Beware of Rust
May 23, 2010
I think this has been my longest posting dry spell since this site's inception. I'd love to catch up, fill in all the blanks, but we all know that's not going to happen, so let's just go with the flow and pick things up in a random spot, shall we?
I finally got my motorcycle dialed in. Before breaking my arm last fall, my bike was running better than ever -- purring like a kitten, as they say -- but the ol' girl is a bit of a drama queen, and if ignored for too long, she'll get into a snit. Needless to say, after sitting idle in the garage for several months, she wasn't very cooperative when I started taking her out again. Although she started fairly easily, slipping out of gear and stalling at lights lost its charm rather quickly, so I spent a little time this weekend diddling with the variety of finicky things that require occasional diddling, and now it's running like a champ again.
By the way, if you think I sound like a douche personifying my bike this way, my wife would love to hear from you.
While stopped at a traffic light on the west side of Prospect Park, a commercial van pulled up next to me, and a black guy in the passenger seat, wearing big gold Elvis shades, leaned out the window and said, "Yo, why do all the white boys like Triumphs?"
It sounded like the start to a joke.
"Seriously, yo. Skinny white boy at work rides a Triumph, too. I don't get it. The thing is, you gotta know how to work on 'em. They always breakin' down and shit."
"If you like to work on them as much as you like to ride them, it's all good," I said.
"Awright, man," he said, as the light changed. "Ride safe."
Honestly, I've been riding my bicycle more often than I've been riding my motorcycle. I've been riding to Manhattan for work every day, and now it's gotten to the point where, if I go a day without riding, I become antsy. Since Deborah likes to practice her singing lessons when I'm not home, I took the opportunity to ride around town. I threw my camera over my shoulder and headed out to see what I could find.
The same old stuff.
It seems like every time I ride through Williamsburg, there are more and more people. And not only did I see a million art student-types wandering around taking photos of random shit, but I saw not one, but two, full-on fashion shoots complete with location vans. I slowed down near the second one to watch the crew fuss around a pair of bony legs in black stockings. A funky young stylist picked lint off the model's legs like a grooming chimp while a hair stylist did her best to make the model's messy blond hair stay messy in just the right way. A shaggy-haired photographer prowled circles around them, shadowed by a skinny guy in torn jeans who struggled to keep a giant reflector disk from being blown off target by the gentle breeze. The driver of the van was taking a nap, of course.
Earlier, I had seen a girl taking a photo of a guy who was pretending to scale a fence into a vacant lot. He was well-dressed in a Williamsburg hipster kind of way -- skinny black jeans and a black blazer -- and I figured they were taking promotional shots to promote whatever particular project it was the guy was trying to promote. A band, a book, an art show, a poetry project, a party? Who knows.
Speaking of parties, Deborah and I got invited to some weird underground all-night rave up by a guy who sold us old Super 8 movies at the Fort Greene Flea Market. "Where the party is is easy," he said, "But when is kind of tricky."
He was excited to find us interested in his Super 8 movies, which I can only guess are not his top sellers. He was passionate and went on and on describing the various movies he had for sale, trying to talk us into this one or that. He held a small reel in his hand. "This one is great. Huey, Louie, and Dewy are going out for Halloween. It's crazy, really wild stuff. Scary."
We laughed. "Scary?"
"Well, you know, you'll get through it, but, yeah, it's pretty scary stuff for what it is."
He held up another, more obscure cartoon and described the storyline as something that someone would get arrested for if they wrote it today. "I mean really crazy off-the-wall stuff," he said. I kept thinking, hasn't this guy ever seen South Park or Family Guy? Then again, he seemed to be living in another era entirely, so he probably hasn't. Either way, I'm sure if I mentioned anything made after 1972, he'd scoff and wave me away.
Deborah and I left with a 1940s Superman movie, a severely edited-for-time version of Planet of the Apes, and a French surrealist flick from 1925 called "The Crazy Ray" that I've intentionally not googled to avoid spoiling for us.
Unfortunately, I hadn't used my Super 8 projector in several years, and when we settled in to watch the movies, the bulb was blown. Thanks to the internet, however, a couple of new ones are on their way. But a review of the triple feature will have to wait.
Wait, what else did we buy at the flea market? Oh yeah, the sexiest set of salad servers you've ever seen. Can salad servers be sexy? Totally. I'll post a picture of them, you'll see.
When did I get so old?
*Update
Here you go. See?
