Sunday Sidewalk Surfin': Hair Apparent

OK, so I'm always finding stuff on the ground--a Hello Kitty charm bracelet, a soggy clump of 20s in a puddle, an apple covered in ants that a funny little boy told his mom he was going to pick up and eat--so I figured I'd spotlight some of my more potentially poetic discoveries on sssspunerisms. I don't intend for it to always be as disgusting as this first installment, so please, uh, don't read if you have a highly active gag reflex.

Exhibit A,  an engaging collection of hair shavings I found in the laundry room last week, on the floor next to the garbage can. I was so repulsed I had to leave a note, asking whosever hair it was to please clean it up. And there was more--stray shavings, ranging from 1/4- to 1-inch-long, were scattered all across the tops of the 5 available washing machines. Ewwww. 

It wasn't dog or cat hair, which wouldn't have bothered me in the least. I don't know what area of the body it came from, or how it could have gotten all over the laundry room. I told a friend of mine about this later, and she thought perhaps the hairless (or at least less-haired) wonder had shaken out a towel he or she had used while shaving before putting it in the wash. No matter what, I suspect this is the hair of a narcissist. A close-shaven one, of course.

Wordless Wednesday: Dream, Deferred

Fans of De La Vega's work will recognize this shattered dream that caught my eye on 87th Street, written on broken, soaken shards of glass. Despite the downer songs I've chosen to accompany this, I saw such beauty here--golden raindrops mirror-balling in the streetlight, hope rising out of a freakin' bag of garbage over the subway grate that some guy used to stand under as he looked up ladies' skirts. (Really, that's true, it was a couple years ago.) Seriously, remember what Nietzsche said about smashing everything and starting anew?

P.S. I took this photo with my new iPhone!


Kicked out of his band, tax evasion, handguns, ten vials of crack in 1/2 hour. Oh dude, we can hear dreams dying, dying in your beautiful voice even here:

High Apple Pie

OK, so I stole a kid's artwork. It's not what you think. Earlier this week, yes, I swiped this from the rec center in the gym where I take Pilates in the mornings. I love this room--one spring there was a bird family nesting in the skylight, and there are tons of inspirational signs all over the place... TEAM=Together Everyone Achieves More! And #1 on the list of How To Deal With a Bully, Use your indoor voice and stay calm.

So, this one was sort of shoved in the back of the sink, right in the exact spot where last semester languished another work of pee-wee art, a diagram of a worm that I coveted all summer long. Every time I saw it I thought, Oh no, I can't take some kid's art...until one day I found it had been thrown in the trash, and by then it was too late. Not this time, baby! Here's my loot in all its pink, popsicle-sticked glory.

Though I have to wonder--do you think he or she was finished? I mean, there's so much room, for success, for failure, endless possibilities after the second affirmation. What to fill that space with?

No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful./Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful??

Or how 'bout... All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece but not too much?

However you fill in your pink blank, I often think of something I recently read in (pretty sure it was) SELF magazine... they say that willpower is like a muscle--the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets...and if you're about to eat that ginormous piece of Death By Chocolate from Pinisi Bakery or tenderly light that cigarette and bring its cool, soft whiteness to your lips, you're supposed to contract your abs, which somehow is supposed to send some tough-guy message to your brain and heighten your resolve.

All good, but I take back the part about Death By Chocolate. Just freakin' eat it.



You can have a town, why don't you take it?



Fight it, baby! Red! And! White! Pinstripes! And! A! Red! Tie!

Wordless Wednesday: More Like the Moon Than the Sun

Oh dear. Sometimes it happens this way. From the two books that found themselves, kneeling and reeling, on my bedside reading table this week:

There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.
-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

UNCERTAINTY like opening your eyes wide in the dark then closing them hard then open and blinded by the sparkling silver dots created from the pressure on the corneas, squint, roll, focus, then you're blind again but at least you saw the light somehow.
-Kurt Cobain, Journals

And for musical accompaniment, why, I thought I'd serve up two of the saddest songs I've ever heard!



When I heard him start to play this next one at Michael Jackson's funeral, I thought..."No, not that! Everyone will cry!"

Wordless Wednesday: So Where Were The Spiders?

I thought this was a tripped-up, hipped-up cousin of a Blue Meanie until I counted the legs just now. Spider? Octopus? And why is there always a Ramones song for everything?!

Meezer Monday: Moon & Supermoon

In honor of Saturday’s supermoon—at its cheesiest and pleasy-est in 18 years!!—here is Keith Moon with his wife’s Siamese cat, Fudge. I can’t find a reliable source to confirm that said kitty a) belonged to Keith Moon’s wife’s and b) was deliciously named Fudge, but it’s a durn good story so we’re going with it.

Durn? Who the heck says that? (Editor’s note: Mark Twain, it turns out.)

Anyway, I have definitely felt the pull of the moon, its champagne light glimmer-shimmering in the night like waves in a dark sea, the only thing (but admittedly, a big one) you have left in common with your unrequited love.

Alternately, I do think it’s probably made of cheese, a yummy triple-cream one like Explorateur.

Ah, the title alone...makes me wanna be/live all poetic:



Andy Partridge's demo of a Dukes of Stratsophear tune...you like?



Not necessarily my fave Who tune, but it's meezer-appropriate. And our hero is featured at the beginning.