Things I Have Seen

So in my first week here in New York, here's just a few things I've seen around and about my new digs in the East Village:

>Little old lady (80+) with a bleached blonde faux-hawk
>Guy on subway with huge swastika tattoo and two SS lightning bolts on his bicep – wearing sleeveless shirt to show them off
>Kid on bike with long handlebars and two huge rear-view mirrors in the shape of iron crosses (sense a theme here?)
>Guy with his shirt open, tweaking his nipples on the subway
>Three rats on the subway (2 different ocassions - the second time, 2 chasing each other)
>Mouse in the movie theater munching (audibly on popcorn) in the row in front of me before the movie started
>Homeless people sleeping in the street on my short walk home from said theater: 5
>Oh yeah, the NYC, um, charter of Hell's Angels is half-way down my short block

On a more educational note, I saw the Zaha Hadid exhibit at the Guggenheim last Saturday. This wonderfully detailed exhibit includes her sketches and paintings, as well as scale models, artists renderings and video interviews with and about her.

Also, I just found a little Aussie Tuck Shop around the corner from my house. They sell freshly made meat pies, sausage rolls, lamingtons, and vanilla slices, as well as Vegemite, Cheezels, and Aussie bikkies.

Tangentially, there are stacks of Aussies here. A couple of others at work, and I keep running into them working around here, standing in line, etc. Feels like I'm at home!

Live from New York

Taken today down at the Battery.

It's official: Hitched to Everything is now a New York City blog.

Wherein I Fall Into Destitution

Well, I'm having to give up my lovely apartment here in the Elizabeth area of Charlotte, NC, and I'll be moving into one about half the size. I'm also going to have to give up my car. Sell off many of my belongings.

Yes, it's true: I'm moving to New York City! I've accepted a job with the fine folks at Avenue A | Razorfish. I'll miss all my compadres at Wachovia, especially the fantastic User Experience team I've been working with, but I also look forward to new challenges in the Big Apple.

(I kid about the destitution. I kid.)

Welcome to the New Improved Iraq

Welcome to the new Iraq, where

>you're marked for death if your name is Omar
>ethnic cleansing is on the rise
>tennis players are shot dead for wearing shorts
>14 year old boys are shot dead--apparently by police--for being gay
>women are being forced to cover their heads
>people selling alcohol are beaten and killed
>backgammon and chess are outlawed by hardline clerics
>civil war is imminent if not already underway

So when do we get to the improved part?

1 Laptop/Child

The new $100 laptop for kids has debuted and it's way cool.

Pete Barr-Watson has flickred additional shots, too.

Liberal Dose has additional details, including info on how the handcrank works.

Last Train to Ithaca

One of my favorite artists Joseph Arthur offers a new track "Last Train to Ithaca" dedicated to the victims of Katrina. [mp3]

Arthur encourages donations to Mercy Corps. Also visit the In the Sun Foundation, launched by Michael Stipe. REM collaborated with various artists on Arthur's song "In the Sun" to raise money for hurricane victims. Sundance is airing a brief documentary about that effort. You can watch it online.

Excuse Me, Do You Work Here?

I'll confess that due to a streak of perversity, I quite admire this sort of "improv": 80 strangers don khaki pants and blue shirts and walk into a Manhattan Best Buy at once. Pictures and everything. They stod at endcaps and helped customers if they approached. If they were asked if they worked there, they said "no." If they were asked if they knew the name of another psuedo-associate, they could quite honestly say "no," since the whole thing was organized over the net.

I Heart Ian McKellan

When I grow old, I want to be like Ian McKellan, partly to age gracefully, but the best part will be being able to say what I really think all the time - hopefully in a witty fashion:

I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith.

That's Sir Ian, in response to suggestions that The Da Vinci Code open with a disclaimer reminding the audience that it's fiction. McKellan confessed that he read the book and thought it a load of codswallop - this while promoting the movie; you have to love the man. He continued to describe the book in this fashion:

I doubt if people have read The Da Vinci Code more than once. It’s not that sort of book. You understand it as you go along and having understood it—it’s like a crossword. Once you’ve done the crossword you don’t rub it out and do it all over again and go onto another one, do you? I don’t.

He also recently said he thought Christians should be happy with the Code's premise:

I'm very happy to believe that Jesus was married. I know the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay.

WorldNetDaily covered most of these proceedings in a single article, though I'm not sure they found the humor in Sir Ian's comments, as I did.

He's going to be in the X-Men III, too, which comes out next week, so it's going to be all Ian all the time. Much better than all Tom all the time in my book.

Stormfront

Is Pat Robertson really a prophet? Or has he just been boning up on global warming?

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

Brand-New Jaw Line

I've posted an update on my brother's surgery today over at Saving Chris's Smile.

He should wake up in a few hours with a brand-new jaw line.

Holy Everlasting Nano Storage!

Before long you may be able to store everything you ever come across on a single memory stick smaller than a piece of gum or a flash drive on your keyring. Been hearing this sort of thing was coming eventually, but this breakthrough in ferroelectric technology is nothing short of astonishing.

Gay? Fine by Me.

This cool program encourages folks to buy a "Gay? Fine by Me" t-shirt to show their solidarity with their gay, lesbian, bi and transgender friends. They just sold their 50,000th t-shirt.

Speaking of all things gay: Just went to the final Charlotte's Gay Bingo last night. Good, clean, riotous fun as usual. Raised over 600,000 for RAIN. But the last one? Shelita! Tell us it ain't so!

A tangential thought: I'm amazed at how when people see what an ardent supporter of gay rights I am, they assume I must be gay. One former student wrote me a year or so to say she "deduced from reading my weblog" that I was "holding to a syncretistic meld of religious and philosophical perspectives, engaging in a homosexual lifestyle, and expanding [my] interest and skill in the arts and popular culture." Eh? Because I link to Human Rights Campaign and write about gay rights from time to time, I'm "engaging in a homosexual lifestyle?" (And that expression "homosexual lifestyle" is so telling of the writer's presuppositions, too.)

What does it say about how far we have to go that people assume you'd have to be gay to support gay rights? (Which, after all, are human rights.)

I don't point this out to out myself as a heterosexual (heh). If people mistake me for gay that's fabulous. I'll take it as a compliment on my sartorial choices and my passion for the arts (to sling a coupla stereotypes around). But I do think the dynamic's telling.

Fear Is Not What's Important

"Fear is not what's important. It's how you deal with it. It's not a matter of whether you feel it. It's how you manage it."

That's James Nachtwey in the excellent 2001 documentary War Photographer directed by Christian Frei. The temper of this subtle, but powerful documentary perfectly mirrors an extraordinary man, who one editor for Der Stern describes as appearing on the battle field in pressed jeans, an immaculate shirt and neatly parted hair. To watch Nachtwey in action is an astonishing thing. Considered the best in his field, he seems utterly unlike any combat photographer (or paparazzo) you could imagine. He's soft spoken, even described as shy, and he remains utterly, utterly calm and quiet in every situation he'd shown in.

Most impressive, however, is the philosophy behind his work:

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me.

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war.

In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that is the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around.

I watched another film this weekend which focuses on the theme of fear: Peter Greengrass's United 93. Like a lot of people, when I first saw the trailer for this movie (it's almost a documentary or cinéma vérité in its style), I was prepared for the worst. When I heard Greengrass was the director, I though maybe he'd pull it off. And he did. It's a tense and horrifying film that left the audience (myself included) largely speechless, as it should, and though there are heroes in the movie, they act as humans, planning on the fly, acting in a rush. There are no stirring aisle-way Agincourt speeches because that's not what happened. That's never what happens, despite what Hollywood's been feeding us for decades.

Still, these men were heroic in the most human sense. They were successful in overcoming their fear and attacking their hijackers, but their success didn't prevent their death. As we know, however, it likely saved the lives of many, many others.

Hallelujah & Pass the Tequila!

I organized a visit for the gang from work to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Charlotte's Discovery Place today. Fascinating stuff. You even get to see encased samples of the scrolls, which are specially lit with lights that go out in intervals for several seconds, so the parchment isn't damaged.

But the piece de resistance was the Dead Sea Scrolls shot glass a coworker bought me. Utterly classic! Now, I just need the Torah, Apocrypha, and New Testament glasses to complete the collection.

I'm a Neo Neo-Con

Crooks and Liars has this hilarious clip of Stephen Colbert interviewing Bill Kristol. Colbert continues to amaze me with how well he stays in character.