is amazingly awful because I haven't had a chance to be pulled in by some flimsy yet narcotic narrative. Plus programming turns over like hot cakes these days, and each time, the reality TV fodder is that much worse. There is actually a fucking show called "Dating in the Dark."



What this show demonstrates to me is that ABC couldn't get clearance on blind soft-core porn because Disney is blind.

2. The commercials actually seem novel. Since I'm not subject to watching the same commercials over and over, a lot of them are still sort of entertaining, or at least easy to shit on. Like the Windows 7 commercial with the American in Germany doing tongue-ups on a wood floor. [I cannot WAIT till ten years from now when Tosh 5.0 cans some laughter making the obvious cunnilingus joke.]

3. Local news looks like nothing more than Youtube virals.
"Local man gets arm trapped in radiator. Cuts it off with the nearest sharp object: a toenail clipping."
"Irate Hanson fans throw chairs at the Southside Seaport when forced to wait ten minutes for them to appear on stage."
"President Obama's Labor Day Speech. What the half-literate man we cornered in front of the subway station has to say about it, next."

4. I've discovered incredible physical and mental health benefits in this absence of television and think everyone should re-consider their relationship to mass media and commercial marketing. It's evil.

5. Netflix/Hulu/DVD addiction.

10 Guan

Watched "I am Love" last night. Amazing movie, that. I highly recommend it.
As it happens, one of the trailers was for "A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop" by Zhang Yimou, which is based on The Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple," also an amazing movie. Here's a trailer for the Zhang adaptation.

Check it out.



You know how I can tell it's a Chinese movie from this trailer? The main characters are haggling over 10 guan.

A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop
I am Love

Philosophical Sycophancy

I have this haunting para-fantasy of college where I'm undone by cheap poetry because I am still at best a dilettante in affairs of the... oh I'm getting wordy. Let's just say there's a thread in here:

Philosophy Major Come-ons.

Version 1. Cartesian.

[Skinny dude with a ponytail, on one knee, to girlfriend]:

I think (pause), therefore I am (longer pause. Then, closing his eyes, he whispers) with you~

Version 2. Lacanian.

[Post coitus, a young man nervously pulls up the sheet over his nipples and looks around confused. Asks]:

Was that as good for me as it was for you?

Version 3. Kantian.

[Junior varsity athlete (he thought philosophy would be an easy major, confusing it with sociology) approaches a hot chick at the bar. Frames his crotch with splayed hands and smirks. Says:]

It's not the size of the ocean, babe. Bu--t actually it pretty much is.

Elsewhere at the bar:

Version 4. Sartresque.

"You had me at hell is other people."

Version 5. Nietzchean.

"Let's make a bet. If you pronounce this word (he shows 'Nietzche' on a piece of paper) incorrectly you have to go out with me. If you pronounce it right, I take you out and date rape you anyway."

Version 6. "Buddhist" (emphasis on the airbanging)

"Let me guess... You're Chinese? Wait, no... Korean? Wait, no..." (He repeats this to death, comes back as Nicolas Cage's sperm, miraculously "gets it right" in the next life and achieves Nirvana, where he is confused and disappointed because there are no hot Asian chicks. Just a bunch of old white dudes with ponytails.)

Telenoid

Japan has a population problem. It's rapidly declining because the kids aren't reproducing like they used to.

Not sure what made me think of that when I read about the Telenoid R1, but I don't... think... it's... helping.

The Telenoid R1 is meant to be a minimalist human, so details are restricted to its eyes and face, which are strangely realistic. Its body is limited to flipper-like arms and a stylized torso that ends in a mermaid-ish taper.

Telenoid users interact with people at a distance through a laptop, as shown in the video below. The control system tracks the user's face and head motion and captures his or her voice, then relays them to Telenoid, which expresses them. It's about 31 inches tall and weighs 11 pounds.

Scared.

Dating awwwww

There's an old (circa 1990s) truism about the milemarkers of dating.

If after three dates you haven't slept with him/her, dump him/her.

If after three months you haven't said "I love you," dump him/her.

If after three years you aren't married yet, dump him/her.

I don't prescribe to or proscribe this schedule but its quality lies in its simplicity, because the reality is much less succinct (if funnier):

If after three dates you don't know anything about him/her, you're just a lay.

If after three months you aren't talking "love," you (i.e. she) will start fighting.

If you keep at it and are with them for three years but aren't married yet, you're going to get divorced whenever you do decide to get married (which you will, because you won't have the courage to dump him/her).

Here's the new truism.

Go on three dates with someone you loved at first sight.

In three months, give them something small but valuable. A word, an object, a gesture.

In three years, go back on a date with this person. It's cheaper than a wedding.

(Repeat)

It already smells bad, go ahead and fart.

My month-long sojourn to Los Angeles draws to a close this week. Here are some highlights.

Images:

Bald body builder with a titanium leg trolling around the streets of Long Beach with the sun in his face. Tells me to smile when I cross his path. Applauds when I obey.

Every unique, dispossessed, splintered (and in every case very likely schizophrenic) vagabond on the Metro-Blue Line. Including but not limited to the woman who will not protect Curious George, the old man from Washington St. in Arkansas, the gay street punk who kept telling himself his feet will "get cut by the nurses again," and the frustrated black woman who threatened to "cut that bitch (i.e. me)."

Bearded homeless man drinking from a 2-Liter bottle of Pepsi filled with clear water, highlighting in fluorescent yellow, a stack of documents in a manila folder.

Proto-1970s Californian home architecture.

Sounds:

Loud music in a small car.

Trains.

Chicano English.

This.

People:

Hanging out with Dad, who is now an uncle. Hello, Uncle Dad. I can't reciprocate your new found affection for me because you broke that part of my soul fifteen years ago.

Hanging out with an old flame, who is now a flamer. Hello, boyfriend of a boyfriend. I am curiously flattered by this news.

Hanging out with Mom, who is now my child. Hello, child mom. What do you want for dinner?

Hanging out with a New Yorker, who is now an Angeleno. Goodbye.

Driving Metaphors:

"I don't even have the gas to drive the car to get to the store that has the words I need to find for this conversation."

"Advance 200 feet and U-turn."

"Turn on your blinker."

"Your blinker's still on."

Auto-Replies

I've always liked to mess with people in my auto-replies. We should definitely have auto-replies for more human situations than absence from the office and customer service confirmation.

Boyfriend Auto-Reply:

"Thank you for writing. Your message is important to me. I respond to every email in the order in which it was received but if you have any pressing questions please call directly."

Bad Ex-Boyfriend Auto-Reply:

"You've reached a girlfriend who is no longer listening to you. Move on. If this is an emergency, please contact another ex or your mother."

Good Ex-Boyfriend Auto-Reply:

"I am currently away on vacation. Yeah, uh...vacation. Not a new man. A vacation... Let's talk in a couple months?"

Bad contractor's Auto-Reply:

"I am currently on vacation in your offices. I will have only sporadic interest in checking my emails from you and will not make myself available for anything other than group takeout orders and my bonus check. Thanks in advance for the job."

Parent Auto-Reply:

"Delivery failure."

The Allegory of My Life Today

On the blue line to Long Beach this morning, a morbidly obese woman wearing matching heather grey sweatpants and sweatshirt, white hair pulled up into a high bun, spoke to herself at my 8 o'clock. Canvas bag full of bright objects between her legs on the floor. Despite the elements, a beautiful woman with a clear and bright face.

And in a calm, even tone:

You're dead meat.

You're torn meat.

They're going to tear you up.

And I won't stop them.

I won't do anything about it.

I won't keep them apart.

You're dead meat, Curious George.

Don't ask for a damned thing.

If they beat you up and call you mean things,

I won't stop them,

because it's all true.

Looks like it's gonna rain.

Hope it does.

Cool things off.

Help flowers grow.

Losers get out and drive.

Winners walk.

Yes, George, tell them you're my son.

They'll come back for you.

You don't hit me, I don't hit you.

Is something wrong with my eye sight today?

Inception Within an Inception

So Inception is the movie to beat, eh?

I saw it last night. Thought it was beautiful. Think it's funny that Leonardo DiCaprio played the same exact role in Shutter Island (psychosis within psychosis) and The Departed--gang within a gang. Are we reaching a tipping point here?

What other "X within an X" formulas can Leo play?

1. Line within a Line. Leo waits at the DMV and finds out it was a line to Popeye's Chicken the whole time. He orders a bucket of chicken and then dies of a heart attack but no one knows he's an organ donor because he never got that driver's license.

2. Marriage within a Marriage. Leo marries a hot Swedish model. Turns out she's secretly married to Hugh Grant, which means Leo is now married to Hugh Grant. They have to consummate the marriage in ten days or someone will make another sequel to Saw.

3. Tweet within a Tweet.

@LeoDiCap @@@@@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Plane-mate, Episode "Unemployed"

On my flight to Chicago a couple weeks ago I sat in my window seat hoping no one would fill the middle spot. As seems frequently the case, the more tardy said middle-seater is, the more colorful their personalities. [ibid.]

This time it was a woman in hand-torn black T-shirt, sweat pants and an anklet.

She smelled like a party three days ago in her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend's back yard, if you catch my drift.

If you don't, try a bowl of salsa with a few stray corn nuts, cigarette butts, beer and vaseline. Put that bowl in the sun and come back a week later.

The woman was a talker. Talked the ear off the man sitting in the aisle seat. Conveniently chose to ignore me. Started calling everyone on her Favorites dialing list once it was announced we were going to be sitting on the tarmac for another hour because of weather delays. She complains loudly that she rushed to the plane for no good reason, not realizing we're actually in a closed cabin on the tarmac.

Flight attendant comes down the aisle asking people if they want to buy headsets.

Woman: How much are the headphones?

Attendant: Two dollars.

Woman: Oh, I thought they were five. Do we get to keep them?

Attendant: Yeah. (Notices she already has earphone) You know your earphones will work just fine.

Woman: I know, I just wanted to know how much they cost. I thought it was five. Two dollars for headsets though...

Attendant: We're all trying to make money where we can.

Woman: Yeah, but two dollars...

Ten minutes later the woman calls for an attendant.

Woman: Do you have a pen I can borrow during the flight? I'll give it back, I promise.

The attendant brings back a pen for her. The woman pulls out a huge folded stack of paper from her huger bag. A ziplock bag full of burnt CDs falls out, along with her CD-man. So ok, the punchline here is her ziplock bag of cds, but when was the last time you saw a CD-man?

The woman unfolds her documents: Laser color printouts of job listings from the internet. She starts reading down the list and circling what I presume are all the jobs she might take. Suffice it to say she circles almost every listing.

I start to feel enterprising. Want to tell her how to be more efficient about her situation. A.) Don't go to Kinko's and pay a buck a page to print out 40 color pages of job listings if you're unemployed. B.) Never not have a pen on you. Especially if you're looking for work.

I sleep instead of proselytizing. Keep waking up to the sound her talking to the other neighbor, who is fully immersed in the Mahut/Isner tennis match. He fails miserably at explaining to her the phenomenon that is taking place on TV: Tennis.

Woman: I don't get it. They only have to get seven points to win a match?

Man: No, each "point" is actually a game.

Woman: So they play seven games?

Man: No, they have to play till someone's up two games in the seventh set.

Woman: You know what, no offense but I don't get tennis so I'm going to watch something else.

Man: (Visibly unoffended.)

When I look back at her screen she's variously watching FoxNews and Friends. I reserve judgement and go back to sleep.

As the plane starts to make its final descent, I notice the woman is switching to listening to her CDs. She pulls one out of the ziplock bag to insert in her CD-man. Scribbled in Sharpie ink are the words:

Three Doors Down

I didn't realize anyone besides AMC theater patrons waiting for their movie to start ever listened to this band. Much less burnt their albums. I no longer reserve judgement; start thinking about how to tell this story.

When we land the woman immediately calls what sounds like her ride from the airport.

Woman: I don't know why they lied to us about the weather to delay us for so many hours. I mean it's all sunny here and shit...

Yeah, just pick me up outside...

What? You want me to pay for gas?...

That's not what we talked about last night!...

If I knew I had to buy your gas I woulda taken the train...

No...

No...

No!...

You know what just forget about it. I'll just have to figure it out with my credit cards. I won't be able to buy food or cigarettes the next couple of days but I'll pay for gas it's fine...

No, forget about it...

I'll buy the gas, forget about it...

I hope for her sake someone eventually explained how tennis works.

I Feel Bad For Him

If anyone else watched the Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island on TV yesterday, you probably couldn't eat the rest of the day either. I know the meme of the day was "Free Kobi" but that's missing the trees for the forest, in my humble opinion.

After witnessing the drama involving Kobayashi, however, (contest-winner) Chestnut said, “I feel bad for him.”

I FEEL BAD FOR HIM.

That's the T-shirt I want.

Chigaco

Tidbits about Chicago:

1. For all the glory of its architecture, downtown Chicago has no clock monuments. In New York you can't turn a corner and look up without seeing at least the remnants of a broken clock. (Observed)

2. There is more oxygen in the Chicago air than a rain forest during summer because the corn crops in Illinois sweat. (Learned)

3. You have to turn in your driver's license if you get a traffic infraction. Any infraction. (Chicago's stupid)

4. Didn't realize it but Sun Ra's from Chicago. (I'm stupid)

5. Rent's cheap. (New York is stupid)

6. And there are possibly as many musicians as there are hot dogs in the city. (Score)

I have a tumblr acct

because

iamilliterate tumblr com

ill iterate

follow?

The Books We Pack

We pick up a lot of cues on compatibility from cultural currency. Yankees fans, Dead Heads, foodies--we learn from all these symbolic appellations, for better or worse.

In discussing the concept of libraries with the fine folks at Observatory (link at end), and then packing my own ad hoc library of books, I went through a laundry cycle of emotions as I handled the books people have given or recommended to me.

Imagine, a taxonomy of these cues.

Think of the Wodehouse collection.

Would I have ever read Maugham were it not for him?

How many double-takes have you gotten from Blood Meridian?

How many reference books were gifts? And all from the same person?

I will never read that conspiracy theory on 9-11 gifted by the Frenchman,

nor will I ever forget being read Possession in bed by the American.

How strange that two totally unrelated and wildly different people should recommend Flann O'Brien. One because he loved him and the other because she didn't,

but thought I would.

Pattern Recognition, a bible to so many.

Airport paperbacks, trash to so few.

Instead of lending my cues, I tell everyone:

take it.

Observatory.

The Wind's Song

I am going to hell and back because the return is always faster, more pleasant. There was a devil's whistle. A fierce wind. Free me, my head. Now.

Now.

Now.

Now.

mongolian wind from Ill Iterate on Vimeo.

What part of Manhattan Are You?

You meet a very stylish stranger who compliments you on a pair of unremarkable and ratty shoes. You think:

A. I love these shoes too! Awesome.

B. Ew. He wants to sleep with me.

C. He/She must work in retail.

D. I'm in.

You buy a six pack at the local deli and it's:

A. 8pm

B. 5pm

C. 7am

D. I'm in.

The clerk behind the register says "how are you, (insert your name)?" You respond:

A. Good. How about you, John?

B. (To self: fuck, what was his name?)

C. Not bad, Nelson. Uh... is Jose still selling the weed I bought last weekend?

D. I'm in.

An ideal roommate situation for you is:

A. Your wife/husband and kids.

B. Your future wife/husband and your brittany spaniel.

C. Anyone you've met at the local deli.

D. I'm in.

You do your banking with:

A. One bank

B. Two banks

C. The local deli ATM

D. I'm in.

If you had to live anywhere else in the U.S. you'd live in:

A. Manhattan

B. France

C. The local deli

D. I'm in.

If you answered mostly A you're not anywhere near Manhattan.

If you answered mostly B you're in the West Village.

If you answered mostly C you're in the East Village/Lower East Side.

If you answered mostly D you're in.