Skyscrapers and everything

Wherespmac was once the fourth-best Nic Wise fan site in Southern Arizona. Then it was the one of the few blogs written in English in a nation of floggers (I'm still trying to get to Cumbio status). Now it is just another blog lost among the millions of New York City blogs. I'll still keep it alive for the sake of keeping it alive and for all my friends who rely on this blog to entertain them while they are in class.

Here are some note-worthy things I have seen since I moved here.

-- Every street in Harlem has somebody selling a Barack Obama something. There are an incredible amount of 3XL tall tees with the presidential family's image adorning the shirt. There are others that have Barack's face photoshopped over Dwight Howard's in this picture, with the words "One giant leap for mankind" beneath the image.

There was also a great poster showing Obama wearing a mean dark pair of shades, tilting his head so you can see his eyes, holding his Blackberry in the other hand. Posing in front of Cadillac limo, which is in front of the White House. It looks just like every other Rap mixtape cover, except it says "THE PRESIDENT" on the bottom. Incredible.

Still my favorite Barack paraphernalia was a shirt with a black and white image of the pres holding one hand up and his mouth open. In big block letters next to the picture were the words: "Chill I got this!" On the back of the shirt it just read "Harlem." Even more incredible. If it was not on a kid's back I would have bought this.

-- On a Monday afternoon I was walking down from Times Square when I saw a professionally dressed man by himself getting a cartoon caricature of himself.

-- A woman was walking about 20 feet in front of her 2-year-old son, before she yelled, "You got two-point-five seconds to catch up to me or I'm gonna fuck yo ass up!"

-- This really doesn't fit here, but if you don't read Fake Rick Reilly's Twitter than you are not my friend.

-- My friend Eric's new shoes:


When he is not wearing weird shoes, Eric normally wears rope sandals inside the Buddhist Zen Temple he lives in. On Saturday I told him I was interested in checking his digs out, he asked if I wanted to come to the service on Sunday morning. Seeing as how my schedule everyday is currently open from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm I was able to find room.

Early Sunday morning my friend AJ (I should note that all these people are friends I have stolen from my good friend Dustin) I headed out to Brooklyn to try out the Buddhist world.

We walked inside the building, took off our shoes and started singing along to the chants/songs/I am not sure what they are called. After we chanted the names of all 86 Daioshins and several more chants AJ, myself and the other first-timers went upstairs to learn proper meditation techniques from a monk. The monk was a cool Mexican lady who somehow managed to work in a Wall-E reference while instructing us newbies.

Then we went back down to the Zendo and I failed miserably at meditating. Many moons ago before I began backpacking in Argentina I wanted to get into meditation because it seemed like a good thing to learn and also because of Phil Jackson. My former roommate Lauren told me how impossible it was to completely zone out and I thought I understood what she was talking about. I never ended up practicing any Zen while I traveled.

Back in the Zendo I could not clear my mind to save my life.I didn't want to get yelled at for moving and I didn't want to fuck up anybody else's Zen high, so I just sat there as still as possible for what seemed like an eternity. I thought of everything the monk told us not to: old conversations, old stories, the future, television shows. Then Tony Yayo's opening line from "So Seductive" not leave my head. The goofy, staccato, bass-driven sounds of G-Unit would not leave my head, "Ah n*gga do you?! Know what this is?! One shot, one deal, what it is?!"

Then the monk walked over to me and whispered in my ear, "Stare at the Buddha it will help you focus, we only have five minutes left." I was cool with that until I realized it was probably a Buddhist mind trick and we had a lot more than five minutes left.

Eventually we got up and started doing walking meditating which was better for me since I could move. Then we sat back down and the monk gave an amazing speech. I had never heard another monk's speech before, but her's felt definitively Brooklyn as she alluded to Wired magazine, Woody Allen, Facebook and Twitter.

Then it was all over and Eric gave us a tour of the building and I applauded him for meditating twice a day, every day. Then I felt like a dumbass for singing Tony Yayo and mentally writing this whole blog when I should have been meditating.