Workplace vignette
We’ve recently started allowing patrons to check out DVDs. We’ve got a weird mix of arty Criterion Collection movies, middlebrow “classics” like Star Wars and Chinatown, and then a bunch of vaguely sex/gender/New York themed stuff. I’m guessing as to the philosophy of our collection, but there is definitely a focus on films portraying homosexuality, running the gamut from The Cockettes to Queer as Folk to After Stonewall to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Anyway, all of the movies are very popular. Considering school’s not in session right now, I think probably fully half of the checkouts I process are for DVDs. While checking in some movies the other day, I cracked open the DVD case for Jeffrey and was confronted with the unmistakable smell of amyl nitrate: if not the actual substance, than one of those dirty analogues they sell as ‘VCR head cleaner’ at porno/head shops. Given the movies available to our patrons, and given the generally accepted utility of poppers, this is a baffling combination. The only conclusion I can draw is that somewhere in the stacks of Fogelman, there lurks a Jean Luc Picard fetishist.
Minor Celebrity Sighting Vignette
The Corner of 13th Street and University is now officially Minor Celebrity Corner. In addition to seeing comic book writer Garth Ennis (buying comics) and Interpol bassist/herpes transmitter Carlos D (picking up dry cleaning, sans holster) last semester, the past week has revealed unto me a forelorn Dave Attell, standing outside Starbucks smoking, drinking an iced coffee and looking as lonely as Charlie Brown on Valentine’s Day, and the next day Target.com star Craig Finn was walking along the street talking on the phone.
I normally don’t have the slightest urge to talk to any celebrities, minor or otherwise, but since I am so head-over-heels for the Hold Steady and I have a vaguely amusing anecdote — that I was mistaken for Finn’s father by someone at their last Bowery show — the urge rose within me, but he was talking on the phone, and the moment was lost forever. Until, like, this weekend at their show, I guess. But still, this is a weird concentration of vaguely famous people on a single block. Although Craig Finn sort of kills my “Minor Music Celebrities on the F train streak”, which was going so well with JD Samson and Jon Spencer. I hope I don’t come off as self-satisfied or starstruck here, it’s basically just trainspotting. Like trying to keep track of how many times I see a certain graffiti tag.
Graffiti Tag Vignette
What is up with the seemingly burgeoning trend of Compl[i/e]mentary graffiti on the subways? I always thought I understood the motivations of graffiti taggers:
1. They are vandals who are subverting the commercial messages — THIS MOVIE SUCKS, BOBBY BROWN IS A CRACKHEAD, MEAT IS MURDER GO VEGAN are all messages put with clear motive and malice aforethought. Sometimes it’s not malice as much as a certain puckishness, promoting a pet cause like smoking weed, or putting balls in your mouth. But clearly it’s some sort of message that the taggers with to impose upon the pre-existing one.
2. Some taggers have a message that is not directly related to their canvas, but is still a clear message. Often it is as simple as HEY LOOK AT ME HERE IS MY TAG, other times it’s someone meticulously writing FUCK THE MTA on every single poster at a station. Either way, neither of these messages are being broadcast by an unmolested Coors Light ad. Again, I can understand this.
3. The bizarre new trend is for graffiti that simply affirms or bolsters the pre-existing message. I first noticed this when someone wrote in small ball-point-pen block letters on a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy poster the words of encouragement “YOU GO JAY! MAKE THAT MONEY!” I suppose this, at least, was a message complementary but external to the message of “WATCH THE NEW SEASON OF QUEER EYE” but it was still strange.
Not long after someone started writing further information about the forthcoming PSP video game system onto Sony’s austere advertisements, including useful info such as its MSRP and release date but also filling in strange technical details about the processor and monitor built into the PSP. Either there was a very strange street team assignment at work, or someone was a big fan.
The latest spate of this has been someone writing RIP JOHN LENNON 1940-1980 WE MISS YOU on posters which promote a museum exhibit whose subject is a tribute to John Lennon. Adding that legend to the top of a poster encouraging people to go see a museum exhibit dedicated to celebrating Lennon’s life and career seems to be a completely superfluous gesture, one hardly worth the infinitesimal chance that you’ll get ticketed for vandalism. Did the vandal in question get worried that without their own emphasis, people would look at the posters and think that the museum piece is dedicated to saying “Thank god that Lennon motherfucker’s dead”?
There are other examples but I’m blanking. What motivates people to do this?
