Mike Pace's Blog, page 3
March 6, 2014
So You Think You Like Pizza
Pizza has recently edged out chocolate as America’s favorite food. No real surprise given pizza’s place in the fabric of our culture. John Stewart does battle with Chicago over whether New York’s pizza is best. And New York mayor Bill DiBlasio has received more criticism for eating pizza with a fork than for delays in snow removal. Most all of us maintain a fierce loyalty to our favorite pizza, a devotion that can last for a lifetime and survive long after we’ve departed the neighborhood. (Fo...
February 28, 2014
Is This Creepy House of Mannequins an Art Project?
It’s called the John Lawson House, located near the New Hamburg train station in New York, and it’s impressive for a few reasons.
First, it’s a really old house, built in 1845. Second – and here’s the “Man Bites Dog” angle – several life-sized female mannequins can be found on the front porch, in different positions and wearing different clothes, each day. No has ever been spotted arranging the figures; they seem to retire in the house without notice at the Main Street Historic District, in wh...
February 20, 2014
"ROCKY" Sex Life
A crude, but nevertheless common expletive hurled at the object of one’s anger suggests that the affronter go [have sex with] himself. Fortunately (or, depending on one’s 
point of view, unfortunately,) having sex with one’s self is anatomically challenging—unless you’re a rock.
Pyura chilensis, otherwise known as the Blood Rock, lives in the waters along the coasts of Chile and Peru, and reproduce by tossing a cloud of sperm and eggs into the water and hoping they knock together. (Thus, the eg...
“ROCKY” Sex Life
A crude, but nevertheless common expletive hurled at the object of one’s anger suggests that the affronter go [have sex with] himself. Fortunately (or, depending on one’s point of view, unfortunately,) having sex with one’s self is anatomically challenging—unless you’re a rock.
Pyura chilensis, otherwise known as the Blood Rock, lives in the waters along the coasts of Chile and Peru, and reproduce by tossing a cloud of sperm and eggs into the water and hoping they knock together. (Thus, the eg...
February 13, 2014
February, that Crappy Little Month
The 1986 drama, “The Color of Money,” with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise (and directed by Martin Scorsese, based on a novel by Walter Tevis, who I mentioned in a previous blog) has a line in it that I’ve always remembered.
After Vincent (Cruise) misinterprets something Fast Eddie (Newman) says, the older star clarifies:
Eddie: You’re some piece of work. … You’re also a natural character.
Vincent: [to his girlfriend] You see? I been tellin’ her that. I got natural character.
Eddie: That’s not what I...
February 4, 2014
Déjà Vu
Déjà Vu is a Classic Rock album by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young featuring such iconic songs as: Woodstock, Our House, Carry On and Teach Your Children. It’s also a weird phenomenon that has rattled most all of us.
Déjà vu, is French for “already seen.” It’s that dizzying, momentary flash of, “I’ve been here before” when we “know” we’ve never been there in our life. Spooky, surreal, maybe a little unsettling, déjà vu has been the topic of dozens of horror/thriller books, most conceiving a par...
January 22, 2014
Out-of-the-Box Characters
The traditional plot model–setting, setup, lots of rising action all culminating in a story’s climax and resolution—is not too different from how many of us see our lives; we are the protagonists of our own narrative.
Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and Ezra Pound, and postmodern writers including Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Beatniks showed the world that clean and linear narratives are not always the most accurate depictions of life as we experience it.
Life from cra...
