Wandering

The good thing about being alone in a place like Manhattan is you have plenty of time to observe the ever changing surroundings. I’ve had my lonely moments, but I’m generally not one to let solitude bring me down. That said I took me and my skinny jeans to The Kitchen in Chelsea last night to watch performance art centered on “hearting” a computer. Rhizome, a new media art organization orchestrated the event in celebration of their tenth anniversary. I won a ticket to the show through Engadget, a tech blog and since I heart computers too I wanted to check it out. The purpose of “They Heart a Computer” was to highlight “forms of expression, desire and anxiety prevalent in a culture increasingly influenced by the Internet.” And there definitely were a few performances I connected to. One was called “Request” it was a YouTube video of a fairly attractive white guy delivering an email through a speech that most of the crowd recognized as spam—you know the mail from the Nigerian diplomat asking you to serve as a silent partner and hold on to his assets. It was a funny take on a scam that so many naïve people have fallen for (I once read a really interesting New Yorker article about it. It’s called the 419 scam.) Anyway, all in all it was a good time and I’m glad I went…

I walked around the East Village tonight. The place totally transforms when it goes dark. Restaurants and clubs invisible during the day pop up at night and what seemed like a somewhat quiet street comes alive. It’s a very cool thing. There’s a place called ChickaLicious nearby that sells only desserts. For a fixed price of $12 you get three courses of dessert. Mmm, I definitely will be checking it out soon!