Remember in The Great Gatsby how there's the valley of ashes midway between the rural West Egg and New York City? It's a lonely, null-zone meridian with a gas station perfect for Tom's affair with Myrtle. Remember the billboard with the watchful Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg?. Remember how George Wilson refers to the eyes as God after his wife's death? The billboard was a terrific symbol for a post-industrial American concept of God. God speaks to us through billboards and Christians know this.

I remember that my mom and granddaddy's picture were featured on a billboard for Wood Presbyterian Home which had a quote from my mother "Dad Couldn't Be Any Happier." Granddaddy passed away that summer and the billboard was imbued with a spiritual aura.

Well, here in the post-modern era, in the oxygen-strangling flanks of Manhattan I have discovered the Javits Center Jumbotron. Yes, Jumbotron is the actual term for those large ad screens composed of teeming reefs of miniscule light-emitting diodes.
. I took this video at around 11 p.m. I had an awareness that I was the only viewer of all these turgid hot gigawatts shot out to entertain and grab only ME. It was like that awful scene in any science fiction movie where the suddenly aware machine addressed the protagonist via a screenhead of some sort. And when I left, it would continue to show its spiraling animation to absolutely no one save the insects wedded to its gleam. When the screen lit up and said "ASK," I actually felt as though I beheld the Great Burning Bush itself. Like the Deus Ex Machina Babyhead at the end of Matrix Revolutions (God, did anyone even watch that movie?) You know, I would say this city needs to shut off some lights at night. Might feed a small village somewhere.





Although for pure Blade Runner cuteness, you just can't beat these 4 little pixies I found in Chinatown at midnight to keep a lonely pedestrian company.