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Saturday, September
27, 2003 at 13:21:45 (EDT) |
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We'll take the subway right down to Kings
Highway
The Coney
Island Short Film Festival is going on in a half-hour, so if you
leave now, you just might make it. Then again it goes all day long,
so I'm sure you'll get to see some of it.
Tonight there's a fundraiser for the indie film "A Kind of
Dream" at Orchard
Bar. My pal Mitchell worked on the movie, so I'll be there as
Celebrity Guest Blogger. I can hear the acclaim already: "Who
are you? What's a blog?" Also it gives me the excuse to visit
the Korean
BBQ guy.
Tomorrow I had better see Lost
in Translation, for I may never get around to it otherwise.
And Monday, Stupid
has secured a slot at the Battle
of the Bands at the Hard
Rock Café! Top prize is something like $1000 and air
time on Q105, whatever that is. The whole thing is a promotion for
that new Jack
Black movie, but he's one of the judges! It's free so you should
go.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday, September
24, 2003 at 11:38:38 (EDT) |
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The devil (kittens) take your stereo and
your record collection
  Something's
been missing from your life. More kitten pictures! I've been taking
pictures, but I haven't had the energy to post them of late. The
kittens are just about ready to head out to their new home up the
street. Apparently I'm supposed to be separating them from Pinky
(the moms) for short periods to prepare them for the big move, but
I can do that this weekend.
Meanwhile I have discovered another occupational hazard of raising
kittens: they will use your records as chew toys.
 Oh,
my poor vinyl! Actually most of this stuff originally belonged to
my parents, who at some point shipped them to my basement. There
they stayed (after I had of course picked through and liberated
the keepers), until our horrendous flood earlier in the summer.
The records were all sitting on the floor and were completely water-logged.
I brought them up to my room to dry out, but they mostly just ended
up getting stuck together. Now the cats like to throw themselves
at the stacks and tear off frayed paper edges form the record jackets.
 Ah,
but I'll probably miss them when they're gone. Who but cute kittens
could get away with ransacking a bedroom and still come off as darling?
Well, I suppose human children might be able to pull this off, but
I dunno anything bout that.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, September
23, 2003 at 14:12:36 (EDT) |
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Maybe I should just change my style
Band names. It ain't easy. Trying to find something you can live with
can be a real struggle, and just when you think you've hit upon a
great one, you find somebody else already used it. Or even a not-so-great
one. Case in point, Poobah, which is pretty much the worst name I
can think of for a band, was a group from my college town. They put
out a CD named "Alkaloid," pretty much the worst album title
I can think of as well. The CD had barely hit the shelves when the
word came down from Youngstown that there was another band with
the same name.
Is there something in the water? I don't know. But the other Poobah
had been around, in one form or the other, since the 70's, so they
won the right to keep this lame moniker. So what did Poobah, Jr. do?
Switched sides on the CD and started calling themselves "Alkaloid"
and the album "Poobah." Then they moved to Chicago and promptly
broke up.
In those days (early 90s) it was harder to know if your band's
name was an original or not. Obviously, nobody was gonna name themselves
"The Rolling Stones" or even "Meat Loaf," but
there are always so many tiny bands out there, who knows when a
name might be repeated. But in our Information Age, there's less
excuse for overlap. For instance, somebody needs to get The
Giraffes (of New York) a computer so they can read about the
other Giraffes
band, fronted by that guy from The Presidents of the USA. Still,
even this mistake is understandable; both bands are relatively new
and relatively isolated.
There is, however, no excuse for the band in Quebec that is calling
itself "Galaxie
500." Now, they claim they never heard of Dean Wareham's
seminal outfit, but honestly, how is this possible? I know, they
live in a another country, but jeez, you can practically see Montreal
from the Empire State Building! They're apparently big enough to
play some festival show, but somehow not even one of their fans
ever happened to hear of the other band after all this time? You'd
think they'd at least Google
their name, just once, to see if, perchance anybody had ever used
it.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
22, 2003 at 15:57:18 (EDT) |
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Like she's never soared before
This is almost enough to make me want to write poetry again. But
his work is actually superior to mine. And now, The
Poetry of DH Rumsfeld. [via MRK]
His work is actually reminiscent of both Jim
Daniel's work (he's a legitimate poet), and the dictation of
Ernest
Noyes Brookings, whose only real claim to fame is that he's
an old man in a nursing home with a peculiar way of putting things.
He was made famous by Duplex
Planet, the comic in which David
Greenberger interviews old folks and has popular alt comic artists
illustrate their stories and non sequitors. It's alternately heartwarming
and bewildering to hear what these senior citizens say. They should
start a new show called "Oldsters Say the Darndest Things!"
Maybe all the poets are in retirement communities or the government
these days.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
22, 2003 at 15:09:03 (EDT) |
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Sometimes I have to wonder about the dog
in me
 Sunday,
I arose ... eventually and biked over to the BARC
Dog Show (I missed the parade). I met up with Jami
and we proceeded to take a million pictures of dogs, in and out of
costume, and two weird people doing some kind of bizarre swimming
performance in a kiddie pool. They were representing some organization,
but I haven't the foggiest what it could be. At any rate, my pictures
pretty much sucked all around, so I direct you to Jami's
superior photo work.
 Then
we retired to Enid's,
which is far nicer than I'd been led to believe, for far too many
beers during daylight hours. Then a quick jaunt to the Williamsburg
Ferry Landing Park to stare into the sun and puzzle over the group
of people dressed in black who were sitting around in a circle and
looking intently at one another. Maybe they were unemployed mimes.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
22, 2003 at 11:05:51 (EDT) |
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Oscillations
Saturday involved a lotta cleaning up around the house, during which
I rediscovered the box full of fine crystal stemware I had completely
forgotten about. What am I gonna do with a bunch of champagne flutes?
To bad I didn't unearth them before that champagne party. At some
point M and I went out to meet a man named Doug who had a Fender
Rhodes electric piano for sale. His ad in Billburg
had said "will take anything for it," so our curiosity was
piqued. Indeed, as he had told us, the piano was not pretty. Its carrying
case is very banged up and its enormous amp/stand looks fairly ratty.
But the keybed seems clean and the keyboard works fine, good action.
The only thing wrong is a problem with the power supply, which is
causing the amp to make a perpetual tone. But it was so cheap we couldn't
refuse. Now we gotta suck up to Z to get him to drive us back there
to pick it up. This thing is enormous. I used to have a Wurlitzer
electric (Clark Nova, hey whatever happened to that?), so it'll be
nice to have another one, especially since this is the benchmark for
all electric pianos, the Suitcase
Piano. Now if only I can remember how to play it.
Speaking of keyboards, Saturday also provided us our first glimpse
of the power duo, People
of the North. It's just Oneida with one less person (they keep
doing this; the next incarnation will be Kid Millions playing a
set of bongos by himself). But this is only temporary, just until
Jane can get back on his feet. They played The Orphanage, a super-stuffy
space in Williamsburg. We got there in time to see USAISAMONSTER,
another two-man outfit who seem to be a cross between Yes, Naked
City and the Melvins. In short, they rocked.
People of the North took the stage late but still drew a large
and enthusiastic audience. Their first song was a cover, which took
me a long time to place. Finally I realized it was "Oscillations"
by the Silver
Apples. They were a band from the late 60's who consisted of
a drummer and a synth/organ player, doing experimental proto-dronerock.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thus the appropriateness of the cover. They
extruded one of their signature 10-minute+ songs that was totally
bitchin'. I don't know how they do it. Their set ended with a cover
of a Suicide song, and a hipster kid attempting some kind of Shane-MacGowan-meets-Travis-Bickle
look jumped on the stage and tried to get all punk rock, jumping
into the audience and knocking over the mic stand. Ah, youth!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
22, 2003 at 10:18:49 (EDT) |
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It's like hypnotizing chickens
Instead of just going out Friday night and drinking the night away,
I went to the theater. And then I went out drinking. I got together
with some other OU
alumni and saw Dose!
The Musical, which was penned by and stars a few more alumni.
While I cannot exactly recommend the play, it did do a few interesting
things. Being a musical about drug addiction and other vices that
keep us in a self-delusional state, the tone of the show is necessarily
odd. I kind of liked that, even if it didn't always work. But the
real stroke of genius is to play on the audience's notions of musicals.
Implicit in a musical is a sense of optimism, since the only people
in real life who feel like bursting out into song in public and the
ecstatic folk. They do the same thing in this play but the happy songs
are always illustrative of the characters' narcissistic myopia (i.e.,
"I may be a fat-ass / But I have a boyfriend!").
Also it had a lot of on-stage nudity, something which people can't
seem to get enough of. After the show I ended up at a going away
party for somebody I didn't know, in a lovely East Village apartment
with a shared deck. Several Sing-Ha's later I ventured towards the
subway, when it hit me: I was in the East Village, after midnight
on a weekend. This could mean only one thing: I can meet the pushcart
guy!
For months now I've been trying to see this guy. An enterprising
young man, Sam got himself a cart and a license and now stands around
the corner of Ludlow & Stanton on the weekends, doling out Korean-style
BBQ to drunken hipsters. I have found it exceedingly difficult to
make it down there on the weekends, for some reason, but now I can
finally give it the Jimmy Legs Seal of Approval. I dunno too much
about Korean BBQ, but this stuff was delicious. I should have paid
more attention to what was in it like a real food critic, instead
of scarfing it down like I hadn't just been at a party with a wide
variety of cheeses. Anyhow, it's good stuff. Sam also vends more
standard fare for the less adventurous dipsomaniac, dogs and wings
and the like. He's about to expand his enterprise to several more
nights a week, so if you find yourself in the area, keep ya eyes
open for what is possibly the only food cart out on the streets
past 12.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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After many false starts, we finally got our