vertigo staircase

vertigo staircase
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

so when you throw a housewarming/going-away-for-a-month-to-europe party an dyou think it would be cool to hold it on your roof, when you decide to give it a theme, you know, everybody gets dressed up, brings appropriate food and drinks, when you think, especially inspired by a great junior senior concert, as well as the legions of badly dressed tourists streaming through our street, it would be a great idea to have white trash be that theme and you go to kmart, two subway stops, buy crazy visors, put back that overpriced willie nelson shirt, that too small, really, yes, guns and roses girly wifebeater, get every cheesy snack there plus crazy timewarp drinks in electric colors and plastic containers, when you take 6 shopping bags full of this crap home, then you realize that not only will you have to lug all this beer and those snacks eight flights up to the roof, but, due to the abscence of doorbell and buzzer, you will have run down -slightly intoxicated and in costume: visor, jack-and-coke stained wifebeater, huge five-dollar white sneakers, boxers not merely peeking but comfortable staring from above my new plaid pyjama pants, one leg half rolled up gangsta style, headphone cord tangling around every turn on the stairs - to let everybody in...

sliced clock

sliced clock
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

the famed blinds semi-obscure the clock i have a hard time reading (i prefer the 24-hour digital kind)

room

room + roommate
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

the southwest quadrant of my room, with added 'four tet' balloon, sliced sunset, found bookcase, gold woodpaneling, lomography on the wall, plus reading roommate.

cool notes from new york

when i went to kmart yesterday, it was my day off, the apartment was stifling and suddenly filled with the newly returned k's possessions, i arrived at the checkout with my new transparent vinyl covered clothing rack only to find i was without my trusty american atm card. panicking only slightly i thought back to the last time i used it, a shopping spree at h&m, pants, socks, shirts? sticky tape to finally attach the japanese tautou to her designated position and to try and fix some of the amazing records i bought at the street fair on saturday (music of the alps, loungy compilations called, sunrise, temptation, or featuring bored housewives with cocktails and fake picket fences) to the gold and white wood paneling, or was it at the dynasty supermarket just above canal street, where i am always the only caucasian shopper, trying to find cheerios among the many different chicken feet and dried sea urchins.
i returned from kmart, huge martha stewart box in tow, to find that the apartment was thrust in an even deeper, but decidedly cooler chaos, since k's too kind fireman brother had sprung for a remote controllable air conditioning unit, which now obscures part of the, according to him, extremely fire hazardous fire escape. i was just about to call the bank and have my card canceled when k suggested i go back to the store and ask if i had left my card there. the jaded city dweller i have become was immensely shocked at the show that unfolded at the supermarket. i spoke to the manager who was extremely helpful and talked to all the checkout girls in turn, one of whom remembered me and in rapid fire chinese directed her boss to my card.
faith in humanity restored, i spent the following hours blissfully unclammy, camped out on the couch correcting a paper on gender mainstreaming for my mom, interrupted by a groovy night out with the archi-pals at the new, and undiscovered hipster hotspot, palais royal complete with the ramones on flatscreen, lingerie drying outside, hidden on the other side of our block among the exterminators and herbal medicine stores of mott street. i returned, pleasantly buzzed on vodka limes, that perennial of summer drinks, strangely unfamiliar to americans. the electronic hum of the airco put me in a buddhist state sedate enough to help sleep the night through without escaped to the kitchen to down huge glasses of icy filtered water or to the cutesy bathroom to dunk my head under the new york tap. i am now just about to finish my recommendations on coupland's eleanor rigby and look forward to the rest of the week, which will bring more visitors, more humidity, a concert by the lcd soundsystem, and more, much more nights of non sweaty, remote controlled sleep. x. f.

kismet, dawson, nuclear bombs

after finishing my coverage on the quite rollicking film adaptation of dangerous parking by peter howitt, who wrote and directed sliding doors, i was put to work on an assessment of douglas coupland's latest, eleanor rigby. kismet, since i had read the entire book on the same flight on which i saw howitt's cinematic work of dull boredom the laws of attraction. another very happy coincidence is the fact that one of my due papers is on coupland's use of storytelling as religion. for this heady project i've reread the charming and still mysterious generation x and my former favorite book ever, the now sadly overbearing girlfriend in a coma to mine them for quotes and meaningful notions of faith and hope. coupland's work is hard to get a grip on because it so unabashedly borders on sentimental or, much much worse, inspirational.
still, i'm ever glad to be able to examine my own fascination with his work, just as a did with my other half-explained crushes buffy and dawson's creek, which, thankfully but not unexpectedly, has tumbled a lot of rungs down my ladder of esteem; mainly because of the horrible main characters, never as captivating as the vampire slayer or coupland's lonely storytellers.
having written this, i should probably still admit that i am now rewatching the third season and am just about to head into the final episodes where the show's major twist starts to hit hard. the irritating dawson loses the neurotic joey to his talky best friend, and ultimately preferable teen, pacey and the show died a slow death with only jen, michelle williams, who i just saw in the very odd lobotomy drama a hole in one, to tide the viewers over to the very last and very fine episodes which finally end pacey and joey's arc as they finally hook up at jen's funeral. tears all around and i'll be ready to start my latest netflix obsession, before this one i did bette davis' melodramas and now i'm gearing up for coupland-inspired nuclear war dramas: on the beach, testament, but also my perennial tearjerking favorite, deep impact.
ps my boss just asked me for my thoughts on a hiroshima movie. hmm, kismet, strange but sweet.

strange things i've won

an electric raser when i was eleven
shiny rollerblades i wore only once
a pair of promotional tighty-whities for the movie nowhere
tickets to the gala premiere of the beach that i got a week too late
a new eames chair

summer's here, and it's noisy

my schedule is back to normal and over. had three days of internship this week, just to make up for the stuff i didn't do over their break. quite tiring, weather was very silly and rainy. in this ghastly weather. i was out and about in chinatown one morning, arranging to get back a deposit from a notoriously absentminded real estate agent who we decided not to sign with. struggling with k's wondrous rainbowy umbrella i borrowed for the day, i towered over all the other pedestrians, quite a sight. but nothing compared to what has been going on with my friends in the home country, buying houses, having babies!nothing of that scale happened here; i bought some more domesticities: whisk, bowls, a groovy orange diner tray with matching yellow mustard squeezer, and some of those wooden/bamboo steamers that i've been filling with assorted dumplings and veggies (my favorite so far, the sheherd's veggie one, has frustratingly sold out, so now i'm forced to wander the aisles in search of a worthy succesor to the mighty dumpling crown). a japanese poster has also been procured from the workplaced: sadly not the shiny one with brittany murphy and jason schwartzmann for 'spun' (made by the company i work for) but a 'dirt pretty things one' of a very demure and mysterious apres-amelie audrey tautou who keeps falling from her designated piece of wall opposite the fridge-window. a drawing of a dirty car on the side of the fridge made by a hugely talented 2-and-a-half-year-old import has also been added to the mix. in other mulby news, the exterminator came one morning, apparently he comes every month, and he was happy to see no trace of buggythingies, yay for swiffer!
friday everything suddenly turned summer: glorious, sunny, and very busy as the saint anthony festival is in full swing on la mulberry. a shooting range with human target, overpriced daiquiris, and fairly badly aged drumbands. with this background, i read some more wildly anticipated scripts (the prestigious, if slightly dull new darren aronofsky, the new paul auster and 'black book' by paul verhoeven! yay for the low countries) these afternoons have been lovely, wandering around the neighborhood with canadian girls, always a pleasure. i followed that on saturday with some odd and obscure cinema by michael powell of 'the red shoes' fame (the boy who turned yellow, anyone? nobody?) and a night of 8-bit gameboy music and videogame art in dumbo, brooklyn. i will be spending memorial day doing some work and enjoying a barbecue in shiny park slope. the rest of this week will bring two of my idols to the city as both chuck palahniuk and david sedaris are reading and signing at the local b&n. more inspired postings are sure to follow. x f.

four pictures

taxi to jfk
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

i took this photo when i rushed to jfk to pick up my sister. the others are vague leftovers i found in the drainpipe of iphoto, mood setting but hardly narrative.

manhattan from a cab
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

shiny passing subway
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

misty view
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

more sample madness

one long day: by the end of it i will have writen more than i have in the past week. has it really been just seven days since many of my friend here left? like i've tried to explain before my sense of time is seriously kaufman-esque at this stage of my life. much or little happens but i cannot seem to accurately quantify its duration in newtonian terms. einsteinian would probably work better if my mind would be able to process relativist physics and since i have trouble getting simple blinds to lower i think that would be too much of a crazy endeavor.
nothing much happened: more sandbox, paperwork for visa, fixed blinds for good (they now raise AND lower), fixed that blinking light on my phone, did dishes, went to laundromat, tried to book tickets all over europe (holland-venice, venice-vienna,
by train, ahh the good life and on the day harry potter comes out too!, vienna-holland, holland-new york), and watched a ton of movies (rosemary's baby, the lady eve, the searchers, house of flying daggers, etc.) now at work, didn't do any of my coverages over 'break', oops, so am now forced to stare at a huge pile of great great scripts while i finish my old ones, grrr, anyway, bruce willis ends up in jail, but happy, while my current subject features classic moments such as: "At home in London, Alex surprises his too glamorous American housekeeper, JACK, as she is practicing her sushi-slicing skills." i'm so there.
today has once again reminded me of the immense joy i have at this job. so silly, so fast, so good. the taunting pile contains the new robert altman, with lindsay lohan!, a new paul auster script, as well as film versions of some of my friends' favorite novels: the night listener and veronika decides to die. much to look forward too then...

these days, lazily sampled from email

thursday: "yesterday brought me through central park where me and the kid fauxfished, looked at the weird little copcars, and he did the thing where he runs up a hill, stops, giggles, falls over, and rolls down. never a dull moment, when you're twoandahalf and high on summer and half an apple.
i had many a moment of fluky mindlessness on my way to return sexy but too small blinds to kmart (forgot measurements, returned home, left them down the stairs while i ran up, came back down, they were gone, ran outside, just caught the landlord trashing them, got hem back, went to kmart, didn't have my wallet, they didn't have my size, grrr, i'm off to home depot.)
i then discovered that netflix are sending my movies to nr 18 instead of 19, so i explained in my suckiest spanish (posta? envelopa? roja?) and got my first disc so now i can have odd memories and dawson for breakfast"
after a very gloomy friday (not only was it sort of wishy washy rainy, but i also finished gilmore girls season three, fire!, jess!, pregnacy! and disc one of my ultimate sick and guilty pleasure dawson's creek, the season where joey en pacey hook up, jen gets chased by michael pitt and dawson and andie chew up valuable screen time with unexpressive foreheads and incredibly lame teen depresssion.)
today, saturday: "got up, watched some rosemary's baby (it's been taking me days now, it just won't end, or get really scary, although the concept of being in a half-furnished new york apartment with weird noises (this morning 7:30 the opening sequence of lotr, i've had worse) feels familiar, mia farrow is cool though, the original gwyneth) then braved subway chaos to get to home depot, 2 stops downtown local, several uptown express, then 9 blocks walking to return the too short blinds i bought yesterday, also found out i'd need a drill. now you might think a drill moi? exactly. never used one, but i still got on that local subway downtown, suddenly running all the way, and started drilling. the effect: a set of very shiny horizontal blinds, a very good moment to quote the dutch translation luxaflex, much cooler than blinds, huh?
did some cereal shopping, got a slightly larger size of my heart tshirt from the young designer's market up the street (i bought it with caroline, off white with an anatomical drawing of a heart over mine and a red bloody stripe through it that looks very funny when worn under a jacket) and proceeded to clean my house in it, floor wetswiffed, one window scrubbed and windexed. i could suddenly see the weather outside. it was lovely, sunny and touristy all day, but around half past five a summer storm strook up and the entire city was bathed in yellow light, the kind you find in belgian tunnels at night. you might be thinking he extrapolates, exagerrates, but really full on wong kar wai yellow (who i'm going to see with c. at the new york premiere of 2046!) gorgeous, especially on the red buildings on my street, the yellow cabs and the white face of the police station's clock, now sandwiched and sliced by my shiny blinds."

post from work

although i am smack in the middle of my coverage on a quite dull quasi remake of 'the river wild' starring morgan freeman as kevin bacon and the usually ever enjoyable, but here just paying his bills, john cusack as meryl streep, i just though i'd present more random snatches of new york life. i went home for lunch today, just 15 minutes away now, and cleaned some more of the furniture i picked off the street after me, g, and k. and his merry gang of architects had the sudden use of a pickup truck (very out of place in the city) and packed and moved k's stuff in a few hours late last night. i am now the proud owner of this random set of found furniture: a huge antique traveling chest (also usable as coffee table or extension of my windowsill), a previously bug-infested bookcase able to hold all of my cd's and books, plus two chairs, one baby size serving as a makeshift bedside (although i don't have a bed yet) table and one fifties style chair to go with k's card table. strange, one day there was no furniture and now the place is starting to look more habitable by the day. back to the movie...

oddly european view from my bedroom/fire escape

my view
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

the neo-classical tower has once been the home of cher and is now occupied by none other than sofia coppola. i'd like to think that when i stretch in the mornings, dear sofia watches benevolently. i also has a clock that lights up at night so that i know what time it is. the glare of the many-coloured party bulbs of all the italian restaurants prevents me from knowing whether it it is morning already or just the onset of twilight.
celebrated the new place yesterday with our first piece of new york street furniture, a soho filing cabinet marked paid bills. good sign, i thought. afterwards there were "big" wontons at chinatown's wonderfully achromal "wonton garden" and then my initiation in what is most commonly known as karaoke. i remember whitney, bon jovi, the carpenters (superstar, ahhh), a rousing version of "how is the weather?" by the turtles and finally that song made famous by tiffany. very silly, and weird to think this kind of crucial asian-americana is mere blocks away.
back to the atheist children's trilogy presentation now, will post more pics and stories of tomorrow's amazing quadruple bill of four tet, manitoba/caribou, junior boys, and the russian futurists. also mere blocks away from the place i artfully decorated with pictures of mexican films and sites of celebrity deaths and now dare to start calling home. as ever, f.

untitled roof access

DSCF0788
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

it's the war of the limos and extended hummers every weekend night on mulberry street

the war of the limos
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

the still empty, empty hallway that ends in my bedroom

empty hallway
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

a peephole to apt. 18

peephole
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.

water towers? tanks? reservoirs? anyway, essential view material.

DSCF0792
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.