Let us reflect for a moment on the legacy he began:
Thanks for changing the world, Jef. Rest in peace.
Dec 25, 2004 thingsThatHappened
Funny thing. You may not know this about me, but I’ve never really been so into Christmas. I mean, we all know it’s the height of commercialism and a bastardization of what may have once been a very graceful celebration of birth and winter and all that good stuff, but I’ve always been particularly turned off by it – the ubiquitous, meaningless ritual of gift-buying and impromptu “togetherness”, the semblance of religion in suddenly crowded church pews and even more crowded shopping malls.
So tonight I was a bit out of sorts; getting off the subway, walking down the stairs, about to go home. But what was that sound coming up the stairs? Was it...could that actually be Christmas carols?
I walked out of the station with a bit of a grin on my face, and there, at the bottom of the stairs, was a van pulled up underneath the train platform, with about two dozen Asian kids grouped up in front of it. Crisp white shirts, shiny black pant, singing their hearts out to Queens Boulevard. An extension cord stretched across the sidewalk from the van to the little band on the side - glasses and neat haircut on guitar, long hair never-saw-his-face on a little keyboard set to "Christmas synth strings" or some such. Their conductor looking just as sharp, his back to the passing traffic, proud to be at the helm of this kind of out-of-tune, kind of out-of-place, but ultimately wonderful operation.
Enter plot twist, stage left. He strolls by, captivated by the music; he is clearly drunk. He stops, he grins, he sways back and forth, his arms start to move up and down as his body rocks to the rhythm of "Noel, Noel."
And before anyone in our little audience of about a dozen knows what's going on, this man is conducting. Full-on up on his toes, arms swooping, whirling and raising to the sky, conducting this choir. The girls are giggling at each other. He is grinning from ear-to-ear. I am laughing hysterically. The "real" conductor, from whom he is standing about two feet away, is doing none of these things.
After two minutes or so, our drunken friend decides his conducting career has gone on long enough, and he crosses in front of the choir to head home, tripping on the extension cord as he does so. He turns around, and walking away, shouts a very heartfelt, very toothless "Merry Christmas." He is engulfed by the moment, by the power of shared experience, by the unexpected emergence of whatever it is that Christmas is supposed to be all about, and for one brief moment, I am too.
So before that moment fades away, let me say this. Christmas itself means nothing. Presents, trees, Santa, reindeer, sugarplums, nothing. The ritual is all we need. Any one will do. Any imposition of time where we step out of ourselves and into the sacred space of the collective, into patterns of interaction that remind us that we share this world and this life with those around us, not just physically, but spiritually. And when we get there, that's when we find the so-called "meaning of Christmas." Or of anything else.
That’s all I got. Merry Christmas. Happy Festivus. Et cetera, et cetera.
Dec 14, 2003 thingsThatHappened
Saddam Hussein, one of the most important figures in the Al-Qaeda terrorist organizations that planned the attacks of September 11th, 2001, was captured today….
Wait, no, let me try again….
Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq, where thousands of weapons of mass destruction were recently found, was cap…..
No, that’s not it either….
Um. What’s going on again?
Aug 15, 2003 thingsThatHappened
I’m sure everyone had their own crazy way of dealing when the power went out, their own stories about getting home, banding together, and roaming the streets of New York, Detroit, Ottawa, Texas, California, or wherever they might have happened to be. (Note: the very idea that the power grid has “nodes” which can knock out power in multiple cities in multiple countries is just plain ridiculous.) I’ll start with mine. Please feel free to share yours in comments below…
The way I saw it, it was our IT guy. I was at the bench in the back dealing with a computer when he reached over, fiddled with something, and turned off the power to the whole bench. I was just about to reproach him, when I noticed that he’d also managed to turn off the power to the entire store. Then someone ran in through the back door, saying it was the whole block. At this point, we started telling all the customers to go home – one customer, I heard, actually called upset that he’d been “hung up on” in the middle of a sale, and when informed that the power had gone out in what we’d now learned was all of New York, said that he didn’t care, that this was very important, and that someone had better call him back in 5 minutes to complete the sale. Sheesh.
Anyway. All of our biggest and baddest employees stood by the front door with the security guard to make sure no one took advantage of the confusion to walk away with a computer or two. The elephant in the room (or is it a gorilla?) was definitely whether or not this was a terrorist attack, and, if it was, what terrible things this would mean for the country at large. People had girlfriends stuck in the subway, family members they couldn’t reach – word was that the Manhattan Con Ed plant was on fire!
After about half an hour, we decided it was time to walk home. At some point, it was going to be dark, and if we weren’t inside yet, it was gonna seem real dark. And real scary. So I started walking uptown with my friend Brandi.
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Aug 7, 2003 thingsThatHappened
So I went to the Mob Project’s Mob #6 today. I showed up at Harry’s Hamburgers by myself, hung around until 7, at which point I received a little slip of paper with further instructions. The first thing I noticed was that a great majority of the people involved were white males in their 20’s or 30’s, button down shirt, hip glasses, with occasional satchel bag. Weird.
The directions read as follows:
Duration: 6 minutes (Gather at 7:18; disperse at 7:24.)
The Site: Toys R Us (Broadway at 44th St).
By 7:15, situate yourself on the second floor of Toys R Us, away from the Jurassic Park section.
At 7:18, approach the giant animatronic dinosaur. Fill in all around it. It is like a terrible god to you. Stare at it transfixed.
At 7:20, drop to your knees, still staring at the dinosaur. Whenever it roars, moan and cower behind outstretched hands.
At 7:24, disperse. No one should remain in Toys R Us after 7:27.
KEEP THIS SLIP HIDDEN. NO PHOTOS OR INTERVIEWS BETWEEN 7:15 AND 7:20.
What really happened: At 7:15, people started pouring and gathering around the dinosaur. Suddenly, the whole crowd fell to its knees. The dinosaur fell into roaring, we shrieked and hid behind our hands. The place was PACKED with people. I felt like I was on the subway. The people working at the store were very confused, I think. One of them shouted out, “Is anyone making a purchase?”
When I was kneeling, I just really wanted to get up and leave. I felt like this was a waste of the potential of human beings to come together and create something meaningful, exploiting our predisposition towards new paradigms to create something totally useless. A little too postmodern for my tastes. In addition, I felt bad for the Toys ‘R’ Us people whose store we were clogging up, and whose tourist customers we probably scared the hell out of. But I guess some of them seemed to enjoy it.
Police, or at least extra security, were called, and the mob was given a little bit of help on the way out. There were definitely still people inside at 7:27. But I think there were a lot more people than anyone was expecting. I’m just glad nobody got hurt or arrested or what have you. I mean, it was really crowded!
I ran into some friends from high school and college, and afterwards, a guy who I’d talked to a little while I was waiting at Hamburger Harry’s came up to me with a woman and a camera and wanted to ask me a few questions. It looked like a camcorder and they both had accents, so I thought they were just tourists or something. After I had talked to them, they asked me my full name, and I was like “Uh, what is this for?” We’re from Reuters, they said.
Damn sneaky TV news bastards. 
Great pictures at Satan’s Laundromat. Other coverage at Fred’s Journal, Writing My Name In Water, cce blog, glowlab news and You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass. (She’s got a couple posts on the topic, so that’s the weekly archive.)
Jul 27, 2003 thingsThatHappened
Just had me a little scare. My recent aggravation with OS X, specifically the uselessness of the Dock, and the lack of decent window management, caused me to try to go back to Yellow Dog Linux. I was using 2.2 back in the days when I still used my Powerbook, and I’ve been eyeing 3.0 ever since it came out.
The installation failed while extracting some package, probably because of a bad burned CD. When I started up my computer again, I got a big ol circle with a slash through it.
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