from Russia with love (and spam)

I need to move into a house where I can paint every surface in chalkboard paint. That's my problem with journaling; the words hide between the covers instead of staring at you from the walls. Emily pointed out that basically this means I want to be a crazy person. If that's what it takes, so be it.

In unrelated news, someone please tell the Russians to stop doing whatever it is they're doing. Either my blog is hot shit in Moscow, or SPECTRE is using it as a front for their new death ray tracking system. Couldn't be anything else. Nope.

Russians. I see you over there. You too, Latvians.

from the labs

Sneak-peak of a project I've got in the works:

Drip-irrigated, portable, raised planter.

Probably gonna post it to Instructables if it works out.

some spring

NYC. It's a long one.

Thursday:


Got in to Manhattan around 2pm. Headed off to Williamsburg to find Vinnie's Pizzaria (Karina's recommendation & vegan-friendly)



Browsed around Williamsburg for awhile, before dropping our stuff off at the room in Flatbush. Emily bought a jacket that she proceeded to dismantle anytime we were on the subway for more than 3 stops.

 

Headed back out for dinner at Taim Falafel in the West Village. Delicious.

 

Ended up at Marie's Crisis Cafe (which we came to find out is a gay piano bar), but only stayed for one $8 beer and about three full musicals worth of show tunes.

 

Friday:

Went to 30 Rock, but couldn't find Tina.

Went to Central Park. Emily liked the sea lions, Knox liked the black squirrels.

Went to Petit Senegal (Senegalese neighborhood up in Harlem) and had pretty authentic ceebu jen, mafe, and bissap. I even got to use my meager wolof on the waitress. She was moderately amused.

Turns out vegans aren't supposed to eat lamb or fish, so Knox had to ride back to the room on the brink of death, while Emily and I went to MoMA.

Free on Fridays means long lines.

While standing in line above a large grate, my contact lens fell out and fluttered down to the ground, somehow adhering to the metal grate and not ending up as subway litter. I licked it and put it back in. So far, no ill effects.

de Kooning.

Went to Katz's deli for a reuben. Maybe the best sandwich I've ever had.

Emily eats meat, dripping with guilt.

Emily wanted to walk the length of Bleecker St to see if there was anything important on it. Turns out Cuba Gooding Jr. was filming a movie on it, so we stopped and watched.

As we were standing there we made a new friend (Michelle) and Topher Grace walked by. Michelle was pretty high, but wanted to hang out, so we went to find a bar. The first bar we found was "too bright", the second was "too much of a sausage-fest", so we ended up at The Stonewall, a historical gay bar (two in two nights??).

After a trip to the bathroom, Michelle returned and made us follow her upstairs where she had made "a magical discovery". Turned out to be 'Lesbo A-Go-Go', a lesbian dance club, where after 5 minutes a woman got on stage and started removing clothing and we decided to call it a night.

In the subway station, a man slips and drops a canister onto the tracks and flips out. He smells like all of the pot ever, and wanders off to find an MTA employee. Knox begins hypothesizing what the container might hold; pot? money? cocaine? lunch meat? We manage to talk him out of jumping down to rescue it. Barely.

Saturday:

Saturday is characterized by a perpetual search for public restrooms.

Went to Little Manila (in Queens) and find a Filipino buffet, complete with whole roast pig, which is probably why it ended up costing $15 a person.

On the train back to Manhattan, a passenger protested the delay by pounding on the wall and yelling "Get a move on!", "Let's go!", "Come on, already!" in a pretty ridiculous voice.

We found a dance troupe performing outside of the Staten Island Ferry. Really racist but pretty funny.

Waiting on the Ferry, we finally found the accents that Knox and I had been mocking the entire trip. The Ferry trip is pretty nice, but Staten Island itself is a letdown.

Indian food in Williamsburg, after taking the Ferry back.

Sunday:

Vinnie's again on Sunday. Tasted better than it looks.

Then off to the bus station, and back to Knoxville.

and they're off

Off to New York. Leaving the camera at home.

waffling

And now I want to be a photographer again.

Arts farts.

"I like the shadows in this one," etc...

Been perusing my high school and college artworks (I use this term loosely), and... well...

Funny how the stuff I put the most effort into and processed the shit out of now make me nauseous, while many pieces that I completely overlooked or discarded now give me hope for poor high school Daniel.

I think I've come to understand that this is to be expected and I will constantly be looking back at old work and fighting the urge to kill it with fire and spears. I don't know quite how long the embarrassment window is, but I sorely miss the journals and doodles of my youth (particularly one schematic of a dormant volcano/airplane hangar complete with lava tube runways).

At any rate, here's some originally overlooked stuff I'm not entirely ashamed of:
(I resisted the urge to do some photoshop tweaking on less-than-stellar images)

Love me some squares.

Cliche verre photogram technique. Paint on glass exposed onto photo paper.
Should've experimented more with it.

Holga print with custom-made negative holder.

Holga print with custom-made negative holder.
Kinda digging the simplicity in this one.

From my ever-so-brief foray into printmaking. Linoleum cut print.
I don't even know what I made this for.

Crossroads 2011 is not a real thing. I think.
Working on layers/masking in photoshop maybe?

This image caused me a lot of strife.
"Oh, Daniel, this is so morbid."
"Oh, Daniel, is this one about death too?"
"Oh, Daniel, I see that death motif coming up again."
I just liked the textures. Jeez.

Entered this one for a logo contest. Didn't win.
Maybe they should get a better URL.

Probably should've majored in Trespassing. 

Turns out I'm kind of a one-trick pony with the whole "abandoned stuff" theme.
Not even a very original trick to begin with. Rip Van Winkle's Plymouth.