xtcian

8/16/02 Can you get a

8/16/02

Can you get a sense of the stifling heat today? Can you feel how steamingly, scorchingly, achingly hot it is jostling down Canal Street around 2pm? If not, click here for the bigger picture, and try to imagine yourself in the bowels of downtown, just getting off the Manhattan Bridge, the pothole-encrusted, 3rd-world, car-damaging stretch of Canal looming out before you. The whole place smells like the bottom of an NBA laundry hamper, and you are already 25 minutes late for where you need to be. The quality of the road plus the quality of the ozone mixes the worst parts of the years 1885 and 2002 together into a post-apocalyptic bouillabaisse. That's right, kids, it's our commute from Brooklyn!

My nephews Sean Patrick and Lucas (along with their mom Melissa) were in town today, staying at our place, rocking on the guitar until late, watching episodes of The Family Guy pirated from eBay. Both nephews remain delightfully surreal, and it's fascinating how many tics, facial expressions and word choices they picked up from Kent.

my extended family also sleeps until noon, which obviously means we're all Welsh cave hibernators with little use for morning

We met them later today at The Half King for lunch, where Sean Patrick's friend Jessie told the story of their first short film. Called "Citizen Robot," it's about a misfit who befriends a race of feminine androids to improve his social interaction. I don't want to spoil the ending in case any of you end up seeing it at the Iowa City High School Film Retrospective, but basically, our protagonist frees the race of imprisoned fembots and all is well. Oh yeah, they couldn't find any girls to be in the film, and they really couldn't find any girls to be in a cage... and they couldn't find a cage, so they dressed up one of their hapless friends in a wig and put him in a soccer net. Oh yeah, the robots are also half-rabbit.

Well, the whole thing landed them in trouble with the West High School Art Club, as I'm sure you could guess. I told them that visionaries are rarely appreciated in their own lifetimes. They said that they'll actually join the Art Club this year and effect change from within.