I don't ride a fish, I ride a subway. Get it right MTA.

How many times have you been on the subway enjoying your kindle (ha, kindles, why do you exist? go away) when you happen to look up and, instead of momentarily looking at those other people around you, you're forced to see this fish?

Then you look closer and you realize it's not a fish. It can't be. Because there's people riding in it. And it's in the sky. Then you look even closer and you see it's not even just people! Look at it. Look!
Those are aliens! Then there's the lizard with that woman who's wearing a sun hat INDOORS (what's with people wearing hats indoors these days?) and that knight in shining armor who isn't even going to help that dude falling out of the back of the flying fish because he's all wrapped up in the PDA going on.

I mean WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Is this a commentary on illegal aliens? On people not helping people? On people making out with people? I know it's not a commentary on how the subway goes underground like a fish because for some reason it's FLYING. It's called "In Flight" for Christ's sake.

Chris Gall you perplex me. Consider yourself in the running for whatever the opposite of the Gentleman and Socialite award is. We'll call it the "Dumb One Year Old Kids Curate the MTA" award.

Even the Buddha visits the Met

For the third installment of our "The Met is Ridiculous" series we will take a look at this beautiful bronze statue entitled "Seated Buddha." Hello there Seated Buddha from Pakistan. Welcome to New York City. It certainly took you long enough to visit considering you've been around since the 1ST OR 2ND CENTURY. I realize you're seated and all but seriously we both know you could have gone on priceline.com and figured out a way to get here sooner. Whatevs. You're here now.

So you're probably one of the earliest iconic representations of Shakyamuni Buddha from Gandhara? That's cool. I guess there's 2319423750897 Buddha statues there now so you decided to come to New York to make it big. Good luck Seated Buddha considering you can't even get up to change the channel on the TV! How do you think you are going to make a name for yourself when all you do is sit there???

So you get to New York City and the first thing you do? Statue of Liberty. Not a bad choice considering what the babies of New York are doing to it. Then you probably went to Times Square and took in a Broadway show before ending up at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts. All fine and good except one thing Seated Buddha: YOU FORGOT TO TAKE OFF YOUR STATUE OF LIBERTY HAT!

That crown is meant for Lady Liberty Buddha, not you! What, just because you too are liberated you think you have a right to wear that ridiculous hat everywhere you go? Geez, I'm tired of standing out like a sore thumb with you. I'm no tourist. I'm going home. No, NO SEATED BUDDHA, you stay here at the Met. You think about what you've done.

And a word of advice since you're new here Seated Buddha: since you're all monastic and stuff don't fall in with the wrong crowd. [Readers note: this is a combination topless and Met article! Cross-genre in da hiz-ouseee!]

The Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art hosts Lady Robots for their Along Came Polly exhibit

In our second installment in our Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art series we will take a look at the Model as Muse installation. In particular this piece which features the dresses from the movie Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? That translates from the French to mean "How much aluminum alloy can you wear and did you enjoy the film Along Came Polly?"

In the youtube clip linked to above you can see that the plot of the movie revolves around an evil genius building lady robots to attack a defenseless igloo village. Trust me that's the plot. I'm fluent in French. And by "fluent" I mean I have excellent pronounciation when I ask people if they are super excited to see Spiderman 3. They pronounce it "Speederman" there which makes Peter Parker sound Jewish and that, frankly, is delightful.

However, evil genius, I have to point out that my friend Rio had this idea a WHOLE YEAR AGO. See?
She can even fly because she built a cape onto her robot body. Rio even got a Fullbright to pursue her research in Africa. Did you get a Fullbright Mr. Evil Genius? I thought not. I. Thought. Not.

Abracadabra

Abracadabra is like entering the beyond section at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I know. I wanted to insert that Family Guy clip here too. It's not online. Sorry. Don't freak out.

Anyway you walk in and are warmly welcomed by a vomiting sound and goo emitting from this gentleman:
Charming, no?

From then on you realize this is no ordinary costume shop. This is the one place I've found in New York City where you can buy a realistic tiger mask, chest hair, and battle axe. Yes, it's a legit axe. I heard it killed two level 7 mages. You think I would buy some plastic shit? Damn you know I know my battle axes son!
Look at how scary these masks are too! I think if there was someone wearing that panda one they would automatically suck my soul out like a dementor.** So if you are looking for some fire magic or want to own a samurai sword or just have a hankering for whatever this is
then come on down to Abracadabra at 219 W. 21st St. And tell the goo emitting gentleman I said "hi" for a 10% discount!

** Essential sidenote: the new Harry Potter movie is awesome and well worth fighting off dorky kids with scarred forehead tattoos to see. My girlfriend stood outside the premiere and saw both Kelsey Grammer AND Dennis Leary. WOW! One thing to do if you get bored waiting in long lines at Harry Potter? Yell "Expeliarmus!" at that kid in the robes trying to urinate in the public restroom. Gets them everytime.

Longest Line Ever for Marionette Show

Special thanks to our guest blogger David Perrin for so beautifully capturing this event:

Recently I spotted a really long line in Central Park. I'm used to standing on long lines for clubs and restaurants and Trader Joe's. But this line got me really excited because it led right up to the Swedish Cottage.

The Cottage has the oldest Marionette Theatre in America (that I could find). It was originally built as Sweden's exhibit for the 1876 Centiennial Expo in Philly, after which Fred Olmsted (hot urban designer that he was) moved it here to CP to function as a bathroom and cafeteria. The Marionette Theatre seats a capacity of 100 (three-yr old sized humans) so I'm not sure how the 5,614 people camped out on this this footpath were all going to get in. Rumor has it that a gaggle of 12 year olds were drugged by their parents and dragged here to sleep overnight on the sidewalk to be among the lucky ticket holders for Peter Pan the next morning.


I was somewhat perplexed by the current fascination in woody Peter and his stringy friends since the current production has been going since last October. The few drowsy line-waiters that I polled told me that waiting on this line is something every interesting NY'er should do before they move on to Minneapolis or Santa Fe.

Notice in this picture the ironic flute player serenading the woozy marionette fans. When I asked the Park Ranger about his beat he said he was supposed to be convincing people that Anne Hathaway was more interesting in 12th Night than Wendy Darling ever would be. As you can tell he was having no luck, not even when he tried an impromptu reading from the 12th Night script, because no one on line would even look at him.

Turns out that everyone was disappointed this particular day because the actor playing Peter went awol, snipped his strings and disappeared from his sleeping quarters. The note he left read, "I'm going to see the real Neverland that Michael built because it will soon be as overrun and as spoiled as Graceland. Besides I need to do more character research on kids who don't want to grow up - I'm beginning to sound a bit like Daniel Radcliffe in my role (yuck). And the Lost Boys are really pissing me off. I need a break. Back before Saturday. Signed, big Peter."

Goddamn hipsters

This hipster made my blog cry. Not me, my blog. And it is made of magic and computer parts I think. The fact that it can cry and me, who is 6590% water, did not is surprising and is probably only because I'm also laughing. And everyone knows the only guy who previously ever was caught doing both was this jerk. That baby is the perfect precursor for a very long rant about how one-year-olds suck at life. Deep breath. Not now. Soon.

Anyway this picture came from look at this fucking hipster which is a very very funny site and will now be added to the ridiculous links section of this site. The caption for the photo featured above was, "The reason I love New York is because it’s the only place where a white person like me can dress this way and not get his ass beat." Very true.

I think all of the pics on this site are from NYC so consider yourself saluted lookatthisfuckinghipster: you are doing your city proud. And I hope your name is KiCCC. Or that you like sock porn.

Japanese Tourists

I just came back from a two month stint in Japan. Yes they do many ridiculous things themselves but the thing that baffled me the most was the number of touristy photos they would go out of their way to take. I went to Disney Sea in Tokyo (awesome, thanks for asking) and the longest line was to take a photograph with Mickey Mouse. And let's face it, Mickey's a doucebag. And hangs out with douchebags.

I've done extensive statistical analysis* and apparently New York City is the number one tourist spot for Japanese citizens ages 2-death. I imagine this statistic takes into account that one-year-olds are prejudiced assholes worldwide, but that's another post for another time.

Think about going all the way to Disney Sea (still awesome, FYI) and the one thing you really want to do is get a shot with Mickey Mouse. Now think of how much bigger the Statue of Liberty is then Mickey. At least twice as big right? Maybe even three times. So the lines there are probably two, three times as long because of Japanese tourists taking photographs. I wouldn't know about that personally; I don't think self-respecting New Yorkers go there unless they have someone from Japan to go with.

I get the going to major tourist sites though. That's all fine and good. Plus I believe every out-of-towner should have a photo of the Statue of Liberty because if you don't acknowledge Ellis Island then you're not acknowledging how all of our last names got messed up and that's just bigoted. I mean, who are you? A one year old (I should probably post something about them soon)?

Here is the mind boggling thing: Japanese tourists will take a photo of anything. I don't know what they are trying to prove. Will your friends back home not believe you rode on a subway? That you ate a meal in a restaurant? That you stood next to a tree in a park? I guess they don't have those things in Japan. Oh wait, you sort of do only it's not as cool as our's.

I can't fault the couple pictured above though. Those ceramic hats are too damn inviting. The MTA should just tile "Take photos here" in Japanese and get it over with.


* I have never done nor know how to do statistical analysis. In fact I'm not sure I even know what that means.