28 March 2009
27 March 2009
26 March 2009
OK so its 2009. We don't have flying cars yet but we have podcasts!
Give a listen to my contribution to the new episode of Issue Oriented.
24 March 2009
Curse of the Immortal
edited & plagiarized from todays WSJ
Mr. Arakawa and Madeline Gins are on a quest to make human beings immortal.
The duo strives to achieve everlasting life through architecture. Mr. Arakawa and Ms. Gins design structures they say can enable inhabitants to "counteract the usual human destiny of having to die."
The pair's work, based loosely on a movement known as "transhumanism," is premised on the idea that people degenerate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable. The artists' solution: construct abodes that leave people disoriented, challenged and feeling anything but comfortable.
They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus prolonging life. "You become like a baby," says Mr. Arakawa.
The couple met in 1962 as students at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She was a native New Yorker; he was already a successful Japanese artist. They later married. In the 1960s and '70s they played a role in the conceptual art movement, based on the philosophy that the artist's idea or concept behind a piece of art is more important than the physical object itself. The Guggenheim Museum SoHo in Manhattan showcased 30 years of their work in 1997, including paintings and architectural models.
"Their research is a milestone in the history of conceptual art," says Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at the main Guggenheim Museum, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where the couple's work is currently on display. She says many of their supporters don't literally accept the couple's message on immortality but appreciate it in a "metaphorical" way.
To the artists, eternal life is a real possibility. "This is a great chance for the human race," says Ms. Gins.
They have completed a park, an office building and nine "reversible destiny" lofts in Japan. The lofts, finished in 2005, cost about $6mm to build and rent for $1,700 to $2,300 a month.
A typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.
At least one tenant says he feels a little younger already. Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn't sure whether it was cured by the loft.
There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can't buy furniture for the living room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he relishes the lifestyle. "I feel a completely different kind of comfort here," says the 43-year-old video director. His wife, however, complains that the apartment is too cold. Also, the window to the balcony is near the floor, and she keeps bumping her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laundry, he says. ("That's one of the exercises," says Ms. Gins.)
Last year, Mr. Arakawa and Ms. Gins's first U.S. home, which resembles the Tokyo lofts, was completed in East Hampton, N.Y. It took $2mm and eight years to construct, and has a listing price of $5.5mm.
Many scientists see the couple's work as part of a futile, age-old human aspiration to live forever. "Longevity salesman is the second-oldest profession," says S. Jay Olshansky, a researcher on aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "This would be the worst possible house you could build for an older person," he says. To prolong life, he recommends building spaces that "lower the probability of falls," plus a healthy diet and exercise.
Some transhumanists dismiss the couple's architectural solution. "Human life has enough challenges in terms of our work and daily lives that we don't need to invent new physical challenges for our bodies," says Ray Kurzweil, a leading transhumanist figure in the U.S. In the future, humans will have microscopic robots in their bodies which will be able to regenerate cells, he says.
20 March 2009
19 March 2009
What the hell is a "Bee"?!
We have spelling BEE's but why don't you ever hear of any other kind of Bee?
Wait a minute, what does “Bee” even mean?!
Apparently "bee" was a word used to describe a gathering of friends to accomplish a task. So like if I was moving and I needed my friends to help me I'd have a “moving bee”.
I guess “bee” was strictly reserved for serious situations when people were needed to help build a barn or clear some bramble and shit like that. “A bee was often both a social and utilitarian event. Jobs like corn husking or sewing, could be done as a group to allow socialization during an otherwise tedious chore. Such bees often included refreshments and entertainment provided by the group.”
Its etymology isn't quite clear but possibly derived from the Old English word bēn for “prayer”. However, because the word describes people working together in a social group it is more commonly assumed that the term “bee” was derived from the insect of the same name and their similar social behavior - hanging out in honeycombs and shit.
I say let's bring the term back. It's cool. Let's start by having a “rent bee” where you all come and pay my rent and I'll serve diet ginger ale. Sound good?
Beggar's Banquet
"Please allow me to introduce myself... " The man of wealth and taste had to make some stops first. I'd been all over town. Back home I was cooking dinner. I was making ziti with gravy... roasted peppers... string beans with olive oil, and beautiful cutlets...that were cut just right that I was going to fry up as an appetizer. So I was home for about an hour before all hell broke loose. I didn't even get to taste the broccoli rabe. I was on my fourth coffee in two hours. Larges, light and sweet. But they didn't understand "light and sweet" once you got past Jersey. Just like Ginger Ale. Good luck finding a Ginger Ale below the Mason–Dixon. A few hours earlier I was rolling around in my bed like an alligator in a death roll with an armadillo. The serotonin had kicked in hard. Every thought I had felt like the best thing ever. Every move I made felt amazing. I was like a little cozy kid under the blankets. Under the clouds. Snoring under the stars in my cave of pillows and dreams. But lets rewind to the diner in Hoboken. This guy had a few thousand dollars worth of Fordite. People paid a lot of money for this stuff, he said. I had never seen it before. What did I know, I owned an old Chevy. The Fordite reminded me of some sort of polished sea stone you'd find on the shore in Cape Cod or in one of those tourist shops 5 for a buck in Lake George. "Carnelian" or something, "banded agate", hey, what the hell did I know? It was actually layers upon layers of enamel from the assembly line of the old Ford factories back when everything was spraypainted by hand. You want details? I had scrambled eggs, home fries well done, and rye toast, dry. He had bacon and eggs and a chocolate milk. We sat by the window. He was late so I fucked with the jukebox and played some Patsy Cline while the waitress filled my coffee ten times over and asked me if I wanted the paper. But like Pavlov the bell meant I had to run. I had to put more sec tones on the commercial carts so they'd all fire in sequence. A cart without a sec tone meant dead air and the DJ would freak out. Especially if that DJ was me and it was 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I used to be the only guy in the entire station. It was a cool feeling. Like staying up late and drinking ice cold Yoo-Hoo from a can and watching the Marx Brothers. I always liked working on the holidays, it was a union thing and I was the shop steward. The city was so peaceful on the holidays. No one around. Just me and the wayward yellow cabs circling like hungry sharks for a rogue fare. Sometimes in the winter I'd go weeks without seeing daylight. I'd be in the underground garage before sunrise and I'd leave after sunset. It's no wonder people in London make such great music. "Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name" and all that great stuff.
Read MoreI was recently interviewed by NPR about my time at Bear Stearns. Amazing it's been a year since that fateful weekend. I miss Bear very much. The camaraderie at Bear was truly unparalleled. I wasn't there very long but I feel lucky to have been a part of it. It's a time in my life and an address I will forever remember. You can see/listen here and here.
pic from Gothamist
My Letter to Felix Gillette
Felix,
Loved your article, "Scarborough/Bloomberg Not Quite Frost/Nixon!". It was very comforting to see someone as disappointed as I.
I came into this world right about the same time Sue Simmons began her career at NBC and I've been watching her for as long as I can remember. I grew up with "Live at 5", Sue, Chuck, Jack Cafferty and the immortal Gabe Pressman. Sue and Chuck and Channel 4 have come to signify NYC to me; its the only station I turn to for news. NBC, CNBC, MSNBC; so long as it ends with NBC. So naturally when I heard NBC was launching a 24-hour local news channel I sang Hallelujah to anyone within earshot. "Anything would be better than NY1", I thought.
NY1 seems to make a living from driving me crazy. Anytime something is breaking in the city the absolute last place I'll turn to is NY1 because 9 times out of 10 while an entire borough is ablaze, NY1 will be rolling some canned news cycle from 7 hours ago.
If you are going to call yourself "New York One" then act like it! If a story is unfolding in NEW YORK CITY I want to turn on NEW YORK 1 and see what's up. I want to see people ON THE SCENE, reporting, as it happens! I don't want to see preheated footage of Dominic Carter's neck eating his chin while he interviews Commissioner Sadik-Khan for fifth time this month or the regurgitated top story cycle by Kristen Shaughnessy taped once at 9 AM and served cold all day long. The whole damn station is CANNED! Its like a news jukebox. NY1 COULD be so much more than it is but I've given up on them. If they haven't learned by now...
Then in comes the big, bad peacock. "Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news", I thought. I was super excited when I heard the news in May of '08. Finally a 24-hour exclusive NYC news channel to silence all the impostors who tried and failed. I had completely written off NY1 and that Brooklyn "News 12" is worse than my Junior High School's A/V club final project. No one could get it right but I, well, I had great faith in NBC.
And then "NY-non-stop" launched and within five to ten minutes I had fallen back to earth, hard. My dreams shattered. The über contrived disheveled David Ushery browsing the net for "cool" sites?! I mean, come on now! Keep your "hip" out of my newsfeed just like your chocolate out of my peanut butter. I fall firmly within the demographic they seem to be going for and even I am rolling my eyes. "What's your favorite place to skateboard?". Yawn.
For the sake of full disclosure, perhaps I watch TV news and listen to news radio a bit more attentively than most as I've worked in behind-the-scenes production in NY media for many years. I'm the guy who actually looks forward to tuning into the Sunday night 11 o'clock news broadcasts because things always go wrong. Most know that Sunday night is when the skeleton crew rolls the graphics and they let the recently promoted interns man the cameras and its a laugh riot. Make some popcorn and try it sometime!
The only way we will have ever a true "hyper-local" 24-hour NY news channel is when someone finally listens to me and sticks a damn camera in the 1010 WINS air studio. THAT would be hyper-local 24-hour NY news. Everything else will simply masquerade as until then.
Just the other day an American Airlines flight made an emergency landing at JFK just after takeoff from LGA. Debris from the plane was found on the street in Queens. What did we see around the dials? NY1 had George Whipple's eyebrows talking about Nick Cage's new movie, CBS 2 was airing a commercial on lumbar spinal stenosis, NBC 4 was "Style By Jury", Fox 5 had Disney Eggs - these are frightening - somehow they have scientifically altered eggs to come out looking like Mickey's silhouette! You get the idea... No one was covering the breaking NY news. They'd all dropped the ball. A plane makes a crash landing in our backyard and all the stations are asleep at the wheel... except 1010 WINS.
What did the new NBC channel have about the emergency landing? Well, the great new "NY Non-Stop" 24-7 had Julia Allison talking about what not to wear to work (assuming you have a job these days) while the crawl was informing me that Bobby Mc Ferrin had turned 59! Oh, joy!
I rest my case.
Sincerely,
Issue Oriented!
I am thrilled to announce I've been asked to contribute to Issue Oriented! My segment will be known as "A Person Familiar With The Matter" and I will be free to explore whatever it is on my mind at the time. I'm very excited to work with Ronen as he is a great, smart guy (not to mention author, teacher and musician) who I've known for many years. Ronen and I have managed to coexist within the same underground stratosphere for quite some time but have never had the chance to collaborate on anything so I'm really looking forward to it!
"ISSUE ORIENTED is a podcast for thoughtful people with good taste in music. From across punk, hardcore, indie, metal and beyond, Ronen Kauffman invites some of the culture industry’s most compelling personalities to have meaningful discussions on real topics. Unlike most podcasts, ISSUE ORIENTED is neither boring nor a waste of your time. "Nominee, 2008 Podcast Awards - Entertainment category
Nominee, 2008 Weblog Awards - Best Podcast
Find out more here Read More
Revival of a Remake
Are there any original ideas left in Hollywood or on Broadway?
Is there anyone willing to take a risk on a new script or concept?
Jesus Christ! Enough with the comic book movies!!!!!
18 March 2009
11 March 2009
Not only is daytime TV fucking terrifying but all these NY news channels suck. An American Airlines flight just made an emergency landing at JFK just after takeoff from LGA. Debris from the plane was found on the street in Queens.
Let's see what we've got around the dials
NY1 - George Whipple talking about Nicholas Cage's new movie.
Channel 2 - Lumbar Spinal Stenosis commercial
Channel 4 - Style By Jury
Channel 5 - Disney Eggs!
Channel 7 - News at noon just finished. Nothing.
How about the great new NBC cable station "NY Non-Stop" 24-7 - well they're talking about what to wear to work and telling me Bobby Mc Ferrin is 59 today.
PATHETIC.
1010 WINS still shits on everyone.
10 March 2009
09 March 2009
I love this thing.
This ad is currently playing on TV in NYC to announce the NY Int'l Children's Film Festival 2009.
Sold the Richard Serra for a David Hockney. We said cheers to the pharmaceutical Gods of Wyeth, domestic honey bees and shared a bottle of Mouton-Rothschild. That wine sure would have went well with that corporate mozzarella di bufala a few years prior. She was head to toe in Greenwich Benetton's best with Tenleytown white hair. I'd spent most of the day toiling in the family bog outside Biddeford. Shut the laptop down and drove North. Cut my losses. Joked we'd be forced to name our next son, Pfizer. It was a good week. Built a bonfire and breathed deep. Sweet saltwater air and sand. The distinct smell of bittersweet bog soil on my old Red Wings. In the old garage there were still Bankers Boxes piled high. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I was trying to find my old Cal Ripken collection. Namely his 1982 Topps Traded rookie card. # 98T. Forgot how much I loved and collected Carlton Fisk. Came across his 1972 rookie. It was him, Cecil Cooper and Mike Garman. They all shared a rookie card. Coop manages the Houston Astros now. Not sure what Garman is up to these days. Carlton plays a whole mess of golf and still hates the Yankees. But she and I met at a panel discussion. A real tear-jerker on the four-millionth floor of the Junius Pierpont building. I think it was during the 11:35 "Identifying Risk and Opportunity in the Middle East Geo-Political Landscape" when we first met mutual rolling eyes. We shared a complementary mozzarella di bufala sandwich on a Midtown ciabatta with a Diet Coke in the breakout area at half-time and then we ditched. Felt like we were back in High School cutting class. Such a rush. Jumped in her idling Lincoln and went downtown. Stopped at Balthazar for a Kasteel Cru and then on to Lombardi's for a pie topped with fresh Ricotta flowers from a piping bag. Then over ice water we decided to sell the David Hockney and bought a Richard Serra.
Read More06 March 2009
Middle of the night, message from D.W. blooped my BlackBerry: "The Morning Glory seeds were no good. LOL. They're all treated with chemicals now so they can't be used. We checked everywhere. Even Home Depot and Lowe's. Some of them are even treated with mercury to prevent them from spoiling. But, we'll find something. Sit tight. Talk soon"
OK, so we knew the Morning Glory seeds weren't going to cut it. At least, not for tonight. But we still had the nutmeg from the health food store on 3rd. A few tablespoons of that and we'd be right as rain, out like lights, asleep for days in an opium haze, crawling to our clean beds with fresh white linens and a cool breeze like pins and needles on our knees. We were awaitin' intense sedation. I had chills and they were multiplyin'.
She started talking with her eyes closed in a cute middle of the night rasp, I had no idea she was even awake, listening to me texting with D.W. "...nutmeg was a very important trade item in the 16th century. It was a precious commodity due to the enormous medicinal properties of its seeds." She had to be kidding me. Who talks like that at 3 A.M.?
I'd heard about slaves on the ships bringing nutmeg to Europe got in trouble for eating part of the cargo. But who could blame them? They knew that a few big kernels of nutmeg would bring them a pleasant, euphoric feeling, and relieved their weariness and pain. It was worth the risk.
She rolled over, "Nutmeg was even used when your boy King Charles the second almost died of a brain clot. His death a few days later did nothing to detract from its useful reputation. Rumor spread through London that nutmeg could act as a cheap abortion pill. The girls who procured abortions from nutmeg were called "nutmeg ladies."
That's the last thing I remember. I must have blacked out. I woke up to D.W. pounding on the back door and Catfinder barking up a storm.
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