While walking the dog on Thursday morning, I saw these posters up to commemorate the life of Ian Jones. (I went home and looked it up and learned that he drowned in the Hudson River while kayaking with his girlfriend. Sad).
...you never know what you're going to find when you come around the curve. Hit the jackpot this evening with some Chinese women doing a synchronized dance routine to a song blasting on a nearby boombox.
While walking Maddy through Tomkins, we briefly paused to admire this hunk, you know, just hanging out in the dog park all casual. Probably waiting to meet an OKCupid date.
Her: "The dog park? Sure! That would be a great first place for us to meet. How will I find you there?" Him: "Oh, you'll see me."
Huh. I don't know what which surprises me most: The fact that he brought his parrot to the park (complete with a little travel parrot-perch!), the fact that he decided to strip down to his undies and play with his parrot...
...or the fact that he was accompanied to the park by an actual woman. Seen here hiding her face. Which I'm sure is only because of the sun. (What, you mean you'd be embarrassed to have a parrot on your ass?)
Somewhere during the course of the afternoon, I ended up making friends with this deaf mute guy. He spent his day circling the park and barking (yes, literally barking, he's deaf mute, remember?) at girls in bikinis to get their attention and then taking their picture with a disposable camera. He communicated with us by miming and manage to tell us that he puts all of his photos of girls in bikinis in an album and that we should all come over and look at the pictures sometime because he lives right around the corner. (I swear this is true. How could I even make something like this up?) The only thing I didn't learn was his name.
...NAKED MAN! Hahahaha. This old dude is always chilling there in a lil' Speedo-type thang and from certain angles (ok, most angles) it looks like he's buck naked.
The best thing I've ever seen in my life was this pack of eight year-old girls from the Lower East Side who rolled up on their bikes to watch in disbelief. Their collective look of "WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE CRACKERS DOING?" cannot even be described.
After watching them try to make sense of the situation for more than five minutes, Grant and I wandered over and tried to make things more interesting. We explained (er, ok - lied) to the girls and told them that the kids were dancing as part of a hidden camera show - they were dancing stupid on purpose in hopes that people would yell stuff at them and heckle them - but the problem was, no one had heckled them yet. We told the girls that if they started shouting insults, they'd totally get to be on MTV. We let them ponder that for a few minutes, and then slunk back to enjoy the magic that ensued. Needless to say, the Dance Revolution packed up and headed back to their NYU dorm in a fucking (embarrassed) jiffy.
Kid in the Green shirt: "Do you know what's lame? The fact that people just don't dance, man. I mean, it's like we spend our whole lives being afraid and then one day, we die. That's just so sad. Know what I'm saying?"
Token Asian Friend in Bad Hat: "I'm totally picking up what you're laying down, nigga. Why don't we all go to the park after breakfast and just dance? Just like forget everyone and dance. Let's just totally let go and take it to anotha level. I bet if we do it long enough, everyone else will join in and it will be a big ironic party! I've a boom box and a pair of track pants upstairs. What about the rest of y'all? Y'all with me?"
...a bunch of college freshmen playing a boom box and self-conciously dancing while trying really hard to pass off their insecurity as irony. (The fact that I was standing four feet from them laughing and unabashedly taking pictures probably didn't help). It only took a glance to imagine the conversation that had been held minutes earlier at an NYU dorm cafeteria table that prompted this "happening."
