Musings from the God of Cities

superawesomejeffrey (formerly freelancerjeffrey) is selling his action figure collection on ebay. why is this post-worthy, you ask? well, you have to check out the wonderful, wonderful auction yourself.

chinese new year in chinatown, new york, 2006.

theatrical chinese make-up, lunar new year flower market, columbus park:


red lanterns, mott street:


chinese dragons, mulberry street:



shop owner trying to drum up business:


white chicks, frontin' on mott street:


toursits, trying to figure out confetti-firing "fireworks":


the lady in this picture had clothed her shi-tzus in "traditional" chinese garb, and popped a squat in the middle of the street so people could take pictures of her pups. i happily obliged her both despite and because at one point, a five year old boy tried to pet one of her dogs, and she totally screamed him to move because people were taking pictures of her dogs.






as a general rule, i hate children, but these were kinda too adorable to ignore:














there was a ton of confetti flying around:


i feel bad for whoever has to clean it all up:


gung hay fat choy, y'all!

hell's kitchen flea market, december, 2005.

...to make a request of you, my adoring fans, (who, i am confident are largely, if not exclusively my friends, colleagues, sympathizers, associates and well-wishers). two weeks from today, on february 6th, i’ll be turning the big three-oh. while i’ve never been one to assign any big meaning to age, nor have i ever made a big stink for my birthday, lots of folks consider turning thirty to be a “big deal”. crafty lad that i am, i’m using that as an excuse to get stuff. allow me to explain:

i spend most of my monies on comics, and uhm, other stuff. i haven’t bought a cd in forever, preferring to acquire music by other, more cheapskatey means, i.e., borrowing cds from friends, downloading songs, etc. even then, i’m pretty slow about getting new-slash-noteworthy music. i recently bought an mp3 player, and loaded it up with most of my cds, music i had on my computer, and any songs i could grab from my friends’ mp3 players. those thousands of songs proved to be but a drop in the bucket that is my mp3 player’s ample memory. AND, i skip a lot of those songs when they come up on my player anyway ‘cause i’m either bored with ‘em ‘cause i’ve heard them so much they’re lost their flavor, or i just plain don’t like ‘em. that said, i want-bordering-on-need new music, which is the point of this ramble. i would like you all to help me help myself to music by making me mix cds for my birthday. i don’t really care of what type of music, i just want some new (as in, ‘new to me’, and not necessarily ‘recent’) songs to listen to. anyone reading this locally can just give me their cd, while i’m hoping my more far-flung brothas and sistas would be so kind as to mail theirs to me. (like i said before, if you’re reading this, you probably know me, and therefore have my address. if there actually is some stranger out there reading this and wants to go to the effort of making some stranger a cd, email me, and we can work something out.) i thank you all in advance, and remind you that i would totally make you a cd if you turned thirty.

UPDATE: go-to-gal erin made a good point in the comments section of this post. specifically, "can you give us a smidgeon of guidance por favor? Like stuff you definitely don't want/already have/songs you've heard about but have never heard and always wondered about." i have loads of beatles, pearl jam (don't ask), tori amos, (again, don't ask), U2, led zepplin, radiohead, and bjork, as well as a smattering of music to random to list. i have a glaring lack of anything recent, as well as hip-hop, punk, and motown. but anything is pretty much fair game. as for songs that i've always wondered about, i remember this was this one song, about a welcome table, and people liked to sit... at... it.

some kind, informative soul wrote and printed up a blurb about the beaver decorations in the astor place subway station.


the blurb, however, was somewhat lacking in the spelling and grammar departments, as was pointed out by the edits someone made to it by some some irate copy editor who just couldn't leave well enough alone

click here for a close-up.

the educational testing company i work for has a ridiculously high turn-over rate. because of this, i've been subjected to countless mass-cc'ed 'good bye' emails. they contain shout-outs to shirley in accounts payable, private joke for jane in HR, and the writer's home email address (included in the vain hope that someone at the office had a crush on them so secret that it can only be revealed "now that we're not working together any more...") the stream of garbage was interrupted by a wonderful farewell email from superawesome freelancerjeffrey, who will be sorely missed for his wit and charm, both of which are evident in his good bye email. i present it here, slightly edited to protect the innocent:

Dear REDACTED COMPANY:

As I sit in my lonely cubicle, staring out into the blank void of the future, I am suddenly struck by the reality that I will soon be leaving you for good. This is extremely sad for me, but perhaps more importantly, it is extremely sad for you.

Will you miss me when I’m gone, REDACTED COMPANY? And what of our late night chats, our tender morning kisses, our wet t-shirt contests? Will I ever again look over at COWORKER in the midst of our morning calisthenics and share a private laugh at the expense of the fat chick in leg warmers? Is this truly the end of my ink fights with GUY WHO WORKS IN PRODUCTION, my Indian wrestling matches with COPY EDITOR, my fax/copier jam sessions with RECEPTIONIST?

We’ve had a lot of laughs, REDACTED COMPANY, and a lot of tender moments that I will not embarrass you by recounting right now. I fondly recall our initial, sweaty-palmed fumblings in the back of the locker room, long after the crowd had gone home, our faces illuminated by an emergency glow stick stolen from the custodian’s closet. I knew from the moment I first laid eyes on you in the ball court at McDonalds that you and I were meant to be together. I remember holding your legs on the beach, your blossoming chest pressed lasciviously against the sun umbrella, furiously trying to rescue it from the petty thievery of an errant gull. We truly fell in love that day, did we not, REDACTED COMPANY? Washing the seagull shit out of your hair later, we embraced, as I recall, and slowly lowered ourselves to the kitchen floor, below the sight line of the prying cameraman stationed at the window.

I am leaving you, REDACTED COMPANY, but I hope you know that I will always cherish you as a squirrel cherishes a field of buried acorns that have been destroyed by a well-meaning-yet-misguided rototiller. You will be in my every waking thought from here on out, driving me mad, yet somehow, simultaneously, keeping me sane. You are not only a lover to me, but a friend, a mother, a father, and a drunken uncle. I cannot be with you forever, REDACTED COMPANY, but I would appreciate it if we could still hook-up every so often, no strings attached, preferably at my place. And don’t stay too long, I’ve got another educational testing firm coming over later.

Ciao,

FREELANCERJEFFREY

last week i got my vaccinations updated, found my passport and headed into brooklyn to check out the mta museum. being a big fan of museums, new york, and our mass transit system, i'd long been meaning to go visit this museum, which is located inside of a refurbished subway station






playing virgil to my dante was erin, who is, in no particular order, my oldest friend, a brooklyn native, a little bit of a ham






the museum is composed of two levels. the first level has loads of nyc transit-flavored stuff like

old-timey signs







apparently spitting and meddling were the big quality of life issues back in the day back in the day.

images of transportation life way-back-when



the picture above shows herald square in 1890, which couldn't look more different now.


even early on, people took issue with advertising on the subway.

and miscellaneous historic memorabilia




my favorite was in a section dedicated to movies set in the new york city subways and busses. it's a poster for the ed-mcmahon/martin sheen vehicle, "the incident"


which apparently features this awesome bit of dialogue


also on the fist level was an exhibit of laura cantor's paintings of what's she's seen in her past 23 years as a new york city transit subway car inspector








the lower level of the museum housed subways aplenty from a variety of eras of subways


from these with (surprisingly comfortable, but ultimately impractical) wicker seats




to these more modern, if somewhat grim, subway cars









seriously, why did people need so many reminders not to spit?

what i liked best about the subways (besides the lack of homeless people) was that they featured reproductions of advertisements from yesteryear, like these movie ads above the doors between cars








as well as these ads above the windows




















what i particularly like about the ads is that they show what people and the zeitgeist were like years ago. for example, i learned that

racism was so acceptable it was used to sell products




the image of a child bleeding to death wasn't always considered too gruesome to be put on public display


and people used to be cool about gays in the military

i was recently in the dominican republic where i sampled the country's national drink, mama juana. much like jamaicans and irish moss, dominicans consider mama juana to be a panacea that will grant the drinker relief from everything from "dolor estomacal" to "enfermedades venereas". it's also known as "dominican viagra", due to its supposedly embiggening qualities. mama juana is made up of a few basic ingredients: a collection of twigs, bark and roots, rum, and honey. i bought the herb mixture and the rum in the airport in DR, where the countergirl explained how to make mama juana.


she started the process for me by pouring the rum i'd bought into the bottle the herbs came in.

i was to let the mixture sit for a couple of weeks so the herbs could soak up the rum, while the rum leeched the bitter tannins from the herbs. after that, i was to dump out the rum, and fill the bottle with more rum, and some honey. this mixture is then supposed to sit for between 2 to 4 weeks, though the longer the mix macerates, the better. anyways, this is how i prepared my mama juana:


first i poured out the tannin-y rum into a measuring cup. i wanted to make sure the honey would be evenly distributed throughout the herbs, and figured it would be tricky to pour into the bottle, so i decided to mix it up with the rum.


in order to figure out how much honey to put in (the countergirl had put three fingers up to the bottle and said, "dees mosh ownee.") i had to figure out how much rum fit in the bottle, hence the measuring cup.


i then measured out the equivalent of three countergirl fingers worth of 'ownee'


to which i added some (dominican) rum,


and stirred the whole thing up.


finally, i poured the honey and rum back into the bottle


and shook the whole thing up.


for the next few weeks, it's gonna hang out with some of my action figures and occasionally get shaken up some more until it's ready to be drunk. or until i am.