This year's Northside Festival is wrapping up. Here's what I did:
Bel Argosy played a show at Legion Bar on Thursday, which is owned by the same people (and has sort of the same checkered-tile floor aesthetic) as K & M. That same Monday we played our final Otto's residency show, to an audience that just barely outnumbered the band. There would've been slightly more people in attendance but the newly-installed door guy booted my sister and her friend, whose fake IDs couldn't pass muster with his hand-held scanner. He also had a decidedly non-casual approach to the night's lineup -- "Where's 'Princess Robot?'" he asked, as we were loading in. "No idea," said Beau -- so maybe it's best that we're winding that down.
The Legion show was the opposite. Initially there was some confusion over whether the show was going to be part of the Festival proper; it ended up not being, but we still got a huge draw, thanks in no small part to my South Brooklyn friends who all came out, traveling one stop further on the L than I am sure they are comfortable with. I think we sounded pretty great! Plus we made friends with our opener, a guitar-drums deal called Silicone Sister, who played with virtuosic abandon reminiscent of Ken South Rock. What is it with these two-pieces? Apparently no combo is better. Like Ken from KSR, I think the guitar player in Silicone Sister plugged himself into a bass amp, which gave him a really deep, rich guitar tone, and he could fucking sing like Ozzy. We're looking to play another show with them soon.
On Friday, Nina and I went to Shea Stadium for the Practical Alchemy show. Lucky Dragons were headlining, and I'd liked the lo-fi edge on some of their weird, experimental songs enough to brave an entire evening of "electronic music," which is not, you know, my favorite.
Before I get to that, though, I've got an important behavioral edict: All adults, stop playing video games on your phones. Seriously, at best you look like an idiot when you do this. The adult baby we were sitting across from on the G on the way to Shea was worse, because he was playing some kind of phone game while riding the train with his girlfriend. Really, guy? You can't hold off on the fucking Angry Birds for the thirty minutes it takes you to get to wherever you're going? His girlfriend kept trying to show him stuff from the magazine she was reading. "Uh huh," he said, not looking up from his toy. "Uh huh."
We arrived at Shea Stadium towards the end of a set by a duo called duYun -- or maybe that was just the name of the girl who was singing? From what I read about her afterwards, she's a classical composer who also does a lot of experimental electronic stuff, and she's clearly got the vocal chops for the former. She sang in a strong falsetto over a clattery, lo-fi electronic beat her co-performer laid down. After she finished, we took some time to walk around and have a booze. The Stadium has gone through a bit of remodeling since the last time I was there: It's gotten a colorful new paint job (the drawing of the naughty kitty's been replaced with a kind of mandala with the Shea Stadium logo) and they're now selling fancy liquor at their bar, but I think it's still got a kind of cool, scuzzy appeal.
Next up was Ryat, another duo with a lady singer and dude on keyboards. The lady had a sweet, warbly voice, and a very endearing lisp. Her compatriot (DJ? I don't know how this works) seemed like he was sampling her voice during the song and letting it feed back as she sang, so that at times it wasn't clear which part was actually live. Their set was accompanied by some beautiful geometric visualizations projected on the wall behind them. There was another girl kind of hiding in the background with a laptop whose job I think it was to coordinate these with the music.
After them was Wires Under Tension, another two-piece. This time it was one dude on drums and another guy playing violin. The drummer was undeniably talented -- a real Keith Moon type who was playing a whole lot of complex, never-ending fills -- but for some reason I just wasn't feeling their songs. Maybe it was the showboating on the drums; maybe it was the super-serious attitude of the violin player, which gave them a strong "guitar teacher band" vibe. They just didn't rock.
And we didn't stick around for Lucky Dragons because by that time my eyes were closing and I'd resorted to crouching on one of contagious-looking couches lined up against the wall. Nina graciously helped me down the stairs and westwards to Bushwick Ave., where she called Bushwick Car Service. Within two minutes, a livery car pulled up. "Bushwick?" the driver asked. But he wasn't from Bushwick. He was from "State," which, we came to learn, is far inferior. The driver, who looked every bit the part of Oscar de Leon -- slack, chubby face; Coke-bottle glasses -- insisted on punching our address into his cruddy GPS and couldn't be convinced that its directions weren't gospel. And then we had to explain that he'd put in our address wrong and that we didn't want to go to 4th Pl. in Carroll Gardens. When it finally seemed like we were on track to get home, he switched on a Christian "rock" radio station and turned it way up. Babies, that is some weak sauce. I remember (possibly incorrectly) that you used to be able to tell a Christian band by the absence of, you know, fun, in their lyrics. But the shit they were playing on this shitty station was literally all about the same fucking thing. I swear I heard the line "You are the only one / Who makes the moon reflect the sun" at least twice in different songs. Do Christians really need to hear about Christ twenty-four hours a day? Or, as I quipped to Nina, shouldn't there be topic-specific rock radio for every subject? If I'm sick of hearing about Christ, shouldn't I be able to spin the dial a little bit to the left and get to hear twenty songs in a row about bananas? Finally delivered to our corner, we stepped off the curb and a waterbug almost crawled right up Nina's leg. Stomp, stomp, stomp.
On Saturday, Tom and I hopped the yellow down to Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade. I'm not going to lie: My interest in the event was largely prurient. And why not? As (I think) William Murderface has argued, isn't a mermaid just a fish... with tits (tittyfish)? In fact, I don't know if there's a good way to be a dude in the parade as opposed to being on the sidelines ogling. Certainly it's not what I saw one Tim Robbins-lookalike doing, strutting paunchy and hairless down Surf Ave., naked save for a sea green thong and a fanny pack. And I don't think the Mermaid Parade really needs a mile long section of guys inching their cruddy muscle cars down the street, one arm out the window wobbling a big garish trophy they won who cares where, pausing every few hundred feet to scream and slap at their kids in the back seat. Maybe the best you can do is be like the guy Tom and I dubbed "Seaweed Dude," a laid-back beardo in a green poncho with a bunch of fabric strips attached to it: Get high, don't be creepy, don't try too hard, maybe hand out some beads. Our fellow spectators included a horny little gnome who was (ugh) videotaping everything, a drunk old lady who was pinching the bottoms of any mermaids who approached the barricades, and a trio of guys who looked like high school soccer coaches -- buzz cuts, sun glasses, missing bicuspids -- who had an enormous German Shepherd with them and kept yelling out their opinions of the ladies and the gay guys in the Parade.
That evening, after sharing a plate of "Irish nachos" with assembled Park Slope types at Dram Shop, I heaved myself back to North Brooklyn to see a show at The Trash Bar. I'd thought to take advantage of my proximity to the G train -- it's been running down here for two years, but I still think of it as a trick that I can hop it direct to Metropolitan Ave. instead of taking the yellow lines up to Union Sq. Not tonight, though. I waited for an hour before the conductor of an F train yelled to me and the other stragglers that we'd have to take his F to Jay St. and then hoof it to Hoyt-Schermerhorn. I began to do this, but, performing a back-of-the-napkin calculation on my way up the stairs from the Jay St. station, realized I'd never make it before the end of the show. I turned towards Flatbush and started on a long, disconsolate trudge home, when a yellow cab pulled up alongside me on the abandoned Downtown Brooklyn alley. Huzzah! I zipped to Trash and got there just in time for the beginning of a set from SHAPES, who were the only band I really wanted to see anyway.
They're a four-piece of young dudes who look like they ride skateboards with a lead singer with a face like Bill Fichtner and who wore black shorts short enough that they bordered on indecent. Their first song was a bit worrisome; it went something like, "Indie rock is just this game we play, and we all think it's really important, but it's not actually that important." (I'm paraphrasing.) I was like, oh no. But then I settled into it -- I bought a whiskey to make sure I felt enough like someone's weird dad -- and it turned out that the guy could carry a tune. His voice had this hoarse, melodic intensity, and the band sounded pretty great, too. They're described on their web site as being "glam punk," but I thought they had more of a Jersey beer hall singalong quality to their music. In fact, to their credit, I could have sworn they borrowed a small piece of guitar pyrotechnics from Titus Andronicus' "A More Perfect Union." The crowd was great, too, lots of exuberant kids. One guy took his shirt off -- the better to mosh, I guess -- and a bemused-looking girl strode up and took his hand for a fast, jittery waltz.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Calendar Season 2011
Check it here, if I haven't sent it to you already. Let the anxiety and regret about time well spent kick in... now!
Here's what I've managed to take in thus far. Last Friday, Nina and I hopped the G and headed to Brooklyn Bowl to see Fang Island, whose intricate guitar arrangements I'd really enjoyed when I listened to their Myspace cuts -- there are some complicated melodies in there, but the production had a cool, lo-fi edge to it as well. We got there a tiny bit late for their set (again, what is up with bands actually taking the stage on time?) but we got to see a lot of it. ...And, you know, it was okay. Their technique was definitely beyond question, and they brought a lot of energy to their playing, but there was something a bit too, I don't know, rehearsed, about their performance. Not a single note out of line. And they were all very clean and dressed very neatly, even the dudes with beards or baseball caps. So I guess I was a little disappointed. But they finished up with a foot-stompingly good performance of their album single "Daisy," which is pretty hard not to love -- it's such a fun song to hear, and, I'm guessing, to play.
After we left, we called Evan up to see if he wanted to grab a drink. He told us he'd left his apartment to beat the heat and was holed up in the Bushwick Country Club, so we headed east to meet him, taking note of the changes to the landscape as we walked: Berry Park Beer Garden (ugh, no), Spritzenhaus (avoid!). It was pretty late by the time we got to Grand St., but there was a road crew out repaving the entire street with a fresh layer of steaming asphalt. They had pods of bright lights set up to illuminate the work of the steamrollers (as well as a strange machine that Nina pointed out whose purpose seemed to be drawing furrows in the ground with its single, enormous finger) casting all the shut-up storefronts in an eerie midnight sun.
At the Country Club we drank the special, a tall can of PBR and a shot of Old Crow (which I'd learned about from Paul F. Tompkins' Driven To Drink) with an optional shot of pickle juice to chase -- only Nina was brave enough to take that one. While waiting for the bathroom, I witnessed the following interaction: A guy and a girl ahead of me on line are talking, maybe flirting a bit. He goes into the bathroom, she's still waiting in line. A separate, very drunk dude comes up to her and attempts to turn her to his affections: "You know, you won't have to put the seat down when he's done. ...'Cause he's gay." She didn't hear him at first (or could not believe what she was hearing), and said, "What?!" He repeated himself, slurringly, but clarifying his position somewhat. She regarded him coolly. "I know what you're doing," she said. "And you're pathetic. Just leave me alone. Just leave." Yikes!
We ended up sticking around 'til closing time, and, although it didn't feel very late to me, I felt compelled to hurry home and jump into bed. I live in fear of what Nina calls "blue o'clock," that time of early morning when the pre-dawn sky begins to lighten to day. To me it signals that I've lost the battle for a good night's sleep and that the next day will be a wash, although I suppose I've had plenty of evidence to the contrary. But I feel compelled to avoid it anyway, and so we snagged a car back to home base, where I made it into bed without seeing that dreadful color out the window.
On Wednesday we went back out to Williamsburg to see Shilpa Ray opening for Man Man at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I'd been smitten with her (and her Happy Hookers) since I saw her open for Kittens Ablaze at a CMJ show at Cake Shop two years ago. The Kittens were underwhelming when I saw them again, but she was fantastic. Her performance is still disturbing to watch: Her pretty face contorts into a fucking mask of tragedy when she really gets to howling, and the way she pumps the harmonium makes her look like she's wringing out a blood-stained shirt. Oh, man, though -- those songs are good. I particularly love "Beating St. Louis," a long, less scream-y one they played towards the beginning of their set. I payed more attention to her band this time, too. The big guy who plays bass does it without a pick, and some of his riffs are Freeman-esque in terms of their complexity. Her drummer's really fun to watch, too -- he's very active, arm- and leg-wise, while sticking to straight-ahead, non-showy rock and roll beats. We clamored for an encore, to no avail.
It took Man Man some time to set up -- they've got a number of... props, I guess you could call them, include a free-standing bicycle wheel and a big stylized drawing of a cut gemstone that pulsed with green light and hung in front of the middle one of three keyboard stands. We used the time to explore the second floor of the Hall (even though its layout is exactly the same as Bowery Ballroom's), eventually situating ourselves at the top of the bleachers -- the perfect vantage point from which to fret over how much keyboard they were gonna have. Their set turned out to be okay, but not great. They sound a lot like Tom Waits, particularly his more antic stuff like "Singapore" -- rhythmic, heavily syncopated piano melodies, with lurching, gravelly vocals. I think they're mostly known for their stage show, though, and there were some interesting touches: Honus Honus, the lead singer and ostensible front-person, did some Jerry Lee Lewis-type acrobatics while seated at his keyboard. During a drum solo in one of the later songs in the set, one of the other keyboard players dropped and did push-ups for the duration. There were feathers thrown, a confetti cannon. They all had face-paint on, and, as if the whole thing were a Park Slope street fair, there was a chick at a booth in the lobby who'd paint your face so you could look like the band. Mostly I was just waiting for it to be over -- and I thought it might be after the first two encore numbers. But it wasn't. They played an encore that was almost 40 minutes long!
I was cranky and feeling sick by the end of it, but Nina helped mollify me by taking me to Rainbow Falafel, the joint right by the train station. That was great! Three dollars a pop, and their idea of the "works" includes pickled package and just the right amount of hot sauce. Mwah!
So what's next? The inimitable Ken South Rock are back safe and sound from their heroic Japanese tour, and they're playing a series of shows in Brooklyn, the first of which is this Saturday. Peelander-Z's playing next Thursday. And my band, the good ship Bel fucking Argosy, is playing our Otto's residency on the 13th and then a show at Legion on the 16th with MiniBoone that's part of, oh man, the Northside Festival. Happy Summer!
Here's what I've managed to take in thus far. Last Friday, Nina and I hopped the G and headed to Brooklyn Bowl to see Fang Island, whose intricate guitar arrangements I'd really enjoyed when I listened to their Myspace cuts -- there are some complicated melodies in there, but the production had a cool, lo-fi edge to it as well. We got there a tiny bit late for their set (again, what is up with bands actually taking the stage on time?) but we got to see a lot of it. ...And, you know, it was okay. Their technique was definitely beyond question, and they brought a lot of energy to their playing, but there was something a bit too, I don't know, rehearsed, about their performance. Not a single note out of line. And they were all very clean and dressed very neatly, even the dudes with beards or baseball caps. So I guess I was a little disappointed. But they finished up with a foot-stompingly good performance of their album single "Daisy," which is pretty hard not to love -- it's such a fun song to hear, and, I'm guessing, to play.
After we left, we called Evan up to see if he wanted to grab a drink. He told us he'd left his apartment to beat the heat and was holed up in the Bushwick Country Club, so we headed east to meet him, taking note of the changes to the landscape as we walked: Berry Park Beer Garden (ugh, no), Spritzenhaus (avoid!). It was pretty late by the time we got to Grand St., but there was a road crew out repaving the entire street with a fresh layer of steaming asphalt. They had pods of bright lights set up to illuminate the work of the steamrollers (as well as a strange machine that Nina pointed out whose purpose seemed to be drawing furrows in the ground with its single, enormous finger) casting all the shut-up storefronts in an eerie midnight sun.
At the Country Club we drank the special, a tall can of PBR and a shot of Old Crow (which I'd learned about from Paul F. Tompkins' Driven To Drink) with an optional shot of pickle juice to chase -- only Nina was brave enough to take that one. While waiting for the bathroom, I witnessed the following interaction: A guy and a girl ahead of me on line are talking, maybe flirting a bit. He goes into the bathroom, she's still waiting in line. A separate, very drunk dude comes up to her and attempts to turn her to his affections: "You know, you won't have to put the seat down when he's done. ...'Cause he's gay." She didn't hear him at first (or could not believe what she was hearing), and said, "What?!" He repeated himself, slurringly, but clarifying his position somewhat. She regarded him coolly. "I know what you're doing," she said. "And you're pathetic. Just leave me alone. Just leave." Yikes!
We ended up sticking around 'til closing time, and, although it didn't feel very late to me, I felt compelled to hurry home and jump into bed. I live in fear of what Nina calls "blue o'clock," that time of early morning when the pre-dawn sky begins to lighten to day. To me it signals that I've lost the battle for a good night's sleep and that the next day will be a wash, although I suppose I've had plenty of evidence to the contrary. But I feel compelled to avoid it anyway, and so we snagged a car back to home base, where I made it into bed without seeing that dreadful color out the window.
On Wednesday we went back out to Williamsburg to see Shilpa Ray opening for Man Man at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I'd been smitten with her (and her Happy Hookers) since I saw her open for Kittens Ablaze at a CMJ show at Cake Shop two years ago. The Kittens were underwhelming when I saw them again, but she was fantastic. Her performance is still disturbing to watch: Her pretty face contorts into a fucking mask of tragedy when she really gets to howling, and the way she pumps the harmonium makes her look like she's wringing out a blood-stained shirt. Oh, man, though -- those songs are good. I particularly love "Beating St. Louis," a long, less scream-y one they played towards the beginning of their set. I payed more attention to her band this time, too. The big guy who plays bass does it without a pick, and some of his riffs are Freeman-esque in terms of their complexity. Her drummer's really fun to watch, too -- he's very active, arm- and leg-wise, while sticking to straight-ahead, non-showy rock and roll beats. We clamored for an encore, to no avail.
It took Man Man some time to set up -- they've got a number of... props, I guess you could call them, include a free-standing bicycle wheel and a big stylized drawing of a cut gemstone that pulsed with green light and hung in front of the middle one of three keyboard stands. We used the time to explore the second floor of the Hall (even though its layout is exactly the same as Bowery Ballroom's), eventually situating ourselves at the top of the bleachers -- the perfect vantage point from which to fret over how much keyboard they were gonna have. Their set turned out to be okay, but not great. They sound a lot like Tom Waits, particularly his more antic stuff like "Singapore" -- rhythmic, heavily syncopated piano melodies, with lurching, gravelly vocals. I think they're mostly known for their stage show, though, and there were some interesting touches: Honus Honus, the lead singer and ostensible front-person, did some Jerry Lee Lewis-type acrobatics while seated at his keyboard. During a drum solo in one of the later songs in the set, one of the other keyboard players dropped and did push-ups for the duration. There were feathers thrown, a confetti cannon. They all had face-paint on, and, as if the whole thing were a Park Slope street fair, there was a chick at a booth in the lobby who'd paint your face so you could look like the band. Mostly I was just waiting for it to be over -- and I thought it might be after the first two encore numbers. But it wasn't. They played an encore that was almost 40 minutes long!
I was cranky and feeling sick by the end of it, but Nina helped mollify me by taking me to Rainbow Falafel, the joint right by the train station. That was great! Three dollars a pop, and their idea of the "works" includes pickled package and just the right amount of hot sauce. Mwah!
So what's next? The inimitable Ken South Rock are back safe and sound from their heroic Japanese tour, and they're playing a series of shows in Brooklyn, the first of which is this Saturday. Peelander-Z's playing next Thursday. And my band, the good ship Bel fucking Argosy, is playing our Otto's residency on the 13th and then a show at Legion on the 16th with MiniBoone that's part of, oh man, the Northside Festival. Happy Summer!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Bengal Tiger At The Berlin Zoo
Nina and I just got back from visiting my sister, who's taking a semester abroad in Copenhagen right now. She's shaping up to be quite the math genius, much to the surprise of her decidedly non-quantitative family (myself included), and so what better place to study abroad than the hometown of, uh, Niels Bohr? She's taking a breather on the math stuff right now, though -- her emails are full of rave reviews of the movies she's watching in her contemporary Danish cinema class.
The last (and first) time I went to Europe was three years ago. At the time, I was getting through a bit of a rough patch in my life and had resolved to just kind of throw myself into the trip and try to have an adventure. I'd brought my iPod with me and I was listening to the Pogues album Tom'd just bought me: Their first, Red Roses For Me. I kept listening to the song "Streams Of Whiskey," and it became kind of emblematic of the trip for me -- not insofar as I drank much whiskey, mind you (it was more of a wine-and-Unicum kind of holiday) but in Shane MacGowan's stoic disregard for misery. There's a video for that song where he's dancing a kind of jig amidst the ruined bricks of a factory, and that image is what I've come to associate with the sight of white clouds in an early morning sky out the window of an airplane and unfamiliar, better-than-average airport food.
The main leg of our flight was about seven hours, followed by an intra-European puddle-hopper. Nina was excited about our early morning stopover in Berlin -- more excited, even, than getting to see Denmark: She'd spent weeks asking her European and Internet friends about breakfast spots near the airport. Unfortunately, Air Berlin's second transatlantic flight (ever) was safe but not punctual, and so we got in to Tegel somewhat later than we'd planned. Breakfast, at least the way Nina'd sketched it out, was out of the question, but we still had a few hours to kill. The guy at the tourism desk suggested (in perfect English) that we hop the airport shuttle to the zoo. "I love it," he said. So that's what we did, arriving in the pale and early damp at gates of the Berlin Zoo. We bought our passes and embarked on a whirlwind tour. It being a weekday morning, the zoo was mostly empty. A Bengal Tiger lounged, yawning, in a hammock. Some reluctant elephants huddled in the chilly air near the entrance to their enclosure. We didn't linger too long in any one place except for the penguin tank, where some kids with the air of schoolchildren playing hooky -- which is what they were, maybe -- were gathered. The enclosure was structured such that there was barely any space between us and the penguins. They waddled and dove, oblivious to the fact that we were inches away. We could have almost grabbed one and run it into the end zone, American football-style. Anxious about making our connection, I resisted the urge. We rode back to the airport in an eerily-silent all-electric taxi, and then waited a good two hours for the flight to Copenhagen.
We were staying at the Saga Hotel, a sort of hostel / converted SRO about a block from the train station. Our room was small and we had to use a communal bathroom, but it was clean and had a picturesque of Colbjørnsensgade. And the food! We got a free breakfast every morning, which we could assemble ourselves from a regenerating array of breads, liverwurst, cheese, jam, granola, and yogurt. All mixed together -- which you would think would be gross but was actually delicious.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was drizzling and chilly when we got into the central Copenhagen rail station. We were exhausted, so before getting in touch with my sister we lay down for a little nap. It was getting dark by the time were rested and managed to get Nina's GSM phone working. We made plans to meet up with my sister the next day and asked what we should do to occupy ourselves in the interim. "Well," she said, "you could go to Strøget." It was thus that we learned some of our first lessons about Denmark. Strøget is sort of the main drag in Copenhagen, maybe the equivalent of Broadway or Madison Ave. in terms of its retail offerings. They've got Gucci and McDonald's franchises, but not much of anything, you know, interesting. Ultimately we stepped inside of one of the oddly ubiquitous 7-11s, which was were we learned another lesson about Denmark: Danes love 7-11s, and 7-11s in Denmark are actually high-end gourmet delis, with more in common with, say, a Dean & Deluca than with, well, a 7-11. We bought some thin, dark bread, some pre-sliced cheese, and some cured sausage, but that nearly used up our allotment of kroners for the day. It started to rain hard. We retreated to the safety of our room and watched Danish TV while making gringo smørrebrød. It got late, but I wasn't sleepy, and I was hungry but didn't want to eat any more salami. So I dragged Nina out of bed and hit Strøget again. My sister'd recommended falafel as a meal for a traveler on a budget and since every other place in town shut its doors at 9 o'clock, we wound up sitting at a table at Strogshawarma on Frederiksberggade. I shit you not when I tell you that they had the best falafel I've ever had. It was spicy and aromatic and weird, babies, like they'd tossed it in a bunch of cumin and cinnamon and god knows what else. Take a note, Maoz. Copenhagen has the ill falafel.
The next day the rain was gone. My sister met us at the hotel and took us on a walk through Copenhagen. Our first stop was at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, where we sat on a bench drinking (in public!) the cans of beer she'd brought us, as well as some funny little cured cocktail weenie sausages and these delicious chocolate-covered marshmallow candies unfortunately named Skum Bananer. After we ate, she walked us back towards the center of Copenhagen, to the Radhuspladsen, the big plaza where Stroeg begins. There's a big bronze fountain there, corroded blue-green, with a statue of a bull fighting a sea dragon as its centerpiece. We spent a long time admiring it and taking pictures from different angles, in part because of how grotesque it was -- the bulging eyes of both combatants, the dragon's spiraling tail. It wasn't easy to see where the bull ended and the dragon began. My sister dropped us off there to go finish up her exams, and we made our way to the Dansk Design Museet, the Danish design museum. They had two exhibits, one on the top floor about encouraging sustainability through design, and a permanent installation in the basement that traced the emergence and evolution of Danish design as distinct among other design traditions. For each decade of the 20th century, they had objects that characterized the design philosophy of the period; the zeitgeist via chairs, phones, and urinary catheters. What they didn't have, a little frustratingly, was any frame for people like me who are a little shaky on what "design" is in the first place. Maybe it's like poetry: If an aspect of an object cues the user that a designer was at work, well, then, that's design.
The next day we hit up the National Museum of Denmark, a huge arts and sciences museum with a focus on Danish natural history. We decided to let the place play to its strengths -- which was not a mistake, as it turned out, because holy shit did they have hell of awesome artifacts. I'm not gonna lie, most of what I read didn't stick, but the sheer number of objects (and honest-to-god preserved human bodies) on display was staggering -- and made possible by the unique ecological features of Northern Europe (bogs) and the convenient cultural traditions of early civilizations in the area (throw everything into the bog). They had fragments of weapons and jewelry and combinations of the two, like the circular metal "belt ornaments" that were apparently never not in style, arrayed chronologically, room after room, for hundreds of years. There were entire vehicles (a chariot, a warship) that had been retrieved from the bogs with their cargo and drivers intact. There were material records of military victories (plundered loot) and defeats (trash left behind by invading armies), births, deaths. It was truly a thing to behold.
My sister met us again later and took us on a ride on the metro (fast, clean, nearly silent) under the Havnebadet to Christianshavn where we took a walk through the "Free City" of Christiania. Christiania's a kind of large-scale punkhouse / squat that occupies about three square city blocks, primarily including some big warehouse-style buildings that used to be army barracks. They don't pay sales tax and they're semi-allowed to sell drugs in a big open-air market, but they also get raided periodically by the Copenhagen police. For that reason, among others, the denizens of Christiania are extremely sensitive about picture-taking. Not that I was particularly inclined to snap any photos: More power to 'em -- and I certainly don't claim any familiarity with the political issues at play -- but I wasn't aching to buy any of the dusty cubes of hashish being hawked on their main street, and everyone I saw there looked like Europe's ubiquitous version of The Eternal Hippie: Bad skin, dreadlocks, leather vest with no shirt. We walked around sloping green that leads from Christiania to the Stadsgraven, and then we left.
We were looking for a pastry to bring to my sister's host family when we met them for dinner that evening. Left to my own devices I might have brought Danishes, or as they call them in Denmark, wienerbrød. My American readers will understand when I say that I've always thought of Danishes as the pastry of last resort -- soggy; sticky in a bad way; filled with sugary, translucent goo. I shouldn't be surprised that "real" Danishes are a whole different story. They're better in every possible way. I could eat a dozen of them in a sitting. I had at least three of them a day every day we were in Copenhagen. Luckily my sister pointed out that bringing wienerbrød to Danes would be coals to, well, you know. So we settled on some kind of fruit tart. It was fine. Gift in tow, we walked along the banks of the canal until we came to the Royal Library of Copenhagen, which is also known as The Black Diamond, on account of the formidable angle of the black glass that forms the exterior of the "new" part of the library. There's an "old" wood-and-brick library in there, too, partially enveloped by the newer building, the way Olin Library at old Wes. U is, and we spent some time sitting there and catching our breath.
That evening we made the trip out to the suburbs for dinner. My sister's hosts were gracious and charming, and their house was full of light and artwork they'd made themselves. Although it was almost June, it was still pretty chilly out, and yet their garden was full of fruit and flowers. They even had a lemon tree with, I noted with a twinge of envy, actual lemons dangling from its branches. "Let it experience a frost," suggested my sister's host father, when I complained that my tree was barren. They had a very cute and friendly dog, a kind of Basset Hound, I think, named Nukka, who had something wrong with her butt or genitals. She kept scooting her rear parts around on the patio flagstones.
Friday we struck out on our own. We wanted to go see visit the ruins of Christiansborg Castle, in all of its incarnations -- the castle and the structures that preceded / succeeded were burned and destroyed several times over, and each time the new buildings were built on top. The entrance to the museum is by the Danish parliament building and it took us some time to distinguish the two. In the process, we accidentally wandered inside what turned out to be the royal stables. I'm not sure if we were supposed to be there. There were no attendants, there was no signage, just midday sun streaming through the small windows above the horses' pens and lighting up a sea of dust motes. We walked up and down the central corridor, looking in on the giant, silent horses. Some of them seemed friendly and put their noses over the bars to be petted, others kept to the backs of their pens and chomped hay. Getting to touch enormous horses almost overshadowed the castle ruins, but the site was pretty amazing. Your ticket bought you entry via a small and unadorned hatchway to what felt like a raw archaeological dig. The centerpiece of the site was the set of original stone fortifications (plus wells, ovens, shit shutes) from Absalon's Castle, the structure that became Christianborg. And there were artifacts, structural bits, and things to read about the first two versions of the palace that were destroyed by fire, both times by poorly-designed stoves.
We followed that up with a guided tour of the canals. It was very relaxing, bobbing up and down in the boat, staring up at the fronts narrow, pastel-colored homes that lined the canal. It was so relaxing that I fell asleep a little bit.
And as I think is often the case, we found one of the coolest things on the last day of our trip. We'd been resistant to the idea of visiting Tivoli Gardens, the city block-sized theme park that was around the corner from our hotel, in part because it was pretty darn expensive, but also because we didn't think it had anything to offer us. We could see a couple of the rides from our hotel room window -- a ferris wheel and something that looked like an oil derrick -- but walking by the place it just looked like a park, albeit one that cost the equivalent of $25 to enjoy. Nonetheless, on Friday night we yielded to the suggestions of all the people who told us to do it. Tivoli Gardens is kind of what it sounds like, a theme park in the classical mode, part technological wonder; part manicured, private green-space. At the center of the park, there was a big open space with a stage, and it was packed with people, thousands of them. There was a show going on! From what I could tell it was the northern European Justin Timberlake -- a dude wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, and sneakers singing and dancing around the stage. We couldn't understand a word of it, but the Danes were going apeshit for him, so much so that the rest of the park was almost empty. We were too chicken to ride the rides, which promised stomach-churning levels of inertia, but we continued to explore the park, clomping across footbridges, ducking into doorways, and poking around the hedges. Some of the regions of the park seemed geographically themed: There was an orientalist fantasy version of the far east -- the Dragon Boat lake, all pagoda and gold filigree; and the middle east was represented, too, I think, by an enormous minaret-bedecked building that housed a restaurant and a dance club. There was no U.S.A. Just as well -- we were on our way back in the morning.
The last (and first) time I went to Europe was three years ago. At the time, I was getting through a bit of a rough patch in my life and had resolved to just kind of throw myself into the trip and try to have an adventure. I'd brought my iPod with me and I was listening to the Pogues album Tom'd just bought me: Their first, Red Roses For Me. I kept listening to the song "Streams Of Whiskey," and it became kind of emblematic of the trip for me -- not insofar as I drank much whiskey, mind you (it was more of a wine-and-Unicum kind of holiday) but in Shane MacGowan's stoic disregard for misery. There's a video for that song where he's dancing a kind of jig amidst the ruined bricks of a factory, and that image is what I've come to associate with the sight of white clouds in an early morning sky out the window of an airplane and unfamiliar, better-than-average airport food.
The main leg of our flight was about seven hours, followed by an intra-European puddle-hopper. Nina was excited about our early morning stopover in Berlin -- more excited, even, than getting to see Denmark: She'd spent weeks asking her European and Internet friends about breakfast spots near the airport. Unfortunately, Air Berlin's second transatlantic flight (ever) was safe but not punctual, and so we got in to Tegel somewhat later than we'd planned. Breakfast, at least the way Nina'd sketched it out, was out of the question, but we still had a few hours to kill. The guy at the tourism desk suggested (in perfect English) that we hop the airport shuttle to the zoo. "I love it," he said. So that's what we did, arriving in the pale and early damp at gates of the Berlin Zoo. We bought our passes and embarked on a whirlwind tour. It being a weekday morning, the zoo was mostly empty. A Bengal Tiger lounged, yawning, in a hammock. Some reluctant elephants huddled in the chilly air near the entrance to their enclosure. We didn't linger too long in any one place except for the penguin tank, where some kids with the air of schoolchildren playing hooky -- which is what they were, maybe -- were gathered. The enclosure was structured such that there was barely any space between us and the penguins. They waddled and dove, oblivious to the fact that we were inches away. We could have almost grabbed one and run it into the end zone, American football-style. Anxious about making our connection, I resisted the urge. We rode back to the airport in an eerily-silent all-electric taxi, and then waited a good two hours for the flight to Copenhagen.
We were staying at the Saga Hotel, a sort of hostel / converted SRO about a block from the train station. Our room was small and we had to use a communal bathroom, but it was clean and had a picturesque of Colbjørnsensgade. And the food! We got a free breakfast every morning, which we could assemble ourselves from a regenerating array of breads, liverwurst, cheese, jam, granola, and yogurt. All mixed together -- which you would think would be gross but was actually delicious.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was drizzling and chilly when we got into the central Copenhagen rail station. We were exhausted, so before getting in touch with my sister we lay down for a little nap. It was getting dark by the time were rested and managed to get Nina's GSM phone working. We made plans to meet up with my sister the next day and asked what we should do to occupy ourselves in the interim. "Well," she said, "you could go to Strøget." It was thus that we learned some of our first lessons about Denmark. Strøget is sort of the main drag in Copenhagen, maybe the equivalent of Broadway or Madison Ave. in terms of its retail offerings. They've got Gucci and McDonald's franchises, but not much of anything, you know, interesting. Ultimately we stepped inside of one of the oddly ubiquitous 7-11s, which was were we learned another lesson about Denmark: Danes love 7-11s, and 7-11s in Denmark are actually high-end gourmet delis, with more in common with, say, a Dean & Deluca than with, well, a 7-11. We bought some thin, dark bread, some pre-sliced cheese, and some cured sausage, but that nearly used up our allotment of kroners for the day. It started to rain hard. We retreated to the safety of our room and watched Danish TV while making gringo smørrebrød. It got late, but I wasn't sleepy, and I was hungry but didn't want to eat any more salami. So I dragged Nina out of bed and hit Strøget again. My sister'd recommended falafel as a meal for a traveler on a budget and since every other place in town shut its doors at 9 o'clock, we wound up sitting at a table at Strogshawarma on Frederiksberggade. I shit you not when I tell you that they had the best falafel I've ever had. It was spicy and aromatic and weird, babies, like they'd tossed it in a bunch of cumin and cinnamon and god knows what else. Take a note, Maoz. Copenhagen has the ill falafel.
The next day the rain was gone. My sister met us at the hotel and took us on a walk through Copenhagen. Our first stop was at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, where we sat on a bench drinking (in public!) the cans of beer she'd brought us, as well as some funny little cured cocktail weenie sausages and these delicious chocolate-covered marshmallow candies unfortunately named Skum Bananer. After we ate, she walked us back towards the center of Copenhagen, to the Radhuspladsen, the big plaza where Stroeg begins. There's a big bronze fountain there, corroded blue-green, with a statue of a bull fighting a sea dragon as its centerpiece. We spent a long time admiring it and taking pictures from different angles, in part because of how grotesque it was -- the bulging eyes of both combatants, the dragon's spiraling tail. It wasn't easy to see where the bull ended and the dragon began. My sister dropped us off there to go finish up her exams, and we made our way to the Dansk Design Museet, the Danish design museum. They had two exhibits, one on the top floor about encouraging sustainability through design, and a permanent installation in the basement that traced the emergence and evolution of Danish design as distinct among other design traditions. For each decade of the 20th century, they had objects that characterized the design philosophy of the period; the zeitgeist via chairs, phones, and urinary catheters. What they didn't have, a little frustratingly, was any frame for people like me who are a little shaky on what "design" is in the first place. Maybe it's like poetry: If an aspect of an object cues the user that a designer was at work, well, then, that's design.
The next day we hit up the National Museum of Denmark, a huge arts and sciences museum with a focus on Danish natural history. We decided to let the place play to its strengths -- which was not a mistake, as it turned out, because holy shit did they have hell of awesome artifacts. I'm not gonna lie, most of what I read didn't stick, but the sheer number of objects (and honest-to-god preserved human bodies) on display was staggering -- and made possible by the unique ecological features of Northern Europe (bogs) and the convenient cultural traditions of early civilizations in the area (throw everything into the bog). They had fragments of weapons and jewelry and combinations of the two, like the circular metal "belt ornaments" that were apparently never not in style, arrayed chronologically, room after room, for hundreds of years. There were entire vehicles (a chariot, a warship) that had been retrieved from the bogs with their cargo and drivers intact. There were material records of military victories (plundered loot) and defeats (trash left behind by invading armies), births, deaths. It was truly a thing to behold.
My sister met us again later and took us on a ride on the metro (fast, clean, nearly silent) under the Havnebadet to Christianshavn where we took a walk through the "Free City" of Christiania. Christiania's a kind of large-scale punkhouse / squat that occupies about three square city blocks, primarily including some big warehouse-style buildings that used to be army barracks. They don't pay sales tax and they're semi-allowed to sell drugs in a big open-air market, but they also get raided periodically by the Copenhagen police. For that reason, among others, the denizens of Christiania are extremely sensitive about picture-taking. Not that I was particularly inclined to snap any photos: More power to 'em -- and I certainly don't claim any familiarity with the political issues at play -- but I wasn't aching to buy any of the dusty cubes of hashish being hawked on their main street, and everyone I saw there looked like Europe's ubiquitous version of The Eternal Hippie: Bad skin, dreadlocks, leather vest with no shirt. We walked around sloping green that leads from Christiania to the Stadsgraven, and then we left.
We were looking for a pastry to bring to my sister's host family when we met them for dinner that evening. Left to my own devices I might have brought Danishes, or as they call them in Denmark, wienerbrød. My American readers will understand when I say that I've always thought of Danishes as the pastry of last resort -- soggy; sticky in a bad way; filled with sugary, translucent goo. I shouldn't be surprised that "real" Danishes are a whole different story. They're better in every possible way. I could eat a dozen of them in a sitting. I had at least three of them a day every day we were in Copenhagen. Luckily my sister pointed out that bringing wienerbrød to Danes would be coals to, well, you know. So we settled on some kind of fruit tart. It was fine. Gift in tow, we walked along the banks of the canal until we came to the Royal Library of Copenhagen, which is also known as The Black Diamond, on account of the formidable angle of the black glass that forms the exterior of the "new" part of the library. There's an "old" wood-and-brick library in there, too, partially enveloped by the newer building, the way Olin Library at old Wes. U is, and we spent some time sitting there and catching our breath.
That evening we made the trip out to the suburbs for dinner. My sister's hosts were gracious and charming, and their house was full of light and artwork they'd made themselves. Although it was almost June, it was still pretty chilly out, and yet their garden was full of fruit and flowers. They even had a lemon tree with, I noted with a twinge of envy, actual lemons dangling from its branches. "Let it experience a frost," suggested my sister's host father, when I complained that my tree was barren. They had a very cute and friendly dog, a kind of Basset Hound, I think, named Nukka, who had something wrong with her butt or genitals. She kept scooting her rear parts around on the patio flagstones.
Friday we struck out on our own. We wanted to go see visit the ruins of Christiansborg Castle, in all of its incarnations -- the castle and the structures that preceded / succeeded were burned and destroyed several times over, and each time the new buildings were built on top. The entrance to the museum is by the Danish parliament building and it took us some time to distinguish the two. In the process, we accidentally wandered inside what turned out to be the royal stables. I'm not sure if we were supposed to be there. There were no attendants, there was no signage, just midday sun streaming through the small windows above the horses' pens and lighting up a sea of dust motes. We walked up and down the central corridor, looking in on the giant, silent horses. Some of them seemed friendly and put their noses over the bars to be petted, others kept to the backs of their pens and chomped hay. Getting to touch enormous horses almost overshadowed the castle ruins, but the site was pretty amazing. Your ticket bought you entry via a small and unadorned hatchway to what felt like a raw archaeological dig. The centerpiece of the site was the set of original stone fortifications (plus wells, ovens, shit shutes) from Absalon's Castle, the structure that became Christianborg. And there were artifacts, structural bits, and things to read about the first two versions of the palace that were destroyed by fire, both times by poorly-designed stoves.
We followed that up with a guided tour of the canals. It was very relaxing, bobbing up and down in the boat, staring up at the fronts narrow, pastel-colored homes that lined the canal. It was so relaxing that I fell asleep a little bit.
And as I think is often the case, we found one of the coolest things on the last day of our trip. We'd been resistant to the idea of visiting Tivoli Gardens, the city block-sized theme park that was around the corner from our hotel, in part because it was pretty darn expensive, but also because we didn't think it had anything to offer us. We could see a couple of the rides from our hotel room window -- a ferris wheel and something that looked like an oil derrick -- but walking by the place it just looked like a park, albeit one that cost the equivalent of $25 to enjoy. Nonetheless, on Friday night we yielded to the suggestions of all the people who told us to do it. Tivoli Gardens is kind of what it sounds like, a theme park in the classical mode, part technological wonder; part manicured, private green-space. At the center of the park, there was a big open space with a stage, and it was packed with people, thousands of them. There was a show going on! From what I could tell it was the northern European Justin Timberlake -- a dude wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, and sneakers singing and dancing around the stage. We couldn't understand a word of it, but the Danes were going apeshit for him, so much so that the rest of the park was almost empty. We were too chicken to ride the rides, which promised stomach-churning levels of inertia, but we continued to explore the park, clomping across footbridges, ducking into doorways, and poking around the hedges. Some of the regions of the park seemed geographically themed: There was an orientalist fantasy version of the far east -- the Dragon Boat lake, all pagoda and gold filigree; and the middle east was represented, too, I think, by an enormous minaret-bedecked building that housed a restaurant and a dance club. There was no U.S.A. Just as well -- we were on our way back in the morning.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Lilacs
April was not kind to me, babies.
I started off the month by getting a ticket from the police for drinking a beer on a subway platform on a post-rehearsal Friday night. Lest you think, dear reader, that your author is a sad old boozehound who can't forebear to drink for, like, the paltry hour and a fucking half it takes to get from the "practice hole" at St. Mary's down to Park Slope, well... that's mostly not true. I actually wasn't in the mood, per se, and so it was at Chris' urging ("Do it, f-----") that we bought our Miller High Life tall boys at Great Food and assumed our customary subway drinking position looking out towards the West Side Highway and the Hudson River from the dark and abandoned end of the downtown platform at 125th St. Except it wasn't abandoned that night -- there was a shifty-looking white guy with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down over his head kind of weaving back and forth by the garbage enclosure. "Junkie," I thought, but when we opened our beers and started pulling from them, he stiffened up, walked over, and turned a flashlight on us. "Can I see some I.D., please?" he asked with a slightly Eastern European accent.
"Oh, shit," said Chris. "I'm sorry, Jules."
I didn't really mind. It was actually kind of exciting. The cops (about five of them swarmed up) could not have been nicer to us. They even let us finish our beers -- nay, insisted, like a father who'd caught his son smoking, maybe. ("You bought 'em, you might as well drink 'em. ...No, not in front of us. Go on, turn around and do it.") By the time I got home, though, I'd started to feel pretty embarrassed. "I'm a criminal!" I told Nina. In response she listed all the people we know who've been "busted" for the same infraction. Nonetheless, I wrote the City a check for my shameful $10 that same night and dropped it in the mail on Saturday.
Then there was the bout of food poisoning I picked up at Uncle Moe's of all places. One moment I'm enjoying my standard Watsonville burrito with spinach, pozole, and marinatesd mushroom (Moe's has the best in the biz) -- next thing I know I'm running a temperature of a hundren and two interleaved with some serious sweats; and, disgustingly, pulling a Spud (Trainspotting) the next morning.
And to top it all off, at the end of the month Nina and I came down with a... condition that Tom describes rather aptly as "apartment AIDS," and which I think I'm going to decline to discuss further just right now. I don't know. It's a real drag, to be sure.
That is not to say there were no bright spots.
The day I was stricken with the shits was the same day Bel Argosy had a meeting with a promoter who'd seen and liked the band at a show we played in Williamsburg. His name is Cenk, and he and his business partner have a little office in a funny building on 5th Ave. overlooking 27th St. that looks like it used to be full of fabric cutters and suspenders salesmen. He's got a lot of band friends in common with us, and has pledged to book us at all the hip juke joints the kids like to "hang out" at.
And Bel Argosy played three shows last month, all of which came off wonderfully. We did another well-attended set (my parents came!) at Otto's Shrunken Head, which has kind of become a relaxing Monday-night social thing for me instead of a stressful command performance: I leave work early, lugging whatever equipment I need down to 14th St., give a nod to the bartender (who does not nod back) and set stuff up in the abandoned back room. Beau eats dumplings and I read a book or mess around until Billy and Chris show up. We usually have time to talk about the set and do a sound check well in advance of the audience showing up. It's really nice, and this month's show was no exception.
On the 16th we played a show in Williamsburg with Beau's side band, Robot Princess, and a band called Majuscules we'd met through one of the Robot Princess guys. It was at a bar called K & M in Williamsburg that didn't have a stage but which turned over half the bar to us. It was pouring rain on and off that night, and we had to dash for cover as we lugged drum equipment from the car Dan was driving to and from the MiniBoone / Robot Princess practice space.
Majuscules plays these moody, psychedelic metal songs, and they've got a killer drummer (whose name is also Julian). They also happen to be super nice guys, and luckily for us they took a shine to Bel Argosy and invited us to play a slot on a bill with them at Lit Lounge on the 28th, which also went pretty well. There was a junkie outside Lit who was weaving up and down the block around groups of pedestrians, gesturing at no one in particular with what looked to be an umbrella with almost all of the ribs removed. "Rrrrnh. Rrrrnh!" Once inside and downstairs, Beau and I sat uneasily on a couple of Lit's scuzzy make-out couches while we waited for our bandmates and watched Majuscules set up and do their sound check. There was a separate bill that evening with another act, a heavy metal band called Brighter Than 1000 Suns, who were on a tour of some kind, and they had roadies (!) loading their stuff into the back room. They'd brought an insane amount of their own gear, and it was funny to compare their equipment -- custom light, custom PAs and drum heads with stencils of the band's logo -- with ours: Guitar amp with temporary I.D. stickers from Billy's college-summer temp jobs, rattly snare drum covered in electrical tape.
We finished our set (video here) and Beau and I headed out as Brighter Than 1000 Suns started theirs, complete with a lighting intro. Their lead singer, a husky-voiced metal chick, hollered, "Hey, New York City! Are you ready to hear some really loud music?!"
I started off the month by getting a ticket from the police for drinking a beer on a subway platform on a post-rehearsal Friday night. Lest you think, dear reader, that your author is a sad old boozehound who can't forebear to drink for, like, the paltry hour and a fucking half it takes to get from the "practice hole" at St. Mary's down to Park Slope, well... that's mostly not true. I actually wasn't in the mood, per se, and so it was at Chris' urging ("Do it, f-----") that we bought our Miller High Life tall boys at Great Food and assumed our customary subway drinking position looking out towards the West Side Highway and the Hudson River from the dark and abandoned end of the downtown platform at 125th St. Except it wasn't abandoned that night -- there was a shifty-looking white guy with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down over his head kind of weaving back and forth by the garbage enclosure. "Junkie," I thought, but when we opened our beers and started pulling from them, he stiffened up, walked over, and turned a flashlight on us. "Can I see some I.D., please?" he asked with a slightly Eastern European accent.
"Oh, shit," said Chris. "I'm sorry, Jules."
I didn't really mind. It was actually kind of exciting. The cops (about five of them swarmed up) could not have been nicer to us. They even let us finish our beers -- nay, insisted, like a father who'd caught his son smoking, maybe. ("You bought 'em, you might as well drink 'em. ...No, not in front of us. Go on, turn around and do it.") By the time I got home, though, I'd started to feel pretty embarrassed. "I'm a criminal!" I told Nina. In response she listed all the people we know who've been "busted" for the same infraction. Nonetheless, I wrote the City a check for my shameful $10 that same night and dropped it in the mail on Saturday.
Then there was the bout of food poisoning I picked up at Uncle Moe's of all places. One moment I'm enjoying my standard Watsonville burrito with spinach, pozole, and marinatesd mushroom (Moe's has the best in the biz) -- next thing I know I'm running a temperature of a hundren and two interleaved with some serious sweats; and, disgustingly, pulling a Spud (Trainspotting) the next morning.
And to top it all off, at the end of the month Nina and I came down with a... condition that Tom describes rather aptly as "apartment AIDS," and which I think I'm going to decline to discuss further just right now. I don't know. It's a real drag, to be sure.
That is not to say there were no bright spots.
The day I was stricken with the shits was the same day Bel Argosy had a meeting with a promoter who'd seen and liked the band at a show we played in Williamsburg. His name is Cenk, and he and his business partner have a little office in a funny building on 5th Ave. overlooking 27th St. that looks like it used to be full of fabric cutters and suspenders salesmen. He's got a lot of band friends in common with us, and has pledged to book us at all the hip juke joints the kids like to "hang out" at.
And Bel Argosy played three shows last month, all of which came off wonderfully. We did another well-attended set (my parents came!) at Otto's Shrunken Head, which has kind of become a relaxing Monday-night social thing for me instead of a stressful command performance: I leave work early, lugging whatever equipment I need down to 14th St., give a nod to the bartender (who does not nod back) and set stuff up in the abandoned back room. Beau eats dumplings and I read a book or mess around until Billy and Chris show up. We usually have time to talk about the set and do a sound check well in advance of the audience showing up. It's really nice, and this month's show was no exception.
On the 16th we played a show in Williamsburg with Beau's side band, Robot Princess, and a band called Majuscules we'd met through one of the Robot Princess guys. It was at a bar called K & M in Williamsburg that didn't have a stage but which turned over half the bar to us. It was pouring rain on and off that night, and we had to dash for cover as we lugged drum equipment from the car Dan was driving to and from the MiniBoone / Robot Princess practice space.
Majuscules plays these moody, psychedelic metal songs, and they've got a killer drummer (whose name is also Julian). They also happen to be super nice guys, and luckily for us they took a shine to Bel Argosy and invited us to play a slot on a bill with them at Lit Lounge on the 28th, which also went pretty well. There was a junkie outside Lit who was weaving up and down the block around groups of pedestrians, gesturing at no one in particular with what looked to be an umbrella with almost all of the ribs removed. "Rrrrnh. Rrrrnh!" Once inside and downstairs, Beau and I sat uneasily on a couple of Lit's scuzzy make-out couches while we waited for our bandmates and watched Majuscules set up and do their sound check. There was a separate bill that evening with another act, a heavy metal band called Brighter Than 1000 Suns, who were on a tour of some kind, and they had roadies (!) loading their stuff into the back room. They'd brought an insane amount of their own gear, and it was funny to compare their equipment -- custom light, custom PAs and drum heads with stencils of the band's logo -- with ours: Guitar amp with temporary I.D. stickers from Billy's college-summer temp jobs, rattly snare drum covered in electrical tape.
We finished our set (video here) and Beau and I headed out as Brighter Than 1000 Suns started theirs, complete with a lighting intro. Their lead singer, a husky-voiced metal chick, hollered, "Hey, New York City! Are you ready to hear some really loud music?!"
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Do Ya
Folks, I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Back in February, at Nina's birthday party at Pacific Standard, Evan and Tom and I got to talking about old-fashioned, pen-and-paper role-playing games, and how one might go explaining their appeal to someone who'd never played. "It's just talking," we said to Nina and Winnie, whose skepticism had motivated our conversation. "Talking and drinking beer." "But how do you win?" asked Nina. So Evan, who'd extolled the dry virtues of the classic Dungeons & Dragons first edition ruleset, located some PDFs of the Player's Handbook, as well as a helpful, "open source" D&D play-alike ruleset called OSRIC, which refines the rules and clarifies some of the more abstruse language in the original materials. He also prepared a first edition campaign for us all to play together, and at the beginning of March, we started rolling our characters. Our initial contingent was me, Nina, Winnie, and Tom. I knew I wanted to try playing a less, you know, physical character, and so I created Camphor Earwig, a forktongue (as Evan described him) and corrupt priest who'd been expelled from his order for his misdeeds and who now worshipped Syrul, goddess of lies and malice. Tom also went the Neutral Evil route, and rolled Florian Aethelred D'Ascoyne IV, a craven, effete "magic user" with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the dark arts. Nina was pretty sure from the outset that she wanted to play a half-orc, and she rolled one and made him dual-classed, a fighter-thief. She named him, to her credit against my urging, Stinkus Pinkus. Winnie created Pinkie Underbrush, a greedy little gnome assassin, small enough to fit in a sack. Not a Lawful one among us, nor a Good. For understandable reasons, then, Evan had us start by being released from the same town jail in the village of Hochen. In the slightly synthetic way common to the outset of most campaigns, we agreed to travel together to the nearby town of Orlane, to investigate some food shortages, disappearances, and other strange goings-on -- and, for Camphor, the possibility of lining his pockets.
The following adventures were experienced over the course of several weeks and with the help of several large bottles of Mountain Dew, Fresca, and fancy Japanese tea; several big bags of Doritos (various powdery flavors) and spicy potato chips; an assortment of theme-appropriate ales (Orkney's Skull Splitter, Rogue's Dead Guy, Wychwood's Hobgoblin); and various and sundry candies and cookies -- the consumption of all of which routinely left us feeling physically ill after a six-plus hour play session.
But it's fun, babies! Like I said, we're using the first edition rules, the design for which I guess was all about modeling the world as formally and as exhaustively as possible while subsidizing the manufacture of oddly-shaped dice. (And I did buy several new four-, eight-, and ten-siders at Blatt Billiards for the occasion.) And there is something comforting about having that layer of abstraction to broker your interactions with the universe. It certainly makes it easier, as a real-life mush-mouth, to play a smooth-talking villain; the dice-roll an effective gloss on my feeble description of my character's attempt to hoodwink an NPC. Evan is an able Dungeon Master, able to improvise when we go beyond the source material, and patient when we're too obtuse to grasp the clues that are in front of our faces. Sometimes he asks us to demonstrate the actions we're attempting: "I'm going to vault the wall and jump down on the guard with my dagger out," says Winnie. "Role-play it for me," he says.
After emerging from a dark and possibly haunted forest, we reached the outskirts of Orlane, and approached a small dairy farm, the proprietor of which directed us to the town center and the Inn of the Slumbering Serpent. (There was an alternative, competing venue, he told us -- The Golden Grain -- but it wasn't as... nice.) He also gave us a few pointers on the lay of the town: Where the local hermit was holed up; where a group of elves that had recently arrived in town was staying; blacksmith; general store; temple of Merikka (the local goddess of the harvest). We thanked him and made our way to the Slumbering Serpent, where we attempted to allay the suspicions of some local workmen dining at the bar by buying them a round. We also bought some meals for ourselves and a few bottles of the inn's renowned, locally-source wine. (Evan asked us to roll a perception check, after which he solemnly informed us, "You believe it is some of the best wine you have ever tasted.")
We negotiated the price of our rooms with the innkeeper -- who also warned us off the Golden Grain, thus further piquing our interest -- and then set out for an evening walk across the river to the temple. It's a big imposing building surrounded by high walls and a moat. By the time we arrived, however, the gates were locked. We managed to rouse a guard, who told us to come back in the morning. A wolf howled ominously somewhere on the grounds. "Fuck it," we said. "Let's go to the Golden Grain." We walked back across town and arrived at the Grain well after dark. Inside, sitting at the bar, we met a hard case with an ugly face who didn't much seem to like us or our questions, so we ordered some ale and found our own table. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the barkeep wasn't on our side either: As soon as we brought the ale to our lips, we started feeling funny. The others were able shake it off, but Camphor's head hit the table; I was out. Which meant I couldn't take part in the ensuing melee, in which our party slew the mysterious patron, the barkeep, and almost the cook, before escaping with my unconscious body slung over Stinkus' back. We avoided a potential rout: The staff could have followed us down the road, but chose not to, strangely.
I was allowed to sleep off the effects of my adulterated booze in our rooms at the Serpent. Florian, rising early, went downstairs to the common area of the inn, where he ran into a well-intentioned (L/G) but deeply unpleasant (CH:7) dwarf-for-hire, Euler Eigenkett, played by a late-to-the-table Ted. (...Who, last time we did this, about ten years ago, played a character named Dirac. What's it going to be next time -- Gauss von Erdős?) Together they made the trek out to the elm grove on the outskirts of town to pay a visit to Ramne the hermit. Old Ramne turned out to be a bit hard of hearing and clearly preferred the company of his pet weasel Whiskers to that of a pair of itinerant fortune-seekers -- especially Florian, who made no secret of his craving for some hands-on access to Ramne's cache of magical artifacts. But he also happened to be the most forthright dude we'd dealt with so far, not only confirming the disappearances, harvest shortages, and a conspiracy at work within the town but suggesting that the temple of Merikka might bear a closer look. He also pointed out that as a bit of an outsider to the affairs of the town, his investigative capabilities were limited. He suggested that we bring any concrete proof of wrongdoing to the mayor.
So Florian and Euler headed back into town an met the mayor, who shared Ramne's suspicions, although he didn't much care for Ramne himself. Also like Ramne, he also tried to pass the buck, claiming that he was too short on resources to get to the bottom of the trouble himself. He said he had agents hard at work on uprooting the conspirators, though. The human and the dwarf pressed him harder -- where could our party best direct our efforts? Reluctantly, he fingered the blacksmith and the storekeep of the general store, who, he said, had been acting strangely of late. The two thanked the Mayor and returned to the Slumbering Serpent.
Euler was introduced to the rest of us, meeting with varying levels of warmth (Camphor was unimpressed; Pinkie Underbrush's pecuniary anxiety bubbled briefly to the surface -- "Is he gonna get an equal share of the treasure?"), and the party resolved to make a return visit to the temple of Merikka. We made the trip, crossed the moat, and found the temple open to worshippers. We asked to meet with the people in charge, and waited, some of us greedily eying an enormous jade slab at the far end of the large antechamber, for our granted audience with the high priestess, Misha Devi. Although easy on the eyes, she wasn't forthcoming when it came to the disappearances in the town -- refusing to acknowledge them at all, really. We left frustrated, but Camphor doubled back. "I'm gonna pledge her cult," I told Evan. "Role-play it out," he said. "Look," I whispered to Evan-as-Misha. "I know about the... thing. I'm down for it. I want in." He had me a roll a d20. Misha acquiesced. If Camphor was serious, she said, he could rendezvous with her agents at the river that night. Naturally, he'd have to give the appropriate sign. "Oh, of course," I said. "Of course I know what that is."
We had the rest of the day to dispose of as we wished, so we decided to take the Mayor up on his suggestion and visit the blacksmith and the general store, splitting into two groups, dropping off Florian and Pinkie at the forge while the rest of us continued down the road. True to the Mayor's description, the blacksmith was in some kind of fugue state, wild-eyed and unresponsive, his forge full of shoddy, half-finished work, the two bellows-boys cringing and wary. Pinkie baited him with a hypothetical order for some chairs she'd like to have built, but it was a flip comment from Florian that put him into a psychotic fury. He grabbed his hammer and drove them running from the the forge, seemingly intent upon bludgeoning them in the road, his assistants trailing behind (perhaps with the idea to restrain him). The mage and the gnome ran to catch up with the other members of the party, who became aware of the commotion and turned to join the ensuing scuffle -- as did the storekeep and his family. Camphor swung his mace (to no effect); Stinkus attacked with his short sword; Pinkie threw daggers (taking out a bellows-boy); but it was Euler who stole the show, cleaving the ravening smith's head from his shoulders with a single (natural 20!) swing of his axe. The other hostiles, taken aback by this bloody display of our martial prowess, were easy to kill or subdue, leaving us panting and victorious in the red chaos of the road.
Time passes.
As the title of this post might suggest to you, I have committed myself to making it through Stephen King's backpack-breaking heptalogy. I'm doing this largely because I got it into my head that pretty much everyone had read them but me. Indeed, several co-workers of mine, even ones that I think of as being more, uh, literate have approached me to discuss, seeing one volume or another on my desk. One of the office's security guards saw me at the elevators in the lobby with Wizard and Glass in my hands.
Back in February, at Nina's birthday party at Pacific Standard, Evan and Tom and I got to talking about old-fashioned, pen-and-paper role-playing games, and how one might go explaining their appeal to someone who'd never played. "It's just talking," we said to Nina and Winnie, whose skepticism had motivated our conversation. "Talking and drinking beer." "But how do you win?" asked Nina. So Evan, who'd extolled the dry virtues of the classic Dungeons & Dragons first edition ruleset, located some PDFs of the Player's Handbook, as well as a helpful, "open source" D&D play-alike ruleset called OSRIC, which refines the rules and clarifies some of the more abstruse language in the original materials. He also prepared a first edition campaign for us all to play together, and at the beginning of March, we started rolling our characters. Our initial contingent was me, Nina, Winnie, and Tom. I knew I wanted to try playing a less, you know, physical character, and so I created Camphor Earwig, a forktongue (as Evan described him) and corrupt priest who'd been expelled from his order for his misdeeds and who now worshipped Syrul, goddess of lies and malice. Tom also went the Neutral Evil route, and rolled Florian Aethelred D'Ascoyne IV, a craven, effete "magic user" with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the dark arts. Nina was pretty sure from the outset that she wanted to play a half-orc, and she rolled one and made him dual-classed, a fighter-thief. She named him, to her credit against my urging, Stinkus Pinkus. Winnie created Pinkie Underbrush, a greedy little gnome assassin, small enough to fit in a sack. Not a Lawful one among us, nor a Good. For understandable reasons, then, Evan had us start by being released from the same town jail in the village of Hochen. In the slightly synthetic way common to the outset of most campaigns, we agreed to travel together to the nearby town of Orlane, to investigate some food shortages, disappearances, and other strange goings-on -- and, for Camphor, the possibility of lining his pockets.
The following adventures were experienced over the course of several weeks and with the help of several large bottles of Mountain Dew, Fresca, and fancy Japanese tea; several big bags of Doritos (various powdery flavors) and spicy potato chips; an assortment of theme-appropriate ales (Orkney's Skull Splitter, Rogue's Dead Guy, Wychwood's Hobgoblin); and various and sundry candies and cookies -- the consumption of all of which routinely left us feeling physically ill after a six-plus hour play session.
But it's fun, babies! Like I said, we're using the first edition rules, the design for which I guess was all about modeling the world as formally and as exhaustively as possible while subsidizing the manufacture of oddly-shaped dice. (And I did buy several new four-, eight-, and ten-siders at Blatt Billiards for the occasion.) And there is something comforting about having that layer of abstraction to broker your interactions with the universe. It certainly makes it easier, as a real-life mush-mouth, to play a smooth-talking villain; the dice-roll an effective gloss on my feeble description of my character's attempt to hoodwink an NPC. Evan is an able Dungeon Master, able to improvise when we go beyond the source material, and patient when we're too obtuse to grasp the clues that are in front of our faces. Sometimes he asks us to demonstrate the actions we're attempting: "I'm going to vault the wall and jump down on the guard with my dagger out," says Winnie. "Role-play it for me," he says.
After emerging from a dark and possibly haunted forest, we reached the outskirts of Orlane, and approached a small dairy farm, the proprietor of which directed us to the town center and the Inn of the Slumbering Serpent. (There was an alternative, competing venue, he told us -- The Golden Grain -- but it wasn't as... nice.) He also gave us a few pointers on the lay of the town: Where the local hermit was holed up; where a group of elves that had recently arrived in town was staying; blacksmith; general store; temple of Merikka (the local goddess of the harvest). We thanked him and made our way to the Slumbering Serpent, where we attempted to allay the suspicions of some local workmen dining at the bar by buying them a round. We also bought some meals for ourselves and a few bottles of the inn's renowned, locally-source wine. (Evan asked us to roll a perception check, after which he solemnly informed us, "You believe it is some of the best wine you have ever tasted.")
We negotiated the price of our rooms with the innkeeper -- who also warned us off the Golden Grain, thus further piquing our interest -- and then set out for an evening walk across the river to the temple. It's a big imposing building surrounded by high walls and a moat. By the time we arrived, however, the gates were locked. We managed to rouse a guard, who told us to come back in the morning. A wolf howled ominously somewhere on the grounds. "Fuck it," we said. "Let's go to the Golden Grain." We walked back across town and arrived at the Grain well after dark. Inside, sitting at the bar, we met a hard case with an ugly face who didn't much seem to like us or our questions, so we ordered some ale and found our own table. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the barkeep wasn't on our side either: As soon as we brought the ale to our lips, we started feeling funny. The others were able shake it off, but Camphor's head hit the table; I was out. Which meant I couldn't take part in the ensuing melee, in which our party slew the mysterious patron, the barkeep, and almost the cook, before escaping with my unconscious body slung over Stinkus' back. We avoided a potential rout: The staff could have followed us down the road, but chose not to, strangely.
I was allowed to sleep off the effects of my adulterated booze in our rooms at the Serpent. Florian, rising early, went downstairs to the common area of the inn, where he ran into a well-intentioned (L/G) but deeply unpleasant (CH:7) dwarf-for-hire, Euler Eigenkett, played by a late-to-the-table Ted. (...Who, last time we did this, about ten years ago, played a character named Dirac. What's it going to be next time -- Gauss von Erdős?) Together they made the trek out to the elm grove on the outskirts of town to pay a visit to Ramne the hermit. Old Ramne turned out to be a bit hard of hearing and clearly preferred the company of his pet weasel Whiskers to that of a pair of itinerant fortune-seekers -- especially Florian, who made no secret of his craving for some hands-on access to Ramne's cache of magical artifacts. But he also happened to be the most forthright dude we'd dealt with so far, not only confirming the disappearances, harvest shortages, and a conspiracy at work within the town but suggesting that the temple of Merikka might bear a closer look. He also pointed out that as a bit of an outsider to the affairs of the town, his investigative capabilities were limited. He suggested that we bring any concrete proof of wrongdoing to the mayor.
So Florian and Euler headed back into town an met the mayor, who shared Ramne's suspicions, although he didn't much care for Ramne himself. Also like Ramne, he also tried to pass the buck, claiming that he was too short on resources to get to the bottom of the trouble himself. He said he had agents hard at work on uprooting the conspirators, though. The human and the dwarf pressed him harder -- where could our party best direct our efforts? Reluctantly, he fingered the blacksmith and the storekeep of the general store, who, he said, had been acting strangely of late. The two thanked the Mayor and returned to the Slumbering Serpent.
Euler was introduced to the rest of us, meeting with varying levels of warmth (Camphor was unimpressed; Pinkie Underbrush's pecuniary anxiety bubbled briefly to the surface -- "Is he gonna get an equal share of the treasure?"), and the party resolved to make a return visit to the temple of Merikka. We made the trip, crossed the moat, and found the temple open to worshippers. We asked to meet with the people in charge, and waited, some of us greedily eying an enormous jade slab at the far end of the large antechamber, for our granted audience with the high priestess, Misha Devi. Although easy on the eyes, she wasn't forthcoming when it came to the disappearances in the town -- refusing to acknowledge them at all, really. We left frustrated, but Camphor doubled back. "I'm gonna pledge her cult," I told Evan. "Role-play it out," he said. "Look," I whispered to Evan-as-Misha. "I know about the... thing. I'm down for it. I want in." He had me a roll a d20. Misha acquiesced. If Camphor was serious, she said, he could rendezvous with her agents at the river that night. Naturally, he'd have to give the appropriate sign. "Oh, of course," I said. "Of course I know what that is."
We had the rest of the day to dispose of as we wished, so we decided to take the Mayor up on his suggestion and visit the blacksmith and the general store, splitting into two groups, dropping off Florian and Pinkie at the forge while the rest of us continued down the road. True to the Mayor's description, the blacksmith was in some kind of fugue state, wild-eyed and unresponsive, his forge full of shoddy, half-finished work, the two bellows-boys cringing and wary. Pinkie baited him with a hypothetical order for some chairs she'd like to have built, but it was a flip comment from Florian that put him into a psychotic fury. He grabbed his hammer and drove them running from the the forge, seemingly intent upon bludgeoning them in the road, his assistants trailing behind (perhaps with the idea to restrain him). The mage and the gnome ran to catch up with the other members of the party, who became aware of the commotion and turned to join the ensuing scuffle -- as did the storekeep and his family. Camphor swung his mace (to no effect); Stinkus attacked with his short sword; Pinkie threw daggers (taking out a bellows-boy); but it was Euler who stole the show, cleaving the ravening smith's head from his shoulders with a single (natural 20!) swing of his axe. The other hostiles, taken aback by this bloody display of our martial prowess, were easy to kill or subdue, leaving us panting and victorious in the red chaos of the road.
Time passes.
As the title of this post might suggest to you, I have committed myself to making it through Stephen King's backpack-breaking heptalogy. I'm doing this largely because I got it into my head that pretty much everyone had read them but me. Indeed, several co-workers of mine, even ones that I think of as being more, uh, literate have approached me to discuss, seeing one volume or another on my desk. One of the office's security guards saw me at the elevators in the lobby with Wizard and Glass in my hands.
"The Dark Tower, right?" he said.So I wanted to find out what they were all about, even if, as I'd been warned, what they were about was pretty stupid. And it is -- and they are -- pretty silly. But I do admit to a degree of sincere admiration at the sheer ambition of the project: Imagine taking a half-baked high school daydream of a story (which is basically what he admits it started off as) and putting in the authorial effort to, you know, implement it in its entirety, which he does. And maybe it's the scale of the plot (Dude Saves The Whole Universe) that makes most of the characterization seem a bit flat or insufficiently empathetic. Or maybe it's just that Stephen King doesn't have the chops to write dialogue for a jive-talking double-amputee who's got multiple personalities. That's an awful lot of rope to give yourself for hangin'.
"Yep," I said. "You read 'em?"
"Yep," he said.
"All of them?"
"Oh yeah."
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A Hell of a Drug
I just got back from Boston, where I'd gone on my yearly pilgrimage to the Free Software Foundation's annual associate members meeting. Making it a one-day trip, as I do, can be a bit grueling, but as I may have mentioned before, part of the draw of attending for me is getting to spend eight or so uninterrupted hours with my laptop, working on a project of my choosing. The Acela's seat-local AC outlets are largely what makes that possible, though, and when I checked the Amtrak site on Friday, I did a double-take at the ticket prices: It was gonna cost me upwards of three hondo to enjoy decidedly spotty WiFi and rest my netbook on a glorified card table. So I resolved to tighten my belt and do it 2004 style -- that is to say, take the Chinatown bus. I set my alarm for 5:30; woke up at 5:15; stumbled out the door and down to the R station at Union St.; and made it to Canal St. by 6:15 AM. Unfortunately, the Google Maps location for Lucky Star Bus is just flat-out wrong, and I wasted enough time nosing around Bayard St. in the pre-dawn darkness that I ended up missing their 6:30 departure from Chrystie St. So I had to wait and take the 7:00 AM Fung-Wah instead. And that was not so bad -- the seats were actually comfier than I remembered them being, and the Dramamine I took knocked me out pretty quickly. So I didn't get any computer time in, but at least I was rested by the time we got into South Station bus terminal. ...Which is considerably less fancy than the Amtrak terminal, babies: A hobo slept on a bench across the way from a cartoonishly off-brand donut joint whose service door literally opened into the men's restroom... in which somebody had puked into one of the sinks. Whatever, man. I jam econo.
The meeting this year was a scaled-down version of the events they've had in years past, although they tried to gloss over the changes: For example, instead of the FSF hosting a GNU hackers meeting as part of the members meeting itself, they invited interested parties to get together informally ("in coffee shops") to work on projects. The wiki explained that the Foundation was planning something extra special for next year, but no one could tell me what that might be. They'd also moved things from Cambridge to Bunker Hill Community College, over on the Orange line of the T.
I arrived in the middle of Máirín Duffy's talk, which was about an educational program she'd designed (with sponsorship from Red Hat) to teach middle schoolers digital media design using Free tools; she'd been running it with a Massachusetts Girl Scouts troop and made her lesson plans (along with write-ups of her observations) available online. Her presentation elicited a lot of interest from the assembled nerds: People wanted to know whether she thought she'd created many converts to FLOSS. I was still pretty groggy at this point, but I recall her saying something about having graduates of her course assist in teaching it the next go-round, which sounds like success to me.
Matt Lee coordinated a round of lightning talks next; eager nerds queued at the stairs at the sides of the auditorium. Asheesh Laroia gave a truncated but inspiring version of a talk about successful strategies adopted by projects and user groups attempting to increase the diversity of their contributor base. He pointed out that isolation is self-reinforcing, and proposed that user groups adopt rules like the ones Jonathan Ames describes for orgies: You can show up if you're a dude, but you gotta bring ladies. James Vasile talked about a project dreamed up by Eben Moglen, a home networking appliance called FreedomBox that acts as a sort of federated social networking aggregator and privacy guard. Mary-Anne Wolf had some questions for the community about finding people capable of modifying the hardware and software component of electric wheelchairs, for the benefit of Arthur Torrey, who'd been injured and partially paralyzed in a recent accident.
Aside from some coffee and muffins, there wasn't any catering for the conference this year. The web site helpfully suggested that we investigate the strip mall across the street from BHCC; I followed Asheesh and his cadre over to a Papa Gino's, where we ran into Brad Kuhn and some other FSF people who generously shared with us some of the salty pizzas they'd ordered.
Richard Stallman's keynote was after lunch. As has been his habit for the past several years, he gave a kind of rambling talk that touched on a number of topics; he focused mostly on the ground he felt had been lost with regard to software running on mobile devices, and on the role the Internet had played in the recent uprisings in the Middle East. On the former, he was pessimistic, although he had some positive things to say about projects like the free Replicant, which has made a lot of technical progress recently.
Brad Kuhn gave the last talk of the afternoon, in which he gave a brief history of the FSF's operations from its inception to the present day, which was neat to have laid out explicitly, having spent . One thing he went into some detail on was the fact that for the first twelve years of its existence, the Foundation devoted a significant portion of its budget to funding developers to work on the GNU system. He popped up a slide with a list of names on it, of which I recognized several. But, for better or for worse, the FSF now concerns itself primarily with marketing and lobbying for Free Software, and with managing the, uh, "intellectual property" that has been assigned to it by developers. To that end, he explained, he'd helped the FSF go through the laborious process of establishing itself as a 501(c)(3) corporation, which, among other benefits, enabled it to raise funds much more effectively. The experience inspired him to create the Software Freedom Conservancy, which acts as an organizational proxy for independent software projects that want to reap the rewards of Tax-Exempt status but lack the time or expertise to go through with the filing process.
The Free Software awards this year went to Rob Savoye, who's certainly put in enough hours of debugging Flash media server wire traffic to deserve it; and to the Tor project. Hard to argue with that.
BHCC gave us the heave-ho at around 5 o'clock. Deb Nicholson and I exchanged contact info (she's no longer with the Foundation), although we were interrupted by RMS chewing out a star-struck fanboy ("For the last time, don't ask if you can take a picture with me! Either take the picture or don't take it!"). I managed to tag along with her, plus Thomas Dukleth and James Vasile, for dinner at a walk-up vegan Thai restaurant in Boston Chinatown called My Thai, which was really, really good -- the most convincing "fake meat" I've ever had, for whatever that's worth. We were joined by Jeanne Rasata and some other FSF people, including the two volunteers I'd met at HOPE last summer, Forest and Fizza. People actually remembered me, which was nice. It grew dark outside the large colonial windows of the restaurant; we talked about reading mail in Emacs and whether anybody posts on Usenet any more about topics that aren't related to Usenet itself (probably not).
And then I looked at my watch and it was almost 8 o'clock, meaning that I had to gun it back to South Station if I wanted to get back to NYC before 1 AM. I did plan to try to work on the way back, but I popped another Dramamine, and quickly wound up back in a pleasant but hard-to-shake twilight state. I tried to rally by listening to The Monitor in full on my iPod, which I'd found to be a potent shit-disturber having just purchased it when I made the trek last year, but no dice: I fell asleep in the middle of the fourteen-minute epic "The Battle of Hampton Roads." The guy in front of me was sitting lengthwise across two seats, staring intently out the window. He kept a napkin pressed to his mouth for the entirety of the trip, as if overcome with emotion or motion sickness. It was a strange sight to wake up to over and over again in the eerie half-light of the Lucky Star.
The meeting this year was a scaled-down version of the events they've had in years past, although they tried to gloss over the changes: For example, instead of the FSF hosting a GNU hackers meeting as part of the members meeting itself, they invited interested parties to get together informally ("in coffee shops") to work on projects. The wiki explained that the Foundation was planning something extra special for next year, but no one could tell me what that might be. They'd also moved things from Cambridge to Bunker Hill Community College, over on the Orange line of the T.
I arrived in the middle of Máirín Duffy's talk, which was about an educational program she'd designed (with sponsorship from Red Hat) to teach middle schoolers digital media design using Free tools; she'd been running it with a Massachusetts Girl Scouts troop and made her lesson plans (along with write-ups of her observations) available online. Her presentation elicited a lot of interest from the assembled nerds: People wanted to know whether she thought she'd created many converts to FLOSS. I was still pretty groggy at this point, but I recall her saying something about having graduates of her course assist in teaching it the next go-round, which sounds like success to me.
Matt Lee coordinated a round of lightning talks next; eager nerds queued at the stairs at the sides of the auditorium. Asheesh Laroia gave a truncated but inspiring version of a talk about successful strategies adopted by projects and user groups attempting to increase the diversity of their contributor base. He pointed out that isolation is self-reinforcing, and proposed that user groups adopt rules like the ones Jonathan Ames describes for orgies: You can show up if you're a dude, but you gotta bring ladies. James Vasile talked about a project dreamed up by Eben Moglen, a home networking appliance called FreedomBox that acts as a sort of federated social networking aggregator and privacy guard. Mary-Anne Wolf had some questions for the community about finding people capable of modifying the hardware and software component of electric wheelchairs, for the benefit of Arthur Torrey, who'd been injured and partially paralyzed in a recent accident.
Aside from some coffee and muffins, there wasn't any catering for the conference this year. The web site helpfully suggested that we investigate the strip mall across the street from BHCC; I followed Asheesh and his cadre over to a Papa Gino's, where we ran into Brad Kuhn and some other FSF people who generously shared with us some of the salty pizzas they'd ordered.
Richard Stallman's keynote was after lunch. As has been his habit for the past several years, he gave a kind of rambling talk that touched on a number of topics; he focused mostly on the ground he felt had been lost with regard to software running on mobile devices, and on the role the Internet had played in the recent uprisings in the Middle East. On the former, he was pessimistic, although he had some positive things to say about projects like the free Replicant, which has made a lot of technical progress recently.
"They've got it working on the HTC Dream, I think it's called," he said.On the latter topic, he was also pessimistic: "We took it for granted that it would be good for humanity because governments were not attacking it very hard," he said. "But the Internet may turn out to be a disaster for human rights." He also praised the actions of Anonymous in launching distributed denial of service attacks against the web sites of companies that agreed to help cut off funding from WikiLeaks, comparing them to "suffragettes chaining themselves to doors and such." I thought that was kind of a problematic position to take, but I didn't say anything. The questions period that followed was characteristically... tense, if not combative. Several members questioned the urgency of the projects on the High Priority Projects list, like GNU PDF.
"It's the G1," Matt Lee piped up from the first row.
"The G1?"
"That's its marketing name."
"I don't know," said RMS. "These things are just... sounds to me."
Brad Kuhn gave the last talk of the afternoon, in which he gave a brief history of the FSF's operations from its inception to the present day, which was neat to have laid out explicitly, having spent . One thing he went into some detail on was the fact that for the first twelve years of its existence, the Foundation devoted a significant portion of its budget to funding developers to work on the GNU system. He popped up a slide with a list of names on it, of which I recognized several. But, for better or for worse, the FSF now concerns itself primarily with marketing and lobbying for Free Software, and with managing the, uh, "intellectual property" that has been assigned to it by developers. To that end, he explained, he'd helped the FSF go through the laborious process of establishing itself as a 501(c)(3) corporation, which, among other benefits, enabled it to raise funds much more effectively. The experience inspired him to create the Software Freedom Conservancy, which acts as an organizational proxy for independent software projects that want to reap the rewards of Tax-Exempt status but lack the time or expertise to go through with the filing process.
The Free Software awards this year went to Rob Savoye, who's certainly put in enough hours of debugging Flash media server wire traffic to deserve it; and to the Tor project. Hard to argue with that.
BHCC gave us the heave-ho at around 5 o'clock. Deb Nicholson and I exchanged contact info (she's no longer with the Foundation), although we were interrupted by RMS chewing out a star-struck fanboy ("For the last time, don't ask if you can take a picture with me! Either take the picture or don't take it!"). I managed to tag along with her, plus Thomas Dukleth and James Vasile, for dinner at a walk-up vegan Thai restaurant in Boston Chinatown called My Thai, which was really, really good -- the most convincing "fake meat" I've ever had, for whatever that's worth. We were joined by Jeanne Rasata and some other FSF people, including the two volunteers I'd met at HOPE last summer, Forest and Fizza. People actually remembered me, which was nice. It grew dark outside the large colonial windows of the restaurant; we talked about reading mail in Emacs and whether anybody posts on Usenet any more about topics that aren't related to Usenet itself (probably not).
And then I looked at my watch and it was almost 8 o'clock, meaning that I had to gun it back to South Station if I wanted to get back to NYC before 1 AM. I did plan to try to work on the way back, but I popped another Dramamine, and quickly wound up back in a pleasant but hard-to-shake twilight state. I tried to rally by listening to The Monitor in full on my iPod, which I'd found to be a potent shit-disturber having just purchased it when I made the trek last year, but no dice: I fell asleep in the middle of the fourteen-minute epic "The Battle of Hampton Roads." The guy in front of me was sitting lengthwise across two seats, staring intently out the window. He kept a napkin pressed to his mouth for the entirety of the trip, as if overcome with emotion or motion sickness. It was a strange sight to wake up to over and over again in the eerie half-light of the Lucky Star.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Tall Tree
Up on the chilly roof of The Iron Monkey in downtown Jersey City on Sunday night, surrounded by a constellation of auto-on lights of the towering office buildings, I was gripped by doubt. Were we alone out here? Had we crossed the Jersey border for nothing?
Nina and I had PATH-trained it out there, lured by a "tweet" that I'd seen on Tom Scharpling's Twitter feed to the effect that he was going to be shooting a music video for the estimable Titus Andronicus: a marathon, single-day guided tour of the Garden State, that was gonna finish up at what looked like a fairly un-punk rock fancy beer bar. I'd been in a panic about being late, and we'd power-walked from the Exchange Pl. stop, only to find that the Monkey was hosting an event for something called Beer Club NJ, a gathering of people wearing khakis and club-branded t-shirts. With increasing bewilderment, we followed the signs pointing us to up to the roof: If the event were for real, why wasn't the place mobbed with angry young beardos in too-tight jeans? The roof was cold, dark, and abandoned, but even empty it didn't look like a place you'd wanna film a video for a rock song: There was a wooden bar, some wrought-iron patio furniture, some unused wooden trellises leaning up against a wall. We parked ourselves on a pair of cold chairs by the edge of the roof and checked and double-checked that we were in the right place.
Eventually we were joined by another young-ish couple, a beardy ginger and his girlfriend, who at least assured us that we weren't crazy. The guy and I fussed with our smart-phones and complained about the punctuality of Scharpling's video producer, Rob Hatch-Miller, as if we knew him personally.
Some more time went by, and finally an Iron Monkey staffer came through the roof door and told us we had to go downstairs, although she did confirm that the shoot was still on track to happen.
When I was a kid I had one of those EC horror comics with a story in it ("Midnight Mess") about a guy who goes to eat at a restaurant in a part of town that's unfamiliar to him. The place is busy but the decor is strange, and there are all these blood-based (!) dishes on the menu. Eventually he realizes that all the other patrons in the restaurant are vampires and that he's the only alive dude in the place -- they realize it, too, of course, and, you know, do their thing on him. Going back downstairs to the bar kind of reminded me of that story, except that I was recognizing my fellow vampires: Those pale geeks at the bar -- they're wearing Titus Andronicus t-shirts under their hoodies! That guy nursing a pint over his duck confit on the second floor -- he's got a WFMU sticker on his briefcase! After that I felt a whole lot better about the situation. Nina and I ordered some fancy beers that came with orange slices in them. And it wasn't too much longer before the band and film crew did show up.
I was watching the street out the window, but what actually tipped me off was Tom Scharpling walking by our table and up the stairs to the roof. He's a big guy in person, bear-like, even, and his voice and mannerisms ("Oh. Well, thank you. You're sweet to say so.") are unmistakable from hearing him on his radio show. He was with his wife, Terre T (much taller than I expected), host of the excellent Cherry Blossom Clinic, also on FMU.
After another interminable wait, they started herding us upstairs. The roof had been transformed by bright lights and bustling PAs, and right where we'd be sitting in the cold and dark a few hours earlier, the band had set up. We were in the first batch of audience members to get up the stairs, and so they kind of herded us around the side of the bar to the far side of the roof. Too late we (I) realized that this would put us out of sight of the cameras, but I was too busy trying to be a good extra to resist the film crew's directions. No matter: We wound up huddled on top of the bar with a bunch of rowdy, friendly people who were as excited to sing along and pump their mittened fists as we were.
After warming us up with the beginning of A More Perfect Union, the band launched into the first of several takes of the song they were doing for the video, No Future Part III: Escape From No Future. Only a few people in the audience seemed to know the long and meandering verses, but everybody sure knew the chorus. "You will always be a loser; you will always be...j a loser."
"I always feel bad about singing along to this part," Nina confessed to the girl sitting next to her. "This can't be good for his self-esteem."
"I know," said the girl. "Our mom goes over his lyrics with a fine-toothed comb."
It turned out we were sitting right next to Mr. Stickles' sister! Nina and I disagree about the meaning of the song's lyrics -- I think it's an affirmation, while she only hears the sad stuff in it -- but either way it's a personal enough song that it's a little unsettling to have it repeated and deconstructed for the purposes of making the video.
A few minutes into the filming, one of the revelers in the part of the roof directly in front of the band took an unlucky stomp on a weak part of the wooden deck and put his foot right through it. There was a pause while the damage was assessed, and then the producers announced that they were going to have to cut the filming a bit short. As a consolation prize of sorts, though, they recorded a very long audience-participatory version of the breakdown during the end of the song. "You'll always! Be a loser!" So I don't think we're gonna be visible in the video, but we might be audible -- and someone behind us took a pretty awesome shot of Nina's gloved and cheering hands that evokes the experience pretty well.
And then it was over and we had to go downstairs. Tom and Terre lingered around by the bathrooms on the top floor, anxiously attempting to triangulate the position of the dude who'd fucked up the deck to see if there was any damage to The Iron Monkey's ceiling that Tom'd have to cover out of pocket. Fortunately, there wasn't any. Nonetheless, when Nina and I finally decided to pack up and head home, we found him lolling on a bench outside the bar, fretting about the incident to the band and an assembled crowd of admirers.
"I'm never going to another Tom Scharpling video shoot ever again," I whined, play-acting an injured deck-stepper.
"Me neither!" he said. But he looked pretty happy.
Nina and I had PATH-trained it out there, lured by a "tweet" that I'd seen on Tom Scharpling's Twitter feed to the effect that he was going to be shooting a music video for the estimable Titus Andronicus: a marathon, single-day guided tour of the Garden State, that was gonna finish up at what looked like a fairly un-punk rock fancy beer bar. I'd been in a panic about being late, and we'd power-walked from the Exchange Pl. stop, only to find that the Monkey was hosting an event for something called Beer Club NJ, a gathering of people wearing khakis and club-branded t-shirts. With increasing bewilderment, we followed the signs pointing us to up to the roof: If the event were for real, why wasn't the place mobbed with angry young beardos in too-tight jeans? The roof was cold, dark, and abandoned, but even empty it didn't look like a place you'd wanna film a video for a rock song: There was a wooden bar, some wrought-iron patio furniture, some unused wooden trellises leaning up against a wall. We parked ourselves on a pair of cold chairs by the edge of the roof and checked and double-checked that we were in the right place.
Eventually we were joined by another young-ish couple, a beardy ginger and his girlfriend, who at least assured us that we weren't crazy. The guy and I fussed with our smart-phones and complained about the punctuality of Scharpling's video producer, Rob Hatch-Miller, as if we knew him personally.
Some more time went by, and finally an Iron Monkey staffer came through the roof door and told us we had to go downstairs, although she did confirm that the shoot was still on track to happen.
When I was a kid I had one of those EC horror comics with a story in it ("Midnight Mess") about a guy who goes to eat at a restaurant in a part of town that's unfamiliar to him. The place is busy but the decor is strange, and there are all these blood-based (!) dishes on the menu. Eventually he realizes that all the other patrons in the restaurant are vampires and that he's the only alive dude in the place -- they realize it, too, of course, and, you know, do their thing on him. Going back downstairs to the bar kind of reminded me of that story, except that I was recognizing my fellow vampires: Those pale geeks at the bar -- they're wearing Titus Andronicus t-shirts under their hoodies! That guy nursing a pint over his duck confit on the second floor -- he's got a WFMU sticker on his briefcase! After that I felt a whole lot better about the situation. Nina and I ordered some fancy beers that came with orange slices in them. And it wasn't too much longer before the band and film crew did show up.
I was watching the street out the window, but what actually tipped me off was Tom Scharpling walking by our table and up the stairs to the roof. He's a big guy in person, bear-like, even, and his voice and mannerisms ("Oh. Well, thank you. You're sweet to say so.") are unmistakable from hearing him on his radio show. He was with his wife, Terre T (much taller than I expected), host of the excellent Cherry Blossom Clinic, also on FMU.
After another interminable wait, they started herding us upstairs. The roof had been transformed by bright lights and bustling PAs, and right where we'd be sitting in the cold and dark a few hours earlier, the band had set up. We were in the first batch of audience members to get up the stairs, and so they kind of herded us around the side of the bar to the far side of the roof. Too late we (I) realized that this would put us out of sight of the cameras, but I was too busy trying to be a good extra to resist the film crew's directions. No matter: We wound up huddled on top of the bar with a bunch of rowdy, friendly people who were as excited to sing along and pump their mittened fists as we were.
After warming us up with the beginning of A More Perfect Union, the band launched into the first of several takes of the song they were doing for the video, No Future Part III: Escape From No Future. Only a few people in the audience seemed to know the long and meandering verses, but everybody sure knew the chorus. "You will always be a loser; you will always be...j a loser."
"I always feel bad about singing along to this part," Nina confessed to the girl sitting next to her. "This can't be good for his self-esteem."
"I know," said the girl. "Our mom goes over his lyrics with a fine-toothed comb."
It turned out we were sitting right next to Mr. Stickles' sister! Nina and I disagree about the meaning of the song's lyrics -- I think it's an affirmation, while she only hears the sad stuff in it -- but either way it's a personal enough song that it's a little unsettling to have it repeated and deconstructed for the purposes of making the video.
A few minutes into the filming, one of the revelers in the part of the roof directly in front of the band took an unlucky stomp on a weak part of the wooden deck and put his foot right through it. There was a pause while the damage was assessed, and then the producers announced that they were going to have to cut the filming a bit short. As a consolation prize of sorts, though, they recorded a very long audience-participatory version of the breakdown during the end of the song. "You'll always! Be a loser!" So I don't think we're gonna be visible in the video, but we might be audible -- and someone behind us took a pretty awesome shot of Nina's gloved and cheering hands that evokes the experience pretty well.
And then it was over and we had to go downstairs. Tom and Terre lingered around by the bathrooms on the top floor, anxiously attempting to triangulate the position of the dude who'd fucked up the deck to see if there was any damage to The Iron Monkey's ceiling that Tom'd have to cover out of pocket. Fortunately, there wasn't any. Nonetheless, when Nina and I finally decided to pack up and head home, we found him lolling on a bench outside the bar, fretting about the incident to the band and an assembled crowd of admirers.
"I'm never going to another Tom Scharpling video shoot ever again," I whined, play-acting an injured deck-stepper.
"Me neither!" he said. But he looked pretty happy.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Three Hundred
This is my three hundredth "blog post!" I've been writing in this thing for, holy shit, about eight years. This thing has seen me through different jobs, different apartments, different relationships; if you scroll back to the beginning, you can see how the subject matter and style has changed quite a bit over the years. I guess if I've learned anything in my tenure as Navel-Gazer-in-Chief here, it's, in the immortal and cryptic words of that weird old guy on Union St. with the signs in his window, "Take it easy, but take it."
Bel Argosy played three more shows: Monday, January 10th at Otto's Shrunken Head, the tiki bar on 14th St. where I'd seen Direct From Hollywood Cemetery play a glorious if sparsely-attended Halloween show several years ago. Our show was even emptier than theirs, though, due in no small part to the fact that we almost entirely neglected to promote it: I posted a Facebook event the day of, facetiously billing it as a "top-secret VIP concert" with a password required at the door. No one (besides the Argosy Belles, Nina's brother Michael, and the steadfast Eve) was fooled. We took turns complaining about the broken fixtures in the men's bathroom, which had that public park reek of old fermenting urine. The back room at Otto's, recently renovated after a fire last year, is separated from the rest of the bar by a pair of double doors, which we closed and then started our newly expanded set. We were told we sounded good -- it's a small room with low ceilings, a good fit for the simple amplifier setup. At one point one of the drunks from the bar poked his head in through the doors and peered at us severely before disappearing back to his post, evidently deciding we weren't his cup of tea. For the first time on stage I got lost in the middle of one of our songs and had to scramble to find the beat. I felt depressed about it after the set, but with some effort got over it. I'm sure it won't be the last time that happens. After the show the we took some "band" pictures in the photo booth, Chris and Billy and I wedged into the two-seater, Beau diving across our laps at the moment of exposure, a dark blur across our faces.
Emma picked up another job: She's ghostwriting a book for a woman in Detroit, and she flew out there on the 13th on the tail of another dramatic snow storm that began on Tuesday. What may interest you, dear reader, is that she left Pearl with us as a boarder of sorts, all of us crossing our fingers that she and Kitty could get along. This was not without precedent -- we'd had Pearl over for a "play date" a few months before to test the waters. That had gone... reasonably well: Kitty was stand-offish and hissy, taking a deep, territory-asserting drink from the bowl of water we'd set aside for Pearl. And she is not a water-drinking cat. But there was no physical violence, and Pearl, for her part, seemed to be entirely oblivious. And Emma brought Pearl over again a few weeks ago for a Bad Movie Night screening, during which Kitty ignored her entirely in favor of copping a nap in the bedroom. So we figured we were primed for a multi-day, cross-species sleepover. Emma dropped off Pearl the morning of her flight, along with the requisite kibble, cartoon bone-shaped dog treats, and a miniature plush cow that'd absorbed more than its carrying capacity of hair and drool. Kitty was horrified. She never let Pearl out of her sight, would hiss when Pearl approached, and over the course of the four days that Pearl stayed with us, delivered several undeserved whops to Pearl's nose. Pearl tolerated this hostility with stoicism if not aplomb, although she demonstrated a marked reluctance to re-enter the apartment after going on walks. The one time Kitty seemed to be able to tolerate Pearl's presence was, oddly enough, at bedtime, when the two of them heaved their combined bulk into the narrow crevasse between our sleeping bodies. "Welcome to the Animal Bed," I told Nina.
Walking Pearl turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I tried to craft novel circuits through the snow-lined corridors of the blocks near our apartment: We went to Prospect Park, walked around the Old Stone House, did figure-eights from 4th and 5th to 2nd and 7th. The lingering piles of snow and ice, which held the historical pisses of multiple dogs in a kind of suspension (very evident during daylight hours but effectively invisible under the yellow streetlights after dark) seemed to be an irresistible buffet of smells for Pearl; a lot of the time I was more or less dragging her along, trying to keep her from getting crystallized urine all over her muzzle. I felt a little like Perkus Tooth in Chronic City.
We thought we'd been booked for a Saturday slot at Cake Shop, but there was some kind of mix-up with the schedule, and we ended up getting bumped. Ken South Rock got wind of this (we whined about it to them) and their manager Aron got in touch to let us know we could play at the release party for their CD (Ningen) at a place called Lone Wolf in Bushwick. And, incredibly, she told us all we had to bring were our guitars. Hard to do better than that. And the place was certainly comfy enough and very chic -- tin ceiling, nice big stage with wallpaper on the back wall, faux-crumbling fixtures. Our set went well, I thought, although the monitors didn't give us a lot of help; Chris said he had to watch my hands to follow the beat. The next band after us was called "Love Handle" (not a great name; they seemed amenable to Beau's suggestion that they re-christen themselves as the marginally better "Abraham Lincoln"), and they played a sort of twangy rock and roll. It was good. I stomped my foot to it. Chris and I remarked on the fact that we only pay attention to the instrument we play in our band when we watch other bands play. "Oh, they've got a girl playing bass," said Chris about Love Handle. "That's kind of a cheap move."
Next up was a band called Imaginary Friends, a bunch of guys who dressed like an 80's hardcore band (knit caps, v-neck shirts, beards) but who had a very controlled, droning sound, especially on the vocals -- a lot like Joy Division, several people commented. Someone in charge was actually manning the lighting controls, and the band was lit up in dramatic red light and shadow, which complemented the lead singer's impassive demeanor. I think we'd like to play with them again if they'll have us.
Ken South Rock's valedictory set was suitably chaotic and exuberant, Adam's drumming leaving me with all sorts of resolutions on how I might improve my own playing, and they were mobbed with admirers upon finishing. Billy and I talked to Aron briefly about KSR's next steps: They're embarking on a spring tour of Japan in a few weeks and then coming back to the U.S. for the summer. She promised we get first dibs on them when they return. "You were here from the beginning!" she said. Oh right, I thought: Those guys have only been playing together for three months.
I lugged the drum stuff back to the Slope and ran into Nina on the corner taking Pearl on a late walk. Pearl was apparently glad to see me -- she reared up to put both front paws on my chest -- but wanted to keep Nina in sight as well, and in tilting her head back to do so, she toppled over onto her back in the dirty snow. We were worried for a moment that she'd hurt herself, but she started rolling from side to side, flappity dog lips falling back from her teeth, her eyes tracking our faces in expectation of tummy-rubs.
The following week we'd booked a Tuesday show with the bands Felix & Volcano and Octo/Octa at a place right next door to where we'd played KSR's party, a coffee house / gallery type deal called Goodbye Blue Monday. Billy got notified the day of that the other two bands were dropping out on account of illness (the unafflicted band depending on the other for a van ride), and given that the venue had expressed ambivalence about us making the gig, we weren't sure whether we should brave the steady drizzle to play. I was feeling pretty crappy myself -- light-headed, fatigued -- but assured Bill that I'd "pull one out" and voted that we do the show in an impromptu band quorum. I felt worse during the day, and was having misgivings by the time I met up with Chris at his girlfriend Lauren's lavishly appointed apartment in Bushwick. She and her roommates revived me with a cup of peppermint tea and some cookies, though, and Chris and I put his bass and the collected drum hardware into the back of a livery cab and headed off to the club. Goodbye Blue Monday really is like a cafe in Portland or something: There's, you know, flair all over the walls: Dioramas, doll parts, road signs. It's like the hoarder younger sister of Glasslands.
We showed up a few minutes late, but the open mic that preceded the bill we were on was still going on. Some of the performers were actually kind of good, but a lot of them were, you know, standard open mic types: Girls singing about themselves in high, operatic voices, dudes strumming guitars noisily with looks of consternation on their faces. The emcee was a big guy in overalls who called himself "Joe Crow," and who looked like a cross between Steve Earle and Mick Foley.
By the time we were cleared to go on, the place was still pretty packed with people who'd come for the open mic and were finishing their drinks. We signaled our readiness, and Billy got up to the mic. He apologized for the absence of the other acts, and then he said, "That's okay, though. We don't really sound very much like them. We sound like this," launching seamlessly into a fast rendition of the rousing song that is our opener, "Into The Distance." I liked that a lot. And despite my lingering feelings of sickness, I was able to keep things together on the drums. We sounded great! But the open mic audience didn't agree -- I couldn't see from where I was, but Bill told me later that people were racing to put their coats on. And by the second song I could tell that the space was empty besides the staff and the small table of wives and girlfriends. That's okay, though. That's even kind of cool.
The next morning I felt like shit. I managed to drag myself into work, but by the end of the day my nose was running like a faucet and I was shaking with chills. I had to bow out of a promised game of Settlers of Catan at Eve's house, sending Tom in my stead. When Nina got home with a bottle of NyQuil I'd been too stupid to get for myself, she found me shivering on the couch in front of a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon on Spike TV, wrapped up in a blanket I'd fished out from under the bed. She took my temperature (102!) and put me to bed. I didn't feel any better the next morning and stayed home from work, but we also had a show -- a "big" one: We actually promoted it a little -- booked that night at Trash Bar, and I had to let Billy know that I wasn't going to make it. I felt rotten about it, and could've kicked myself for pushing us to play the show on Tuesday, but I was still running a high fever by the evening was pretty sure I'd only embarrass us on stage. Luckily Billy and Beau were able to perform a quickly-rehearsed set for one of Beau's other bands, a trio (with Doug from MiniBoone on drums) called Robot Princess.
As far as I can perceive it, I don't often get sick. Or maybe I'm just a little sick -- sniffles, phlegm-spitting -- a lot of the time. But every so often I get a flu or something that kind of stops me cold, makes me feel weak and helpless; a real memento morii type deal. And this was one of those. I guzzled over-the-counter remedies and took it about as easy as I know how, but I was still pretty much out of commission mentally and physically for the better part of a week. I'd like to think there's some secret benefit to getting a dose of mortality like this, like maybe it helps you savor the quotidian pleasures more readily, but I don't think there is. At the very least, I'm hoping that'll do me for the rest of the year, because I got some shit to do.
Bel Argosy played three more shows: Monday, January 10th at Otto's Shrunken Head, the tiki bar on 14th St. where I'd seen Direct From Hollywood Cemetery play a glorious if sparsely-attended Halloween show several years ago. Our show was even emptier than theirs, though, due in no small part to the fact that we almost entirely neglected to promote it: I posted a Facebook event the day of, facetiously billing it as a "top-secret VIP concert" with a password required at the door. No one (besides the Argosy Belles, Nina's brother Michael, and the steadfast Eve) was fooled. We took turns complaining about the broken fixtures in the men's bathroom, which had that public park reek of old fermenting urine. The back room at Otto's, recently renovated after a fire last year, is separated from the rest of the bar by a pair of double doors, which we closed and then started our newly expanded set. We were told we sounded good -- it's a small room with low ceilings, a good fit for the simple amplifier setup. At one point one of the drunks from the bar poked his head in through the doors and peered at us severely before disappearing back to his post, evidently deciding we weren't his cup of tea. For the first time on stage I got lost in the middle of one of our songs and had to scramble to find the beat. I felt depressed about it after the set, but with some effort got over it. I'm sure it won't be the last time that happens. After the show the we took some "band" pictures in the photo booth, Chris and Billy and I wedged into the two-seater, Beau diving across our laps at the moment of exposure, a dark blur across our faces.
Emma picked up another job: She's ghostwriting a book for a woman in Detroit, and she flew out there on the 13th on the tail of another dramatic snow storm that began on Tuesday. What may interest you, dear reader, is that she left Pearl with us as a boarder of sorts, all of us crossing our fingers that she and Kitty could get along. This was not without precedent -- we'd had Pearl over for a "play date" a few months before to test the waters. That had gone... reasonably well: Kitty was stand-offish and hissy, taking a deep, territory-asserting drink from the bowl of water we'd set aside for Pearl. And she is not a water-drinking cat. But there was no physical violence, and Pearl, for her part, seemed to be entirely oblivious. And Emma brought Pearl over again a few weeks ago for a Bad Movie Night screening, during which Kitty ignored her entirely in favor of copping a nap in the bedroom. So we figured we were primed for a multi-day, cross-species sleepover. Emma dropped off Pearl the morning of her flight, along with the requisite kibble, cartoon bone-shaped dog treats, and a miniature plush cow that'd absorbed more than its carrying capacity of hair and drool. Kitty was horrified. She never let Pearl out of her sight, would hiss when Pearl approached, and over the course of the four days that Pearl stayed with us, delivered several undeserved whops to Pearl's nose. Pearl tolerated this hostility with stoicism if not aplomb, although she demonstrated a marked reluctance to re-enter the apartment after going on walks. The one time Kitty seemed to be able to tolerate Pearl's presence was, oddly enough, at bedtime, when the two of them heaved their combined bulk into the narrow crevasse between our sleeping bodies. "Welcome to the Animal Bed," I told Nina.
Walking Pearl turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. I tried to craft novel circuits through the snow-lined corridors of the blocks near our apartment: We went to Prospect Park, walked around the Old Stone House, did figure-eights from 4th and 5th to 2nd and 7th. The lingering piles of snow and ice, which held the historical pisses of multiple dogs in a kind of suspension (very evident during daylight hours but effectively invisible under the yellow streetlights after dark) seemed to be an irresistible buffet of smells for Pearl; a lot of the time I was more or less dragging her along, trying to keep her from getting crystallized urine all over her muzzle. I felt a little like Perkus Tooth in Chronic City.
We thought we'd been booked for a Saturday slot at Cake Shop, but there was some kind of mix-up with the schedule, and we ended up getting bumped. Ken South Rock got wind of this (we whined about it to them) and their manager Aron got in touch to let us know we could play at the release party for their CD (Ningen) at a place called Lone Wolf in Bushwick. And, incredibly, she told us all we had to bring were our guitars. Hard to do better than that. And the place was certainly comfy enough and very chic -- tin ceiling, nice big stage with wallpaper on the back wall, faux-crumbling fixtures. Our set went well, I thought, although the monitors didn't give us a lot of help; Chris said he had to watch my hands to follow the beat. The next band after us was called "Love Handle" (not a great name; they seemed amenable to Beau's suggestion that they re-christen themselves as the marginally better "Abraham Lincoln"), and they played a sort of twangy rock and roll. It was good. I stomped my foot to it. Chris and I remarked on the fact that we only pay attention to the instrument we play in our band when we watch other bands play. "Oh, they've got a girl playing bass," said Chris about Love Handle. "That's kind of a cheap move."
Next up was a band called Imaginary Friends, a bunch of guys who dressed like an 80's hardcore band (knit caps, v-neck shirts, beards) but who had a very controlled, droning sound, especially on the vocals -- a lot like Joy Division, several people commented. Someone in charge was actually manning the lighting controls, and the band was lit up in dramatic red light and shadow, which complemented the lead singer's impassive demeanor. I think we'd like to play with them again if they'll have us.
Ken South Rock's valedictory set was suitably chaotic and exuberant, Adam's drumming leaving me with all sorts of resolutions on how I might improve my own playing, and they were mobbed with admirers upon finishing. Billy and I talked to Aron briefly about KSR's next steps: They're embarking on a spring tour of Japan in a few weeks and then coming back to the U.S. for the summer. She promised we get first dibs on them when they return. "You were here from the beginning!" she said. Oh right, I thought: Those guys have only been playing together for three months.
I lugged the drum stuff back to the Slope and ran into Nina on the corner taking Pearl on a late walk. Pearl was apparently glad to see me -- she reared up to put both front paws on my chest -- but wanted to keep Nina in sight as well, and in tilting her head back to do so, she toppled over onto her back in the dirty snow. We were worried for a moment that she'd hurt herself, but she started rolling from side to side, flappity dog lips falling back from her teeth, her eyes tracking our faces in expectation of tummy-rubs.
The following week we'd booked a Tuesday show with the bands Felix & Volcano and Octo/Octa at a place right next door to where we'd played KSR's party, a coffee house / gallery type deal called Goodbye Blue Monday. Billy got notified the day of that the other two bands were dropping out on account of illness (the unafflicted band depending on the other for a van ride), and given that the venue had expressed ambivalence about us making the gig, we weren't sure whether we should brave the steady drizzle to play. I was feeling pretty crappy myself -- light-headed, fatigued -- but assured Bill that I'd "pull one out" and voted that we do the show in an impromptu band quorum. I felt worse during the day, and was having misgivings by the time I met up with Chris at his girlfriend Lauren's lavishly appointed apartment in Bushwick. She and her roommates revived me with a cup of peppermint tea and some cookies, though, and Chris and I put his bass and the collected drum hardware into the back of a livery cab and headed off to the club. Goodbye Blue Monday really is like a cafe in Portland or something: There's, you know, flair all over the walls: Dioramas, doll parts, road signs. It's like the hoarder younger sister of Glasslands.
We showed up a few minutes late, but the open mic that preceded the bill we were on was still going on. Some of the performers were actually kind of good, but a lot of them were, you know, standard open mic types: Girls singing about themselves in high, operatic voices, dudes strumming guitars noisily with looks of consternation on their faces. The emcee was a big guy in overalls who called himself "Joe Crow," and who looked like a cross between Steve Earle and Mick Foley.
By the time we were cleared to go on, the place was still pretty packed with people who'd come for the open mic and were finishing their drinks. We signaled our readiness, and Billy got up to the mic. He apologized for the absence of the other acts, and then he said, "That's okay, though. We don't really sound very much like them. We sound like this," launching seamlessly into a fast rendition of the rousing song that is our opener, "Into The Distance." I liked that a lot. And despite my lingering feelings of sickness, I was able to keep things together on the drums. We sounded great! But the open mic audience didn't agree -- I couldn't see from where I was, but Bill told me later that people were racing to put their coats on. And by the second song I could tell that the space was empty besides the staff and the small table of wives and girlfriends. That's okay, though. That's even kind of cool.
The next morning I felt like shit. I managed to drag myself into work, but by the end of the day my nose was running like a faucet and I was shaking with chills. I had to bow out of a promised game of Settlers of Catan at Eve's house, sending Tom in my stead. When Nina got home with a bottle of NyQuil I'd been too stupid to get for myself, she found me shivering on the couch in front of a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon on Spike TV, wrapped up in a blanket I'd fished out from under the bed. She took my temperature (102!) and put me to bed. I didn't feel any better the next morning and stayed home from work, but we also had a show -- a "big" one: We actually promoted it a little -- booked that night at Trash Bar, and I had to let Billy know that I wasn't going to make it. I felt rotten about it, and could've kicked myself for pushing us to play the show on Tuesday, but I was still running a high fever by the evening was pretty sure I'd only embarrass us on stage. Luckily Billy and Beau were able to perform a quickly-rehearsed set for one of Beau's other bands, a trio (with Doug from MiniBoone on drums) called Robot Princess.
As far as I can perceive it, I don't often get sick. Or maybe I'm just a little sick -- sniffles, phlegm-spitting -- a lot of the time. But every so often I get a flu or something that kind of stops me cold, makes me feel weak and helpless; a real memento morii type deal. And this was one of those. I guzzled over-the-counter remedies and took it about as easy as I know how, but I was still pretty much out of commission mentally and physically for the better part of a week. I'd like to think there's some secret benefit to getting a dose of mortality like this, like maybe it helps you savor the quotidian pleasures more readily, but I don't think there is. At the very least, I'm hoping that'll do me for the rest of the year, because I got some shit to do.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
And Best Of
You've all been waiting for it. I know. I know.
Best book I read: Blood's a Rover
Best album: Titus Andronicus, The Monitor. No contest.
Best show I went to: Titus Andronicus, at Bowery Ballroom, March 6th
Best new reason for donating to WFMU: Tom Scharpling, drunk.
Best scone: Cranberry, Not Just Rugelach.
Best movie I saw in the theater: Inception? I don't know, I didn't see a lot of 'em
Best movie I saw not in the theater: Animal House
Best worst movie: Tie: Revenge of the Stolen Stars / The Star Wars Holiday Special
Best brunch: Colombian breakfast, Bogota
Best pie: Winter fruit, again
Best recipe: Green pozole with [tofu]
We played two more shows around Christmas, one at Cake Shop, the other at Bruar Falls. Andy Bodor, the manager of Cake Shop, booked us for the 14th, the bitterly cold day after Amy Klein from Titus had, incidentally, played that stage with her side band, the confusingly-named Hilly Eye. I'd brought the pink vinyl shoulder bag, still laden with pedals and cymbals, to work. I considered walking it down to Cake Shop from 19th St., but as soon as I left the office and felt the freezing metal of our heavy ride cutting into my finger joints, I was like "fuck it." As I was trying to hail a cab, a well-dressed young woman wearing a fur collar and a lot of make-up approached me.
Somehow I made it, though. Our set came off without a hitch after Beau played (during which he donned his much-talked-about Christmas light suit, which did not disappoint). Ken and Adam were exceedingly gracious and congratulatory, which was very sweet, considering how comparatively advanced they were. Unfortunately, in the rush to consolidate our equipment and pack up the van, which Billy and Sarah had driven down, I got confused about which cymbal stands were ours and which we'd borrowed from the club, and we ended up leaving one of them behind. I felt crappy about it, but luckily Chris and Lauren were able to swing by the next weekend and pick it up from one of the bartenders, who was surprisingly willing to let them rifle through the store of equipment.
At some point it was Christmas. Nina fled to Clarks Summit, and I visited my parents' house to deliver my meager offerings: I got my mom this year's ubiquitous parent gift, Mark Twain's unexpurgated autobiography; I got my dad a signed copy of American Tabloid, by that shaved ape James Ellroy. Wondering if he'll be horrified. Christmas evening, I'd casually organized but extensively prepared for a screening of Bad Santa with Billy and Chris and Winnie and Evan and had planned extensive food options; Billy and Chris canceled, independently, leaving me at loose ends, but Winnie and Evan came over and we managed to homph down most of the coffee gingerbread and chocolate apricot cookies I had made. We didn't watch the movie, but we played a fair amount of Red Dead Redemption, which Evan had brought over and just left, and then we spent an embarrassing number of hours trying to unlock hidden characters in Super Street Fighter IV by beating that asshole Seth. There was a lot of swearing.
The next day, the snow began. I'd asked Winnie to come by to help me work on a present for Nina, a painted pair of All-Stars. The snow was blowing horizontally by the time she left Bensonhurst, she informed me in an incredulous phone call from the outdoor subway platform she was waiting on. I hustled out to Joe's (née Prego's) for a half-mushroom pizza to make it worth her while. There was so much snow blowing around that you couldn't see for more than half a block; the streetlights made everything beyond that into a brownish-orange blur. It felt like a gusty day at the beach, the wind whipping stinging little ice crystals against my face like sand. Winnie arrived intact, and we lay down some newspaper. The snow accumulated on the windowsills while I sketched out a little design for the shoes and watched her as she expertly mixed and diluted colors of acrylic paint. We watched The Return of the King one and a half times on SyFy before finishing our work.
The storm had gotten even worse, so Winnie crashed on the fold-out sofa. As has since been more than adequately reported, the city was in a bit of a pickle with the snow the next day. I stubbornly resolved to go to work that day, but judging by the relative emptiness of the R train, when it finally came, I was in the minority. I feel bad about saying so, since it costs millions of dollars and people die, but I secretly find these kinds of weather events thrilling in the transformative effect they have on the landscape of the city. 5th Avenue in Park Slope was a white desert: There were cars spun out and simply abandoned in the middle of the street. Teams of dudes with shovels roamed up and down the avenue offering their services to those what needed help digging out or pushing their cars. At Union St., the stairs were a white slide, and drifts of snow had wended their way down the stairwell and into the station, making it look more cave-like than usual. I was the only engineer in the office all day.
Despite the breakdown of civilization of we played a show at Bruar Falls -- the sister club to Cake Shop in the Bodor entertainment empire, I learned -- on Tuesday. The Falls have speakers but no amps, so we needed to drive the van down from St. Mary's again. I'd taken the liberty of going to Guitar Center after our last show and stocking up on felts and jackets and other small bits of drum hardware, as well as investing in a cymbal case, which proved to be a life-saver for my fingers in the cold; additionally, Chris labeled all of our equipment to prevent a repeat of the confusion over whose hardware was whose. I hopped the subway up to Harlem on Tuesday to help Billy and Chris dig out and load the van, but they were already done by the time I got there, so all I had to do was ride down with them. The St. Mary's van is funny: It handles well enough for its age but complains audibly, and the interior fills with exhaust so you have to keep the windows as open as you can bear. As such, the ride to Williamsburg was freezing and not a little stomach churning as we attempted to navigate to Grand St. via side streets that were only intermittently plowed. Chris commented repeatedly that the fumes were making his extremities go numb, although I think it was probably the cold. For my part, I took of my boots and wrapped my scarf around my feet, which were like ice; ice feet. It was a very band kind of van ride.
When we got to the place, Chris hopped out and lugged some stuff into the club. I attempted to direct Bill into a parallel park up against a piled-up all of snow, but Chris had to re-do it when he returned. Our set went off well, except that Chris and I had trouble hearing the rest of the band, and some kind of firmware change to Billy's pedal board had led him to tune his "A" to 448hz, leaving him subtly and confusingly out of tune, which he blamed, at the time, on Beau. Ken and Adam headlined this time, as they should have, and played a characteristically vigorous and virtuosic set, although theirs was not without incident, either: Ken managed to unplug his amp during one of his solos. (The sound guy staged a daring rescue.) And Adam sliced his hand open on the lip of the snare and spattered all of the drums (including our cymbals, which they'd borrowed, with gore -- a mark of distinction, as far as I'm concerned.
And, unfortunately, there was yet another equipment SNAFU: While we were loading up the van after the show, somebody put the cymbal case into the van without all of the cymbals in it. I noticed this and brought the bag back into the Falls to collect the other cymbals but got distracted and left the bag in the club. In a livery cab on the way home, I had a twinge of memory and called Bill, who searched the van while it was stopped at a gas station and confirmed my fears. At this point I'd gotten all the way back home, and so, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and a black cloud hovering over my head, I hopped into a Carecibo and had the guy take me back to Williamsburg, hoping beyond hope that the Falls was still open. By some miracle of providence it was, and, although there were only a few stragglers left at the bar, one of them turned out to be Adam, who'd noticed my mistake and had the bartender set our cymbals aside in a locked room. That guy is a saint, and Ken South Rock is the nicest band in the world.
Nina had since returned, and with her, the temperature had taken an up-turn. She was concerned that she'd missed the peak of sledding and snowcraft, so on Wednesday we made an early expedition before Bad Movie Night (Creepozoids) out to Prospect Park to see what adventures could still be had. Quite a few, it turned out: We filched some glossy-looking cardboard boxes from the recycling stash in the basement and fashioned them into makeshift sleds that worked reasonably well in the still-snow-blanketed northern part of Long Meadow. We started on some of the gentler hills and then, emboldened, decided to join some Packer-type girls who were riding a plastic three-seater sled down the steep slopes on the northeastern border of the meadow. Nina's box, having a slicker coating to it, proved to be the more exhilarating ride, and we took turns going alarmingly fast (and often head over heels) with it down the hill.
After it finally disintegrated, we attempted to build a snowman, although the snow was so sticky that we couldn't shape it that well. Here are the results:
Best book I read: Blood's a Rover
Best album: Titus Andronicus, The Monitor. No contest.
Best show I went to: Titus Andronicus, at Bowery Ballroom, March 6th
Best new reason for donating to WFMU: Tom Scharpling, drunk.
Best scone: Cranberry, Not Just Rugelach.
Best movie I saw in the theater: Inception? I don't know, I didn't see a lot of 'em
Best movie I saw not in the theater: Animal House
Best worst movie: Tie: Revenge of the Stolen Stars / The Star Wars Holiday Special
Best brunch: Colombian breakfast, Bogota
Best pie: Winter fruit, again
Best recipe: Green pozole with [tofu]
We played two more shows around Christmas, one at Cake Shop, the other at Bruar Falls. Andy Bodor, the manager of Cake Shop, booked us for the 14th, the bitterly cold day after Amy Klein from Titus had, incidentally, played that stage with her side band, the confusingly-named Hilly Eye. I'd brought the pink vinyl shoulder bag, still laden with pedals and cymbals, to work. I considered walking it down to Cake Shop from 19th St., but as soon as I left the office and felt the freezing metal of our heavy ride cutting into my finger joints, I was like "fuck it." As I was trying to hail a cab, a well-dressed young woman wearing a fur collar and a lot of make-up approached me.
"Excuse me," she said. "Could you spare a few dollars?"The exchange left me annoyed and preoccupied at Cake Shop as I waited for the other guys to show up, but the feeling evaporated after I spent one of my drink tickets. The show ended up being well-attended! Sarah and Nina and Chris' girlfriend Lauren showed up, as well as Eve and Josh and Emma and Tom, which was very nice. In addition to playing a brief solo show before us, Beau'd secured an opening act for us, a two-man group called Ken South Rock, made up of a muppet-like American drummer and a Japanese guitar player who looked a bit like a Jamie Hewlett drawing. They went on before him, and they set an unexpectedly high bar for us: The guitar player, Ken, turned out to be a consummate showman, despite the language barrier, and was able to extract a phenomenally rich tone from his guitar, which was this gorgeous vintage Epiphone EJ-200 (I think). Adam, the drummer, was a real Keith Moon type, and he played these jaw-droppingly fast and intricate fills. Although they were unmistakably playing rock songs, the complement of their individual sounds created a deep and almost meditative resonance. I thought they were great, although I worried that I wouldn't be able to follow Adam's drumming.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's for a hostel," she said. "Do you know what a hostel is?"
"Yes," I said, bristling. "I know what a hostel is."
Somehow I made it, though. Our set came off without a hitch after Beau played (during which he donned his much-talked-about Christmas light suit, which did not disappoint). Ken and Adam were exceedingly gracious and congratulatory, which was very sweet, considering how comparatively advanced they were. Unfortunately, in the rush to consolidate our equipment and pack up the van, which Billy and Sarah had driven down, I got confused about which cymbal stands were ours and which we'd borrowed from the club, and we ended up leaving one of them behind. I felt crappy about it, but luckily Chris and Lauren were able to swing by the next weekend and pick it up from one of the bartenders, who was surprisingly willing to let them rifle through the store of equipment.
At some point it was Christmas. Nina fled to Clarks Summit, and I visited my parents' house to deliver my meager offerings: I got my mom this year's ubiquitous parent gift, Mark Twain's unexpurgated autobiography; I got my dad a signed copy of American Tabloid, by that shaved ape James Ellroy. Wondering if he'll be horrified. Christmas evening, I'd casually organized but extensively prepared for a screening of Bad Santa with Billy and Chris and Winnie and Evan and had planned extensive food options; Billy and Chris canceled, independently, leaving me at loose ends, but Winnie and Evan came over and we managed to homph down most of the coffee gingerbread and chocolate apricot cookies I had made. We didn't watch the movie, but we played a fair amount of Red Dead Redemption, which Evan had brought over and just left, and then we spent an embarrassing number of hours trying to unlock hidden characters in Super Street Fighter IV by beating that asshole Seth. There was a lot of swearing.
The next day, the snow began. I'd asked Winnie to come by to help me work on a present for Nina, a painted pair of All-Stars. The snow was blowing horizontally by the time she left Bensonhurst, she informed me in an incredulous phone call from the outdoor subway platform she was waiting on. I hustled out to Joe's (née Prego's) for a half-mushroom pizza to make it worth her while. There was so much snow blowing around that you couldn't see for more than half a block; the streetlights made everything beyond that into a brownish-orange blur. It felt like a gusty day at the beach, the wind whipping stinging little ice crystals against my face like sand. Winnie arrived intact, and we lay down some newspaper. The snow accumulated on the windowsills while I sketched out a little design for the shoes and watched her as she expertly mixed and diluted colors of acrylic paint. We watched The Return of the King one and a half times on SyFy before finishing our work.
The storm had gotten even worse, so Winnie crashed on the fold-out sofa. As has since been more than adequately reported, the city was in a bit of a pickle with the snow the next day. I stubbornly resolved to go to work that day, but judging by the relative emptiness of the R train, when it finally came, I was in the minority. I feel bad about saying so, since it costs millions of dollars and people die, but I secretly find these kinds of weather events thrilling in the transformative effect they have on the landscape of the city. 5th Avenue in Park Slope was a white desert: There were cars spun out and simply abandoned in the middle of the street. Teams of dudes with shovels roamed up and down the avenue offering their services to those what needed help digging out or pushing their cars. At Union St., the stairs were a white slide, and drifts of snow had wended their way down the stairwell and into the station, making it look more cave-like than usual. I was the only engineer in the office all day.
Despite the breakdown of civilization of we played a show at Bruar Falls -- the sister club to Cake Shop in the Bodor entertainment empire, I learned -- on Tuesday. The Falls have speakers but no amps, so we needed to drive the van down from St. Mary's again. I'd taken the liberty of going to Guitar Center after our last show and stocking up on felts and jackets and other small bits of drum hardware, as well as investing in a cymbal case, which proved to be a life-saver for my fingers in the cold; additionally, Chris labeled all of our equipment to prevent a repeat of the confusion over whose hardware was whose. I hopped the subway up to Harlem on Tuesday to help Billy and Chris dig out and load the van, but they were already done by the time I got there, so all I had to do was ride down with them. The St. Mary's van is funny: It handles well enough for its age but complains audibly, and the interior fills with exhaust so you have to keep the windows as open as you can bear. As such, the ride to Williamsburg was freezing and not a little stomach churning as we attempted to navigate to Grand St. via side streets that were only intermittently plowed. Chris commented repeatedly that the fumes were making his extremities go numb, although I think it was probably the cold. For my part, I took of my boots and wrapped my scarf around my feet, which were like ice; ice feet. It was a very band kind of van ride.
When we got to the place, Chris hopped out and lugged some stuff into the club. I attempted to direct Bill into a parallel park up against a piled-up all of snow, but Chris had to re-do it when he returned. Our set went off well, except that Chris and I had trouble hearing the rest of the band, and some kind of firmware change to Billy's pedal board had led him to tune his "A" to 448hz, leaving him subtly and confusingly out of tune, which he blamed, at the time, on Beau. Ken and Adam headlined this time, as they should have, and played a characteristically vigorous and virtuosic set, although theirs was not without incident, either: Ken managed to unplug his amp during one of his solos. (The sound guy staged a daring rescue.) And Adam sliced his hand open on the lip of the snare and spattered all of the drums (including our cymbals, which they'd borrowed, with gore -- a mark of distinction, as far as I'm concerned.
And, unfortunately, there was yet another equipment SNAFU: While we were loading up the van after the show, somebody put the cymbal case into the van without all of the cymbals in it. I noticed this and brought the bag back into the Falls to collect the other cymbals but got distracted and left the bag in the club. In a livery cab on the way home, I had a twinge of memory and called Bill, who searched the van while it was stopped at a gas station and confirmed my fears. At this point I'd gotten all the way back home, and so, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and a black cloud hovering over my head, I hopped into a Carecibo and had the guy take me back to Williamsburg, hoping beyond hope that the Falls was still open. By some miracle of providence it was, and, although there were only a few stragglers left at the bar, one of them turned out to be Adam, who'd noticed my mistake and had the bartender set our cymbals aside in a locked room. That guy is a saint, and Ken South Rock is the nicest band in the world.
Nina had since returned, and with her, the temperature had taken an up-turn. She was concerned that she'd missed the peak of sledding and snowcraft, so on Wednesday we made an early expedition before Bad Movie Night (Creepozoids) out to Prospect Park to see what adventures could still be had. Quite a few, it turned out: We filched some glossy-looking cardboard boxes from the recycling stash in the basement and fashioned them into makeshift sleds that worked reasonably well in the still-snow-blanketed northern part of Long Meadow. We started on some of the gentler hills and then, emboldened, decided to join some Packer-type girls who were riding a plastic three-seater sled down the steep slopes on the northeastern border of the meadow. Nina's box, having a slicker coating to it, proved to be the more exhilarating ride, and we took turns going alarmingly fast (and often head over heels) with it down the hill.
After it finally disintegrated, we attempted to build a snowman, although the snow was so sticky that we couldn't shape it that well. Here are the results:
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The First Voyage of The Bel Fucking Argosy
Bel Argosy played our first show on Saturday the 11th at a not-quite venue (read: some guy's apartment) in Bushwick called Cheap Storage. We'd booked a performance at the venerable Cake Shop for the following week, but Billy and Beau are friends with a guy named Doug in a band called MiniBoone, and he got us on the bill, which included an assortment of other guitar-oriented Brooklyn indie rock bands. We practiced like crazy, set up a bunch of promotional web sites, and made some tentative invites. I had to gently dissuade my mom from making the trip out to Wyckoff Ave.: "There's no working toilet," Beau warned us. "So the landlord's been cutting them a break on the rent and they've been going to the bathroom in a bucket up on the roof."
My perennial friends at Lincoln Pl. were throwing a holiday party the same night, so in my typical, neurotic way, I had to not only show up, if only for an hour, but also bake a pie. I managed to do it, too -- another of the Winter Fruits variety, slightly burnt -- and walked it over to their apartment from mine balanced on top of the snare drum we were asked to bring to the show, carrying the hi-hat and kick pedal in a tiny pink vinyl bag in my other hand. I made it without any upsets, and spent a glorious hour hand-decorating Christmas cookies (baked by Colleen into a million different shapes: Snowman, Christmas tree, the outlines of the states of New York and New Jersey) with flavored, food coloring-colored icing and a satisfyingly varied menagerie of nonpareils: Sprinkles, little pine trees, little snowflakes, shiny little edible beads. Pro tip: It takes very little blue food coloring to make white icing sufficiently blueish; it takes a bleeding gallon of red to make it red enough.
I left, somewhat reluctantly, and hopped the R to the N to the L to the Jefferson St. stop in Bushwick, lugging the drum equipment behind some much younger and hipper types who I suspected might also be performing at the same place we were. The guy's house was pretty much right outside the station, and it was clear why he called it Cheap Storage -- that text was emblazoned on the big building's northern tower. The screen on my trusty LG clamshell phone finally bit the dust a few weeks ago -- the dialer and keypad still work, but the video card was just displaying a blank white image. So I'd taken to writing down phone numbers I didn't know by heart on a little index card and punching them in to make calls as necessary. I tried to reach our contact at the venue, but got no answer. Luckily, the young turks I'd been following managed to get the front door open and held it open. They introduced themselves as "douchebags," but I think they were listed as "Hep Cats" on the bill. Cheap Storage was actually a pretty cozy place. It definitely looked like the storage facility it used to be: Concrete floors, big plaster columns throughout, exposed fiberglass insulation. There was a big industrial looking furnace right in the middle of the floor that kept things nice and warm, and there actually was a working bathroom. One corner of the big open living room was set aside for the bands. Each roommate in the loft had a little cubicle-like room; I asked a big Australian-sounding guy if I could deposit our stuff outside his. "As long as you're not depriving me of access to food or sex, you can do whatever you want," he said.
Chris and Beau showed up after a short time, although not so short a time that I was spared the experience of being the weird guy who knows nobody and whom nobody knows. "Are you okay?" asked the girl from Hep Cats. ("I'm fine," I explained. "I'm just an orphan.") Beau, Chris, and I deposited the equipment and then went to stuff our faces a few blocks away at Tortilleria Mexicano Los Hermanos, which was very good.
The first guy to go on was called Yoni Gordon, and he seemed to be sort of an alt-country indie rock troubadour. He had a sad, yelping voice not entirely unlike Jonathan Richman's. He was accompanied by a drummer who looked like The Edge with a full beard and who had a big, beautiful, expensive-looking orange sunburst drum kit that he played very sparingly. Yoni was a pretty good guitar player and had a good sound, but he seemed a little out of place -- people weren't really moving around, and the Hep Cats were bordering on heckling him. He had this little clip-on lamp that he'd affixed to his mic stand and that he was using for dramatic effect, but one of the 'Cats kept turning it on and off while he was singing, to Yoni's obvious irritation. And as he was tuning up between songs, one of them called out to him, "Tell a funny joke," which sounded to me like a bit of a provocation. There was a moment of tension (I thought), but Yoni defused the situation: "I'll do you one better, friend," he said. "I'll take you on an adventure of the mind." And then he gave weird but earnest introduction to the next song, which had something to do with roadhouses and The One That Got Away.
Once they were finished, there was a scramble to get our drums set up. It was briefly proposed that we ask Yoni Gordon's drummer if we could use his fancy and largely untouched kit, but he packed it up before we could muster the courage. Instead, Taylor, the drummer for MiniBoone, brought over some of his equipment and helped me and Chris set it up. He was very nice and patient, even donating extra cymbal felts to the cause (I cannot abide a flapping crash.) The residents of Cheap Storage had suspended a piece of plywood with chains from the ceiling near the area where we were playing, and before we went on they'd put a digital projector on it. When we started, somebody put a movie in and it (or at least the DVD menu) played on the wall adjacent to us. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that it was Le Samouraï. Which is pretty cool.
Our set was very short. We only played the six songs we were sure about, which amounted to around fifteen minutes. I don't know what it's like for other drummers, but for me, playing the drums is an absorbingly passive exercise. I see the job as being kind of like an insect's nervous system -- inhibitory as opposed to excitatory. So I was paying attention, but sort of zoned out as well, staring at an enormous Alain Delon. And I was so scared! But I managed to avoid pulling what Billy and Chris refer to as "a Continental," in reference to my frightened-rabbit tempo at the Headliners show I wrote about a while ago.
"Who are you?" hollered the girl from Hep Cats, towards the end of our set. "We're Bel Argosy," said Billy.
The band after us was called Boom Chick; they were a White Stripes-y collaboration between Frank Hoier, who plays guitar, and his girlfriend Moselle, who plays drums. They played a very long set, but they were actually pretty great. We were all dancing and stomping along to their songs. As Boom Chick played a slow song, I danced with Patrice. Billy danced with Sarah. He tried to dip her, at an opportune moment, but she demurred. "I'll do it," I said. He dipped me and poured Miller High Life into my mouth -- and nose and ear as I tried to turn my face away.
Their set finally ended and MiniBoone started to set up. Le Samouraï rolled its closing credits, and the projection went dark. ...And so did the lights in loft. MiniBoone played a raucous, noisy, dark, sweaty set that belied their math rock-y underpinnings. The crowd pressed in around the band, dancing and clapping.
After MiniBoone finished, we all kind of resolved to head out. I was exhausted from dancing, and pretty drunk, to the extent that I wondered a few times whether I would have to upchuck. We gathered up our stuff. I agreed, perhaps unwisely, to take home an additional cymbal, our twelve-pound heavy ride, tucking it under my arm as Beau and Patrice and some other hanger-on Amherst alumni lurched our way to the subway, and then to 14th St., and then back to Brooklyn, singly. When I finally got above ground at 4th Ave., it was deeply cold and a light rain was falling. I had stop several times to adjust my grip on the bag of hardware and the cymbals, which were digging painfully into the joint-creases of my fingers. A very drunk woman appeared in the entryway of the building as I was struggling to open the door to the lobby without knocking over the ride. "Do you live here?" she asked. "Okay, I'll let you in." In the elevator, as I leaned against the wall, barely conscious, she said, "Did you take a cab home? I took a cab. Too tired to take the train."
My perennial friends at Lincoln Pl. were throwing a holiday party the same night, so in my typical, neurotic way, I had to not only show up, if only for an hour, but also bake a pie. I managed to do it, too -- another of the Winter Fruits variety, slightly burnt -- and walked it over to their apartment from mine balanced on top of the snare drum we were asked to bring to the show, carrying the hi-hat and kick pedal in a tiny pink vinyl bag in my other hand. I made it without any upsets, and spent a glorious hour hand-decorating Christmas cookies (baked by Colleen into a million different shapes: Snowman, Christmas tree, the outlines of the states of New York and New Jersey) with flavored, food coloring-colored icing and a satisfyingly varied menagerie of nonpareils: Sprinkles, little pine trees, little snowflakes, shiny little edible beads. Pro tip: It takes very little blue food coloring to make white icing sufficiently blueish; it takes a bleeding gallon of red to make it red enough.
I left, somewhat reluctantly, and hopped the R to the N to the L to the Jefferson St. stop in Bushwick, lugging the drum equipment behind some much younger and hipper types who I suspected might also be performing at the same place we were. The guy's house was pretty much right outside the station, and it was clear why he called it Cheap Storage -- that text was emblazoned on the big building's northern tower. The screen on my trusty LG clamshell phone finally bit the dust a few weeks ago -- the dialer and keypad still work, but the video card was just displaying a blank white image. So I'd taken to writing down phone numbers I didn't know by heart on a little index card and punching them in to make calls as necessary. I tried to reach our contact at the venue, but got no answer. Luckily, the young turks I'd been following managed to get the front door open and held it open. They introduced themselves as "douchebags," but I think they were listed as "Hep Cats" on the bill. Cheap Storage was actually a pretty cozy place. It definitely looked like the storage facility it used to be: Concrete floors, big plaster columns throughout, exposed fiberglass insulation. There was a big industrial looking furnace right in the middle of the floor that kept things nice and warm, and there actually was a working bathroom. One corner of the big open living room was set aside for the bands. Each roommate in the loft had a little cubicle-like room; I asked a big Australian-sounding guy if I could deposit our stuff outside his. "As long as you're not depriving me of access to food or sex, you can do whatever you want," he said.
Chris and Beau showed up after a short time, although not so short a time that I was spared the experience of being the weird guy who knows nobody and whom nobody knows. "Are you okay?" asked the girl from Hep Cats. ("I'm fine," I explained. "I'm just an orphan.") Beau, Chris, and I deposited the equipment and then went to stuff our faces a few blocks away at Tortilleria Mexicano Los Hermanos, which was very good.
The first guy to go on was called Yoni Gordon, and he seemed to be sort of an alt-country indie rock troubadour. He had a sad, yelping voice not entirely unlike Jonathan Richman's. He was accompanied by a drummer who looked like The Edge with a full beard and who had a big, beautiful, expensive-looking orange sunburst drum kit that he played very sparingly. Yoni was a pretty good guitar player and had a good sound, but he seemed a little out of place -- people weren't really moving around, and the Hep Cats were bordering on heckling him. He had this little clip-on lamp that he'd affixed to his mic stand and that he was using for dramatic effect, but one of the 'Cats kept turning it on and off while he was singing, to Yoni's obvious irritation. And as he was tuning up between songs, one of them called out to him, "Tell a funny joke," which sounded to me like a bit of a provocation. There was a moment of tension (I thought), but Yoni defused the situation: "I'll do you one better, friend," he said. "I'll take you on an adventure of the mind." And then he gave weird but earnest introduction to the next song, which had something to do with roadhouses and The One That Got Away.
Once they were finished, there was a scramble to get our drums set up. It was briefly proposed that we ask Yoni Gordon's drummer if we could use his fancy and largely untouched kit, but he packed it up before we could muster the courage. Instead, Taylor, the drummer for MiniBoone, brought over some of his equipment and helped me and Chris set it up. He was very nice and patient, even donating extra cymbal felts to the cause (I cannot abide a flapping crash.) The residents of Cheap Storage had suspended a piece of plywood with chains from the ceiling near the area where we were playing, and before we went on they'd put a digital projector on it. When we started, somebody put a movie in and it (or at least the DVD menu) played on the wall adjacent to us. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that it was Le Samouraï. Which is pretty cool.
Our set was very short. We only played the six songs we were sure about, which amounted to around fifteen minutes. I don't know what it's like for other drummers, but for me, playing the drums is an absorbingly passive exercise. I see the job as being kind of like an insect's nervous system -- inhibitory as opposed to excitatory. So I was paying attention, but sort of zoned out as well, staring at an enormous Alain Delon. And I was so scared! But I managed to avoid pulling what Billy and Chris refer to as "a Continental," in reference to my frightened-rabbit tempo at the Headliners show I wrote about a while ago.
"Who are you?" hollered the girl from Hep Cats, towards the end of our set. "We're Bel Argosy," said Billy.
The band after us was called Boom Chick; they were a White Stripes-y collaboration between Frank Hoier, who plays guitar, and his girlfriend Moselle, who plays drums. They played a very long set, but they were actually pretty great. We were all dancing and stomping along to their songs. As Boom Chick played a slow song, I danced with Patrice. Billy danced with Sarah. He tried to dip her, at an opportune moment, but she demurred. "I'll do it," I said. He dipped me and poured Miller High Life into my mouth -- and nose and ear as I tried to turn my face away.
Their set finally ended and MiniBoone started to set up. Le Samouraï rolled its closing credits, and the projection went dark. ...And so did the lights in loft. MiniBoone played a raucous, noisy, dark, sweaty set that belied their math rock-y underpinnings. The crowd pressed in around the band, dancing and clapping.
After MiniBoone finished, we all kind of resolved to head out. I was exhausted from dancing, and pretty drunk, to the extent that I wondered a few times whether I would have to upchuck. We gathered up our stuff. I agreed, perhaps unwisely, to take home an additional cymbal, our twelve-pound heavy ride, tucking it under my arm as Beau and Patrice and some other hanger-on Amherst alumni lurched our way to the subway, and then to 14th St., and then back to Brooklyn, singly. When I finally got above ground at 4th Ave., it was deeply cold and a light rain was falling. I had stop several times to adjust my grip on the bag of hardware and the cymbals, which were digging painfully into the joint-creases of my fingers. A very drunk woman appeared in the entryway of the building as I was struggling to open the door to the lobby without knocking over the ride. "Do you live here?" she asked. "Okay, I'll let you in." In the elevator, as I leaned against the wall, barely conscious, she said, "Did you take a cab home? I took a cab. Too tired to take the train."
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