Busy Day

What a busy day, yet I don't feel like I've done anything. Here's the recap:

+ Learned the reasoning behind some journalists being arrested and others not arrested at the RNC: St. Paul Assistant Police Chief said, "There was a gap in communication." Nice. Thanks for the update, @schmadigan.

+ Finalized a $440 order to have eight matted enlargements framed. This dude at a frame shop cut me an excellent deal. I have a photography show in Cincinnati next week, and I've now moved on to dreading the shipping costs. More details on the show in a day or two.

+ Because I'll be in Cincinnati, I was asked to speak to some journalism students at my alma mater. More details on that coming shortly as well.

+ You know those Biscoff biscuits some airlines serve to you on shorter flights? I've kept one of those wrappers lying around my clutter collection for five years, but was just reminded of it on a recent flight. The order of 100 twin-wrapped packets arrived today. These things are good.

+ I've admitted here before that I'm not above self-promotion, but it's still weird to write a full-on press release about yourself. Now I'm trying to get some media for both events next week.

+ The evite replies for Sept. 27 are filling out nicely. If you live in New York, please act accordingly.

+ After what will no doubt be a stressful two days in Cincinnati next week, it is my intention to be overserved at John Boel's OSU-Wisconsin watching event on Sat., Oct. 4.

+ I cannot stop clearing my throat.

Catching Up

Thanks to social networking, I got an email from an old college roommate whom I haven't been in touch with in at least 10 years. I Facebooked him, he accepted, then sent a short note that only had this:

"Hi John. How's NY? I golfed with nobody the other day. It was great."

Seriously. Getting paired up with other a-holes sucks.

Catching Up (New Year's Day edition)

Been out of touch lately. Here's what's up:

Friday, Dec. 21 -- My flight got in too late for me to attend Dr. Schwartz's funeral in Cincinnati, but I spent the entire rest of the day out at their house. Drinks and food and many good people made the day a pretty positive one.

Saturday, Dec. 22 -- Good friends (and charter sponsors of my photography venture!) Amanda and Guy had their annual holiday party at their lovely home in Newport, Ky. I enjoy holiday parties.

Sunday, Dec. 23 -- Drove back to Columbus to catch my flight back to New York. On the bus ride back into the city from LaGuardia, a tourist seemed lost, so I helped direct her to where she needed to go. This is relevant.

Monday, Dec. 24 -- Worked a slow and quiet Christmas Eve morning, then got a call from the lost tourist, a German nanny named Christina. She convinced me to put on ice skates for the first time in about 10 years. Was a little unusual spending Christmas Eve with a total stranger, but was nice to go ice skating after all these years. At one point, we saw a guy get down on bended knee at center ice and propose to his girlfriend (watch the video).

Tuesday, Dec. 25 -- Caught an extremely early flight to Cleveland to spend a few days with Mom and Mike. Ate some food, exchanged some gifts, napped, then big Christmas dinner, then more napping. The perfect Christmas Day!

The rest of the week was kind of like Tuesday. I ate lots of food and caught up on some rest. We went out several times, but what mom made at home was the shiz-nit. Sausage and cheese casserole for one breakfast, blueberry pancakes (with oatmeal in the batter) for another, shrimp salad to snack on throughout the week, Slovenian sausage sandwiches. Mom's cooking is so outstanding, and diverse enough that we're thinking about doing a cookbook now.

Another great thing about the visit home is the ample supply of hot water that comes pounding out of the shower nozzle, a far different setup than what I have at my apartment here in New York, where I get water pressure comparable to what would leak out of a limp garden hose that a car might be parked on in your suburban driveway.

Typically I'm the one annoying mom with toilet humor, but she actually pulled a fast one on me. As I said earlier, she made some Slovenian sausages for breakfast one morning. We had plenty left over. When I was in the shower later that day, she thought she'd try to scare me by leaving a little surprise on the floor of my room. None of her three cats was capable of doing something like what is pictured to the right, and it also didn't help her plan that I could hear her laughing all the way downstairs when I came out of the shower. But a good try nonetheless, mom!

I returned on Friday, Dec. 28, and had a lovely weekend. I don't go out in Chelsea often, but I met Crystal at Kanvas, which looks more like my type of place online than it turned out to be in person.

Saturday I finally got up to Harlem to shoot the enormous St. John The Divine (pictured, left), but was ill-prepared on the battery front, so a return trip is likely soon. New friend Bridget from work is also an avid photographer, but I wasn't the only one who planned poorly. She suggested we hit some art gallery before heading up to Harlem, and when we arrived, it was closed for the entire weekend.

I'm starting to dig the west side a little bit, and that was even before Bridget and I grabbed a beer and a burger later at The Dead Poet, a perfectly laid-back spot for a late lunch or early dinner on a cold Saturday.

Stayed in that night but met Sneha for a late brunch in Brooklyn on Sunday. She's a designer for a high-end label -- I think I've mentioned her here before -- and when she shot up out of her seat during "Eastern Promises" two weeks ago to say "Oh my God, that's my dress," I thought she merely owned it. Turns out homegirl designed what Naomi Watts was sporting in one of the movie's final scenes.

Speaking of "Eastern Promises," here are some recent reviews:

I Am Legend (Theater) -- Will Smith can usually do no wrong, so he makes a mediocre movie with a decent premise pretty good. But certainly not his best effort.

Eastern Promises (Theater) -- Good movie if you can handle heavy foreign accents that cause you to miss a line or two.

Perfect Stranger (NetFlix) -- Interesting ending makes up for a lackluster first 45 minutes or so. Halle Barry is good, Bruce Willis is decent and Giovanni Ribisi was given a couple of weak lines, but if not for the script he was very solid.

Glory Road (NetFlix) -- I'm not crazy about movies that take too many editorial liberties with true stories. It's an important part of American history that's gone largely untold, and Josh Lucas certainly was good, but there were certainly some script and timeline shortcomings.

Rushmore (Recent purchase) -- I hadn't watched this in six or seven years, but it didn't take long to remember how much I enjoyed it when it first came out. Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman both should have called it quits after this one.

Up next in the theater: Charlie Wilson's War, Atonement

New Year's Eve got pretty out of hand for me. One minute I was in the middle of an "Entourage" marathon on HBO, the next I was laughing my head off at the network's On-Demand "Extras" series finale. If you're still not familiar with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, please aks somebody. I enjoy my couch.

So I think we're about all caught up. Write in with your New Year's resolutions. Or don't. Here are mine:

Sell a lot more of my photography, visit Africa, do my taxes early this year, run more, get back in the kitchen, listen to this guy more often, buy a new camera, sell stuff on eBay, drink less, organize my music, get more of my writing published, see Alli T. in person, sell my car, count to infinity, worry less, advance in my field, choose to be happy more, call fewer women, get rid of clothes I don't wear or anything else I don't use, read the fine print, learn how to make clam chowder, eliminate debt (heard that one before?), meet Jonathan Ames, reconnect with some old friends, actually eat the fresh vegetables I buy, learn Flash, read a manual and throw at least one party.

Happy New Year, y'all!

More Catching Up

OK, today we have sports, celebrities and camel toe. Enjoy!

+ Here's why it's difficult to enjoy watching regular season baseball:

My Cleveland Indians beat AL East-leading Boston last night, which is cool. But the score was 1-0, there were only a total of eight hits between the teams, only two walks, only five men left on base and the Indians didn't even need to bat in their half of the ninth inning, yet the game took 2 hours and 45 minutes to play.

I don't mind the lack of offensive fireworks, but a game like that should take two hours, maybe 2:10 tops.

+ Forgot to tell you in Monday's Catching Up segment, but I was walking uptown Sunday and what caught my attention was a loud woman on her cell phone. What kept my attention was the moose-knuckle in the crotch of her skin-tight gym leggings. This was without doubt the grossest camel-toe violation I'd ever seen in my life. She was in her mid-50s, but trying to look like she was only 48 or so with fake boobs, collagen-injected lips, fake tan and a tight top that was tragically far too short. One would think someone so caught up in vanity would know to a) wear underwear, 2) not wear those pants and D) stay home.

+ It's 11 a.m. and I've already eaten three doughnuts at work. The boss brought them in. He's pretty cool.

+ What will end first, violence in the Middle East or racism?

+ My walk-home-from-work friend Kelly and I turned the corner from 67th Street onto 3rd Avenue the other day and walked right past Matt Lauer. Kelly said "Hi" and I said "Hi Matt," as if he was some dude who worked on our floor. Mr. NBC said hello and kept walking with his two young daughters, and Kelly and I laughed because we both acted like everyone who works in television must know each other. Surely, he went back to work and wrote on his blog that he bumped into John and Kelly from the rival news organization across town.

+ What's new in baseball? A-hole Barry Bonds and steroids. Football? Michael Vick and dogfighting. Basketball? Game-fixing by referee Tim Donaghy. NASCAR? It's NASCAR. Shoot, even cycling is scandal-ridden. And hockey has the worst TV ratings? I don't get that.

+ Speaking of Vick, the NFL Wednesday told him to stay away from Falcons' training camp. An unconfirmed report from a PAE correspondent in Atlanta suggests that the NFL's message to the troubled quarterback sounded more like, "Staaayy. Staaaaayyyyyy."

+ I can't not weigh in on Lindsay Lohan, who says the cocaine in her pocket was not hers. And her family says she was trying to help her assistant, which clearly explains why she was speeding while drunk at 2 in the morning right in front of a police station in Santa Monica. Now it all makes sense.

In a joint statement released this morning, Lindsay's parents -- one a former coke whore and the other an alcoholic recently released from prison -- said, "We are under the impression that the police, the media and the general public were all born yesterday."

This is quite reminiscent of the after-school-special-ish stories you hear about the troubled teen who pleads with her mom about the cigarettes found in the inside pocket of the varsity jacket, "Mom, I was holding those for Ashley. I swear they're not mine."

It's human nature to be curious and want to experiment, to want to rebel and to want to save your own ass when your plan backfires. But you grow the F up and it then becomes human nature to admit you did something stupid, especially when the whole world is watching. She's a 21-year-old zillionaire with a huge future in her pocket, right next to the bag of coke. After you spend a few bucks on someone to cart your drunk-ass around, but maybe hire some advisors who will help you not look like such a stupid whore. Whatever illegal acts you've committed are bad enough, but the denials make things so much worse and make you look like total white T. Unfortunately, our weak and shallow culture will only be more willing to see Linday's bad movies and buy her weak music. All because she's a party girl with great tits. I mean, would there be such a clamor if the troubled celebrity was Miranda July?

Catching Up

Sorry, been out of the loop for a while, so let's get caught up:

+ Went to Robert Moses Beach with Christine and got a nasty sunburn on Sun., July 15.

+ Spent the week crying about my sunburn, and finally peeled off I think one full layer of skin from my back over this weekend.

+ Wednesday, Sylvia was nice to take me to "Old Acquaintance" at the American Airlines Theater. I'm not a Broadway expert, but the play was actually very good.

+ Wearing my salmon pants -- no, they're not pink -- that got some predictable comments from some drunk construction meatheads at the bar we visited for a quick bite before the play, I arrived a little tardy because of the steam pipe explosion at Grand Central Terminal. I live on the 4/5/6 line, where service was closed off just moments before I'd gotten on the train. Finally, a legitimate excuse for my tardy habit.

+ The old lady sitting next to me, married to the man whose hearing aid kept making loud beeps so that the entire theater could hear throughout the entirety, grabbed my arm as I SILENTLY paged through the Playbill for about five or 10 seconds to find the name of one of the actresses as she appeared in Act One, asking, "Could you please not do that?" I have no problem with deaf people, but paging through the program for several seconds was far less of a distraction than their two-hour, two-man circus.

+ Watched the movie "Reno: 911" last week. That was excellent.

+ Went to McAleer's Pub on the Upper West Side for Bruce's birthday on Friday night. He's got some pretty cool friends, and I invited them to my party, still on for this Saturday, July 28. Also was nice to invite some street strangers who I met that night. We'll see if they show up. And remember Homecoming Date Lisa? She and her husband came out for a beer too. I think the last time we hung out they bought me a beer then as well. I need to buy them a beer or two next time.

+ Started to get the crib ready Sunday for next weekend's party. First order of business was to carve out the tuna-flavored science project from a tupperware container in my fridge. Some would call it moldy; I'll just say it was growing a beard.

+ Edited a lot of new images over the weekend and ordered some more. My stuff is going in a gallery in Newport, Ky., as soon as I get it there, probably in a week or two, and I might have another art show there in October. Please stay tuned for details on that.

+ The Barry Bonds pool I organized at work is shaping up nicely. If Bonds surpasses Hank Aaron's home-run record anytime between July 28 and Aug. 5, I win $105. Let me reword that. I get to keep the $105 I've already spent. Before Opening Day, I collected $5 a head from co-workers just to promote a little inter-office camaraderie, and you wouldn't believe how many people complained about the rules and procedures and this and that ... all while handing over their money. Suckers!

+ I can't figure out which hour of comedy is better -- Thursday's "30 Rock" and "The Office" on NBC, or Sunday's "Entourage" and "Flight Of The Conchords" on HBO. "Conchords" is awesome. It might be a touch dry at times, but I heard over the weekend it's pulling the best ratings of any show HBO has placed in the post-"Entourage" slot, so don't look for it to go anywhere anytime soon.

+ Fifty bucks says the investigation into Tim Donaghy reveals more NBA refs are involved in betting on games they're officiating. This could blow wide open, but then again, that's what I said more than a year ago about Rick Tocchet and his NHL gambling ring. That story just kind of disappeared, right?

+ And I must admit, I watched the David Beckham debut Saturday with anticipation similar to that of LeBron James' NBA debut in 2003. It was exciting to see him take the field in the 78th minute, though no fireworks followed. After abhorrent behavior Friday night, my Irish guilt kept me indoors Saturday night, and watching the Galaxy hang tough with Chelsea from my couch turned out to be a pleasant alternative.

+ Best line I've heard recently, during a conversation about how weak ESPN's "Who's Now?" debate is. John Boel said last week, in a mock tease voice, "Tonight on Who's Now, dogfighting legend Michael Vick takes on Rainmaker Pac-Man Jones." That's pretty funny. That "Who's Now?" piece is awful, just as most of ESPN's stuff is, but methinks ESPN's love affair with itself will only lead to an expanded field next year of 64 contenders. I can't figure out who I despise more, Chris Berman or Stu Scott.

Thoughts On Who's Now?