Somebody's Butt-print

There are a lot of things about this neighborhood that I find a little less than normal.  But this morning I actually saw something I hadn't seen before in nearly 24 years of living here.  Somebody left an ass-print on our glass front door.

The logistics of doing this vulgar thing must have been a little complicated - the glass part of our front door is about six feet off the ground, so it not only means that someone had to drop their drawers in my lobby, it also means that someone ELSE had to spray paint their butt, and then lift them up and stick them, cheeks out, up ONTO the door.

Weirdly, I looked for a picture on google images to illustrate the concept of "ass print" and found too many to count.  This one, aside from the color choice (ours was yellow) pretty much says it all.  I would have taken a picture of our own objet d'art, but the battery on my Canon just died.

Seeing all of these butt pix made me realize how little imagination human beings have.  From the invention of the Xerox machine all the way back through the Renaissance, the human response to the question "what is art and, yet, funny?" was "butt cheeks!"  It makes me wonder why archaeologists haven't unearthed the imprint of some Egyptian tomb-worker's bare booty, done up in burnt ochre, right up on the wall with the hieroglyphics.

Speaking of butts, just came back from the Planet Fitness up the street from me.  I'm still steadily losing weight, but not really fast enough to get me back in normal-sized clothes before the end of the summer.  I only seem to drop about four pounds a month, and for someone who's as overweight as I am, that's really kind of glacier speed.  But I have to keep telling myself this is just the way I have to take care of my health now, and there's no return to the telly-booze-pizza life that almost put me in the hospital.  Gotta keep trying.

I was going to go out and get the new Jules Pfeiffer book.  Almost done reading the Joe Papp biography "Free for All" which is totally amazing - my favorite format for a biography nowadays, which is the David Hajdu method of gathering interviews and then editing like a madman.  This one was written by a guy named Kenneth Turan, and it's a fascinating look at the work of a fascinating man.  As I say, I was GOING to go out and get this book, but the skies are darkening and we're supposed to get a huge thunderstorm.  This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons, but most unfortunate because it's 3 PM, there's no food in the house, I'm starving - and I always feel TERRIBLE if I ask a delivery guy to come out in the rain and bring me something.  I guess Jules Pfeiffer and food will have to wait.

So since I've already put in some hours this morning on rewrites, and already gone to the gym,  I'm going to be putting my butt-print on the sofa for a little while, waiting for the rain to come and go.

Great Fire burning

I can't believe the last time I wrote in this blog it was snowing - and not just snowing but a huge blizzard.  Today it was 96 fucking degrees out, and I had to alternate running errands and going to the gym with just staying home and having a lie down.  Thank God the air conditioner has been holding up, or I would have been completely freaking out.

They've just opened a new restaurant and a new wine bar, both on Dyckman street, in the past few weeks.  I checked out the restaurant, "Papacitos", and was pleasantly surprised.  I read online that the service was crappy and the food just run of the mill, but the food was actually pretty good.  Not a lot of healthy choices, but once I'd scraped the "Oaxaca Cheese" - (I didn't know Oaxaca was known for its cheese) off of the grilled corn on the cob, the chicken mole was moist and fab, and the guacamole was absolutely perfect in my opinion.

Guacamole is the perfect food if you're on a diet - as long as you don't eat it with corn chips.  I know that sounds weird, but that's the way I live my life lately.  If you just dive into the guac with a fork, it's just as nice, and all the fat is the good (monosaturated) kind.  Unlike the vile over-spiced mole at chains like Chipotle, this was perfectly spiced, cut with just enough lemon, and full of red onions and tomatoes.  And mole sauce is just as legal - there's no fat in it at all, just a load of flavor, and it goes great with chicken of course.

When it's this hot, eating is the last thing I want to do, and when I don't feel like eating it's newsworthy, trust me.  The hood is very much a ghost town, and I love that about July 4th weekend.  I can get into any restaurant I want to go to, the stores aren't crowded (unless you're stupid enough to go to Macy's which is always tourist central), and even the movie theaters are empty.  Unfortunately, this is probably the worst weekend for movies I've ever seen in my life.  We have the requisite selection of kiddy movies, all now in 3D.  Pass.  Then we have the latest Twilight movie, which provides the perfect combination of execrable dialogue, paper-thin characters, and the horrid grey-wash cinematography that seems so in and hip these days.  And let's not forget Robert Pattinson, the romantic hero character who's dark, poetic, troubled, and virtually humorless - he'll be fucking up an entire new generation of young women by fixating their burgeoning libidoes on the emotionally unavailable young men in their lives.  Great.  Thanks Stephanie Whats-her-face.  They should send her their therapy bills.

And then there's "Cyrus", which stars the guy I think of as "The other fat guy."  Please.

I was thinking of bagging the gym this morning in favor of walking down the West Side Highway - but then I checked the temperature and, at 7 AM, it was already almost 80 degrees.  Forget that.  Air-conditioned gym for me.  I've lost two pounds this week, which is great - except, with temps in the 90's for the rest of the week, it's probably all water.  Oh well.  I'll take what I can get.