sweet smell of brooklyn

The map looks simple enough, squiggly lines differentiated by wieght. I-95 sign split to face either flow; an open palm promising 'New England', the back of my hand (as if I knew either so well as the adage) forever abbreviating 'NYC'. We find our Fords aren't those Fords and that those Fords along with most other billionaire/millionaire types aren't in the habit of sharing the benefits of their station in life. Sherry and her wealthy collectors both get an A+ for double time sharing the extra extra mansion. Greenwich, CT is home to Ivana Trump's country house, rampant drug problems at the high school, and also where ezpei works (decreased commute big motivator to our campout). We call it the country (there are a-ni-mals just roaming for crying out loud), but truly it is just the suburbs, the suburbs on steroids with legions of clever tax lawyers.

No cell phone reception, internet, or cable will sure clear some 21st century build up out of your ears. Anxiety over the silence, the expansive uninhabited picturesque land, the lack of pressing issues, the homogenous opulence---- waned after a couple of midnight hot tub runs. Well, ok, so Sherry + I also worked on some landscape art to better situate ourselves- hers is blue haired sherry in a bucolic new england background...with a burning helicopter dropping out of the sky....mine is likewise a landscape, where the tree trunks are transformed into the iconic cross towers of the projects (I don't think we ever got over calculating how many more people would be inhabiting the same cubic feet in our fair city).

In a car packed with e.z.pie pickup, picnic basket, paintings, pink slippers, with a sherry on top, the lines of the map gradually lost their trees and came closer and closer to more lines. They started honking and the stench lifted off them aroudn Shea stadium was a fright. The said nothing of the unchopped vista from the White Stone Bridge back into the mountain range of Manhattan. The trees were tranquil; the handbuilt Manhattan megalith goddamn inspirational.

Slid rather easily back into rooftop sunset toasts, cell-phoned triangulation for impromtu meet-ups, mega-museums, level 7 white noise, people watching and 24 hour anything you want. Only more happy.

What I wouldn't give for a monthly dose of perspective.

a ok
zoot zoot.. i'm out again (the blog remodel didn't eat me). just slide back into the brooklyn radar to gather more power pellets and leave a hefty supply of flaked fish feast for the furry monster who usually follows me about the house. must give the thumbs up on life really quick before i jet to rejoin sherry at her borrowed mansion in connecticut. already it seems so loud here. yesterday morning i had a conversation with a deer in the front yard... if you can call it that when it's beyond 2 football fields long. a pasture? complete with deer? also convinced that the good folk of greenwich, ct have paid for a dehumidifying turbine just outside of city limits. ezzie says their called 'trees'. whatever it is, i'll take it. my ears are already tired of sweating.
also, i come back and check the mail only to find two huge bags full of super cute girl sample clothes. some fashionista musta had her fill. the leftovers are enough to keep my ladyfriends suited for summer. good times green rolls again.
so strange these good things in plenty- will ruminate further whence we get back. hope you find a little of the pie while i'm out.

hello dear reader,

The robot got a little grumbly in the belly. The doctors official diagnosis was "yep, he's full." Retirement for the old curator was long overdue. The hired help was put to task on this renovation- the wee little workers have been hammering away through the wee little hours and bring you this. They hope you like it. While we're gonna have to work out a new clickable solution to ensure picties get their props, y'all can have some fun with the new links (they've got a brief description if you put the mouse over em). In the next couple of minutes there may even be comments, though I can't guarantee they'll stay...at least you can have a chance to grumble or pay your respects to that dutiful robot.

Good chap, but he never had a name.

"Things are gonna change, I can feel it"

trying to walk slow is futile

The super air conditioner blast at Javits started a drip drip down the throat throat which is presently being washed down with copious amounts of citrusy liquid. In an effort to save resources, this bean attempted rather unsuccessfully to 'take it easy' on the streets of Manhattan. Like asking rain to come down slower. I must have looked like a driver just learning stick...rearing up and then halting only to find myself maxed at the top of the gear again.


pernicious porch: beware glass, syringes, sassy girls


local wild life: endangering human habitat


This summer Teddy is the new Sherry. Only she does her dishes. And her friend's dishes. But in defense of Sherry, who cannot defend herself from her borrowed unconnected connect-i-cut mansion, she has fewer moxious maneuvers and perhaps less mysticality. But then again, who's maneuvers can compare to the Mighty Moxicity of Miss Wong.

Then again..... Teddy + said friends partook of our pernicious porch with fresh coffee, concord grapes, nutella and fresh baked bread. We sipped and sang on furniture we disposed of a miraculous 14 hours prior (life expectancy for freebies is usually in the 1-2 hour range) while watching birds gather debris for nesting and the menfolk kick up neighborly concrete dust. Ah Brooklyn.

left turn

Short on words right now. The fallout is still collecting around me and I see the possibility of a few 90 degree turns coming ahead. Just working on keeping my teeth unclenched.
Part of this has come from a little surprise the landlord built into our tiny print unreadable copy of the lease.. ezpei rants on this most unrighteous extortion so I don't have to ("it's advisable to be two people" is still our most valuable Ikea instructive). There is some parallel relationship going on that needs to be charted between increased righteousness and absolute evilness. I'm starting a campaign for righteous free evil, I can't handle the pollution.

In the meantime, the design blizzard left some colorful snow...


moire rainbow at the metropolis conference...
this year less enlightening than last


shiny objects abound. a field full of fingerprints

ball by clever dutch fellow...house w/ chrome picket fence by metal fabricators

bad design in the bathroom- never paint a toilet seat

tumble dry in large capacity dryer with tennis balls

Sometimes tis important to read directions. Sometimes there aren't any.

There were some feverish posts hovering above the panic button when one week before showtime, we didn't have a board to lay our queens on. Whilst those who know me, may be familiar with the phenomenon my mother describes as, "she just smiles while the rest of us worry and at the last minute it all comes out smelling like roses-" and whilst I have been known to rely on said phenomenon with blind faith in the face of utter catastrophe with remarkable results- it is a different ballpark when you are standing on nothing as two people.

this is a conversation i know better than to try:
ez: "our debut is one week away and we have no board"
bean: "i know it looks dim, but let's just trust this feeling that something totally unforeseen will work out at the last minute"

But folks, a minor miracle was set to motion last Tuesday night over solemn drinks with Christina the butterfly. She dropped an idea that seemed fully executionable under the most ideal circumstances. The next morning one of the oh so hard to reach metal fabricators calls me back. A solution to the unsolvable finish problem is uncovered. A call to Alcoa distributor in Queens is made and one girl hops one train and taxi to Connecticut to get one car to get 12' aluminum in one 2 hour window on one thundering afternoon. Delivering to the shop for the next hardest part only to find a fellow looking to pick up some small jobs on the fly and on the cheap. Quick negotiations and the set is done by 2pm Saturday and set up in situ by three. Have mercy. Allelujah and AhLady.

Setting out the 96 pieces turned into a bit of a spectator sport and by the end fathers were calling their wives and people were peaking over shoulders to watch the money nesting moment. We left our baby to his first day of school and watched with genuine separation anxiety how he got on with others from the window seat across the street. Was it getting noticed? yes. Were people throwing it about like a football? lucky for them not yet. Was the how-to pamphlet useful or useless? hard to say. We'd finished lunch for a good 15 minutes before we finally left.

Schmoozing, as it turns out hasn't been our forte. We can't quite pull ourselves to anything disingenious. Sherry's greatest talent as an equisite schmoozing artist keeps earning more respect from this bean. This may hurt us in the long run, but in the short we've delivered not 200 carpet bombed postcards, but a dozen well-connected ones to people whose work we likewise respected. And ezzie's loose lip critiques haven't cause more than one or two damage points to our healthy team.

I'm going back into the trenches of the ICFF today, we'll see how goes. O.K. time for picties.


the board can also be used as 64 extra industrial coasters

this is the big idea- the chess set nests into the tower
like russian nesting dolls.

controversial organs

NYT gives a little tour (video too) through the Gehry designed organ at the new LA Disney hall.

Squeezebottom Scoundrel

I have a life in the parallel universe: Kingdom of Loathing The Council of Loathing gives me missions, along the way I battle undead elbow macaroni and heal myself with my moxie weed. When my mojo is down, I mix a little cocktail or cook up some tasty treats in my e.z.bake oven. When I'm tired, I go down the shore in the Bitchin' Meat Car I built. A 15 lb. mosquito friend who'd help me by sucking my opponent's blood. My name is bobum, I'm an accordian thief who likes to trollop in a f3d0r4 and bloody clown pants and this is what I look like:



Is an adventurer you? play now.

arrowed



This image strikes me as a provocation that ought to hang in a Williamsburg gallery- the problem ridden loft, so familiar here, cleaned up with fancy things like insulation, central air and finished floors and cleared of noisy neighbors overhead underfoot and streetside. The next step in gentrification, clearing out the city so we can raise our children in proper protectionist isolation- now without the stylistic opportunity cost. Loft living goes suburban in Colorado -via Metropolis Magazine.

"Recently I caught up with Dean Thedos, self-described “head of crazy-idea development” for Cornerstone Homes. He’s the brains behind Ironworks Lofts. He says the goal was to make a less “exclusionary” version of the urban loft. The loft, he says, “has been in locations that have been fairly inhospitable except to a small segment of the population.” He’s talking about cities."

Meanwhile our loft got the tetris treatment over the weekend. This foam tile two squares left, one square south. AhhhA... two unit foam platform re-employed into 'couch' yielding a zone equipped with glowing boxes with moving images to stare at (the fishtank/kitty tv + people tv- we actually do have one) shall now be the 'den'. Kicking up dust and strategizing into the night for the next morning's rearrangement is a lascivious event for us; planning as foreplay, space reclaimation climactic, new lighting details the act of slowly redressing.

picture book

from the bolinas birthday trip. the boy, the boy's boys and the boy's boy's lady friends. meeting up with that high roller from korea set the date + the place for the rest of us schmucks. we put the hunter of the group in charge of finding the rental house. he snuck us into bolinas, ca- where the bolinas border patrol habitually takes down signs on the only road into this little hippie paradise north of the bay and got us hooked up with an adult playhouse...i never realized how easy it is to build a personal sauna.. hmm...


baharak looks at this picture and says, "i've been to this house, the ropes.."

and indeed she has...we def need an indoor trapeze

jen's infamous battery operated transistor radio with small people and extra small ezzie in beach jeans

life through tiny bubbles

who doesn't need their own personalized brander?

more different herbal therapy

on this coast our come back was greeted with silence. no sherry. no
darin. an extra huge loft illuminating their absence.. particularly
in contrast to being surrounded by the loverlies across the bay. nyc is
thinning- people emigrated. need new blood or new land or maybe a new
source of candy + bubble tea. more bike riding?

faced w/ 12 days til chesstryoshka debut and many cards sent and no board to butress the
pieces. how can you cancel a debut?
no good i tell you. we think it might be because i'm me. too short.
too girly girl for the burly blue collars (holding my fabricating future hostage) to take seriously. starting to
understand why so many more experienced female architypes command their inner
bitch. we talk bitch strategy over miso soup. trying to get better at it,
but..
they leave me hanging... they leave me flat out and sundried with not even an aluminum pillow on which to lay my queen.

perhaps there are assertiveness courses? Bitchin' 101. or maybe a homeopathic remedy for increased bloodflow to the part of the brain in charge of sassiness.
stressballs a bit and hands tied.
the board. the board. the chessity chess chess board.
what to do about the #$#$% board.

at least the roommate hunt finally relented (or so they'd have us believe).
he makes zombie silkscreens with his whip-smart ladyfriend. ezzie made a funny on
the strangest response here.

poops.

gave myself a calming break today. union square farmer's almost all
flowers, herbs and mini trees. herbs planted and now adjusting to
their new low home. there is even direct sun for them from 5:15- 5:37 before it sets behind the recycling dump.
the plants and arwen are now the only ones i talk to.
i think my mouth is going to seal shut.

until my next audition. last one much better than first one.
still no guarantee these folks be looking for one bean and not another
legume. turns out m'lady is ms. design host casting director nyc and
auditioning may turn out to be my new part time job. unpaid job.

and then you never know do you

Promise pictures of pleasantries soon.
Today I'm busy getting ready for 'bean on tv: take 2'.
The original casting director (picking things, like titles, up on the quick here folks) calls me Saturday with a sweeter invitation to come in again. This time it's closer and for adults. T minus 2 hours to:

* perk up with some black tea
* pick up that pink pen (to keep it interesting for me) and write down 'So, tell me about yourself' self stuff
* look SO good...and double check to see I don't look SO out there
* bind my 'bean in a packet' packet
* look up screen test tips
* perk down with a shot of whiskey and some hula hooping

The chances are still slim that this flies, but I'm not in a position to deny the knocking. Or the paycheck.