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Understatement of the Century: Times Square is crowded.

Gay Japanese Men, Naked Cowboys and the best signage anywhere. Only in NYC.

Photos from Lauren Ciccarelli’s graduation party. Wow, what a large family.

Pete applied the fake tattoo with beer.

There is a certain sadness that comes with growing up, moving on, passing thresholds, etc. but I find it infinitely compounded by the fact that I am bound to the indoors during summer. One could debate which is worse, being stuck inside during summer doing homework and attending classes, as was the case during the last few summers for me at Drexel, or being inside working for free as an ‘intern’. O, the things I have to do for my art.

I’m going no where with this.

Today I discovered a really cool shop in Montclair – the London Grocer. They sell British food. Guess who was smiling after purchasing, and later, eating a Moro bar. (formerly Boost).

I can almost taste the English air…

Just some photos from the pool on a not-so-crowded day.

Went to the Dancing Goat Cafe yesterday with Mischa. Turns out it was a really cool venue and I can certainly see myself heading back there shortly. It would have been an excellent place to chill during High School, but alas, the bi-town center renaissance came slightly too late.

13 Hands, a one-man performer who was really more of just some hippy guy with a guitar, a stereo with some background loops, a good singer voice and a bunch of decor from his basement. Nothing special, good music though.

“Let’s turn our basement into a coffee house” -Mischa Perez-Fox

watching dancers move
on a stage with colored lights
I applaud for them

Went to go see Jeanne Ruddy and company dance last night at Drexel. It was a good show, especially Ann Reinking’s piece. Very sexy, very dark, very cool. I like cool.

Jason showed me his scrapbook from the last two years at Drexel and I was amazed at how organized and complete it was – Triangle clippings, ticket stubs, photos, anything else. It seriously made me sad that I haven’t made such an effort to document the last 5 years of my life, but then I remembered that I have a record of my life which is comparable – my website, this website. And so, I announce that I will be making an effort to back-log this site, adding old entries which span all the way back to 1999, which will then be searchable, and accessible from this site directly. It’s going to be a project, I tell you.

A photo Jason took at the last dance show. Jason, James and me.

G-Day.

And so it ends, as quickly as it began and with equal awkwardness and in classic overrated fashion. I have to say, the only odd thing about our commencement ceremony was that when we walked into the gym, I seriously didn’t recognize anything, the entire structure was rearranged including the bleachers, which I had always thought were a permanent fixture.

I will always be amazed at the two people who went through 5 years of engineering without getting any grades aside from A, one of whom is Josh Caparella, from my own major. I had no idea he was that intensively perfect, gradewise.

It is unlikely that I will soon, if ever, forget the speech made by that Masters degree kid from India. What a bad, bad, stupid, poorly written, bad speech. Geez, how the hell did he get picked for that, and why didn’t I apply.

The fact is, I don’t have much to say about it. Unlike high school, it doesn’t seem like crossing any sort of threshold and entering a world unto which we have previous had no vision, but rather, this was just a ritual through which we had to proceed in order to get things over with. In fact, that seemed to be the air of the whole day, “let’s get this over with”. All those damn names, in no sort of order.

My large criticism is that we were segregated by college. This was clearly not the way we had spent the last 5 years, we had friends, roommates, teammates, colleagues, and just people we knew who are from a wide variety of majors, not just our own college. Still, it took 2 hours for us to conclude the absurd ritual, complete with funny hats and cloaks and other stuff fitting for a chapter of the Harry Potter books.

Gotta say though, I like wearing robes like that, I forsee many Halloween antics in my own future.

So before I even got my degree, I was back at Columbia. It was bizarre going back this time, even more than in past years, because for the first time it actually felt like I was back in High School. Aside from the packed hallways, the long white t-shirts, the randomness bells going off and annoying fire drills, there was just the sort of mid-June air that I remember so well and teacher scrambling to bring order to a teenage student body that wants nothing but summer. I can relate.

I gave my talk in Mrs. Petrallia’s and she was grateful as usual. I do enjoy going back and talking to the kids; after all, they carry the Columbia name the same as I do, and I won’t let them bring shame to my school’s name. Plus it gives me a chance to practice public speaking and being strangely poetic and avoiding saying “um” while making it up completely. I like to play a little game where I weave in Shakespearean quotes without seeming blatantly geek-ish.

Went to Seldin’s class as well, helped out some graphics folk and chatted with the big guy for a while. I may go back next week and give a mini-workshop on web design, we’ll see.

I also had a chicken patty with cheese on cocoa bread. Mmm, Mmm, bitch.

And I got my first ever pedicure. I gotta say, I was kinda disappointed in the experience. My feet are still leather, just slightly more polished leather. In truth, they weren’t so bad to begin with.

Tuesday night we went to Ortlieb’s for perhaps the last time for a long time. I was a good time, lots of great music flowing, people just relaxing, crazy old jazz cats babbling incoherently. Good stuff.

We wound up at New Deck where everyone was 19 and drunk. What the hell. At least there were peanuts.

For the 12th and final term at Drexel, I made straight A’s. It comes as more of a relief than an accomplishment though and I feel as if this was something that was merely stolen from me numerous times before, rather than awarded to me now.

And, yes, I have noted the irony that this is the only term in which I did not take any classes from my major and, yes, I noted the pressence of 4 dance classes on my schedule. (although I only got credit from 3 of them).