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Friday, April
16, 2004 at 12:27:36 (EDT) |
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There never seems to be enough time
to do the things I want to do
Decatur spent a lot of the morning sitting on the roof. The
squirrels weren't even bothered by her. They probably think
she's just a really big squirrel.
Tonight, Motico
once again takes the stage at The
Balanza Bar. We go on around 9, the cover is merely $5.
Tonight MRK promises to bite the head off a bottle of Claritan!
Today is also the day of the NYU
Zine Festival, for which I believe Rated
Rookie has a booth. I can't make most of the proceedings
but one thing I'd really like to see is Phoebe
Gloeckner's reading at 6PM. She's one of my favorite comic
artists, if not the most prolific. She's the guest of honor
at the show today, which may well be her last NYC gig since
she's taking a teaching position at the University
of Michigan and will be leaving the area.
But I probably won't be able to make it as it brushes a little
too close to our showtime. I suppose once we're more used
to doing gigs, we might be a little more lax about pre-show
preparation, but I can already feel the needles of nervousness
building up on top of the foundation of nervousness which
serves as the basis of my winning personality.
This is one of those instances in which I again lament the
fact that we don't have teleporters in every major city.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Thursday,
April 15, 2004 at 11:52:55 (EDT) |
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We owe you nothing
As I am wont to do, I forgot to hustle for the monthly blogger
reading
that occurred last night at PS122.
If you can float the hefty $7 cover, it's always impressive.
Bloggers can actually write. Token published author Ned
Vizzini even mentioned that the books he's written don't
seem nearly as 'cool' in relative terms to the output in the
blogworld. He might also have been joking.
The reading was again excellent and I'm starting to wonder
if they wouldn't get a bigger turnout if they could just lower
the cover price some. Seven bones is still a little too steep
these days. I defer to what I think of as "The Fugazi
Line," after the band who for many years refused to play
any venue who charged more than $5 a head. If I go see something
whose price crosses the Fugazi Line, I have to think twice.
And thinking twice usually means I won't go. Of course, there
are exceptions, like WYSIWYG,
cuz I know it's always going to be good enough to justify
the cost. And then again, I think Fugazi went over The Fugazi
Line some years ago, right?
Then I hit Lit
to see Electric
Turn To Me with MRK and Sylvia for MRK's birthday. This
was a last-minute show, so nobody was there except their friends
and weirdos like us who follow their every move. They really
are turning into an impressive band. Last night they sounded
more like Joy Division than ever before, but because they
rock out I don't have to feel like a goth dork (re: high school)
to like it. They get compared to an ampped-up Siouxsie &
the Banshees mostly because they have a female lead singer.
But I think Silke's stage presence is far more reminiscent
of Peter Murphy, cuz onstage they both appear to be about
9 feet tall and 80 pounds.
And now, MRK's birthday photo tour:
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, April
13, 2004 at 15:37:28 (EDT) |
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You know when you grope for luna
 On
the train to Maxwell's the other night K embroiled us in a conversation
about train gropers in Tokyo. I have heard about chikan,
men who smoosh themselves in Tokyo's famously crowded trains
for the sole purpose of copping a feel on a woman pinned under
the press of so many passengers. But K seemed to think the groping
was equal-opportunity, that women were taking advantage of the
hapless commuters as well. That I had never heard before;
in fact, it seems more in line with a male-perspective fantasy
than anything else. A couple of cursory Google searches yielded
mostly news stories concerning men accused of chikanery
(I am so clever!) who formed a self-help group
to protest their innocence. But nothing about grabby females.
So does this go on, are their normally-demure Japanese women
looking for prey on the subway? If so, Motico will be scheduling
our first tour entirely in Tokyo.
But one needn't travel to Japan to grope women. Here's a
handy
site that details prime groping spots all over the world,
complete with helpful advice like this one (from London):
I carry a mobile phone in one hand and pretend
to send a text message when riding escalators. I can grope
with my fingers when and if she looks round I am using my
phone. I don’t even look up from my phone. Why should
I, I haven’t done anything.... Beware stations and
Underground unless the station is packed your actions will
be recorded on CCTV.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. These guys have their
methodology so planned out, one wonders if their time couldn't
be better spent, somehow....
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, April
13, 2004 at 09:08:38 (EDT) |
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This isn't some kind of metaphor
 Nobody
knows why there's a turkey in Battery Park, but one thing is
clear: us bloggers
love it. I saw said turkey when I was meeting my parents a couple
weeks ago, but because I was distracted trying to find them,
it didn't really register.  I
just thought it was a peacock, since years of zoo attendance
has taught me that peacocks are the one animal you can successfully
allow to roam around out in the open. I see now the fallacy
of my conclusion,  upon
which I blame the faulty "See 'n Say: Farmer Says"
Educational tool I had as a child.
So the Battery Park turkey is named Zelda, possibly for F.
Scott Fitzgerald's wife, who went insane and was found wandering
around lower Manhattan in the late 1920's. Oh, I'm making
that up.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, April
12, 2004 at 13:29:31 (EDT) |
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We took the train from New York City
Okay, so now I know why I've never been to Maxwell's.
It's a pain in the ass. Maybe it's just the psychological weight
of traveling to another state just to see a show, but Zack calculated
that we spent as much time in transit as we did at the actual
show. Two subways, the cavernous WTC PATH station, the embarrassing
Jersey couple flirt-fighting on the train, the $3 cab ride to
the club. That was a show in itself.
I was kind of surprised that the show wasn't sold out. Have
I so severely misjudged the relative popularity of Oneida,
The
Dirty Faces and Modey
Lemon to think they'd pack the smallish band room at Maxwell's?
Or do New Yorkers just recoil at the idea of going to Jersey
for an evening's fun? Anyway, I was glad to finally see Modey
Lemon after hearing them mentioned here and there over the
past year. They kick ass. Just the drummer alone is enough
to say they kick ass. His kit uses a floor tom as a rack tom
and a 22" bass drum as a floor tom. His actual bass drum
is much smaller than his floor tom. What's up with that? I
dunno but it's fine by me. They're one of those bands with
no bass player, but they make up for this with organ and goofy
synth effects. At first they seem like another garage band,
but they're doing a lot more than playing two chords and shouting
'Yeah!" a lot.
I've liked The Dirty Faces in the past but I fear that my
problem with them Friday stemmed from my own shortcomings
more than anything else: I am becoming a 3-peice band snob.
Somehow, if there are more than three people onstage doing
stuff, I lose focus. There's just too many cooks in the kitchen,
it's like a three-ring circus to me. I know that sounds dumb
but I've always had problem focusing. So I don't know how
much was the band and how much was the sound system and how
much was my own mental deficiency, but my mind wandered a
bit during their set. I think I need to see them only at super
small clubs like Lit, where you have no choice but to focus
on the bands. Maybe I need some Ritalin.
And Oneida rocked again, although I can never hear Jane when
he sings at the beginning of "Each One Teach One."
They seem to start every set with this song, and it is a good
song, but that whispery-singing thing always catches the sound
guy off guard. Oh well, vocals are not really the main focus
of this band. They played "Up with People" which
has really evolved into a cool song, so I left happy.
Getting home was a farce. Four drunk people stumbling around
the PATH station, unsure where we supposed to go. We got on
a train, only to be hustled out of the car by some guy in
what appeared to be a porter's hat, because somebody had kicked
a plexiglass panel out of the car's window. A really drunk
guy who had been swinging on the poles stepped forward and
said, "Well, I sure didn't kick the window out."
Hmmm. The train took us somewhere that was not quite right
and we panicked for a few minutes until the right train showed
up. We're obviously terrible in a crisis.
See pictures of T
Glitter's butt, among other things, on Juli's site.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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