sorabji at WSBJ.com |

America.

I spotted this sign-bearing individual outside the Trump Tower today, scene of a rally in which a...

Long Beach Township Takes Over East Elmhurst

From the nyc.gov website. Somehow the Long Beach Township in New Jersey took over much of East...

The Smiling Bear

Rummaging through photos from 10 years ago turns up some crazy shit. Why is the bear...

“once upon a time”, by Lori Shvil

Sometimes I think the best pictures I ever got used the cheapest, crappiest cameras. This is from...

The Monkey Puppet Introduces a Small Portion of my Library. September, 2010

Radishes Redux

Exactly ten years ago today I took this picture of some radishes. Joy was felt throughout the...

to a fallen pretender of fame came ugly suggestions of blame a life sent to hell a knife lent to tell that the winners do not play the game control of the hovering blame is graced by a cigarette shame an empty motel a...

A Waltz I Think I Wrote, But Not Sure

These two takes of the same short piece are from December, 2004. I find nothing else on them, but feel reasonably confident this is something I could have written. If you the composer to be someone else please let me know....

Ravenswood Cat

For years I’d see signs on the buildings at the Ravenswood Housing Complex saying...

The Road to Covid Corner

I made it out to Calvary on Sunday. Normally this would not be especially exciting or even remarkable. But Calvary has been closed to the public for about two months as the workers there handle the influx of burials from the...

Dear Customers:

Dear customers: Due to the Covid-19, Some employees doesn’t comeback to work. We could not...

Ludovico Einaudi – Dietro Casa

...

Steam.exe (main exception): CMultiFieldBlob(pSerialized): Bad field – extends past end of blob

Schroeder. A Great Pianist of the 20th Century.

I remember watching “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” on TV in the 1970s, not thinking much of it (even as a kid I never cared much for the Charlie Brown movies). Then this came across. Schroeder was among the great...

Book Club

Astoria. 35th Avenue. April, 2011.

the world’s best website http://pathfinder.com

I open the tool box in my closet about once a decade. This is what shows up, when I lift the top...

Ancora, by Ludovico Einaudi

Just messing around with this piece by a composer new to me. Ludovico Einaudi’s Ancora is an often played piece by the Italian composer. My rendering is not perfect, and the pageturns can be an irritant, but this is...

Remembering the Dope Corner Office I Had in 2001

Just found this forgotten video I made with a Nikon Coolpix 990, from what was for about a year my...

My Letter From Horowitz

As a conservatory scrub in 1989 I had a crazy idea: Write a letter to Vladimir Horowitz, arguably...

I Tipped My Hat…

… to the 9-year old artist who last week created this ephemeral masterpiece, already washed...

I Was a Certified Bush Pilot in Vientiane, 1974 or 1975

Times Square, 1999

Human Sacrifice In Your Pajamas

A small plague of rock concerts briefly invaded boxes of cereal produced at a Long Island manufacturing facility last week. Supervisors at the Jolly Bootstrap plant in Glen Cove briefly suspended production of their signature...

Sunday Afternoon in Washington Heights, 1991

It’s me pecking at a honky-tonk style piano from my second room in New York, some time in...

Thank You From Metropolitan Lumber in Astoria

ANY FUNCTIONING ADULT

Henry Cowell: The Tides of Manaunaun

Audio of me playing “Tides of Manaunaun” a bunch of years ago. I took some pride in...

Chopin Prelude, Opus 45

I’ve never done one of these follow-the-score videos, so if it looks a little ragged, well,...

Found Some Old Mendelssohn Recordings

I think these are from 2004. The “Duetto” is among my favorite of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words”. To me it creates the illusion that 2 people are playing at the same piano. Mendelssohn - Song...

Spambots Attacked Stuff I Forgot I Ever Wrote

BEGIN THE CHRISTIAN NEWS People standing around the Freedom Tower saw savage nudity suddenly arise with 30% more warheads, home-based isolation, and occasional fog attacks against the United Nations. “That’s isolation for $50”,...

Today was a Fustercluck

I tried, but did not make it to Calvary today. Or rather, I did not make it to the new Kosciuszko...

When 69 Is Really 69

During a roughly 12-mile ramble through Sunnyside, Woodside, East Williamsburg, and everywhere...

Walked About 12 Miles

I usually add about a ½ mile to the GPS maps I record almost every day, to account for slipping...

From an Email to a Friend

I went back to Calvary. Seeing actual burials of Covid-19 victims seemed ghoulish at first, or needlessly moribund. I changed my mind. From quarantine it can start to feel like none of this is really happening. I know a...

Pet Cemetery, Unknown Location

This is from my absurdly huge collection of found photos and slides, mostly purchased from eBay...

Finally Sold a Domain Name

I had not sold a domain name in over 20 years. I won’t say which one, and the net amount of money is not even worth bragging about. But I’ll take what is basically free money. The website at this particular domain...

Reality Beckons

I should not be surprised, but it still felt unexpected to encounter the grim vision I spotted...

Dashboard Gloves

THE END

ITS OK 2 SPRAY

A Little Rusty, No Worse For Wear

https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v6.0 I am definitely rusty, after...

Doggie Down

Calvary is Closed

One of my favorite places in New York is shuttered. The St. Patrick’s Diocese will keep...

DON!

Midtown Shutdown

I wrote this postal ramble not because my thoughts have much merit but as a stress release. It worked. Thanks for reading.

From an Email to an Old Friend

It’s not been that long and people are seriously showing some agita. Until now there’s been an air of “we’re all in this together” but New York is too full of complaining, entitled, selfish,...

PUT ON MASK WHEN YOU GOING!!!

Craigslist Favicon at Facebook?

Someone sent me a document through Facebook Messenger. I clicked to download the document and...

Carpe Diem, from Adam Kiyoshi Fujita, at the Welling Court Mural Project

Positive vibes have been hard to come by these days, as the coronavirus daily death toll in New...

Guitarist Tearing It Up On His Driveway During Corona Lockdown

During the Corona Lockdown I spotted this guitarist tearing it up on his driveway. Observers...

Remembering Aline, and the Net-Sex-Hungry Women I Met There. Golden Days of the Pre-Intertubes.

Aline was a connection to the French Minitel in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I think I paid $11/month for it.
Or maybe it was by the minute.
I don’t know.
But Aline is where I met Marie.

From When Women Used To Send Me Their Poetry

Remembering how I used to exchange poems with strangers. This is from a college student, November 1994. mark, haven't seen you around in awhile :( i'm hoping that sometime you will send me another poem or a story or something, i...

WTH Happened Here?

...

E-Mail to Robert Helps, 1992

Dear Bob, Hello. How are you doing? I was thinking of you last night when I ordered a Cape Codder at Kennedy’s Restaurant & Bar on West 57th Street. They made it exceptionally strong, I think, which may have...

I’m a friend of Jesus: I will not suck my own penis.

I have no idea what this refers to. I found it in a mass of text files from the early 1990s....

E-Mail to Marie, 1993

I knew her through the Minitel, available in New York as “Aline”.

Washed Some Dishes at 3am

Farah Al Qasimi

I saw this on the side of a bus shelter and thought wtf kind of display advertisement is this?...

Beans are Coming Back

Dark

...

WhatWhat

Being careful, and being ridiculed by strangers for it. Fuck you. I cough on your face. But...

10.11 Miles

China Calling

Hmmm

Just Another Busy Wednesday Afternoon in Midtown

I struck up a brief conversation with the woman in this picture, seen standing in the middle of...

Goodbye Single-Use Plastic Bags, Hello Single-Use Latex and Vinyl Gloves

It’s not something I would have paid attention to before, so maybe these have always been...

Romano’s Astoria

Earthly Possessions

Latex Glove Turned Yellow

This latex glove turned yellow after I put it on. At first I thought my skin had turned yellow,...

Mad

Unmarked Columbarium Niches

Too cool that someone put their McDonald’s ring on top of their columbarium urn.

Buick Eight

No Chicken Dinner For Me. Boo-Hoo.

1:30am, Checking in on my Payphone

...

Did NYC Ever Have an “OO” Exchange Name?

Did an “OO” telephone exchange name ever exist in NYC? Just spotted this in the...

Rachel. New Calvary

Back of a Baby Doll’s Head Cracked Open by an Impromptu Map of South America

A Wall of Words in Brownsville Today

Blend

I Took This Picture. My Dad on the Left, His Twin Brother on the Right. Atlanta, 1998 (I Think?)

How my dad stayed so lean and limber after drinking and smoking into his Larry King suspenders...

You’ll Get 30 Years for Leaving a Food Delivery Menu Here…

Disk Cleanup

I spent much of the afternoon deleting gigabyte after gigabyte of redundant content, left over as a byproduct of several server moves, content management system switches, domain name changes, etc. It is tedious and thankless...

FUCK YO COUCH

Who Doesn’t Look Better in the Dark of Night?

...

My Exorcist Staircase

Some day, some way, I will fall down these stairs, and die. My head will turn around on its fatal...

Kind of a Discouraging Name for a Laundromat, or Any Place.

Favoritest Picture I Ever Got of the ESB

Snow Pix From a Bunch of Years Ago.

...

This is what Email from Eventbrite looks like to me

Oddest Idea for a Concert Event I Can Remember

There will, of course, be a classically-trained violin/piano duo performing Beatles covers at the...

Old House In Astoria

I never got a backstory, if there even was one, on this old house in Astoria, 24th Avenue ~45th...

Industry

Sometimes I find evidence of work performed, industry exerted, and mental ignition lit over...

Force of Nature

Here’s audio I made describing a woman I spotted while talking on a payphone yesterday. She paced back and forth outside a doughnut shop, drinking from a bottle of beer she carried in a black bag. She had a steely,...

Family Tree

The family was having a good old time when dad decided to bring things down to earth by reading the family tree. He had a late-life interest in genealogy, suddenly becoming best friends with distant cousins he had never...

Black Cadillac

Foothead

This post is called “FOOTHEAD” for a reason.

Indent

The red-inked bloodbath teacher in these scans, Ruth Allyn, is, as far as I know, the only person...