I’m going to get back into the swing of things. Large hocks of meat (picnic in this case), lots of cooking.

A convergence of red things in Chinatown, or NYC patriotism.

An apartment, Williamsburg.

I bought a bunch of bananas from the friendly fruit cart guy near the Astor Kmart. I leave them on my desk at work.  First they attract senior management.  Then they attract fruit flies.

They have lots of potassium.

Summer is officially now over.  Today I felt cold. That’s how you know.

Here’s Sheep Meadow on a wonderful Summer’s day. [film]

I bought ahh ticket to The National at Hammerstein in October. I wish my National buddy was here. Anyone want to go? It’s $35 and includes a 1 year subscription to New York Magazine.

Here’s Matt Berninger at Summer Stage on some ilford xp2.

I got stuck in a elevator on my way back from lunch two days ago. This is not an uncommon occurrence in our building–about 1/3 of our company has gotten stuck at one time or another. However, it’s a bit awakening when it happens to you.

The elevator made a very sudden stop on going up from the 1st floor lobby to the 28th floor, sudden enough enough to give a moment of weightlessness. Fortunately I happened to be with my boss/good friend from work and it was just us. And fortunately we’d just come back from grabbing lunch, so starving to death wasn’t a worry of ours. We pushed the alarm button which just rings a loud bell attached to the elevator car. Nothing happened.

As I mentioned, other coworkers had also been stuck in one of 6 elevators for our floor, one time on our floor with the doors 7/8 closed–just enough to see in, but not enough to get out. When this happened, I thought I should try to be the hero and open the doors, after all, the doors were already cracked open, there were 5 very uncomfortable looking people in the elevator, and the primary function of doors in general is to open and close, so really why not try to open them? Well, another coworker watching the spectacle said, “No no, it’s a liability, building maintenance (or the fire department) will eventually come.” Maintenance did come, 20 minutes later, and opened the already open doors.

However, when you’re the one in an elevator, liability isn’t really a concern–getting out of the elevator is the main concern. So I’m thinking, this is bs, we shouldn’t be stuck in this stupid elevator. Time to give liability the upward fist. I push on the inner elevator car doors and they slooowwwly and heavily slide open and lock in place. We’re half a floor above the 18th floor. This is fortunate as our elevators only services floors 18-35. If we’d gotten stuck at floor 9.5, we’d be shit out of luck. I found the cam on the inner elevator doors to release and open the door. It slides open. Hmm, it’s a 5 foot jump down into the 18th floor elevator lobby. We contemplate worst case scenarios (edge cases as they’re called in our industry) — The elevator comes back to life and shoots upward as one of us is crawling out slicing the person in half at the waist. Or worse, the elevator decides to plunge 18 stories to the 1st floor with the same outcome as the previous case.

We decided that both of these cases are highly unlikely but just to be safe, we should exit quickly as opposed to leisurely straddling the guillotine of separation. I throw my pint of steamed white rice down into the elevator lobby and jump out. My boss follows with his combo #17 (fried founder sandwich on a wheat kaiser roll with fries). I push the up elevator button in the lobby like nothing had happened, we take a functional elevator to our floor, sit down and eat our lunches.

So, a little bit of mid-day adventure…things definitely could have been worse.

Just cruising around Central Park on a warm Sunday afternoon. Ate some lunch on the rocks. Watched a little softball.

Strange signs today: Weird weird dream about black horses with glowing eyes trying to take over a New York building from the rooftop, and trying to come to get us (?). A call from an 866 number that played salsa music for a minute until I decided to hang up. A call from someone named Erica asking if I need a ride home after Spanish, I said I’d walk home or take the bus (playing along) and she thought that “greg” was playing games with her. Weird part is, she called me greg and knew my number, I’ve never known anyone well enough by the name of Erica to have given my number out. She called back and confessed her wrong numberedness. Lastly, random flashes of light on our street. Too directed and powerful to be a camera flash, too intermittent and random to be a strobe light or burglar alarm. I’m not sure what’s going on.

Below: A distortion of reality.

Dragonfruit, C-town.

“Steak Fries.” That is my new invention. More to come, perhaps some prototypes.

Hmm, update. I saw the National last week at Terminal 5, a brand spankin’ new venue in Hell’s Kitch. The National is great (give em a listen, click play), but their show was…well, was unfortunately their album. Shows should never be an album. There should be stuff that you’d never hear on the record. There should be b-sides, commentary and randomness. There should be 5 minute long bridges, acoustic versions and stuff that gives you the chills. The show felt uptight and flat. Makes me sad because me knows they have the skillz.

Friday midday. I decide to take a last minute trip home. I haven’t been out of New York city since March 19th. That’s a long damn time to never leave one place. I left, went home. In no particular order: Hukilau Hawaiian food, Cheeseboard pizza, running on Mt. Tam, hanging with Moms, pumping up car tires, driving through the Berkeley hills, Stylized Sculpture exhibit at Asian Art, pho, tech/startup talk with Karen, cooking with Mom, driving across as many bridges as possible, lunch with Grandma a la Sushi House, broken airplane -> new airplane, crab roll from fish(.), 1lb Peet’s Italian roast, 1lb Graffeo dark roast, Frozen Life at the Mill Valley film fest, and 3 hrs of sleep on a red eye.

Below: Moma. (film delay, will have this past weekend’s pics in 2 weeks)

A while back, I had the opportunity to attend the NY TV fest, a film fest of sorts but for TV, and interview the cast and crew (with A-Nation host Kim Mi Ly) of the new ABC show Pushing Daisies. Below is Lee Pace, the main actor. I would definitely recommend the show. It’s a sort of blend of Harry Potter and Serendipity (the movie). At the premiere, Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black, Get Shorty), the director, explained how if the concept didn’t get picked up by a major network, they were going to make a movie out of it. The show is unique in that its genre is somewhat undefinable in the TV world, but would fit in amongst quirky/magical romantic comedies in the movie world. I hope it can hang in there despite it’s undefined, unproven niche.

It’s interlaced reality! Moma windows.

Well I’m moving. Movin on down to St. Marks-ish/East Village. Movers are coming at 9am tomorrow. Worked till 9pm tonight. Still have to finish packing. Change is such a good thing.

Below. Brids and me. Natural History Museum. Can you see me? I didn’t even notice at first.

Little Italy fest last weekend. Lots of sausages, wanted more pannacotta.

Mark Ecco was hanging out by the stock exchange today interviewing people, asking what they think he should do with his recently acquired 756* ball. A coworker told me this. I looked but wasn’t able to find him. I probably would have helped if I knew what he looked like. Kitty corner to the stock exchange is Federal Hall, where George Washington was sworn in as the first president. It just reopened after a bout of remodeling, so I went poked my head in for a looksee during lunch.