Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Events from July & August, Part 5

People confronting anti-gay protester
People confronting an anti-gay protester, Jersey City Pride festival

Jersey City Pride Festival
Jersey City Pride festival

Bryant Park before a film
Bryant Park before a film

Washington Sq. Park
In Washington Square Park (this was the first time I'd been in the park since the renovations, which are still underway)

Art on the High Line
Art on the High Line, Chelsea

Flowers on the High Line
Wildflowers, on the High Line

On the High Line
The Empire State Building, from the High Line

Artwork on the High Line
Artwork on the High Line

Events from July & August, Part 4

At Tan Lin's books launch
At Printed Matter, Chelsea, for the book launch of Tan Lin's Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (Wesleyan, 2010), and its related texts

Tan and a colleague
Tan Lin and a colleague, at Printed Matter

At Tan Lin's books launch
Tan Lin's mother, Gordon Tapper (center), and a friend, at the Printed Matter book launch

David Ebershoff and Gary Shteyngart at Bryant Park
Writers David Ebershoff and Gary Shteyngart at a midday reading, Bryant Park

Paulus Hook Commemoration, Jersey City
Paulus Hook landing commemoration, Jersey City

Jersey City Puerto Rican Festival
Jersey City Puerto Rican Day festival

JC Puerto Rican FEstival
Jersey City Puerto Rican Day festival

Events from July, Part 3 (Harlem Book Fair)

Artist signing his work @ the Harlem Book Fair
Artist signing his work

Interview @ the Harlem Book Fair
Women being interviewed

Harlem Nobel @ the Harlem Book Fair
"Black Nobel" at the Harlem Book Fair

@ the Harlem Book Fair
Author Freddie Simmons

@ the Harlem Book Fair
Bookstalls

@ the Harlem Book Fair
Women checking out the music at the Sexy Soul Oldies booth

@ the Harlem Book Fair
A patron checking out books

@ the Harlem Book Fair
New York Black Librarian Caucus's booth, Harlem Book Fair

Events from July, Part 2

Graffiti show @ the Benrimon Gallery
Graffiti show at the Benrimon Gallery, Chelsea

Graffiti show @ the Benrimon Gallery
One of the pieces at the Benrimon Gallery

DIL (black baseball cap) @ the Benrimon Gallery
Artist DIL (in the black cap), event organizers and friends at the Benrimon Gallery

Graffiti show @ the Benrimon Gallery
One of the large painting-sculptures at the Benrimon Gallery

Graffiti artists posing
Grafitti artists posing, Benrimon Gallery

"The keys to the city"
Two attendees offering me "keys to the City"

Graffiti show @ the Benrimon Gallery
More of the artwork at Benrimon Gallery

Graffiti show @ the Benrimon Gallery
More artwork at the Benrimon Gallery

Graffiti show at the Soapstone Gallery
Graffiti show, Soapstone Gallery

At the Soapstone Gallery
Artwork at the Soapstone Gallery

At the Soapstone Gallery
Artwork at the Soapstone Gallery

At the Soapstone Gallery
Artlovers at the Soapstone Gallery

Fumero, at the Soapstone Gallery
Artist Fumero, at the Soapstone Gallery

At the Soapstone Gallery
Artlovers at the Soapstone Gallery

It's Spelled M-O-S-Q-U-E


Here's a fun little site I learned about today. It's called Openbook. It sort of allows you to have a gander around Facebook by searching for any particular word(s) that you'd like. Granted, it is only able to search those Facebook profiles where the people have not set their privacy settings in a way that would not able their profile to be searched. And folks that don't care about their privacy settings really don't care about their privacy. That means that they'll post just about whatever. And whatever do they post.

I read somewhere on the Internets that getting a glimmer of how people on Facebook feel about the mosque that may be built by Ground Zero is an amusing way to pass some time. Simply type "mosk" into the search box on Openbook and read the results that come up. So I did. I also searched for variations on that them. That is, the misspelling of mosque. Let's look at the results, shall we? You're probably going to have to click on the images to make them bigger. Blogger has it's limits and apparently making screen captures from Openbook able to be read is one of them.

Let's see...Oh, from Alexis. "Obama isn't Muslim. Even if he was, that shouldn't matter anyway. The rednecks need to get over themselves. And btw, I'm for the mosk near Ground Zero. The Muslims didn't do crap to WTC families, it was the Taliban. Get your facts straight!"

Well, she's close. Taliban...al Qaeda...close enough. She is right, however, that President Barry is not a Muslim. She's also right that folks should get their facts straight. See the Taliban reference. Moving on, to Brad's words of wisdom. "OK, this whole moske thing and yes I know I spelled it wrong but I dont care. Yes they do have every legal righ to build it on ground zero but its quite unethical to do it. You wouldnt see us building a church on heroshema or auswitz. And I am sick of hearing about it."

You tell 'em, Brad! Good points bringing up heroshema and auswitz, too! Hard to argue with that (but that's only because I don't know what the heck he's talking about). Next up is Landis who says: "Ground zero might be at risk cuz they want to build a mossque thats a memerial for those who died if u care about those ppl who lost there lives respost this".

She's awfully confused in several aspects. Spelling and punctuation being only a couple of them. How is Ground Zero at risk if the mossque gets built? Does that mean that the World Trade Center buildings will magically reappear? I don't think that's what it means. Then again, I don't know that she is really all that sure what it means either. (The scary part was that it sounded like she was actually trying to explain it to people) But maybe Nancy knows what she means. Let's see...hmm...it reads: "jonmanncnn jonathan mann developing story from irak war their legancy is islam and the builing of moske on ground zero. Anna coren reporting".

Then again, maybe she doesn't. Really? We've been in Iraq for years now. You still don't know how to spell it? And what in the world is a legancy? Never mind. I don't want to know. Kind of in the same way I don't want to know much more about Peggy's point of view, expressed as "their building a mosk for arabs over ground 0...ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!!?!?"

I'd like to know why she had all of the time for the abundance of exclamation points and question marks, but couldn't find the time to type out the word zero. I wonder if she would express the same disbelief if someone told her that it's they're, mosque and Arabs. Perhaps. Actually, I'm guessing she would. But she's not alone in thinking that the mosque would go right on top of Ground Zero. Russ thinks the same thing and says, "I vote to kick our current president out of office solely on the basis of him wanting to put a moske right where the twin towers used to be.! I mean... WHAT AN IGNORAMIS!!!"

Yes. What an ignoramus, indeed. Speaking of those who might be an ignoramus, Stephen enlightens all of us with this nugget of knowledge: "Oh, you Angelenos with your Emmys and your Glees, what about the MOSK?"

Who should break it to him that Glee isn't an award? Or that Emmy isn't a show? I just know that I can't do it. Nor can I take much more of this. One more. Let's hit 'er, home, William! "Well I agree with the Presadent, Musslems shude be alwoed to build a Mossk near ground zero. To denie them that constitunel right, would make us no beter then the people who attaked us in the first place. besides last time I checked it was alkida that attacked us not Islam".

Typing that out made my head hurt. I'm going to look into who this alkida person is. Sounds like one of Superman's enemies. Alkida from the planet Mossk. Keep your eye out for 'em. And keep your eye out for these folks, too. They're clearly not well.

Monday, August 30, 2010

They Wore What To The Emmys 2010?

It's time for the Emmy awards again. That means it's time for a brief look at some of the fashions that were worn last night. And as always, I will issue my disclaimer that I am far from a fashion monger. Fashion mongrel would be more like it. Never the less, I intend to relay what it was that I saw there last night (via the Internets).

Here we have who appears to be Jack Nicholson as The Joker. Behold!

What's that? It's not The Joker? It's really someone I've never heard of named Maria Menounos? Huh. My apologies, both to Mr. Nicholson and Ms. Menounos. Well, moving on....let's see. Oh! OK, so I haven't watched Entertainment Tonight in quite some time (if ever), but I don't remember Mary Hart looking anything like this:

Wow. It appears that she could barely bring herself to tone down her big hair from the 80s. Nice try, though. And I kind of feel like I had seen that dress on someone else at the Emmys. Who was it? Oh, I know! January Jones. Behold!

Yeah, see, she just kind of ripped the front of it off there. Other than that, it looks remarkably similar. I'm just glad that it's January Jones with the ripped off front dress and not Mary Hart. That's all I have to say about it. But it's not quite all I have to say about Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. Behold!

Mr. Bacon looks the same as he always does. How does he do that? Ms. Sedgwick looks generally lovely in that eggplant colored dress. She appears to be carrying a clutch purse that is made out of a giant kidney bean. Seriously, what on earth can you even fit in something like that? Not much? Not even the kidney beans after which it was modeled, I'd imagine. Wait! Maybe she has the rest of Heidi Klum's dress in there!

From the looks of it, Heidi Klum's entire dress could have fit in that kidney bean purse of Kyra's. There is not much there, is there? I'm not saying that she should dress like Betty White or anything, but come on! Oh, speaking of Betty White, here she is looking radiant and wearing what is seemingly an obligatory lipstick shade for elderly women.

I don't know what it is with the over-70 set of ladies, but they love them a nice bright red lipstick, that's for sure. They wear it everywhere and with everything. I would imagine that they would even wear it to the wedding of the couple below. Oh. Never mind. That's not a wedding couple. That's Ty Burrell and his wife Holly. Yeah, he looks like he's getting married and she looks like the car that they would drive away in together. Odd. Maybe it's their first time at the Emmys. Or out in public. Something.

Both Kim Kardashian...

...and Anna Paquin (seen below) decided to go with either what appears to be some sort of an Egyptian themed gown or what appears to be some sort of gladiator style gown. I really can't tell which it's supposed to be. But I'm sure that it's one of those. I can't imagine that they were just looking that way without basing the look upon something.


And finally, let's wrap this up with the absolutely stunning Lauren Graham who is wearing...um, well, she's wearing....see, it's kind of...well...oh, forget it. I don't know what in the hell this is. Behold!

Let's see if I can decipher this. No. No, I can't. It appears as if she is wearing a dress with what could be a diaper draped over her upper torso and right shoulder. Maybe a small bed sheet. I don't know. I don't know what would possess anyone to wear that on purpose. Ooh! Maybe she lost a bet! Hard to say. But I do know that she is super talented and super hot and I'm sure that she'll be around again for the Emmys next year. Let's hope she's over this look by then.