unpacking at new place
created: Sun Apr 8 19:28:51 2007last mod: Sun Apr 8 19:40:56 2007
For years I have been telling people that I don't own much stuff. This is a falsehood. Maybe it was true in 1998 when I moved in to a tiny apartment on West 12th street, but it became untrue in the intervening years. My stuff has, in fact, expanded to fill the space it had.
Yesterday, along with Mike, Ben, Greg, and Jason, I gathered it all up (almost all) and deposited it here. Now I am unpacking. I am trying to unpack every box, and get rid of all the cardboard boxes from this apartment.
Some of these have not been unpacked in years. My excuse is that I have been living in an in-between state (not that it isn't my fault).
I'm in the middle of clothes right now. Pretty practical bunch of clothes. Only a couple of things that I will get rid of because they don't fit me. Also, two extra pears of cycling cleats. Took a couple of tries to get the right cleats. Maybe I can give those to someone with an 11 foot who wants to try clipless pedals without too much of a financial commitment. I'll post something on the NYCC message board as soon as I get somewhere where there is a connection to the internet.
Bicycles, I have many of. Old road bike, new road bike, tandem, old commuter bike, old English 3-speed I found, Peugeot mountain bike I built from found parts, a couple of frames, some wheels, various scraps of bike, etc. I will, I promise, get rid of one bike a week for the next few weeks. Ben is taking the Peugeot whenever I can get him to take it. The tandem I should be able to sell, as it's a nice bike that even a non-crazy person would like to ride. The commuter will be taken apart and the parts sold on eBay or on the NYCC message board. Anyway...
I still have a bunch of music-related stuff from when I was in to making music. I shall have to figure out how to get rid of that stuff. What to do with a distortion pedal and a tone control that I built? Nobody will want these things, though they sound really cool
It will be a good summer, I hope.
By spreading bikes around every room of this house, I have made it almost seem like I don't have too many bikes.
I am eating Pirouettes right now because I am hungry and I don't have any food. These came from the old apartment. I still have food from when I was not single.
Speaking of food, Fresh Direct delivers here (thank god) and a big order is coming on Wednesday. I even ordered salt. I have nothing.
No, I have stuff. I have friends who helped me move, and I have friends who gave me stuff, and I have friends who did neither but are still friends. Also, I have the stuff the second group mentioned above gave me. Among it, a lovely coffee grinder and some coffee from Gaby, and a coffee maker from Mark. Mike has donated a box cutter, my first house warming gift. My mother has given me a lot, most recently three bananas.
I will have a table and chairs in this apartment. I have not really had that for morethan 10 years.
...
Three more boxes toward a cardboard-box-free existance.
Apparently I have not thrown away any clothing in the last 10 years either. This may be too much information, but I just unpacked the shirt I lost my virginity in. That would be 20 years, and I think I had the shirt for a while before that.
...
I have bowls! I have cups! I have a white ultrasuede blazer! I have two navy blue overcoats.
I am the first owner of almost none of this stuff.
There is a lot of really good clothing here. I had a period of dressing differently than I do now, but I went back to the jeans and t-shirt model, mainly, because there were certain people in my social circle who would not stop commenting on the way I was dressed, and it made me self-conscious. Maybe I will try it again, because it was fun.
I have a pith helmet.
If they pass a rule saying that cyclists must wear a helmet, maybe I shall wear this pith helmet. It does protect one's head against falling tropical fruit, especially the coconut.
unpacking at new place is filed under brooklyn (2) .
Intellectuals
created: Sun Nov 13 22:24:27 2005last mod: Tue Nov 15 23:19:33 2005
I just saw The Squid and The Whale, and it was OK. It was well acted. Setting it in 1986 was unnecessary. I actually hate period films. What's the point? I'm sitting there watching Titanic thinking, "look at all those people in realistic period evening wear, drowning." Perhaps to Noah Baumbach's credit, not much of an attempt to achieve period authenticity was made. Where the movie really fell down was in trying to convey that the protagonists are intellectuals. It felt a bit ham-handed. Why Kafka? Because he's the one everyone is going to know? Kafka == intellectual? I hated that.
Intellectuals is filed under intellectuals (1) brooklyn (2) criticism (18) movies (11) .