so this is it

my final entry on us soil for a while. last night, we had a very good celebration of all things american, mac 'n'cheese for dinner, a west wing, oh, and roll bounce.

xy shaved my head, and i won't mention the weird bald patch right above my right ear and the chunk he tried to take of my left ear (of my ear, not my hair). i look like i like the ladies...ooops.

namaste, motherfuckers.

come pick me up

the maj just emailed me this confirmation from sweet ass hotel in delhi re: our pick up at the airport. it's like a piece of candy, this one:

Please note the driver would be standing near the arrival lounge with a placard in his hand which shall be having Hotel’s name and your name printed on it. The same shall be at the time of pick-up for Ms. Wild Cherry Sara. The placard shall be having her name printed. The car would definitely be in the parking but the driver would wait for you near the arrival lounge. If in case you find any trouble locating the driver please contact the hotel reception at [redacto].

the placard shall be having my name printed!! and the car would be in the parking lot! yes! and what do i do if trouble finds me first?

with a little help from my friends

this is a special shout-out edition to those of you who have been so sweet about me going away...

some folks from work went out for a special lunch yesterday, and i was presented with my very favorite insanely delicious dessert: buttercup's banana pudding, so for that, thanks to rudoph and west river.

west river came through with the hilarious "sara, please come home safe EP" mixtape. i've never gotten an EP mixtape before, but i love it. we discussed how it makes good sense, as he didn't want to overload me with stuff, and this was the best and why waste time with filler. nice work, wr. thanks.

lester sent me the 21st century version of a mixtape, a buncha links. including lilly allen's LDN, which he suggested i listen to whilst im back home is where the heart is, and i just might!

stella has kindly volunteered to take me for a last fling with charred cow flesh tomorrow before i go to the airport.

and xy will be not only watering my plants, but doing the honors of removing the vast majority of my hair tonight. too bad he has no idea i sabotaged the shit out of the netflix queue for the time when xx and i will be gone.

xx took the time to read through more of my lonely planet than i did and spent tuesday night following me around the house as i pre-packed spewing all sorts of useful facts.

apple brandy gave me a handy list of good street foods to try in delhi and the name of a restaurant or two.

and lots of others who've given me advice or hooked me up with people who've travelled in india. thank you all!

i hope to do at least a few posts from hindustan, but who the hell knows what will happen. check in every now and again and i'll try and give you a reason to stay.

ps, what's up with this? someone stole a government laptop that had all sorts of infor about veterans? kinda strange thing to steal if you ask me. this is just like the time someone stole bono's laptop with all the lyrics to the then-upcoming U2 record.

a last holdout

brooklyn record's all up in timboo's with a great, albeit quick, piece about the age-old bar. it's not a place i frequent. i've been maybe twice in the last 4 years, but whenever i did go in (super wasted and ready for karaoke) the people were friendly and fun.

br talks about how it is an ironworkers bar, which makes me wonder how many ironworkers are really left in the slope. but the best thing about the article is the picture...see that guy in the cowboy hat? he's always standing out front of timboo's. full suit, hat, great stache (the kind you're just not allowed to have unless you're over 70), beautiful cane and a bunch of union pins on his lapel. i see him out there almost every saturday and sunday morning. yeah, morning. anyway, whoever you are, cheers to you, that guy!

just so you know

i'm officially a douchebag. i just bought a moleskine journal (r) to record my idiot musings whilst in india.

things left to buy:

purse/bag, knife, soap, some stuff for the maj, toothbrush holder.

good news: i will be in fucking london for saturday's england v. portugal world cup game
bad news: i will be boarding a plane just around halftime of saturday's england v. portugal world cup game.

kisses,

cliche cherry sara

devotchka!!

Saturday guillaume and i checked out devotchka at bowery ballroom (oh, what a thrill with two visits to bb in one week!). they were totally awesome.

nick urata's voice is just as spine tingling as i hoped it would be, and they treated us to the two stars from their latest ep of covers, "curse your little heart": "i cried like a silly boy" and "somethin' stupid". i remember 'the oblivion' and 'queen of the surface streets' and 'how it ends', the rest of their set was nicely sprinkled with ballads, but much of it was rambunctious and fun. the crowd really got into it. the girl in front of me bounced through most of the show, only landing on my foot twice.

also cool, two bands (i think norfolk & western used one) with theremins in one night. YES! btw, norfolk & western are worth checking out, if only to watch the one guy who seemingly plays every fucking instrument there is...banjo, mandolin, musical saw, accordion, violin/viola(?). he came out for a devotchka song and played violin with them, too.

for the encore, they brought out a bunch of young ladies with accordions, here is a blurry picture of them:

ps--this band have an AWESOME sense of style. they were so professional looking. uh. that nick is HOT.

fun with realaudio

how many times can i talk about how much i love mmj? lots. and more excitingly, i can give you a link to their 3+ hour bonaroo performance. woo! it takes a fucking year to download tho.

via gothamist, i think.

ps, that is bor fave andrew bird whistling and violining along in there. dude sounds like a theramin

you gotta put your faith in a loud guitar

there was a little bit of controversy at last night's Air Guitar Championships at Bowery Ballroom.

It seems the judges (the owner of Vice, a dude from the daily show, former champion sonyk rock and an a&r dude from Atlantic Records) didn't know exactly how the scoring worked and so asked for a reneg on the champion they chose. what happened was, william ocean scored ok in the first round and got a near-perfect in the second round, while the guy with the sombrero scored very well in the first round and also got a near perfect second round score, giving him the title. seems fair enough. whether or not you win should be based on your chosen performance song as well as compulsory (enter sandman, excellent choice!-- when the contestants all got to listen to the bit they would play, it took about three seconds before all their heads, save that of the rainbow zombie guy, who totally stayed in character, were bobbing along. mine was too) performance.

anyway, the judges were all "we'd like to have an air-off", because they wanted william ocean to win. give it up for the man, he shaved the word "air" into his chest hair, and crushed a beer can by sort of piledriving it. he also had his cohorts carry him through the crowd during his entersandman. he was pretty insane. (his first performance was prince, i think, and he came out with a graduation gown type thing that said Warning: prepare to be rocked on the back.) anyway, the sombrero guy, who's initial song i cannot remember but who was very good, went totally insane during the second round and ran up the stairs to the balcony where the judges were and hooked his legs through the bars and leaned over. we all thought in some way he was going to die. but he didn't, he just spilled all the judges' drinks and knocked a bunch of shit over and scared the shit out of them. intense, thy name is sombrero dude.

anyway, it was a bit shitty because they'd given sombrero guy his trophy already--the head of the air guitar committee or whatever looked like he walked off a dockers ad, not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to be in charge of a bunch of air guitarists--but now they wanted to take it away. william ocean was very gracious and clearly did not want to be a part of such an unearned and underhanded win, the audience were torn, wanting to see an air off (who doesn't?) but also thinking it was a shit thing to do. in the end, the air guitarists spoke, all of them stuck up for mr sombrero head because he'd won it fair and square. one of them even told the judges to "follow the rules". it was an interesting political process.

other highlights of the evening included me getting pissed off at the morons who had to take upwards of 40 pictures (i took two and haven't uploaded them yet), a guy breathing fire, a 50-something guy who put on a pretty sad performance, but was cool nonetheless, psycho dave losing his wig about six seconds into his performance and ruining his chances (much like that fucking penatly kick ghana undeservedly got fucked the US in yesterday's game...ahem), bjorn toroque endlessly talking about himself, the owner of vice remarking that rainbow zombie's partial-moon looked like a "baby's cunt", and the overwhelming joy that only comes when someone plays "crazy train", good god i love that song, i mean are there better lyrics in the world than "i'm running off the rails on a crazy train"? (no, there aren't)

extra special attention should be paid to the guy who...caught the air guitar that one of the performers pretended to throw off the stage. to you, dude, i say this: you are SO. FUCKING. LAME.
the final hurrah, anyone was invited to the stage for "keep on rocking in the free world"




william ocean, in all his violent glory

if living right is easy, what goes wrong?

i met (beta) for the son volt show at the world financial center yesterday. it was really fun! if you like alt-country, free things, bagels and breezy afternoons, you would have liked it, too.

the show was at the marina next to the financial center so it was just lovely out. except for the short, heavy rainshower we got. which was exceptionally weird as it was sunny to the west. i bet there was a rainbow somewhere.

i don't know son volt that well, i've heard and always liked them, but the only song i recognized was "drown", which is great and i used to think was they might be giants...they played lots of pretty stuff that goes well with sunny afternoons, and some crunchier stuff and they covered "i'm not like everybody else", which was pretty cool.

well, that was vague.

i made the horrid mistake of meeting xy for a drink downtown. he and i are both big fans of that area of the city, so we walked around and got shitfaced. gin is disgusting. i liked it up until about 4 hours ago, and it is now my sworn enemy. i was cuddling a bottle of gatorade on the train ths morning, trying to regulate my breathing and not spew all over my fellow commuters. one of my coworkers just sent me an email addressed to "drunky the clown", which made me laugh, which made me want to puke.

best. videos. ever.

accorting to pfork. ok, it's some of their favorites, which means i can exuse them for the lack of

sabotage
i can't wait
just
if i could turn back time (kidding)

T minus 10 days

ok, so 10 days from now i will be getting on a plane to fly for two days over to india. weird. how is it that i planned this thing myself and i still can't get my head round the fact that it's actually going to happen? and what do i have to do still? laundry, for sure. probably buy some shitty clothes i can discard along the way. start malaria meds....make a big fuck off list of all the shit i need to do.

the moms was in town this weekend and we went shopping. EMS was certainly glad to see us, as i think we bought nearly everything in the store. water purifier, rehydration salts, deet, rain jacket, etc. i hope it all fits in my pack.

we spent the rest of the weekend in the theatre...

first off was the history boys: pretty good, apparently it is a movie, too. members of the cast were familiar from harry potter. anyway, it was all about how learning just to learn isn't meaningful, it's learning to live that is important. duh. still, a bunch of boys in ties lolling around a classroom pontificating is always relatively amusing, and it's very clever. there was a lack of english audience members illutsrated when no one even chuckled when they made a comment about living in hull...

we came out of the matinee and were lucky enough to catch the last few minutes + stoppage of the usa v. italy game on the jumbotron.

then we had some din din at the jewel of india restaurant, which was not far from the theatre. food was pretty good. i had some tasty lamb tandoori and mom kicked it korma style. the puri was gigantic, like the size of a basketball. unfortuntately, about halfway through my meal i looked over and noticed this sitting next to me:

next was the lieutenant of inishmore...i've been to the aran islands, they are fucking beautiful. windswept, wild, wooly. we stayed on the tiniest of them all, inis oirr, where no one locked their doors and you could traverse every inch of the place in about 45 minutes. after a long day of walking around and around and around, shwags and i went down the pub/restaurant/city centre and ate the most irish meal ever: lamb and roast potatoes with carrots or something. it was the hartiest meal in memory, and it was accompanied by live music and footie and, obviously, beer. we never wanted to leave. but the point is, these are very wee islands off the coast of galway and not a whole lot tends to happen on them. basically a member of an IRA splinter group is called home because his cat has fallen ill (actually it's been bludgeoned but he doesn't know that) the dude is what some of us would call a psychotic and his temper is feared throughout the land. the father reminded me of an old english professor i had, round pale yet blotched face, white hair, jolly stature. and the other guy was a whiny, long-haired wussy-type who provided the majority of the comic relief. the only thing i don't get is what this play is doing on broadway, it's pretty silly, and seems like it would only really appeal to a pretty small niche, those who enjoy irish nationalist humor...but moms and i both thought it was a fun time. NB: it was at the lyceum, which is probably my favorite b'way theatre.

the moms and i crashed at the algonquin hotel, which is fecking gaaargeous. they've done a really nice job keeping it looking nice. apparently it looked pretty shit up until about five years ago, but they've mended all that now. lots of very dark wood and large leather chairs that want you to sit in them all day and drink expensive scotch. we didn't, but next time!

my only complaint is this:

stupid, stupid, stupid wallpaper of new yorker cartoons. who likes that shit? they really do give themselves a lot of credit for being a literary heritage site, there's a little booklet in every room that tells you all about all the famous stuff and people that were there. it's interesting.

anyway, if you have the means, i highly recommend putting up a family member there.





sunday was the big shop, bookended by the Immigrant Day Festival (or some such)




and "7th heaven" the 7th ave fair in PS. -->



which i followed up with dinner at sakura. verdict: fucking rad.
xx and i split a tofu and avocado salad (best idea ever?) and then i had an alaska roll and a spicy tuna roll, both of which were super fresh and not that pricey (5 or 6 bucks). plus they have a nice backyard. here are the trees from it:

we were dancing all night long

so, you'd think that after getting up at 545 and drinking and hanging out in the windy sunshine all day, i'd probably want to go home.

not so much, it seems. xx and i split off from xy when he went back home to drop off some shit and change and we hung around le cite. then we re-met up at guero, which was apparently formerly a lesbian bar and they haven't really done much redecorating. we had a pint there and then walked over to loreley for hollaback's birthday.

obviously, loreley's just the kind of place where you know you're not getting out before at least 3. coach dball and k-fed spun all the hits the kids love and we danced our asses off yet again. at some point, bonnaroo was doing everything she could to get rid of the little glowy bracelet someone had bestowed upon her. the thankful recipient then proceeded to wave it up and down for practically the rest of the night. xx vanished into the night around 3am, leaving me to fend for myself, which is never a smart plan. in this case, we closed the place and headed over to sing sing for karaoke. somehow we got in after they'd closed and continued our revelry for an hour or so. the highlight here was k-fed's spectacular header off one of the tables. some sort of surf move gone pear-shaped, he managed to not only take quite few beers down with him, but didn't miss a beat of whatever song he was singing. it was hilarious.

i think i remember someone singing "islands in the stream", and at one point i engaged in what can only be explained as embarrasingly drunken behaviour in which i and a cohort did a freestyle song about blogging to U2's "one"...don't even ask.

we emerged into daylight and ignored the (smarter) ones who suggested getting food, and instead headed over to drink more beer at someone's apt in the les. there were a number of bloggers amongst the crowd (real ones, who like get paid and stuff) and hysterically the conversation turned to php and css and other geeky subjects right around 6. just after i'd hit 24 stupid hours of being awake. staying up that long seems like a fantastic idea at the time, but it's really not.

arrival home: 745 am. sunday was hell, i never even bothered getting dressed. thank god i had weed and super troopers.

drink beer out in the country

saturday was family day at the races as xy and some friends were heading to belmont and xx and i went along for the "ride" (ha!).

unfortunately, this required getting up at 545 am, something i rarely, if ever, do. if i'm gonna be up at quarter to six in the morning, it's because i still haven't gone to bed yet. anyway, through all our crankiness, we grabbed some rad bagels from bagel hole and met up with the rest of the crew. there was some discussion as to the absence of one guy, post, who apparetnly had gone to bed only minutes before we were meant to meet and leave, he would meet up with us later, and i'm pretty sure he never bothered sobering up.

we arrived well before the gates opened, which xx and i used as grumble fodder for why the hell we had to get there that fucking early, but whatevs.

there's of course the strange juxtaposition at tracks of people who wear fancy clothes and sit with opera glasses way up high and people with coolers and baseball caps, which i never really got past. xx and i spent a lot of time wandering around the various floors saying, "ooh! more rich people!" and wondering how it was any fun to hang out in those outfits all day.

i won my first race and lost all the rest of them, i ended up down about $10 on the day, which i guess is fine. i've never been much for gambling anyway. no one really won big, but the boys seemed to enjoy throwing large amounts of cash away.

awesome: they had smithwick's for $6.75, which was cheaper than a lot of other beer
stupid: they had a fucking get well card for a horse. A. HORSE.

gates to microsoft: i generally spent most of my day just reading blogs, anyway

billy g isn't even gonna drag his ass to the office any more.

"I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility - the responsibility to give back to society and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need," he said

is it just me or did once he catch a rather largish load of flack for not giving money to charity for many years?

alternate headline: gates admits to "mostly just staring out the window" all day long

whatever happened to good old fashioned vinegar and bakin soda (or was it powder)?

mentos + diet coke + geeks = bellagio

(slashdot)

you're now allowed to do something you should've always been allowed to do in the UK

convert your own cds into mp3s, etc.

but don't even THINK about doing it for your friends.

via slashdot

it seems the avoidance of coffee wasn't such a smart choice

i'm not much into coffee, but thanks to this article i just recieved from craigslist, i should perhaps start drinking it by the gallon.

i vaguely remember 1010wins mentioning something similar to that last line of "the primary approach to reduction of alcoholic cirrhosis is avoidance or cessation of heavy alcohol drinking," but i'd already missed the beginning where they tell you that coffee cuts down on your chances of it.

pass the mochalatte!

dog bites zip burger

we've had a busy day here at the bagofrocks newsroom, but now, in the shade of the afternoon, i'm here with some good news.

1. dog bites man might have real potential
2. zip burger is delicious

dbm is shot in a very similar way to the original "office" series, and is equally awkward. the only real threat this show has (aside from not having longevity) is that people may be a little sick of feeling sick when they watch tv. it was only the first episode and i cringed mulitple times, which, for me is a good sign. but what with the us office and curb your enthusiasm and the office office, other people might be over it. i'm certainly keeping it on the dvr, though. i urge you to give it a shot. you will be impressed, even if you don't enjoy it.

some friendly coworkers and i went to zip burger for lunch. me = burger w/goat cheese, grilled vidalia onions, let, tom, bacon on whole wheat bun. west river = burger w/cheddar & vidalia onions, rudolph = veggie burger (wow! all lentily and delicious) w/gouda on soudough, redvines = burger w/american and let/tom. + 2 orders fries. verdict: we all talked about how good it was the whole way back to the office and plan a return trip next week. the patties are a little on the greasy/thin side, but delicious and cooked miraculously to medium rare. fries are a little salty for my taste, but rudy loved that. west wing river thought i overloaded mine and overpowered the burger, but he can suck it. word to the wise, the milkshakes are made with soft-serve ice cream.

hours logged on the phone with cingular = 4.5

ok, so first there was the phone that hooked itself to the internet all day long, resulting in various monthly charges of 60 and 70 bucks, which required at least one phone call each to remove from my bill.

then there was the replacement phone, sent with a sim card that wasn't compatible and therefore disabled the voicemail icon.

then came the replacement sim card for that sim card that was STILL THE WRONG sim card.

then came the next sim card, which, following a message that said "message center number" when i tried to send a text to xx, i finally called to activate.

when you call for this shit, they make you punch in your phone number, then when they answer the phone, they make you give them your phone number again. then they ask you your name, then the last four digits of your ssn.

what with all this information they're using to verify things, i'm pretty fucking amazed at how the woman managed to activate my sim card to SOMEONE ELSE'S phone number. of course, i didn't know this until i tried to call myself and leave myself a vm to see if it worked and the icon is back. beep boop boop beep beep beep beep...dead air. DEAD. FUCKING. AIR.

luckily, i now have cingular's customer service number memorized and am currently on the phone with travis, who is, as they have all been, very helpful, but in whom i have very little confidence.

he just said "this is probably not going to be good".

turns out the lady i spoke to was making changes to another customer's account, which explained why she thought i had a nokia. (travis told me they work off three separate screens and she punched in the wrong number on one of her screens after verifying the account. which is obviously very comforting.) i mentioned that not only do i not have a nokia, but haven't for quite some time and have even recently been the recipient of a REPLACEMENT LG phone from THEM, so doesn't she think it's weird that it says i have a nokia; and also i DO have text messaging and i'm a little concerned that she says it says i don't on my account. this did not prompt her to double-check that she was looking at the right account, she just gave me a little attitude and activated my sim card to some other poor sod's phone -- who, incidentally, just unexplainedly lost all use of his or her phone. ha ha, guess they'll be dialing 18003310500 soon!!

anyway, they're now going to, for the third time, ship me a motherfucking sim card (dare i mention that i asked them to ship it to my work address, but they went ahead and sent it to my apartment anyway? nah, i'll leave that out). only travis didn't know what i was talking about when i said i need a special one that starts with 4101 instead of 4103, so chances are this one won't work either.

stay tuned!

all the news that's blatantly obvious

i was just glancing over the times website trying to avoid reading about that guy they dropped 2 500lb bombs on, and noticed these hard-hitting headlines in the AP and reuters section:

Lawyer Says Pete Doherty in Detox

Bush: Not Clear When Troops Can Leave Iraq

Extremists Mourn Al - Zarqawi's Death

sunday times xxxword

i am a week behind on my crosswording, so i'm still doing a week ago sunday's.

58 down: ejaculate

c _ _

what the?

bollywood 101

woozy and i hit the imaginasian on monday to see fanaa, a movie set in kashmir and delhi. i heart bollywood for many reasons, but one of the more important ones is their blatant disregard for realism of any kind in their plots...observe:

blind girl from kashmir goes to delhi with her dance troupe and meets the suave (?), sexy (?), rougueish-yet-charming womanizing tour guide who pulls out his heavy artillery of horrid, on-the-spot poetry to cajole her into hanging out with him. he gives her a tour of the city and she touches his face a lot. all her friends, of course, are split between "stay away from that slime ball" and "oh, he's so dreamy!"

eventually, she caves and they have a big dance scene (nb: i missed this b/c i got a call from the maj in prague which i figured i should go ahead and take, woozy says it was pretty good). the last day she is in town, tourguide fails to show up for whatever they're supossed to do. so she, in all her blindness, tracks him down and yells at him and they do it (nb again: i have NEVER seen such a racy bollywood movie, normally they don't even kiss, but this time they were clearly doin' it). she leaves the next day to get on a train and of course he shows up on the train and, get ready, carries her down the tracks back to delhi after they pull the fucking emergency brake.

they decide to get married and she finally goes for the eye check up her mom's been nagging her about. lo and behold! there is a new surgery "silly girl, you should have come to the doctor long ago, there have been such advancements!" that can, you guessed it, restore her sight.

she comes out of surgery, mom & dad are there, but rehan (tourguide) is nowhere to be seen. then we find out that someone has blown up something in delhi and she is called in to identify the remains. she clings to the horrid sweatervest she knitted him and remembers when he said "to be a piece of wool wrapped around that finger" (hello shakespeare!) and it's all very emotional.

then we see the like, center for anti-terrorism or something and they're talking about this uncatchable mastermind behind all these recent bombings, etc. of course, we now know it's rehan, who has cut his ridiculous hair, finally stopped wearing scarves all the time and is acting all james bond at the airport. turns out he's fighting for the IKF to create an independent kashmir.

he goes back to his snowy training camp where the boys are all playing footie and his grandfather is all "i'm so proud of you". eventually the indian gov't find out he's stolen a trigger for a nuclear bomb and they chase him around for a while. he ends up in the middle of the night at the door of like the only house for 1000 miles.

guess who lives there?? what's-her-face and her son, rehan (ahhh, that's why they had the sex scene!) and her dad (mom's died). of course, she was blind when they were together, but now she's not, and can't recognize him (i guess his voice didn't tip her off, plus she thinks he's dead). anyway, they bring him inside and nurse him back and eventually everyone figures everything out and rehan the elder says he just needs this one mission and then he'll come back to them forever and they get married at her house.

however, she ends up shooting him because he refuses to give up the trigger to the indian gov't.

the end.

i can't believe what i do late at night

nickels gratuated from graduate school not too long ago, so we went out to celebrate saturday. we started at the crocodile lounge, which, while playing pretty good music and having some of the nicest barstaff around, isn't all that. $5 bud light is not made up for by free, salt-ridden pizza. give me capone's any day over that shit.

anyway, we moved on to grassroots, which turned out to be a bust because nickels only had his birth certificate and college id and that is apparently not enough to convince that guy who's always sitting on the stool that he's 21. we rolled across the street to bull mccabe's. i haven't been here since tampson took me there about 4 or 5 years ago, either before or just after i moved to le cite.

kirin ichiban and i wanted to crack some balls, so we got on the old pool list. here's the funny thing about playing pool in bars: sometimes you play with some really fun folks and you all have a good time. see: last week's trip to brooklyn social club. sometimes, you play with some totally anal retentive arseholes who seem to think that, despite being at a crowded bar at 12 am, it's totally acceptable to make you call all of your shots and play by every fucking rule in the book. "oh, no, you hit our ball, that's a scratch". dude, go to a fucking pool hall if you're gonna act that way. rules are all fun and stuff, but we're fucking around here. plus, we shouldn't have to play by your rules, we can all make up some new ones together! like i get to whack you in the nads with the short stick after you grumble at my teammate's ass kicking pool abilities. anyway, justice was served when we beat the ever loving shit out of them and the team that followed, including a beautiful three-in-a-row streak that ended with the eight ball for me. woo!

we'd had just enough of that, and nickels had taken it upon himself to finish my fucking widmer bros, which angered me, so we popped over to sing sing. normally by the time i get to karaoke i'm, uh, hammered. but we were all severely buzzed at this point. which worked out well, since there was an 80 minute wait for songs.

this gave us plenty of time to cajole sake shots out of the guys sitting next to us, get kirin ichiban drunk enough to sing, for nickels to bite the fucking shit out of my finger (i can't for the life of me remember why), for people to sing "champagne supernova" three times (what's up with this song? why do so many people want to fucking sing it?), for me to sing "don't stop believin'" with xx and "manic monday" with wafflehouse, and for about 6 dudes all wearing the same button-down striped shirts to convince us to come with them and hang out in their room (there is no way to make this not sound like a freshman girl's first time at a frat party).

so we went. we were three girls and two guys, so we were safe enough. they paid for everything though, can't knock that. plus we got in some beasties, allman brothers, lots of madonna and tom petty. it seems that given the chance, i will become a karaoke whore...oops. but when no one's singing, i'll do it!

per usual, we got ejected when the place shut down and proceeded to spend the next 1.5 hours on the street talking to another group of guys all wearing button-down shirts. sadly, none of them, nor my own friends, agreed with my theory that since it was already getting light, we might as well go down to the staten island ferry for a sunrise cruise. losers. next time!

and once again, the sun was above the horizon when i finally closed my eyes. these early sunrises are gonna be the death of me.

why do you suddenly care about July 13?

because that's when the office will be starting its webisodes! 10 minute web-only tide-you-overs.

my deepest fears come to light

who doesn't have the slightest hint of panic that those colonial w'burg ads are actually gonna be about our very own broken-glass-and-hipster-laden tourist destination?




via gawkster

and the gap between crack and thunder, crack and thunder, is closing in

i am constantly taunting new york with my claims that its thunderstorms are lacking in both frequency and intensity. atlanta gets fierce storms almost daily due to its immense radiation of heat (mostly from traffic) and they are loud and scary and i love them. so you can imagine my delight last night when finally the gods started banging around on the drums up there.

xx and i were on our way to the rogue wave show at southpaw when the 12oz drops began falling all around us. sparsely, at first, cold plops on our arms and heads, leaving us plenty of time to establish the gate as our first port of call. we dipped into bagel world, though, when someone turned the water pressure way up.

this turned out to be a fortunate side trip, as not only am i pretty sure they stayed open well past their normal closing time to accomodate the few of us caught on that particular block in the storm, but when i saw the guy run out to a car and unload a giant batch of cupcakes , i ran out after him with my umbrella to protect the little sweeties, and xx and i were granted with free (and absolutely delicious) ones!!

it might have been the angry latnia coming in, yelling at the guys behind the counter and racing out of bagel world with a metal ladder into a thunderstorm or the ever so slight lightening of rain that convinced us to make our way to the gate. we ran down the block and managed to grab two pints (brooklyn blonde!!) and settle out on the patio.

yes, the patio. yes, it was still storming. but they had their canopy out and there were quite a few of us camped out enjoying the smell of fresh rain and the lightning and thunder and watching sad fools walk down the streets in various states of drenchedness whilst enjoying cold (US) pints. we had a nice chat with two guys who have a boat and drink very fancy beer, which they let us try (leftbrau? it's delish!) and the guy and girl on the other side of us who were equally giddy at being able to watch the storm outside with beer.

we were also fortunate enough to be within earshot (not that it was very difficult) of "that girl". note it was roughly 9pm, not the time for such antics. she was yelling at what i can only assume was her boyfriend, who looked somewhere between bored, horrified and resigned, almost the entire time we were there. at one point i mouthed to xx "is she wasted?" and that girl promply confirmed my suspicions by announcing, "but i am an artist, it doesn't matter how talented people are, it's all luck!!!" whatevs, hon. go home time!

things had finally eased by the time we slid down to 'paw. we got there just as the vaguely interesting second opener finished up and rogue wave came out about 20 minutes later.

when i saw rw with nada surf earlier this year, i was pretty well disappointed, but retained a desire to check them out when they were standing on their own, and i am very glad i did. they sounded clear and powerful and well-rested, and it looked like zach had actually bathed in the past couple days. he was sporting a seemingly clean black tee shirt versus his dingy white one of last show. he also seemed to have got some new jeans.

the thing about rogue wave that always made me think they should be great live is the tidal nature of their songs. each one has slow parts and rockin' parts and swaying parts and melodic parts. they're like a perfectly-toasted, buttered english muffin: some bites are very crunchy and a bit drier, and some are that awesome burst of butter that's been hiding in one of the deeper nooks and crannies and it's glorious. (eg, endgame, 10:1)

anyway, enough with the breakfast food analogies, this time, as i'd hoped, the drum rolls in "bird on a wire" came through with avengance and zach channeled freedy johnston eerily well for "california". the whole set, while lacking in a few of my personal favorites, was well rounded and included, to my very very very very very very very beer spillingly joyous surprise, a downright delicious cover of the beatles' "i'm only sleeping" of which just a few nights prior i'd been extolling the virtues to xx at brooklyn social, as well as "something in the air" as a closer.

the overall pleasantness of the evening despite near-misses of lightning strikes was almost enough to make me not care about the group of morons standing next to us at the show. i always stand behind the tall guy, because there is one for every 5 or so peope at every show. and they are evenly distributed throughout the crowd. but this tall guy was not only oafish and gennerally irritating to look at, but came with a set of two petite girls, neither of whom could manage to shut their traps the entire way through the fucking show. this of course caused oaf man to continually bend down to hear what they were saying and respond, forcing me to rearrange myself about 50 times over the course of the show. not only that, but these fucktoids were standing at the front of the raised part of southpaw, which means they were fucking up a lot of people's good times. the guy next to me and i exchanged "should we just kill them?" looks a number of times and by the end of the show xx and i were just agog at how moronic these people were acting. why the hell do you go to a gig if you don't have the slightest intention of listening to the music? get the fuck out before i dump my beer on your oafish (or "that's so stupid"-repeated over and over and over and over again) head!

but it was really fantastic time.

this is what you get when you mess with us

continuing our very special 1984-themed bag of rocks, my very own mayor mikey thinks it's not such a bad idea to keep a DNA database for all legal US workers.

or perhaps this is closer to gattaca?