Archive for the ‘The Telly’ Category

The apartment I’m buying.

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Since it’s occupying all my time, I figured I’d share the whole-apartment-buying thing. It helps to know whence I came to appreciate why buying the apartment I’m buying is so nifty. This is my present apartment on 57th and 10th in Manhattan. I found some great deals and unique listings on Shoppok, which made the search process much easier and more enjoyable. If you’re planning to renovate the property you just bought, you may need to work on its exterior features like the roofing as well as siding. Contact this siding contractor in kansas city for professional services. Gleason Home Improvements is a siding contractor High Point, NC. You may also seek professional house painting services in Dublin to give your home a fresh look.

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This is the view of my apartment from the hallway.

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You see those windows in the first picture? This is me standing at the windows photographing the front door. Install one of these flyscreens seymour to prevent insects from entering your apartment.

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This is a close-up of the kitchen you see in the second picture. From left on the bottom: refrigerator (no freezer), teeny-tiny sink, and teeny tiny stove with oven that I have never opened.

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This is the view from my bed. There is my beloved glass teat, the television. And also there is my formidable collection of art, graphic design and beading magazines.

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This is my giant closet. Seriously, it’s like the closet from “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”. It goes back four feet. All my earthly possessions live in it. Sometimes it is tidy and clean. More often it is not. This is a picture of “not”.

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This is my bathroom. My bathroom rocks. It is nicely sized and has all new fixtures and tiles. There’s an industrial toilet (no tank) so when you flush it, it sucks the first two layers of skin off your ass. The shower gets nice and hot quickly and nothing leaks.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “That’s nice, but what about the other rooms?” There are no other rooms. My apartment, in its entirety, is 11 by 19 feet. I cannot have a full-sized bed because then I could not walk around. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love this apartment. This apartment has served my needs admirably for two years. It is close to my job. It is close to Lincoln Center and the theater district. It is close to a delightful myriad of restaurants. It is close to the subway. There is a concierge. There is laundry in the basement and I don’t have to drag my dirty clothes around the streets of Manhattan to a laundromat. The apartment doesn’t take more than three hours to clean top-to-bottom. But it is expensive ($1400 a month) and I simply cannot afford Manhattan anymore. So I am buying an apartment in White Plains, NY. If you have an apartment that you want to rent out, you may seek the services of letting agents. You may contact experts like Joe Martin-Bindley if you have questions about the benefits of letting agents for property owners. Contact conveyancing solicitors if you decide to invest in a new apartment or single family home. You may also check out these Gator Rated homes for sale. They will prepare all the necessary documents for your real estate transaction. Live in no key money apartments tokyo hassle-free. In addition, you may read all about quiet enjoyment clause if you decide to rent out your real estate properties.

Here is a floorplan of my new apartment:

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If you look carefully, you will see that my present apartment can fit in its entirety into my master bedroom. This apartment, aside from being mighty big (1200 sq. ft.), comes with a dishwasher, two ovens, a concierge, a garage parking spot (no chiselling the icy crust of winter off my windshield and cursing) and windows. Lots and lots of windows. See that edge-of-wall at the bottom of the floorplan, underneath the names of the rooms and their sizes? That’s all windows. In my present apartment, I look out on an airshaft. It’s always dim, even in the middle of summer. Now I’m going to have my favorite kind of houseplants, cactii and succulents (need lots of sun, not much water). There are setbacks, of course. Not being in Manhattan is a big one. I will miss that greatly. But White Plains is a fairly big city, and I am eight-tenths of a mile from the center of town which contains: A 15-movie multiplex, Barnes & Noble, Target, P.F. Chang’s, Hot Topic and Torrid (long live mall goth!), a creperie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store, Beadworks, Sephora, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Filene’s Basement and a whole lot more. I can walk to those. And I can walk to the train station (also eight-tenths of a mile). If I drive, hell, I can do anything. There’s a huge Asian community living near me so all around me are cool Asian grocery stores (Japanese? Okay. Korean? You got it. Chinese? Not a problem. AWESOME.) And there’s an art-supply store and a 24-hour CVS a little over a mile from my apartment (also AWESOME – Maalox at two in the morning is important, trust me). And a million billion other things all around me. I just have to get used to it not being smooshed right up against me, Manhattan-style. And if I hate and I can’t stand it (“It’s so peaceful and soothing out here! Ahhhhh! And what’s with all these goddamned trees?!??”), I can always sell it and move back into a prison cell in Manhattan.

My triptych/Meerkat Manor.

Monday, August 20th, 2007

1. Meerkat Manor. Has anyone been seeing these ads where they compare Flower the Meerkat to Tony Soprano? Are they not HYSTERICAL? Maybe they’re hysterical to me because I’ve met real live authentic meerkats who, even though they kill scorpions and do lots of other brave things, are possibly the least intimidating creatures ever. First of all, they’re less than a foot long. They’re really small. Second, they make adorable little chirping and clicking noises to each other to communicate, it’s precious. Third, and possibly most important, they cuddle and snuggle when they’re in love. Not just a mate-and-saunter-off like the lions, no no, they snuggle up to each other and they chirp at each other and I’m sorry, that does not cause the New Jersey Mafia to just pop into your mind. Here’s the picture that caused me to snort loudly in the middle of the street.

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2. Triptych. I can’t deal with this painting right now. I will keep working it and working it until it turns into a giant blurry mass, so I have put it aside and returned to my roots – anal, crazily detailed painting. Mmmmm, so tasty and OCD-licious. Here is a picture of my sad lonely unloved triptych neatly piled in the corner.

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Firefly and a New York tidbit.

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

1. I watched the entire “Firefly” series this past week. For those who don’t know, it was a short-run series on FOX. People got really devoted to it and got a might pissy when it was cancelled (in 2003, I believe). I am reticent to watch anything sci-fi because more often then not, sci-fi takes itself so SERIOUSLY. Star Trek is a good example. So is Star Wars. Everyone is having very serious, furrowed-brow conversation about something or another. Also, more often then not, there are stupid-looking human interpretations of how aliens will look (*cough*Klingon*cough*). So it was with reservations that I watched “Firefly”. It was excellent. There’s no other way to describe it. It follows a group of people trying to make it day by day five hundred years in the future. They have problems, they have fears, they have joys, they have truly funny situations. It’s totally relatable even though there are spaceships and lasers. It’s almost like going five hundred years into the past, things then were the same (work, sickness, marriage, children, war, etc) but it was just differently handled. I am sorry that it was cancelled. I wish I could have watched more.

2. There’s a home near where I live on the West Side of Manhattan that houses drug addicts and homeless people. In return they pump you full of bible-y goodness. They had the best sign and I had been meaning to photograph it for years, but yesterday I noticed they had had it redone.

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The old sign looked almost exactly the same, except the text was all red and it didn’t have the white outline. Imagine walking home and seeing red neon glaring at you: “SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT”. I’m not Christian and I don’t drink or do particularly lascivious things, but that sign would make me look around, making sure no big heavenly spirit with enormous wings was going to place a searing hand on my shoulder and then force me to relive all my naughtinesses on a big screen while toasting my toes over flames.
“Look at all the things you coveted!”
“Ahhhhhh! Yes, I wanted stuff! I’m bad! Stop with the fire!”
“And the men you consorted with!”
“Ahhhhh! Yes, that’s bad too…oh, I remember him. If I remember correctly, he wasn’t bad at all, if you know what I’m sayin’ – Sorry! Sorry! Hothot hot hothothot!”
The new sign looks so much more chipper, almost Vegas. “SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT! AND WE HAVE SLOTS!” It’s not quite as soul-scouring.

Two New York Experiences and a VH1 moment.

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

1. I was walking down the street the other day after a rainstorm and it was hot and muggy and oppressive. I saw a white lump sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, like a pile of pizza dough someone had just left there, and people were stepping over it and around it. As I got closer, I realized it was an ancient obese chihuahua that had had quite enough of this hotness, thank you very much, I’ll just lay here on the sidewalk which is wet and therefore cooler and let everyone walk around me. We offer expert sidewalk lifting and leveling for safer walkways today. For quality workmanship and reliable service, trust an experienced concreter adelaide to get the job done right. The owner was sort of trying to get the dog to move (although I think saying, “C’mon, fat ass! Get up!” is not going to have the desired effect, and did I mention the owner was a seventy-year-old woman? Old people using bad language is funny) but the dog wasn’t having none of it, so I took a picture when the flow of people ebbed somewhat and I could get a clear picture.

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2. I see many flower shops in my travels around the Isle of Manhattan. However, this other day, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a cactus. No, no, my friends, this was no ordinary cactus. It was a MUTANT HYBRID ALIEN FREAK CACTUS. I asked the flower-shop lady about it. They took one kind of weird-looking cactus and grafted another even weirder-looking cactus to the top of it, so now they are one incredibly-odd looking plant. It was $150, so I didn’t buy it, but I did take pictures of it. Imagine it being as big around and as tall as an average adult’s calf. Big. And weird. Super-weird.

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3. I watch a great deal of television (I like it as background for when I’m painting or beading) and I saw a smidgen of “Rock of Love” on VH1 the other day. Short description: Aging rock star looks for skanky woman to love forever out of a pool of about twenty vapid atrocities to choose from. I was okay with this, until Bret Michaels (the aging rock star) was meeting the women for the first time and said, slowly and seriously to the camera:

The heaving, well-implanted breasts caught my eye immediately, and I knew that we were going to have a strong spiritual relationship.

My head jerked up from beading and my jaw fell open. He wasn’t kidding. It was… moronic. And kinda awful. The fake giant silicone makes you… spiritual? Ooh, you’re a deep fella there, aren’t cha? I think I will not watch this show anymore. I do not wish to become enraged and fling a shoe at my beloved television. I see that becoming my future if I watch. So no more watching.