Here they are! All the photos I took in January that don't have their very own entry but still deserved to see the light of day!
Sunday, January 1st
The very first day of the year was pretty much all about Niki and I having a "we're recovering from last night" TV-marathon and trying to eat as many of leftovers from our New Year's Eve party as we could.
It was very similar to the BodyWorlds show I saw back when I was out in LA: They take human corpses, put them through a process called "plastination" which removes all the water from the cells and replaces it with a clear, resin, and then they can present the bodies in all sorts of crazy ways without worrying about them decomposing. (The only difference was that at the BodyWorlds show, all the specimens were willingly donated by the owners; whereas the show in New York was controversial because it came from China and there were rumblings that all the "specimens" might not have been "willingly donated" by the owners!). Anyway, here's a dude sliced up like a cheap deli salami. (That'll teach you to talk bad about Chairman Mao!)
It's hard to believe, but this is actually a real human head that's been "plastinated" and then had most of the skin peeled off to show how the facial muscles attach. (And to also show how easy it is to make a dead body look like Mr. Bill if you've got access to plastination chemicals).
This photo (sort of) shows the human circulatory system floating in way. They take a body, drain all the blood, then they fill up the entire circulatory system with a red-colored plastic resin. After the resin hardens, they put the body into a vat of some sort of acid that dissolves everything except the resin. So after months and months in the acid, all the bone and tissue is dissolved leaving behind a perfect "mold" of the circulatory system. Insanity, right? (By the way, please excuse the shitty photos - photography in the exhibit was verboten so these pics are all the result of me shooting on the sly from my hip sans flash.)
In this exhibit, they did the exact same thing except used a solution that left bone intact to demonstrate all the veins, arteries and capillaries around the skull.
Towards the end of the exhibit, they had a whole separate section that was filled with fetuses. (It was kept separate because apparently there are people who can look at bodies of dead adults diced up like carrots but can't, Jesus forbid!, stand to look at lil' innocent "unborn angels" treated the same way.) Anyway, here's the plastinated corpses of two siamese twins that died during birth. Crazytown!
And here's a human fetus (I think around 5 months?) that's had some sort of treatment done to highlight the bones. So amazing. It was really interesting how from the side it totally looked like a human baby...
...but from the front it looked like the little unborn baby version of Venom from Spiderman 3. We ended up spending almost three hours there! The exhibition was so awesome, if you ever get a chance to see it, you should go. It gave us all new insights into the wonder that is the human body.
But that certainly didn't stop Grant from getting me to take this picture of him surreptitiously mocking a family of ginger kids that we passed on the way out. Grant was almost fucking beside himself as he kept giddily hissing "Look at their hair! It's SO RED! They have FUCKING CLOWN HAIR!" Hahaha.
After we left, we got caught in a torrential downpour while walking back to my apartment (instant karma!) and everyone had to raid my wardrobe for a dry change of clothes. Grant opted for a hoodie and a stretched-out old pair of skiing thermals that I don't think had seen the light of day since '93.
...that's right, it was Amanda's Hanukkah gift to Meredith, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie! (aka - the worst movie of all time. SERIOUSLY!)
I know people engage in that "OF ALL TIME" hyberbole all the time (er, especially me), so I just googled around for reviews of the movie and came across this gem of a review. Case closed.
On Saturday, Meredith went out with Christine and tried to make out with her but every time Meredith would make a move, Christine would pull frat-dude moves like this one. Hahahah. (Photo by Meredith).
On Monday night, a bunch of us went to Karaoke Killed the Cat at Pianos. Here's MC of the night, Goldteef Chris (seen here shyly hiding his gold teeth).
On Thursday night I got a call from my friend Emily (who I went to high school with) to come to meet her at a bar in the East Village. When I arrived I was surprised by two other Roxbury High School alums, Ben Berliner and Derek Schmere (sp?), both whom I hadn't seen in six or seven years!
Late, late late night, I met up with Leigh and Posh Tony over at Black and White and we ended up getting shit-hammered. We got so drunk that we somehow ended up becomming best new friends...
Mike Doyle was in town from San Francisco and on Friday night he and I went out to Brooklyn to meet up with Mikie. It was the first time we'd all been together since she played tour guide and took Mike and I around Japan. Great American-style photo, guys. Now give me Japan-style photo!
Later that night, Mike and I went to Orchard bar. Right around 4am, this girl tried to pick a fight with one of our friends and then Sarah turned the music off and the whole place started booing her. I managed to snap this photo as she grabbed her stuff and left in a huff (bonus points to Brandon Reilly who can be seen in the background laughing at her!).
...and that later that night we went to Jamie's Ball. (Which is the name of my fried Jamie Kirkpatrick's benefit party he holds every year to raise money for testicular cancer after he lost one of his boys to the disease a few years back). I try to go every year - because it's one of the few times of the year I can donate to charity and make testicular double-entendres all night. (But I'm not even the worst offender, check out the Jamie's Ball website and watch the video he's got there).
On Thursday night I went to some party with Nina. We left and when we were walking up the Bowery, we saw the hands-down most ridiculous "club flyers" that were left on all the car windshields.
