Author: hugh

On Reality-Based Fantasies

Basement sunflowers

I had lunch in the restaurant above this basement karaoke bar but it was pretty unremarkable. Empty restaurants are even more creepy when the staff wanders around doing nothing looking sad. Maybe I’ll go back for karaoke and do my Jim Morrison/Ian Curtis.

My pal Foot Foot was telling me about a reality TV show she was watching based around funny animal tricks. In this one, a dog was trying to steal a ball from an elephant. Very exciting. The other day, I saw an ad for a show called “Ice Road Truckers.” There are lots of reality shows but of course, the irony is that “reality show” is an oxymoron. It’s all stagecraft innit in the same way a baseball or football game is stagecraft. Somebody has really funny ideas of what a reality show really is because “Deal or No Deal” is listed on the wiki. That’s a game show, but we get the point.

The Republican candidates have turned politics into a reality show which is [not] funny because I’m pretty sure the left coined the “reality-based” meme. Oxymoron city. I don’t wanna talk about it in this reality anymore. How ’bout that Hadron Collider? I want some of that glue that holds the universe together. That’s some real shit right there.

Astroland Not Dead Yet

Last shots of Astroland? Maybe not.

So the world got a little less fun last weekend. Except now, Mayor Mikey is trying to negotiate another year-long extension… and then rezoning? It still stinks of inevitability… like in those Hollywood rescue movies where the trapped survivors wonder if it’s worth trying to stay alive, and the scriptwriters in their infinite sense of lesson-giving fatalism have a bunch more people die before the end anyway.

Have you ever had a housefly infestation? Maybe your cat left a dead mouse behind a desk. Maybe something died in your basement and/or your landlord knocked a hole in a wall to mess with the plumbing. Not fun at all.  Well, Thor Equities knocked a hole in the universe to mess with all the fun plumbing and now all the house Disneys are flying in. Fly paper works pretty good on all that stuff.

The Lunch Wire

when in doubt

The short lunch the day before Hurricane Hanna hit New York…

The Taco Bell® was full except for a table next to a dude in a red and black biking outfit with a full matching backpack sitting in the seat of the table next to him. He didn’t have any stinking bicycle with him.

“Is that yours? Can I sit here?”

He nodded and put the pack on the floor next to him and said, “You should sit here cuz I KNOW you do not want to be looking at that guy.” He pointed to a guy sitting on the fire pipe on the other side of the front window. I had a book and didn’t think I would be spending any time looking out the window and said, “No thanks, this cool.” He went on. “That guy’s on acid or something. He come in here like lookin’ around, staring. Then he go outside and stand in the middle of the street holding up traffic. Staring. Then he finally sit there. Man. You know. I’m just trying to relax and this guy getting me all worked up like what the hell he gonna do. I got my musics and shit just trying to relax. Hey that chairs fucked up — you sure you wanna sit there?”

The chair was fine and I looked at the pile of CDs he had on the table. The top one was Paul McCartney’s first solo record with the cherries and the bowl of red juice on the cover. Under that was Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. There were five more but the titles were turned away from me. “No thanks. Just gonna read my book and eat my crappy burrito,” I said.

He started spieling again about the guy outside but I started reading and eating my crappy burrito and he finally shut up. Just trying to relax. He listened to Paul McCartney and opened the other CD cases one by one and nervously cleaned each one with a Taco Bell® napkin.

In between my book and my burrito, I checked the guy outside. He had a reusable shopping bag from the Time/Warner® Whole Foods® store with some clothes and a black basketball on top. He also had a white Listerine® box with another bag inside it. I read the blurb about killing germs on the side of it five times but I can’t remember it. He was dressed in a blue basketball jersey and had black basketball shorts on and was sporting a black headband. Probably just lost a street game at West 4th Street that he had some money on.

When I went outside, the guy was standing up and holding his bag and Listerine® box under his arms and talking to a very short and wide girl about finding a job.

I walked past, got a coffee at the deli, and went back to work.

Spasticus Rouge

I won a poker game tonight. I didn’t listen to any speeches and I’m just quoting JMM for a reality check.

10:44 PM … Did anyone else notice this? A few lines back I think he called for abolishing unemployment insurance. Here’s the line: “I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn’t even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That’s going to change on my watch.”

Wow fuckin wow. Sit on my red couch


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Joy Division, Control

Way, way after the fact: Control, the 2007 Ian Curtis biopic shot by Anton Corbijn (who does not have an official myspace page) is a wonderful film though it was hard to march on with it. The music has been important to me ever since I first heard it. A year after the Curtis story ended (1981) I read Mikal Gilmore’s Rolling Stone reviews of most of the Joy Division catalog (along with ramblings on PiL who I was already into). Punk was dead, I was hanging out with mostly the wrong crowd, and it was good time for Gang of Four and the Minutemen. A couple of weeks later I called a friend up for a listen. I thought it was brill but he didn’t like it and we headed out for beers and I totaled my Japanese compact car that afternoon running a red light.

I like that Corbijn got a real band together and shot real live concert footage. The cast is great. My one complaint is that he didn’t pursue shooting the film with real black and white film stock instead opting for the safety of color and digitally taking it to black and white. So it sometimes has a slight fakey feel. My digital camera does the same thing even if I set it to shoot in black and white. It isn’t black and white film innit? Why didn’t he consult with Peter Bogdonavich who made Paper Moon and Last Picture Show? — masterpieces of noirish black and white cinematography less than um, 40 years old. Taking Corbijn’s word, I suppose they just don’t make the good shit anymore.

Is the car on the right really the only thing that’s supposed to be in focus in this shot? Ha.

I’m at least hoping one can saunter into a decent karaoke bar these days and find more Joy Division besides “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” See this film if you’re a rock fan.
(images used per fair use… will remove if nec)

Deep Thoughts

the light at the end of the tunnel is on the wrong side of the tracks

The Hail Mary pass is the pie in the sky. (Why does no one ever say “He threw an Our Father pass”? or “a 23rd Psalm pass”?) The effect of listening to two hours of shameless spin doctoring is to jump the shark while waltzing with zombies a million times.  Which makes a better American story: the gun-totin bikini governor or the senator playing pick-up basketball?

Knitting My Curls with Nebula

Stoner rockers can’t wait to bang their heads

I can’t take a rock band picture with my camera to save my life (without flash which I don’t use because flashes bug me when I’m onstage) so here’s another bar shot.

Nebula and Totimoshi and Orphan performed last night at the Knitting Factory for a great triple bill of stoner rock. The moniker is for the sort of heavy bluesy rock first formulated by Black Sabbath which is unfortunate as for me it’s just kick-ass. Being a Monday, only about 50 people attended which is fine by me as I find myself sometimes getting claustrophobic at crowded shows.

I listened to the Democratic Convention and speechifying in Denver a little bit. I have a few problems with the nominee but anything is a damn sight better than four more years of tremendously worse. The best critical lines I recall went something like, “McCain voted with George Bush 95% of the time. That’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick!” and Mark Warner, the keynote speaker said something like, “Some say George Bush was born already on third base. Well, after the gazillion dollar surplus and 22 million jobs left to him by Bill Clinton, George Bush came into office on third base. And in his eight years in office, he didn’t make it to home plate, he stole second base.” Ahahahaha.

Sunday in Williamsburg


vintage motor party 0808

I spent the day in Williamsburg with the first part at a motorcycle party (which I can’t find any link for), then in line for the Yo La Tengo show which sucked even though I wasn’t there. My friend Eva left the line and went home and then I left the line. Then I heard later that yes, YLT played a mostly slow Mint Julep set. Was at Iona for a sour IPA where I watched some Olympic volleyball–Brazil and someone else. I think Brazil lost. The Olympics are such an anomaly in this modern world. (I hope Naomi Klein was there.) Another post on that maybe but then I never watched these athletes until today. On a lark, I ran into an old friend who told me there was free show at the Williamsburg Hall of Music so I went. The music sucked but I’m glad I went as I got a free “distressed” hipster t-shirt and met an old regular from the Ding Dong Lounge.