Here’s how August 2010 ends in New York. At the corner of Grand Street and Clinton, on the Lower East Side, with the temperature approaching 100 degrees, an old man in a light-blue polo shirt is being pushed in a wheelchair by his caretaker. “Not this way!” he shouts, as she noses him into the crosswalk on Grand. He points west, across Clinton. “I want to go there!” She continues, and calmly explains to him that they need to go in the direction they’re going. Maybe they’re going to the Rite-Aid on the corner, maybe the kosher butcher down the block. “No,” he says, “the other way! Bring me the other way!” He twists his head around, straining to see her face. It looks like he’d bite her if he could. “The other way!”

This was a particularly shitty month in a summer full of them. And I’m happy to see it go. Here’s to September.

Yay, I got my Gmail Priority Inbox! Yes, your Gmail can now be divided into “important” and “totally common.” This solves all my organization and email response problems, clearly. Why won’t totally wholesome and beneficial corporation Gmail provide me with a personal spider monkey that is trained to deal with email?

The hits keep coming! “A majority of Republicans believe that President Barack Obama ‘sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world,’ according to a survey released on Monday.”

“’Clear Blue Tuesday’… is not about the attack itself, which occurs off camera in the opening scene and is conveyed with blowing dust and office paper. It is more interested in tracking the changes in the lives of 11 characters as the anniversaries flit past: 2002, 2003, 2004, and so on. The attractive and eccentric cast of New Yorkers fall in love and split up, lose jobs, get jobs, shack up — and sing, roughly one song per character.

The film, often doggedly cheerful, will not please uniformly, and only die-hard fans of musicals, very earnest people and Sept. 11 completists are likely to digest it whole.”
–There’s just so much to take in here.

As we are preparing for the Great Fall Culture Return in New York City, did you know there is a comprehensive calendar for opera in New York? Now you do, for all your post-Labor Day needs.

We have a winner for press release of the day! “ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO LAUNCHES WIDE-RANGING INVESTIGATION INTO PATRONAGE, CRONYISM AND WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY AT THE NEW YORK STATE FAIR.” Oh really? “The State Fair has long been plagued by allegations that it has become a patronage playground for friends, relatives and cronies of the Fair’s directors and managers. The Attorney General’s investigation will assess the integrity of ticketing, contracting, hiring, and other management and financial practices involving the Fair.” (Subpoenas went out to, among other parties, Clear Channel Radio, which, hmm!) Anyway, this undoubtedly put a pall on this morning’s “Pettis Pools’ Extreme Canines stunt dog show” at the Adventure Zone by the New York State Fair Grandstand and the “MaxMan Reptile Rescue demonstration” in the Hall of Veterinary Health. For yes, the New York State Fair is going on right now, at the Empire Expo Center, “immediately adjacent to Route 690 just west of Syracuse.” I hope no one is trying to build a mosque by it. (via)

We won’t, because we don’t, but thanks anyway: “’I’m concerned about monkey pox,’ says Don Burke director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn’t involved in the study. ‘It isn’t going to emerge as pandemic tomorrow, but could at any time start to increase its transmission. It’s worrisome. This is the type of warning siren we need to take very seriously.’”

Random New Yorker: Matthew Michael Cooper, “Sleight of the Mind Artist”

by Andrew Piccone

Tell me about your job.

My job consists mainly of magic but I’ve gone into a different area of psychological tricks of the mind. I like to call myself a ‘sleight of the mind artist.’ It encompasses traditional slight of hand, modern mind reading and con artistry. I’ve got a gig at a hotel bar right now, and I present weird and strange tricks to people while they’re drinking it up.

How did you get into it?

I did it when I was younger like any child would, but the interest bloomed in high school. My mother was working in the Folies Bergere as a showgirl, my father was a stagehand, so I was already sort of into the Vegas lifestyle and showmanship. They pushed me into doing magic more, which was sort of surprising. But I got into and it bloomed quickly and flourished and people responded extremely well and I realized I could probably make money doing this.

So is this your full time gig?

I was in Las Vegas, I just moved out here in January. I’m still getting by on it, I had to get all new contacts and start all over but it’s far worth not living in Vegas. So right now I am doing it for a living, just barely.

What’s your favorite place or thing in New York?

I don’t have a favorite place, but my favorite thing is the overwhelming amount of character. Coming from Vegas you have these Hollywood and grandiose ideas of Las Vegas but it’s not really like that. You don’t live in the city, you live in the suburbs, pretty much everyone does, its very sort of cut and dry, and can be quite annoying at times, but here you can walk the streets, get on a subway, get off and be somewhere new and be surprised every single day. I just love the charm and the character and the aesthetic of the whole thing.

What’s your opinion of the Ground Zero Mosque?

I’m certainly against it, not because I don’t subscribe to any religion, but because I think the best response is to rebuild the towers in their entirety. We have to continue with the whole business as usual thing. It’s the only way we can demonstrate our strength as a nation.

What’s your least favorite part about your job?

The association magic has to glitter, bad music, stuffing women into boxes, all the clichés I guess. My hope is to aid in the advancement of the art form by presenting something more unique, more intriguing. Something that gets under your skin.

Andrew Piccone is a photographer in New York City.

The extraordinarily abstruse Triple Canopy has a new issue up. Most of it is beyond my interests and/or understanding, however I greatly enjoyed this interview with Bob Stein, who for the last six years has run the think tank Institute for the Future of the Book (I don’t know, really; one of its goals is that it has “no deliverables”) and also founded the Criterion Collection and spent a lot of time thinking about LaserDiscs and HyperCard (oh man!) and also worked at Atari, trying to create the encyclopedia of the future. Basically he makes Clay Shirky’s jobs look very task- and result-oriented.

I have read two excerpts of Kevin Guilfoile’s novel The Thousands now and it is really weird! Obviously though I would pretty much read any book about a cybernetically enhanced jury consultant and a secret society probably.