Stacy Horn

Time Warner has changed their interface again. As usual, for the worse. It used to be to delete a show you’d highlight it, hit delete, and when asked if you really wanted to delete it you’d select “yes” and you were done. Then they changed their interface and added more steps. They just did yet another re-design and now here is what you need to do to delete a show.

– Highlight the show.
– You’re taken to another screen where you need to highlight the show again.
– Then you have to scroll over to the right and choose delete show.
– Then you have to highlight the show AGAIN. (Seriously?)
– Then you have to scroll back over to the right and choose “delete selected.”
– Now you’re asked if you really mean it and you can select “yes”.

Time Warner is just messing with us, right? Why Time Warner, why?? That said, I am looking forward to the Roadrunner speed upgrade.

Here is Michael Cerveris (I still miss Fringe) at the Loser’s Lounge last night singing Baby’s on Fire. I have an old camera which is actually a great camera in many respects (a Canon G9) but it does not do well indoors or at night or in any kind of low-light situation. Cerveris is very charming. He did an amusing little pyrotechnics theatre involving babies and fire.

I passed by another shoot the other day, this time for a new tv show called Public Morals. It’s set in 1967, which should be a lot of fun, it’s such an interesting time period, and it’s about the NYPD’s Public Morals Division. I don’t know anything about that division but based on the name I’m guessing it was an ineffective and corrupt division. That decade was not the NYPD’s finest hour, and the idea of any police department enforcing public morality is just a bad, bad idea on so many levels. In the right hands it could be fascinating, if they dealt with the subject honestly.

I wonder when tv shows specifically about the 60’s are going to start appearing. Talk about a dramatic period. All the turmoil and struggles that went on then, for civil rights, against the war, women’s rights, and all the groups like SDS, the NAACP, NOW, the Black Panthers, hippies, yippies, Freedom Riders, (and many others). And of course all the people who emerged, both heros and villains. Many are still alive of course, and in some respects it will always feel too soon, perhaps.

The shot that follows this one shows one of the actors in a period costume.

When I walked up and saw this actor dressed as a cop I totally guessed wrong about the time period. “Is this set in the 40’s or 50’s?” I couldn’t tell at all.

I can’t wait for Halloween this year! Last year, for the first time in almost twenty years, I didn’t drum in the Halloween Parade. Drumming in that parade is one of the joys of my life (I wrote about learning to drum in order to do it in Waiting for My Cats to Die). But for some reason I didn’t drum last year and had an amazing, fantastic time walking around my neighborhood.

What I’ve been missing every year because I don’t get home until late, when the streets are taken over by drunken college kids (which is actually a different kind of fun, I’m not complaining) is how my neighborhood is transformed by mini-theatre-like events or tableaus, mostly for the benefit of children, but are entertaining for everyone. I’m sure I must have posted about them last year. Oh yes, I posted a lot about what I saw. Here’s one with a brief movie, and here’s another with a couple of good shots.

I’m thinking I will forego drumming again this year to walk around and enjoy the sights. The crashed Tardis on Perry Street is one of the highlights! Every year I strive to get a picture that really shows how great this is and every year I don’t quite capture it’s full glory. Some attempts here and here. This year will be my year!

This is not a Halloween decoration (I don’t think!). Just a kinda creepy front yard due to that half mannequin.

I’ve been going out of my mind! Every night a mosquito or two will feed on me throughout the night. As the bite starts to itch I wake up, so I end up waking up over and over and over. I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in months. I used to get the occasional mosquito but now it’s completely out of hand. In the beginning, whenever two bites were even remotely near each other I’d panic and think bedbugs! But even when I didn’t catch a mosquito in the act there was always one nearby on the wall.

Although I have screens in all my open windows I’ve got very old windows with huge gaps everywhere. There are plenty of places for mosquitos to come in. I didn’t want to cover my windows in plastic because even in the dead of winter I like to open the windows.

Thank you Garber Hardware and Aemon, my fantastic next door neighbor who works there for suggesting I try using Frost King air conditioner weather seal, 2 1/4″ x 2 1/4 ” x 42″. You can cut it to any size, and, unlike some of the others things I tried that didn’t work, you can take them in and out easily when necessary. It was so easy to fit it into big and small gaps. I went around to every window and carefully filled in every opening. (That reads like a commercial! I’m just trying to pass on a tip.)

I also planned to buy some sort of bug spray to catch any stray mosquito that might already be on the inside, but when I read the directions and cautions on each can they read like certain death for me and the cats. So I went to bed with a bottle of Windex within reach. I figured that can’t be good for them, that it might kill them slowly.

Last night only one mosquito showed up, I got him with the Windex, and he never showed up again. I slept well. The end. Thank God.

Setting up lights on Broadway for a movie shoot.

I’ve got a cat named after this bar. It’s the bar of my youth and I remember it fondly. The table in the back right corner was my favorite, it was probably everyone’s favorite of course. I wonder what the story is behind that Blue Devils jersey? I googled it for a bit but didn’t find an explanation. My guess is he simply drank there a lot, or a sadder possibility, he drank there a lot and died and the jersey is there as a memorial.