as an unlikely father of two in so-called modern society, i am, mostly against my will, in constant contact with objects of childhood. from diapers, co-sleepers and placenta under-the-bed storage bins to begin with; to, inevitably, primary colored toys, midget-sized blazers and sadly interactive books, the ones with built-in finger puppets. little by little, you whittle down your selections to the aesthetics that perturb least your sense of right and wrong and hope for the best. but at some point, and i'm afraid i may have reached that juncture, you turn around to look over your thoughtfullly-erected domain and bear witness to the fact that you are but the proud king to a pile of crap. and not just any crap but crap that was once in a perfectly engineered package which tried its best to convince you that said crap, if anything, would elevate your child's brain to unforetold heights. fact is, when you look around in any store where plastic is celebrated as a god, you see that everything marketed to kids is supposedly "educational." very few packaged toys are ever specifically designed or sold ...
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so it was earth day last week, i'm told. truth is, if sting isn't singing fragile somewhere, i'm less than interested in helping... there really wasn't much activity around the yearly consciousness drive this time, i guess saving the planet has become a bit of a hobby at this point, nothing much more than that. and, actually, why does it always have to be "the planet" that we save? why are we always being asked to save the world in order to make a difference? it’s a shame that every time somebody feels that a change is necessary in their lives, it has to be about making a difference, not just in their life, but in everybody’s. as scary a topic as the environment is, i’m with george carlin on ...
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between birth and death, we are encouraged by our parents, then our peers, to mark the passing of time with celebrations, mostly undeserved, of the day of our being delivered into this world. appropriately named birth-days, they are spent taking stock of the successes and failures of the past in order to adjust the present and better divine the outcomes of the future drinking swill until the body can take no more and rejects you as a host.

now, this past friday was my dearest friend, english-born ceylon beauty natasha chetiyawardana's birth-day. i have known her less than a decade but in that time have learned to appreciate her as an artist, a designer and a humanitarian bring her to near-orgasm with nary a touch while watching Lost. or at least, i used to... see, a few months ago, she left back to her native england in order to pursue a career that evidently did not have to include near-orgasms. this is a woman whose friendship, as previously documented here, is hard for me to live without, a woman whose brain i most possibly share, a women whom my wife, in a feat of understanding, seems to feel no bitterness towards. what to get such a women to celebrate the 30th year of her appearance on this, our earth?

vivienne westwood wallpaper to finish her new london flat?
25 films by akira kurosawa because she never saw 1?
a new suitcase for her many travels?
ceramic centerpieces for her obsessively glorious cooking?
or the topless bikini for obvious reasons?

well, none of these really hit gina or i as the perfect gift. no, instead, we chose humiliation... i slid over the piano, gina to the legal pad and we soon would be in possession of exactly that in the form of a ditty and accompanying visuals written and directed expressly for her. of course, for the rest of you, it might make little sense and readily catapult us in the internet's deepest, darkest corner but if you read these pages on a regular basis, you know that we have little dignity left to lose.

so here it is, natasha, ladies and gentlemen, i give you (and do yourself a favor, fullscreen and crank that shit to 11) ...

"brown girls"

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it was on this date 10 years ago that i first packed my bags to fly away to the famed salone internazionale del mobile, an event of gargantuan proportions in the club i had just feigned membership into with the opening of the apartment design store. i was told that i could not miss milan's design fair if i wanted to be significant at all within the ranks of said elite community. these were good times, like the ones i'd heard about from france, during which entrepreneurs like myself granted ourselves permission to "invest in our growth" as we called it so as not to alarm the accountants. and so on we went, from first class alitalia, and discovering it was no better that coach delta, to our first taste of melt-in-your-mouth bufala, the trip became much more than a matter of mere trade show attendance, but rather a pilgrimage to a land where quality of life was not a pursuit, just the way. from lunching and shopping at 10 corso como to nighttime debauchery at plastic, the journey soon became a blur. supposed to focus on designers and their wares, our time was rather quickly filled with the golden triangle and the myriad restaurants and other places of capitalistic sin previously listed in this here column from last year.

but you know what? it would probably be much better to actually see it happening instead of reading me telling you how amazing it used to be. well, as luck would have, it, i just unearthed my very first travelogue, heretofore never seen by anyone but its participants. it was only our second year in the italian design capital and it was quite a treat. it would be my first foray in committing audiovisual to digital memory so the pace is slow, the editing tentative (in iMovie 1!) and the storyline is approximate at best but here it is...

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this morning is a tired one in the sunny hills of upstate new york. not much sleeping done last night due to unexplained reasons. could be that i am tantalized at finally iPaddding today, having missed my saturday delivery. could be that i feel trepidation at the arrival of warm weather which will enable near-naked antics all across the land. could be that the aforementioned balm and nudity isn't exactly an incentive to look for new ...
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