rest in peace.

dear grandma donna,
i'm sorry i couldn't fly out to your memorial service today. if i could have, i would have brought a pretty notepad for all of the ladies and maybe a gravitationally powered mag-lite for the men.

please stand clear of the closing doors

okay, so i'm not just bumming you out with my stories of late night crime--here i feature one of the beauties of new york city--the subway entertainment.
footage courtesy of my sister abbie, who came out to visit a year ago exactly, i'm reminded, to celebrate her birthday. happy birthday again abbie!

the people in this first video were so full of infectious and ridiculous fun. happy makers. except the guy just under the two-minute mark, who wasn't too thrilled to be surrounded or infected...



and then, of course, the classic.

bear crying wolf

i was having a frightening yet laughable dream that a bear was stalking me through a cabin window. i wanted to be quiet and lay low, but even though i was awake, i couldn't stop snoring. loud snoring. boy snoring. in fact, kind of like jade snoring. could it be my dream was intercepted by the ambient audio of the room?

no time to ruminate on that, though it now brings me chuckles, because my dream was pierced by another, more pressing audio--that of a girl calling out for help. her cries escalated to a volume you only hope you could attain in crisis. and suddenly we're wide awake--bears chased away--jade thowing on his carharts and boots to run outside.

on a corner that last week saw a violent rape, wanted posters still plastered to every window, naturally, our minds went there.
but no, only a drunk girl who didn't want to pay her cab fare.
something made me really angry about this. that we were taken in to care for her and duped by her selfish false alarm.
but perhaps more frightening was the fact that jade was the lone person who ran out to her rescue. what if she had been in real danger? no one would care.

10 march 2009--john john

and while we're on the topic of john-johns...i had a neighbor while growing up cursed with that redundant name. he was a jerk kid. i guess sometimes little boys can't help themselves. john-john delighted in seeing me cry. he was a year or two older than me and it seemed twice my size. his large german mother was the only other in the neighborhood (except mine) whose bellowing call reverberated from their doorstep and through the fields to reach us where we played. but 'playing' with john-john was not a thing of happiness for me, as it usually entailed him stuffing gardener snakes in my mailbox just before i obsessively and promptly retrieved the letters at 3:15 each day. he also bore the distinction of being the first kid (in a line of many many) to tease my name. just the sound of him singing, "here.....kitty kitty kitty" brought tears. and 'kitty litter'? forget it. i was a wreck.

09 march 2009 b&h

taken on the sly under the guise of testing a new lens. oh, wait, i was testing a new lens....

08 march 2009--allison

07 march 2009 bruce

06 march 2009--mac premo

04 march 2009 heather

quote of the week

road rage turns almost violent
large man gets out of car and has his arms inside driver's window, screaming.
scrawny car man cowers behind wheel waiting for ass-kicking

cabbie next door rolls down window and yells:

"you stupid! this ain't detroit!"