During walks around this quaint little city of ours, I have noticed that there are many signs proclaiming various #1s — stores proclaim to have the BEST, the MOST FAMOUS, the CHEAPEST of whatever they are selling — without documenting an objective source.
There are 2 signs below: The first picture was taken at a street fair, and struck me as quite preposterous. The SOFTEST socks? Really? Is there a soft sock contest I am not aware of? Did these random socks at a random street fair happen to win it?
The second sign shows the somewhat painful wording that comes with brutal honesty …
Thanks to Allison for sending me this pic.
Thanks to Stephanie for sending me this pic.
Have a cool pic? Send it in to non dot cultured at gmail dot com
Shel Silverstein contributed to Playboy starting in 1956, wrote awesome children’s books, such as Where the Sidewalk Ends, and a song for Johnny Cash (the video of the song is at the end of this post).
For the kiddies, Shel wrote inspirational, heady stuff like this:
Listen to the MUSTN’TS child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -
Anything can happen, child
ANYTHING can be.
And then, for Playboy, he wrote stuff like Topless Town, a poem about a restaurant that discovers the way to make big $ is for the waitresses to go topless.
And, then, he wrote A Boy Named Sue for Johnny Cash! (which is CRAZY! I didn’t know that, and I’m kinda obsessed with Cash). Here’s Shel and Johnny:
‘Twas a really cool tour, where we learned stuff about Andrew Carnegie and the Hall itself– like that:
Andrew Carnegie’s mommy forbid him to marry while she was alive (hmmmm … Freud would have a field day with that one!)
That Carnegie Hall has 837 seats in the balcony, because Andrew Carnegie came from very humble beginnings, and wanted there to be as many cheap seats as possible
The origin of that old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice” was the following: Some violin player was leaving Carnegie Hall after a bad rehearsal. A tourist came up to him, and said, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” His answer: “Practice, practice, practice”
Cool, eh? Public tours start up again in September.
Want people to remember your name — at a party, at work, at a networking event, etc? Be sure to smile when you are first introduced. According to a new study, “behavioral results showed that the retrieval of face-name associations was more accurate and faster for smiling than neutral faces.”
I don’t know if you could completely see this ad for Gold Peak Tea, but you can see the large feet in the corner, right? The words next to those large feet are “The Way Tea Should Taste.”
It’s really hot outside. I don’t know about you, but I could go for a refreshing gulp of relaxing male feet fresh from the ‘fridge.
The ad was on the side of an innocent New York City bus, but it follows me everywhere I go. **Thanks to Allison for capturing it and sending it in**.
(Do you have an odd picture? Send it to non dot cultured at gmail dot com !)
OK, so the title of this post is pretty awful. Kids are great, of course — how could you not love ‘em?
So cute & innocent.
In fact, I once read that babies’ proportions have evolved so that adults cannot resist the urge to care for them: babies have big heads in relation to their bodies, big eyes in relation to their heads, and, oh, that sweet baby smell (well, um, sometimes)!
However, it’s scenes like this that make me think parenthood is a little like living under a tyrant:
I was on the E subway today, on my way from Manhattan into Queens. Across the way was a family: 2 little girls, a Mom, a Dad. One of the little girls — maybe 7 years old or so — kept on putting her feet in Mom’s lap, for her Mom to rub.
The girl would put a foot up on her Mom’s lap. Mom would rub it. Girl would switch feet. Rub. Switch feet.
And, of course, this scene rates a big ZERO on the spectrum of disgusting that that Mom has probably done for her daughter — over and over and over again.
But, of course, it’s all probably worth it for the cute ‘n innocent little task-masters. Right?
There’s a grass-roots movement now to do just that, begun by Dave Bruno. It’s sort of a backlash against American consumerism. Bruno documents such questions as if a pair of shoes constitutes 1 item or 2 on his blog and how many jeans is absolutely necessary at www.guynameddave.com
I don’t know how I feel about that: it’s rather drastic, isn’t it? I mean, simplifying your life by that much takes a lot of effort in itself — a lot of thought about what is important and what isn’t. Like trimming a bonsai tree, keeping your items under 100 needs a constant attention — a constant weighing of one’s possessions.
Might be better to go for a sort of moderate materialism, know?
Click in the box below for a video I made in about 10 minutes, with the help of my new favorite site called Animoto.com and members of Culture for the Non-Cultured Meetup who took pictures of some of the cultural events we have been on in New York City over the past 2 years.
Scroll down after the video to see how simple putting it together was …
And it was soooo simple to put together. You just upload your pics, pick the music, then the site analyzes your images and the music. And you get a cool video that the site helps you to upload to youtube, share on MySpace, whatever.
Gail was volunteering through New York Cares, an organization that offers people opportunities to volunteer on various projects in the community. She had a 10-week commitment to teach computers to the elderly in Harlem.
There was one woman, Ruth, who was having a particularly tough time getting used to the computer, until my friend stepped in. Gail patiently helped Ruth, and the two became close as the weeks wore on.
Ruth was attending the class so she could communicate with her son and daughter-in-law, who were stationed in Iraq. The family had grown while the war raged: Ruth had a grandchild who lived with his mother on an army base. The baby was born there, and Ruth had never seen him.
As the class continued, Gail helped Ruth hook up a camera to her computer. Ruth’s son arranged it so he could come off the battlefield and onto the army base where his wife and baby resided.
… and on the last day of class, Ruth looked at the computer screen to see her son holding up her grandbaby.
As many of you know, for the past 2 years, I have organized a large social group in New York City called Culture for the Non-Cultured Meetup. We attend cultural events around the city — theater, museums, walking tours, baseball games, and more — in groups of 20-60 people. Events are usually held 3-4 times per week. Afterwards, we eat together, because nothing builds community quite like sitting around a table full of calories.
Upcoming events that are already announced on the Meetup site are
And, this is NOT announced on the site yet, but we are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a self-guided tour on July 12th. The event will probably be officially announced tomorrow.
Here’s the exhibits we shall see there (for more information on each of the exhibits, please visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art website):
1. “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” which explores “fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.” Come see what Superman, Wonderwoman, and the Hulk wore, and how their fashions are reflections of art and culture.
2. “Pop Art: Works on Paper,” an American art movement that began in the 60’s and appropriated images, techniques, and materials from mass-media and popular culture and presented them in bold, graphic formats. Notable members of the movement included the painters Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann, and the sculptor Claes Oldenburg.”
3. “Jeff Koons on the Roof,” If the weather is good, we’ll go up on the roof to see Jeff Koons’ sculptures — there’s even one that looks like one of those dog balloons that clowns make — and take in the gorgeous view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.
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