This video was the perfect start to my Friday. The Video is by Fott, called ‘Motorcycle. Better than Breakfast.’ The title sums it up. I doubt that there are many red-blooded males out there who would choose shoveling down some oatmeal over blasting around a pre-dawn Moscow atop a cafe racer before morning rush hour. If that was my breakfast, I would eat breakfast every day. Anyway, check out the vid.

PS: My brother arrived safe and sound this morning. He also brought along his lady friend, who I was able to meet for the first time this morning. Today Reagan is modeling for a shoot for Vogue Japan, or something like that. I think it is going to be a good weekend.

In true form, Thanksgiving weekend was a banger. Contrary to previous forecasts that I had seen, the weather was fantastic–sunny and uncharacteristically warm for this late in the year. We were able to catch up with several old friends, including some house guests. Saturday I spent the day with some friends at Brooklyn Bowl, throwing strikes and catching up. I was also able to drop by Opera Gallery in Soho to check out an installation that I’m pretty excited about, by London Police (below).

Top photo: Reagan has kind of a little tradition to get fresh flowers when we have house guests. I think it is kind of a nice one.

4 day weekends are boss. The weather has turned to crap, and is supposed to remain crap (rainy) for the duration. I’m not worried though. Some of our good friends will be spending the holiday with us, and I’m sure that there will be plenty of good times had. I’m also excited about my good friend Michael Corleone who will be returning from Italy after several years on the lam. Wait, that is a different Michael C.. My friend Micheal C., who is coming home from Italy to visit, didn’t shoot anyone. I’m hoping to be able to kick it with him for a minute or two over the weekend, as well.

Since it is sort of a Friday, I’m going to serve up this A train poem. I thought it was cheesily appropriate for this week since it has a bit of a gratitude theme.

The rain magnifies everything on the A train. The humidity on the platform, once bearable, reaches levels normally reserved for swamps and saunas. That subtle stench of urine/body-odor/halitosis becomes much less subtle. On rainy days, nose-deaf strap hangers are counted as fortunate. When it rains, the slight annoyance felt toward the person who keeps bumping your leg on the A train, becomes tangible as their wet umbrella soaks your slacks and drips onto your brogues. On the A train when it’s raining, that feeling of relief to finally be headed home goes beyond relief, and breaches the threshold of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

[photo: Rush hour on the West Side Highway from the Vesey St. foot bridge]

I seriously did almost nothing. The only remarkable things that I can even think of, were seeing a movie and cleaning the house. I think that it was kind of nice, though, to have a little bit of reprieve sandwiched between two crazy weekends. Especially since the upcoming holiday weekend starts in two days.

In more interesting news, El Mac just released the print above. I absolutely love it. The piece is entitled “Prayer,” and is available at Moon Editions.

First of all, happy Friday. What better way to kick off the weekend than more photos of torn apart computers? Hahaha. I picked up a new computer on Wednesday night, and have basically been working on that stuff during every free minute, since. Hence not much blogging (or anything else). In the photo above, I’m ripping my old hard drives onto my Linux server. Luckily, I was able to save everything that I wanted from the computer that died.

After that, I loaded up my new computer with memory, a new video card and power supply. Once I got that running, I networked everything. It’s working awesome. Now I just want to get a RAID box, so that I can scrap the Linux machine. Maybe this weekend. The one that I want is currently out of stock at B&H.

Shifting away from the nerdy stuff, I’m pretty excited about the weekend. We are going to try to do our holiday card photos tomorrow. We are also attending a b-day party. Sunday should be full of maxing and relaxing.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t come up with a good A train poem for today. As I was flipping through my little orange book, I just felt like everything was sub-par. But I will leave you with this: As I was getting ready for work this morning, I asked Reagan if she liked Ewoks. She said no. I was a bit surprised to hear it and asked why not. She said, “because they are jobless little nuisances.” Something to think about.

Weddings, man. We hit a pretty good one, over the weekend. It was one of Reagan’s good friends who she has known since a very young age. Reagan did all of the hair for the bride and the bride’s maids. Anyway, here are a couple of shots of Reagan knocking out, not one, but two looks for the bride on her special day. Great times were had by all. I had never been to Charlotte before.

Charlotte has been pretty dope, so far. Getting to the airport last night/the flight, was hellish. I mean, that is the only way to describe it. Finally, at long last we arrived in Charlotte. We met up with Reagan’s childhood friend, Deanna at the airport. We took the city bus from the airport, which was pretty awesome. After checking in to the hotel, we hit up a place called Carolina Ale House. Wings, nachos, etc.. Apparently it is a chain, down here (in the south). So dope.

Reagan has been doing pre-wedding stuff all day and I? Have been bowling (self P, above) and shopping by myself (and loving it).

Next chapter: is everyone ready for the next A train poem? Ok, that is entirely too much build up. No photo of the train to accompany this poem.

Did you ever notice how similar are the words “commute” and “commune? Commute, commune, communism, socialism, subwayism. I hear that in Japan, commuters are packed into the cars using a large bamboo staff. They are compressed to tightly that one could sleep while standing. Commute, compress, compact, contact. I think that I would like Japan.

So there is that. This is one of those multifaceted posts, where I delve into various unrelated, or loosely related topics. Next topic: Veteran’s day

Some might find it slightly ironic that I’m posting a photo of my paternal grandfather during WWII (bottom left), directly below a paragraph about liking Japan. But, dude, isn’t that kind of amazing? two generations back, sentiments of xenophobia directed towards Japan were common place because of the war. In current times, our hearts bled for those same individuals in the wake of earthquake/tsunami devastation. Can you imagine a world where Americans generally love and empathize with Afghanistan. I don’t have any sort of agenda. I’m just putting that out there.

I have serious respect for all our our enlisted men, past present and future. I’m sure that I will never be able to comprehend exactly how much our country is indebted to our servicemen.

Have a great weekend.

It is always nice to have a Friday on Thursday. This evening we are jumping a flight for Charlotte, to attend a wedding. It should be a pretty nice time. In addition to being excited about the actual wedding and ancillary events, it is going to be really cool to catch up with so many friends that we haven’t see for several years. I’m taking my small computer with me, and hoping to be able to drop in a couple of posts along the way. Have a great weekend!

[the photo has absolutely nothing to do with this post]

Oh man, I love this race. There has been so much going on in my personal life lately that I never really had a chance to get excited about the race this year. In fact, I even considered sitting it out, especially after the crazy weather the previous weekend. Thanks to some good friends’ motivational pep talks, I showed up yesterday morning with my running sneaks on. I’m so glad that I did.

I rode down to the SI ferry with my same friends that I ran Chicago with. There was some drama with the car service. But that was really the only setback of the morning. By the time we arrived in Staten Island and boarded the buses for Verazzano Bridge, the sun was already coming over the horizon, and I could tell the weather was going to be phenomenal.

My friend Becca agreed to run with me. Which was very gracious of her, considering that She tends to totally crush the NY Marathon. She PR-ed in it a few years ago with a faster time than I have had at any marathon, which is super impressive for such a difficult course. Anyway, it was so great to have her there, to chat with her in the staging area, because it gets so boring waiting and waiting for gun time.

It is always so exciting when you finally get up onto the bridge and can see the start line. Bloomberg gives his little good luck speech, and the cannon goes off. There is suddenly a sea of bouncing heads that begins pouring onto the bridge toward Brooklyn. It is the most amazing sight, ever. On my way across the Verazzano, there was a Coast Guard Black Hawk on my left side, along with a TV news helicopter. On my right hand side was an NYPD helicopter. They would fly right up next to the bridge. Coast Guard was waving through the open side door. I waved back, of course. Hehe.

Becca and I kept a nice comfortable pace just under 8 minute miles through all of Brooklyn and Queens. We even tackled the Queensboro Bridge with a pretty good pace (mostly thanks to Becca). Once we made it into Manhattan and started to charge up 1st Avenue, I began to struggle. Thankfully, Becca was really good about not letting me slow down much (even though I really wanted to). By mile 17, I was really wishing that I had brought some energy gels with me. Thankfully at mile 18 they were handing them out. But, by the 20k mark, I was really losing steam and thankfully Becca didn’t let me slow her down anymore. I watch her fade into the crowd of runners in front of me. Around mile 20 the energy gel started to kick in, and I was feeling a little bit spry again.

As I was coming off of the bridge into the Bronx, without warning, my left hamstring cramped up really hard. Like, so hard, I was worried that my race might be over. I hobbled over to the sidewalk (without tripping anyone, thk gdnss), and stretched it out for a few minutes. It ended up costing me. That mile was a 12 minute mile, hahaha. From then on, I knew that I wasn’t going to get any sort of amazing time, so I just settled in at a 10 minute mile and enjoyed the home stretch. It was almost existential. I stopped looking at the pace clocks, and my watch, and just enjoyed the crowd. I crossed the finish line at the same time as Jack Waitz, husband of the late Grete Waitz.

Thank you so much to everyone who provided encouragement to me about this race. Also thanks to everyone who tracked me, and came out to cheer. I saw one of Reagan’s hair models, out cheering twice! Hahaha. It was pretty awesome. Can’t wait to do it again next year. Here is a link to my Garmin stats.

Well, the big news around these parts, is the freak snow storm that showed up on Saturday (view from our fire escape, above). New Yorkers love to complain. I think that snow might be one of their favorite things to complain about. This is especially true, when we get so much of it, so early. It snowed enough that the Sunday morning race I was supposed to run, was cancelled. I was very grateful for that. I was not looking forward to waking up before dawn to run outside in those conditions.

Sunday we did venture out. Reagan is reviewing a new point and shoot camera for some of her blog stuff. I decided to bring it along and test it out. We shot the video below using it. The camera is a Canon ELPH 300HS. It shoots full 1080p, which is pretty cool. As you can see in the first part of the vid, there is a little bit of jelly, if the cam isn’t held fairly steady. But the auto exposure/white balance definitely rival those on the other point and shoot video cams I have used, like the Flip and Kodak play sport. Enjoy the vid, and have a Great week!