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Bill Cunningham New York
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1766
For IFN tonight it's a documentary about Bill Cunningham - Fashion Photographer for the NY Times (and other publications).
Charming, engaging, a wonderful subject for a documentary - at 81 years old still riding about New York on his bicycle snapping pictures of people - styles, outfits that he thinks are worthwhile.
Out of our box and well worth seeing.
Garage Sales - Week 5 - 2011
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1912
Friday morning and it's pouring, I'm up early before work and on my way to the first stop - the Lighthouse Church in the old Women in Need on Horton Road. It promises great things, I haven't been there forever....
Outside it's a deluge, it's impossible to get motivated in this. All week, raining, pouring....
The wiper blades on the car, they're in need of replacing, have to remember this for the next servicing.
At the church, (not a church so much as a small bay) an assortment of antique tools, some electronics, tools, miscellaneous rubbish. I search, some small things, nothing big. Dealers.
Then back into the rain, home and work.
Saturday morning and the rain has stopped - there's a "parade" as part of the Richmond/Knob Hill community clean up, driving about the neighborhood at 8:00 it's not yet started, I find one, kid's stuff...
From here over to Scarboro, which is having it's annual parade of garage sales, a couple of walking sticks, picture frame, artist's palette, other small and useless treasures, it's not as good as it's been in past years - where the entire neighborhood was set up on their lawn, this year there's only a few houses and they're all several blocks apart.
And I'm missing treasures. At one, a giant stuffed pheasant perched on a log, Ju-ju dealer lady (English and covered with the sort of bad-handmade tattoos that make you think she either did them herself or did time in prison) sweeps in and picks it up for fifty cents...
I'm annoyed.
Now, really, if I wanted or needed the stuffed pheasant I should have asked, but it's one of those things you need to think about - yes, I need it, but what for exactly...?
But now that she's purchased it I decide that I wanted it very badly, I mean, fifty cents? How do you go wrong? And I think of all the things I could have done with it. Made it a perch upon my shoulder. Or there's this waitress at work, and it would look amazing perched in her hair....
And again, another sale, electric guitar, case, stand, amp, good condition, $75.00, while I'm debating a dealer sweeps in and takes the lot for $50.00.
I'm really annoyed, not that I needed a guitar, but for the boy (and he doesn't need another one either....) - but it's the PRINCIPAL, the PRINCIPAL...
This is how the day goes, treasures stealing away from under my nose, there are some good things - furniture, coffee tables, couches, other things, good, but nothing I need or desperately want, I think - week 5 and all, that I must be getting saturated.
And all the way home, stopping, finding things that I talk myself out of purchasing, plant pots, plastic organizers, video games, some days are like this.
This is it. Week 5 of garage saling, more or less a bust.
Crack Addled Squirrels
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2770
This is an old one, but a great one. Apparently in some places in South London (Brixton), New York, Chicago, anywhere where drugs is a bit of a problem, there are these squirrels that have become unusually aggressive in their search for drugs - having become, as it were, addicted to crack. Or, as I like to say, crack-addled squirrels.
Now there's more than a slight whiff of Urban Legend to this one, but it's been so widely reported that one can't held thinking that maybe, just maybe there's a slight grain of truth to it...but..., well, it's the media after all. Read with caution.
Links: The Sun (UK) - Squirrels go nuts on crack, The Guardian, The NY Times, Various YouTube videos on the Crack Squirrel Problem, Christine O'keefe Aptowicz performs Crack Squirrels, and finally, a seemingly irrelevant connection to Russia where they don't seem to have made the connection - Russian Squirrel Pack Kills Dog.
I couldn't make this stuff up.
The Jersey Devil
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1681
Forteana and Cryptozoology are interests of mine. Not, particularly, going out to look for Bigfoot or Nessie, but the folklore of it, and - in some instances, the mystery behind what it was people saw that made them believe or think as they did.
Like Ghosts or UFO's. I've never seen one, but I'd be curious to have the experience.
Here's an old legend - reported by various sources (none so convincingly recently) - The Jersey Devil. Curious.
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