Spotted in a shoe store window in midtown. I’ve seen a lot of Christmas decorations in my time, but this has got to be one of the more macabre ones to date. It reminds me of those witch doctors’ shrunken heads you’d see in cartoons and comics. The only things that are missing are lifeless eyes and sewn-shut lips.
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I fly out to San Francisco on Saturday. Hard to believe I’ve been living in New York for almost four months now. Time has a funny way of sneaking past you. It’s been an interesting four months, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I feel like a New Yorker yet, but that might partly be due to the fact that I don’t really spend much time in Manhattan. I’ve always equated Manhattan and Brooklyn with New York, and not living in either has me not feeling 100% New Yorkerly. Which is entirely silly, of course. Every borough is just as New Yorkerly as the next (even Staten Island), but there it is.
In any case, I’m looking forward to my flight back. It’ll be weird being in San Francisco as a visitor for the first time in eight years. Maybe I’ll finally get around to riding a trolley.
Probably not.
I’ve never been a fan of seafood, much to the puzzlement of pretty much everyone.
“How can you not like seafood?” they always ask, bewildered. “You’re from the Philippines!”
Apparently growing up in an island country means I’m expected to eat seafood. I wonder if vegetarians from Texas are met with the same incredulity.
(Note: New photo above was uploaded to replace an image of my buddy, Homer, as Kato. As it turns out it wasn’t taken by me but by another buddy, Tas. Though it’s a great pic, I can’t in good conscience put it up on my photoblog since I didn’t take it)
I don’t care what day of year it is, a clown walking through traffic with a baseball bat is creepy. Not so much in a “Pennywise” kind of way as a “Joker is going to blow stuff up” kind of way, but creepy all the same.
Experienced my first New York Halloween tonight. I was, to be honest, somewhat disappointed. Overwhelming crowds made it impossible to see the parade, and the sea of people made joining the parade even more frustrating an endeavor.
Then it rained.
We eventually just gave up and got ‘far from the madding crowd’ by making our way to a nearby restaurant to recharge. The company was good, as was the food and drink, though even that was sullied by the obscenely loud table of drunken revelers that hooted, whooped, and hollered anytime someone with a costume walked past the storefront. A lot of people walked past the storefront.
I suppose in the end I’m just not much of a street-partier when it comes to Halloween. When I lived in San Francisco I would stay as far away from the Castro Street party because it was just a big sardine can of bodies and limbs. I suppose I’m more of a house party guy, where the booze is free, the company is welcome, and there’s always somewhere to sit.
And it very rarely rains indoors.
Entry to come. It’s too damn late and I’m too damn tired to think.
While wandering around the Flatiron earlier, some friends and I happened upon a row of stalls, mostly selling crafts items, art pieces, and the like. One of the stalls was for a company called “Silly Puppets” selling, well, I think you can guess.
Needless to say I bought one. The green monster thingie on the front row toward the left.
I still haven’t named him yet. I’ve had a number of good names suggested to me, but so far none of them have felt “right.” Which is an odd thing to say, when you think about it. After all, it’s just a puppet. Why should I be giving it a name at all, let alone a ‘fitting’ one. And for that matter, what is a fitting name for a puppet?
We seem to have this obsession with anthropomorphizing the things around us. We name our cars. We talk to (okay, yell at) our computers. We feel bad for old lamps when they are left on curbsides.
Why do we do this? Is it an attempt to relate to the things around us? To make them more real to us? More important? If we see a stray wandering around our yard, it’s a cat. If we take it in and give it a name, it’s a pet. A member of the family.
I read a story earlier today that ended with a small group of animals dying. Under normal circumstances, this would be sad but little more. But because they had been given voices and because I had followed their exploits and partaken in their dramas, their deaths were heartbreaking. Even though I know animals can’t really speak and are not subject to the same dramas that afflict people, because some author had decided to make them more like people, it broke my heart to see them perish. The same way I feel a tugging at my heartstrings when I see a lamp sitting in the rain while sad music plays.
Silly humans.
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