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Friday, March
05, 2004 at 12:09:47 (EST) |
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Look
away, baby, look away
Do any cat owners out there ever experience this? Mr Bones seems
to need to be watched when he eats. I've been feeding him for
the past couple days and I notice that even after he gets fed,
he keeps waddling out and trying to get me to come back into
the room with his food bowl. If I follow him, he'll start eating
but if I make to leave, he looks all anxiety-ridden and comes
after me.
Obviously, he still finds time to eat unobserved.
Tonight I will be attending the show at Freddy's
Back Room, featuring Matt and Dana of Stupid
who will be doing an acoustic set. The show is a benefit for
Ben
Hoyumpa, Stupid's drummer, who broke his arm in a band-related
car
accident. Matt and Dana played together in a band before
Stupid called the SOBs, so perhaps we'll get to hear some
of their earlier work.
What else are people doing this weekend? I fear I am getting
into a rut in terms of the stuff I do on the weekends. Generally,
the weekends tend to be vast wastelands of cultural enlightenment.
I love not having to work, but with an entire day at my disposal
I often end up doing less than what I do during the week.
I make lots of plans for the weekends: shopping, cleaning,
writing music, going to museums, buying pickles,
cooking, painting, brunching ... But who schedules time for
lingering in bed, reading the New
York Times Magazine, staring hazily at your coffee
cup, wondering why the magical elixir within doesn't' seem
to be doing the trick today? Thus, many a weekend day passes
into insignificance.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday,
March 03, 2004 at 15:57:09 (EST) |
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Let's
face it pal, you didn't need that eye surgery
Is anybody going to the Don Caballero show tonight? I totally
thought it was later in the month, but luckily Zack reminded
me. They're playing tonight at North
Six with Detachment Kit and Sir Prize Fighter, whoever they
are. This totally sucks, as MRK is in Cleveland right now.
Of course, this isn't your father's Don Cab. Damon Che, magnificent
drummer and magnificient bastard, has been touring around
with some guys from Creta Bourzia and calling it Don
Caballero. The other original members of the band had
no idea he was doing this, and I don't think they like it.
Anyway it should be interesting, as long as Che doesn't take
his pants off.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday,
March 03, 2004 at 11:01:34 (EST) |
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I'm
a man with a mission in two or three editions
I was very happy to go to Symphony
Space last night for the McSweeney's
Writing Center fundraiser. This is mostly because I really
like that reading
series they air on WNYC
on Sunday afternoons, the one in which famous actors read worthy
short stories. This is is good idea since it's normally a crap
shoot when it comes to authors' speaking voices. For every Paul
Auster there's a Bin
Ramke (okay, none of you will know him, he's a poet and
a damn good one but if i ever have to hear him read again, I'll
stick a screwdriver into my ear). Anyway, many a lonely Sunday
afternoon has been spent with this surrogate bedtime story factory.
But back to the fundraiser: Abby
and Liz
& J were there; in fact, we were all in the balcony together.
But they were on the other side of the room and I'm sure they
just didn't see me, for ignoring a fellow blogger in a public
place would be tantamount to a slap in the face with a studded
leather glove covered in hallucinogenic frog poison. Look
it up, it's in the rules!
So McSweeney's
started here in Brooklyn a few years ago, in my old neighborhood
in fact. But it grew larger than life and so had to move to
San Francisco. There it started its writing tutoring program,
which it now hopes to duplicate in Brooklyn. It's a good idea,
and if the selections they read last night of student work
is an indication, they're doing very well already. The reading
was pretty good (if loooong, with no intermission!) My favorite
author for the night was Jonathan
Safran Foer, perhaps only because his story is about a
precocious kid who, like I did as a lad, comes up with a lot
of much-needed inventions for the world. I also liked Chinaka
Hodge's poetry, mostly because everybody rolls their eyes
when they hear the dreaded P word, but her work is of the
explosive, performance variety. I still think of it less as
poetry and more rapping for people who don't like to rhyme,
but maybe the difference is negligible. Roddy Doyle and Nick
Hornby were also very good, but they both had shaved head
and from where I sat I couldn't tell them apart.
Does anybody know the name of the band who played? They were
cute, and further evidence that Philadelphia might be the
Cradle of Civilization. It's been coming up a lot lately,
the arts scene in Philly sounds very communal and supportive
of weird-ass stuff. Makes me wanna take a field trip there
to take the Poe House Tour, in which Tom Devaney takes you
through his empty house and you experience nothing.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, March
02, 2004 at 11:30:56 (EST) |
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Get
out of my dreams, get into my golf cart
 It
happened again. I overslept with NPR
on the clock/radio next to my head, and so had a dream based
on the information disseminated by Morning
Edition. This time I was fleeing the scene of a crime
with two other people. Our leader: Soterios
Johnson. Yeah, the guy who always sounds like he vaguely
hates his job on WNYC.
As usual, in my dreams he is a black man,  and
in this one specifically he is a professional assassin. We are
in Haiti, amidst the revolutionary turmoil. Soterios has just
shot and killed somebody, possibly Aristide, possibly Brian
Lehrer. There is panic in the streets, as hysterical people
run around and remind us that "today's high will be right
around 60 degrees!" Car bombs go off and the only escape
is on a golf-cart we ride to freedom which for some reason is
underground.  Soterios
is absolutely cool; he brushes his dreadlocks out of his face
and mentions it's "Super Tuesday" and that polls will
be open until nine. How can he think of the Democratic primaries
when he's just shot either the leader of a country or the host
of a topical radio talk show?  We
speed on but realize the catacombs we've been racing through
are actually some kind of mall, like one would have found under
the World Trade Center. We forget all about our problems and
browse at some kind of retro-80s fashion shop. While sifting
through some Cyndi Lauper-style plastic-and-plaid outfits, Soterios
turns to me and smiles knowingly: "It's twenty minutes
before the hour."
Posted By
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Monday, March
01, 2004 at 11:54:20 (EST) |
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I've
got the straight edge
 I
spent a good deal of Saturday on Staten Island. Apparently there
is a movement afoot to recast the Forgotten Borough as a beehive
of artistic activity, a new SoHo, if you will. Visiting there,
I certainly saw little evidence of this, and it's probably just
as well. When SoHo first became a viable artistic area, how
did people describe it? Did they say it was like Paris at the
turn of the century or something? Probably not.  I
wish we had some way of defining things besides comparing them
to previous feats. I guess that's the price of living in these
postmodern times.
Anyhow, Staten Island was fun. Nice to place to visit ...
but you know. Not quite New York City. We were there to buy
some art off a mildly weird artist guy who slightly resembled
Spalding
Gray (which allowed me to indulge in 'faked his own death'
fantasies for a few minutes).  Then
we went to a local bar, where I was sorry to learn that beer
is no cheaper on Staten Island, and the smoking ban seems
to persist (I had sort of thought nobody would pay attention
to rules dictated from Manhattan). I want to spend more time
there, but probably not any time soon. Maybe I'll take my
folding bike over there once the warm weather is here to stay.
Saturday night I found myself the subject of an impromptu
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy judging. At a birthday
party over in Carroll Gardens, one of the party-goers (who
was what I like to call loudly gay) took it upon
himself to rate all the straight guys present. I'm not complaining,
as he gave me a rating of 'fabulous';  others
were not so lucky. Now I'm trying to figure out the chicken-or-egg
basis of that show: did Queer Eye give our culture
the notion that all gay men have an innate ability to judge
fashion, or have they always thought this and the show is
just capitalizing on it? It's probably the latter, but again,
as long as I pass muster, who am I to refuse praise?
Also at the party I met a guy who has one of the coolest
jobs ever. He works at a swanky hotel and his job is simply
to get the higher-profile guests whatever they want. There
is a rule against procuring things that are "illegal
or immoral," but beyond that he gets to do things like
buy white socks for famous rapper/actors and the like. This
seems like it could be tedious, but it makes for quite a wellspring
for amusing anecdotes.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, March
01, 2004 at 10:07:44 (EST) |
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We can't rewind we've gone too far
 Using
J's pilfered camcorder, we videotaped ourselves practicing the
other night. Then I spent a lotta time whittling the video down
to one song, which is now posted over on the Motico
site. The real trick was getting the video in Quicktime
format, which streams nicely and is small. But I am totally
hooked on DV now. You just hook it up to the computer and capture
the video. Voilà, you're a music video director. Of course,
our video is one stationary shot of the band, and we mostly
just stand there playing our new song, which needs a lotta work
and the sound quality is dubious at best. But once I figure
out how to strap a camera on one of the cats (probably Mr Bones,
since he has the most, um, surface area), then we'll really
start to innovate the medium.  Like
Journey.
J, I owe you a tape. Remind me when ya get to town!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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