I thought the idea of going to Detroit in the middle of winter was exotic.
Downtown Detroit
It would be bitterly cold and there might even be some snow.
Alumni Game, Comerica Park, Detroit, December 31, 2013
I dreamed of a blizzard. 
I knew all of this wouldn’t happen – with global warming bearing down – but kept to my dreams of icy roads…
Frozen landscapes…
Toronto Island
Airport closures…
Billy Bishop Airport, Toronto
In a world hushed by snow.
Union Square, New York
Maybe next year. 
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has established a deserved reputation for excellence in the arts – in music, dance and theater. I have blogged on many of these, including Grupo Corpo, Trish Brown Dance and Roman Tragedies.
Brutus absorbs the impact of Antony’s speech at BAM in 2012.
Thoughtful, sometimes even entertaining, the productions have been well worth the time and expense.
This, however was not the case in this fall’s highly-touted New Wave Series, offering instead half-baked exercises in esoteric nonsense. While my sampling is limited, having attended only four evenings, of those four, three were hardly passable – We Have an Anchor, An Enemy of the People & Hans Was Heiri and one – Bodycast – was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen in New York. 
BAM has taken a turn for the worse, indulging in this directionless, tedious stuff and, to add the insult, changed their ticket policies, almost blackmailing attendees into subscriptions. Bad, BAM. No.
And so we’re thinking of doing something different, perhaps subscribing to another theater or maybe even being more drastic than that.
I’ll be standing there thinking I’m faking it, just staring ahead, and I’ll feel like I’m just pretending, waiting for someone to rush to me, the poor lonely kid with no one to love. 
I feel like that when I’m doing anything, eating, walking, crying, anything, and I’ll think that when I’m dying too. 
That’s how I am.*
(From “All In”.)
As I understand it, there are two distinct choices in today’s New York City mayoral election. It’s either this:Â 
Or this:
Whoever it is, I expect it will be better than this:
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford finally admits, “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine…probably in one of my drunken stupors.”
Ofri Cnaani’s Moon Guardians opened in New York’s Meatpacking District last night. 
The More Art installation features four different personalities – an elderly couple, gallery owner, drag queen and butcher – from the area’s historic past.
Ofri Cnaani’s piece is subtle, quietly inhabiting a corner of Gansevoort Square, a busy place swarming with people all about.
It is a good place to contemplate, even in the chilly evening, and watch so many others race to wherever they have to get.
Banksy’s New York residency has been a frenzied thing.
His works are thronged by an adoring mob one moment and then defaced by angry individuals the next.
Jay and Staple Street. Wednesday, October 15
Jay and Staples Street, Friday, October 17
Jay and Staples Street, Tuesday, October 22
It’s an ugly circus, funny and not, conveying something we already knew: The city is full of idiots.Â
From the opening chapter of The Ark, Dee takes Apollo out for a walk after Hurricane Sandy:
I took Apollo out toward Broadway. A threatening row of generators, inert grey metal boxes the size of trucks, lined the streets, steel bars and locks, red electric bolts along the rusted edges, thick cables and tubes clumped out across the sidewalk, into doorways, droning fierce metal on metal. 
A misery came into me, a weighty nothing, the tininess in my head gone. I was worthless. I knew that. It wasn’t just death, the meaningless of that, my stupid realization of my impending deterioration, but the clear pathetic thud of utter meaninglessness. 
It was this street, this fleeting attempt against the waters taking everything back, the cables and machines, the buildings and walls, huddled in the sharp early light, waiting for the inevitable next. 
Apollo pulled hard to the garbage truck and pissed.
An internet job site recently sent me the following posting:
Good news! The Career Center has found 1 new job that meets your job alert criteria:.Custodian, Full-time Evening (Atherton CA)
Custodian in “Election”
Neither do I have experience as a custodian nor do I live anywhere near Atherton, California which, at 2,933 miles, would be 4-day commute.
Matthew Broderick in “Election”
Maybe the job market is tougher than I thought.
Workmen arrived at the corner of Staples and Jay Street in Tribeca to box up the Banksy. 
“Thank god you guys got to it first,” a Banksy enthusiast remarked,
The workman measured the width of the piece. “Oh, they’ll get at it, if they want to.” 
“At least you’ll slow them down.”
“You can never stop evil.”
AÂ Tribecian passed by with his Golden Labrador and blurted out sarcastically, “Oh, my god, it’s art!” 
The Banksy enthusiasts looked back, a little miffed, but shrugged it off. They continued to watch the workman drill holes around the Banksy work.
“Did you know that you can’t see an original piece of art anymore?” One said a little loudly over the sound of the drill. “You know how many times they’ve painted over the Mona Lisa?”
Having tried to take her pictures for some time around the workmen, a Banksy admirer finally gave up and confessed to her boyfriend. “All I got was a picture of that guy’s ass.”
A young family squeezed behind, carrying three large wooden crates of apples. “You’re pulling me,” one of the young sisters complained to the other.
Bansky is in New York. 
Here’s a map of what he’s done so far. Some worship him.
Others not so much. 
Whatever anyone thinks, he’ll be hyping it up in the city for another two weeks. I’m just hoping to catch Sirens of the Lambs. 
Although it might be hard to find.
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