BUMMER

A couple nights ago we had a mini hurricane. When I went out yesterday I saw this unfortunate vehicle on 110th Street.

Here’s another nature story: I have watched these two grow up from tiny goslings (not to be confused with my sometime drummer Jake Geesling).

I was able to get up real close to them for a couple minute photo shoot. But sure enough, mom and dad came waddling over eventually. They don’t want their offspring getting big heads. I understand.

Yarn cones + nest + teeny cupcake= awesome.

Here’ s a photo of what I have done of the tree part–you can just make out the cupcake nest at the tippy-top. Eventually it will have several nests–about enough for a dozen cupcakes.

I was hoping to make the frosting robin’s egg blue, but the blue cupcakes didn’t show up enough from the tree. Were I a real bird that would be a good thing–a little camouflage never hurt anyone. But my goal is for people to see the cupcakes and eat them all up. They have to be visible, see?

I tried a lot of different ways to make this nest. It was my idea that I’d use no glue–that I’d attach twigs together with back pressure. When I realized that was not working I tried sewing them together with thread–also not happening. Did you know it was so hard to make a nest? Well, it is. It’s hard and time consuming.

In the end I caved and bought a nice can of spray glue. Even this was not without its difficulty–the sticks stuck to my hand more than to each other. It’s actually not coming off my hands any time soon, nor the spatula I used to detach the poor nest from the plate I constructed it on. I may have to throw the spatula away or just use it in nest making evermore.

All this to say: I don’t know how they do it. This is really a sorry nest–it wouldn’t keep any eggs warm for a second. . And I had tweezers, a spatula, spray glue and needle and thread to help me, not to mention advice from a nice lady at Michaels. It looks simple, but it aint.

I read that the American Goldfinch makes its nest so snug that it can hold water. The American Goldfinch are geniuses!

This nest is going into my Yarn Tree and will soon house some teeny cupcakes with robin’s egg blue frosting.

My tree is nearing completion. My joy is great. I still think i have around 100 cones to go, though. Turns out, making a tree is pretty time consuming too, almost as time consuming as growing one.

My nice landlady bought me this pepper plant kit as a thank you for taking care of her giant, deaf, white cat. It’s real cool–you put the soil pellets in water, then you push the pepper seeds into the soil and viola: cute little sprouts that grow real fast for 4 days. I was overjoyed. Rapturous. But, the pepper plants seem sad now, and not growing for over a week no matter what I do. Can I be a plant lover who can’t grow plants?

Jalapeños (Capsicum annuum) are supposed to be relatively easy to grow. I guess if you have actual land to put them in…not sure they’re suited for apartment life, but who is?

I should get some regular old houseplants now that my plant-eating cat is gone. It’ll be the first time in my adult life that I can have plants who aren’t someone’s personal salad and/or napping ground.

Working hard on my Tree. Have to get this thing all done before I go to AZ for the rest of the installation build. I’m really looking forward to that, though I’m not looking forward to Phoenix’s oven-like temperatures. If anyone says “but it’s a dry heat” again I’m going to punch them. It doesn’t matter how dry 120 degrees is. I must admit that NYC ain’t no party in the weather department right now either…it’s hot and soupy. Go outside for a few minutes and you feel like you’ve been dipped in honey. A few minutes later you feel deep-fried.

I’m not really complaining though. I’m over the hump of NYC humidity really bothering me. I was spoiled by a childhood in rural Central California…most of the year it’s 50-70 degrees. It’s so beautiful all the time there that no work gets done, ever. I guess bad weather is good for production. Yeah, NYC has only two weeks of good weather in the Fall. That’s why we have so many type A personalities tap-tap-tapping away all year. Thank God for bad weather.

BROOKE HOGAN INTRODUCES ANTI CHAPS

One of my excellent friends hooked me up with a funny day job for a bit: I’m on a shoot with Hulk Hogan’s daughter–it’s something having to do with Mr. Hulk’s VH1 reality show. Ain’t never worked on a reality show before. I’m sure it will be alternately pain and pleasure and by pleasure I mean that awesome feeling you get when you think “well, how did I get here?”

But seriously, I do love working on bad TV. I’m not sure I can explain why…Something about having grown up with little or no TV makes this so. When I worked at TV Land I was overjoyed to watch 25 episodes of A Team. I also loved Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, all of it really. No, I take it back; I draw the line with that awful Olson Twins/Bob Saget sitcom. You know the one.

Did I tell you I’m editing a movie? I guess it’s not actually a movie–it’s more like a serial. It’s around 16 episodes of a fairy tale about (you guessed it) Central Park. In the movie the park is filled with magical people who live there, including this girl, who is, for lack of a modern term, a Brownie, or perhaps a Pixie. This pixie does the evil bidding (mostly lurking, spying and message-carrying) for the main antagonist of the film, an old woman called The Grandmother.

Right now I’m looking for footage of the Pixie spying on the protagonist. Also–footage of the pixie running with messages all through the park. This is very entertaining because:

1) The pixie is extremely photogenic.
2) She runs in this way that is very pixie-like and makes me laugh every time.
3) The evil director (me) keeps forgetting to give her clear running directions. Sometimes when I just want her to run out of the frame, she keeps running full bore till she’s a tiny dot on the horizon. Then the evil director tells her to do something else and she’s totally out of earshot. Then then the evil director looks through the camera to find her. Then the Brownie-actor must run full bore back to make it to the next shot. No one is getting fat on my watch.
4) Then the evil Brownie (who is actually a super nice 15 year old kid named Johnnie Warfield) is panting and sweating. I guess that part’s not funny if you’re the super nice 15 year old kid, and I felt bad at the time, but man is it funny from here.

One thing that’s not funny (as an editor) is watching yourself act on film. Let this be a lesson to would-be filmmakers: leave yourself out of it–you’ll thank me later. I have edited out almost all of my own speaking parts so that I’m even more of a bit part then the script called for. Oh the terrible sound of your own voice! Every time I hear myself talk I start writhing around like those characters on old Star Trek.

You can see episode 1 here, btw. And soon you’ll be able to see episode 5, which will act as a sort of a trailer.

Here’s a belated show review from Wednesday May 22.

We played WE fest in Wilmington NC, which was nice except for a band (who shall remain nameless) who treated us worse than my band’s ever been treated in all my 1000s of shows. We parked our car away from our own motel (which they were staying at too) because we thought they might vandalize it. We also had spit in our beer, my drummer’s cymbals thrown on the ground, and tongue lashings about how inexperienced we are. Yeah, we’re not 50; we’re sorry.

Those old guys just wanted to be Rock Stars, you know? They wanted to be violent jackasses, and they succeeded; it’s important to make attainable goals.

The upside is that we made a pretty good plan of what to do if someone starts throwing punches. We’re not very violent; my guitar player has a peace tattoo on one arm and a love tattoo on the other. I suppose Jake (drummer) could throw a punch, but he’s too nice. Oh and Dan, our bass player for the event, is a Mennonite; they do love their peace and social justice. I think I might be the most anger management member of the band, but I just had major back surgery, not to mention regular anxiety dreams about being beat up by a midget.

Anyway, I digress. What I really wanted to tell you about is a show we saw that night–our favorite out of all the bands at the festival, our almost-homies Terminal Reynaldo (Jersey City).

Austin was having palpitations when they first set up–so many toy keyboards and old-fashioned effects pedals, a Q-chord, and much etc. Gadgets everywhere!

Their show was amazing– lines played unison on various toy instruments, a violin/sax player also sometimes chiming in (which doesn’t necessarily sound pleasant in print, but was wonderful live). They had a winsome, childlike quality in every song, along with a sufficient amount of darkness to anchor everything–a Radiohead thickness with a bright strain of playfulness thrown in–very satisfying. It was fun to hear something completely new–don’t you love that feeling? It happens so rarely.

Please check them out. They are going to be huge.

They are also extremely nice guys and let us play their Fischer Price keyboard in their hotel room after the show. They were a bright spot in our otherwise anxiety-filled day.

Did I mention that Jake also got harassed by a southern cop at the Waffle House that night? Inexplicably, the cop decided to call him “Baby Boy.” That gives me the creep-out shivers every time I think of it. Baby Boy? AAAAAH!

In some ways, I guess I should feel good about the hubbub. We are so mild mannered. It kind of feels like we were bad-asses for once. Trouble was looking for us, finally, thank God. Now we can have our own reality show.

My brain is boring, thank God. Perfectly normal, see? I left the doctor with a huge envelope of brain pics, feeling like I had just been to some demented elementary school Olan Mills shoot. Really, the individual scans come out in little squares that are more-or-less wallet sized. I might sign one “have a nice summer” for Jad. He used to tell me he liked me for my brain.

I’m thinking of cutting them up and using them somehow in the installation. They might make good tree innards, coupled with my lumbar spine MRIs. Like the tree skeleton is in there and it’s just like yours, you perfectly normal (albeit with some bionics) patient, you.

I’m considering making knot holes in the Yarn Tree or the Sweater Tree which have a magnifying glass and an LED light so you can see the bones.

Yellow Swamp Iris: I’m told this is a weed, and that makes me like this beauty even more than if it were planted fastidiously every year by the Conservancy.

While this Foxglove was planted in the Conservatory Garden, and therefore planned and well kept, in most parts of the country it just volunteers weed-like anywhere the soil conditions are right. These are one of my favorite flowers to run across. I imagine actual foxes putting their paws into the bells of the flowers. It seems like a nice accessory for a society fox to wear to tea, don’t you think?

Black Locusts grow incredibly fast around here. When I first moved into my house in 2001 there was a 5 foot tall weedy-looking bushy thing in the backyard that my landlady wanted to remove. Since then it’s grown into a giant tree which beautifully shades her backyard in the summer. Right now it’s so beautiful with the white blossoms. They smell like honey, Honey.

I should really add this to my list of things I love: weeds. I love dandelions. I love that they win every war to kill them. Were I a suburbanite, my lawn would be all dandelions. They are so bright and noisy. I also love bittersweet nightshade, chickory, ailanthus, and etc. Most of them have flowers. I think that’s a defense mechanism; “I know you want to get rid of me, but look how cute I am!”

On a related, but slightly non sequitur topic, I’d like to point out that I’m trying to find a way to give fresh flowers in my installation. Like maybe there’s a flower tree that contains daisies. Perhaps people can wander by and pick daisies all day? I think in the apple tree, some of the ladles can be filled with water and flower heads. Yeah.

I’m also toying with the idea that people won’t know they can take stuff, until the first person does and doesn’t get in trouble. Like you take your 8 year old to the installation and she can’t keep her hands off the apples. Then no one yells at her. Then adults start to touch stuff and no one yells at them…then suddenly everyone realizes that everything can be harvested.

One way that my Central Park will be better than the actual one; in Real CP you can pick apples, but you better not get caught.

Thinking ourselves SO original yesterday, with our knitting men post, I expected to be the only listing to come up when I typed men who knit in the Google box. Not so. Not even close to being so.

This is a real, live genre of activity/person out there. There were not just a few listings. No, there are pages and pages of listings, including a magazine devoted to it.

This is probably my favorite site out there…It includes a little history of male knitting.

I would like to read this children’s book, too, but keep in mind: written by a woman.

Here’s a video, featuring a man knitting a hammock with pool cues.

Some more links:
Men Who Knit Community
Male Knitters (at Knitty.com)
A fun blog

Keep in mind, I’ve only listed a tiny fraction of the sites out there.

We’ve officially decided to rename our musical genre Male Knitting Music. It’s going to catch on, I’m sure of it.