Les Touristes de Nouveau Yorque

(Click to enlarge)

As you walk down West 34th, wondering what the hell brought you up there in the first place, you are surrounded by the tourists with their various plastic bags of souvenirs: hot pink leggings from H&M, cork wedges from Nine West and a silk bejeweled tunic from Zara. None of this is New York, but they will delight in telling their friends back home that it's from "oh, some little hidden boutique in the east village." Note that this recently happened for a friend of mine, whose acquaintance purchased a leather journal and fountain pen at Barnes & Noble as a souvenir of New York (wtf?)

Well, these are the names of those heretofore unnamed tourist passers-by, according to the cheap mini license plate stock: Pierre, Mitch, Kelsey, Kari, Katheryn, Pablo, Marc, Lori, Pepe, Neil... it's all a smattering of outre Europeans and American suburbanites. It looks like the least popular names (meaning most plates leftover) are Peggy and Judy - because ladies with those names are probably sensible enough to be in Disney World on vacation, getting engraved crystal Epcot Centers.

Let's end things on a high note:

Anyone who purchases one of the shirts below knows what they've gotten themselves into. Especially that green one - I mean, NYC, Starbucks AND it's American Apparel? I want to hang out with the person who takes that back to Liege, Belgium and shows it off at his local pommes frites vendor. Yes, sir.

Comics to Redefine Comics

Among the things that get me through every day are, surprisingly, comics. Aside from a brief 7-issue collection of the physical comic book Catwoman: When in Rome (see picture top right) my daily departures have been of the web variety. On the top left there we have my highest recommendation: Eliza Frye's "The Lady's Murder," a mystery of beguiling images which are drawn and painted and instantly scanned to reveal the story one page per day.

And then there are the hilarious quips also doled out daily by Married to the Sea (bottom left) and Wondermark (bottom right). Is the turn to web comics a piece of the dilapidation of print media? Sure, why not. But then everyone wants to turn a hard profit, thus Wondermark found its way into The Onion and Eliza Frye is searching for a printer. When/if these series end, what will I read over dinner? Oh, books - yea those.