Erase

What’s up baby listen to me

Do you know you're all a light honey and one since you are. Period. You'll have a little bit tardy you games do with the babe on E. 72nd St. were both in bed and her daughter little doggie while he watches the Watchmen I went to the bathroom and he followed me later on.  About suppertime I woke up in the great big Hollywood bed and every server with my hand looking really big.

Mike: What am I looking at here, Luke.

Luke: You’re looking at a fetus.

Mike: That does not sound like what I thought it was going to be.

Luke: Well maybe sometimes you’re in for a surprise. A FAT surprise.

Mike: Can we go do something else now?

Luke: What were you thinking of?

Mike: Well how about something where we're not looking at death?

Luke: Yeah that sounds like a perfect idea.

And our adventurers wandered out of the basement and up the stairs and outside into the world.

Mike: Wow.

(Looks Around)

_____________________________________________

It takes a sip of whiskey, and takes a look himself in the mirror wearing the overcoat. He looks like an overgrown child, his breath barely making sense inside of himself. ‘Some things were not meant to be this way’ he thinks to himself because he looks into his eyes and takes another pull. Between design on the dog the dog looks back at him he pulls this overcoat up above his head and mocks the dog the dog doesn’t look amused, just uncertain, as things like happiness and sadness melt away.

______________________________________________

Just remember everything you thought.

I’d rather move forward.

From this cold night.

A place so cold, simple.

Afraid, alone.

Not afraid, alone, not.

How, what.

This is what you thought:

“A man as a character is thinking to himself ‘A thousand grains of rice, a splendid meme, erase, no, what, spill, I can’t…” and then he trails off.”

Good. Very good. Okay.

His phone blinks at him. Remember me old pal.

Who cares. Death. It’s all dead.

There’s life. Not what promised. It’s okay? I don’t know. Things are different now.

Read more books. She. Where. Silent.

Spills. It spills all over. Carpet. Erased. Who.

Spills. Not very good. Stop. Start. Erase.

Cut. Enerma. Cut Enema. Paste. Erase.

Space. Wasted Space. Major Race. Rhyming. Rhythm. That’s it. Okay.

"In 1553 the Marquis de Sade gave birth to a wet dog/cow/thing. He erased his memory. Quite clearly, he was not ready."

_________________________________

Man: You learned how to make your eyes smile.

Woman: Don’t you worry about me.

Man: I spend a lot of time making sure I can worry about you.

Woman: Then don’t.

(Man smiles)

Woman: I carry a brush in my purse. I feel like I can see it at night, dreaming.

Man: I fought in a war a long time ago. My children were grown up at this point, but I still fought.

Woman: What war?

Man: A made up one. It was in my mind. But now it doesn’t exist.

Creativity

_{I must from time to time in mind you of what I have often recommended to you, and what you cannot attend to you too much: sacrifice to the graces. Intrinsic merit alone will not do; an inconvenient of general steam of all, but not particular affection, that is the heart, of any.}

_{To engage the affections of any particular person you must, over and above your general merit, have some particular merit to that person; I service is done, or offered; expressions regarding esteem; I complacence, attention, etc., for him; and graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart, and facilitates or rather insurers their effects}

_{The thousand little things, not separately to be described, conspired for mistresses, this just Sikwa, that always pleases. A pretty person, a proper degree of dress, and harmonious boys, something opening cheerful countenance, but without laughing; a distinct improperly very manner of speaking; all these things and many others are necessary ingredient}

_{As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives each wife had seven cats each cat had seven sacks each sack had seven kids how many were going to...}

_{Having mentioned laughing, and most particularly warn you against it; I would heartily wish that you may not be seem to smile, but never hurts Leslie Wood. Freaking in love lasters characteristic falling ill manners; is the manner in which the mop express their silly joy at silly things; being married. In my mind there's nothing so liberal and so ill bred as audible after. I'm neither of the melancholy nor...}

_{Berlin will be entirely new seem to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step in the secret world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble of the threshold. He will there be in more company that you have yet been; manners and intentions will, therefore, be more necessary.}

_{You will just acquire these by frequenting the companies of people fashion; but then you must result to acquire them, in those companies, but proper care and observation. When you going to good company – bracket company is that the people of the first session of the place – is there carefully their turn, their manners, that address; and conform you're going to them. This is not all either; go deeper still; observe the characters}

_{Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the standard American diet, but it's fast becoming clear that is the major one. A study published in the February 27 issue of the journal CLOS one links increase consumption of sugar with increased rate of diabetes by examining the status on sugar availability in the rate of diabetes and hundred and 75 countries of the past decade. After accounting for many other factors...}

_{Study demonstrates this with assimilable confidence that link cigarettes and one cancer the 1960s. Is Rob lusted one of the studies authors and pediatric endocrinologist of University of California, San Francisco, sent to me, "you could not enact a real world study that would be more conclusive than this one.”}

_{The city control for poverty, urbanization, aging, obesity and physical activity. The control for other foods and total calories. In short, and controlled for everything controllable, satisfied long-standing "Bradford Hill "criteria for what's medical inference of causation by linking does pararectal sees the more sugar that’s available, them.}

_Them.

_Them.

_Them.

_{Here we go.}

On Creativity

When I was a kid, I used to be obsessed with drawing-- sometimes accurately, sometimes grotesquely out of proportion--Sonic the Hedgehog. I first started taking old video game magazines and tracing the speedy porcupine from various ads, usually cheekily wagging his finger, eyebrow cocked and looking up to no good. Then, I would go to the mirror and attempt to mimic his cartoonish eye; later in life, my friends would note my expressive eyebrows, calling me “an eyebrow actor”, something I never sure was a compliment or a derision – perhaps I was incapable of emoting outside of the thick, arched buttresses of my brows.

As fast as Sonic ran, I ferociously traced artwork from whatever subscriptions I had at my house and bringing them into 2^nd grade show-and-tell. Hellacious moonscapes, flaming skulls, the intricate robotic anatomy of the Terminator—all were shown in prideful displays of what I thought to be an unstoppable personal talent, burgeoning and worthy of the highest accolades.

“But it’s all done on tracing paper!” said one of my friends. His name was Tom and he drew prodigiously well and was already becoming known as the class smarty-pants. I looked over his artwork, ‘Where’s Waldo’-esque scenes filled with fantastical creatures and complex geometry. I couldn’t help but feel a nagging sensation that he was more talented than I. Also, he seemed to ace every quiz and excel in just about every other subject except for social competence. He was pasty, not athletically inclined, but we both took advanced math classes together and I was in awe of the genius I began to see within him.

That day, I resolved to draw more like him, yet had no idea where to start. His ideas seemed to flow out of some sort of Manna pool that I had yet to tap within myself as I spent hours hammering my head with a pencil seeking that magical orifice. No matter how much I studied his increasingly fantastical drawings, I failed to make the neural connections in my own creative cortex come even close to what he was creating. At this point, I had graduated from tracing paper to plain white, but I was still most talented at copying others work, albeit by a more impressive freehand method.

In 3^rd grade I won an art contest for drawing my shoe. The drawing went on to be displayed at a pop-up art gallery in one of the district schools. I went over with my parents to look at the shoe, saw it, then, when the event was over, we took it down and went home. I remember it hanging over my toilet for a few years. This was, probably, my highest artistic achievement. From that point on, for whatever reason, possibly the lack of funding for the arts or just plain oversight, I all but discontinued my passion for drawing. There was probably a 4-year gap in between then and when I began picking up music that I did anything remotely artistic, filling most of my spare time with the trends of the day—Magic Cards, Pogs, Soccer and chasing girls around the playground.

Much later in life, I bought several sketchpads and markers with paintbrush tips and began drawing again, slowly, but surely. My first few sketches were embarrassing, sloppy and devoid of much complexity, but the further one got in the pages, the better my technique became. I lost most of them in a place trip across the country but luckily there are some existing pictures to prove that I did something with that expensive marker set.

I wonder sometimes why I stop attempting to make art: is there already enough in the world? Am I just lazy? Do I get depressed when the art starts turning sour and feel like that there really is nothing special inside of me? Of course, from time to time these thoughts nip at my tail. But the spirit of creating and creation is so important to me, so essential to my existence, that the thought of only being able to consume and never release that energy makes me feel excessively bloated, needing some sort of relief from that creative pressure valve.

Just as I developed apathy for laying a colored pen or pencil on the page, I find it more and more difficult to fill in empty pages with words. An almost Herculean effort is required to arouse in me the ability to write several pages of cogent thought, as the constant distractions and demands of modern day life buzz into my subconscious thoughts. I’ve succumbed to the addictiveness of composing pithy tweets and Facebook updates and no longer feel the desire to compose free-flowing prose, as it seems less and less likely people will take the time required to read something complex or lengthy. I feel like an ancient man with no beard or a rich man with no one left to tell his tale to.

The real key to creation lies in the same drive to excel in other areas that seem to have nebulous tangible results in the real world. For example: pull-ups. Over the past two months, I’ve acquired a pull-up bar and gone from being able to do several to doing sixteen in a row. If you were to ask me last year if I thought I could do twenty pull-ups, the notion would have seemed absurd; now it appears right within my literal reach and grasp. To apply the same determination to my writing, my search for fulfillment, monetarily and of other natures, and I will need to do this and soon be on my way to success. But what can be my artistic pull-up bar?

Setting goals is fantastic. My goal at the moment, or more precisely, several paragraphs ago, was to set a finish line at two pages, and it appears I am getting closer and closer as I empty the contents of my brain upon the page. How easy it is when you let the truth guide your word! Also, keeping in mind that ‘Creation is Key’ helps: editing can always happen later. If you have not created anything, despite how trite or banal or just plain abhorrent the content is, you will have nothing to edit in the end. And that means you are still keeping inside of you all that you have consumed, which, my friends, is A LOT. Even your dreams are content creators of data that you consume, and you don’t have a lot of control over what goes on in those, do you?

          As a child, I had no goals with art. This seems like an absurd statement, but it is true: as children, we don’t think in terms of having concrete artistic workmanship; it either comes out of us naturally or inspired by a mentor or competition. We must think as children and work as adults to realize our artistic aspirations and reach our peaks as human beings.

Riding a Bike in L.A

On January 17th, 2013, I decided to ride a bike for the first time in Los Angeles. I rode over 20 miles in the city, starting in North Hollywood and ending near Downton L.A. 

A large percentage of people, including Angelenos, are constantly surprised to hear that L.A. has a functioning subway system. Considering its car-centric ethos and sprawling city boundaries, it comes as a shock that there are thousands of miles of connected commuter tunnels underneath Los Angeles. It wasn't until nearly a decade ago, however, that North Hollywood, separated by 8 miles of San Fernando Valley, became connected to the rest of the city via the subterranean Metro Rail system. Theories abound--from collusion with General Motors to lobbying from the Taxi Union--have sought to explain why L.A. is so miserably behind in speedy and reliable public transportation, considering its reputation as such a future-oriented metropolis.

Despite all the bureaucratic hang-ups that have kept the public trans from becoming the next New York or Paris, the subway works well and runs often; enough so that it is a great ancillary source of transportation, especially for those who enjoy riding bikes. At the moment, the train's carriage is wide and unpopulated, leaving ample room at end-cars for bicycle storage. An eight-minute trip from the end of the Red Line in NoHo takes you straight to the Hollywood Walk-of-Fame, a fun area to mill about on a bike and gawk at the lycra-laden actors dressed up as your favorite superhero or villain. 

I lived in L.A. for a month and a half before I finally got my friend's bike fixed, a solidly-built 1970's Seikoand, and ventured out into the city, an area that most commuters make out to be a "cyclist hellhole". I walked my bike to the shop across the street, filled up both tires, adjusted the seat and the brakes and rode up to the Red Line, a main subway artery only a few blocks from my apartment in NoHo, and quickly jumped on the train to Hollywood.

MY JOURNEY

I end up taking the subway a few more stops further and embarking into Silver Lake, an area with a long stretch of bike lane that runs along Sunset Boulevard. It's a nice, long ride with plenty of shops, restaurants and cute hipster girls walking around in black leotards and floppy black hats. Even in the middle of January, it is warm and sunny. I'm wearing a light thermal outside during wintertime and there are no complaints to be had. I continue, sleeves rolled up, to take Sunset all the way downtown and find myself taking a slight detour into Chinatown, a moderately congested strip of knick-knack shops, fish markets and jewelry stores.

I ride my bike through a mixture of of tourists and locals while an old man plays an Erhu, a two-stringed bowed instrument that is like a folksier violin set upright. I park my bike, walk around, eat some delicious deep-fried shrimp, look in a Chinese book store and then meander into the Jewelry district, a set of semi-identical, brightly-lit shops selling various flashy accoutrements.

It was beginning to get dark, so I hop back on my bike and ride into downtown. Even for rush hour, the streets are wide and never once felt stressful to navigate. One of the great things about riding in L.A. is that no matter what street you end up on, there usually is a fairly wide sidewalk to ride on if the situation ever gets too hairy. Also, at night-time, most streets are virtually empty, so as long as you are properly illuminated, the streets are yours after dusk.

After several blocks, I run into a large crowd of people standing on the sidewalk. I pull over to investigate what they're congregating around, and it turns out to be a DVD of a late-80s Michael Jackson concert, the audio blasted through a music store's heavy-duty P.A. system. I end up watching for a while, finding myself mysteriously wrapped into a very "L.A." moment--people interrupting their daily life for synthetic entertainment. The longer I stay, the more people crowd around, until there were at least an audience of 30, rapt with attention. Some of them even begin attempting to mimic the King of Pop's dance moves on the sidewalk pavement.

I decide to explore inside the store, which still has the DVD music playing, but even louder. Suddenly, the owner shuts off all of the lights and turns on multiple fog-machines and lasers, converting the store into an impromptu dance club; none of the shoppers seem to mind. It feels to me like something the managers did quite often when they were tired of standing behind the counter.

I cycle further into downtown and board the red line back to Hollywood and Highland station. After a 15 minute trip, I hop off and emerge from the subway into a sea of neon lights and milling tourists. Hollywood Boulevard has ersatz diamonds crushed up into the asphalt, lending the street a glittery, supernatural feel amidst the traffic. I end up riding a mile in the wrong direction on the street, but was not worried, as the air was still mild and the mood relaxed. I cruised a mile over to La Brea and rode downhill for another mile to a Comic Book store my friend was performing open-mic stand-up comedy at.

The room in the back of the store was packed with eager comedians chattering, waiting to hear whether or not they were to get selected for the line-up that evening. My friend and her friend did not get picked in the lottery to perform, so they decided to eat food across the street. I went with them for a little bit and then rode 5 miles back to Silver Lake to meet a friend at a bar for Soul Night. During my nighttime riding, I never once felt unsafe or worried about being hit by cars. There are plenty of side streets and although L.A. drivers may speed insanely along the freeways, but they don't seem to make many irrational maneuvers in the calmer areas of town.

I still have many more adventures riding in L.A ahead of me, but so far, I think the city gets a tremendously bad rap for not being a 'biking city' when the weather is agreeable year-round and perfectly navigable in tandem with the public transportation system. I believe that a certain mentality has been in place for too long, that you're 'insane' to even think about biking or that you 'have to have a car' when all it takes is a little bit of courage and ingenuity to get out there and start riding. The city can be your oyster if you subscribe to these thoughts.

The Wind Beneath Your Wheels: Riding a Bike In Chicago

In 2012, I moved to L.A from Chicago (or from L.A. to Chicago, however you look at it), where I sold my car and cycling was my primary mode of transportation. This is a story about riding my bike in Chicago. The second part describing my time spent in L.A. will be up next week.

During my first few months in the Windy City, I was fortunate enough to have several seasoned bike veterans, knuckle-deep in the grittiness of the streets, show me the proper routes and appropriate level of aggression for navigating a city that had not quite yet become comfortable with cyclists. There I learned how to ride alongside cars to the point that I felt like a sidecar--zooming around in tight corridors and developing a sixth sense for any imminent danger in my environment, hooked on the inside and avoiding potholes and rats. This developed into a survivalist mechanism still ingrained in my mind today. Riding a huge city like Chicago is like riding through a condensed version of North America, with its diverse array of neighborhoods and varying levels of bike-friendliness abound. It was a challenge coming from growing up and riding bikes in Portland, OR, a city renowned for its "bikes first" attitude and overall environmentally-conscious zeitgeist.

The longer I stayed in Chicago, the more people rode on; a study showed a year after I had lived there the number of cycling commuters had increased a staggering 150%. More bike lanes, protected and shared, meant more major arteries via the downtown plunge of Kinzie and the moderately traffic-heavy Kedzie in Logan Square. Through beads of sweat and blurred vision in the sweltering summer of '12 you could visually see the dramatic increase in people who were willing to give this 'crazy' bike thing a shot. No statistics were required to get the idea that Chicago was moving, with both wheels slowly turning, towards a stronger vision of a new Cycletopia.

The starry-eyedness of our City's vision took advantage of multiple facets of its contours. The complete flatness of the city in contrast to most other landscapes is huge, along with the denseness of space and fairly liberal attitude towards back-street stop signs. Riding your bike in Chicago felt at once liberating and rebellious, as if you were cilia within an organism which got to bypass the bulkier mytochondria. One never had to deal with the byzantine parking rules (enforced by a 3rd-party organization since Chicago had privatized its street parking many years ago) and one was pretty much free to navigate the city however you wanted as long as you didn't crash into anything. I absolutely loved it, and scarcely used public transportation, except during extreme weather or when accompanying someone who didn't deem it safe or logical to ride bikes in the city.

All of it paid off, though. In 2012, Chicago was named the 6th most bike-friendly city in America, a metric that takes into account a myriad of metric-unfriendly factors--public attitude towards cars, how easily cyclists and traffic co-exist on the roads and overall tone of the hearts of the populace. Chicago was beat out by the two other reigning heavyweights that year--Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis made their presence known--yet it had me incredibly proud to have lived in a city for three years through such a major milestone. 

Our achievements were priding, but there can still be shadows cast underneath the bridges and throughout the sodium-lit alleyways. The number one major downside to riding your bike in Chicago, as public word of mouth presumes, is that the weather there is REALLY rough for about one-third of the year. It's really hard to motivate yourself to go anywhere during the winter months, and if you chose to, be prepared to spend about 20 minutes bundling up for extreme cold and harsh, spiraling winds. I wore a ski mask and goggles during most of February, the fog of my breath obstructing my lenses as cars zoomed around me. Fortunately, I survived the Winter infirmary by being extremely careful and tactician-like in my route-chosing--taking back streets, riding slowly and trying not to get knocked off my bike in extreme blasts wind.

But, a lighter side exists to any city, and during the other 66% of the year, the riding is sweet as candy, although that candy is occasionally coupled with an unusual sewage smell that permeates certain pockets of the city during muggier weather. As gross as that sounds, it is a small price to pay to be able to access a vibrant, thriving city with a virtually endless supply of places and friends within a short distance that can hold you to a spot that beats at the steady rhythm of life.

MY WEEK IN REVIEW

Well to start off, I ending up making this slice of a screenshot here a few days ago. Doesn't really tell you much. Maybe an excerpt from an .epub?

Est. Jan. 14, Sometime in Morning

My grandmother right now is asking me why don't I take off the italics key.

This seems to be pictures of the sun over here. And then here is the secret to happiness 

Just try and read this. It's really tiny and it will make your Google eyeballs shrink.

I'm writing a Children's Book for this young lady.

Here is another screenshot of Facebook. Really takes you back, doesn't it!

Anyway, here's a final ScreenSlice™. First person to guess what it's from wins a lotto ticket!

伊豆テディベア・ミュージアム展示棟２階

にて、「スージー・ズーのいつまでもともだち」展を絶賛開催中です。 絵本の中から飛び出したウィッツィーやブーフ、なかまたちに会いにきてくださいね。Fin

Thinkin' of U, Chicago

So last time I left off I think I was talking about Chicago and some of my thoughts on it. Maybe this blog will be called "Thinkin' of U Chicago" or something kinda gay and artsily titled because that's kinda how Chicago was, Gay and Artsy and just full of great stuff and stuff I didn't like and gosh it's so easy to make comparisons, but let's start by talking about how easy it was to DRINK there.

Fun fact: Chicago is basically synonymous with Al Capone, a prohibition-era gangster who liked to shoot a Tommy gun and wear striped suits and kept the streets of Chicago flowing with liquor and violence, along with consummate corruption. He apparently had a safe underneath the city that contained his secrets which Geraldo decided to blow up sometime in the early 80's, creating a big fat red herring of a moment when he left everyone to wonder if we could ever trust the news media ever again. 

FAST FORWARD: It is the 2000's and you now have a city steeped firmly in a strong history of alcohol; when I moved to Chicago in 2009 it was rated as the 10th drunkest city per capita, and the drunkest "Big City". In Chicago, you can drink pretty much anywhere at any hour, legally. Summertime, the laws become even more lax, as street parties become rampant and the cops seem to be only present only when things truly seem on the precipice of getting out of hand. I moved to Chicago where, by Chicago standards, I would be considered a teetotaller: I drank at most once or twice a week. It was very hard to keep those kind of standards in a city where 5 a.m bars were in every neighborhood, premium imported and domestic draughts could be found for 2 dollar specials everywhere, and pretty much everyone I knew loved to drink. It was like living in a city of alcoholics who had found their perfect city. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think everyone in Chicago is an alcoholic, it's just that the ease of availability of cheap booze 24/7 and a superb public transportation system made it very appealing to go out and get drunk A LOT more than I ever wanted to. But shit, it was a ton of fun.

And that's what is great about Chicago: it is a FUN city. A million things to do every night!  And it's all within 5 miles of you. The only problem is for about 4-5 months of the year you don't want to go out; the wind whips around you like an annoying mosquito that won't quit and it is FUCKING COLD. Everyone is very connected to social media and it makes it very easy to find several things within your neighborhood to do, but the weather makes it very appealing to sit at home on your laptop and eat comfort food while you wonder how the fuck it got dark at 4:15 pm. 

Sometimes I don't think I really should have moved there. I visited once when I lived in Nashville (another not-so-smart place that I moved to on a whim) and decided it was better than living amongst honkey-tonks and rampant institutionalized racism, so I went. And it was really great for the first year or so, especially the first three months of Summer when I got to crash on a friend's couch and pretty much just party all summer long and live off of my savings I had made back in Tennessee. It was especially wonderful, too, because I had made pretty much zero friends in Nashville in a whole year and ended up making like 50 (or at least facebook friends) in Chicago in a matter of weeks. And that's when you begin to realize that Chicago is really just a largely populated city that begins to feel like a small town that is also drowning in booze. 

My first scene that I fell into was a group of friendly people that liked to drink and have bbqs and liked to have a fun time, but there was a certain shallowness I felt after repeated hangouts with the scene, so I branched out by deciding to go out on my own and try and meet some people. The first person I met unaffiliated with the aforementioned group (let's just call them the "late 20's hipster group") was a 19-year old kid with a fake ID I met dancing at Beauty Bar. He invited me back to his place and drink boxed Zinfandel while I lamented to him how the first girl I dated (from the late 20's hipster group) had gone completely bonkers on me and had started stalking me at a street festival. He lived in a big art gallery which was amazing to me since I was living on a dirty couch in a rat-infested box in Ukranian Village and I immediately assumed he was rich (he wasn't, he just had lucked across the deal of the century in terms of loft space). For whatever reason, he came out of the closet that night to me, which wasn't that big of a deal except he told me later that I was like the 2nd person he had ever formally admitted to being gay to, which made me feel pretty special and kinda felt like this secret bond we had in the ensuing months when I was going to art openings at his space. 

Anyway, through him I ended up meeting a whole ton of art students who drove me completely up the wall, but fortunately his roommate shared the same passion for art school-bashing and was older so we became bros for the summer. I remember that time being this weird combination of coming down from a lingering insomniatic depression (due to Nashville being such a horrible, horrible place for me to live), riding bikes, sweating through a lot of Hanes tank-tops, discovering lots of new places and becoming fully steeped in the Chicago Swagger and Attitude that permeates the pores of the city. 

-----------------------

Chicago is filled with brick and its really brown and there's not a lot of nature. You kind of feel like you exist in a box inside a box inside an unfathomably large box. There's really no other way to describe it except for that it is crazy. It is nestled smack dab in the middle of the country, in the midwest, with no oceanic coast to be see for thousands of miles. There's something about that confining nature that keeps you a little bit more comfortable with going through the motions of the rat race and losing your ability to dream, but that could be a personal thing since, after all, Billy Corgan did come from there. And Wilco! And, I don't know, Tina Fey spent a lot of time there, along with pretty much any other famous, quick-witted comedian. 

And that is one of the things I loved the most about Chicago. People are so fucking fast in the way they think. And it's really just a survival mechanism you develop once you get there. Need to get across the street while a deluge of insane commuters are trying to beat the 5pm inner-city gridlock? THINK FAST! Need to figure out how to make it to your friend's sketch show in 15 minutes while you're riding your bike against traffic and you literally have no time to call, text or ask anyone for directions? THINK FAST! You learn pretty quickly how to make things happen. It really is the entire thesis of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and the entire exegesis of improv rolled up and tucked into the city's entire ethos: You Don't Think, You Just Do. And it all somehow works. And you still are alive at the end of the day.