How to spot a mad cow – Thanks for the tip, Warren.

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Walking through the subway the other day, I spotted my first “Kucinich for President” campaign button. I don't expect to see too many of those. It might be a collector's item in several years.

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The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Walking on 42nd Street the other day, I noticed the gargantuan lighted marquee of the McDonald's across the street from the New Victory Theatre. That marquee reminded me very much of the marquees that adorned the huge first-run movie theaters that lined the block and later morphed into peep shows in earlier eras.

I flashed back to the night I walked my high school girlfriend (only briefly) Darcell along 42nd Street on our way to see Marvin Gaye at Radio City Music Hall. Hustlers swarmed the sidewalks. You could still take in a Hollywood film on that block then, but it seemed that every other marquee hawked a porno film with a title that spoofed the Hollywood fare.

In one fell swoop, Disney changed all that. Seemingly overnight, the peep shows, video sellers and head shops were boarded shut with massive slabs of plywood painted in red, orange, green, blue, or purple. They lifted one building and moved it several blocks on train tracks. Anheuser Busch ran a spoof ad campaign for one of their beers: a mock evangelist warned against the evils of “Amsterdamned fluids...” Another group placed messages of peace and positivity on the dormant marquees. The reconstruction and repositioning of 42nd Street was afoot.

Through all of its incarnations, the lights have been the visual signature of those few blocks. The technology has changed, and the lights are brighter now. Things tend to look more plastic these days, too, but the essence isn't much different from when Times Square and 42nd Street became lighted spectacles several generations ago.

Phew... all that from looking at a big flashing marquee.

Happy Kwanzaa

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A Trip up North
We had an oh-so-homey delicious meal at my Sister-in-Law Rhonda's place in Putnam Valley yesterday. Her place is full of pictures, and has the nicest tree. Denise and Rhonda's Mom made the angel that tops Rhonda's tree. Rhonda added the starry halo.

A dirty window, a stranger's imagination and tunnel lights add to the train ride

Point of arrival

Back seat near Bear Mtn

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Almost done with Burning Chrome – I'm most of the way through “Dogfight,” then the title story is left. I might finish tonight. This is a great collection of short stories, and shows other dimensions of Gibson's voice. My favorite so far is “New Rose Hotel.” It reads like a long poem, like a love letter, and also like someone's internal monologue as they imagine having a conversation they can never really have.

Another favorite of mine is “The Gernsback Continuum.” So cool – right after I start digging into semiotics, comes this bit from the story:

If you want a classier explanation, I'd say you saw a semiotic ghost. All these contactee stories are framed in a kind of sci-fi imagery that permeates our culture... They're semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken a life of their own, like the Jules Verne airships that those old Kansas farmers were always seeing. But you saw a different kind of ghost, that's all. That plane was part of the mass unconscious, once. You picked up on that, somehow. The important thing is not to worry about it...

The prescribed antidote is a bit amusing.