Will Hines Dot Net

So I’m pretty sure that a guy was masturbating in the sauna at my gym on Friday night. I say “pretty sure” because once I became aware of it (via the sound and the motion I could see out of my peripheral vision) I felt terribly awkward about looking over there to confirm. There were four other guys in the sauna besides me and the suspect — and no one seemed to be reacting at all. I put on a deliberately furrowed “what the heck is going on brow” and made eye contact with someone, hoping he’d say something like “Yeah, that guy next to you is jerking off — we’re cool with it” or something. After about 20 [...]

I cut through Rockefeller Plaza on my way to my office each morning. This morning, a security guard directed me the long way around the building because a construction team was putting up the Christmas tree. Oh yeah, I grumbled to myself — I forgot how completely saturated with tourists this area becomes this time of year. For the next month and half I may as well be working in an office in Tomorrowland.

But then I came around the corner and saw the tree up, and I have to admit it was a glorious site. Sure it’s a pagan ritual whitewashed with a veneer of righteous Christianity, but you can’t deny [...]

That’s where I live — Lorimer St. It’s a lovely Italian neighborhood with nice people and a warm atmosphere, with one tiny exception: The 8-lane Brooklyn-Queens Expressway which tears right through the middle of everything. In the morning, the trucks take over the streets — entering and exiting the BQE with terrific enthusiasm. Crossing even the smallest streets takes a while as vehicle after vehicle speeds by — delivering some kind of product from a warehouse to some store.

But that’s just in the morning. Otherwise it’s pretty nice.

Sufjan Stevens recently premiered a musical piece entitled “The BQE.”

[youtube loyuW_nYGIc nolink]

New video. Shot this at my office last Friday. Thank you Ben Rodgers, Neil Casey and Molly Lloyd!

This is a “Greenstreets” area down the block from my apartment. Sometimes when I walk by it in the morning I feel sorry for it, because it’s such a small amount of dirt and trees in the middle of a huge concrete plain, and yet someone still planted a sign proudly stating “Greenstreets” in the middle. Is it worth doing so little, when it risks ending up looking so pathetic? Is it like walking into the middle of 19th-century style coal factory and installing a single compact fluorescent bulb to conserve energy? Or installing an air bag on a space shuttle?

But I guess that’s part of the Greenstreets program — incremental gains all [...]

First of all, Corn Mo is God. He performed at the UCBT’s Halloween Party last night and kicked the shit out of everyone there. Gavin Speiller was walking through the back to put his bag down in the green room and was frozen, mid-stride, by the awesomeness and couldn’t move until it was over. The Last Car, the other band, was also awesome but none could deny the power of the headliner.

I experienced the entire show in an altered state, not from drugs or alcohol but from wearing ear plugs. Corn Mo politely passed out a bin of [...]