zBlog

St Ann's Parochial School

A guy named Joe (a friend of my friend Bobo) mentioned to us that we live in a building that used to be a parochial school. It's interesting to me that I hadn't noticed until then that there's a flag pole sticking out of the front and a sign at the top of the building that says "St Ann's Parochial School 1870". 1870! It makes me wonder what the area around it was like when it was built. What else around here is as old?

the view from the street and a close-up of the sign on the top

Double Zero

In browsing movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (a great site, maybe the greatest for movie reviews) I found a rare gem - a movie that had a perfect 00 rating. This is even more amazing, considering the 22 professional movie reviewers attached to the conglomerate review. Here are a few of my favorite clippings of reviewer gold:

One can only hope that Witless Protection is targeted at a vanishing species of American Neanderthal. -John Anderson (Variety)

I began hating it not just for its utter lack of quality as art or entertainment, but for the blackness of its very soul. - Emanuel Levy (emanuellevy.com)

Vigo's Carpathians caught on camera

Last night my team had a scheduled game, but the other team forfeited without telling us. So we decided to just play against ourselves. We won... and we also lost. Wendy took photos of us winning and losing:

word challenge has broken my brain

Last night I couldn't fall asleep because I couldn't stop constructing words in my mind - resorting a bunch of letters over and over
mope
mop
ope
opem
opera
per
pore
por
par
I couldn't stop it and no matter what I thought of it was happening. I would say to myself "think of nothing" and
not
hot
tin
thing
ting
gin
got
nit
git
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. It happened when I was talking to my brother over the phone even while I was talking - it's horrible, make it go away. Now I have to stop playing that stupid facebook game. Scrabulous was never THIS bad!

300!

I didn't even notice until after I posted it, but that last entry was my 300th post to my blog! I guess that means my blog is 300 (actually 301) now!

to iPhone or not to iPhone

The new iPhone is beautiful just like the first iPhone and with even fewer reasons not to get one. So why am I having such a hard time deciding whether or not I should get one?

Maybe it's because I'm partial to the ways of the PC. I really do like how much you can hack and add things to PC hardware, but this is the first time where I can honestly say that an Apple product might actually be more mess-around-with-able than any competing product. There just aren't other cell phones that you can add more applications to or do more with.

The only remaining reasons I can think of to not get one is that the service isn't as good as Verizon, but I'm beginning to think that I won't mind being unreachable every now and then.

COMMENTS!

Hooray for George!

Now you can comment on stuff, people!

That is, if anyone is reading this...

Parsons ho!

When I went to Ghana this March I had some serious thinking to do. I'd already done what I had set out to do with animation before I got to NYC. That was to just become an accomplished animator - done - but I was bored. So, I used all that time away from my familiar surroundings to figure out what to do next. Instead of coming up with where I wanted to go next with my career, I realized that a big source of my unhappiness was due to how little I was doing other than pursuing a career. I realized that the thing that made me most happy was my basketball team over at Chelsea Piers. There goes the lightbulb - if something outside of work is making my life more fulfilling, then why not just add a few more outside-of-work things? Here's what I decided - teaching and acting. The acting thing turned out to be easier to find (I've been taking an improv class for the last 6 weeks) but teaching wasn't panning out. I had contacted all the people I knew involved with schools to see if there was something I could do. Surprisingly, it was when I'd stopped looking for a couple of weeks that someone from Parsons called me up, looking for a teacher for their Maya class on Thursday evenings. Bingo!

rotation can be fun, especially for a building

This is the building I want to live in (too bad it's going up in Moscow):

Gizmodo's story and the architect's site

Huey, Dewey, and Louie

I read that houseplants can filter toxins from the air and since I live in NYC, there will be plenty to do for Huey, Dewey, and Louie. There is doubt that a few houseplants can do anything significant. Actually, I'm trying to find a new breed of houseplant I read about a few years ago that can supposedly filter 100's of times more than the regular plants that can be found at ye olde local nursery. I think it was Yamaha or some Korean company that created this new kind of plant and from what I remember, they were selling the plants for thousands of dollars, but I'd still like to find them again... anywho, here's a photo of my new friends:

(Huey, Dewey, and Louie)

Josh in Syracuse

I went to visit my friend Josh over the weekend after almost 3 years of not seeing him, but I tell you, it's not like we skipped a beat. Our friendship just doesn't evolve. Some constant things like Josh are needed in one's life. That's why I recommend Josh to whomever I can.

at Onondaga Lake today with Josh (near Syracuse)

the Ugly Dogling

Who doesn't love an ugly dog? And by that logic, who doesn't really really love the world's ugliest dog?

...and follow this link some video of the three-legged cancerous wonder-pup:

sewing

"I am going to be sewing human foreskins onto mouse butts" - overheard @ Josh's party yesterday

gingerbread houses

"gingerbread house can eat me" - Wendy

Jan

Jan, my roomate, wanted to be in my blog, so here he is(was)... in our then un-bought couch: