Weekend Frivolities: Spring, Says Chuck, the Staten Island Groundhog, and More Signs of an Early Spring

We have some exciting days ahead in the big city. Today, the New York Giants play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. On Tuesday, another Super day, New York voters will go to the polls and pick their party favorites. And today's weather forecast calls for clear skies, calm west winds and temps in the low 50s.

"Well, he's a New York boy so he's going to be hardcore and real, and he seemed happy and that definitely means spring," said his handler Doug Schwartz.- from NY1 Top Stories, February 2, 2008.

Chuck may be right. Spring is near. That's not to say that New York won't see a serious snow storm around Lincoln's birthday. Many of the largest snowfalls in New York history have arrived in February, especially in the February 11-14 period, so I wouldn't be surprised to see several inches of snow again here in a couple of weeks.

Still...Chuck, the groundhog in Staten Island (if he lived in Manhattan, he'd be named Charles, in Brooklyn, Charlie, in the Bronx, Carlos, or in Queens, Charlene), has been accurate 23 out of 27 times. Phil in Pennsylvania has an estimated accuracy of 40%, so it's best to go with the opposite of his forecast. Yesterday, for example, Phil predicted six more weeks of winter, so I think it's safe to side with Chuck.

Other signs - This morning, chirping birds woke me up too early, and I detected some spring voices in their cackle (mostly starlings, not grackles). A pair of cardinals alighted on a nearby tree and stared at me through the window.

The forsythia is in bloom in Washington Square Park, or it was when I saw it a week ago. I may not find it again, thanks to the killjoys who've insisted that the fountain and surrounding area be torn up and moved. Do NOT go to Washington Square Park right now and expect to be uplifted in joy. And while I'm bringing us all down now, I'd be more overjoyed about an early Spring if I didn't think so much about global warming - mosquitoes, drought, floods, and the End Times on this paradise island.

My own spring awakening, which usually begins in early March, is often accompanied by a daily dose of Loratadine. Not this year. I'm already on Day 5.

I wish I could predict the Super Bowl and the outcome of the Super Tuesday races, but I'm feeling bullish about Spring.

Coming up on Walking Off the Big Apple: Further evidence of spring awakenings, NY party food, election coverage, more Raymond Hood buildings, Jasper Johns' favorite color, checking in on Chelsea, a NY Valentines Day chocolate breakdown, and more.

Image: Loratadine, one of my favorite things.

Weekend Frivolities: Tour de Bears, Real, Imagined, and Stuffed, of Central Park

Now that the winter solstice has passed quietly in the night (approx. 1:08 a.m. EST NYC), I continue to dream of hibernation. I have feasted on nuts and berries and slumped into carbohydrate narcolepsy, and I dare not disturb my slumber until the vernal equinox. But I cannot rest up here in the frosty north. Some rotund bearded guy keeps me awake at night, my obese compadre of El Norte, and the frozen tundra has started to melt under my den. I shall seek out then quieter caves and lazier company in Manhattan's Central Park.

Da Bears -
• Real live polar bears named Gus and Ida live in the Central Park Zoo.
• A Dancing Bear statue is near the Zoo.
• "The Bear Dance," a satirical painting by William Holbrook Beard (1825-1900) on a poster for the New-York Historical Society, is popular with young people. The painting is also known as "The Bears of Wall Street Celebrating a Drop in the Market." For more on this bearish subject visit the office of Bear Stearns at 383 Madison Avenue, or better yet, see Walking Off the Wall Street Bears on this website. Dancing bears, a street act in which real captured bears are made to perform, is a cruel tradition and should be universally condemned.
• The bears in the American Museum of Natural History include the Alaska brown bear, grizzly bear and polar bear dioramas.
• "Group of Bears" (1932, cast 1963), a statue on the south side of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is by American modernist sculptor Paul Manship.
• The Art Bears inside The Met include Leonardo da Vinci's "A Bear Walking" and a Roman vessel in the shape of a bear made 200-400 AD. I'm sure there are more bears in there.

The Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, Dec. 23 at home on Soldier Field. 1 p.m. Check your local listings.

The name Arctic is derived from the Greek word meaning "bear." Antarctica means the polar opposite.

Walking Off the Big Bears (!) will go into hibernation December 25-30, 2007.

Weekend Frivolities Holiday Baking Special: Freestyle Gingerbread

The image says it all. Rolling out dough for gingerbread cookies, I realized that the slab was nothing more than raw material for sculpture or a blank canvas on which I could apply paint. I looked at the cookie cutters on the counter and decided I didn't need them. It was time to get real.

It was time to get POP. So thinking about the most popular artist in the world, who is no longer with us, I pulled out a knife and started slicing through the dough. And then I thought, "What about my needs?," and so I made other shapes that spoke to my personal interests.

Decorating cookies is a fun artistic medium, especially with the edible gels and decorative frosting. The latter is nothing more than confectioners sugar, a little vanilla, a bit of beaten egg white, and food color. It's possible to make anything. I could bake an abstract expressionist collection, emphasizing the work of Franz Kline, or maybe just all Mark Rothkos. Those would be so beautiful. Or maybe I could do my own work and not be so derivative.

Anyone can do this. I used the recipes for both the gingerbread and the decorative frosting from The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne. The book is one of the best Southern cookbooks, in my opinion, because Claiborne was from Mississippi. Watch out, though, for the trans fat. I also tried a recipe for a healthier gingerbread that used egg substitute and light molasses, and though I didn't care for it as much, the sugary frosting canceled out its weaknesses.

Image: (in random order) Shoe, bananas, famous artist, cowgirl boots, flowers, portrait of Chinese leader, walking man, squirrel. Edible gels and decorative frosting on gingerbread. 2007.

Weekend Frivolities DIY Edition: Venetian Masks

The previous post on taking black-and-white photos in New York in the snow could be filed under Weekend Frivolities, in that it's about making holiday gifts, but I didn't think it crossed the Bridge of Idiocy enough to qualify for this feature.

I've been promising to demonstrate how to make Venetian masks, but I think they're too hard for me to explain. First of all, you need to make a clay sculpture that looks like something, maybe a terrier or a cat, mix up some plaster in batches and then pour it over the sculpture, wait till it hardens, pull the clay out of the mold, and then start cutting up pieces of paper for papier-maché. That's just for starters. It's a big mess. I've cried any times.

The best way to learn how to make beautiful masks in the authentic tradition is to fly into Marco Polo Airport, find a hotel in Venice for a few days and then walk the mysterious streets of the Dorsoduro until you accidentally find the Ca' Macana shop.

The former architecture students who founded Ca' Macana in the early 1980s played a role in the revival of the Carnival, an event that had nearly disappeared for a couple of centuries. The shop made the masks for Stanley Kubrick's sexy Eyes Wide Shut (1999). I bought the fox mask (at left) from them as well as their book that includes step-by-step instructions.

To understand the creative process of these well-crafted masks, the section of Ca' Macana's website about mask-making classes features an informative video.

I have a mask I want to make, one that will be a perfect accompaniment to the southern funeral fan that I demonstrated last weekend. I'm going to call it Artist's Mutt. I'll post a photo if it turns out OK.

Image at top: A Venice "street," with the Bridge of Sighs in the background. When I took the photo, I was fascinated by the fellow standing on the bridge in the foreground, because I thought for sure it was the ghost of Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's 8 1/2.

To see examples of my unusual Venetian masks -all with some sort of twist, look for the illustration accompanying the following posts:
Museums in New York Open on Mondays
Then We Take Berlin: Berlin in Lights Festival

Weekend Frivolities: Making Holiday Gifts - The Classic Wax Paper Placemat Updated

Many should remember how to make wax paper placemats from elementary school days, but I would like to update the classic. Continuing the Weekend Frivolities theme from yesterday, when we learned how to make southern funeral fans, this edition suggests new ideas for the wax leaf placemat.

First let's review what many of us learned in elementary school. Walk to a place with lots of falling leaves - I found an abundant variety in Washington Square Park this morning, select the prettiest leaves, and go home and turn on your iron. Roll out two rectangular pieces of wax paper, place one of them on an old cloth, shiny side up, arrange your leaves and whatever else you choose, and then place the other piece of wax paper over that, shiny side down. Iron the two together so that the two pieces of wax paper adhere.

I decided that I would make a placemat for myself that warns of overeating during the holidays, so this placemat would be inappropriate to give to a friend, even one that is overweight. But this easy and inexpensive gift idea would be fabulous for others. It's possible to get rid of the leaves altogether and just make wax placemats with an endless array of flat items - pictures of your cat, or Andy Warhol, or both, cut up pieces of an old ArtForum, or if your friend is in the theater or the arts, maybe some good reviews of their "work."

Weekend Frivolities: Making Holiday Gifts - Handmade Fans on Sticks

This year I harbor a fantasy of making gifts for friends and family instead of giving them what they want. I know many people crave popular electronics, but I think in the long run they'll appreciate homemade craft items, especially if the giver makes something precious and a little weird. The worst thing that can happen is that the recipient will hide the touching and eccentric homemade gift in the closet until the creator passes away. Then no one will care.

HOW TO MAKE A SOUTHERN FUNERAL FAN

The thought of passing into the next life provides the natural segue to the first type of gift I'm going to teach everyone how to make this weekend - the Southern Funeral Fan. I possess a modest collection of authentic fans, the kind sponsored by funeral homes in states such as Mississippi and South Carolina. Typically, these fans consist of an image printed on a curvy 8 inch square piece of sturdy paper (#12 card stock) and then stapled to a wavy wooden fan stick.

Fans made like these are not unheard of in New York City, because they're often used for promotional purposes. I found one for a Broadway production that someone left behind in Washington Square Park, but I don't think that the same level of emotion is at play with these promotional fans as the ones used to calm the grief of a family member sitting in an un-air-conditioned church.

Making fans is easy. Cut out a square piece of cardboard in the shape you desire, think what image would delight the recipient, and then create it. You could print out a picture of Andy Warhol or a cat, or both, trim the image and then paste it on the cardboard. Lamination is a possibility. Then staple the assembled fan on a stick. That's it! Who wouldn't love a southern funeral fan with Andy and some kitties?!

Lee's Art Shop at 220 West 57th St. should have some wooden sticks for crafters living in NYC.

Other holiday gift ideas from WOTBA: The DVD of Ric Burns's excellent 4-hour Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film for American Masters (PBS Home Video), in addition, of course, to the gifts from the new Walking Off the Big Apple Emporium at Cafe Press.

Image: WOTBA's demonstration fan with Andy and kitties, Broadway promotional fan, and a southern funeral fan from Walterboro, South Carolina.

Weekend Frivolities Para Todos: Texas, New York

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In the previous post, I introduced you to the town of New York, Texas and its world famous New York Texas cheesecake. In this second edition of Weekend Frivolities, I point you to the existence of the hamlet of Texas, New York. Actually, Texans don't know much about hamlets other than sorry young men who get bent out of shape over family matters.

I can't get a good fix on Texas, NY, other than the eye-popping fact that apparently Texas is part of the larger town of MEXICO, NY. As someone who grew up in the once Republic of Texas, this is hard to understand.

I don't think there's much happening in terms of viable economic activity in the Texas, NY hamlet, although I've been reading that people like to flock to the nearby shores of Lake Ontario up there in Oswego County.

They need at least one roadhouse that serves some bbq and longnecks. Maybe a jukebox and some sawdust strewn on the floor. Obviously, as they are still part of Mexico, there's no mention of the Alamo in anything I've read. Near WOTBA, at least, deep in the heart of Astor Place, there's a large dark minimalist spinning cube titled "Alamo."

Here's just a smidgen of Texas-in-the-Big-Apple:

Butch Hancock's exhibit at Cue Art Foundation. Curated by Terry Allen, through December 1, 2007.

New York Texas Exes website

Hill Country Restaurant, a previous WOTBA post

That's a wrap for Weekend Frivolities. WOTBA will be back on Monday.

Remember the Alamo and to turn your clocks back one hour tonight.

Weekend Frivolities, Y'all: New York, Texas

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The article Texas Haute Country by Jim Atkinson in the NYT's Travel section on November 2, 2007 made me homesick. Just reading about the pleasant hamlets of Marble Falls, Fredericksburg, and Utopia turned my thoughts away from the Big Apple and south toward home (a Willie Morris reference). Back in college WOTBA had some friends who smoked something they shouldn't have in Utopia, and after their arrest and release, they printed up T-shirts for the whole gang that read "Busted in Utopia."

When I visit a Whole Foods Market in NYC, I rewind the memory tape to the original Whole Foods on Lamar Blvd. in Austin, Texas. The store was sited in a low-lying area and was prone to flooding. The atmosphere was excessively friendly. When I bought groceries there, the clerks would comment on every item and ask what I planned to do with it. This atmosphere does not prevail at the NYC locations, where the efficient check-out procedures make me feel jumpy, like I'm a competitor on a game show.

WOTBA's own contribution to New York Texas travel mania will be to now introduce you to the verdant primordial splendor of New York, Texas, featured on the map above. Population of 15, count 'em, for the 2000 census, New York, Texas could be the real estate bargain of which all New Yorkers dream.

The very existence of the New York Texas Cheesecake Co. in nearby Athens, the seat of Texas democracy, solves many of WOTBA's holiday gift-giving dilemmas.

Next up on this Weekend Frivolities Double Feature: Could there possibly be a....? Yes, Virginia, there is a Texas, New York.

Weekend Frivolities: The Cupcake Winner

SUGAR SWEET SUNSHINE PUMPKIN CUPCAKE

If you were walking by the corner of Rivington and Norfolk yesterday at about 4 p.m. and saw a woman standing on the corner and eating a pumpkin cupcake, that would have been me.

While this cupcake looks humble compared to the others, it won my personal tasting contest because of one particular quality. It was WARM. In fact, the image here is of a second cupcake because I ate the first one. The cupcake tasted like someone cooked it at home. And the fact that the young woman who sold it to me was dancing at the same time she was talking gave the cupcake some extra mojo.

I liked Pinisi's moist red velvet cupcake, too, and the inside color was redder than red. The Dean & Deluca cupcake was elegant in its texture, like a respectable slice of wedding cake. The Whole Foods R.I.P. cupcake tasted too processed. I thought it was ghastly.

I walked a total of five miles to gather cupcakes, and I didn't finish any of them except the pumpkin ones from Sugar Sweet Sunshine. The bakery is the furthest from where I live, but I now know I can buy a delicious cupcake for $1.50, the least expensive of the bunch, and then I can walk it off on my way home.

I found cupcakes harder to find than muffins, tarts, and other individual baked goods. A few of the bakeries I passed were genuine patisseries, with a mâitre patissier who creates great works of art. These beautiful works attract my attention always, but I grew up in a culture that privileged cupcakes as comfort food, and that was what I was after.

Weekend Frivolities Sunday Morning Treat

I have found such a treat for you this fine crisp Sunday morning.

Let your hair down and enter THE KITCHEN OF LOVE.

Image: Charles Willson Peale. The Artist in his Museum, 1822, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

5 Miles, 4 Cupcakes, and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

The four finalists of the cupcake search: clockwise, from top left:
Dean & Deluca Flower Vanilla Cupcake (Prince & Broadway): $5.50
Whole Foods Market R.I.P. Chocolate Cupcake (E. Houston & Bowery): $4.99
Pinisi Red Velvet Cupcake with Strawberry (128 E. 4th. St.): $3.50
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Pumpkin Cupcake (126 Rivington St.): $1.50

"The cultural, if not moral, justification of capitalism has become hedonism, the idea of pleasure as a way of life. And in the liberal ethos that now prevails, the model for a cultural imago has become the modernist impulse, with its ideological rationale of the impulse quest as a mode of conduct. It is this which is the cultural contradiction of capitalism. It is this which has resulted in the double bind of modernity.

-Daniel Bell, Introduction, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 1976

Stay tuned for the winning cupcake and more discourse on social class.

Weekend Frivolities: The Ho' Made Cupcake Melting in the Rain Edition

CHORUS
MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
-Jimmy Webb, MacArthur Park

Image: Photo of one of Bruno Bakery's Easter Cupcakes from the Spring of 2007)

Once upon a time, I lived for a few years in the Upper Midwest, the land of the Frozen Tundra (and a nightmare for me on a personal level), where I explored many of the area's villages and hamlets. Driving through one tiny town on a snowy evening, a merry group of us stopped at a local café for some dinner. On the sign above the door, under the café's name, were the words "Ho' Made." This greatly tickled us all.

Furthermore, the menu at this comfortable establishment featured all the usual Upper Midwest favorites - fried perch, bratwurst, cheeseburgers, and pasta alfredo, and the dessert part of the menu printed a list of candy bars along with their prices. This was the first menu I had seen listing Snickers, Mars Bar, Butterfingers, and the like. So when the waitress came, I said something like, "I'll have a salad, the bratwurst, and some Junior Mints. Bring two forks."

It's raining today in New York, and for once the weather promises to turn a little chilly. I can tell you that thousands of New Yorkers will stay inside today to perfect their costumes for Wednesday's Village Halloween Parade. As this year's theme is Wings of Desire, I'm pulling together an avenging cowgirl angel outfit. For the dogs I'm thinking of dressing them like Truman Capote and Katherine Graham at the Black & White Ball. (See pix here at Bold Type's George Plimpton scrapbook). Whaddya' think?

I have holiday cupcakes on my mind, so today I plan to put on the slicker and galoshes and search for the most beautiful cupcake below 14th St. I will report back with the results. I'm going to be hearing Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park song in my head the whole time.

In the meantime, enjoy this feature of wholesome ho' made cupcake madness. And don't worry about the calories just now. We'll walk it off later.

Halloween Cupcake Links:

Halloween Cupcakes

Weekend Frivolities: Stumble Upon Is WOTBA's New Safe Drug Of Choice

Just to update you, I skipped out on the excursion today to the Guggenheim and The Met. As a psychic flâneuse, I envisioned myself at about 4 p.m., overcome with art-induced vertigo, free-falling over the inside walls of the Guggenheim. I saw myself, as if my spirit left my body and I was watching from above, sprawled out on the floor of the Frank Lloyd Wright museum.

As a way to recover from my blown art gasket, I put the frail human construct known in abbreviated form as WOTBA in the shop and took a nap for two hours and ten minutes. Upon waking, I drank Earl Gray, black - just like Captain Picard, and then sat down for a tripped out Internet voyage via Stumble Upon. This new tool, wherein the user encounters random websites based on interests, calmed my fragile nerves. Early in the process I "stumbled upon" the site for Casa Battlo, by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona. Enchanted by the background music on the site, I stayed in the land of Gaudi magic for a long time. After several minutes I was ready once again to entertain guests in the best possible way.

Weekend Frivolities is late this weekend, falling into the Sunday time period once reserved for The Wonderful Word of Disney. In lieu of anything on TV, I encourage a night of recovery by means of comfort foods and Stumble Upon. I plan to fully rebound with dextrose food energy in the a.m.

Weekend Frivolities: Movie Trailer

While I put on my dark glasses and floppy hat to venture up Madison Avenue, you may be interested in a visit to the picture show. The colonel and I strolled up Broadway to the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 last night to see Across the Universe, the new Julie Taymor movie, and we enjoyed it for all kinds of reasons. I thought that the movie was the perfect end to the British Invasion Walk, as it involves a romance between an American blonde and a cute John/Paul Liverpudlian boy. The action goes back and forth from Greenwich Village to Liverpool. The movie is set in the turbulent sixties, and we enjoyed seeing our neighborhood in its psychedelic glory. Taymor is part of a creative group that attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in the 1970s, and fellow alum Bill Irwin makes a cameo appearance in the movie. Her use of gigantic puppets also references those creative days. You might wonder why WOTBA knows all this, but I don't need to go into all that right now. Enjoy the show.

See the trailer and more at the official website for Across the Universe.

Weekend Frivolities: Buried Treasures

(Left: I lost my head at the Prada store in SoHo.)

I'm beginning to break through this morning's fog and shall soon be out and about in the Metropolis.

Did you think that last week's British Invasion Walk was a little long, or perhaps just a tad pretentious? I know I thought so. For the coming week, I plan to take shorter walks and commit to shorter posts on shorter subjects. I can always find good movies or old TV shows if we don't want to read so much.

I did not even get around to sharing with you some of the most fascinating items I discovered last week, and in naughty fun on this very fine foggy morning, I buried these treasures on a hidden web page that you have to find.

So Weekend Frivolities involves a GAME. I pulled together the posts for the British Invasion Walk and placed the compilation where it belongs on the sidebar up on the right. I am not saying for sure, but maybe, just maybe, I've buried the treasure somewhere in that new place.

You will win something if you find it. Good luck!

Now WOTBA is off to OHNY (Open House New York) or maybe just to a Pinkberry location. I'll be back soon.

Weekend Frivolities

From WOTBA's Command and Control Center: Mapping the Global Audience

• Thanks to the GWB administration, all Texans now possess sophisticated embedded codes to track the geographical position of the readers of their websites. I don't know who you are, gentle reader, but I do know where you are.* So upon waking this morning, I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, poured a cup of coffee the size of the Friends mug in Keith Tyson's installation at PW, and entered the WOTBA Command and Control Center to analyze the data from this past week. Looking up at the enormous map of the world that fills the wall I could see the "points of light" indicating recent "hits" on this website.

• So where were these points of light? Predictably, indicators showed pinpoints for WOTBA's subscribers and casual readers in central Texas, college towns in the South and Midwest, West Hollywood, western Canada, Ohio, and Wyoming for some reason. Brooklyn, with its young literary romantics full of wanderlust, shines brightly on the map. There's a sprinkle of hits from all over the globe, most of which I assume are people visiting by mistake. Merry Old England, on the other hand, was lit up like a Christmas tree this fine morning.

• Importantly, where are the dark regions indicating lack of interest? Residents of Manhattan rarely visit WOTBA unless the post directly concerns their art career. I don't mind. Furthermore, many residents of Manhattan keep to their own neighborhood, prefer their food delivered to the front door, and hire others to walk the dog for them. They'd sooner travel to the inaccessible town of Marfa, Texas than take the A train to The Cloisters. I understand this, too. After being cooped up in a Gotham apartment, it's good to get out into the vast open spaces, prop the boots up, pop a cold one and chill out on some Donald Judd.

• Based on the information I'm holding in my hand, WOTBA will explore Britain in the Big Apple this weekend. While the BBC and The Guardian work to build their audiences in the U.S.A., WOTBA aspires to be a trailblazer in the reverse direction.

• Furthermore, I will learn more about the home towns of the readers. I see from this morning's printout that we have London here, also Liverpool (Capital of Culture 2008 and home of the Flâneur mother ship), Portsmouth, and Brighton (greetings, Land of Oz!). I need to brush up on Bolton, Wigan, and Kirklees.

Cheerio, for now.

*also the IP address, type of browser and operating system, date and time of the visit, individual pages visited, and referring URLs. I can only infer certain patterns based on this information. I have no idea of your name, what you ate for breakfast or what you are wearing right now. I also don't care. If you were previously unaware that most websites collect this exact sort of information every time you visit and actually make use of it, then I have already been of some service.

Image: MCC, JSC, Courtesy of NASA.

Weekend Frivolities

While Walking Off the Big Apple prepares to visit The Cloisters, I have assembled a couple of items for your weekend enjoyment:

Contemplate the relationship of Lomography to Flânerie.
I enjoy walking through the streets without a camera, but I wholeheartedly support those that do. I especially like the flâneuring young street photographers who take images with their Soviet-style cameras. Learn more about the role Vladimir Putin played in the revival of the Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association (Lomo) camera by reading an article from the BBC here.
While many Lomo pix are hipster awful, please see the extraordinary Lomo photos on the Flickr site of Lee Wei-l (b. 1982 Taipei).

(Image) Enjoy browsing through New York Sketches from 1902 and Charcoals of New and Old New York from 1912. Download them at The Prelinger Archives on the Internet Archive.

That's all for right now.

And for those on the New York Yankees diet, remember that you have to walk 9.5 miles to walk off a big pastrami sandwich. See the chart.

Weekend Frivolities

Good morning, Gotham! Good morning, red states! Come on up to the blue! The skies are clear in Metropolis, and the morning has brought us a humidity-free temp of 58 degrees.

Publisher's Interruption: In response to a branding-conscious reader's concerns, we have now removed from the sidebar all images of people sitting on park benches and reading. Indeed, why should we devote these pages to the life-altering power of walking but then illustrate the points with chubby adults sitting on their butts reading Harry Potter? We'll tell you why. People sitting on benches are easier for our editor and writer to draw, but we get the point.

Photo at left: What is this? It's a photo I took last fall of a big inflatable rat that the union guys use here to shame abusive capitalist rats. They pointed this rat so as to face the abuser's bedroom window. My publisher just told me that I can no longer draw people sitting down.


I have so much fun in store for you here this weekend that you will end up neglecting the laundry and the dust bunnies living in the corner of your room. I will tease you by posting the following frivolities in any order that I whimsically choose over the course of the next 48 hours, plus maybe a lot more!:

• It's a Teddy Bear's Picnic: Walking The Big Apple visits the Schnabel-designed Gramercy Park Hotel in the company of a trusted and academically accomplished friend.

• Introducing artist Aram Bartholl, with a bonus video!
  
• How Julian Schnabel literally ate the dictionary
• The Skyscraper Walking Game