Monday, August 20, 2007
The Library of Babel
So, yeah, I went to go see Direct From Hollywood Cemetery at Rock Star Bar last Monday, after trivia (this guy Dave from my office and I bombed as The Heaps), and they were amazing, as usual. And I still can't fathom what they're doing playing a Monday night show with horrible openers at a frankly kind of dumpy venue. I asked The Vegetable this question, too, having run into him on the way out, and he said he had no fucking clue, either, but that they've got a new album coming out that's going to rock. He let me keep one of his drum sticks that had gone flying from his kit during a particularly enthusiastic finale for Boiler Room. Nina came, too -- she's well-connected with these guys, surprisingly enough, since the bass player has done some work for Seed.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Nerd Rock
I tire, babies. I didn't sleep that well last night.
What's happened? Last weekend, Eve and I played Scrabble in Greenwood Cemetery. It was very beautiful. I almost, for the first time in my life, used all of my Scrabble letters by spelling out 'wolverine,' but was thwarted.
On Tuesday, I went to go see Peelander-Z and Go!Go!7188 at The Knitting Factory. Go!Go! is from Tokyo, but I'd seen flyers for the 'lander for years and had been curious about their live show. It turns out that they're a little bit, uh, sloppy, but their enthusiasm and the variety and quality of their props pretty well makes up for it -- they're like a manic tricolor Japanese Carrot Top! They led off with a song called "Mad Tiger," during which all three band members donned these awesome, realistically-furred tiger masks. Then there was an interlude in which the gap-toothed lead singer removed his yellow helmet and called up volunteers from the audience to help him scissor off his remaining tendrils of hair. Then they played more songs, the drummer and bass player holding up white cardboard placards with the titles on them, presumably for the benefit of the audience. For their last song, "Health," they invited a bunch of audience members up on stage, this time to play the instruments while they cavorted in the crowd. The yellow dude quick-changed into this bowling pin costume and kept charging and pile-driving the red guy while their merch lady (whose jumpsuit was pink) refereed.
Go!Go!7188 was really very good -- their lead singer, Yuu, has a great set of pipes, even though she's pretty small, and the band is incredibly tight, musically.
On Thursday, Mike Frank came up from D.C. and he and Eve and I went to see The Hold Steady in Prospect Park. They were characteristically energetic -- even though a lot of their songs are a bit too down-tempo, or, I don't know, meandering for me, it's kind of impossible not to be in a good mood while you're watching them. The crowd was psyched, and Craig Finn was doing his trademark shout-unintelligible-stuff-off-mic thing (what is he saying?). He was wearing a baseball jersey given to him personally by Kent Hrbek, I think he said. They didn't play as long as they did at the show of theirs I saw at Warsaw, nor did they drink as much, really, but I think the Celebrate Brooklyn people had to get people home; also it was raining, kind of.
Last night the folks at 680 threw a barbecue. I borrowed Eve's bicycle and Nina and I went around Prospect Park a couple of times before heading down to the party. We saw a whole bunch of fireflies in the park, as well as two bats and a bunny.
Today was the big Thermals / Ted Leo show in McCarren Park Pool. Nina and I got there kind of late, on account of we were kind of hung over and tired and sick-feeling from the activities of yesterday, so we got there just in time to hear The Thermals wrapping up, but that's okay. We were eating sushi. Ted Leo, though, was excellent, as usual and despite the heat, which must have been unbearable up on stage. I'd never been to one of these Jelly NYC pool parties before, and I don't know what I think about them -- they've got enclosures set up for water polo and dodgeball, there's a Slip 'n Slide, and, thankfully, a cooling-off tent with these big fans that kind of spray water at you; and as a result the space is so big and distracting that you don't get the kind of critical mass, crowd-wise that really makes for a good rock show. Nonetheless, they were loud and fast and really tight. It was the bass player's last show with the band, so they did Counting Down The Hours as an encore, since it's apparently his favorite song. I think it might be my favorite song, too!
On the way home from the show, after Nina detrained to go get dinner with her bro and her dad, I bought some stuff at Trader Joe's and then got on the N, which was running local, infuriatingly, as it's been doing recently. I sat down next to a young man and woman who were engaged in animated conversation. I wasn't really paying attention at first, and when the woman started saying, "Kids want different experiences, they want to experience stuff -- electronically, or outdoors, whatever -- it's about experience-hopping," I thought she was talking about, you know, child psychology or teaching or something. But she wasn't. Her male companion took the ball and ran with it: "Right, definitely. So it should be like, 'You can take Go-Gurt to the beach, you can take it underwater, or, uh, in a boat, you can take it to Space Camp..." These were ad people, working after hours on a campaign for Go-Gurt, the yogurt-like acrylic paint you drink out of a condom!
"Yeah," the woman said, "we should have pictures of all the places you can take Go-Gurt, you know, photos or illustrations..." The dude cut in with "I think where all this Dr. Seuss kind of stuff is leading us, though, is that there's nowhere you can't take Go-Gurt. I mean, maybe we give it as a challenge -- show us a place you think you can't take Go-Gurt and we'll show you that you can. And, you know, this is really something we should let the 'creatives' take care of -- because we're not creatives. But, in a way, we are." They went on like this for some time, waxing philosophical on the "portability" merits of Go-Gurt, to the exclusion of all other topics, except for one point, when, after a brief pause in the conversation, the woman started expounding on the virtue of... herself, in a kind of frightening tone of voice. "They're going to love me. I mean, they already love me, but they don't know what I can do. I didn't know what I could do, but now that I do, nothing can stop me." The last thing I heard, as they got off at 9th St. (to return to the apartment that they apparently shared?) was the guy asking the girl, the concern in his voice actually kind of plausible, "Wait, are you proposing a redesign of the product?"
"No," she assured him. "I'm not trying to change the tube experience."
Danica moved out, slightly ahead of schedule -- surprise funeral upstate this weekend, she's flying back to CA tomorrow to start the fall semester as planned. This is kind of sad; she was a good roommate. But tomorrow is Vampire Hollywood at Rock Star Bar!
What's happened? Last weekend, Eve and I played Scrabble in Greenwood Cemetery. It was very beautiful. I almost, for the first time in my life, used all of my Scrabble letters by spelling out 'wolverine,' but was thwarted.
On Tuesday, I went to go see Peelander-Z and Go!Go!7188 at The Knitting Factory. Go!Go! is from Tokyo, but I'd seen flyers for the 'lander for years and had been curious about their live show. It turns out that they're a little bit, uh, sloppy, but their enthusiasm and the variety and quality of their props pretty well makes up for it -- they're like a manic tricolor Japanese Carrot Top! They led off with a song called "Mad Tiger," during which all three band members donned these awesome, realistically-furred tiger masks. Then there was an interlude in which the gap-toothed lead singer removed his yellow helmet and called up volunteers from the audience to help him scissor off his remaining tendrils of hair. Then they played more songs, the drummer and bass player holding up white cardboard placards with the titles on them, presumably for the benefit of the audience. For their last song, "Health," they invited a bunch of audience members up on stage, this time to play the instruments while they cavorted in the crowd. The yellow dude quick-changed into this bowling pin costume and kept charging and pile-driving the red guy while their merch lady (whose jumpsuit was pink) refereed.
Go!Go!7188 was really very good -- their lead singer, Yuu, has a great set of pipes, even though she's pretty small, and the band is incredibly tight, musically.
On Thursday, Mike Frank came up from D.C. and he and Eve and I went to see The Hold Steady in Prospect Park. They were characteristically energetic -- even though a lot of their songs are a bit too down-tempo, or, I don't know, meandering for me, it's kind of impossible not to be in a good mood while you're watching them. The crowd was psyched, and Craig Finn was doing his trademark shout-unintelligible-stuff-off-mic thing (what is he saying?). He was wearing a baseball jersey given to him personally by Kent Hrbek, I think he said. They didn't play as long as they did at the show of theirs I saw at Warsaw, nor did they drink as much, really, but I think the Celebrate Brooklyn people had to get people home; also it was raining, kind of.
Last night the folks at 680 threw a barbecue. I borrowed Eve's bicycle and Nina and I went around Prospect Park a couple of times before heading down to the party. We saw a whole bunch of fireflies in the park, as well as two bats and a bunny.
Today was the big Thermals / Ted Leo show in McCarren Park Pool. Nina and I got there kind of late, on account of we were kind of hung over and tired and sick-feeling from the activities of yesterday, so we got there just in time to hear The Thermals wrapping up, but that's okay. We were eating sushi. Ted Leo, though, was excellent, as usual and despite the heat, which must have been unbearable up on stage. I'd never been to one of these Jelly NYC pool parties before, and I don't know what I think about them -- they've got enclosures set up for water polo and dodgeball, there's a Slip 'n Slide, and, thankfully, a cooling-off tent with these big fans that kind of spray water at you; and as a result the space is so big and distracting that you don't get the kind of critical mass, crowd-wise that really makes for a good rock show. Nonetheless, they were loud and fast and really tight. It was the bass player's last show with the band, so they did Counting Down The Hours as an encore, since it's apparently his favorite song. I think it might be my favorite song, too!
On the way home from the show, after Nina detrained to go get dinner with her bro and her dad, I bought some stuff at Trader Joe's and then got on the N, which was running local, infuriatingly, as it's been doing recently. I sat down next to a young man and woman who were engaged in animated conversation. I wasn't really paying attention at first, and when the woman started saying, "Kids want different experiences, they want to experience stuff -- electronically, or outdoors, whatever -- it's about experience-hopping," I thought she was talking about, you know, child psychology or teaching or something. But she wasn't. Her male companion took the ball and ran with it: "Right, definitely. So it should be like, 'You can take Go-Gurt to the beach, you can take it underwater, or, uh, in a boat, you can take it to Space Camp..." These were ad people, working after hours on a campaign for Go-Gurt, the yogurt-like acrylic paint you drink out of a condom!
"Yeah," the woman said, "we should have pictures of all the places you can take Go-Gurt, you know, photos or illustrations..." The dude cut in with "I think where all this Dr. Seuss kind of stuff is leading us, though, is that there's nowhere you can't take Go-Gurt. I mean, maybe we give it as a challenge -- show us a place you think you can't take Go-Gurt and we'll show you that you can. And, you know, this is really something we should let the 'creatives' take care of -- because we're not creatives. But, in a way, we are." They went on like this for some time, waxing philosophical on the "portability" merits of Go-Gurt, to the exclusion of all other topics, except for one point, when, after a brief pause in the conversation, the woman started expounding on the virtue of... herself, in a kind of frightening tone of voice. "They're going to love me. I mean, they already love me, but they don't know what I can do. I didn't know what I could do, but now that I do, nothing can stop me." The last thing I heard, as they got off at 9th St. (to return to the apartment that they apparently shared?) was the guy asking the girl, the concern in his voice actually kind of plausible, "Wait, are you proposing a redesign of the product?"
"No," she assured him. "I'm not trying to change the tube experience."
Danica moved out, slightly ahead of schedule -- surprise funeral upstate this weekend, she's flying back to CA tomorrow to start the fall semester as planned. This is kind of sad; she was a good roommate. But tomorrow is Vampire Hollywood at Rock Star Bar!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
If It's Horrible, It Exists
Drink, drink, drink.
Nina and I went to the They Might Be Giants show at the 'Ballroom, albeit with Nina's brother Michael and his friend Ari instead of Randy and Danica. It was great! The Johns described the show as being a collection of lesser-played material of theirs from the 90s, and, you know, true to their word, I didn't really know any of the songs -- except for one that my friend Kim put on a mix tape that she gave me in high school to cheer me up. I quote it here because it's a nice example of how stirringly cute their lyrics are, not to mention the hooks:
After the show we followed Michael and Ari over to this Thai bar with a name I can't remember in the West Village to see a childhood friend of Michael's playing blues (raw, acoustic) at, I guess, a sort of open mic dealie. He was very good, but I don't remember his name. What I do remember is that somebody peed on the street afterwards. I won't say who!
One thing I forgot to mention last time was a birthday thing. Eve got me a pair of tickets to go on a "working harbor" tour of the East River, and Nina and I did it. The thing was held on a big yacht that served booze and was equipped with a sound system so the guides (who were kind of like a maritime Click & Clack Tappit) could explain things about container shipping. We left from Pier 16 and got a peek at the Brooklyn Navy Yards before turning around and heading South towards Red Hook and Staten Island. Red Hook had a bunch of beautiful old fire-gutted piers and warehouses. We took some pictures, but most of them came out blurry. Down by Staten Island is a kind of tugboat harbor that the guides were really fascinated with. We got to a see a bunch of tugboats hauling loads around. They can push or pull their barges, but they can also drag them along from the side -- wouldn't've thought that was physically doable. Of all the things we saw, my favorite was this one bit of the fuel tanker docks that had this enormous grid draped with colorful hoses used for routing the payload of the tankers to the proper holding facilities: an Ethernet pinout writ large!
I went to a few more movies at the McCarren Park Pool summerscreen film series, which is turning out to be a wonderful alternative, lineup-wise, to the packed clusterfuck that is Bryant Park. It's a beautiful space, rarely very crowded, and Schnack does the cooking. Most recently, I was there for:
I did an exhausting thing yesterday that I can't really talk about on the ol' blog. Maybe I'll talk about later. Suffice it to say that I'm exhausted. I have the day off today and I've spent it lying around, eating and playing video games. I'm watching The Killing Fields right now, but not really giving it 100% of my attention.
Nina and I went to the They Might Be Giants show at the 'Ballroom, albeit with Nina's brother Michael and his friend Ari instead of Randy and Danica. It was great! The Johns described the show as being a collection of lesser-played material of theirs from the 90s, and, you know, true to their word, I didn't really know any of the songs -- except for one that my friend Kim put on a mix tape that she gave me in high school to cheer me up. I quote it here because it's a nice example of how stirringly cute their lyrics are, not to mention the hooks:
I returned a bag of groceriesThe hooks! They're so clean and catchy, these songs. It put me in mind, as a lot of things do, of the songs The Headliners used to play -- pairing up a catchy melody (the less complicated the instrumentation of which the better) with a good-faith exploration of a silly idea. That's a formula I haven't yet lost respect for. I don't know if I ever will!
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the expiration date
I came back as a bag of groceries
Accidently taken off the shelf
Before the date stamped on myself
Did a large procession wave their
Torches as my head fell in the basket
And was everybody dancing on the casket?
Now it's over, I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want
Or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do
After the show we followed Michael and Ari over to this Thai bar with a name I can't remember in the West Village to see a childhood friend of Michael's playing blues (raw, acoustic) at, I guess, a sort of open mic dealie. He was very good, but I don't remember his name. What I do remember is that somebody peed on the street afterwards. I won't say who!
One thing I forgot to mention last time was a birthday thing. Eve got me a pair of tickets to go on a "working harbor" tour of the East River, and Nina and I did it. The thing was held on a big yacht that served booze and was equipped with a sound system so the guides (who were kind of like a maritime Click & Clack Tappit) could explain things about container shipping. We left from Pier 16 and got a peek at the Brooklyn Navy Yards before turning around and heading South towards Red Hook and Staten Island. Red Hook had a bunch of beautiful old fire-gutted piers and warehouses. We took some pictures, but most of them came out blurry. Down by Staten Island is a kind of tugboat harbor that the guides were really fascinated with. We got to a see a bunch of tugboats hauling loads around. They can push or pull their barges, but they can also drag them along from the side -- wouldn't've thought that was physically doable. Of all the things we saw, my favorite was this one bit of the fuel tanker docks that had this enormous grid draped with colorful hoses used for routing the payload of the tankers to the proper holding facilities: an Ethernet pinout writ large!
I went to a few more movies at the McCarren Park Pool summerscreen film series, which is turning out to be a wonderful alternative, lineup-wise, to the packed clusterfuck that is Bryant Park. It's a beautiful space, rarely very crowded, and Schnack does the cooking. Most recently, I was there for:
- Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, which is a weird and wonderful little punk rock gem that I'd never heard (neither has Netflix). It kind of falls apart, plot- and message-wise, in the final act, but all the characters are played convincingly and earnestly -- the whole thing's got enormous heart. Plus Ray Winstone's one of the leads. Who knew?
- Repo Man, which should have been infuriating, given that it just kind of throws together pretty much every punk movie theme -- the only thing missing, debatably, is a zombie invasion -- but somehow avoided being glib. I really liked it! Tight pacing, clever dialogue, shit acting.
I did an exhausting thing yesterday that I can't really talk about on the ol' blog. Maybe I'll talk about later. Suffice it to say that I'm exhausted. I have the day off today and I've spent it lying around, eating and playing video games. I'm watching The Killing Fields right now, but not really giving it 100% of my attention.
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