Ersatz Existential Daily Post

Today I poured a cup of coffee into a plastic, reusable cup. I sighed. As the world sighs. I sat at my Formica dining room table, listening to the sound of faint music from the bottom floor rising up like a tribal beat, a haunting sound, then quiet. My cup dry. My cup doth not runneth over. The refrigerator hums. I sit in my pea-green apartment and I am one with the universe. It's the best thing going for I must have some sense of transcendence. Right? It bothers me that I must be so existential in the morning. Damn coffee cup. Damn emptiness. I eschew you. Spit you out. There. That's better. Good day, mates.

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List of 100 Favorite Movies

I make no claim to a cinematic canon. These are my favorite movies. Subjective. No claim to objective standards of taste. Drum roll please:

1. Les Quatre Cents Coups (The Four Hundred Blows), Dir. François Truffaut (1959)

2. The Wizard of Oz, Dir. Victor Fleming (1939)

3. Billy Elliot, Dir. Stephen Daldry (2000)

4. Psycho, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)

5. Au Revoir Les Enfants, Dir. Louis Malle (1987)

6. Kes, Dir. Ken Loach (1969)

7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dir. Michel Gondry (2004)

8. Los Olvidados, Dir. Luis Buñuel (1950)

9. Vertigo, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1958)

10. Where the Wild Things Are, Dir. Spike Jonze (2009)

11. Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Cinema Paradiso), Dir. Giussepe Tornatore (1988)

12. Dekalog (The Decalogue), Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski (1988)

13. Det Sejunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal), Dir. Ingmar Bergman (1957)

14. Rear Window, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1954)

15. Some Like it Hot, Dir. Billy Wilder (1959)

16. The Kid With a Bike, Dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (2011)

17. Welcome to the Dollhouse, Dir. Todd Soldonz (1995)

18. Citizen Kane, Dir. Orson Welles (1941)

19. The Tree of Life, Dir. Terrence Malick (2011)

20. Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog), Dir. Luis Buñuel (1929)

21. Fahrenheit 451, Dir. François Truffaut (1966)

22. The Mirror, Dir. Andrey Tarkovsky (1975)

23. The Graduate, Dir. Mike Nichols (1967)

24. Le Souffle au Coeur (Murmur of the Heart), Dir. Louis Malle (1971)

25. Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games), Dir. René Clement (1952)

26. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975)

27. Orpheus, Dir. Jean Cocteau  (1950)

28. The Phantom of Liberty, Dir. Luis Buñuel (1974)

29. The Firemen’s Ball, Dir. Milos Forman (1967)

30. Midnight Cowboy, Dir. John Schlesinger (1969)

31. La Strada (The Road), Dir. Federico Fellini  (1954)

32. Mulholland Drive, Dir. David Lynch (2001)

33. Habla con Ella (Talk to Her), Dir. Pedro Almodovar (2002)

34. Stella Dallas, Dir. King Vidor (1937)

35. Olivier, Olivier, Dir. Agnieska Holland (1992)

36.  Battleship Potemkin, Dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein (1925)

37. 晩春 Banshun (Late Spring), Yasujirō Ozu (1953)

38. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)

39. My Night at Maud’s, Dir. Eric Rohmer (1969)

40. The Royal Tenenbaums, Dir. Wes Anderson (2001)

41. A Trip to the Moon, Dir. Georges Méliès (1902)

42. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dir. Steven Spielberg (1977)

43. Au Hasard Balthazar (Balthazar, At Random), Robert Bresson (1966)

44. Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul), Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1974)

45. Harold and Maude, Dir. Hal Ashby (1971)

46. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Dir. Steven Spielberg (1982)

47. La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), Dir. Jean Cocteau (1946)

48. The Squid and the Whale, Dir. Noah Baumbach (2005)

49. Spoorlos (The Vanishing), Dir. George Sluizer (1988)

50. La Cite des Enfants Perdus (The City of Lost Children), Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1995)

51. Mighty Aphrodite, Dir. Woody Allen (1995)

52. La Stanza del Figlio (The Son’s Room), Dir. Nanni Moretti (2001)

53. Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother Too), Dir. Alfonso Cuarón (2001)

54. 雨月物語 Ugetsu, Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi (1954)

55. 羅生門 Rashomon, Dir. Akira Kurosawa (1950)

56. The Night of the Hunter, Dir. Charles Laughton (1955)

57. Le Plaisir, Dir. Max Ophüls (1952)

58. Being John Malkovich, Dir. Spike Jonze (1999)

59. Synecdoche, NY, Dir. Charlie Kaufman (2008)

60. High Noon, Dir. Fred Zinnemann (1952)

61. Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Dir. Alain Resnais (1959)

62. The Lady Eve, Dir. Preston Sturges (1941)

63. Lost in Translation, Dir. Sofia Coppola (2003)

64. The Up Series, Dir. Michael Apted (1964 - Present)

65. Weekend, Dir. Andrew Haigh (2011)

66. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dir. Mike Nichols  (1966)

67. La Mala Educación (Bad Education), Dir. Pedro Almodovar (2004)

68. Lord of the Flies, Dir. Peter Brook (1963)

69. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Dir. Peter Care (2002)

70. Andrei Rublev, Dir. Andrey Tarkovsky (1966)

71. Amour, Dir. Michael Haneke (2012)

72. Inglorious Basterds, Dir. Quentin Tarantino (2009)

73. Empire of the Sun, Dir. Steven Spielberg (1987)

74. A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Dir. Steven Spielberg (2001)

75. The White Ribbon, Dir. Michael Haneke (2009)

76. Margaret, Dir. Kenneth Lonergan  (2011)

77. Wild Tigers I Have Known, Dir. Cam Archer (2006)

78. Alice, Dir. Jan Švankmajer(1988)

79. Through a Glass Darkly, Dir. Ingmar Bergman (1961)

80. Passion of Joan of Arc, Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928)

81. Arabian Nights, Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini (1974)

82. 千と千尋の神隠 (Spirited Away), Hayao Miyazaki (2001)

83. La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), Dir. Michael Haneke (2001)

84. George Washington, Dir. David Gordon Green (2000)

85. Niki Ardelean, colonel în rezerva (Niki and Flo), Dir. Lucian Pintille (2003)

86. Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), Dir. Wim Wenders (1987)

87. Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), Dir. Josef von Sternberg (1930)

88. Equus, Dir. Sidney Lumet (1977)

89. The Best Years of Our Lives, Dir. William Wyler (1946)

90. 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Dir. Cristian Mungiu (2007)

91. Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati (1958)

92. Copie Conforme (Certified Copy), Dir. Abbas Kiarostami (2010)

93. Hedwig and the Angry Inch, John Cameron Mitchell (2001)

94. Louisiana Story, Dir. Robert J. Flaherty (1948)

95. Black Orpheus, Dir. Marcel Camus (1959)

96. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dir. Jim Sharman (1975)

97. Dancer in the Dark, Dir. Lars von Trier (2000)

98. Silver Linings Playbook, Dir. David O. Russell (2012)

99. Ordinary People, Dir. Robert Redford (1980)

100. The Silence of the Lambs, Dir. Jonathan Demme (1991)

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Repost from the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research - "Dreams and Hysteria: An Introduction to Freud"

Sharing The Myth of Sisyphus With Kids: The Original Rolling Stone

I’ve been teaching Greek myth to a class of 8-12-year-olds since February, and it’s been so much fun hearing what the kids say about myths when they process the psychological insights I can share. One of the primary themes of our class has been how and why the myth is still relevant today, thousands of years after these stories were first told. A particularly useful recent lesson was on the myth of Sisyphus, an excellent metaphor for human struggle.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a Greek king in the evil trickster mold who found trouble with Zeus when he traded his knowledge of where Zeus was cavorting with a river nymph to her father in exchange for a spring of pure water for the people of his kingdom. In anger, Zeus had Sisyphus carried away to the underworld, but Sisyphus tricked Death into wearing his chains. No one could die until Ares released Death and gave Sisyphus to him.

Sisyphus tricked Death once again (Death must not have been the brightest guy), persuading him that since his (Sisyphus’) wife hadn’t performed the proper funeral rites, he must return to the upper world to correct the situation. Once there, of course, he lived happily for another 50 years or so.

For his offenses against the honor of the gods, Sisyphus is punished by being forced to push a large rock up a steep hill, only to see it roll back down again. He must trek down to the bottom of the mountain and start pushing still.

French-Algerian Writer Albert Camus Reinvents the Myth of Sisyphus for Modern Readers

In his seminal essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes about this myth, arguing that Sisyphus’ fate is the fate of every human. Every day we must do the same tasks: going to work, cleaning our homes, and making our meals. We roll the rock up the hill; each day, it rolls back down, and we must start again.

However, Camus argues that Sisyphus is not genuinely cursed because he isn’t unhappy with his fate. The gods can force him to repeat this task, but they can’t force him to hate it. He is content, and therefore Zeus’ punishment has failed.

Teaching the Myth to My Kids in the Classroom

It was refreshing when I explained all of this to my kids because they asked brilliant questions. They always want to know why the characters in Greek myths didn’t make different, better choices. One question came up: why doesn’t Sisyphus chip away at the rock to make it smaller and more manageable for himself? I compared that to working less hard on studying for an exam and getting a “C” instead of an “A.” You can always take steps to make things easier for yourself, but you’d be cheating yourself at the same time. They got it, and it was cool to see them getting it.

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Quote: Alighiero Boetti On Reality

First of all I prefer thought. This is the basic thing. I really think manual skill is secondary …. It’s taking things from reality. Everything, however small and humble, always has a beginning and stems from reality. 

Alighiero e Boetti

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Carrot Black in Soho

Stumbled onto Carrot Black's street art again today in SoHo right next to the Mulberry Branch of the New York Public Library. Wonder where I'll see Carrot next.

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That's Boring! - A Propaedeutic

First off, I have done fuck all. It's very Zen. To do is not to do. My inner Zen boredom master says, "Overcome the urge to be productive, Greig." It looks good on a resumé. Don't leave the house. Lie in bed and don't think. This induces boredom.

Clearly inspired by boredom

Mourning
There is a mourning though that occurs first. After resisting the urge to do stuff, to be productive, the brain clicks into mourning, a low grade melancholia — it’s like the experience of loneliness — because ideally boredom like the kind I am talking about also requires solitude. I want to connect with another person and I have this insistent urge to be with someone, or someone to be with me. Kurt Vonnegut said it this way: “When I am alone I want to be with others and when I am with others I want to be alone”. Resist! It’s not that hard. Really. Tell your friends you have something really important to do and unfortunately you can’t do that really fun thing. They’ll insist. The creative spark comes with being with others. I am with my friend and I have a creative idea and I wish I were in solitude to pursue it but I am with my friend so I put it aside. The creative nugget that surfaced is there waiting for solitude to bring it out afresh. For me it is a nasty business to be creative.

Boredom  
Boredom was anathema in my mother’s vocabulary. She would punish us with laps around the house if we said the word — “You’re bored? OK. Run two laps. I want to see you pass by that window every few minutes.” The punishment didn’t work well for me because after three quarters of a lap I was distracted, a tit mouse in the garden, a glint of light from a water puddle, or a red fire engine charging down the street to the station, or my friend Clay walking his dog on our friendly suburban street, and I would say distractedly, “Hey, Clay!” By the way "red fire engine" is for me the quintessential metaphor for childhood. I'm sure the phrase is laden with hidden unconscious meaning that I have yet to plumb. Red. Fire. Engine. Figure it out.

About the laps:
I would forget about the laps but then, maybe Mom was right, because the boredom was gone. Until it came around again. I would spend many hours in my room as a child listening to books on record players. I loved reading Hans Christian Andersen's “The Tinderbox”. Even as a little kid I knew there was something seriously transgressive about transporting a sleeping maiden to your bedroom. The color of the storybook with the words that matched the narrator’s strong masculine voice accentuated the sexual power of the tale. I think this is when I realized I like men. Something about summoning, maybe? Fairy tales are friggin' powerful vehicles for raw desire. No wonder Plato in the Republic forbade the telling of certain tales to be told in the city. Something as simple as a narrator’s voice can shift attraction, help form identity — the power of the tale, the desire to wake a sleeping princess, to bring her to your chambers, the fallout and punishment, and lastly, the reconciliation with hero and lover. All that in the idle wiling of one day. Boredom is awesome and filled with potential for unbridled creativity. Human beings have formed their identities through idleness — it's the stuff of tales.

Boredom is an emptying out.
To be creative it is necessary to carve out a creative space to create what the Classical Greek philosophers called leisure time. By boredom what is meant is leisure — when nothing that is done has immediate value. The highest form of boredom is leisure.  It’s a special time because everything else has to be accomplished first. I can’t be bored if I am worrying about a package due to arrive by FedEx or if I have a class to teach in an hour. Boredom requires true relinquishment of responsibility. To get to that leisure time — the true elixir of creativity that boredom promises — is to get past the urge to fill up time with useless crap. Like check email or check the post or check text messages. I know. It’s nearly impossible.

Bartleby the Scrivener
In literature, I most identify with Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville’s famous office clerk who says, “I prefer not to” — until the very end of the story, where he is put in the loony bin for saying, “I prefer not to”. This is why I have trouble with cover letters. 

I’ve accepted my mediocrity. My averageness.

Life Lesson: Just because it don't look like "work" don't mean it ain't work, bro.

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All Ready Made (Building #7), 2012-2013

View from the New Museum, The Bowery, New York City, 2013

Carrot Black
b. 2011 New York, NY

All ready-made (Building #7), 2012-2013
Brick, mortar, steel, concrete, sheetrock, living people, found objects

Art is meta. Looking out the window at the New Museum on Bowery the other day, the back wall of a building is in view affixed with a ginormous title card, the same style and font found in museums. I like how the title card makes me think of the wall it is affixed to as art - as if the card itself authorizes the wall as an art object, perhaps a swirling Rothko or a new experiment in Abstract Expressionism. Or maybe it's just a wall. Hmmmm. *scratching my chin*

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Floyd Bennet Field, Brooklyn, New York

Floyd Bennet Field, Brooklyn, New York

This picture was taken at Floyd Bennet Field, a former New York City airport in Brooklyn. Today it's run by the National Park Service and is essentially a collection of abandoned runways overgrown with vegetation. The Marines have an outpost here and there is a hangar on the property that has been restored into an athletic center replete with two ice skating rinks and a huge basketball court. This photo was taken in the northern section of the island near where the NYPD lands emergency helicopters.

G., 2013

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Greig Roselli

Photograph: "Plato's Cave"

"Plato's Cave"

© 2013 Greig Roselli

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Scared D Train (Repost)

Just to say: this is my neighborhood subway station at 36th Street and Fourth Avenue, the contractual confluence of the D, N, and R trains! Sometimes the D does hide in the hollow of the station entrance. This phenomenon also occurs at Delancey/Essex Street most commonly with the M train waiting to go over the Williamsburg Bridge. 

Scared D Train: Reposted from Adam Sack's Youtube Channel

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"Who AM I?" And Do We Ever Change (Also A Brief Reflection On "Is Being Together Possible?")

Looking Back At March 31, 1997

Pencils in My Pocket

I spent last Saturday reading my journal from 1997. Look at what I wrote on March 31, 1997. It’s proof that I have not changed. At all. I will be sixty and still wondering about my place in the cosmos (and hopefully with a better HMO):

How do I fit in the grand scheme of the cosmos? I am seventeen, medium height, medium weight, hazel eyes, brown hair, mild complexion, have acne, am Catholic, attend a public high school, love to read and participate in other cultural activities, learn about historical events, visit art museums and view fine films. That’s me in a nutshell (into clichés tonight). I am an independent person and don’t care for much intervention. I get the most joy out of completing tasks by myself, not because I like doing it by myself. I don’t get my joy for performing and doing things for others, when I act I please myself. It is fun to see people laugh at my jokes or comment or something. I do, but frankly I don’t do it for them. People who know me well may think I am cold-hearted, I don’t think so. I love people and love seeing people happy. I desire the best for anyone I know; I am talking about the core of my being, what gives me most enjoyment: people or myself? The answer must be myself. I’d rather ride my bike alone or walk my dog alone. I’d rather cook a meal or read a book alone. I’d rather tour a museum alone or view the stars by myself. But I do love sharing my experiences. I am not shy when it comes to depositing my knowledge. The gift of teaching resides in me. That is what God gave me. I never grow tired of friendships and good conversation. I would get lonesome being by myself too long. I would want to escape and experience something else …. I have more to offer the world than wash dishes, get braces, being obedient, etc. I am impatient, but am hanging on the vine.

  I am not sure I agree with my seventeen-year-old self that teaching is depositing knowledge but I will forgive him because he had not read yet Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I no longer have acne and I am not sure where I stand on Catholicism but the gist of what I wrote that night in March of 1997 still rings true in 2013. Is this the same for everyone? Even if you don’t have access to a journal entry you wrote 16 years ago it is still interesting to reflect on how much we change. It's interesting I wrote that entry during my Senior year of high school. So it makes sense I would be thinking about what I want out of life. Now after having finished college and two graduate degree programs, as well as some years of teaching - and don't forget my six years as a Benedictine monk - I still think of what this seventeen-year-old boy was thinking: who the hell am I?

I think I am thinking about this more than ever because I feel this persistent push to be something, to do something, but at the same time I have this other feeling inside of me that I am (and have been) doing it all along - I just hadn’t noticed. It’s like I spend so much time thinking about what I will be or will do that I have forgotten what I did, what I have seen and heard. My seventeen-year-old self is telling my thirty-three-year-old self “to please myself” and continue to take pleasure out of art, novels, friends and all that jazz.

It sounds like what I am saying is that if I am ever going to find someone else to share my life with they also have to know their joy. We come together and share what joys we know. When I first read this entry I thought, *&^%, I will be alone for the rest of my life. But I read it again and it struck me, something I did not notice the first time I read this scrap of paper from the past. It’s so human to want to please yourself and to think of the future but at the same, I sense a longing to share that something with someone else and to know their joy. Is that what they call interdependence? It's when I say “I love sharing my experiences.” That’s the art of being together. That’s what I crave and I think it is what a lot of human beings crave. I love how at the end I say I am impatient and holding on the vine. That’s very Greig Roselli.

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A Judgment of Beauty At West Fourth Street Station (And a Rant about Education in These United States)

     Sometimes as a teacher of college students I am ridiculed by my own students. Today I got excited about describing an aesthetic judgment of beauty I witnessed in the cavity of the West Fourth Street Station as the D train sidled into the station - I will explain what that moment was in a moment - and Olivia, a student in the front row, just flat out laughed - you know, in that one-off laugh that does not indicate joy, but rather a mean, derisive laugh (a rough form of "huh") meant to show that she could not relate to what I was saying, so her only response was not to question me why, nor to give me a chance to elaborate, but to laugh in such a way as to communicate to me and the rest of the class, "what is this man talking about?"

     Maybe there was derisive laughter from this student because beauty and the subterranean chaos of the New York City subway system did not equate in her mind with a notion of beauty, or, it seems to me, the notion of beauty, a capacity to appreciate it - albeit in the slum of the West Fourth Street Station. I felt sad and isolated in front of the class. Not because they missed my point, but I felt isolated in that way a kid feels when they have said something wrong in front of a group of adults. As if I had said the wrong thing to a group of fellow human beings - and I do not think I am over-thinking this moment. I think educators, people like me who spend lots of time in classrooms, have witnessed two critical deformations in intellectual seriousness. First, we are educated to be producers, not thinkers. What this means is that a sharing response to what is beautiful is not what we do in classrooms. Notionally, we should be doing other more important endeavors (what this other stuff is exactly I have not fully ascertained but I get the impression it is dull and prosaic). Second, in the name of entertainment, the public sphere has been dumbed down to such a point that beauty is losing its shareability. I actually had the president of the school where I work tell me and a large group of faculty members that first and foremost the students should be entertained in the classroom. Tell a joke, he said. One time during a midterm exam a student got up from her seat and gave me her test. I asked her why she had not finished it and she told me, "if you had made this class more fun I would know this stuff." I never saw her again. She dropped the class.

Leon Trotsky's Brain

Leon Trotsky's Brain, Mexico City

Source: Paglen, Trevor. The Last Pictures. 2012. Print.

Aesthetic Thursday: Surrealism in Film

Perhaps one of my favorite films of all time: Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty (1974). 
Interpret this nonsensical "dream sequence" however you want - I think it is pure brilliance. Compare this scene to Buñuel's other dream sequence in Los Olvidados (1950). Interesting, right? 

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Lower East Side, New York

A woman lights candles in a post Lunar New Year ritual.

A woman lights a candle outside of a temple in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Image Credit: Greig Roselli

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Aesthetic Thursday: Surrealist Drawing

Toyen, Tir VI / The Shooting Gallery, 1939-1940

Toyen (née Marie Cerminova) is the name of a Czech artist. This drawing is on exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City as part of a series of surrealist drawings.

This particular piece is notable for its juxtaposition of childlike imagery against a stark pointillist dessert.

The exhibit is open from January 25 through April 21, 2013.

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New York City Subway 30 Day Metrocard Notebook

The MTA offers customers a 30-day
MetroCard; but, is it worth it?

Note to myself: Is my 30-day New York City Transit unlimited MetroCard worth it?

$104 Metrocard

Cost Per ride (with 7% discount): $2.09

Total Number of Rides: 64

List of rides with random notes made on a 30 day unlimited card purchased at the BMT 45th Street Station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn January 19, 2013. 

Subway List Graffito

1. $2.25
2. $2.25
3. $2.25
4. $2.25
5. $2.25
6. $2.25
7. $2.25
8. Tuesday aftn 01/22/2013 $2.25
8. $2.25 Wedy morning 01/23/2013
9. $2.25
10. $2.25
11. $2.25
Thursday afternoon after class.
12. $2.25 Friday night
13. $2.25
14. $2.25
15. $2.25 Saturday afternoon
16. $2.25 Saturday night
17. $2.25 Monday morning
18. $2.25 herald square Monday even
19. $2.25 Jay Street/Metro  Tuesday
20. $2.25 Tuesday afternoon jay
21. $2.25 Tuesday whitehall
22. $2.25 Wednesday morning (smoke on the track) 01/30/2013
23. $2.25 Wednesday night to 42nd
24. $2.25 Wednesday night home
25. $2.25 home
26. $2.25 Thursday morning
27. $2.25 Thursday evening jay
28. $2.25 Friday afternoon 45th street
29. $2.25 Friday at 33rd st.
30 $2.25 L train
31. $2.25 l train to the q then n
32. B63 bus
33. r train at bay ridge
34. Sunday afternoon 45 street
35. b63/Atlantic avenue Pacific street
36. 49th street night
37. 45 street R/N express
38. 42nd street times square
39. 45 street R local
40. Court Street R local
41. 45 street R Local evening
42. G at Bedford/nostrand
43. G at Nassau (church ave bound)
44. Atlantic/Pacific (I walked from the Fulton G station).
45. 36th street D express Thursday night
46. Union Square n/r Thursday night
47. 45 Street Friday afternoon
48. M1 fifth avenue
49. 47/50 Rockefeller center
50. 45 street Saturday afternoon
51. Astor Place Saturday afternoon
52. Grand Street Saturday afternoon
53. 36 street D train
54. E/M 53 street/6 51 street
55. 8th street NYU
56. 45 street
57. Q union square
58. 45 street ash wednesday
59. 42 street with melanie and Troy
60. Broadway/Lafayette Ave. D train night. I watched Lore tonight. I had butterfly shrimp with Melanie and Troy. I have $1.16 in my bank account.
61. 45 street waiting for Manhattan bound R train. Picked up money order at Western Union. Got a call back from a job. Transfer to the M3 bus

62. 14th Street Union Squre: Commute home

63. I gave my metrocard to a friend to use. I think she took the L train to Williamsburg and 64. came back home on the G (then a transfer to the R).

Metrocard expired.

Baby, it's worth it!

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TV Review: I Like Girls

The following post is a deep dive into Girls, Lena Dunham's HBO dramedy about young privilege in NYC. Reflections on its unapologetic storytelling, intimacy, and cultural impact.

My roommate asked me today if I liked girls. My other roommate laughed. "No," my roommate said, this time more emphatic, "the show - Girls."
"Oh. Yeah," I said, I like that show. My roommate looked at me in that way I knew demanded more context, more explanation, a sort of impromptu lit crit discussion by the kitchen sink. He said, encouraging me, "I've watched it too. It's very popular, the show. That's why I watch it."

Lena Dunham in Girls

We then proceeded to talk about Girls in a way that everyone is talking about Girls: white privilege, young up and coming white girls living in a neighborhood in Brooklyn where only a certain kind of youth inhabit - and yes, the girls have trouble paying the rent, but, hey, it's real life, yada yada yada. Is it the same as Two Broke Girls? But that show stars Kat Dennings (what is not to like?) And why is James Franco ranting about this show? Why am I ranting about this show? If you Google Girls a ka-jillion hits pop up - the show is viral. Even my Dad watches it. Just kidding. I didn't ask.