Superhero Sewing Circle

One of the first people to take a picture with Birthday Girl took a second picture with her, after restoring some of her line work. Three cheers for Anneliis!!!!!

(last post on Birthday Girl, I swear.  I’ll start using my brain again.)

Yeah, well, I guess it was inevitable.

I have to say, I’m surprised at how premeditated the destruction was.  Ry and I both knew that the thing would get a mustache drawn on her, or a cock and balls, or other graffiti… in fact, we expected that and were surprised when it didn’t happen.  This thing, though, required the person to print out their little “Stay in Connecticut” sign, bring white paint or spray or whatever, and paste, and spend some time sending their message.  What message, though?  Clearly not a protest against street art/vandalism, depending upon how you look at it, since this person had to drag their stuff over to Birthday Girl in the wee hours to do this themselves.  And also, they very conspicuously didn’t take her down, meaning that they wanted to co-opt Ryan’s art space for their own, which is the weirdest, meanest part in a way.  You can argue that Birthday Girl was an eyesore, or a cry for attention, or taking up space, blocking traffic (all of these have been made as claims in the Gawker comments, which are full of petty one-liners about this subject); but in reality, this defacer turned an actual art project — loving and creative to some, lame and annoying to others — into actual trash.  The destruction of art and sentiment.

Birthday Girl was the best present because she allowed everyone who wanted to participate to feel good about the project for a moment or two.  Ry loved making her and was proud to install his work on the street.  I loved that she existed and the thought that went into such a loving present.  And everyone who participated (a lot of people!) got to be part of something fun, get their picture on flickr, and genuinely make me smile for almost no effort at all.  The worst part about this defacement is that it turned a thing that inspired a lot of different reactions in people into a thing that only radiates contempt and meanness.  They could just as easily have put up the “Stay in Connecticut” sign over her face without whiting her out.  That would have conveyed a similar sentiment.  But instead, this wasn’t primarily about the destruction of an art project; it was about a battle for attention, which is so petty, immature, and mean.

People have been asking me if I’m upset.  I’m upset that more people, including a lot of my actual friends, didn’t get the chance to take their pictures with her.  And I’m a little upset that something Ryan spent months on was callously destroyed in this way.  But other than that, I’m actually really happy that she stayed up as long as she did (we went out to see her again the day after we’d put her up, half-expecting that she’d already been taken down and gone).  She was a piece of illegal street art, and I can’t be too mad that something happened to her eventually.  I’ve got pictures with perfect strangers, I’ve got pictures with myself and Ryan, and, heh, I guess I’ve got a little legacy of my own.  I’m sorry to the owner of the building that she’s parked outside, because now he really does have a gross eyesore instead of a colorful thing of whimsy.  In fact, I hope the board actually gets taken down now.

And if you’re reading this and you were one of the people who took a picture with her, THANK YOU!  My birthday lasted a week longer than God intended, and that’s the ultimate present.

Check out her continued progress here!

Found this via my friend Alden’s site, which you should read anyway because that shit is smart AND funny. It’s an old Jeff Goldblum Apple commercial slowed down to half-speed so he comes off as even more drunk than he usually does.

Actually, the original commercial, the one that Apple actually unleashed on television viewers everywhere, makes him “seem” like he’s totally coked up:

Jeff Goldblum! One of our national treasures! (Sorry, Nic Cage.)

Can someone please explain to me the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org?  Every time I try to comment on a blog that’s hosted on wordpress.org (mine is through wordpress.com), I’m told I can’t comment unless I’m signed in.  So then I try to sign in, and I’m told that stellakevlar is not a recognized username.  The fuck?  The only difference I can see between their blogs and mine is that theirs seem to be hosted by the .org version of WordPress, but mine is the .com.  Can someone enlighten me, please?  This has happened to me twice in as many days, on newyorkshitty.com and ladypilot.org, in case you were wondering.

Thanks!

I saw Iron Maiden on my birthday this year. At Madison Square Garden. For free. It was a good birthday.

Putting words together for this ridiculous experience is kind of hard, made harder by the fact that the event was in part fueled by an illicit bottle of Johnny Walker Red.  But here are some stills and some video to help you out:

(That black dead space at the end was me trying to turn the phone around and make some sort of metal face.  Ill-advised.)

And some pictures of the various pyrotechnics:

Going there was fun and also, sort of, um, did that happen?  The best part was when the sound at MSG completely went out in the middle of a song and STAYED OUT FOR FIVE MINUTES.  Man, I’m glad I didn’t pay for my ticket.  The front man kept muttering about Iron Maiden not being part of “any fucking establishment” to cheers from the crowd, who were apparently unaware that all the backup members of the band were actually wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts, which could be purchased for a mere $50 as you were leaving the concert.

Amazingly, the audience at MSG were EVEN WHITER than the audience at the even I attended on Tuesday evening, my sister’s high school graduation.  (Even rich white suburbs have a few Indian kids to throw off the cumulative GPA.)  Here’s some video footage from the musical delight that was the senior choruses a cappella version of “Bittersweet Symphony”:

I hadn’t been to a graduation ceremony since my own, and it was (shockingly!) exactly the same as mine eight years ago, complete with:

1. best speech given by the class president, who was hilarious, actually knew how to talk in front of a crowd, and included the sentence, “Because what AP History paper would be complete without the use of Wikipedia?”

2. worst speech given by the class salutatorian, who was an unctious tool and would have done much better for himself if he’d stopped trying to STILL be cool on his last fucking day of meaningless high school.

3. even worster speech given by the class valedictorian, who, though her speech showed that she is actually very talented as a writer (”The people, places, and things that we will spend the rest of our lives with, we haven’t even heard of yet.”), obviously talked down to her entire class in an attempt to demonstrate her immense wisdom that comes with having a 4.5 GPA at a New England public school.

My favorite quote from her: “We, the Class of 2008, are particles, fueled by kinetic energy.  We are bumping into each other.  Soon, the lid will be lifted on our container, and we will diffuse into our new container… THE WORLD.”

Oh, and my sister won Class Clown, which is SO MUCH cooler than the gay “Class Writer” that I captured oh so many years ago.  I ran into a friend with whom I’d graduated, whose little brother was in my sister’s class, and she asked what I’d been up to.

“Oh, I’m applying to medical school,” I answered confidently.

“Wow, I just finished med school!” she exclaimed, as my sense of accomplishment shattered.

As most of you know, I moved from New York City back to Connecticut a year ago. I’ve written pretty extensively about the ins and outs of that situation, my happiness with having a confident direction, and my sadness and frustration with living at my parents’ place again. The past year has been many things good and bad, but something consistent has been my feelings of nostalgia for my old life in NYC, specifically to Greenpoint, the Brooklyn neighborhood where I lived (and loved). Every time I’ve gone back to NYC in the past year and found myself in Greenpoint, I’ve also found myself remarking out loud how much I miss it, this street, that bar, this store, etc.

As it turns out, my boyfriend heard me all of those times and this weekend, my 26th birthday, he gave me the chance to have a few more fun times with perfect strangers in the neighborhood.

He started with this photo (credit: Tara Leigh) that was taken of me in Greenpoint in 2006:

And from it, he made Birthday Girl:

Birthday Girl is my height (5′6″), made of wood, and wears the same sunglasses as I do. Her new home is the corner of Franklin and Noble in Greenpoint, and she has just one request of anyone who passes by:

We put it up together last night, and I really can’t wait to see if she makes any new friends over the coming days/weeks. I can’t even express how loved and honored I feel, how floored I am that someone took the time and care and energy… oh, AND that ALL my friends knew about it and NO ONE said anything to me is also pretty amazing.

If you’re in the hood, go check her out, take a picture, and send it to birthdaygirl08 [at] gmail [dot] com. Hopefully she’ll stay up long enough for some people to help me continue having what truly was the greatest birthday ever. Thanks, Ry… I love you so much!!

Update: It’s been picked up by several blogs already, including Gawker, New York Shitty, and Greenpointers. THANKS, GUYS!!!!

Update #2: Also, Gothamist and Urban Prankster!

I was at camp when we got the news that Peter Jennings had died, and it was really hard on me.  His face was a staple in my early memories (we were ABC news watchers), and when I was a little girl, I used to refer to him, to the delight of my family, as Uncle Peter.

Today, Tim Russert died.  Though it’s not quite the same as Uncle Peter, it feels strangely like I’ve lost family, or at least a familiar face.  What a unique position you’re put in as a newscaster - your face and your voice are part of strangers’ lives, their households and daily rituals.  I’ve never met him, and it won’t feel like this tomorrow, but right now it’s a little sadder than maybe I expected.

He was 58, two years younger than my own father.  I’ve said “I love you” to my dad maybe 5 times in my entire life, but this afternoon I think I’ll make it number 6.

I watched the Lost season finale on Thursday night in wide-eyed wonder and sheer, childlike adulation.

36 hours later, on the verbal section of my MCAT exam, there was a passage about the philosophy and writings of Jeremy Bentham.

WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!!!

(to the island, not the test.  oh god, please don’t ever make me have to take that test again.  if there is a satan, he definitely takes the form of a frumpily-dressed standardized test proctor, and he lives in a soulless room lit by fluorescent lights and the flickering of ten-year-old computer monitors.)

I recently had the privilege of watching “The Little Mermaid” with two youngsters who were seeing it for the first time. And, naturally, since then I have watched “The Little Mermaid” with these same two little ones three more times (as you do.) It’s no secret that I already love this movie; that I identified with it at an early age, since the pronunciation of my first name is pretty close to Ariel’s, and since we’re both self-absorbed, ballad crooners (though, to be fair, I’m an alto, thank GOD); and also, that I have every word of the movie memorized. I’ve sung “Part of Your World” at karaoke, and only halfway to being drunk, at that.

But, like everything I truly love, “The Little Mermaid” deserves to be subjected to intense criticism. Here are a few to start:

1. I’m really perplexed by the anatomy of the mermaid. Let’s start with breathing. We’re to assume that she’s human from the waist up, which means she probably has human (mammalian) lungs. Fish, obviously, don’t have lungs, they have gills, which work by a system of countercurrent gas exchange, whereby oxygen-rich water flowing in one direction over the gill filaments diffuses into the blood vessels, which then carry that oxygen to the heart. In other words, the exchange of oxygen is directly from water to blood vessels, without the need for respiration, a lung system, or a diaphragm. But we’ve all heard the sustainability of tone and volume that Ariel possesses: no way is that merbitch doing all that belting without the use of a diaphragm, or some analogous muscle to create pressure differences inside her chest cavity. But if she had lungs, at first inhalation of seawater she would not only implode due to internal pressure, but, assuming she lives in the ocean (saltwater), due to differences in electrolyte concentration, fresh water would rush out of her organs and tissues to try to dilute to hypertonic water now inside her lungs (not to mention the hypertonic environment all around the outside of her body), and all her organs and skin would shrivel up and she’d be poisoned by excess Na+ and Cl-.

What seems obvious to me is that merpeople have some sort of hybrid internal osmoregulation system, in which case, we humans should be doing our best to harpoon and dissect them in the name of science.

2. Another anatomy point: how do mermaids go to the bathroom? I guess they have some sort of anal opening in their scaly tail, but that raises another problematic issue. Fish excrete their wastes in the form of ammonia, which has high water solubility but is incredibly toxic to humans. So it’s unlikely that the bottom half of the merperson would be carrying around all this ammonia which would be toxic to the top, human half.

3. One more anatomical point: I’m interested in the social norms of merculture, specifically those that dictate the need for merfemales to cover their breasts at all times. It seems to be only the breasts, for Ariel and all her sisters don’t ever wear anything covering their shoulders or midriffs. If we’re to go by human culture as an analogy, this is due to the viewing of breasts as a sexual organ, that is, the vessel that provides milk to newborn merlings. However, mermaids can’t possibly be mammals! There doesn’t seem to be any possibility of live birth, given the lack of a birth canal and the fact that most fish eggs are externally fertilized (due to the aquatic environment). Thus, it’s unlikely that Ariel’s breasts produce milk. So why the covering of them specifically?

4. So Ariel becomes human from the waist down, and, since this is for the purposes of heterosexual mating conquest, we’re to assume that she becomes an anatomically accurate human female from the waist down…and the things she’s the most excited/curious about are her new legs? Highly, highly doubtful.

Still, on the whole, a lovable movie, if you can manage to suspend your disbelief for 70 minutes. Also, Scuttle has some truly hilarious lines. I always thought that bird was funny when I was a kid, but it turns out that he’s a true comedic genius. Oh, and the infamous “priest boner frame” has been removed from the newest edition.

Finally, a present made for me by the two little girls who enabled me to become re-well-versed in this movie:

The older one (age 4) asked me what I was supposed to do great on, and I replied, “I have a test on Saturday.”

Her: But why?

Me: It’s a test I have to take if I want to become a doctor.

Her: But why?

Me: [sigh]