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Mom in the News 07.31.08
My Mom's in the news.
Or, at least, she's mentioned in the "More on Lieberman visit" section of the Miami Herald's "Naked Politics" blog. Last night, I took an hour-long nap. Then I ate some soup and went to bed at 9:55. This made me very happy. Bizarrely happy. When I woke up this morning, I had a feeling in my heart better than being in love. Aging is such a freaky scene. 07.29.08
Sometimes my work takes me to East New York.
East New York, which is located in the county of Kings, is one of the most rough-and-tumble neighborhoods in New York City. It has one of the city's highest crime rates and more than half the population lives below the poverty line. Still, to me, East New York is a place of unique beauty. Here are pictures I took during some of my past visits.
  That's all for now. 07.28.08
Most nights I set the alarm intending to go to the gym in the morning.
And most mornings, like a reflex-response coming from deep within my lizard brain, when the alarm goes off, I pound on the snooze button until it shuts up. This morning, Brian set the alarm for an ungodly hour, and it woke me up. I fell back to sleep immediately with my usual panache. While asleep, I dreamed I was trying to pull myself out of bed to go to the gym. When I finally got up and out, I realized I was at my parents' house, and I couldn't figure out how to get to the Prospect Park YMCA from Florida. And it was even more confusing because the house was under construction. And there were giant balloons everywhere. I finally woke up around the time I usually first begin hitting snooze. So I pulled my butt out of bed and made my way to the gym. The weather was pleasantly mild. Still, my eyes felt like they were almost scabby with the crusty-dried rheum of sleep. I walked through the door and handed the man what I thought was my YMCA ID. He shook his head. "Wrong card," he said. I looked down, confused. I had handed him my metrocard. This is a little interesting, because most mornings, when I do not go to the gym, and my eyes are still rheumy with sleep, I walk up to the subway turnstyle and take out my house keys. I seem to be forever one step behind in the mornings. I came home this evening to one of the most interesting messages on a postcards I think I've ever received. The front looked like this:  I couldn't imagine who it could be from, so I flipped it over. It was from my friend Dawn, who I haven't seen in person for something like 6 years. Dawn has been living in Boston almost since we graduated college. I hadn't even know she was visiting LA. I read the message, which looked like this:  It made me smile. Misery loves company. 07.22.08
Estelle!
Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' dies at 84
 Also, from Brian, Creepy Vermont Market in the NY Times!!!! 07.21.08
This heat is making me ill.
I so hate summer. Since Wednesday, Brian's had been getting home at more normal hours. We've been seeing a bunch of samurai movies that have been showing at the Film Forum. We also saw the Exiles and My Winnipeg, which were wonderful, and on Sunday, we saw The Wackness, which I felt to film about people trying desperately to connect. Brian thought it was about the summer he graduated high school and reminded him how he was the first person to discover rap music in Clearwater, Florida. We both had a good time. Brian found a "to do" list on the sidewalk the other day. It looked like this:
Our friend Heather was in town this weekend. We traveled back to the Upper West Side and had brunch at the place we used to eat together nearly every Saturday when we all lived in Manhattan. Our server/friend Fernando was so happy to see us, he gave us fun rum drinks in pineapples with fancy drink umbrellas. They looked like this:
They were very beautiful, and contrasted greatly with the strange sleeping man I saw this morning sprawled out on the A train with oozy dried blood running down his leg and pooling in his socks. In sleep, he was hugging a bicycle and he was wearing a bike helmet that looked like something a gunner might wear in the first world war. He had a courier bag slung across his chest. Everyone who stepped on the train appeared to be going through the same thought process trying to make it all tell a story. I had to turn away to stop looking at the bizarre leg wound. 07.15.08
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from UPS.
I couldn't remember ordering anything. I clicked on the link to see what was heading my way. The email address was mine, as was the name. But the address to which the package was being sent was the same as the woman whose co-op board memo and tax documents I had received. I thought about forwarding the email to debschwart1, but I felt it might ask more questions than it answered. After all, the package was going to the correct address. I haven't heard from anyone else looking for debschwartz1 lately. But Brian forwarded me an entertaining email exchange the other day. It went as follows: From: concert The report that Brian was working on came out. His name is announced at the very end of this press conference and his name is listed on the report. I thought that was nice. Though not, in my opinion, worth the very long hours he stays at work. Lastly, JM, of Heck's Kitchen fame conducts a heart-warming interview with the father of the lesbaby. 07.14.08
Or, at least, it was a number of days ago when I had initially intended to blog. I'm kind of obsessed with Photoshop. I like retouching my face so my zits disappear and I no longer have evil-demon eyes. I enjoy Photoshopping friend's faces onto other people's bodies. But what I really love is spotting the Photoshopping in big, glossy ads. My new glossy-ad obsession is the poster for the movie Hellboy II I know almost nothing about this movie, save it stars Ron Perlman as a big red man with one stumpy-looking arm, and that it was based on a comic book. And its movie poster has some pretty lame Photoshopping going on. I became obsessed with this ad one day when Brian and I were waiting for a G train. Because it was a G train, we had been waiting for about 12 hours. That's when I spotted the poster. I stood with my nose about three inches away and spotted one problem after another. By the time the G train finally arrived, I was frothing at the mouth. Let's take a look.  Here is a picture I took of the poster. Big red man with one stumpy-looking arm, no? Here is a detail of the figure from the waist-down.  His feet are two different sizes and coming from two different angles. He appears to have two left knees. And light is hitting the image from the far-right, from the center-right, and from the far left. This looks like some crazy-sloppy Photoshopping here. Am I wrong? Who approved this poster? Were they drunk? I went back to the Photoshopped pictures of the Iranian missiles. I actually didn't catch the fake one. When they pointed it out, I could see it, but I fear even super-sleuth The Diminutive Pinky would have missed the fourth Photoshopped missile. I have been trying to do a small amount of housekeeping here at debcentral so no one will mistake this website for a Collyer brothers-like piece of cyberspace. Thanks to Heck's Kitchen's lovely masthead collection, I was inspired to do something with many of the loose pictures floating around my blog. So I made this: Debcentral's blog's image library. Automated by Photoshop. Thanks again, Photoshop. Enjoy! 07.10.08
Here are some odd things I saw the other day:  An upside-down hanging office chair
 This makes me sad. But going to the Mets game made me happy. As did winning two gold-rimmed Stella Artois glasses playing bingo with friends Susan, Lauren, and Alberto on Monday night. And Susan and I went to the 2008 I.D. Annual Design Review at Parsons last night and I got a free egg poacher, a kitchen sink strainer, and some magnetic measuring spoons. I love free stuff!
Is this video really old? It's the first I've seen of it: 07.09.08
Brian placed a hand on my comfortered-foot to wake me up.
Most mornings, this yields one of two results. 1. I wake up.Monday morning, I jolted up in bed with the great fear of god gripping my chest like a tightly clenched fist. I cried out, and Brian looked at me totally baffled. I was incredibly confused and shaken. I couldn't even talk at first. But when I tried to describe it ... how could I describe it? Such dread. Such incredible dread. It felt like... It felt like... It felt like I had woken up late on the first day of school with a whole load of assignments due. I was shaking, and I made Brian hold me. To calm down, I just kept saying to myself, "I'm not in school anymore. I'm not in school anymore." Now I feel dumb.
From Heck's Kitchen, Bob has sent an important message Enjoy! 07.02.08
While you wait.  Brooklyn Bridge (Manhattan side, looking east)
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