Film: Learning - Bronx Botanical Gardens

Film: Learning - World's Longest Footbridge

Monday Goes In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb

Trial #1

This Weekend, Yes Please!

Beach!

Dance!

Jokes with friends!

Free kisses!

Food and beverages!!!

Couples Gone Wild Vol. 10

Kinda

Modeling 101

Record High On The Good Vibe Index

Julia Child

Species

Beached

There is currently a whale washed up ashore at Jones Beach:

I think its interesting how the beaching of a whale draws so much media attention - its like when a D list celebrity dies of a drug overdose and they become posthumously famous (Britney Murphy).  I get it though.  I think if I encountered this Goliath while beach combing I would be fixated.  25 feet long! You could make an airplane out of that thing!

Some research led to a few interesting revelations.  Most beachings involve the toothed whales (Sperm, Pilot, etc) rather than their baleen relatives.  Its rare that a live whale washes up onshore though it did happen recently in the Hamptons.  Because thousands of sea creatures die each year, factors like winds and tides push floating carcasses ashore for us to enjoy.  More likely than this though is a phenomenon called Whale Fall which is basically a term for when an ecosystem builds up in a whale's carcass that has died in the open ocean (rather than shallow waters).  The whale's body will fall to the ocean floor and there many creatures will take up residence within the walls of its blubber.  One whale's carcass can provide sustenance up to several decades for the critters of the deep to feast upon! 

There are mass beachings too.  These are attributed to many factors including pods following the distress calls of their beached buddies and shallow water tidal mix-ups that become unnavigable.  Either way, it looks like this:

 Imagine the smell! 

According to Wikipedia, nearly 2,000 ocean animals beach themselves every year.  How come we never see a Great White washed up on Cannon Beach?  Are sharks not beachers?  Do whales have a unique physical make-up that makes them more likely to beach than other sea creatures?  Last summer while walking the sands of Fort Tilden, I nearly stepped on a dying ray.  Its gills were foamy, eyes glazed and it lay there in a desperate, fishy stupor; drying out, waiting for the sun to kill it.  I knew if I threw it back, it would still die anyway, not to mention it was a mess.  There was no way I was going to touch it.  I sat there and stared at it as it lay in its sandy hospice and thought how about how a sea creature's beaching must be equivalent to a human's drowning. Even if its a crab, a ray or a whale - when we watch, is it like craining your neck at a car accident?   Is it okay to stare because they aren't some body's mother?  Are mass beachings like Heaven's Gate?  I dunno.  Something about the Jones Beach whale, to me at least, is a 25-foot reminder of my own mortality.  Lets bury that thing.  Stat.

Rethinking

Looking for a little room in the budget to get a set of these:

Accessorizing in the summer can be really horrible.  Its hot and things are swollen.  Often times getting ready, I look over at my dish of rings with scorn knowing that rather than beautifying a finger, they constrict each digit like the casing to its sausage.  If I do wear rings or bracelets out, there is no telling where they might end up.  If I had a dollar for every time I've been out and have removed a piece of jewelry because it was feeling too tight, I would literally have enough money to take us all to St. Tropez.

So! Instead, this summer I'm toying with the idea of banishing rings, bracelets and necklaces from my wardrobe and instead just getting a set of really blinging nails.  With these decorating my paws, I could leave the house in a burlap sack and still feel like J.Lo circa 2000.  That's a BFD. 

Listen Up! A Very Important Message From Gil Scott Heron:

Gaffer Gone Wild

Necromancy On Norman And Lorimer

My house is haunted and I need a ghostbuster.  Evidence of a presence has been amassing and then something happened yesterday that makes me think a presence is undeniable.

This all started almost exactly a year ago when I had that going away party for Sophie.  Remember that? Ok.  That morning, I woke up and was inspecting the previous night's damage to my face (wrinkles, redness, barf) in the bathroom mirror when I heard a piano playing.  The pianist was not playing a song, but rather banging on the keys then playing a snippet of a tune, losing interest and banging away again.  It sounded like someone who was trained to play the piano trying to practice but getting too distracted to do so. 

A few things ran through my mind.  One - I didn't know there was a piano in my building.  I live in a three story walk up, so I would argue my living situation is somewhat intimate when it comes to the residence's other tenants.  Secondly, I thought it was funny I could hear the sound so clearly where I was standing.  You see, my bathroom is in the basement and shares a wall with a garage and the building next door.  It has no windows, so having such a clear sound in such a isolated area seemed strange.

Night fell and the party began and as people came and went, my neighbor wandered in with his sister.  I handed them both a beer and then being the horribly boring drunk that I am, isolated them in the far corner of our living room and started my piano diatribe.  I explained the noise and how the nature of sound was weird and how the building was old and then followed up with the fact that I didn't realize there was a piano in the building.  My neighbor froze.  There was no piano in the building. 

Then he offered this tidbit: His roommate had been wanting to move out because he had seen a girl in his room.  In the middle of night, a change in temperature had woken him from his sleep and he rose to see a girl standing near his bed.

Shiver.

So its been a year of that.  The piano every now and then with the occasional footsteps over head.  I sleep in the basement below our living room, kitchen and dining room.  I remember clearly last fall being home alone one night and hearing someone doing what sounded like rearranging furniture upstairs.  When I snuck up there, defense weapon of a hammer in hand, I found nothing but my dinner's dishes in the sink. 

Honestly, I have no idea how I have managed to joke about it for a year without really freaking myself out.  Cursory research shows my house is on the Jacob Meserole family farm plot which spanned from Norman to Meserole on Lorimer and Manhattan Avenues.  There is no doubt in my mind a prominent family such as the Meseroles had a piano and maybe a young brood of practicing pianists.  However, without hitting some serious archives all I have is geeky message boards on the web which honestly are so weird its kinda alienating.  But I think I may finally have the motivation to do some digging after yesterday's incident.

I was home doing some studying in my bedroom and got up for a break.  I went into the bathroom and the piano was at it again.  When I first used to hear the piano, I would pray that whomever was playing it would break out into 'Benny and the Jets' or some other contemporary song.  This would confirm that I was right, sound was indeed weird and came from odd places and that I just had gay neighbors that liked sing alongs.  But I have only ever heard older, sort of jig style music being played.  So yesterday, when I was in there listening to an upbeat rag, really I just ignored it.

Next I went upstairs and ran into Nadja, my roommate, and made a joke about the ghost piano.  She laughed, it was casual and I got a glass of water and went back downstairs.  I think I was probably out of my room for ten minutes total but when I returned to my room, someone had lifted my mirror from my dresser/vanity area and laid it on the floor.  Some logic:  had the mirror fallen two things would've happened.  One, it would have disturbed the contents of my dresser, which remained in place.  Two, wouldn't it have broken?  The final oddity to this story is I have a picture tucked into the frame of my mirror that is constantly being blown out of its position at the slightest gust of wind or air.  But the picture lay completely unmoved in bottom left hand corner of the frame of my mirror now on the floor.  There is no way the mirror could've slid off my dresser.  The only way it could've gotten into its new position on the floor is if it had been lifted and then set down again.  Double Shiver.

 Immediate research ensued and a search of 'signs you have a ghost' turned up the following:

1. Strange noises - piano, furniture moving, footsteps - CHECK

2. Sightings - girl upstairs - CHECK

3. Moving objects - mirror - CHECK

4. Weird animal behavior - this is interesting.  I didn't indicate this above, but I live with a poodle that will be resting and then out of nowhere will be spooked into a barking tantrum for which there is no anodyne.  I always thought it was just the realm of poodle-dum that made Rex behave so erratically, but now I'm thinking maybe he occasionally gets disturbed by something or SOMEONE.  so - CHECK

Anyway. I want more information but I don't want to piss off any presence (if there is one).  I feel like in scary movies, 'research' into the haunting always aggravates the already restless spirits and as soon as you do some digging that's when the shit really hits the fan.  I don't want to lose any hair, sleep or friends over this, but it could be a really fun summer adventure.  Does anyone want to ghost bust with me?  Maybe we could have a seance the next time my cheese of the month shipment comes in - you bring the baguette, I'll bring the psychic?  Spin the bottle with the ghost? Do you think the ghost is reading this right now? Ugh. Terrifying.

What To Expect When You're Expecting

Its Music Video Friday!!!

From A Camera Long Long Ago

Trend Alert!*

*These pictures come from different photoshoots

Peep Show