The city never sleeps, just the people in it.

We had a really great weekend, thanks for asking. Our friend Joey came to visit for a week, and we saw Avenue Q, which was really awesome I thought. It's a musical with puppets. Earlier in the week we also watched Pineapple Express, which we all really liked as well. On Saturday we went over the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the WTC site, had lunch in Little Italy and saw frogs climbing out of barrels in Chinatown. Luckily the vendor had a handy metal rod to help them back into the barrel. That night we went to the Jersey shore and walked along the beach, and I was later denied access to a bar because I only had a federally issued ID, not a state-issued driver's license. So we went to a bar that didn't bother carding. So much for the facts.

Here's what's really important though: Either some people in this town work way too hard, or the city just makes you really sleepy. While riding the subway on the way to Brooklyn (yeah, we took the easy way out), a young man was falling asleep in his seat, leaning on the unsuspecting people who sat down next to him. The first person I saw this happen to just got up and let him sprawl out, the next lady was rather large, and it was hilarious to see him lean on her shoulder. After that people kept nudging him, or just laughing, and it was quite entertaining. Later on in Chinatown a man had decided to go to sleep on the sidewalk. While this second case was probably more sad than funny, you've got to be one tired mothertrucker to be able to sleep right there on a sidewalk with hundreds of people pushing by. In the middle of the day. What's your favorite Led Zeppelin album?

Squeeze until you diiiiiiie!

I saw something on TV the other day about the latest shoe trend for women, and they went to these fancy stores in New York and looked at some $700 shoes and stuff. It was boring, and all you need to know is that the latest trend are pumps with the tip cut out a certain way. I wouldn't have even remembered it, had I not seen shoes very much like those shown on that newscast (or pathetic excuse thereof I guess (have you noticed how I've been overusing parentheses in my recent posts?)) in a window today. And it got me thinking (don't laugh, it might really have happened): How do these trends get created and why do the designers charge so much? Cause I can't really get my head around it: (this is really turning into colon country) There are all kinds of different of these high-profile designers, sitting in their offices dreaming up these new shoe designs all day, which is really hard, right? But we're talking about super-creative people here. They can do these kinds of things over and over again, season after season, year after year, decade after decade. Miracle-workers. And yet, miraculously, they all end up designing shoes that look the same. I mean, what the pluck? Did they all get together and decide which way they're gonna cut off the tip of the shoe this year? And then they all get colors and fabrics assigned so there's no duplicates? Are they all spying on each other? Either way, their effort seems to be small, and the price of the shoes high. But you know what, people that buy these kinds of shoes, don't deserve any better. They're getting ripped off, financially and creatively, and I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. I'm not saying I don't ever follow any trends, I don't think anybody can escape them, and I don't want to write another post with a somewhat negative vibe, but these kinds of mainstream trends are really pathetic. They get published and broadcast everywhere like they're these deeply-rooted autonomous currents that fuel our society and that you just can't escape. As if the shoe design just materialized out of the divine designer mist one day, just in time for the fall collection, and then people need them like the air they breathe. But the truth is, the designers probably do all get together and decide what to do next. And then people go and buy this stuff, not cause they like it, but because they think, or realize that, everyone else bought it too. And that my friends, is how those skinny jeans and boots with high-water pants became popular.