Song Of The Day

Beginning Of A Story That Never Existed

The amateur Chocolatier trampled thru the jewelled forest with his gear bouncing and hanging intact until he reached the base of the mountain. There, he peeled off his backpack, his heavy fur coat, his tools, and began to make a fire. Staring into the flames, clutching a tin cup of hot cocoa, he pondered the ascent towards Widow's Peak that he'd embark on at daybreak. He understood his mission well. He was confident in a way that also breeds caution. He studied his map one last time, took two yellow pills and then, wrapped in fine-fibered sleeping bag, laid his body down next to the dying fire as rickshaw wolves howled in the distance and a big half moon peeked out behind an enourmous dark cloud.

Song Of The Day

I wouldn't complain one bit if this song was played at my funeral. And just the way it's done here. Fiddle, Banjo, Guitar.
This recording is from 1920 something. Still gives me the goose bumps like it did when I first heard it back when I lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Click on the link to give a listen.(Preferably with headphones on)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy_netsTaR8&feature=related

Color Of The Day

Magenta.

Fact Of The Day

The City of Cleveland has not won a major sports championship since 1964.

The Spread Of Yoga Is Freaking Me Out

        The proliferation of Yoga Studios is now gone totally out of control. Not only are there studios in second floor buildings next to train tracks in the burroughs of major American cities, but those professed supposed guides to meditation and strength-- a sure way to improve one's quality of life-- are found nowadays in all sized locales from backwood dives to college towns to mountain cities, and all throughout the largest metropolis here in New York City. In each place I have lived, there's never been a shortage of yoga studios. Even in my hometown of Ashtabula,Ohio there are  now places to go take yoga.(Something unheard of 20 years ago.)  Here in Astoria in Queens would you believe me if i told you that down the street somebody just opened 'Yoga For Kids'?!

The thing that really bothers me is that I can not exactly figure out why this bothers me. I realize that people all over the country are helped by going to take Yoga; that for them maybe even if in small ways, their life is made healthier. I also appreciate anything that gets people out of their house, away from the computer screen or blackberry screen and into the real world. So why should I joke with friends and put 'yoga studio' and 'epidemic' in the same sentence? What's more, kids these days grow up saturated in digital media, social network technology, youtube. They grow up developing routines early of checking e-mails, and tweets, and facebook first--checking in with themselves and physical interactions with people come later or not at all. So wouldn't a Yoga For Kids be a helpful tool for children developing their own healthy minds and bodies and abilities to reflect on their own actions in the world? Maybe the greatest thing it does is to slow things down a bit. I guess I just wonder if there aren't other ways to acheive these things; if we might as adults, try to develop our own homegrown way of the same thing without always attaching 'yoga' to the equation. A kid can just go to a playground or to a feild with other kids and play a game of wiffle ball or Freeze Tag or a million other things. Childhood doesn't-- or shouldn't-- require yoga.
My roommate Danielle says, "I'm done with yoga because they're a bunch of pretentious fucks."
Now let's all take a deep breath.

Public Submitted Poem For The Day

"Three Year Anniversary"

You did this to yourself.
Now swim until every fiber
In your body is sore.
Until every last fiber is sore--
And then dog,
Swim some more. Bastard.
She said. And hung up the phone.


-Rosemary Acropolis

(Denver, Colorado)

Song Of The Day

Song Of The Day

NYC Observations

Why do the man-hole coverings that cover the holes going to the sewers, on the steets of NYC read, 'MADE IN INDIA' ?

Public Submitted Poem For The Day

Triple Threat Evaluation


Those dogs at midnight who cometh
Rip out memories of you and them
Of yours and theirs
Movies last forever but not for you.

So you gather arms where you may.
A knife from the kitchen, a lamp from the living room.
You fend them off as you best you can until the morning--
When it's back to another day-light and those pancakes
With way too much syrup.

-Travis Peckingpah
(Zanesville, OH)

Freeze Tag: Quick Appreciation For Cinematographer Dean Cundey...

Freeze Tag: Quick Appreciation For Cinematographer Dean Cundey...: "This is the guy that has given that certain look that I really love to some great 1980's films not to mention the classic 'Halloween.' &nbsp..."

Ingredients for Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar

(Ah, how I adore this mildly sweet delicious 4.25 ounces of pure chocolatey joy. But what's in it?)

Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Milk Fat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, PGPR, Emulsifier, Vanillin, Artificial Flavor, Milk.

180 calories per serving and 7 grams of saturated fat and there are about 3 servings per bar.
Yikes, sometimes I eat the whole bar in one night. I'm helpless to its power. I think the all-organic dark chocolate bars my roommate buys from the store is supposed to be much healthier but you know what?

Those ones just aren't as scrumptous.

Alain Resnais's film 'Je T'aime Je T'aime

Director--Alain Resnais 1967.  (Viewed at the Museum of the Moving Image)

There's alot to like here of course---although there were times early on when I wondered if the film wasn't teetering on the verge of being cheesy---yet the melacholy story of a man whose failed suicide puts him in position to be used in a time travel experiment and goes back in time revisiting (sometimes multiple times) scenes between him and his girlfriend who somehow ends up dying, keeps the movie above cheese territory and is able to stun the viewer with quick cuts between scenes of the past repeated until the movie gathers its non precise cycle and soon we find ourselves under Resnais's spell again.(And only a few lines ago I was saying something about parts of the movie almost being too goofy.) It's actually too sad and the leading actress's performance I think is too believable for such a label. I'm sure every French Cinephile knows this film.
This was made six years after 'Last Year at Marianbad' in 1961 and after seeing each film once on the big screen, I still prefer 'Marianbad' but this particularly somber yet zany French film is staying with me more and more and I keep thinking about the doomed love affair of the couple in the film and about regret---and I guess how time travel retains its romantic appeal for its potential to change everything for the better; to make everything happen the way it should have happened.
Or Something. Allegedly influenced 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'

NYC Observations (Cheap Phone Snapshots)

Public Submitted Poem For The Day

                               Barb on Barbituates

Oh, I already knew that 'cause
Barb on Barbituates sometimes sleep walks
and wakes up in our garage naked
with motor oil all over her breasts
muttering something about her cheatin husband.


Lance Bandello      (Culver City, California)

Chewbacca's Head at The Museum of the Moving Image

                                                        Yes, it's come to this. Recently I witnessed behind a glass show-case at The Museum of the Moving Image, the head of the one and only Chewbacca from Star Wars. That is to say, Star Wars 1977. It took me awhile but I started to dwell on this odd spectacle--this heroic figure to so many, enclosed by glass as though he were an artifact at the Smithsonian. I don't think it was until after I returned home that I thought to myself, "My beautiful mythological creature from childhood, what have they done to you?" 
There's nothing in my childhood as nostalgic as Star Wars is for me. And please don't mix up Star Wars with Star Trek or I will have to kill you.
Before I left the Museum I took a picture of the decapitated good-guy, frozen in time, on my cell phone and sent it to my cousin back in Ohio who may love Star Wars more than I do. I guess it was kinda cool, right? (And the little placard at the base behind the glass read something about it containing 'Yak hair'.) Yak Hair?! No, that's Chewbacca's hair damn you unnameable villain!
Naw, I like the world better when we believed in the make believe and mysteries were preserved. There's just something wholly unnatural about seeing Chewbacca like this.
Having said that; I really had a good time at newly renovated (spaceship interiored) Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens and highly recomend it. In fact, give MoMA a break on Free Fridays, (the Pollacks do little for the young kids these days anyways.) Go instead to the Museum of the Moving Image and if the force is strong with you, use stealth and Jedi mind tricks and bust out Chewbacca so he can recieve a proper buriel in that place where he lives on forever in those first three sacraments of cinema.

Song Of The Day

Brief Guide On How To Go To Museums Once A Week With Barely Any Money

For the poor folk who might be curious about going to Art Museums:

 1.  First off, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is actually pay what you can. Of course they suggest you pay twenty dollars which might not be a drop in the bucket to the people who live on the Upper East Side but to some of us, it is way too expensive. Luckily they redeem themselves times over by allowing the poor folk in for what-ever-you-can-pay. And this applies to every day of the week.
2. MOMA is free on fridays from 4-8pm.
3. American Folk Art is right next door and is free on fridays from 5:30-7:30.
4. PS 1 Contemporary Art Museum in Queens. Free with your admission ticket from MOMA which you got for free by going between 4 and 8 on friday.
5. Whitney Museum of American Art pay what you can fridays from 6 to 9pm. (As you may be able to tell, this is why if you have the option of not having to work on fridays or of getting off early, try to keep it open.)
6. Guggenhiem Museum steps up to plate and comes thru by giving pay-what-you-can on saturdays from 5:45 to 7:45pm.
7. The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens is free from 4 to8 on fridays as well.
Now this is just a partial list to be sure but it simply demonstrates that for the poor folk who might be interested in this kind of experience repeatedly, have easy access each and every week. Basically, in NYC, if you have the time, and this is the fact part-- you can go to two museums per week for two dollars a week. That is realistic. It's that simple. (Of course I'm not including subway fare but still.)
So, no excuses people, ya hear. Unless you hate going to museums--in which case I wouldn't mind at all sitting down and hearing your argument and may even be inclined to agree with you on why certain elements on the experience can totally, how I shall I say---suck.

NYC Observations (Snapshots)

The Color of the Day

Maroon.

Floating mysteriously without so much as a sound. That is until the dew begins forming on the grass and a soft melancholy in the form of a melody comes from the other side of the hill. Looking at it here it reminds me of Ranier Maria's first album which I used to absolutlely love and wish I could listen to right now but my records and record player are in Ohio and the one we have here is broken and I guess I could listen to the album online but I haven't heard it in a long while and I don't want to ruin the experience by cheap quick listens; plucking songs randomly here and there. Such a great fucking album 12, 13 years ago.  I wonder how it would hold up now? I need to revisit that place soon. Ah, Maroon.

Year of The Day: 1989

I recently came to find out that the first time anyone anywhere in the world typed www. whatever and got an address was in the year 1989. The Berlin Wall collapsed as well that year. The war between Russia and Afghanistan ended. The Cold War ended too. Nirvana's first album, 'Bleach' was released on subpop records.
Mike Tyson was Heavyweight Champion of the world. In China the Tiananmen Square Protests were going down. 1989; The world was changing. That was the year me and my cousin and a friend on some innocent Saturday night were dropped off to see those zany heroes in a half shell, the Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen at the old Nichol's Plaza Theater on route 20 in Ashtabula; the one that was torn down a few years ago leaving only blank space so that now you'd never know in passing, that it ever really existed and that it was a great source of wonder and enjoyment as we were growing up.