"Newspaper boxes" Or, "who made this art and why is it still so clean?"

On Grand Street near Ludlow. I wonder if they're new, because they are still pristine. When I worked at the Voice I was always amazed that we had to pay fines if our boxes were defaced. I guess it makes sense, since the Voice owned them, but still, it seemed crazy, because all newspaper boxes are so often destroyed by graffiti and garbage.

1J82

You don't have license to wish me "sweet dreams" as I slam the taxi door.

On The Anxiety Of Writing About Photography

I've been asked to write for Jen Bekman's Hey, Hot Shot! blog. So I'll be writing about photography again soon!

On The Anxiety Of Photography

"Photography can be a neurotic’s worst nightmare. At least if the neurotic thinks about it, and the neurotic does. He thinks too much. The photographer/neurotic gets caught between his desire and his intellect, and therein lies the nightmare. It’s not that desire and the intellect don’t go together, they do."

— From Too Drunk to Fuck (On the Anxiety of Photography), by Mark Wyse

MySpace Can't Possibly Own Credit/Copyright To Your Profile Photos, Can They?

It's bad enough that the Times relied on MySpace as the main source for their latest scoop on the Spitzer scandal, but to give MySpace a photo credit for each shot taken from the prostitute's page?!

MySpace does not own the photos uploaded to it. Though this doesn't seem like a mistake the NYT wouldn't make. Now I'm curious. I'm going to look into this.

This Office Chair Is More Beautiful Than My Office Chair

To find out what I mean, go here.

5M26

"This is my first day," he said with a bravado that barely masked his fear.

"I mean, you're not my first. I go to college. I've been driving for, like, a long time. All day."

"How many fares have you had?" I asked.

"A lot," he said. "Uh, three."

"It's still early," I said.

"Okay, fine, fine, I've only had one. I mean none. No others. You're the one. The only one. You're my first."

He then told me that he loves live music and asked if he could put on some songs for me. I was listening to my ipod, but I nodded.

He played a song that repeated something about "baby, don't you rush, girl, we got the whole night" and a 50 Cent tune that seems to be titled A Little Bit.

Subtle.

The Office

My first post on Personal Days (the blog of the book by Ed Park) is up. It's about David W. Dunlap's The Office as Architectural Touchstone from Sunday's New York Times.

The Bell Labs campus is near my parents' house. I've always wanted to visit. I don't think you're allowed in.

Reblog

I haven't switched this blog to Tumblr yet, although as soon as I find someone who knows how to do it, I will. (If you know how or want to do it for me, e-mail, please.) For now, just pretend that I've reblogged this awesome photo below. I love it.


prettystandard:

The slow demise of the DUMBO snowman colony

Black Cab Sessions

The Black Cab Sessions (here, Spoon and Saint Vincent). I love these and their motto: "One song, one take, one cab." It might be my second-favorite foreign indie rock video series, after The Take Away Shows.

It's time I started my trope, interviews conducted during cab rides. Soon...

Our Blog Could Be Your Life

How is it possible that every article about Quarterlife isn't titled "Our Blog Could Be Your Life?"

A Nexis search reveals that it hasn't been used even once.

Links, Some

• Something about how I would definitely fall down these stairs.
• Something about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the anniversary. And Anne Frank.
• Something about The Echo Park Time Travel Mart.
• Something about liking New Jersey Turnpike tolls.
• Something about I recently discovered and now sort of love this blog.
  

HP73? 73HZ?

I'm loathe to leave his number, even as I indict him here.
(Also, I didn't take a receipt, so my recall of the number is sketchy.)

Maybe if he wasn't driving around New York with a trunk full of porn, I wouldn't have reason to write about him.

His car was clean.
He helped me with my suitcase.
He ignored my histrionic cell-phone call.

But he kept them in a big, clear trash bag.

Trashy.

Found: You Are An Electro Remix Of A Song About Love & Loss & Redemption

(Made by shaderlab.)

Things, Some

• Something about festival dailies.
  
• Something about frozen dumplings.
  
• Something about that stranger, leaning against the doors for the entire ride, writing alternating lines in blue pen and in black pen in a tiny notebook, and never messing up, and balancing.
  
• Something about Botox and sweating.
  
• Something about where they keep the carts at night and when it's cold.
  
• Something about this being the block where I lost you.
  
• Something about the bakery staying open for one more holiday's haul.
  

Things I Don't Understand And Definitely Am Not Going To Talk About

• Things I don't understand and definitely am going to talk about.
• Everything.

Backseat Shooter: Football Helmet In Place Of A Hardhat, SOHO

Broadway, at Houston.

Away Message

My away message had a link to this blog.
This is what I found when I returned to the computer:

bonniesnow: Jennifer, are you dating a cab driver?!

bonniesnow: I don't understand.

bonniesnow: Why don't you tell me about these things?!

bonniesnow: It's okay if you're dating a cab driver.

bonniesnow: We should talk.

bonniesnow: It's not okay if you're dating a cab driver. It's WEIRD!!!

bonniesnow: Just because a boy tells you that you're pretty doesn't mean that you have to go out with him.

bonniesnow: I tell you that you're pretty.

bonniesnow: I think you should call me.

Girls Are Funnier Than Boys

Nina is right.
Also funny: Monday night road trips, as a ritual.

Backseat Shooter: 2C68

There was a kite and a beach and a family and a fight and there was a cab, and it was out of place, and it made them laugh. A little.

Reading In Cabs With...

"We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab, and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that entirely suspect Chinese restaurant, and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea."

Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York,also, New York Times Magazine.

(I'm not sure I know how to write about this essay without being corny. It's super-sentimental, and perhaps overwrought, and I hadn't read it in years — although I'd read it about a million times since I first saw it in the NYT Magazine — when I saw the book, Colussus of New York, in a store recently, and turned right to it, and it definitely made me cry. And so, because it made me cry in the middle of Bookcourt, and because it's still one of my favorite pieces of writing about New York, and because it meets the key criteria of "Reading In Cabs With," i.e. it mentions a taxi, that's why it's here.)

What's So Funny About Brooklyn?

Ed Park will be at the Brooklyn Public Library tonight. He will read from the forthcoming/awesome Personal Days.
Ed Park is what's so funny about Brooklyn. Even though he does not live here. Perhaps this will be discussed at the event.

Gray Nail Polish Is Not Gross.

More info here and here.

To The Library, And Step On It!

Any excuse to use the phrase.