Kalindi's World Message

This is the cover of a CD I found on Avenue A. Copies had been left on random horizontal surfaces to be picked up.

According to the Gourasana website, "Kalindi was given the destiny by Gourasana to be a spiritual Master for the world and the Voice of God, to speak for Him, to bring His teachings, His guidance, His love, His energy, and the exquisite truth that the world has been crying for."

This is Gourasana, The Golden One. Gourasana is an incarnation of God in the body of a guy named David Swanson. He looks like some dude who thinks he's found a way to make a lot money and bang a lot of chicks with something called Miracle of Love^®, a vaguely Eastern religion.

Sounds like complete horse shit®

ZEPP

Now that Led Zeppelin is playing live again, tribute acts like Zepp will have to compete against the real thing. But without John Bonham, even the reinflated Zeppelin is an imitation of itself.

The Robe

This is ominous.

Calling the number at the bottom gets you Majestic Robe of Santa Monica. Maybe they just sell robes, but maybe they're also murdering teenagers for Satan.

Guitar Lessons!!

Dan Smith isn't the only six-stringer slinger in NYC who teaches. But before you take your first lesson, you can get your blues name at The Blues Name Generator.

Bush Did It For Oil

For those who still can't get enough conspiracy theories about 9-11 , there's patriotsquestion911.com to answer your need.

Found on 3rd Avenue in the East Village.

Leviticus - Part 14: The Artist At Work

Last Friday evening, the family and I needed to get out of the apartment so we went to the Starbucks at 2nd Avenue and 9th Street, not our usual location. While I was snagging a table, I noticed that, on the table next to us, there were what looked like Leviticus postings, mid-creation. A minute later, the face that I had seen on a few postings returned to the table. He had a large stack of typing paper, the words already written on them in Sharpie, and was going through a fashion magazine, cutting out pictures and taping them below the text.

I went out the next day, looking for one of his creations but couldn't find any. From what I saw, I think they were going to look like this:

Artist's interpretation.

Meet Duchess

At first I thought this was some sort of furry event or American Apparel promotion, or both, but it's for Cats on Broadway, a musical. According to The Bruce High Quality Foundation site, "Set on the border between Bed-Stuy and Bushwick (Broadway, Brooklyn) and performed in the newly renovated Bruce High Quality Foundation Theater (1100 Broadway, Brooklyn), Cats on Broadway brings together an all-volunteer cast of performers, musicians, stagehands, and designers to reflect the emotional conflicts of the gentrification of Brooklyn while satirizing both the utopian reform schemes and self-pitying nihilism often associated with the artists responsible for gentrification’s 'first wave.'”

Britney Happy B-Day

Rob, my friend in Los Angeles, found this at Crescent Heights and Mulholland Drive. He had to get out of his car to retrieve this so it has to be special. It's also crazy. And gay.

Like, this is way crazy and a little gay.

And this is a little crazy and super gay. Super L.A. too. I don't find stuff like this here in NYC. We're more obsessed with money than celebrity so we tend to leave our resident stars alone. Except for John Lennon.

Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad

I think these ladies overestimate the novelty of Jewish girls gone bad. I've had extensive experience with the daughters of the twelve tribes and I can tell you that very few of them are "nice." In fact, the only one I ever dated who was "nice" had WASP aspirations.

Your Name Here

I was at Starbucks, getting my morning tea, when I looked at the CDs by the register. One jumped out at me because it didn't look like it was was being marketed to soccer moms. I picked it up and saw that it was a home-brewed release by Your Name Here, a one-man electronica band.

I don't know how it got there. My first thought was that it was some form of protest. But the Starbucks is at 1 Worldwide Plaza, the home of the Universal Music Group. Perhaps the plan was to put it in the path of a record company executive.

Leviticus - Part 13

More Leviticus postings from around Union Square. He did a drawing like this before on a bus shelter, including the coffee mug motif.

This is a page out of a textbook. Now I'm noticing that not only does Leviticus usually draw on scrap paper, all of his art supplies can be stolen from a Walgreens.

Kinski

A friend of mine was going to see Kinski and asked me if I wanted to join him. I hadn't seen a band in a while so I made the trek out Club Europa in Greenpoint. NME described Kinski "like Sabbath in a washing machine during a power surge." That's pretty accurate. We left midway through Oneida's set. They play like every chord change costs them $20.

On the way out I pulled down Kinski's poster. They put a lot of effort into their graphics. What I like about this poster is that it's printed on cheap newsprint.

Missing

I see flyers for missing people regularly in NYC. Here's one from L.A.

Missing Cat

Whenever you get a cat you have to rename it. It doesn't matter how old the cat is or what the previous owner named him. When our cats were adopted they were Hallow and Weenie, because one is orange and the other is black. They became Arlo and Guthrie.

This cat is named Bob Dylan. Whoever finds him will have to change that. Robert Zimmerman has a nice ring to it.

Found

Also found in L.A., on Melrose.

I had to find a lost ferret once. They're little creatures and widely misunderstood. The people who found him were feeding him lettuce. Ferrets aren't rodents. They eat meat. He had diarrhea for a couple of days after his return.

Lost

I was in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving and found a few flyers while I was there, all for lost and found pets and one human.

L.A. has a large urban coyote population. Maybe one them has a taste for Mexican food.

Diary of a Madman

I was walking down 11th street when I saw a black bag with its contents spread around it, piles of paper scraps with writing on them. This is the diary of a madman.

Here are some of the lyrics to Diary of a Madman by Ozzy Osbourne:

Screaming at the window
Watch me die another day
Hopeless situation, endless price I have to pay

Sanity now it's beyond me; there's no choice

Diary of a madman
Walk the line again today
Entries of confusion
Dear diary, I'm here to stay

By comparison, Ozzy seems pretty sane.

Iraq Out Now - Part 2

This micro protest is only 2.5" wide. That's not enough room to present a cogent argument or even specify where Iraq needs to get out of. Iraq, maybe? If I were Iraq, I'd want to get out of Iraq.

Found all over the Union Square area.

Actor Needed

What's odd about this flyer, besides that there are no casting specs other than gender, is the promise to "pay in food."

This filmmaker needs to find someone holding a sign like this...

No Hate

As someone who hates, I often feel that I am in the minority. What's worse, I often find myself confronted by those who work to oppress me and crush my right to hate, loathe, detest, abhor and begrudge.

Found on the Upper East Side.

Papermovie

Let's say you want to make a movie. The problem is you have no budget, no movie camera, no movie film and no craft services table. Even worse, you live in Bulgaria. But you can still get your project made with Papermovie.

Depending on how you look at it, Papermovie is either an evolved storyboard or a lo-fi movie - so lo-fi that the pictures don't move.

Printed in flyer form, these movies are distributed for free in clubs, cafes, sports centers, cinemas, shops, tattoo studios, universities, subway stations, beaches and prisons. To see the whole story you have to collect all the flyers. Or you can visit Papermovie.com and read the stories while listening to their original soundtracks.

Papermovie is an end in itself. It's not a guerrilla marketing concept for a studio release or the pitch for a Project Green Light type reality show.

It doesn't get any more indie than this.

Doo Wop Singers Wanted

If you're going to form a band in a genre that predates the Xerox machine and Craig's List, it makes sense to advertise for members using neither. I hope that's not a cell phone number.

Found on Broadway, near some NYU dorms.

Missing Cat

Found in the West Village near where all the dogs have gone missing. Maybe the dognappers are branching out into other species.

Leviticus - Part 12

Leviticus continues in his campaign to write his name and the Freestyle Family logo on every piece of paper he comes across. Found these near Union Square.

This is a page of Hello Goodbye from a Beatles song book. I'm not looking for any significance in the choice of artist or song. I think that if he had Twenty % Tippers: Greatest Hits that's what he would have used.

Black Veil

I received another mailing from the Twenty % Tippers, a story entitled Black Veil. If any of the tale is to be believed, they are about to record an album on Rhombus Records. The only hang up is that they're short a female vocalist for the project. If you've got the time, the pipes and the estrogen, call 646-335-3390 and leave a message, or email the band at band@tippersmusic.com. If you want to hear their music first, they're still giving out free CDs here.

LampPosts

LampPosts is an art magazine designed to be posted page-by-page in public places. Anyone can participate by printing out an issue, or a hundred, and posting them. Everything you need to know is at lampposts.org. including a map of where in the world LampPost has been posted so far.

I found page two of issue one at 2nd Avenue and 7th Street.

Comics Mecca

I read a piece of business advice saying that you shouldn't open a business doing or selling something that you're passionate about because your emotions will cloud your business decisions. If everybody listened to that advice there would be no recording studios or comic book shops.

Celso

Here, Celso combines the sex ads from the back of a tabloid weekly, the labels of sports drinks and drawings of naked women. Yes, cavorting with hookers can make a guy thirsty.

Workin Hard?

The insinuation is that the have-nots work hard, haves don't and it's the latter who are getting richer.

As my father-in-law says, to go from nothing to $8 million is impressive. To go from $8 million to $30 million is inevitable.

Found on Broadway near Union Square.

O, Pardon Me, Thou Bleeding Piece of Earth

The text is by William Shakespeare from Julius Caesar and is the source of the expression "the dogs of war."

Nothing classes up street art like a Shakespearean quote.

Here's Irony For You

There's a big difference between George W. Bush and Ehren Watada. Bush weaseled out of combat duty without defying any direct orders. Watada just said no and that's something that the military can't allow. If soldiers get to decide whether they want to go to war or not then they'll be deciding who will be storming the beach, what time the bombardment starts and who gets to drive the tank. Anyone going into the military has to know that it's not a democracy. You obey orders and if you don't like them you have to obey them anyway.

These were being handed out in Washington Square Park by Veterans for Peace.

What's Missing In Your Life That Her Life Is So Important In Yours?

I think I can answer that question. What scares us is the nagging feeling that our lives don't matter and that we will die without having made any mark on the world. Celebrities hold out the possibility that we can make a lasting impression and possibly live on after death. that's why we build them up and, because the goal is merely fame, we are willing to elevate someone like Paris Hilton who has no real accomplishments.

Eventually we realize that we won't become famous - not even for 15 minutes - and we become resentful of those in the limelight. We tear them down, getting pleasure every time we see a famous face getting arrested, divorced, caught on tape having sex or making a poor fashion choice.

But that doesn't solve our original problem - the pointlessness of our lives - so we hunger for more celebrities and the cycle continues.

Daydream

Looks like Elbowtoe is giving De La Vega a run for his money. Found near Union Square.

Beers For Barcelona Video

This was made at Animoto.com.

Tall & Handsome - I'm Sleepless In Seattle!!!

"Hi Mr. Tall & Handsome, remember me?? I'm Gina Newton from Seattle. I design furniture and haven't or couldn't forget your kindness and generosity. You saved me (and my wallet) at the Club Sway in 305 Spring Street. You found it and took it back to the bartender. Thanks honey-hon hon!! I know you live in the Astor Place area. If this is indeed you, please email me and say hello. I know you are VERY tall with dark hair (my fave..)

Found near Astor Place on a Sunday afternoon.

Leviticus - Part 11

After all these months of publicity, here's my chance to see Leviticus live! What can I expect? Music? Poetry? Self-immolation?
Meanwhile, the Freestyle Family was busy taping up these mini Bible pages around the East Village, challenging our ideas about biblical proportions.

Rebuild Us You Cowards

I don't think that it's lack of intestinal fortitude that's preventing anything from being built where the World Trade Center once stood. Even the site of a national tragedy is subject to the same real estate issues that effect any other plot of land in New York.

What I want to know is when those yellow-bellied weasels are going to do right by the victims of 1911 and rebuild the Triangle Waist Company Factory?

Lost Dog

The canine-snatching crime wave continues in the Washington Square Park/Lower 5th Avenue area.

When the New York Post and the Daily News put this on the front page they can use these headlines:
DOG GONE!
HOT DOGS!
POOCH POACHERS!
TERRIERISM!

Awesome Stoop Sale

At first I was skeptical as to how awesome this stoop sale was going to be, but then I saw, "YES THERE WILL BE FREE CANDY!" And a cat tent? Totally awesome!

Found in Long Island City.

Stoop Sale

It is almost impossible to resist the urge to make double Os into eyes. How do Bloomingdale's, Google and the Food Network resist?

East/West Village Border

The East Village is way more tolerant of stickers and flyers than the West Village. We'll see if this changes as the East Village becomes more gentrified.The dividing line is 4th Avenue where I took this photo.

Stolen

Found at 5th Avenue and 10th Street.

My instincts were right - there is dognapper loose in the neighborhood. "Peter" might also have stolen this dog and this one too.

When you read about this in the New York Times you can say that you saw it here first.

Parade Without A Permit

The Radical Homosexual Agenda has a problem with the city's parade permit rules. You can read all about their issues with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and New York's Finest on their website, but the gist of it is that they don't like it that The Man decides who gets to march and who doesn't.

With a name like The Radical Homosexual Agenda you're just begging to have your permit denied.