Hallowe'en

I've been watching AMC's monster movie marathon. It's pretty great. I love cable TV!

What am I gonna do for Halloween, though? I feel like this past weekend was pretty much it for the grown-up Halloween festivities, except for kind of institutional things like the parade. I'm not dressing up, I think. The time for that is passed. But I did buy this perfectly hideous pirate skull dealie to hang on our front door, and Randy bought some candy. I'm hoping we can hand some out to trick-or-treaters, but I really don't know for sure whether there'll be in our building (although there are plenty of kids). Este hogar es Catolico and that.

I did go to a rock show last weekend, though, over at Otto's Shrunken Head. I was there to see the delightful Direct From Hollywood Cemetery, who were playing there because it the place was doing some kind of rockabilly night? They're not really a rockabilly band, though. Not sure. Anyhow, all the bands' MySpace pages gave different times for the start of the show, and the venue's site listed them at the bottom of the list of bands, which typically means they go on first, but I couldn't believe they'd be opening for all these bands I'd never heard of, so I decided to arrive squarely in the middle of the show and just trust to providence. I get there just as this band called The Deadneks is going on, and they've got this big merch table set up, and I start doing these panicky mental calculations about how many bands could've gone on since I showed up. Plus I'd seen the frontman for DFHC, Dave, wandering around the crowd in full makeup, which was weird, because they usually do a whole intro where he gets into costume and then comes out from behind something, like a speaker cabinet or a door or something. You know, pageantry.

There was a guy standing in front of me, a sort of hulking, bald, impassive, baby-faced lump, wearing one of those glossy jackets that skinheads wear; I've found that this type is, oddly enough, a fixture at small punk shows. Maybe he was a skinhead. But he was talking to this girl whose boyfriend, I think, had temporarily abandoned her, and I overheard the following snippet of conversation:

"Yeah, so the body was on the tracks, but they found the head up in the engine."

"The engine! Do you get a lot of suicides on the LIRR?"

"Well, Metro North, but, yeah."

A little while later, this man and two women were standing behind me, and I overheard them complaining about how they couldn't see because of how tall I was. I turned around and sort of mumbled an apology and stepped to one side. They were a little embarrassed, and the guy said, "Oh, hey, that's the same guy who was fixing the mousetrap!" What? I said. "You were over there earlier," he said, pointing at one of the couches, "fixing this box" -- "It was an effects pedal," said one of the women. That wasn't me, I said. "Really?" he said. "Maybe you're wearing a disguise now." Yeah, I said. That's my costume. I'm a tall guy who goes to a show.

Anyway, The Deadneks weren't very good, although their lead singer had a kind of cool Chelsea smile and their bass player was playing an awesome, shiny white electric upright bass with a wireless transmitter, and he'd kind of walk it out of the room and up and down the hall by the bathrooms. But they were a bit too screamy and the songs weren't very clever and the guitar and bass weren't tight enough. After them came the Memphis Morticians, who were actually pretty okay although none of their songs had any really catchy hooks.

DFHC did come on after that, thank the fuck Christ, and they were incredible. As usual, inexplicably, the crowd thinned out by about half as they were going on, but the band was impeccable -- ungodly energetic, given the hour, and just really precise and tight. It might have been the best performance of theirs that I've seen so far. Dr. Fangs pogoed into the audience as soon as they started, and everybody was dancing around vigorously -- one lanky, preternaturally tall dude in a leather jacket (not me, believe it or not), jumped on Dr. Fangs' back and rode him around (he's a pretty big guy) for several numbers. People crashed into the instruments, prompting facetious admonition from the band members, who were themselves tossing and kicking their guitars around on the beer-slopped floor. As an encore, they covered Psycho by The Sonics, which is a pretty great song for them, I think. There was even some crowd surfing, though the venue hardly had the room for it -- this shrimpy bespectacled kid in a blazer got boosted up and thrown around for a bit. After the band quit the stage, he somehow wound up with the mic and explained that although it was his birthday that night, "it's all about the music."

Lucretia Secretions was absent, no explanation given.

On my way out, I saw Dave pooped out on a stool near the bar. He looked exhausted, understably. "You guys were amazing," I said. He muttered something appreciative. These guys might be the spiritual heirs to The Dickies. And it's just as well, 'cuz I don't think those guys are going on tour or putting out any records any time soon.

Apple Bapple

It's finally rainy and cold, which I would be hell of enjoying if not for the fact that I'm still recovering from the worst case of the grippe I've had in quite some time. But more on that in a second.

My friend Squick came down to NYC from Boston on his vacation last Friday and stopped off at work to say hi. We hung out with PT at Bite and had some "drink," which was definitely welcome, given how awful and stressful work has been lately. I'd gotten my hair cut that day by my guy at Astor Hair, Edward, who looks and sounds like a Joe Sacco drawing and gives great haircuts but is utterly unemotive when it comes to pretty much everything. (While I was waiting on Friday, he was cutting the thick, spiky hair of this Asian kid, and he marveled, in a monotone, of course, "Your hair. So much. It like whole other head."

So we were talking about Edward and hair and the cutting of it, and this guy Elo who's a bouncer at Temple Bar came over and started extolling the benefits of shaving with a straight razor. He's kind of a big-shot in the Dominican Republic, he says -- he owns his own pool hall that he won off a guy -- and he's super into collecting razors and shaving paraphernalia. The pride of his collection is one of the razors belonging to the personal barber of Rafael Trujillo. "That guy was like our Hitler," Elo said. (Presumably he didn't mean the barber.) The razor's got this incredible mother-of-pearl handle, and, presumably, some genetic material belonging to the former dictator. "I'm going to restore it," he said. "Wouldn't a museum be interested in those flakes of skin?" I asked. "Nah," he said. "'s worth more if I clean it off." He told me I should Google him to find the forum he posts to in order to get his personal picks for shaving soap and astringents. "I'm like the seventh hit," he said. "He's right," said Squick. "Right after Electric Light Orchestra."

Apple picking got done on Saturday. We usually (well, for the past two years) go to a place called Wright's Farm in Ulster County, NY. That place is great, but it takes a really long time to get to, and we were kind of ready for a change. So this year we went to Riamede Farms, which is in New Jersey, and is just as nice, apple-wise, although they don't have a cool little cafe the way Wright's did, nor do they have dilly beans. Ted (driving) and Tom and 'Leen and Greg (down from MIT) came this time -- Katharine was in the middle of a hellish close at the 'xim, Emma's under the gun on her book, and Nina had midterms to cram for. And Katie just kind of inexplicably bowed out at the last moment. Still, we managed to have a great time -- the evidence is in my photostream. The apples were all huge and strangely luminous, and we ate and picked a ton. I got not one but two grasshoppers put down my shirt (though I may have squealed and cringed about twice as much as last year), and Ted gave himself a pretty deep cut by trying to yank a tough, fibrous weed out of the ground in the pumpkin patch. I don't know what I'm going to do with all my apples. A pie, prolly?

We convened at 680 afterwards to mull some cider and enjoy the material fruits of our fruit-labor -- and the previously absent ladies did show up for this -- but everybody was so exhausted that it wasn't really much of a shindig. Colleen called from her place a few minutes in and asked Tom if he could help her dispose of a rat she and her roommates had nabbed in a glue trap. Tom, not particularly relishing the idea of the actual, uh, disposal, asked if I wanted to help, and I'm all, you know, sure. So we head over there and the thing is kind of writing around in the trap grotesquely, stuck by it's legs, but also sort of keeled over and gummed up on its side. It can't really move much at all -- not a case for extraction, certainly. And it's definitely a rat (I'm a little skeptical of Nina's theory that there are no mice in New York, only baby Norwegian Browns); the shape of its head and back are pretty telltale. So Tom puts the thing in a plastic bag, and we head down to the street, wearing work gloves and filled with terrible purpose. I grab one of those big cobblestone things they use to line the planters the city plants trees in, and I just kind of bash the bag a whole bunch. That's not really a problem for me -- I'm a firm believer in putting things out of their misery -- but in mid-bash, a bunch of dirt flies off the cobblestone and gets in my mouth! And I'm all ack, pbthhh.

As the evening starts to wind down, I start feeling kind of unwell -- throat's all scratchy, nose is running -- and of course I think, oh god, I got plague from the rat bits! But not really. I got plague from Nina or Eve or any one of the dozen people who were sick last week. And what a plague it was! I felt like a dude in a NyQuil commercial (given to describing my suffering in florid similes) for like 3 days straight. I stayed home from work, playing Final Fantasy and creating a small mountain of Kleenexes, which I think freaked Randy out a little. And I've still got a sinus infection, which is turning my nostrils into taps for thick, yellow, acrid custard. Cheers!

That Cough Don't Sound Too Good, Marc Maron

It's actually a bit warm now, but last week was very cold. It made me strikingly sleepy (nothing like drowsing on the sofa during a cold, dry day), but it also stirred up, pretty strikingly, a bunch of memories from a few years ago. When I was at Wesleyan, I took a class on formal languages -- it was the first time I ever had to write serious proofs, and I spent a lot of time standing in front of one or another of the blackboards in the hall on the top floor of the Science Tower, trying to puzzle things out. Connecticut always seemed to get colder than New York. I'd shuffle from the Butterfield Colleges through the dead leaves up Church St., take the elevator up to the fourth floor of the (often) empty building, and then struggle to glimpse (and then retain) some relatively obscure truths about the nature of computation. In the clear, gray autumn light from the window, where I'd often find myself looking, you could see this kind of ocean of trees, the scope of which was kind of invisible from the ground. Very picturesque. I had this kind of ugly mottled brown sweater that I was wearing a lot those days. I'd bought it for (literally) fifty cents at a thrift store in town that sold cast-off stuff from hospitals. It was very warm, but I looked like a grandpa-in-training or some kind of weird eastern European.

The venerable Eve is now 26 years old. As with last year, we convened at Buttermilk to celebrate, and as with last year, Eve puked like a champ. The Star Wars pinball machine that caused problems for me last year was nowhere to be found, but Eve herself was a healthy terror, especially after she "rallied" -- the evening culminated in our drunken pursuit of her as she tore down 4th Ave., weaving from side to side in birthdatorial glee.

There's this weekly comedy show at Union Hall hosted by Michael Showalter and Eugene Mirman called Tearing The Veil Of Maya. I have no idea what that means, but the premise -- at least, I think -- is that it's for relatively well-known alternative comics to try out new material and talk about funny stuff that's happened to them during the week. Tom is fucking apeshit for it, and he goes every week. I've been twice now, and both times were fairly spectacular: The first time, Jim Gaffigan showed up (unannounced, I think) and did a whole set about how much loves bacon -- interspersed, of course, with his standard commentary from an imagined critical audience member (which sounds suspiciously close to the ultra-endearing "girl voice" that Tom and I do); last weekend they had Marc Maron, my all-time favorite comedian, bearded and intense and miserable, fresh from what he described as a terrible week in Edinburgh and a break-up with his (second) wife.

His delivery is such that I can't really remember more than a couple choice bits of his set (God speaking to him in Davey-and-Goliath voice; an extended simile about how dating women is like "sticking your cock into a hurricane"), but we (Tom and Colleen and Ted and Jill and I) were sitting in the second row, and intimidating eye contact was made throughout. At one point, he addressed a comment in the second person to some hypothetical hipster -- "I know what movie you're here to see with that haircut" -- while staring right at me. I don't even have a haircut right now! It's all over the place. Later on, warning the crowd that things were about to get weird, he took a guitar pick out of his pocket and winged it into the audience. It sort of boomeranged over my head and then landed squarely in my lap! I'm going to frame it, maybe? Not sure what to do.

Mike Birbiglia was up next. A bit stung, maybe, that Eugene Mirman had let Marc go really long, he explained that Marc was "the best comic," and that he's pretty much exactly the same off-stage -- except not funny. Seeing Marc lingering in the back of the room, he called out, "I slept with your wife!" "That's enough," said Marc, and promptly left.

This weekend is apple picking! I gotta go now -- I've got a meatloaf in the oven, my first ever, in honor of National Meat Loaf Appreciation Day.

Rice Milk

So, yeah, I made some horchata. Ingredients-wise, the stuff is pretty simple, except that the raw vanilla beans were expensive as fuck, like $5.99 for two at Whole Foods. Yes, I know. I know that I got hosed. But I put all the shit in to a blender and pureed it for a while, and then I emptied everything into the tea sock that I'd bought. And I thought it would just, you know, work from that point on, but the consistency of the mixture was such that it was holding in the water and not letting it seep through the sock. (Maybe I should've done it a cup or so at a time?) I ended up having to "milk" the bulging tea sock for about half an hour, squeezing the tip with my fingers as the rice water trickled out over my fingers and into a bowl. Ultimately, I ended up getting several cups out of it, and it was fucking delicious -- the best horchata I think I've ever had! It was rich and sort of spicy and not too sweet at all. But I don't know if I'll make it again any time soon.

Next up: Figuring out what to do with the nopales paddles and baggie of carne enchilada I bought at C-Town.

Eve and Nina and I have been going to this new bar called Quarter over on 20th St. and 5th Ave. The place is usually pretty empty, but it's very pretty inside, there's a good selection of booze, and the bartender's a real nice guy who never even complains when you order your fifth mashed basil drink that takes ten minutes to make. The three of us were there on Friday night, and, as y'do, I headed to the bathroom to take a piss. I finish my business and go to flush, but I guess someone had just been in there, 'cuz the toilet was still, you know, filling itself, because when I turn the handle, it doesn't do anything. So I thought maybe it was just one of those toilets where you have to turn the handle, you know, a little bit more. Some toilets are like that, man. So I gave it a bit of an extra turn, and the thing just snaps off in my hand.

On Saturday I went with Eve and Nina and Ted and some other people to see Arcade Fire out on Randall's Island. I'd never been there before, having skipped out on joining the track team in high school -- truth be told, I wasn't even 100% sure where it was. (It's in the East River, way up north 'round Harlem.) We took the D train all the way up, taking advantage of the super-express service after 59th St. in Manhattan. Unfortunately, on account of the enormous cup of coffee I drank that morning, or on account of I-don't-know-what, my stomach started having a major freak-out about half way up there, complete with the sweats and heart palpitations like you wouldn't believe. I really thought I was going to faint or have to puke. In classic Julian style, I just sort of sat there and fingered my vagus nerve until it was time to stagger up the stairs at 125th St. We're walking across town to the place where the special express bus was supposed to pick us up, past all the people hawking incense and black people genre fiction, and I'm feeling sick as a dog -- and I remember that I've left my ticket at home. Voyage of the fucking Pequod. So I call Ted and by the grace of God it turns out he hasn't managed to get rid of his extra ticket yet.

We get to the bus stop and it's a zoo. There's tons of hipsters and just not enough buses. There are, however, a bunch of erstwhile livery cab drivers looking to make a killing. One of them offers us a flat rate of $40 a head to get across the bridge, which I think is too much, but to which the other members of our party agree. I sweat my way through the ride, and then we get to the entrance, with a two-tier security check-in. Nina and Eve go in without me in order to retrieve the ticket from Ted, and I pace around, sweating and belching and feeling awful. But everything ends up sorted out, and I get a $7 beer in me and start feeling a whole hell of a lot better, and Nina and I get to plotz out in the middle of the field while she bravely homphs a tzatziki sauce-drenched burrito she's bought at one of the vendors lining either side of the main grassy bit. Randall's Island is very pretty and much greener than I thought it would be. And even though there were tons of people there and the stage was super far away, they've got a great PA system and these two huge projection screens set up on either side of the stage that display helpful (if needlessly arty) close-ups of the action.

By the time Nina and I met up with the rest of the group, LCD Soundsystem were going on. I'm not their hugest fan, but they played all different kinds of songs, some of them quite good, and their lead singer had plenty of energy.

Arcade Fire, though -- those guys are amazing. Their visual aesthetic alone is worth the price of admission: It's this Amish goth thing, kind of like they're the Addams Family's cousins from rural Canada. Win and Régine always both have the same distracted, fearful look on their faces, even when Régine's stomping around the stage like a hot little chimp. The sound was great, and the set list was pretty much the same as when I saw them at Radio City -- focusing heavily on the excellent Neon Bible. Their songs are catchy as hell, but the tone, melodically and lyrically, is so grim and spooky that there's this hard-to-shake... dread feeling that comes over me when I listen. Is that just me? The band doesn't seem to be affected -- they were cavorting all over the stage as usual, laying waste to various components of the drum kit in the process. At one particularly exciting point towards the end, Will Butler grabbed one of the floor toms (I think) and started climbing up the stage scaffolding while playing it. He got about a story and a half up when the stick flew out of his hand into the crowd below. He made a wild grab for it and looked for a second like he might lose his grip. But he didn't.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da... Black mirror!

There was a guy standing in front of us through most of it who looked like a cross between Tom O'Donnell and Zach Galifianakis. And he was a total dipshit, kind of smirking and muttering to his friends about how lame it was that everyone was singing and dancing around. Guy, don't go to a rock concert if you're not into that. "Liiiees, liiiees," right into Ted's ear.

After the thing was over we opted to take the foot path back up to the Triborough and walked to Queens. We debated getting a drink, but everyone was exhausted. And apparently we left a tad too early.

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

It really is. This is my favorite kind of weather. Everything seems kind of clear and sharp, and the temperature is perfect for, you know, actually thinking about stuff. Plus, this is when all of my favorite things happen -- going back to school (used to get psyched about this when I was a kid); apple picking; Halloween; Thanksgiving.

So I haven't posted in a while. Sorry! Laziness, really.

The Monday before last Nina and I went to go see Bjork at Madison Square Garden. We showed up a little late, thinking there'd be more openers than there were, but we got to have a delicious dinner (the remnants of which they made us throw away at MSG) at Grand Sichuan beforehand. The pink peppercorns in my broccoli dish made my lips tingle! It was actually a little scary. So I'd never been to the Garden -- it's intimidatingly huge inside the arena, but the stage is just sort of set up on top of the wood court, so the whole thing feels a little like a band playing in a high school gym. I'm not a huge Bjork fan (neither, Nina speculates, were most of the dudes who were there that night), and our seats were such that we couldn't see *that* well, but the stage and costumes were pretty sweet, and she's got a great voice (pretty sure she was actually singing the whole time) and a ton of energy. I found some closer-up pics up the thing here.

I put in a bunch more hours over the weekend (holy shit I was clocking like 80-something) and finished Dragon Quest VIII; I did not get that empty feeling some people get after beating a game. I initially had some contempt for the game -- it's a little too cute, and it begins very much in media res, which I assumed was some kind of bullshit Japanese storytelling thing -- you know, that we're just supposed to get from the title that the game is about, you know, an archetypal "Cursed King," and that should be good enough to get us through the narrative. It turns out, of course, that the game's a fair bit cannier than that, and the plot and the metaphysics of the game universe are reorganized about half way through in a pretty subtle and pleasant way. Sorry, Japan! Now I'm playing FFXII, which I picked up on sale a few weeks ago but hadn't yet cracked open. In terms of the art direction, it seems like something I've always wanted to play: A Byzantine fantasy in every sense. I'll reserve judgment on the rest of it 'til I'm a bit deeper in.

Kind of a whirlwind of a day on Sunday. To start off, Eve and I went to go check out the Chili Pepper Fiesta at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The garden is always beautiful (although I'm conflicted over whether it's worth $8 to go see), but this festival was no great shakes. The main attraction seemed to be a big tent set up with tables where you could go and taste (and hopefully buy) the wares of local chili gourmands -- salsa, fudge, etc. Maybe we showed up too late. We showed up a bit late to the Atlantic Antic, too, which we hit up next, as most of the vendors were closing up shop. Managed to pick up a cool t-shirt for Nina at the Cut It Out table (thought they had a web site, but now I can't find it) and ate some delicious fish cakes. We also ran into my friend Arthur (a.k.a. Arturo) from Wesleyan.

Arthur's a nice guy -- I was in a couple of plays with him at Wesleyan, and although I don't share his passion for Harold Lloyd-style "clowning," I was more than happy to help him out on this film project he did one year over Christmas. Nina and I had just been discussing the relative probabilities that either of us would turn up on the YouTube, and I'd pegged mine pretty low. Well, I was wrong. For those of you who've seen Pete Hagan's epic New-Wave senior project, The Zombies Win, I should point out that in this film, Somni, I'm maybe 60% as effeminate but like twice as beaky (lit'rally):

• Part 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=faRZoSYyxYE
• Part 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ljK-JTf1HgQ
• Part 3: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OFhIqAMo_kU

It's Sukkot right now, which means there are a lot of Lubavitchers hanging out in the subway asking you if you're Jewish. They're asking, as Eve explained, because they want you to fondle this stick they're carrying or some shit -- it's a mitzvah if they get other Jews to do it. So I'd been cursing them out and giving them the finger when they asked yesterday: my policy is that people who dare to get in your face about religion in public deserve at best ridicule and at worst a good beating. Eve feels differently, though, and so once I met up with her I agreed to tone it down. To the next guy who approached us I said, "you know, it's really none of your business, buddy." He backed off, and as we were passing muttered, "Chag same'ach." I promptly flipped him off over my shoulder. But then I got curious and asked Eve, "He was slagging me off, right? What did he say?" Eve said, "It means 'Happy Holidays.'"

Last night I dragged my friend Jason from work with me to Chinatown to this Thai grocery store, where I was shopping for ingredients to make horchata, a delicious, rice-based dessert drink they serve at Mexican places. It's a pain to have to go to a restaurant when you want some, and the stuff they sell off the shelf at the carnicerias is disgusting. So I'm soaking the ingredients now and I'll blend it up tonight and give it a taste. After I found as much of the stuff as I could, Jason insisted I come over to his house to taste some whiskey -- this is a thing he does with work friends; it was finally my turn last night. I tried four different whiskeys, really liked three (the icky fourth, from Laphroiag, tasted really strongly of band-aids and beef jerky), and we listened to a bunch of Pogues songs.

They're making my favorite game, Bigger Scumbag, into a TV show!

Going to see Arcade Fire at Randall's Island on Saturday. Shamefully enough, I have never been (to the Island).