Silsby Samizdat

A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, Version 2?

As if the thing from (a 1940s version of) the future in the middle of my office was not surreal enough, I had an experience in the middle of Washington Square to supplement it last night.

When I say, “in the middle,” I mean in the center where the fountain usually is, but which hasn’t been turned on for some reason yet.

I was walking through the park on my way uptown, when I came upon some kind of pseudo-German/Russian Futurist performance. In the middle of the dry fountain were PVC scaffoldings anchored by people wearing semi-transparent white plastic jumpsuits. On top of each of the four scaffoldings was a palate of 10 or so 2 liter soda bottles. At one side of the fountain was a welded steel arm at an Expressionistic right angle to nothing. Looking like one half of some king of steel diamond picture frame. Hanging from the top of this steel beam was a red and silver “spaceship” looking like a cross between Mork form Ork’s outfit and a nomad prince’s tent from an old MGM Moroccan desert epic film. Opposite the “spaceship” was a table where other semi-transparent white plastic jumpsuit clad people were tinkering with a laser. There were yet more of the plastic people running around erratically wrapping things in yellow and red police tape. On either side of the laser people’s table were two circus platforms – the cones with the tops cut off things – between which a man in a plastic jumpsuit with a loud voice was alternating. He seemed to be some kind of head technician and would stand on one to shout instructions to his laser people or the audience. Another man in a dark suit and tie was wandering around checking on the progress being made by the police tape wrappers. And a third boss guy with a whip was circling the fountain cracking the whip every so often and shouting unintelligible demands to all the workers. To top off the scene was a balloon seller with two dozen red balloons and a tiny band playing a loosely headed toy drum and a Weil inspired saxophone.

I came in at the middle of the “performance”, so I am not sure what the build up was, but when I got there, they were trying to shoot the moon with a green laser, which would some how get the rocket to lift off correctly. We were assured that this was completely safe, totally 100%... unless something red got in the way of the laser causing a chain reaction – but other than that, totally 100% safe. Once the laser was working (after lots of shouting and running around and whipping by the pit boss) and some fog was used to show us the invisible laser, we were asked to start the countdown in German. After the first countdown nothing happened. The second countdown started, then all of the soda bottles started exploding ,they were being tossed around the fountain, the band started playing louder and faster, deep booming echoes of explosions when a bottle was tossed into a plastic barrel, hoses spraying water all over the audience, lasers and strobe lights playing off of the fog and mist from the exploding soda bottles, ripping down the space ship, blaming the balloon seller and attacking the balloons with water. Decent into chaos and destruction.

I think the only logical thing for me to do next, will be to go to the Dada exhibit at MoMA. After invasions by Terry Gilliam’s nightmares and a Pseudo-German Anti-Futurist performance, seeing an exhibit on Duchamp and Man Ray will seem sane.

Danger! Danger! Sam Lowry! Danger!

I rarely, if ever, write about my work.

Today, however, is an exception.

A very big exception.

A little background. We had been told that on Monday the A/C was going to be shut off in our office for maintenance. Monday – the coolest day of the past week and the forecast next week – came and went, and our office was the coldest place in the building. Tuesday and Wednesday were only slightly warmer than Monday, and yet we still had very nice A/C temp, so we began to think that the A/C was never going to be turned off.

However, today, the hottest, most humid day of the week, leading into a warm week ahead, was the day. No A/C. It was also the day of insanity. I don’t mean just high stress busy schedule that has been building all week. I mean a have-I-lost-my-mind surreal insanity. While I am on hold with one person, conference call with another few people, working on a handful of Treos, in rolls our temporary replacement A/C unit.

It looked like something out of a 1940s sci-fi film. A two foot diameter duct descending from a hole they put in our ceiling and a couple one foot diameter ducts arching out of a three foot high box with buttons and blinking lights. I half expected Jonathan Harris to try to kill me or Robert DeNiro to burst through the ceiling and rappel down.

Here it is:

And a close up of the entrance vortex: