Getting Fuck-All Done Today

I don't recall what I was doing on my birthday last year, but I don't think it was raining. Today it's raining and I'm supposed to be writing. But I'm getting fuck-all done today between errands, procrastinating with my new guitar and reading about Paris in May of '68. When I was in college I was infatuated with this period and wrote a whole bunch on it, thus I figured it would make a great topic for my other gig. Now I've been sitting here ruminating on how that seems all but evaporated today. Eight years ago people were taking to the streets for things they cared about and I was running with them. The turn of the millenium was a far milder period than '68, but there was an energy. Unfortunately we keep consuming our revolutions, if that's what they are. We want to take credit for them and stroke our egos with 'where was I during the revolution, man? well I'll tell you somethin....'
Romantic and pragmatist fight each other as if they aren't two sides of a coin, as if they aren't blood relatives, Ishmael and Isaac. And that's just on 'our side'. 'With friends like these, who the fuck needs cointelpro?' I was -13 when Paris exploded and students and workers shut down France. They shut it the fuck down! And everything they fought about then is still relevant today.

I thought I had more thoughts, but they have gone. Here's a video I've found that actually features an old professor of mine from the New School that I had when I tried my hand at grad school (and failed, haha). He never mentioned that he knew a lot about this period, even though I wrote papers and did some presentation on it or something. Actually, I don't really recall. Anyway, the video is interesting if you like learning things. Also, pay attention to the poster art montage. If we remember nothing else from that time, we must remember what these posters were trying to convey...

The 7th Grade School Dance in My Skull

For the past week I've been plagued by bad songs entering my brain from the void (or somewhere near the void). Last week I woke up to some Richard Marx song I don't know the title of (thank heavens!) because somebody was blasting it out on the street. I'm still baffled by that, since I live on a majority Latino block and 90% of the time the music I hear is Caribbean or Latin. Richard Marx? Please...
While I had the good fortune of not remembering Mr. Marx's song, I have yet to get another more insidious song out of my head. That's right, it's none other than that #1 hit song in '94, then-staple of middle school dances and all-around catchy tune: Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes The Hotstepper". (You can thank me later when this gets stuck in your head for weeks on end)




Bonus!!! Did y'all catch the JMZ train? Bushwick/Bed-Stuy rep

Dear Liam Flanagan,

Hi Liam. I know you're a huge fan of my site here (and a huge fan of me, in general) so I decided that, against my better judgment, I'd take your advice and start writing dating columns. See, after that mediocre date I had last week, I was all, "dating is stupid, i'm just gonna hang out with Nick and we can be boyfriends together (cos Nancy thinks we are anyway)." However, sometimes you meet somebody who is actually rad and sometimes you meet that person on the subway 'cos you keep running into them on the subway and you have to say something or else it becomes more awkward than this run-on sentence. Meeting folks on the subway is terrible and 97% of the time I highly recommend not doing it. Then again, most statistics are made up anyway. I guess my advice amounts to something like this: If you're not a sketchy guy or possible date-rapist, and you see an adorable girl (or handsome guy, or cute tranny, or whatever) on the subway, for pete's sake, say something. I'm hoping that this time was the 3% that I highly recommended to myself.

Now that that's done, I'm never ever ever ever writing about dating ever again. Liam, you're welcome. Oh, and who is Alex Bradshaw?

PS-The restaurant Moto in Williamsburg is really good.

I am some sort of Futuristic-Alloy-Man!

I was out on what would probably be considered a 'first date' last night (oh, must I qualify every phrase I use?) and ended going to see the new film IronMan. My dating skills are only slightly less honed than my writing skills, so it went, for all I know, pretty well. Anyway, thanks to whatever was going on with the 4 & 6 trains yesterday, my date, Rebecca, and I and two of her friends completely missed the first 20 minutes of the movie (some of her other friends had gotten advance tickets for all of us). Now, generally, seeing the first 20 minutes of a movie is fairly important. It could very well have been the case in this film as well, but I may never find out. For whatever reasons, despite missing the beginning the rest of the movie made complete sense, though it was pretty terrible. I won't lie and say I wasn't entertained, because I actually was very entertained. Not by Robert Downey, Jr. (who is just a creepy guy these days and walks around the entire film with his chest puffed out. It's ridiculous.), no, no, the real star of the show was The Dude...er...Jeff Bridges.

Okay, I'll confess that I've only seen Mr. Bridges in a few roles outside of his masterpiece, The Big Lebowski, but I know he's a versatile actor. That's why I was kinda shocked that he played the entire role of Obadiah Stane as if he were 'The Dude in the role of Obadiah Stane'. I thought it was fucking hilarious. Maybe we'll all look back on this performance in the way we can now see Gina Gershon's role in Showgirls. As is mentioned in the commentary of the box-set edition of that film, Ms. Gershon is the only person in the entire cast who knows what movie she is making. Same goes here for Jeff Bridges in IronMan. What a travesty of a film and what a superb job as The Dude playing an evil weapons manufacturing tycoon. In the words of the big Lebowski, 'You're joking, but maybe you're right.'

I'm Still Deaf

I can't hear anything right now for, I think, two reasons: a) my allergies have corrupted all my internal functions, and b) I didn't have my earplugs in last night for one of the best shows I've seen in recent memory. Most of the shows I've been to lately have been larger venue affairs for Converge/Baroness and Neurosis/Mastodon. Not last night. Last night I finally got back out to a house show at the Silent Barn, hosted by the ubiquitous Todd P. To save my ailing, sinus-troubled brain from overwork, here's the rundown (in set order):

Maw: These three fellas are good friends of ours and play some sort of chunky, thrashy math rock. It's super fun and they played what may have been their tightest set ever. Keep your eye out for these guys, I think they're gonna be recording with Colin Marston soon.

Animal: Another local instrumental group, this duo is in a similar vein to Hella or Lightning Bolt, but far more listenable than the latter. This is a band that anybody can get into and they still rock. Girls and guys were dancing (in a good way, too, not some cheap ironic shit) and rocking out and it ruled.

Dead Child: Surprise guests of the night featuring members of Slint and Lords, they played throwback thrash from the 80s. I was wasted at this point and thought it was pretty good. The smoke added flair, too. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything they did worthy of actually purchasing their album. So...um, maybe next try?

Krallice: Having missed their last show (which may have been their first? dunno), I had no idea what to expect from a 'black metal' project featuring Mick Barr and Colin Marston. Well, there was little to be found in the shred/noodling department, but man, this was fucking relentless, bleak, tortured, melodic black metal. I don't know what it is (besides the Colt 45 I was enjoying), but great black metal puts a huge, goofy grin on my face. I don't know how long they played, but time pretty much stopped. Enjoyed every second of it.

Behold...The Arctopus: I've been seeing these guys since I was introduced in 2003(ish) and my unprintable galaxy they are possibly the most talented and most underappreciated band on the planet. If there was any fairness in this universe these guys would be billionaires and have just over 6 billion adoring fans. Unfortunately, the world is full of idiots with no taste, so these guys press on making obscenely complex, jaw-dropping metal fury for those of us who care way too much. For pete's sake buy their new album and get yr brain melted.

Yowzers! (Weak Stomach Alert!)

This is amazingly gross. I feel terrible for this girl. She looks like an elephant seal and it may kill her...

Scientific American will put you in the mood.

Who is the CPA Programmer Metalhead?

This is ridiculous and also awesome. I was (belatedly) doing my taxes last night with TurboTax and started having all these problems understanding what the fuck was going on. Normally my mom does them for me, but at the tender age of 27, I was finally left to fend for myself (except for the good hour and a half I spent on the phone with mom this afternoon) and do my own damn taxes like a big boy. So anyway, TurboTax was sucking balls and then had the gall to tell me I owed the feds a stupid amount of money given the paltry amount I earned last year (I am not releasing the figures publicly). However, mom found an alternative while we were on the phone that worked far far better.

TAX SLAYER.

Yeah, you read that right. I used FUCKING TAX SLAYER! How awesome is that. Now I normally don't like to just give some random company a free ad, but COME ON! Could they have given themselves a better name?

What sucks? Taxes.
What do you do to stuff that sucks? SLAY THEM
(do I need to write anything about SLAYER here, too? jeez)

So yeah, if you're lazy and haven't done your taxes yet, it took me no more than 20 minutes to do the whole damn thing and I have 1099s and other bullshit. Also, they halved the amount that TurboTax said I owed. So I don't know what kind of shenanigans those morons were pulling, but I think everybody wins with Tax Slayer. I even like saying it.

See the pretty notes, taste the chord progressions

I've been working on a piece about synaesthesia, which is, for those who don't know, a neurological condition that creates 'crossover' effects in experienced sensations. The most common form of this exists in those for whom letters and numbers have related (and specific) colors. There are musical variants that have colors related to certain keys or notes or even different chord progressions. I don't dare call it an 'affliction' because that has negative connotations and this does not sound negative in any way. In fact, it is reported that the vast majority of synaesthetes would hate to lose such a 'gift' and I could hardly disagree with such a statement. I'm actually kind of jealous, to be honest.

There are all sorts of artists who have this and probably loads of non-artist people, too. It is thought that 1 in 23 people have one of at least 54 different forms of the condition. I've mostly focused on musicians and composers who have it. Among them are Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), Duke Ellington, Eddie Van Halen (apparently dickheads can have it, too), Jean Sibelius, György Ligeti, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Olivier Messiaen. Below is a video (I don't know from when, but it looks a bit dated) of a Messiaen piece that is pretty rad. He saw different colors as keys changed, was a trained ornithologist and also a convert to Catholocism. I figure that's a pretty full life.

Cablevision Sucks (as if you weren't aware)

Finally.

After two no-shows last week and a near third today, Cablevision finally arrived to provide my new apartment with an internet connection (of course, they had to botch something so they apparently disconnected the upstairs neighbors! uh-oh...). I don't know if anyone has ever had to deal with these morons, but obviously they are not competent service providers. Unfortunately for me, they have the monopoly over my Bushwick zip code, so I have no choice but to go with them. Cablevision...Cablevision...YOU SUCK!


On an awesomely positive note (that I should probably separate from the above nonsense but won't), I have to give two thumbs up to Liz Hazelton at Random House. She's none other than the publicist for Michio Kaku's latest book Physics of the Impossible and she caught my last post about his other books. Liz was gracious enough to send me a copy 'on the house'. Sweet move 'cos that just means more publicity! Also, in case anyone missed it yesterday, Mr. Kaku was on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, so there's the link to go listen to them talk about cool stuff.

Anyway, welcome back to my dear, dear heart, Internet. Now I can get work done and do my taxes...

Now, More Internet @ Work!

Sorry I haven't been posting about anything lately. I've been hard at work on a few projects and, with my move to my new apartment completed, I now lack internet until it gets set up there. On the upside, we have a newly connected computer at work, so I can kill bits of the fourth dimension just like I'm doing right now.
Speaking of dimensions, I'm a bit pissed because I was about halfway through Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds when somebody stole that book from the store! Fuck you, thieves! So in it's place I started to read Kaku's previous book, Hyperspace. Figures people would buy both copies in the space of a week. So now I have no Kaku!
Now back in college we used to do a bit of thievery, which I don't condone, but I know folks do it. Thieves make me feel old and crotchety now. Humbug, you swine! I want to read about higher dimensions and here you are swiping paper! Then again, by the oddities of quantum mechanics, the book may have just disappeared into another dimension or somewhere else in our universe in a wormhole of sorts. Highly unlikely, but still possible, nonetheless.