76 posts from 2006

Money, more money, a box of DV tapes, the trunk of Bibi the Volvo, a Mates of State b-side, birthday wishes, random job leads, stories, jokes, photographs, encouragement, advice, affection.

There are the things Leslie offered to me over the course of the last few years. I'm one of the lucky ones who knew her. (As it turns out, there's a lot of us, and I think we all, collectively, feel 110% lucky that we knew her.) Leslie was one of those remarkable people who could swoop in and make it all better -- she always gave freely, no strings attached, out of friendship. I like to think that she'd offer you the world if you needed it.

I'm sorry we never got together that last time she was in the city. I'm sorry I won't get to hear about her re-doing her house with the smokin' hot fireman again or cooking extravagant multi-course meals. I'm sorry I won't get to thank her for everything, ever again. I'm sorry she'll never get to see our finished movie. I'm sorry we'll never have the joy of hearing another funny story from her, or another dashed off, perfectly timed email.

Leslie, we'd follow you anywhere.

Rest in peace, friend.

(At least that I can tell from their Camera Finder, which relies on EXIF data...which sometimes gets stripped out of photos for one reason or another)

Least popular camera: Leica R9 with a whopping 18 photos!

Least popular cameraphone: Motorola V300... although the EXIF data rarely makes it through on cameraphones.

We're going under the East River, from Bedford Avenue to First Avenue. A handful of hipster brats on the train with me. I'm tired, so I'm resting my eyes.

The conductor keeps blowing his horn over and over and over as the train moves slowly in the tunnel.

Honk. Honk. Honk. Honk. Honk. Nice, long, teeth-rattling honks.

Then all of a sudden he changes them to multiple, rapid-fire short horns.

Honk-honk-honk-honk, and the train slows down but it's still going. The shabbily dressed hipster boy who looks like a scrawny Seth Green smirks and elbows his friend, mimicking the short honks.

Then, behind his head, in the window, I see a gloved hand. It's a dirty white and it's waving hello at me.

I look up. MTA construction workers. They're squeezed into a tiny space between the tunnel and the train. They must have been doing work, and the conductor's honking was the signal to get out of the way, because a train is coming through.

They're standing upright, with only a few inches between their bellies and the moving train, the moving train that contains us. And a few of them are looking inside the L train, and waving, as we go by.

I wave back from inside the train. Then, they're gone.

J.Ko's liveblogging of Pop!Tech is very cool, and this tidbit caught my eye:

Hasan Elahi, during his ordeal being mistaken for -- what's the term these days? -- an enemy combatant, learned that language translates easier than culture. That is, you can learn how to speak a language fluently way easier than to have the cultural fluency necessary to convince someone you're a native. In his interrogations, Hasan liberally sprinkled pop culture references in his answers to questions posed by the FBI to help convince them that he was a native. Workers at call centers in India for American companies are not only taught to speak English with an American accent, they also receive training in American geography, history, and pop culture so as to better fool/serve American callers.

The first bit reminds me of a great This American Life story from last year about a different case of mistaken identity.

The second part reminds me of something that happened last week: I was calling to activate my new credit card that I'd gotten in the mail. Instead of a machine giving me prompts to enter in stuff like my social security number, I was immediately connected to a woman who asked me to verify my identity. Then, she said she was calling from Provo, Utah and where was I calling from? And tried to make conversation, saying that it was raining in Provo but had lightened up a bit and how was the weather in New York blah blah blah. How very strange. After a minute or so or chit-chat we went ahead and activated my card and all that jazz.

It wasn't until right after I hung up that I realized, Discover Card was either very sneaky or very smart. In light of all of the outsourcing of call centers, they wanted to make sure I was (or I thought I was) speaking to someone in Utah and not India or Thailand.

Clever.

Juan Maclean, Wilco, Two Gallants...nobody is safe. Of all of the weirdest bands to associate with violence! What next, a riot at a Decemberists show? Fighting at Sujan Stevens?

Says Pitchfork:

Seriously, WTF? Jeff Tweedy's decking rowdy fans, cops are Tasering innocent 14-year-old kids, and now this? National Rock Club Violence Week continues with this latest report of live gig fisticuffs: according to numerous posts on the DFA message board and confirmed by a representative from the label, DJ Juan Maclean leapt down from the stage at last Friday's DFA gig (October 13) at the Earl in Atlanta to lay the proverbial smack down on a drunk-ass fan who messed with his gear.

What's your favorite way to keep in touch? Phone, snail mail, email, text message, Vox, _____ ?

Carrior pigeon.

Smoke signal.

Semaphore.

Morse code.

Hobo chalking.

The subway challenge boys made it! At 6:06 a.m., the pair arrived at the Pelham Bay station on the No. 6 train, clocking in at 24 hours, 2 minutes.

The duo, Matt Green and Don Badaczewski, broke the standing record set in 1998, which was 25 hours, 11 minutes.

My favorite quote, from an MTA spokesperson: "I can honestly say I could find other things to do for a day then spend it entirely on the subway."

They're trying to pass-through every single station in the system on a single ride using lots and lots of transers. Here's a Gothamist interview and a New York Times story:

There are 468 stations within the subway system, according to New York City Transit. But Mr. Badaczewski said that they did not intend to pass every one, because they would count two stations as one if they are connected by passageways.

One inflexible rule is that both men must stay in the subway system until the ride is complete. So they each plan to use a single-ride Metro Card.

The difficulties will be obvious to any straphanger.

I just tried calling their "hotline" (718-407-4697) and got a generic "out of service" message. Boo. I'm guessing the hotline is really one of their cellphones.

What albums are in heavy rotation for you right now?

Peter and the Wolf - Red Hunter's warped folk music + junk orchestra (group of howling, drunk friends banging on cans and shit) + eerie old-timey flavor = really, really good. I prefer the self-titled over Experiments in Junk.

Augie March - beautiful, lush, Australian pop. Uber-poetic and sometimes heartbreaking. I uploaded "Cold Acre," my favorite song off of the new album, which probably won't see US distribution for, like, three years. Fucking record labels! Get on this!

The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed. I approached TLW's 3rd album with some trepidation at first and my initial reaction was lukewarm. Slowly, the bulk of the songs earwormed themselves into my brain. "Honest" and "Hindsight" and "Teaspoon" all get stuck in my head for days at a time. Damn you, Roderick.

Page France - a double EP set called Pear and Sister Pinecone. Page France's nuanced, clever folk-pop is carefully constructed using modest but warm components -- acoustic guitar, organs, glockenspiel, tambourine, the pretty backing vocals of keyboardist Whitney McGraw -- while Michael Nau's striking voice lends the band's music an air of sincerity and innocence. More from me on NPR.

Boat - more charming indie pop. Haven't listened very deeply yet but it's made a good first impression.

Gogol Bordello - in lieu of talking about Beirut again and Devotchka again (and don't buy the Little Miss Sunshine track unless you want to hear shredded up instrumental versions of your favorite Devotchka songs, seriously), I've been taking in some gypsy punk rock. That's right. See also: A Tribute to Stesha, for more traditional  Russian gypsy music.

Astor Piazzolla - Tango: Zero Hour. A classic in nuevo tango. I'd had a bunch of Piazzolla mp3s on an older computer a while back but I have no idea what happened to them all, so I Primed this off of Amazon. If you liked the Waking Life soundtrack or Tin Hat Trio, you'll love this.

(Hmm, I wonder if I should post a neuvo tango/gypsy/Russian folk/etc. mix to Vox at some point.)

There's also new stuff from Eric Bachmann (on first listen way better than the last Crooked Fingers album), the Mountain Goats (this is definitely a cloudy fall day album and is much lighter on the barnburners than previous works), Chad VanGaalen (I have an animations DVD of his that I won a few months ago that I still haven't watched either), M Ward, and others that I haven't sat with long enough just yet.

Notes:
* I hope this doesn't look too weird on people whose layouts differ from mine.
* Uploading mp3s and then not being able to add cover art afterwards really bothers me.
* So does adding albums that aren't on Amazon (which I did by finding their cover art and the uploading it as a photo.)