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episteme_sundays
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Name: Austin S. Lin
Gender: Male
Interests: energy, contemporary art, acting, filmmaking, epee fencing, jazz saxophone, classical piano, poetry, travel, languages, oceans, carnivorous plants.
Occupation: Engineering
Industry: Manufacturing
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  LinAustinS
Member Since:
8/30/2004
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| I Like to Push Buttons.
The New York City Taxi Commission and new taxi rules and regulations have caused lots of fuss among the taxi-driver world but the ultimate outcome has been these WelcomeToTheFuture style services in most cabs.
Now most cabs accept credit card and, while you are cooling your heels in the back seat, an interactive screen updates you on the news, the weather, and even fun map/ GPS stuff to tell you where exactly in Manhattan you are.
And then there are these great buttons.
On the screens, at some point in your journey, you will get asked if you would like to pay by credit card or by cash.
Typically, this screen will not show up until you are at your destination and you are ready to square up and settle the cab tab.
If, however, this screen should pop up because of an accidental brushing of mission control in the front seat by your cab driver, bear caution.
The buttons...let me tell you, are screaming to get pushed. They're about 2" x 3", large, luminous, their shade of azure that's somewhere between that blank TV glow from the movie Poltergeist and the beckoning call of the deep blue Caribbean. Blue, let me tell you.
One says CASH and the other says CREDIT. What's not shown is the quiet, subtle siren song of "Push me now. Don't wait. Who cares if the cab is ready? YOU'RE ready."
Especially if you're like me and become easily entranced by bright glowing lights.
So the cab driver turns to me and says, "Hey, do you plan to pay cash or credit card? I just want to know because I'm going somewhere afterwards and I'll need cash, but if you pay me cash I won't stop for cash and instead will go straight to my--------" and on and on.
I took this as a subtle sign that some higher force was giving me the warm, hand-clasped permission to push the button of my choice.
And I nearly leaped from my reclining position, finger extended like a musketeer charging into the front lines. CASH CASH CASH
Somewhere up front, the receipt machine closed out the meter and started printing my receipt.
At this point, everything stopped. And there we were, on 9th Ave and SomewhereSouthOfTheFinancialDistrict.
"I thought you said Eighth and 26th?" the cab driver inquired.
What?? You think this is somehow my fault? I thought, but not out loud. Oh, I guess it is my fault.
"Haha. Yeah. Well, I was..you know..."
I smiled politely, lest I get ejected from the cab.
I eventually arrived at my destination safely. Eventually, keeping my hands to myself the whole time.
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| The Couple in Row 27.
One of the benefits to pseudo red-eye flights like the one I'm on is that because it's so late at night, there are very few passengers aboard and chances are, you can get the exit row seat all to yourself as your Boeing 757 carts you off back to the northeast.
For some people, opportunities like these present the time in which one is forced to do something, even if that something is nothing, for two hours.
Some people like to catch up on reading. Others catch a 2 hour power nap so they have the endurance to drive home. Others think about how long it's going to take for them to catch the M60 into Harlem and then port their luggage down into the labyrinth to catch the 6 train to the Bronx.
Others, like the couple behind me, like to sing.
We're not talking humming or a quick whistle of inspiration. Singing.
Like "The Best of the 80s Volume 1" singing.
Like "Two tickets to paradise." sung by a girl in a Disney Princess kinda voice. Followed by, the guy:
"No, no...it's 'Two tickets to PAH-RAH-dice! More like PAH-RAH-dice!"
"Paradise!"
"Yeah, PAH-RAH-dice!"
"Twooo ti-ckets to paaa-ra-dieeees..."
"No, like, PAH-RAH-DAEEEEECCCEEE. PAH-RAH-DAESS!"
"Paradise..."
"Yeah. PAH-RAH-DAESS! Yeah!"
"Paradiiiiice."
"And then there's the classic <some guitar solo, except with a voice imitating an electric guitar with reverb>" Hey, I can spell "onomatopoeia," but I can't exactly write out the particular mellifluous set of sounds that emanated from The Fountainhead of 80s Pop Culture sitting behind me at this particular moment.
So let me get this straight. How do you pronounce "paradise" again?
And so on and so forth.
Slowly, one syllable at a time, there they were ,the Couple in Row 27, reminding each other that right down nostalgia lane was an 80s big hair back-alley full of Stray Cats, Cars, and all.
Hey, listen, I LIKE 80s music. I was just a kiddo but I listened to Quiet Riot. I lip synched Tarzan Boy when Baltimora sung it live on Solid Gold. I watched Mama's Family (nothing to do with music, but I think it came on just before Solid Gold so, naturally...)
And in fact, I don't mind when 80s music is sung to me. I'd air guitar Axl Rose with anyone willing to go down that path of friendship faster than you could say Aqua Net.
But not now. Not at 11:00 at night. On a plane. Not when the plane is circling Long Island for 25 minutes because there's traffic in the air above Laguardia.
Not tonight. Please. Not when I'm this tired and once we land, I'll still be at least 2.5 hours commute distance from my bed.
Not when, for each excruciating finger-drums-on-the-arm-rest that
resonates from behind me, it feels as if Motley Crue is auditioning automobile collisions in my inner ear.
I will take this opportunity, though, to say that at least her feet didn't smell bad.
How do I know about her FEET? you ask.
Well, my seat was 26D, on the aisle, and her toes must've been, oh, let's say, 26D 1/2---that little crevice of empty space that's actually between 26D and 26E, you know?
I was gonna go on to say that the couple's singing sounded as if they were sitting right next to me.
But I guess TECHNICALLY, her toes were right next to me. All ten little piggies.
I was too exhausted to sing along or complain. Wheeee, wheeee, wheeee, alllll the way home.
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| Sunny with a Chance of Restaurant Entrepreneurship.
So when a former weatherman and local celebrity became a restaurateur after an unfortunate turn of events, all was not lost. At the Jet Stream Grill on the North Shore: Decent food, yummy black bean burgers, and the possibility of watching the Weather Channel while dining is just pure yum-ness. Sunny & sunnier times ahead for all, I'm sure.
Afterwards, go to Mercatino for a savvy ambiance that's a modern day interpretation of the former Vine Street Market near the UTC campus...but completely in and of itself, tall icy mochas, and one of the few places in town to scarf down one cannoli after another.
 Speaking of jet streams...
 ...for the most part, yes.
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| Sandbag.
I just paid $22 for a candle.
Now, I probably don't come across at first sight as a guy who would buy candles (I don't, really. Seriously.), but I was over visiting my friends Omar & Amy in Los Angeles a couple of years ago and the candles they were burning in their living room were just divine-smelling. The three of us were sitting on the patio eating pastries. Drinking tea. You could smell the candles. Divine, I'm telling you. At least the memories associated with those smells were divine...but I'm pretty sure the candles themselves smelled pretty divine also.
Maybe that's how people can strike it rich being aromatherapists. I'm not sure.
But I wasn't looking for therapy per se, just a way to make my living room smell freshy. I was actually just in China where nearby there was a giant candle factory, possibly the largest on the entire planet. Maybe I should have stopped by their employee store. Maybe they had an outlet store. Candles with nonconforming wick lengths or something. Something for cheap, you know?
So anyway, back to this $22 candle.
It's supposed to smell like sun and sand.
It was only after I paid $22 for this candle that I really started rationalizing with myself. Now wait a minute. The sun doesn't really have a smell now does it? I mean, the sun's just made up of all this radiation and stuff.
And. AND does sand actually smell? All those little tiny bajillion particles of tiny rocks and glass...?
And. AND despite all the beaches I have had the pleasure of frolicking around in, I have never recalled that the sand smelled like anything. (Well except for this one time on Jekyll Island in Georgia where the sand smelled kind of like rotting plants).
Okay, I'm thinking to myself: I've been had.
If there was a candle that was scented : "Omar & Amy's Westwood Living Room," I would soooo totally be there.
Good thing they don't make a candle that smells like Air that also costs $22.
Because I would probably buy that, too.
So I get home. I go light this candle, getting all excited despite this great big insurmountable wall of facts before me.
And it does smell.
Like wax.
No--that's unfair...like fresh, scented wax.
But I've never smelled the sun or sand, so who am I kidding anyway.
I hate it when I'm this stupid.
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| Museum People.
So I'm reading this biography of A. Everett Austin, Jr, who, at 26, became the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford. In the 1930s, he hosted the first ever public exhibition of Picasso in the US and along with his other skills as museum director, artist, socialite, stage magician, playwright, set designer, architect, and educator introduced New England and the modern US to avant garde art and performance. Known by his nickname, "Chick," he also staged a monumental opera by Gertrude Stein and later would pave the way for George Balanchine in bringing modern ballet to America.
All this information I have garnered most of this information from the inside jacket of this book, Magician of the Modern, by Eugene R. Gaddis, from the contents of the first chapter, and from personal recollections from an exhibit featuring Chick Austin's art deco/ Bauhaus mansion that was at the Atheneum in February. I am excited to read more. Also, I saw a fish-themed costume that Chick wore while moonlighting as The Great Osram during the times he'd express his stage magician elements. This only made me want to read the book in its entirety even more.
I suppose that somewhere inside his biography lies further evidence at the creation and acceleration of new knowledge generated by the intersection of several seemingly un-related areas of knowledge.
But obtaining knowledge from biographies is very different than obtaining wisdom from biographies, or at least, from the purchasing of biographies.
When I bought the book, the girl behind the counter, whose name was either Kristen or Krista or Kirsten, exclaimed very loudly that "That's a great book!"
At this point, I thought it would be appropriate if I permitted the wisdom of my profound remarks to radiate unto the world and contributed this gem: "Yes. It's one of the only comprehensive books about him."
You know sometimes when you re-envision and rewind a statement you made earlier in the day and instead of seeing yourself, you see a wiley haired, pompous octogenarian waving a finger in air as if the wisdom of the known universe depended on it?
"Debit or credit?" Kristen/Krista/Kirsten replied threateningly.
Her face was now suddenly wearing an expression as if I had just told her that her cat had died and that I thought it was hilarious that her cat had died.
She was then paged on the museum shop phone about whether or not a monograph of Gaugin was in stock.
And I left as quickly as possible.
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