It is a hot day. The citizens of the biggest city in the world suffer with the heat-jitters. In tenement windows tired wives rest their stout elbows on pillows and stare blankly at the raucous elevated trains. High-priced blossoms in the show-windows of Fifth Avenue florists are shriveled. Subway guards, sweating in their heavy blue coats, mutter surly curses and push people into the hot carts. It takes ten beers to quench one’s thirst. The damn, insistent heat has placed blue lines beneath the eyes of subway passengers. The flags on the sky scrapers are slack; there is no breeze. Drowsy citizens stand in wet garments beneath the most popular thermometer in town- the giant in front of the Pulitzer Building on Park Row - and watch, fascinated, while the mercury climbs inexorably into the nineties. The asphalt in the streets is so soft that heels leave their marks in it. When two people meet one is almost certain to inquire, inanely, “Is it hot enough for you?” Summer has the city in a stranglehold.
- The Biggest City in the World by Joseph Mitchell
Currently reading…
I’m loving how Joseph Mitchell describes a hot summer day in New York City in his short story The Biggest City in the World. He wrote the piece in the 1930s, but his observations transcend modernization. A journalist, he tells it like it like he sees it, and he’s right (in this case). I was going to post an excerpt, but there’s a cool rain tapping my window right now, so the timing seems off… until the next scorcher.
Janelle Monae - Cold War
I like the concept of this video - she’s the focus yet vulnerably aware of the camera’s close-up. Right around 1:40 she breaks her lip sync as if something, a feeling or painful memory, has set her off. Upset, she tries to get back into the song, but her tears sustain till the end. Beautiful.
Chelsea to the Cloisters.
erinphotoaday:
August 20, 2010
I’m no gamer, but last night I was introduced to my kind of game. Limbo takes a simple concept - a boy in a dark forest dodging traps, spiders and other creepy things- and transforms the experience into something really cinematic. There’s no music, no color, just sound effects, and a noir aesthetic. It felt like I was in control of a filmmaker’s animation not playing a game. It’s a little macabre at times, but definitely something to see.
