Knoblet

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2009-03-10T17:12:00.001-04:00

Back Once Again With The Renegade Master

2006-08-03T10:52:00.000-04:00

Okay. So I am now officially on "sabbatical" from work to "recharge my batteries." This is day 2. And I'm also officially going crazy.

So it turns out that I'm not the kind of person who would actually like to stay in and not do anything all day. I need projects, I need things to accomplish or I feel like I'm just being lazy and the world is completely passing me by. What I've done this morning so far: listen to Tom Petty's new album, read the article in the Times Magazine about underground brands that I wanted to read, design two half-hearted Elephant Larry t-shirts, drink a cup of coffee and eat breakfast.

Now I'm blogposting my journal that I swore that I would keep during this time to make sure that I'm feeling reflective and trying to think through what is going to make me happy once this whole experiment is over.

Now whereas that sounds like a lot, I have this huge itch to just do a project, any project, go somewhere, do something. Which isn't a problem, because I could totally just do that. However, there are a zillion things that I could be doing, and these options are slightly paralyzing. Should I make my apartment-mates happy by doing some shopping for household items and straightening up? Do I go out and get frames for our pictures that we want to put up? Do I head on over to Tea Lounge for some similarly lazy company? Do I sit in a bar all day? Do I go to a museum? Do I wander around soho just because I can?

One thing is clear -- apartment living/working ain't gonna cut it for me. Maybe if I'm freelancing and working from home, but probably not. I'm going to feel like i still got nothing done. The idea of sitting home in my pajamas isn't going to keep me happy, it's going to drive me completely batshit crazy.

So I apparently do like structure. That's a good one to know. And I apparently like being busy. I'm suspecting it's the start/stop nature of US Concepts that broke me. Maybe I just need a BETTER job? Not necessarily freelance? We'll see. Till next time, blog...

2004-11-23T00:12:00.000-05:00

Saves the Day! Totally awesome. They were doing an acoustic set at S.O.B.'s, and it was really great -- the songs all sounded fantastic, the place was packed, and everybody was singing along to ALL THE WORDS. I felt a little bad that I wasn't a huge gigantic superfan, like the rest of the audience. It was hard to maneuver around in the crowd, because there were so many people just dying to get superclose to the stage. I was also about a head taller than all the girls that were surrounding me, so I felt a little guilty getting close because I knew that would mean that nobody'd be able to see. On another note, the bassist was chewing on some sort of root-stick or something the entire time and it looked really cool. I'd like to chew on a stick. Anybody know what these chewable sticks are?

2004-11-23T00:08:00.000-05:00

This here is Har Mar Superstar, who put on one hell of a show (before I had to run away to go take pictures of Saves the Day). Unfortunately, my pictures from this show are not so great (I was still attempting to work with my priority modes on my camera, as opposed to going all manual, which is what I learned how to do on Friday), because the lighting was so low and vague. I do like this shot though, even though it doesn't quite capture the exuberance he showed on stage. A little too faux-soul-ironic for me to truly embrace, but I would listen to Har Mar while driving somewhere if I had a car or his CD.

2004-11-23T00:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I know I've been a total delinquent, but I'm going to gradually post the rest of my CMJ adventure photos up on here. Back on track, Stefan, back on track...this is John Cale, who I knew precious little about going into this concert except that he's some sort of Velvet Underground legend, that sort of thing. I could only stick around a few songs though, because I had to make it uptown to go see Har Mar Superstar at the Coral Room...what I heard though was perfectly droney and pleasant and the crowd seemed equally nice and calm. Kind of hypnotic, especially with the lighting scheme they had going there in the Avalon (usually a gay dance club, I believe).

Well, THIS looks awesome.

2004-10-20T10:22:00.000-04:00

Are you an astute reader?

2004-10-20T01:43:00.000-04:00

Astute readers will take note that the previous two posts to Knoblet were, for some reason, posted out of order. And I'm entirely at a loss as to how to fix it. So, uh, astute readers - carry on. Rearrange this blog in your head. I'm sure you can do it. I can, and I'm vaguely retarded, so I think you can as well.

2004-10-20T01:23:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2004 - 10:30 PM (scheduled time) - 11:00 PM (actual time) Not much to say about Turing Machine, I have to say. They were playing at Delancey . I deliberately skipped the French Kicks show that I was supposed to be covering at 10PM so I could get back on schedule (rushing over to Irving Plaza just to miss the Saul Williams show by one song threw me off course), but when I got to Delancey, the Bloodthirsty Lovers were still playing, and it took Turing Machine until 11 to actually get set up and ready to play. They were being described by everybody around me as "math-rock," a term that has very little meaning for me. To listen to their set, which was techically quite competent, I take it that math rock implies rhythmic and rigid jamming (no lyrics?) and, it would seem, expressions of pained constipation/concentration. It didn't seem like much fun; I lasted about two songs and then proceeded over to Crash Mansion on Bowery where I just missed Jean Grae (dammit, heard she was good). Also, ran into Alex's brother Jonathan on the way out of Delancey. I also briefly high-fived with Marshall on Delancey St. as well. What, does everybody hang out on the Lower East Side?

2004-10-20T00:42:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2004 - 1AM - RJD2. So upon entirely missing Jean Grae at Crash Mansion, and instead hanging out watching some Brooklyn Academy rappers berate their audience for being so "shitty," I headed back to the inconveniently located Irving Plaza for two shows, RJD2 & Mixmaster Mike, both of whom were on my shortlist of requests for the marathon. I have RJD2's "Deadringer" album, which is quite good - lots of instrumental hip-hop and a coupla good MC'd tracks - so I was curious to see what his live set was like. And it turns out it was awesome. If you have the chance to see him, do - he's an exceptionally competent mixer and is having a ton of fun to boot. He kept smiling and getting excited at playing, which for me is one of the most important things. I always want to see that the performer is having a good time while performing. You can't really tell from this photo, but he had four turntables set up, as well as a sampler and a drum pad. And the entire show, he was running back and forth, no headphones on, mixing it all together on the fly, and it FUCKING BANGED. I was nodding my head, the crowd was into it, there was lots of cheering - so much fun. One of the best shows of the marathon, hands down.

2004-10-18T23:55:00.000-04:00

Just had to show you this - the drawn-upon converses of one of the girls of Smoosh! I like the uniformly positive expressions of glee: Yeah! Happy! Fun! And note the Swedish flag. Not sure why that's there, but I'd be curious to find out...

2004-10-18T23:54:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2004 - 9:00 PM - Smoosh! These girls were absolutely adorable. They were playing at Pianos on Ludlow St. (a bar/club that used to be piano store - they wholesale kept the sign outside that read "Pianos"). They're these two girls, 9 & 11, who play keyboards & drums and sing all their own material. I think there were plenty of people there who were there for the novelty of it, but as soon as they started playing, people knew that they were for real -- their songs were good, smart indie-pop, with nice, complicated, adult melodies. Good stuff. Couldn't stick around too long for this because I had to race back up town (for a gig that I would ultimately miss, Saul Williams, sigh), but I was impressed. They seemed really genuine and nice, and had Death Cab for Cutie & Long Winters stickers on their gear. Turns out the drumming girl, her teacher was the drummer for Death Cab, and he had encouraged them to start a band. And so here they are, showcasing in New York. Crazy. Man, I woulda flipped my shit if that was me in, what, 4th grade? Good god.

2004-10-18T23:48:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2004 - 8:30 PM - This was the first band of my assignment - the Rock-n-Roll Soldiers, who were playing at CBGB, the legendary punk club. I had never been there before, so it was fun to actually go see a show there. I have to say, it looked awesome on the inside. Floor-to-ceiling covered in stickers and sweat. It looked like the whole place was some sort of Mexican cantina that had been carved out of a building somehow and had been allowed to organically drip into place. It felt like a place you couldn't design or make, it had to have evolved over 20 years. In any case, these guys were quite good - full of spazzy little rock moves and posturing but done in such a way that you just knew that they Loved to Rock. Plus their songs were plenty catchy. I jockeyed for position with people whose cameras looked way more professional than mine (though mine can blend in if it needs to). I have to say I didn't feel like I needed a whole lot more camera than I had with me, but people always seemed to show up with three cameras and some gigantic flash attachment. And some unnecessarily big sports photographer lens. I mostly tried to suppress my gear envy and concentrate on taking pictures. Incidentally, I also dunked my knee in some big wet puddle at CBGB so I felt all rock and roll and dirty for the rest of the evening.

CMJ Overview

2004-10-18T23:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it's done - 4 nights of shows, 20 bands, about 1600 photographs and 3 hours of sleep later, I've survived the nonstop music parade that is the CMJ Marathon. I've learned a shitload about the subway system (who knew that getting to the J from Canal St. & Broadway involves no less that 6 sets of stairs?) and how to get around Lower Manhattan. In addition, I've now been to scads more music venues that I'd never been to before. I've learned to wield my camera as a tool of access - it's incredibly easy to bluff your way in somewhere if you state your purpose clearly and hold up some heavy-looking gear. I've also vaguely overdosed on feeling like a distanced observer to something I would like to feel like a participant in. It's fun to see lots of shows, and I do like having something to do - I often get a little bored at shows (much as I love the music - it's my mess of a brain), so it's nice to have a sense of purpose. But it's quite obvious to everybody around that you don't have as much invested in attending the show as they do, and it can feel a little lonely. Add to that that I'm not the best at talking to strangers and you end up with a series of four nights spent very much in my own company and inside my own head. Nothing wrong with that, inherently, but I like music shows as social experiences as well, and I missed out on that, eventually.

But in the overall, I have to say it was awesome, and that I would do it again in a heartbeat. I love taking pictures of musicians and shows - they're always doing something interesting, and when you can catch that moment of unguarded abandon, where you see the honest love of music involved, that's what I was looking to capture. And, with varying degrees of success, I think I got that with a bunch of artists, and ended up with some(by my judgment) good photos. I guess I'll let you judge for yourself. But I had a good time, and I learned a lot. Like the fact that the Knitting Factory refuses to light their shows barely at all. And that my camera's priority modes are totally for crap. I was much happier once I went totally manual. But enough! It's time for photos!

Okay, Pause, Waittaminute

2004-10-18T23:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, so while we're all waiting for my massive CMJ update that I'm anyday getting around to posting (hey, gimme a break here, I'm busy), I will post this profile, in it's entirety, of some girl on Lavalife named ItalianPrincessX. Tell me if it makes ANY SENSE AT ALL to you:

Just looking to pass time and spark intellect if you have game that's you, as for me I'm interested. No losers. Must be professional. I am.

Ooooh, intriguing. Now, lemme see -- I like to spark intellect. I have game that's me. Aaaaaaaaaaaand she's interested! Wait - am I a loser? Uh. NO! I am not! And I'm professional! Man, I pass her bizarre standards for dating and now I'll write her back...or, on second thought, I might just let this one go.

Marathon Man

2004-10-13T19:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, Knobleteers, it is finally here - the CMJ Marathon, in which a million and a half bands play about 5 million shows here in New York over the course of four days, and I'm one of the CMJ photo staff, covering the whole thing. Which means I'm taking picture of about 8 or 9 bands a night for the next four nights. It's gonna be totally exhausting, but I'm going to try to keep this thing updated with reports and reviews and assorted other junk. Sound good? Great! I'm heading out of the office now to pick up my press credentials from the Javits center. See ya later, dudes...

HOLY CRAP WHAT

2004-10-13T15:26:00.000-04:00

Uh, yeah, I have nothing much to say about this except WOW what, oh my god, huh. If you click on the headline above, you'll see that scientists have been, in fact, creating a meat jacket. A MEAT JACKET. OUT OF HUMAN BONE CELLS AND MOUSE CELLS. Now, while this is gross and looks in fact like they skinned a small, jacket-like creature, this is the kind of thing that I get quite excited about. How cool is that? I do want to point out that I started thinking about organic jackets a long time ago, when we were suggesting that we could make a Fat Jacket out of J's excess flesh. But that's another story.

A Coupla Things

2004-10-10T20:29:00.000-04:00

First off, a li'l shoutout to Not The Rhino for being all more updated on a regular basis. Which is very exciting. Hey, Kath, liked the last post on "moving." You rock.

Secondly, I was at a dinner party at Jessie's place yesterday (Saturday), which was fantastic - she and her housemate Topper cooked a veritable feast, from the delicious artichoke soup to the roasted cauliflower to the roasted lamb, everything was quite good. And, most delicious of all, the meal finished off with a sweet potato cake with homemade apple sauce, which was one of the best desserts I've had in a long time. Kudos to you, Jessie & Topper! But anyway, at the party was Jessie's former physics TA, Dan Hertz (sp?) with whom I had several great conversations. One of my favorite things he was discussing was the concept of the Klein Flask, a theoretical mathematical concept of a zero-volume container, i.e. a container in which the outside surface smoothly segues into the inside surface, leaving you with no actual "inside" or "outside." Of course, I'm vaguely retarded so I could only mildly imagine what this meant - until I went ahead and visited KleinBottle.com, and all became clear. I particularly enjoy this particular incarnation of the Klein Bottle. Enjoyable. I love this kind of stuff. The other thing we discussed was part of a larger discussion about the state of America under Bush. Topper, while no fan of Bush, is a conservative on many issues, and this being New York where one tends not to run into Republicans, this engendered a long discussion on the debates in particular and Bush in general. Dan Hertz brought up something that I think I had tangentially heard about, but hadn't much thought. Apparently the Union of Concerned Scientists have issued a collective statement calling for the return of scientific integrity in policy making, leveling the accusation upon the Bush administration that they've systematically ignored or altered or distorted scientific evidence to suit their purposes, have attempted to have support for the administration to be a litmus test for appointments to scientific panels, and have attempted to subvert the current system of scientific peer review. You can read the full complaint here. Now as a person who is not particularly endowed with a very scientific brain (it's much more of a touchy-feely blob), I still have an enormous reverence and respect for science and a belief in the importance of science in our society. That political motivations cause evidence to be buried or ignored in favor of unsupported ideology drives me crazy angry. Kath & Spoons, in particular, what do you think about all this? I was very happy to hear in the debate on Friday that Kerry straight-up told us that he will be a president who believes in science. That's a beautiful thing.

Final thing for today - so yesterday, myself, Alex, Chris & Geoff were walking around filming small segments for a series of web commercials for Sketchfest NYC which will be taking place in June of next year. The whole idea was that we'd be dressed up as sketch comedy archetypes and walk around New York doing very New York things. So I was a pirate waiting for the subway, Chris was a ninja on a parkbench, and Geoff was a Santa talking on his cellphone while walking around. Anyway, we had filmed a couple when we turned up Sullivan St. to head up to Joe's Pizza (the same teeny pizzeria where Peter Parker worked in Spiderman 2 - their pizza is fantastic, probably the best version of New York street pizza I've ever had) to film something there. We were passing by another film shoot when one of the people on the film crew approached Geoff and had the following exchange:

Guy: Hey, are you going to be wearing that Santa costume all day?
Geoff: Uh, maybe. Why?
Guy: Because we're filming this thing and the guy who was playing our Santa Claus just dropped out, and we need somebody to play a Santa.
Geoff: Uh-huh.

We were flabbergasted. So it turns out that it was a short film featurette type of thing for Virgin Mobile, potentially to be shown on Virgin Atlantic Airways and some parties or something. So Geoff signed up for it and reported for call a little later this afternoon. He was playing a kinda creepy Santa at a holiday party that goes awry. Alex, Chris, and myself hung out for a little bit "on set," which was the offices of Trace Magazine down in Soho. I left after an hour or so, but Geoff said they didn't film until ages later, so I'm glad I ditched and went to Jessie's dinner party instead...but still, pretty cool. We were all pretty flabbergasted about the whole thing. But as stunned as we were, we were trying to think about it from the film crew's perspective - their Santa had just dropped out ten minutes before, and then around the corner comes a Santa. That's just fucking bizarre.

The other fun thing about walking around with a Santa Claus is that people like to shout out things at you. Usually, it's just things like "ho ho ho" and "Hey, it's Santa." But far and away, the best reponse was a kid who just pointed and said "Give me a present or I'll kill you." Oh, kids.

Awkward

2004-09-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

Why, oh, why is it so awkward to run into co-workers on the train? Especially when you're far from your destination? And you don't know the co-worker that well? Now, these questions may all seem rhetorical but believe me, THEY ARE NOT. On the Jay St. – Borough Hall platform, I ran into Roland, who heads up the interactive division here at US Concepts. I don't know him that well, but he's always seemed like a nice enough. But man, oh, MAN, it was strange riding to work with him. Because, you know, once you acknowledge that you're on the same train, you have stand next to each other or else you're being deliberately anti-social - and then you have to make some sort of conversation because it's kinda understood that conversation should trump reading, if you're with somebody you know. So what happened was the following exchange:

Roland: Hi.
Stefan: Hey! I didn't know we were on the same train. Where do you live?
Roland: Park Slope.
Stefan: Oh, me too. Where?
Roland: 5th St. & 4th Ave. By the gas station.
Stefan: The Hess?
Roland: No, the BP.
Stefan: Oh.
Pause.
Stefan: How long have you been in the Slope?
Roland: Three and a half years.
Pause.
Roland: How long did that meeting go yesterday?
Stefan: I don't know, I eventually grabbed one of those organic donuts and snuck out. Those donuts were aweseome.
Reaaaaaallllyy long pause during which Roland stares in the other direction and I start to read my magazine.

Now, granted, I'm not the best at small talk, but I'm enthusiastic and friendly (I think). I think it's Roland's fault, personally. Luckily, some ice was broken later when the subway we were in had some doors that wouldn't close, so we all had to exit. Complaining breeds solidarity, fortunately, and some funny griping ensued briefly. Then Roland led us onto the wrong train (heading towards Brooklyn instead of Manhattan), more funny griping ensued, and we managed to make it onto the right train and to our stop without much incident. More forced conversation upon exiting the train station about what we're both working on at the moment. Sigh. I just hate small talk. I'm not really good at it, and I can't really paper over gaps in conversation very well. It's one of the things I just wish I was better at. Mostly, I don't know what to ask people – I sorta run out of interesting questions to tease out their topics on interest. I have the basic New York questions down (where do you work, where do you live, where are you originally from, how much money do you make, that kind of thing) but beyond that, I'm just crap. It's my curse that I can be a very good friend to you if you've known me for about a month or so. But it's tough to get to that point if I just awkwardly stall out of every initial conversation. Anybody have any tips for me?

Another 8:30 Morning

2004-09-27T23:17:00.000-04:00

Okay. So the thing I was in at 8:30 for on Friday never ended up happening, so I was told, again, to be there at 8:30 today. Fine. Okay. So I drag my tired didn't-go-to-bed-when-I-was-supposed-to ass to work, and arrive shortly before 8:30. I sit down, put my perishable food items in the fridge, and promptly pass out, figuring that I'll get a few moments of quiet before work formally begins. Of course this is the one day when he needs me before 9. So I wake to the CEO hanging over my cube wall saying "Sorry to wake you." It's a little embarrassing. Of course, all he needs me to do is print out a coupla documents - documents he already has. It takes me a sum total of 10 seconds. I'm so glad I was there for that.

Eh, this is getting a little too curmudgeonly for my taste. Now, not that I'm ecstatic about always being there early, but it's NOT terrible. Besides, for some reason, I'm leaning toward some sort of higher job satisfaction level. Not sure what that's all about, but my attitude's been a little bit more positive. So whereas before it was hovering in the 65-70 range, it's now nudging more toward 75 or so. It helped I think that the Sprite presentation that I worked so hard on (and quite enjoyed, in addition) went apparently very well on Friday. Not that that means we're going to get the business, but they did say we displayed "revolutionary thinking." Whatever that means. I've been feeling pretty happy with the actual work I've been turning out too, which is nice. I go in cycles, where I'll be happy with nothing, and then there will be weeks where I feel like I sneeze and good stuff comes out. I mean, I know that's not true, because I mostly exist in the big middle bit of the bell curve, but some days are easier for me than others. Creativity is weird. Because to some extent my job is very technical and relies on me knowing my programs and being able to use them properly. But the other bit is the part that I don't feel like I have any control over - it's like I have to give my brain the proper environment, and it will come up with things. But I don't know how it does it. It's a little frightening, because it's very easy to have the technical bits all down cold, memorized, but you can't memorize inspiration. Not that I'm doing anything ground-breaking at work, but largely what I do is guess. Guessing what will look good to me, and hopefully, to other people. It's a strange thing. It's like the part of my brain that doesn't quite let me functional in a rational, normal way, the part that makes me forget my cellphone and stare into space and be all spacy - that's the part that gets rewarded at work for being non-linear, random and mysterious. Bizarre. I'll have to think more about this.

In other news, the Super Clean 24/7 laundromat that I passed by this morning thinking "Will it ever open?" finally opened tonight. It looks like a very shiny, sparkly new laundromat. I've never seen that before. All laundromats look like they've been half-shitty forever. It's too bad that I'll never use it since I have a washer/dryer downstairs gloatgloatgloat.

Oh, wow, I can't end an entry on that kind of horrible mean note. Uh...bunnies are soft. Good night!

Vogue, Damn You, Vogue

2004-09-26T13:02:00.000-04:00

Why, oh why, does every party attended by theater people end with somebody popping in "The Immaculate Collection?" I swear, this is like my signal to go home every single time. Because whereas I do know the Madonna songs in question, I have SO little desire to dance to them. And the fact that it's somehow de rigeur for attention-seeking theater people makes it even worse. Oh, man, am I getting crotchety?

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I went to a party A BLOCK AWAY from my apartment. It was awesome. I mean, the party was okay (I didn't know anybody really, except for my friend Steph and her friends Logan & Laura) but then when it was over, I just walked ONE BLOCK and then I was home. It was the most convenient party ever. Not much to say about the party really aside from that, though the big highlight was that there was no tequila - so me and Steph tried to make up for that by labeling as many things as possible "tequila." So some Toasteds crackers became tequila, some cookies were written on to read "tequila" and there is, as we speak, a bottle of olive oil in the freezer that was labeled tequila. I hope they find it soon and don't think that somebody made off with their olive oil.

Final cool thing: they had a papasan sofa. It was awesome. I had to repeatedly get up out of it to prevent getting stuck in there. It was really easy to just sit down and never want to get up again. Dangerous! Yet comfy. Puts my papasan to shame.

8:30 AM, Friday Morning

2004-09-24T08:37:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are, 8:30 in the morning, called in on special assignment by the CEO of my company. Which is totally, utterly fine, because he has that right. Of course he can commandeer me extra early. BUT, the clock is gradually ticking toward nine, and he hasn't e-mailed or made contact and I swear to god I just heard him say he was going somewhere right now. And this wouldn't be so bad either, if it didn't happen in this exact way every single time he calls me in early. I'm here, I'm awake, I'm ready to kick some ass, and my assignment doesn't happen till, oh, 10 or 11. I don't care, at 9 I'm going downstairs to get myself an everything bagel with ham, egg & cheese and come hell or high water, nothing will stop me. That's going to be my treat for getting up early.

It's ridiculous, but having to get up to be here at 8:30 is so much harder than it really should be. I don't know what it is. But the difference between waking at 7 and waking at 7:30 is HUGE. Especially since I generally don't have a hard deadline time to get in by - my general guideline is 9 to 9:30. So if I slack a little in the morning (which I am wont to do) and mess around a bit, don't go too fast, that's generally okay. But if I have to be here at 8:30, it is CRUCIAL that I do everything in the time that it takes optimally. Guh. I don't like my mornings to be quite that structured.

I do however like being outside earlier. The light is prettier, all golden, day seems all full of possibilities. I like watching people get their coffee and gradually wake up on the train. And there's something hardcore about it like "I am getting up to get things accomplished now. I am useful, able and ready." And if I didn't always run on a perpetual sleep deficit, I might just do this more often. I also like this office when it seems quiet and non-stressed. It's not a bad office, but it stresses me out when it gets noisy and full of people walking around very fast. Especially since I feel like my office/art pit is just made for people to sneak up on me. But it's nice and peaceful at this hour, cool and calm. Yeah.

Timecheck: 8:45. Still no sign of him. Dammit.

Last night when I got out of the subway (the 7th Ave. stop, because as usual when the F decides to go express it completely disrespects the 4th Ave. stop every single time), there was this incredible noise as I was climbing the stairs to the street. Like, huge, pounding, jackhammer noises. Which, as it turns out, they were. There was entire crew of workers jackhammering the street, tearing it up, at midnight. MIDNIGHT! Now, I understand that they probably don't want to tear up the street during the day because people are, I don't know, driving on that street, but these motherfuckers were so goddamn loud I was amazed that weren't more people leaning out of windows in their nightshirts yelling about the racket. Like seriously, if I was on that block, I'd have trouble sleeping, and I never have trouble falling asleep with noise. It just seems to me that the inconvenience caused to the neighborhood would outweigh the inconvenience to the drivers of 7th Ave. during the day. I mean, it's not an unpopular street, but there are certainly plenty of ways to get around it if you have to. All I'm saying is, come on, people let's do the roadwork during the day, like normal cities.

As I was walking home, it wasn't until I hit 5th Ave. that the sound starting to die down. That's ridiculous.

Timecheck: 8:52. At least I'm getting to catch up on my blogging. Sigh. Till next time, muchachos.

EDITED AT 9:37 AM: Okay, rumor confirmed, he headed out to a meeting at Schieffelin (the company for whom we were preparing this presentation) at 9. Won't be back till 11. I am victorious in my predictions, yet I have died a little inside. But it's okay, I now have my bagel, and my coffee, so I am happy.

2004-09-22T23:58:00.000-04:00

And this is my other favorite shot. Or rather, it's my other shot. I only have two, unfortunately. But no worries, friends, there will be other nights when the Magic Hat comes-a-partying. And they will be special nights. Oh, yes they will be. You'll note the rakish Corona I have in my hand there - that was part of the amazing Corona-n-Cuervo-for-five bucks deal that they had going on there at the bar. I'd say that handily beats the Infamous Seven Dollar Corona I had at this place called Automatic Slim's - which, despite being a fun bar, with good music and some ridiculous people, has NO business charging seven bucks for a beer like Corona. For real, New York, what the hell is up with you?

2004-09-22T23:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, so if you remember, I was mentioning my "Magic Hat" which I had found on the street and decided to pimp out with all night on Saturday. Well, without further ado I present to you a few choice shots of it in action (courtesy of Slightly Known People, thank you very much!)

Friggin' Settings

2004-09-21T23:06:00.000-04:00

Okay, so several of you (in fact 2 Brians) let me know that I retardedly have my settings set so that only registered Bloggers can leave me comments. Which is stupid. Since most of you don't blog. But it's all fixed now - point being that if you were stymied earlier by wanting to comment and couldn't, now you can. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

Okay, Sound Off

2004-09-20T23:07:00.000-04:00

Egotistical roll call: Who's reading this damn thing anyway? Comment below!

Well, If It Ain't The Superfan

2004-09-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

So, after dinner at Virgil's BBQ (delicious actually - I had the Fried Shrimp Po' Boy YUM) with Geoff, Jerf & Monica, I skipped a Sky Captain excursion to go ahead and make it on home. I was kinda tired and in need of a chill li'l evening of not doing much at all. I went down to the F station at 42nd St., got down to the platform and was stopped by the Skits-O-Phrenics SuperFan.

I'm not sure what his actual name is (Chris? Riccione? or something like that) but he was a BIG Skits-O-Phrenics fan back at Cornell, always coming to the shows, and stopping us all on Slope Day. We would hear Hey! Skits-O-Phrenic! and we'd know it was him. He's now moved down to the city where he's been a fixture at our Elephant Larry shows. Apparently, he's now works in finance, investing people's money according to him, and I regularly get sucked into conversations with him that increasingly center on him being a sketchy dude, the kind that prostitutes and strippers gravitate to in search of business. The last time I talked to him (after the Crime Machine) he had mentioned that he was working on some sort of television show modeled after the "Mike's Apartment" website thing - ad is placed, girls respond, he requests favors like massages and stripteases from them in exchange for letting them stay in his apartment. Sketchy, right? Well, today he informs me that this project (entitled "Roommate with Benefits") is well underway, but that it's now going to be an all-acted endeavor - i.e. the girls will be actresses, and he's going to have pre-scripted scenarios that he'll play out. STILL SKETCHY, I'll point out. Especially since he's not going to be paying the Craig's List actresses that he's recruiting. The "twist" on the film is that he's going to have his friends observing the whole thing via some sort of hidden camera and commenting, colorfully, on the procedure. It still sounds like a television show to me, but he has the idea that he's going to turn it into a film. It's weird that for an idea that centers around thwarted expectations and hidden cameras, everybody's in on the deception. Which means that these better be some pretty damn well-written scenarios that he's got going on, and that his friends better be freakin' amazing at coming up with quips and hilarious zingers. He offered that I could be one of the friends commenting. I told him I'd consider it. Because, honestly, I would. This whole thing may just be too weird to pass up.

I have to say, it was pretty entertaining talking to him, especially since I put it out there right away that I thought this seemed like a sketchy excuse to get himself carousing with women who'd be "acting" while they massage him with oil or whatever. So there was some fun ribbing about that and he did joke around that he spent all his free time in strip clubs and cavorting with whores (not true, apparently). And I do like that I can run into people on subway platforms and have conversation buddies. I thrive on random situations, but I'm not quite forward enough to make them really happen. So it's nice when they decide to randomly decide to happen to me instead.

Oh, and playlists. Tonight on Real Rhapsody I've listened to: Wilco A Ghost Is Born, G. Love The Hustle & Nas Illmatic.

Weekend Funnery

2004-09-19T13:11:00.000-04:00

So this weekend's been going pretty well so far. I usually don't do these "summaries of what's been going on" kinda entries, but I'm well-caffeinated, it's one of those amazing flood-your-living-room-with-light kinda mornings, it feels like fall, and I'm listening to chill white-boy acoustica (Donavon Frankenreiter - where the fuck does he get of spelling his first name so completely counterintuitively?) and I felt like I haven't updated in a while so here goes.

Friday night was Geoff's birthday party, which was a lot of fun - exactly the kinda evening I wanted to have, and he seemed to have a blast as well. It started out awesome - we met up at his new Sullivan St. apartment, where Chris created the newest Elephant Larry subgroup, VH-1 CLASSIC, so dubbed because he got three free VH-1 shwag watches from some off-site meeting that his bosses went to. I was Bob Marley, Geoff was David Bowie, and Chris was Joan Jett. So when we powered up, it sounded like this:

Geoff: CHANGES!
Stefan: NO WOMAN, NO CRY!
Chris: I LOVE rock n' roll.

It was our rallying cry for the evening.

Before we left the apartment to go to Otto, I presented Geoff with his present, a bottle of "Chaos" from the McSweeney's Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Just as he opened it to find out what was inside, the umpire reversed a run the Red Sox had just scored. Chaos indeed! Geoff was quite happy about that.

So then we left, and went to Otto Enoteca (where enoteca = wine library; appropriate, since they have about 8 million wine options) which I'm always a big fan of. Chris had the ever-awesome Otto Lardo pizza (basically dough with olive oil and "lardo," or pig's backfat, on top), I had my usual favorite of Aglio, Olio & Pepperoncino (Garlic, Oil & Chiles), and Geoff had something with anchovies on it. I tried a li'l bit of the anchovy, but goddamn if that's not way too much fish taste for me. I feel like I'll eventually come around if I shut my eyes and pretend I'm having a Caesar Salad pizza or something, but whoa, crazy fish taste, for real, son. So after brief dessert (Olive oil gelato, with salt, strawberries and mint - mind-blowing, so good), we headed over to Dempsey's on 2nd Ave. for some boozing and chilling. We made a quick stopover on St. Mark's place to pick up some party accessories for Geoff (a fuzzy gray hat + some of those weird, hilarious bug glasses that only ever seem to available on St. Mark's for some reason). The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful in the best way - got to hang with people I wanted to hang with, it was fun.

Yesterday I bought a suit! I braved the post-Hurricane Ivan subway conditions and went to the Hugo Boss store on 5th Ave. & 55th St., easily the swankiest store I've ever entered with the intention of actually buying anything. It was one of those places that are excessively white and understocked - lots of floor space and, like, four garments. Luckily, it seemed practically attitude-free, at least in the men's suit department, which was (strangely!) where I spent most of my time. I basically threw myself upon the mercy of the salesstaff and confessed that a) I had never bought a suit and b) I didn't really know the rules or what to look for. I wasn't particularly worried about feeling ripped-off by doing that, since I had set a budget beforehand. Luckily, my boy Michael (this ridiculously ripped man in the tightest t-shirt possible) knew his stuff mostly and helped me out and good. I'm absolutely at the low-end of their sizing because I'm so skinny and therefore not even close to the American male average they usually cater to. This meant that there were not that many options for me, but I ended up, after extensive consulting with their head tailor and Michael, going with a black "Flynn-Vegas" cut that's going to look AMAZING once it gets altered properly and I pick it up next weekend. Man, all you fools at Liz's wedding are going to be like, man, who's the dude in the suit. It looks like Stefan, but he strangely doesn't look like total crap. Who is that? Hee hee. I really liked the whole experience. It was a completely novelty shopping for something in a luxury-ish store and being waited on by two people at once was crazy, and kinda fun. That never happens when I buy t-shirts.

Then last night I went out briefly to Will Nunziata's (of the Royal We) birthday party that was being held at Korova Milk Bar (this bar that attempts, not entirely successfully, to look like the creepy bar in A Clockwork Orange) in the East Village. Pretty fun, I didn't know that many people, but I ended up running into this girl Christina Casa who's all comedy scene-y and also used to temp at US Concepts (as recently as last week). Slightly Known People were there as well, celebrating Mel's birthday. It was cool to see them, they're crazy nice people. It also cemented their names in my head, which was good, since I'm so terrible at names. They're doing a run of shows at Rififi over the next month or so, and I think I'm going to go check 'em out. Plans were also made to have a Sketch Dance-off.

I should mention right now what I was wearing. I made a commitment to wear some funny "going-out" clothes earlier in the evening, because I was feeling a little "eh" during the day and wanted to feel swanky. So I put on my vintage Arizona bell bottoms, my "Here Comes A Special Boy" Achewood t-shirt, and my dad's old leather jacket. AND THEN as soon as I left my apartment and turned right, I saw this amazing hat somebody was throwing out -- all crumpled, kinda top-hatty, with a huge feather arrangement coming out of the back. And here's the best part - somebody had written, in glitter letters MAGIC across the front, with the last C being backwards. Fantastic! So I wore that hat for the rest of the evening and it made me feel really good. I've discovered I love hats - they completely make the rest of your outfit and allow you to be somebody through the hat. It's weird - more than any other kind of garment, they're costume pieces & make the man. I gotta invest in more hats. But yes, this hat was fantastic and garnered nothing but admiring comments all night. Serendipity. Sometimes life is so wonderfully coincidental and fun. Thank you, whoever threw out the hat. Thank you.

After Will's party, little J and I moseyed on over to Kenny's Castaway where Geoff, Chris & the Somers crew were hanging out because it was the debut of The Teenage Softies, which are a "band" fronted by Chris' friend Amy & her friend Anastacia (I think?). I put the word band in quotation marks because they're not actually a band so much as they're art direction, t-shirts, fake albums and a hoax in search of a band. Luckily, Amy confessed as much to me at Geoff's party - she was so excited about her deception that she couldn't keep it to herself. Basically, she thought it would be funny to make CD art, publicity art, Friendster profile and t-shirts (a signed one of which I am now in possession) without there actually being a band. Now, whereas I think this is actually pretty amusing, I'm very happy that I knew about this beforehand, because otherwise I would have felt obligated to stay all the way until the end of the evening to see their "show." As it was, I knew that they were just going to go up on stage, say "Hi, we're the Teenage Softies" and then leave. And that just wasn't worth staying for (though I'm sure I'll get a report from somebody as to how the actual show went - and I'll post an update, I promise). At least we got to hang out in the upstairs VIP area (Amy's brother, Lucas, was playing his birthday show there that evening with his band, Cool Hand). We watched some band that sounded like Idlewild went on, thinking that the Teenage Softies would be on after that. But then another band was set to go on at 2:30, and I decided that I'd had quite enough and headed on home. Amy seemed quite satisfied that we all came out to say hi anyway and forgave me for not seeing the show.

And now it's Sunday morning, it looks like beautiful fall outside, and Marika and I are going to go take a walk. It's just that kind of day. Ah, I love fall.

Ed Koch Loves Stefan & Doesn't Even Know It

2004-09-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

Hey babies! You gotta check this out - if you click on the headline above, you'll link to a picture of Ed Koch reading the menu I designed for the CNN Diner (the Tick Tock Diner, as converted for the RNC). Amusing, no? It made me giggle. If you look on the table, you'll also see the Beverages menu I designed as well. Bizarre little city we live in, honestly.

Watch Watch

2004-09-14T08:17:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm just going to post this before I forget: I woke up this morning, alarm went off, and I look down on my wrist to see that at some point during the night I put on my watch (and not the Nixon one I usually wear, but the Fossil one). How did this happen? What was the process? Somehow I apparently thought it would be AWESOME if I just threw on a watch I guess. So weird. Similarly disorienting to the time when I was on vacation in Sweden when I was, oh, 15 or so and went to sleep in the top bunk of the bunkbed my sister and I were sharing - and woke up on the sofa in the living room. Man, I'm a freak when I sleep, I'll tell you that.

2004-09-13T23:50:00.000-04:00

This one's for J - I promised him I'd post the picture of myself, with the bachelorette from Seattle for whom I stripped down to my skivvies, with scant more reward then the dollar bill that was unceremoniously stuffed into my boxers. But damn if it wasn't a gratifying experience - if for no other reason than that it freaked Jerf out that I wasn't getting dressed again fast enough. Ah, Jeff. Always worrying that I'm going to get arrested.

Coffe [sic] Time

2004-09-13T14:46:00.000-04:00

So I was just getting my afternoon coffee pick-me-up type of beverage from our in-office Flavia machine which, if you're not familiar, is a single-packet industrial coffeemaker. You pop your foil packet in, you get something that resembles coffee out, you squeeze it down and go on with your day. While it does not actually have any of the flavor benefits of coffee, it does retain the stimulating benefits, and is thus perfectly functional. In any case, the bin of disposed coffee packets was full and after I finished emptying it, it gave me the number of cups of coffee the machine had dispensed so far: 10814. That's SO much coffee. It's interesting, really, in a non-sky-is-falling-what-are-we-coming-to kinda way, that we as a nation have so thoroughly embraced coffee (bad coffee, too, which is ALSO an interesting, but separate, issue). It's like we've acknowledged that we no longer have the energy or time to do all the things which we expect ourselves to do -- and instead of solving that problem, we artificially keep ourselves awake longer. I mean, we're definitely functional addicts in this respect, but it's very telling that offices are expected to keep coffee on hand at all times. Isn't it just a smidge away from one of those dystopian sci-fi movies where people are injected with work drugs or given obedience pills? I mean, not that anybody's forcing you to drink coffee at work, but it's always sitting there, silently saying "This company does not respect that you're tired. Do something about it." Man, when I have a company (if I ever do) there will be a nap room, and you will get a nap allowance and that nap allowance will be respected dammit.

Of course, all of this ranting is from somebody who loves drinking coffee. And does feel like his days should be packed with gobs more productivity. Sigh.

I got blogged!

2004-09-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

Wow, I totally got blogged. In one of my egotistical time-wasting maneuvers, I googled myself and this link came up:

Robotic Tronic Masterpiece

Apparently the author of my li'l profile in the Brooklyn Eagle (available to read on the Elephant Larry website) also knows Frank who made Dannybot, the movie in which I star as a robot. Oh, what a teeny little world.

Andres Is Funny

2004-09-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, so you pretty much have to check out the link (by clicking on the title of this post). It's ludicrously awesome, so make sure you read the whole thing.

In case any of you don't know, Andres du Bouchet is a Cornell alum, a former Shrimp (from, like, way long ago), and currently is all over the New York comedy scene...he did a set at the Big Red Comedy Festival (along with Jamie Greenberg, as Only Children) and, like Elephant Larry, he is one of Back Stage's Comedy Best Bets 2004. Hot hot hot.

Now, if you're still not checking out the link after all that convincing, you're obviously no friend of mine. Get out. Get out now.

Completely Unrelated to the RNC

2004-09-01T09:38:00.000-04:00

I think it's absolutely COMPLETELY adorable that Domino Sugar's slogan is "We'll always be your sugar." It seriously kinda makes me smile everytime I add brown sugar to my cereal blend that I make in the morning. It just doesn't smack of over-focus-group tested anything, and it's kinda folksy without being pretentious. I dunno, it's just cute.

NYC: Convention Time

2004-08-31T21:07:00.000-04:00

So I actually work downtown and west enough that if I didn't know the Convention was here, I wouldn't actually experience it at all (with the possible exception of the NYPD bike dispatching station that they've set up around my subway stop on 8th Ave. -- last time I checked, there were something like 50-odd bikes and tons of cops hanging around). Of course, most of New York is like that -- except for things like 9/11 or the blackout, things could very well be happening on the next block over and you would just have no idea. It makes the city kind of fun. Walk walk walk - BOOM! Movie shoot! It's kinda neat.

But yeah, the convention -- myself and little J headed out on Sunday morning or so, armed with plenty of water and a camera, to see what was going on. I didn't exactly know where the route was going to be, or where the parade was going to be by the time we emerged from the subway, so we just took the F train to 14th St. and figured that we'd wander around until we saw people moving some general direction or another. It didn't take very long. Immediately upon exiting we saw people with signs heading down 16th St., moving west. It didn't seem like much of a parade, so I was initially disappointed. But then I was struck by all the loud thrumming in the air, and realized that from where I was standing, I could see four newscopters and a blimp. The helicopters gave the proceedings an eerie, menacing tone, but that was soon counteracted by the actual people that we ran into, closer to 7th Ave.

The crowds soon thickened up -- the streets were jammed as soon as we actually got to 7th. Huge banners, people in costumes, wearing signs. There was a whole group of protesters I'd actually seen the year before at the Iraq protest I went to (similar vibe), a group of harlequins in full headgear and sparkly makeup. They were accompanied by a guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty, but with a skullface painted on. He was being interviewed by somebody with a videocamera. The reporters were all out in full force, as well as the hobbyists with their camcorders and digital cameras. Everybody was recording everything, including me, who was snapping away with my D100. There was a veritable D-SLR army out there on the street, and I felt a silly, inconsequential kinship with those that had my exact make and model of camera.

One advantage of liberal activist protests that you don't seem to get at conservative rallies is that while the activists are obviously out there because they care deeply about this convention and this administration, they're also out to have a damn good time. There was a very definite pranksterish tone to the whole thing -- people obviously spent a lot of time making elaborate costumes and funny signs, as well as coming up with clever chants to yell as they marched. It's kinda hard to imagine a fundamentalist mom holding up a sign reading "I skipped Burning Man to protest your abortion." In addition, the sheer amount of percussion made it seem like a parade, rather than a protest. I accidentally typed "parade route" earlier in this post, but I let it stand because it still seems like an apt way to describe it. Hippies with their handdrums, maracas, flutes -- whole sections of the crowd were marching, dancing and singing. It made the whole thing seem very fun. Which I think is both good and bad -- in people's efforts to make it an event, gimmicks inevitably win out. I found myself taking pictures of people's funny signs ("God Hates G.W. Bush," "Monkeys Against Bush," "Sluts Unite") and funny costumes rather than the honest-to-god earnest protesters (of which there were some). It's attention-getting sure, but is it effective? Is ANY of this effective? Part of the point I guess is to show the country that there are lots of people who care enough about getting Bush out of office. And perhaps somebody who lives in a mostly red county will see it and feel a little less alone, be inspired to activism, I don't know. It's fairly impressive that hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country have descended upon New York to make a big stink. But on the other hand, if it's the unwashed hippies, the noisemakers, the funny sloganeers -- isn't that also the easiest thing in the world to dismiss? There was very little nuance involved in the demonstration. I mean, granted, nobody is going to be chanting "Hey ho, hey ho, measured troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2008 is the way to go" but neither, I think, is holding up signs like "Bush is a fascist" and "Asses of Evil." I found myself annoyed at being able to very easily come up with counterarguments for all the extreme positions expressed. It's the exact same intolerance for the realities we're facing that I get so annoyed at when they come from White House.

J and I cut around the slowest bit of the parade (it had taken us and hour to move two blocks) and headed uptown, where we caught up with it around Herald Square. After a small picture-taking break, we marched past the mounted police (so cool; when we passed, the crowd started chanting "Give the cops a raise!") and turned down 5th Avenue. By this time, we were hot, tired and a bit dead on our feet, so we followed Fifth Avenue down to 23rd St. (at the Flatiron Building) and headed home from the 23rd St. F.

Overall, I was glad I got out there. Just by being another body out in the crowd, in some way, I swelled the ranks and showed my dissatisfaction with the current administration. But I also didn't feel like I wanted to discuss anything with the people I was marching with. Sure, I don't like Bush. And yes, I want him out office. But I felt like I would have just been picking a fight if I had expressed by more moderate views with anybody there. It is inspiring, though, to see so much motivation and fire. I'm interested to see how the rest of the week turns out...

Baby Carrots

2004-08-24T14:21:00.000-04:00

So, my worst suspicions were confirmed today with a quick Google search while having lunch today. Unlike Cornish Gamehens, which are actually chickens bred to be smaller, baby carrots are in fact full-grown carrots whittled down to size to appeal to the American snacksense. Because, you know, we'll eat anything modular. To be precise, according to USA Today:

"They're grown-up carrots cut into 2-inch sections, pumped through water-filled pipes into whirling cement-mixer-size peelers and whittled down to the niblets Americans know, love and scarf down by the bagful."

Awesome. I don't like them any less, of course, but it was still neat to know. Interestingly as well, an entire pound of baby carrots only has 200 calories. Crazy.

2004-08-23T07:49:00.000-04:00

So I got a bit of spam today in my inbox, the usual deal, asking me to check out some webcam, "if i'm lonely." But then, at the end of the e-mail, there's this surreal little paragraph, which I think is totally, totally precious:

"Her daughters hairy binocyles is thinking. His brothers noisy mobile
phone calculates and their small kitchen calms-down."

I wonder what a binocycle is.

In other news, Elephant Larry's show "The Precinct" finally got reviewed! It's not the best-written piece of work, but they did like it quite a bit. I'm very proud of the show, so that's pretty cool. They even namecheck me and Geoff's bagpipe bit, which is really fun to do. So that's cool.

2004-08-19T23:04:00.000-04:00

In addition, right around the corner from where we're doing "The Precinct," our all-police-themed sketch comedy show, there's this priceless bit of graffiti. For those not as intimately acquainted with the show, Geoff's character's name is Preston Jenkins...so we couldn't really resist this lovely photo-op. Ah, shenanigans.

2004-08-19T23:02:00.000-04:00

So this is a truck that we honest-to-god saw after Elephant Larry had dinner at Benny's Burritos on Greenwich Ave. Rapex Contracting Corp. Are you fucking kidding me? Who names something like that? So, needless to say, we had to take a picture.

2004-08-13T09:59:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't it be funny if there was a proverb that went:

"The best babies have the slowest mommies."

Which is to say, the best ideas/things take the longest to come into fruition, a perfectly adequate idea to express in proverb form. But I love how awkward the image of a slow mommy is. And the idea that there is such a thing as a 'best baby.' Overall, the phrase makes sense, but good lord the analogy is flawed all over the place.

Oh, man, I'm going to have some more coffee.

2004-08-09T15:57:00.000-04:00

Oh, man, I totally almost forgot to post this, but a bumblebee hit me in MY FRIGGIN' EYE this morning. I was just turning onto 4th Avenue on the way to the subway when this bumblebee buzzed around the right side of my head and smacked me in my eye. So weird. I jerked back kinda awkwardly, and gave a look to the girl walking right behind me like "did you see that" which either she did not or she was trying to ignore the weird guy herky-jerkying across the sidewalk like some kinda nerd. Good start to the day...

2004-08-06T00:27:00.000-04:00

Mostly, this is just a test to see how well this photo uploading softward I just downloaded works. But dudes (I say, as if anybody's reading this thing), I also wanted you to see this Gorgeous Picture of myself and Alex duking it out as the heroic crime-and-self-fighting duo, Fightman & Puncher. Yeehaw.

2004-08-05T09:35:00.000-04:00

Two small things today.

1) File under the heading of small things that you have blind spot for (like blinking!): Gum. On the streets. Absolutely freaking everywhere. I thought about it this morning as I got off the train because I musta stepped in some sort of gummy fruit thing (not actually gum). And then when I emerged from my stop, I look around and all over the sidewalks are the little black dots of gum-having-been-there evidence. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Absolutely everywhere. Who does that? Who just tosses gum on the street? And usually, you never see a fresh piece. I wonder how long some of that gum has been there. Of course, I think it's more stunning for me, because I trained myself long ago to just swallow gum, because, hey, it's smaller than most food you swallow and pretty slick and I'm PRETTY CERTAIN it does get stuck in your appendix for 18 years or however long it's supposed to be there until they have to remove your giant chewing gum tumor through surgery. But yeah. Gum on the streets. Total blindspot. And yet it should be pretty obvious that our sidewalks are not sidewalk-colored but in fact totally spotty almost all the time. I like seeing stuff that I usually ignore. Makes me feel observant or something.

2) For some unknown reason, I've been carrying around 10 useless keys with me at all times for about a year or so. Everyday, I only ever use ONE key. It opens my door to my apartment. That's the only key I ever ever ever use. And yet, I've been lugging around an excessively heavy keychain, and it didn't occur to me until yesterday that perhaps, oh, I should cull that down to a few less keys. Which I did. Now I carry around just one key. And I feel smarter. I like simplifying my life. Next stop: cleaning out my fucking backpack. It's heavy for no reason. I'm going to figure out why.

2004-08-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

So I've got Switchfoot's "Meant to Live" stuck in my head, and how. I have to say that even though I've been hearing the song all summer, it finally hit me in some sort of pop-rock sweetspot (this happens occasionally). I predict that I will listen to it everyday for the next week or so as my get-up-in-the-morning song, and then return to it every couple of weeks or so. I don't know, there's just something about epic radio songs that ask you to live up to your potential that really get to me – Stan Bush's "Dare" and, you know, the entire Andrew WK canon come to mind. Especially since the Switchfoot package is so banal and polished – I watched the video and they just look like a central casting "rock band," wearing all kindsa tight li'l t-shirts and leather armbands and sweatbands and chunky watches and, god help me, the drummer's even wearing a trucker hat. Also, to watch the video, there seem to be about a million guitarists in the band, but it's a little hard to tell since a) they're in different rooms for some reason and b) the camera seems to only wanna make a star out of the singer. Which makes sense, since he's the kind of blond mopheaded singer that cameras seem to love. He looks a bit like the singer for the Goo Goo Dolls (name escapes me, I seem to remember it's something complicated with lots of consonants). Anyway. I would love for there to be a roadtrip sometime soon where I could sing this song really loud while hanging out the window, but I fear that's not going to happen.

2004-08-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

So among the weirder things I'm involved with recently is a new website that me 'n' Alex designed for a photographer friend in trade for his services: www.passedoutwookies.com. It's a gallery website, basically, where people can contribute their photos of hairy hippies who have overindulged and then, for lack of a better term, passed out. Now, this is all sort of entertaining (I don't quite have the necessary levels of schadenfreude to properly appreciate the site, I think), but the thing I find more fascinating is how many hits the site has been getting. A feature of the gallery is that you can see how many times the various pictures have been looked at...and some of them are now up in the 3000 range. Which is strictly incredible to me. It's some sort of law of the internet (and humans, I guess) that the easer an idea is to grasp and "enjoy" (i.e. the dumber the idea) the more popular it's going to be. Alex and I toiled for 2 years on our sprawling, complicated X-Ball website – a site who's quirky pleasures would only get better if you read the million and a half (give or take) stories that we posted about our fictitious extreme sports-playing characters. Despite our best efforts, it never really took off, even though I'm quite proud of it to this day. We used to joke about how we should have just gone ahead and made runningintowalls.com, where we'd post nothing but pictures of people hurting themselves, and how that woulda been the most popular site ever. I realize now that we could very well not have been joking. Not that I condemn simple entertainment, but I guess I don't really feel like I need to be actively contributing to the din of moronic crap out there. Not that the passedoutwookies.com thing is moronic crap. I think I just prefer the achewood.com's of the world. All right, I'm getting back to work here. Enough shirking!

2004-08-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

Man, do NOT think about blinking for too long, or it just starts to seem like the weirdest thing you do. Try not to pay attention that, as you're speaking with other people, they're continually moisturizing their eyes. WITH THEIR EYELIDS. On the other hand, if you decide to think about it, make sure you notice how smooth and automatic the motion is, how fast it is, how it doesn't interfere with your normal life EVER (unless you think about it too much). It's also very quiet. Okay, I'm quite done here.

2004-07-14T18:57:00.000-04:00

2004-07-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

Hey dudes. So I know that my last "audioblog" didn't mention anything about t-shirts at all, so I figured that I would throw you all a bone and comment on my most recent favorite t-shirt sighting...on the subway ride home last night from my Elephant Larry meeting I spotted a dude wearing an oversize white t-shirt with alternating day-glo orange and gray text that read "NOT ALL MEN ARE FOOLS SOME ARE BACHELOR." Note the all capsness and the poor grammar there at the end. Amazing, truly and honestly – though, if I had to guess, he did seem like a recent immigrant kinda guy, a little bewildered and scared-looking, but I'm still supercurious as to where he got the shirt, because I certainly can't imagine any novelty t-shirt store in the states selling this one. No native English speaker would snap up some shirt proclaiming a weird, don't-date-me sentiment that is not particularly funny or obscene. The guy wearing it also didn't seem like the kind of guy who thought all men who weren't bachelors were fools. To put it mildly he did not exactly give off the International Jetset Playboy vibe. I do feel a little guilty about posting about this shirt, since it has so many sad undertones, but that, of course, is part of the reason I liked it so much.

So there you go, t-shirt of the day.

2004-07-12T17:00:00.000-04:00

2004-06-02T09:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, remember how I was talking about the guy wearing a Planet Earth sweatshirt? Well, this just in from my friend Monica:

"I was strolling down 6th Avenue a short while ago and I happened to glance up at a man passing me. He was wearing normal dark pants, a red button down shirt, and... 2004 glasses. seriously. I did a doubletake to make sure: 1) it wasn't Geoff, and 2) that this man wasn't wearing a "month" t-shirt."

What the hell, people. What the hell.

2004-05-26T00:12:00.000-04:00

I give up. This is going to be yet another apparel post, so yeah, I guess this is going to be a Wearables Blog and you all can just kiss my ass and deal.

T-shirt of the moment: My Swedish shirt, blue, with three yellow crowns and the letters SWE.
Sincerity Level: 100%. I love Sweden, and I love this shirt.

So Elephant Larry, my sketch comedy group, has a sketch in which an employee has been wearing his novelty New Year's 2004 glasses for an excessively long period of time (yeah, I know, it sounds very funny describing it), and his boss berates him with a speech in which he says it's like "...wearing a hat that says Planet Earth or a t-shirt that says what month it is." Of course, tonight, on my way home I see a kid wearing a hooded sweatshirt that says Planet Earth and I was amused. :) Granted, it's not a hat, but whatever...on a related note, several Elephant Larry members have taken to wearing shirts that say what month it used to be, since we're no longer doing the show and the shirts used to be props. If I didn't know them and I saw them out on the street, I don't know what I'd think. I'd probably blog about it. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for Mr. Planet Earth, like that it's some totally awesome brand that I haven't heard of. He's probably cutting edge and I'm a total tool.

I was telling Geoff (of Elephant Larry) earlier this evening, as we were sitting on the subway, that I like to recontextualize people's clothing. Case in point: we were staring at a gawky, awkwardly-posed man who was wearing a black shirt that said "Salem, Massachusetts" on it and had an image of a huge cat head, capitalizing on the witchy reputation of Salem. On him - that shirt looked achingly sincere and a little embarrassing. Give that same shirt to a guy with better posture and a few less years and all of a sudden it's cheekier and could totally work. Granted, I'm not a fan of insincere t-shirts (I try to be able to stand behind the sentiment of whatever shirt I'm wearing - I'm awfully post-ironic these days) but as far as fun "place" shirts go, it could be fun. I also do the same thing with sizing. A shirt in XXL that depicts a tribute to Salt Lake City, Utah is nowhere near as cool as a shirt in Medium depicting the same thing.

And just to wrap up, I'll just say that my t-shirt collection is now entirely out of control. It's moved into three drawers now in my 6-drawer dresser and as I was doing laundry last night, it was about 60-70% shirts. I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way, since I love my t-shirts, but goddamn if I'm not amassing quite a bunch.

2004-05-24T16:12:00.000-04:00

Here's a tip for all three of you reading this: if you're faced with the choice between buying 8 navel oranges for $1.99 or 6 navel oranges for $1.99 do NOT buy the cheaper ones, because the quality difference is so dramatic as to make you curse your everloving cheapness. The 6for199 variety are juicy, delicious, sweet, and come right off the peel with no problem. The 8for199 are not as sweet, generic and take a generous amount of bitter peel with them as you rip into your orange wedge.

Consider this your last warning. I shall not tell you again.

2004-05-18T09:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, I give up. I guess this blog is gonna turn into nothing but posting about T-Shirts. I'll just call it Me!-Shirts or something similarly stupid, and call it a day.

1) Girl, on her way to school, wearing a "Do I Look Like A Fucking People Person To You?" shirt, which just seemed to me to be so New York. Certainly, there's more cheerfully accepted public "profanity" in this city (I certainly don't remember any "Welcome To California! Now Fuck Off!" shirts from back home), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...but still...to school? I feel like even in the NYC school system, there might be a problem with that. And it's not even a clever shirt. It more seems like controversy for no reason. If there even would be a controversy.

2) Guy, wearing a "Cash is King" shirt. There's something funny about a kid who's obviously not doing anything particularly lucrative wearing this shirt. Unless, of course, it was a Johnny Cash shirt. Which would actually be kinda clever. But, upon refelction, the shirt was yellow with green writing, and any Johnny Cash shirt worth it's salt should really only be in black & white. I'm just saying.

2004-05-14T09:24:00.000-04:00

So on the way to work this morning, I spotted a snipe poster that was advertising Metro, the new free daily newspaper for New York (competing, I guess, with AMNY). And it's slogan, in big shouty letters, was: I HATE NEWSPAPERS THAT THINK I HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. Oh. You're right. I am such a busy guy, that I can't personally figure out what news is important to me by using the filter that's my brain -- instead, I should rely on dumbed-down AP articles and headlines so that I can not only finish my newspaper on my morning commute but also get nothing but blipvert versions of news articles. Now I can feel smug and self-satisfied because "I read the news! Like a real adult!" and get my big, overpriced coffee, march into work and be an Important Guy. No. Wrong. Sigh. It just makes me angry the way that if you're busy everything needs to be condensed. There's this sense that if you have a limited amount of time you should do lots of things at a compromised quality, and that will somehow make up for it. Listen. If you really want the news, you need to fucking make it a priority and not pretend like you're a newspaper-reading guy that somehow doesn't have time for actual news.

It just feels like another step in the cranking up of everyday life. Just as I'm trying to slow mine down and take some breaths now and then, somebody steps right in and says "NO! You don't have time! Go faster!" Of course, I do live in the New York, and I barely get through the Sunday Times in a week, but still. Get off my back, you speedhounds.

2004-05-12T21:00:00.000-04:00

I love love love tattoos, because it's so endlessly fascinating how people want you to immediately perceive them -- because no matter what people say, the symbolism behind a visible tattoo is probably the first communication of any sort you're going to get from a person. So. This morning, on the subway, I saw a guy, close-cropped hair, all black expensive-looking clothing, good shoes -- and around his left bicep was a ring of friggin' dollar signs. Dollar signs. It's like he was saying "No, really, I may look like I'm all about money, but really, you know, I'm all about money. Did I mention I'm all about money?" If he ever wants to prove that he's not some shallow asshole, this dude's got an uphill battle.

2004-05-11T08:19:00.000-04:00

Not to keep posting about t-shirts, but...okay. So I was walking to my Elephant Larry Emergency Meeting (don't worry, it was all about good stuff) and I was passing through St. Mark's Place, where all the tchotchke stores are. Now, if you don't know, these stores basically exist to fill your every novelty/pseudo-rebellious/pseudo-offensive need, from funny sunglasses and wigs to skull rings to shirts celebrating punk rock or the idea that you actually fucked the t-shirt observer's mom. In any case, I usually casually browse the t-shirts as I walk down the street, never really seeing anything new, but this one caught my eye. It was a black t-shirt with the statue of liberty on it, and it said "Welcome to America. Now Speak English." Okay. Fine. Not the most friendly shirt in the world, but the hitch is that every single last one of these novelty are owned by immigrants.
And granted, they do speak english, but damn if that shirt really isn't anti-immigrant at its core. And it's being sold by recent immigrants. I just can't quite imagine the storeowner perusing a catalog (or however they go about picking shirts that say "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck)and being all "Yes. That's the shirt I would like to sell in my store." Curious.

2004-05-08T01:33:00.000-04:00

So I saw a girl today, wearing a Von Dutch hat AND a tank top that said Von Bitch on it. It blew my mind. What was she trying to say? She seemed to be commenting on the ubiquity of Von Dutch at the same as she was perpetuating that ubiquity. Of course, I realize that Von Bitch might be a little vague and that most people, upon seeing it, are like "Oh, I get it. It's funny because it's like Von Dutch but dirty." But still -- come on, people. How often do you wear two garments, one of which is making fun of the other? Either this girl is the most self-aware person on the planet, or the least.

2004-04-10T10:48:00.000-04:00

Oh, MAN. Last night was just the best Friday night I've had in a long time. I was so happy about it. It was just a combination of doing all kindsa fun things I haven't done in a while. Yay. :) Keep in mind this is absolutely coming off a really brutal week at work -- nonstop, stomach-churning, turn, spin, up down, workworkwork type of week. So I'm really exhausted, and all I wanna do is just have a chill good time.

So first, I meet up with Anne of Trevor & Anne and her cronies, because it was her birthday on Wednesday and she's having a little birthday dinner at this restaurant called Funky Nassau, which is this hole-in-the-wall BYOB organic restaurant. It looks like nothing on the outside (though it does have a thoughtfully placed bench for the inordinately long waits this place has) and it looks like nothing on the inside -- it's cramped with folding chairs and standard elementary-school style tables. Oh, and you sit on the refrigerators that you put your beer inside. Also very cool. But the place is bubbly, and fun, and HOLY CRAP the menu choices are amazing sounding. They're all "Wildboar Sausage with Blueberry Sauce" and "Jerk-spiced Duck Confit" and "Rabbit with Carrot-Ginger Sauce." That triple threat of dishes is actually what the guys' end of the table decided to order and split in a rotating plate system. We all were very pleased that we had three different awesome types of meat just hanging out on our table. The duck was amazing, everything else was just really, really good. On the way to the bathroom, which, since the place is about as big as a living room, if that, is very close to the table, I got to see the "kitchen" which has got to be the most effective use of 3 square feet that I've ever seen. One guy, busting away in there. Amazing. Portions ended up being a little too small for my liking, but I got an Organic Vanilla Doughnut for dessert which made me not hungry. Lovely. Also recommended is the Toasted Almond Doughnut. Yum. Okay, I love doughnuts.

Yeah, so, to sum up: Funky Nassau = Crowded + Yummy + Cheap + Fun, so I'd totally go back. So around 9:45 or so, Little J and I had to bust out, because we were meeting Jerf at Northsix in Williamsburg where the Long Winters were gonna be playing. We just found out yesterday, and Jerf basically shat himself, and I did too. The Long Winters rule. Their music is just catchy, and rocking, and melodic, and smart and their CD booklet is the best-designed thing I've seen in years. It's got a weird rubberized print thing going on. So fun to touch! I like tactile things. Anyway, me and Jerf have been creaming ourselves over "When I Pretend To Fall" for the past six months or so, so we were so psyched to go see 'em. I had no real idea about what to expect, but they blew me away live too. They have a great sense of humor (which doesn't really come across on the CD so much), and their show was just FUN. I was smiling a ton. It was great. Highlights included their spot-on impromptu cover of "Hot for Teacher," them opening with "New Girl," and their wailing, dark "Nora" which concluded with some of the best controlled guitar feedback soloing I've ever seen. Their lead singer John Roderick is all nerdy charm and rock confidence and he's a fucking hoot to watch. Afterwards, Jerf went to talk to him, because that's what Jerf does these days -- talk to artists he likes. He met Ben Kweller the other day and shmoozed him too. It's very admirable. I don't have his balls. But yeah, John Roderick seemed really nice. He actually promised to e-mail with Jerf. So cute.

So this was like my fourth time or so going to Williamsburg, and I'm not sure I quite get the place. It seems like Hipster Sleepaway Camp or something, like there are no "grownups" around or something. Like the entire neighborhood had packed up and left, and then everybody just flooded in and opened up their little cafes and bars and clubs. J made the comment that the difference between Williamsburg and other hippified neighborhoods is that other neighborhoods used to be nice and fell into disrepair and then were revived. But Williamsburg was always shitty -- warehouses and ugly houses and all that -- and now there are just hip things wedged into the crappiness. Of course, that's what New York does to some extent: find industrial areas, call them authentic, and then "quirkily" set up shop there. It's a little like what's happened with the Meatpacking District, except less people have moved into the Meatpacking District. New York just can't get enough of crap that they can polish up and turn into boutiques. This city fascinates and mystifies me.

So then me and Li'l J caught a cab back to Park Slope, where we had the cab drop us off at Smiling Pizza, because that seemed like a perfect capper to the evening. Man, what would happen if I lived in a city where I couldn't get 2 in the morning pizza? And have that pizza be frickin' awesome? I have no idea. Night pizza is one of the best things ever. I have it, and I thank god I'm alive. Smiling Pizza indeed.

Okay, I'm gonna leave off here with two links.

1) The most hyper thing ever. Better than coffee: www.512kb.net/flash5.htm

2) The most addictive thing ever. Careful: www.yetisports.org

2004-02-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

So, amusingly, I got hit on in the subway today. This doesn't usually happen to me...this girl in skintight white pants, pointy black shoes, and this small Phat Farm jacket came onto the train, bumped me a little. I was listening to my headphones (I think it was Control Machete's "Si Senor") so I didn't hear what she said. I removed my headphones, said "what?"

"I like your eyes."

Oh. "Thank you." And then I replaced my headphones, because I had no idea about how else to respond. And I was quite flattered, since I think *other* people, not necessarily me, would consider her hot. And, you know, I was flattered. Nice way to start the day. I usually don't get randomly complimented like that.

Especially since it took me three hours to get home last night because I made retarded, retarded train decisions last night and was on trains and subway platforms forever. Guh. I'm tired now. But now to work! I have lots to do.