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?

adventures in customer service

the last 15 minutes have presented me with what are hopefully the final chapters in two misadventures in which i've been lately involved.

the first is to do with my email at work. for those of you who use outlook, you might be familiar with the handy little tool known as "auto-complete". this means when you put someone in your contacts whose name is Crackhead Buttjammer, all you have to type in your "to" field is "crack" and bill gates fills in the rest. only we got a new server recently. i'm sure in the long run this will bring us nothing but great joy, for now it's a motherfucking pain in my ass. all my files require half a dozen more mouse clicks than they used to, i had to reset all my shortcuts and this new problem with email is hassling me.

since i've seen a number of verbatim emails reproduced in blogs cause nothing but trouble, here is my version of what happened (and i'm paraphrasing myself here)

Dear Tech Support:

My little thingy that makes names pop up in the "to" field of my email doesn't seem to be working. Instead, I have to scroll through my contacts list and select them. This is especially difficult for my distribution lists, as it becomes very time consuming. Next time you're in the office, can you fix this?

Lovingly,

WCS

--------

Dear Wild Cherry Sara,

Since we got a new server, you and your distribution lists are fucked. Sorry. You'll have to redo them all.

Tech Support


-------


Dear Tech Support,

I actually already did redo all the lists, but they still aren't recognized until i go through that drop down menu that allows you to choose from the "universal" contacts or my "personal" contacts. This sucks for me.

WCS

--------

No response at press time.

Update. turns out they could and did fix the problem. hooray!

Nextly, we deal with Cingular Wireless. I'm not linking to them because you can figure out what their website is and there's no real reason to anyway.

I had this LG phone that had a mysterious icon on it some of the time. it was a little arrow pointing up. I looked high and low through the user's manual and there was no mention of this icon. i called cingular and a very nice lady and i had some chuckles over it and she couldn't find it either.

then, two months ago there was a $75 charge on my bill for internet use. i don't use the internet on my phone--ever. ever, ever, ever, ever EVER. when i accidentally push that button i fly into a panic and smash cancel as hard and as frequently as possible until i get that reassuring blank screen with the time and "cingular" on it.

anyhow, insanely long story involving about seven (20+ minute) phone calls to cingular short, i got all the charges (and subsequent charges) removed and they sent me a replacement phone. i'll give them this, cingular customer service i swear used to be staffed by prisoners at minimum security prisons. surly idiots who could not have given less of a shit (not that i can blame them) about me and my phone problems. but they've been replaced by very nice (indians?) people, one of whom told me all about how he's going to buy a new car (new to him) and he was gonna sell his mom his old car but he totalled it and it was almost paid off and...

ok, so i got a new phone. yay! and it wasn't logging on to the internet every single minute of the day. yay! but i realized after a couple people said "didn't you get my message?" that the voice mail icon was no where to be found. boo!

so again i called and they explained that (oops!) the new sim card they'd sent with my new phone didn't work with that phone (why they shipped these two things together if they do not work in tandem is beyond me), but they would gladly and promptly send a new one. which they did, and i got it today. and i called to activate it and it turns out they sent ANOTHER WRONG SIM CARD. what the bloody fuck? isn't there a bin marked "LG phones" and a bin next to it marked "sim cards that work with LG phones" or something like that in the big warehouse in texas where they keep all this shit? good god.

three arms

and a baby.

sheep in sheep's clothing

one of the things i vaguely remember from this weekend is telling xy over and over again that i was a sheep in sheep's clothing. at the time i thought it was immensely clever, but i have no idea what i was getting at, and the only reason i remembered it in the first place was the nofx review in pitchfork (linked above).

the best thing about summertime weekends is that all the prats tend to get out of town, leaving the increasingly smelly, steamy, sticky streets to people like me. this is also an important weekend for me because i moved here on memorial day in 2002, so i like to do as many new york-centric things as possible. and drink lots of beer outside.

saturday xx, guillaume and tbone and i took a lovely walk through red hook which began with an investigation of the future whole foods/current toxic waste dump (below and below), wove through the bqe (left) and culminated in a binge at the new red hook fairway (below left). $75 got us a bottle of the most delicious olive oil i've ever tasted, some sausage, steaks and FIVE kinds of cheese. xx and i have both decided we want to marry the cheese guy. we went back about three times and had what can only be described as completely retarded conversations about goat's milk brie and romano cheeses. as we rang up, the cashier asked 'do you always buy cheese like this?' it was more than slightly embarassing.

after dropping off the food, xx and i felt that magnetic pull towards the only place one should spend a sunny saturday afternoon -- gowanus yacht club. we followed this up (after xy joined us) with a trip to brooklyn social, where the aforementioned "sheep in sheep's clothing" comment occured. and where we later schooled two dudes who'd been at a wedding earlier that day at pool. again and again. turns out i don't actually suck at pool. at least not that much.

we knew things were out of hand when the barmaid from gowanus showed up at bsc, and then they were really out of hand when ivan, conjuring a serious case of deja vu, told everyone it was time to go home, please. i went to bed just as the sky was turning that very pretty but somewhat disturbing shade of blue and the birds in the tree outside my window were happily chirpping their heads off, making falling asleep at 530am a lot more difficult than it should have been.

11am! another stupid thing i said when xy and i were at brooklyn social was that i'd make breakfast the next morning. he forgets to take out the trash, or wash his dishes, etc. but does he forget i said i'd make breakfast? no. xx and xy and i united our hangovers to create some poached eggs, sausage, bacon, cheese grits and mango juice.

we headed into manhattan for the avenue c street fair, where jensenator met up with us and we all enjoyed various street foods and confusion over the number of "healthfirst" vans throughoutthe fair. we also noted a distinct lack of hipsters, which we compared with the overwhelming number we saw at our own 5th ave fair not long ago. where did they all go? xy and i had a swift half at patio lounge, where i had some rasberry beer thing that tasted like black cherry soda. nice, but very sweet.

monday i had a delish brunch at five points with (beta), woozy and guillaume. passionfruit belinis = awesome! we popped over to lunasa for a couple hefeweizen before heading once again to the yacht club (which had been ransacked and was out of pbr, 160z bud, regular buds and various wursts) and eventually to commonwealth where we finally realized this beautiful gift of three days of perfect weather, walks and wheat beers was winding down. boo.

but fear not! tonight, we head back to our home away from home for trivia!

oh big brother, where art thou?

America Online Inc. employs more than a dozen people, including several former prosecutors, handling almost 12,000 requests a year from federal state and local police agencies. The unit works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and maintains a special hotline that police or federal agents can call to help them with their queries and tailor their requests. For the last five years the company has published a "Law Enforcement Training Manual" complete with information about how long the company retains basic subscriber information and unread email, to sample subpoena and court-order wordings to speed processing of the police demands.

this should freak you out. a lot.

Oh goddammit!

skype. china. wiretap. ugh.

(via consumerist)

no skills of any kind required

every now and again, i look at the parks department to see if they have anything i want to do there, and here is the requirement for a "community assistant":

There are no formal education or experience requirements for this position. However, the ability to understand and carry out simple instructions is required

hell yeah, the ability to understand and carry out simple instructions!!! totally have that!!

apples are hot & juicy!

there was an article or four in endgaget that mentioned macbookpros' tendency to get a little hot under the collar, and how therefore apple put a warning in their manuals and dumped the term "laptop" altogether.

this article, while interesting, i suppose, in and of itself, linked to another article about a "don't chew on me" warning for shuffles in the UK (vs the "don't eat me" warning in the US).

this, of course, reminded me of the guy i saw the other day on the F who was, i kid you not, nor do i exhaggerate: treating his nano like a lolly. first he was just sort of pushing it against his closed lips, but then, i guess he just couldn't resist. at first i was concerned that he'd fuck it all up by getting saliva in little slot where you plug in the, uh, plug thing, which is gross anyway. then i realized the nano has the headphone jack and the pluggy inny thing on the same side and he was sucking, and now, it seemed, chewing, on the other side. so good for that, i guess. then i wondered about the "lock" mechanism. then i realized the guy is chewing on fucking ipod nano and he's probably got way more problems besides getting his drool in the lock mechanism.

still, what the hell?

if only i'd been that duck

Little boy to duck: Uh, what the fuck, dude?
--Harlem Meer, Central Park

ohiny

onion rings and pixies covers

i am hungover, so it's no surprise that an article in the times about a guy driving all over the country and eating a bunch of fast food caught my aching eye this morning. what was a surprise was his ability to appreciate The Varsity, an atlanta establishment for lots of years that holds a very special place in my heart (and not just because it's clogging my arteries). everyone has a thing at the varsity, and mine by far and away is the onion rings. they have what are basically broomsticks with loops of thinly sliced onions (vidalia?) stacked on that they dip in to batter and then fry. what you end up with is more like one mutant onion ring, but good lord are they delicious. what i wouldn't do for some right now.

what i do have right now comes to you courtesy of manlio, who correctly told me i'd love this> what happens when some dude with what is clearly limitless free time remakes pixies songs in the style of, oh, say, the beach boys? or the beegees? go find out. you will be rewarded.

23-fer tuesday

huh. iraq is starting to sound a lot like east compton.

NO!! I'm a volcano!!!

when i lived in london, my friend had a halloween party. the english aren't super into halloween. not like we are. so my friend's party was actually a theme party. we will not discuss how moronic it is to have a themed party on halloween, for we should be happy they had a fancy dress party for halloween at all. (they do seem to have fancy dress parties more frequently throughout the rest of the year, however. and they are very fun despite the disproportionate number of people dressed up as the clockwork orange kids.)

the theme was Hawai'i. why? i don't know. it's not like it's bad enough to have a themed party for halloween, but -- right, i wasn't going to do that...

so i decided to go as a volcano. i was extremely impressed with my cleverness. i wore a long black skirt and a black shirt and painted my face and neck bright orange, donned an orange clown's wig and had orange crepe paper streaming down from my neckline. it was entirely impossible for anyone to NOT know i was a volcano. right?

as halloween is not much of an event in london, it's not like walking around new york with a huge orange wig and an orange face. you kinda stand out. especially when your lame ass friends and flatmates could muster little more than shorts and hawaiian shirts as costumes. and also would not walk within 20 meters of you.

and suddenly you'll notice that the things people on the street have been hollering at you all sound the same. and eventually you figure out that what they've been saying is "you've been tango'd".

ahh. you don't know what this means, but your friend explains tango is an orange flavoured fizzy beverage whose commercials regularly featured people popping cans open, taking a swig and ending up looking like what i would call a volcano. their hair pops out and they turn orange. i've never actually seen one of those ads, but i saw others whilst i lived there, and they were always pretty good.

the point is, today craigslist sent me a link to this tango ad. not only did it remind me of that moronic night when i rode the tube angrily declaring myself a volcano, but it's a nice rip off of that sweet sony ad from a while back. the frog does not fare so well this time.



also: dr. dog and myspace i recommend gettin' down with the kexp podcast.
finally: do you know what's been missing from your life? my old kentucky blog does. it's a whole bunch of different people covering such songs as "love will tear us apart", "god only knows", "in the aeroplane over the sea" and "there is a light that never goes out". but it's missing no more.

blogger spellcheck says clowns cannot have posessions and nothing can be fizzy

THIS IS THE BEST PROM EVER!!!

i was just reading turning all the pages of NY Magazine and i came across this article about al gore. i didn't read word one of the article, because i'm over al gore, but i did see the raddest picture of people who used to run the country ever:

i am fairly sure al is telling the photographer: "no, seriously, i LOVE you". and note the trajectory of bill's gaze. as well as the generaly sleazy look on his face. hills looks kinda cute. and wasted.

Save 5ave

GL is sporting this rendering of what the view up 5th ave will be when frank gets his retarded paws all over it.

ps don't vote for freddie hamilton...

how to gracefully disappear in a room

i spent most of the weekend holding back tears of laughter as my aunt's rotweiler ate every paper product in the house: paper bags, paper towels, paper napkins, tissues and, the piece de resistance -- grabbing the end of the toilet roll and running through the house, tping the inside, for ten minutes. she also tried to eat my socks. she loves my socks.

but then i got on a train and came back to new york city. i celebrated by immediately getting poured on as i walked out of the subway. this has been happening a lot. and i have been not bringing any kind of rain gear with me a lot. thus, i have been walking around soaking wet frequently. but, no matter.

the fifth ave fair was on in full effect and like good street fairers, xx and i ate our way up it and drank our way down it. yes. street fairs are like heaven on earth. snacks included a rib from blue ribbon, sushi from blue ribbon (oh god!), mozareppa, pickles, a samosa, pad thai and beer (six point ipa and sweet action, yum).

i then hopped the f to meet jensenator at webster hall for the national show. we got there early to check out doveman, which turned out to be a waste of time, as neither of us were terribly interested.

but the second opener, this baby dayliner person, was very entertaining, if a little unnerving. he sort of mosey-dances his way around the stage with his pompadour and sings (badly) very strange and funny lyrics over what might be very obscure 80s tunes and if not are very good copies of 80s tunes. jensenator smartly said it was like karaoke, mostly cause the guy just isn't a very talented singer. but i was definitely getting a little dancy itch in my legs and he's pretty freaking funny. worth checking out if only for sheer entertainment value. however, i was over it about three songs before he was.

then the national came on. played a very nice set with most, if not all, of alligator and a few from dirty songs.... they're good. real good. very tight. i have a huge crush on one of thier guitarists now based on not only his cuteness, but the fact that he's the one who plays all the pretty little riffs, and watching his fingers run across those strings? wow.

lit up and mr. november were sure crowd pleasers, and i was surprised that all the wine got as big a reaction as it did. i did not get 90 mile water wall, but that's OK. i did get karen and secret meeting.

so matt beringer, though. uh. issues. the lyrics certainly make you think something's up, but his onstage antics rival thom yorke's in the "super crazy lead singer" category. he sort of knocked the mic against his head and looked generally disturbed most of the show. i sort of hope it was an act, cause this dude looks like he's got serious problems. also, not one for the "performer/audience" banter. more of the "this show was supposed to be at bowery ballroom, but they moved it, and we don't care. this show was supposed to be for charity, but now it's not, so we're all getting personal slaves" (only it took about 10 minutes to get that out) type.

good show, though.

and finally, the answer to today's inane question: yes, pink good & plentys taste better than white ones.

i couldn't make this shit up if i tried

first, they finished the human genome. so, there's that.

second, and more importantly: someone is creating an anti-diarrheal drug that grows in rice and is made from a human gene.

so, like, "human rice" will stop the runs. or something. does this make me a cannibal?

(via slashdot)

didya hear about iran? they are such copycats!

you knew they'd fuck it up sooner or later

some companies are writing in support of anti-net neutrality laws. awesome! (via slashdot)

(ps, that was sarcasm)

brook-lyn! brook-lyn! brook-lyn!

blah blah civil war in brooklyn. wburg sucks! no park slope sucks! they both suck! doesn't anyone else remember those stupid L train vs. F train fights people used to have on craigslist? this has been going on for eons and for eons more it will go. who gives a shit? what really sucks is the MTA, 'k?

HOWEVER, and far more importantly, the borough unites in this, my new favorite blog ever (don't worry, i'm fickle, there'll be a new one next week):

BROOKLYN!!!!!

good god there are a lot of bloggers in this borough.

also sprach fifth avenue

we don't want no baby gap up in here
on the un-billposted section of the wall around the big hole at 5th and 13th, where the BG is rumored to be gestating as we speak.

it's so, so, disappointing

one of my friends in london emailed me yesterday to tell me of his miraculously successful attempt to get a ticket for radiohead there last night. he phoned them up about 5 hours before the show and got the ONE remaining ticket.

and this morning, i got his review:

it was pretty good. nice to see them in a smallish venue for the first time in about 13 years.
they played for over 2 hours and let down was in there

i have seen radiohead five times now, and i didn't even bother trying for tickets to this tour because they were pretty expensive and i knew, KNEW they weren't ever going to play "let down" live again. and that's pretty much the only thing i'd need to see to complete my list of songs i want to see live (except for los pixies' "dig for fire"). so i was like, whatevs. but now, i see on a few setlists and have confirmation from a living friend of mine, that they are playing motherfucking let down on this tour. god fucking dammit!

gone, daddy gone, the [maj] is gone away

the maj and i had a little lame fest last night. we dropped by american apparel and spent more money than we should've and then walked, via rachel's taqueria, back to my house where we ate and booked our hotel for delhi. then we said goodbye to each other about six bazillion times.

but, there's something pretty fucking rad about saying, "i'll see you in india", especially when it will be as i walk up to find her laying by this pool:

















yes, my brothers and sisters, this is the pool of the maidens hotel. it's old colonial style with lots of "grounds" and a "bar" and also a "pool". and they will pick us up from indira ghandi international airport. the maj gets in july 1 at 10pm and i arrive 2 july at 8am.

all you gotta do is pick it up!

give a heartfelt speech about how to eat a watermelon. then stroll around washington dc with a bunch of kids...

bananarama

consumerist, one of the greatest ideas ever, has enlightened me to the fact (although, i've heard this rumour a dozen times, it was always something i meant to look up on snopes) that bananas are going bye-bye. apparently they can't reproduce sexually any more, which is a real goddamn shame. especially seing how fallic bananas are in the first place.

this reminds me of a story the maj told me about the trees in new york city. apparently, they're all male. males give off more pollen, but they make less of a mess when they shed, or some crap. anyway, we have a city full of homotrees. what i like about this story is, despite having no idea where it originated, the maj, xx and i all decided to believe it because just because we liked the sound of it.

good news for bloggers who like to go outside occasionally and sit under a male non-banana tree:
The effort is part of a larger initiative that would also set up wireless networks by summer's end in parts of three more large parks: Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

I know i've been really, really negligent on this lately, but here to make it up to you, i give thee "baghdad parking garage kills at least 19"

it's a bocce bocce bocce bocce world

saturday started bright and early with a pre-playoff workout. i walked over to floyd, ready to play game two of the playoffs. we were up against the sweet meats, a team we've faced on many occasions in the past and were hoping to beat.

floyd shows footie on the weekends and there were about 150 brits when we got there. these were truly some of the rudest english people i've ever seen, and i've watched footie at pubs in london. when the lights went on over the court, one particularly raucous ogre-type threw a bit of a hissy. for reasons i don't particularly understand, the head of the sweet meats was all "well, we can play with the lights off, right?" to be honest, he looked a little worried. so we played with the lights down low.

but the fun didn't stop there, the west ham and liverpool fans figured that a bocce game didn't really hold prevalance over them having a clear path to and from the toilets. with zero regard for either of the teams, drunken boys used the court as their personal yellow-brick road. this was, as you might imagine, intensly irritating.

despite all these factors working against us, along with being a pared-down team of only me, the schwartz, bonnaroo and coach dodgeball, we gave the sweet meats a talking to. we smoked them 7-0 in the first game and 7-2 in the second. yeah, biatch.

the rest of the day was wiled away with food and more drinks, including a "baci" at bar toto, in honor of the playoffs. that night, xx, bonnaroo, coach d'ball, jonny 5, shwags, the jensenator and others descended upon the magician to celebrate (i guess) the maj's bon voyage. she is deserting us for like 8 months or something. luckily, i'll see her in delhi in 1.5 months.

a failed attempt at karaoke led us to three of cups, where we ran into a very, very, very drunk girl who was just turned thirty and was clearly thrilled about it. she might have had a little crush on xx. that or xx was conveniently located for all of this chick's anti-balancing act. we were sitting by her bag of gifts and such and she came over and uttered something to the effect of "i just don't know you guys and my stuff is over there and i don't know you". why they'd abandoned the whole area and the presents is beyond me, but for some reason our up-until-then well behaved group decided to rumage through the bag. i put on a pair of those ugly plastic clogs, jensenator tried on what was clearly a woman's jacket.

sunday the four of us, plus xx for moral and photographic support, were at floyd again by 1pm. this time we played nototious B.R.F. a nice team of ladies with a name i don't understand. we beat them, too, but i'll be damned if i can remember the scores.

then the break of death. it was about 2 and our next game was at 5. we all decided to ease up on the drinking and hang around and watch the games. we saw the coffee flat terrors get creamed by the old dirty barristers, and boccelism beat, uh, someone. things were decidedly low-key. xx pointed out that we usually sit in the front of the bar where more sunlight comes in, and so the fact that we were toward the back all day might have accounted for the complete sluggishness that set in just after lunch.

the reason we weren't sitting at the front is because there was a christening party in the front. yep, a whole swarm of WASPS in kakhis and spring dresses took up the front part of the bar. their kids loved the bocce. unfortunately, they loved being on the court whilst we were playing, which isn't so cool with me. one of notorious B.R.F. very politely asked the mom to get her kid off the clay, and that solved that problem. i was glad, cause i know i wouldn't have been quite so diplomatic. anyway, these creatures brought tons of food. they looked like they were at some sort of croquet party, only they were in a dark bar at 2 in the afternoon. it was totally weird.

the schwartz was about to take off for a mother's day dinner, and the maj showed up just in time to take over. schwartz and i rolled the first game against boccelism, which they took 7-1. maj and i were in it to win it for the second game. bonnaroo and coach d'ball were on FIRE. i had two really awesome rolls, but the rest weren't particularly productive. we came back to win 7-5. it came down to the third game, and, um. you see, what happened was i rolled, and the ball, having a mind of its own, did not do what i told it to do. instead it went and hit one of boccelism's balls closer to the pallino, giving them the win. whoops.

boccelism ended up taking the trophies in the end, although i snuck out for a cigarette and avoided the entire awards ceremony. i'm kind of a sore loser...

and so, we close the book on another season of rolling heavy balls down a court into a littler ball.

three cheers for watch your balls!!

note to bands: stop using instruments

and now the concretes join the befuddled masses of bands whose shit is stolen.