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Stolen Images
Apologies if this was already covered by Seinfeld on Nueva-Centric living. Among the abundant subway characters that pack into our steel cars twenty-four hours a day lurks a silent being that can be viewed in two different ways, depending on your mood: When you’re not in an exactly “collective love New York state of mind”, these people are like little stalking Gollums slithering through the tunnels on a mission to possess something. It aint a ring. In better moods, they serve as a flattering mirror; you might immediately fix your hair when you lock eyes with them, smile, or even give a bashful blink. I’m not talking about Shutterbugs, the people who steal an image of you with a camera’s lens, then scuttle away like a Peeping Tom. Hard to justify that type of image mugging. I’m talking about the person in the seat diagonally across from you with penetrating eyes that switch every five seconds or so from a soul-gripping lock on your face and the small pad and pencil cuddled atop their knapsack. When a sketch artist, art student, artist–whatever it is you want to call these subway characters–chooses you out of the rest of the sardine gang commuting alongside you, it’s sort of flattering. Unless of course they chose you because you just look so darn strange, but hey you’ll never know the truth. But the act also evokes a level of intimacy that was never asked for and requires nothing from you except submission. Suddenly you’re aware that someone is taking in all the fine details of your face, a beauty mark on your cheek, they way a strand of hair curls along your neck. You begin to feel their pencil tracing the contour of your nose, outlining the shape of your lips. What probably makes the experience a little confusing (do I sit still, do I smile, do I wickedly roll my tongue across my upper lip?) is that you were never introduced, never did you give permission to sit for a portrait that can stay locked in a drawing pad, be part of a stalker series, be displayed in a classroom or serve as some inspiration for something that hangs in a museum (did I mention how flattering it can be?) It is both a wicked and innocent act. Should they catch you in a not-so-loving mood, then your solace is remembering this: Some things aren’t owned- people’s impressions of you are not yours, though you may exert influence. They are something people take with them, sometimes in number two pencil on the pages of a sketch book.
When Salsa Characters Dress as Salsa Characters
Halloween for the salsa crowd is sort of like an outing of all those inner salsa characters that emanate from the hearts and dance of certain salsero(a)s. It’s like our salsa characters jump out from the words of this screen, liberated to live the lives we pretend to live for them (STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION MOMENT: EPISODE WHEN MORIARTY WALKS OUT FROM THE FANTASY WORLD OF THE HOLODECK TO DECKS OF THE ENTERPRISE). Honestly, going to a Halloween Social felt like the characters from my fiction world broke out of jail and I was partying hard with them.
Out of the Looking Glass, here were some salsa characters that showed their scary faces at Halloween:
The Pimp: His bitches are all his students: the girls he makes wear heels, the guys he forces to do a male macho strip tease (oh, ok, they were shines). He has his dancing way with all the girls whenever he wants them, and even the quivering male student too, if a point is needed to be made. The pimp goes by the name of teacher (Jedi) on every day except Halloween.
Narcissus: Boy do they come out on Halloween. It’s like all the salsa characters defect into this character come Halloween. Most girls would rather be dancing with a mirror than their partners on the Night of the Dead.
The-Ugly-Green-Eyed-Monster: Oh, doesn’t this sound so very Halloween? Unfortunately, these characters DON’T wear a mask or costume. It’s them in their naked, bare-ass form. They are conjured when a Narcicuss places the mirror in front of his/her face, though the Narcissus doesn’t notice it. Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the ugliest of them all ? The Ugly-Green-Eyed-Monster. They have the chromosomal pre-disposition of being XX and spend more time glaring at other XX’s than they focusing on their dancing. Like the Cheater who scans the room for his next dance during a dance, the Ugly-Green-Eyed-Monster is so possessed with 
envy it scans the room with eyes of venom, looking to hate. What is the garlic for this vampire? Go on with your business, smile, ignore them. They will likely gain another frowning wrinkle, and wither away.
The Sexpot: It’s our chance to dress how we really feel when we dance. Prudes, get over it.
Closeted Psychopath: Don’t want to take off your mask for us to see you? Dressing as a comic book character with an unknown father who kills people who remind him of his prostitute mother? Buddy, move on from this salsera. You are probably a Shy-But-Why in your real life salsa character. Scrawny and gentle.
I’m-just-too-cool: Coming to a Halloween Social without a costume, or even a mask? Really? The only excuse for this is some serious spiritual conflict about worshipping spirits of the dead.
Succubus: The salsera/o who latches onto you because they are afraid to be alone, don’t know how to mingle and just love to feed on your energy. Be gone, ye Succubus. Go make your own party.
The Dog: The Salseros who spot a Sexpot but mistake her for a fire hydrant. A Predator when it isn’t Halloween.
When a salsera goes (responsibly) postal
As freeing as salsa is, there are moments when a salsera asks herself:
- what curse brought you into my life that I have to learn 188 shines that go by 188 different names in different studios?
- how many damn stretch pants can I own and not look like a mannequin at Strawberry’s?
- why, why, why am I touching the unknown hands of so many unknown men with so many unknown thoughts as they touch me?
- why do I subject myself to spontaneous Mr. Fantastic moves by men who don’t know what they’re doing?
There is a need for ninja salsa courses where experienced male dancers can accelerate the learning of the females so we don’t have to wait around for the learning curve to kick in. I got a crash salsa start this way. I now feel held back, with all humility because before this I had a hard time keeping up. It’s time to communicate this to the teachers.
The saving grace that prevents me from using my salsa stilettos as ninja stars into the heads of jerks, and those who are gaining experience from me but not giving any back, is that all this is part of a wonderful learning process that eventually will evolve into a high command of dance and unison with a celebratory form of music. When one gets grouchy, remember, you are gaining tools to make a “better fun”. And it’s a team effort, sometimes you have to be a Robin Hood. Blah. Ok.
I think I’ll go practice shines by myself in the corner until I decide it’s worth it again.
Street Cookie Portal
Manhattan Avenue, NYC September 2010
Believe I found the nesting ground for Street Cookies. Or a major portal for them in NYC. Or perhaps this is the portal for Puerto Rican Street Cookies.
Urban Arbor-Based B-52 Acorn Operations
Since fall decided to make an August debut, us urban sidewalk pedestrians are getting an early treat that is usually reserved for September. We are referring to when trees, and the little furry demons that live in them, launch acorns from sky high, giving you a nice bonk on the head. Sometimes you get some warning beforehand: they explode on the concrete pavement just 2 steps ahead of you. Often though, like subway rainwater scum-b0mbs, they land directly on your head. This is not a hazard you’d normally assign to urban living. But we walk around a lot in New York City, and Urban Arbor-Based B-52 Acorn Operations are indeed a reality here. And if they don’t bonk you on the head, you’re not out of the woods yet: the rounder ones have a good spin to them if you step on them the wrong way.
Lord of the Frappes
If the link doesn’t work, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaHb8grTIUk
Inwood Crop Circles
In a fenced-off field of grass and other green things, there are patches of shiny grass that has been flattened.
Is this a growing technique of Parks and Rec?
Is this is a particular species of green?
Are people laying in these areas?
Have the aliens landed in Inwood? Is the grass shiny from the metal rub of a spaceship bottom?
Theories, please….
Coming to a future near you… Terminator
Well thanks to the NY Times reading SkateDiva, I have one more theory to add to apocalypse worries. Singularity! At first I thought she was directing me to an article on on in-coming black hole. Or that one was created with the The Large Hadron Collider. this one seems to be about building a brand new robot species. Google is apparently one huge brain that keeps growing and growing the more we use it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html
Yes, yes, we’ve heard it before… perhaps its inevitable. Perhaps this timeline will never get a chance to happen because the earth will suddenly stop “living” with this oil spill because it turns out all that oil serves some sort of purpose for its rotation, winds, cloud formation, etc. The future is just so interesting to think about.
Someone explain this…
Washington, DC March 2010
Someone tell me why this is on the building of the US Department of Agriculture (I am pretty sure it was that one, I know it was a federal building…. Was it the treasury?)
Star that helps guide the farmers in their crop (Bio-dynamic farming?)
Ode to Venus?
Ode to the Masons?
Oh a Mason mark?
War of the Worlds
So here’s the apocalyptic side to “a festival of lights”. So it’s fine and dandy to witness the glories of the cosmos (like the recent Geminids meteor shower) and have near religious experiences in the process. Here’s what f*cks with your head either as a series of coincidences accompanying the shower, or the government trying to subtly tell you something:
- The Syfy (Scifi) channel or some channel was showing back to back movies about alien invasions. I couldn’t help but watch “War of the Worlds” which turned out to be a very, very bad idea. The remake of War of the Worlds plays on pretty much every fear you could have: alien ship attacks, alien robot attacks, air planes going down, drowning in cars, Titanic-like boat going down, aliens that incinerate you indiscriminately, aliens that capture you and put you in a metal farmers’ market basket until they are ready to thrust their tentacle through you and suck out all of your blood, human kind’s extermination, mob hysteria, loosing your child, apocalypse. For those who didn’t see the new War of the Worlds: the aliens arrive in a stream of lightening bolts from the sky. So I couldn’t help but have a lump in my throat while watching the Geminids meteor shower.
- Also, for some reason, the powers that be seem to be testing the “Emergency Alert System” out. A lot. You know, that horrible nuclear bomb alert sound followed by, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast system. If this had been an actual emergency…” Those who saw War of the Worlds will know that this same message was being broadcasted during the alien invasion, saying “this is a TEST of the emergency broadcast system”–a test– even though it was sure damn well past an emergency. This test was playing on my TV upon my return of watching the Geminids meteor shower. These series of events are a great way to become an insomniac, but I don’t know if I was scared or more annoyed by the fact that the announcement said “this is a test of New Jersey’s emergency broadcast system”. New Jersey? I’m not in New Jersey! Are you telling me that in the event of an emergency Inwoodites are screwed because Manhattan forgets we exist and New Jersey is calling us theirs even though there is a freakin river between us? Inwoodites better start building rafts and canoes because it looks like we will be screwed.
- The Hadron seems to be up and running again.
The broadcast alerts are still going on… Just when War of the Worlds was receding from my mind a day later, as I dozed off with a smile on my face listening to Craig Furgeson, suddenly, in the middle of one of his jokes, the horrible nuclear bomb alert sound blasted like a siren with a “test” message. Success in finding a sound that will jerk anyone out of a soundful sleep.
So take it as fiction and believe what you will. The arts are a great way to send mass messages to people: either to have us buy something, to act a certain way, to serve as a mirror for our fears and desires, or to subtly prepare us for an alien invasion.
