street vendor: hey, hey, hey man, jewelry blow out special. everything a dollar. buy something nice for your wife for the holidays. one dollar!

businessman: a dollar? i'm not gonna buy my wife jewelry for a dollar.

street vendor: it's the thought that counts.

-overheard in new york, 57th and 8th-

"sure it sounds trite and foolish but if you really take a deep down look, isn't that what love really is all about? sacrificing rationality to show how much someone means to you? like in example, the engagement ring? diamonds aren't rare you idiot! if it cost $5 trillion dollars she'd flaunt the hell out of a cheerio with a marshmallow glued to the top! love is like that. it is truly the parade of the insane."

-yelofngr-

people are going to want something more when it seems harder to obtain. referencing the post of a few days ago, a friend pointed out something. if the intent is to warn both sides, or one side, of the potential mishaps that could result from a romantic connection, it's sometimes best to say nothing. why? because nothing brings two people together more than adversity. the best way to arouse curiosity is to say "stay away." the easiest way to get two people on one side is to try to keep them apart. parents probably know this. romeo and juliet's parents probably realized this too late.



and also, people are going to do whatever they want to do anyway, so why fight attraction? short of one person being an axe murderer, why not just let things be? que sera sera. all you do by telling two people to watch out for each other is to pique their interest. "hum, why is jon telling me to stay away? there must be an interesting reason. i must find out." so maybe it's best to not say anything at all when two friends are interested in each other. the only productive thing to do is just bet the over/under and create a pool for how long the "relationship" will last, and then hope that your horse comes in.

great expectations. how much would you pay for the best cupcakes on earth? okay, not even the best, how about the most popular? people pay outrageous sums for a morsel of the rarest caviar, the tenderest steak, the freshest filet-o-fish. what would you pay for a famous cupcake? apparently i'm willing to pay a buck fifty plus an hour of my time. and if my time is invaluable, i just paid infinity plus one fifty for a cupcake that'll probably cause me a hundred fifty in dentist bills.



of course i'm talking about magnolia bakery. magnolia's cupcakes were already a coveted item in new york before they exploded onto the small screen via sex and the city. once magnolia went cable tv, they got huge. no longer were they "magnolia, famous for their cupcakes." now they were "magnolia, the place that carrie and co went to get cupcakes." everyone had to have one after that. and apparently, everyone was there last saturday, waiting to get their hands on a creamy cupcake.



it's amazing, you make a long line of of people out the door and people want something even more. normally i would pass up this sort of event. nothing is worth an hour's wait in the winter (although it wasn't particularly cold). but this was more or less a once in a 2004 opportunity. i was thinking the holiday spirit would make people happy and cheery but really, most of the people standing there were questioning the sanity of standing in line. yet nobody made a move to leave. busy manhattaners walking by would look at the line, turn to their friends, make a snide comment about "those people are crazy...and dumb!" and then scuttle along. i would have, should have, been one of those people. but that night, for the sake of cupcakes, i was one of the crazy and dumb ones.



the question inevitably comes down to, "were the cupcakes really that good? was it worth it?" the answer is no. and yes. the cupcakes aren't that mind blowingly good. in fact, i prefer the soft mushiness that is the local vons cupcake. the signature frosting on the magnolia cupcake is pretty good, but the huge smear of it they put on top is too much. no adult over the age of twenty can seriously eat this cupcake without being overwhelmed by sugar. i have a super sweet tooth and even i was unable to fall in love with the frosting. and the actual cupcake itself was so disappointing. lumpy and hard, and almost crispy. leslie warned us beforehand that most homemade cupcakes were better, and she was spot on in her evaluation.



but the cupcakes were worth an hour and a dollar fifty out of my life. why? because it's the experience. where else would you be able to stand in line and look longingly at overpriced baked goods? where else would you get riled up by some lady repeatedly going back to raid the cupcake tray? where else could you sit in a park and toast your friends with the cupcakes that you just bought? nowhere, only magnolia.



the weirdest thing about magnolia was the personnel behind the magic. it was all art school rejects. no grandma types in sight. where's the token old lady? i'm not sure i can trust a bakery that hires only art school types. i need a grandmotherly type running the show. plus, the bouncer at the door was intimidating. i thought we would have to flash id to get into magnolia.



the wisdom i have to impart about magnolia cupcakes is this: try the cupcakes, just so you can say you've tried them. but get the banana pudding. that shit was worth waiting in line for. and i don't even like banana pudding.

clear and present danger. let's say you've got two friends. one of them is interested in the other. the one you're closer with is a great person, actually, they're both great people, but you see a potential mismatch. you see where they vibe, you see where they might really have a chance to make something, but you know things that one or the other doesn't know. should you warn one of the parties? let's say billy likes tricia. you're really close with billy -- you know him inside and out -- for good and for bad. you're not nearly as close to tricia but you're still good friends. if billy and tricia start to express interest in each other, is it right for you to potentially nip something in the bud by telling tricia about some less than savory traits that billy possesses?



is it your duty to say nothing since you're closer to billy? even if you think tricia stands to get hurt here? should you remove yourself from the situation, just become a bystander, and not get involved? what if you're the one who introduced billy and tricia. if all shit goes to hell (for reasons you could have anticipated), would tricia be right to be mad at you for not warning her? would you be ratting out your boy billy by not keeping your mouth shut?



most people would take the middle road on this one. warn tricia, tell billy you told her some things, then take a step back and watch it all unfold. that way, you did your part and any future guilt could be absolved, and you wouldn't have really rat out your boy totally. this is the path of least resistance. that's not what i would do.



i would choose to not say anything to tricia, despite knowing things that might be useful. i wouldn't want to taint her initial high opinion of billy with cautionary tales. i'd just talk to billy about being very very careful. i say you attack from the source of the trouble, and you talk to whichever one you're closer with. and if that doesn't work then, oh well, you never should have introduced them in the first place.



i think if you're gonna introduce people, you gotta give'em a fair shot right? because anything negative you say will unduly influence someone, just because your "insider" knowledge will probably carry some weight. and the slightest defensive posture, or cautious mindset from tricia, can eventually ruin it all for their budding relationship. mum's the word.



but really, how many of your friends would you recommend for a relationship, without some sort of side comment or caveat? like none right? it's like recommending a movie. you've seen it a few times before, you know if it's good or not, you know which parts they'll probably like, which parts they'll hate. you don't just keep quiet right? how can you just pass on a (movie or other) recommendation without some personal comments? and usually the comments are of the "the boy is good but the commitment sucks" or "she's cute but not so much in the morning" variety. if your ass is gonna be on the line for recommending/introducing something, you gotta hedge your bets right?



cupid's arrow isn't pointy for nothing.

left right left. you know what they say about left handed people. well actually, what do they say about left handed people? "left handers do it right." plus they're supposedly more intelligent, more balanced and more creative. i'll argue the first two, maybe give a bit on the last one. there definitely is something to left handed people being "special." i think every left hander i know is pretty damn well rounded. some are super funny, some are super talented, some are just super. and i can't think of any left handers i know who aren't. off the top of my head anyway.



is it kind of shallow to have a positive bias towards left handed people? i mean, i can't help it, i like left handed people okay? however, there is one thing about lefties that's always bothered me. their handwriting. sure, some lefties have great handwriting -- an ex-girlfriend had the craziest handwriting i'd ever seen, all letters spaced exactly evenly apart, all the same height, all slanted to the right -- but for the most part, lefty handwriting is the pits. or laughable. or comedic. or smudgy. i saw one friend's handwriting, which looked exactly like a kindergartener's and i almost died laughing. beautiful stuff, but just hilarious.



and then there are the people whom i assume are left handed in my mind. or i think of them as left handed even if they're not. one friend is so outrageously artistic and overall talented that i can't believe they're not left handed. if only i had been born lefty so that i could be genetically superior, or at least know how to draw.

the p---s for food program. a lifetime supply of food. room and board for free. books forever. the ability to play any instrument. a super power. i would trade my penis in for all of these things. really, if you think about it, what has sexual organs ever done for anyone not interested in procreation? if you were to lose a limb, would you rather lose an arm, your left leg or your third leg? rationally speaking, you lop off the leg that's not crucial to transportation. and even at your wilt chamberlain-esque best, how much are you really using your penis anyway? as far as i'm concerned, lorena did john wayne a favor. what has the sexual organ (male or female) ever done except cause excessive trouble? what would it be like if people were less focused on getting some and more focused on doing something.



it could be argued that we would lose some art and some music and some beautiful emotions that fuel creativity. but c'mon now, we can find creative inspiration from sources other than love and lust. can't we? if all that makes great art is the burning in our loins, then we're kind of missing the point right? if ninety percent of a man's time is spent figuring out how to get into a woman's pants, aren't we losing some valuable thoughts and experiences? hormones make the world go round but i propose a snip and tuck for men around the world. no rape, no stalking, no animalistic urges. no flowers, no chocolates, no bitches (and not talking about the female kind). the world would be a wonderful place don't you think?

mighty mouse. interesting enough, humility is defined as being either meek or modest. humility was always a "good" trait in my book. i gotta stop quotations around stuff like "good, bad, best..." it's just so pretentious. anyway. all the dictionary definitions of humble seem to be bad. "showing deferential or submissive respect; low in rank, quality or station." it sounds pretty bad to be humble. is that something someone would even want to be?



i think humility is really just knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and being open with what you're capable of. and then not taking it too far to being cocky or annoyingly unable to accept a compliment. i hate those people. people who can barely accept a compliment. look, you know you're good, i know you're good, just say a quick thanks and acknowledge that you're good. don't pull the "oh no, i'm not that good thing." you are that good. no need to rub it in my face or anything but it's okay for you to acknowledge how good you are at something.



humility is, i think, most of all, about being realistic. but even when you're humble and realistic, you gotta try. often times, once you think you know your limitations you stop trying. i think i do that. but if you try once in awhile you'll suprise yourself.



this inspirational message has been brought to you by the happy hands club.

trust a try. you ever notice that once your opinion of someone is made, for better or worse, it seeps into all aspects of them? so even if a guy is a brilliant money market investor, you might be prone to ignoring his advice simply because he's terrible at risk. and the same thing the other way around. a person could have the worst real life business sense but if he's good at monopoly, i'm in. it's all about perception. once you're seen as incapable and dishonest, you're usually gonna be stuck with that label. i mean, sure a guy could be a stand up salesman but if you know that he likes to cut corners and be lazy, would you trust him? probably not.



this is probably why it's best not to work with friends. you simply know too much about them. you know that they're never on time, that they're never responsible, you know that having a woman tends to turn their focus away from your money to their loins. that kind of thing. it's probably better to assume that your accountant is great at what they do, as opposed to knowing how many times they crack themselves out weekly.

i b(r)ought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face. ...pajamas, a hairbrush, new shoes and a case. i'm an overpacker. i admit it. i try to pretend that i'm not but even for a one night trip to LA i'm throwing three different version of clothes into my trunk. in my defense, sometimes you have to have space for all the clothes you need, even if it's just for a twenty four hour period. for example, going to LA for one night of going out entails packing whatever you're wearing that night (including shoes, belt, black socks) and whatever you need for the next day. plus sleeping clothes. all that for just one night in LA.



so packing to go somewhere for four days or more just increases the amount of stuff i think i'll potentially need. i'm incredibly anal about packing. not the actual packing part -- which is more just throwing stuff around to see what fits -- but just the process of packing. i make two lists. one of stuff to do (shower, groom, electronics to charge, emails to send) and one of things not to forget (money, license, clothes, electronics, contacts, glasses). then i make a mock up list of what i might wear each day, and try to stick to that. never works out of course. i always end up over packing. it's a gift. some may call it girly, i just call it "being prepared." i finish off with a flourish by thinking of everything i must do the next day to be prepared, right before i go to sleep. i try to harness my unconscious to help me remember what to bring. while this method works, i seem to forget everything else that's important, like waking up on time.



does anyone not know that rolling up stuff is the most efficient way to pack? if not, you should know that by now. by rolling your clothes, you save room and minimize wrinkles. just a word to the wise.



you know who is an amazing packer? amit. i remember him visiting us once and me going "is that all?" he had a little duffel bag and that was it. yet he was able to remain fashionably dressed at all times (as always). how does he do it? has he found the secret of packing light? share share. i'm also very impressed with girls who can pack light. somebody once went with us to new york with the tiniest little bag i'd ever seen. and out of this tiny bag came five days worth of clothes. incredible. girls who pack light, plus. guys who overpack, minus.



i'm off to new york. pray for my wicked dreams to be fulfilled via the ticket lottery.

the soloist, the soul controller. you gotta love rakim. if you love hip hop and you love lyrics, rakim's the guy, the legend, the god. in any ranking of best lyricist and mc, rakim is usually the unparalled number one. for me, i first heard him on an nba basketball video. that song was "don't sweat the technique" and while it was the string bass that initially attracted me to the song, rakim's smooth delivery and lyrics soon had me replaying the song over and over. and then i found his other stuff, and i was smitten.



what makes his lyrics so good? it's a number of things -- in fact, everything. his quiet voice, his delivery, his rhythm, his flow, his lyrics, his depth and his use of poetic devices. i'm not expert on poetry but what rakim brought to the hip hop world was new rhyme styles. back in the beginning, rappers were doing "cat, hat, bat" stuff, rhyming the last word of each line. this was effective but it wasn't exactly groundbreaking. rakim did so much but i'm just here to highlight one thing that i've noticed about his lines. they always rhyme the last few syllables, the last few "notes" are always the same. this may not seem all that impressive -- who can't rhyme three syllables right? -- but for rap, this was breaking new ground. you may not be amazed but if you listen to rakim, then you will be amazed to see how much of a difference this one little change makes. everyone does this nowadays so it may not seem fresh or new, but think about when rakim was doing this, this is like technicolor in 1939 wizard of oz stuff.



there's a million reasons i love rakim, this is just one.

i ain't no joke, i used to let the mic smoke

now i slam it when i'm done and make sure it's broke



when i'm gone no one gets on cuz i won't let

nobody press up and mess up the scene i set



i like to stand in a crowd and watch the people won-der damn

but think about it then you'll un-der-stand



i'm just an addict addicted to mu-sic

maybe it's a habit, i gotta use it



even if it's jazz or the qui-et storm

i hook a beat up convert it in a hip-hop form



write a rhyme in graffiti in, every show you see me in

deep concentration cuz i'm no com-e-dian

-eric b and rakim, i ain't no joke-

turn the radio up for that sweet sound. i specialize in three types of music. actually no, just two. i appreciate three, i specialize in two. i have middle of the road classic hip hop -- not mainstream but not underground either -- and car game. the catch all category of car game includes anything and eveything you can sing in your car. selections range from cheezy eighties ballads (make me lose control, lean on me), alternative standards (under the bridge), pm dawn and other sing-a-long r&b stuff and admittedly, some boy bands -- they're good okay? hack cough cough. that's it, that's all i got. i got the hip hop for listening to during the day and soft sappy karaoke stuff to listen to at night. you've been forewarned. ride with me at your own risk.



i'm also a very demanding car dj. first, i need music on at all times in a moving vehicle. second, i refuse to listen to your music unless i'm already inclined to like it. i bring my cd books into other people's cars and expect them to allow me to stage a musical coup. it's like bringing your own food when you've been invited over for dinner. oh well. it's rude but you gotta do it.



by the way. the key to successful car game is to have random ass songs that everyone secretly, or not so secretly, loves. car game should consist of songs that people know all the words to but somehow haven't heard in five years or more. bam. bust it and that's car game material. you know a true car game winner when everyone is singing along and no one is willing to open the window so that outside people can hear. the window must stay up, or you run the risk of getting caught singing along to sophie b hawkins as the four dudes with gangsta rap pull up at the light. not that that's ever happened to me or anything.

library records - you live and you learn. luckily the library came and saved my life. the dormitory library that is. stocked with a decent collection of music, i was finally able to make my musical choices according to what other people had already chosen. freedom at last, limited only by the narrow scopes of the underpaid student librarian staff. deciding then that i needed to know what music i liked, if only to define myself to others, i would borrow cds from the dorm library and run downstairs to copy them onto tape (my tape deck lasted me all four years of college and beyond), and then return the cds upstairs immediately, in exchange for another grab bag.



slowly my music selection widened, until i had just about everything worth copying in the west quad library -- including the best of snoopy, jazz edition. most of the cds i copied ending up sucking. i didn't like most of the stuff i heard. those tapes were promptly trashed and copied over. the stuff that stuck was mainly hip hop. de la soul, tribe, roots, gangstarr, all the stuff that i'm addicted to now, i probably heard within the first month of raiding the library. master p had a whole section of cds (since no limit released crap fast and furious) but i was wise enough to forego that type of hip hop lifestyle. i was my own man, with my own musical tastes. a new door had been opened and i found myself slowly turning my focus away from yodelers and angry candian women.

musicology 101 - dazed and confused. i have a very narrow range of music i enjoy. i'm not a music snob by any means, i'm just selective about what i listen to. not based on quality, but usually, genre. i pretty much only listen to hip hop and um, nostalgia stuff. for reasons having to do with fob boats and english as a second language, i missed out on most of the i love the 80s. which is, i'm thinking, not an entirely bad thing since i'm not bogged down by a whole extra decade's worth of music to reminisce over. heck, i think i missed most of the early 90s too. so really, we're looking at maybe only the last ten year's worth of music that i genuinely have an appreciation for.



the first songs i can remember really digging were the beach boy's "kocomo" and "toy soldiers" by martika. man those were good songs. i have no idea what i did for music in the periods between middle school and high school. i must have been a very out of it deaf sheep. i gave my mom a judy garland tape once for her birthday. i ended up listening to the damn thing about a thousand times more than she did. between being judy garland's biggest fan and having an intimate working knowledge of the ad&d handbook, i was terribly cool. why didn't anyone else agree?



whenever "10,000 maniacs unplugged" and yanni first hit the scene is when i started to buy my own music. i also had pearl jam's "ten." and i'm sure dr dre's "the chronic" was stuck in there somewhere, teaching me new words and phrases. i never quite figured out what "you never know she could be earnin her man and learnin her man -- and at the same time burnin her man" meant until waaaay later. that snoop, always saying the most confusing things. so, that was probably the extent of my muscial collection until i was of legal smoking age. dr dre, warren g, yanni, the multitude of maniacs, pearl jam, eric clapton and judy garland. i acquired a love for jewel, alanis morrissette and oasis somewhere in there, senior year of high school. for a brief moment in 96, i was in lockstep with current musical tastes. "who will save your soul" was my jam. i was finally listening to what my peers were listening to.



oh nope, two steps forward, one step back. freshman year, the most popular cds in my rotation were still jewel, alanis and another album whose name i'm unwilling to divulge. i didn't even properly hop onto the puff daddy band wagon when the bling revolution came. i was still too busy trying to follow in the hot footsteps of the original lyrical gangsta. to my credit, i never got onto the electric slide train. that electric slide shit was gay and required too much coordination. also, nobody told me to c'mon n ride the (party) train either. clearly i was left for dead at the station.

fairey's posse. andy warhol had a hand in getting mao and che's images elevated to pop icon status. i'm sure those images were already popular by the time warhol got to them but by using his trademark "swatches of ugly color" technique, warhol made mao and che objects of desire -- akin to soup and hollywood starlets. at least that's what i think he was doing. i actually don't know what he was doing at all. if warhol had a non-bullshit method to his technicolor madness, i haven't learned about it yet. i think what he was doing was turning anything and everything into pop culture, so making leaders of communist revolutions (and normal everyday objects) into pop art must have made perfect sense.



there's a guy doing this today. stage left, welcome shepard fairey. who obtained fame and fortune by plastering andre the giant's image all over the place. now he runs a design company that sells simplified stenciled of people and reproduces them "on a vast array of merchandise, such as t-shirts, posters, and baseball caps." sound familiar? instead of hollywood females and campbell's, it seems like shepard fairy sticks pretty closely to hip hoppers, musicians and political figures for his portraits. the thinking behind his choice of images? the obey giant manifesto? read on.

the obey campaign can be explained as an experiement in phenomenology. the first aim of phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environement. the obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail.



the medium is the message.

my interest in obey giant is his choice of political figures, many of whom warhol already pop icon-ed. doesn't this sort of go against the "people are not used to seeing" part? we're used to seeing che and mao plastered all over the place. andre the giant was new. biggie and tupac, semi-new. nixon, sid vicious and ozzy, new. mao and lenin? not so new. getting first crack at george w bush and yassar arafat don't count as new, it's just timely. but maybe fairey includes mao and lenin's already pop-ed out icons to establish a link to the past. is shepard fairey warhol's ideological son? sure, why not.



it's also safe to say that fairey has sold out. maybe that was his intent in the first place. to get rich by distributing images that sell, with an audible but thin veneer of provokement. well, he's done a splendid job. now if he would only sell a hitler poster, that would give him back some street cred.

"according to shepard, the work is less about a specific "meaning" and more about the reaction created in the mind of the viewer. he hopes that upon viewing a giant image, people wake up to their surroundings and environment. the russian communist influence in some images reading "obey" or declaring "we want you to join the posse" is merely reverse psychology as people in society already subconsciously obey messages of consumption disseminated by corporations through advertising and billboards. by questioning the absurdity of the giant campaign, people may then be more inclined to question the messages of mass marketing."

is that what we're really doing? or are we just padding his pockets by purchasing his neato designs? i know that's what i'm doing, just buying his stuff because it's fun and cool. for example, i'm about to snatch up fairey's new magazine, swindle, exactly because his aesthetic and messages are commercial and easily accessible, even if subversion was a part of his original goal.



i wonder what i have to do to become pop icon-ed. make an actual impact on people? make a difference? have some influence? can't i just sit here and get icon-ed from my couch? wouldn't that be provoking when you're forced to ask "who is the guy on that ubiquitous poster? who is this 'obey jon' character?"