It really has hit me. I’m working in Manhattan, I’m up to my eyeballs in the Olympics and other projects. A month out, and it feels like I’ve been here forever, and that’s a good thing.

I wanted to share the sheer absurdity and tranquility that is New York through a series of (sometimes blurry) pictorials and stories.

People in New York City do smile

On Saturday night, I was walking down 9th Ave, around 45th or so toward Penn Station. Ahead of me was a huge crowd of people surrounding the opening of about 4 different restaurants/bars. Naturally curious, I went to see what the hell was going on.  As it turns out, each bar had the 4×100 meter medley (otherwise known as the “Phelps 8th gold race”) showing on their televisions. Lucky me, I had walked up with less than a minute left in the race. I stopped, joined the crowd and got swept away. Every time Phelps touched a wall, there were uproarious cheers down 9th Ave.  By this point, some cars had stopped, and were watching from their windows.

The last 100 meters of the race were intense in their own right. As Phelps fought through and touched his hand on the final wall, the collective crowd -  patrons, pedestrians and drivers all – exploded into raucous cheering and applause. Admittedly, I was caught up in the moment.  I jubilantly cheered, feeling I had just experienced a strange and unique camaraderie that would be difficult to manufacture.  It was over as quickly as it began, as though a work whistle had been blown, the crowd dispersed almost immediately. I walked with a slight spring in my step for the rest of the way to Penn Station.

Slightly aged, non-mutant, certainly not ninja turtles (in Manhattan!)

Later in the week, I was walking around West 50th St and 9th and I was astounded to see a huge freaking turtle walking down the street! The turtle was followed by a meek non-English speaking woman pushing a cart. She smiled, did not respond to any English, and continued walking with the turtle. During this time I also had the following dialog with a passerby “Whoa, it’s a turtle.” “Yeah, It’s Manhattan what do you expect?” “Umm. A turtle apparently?”

New York is beautiful

I may have mentioned I’m staying in Long Island right now. In my (very little) down time, I’ve taken to walking the area. Staying in Long Island has done wonders for establishing an equilibrium between my old life and new. I need trees. I need to see grass, I didn’t grow up in the city, so it’s just one of those strange things that may be slightly comforting on a sub-concious level.

I managed to find a nice park area that opens up to the water. It has a rec center, pools, and various other amenities. I found it to be a great place just to chill out after spending alot of time in the city. As the sun was setting I snapped this on my cell phone. (Translation: “pardon the picture qaulity, but the moment shouldn’t have been lost, so I took the picture with my cell phone.”)

Ugly Betty tows cars, people!

I’ve been working in the Tribeca area the past two weeks.  I pass Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Grill on a daily basis and I’ve had the opportunity to visit the firehouse used in Ghostbusters. But what really put a smile on my face was this notice posted on Monday morning this week on Franklin St:

That’s right. The third season of the ABC show Ugly Betty has moved production to New York City. Quite amusingly, the note reads “Vehicles will be TOWED to the nearest legal spot..” That’s great, they don’t actually tow you to a yard, just down 4 blocks! How will you ever know? Note the cones along side the street.

Raccoon’s love cat food too

Bless my dear Grandmother. She is something of a good samaritan when it comes to feeding stray cats and catching them to be neutered. As such she feeds a mini-colony of cats who come to her home on a nightly basis. Most of them are adorable, and skittish, some feral, but all definitely CATS. Except on Tuesday night, when her customers were a little less friendly.

Meet “Mr & Mrs. Screaming Hissing Raccoon.” No, that is not a two-headed raccoon. Rather it is two of the five raccoons that were chomping down on some cat food.  They were not happy by my presence and immediately began hissing and showing their teeth. They stood their ground, and ultimately I opted to leave the house from a side door. (I’m cool like that)

Ouch, I’m dragging ass.

I’ve been working nights since Sunday and it has put my schedule on its head. Actually, right now (it’s 2 a.m.) I have a little bit of a lull in work, but for the most part it has been pretty busy since Sunday. One of the great benefits of this gig though is I am watching many Olympic sporting events I probably would have missed otherwise. Like the pommel horse…

The last Olympics that I watched with any level of regularity was the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics and that was mostly because of my great interest in Japanese culture and geography and the debut of the Snowboarding and the Half-Pipe as events. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I’m equally as enamored with the culture of China.

Speaking of China, I have another post up over at The Great Nude.tv website. It is part one of a multiple series of posts that explore some of the contemporary Chinese painters as they relate to figurative arts. It is a great time to explore some Chinese culture as it relates to the arts, don’t you agree?

-M

This Sunday I will begin my 2008 Beijing Olympics work schedule which is comprised of several back-to-back 10 hour night shifts in Lower Manhattan (TriBeCa) – It’s going to be balls to the wall until the end of August. The work I’m doing requires video encoding for the Internet TV platform TVTonic. TVTonic has partnered with NBC to provide NBC Olympics On The Go a full Tivo-like experience for aggregating and time shifting video content on the web. There will be new video content flowing in non-stop, so it should prove interesting. [Note: sorry OSX and XP users, it is windows vista only product.]

In other internet TV news, I’m working hard to grow another project that is showing a lot of promise – The Great Nude. The site/show/blog are all centered around the celebration and appreciation of the figurative arts with an instructional and entertaining component.

We are in the process of setting up a regular shooting and post-production schedule for September. It is exciting to be around so many artists again. Anyway, In the mean time, I’m editing some of the first round of videos that are already shot. Here’s a quick snap shot of one in Avid.