The Mars Bar, NYC East village, 25 E. 1st St
The Once And Future Blonde: “Wanna meet in east village dive Mars Bar?”…err, ok. So while waiting for Blondie to show up, I planted myself at the bar counter pretending to read The New Yorker. In reality I was eavesdropping on wheelchair dood chatting up middle-age single mom, drunk Yama-san blurting out Japanese-sounding English grunts, gay latino boy throwing his arms around (he briefly did some sort of gogo dance on the counter) and sulky bartender showing a customer some doodles made by the regulars (I sneaked a peek: Yama is the artist behind hand with penises for fingertips…sugoi!).
Note: I stole the pix from Boris Kafka’s flickr (Boris, who by the way is not me).
Posts tagged with personal rambling
“I said no photos, you little shit!” — angry Michael Angelakos bashes a fan’s camera with his mic at a recent Passion Pit gig.
….Ok, so, that’s not exactly what happened. Angelakos is too sweet a guy to be doing that. But his mic did collide with my camera. The collision was very minor and totally accidental, I am sure of it. Now, I wish I could say the same of the tiny girl standing next to me: she suddenly disappeared under Michael’s weight and when she resurfaced a minute later she looked somewhat damaged by that unexpected encounter. Ouch.
Flickr set: Passion Pit at Koko, London, 27 Oct 09
Just as I was about to transfer the most recent batch of *ahem* dubiously *cough* acquired movies to my external drive, upping my digital collection of films to, oh I don’t know, 400? 500? a trillion? - films ranging from Duck Soup and Battleship Potemkin to Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle via Ghost Dog, Arsenic and Old Laces, L’Atalante, The Princess Bride, Rambo….In short, a seriously eclectic bunch of masterpieces and some it’s-so-bad-it’s-good ones.
So yes, just as I was about to make that transfer and do a victory dance around my treasure chest, well, my external drive died on me. Great, months of illegal copying down the drain. Karma? Fuck Karma and fuck Western Digital. Now, the hotline dood asked me if I had backed up my back-up drive somewhere else — that would have been the smart thing to do, sir, as external drives can unexpectedly fail…
…!!!….
Right. Sure, I did. Phew. All better now. Oh no, wait, my back up’s backed up back up is backed up in a secret location somewhere in central Asia. The map to that secret location is safely guarded in some Apple Genius’s ass in the we’ll-take-all-your-money store in a not-so-secret location of London. Let me go pay the guy another million pounds real quick so he can make the birds sing again and all is right with the world again. If I weren’t dead inside, I’d be crying right now.
(Note: random pic found on the online Mac cemetery)
Just got back from the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Istanbul. Phil, one of our reporters, and Scott, one of our photographers, covered the riots on our last day there. Going through a bunch of invoices today, I’ve just come across Phil’s expenses; one of his entries reads “Coffee with Scott after riot: TL10”. That made me laugh.
Photos by Scott McGale
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
The set of rules Douglas Adams came up with to describe our reactions to technologies. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme dug that up to illustrate a point about twitter.
….I don’t have much time left. Scary.
….I don’t have much time left. Scary.
oats:
Kids in Paris having the times of their young lives watching a puppet show
This photo was taken in 1963 at a Guignol puppet show in Parc de Montsouris, Paris…Le theatre de Guignol has been getting this types of reaction from French kids for more than 200 years.
A typical scene from Guignol would have the ugly bad puppet approaching our hero (Guignol) very slowly from behind with the intention of knocking him down with a big ugly stick. The kids would go insane trying to warn Guignol of what’s about to hit him. Repeat that about 10 times and by the end of the show, the kids will have lost both their voices and the will to live. I’m telling you, it’s not for sissies.
Ok, so, just like Descartes, I have a soft spot for women who are sligthly cross-eyed. Which reminds me that I need to see Five Easy Pieces again; it’s on my list of all-time faves but it’s been years since I saw it and I can barely remember a thing about it… Except for Karen Black’s eyes that is.
Lenny (1974) by Bob Fosse
Here’s a film that profoundly marked me when I first saw it and kicked off a phase in my early-mid teens when I would travel great distances across Paris to catch screenings of American film classics. Both Dustin Hoffman and Valerie Perrine are absolutely fantastic in Lenny. The 70s were such a great decade for Hoffman…then the 80s happened and…oh, well.
Word of the day: Buffalo
Buffalo, the city + buffalo, the animal (plural form) + buffalo, the verb (to buffalo = to confuse) => “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”
…Confused? See more buffalo malarkey here
Ratatouille (2007) by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava
A cute Pixar tale about a cute French rat that loves to cook and ends up being the chef-in-hiding at a famous Parisian restaurant. How cute, how charming. Well, actually, it’s not cute, it’s not charming, it’s frankly disguting. There’s a rat in the kitchen of a restaurant. Cooking food for humans, who by the way are paying top Euro for their meal. It’s gross. Gross gross gross. And that thing is everywhere and touches everything in the fucking kitchen… And when you think you couldn’t possibly be more grossed out, the little bugger brings in all its ratty pals to help him cook a lame ratatouille. That image alone, of seeing the kitchen infested with millions of rats as they happily spread the plague all over Paris, is still engraved in my brain, and I can’t shake it off… Genitalia-bashing and blood-ejaculating Antichrist might just be what I need to clear my head.
Actually-Scrap-That-I’ve-Changed-My-Mind note: How clever the premise though… A rat that defies its social and natural circumstances by refusing to eat garbage and becoming a successful chef? What a great tale of social mobility. Quite inspiring, in fact. Plus, in the end (warning: major spoiler), everybody, including the rats, gets to eat haute cuisine. I mean, ratatouille. Lovely.
Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm
Like many others of my generation, as a kid in the 80s, Grace Jones scared the shits out of me. To me, she was this giant mechanical head that could swallow an entire car - with me in it. I’m referring to this Citroen commercial. I would picture her getting out of Studio 54 totally off her head, going on a rampage on the streets of New York, snapping innocent necks left, right and centre. However put off I was by the diva-esque persona, it was impossible not to be in awe of her outlandish style and her growling voice. “Slave to the Rhythm” is simply awesome. Love the video and love this live rendition.
A colleague of mine went to see Grace at Somerset house last night and it seems that she’s still got it.
Frances McDormand was sitting next to me on the flight from Istanbul to London (her hubby and their adopted son were on the other side of the aisle). I’m a big fan (particularly of her performances in Fargo and Wonder Boys) and would have loved to have told her so, but no no no, instead I thought it’d be better to pretend to not have recognised her and let her be. So I spent most of the flight reading my book…with my right eye that is… because the left one was busy stalking McDormand and it did not lose sight of her the entire time. She paid me no mind of course and seemed totally oblivious of my stalking; she read that stupid inflight magazine from cover to cover. I mean, seriously, who were you trying to fool with that act, Fran? You were totally pulling a strabismus on me too, I just know it, you sly little minx.
After getting myself happily lost in the maze of the streets of Istanbul, I got hit with the view of the Sea of Marmara. It was hard to get moving after that: boat watching can be addictive and my ipod started playing Efterklang, which got me to sink even deeper into contemplation.
And just when I thought that I was seriously over the whole business travel routine, I got to my hotel room and got introduced to the wet room. Love at first sight. It reminded me why I liked staying in hotels so much: the walk-in shower with that gigantic shower head coming out of the ceiling. That thing can shoot water down your head with such power that it peels the skin off your skull. Sooo good.
Granted, it might be trivial, but that shower makes me real happy. The 24h room service too. (The surroundings are not bad either.)
