OMG, these Chinese shorts are stroking out!

When I was little I used to think that “pretty” was spelled “pritty” because that’s how it was written on my fashion sweater from my Taiwanese grandma. Little did I know that Asian products are the foulest place to learn English spelling and grammar. The *essence* of America talk is enough. Then it’s relly orkay if is not quite rite. Is horse cake Tuessday cool still!

Behold the products of western love and post-WWII America-worship. Clothes, bags, stores, and snacks are named for some slaughtered English phrase to be cooler or more credible. It’s a little piece of the exotic west printed on a pencil case, kind of like Chinese characters tattoo’d on a white guy. Who’s safer there…

Well I love me some good Engrish. It makes me laugh long time. If you’re not near any Chinatown shorts, you can go to Engrish.com to get your fix of the English language remixed by my yellow peoples. They either don’t get it quite right (”No smorking”), do their own better take (”Little grass is having rest, please dont disturb them”), or they’re in some other place (”Grandpa Fuckin Spaceshuttle”). Good times for everyone, everywhore.

Hahaha and like that, it’s… so good… Garfield minus Garfield (thanks James).

I was in City Hall yesterday to check out the final public hearing for the big Con Edison waterfront project near the UN. My friend Matt works for SOM, one of the architecture firms involved in the project, and we anticipated a good chair-throwing, vegetable-tossing, community-versus-developer bloodbath.

There was some gavel-pounding, but overall, it was pretty docile so I started staring at the ceiling… and misread a grandly-framed quote by George Washington. That is some heinous text formatting. I see what you were trying to do with the justified text, but no, no no, this is the time for a good ragged-right that won’t split your money word. The graphic design police are calling you out, City Hall sign maker, ya oh snap watch out…

Wow. That’s the way we do business-casual on Canal Street.

Yesterday’s winter wonderland snowfall reminds me of one of my favorite projects Object Orange, where a group of Detroit artists brought attention to the thousands of abandoned buildings in the Detroit metro area by painting them bright orange. Simple and brilliant.

Photo above from Woostercollective.com.

Somewhere out in the Mojave Desert, the whole family is having fun… I once had red wine ice cream and thought I found my dream food, but it tasted weird and wrong like innocence lost.

My Red Antenna cohorts have put up a Red Antenna music site with some of our recent tracks and mixes, as well as a few of our previous CD and vinyl releases. If you like minimal techno, electro, disco house, or krautrock, you’ll loooove Red Antenna. Listen on the spot and download truckloads of free hott music!

When James, Steve, and I drove around Italy and the south of France after our Grenoble performance, we passed through Monte Carlo, land of Baby Dior stores and Grace Kelly memorials. Her son, Prince Albert II, has his portrait everywhere, in the same way Americans slap the US flag on everything. Storefronts all display his framed face in their windows, which makes for dignified dioramas until his face is propped between red lace bras and a sexy butt photo. Oh you naughty prince you haha…

I never thought about it that way, but now I’m glad Americans use the flag and not Bush’s face. That would be scurry.

In a twisted way, I’m happy it’s so expensive to live in NYC. It means that a lot of people want to live in the city, and that’s cool. But otherwise, it sucks, and the way things are going it will soon be a land of the rich and some poor and nothing in between. Public housing and inclusionary zoning will open the gate for a few low income folks to slip through, but there’s nothing for the middle class folks like me. Rent is either $300 or $3,000 with no break for the medium guy.

This could mean two things: a) There will no longer be New Jersey and B&T jokes because the people who made fun of them now all live there. b) More middle-class people will move completely out of NYC and to… where exactly? Most are probably not suburban McMansion fans. Some will opt for cheaper big cities in the US and beyond. Some might do a 180 and live off the Montana prairie. But there’s another interesting new/old place that has a lot of potential… (drum roll)… the abandoned downtowns of medium-sized American cities!

Maybe that doesn’t sound so sexy, but it could be. Driving across America is an enlightening experience that makes you see the sweep and carnage of 20th century history: port cities, train cities, Main Street USA, WWII, white flight, car & suburbia enchantment, car & suburbia enchantment backlash (still in progress)… And now every state has little towns with little Main Streets lined with empty little stores for little rent. No one is there - but the infrastructure is!

Thankfully urban renewal didn’t bulldoze everything and we still have all these quaint, historic, pedestrian-friendly downtowns with mixed-use buildings and sidewalks and everything Jane Jacobs waxed poetic about New York’s little neighborhoods. It’s all there ready to be populated by cute hipster girls and funny poignant boys and corduroy’d academics and couples thinking about getting a dog and everyone else in Brooklyn…

My years living in Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill taught me I can draw a remarkably small radius around my daily needs. If I stop thinking I need to know I can go to 1000 restaurants at any moment, and if I knew Brooklyn was coming with me, I could see myself living a good life on one of these old Main Streets. They’re ready for us, ready for Round 2, ready to be filled with the tired, middle-class, huddled masses of New York.

I’m surprised this sign hasn’t been egged, or better yet, tagged and graffiti’d… A few months after 11 Spring Street had its big street art blowout, the scaffolding went up and then eventually this sign: “Three Unique Residences Starting At $6,700,000.” We knew this was coming, but I didn’t think they’d flaunt it. Note the writing out of every zero (and the size of the building that will be divided into a mere three units). Rich dork butts. To gawk at more million-dollar apartments and everything else that’s for sale, check out streeteasy.com, my favorite source for NYC real estate porn.