Musings from the God of Cities

i was walking around the east village yesterday and came across the 2007 new york city santacon santas hanging out at tompkins square park, drinking and getting high being jolly. i didn't know santacon was going on, and i hadn't planned on being out all day taking pictures so i didn't take a shit-ton of pictures like i would have had i been a bit more prepared. here's what i did get pictures of:

southern gentleman santa


"naughty" shirtless santa who goodnaturedly gave me shit about taking his picture because he had his shirt off. (he totally rubbed his nipple and everything!)


this trio of make-up santa, wonder-woman santa and uhm... kinda totally over this whole thing santa


i took this picture of the wonder woman santa climbing over the fence

and had to rationalize to myself that it's not mean to post because she's wearing a star on her hiney, and you know... no pants. i think she's ok with people seeing her tush. besides, like 4 people look at this blog.

there was this lady santa making out-ish with a humbug santa.


but (apparently) santacon isn't just about santas and drinking beer and smoking weed in the park spreading holiday cheer. it's also about ancillary christmas characters and things such as

rudolph the red nosed reindeer... who is on strike or something


happy, friendly christmas elves


mean and surly christmas elves


hipster christmas tree

who, incidentally, had a whole dick-in-a-box thing going on.

this sort of queen-of-winter or something


and this lady who, i'm guessing was going for a poinsetta look of something?

mostly, i just like the way the picture came out.

for more pictures from santacon nyc 2007, check out my flickr page.

Labels: pitcherz

marquette, michigan. summer 2007.

Labels: pitcherz

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

Holy canoli! It’s been since July 4th since I’ve posted anything here on this dusty old blog of mine. I guess I’ve been mostly just flickring, which is generally more immediately satisfying and frankly, easier to do. However, I’d be remiss not to post pictures from the 17th Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade. Once again, I braved the muddy, muddy Tompkins Square dog run to bring you, my two readers, the finest pictures of dogs wearing Halloween costumes I could be bothered to take. I've uploaded all the pictures to my flickr page, so if you want to see them all, click here. Otherwise, enjoy these highlights:

People who dressed up with their dogs:

lobster dog and female fisherman


lucille ball and desi arnaz dog


sm/bondage dog (hello, people who googled the phrase "sm/bondage dog". i think this is what you were looking for.)


football player dog. i love it when pet costumes have those little arms. it kind of makes me squeal.


this picture of the woman who made an exterminator (exterminatrix?) costume, she made her dog a millipede costume! ridiculous.

love it.

there were dogs dressed up as fictional characters:

E.T./Elliott dog


yoda dog


hannibal lecter/silence of the lambs dog

dogs dressed like famous people:

elvis dog with stage


amy doghouse and pete doggerty. (amy winehouse and pete dougherty dogs, obvs.)


frida kahlo dog

dogs dressed as people:

grandma dog


pugs in wigs (in space)


space dogs

dogs dressed as... things and stuff:

dachs boot dachshund


pumpkin pug


swiss army knife dog


iphone dog


taco dog

and probably my most favoritest type of pet costume: dogs dressed up like other animals:

little rabbit dog


shark dog


turkey dog


peacock pug

and the most awesome costume idea for a dog:

dog dressed up like another dog!

there's a bunch more pictures from the east village dog parade here on my flickr. as an added bonus, you can also find pictures from the carl schurz dog parade there as well.

Labels: dawgsz, pitcherz

much like almost every other stupid jerk with a digital camera, i went to see the simpsons movie promotion at 711 where they changed a 7-11 into a kwik-e-mart. (though all the other stupid jerks probably didn't go on the 4th of july at 8 a.m.) i thought it would be a bigger, crazier transformation, but it really just amounted to some pastic characters, and some signage. pretty neat, but nothing to write home about. blogging about it, on the other hand...


here's the outside signage of the 7-11/kwik-e-mart


office wiggum, enjoying some...


...pink frosted donuts


ralph wiggum enjoying an icicle next to...


...comic book guy heff albertson and jasper, aka frostilicus


of course homer was there, enjoying...


...kwik-e-mart hot dogs, which are full of bunly goodness


i didn't find any buzz cola, but there were tons of boxes of KrustyO's cereal boxes (one of which i bought, obvs.) i also bought a couple of donuts. there were a couple of cops there, and i wanted to ask them to pose as if they were easting a donut, but i'm pretty sure they would have shot me up real good if i had.

more pictures from my visit to the 7-11/kwik-e-mart trip
here on my flickr page. speaking of which, even though i don't post here very often, i'm sort of constantly uploading stuff on flickr. i'll probably post some of that stuff here sooner or later, but if you want to keep abreast of my latest picture-taking adventures, you always check out my flickr page.

Labels: pitcherz, stuff

5th ave, nyc, 4/22/07

Labels: pitcherz

"WHITE BABIES
These are an acquired taste. They're not cute like a bug and they don't have big black eyes like the other races, but they have something happening in a "funny little man" way. Like, if you were to put a suit on this guy and sit him behind a desk, you could almost hear him saying, 'Jennifer, I like you. We all do. But you have to understand, General Motors is about teamwork and if you can't learn to hand in your purchase orders with the rest of your team I'm not sure we can keep you on here.' He's literally a tiny dad."

---Vice Magazine, Who's Cuter- White Babies or Black Babies?

Labels: pitcherz

jeffrey solow, celist. princeton, nj, april 14, 2007

Labels: pitcherz

here are some birds i saw on a recent trip to the central park zoo:

some kind of dove or something


peacock!


and this annoyed bird

Labels: pitcherz

i had a busy, busy, busy week this week. twice this week i got suckered into going to things that i agreed to do while i was druink. in the end, they were both way more enjoyable than they had any right being, so it's all good. the first thing was going to see my coworkers play in the company team's playoffs. i took some pictures while i was there. i like the industrial look the lighting gave the pictures



more here.

the other thing i went to was my friend brom's debut with a band he joined, the trembling turncoats. they played at kenny's castaways, which apparenly has all kinds of crazy music history. i was talking to the bouncer, who said that the difference between kenny's castaways and cbgb's is that cbgb's had a better PR person. anywho, the band was supergood. i really dug 'em.





more picture from the show here.

Labels: frenz, pitcherz

jeers to "the descent" which, despite positive reviews, i didn't care for. i just didn't think it was that scary. there were a few good moments, sure, but overall i was hoping to crap my pants with terror, but didn't.

cheers to "the graduate" which i saw for this weekend for the first time. good stuff, good stuff. i realize i'm coming into this way late, but like a wise old woman once said, "it's better to be late than pregnant. besides the obvious reasons why the movie is enjoyable, i thought it was neat to see dutin hoffman as a young, nervous buck, and to hear all those classic simon and garfunkel songs in their original context.

more and bigger cheers go to the manpanion and the brand new, totally awesome camera he bought me. i don't have a memory stick yet, so i can only take about eight pictures at a time, and therefore didn't take it outside. instead, i stayed indoors and started teaching myself how to use the camera. i'm still learnding, so the pictures didn't turn out great, but some of 'em came out pretty good. mostly 'cause the camera is so great. it has more than twice the megapixels and three times the optical zoom of my old camera. anywho, here are the highlights of the pictures i took with my new camera:

the jack knight starman action figure i have in my bathroom


and here it is up close


here's the golden age sandman action figure i have next to starman


this is the "justice league unlimited" action figure i have across from the two former JSA members


here's my arachane-variant spider woman chase action figure


here's two of the three hydra henchmen that come wih the spider woman figure


here's a homer simpson christmas ornament


here's a mochi i was eating that i thought looked kinda like some weird "dark crystal"=y creature. (which, p.s. did you know they're making a dark crystal sequel?)


finally, i tried taking some pictures from far away to test out the zoom. i'd say the camera really held its own in these pictures of stamps taken from across the room


this detail from a map several feet away


and this lord of the rings bookend on my top shelf

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

being the sneaky fella that i am, i managed to score a pass to the 2007 American International Toy Fair. the highlight was obvs seeing the d.c. figures (marvel didn't have anything particularly interesting out. there, i said it.) it was an "all business" kinda place, so i couldn't mess around too hard, taking pictures and whatnot, but it was still really cool seeing everything... and i unleashed the ninja and took some sneaky pictures of the d.c. figures. some of the pictures came out kinda polly-wolly crappy 'cause i was being all sneaktacular. i think i probably could have been less sneaky about it, since the d.c. folks seemed more relaxed than any of the other folks there. anywho, here are pictures of the new d.c. comics/d.c. direct action figures, busts and other ephemera such as


batman statues and a batwoman bust


zatanna "women of the d.c. universe" bust


busty busts (l. to r. big barda, power girl, wonder girl donna troy)


superwoman, batwoman and bizarro from loeb and mcguiness's "vengence" storyline in "superman batman"


more mcguiness bat-people goodness

it was a touch... ironic? that the two pictures i took that came out the best least worst were of some fey elseworlds flash i'm not familiar with and...


...the new aquaman, arthur joseph curry. at least you can see the variant blue beetle figure.



my favorite thing at the toy fair had to be dr. fate's helmet of nabu and amulet of anubis. they were so realisitc, i was afraid to put it on, lest it turn me to water.

oh, and tobey mcguire was promoting the new spiderman movie there. i tried to get his autograph, but he just hopped in a cab, which is when i snapped this picture of him.

he really has put on a lot of weight.

a few more pictures from the toy fair can be found here on my flickr page.

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

i love visiting mumsie up in westchester 'cause she's always going to random stores they don't have in the city. last time i was there, we went to michael's arts and crafts store together where i took these pictures:

Labels: pitcherz, stuff

two of my favorite chicagoans, brian and ryan, came to nyc to celebrate ryan's ...29th birthday.

while they were here, we did all kinds of dumb shit, including but not limited to meeting up with some friends

and getting some dim sum in chinatown,

working our way north to perennial favorite NOLITA to go to rice to riches








'cause ryan wanted some rice pudding.

ryan loves rice pudding and wants to marry it.

we kept going north and ran into some kind of outsider art fair at the puck building





i took a picture of brian taking a picture of me taking a picture of brian taking a picture of me, taking a picture of brian...

and finally, we went to bamn! the automat restaurant on st mark's in the east village




everyone was excited about the automat, especially frank...



...but especially brian:


as evra, these pictures and more from my adventures with the chicago boys can be found on my flickr page.

Labels: chicagofolks, frenz, pitcherz

i realize that it's been ages since my lat post, but between the holidays, and general laziness it's hard for a fella to post dumb shit on the internet. also adding to my drastically decreased get-up-and-go-edness is my new job, which saw me working on a saturday this week. A SATURDAY! after a few hours, i started getting punchy and decided to amuse myself. i took my cue from my father who, when i was in high-school, gave me a photocopy he'd made of his face at work. at the time i had odd, arty-farty stuff on the walls of my bedroom (as one does when one is a sullen teen) and my father made me the photocopy because he knew i liked weird stuff on my walls. that was pretty much the one cool thing my father ever did. anywho, in keeping with my tradition a bit, here are some photocopies of my face. the copious amounts of hair around my head is the hood from my winter jacket. the copious amount of hair on my face is my italian heritage and my dislike of shaving.

Labels: pitcherz