I play rochambeau with ghosts, take photos of space, and ride my bike in the bus lane.
Liveblogging from Think Café near NYU. Blurboxer is sitar and upright bass. I think (ha) this is their first gig and it works great as coffee and soup music. The clean improvisation pieces sound wonderful but the electronic effects sound overmodulated. Yet again, I blame the nonexistent sound guy.
Update: I was informed the speakers are blown. Don’t get me started.
I saw a number of friends’ bands over the last couple of weeks and thought I’d give them all reviews and plugs.
Spanglish Fly, Feb 19, Rose, Brooklyn — I’ve known the leader of Spanglish Fly, trumpeter Jonathan Goldman, for about eight years as he played on the corporate softball team I coached. He led a New Orleans style jazz band for a few years, then lived in New Orleans for a few years and came back and formed this band. These guys are bringing back the boogaloo sounds of Spanish Harlem in the 1960s and 70s mixing mambo, soul, latin jazz, and funk typified by supergroups like the Fania All-Stars. They’re playing live a lot and are highly recommended! See link above for schedule.
Continue reading “February Live Music Reviews”
I’m pretty sure I posted a photo of the gobbling gargoyles before. You can read about them here. I also posted a bunch more snow pictures in the February Blizzard Pix gallery. It’s true you can have too many snow pictures as I edited out plenty.
Someday, all the countries and insurrections that want weapons will have to buy them on TV.
My cat, Sweetie Pea, is Mrs. Cranky Pants. I guess that happens. She’s the twin of the dude from last year. At the same time, she’s more of a truck than he was. After this, I have to post a real picture for the cat internets.
I’ve been spending more evenings at the Manhattan School of Music. I can’t say enough great things about this institution. They have a whole other level of performance instruction Juilliard doesn’t touch!
A friend who knows I love Indian food gave me a packet of Rasoi Magic Veg Kolhapuri Mix. If you’re looking for an easy way to get into cooking your own Indian food, this is it. For this one, you literally just add vegetables and tomatoes (and some oil). The salt is included. No MSG or other funky chemicals. A local produce stand sold me a two-lb bag of bruised zucchinis and and a two-lb bag of bruised tomatoes for $1 each and half of each went into this. (The other halves went into a pasta sauce I made the other day.) Along with a third of a bag of cooked chick peas, a couple of carrots and an onion, this pan of food cost me about $3. So delicious! The spice packs are available at any Indian store and at finer gourmet stores. Study the ingredients and you’re on your way to learning about Indian spices.
It might be unsettling to realize you really are eating a couple teaspoons of spices when you eat Indian food. It’s good for you! Another site I find endlessly fascinating is nutritiondata.com where I first looked up zucchini. You can find nutrition tables and more on all the unlabeled loose food you buy.
I rewatched the movie Them! which I probably haven’t seen since I was a kid. For a 50s B-sci-fi flick, Them! rocks! Some cliches of Hollywood and lessons in fear-mongering, sexism, and racism were de rigueur. In this first set, the aged scientist schools the Washington idiots on how it’s going down. More pix after the jump.
After taking these pictures at Straus Park (not the fire escape ones), I sat in a bar with a million TVs and there was nothing but snow news: talking to plowers, motorists, sledding kids, moms at the shopping mall and why the hell are they at the shopping mall, and mayors talking about how many plows are out there. You’d think we’ve never seen snow and that plowers fly south when bad weather comes. Two websites I looked at recently:
Update (Feb. 28, 2010): Added 19 more pix (after the first six) to this gallery taken during the next two snow blizzards of Feb. 16 and Feb. 25-27.
Of course, eventually it will all (not) look like Washington D.C.’s subway with all the renovation going on.
I like the pool of melted foam plastic under the passenger door. I was going to take more pictures but the cop on duty didn’t want me to. It’s not like I work for the insurance company.
