k-robo

Summer Fun Calendar 2007 (pre-release)

2007-05-10T15:05:00.000-04:00

Friday May 25 Single-Speed Bike Showdown. 7pm at East End of 102nd Street Transverse of Central Park. This will include the famous fixed-gear bikes you’ve been hearing about. Lanky hotties are sure to abound! But I draw a parallel with what Neilson says about the FMU Record Fair: “The one thing the guys there care about more than getting laid is records (bikes)…no one will notice you.”

Saturday May 26 Bicycle Fetish Day, 2 pm. Havemeyer Street at Grand Street, Williamsburg. Rally/contest for souped-up bikes.

June 1 Animal Collective 7 pm at South Street Seaport

Saturday June 2 Roky Erickson at Castle Clinton

Monday June 4 The Fucking Champs with Red Fang (Aaron Beam’s band) at 8pm at the Mercury Lounge ($12). Bring earplugs. The evil of this music will make you die, then the joy of this music will make you rise again.

Tuesday June 5 Champs and Fangs again ($10), 8pm at Studio B, Brooklyn. After seeing them on Monday, you’ll be hooked!

June 5 through July 8 Romeo and Juliet 8pm at the Delacorte Theater

Sat. June 9 Kathy’s annual birthday-related mixer. 7 pm Village Yokocho, 8 Stuyvesant Street, 2nd flr. (the restaurant outside Angel’s Share)

Wed. June 13 7pm Booker T. and the MG’s at Rockefeller Park (Memphis soul stuff)

Sat. June 16 Television & Apples in Stereo at Central Park Summerstage (reunion of an old band, with what I feel is a much poppier band)

Sat/Sun June 16 & 17 Renegade Craft Fair in McCarren Park (punk/indie/diy crafters come from around the US to sell stuff to others of their ilk. It’s quite a big deal.

Thurs June 21 Richard Thompson at Prospect Park Bandshell

Fri June 22 Ralph Stanley at Prospect Park (bluegrass)

Tues June 26 7 pm Martha Wainwright et al at WFC Plaza

Friday June 29 Bob Dylan at Jones Beach ($35 and up…Dylan is back on the guitar, and I’m looking for people to go with)

June 30 The Stills at Prospect Park

July 4 New Pornographers 3:30 pm at Battery Park

July 6 Fujiya & Miyagi at 7pm at South Street Seaport (sounds interesting: post-Can prog/noodle rock)

Saturday July 7 The BOREDOMS! With 77 drummers! 5 pm at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Where will the audience sit?
OR…Cat Power and Built to Spill at McCarren Park Pool ($35?)

Tues July 10 New York Philharmonic (Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky at 8 pm at the Prospect Park Bandshell

Wed July 11 New York Phil (same program) 8 pm at the Central Park Great Lawn
OR…Spoon at 7 pm at Rockefeller Park. With opening acts Fork and Knife.
OR…North by Northwest at 8:30 on pier I. (w. end of 70th St.)

July 12 Ron Sexsmith 7 pm at Castle Clinton

Mon July 16 The Decemberists at Summerstage

Tues July 17 Marc Ribot 7pm at WFC Plaza
OR… NY Philharmonic (Strauss, the same Tchaikovsky as the prev. week, and misc. operatic arias) at 8pm at Central Park Great Lawn

Wed July 18 Toumani Diabate (West African orchestra) 7pm at Rockefeller Park. Sure to feature some hippie dancing!
OR… Ani Difranco at Prospect Park
OR… The Searchers 8:30 pm on pier I.

Thurs July 19 Blackmail, a silent film by Hitchcock, accompanied live by the Alloy Orchestra (original score. These shows are schweet(!) except when it pours rain or the film or the projector break; bring a friend you enjoy talking to)

July 20 Neko Case at Summerstage

July 21 Richie Havens on Governor’s Island. I saw him open for Billy Bragg when I was in high school. What a pinko I was. He has amazing presence.

July 22 Dan Zanes at Prospect Park (kidnap someone…must be accompanied by child! Just kidding.)

Wed July 25 Sideways at 8:30, Pier I
OR… Carolina Chocolate Drops at Rockefeller Park (if you’re a sucker for “old-timey,” as I am, you’ll like this band who have lots of buzz in the old-timey scene.)

Wed August 1 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 8:30, Pier I.

August 6 thru Sept. 9 A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Delacorte Theater

August 7 The Fountainhead at 8 or 9(?) at the Elevated Acre

August 10 Au Revoir Simone at South Street Seaport

August 14 Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Elevated Acre

Wed August 8 Caddyshack at 8:30, Pier I.

Wed August 15 Days of Heaven at 8:30, Pier I.

August 17 The National at South Street Seaport

August 21 On the Waterfront at the Elevated Acre

August 28 The Apartment at the Elevated Acre

Venue notes:

Castle Clinton: Down by the Statue of Liberty ferry. You have to show up early to get free tickets. I've never succeeded at it.
Delacorte Theater: Oh you know, it’s at like 76th street in Central Park? Lots of people have good luck showing up at 7pm for standby tickets. (1 per person)

The Elevated Acre: A new corporate/public park at 55 Water Street, way downtown. Go up escalator to access. The lawn is astroturf, the screen is small, and it’s on video. Last year the movie I saw was out of sync between sound and picture; hopefully that was a one-time thing. It’s a pretty nice space anyway.

Mercury Lounge: 217 E. Houston St.

Pier I: At the far west end of 70th Street. Would be Pier 100 if someone had thought to make it not sound like a store. I’ve never seen a movie here so I don’t know yet what it’s like.

Prospect Park Amphitheater: Take the F train to 7th Ave/9th Street, then walk uphill on 9th to the Park. They look in your bags, and prefer that you give $3, but you don’t have to. Some people sit outside the fence so they can drink their own wine or beer (cups are sold for $5 inside.) This doesn’t mean it’s legal.

Rockefeller Park: At the western end of Chambers Street, just past Stuy High. (In case of rain or threat of it, concerts are in the H.S. Aud, which is very fancy. There are some folding chairs and lots of lawn, and sea breezes. The only drawback is loud helicopters passing by.

South Street Seaport: At the tail end of Coenties Slip. I just like saying that. It’s actually at the eastern end of Fulton Street, near the mall. It’s sort of a small venue. There are folding chairs.

Studio B: 259 Banker Street, Greenpoint. If you’re walking north on Berry, Banker St. would be N. 15th. Make a left (toward the water). I’ve never been there.

Summerstage: In Central Park near the E. 69th Street entrance. I think they still do a bag search. Be aware that some of the major acts are benefit concerts and cost $40.

World Financial Center Plaza: By the water, outside the Winter Garden, which is west of the former WTC. Reach it via a convoluted system of passageways from the south, which makes me think of how things will be once the earth is no longer really habitable, or go via the north, by that movie theater. Some of the best acts play here, which means too many people in too small a space. Go early to get a seat. It can be very cold from the wind or hot from the pavement. I guess the acoustics are better than at more pleasant venues.

crazy ebay ad

2006-10-19T17:01:00.000-04:00

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The alarm clock of this radio, the radio. The alarm clock of am.fm, it is the work to be normal. The clock is normal and accurate in passing by one it is not late. The light is lighted small night. The sleep equipment works normally. The radio, the defect of the sound is that you are unable to control the voice to make the enormous loud change; But you can is it control it to come through outer loudspeaker, beautiful a lot of sound is it link it test at me to have. I will not attempt to change it . Is it make radio finish about have one's tender accepted article include one monotony earphone to do the best [whether but it color have some a little yellowing already ]. Include primitive this radio packing box and the work book ,need more intact you if, the one that please read another one and auction me.

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_W e wish you much pleasure with your GRAND STAR GS-969 Digital clock Radio.You now possess a radio with built-in electrical digital clock for operation on AC mains.with the following features: The GRAND STAR GS-969

_shows the time in direct 24-hour figures - large.Plain and illuminated.
_switches on your pre-selected radio programme at any time of the day or night.
_thereafter switches itself off automatically after one hour.
_has a separate automatic off switch adjustable from 0-60 minutes.
_can also be switched on and off as a normal radio receiver

summer calendar

2006-05-16T18:35:00.000-04:00

All the things listed below are places I basically want to go. So go with me! Or go without me, and risk mild wrath. Events are free unless otherwise noted.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday June 7-9 at 7 pm Andromache by Euripedes (free live theater performance) at the Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, DUMBO

Friday, June 9, 8 pm O'Death at Brooklyn Fireproof, Williamsburg. My MySpace friends! ($7)

Saturday June 10 My Birthday Party! (ask me)
as well as... 2 pm Brooklyn Croquet in Prospect Park

Tuesday, June 13 through July 9: Macbeth at the Delacorte Theatre; only one movie star this season: Liev Schreiber--so maybe you can get tickets.

Wednesday, June 14, 7 pm Ralph Stanley (bluegrass), Rockefeller Park (west end of Chambers St.)

Saturday, June 17, 11-6, Renegade Craft Fair, McCarren Park, Williamsburg. Handmade hipster goods. Oh don't worry, I'll be there.
OR...2 pm, King Lear at 69th St and Central Park West
AND...7:30 pm, Laurie Anderson with Tuvan throatsingers opening for her, Prospect Park Bandshell

Sunday, June 18, 11-6 Day 2 of Renegade Craft Fair, and King Lear repeats.

Tuesday, June 20, 7pm Son Volt, World Financial Center Plaza

Thursday, June 22, 5-6:45 pm, New York City Schools' Ballroom Dance Program Danceoff, Winter Garden, Batter Park City

Saturday, June 24, Short Film Festival/Stella Artois Beer Garden in McCarren Park POOL. The condemned area, yes. "almost free."
OR... 2 pm, King Lear, 108th St. and Riverside

Sunday, June 25, 2 pm, King Lear repeats

Tuesday, June 27, 7:30 pm, concert including Ravel, Mozart, and some modern stuff, Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park. This is that bandshell immortalized in the movie "Hair" that's near that place where people rollerdance. You know where I mean.
OR...6 pm, Brazilian Girls and The Adam Deitch Project, Pier 54, west end of 14th st. But you are not art-rock enough, perhaps?

Friday, June 30, 6:30 pm, TV on the Radio at Prospect Park Bandshell. I gather these people are popular, somebody please clue me in.

Sunday, July 2, 3-6 pm Seu Jorge w/opener Cut Chemist, Central Park Summerstage

Tuesday, July 4, 3:30 pm, Belle and Sebastian at Battery Park; free advance tickets required

Thursday, Jul 6, 8:30 PM The Wizard of Oz, Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...6:30 Love's Labours Lost (live Shakespeare) at 70th and Riverside; repeats on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Friday, July 7, THE BOREDOMS, Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St. opening night of art installation of 77 drumkits. I destroy, like dinosaur.
Saturday, July 8, 2nd free show by boredoms, same place. Cancelled! I am bummed.

Tuesday, July 11, 7:30 pm, Stravinsky, Mozart, and Beethoven concert, Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park
OR...The Brazilian Girls, Fort Greene Park

Wednesday, July 12, 8 pm, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak concert by the New York Philharmonic, Great Lawn, Central Park (with fireworks!) This is the classy shit, people. Bring the portable table and the Veuve Cliquot. Alas, I will be in the South of France this week.
OR...On the Waterfront at 70th and Riverside; there are vintage movies here every Wednesday night through August 9.

Thursday, Jul 13, 8:30 PM, Easy Rider, Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Deerhoof at McCarren Park Pool
OR...6:30 Love's Labours Lost (live Shakespeare) at 70th and Riverside; repeats on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Saturday, July 15 Siren Festival, The Rogers Sisters, Art Brut, The Stills, more TBA, Coney Island
OR...2 pm King Lear at Brooklyn Bridge Park; repeats on Sunday

Tuesday, July 18, 8 pm, John Adams, Prokofiev, and Beethoven concert by the NY Phil, Great Lawn, Central Park (also with fireworks)

Wednesday, July 19 7:30 pm, Upright Citizens Brigade, Central Park Summerstage
OR...The Beastmaster, Pier 54

Thursday, Jul 20, Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock) Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...6:30 Love's Labours Lost (live Shakespeare) at 70th and Riverside; repeats on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Friday, July 21, 7:30, Blackmail (silent Hitchcock! with live accompaniment), Prospect Park Bandshell

Saturday, July 22, 2 pm King Lear, 69th and Central Park West, repeats on Sunday.

Tuesday, July 25, 7:30 pm Mozart, Poulenc, and Nino Rota(?!) concert, Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park

Wednesday, July 26, Jaws, Pier 54 (w. end of 14th st) I think it will be scary to watch Jaws while sitting on a pier, don't you?

Thursday, Jul 27, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Brooklyn Bridge Park

OR...7:30 Dracula (1931) with live accompaniment by Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet, Prospect Park Bandshell
OR...6:30 Love's Labours Lost (live Shakespeare) at 70th and Riverside; repeats on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Sunday, July 30, 3-5 pm, Lady Sovereign, Pete Rock, Jean Grae, Curated by DJ Rekha, Central Park Summerstage

3-8 pm, Enon and Of Montreal at McCarren Park Pool

Tuesday August 1, Bottle Rocket at McCarren Park Pool...I'm psyched for this because the library's copy was stolen so I've never seen it.

Wednesday, Aug 2, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Brooklyn Bridge Park

Sunday, Aug 6, 3-8pm Detroit Cobras, McCarren Park Pool

Tuesday, Aug 8 through September 3: Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte; written by Brecht, translated by Kushner, and starring Streep--sounds like a hot ticket.

Tuesday, Aug 8, 7:30 pm, Misc music from the 17th & 18th centuries, Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park
OR...6:30 pm, Barefoot in the Park at The Elevated Acre at 55 Water St, a new park off FDR drive south of Wall St. Up some stairs, I guess.

OR...French Connection at McCarren Park Pool

Thursday, Aug 10, Bonnie and Clyde, Brooklyn Bridge Park

Friday Aug 11, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sonic Youth, and Blood on the Wall at McCarren Park Pool ($36)

Saturday, Aug 12, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sonic Youth, and Awesome Color at McCarren Park Pool ($36)

Sunday, August 13, 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM, DJ Talvin Singh, Asha Puthli with special guests Dewey Redman, Guru, Solar & DJ Doo Wop Prefuse 73, Outernational Curated by DJ Spooky, Central Park SummerStage

OR...3-8pm, Deerhoof etc. at McCarren Park Pool

Tuesday Aug 15, 6:30 PM, Pickup on South St. (a film noir) at 55 Water St.

OR...The Swimmer at McCarren Park Pool

Wednesday, Aug 16, Goodfellas, Pier 54

Thursday, Aug 17, Iron and Wine, McCarren Park Pool ($32.50)
OR...Raiders of the Lost Ark Brooklyn Bridge Park

Friday, Aug 18 7 pm The Box Tops/Alex Chilton at Pier 17, South Street Seaport

Tuesday, Aug 22, 6:30 pm, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) at 55 Water St.
OR...8pm, La Traviata sung by the Metropolitan Opera, Great Lawn, Central Park

OR...Love Streams (Cassavetes movie) McCarren Park Pool

Wednesday, Aug 23, 8 pm, Rigoletto by the same people, same place.

Thursday, Aug 24, The Warriors, Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Neko Case, Joanna Newsom, Martha Wainwright at McCarren Park Pool ($36)

Saturday, Aug 26, Style Wars with opener DJ Spooky, should be crowded.

Tuesday, Aug 29, 6:30, Rear Window, 55 Water St.

For more concerts, information, and directions, look into the links below:

Central Park Summerstage
Central Park Classical Music Stuff
Downtown River to River Festival
World Financial Center Events Calendar
South Street Seaport Music Festival
Prospect Park Bandshell East River Music Project
Lincoln Center Outdoor Free Festival
Hudson River Park Events
Brooklyn Bridge Park Movies
Riverside Park Movies at 70th St. Pier
Socrates Sculpture Park Movies
Bryant Park Movies

sorry, my stilettos just got caught on my palazzo pants

2006-01-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

I know, that's not really a good enough excuse for the sad state of the blog lately. All I can say is... Blogs are so over! You heard it here FIRST! Always first in the news. At any rate, the honeymoon is over. The dew is off the rose, or...what's that expression again? Blogs, all blogs, just don't thrill me anymore. I've also succumbed to the sudoku craze, which is evil, but I think will wear off quite soon once I get too good at it.

This is just an apology really, not a retirement announcement! I still need "someone" /everyone to tell when I see Anderson Cooper or a woman getting caught on her fluid jersey extralong gauchos.

celeb

2006-01-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

OMFG on my lunch hour I saw Anderson Cooper walking his dog, some sort of very classy white and auburn spaniel/setter type of thing. I would tell you where this happened except I also saw him go into his apartment building, so if I told the internet his address it could fall into the hands of the Evildoers. You could tell it was him because his coat, hair, and skin were of exceptional lustre and quality. His apartment seems nice, not a cookie-cutter highrise, with good light.

Spelling Bee in the news again

2005-12-30T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Freddy's Spelling Bee has made it into the news again, complete with photos. See it at Newsday. Alas, you cannot see my picture there, though you can see the girl who beat me. I guess you readers (who are surely all strangers) will never know what I look like, which is just as well! The Bee was on hiatus for the month of December but it will be back on Wednesday the 26th and this time hosted by the glamorous fashion magazine editrix Heather McC*be. All the words will be things like "louche," "luxe," "dewy," and "fluid jersey." No not really.

Stella McCartney for H&M

2005-11-10T15:45:00.000-05:00

Girls, you may have heard that Stella McCartney was putting out a line of clothes for H&M. Today was opening day. They opened the stores at 10 AM and by the time I got there at 11:45 they were sold out at both of the stores on 34th St. There was a sign in the window that said "Big success! Refillment coming soon." And inside there was a mob standing around, I'm not sure what they were hoping was going to happen. If you try for the "refillment," look for the clothes on thick wooden hangers, those are the McCartney ones. I did find a long black frock coat in size 10 near the mirror, but it was $199 and I don't need to spend that just for something I don't even want. I think people must have grabbed everything to sell on eBay. I'm also pretty sure that the clothing companies around here have taken them back to their laboratories to copy them. If you can't get your hands on any of the clothes you can at least see them here. I'm not sure I could get away with any of those clothes anyway. A satin romper with over-the-knee stretch boots? I just don't know where I would wear that.

shopping report

2005-11-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

Hey Kids! Act fast! Master Cutting Table Co., Inc is going out of business! All cutting tables, tools, dies and store fixtures must go! And a special private label sale on wooden hat forms! I'm sad to see this place go. I had never noticed it before the other day when I was going around with my camera trying to shoot my "cats in store windows" series. Sure enough, once I had the camera with me, there were no cats in any store windows. But this here is one of the most arcane storefronts I've seen in the garment district. I'm not even sure what it is that it sells. Somehow I found that I was too scared to go in. But I had to take a picture, I couldn't get over the full-size b/w lingerie model fronted by photos of various groups, and sharing a wall with signed photos of the Kennedys. Note too the mannequin in the window. I mourn the passing of it all.

hobo party now improved

2005-10-31T11:34:00.000-05:00

I finally bought myself a Hobo Party Shirt and I see now that I did a shoddy job in the coloring in. I have painstakingly improved it, as shown here. I expect sales to skyrocket now.

Have you tried it?

2005-10-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

On Broadway in the 20's you've doubtless noticed an intriguing sign for M. Gordon Novelties, Inc. above a shuttered storefront and thought, "My but those days are gone, Olde New York how she's passed away." But did you know, this intriguing business is still operating at a smaller premises at 52 W. 29th St. off 6th Avenue? The awning reads "Paramount," but when the phone rings you get the answer "Gordon." I go here now for all my party decorations. Did you need miniature plastic baby strollers? Five choices of paper stork? Articulated skeleton wall hanging? Will that be glowing or matte? A horse mask, you say? And temptingly, the "5-way mustache" that clips to your septum (no adhesive needed!) It promises to "instantly transform your appearance. Makes everyone look more distinguished." There is even a rudimentary magician supplies section along the lines of the squirting corsage gag. The problem for those of you who don't work in the garment district is the hours they keep, only M-F 9-5.

a theremin recital

2005-10-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Recently I went to Tonic to see a theremin player I'd heard about, Pamelia Kurstin. Some call her "the greatest in the world." As a non-practitioner of the theremin, I don't know its challenges so it's hard to know who's the best. I do gather by watching that it's extremely difficult to get right. On the guitar, you have strings you hit for certain notes, along with frets that place you quite accurately on pitch within the range of tones that string will allow. On the violin, however, there are no frets, which is why beginners playing violin can sound so awful. You sort of have to learn where the imaginary frets would be in order to hit the notes that our western-music-trained ears will accept. Now on the theremin, there are no frets, there is no fretboard, and there are not even any strings. This means that the x, y, z and all other possible axes are wide open to you as an artist, and wide open for making mistakes and unpleasant sounds. Have you seen the theremin played? Are you fortunate enough to have seen the documentary "Theremin"? I recommend it. You're most likely to have heard the theremin in the song "Good Vibrations/The Sunkist Commercial." It also played a big role in 50's and 60's science fiction soundtracks, which makes most people instinctively creeped out when they hear the instrument. That's too bad, because it has a lot of capabilities and possibilities.

Pamelia Kurstin has been trying to expand these possibilities. Unlike some expert players, she does not try to make her instrument sound like a classical violin. Nor does she play it just for freaky effect. However in her band, Barbez, she gets sort of lost. I was trying to describe their genre to someone and came up with "Chaos." They have all sorts of pan-global influences and lots of members and an anything goes fun party attitude. It looks like a lot of fun to do. I guess it's fun to watch. But it's not totally to my taste. It's Noodle Rock. Pamelia had promised a solo set on this occasion, so my friend who's a big fan of hers but doesn't live here urged me to go. When I got there I was disappointed because there were three additional people on stage and they didn't sound all that good. There was a passable woman singing in Portugese and two longhaired guys noodling on guitar, bass and xylophone. That's right, there were more instruments than people. It turns out the two guys are from Barbez and the feminist in me says "why can't they leave her alone to shine without their wannabe Can stoner jamming? Dicks." But it seems like she wanted them there, she wasn't all that comfortable being alone on stage, she only did it for one song the whole evening. And when the guys left the stage to watch, they looked at her in rapt attention and admiration. (feminist read: they put her on a pedestal)

But back to the set list. After the portugese lady singer, there was a long jam with the two guys and Pamelia. At some point there was this really grating loud bassline and I complained to my companion and he said "that's the theremin" and I realized that sure enough, she was creating an incredibly bass-y bass, for such are the capabilities of this instrument. Later she was making high-pitched squealing sounds. Both extremes were a bit beyond the tolerance of this bourgeois listener. In addition it was made aurally clear that the xylophone player had been active in the Javanese Gamelan Club in college. Nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying. Then the boys stepped down and up came a woman friend, who looked like a participant in an Victorian seance, just in time for this interesting exhibit at the Met: (The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult). The woman stood in Pamelia's position at the theremin, and Pamelia stood in front about three feet away and played both the woman AND the theremin. It WAS like a seance because it seemed to be magic. I'm sure there is some rational explanation though. Next up was Pamelia's solo, seemingly something of her own composition, and highlighting her ablities with not only her instrument but also its various knobs and her own pedals that could sample the music as it happened and then repeat it in a loop, allowing her to create bigger and bigger virtual groups of players. It was like when you play the "name game": my name is Kathy and I like cabbage. Your name is Kathy and you like cabbage, my name is Pamelia and I like prunes. Your name is Kathy... and so on, building up, except everyone is talking at once. I mean basically yes, it's a synthesizer. Except it's the only synthesizer I know of that has such a deeply organic component as its point of departure. I would imagine that if she gained a great deal of weight, for she could not possibly lose any, her playing would sound quite different. Like if Barbra Streisand got a nose job. But I digress.

After this she seemed unable to take the attention any longer and called nearly everyone up to the stage for a "dance party." Some eccentric German people danced, for it was Eccentric German People Dancing Music.

celebrity sightings

2005-10-17T11:41:00.000-04:00

More sightings to report: if this counts, I saw Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce come out of the stage door at Spamalot, after waiting by the stage door after seeing Spamalot.

Yesterday we saw Anh Duong in front of Jacques Torres Chocolates during the Dumbo Arts Weekend. She's this woman you see in the society pages, listed variously as artist, model, socialite. I would have to study the society pages more assiduously to know who all her companions were.

The Responsible Party

2005-10-17T11:21:00.000-04:00

This week suddenly all this responsibility is falling to me and it's exciting but tiring. Someone in my writing class said she thought we should all get together for drinks, and I said "I second the motion!" so now it's somehow to me to choose the date and venue for a bunch of 23 year old girls who live in the suburbs with their parents. On Friday, I find myself babysitting for a two year old, which isn't the easiest since I don't have much babysitting background. On Saturday there's an alumni chapter trip to go hiking near Delaware Water Gap and they needed a driver, so I said "well, pick me last, I'm not the best driver and I'm not a morning person!" but I'm really the only volunteer so there I am, and somehow now I've gotten it so that I'm going to find the van, reserve it, pick it up, decide where to pick the hikers up, drive them, then figure out how much money they owe me...lots of work. I'll even have to stay sober at the post-hike barbecue! Then Sunday I'm going to Gowanus Open Studios with someone, he's like Oh do you want to have lunch or dinner? Where? Where should we meet? What time? Then the freelancer here at work said "what do I do when the coffeemaker's broken and I can't get hot water?" Correct Answer: Use the microwave. My Answer:" Gah! That's never happened before! How should I know!" I had exceeded my responsibility limit.

embroidery trend watch

2005-10-06T12:19:00.000-04:00

I was going sitting around at home doing needlepoint, and wondered whether buying a floss color organizer would be worth it, so I turned to my Herrschner’s catalog to see what they were about. It seems like floss organizers are not terribly convenient, but at length I found this totally insane product, the day-of-the-week “Tropical Baby” tea towel set kit. I’m not sure what’s more antiquated, the art or the idea that you would change your tea towel every day of the week. How on earth does something like this still exist? Somewhere (in the South Pacific maybe?) these are still being printed in a factory. This company, Aunt Martha's, makes all kinds of iron-on designs that you can color with fabric paint or stitch on with thread. I can envision creating a giant Darger-esque mural combining many of the designs in a huge creepy retro collage. Holy crow.

more media mentions

2005-09-29T14:00:00.000-04:00

My friends are all over the media today! Heather has two blurbs running in the New York Press' "Best of Manhattan" issue: "Best Banjo Player Who Sings About Hoboes" (Al Duvall, obvs.) and...I'm not sure what the other one is, might be "Best Place to Hear NYC's Oldest Choir"? She got no byline, dammit! Plus they axed like 10 more of her blurbs that they were going to publish.

In the New York Times, Josh, Karl, and Alison are all featured in an article about spelling bees in the Thursday Styles section. Counterfactual: Karl and Alison are not just bf/gf, they're enGAged! But I bet they told the interviewer they were just friends. There was a spelling bee last night. Cablevision News 12 Brooklyn sent a reporter, who filmed us for a little while. Today it's airing as part of their continuing news cycle. If you have a Cablevision account number or an optonline email account, you can log in at their site and listen to an audio feed. If you have Cablevision in Brooklyn, I wish you would love me enough to tape it. I think it's like a minute long. But I listened to the feed for 30 minutes and it played twice.

Also, since when you google Freddy's Spelling Bee you get a mean-spirited comment from April 2005 comparing it negatively to the Pete's Bee, I think we should have a letter writing campaign to balance it out and/or overwhelm that mean meanie. Ok so maybe we're annoying spazzes. What do you want from a spelling bee? Maybe I shouldn't, after losing, cry out "I WIN!" after correctly spelling "cromlech" and some other word in my head while the contestants were getting them wrong, but it's all in the spirit of fun. Results: Aforementioned banjo artist Al Duvall won the first Bee of the night, and I WON! the second one. Fred (no relation to Freddy) won a cookie.

Knitwear News

2005-09-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

Girls, get down to H&M this fall because there are some truly interesting sweaters happening. They remind me of what I was trying to make last year. It's not that I came up with them, it's that Twinkle, Pierrot, and Rowan had great designs last year. I know from my month temping at Esprit that it takes a large company about 9 months to roll out new designs, so that's why last year's Rowan is this year's H&M.

Point Reyes in the news

2005-09-26T10:34:00.000-04:00

About one year ago, I spent a delightful week living at Point Reyes National Seashore as part of a Sierra Club service trip. Our chief activity was killing plants. How I loved to choke the life out of flora after fauna. This week there's a nice article in the New York Times about the place, the top photo shows a hillock where we spent a whole day killing iceplant. I went most everywhere in the article, except anywhere that costs money.

Poor Man's Fire Island

2005-09-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

A few Sundays ago I took the train and the bus down to Jacob Riis Park, at the west end of Rockaway. I found that on the east side of the park, there was a Fire Island Diaspora settled, with flags flying. A little further on, it's "clothing optional." Psst! I accidentally took a picture of naked people because I didn't notice them at first. (not shown.) There's a big beautiful bathhouse building that's been under renovation for fifty years now. It must have been beautiful when it was built. This satellite bathhouse looked a little like the Olympic Stadium in Berlin to me.
Here's where I went swimming. I kept getting hit with jellyfish, but I was just relieved to see that they weren't condoms. In all, a lovely outing!

Hog Killin’ Time

2005-09-09T19:00:00.000-04:00

It’s hog-killin time at Rob***o* Ranch. You probably don’t know this, but sometimes when talking to myself I refer to wherever I live as R-- (my full name) Ranch. Having never owned any livestock, I know it’s a bit odd. But last week it was strangely apt. I bought a pound of “leaf lard” from a farm, and you have to “render it yourself.” Basically it’s the fattest part of a pork belly. Why I wanted it, I’m not too sure. I think I like the idea of making a pie crust without any butter, but the lard you get at the store is just somehow scary and unwholesome. Not like this special pastured pig fat I got, it was extremely unprocessed. All you have to do is chop it into small pieces and melt it in a heavy pot over low heat. It takes a little while. As it melted, I ladled it out and strained it through a folded paper towel I fastened over a jar with a rubber band. At first it was golden brown oil, but after being in the refrigerator overnight it was solid and white. Mmm! Once the leaf lard had all melted, there were brown crispy bits of skin or something left. I was going to throw them out, but then I remembered from the instructions I’d read on the internet that they were called “cracklins” and you could salt them up and eat them as snacks. That doesn’t really appeal, I have to admit. “Cracklins, eh?” I thought. “That rings a bell.” And I remembered something called “cracklin’ bread.” (Not to be confused with “shortnin’ bread.”) Sho’ nuff, I found the recipe in White Trash Cooking for “Big Mamma’s Cracklin Corn Pone.” I quote from this classic work: “Cracklins are the skins and other pieces left after the rendering of pork fat at hog-killing time (in the Fall after the first cold snap).” I guess I killed my hog a little early in the year, but I tried it anyway. Um, why I thought “skins and other pieces,” cornmeal and milk would have some sort of gestalt effect and become unutterably delicious, I’m not sure. It didn’t. It was ok, but in sort of a penitence-type way. Especially the third day.

hobo party

2005-09-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

My hobo party t-shirts got media coverage, of a sort! I guess if you know about John Hodgman you know he’s inordinately interested in hoboes. If you don’t know who he is, well, he’s one of those McSweeney’s guys, and lately he’s written for the New York Times Magazine. No I didn’t make it into the Times, or even McSweeney’s, but the shirts and their site were referenced in a weekly email that Hodgman sends out to his supporters to build enthusiasm for his new book. He called the shirt an “important garment.” I owe it all to Heather, who called his attention to them.

Red Hook Pool

2005-08-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

A few Sundays ago, I and two other ladies took a daytrip to exotic Red Hook! It's not really that exotic but somehow it felt that way. We finally checked out the Red Hook public swimming pool, which I'd been interested in after hearing that "it has giant pyramids in the middle, and when you get near them a disembodied voice says, 'stay away from the pyramids! stay AWAY from the pyramids!!!'" I have to say I was a bit undewhelmed by these pyramids, they aren't really as big as the ones in Egypt. But after someone had the nerve to flout regulations and dive into the pool, the disembodied voice did come on immediately to say "there is no diving in the pool. NO! DIVING! in the POOL!!!" so that was fun. Luckily I'd asked someone about special instructions before going down there because there are several. No food allowed in the building, not even inside your bag. Nothing but you, your bathing suit, towel and flip-flops are allowed in the pool area. You must lock up your belongings with your own lock. And finally, just like in high school, you must wet yourself down in the shower before going near the pool. There aren't any chairs to sit on and there are children everywhere. Still, it was quite pleasant. Clean and not overly chlorinated. I think they clean it in the middle of the day, which is why one person reported being shooed out in the middle of the day when she went. The hours are 11 to 3 and 4 to 7, 7 days a week from June 25 to Labor Day. (Hurry up!)

Foodies are all abuzz about the taco trucks in Red Hook Park. They are still going strong, and I had a competent huarache (like an oblong sope with beans stuffed in the crust). I don't think I've ever had a great huarache, which makes me think I should just stop trying. But the real winner of the day was this lime sorbet we bought from a roving cart. Oh so fresh and refreshing! It was miles away from the shaved-ice and syrup guys. This guy has a cart and teenage helpers, with the sorbet in big metal canisters. But yes, it was homemade.

museum piece

2005-08-15T15:14:00.000-04:00

Do you recognize this watering can? Yesterday I went to the Upper East Side municipal cooling center, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, basically just to find some relief from the heat. I went into one exhibit, called "A Curator's Eye," honoring someone who'd just retired or something and showing the items he'd selected for the collection in recent years. When I saw this I knew immediately that it had come from the Ikea catalog, which is cool, I'm glad Ikea is being included in museum collections, it makes me feel better about owning so much of it. But I went into hysterical laughter when I read the caption: Vallo Watering Can, 2004. Promised gift of anonymous donor. Can't someone come up with the two dollars the Met would need to buy this thing outright? Hell, I would do it! And is the donor anonymous because it's so embarrassing to only promise he'll probably give it to them in the future, or because it's too cheap a gift, or what? And is the watering can used? It had better not have a scratch on it.
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation for the status of this item, perhaps to do with storage fees, (surely not a tax break!) but I really can't figure out what it is.

another vacation

2005-08-11T14:51:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the hiatus, I was visiting Ronnie Bostock and his parents in Colorado.

Their town is a bit hippie, I have to say. We went to a skateboard competition and look how the police officer was dressed!
But to be fair, they only dress like that when it's "Mountain Fair Weekend." It was just funny to see him with the little hat and shirt but still have a gun, handcuffs, and a nightstick on.

We went camping for one night (all I can really handle) at Fryingpan Lakes.

And after we set up camp it rained for three hours, which was pretty at first, and then just...elemental.

Phantom of the Opera

2005-07-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

Realizing that I had not taken advantage of enough of my "Summer Calendar" events, I decided at the last minute on Friday night to go to "Phantom of the Opera" (1925) in Prospect Park, with original live accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra. Somehow I thought this would involve a very small niche audience, like three people, but it was packed. Not as packed as New Pornographers, but still very full. I suppose in addition to silent film buffs there are people who wanted to hear a concert by the Alloy Orchestra (the premiere of this piece, besides), as well as many others who just wanted to sit outside and watch a movie. I went to the movie at Brooklyn Bridge Park the night before and it was packed as well, I think these events are really taking off. Prospect Park Bandshell has the advantages of good acoustics, beer and food for sale, folding chairs, and in this case at least, 35mm projectors. It's so great to have a film in 35 and hear the clack clack clack as it's running. Except when one breaks down and they have to try to fix it for ten minutes and then end up just showing it on one projector, which means 3 minute pauses every 10 minutes or so. I don't know if it's better or worse for me having been a projectionist and knowing exactly what he's going through up there. I am insanely tolerant of what's going on, but at the same time stressed out in this overly empathetic way, having flashbacks to my own projection-room traumas.

The band was great though. They had a really excellent score for the movie and improv-ed their way through all the reel change pauses. The movie was pretty great too, it was a brand-new restored print with hand-tinting and a sequence in primitive Technicolor. I found out today that the first color movie was actually in 1908! (It was silent and only 8 minutes long.) Lon Cheney was excellent and it was quite suspenseful even if the plot was a bit thin.

This coming Friday they will be showing The Sound of Music in full-on Cinemascope, and that's the end of their movie season.

graf pics

2005-07-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

I saw these cute items off 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn when I was walking to Lowe's Improving Home Improvement.

Someone named "MIST" has been doing paste-ups, or slap-ups, or whatever they're called, around Smith St. and environs.

hidden treasures

2005-07-22T11:40:00.000-04:00

I enjoy looking for graffiti sometimes, it becomes like a treasure hunt. I've always liked things like that, like the hidden pictures in Highlights magazine and so on. Even proofreading at work can be seen as a treasure hunt, every time you find an error you can see it as a little prize! After a while, this makes us proofreaders go a little psychotic.

When I was in Venice, I went to one of the Biennale shows by accident. I had wanted to visit the Palazzo Querini Stampalia to see an 18th-century palace. They also happen to have a bunch of good art. But when I got there I found all these young Biennial-goers all over the place, all excited to see Kiki Smith. A young lady came up to me in the galleries and desperately pleaded, "Kiki Smith??!" And I directed her the wrong way, I had no idea where it was. Moments later I realized that in addition to the top floor gallery installation, there were sculptures insinuated into the decorative arts exhibit, like inside a cabinet, on end tables, in the cubby of a desk. Having seen her sphynxes a few years ago in Central Park, I recognized her stuff immediately. The museum guards were looking at one of them but had passed by one hidden in the previous room, so I tugged at them excitedly going, "Kiki Smith, Kiki Smith!" like I was Lassie or something. I wanted to tell all the young people cluelessly wandering around not noticing them. And also not noticing the amazing art that's over 50 years old that kids today seem to have no patience for. To me it was sort of gross to be in this city with so much great art but all the international art scene people not going near it, just following around the hip and famous art scene artists. I guess I was sort of like that in my early 20's too, I didn't like anything old. But going to Italy has definitely cured me of that.

summer calendar

2005-07-14T16:30:00.000-04:00

Tuesday 6/14 Tosca in Central Park
Wednesday 6/15 Samson & Delilah in Central Park
Saturday 6/25 New Pornographers (featuring Neko Case) at Prospect Park Bandshell
Sunday 6/26 Tegan and Sara and Ron Sexsmith at Summerstage, 3 pm
Tuesday 6/28 Richard Thompson at World Financial Center (7 pm)
Thursday 6/30 Del McCoury Band at Prospect Park Bandshell
Monday 7/4 Yo La Tengo and Stephen Malkmus at Battery Park Lawn (3:30 pm)
Thursday July 7 Key Largo at Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Clem Snide at Castle Clinton (7 pm)
Sunday 7/10 Blind Boys of Alabama, Citizen Cope, and Royal Wylds at Summerstage, 3 pm
Wednesday 7/13 Chicago at Riverside Park, 70th St. Pier
OR...NY Philharmonic in Central Park

Thursday July 14 Gidget at Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Son Volt at South Street Seaport, 7:30 pm
OR...Calexico at Castle Clinton, 7:30
Saturday 7/16 Siren Music Festival at Coney Island, all day, Spoon and Mates of State are the headliners.Brooklyn Philharmonic at Prospect Park Bandshell, 8pm
Sunday 7/17 Femi Kuti at Summerstage, 3 pm
Tuesday 7/19 NY Philharmonic in Central Park
Wednesday 7/20 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at 70th St. Pier
Thursday July 21 A Fish Called Wanda at Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR... M. Ward at Castle Clinton (7 pm)
OR...Pier 54, 7pm The Donnas , Ok Go & Rock & Roll Soldier, DJ Ayers
OR...Movie: Gotham Fish Tales at Stuyvesant Cove Park, 22nd st and East River
Friday 7/22 (Lon Chaney's) Phantom of the Opera with live score by Alloy Orchestra at Prospect Park
Wednesday July 27~~The Fiery Furnaces~~ Daniel Lanois at Rockefeller Park (west end of Chambers St. -- 7 pm)
OR...Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at 70th St. Pier
Thursday July 28 Dr. No at Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Mana: Beyond Belief at Stuyvesant Cove Park, West end of 22nd st.
Saturday 7/30 MC5 (surviving members), Sun Ra Arkestra (surviving members +extraterrestrial forces) and DJ Spooky at Summerstage, 3 pm. Ok, what!?!?
Wednesday 8/3 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at 70th St. Pier
OR...Ronnie Spector at Rockefeller Park, 7 pm
OR...Clerks at West End of 14th st.
OR...Knife in the Water at Socrates Sculpture Park
Thursday August 4 Mermaids at Brooklyn Bridge Park
OR...Patti Smith at Summerstage, 7:30
Friday 8/5 Found Footage Film Fest on roof of 50 Bedford Ave, the High School in McCarren Park
Wednesday 8/10 Little Women (Winona version) at 70th St. Pier
OR...Animal House at 14th St. pier
Thursday August 11 Chinatown at Brooklyn Bridge Park
Wednesday 8/17 Sweet Charity at 70th St. Pier
Wednesday 8/24 Pather Panchali at Socrates Sculpture Park
Saturday 9/3 Doc Watson at the park in Lincoln Center, 9pm (with openers)

Everything on the list is free, though Prospect Park would prefer that you donate $3. The start time of the movies is always "dusk," or sometimes even "dark," a time that changes as the Earth goes through its orbit.
This list is totally arbitrary and selective. Except the movies...all the movies are listed. Except Bryant Park, that is a mob scene. For more concerts, information, and directions, look into the links below:

"hard news"

2005-07-13T13:15:00.000-04:00
Not like I consider myself a news source or anything, but one thing I found really interesting in the news about the London bombing investigations is that they found the suspects after one of their moms called the police to report him missing. "He went down to London with three of his mates, and I 'aven't 'eard from him," she reported. (See AP story.) They looked for someone matching his description among the dead and found he had died in the bus explosion and had been very close to the bomb itself. Then they looked at surveillance from King's Cross station, since he had come from Leeds via Luton and I guess that's where you end up(?) And found him and three other dudes on a surveillance tape and they were seen going four different ways: north, south, east, and west, as it says in the terrorist's statement of responsibility. The guy going south didn't get very far, as you see from the maps, maybe his train was stalled. The guy going north had an even rougher time, since the subway line was out due to a train malfunction in the line. Perhaps frustrated that there was no train, he got on a bus that runs parallel to the tube route, but he seems to have gone in the wrong direction AND the bus was being rerouted that day. This was the kid who was only 18, whose mom reported him missing. Perhaps he'd hoped to get back on the Tube at some point and that's why he didn't detonate his bomb until nearly an hour after he was supposed to. At first people thought the bus bomb was calculated to cause the maximum damage because people would be crowding buses after the tube closure, but it sounds to me like it was just an accident of circumstance. Here are more new details.

feh

2005-07-13T11:45:00.000-04:00
Feh, I know I said I was nearly ready to start internet dating again, and everyone is ready for some vicarious thrills, but then I read this unpublished play about a series of first internet dates and I'm talked out of it again. There's something so truly terrible about it all, about all the "getting to know you." It's almost worse than a job interview. The play was so accurate, like how the daters give each other the third degree about everything: "Are you interested in this? I am interested in this. You should become interested in it, I know what's best for you. You used to be interested in it? Well what happened to you? What is your problem? Do you have that problem a lot? I'm sure I could not be around someone with that problem. That is unacceptable. Bye." All these snap judgments are made, and I don't know how it can be avoided. Both parties are desperate to make their case for why they are so great and at the same time to root out any potential problems with the other party so that their precious time will not be wasted. It's not like chatting at a party with a group where you can just see how the person interacts with people and talk about subjects of general interest. The topics have to come around to things about the personality of you and your date the whole time. It's not like getting to know and like someone gradually. It's like: catch sight of them, make comparison to their personals photo, evaluate appearance, experience skepticism, form rating, evaluate body language, evaluate clothing, talk about yourselves at length as if in a sales meeting, and then yea or nay. There's not really a chance for someone to "grow on you." Unless for some reason one party likes the other enthusiastically, beyond what should be happening after reading their ad and meeting them for one or even three hours. Then that person convinces the other that they must go out again. Then the liker might "grow on" the likee after a longer exposure, but meanwhile the liker is only really in like with a fantasy of the likee and the thing is doomed anyway. It's fucked, I'm telling you!

Meanwhile, keep inviting me to your parties and instead of reading about my dates why not tune in to "Hooking Up" on ABC, premiering this Thursday at 9 pm. A bunch of women will be going through internet dating hell on national television. I'll be watching!

travel photos

2005-07-11T10:19:00.000-04:00
On Friday I sent some snapfish photo albums to people I thought would be able to tolerate my lengthy shaggy dog slide shows. If you were left out and don't wish to have been, please email me. Specify "highlights" "Berlin" and/or "Venice."

WWII

2005-07-07T14:15:00.000-04:00
I watched the movie "Stalag 17" last night, it was great. But because of that and the bombings in London I find I can't do my work (reading advertisements) without framing everything in terms of wartime. Read this sentence from a "branding binder":
"Our focus on execution and collaboration ensures that we keep our promises to each other and to those we serve."
Doesn't that just reek of Nazism, or is it just me? Now I can no longer read this very long document at all. "Deviation from the principles of branding is a big risk..." Devianz ist verboten! Och! Can we just calm down a little? I guess the problem with the whole piece is that it's written in such a melodramatic and severe tone about such a pedestrian issue. Twenty pages to say: "These are the logos and colors for the product, you should use them in all the ads." I wish I could just cross it all out and say that.

German Dogs

2005-07-06T16:51:00.000-04:00

In Berlin, they are so freedom-loving that dogs of any size can go on the subway. They even ride for free.

dating?

2005-07-06T16:09:00.000-04:00
A young lady mentioned to me that she had made something of a mid-year's resolution to try her hand at online dating. Whether she's doing it or the first time, or after a long absence, I didn't manage to ask, because this time it was not my first instinct to tell her why she should stay far away. My first instinct was instead "well if she can do it, maybe I can too." Today the guy who sits next to me at work uncharacteristically left his desk for more than five minutes, so I decided to have a peek at the online menfolk. Happily, I was able to tolerate them without immediately retching, which I consider great progress. It took a full 15 minutes for the retching to commence. What an enormous step forward.

sightings

2005-06-29T15:44:00.000-04:00
On the way back from lunch today, I saw Isaac Mizrahi and a 3-person entourage at the corner of 34th and 8th. He looked cute in a bright pink polo and dark sportcoat.

A few weeks ago at lunch I saw David Byrne on 7th and 23rd. He was trying to get a cab. One pulled up but then a woman in a wheelchair came along and got in it so he had to keep looking. What was he going to say, "Excuse me, I realize you're in a wheelchair, but I'M David Byrne!"? Later, my friend said he had seen DB that same week, teetering on a bicycle over the cobblestones of Greene Street. He had on an old-school yellow bike helmet. We confirmed that backpack was of same model: very slim and German-looking.

art celebs

2005-06-29T12:50:00.000-04:00

Call me crazy, but after the Venice Biennale I became convinced that I was seeing art and related celebrities everywhere. Here are some of my paparazzi photos, one is at a cafe and the others were on my flight back to Berlin. Do you recognize anyone?

Richard Thompson

2005-06-29T12:00:00.000-04:00
I did go see Richard Thompson, I even got two people (nonreaders) to go with me! It made a believer out of me, though now I'm not sure which of his thousand records I would want to buy. I got a free copy of the first Fairport Convention album, and it's pretty good but I'd rather it had Sandy Denny or Linda Thompson or more Richard Thompson singing. I like the folk music, but not so much the long protest songs and ballads; more like the rockers, but I wouldn't want it rocking with too much band going on. Yesterday he played just acoustic guitar since "the band failed to turn up...again!" The show was full of those "yuk-yuk" moments, like the song "I've Got the Hots for the Smahts" about intelligent women, and "My Daddy is a Mummy" about ancient Egypt. I started falling asleep on the endless renditions of "Gethsemane" and "Pharoah" but I headbanged on "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." The crowd was quite large, including all the usual guys you see at the WFMU record show.

You can hear the music for yourself and get some yuk-yuks (Q: "So are you on a tour?" A: "Well it's more like a Tourette...") on this radio show. I'm really shilling for NPR these days.

concerts

2005-06-27T11:34:00.000-04:00
A reader pointed out that his weekend had been "ruined" by my failure to attach a time to all the prospect park concert listings. I actually withheld the information so that people would be more dependent on me. They all begin at 7:30 and end at 11 due to the noise ordinance. I went to the New Pornographers concert on Saturday. I'm not familiar with their work except for that one hit about "I'll be spinning you around" but it was a nice concert. I have never seen the venue so crowded. We sat on the grass in the far far back and the sound of the music was a bit distant. Everyone was talking the whole time, including us. A friend sat in the very front, having arrived at 6:30, and it was "like a real concert," instead of like a picnic.

I am hoping to see Richard Thompson (of Fairport Convention) this Tuesday and Del McCoury (old-timer bluegrass) on Thursday...any takers? I saw Del once and he kicks ass. Richard Thompson is more just sort of because I can and it's free. Then Monday is Stephen Malkmoose in Battery Park. Somebody saw his recent show in New York and said it was the rockingest yet, so that's good news. Yo La Tengo is playing too but I've never been too fond of them. I have a five day weekend starting Friday and am looking for action.

natural plastic composites

2005-06-24T13:24:00.000-04:00
This piece this morning on marketplace almost made me cry with happiness. It talks about how companies are now using plastics with botanical components instead of petroleum products because they are now more cost-effective. Not because of regulations or even consumer demand, not the "other bottom line" but the regular bottom line. Oil is now expensive, so plastic becomes expensive, and heavy cars are too expensive to power, so lighter renewable materials are being used in cars. I can't even believe it's happening.

spelling bee

2005-06-23T09:52:00.000-04:00
Whoo! Yay me! I rule! I am the best speller! I won the spelling bee again, a whole twelve dollars all to myself. In the first round there was a tie since the two top spellers had a whole bunch of words that neither of them could spell. But in the second competition, it was back and forth between two of us who kept spelling and spelling. High drama.

And then this morning there was quite a long piece on WNYC about displacement from the coming Nets stadium, featuring Freddy's Bar, home of the spelling bee.

back from vacation

2005-06-21T11:16:00.000-04:00
Well I'm back from my trip to Berlin and Venice, they were awe-inspiring. Pictures and reviews to come. Venice is the most beautiful place I've ever been. And dogs are everywhere in Berlin. Heaven! My host there was very very nice to me, almost like a servant.

Fleet Week

2005-06-03T10:27:00.000-04:00

Let's hear it for Fleet Week. This is really a classic shot, wherein the serviceman "claims" the young lady by placing his hat on her head. These guys had made it all the way to Astoria for the Czech/Slovak Fest at Bohemian Hall and Park. Apparently they were drinking free pitchers. A more comprehensive description and many more photos can be found chez Heather.

karaoke

2005-05-24T10:18:00.000-04:00
Woo! Yay me! I won at Karaoke Big Ass Ham! Now you may be saying, “But Kathy, you can’t ‘win’ at karaoke any more than you can ‘win’ at Thanksgiving. It’s not a contest.” Well, I think you’re wrong on both counts, because I won a large canned ham last Wednesday for being the best (or is it worst?) karaoke performer at Freddy’s. And when I bring this ham to whatever Thanksgiving table I go to, I’m going to win at Thanksgiving too. The End.

celebs

2005-05-24T10:11:00.000-04:00
Benicio del Toro! Spotted at The Strand Bookstore. Bushy sideburns, wig-like hair, very tall. Seemingly looking intently for something...doesn't everyone know that looking for something specific there is a losing battle?
Also Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst(?) (times 30) outside Webster Hall before Bright Eyes concert.

New Trivia to Report

2005-05-17T11:32:00.000-04:00
Where one trivia night falters, another will rise to take its place. Starting this Wednesday, May 18, Magnetic Field at 97 Atlantic Ave (Henry/Hicks) will be the place to triviate every other Wednesday at 8 pm. It's sort of high-stakes at $5 per person, with 4-person teams. I think the themes are variable, this week's will be music and they will be showing "High Fidelity" afterward. As for me, I am already mentally committed to appear at Freddy's Big Ass Ham Karaoke this Wednesday. I will go to Mag Field on June 1.

"Trivia for the Unwashed and Well-read"

spelling bee in media again

2005-05-12T18:00:00.000-04:00
The Brooklyn Downtown Star did a story on the latest Spelling Bee at Freddy's. Go read it, and then we can talk about it. It's always frightening when a nationally respected news leader like this has counterfactuals in its news stories of events that I experienced. For instance, "Ms. Magoo" is quite sure she did not spell the word she is reported to have spelled. Also, can you spot the word with an extra syllable?

no more trivia to report(!)

2005-05-10T15:57:00.000-04:00
Well, it seems that Dr. Fact's Night of Fifty Questions, aka Buttermilk Bar Trivia, is no more. My correspondent has it on the authority of the bartender, aka Dr. Fact's girlfriend, that they "got sick of doing it." I can imagine that; I for one am not going to be the one to step up and fill the void with a trivia night of my own. However I'm not yet ready to give up my monthly trivia. We will have to find a new trivia night. I don't think I want to go back to Pete's Candy Store. Though it's free and ends at a reasonable time, I grew bored with the whole routine. Leave work, wander Williamsburg looking for something to eat, trudge to Pete's and be too late to get a table in the main room but be totally alone in the back room, struggle to read by light of one votive while wanly waiting for unknown number of friends to show up at the last minute. Then be mentally chafed by hecklers who are not me and not funny, and struggle with otaku categories like "Famous Quotations of the Big Lebowski," "Soundtracks of the Coen Brothers," and "Whitesnake Words of Wisdom."

As far as I'm aware, the options are Last Exit or Red Hook Bait and Tackle. Votes? Additional suggestions?

new camera

2005-05-05T18:06:00.000-04:00
Folks, I have inherited an old first-generation digital camera and can now join the digital revolution. For a while I've been wanting to take and post pictures of the funny or beautiful (or both) graffiti and advertising defacements that I see everywhere. Here is the first one, which I saw on Dean Street last night:

And while we're on the topic, the Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, followed by Mother's Day on Sunday. Don't forget!

Cringe

2005-05-05T16:38:00.000-04:00
Last night I went to the "Cringe" recital at Freddy's Bar. I think this event really has legs, baby! It was a huge crowd-pleaser. The concept is that people get up and read from the diaries, poems, songs, notes, and letters of their youth. With hilarious results! This was the second monthly Cringe and it's still mostly women. As one dumbfounded audience member remarked, "Boy, teenage girls are really self-obsessed!" My favorite I think was Megan, who among other things had written, "I mean, nothing really happened this year (1991). I entered junior high...the Soviet Union Collapsed...the hedge was cut so now I can see straight into [neighboring teenage boy's] window..." I can't even really do it justice, it was so funny because 1991 was one of the most newsworthy years ever but for a teenage girl sometimes nothing is exciting no matter what it is. Que Sera Sarah, the organizer of the event, has a more comprehensive roundup of the event. I was joined by:

Douglas

Heather, and

Sasha, among others, not pictured.

Bob Dylan

2005-04-26T15:38:00.000-04:00
Last night I went to see Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard at the Beacon Theatre. It was awesome. Bob is always awesome. I generally go by myself to his shows for the same reason I go to Star Wars movies by myself...because I don't want anyone along to harsh my mellow. I don't want to hear how bored someone is, or how overpriced it was, or even worry about whether they're thinking it and not saying anything. I just want to sit and stare with rapt attention and leave glowing. Maybe cry a little. No harm, no foul. On this tour Dylan is playing a keyboard and harmonica instead of the guitar, which is new and different. As always he is old and sagging but he's still riveting to me. I found myself just staring through my binoculars nearly the whole time, even between songs when I should have been clapping, just to see him go to the side and blow his nose (heaven!) and shuffle his feet and wave his hands around, spry and skipping. And in the dark, from behind, he became his younger self again.

The cool thing about his concerts is that he remakes his songs every year. It never sounds the same as the record, usually not even close. There are just (most of) the lyrics and some of the motifs of the music, and the rest is largely transformed. The part I don't like about it is when it's transformed into lounge music, but it's his right to do that and I'm sure some people love it. That only happened on two of the songs last night. Most of it was loud and rocking. He never did pick up the guitar, though there was one sitting there teasing us. After the encore I was wishing that the band would go offstage and he would pick up the guitar and do an acoustic solo version of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." No dice though.

The Beacon is pretty small, so even though I was in the front of the rear balcony I was pretty close. I suppose I'll never get closer than I was at the Towson State University Gymnasium in 2000, standing probably ten rows back. I can't believe he even played there, it had those rolling wood bleachers and "1986 Champions" banners and everything. I wholeheartedly recommend that venue.

Merle Haggard was a great opener. Merle Haggard?!? He had a lot of fans in the audience. He had what, eight band members? And who knows what history those guys have seen. Those are some experienced gentlemen there. They had my foot and tap-tap-tapping. They managed to walk the line between slavish traditionalism and the sort of je ne sais quoi that makes today's country too cheesy for my taste. I found the other opener, Amos Lee, cheesy. I wish I could explain why.

Ok well let me know if you want to go to the new Star Wars and not make fun of it and say it was awesome.

grossest thing ever?

2005-04-22T14:57:00.000-04:00
I guess I should be happy that I never get cockroaches in my house, I only get what some have colorfully termed "palmetto bugs." Even though they look like massive roaches in every way (except that they fly), supposedly they are a different creature, and for my sanity I have tried to think of them as something innocuous. Like a beetle. I'm not scared or disgusted by beetles, only a little startled sometimes. Why can't I have beetles in my house instead? One gross thing you may have noticed about palmetto/waterbugs is that when you crush them you don't see nice red blood or even goo, you see something like dirty fryer oil coming out of them. That's just gross to me, to think of an animal that circulates oil instead of blood. Though I guess I should feel good about it, the way I feel good about biodiesel. However yesterday morning I saw something you probably have never seen. I was running the bath till the water got hot and then I turned on the shower and opened the curtain to step in but was met with a belly-up waterbug (not doing very well in the water, by the way) flailing around in its death-throes. I feared turning the water off, knowing that they can fly and run really fast, so I stood there deliberating a minute and watching it. Soon it took a shit. It discharged this oily inky substance out its roach butt. Quite a lot of it too. I've heard that humans let out all their intestinal contents when they die, and I guess roaches do too, because that's what happened. It was a new level of gross, it really was.

still more celebs

2005-04-20T10:17:00.000-04:00
I guess I saw Amanda Peet or something yesterday morning. I was walking by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Columbus Circle and saw these guys pull up in a car on the corner and run in panicked fashion up to the door. I thought they must be elevator repairmen or something. Then I saw them bobbing around staring at a minivan, and they had disposable cameras, and a woman with tons of makeup on was getting out of the van. She gave them an "oh god, yuck" look, which made me think (along with the lo-qual cameras) that they're not paparazzi, just two guys who are unhealthily obsessed with Amanda Peet. Or whoever it was. When I walked by again after my doctor's appointment there was a different guy standing out there with a real camera. Who is so important that photographers need to document every time they go in and out of hotels? I thought maybe Princess Stephanie, but it seem she is not supposed to leave Monaco during her period of mourning. If she did, I guess that really would be news. Or, "news."

more celebs

2005-04-14T09:47:00.000-04:00
Well, life goes on. The other day I volunteered to usher at St. Ann's Warehouse for the Wooster Group's production of House/Lights. What you do is, you email this lady at the theater and she gives you a slot as an usher so you can see the play for free. (A $30 value!) The drawbacks are that there's a lot of waiting around and you have to sit in either the back row or in the front row but on a riser instead of a chair. Other than that the work was pretty easy. I would say sign up with a friend, because of all the waiting around. In fact, I was the "friend" in this case. As an usher, I was enlisted to hand out programs. This is sort of a dizzying task...they come in so fast, and not everyone is sure they want what you're giving them, and some people will take them for their companions but then the companions don't know it and want one too, and some people have both hands full...but then! Then you look up and you're handing a program to Laurie Anderson and right after that you hand one to Lou Reed and he says "Thanks" and you're like omigod omigod! They had excellent seats, obvs.

I liked the play, I guess. It was sort of hypnotic. Excellently choreographed. There was a lot of need for perfect timing between the sound and the movements and the video and the players with each other. It was sort of more like a dance performance. What was the story? I'm not sure. Was it a good play? I don't know. It was a good production, to be sure. The ushers were excellent, especially that girl with the programs, really top-drawer.

of overwork

2005-04-12T14:05:00.000-04:00
What's been going on is that in an unaccustomed departure from the usual, I have been working constantly while at work. I've even kept working after work was supposed to be over! Quite a few times! And as you may know I have no computer at home; well, none to speak of, so I haven't been blogging.

Oh for christ's sake, here comes another thing I have to work on now...you see what I mean? I had like 10 minutes off.

more ranting about men and pool

2005-03-24T09:50:00.000-05:00
People think I overreacted to that guy making fun of my billiards skills. But this morning on the train, instead of concentrating on the admittedly useless essays in the back of "White Noise: Critical Edition" I eavesdropped the whole way on these two guys talking, mostly about the new French fiancee one of them has. Toward the end the subject turned to pool...
Guy 1: "So anyway you'll have to meet her...she likes to shoot pool, which is cool."
Guy 2: (excited) "Wow, that's great."
Guy 1: "Yeah I mean, but she's so bad at it, it's so cute."
Guy 2: "Well I mean at least she likes it, that's the important part...I've dated so many girls who won't go near a pool table."
Guy 1: "Yeah, she likes it, I try to teach her stuff, she tries really hard. But like you don't want a girl who's like really good, who makes all the shots..."
Guy 2: "But that can be hot..."
Guy 1: "Well yeah, as long as she still acts like a girl about it, not like a guy. One time I was playing and there was this girl who was way better than everyone else in the room, like insanely good, but she was like so pompous about it, you know? She was making all the shots. So I made fun of her, I was like 'oh is this your first day playing pool? it can be tough to learn on your first day' and all."
Guy 2: "How did she take that?"
Guy 1: "Oh she was good, she got it, she laughed about it."

Well what choice did she have? I'm sorry but it's still just not funny. Ask yourself why you feel you need to "take her down a peg." And then tell me, because I don't understand anymore. And then stop doing it, because it sucks.

And then I came out of the subway and saw a fat weird crotchety old man wearing a knit cap which said DIG IT DIG IT DIG IT all around it, and felt better.

trivia report

2005-03-16T09:44:00.000-05:00
Isn't this feature boring by now? I'm more interested by "lunch report." Well Bryan, Marya, Mia and I went to Buttermilk for trivia on Monday and set up under the now-established name "The Real People." I'm not sure how we got this name but it's based on the television show. This was one of my favorites as a child, along with Love Boat. Since it ran from 8 to 9 and my bedtime was 8:30, I had to cut a deal that I'd put my jammies on and have my teeth all brushed by the time the show was over so I could go straight to bed at nine. It makes me laugh that I loved the show so much but perhaps it presaged my later interest in anthropology in college. And hey, Fred Willard was on there, he later came into his own in the Christopher Guest movies. When I was seven we went to Florida and I actually got to see one of the hosts, the "cute" one (Skip Stephenson), in a personal appearance at Circus World. My first celebrity sighting! Though it doesn't make the list since it doesn't count if you have to pay to see the person. Which begs the question, if you're walking in Times Square and see Carson Daly broadcasting TRL through the MTV window, does that count as a sighting? Um, not that I looked.

Back to trivia: it's quite exciting because we finally tied for second with such luminaries as "Steve Gutenberg Bible" and "The Neuticles," who both win consistently. However "Suspicious Package" had us all beat by two points. I think what really did us in was the visual identification round, which was all hockey players. Now, Bryan is extremely masculine of course, but this knowledge was just too esoteric. He did get two of them, which is terrific. I could only come up with "Bobby Labonte," which is the wrong sport. As usual there was a lot of second-guessing and guesses vying for dominance against other guesses, only to find that the other guess was the right one. There was an amusing category where he read the capsule reviews of movies from the Sunday NY Times TV section. I screwed up and guessed "Coffy" as the movie starring Pam Grier as a vigilante nurse, when it was simply the more notorious "Foxy Brown." I thought I was being so clever. But redeemed myself on the next question: a bad western starring Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone. Apparently this information had been living in my ass all along because at the very last moment, when the answer card was being collected, I managed to pull it out! "The Quick and the Dead"! Many thanks to Mia for the assist: she knew it had "and the" in the title, which proved very important info. Buttermilk trivia is on vacation next month.

product review: gooey moisture socks

2005-03-03T14:37:00.000-05:00
Well ever since seeing in Lucky magazine that Shoshanna Lonstein uses this product, I have been curious about the Bliss Spa moisture socks, which are impregnated with a mineral oil gel and effortlessly moisturize your feet overnight. I don't want to deal with foot baths and pedicures and so on. But as I get older, my feet get dryer and dryer. Last night I was wandering down 5th Avenue when I saw that Bath and Body Works has launched a skincare line from CO Bigelow Apothecary. I said "what the?" and walked in. They are making a big splash. It seems like Bigelow's is going head to head with Kiehl's, which is now owned by L'Oreal. L'Oreal has Lancome, L'Oreal, Maybelline, and now Kiehl's. The Limited has Henri Bendel, Limited, Express, Victoria's Secret, Bath and Body Works, and now Bigelow's? Though Bigelow's is still independent, they just have a distribution deal with BBW. My second cousin-in-law is a chemist at L'Oreal and after talking to him I became even more skeptical about just what these "different" brands are offering. It seems like all that differentiates them is price point and market targets, not the merchandise itself.

Which brings me back to the socks. Looking across that overpoweringly scented shop, I spied the Bliss moisture socks I'd been wanting. I thought what the hell I'd get them but after careful scrutiny I realized they were knockoffs. Knockoff Bliss products? They have the same font, same color, same styling, everything. But the True Blue Spa socks were $10 cheaper. ($38, by the way! but they're reusable indefinitely.) I was really puzzled about what to do. After all, it's a silly pampering item anyway...scrimping on pampering just seems like a contradiction in terms. And for $38, it had better be good! I mean, only $10 more and I could have the best? But I decided since I was already holding it in my hand and seemingly in a buying mood, I would just get it. I planned to wear them overnight but by 9 pm my feet were already feeling dry and cracked, just crying out to me for the gel socks. So I put them on for three hours. At first they were super cold and clammy. Then it started to heat up in there and activate the moisture oils and lavender scent. At the end it was really hot in there and sweaty, so I took them off. If I'd been asleep it wouldn't have mattered. Afterward I could definitely feel the presence of oil on my feet. But could I have just put oil on my feet instead? I think that the heat really helps it penetrate. When I had my facial they put heated mittens on over hand lotion and had me sit there and bake. But that could have just been gimmickry too! To make me feel like my $65 was going somewhere. I don't know what to believe. I notice that Conair has come out with a heated lotion dispenser, going along the same principle. That sounds gross to me. Most lotion will separate under heated conditions, I think. But you know the real purpose of the product is to improve hand jobs and masturbation anyway. Which makes the product just doubly creepy.

The Verdict: moisture socks are of unknown efficacy at this time, will require further trials.

Spelling Bee Page Six

2005-03-01T12:00:00.000-05:00
Prospect Heights was all "abuzz" last week for the fourth Novelty Adult Competitive Spelling Bee at Freddy's Bar and Backroom. At 23 entrants, it was the biggest turnout yet. And was anyone there not a blogger? Emcee Josh Reynolds has one, as does Heather. Jimmylegs was there, with his new gf, and did I spot two of his exes as well? They're exemplars of "staying friends." And Douglas was there too, with his new gf! Cute! Books blogger Alison spelled well as usual, accompanied by man-friend Karl. I also saw que sera sera Sarah, and a big group of Very Young Lesbians. (Jill Krementz take note, that could be a good new book project for you.) Former spelling champ Linus was conspicuously absent. We spelled for three contests, I'm not sure who won since I was having a lot of attention deficits. I do know that I nearly won, but was robbed! when the other finalist was given the pedestrian "eohippus"-an evolutionary precursor to the horse, while I was saddled (no pun intended) with some greek word, I don't even know what it was, some kind of pointy hat thing I've never heard of. My embarrassing moment came when I tried to spell "narcoticism" and couldn't-- I tried it as "narcotocism" saying, "it has an o, like erotocism!" not noticing that that isn't how you spell eroticism either. I might have saved myself. Last night apparently the Jane Pauley Show went to Freddy's in order to film Knit Night in action. As a friend pointed out, Jane Pauley going to Freddy's sort of points to us now being in The End Times. Surely the plague of locusts is next. After walking home after work through icy pellets digging in to my face, the idea of leaving the house again was just more than I could bear. If anyone went to the event I would love to know how it turned out. Bloggily yours, Kathy

barneys

2005-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:00
I went to the Barneys warehouse sale yesterday at lunchtime. Eh. It seemed like nearly everything was Marc by Marc Jacobs. It's still more money than I really want to pay and too silly for me to really wear. I'm sort of sick of his marching band meets Gunne Sax meets pink and purple unicorns styles. Judging by the fashion week coverage, even Marc Jacobs is sick of it. Now he wants us dressing like Hasidim. That's just my luck because I've already been working that look for years.

central park

2005-02-23T10:45:00.000-05:00
On Monday I went back to Central Park to see the north side of The Gates and the snow. It was great! I love the snow. I love the park in the snow. I love the Gates in the park in the snow. Following the Gates around gave me a fresh appreciation for the landscape design of the park. It's a pretty miraculous place, really. I took too many photos, probably. I'd show you but I don't have a digital camera. And I had my first celebrity sighting in a while. Pale Male, the hawk who lives on 5th Avenue. He is even cuter in person! So dreamy!

He's Just Not That Into You

2005-02-18T14:36:00.000-05:00
Ok well, I just read “He’s Just Not That Into You” (HJNTIY) and I’m sure people will want me to report about it instead of having to read it themselves. The way it’s structured is that each chapter gives you one more way of telling that he’s just not that into you. E.g., he doesn’t call you, he doesn’t ask you out, he doesn’t want to have sex with you, and/or he’s married to someone else. After reading these I was able to discern that not only is no one into me now, but neither were most of the guys I thought were into me in the past. Kind of a downer. The author bases everything on the premise that his experience is the exemplar for everyone. You meet the woman of your dreams, you know it instantly, you love and dote on her, hang on her every word, meet all her expectations, call her five times a day, and reform the dickly ways of your youth. You ask her to marry you and live happily ever after. It has me wondering, what did his wife want? Does she love him, or does she, to quote the song, “love how you love me”? In describing himself, Greg Behrendt plays on the fantasy most women have grown up with, the doting loving husband, and the love at first sight thing. It’s what everyone wants, men and women, and if you think you don’t you’re lying to yourself. At some point he finally comes out and says “How many times do I have to repeat it? [though it’s the first time he has] Women cannot separate sex and love.” It’s the same old thing…women put up with putting out in order to get love. Apparently this is genetically programmed from the so-called caveman days. Men act on the evolutionary imperative to spread their genetic material to as many places as they can. It’s against their nature to get attached. Women on the other hand want to make sure that when they have babies they also have someone to bring home the mammoth so they can sit around and eat bonbons in the cave. It’s against their nature to work, so they have to make sure they can get someone else to do it for them by harnessing the male sexual urge. HJNTIY doesn’t say all this, don’t get me wrong, but it’s sort of the baseline for the discussion. Needless to say, I’ve never been a big fan of evolutionary psychology.

According to the book you must not ask a guy out or otherwise pursue him, because that will turn him off. Guys love a chase and they’re not going to want someone they know they can get. Well what about girls? It seems to me that the desire to chase men and to seek a challenge is one of the things that drives all these elaborate rationalizations in the first place. We hope we can solve the puzzle of why he didn’t call back. We hope we can get him to like us. It’s our chase and our desires that keep us fixating on someone who’s unresponsive. HJNTIY doesn’t allow for this possibility. They’re saying that what is driving women to fixate is a desire to recoup the emotional investment they’ve already made in a guy who’s being unresponsive. I totally identify with this. I’ve often whined to myself, “God…I have to make this one work, ‘cause where am I going to find another one? You mean I have to go out and get to know someone like this all over again?” I definitely get all Procrustean like that. “You’re going to fit in this bed if I have to cut your feet off, dammit!” Sometimes it’s not about recouping the investment. Sometimes it’s about “winning.” And we could all stand to take a step back and ask ourselves if it’s the guy (or girl) we really want, or it’s just the victory. By the same token, women being pursued sometimes need to look beyond the flattery and see whether they’re being chased for the chase’s sake.

What did I get out of the book? Well, that you shouldn’t have to struggle and fret and suffer and obsess quite so much. Eventually someone will come along who you love and you won’t have to make up elaborate explanations about. (This was repeated in a Saturn commercial I saw last night. The girl is saying, “I kept asking myself, ‘why doesn’t this feel right?’ And then I met Ben and finally it just feels right.” I was thinking it was a commercial for eHarmony, because she’s picking Ben up at the airport, and eHarmony tells people they should do a worldwide search in order to find their perfect match. But no, it’s a commercial for the car that’s like a perfect boyfriend.) What I’ve been getting lately out of dating advice is this sort of Buddhist scene, that you shouldn’t have to push and struggle too much in life. Say you like some guy who says he’s scared to be with you. This could mean exactly that, that he has issues. Or it could mean that he’s not interested and making up an excuse because he doesn’t want to come out and say he’s not interested. But it’s useless to keep guessing about it, because it amounts to the same thing: he doesn’t want to be with you right now. So move on with your life. If you’re putting all your energy into fussing and fixating about someone who’s mysterious and recalcitrant, you don’t have the energy to “be the best me you can be” or to let anyone else in to your heart.

All across America, women have read this book and decided to end their “better than nothing” relationships. They’ve ceased booty calls and breakup sex. HJNTIY has shattered illusions and left fewer women on the end of strings. I think they need a sequel about how they propose that we find and identify the guys who won’t string us along and be dicks. Because I for one am at a loss.

japan is weird

2005-02-15T12:09:00.000-05:00
In the "japan is weird" column, I was looking around for descriptions of Japanese matchmaking parties, known as "gokon," and I found this strange page. It's an international chat room of some kind. I don't know where the guys come from, I don't think they are Japanese. They really hate women, it is interesting.

And the fun just keeps going in the article and comments that spawned the link above.

Dating Times

2005-02-15T10:15:00.000-05:00
A reader says after reading the TimeOut NY "be a better dater" issue he is totally amped and ready to try weird dating events. I say don't lose that momentum! Don't wait until I'm invited to one or wait longer yet for me to get one together. Try 8 at 8, which places you at dinner tables at restaurants with other single yuppies. And then report back, ok? Hmm, I'm not sure how expensive it is, though. They say, "Compared to expensive matchmaking services or video dating services that cost thousands of dollars, Eight at Eight is extremely affordable." Or how about The Lunch Club? It's not just for lunch anymore. It's not just for dating either. It seems to cost just slightly more than going out to eat (or do other activities) with people you already know. And you can do career networking there for no extra cost. Singles on the Go is a sort of tacky website that has some useful links to many more events of this nature. There are even two groups just for tall people!

I read that TimeOut article too, and was taken aback to see that the event I'd gone to was in no way unique, apparently other people are doing them. However in the article they said it was all (straight) women. The one I went to was very strict about women having to bring a man, so there was definitely not that problem.

I can't say that I recommend speed dating, though as a franchise opportunity it seems to be a winner. There are now at least 9 different services in New York. Speed dating is a trial by fire. It sounds good, doesn't it? You can see if you have that elusive "chemistry" with someone? Don't waste 3 hours on a blind date, just 3 minutes? I don't know if you can find chemistry in 3 minutes, actually. It just means having to answer "so what's your story?" fifteen times in a row. And the pool of singles? Well imagine going online and doing a search with the only parameters being "within 25 miles of NYC, age 25-35, looking to date." And then meet the first 15 who come up, no matter what. Is that worth $35 to you? And your self respect and self esteem besides? At least at the dinner party you can have a nice time talking with the group, hopefully, even if you make no love connection.

christo

2005-02-14T11:47:00.000-05:00
Were you there? Did you see it? Everyone was there. I went to Central Park yesterday and I have never ever seen so many people there. The crowds themselves were almost the most exciting thing about it. As Michael Kimmelman noted in The NY Times, the flags make you feel as if you're part of a parade. Everybody marching around. And around and around. One really interesting effect that I noticed was that many people donned orange clothing or accessories for the occasion. It didn't even occur to me to do that, but it occurred to hundreds of other people yesterday morning. I only saw the southern end of the park, which is always where most of the visitors are. I think next weekend I would actually like to return to the north side of the park and hopefully see some more sweeping vistas. I went from The Plaza to The Met. At the Met I slipped in the handicapped/groups entrance, then beelined to the roof deck elevator at the rear. There was a pretty long line so I took the stairs, which were also mobbed. It was orderly but slow, like at the Statue of Liberty. You can't really go fast enough to get tired. Finally I got to the top and it was so underwhelming up there. I feel bad for anyone who paid the full $15 admission just to get up there. You could barely see any of the Gates. Not recommended! I guess the artists did say they were not meant to be seen from above, but that doesn't stop me from scheming to get to some higher vantage point that overlooks the park. One thing you can't get from pictures is the quiet little sound of the gates flapping in the breeze, and the feeling of the sun shining off of them. It's pretty cool, you should go. It will be up until the 27th.

comments features

2005-02-11T16:52:00.000-05:00
Just as I was about to move my comments to HaloScan, Blogger made some improvements in the comments feature that may keep me using it for a while. Now comments are in a popup window. Now they have the time AND the date. And now you don't have to be anonymous if you're not a blogspot user. You do have to click the "other" button under "choose an identity" and then it gives you two fields for your name and/or url. And you don't have to click through two or more screens to do it. Well ok maybe two; it doesn't display the comments in the same place as the comment entry field the way haloscan does. Hopefully they will catch up. I thank you for your patience.

cuz it's ladies nite

2005-02-11T16:02:00.000-05:00
Last weekend I went to what I ended up calling a "singles mixer" at a bar, the Dakota Roadhouse to be exact. The brilliant premise was this: surely great single women know great single men who for one reason or another they don't want to go out with, and the single guys they know should meet the single girls they know and maybe somewhere in there there'll be a love connection. Brilliant, right? Actually isn't this the premise behind Friendster? And how successful have you been in dating from Friendster? I believe so strongly in this idea. Why does it never work?

The rule for this evening was that every woman had to bring a guy, what I came to call an "un-date." It felt really weird to ask anyone for this un-date because it's like asking someone on a date but at the same time telling him you don't want to have a date with him. To my relief, both of the guys I asked seemed flattered and intrigued. But only one was available, since the event was on a, no pressure, Saturday night. The brave and daring organizers said there would be pool and foosball and no high-pressure situations. We were so curious: how bizarre was it going to be? What would happen?

Somehow since my female links to this event were in publishing, I had expectations for the crowd that turned out to be wildly inaccurate. I sort of thought the guys would be tweedy editors or chic art directors. But no one brought her coworkers. Everyone brought her financial advisor or something. You may know them as the pleated pants loafers guys from Hoboken. I think the crux of my problem with them was the lack of any personal style. Even the girls had put on uniforms of some kind. It was like being at University of Michigan. I guess I'm just a die-hard bohemian is all. Is there a singles night for them? On the other side of the coin, extremely indie rock guys tend to drive me wild with lack of desire. I mean on both sides there's this conformity that gets so stifling. "Yeah I'm just comfortable in this hoodie and gas station pants, they really just say 'me,' you know?"

It's scary to go outside of conforming. It can be really painful to put yourself out there and be rejected. And that's what happened to me on Saturday. I tried to dress up, but I wasn't wearing Seven jeans and heels and a push-up bra, which seems to cause people to be all "what *is* that? Is that a girl or a guy? Does not compute!" No but seriously. I felt a bit off in my orange dress. So for a while I was wallflowering it with my un-date and my girl friends, and then the hostess asked me to play doubles pool with her and two guys. As you may remember from last year's office party, I am good at pool. Not like Ryan on The O.C. good, but fairly competent. This seemed to make my male partner upset. After winning two games with me he asked some other girl to be his partner and when I asked him what happened he said "oh I thought you didn't want to play again." Whatever dude. I hate you anyway. Then this other guy comes up and I guess he was trying to flirt because he's all "Ooh nice SCRATCH!" and I said hah hah, but did you see all the ones I got in? "Naw I only saw you SCRATCH!" Repeat 2x.

I'm the first to admit that I'm hypersensitive but the evening left me so demoralized. Those guys seemed so bothered by my mad pool skillz. And no one laughed at my Lucille Ball antics either. So I'm supposed to "tone it down"? I thought you were supposed to "be yourself." I feel like I'm a pretty cool lady >sniff!< but guys just aren't into me. I just read "He's Just Not That Into You" and the whole time I was like "yeah, no shit, I never thought anyone was." Whine whine whine pity me...

new motifs

2005-02-11T10:23:00.000-05:00
Check out my new "office coffee" and "hobo party" motifs on Cafe Press. Do note that any of the motifs can be put on any of their available products, just ask.
Later that same day...Hobo Party has its own storefront. You can't have two designs of one type of blank t-shirt in any given store, unless you pay extra for it. Weird/bad. By the way the bestselling item at Cafe Press is the "Vote For Pedro" t-shirt. Apparently this comes from Napoleon Dynamite, has anyone seen this? I LIVED IT, man, I don't need to see it.

trivia report: Bait and Tackle

2005-02-09T14:55:00.000-05:00
Last night KE and I tried out the new trivia night at the new Bait and Tackle bar in Red Hook. It was a pretty good event I guess. There was no entrance fee and I think if you win you get a $50 ($15?) bar tab. If you come in last you get a novelty canned food product. We wouldn't know exactly, since we weren't quite first or last. The bar was pleasingly plump, not bursting at the seams with people. I would say maybe 10 teams? And one team was the Right Hon. Dr. Fact himself, emcee of the Buttermilk Trivia night, and his girlfriend the bartender whose name I don't know, and his musical accompanist Scott, and their event-specific bartender Francis. There is a team limit of 4 persons. We only had 2 because we were so spontaneous about going. There are only 31 questions and you only find out the answers when it's all over. So the event only took about an hour and a half, perfect for a working yuppie on the go like myself. Although...being so short it lacked that "then your whole evening is gone" quality that I usually seek out in my amusement choices. The questions were tough but fair. The bar is a bit hard to get to, you have to take the B61 bus or bike there. On the bar's website they advocate taking cabs(!) It's nice for the people who live in the neighborhood. The Pioneer Bar is right next door. Bait and Tackle's decor is more like "hunting and fishing." They have a bunch of taxidermy and lots of flotsam and jetsam (literally). As convincing as the layer of dust covering it is, it feels a little forced to me. I'd rather be at Sunny's where the dust is real and the built-up tchotckes were added gradually instead of just before the opening. Well what can you do? New bars can't be old right away. I was still more comfortable there than at the Dakota Roadhouse, where I went on Saturday.

first t-shirts

2005-02-07T16:27:00.000-05:00
Aha! I have designed two t-shirts on Cafe Press.

lunch IV

2005-02-04T15:15:00.000-05:00
I had to go to the library and the bank today so I thought I'd check out Madison Ave. and decided on Sophie's Cuban Cuisine. They were handing out menus on 6th other day and for once the handout was something I wanted, which was a shock to the system. Their sandwiches are $6. Since I can't digest cheese I got a pernil (roast pork) sandwich. If you want to eat there you have to get a table and have waitress service, even though the sandwiches are made in front of you and the other food is all behind the counter for the to-go customers. Somehow I found that annoying. Actually it's not mysterious why it annoyed me, it's because then I felt like I had to tip the lady even though she didn't do anything I couldn't have done myself. The pernil was ok. A little dry/tough. They put those weird fried potato strips on the sandwiches. Not french fries. More like potato chips. That product called "French's potato sticks." Formerly known as Durkee? It was all extremely salty. When I get back from a lunch like that I have to drink a gallon of water and I'm still thirsty. It's totally not South Beach.

Lunch III

2005-02-03T15:48:00.000-05:00
Today I felt like I had to stay at my desk and TCB so I dashed out to "Speedy's Fresh Food Fast" without my coat on and got soup and a roll. It's $3-something, which is OK for a midtown lunch, except that I get hungry 3 hours later. Plus it was cold. That's ok because I have a microwave. I sort of like the food at Speedy's but I hate the experience. It's squeezed into this little triangular spot and is always packed with people. It's super hard to move around the place. Plus you end up spending tons of money. The salads are $6 and up, and even when you think you're being frugal at the hot-cold food buffet you end up spending $6.50. Oh plus there's no salad dressing at the salad bar. There's maybe one of those super thick and sweet italian dressings and a nasty ranch dressing. So what I usually do is take some of the already overdressed salads and mix it with the undressed greens to get some kind of happy medium. Another annoyance for me is having to struggle to get them not to wrap it up in all this packaging including all the plastic utensils and a handful of salt and pepper packets. What is this salt and pepper policy? I find it all so wasteful. So I'll struggle to stop one person from wrapping it up and immediately someone else will see this offensively unwrapped item and rush to wrap it up and put salt & pepper with it and I have to restrain them too. Sometimes I'll eat there in the upstairs seating area but like the downstairs it's a total circus. They really pack the people in, they definitely benefit from their location and the signage that says "clean, contemporary, soft-branded."

funny website

2005-02-03T14:37:00.000-05:00
I want to make a t-shirt with a bichon frise on it. Even before I met Coco, I liked them. One time I passed a woman on 72nd st. with the most awesome bichon shirt ever. I can't find that one on the internet but I keep coming upon weirder and weirder items. Somehow just adding a bichon makes everything funny.

lunch II

2005-02-02T14:17:00.000-05:00
Today I ate lunch at the Greenmarket in Union Square. I took the express train one stop so I could go to Barnes and Noble. They didn't have the book I wanted, and there weren't really lunch items. I ate a dry flax-sunflower roll and then got a super protein odwalla to balance it off when I got back. Why don't they have more lunch items at the Greenmarket? I feel like they would sell well. Most of the other ones I've been to, in other cities, totally have food you can eat right away. Maybe it's part of the market bylaws that they can't. I did manage to get a plant to keep me company at my desk. This might turn into a boring feature for the blog, actually.

herald square eating

2005-02-01T13:49:00.000-05:00
Well now I want to talk about how hard it is to find lunch where I work, which is Herald/Greeley Square. Herald and Greeley Square are these two crap-ass parks that sit at the triangles where Broadway and 6th Ave cross at 34th St. There is nothing good to eat here. It goes from bad to mediocre. I'll just do this day by day.

Today I ate at Cafe Arome, on 32nd between 6th and 7th. I keep forgetting it's over there, then I'll remember and say "well it's just a standard deli, that should be good!" and then eat there and remember why I had actively put it out of my mind in the first place. It satisfies my hunger by making me never want to be around food again. That's how bad it is. It's hard to pinpoint why. They have pizza in the window so it seems like a pizza place, and plenty of people order it. But I have noticed that they are all foreigners. Not to be jingoistic, but that is suspicious to me. I want to say "stop! go somewhere else! you deserve better! this is not America!" The lettuce and tomato are white and yellow. The grilled chicken is microwaved into lead. The only upside is that they have a reasonable seating area. However it's filled with trash and quite depressing and they listen to Lite FM. I wonder how many more times I will forget and return there. I find that even now I am intrigued by their gyro sandwich.

restaurant review

2005-01-27T00:15:00.000-05:00
I want to talk again about how much I dislike Bar Tabac. Last night I gave it a third try and I still don't like it. Start with the service. Well first of all the place where you wait for a table is entirely filled by a foosball table, which is just so stupid I won't even mention it. So then you sit down and before your coats are off you're asked about drinks, which aren't on the menu. You ask for water and you get that stupid "still, sparkling or tap?" crap. That is always so unclassy to me. If I want fucking mineral water I know it and I'll jolly well say so. It's exactly like saying "you want fries with that?" It's classic "up-selling" and it belongs only in franchise operations like Macaroni Grill where the employees have orientation at Corporate and have to follow this three-ring binder "associates manual" that has pages where "SMILE" is some goddamn mnemonic acronym for like "selling, motivating, ingratiating, lick-ass, emesis" or something. Ew ew ew. The worst is when the bottle of water is already cluttering up your table as if it were free but it's really $11 and you have to actively be all "no thanks, I'm cheap, send it away!" So I'm ordering wine, I want red wine, and he's all "what type of experience are you looking for in a wine?" and I'm like "oh, watching you get reamed up the ass, actually" and he's all OK then, you want a blah di blah, which I know is expensive just from looking at him but I'm not going to be all niggly about "how much is that one? and that one? and that one?" How hard is it just to print up a damn beverage card? After dinner my friend wanted an Armagnac so he had to listen to this dude go on about those, only to have him come back and be like "we're out of the more 'budget' Armagnacs, all we have is a very nice one for $21...would you consider that?" And he's all, "uh, no." And I'm thinking, dang that stuff must be syrup by now, how long has that been sitting behind the bar keeping warm by some decorative votive candle? What are they doing with a $21 glass of Armagnac, who do they think is going to drink that here at a "bistro" with a freakin foosball table in it?

So then we're ordering food. Armagnac friend says: "I'm trying to decide between the tuna and the hanger steak." And the waiter says "well how hungry are you?" and friend says "Quite." What kind of question is that, anyway? Is there no other relevant difference between the dishes? So he says "have the tuna." I get the hanger steak. When the food comes, the tuna is actually less food, it's much lighter. Later we try to theorize on what the waiter heard instead of "quite." "Light?" "How hungry are you?" "Light." That makes no sense. Or maybe he was supposed to say "very." Semantically speaking I don't think very is actually more extreme than quite. Across the table, another person already knows he wants to have tuna. "And how would you like that done, sir?" "Uh, what? Well, as done as can be?" "Oh dear god no! You don't want to overcook it! You can only get it rare or medium rare! You've just killed a baby!" Fine, if this primadonna chef in this "casual bistro" where by the way the tuna is $17.95, thinks it should be cooked a certain way, he should just do so. Show some confidence. Put "seared rare ahi steak" on the menu like a normal person. Then we're asked what doneness we want for our hanger steaks, which really makes not a lot of difference when you're talking about a thin cut like that. I ask for medium and it comes with burnt crisp edges, whatever. It's supposed to have shallot sauce, but who knows what it's swimming in, it's like a stew. It comes with "mushroom risotto" which tastes like yesterday's grits with velveeta mixed in. It's cold and thin like a gruel. The baby gets bow-tie pasta with tomato sauce. She barely touches it, which we put down to weird vagaries of being a baby. But then some of us are still "quite" hungry after our little meals so we decide to eat it. Apparently Chef Boyardee has launched a canned bow-tie pasta. Mush and sugar and boy was it nasty. It reminded me of "how do we know dog food tastes good, they can't tell us!" Because the baby can't quite talk yet. Her mom's shell steak was none too good either, I had some of that. And the salad with it had been overdressed sometime long before.

Basically what I'm saying is, I hate up-selling. I hate being made to feel declasse. I hate pretension and I hate obsequiousness. I went to this other place, in Greenwich, "Valbella!" which supposedly Regis Philbin loves. The food was indeed good but the waiter was terrible. He was not all that competent but made up for it with fawning; every two seconds he was calling my mom (who is 72) "beautiful young lady" "and for the young girl?" "my precious?" "she in whose honor I presume to draw each humble breath?" it was embarrassing.

People razz me, they say "Kathy, why you gotta hate? Is there anything you like?" Shockingly enough, the answer is yes. I love cute dogs and cute boys. I enjoyed eating out last night because of the company. I enjoyed the food at "Valbella!" On Tuesday I even had a great meal at Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A, if you can believe it. Lemon chicken with garlic-wilted spinach and wasabi mashed potatoes topped with caramelized onions. They let you choose your side dishes, like at Boston Market! Except they're good. The spinach was not frozen or unwashed. The potatoes were real, I think, and the wasabi had a light touch. The sauce did not cover the entire plate. The waiter was good too, he could remember what kind of beer you were drinking and would make eye contact with you when he went by, in case you might need something. Unlike at Lil Frankie's last week, where the staff's avoidance of eye contact actually reached comedic levels. There were too many customers for the number of staff. Food was good though. I love Max in the East Village. Their lamb ragu is so amazing. They probably use an obscene amount of butter. The meatloaf stuffed with cheese is also very good. Don't go for the chicken cutlet because it's like a frozen Weaver cutlet sitting on top of a wilted soggy salad. With diced tomatoes on top so the cutlet gets wilted too. It sits there like a landmine on the menu. Gramercy Tavern is amazing, make your parents take you there. There's like one waiter for each diner but you don't feel smothered. The food is revelatory. I would eat raw eyeballs if they told me to, and it would be good.

Gee I feel super after getting this all off my chest. Who wants to go out to dinner?

viceland

2005-01-26T16:16:00.000-05:00
I have this friend who really likes both Vice Magazine and Us Weekly. I have to say I can't get entirely into either of them. But then I found an issue of Vice which is like this hommage(?) To Us, and I am hooked. Go and look at it. That's where I'm spending my free time today.

New Orleans report

2005-01-25T13:31:00.000-05:00
Ah, hello there. I'm enjoying pretending that I'm still on vacation. In fact I got back last Wednesday night. New Orleans was just about as much fun as I'm capable of having. Lots of people were there for this wedding and I think we all got along fine. I ate oysters every day, which was probably going too far. If I wasn't eating raw oysters I was eating fried ones. I am still on the fence as to whether I think po-boy sandwiches are delicious. However I unequivocally recommend muffaletta sandwiches. Sure, on paper they sound just like the typical "italian sub" we have in New York. Salami, provolone, ham... But the difference, especially at Central Grocery, is the bread and the relish. It's these mixed olives in oil with cauliflower and who knows whatall else. The sandwiches are so popular that you sort of can't order anything else there. You walk in and say "whole" or "half" and they hand it to you already wrapped. Hmm, also, boudin is delicious. I had it in my mind that it was more like a haggis (ie gross organ meats) but actually it's not at all slimy.

I guess I'm talking about food too much. I also went to Preservation Hall, that famous bastion of "dixieland jazz." The deal there is, you wait outside for a half hour or so, then pay $8 and go in and watch music (if you're tall enough to see anything) for 40 minute sets with 15 minute breaks in between. Lots of people had seen enough after the first set, apparently, and there were more people in the line to replace them. There are a few seats in the front, on the floor and on benches, but you would have to be first on line to get those. My aging feet hurt too much from walking around all day to really stand there all night. I tried sitting in the hall outside just to hear the music, but it was 40 degrees out there. A lot of stuff in NOLA is outside or semi-outside. I guess 30 and 40 degrees is quite unusual for them. During the day it was more like 60, which was quite nice.

There's more to New Orleans than the tourist areas, I'm sure, but boy were the parts I saw touristy. Tourists everywhere. At one point I postulated that they were actually not tourists, I just thought they were tourists because they're the type of people I see touring around Herald Square, and in fact New Orleans was actually their home; perhaps New Orleanians make up the bulk of NYC tourists. But I suppose this isn't the case, which begs the question, "where do the tourists come from?" I have to say that there is certainly a Disney-esque quality to the place. You sort of expect the Country Bear Jamboree to roll out of a doorway at any moment and animatronically chime the hour. I went to the Museum of Southern Art and tried to do some of the audio tour. It was blah but at one point the narrator said something like "New Orleans is one of the only cities that has retained its urban character and essential flavor without becoming a parody or a theme-park version of itself." Whaat? My friend and I had just gotten done saying to each other for the 100th time that it was like a theme park. If that's not one, where is? My own home city? Fuhgeddaboutit! Does New York seem like a parody of itself to outsiders? Discuss.

New Orleans

2005-01-12T10:40:00.000-05:00
I'm going to New Orleans on Friday for an extra long weekend, it's practically a week actually. Can you readers give me some ideas about what to do there? I'll be part of a wedding group and making decisions by committee, but on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I'll be there all alone. Well like what restaurants (cheap) are good, what bars, what sightseeing destinations?

trivia report

2005-01-11T13:19:00.000-05:00
I'm still getting used to blogspot, it's weird here. I'm used to reading other people's blogs that look like this, and suddenly mine does too? I feel like I am the new exchange student who's just arrived at the host family's house and have been shown my room and told to make myself at home and I have this rising excitement and fear. I get this feeling all the time. Which is odd because it feels like a real memory and yet I was never a foreign exchange student!

Well, last night was the monthly trivia night at Buttermilk bar. To celebrate the first anniversary, the entry fee was $30 per team but those who placed 1st 2nd and 3rd all got some money, and they gave pitchers of beer to 5 teams who scored well on the bonus round, and gift certificates at a record store to 3(?) individuals who were drawn in a raffle, and goodie bags to 3 more people. Or did 3rd place just get bronze medals? I saw two Neuticles wearing medals as I was leaving. I am fuzzy on all these details. My team was called "New Lease" in celebration of one of our number moving back to NYC and signing a lease yesterday. The team of my affiliates was called "Meat Endures," a homophone of "Meet Indoors," which seemed amusing at the time. Maybe we should give more thought to the team names before we are actually standing there having to sign ourselves up. I envy the Neuticles who always have the same name and the same people. We had 8 people and had to draw ones and twos from out of a hat, and then decide the team names and then which team got which name while meanwhile the games were beginning. It was great luck that we had 8 people show up, since there is the 4-person team limit in place. The bonus round was a doozy, it was 20 questions long. And all of them were questions that had been in the quiz during the past year. Nearly all of them were things we had gotten wrong and hoped we'd never have to think about again, like "How many miles long is Long Island?" (110) and "How many medals did the US get in the 2004 Olympics?" (103). Those at least were multiple choice. Oh it was maddening. However since we had so loyally shown up all year, New Lease, Meat Endures, and the Neuticles all got enough correct answers to win beer. As for the main body of questions, they were tough but fair. Ooh except one about the time difference between New York and Moscow, which didn't specify if we were in daylight savings time or not. Doesn't that count? We didn't quibble though, since we didn't really know the answer even though our guess was off by only an hour. But maybe we should have, since New Lease was one point away from tying for 3rd with 3 other teams. I guess that made us 6th place. Meat Endures was two points behind that. For some reason there were only 25 questions instead of the usual 50, so it was over early enough for us to actually stay and drink the beer prizes and enjoy ourselves. It even started on time! I was impressed. However for some reason I ended staying out later than I ever have. Oh well.

obsessive

2005-01-10T11:38:00.000-05:00
Greetings! You may not have noticed, but for the past few days my new posting has been confined to adding more and more celebrities to the sightings list. This reminds me of sixth grade, when Mrs. Shays(!) had us write for an hour a day, and practically the whole year I obsessively kept writing my book on Summer Camp. She would keep trying me to start something new but I could not stop talking about summer camp. I would write the story on every other line of the paper, and when I had some text to insert I would write it in the lines that had been blank, sometimes for pages at a time. I found it perfectly legible but it drove her up the wall. I was such a little Outsider Artist! I loved camp because I had friends there and no parents, and nonstop activities. Thinking about camp helped me get through the rest of the year. Is thinking about celebrities helping me get through the hardships of living in New York?

brushes with fame

2005-01-05T10:39:00.000-05:00
I the spirit of Gawker Stalker, only even more pathetic and possibly more humorous, I want to list here all the celebrity sightings I've ever had in my life. I will add yours too if you want.
Passed Chris Noth on 6th Ave near 59th.
Passed John C. McGinley from "Scrubs" up by the Polo Store.
Watched Elizabeth Rohm's (Serena on Law & Order) nanny feed baby an avocado while show was filming in Madison Square Park.
Sam Waterston attended ex-boyfriend's sister's wedding. (I was there too.)
Passed Beck on 41st St. At first, thought he was Nils. He stared at my white swiss miss hat.
I swear I saw Lizzie Grubman crossing Broadway and 34th.
Sat in same room as Samm Levine (Neal on Freaks & Geeks) while watching standup comedy on Upper West Side.
See Eugene Mirman, standup comedian, nearly every time I go to 5th Ave in Park Slope.
See Tom Verlaine nearly every time I go to therapy, since he lives near there.
Stephen Malkmus was forced to make eye contact with me in order to interrupt my conversation with someone.
Hung out on basement floor with Wendy Stanzler, editor on "Sex in the City."
Learned Mah-Jong from assistant fashion stylist on "Sex in the City."
Another ex-boyfriend was babysat by David Fair of Half Japanese. I shook hands with Jad Fair.
Saw Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and Lou Reed at art opening.
Consistently fail to notice presence of Chloe Sevigny at rock shows and parties where she is present.
A boy at my parents' church used to date Natalie Portman.
Saw Gregory Hines on Lower Broadway yelling up to be let into a building.
One time my mom followed Fred Astaire down the street.
She also met Duke Ellington and he gave her concert tickets and then she and her family were in a New York Times photo of the concert.
My dad tried to impersonate a fireman on "To Tell the Truth."
He was also chums with I.M. Pei's uncle.
My brother is buddies with Mike Fincke, who lived on the International Space Station.
Played pool with Jon Fishman of Phish. He was pretty good.
Saw U2 giving concert on flatbed truck going down 7th Ave.
Saw Michael Kors and models on flatbed truck going down Broadway.
Saw Alek Wek coming from Michael Kors trunk show.
Sat near Bill Beutel (or was it Bill Boggs?) having lunch at Aquavit.
Saw Ron Howard playing with his children in the park in my hometown.
Watched Ethan Hawke push his child on the swings and monkey around with the other kids in Union Square Park.
Lived a few doors down from Kate Moss. She had an amazing roof garden which no one ever used.
Helped cat-sit for Martha Plimpton. (I didn't meet her...sorry Martha, I swear I didn't go through your things, and I didn't have your housekey.)
Met Sara Gilbert (Darlene on "Roseanne") in my freshman dorm.
Met Lecy Goranson (Becky on "Roseanne") at the International Bar.
Passed Bjork coming out of Barnes and Noble Union Square.
Wrote Chuck Klosterman an email about his Esquire article about friendster, got an email back.
A couple I fell in love with during my short time in DC was recently discussed in a travel feature in Budget Living!
Shook hands with Seamus Heaney.
Chatted with Steve Reich about how I was setting up to tape his presentation.
Took a course with David Schiff.
Lindsay Brien from Real World Seattle (now of CNN) was in a small film class that I showed clips for. I sat near her a lot.
Drank beer with and got hit on by Dr. Demento.
Met Uncle Junior's doctor on The Sopranos at a bar.
Talked to a guy in a bar for a while and found out he'd been in a Hershey's commercial. Would rather he had asked for my number.
A girl in my high school was part of the "Gitano Family" ad campaign. They weren't really family! Scandal!
At the Aspen Animal Shelter I walked a husky who had just shot a Jones New York ad campaign with Claudia Schiffer.
Michael Stipe sat on the other end of a pool table from me at the "Tranny Shack" show in San Francisco.
I saw singer Rebecca Gates in the aisle at Kienow's supermarket.
I know Zelda the dog, who was on the cover of The Onion.
I had a date with Don Wood of PBS's "Colonial House."
I met Scott Morgan from The Rationals in Ann Arbor.
I have seen Iggy Pop's high school yearbook photos.
Shook hands with Davie Allan, surf guitar legend.
Saw John Flansburgh walking down Sixth with strangely shaped instrument cases.
Saw Stephin Merritt outside movie theater on 3rd Ave.
Went to novelist Andrew Sean Greer's Halloween party.
I knew the two cute girls on the cover of Team Dresch's album "Personal Best."
We were also friends with Jo from Le Tigre. God, I used to be so cool!
Moby was the DJ at the teenage goth "nightclub" at the Episcopal church in my hometown. You could get in free if you went to the bible study beforehand.
I saw Ted Kennedy at an auction in Nantucket.
I once hugged Sleepy LaBeef.
Congressman Christopher Shays' wife was my sixth grade teacher.
I went to school with the daughter of WNET chairman Bill Baker.
I passed Isabella Rossellini on the Upper West Side, walking with a beautiful teenage boy on rollerblades. She is even more beautiful in person.
Followed Chief Justice William Rehnquist (and his secret service) around exhibit of Presidential artifacts at the Museum of American History (before opening hours).
James Gandolfini at the Ear Inn.
Sat next to Yo La Tengo outside the Ear Inn (different visit).
At BAM Harvey, Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, Lauren Bacall, and Martha Stewart were sitting in the same row in the audience!
I saw my first internet date on the way to meet my last internet date. The augury inherent in the event is one of the many reasons why I have not had another interdate.
In 3rd grade, I was quoted in my hometown paper as saying "I don't like big rooms," because, um, my school was closing and the new school had an "open space" design with 4 classes in one big room. Even then I thought I came off sounding dumb.
In 10th or 11th grade, I was pictured in my hometown paper holding a "No Nukes" sign. I don't think it gave my name.
There is an out of print CD (that I don't own) of a concert in which I sang a song. (uncredited.)
I took a photo of a band that was printed in The Rocket. However the photo was misattributed to the author of the article.
I was quoted (no name given) in the New York Press as saying "I'm dressed as a child, if that helps," in an article about the cancelled spelling bee at Freddy's Bar. The author asserted that I was wearing "flood pants," when in fact as we all know they are Angus Young shorts.
There is audio of me (uncredited) talking about "futilism" as a viable life strategy , and misspelling the word "sacrilegious" on NPR's "The Next Big Thing."
Clearly I am overdue for some (credited) public recognition!

seeking escorts for...

2005-01-05T09:49:00.000-05:00
Venice
Berlin
Savannah, GA long weekend
Cross-country skiiing
~~Mina Bangladeshi Restaurant~~ Angon on the Sixth, 320 E. 6th St. (chef's new place).
Union Square Cafe
Eating It comedy night
Trivia at Buttermilk Bar
Whitney Museum (I get in free "plus one")
MOMA (free on Fridays 4-8)
Christo "The Gates" (mid-Feb)
The Armory Art Show (March 11-14)

first entry

2005-01-04T14:35:00.000-05:00
If you like this site you might want to go back to its previous incarnation at Diaryland..