Musings from the God of Cities

at this weekend's wigstock at HOWL festival i saw one of the trippier things i've seen recently. namely, legendary warhol superstar holly woodlawn performing lou reed's "take a walk on the wild side." i can now die slightly happier than i otherwise would have, having seen miss woodlawn starting off the classic song with, "i moved from miami, f-l-a..."

'degrassi: the next generation.' has become my own personal 'police cops' and officially made my life into an episode of the simpsons. for those of you who have never seen the show, it's about... excuse me, aboot the degrassi that we all know and love, but like 20 years later. joey jeremiah, snake, and spike are still in it, but this time around they're adults. snake is a teacher, joey is a car dealer, and spike's kid grew up and is now a student at degrassi. "so what? who cares? shut up! shouldn't you be working instead of writing this blather?" you're all surely saying to yourselves. well, those are all valid points, but you're missing out on the big picture. namely, there's a character on degrassi named marco. (like me!) who is italian (like me!) and whose parents are totally just bad italian stereotypes (like my parents!) and (drum-roll please) he's a 'mo. over the course of the first season, marco comes to grips with his craving for cock, gets gay bashed, comes out, wonders if he’s “too girly” and goes on a date with the other gay guy at degrassi, dylan. (actually, there’s a 3rd gay guy, but he was only in one episode as the potential obstacle to marco and dylan getting together.) while i commend the producers of degrassi: t.n.g. for having the courage to show a realistic depiction of a gay teenager (they even have him kiss dylan!), i have reservations about sharing a name, nationality and weakness for the fellas with the dude they have playing marco. he’s acts like he’s constantly on the verge of tears, dresses like a total douche (he wears a necklace, the beads of which look suspiciously like pearls), and looks like he wears some kind of weird fright wig. thankfully, though, i’m about twice as old as anyone who would ever stumble across the show, and the similarities are all fairly superficial, but i can’t help feeling a little bit like homer did when he found out about the character with his same name on the t.v. show “police cops”. ah well, if the episode is any indication, i should soon be meeting bill clinton, woody harrelson, and ed begley jr.

this weekend the bf and i went to check out peace place park in harlem. the children from the creative art workshop were celebrating the completion of the most recent artwork they'd created in the park to beautify it and provide an opportunity for others to enjoy it.



previously the children had created a workspace out of a large donated bin...



and created these colorful boxes.



the main projects that the kids worked on this summer were a series of tables and benches to be used by the children in the community.


two tables were created to be just tall enough for toddlers to play on. they were painted in bright colors to grab the kids' attention, and this one had the names of housing projects in harlem and the bronx. (the kids created boxes for themselves. the one pictured here is an homage to scooby doo. the girl who made it asked me if i liked scooby doo, saying that if i didn't, i was wack. i didn't have the heart to tell her i've never liked scooby doo, so i just lied. don't judge me, kids need to get used to being lied to by adults.)



working off of the solar theme of large mural in the park...


...the kids created benches using planetary and lunar motifs. the benches are built in such a way as to fit modular tables in between the benches so kids can work on art projects on them.










i still can't get over how great it is that these kids created art playing off of other art for the purpose of allowing other children to create art. if that's not what it's all about, i don't know what is.

am i the only one who didn't know that you can totally buy dildos on amazon?