Feel like I am in a fog today. A lengthier-than-expected stroll through Brooklyn reminded me that I sometimes misjudge how long it will take to walk from point A to its vaunted bretheren: point B. I attempted to get a free idNYC membership at the Brooklyn Museum. So did about 200 other people. It’s the longest line I’ve seen at any of these idNYC museum freebies. After not moving for about a half hour I just decided to either give up or try again another day. I managed to get over to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and get a membership there, even though I do not really care much for flowers and orchids and beautiful things.
From there I expected to use my phone’s mapping app to find the way to Atlantic Avenue but either my phone is fucked or GPS satellites were borked because I got no signal. A giant map outside the museum was no help so I asked a couple of police officers and was on my way to Cobble Hill, only a little late. I do not like being late. I consider myself reliable, even for non-critical meetings.
The day before I made an onerous but pleasant enough trip up to the Bronx Zoo. idNYC includes a free 1-year membership to the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, but to get the membership you have to go to the Bronx Zoo. I don’t like zoos but I went and made the best of it by getting in some payphone hunting. Found none.
The Express Bus ride was the highlight, though. It was nice, and I think I’ll try other routes to Coney Island or Staten Island. I went to the zoo in 2009 and took the same bus then. I like buses. The Brooklyn Museum free membership I might just have to give up on. As a destination it has somehow never really even crossed my radar, though the building itself was quite impressive.
There were a couple of excellent payphone sightings. Going to post about those at the payphone site later. Atlantic Avenue is kind of an epic stretch of road. It was out of my way for where I was going but I was sure there’d be some payphone detritus.
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I wrote the above paragraphs on Monday. This week has raced by. I am planning the voice/radio project I’ve started and stopped doing for years now. Thinking the first show would be called “The Sea of Shit”. I think the last time I put any real concentrated effort into this project was about 3 years ago. I intend to record in public places, like Queens Plaza or maybe an accommodating diner/coffee shop. I would release it through Usenet. “The Sea of Shit” would be a discussion of the Internet and my baffled disillusionment at the oceans of bogus information knowingly shoveled onto the web. Those web sites that scramble legitimate data and post phony identification information in a stated attempt to thwart identity thieves but instead burying legitimate information under a sea of shit. It’s not just this context. Journalism has become a sea of shit. I think the turning point for me in this realization was when 4-letter words and lengthier obscenities made their way not just into everyday journalism but even the fucking headlines. Writing and editing of this sort reads like a high school newspaper editor’s wet dream, sounding like a whiny 10th grader who raises their hand in class to say something they think is totally profound only to e rebuffed by a sympathetic but impatient teacher. Calling the piece “The Sea of Shit” is my way of saying that I am in it, too, swimming in this ocean of feces, and that I am contributing to it not so much with this radio spot but with my other project of transcribing radio content with voice recognition software and filling the coffers of torturechamber.com with this small but sincere contribution to the sea of shit. SEO of shit.
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Text message from a friend I basically never see or hear from any more informed me that a friend of his had died. I only knew the fellow as a bartender and do not remember ever saying more than “Goose Island, please” to him. J, who texted me and I assume many others with the news, told me over a year ago that this person got the rarest form of liver cancer. It has nothing to do with alcohol as the guy did not drink at or drank minimally. With this cancer all the doctors can do is just keep chopping off pieces of the liver until there’s none left. I think he was in his 30s. Was sorry to hear, mostly for J who seemed to admire the gentleman for his way of never complaining or giving off negative energy on account of his diagnosis. This differed entirely from another friend of ours who dealt with cancer for as long as we knew him, and who was a freaking lava spew of negative energy and hopelessness. I still remember one of his Facebook status updates: “Sick again. Cancer’s back. Dying.” There was another similar one which mentions how wife either left him or hated him. As far as I know he is still around.
At a Panera now. I got a laugh last time I was here. The bins full of mayonnaise packets were gone. You had to ask for them. I figured they did this in response to people like me who grab 45 packets and use only 1 of them while here. Alas, they are back. Either there were complaints or they were just running very low on mayo last time. I grabbed a handful as I always do. Unlike ketchup packets which accumulate for decades before i throw them out I actually use the mayo ones at home.
I’ve imagined a mayo packets swat team that confronts people like me who horde these things. That sounds like fodder for a radio play.
Another idea for a radio piece is to go out to a cemetery and record from the field, commenting on things. I want to sound solipsistic but not too too much like Joe Frank. Everything will be underlined with my piano music. When I met with the documentary crew a few weeks ago one of the women said she loved my voice and that i should do radio. I appreciated the encouragement and the seeming sincerity. It seems intimidating at first but it’s like a lot of things I’ve discovered lately: you can get a lot of mileage out of a small kernel of material.
