The New Year always feels like it comes too soon. I guess that's a pretty trite observation, but I feel like this past year, especially, ended without enough concrete deliverables -- I never got to see the roll-out of the final (working) version of the code I wrote at Rebel Monkey (hell, I haven't even been paid). I didn't juice all the juice out of the summer. The projects I laid out for myself the year I graduated from college are still incomplete -- the second-order dependencies for some of them are still incomplete. I'm softer around the middle than I want to be, my hair is thinner than I'm comfortable with. These things aren't surprises, I suppose, but I think even younger, less decrepit readers can relate to the feeling of doors to possible futures shutting for lack of time.
Call the waaambulance.
My list, for posterity:
Best book I read: 2666
Best movie I saw in the theater: Moon
Best movie I saw not in the theater: Let The Right One In
Best show I went to: The Dickies, at Southpaw, January 2nd
Best reason for donating to WFMU: Ken Freedman, drunk
Best pie: Winter fruit
Best bark stripper: Alan Grayson
Best video game: Fallout 3
Best single: Alcoholics Unanimous
Best cemita: Pollo asado, Tacos Matamoros
For New Year's Eve, Nina and I had vague plans to hit up a dance party at the still-mysterious-to-me Industry City, the warren of art studios across the BQE from us between 34th and 40th St. But we waffled and ultimately took the train up to KT's apartment on the upper west side, which was filled with friends and food. We left around 2:30 AM, taking a D train that paused for a while at 53rd St. while some guys who were puking and punching at each other were hustled off the train by some extremely patient police officers. When Nina and I got off at 36th St., we weren't totally beat yet, so we decided to investigate the party. We walked in the dark, up and down the puddly, unpaved service roads strewn with rusty barrel hoops and corded rebar; but, although we could hear the sounds of music in the distance, we couldn't figure out precisely where the entrance was and gave up.
When I saw Billy and Chris at Billy's birthday party at Barcade on the 18th, we discussed the possibility of forming a (new) band, huddled in the corner with the original and unforgiving Punch Out!! machine. I did not realize these discussions were in earnest until a week or two later, when the email negotiations began.
I haven't played real drums in, god, years; and the last time I played anything approximating the drums was during the final, sad weeks of Rebel Monkey, on the office copy of Rock Band. I was holding the sticks a bit too tight or something, because I gave myself a large and painful hematoma on the inner joint of my thumb, which, at the time, I decided was a sprain and peevishly splinted with two snapped-off barbecue skewers.
Messrs. Lopez and Cumming were very tolerant. We played in a small attic room at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, across the street from the 26th precinct on 126th St. I'd been to Bill's wedding there a year or so ago; I'd even stood around the Kooperkamps' living room -- the western half of the church is their house, sort of -- uncomfortable and hungover in my one fancy, funereal suit. But I'd never explored the upper reaches of the place, and it turns to be delightfully maze-like, with irregularly-placed staircases and chilly, darkened corridors leading off to rooms that have been abandoned to the cats and dogs. There's art all over the walls -- prints, paintings, and sketches made by Sarah and her family. It's really beautiful, especially the aforementioned practice room, which is covered in collages and photos. There are amps, an old computer with a surprisingly well-balanced microphone, and the original drum kit we bought for The Headliners, although I didn't recognize it at first.
Like I said, I'm a bit out of practice, but I think I've made incremental improvements to some of the basics, especially when it comes to bass drum independence and endurance, which was always a weak spot for me. We wrote and recorded three songs, no lyrics yet. They're substantially different, tonally, than Headliners songs -- a bit moodier, less patently "rock and roll punk rock music." The hooks are buried a little deeper, but they're there.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The Boss Wants To Talk To You
Hello everyone.
It's the holidays already. What have I been up to? Not a whole lot -- or not a lot of the stuff I usually talk about on the online journal. Tom O'Donnell and I are hard at work on a project I hope we can unveil in the new year. My office job continues more or less peacefully. The weather got cold and rainy.
Sunset Park's Business Improvement District put up their 5th-Avenue-spanning Christmas decorations, which would be unremarkable except for the way some of the banners seem to hover in the air on account of the semi-invisible cords that lash them to the lamp posts. Some guys got killed on Nina's old block -- Winnie happened across one of the crime scenes as she was on her way to feed Kitty while Nina and I were away in Clark's Summit for Thanksgiving with the Priccis.
Concert season seems to have been put on pause for a little while. In lieu of that type of entertainment, I've been attending what Tom and Co. have been referring to as "film festivals" -- weekly screenings of movies that we've determined to be the bêtes noir of the critical establishment. The first of these was a movie called Snake Eater, in which a smirking, mouth-breathing Lorenzo Lamas plays a rogue marine who tails a family of hillbillies who've boiled his mom's head and are threatening, unconvincingly, to rape his sister. Lamas has the idiosyncratic delivery and mannerisms of Nicolas Cage at his loopiest, but he's got none of the emotional range and about zero charisma. And the movie begins and opens with a gag about cops pissing into a homeless man's coffee cup. We followed up with:
Gymkata: The CIA recruits a champion gymnast (played by Kurt Thomas, who's got the same fetal pig look as Mark Hamill but none of the spark) to help protect their interests in Eastern Europe, training him in a fighting style that blends the, uh, killing power of gymnastics with the oriental caché of karate. There's some jibber-jabber about spy satellites, but what Thomas really ends up doing once he arrives in the primitive nation of "Parmistan" is compete in a poorly-described and more poorly-justified athletic contest known as The Game, which consists of running, jumping, and not giving in to the temptations of wayward monks whose robes don't close in the back.
Heartbeeps: This one was a truly execrable piece of shit. Andy Kaufman, basically unbearable to begin with, puts on this excruciating baby voice to play some kind of robotic accountant that escapes from a warehouse along with a prostitute robot (Bernadette Peters) and a Rodney Dangerfield tank. They get lost in the woods and make a baby. I picked it out because the name made me laugh out loud, but it made everybody angry to sit through. On the plus side, it pretty much ruined the careers of everybody who appeared in it.
Fire Down Below: Steven Seagal's got a resume full of films where he plays folksy karate masters who step in to save small towns or neighborhoods from the predations of nebulously evil corporations or gangs. In this one he plays a government agent trying to stop some scary guys from dumping toxic waste in Kentucky. I don't know whether it's the ridiculous embroidered vests he wears in every movie I've seen him in or that his characters never seem to take any punches during fight scenes, you can just tell Seagal's impossible to direct. Also, I'll cop to thinking the guy was Native American, but it turns out he's an Irish Jew. (And he makes his own wine!)
Bionic Ninja: Tom found this one. It's by the guy who directed "Enter The Dragon," and it's basically gibberish -- an American CIA agent wearing a yellow spandex leotard has to beat up a bunch of KGB guys who've been trained as ninjas ("Who are these bloody wizards?" he wonders) in order to retrieve something called the "Top Technical Secret Tape." But there's a whole 'nother, unrelated movie that somehow got spliced into it about a criminal cartel led by a guy named Mr. Smart that's hunting down a street-fighting high school student named Gordon Mann. Along the way, the CIA guy does a bunch of calisthenics in a public park and gets dirt all of over his ass, which stays there for the whole rest of the movie.
Out For Justice: Pretty much the same formula as Fire Down Below, except that in this one Steven Seagal (younger, more horse than pudding) plays an invincible Brooklyn cop (instead of an invincible DEP agent) with a ludicrous accent, named, no joke, "Gino Felino." He's gotta kill some mob guys, but the convoluted reason why is sort of obscured over the course of dozens stupid fight scenes in which hundreds of guys who may or may not deserve it get their asses kicked by a humble Italian cop with awesome karate training.
China O'Brien: I had to actually buy this one, because Netflix doesn't carry it, and it was kind of a disappointment: Cynthia Rothrock is actually kind of good at karate. ("She's a chop-suey fighter!" points out one character.) After her dad gets blown up, she has to rescue her hometown from a bunch of sinister business types conspiring to rig elections and... do something else that's bad. It's not really clear. But she and a kid with a missing hand and some barbarian guy from Gymkata kick a bunch of guys in the face.
Tom Scharpling's The Best Show On WFMU, which I'll admit to listening to quite a bit over the past month or two, did a Jon Wurster bit on their November 24th show about hypothetical guy who lives in Brooklyn and only listens to unlistenable music, eats inedible food, wears ridiculous clothes, and is forty years old. "It's so stupid," says Wurster as the character, describing some bit of kitsch he's acquired. "It's great." Is that what we're up to here? Maybe. But for me, it takes a special combination of flaws for these movies to hit their resonant frequency, so to speak: The intention of the director needs to be intelligible but contemptible or completely out of sync with the final product; the dialogue should be polished enough that it's wincingly obvious when the writers have "written around" some critical element of the plot that nobody involved with the project understood (spy satellites, drugs, pollution, etc.); bonus points if the whole thing is an ego trip for a star who's got no right to treat it as such.
It was Christmas! Nina and I decorated with LED lights and a diminutive Christmas tree purchased at the garage on the corner of 39th and 4th Ave. that's pretty only open around Christmas. We cut out paper snowflakes and stuck them on the windows: Getting them to look flake-y is surprisingly tricky -- you have to kind of fold and wrap them into a flattened cone before cutting all the shapes into them. Later, real snow fell and blew into a strikingly dune-like ridge on the roof.
It's the holidays already. What have I been up to? Not a whole lot -- or not a lot of the stuff I usually talk about on the online journal. Tom O'Donnell and I are hard at work on a project I hope we can unveil in the new year. My office job continues more or less peacefully. The weather got cold and rainy.
Sunset Park's Business Improvement District put up their 5th-Avenue-spanning Christmas decorations, which would be unremarkable except for the way some of the banners seem to hover in the air on account of the semi-invisible cords that lash them to the lamp posts. Some guys got killed on Nina's old block -- Winnie happened across one of the crime scenes as she was on her way to feed Kitty while Nina and I were away in Clark's Summit for Thanksgiving with the Priccis.
Concert season seems to have been put on pause for a little while. In lieu of that type of entertainment, I've been attending what Tom and Co. have been referring to as "film festivals" -- weekly screenings of movies that we've determined to be the bêtes noir of the critical establishment. The first of these was a movie called Snake Eater, in which a smirking, mouth-breathing Lorenzo Lamas plays a rogue marine who tails a family of hillbillies who've boiled his mom's head and are threatening, unconvincingly, to rape his sister. Lamas has the idiosyncratic delivery and mannerisms of Nicolas Cage at his loopiest, but he's got none of the emotional range and about zero charisma. And the movie begins and opens with a gag about cops pissing into a homeless man's coffee cup. We followed up with:
Gymkata: The CIA recruits a champion gymnast (played by Kurt Thomas, who's got the same fetal pig look as Mark Hamill but none of the spark) to help protect their interests in Eastern Europe, training him in a fighting style that blends the, uh, killing power of gymnastics with the oriental caché of karate. There's some jibber-jabber about spy satellites, but what Thomas really ends up doing once he arrives in the primitive nation of "Parmistan" is compete in a poorly-described and more poorly-justified athletic contest known as The Game, which consists of running, jumping, and not giving in to the temptations of wayward monks whose robes don't close in the back.
Heartbeeps: This one was a truly execrable piece of shit. Andy Kaufman, basically unbearable to begin with, puts on this excruciating baby voice to play some kind of robotic accountant that escapes from a warehouse along with a prostitute robot (Bernadette Peters) and a Rodney Dangerfield tank. They get lost in the woods and make a baby. I picked it out because the name made me laugh out loud, but it made everybody angry to sit through. On the plus side, it pretty much ruined the careers of everybody who appeared in it.
Fire Down Below: Steven Seagal's got a resume full of films where he plays folksy karate masters who step in to save small towns or neighborhoods from the predations of nebulously evil corporations or gangs. In this one he plays a government agent trying to stop some scary guys from dumping toxic waste in Kentucky. I don't know whether it's the ridiculous embroidered vests he wears in every movie I've seen him in or that his characters never seem to take any punches during fight scenes, you can just tell Seagal's impossible to direct. Also, I'll cop to thinking the guy was Native American, but it turns out he's an Irish Jew. (And he makes his own wine!)
Bionic Ninja: Tom found this one. It's by the guy who directed "Enter The Dragon," and it's basically gibberish -- an American CIA agent wearing a yellow spandex leotard has to beat up a bunch of KGB guys who've been trained as ninjas ("Who are these bloody wizards?" he wonders) in order to retrieve something called the "Top Technical Secret Tape." But there's a whole 'nother, unrelated movie that somehow got spliced into it about a criminal cartel led by a guy named Mr. Smart that's hunting down a street-fighting high school student named Gordon Mann. Along the way, the CIA guy does a bunch of calisthenics in a public park and gets dirt all of over his ass, which stays there for the whole rest of the movie.
Out For Justice: Pretty much the same formula as Fire Down Below, except that in this one Steven Seagal (younger, more horse than pudding) plays an invincible Brooklyn cop (instead of an invincible DEP agent) with a ludicrous accent, named, no joke, "Gino Felino." He's gotta kill some mob guys, but the convoluted reason why is sort of obscured over the course of dozens stupid fight scenes in which hundreds of guys who may or may not deserve it get their asses kicked by a humble Italian cop with awesome karate training.
China O'Brien: I had to actually buy this one, because Netflix doesn't carry it, and it was kind of a disappointment: Cynthia Rothrock is actually kind of good at karate. ("She's a chop-suey fighter!" points out one character.) After her dad gets blown up, she has to rescue her hometown from a bunch of sinister business types conspiring to rig elections and... do something else that's bad. It's not really clear. But she and a kid with a missing hand and some barbarian guy from Gymkata kick a bunch of guys in the face.
Tom Scharpling's The Best Show On WFMU, which I'll admit to listening to quite a bit over the past month or two, did a Jon Wurster bit on their November 24th show about hypothetical guy who lives in Brooklyn and only listens to unlistenable music, eats inedible food, wears ridiculous clothes, and is forty years old. "It's so stupid," says Wurster as the character, describing some bit of kitsch he's acquired. "It's great." Is that what we're up to here? Maybe. But for me, it takes a special combination of flaws for these movies to hit their resonant frequency, so to speak: The intention of the director needs to be intelligible but contemptible or completely out of sync with the final product; the dialogue should be polished enough that it's wincingly obvious when the writers have "written around" some critical element of the plot that nobody involved with the project understood (spy satellites, drugs, pollution, etc.); bonus points if the whole thing is an ego trip for a star who's got no right to treat it as such.
It was Christmas! Nina and I decorated with LED lights and a diminutive Christmas tree purchased at the garage on the corner of 39th and 4th Ave. that's pretty only open around Christmas. We cut out paper snowflakes and stuck them on the windows: Getting them to look flake-y is surprisingly tricky -- you have to kind of fold and wrap them into a flattened cone before cutting all the shapes into them. Later, real snow fell and blew into a strikingly dune-like ridge on the roof.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
yankeesbeisbol.com
It was Halloween! I toyed with the idea of dressing up as Donny Donowitz, The Bear Jew, but ultimately resolved once again to stay home and play grown-up by attempting to give candy away to trick-or-treaters. Nina and I carved a pumpkin! Evidence:
Candy-wise, I picked a several-pound bag of individually-wrapped chocolate things and we emptied them into a bowl. Nina made a very nice hand-painted sign for our apartment door advertising our inventory, but I was skeptical -- there are maybe two kids of trick-or-treating age in our building, and, come 8 o'clock no one had rung our bell. I insisted that we take our bowl, running over with Whoppers, to street level. We sat in the evening drizzle for a while. A few costumed adults passed by and sampled the goods, some of them on their way into our building to attend a Halloween party. Eventually Martin, our upstairs neighbor, and apparently the guy throwing one of the parties, came down to the stoop. He was dressed as a chef. "Come upstairs to my party," he said. "Bring the candy."
Up on the fifth floor, there was dancing, booze, a Yankees game, and some bored kids happy to eat our candy. Martin's sister, dressed up (I think) as a fairy, kept doing the robot. She'd come up to you and sort of slump over. "She wants you to wind her up," explained Martin. "Don't do it! She's been doing this all night!" Martin's niece came as a referee. She was wearing a whistle that she'd blow whenever people started dancing too close or, you know, intimately. Long after we'd retreated downstairs -- Nina to write a paper; me to, uh, watch TV while she wrote a paper -- we heard intermittent whistle-blasts that let us know that people were still grinding above.
Our new apartment is great, but for a while after we moved in, the oven wasn't working -- we'd turn the knob, the pilot'd be on, but the gas wouldn't flow and the main oven burner wouldn't light. Kat eventually got Sears to come out and repair it, though, at not-insignificant cost, and now it is fine. I started baking things immediately to make up for lost time.
The Yankees won the world series! I sort of paid attention to the lineups and who was getting injured et cetera. I watched a bunch of the games at Emma's house, snuggled up with Pearl, who is ever-eager to shake hands. She (Emma) proclaimed that I know "fifteen percent" of baseball. Highly unlikely, I think, but I appreciate the vote of confidence.
On Monday I had drinks with Scott Moran, the release engineer from Rebel Monkey. We talked about his losing campaign for Camden County clerk versus Kelly Ripa's dad. Partisan hack that I am, I can't give Scott the undecidable.net endorsement for public office, but he's a very good release engineer.
On Friday night Nina and I went out to Williamsburg to see Art Brut at Brooklyn Bowl. I'd never been to the 'Bowl before, and thus hadn't realized that it's literally right around the corner from Brooklyn Brewery. So, while the bowling lanes were a neat touch (wait, scratch that, they were kind of distracting) the place gets a gold star from me for having pretty much every variety of Brooklyn on tap. ...Including my particular favorite, the Pennant Ale '55, which is more or less impossible to find outside of a few pretty fancy beer stores in Manhattan and Park Slope.
Surfer Blood was opening, which was sweet because I'd wanted to see them anyway. They've got raw, novel hooks; moody and good enough that I can't quite imagine their sound coming out of a practice space in South Florida. They kind of remind me of Kittens Ablaze, but more tightly controlled -- to the extent that their lead singer needs could probably loosen up a bit. He's this kind of delicate-looking Michael Cera type, and his guitar playing is proficient but tentative, like he has to concentrate so hard on the fingerings that he can't rock out. The other guys in the band didn't seem to have any problem hoppin' around. At the end of their set, the band all made out with each other, sloppily -- for which, you know, I woooo!ed at them, because it tipped the scales a hair, from twee to punk. Although maybe it just spoke to the fact that those dudes are still real young.
Art Brut were great, despite Eddie Argos' repeated apologies for being hung over. He certainly seemed to be in top form, at least as far as being a punk rock eyebrow Frankenstein is concerned. Surfer Blood got a shout-out in "Formed A Band": Eddie announced (using his distinctive referent synecdoche) that Art Brut were adopting them. They played everything I was secretly hoping to hear, including, as a first encore, "Alcoholics Unanimous" (during which Eddie ran and hid his head behind an amp instead of doing his traditional shot). "Took me ages and ages to get dressed this morning," he spoke-sang, shooting a mea culpa look in the drummer's direction. Jasper Future was also characteristically high-energy, leaping around on the stage and doing the sort of flamboyant performer-to-audience pantomime ("What's that? You want us to play our hit single?") that I find impossible to resist. What's up with the other guitarist and the bass player, though? They keep it pretty "Todd Barry" as far as I can tell. Nonetheless, I'm getting pretty attached to that band, not least of all because Eddie Argos' admonitions to call up a friend on a hung-over Saturday and form a band actually make me feel like doing it.
After the show, we dropped by Teddy's for wings, deep-fried portobello mushroom, and whiskey. Gross? No. It was delicious. Have I mentioned in my online journal, babies, that I harbor secret yearnings to live in that neighborhood? Contemptible, I know, but I feel a pang whenever I walk down a street of those shabby, wooden row houses.
One day.
Candy-wise, I picked a several-pound bag of individually-wrapped chocolate things and we emptied them into a bowl. Nina made a very nice hand-painted sign for our apartment door advertising our inventory, but I was skeptical -- there are maybe two kids of trick-or-treating age in our building, and, come 8 o'clock no one had rung our bell. I insisted that we take our bowl, running over with Whoppers, to street level. We sat in the evening drizzle for a while. A few costumed adults passed by and sampled the goods, some of them on their way into our building to attend a Halloween party. Eventually Martin, our upstairs neighbor, and apparently the guy throwing one of the parties, came down to the stoop. He was dressed as a chef. "Come upstairs to my party," he said. "Bring the candy."
Up on the fifth floor, there was dancing, booze, a Yankees game, and some bored kids happy to eat our candy. Martin's sister, dressed up (I think) as a fairy, kept doing the robot. She'd come up to you and sort of slump over. "She wants you to wind her up," explained Martin. "Don't do it! She's been doing this all night!" Martin's niece came as a referee. She was wearing a whistle that she'd blow whenever people started dancing too close or, you know, intimately. Long after we'd retreated downstairs -- Nina to write a paper; me to, uh, watch TV while she wrote a paper -- we heard intermittent whistle-blasts that let us know that people were still grinding above.
Our new apartment is great, but for a while after we moved in, the oven wasn't working -- we'd turn the knob, the pilot'd be on, but the gas wouldn't flow and the main oven burner wouldn't light. Kat eventually got Sears to come out and repair it, though, at not-insignificant cost, and now it is fine. I started baking things immediately to make up for lost time.
- First, I baked my sister the lemon bars she'd asked for for her birthday. Those things are insane on the butter and sugar front! I overnighted them to her in Saratoga Springs.
- Then I baked a pumpkin pie, hoping to use some piece of the pumpkin we'd carved, though I had to fall back to the canned stuff after finding out how much work you have to do to prepare the raw pumpkin
- So instead I roasted the seeds after marinating them in chili sauce as per this recipe
- ...and then mixed them into brittle as per this one. Highly recommended.
The Yankees won the world series! I sort of paid attention to the lineups and who was getting injured et cetera. I watched a bunch of the games at Emma's house, snuggled up with Pearl, who is ever-eager to shake hands. She (Emma) proclaimed that I know "fifteen percent" of baseball. Highly unlikely, I think, but I appreciate the vote of confidence.
On Monday I had drinks with Scott Moran, the release engineer from Rebel Monkey. We talked about his losing campaign for Camden County clerk versus Kelly Ripa's dad. Partisan hack that I am, I can't give Scott the undecidable.net endorsement for public office, but he's a very good release engineer.
On Friday night Nina and I went out to Williamsburg to see Art Brut at Brooklyn Bowl. I'd never been to the 'Bowl before, and thus hadn't realized that it's literally right around the corner from Brooklyn Brewery. So, while the bowling lanes were a neat touch (wait, scratch that, they were kind of distracting) the place gets a gold star from me for having pretty much every variety of Brooklyn on tap. ...Including my particular favorite, the Pennant Ale '55, which is more or less impossible to find outside of a few pretty fancy beer stores in Manhattan and Park Slope.
Surfer Blood was opening, which was sweet because I'd wanted to see them anyway. They've got raw, novel hooks; moody and good enough that I can't quite imagine their sound coming out of a practice space in South Florida. They kind of remind me of Kittens Ablaze, but more tightly controlled -- to the extent that their lead singer needs could probably loosen up a bit. He's this kind of delicate-looking Michael Cera type, and his guitar playing is proficient but tentative, like he has to concentrate so hard on the fingerings that he can't rock out. The other guys in the band didn't seem to have any problem hoppin' around. At the end of their set, the band all made out with each other, sloppily -- for which, you know, I woooo!ed at them, because it tipped the scales a hair, from twee to punk. Although maybe it just spoke to the fact that those dudes are still real young.
Art Brut were great, despite Eddie Argos' repeated apologies for being hung over. He certainly seemed to be in top form, at least as far as being a punk rock eyebrow Frankenstein is concerned. Surfer Blood got a shout-out in "Formed A Band": Eddie announced (using his distinctive referent synecdoche) that Art Brut were adopting them. They played everything I was secretly hoping to hear, including, as a first encore, "Alcoholics Unanimous" (during which Eddie ran and hid his head behind an amp instead of doing his traditional shot). "Took me ages and ages to get dressed this morning," he spoke-sang, shooting a mea culpa look in the drummer's direction. Jasper Future was also characteristically high-energy, leaping around on the stage and doing the sort of flamboyant performer-to-audience pantomime ("What's that? You want us to play our hit single?") that I find impossible to resist. What's up with the other guitarist and the bass player, though? They keep it pretty "Todd Barry" as far as I can tell. Nonetheless, I'm getting pretty attached to that band, not least of all because Eddie Argos' admonitions to call up a friend on a hung-over Saturday and form a band actually make me feel like doing it.
After the show, we dropped by Teddy's for wings, deep-fried portobello mushroom, and whiskey. Gross? No. It was delicious. Have I mentioned in my online journal, babies, that I harbor secret yearnings to live in that neighborhood? Contemptible, I know, but I feel a pang whenever I walk down a street of those shabby, wooden row houses.
One day.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
What The Hell Do We Do
I ended up going one for three on CMJ.
On Wednesday night, after an early screening of Lorenzo Lamas' Snake Eater at Chez O'Donnell, I tried to hit up the Hooray For Earth show at Crash Mansion, only to realize I'd written the info for the show down wrong. I could've stayed and seen Die! Die! Die!, but didn't.
Friday was worse: I swung by the WFMU Record Fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion after work, with the intention of snagging a vinyl copy of one of The Abs' albums (my current low-grade obsession). Didn't find any, but I did get to peep Nick The Bard and Ken in the flesh, and the wet-dog smell of record collectors is pleasantly familiar. After that, I got booze with Emma and we had dinner at Melt. We parted ways around 10:30 -- my plan was to hit up the Matador showcase at The Suffolk just in time to catch Ted Leo and miss all of the opening acts. Unfortunately, I failed to anticipate the popularity of bands like... "Cold Cave." Or "Lemonade." That is to say, the place was packed, the bouncer unsympathetic, and I'd arrived past the beginning of Ted Leo's set. I'd just hoofed it all the way to Suffolk and Delancey from Canal St., though, and, although it was drizzling, there was a spot next to the external stage door under some scaffolding where you could hear pretty much everything (except the vocals). So, somewhat shamefully, I lurked outside, face metaphorically pressed to the window, and managed to semi-listen to the majority of the songs. They played "Me And Mia." I think they played "Counting Down The Hours." They covered Hybrid Moments as their first encore.
Thursday almost made up for all that, though. I went to Cake Shop to see Kittens Ablaze, again trying to time things to miss as many bands as possible that I hadn't vetted beforehand. Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers were on stage as I came downstairs -- I hadn't meant to arrive for their set, but I was pretty quickly overwhelmed by the, uh, intensity of their sound. Shilpa Ray sings and plays the harmonium, which is a kind of stationary accordion that she pumped with one hand. She's got an amazing, Brody Dalle-level set of pipes, and a frighteningly expressive face: When she's howling out a real raw, scary song, her features get all screwed up like a toddler throwing a tantrum and her frizzy hair floats in front of her face like a dark cloud, bruise-colored. In contrast, the "happy hookers" were a trio of chubby white beardos. It was weird. But I came away from their set feeling like I'd been hit by a (small) truck, which doesn't happen very often.
pow wow! came on next, and they were fine but nowhere near as good as Shilpa Ray. Their set reminded me of what (I think) people don't like about The Strokes: Bouncy, sing-song guitar and bass backup up indifferently-sung lyrics of no particular significance. After them were a Mancunian ensemble called The Answering Machine (ugh) who were also fine but not very interesting.
Kittens Ablaze went on a little after 11:00. One thing I like about them is the way their songs sort of emerge from the tuning noise and between-song dithering of six different instruments. This sounds like a horrible way to perform rock and roll -- indeed, I have no idea why I don't hate it -- but they ramp up the tempo and tighten things up nice and quick, and before you know it they're literally clambering over each other and across the cramped stage area to shout into the mics and the cellist and violinist are going nuts. Their aesthetic and the earnestness of their music reminds me of the The Clash a little -- they've got the backpacking-through-Europe look nailed, and the music's sloppy and super catchy. There's no way to avoid being drawn in by the screamed choruses of "This Machine Is Dying." You'd have to be a real suck-ass not to sing along.
On Sunday, Tom and I went to go see a stage production at the Magnet Theater by the people who curate the website Everything Is Terrible!, which showcases awful, found videos from the past few decades. The stuff on their site runs the gamut from funny (old people using the Internet in 1994) to terrifying (mass hysteria at a Pentecostal prayer convention), and the show included some additional videos that they weren't allowed to put on YouTube, like a promotional video for a Jeff Stryker-branded penis pump. Unfortunately, the show also featured some live-action "interview" segments with the people who hunt down and edit the videos (wearing outsized masks / headdresses to obscure their identities from the potentially litigious) and those really dragged.
Video game news: I finished Bioshock, ultimately coming around to appreciating its narrative chops; the story really solidifies in the second act. I had to put it on easy mode to get through the very last fight. Evan came over a few weeks ago and filled up the Xbox's download queue with demos, which Nina and I have been working through since. The one for Batman: Arkham Asylum was pretty neat, although the controls seemed to be pretty involved. Brutal Legend's got great writing and voice work but the running around and killing things part isn't that much fun. Lost Planet 2 was gorgeous but pretty much unintelligible. I've become very impatient in my dotage -- tl;dr.
On Wednesday night, after an early screening of Lorenzo Lamas' Snake Eater at Chez O'Donnell, I tried to hit up the Hooray For Earth show at Crash Mansion, only to realize I'd written the info for the show down wrong. I could've stayed and seen Die! Die! Die!, but didn't.
Friday was worse: I swung by the WFMU Record Fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion after work, with the intention of snagging a vinyl copy of one of The Abs' albums (my current low-grade obsession). Didn't find any, but I did get to peep Nick The Bard and Ken in the flesh, and the wet-dog smell of record collectors is pleasantly familiar. After that, I got booze with Emma and we had dinner at Melt. We parted ways around 10:30 -- my plan was to hit up the Matador showcase at The Suffolk just in time to catch Ted Leo and miss all of the opening acts. Unfortunately, I failed to anticipate the popularity of bands like... "Cold Cave." Or "Lemonade." That is to say, the place was packed, the bouncer unsympathetic, and I'd arrived past the beginning of Ted Leo's set. I'd just hoofed it all the way to Suffolk and Delancey from Canal St., though, and, although it was drizzling, there was a spot next to the external stage door under some scaffolding where you could hear pretty much everything (except the vocals). So, somewhat shamefully, I lurked outside, face metaphorically pressed to the window, and managed to semi-listen to the majority of the songs. They played "Me And Mia." I think they played "Counting Down The Hours." They covered Hybrid Moments as their first encore.
Thursday almost made up for all that, though. I went to Cake Shop to see Kittens Ablaze, again trying to time things to miss as many bands as possible that I hadn't vetted beforehand. Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers were on stage as I came downstairs -- I hadn't meant to arrive for their set, but I was pretty quickly overwhelmed by the, uh, intensity of their sound. Shilpa Ray sings and plays the harmonium, which is a kind of stationary accordion that she pumped with one hand. She's got an amazing, Brody Dalle-level set of pipes, and a frighteningly expressive face: When she's howling out a real raw, scary song, her features get all screwed up like a toddler throwing a tantrum and her frizzy hair floats in front of her face like a dark cloud, bruise-colored. In contrast, the "happy hookers" were a trio of chubby white beardos. It was weird. But I came away from their set feeling like I'd been hit by a (small) truck, which doesn't happen very often.
pow wow! came on next, and they were fine but nowhere near as good as Shilpa Ray. Their set reminded me of what (I think) people don't like about The Strokes: Bouncy, sing-song guitar and bass backup up indifferently-sung lyrics of no particular significance. After them were a Mancunian ensemble called The Answering Machine (ugh) who were also fine but not very interesting.
Kittens Ablaze went on a little after 11:00. One thing I like about them is the way their songs sort of emerge from the tuning noise and between-song dithering of six different instruments. This sounds like a horrible way to perform rock and roll -- indeed, I have no idea why I don't hate it -- but they ramp up the tempo and tighten things up nice and quick, and before you know it they're literally clambering over each other and across the cramped stage area to shout into the mics and the cellist and violinist are going nuts. Their aesthetic and the earnestness of their music reminds me of the The Clash a little -- they've got the backpacking-through-Europe look nailed, and the music's sloppy and super catchy. There's no way to avoid being drawn in by the screamed choruses of "This Machine Is Dying." You'd have to be a real suck-ass not to sing along.
On Sunday, Tom and I went to go see a stage production at the Magnet Theater by the people who curate the website Everything Is Terrible!, which showcases awful, found videos from the past few decades. The stuff on their site runs the gamut from funny (old people using the Internet in 1994) to terrifying (mass hysteria at a Pentecostal prayer convention), and the show included some additional videos that they weren't allowed to put on YouTube, like a promotional video for a Jeff Stryker-branded penis pump. Unfortunately, the show also featured some live-action "interview" segments with the people who hunt down and edit the videos (wearing outsized masks / headdresses to obscure their identities from the potentially litigious) and those really dragged.
Video game news: I finished Bioshock, ultimately coming around to appreciating its narrative chops; the story really solidifies in the second act. I had to put it on easy mode to get through the very last fight. Evan came over a few weeks ago and filled up the Xbox's download queue with demos, which Nina and I have been working through since. The one for Batman: Arkham Asylum was pretty neat, although the controls seemed to be pretty involved. Brutal Legend's got great writing and voice work but the running around and killing things part isn't that much fun. Lost Planet 2 was gorgeous but pretty much unintelligible. I've become very impatient in my dotage -- tl;dr.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Handsome
Emma was on Jeopardy! She looked and sounded really professional, and answered so many questions that I can't believe she only came in second. Although, to be fair, Terry From Plano is clearly a trivia master, and Jeff Kirby has apparently done this before.
On Saturday night, Nina and I went to the Peelander-Z show at The Studio at Webster Hall. I'd never been to that part of the club. We got in via their weird little subterranean entrance, cutting through the line winding around the block for the show in the main space, some DJ. The Studio's not bad at all -- kind of cozy, really -- except that people from the horrible, regular part of Webster Hall pass through on their way to the bathroom. It's like rooming with a bunch of frat brothers in a railroad apartment.
Peelander-Z command attention, though. Peelander Red opened the show, storming the stage in an enormous plush red squid / bass hybrid costume. He couldn't play bass while wearing it (or see, I don't think), but he could cavort, and he sure as fuck, you know, went up. They played a bunch of songs, or parts of songs, but that's kind of besides the point. And I don't mean that, you know, the music doesn't matter, but the fact that they start and stop the songs more or less as they feel like it keeps the show lively; keeps at bay the sweaty pageant vibe that so often creeps into the live show of "fun" bands.
"We are not human beings," explained Peelander Yellow, picking his nose and flicking it into the crowd. "We are from Peelander planet, Z area. On my planet, I am considered very handsome. Here, okay. But on Peelander planet, very, very handsome." Peelander Red climbed into the ceiling, hooking his legs around a metal beam and dangling upside down over the audience while he played. Peelander Green did the same thing, while pounding the fucking drums. All the Michaels in the audience came up on stage for "So Many Mike." They closed out the show with a combination conga line drum circle sing-a-long to "We Are The Champions." "This is cheaper than therapy," Nina said. I bought a t-shirt.
Afterwards, Nina wanted a slice of cake, so we walked over to Veniero's, which was still open. She had a slice of coffee-imbued cake and a limoncello. I had a coffee with a bunch of booze in it, which was awesome. It was a nice date.
Tom's been trying to get me to listen to The Best Show On WFMU, but I just can't get over how radio Tom Scharpling sounds. And is it possible to have a genuine radio talk show with bearable phone calls? I don't know. Scharpling's just too unpredictable when it comes to which self-important WFMU-listening twits he's willing to indulge, and for how long. Fans of Seven Second Delay have complained that they're afraid of being summarily dismissed by Andy Breckman; I find I get a cold feeling in my stomach when it becomes clear that Tom won't be giving "Spike" the "heave-ho" he so desperately deserves.
This week is CMJ! I'm planning what to go to.
Sunset Park got cold, babies. I brought lemon tree inside from where it had been summering: the top of the metal staircase out back where all the flies are. Our apartment, like others in the neighborhood, comes with ample heating apparatus but practically no way to control the temperature. First it was sweltering, then freezing; last weekend the radiators made a soft splashing sound, like the waters of a quiet lake being acted upon by the moon.
On Saturday night, Nina and I went to the Peelander-Z show at The Studio at Webster Hall. I'd never been to that part of the club. We got in via their weird little subterranean entrance, cutting through the line winding around the block for the show in the main space, some DJ. The Studio's not bad at all -- kind of cozy, really -- except that people from the horrible, regular part of Webster Hall pass through on their way to the bathroom. It's like rooming with a bunch of frat brothers in a railroad apartment.
Peelander-Z command attention, though. Peelander Red opened the show, storming the stage in an enormous plush red squid / bass hybrid costume. He couldn't play bass while wearing it (or see, I don't think), but he could cavort, and he sure as fuck, you know, went up. They played a bunch of songs, or parts of songs, but that's kind of besides the point. And I don't mean that, you know, the music doesn't matter, but the fact that they start and stop the songs more or less as they feel like it keeps the show lively; keeps at bay the sweaty pageant vibe that so often creeps into the live show of "fun" bands.
"We are not human beings," explained Peelander Yellow, picking his nose and flicking it into the crowd. "We are from Peelander planet, Z area. On my planet, I am considered very handsome. Here, okay. But on Peelander planet, very, very handsome." Peelander Red climbed into the ceiling, hooking his legs around a metal beam and dangling upside down over the audience while he played. Peelander Green did the same thing, while pounding the fucking drums. All the Michaels in the audience came up on stage for "So Many Mike." They closed out the show with a combination conga line drum circle sing-a-long to "We Are The Champions." "This is cheaper than therapy," Nina said. I bought a t-shirt.
Afterwards, Nina wanted a slice of cake, so we walked over to Veniero's, which was still open. She had a slice of coffee-imbued cake and a limoncello. I had a coffee with a bunch of booze in it, which was awesome. It was a nice date.
Tom's been trying to get me to listen to The Best Show On WFMU, but I just can't get over how radio Tom Scharpling sounds. And is it possible to have a genuine radio talk show with bearable phone calls? I don't know. Scharpling's just too unpredictable when it comes to which self-important WFMU-listening twits he's willing to indulge, and for how long. Fans of Seven Second Delay have complained that they're afraid of being summarily dismissed by Andy Breckman; I find I get a cold feeling in my stomach when it becomes clear that Tom won't be giving "Spike" the "heave-ho" he so desperately deserves.
This week is CMJ! I'm planning what to go to.
Sunset Park got cold, babies. I brought lemon tree inside from where it had been summering: the top of the metal staircase out back where all the flies are. Our apartment, like others in the neighborhood, comes with ample heating apparatus but practically no way to control the temperature. First it was sweltering, then freezing; last weekend the radiators made a soft splashing sound, like the waters of a quiet lake being acted upon by the moon.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Diablo Cody
Eve and I went to Union Hall on Saturday to check out The Rifles, after eating delicious poutine at Sheep Station. We got to the 'Hall around 9:30, expecting to miss the opening act, and the place was practically empty. "Oh no," I said. "What if nobody came? I'm sorry if the bands suck." But it turned out that nobody had gone on yet. The first band was called The Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band (ugh), and I hadn't been wowed by the songs of theirs that I'd heard, but they ended up being fairly tight, musically -- good, precise guitar playing; excellent, vigorous drums. There were two things wrong with them, though: First off, there was this chick in the band whose only job seemed to be to shake rain sticks and look really blissed out, like the music was really, you know, moving her. Second, the lead singer had this awful smug, insincere attitude. While the band was tuning up between songs, he'd say things like: "Yesterday we were in the Poconos. ...Hiking on the old Appalachian trail. What were you doing? Were you stuck in the sticky city? ...Were you in your office?" (Yep. I sure was. What a sucker I am.) As they prepared to leave the stage, he said, "Thanks everybody. Stick around for The Rifles. I'm sure they sound really great." Yikes.
The bass player was the first member of The Rifles to take the stage, and we could tell immediately that they had a much better vibe. The guy was dressed like a alt-rock clown: aviator shades, a black felt hat with a feather in it, and a weird little miniature checkered scarf. He gave a bunch of fans in the front some cool older-brother high-fives, like a guy who might technically be a douchebag but who's pretty hard to dislike. Their music was also pretty hard to dislike -- they sound a bit like The Jam, a bit like The Fratellis -- but it was almost unmitigatedly monotonous, to the extent that Eve decided she'd had enough and left about fifteen minutes before their set was over. I guess I felt a little more charitable towards them, but, yeah, it was a little boring, and a little hard to fathom how they had so many fans who were that into them -- because there was a mysteriously high quotient of well-dressed, purse-carrying girls who were dancing around and taking pictures of the band and each other on their fancy computer phones. It reminded me of that time that Alana and I went to go see this ridiculously terrible band called Copperpot at a now-defunct club on the Lower East Side that was packed with screaming teenage fans who'd been bused in. The Rifles definitely had a leg up (or not) on that band, though, in that the guys in The Rifles mapped eerily well onto the cast of That 70s Show: The bass player looked like Danny Masterson, the lead singer like Topher Grace, and the other guitar player like Wilmer Valderrama. The drummer didn't look like Ashton Kutcher, though.
On Sunday, Nina and I had planned to go apple picking with Brooke and Aanie, but it ended up being too rainy. So we went out to brunch at Belleville instead, and then hopped the bus to Ikea, where we picked up a few small, useful things. Because of the speed and circumstances of our move, we hadn't yet had a chance to "play house," and so it was nice to make plans and think about ways to improve our new apartment. Ikea can be pretty draining, though. It's like a hedge maze, or one of those haunted house amusement park rides where you go from diorama to scary diorama and you just have to wait until it's over. But at Ikea all the dioramas are about chairs that don't have armrests.
My new(-ish) job continues to be an improvement over the past two years. I guess I didn't say too much about it last time, so: Conductor is a search optimization / analytics company, about 60 people strong. You know me, I'm not into marketing or business or that type of thing, but they're building something pretty advanced and interesting (and which I can't really talk about). The company's currently headquartered in the Grand Masonic Lodge building on 6th Ave. and 23rd St., which is a regular office building except that some of the floors (including one of the ones Conductor's on) are outfitted with mahogany trim and full-length wall murals of Teddy Roosevelt and other famous Masons. Oh, and there are special locked rooms full of Masonic books and artifacts -- for example, there's a Masonic dining room about 10 feet from one of our conference rooms that houses, among other curios, an 8-foot-tall stuffed polar bear. I shit you not.
Like I said, though, it's an improvement, especially in terms of management sanity and, you know, "perks" -- there's free fancy coffee, a fully-stocked snacks cabinet, and free pizza on Friday. I'm not fully sure what it means that this is reassuring to me. It's either that, as a company, it's pretty easy to provide a baseline level of comfort for your employees; or maybe it's just that programmer types can be bought off with granola bars and pepperoni.
I went out to Williamsburg tonight to catch a show at Bruar Falls. I'd never been to the venue before, although it comes up a lot on Oh My Rockness. It's set up like a lot of new places seem to be these days: Bar in the front, small stage area in the back, furnished like a kooky living room from the 70s. And there were a lot of little Bud Cort-type guys in attendance. But the bands ended up being pretty great. The opener was called Yusef Jerusalem, and they were a little rough at first -- their first song was just a bunch of shrieking and guitar feedback that made me go "oh no" -- but they ended up being pretty tight and garage punk-y. The lead singer didn't say anything to the audience, though, which was a little weird. Not even hello or goodbye.
Thomas Function, the band I was there to see, were pretty dope. They play fast, tight, punky soul songs, and their lead singer had a cool, nerdy yell. I wanted their set to be longer, but it was not to be.
I've been playing Xbox 360 games. They're selling a combo-pack of Bioshock and Oblivion for cheap at Best Buy, and both of those games seemed to be pretty well-received, so I picked 'em up. I'm in the middle of Bioshock right now. I can't deny that it's a pretty original framing device, and it certainly makes me consider while I'm playing it the differences between representation and endorsement of an idea, but there's something about the way it's paced -- the fact that you never really leave first-person-shooter mode, say, or that the character development happens primarily through asynchronous voice-over -- that makes the world feel kind of superficial.
The bass player was the first member of The Rifles to take the stage, and we could tell immediately that they had a much better vibe. The guy was dressed like a alt-rock clown: aviator shades, a black felt hat with a feather in it, and a weird little miniature checkered scarf. He gave a bunch of fans in the front some cool older-brother high-fives, like a guy who might technically be a douchebag but who's pretty hard to dislike. Their music was also pretty hard to dislike -- they sound a bit like The Jam, a bit like The Fratellis -- but it was almost unmitigatedly monotonous, to the extent that Eve decided she'd had enough and left about fifteen minutes before their set was over. I guess I felt a little more charitable towards them, but, yeah, it was a little boring, and a little hard to fathom how they had so many fans who were that into them -- because there was a mysteriously high quotient of well-dressed, purse-carrying girls who were dancing around and taking pictures of the band and each other on their fancy computer phones. It reminded me of that time that Alana and I went to go see this ridiculously terrible band called Copperpot at a now-defunct club on the Lower East Side that was packed with screaming teenage fans who'd been bused in. The Rifles definitely had a leg up (or not) on that band, though, in that the guys in The Rifles mapped eerily well onto the cast of That 70s Show: The bass player looked like Danny Masterson, the lead singer like Topher Grace, and the other guitar player like Wilmer Valderrama. The drummer didn't look like Ashton Kutcher, though.
On Sunday, Nina and I had planned to go apple picking with Brooke and Aanie, but it ended up being too rainy. So we went out to brunch at Belleville instead, and then hopped the bus to Ikea, where we picked up a few small, useful things. Because of the speed and circumstances of our move, we hadn't yet had a chance to "play house," and so it was nice to make plans and think about ways to improve our new apartment. Ikea can be pretty draining, though. It's like a hedge maze, or one of those haunted house amusement park rides where you go from diorama to scary diorama and you just have to wait until it's over. But at Ikea all the dioramas are about chairs that don't have armrests.
My new(-ish) job continues to be an improvement over the past two years. I guess I didn't say too much about it last time, so: Conductor is a search optimization / analytics company, about 60 people strong. You know me, I'm not into marketing or business or that type of thing, but they're building something pretty advanced and interesting (and which I can't really talk about). The company's currently headquartered in the Grand Masonic Lodge building on 6th Ave. and 23rd St., which is a regular office building except that some of the floors (including one of the ones Conductor's on) are outfitted with mahogany trim and full-length wall murals of Teddy Roosevelt and other famous Masons. Oh, and there are special locked rooms full of Masonic books and artifacts -- for example, there's a Masonic dining room about 10 feet from one of our conference rooms that houses, among other curios, an 8-foot-tall stuffed polar bear. I shit you not.
Like I said, though, it's an improvement, especially in terms of management sanity and, you know, "perks" -- there's free fancy coffee, a fully-stocked snacks cabinet, and free pizza on Friday. I'm not fully sure what it means that this is reassuring to me. It's either that, as a company, it's pretty easy to provide a baseline level of comfort for your employees; or maybe it's just that programmer types can be bought off with granola bars and pepperoni.
I went out to Williamsburg tonight to catch a show at Bruar Falls. I'd never been to the venue before, although it comes up a lot on Oh My Rockness. It's set up like a lot of new places seem to be these days: Bar in the front, small stage area in the back, furnished like a kooky living room from the 70s. And there were a lot of little Bud Cort-type guys in attendance. But the bands ended up being pretty great. The opener was called Yusef Jerusalem, and they were a little rough at first -- their first song was just a bunch of shrieking and guitar feedback that made me go "oh no" -- but they ended up being pretty tight and garage punk-y. The lead singer didn't say anything to the audience, though, which was a little weird. Not even hello or goodbye.
Thomas Function, the band I was there to see, were pretty dope. They play fast, tight, punky soul songs, and their lead singer had a cool, nerdy yell. I wanted their set to be longer, but it was not to be.
I've been playing Xbox 360 games. They're selling a combo-pack of Bioshock and Oblivion for cheap at Best Buy, and both of those games seemed to be pretty well-received, so I picked 'em up. I'm in the middle of Bioshock right now. I can't deny that it's a pretty original framing device, and it certainly makes me consider while I'm playing it the differences between representation and endorsement of an idea, but there's something about the way it's paced -- the fact that you never really leave first-person-shooter mode, say, or that the character development happens primarily through asynchronous voice-over -- that makes the world feel kind of superficial.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Lost Summer
Well, the furlough turned, predictably enough, into the full-on dissolution of Rebel Monkey (on my birthday, no less). I won't speak to the particulars, since some very important aspects of them are still being resolved. But, man, losing your job is really a drag. It's not like I don't have a full plate of projects to work on, but there's nothing like having all the time in the world to make you not feel like doing very much at all. And there's nothing like having a whole summer to do with what you will to make you not feel like going out and doing fun summer things. I was assisted in these exertions by Nina, who very sweetly bought me an Xbox 360 and a copy of Fallout 3 (which is surprisingly sad, and far too short) for my birthday.
Finding a job is a drag, too. But find one I did, shepherded by a team of recruiters (whose attentions are hard to get used to). So I have a new job now, and a new apartment, because we moved, and that was arduous and stressful, too. Maybe I'll write about that later. But I haven't posted anything here for three months, so this is me just clearing the slate.
Finding a job is a drag, too. But find one I did, shepherded by a team of recruiters (whose attentions are hard to get used to). So I have a new job now, and a new apartment, because we moved, and that was arduous and stressful, too. Maybe I'll write about that later. But I haven't posted anything here for three months, so this is me just clearing the slate.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Furlough Tuesday
Okay, this rain shit has got to stop. It's making me moody and sluggish. It's been raining non-stop for like three fucking weeks! More, probably. I brought my lemon tree outside a couple of weeks ago, thinking it wasn't getting enough light / moisture, but now I'm worried it's gonna be washed away.
Spinnerette played Bowery Ballroom on Monday. Committed readers will know that I've been a fan of The Distillers since I first saw the video for "Drain The Blood" on MTV of all places while channel surfing at 680 Degraw. At the time I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of a band as good as that. But I was like, fuck, this is great, I can get really into them and go see them live. And I did, once, right after they released their most commercial-sounding album and right before they broke up forever. That's just the way of things. So I was psyched when I heard Brody Dalle was putting a new band together, somewhat less psyched when I heard it was going to be a techno grime dance rock band, but then a little psyched again once I heard a couple of their singles last summer. An eponymous album has since come out. The Onion A.V. Club describes their sound as having "rubbery hooks," which, although it sounds like oblique music criticism jibberish, is oddly accurate -- the beats throb instead of, you know, beat; and the melodies have these eerie harmonies that defy being prized apart.
So I figured that when I saw them live, it'd be Brody and a bunch of keyboards. Not so -- they managed to produce a sound pretty comparable to the album using three guitars (Tony Bevilacqua, Brody, and some other dude), a bass, and a whole fuck of a lot of flange pedal. The real draw, of course, was Brody's voice, which was frighteningly good as usual, despite her claim that she'd been stricken with laryngitis. "They gave me a shot in the ass," she said. "So I could sing for you guys." ("With a cock?" someone in the audience hollered. "I wish," she said.) Also present were the hordes of tween girls (sans Courtney Love this time), hollering, pogo-ing, and doing that annoying dance where you kind of press your arms together above your head and just kind of sway, eyes closed -- the dance that, according to Dave Chappelle, all white people do when they hear guitar music. But, man. That voice. Whatever shot she got must've been a doozy, 'cuz she sounded pretty much perfect -- there's something in the sonic middle of that hoarse, ragged sound that hits the resonant frequency of your skull. They mostly played stuff off their album, including plenty of songs I hadn't heard before and which sounded a little rougher than their singles -- some of them kind of unfinished, even. Perhaps as a consequence of her illness, they didn't play any encores. I confess to a guilty desire to hear "Dismantle Me," but it was not to be.
Free summer rock and roll music continues apace. Startlingly, Jay Reatard played a set at this free concert series called Music On The Oval being sponsored by the idiots who bought Stuy Town. For those of you who didn't know (like me), the park in the center of the maze that is Stuy Town is called the oval, and, in an attempt to dampen the financial tailspin that they're in, Tishman Speyer has been setting up little pay-to-play premium areas, which they call "amenities," all kind of branded, uninspiringly, with the word "oval." There's OvalKids (a playpen for little Max Fishers, I guess), OvalLounge, OvalStudy, etc. So the powers that be booking Jay Reatard is entirely consistent with their history of making poor choices. Land grab? Billion-dollar boondoggle. Family music festival? Awkward performance by sweaty hair-punks.
It had rained the night before, and although it was a beautiful day the oval was pretty swampy: Nina lost a flip-flop to a sucking mud hole. There were toddlers and non-plussed-looking oldsters everywhere. An events coordinator with the demeanor of a kindergarten teacher introduced the band as "Jay Ree-a-tard," and the band played a short, tight set. I don't really know what to say about it -- those guys are great, and they played energetically, spinning their hair as they thrashed out their songs. Jay's between-song commentary (when there was any) showed he was not unaware of the contradictions inherent in the situation, and his set list included "Greed, Money, Useless Children." But it felt wrong, kind of like that scene in Spinal Tap where the 'Tap plays the Air Force base. Eve and Nina and I sat towards the back of the park and ate bagels and drank beer, which Eve loudly referred to as "soda" so as to thwart detection by Stuy Town security personnel on the prowl for open containers. You know, culture-jamming.
On the Bad News front, my employer has run into some cash flow issues -- the cash ain't flowing, and I'm on an enforced, unpaid two-week vacation. We're going to re-evaluate at the end of it. Things might clear up, or they might not. So, you know, I don't want to be premature here, but if you think you might need someone to engineer some software for you, I encourage you to look at my resume. To paraphrase Katt Williams, I love engineering software; engineering software is my shit. That's my shit.
Of course, all this free time has left me with plenty of time to hang out with friendos. KT threw an impressive dinner party at her new apartment on Saturday on the Upper West Side, which is more or less a studio but has an impressive view and a wonderful, maze-like entryway -- the building houses both commercial and residential units, and to get to the apartments, you have to go up several staircases and through a bunch of doors that don't look like you should be opening them. It reminds me of dreams I've had. And then Ted and Cat had a cook-out in the back yard of the ground floor unit in their posh Park Slope apartment (they're house-sitting). I showed up a little early and helped Ted whip up some Mexican-inflected Rick Bayless recipes: A tomatillo salsa type concoction (which caused a minor explosion in the food processor) and a spicy, quivering pork loin that we slow-cooked in the grill. Cat made these little individual strawberry shortcakes, which were crazy good.
Spinnerette played Bowery Ballroom on Monday. Committed readers will know that I've been a fan of The Distillers since I first saw the video for "Drain The Blood" on MTV of all places while channel surfing at 680 Degraw. At the time I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of a band as good as that. But I was like, fuck, this is great, I can get really into them and go see them live. And I did, once, right after they released their most commercial-sounding album and right before they broke up forever. That's just the way of things. So I was psyched when I heard Brody Dalle was putting a new band together, somewhat less psyched when I heard it was going to be a techno grime dance rock band, but then a little psyched again once I heard a couple of their singles last summer. An eponymous album has since come out. The Onion A.V. Club describes their sound as having "rubbery hooks," which, although it sounds like oblique music criticism jibberish, is oddly accurate -- the beats throb instead of, you know, beat; and the melodies have these eerie harmonies that defy being prized apart.
So I figured that when I saw them live, it'd be Brody and a bunch of keyboards. Not so -- they managed to produce a sound pretty comparable to the album using three guitars (Tony Bevilacqua, Brody, and some other dude), a bass, and a whole fuck of a lot of flange pedal. The real draw, of course, was Brody's voice, which was frighteningly good as usual, despite her claim that she'd been stricken with laryngitis. "They gave me a shot in the ass," she said. "So I could sing for you guys." ("With a cock?" someone in the audience hollered. "I wish," she said.) Also present were the hordes of tween girls (sans Courtney Love this time), hollering, pogo-ing, and doing that annoying dance where you kind of press your arms together above your head and just kind of sway, eyes closed -- the dance that, according to Dave Chappelle, all white people do when they hear guitar music. But, man. That voice. Whatever shot she got must've been a doozy, 'cuz she sounded pretty much perfect -- there's something in the sonic middle of that hoarse, ragged sound that hits the resonant frequency of your skull. They mostly played stuff off their album, including plenty of songs I hadn't heard before and which sounded a little rougher than their singles -- some of them kind of unfinished, even. Perhaps as a consequence of her illness, they didn't play any encores. I confess to a guilty desire to hear "Dismantle Me," but it was not to be.
Free summer rock and roll music continues apace. Startlingly, Jay Reatard played a set at this free concert series called Music On The Oval being sponsored by the idiots who bought Stuy Town. For those of you who didn't know (like me), the park in the center of the maze that is Stuy Town is called the oval, and, in an attempt to dampen the financial tailspin that they're in, Tishman Speyer has been setting up little pay-to-play premium areas, which they call "amenities," all kind of branded, uninspiringly, with the word "oval." There's OvalKids (a playpen for little Max Fishers, I guess), OvalLounge, OvalStudy, etc. So the powers that be booking Jay Reatard is entirely consistent with their history of making poor choices. Land grab? Billion-dollar boondoggle. Family music festival? Awkward performance by sweaty hair-punks.
It had rained the night before, and although it was a beautiful day the oval was pretty swampy: Nina lost a flip-flop to a sucking mud hole. There were toddlers and non-plussed-looking oldsters everywhere. An events coordinator with the demeanor of a kindergarten teacher introduced the band as "Jay Ree-a-tard," and the band played a short, tight set. I don't really know what to say about it -- those guys are great, and they played energetically, spinning their hair as they thrashed out their songs. Jay's between-song commentary (when there was any) showed he was not unaware of the contradictions inherent in the situation, and his set list included "Greed, Money, Useless Children." But it felt wrong, kind of like that scene in Spinal Tap where the 'Tap plays the Air Force base. Eve and Nina and I sat towards the back of the park and ate bagels and drank beer, which Eve loudly referred to as "soda" so as to thwart detection by Stuy Town security personnel on the prowl for open containers. You know, culture-jamming.
On the Bad News front, my employer has run into some cash flow issues -- the cash ain't flowing, and I'm on an enforced, unpaid two-week vacation. We're going to re-evaluate at the end of it. Things might clear up, or they might not. So, you know, I don't want to be premature here, but if you think you might need someone to engineer some software for you, I encourage you to look at my resume. To paraphrase Katt Williams, I love engineering software; engineering software is my shit. That's my shit.
Of course, all this free time has left me with plenty of time to hang out with friendos. KT threw an impressive dinner party at her new apartment on Saturday on the Upper West Side, which is more or less a studio but has an impressive view and a wonderful, maze-like entryway -- the building houses both commercial and residential units, and to get to the apartments, you have to go up several staircases and through a bunch of doors that don't look like you should be opening them. It reminds me of dreams I've had. And then Ted and Cat had a cook-out in the back yard of the ground floor unit in their posh Park Slope apartment (they're house-sitting). I showed up a little early and helped Ted whip up some Mexican-inflected Rick Bayless recipes: A tomatillo salsa type concoction (which caused a minor explosion in the food processor) and a spicy, quivering pork loin that we slow-cooked in the grill. Cat made these little individual strawberry shortcakes, which were crazy good.
Monday, June 08, 2009
The Sexton's Mouse
Summer, I think? It's been inordinately rainy in June so far. Lightning wakes me up around 3:00 AM.
Otherwise, Sunset Park has been a dream. The barber shop on our block up towards 5th Ave. was gutted last year and turned into a mini-warehouse for Coco Helado guys to store their carts. And a month or so ago, somebody parked an ice cream truck in front of it with a "For Sale" sign on the back. I think it may be damaged goods since I've never seen it drive anywhere, but somebody's run an orange power line from the warehouse, draping it over some branches of a nearby tree (which the rainy weather has made green and leafy as fuck), and into one of the windows, where, presumably, it runs the freezer when its owners are operating it in stationary mode in the afternoons. The jingle the thing plays is La Cucaracha.
The second floor landing of our apartment building has had a nice, musky spice smell to it for several weeks now, like chili powder or curry or something. I thought it was great until Nina pointed out that bedbugs, in a population that's reached horrifyingly critical mass produce a smell that's ironically pleasant to humans. But then I looked it up on the Internet, and it turns out that smell is "raspberry," and this is definitely not raspberries, so now I think the second floor is great again.
Nina and I came home from helping her mom clean her apartment (in extended preparation for accommodating relatives visiting from Puglia) the other night to find the house in mild disarray (waste baskets knocked over, bedclothes tossed around) and no sign of Kitty to be found. After looking in the closets and under and behind everything we could think of, we finally found her in the bathroom curled up behind the toilet, in the nook behind the bowl under the the toilet, a torn plastic bag sealed firmly around her midsection. She likes to eat the fucking things, see, but one must have gotten the better of her.
Ever since Steve Merchant wrapped up The Steve Show a couple of months ago, I've been trying to be more active in my search for, as Smerch would call it, "new music." (This pretty much means I read the descriptions of bands on Oh My Rockness and then visit their Myspaces.) I recently became aware of a group called Kittens Ablaze that met my current criteria for contemporary indie rock music: Not folk, not techno. I hit up a show they played the last weekend of May at a venue I'd never heard of called The Flytrap -- which ended up being a two-story private house on Court St. right across the Gowanus Expressway. I almost didn't find it, but the sounds of rock music got me zeroed in. They'd set up a little ticket counter by the entryway, and then you walked down a long hallway to get to the back yard where the actual show was happening. It was a beautiful spot: The house was and yard were flanked by warehouses, so the yard made a kind of concrete box that somebody'd gone to the trouble of furnishing with hedges. There was what I guess you could call a shed towards the back where the bands were setting up, except it was sized and decorated like a miniature house. The most impressive feature, though, was the cascade of roses and what I think were climbing hydrangeas pouring over the northern wall and wrapping themselves around the wrought-iron staircase going up to the second floor, creating a flowery canopy over the stage.
The bands (and there were hours of 'em) were mostly of a single disposition: Jangly, earnest. Nonexistent production. A band called Turbotronics (whose members apparently contained tenants of the building) was releasing an album -- this was their release party -- but they ended up switching up the list so that they were opening for Kittens Ablaze. I'd never heard of them, but I was pleasantly surprised by their sound: Kind of synth-y, nasty guitar rock, with a snotty, "fuck it" attitude in the lyrics that reminded me of the Dickies or the Dead Kennedys. Their songs had names like "Taco Bell (Taco Hell)" and "Let's Do Some Yoga."
By the time Kittens Ablaze went on, I was almost too beat to dance -- I have to stop dragging my stupid laptop to shows just so I have something to do on the subway. They played a vigorous, orchestral set (didn't realize they've got both cello and violin players). Their songs are long but have a sustained urgency to them that got me dancing around. Someone kept firing these little champagne party poppers over the heads of the band, the sparks and confetti mixing with the flowers. Long songs but not very many of them (four, five, maybe?) -- after they finished, there were calls for an encore. "I don't think we have any other ones," said the cello player.
The following week, I went to Mercury Lounge to catch Art Brut for the fourth night of their week-long residency. They were great! I remember being fairly skeptical about them when Katharine played their first album for me a few years ago, but I've come around. Despite Eddie Argos' admonitions to the contrary, I did think his talk-singing was ironic -- or musically prickly enough that I was put off. But over the years I've been won over by his clever writing and the band's obvious enthusiasm (although I still don't know if the songs are, you know, hummable). Argos' flustered delivery combines amusingly with how tight the band is and how confidently he directs them. He's a mix of authoritarian and self-effacing -- it's like Martin Prince grew up and started fronting a punk rock band.
The opening act, Cymbals Eat Guitars, was awful: yet another lead singer without any charisma. And a hippie playing a keyboard. How does this keep happening?
Otherwise, Sunset Park has been a dream. The barber shop on our block up towards 5th Ave. was gutted last year and turned into a mini-warehouse for Coco Helado guys to store their carts. And a month or so ago, somebody parked an ice cream truck in front of it with a "For Sale" sign on the back. I think it may be damaged goods since I've never seen it drive anywhere, but somebody's run an orange power line from the warehouse, draping it over some branches of a nearby tree (which the rainy weather has made green and leafy as fuck), and into one of the windows, where, presumably, it runs the freezer when its owners are operating it in stationary mode in the afternoons. The jingle the thing plays is La Cucaracha.
The second floor landing of our apartment building has had a nice, musky spice smell to it for several weeks now, like chili powder or curry or something. I thought it was great until Nina pointed out that bedbugs, in a population that's reached horrifyingly critical mass produce a smell that's ironically pleasant to humans. But then I looked it up on the Internet, and it turns out that smell is "raspberry," and this is definitely not raspberries, so now I think the second floor is great again.
Nina and I came home from helping her mom clean her apartment (in extended preparation for accommodating relatives visiting from Puglia) the other night to find the house in mild disarray (waste baskets knocked over, bedclothes tossed around) and no sign of Kitty to be found. After looking in the closets and under and behind everything we could think of, we finally found her in the bathroom curled up behind the toilet, in the nook behind the bowl under the the toilet, a torn plastic bag sealed firmly around her midsection. She likes to eat the fucking things, see, but one must have gotten the better of her.
Ever since Steve Merchant wrapped up The Steve Show a couple of months ago, I've been trying to be more active in my search for, as Smerch would call it, "new music." (This pretty much means I read the descriptions of bands on Oh My Rockness and then visit their Myspaces.) I recently became aware of a group called Kittens Ablaze that met my current criteria for contemporary indie rock music: Not folk, not techno. I hit up a show they played the last weekend of May at a venue I'd never heard of called The Flytrap -- which ended up being a two-story private house on Court St. right across the Gowanus Expressway. I almost didn't find it, but the sounds of rock music got me zeroed in. They'd set up a little ticket counter by the entryway, and then you walked down a long hallway to get to the back yard where the actual show was happening. It was a beautiful spot: The house was and yard were flanked by warehouses, so the yard made a kind of concrete box that somebody'd gone to the trouble of furnishing with hedges. There was what I guess you could call a shed towards the back where the bands were setting up, except it was sized and decorated like a miniature house. The most impressive feature, though, was the cascade of roses and what I think were climbing hydrangeas pouring over the northern wall and wrapping themselves around the wrought-iron staircase going up to the second floor, creating a flowery canopy over the stage.
The bands (and there were hours of 'em) were mostly of a single disposition: Jangly, earnest. Nonexistent production. A band called Turbotronics (whose members apparently contained tenants of the building) was releasing an album -- this was their release party -- but they ended up switching up the list so that they were opening for Kittens Ablaze. I'd never heard of them, but I was pleasantly surprised by their sound: Kind of synth-y, nasty guitar rock, with a snotty, "fuck it" attitude in the lyrics that reminded me of the Dickies or the Dead Kennedys. Their songs had names like "Taco Bell (Taco Hell)" and "Let's Do Some Yoga."
By the time Kittens Ablaze went on, I was almost too beat to dance -- I have to stop dragging my stupid laptop to shows just so I have something to do on the subway. They played a vigorous, orchestral set (didn't realize they've got both cello and violin players). Their songs are long but have a sustained urgency to them that got me dancing around. Someone kept firing these little champagne party poppers over the heads of the band, the sparks and confetti mixing with the flowers. Long songs but not very many of them (four, five, maybe?) -- after they finished, there were calls for an encore. "I don't think we have any other ones," said the cello player.
The following week, I went to Mercury Lounge to catch Art Brut for the fourth night of their week-long residency. They were great! I remember being fairly skeptical about them when Katharine played their first album for me a few years ago, but I've come around. Despite Eddie Argos' admonitions to the contrary, I did think his talk-singing was ironic -- or musically prickly enough that I was put off. But over the years I've been won over by his clever writing and the band's obvious enthusiasm (although I still don't know if the songs are, you know, hummable). Argos' flustered delivery combines amusingly with how tight the band is and how confidently he directs them. He's a mix of authoritarian and self-effacing -- it's like Martin Prince grew up and started fronting a punk rock band.
The opening act, Cymbals Eat Guitars, was awful: yet another lead singer without any charisma. And a hippie playing a keyboard. How does this keep happening?
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Everything Thermal
Eve and I went to go see The Thermals play the Music Hall Of Williamsburg. I'd never been to the place, despite it having opened almost two years ago (and I'd never been to Northsix, either). I guess I'd forgotten that the place is owned by the same people who run Bowery Ballroom, but holy shit -- the layouts of those venues are totally fucking identical! Like, seriously, down to the shape of the bar in the basement, and the locations of the bathrooms.
The opening act was a band from Portland called The Shaky Hands, and they pretty much ate it -- no charm, the music had no hooks, and the front guy's between-song banter was so tentative and awkward that the sound man's jaw dropped visibly several times, an incredulous look on his face. Eve and I stood back by the board and talked. And it wasn't just us -- the stage area was pretty empty for the duration, and I would've been worried that the crowd wasn't going to reach, you know, critical mass, except for all the people milling around in the foyer and downstairs at the bar. But everyone showed up and got front and center for The Thermals, and they played an amazing set: tight, energetic, a really good mix of old and new songs. Hutch Harris was wearing a full suit, which he explained, cryptically, as being an artifact of his having been hanging out at the stock exchange all morning. That guy always reminds me a bit of Moloch from Watchmen; he's a great, sardonic counterpoint to Kathy Foster, who was also in top form, bopping her springy hair and trademark frilly collar all over the place and squeakily dismantling, as she always does, the weirdos in the crowd who wouldn't shut up: One guy kept yelling, "I love your zapatos!" "Zapatos?" She said. "Did you just learn that word?"
Here's a partial, out-of-order set list. I'm not enough of an expert on their catalog to recognize everything.
Katharine got married to Tom last weekend up on the Cape. I'd gotten them something from their registry and booked a room at A Beach Breeze Inn a while back, but I kind of slacked on planning the transportation for me and Nina: Instead of carpooling on Friday like everyone else, we hopped an afternoon Acela to Providence -- which was fine, except then we got stuck there for three hours waiting for a connecting Peter Pan and trying to ignore a noisy drunk who'd stolen a TV and a bunch of jewelry attempt to make away with his contraband on a Providence city bus. And then our bus missed its connection in Bourne and the bus company had to send an extra bus back to pick us up and take us to Falmouth. ...Except when it showed up, the driver said he was going too Woods Hole, and we were like, oh, that's not us. And so he almost left without us, but finally called out "Falmouth!" too. ...Which would've been great, except that when we got to Falmouth, it turned out that's not where we wanted to be at all. Whatever calculations I'd made had involved calculating the proximity of the bus stop to Falmouth (possibly because there is a similarly-named, competing hotel there), not West Harwich. I started calling cab companies, but when I told them where we were and where we were going, there was silence; and then they'd all say, "You're on the wrong side of the Cape!" So, we were, but we still needed to get 50 miles east, so I finally caved and went with the guy who said he'd get us there for $100. That was the best offer. Pam, the woman who ran A Beach Breeze had waited up and was very understanding. We were beat, but not too beat to order a pineapple-and-pepperoni Dominoes pizza and homph it down like orphans at a food rodeo.
Maggie and Cliff drove by in the morning, and hauled us over to a buffet-style breakfast-only place called The Egg And "I" (quotes included), where we were joined by Tom O., Greg, etc. Over plates of eggs and egg-like things (Devin ordered a cheesy horror called The Crow's Nest), we discussed Tom H.'s request (via Katharine) that we sing the proffered hymns at the wedding. "When we had to sing Latin hymns in my church growing up," Maggie said, "we couldn't pronounce the words, so we just sang 'pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.'"
After breakfast we went over to a mini-golf course across the road from the Beach Breeze, and the nine of us split into two semi-competitive teams. The course was brutal, but it was really nice out -- so nice, in fact, that I totally didn't notice getting an actual sunburn on the back of my neck. We ate some moose tracks. And then the buses that Tom and Katharine and arranged for showed up and we had to get dressed up and go to the actual wedding. ...Which took place at the First Congregational Church in Chatham, which was very pretty and had a neat little churchyard with graves from hundreds of years ago. It was a short service. The bride and groom were sharply attired, and the minister was a dead ringer for Victor Garber. We sang the hymns as requested, although I sang "pumpking, pumpkin, pumpkin," and then felt guilty about it.
After that, the buses took us over Wychmere Harbor, the fancy country club where the reception was being held. The tables at the reception were named, I think, according to places that the newlyweds'd lived or visited; Nina and I were at one called Little Venice, wherever that is. We were sitting with Matt Carter, of whom I'm a fan, Mike Ettanani, some Scots, and a guy from Boston also named Mike. There was some initial awkward silence while we sipped our wines and stared at our plates. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike from Boston reach over to the plate of beautifully-carved butter roses. I made eye contact with Matt. "No way," I thought. But, yeah -- he popped the rose into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, hard. Matt and I stared at him, awaiting his reaction. "These aren't white chocolate," he said finally. "Just so you know."
There were speeches and there was dancing: The British contingent acquitted themselves impressively, the kilted and the elderly among them kicking up their heels and doing rhythmic, atavistic dances to covers of "Jesse's Girl" and "Don't Stop Believin'." After it was all over, we piled back in the buses and, at Katharine's behest, headed over to a bar in Chatham called The Squire, which was packed full of Cape Cod, uh, off-season types. There was a band playing, deafeningly, somewhere out of sight. We found an out-of-the-way nook in which to drink our Pabsts and homph the custom-branded (complete with little black-and-white photo transfers) "Tom & Katharine" M&Ms that had been favors at the reception. At around 1:30, the bar closed, we got back on the buses and headed back to the hotel, where Nina and I conked the fuck out. We were exhausted! So much so that we missed brunch the next morning. Nani was nice enough to drive us back, though, which was a relief considering the trip up. And I got to DJ the ride on this neat satellite radio console he had in the car!
Minutiae:
The opening act was a band from Portland called The Shaky Hands, and they pretty much ate it -- no charm, the music had no hooks, and the front guy's between-song banter was so tentative and awkward that the sound man's jaw dropped visibly several times, an incredulous look on his face. Eve and I stood back by the board and talked. And it wasn't just us -- the stage area was pretty empty for the duration, and I would've been worried that the crowd wasn't going to reach, you know, critical mass, except for all the people milling around in the foyer and downstairs at the bar. But everyone showed up and got front and center for The Thermals, and they played an amazing set: tight, energetic, a really good mix of old and new songs. Hutch Harris was wearing a full suit, which he explained, cryptically, as being an artifact of his having been hanging out at the stock exchange all morning. That guy always reminds me a bit of Moloch from Watchmen; he's a great, sardonic counterpoint to Kathy Foster, who was also in top form, bopping her springy hair and trademark frilly collar all over the place and squeakily dismantling, as she always does, the weirdos in the crowd who wouldn't shut up: One guy kept yelling, "I love your zapatos!" "Zapatos?" She said. "Did you just learn that word?"
Here's a partial, out-of-order set list. I'm not enough of an expert on their catalog to recognize everything.
- I Let It Go
- Now We Can See
- I Called Out Your Name
- When I Was Afraid
- Here's Your Future
- A Pillar Of Salt
- Returning To The Fold
- Test Pattern
- St. Rosa and the Swallows
- I Hold The Sound
- How We Know
- No Culture Icons
- Everything Thermal
Katharine got married to Tom last weekend up on the Cape. I'd gotten them something from their registry and booked a room at A Beach Breeze Inn a while back, but I kind of slacked on planning the transportation for me and Nina: Instead of carpooling on Friday like everyone else, we hopped an afternoon Acela to Providence -- which was fine, except then we got stuck there for three hours waiting for a connecting Peter Pan and trying to ignore a noisy drunk who'd stolen a TV and a bunch of jewelry attempt to make away with his contraband on a Providence city bus. And then our bus missed its connection in Bourne and the bus company had to send an extra bus back to pick us up and take us to Falmouth. ...Except when it showed up, the driver said he was going too Woods Hole, and we were like, oh, that's not us. And so he almost left without us, but finally called out "Falmouth!" too. ...Which would've been great, except that when we got to Falmouth, it turned out that's not where we wanted to be at all. Whatever calculations I'd made had involved calculating the proximity of the bus stop to Falmouth (possibly because there is a similarly-named, competing hotel there), not West Harwich. I started calling cab companies, but when I told them where we were and where we were going, there was silence; and then they'd all say, "You're on the wrong side of the Cape!" So, we were, but we still needed to get 50 miles east, so I finally caved and went with the guy who said he'd get us there for $100. That was the best offer. Pam, the woman who ran A Beach Breeze had waited up and was very understanding. We were beat, but not too beat to order a pineapple-and-pepperoni Dominoes pizza and homph it down like orphans at a food rodeo.
Maggie and Cliff drove by in the morning, and hauled us over to a buffet-style breakfast-only place called The Egg And "I" (quotes included), where we were joined by Tom O., Greg, etc. Over plates of eggs and egg-like things (Devin ordered a cheesy horror called The Crow's Nest), we discussed Tom H.'s request (via Katharine) that we sing the proffered hymns at the wedding. "When we had to sing Latin hymns in my church growing up," Maggie said, "we couldn't pronounce the words, so we just sang 'pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.'"
After breakfast we went over to a mini-golf course across the road from the Beach Breeze, and the nine of us split into two semi-competitive teams. The course was brutal, but it was really nice out -- so nice, in fact, that I totally didn't notice getting an actual sunburn on the back of my neck. We ate some moose tracks. And then the buses that Tom and Katharine and arranged for showed up and we had to get dressed up and go to the actual wedding. ...Which took place at the First Congregational Church in Chatham, which was very pretty and had a neat little churchyard with graves from hundreds of years ago. It was a short service. The bride and groom were sharply attired, and the minister was a dead ringer for Victor Garber. We sang the hymns as requested, although I sang "pumpking, pumpkin, pumpkin," and then felt guilty about it.
After that, the buses took us over Wychmere Harbor, the fancy country club where the reception was being held. The tables at the reception were named, I think, according to places that the newlyweds'd lived or visited; Nina and I were at one called Little Venice, wherever that is. We were sitting with Matt Carter, of whom I'm a fan, Mike Ettanani, some Scots, and a guy from Boston also named Mike. There was some initial awkward silence while we sipped our wines and stared at our plates. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike from Boston reach over to the plate of beautifully-carved butter roses. I made eye contact with Matt. "No way," I thought. But, yeah -- he popped the rose into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, hard. Matt and I stared at him, awaiting his reaction. "These aren't white chocolate," he said finally. "Just so you know."
There were speeches and there was dancing: The British contingent acquitted themselves impressively, the kilted and the elderly among them kicking up their heels and doing rhythmic, atavistic dances to covers of "Jesse's Girl" and "Don't Stop Believin'." After it was all over, we piled back in the buses and, at Katharine's behest, headed over to a bar in Chatham called The Squire, which was packed full of Cape Cod, uh, off-season types. There was a band playing, deafeningly, somewhere out of sight. We found an out-of-the-way nook in which to drink our Pabsts and homph the custom-branded (complete with little black-and-white photo transfers) "Tom & Katharine" M&Ms that had been favors at the reception. At around 1:30, the bar closed, we got back on the buses and headed back to the hotel, where Nina and I conked the fuck out. We were exhausted! So much so that we missed brunch the next morning. Nani was nice enough to drive us back, though, which was a relief considering the trip up. And I got to DJ the ride on this neat satellite radio console he had in the car!
Minutiae:
- Calendar season. Get on it.
- I've been running in Sunset Park, which is difficult but rewarding in that I can actually, you know, do it. The hill on the southeastern corner might be even more brutal than the one in the northeastern part of Prospect Park.
- Nina and I got dinner on Saturday at Tempo in Park Slope, a place I'd often passed but never visited. The service was a little stiff, but the affogatto... oh, man.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Live-Blogging The Wire
You fuckers have been bugging me to watch The Wire for the past two years, and, like I've been saying, it's in there, man, it's in my Netflix queue. It's just down a ways, past some documentaries about globalization and the second Jackass movie. But Nina was willing to accelerate it a bit in hers, and so last night I finally saw the first three episodes. In view of the faux-momentousness of the event, I decided to "live blog" it.
Hey, so that's a good show, you know? It kind of reminds me of Prime Suspect, both in terms of the subject matter and tone, and in how some scenes seem to be shot on film and some on something cheaper -- Deadwood on DV, say. We're going to keep plowing through, I think. And not least of all, now I know what all the fuss is about Lance Reddick's web site.
00:04 - "He'd wait until there was money on the ground, then he'd run off with it. Couldn't help himself." Snot Boogie's racket sounds pretty awesome. I'd play craps with him, although I can see how he'd be an acquired taste.
00:06 - Where do I know that dude McNulty's talking to? Holy shit, it's agent Richard Gill! "You gonna lick? You gonna lick? I'll tell you what you can lick." ("That's why they call me stallion...")
00:22 - Avon Barksdale is a sneaker name. Or the name of a cartoon dog butler.
00:28 - "Use Me 'Til You Use Me Up," says Nina, giving and singing the name of the Al Jarreau song they're playing at the titty bar. "How do you know that?" "It's on a CD I have," she says. "The CD is called 'Badass Singing.'"
00:33 - That fat cop Landsman looks like if Alec Baldwin in The Departed had a baby with Chief Tyrol
00:41 - I've never even heard of anyone paying drug dealers with xeroxed money. That's pretty gutsy.
00:43 - Wait, that white kid who's shooting up with Bubbles -- is that Telly? It is! This show is like a Who's Who of mid-nineties character actors.
00:47 - "You give great case, brother" -- that's some white collar-ass slang.
00:55 - Is that bartender at the strip club moonlighting as a taxi dispatcher? Nina thinks D'Angelo is handsome until I point out he looks like a baby whose eyebrows got shaved off.
00:58 - "You shot the mouse?!"
Hey, so that's a good show, you know? It kind of reminds me of Prime Suspect, both in terms of the subject matter and tone, and in how some scenes seem to be shot on film and some on something cheaper -- Deadwood on DV, say. We're going to keep plowing through, I think. And not least of all, now I know what all the fuss is about Lance Reddick's web site.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Night Of A Thousand Songs
Spring!
After a thorough search for recipes for banana pie that actually involve bananas as something more than, you know, a topping, I settled upon this recipe and made it. It was difficult but ultimately pretty rewarding. Word to the wise: You cannot substitute half-and-half for heavy cream.
On Friday the company was celebrating my friend Joe's birthday; we took him out for Korean barbecue at a place on 31st St. I'd never had that stuff before -- it really is, you know, a barbecue. I totally dig the proscribed method of consumption (cook some shit, bundle it up with rice and kimchi in a big floppy lettuce leaf; homph it). That stuff is pretty expensive, though -- good thing the 'Monkey comped it.
After dinner we went looking for a karaoke den. After rejecting one for price reasons, we walked around K-Town for a good 15 minutes, despaired of finding a joint that could accommodate all of us at the price we wanted, and ultimately settled on a place with a lobby tricked out with lasers and a fog machine. A little while after we'd settled in, Libby and Steve, who'd gone in search of a B.Y.O.B. solution, reappeared carrying a case of Korean plum wine, which they'd been recommended by the locals as being the best thing going for karaoke. Unfortunately, there were cameras in the private rooms, and, naturally, the staff swooped in and briskly removed the offending bottles -- save two, which Libby secreted in the folds of her coat. "What's under here?" they asked. "It's water, it's water," she said, in total bad girl mode. After the fracas concluded, she and Joe (and anyone else they could induce to taste the stuff) nursed their contraband in the corner underneath the security camera.
Some of the Monkeys were reluctant, but Nick and Margaret sang a Madonna song and Matthew led with a funny, super lounge-y rendition of some R&B song. And I tried to be good, giving, and game, to the extent that my half rasping, half hollering style of karaoke delivery allows me to be. (In the absence of songs by bands I'm actually, you know, up on, I think "I'm A Believer" might be my new karaoke go-to.) The little karaoke display system would give you a "grade" when you finished singing a song, via a little cartoon spaceman who'd spray-paint a score on a brick wall or sommat. After attempting to analyze the mechanism behind a bunch of seemingly incongruous ratings, we decided that they were based pretty much entirely on volume.
After a good two hours, our party split up -- management went on to some king of swing-dancing club that they do, other people hit up a bar. I lurched over to Duet 35 where a whole mess of college people were already singing: Tom and Colleen, Emma, Katharine, Nani, li'l Greg; Nina joined up as well. My throat was already pretty sore -- I didn't know if I'd be able to . Nani (not Nina, although she was admirably participatory) did a fairly stunning (Michigan J. Frog-wise) solo performance of that Nat King Cole song "L-O-V-E." "Two Princes" sure as fuck got sung again, as did Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." Circa 3:00 AM we finally called it quits and piled into cars on the C.A.B. line -- except Nina made her way over to Williamsburg to hit up her friend's birthday party. She made it, too! Truly indomitable, that one.
I've been playing on a pub trivia team. It's held on Sunday nights at Pacific Standard, a slightly fancy California-style beer bar over on 4th Ave. near Atlantic Terminal. Eve got me into it; it's a semi-rotating crew of people from our high school and friends and friends of friends of theirs. She made the initial mistake of selling the virtues of attending based on the intellectual rigors of the questions: "It's all stuff about history and literature! You don't have to know any stupid pop-culture stuff." And maybe it's true that there's something for the Harvard types on our team to chew over, but I got serious brownie points for knowing that Chuck Norris volunteered to be president of a seceded Texas and that the Italian press had nicknamed some murderous American chick "Foxy Knoxy."
The name of our team is Toledo Despair, a failed answer to a question about the name of a minor league baseball team in Ohio. We've been consistently hovering around first place in a set of rankings that supposedly determine our fitness to enter "the playoffs," which stand to net us a private, budgeted party at the bar. Our success also nets us weekly discounts (sometimes of 100%) on Sunday night booze, leaving us lurchingly attempting to tilt the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine long after the questions are over.
Before I forget: You know how I bought that fancy electronic trap that Tom'd turned me onto? Before leaving for Florida last month, I set it up on my desk. The Monday that I was away, I got the following picture in the mail:
Jason, the guy who sits behind me, found the trap sitting in the material shown, which he describes as "liquid mouse." The office consensus was that possibly two mice had wedged themselves into the thing, overloading it such that it, uh, pureed them. Suffice it to say, Jason is owed some Snapples.
After a thorough search for recipes for banana pie that actually involve bananas as something more than, you know, a topping, I settled upon this recipe and made it. It was difficult but ultimately pretty rewarding. Word to the wise: You cannot substitute half-and-half for heavy cream.
On Friday the company was celebrating my friend Joe's birthday; we took him out for Korean barbecue at a place on 31st St. I'd never had that stuff before -- it really is, you know, a barbecue. I totally dig the proscribed method of consumption (cook some shit, bundle it up with rice and kimchi in a big floppy lettuce leaf; homph it). That stuff is pretty expensive, though -- good thing the 'Monkey comped it.
After dinner we went looking for a karaoke den. After rejecting one for price reasons, we walked around K-Town for a good 15 minutes, despaired of finding a joint that could accommodate all of us at the price we wanted, and ultimately settled on a place with a lobby tricked out with lasers and a fog machine. A little while after we'd settled in, Libby and Steve, who'd gone in search of a B.Y.O.B. solution, reappeared carrying a case of Korean plum wine, which they'd been recommended by the locals as being the best thing going for karaoke. Unfortunately, there were cameras in the private rooms, and, naturally, the staff swooped in and briskly removed the offending bottles -- save two, which Libby secreted in the folds of her coat. "What's under here?" they asked. "It's water, it's water," she said, in total bad girl mode. After the fracas concluded, she and Joe (and anyone else they could induce to taste the stuff) nursed their contraband in the corner underneath the security camera.
Some of the Monkeys were reluctant, but Nick and Margaret sang a Madonna song and Matthew led with a funny, super lounge-y rendition of some R&B song. And I tried to be good, giving, and game, to the extent that my half rasping, half hollering style of karaoke delivery allows me to be. (In the absence of songs by bands I'm actually, you know, up on, I think "I'm A Believer" might be my new karaoke go-to.) The little karaoke display system would give you a "grade" when you finished singing a song, via a little cartoon spaceman who'd spray-paint a score on a brick wall or sommat. After attempting to analyze the mechanism behind a bunch of seemingly incongruous ratings, we decided that they were based pretty much entirely on volume.
After a good two hours, our party split up -- management went on to some king of swing-dancing club that they do, other people hit up a bar. I lurched over to Duet 35 where a whole mess of college people were already singing: Tom and Colleen, Emma, Katharine, Nani, li'l Greg; Nina joined up as well. My throat was already pretty sore -- I didn't know if I'd be able to . Nani (not Nina, although she was admirably participatory) did a fairly stunning (Michigan J. Frog-wise) solo performance of that Nat King Cole song "L-O-V-E." "Two Princes" sure as fuck got sung again, as did Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." Circa 3:00 AM we finally called it quits and piled into cars on the C.A.B. line -- except Nina made her way over to Williamsburg to hit up her friend's birthday party. She made it, too! Truly indomitable, that one.
I've been playing on a pub trivia team. It's held on Sunday nights at Pacific Standard, a slightly fancy California-style beer bar over on 4th Ave. near Atlantic Terminal. Eve got me into it; it's a semi-rotating crew of people from our high school and friends and friends of friends of theirs. She made the initial mistake of selling the virtues of attending based on the intellectual rigors of the questions: "It's all stuff about history and literature! You don't have to know any stupid pop-culture stuff." And maybe it's true that there's something for the Harvard types on our team to chew over, but I got serious brownie points for knowing that Chuck Norris volunteered to be president of a seceded Texas and that the Italian press had nicknamed some murderous American chick "Foxy Knoxy."
The name of our team is Toledo Despair, a failed answer to a question about the name of a minor league baseball team in Ohio. We've been consistently hovering around first place in a set of rankings that supposedly determine our fitness to enter "the playoffs," which stand to net us a private, budgeted party at the bar. Our success also nets us weekly discounts (sometimes of 100%) on Sunday night booze, leaving us lurchingly attempting to tilt the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine long after the questions are over.
Before I forget: You know how I bought that fancy electronic trap that Tom'd turned me onto? Before leaving for Florida last month, I set it up on my desk. The Monday that I was away, I got the following picture in the mail:
Jason, the guy who sits behind me, found the trap sitting in the material shown, which he describes as "liquid mouse." The office consensus was that possibly two mice had wedged themselves into the thing, overloading it such that it, uh, pureed them. Suffice it to say, Jason is owed some Snapples.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Escape From Sarasota
Just got back from a week in Sarasota, Florida, where I was visiting my grandmother on my dad's side. He was flying down there to help her take care of her taxes -- she's got a trust that my grandfather set up for her that keeps her in an assisted living facility for ladies who used to lunch. And it also happened to be her 90th birthday. ...And, embarrassingly, it'd been around five years since I'd visited her. (Mer and I'd gone to see her right after she'd gotten one of her legs amputated; she was pretty out of it the whole time, so that may not even count.) Babies, I struggle with filial piety at times.
The flight down was a snap: I'd never been to the new Terminal 5 at JFK or flown JetBlue before -- the special TV hookup they give you was totally fascinating. I finally got to see an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show -- he went to Uzbekistan and attended a wedding. The footage they got of the country and the people was great, but although Bourdain talks a big game ("Oh no, more vodka? You do not want me to drink more vodka"), he actually seemed to have, in fact, many reservations. After that the Travel Channel had a show where a fat, bald dude ate some puffins.
My grandma lives in an assisted living facility right on the bay -- it's actually a lot like a fancy hotel, except that, because of her leg et al., she lives in the hospital wing, which is a little more... medically equipped. My dad and I were staying at a Comfort Inn a few miles up the road. Every evening after my grandmother was put to bed, we'd head back to the room to watch the free HBO (we watched the pilot for The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I actually kind of liked a lot). There was no way to control the strength of the air conditioner -- it was either sweltering or freezing, so we went in the freezing direction. After hearing my dad describe the situation, including some complaints about the wretched coffee included in the complimentary "continental breakfast," my grandmother dubbed it the "Cold Comfort Inn."
During the day we'd follow her around the palacial grounds of the facility -- she's got a motorized chair with which she's quite agile and speedy -- from the lizard-crossed gazebo looking out over Sarasota Bay to the residents' herb gardens to the fancy-dress dining room (I'd been told to pack a suit for to wear at dinner; as per my usual M.O. I managed to bring two left dress shoes). As we puttered around, she explained to anyone who'd listen, "my whole family's here!" The clucking and attention felt good, I have to admit. We celebrated her birthday, which, to my grandma's consternation, almost all the other residents'd gotten wind of via the chapel bulletin board. Nina'd helped me repurpose a very apropos silk scarf as a gift; my mom sent along a 500-piece Barack Obama jigsaw with my dad. I got to eat a lot of fish and seafood at fancy Sarasota restaurants; I even found a mussel pearl in my food at The Crab & Fin, promptly almost losing the tiny thing in an inner pocket of my jeans.
Somewhat more claustrophobic were the rigors of her schedule: She'd be up early, ready to meet me and my dad for a few circuits of the gardens; then lunch'd be ready; then more walking around around or watching movies from the library; then obligatory whiskey (holy god do old people drink) while she listened to the copious voicemails her friends had left her while she'd been out; changing into dinner clothes; dinner in the posh dining room with motorized curtains that slid closed as the sun set over the water; then it'd time for her to be "processed" and put to bed, leaving my dad and I with naught to do but drive back to the hotel and watch a couple of hours of TV before the whole thing started again.
Nonetheless, the week passed pleasantly enough, and pretty soon we were back at the Sarasota-Bradenton airport to catch a JetBlue flight home to JFK. I picked up some odd-tasting "key lime"-flavored treats for my co-workers (bark, taffy) at the CNBC store and we hunkered down to wait. And we waited. And the scheduled time of our flight came and went. And eventually it was dark and the terminal was almost empty. Apparently JetBlue has a single plane devoted to the New York-to-Florida route, and because of inclement weather earlier in the day at JFK and the cascade delay that had led to, well, blah blah blah, we were running late. At about 10 o'clock, the flight crew made the announcement that they were going to attempt to board us, but because they had a very narrow window for taking off (the pilots were at this point toeing the line of maximum awake hours), we had to be fully boarded in 10 minutes. My heart sank, but we lined up and got on the plane -- and they did do a pretty efficient job getting us on board. We began taxiing, the little DirectTV screens turned on and started playing a New York Times interview with Mickey Rourke. The flight crew did a high-speed version of the emergency procedures, and for a minute it actually looked as if we were going to get airborne. But then we stopped taxiing and the lights flickered out, Mickey Rourke frozen tauntingly on the TV screens in mid-smirk. We'd missed our window, they told us, and, furthermore, they couldn't get us on another flight that night or even the next day. And we might not even be able to fly back to New York until Monday.
My dad and I sort of panicked -- I opened my laptop and we made an emergency visit to Travelocity.com. Last-minute plane tickets are expensive! The earliest, most convenient flights were going for, like, a thousand bucks a pop. So we booked a middlingly-expensive and sort of roundabout itinerary, flying out of Tampa the next morning (at 7:00am!) and into Boston, and then from there into good old JFK on a Czech Air puddle hopper. We were harried and pissed off, but we weren't the most fucked by any means -- a woman ahead of us on line kept repeating into her cell phone: "What am I going to do? I have no one here. I have nothing." My dad re-rented a car and we drove back to the Cold Comfort Inn to try to sleep for three hours (couldn't) before waking in the dark and making the hallucinatorily early hour-and-a-half drive to Tampa. Once we'd done that, though, things were easy -- all our flights were punctual, I slept en route, and even found an issue of The Guardian from January in the seat pocket on the Boston flight that had a scary article about serial killers.
I pretty much agree with this: http://fuckyeahcilantro.tumblr.com/
The flight down was a snap: I'd never been to the new Terminal 5 at JFK or flown JetBlue before -- the special TV hookup they give you was totally fascinating. I finally got to see an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show -- he went to Uzbekistan and attended a wedding. The footage they got of the country and the people was great, but although Bourdain talks a big game ("Oh no, more vodka? You do not want me to drink more vodka"), he actually seemed to have, in fact, many reservations. After that the Travel Channel had a show where a fat, bald dude ate some puffins.
My grandma lives in an assisted living facility right on the bay -- it's actually a lot like a fancy hotel, except that, because of her leg et al., she lives in the hospital wing, which is a little more... medically equipped. My dad and I were staying at a Comfort Inn a few miles up the road. Every evening after my grandmother was put to bed, we'd head back to the room to watch the free HBO (we watched the pilot for The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I actually kind of liked a lot). There was no way to control the strength of the air conditioner -- it was either sweltering or freezing, so we went in the freezing direction. After hearing my dad describe the situation, including some complaints about the wretched coffee included in the complimentary "continental breakfast," my grandmother dubbed it the "Cold Comfort Inn."
During the day we'd follow her around the palacial grounds of the facility -- she's got a motorized chair with which she's quite agile and speedy -- from the lizard-crossed gazebo looking out over Sarasota Bay to the residents' herb gardens to the fancy-dress dining room (I'd been told to pack a suit for to wear at dinner; as per my usual M.O. I managed to bring two left dress shoes). As we puttered around, she explained to anyone who'd listen, "my whole family's here!" The clucking and attention felt good, I have to admit. We celebrated her birthday, which, to my grandma's consternation, almost all the other residents'd gotten wind of via the chapel bulletin board. Nina'd helped me repurpose a very apropos silk scarf as a gift; my mom sent along a 500-piece Barack Obama jigsaw with my dad. I got to eat a lot of fish and seafood at fancy Sarasota restaurants; I even found a mussel pearl in my food at The Crab & Fin, promptly almost losing the tiny thing in an inner pocket of my jeans.
Somewhat more claustrophobic were the rigors of her schedule: She'd be up early, ready to meet me and my dad for a few circuits of the gardens; then lunch'd be ready; then more walking around around or watching movies from the library; then obligatory whiskey (holy god do old people drink) while she listened to the copious voicemails her friends had left her while she'd been out; changing into dinner clothes; dinner in the posh dining room with motorized curtains that slid closed as the sun set over the water; then it'd time for her to be "processed" and put to bed, leaving my dad and I with naught to do but drive back to the hotel and watch a couple of hours of TV before the whole thing started again.
Nonetheless, the week passed pleasantly enough, and pretty soon we were back at the Sarasota-Bradenton airport to catch a JetBlue flight home to JFK. I picked up some odd-tasting "key lime"-flavored treats for my co-workers (bark, taffy) at the CNBC store and we hunkered down to wait. And we waited. And the scheduled time of our flight came and went. And eventually it was dark and the terminal was almost empty. Apparently JetBlue has a single plane devoted to the New York-to-Florida route, and because of inclement weather earlier in the day at JFK and the cascade delay that had led to, well, blah blah blah, we were running late. At about 10 o'clock, the flight crew made the announcement that they were going to attempt to board us, but because they had a very narrow window for taking off (the pilots were at this point toeing the line of maximum awake hours), we had to be fully boarded in 10 minutes. My heart sank, but we lined up and got on the plane -- and they did do a pretty efficient job getting us on board. We began taxiing, the little DirectTV screens turned on and started playing a New York Times interview with Mickey Rourke. The flight crew did a high-speed version of the emergency procedures, and for a minute it actually looked as if we were going to get airborne. But then we stopped taxiing and the lights flickered out, Mickey Rourke frozen tauntingly on the TV screens in mid-smirk. We'd missed our window, they told us, and, furthermore, they couldn't get us on another flight that night or even the next day. And we might not even be able to fly back to New York until Monday.
My dad and I sort of panicked -- I opened my laptop and we made an emergency visit to Travelocity.com. Last-minute plane tickets are expensive! The earliest, most convenient flights were going for, like, a thousand bucks a pop. So we booked a middlingly-expensive and sort of roundabout itinerary, flying out of Tampa the next morning (at 7:00am!) and into Boston, and then from there into good old JFK on a Czech Air puddle hopper. We were harried and pissed off, but we weren't the most fucked by any means -- a woman ahead of us on line kept repeating into her cell phone: "What am I going to do? I have no one here. I have nothing." My dad re-rented a car and we drove back to the Cold Comfort Inn to try to sleep for three hours (couldn't) before waking in the dark and making the hallucinatorily early hour-and-a-half drive to Tampa. Once we'd done that, though, things were easy -- all our flights were punctual, I slept en route, and even found an issue of The Guardian from January in the seat pocket on the Boston flight that had a scary article about serial killers.
I pretty much agree with this: http://fuckyeahcilantro.tumblr.com/
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Alex Rider: Stormbreaker
Libre Planet 2009, aka the Free Software Foundation's annual members meeting, was this past weekend, and this year the powers that be planned two days of software activism-related... fun. I emailed Greg to see if I could crash on his sofa again, but he replied to say that he was going to be NYC that weekend. I started researching hostels but secretly planned to get a private room at a commodity motel chain such as could be located. Luckily, in the middle of the week, Greg wrote back again to say that he was so swamped with work that he'd canceled his visit to the city. I went out and bought him a bottle of scotch. And then I got up at 6:00 AM, every bone in my body wishing I could scrap the weekend, and schlepped it up to Penn Station to catch the 8:00 AM train to Boston. Trying to sleep on the train, I couldn't get comfortable and sort of draped myself over the armrest in the pair of seats closest to the bathroom like a homeless person, making no usage whatsoever of the AC adapter in the business-class seat I'd shelled out extra for.
Nonetheless, I did get to Boston about forty minutes earlier than I would've on the regional, and managed to find my way to the Science Center (it was at Harvard this year). At the sign-in desk they were giving everybody these little badges that said either "Staff" or "Blogger" or "Activist." That last one was me. (Although, as I pointed out to Joshua Gay later, I'm fuckin' blogging this, aren't I?) The format of the first day was pretty much what the meetings have been like every year -- technical-political talks with breaks for portabello mushroom sandwiches and cookies.
I missed Mako's talk about freedom for network services, which is too bad, since I really liked where they were going with the Franklin St. Statement.
Rob Savoye, who's running the Gnash project, gave a really entertaining talk about what it takes practically to do a clean-room implementation of a jealously-guarded piece of proprietary software -- spoiler: it involves having a friend of yours install Flash Player so that you don't have to agree to the EULA and then sniffing their network traffic. He also described, entertainingly, his conversion from skeptic to enthusiast with regard to Flash on the web: He didn't know what the fuss was about at all until he saw YouTube. Now he's an addict, he says.
Ciaran O'Riordan gave an update on what the FSFE's been up to, specifically with regard to the EndSoftwarePatents campaign that he took over from Ben Klemens (never heard why he stepped down). He had some good stories about camping out at the European Parliament during the debate over the European software patents directive: "We were sleeping on the floor. Eventually someone came and told us that there were beds in the building that we could sleep in. They were kept around for the politicians to sleep in. So we went and slept in those beds."
"With the politicians?" someone asked.
Ciaran paused. "That's not the kind of lobbying we do," he said.
Bradley Kuhn and the two guys from the EU did short panel discussion on activism. Brad made some good points about the importance of "showing up" (which is apparently how he got the executive directorship at the FSF). And he had a funny anecdote about following RMS into a bathroom to talk to him about Free Software. "Especially if you're an awkward person, it's probably not a good idea to follow your intellectual idols into the bathroom. Luckily, Richard's such an awkward guy himself that he didn't seem to mind."
Evan Prodromou, the author of (net http), but more prominently the CEO of Control Yourself, Inc., the company that runs identi.ca, gave a talk on the practical issues related to creating and running a Free network service.
Stallman came out at the end and gave short (5 mins.) and kind of anemic talk about how the concept of "software as a service" is problematic. He also handed out a pamphlet about what he's calling "The Javascript Trap" -- the deal where a lot of Javascript doesn't have an explicit license and you don't have any control over how it executes in your browser. (Seems to me like that's a general problem with dynamic code in general, but I didn't want to get into it with him.) He didn't take any questions. Think he had a cold or something; his voice was all hoarse.
After the talks were done, I stood around for a while chatting with Josh and some other FSF types. And then, this year, instead of everyone going to The Middle East for a pay-your-own-way dinner party, we walked over to redline, where some generous software person had bought out the space for the FSF for the evening, complete with vegetarian hors d'oerves and drink tickets. (Drink tickets, courtesy the Free Software Foundation! The mind boggles.) I wound up having a long talk with Mike Linksvayer, the guy who'd accepted the FSF award on behalf of Creative Commons (a plaque inscribed from the FSF to CC! The mind boggles further), who turned out to be a super nice dude. And I got to plug the new bytecode VM to Evan, who admitted, in a moment of candor, that he'd be writing network services in Scheme if he could. Mako invited everyone to the Acetarium ("Your place!" I said. "Your place is the place that has a name!"), but I was pretty pooped.
I gave Greg a tipsy call and managed to navigate to his apartment based on half-remembered phone instructions and an assortment of visual Cambridge landmarks. His new place is a grad student's dream of an apartment: enormous, newly-renovated, exposed brick, the works. He'd called off his academic efforts for the day and seemed kind of beat, but he shared his pizza and cookies with me and we watched a bunch of premium cable: We found this on-demand movie called Alex Rider: Stormbreaker that starred basically every famous British person, plus, inexplicably, Alicia Silverstone and Mickey Rourke. It was about a kid who discovers that he's been sort of covertly trained his whole life to be a secret agent, and he uses his spying and martial arts skills to thwart a plot involving deadly (!) computers donated to public (or is it private?) school classrooms. The computers were the things called "Stormbreakers." I don't get why they were called that; it's a scary name to give to an educational computer.
Then the second half of Knocked Up was on, so we watched that. I don't know, I guess it was pretty funny? But the main characters are pretty loathsome and there wasn't much of a catharsis for me when they wound up together at the end. I was like, is this a joke? They hate each other. After that I went to bed -- and slept great, actually, although I had to get up once in the night and do bathroom stuff because of all the vegetable kebabs.
The second round of talks was a free-er form dealie. I got there late and in my hurry to find a talk to sit in on, I wound up in the room for the track I was least interested in, which was Free Software activism. Nonetheless, the guy giving the spiel had some tips that I was glad to hear articulated, moreso because he was sort of pitching from the perspective of a super awkward dude who'd had to clean up his act a bit to appeal to normals.
After that I listened to a tired-looking guy from the coreboot project talk about some of the technical / business difficulties inherent in developing a custom BIOS from scratch. After him a striking-looking Russian guy with a white ponytail and a missing eye gave a talk about running free software on digital cameras: apparently the hardware resources are so limited that you have to compile all your code using scary proprietary compilers that do things to optimize the layout of the heap at build time. After more cookies, I listened to Tom Dukleth, whom I know from various NYC Free Software activities talk about free access to bibliographic data, which is his particular thing. And then I had to run because I wanted to catch a reasonably-timed train back home. The whole thing cost a lot, but, man -- the emotional difference between this year and last year, when I'd barely slept and felt totally strung out the whole time, was huge. And they have fucking Internet on the train, man. I bet you didn't know that.
But then I watched Come And See because it was in my Netflix, and it was fucking terrifying.
Nonetheless, I did get to Boston about forty minutes earlier than I would've on the regional, and managed to find my way to the Science Center (it was at Harvard this year). At the sign-in desk they were giving everybody these little badges that said either "Staff" or "Blogger" or "Activist." That last one was me. (Although, as I pointed out to Joshua Gay later, I'm fuckin' blogging this, aren't I?) The format of the first day was pretty much what the meetings have been like every year -- technical-political talks with breaks for portabello mushroom sandwiches and cookies.
I missed Mako's talk about freedom for network services, which is too bad, since I really liked where they were going with the Franklin St. Statement.
Rob Savoye, who's running the Gnash project, gave a really entertaining talk about what it takes practically to do a clean-room implementation of a jealously-guarded piece of proprietary software -- spoiler: it involves having a friend of yours install Flash Player so that you don't have to agree to the EULA and then sniffing their network traffic. He also described, entertainingly, his conversion from skeptic to enthusiast with regard to Flash on the web: He didn't know what the fuss was about at all until he saw YouTube. Now he's an addict, he says.
Ciaran O'Riordan gave an update on what the FSFE's been up to, specifically with regard to the EndSoftwarePatents campaign that he took over from Ben Klemens (never heard why he stepped down). He had some good stories about camping out at the European Parliament during the debate over the European software patents directive: "We were sleeping on the floor. Eventually someone came and told us that there were beds in the building that we could sleep in. They were kept around for the politicians to sleep in. So we went and slept in those beds."
"With the politicians?" someone asked.
Ciaran paused. "That's not the kind of lobbying we do," he said.
Bradley Kuhn and the two guys from the EU did short panel discussion on activism. Brad made some good points about the importance of "showing up" (which is apparently how he got the executive directorship at the FSF). And he had a funny anecdote about following RMS into a bathroom to talk to him about Free Software. "Especially if you're an awkward person, it's probably not a good idea to follow your intellectual idols into the bathroom. Luckily, Richard's such an awkward guy himself that he didn't seem to mind."
Evan Prodromou, the author of (net http), but more prominently the CEO of Control Yourself, Inc., the company that runs identi.ca, gave a talk on the practical issues related to creating and running a Free network service.
Stallman came out at the end and gave short (5 mins.) and kind of anemic talk about how the concept of "software as a service" is problematic. He also handed out a pamphlet about what he's calling "The Javascript Trap" -- the deal where a lot of Javascript doesn't have an explicit license and you don't have any control over how it executes in your browser. (Seems to me like that's a general problem with dynamic code in general, but I didn't want to get into it with him.) He didn't take any questions. Think he had a cold or something; his voice was all hoarse.
After the talks were done, I stood around for a while chatting with Josh and some other FSF types. And then, this year, instead of everyone going to The Middle East for a pay-your-own-way dinner party, we walked over to redline, where some generous software person had bought out the space for the FSF for the evening, complete with vegetarian hors d'oerves and drink tickets. (Drink tickets, courtesy the Free Software Foundation! The mind boggles.) I wound up having a long talk with Mike Linksvayer, the guy who'd accepted the FSF award on behalf of Creative Commons (a plaque inscribed from the FSF to CC! The mind boggles further), who turned out to be a super nice dude. And I got to plug the new bytecode VM to Evan, who admitted, in a moment of candor, that he'd be writing network services in Scheme if he could. Mako invited everyone to the Acetarium ("Your place!" I said. "Your place is the place that has a name!"), but I was pretty pooped.
I gave Greg a tipsy call and managed to navigate to his apartment based on half-remembered phone instructions and an assortment of visual Cambridge landmarks. His new place is a grad student's dream of an apartment: enormous, newly-renovated, exposed brick, the works. He'd called off his academic efforts for the day and seemed kind of beat, but he shared his pizza and cookies with me and we watched a bunch of premium cable: We found this on-demand movie called Alex Rider: Stormbreaker that starred basically every famous British person, plus, inexplicably, Alicia Silverstone and Mickey Rourke. It was about a kid who discovers that he's been sort of covertly trained his whole life to be a secret agent, and he uses his spying and martial arts skills to thwart a plot involving deadly (!) computers donated to public (or is it private?) school classrooms. The computers were the things called "Stormbreakers." I don't get why they were called that; it's a scary name to give to an educational computer.
Then the second half of Knocked Up was on, so we watched that. I don't know, I guess it was pretty funny? But the main characters are pretty loathsome and there wasn't much of a catharsis for me when they wound up together at the end. I was like, is this a joke? They hate each other. After that I went to bed -- and slept great, actually, although I had to get up once in the night and do bathroom stuff because of all the vegetable kebabs.
The second round of talks was a free-er form dealie. I got there late and in my hurry to find a talk to sit in on, I wound up in the room for the track I was least interested in, which was Free Software activism. Nonetheless, the guy giving the spiel had some tips that I was glad to hear articulated, moreso because he was sort of pitching from the perspective of a super awkward dude who'd had to clean up his act a bit to appeal to normals.
After that I listened to a tired-looking guy from the coreboot project talk about some of the technical / business difficulties inherent in developing a custom BIOS from scratch. After him a striking-looking Russian guy with a white ponytail and a missing eye gave a talk about running free software on digital cameras: apparently the hardware resources are so limited that you have to compile all your code using scary proprietary compilers that do things to optimize the layout of the heap at build time. After more cookies, I listened to Tom Dukleth, whom I know from various NYC Free Software activities talk about free access to bibliographic data, which is his particular thing. And then I had to run because I wanted to catch a reasonably-timed train back home. The whole thing cost a lot, but, man -- the emotional difference between this year and last year, when I'd barely slept and felt totally strung out the whole time, was huge. And they have fucking Internet on the train, man. I bet you didn't know that.
But then I watched Come And See because it was in my Netflix, and it was fucking terrifying.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Blizzard!
[Ironically, after finishing editing a post about a conference where everyone was fretting over the ubiquity of not-free-as-in-freedom network services like the ones Google offers, Blogger freaked out and deleted this post -- from its internal database *and* from undecidable.net. It did this silently: the timestamps on the files on my site were the only indication that anything had changed. What's more, it turns out there's no way to get Google to help you with this kind of thing, not even if you give them money. So, hey, case in point. WordPress ahoy?]
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Best Of
Hey, so it is a new year and everything. Maybe I should say something about 2008?
Marc Maron did a show at Maxwell's on Saturday night. He's been doing stand-up shows in and around New York recently as, I think, he refines his one-man show about his bad, ugly divorce from his second wife. I'd been stuck at work for it, but Tom described "An Evening With Marc Maron" at Union Hall as "intense. Not a lot of jokes" -- so I knew I had to see him. I hopped the PATH at 34th St., remembering that I hadn't been to Maxwell's since Chris and I saw The Queers there in high school. What I recall about that show is that there were a bunch of sandal-wearing hippies there who were kind of killing the vibe; that Chris and I got a bunch of dirty looks for putting The Beach Boys on the jukebox; and that the eleven blocks between the station and the club were really, really long. That last part hadn't changed, and I'd remembered halfway through the trip that since comedians don't do 50 minute sets with DJs in between, my plan to skip the openers might lead to me missing Marc himself. So I had to really leg it to 11th St. through the freezing cold, lugging the laptop and book that I'd stupidly brought along, mucus pouring out of my face, using a free hand to alternately and unwrap my scarf around my head. By the time I got to the place I was 'bout ready to puke, but it turned out I hadn't missed that much.
Marc was doing a mix of funny and, you know, scary material, some of which I'd seen him do on Conan or whatever. There was an irritating, unappealing woman who'd stepped right up close to the stage, at some remove from the rest of the audience, who was clearly trying to "connect" with Marc throughout the show. She was drinking a glowing red drink, its luminescence of origin unknown, and she kept nodding and shaking her head and saying "yes, yes" in response to his rhetorical questions.
I've been working late these days, babies, later than a man should work. So, sometimes, when I get out of the office and it's super late, I opt for the ol' C.A.B. line over the F-to-the-D, which can take up to two hours after a certain time of night. It's expensive, but, you know, I do some mental economics about how much the extra hour or two of sleep / girl is worth, and, you know, it's hard to argue against. Anyway, I've gotten sort of pleasantly accustomed to the route we usually take, which goes something like: FDR or 5th Ave. to lower Manhattan; the Brooklyn Bridge on-ramp taking us right past the tantalizing windows of one of the Pace University libraries; over the bridge; a brief drive through Brooklyn Heights before getting on the BQE; the BQE to the 39th St. exit; that U-Turn in front of Peyton's Playpen. The initial leg of the BQE goes by a stretch of the Brooklyn Heights waterfront with some piers and warehouses. There's nothing really going on there at night; it's dark, except for a lone street light that always seems to be on, illuminating the municipal utility vehicle under it, like a lone fisherman fishing through a hole on an ice floe.
- Best Chris Matthews moment - tie: Fred Thompson's masculine musk; What did Neville Chamberlain do?
- Best killing spree - Stephen Maturin, in The Fortunes of War
- Best informercial - Snuggies: The blanket you die in
- Best Keith Olbermann impression - Ben Affleck
- Best song on the Spinnerette EP I bought, even though it was also the free single - Valium Knights
- Best SciFi channel original movie - Rock Monster
- Best return on investment "hard" mode drum song in Rock Band - Maps
- Best show I attended - Green Jelly at The Gramercy
- Best scone - The maple walnut at Cafe Grumpy
- Best Seven Second Delay episode - Andy Breckman gets waterboarded; runners-up - anything with Kelly Jones
Marc Maron did a show at Maxwell's on Saturday night. He's been doing stand-up shows in and around New York recently as, I think, he refines his one-man show about his bad, ugly divorce from his second wife. I'd been stuck at work for it, but Tom described "An Evening With Marc Maron" at Union Hall as "intense. Not a lot of jokes" -- so I knew I had to see him. I hopped the PATH at 34th St., remembering that I hadn't been to Maxwell's since Chris and I saw The Queers there in high school. What I recall about that show is that there were a bunch of sandal-wearing hippies there who were kind of killing the vibe; that Chris and I got a bunch of dirty looks for putting The Beach Boys on the jukebox; and that the eleven blocks between the station and the club were really, really long. That last part hadn't changed, and I'd remembered halfway through the trip that since comedians don't do 50 minute sets with DJs in between, my plan to skip the openers might lead to me missing Marc himself. So I had to really leg it to 11th St. through the freezing cold, lugging the laptop and book that I'd stupidly brought along, mucus pouring out of my face, using a free hand to alternately and unwrap my scarf around my head. By the time I got to the place I was 'bout ready to puke, but it turned out I hadn't missed that much.
Marc was doing a mix of funny and, you know, scary material, some of which I'd seen him do on Conan or whatever. There was an irritating, unappealing woman who'd stepped right up close to the stage, at some remove from the rest of the audience, who was clearly trying to "connect" with Marc throughout the show. She was drinking a glowing red drink, its luminescence of origin unknown, and she kept nodding and shaking her head and saying "yes, yes" in response to his rhetorical questions.
I've been working late these days, babies, later than a man should work. So, sometimes, when I get out of the office and it's super late, I opt for the ol' C.A.B. line over the F-to-the-D, which can take up to two hours after a certain time of night. It's expensive, but, you know, I do some mental economics about how much the extra hour or two of sleep / girl is worth, and, you know, it's hard to argue against. Anyway, I've gotten sort of pleasantly accustomed to the route we usually take, which goes something like: FDR or 5th Ave. to lower Manhattan; the Brooklyn Bridge on-ramp taking us right past the tantalizing windows of one of the Pace University libraries; over the bridge; a brief drive through Brooklyn Heights before getting on the BQE; the BQE to the 39th St. exit; that U-Turn in front of Peyton's Playpen. The initial leg of the BQE goes by a stretch of the Brooklyn Heights waterfront with some piers and warehouses. There's nothing really going on there at night; it's dark, except for a lone street light that always seems to be on, illuminating the municipal utility vehicle under it, like a lone fisherman fishing through a hole on an ice floe.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Stukas Over Southpaw
The always-elusive Dickies played a bunch of East-coast shows shortly after New Year's -- they played a weird $45 New Year's Eve lock-in at some newly-fancy shithole on the Bowery, and then on the 2nd they did a show at Southpaw with The Kowalskis, a ticket for which I bought as soon as I saw found them on sale. I'm always a little worried they're never going to back out here.
They opened with "Rosemary," as they've been doing for the past I-don't-know-how-many years. It's a great song, but nobody danced. And I was like, man, these Park Slope fuckers, they're just gonna stand around. Because that's what punk audiences are like these days, especially for bands of a "certain age" -- moms and dads (both looking like members of The Lone Gunmen) who brought their kids to the show and most certainly do not want to dance. But then they launched into "Nights In White Satin" and the pit opened up so fast and so violently that I thought somebody'd started a fight (actually someone had, but, you know).
The band was plagued with electrical problems throughout: Stan's amp kept squawking and hissing, the result of a bum cord; and then he broke a string, temporarily forsaking his yellow Spider-Man SG for Kitty Kowalski's powder blue one. And I would've expected Leonard to pout like the Dauphin in Henry IV or storm off or something, but he was relaxed and understanding, and he had banter to spare: After explaining at length how happy he was to be back in beautiful Queens, New York, he opened the floor up for questions:
Now (that I've transmitted Christmas presents to Nina) it can be told: I spent several hours on a Friday night several weeks ago waiting to meet Chris Onstad at a signing at Rocketship in the Carroll Gardens. I showed up on the late side, having underestimated both the time constraints and the popularity of the event and found myself at the end of a line stretching around the corner. Passersby kept stopping to ask what all the fuss was about, and the guys in front of me couldn't help themselves, apparently, from sounding like total assholes: "It's a comic. Well, a web-comic. That's a comic that the creator -- usually they're self-published -- puts on a web site, typically in daily installments -- although they're free to publish on whatever schedule they choose..." Ai yi yi. I kept my head down; I felt awkward enough as it was, finishing an enormous George R. R. Martin book. For a long time the line didn't move, and then someone from the store came out to say that Chris had taken a break, sneaking out the back of the store (I shit you not) to drink a couple of shots at a bar, but now he was back and signing again, and to not give up hope. So I didn't, and eventually I made it inside and got to meet him. The guy himself looks like a cross between Ray and Pat from the comic. I was, I think, the third-to-last person to get signed, right behind a short little nerd who asked for five copies and wanted to talk a lot. Onstad looked exhausted, but he was still polite when he shook my hand, even though I still had that gross little chin-beard, the punishment beard.
Nina and I made another pilgrimage to Bay Ridge last weekend, in order to fill a prescription at the Duane Reade on 86th. It was a bitterly cold Saturday night, characteristic of the frigid weather we've been having. We'd committed to eating dinner out there, but none of the restaurants really seemed to be beckoning, so we just walked up and down Fort Hamilton Parkway. We bought some rye bread at a Polish grocery and looked in the window of a storefront that promised "PUPPIES" (they weren't kidding). Finally, we headed shiveringly down 5th Ave. with the intent of heading back to Sunset Park, but found ourselves in front of a Greek place called Agnanti that we decided to give a shot. It turned out to be great. They sat us (well, me) in front of a nice, hot wood-burning stove. I had lamb stew, allowing my post-November 4th attempt at vegetarianism to lapse a bit. (I am trying, though). Nina had an enormous fish thing. We ordered a half-carafe of retsina, thinking it was a kind of red. Was there something else I was supposed to remember? Along with the rest of the restaurant, we sang "Happy Birthday" to somebody whose birthday it was.
Oh, you know. Happy New Year, too.
They opened with "Rosemary," as they've been doing for the past I-don't-know-how-many years. It's a great song, but nobody danced. And I was like, man, these Park Slope fuckers, they're just gonna stand around. Because that's what punk audiences are like these days, especially for bands of a "certain age" -- moms and dads (both looking like members of The Lone Gunmen) who brought their kids to the show and most certainly do not want to dance. But then they launched into "Nights In White Satin" and the pit opened up so fast and so violently that I thought somebody'd started a fight (actually someone had, but, you know).
- See My Way
- I'm Okay, You're Okay
- Waterslide
- My Pop the Cop
- Give It Back
- Poodle Party
- Paranoid
- Manny, Moe, & Jack
- I Got It At The Store
- If Stuart Could Talk
- Going Homo
- You Drive Me Ape
- Gigantor
- Rockin' In The Free World
- Banana Splits
The band was plagued with electrical problems throughout: Stan's amp kept squawking and hissing, the result of a bum cord; and then he broke a string, temporarily forsaking his yellow Spider-Man SG for Kitty Kowalski's powder blue one. And I would've expected Leonard to pout like the Dauphin in Henry IV or storm off or something, but he was relaxed and understanding, and he had banter to spare: After explaining at length how happy he was to be back in beautiful Queens, New York, he opened the floor up for questions:
"Alright, Q & A. Ask me anything."The precise attitudinal pH of The Dickies is something I've puzzled over for a long time. A band that plays nonsense music to an audience of shoving punks; maybe it's a California thing, re-purposing your sugary pop-culture milieu as something dark and rough. That's sort of what the Dead Kennedys pulled off, and it's a little like what I always had in mind for The Headliners: Writing music that's not grotty or mean on first listen but nonetheless achieves a kind of punk perfection by tricking the audience into taking seriously a bunch of inconsequential doggerel. You know. "Horse The Cop."
"When's the new album coming out?"
"No comment."
"How's your mom doing?"
"No comment."
"How old are you?"
"No comment."
Now (that I've transmitted Christmas presents to Nina) it can be told: I spent several hours on a Friday night several weeks ago waiting to meet Chris Onstad at a signing at Rocketship in the Carroll Gardens. I showed up on the late side, having underestimated both the time constraints and the popularity of the event and found myself at the end of a line stretching around the corner. Passersby kept stopping to ask what all the fuss was about, and the guys in front of me couldn't help themselves, apparently, from sounding like total assholes: "It's a comic. Well, a web-comic. That's a comic that the creator -- usually they're self-published -- puts on a web site, typically in daily installments -- although they're free to publish on whatever schedule they choose..." Ai yi yi. I kept my head down; I felt awkward enough as it was, finishing an enormous George R. R. Martin book. For a long time the line didn't move, and then someone from the store came out to say that Chris had taken a break, sneaking out the back of the store (I shit you not) to drink a couple of shots at a bar, but now he was back and signing again, and to not give up hope. So I didn't, and eventually I made it inside and got to meet him. The guy himself looks like a cross between Ray and Pat from the comic. I was, I think, the third-to-last person to get signed, right behind a short little nerd who asked for five copies and wanted to talk a lot. Onstad looked exhausted, but he was still polite when he shook my hand, even though I still had that gross little chin-beard, the punishment beard.
"Who's this for?" he asked.Later, I shaved off the punishment beard.
"Nina," I said.
"She a Philippe girl?" he asked, signing.
"Actually, she likes Roast Beef," I said.
Nina and I made another pilgrimage to Bay Ridge last weekend, in order to fill a prescription at the Duane Reade on 86th. It was a bitterly cold Saturday night, characteristic of the frigid weather we've been having. We'd committed to eating dinner out there, but none of the restaurants really seemed to be beckoning, so we just walked up and down Fort Hamilton Parkway. We bought some rye bread at a Polish grocery and looked in the window of a storefront that promised "PUPPIES" (they weren't kidding). Finally, we headed shiveringly down 5th Ave. with the intent of heading back to Sunset Park, but found ourselves in front of a Greek place called Agnanti that we decided to give a shot. It turned out to be great. They sat us (well, me) in front of a nice, hot wood-burning stove. I had lamb stew, allowing my post-November 4th attempt at vegetarianism to lapse a bit. (I am trying, though). Nina had an enormous fish thing. We ordered a half-carafe of retsina, thinking it was a kind of red. Was there something else I was supposed to remember? Along with the rest of the restaurant, we sang "Happy Birthday" to somebody whose birthday it was.
Oh, you know. Happy New Year, too.
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