Death and Taxes

Both occurring last week. Yep, life's a trade off. You say goodbye to a loved one and you say hello to almost two grand from the federal gobment. My first real experience filing this year (and coincidentally my first family funeral, too) and I didn't think I'd say this, but it was quite delightful (the filing, not the funeral.) Being in advertising one gets to reap (not to be confused with its grim homophone and ironic theme of this post) the benefits by the plenty. Netflix? Write-off. Cell phone, take it off. Magazine, books, cable, drinking, clothes. Take it allll off. Only instead of throwing money at it, the money gets thrown back at you.

My accountant (Richard Prinzi but i'll call him Dick Pee) asked that i look through all my banking transactions which I environmentally unconsciously printed out before I went, to decide where i was spending most of my money. It went a little like this:

Dick Pee: take a look and see if anything pops out.
Me: hmm...bar, restaurant, starbucks, restaurant, american apparel, bar, bar, starbucks, restaurant, restaurant, american apparel.
Dick Pee: ok so basically eating out and drinking.
Me: and buying new hoodies.

Thanks to Dick Pee and recent loss in family member, I have decided to change my ways and change my spending habits. and with spring just around the corner and plenty-a-bar opening up its garden seating and patios that should be the hardest fucking thing I do. but there's a flat screen tv my bare white wall has been mocking me for and a trip to DR I'm dying to take this year. We'll see where the write offs and government issued six-ho-ho will get me.

life is short, spend it happily.


in loving memory of Grandpa Smith

An elephant never forgets.

The Elephants are here! No that's not anthropomorphically kind way of saying Kristie Alley and Oprah are in town. Really, the elephants from Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus walk through the Midtown Tunnel tonight at midnight. And you can go watch them, lots of people do. But is it just me? Did the movie, Dumbo, ruin it for anyone else? I can't help but get a little sensitive and think about Dumbo’s mom and the other lady elephants lumbering tail to tail into the bizarre and unnatural world that is the circus. Remember when they all had to sit on each other’s heads all sweaty, wearing ridiculous costumes, while getting whipped? Now I wish we were talking about Kirstie Alley and Oprah. Ah well, I guess anything’s better coming from Queens.

Casual sex makes my foot fall asleep.

Ahhh the fuck buddy. I’m not sure why I onomatopoeia-sighed just then. Like the overused and almost consistently ill-fated pop culture term is an any way relieving. Because it’s not. I’m speaking on experience both personal and vicarious. Too many times we go into a relationship hoping to keep it casual and friendly as it indefinitely and inevitably always seems to turn into a big, sloppy, mascara-running-down-your-cheeks, walk-of-shame-mess. Or a publicly addressed resignation. Or a political impeachment.

Either way, it’s bad no matter who’s involved. Those strings? Or there lack of, do really become attached. So much so that you’re actually tangled in them and cutting off blood supply to important parts of your body. Sort of like that tingling feeling you get back in your foot after you sat on it for too long. It’s kind of your foot's way of saying: What the fuck, asshole? Thanks for just now realizing that I’ve been underneath your worthless, fat ass for so long. Too bad complaining was the only way to get you the fuck off me and let me BREATHE.

Not that that has some double meaning, or anything.

But it’s the tingling sensation equivalent to the bad conversation where both of you pretend you didn’t know what was going on, and try to leave it as casually as you started. And only when you get the feeling back do you say: What the fuck happened? Why was in that position for that long? Which is exactly the irony of it all. You go in not wanting to get hurt, you go out a little numb and gimpy.

And now we watch the term go from literal descriptor to ironic double entendre:

Before: “Fuck buddy!” After: “Fuck, buddy.”

The latter is usually followed by a few solid condolences and binge drinking. The important thing is to just make sure the double vodka tonic haze isn’t the condition you meet the next potential “blank” buddy. Because no matter what word you put in front of it, a buddy is still just a buddy. No matter how long you sit on him.

Today was awesome and it's not even noon.

Human Giant keeps promo promises.
Finally a show that's just as crass as its trailer. Human Giant aired the other night. And just when you thought butt sex and gay jokes were the victims of reverse discrimination, alas they’re alive and just a raunchy and homophobic as ever. Where’s Will Arnett? He’s my only reason for living. And watching.

Kristen's a whore, but doesn't look like one!
Surprise! "Kristen’s" not a trashy cunt with acrylic nails OR hair! Way to go, Spitzer. Guess if you’re going to F up your career, marriage and reputation royally ( not to mention publicly) might as well do it over a 22 year old swimsuit model.

Thank God Heidi’s Spencer (he doesn’t need a last name, just Heidi’s before it) will be dishing out relationship advice for Radar magazine. Maybe the Spitzer Scandal can be his first topic:

Dear Love Gov,
Break ups are hard. Might I suggest the Douchebag First Aid Kit. In there you’ll find bleach, whey protein, Neutrogena Self Tanner, Crest White Strips, and a signed copy of: How to Get Everything You Want by Acting Like a Chatch. And if you can’t find another woman you can always stage a relationship like I did.
Stay up, braw.

Shit or get off the pot.
Seriously. Or your ass will stick to it. Like the woman in Kansas who was stuck to hers for two years. Fine, don’t believe me:
Woman Stuck on Toilet

“Mr. Whipple, stop squeezing the Charmin and get my ass out of the toilet!”

In other news: Spring forward still sucks.

Exactly

My sister used to hang her naked Barbies by shoelaces off doorknobs in our playroom. This is way better.

The Avalanches, PhD Psychovinyltherapy

Screw, Go with the Flow. Ok Go! can eat it. The Frontier Psychiatrist music video makes my eyes roll in the back of my head and my ears have an orgasm.

Client #10

I, too, want to do unsafe things.

Those Dems really know how to have some fun while in office, no? This alleged affair (neither really alleged, nor an affair, I suppose. Dirty sex with a prostitute is more of a hobby–sorta like golf.) Trying again: This repeated business transaction between Client #9 and "Kristen" is said to have pulled in nearly $5,500/romp. According to the Associated Press, "Kristen" was part of some high class prostitution ring that charges the price of a Soho loft every time she has her hair pulled.

Cut to Kristen and a Realtor in a spacious apartment.
Kristen: Ok ! I'll take it!
Realtor: Great. I'll need 20% now before i can give it to you.
Kristen: (angry) Fuck you! I didn't put 20% of my mouth on your ****, did I?

I guess that would mean she'd rather pay in full. Whatever, she's a stupid whore, anyway. This is probably how it'd go down. (ha. go down...)

And now we wait for the resignation. Don't resign, Spitzer. That's like a rad Law and Order plot that someone was like, "ah fuck it" and turned it into a Lifetime movie, instead. Handsome Governor resigns, retires and lives the simple life in boring-ass Connecticut where he tries to become a better father and husband while taking up sailing. Stand tall, Spitzer. And after your trial, stand on the courthouse steps, flail a gun in front of Detective Stabler yelling, "I did it," blow your wife a kiss, and shoot yourself in the face.

Dick Wolf

Alice in Tim Burton's land

Tim Burton will be directing a 3D stop motion animation version of Alice in Wonderland. I wonder if Johnny will be making a cameo? Or Christina Ricci as a big foreheaded Alice? Personally, I would rather see Baz Luhrmann's take on the story with LSD induced color saturation and euphoric plot line. But I guess when your job list includes working with a crazy, chocolate-eating pedophile and a headless asshole (both with J. Depp) only one director could pull of a ruffied tween, stoned cat and a couple of alcoholics uncelebrating an unbirthday party.

"Cheshire-Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where-" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"-so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Bums are cool. NYC bums are rad.

Seriously. If you’ve ever taken the time to talk to them you know what I mean. Sure the smell of shit and body odor make it hard to carry on conversation without gagging, and chances are they’re too fucked up on something to make any real sense. But talk to one for a minute and you realize that they are the most in tune sons of bitches you’ll ever meet. They know the city inside and out. Riding the subway all day long just because you’re bored and it was free will do that to you, I suppose. And they’re resilient survivalists. We complain when we have to walk in the rain. These mother fuckers sleep in it. Not to mention on the pavement while wearing everything they own or using it as a mattress depending on the season. My only question to them is why New York City? If I was a bum I’d pack up the proverbial bag on a stick and take someone else’s bike to Miami, or Mexico even. Somewhere that isn’t snot-freezing, gangrene inducing cold in the winter. Somewhere where there isn’t winter. Imagine: Florida, your grandparents walking the beach past some Schizo simulating oral sex with a conc shell screaming, “Jesus hates you!” Now that’s retirement. We’d miss them, though.

Here’s what a few bums (to be p.c: the housing and employment challenged) had to say about living in the Big City, or at least staying alive here:

"Got a smoke?"

[Kissing noises]

"The ting is you dunno, you know? You dunno what chu got until you lost it playing turkey crash banks on the boome dumb street war back in ‘78. Big fire down der and shit ass bitch fuck you din’t know it cause it was so cold, it was too danger e’rybody left and fuck shit ass piss bitch, no one knew. Day all gone still."

"New York is beautiful. Fuck LA."

"I make more money off the street here than I ever did working for the government."

"New York is alive. The street keeps you sustained, even if it’s sub zero weather and your dick's about to fall off it’s so cold, the city that keeps you alive."

"Because."

"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Whoever said that was right, but he was also making a fortune or else we wouldn’t be quoting him. If you can make it here without knowing where your next hand outs going to be then you really can make it anywhere. Now that’s true. But I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else. Anywhere else isn’t as rewarding."

"Now why the fuck would I want to go to Miami?"

Vandalism rocks

New York can be a piece of shit some days. Most days actually. It’s polluted with trash, junkies, meth heads and nasty whiffs of sewage piss air, but it's fucking rock and roll. And like good New Yorkers rather than clean up the trash, we pick up a can of spray paint and trash talk over it. Graffiti is nothing new, but one artist has redefined its deviance with some sidewalk chalk and an inspirational message as a tag. I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with James De La Vega, a New York street artist who's as fucking New York and street as they come.

Sitting down to interview James De La Vega in his St Marks Place gallery where the once sidewalk chalk drawings have been transferred from the street to canvas and pictures of his “Mom as Picasso”, or his mom just plain hating on him hang throughout, we are interrupted by a woman with a stroller.

"Excuse me? Do you know what grades that school is down there?" She asks referring to the elementary school a few doors down.

He answers her as politely as he could, both of us expecting her to apologize for interrupting.

Instead she says, "Thanks. I'll be back," as if it offered some sort of consolation for not coming in and browsing. As if that's what most artists would want to hear. But De La Vega isn't like most artists.

"I'll be here waiting," he replied smugly as she shuts the door.

He snickers for a minute, then feeling the need to explain himself he says, "It's not so much arrogance as it's brutal honesty."

And it was honest. As is his work, as is his gallery which stands as what he refers to as an NYC institution. To cut through all the bull shit, to actually reach people- and not just any people, New Yorkers–on another level. It's that kind of keeping it real De La Vega expresses and embodies both in every day life and in his art.

"Pressure to survive in the big city can make you lose sight of your dream. Hang in there." Chances are you've heard this message before, perhaps in inspirational tear-off calendars or coffee table books, but never as graffiti. And according to De la Vega, it's not.

"I never identified with the graffiti movement, there's a certain amount of deviance and negativity that comes with the connotation," he says.

And since avoiding jail time for one graffiti related incident back in his Spanish Harlem days, the artist is sensitive when it comes to the name graffiti artist. Instead, he's a self proclaimed Sidewalk Philosopher or guerilla performance artist, which he admits to not really understanding. When I explain it’s a form of expression that takes on a non traditional outlet, he complies and says, "I guess that's true..."

What challenges De La Vega in his quest for positivity is the audience he's reaching out to. New Yorkers have long history of callous thick-skin. Where messages of "becoming your dream," and "hang in there" are lost in a concrete sea of huffs, puffs and “whatever’s.” But regardless of the message, it seems to be working. De La Vega is an icon in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood where he first started out, and now that very same street cred has followed him down to the village where he now reigns as a kind of St Marks Confucius.

There's a level of hard core no-nonsense that makes New Yorkers listen, or stop to read depending on where the message is coming from.

“I'm not trying to Walt Disney or Sesame Street this shit. That's not De La Vega, but it's creating a unique language that reaches people to tell them to do something with their lives. To push forward. To fight back.” Which is something many New Yorkers already knew or else they wouldn’t live here, but all could stand to hear it more often. And when we’re ready, like the lady with the stroller, De La Vega will be waiting.

Fuck yeah

The snowboard-inspired Balenciaga Sportiletto from last fall's collection. If they make one that actually straps on to a board i think my face will explode.