It’s not unusual for the rich to have weird parties, but in New York those parties are stranger than most.  On Tuesday, artist Julian Schnabel was honored at a party at an abandoned sugar refinery: the Domino Sugar Factory. The factory has lain abandoned under the Brooklyn half of the Williamsburg Bridge for ten years, [...]

read more from this topic.....

On January 25th, three days after his 85th birthday, legendary artist Shozo Shimamoto died of heart failure. A memorial event titled Shozo-ism was held at Hotel Novotel Koshien, Osaka West in Japan on March 13th. Another memorial is ongoing. Quoting Shozo’s first son, Takashi Shimamoto “please visit Shozo’s soul, he would be so excited to [...]

read more from this topic.....

Canadian photographer Michael Ernest Sweet writes about street photography and the tremendous challenge of achieving uniqueness and independent style.

read more from this topic.....

Street photography is abound these days, but good stuff can be harder to find. Enter Markus Hartel. Markus is a New York based street photographer who produces some truly stunning work. He also photographs in color, which is rare when it comes to street photography. His images are memorable and unique. I sat down with [...]

read more from this topic.....

Welcome to the First Virtual Church of Our Lord and Savior, Steve Jobs. As you enter the sanctuary, please do not make eye contact with anyone. Keep your eyes focused on the screen of the mobile device of your choice. We are relevant and practice diversity here, which is easy since no one will even [...]

read more from this topic.....

It was bound to happen. I had already been in New York City for a couple of weeks and planned to spend the rest of the summer working the streets. As a street photographer, Times Square is a natural draw. So, Times Square is where I began and that’s where it happened. First, a flash [...]

read more from this topic.....

That’s the title of an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the results of a new study on how school vouchers affect their recipients. President Barack Obama last month signed an executive order promising to "improve outcomes and advance educational opportunities for African Americans." The order instructs federal agencies to "promote, encourage, and undertake [...]

read more from this topic.....

“So JFK is going to be the new president. Right? Not so fast. Some goober decides to drive up to the Kennedy compound with dynamite in his car….” I have a long memory, so I’m still unwilling to bet that Mitt Romney will win or keep the Republican nomination, much less the election. I know [...]

read more from this topic.....

I’ve always been a little nervous of those elevators where you have to manually open the door. They creep me out. But, it was nearly one hundred degrees and Gramercy Typewriter was on four. In the end, I would take the elevator. And, I’d end up with a newly refurbished Olivetti Lettera 22. In this [...]

read more from this topic.....

The most famous death from “friendly fire” was the accidental shooting of Stonewall Jackson by one of his own men in May 1863. His death had serious consequences, since he no longer was there to be Lee’s “eyes and ears” when, a few weeks later, the Confederate patrol looking for shoes stumbled on to the [...]

read more from this topic.....

This year’s presidential campaign has been going on forever, and it still has five months to go. But silly season is here: The dog days of summer are still to come, but we already see the campaign going to the dogs. First, we had Romney putting his carsick dog on the top of the car, [...]

read more from this topic.....

Yes, contest fans. You too can win a free trip to New York City, and a dinner with the President, the first lady, a snotty British editoress from Vogue magazine (what, no good American gay fashion editor to tell us what to wear?) and someone named Sarah Jessica Parker (who is so thin it looks [...]

read more from this topic.....

A recently launched Save Voice of America Tibetan Radio website (www.savevoatibetanradio.com) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/savevoatibetan) urge supporters to contact their congressmen with a message to oppose elimination of Voice of America Tibetan radio by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal government agency which oversees VOA broadcasts and wants to silence VOA [...]

read more from this topic.....

There have to be clowns. Without them, we might cry a river during election years. Pinching your nose while voting brings tears to the eyes of many. So send in the clowns. Or at least– a really sharp comedy. Some clarification as to what counts as comic. The Mitt/Newt/Rick Show and MSM’s Fist Pump 4 [...]

read more from this topic.....

While down with the flu in January, I read a lot of Richard Stark. Aka Donald Westlake. A pile of volumes from Stark/Westlake’s Parker series towered on my nightstand. The adventures and misadventures of Parker, an ultra cold hearted professional thief, were the perfect antidote to fever. The late Donald Westlake grew up in Albany, [...]

read more from this topic.....

“Traumatic grief, with its unanswered questions, its numbing shock, its horror, its ability to sear disturbing images into our souls that cannot be erased by sleep or by time–this process follows the same general path both for persons and groups.” When 12:30 struck, none of us fourth graders knew that our young president was being [...]

read more from this topic.....

This just in from Hollywood– Jon Corzine, who until about a week ago was Top Dog in the tanking Wall Street unreality series My Own Private MF Global has been cast as supervillain Two-Face in the next Batman opus. Buzz sez Bat producer Michael Uslan saw the Reuters piece The Two Faces of Jon Corzine [...]

read more from this topic.....

Happy Halloween! Last weekend, New York Governor Andy Cuomo ordered his dog, Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, to have state and city cops chase Occupy Albany campers out of a downtown park in the Capital City. But oops, both sets of cops (and Albany County District Attorney David Soares) balked. Lots of reasons. Some jake, some [...]

read more from this topic.....

In my previous post, I wondered if the protesters on Wall Street had proposals of how to fix things, or if they were theoreticians from Nephelokokkygia. So exactly what do those Wall Street protesters want? A proposed list of demands can be found at their website. They don’t want much. Demand one: Restoration of the [...]

read more from this topic.....

Some of the progressive blogs are lauding the protests against Wall Street as if these protests were an uprising of the “PEOPLE” against the rich, and a copy of the heroism of the Arab Spring. Now, I am aghast at the Wall Street shenanigans as much as the next person, but when the president and [...]

read more from this topic.....

 The man was well until his wife baked him a “healthy recipe” from the NYTimes “Healthy recipe section: Fava bean and artichoke stew. He soon became pale and jaundiced, and it took awhile for the ER doc to figure out why the man was sick. He had an acute hemolytic crisis, where his red blood [...]

read more from this topic.....

While the economy collapses, the Middle East is on fire, and our beloved President seems to be as unable to communicate with the American people as the previous president, the news stories are full of a tweeting congressman. Jokes are easy to make about the problem, especially since the congressman’s name is easily mispronounced to [...]

read more from this topic.....

When the first message on the ARPANET (the predecessor of today’s Internet) was sent by UCLA programmer Charley Kline, on October 29, 1969, the message text was the word “login”; the letters “l” and the “o” were transmitted, then the system crashed. Forty two years later, the Internet is everywhere and rapidly becoming embedded in [...]

read more from this topic.....

Albany, New York isn’t just the seat of a clown car state government– it’s also a college town. And college students, when boozed to the gills, can out-bozo politicians. (Well, almost.) On March 12th crowds of drunken students rioted in the Albany neighborhood known as the student ghetto. The lads and lassies, most of whom [...]

read more from this topic.....

Remember the late great Tea Party? The grass roots movement that made the political establishment quake? For one glorious moment it seemed as if a truly independent, average Joe/Joan movement might be gathering steam. A memory from that halcyon time: assorted TV pundits telling Republican leaders that Tea Party people “don’t like you guys either”. [...]

read more from this topic.....

The NYTimes has a headline that questions if “Shaken Baby Syndrome” exists. Actually, the article is better than the headlines, but I worry that by trying to absolve the guilt of the perpetrator by showing the problems in diagnosing when and how the child was injured, they are missing a  teaching moment. What you need [...]

read more from this topic.....

And so it begins. Not with a bang but a brrrrrr. On January 5th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid down his first State of the State address in a freezing cold auditorium at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany. The space wasn’t frigid by accident. Some like it hot, but Andy does [...]

read more from this topic.....

If only I were Edith Piaf. But alas, I can’t say je ne regrette rien. Once upon a wasted time (circa late 1970′s and early 80′s) I hung on New York City’s downtown art/music scene. The scene never fit me, I tried to fit it. Which was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. [...]

read more from this topic.....

The headline Last week in New York Newsday regarding The Nassau County Crime Lab Failures is not surprising, given the Department response. Those following the Story noted that the Police Commissioner first responded to the Critical reports by “Transferring the Commanding Officer” This on the surface, appears to be a good first step, however Those [...]

read more from this topic.....

Sometimes a story is so local it jumps up and bites you. Such is the case with the stash of potentially explosive materials found in an apartment building in the town where I live. Say hey for Delmar, New York. It’s a mighty nice place. Delmar is a suburb of Albany. The kind of old [...]

read more from this topic.....