Musings from the God of Cities

"...Police said Hutcherson was apparently unaware his friend had been decapitated -- and drove more than 10 miles to his parents' home, where he went inside and fell asleep with the headless body still in his truck..."

"...there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-weet?'"

---slaughterhouse-five, or the children's crusade: a duty dance with death by kurt vonnegut, jr.

a few weekends ago i woke up stupid-early and went down to the union square subway station in hopes of being able to take pictures of the fantastical murals by chiho aoshima that were put up there as the last of the public art displays associated with the japan society’s 'little boy' show. (faithful readers will recall my excursions to see the other public ‘little boy’ pieces. unfaitful readers can read all about those adventures here.)

the murals are very striking, and really do an excellent job of jazzing up the subway station that so many of us know and love. do please try and go see them if you can. if you can’t, then enjoy them here:


Pictures of Chiho Aoshima Union Square















































































































































a week or so after having taken pictures of the chiho aoshima murals, i was strolling through washington square park and noticed some unusual looking sculptures by where people play chess. at first i thought maybe some NYU students had taken it upon themselves to make them, (remember the alamo?) but then i noticed that there were a bunch of decorated lamp-posts in the area and figured it was some kind of public art-fund related situation. a little googling proved my second theory to be correct. the sculptures and lamp-posts are part of a piece called “well lit chess pieces” by marjorie kouns. you can read more about the project here and see pictures of it here:

VICTORIA -- The dumping of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean was an issue one man wanted to take to an all-candidates meeting in the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding Friday morning, but the costumed crusader was not allowed in.

James Skwarok arrived dressed up as "Mr. Floatie," a two-metre tall turd representing POOP, People Opposed to Outfall Pollution.



CREDIT: CH News
'Mr. Floatie' - a man dressed up as a giant turd - crashed a Victoria all-candidates meeting to draw attention to the city's practice of dumping raw sewage in the ocean.

i spent a good part of this past fall and winter muttering under my breath that by the time that i'd left work for the day all of the good light was gone. on the weekends it rained more often than not, so though i'd been taking my usual sneaky pictures of people walking around new york city, i hadn't been getting all that many good pictures. therefore, i was pretty jazzed when the weather started getting nicer, and daylight sayings hit. that way, i could get out from work and still have enough good daylight to snap pictures of folks. here are a ton of pictures i've taken of people. there's no narrative or unifying theme other than the fact that the pictures below recount some of the folks and stuff i've seen this new york spring. (sit back and relax, folks... there's like 3 billion pictures)

"Listen up, Steve and Forrest, or you can kiss ALL the black off my ass. This ain't no band of brothers. Earth Wind & Fire. The Commodores, that's a band of brothers, y'all. Even if they don't play they instruments, it'd be a band of brothers if they was related, like the Jackson 5, or the Isley Brothers, or the Doobie Brothers..."

i know this it's tired and clichéd to list the words and phrases people googled to get to my site, but it's still new to me so suck it, nerds!

in no particular order:

purring shins
ryori no tetsujin
homothug (people found my site searching for this literally dozens of times)
mango addict shirt
sucked-your-own-dick (in Arabic, no less!)
“physical dangers of fisting”
learn to fart state
wise mountain ape
chinatsu ban central park
necrophilia homo mallard
i’m mad at the dirt
"Eli, Patrick" + death
krappenfest
degrassi dylan marco
manpanion (like, a jillion times)

i also get tons of hits from people doing a google image search for this picture that i took on a trip to p.s.1 a while back:


unfortunately, i can't figure out what people are searching for, but i imagine that since i'd captioned the photo "gay or european" people might be searching for that, as the picture comes up when you do an image search for that phrase. what's curious is that most of the people who find that picture through an image search are in europe. what's even more curious is that they click through to the picture despite it's obvious lack of nudity and/or HARD! CORE! ACTION!

several of my friends who are a few years older than i am have warned me over the years that as i enter my late twenties/early thirties, many of my friends would be getting married. i remember laughing and explaining that none of my friends were really “the marrying type” and that i was probably safe from having to deal with nuptial nonsense any time soon. unfortunately, my words have come back to bite me in the ass and this weekend i went to the third wedding-related event i’ve been to in the past six months. (NB: before that, i’d only ever been to one wedding--- my brother’s.) i’d recently gotten in touch with matt, my roommate from freshman year of college...


...after not having seen nor heard from him in years. turns out he was still in touch with my sophomore year roomie, tom...


...who is getting married soon, and did i wanna go to the bachelor party? i said heck yeah, and asked my friend hannah...


...to accompany me to the festivities. i guess it’s weird to bring a chick to a bachelor party, but hannah is the most down-ass chick i know, and an excellent addition to any evening where there is boozing and whoring to be done.

anywho... all of the dudes who went stayed at mohegan sun, which is where the festivities took place. by the time i tried to book a room at mo’ sun, they’d already sold out of rooms, which were wicked expensive anyway, so hannah and i wound up staying at a local radisson. hannah drove in from boston, while i took amtrak...




(which always reminds me a little bit of the chemical brothers’ “star guitar” video)






...to scenic new london, connecticut








...which is as close as my no-driver’s-license-having-ass was gonna get to mohegan sun.

mo’ sun itself was pretty ridiculous, as these things go. it was basically a mall with gambling. hannah and i took were like pigs in poop when we realized we could bring our drinks with us as we window shopped.


i wasn’t able to take too many pictures while in the 'sun since snapping pictures is looked down upon in places where there is tons of gambling going on. but i did manage to take a picture of one of the totally ghey animatronic wolves they have there....


...as well as this awesome dale chihuly glass piece in front of an indoor waterfall




best of all, i got pictures of quiet motherfucking riot, who were playing there






apparently they had more songs than “cum on feel the noize” ‘cause they didn’t sing that particular ditty until about 20 minutes into their set. go figure.

the evening wore on, and many other adventures were had, but rather than write about the junkie whores we rented whatever else may have gone on that magical evening, i think i'll let my silence in this forum be my wedding present to tom.

I LOVE YA, BIG GUY! CONGRATS ON GETTING HITCHED!!

"NAKHON PATHOM: In an era of chiselled supermodels and bizarre weight-loss diets, a Thai beauty contest celebrated women with a bit of flesh when heavyweight contestants battled for the Miss Jumbo Queen crown.

The annual contest, which aims to raise awareness and money for Thailand's dwindling elephant population, allows full-sized women weighing over 80kg to show weight-conscious Thais that big is beautiful.

This year, 24 women participated in the contest at the Samphran Elephant Ground and Zoo, west of the capital Bangkok."


BIG IS BEAUTIFUL: Tarnrarin Chansawang celebrates being crowned Miss Jumbo Queen 2005. The prize goes to the contestant who most resembles an elephant.
Reuters


thanks, davin!

for people who love grouphug, but are looking for something more visual (that's not too abysmal) i present postsecret, which i just found... though, again, i'm sure that everyone else in the world except me has heard about it already. anywho, postsecret is "an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." and is v.cool to boot. hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as i do...