Friday, February 16, 2007

ffffffzzzzzzzzzzzzz

hey guess what's more annoying than taking the train home to park slope
from the upper west side at 3am while wasted? taking the train home to
park slope from the upper west side at 3am while wasted and riding next
to a tourette's ridden co-passenger. sorry if your brother has tourette's or whatever, but FUCK. also why is it so cold outside? i'm still shivering at i've been home for like twenty minutes.

Monday, February 12, 2007

A Day Late And An MP3 Short

I don't know why, but I always hesitate to listen to new bands my friend rave about.* I trust their opinions about most things, so why wouldn't I give a hear to new music they're ravin' on? Even when I finally end up listening, it's usually by accident (e.g. hearing it on the radio or at a party) or out of boredom. I almost always end up liking whatever it is because my friends have good taste. It's just so embarrassing when I'm listening to THE MOST AWESOME BAND FROM 6 MONTHS AGO. I tell all my friends, 'Oh man this band is so dope!' And they're like, 'Yeah I knew that 6 months ago when I told you to listen them.' Then I have to

because I'm so red in the face about it.

Anyway, here's a list of musics I was late to get into, but am now glad I did:

Animal Collective
Hot Hot Heat
Regina Spektor
The New Pornographers
Xiu Xiu (I'm only 50% glad I finally listened to this)
Harlem Shakes
Lupe Fiasco
The Walkmen
Freakwater

Here are bands/artists I am still thinking about jamming on and might get to in a few months:
Beirut
new Of Montreal albums
PJ Harvey (probably not though)

If you want to make sure I listen to something you love RIGHT AWAY, please send me the tracks or make me a cd. It's much more likely that I'll listen if you make it easy for me. I know you have a vested interest in expanding my cultural horizons (as I have in expanding yours), so help me out a little, ok?

*This also happens with tv programs, but it's much harder to catch up with television. I really wish I had jumped on the Heroes wagon when it first started rolling. Now, unless I want to subscribe to Netflix (which I don't) or buy a million episodes on iTunes (no thanks!), I'm without recourse. People told me of the glory of Degrassi years ago, but I was reticent. Same with Buffy. Luckily, due to the cult following surrounding these shows and the proliferation of reruns, I was able to get back on track.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Five Days In Three Parts

I. Saturday

A. I took a magical trip to Staten Island on Saturday. It is unbelievably close to my house-- maybe 20 minutes tops from my block to the end of the Verrazano. It is a really interesting place. The neighborhoods change rapidly so it keeps you interested. Overall it reminded me of the Midwest (definitely Iowa, maybe Michigan, Ohio or Minnesota, not Indiana). The main imperative of the trip was to thrift shop and that we did. We went to a bunch of places including Everything Goes. It's owned by some weirdo commune freaks which we found out only after being creepily followed around the entire time. They also had a 'costume' section which was basically what anyone of our persuasion (i.e. frequent thrifters, 20somethings, from big cities, etc) would consider to be totally standard vintage fair. It was funny that they put it in its own 'wacky!' section located in the basement. Here's another place we went:


Seriously, it looks like I got that off an ironic signage photoblog, but it's totally legit. Funny, right? I scored a killer golf-themed ice bucket there. They also had a decent record selection, including a sealed copy of Rick Springfield's Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet.


Here's Lindsay perusing their collection:


The Island is rumored to have good Sri Lankan cuisine, but we couldn't find the restaurant we planned to patronize, so we settled for a totally empty Indian restaurant in a strip mall instead. It was pretty good and the lunch special was very reasonable. With Haley's help, I finished all my tandoori chicken.


Here's a pretty thing I saw:


In all, I'd definitely recommend going to SI for thriftin' or just plain hangin'.

B. Later that night we finally did THE GREAT CHAIN SECRET SANTA GIFT EXCHANGE. This has been many months in the making. We didn't have everyone in attendance, but 3/4 was our quorum, so we proceeded. People did a great job! Here's Matt, excited and red-eyed after Jess revealed that she will buy him new sheets when he gets his new bed:


I have to say that Erin's gift to me was the best of all. She got me a Cuisinart Heart-Shaped Waffle Iron Thanks Erin!! Matt got Erin some Rachael Ray literature.


We ate at Number 1 Chinese, which is like The Max or The Peach Pit for The Chain. Matt loooooves the chips they serve. They give you tons with an awesome dipping sauce!


Zack made a cool chopstick riffle.


Paul likes to suck the flavor out of the chopsticks. See?


For some reason the whole weekend was full of Jenga. I didn't play, but it was all around me all the time.




II. Eye Donors


Has anyone seen the subway advertisements for The Eye Bank of New York? They feature Jerry Orbach, who apparently gave his eyes away when he died. I wouldn't say these ads are successful necessarily, though they do make me think about the fact that two people are walking around with one of Jerry Orbach's eyes. They also makes me picture Jerry Orbach lying in the grave without eyes. They also make me think about Jerry Orbach's 'viewing.' I don't know if he had one, but if he did, did they give him fake eyes? It'd be pretty nasty if they didn't. Also were the eye recipients present? Matt thought it'd be dope if the recipients were ungauzed at the viewing, so the first thing they saw with one of Jerry Orbach's eyes was Jerry Orbach's dead body/face with exposed ocular cavities. Lastly, the ads make me wonder if eyes live forever. Can those who inherit eyes also donate?

III. Pipe Burst

I tried to fix my heater last night. I called the plumber who told me to turn the valve all the way to the left until I couldn't turn it anymore. I said, 'But water comes out when I do that.' He said, "Keep turning it. It'll stop.' I did. Apparently I turned the wrong thing and the entire valve came off and water went everywhere. For 45 minutes. It looked like this, but horizontal and narrower.



I flipped out. I was crying and hyperventilating. Thank god Cody was home. He has been in so many emergency situations (including, but not limited to: a hotel fire, a whirlpool overflow, and a car-through-wall-at-the-fudge-factory) that this didn't even phase him. Luckily because of the extreme slant in my apartment (a feature I had always considered the apartment's greatest shortcoming), almost none of my stuff was damaged. Morris the landlord came over and helped us out. He was extremely nice, despite some annoyance that he was 'about to sit down to watch American Idol.' I think being a girl worked in my favor because Morris is somewhat sexist. It was easy for him to chalk this incident up to girls being stupider than boys, a fact which he relayed to our lesbian neighbors saying, 'Never send a woman to do a man's job.' Hmmm.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Society of the Spectacularly Idiotic

If Guy Debord was alive today, he would have had a field day with Terence Koh and Jeffrey Deitch's latest masturbatory concoction (pun intended).


(photo credit- Stephanie Halmos/Patrick McMullan)

This performance piece was done in conjunction with Koh's exhibition at Deitch's other gallery, two doors down from this space. During the dinner, these genital-baring, bucket-helmet-wearing boys constructed a wooden bridge with a white box at the top.

  
(photo credit- Stephanie Halmos/Patrick McMullan)

I don't have all the details of the performance, but as the dénouement of this little display was a group urination session. They all pissed into their bucket helmets.

Now, this is an interesting corollary to my post on the New York Magazine Dash Snow article in which I probed, 'What do cum-and-glitter-embellished skulls have to do with the common man?' Alas, I was without answer. With this performance, I am left dumbfounded once again, but able to make some interesting historical connections.

At least the Situationists, though similarly misogynist, based their social detournment on some kind of political foundation. This is such a fantastically poignant illustration of people simply appearing to interact. The viewers are actually watching people construct the images that then literally obstruct the possibility for genuine human interaction that might transpire at a dinner party. Here's a quotation from Chapter 1 of Society of the Spectacle:

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.

This is exactly what's happening here. False consciousness? YUP! I bet they all think they're really thinking and smart and aware and shit. Deceived gaze? YUP! They're staring at assy nothing! It doesn't even have aesthetic value! It's just some 2x4s and cardboard! I would love to see some literature trying to justify or explain this abomination, though that assumes that Terence Koh is actually literate, which I highly doubt.


(photo credit- Stephanie Halmos/Patrick McMullan)

In summation, I reiterate my plea for help finding and castrating Dash Snow. I add Terence Koh to the list. Their names even rhyme. That must mean something.