Musings from the God of Cities

merry belated thanksgiving to you all!

once again, the manpanion really brought it this year and cooked up another kick-ass thanksgiving dinner, which included a juicy-ass turkey

which admittedly looks kinda weird in this picture, but I assure you it was moist, tender, and delicious. the key is brining your turkey, doye!

there was a veritable plethora of yumtastic sides


the most adorable food item went to friend Cheri’s totes adorbs crafty corn cookies


which were made from simple butter cookies with white frosting, resse’s pieces, and green-apple fruit roll-ups.

love ‘em.

and while on the topic of fud I would like to take this opportunity to call mild bullshit on shake shack’s pink peppercorn custard. I’d gone to shake shack a few weeks ago and noticed on their custard calendar that their flavor of the day on Thursdays during November would be pink peppercorn. I’m no stranger to eating curious, slightly questionable food, so I figured this was right up my alley. I went last night to try some. I was expecting the custard to be, well, pink and peppery. What I got was what looked like plain vanilla custard, and at first also basically tasted like vanilla custard. It was only after I swallowed that I could taste the pepper. The peppercorn was more of an aftertaste, if anything. It complemented the vanilla well, and brought out a more floral taste in the vanilla, but ultimately the taste was subtle almost to the point of being imperceptible. In fact, if I didn’t know that there was peppercorn in the custard, I wouldn’t have guessed that’s what I was tasting. All that said, the quality of the custard is very high, since Shake Shack makes awesome custards, but I was hoping for more peppery taste… mmm, then again though more pepper flavor might be kinda gross. Ah well, bullshit has already been called, and there’s no going back now.

once again, goldberg and i went to the the big apple comic book, art, toy and sci-fi expo. unlike the 1st annual new york comicon i went to a couple of years ago, there weren't a lot of cosplayers. there were, however, a buttload of celebrities. val kilmer, hayden panettiere, and katy segal were there. sadly, i was too cheap to pay to get pictures of them. plus it's kinda creepy to pay to have your picture taken with someone. i still got pictures of celebrities, though. and by "celebrities" i mean "people that you've probably never heard of unless you're a gigantic nerdlinger." people like

the most dapperest man in comics, jim steranko


sergio aragones, father of groo


jim calafiore, who did art for exiles and countdown (and whose art i kinda don't care for. sorry, calafiore fans!)


daredevil cover artist, the not uncute alex maleev


uhm... lynda carter?


and perhaps most famous of all (if this were 1978) haywood nelson, aka dwayne nelson from "what's happening" (and possibly "what's happening now" though i don't feel like looking it up on imdb)


but the big apple comicon wasn't just about the glitz and glamor of celebrities, it's also about mounds and mounds of ridiculous crap. how ridiculous, you ask?

naked girl dressed up like a gorilla-ridiculous


sci-fi-puppy-ridiculous


unintentinally supergay hercules bust-ridiculous


wee super hero penguin-ridiculous


(that's a lot of ridiculousness, y'all.)

and to make a painfully long post mercifully short, here's the last of the stuff i saw at big apple con 2007:

lightsabers


evil lyn bust


iron man statues


a ninja named stan



and bringing up the rear (pun gratuitously intended) is this controversial statue of mary jane watson parker.

you're welcome, fanboys!

(for more pictures from the 2007 big apple comic book, art, toy and sci-fi expo, check out my flickr page here.

Labels: comicon, comixxx, pitcherz, they're not dolls

i went to the kaiju big battel more better fighto event

at warsaw in (noncolonial) williamsburg, brooklyn last night. it was kinda sketchy as to whether or not pictures were allowed. the bouncers seemed were unfriendly in that unamused eastern european sort of way, so i didn't really want to take my chances. because of that, i didn't use a flash to take pictures. out of general thoughtlessness, i didn't fiddle with my camera's settings to see if i could find one more appropriate to what i was trying to capture. some of the pictures came out pretty well even though the settings were kinda wrong. in fact, they probably came out alright because the settings were wrong. some of the pictures look like old stills from crappy, low-quality japanese moster movies, which i thought was neat. check out some of the unintended effects in my pictures from the kaiju big battle:

this dude was the mc. i forget his name, but i guess he's some kind of youtube celebrity. would anyone out there who knows his name care to hook me with the 555-1212?


this is one of the dudes who was hyping up the crowd.


the nefarious dr. cube


and of course, the kaiju! (that's "strange beast!" or "monster!" to you white devils.)
there was intergalactic pest uchu chu


one of the fierce fighting space spawn, the swarm


aspiring do-gooder, hero intern


the actually dusty dust-o bunny


and last but not least, some other dude, whose name i also forgot


i love you, monster-dude whose name i can't remember!

p.s. more of my pictures from the kaiju big battel more better fighto can be found here.

Labels: pitcherz

smiling guy on a bike. oberlin, ohio. may 2007. Originally posted here.

Mudd Library, Oberlin College; Oberlin, Ohio. May 2007. Originally posted here.

I went to the Secret Science Club's 3rd annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest at Union Hall in Park Slope this past Friday.


I saw a whole lot of two-headed animals like this two-headed chick, made by the fine folks at The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists


And this two-headed calf named Tango, presented by the folks from the Evolution store in SoHo




The folks from Evolution also presented a reproduction of the skeleton of interweb sensation Frank and Louie, the two headed cat


The skeleton was made from the bones of two other cats, and was constructed to look like what Frank and Louie's bones probably looked like


The taxidermist wh omade it did such a good job that one of the judges, Darrin Lunde, The American Museum of Natural History's collections manager for mammalogy, said that if he hadn't been told the skeleton was a fake, he would have thought it was the real deal. While Mr. Lunde was impressed with the quality of the skeleton, i was more impressed by the fact that the guy who had assembled the bones was a bit playful and posed the cat playing with a toy mouse

Incidentally, the taxidermist's girlfriend chided me for laughing at a racial joke that one of the presenters made, and then told me to not take her so seriously and then tapped my forehead with her fingers.

Another store, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, presented this antique tableau of voles (or possibly weasels... there was some debate)


Mounted to look like tiny little baby-sized polar bears

If you like it, it's going on sale pretty soon at Obscura, FYI.

There were also some imaginary animals such as this Rump Ape


And this Fiji Mermaid made by man-about-town Takeshi Yamada


Who also made this Horseshow Crab Samurai


There was an alleged Titmouse skeleton


Some jewlry made from insects


This rhinestone-covered skull, entitled "For God's Sake" stretched the definition of "taxidermy" a bit

but was still a crowd favorite, as the artist explained he had made it over the summer as a goof on Damien Hirst's "For The Love of God"

The show had some sweet moments, like when this lady talked nostalgically about the stuffed bird of paradise that her grandmother used to wear on a hat


And when we got to meet Pope Squirrel

which doesn't look like it would have a sweet sory behind it, but check out what its owner wrote about it on Pope Squirrel's Myspace page:
"it came in a big box with wrapping paper from the guggenheim. the way they were all standing around with their cameras made me think it was going to be a box full of snakes; those mischievous smiles!
i finally got the box open and all i could see was a piece of wood attached to...something. something covered in bubble wrap.

it said "dear frannie: may ALL your dreams come true. we love you."

several years ago i had a dream. i was in the guggenheim museum. as you may know- the guggenheim is a round building with inclining ramps instead of stairs. i dreamt i was running up the ramps because i had something to do at the top, although i didn't know what.
i got to the top floor and at the very end of the ramp there was a door.
i opened the door and inside the room there was a little squirrel in a pope outfit on a pedestal. the little pope had the little hat and a little staff and a tiny little round ball incense holder. his hand was up giving rites to some guy standing there. pope squirrel turned and stared at my with his beady eyes. i was so embarrassed that i had interrupted them! i kissed pope squirrel's precious tiny paw and backed out of the room bowing and apologizing profusely.

i told this dream to my dear friend kat a couple of years ago because it was such an odd dream. she remembered it all this time and made it happen for my 29th birthday. saved little squirrel from a junk shop and brought my friends together to make him for me.

it's not often someone makes your dream come true. and i've never been given anything so wildly lovely and thoughtful before.

i am TRULY blessed to know you, the architects of my dream- my dear kat, maria, kimberly, kelly, luke, rob and charles.
i love you. thank you."

Hee! I love you pope squirrel!

As always, there are more pictures from this event on my flickr page. Click here to see more pictures from the Secret Science Society's taxidermy contest including a punny corn dog, a deerhoof (not that kind!), and since i gotta be me, hirsute scientists and hunky taxidermists.