I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to arrest you for being SEXY!

Alright, humans. I'm in New York, and it's more awesome than I ever expected it to be. I ended up staying up all night on Sunday to pack and get ready, because by the time I had finished saying goodbye to my friend Pete, it was almost midnight and I figured it wasn't going to be worth it to pack for three hours and then go to sleep until 6am. I guess security was all pimped out because it was 9/11, so there were these really strange box things that everyone had to step into individually and it sprayed you with air. Does anyone know what those were and what their purpose was? Because I still can't figure it out.

Well, I got to New York fine. I met up with Rachel Teagle (another girl on this trip) in the Houston airport, and we shared a taxi from La Guardia to International House when we arrived. My room is freaking HUGE. I have a video of it which I'll put up when I remember to take it of my external hard drive. And if I figure out how to put videos up that aren't google videos. (UPDATE: I didn't figure out how to put up videos that weren't google, so I just got a google video account. Ha!)



Yesterday, we had a meeting at 10am that took a pretty long time, but it was informative. I can't believe I actually woke up that early. All I really remember about it right now is the part where John Schott said something about how Berlin was like lifting up a manhole cover and finding people dancing in black down there. I only really caught the end of that part, so I have no idea where that came from.

Afterwards we got a break to get lunch, and Caitlin, Joe, Jeremy, and I (I think there was someone else who was with us, but I can't remember who it was...sorry!) took the subway to some random Indian restaurant with a chinese/christmas theme. Then we were late for the next meeting at 1:30, but so were a bunch of people. We also decided on a "classroom" to have our meetings in, since we're not allowed to have a special meeting place here without paying. It turned out to be Joe's room, and we all crammed in for a presentation by John about the Institute for the Future of the Book. To be honest, it sounded kind of lame. But it's actually amazing. I'll get to that later though.


After the presentation, "class" was over for the day, and we got to wander around New York a little. Stacy, Rachel, Jenny, Karina, and I all got on the subway and went to Greenwich Village to check it out. I ended up giving some crazy old homeless man money, and some Russian girl directions to the subway. We took a ton of pictures, checked out Washington Park and saw these two hippy folk singer guys with beards, and finally ended up getting pizza that this really good (and inexpensive for what it was) pizza place which I can't remember the name of anymore. I think it started with an A. Yeah.

That night a few of the guys decided to have a party where we could all get to know eachother. It was actually really really fun. We sat around and told stories about the day and such. Apparently a few of the guys got ticketed by an undercover cop in Central Park for drinking a beer (this story is where the title came from). We also played Never Have I Ever, told everyone where we were from and what our favorite color was, and then started talking about ideas for projects to do for the trip. Eventually though, it turned into how we could harass people. Julian had an idea where we would all make the same kind of expression while we were being talked to at presentations and such, so that when the person turned around, we'd all look really excited, then the next time they'd turn around, we'd look really bored, etc. and we'd record the audio of how their voice changed when they saw our expressions. Eventually, we came up with a part where we'd all wear eye patches when the person turned around, and then when they turned around again, we'd have them off. That was about the point where we decided that we weren't talking about anything useful anymore and we should all go to bed.


Before I went to sleep, I decided to finish reading up on the Future of the Book people. I ended up staying up until 1:30 am and being really tired when I got up at 8:30 this morning. But it worked out alright. We met at 9:30 and took the subway down to Brooklyn to see these people. Like I said earlier, I thought this whole Future of the Book thing sounded totally lame. I mean, why would you really need to "recreate" the book. We went up to their office and said hello to everyone, and then walked down to this New Media night club called Monkeytown.. It was a little different than I'm sure it looks usually, because it was the middle of the day when we were there, but it looks like it'll be really cool. I think we might go back there on Saturday. Anyway, the reason it's a sort of new media nighclub type place is because there's this sort of cubic room with four really large screens and projectors where they show some kind of visual images with sound. They ended up giving their whole presentation to us there where we found out that the Future of the Book isn't really that much about books as it is about everything. They have this amazing software that makes all kinds of things so much simpler than they are right now. Graphic design or page layout could be done within a matter of a few minutes. You can make links inside of movies without having to do anything too complicated. You can have an audio book with illustrations to match what you're saying when you say it. It's the most amazing software I've ever seen. When they asked for questions or comments at the end of the presentation, all I could think was "when do we get this?" We do get it in a week or so though (for free. Muahahaha!!!) and I already have an idea for a project that I can make in it. So I'm really excited.

Afterwards, we walked around in Brooklyn until we found a place to eat. I'm still not sure what I think about Brooklyn. Looking at the people, it doesn't seem like a bad part of town, but there's graffiti on almost everything and it just looks really bad. I might have to explore it a little more before I decide.

Well, I'm going to finish putting the links to everything in this blog, stick a picture or two in, and then I'm going to bed. We've got our meeting at 9am tomorrow, so I need a little bit of sleep. If you're reading this, good job getting to the end. I was thinking I would wait until today to post since I wanted to have something to talk about, but I probably should have just done this in shorter posts. Next time.