Picture by Invader. 

Cheap eats. 

I was in my Bronx apartment on the morning of September 11, 2001. I watched on TV like the rest of the country. Eventually, I don’t recall if it was later that day or the following day, or the day after that, I got on the subway and went as far south as I could go–14th Street. I felt the need to get closer. I couldn’t go further downtown so I turned around and walked up 8th Avenue. As I passed the bus terminal at 40th Street I saw Joe Franklin talking on a pay phone. He was alone, a pregnant briefcase resting between his feet. I had been in a daze and the sight of Franklin snapped me out of it for a moment. It was comforting to see him.

“Hey, Joe Franklin” I said to nobody in particular and kept walking. Franklin, a New York fixture for many of us, died the other day. He was 88.  

Salute.

[Photo Credit: Andrew Savulich; Illustration by Drew Friedman]

Sunroof top:

[Picture by Bags]

“Woman with a Bird Cage” by József Rippl Rónai (1892)

Had another sneeze and a blew my nose:

[Picture by Sacha Goldberger]

Picture by Bags. 

I don’t even know that I’d like this but it looks interesting enough to try. 

If you’ve never seen it, do yourself and check out Arthur Penn’s very 1970s noir, Night Moves.

Dig this fine piece on Roy Orbison by Rachel Monroe for the Oxford American:

The Orbison family moved to Wink in 1946, when Roy was ten years old, so his father, Orbie Lee, could find work in the oil fields. Though he did eventually get hired on as a rigger, the Orbisons were late to the oil boom party: Wink’s population peaked at around 6,000 in 1929; seventeen years later, when the Orbisons settled in, most of the wells had dried up and the town had shrunk to about 1,500 residents. “It was macho guys working in the oil field, and football, and oil and grease and sand and being a stud and being cool,” Orbison said later. “It was tough as could be, but no illusions, you know? No mysteries in Wink.”

Orbison wasn’t popular; later he said he felt “totally anonymous, even at home.” He started wearing glasses at age four. When he tried out for the Wink Kittens, the junior high version of the Wink Wildcats high school football team, the helmets didn’t have face guards, and his glasses kept falling off. He didn’t make the team.

Growing up is a lonely enterprise, even more so in a town that’s past its prime. Once he made his money, Orbison left for Tennessee, then Malibu. He wasn’t one to rhapsodize about his childhood very often, but once I visited his hometown, I couldn’t help but hear a telltale hint of Wink every time I listened to his songs: that sense of missing out, of having been passed by. An absence, a longing, a loneliness.

“La Chouette” by Pablo Picasso (1953)

The Wife and I were in Florida for a few days. On our flight home, a stewardess showed us a nifty trick. Squeeze a bit of lime on a Biscoff cookie and presto! you’ve got Key Lime pie.

F’realz.

I want to fly.

[Photo Via: Kateopolis]

Most cool.

[Photo Credit: Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty Images]

Herbs…

This one brings me back. A cousin from Belgium visited the summer it came out. She bought the record and my sister, brother and I listened to it until there were a few scratches. Our cousin got so pissed that she bought a new one. But we were happy because, after all, what are a few skips? I can’t even tell you that I like this song. It doesn’t matter because it is so evocative that I can’t hear it without remembering where I was the summer it was released.

[Picture by Andre Juillard via This Isn’t Happiness]

Pickle. 

“Rainy Night, Charing Cross Shops” by Joseph Pennell

Sunday Schmeer.

[Photo Credit: The Food Gays]

Via the ever-wunnerful Kottke, check out this AMA with the ADR (automated dialogue replacement) editor from The Wire.