n i c k y n a x . c o m

This is week sixty-five in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could only use one cosmetic item for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

Tough call. It would come down to choosing among soap, toothpaste or deodorant. I think I’d ultimately choose the toothpaste though. I still wanna be kissable.

If you could cure any disease, which would it be?

AIDS

If you could be the owner of any current team in professional sports, which one would you want?

Sports? What’s that? I guess the Yankees? Hell if I know.

If you had to eliminate one odor from the earth, which one would you get rid of?

The smell of vomit. Just smelling it causes me to almost vomit as well.

Those are my answers to this week’s questions. What are yours?

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Sometimes we forget that we don’t have to travel far from home to experience something beautiful. Perhaps we become too used to our surroundings to fully appreciate them and we start to take them granted. Perhaps we just never bothered to see them in the first place, assuming that the only things really worth noticing were always ’somewhere else.’

This afternoon, I decided to take an Astoria Appreciation Walk and try to take some time to really notice and enjoy my neighborhood. It wasn’t that thorough of a walk, mind you. Nor was it to any parts of the neighborhood that I haven’t been to before. But this time, the sole purpose was to take a moment and actually notice. Notice the people. Notice the architecture. Notice the rhythm of everyday life and how the mundane can actually be beautiful if you actually see it instead of just looking at it.

I took my camera along with me, because I find if I have it in my hands it forces me to notice things even more, but unfortunately it ran out of batteries after I snapped a few pictures. And I even had a five minute debate with myself before leaving the house as to whether or not I should put a fresh set of batteries in it. “Nah. I’m sure these ones are charged up pretty well.”

Lesson learned.

I did get a couple of nice pictures though.

The first one was just a random soda bottle bobbing in the East River. Sure, litter in the East River is pretty common, but this lonely bottle floating around looking for a place to wash ashore (perhaps with a message inside waiting to be read) was a small moment of beauty found along m way… which I then photoshopped the hell out of.

I think it must be a law on the books somewhere that if you go to Astoria Park, you’re required to take pictures of the bridges. I’m sure if you don’t, they cart you away somewhere and stick bamboo under your fingernails and torture you into submission. It’s just one of those obligatory pictures you’re required to take. Like when you Pisa. You are required to take one of those perspective picture that make it looks like you’re holding the Leaning Tower up so that it doesn’t topple over.

So, not wanting to risk the torture, I took some bridge pictures.

This one feature the Hell Gate Bridge in the front, the Triborough Bridge (now officially named the Robert F Kennedy Bridge, though it will always be the Triborough to me) further back, and the skyline of Manhattan in the background.

At the base of the Hell Gate bridge I found a man playing fetch with his dog. Except he was throwing the stick into the river for the dog to swim out to and retrieve. I would never send my beloved animal companion into the cesspool known as the East River, but to each his own. Here’s a shot of the dog (center of the frame) leaping into the river to fetch the stick… and a plethora of diseases.

And that’s when my batteries died. I still had my iPhone with me though, and my obsession with taking panoramic pictures with it hasn’t died yet, so I positioned myself for a nice panoramic picture of the two bridges spanning the river.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of my Astoria Appreciation Walk was that Mother Nature waited until five minutes after I returned home to start raining. Thanks, Ma!

In closing, I encourage you to spend an afternoon exploring your own backyard and neighborhood and find the beauty you never noticed before.

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Allow me a moment of self-indulgence in celebrating a small milestone that happened today. And really, when I say small milestone, I mean miniscule. But it’s a milestone, nonetheless, and all of life’s milestones should be celebrated in one form or another. So, that’s that.

Today, one of my YouTube videos has met the 1,000 views mark. I realize to a vast majority of the YouTube community, that’s small potatoes and their videos hit that mark within hours or days. But since this is the first of mine to make it, I’m understandably a little excited.

The winning video was my Gay-cation to Walt Disney World I filmed with Karen, Kevin and Lauren. But it wasn’t without a worthy opponent. For awhile there, it looked like A Day at Wonder Works was going to surge ahead and win, as it seems to get many more hits per day than Gay-cation does. But the Gay-cationers maintained their lead long enough to pass this finish line first, so congratulations to them!

Now, I have no doubt in my mind that my Christmas video would have made it to the 1,000 mark first (and long ago) had YouTube not removed it due to my using a bit of some music that I’m legally not allowed to use (blah blah blah), but they did, and so its brilliance was yanked. Hint: It’s still on Facebook, so if you want to see me at my best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), you can find it in the video section of my profile there.

Speaking of Facebook videos, I really wish they kept track of how man times videos are viewed. I have a hunch I get a majority of my views there, and not that it’s really a big deal in the grand scheme of things how many times someone has watched my videos, it’s just nice to be able to know if the time and effort I put into them is even worth it. It’s always nice to get some recognition for your hard work, you know?

But today isn’t about that. Today is about celebrating my first video to reach 1,000 views on YouTube. So, to celebrate, I invite you to head on over to My YouTube Channel and watch some of my videos. I post most of them here as they get uploaded, but who knows, maybe you missed one. Or maybe it’s time to revisit an old favorite.

In any case, go take a gander. Comment. Rate. Subscribe. Tell a friend. Send cash donations!

No really. I accept PayPal.

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This is week sixty-four in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could serve in one capacity in the military (in which you haven’t already served), what would you want to do?

Administer the physicals to all of the strapping young men who have enlisted.

If you could eliminate forevermore one cause of death on earth, what would it be?

Murder.

If you had to choose the best book in history, which book would get the prize?

I’m no literary maven. In fact, I can’t remember the last book I read that wasn’t Harry Potter, and while I love those, I’d never give them the title of Best Book in History. I really should read more often, shouldn’t I?

If you had to choose the worst book ever written, what would it be?

Well, again, having read very few books in my adulthood, I’m in no position to be picking bests and worsts. But, for no other reason than just to piss off the junior high girls of the world (I haven’t even read it), I will say Twilight.

Those are my answers to this week’s questions. What are yours?

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A couple months ago, I went on this spree where I started decorating my apartment. We all know the real motivations behind it, so there’s no point delving into that, but after spending a few hundred dollars on things like picture frames, candles, and other small decorative items from the Brooklyn IKEA, I also dropped a hundred dollars on some nice potted plants at the local flower shop.

I always feel like plants help make a house feel more like a home, so I really wanted to get one for each room. I chose a nice, full Sago Palm for my nightstand as I had had one of these in a previous apartment I had lived in and liked the look of it. Also, having a palm of any type reminded me of Florida, which is always a good thing. That one had died when Miss Jackson decided she would eat it.

Come to find out later that the Sago Palm is highly poisonous to consume.

Whoops!

Anyway, I have had this one for a couple months now, and recently something odd began to happen. Perhaps not odd in the world of Sago Palms, but it never happened with my old one, so it’s odd as far as I’m concerned.

The plant itself is made up of three palm-like branches that sprout out of a center bulb-like base. But one morning I woke up to discover that two thin…. stems (for lack of a better word) had started sprouting from the base as well. No biggie, I thought. It’s just new palm fronds growing. But over the past month since I first noticed them, they have yet to form into palm fronds. Instead they just keep getting taller and taller and taller. With little buds along their surface at approximately every inch or so.

They are now over two feet tall and still showing no signs of turning into anything resembling a Sago Palm. And of course since I have an overactive imagination, I’ve decided that I’ve got my own little Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors sitting on my nightstand and he’s slowly growing long tentacles which, once long enough, will reach over and choke me in the middle of the night, drag me off the bed, and pull me over so he can slowly devour me and begin to take over the planet.

I’m sure there’s a completely logical explanation for the bizarre things growing out of my plant, but for now, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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This is week sixty-three in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you were elected to be the leader of the United States tomorrow, what would be your first act?

Legalize gay marriage nationwide.

If you could eliminate one thing you do each day in the bathroom so that you never had to do it again, what would it be?

Shaving

If you had to have your mate get a part of their body pierced, exactly where would you want it to be?

I don’t currently have a mate, but if I did, I would probably pic the top, outer edge of the ear. Not really a fan of piercings on men in most cases, but that location seems to work best on most guys that I’ve seen.

If you could only hear one voice that you are familiar with for the rest of your life from the mouth of all people, whose would it be?

Steven Hawking. No, that’s just a joke. I can’t decide if I wanted a voice of someone I love or just a voice I love from someone else. If it’s the former, then I think I’d want my mother’s voice. If it’s the latter, maybe someone with a calm, soothing voice. With a sexy foreign accent.

Those are my answers to this week’s questions. What are yours?

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I normally work on Saturdays, but today I actually had the day off, and while it was fantastic being able to sleep (which I did until about 10am), once I woke up, I couldn’t help but be a little bummed out that I had no real plans for the day.

Sure, there’s always some chores that can be done. Laundry, cleaning, running errands. But those sorts of things never really appeal to me. Do they ever appeal to anyone? Having no exciting activity planned for a day off that I normally don’t get left me feeling a little discouraged about the state of my life right now. It made me realize that I’m getting dangerously close that threshold where your job is the only thing keeping you active and getting you out and about. Yikes!

I put a call out into the universe for something interesting to do today, and the universe answered back in the form of a suggestion from Lauren that I pay a visit to P.S. 1.

I couldn’t believe that in three years of living in virtually the same neighborhood as P.S. 1 (nevermind ten years of living in the same city), that I had never actually been there. I checked their website, discovered that it was only $5 to get in, and my adventure for the day had been decided upon.

Upon arrival to the museum, I discovered that it would be filled with modern art, based on the giant sign on the facade of the building declaring that it is part of MoMA, as evidenced by the above picture (not mine. shamelessly stolen from the Internet). I have been to MoMA once before to see their Pixar exhibit a few years ago, but didn’t really explore the other areas of it at the time as we didn’t have much time to on that particular outing. This trip reminded me that I need to get back there and do that.

First thing I was greeted with was their giant stone sign at the front gates.

That left me with the question “Is there a difference between Modern and Contemporary Art?”

I will be the first person to admit that I know nothing about art. I can’t really analyze it, or discuss it academically with any real authority. I have no idea how to interpret it or find the deeper meanings. And when i comes to Modern (or would that be Contemporary?) Art, all bets are off. I was starting to get concerned that I wouldn’t be able to actually enjoy the museum if I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.

Lauren had told me that the front courtyard was really pretty, so I was looking forward to that part. Unfortunately it looked like they were in the middle of installing a new exhibit (or perhaps uninstalling it), so there wasn’t much to look at. It looks like it will be pretty cool when they finish with it though, so I decided if I liked the rest of the museum enough, maybe I’d come back in a month or so to see the finished courtyard display as well.

Once beyond the front doors, I was informed that there was no cell phone use or photography allowed, so I was unable to take pictures of anything else to share. Which I totally understand. I’m familiar enough with various mediums of art to know that unauthorized reproductions (including photographs) are generally frowned upon. Does that make me a hypocrite for posting a picture of the courtyard installation? Probably.

Hey, nobody’s perfect.

One thing about the museum that left me a little crestfallen was that it currently seemed to be only about half-full. A lot of areas, and even some entire floors were closed off and dark, so my afternoon at the museum quickly turned into only about an hour or so. That’s not to take away anything from the experience and exhibits that I did see there, just wish I would have had the chance to fully explore and see even more to make more of a day out of it.

The exhibits that I did see left me with the question of “What is art?” What makes this random thing sitting in the middle of a white room “art”? What does something have to be or include to make it cross that line from being a something to being a work of art? Who is the one who gets to decide that?

There was one exhibit which featured a white pillar that came up to about my navel. On that pillar was a cube-shaped glass container filled with water. And submerged in that water was a block of tofu. And that…was art.

Really?

I soak tofu in water at least once a week in my kitchen. What made the one in the museum art while mine is nothing more than leftovers waiting to be cubed up and put in a salad? The pillar? Do I need to get a pillar so I can start making money off of my leftovers?

There was also a whole exhibit that dealt with Lee Harvey Oswald. Clipping of photographs, interviews, newspaper excerpts all collaged together into various pieces. As if the whole JFK assassination controversy wasn’t fascinating enough, there was one piece in this exhibit that captured my attention. Handwritten in a haphazardly-neat (did that make any sense?) cursive in the bottom right corner of the piece was the phrase “Anybody Can Pretend.” I have no idea what that means or what exactly the artist was trying to say with that phrase on that particular piece, but those three words really struck a chord with me. I stood there and stared at it for a good three minutes before I realized I had been standing there for three minutes staring at that sentence. It left me feeling a little uneasy, and yet inspired at the exact same time.

There were a couple moments that were actually a little shocking to the system and scary. You have to use these stairwells which are unpainted and a little unkempt to travel from floor to floor. Exposed brick, but a little disheveled. They gave the appearance of being stairwells that aren’t meant for public use and more for maintenance use only. So, it feels a little bit like your trespassing in areas that you aren’t supposed to be. Not only was it creepy enough to be walking through areas where you didn’t think you were allowed to be and not sure of where they were going to lead, but you turn the corner and staring you in the face is one of the 9/11 terrorists.

Excuse me?!

Yeah, apparently in random and out of the way corners and stairwells where there would not normally be a piece of art hanging, there were small, framed 5 x 7 photograph of various 9/11 terrorists. It left me feeling very uneasy and nervous to explore areas outside of the main exhibit rooms. We’ve all been trained by society and our media to have such a strong reaction to these people (and understandably so) that I found myself a little scared whenever I saw one. And it didn’t help that I was in what appeared to be an abandoned stairwell at the moment.

Thus my imagination started getting the better of me and I started to think about how awesome it would be to film a horror movie at P.S. 1 where students on a field trip get locked in overnight while a psychopath held them captive in the museum and chased them through all the back stairwells and basement and through all of the creepy exhibits…soaking tofu and all.

Hey, it made me feel better about being stared down by a terrorist.

One of the most interesting parts of it all was that P.S. 1 used to be a public school (as evidenced by its name). It was very bizarre walking the halls of what was obviously once a school building, going into what was obviously once a classroom, but finding an art exhibit inside. It was a very unique juxtaposition that left me feeling a little unsure of where I was.

Perhaps that was an unintentional exhibit in and of itself. A museum that is a public school that is a museum. Where does the school end and the museum begin? Where else can a museum exist? Maybe everything we do and create is a living and ever-changing museum about who we are.

Woah. Did I just say something deep? That’s new.

Upon leaving the museum, I was still questioning what makes something art, and I think I’ve come up with an answer that works for me. I think that anything that someone creates that can cause an emotional reaction in someone else can be deemed art. Whether it be joy, sadness, fear, hope, or even confusion. If it has touched you somewhere and made you take a moment to think and feel, then that is art.

I left the museum feeling very good about my visit and newfound discovery.

On my walk back to the subway to head home, I passed a trash can that made me smile. You see, when you pay your admission to get into P.S. 1, you’re given a sticker to wear as proof of payment. And when you leave P.S. 1, you throw that sticker away. Or not.

I couldn’t help but stop and smile. I happily removed my sticker from my shirt, added it to the collection, and snapped a photograph of the collaboration I had now become a part of.

Perhaps someday someone will move that trash can inside the museum walls, because I think it’s pretty artistic as well.

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I haven’t really written many blog entries lately that weren’t the weekly “If…” entries, and that’s mostly due to a lack of anything worth writing about. Not that my life is completely void of all activity (though sometimes it sure can feel that way), there just hasn’t really been anything that I would personally deem to be blog-worthy. So, for that I apologize.

I’ve decided that maybe in order to provide more content during those slower times we all experience in our lives, I could always just post a quick picture or two every now and then. I mean, I have the blogging app on my iPhone and am always taking random pictures with it. There’s no reason why I can’t put two and two together and blog some of those random pictures.

And I live in NYC for goodness sake. There’s always something interesting to take a picture of and share. So, that’s what today’s entry is.

Awhile back I posted a picture of the view from my living room and how you can kinda sorta barely see the Empire State Building if you dangled yourself from the window and leaned your head just right. Today’s entry will be the cousin of that entry. This one is the view from my desk at work.

I recently shifted desks in the office and my new window has a much better view than my old one, so I took this panoramic photo of it (yes, I’m still a little obsessed with the Pano app on my phone). This is what I get to stare at all day while I’m workin hard for the money.

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This is week sixty-two in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could read the mind of anyone you know, who would it be?

I guess I would like to read Kevin’s mind so I could know what it was that I did that made him not love me anymore. Because, honestly, I have no clue and doubt I ever will.

If you could read the mind of someone famous, who would it be?

I would love to know exactly what was going on in Ellen DeGeneres’ mind so I could see how it worked so quickly and spontaneously to come up with the brilliant sense of humor she has.

If you could dance any one dance perfectly, which dance would you choose?

I guess being a Broadway Boy, it would end up being a famous piece of stage choreography. Something iconic like the opening number of A Chorus Line.

If you could be the editor of any single magazine, what publication would you pick?

Playgirl? I would want it to be a light-hearted magazine. Nothing news-heavy and depressing and intense. Some silly pop-culture-centric magazine would suit me just well. Or maybe a Disney publication. I could be passionate about that genre as well.

Those are my answers to this week’s questions. What are yours?

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