If We Were
Aug 31, 2003 myMusic
For those of you who have clamored to hear the new version of If We Were, I’m going to hit the open mic at the Sidewalk Cafe tomorrow night (Monday, September 1st). You only get 8 minutes, so I’m only gonna do the one song (it’s fucking seven minutes long). I don’t really know too much about details, but I’ll probably find out more by tomorrow evening, so drop me an e-mail, an IM, or a phone call, and I’ll try to let you know. I do know it’s no cover, 2 drink minimum, and there are always tons of great acts.
[Update 10:30 PM: I think the whole shebang starts at around 8 with signup at 7:30. No idea when I'd be going on then. Not a big deal if people don't show since I'm only doing one song, but I'd appreciate the moral support...]
P.S. Check back here if you can before you come, in case I chicken out or something. Cause you know I might.
Dying On The Vine
Aug 29, 2003 coolSites
I think pretty much everyone who reads this is on Friendster, so I’ll skip the background info. What I want to talk about now is the usefulness of the system, how people subvert it, and how we become their hapless victims.
First of all, there are the fake people. God, Jesus, Lesbian, Yale University, Technics, etc. These people are pissing in our well. Not that it will matter once Friendster starts either charging for their services or delivering all our interests, connections, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses directly to the Total Information Awareness program, but right now it does.
Why do we Friendster? It gives us inhibited geeks a brief glimpse at what extroversion might be like. But more importantly, it provides us with thousands and thousands of people like ourselves with whom we supposedly have common ground. Except that that really cute girl who describes herself as shy and geeky and likes cartoons and Labyrinth is only connected to you through Atari and Ben Seaver from Growing Pains.
Enough bitching about the fake people. Friendster IS cracking down on them, although their tactics leave something to be desired. What really bugs me are the weak links.
The whole thing is based on the concept of the “friend of a friend.” In the real world, if I am connected to someone, and they are connected to someone else, that third person is someone that I very well might meet sometime, or that I may have met already. That person and I DO have something in common – our mutual friend – and we CAN use that as a starting point for building our relationship, whether business, personal, artistic, or whatever.
But so many of our friends on Friendster are not like that. So many of us have friendsters with whom we’ve never even really had a conversation – coworkers, people from school, people we want to get to know better and think that just by having that link, something will miraculously happen between us. It’s just plain silly. Friendster is a big enough waste of time as it is; it becomes far more so when the one useful thing it’s good for – bringing people who are somewhat connected a few steps closer – doesn’t even work.
Right now, I have three Friendster requests from people I barely even know. They’re all people I like, but I’ve only hung out with them in groups and very few times at that (only once for two of them). Within the context of Friendster, it just doesn’t make sense to add them as my friends. So until I’ve spent any more time with them, I’ve left them, as my friend Lin says, to “die on the vine.” A good expression, but it makes one wish that after a while, the friend request would disappear to assuage one’s unfounded guilt.
And if Colecovision, Blue Suede Shoes, or even Friendster itself try to be my friend, they’re getting flat-out rejected.
Tuesday Morning Update #8
Aug 26, 2003 myMusic
I’m about five lines away from finishing this goddamn song. Do I stay up until it’s done, or do I punk out, go to sleep, and let it drag on forever? The pale light of morning will reveal the answer….
[Update 8/26 2:22 AM]
The unthinkable has happened. If We Were, the song that I made a short recording of eight whole months ago, which numerous friends have heard, and harassed me for more, is finally done. I mean, it clearly needs some editing, reworking, etc., but the whole structure is there, and there are words and chords from beginning to end. This bodes well, I think.
I am too tired for a full-on update, but I will say more tomorrow….
I Love XML!
Aug 22, 2003 programmingandInterfaces
Entirely apart from how amazing the concept of Web Services is, and how it’s allowed me to suck info off of Amazon’s servers for the music I’m listening to, I love XML because it’s the backbone of RSS, and I just found out today that Craigslist has RSS feeds!
They’re at the end of every category page. So I can now keep tabs on all the new furniture in Manhattan. Or internet engineering jobs in Queens. Or casual encounters in all of New York. Cause those shits are funny.
Tuesday Morning Update #7
Aug 19, 2003 myMusic
Progress Report – same shit as last week: the song I’m working on is almost done. When I finish it, I’ll work on some others. I guess I’m just that slow.
Been thinking a lot recently about the choices we make, and why we make them. Sunday night, I was trying to take some songs I can play on the guitar (Jeff Buckley and Martin Sexton tunes mostly) and transfer them over to the piano, a move necessitated by the past 3 and a half years of piano love and guitar neglect.
At the end of my junior year in college, I made a plan to spend the entire summer really working on my jazz piano skills. I made a conscious decision then to focus on the piano, with which I had little experience and even lesser ability, and shy away a bit from other instruments, like the djembe and the guitar, for which I have more of a natural affinity. On Sunday night, desperately trying to make these songs sound like something more than a series of static chords, I had to ask myself why.
I think I treated the piano like a responsibility. I knew it was the instrument that would serve me best in the most areas – accompanying myself, playing jazz, “composition,” whatever. Maybe it was the wrong move. But I’m probably stuck with it.
Don’t you just hate knowing that things would be so different if you had just made one decision differently a long long time ago?
I definitely could have been a great fucking drummer by now. Oh well. Guess you can’t sing while you’re playing drums…
Fairway Uptown!
Aug 18, 2003 food
Down the stairs, to the left, walk all the way west to the river, and head inside.
This is how I got to the most amazing supermarket I have ever been to, Fairway Uptown. Best produce I’ve seen in New York. Humongous. Decent prices. Not too far from my apartment. And The Cold Room. I wish I’d had a camera. I’d been talking about going there ever since I moved uptown in March, but I didn’t get off my ass and do it until today.
It seems that every time I get off my ass, things improve. New York is looking better and better every day.
14 Hours of Darkness
Aug 15, 2003 thingsThatHappened
I’m sure everyone had their own crazy way of dealing when the power went out, their own stories about getting home, banding together, and roaming the streets of New York, Detroit, Ottawa, Texas, California, or wherever they might have happened to be. (Note: the very idea that the power grid has “nodes” which can knock out power in multiple cities in multiple countries is just plain ridiculous.) I’ll start with mine. Please feel free to share yours in comments below…
The way I saw it, it was our IT guy. I was at the bench in the back dealing with a computer when he reached over, fiddled with something, and turned off the power to the whole bench. I was just about to reproach him, when I noticed that he’d also managed to turn off the power to the entire store. Then someone ran in through the back door, saying it was the whole block. At this point, we started telling all the customers to go home – one customer, I heard, actually called upset that he’d been “hung up on” in the middle of a sale, and when informed that the power had gone out in what we’d now learned was all of New York, said that he didn’t care, that this was very important, and that someone had better call him back in 5 minutes to complete the sale. Sheesh.
Anyway. All of our biggest and baddest employees stood by the front door with the security guard to make sure no one took advantage of the confusion to walk away with a computer or two. The elephant in the room (or is it a gorilla?) was definitely whether or not this was a terrorist attack, and, if it was, what terrible things this would mean for the country at large. People had girlfriends stuck in the subway, family members they couldn’t reach – word was that the Manhattan Con Ed plant was on fire!
After about half an hour, we decided it was time to walk home. At some point, it was going to be dark, and if we weren’t inside yet, it was gonna seem real dark. And real scary. So I started walking uptown with my friend Brandi.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday Morning Update #6
Aug 12, 2003 myMusic
Just came back from a night at the Sidewalk Café with Tim. Monday nights are the “Anti-Hoot Open Mic.” We didn’t go to perform this time, just to scope out the scene. But who should we run in to, but our boy from back in college, soce the elemental wizard? Unfortunately, I had to go home for sleep before he went on, but I see him a bunch anyway, so it’s all good. Ooh, and we talked about me singing on one of his tracks. Fun!
People at the open mic were talented in all kinds of weird ways – some were good singers, some good lyricists, some good guitarists, some just plain funny. No one really blew me away, but the acts were definitely getting better as the night progressed, so I probably missed out on some great stuff. Apparently, the way it works is that if the guys like you, they ask you right then and there whether you want to do a full show there. Crazy.
I realized as I was leaving that the one and only reason I couldn’t do a full show is that I don’t have enough material. Now I’m generally a modest guy, but I think I’m comfortable saying that not one of the people I saw was half the singer I am, their songwriting and lyrical abilities notwithstanding. I haven’t heard too much of Tim’s singing recently, but I’d venture that the same probably goes for him as well (as in he’s like me, not like them).
This week, I also got paid by a friend to incorporate some sounds and do some mixing on a jingle he was doing for a commercial. We had a real fun time, we talked about creativity and about how you can’t succeed if you don’t try (wise fuckin’ words), I gave him a CD of some of my music, and we parted ways for a bit. It was the most money I have made to date from a single musical endeavor, and I can’t decide whether to be excited or merely shocked by its silliness. [Update 12:50 AM: They said the version with the extra sounds cut out at the end, so they had to use the pre-Arthur original. Har!]
Must finish songs. Write write write create create. It is the only way.
And in closing, there is nothing like listening to Hard Normal Daddy while wandering downtown late at night. Vague memories of rare bewildered trips to Konkrete Jungle and Alberto Balsalm pouring out of Evan’s back room. Visions of being hunched over my keyboard with headphones on, room lights down, little lights flashing. Hopes of dancing my own cosmic musical dance that will someday affect others as Squarepusher’s has affected me. I’ve been a little down on New York recently, but tonight helped me remember why I take shit all day and still end up poor. It’s because, in some weird fucked-up way, this is where my life is. This is where the life is. When I finally start blowing up, this is where it’s gonna have to be, because when all is said and done, anywhere else, it just wouldn’t matter.
People – There’s Just No Stoppin ‘Em
Aug 10, 2003 greatThingsThatPeopleDo
An excerpt from Herbert Asbury’s The Barbary Coast. There’s a Sandman story about this, but I always thought Neil Gaiman just made him up.
“By far the best known of all San Franciscos queer characters, however, was the Emperor Norton, whose real name was Joshua A. Norton. He was born in England in 1819 and at the age of thirty came to San Francisco with forty thousand dollars, with which he established himself as a real-estate operator and broker. Within ten years he had increased his fortune to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all of which he lost in an unlucky investment.
“The financial disaster unbalanced his mind, and on September 17, 1859 he sent to the newspapers an announcement that the California Legislature had chosen him Emperor of the United States, and that henceforth he must be addressed by his proper title. For a while he also called himself Protector of Mexico. For nearly thirty years he was one of the best-known men in San Francisco. Each afternoon he promenaded the down-town streets, graciously greeting his subjects. He wore a blue military uniform with tarnished gold-plated epaulets, which had been given him by the officers at the United States Army post, the Presidio, and a beaver hat decorated with a feather and a rosette, and he always carried both a cane and an umbrella.
“When his uniform began to look shabby, the Board of Supervisors, with a great deal of ceremony, appropriated enough money to buy him another, for which the Emperor sent them a gracious note of thanks and a patent of nobility for each Supervisor. He ate without paying at whatever restaurant, lunch-room, or saloon took his fancy; and whenever he wanted cash, he issued bonds in the denomination of fifty cents and sold them to his subjects. He also drew an occasional check for that amount, and it was invariably honored by the San Francisco bankers and merchants. On January 8, 1880 the Emperor died, leaving an estate which consisted of a two-dollar-and-a-half gold piece, three dollars in silver, a franc piece of 1828, and 98,200 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine.”
Thinking of this man seems to provide some kind of lifelong comfort. When things get rough, we all have the capability to get through them. Crazy or no, at least he was happy.
Dumb Mobs
Aug 7, 2003 thingsThatHappened
So I went to the Mob Project’s Mob #6 today. I showed up at Harry’s Hamburgers by myself, hung around until 7, at which point I received a little slip of paper with further instructions. The first thing I noticed was that a great majority of the people involved were white males in their 20’s or 30’s, button down shirt, hip glasses, with occasional satchel bag. Weird.
The directions read as follows:
Duration: 6 minutes (Gather at 7:18; disperse at 7:24.)
The Site: Toys R Us (Broadway at 44th St).
By 7:15, situate yourself on the second floor of Toys R Us, away from the Jurassic Park section.
At 7:18, approach the giant animatronic dinosaur. Fill in all around it. It is like a terrible god to you. Stare at it transfixed.
At 7:20, drop to your knees, still staring at the dinosaur. Whenever it roars, moan and cower behind outstretched hands.
At 7:24, disperse. No one should remain in Toys R Us after 7:27.
KEEP THIS SLIP HIDDEN. NO PHOTOS OR INTERVIEWS BETWEEN 7:15 AND 7:20.
What really happened: At 7:15, people started pouring and gathering around the dinosaur. Suddenly, the whole crowd fell to its knees. The dinosaur fell into roaring, we shrieked and hid behind our hands. The place was PACKED with people. I felt like I was on the subway. The people working at the store were very confused, I think. One of them shouted out, “Is anyone making a purchase?”
When I was kneeling, I just really wanted to get up and leave. I felt like this was a waste of the potential of human beings to come together and create something meaningful, exploiting our predisposition towards new paradigms to create something totally useless. A little too postmodern for my tastes. In addition, I felt bad for the Toys ‘R’ Us people whose store we were clogging up, and whose tourist customers we probably scared the hell out of. But I guess some of them seemed to enjoy it.
Police, or at least extra security, were called, and the mob was given a little bit of help on the way out. There were definitely still people inside at 7:27. But I think there were a lot more people than anyone was expecting. I’m just glad nobody got hurt or arrested or what have you. I mean, it was really crowded!
I ran into some friends from high school and college, and afterwards, a guy who I’d talked to a little while I was waiting at Hamburger Harry’s came up to me with a woman and a camera and wanted to ask me a few questions. It looked like a camcorder and they both had accents, so I thought they were just tourists or something. After I had talked to them, they asked me my full name, and I was like “Uh, what is this for?” We’re from Reuters, they said.
Damn sneaky TV news bastards. 
Great pictures at Satan’s Laundromat. Other coverage at Fred’s Journal, Writing My Name In Water, cce blog, glowlab news and You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass. (She’s got a couple posts on the topic, so that’s the weekly archive.)
