Another one.

From a set of etchings I did on found transparencies in the late ’90s.

I worked at a newspaper in Oregon, where they were getting rid of old archives of transparencies from the entertainment desk.

Can you believe that newspapers used to be composed this way? The networks would send out press packs to papers with color slides to shoot and lay out in the paper.

The newspaper was throwing out a mess of them, so I grabbed some and did stupid free-association scratchiti on them.

Christian Hosoi

While browsing Wikipedia yesterday after getting hit by a Bones Brigade flashback, I began to see a pattern in which many ’80s skateboard luminaries had converted or gone back to Christianity. I suppose Christian Hosoi was either fated to accept Jesus as his lord and savior or just become a batshit-crazy Satan worshipper.

Steve Caballero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Caballero

He was brought up as a Catholic, studied Zen/Taoism for 6 years, and in 2005 returned to a non-denominational Christian church.

Lance Mountain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Mountain

Mountain is a Christian.[citation needed] He is married to Yvette Loveless and has one son, Lance Ronald Cyril Mountain.

Mark “Gator” Rogowski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rogowski

He converted to a strict Evangelical form of Christianity after a severe accident in Germany (he jumped out of a hotel window while drunk and landed on a fence). At the same time, spurred by girlfriend [Brandi] McClain leaving him, Mark began a period of severe alcoholism.

Rogowski said he had considered seeking psychiatric help at the time, but the born-again Christians he was involved with discouraged this.

Rogowski would later go on to beat, rape, and murder the mutual friend who introduced him to Brandi McClain.

Christian Hosoi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Hosoi

In June 2004 Hosoi’s sentence was reduced for good behavior and he was released on parole. Hosoi married girlfriend Jennifer Lee. He became a born-again Christian through the urging of his wife and her uncle, Pastor Christopher Swain. He also earned his high school diploma. Hosoi continues to be open about his new-found faith, having become ordained as an associate pastor, and has resumed his skateboarding career.

Fun note: Christian Hosoi has three sons, all of whom sound like their names could be skateboard products — Rhythm Hosoi, Classic Hosoi, and Endless Hosoi.

The Space Between: Arch, originally uploaded by Adam Kuban.

Took this Monday night while walking home along 33rd Street in Astoria from El Mariachi Mexican restaurant. I enjoy walking around Astoria. It’s probably due to the novelty of it all — I was thoroughly familiar with Park Slope after having lived there for eight years. It was beautiful but boring and there were few surprises. It may not be all brownstone beauty (actually, none of it is brownstone), but Astoria’s scatterpodge of residential architectural styles from the last hundred years at least leaves room for discovery.

Locals and Tourists #2 (GTWA #1): New York, originally uploaded by Eric Fischer.

Heat map of Flickr photo volume around NYC. Red is tourist-generated, blue is locals, yellow might be from either. [via City Room]

The Space Between, originally uploaded by akuban.

On the Web, a Wave of Support for Conan O’Brien [Media Decoder/NYT]

Jake Dobkin finds an unusual piece of street art.

I SO WANT THIS.

At Katsuhama.

More about Katsuhama on Serious Eats.

Poster Boy has gone missing from the 23rd Street C/E Station so I have to look online for his work these days. Looks like he’s been collaborating with Aakash Nihalani on some amazing pieces that seem to jump from walls onto benches, platform floors, and all over the interior of subway cars. Nihalani’s signature seems to be the colorful boxes, while Poster Boy brings the surreallist collage element to the collaboration.

I’ve got a loaner camera from Nikon after having done a podcast with the folks there on food photography. It’s been a good camera so far, though I think I still need to get used to its features before I can get some really amazing photos out of it. I’m using the standard kit lens with it (18-55mm/f3.5), but Nick may let me borrow his Sigma zoom macro for it for a spell. Then we’ll really take this thing out on the road and open her up.

Earlier this month I went with my friend Justin to see the Silver Jews play. I didn’t realize until we got there that this was a pretty big deal, since this is like maybe the second time Jew-in-chief David Berman had ever toured. They started the night off right, playing one of my favorites, “Smith & Jones,” and then kept it up, playing a nice mix of new and old.

Berman looks like what I’d imagine the guys from Steely Dan looked like in their heyday. It was a great show, and the Music Hall of Williamsburg is a fine venue. Good sightlines. It’s rare that I like shows these days, but I really did enjoy this one.

I would find this headline from the Times funny if the news behind it weren’t so terrifying. As if any reassurances from Bush are worth a hill of beans. I think a Times copy editor was employing some dry gallows humor here.

I was on the R train from Bay Ridge, heading in to work at Martha Stewart Living. I was already late—I realized last-minute that I had to iron my pants before leaving.

Everything seemed normal until we pulled into 36th Street, an express-train transfer point, and there was the most unbelieveable crush of people on the platform. I had never seen a platform that full and haven’t to this day.

As many people as could fit transferred into the R train. I normally would have switched to the D train, but figured it wiser to stay in my seat.

“What’s going on?” some people asked the newcomers.

“There’s a fire at the Trade Center. They’re diverting trains.”

The R would have run right under it, so I knew we’d be in for a long ride. As the train crept along the line, collecting more people, we got more information.

“Don’t know. Something about a plane hitting the Trade Center.”

“What, like a little sightseer Piper Cub?”

“Beats me.”

At that point, nobody seemed too worried or thought of terrorists.

More people boarded and we heard rumors of two planes hitting the towers.

“What, like they collided in midair and went into the buildings?” someone asked.

“Don’t know.”

We still didn’t think terrorism.

It wasn’t until the train stopped at Union Street that I got out. I figured I’d walk back up to 9th Street and catch the F, which went nowhere near the Trade Center. But I popped out of the station among a crowd of people staring at the skyline.

Both the towers, which were once visible if you looked down Union Street toward Manhattan, were on fire. I remember thinking they looked like two smoldering cigarettes and then wondered how a little Piper Cub sightseer plane could do that much damage.

I didn’t have a cell phone at the time, so I tried calling my boss from a pay phone, but the pay phone kept saying “all circuits are busy.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard that phrase.

I finally got through to my boss’s voicemail. “Uh, Debra, I’m going to be late. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but the World Trade Center is on fire. I’m near the F train, so I’m going to try that line. It might be an hour or so.”

And then I heard news reports on a car radio. A man had stopped his SUV and was sitting in the driver seat, door propped open, playing the report loud enough for the crowd to hear.

“Congress has been evacuated. The Pentagon is on fire.”

There was this girl there, and I think it dawned on her at the same time. We just sort of looked at each other, and I could tell we had both figured it out: terrorists.

Shortly after that, they stopped all trains and buses and traffic into Manhattan. I called my boss: “They’ve stopped all transit in. I guess I won’t be in today.”

I was close enough to my friends’ Bryan and Laura’s place on Flatbush Avenue. I grabbed a big Heineken beer from a bodega on Fourth Avenue. Still don’t know which one. I knew I’d need it.

Somewhere along my walk down Fourth toward Flatbush, I heard a woman scream above me: “Oh my God! It just collapsed. The tower just collapsed!” I looked up and she was crying and dabbing at her eyes. I looked toward Manhattan and an enormous cloud of dust rising.

I walked up Flatbush, closed to all traffic but emergency vehicles, and saw a man with a portable, battery-operated black and white TV tuned to the news (not that you could tune to anything else that day). He had a small crowd of people around him, eager to watch what whas happening on TV, even though at the moment scores of cop cars and fire trucks were screaming down the street behind us and the scene was unfolding to our left. I realized later that they were probably hungry for the official word on what was happening.

Bryan, Laura, their upstairs neighbor, Chrissy, and I all drank shots of Jägermeister and went up to the roof.

I had ironed my pants, pulled them on, and dashed down into the subway, worried that my boss was going to kill me for being late. I popped out of the station into a world that made that concern seem idiotic. I would rather have been yelled at.

The Republicans’ use of 9/11 to stoke their nonsense has been a disgrace. They should be ashamed of themselves, yet they aren’t. Olbermann sums up their despicable manipulation of what was a truly horrible day. Country first, my ass.

[MSNBC]

Nota bene: The only reason I subscribe to the New York Times these days is for the op-ed page, the crossword, and the weekend paper. I read the op-ed first thing while waiting for the train (and do the crossword on the way home). I think I may unsubscribe from the weekday editions, though.

It’s up from about 9 hits a day average to an average of 30 hits a day over the last two days. Most of the new traffic has been from the link off the home page of my new Twitter account. After the jump, you can see the referrer log.

Before his death, he had provided voiceovers for an estimated 5,000 movie trailers, including “Batman Returns,” “The Terminator,” “Cast Away,” “The Elephant Man” and “Dr. Strangelove.” Many of those began with his catchphrase, “In a world where …”

Here’s a bit where LaFontaine talks about his work:

[YouTube]

There’s also this video, where LaFontaine and other voiceover artists share a limo ride to the 26th Annual Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards:

[YouTube]

R.I.P., Mr. LaFontaine. Your golden voice and sense of humor will be missed.

I rolled in Games 2 and 3.

Game 2 opponents were The Gutterfingers. Also a pun involving the butter/gutter thing. And they’re a nice team, too. They were fun to bowl against. I rolled a 103. Not horrible, but not good.

Game 3 opponents, I don’t remember their team name. I’m sure Tien has it in his league list. I rolled a 157.

I need to see if Tien has been keeping lists of individual scores so I can calculate my average, but based on last week and this week, it’s 114. That’s lame.

In other bowling news, Paul Kermizian, one of the co-owners of the Gutter (who is dating my friend Janelle), mentioned that he tried the MacKinnon recipe that Paul Clarke blogged about on Serious Eats last Friday and has now posted its recipe on a notecard behind the bar there. I tried a sip of his, and IT WAS DAMN GOOD!

Now I’m going to have to introduce him to these guys:

THE HORSEFEATHER
Drop 2 to 3 ice cubes in a rocks glass, pour in about 2 fingers of Irish whiskey, top off with ginger ale, add a couple dashes bitters. Stir and serve.

THE DUBLIN 8
A heavy pour of Irish whiskey, the juice of half a small lime, a teaspoon of sugar, and a few ounces of orange juice and a tiny dash of bitters followed by a splash of soda. Garnish with thin lime wheel.

Both the Horsefeather and the Dublin 8 recipes were created by my friend Jeremy Sidener quite some time ago in Lawrence, Kansas, at one of the various bars he has tended at there. “Dublin 8″ refers to a rough area of Dublin (at least it was rough in the late ’90s; it might be gentrified now that Ireland has had an economic boom). The Horsefeather was named as a nod to a local band, Arthur Dodge & the Horsefeathers.

The funny thing is that Flickr, which is usually super user-friendly, makes you go through a lot of steps to block someone. OK, it’s an easy process, but here are the steps:

1. Click on “Block” under the options in the user icon.
2. You are taken to a new page, where you have to select a checkbox: “Please confirm that you’re sure you want to block USERNAME.”
3. Click “Block.”
4. Select “Confirm” from a browser alert window that then pops up.

I think they could eliminate the last step. By the time I check the checkbox and click “Block,” I’m reasonable certain I want to block the person.

Here is the current state of my Blocked list:

[Serious Eats World Headquarters, on Flickr]

Another cool photo from Noah Kalina.

I started bowling in season two of the league at The Gutter. It’s a hipster bowling alley and bar in Greenpoint. The folks who run it found an old warehouse space and a dingy street and did an amazing job of salvaging decommissioned lanes from somewhere in the Midwest and acquiring all the rec-room accoutrements that people of my age remember from their dad’s or granddad’s basements. If you’re hipster-cynical, it sounds like it could be too annoyingly cool, but it really is awesome.

Anyway, last night, we had a triple-header, and I stunk up the joint. I probably shouldn’t have rolled all three games. I think I’ll stick to two at most in the future.

Game 1: 103
Game 2: 126
Game 3: I didn’t note the score, but it was sub-100. Something like 86. Lame.

I totally fell down in that last game, after having literally fallen down, tripping over a pebble or something, while getting a Coke after Game 1.

I assured our teammates who had just joined us, Finn and Scott, that I wasn’t blotto and that I normally don’t fall down. Which prompted teammate John to say, “It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people who know you say, ‘He didn’t fall down tonight.’” LOL.

Our team name is I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gutter. Which is awesome. John came up with that.

Related: The Gutter Opens [Gothamist]

Photographs: Tien Mao

Robyn Lee snapped this on a visit to Flushing, Queens. It’s pretty insane.

Ed Levine reviews Spacca Napoli on Slice today. It’s a well-written piece, as always, but I’m really happy with his photos. He’s come a long way from his first foray into blog photography, and these pix are perhaps his best yet. The sausage pie above is my favorite photo from his visit.

My favorite bit of wit:

It was the pizza equivalent of what happens when all the air is let out of a bike tire.

Oh, snap!

Hasn’t changed much since I was a teen-ager.

[YouTube]

Don’t know why I never wondered about this until now, but I just Googled to find out if the people in the ad, particularly the nerd girl, had been identified. They have been. Looks like the Seattle Times got to the bottom of this way back in 2006. [via Christine||enitsirhC]