Owlspotting

Someone in my building received this package recently. It was in the hallway and I couldn’t resist running back for my camera to snap a picture. We all love getting mail from our retarded families.

My dad turned 50 this week, just days after he sent me an e-mail that broke my heart. It was sent at 4 A.M. Romania time — he obviously hadn’t slept that night, busy musing about the life and the lessons he took away from always being too eager to help others. Reading his words, […]

I spent Thursday and Friday in Washington, D.C. looking for an apartment. It was the beginning of my process of accomodating to new city I had just taken a job in. If I think hard enough, I can summarize all my experiences in a few words. The summer of 1994 was soccer, the summer of […]

Romania is under water. The recent floods in 33 of the country’s 42 districts killed 21 people and left more than 12,000 without a home. According to a Reuters report, the floods are the worst the country has seen in 50 years, topping the floods of April and May, which produced an estimated damage of […]

I am lucky (I guess) to be interning at a certain magazine in the midst of one of the biggest non-sex Washington scandals in recent years. And yet, as all the speculation and evasion and embarrassment swirls around me, I am reminded of the other news of the past week: the terrorist attacks in London. […]

How do you judge your music? Is it the brilliance of the guitar riffs? The digital perfection of the production? The intellectual ambiguity of the lyrics? The ass-shake-potential of the bass? The “add to my sex playlist” quality? Those are all good categories, and there are scores I didn’t mention. They are all safe conversational […]

A teenager was stabbed in Brooklyn late last week because he refused to hand over his iPod to his attackers, who fled with the mp3 player, a cell phone and the boy’s sneakers. The front page of the Sunday New York Post read “iPOD MURDER” and the New York Times also ran a brief on […]

July 4 fireworks, originally uploaded by owlspotting.We saw this year’s fireworks display from the lawn of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It was an amazing display of light and color and these photos don’t do it justice. I was too busy being amazed. Still, there are a few more shots here.

“I sure as hell hope New York doesn’t get it,” she says earnestly, looking around the room for nods of support. “Might as well draw a big target on us.” It’s about the 50th time she’s said this. But though I’m not sure of her title, I’m pretty sure she’s important to the grand hierarchy […]