At Least I'll Get My Monday Nights Back

I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of weeks and have decided that it's time, after 3 1/2 years, to stop doing the Toxic Pop Newsletter. I started it when I was totally flat-ass broke and doing freelance PR for various underground performance artists, musicians, etc. to keep myself fed. The idea was to have a built-in promo vehicle for the artists I was repping, and it just kind of took off. Today I've got thousands of subscribers, more and more each week... but it's become a chore. It's just not fun anymore. I don't necessarily advocate dropping anything and everything when the fun goes out of it - everything goes through un-fun stages, slumps. But with this one I've been trying to make it work for months. I dunno. Maybe the newsletter and I need couples therapy, but I think that my life needs changes and I can feel those changes gathering around, waiting to be let in. I guess to make room for new stuff sometimes we have to let the old stuff go.

I've never let go of things easily. I've also been thinking recently about this: why I'm 41 and single. Before I was 40, I never even thought about the "why"... I just was. Now I think that maybe the reason that I've had a habit of persuing unavailable women is that I'm afraid of ultimately letting them go. I'm the worst at goodbyes... I get sad at saying goodbye to someone I met during a 90-minute layover in an airport because I like them and I know I'll never see them again. As some of you know, this can have (and has had) disasterous results. Anyway. Now I have to say goodbye to 3,000 people I've never met, but for whom I still feel a great affection because they're the ones that saw why this list was important, why it was needed beyond my selfish self-promotional motivations, why we still have to struggle for art to live in NYC.

There it is. There better be something *really* good to take its place. Just saying.

Acres of diamonds, baby.

.

Incidentally, that picture below is of the Hotel Seville (29th & Mad) before it became the Carlton-Meridian. I lived in the Seville in 1985-86 when it was still a welfare hotel, and had several self-imposed near-death experiences within its walls. Sid Vicious tried to commit suicide there. My friend Christ lived there too. He and I also moved to LA at the same time... I made out of LA alive, he didn't. He was shot in the back of the head by his girlfriend's brother.

i'm in love with something that i can't see

i just took the qualifying test for Jeopardy! it was harder than i thought it wood bee.

now i'm having conversations with dead people: physically dead, spiritually, or just "dead to me".

those are always fun

told christ wetzel that the hotel sevillle is now a Carlton/Meridian

where millionaires sleep with the ghosts of dead crack whores.

and you can't get a loosie for a dime anymore at the bodega on the corner

because it's gone, the family retired happily to queens

with the buyout money from Crunch.

told my dad i'm doing ok, still landing on my feet

and i still think about him on his birthday.

told my high school girlfriend that i had dinner with

a transboi on thursday.

told a passing lady that love allows for all things good

and never hides

and always looks you in the eye.

xoxoxoxo xoxoxoxo
oxoxoxo oxoxoxo
xoxoxo xoxoxo
oxoxo oxoxo
xoxo xoxo
oxo oxo
xo xo
o o
x

Spring Cleaning

I didn't even realize that it officially turned spring on Monday. So much junk has built up, even in just the past half-a-year. Junk I didn't even know was junk... something found, that I thought I loved for a minute so I brought it home and put it in the corner...but it didn't belong in the corner. Or anywhere. It was junk, and belonged in the trash. But throwing away anything that you even thought you could love, hurts to a degree relative to the amount of time you loved, or thought you could love, that thing. love things trash junk. Or there's a sweater that you find on the floor of the closet. There was a day that you loved that sweater more than anything - the moment you decided to buy it, that sweater was everything. Now the cat's peed on it, and the pee has dried up. Your once favorite sweater is crusty with old cat pee. You hold it up to the light, and see the holes for the first time... new holes or ones that were there w/out you noticing.. it doesn't matter. Holes are holes (insert bisexual joke here). By the end of the day you have 3 contractor bags full of holy sweaters, expired vitamins, vhs tapes, a stray square of christmas wrapping paper, half-filled notebooks, and dirt. I need 2 trips to get them to the street. After the second, wiping my hands on my jeans out on the sidewalk, I look up and meet familiar eyes - a friend I used to love, passing on the sidewalk. Eyes quickly away and down, and I smile in a way that hurts. Back inside, everything feels bigger.

what the fuck happened?

Holy shit, I'm home! How did I get here? I love when my day starts like that. Went with Rev to Sidewalk to see Milk Kan (actually, it was just Simon, aka "Scrappy Hood", solo). We were joined by Lopi, Dodge, Brer, Kat, Monica & Humphrey, Prichard, Mike Amato and Michele Carlo. We took up about 3 tables in the showroom, where we camped out through a few opening acts of varying levels of goodness and drank. And drank. And got shusshed a lot. And whiled our time chatting with Simon and sending text messages back and forth between tables. Simon went on at about 11ish (they are remarkably punctual at Sidewalk) and did a short set, maybe 30 minutes or so.... after which most of us staggered over to Dodge's. Somehow Rev, Simon and I got seperated from the others and decided we should stop in at a bodega for beer, since we didn't know if the others would be buying some (No, it never occured to any of us to use our cell phones to call the other group). We walked out with a keg of Heineken, which we lugged up to the Dodge-Mahal, where the others were waiting. After that.... uhh... I remember there was a fair amount of drinking beer out of jars, there may have been some dancing, I smoked a cigarette or 2. And then I was home, and it was Saturday! Like magic! and...oooff... food calls. As does the gym. laterz.

North Six

I can barely move today due to late night cavorting amongst metal heads in bburg last night. Rev's next article for Nerve is about trying to be a groupie and to that end she asked me if I'd call my friend (and Matador Records prez) Chris to see if he could help her hook up with a band. I'd barely gotten her request past my lips, when Chris said "I've got the perfect band for her, but she'll have to act fast." The band, Early Man, is an extreme metal outfit from Columbus, Ohio who have one of the best bios of any band we'd ever seen. They'd be playing at North Six in Wmsbg that same night, and out in Hoboken the next (tonight). Since neither one of us wanted to go to Hoboken, and we both had planned to go to Prichard's birthday party on Sat, she had to make the move quickly.

At about 9:30, Rev, Dodge and I piled into a cab and headed over the bridge. I made a call to get a 20 on Chris, but he clearly had already begun drinking and I couldn't really make out where he was, except that he was already in the burg somewheres. We pulled up to North Six to a gaggle of metal hipsters hanging on the sidewalk, asking if we had the hookup on extra tix. After being carded and bag-searched, we were fed into the outer lobby just in time to see the 6'6" bouncer "escorting" an unruly metal head out to the street, via some kind of choke-hold I'd never seen before. I called Chris again, and all he was able to get out this time was "Berry and North Six. Drink."

"What's the name of the bar?"

"I unno. Berry and North Six"

So the three of us headed to Berry and N. 6 and met up with Chris, his wife, and a fellow named (Andrew?) who was quiet and mysterious. They were just standing out on the sidewalk, and I think someone must have suggested a bar, because Chris staggered off in a direction and seemed to know where he was going. I think we were looking for Greenpoint Tavern, but never did find it. On the way, Chris ran into the Early Man drummer and the guitarist for the opening band, Priestess, and they all engaged in some kind of shop talk, while Rev, Dodge and I hung back. I told them that if they were gonna do this groupie thing, they'd better get in there and introduce themselves, so we stepped up but let Chris do the introductions. He didn't mention that Rev's goal was mind-bending sex with one of them by the end of the night, which is probably just as well. After not-finding our destination, we just went into some random bar and I got my beer on, while Chris ordered a bourbon straight-up. He'd mentioned on the phone earlier that he'd been keeping sober lately, and planned on just "dipping his toe off the wagon" but not until next weekend. As we waited at the bar, I said "I thought you weren't dipping off the wagon til next week", to which he replied "The minute I heard your voice on the phone, I knew I wouldn't be staying sober tonight." I was flattered that I could have such an effect on someone.

11:00 PM: We make it back to NorthSix in time to catch the end of Priestess's set which they rocked to a sea of headbangers, many of whom were waving the obligitory devil-horn fingers in the air. We'd hoped that Priestess would be an all-girl metal band so that I could get in on the groupie action too, but alas they were all dudes. I lost Dodge and Rev in the crowd, but when Priestess finished up, they found me and began waving their own devil-horns and screaming about how Priestess rules the world! They asked if I could get Chris to let them downstairs so they could start mauling the band members. I disappeared to find him, and when I did he said "This isn't really a Matador show, so I can't really start sneaking them around. Besides, Rev Jen is going to have to do some of this groupie work on her own. I told her earlier that the key to being a groupie was patience, and she'll just have to have some." I felt like I was being given a lecture on self-restraint by Keith Moon. I got another drink and headed back to break the bad news, but the pair were, once again, nowhere to be found.

As it turns out, NorthSix isn't too tough a place to sneak around in. Rev and Dodge had done just fine getting backstage without Chris's help and apparently they were able to meet and socialize with many of the band members all on their own. Chris would be proud, I thought. However, Rev made the cardinal error of telling the dudes she was a journalist ("I never should have done that!" she said this morning) which made them all take a big giant step away. Apparently, musicians don't like their "gee-eff's" knowing about their groupie activity, much less reading about it on urban hipster websites like Nerve. By the time the 2 of them came back up to get me, Early Man had already taken the stage and the heads were banging once again. We strolled right by the "security" guy and went back downstairs to an empty green room to do some more drinking. Dodge, by this point, had fallen in love with Vince, a member of Priestess and was lamenting that he had given them the brush. "Maybe that's his jacket," I said, pointing to the brown leather fur-collared bomber laying on the chair. I felt through the pockets to see if there were any identifying objects, and sure enough, there was a wallet in the inside pocket. It should be mentioned that Priestess are from Canada, and apparently are not too hip on the do's and don'ts of the big bad apple, the first of which is DON'T leave your wallet alone in a room by itself. Lucky for Vince I'm not a thief, but I did pull his driver's licence for Dodge, who swooned when she saw it. "Look! It's got his address!", she gasped, and immediately wrote it down. I also found his cell phone, and tried calling my own number from his phone in order to get Dodge some digits to go with the Montreal residence info, but we couldn't get a signal in the basement.

We remained downstairs until Early Man got offstage and Chris came down with the band for a little late night metal schmoozefest. I was already about 7 or 8 pints in at this point, so here is where the old memory starts to crackle out. I know that we were downstairs for a while (although I don't remember who I talked to, if anyone) and then left, Dodge went home, and Rev and I went with Chis and the band to some other bar where we drank big giant beers out of styrofoam. "Is this Greenpoint Tavern, Rev? Did we finally find it?" I remember asking. "No," she said "We're somewhere else that also has beer in styrofoam." I was confused. I was very drunk. It was very late. I went outside and got in a cab and went home. Rev never did get laid, but hopefully she got something to write about.


The green room


This dude is wringing the sweat out of his shirt.


Hangin' with Early Man

You Are So Right

Ach ja... estas tan correcto, sweet seniorita. I do, indeed. So why is it that I haven't the energy to put pen to paper, never mind to dance, laugh, stay out all night, make art both good and bad, drink too much and actually live the life worth writing about, the way we all did just a few years ago. We all stay in now, we feel older, tired, more...serious. Now the work we do we do alone, at home, in our pajamas with a cup of tea at our elbow. Not a decade ago we did it together, in the bars, on dirty stages and half out of our minds. What I can't figure out is this: it can't be age that wears us, because I was older in 98 then than Rev is now, and Prichard was older than I am today. Were we just drunk on.... what? The 90's? Clinton? cushy internet jobs, IPO and Launch Parties for websites that would disappear a month later, open bars every night of the week... Was it that, or is it us? Maybe it was 9/11. Maybe it's the city. In 1998, the 1-2 Giuliani-Bloomberg punch was still in mid-swing, New York wasn't yet on the ropes with blood in her mouth, both eyes swollen shut. Surf Realities still had a fighting chance, the future wasn't yet inevitible. We all smoked in bars and it wasn't against the law, or half a day's pay for a pack. We raised our flag in the dirt, the LES, the only island of old New York we could find - an island sinking like Atlantis, deeper by the hour.

Tonight I let the marijuana wash the stress of the day off my shoulders... struggle with inertia just turning off the TV and touch my face while I write. I wonder if there an alternate reality somewhere, maybe it's just another city, that still has reverend hanks flushing their own heads down toilets, red-leather clad curry spices following friends home at 5 in the morning, friends who have to work at 7. A place where the kids like to have fun and they don't notice their common alcohol bloat and face is still all alpha. A place where empty spaces still exist, and people come to fill them with play... where the only reason you need to create is space/time to do it in. Where did those things go?

I'm rambling. Just blowing off steam. My apologies.

new empty spaces replace the old ones



pic by jen-x. i stole it from her myspace profile.

be careful what you wish for

Thursday night, the 202 Restaurant in Chelsea Market - a ridiculously overpriced "restaurant" that also sells overpriced clothing and furniture for some reason - invited the tenants of the Market (O2, Food Network, etc.) to a 2 hour free margarita open bar, from 6-8pm. A mass email was sent to all O2 employees, so I fully expected the joint to be packed with my coworkers at 5:59. I twisted our production manager Rebecca's arm to get her to skip the gym and go with me, and we headed down at five-of, in order to be right on time like good alcoholics. Shockingly, only about 7 Oxygenites showed up... most of the drinkers were from the Food Network, all of whom seemed a little snobbish when they found out we were from O2. During the first hour, I noticed that either I was growing larger and larger, or the margaritas were getting smaller and smaller. By 6:45, they were being served up in shot size glasses, and by 7 I found out why: they had run out of stinkin' tequila!! Now look, I don't want to tell anyone how to throw a party, but if you're throwing a 2-hour *margarita open bar*, you should, umm... HAVE PLENTY OF TEQUILA ON HAND! They also ran out of Contreau, which meant that the drinks had to be made with some ghetto triple-sec bullshit. Rebecca and I bailed immediately, and went to get some food and margaritas at Mary Ann's, where I knew the tequlia would be plentiful. Later, I headed over to Rev Jen's for our weekly OC party (which has dwindled to just she and I of late) and drank beer while we watched our fave show, yelling at the TV and digging into her roommates beer when ours ran out. Somehow, she convinced me to go to the Bowery with her at midnight to see THE HOWL, and we spent the 2 hours after the OC doing drunken friend-invites on myspace and applying our makeup. The rest, as you can imagine, is kind of a blur... I do remember seeing the crazy-dancing Lopi and our good friend Kat at Bowery, and that I got home (somehow) after 2 AM. I menatlly adjusted my usual friday schedule of getting up at six for the gym, and fell into bed.

Needless to say, yesterday I was a mess, and in no shape to be doing anything but going home after work and watching my 24 DVDs. Nevertheless, I'm still enough of a pushover to be talked into going out, no matter how out-of-it I am. Rev called in the afternoon and asked if I didn't want to go see Pamela Des Barres reading at a bar in Greenpoint, instead of seeing her Saturday (today) at Coliseum Books as we'd originally planned. It was tempting and, as a Wilde boy once said: "I can resist everything but temptation". Since I came into work almost 2 hours late, and am doing an off-site training on Monday and Tues, I stayed at the office til 8PM finishing things up, and then hopped the L out to Bedford. Rev and I found each other on the corner, and fled the mob scene of milling hipsters as fast as we could flee - down Bedford towards Greenpoint. It's a good ten-minute walk at least, which we spent marvelling at just how many hipsters were in Williamsburg and fantasized about throwing a "Dork-Fest" in the neighborhood, in an attempt to drive them out. I said we could appoint a hipster pied-piper of sorts, who could carry a boom-box blasting Cold Play, and lead the parade of hipsters through the streets and into the east river. She suggested Monopoly tournaments and Tolkein readings. Just before we hit McCarren Park, we passed a ginormous patch of vacant land, at least the size of a city block, surrounded by chain-link and barbed-wire. "What's that?" Rev asked. "That," I answered, "is a hipster-free zone." For a moment we thought we'd gone in the wrong direction because we couldn't find the bar (Enid's), but every time we tried to ask a passing hipster for help, we were completely ignored. I finally realized they weren't ignoring us, per se, but that each and every one of them was listening to an iPod, and were blissfully oblivious to our plight.

We found the bar, and were quite early, as we'd planned. Still, there were no tables available so we ordered our beers and stood awkwardly in the back by the restrooms. There was a big birthday party (evidenced by the half eaten birthday cake in the center of the array of pushed-together tables) in the center of the room, a few of whom had apparently abandoned their cake and drinks and split. Rev and I wondered if we should just sit at the birthday table, and I voted yes. After all, they're probably not here for the reading, and surely no one else would have the balls to just move in on someone else's party. So that's what we did, and no-one said a word. I almost cut myself a piece of cake, but didn't want to jeopardize our amazing seats. Eventually an even better table right next to ours was freed up and we jumped on that immediately. Rev's friend Angie from work showed up with a couple of her buds, and we ganked some chairs for them so that they could sit at our best-table-in-the-house.

Pamela came on at about 10:30, and the reading was amazing. She is 57 years old, and looks like she is in her early 40's. Surely there's some botox and surgery involved in that equation, but she really did look stunning. She started out by reading a short piece from her bestselling memoir, I'm With The Band, about hanging out and doing PCP (actually, a drug called Trimar) with Jim Morrison in the early days of The Doors. She then gave up the stage to Rhett Miller, a musician from The Old 97's, who read an even longer piece from the book, about Pamela's torrid affair with Jimmy Page. She then returned to the mic for a wildly entertaining Q&A with the audience. I'm still going tonight at Coliseum, where she will be reading with Sandra Bernhardt.

HOWdeeeeeeee!

<- Bex n' I at Scenic saturday night. There to see DEVA, the female-led DEVO tribute band. I'd thought they were *all* female, but it turns out I was confusing them with the opening band: VIOLATOR, the all-girl Depeche Mode tribute band. Bex and I dressed as cowboys - old-school, Come Back Jonny style - and stood right up front blocking everyone's view with our giant ten-gallon chapeaux. DEVA rocked with their matching quasi-Clockwork-Orangesque getups and synchronized 80's dancing, even though their set-list consisted of few hits. Still they managed to crank out an hour or so of DEVO's more interesting and dancable tunes: Mongoloid, Freedom of Choice, and Secret Agent Man among them. But alas no Satisfaction, Gates of Steel or Whip-It. Still.. so f'in FUN.

thoughts on recent media while grooving on a cookie

24: This show is like crack cocaine. Watching the 2-hour season premiere at her place last night, rev and I were comparing notes on how Jack Bauer never has to recharge his cell phone or pee. Neither did 007. Jack Bauer is the new James Bond. Racist? Sure. oh, and Bond wasn't? I still think all Russians are evil.

Brokeback Mountain: YipeeayooK-Y Muthafuckas. I liked it. Best Picture? No way (of course my saying that means it will sweep... what do I know - I didn't like that MDB that won last year either. ) There wasn't enough of a story. If it had been a man/woman love story it would have bored the shit out of me in 20 minutes, and a woman/woman tale would have busted my chick-flick-ometer and sent me fleeing in horror.

King Kong: WWWWay too fuckin long. We don't need an hour of giant bugs and chases and yeah, we-get-it-youre-really-good-at-special-effects. Or bland ingenues for that matter. Beautiful photography but, duh, it's Peter Jackson.

The Corporation:

The O.C:

[to be continued.... i took a break to watch 24]

From Friday's Times

Why is this bugging me so much? I even had nightmares about it last night.

From Friday's NY Times Op-Ed: While You Were Sleeping, by William Falk

FORBIDDEN IDEAS With more than 100 million users, the Internet is booming in China. The American Web giants Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have all grabbed a piece of the lucrative Chinese market - but only after agreeing to help the government censor speech on the Web. In providing portals or search engines, all three companies are abiding by the government's censorship of certain ideas and keywords, like "Tiananmen massacre," "Taiwanese independence," "corruption" and "democracy." Most foreign news sites are blocked. This year, Yahoo even supplied information that helped the government track and convict a political dissident who sent an e-mail message with forbidden thoughts from a Yahoo account; he was sentenced to 10 years in jail. "Business is business," said Jack Ma, Yahoo's chief in China. "It's not politics."