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Wednesday,
July 20, 2005 at 13:40:46 (EDT) |
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Almost paradise
I'm back in Brooklyn and it's really very hot. I hope this does
not last through this weekend, when I'll be standing in some
parking lot in LIC for several grueling hours in searing daylight
to see a bunch of bands. Todd
P is putting on his own lil Lollapalooza Saturday starting
at 3. There are tons of good bands, including, but not limited
to, Lightning
Bolt, Japanther
and USAISAMONSTER.
The latter I have written about for the NY
Press; looks like the editing this time around spared most
of the original, with only a few completely nonsensical editorial
additions. Once again, my article about Fresh
Kills did not get published. Then again, I had written about
USAISAMONSTER in the past and it didn't get printed, so maybe
there's something to be said for persistence.
So I have just spent nearly a week in southern Indiana. I
should have been home Monday, but due to weather in Detroit,
my flights were canceled and rescheduled for the following
day. That flight almost screwed me as well, but at the last
minute they shifted me to another airline and I got home ahead
of schedule. It seemed very easy for them to put me on a completing
airline; perhaps too easy. Maybe all the airlines are really
just one big airline, the same way that MasterCard and Visa
are in reality the same corporation.
Anyway, Evansville was nice and relaxing, although whatever
stress was reduced by the visit was probably more than replenished
with the stress of dealing with the airports. Here's a bunch
of pictures of my surreal journey to exurbia.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Friday, July
15, 2005 at 14:34:59 (EDT) |
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We have to pull together, we can't
stay worlds apart
Ooh, does everybody miss me? Sure you do! I'm again in Indiana,
chasing the family dog around the neighborhood when he gets
out, wordlessly doing the chores my mother requests, trying
to think of something interesting to talk about that doesn't
involve reality TV shows. It is not intolerable. but then, I
won't be here but for a few days.
Mom has central A/C, which I should revel in since I only
have A/C in my room, and it doesn't really work so I don't
use it most of the time. This is the real deal, cold air in
every square foot of this humongous (to me) house. Now the
problem is it's cold. It's so friggin' cold in here! Yes it
is hot outside, but it's not that bad. My mother apologizes
for the temperature but doesn't seem to be able to do anything
about it.
In other news, Buzz thinks this is important enough to post
here:
Transformers,
the long-planned, live-action movie based on the robot-morphing
cartoon, comic and toy franchise, will roll into theaters
July 4, 2007.
I guess I was into the Transformers when they were big, but
now looking back the conceit seems a bit thin. They were robots
who could be converted into vehicles or other household item,
like a Walther
P-38. Then they came up with the whole backstory about
why they existed. It's like building a movie around its own
product placement, right? How are they gonna pull off a 'live
action' movie, by the way? That phrase seems a little misleading,
since I'm sure this will require tons of CGI.
Okay, I'll be home Monday night. Don't break anything until
I get back!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, July
12, 2005 at 15:55:54 (EDT) |
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Once I was an embryo, then I got the
old Heave-Ho
Thanks to CrazyNoisy
for reminding me to visit the Bicycle
Station (and you should check out his band, Chamisa
Mesa, they're awful good). That's the bike shop in Prospect
Heights, near what I consider Clinton Hill's south-eastern border
(below Atlantic at Vanderbilt). They're such good eggs there,
it almost seems suspicious at first. Most of the other bike
shops I've been to have either been really apathetic in the
service department, or so high-end I felt like the staff was
looking down their noses at me because I ride a beaten-up steel-frame
bike from the early 70s, and not some needle-thin, toe-clip
speed demon. Bicycle Station must get some fancy riders in there,
but most of the time it just seems to be plain folks with plain
bikes that need some work.
The Raleigh Twenty, nature's most perfect
bicycle
So I'm finally getting new wheels. I've probably lamented
before about how I've been meaning to replace the wheels on
that bike since the day I got it. The current rims are steel
(like everything else on the bike), and the spokes are largely
bent. So I'm getting aluminum rims to lighten the overall
heft. In turn, I hope this makes me happy to carry my bike
up the stoop when I come home, instead of looking at the stairs
with dread and trying to remember how to lift with my legs.
My bike will be in the shop for at least a week. That won't
be much of a problem since I'm leaving town for a few days.
I get to go to exotic Indiana for four fun-filled days. It's
not that I mind visiting my relatives, it's just that it's
hard to shake the feeling that I'm missing out on something
by not being in Brooklyn the whole time. But of course, I
won't be missing out on everything! Yes, I will once again
be taking my work laptop with me, so I can get all of that
important day-job stuff done while I'm away. This enables
me to avoid taking any days off while I'm away and further
proves how much of a stooge for the Man I am.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, July
11, 2005 at 15:58:26 (EDT) |
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Take it to the limit one more time
Ah, a relaxing Saturday in which to sleep in to my heart's content!
And although part of me feels mildly guilty about "wasting
half the day" as my Dad always put it, I figure that I
make up for it in other ways. Mostly by staying out til really
late at night. Anyhow, my Saturday reverie was broken by a bunch
of guys trying to stuff a Hammond B3 organ down my staircase.
My bandmates were planning on recording a friend's jazz combo
and due to my late-night shenanigans, I didn't get the memo.
No big deal, but their organ is a B3, which is kind of like
the Sherman tank of organs. It's big and boxy and has two
rows of keys and weighs 300 pounds. Any of you who have been
over my place will recall that the scale of the house seems
somehow diminutive. The doorways are just a little too short
for people over 6 feet, the size of the rooms is a little
cramped (okay, my bedroom is a nice size but it originally
served as the house Grand Ballroom). And of course, if you've
seen the old coal stove that resides in the kitchen, you'd
think this place used to belong to the Keebler Elves. We've
had many a problem in the past with getting stuff into this
house, as documented in our saga with our Big Orange Couch.
Okay, it's very difficult to determine if some objects will
fit through the door or down the stairs, but when I saw the
organ it sure seemed like an unlikely candidate for getting
down to the basement. They tried to bring it in through the
doors under the stoop stairs, which was of course way too
small. So they brought it up the stoop through the main doors
and and along my bedroom to take it down the stairs. This
was so not meant to be. They struggled with it, got it mostly
down the stairs, only to realize the organ would need to make
an impossible 90-degree angle to get out of the stairwell.
Not gonna happen. So then they had to admit defeat and get
the thing out again. This seemed to be even harder and for
a while it didn't look good. The walls and the organ were
getting all banged up, but eventually they got it back outside.
They discussed using Buzz's synthesizer instead of the organ,
but eventually settled on this rather novel solution:
This actually worked out really well. With headphones on,
the organist could hear the other instruments, and with the
Hammond's speaker cabinets down in the basement, the other
guys could hear him as well. There was only one more problem:
the rain. We got a huge downpour, lots of wind and super heavy
sheets of water. So they covered the organ in plastic sheets
and gave the guy our patio umbrella. Buzz should have some
good shots of this on his photoblog
soon. He made it through the rain (ho ho) and after that it
was all relatively smooth sailing. They finished 9 songs in
just a few hours. Meanwhile, our own band has been attempting
to record for weeks and weeks and have to date not yet finished
any one song. I guess that's because we're such, uh, perfectionists.
So I didn't even have much to do with all that, other than
look aghast and nurse my hangover. The rest of my weekend
is pretty much documented on my Flickr
site.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Archives
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Week of July 10-23, 2005
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Ponderous
Ponderable: Why are there so many bands around these days with
"Bear" in their names?