Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Making Monsters For My Friends

Nina and I went to a benefit for George Tabb (he of Furious George fame) the other night. He's got some auto-immune problem from living too close to the WTC, and people were selling booze and auctioning off artwork to help him out with his medical bills. The man himself wasn't there, but I guess a lot of his friends were? (Is it bad form to come to your own benefit?) There were a lot of high-toned Greenwich, CT types, which makes sense, I suppose, given who the guy is. The dude Nina was supposed to meet there had left by the time we showed up, though, so after downing a few whiskeys, we took the bottle of Glenlivet she'd bought for him and skedaddled.

On our way there, though, we took some pictures (well, Nina took most of the good ones) of these neat, old-fashioned-looking telephone booths dotting West End Ave. The evidence is in my Flickr photostream. I also got to hang out with her for a little while on the steps of Butler Library at Columbia, the campus of which is really pretty at night.

It's getting colder out. I think this is my favorite time of year, aesthetically. It's kind of hard to enjoy when you're in the thick of it, though.

Saturday night was Eve's birthday -- we went to Buttermilk, over on 5th and 16th. Eve, now 25, puked like a champ; I damaged my pelvis and testicles at Nina's behest trying to tilt the Star Wars: Episode 1 pinball machine.

CBGB is shutting its doors for good come Sunday. For having grown up next to the fucking place, I sure didn't go there that much -- the reason being that by the time I started going to shows in the early 90s, the only bands that played there were unlistenable speed metal and hardcore acts. I only distinctly remember seeing two shows there: The audition show for Alana and Serena's Contraband; and Wesley Willis w/ The Fiasco Band. I may have seen Jacques Aboaf's band (The Diplobrats, nee The Fiasco Brothers) audition there, but I'm not sure. And I'm only counting the main stage -- you know, the actual CBGB, the one with the revolting plywood palimpsest of a stage and those sort of dubious booths. I've been to the "lounge" part next door pretty often, actually.

Update: Sunday night Nina and I trekked up to Manhattan to eat dinner with her mom at Petite Abeille (mussels, etc.), and then headed down to CBGB to see what was going on. Predictably, nothing good -- a lot of NYU students, some of which were gawking from what is now the front porch of their dorm on the corner of Bleecker and Bowery; and a bunch of sanctimonious pricks complaining about the NYU kids ("I'm tellin' you, if you told me right now that this was the future of CB's, I'd burn the place to the fucking ground," said a guy who couldn't have been older than 30 to a bored-looking fat dude guarding the door). There were actually a few people who seemed to know what they were talking about -- they were the hobbity-looking ones. Barred from entering CBGB proper, we got a beer at the 313 Lounge, where there was an orgy of t-shirt sales taking place.

I've been finishing up the second half of the second season of Battlestar Galactica. It's, you know, okay. Good performances all around, except maybe for "Apollo," who seems to get far more screen time than he really needs.