Thirty

Quickly, before it's too hot to think:

My friend Beau, the distinguished lead guitar player of Bel Argosy and frontman of Robot Princess, has been working hard on the script for a movie (with Doug of MiniBoone), and last weekend we helped him film it. The movie is called "Vanderpuss Redux," and it's a comedy of errors, a dinner party farce set in the home of a failed lawyer. Beau cast me as the (creepy) Judge Archibald Brisbane and Nina as a mute woman named Lilly, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against a light bulb manufacturer played by Patrice. I don't want to give away any more of the plot. At the time he cast me, I'd gone a few weeks without a shave. "Does this creepy judge have... a beard?" I asked Beau. "Hey, sure," he said. "Whatever." That was all the encouragement I needed to let my facial hair run wild. Now I've got a big fur coat -- thicker, even, than the Charlie Salinger beard I grew on summer vacation when I was 16 -- on my face that I've been obsessing over and tweaking with a cheap electric beard trimmer.

We just finished filming! Beau was able to get the run of his vacationing friend Ali's apartment, a well-furnished two-and-a-half-bedroom place over in Clinton Hill. It also happened to be the current home of our friend (and Beau's former roommate in the "practice hole" at St. Mary's), Ali's little brother Zain. The only downside to the location was its somewhat cramped geometry. To give the illusion of a larger apartment, Beau shot about a half dozen different angles on the single narrow hallway connecting the master bedroom to the eat-in kitchen. We all (there were about ten people in the cast) shuttled between the rooms in which shooting was happening and the rooms where the air conditioners could be run, all of us wearing our cobbled-together grown-up costumes: Suits, ties, cocktail dresses, all soaked through with sweat. The guy playing Norway Vanderpuss went shoeless, like a Hobbit. Zain and I tried to keep our ties loose. I kept my suit jacket on, though. That is just how creepy judges roll.

We ended the first day of filming at about 7 o'clock, in order to allow us to make it to South Street Seaport in time to catch Ted Leo and his Pharmacists doing a special performance of his 2001 album The Tyranny of Distance, a kind of "preview" show to hype the 4Knots music festival happening on the following Saturday. There was a small stage on Pier 17 between the Seaport mall and The Peking, which is permanently moored across from it. Beau and Doug are both rabid Ted Leo fans and Beau ranks "Tyranny" as his favorite Ted Leo album; me, I got on board with Shake The Sheets, so, while it's impossible not to stomp my foot to the riff in "Timorous Me" (quite possibly one of the best guitar lines written by anybody, ever), I think some of the deeper cuts were lost on me. But it's always thrilling to see them play. Contrary to -- or maybe consistent with -- what he said last year about slowing down as he rounds the bend to 40, the guy bopped harder than ever, sang harder, shredded like crazy. And their drummer, Chris Wilson: Oh man, what a consistent, precise, and economical drummer that guy is. And as a newly-minted beardo myself, how could he not be my new drumming hero?

Seeing a show at a place like the Seaport, where there's so much other stuff going on in parallel, is always a little funny -- on the way in, the sight of people lounging around an outdoor table at a Heartland Brewery franchise or shopping at an Ann Taylor makes you wonder if you're in the right place. 'Cuz if Ted Leo were really playing a mere two hundred feet from here, this place should be empty! And on the way out, you're like "What are you guys doing just sitting there? Do you know what you just missed?" I guess the things I like, they're not for everybody. And that's probably for the best, anyway.

The next week was busy.

I ducked out of work early and Tom and Jerry and Katie and I caught a live remote broadcast of Seven Second Delay at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater over on W. 26th St. 7SD, in case I haven't said so outright, is pretty much my favorite thing, ever. And while I'm not as crazy about their live shows as I am about their in-studio shows ("detention," as Andy Breckman calls them), which are more likely to be train wrecks (and thus light up my squirmingly-awkward comedy neurons), this was still a real treat. The basement UCB theater is pleasantly scuzzy; dark, with low ceilings and plush, old-fashioned movie-theater seats. We drank beers and listened to Andy, weirdly nervous and twitchy, talk to Jon Benjamin about provoking strangers in the bathroom. And then the guy who handles the cue cards for SNL came by and Ken and Andy had a couple of audience members interview him via cue card. The cue card guy was trying to launch a project where he'd auction off celebrity-signed cue cards for charity. After the interview, Ken asked Andy, "Are you going to donate your cue cards to charity? 'Cuz I am."

"Uh, sure," said Andy.

"No you're not. You're just copying me."

"Uh, I'll donate 'em to 'Got You Last.' You ever hear of that charity?"

"No," said Ken, laughing. "Tell me about 'Got You Last.'"

"They play practical jokes on terminally ill people," said Andy, to the biggest laughs of the evening.

I considered lingering afterwards to fawn creepily on the hosts, but I had to make it uptown for Bel Argosy rehearsal, so I said goodbye to my friends and hopped a cab. We'd barely made it to Columbus Circle when it started raining, at first a few scattered drops, the sun still shining, and then, dramatically, a full-on thunderstorm -- dark, oppressive sky; fat, splashy drops. I watched a group of girls try to create a quorum of umbrella shelter before giving up to huddle under a hotel awning. Everything smelled like water and ozone. And it was all over by the time I stepped out of the cab and let myself into Billy's building.

The next night, my sister took me out to see a midnight premiere of the final Harry Potter movie with a group of her friends at the Battery Park Regal Cinema. I was a little apprehensive about participating in what seemed like a rite of passage that wasn't mine -- and it really was a big cultural, you know, happening: The movie theater looked like an airport in a blizzard, people sprawled on the floor amidst their sundry props and accessories. Clearly struggling to keep up with the snack passion of the muggle hordes, the theater had arrayed some backup refreshment stands to dole out popcorn and sody-pop and the like. The weird part: By and large, the first-night attendees were girls. To be sure, there were dudes, but they were mostly, you know, accompanied. "This must be your generation's Lord of the Rings," I said to my sister's friend Jess. "Lord of the Rings was my generation's Lord of the Rings," she said. So I don't know what Harry Potter is. But my sister and her friends were very gracious about sharing the moment with some creepy old guy. I turned thirty years old just as the movie theater's "Shut Up And Buy Snacks" animation started playing -- the viewer's proxy camera hurtling through space on a roller coaster track, through some kind of futuristic hellscape of cinematic detritus. And then it was dark and I was alone with several hundred weeping twenty-year-old girls, watching some chubby British kids take off their shirts and give Ralph Feinnes and his snake the business for two hours.

The next morning at work, my co-workers had gone out get me some birthday accessories -- a candy-stuffed, clown-shaped piñata, which I obligingly destroyed during our morning "stand up" meeting, and a plush, ornate crown, which I wore while I did it. I think they were of two minds -- to embarrass me as well as to fête me, but I loved it 100%.

Bel Argosy'd arranged to play a show that night at Lone Wolf in Bushwick as a favor to Aron Blue, the lady who books Ken South Rock stateside and who produced their album, Ningen. She's been real nice to us, and we were happy to do it, especially since we'd get to "headline" after a good-sounding band from out of town, The Broken Bricks. "You wanna see my new apartment?" she asked me and Billy when we arrived. "It's right here. We just moved in." We walked down the block past the entrance to Goodbye Blue Monday and she let us into a building through an undistinguished front door. We followed her through a real Death Wish kind of entryway and up some stairs to her new place, which turned out to be pretty awesome -- a high-ceilinged wunderkammer of art supplies, an 8-millimeter film projector and film reels, whole rooms crammed full of instruments and recording equipment.

Nina arrived, bearing with her a wonderful surprise -- fucking peanut butter pie from Trois Pommes, plus party hats she'd tramped all the way down to Sunset Park to obtain (99 cent stores in crummy Park Slope don't stay open past 10 PM). We stashed the pie in the fridge behind the bar and stood outside wolfing pre-show deli sandwiches while being eaten ourselves by mosquitoes. The Broken Bricks sounded really tight and hooky, but they also had things turned up to 11, so we didn't feel any strong compulsion to go inside and do our duty as bill-sharers. Despite our bad behavior, they were gracious enough to let us borrow their kit once they were done, and we commenced setting up. Beau briefly lost a set of patch cables down an inconveniently-positioned hole at the front of the stage, but as usual we began frighteningly (for me) promptly. I still get wound up enough on stage that it's hard for me to recall individual moments of our set, but I do know I wore my crown the whole time, and that consequently I was soaked with sweat. We played a somewhat abbreviated set: They wanted us off the stage by 1:30, and Billy was having trouble with his, you know, instrument, anyway. Owing to the lateness of the hour, Billy and Sarah departed before we could serve them pie, graciously lugging all the equipment back up to Spanish Harlem, but lots of people stayed -- Chris, Beau, Andrei, Patrice, Andrei's friend Jake -- and we all had pie. There were a few extra slices; we distributed these to Aron, the bartenders, and finally the bouncer, who hesitated before accepting a plate and fork. The pie was delicious! It was so tasty and sugary that I worried it'd give me a tummy ache, but it turned out to be as digestible as it was tasty. I could probably have eaten another slice or two! Beau, inveterate hummingbird that he is, seemed to enjoy it, too: "Take a picture of me and Julian eating this pie!" he demanded of no one in particular.

When we finally got home, I tossed my soggy crown onto the dresser and switched on the lights to reveal... flowers, everywhere! Nina'd arranged lilies, a (comically large) sunflower, white roses, and many other varieties in artful clusters all around the apartment. It was stunning. For the second night in a row, I didn't get to bed until somewhat after 3:00 AM. But I felt good, babies. Like I'd done it. Great birthday. Greatest birthday, maybe?

And then the next day it was back to the Seaport for the 4Knots Festival proper. I was primarily interested in seeing Titus Andronicus, whom I hadn't seen live since February (if that counts) and last summer before that. My compatriots bailed and the trains were an utter disaster -- had to bail on the C, which was running on the F, at Broadway-Lafayette, thinking I could take the 6 down to the end of the line, but there were no downtown trains at that station, period. Despairing, I left the station and sprinted across town to the W. Houston stop on the IRT, and hopped the train to Fulton. I ran all the way from the station to the pier, but I was still grievously late, arriving only in time to catch the fourteen-minute epic "The Battle Of Hampton Roads." At the end of that song they launched into a spirited "Titus Andronicus Forever." Everyone in the band took a solo in this one, each introduced by Patrick as they did so. "Amy... David... Eric... Julian [their new-ish bass player]... Now watch me!" And he shredded through an Aaron Copland-flavored solo. It wouldn't be a Titus Andronicus show without some hortatory remarks from Patrick to close things out; he didn't disappoint. "Everyone pick up a bottle or a plastic cup on your way out," he suggested. "That shouldn't be too hard. And let's all try to have a safe summer."

Up next were The Black Angels, a "psychedelic rock" band from Texas. I wasn't crazy about them. Leaving aside the fact that all things "psych" leave me cold, the 'Angels looked and dressed like a bunch of Abercrombie & Fitch models. I stayed for a couple of songs and then went inside the mall and bought a pair of rust-colored All-Stars at Foot Locker. The summer's half over; time I had some summer shoes.

On Sunday my parents and my sister took me and Nina out for dinner at Jean Claude. They showered me with wonderful gifts that I probably (definitely) don't deserve: A J.M. Coetzee novel, a casserole dish, a pair of drum sticks that double as mixing spoons for cooking. And most strikingly, they gave me a book, a special book that they'd had custom printed, with glossy pages of photos of me as a young'n, the content of which was a selection of cute / weird things I'd said. Some readers will already be familiar with these quotations; those of you who are not are out of luck: These sayings of mine are mainly anatomical in nature.

Onwards!

America!

Summer continues, and with it the procession of predictably awesome shows. To wit: I went to go see Art Brut at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday. I'd been looking forward to seeing them, well, ever since the last time I saw them, a couple of years ago at Brooklyn Bowl, but then I got word that my friend (well, friend-of-a-friend) Doug's band, MiniBoone, was going to be opening! A word about them: I'd seen them live once before, when we opened for them at our very first show, and thought that they were a fun, sloppy, party band. But that show had been marked by electrical outages and audio failures, and so it probably wasn't a good example of what they're like live. Because they should themselves to be crazy tight and hooky on Thursday -- no easy feat when you've got five guys on stage and they're each playing three different instruments. Their drummer in particular impressed me with his extreme precision and effortless cool.

After MiniBoone was Reptar, a kind of electro-clash dance punk band. They were actually very good, despite the fact that they had two drummers and that one of the keyboard players had a whole bunch of twisty, silly braids in his hair and performed their set wearing some kind of house dress. I liked their singer, too. He was a small guy with a high, nasal voice that put me in mind of Leonard Graves Phillips, never a bad thing.

Art Brut's roadie came out amid anticipatory chants of "Art! Brut! Top of the pops!" and tuned several guitars. And then the bass player, drummer, and guitar players came out and took their places on the stage. There's a sort of back stage area at Music Hall of Williamsburg, with a door that opens directly onto the stage. Eddie Argos lingered in the doorway for a moment by himself, framed dramatically in the blue light of the stairwell behind him, before running out to join the band. "The last time we were here, this place was still called Northsix!" he said. "Ready, Art Brut?" They kicked off their set with a song from "Brilliant! Tragic!" called "Clever, Clever Jazz," which I thought was a funny introduction for what's arguably a pretty arty, weird band. And then they played "My Little Brother," updating the age of Eddie's little brother to "only twenty-nine." He's out of control! Traditionally, that song's got a breakdown in which Argos explains that all of the records they're listening to have the same theme -- "Why don't our parents worry about us?" -- and gave that speech this time, too, except he also went on to point out that, given that his brother's getting married and settling down, their parents are more worried about him (Eddie) since he's been playing in a rock band for the past nine years and they seem to have peaked (his words) a few years back. I'll take his word for it, but their set was tight as fuck. The band still seems to be having fun, especially Jasper and Ian, who bopped around the stage and off of each other throughout. Eddie took frequent breaks during songs to address the audience, which seemed to amuse him as much as it did us. During "Modern Art," he began his customary monologue by saying, "This is the part where I'd usually end the song by diving into the crowd, but since I got a bit too heavy for that a few years ago, I'll just climb down here." With a roadie spooling out microphone cable behind him, he hopped down off the stage and waded into the center of the audience, all the while extemporizing about his first experience seeing a Van Gogh up close for the first time. "You know, when I wrote this song, I'd only been two art galleries," he observed, to good-natured laughter. When he got to the center of the room, he stopped. "Alright, everybody," he said. "Now sit down." And, in acknowledgement of his breezy control of his audience, we all sat or crouched down on the floor, and he went on with the story. The band continued to fill in the song's low, bouncy melody, gradually rising in volume as Eddie wrapped things up, and returning to full power as he bounded back up on stage and we all stood up.

There was the obligatory "Art! Brut! Top of the pops!" and "MiniBoone! Top of the pops!" and "Reptar! Top of the pops!" And, as usual, somewhat confusingly, there was also "We Are Scientists! Top of the pops!" They closed with a very satisfying performance of "Alcoholics Unanimous." "We are Art Brut! Thank you! We love you! Be excellent to each other!"

That Saturday we saw our first Celebrate Brooklyn show of the summer -- The Heavy at the Prospect Park bandshell. I accepted Katharine's invitation before giving them a listen, and when I did I was kind of apprehensive. Oh man, I thought, these are the guys that did that car commercial song. But they turned out to be great! I got to the park as their openers, The London Souls, were finishing their set. They weren't that great: A bunch of hipsters wearing fancy collared shirts and playing Blues Hammer-style rock. Towards the end of their set they covered "Folsom Prison Blues," which just seemed unnecessarily risky: That song gets its intensity from its lyrical tone and from its simple dynamics; it's not a good fit for splashy rock-and-roll drumming and distorted guitar. And it's such an iconic song, that you better bring your 'A' game if you cover it -- which they didn't.

Celebrate Brooklyn's gotten a lot fancier since the last time I went there. They've got crazy prominent branding on everything, and they're really pushing their tiered pricing model -- the low end of that being free, of course, but with a premium end that apparently includes special seating areas with table service from the fancy food vendors who've set up outposts in the park: The Farm on Adderley had set up a full-service thatched-wood kitchen to the left of the bandshell. And there were beer tents on either side serving Hoegaarden along with Bud Lite Lime. And yet it wasn't awful. I remember it being an ordeal to see a show there a few years ago: squatting in the dog shit-smelling earth on the hill sloping up to the road, getting chomped by bugs, straining to see the stage. But this time around, it just felt cleaner, clearer, bigger. I munched on a clutch of fried asparagus while I waited for my friends to arrive.

Kelvin Swaby took the stage flanked by a black-suited horn section on his right and a trio of backup singers wearing cocktail dresses on his left. The band's got a hip, classy, neo-soul aesthetic, and he's got an amazing voice, alternately raspy and smooth, with an attitude to match: Between racing up and down the stage and bearing down on the mic, Swaby mock-chided the audience for making him sweat. "Y'all going to make me get naked!" he said. Sure enough, as the stage got hotter, he stripped down from a suit jacket and tie to his undershirt, but his voice held up. And to their credit they held off on playing their car commercial song until the encore.

Afterwards we killed two waterbugs and then got drinks at The Gate. I ordered a pizza, the Ippolito special: Pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives. It is delicious.

The inexorable march of days: July 4th. I set my alarm for 10 AM in preparation for heading down to Coney Island for the Hot Dog Barfing Contest, failing to take into account the repercussions of my meal the previous night. We'd been having a night out with Winnie and Evan, and sat down for fried things at The Commodore, where I did battle with a scaldingly spicy sandwich which left me sweating embarrassingly about the face parts but ultimately victorious. Tasting it, Evan wagged his finger at me: "That's going to be trouble later on," he said. It wasn't, that night -- we continued on to the Bushwick Country Club, where I ran into Joe, a friend of mine from a previous job, and where I took advantage of the PBR-and-Old Crow special.

But it was trouble later on. And so it was after some stinging discomfort in the bathroom that I dragged myself, groggy and dyspeptic, down to Coney Island for the contest. Knowing I'd been standing in the hot sun, cheek-to-jowl with a pushing, shoving, inconsiderate mass of humanity, I applied sunblock and iced tea to myself in generous quantities, and I brought with me the copy of David Peace's Nineteen Eighty I was reading, which gave the proceedings a bleak and corporeal cast. Conspicuously missing from the event was, obviously, Takeru Kobayashi, whose public feud with the International Federation of Competitive Eating continues (he staged a parallel feat of endurance at a bar in Manhattan); but so was Eric "Badlands" Booker and "Crazy Legs" Conti, two of the more recognizable faces from previous years. In their places were a bunch of chubby white also-rans, as well as, notably, a contingent of Chinese competitive eaters decked out in (tongue-in-cheek, perhaps) matching red jumpsuits. But two of my favorite perennial runners-up, Eater X and Patrick Bertoletti, the Chi-town hipster who looks like Tony Clifton with a mohawk, and whose technique, in a rare deviation from the ubiquitous Solomon Method, involves mashing the hot dogs into a revolting pink paste with both hands and then cramming the resulting fistfuls into his mouth. Not surprisingly, Joey Chestnut claimed victory, but Bertoletti was a reasonably close second. Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas took the prize in the new, separate, women's category. Which I guess they created because there were so many eager female competitors? Ick.

Chris had led me to believe he'd be up for a trip to Brighton Beach, but when the early part of the day turned out to be kind of overcast, he bailed. I'd bought a pair of swim trunks from Target in preparation, though, and was determined to use them, and so Nina (who'd done likewise) and I ventured forth in search of a public pool. The one at Degraw and 3rd Ave. was supposed to re-open after a routine bit of maintenance at four o'clock, but when we got there at 4:15 we found the gates closed and groups of would-be splashers crowded outside the chain-link fence watching a team of lifeguards who were huddled together at one end of the pool. One of the lifeguards came over to explain things.

"We've got a minor sanitation issue with the pool," she said. "It'll be open again at 4:30." Nina wanted to know, if nobody minded, what was the actual problem? "Take a guess," said the lifeguard. Oh no, we thought. Nina had to be sure: "Is it a poop?" she asked. "Is there a poop in the pool?" The lifeguard nodded. "They're drawing straws to see who has to fish it out. That's why I came over here," she said. "I don't even want to be in the running for that." After some soul-searching, we decided we probably weren't cool with swimming in a pooped-in pool even after the turd in question had been removed (despite the fact that we've almost certainly done so unwittingly in the past), and so we slung our towels over our shoulders and trudged southwest to Red Hook Park to have a look at the pool there. (We ran into Mike, another former co-worker, in Gowanus.) But that pool was overflowing with kids and their families, and we made excuses to each other about the oozy blisters on our feet not passing mster with the ill-tempered Parks Department attendants in order to punk out.

"Let me show you something," Nina said, back at our apartment, with both of us wedged head-to-foot into our bathroom tub, the sun long since set. "Tilt your head back. Lie back until your ears are under the water." I obeyed, the lukewarm water muffling the sound of her voice. "It feels like your whole body's floating, doesn't it?"

It did!

That's The Crip Side

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.

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!

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.

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?!"

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.

"The Dark Tower, right?" he said.
"Yep," I said. "You read 'em?"
"Yep," he said.
"All of them?"
"Oh yeah."

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'.

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.

"They've got it working on the HTC Dream, I think it's called," he said.
"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."

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.

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 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.