September... and then October

So, the blogging has really dried up here at iBellum. But what else is to be expected, now that I have been sucked into the twin engines of work and school? Every spare moment is spent on thinking of shift routines and Petrarch's letters, profit and loss statements and More's "Utopia", disciplinary meetings with unionized staff and the themes and methods of Humanist Literature in the 16th century.

Really... when there is all of that, how could there be time for anything else?

But there are a few fun things to report:

1. Went to see Built to Spill again... they played "Perfect From Now On", and it was a fantastic show.

2. Celebrated my friend Ray's 40th birthday... and what a clusterfuck of wine drinking that was... I don't know if you're supposed to get that  hammered on multiple bottles of vino at a co-worker's birthday party with all his friends and family in attendance, but that is certainly what I did, and it seemed like we all had a good time. Granted, my perspective was somewhat skewed...

3. Snezan introduced us to "Underground", a titanic 3 hour film about Yugoslavia. Everyone should see this movie... they drink, yell, dance, lie, love, and suffer through 40 years of Communist dictatorship... and through it all they are constantly surrounded by gypsy street performers playing a drunken variation of the music "Beirut" is so clearly inspired by.... Awesome!

4. Bob Dylan released "Tell Tale Signs", and I think I might finally care to listen to Dylan again after a year long fascination with Neil Young. I haven't really gotten involved with Dylan's last two albums, and the brilliant 70's work by Young has taken up a lot of my time and interest lately... but this Bootleg Series always finds a way to share a new side of Dylan, and I like what I'm hearing.

5. My iPhone continues to run my life... I don't own it, it owns me.

6. As you can see from the picture above... I had a chance, after a doctors appointment, to bike by the MET and have a martini on the roof amongst a few works by Jeff Koons. A rare and lovely afternoon away from work.

And in the near future I will be attending a Dance performance involving a neighbor, midterms are fast approaching, and I am involved in a plan to actually take part in Halloween this year... the first time since I was 12. I will try to put up some pictures of that insanity after it all goes down.

So... that's all I have time for. I am now very late to work, but I felt a strong need to put something out on this blog. It's not very clever or well-worded... but its something to hold us over till I find the time and the passion to start blogging again.

Take care everyone.

August Recap

Well, its been a quiet month here on the ibellum blog... and there were good reasons for that. As the summer days began to fade into fall, a kind of frenzy over took me, and I tried to wrap my legs and arms around each day and struggle it to the ground and have my way with it. When such aggressive "living" is going on, there is little time to log on to a computer and comment about it. So, in the interests of world history, I've decided to recap a few highlights from the last month, in no particular order:

-Tapes&Tapes and the Black Keys in McCarren Pool Park

-Jessica's Birthday in Little Italy

-My Credit Card information was stolen for the first time

-Bob Dylan in Prospect Park

-Got an iPhone (and started to Loopt my life, rather than Blog it)

-Jessica's Softball team finished Second in the League this year

-Became even more obsessed with biking, and I'm about to ride to work for the second time this morning

-"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" was a masterpiece of a film... welcome back Woody!

-Teresa's, in Brooklyn Heights, was discovered to have cheap drinks and delicious pierogies

-Biked to the Astoria Beer Garden with Will, and discovered Miss Favela

-Watched them filming a scene of "Gossip Girl" at Columbia

-Finally started hanging out with our cool neighbors upstairs in 4C

-Welcomed Snezan to the neighborhood, and the hood is already better for it

Well... that's good enough, and I'm out of time. Peace in the Middle East.

rb

From Erotic, to Aerobic

At first, I think I'll let the picture speak for itself...

If you want to understand the picture, look below to read an excerpt from the New York Times article that accompanied this picture:

BEIJING — Clad in knee-high leather boots, spandex shorts and a sports bra, Xiao Yan struck a pose two feet off the ground, her head glistening with sweat and her arms straining as she suspended herself from a vertical pole.

“Keeping your grip is the hardest part,” she said. “It’s really easy to slide downward.”

Ms. Xiao, 26, who works as a supermarket manager, is one of a growing number of women experimenting with China’s newest, and most controversial, fitness activity: pole dancing.

“I used to take a normal aerobics class, but it was boring and monotonous,” Ms. Xiao said. “So I tried out pole dancing. It’s a really social activity. I’ve met a lot of girls here who I’m now close friends with.  And I like that it makes me feel sexy.”

A nightclub activity mostly considered the domain of strippers in the United States, pole dancing — but with clothes kept on — is nudging its way into the mainstream Chinese exercise market, with increasing numbers of gyms and dance schools offering classes.

The woman who claims to have brought pole dancing to China, Luo Lan, 39, is from Yichun, a small town in Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. Her parents teach physics at the university level.

Ms. Luo said she struggled in 20 different occupations — secretary, saleswoman, restaurateur and translator among them — before deciding to take a break. She traveled to Paris in 2006 for vacation. It was there that she first saw pole dancing.

“I wandered into a pub, and there was a woman dancing on the stage,” she said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

Those who embrace pole dancing for fitness are a snapshot of urban youths whose values are changing from those of their parents.

Jiang Li, 23, a pole dancing student; "A lot of people expect Chinese women to be subdued and faithful, that we should marry and take care of kids at an early age,” she said. “But I don’t think that way — I want to be independent. I’ve been studying traditional Chinese dance for many years, but this is totally different. I feel in control when I do this.”

-by Jimmy Wang

God bless fusion cooking, rule breakers and rule breaking, and cultural appropriation from all sides and in all things... and special blessings today on Luo Lan who took erotic performance art and turned it into a profitable aerobic exercise concept in a socially repressive country, bravo! 

So I survived my first crash...

There I was... heading down Bergen Street to get myself to Grand Jury Duty in the Borough Hall area. Just as I was crossing 4th Avenue, I looked left, and the van that cut across my path looked right, and we didn't see each other till we smashed together. I rolled to the ground, unhurt and full of adrenaline, and after we assessed each other we went our separate ways. It wasn't till later that I realized the back axle of bike was broken... but I walked away from that crash, so I have no complaints.

Bike riding in the city is a wonderful thing... if only there were no cars.

The New Me

Reading the NYT this morning, I found myself swept away in unbridled enthusiasm for a new sport... no, a new way of living.

In Adrspach (an area in the Czech Republic) there is a long history of real men living real lives... and the way they prove this to each other is not through the purchase of the latest technical gadget, nor through an ability to spawn numerous copies of biological self from the beleaguered wombs of their women folk, nor in the more typical fashion of participating in carefully modulated and commercialized and homogenized sports traditions like basketball, football(soccer), baseball, jai alai, football americano, cricket, etc. 

No... these men prove their truth by taking rock climbing to the next level... they climb to the top of tall rock towers, and then jump from one to the other, always striving to find the most difficult and most dangerous jump to perform... they jump, that is all, just jump. But take a look at this jump....

They jump when the situation is most dire, when the possibility for injury and death are most pronounced. This is no elfin-dance Triple-Jump like they perform at the Olympics... this is a jump of manhood. 

Boys climb the rock towers, and Men jump...

So... who wants to put their life on the line to prove themselves to a bunch of Czech adrenaline junkies and death-wish afficinados who have nothing better to do with their time than get drunk and dare each other into life-threatening situations? Will you risk it all to gain the socially constructed concept of "manhood", so that you can affix that title to the masthead of your personalized stationery/webpage for the rest of your life?

I'm on the next flight to Adrspach... are you with me?

 

The People Spoke, the Company Listened

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Robert,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all
the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the
next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

The Wyoming Circle

The Wyoming Circle: Starting from centrally located Riverton, going west to Dubois, to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons, up thru Yellowstone National Park, to Cooke City (in Montana), back down through the mountains to Cody, to Thermopolis, and right back to little Riverton.... the Wyoming Circle. This is a trip I first went on in 1988 when I was 11 years old, when Yellowstone burned and burned... I remember the smoke from all the fires just starting to fill the sky as we left.

I returned to Yellowstone National Park twice more in my life before this year, but I was never lucky enough to travel "the Circle" again. This time I was able to share this wonderful trip with Jessica. This time it was snow, rather than smoke, that filled the skies of Yellowstone. This time... I saw grizzly bears.

Many thanks to Wesley James Bell, who carefully organized and narrated this trip for Jessica and I, and for good measure, even drove us the entire length of the trip. His knowledge of biology, geology, history, and local lore proved invaluable and indispensable. It would have been little more than a long car ride through pretty scenery without his presence and presentation. Thank you Porkchop, we couldn't have done it without you!

Wyoming 2008